John Ensign

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I want to spend a couple of minutes talking a little more about this legislation. First of all, this chart that we have in back of us--this graphs the calls and online registering to the Do Not Call center. This started June 27, 2003, which is the far left side of the graph. In blue or purple there is the amount of e-mails that came in, the way the people registered on line. In the middle is 1-888-382-1222, the telephone number. About 11 million came in there. In the yellow at the bottom which started in July, about 8.5 million people came in. Those were numbers that came in from the States. There are over 31 million people just since June 27 who have registered online. So we see, for a total of a little over 50 million people, how rapidly people have signed up to say we do not want to receive telemarketing phone calls. The key is people are saying we don't want to be bothered. Part of freedom, it seems to me, is the freedom from being bothered by people when you are in your own home. Telemarketers contend that, just as if they are sending mail, somebody who is sending mail to somebody's home, they have the right to call somebody in their home. The American people are saying no; we don't want to receive those phone calls. Mail they can just glance at and throw away. They don't actually have to get on the telephone and speak to somebody. Telemarketers require somebody to pick up the phone. If it is ringing, you have to go because you don't want to miss an important phone call. Maybe your kids are out or something, you don't want to miss an important phone call, and it turns out to be a telemarketer. Nowadays, because of answering machines, you have a situation where you come home and it says: Hi, this is Fred--or this is Lisa or whoever it is. Please give me a call my number is, and you don't know who it is. Then you call the number back and you find out it is a telemarketer. So you have just now wasted the time listening to the message, and you have wasted the time making the telephone call. So we have people stealing valuable time, and time is our most precious commodity. That is why so many people want to sign up for the Do Not Call list. We want to remind people--and I think this is going to happen a lot-- that the telephone number is 1-888-382-1222. That is the number that people will be able to call, and can call today to sign up for when this goes into effect on October 1. They just call up, very simple, add their name, give them their telephone number, add it to the list. If they want to register on line, it is on the World Wide Web, donotcall.gov. It is all small letters. They go on there, they sign up, put their telephone numbers in, and they are added to the list. It is simple for people to do. I think the simplicity is why it has been so wildly successful up to this point. On October 1, when it goes into effect, that is when people will start having some peace of mind at home. At a time where families need more time together, they need more time to talk, I think it is important, especially around dinnertime when there are so many distractions--that is a prime time for telemarketers to call, at dinner time. Families don't have enough time together as it is now. I think to have those distractions around dinnertime is even more disruptive of that important family time. We need to encourage families to be together. This certainly will result in fewer interruptions around the dinner table. That is why I so strongly support the legislation and why I sponsored this legislation to repeal what the Federal judge did in Oklahoma. I don't currently see anyone who wishes to speak. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Pryor be added as a cosponsor to S. 1655.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I rise to speak against the resolution that we have before us today. I will make a few points that are being overlooked in this debate. First, when the original ideas for this cap on percentage of media ownership were put into place, they were put into place because of the principle that we did not want a small group of people owning our airwaves to the point where they would be able to control thought, whether it is political thought or any other kinds of thought, in the United States. So when these were put into place, we had basically three networks. When I was growing up, there virtually was no cable and everybody had over-the-air broadcast television. We had the three stations, and whatever were on those three stations is what one watched. We were lucky to have one or two, maybe three, radio stations, especially if we were not in a major media market. The reality of today is that we not only have the over-the-air broadcast with the three networks, we also have Fox, UPN, and others, but we have systems whereby the vast majority of the homes in America can either get cable or some kind of a direct satellite TV system that has hundreds of stations which provide news, which provide entertainment, which provide all kinds of information. In media markets, for instance, where I live in Las Vegas, NV, someone cannot turn the dial without getting a new radio station, both AM and FM. The choices are incredible. Other types of information we have coming into our household today include the Internet. Anybody can set up Web sites or news information-sharing sources. That is becoming a larger part of how people get their information. Other than the major media outlets, there is the Drudge Report and other places on the Internet where people are getting information. The point is that there are so many more places for information to be had today than when these rules at 25-percent caps were initially put into place. The other major point I make is that what we are talking about is potential viewership. Right now, the cap is set at 35 percent. It wants to be raised to 45 percent. I believe the FCC tinkered a little bit around the edges. This is not the tidal wave of change that people are talking about. This is a minor change in that it is potential viewership, it is how many homes can be reached. It is not how many people are watching a station at any one time. It is how much potential reach can one have into the home? So we are not only saying it does not matter how many choices one has, it only matters how many homes can somebody potentially reach. It does not matter if somebody reaches 100 percent of the homes, as long as they have plenty of other choices. We should be making sure there are plenty of choices. When people choose which station they watch, they should be free to choose whatever stations they want. We have also heard mention in this debate about cross-ownership with newspapers. One of the big complaints I hear about localism is that a lot of the TV stations today do not cover local politics. We know when there is cross-ownership there are more resources, especially in smaller media markets where necessarily TV stations or the newspapers do not have the kind of resources to put good reporters on the beat and they do not cover as much local politics. When there is cross- ownership, we see 50 percent more local news and public affairs programming, and an important thing is that local politics is covered. This is one of the big gripes I had in my last few campaigns, that the local TV stations--whether they are owned inside the State or outside the State, it was the same thing--didn't cover local politics enough. I happen to be a Republican. In Las Vegas, NV, these two entities I am going to talk about lean more to the left. There is a TV station in cross-ownership with one of the newspapers in Las Vegas and, since they have been in existence, the coverage of local politics, not only by them but also by their competitors, has increased dramatically. I think that is good. That is more localism. There is cross-ownership there, but that is localism. I think the precautions the FCC has put into place on cross- ownership, where you have to have a certain number of TV stations within a market if there is only one major newspaper, are the right kind of precautions to put in. The point is, are we giving people choice? Where they choose to view is up to them. We should not be in the business of regulating what they watch, what they read, and who owns those, if we have enough choices in an area. I actually believe the FCC could have gone farther than they went. This is a very conservative move they have made today. If we are starting to be in the business of regulating how many people you can attract to your television stations, then we are starting to regulate whether you are getting too popular. That seems to be wrongheaded, in my opinion. It seems to be right that if you have a couple of gas stations in an area, as long as you have choice among the gas stations, that is the important aspect. You don't want a monopoly saying this is the only gas station to which you can go. If we have 200 different gas stations, it doesn't matter whether Exxon reaches 100 percent of the cities in the United States. If there are 200 different gas stations in each one of the markets around the country, who cares? Because there would be competition to make sure Exxon is keeping its gas at the right price; otherwise, they would not be able to compete. That is the same thing we have here. It really doesn't matter, in my opinion, whether ABC or NBC covers the entire United States. If there are 200 active choices just on television to be able to choose from, then let people choose where they are going to watch based on their remote control or based on how they flip channels. That seems to be the right kind of choices America should be all about. We are in this fear. There are some on the right and there are some on the left who are afraid that either liberals or the conservatives are going to control too much of the media and control too much thought in one regard. Whichever side of the political spectrum people may have had a bad personal experience because in their area maybe the liberals controlled it or in another area maybe the conservatives controlled it. People complain about Fox News today; people complain about talk radio; you hear conservatives complaining about the major TV networks and all that. But as long as people have the choices of where they view, the market will determine where they get their information based on people choosing which stations they choose to watch. That seems to me to be the American way. Let there be plenty of choices out there. Let freedom ring, basically, and then Americans will choose what the percentage of viewership is based on the choices they make. In this Senator's opinion, this resolution before us today would go the exact opposite way of that we should be going. We should be liberalizing these rules so broadcast stations have a chance to compete. We are watching daily the quality of programming in our broadcast television go down because it is incredibly expensive to produce those shows today. So we are seeing more shows like ``Survivor,'' with these people on reality television shows that frankly don't cost a lot of money to produce because you don't have to pay the big actors. We want to reverse that trend, go the other way, and the way to do that is to liberalize the ownership rules. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENSIGN

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

Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, I ask that the pending amendment which is currently before the Senate be temporarily set aside, and I call up amendment No. 1585.

Mr. ENSIGN. I will be very brief. This amendment is adding $100 million for the afterschool programs. It is offset. We do a small across-the-board cut; it will only be .012 percent for the programs. I think any of the programs can take that. But in the process, we are going to be helping a lot of kids who otherwise are going to be becoming juvenile delinquents. We know the statistics. If you don't have kids in the right activities, they get into trouble. If they are sitting around with nothing to do, they get into trouble. Afterschool programs are perhaps one of the best anticrime measures we can take. I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: My understanding was the order would be that the Senator from Illinois would proceed, then myself, and then the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, this amendment would increase funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program by $100 million. This amendment does not bust the budget or cut any other education program in the budget. Rather, the amendment requires an across the board cut in every other title of this appropriations bill. This calculates to a point zero-zero-one-two-percent across the board cut. I am committed to ensuring that our schools have the assistance they need to make certain that our children leave the education systems as well-rounded individuals. The 21st Century Community Learning Centers in Nevada, and across the country, work to create well-rounded individuals by partnering with groups such as local YMCAs, local children's museums, the Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, and in Nevada, the City of Las Vegas, the University of Nevada, the Clark County Health District, the Nevada Youth Alliance, and America's Promise, just to name a few. Last year 2,780 new applicants requested over $1.9 billion from this program. Only 308 applications received approval and funding totaling $206 million. Currently in Nevada there are 6,750 children receiving services from a 21st Century Community Learning Center in their neighborhood. However, there are currently over 75,000 students eligible for this program in Nevada alone. The benefits of this program should go without saying. Not only do children enrolled in these programs improve academically, but are also less likely to become caught up in the juvenile justice system. Accordinig to the Department of Education, children who regularly attend high quality after-school programs have better peer relations and emotional adjustment, better grades and conduct in school, more academic and enrichment opportunities, spend less time watching television, and have lower incidences of drug use, violence, and pregnancy. This makes sense considering that studies by the FBI have found that the peak hours for juvenile crime and victimization are the hours after school and before parents get home from work. These important programs not only give students a place to go after school, but use that time to give students assistance with their homework, provide additional English lessons to students who do not use English has their first language, and give these kids a safe place to interact with their peers. I ask my colleagues to not give up on the thousands of children across America who may need a little extra help to succeed in school and support this amendment. Senator Boxer offered an amendment earlier on the very program on which I am offering an amendment. Her amendment was for a larger increase in the afterschool program but her amendment was not offset. I totally support what she is trying to do. I believe very strongly in afterschool programs. I am offering a $100 million increase in the afterschool programs compared to what is currently in the bill. I know that the chairman has worked hard and has tried to get as much funding as he can. But as somebody who grew up in a situation as a latchkey kid, afterschool programs would have been very helpful to me. There are many, many children out there today who need afterschool programs to keep them out of the improper type of behavior that kids can engage in these days. It is cheaper to invest in these children in these afterschool programs than it is to spend the money when they get into trouble in the juvenile halls and some of them end up going to prison. These are wonderful programs. I ask our colleagues to consider this amendment. I know we are trying to stay within the budget. Ours does. It shifts some funding from one place to another so we can provide this extra funding to get more kids into the afterschool programs. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENSIGN

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

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. ENSIGN. Very soon.

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

Mr. ENSIGN. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Collins be added as a cosponsor to amendment No. 1621.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I will take a very short time on this amendment. I am proposing this amendment for myself, Senator Murray, and Senator Gregg. This amendment is to address a problem we hear about back home on the No Child Left Behind Act. When you go home and talk to educators, they talk about not having adequate money to get the technology to transfer the data to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act for the local school districts. It is the No. 1 complaint we have heard from all of the school districts back home. This amendment appropriates $80 million to basically fund that shortfall, and it takes the money out of administrative costs in the Department of Education. We think it is a very reasonable amendment. We hope our colleagues will support the amendment. Hearing from educators across the country, this will address one of the most pressing concerns they have in complying with the No Child Left Behind Act. I just spoke to the new teachers in Clark County. They had to break it down into 2 days, with 700 one day and 700 the next for new teacher orientation. During that time, there were a lot of administrators around, and this was by far the biggest question they had--making sure they had adequate funds to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act. We think this amendment goes a long way toward complying with the No Child Left Behind Act. I will yield to my friend from New Hampshire to make some remarks.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, if no one else seeks recognition, I just add a couple of comments about the amendment. It has the support of the Council of Chief State School Officers. The reason, as I mentioned before, is because no matter how small or large the school district is, they are all facing the same problems this amendment attempts to correct. They just do not have the infrastructure that is necessary to capture, analyze, and disseminate the data required by the No Child Left Behind Act. Several States have not even done the planning to implement this because they don't have the resources. This amendment is going to give those resources necessary to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act.

Mr. ENSIGN. I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays be vitiated.

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

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a man of remarkable leadership, dedication, and courage and to join Nevadans and Americans in mourning the loss of retired Air Force General Bill Creech. As chairman of the Military Readiness Subcommittee, I have learned a great deal about what it has taken and what it will continue to take for our armed services to be the top military in the world, bar none. For the strength, effectiveness, and success of today's Air Force, this nation owes a debt of gratitude to Bill Creech. Creech started as a private in the Air Force in 1944, and as he rose 14 rungs to four-star general, he never forgot what it was like to be at the bottom. During almost 40 years of service to this nation, he flew 280 missions as a combat pilot and was decorated 39 times, including 22 awards for bravery in combat. In 1960, he came to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas where he was director of operations for the ``Top Gun'' Fighter Weapons School and during which his relationship to southern Nevada first formed. In 1978, he earned his fourth star and became commander of the Tactical Air Command, or TAC, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. During his 6\1/2\ years as commander, Creech showed the Air Force how to get the job done, and his leadership continues to be a lesson to us all. Under his direction, TAC's productivity improved by 80 percent and resulted in $12 billion of savings for the government. And while Creech cut out the fat and waste, he oversaw the development of a new generation of air fighters including many modern jets as well as our prized Stealth fighter that eludes radar detection. Creech also used his experiences in Vietnam to develop night-flying tactics that led to our victories in the Persian Gulf War and Iraq. After his retirement from the military, Creech became an internationally recognized management consultant with a best-selling book on total quality management based on his success restructuring the Air Force. For anyone who manages a single office or a multi-billion dollar corporation, Creech's message is invaluable. By rewarding accomplishments, creating pride in ownership, and developing a team atmosphere, the human factor endures and success results. To southern Nevadans, Bill Creech will always hold a special place in our hearts for his loyalty and dedication to our beloved Thunderbirds, the air demonstration team that calls Nellis Air Force Base home. A Thunderbird pilot who flew 125 demonstration shows, Creech was once referred to as ``the father of the Thunderbirds,'' and he believed that the Thunderbirds inspired young people to join the Air Force. The Thunderbirds exist today because Bill Creech stood up for them. After four pilots were killed in fight, he publicly stated that if the team suffered an accident during his tenure he would resign. We are grateful that he took that stand. I have had the honor of watching the Thunderbirds in action on many occasions. They display the power and awesomeness of our Air Force and the dedication of people like Bill Creech who lift this nation to new heights so that we may all continue to soar. To Bill's wife, Caroline, I offer the condolences and admiration of Nevadans and Americans. This great Nation that Bill Creech risked his life for and lived his life for will always be grateful for his contributions.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the bill.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of an amendment concerning our U.N. peacekeeping assessment rate. This amendment is very simple. It supports the President's plan to move toward having the U.S. share of U.N. peacekeeping costs fall to 25 percent without incurring arrears. This history of our financial commitment to U.N. peacekeeping should be a cautionary tale. For instance, from 1988 to 1994, U.N. peacekeeping spiraled out of control as the number of operations more than tripled and costs soared from $268 million to $3.5 billion. Finally, in 1994 the Democrat-controlled Congress and President Clinton enacted legislation unilaterally reducing the U.S. share of the U.N. peacekeeping budget from 31 percent to 25 percent. This produced arrears, but it also produced badly-needed reforms. Indeed, combined with the disastrous U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Bosnia, this drastic action finally helped get the attention of other member states. For instance, the U.N. finally set up a 24-hour-a-day command and control center where military officers participating in peacekeeping operations could call in to discuss the situations in the field. Results were positive. The annual U.S. peacekeeping bill fell from almost $1 billion to around $300 million in 1997. With the historic Helms-Biden U.N. agreement we managed to clear up our fair share of arrears in exchange for much needed reforms. Congress later agreed to a glide-path in our peacekeeping assessment rate, still maintaining the 25 percent cap in law but permitting higher authorized levels as we work to achieve that goal. This amendment continues the glide-path. It authorizes an assessment level of 27.1 percent for the next 2 years, which is the exact level the Bush administration says we need in order to fully fund our obligations. To permanently raise the cap to 27.4 percent, as the underlying bill seeks to do removes all pressure to reduce the U.S. assessment level and reform U.N. peacekeeping. That is unhealthy for the U.S., which paid $794 million in U.N. peacekeeping costs last year, and unhealthy for the U.N. which is overly reliant on one nation--the U.S.--for financial support. Let's fully fund the President's request for U.N. peacekeeping and let him keep the necessary tools he needs to ensure that U.N. peacekeeping is as effective as it can be. One of those tools is the 25 percent assessment rate in current law. The White House Statement of Administration Policy calls section 401 of this bill, which permanently raises the peacekeeping cap to 27.4 percent, a significant provision that restricts the President's ability to conduct and manage foreign policy. So I hope that my colleagues will join the White House and State Department in supporting my amendment to this bill.