Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes the bankruptcy bill tomorrow morning, the Senate begin 10 minutes of debate equally divided on each of the following amendments in the order mentioned below; provided further that following that debate the Senate begin a series of votes on or in relation to the amendments in that same order; provided that no amendment be in order to the amendments prior to the ordered votes. I further ask that there be 2 minutes equally divided for debate between the votes after the first vote and, lastly, that all votes in this sequence after the first vote be limited to 10 minutes in length. The amendments are Durbin, No. 110; Harkin, No. 66; Boxer, No. 62; Dodd, No. 67. I further ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the adjournment of the Senate, all time overnight until the Senate resumes consideration of the bill be counted under the provisions of rule XXII.

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

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the Schumer amendment which would make debts incurred in connection with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act nondischargeable in bankruptcy. This amendment has been a poison pill to enactment of the bankruptcy bill and must be defeated. On two previous occasions, CRS performed research for us and told us that FACE debts had never been discharged in bankruptcy. Just recently, I asked CRS to perform an updated search on reported decisions considering the dischargeability of liability incurred in connection with violence at reproductive health clinics by abortion protesters. CRS confirmed that this amendment is not necessary. The CRS memo identified only one reported case, which found the debt to be nondischargeable under the bankruptcy law's discharge exception for willful and malicious injury. So this amendment is not necessary. Even Senator Schumer's own witness at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bankruptcy bill testified that in all the cases that she had litigated, the court had always found that the debts incurred under the FACE Act were nondischargeable in bankruptcy. My colleagues make a big deal out of the fact that some of us on this side have supported amendments similar to this one before. The truth is, when the Schumer abortion amendment was offered in 1999 to the comprehensive bankruptcy bill, Vice President Gore was campaigning for the Democrat nomination. His opponent, Senator Bradley, was alleging that Vice President Gore was not sufficiently pro-choice. Vice President Gore's allies in the Senate were maneuvering to create a tie vote on the Schumer amendment so Gore could ``break the tie'' to improve his political standing. To avoid this, most Republicans voted in favor for the Schumer amendment. Thus, that vote in the 106th Congress was not a vote on the merits of the Schumer amendment. The Schumer amendment was included in the 107th Congress bankruptcy bill. But the fact is that in the 107th Congress, the Schumer amendment killed the bankruptcy conference report because the House would not take it. Thus, the Schumer amendment is a poison pill and must be defeated. Let me reiterate that in two previous memos, CRS concluded that the Schumer amendment is unnecessary because abortion protester debts are already not dischargeable in bankruptcy. We have just updated this research and CRS has confirmed that FACE Act violations are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. The proponent's own witness testified before the Judiciary Committee that none of these debts have ever been discharged in bankruptcy. The reality is that the Schumer amendment is just a political ploy designed to generate opposition to the bankruptcy bill. The Schumer amendment is a poison pill which will kill the bankruptcy bill. This amendment must be defeated, and I urge my colleagues to oppose it.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution and preamble be agreed to, en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record, without intervening action or debate.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, the Senate adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 9. I further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and the Senate then begin a period of morning business for up to 60 minutes, with the first 30 minutes under the control of the majority leader or his designee and the second 30 minutes under the control of the Democratic leader or his designee; provided that following morning business the Senate resume consideration of S. 256, the Bankruptcy Reform Act, as provided under the previous order.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Tomorrow, following morning business, the Senate will continue its consideration of the bankruptcy bill. Under the agreement reached tonight, we will have up to 40 minutes of debate on a series of amendments, which will be followed by four stacked rollcall votes. That will be on these amendments. The first vote will be in relation to the Durbin paperwork amendment, and that vote will begin at approximately 11:30 tomorrow morning. For the remainder of the day, we will continue working through the amendments to the bankruptcy bill. There are a number of amendments pending, and it is my hope that most of them will not require rollcall votes. Earlier today, cloture was invoked on the bill by an overwhelming margin. It is the leadership's intention to complete action on the bill during Wednesday's session.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise today in tribute to a noble Iowan who has given his life for his country. 2LT Richard ``Brian'' Gienau was killed on Sunday, February 27, in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when his military vehicle was struck by an explosive device. He was 29 years old, a fellow alumnus of my alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa, and a member of A Company, 224th Engineer Battalion, Army National Guard, Burlington, IA. Second Lieutenant Gienau is remembered as a hard-working family man with a history of military service. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1994 and enlisted in the Iowa Army National Guard in 1999. After graduating in 2003 from University of Northern Iowa, he was commissioned in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps as a second lieutenant. He was mobilized last October. Second Lieutenant Gienau is survived by his mother, Debbee Way, of Dunkerton, IA, and his father, Richard Gienau, of Waterloo, IA. He also leaves behind a young son. My prayers go out today to his family and friends in their time of loss. Let us today remember his life as we honor his sacrifice on behalf of all of us. We are forever in his debt.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am taking this opportunity to talk about the mess we have in the Medicaid Program, a mess that does not properly account for billions of taxpayer dollars. First, allow me to remind everyone about a report released last summer by the Government Accountability Office, GAO. That report on Medicaid Program integrity found that Medicaid's size and diversity made it vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse. Further, the GAO found that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, CMS, allocated only $26,000 and only eight employees to work on Medicaid program integrity. As I said at the time, it does not make sense for CMS to invest so little in Federal oversight when so many Federal taxpayer dollars are at stake. If one considers that Medicaid has surpassed Medicare as the single largest Government health program in the United States, it makes no sense at all. The Congressional Budget Office projects the Federal share of total Medicaid payments for Fiscal Year 2005 at greater than $183 billion. Medicaid's vulnerability to fraud, waste and abuse have also ranked it on the GAO's list of high-risk programs for the past 2 years. The Medicaid Program continues to pay too much for prescription drugs. CMS estimated that Medicaid expenditures for prescription drugs in Calendar Year 2003 totaled more than $31 billion, triple the $9.4 billion spent in 1994. Each year drug companies pay approximately $6 billion in rebates. Today, the GAO released a damning report on Medicaid drug spending. Congress established the Medicaid drug rebate program in 1990 to help control spending on drugs. Note that the word choice and intent here was control, not out of control. It should come as no surprise that the GAO's report shows that the drug program has been and continues to be badly mismanaged. The report--requested by Congressman Waxman and me--identified fundamental problems in the program. The mismanagement has been bipartisan and has spanned multiple administrations. According to the GAO, it is a program virtually without regulation. CMS has been sitting on draft regulations since 1995 a decade ago. It is also a program virtually without oversight. The GAO found that the Office of Inspector General has issued only four audit reports on drug-company reported prices since the inception of the program. Of course, the OIG says in its defense that its efforts have been hampered by unclear CMS program guidance and a lack of documentation by drug companies. According to the GAO, even when the OIG has managed to identify problems related to the drug companies' reported prices and methodologies for price reporting, CMS has not done much of anything to resolve them. The drug rebate program is governed by a contractual agreement between the States and each drug company that wants to participate in Medicaid. One of the things that boggles the mind is that this contract allows drug companies to rely upon reasonable assumptions'' Each drug company may craft its own ``assumptions'' as long as they are consistent with the ``intent'' of the law. Consequently, because drug companies can pick their own methods, they in effect set their own prices and amount of rebates they pay. According to the GAO, ``CMS does not generally review the methods and underlying assumptions that [drug companies] use to determine [the reported prices], even though these methods and assumptions can have a substantial effect on rebates.'' Furthermore, quoting the GAO again, ``CMS sometimes identifies price reporting errors . . . but does not follow up with [drug companies] to verify that errors have been corrected''. In sum, the GAO report confirms that neither CMS nor the OIG know the extent to which Medicaid overpays for prescription drugs because the program lacks effective management and oversight. A worse state of affairs is not likely. Drug companies have been profiting for the past years on Medicaid drug pricing. We are dealing with a system that unnecessarily costs taxpayers untold hundreds of millions A not billions of dollars annually. The Medicaid drug rebate program is quite simply a mess--a Medicaid mess. I urge my colleagues to consider this GAO report and its recommendations.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, America is a nation of sports fans and sports players. In fact, it is hard to imagine something more influential in today's society than athletics. As children, we grow up emulating our favorite players in the backyard. Year in and year out we watch and hope that this is the year our favorite team makes it to the Super Bowl, the World Series, or the Big Dance. And every 4 years we watch in pride and tally the medals as American athletes compete in the Olympic games. Every day millions of young people from across the country share the same dream of one day playing in the big leagues. But the reality is that most will never get the chance. In an average year, there are approximately 2 million high school boys playing football, baseball, and basketball. Another 68,000 men are playing the sports in college and 2,500 are participating at the major/professional level. In short, only 1 in 736, or 0.14 percent will ever play professional sports. With that kind of competition, compounded by the lure of fame, endorsements and multi-million dollar contracts, an increasing number of young athletes are giving in to the seduction of performance enhancing drugs hoping to gain an edge on their peers. And what can you expect when some of the biggest superstars in sports have been found using steroids as a way to improve their performance. But, unlike better athletic gear, better nutrition, and better training, injecting and ingesting performance enhancing drugs as a shortcut to the big leagues jeopardizes the health and safety of young athletes and cheapens the legitimacy of competition. In an effort to combat the use of performance enhancing drugs at the youth and amateur sports level, I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues Senator Biden, Senator McCain and Senator Stevens in introducing legislation to authorize continued Federal funding for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA. As the anti-doping agency for the United States Olympic movement since 2000, USADA is responsible for ensuring that U.S. athletes participating in Olympic competition do not use performance enhancing drugs. Through its efforts, USADA is establishing a drug free standard for amateur athletic competition. This is achieved through testing, research, education, and adjudication. USADA conducts nearly 6,500 random drug tests on athletes annually and has made anti-doping presentations to over 3,000 athletes and coaches last year alone. Over the last 2 years, USADA has worked to prevent U.S. Olympic athletes who have used banned substances from participating in the Olympic Games. But for the efforts of USADA, it is possible that more than a dozen elite U.S. athletes would have participated in the Athens Games last Summer and potentially embarrassed the U.S. once their drug use was exposed. USADA also works to fund research, including more than $3 million in grants for anti- doping research over the past 2 years, which is more than any other anti-doping agency in the world. The research and testing standards serve as models for other amateur athletic associations who wish to protect the health of their athletes and the fair competition of sport. To date, the Federal Government has provided approximately 60 percent of USADA's operational budget, with the remainder of the agency's budget provided by the U.S. Olympic Committee and private funding sources. With continued support and proper funding, USADA could expand and improve upon the programs for anti-doping that already exist and continue to enhance the credibility of U.S. athletes in the eyes of the international sports community. While the issue of anabolic steroids has received a great deal of national and international attention in the context of professional sports, the importance of stopping steroid abuse extends far beyond the track, baseball diamond, or football field. Instead our focus should be on the health and future of our children. I encourage my colleagues to join in support of this legislation to set the standard for free and fair competition. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I will finish one sentence, if I could.

Mr. GRASSLEY. We do not want to get ourselves in a position of having the Japanese say to us our meat is not safe even though it is shown to be safe based on sound science. Since we want our beef to go to Japan because it is safe, then, obviously, if meat is safe coming in from Canada, it has to be received as well.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the resolution that comes before us disapproving the actions of the Department of Agriculture on the importation of Canadian beef into the United States. But in doing so, I do not denigrate the efforts that are being made to have a debate on a legitimate public policy issue, but to put it in context. First, from the standpoint of my chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee with jurisdiction over international trade, I think this is something for which we have developed policies over the last couple decades, where we have worked very hard to see that several rights can be preserved. One, probably basic to this debate, is obviously the sovereign right of any country to make sure that it does not in any way allow products into the country that would in any way hurt the health and safety of the consumers of that particular country. I think every trade agreement takes that into consideration. Within the last 10 or 15 years, we have worked very hard and have included in our trade agreements rules concerning sanitary and phytosanitary measures. These rules require that science, as opposed to political science, be the basis upon which we base decisions as to whether a product is safe to enter the U.S. market. So I hope during this debate that we keep in mind that we do have commitments to rely on science when making determinations as to whether products are safe. Hopefully, each country respects that. Particularly the United States, being a leader in the rule of law in international trade, ought to do that. But we expect every country that comes under the WTO to do exactly the same, and the same holds with other trade agreements. We also, of course, reserve the right to make sure our food is safe. For the debate we are in now, I hope we remember that if it had not been for mad cow disease in Canada, there would never be any such discussion before the Senate because over a long period of time we had imports of beef from Canada, and we have been exporting our red meat and other food products to Canada. So if we had not had mad cow disease in Canada, then we would not be debating this issue. So when it gets to the issue of whether mad cow disease is an issue with Canadian beef coming into the country, then let's remember that decision ought to be made strictly on the sound science of whether that meat is safe. If we are going to make a political decision in place of a scientific decision as to whether Canadian beef should come into the country, then, of course, our purity in international trade is going to be questioned by other countries. The second point is that, during this very same period of time when we have been having this problem with Canada as to whether their meat is safe to come into the country, we have also been trying to negotiate with the Japanese because we had one mad cow case and the Japanese and other countries are not taking our beef. We have been working over the last several months to get Japan to take our beef based upon the principle that we are following the sanitary and phytosanitary rules, on a scientific basis, for making sure our meat is safe for the Japanese consumers. We do not want to get ourselves into a position where we are going to ignore the science of the safety of meat in Canada versus--

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I oppose the Schumer amendment. This is an issue that just needs more time for us to determine whether there is an abuse that needs to be addressed. We need to ensure that this amendment doesn't have unintended consequences. For instance, it doesn't define the term ``asset protection trust'' and therefore we aren't even sure what we are being asked to vote on. Further, it not only covers asset protection trusts, but also covers ``similar trusts.'' Until we have had time to really understand whether this is a loophole, and if it is, how to close it in a way that doesn't harm innocent third parties. In addition, this issue is even more complex because it implicates 50 different State laws. We don't know enough at this point about how it works. This would override at least some State laws, like the homestead cap would. I think it is important to look at this issue, have a hearing and consult with senators whose States might be uniquely affected. Be sure, however, that my opposition to this amendment doesn't mean that I will not ultimately find that this issue needs to be addressed at some future date. I think that all the work we have done on this bill, the compromises we have reached should not be disrupted by this last-minute proposal that has not been well thought out. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to honor a soldier who has fallen in service to his country in Iraq. SSG Eric Steffeney of the 18th Ordnance Company died on the 23rd of February near Tuz, Iraq, when an undetected explosive detonated while he cleared the road of landmines. He was 28 years old and is survived by his mother, Annette, his father, Gary, his wife, Theresa, and their three children, Benjamin, Caitlin, and Dennis. Staff Sergeant Steffeney grew up in Waterloo, IA, where he attended West High School. He graduated from high school early and enlisted in the Army when he was 17 years old. Initially serving as a paratrooper, Staff Sergeant Steffeney eventually joined the Army's bomb squad because he thought it would be more challenging. He was finishing his second tour of duty when he was killed. Staff Sergeant Steffeney was described as a quiet, loyal, and responsible man who was a good soldier and an all-American boy. Indeed, it is the dedicated and courageous people such as SSG Eric Steffeney who embody the ideals of this great country best and, through the way they lived and gave their lives, keep her people standing proud and strong. I ask all of my colleagues to remember with pride and appreciation this soldier. I give my condolences to the family and friends of Staff Sergeant Steffeney who have felt this loss most deeply. I offer my most sincere gratitude and respect to SSG Eric Steffeney. This country is forever indebted to him and his colleagues for the sacrifices they have made to uphold the ideals which we treasure most as Americans. staff sergeant william t. robbins

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, America is a nation of sports fans and sports players. In fact, it is hard to imagine something more influential in today's society than athletics. As children, we grow up emulating our favorite players in the backyard. Year in and year out we watch and hope that this is the year our favorite team makes it to the Super Bowl, the World Series, or the Big Dance. And every 4 years we watch in pride and tally the medals as American athletes compete in the Olympic games. Every day millions of young people from across the country share the same dream of one day playing in the big leagues. But the reality is that most will never get the chance. In an average year, there are approximately 2 million high school boys playing football, baseball, and basketball. Another 68,000 men are playing the sports in college and 2,500 are participating at the major/professional level. In short, only 1 in 736, or 0.14 percent will ever play professional sports. With that kind of competition, compounded by the lure of fame, endorsements and multi-million dollar contracts, an increasing number of young athletes are giving in to the seduction of performance enhancing drugs hoping to gain an edge on their peers. And what can you expect when some of the biggest superstars in sports have been found using steroids as a way to improve their performance. But, unlike better athletic gear, better nutrition, and better training, injecting and ingesting performance enhancing drugs as a shortcut to the big leagues jeopardizes the health and safety of young athletes and cheapens the legitimacy of competition. In an effort to combat the use of performance enhancing drugs at the youth and amateur sports level, I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues Senator Biden, Senator McCain and Senator Stevens in introducing legislation to authorize continued Federal funding for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA. As the anti-doping agency for the United States Olympic movement since 2000, USADA is responsible for ensuring that U.S. athletes participating in Olympic competition do not use performance enhancing drugs. Through its efforts, USADA is establishing a drug free standard for amateur athletic competition. This is achieved through testing, research, education, and adjudication. USADA conducts nearly 6,500 random drug tests on athletes annually and has made anti-doping presentations to over 3,000 athletes and coaches last year alone. Over the last 2 years, USADA has worked to prevent U.S. Olympic athletes who have used banned substances from participating in the Olympic Games. But for the efforts of USADA, it is possible that more than a dozen elite U.S. athletes would have participated in the Athens Games last Summer and potentially embarrassed the U.S. once their drug use was exposed. USADA also works to fund research, including more than $3 million in grants for anti- doping research over the past 2 years, which is more than any other anti-doping agency in the world. The research and testing standards serve as models for other amateur athletic associations who wish to protect the health of their athletes and the fair competition of sport. To date, the Federal Government has provided approximately 60 percent of USADA's operational budget, with the remainder of the agency's budget provided by the U.S. Olympic Committee and private funding sources. With continued support and proper funding, USADA could expand and improve upon the programs for anti-doping that already exist and continue to enhance the credibility of U.S. athletes in the eyes of the international sports community. While the issue of anabolic steroids has received a great deal of national and international attention in the context of professional sports, the importance of stopping steroid abuse extends far beyond the track, baseball diamond, or football field. Instead our focus should be on the health and future of our children. I encourage my colleagues to join in support of this legislation to set the standard for free and fair competition. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Five minutes on the beef resolution because I have to go to a committee meeting.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, with the permission of the Senator from Georgia, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, let me be very clear about this. I feel passionately about competition and concentration-based issues. Last Congress I introduced the Packer Ban, the Transparency Act, which requires packers to purchase pigs and cattle for slaughter from the cash market daily, the 20-10 bill, which limits any packer which owns more than 20 million head of pigs to slaughtering less than 10 million vertically integrated pigs, and a bill to eliminate mandatory arbitration clauses from production contracts, similar to legislation we passed for car dealers. I feel strongly that we need to empower producers through legislation based on leveling the playing field, but this resolution is not how we should accomplish that goal. By supporting this resolution we are taking a protectionist position instead of encouraging free trade. We might delay the importation of 900,000 feeders, but ultimately we are potentially putting our entire export market at risk, including the Japanese market. In the world we lead by example, and if our example is tied to the precautionary nature of this resolution, expect the world to potentially follow suit. The decision by USDA to re-open the border has been construed as a ``rush to judgment''. That could not be further from the truth. The truth of the matter is that we have an obligation to look at the science of the issue and if the science dictates, we should re-open the border. That is where we are today. If someone this morning can demonstrate to me that the science USDA has relied on is faulty, I would be the first person to say we should not move forward, but science must dictate our course, not political will.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am reintroducing a bill I proposed in the last Congress to help prepare new teachers to recognize and meet the needs of gifted and talented students. According to the federally funded National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, the large majority of gifted and talented students spend at least 80 percent of their time in a regular education classroom. Of course, gifted students are not gifted only 20 percent of the time. They are gifted all the time. Unfortunately, the lack of teacher preparation means that gifted students are not being challenged during much of the time they spend in the classroom. Their educational needs are not being met. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about the needs of gifted children. You might say, ``Why should we worry about these children? They are the smart ones that the teacher doesn't have to spend so much time on.'' First of all, I'm not talking about your average straight A student who maybe learns the material easily, but much the same way as other students in the classroom. What makes a child gifted and talented is not how well the child does in school, but how he or she learns. A straight A student may or may not be gifted and a gifted student may not always get good grades in school. Gifted and talented children actually have a different way of looking at the world. They tend to have distinct approaches to learning and interacting socially, and they frequently learn at a different pace, and to different depths, than others their age. The bottom line is that gifted and talented children have unique learning needs that need to be met in order for them to achieve to their potential. To illustrate this point, I would like to remind the Senate of an example I first cited two years ago while speaking on another piece of legislation related to gifted and talented students. It concerns a young elementary school student from Iowa City named Jose. Jose was not putting much effort into his schoolwork and was getting bad grades. He was a good kid but he also had a tendency to act up in class. He got along with his classmates, but didn't have many friends. Jose's teacher was frustrated and couldn't figure out what to do with him. Still, Jose's parents saw in him a real hunger for learning and had his IQ tested over the summer. It turns out that what the teacher saw as behavior problems or a lack of work ethic were really symptoms of a gifted student who was not being properly challenged. Jose started leaving his regular classroom a couple of times a week to work with a teacher who was trained in meeting the needs of gifted students. As a result of the added stimulation he received, Jose started to enjoy school more, made friends with his gifted peers, and began to succeed with his regular school work. Jose was fortunate that his parents were so perceptive and were able to have him assessed privately. However, not all parents are in a position to recognize the signs of giftedness or to advocate for their child's needs. Even in schools where there are active gifted and talented programs, many students go unidentified. Moreover, even with pull-out programs like the one I described that supplement the classroom experience and other strategies like grade skipping, it is inevitable that many gifted students will spend much of their time in a regular classroom with non-gifted students of the same age but far different ability levels. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that all classroom teachers should have at least a basic knowledge about how to recognize and meet the needs of gifted and talented students in their classrooms. However, a national survey of third and fourth grade teachers by the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented found that 61 percent of teachers had no training whatsoever in teaching highly able students. Only one State currently requires regular classroom teachers to have coursework in gifted education. Some of the techniques used in classrooms to accommodate gifted kids include differentiated curriculum, cluster grouping, and accelerated learning. The time to make sure teachers have the necessary knowledge is when prospective teachers are in their pre-service teacher training programs. If teachers aren't exposed to information and strategies to meet the needs of gifted students in their pre-service training, they may never acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. With the Higher Education Act due for reauthorization, this is the perfect opportunity to encourage schools of education and States to take a greater look at how they can improve teacher preparation programs to integrate instruction on the unique needs of gifted learners. Title II of the Higher Education Act already contains grants designed to enhance the quality of teacher preparation programs. My bill would simply add allowable uses to these existing grants to provide an incentive for states and teacher training programs to incorporate the needs of gifted and talented students into teacher preparation and licensure requirements. I should point out that this change would not cost the taxpayers any additional money. Under current law, Title II State grants are awarded directly to States and are to be used to reform State teacher preparation requirements. The law lists seven potential reforms under the allowable uses for grant funds. The first three allowable uses include: strengthening state requirements for teacher preparation programs to ensure teachers are highly competent in their respective academic content areas, reforming certification and licensure requirements with respect to competency in content areas, and providing alternatives to traditional teacher preparation programs. My legislation would add another allowable use, referencing these three reforms, to encourage states to incorporate a focus on the learning needs of gifted and talented students into reforms of state requirements for teacher preparation programs, reforms of state certification and licensure requirements, or new alternative teacher preparation programs. In addition, my bill would add a new allowable use so that States could use grant funds to create or expand new-teacher mentoring programs on the needs of gifted and talented students. This way, new teachers could learn from veteran teachers about how to identify classroom indicators of giftedness and provide appropriate instruction to gifted students. My bill would also add language to the Partnership Grants, which provide funds to partnerships among teacher preparation institutions, school of arts and sciences, and high-need school districts to strengthen new teacher education. These grants come with three required uses, including reforming teacher preparation programs to ensure teachers are highly competent in academic content areas, providing pre- service clinical experience, and creating opportunities for enhanced and ongoing professional development. One allowable use for which a partnership may use funds is preparing teachers to work with diverse populations, including individuals with disabilities and limited English proficient individuals. To this section, my legislation would add gifted and talented students. Recognizing that every teacher could have gifted students in his or her classroom, my bill would also add a new allowable use so that teacher preparation programs could use the funds to infuse teacher coursework with units on the characteristics of high-ability learners. In other words, the idea is not to require additional courses, but rather to discuss how to accommodate for the needs of gifted students throughout the teacher preparation curriculum when new teachers are learning how to present lessons. Again, my bill does not create a new grant program and doesn't cost any more money. It simply provides an incentive through existing grant programs to encourage States and teacher preparation programs to make sure that new teachers have the skills they will need to identify and meet the unique needs of the gifted and talented students who will be in their classrooms. I think we all recognize how important a quality teacher can be in helping a student achieve. This is no less true with gifted and talented students. Having a teacher that is equipped to meet the unique needs of gifted students can mean the difference between a child hating school and a child loving school; a child falling behind, and a child succeeding beyond all expectations. When a gifted child is left behind, the loss of human potential is doubly tragic. Gifted and talented children are a national resource that we must nurture now for our nation's future. This modest step could reap rewards for generations to come. I urge my colleagues to join me in this investment in our future.