Mark Dayton

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my colleagues in support of this conference report, the national defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2004. At the outset, I express my appreciation and my utmost respect for the two outstanding leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman John Warner from Virginia and Ranking Member Carl Levin from Michigan. When I was preparing to join the Senate 3 years ago, I asked two of my distinguished Minnesota predecessors, former Senator and Vice President Walter Mondale, former Senator David Durenberger, and my long-time friend and then-colleague-to-be, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, for their advice on committees to seek assignment. All three enthusiastically recommended the Senate Armed Services Committee for two primary reasons: First, it is of paramount importance with responsibility to assure this Nation's overwhelming military superiority now and forevermore; Second, the unparalleled opportunity to serve under, work with, and learn from the two incomparable committee leaders, Chairman Warner and former chairman, now ranking member, Levin. The advice of my fellow Minnesotans was prescient in both respects. For all the attention that is given to this body's partisan differences and discord, what are usually overlooked, though fortunately much more prevalent, are the bipartisan professionalism, mutual respect, and shared commitment to do what is best for America, for all of America. That ethic is what predominates in the Senate Armed Services Committee. It begins with the personal conduct and professional relationship of these two extraordinary public servants and national leaders, John Warner and Carl Levin. At any time in our Nation's history, but especially during the unprecedented circumstances of the last 3 years, since the September 11, 2001, attack, the two wars that followed and are still ongoing in Afghanistan and Iraq, our Senate and our Nation are exceedingly fortunate in the leadership of these two outstanding men, Chairman John Warner and Ranking Member Carl Levin. They have also led members on the Armed Services Committee, on which I am proud to serve, to pass legislation, first in the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support and now in the conference with the House, with President Bush's civilian defense leadership and with our Nation's military command, Chairman Richard Myers and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who serve this country with such great distinction. As George Washington said in 1793, in his fifth annual address to Congress: ``If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.'' The succeeding 210 years have proven President George Washington's wisdom and the imperative that we follow that advice. With this legislation, we have continued that bipartisan commitment and upheld that most sacred trust, the protection and safety of our fellow citizens across this great Nation and, so much as humanly possible, throughout this world. The final bill before the Senate authorizes $401.3 billion in budget authority for fiscal year 2004 with additional funding authorized for the acquisition of 100 tanker aircraft. The Defense appropriations measure, which this body has passed, which will come back in conference reports that we will pass again with overwhelming bipartisan support, will obligate most of that funding, which does not count the $67 billion in the recent supplemental appropriation for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which means that, in total, in fiscal year 2004 we will spend over $500 billion for our national defense and military operations. Some of my constituents would say that is too much. Some would say it is too little. It is unquestionably a great deal of money. As a great former Senator and colleague and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Max Cleland, would say, $500 billion does not go as far as it used to. But freedom is not free. Today, on Veterans Day, as we honor the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives, their bodies--as Senator Cleland did--we are reminded once again that freedom is priceless and ever more expensive. But the results in Iraq and Afghanistan should assure our Nation that the money we have spent has been well worth it and well spent. It has saved American lives in those theaters and it has saved the lives of other people in the world. It has protected the world from some of the most evil forces imaginable and from that most awful of possible occurrences, a nuclear catastrophe. My fellow citizens should recognize that we are not, all of us, together, paying that price. We are borrowing it and passing most of the costs of its repayment to our children and our grandchildren. The projected fiscal year deficit for the Federal budget for the same fiscal year 2004 which we have just begun is estimated to exceed $500 billion. That happens to be approximately the expenditure for our national defense. It is not right to single out defense spending as the cause of that deficit. It is right, in fact, to single out everything as the cause of that deficit. Regarding our spending and our tax policies, which the Concord Coalition, a coalition of business men and women and previous leaders of this Nation, recently called the most reckless fiscal policy in this Nation's history--4 years ago, in fiscal year 2000, the total Federal revenues coming from the personal income tax, the corporate tax, the excise tax, the estate tax, and the capital gains tax equalled, for the first time in 40 years in our Nation's history, the expenditures other than Social Security and part of Medicare which we call the on-budget expenditures, which include all of our expenditures for national defense, military operations, intelligence, and other ongoing activities. For this fiscal year just completed, 2003, those revenues amount to only two-thirds of those expenditures. And next year, if projections hold, revenues will be even less than two-thirds of those expected expenditures. I regret we live in a world where this much money must be spent on our national defense. I would rather we could spend the money on special education for all of our children, who are now still being left behind, and that it could be spent on student aid for our young adults, who are going tens of thousands of dollars into debt just to complete their undergraduate and postgraduate education. I wish the money could go to buy prescription drug coverage for our senior citizens and other Medicare recipients that would be as good as what the Members of Congress receive. I wish we could provide health care to the 44 million Americans who receive no health coverage at all. I wish we could rebuild our highways and improve our mass transit systems, add to our bridges, and advance our infrastructure. There is so much else we can do for the betterment of our citizens, but, unfortunately, there can be none of these homeland improvements without improved homeland defense. We cannot achieve national prosperity for all of our citizens if we do not first and always achieve national security for all of our citizens. As I said, the experience of the last 3 years should assure all Americans that those national defense dollars are being well spent and that we are well served, well protected as a result. In Afghanistan, the United States military accomplished, in 10 weeks, what the old Soviet Union could not accomplish in 10 years: the routing of the Taliban and the restoration of the beginning of a new government, a government of the people of Afghanistan. In Iraq, it took only 3 weeks for the United States forces on the border to occupying Baghdad, the nation's capital. The difficulties that have occurred since then have not been the result of failed military strategy or its execution but, rather, the failure of securing the peace to catch up with winning the war. Our Armed Forces, our fellow Americans--our sons, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters, wives, husbands, mothers, and fathers--in the words of the motto of the U.S. Army's Second Division, which I visited in April with Senate Majority Leader Frist, and others of my colleagues--are ``second to none.'' The U.S. military is second to none. It is the best, the bravest, the most accomplished, intelligent, and patriotic armed forces anywhere in the world, anywhere in the history of the world. I am especially proud, as a Minnesotan, of our State's and other States' reservists and National Guard men and women, who are now--many of them--on active duty serving in their second or even third tour of duty in recent years. They deserve our gratitude, and, more than that, they deserve our ongoing support. It is very important, as others have noted, that this authorization provides for a significant pay increase for our Active Forces. It establishes, for the first time, the coverage on health care to some of the members of the Reserve and National Guard, those who do not presently have the opportunity to obtain that health coverage through their private employers, to be covered not just when they are on active duty--which they increasingly are--but year-round. I viewed, on Sunday night, the ABC televised report that said of the reservists and the National Guard men and women presently serving in Iraq, only 54 percent indicated they would reenlist, which is understandable, given the severe circumstances they are experiencing there, as the chairman and ranking member and others of us, including myself, experienced briefly last July in that country. I would expect that with the opportunity to return to home and families, that percentage would increase, but it underscores how imperative it is we create incentives for these courageous men and women, and for their families, and for their employers. They undergo the sacrifices that they must to be in the Ready Reserve and to step in, in these times of national emergency. We need to provide health coverage for them and for their families. I salute the chairman and the ranking member and Senator Graham of South Carolina, who also spearheaded this measure in this Senate, who has assured me this is the first step toward securing, hopefully next year, complete coverage under the Federal health care system for all of our reservists and National Guard men and women because it is the right thing to do, it is the humane thing to do, and it is the best thing we can do to offer them a reason to reenlist, to stay a part of keeping this Nation as strong as it must be. They are taking awfully good care of us. It is imperative that we take as good care of them as we possibly can. The same measure of standard should apply to our veterans who have served us formerly who are now moving on in years. I note, as others have, with great appreciation, the outstanding efforts of the Senate Democratic assistant leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who has championed the concurrent receipts for all of our veterans who have suffered disabilities, who reach the age where they also are eligible for Social Security and other retirement benefits. Why they should be penalized, unlike anyone else in the private sector or the public sector, is beyond me--those people who have served and who have paid the price with their own physical infirmities, wounds, sometimes maimings. Today I was at the Korean War Memorial with a group of Minnesotans, some of whom could not walk and were in wheelchairs--amputees because of the wounds they suffered fighting for this Nation's freedom and the security of the world in Korea over half a century ago. Why they should be penalized now in their older years for that service, for what they earned, and what they paid for with the price of their own bodies, is somewhere where we still, as a nation, have fallen short in our responsibility to them. To phase it in, with all due respect to all of us who made this effort--but against the fervent opposition, which I do not understand, of the administration, to immediately correcting this injustice--to phase it in over 10 years, to me is unconscionable--indefensible and unconscionable. We have put tax relief for the wealthiest people of this Nation in place and made it retroactive. We have tax relief coming in and out and in and out and back again within the same 10 years we are talking about phasing in this deserved benefit--earned benefit--for our injured veterans of America. That is another critical task that I know this body, which passed it overwhelmingly last year--and the efforts of the chairman and ranking member of this committee, if they had been able to prevail, would have been applied fairly and immediately to all of our disabled veterans. But it is a task that all of us must undertake again next year. There are important measures in this legislation that benefit the State of Minnesota, as other States. What is most important is that this is a measure that benefits our entire country. I would say again that the bipartisan spirit of the committee, of the Senate, with regard to national defense, both before but particularly during most of the 3 years I have been in the Senate, which has included the post-9/11/2001 era, has been probably my proudest participation in the Senate because we are first and foremost, all of us, Americans. Even those disagreements that sometimes preoccupy us, that capture the headlines, that seem to be the description of this great body, are, in fact, as our distinguished Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, has reminded us regularly, the noise of democracy. It is because we can all stand in this body and express our views and agree or disagree, hopefully, respectfully, with one another. Regardless, that we can do so, and go home to our families, to return the next day to offer our best judgments and ideas, again without fear of incarceration or execution or obliteration--that is what is priceless about this Nation. That is what this bill is intended to preserve. I believe that the committee, and the conference committee, the men and women serving in our Armed Forces, the civilian leadership of this country under President Bush and his civilian defense leadership, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the command of the military of this country, for whom I have felt the greatest respect and regard--I think our fellow Americans can sleep well tonight with the knowledge that they are being well protected. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DAYTON. Madam President, I will agree to a voice vote if the Senator from Utah concurs.

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, this summer farmers in my State of Minnesota suffered one of the worst droughts in the State's history. Throughout the critical months of July and August, Minnesota received no rain whatsoever. Those cloudless blue skies with lots of warm sunshine which are considered good summer weather become deadly when it becomes relentless. Ninety-five percent of Minnesota's crop acres suffered some loss as a result, and 62 of our 87 counties were declared by the Secretary of Agriculture to be disaster area counties. Yields, moisture content, and overall quality of crops were all adversely affected by this drought. To add misery to injury, insect infestation attacked thousands of soybean acres in southern Minnesota, further destroying plants, lowering yields, and forcing already hard-pressed growers to spend $10,000, $20,000, or even more to spray their fields in order to fight off total devastation. In total, Minnesota farmers lost more than $1.1 billion in expected crop revenues. That is over 30 percent of our State's total crop revenue. Yet, tragically, another disaster afflicts those unfortunate farmers and thousands of other farmers who suffered similar losses in other States this year. That disaster is that there is no disaster aid funding in the current farm law which was enacted last year. The Senate bill that we passed here provided disaster aid. The House bill did not. The conference report, regrettably, took the House and the administration's position, with the result that if you are hurt by low prices, you are helped under the current law, but if you are devastated, you are on your own and receive no assistance whatsoever. My amendment provides assistance when disaster does strike. It does so by starting with the formula that was used in last year's disaster aid bill; from losses exceeding 35 percent of total value, farmers received disaster aid payments equal to 65 percent of the losses above the 35 percent threshold. It is a survival payment. It is not a break- even and certainly not a profit payment. My amendment also adds a lower reimbursement for losses between 25 percent and 35 percent of value. Formerly, those losses would have received no assistance whatsoever. This formula pays 40 percent of those losses between 20 percent and 35 percent of total value. The amendment also covers unreimbursed losses during the 2001 and 2002 seasons. As my colleagues will recall, farmers who suffered disasters in both of those years were allowed to receive payments from losses in only one of them. In other words, disaster aid is Sophie's choice. This amendment would compensate those farmers for their losses in the second year. My amendment as written covered program crop losses and specialty crop losses throughout the country. However, I have also added, at the request of other Members, losses suffered during the year, which means the amendment now covers losses of shrimp in Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, and other losses which occurred in the States of Michigan, Florida, and California, as well as other national specialty crops. The total cost of my amendment, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, is approximately $6.3 billion. Because it is, in my view, an emergency expenditure, I do not believe it requires, under the Budget Act, an offset, and I am not providing one. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DAYTON. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DAYTON. It is my understanding then that I have the floor to proceed but there is no further agreement thereafter; is that correct?

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, responding to the distinguished manager of the bill, I myself will take less than 10 minutes. It is my understanding there may be one or two other Senators who wish to speak on this matter. I do not have their requests before me.

Mr. DAYTON. Madam President, with due respect to the Senator from Utah, it seems to me that if we are going to measure whether something is an emergency by the extent of the emergency, we are misperceiving those situations. I regret that the cost of this measure is estimated to be $6.3 billion, but that is a function of the extent of the disaster which has occurred nationwide. If disaster aid is not itself considered to be an emergency, frankly, I don't know what possibly could be under the Budget Act. So, Madam President, I move to waive the budget point of order and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DAYTON. I ask unanimous consent for 1 minute to conclude my remarks.

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I want us to walk out of that situation with our heads held high--on which the hopes and dreams of the Iraqi population now depend--with the victory and success we want to achieve, with the result we want to give the Iraqi people--a democratically elected government, a country that has hope and means for a better future and which restores this country's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world, the stature, the respect we have had and that we deserve to have and that we must have to be the leader of this world in the years ahead. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, it is a sad and somber day to consider the conference report on the $87.5 billion supplemental appropriations for the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday was the worst loss of American lives in any day in Iraq. Sixteen American soldiers died in a helicopter brought down by a ground-launched rocket. Twenty others were wounded in that horrible moment. Another U.S. soldier was killed when his Humvee was ambushed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. Another convoy was attacked in Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad. One U.S. vehicle was destroyed and no casualties were officially reported. Yet another attack on that city killed two American civilians and wounded one. In Abu Ghraib, a western suburb of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers and residents reportedly fought in the streets. The residents said at least one American soldier had been killed, along with several Iraqis. That is in one terrible day. Our deepest condolences and prayers go out to the families and friends of those brave Americans who gave their lives in the service of their country, as those who have lost their lives before them. I will support this additional funding for one primary reason, and that is to win this war in Iraq, to secure lasting victory there and in Afghanistan, and then bring our American troops home as quickly as possible. That should be a goal we can all agree on, something that unites us all in this Chamber and as Americans. Let's do what we must to secure our military victory, to establish the framework for continuing success there, and then let's get our troops home as soon and as safe as possible. Whether we agreed or disagreed with the decision to start this war, we are in it now. Whether or not weapons of mass destruction are eventually found, whether they were there before or not, whether international terrorists were there or not--none of these questions, nor their answers, nor the debates over them, change or will change the situation we are in today, which is that 138,000 of our sons and daughters are in Iraq because they were sent there. They are risking their lives. Some are fighting for their lives. Some are losing their lives to carry out the orders they have been given to fulfill the mission they have been assigned. They have done so courageously, heroically and, to this point, successfully. This supplemental funding gives their Commander in Chief almost everything he asked us for. It gives the military command everything they asked us for, gives the soldiers everything they need to complete these assignments successfully, to accomplish their mission victoriously, as quickly and efficiently and completely as possible, and we do so because they must succeed. Our country must succeed. We must prevail in the very difficult circumstances in which we are entangled in Iraq. We must win a lasting victory there militarily, economically, and socially. We must succeed and establish a new Iraqi government, which will be able to itself succeed after we leave. We must assist and enable the Iraqi people to succeed now and after we depart. We must win this war we started because the consequences of failure would be catastrophic. Failure is not an option--not for our sake, not for Iraq's sake, not for the world's sake. We must not lose this war. I speak as somebody who voted against last year's congressional resolution that authorized the President to start this war. I thought it was premature a year ago last October. I thought it was unconstitutional. I thought it was a mistake, that it would weaken, not strengthen, our national security. I said then I hoped I was wrong. Today I don't believe I was, but that is irrelevant to what we face today--that we are fighting a war in Iraq. The Americans and the Iraqis who are supporting them there are fighting for their lives, and we must win the war and secure that peace so we can leave that country with a victory that will last. Failure, pulling out now or at any time, followed by the collapse of that country--whatever government, whatever resulting civil war or anarchy, or if a return to power by Saddam Hussein would occur--would be a disaster for Iraq and for us. It would be devastating to our national security, to our standing in the eyes of the world, to our ability to lead that world. Failure is not an option, so we must proceed and succeed. How? I have my ideas. Everyone else in the Senate has his or her ideas, and House Members have their ideas. Every retired general has lots of ideas. What matters most is what are the ideas of the Commander in Chief. What is his plan of action? What must be accomplished? What is the measure of our success? What is the intended timetable for reconciling and accomplishing them? To the question he was asked at the press conference last week, would he guarantee there would be less than 200,000 troops in Iraq a year from now, he replied, ``That is a trick question.'' That is not a trick question. It is essential. What is the timetable for the men and women serving over there, suffering over there, fighting and dying? What is the timetable to bring them home with a victory accomplished? Those are questions that deserve answers. They deserve truthful answers because, for $87 billion, the American people--all of us--deserve to be told the truth. Mr. President, $87 billion is a lot to pay for the truth. It is way too much to pay for partial truths or fabrications or misrepresentations or outright lies. This administration must tell us the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the successes and the nonsuccesses. If not, the credibility of those who are in command will suffer. That loss of faith and trust in our leaders is something we cannot afford--ever--in this country, but especially not now. On last Saturday, a U.S. commander said that the opposition's attacks are ``strategically and operationally insignificant.'' What are we supposed to believe the day after the most damaging, fatality-filled day of the war for Americans? When Democratic Senators were not allowed to travel to Iraq during the last recess to see firsthand, as I was able to do with the Presiding Officer and a bipartisan delegation in July, when Democratic Senators are not allowed to see for themselves what is actually going on in that country, then what are we supposed to believe when what we are told by others turns out not to be true, such as when we are told, as we were last August, that 95 percent of that country is now peaceful and is secure, and these atrocities continue day after day taking the lives of Americans and maiming and wounding others. Tell us the truth. Secondly, it is imperative that the administration spend this $87.5 billion well and spend it wisely. The President insisted that all the money for economic and social rehabilitation be grants, not loans, as a majority, myself included, in the Senate would have preferred. The fact they are grants is all the more reason to make sure all those dollars go to get the job done as soon as possible because American troops' lives are depending upon it, because every day they don't come home is a day more casualties are likely to occur. Any company, any individual, any American corporation, or American citizen who is taking money under those pretexts and is not putting that money to its proper use is a traitor to this country and to the cause for which those men and women are fighting and risking and giving their lives. The reports we have read of rampant overcharging by certain companies, egregious overcharging for the price of oil that is being transported into that oil-rich country, reports of kickbacks and bribes necessary to secure contracts, reports of sweetheart deals being arranged, no-bid contracts being awarded, of people in Washington setting up shop and telling those who want contracts over there that the means to achieve them, not because they are well qualified, but because they have higher up connections--that would be an abomination. It would be a waste of taxpayers' money. It would be a desecration of the memories of the men and women who have given so much on behalf of our country there, and it would delay--and this is what is most unforgivable--it would delay the achieving of success that is necessary to bring our men and women home with a lasting victory achieved. We must get rid of Saddam Hussein. When I was in Iraq last July, I was told by a commanding general it was an urgent priority, an urgent necessity to remove him and his two sons from power permanently by whatever means necessary. The military of the United States is two- thirds of the way toward that objective. The people of Iraq must be assured, and every day they are not again delays our success. They must be assured Saddam Hussein will not return to terrorize that country ever again. Finally, we must treat our Armed Forces in Iraq as well as we possibly can during and in the aftermath of this war, and those fighting in Afghanistan as well. I am very pleased that the conferees included an amendment my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Coleman, and I sponsored that earmarked $55 million of this appropriation for the travel costs of troops to come back to the United States, to cover their airfare to their homes and back, whereas previously they were being forced to pay that airfare themselves to get back to their families and loved ones. Most of them, in fact, from Minnesota who are serving now have had their tours of duty extended from 6 months to a year, after they arrived in Iraq with no recourse, no opportunity to make those arrangements back home, except after the fact. So the chance to come home for 2 weeks is crucial for them, for their spouses, and for their children. Given the financial sacrifices many of them have incurred by virtue of leaving better paying jobs, sometimes losing small businesses they had underway, incurring those financial hardships are such that even a round-trip plane ticket can be an almost prohibitive expense. It seems to be the least we can do and should do and, according to this bill, are going to do to thank them and give them a chance to connect with their families before they go back to again risk their lives in Iraq. I am glad to see included an amendment that Senator Graham of Florida proposed, which I was also pleased to cosponsor, that will prevent the Pentagon for charging our wounded soldiers for the cost of their meals and hospitalization or rehabilitation. It doesn't seem it should be necessary, but given they are paying that price for their service, the least we can to is feed them at our expense. I am also pleased the conferees included the requirement that each member of the Reserve or National Guard who is serving in Iraq on active duty has to be informed in writing when their tour of duty will be concluded so they and their families will know when they can count on their return. I strongly urge the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the period of demobilization, the time from when troops, especially those who are going to be deactivated, Guard men and women, reservists, from the time they arrive back home and the time when they are released to their families, homes, jobs, that time be kept to an absolute minimum--days, at least a week or two, rather than the weeks and months I am told typically it takes. It is important we treat these men and women well for what they have given on behalf of their country so that we retain their services for future needs. I support this supplemental appropriations with the regret that it is necessary but the resolve that it is what we must do to achieve victory. I want to be able to face our fellow citizens with the assurance that it is money that is needed, money that is going to be spent as it was appropriated, and money that is going to be spent as it was intended.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I want to thank the distinguished majority leader for setting aside time today for those of us who wish to share our tributes and thoughts regarding our colleague who, 1 year ago tomorrow, passed away in a tragic plane crash, Senator Paul Wellstone. Paul was a friend of mine for over 20 years and my colleague, mentor, and partner here for the first 2 years of my term. It is hard to believe it was a year ago now that he boarded a small charter plane to go up to northern Minnesota and somehow, impossibly and horribly, it crashed as it was trying to land there. It was demolished by the impact and by a fire that killed all eight people on board--Senator Wellstone; his wife and partner of 39 years Sheila; his daughter Marcia; the associate chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party, Mary McEvoy; and two of Paul's trusted aides, Tom Lapic and Will McLaughlin; as well as the plane's two pilots. I have felt deep sadness and futile anger many times as I have entered this Chamber during the past year and as I walk by Paul's desk--which to me will always be Paul's desk. I have always felt his absence at caucus lunches, committee hearings, and policy debates. Always I miss his courage, his eloquence, his passion, and his deep caring for other people and their well-being, especially for all the people who have most often been ignored or forgotten in the stampedes of the rich and powerful, which occur regularly around here. Thousands of Minnesotans and other Americans have felt similar grief, despair, anger, hopelessness, and profound loss during this past year. No one in my lifetime has meant so much to so many people in Minnesota as Paul and Sheila Wellstone. Paul once wrote that politics is not about left, right, or center; it is about speaking to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives. Paul practiced what he preached. He was both by gut instinct and by reasoned conviction a man of the people. The rich and the famous held no special sway over him. Senatorial trappings, perks, and offerings did not appeal to him. Instead, he was drawn to the real people, everyday Americans going about their business in their homes, schools, farms, offices, and union halls. They were the people who aroused his personal passions and instructed his political purposes. Their misfortunes became his causes. Their injustices forged his remedies. Their hopes and dreams inspired his orations. He was their Senator, their champion, and their hero. Paul liked to say he was the Senator for the little fellows, as he jokingly pointed at his own height. He may have been short, but he was in every other respect a big, big man, with a big heart, big ideas, big courage. He became a towering political leader. His popularity and prestige were enormous in Minnesota, and they were growing nationwide, especially with people who were hungry for real leadership. Had he lived and had he won reelection, his star would be shining even more brightly than ever before, which is why the darkness surrounding his absence is so hard to bear for his family, his friends, and his followers. His best was still to come. He understood, as he said, that people yearned for a politics that speaks to and includes them and that offers them something real. As Paul admonished his colleagues, especially those of us in his own caucus, the question is not how to communicate our agenda but whether we have an agenda worth communicating. Paul did. Nothing illustrated better his greatness, his unfailing ability to rise up to the challenge, to summon his courage, and to act rightly than one of his last votes in the Senate a year ago. The Senate was about to begin its consideration of a resolution authorizing the President to initiate military action against Iraq. Paul was in the final weeks of a very tough reelection contest against my distinguished colleague from Minnesota who is presiding at this moment, and many of his friends and political advisers were urging Paul to support this resolution. Doing so, they said, would assure his victory. Voting against it, they warned, could seal his defeat. Paul was still wrestling with this decision when an article appeared in one of the Capitol press reports which quoted an unnamed Senate aide as saying the Democratic caucus was trying to devise a political cover to help Paul and others in close reelections finesse this tough vote. At a caucus meeting later that day, Paul was as furious as I had ever seen him. He wasn't seeking anyone's cover, he fumed. He had never tried to duck a difficult vote, and he refused to do so now. He finished by saying: Whether Minnesotans agree with my decisions or not, they know I am doing what I believe is right. If I lose that trust, I have lost everything. He left the meeting and went straight to the Senate floor and gave a powerful speech announcing he would vote against any resolution which gave the President complete and unilateral authority to start the war in Iraq. In the following days, his last days on Earth, Paul was the most relaxed and upbeat I had seen him since his reelection campaign began. He was, of course, delighted with what he said were poll numbers which had boosted his standing after making that speech but, more importantly, he knew he had done what he believed was right. Principle had again prevailed over expediency. His integrity, his courage to stand up for his convictions, and his inspiring eloquence in speaking the truth were the essence of what he offered to the voters of Minnesota, and he knew he had reestablished that connection, that special bond that he and only he had with so many Minnesotans. He boarded that plane a year ago tomorrow, hopeful and optimistic of a victory in 11 days. That we will never know. But I say: Paul, you were right. You were and you always will be a winner. Ernest Hemmingway, in his book ``Farewell to Arms,'' wrote: Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. The Senate body recognized Paul's rare greatness last year by authorizing $10 million for a project selected by Paul and Sheila's two surviving sons, David and Mark Wellstone, the Neighborhood House in St. Paul. Mr. President, $8.9 million was appropriated for fiscal year 2003 through the good efforts of my colleague, Senator Coleman. He and I share the hope that the remaining $1.1 million, to fulfill the Senate's commitment, will be appropriated for fiscal year 2004. It is a wonderful project, and it will benefit many people in Paul and Sheila's name for many years to come. We can do something even more significant, even more befitting Paul's memory. We can pass the legislative initiative that was closest to his heart and to which he devoted himself in the last 5 years of his life, and that is mental health parity. Senator Domenici, whose personal dedication to this just cause equals Paul's, has carried that torch forward. He has been joined by Senator Kennedy who, like Paul, has also championed so many efforts to help those among us who are most in need. Senator Domenici informed me this week he is optimistic the bill will be considered by the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee within the next 2 weeks, and hopefully will be passed out of that committee and put on the Senate calendar where it might even be taken up and acted upon this year. That is incredibly good news for Paul and Sheila's families for whom this means so much. It is incredibly good news to the many organizations throughout the country that have joined to help support and enact this critically important and needed legislation. It is most incredibly good news to the many Americans who will benefit from it, who will finally have access to the health care they need at prices they can afford. Even then, however, the bill faces major obstacles. The House leadership is reportedly opposed to it; the White House is supposedly against it; the insurance companies hate it; and many health care providers would also prefer that it just not be passed. So nothing has changed down here, Paul. It is the same battle: Profits for the bigger fellows versus services for the little fellows. Only this time, Paul Wellstone will not be able to champion the cause for the little fellows. He cannot come to this Senate floor every month, week, or even every day, if necessary, to remind us, to challenge us, to cajole us, to do what is best for most of our constituents. So all of us must do it without him and do it for him. Surely we can find it within ourselves to vote once for something to which Paul gave his entire life, and his life itself. So, my friend and colleague, we will go on missing you. We will do our best without you to advance the causes which you have championed. Somehow saying ``rest in peace'' does not seem to fit your style. So instead, I hope there is a great debating hall up in heaven, that you are seated with other great Senate voices such as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. I hope your microphone cord is long enough for you to roam while you speak and that there are no time agreements limiting debate. Please keep your eye on the rest of us down here and, if you can, send us a little of your wisdom and your inspiration, especially when we face the choices between principles and expediency, profits and people, between what is easiest for us and what is best for everyone else, the people we are elected to serve. Keep reminding us, if you will, that as once said, inasmuch as ye have done so unto the least of these thy brethren, ye have done so unto me. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. A year ago this month, Congress cast a fateful vote. The majority decided to give the President blanket authority to declare war against Iraq. On several occasions during our deliberations over that resolution, I had the good fortune to be on the Senate floor when the great Senator from West Virginia, the senior Senator, spoke. Both Senators from West Virginia are truly outstanding Senators and men. One is extraordinary in his seniority in this body and also the wisdom he has acquired through his experience and service and his search for the history of this country and the history of other countries throughout the world and across the spans of time. It was my great opportunity, sitting in that chair where the Presiding Officer now sits, to be instructed about this country, especially the Constitution which all of us take our oath of office to uphold, that extraordinary document which has shown, over the span of more than two centuries, a foresight, a vision, an understanding of human nature and an appreciation for the potential we bring and the pitfalls we must avoid. It has been unprecedented in the history of the world and has produced, along with the quality of our citizenry, the most successful form of self-governance that has ever been devised or practiced on this planet. As a result of much of what I learned from Senator Byrd, I voted against the resolution which passed the Senate last October. I did that because those tutorials convinced me that by acting at that point, before the President himself had decided whether to recommend or undertake an invasion of Iraq, the commencing of a war against another country, for Congress then to pass not a declaration of war, which the Constitution prescribes, but rather a resolution authorizing, with its usual euphemism, something like ``whatever force necessary in order to accomplish the objectives,'' Congress was abdicating to the President that constitutional responsibility which it had no right or authority to pass on. The Constitution says clearly that the Congress shall declare war, that Congress and only Congress shall make that final decision whether or not to declare war and to commit this country to that course of action against another nation, at which point the President is the Commander in Chief and undertakes the prosecution of the war. It is exactly that balance of power the Constitution wanted to achieve. I also said last October that I was not persuaded at that time by the intelligence and other information that I received to that point that Saddam Hussein's estimated military arsenal constituted an imminent and urgent threat to the national security of the United States of America. I may not have been privy to every piece of information that a few of the more senior colleagues in this body had at the time, particularly members of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, but as a member myself of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I did have much of the information acquired from participating in a score of briefings, many of them classified top secret. In my best judgment, from all the intelligence that was presented to me over a 5-year period of time, the case against Iraq was inconclusive and unconvincing. Furthermore, it was presented to us by our top intelligence officials as incomplete and inconclusive. Those officials, in my judgment and my experience, were very candid about the information they were providing us. They were candid about its uncertainty. They were candid about its reliability. They were candid about the difficulty to obtain reliable, accurate, and timely information in a country as closed as Iraq, where the penalty for any transgression could be torture and death. It was reasonable to assume back then that Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, or materials with which to make them, using the supplies that presumably were not less than what were known to exist when the United Nations weapons inspectors were evicted in December of 1998. But our intelligence officials, in the meetings and briefings which I attended, never asserted more than that, nor did they assert a 100-percent certainty that those amounts of products still did remain in Iraq, nor did they ever state that Iraq was known to be close to developing nuclear weapons. They said they didn't know. My own experience over the last year is that the discrepancies between our intelligence information and what we now know with 20/20 hindsight are far less, than the differences which on several occasions I witnessed between what the intelligence briefers were telling us and what the high level administration officials, especially the President and the Vice President, were telling us and were telling the American people and the people of the world. Every time that occurred, administration officials portrayed the threat from Iraq's likely weapons of mass destruction as more certain, more urgent, and more dangerous than it turned out to be. The most glaring gaps, therefore, between fears and fiction and facts occurred when the intelligence information exaggerated the threat, and then the Bush administration exaggerated that threat. When 138,000 or more U.S. troops and a reported 1,400 weapons of mass destruction hunters and investigators in the course of 6 months can find nothing, virtually none of the primary reasons we went to war in that country, that is about as glaring a gap as it gets. But blaming the intelligence gatherers missed the real culprits. The information users are the ones who should be investigated, not the providers. That is the investigation which should be conducted. That is the investigation which the White House is doing everything possible to prevent. The investigation the administration cares about wants the answers, at least the answers that they want there to be, concerning the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. That appeared to be their No. 1 priority, their No. 2 priority, and perhaps their whole top 10. Several of my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the chairman and ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and I traveled to Iraq in July and saw firsthand and were briefed about the priority operations beginning or underway there. The one that was far ahead of the rest in development, in deployment, and in resources committed to it was the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Again, it has been reported publicly that some 1,400 professional intelligence gatherers, processors, and prosecutors have been scouring that country, investigating, incarcerating, interrogating. During that time, and the time we were there, many of the other important efforts were barely underway and were badly behind already--like finding and eliminating Saddam Hussein himself; like restoring basic services, electricity and running water; like connecting, communicating, and cooperating with the Iraqi citizenry. Those delays, and the lack of tangible progress made in those areas and others, have been costly. The price is paid, tragically, by our own service men and women-- those patriotic, courageous, and extraordinary Americans who won the military victory in Iraq just 3 weeks from the first day of the invasion to the triumphant takeover of Baghdad, the toppling of Saddam Hussein himself, and the statue coming down, symbolically, as the regime was overthrown. As other colleagues have noted here tonight, that was a great boon to the Iraqi people and to the world. At the same time, American forces and British forces--primarily the coalition, being essentially those two nations--took over occupancy of most of Hussein's former presidential palaces. When I was there, the estimate was there were 120 of them throughout the country--the most incredible waste of resources one could imagine contrasted to the squalor in which most Iraqis were living their lives. At that time also, American forces had accomplished dispersal of Saddam Hussein's army, of his political party, top government officials, and the henchmen who spread that tyranny, and even Saddam Hussein himself. American Armed Forces won. The mission was accomplished. Their objectives had been achieved. The job had been exceptionally well done. All of that training, all of that traveling and preparing, and all their upbringing, bravery, devotion to their country, their service, faith, and hard work, all came together effectively and successfully and they achieved what they needed to do, overwhelmingly. That should have been the end, or very close to it. Their victory was decisive, their victory was complete, and they should have been going home. Most of them should be home today. Most of them were expected to be home today. One hundred and thirty-eight thousand American troops remain in Iraq today--more duration than what was planned for at this stage in the operation. Instead, for the present time and for the foreseeable future, 138,000, or close to that number, will have to remain in Iraq. Many of them are Minnesotans. Others have had their tours of duty extended 6 months. Most of my colleagues and I went home to our respective States and visited with families and spouses who are getting desperate about the absence of their husbands, their wives, their sons, and their daughters with extensions of duty, not knowing when the end point will be. Many of them still do not have a definite return date. It is a terrible way for the military and the administration to be mistreating those who are making these heroic sacrifices on behalf of their country, and who are doing so at great personal risk. Often during the course of their responsibilities, they are exposed to the rest of their surroundings, standing at station, and are targets as they guard public and private property and other locations and highways throughout that country. Since the takeover of the country militarily by U.S. forces, they have had to become more stationary. The point which should have been the end, or close to it, but which is really barely the beginning, American soldiers every single day are being attacked, wounded, maimed, and murdered. It has occurred while they are waiting for the rest of these other operations to get started and start getting the necessary results. Every day that those other operations aren't accomplishing what they must, aren't getting the resources they need, aren't being given the priorities they should be given, for every one of those additional days American troops must remain in Iraq, American troops are likely to die in Iraq. It is our responsibility to get the rest of that job done--to get their government elected and in charge of the country, restore domestic law and order, train the Iraqi police force so they can maintain that, get the society functioning--once again, a lot of which has been accomplished. And much has been accomplished. It is important to acknowledge that. Hospitals have reopened. They now need to be supplied with the tools and be rehabilitated. An economy that is producing again--producing jobs, producing wealth, producing resources--can bring Iraq back into the civilized world. A genuine international sharing must be achieved. The ongoing costs of responsibilities and risks are still going to be required during this transition until Iraq can take care of itself. For those things to occur with other nations of the world, the United States must offer to provide a genuine sharing of control of postwar Iraq. It means the Bush administration doesn't make all of the decisions. It means their corporate cronies don't get all of the contracts and the profits. It means their colleagues in the majority caucus in the Senate should not get the only military transport escort to tour that country to assess the situation and to support our troops. In fact, I would respectfully urge the President and the Vice President especially to use the passage of this important supplemental today by both the House and the Senate to mark the beginning of a new chapter in undertaking to restore our conduct before the world, the dignity, the civility, and integrity which our great Nation deserves and upon which it has built its reputation and its leadership position in the world. I urge especially the Vice President to stop attacking the United Nations which was founded over half a century ago by American leaders of both political parties. It has been nurtured, guided, supported, and strengthened during that time as the best hope of the human race, to keep all nations of the world striving together for the peaceful resolution of our differences and the prevention of the next world war, which most believe will be the last world war. Through that diplomatic effort, working through the differences and the difficulties and all the barriers and obstacles that remain among the human race, it has succeeded in preventing that kind of holocaust for the last half century. It has prevented the scourge. It has been successful in discouraging other nations from launching preemptive military strikes against other countries and provoking additional conflict and conflagration that always threaten and risk escalation and annihilation. Other nations of the world have been harangued and denounced for not agreeing with the decisions that were made by this Nation's Government. I urge a new spirit of genuine cooperation, partnership, recognition of their legal and moral autonomy as they also decide whether to commit their own resources, their own citizens, the lives of their young men and women to the undertakings which we believe are important but we have no right to compel other nations to adopt. Whether we felt one way or the other, viewed the situation one way or the other a year ago, the facts are, clearly, today we are committed to a country with 138,000 of our men and women who are risking their lives and demonstrating courage and patriotism to sustain that operation. We owe it to them. We owe it to the world and to ourselves and to future generations to now complete this undertaking in the ways that bring out the best of America, that showcase the best of America for the world. That is where our ultimate national security is going to derive, from continued military preeminence, absolutely. That in and of itself is not enough, as we learned on September 11. We need allies, friends, eyes, ears, intelligence all over the world. We need to establish in the eyes of nations that now misunderstand us and our way of life; we need to showcase as we have been doing the last 2 years in Afghanistan and as we must do now over the next 2 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, what it is about our way of life, our economy, our technological know- how, our compassion, our generosity, what it is about all Americans that makes us a people who have so much to offer the rest of our fellow citizens throughout this planet. I urge the President and the Vice President and the administration to demonstrate the best qualities of America. If they do so, I believe what comes out of this undertaking will be one that we will all be able to live with, better off than we were for many decades to come. Conversely, a failure to do so will have catastrophic consequences for decades to come.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I join the distinguished majority leader in expressing my appreciation for your presence here this evening. I assure the Chair I will not take him too far down the path to his next 100 hours--not tonight, anyway. I was in the dubious position of being 100th in seniority for the previous 2 years. I did not achieve my golden gavel status as swiftly as the Senator from New Hampshire, but I did. I suffered through many hours when I would rather have been elsewhere in order to achieve that. I again thank the distinguished Chair and also commend him for the dignity and the stature with which he presides over what are, as we both know, occasionally unruly adults.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague, Senator Coleman, who joined with great minds which think in the same direction. We introduced this legislation on the same day. I am proud to be joining with Senator Coleman in the Coleman-Dayton amendment to provide for transportation to homes and places of origin for our troops, many of whom, in the case of Minnesota, have just had their tours of duty in the Iraqi theater extended by 6 months. In the case of the 142nd Battalion, it covers northwestern Minnesota and North Dakota. As a result of this extension and this deployment and administrative matters, many of them will not see their families for up to 18 months. To drop them off at the Baltimore airport and tell them they are going to be on their own at that point and at their own expense to try to get back and see their families for their one opportunity in nearly 18 months I think would be shameful. I think the American people are more generous than this. I think under these circumstances it is the least we can do. I thank the Senator from Minnesota for his leadership on this matter, and I am glad to sponsor it with him. I yield the floor.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, S. 1670, which would pay for the travel of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, or in that theater, to and from their homes for the 2-weeks leave they are being granted. Incredibly, while asking the Congress for an additional $87 billion for the war in Iraq, the Department of Defense wants to drop soldiers on leave off at the Baltimore Airport and then make them pay for their transportation home and back. Those service men and women are serving with great courage in 115-degree temperatures and other truly awful conditions. They are being given 2 weeks leave--many of them--because they are in the Reserves or National Guard and they have just had their 5- or 6-month tour extended by another 6 months. This will be the only time that many of them will have a chance to see their families during an entire year. The least we can do is get them home and back at Government expense. If all 138,000 troops who are stationed in Iraq were to take this leave to travel to their homes, the total cost would be approximately $69 million. My legislation would not increase the $87 billion requested by the President, it would just direct that up to $69 million be available to be expensed for this purpose. Last week, I also cosponsored legislation introduced by Senator Bob Graham, which exempted soldiers wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan from having to pay for meals while they are hospitalized. I was astonished to learn that the military would otherwise dock their pay for the cost of their meals. We are appropriating over $400 billion for our military operations next year through the regular appropriations and supplemental bills. Surely, that provides enough money that U.S. troops who are fighting, risking their lives, being wounded, and dying can be treated compassionately and fairly, not nickeled and dimed with travel and meal costs while on leave, or, even worse, while being hospitalized with combat wounds and injuries. The American people are generous enough to support our troops properly and care for the wounded compassionately. The Department of Defense should not have to be required to do the right thing. It should be obvious enough to them, but if not, they should give me a call and I will let them know. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, S. 1670, which would pay for the travel of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, or in that theater, to and from their homes for the 2-weeks leave they are being granted. Incredibly, while asking the Congress for an additional $87 billion for the war in Iraq, the Department of Defense wants to drop soldiers on leave off at the Baltimore Airport and then make them pay for their transportation home and back. Those service men and women are serving with great courage in 115-degree temperatures and other truly awful conditions. They are being given 2 weeks leave--many of them--because they are in the Reserves or National Guard and they have just had their 5- or 6-month tour extended by another 6 months. This will be the only time that many of them will have a chance to see their families during an entire year. The least we can do is get them home and back at Government expense. If all 138,000 troops who are stationed in Iraq were to take this leave to travel to their homes, the total cost would be approximately $69 million. My legislation would not increase the $87 billion requested by the President, it would just direct that up to $69 million be available to be expensed for this purpose. Last week, I also cosponsored legislation introduced by Senator Bob Graham, which exempted soldiers wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan from having to pay for meals while they are hospitalized. I was astonished to learn that the military would otherwise dock their pay for the cost of their meals. We are appropriating over $400 billion for our military operations next year through the regular appropriations and supplemental bills. Surely, that provides enough money that U.S. troops who are fighting, risking their lives, being wounded, and dying can be treated compassionately and fairly, not nickeled and dimed with travel and meal costs while on leave, or, even worse, while being hospitalized with combat wounds and injuries. The American people are generous enough to support our troops properly and care for the wounded compassionately. The Department of Defense should not have to be required to do the right thing. It should be obvious enough to them, but if not, they should give me a call and I will let them know. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Madam President, last week, in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I listened to some of the most disturbing testimony I have heard in my entire almost 3 years now in the Senate. Testifying were members of a congressional panel investigating the sexual harassment charges raised at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The hearing, which is the third one this year on this matter, is a great credit to its chairman, Senator Warner. There is no one in this body for whom I have greater respect than the senior Senator from Virginia, now in his 25th year of outstanding service to the State of Virginia and to our Nation. He and his colleague of 25 years, Senator Levin of Michigan, don't always agree, but they always work cordially and constructively together to lead that committee and establish a bipartisan or nonpartisan relations way. As former Secretary of the Navy, the chairman, who strongly supports the services, clearly does not relish in this kind of critical review of one of the Academies. He does not evade it either. To the contrary, he faced up to it responsibly and resolutely, which led to the hearing last week and to another one scheduled for tomorrow. Last week's testimony was provided on behalf of the congressional panel established by the Congress to investigate sexual misconduct allegations at the Air Force Academy. It was eloquently presented by its chairwoman, the Honorable Tillie Fowler, a former U.S. Congresswoman from the State of Florida. Seven other members of the panel appeared with Chairwoman Fowler and answered a number of the committee's questions. I cannot do justice to the outstanding work of this panel. In just a matter of 2 months, they accomplished more than most Government investigations do in 2 years, or even longer. They probed more deeply, they assessed the conditions at the Academy over the past 10 years more comprehensively, and they reported more concisely, yet insightfully and incisively, than grander commissions with more time and costing much more money. They have all performed a very important service to their country and this Congress, which established and charged them with this mission. They did so with great distinction, and I thank them. While the report was excellent, its findings were by far the opposite. My colleagues will recall that our colleague, Senator Allard, in whose State the Academy is located, brought complaints from a couple of his constituents to the Academy and then to the Secretary of the Air Force when he was not satisfied with the Academy's responses. Senator Allard also deserves great credit for bringing those deplorable offenses to the Air Force Academy's leadership to deal with them and bring them to the attention of the full Senate and bring the larger spotlight of public attention on to these abuses. As the first abuses were reported, other women, present and former cadets at the Academy, disclosed rapes and other sexual assaults against them, and Senator Allard has heard from a total now, at this time, of 39 women. That number could be even higher by this time. After denying there was a serious problem, first, by Academy officials, then by the Air Force service and civilian leaders, and the growing number of victims making accusations of being sexually assaulted at the Air Force Academy and continued pressures of Senator Warner and Senator Levin and Senator Allard, there was finally forced the necessary attention and investigations and initial actions by those who have been accused. The publicly reported experiences of women cadets were truly horrible. In fact, twice horrible--horrible in the rape or the physical attack against them by another cadet at the Academy, and horrible in the callous indifference or even putative responses of Academy officials--toward them, the victims, not toward their alleged attackers. Here is a brief summary of one first year female cadet's nightmare at the Air Force Academy. This is a published report in the Washington Post: Once not very long ago, [her] eyes shown bright when she spoke of piloting airplanes. Few her age seem to be too promising in a future in aviation. But now when the conversation turns to flying, the former Air Force academy cadet dips and stares at the floor. Ever since, she says, a fellow cadet raped her a year ago in her freshman year at the academy, her dreams of flying F-16s and her love of the Air Force have crumbled. At age 18, she was a first-year cadet at the academy. But even in that elite group she was one of a very few in her class who had a private pilot's license. In November, 2001, she was chosen as the year's first freshwoman to fly an Air Force plane, roaring above the academy's football stadium before a game. Her downward spiral began a year ago when a cadet whom she knew slightly from the academy raped her in her dormitory room, she said. What she did not know then is that the same senior, once a star of the academy boxing team, had been accused of sexually assaulting a civilian in California 3 months earlier, as well as another freshman cadet at the academy more than a year before that. Thus began her dizzying fall from grace. Struggling academically and athletically, emotionally devastated, and she said, harassed and hounded by the academy leadership for minor disciplinary infractions, she finally quit last Christmas. The Academy did not discipline the male cadet for his alleged on-campus assault because Academy officials said evidence was lacking. However, it did expel and court martial and convict him on the charge of forcible sodomy in California. He is now serving an 18-month sentence in a Navy brig. While the female cadet remains angry about the sexual assault, she is angriest at her treatment by the Academy's majors, colonels, and generals who she said turned the tables on her after she reported the assault. She said some officers criticized her for acting affectionately with her boyfriend, who is a different person from the individual who committed the rape. They said she was ``no lady'' and suggested her behavior was generally promiscuous. It is not a problem of a few bad cadets, the woman now says, the problem is a few bad generals. For a long time, after first denying there was a significant problem with cadet sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy, the Academy and Air Force leadership questioned how extensive the problem really was. On a couple of occasions during the past decade when students were surveyed on the subject, an alarmingly high percentage of female cadets reported they had been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted during their 1 to 4 years at the Air Force Academy. The response of the Academy administration was to claim the surveys were not statistically valid, and in two instances, simply not to ask that question in the next year's survey, just defies belief. Talk about sticking their heads in the sand. They really didn't want to know how bad the problem was at the Academy. Now we have a good idea. One of the accomplishments of the Fowler panel was to obtain from the Department of Defense and inspector general preliminary data from its May 2003 survey of female cadets at the Air Force Academy. Of 579 women in the classes of 2003 to 2006, 88 percent of all women cadets at the Academy at that time responded to this survey: 43 cadets, 7.4 percent, said they had been victims of at least one rape or attempted rape during their 1 to 4 years at the Air Force Academy. That is 1 out of every 13 women. In the senior class, those women who had been there for 4 years, 11.7 percent, or 1 out of 8 female cadets were raped or victims of attempted rape during their 4 years at the Academy; 109 female cadets, 19 percent of all respondents, said they suffered one or more sexual assaults during their years there. That is almost 1 out of every 5 female cadets being sexually assaulted at the Air Force Academy. The Air Force response to this survey? They consider the definition of ``sexual assault'' used in the survey too broad and thus the percentage too high. That definition is a sexual assault is: Cadet victim, witness, assistance, and notification procedures--the touching of another without their consent in a sexual manner, including attempts in order to arouse, appeal to, or gratify the lust or sexual desires of the accused, the victim, or both. Sexual assault includes, but is not limited to, rape, sodomy, fondling, unwanted touching of a sexual nature and indecent sexual acts the victim does not consent to or is explicitly or implicitly forced into. It is immaterial whether the touching is directly upon the body of another or is committed through a person's clothing. That sounds like a clear definition of sexual assault to me, and the keywords are ``without their consent.'' A couple of the other survey findings were that over two-thirds of women cadets, 68.7 percent, reported they had experienced sexual harassment, defined as unwanted and uninvited sexual attention in the form of ``sexual teasing, jokes, remarks or questions'' while at the Academy--over two-thirds of women cadets. Of the sexual assault victims, only 19 percent, less than 1 in 5, were reported to the authorities, and of those who did report these incidents, almost half, 46 percent experienced what they called reprisals. That is how extensive these atrocities were if the Academy or Air Force leadership had wanted to know, but they didn't. An internal Academy working group decided whatever problem did exist there was attributable to, according to the report, among other things, the definition of ``sexual assault'' in the Academy instruction book was confusing, the training had little focus on the moral leadership or character components of deterrence, and, amazingly enough, the self- defense training given to fourth class women cadets often occurred too late in the semester to be effective. Let me repeat that. The self-defense training given to fourth class-- in other words, first-year women--often occurred too late in the semester to be effective. In other words, the Academy didn't get around to giving them self-defense training before they were raped or sexually assaulted there. The Fowler panel, which is a document I commend to all of my colleagues as being both incisive and insightful in its own right, and the example of what an outside panel can accomplish in a brief period of time, stated other than the reassignment of recent Academy leadership and retiring the immediate past superintendent in lower grade, the Air Force has not held any member of the Academy leadership accountable for a decade of ineffective action or, in many cases, inaction concerning sexual assaults and the culture that tolerated them. While the record is not complete, the evidence before the panel shows the highest levels of leadership had information about serious problems at the Academy, yet failed to take effective action. It may be impossible to ever fully know what the Air Force leadership knew or suspected about sexual assault problems in the past 10 years, nonetheless the panel uncovered substantial information showing Air Force headquarters had serious and repeated indicators of a problem. If the Air Force headquarters did not act on this information or did so tepidly, it should be held accountable for avoiding its responsibility and accepting sexual misconduct as an unavoidable condition at the Air Force Academy. By contrast, when the general counsel of the Air Force, who had led a review of a working group and a report issued by the same, stated that, in the words of the Fowler panel, despite the considerable evidence of long-term knowledge by the Air Force and the persistence of sexual misconduct problems at the Academy, the working group, headed by the Air Force general counsel, concluded that ``there was no systemic acceptance of sexual assault at the Academy or institutional avoidance of responsibility.'' In other words, nobody was responsible for all of these atrocities occurring over the previous 10 years, probably longer but not reported or documented before that time. Nobody in positions of command at the Air Force Academy or the Air Force itself is responsible for any of this, and the Fowler report clearly documents instances time after time over that decade where the top command knew, was informed, and failed to act, failed to follow through, replace, failed to communicate, failed to even hold meetings as frequently as required, failed time after time in a myriad of ways to assume the responsibility that they had for the young lives that had been entrusted to them by their families and who were recommended for those appointments by Members of this body and the House of Representatives, who placed their faith and trust in that institution, and not just let down, they were abused, their lives were emotionally devastated, their careers at the Air Force Academy were, in many instances, destroyed, and the perpetrators of these violent crimes, these rapes and sexual assaults, have gone untouched, unsanctioned, and now are pervasive throughout the Air Force itself. It is so bad, in fact, that in one survey taken by the panel, over 20 percent, over one-fifth of those cadets the Air Force surveyed didn't believe women belonged at the Air Force Academy. The Air Force Academy has been accepting women since 1973--in other words, since before those cadets were born. How did they conclude, based on the history, since the time they came into consciousness, that women who are an integral part of the Air Force Academy ``did not belong'' there? How could they not belong any more or less than male cadets? The panel concluded, as one of them said, the culture at the Air Force Academy is infected. This is not a matter of misguided young adults. In fact, I know from my experience, as I am sure my colleagues have had approximately the same experience, the young men and women who we nominate for appointment to the Air Force Academy, or any of the service academies, are extraordinary young men and women. At least in my State of Minnesota they have to compete with other extremely well- qualified young men and women, and they are selected only after a careful review process. They have to have distinguished careers in high school with their curricula. I have not seen and I would not nominate anybody who has had problems with sexual misconduct or problems in understanding their responsibilities at such an academy to be inclusive, to be honorable, and that they report any violations cited by a commission of these kinds of actions. According to the panel, what has happened--and I would concur from my own brief experience--is that the culture is infecting those cadets with the wrong ideas, with the wrong views, and with the notion that they can commit those acts with no consequence, that those who are the victims are the ones who are going to be punished, and the honor code notwithstanding, they should just look the other way or ignore what they see happening. What a terrible climate to create at this institution which is paid for with taxpayer dollars and which is producing men and women who we are going to rely on to pilot Air Force planes and defend this Nation for years to come. As I said, the very distinguished chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner, deserves such enormous credit for spiriting this inquiry on the part of our committee. He has scheduled another hearing tomorrow where the Secretary of the Air Force and the general counsel of the Air Force are scheduled to testify. I look forward to that hearing so we can get answers to some of these unresolved questions, answers that better be found by the time this matter has been concluded, because, otherwise, I have serious questions whether the Air Force Academy is in a fit position to continue to receive the young men and women of this country and whether, despite the new leadership, it is so systemically ``infected,'' to use the panel's word, with these cultural biases that it is simply not fit to continue to provide training, especially the training of moral conduct and leadership, that these young men and women deserve and which our Nation requires. To be continued, I will report to my colleagues on my impressions after that hearing, after receiving that report. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I am delighted to honor a Minnesotan who recently reached the age of 90, after having spent much of her life in dedicated service in her community. Carolyn ``Kelly'' Earl Davis was born on September 21, 1913, the daughter of Dr. George Earl and Lillian Earl. Growing up, Carolyn, affectionately known since childhood as ``Kelly''--the name given to her by her brother, Rol-- loved to play baseball. She was an all-star player whose exploits on the field were greeted with exhortations of ``Slide, Kelly, slide!'' Kelly lived in St. Paul, MN, and attended Summit School, where she took part in student government, sports, and volunteer work. She then attended Smith College and the University of Minnesota. In 1936, Kelly married Edward P. ``Ned'' Davis, Jr., and the Davises, who eventually had three daughters, Sally, Janie, and Mary, lived in St. Paul until moving to Bloomington's Friendship Village retirement community. They had been married 60 years at the time of Ned's death in 1997. Today, Kelly is the proud grandmother of 6 and the great-grandmother of 3. Her family activities and interests have included canoeing, skiing, tennis, and golf. Throughout her life, Kelly has also given of herself through a remarkable career of volunteer service. During World War II, she served her country as a nurse's aide with the Red Cross. She is a member of the House of Hope Presbyterian Church, where she has been president of the Women's Association Board, among other offices and committee memberships. She has taught Sunday school and has also been a leader of the Brownies and Girl Scouts. Her enthusiasm for sports motivated her to teach tennis and skiing to underprivileged children, having collected the necessary equipment for them to use. Because education has been especially important to her, she belonged to the alumni boards of the Saint Paul Academy and Summit School. She was also a member of Summit School's Board of Trustees and chaired the school's 1958 building fund. Even at the age of 79, Kelly was still busy, serving as the chairman of Summit School's 75th anniversary celebration. The range of Kelly's interests and pursuits is formidable: the arts, public health, employment, child and family welfare. She gave of her energies and fund-raising talents to a variety of organizations and causes, including the Junior League, the St. Paul Rehabilitation Center, the Children's Hospital Association, Neighborhood House, Merriam Park Community Center, the Volunteer Bureau, the Family Nursing Service, Planned Parenthood, and the Minnesota Public Health Association. Despite the passing years, Kelly remained involved into her eighties. She served for two terms on the Friendship Village residents council and held the post of chair of the Friendship Village ad hoc committee for the health care center renovation. Kelly's contributions are so numerous that they are almost impossible to catalogue. I am proud to salute this remarkable lady for her exceptional record of community service and advocacy. Truly, Kelly has spent her life working with and enjoying people of all ages.

Mr. DAYTON

Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute to LTG Emil R. ``Buck'' Bedard, who will retire Monday and return to private life after more than 36 years of selfless service to our Nation as a United States Marine. I have had the pleasure to work with Lieutenant General Bedard on matters of importance to the U.S. Marine Corps and to our Nation's defense. His experience and expertise will be missed by many of us in the Senate, as will his integrity, keen insight, and good judgment. Buck Bedard was born in Argyle, MN, where he graduated from Argyle high school. He then slipped away from Minnesota's grasp and attended the University of North Dakota. Following his graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in December 1967. General Bedard also holds a master of science degree, and his formal military education includes the U.S. Army Advanced Infantry Course, the Armed Forces Staff College, and the Army War College. While he was a lieutenant, Buck Bedard served as a rifle platoon commander and company executive officer with 2d Battalion, 27th Marines, and 3d Battalion, 3d Marines, in the Republic of Vietnam. Subsequently, he was ordered to Quantico, VA, where he served as a staff officer and then as the commander with Schools Demonstrations Troops. Then-Captain Bedard was assigned to the U.S. Army Intelligence School as an instructor, and he later served as a company commander in the 3d Marine Division in Okinawa, Japan. Following that tour of duty, Captain Bedard became the Marine officer instructor at the Naval Reserve Officer Training Unit at Vanderbilt University and was a Platoon and Company Commander at the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, VA. Following his promotion to major, he served as the Logistics Officer, 7th Marines, and then as the executive officer, 3d Battalion, 7th Marines. Then-Lieutenant Colonel Bedard served as the assistant operations officer, 1st Marine Amphibious Force, G-3, Pacific Plans Officer, and finally as the G-5. Assigned to NATO and stationed in Holland, LTC Bedard served in the Central Region Operations Division in charge of reinforcement operations of Allied Forces to Central Europe. Then-Colonel Bedard was reassigned to Twenty-Nine Palms, California, where he directed the Combined Arms Exercise Program at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. He became the Assistant G-3 for Operations for the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. From May 1991, through June 1993, Colonel Bedard commanded the 7th Marine Regiment, which deployed to Somalia in December, 1992. In July, 1993, he was assigned as the Assistant Division Commander for the 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, California, and in October 1993, he was reassigned as J-3 Operations Officer, Joint Task Force, Somalia. In June, 1994, Colonel Bedard was advanced to Brigadier General and was assigned as the President, Marine Corps University and Commanding General Marine Corps Schools, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia. His next assignment in June, 1995, was as the Deputy Commander, Marine Forces Pacific, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii. General Bedard assumed command of 2d Marine Division in July 1997, and was promoted to Major General on September 1, 1997. He assumed command of 2d Marine Expeditionary Force in July 1999. On June 29, 2000, General Bedard relinquished command of Second Marine Expeditionary Force and was advanced to his current rank. Lieutenant General Bedard has been the Deputy Commandant of Plans, Policies and Operations at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, since July 2000, where he has skillfully guided Marine Corps operations following September 11th, 2001, and during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Throughout his career as a U.S. Marine, Lieutenant General Bedard has demonstrated his outstanding character, discerning wisdom, and deep sense of duty to his Country, his Corps, his Marines, and their families. On behalf of the U.S. Senate I thank Lieutenant General Bedard for his exemplary career, his many accomplishments, and his devoted service to our Nation. We also thank his wife, Linda, and their three children for sharing him with his country. Congratulations, Lieutenant General Bedard; your mission has been very well accomplished.