Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I am happy to do so. In 2004 the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the body of epidemiological evidence ``favors rejection of a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorder'' and also ``favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal- containing vaccines and autism spectrum disorder.'' The IOM committee also found that ``potential biological mechanisms for vaccine-induced autism spectrum disorder that have been generated to date are theoretical only.'' However, the IOM committee also acknowledged that ``[a]bsent biomarkers, well-defined risk factors, or large effect sizes, the committee cannot rule out, based on the epidemiological evidence, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism spectrum disorder in some small subset or very unusual circumstances.'' The IOM committee also noted that ``experiments showing effects of thimerosal on biochemical pathways in cell culture systems and showing abnormalities in the immune system or metal metabolism in people with autism spectrum disorder are provocative,'' and suggested that ``the autism spectrum disorder research community should consider the appropriate composition of the autism spectrum disorder research portfolio with some of these new findings in mind.'' I agree with the IOM committee's recommendation that ``available funding for autism spectrum disorder research be channeled to the most promising areas.'' The HELP Committee reported this bill without making the determination for the autism spectrum disorder research community of what are the ``most promising areas'' for investigation. Instead, the bill reported by the HELP Committee contemplates key research activities, including environmental research, that focus on a broad range of potential contributing factors, with meaningful public involvement and advice in setting the research agenda. However, I want to be clear that, for the purposes of biomedical research, no research avenue should be eliminated, including biomedical research examining potential links between vaccines, vaccine components, and autism spectrum disorder. Thus, I hope that the National Institutes of Health will consider broad research avenues into this critical area, within the Autism Centers of Excellence as well as the Centers of Excellence for Environmental Health and Autism. No stone should remain unturned in trying to learn more about this baffling disorder, especially given how little we know. I also want to note that this broad statement is appropriately limited to biomedical and not epidemiological research. Although S. 843 provides for specific centers of excellence to examine epidemiological issues related to autism spectrum disorder, there is currently no expectation that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should further pursue additional epidemiological research regarding the link between autism spectrum disorder and vaccines or vaccine components, unless new biomedical research provides additional information about specific at-risk subpopulations. At this point, given what we know and what has already been done in this area, no new epidemiological research is required.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I allocate myself 7 minutes of the 10 we have on our side. A year ago, we were working on a pension bill, and we were working on the bill in two separate committees. We passed bills out of both committees. Then the two committees met together, and we merged it into one bill. There were a lot of difficulties in doing that process. It took quite a while. At the end of November we still had several problems and because of that, the media pronounced the bill dead. A week later, we had revived it and passed it in the Senate with just two votes in opposition to it and 97 in favor. All that in just 1 hour. Then it was brought to life on the House side. They passed the bill in December of 2005. Then, in March 2006, a conference was named, and we worked on it diligently for hours virtually every day. A lot of moving parts started to fit into place. Some wondered if it would never get done. I looked up the last major revisions we did on a pension bill. They were not nearly as expansive as this. This is the biggest revision of pension laws to be enacted in the past 32 years. I noticed, in 1987, a big pension reform conference started in early March. The conference committee started a little earlier, but the bill was enacted until December 22. In 1994, there was a second pension reform conference. Again, the conference started in March of that year. The conferees wound up the conference agreement a little earlier than in 1987. This time, the bill was enacted on December 8, 1994. So we are way ahead of schedule compared to those two conferences. But we had to do it in a little different method than we might have liked to get to this point. Nevertheless, it is the most sweeping amendment to ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code in over 30 years. It is nearly identical to the product and agreements made by the members of the conference committee in a bipartisan manner. I am proud we have before us the most sweeping changes to our Nation's retirement laws since the enactment of ERISA itself. This legislation will provide greater security for our Nation's workers who have retirement benefit plans and greater stability for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. There is little doubt this bill will be the foundation on which the future of our retirement system rests. Today, we secure the future for American workers and their families. We ensure their hard work is rewarded and their hard-earned dollars go towards their retirement needs. At the outset of the pension debate, I laid out three guiding principles that must be followed when the bill is enacted. Each of these has been satisfied in this bill that I am proud to have helped craft as chairman of the conference committee. The first guiding principle is: The money workers earn for retirement must be there when they retire. This legislation contains tougher funding rules to ensure the money is there when workers enter retirement. The pension bill puts an end to phony pension accounting rules that inflated the apparent value of pension plans, relied on inaccurate measurements of liabilities, and permitted funding holidays through the use of credit balances when plans were seriously underfunded. Promises made to workers for their retirement will be promises kept by assuring the money needed is in the fund and by appropriately limiting when benefits may be increased, freezing future accruals, and restricting the rapid out-flow of lump sums and shutdown benefits when the plan gets into serious trouble. The bill also imposes discipline on management by restricting new executive compensation when pension plans are in trouble. The second guiding principle is: The new rules we craft should not be so draconian that they become the cause of more bankruptcies and pension plan terminations. The conference committee leaders spent nearly 4 months debating this exact point with regard to ``at risk'' triggers. In the final bill, I believe we have found a proper balance. The legality of cash balance and other hybrid pension plan designs is clarified on a prospective basis under ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, thus ending legal challenges that have driven hundreds of quality employers out of the defined benefit system. We have always felt that these plans are valid under the Code, ERISA and the ADEA. The final guiding principle is: A taxpayer bailout of the PBGC is not an option. The full faith and credit of the United States does not stand behind the private pension insurance systems, and I am committed to keeping it that way by shoring up the finances of the agency without a taxpayer bailout. The legislation repeals the full funding exemption on the variable rate premium which reduces the deficit at the PBGC by billions over the next 10 years. With this single vote, we will make the most sweeping changes to ERISA since its enactment in 1974. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill. Our future generations are counting on it. I ask unanimous consent that the following letters be printed in the Record.

Mr. ENZI. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a very important bill, one that my colleague Senator Kennedy and I have been working on for some time. In 2005, the HELP Committee held two hearings on the issue of drug safety. We received over 50 recommendations from witnesses at those hearings. At that time, Senator Kennedy and I pledged to develop a comprehensive response to the drug safety issues raised. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act is the product of working across party lines, and creates a structured framework for resolving safety concerns. Under the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act, FDA would begin to approve drugs and biologics, and new indications for these products, with risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, REMS. The REMS is designed to be an integrated, flexible mechanism to acquire and adapt to new safety information about a drug. The sponsor and FDA will assess and review an approved REMS at least annually for the first 3 years, as well as in applications for a new indication, when the sponsor suggests changes, or when FDA requests a review based on new safety information. The development of tools to evaluate medical products has not kept pace with discoveries in basic science. New tools are needed to better predict safety and efficacy, which in turn would increase the speed and efficiency of applied biomedical research. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would spur innovation by establishing a new public- private partnership at the FDA to advance the Critical Path Initiative and improve the sciences of developing, manufacturing, and evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs, devices, biologics and diagnostics. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act also establishes a central clearinghouse for information about clinical trials and their results to help patients, providers and researchers learn new information and make more informed health care decisions. Finally, the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would make improvements to FDA's process for screening advisory committee members for financial conflicts of interest. FDA relies on its 30 advisory committees to provide independent expert advice, lend credibility to the product review process, and inform consumers of trends in product development. The bill would clarify and streamline FDA's processes for evaluating candidates for service on an advisory committee, and address the key challenge of identifying a sufficient number of people with the necessary expertise and a minimum of potential conflicts of interest to serve on advisory committees. I want to thank the dozens of stakeholders, including the Food and Drug Administration, patient and consumer groups, industry associations, individual companies, and scientific experts who have taken the time and effort to give us their comments and input on the bill. Their assistance has been invaluable. I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance this important piece of legislation.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 5970, the Estate Tax and Extension of Tax Relief Act of 2006. Specifically, I strongly support inclusion of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act Amendments of 2006 in this piece of legislation. This legislation is very important to my home State and to coal-producing States throughout our Nation. I have been working to fix the Abandoned Mine Land Trust Fund since I was first elected to the Senate in 1996. We have legislation before the Senate to make that happen, and I applaud my colleagues from Pennsylvania and West Virginia for their hard work on this proposal. Senators Santorum, Rockefeller, Specter, and Byrd have helped produce a solid piece of legislation, and I strongly support moving this forward. For years, reauthorizing the Abandoned Mine Land--AML--Trust Fund has been an issue that pitted the East versus the West. Consensus was never reached on the issue, and the AML Trust Fund continued to be a broken system. Members from the East argued that we needed to send more money to do reclamation, while members from the West argued that we needed to take care of the Federal Government's promise to the States. That promise was made in 1977 with passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, SMCRA. When SMCRA was passed in 1977, a tax was levied on each ton of coal produced. The purpose of that tax was to reclaim coal mines that had been abandoned before laws existed that required reclamation. Half of that tax was promised to the State where the coal was mined. That money is known as the State share. The other half went to the Federal Government to administer the reclamation program and to send additional funding to the States with the most abandoned coal mines. It was a simple enough concept. Half of the money was to be sent to the State share, and the other half administers the AML program and goes to States with the largest reclamation needs. Unfortunately, like many things in Washington, while the concept was good, the implementation has been disastrous and the program has not worked as it was intended. For years, States have been shortchanged and reclamation work has not been done. Today, the Federal Government owes States more than $1.2 billion. At the same time, more than $3 billion in reclamation remains unfinished. When I was named the chairman of the conference committee whose job it was to find a compromise between the House and Senate on pension legislation, I was approached by Senator Santorum who had a proposal. He brought with him a coalition made up of coal companies, the United Mine Workers of America, UMWA, environmental groups and other businesses. Together, they expressed an interest in including an AML Trust Fund reauthorization in the pension conference report. Where I come from, when something does not work, we work to fix it, and so the idea of fixing the AML program on the pension conference was intriguing. For years, I have worked with the other members of the Wyoming delegation to reauthorize this program, and as chairman of the conference committee, I was in a unique position to make a difference. After listening to the proposal, I laid out a set of principles that were necessary to gain my support for such a move. First, I wanted to see the return of the money owed to the States, including the $550 million owed to my State. Because Wyoming is a certified State, I wanted to see that money come from the Federal Government with no strings attached. The legislation we have before us today accomplishes that goal by guaranteeing that Wyoming will receive the money we are owed from the Federal Government in 7 years. Second, I wanted a guarantee that future monies would be directed to States like Wyoming where significant amounts of coal are produced. Third, it was important that more money be directed toward reclamation in States where the reclamation work is needed. Those goals are accomplished with the legislation that is included in this bill. Finally, I wanted to see a reduction on the tax charged to Wyoming's coal companies. Some of the companies in my State do not have the problems associated with abandoned coal mines, nor do they have the orphan miner liability that is held by some companies. Those companies agreed not to fight an extension of the tax if it was reduced, and this legislation includes a slight reduction in the fee. The priorities of other members are also included in this bill, including provisions that shore up health care for orphan miners who fall into the Combined Benefits Fund. Those priorities include the addition of health care coverage for members who fall into the 1992 fund and the 1993 fund. Although the shoring up of those three funds was not a priority for me, this represents compromise legislation. The compromise brought all of the major players on board. The coal companies strongly support this bill. The United Mine Workers of America, UMWA, strongly support this bill. Other businesses who had interests in the AML fund strongly support this bill. With all these groups on board, we set out to gain support for this bill. Senators Santorum and Rockefeller worked hard to bring members from both sides of the aisle on board, and I commend them for their efforts. At the end of the day, we had seven committee chairmen who supported this bill. The chairman and ranking member of the Energy Committee, who have jurisdiction over a portion of the bill, signed a letter to the majority leader asking that it be included in the pension conference. The chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, who have jurisdiction over the rest of the bill, expressed support for moving this forward. As we gained support, we also learned of opposition from members who objected to the cost of the legislation. They claimed that the bill was too expensive and that the health care coverage for the orphan and widow miners was too good. As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, I want to spend taxpayer dollars appropriately. I want programs to work the way they are intended to work, and this program has not done so. For my colleagues who have concerns about the cost of the legislation, it is important to remember that a $1.8 billion Federal trust sits in the Federal Treasury. It is important to remember that, although the fee is reduced slightly, we will continue to collect significant income from the fee. It is also important to remember that the Federal Treasury will collect significant revenues from coal production. For years, we have been using Federal dollars in a way that they were not intended to be used. We have not made progress on the reclamation side, nor have we kept our promise to the States. This legislation corrects that error. It sends significant amounts of money to do reclamation, and it returns the money that was promised to the States. As for the health care aspect of the bill, it is important to know that the Federal Government already provides funding for some health care. It is provided for with interest from Wyoming and other States' money. The Senators who represent the families who receive this health care continue to make sure the families receive it. Since miners' health care continues to be funded, we needed to find a way to fulfill the promise to the States. This legislation was such a fix. As more members were brought on board, I worked with my colleagues on the pension conference to include this provision in the final conference report. Much progress was made, and at the end of the day, I included the AML bill that is a part of H.R. 5970 in my chairman's mark for the pension conference. This AML fix fit nicely in a section containing important tax credits, such as a State sales tax deduction from Federal income tax for Wyoming and other States with no income tax. A last-minute strategy decision by some House members was made to separate the AML bill and the tax credits from the pension portion of the conference report. The House put the AML and the tax credits in a bill that also included the death tax forgiveness and a minimum wage increase. The second bill included many of the pension provisions of the pension conference report. The House then passed the pension bill and the tax credit bill and then adjourned on July 29, 2006, for the August home work period. That is where we stand. I also take this opportunity to voice my support for the estate tax relief contained in this legislation. While I support a full and permanent repeal of this burdensome and unfair tax, the language contained in H.R. 5970 is a big step forward. Under this legislation, the estate and gift tax exemption will be increased over time to $5 million per person. The elimination of this unjust tax will allow many small, family-owned businesses throughout Wyoming and the Nation to keep their businesses open. As I have said time and time again, the death tax is fundamentally unfair because it constitutes another layer of taxation. After years of paying State and Federal income taxes and other property taxes while trying to operate a successful business, the family must pay again at the time of death. The land subject to the death tax is the exact same land that the owner has been paying annual property taxes on. Double taxation is not only unfair on a philosophical level, it causes severe financial harm to the small businesses that are the driving force behind our economy. Our tax laws should encourage investment and growth and not stifle small businesses. In addition to affecting many small businesses, the death tax forces landowners to sell their property to afford paying this tax and avoid passing on the costs to the next generation. Throughout Wyoming, I hear stories of families who are struggling to decide whether to sell part of their farm or ranch or risk leaving their children and grandchildren with this overly burdensome tax. Families should not have to make this impossible choice. In Wyoming, we work hard, in pursuit of the American dream, to create a better life for our children and grandchildren. Yet the death tax punishes this dream and the families who must pick up the pieces after losing a loved one. There is another hidden cost to this double tax that many people do not consider. The death tax also forces families to spend thousands of dollars on estate planning. By requiring individuals and families to use vital financial resources on estate planning, money is being taken away from the family business, farm, or ranch. Permanently eliminating this tax will move precious financial resources to the business and employees themselves instead of to extensive estate planning costs. Finally, I would like to briefly address one additional provision in this legislation--the State and local sales tax deduction. H.R. 5970 includes an extension of the State and local sales tax deduction for 2 years. I applaud the extension of this deduction. The ability to deduct State sales tax is an issue of fairness and parity. Under this legislation, taxpayers have the option to deduct their State and local sales tax or their State income tax. Federal taxpayers who reside in a State without an income tax should not be punished and forced to pay additional Federal taxes. Under this extension, taxpayers can choose whether to deduct their State and local sales or income tax. I intend to vote in favor of the overall package. I strongly support the inclusion of the AML legislation. I am also strongly supportive of the tax extenders and the death tax relief. I hope that my colleagues will see the importance of this legislation and will join me in supporting its passage.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 3711, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. This important energy legislation begins a process by which we start to produce more energy domestically. It moves our Nation and our economy one step away from foreign oil barons and one step closer to energy independence. The legislation does so by opening up a portion of the Gulf of Mexico to energy production. Energy production in the Outer Continental Shelf, OCS, is not a new energy endeavor. The entire OCS is composed of 1.76 billion acres and there are 8,000 active lease areas producing oil and natural gas. This production translates to approximately 20 percent of our domestic oil production and approximately 30 percent of our domestic natural gas production. Unfortunately, as hard working families endure record prices each time they fill up their vehicles and as our Nation's ranchers and farmers struggle with higher fertilizer costs, more than 85 percent of the coastal waters around the lower 48 States currently are off limits to energy development. This legislation is a step in the right direction. S. 3711 requires the Secretary of the Interior to offer mineral leases in what is known as lease area 181 within 1 year of enactment. Such leasing would translate to 1.26 billion barrels of oil and 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Those minerals could be used to help meet the energy needs of our economy and help ease the burden of high prices on our hard working families. Put in perspective, lease area 181 will provide enough natural gas to heat 6 million homes for 15 years. Although I support the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, it is not perfect. I would prefer to see the act do more to open up a greater portion of the OCS to drilling. I would prefer that Federal royalties not be automatically directed to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and I would prefer that the bill allowed States that wanted energy development off their coasts to opt in and States that opposed energy development off their coasts to opt out. While I would like to see these improvements made eventually, it is important to remember that S. 3711 is an excellent first step to expand our domestic energy production. Opening lease area 181 must be part of a broad and comprehensive strategy to expand our traditional energy portfolio as we develop better technologies such as clean coal and hydrogen. Every great endeavor starts with a first step. The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act is a good first step, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the conference report to accompany S. 250, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006. This legislation reflects a lengthy bipartisan effort to strengthen and improve Federal programs designed to support career and technical education. I am very pleased to have worked with my friend and colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, from introduction of the bill in the Senate through today's consideration of the conference report. This legislation was reported favorably by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee last Spring by a unanimous vote. The following day it passed the Senate on a vote of 99 to 0. I am encouraged by the broad support for this legislation and I am pleased to be able to recommend passage of this conference report. This legislation is important for three reasons. The first reason is the added emphasis on academic achievement. I commend the President and the Governors for raising the issue of high school reform, and I believe this legislation is an important part of that process. Improving and strengthening the academic focus of the Perkins Act is part of a much larger effort to ensure that today's students will be ready for tomorrow's reality, whether it is in college or the workplace. In 1998, when Congress last reauthorized the Perkins program, additional emphasis on student academic achievement was incorporated into the bill. That emphasis was critical, and the results have been demonstrated in the program. More Perkins students are performing better on national reading and math assessments than ever before. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, released earlier this year, pointed out that career and technical education students perform better than their peers in both reading and math comprehension. Another recent study of Arizona career and technical education students showed that students in career and technical training courses were more likely to meet State math proficiency levels than students not enrolled in technical training courses. That is good, because today's jobs are requiring stronger academic preparation than ever before, especially in math and science. We are also facing a significant problem in terms of today's students completing high school and earning a secondary education degree. A significant amount of research, many college instructors, and employers agree that far too many high school graduates are not prepared for college-level classes and many more do not have the skills to advance beyond entry level jobs. Only 68 percent of the students entering the ninth grade 4 years ago are expected to graduate this year. For minority students, this number hovers around 50 percent. In addition, we continue to experience an overall dropout rate of 11 percent per year. The Perkins Act emphasizes high school completion by making academic courses more relevant. According to the National Assessment of Vocational Education, now 2 years old, career and technical education students are three times more likely to apply academic skills to job related tasks than students in academic courses. The Perkins program can help address the ``wasted senior year'' by helping to improve student academic achievement. It does that by linking learning to relevant applications and tasks. Students that are excited about learning will always do better, and a great way to get students excited about learning is to show them how they will use the skills they are learning in real life. For many students, understanding how they will use the skills they learn can mean the difference between completing a high school degree and dropping out. For others, it means greater investment in their studies than they might otherwise have. Making learning relevant is one of the best ways to ensure students stay interested in their coursework, while also preparing them for college and the workforce. In the bill we are now considering, we have made academic achievement one of several core indicators of performance for programs receiving funds from this act. As States are elevating their expectations for students under No Child Left Behind, we anticipate that career and technical education students will benefit from those same high expectations. We believe that career and technical education programs should be able to take credit for helping students improve their academic achievement in core subject areas, like reading, math, and science. This legislation also emphasizes the connection to postsecondary education. Many of today's high school students are entering college behind the curve before they even start. Almost a third of all college students are taking some remedial education courses before graduating. We need to make sure that more high school students are receiving the instruction they need before they leave high school in order to be successful in college. The impact of the need for remedial academic instruction has dramatic consequences. As many as three in four students requiring remedial reading instruction will not complete a postsecondary degree program. Over 60 percent of students requiring remedial math education will not complete a postsecondary degree. The Perkins program is in a unique position to help prevent the need for additional remedial education at the postsecondary level. Because the program provides funds for both secondary and postsecondary schools, programs are more coordinated, and students have broader exposure to postsecondary education before leaving high school. A number of programs enabling students to earn concurrent credits for high school and college are springing up within the Perkins program, helping students prepare for college and reduce their time to graduation from a postsecondary degree certificate or degree program. In Casper, WY, right now, the community college and the school district are working on plans to create a hybrid career and technical education center, which will help students earn credit toward a college degree, learn relevant job skills, and meet challenging State academic standards, all through a single sequence of courses. This legislation encourages more schools to begin innovative programs like the one being developed in Casper. The second reason this legislation is important is because it will help ensure we are preparing students for tomorrow's workforce. We are in the midst of a skills revolution. It is estimated that today's students leaving high school or college will have 14 different careers in their lifetimes. It is also estimated that the top 10 jobs 10 years from now haven't been invented yet. The question that faces all of us, put simply, is ``got skills?'' We must equip our workers with the skills the technology-driven economy demands. We need to prepare our students for tomorrow's economy in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Nations such as China and India are rapidly catching up to our institutions in terms of quality, and they have a much larger student body from which to draw. The only way we can compete in the changing economy is to graduate students with the highest quality of academic and technical skills. Earlier this month on the Senate floor we discussed the need for skills training and its impact on wages. I made a speech to the effect that the problem we are facing is one of minimum skills--not minimum wages. The effect may be low wages, but the cause is low skills. We need to address those workers who have few, if any, of the skills they need to compete for a better job and command higher wages. We need to start thinking in terms of skills, the kinds of skills that will help students support themselves and their families in the future. Research shows that high school dropouts have an unemployment rate two times higher than high school graduates, and three times higher than college graduates. Over time, the earning differential between high school and college graduates has increased as well. In 1980, college graduates earned 50 percent more during their lifetime than high school graduates. Today this differential has increased to 100 percent and continues to expand. The programs supported by the Perkins Act help students learn and develop the skills they need to compete in the workforce. In the bill before us, we have emphasized the need to prepare students for placement in high skill, high wage, or high demand occupations. These are the types of jobs that will ensure a stronger future for students and will help them become self-sufficient. Eighty percent of the jobs created over the next 10 years will require some postsecondary education. However, the majority of those jobs will require less than a 4-year degree. This is a critical issue, and we need to start now to meet the needs of the future workforce. I believe that a stronger, more effective Perkins program is an important way to address this issue. By 2010 we face a projected skilled worker shortage of 5.3 million workers. That's 5.3 million American jobs that can't be filled because our workers don't have the right skills. That is why career and technical education funds are so critical to the supply of skilled labor in this country. These are precisely the types of careers for which the Perkins program is preparing students. Career and technical programs in this country are preparing students with the skills to succeed in health care, information technology, trade, manufacturing, and a host of other careers. One of the most critical improvements we have made to the Perkins program in this bill is to strengthen the connection of career and technical education programs to the needs of businesses. If we are going to help fill the growing need for skilled workers, we need to ensure Perkins programs are coordinating their instruction with current practices in industry and the needs of the local workforce. Thousands of examples are available of schools connecting with businesses to help develop the right curriculum for available high skill, high wage jobs. At a roundtable I chaired earlier this year on high school redesign issues, several of the participants described programs that linked academic programs at the high school or community college with the needs of the employers in the area. One such example was a program that prepared students to work in a nearby nuclear energy plant. The area high school offered classes so students in the area could begin the technical training to get a job at the nuclear powerplant, earning more than $40,000 a year to start. That's the type of relevant instruction that we need to encourage and that we are encouraging through this conference report. I expect that the students performing well in their nuclear power management and safety class are also performing well on State math and science assessments. The final reason that this legislation is important is because it provides a foundation for the redesign of Federal education policy. We need to structure Federal education policies that provide students and adult learners have access to lifelong education opportunities. In this 21st century economy, learning never ends, and school is never out. The Perkins Act is one part of a ``three-legged stool'' of Federal education and training programs, all of which we will have considered during this Congress. The other two key pieces of this approach are the Workforce Investment Act, and the Higher Education Act. This is the first of those three bills to make it through conference, but I hope we will quickly follow with the others. If we are going to stay competitive, Federal education programs need to help support seamless transitions from education to the workforce, throughout life, from preschool through postsecondary education and beyond. The conference report we are considering takes the first step in that direction by emphasizing the connection between academic and technical education and the workforce and postsecondary education. The Workforce Investment Act and the Higher Education Act will be the next critical steps in ensuring that American students are prepared for today and tomorrow's careers, many which haven't been invented yet. Today's students are more and more likely to return to school throughout their lives for additional training. Some estimates suggest that as many as 75 percent of today's workers will need additional training just to stay current with their jobs. The modern college student reflects this trend perfectly. Today's average college student is likely to be older than 24, independent, and more likely to be female. They are also likely to have transferred institutions at least once in their postsecondary career. That snapshot reflects the reality that today's college students are there for training and technical skills acquisition more than anything else. Postsecondary education is one of the fastest means to advancement in today's economy. With a postsecondary education, workers are more likely to keep their jobs and take advantage of opportunities to grow and advance in the workforce, or transition to another occupation as the workforce changes. Federal policy needs to reflect the 21st century reality: we are in the midst of a jobs revolution. We are going to experience dramatic changes in the workforce over the next 10 to 15 years, and we need to start now if we are going to adapt Federal education and training policy to meet the coming crisis of too few workers with too few skills. I am pleased that this legislation is now at the final stage of the process. We were able to move this bill quickly through committee and the floor because we were able to work in a bipartisan manner to reauthorize a program that the members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee feel is an important part of the federal education and training system. Although the intervening work took much longer than I would have liked, I am happy to see the conference report taken up in the Senate. I want to thank Senator Kennedy and his staff for their hard work, and for the hard work of the Senate conferees. I specifically want to thank Carmel Martin, JD Larock, and Jane Oates from Senator Kennedy's staff. Although I understand Jane has moved on to greener pastures, she had a significant role to play in helping the legislation get to this point. I also want to thank Mr. McKeon and Mr. Miller, as well as the other House conferees, for helping us get to this point, and their staffs: Whitney Rhoades, Stephanie Milburn, Krisann Pearce, Lisa Ross, Denise Forte, Lloyd Horwich and many others. Finally, I want to thank my own staff--Scott Fleming, Beth Buehlmann, Lisa Schunk, Ilyse Schuman and Katherine McGuire--for helping me to move this bill all the way through the legislative process. They have spent many long hours seeking agreement on the provisions of the conference report and have done stellar work. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support adoption of the conference report.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, passing S. 1021, the Workforce Investment Act amendments, is an important step toward ensuring America's competitiveness in the global economy. We need a skilled workforce to maintain our competitive edge in this technology-driven economy. This reauthorization of our job-training system created under the Workforce Investment Act, WIA, will help our workers obtain the skills they need to find good jobs with good wages and fulfilling careers in high skilled occupations. This bill will help our businesses find the skilled workers they need to grow and remain competitive. We have a skilled worker shortage in this country. Fortunately, that can be addressed by ensuring our workers have access to lifelong education, training, and retraining opportunities The substitute amendment to S. 1021 makes technical changes to the bill that was reported out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee unanimously. Most importantly, this amendment provides for 100 percent flexibility between WIA adult and dislocated funding streams in order to meet State and local job training needs. However, formula funding for each of these WIA funding streams remains the same. Increased flexibility moves us further toward achieving our goal of an effective, coordinated, and accountable job training system. This bill allows for real reform shaped at the State and local level with the full participation of the business community. States working in concert with their local governments and leaders should have the option of determining what is best and most needed--for their economy. There are many other important features of this bill such as improved connections with the private sector, postsecondary education and training, and economic development systems, and a new focus on entrepreneurial skills and microenterprises coupled with the unique needs of small businesses and rural areas. S. 1021 includes amendments to the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act and the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. These amendments encourage coordination with K-12 schools, postsecondary education, and the workforce system so that individuals can overcome the barriers to their participation in the workforce and have an opportunity to gain the literacy, language, or core skills needed to enter and advance in their chosen profession. I am especially pleased that we have been able to define an improved transition process for youth with disabilities in order to achieve significant improvements in postsecondary outcomes for youth with disabilities. I thank Senator Kennedy and the rest of my colleagues on the HELP Committee for their hard work in getting this important bill passed on a bipartisan basis. I also thank the HELP Committee staff on both sides of the aisle who spent countless hours crafting this bill. I would particularly like to thank Katherine McGuire, Beth Buehlmann, Ilyse Schuman, Scott Fleming, and Aaron Bishop on my staff, and Michael Myers, Carmel Martin, and Connie Garner on Senator Kennedy's staff, and Jane Oates, formerly on Senator Kennedy's staff. Unless we can make sure that those workers with minimum skills have the opportunities and the resources to improve their ability to meet the challenges of the 21st century workplace, we will find ourselves as a nation losing our competitive advantage in a global economy. I look forward to going to conference and getting this important bill signed into law.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator DeWine, Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski in introducing the Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006. The Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006 is the primary source for the delivery of social and nutrition services for older individuals. Enacted in 1965, the act's programs include supportive services, congregate and home-delivered nutrition services, community service employment, the long-term care ombudsman program, and services to prevent the abuse, neglect and exploitation of older individuals. The act also provides grants to Native Americans and research, training, and demonstration activities. The 2000 amendments to the act authorized the National Family Caregiver Support Program; allowed State agencies on aging to impose cost-sharing for certain supportive services for older persons; revised the State funding formulas; and required the Department of Labor to establish performance measures for the community service employment program. Title I of the Older Americans Act set broad social policy objective to improve the lives of all older Americans. It recognized the need for an adequate income in retirement, and the importance of physical and mental health, employment in community services for older individuals and long-term care services. Title II established the Administration on Aging, AOA, within the Department of Health and Human Services to be the primary Federal advocate for older individuals and to administer the provisions of the Older Americans Act. It also established the National Eldercare Locator Service to provide nationwide information with regard to resources for older individuals; the National Long-term Care Ombudsman Resource Center; the National Center on Elder Abuse; the National Aging Information Center; and the Pension Counseling and Information Program. The 2006 amendments will establish an Office of Elder Abuse Prevention and Services to develop a long-term plan and national response to elder abuse prevention, detection, treatment, and intervention. Further, the 2006 amendments strengthen the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services through an interagency coordinating committee to guide policy and program development across the Federal Government with respect to aging and demographic changes. Title III authorized grants to State and area agencies on aging to act as advocates on behalf of older individuals. Title III services are targeted to those with the greatest economic and social need, particularly low-income minority persons and older persons residing in rural communities. It funds supportive services, congregate and home- delivered meals, transportation, home care, adult day care, information assistance, and legal assistance. The 2006 amendments will expand the Caregiver Support Program to permit the use of volunteers to enhance services and increase program authorization levels. In addition, the bill contains a new demonstration project that promises to lead to changes in our long-term care delivery system, leading to consumer driven choices. Title IV authorized grants for training, research, and demonstration projects in the field of aging. This title supports a wide range of projects including those related to income, health, housing, retirement and long-term care, as well as career preparation and continuing education. The 2006 amendments will expand gerontology training for minority students; multigenerational activities, and civic engagement activities. Title V authorized the community service employment program for older Americans known as the Senior Community Service Employment or SCSEP--to promote part-time opportunities in community service for unemployed, low-income persons who are 55 years or older and who have poor employment prospects. It is administered by the Department of Labor. The 2006 amendments establish 4-year grant cycles for the competitive program and permit poor performing grantees to be terminated from the program based on performance measures and establishes a 3 year limit for participating in subsidized employment with a 20-percent waiver for difficult to place individuals. Title VI authorized funds for Supportive and nutrition services for older Native Americans. The 2006 amendments will increase the funding levels for this program. Title VII authorized the long-term care ombudsman program and elder abuse, neglect and exploitation prevention programs. The 2006 amendments will enhance the elder abuse prevention activities by awarding grants to States and Indian tribes to enable them to strengthen long-term care and provide assistance for elder justice and elder abuse prevention programs. It will create grants for prevention, detection, assessment, treatment of, intervention in, investigation of, and response to elder abuse; safe havens demonstrations for older individuals; volunteer programs; multidisciplinary activities; elder fatality and serious injury review teams; programs for underserved populations; incentives for longterm care facilities to train and retain employees; and other collaborative and innovative approaches. Further, it will initiate a new incidence and prevalence study and a data collection process. The proportion of the population aged 60 and over will increase dramatically over the next 30 years as more than 78 million baby boomers approach retirement. It is essential that in the coming years Congress and the Federal Government take a leadership role in assisting the states in addressing the needs of older Americans. The bill we offer today will ensure that our Nation's older Americans are healthy, fed, housed, able to get where they need to go and safe from abuse and scams. The No. 1 resolution of the 2005 White House Conference on Aging called upon Congress to reauthorize the Older Americans Act during the 109th Congress. I am pleased that the Senate and the House are well on the way to accomplis1ing this goal on behalf of one of our Nation's greatest resources--our older Americans. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of S.J. Res. 12 which proposes an amendment to our Constitution allowing Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the resolution introduced by my colleague from Utah. Throughout the years of our Nation's existence, many brave men and women have fought and died to defend the freedom that our flag symbolizes. We must honor their memory by protecting our flag and preserving this symbol of our Nation and the unity of the 50 States. I have heard from veterans across my home State of Wyoming about their service and the importance of the flag in both their military and civilian lives. Our flag is a constant reminder of all those who have sacrificed so much so that we might be free. We are now engaged in a new and different kind of war. We have taken up arms to end the threat of terror. We have been joined by many different nations in that effort, but we are, once again, relying on our own Armed Forces, the greatest fighting force in the world. With the talents and abilities of our service members and our support and prayers, I have no doubt they will get the job done. When our deployed troops return home, they will deserve our support and encouragement as they return to their everyday lives. I believe they will also expect us to take action to ensure the symbol of our Nation that they carried with them into battle is afforded the protection it deserves. We must ensure our flag is respected and protected as a symbol of our freedoms and the sacrifices that were made. Over the last couple of days, some Members of this body have made some misleading statements about what this resolution does. Let's be clear--this piece of legislation does not ban anything. It does begin the process of restoring the authority of Congress to pass a flag desecration statute. A constitutional amendment will only become law if it is approved by three-quarters of the States. I have also heard some of my colleagues claim that the language we are debating is too vague. Again, this is simply the first step in a process. The details will be debated once Congress regains its authority to make laws related to the desecration of the flag. It is then the job of those in Congress to talk about and debate the definition of desecration and what that word will mean in our laws. Again, I believe our flag should be protected as a symbol of this Nation and our history. It represents us in military actions, in athletic competitions, diplomacy, and any activity we engage in around the world. The flag helped rally the Nation after the attacks of September 11, 2001. It calls to mind those who serve on our police, fire, and emergency response teams, risking their lives every day to ensure we are safe and protected from harm. Diana and I have a friend from Finland who taught in the United States for a year. She had a flag of Finland that she traveled with while we were debating a flag burning amendment. She couldn't believe that anyone would dishonor their country's flag by burning it. As a symbol of the country, she couldn't believe that anyone would desecrate it in any way. She couldn't imagine that burning or desecrating the flag of a person's own country could have any positive effect. She believed that what people were doing to the symbol of our Nation would have a very detrimental effect overseas. Changing the law may not change people, but the discussion alone that we are having should point out what is right and wrong and how other countries view the disrespect we demonstrate for our country. People are missing the issue of the protests. They are only seeing the disrespect for the country. We can do better. We must do better. This amendment will help us do better on focusing on problems instead of drama that takes away from ways we can make our lives and our country better. Our flag symbolizes our hope for the future and our willingness to work together to make this world a better place for us all to live. That hope for tomorrow unites us, guides us, and helps to make us truly one Nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. I encourage all Senators to support S.J. Res. 12.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator DeWine, Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski in introducing the Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006. The Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006 is the primary source for the delivery of social and nutrition services for older individuals. Enacted in 1965, the act's programs include supportive services, congregate and home-delivered nutrition services, community service employment, the long-term care ombudsman program, and services to prevent the abuse, neglect and exploitation of older individuals. The act also provides grants to Native Americans and research, training, and demonstration activities. The 2000 amendments to the act authorized the National Family Caregiver Support Program; allowed State agencies on aging to impose cost-sharing for certain supportive services for older persons; revised the State funding formulas; and required the Department of Labor to establish performance measures for the community service employment program. Title I of the Older Americans Act set broad social policy objective to improve the lives of all older Americans. It recognized the need for an adequate income in retirement, and the importance of physical and mental health, employment in community services for older individuals and long-term care services. Title II established the Administration on Aging, AOA, within the Department of Health and Human Services to be the primary Federal advocate for older individuals and to administer the provisions of the Older Americans Act. It also established the National Eldercare Locator Service to provide nationwide information with regard to resources for older individuals; the National Long-term Care Ombudsman Resource Center; the National Center on Elder Abuse; the National Aging Information Center; and the Pension Counseling and Information Program. The 2006 amendments will establish an Office of Elder Abuse Prevention and Services to develop a long-term plan and national response to elder abuse prevention, detection, treatment, and intervention. Further, the 2006 amendments strengthen the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services through an interagency coordinating committee to guide policy and program development across the Federal Government with respect to aging and demographic changes. Title III authorized grants to State and area agencies on aging to act as advocates on behalf of older individuals. Title III services are targeted to those with the greatest economic and social need, particularly low-income minority persons and older persons residing in rural communities. It funds supportive services, congregate and home- delivered meals, transportation, home care, adult day care, information assistance, and legal assistance. The 2006 amendments will expand the Caregiver Support Program to permit the use of volunteers to enhance services and increase program authorization levels. In addition, the bill contains a new demonstration project that promises to lead to changes in our long-term care delivery system, leading to consumer driven choices. Title IV authorized grants for training, research, and demonstration projects in the field of aging. This title supports a wide range of projects including those related to income, health, housing, retirement and long-term care, as well as career preparation and continuing education. The 2006 amendments will expand gerontology training for minority students; multigenerational activities, and civic engagement activities. Title V authorized the community service employment program for older Americans known as the Senior Community Service Employment or SCSEP--to promote part-time opportunities in community service for unemployed, low-income persons who are 55 years or older and who have poor employment prospects. It is administered by the Department of Labor. The 2006 amendments establish 4-year grant cycles for the competitive program and permit poor performing grantees to be terminated from the program based on performance measures and establishes a 3 year limit for participating in subsidized employment with a 20-percent waiver for difficult to place individuals. Title VI authorized funds for Supportive and nutrition services for older Native Americans. The 2006 amendments will increase the funding levels for this program. Title VII authorized the long-term care ombudsman program and elder abuse, neglect and exploitation prevention programs. The 2006 amendments will enhance the elder abuse prevention activities by awarding grants to States and Indian tribes to enable them to strengthen long-term care and provide assistance for elder justice and elder abuse prevention programs. It will create grants for prevention, detection, assessment, treatment of, intervention in, investigation of, and response to elder abuse; safe havens demonstrations for older individuals; volunteer programs; multidisciplinary activities; elder fatality and serious injury review teams; programs for underserved populations; incentives for longterm care facilities to train and retain employees; and other collaborative and innovative approaches. Further, it will initiate a new incidence and prevalence study and a data collection process. The proportion of the population aged 60 and over will increase dramatically over the next 30 years as more than 78 million baby boomers approach retirement. It is essential that in the coming years Congress and the Federal Government take a leadership role in assisting the states in addressing the needs of older Americans. The bill we offer today will ensure that our Nation's older Americans are healthy, fed, housed, able to get where they need to go and safe from abuse and scams. The No. 1 resolution of the 2005 White House Conference on Aging called upon Congress to reauthorize the Older Americans Act during the 109th Congress. I am pleased that the Senate and the House are well on the way to accomplis1ing this goal on behalf of one of our Nation's greatest resources--our older Americans. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield myself 4 additional minutes. The Senator from Massachusetts has said: Let's have an up-or-down vote. There are a lot of things around here that we talk about having an up-or-down vote on. We have not been able to have up-or-down votes, and it is always because there are some other amendments that might make the bill better. Sometimes they are even germane to the bill we are talking about. The one we are talking about, the amendment we are putting this on now is Department of Defense. Yes, you can make some arguments about how this is defense related, I guess, but what we would normally do, if we were serious on an issue such as this, is bring it up as a separate issue and allow amendments to it. But that is not going to happen because there are a few things in my bill that the other side of the aisle would not like to have. One of those is flextime. They show that chart where the person could make 50 hours this one week and get overtime and then make 30 hours in the next week. That is not how the real world works either. They would earn 40 hours in one week, which would not be overtime, and 40 hours in the next week, which would not be overtime. That is still the same 80 hours. With the agreement of the person asking for the flextime, they could put the 50 hours in one week, the 30 hours in the other week, have the extra day to do whatever they want with their kids. If flextime is a bad idea, why did we let the Federal employees do it? The problem in my State is with the person who works for a private industry in Wyoming who is married to someone who works for the Federal Government because the Federal Government lets them do the flextime that the Senator from Massachusetts says steals overtime. If it stole overtime, does anyone think our Federal employees would be interested in it? No; they have other values. When we did flextime for the Federal Government, Senator Kennedy voted to ensure that the Federal employees would have access to flextime, to have the scheduling options necessary to balance work and family life. Senator Kennedy, along with 11 other Democrats, cosponsored the Nickles bill that extended flextime and comp time to State and local employees. If it is a bad idea, why would they do it for Federal employees and State and local employees? And why don't we do it for the private employees? The argument is, nasty employers would never let them have the time. That is a terrible rap for business. Small business understands the needs of their people better than big business because they work with them every day, they go to church with them every weekend, they are in civic organizations with them, their kids go to the same schools, and they are the ones who have to deliver the bad news that they are not going to be allowed to do that flextime, and they cannot afford to do it a different way. Sometimes the employees in small business make more than the employers in small business. Those are some of the CEOs whom I am worried about, the ones who have to wake up in the middle of the night and say, How am I going to make payroll this week? I would like to be paying my people more, but I don't know how I am going to pay them at all. That is a reality in small business. I know small businessmen across the country who are hearing me say that are saying: He's got it. He understands our problem. What can you do to help us? So we put together some provisions that in a normal situation we would be able to debate one of those at a time and decide on some of them and reject some of them. That is how it ought to work. But it is not just as simple as saying we can get everybody and all the kids out of poverty if we were just to raise the minimum wage. Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, may I ask unanimous consent that the Senator's additional comments be printed in the Record.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield 15 minutes to the Senator from Alabama.

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

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes. I have listened patiently through 4 hours yesterday and quite a bit of time this morning. There are some things that need to be said. I appreciate the comments from our side of the aisle and from everybody who has gone before me. I particularly appreciate the comments of the Senator from Georgia because some of those things have been grating on us a little bit as we have listened to what has been said. We have seen the charts which show that small businesses in this country are in favor of that kind of a tax increase. I spoke to the Federation of Independent Businesses yesterday morning. They do the most complete job of surveying their members than any association that I know of. They do not back anything unless there is a strong consensus by their members. They are opposed, by their vote, to the minimum wage increase that Senator Kennedy is suggesting. I do not know where they find that 86 percent. But I have seen surveys before that are able to manufacture the kinds of numbers that people want to have. From the manufacturing members, I suggest that it sounds reasonable to people. I saw a chart over here last night that showed the average CEO in America is making $11.8 million compared to what a minimum wage person is making. That is an average CEO. What do you suppose the good ones are making? Eleven million eight hundred thousand dollars a year for the average CEO in this country? I think that must be the average CEO in the top 100 companies in the world. But that is apples and oranges when you are talking about the minimum wage. We have heard some pretty big numbers about how many people are in poverty and under the minimum wage. The purpose is to take the 1.9 million people who are at the minimum wage and get them higher wages. We all agree on that. What we don't agree on is how to do that. The Senator from Massachusetts earlier today said minimum wage jobs don't get you out of poverty; that they keep you in poverty. That was his quote this morning. I absolutely agree with that. What we need to do is get higher skills in this country. We need to reduce the number of dropouts in this country. It is dropouts who are working at the minimum wage. It is people who have made some choices that put them in a position where they have to take the lower paying jobs. We need to change that. When I first came to Washington, welfare reform was going into effect. The newspapers were full of stories that on the day that went into effect, people were going to drop through the cracks. It was going to be this tragedy for American people. After it happened, there were not many stories on that. That is because the tragedies did not happen. People improved their lot in life with jobs. I happened to be in an ice cream shop where they shared the tables fairly closely. This was fine, but it made it impossible for me not to hear the conversation at the table abutted up to my table. It was a woman and her husband talking to a sister who had a child with her. She was talking about the change that welfare reform had made in her life because she had gotten some additional training, she had gotten a good job, and she was so pleased with her job she was going to shift some hours so she could be at work when her sister was in training. She would take care of that child who was sitting there so her sister could have the same kind of benefit she had. That is the way we change America. We get people better jobs. We take care of things so people can get better training. Better training reminds me of the Workforce Investment Act. I have been trying to get the Workforce Investment Act through this process for 3 years now. That is a bill that would train 900,000 people a year to higher paying jobs. That is what we want, higher paying jobs. Do you think we have been able to get it through the process? No. For 2 years we were not able to get a conference committee. Now we are being blocked from having it brought to the Senate for debate. That would solve a lot of the problems. We talk about the difference in wages between men and women. We had a great hearing in our Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. I liked one of the people whom Senator Kennedy selected to give testimony, a lady from New York City. She was talking about the value of taking nontraditional jobs. She happened to be a stone mason, a person who works with bricks, rock, and marble. She makes things beautiful. She started with basic construction, and she worked her way up to where she was hanging marble on skyscrapers. She shared with us the progression in pay she had gotten. She is making more than I am. She made that progression rather rapidly, but she had to take a job that was nontraditional for women. She wears a hard hat and safety toes and goes up skyscrapers. You do not necessarily have to do that to make more money. I always point out in Wyoming we have a shortage of people to work. That shortage is providing power for this country. Over a third of the coal that is mined in this country is mined in Campbell County, WY, which is where Gillette is. That is where I am from. Their problem now is getting people to drive haul trucks. They are big trucks. Two of them would not fit in this Chamber. They would be as high as the ceiling. They are big equipment. They have power steering, power brakes, enclosed cabs with air conditioning. They drive almost like a car. If a person can drive and pass a drug test, they can start at $60,000 a year and get the training to work on that truck. That is way above minimum wage, folks. That is $60,000 a year. If they want to put in some overtime--they would not be allowed flextime at the present time--they can make more than that. We need to have people look at some of the nontraditional jobs and look at some of the other areas of the country. If they are in an area with a lot of people and not many jobs, they will have lower paying jobs. We need to get more job training. We need to have the people be where the good-paying jobs are. They would find pretty good quality of life, too. I need to correct a couple of other things. First of all, we make some of these charts sound as if everyone working at minimum wage is a single mom with lots of kids. That does not fit with the statistics. There are 1.9 million people at the minimum wage. Fully 85 percent of the minimum wage earners live with their parents--I would think most of the parents hope that means they are teenagers--or they have a working spouse or are living alone without children. So 41 percent live with a parent or relative, 23 percent are single or are the sole breadwinner in a household with no children, and 21 percent live with another wage earner. A lot of those are teenagers. Yes, they are in poverty if that is all they are making. I have had some minimum wage jobs. I don't know how many in this Chamber have had minimum wage jobs. I worked in the summers and while I was going to college, even when I was considerably younger than that. One of the things I discovered was if I was interested in what I was doing and I learned as much as I could about it, I was not at the minimum wage very long. I got a promotion. I got more pay. But of course the reason I got more pay is because I was able to do more things. I was more skilled. Minimum wage equals minimum skills. McDonald's takes a real rap for starting people at minimum wage, and I have a friend named Jack Preiss who owns several McDonald's. He pointed out to me he has three of his employees who started at minimum wage who now own 20 McDonald's. That is the way we want America to work. We do not want minimum wage jobs that don't get you out of poverty. They keep you in poverty. Yes, we want higher skills, better jobs, and the opportunity for people to have higher wages. If people are locked into the fact they are going to have a minimum wage job their whole life, they are going to have a minimum wage job their whole life. But there are options. There are opportunities out there. And there could be more if we could do the Workforce Investment Act. Flextime is one of six provisions in this bill that make a difference to small business. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I would quote the Senator from Massachusetts again who said: Minimum wage jobs don't get you out of poverty, they keep you in poverty. Until we get a Workforce Investment Act passed around here that increases job training for 900,000 people a year so they can get higher-skilled jobs so they can get the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past, we are going to have problems with the minimum wage and poverty. We need to be able to give people more choices, not less choices. There is a definite difference in philosophy. We think that free enterprise can work and that it is working and that it does work, and also that States rights work. States are changing the minimum wage to match the economy of their State. Although, if they have really good jobs, they will attract people, I hope. We are having a little problem attracting people to Wyoming, and those are not for the minimum wage jobs, those are for outstanding jobs. So people need to think a little bit about more training or moving a little bit to get better jobs and get out of the minimum wage rut that will cause a spiral. As we increase the minimum wage, we also cause an upward spiral that eliminates the value of that minimum wage. I ask you to vote against the Kennedy amendment and to vote for my amendment. Something that has been overlooked is my amendment includes a $1.10 increase in the minimum wage over 18 months. Mr. President, I ask to have printed in the Record a letter dated June 13, 2006, to Senator Kennedy.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. In answer to the question, Mr. President, I can't tell how long it will take for the Joint Tax Committee to have the new numbers. But I can tell you, I didn't know that the Senator was going to offer his amendment until yesterday. The estimated revenue effects that we have are from the one that we did and voted on last year which shows over a 10-year period that all costs are covered with a slight surplus.

Mr. ENZI. That is correct. Of course, I am going to ask that he withdraw that amendment and I do not propose my amendment because they don't have to do with the Department of Defense authorization.

Mr. ENZI. No, Mr. President. Senator Kennedy filed an amendment that dealt with the minimum wage. I actually won't send mine to the desk right now, but I would like to comment on that right now.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I know that some people who are following this debate might be wondering how the minimum wage relates to legislation that authorizes national security programs in the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy for the next year, and that is certainly a valid question. The answer is: It doesn't. The underlying legislation the Senate has been considering for over a week is of tremendous importance to our national security. The bill is bipartisan and was reported out of committee unanimously. As those of us who chair committees know, it isn't easy to obtain unanimous bipartisan support for legislation. Chairman Warner and Ranking Member Levin worked hard to achieve this feat because the subject of the bill is so critically important. Now I believe we owe it to them, as well as to our constituents and every American, to give this national security legislation swift consideration so that it can become law. The amendment offered by Senator Kennedy has the opposite effect. It will slow this bill down because it is an entirely different subject than the underlying bill. It will take up valuable debate time that should be spent on the bill's national security provisions. Should it be adopted, the Kennedy amendment would become a thorny issue for the conference committee, and that will further slow down the bill's enactment. Even more frustrating, the issue Senator Kennedy is raising has been considered and voted on by the Senate four times already in this Congress. We voted on the majority and minority plans to raise the minimum wage twice. We voted on the two of them in March, and we voted on them in November. Now, both times, no proposal succeeded. Amendments offered by the Senate must comply with certain budget rules which, as a member of the Budget Committee, I fully support. Amendments that constitute an unfunded mandate are subject to a point of order which can only be waived with a vote of 60 Senators. Not 1 of the 4 minimum wage amendments has received 60 votes in the Senate this Congress. Yet here we are again, facing the same situation, using up time on the Defense bill. The outcome is likely to be the same as it was the last four times we voted. Knowing this, I find it difficult to understand why those on the other side of the aisle want to bring it up again on this critically important national security bill. Let us not misuse the time we should be spending debating our national security priorities for the next year by repeating votes that already occurred four times in this Congress. Instead, let's focus on how we should prepare for the many threats we face as a nation. The good men and women who work for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy need our authorization and our guidance to move forward with their activities that keep us safe. We have always done it before we do the appropriations on those budgets. We should not let them down. We should not let the American people down. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle not to divert this debate on to an entirely unrelated matter, the outcome of which is clearly determinable. So I urge my colleague, Senator Kennedy, to withdraw his amendment. I would add that if he does not, I am plenty willing to have the debate again. We want to have the American public making as much money as possible. I would rise in opposition to the amendment offered by Senator Kennedy that would increase the Federal minimum wage to $7.25 over 26 months, which amounts to a 41-percent increase. My amendment would raise the minimum wage by $1.10 in two 55-cent steps over 18 months. But, more important than the numbers, only my amendment recognizes the enormous burdens a mandate such as this would place on the backs of America's small businesses. The Senator from Massachusetts has previously referred to the economic effect of the minimum wage proposal as a drop in the bucket in the national payroll. Comments such as this are precisely why small business owners across the Nation believe that Washington, DC, politicians do not understand their needs. We must always bear in mind that these are the people who create jobs that provide an increasing percentage of employment for all workers, including those entering the workforce for the first time and those who most need to acquire job skills. Those businesses train people with no skills. We are not talking minimum wage; we are talking minimum skills. And a lot of the small businesses that employ people at a minimum wage hire them at a minimum wage with no skills. As they get skills, which in many of those businesses occur in the first month they are hired, they go above the minimum wage to other levels, and as quickly as they learn other skills, they get paid more money or they go elsewhere, which is another option. It is particularly offensive to those employers doing that training to suggest that a 41-percent increase in their labor costs amounts to a drop in the bucket. A 41-percent increase in labor costs forces a small businessperson to face difficult choices such as whether to increase prices, which they usually can't do or face a potential loss of customers because they raise the price, or whether to reduce spending on health insurance coverage or other benefits for their employees or, the worst of all possibilities, to terminate employees. These choices are far more significant than a drop in the bucket. Apart from its failure to mitigate the cost of this mandate for small businesses, Senator Kennedy's amendment also fails to address the root of the problem for our lowest paid workers. Congress, by simply imposing an artificial wage increase, will not meaningfully address the real issue of the lowest paid workers. Regardless of the size of any wage increase Congress might impose, the reality is that yesterday's lowest paid worker, assuming he or she still has any job, will continue to be tomorrow's lowest paid worker as well. There is a spiral effect to these increases when we do them because everybody all up the chain has to have an increase to stay ahead of those with no skills. There are even union agreements that are tied to raises in the minimum wage, which is probably a bigger reason we debate the minimum wage on such a frequent basis around here. But if everybody gets a raise, something has to happen to cover the cost of that raise. As I mentioned, you either eliminate employees so that you are increasing productivity to handle the same thing or you are raising the price. If you raise the price, you create inflation. If you create inflation, what they were able to buy for minimum wage today they can't afford for tomorrow's minimum wage because the price went up. So a false economy of just demanding by Congress that everybody do this really doesn't affect the economy the way we think it will. The way that you do that is advancement on the job and earned wage growth. Earned wage growth cannot be legislated. We do a disservice to all concerned, most especially the chronic low-wage worker, to suggest that a Federal wage mandate is the answer. What we need to focus on is not an artificially imposed number but the acquisition and improvement of job and job-related skills. In this context we should recognize that only 68 percent of the students entering the ninth grade 4 years ago--68 percent of the students entering the ninth grade 4 years ago are expected to graduate this year. Do you know what kind of a job you get if you don't graduate from high school? Well, 68 percent of the kids who entered 4 years ago--not all of them--are going to graduate. For minority students this number hovers around 50 percent. In addition, we continue to experience a dropout rate of 11 percent a year. These noncompletion and dropout rates and the poor earning capacity that comes with them cannot be fixed by a Federal minimum wage policy. I was in a retail store the other day. I noticed some of the skills have deteriorated to the point where the person at the cash register can't figure out the dollars themselves. I remember when cash registers in stores didn't tell you how much change you had to give the person. You had to figure it out, and kids and adults did that. But there are errors with that, so modern machines took up the disadvantage that was caused by that and we now have cash registers that figure the change for you. But watch out if you ever change the way you give them the money after they figured it on the computer cash register. Have you ever had a bill for $10.81 and you gave the clerk $11 and then you gave them a penny? That is no skills, if they can't figure out they owe you the 20 cents. No skills. That is what the retailers out there are training people on--basic, rudimentary things for having a job. We don't fix those by legislating. If we are going to meaningfully address the issue of low-wage workers we have to acknowledge that you do not do that by simply passing a wage law. If that were the case, we could pass a law that made the minimum wage $20 or $50 or $100 an hour. It is just not that simple. In my own State of Wyoming, Governor Freudenthal, a Democrat, this year, in speaking about legislation to raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15, noted that the real question is how do you enable a worker to become more qualified and thereby able to earn a higher wage? He noted: How do you make the individual more valuable in the marketplace and demand a higher wage? It's not simply how do you pass a law. As I mentioned, the Governor of Wyoming is a Democrat, one who understands the reality of this issue in the workplace and the job market. Low wages may be the effect; low job skills are the cause. Raising the minimum wage does absolutely nothing to enhance job skills for low-wage workers. In fact, to the extent it makes entry into the workforce more difficult, and increases low-skilled unemployment, as a minimum wage hike without economic relief for small business will unquestionably do, it will have precisely the opposite effect. If we are able to approach this debate in a candid and constructive way, we need to acknowledge certain basic principles of economics. First of all, wages do not cause sales. Sales are needed to produce revenue. And wages don't cause revenue. Revenue drives wages. Wages can cause productivity, but the productivity has to come first to be able to afford the wages. Wages have to be paid for. Skills, however, operate differently than wages do. Skills do create sales. Sales do produce revenue. Skills do create productivity. And here is the most important part--skills get compensated with higher wages or else the employee goes somewhere else to get true higher wages to compensate for their increased skills. There is a relationship between skill and how much you make. Dropouts will not make as much as college graduates. Dropouts will not make as much as someone who has been to a technical school. Dropouts will have minimum skills. Some people who finish school have minimum skills. I know my dad, once, when he was interviewing a person, said the person told him he had 5 years' experience. My dad, after questioning him, said: Unfortunately, he had 1 month of experience 60 times. Wage increases without increased sales or higher productivity, which are a result of more skills, have to be paid for with higher prices. Higher prices wipe out wage increases. Better skills, not artificial wage increases, produce true net gains in income. We also need to focus on the goal that the minimum wage should be for all workers and what it is for most, which is a starting point in an individual's lifelong working career if they are not skilled. Let me say that again. We need to focus on the goal that minimum wage should be for workers who need a starting point in an individual's lifelong working career because they are not skilled. If viewed as a starting point, it is clear the focus needs to be far less on where an individual begins in his or her work career and far more on how an individual can progress--get jobs that have the potential for increase, get jobs that teach skills. They are available. I always have to mention this. Right now in Wyoming, which is the least populated State in the Nation, we have a huge shortage of workers. There is a huge shortage of workers. Are these good jobs? Yes, they are good jobs. They are in the coal mines. We ship a third of the Nation's coal out of my county. It is clean coal and it is open-pit mining. We use huge trucks. You could only fit two trucks in this whole room and that would be a pretty tight squeeze. The top of it would probably touch the top of the roof. They are big trucks. We are having trouble getting drivers for the trucks. The only requirement for being a driver on one of these trucks is to be able to drive and have a clean drug record--be able to pass a drug test. When you drive one of these trucks, once you get up to elevation and get in the driver's chair, there are antivibration seats, power steering, air-conditioned cabs. That great big vehicle is easy to drive. What do you get paid for driving it? The starting salary is about $60,000, and they train you, provided you have this clean drug record-- $60,000 a year. We are having trouble getting people to come to Wyoming to work for $60,000 a year. So it isn't always minimum wage that drives these things. Skills are important, but you can even get the skills if you look for the jobs that pay well. They may be nontraditional jobs. We have a lot of women who are driving coal haul trucks. They can do it very capably and probably with fewer accidents than the men. The truth is, real wage growth happens every day. It is not the function of Government to mandate it. It is the direct result of an individual becoming more skilled and therefore more valuable to his or her employer. As a former small business owner, I know these entry- level jobs are a gateway to the workforce and an opportunity for workers to begin to acquire the skills and experience they need. These entry-level jobs can open the door for better jobs and better lives for low-skilled workers--if we give them the tools they need to succeed. We have a great example in Cheyenne, WY. Workers entering the job market were given the tools and the opportunity to reach the American dream. We have a man there named Mr. Jack Preiss, and he is the owner of eight McDonald's in Wyoming. We often talk about McDonald's and minimum wage. I want to tell you he has had three employees who started working at McDonald's at minimum wage who now own a total of 20 McDonald's restaurants. They own them. This type of wage progression and success should be the norm for workers across the country. However, there are a small percentage of workers who have not acquired the necessary work- based skills and for whom stagnation at the lower tier wage is a longer term proposition. The answer for these workers, however, is not to simply raise the lower wage rung. Rather, these individuals have to acquire the training, experience, and skills that will lead to meaningful and lasting wage growth. Our policies ought to be directed at that end. We have to equip our workers with the skills they need to compete in a technology-driven global economy. It is estimated that 60 percent of tomorrow's jobs will require skills that only 20 percent of today's workers possess. It is also estimated that graduating students will likely change careers 14 times in their lives. You didn't hear me say change jobs 14 times in their lives. That is easy. I said change careers 14 times in their lives. Here is the important part of that statistic. The world is changing so fast that 10 of those jobs don't even exist today. They are going to have 14 career changes, 10 of which are for jobs that don't even exist today. We have to do a better job of educating and training our youth to be able to take the kind of jobs we are going to have. We need a system in place that can support a lifetime of education, training, and retraining of our workers. The end result will be the attainment of skills that will provide meaningful wage growth. As legislators, our efforts are better focused on ensuring that the tools and opportunities for training and enhancing skills over a worker's lifetime are available and fully utilized--more available and fully utilized than we are in imposing an artificial wage increase that fails to address the real issues and in the process does more harm than good. Skills and experience, not an artificial wage hike, will lead to lasting wage security for American workers. As chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, one of my priorities is reauthorizing and improving the Nation's job training system that was created by the Workforce Investment Act. This law would help provide American workers with the skills they will need, new skills to compete in a global economy. Those are ones that will lead to real, not artificial wage increases. Last Congress--this is 3 years ago--I was denied the appointment of a conference committee to resolve the differences with the House on this important bill by some of the very people who are proposing this minimum wage increase. This Congress, this important bill has faced the same obstruction. In November of last year we reported this legislation out of the HELP Committee by unanimous voice vote. Yet it continues to languish, unavailable for debate on the floor of this Congress, with no progress being made and little hope for action in this Congress if such obstruction continues. This bill would train an estimated 900,000 people a year to higher skilled jobs--900,000 people a year could be on a better career path, could have more skills. That would be a real improvement for chronic low-wage workers. It makes little sense to me that some of the same people who denied the opportunity in the last Congress to enact real improvement now think a redetermination of the lowest wage will magically change everyone's life. If we truly want to change and improve the lives of our lowest paid workers, we must pass the Workforce Investment Act. Let's be clear about what a minimum wage hike will and will not do. First, we must realize that large increases in the minimum wage will hurt low-income, low-skilled individuals. Mandated hikes in the minimum wage do not cure poverty, and they clearly do not create jobs. The Congressional Budget Office has said: Most economists would agree that an increase in the minimum wage rate would cause firms to employ fewer low-wage workers or employ them for fewer hours. That is a CBO estimate from October 18, 1999. What every student who has ever taken an economics course knows is that if you increase the cost of something--in this case a minimum wage job--you decrease the demand for those jobs. Misleading political rhetoric cannot change the basic principle of supply and demand. The majority of economists continue to affirm the job-killing nature of the mandated wage increases. A recent poll concluded that 77 percent or nearly 17,000 economists believe that a minimum wage hike causes job loss. It is kind of a spiral that we get into. We simply cannot assume that a business that employs 50 minimum wage workers before the wage increase is enacted will still employ 50 minimum wage workers, whether the business is in Washington, Wyoming, or Massachusetts. Employers can't absorb an increase in their cost without a corresponding decrease in the number of jobs or benefits they can provide workers. We know there are losers when we raise the minimum wage. But who are the individuals who will benefit? Minimum wage earners who support a family solely based on the wage are actually pretty few and far between. Fully 85 percent of the minimum wage earners live with their parents, have a working spouse, or are living alone without children. Of the minimum wage earners, 41 percent live with a parent or relative, 23 percent are single or the sole breadwinner of the household with no children, and 21 percent live with another wage earner. All are low-skilled workers or brandnew employees. In a shoe store you might have the lowest-skilled people unpacking the shoes. By the time they can check inventory and correctly put it on the shelf so they can find the size when the customers come in, they get a raise. If they can actually wait on a customer--that is kind of the goal in most businesses, to be able to wait on a customer--that is another level of wage increase. The better they do waiting on customers--which is the important part in the business--the more they get paid. Research shows that the poor targeting and other unintended consequences of the minimum wage make it a terribly ineffective approach to reducing poverty in America--the intended purpose of the policy. In fact, two Stanford University economists concluded that a minimum wage increase is paid for by higher prices that hurt poor families the most. A 2001 study conducted by Stanford University economists found that only one in four of the poorest 20 percent of families would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage. The way to truly improve the wages and salaries of these American workers is through education and training--not an artificial wage increase. With these realities in mind, I will offer an amendment, unless Senator Kennedy wishes to withdraw his amendment. We can go on with the Defense debate. There must be serious discussion on that possibility. So I will allow that to go on and make a few more comments. But I am considering offering an amendment that recognizes the true cost of the minimum wage increase on American workers and businesses, and particularly small businesses. My amendment includes a minimum wage increase of $1.10, and it also addresses other needs for reform and the needs of small businesses that create the most jobs in this country. Therefore, my amendment is protective of economic growth and job creation. Let me turn to a brief review of the provisions that would be contained in my amendment. In doing so, we must bear in mind that small businesses continue to be the engine that drives our economy and the greatest single source of job creation. Any wage increase imposed on small businesses poses difficulties for that business owner and, more importantly, for his or her employees. My amendment recognizes this reality and provides a necessary measure of relief for these small business employers. My amendment would make the following changes that are critical, particularly for small business. The first one is updating the small business exemption. Having owned a small business in Wyoming, I can speak from personal experience about how difficult any minimum wage increase is for small businesses at the low end of the scale level and job growth. Small businesses generate 70 percent of new jobs. Since the negative impact of a minimum wage increase will affect small businesses most directly, we have proposed addressing the small business threshold which is set under current law at $.5 million. If the original small business threshold enacted in the 1960s--that is when we came up with this arbitrary number, in the 1960s--if it were to be adjusted for inflation, it would amount to over $.5 million. The small business threshold was last adjusted 15 years ago. In those ensuing years since the national minimum wage rate has been hiked, the economy has undergone a dramatic change, and the way work is done in this country has changed forever. The pending amendment raises that threshold for small business determination to $1 million to reflect these changes. My amendment also incorporates bipartisan technical corrections that were originally proposed in 1990 by then Small Business Committee Chairman Dale Bumpers, Democrat from Arkansas, and cosponsored over the years by Senator Reid, now the Democratic leader, Senator Harkin, Senator Pryor, Senator Mikulski, Senator Baucus, Senator Kohl, and others. Those Senators can attest to the Department of Labor's disregard of the will of Congress and interpreted the existing small business threshold to have little or no meaning. The Labor Department would make a Federal case out of the most trivial paperwork infraction by the smallest small business because of what it interpreted as a loophole in the law. Some would say that the 1989 bill to hike the minimum wage and the small business threshold was inartfully drafted and permitted this result. Others say the Department is misreading the clear language of the statute. Regardless, the fact is that a threshold enacted by Congress is not providing the balance and fairness that was intended. This amendment corrects the problem by stating clearly that the wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act apply to employees working for enterprises engaged in commerce or engaged in the production of goods for commerce. My amendment also applies those wage and hour worker safeguards to home-work situations. Second, ensuring procedural fairness for small business: This next provision is just common sense and good government legislation. Surely, we can all agree that small business owners--the individuals who do the most to drive our economy forward--deserve a break the first time they make an honest paperwork mistake when no one is hurt and the mistake was corrected. Let me say that again. Surely, we can all agree that small business owners-- the individuals who do the most to drive our economy forward--deserve a break the first time they make an honest paperwork mistake where no one is hurt and the mistake is corrected. Small business owners told me over and over again how hard they try to comply with all the rules and regulations imposed on them, mostly by the Federal Government. As a former owner of small business myself, I know what they mean. Yes, for all that work, a government inspector can fine a small business owner for paperwork violations alone, even if the business has a completely spotless record and the employer immediately corrects the unintentional mistake. Even the best intentioned employer can get caught in the myriad of burdensome paperwork requirements imposed on them by the Federal Government. And I will even go so far as to say a lot of times the paperwork isn't clear, because I have filled out a lot of those documents. To comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act, sometimes we use something for insurance that deals with health, and the questions can't be the same. So there are a lot of possibilities unless you follow the manual very closely. And small businesses don't have time to do that because they are trying to make a living for themselves and their employees. There are a lot of opportunities out there which the Federal Government gives them to make paperwork mistakes that really don't affect anybody. But if we have enough people working in the Federal bureaucracy to check and see if all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted, we can find some mistakes, particularly if that person only has to concentrate on one document. The small business owner has dozens that he has to comply with. The owners of small businesses are not asking to be excused from any obligations or regulations, but they feel they deserve a break if they previously complied perfectly with the law. Small business men and women who are first-time violators of paperwork reduction deserve some protection. The third part of the bill would provide regulatory relief for small businesses. As any increase in the minimum wage places burdens on small employers, it is only fair to simultaneously address the ongoing problem of agencies not fully complying with the congressional directive contained in the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Act. That is a mouthful. Under the law, agencies are required to publish small entity compliance guidelines for those rules that require a regulatory flexibility analysis. Unfortunately, agencies have either ignored this requirement or when they tried to comply have not done so fully or carefully. My amendment does this by including specific provisions that the Government Accountability Office has suggested to improve the clarity of the requirement. The fourth thing it would do is remove the barriers to flexible time arrangements. My amendment includes legislation that could have a monumental impact on the lives of thousands of working men and women and families in America. This legislation would give employees greater flexibility in meeting and balancing the demands of their work and family. We came up with an idea like this, and it is real important to pay attention to it. We stole it from the Federal Government. The Federal Government imposes this on agencies. The Federal Government says you are going to give the employees flexibility. The first time I ever heard of this was in Wyoming. Some people in Wyoming are married to people that work for the government, probably not nearly as strange as out here. Out here, I think a lot of people who work in government are married to people who work in government. But out there, a lot of people who are working in government are married to people who aren't working in government. We give this benefit to government employees--being able to have a little flex in their time. But we prohibit it in the private sector. We say you cannot do this even though we let the government folks do this. There, it would be a bad idea for your employees. We don't want you to have any flexibility. We know both the Federal employee and the private employee would like to watch their kids play soccer. The private employee better have his soccer schedule done so he doesn't need any flextime. But the government worker ought to be able to take it whenever they feel like it and trade it around. We give the Federal Government the kind of flex I am talking about in this bill. Particularly in a family where the private employee is married to a government employee, they do not understand why they cannot have the same right as the government employee. They can bank a few hours and have a little longer weekend the next weekend, all in the same pay period. Their spouse can do it. They can have a little longer weekend. They can go use the boat over the longer weekend, but for the one that works for private industry it would be illegal. You cannot do that. Just try and explain that to a family. That is how I first found out about this problem. I had a mother who wanted to be able to do the same thing as her husband. Her husband worked for the State government. He could do it. He could bank hours. But if it is a private sector, no, that would be stealing overtime from people. Why would it be stealing overtime in the private sector when it is not stealing overtime in the government sector? I don't understand that. You will hear more, if we debate these things, and if we decide we are going to impose it on the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy authorization. If we decide we are going to impose that, comments will be on this flextime provision. Most of it will be on this because it is kind of a red herring that you can throw up and say, We do not trust business. Yes, we trust government but we don't trust business. You will hear that as the main part of this debate. That is why I have spent a little time concentrating on it here. This legislation would give employees in the private sector flexibility like in the government sector in meeting and balancing the demands of work and family. Whatever we do, remember that part--only asking for private business what we give to government employees. Let me give some of the latest statistics: 70 percent of employees do not think there is a healthy balance between their work and their personal life; 70 percent of employees say family is their most important priority. The family time provision in my amendment addresses these concerns head on. It gives employees the option of flexing their schedule over a 2-week period. In other words, employees would have 10 flexible hours they can work in 1 week in order to have 10 hours off in the next week. Flexible work arrangements have been available in the Federal Government for over two decades. Have we had any arguments about them? No, they have been a great idea. They have been accepted and desired and used. But don't let the private sector have that. Because it works in one place doesn't mean it might work in another place. Let's continue to discriminate against private business. That is what we are saying when we do not allow the flextime. This program has been so successful that in 1994 President Clinton issued an Executive order extending it to parts of the Federal Government that had not yet benefited from the program. President Clinton said: [The] broad use of flexible arrangements to enable Federal employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism. It would allow the Federal employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities--that sounds good to me--and it can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism. That sounds pretty good, too. Let's see now. We tried it for over two decades and decided to extend it to all Federal Government, so it has to be a good idea. Would we pass on a bad idea to the Federal Government? Would they stand for it if we did? No. So why can't we give it to the private sector? Why do we say: Private sector, you are just not as good as Government employees. You do not deserve the same breaks we give Government employees. As I mentioned, this will be the bulk of the debate on this particular issue, the flextime part. It could have been a lot more inclusive. Actually, the Federal Government gets to do more than what I have stated, but we are definitely not going to allow that. We are putting this down to a very small minimum to see if we can get any movement on it at all. As I said, we have voted on this before, and the answer is, Heck, no, we will not give the private sector that kind of a privilege. We don't care what the Federal Government gets to do, you can't treat the private sector decently. No, they didn't say that, I said that. I could not agree more with what President Clinton said when he did his Executive order. I am saying now we need to extend this same privilege to the private sector workers. It would allow employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities, it can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction, while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism. That was President Clinton talking about this kind of provision for the public sector. I am saying, if it is that great, we ought to do it for the private sector, too. We know this legislation is not a total solution. We know there are many other provisions under the 65-year-old Fair Labor Standards Act that need our attention, but the flexible time provision is an important part of the solution. It gives employees a choice, the same choice Federal workers have. The fifth part of this would extend the restaurant employee tip credit. A major employer of entry-level workers is the fast food service industry. Another part of it is the regular food service industry. The regular food service industry relies on what is known as the tip credit, which allows an employer to apply a portion of an employee's tip income against the employer's obligation to pay the minimum wage. Currently, Federal law requires a cash wage of at least $2.13 an hour for tipped employees and allows an employer to take a tip credit of up to $3.02 of the current minimum wage. To protect tipped employees, current law provides that a tip credit cannot reduce an employee's wages below the required minimum wage. Employees report tips to their employers, ensuring an adequate amount of tips are earned. Seven states--Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington--do not allow a tip credit; however, requiring raises for all hourly employees when States increase the minimum wage. The lack of a tip credit requires these employers to give raises to their most highly compensated employees, the tipped staff. If you are working in a nice restaurant, the tips will be more than the salary. Nontipped employees in these businesses are negatively impacted by the mandated flow of scarce labor dollars to the tipped position. In addition, employers are put at a competitive disadvantage with the colleagues in the rest of the country who can allocate employee compensation in a more equitable manner. My amendment expands the tip credit to nontip credit States, consistent with the initial establishment of the credit under the Fair Labor Standards Act, anticipating the increase in minimum wage. The sixth provision is small business tax relief. If we are going to impose greater burdens on small business, we should give them some tax relief at the same time. My amendment extends small business expensing by 1 year. Simplify cash accounting methods. I am the only accountant in the Senate, so I probably ought to explain what cash accounting is. That could be a huge debate all by itself. It means that the business can actually use the dollars coming in as part of the accounting as opposed to anticipated dollars that would be coming in. It works off the actual cash flow rather than some of the accrual methods that we use. I will not go into that. Accounting is important, but it often puts people to sleep. It would simplify cash accounting methods and provide restaurant depreciation relief. All of these tax provisions are fully offset in the bill. That means they are paid for. That means there is some way of covering the cost of them so that it isn't the general budget. In total, the additional provisions in my amendment are intended to mitigate the small business impact of a $1.10 increase in the minimum wage so people can keep their jobs. I share the view of many of my colleagues that if we are going to impose such a mandate on the Federal level, we must do our best to soften the blow. This may be the best we can do today, but I entreat all of my colleagues to look at the true root of the problem for minimum wage workers. That is the acquisition of job-based skills: more skills, more money. We all share the same goals, which is to help American workers find and keep good-paying jobs and to keep the best paying jobs in this country. Real job skills, not artificial wage levels, should be our focus. Education, training, and job experience are the solution for low-wage workers. We have to pass the Workforce Investment Act that will train those 900,000 people a year to higher skill jobs. In terms of education and training, we need to move forward on that kind of meaningful legislation that will lead to increased wages and better jobs that we all want for our Nation's workers. In terms of job experience, we must always remember that businesses, particularly small businesses, create the jobs and provide the gateway to the working world for the vast majority of low-wage workers. If we do not balance a minimum wage increase with economic relief for the small businesses, we will stifle job creation and shut the employment door on the very individuals we are trying to help. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment offered by Senator Kennedy and, if we continue to have the debate and I submit my amendment, to support my amendment. Both raise the minimum wage. One covers the cost of the minimum wage so that it would not drive down the number of people employed in this country. We have been trying to increase employment. We want those people starting with minimum skills to work their way up the ladder to owning the business. That can happen in America. That can happen if we give them an incentive to learn to improve their skills and we don't impose false security of mandated higher wages that drive a spiral upward and eliminate jobs. Elimination of jobs is not the answer. Training people to higher skills so they can demand more money or go to work somewhere else is the answer. If we are going to have this debate on the Department of Defense bill, I would be happy to submit my amendment to have it voted on, along with Senator Kennedy's amendment. We have done that before. We know what the results will be, I suspect. Both of them will be subject to a point of order. We usually agree not to go for the point of order but just order the vote and have the 60-vote threshold we have always had. We would be willing to do that, but a more appropriate time to debate this would be another time on another bill. I yield the floor.