Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I begin by congratulating the Senator from Massachusetts for an excellent statement. I agree with 90 percent of what he has said. He is absolutely on the mark relative to what is happening in No Child Left Behind. Progress is occurring. We still have a debate, obviously, as to what the proper level of funding is, but this bill was passed not as an issue of money but as an issue of looking at the low-income child and recognizing that for generation after generation we have left this child behind in our school systems. We said enough is enough. Under Senator Kennedy's leadership, and under President Bush's leadership, we said it is time to say to the low-income child that when they finish their education, when they step out of that classroom that final day when they graduate, they are going to be able to compete for the American dream because they are going to learn what they are supposed to learn, they are going to learn what they need to learn. It was a commitment we made as a Congress and as a country, and it was the right commitment. Now we have this type of amendment come forward, which is essentially an attempt to put a stake through the heart of the essence of how parents can figure out how to help their low-income children who are in these school systems. This amendment would have the practical effect of basically eliminating the options which parents get under the No Child Left Behind Act to give their child a better shot at the American dream. We are talking about parents of low-income kids, by the way. Supplemental services, what is that? Well, it is one of those terms that is a big word. It is a confusing word. What it means is if someone is a parent of a low-income child and their child is in a school that is not working, that has not worked year after year, that has turned out kids who have not been able to compete year after year, we are going to give them the chance, as a parent, to take their child after school, or maybe even during the schoolday if the school decides to structure it that way, to get some remedial support in reading, remedial support in math, things which will catch that child up so they are no longer left behind. The only way they are going to get some of these third and fourth graders, who come into the school system undernourished, up to speed is to give them this tutorial support. That is what this amendment would kill. It would kill the opportunity of a parent who has a child in a public school system, who knows that the public school next door or down the road is doing a better job with kids like her kids, who knows that if her child stays in the school in which they are presently enrolled, that child is simply never going to catch up, but knows if they can take them down the road a little way to another public school, that child will have a chance at the American dream because they will be taught what they need to know. It would kill the opportunity of that parent to accomplish that. That is an inexcusable act, in my opinion, of denying parents of low-income kids the opportunity to do something about their children's right to a decent education. The No Child Left Behind Act has, unfortunately, gotten caught up in a lot of crosscurrents that deal mostly with the funding fight. There is also an undercurrent of resistance from some of our professional community that just does not want to be held accountable. Unfortunately, what has happened over the years is that we have never had a system where parents really could find out what was happening to their children, especially low-income kids. They knew something was wrong because there was produced child after child who could not compete in our society, but they could never find out what was wrong. Well, No Child Left Behind creates an atmosphere and a system which, remember, is designed by the local school system--this is not a top- down system. The Federal Government does not set the testing standards. The Federal Government does not set the hurdles. It is set by the local school systems. When those local school systems set their standards for testing as to what a child in the third or fourth grade should know, at that point that information becomes public. The parent gets an opportunity to see it and find out what is happening to their child in that school, and if they discover that their child is in a school that year after year has failed to get their children to the level of ability that has been set as the level by that school system, by that community, of ability that a child should have at that grade level, then the parent has the right to do something to correct it. Under this bill, we have empowered the parent with tutorial support, with public school choice, both of which would be killed under this proposal, as would, as the Senator from Massachusetts so appropriately pointed out, the funding for those programmatic initiatives which are directed right at the low-income teaching community. Those teachers who have a high number of low-income kids in their school systems need some special skills in many cases to deal with those kids, especially language skills. This amendment would eliminate the ability to fund those programs. I will touch base also on this whole question of, is there adequate funding? Let me point out that this amendment is justified on the grounds that Illinois is not getting enough money under No Child Left Behind. That can be debated. But the fact is, Illinois is getting 36 percent more in dollars under No Child Left Behind for title I funding, as a result of No Child Left Behind, than it would have gotten if we had continued under the old law. They have received $813 million in 2003. They received $813 million. This was $213 million more than what they would have received under the old law. In fact, they have received so much money under No Child Left Behind, it is really a prefunded event. It is not an unfunded mandate. They have been receiving so much money that has been flowing into Illinois. Under No Child Left Behind, there is presently $312 million of title I funds which is unspent as of the end of the year 2002. It has not been drawn down by the school systems yet in Illinois. But that gets into the funding debate, which is really another debate, not this debate. Debate about this amendment is about whether or not you are going to eviscerate the basic purpose of the No Child Left Behind law, which was to give low-income kids an opportunity to learn at the level of their peers; and if they were not learning at the level of their peers because their school systems were not delivering the educational standards they needed, then to give their parents some options to try to get them up to speed through tutorial choice or public school choice. So I join my colleague from Massachusetts in strongly opposing this amendment and hope other Members will join us. I reserve the remainder of the time.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I yield the remainder of my time and I urge the question.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I rise to support the amendment offered by the Senator from Connecticut, which I think is a good amendment. Initially, the proposed amendment used advanced funding, which, in my opinion, is inappropriate because it essentially aggravates the deficit and tries to escape the budget discipline of our spending caps. The Senator from Connecticut has modified his amendment to offset it so the dollars being spent will be offset in an appropriate budgetary process way that keeps this amendment within the budgetary caps and the allocations of this committee. Therefore, I can support it with enthusiasm because it is offset and it is an appropriate amendment. In fact, I would have offered an amendment as an alternative to his had he gone forward with the advanced funding approach which would have accomplished the same goal on funding but would have also accomplished the budgetary discipline that we needed, which is now reflected in the amendment as offered. I intend to work and be supportive of this amendment in conference, although I do not chair this subcommittee. Obviously, that is Senator Specter's role, and hopefully we can be successful in the House in retaining this number. I think it is important, however, to reflect this number in the context of what has been done in the past and how aggressively we have tried to fund special education. Trying to get special education funding up has been a priority of mine since being in the Senate. When I arrived in the Senate, the Federal Government was paying about 6 percent of the special education costs of the local school districts in New Hampshire. The original agreement under which the special education act was approved, the Federal Government would pay 40 percent of the cost of special education. So the Federal Government was coming nowhere near its obligation. As a result, local communities in New Hampshire, through their local property taxes, were having to pick up the responsibility of the Federal Government relative to special needs children. We ended up with special needs children being pitted against other children in the school system, parents against parents competing for these resources. It was totally unfair to the special needs child and to their parents because they were being reflected as taking a disproportionate share of the local property tax to benefit or to address their educational needs because of the fact that the Federal Government was not fulfilling its obligation. I have aggressively pursued trying to increase special education funding. As a result of that initiative, when we took back control of the Senate in 1996, Senator Lott and Senator Specter took on this cause. I like to think I encouraged them in that direction, but I think they had that inclination anyway. Significant progress in the area of increasing special education dollars has been made since then. In fact, we have now gone from the Federal Government paying 6 percent, after this bill, to over 20 percent of the costs of special education. It is on a path, especially with this amendment, toward full funding of special education by the year 2009, which is a commitment that many of us have made and tried to reach. It is also important to note that this effort was made pretty much unilaterally by the energy and commitment of the Republican Congress at that time. In fact, historically, the Clinton administration did not send us an increase of any significance in special education funding during its first 7 years in office. It was not until the last year in office that the Clinton administration actually sent up an increase in special education funding of any significance, and yet during the last 4 years of the Clinton administration we basically reallocated, within the budget caps that we had at that time, money in the Republican Senate and at that time the Republican House, and we significantly increased the funding every one of those years. In fact, there was over a billion dollars of increase each year during that period of time. That was in large part due to the strong commitment made by Senator Specter, who chaired this appropriations subcommittee during that period. So I think it is important to put in context the effort that has been made in educational funding by President Bush and by the Republican Congress. Since President Bush has come into office, he has maintained and continued this effort that was started by the Republican Senate in dramatic terms. This chart reflects it in very stark terms. During the 8 years of President Clinton's term, the increase for IDEA was about $400 million in his proposed budgets. During the 3 years President Bush has been in office, his increases in special education funding have been over $3 billion, with the addition of funding this time in this budget. So every year since he has been in office, President Bush has asked for and made a commitment to significant increases in special education funding--over a billion dollars a year. If we want to put this in some sort of statistical context, the average annual increase for special education funding since President Bush has been has been $1.1 billion. That is a 700-percent higher commitment--almost 770 percent--to special education than occurred during the Clinton administration. So the commitment by this administration has been there. In fact, this administration has increased special education funding in just 3 years by 53 percent. Special education is the single largest-growing function of the Federal Government on a percentage basis. That is a strong, firm commitment to special education. This is another chart that shows it rather starkly. That commitment has essentially been carried forward as a result of a commitment made by President Bush and our party to this very critical element of education. Why are we so committed to special education? Well, there are basically two reasons. One, because special needs children do have the right to receive a quality education and, two, local taxpayers have the right to be able to use their dollars to fund what they think is a priority, not have to use their dollars to fund the Federal responsibility in special education. So we are on a path, an aggressive path, led by the President in his 3 years and by this Congress, toward full funding of special education. This amendment increases by $1,200,000,000, the $1 billion increase which was already in the bill. That is an appropriate step. It also almost assures that we will be on a path toward full funding and as a result will do significant good in relieving local school districts of the pressure which they are getting to fund special education and the Federal role in special education. Along with the funding issue, however, we have made a significant commitment to trying to improve the quality and the actual terms of the program. We have reported out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--which I have the good fortune to chair and on which Senator Kennedy is the ranking member--a bill which basically reforms the IDEA program, the special education program. It takes out a lot of the input controls, it takes out a lot of the regulatory morass which has been created over the years and refocuses the emphasis of special education on the child, on output, on making sure the special needs child is actually learning what we think is important and appropriate to their skill levels, rather than spending all of our time on consultants, on attorneys, and on highly structured plans which inevitably end up with a lot more time being spent on paperwork than time being spent directly on making sure the child can get ahead in their school system. This bill which we have reported out of committee also allows the local school district to more effectively deal with the issues which we hear most often have affected their ability to make the special need's child experience in the school system constructive and useful. First, the paperwork which I just mentioned, but also the issue of discipline, where there were different standards of discipline for different children and as a result there were inconsistencies and it was difficult to maintain decorum in the classroom in some instances, we have tried to address that issue. Hopefully, to some degree, we have also taken out this very litigious atmosphere that has been out there for far too long where actually in some places such as Washington, DC, an entire cottage industry has been created which essentially involves litigating all sorts of miscellaneous technical points such as whether a 10-day time frame has been made versus 11 days, creating very significant costs on the school systems, which basically are drained off to lawsuits instead of going to assisting children. Significant progress is being made in the area of special education, both on the policy side, where I think we have produced an excellent piece of legislation which I hope will be passed by the full Senate later this year, and also on the funding side. Year after year since this President has taken office, we have dramatically increased the amount of money flowing to special education. This amendment continues that process. It raises the number by $1.2 billion. I believe as we go through the appropriating process, it should be funded within the budget caps, as this amendment does, but it does so really in a manner which is consistent with the Republican effort and this President's effort over his first 3 years in office. He has year in and year out made the very substantive commitment to special needs children that is appropriate and necessary for taking care of those children and relieving local taxpayers of the burden of paying the Federal share. I support this amendment. I expect we will take it on a voice vote. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG. And the Senator from Connecticut?

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, how much time remains?

Mr. GREGG. Are we going to divide the time between proponents and opponents of the amendment between now and 9:45? I understand there is no time agreement. I would like to have 2 minutes in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I want to associate myself with Senator Kennedy on this amendment. It is unfortunately ill conceived because its practical effect would be to deny parents the empowerment tools which we give them under the No Child Left Behind Act--specifically, the tools to get tutorial services for their children if the school they are in isn't working, and to get the opportunity to send their children to other public schools if the school they are in isn't working. The No Child Left Behind Act was aimed at low-income children and giving parents of low-income children the tools to educate those children so they are not left behind. The Durbin amendment would put a stake through the heart of the essence of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Mr. GREGG. I have no objection, except that I will not be speaking in opposition. I wish time to speak on the amendment, though.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the next amendments to be offered and debated be the following: Boxer, afterschool, 30 minutes; Landrieu, 20 minutes; Durbin, No Child Left Behind, 40 minutes; Durbin, teacher quality, 10 minutes equally divided. I further ask consent that there be no second degrees in order to the amendments prior to votes in relationship to the amendments, and, further, that the votes occur in relationship to the amendments in sequence beginning at a time determined by the majority leader after consultation with the Democratic leader.

Mr. GREGG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Change Of Vote

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let us remember what is happening. Basically, the Congress is trying to step into the middle of a regulatory process, which is ongoing and has not reached a conclusion, and short circuit it. Eighty thousand comments have been received relative to these regulations. They have not been promulgated in final form. In fact, I know the Department is aggressively reviewing those comments, and I expect substantive changes in significant parts of the regulatory proposal as it has been put forth. So it is premature to step in at this time. It is not ripe. The matter is not before us at this time. If the regulations come down in a format that is unacceptable, we as a Congress have the right to step forward and revoke those regulations, as is occurring right now relative to the FCC rule that was promulgated by that regulatory agency. So we are stepping forward at the wrong time in the wrong place and we are short circuiting the regulatory process in doing it in this manner. Secondly, what we have heard for the last few days and what we have heard nationally from some of the promotional groups that advocate on the other side of this issue is misrepresentation on the number of people involved. They have been saying 8 million people will be affected in a negative way. That number is absolutely bogus. Of that number, 1.5 million are part-time workers who will not be affected at all; 3.8 million of that number are already exempt, so they will not be affected; 1.1 million will be exempt under the proposal as it is being proposed, so they will not be affected; and 800,000 are manual workers who will not be affected in the first place. So 7.2 million of that alleged 8 million people are off the table and are not going to be impacted. So what we are talking about is 800,000 who may be affected by this regulation in a negative way. On the other side of the coin, let's recall that this regulation raises the number at which people get and are guaranteed overtime. Today in the workplace, if one makes $8,000, they get overtime. That is not much money. Under this regulation, if one makes $21,000, they are guaranteed overtime, no matter what their job description is. That means it is going to empower 1.3 million people--this is a hard number--1.3 million people who do not have it today will be getting overtime under this regulation. So there is a net win for America's workers. At least 500,000 American workers are going to come out winners in relationship to American workers who may be impacted by this regulation, and that 800,000 number of people who might be impacted may not be impacted at all because they may be union individuals and as a result their union contracts may be negotiated over the overtime issue. The fact is that we should allow this regulation, this process, to go forward, allow these 1.3 million people who are going to be enfranchised with the right to receive overtime to receive that overtime, and not short circuit the process and leave these 1.3 million people who would get overtime without the ability to receive this new opportunity. This is a proposed regulation. For the Congress to step forward at this time is wrong.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I always enjoy the eloquence of the Senator from Connecticut. I am a great admirer of him as a legislator and as a colleague in this body, but I must disagree with his analysis of what this proposed regulation does. Let's begin with the fact that this is a proposed regulation. That means it is not final. It means the Department is still in the process of adjusting it, of building it, of designing it. They have received 80,000 comments. The approach of the other side of the aisle is to say we do not care what the 80,000 comments were; we do not care what the process is for regulatory review. We are going to step in, and we are going to unilaterally decide that a law that has not been adjusted in over 30 years is a good law, shall be law, and shall never be changed. It makes very little sense. When this regulation was initiated, America was an entirely different country. It had a different employment structure, different individual types of responsibilities within the employment structure. We had jobbers. We had people who were working on the line as the primary responsibility of our manufacturing structure. Today we are a much more mobile society. We are a much more dynamic and flexible workplace. We are a workplace which reflects massive change in the way we compete and are successful as an economy. Yet a law passed 30 years ago does not keep up with those changes. It has not adjusted to the change in the workplace that has occurred as a result of the information age coming to fruition. It does not reflect the fact that so many people who work in the workplace today earn a heck of a lot more than what they were paid under this law when it was originally passed. On the face of it, the administration has done a job of trying to address low-income individuals. They have said under the present law that if someone earns $8,000 or less, they can get overtime by law. Well, that is ridiculous. That is a ridiculously low number. What this administration has said is if a person earns $21,000 or less, they will have the right by law to get overtime. It does not matter how their job is classified; they have the right to overtime. That is a very reasonable approach. Basically, it empowers an additional 1.3 million people in this country who will automatically be qualified for overtime who are not qualified for it today because of this absurdly low threshold which was placed in law over 30 years ago. That is the type of reason we need to revisit this type of regulation. It is also important to recognize that there is a huge debate over who is and who is not covered in this law. A think tank--and we have a lot of them in this city and they are all very aggressive--which is essentially funded by the national Washington labor movement came up with this number of 8 million. So I have kept asking my staff: Well, how did they get to 8 million? The Department, which used outside counsel, outside consultants, and a bevy of outside experts in this law, and economists, came to the conclusion that this will give 1.3 million people overtime and it may affect somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 who might lose their overtime under this law. They decided that that trade-off was worth it, first because on the plus side more people would be getting overtime than not, but secondly because the law has become so convoluted, so complex, and has such a large gray area--as one moves into the higher income brackets, people up around $65,000--that we basically created a lawsuit mentality in the area of the workplace relative to overtime pay questions. In fact, this is the fastest growing area of lawsuits for trial lawyers. This is sort of the new oil field they have struck. You know how sometimes we strike oil fields in Kansas or in Saudi Arabia or in the North Slope. Well, this is the new oil field that the trial lawyers have struck, which is the inconsistency, the confusion, of the overtime law. It has become the new gusher for one element of the bar. The Labor Department said: Let's try to straighten these regulations, get some order to them, make sense of them. Did they do a perfect job? No, they did not. That is why 80,000 comments came in. I do not subscribe to this regulation as it is presently structured. I think it can be improved and I think the 80,000 comments are probably going to significantly impact the way the Department of Labor addresses this regulation, but I do not think we should short-circuit the process and suddenly say no, it does not work. If it is such a bad regulation when it finally comes out, we have the ability in this Congress, as we are now proceeding to do under the proposal of the Senator from North Dakota in the area of FCC ownership, to bring to the floor an amendment on a privileged resolution within a very short period of time that only requires 36 signatures. We have to bring it to the floor, we have to debate it for 10 hours, we have to vote on it, and then we can repeal this. We ought to at least give the process the ability to move forward to see if we can straighten out some of the fundamental flaws of this law which have over the years evolved to a point where we basically have created a new gusher for trial lawyers but very little constructive, efficient, market-oriented events for the productive side of our community, which is the workers. To get back to the question of how many people are impacted, as I said, the Department of Labor came up with their numbers which were independently evaluated, independently reached, and which were certified essentially by people who understand and who are expert in this area. Where did this 8 million number come from, that we have heard bandied about as if it had been sacrosanct, delivered to us from the mountain on high, by some tablet that said 8 million workers are going to be impacted? This number came, as I mentioned, from some think tank in Washington, which think tank is funded by an interest group which has a very significant role in this debate, which is the major labor union leadership in Washington. It was put together not by a group of economists, not by a group of experts in this law. It was put together by two individuals whose expertise in this law is new, to be kind. I think one has a social worker's degree and the other has some sort of other degree, but they are not recognized national leaders in this area. They did not support their findings with anything that was substantive. They just sort of picked a number, 8 million. They picked that number, it appears, without, one, understanding the regulation as it was proposed, two, maybe stretching it as it has been proposed, or, three, just simply fabricating the number in the sense that the number has no relationship to anything the regulation actually says. Let's begin with the biggest fabrication in their proposal of 8 million, which is that they have included part-time employees. Now, how they can include part-time employees, which is probably about 6 to 7 million of the people they added to the 8 million--I do not know the number because they did not attach a number to it, but part-time employees is a big number in our society--is beyond me when we are dealing with a law that requires someone to work 40 hours a week before they can get the overtime. By definition, a part-time employee is not kicked into overtime except in that rare case where they decide to become a full-time employee, and then they should not be counted as a part-time employee under this proposal. So right off the bat, that 8 million is extraordinarily suspect as to the vast majority of the numbers in that 8 million. Then we go down to the other folks they added to their list, and we begin with the firefighters. Independent of what my learned friend on the other side of the aisle says, the fact is it has been made very clear by this administration, by the Secretary, and by the people who are involved in the drafting of this regulation that firefighters-- firemen and first responders, such as EMTs--will not be impacted by this language. That is why, I presume, the national chairman of the organization, the Fraternal Order of Police, has essentially signed off and said that is the case. I submit, since we are submitting materials, a release from the FOP, which is entitled ``F.O.P. Confident of Satisfactory Resolution on DOL Overtime Regulations,'' and ask unanimous consent it be printed in the Record.

Mr. GREGG. Opposition is not the issue. The issue is whether police officers, fire, and EMT will be affected. I believe the administration made it clear they won't be affected, and I believe the assessment, as reflected in this quote from Mr. Canterbury, is accurate. My second question is on the issue of nurses because the Senator also said all nurses would be affected. I am sure, as the Senator knows, nurses are already exempt from the FSLA, and to the extent nurses are affected by overtime, it is because of a contractual agreement in their union contracts. As a practical matter, therefore, the vast majority of nurses who are subject to union contracts will have no impact on their overtime, and there is no adjustment here in any way to the nurses of this country, as again has been made clear by the administration and again reflects the fact that the present law is in place and that nurse overtime is tied to contractual agreements, not to FSLA regulations. To throw the nurses in--and I can go down, actually, the whole list. I could go down to cooks, reporters, clerical workers, teachers, physical therapists, lab technicians, social workers--all these individuals who have been put on the Senator's list actually are not on the list. They actually are not on the list.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I tend to side with the head of the National Fraternal Order of Police in his assessment of this situation and the commitment made by Secretary Chao that the police officers, fire individuals, and EMTs will not be impacted. It has been made very clear the regulation has no impact on them, and I think it is just not correct to make that statement, although I can understand the Senator can read the regulations and has concluded that, but nobody else has.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a further question?

Mr. GREGG. The Senator made two points. First, on the issue of police officers, fire individuals, and first responders, I believe the administration and the Department have made it very clear that those officers would not be impacted by this decision in any way and, in fact, to quote the President of the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the country representing 310,000 people, Chuck Canterbury, said: Thanks to the leadership of Secretary Chao, we have no doubt that the overtime pay will continue to be available to those officers currently receiving it. And if the new rules are approved, even more of our national police officers and firefighters and EMTs will be eligible for overtime. This development was possible because this is an administration that listens to the concerns of the Fraternal Order of Police and because of their commitment to the Nation's first responders. The Senator from Connecticut represented a couple of times how police officers are going to be denied overtime pay. This is the president of the largest representative group of police officers in the country saying just the opposite. The Department has said just the opposite. The administration has said just the opposite. I am wondering what factual basis the Senator concludes that the head of the police, the National Fraternal Order of Police, is wrong; the Secretary of Labor is wrong; and the administration is wrong on this point?

Mr. GREGG. That is a big chunk, but how many police officers and firefighters and EMT workers they included in that number, I don't know. I would not be surprised if, of the million or million and a half or maybe 2 million who were not part time who were included, it is probably close to about half that. I don't know because this report did not have the integrity to put the numbers on their people. They also included nurses. As we just had this little exchange, nurses are already exempt from FLSA. The reason for that is they are deemed to be essentially professional as a result of their training experience. The present law is fairly clear in this area. I believe I have it somewhere here. Basically it makes it very clear that nurses are not covered by FLSA. The reason nurses get overtime is because the vast majority of nurses reach a contractual agreement in their union negotiations which gives them overtime. Those are not going to be changed, obviously. As a practical matter, nurses should not be included. So there you have another, who knows, 200,000-plus people who were added to this 8 million number, which is bogus. Then you have cooks. There is a difference here on cooks. There are chefs, professional chefs--yes, they would probably lose overtime, or be suspect, or have that as part of the compensation, depending on whether they have a union contract. The 4-year culinary school graduate who is a professional chef who manages a kitchen, that person is probably going to have to negotiate their overtime independent of these rules. But there are not any other cooks who are going to be covered. The fellow working down at the local diner or the persons working in a restaurant are not going to be covered by this law because they are clearly not exempt individuals. The vast majority--who knows, probably 90 or 95 percent--are not going to be exempted and will continue to get overtime. So you have a number, however, that was included, which I believe is all the cooks. At least that is the implication of the language. Probably another 200,000 people are in that category of work. Reporters--this is another one listed by my colleagues across the aisle. All reporters are going to lose their overtime. That is a fight reporters have been having for a long time. That is a fairly public fight, whether reporters are professionals or not professionals. I guess every reporter has to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and decide whether they are professional. But those who decide they are not professional who want overtime are going to have to negotiate their union contracts for that, probably, because as a practical matter that reporter issue is being settled in the court system. How it breaks down is very much an issue. But it certainly is not going to be affected by these regulations. It is already decided in large part by court decisions and will continue to be so. So to throw reporters in here is again a very bogus figure. Clerical workers clearly are not going to be covered. The vast majority are not going to be covered, vast majority are not going to be covered by this regulation nor will it have any impact on their overtime. Teachers are entirely exempt by law already from FLSA. To put teachers on the list is again misleading. It either reflects a lack of knowledge of how the law works or an intent to try to inflate the number. Teachers clearly get overtime, but it is a function of their contract negotiations, not a function of FLSA. The same goes for physical therapists, lab technicians, and social workers. In all these categories the vast majority of people who fall in the last three categories are not going to be impacted in any way by this proposal--by exemption, but will continue to get coverage for overtime activities or will pick it up through their union contracts, many of them being unionized, especially social workers, for example. As a practical matter, what we have here is a grossly inflated number which has no economic or statistical support behind it, which has virtually no law support behind it, especially in the biggest categories--part time, police, fire, first responders, nurses, and teachers. And as a result, this number of 8 million which we keep hearing thrown out on the floor is a bogus number. It is a completely bogus number. The real number is probably closer to what the Department had assessed by outside counsel, by outside review, and which shows a plus. In other words, it shows more people are going to get overtime out of this regulation change than have the potential of losing overtime under this regulation change. Does that mean it is perfect? Of course not. There are ways to improve it, as I mentioned when I started, with 80,000 people commenting on it. But this issue is clearly not ripe for this Senate to be acting on it. Let's wait and give the Department a chance to review the options, review what it hears from the various people including, I think, some very cogent and thoughtful comment that came in from some of the major labor unions that are concerned about this. Although if you are in a labor union, by definition you are probably not going to be impacted by this law. But as a practical matter--you may be. As a practical matter, there was cogent, thoughtful comment put forward. There were 80,000 comments. Not all of them, I assume, were cogent and thoughtful, but a great deal made some thematic sense. Let's allow the Department to sift through this and update a law or regulation that has been on the books for 30 years and really does need updating. We are a different society. We have a different work structure now. We have a much more flexible and educated workforce, a highly technical workforce, a value-added workforce. We need to have an overtime law which reflects and answers the needs of that workforce, not the needs of a workforce in 1950 or 1960. I simply say it is premature to be going forward with this proposal at this time. Let's wait until the final regulation is passed. It is extremely inappropriate for us to be going forward on the basis of a number which is being used as the bludgeon for pushing through this amendment, this 8 million figure, which is totally inflated and, in my opinion, clearly bogus and inaccurate, especially if you compare it with the hard figures which were brought forward by the administration on this proposal. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG. By definition, this administration has shown it intends to give more people overtime. It has said people now earning up to $21,000 will be guaranteed overtime. Under the present law, if you are earning up to $8,000 you are guaranteed overtime, but between $8,000 and $21,000 you can be doing a number of jobs in the country which deny you overtime, where your employer can say, I am sorry, we are not going to pay you overtime because you happen to be an exempt employee. Under this proposal from this administration, over 1.3 million people will be getting overtime they would not get under the present law because the threshold goes up to $21,000. I appreciate the Senator's question.

Mr. GREGG. If that is a question which the Senator has presented, which I think was rhetorical in its nature?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I wish to speak to this bill, and in a moment I will have supportive charts to discuss this bill's efforts in the area of education. Let me begin by congratulating the chairman of the committee, Senator Specter, for bringing to the floor a bill which has made major strides every year since President Bush has been President, but especially this year, under Chairman Specter's leadership, major strides on the issue of educational funding. In the context of that funding, relative to what was done when the Democratic membership controlled this Senate, or when the President was a member of the Democrat Party, the difference is startling. President Bush and the Republican Senate have made spectacular strides in assisting and supporting education in this country while, at the same time, doing so during a very difficult period of America's history, a period when we are fighting a war, a war which has required huge resources, and a war which has required extreme attention by the administration, and at a time that we have been in a period of economic recession, in a period when the revenues to the Federal Government have been dropping precipitously because of that recession. Even in the context of those two very severe restraining events relative to domestic program activity, this President has been willing to step forward and focus on the issue of education, try to improve the education of America's children and support that effort with dollars. I think before we get into a discussion of the dollars, because that is critical to the pending Byrd amendment, I will begin by saying this goes beyond the issue of dollars, this goes into the question of the attitude and approach to education. What President Bush has said is we can no longer afford an educational system which, year in and year out, in generation after generation, leaves behind especially low-income children, takes those children and runs them through the educational system and, at the end of their schooling period, leaves them without the skills they need in order to compete for and participate in the American dream. President Bush has sounded a call to end that system and do something about the failures of that system. There are a lot of good-faith people, a lot of hard-working people in the educational community in this country. A lot of teachers spend an extraordinary amount of hours, time, and extra effort to try to make sure their students succeed. Unfortunately, the fact is that, even though we have radically increased the dollars in education over the last 20 years, the performance of our children has not improved-- especially the performance of low-income children. So President Bush said let's try a different way. That is where the bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, came in. It says, rather than controlling the input of legislation, rather than telling local school districts how to run their schools, let's take a different look at this and say, what are the children learning? Let's find out what they are learning; let's shine a light on it. If they are not learning enough to be competitive with their peers, or with what they need to be successful in society, then let's put in the remedial efforts to try to correct those problems. It is an unusual approach in our educational system because, basically, it calls on the educational community to be accountable, to actually have to look at what a child is learning and determine whether what they are learning is what the community expects them to learn. The President's program, as passed by the Congress in a bipartisan initiative, doesn't set a Federal standard for what a child in the fourth grade in Epping, NH, knows; it rather says to the people in Epping, you set the standard for what your children should know in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Once you have set that standard, you are going to have to determine whether your children are learning to that standard, and especially whether your low-income children, who have historically been left behind, are learning to that standard. If they are not, you are going to have to tell the parents they are not. You will have to disclose to the community at large that a certain percentage of the children are not reaching the standards the community set for those children. It is a radical idea for education to be held accountable, but it is an idea whose time has come. So far, the response of the educational community has been very positive. Most teachers understand this is a law directed not in a negative way toward their efforts but in a supportive way, trying to make sure school systems are more accountable--especially in those areas where you have schools that have not made the grade, where a majority of low-income kids are failing. In other words, they are not reaching the standards of ability a fifth grader should know in math or in English. In those schools, we are going to try to improve their efforts. There is a lot of remedial activity to accomplish that. The President not only set out this new initiative in the concept and the way we approach education--when somebody comes up with a good idea for smaller classrooms, more computers, and throws out ideas without any accountability as to whether it produces results, instead of taking that input approach, but an output approach, where you actually expect kids to learn and you find out if they are learning, and if they are not, you do something about it, especially with low-income kids, not only did he initiate that approach but he was willing to put the dollars into the programs that succeed in this area. I think it is important to understand, as we view the debate of this amendment specifically before us--the Byrd amendment--that the dollars the President has proposed, and which the Congress passed under the Republican Congress, at least, have been a radical increase in funding for education at the Federal level. The most significant reflection is that, as a function of the Federal Government, education has received more funding in the way of increases than any other function in the Federal Government. You would not believe that if you listened to the other side of the aisle. You would think it was actually being cut or not maintained. But, in fact, what the President has proposed, and what we have passed as a Republican Congress, has been a dramatic increase in funding in education. This chart reflects that. It shows that in 1996, when the Republicans took control of the Congress, but most of the burst occurred in the last 3 years since President Bush has come into office. The increase in education has been 145 percent, whereas the increase in health and human services is 100 percent. And in defense funding, if you ask a person on the street what part the Federal Government expanded fastest in the last 5 years, they would probably say defense because that is all you hear about--especially from the other side of the aisle. But that is not true. Defense funding increased only a third as fast as education funding. That really tells only part of the story. The story is what has happened in the context of this President's efforts versus that of the prior administration, this Republican Congress's efforts versus the prior Democratic Congress's efforts, because we are now hearing all these amendments being thrown at us from the other side about how we are underfunding this or that and not doing enough funding here or there. But you have to ask yourself, what did they do when they were in charge? Did they make the type of commitments they are now asking be made by the Congress or did they maybe do substantially less and come forward today because it is politically enticing to do so and claim these accounts are underfunded and, therefore, we have to add these additional moneys? Well, I think there are a couple of facts that need to be addressed right now. The first is President Bush's funding in comparison with President Clinton's funding. In the last year of the Clinton administration, $42 billion was spent on education in this country. This year, after 3 years in office, President Bush will have increased education funding by 60 percent over the last Clinton budget, to $67 billion. That is a huge increase and a huge commitment. It goes beyond that. If you look at it by accounts, you will see what President Bush has done is stand behind his words, especially in comparison to what the prior administration did. For example, in the entire period when the Democrats controlled the Congress and had a Democratic President, their increases in title I spending were $286 million. Since the Republicans have controlled Congress--and primarily since President Bush has come into office--it has gone to $1.2 billion. If you total these in special education and also Pell grants--and we have heard a lot of misrepresentation on the issue of Pell grants on this floor--the difference is that in the period of a Republican- controlled Congress--especially since President Bush has become President--the average annual increase has been $4 billion. That compares to about half a billion dollars during the period President Clinton was in office and when there was a Democratic Congress. A Republican Congress and a Republican President have basically made the commitments not only in the area of policy improvement but also in the area of dollars to back up that new policy. It is instructive, for example, to take a look at some of the percentage differences between what the Republicans have done and what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle did when they were in control. In the area, for example, of title I, our increases are 320 percent higher than the increases of the Democratic membership. In the area of IDEA grants, our increases are 770 percent higher than the increases when the Democratic Party controlled Congress. In the area of Pell grants--actually during the Clinton administration, Pell grants were cut; they fell in funding--under this administration, the increases have been on an annual basis about 10 times higher than what the Democrats did during their period. It is dramatic. Overall, if you were to put it into gross terms, that $4.1 billion annual increase in educational funding, which has come about as a result of the commitment of this President to improving education and backing up those improvements with dollars, represents about an 858- percent increase on an annual basis over what happened when our predecessors were controlling the Congress and we had a different administration. The practical effect of this has been that we have created so much more money flowing into the educational accounts at the Federal level, unlike what is represented across the other side of the aisle that more money is needed. In fact, what is happening is that we have put so much money into these accounts so fast under President Bush and the Republican Senate that we now have a situation where a large percentage of the dollars which we have already appropriated cannot be spent and have not been spent. In fact, of the $31 billion which has been appropriated under title I or the No Child Left Behind Act, $9 billion remains unspent. It is sitting at the Department of Education waiting for the States to get to a position where they are able to draw down those dollars. And this is not just from last year, this is from 2 to 3 years back, the whole period of President Bush's Presidency. It is not an issue of lack of dollars. In fact, it is just the opposite. We are putting so many dollars into the educational accounts at the Federal level so fast that, to make sure they are spent correctly, it has made it difficult for the money to actually be spent. We, obviously, do not want to throw the money out there. It has to be spent pursuant to a plan. Every State has to file a plan. But as a result of the increased spending coming through the Bush initiatives, as supported by this Congress and especially by the chairman of this committee, Chairman Specter, who has been funding these accounts, we now find there is approximately $9 billion of funds which has not been drawn down. Today we have before us an amendment proposed by the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee--a man whom I greatly respect and who I think all Senators respect because of his extraordinary history in the Senate--which is proposing to add $6 billion of spending on to the educational accounts. But how is it paid for? I think we need to address that, too, because, of course, all these kids we are educating and trying to make ready to participate in the American dream are going to have to pay the bills we run up on them if we run them up as a deficit. So we put in place this year a budget. It was an idea that has been brought back, so to say, because when the colleagues across the aisle controlled the Senate last year, they did not put in place a budget. Why? Because a budget requires fiscal discipline and there were, I suspect, some who did not want fiscal discipline, did not want rules which drive fiscal discipline to be put in place so that spending could be controlled through budget points of order. We had no budget last year. It was sort of a shock really. Here is the Government of the United States functioning without a budget. It was chaos--in fact, such chaos that not only did we not have a budget, we did not have any appropriations passed under the leadership of the last Congress, my colleagues across the aisle. The first order of business when we took responsibility for this Chamber, under the leadership of Senator Frist, was to pass all the appropriations bills from the prior year--almost all of them, 11 of the 13 had to be passed in this year rather than last year when they should have been passed. At any rate, we produced a budget this year, and we passed it. What is the purpose of the budget? The purpose of the budget is to put in place some reasonable fiscal controls so that in a time when we are obviously running very high deficits as a result of a number of factors--primarily the slow economy which has slowed revenues, the war in Iraq, and the war against terrorism--in that context where we are driving, unfortunately, large deficits, not historically extraordinary deficits but still very large deficits--we need to control the rate of growth in those deficits by having in place a budget which at least in some accounts gives fiscal discipline. So we put in place a budget. The budget allocates to each area a certain amount of money to be spent. Even in the context of the very severe deficit which we have-- and it is significant--the Budget Committee, under the leadership of Senator Nickles, agreed to significantly increase the funding for education to try to meet the goals set out by the President. In the area of special education, we increased funding by over $1 billion; in the area of title I, we increased funding by over $1 billion in the budget; and in the area of Pell grants, we increased funding by almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in the budget even though that meant that other accounts had to be reduced because to get the budget in place and have it be fiscally responsible, that required, if we were going to increase some accounts, we were most likely going to have to reduce others. We did a budget, and we passed it in the Senate, and it was passed by the House. We have in place a budget for this country, finally. We renewed the concept of fiscal discipline through a budget after having abandoned it for a year under the prior leadership of the Senate. That budget sets out these spending goals, these spending limits which are called caps, the amounts which should be spent in these accounts. The leadership of this committee, Senator Specter, met those caps and significantly increased by over $1 billion the spending on special education, over $1 billion the spending on title I, low-income kids, and almost $1 billion in spending on Pell grants. Now we see these amendments coming from the other side saying: Even though we have a budget, we should ignore it and we should fund all these programs, not at the level that has been set by the budget or the level that has been set by the Appropriations Committee, but at the level set by the authorizing committee outside of the budget. They are using a gimmick of classic proportions, advance funding, to claim that they are really doing it in a fiscally responsible way. Let me explain what advance funding is. When a Senator offers an amendment which increases spending by $6 billion over what the budget allows, and then that person claims it is paid for because they borrow the $6 billion from next year's budget, that is not fiscal responsibility. That is a game. Anybody sees that as a gimmick. What happens next year? You are $6 billion in the hole. So next year you not only have to pay that $6 billion, you have to pay on top of that whatever you are going to pay for the increase in those accounts. As a practical matter, it is doubling up the deficit. It would probably be better from a practical standpoint if you did not advance fund and you just said: All right, we are going to add to the deficit $6 billion outside the budget, and we are not going to advance fund. Advance funding is the worst of both worlds because it takes money from next year, which creates havoc with next year, and at the same time it aggravates the budget deficit issue. So as a practical matter, the $6 billion that is proposed in this amendment will add $6 billion to the deficit, if not this year, next year. Who pays for that? Who pays for going outside the budget? Well, deficits are paid for by the folks who come here to work, who are students in high school, who are pages. When they get out of college-- and I presume most of them will want to go to college--they are going to get a job and that job is going to have a tax burden tied to it. That tax burden is going to be directly related by how much we increase the deficit today, because they are going to have to pay that bill down the road. It is going to come to them, not to us, not to my generation, most likely, but to my children's generation and to my children's children's generation. So every time we break the budget, we are adding costs to our children. These are the same children we are trying to help. These are the same people we are trying to help as they move through their educational experience. How are we going to help them when we first-- well, unless we follow the President's program, we will not give them a great education but, more importantly, when you pass on to them a debt that is outside the discipline which is put in place to live by. We put this budget in place so we would have fiscal discipline, so we would not be passing on more of a deficit to our kids than is reasonable. Yet these amendments keep coming at us, one after another, saying just add to the deficit, if not this year, next year; don't worry about it; it does not matter; it is for education. I think it is ironic because the kids who are supposedly going to benefit are the kids who are going to have to pay the costs, and as a practical matter it is not going to benefit them that much. Why is it not going to benefit them that much? Because we already have $9.3 billion of unspent money in these accounts. We have increased them so fast that they cannot be drawn down effectively. Now let's go to another issue, this concept that the authorized level has to be funded. This is a very unusual concept for Congress, because for all intents and purposes Congress does not fund anything to authorized levels. Authorized levels are statements of intent, purpose, goodwill. What Congress funds is a budget and appropriated levels. But now we hear, almost as a matter of sanctity, from the other side of the aisle that we have to reach the authorized level or we have abandoned the children of America. That is a very interesting concept, but they did not subscribe to that concept when they were in control of the Senate. Last time the Democratic membership controlled this body, which happened to be a year ago, they brought forward an appropriations bill under Labor-HHS, which is the bill we are dealing with today, and they funded education. Did they fund to the authorized level? No, they did not. They did not even come close to funding to the authorized level. This is the difference. This is the authorized level, the black line. This is what the Democratic budget proposed. It is a pretty big gap, about $4 billion. This was what was actually funded in the Democratic bill, which never passed, by the way, nor did the budget because they decided they did not want a budget and they could not pass their bill. Suddenly there has been an epiphany on the other side of the aisle. Suddenly, the authorized levels are sacrosanct and we must fund the authorized level. Well, I suggest there is a touch of inconsistency, especially in light of the track record we confront when we look at the facts. So we are turning to the basic underlying point, and that is this: For the first time in at least a decade, and really longer, we have a President who even in a period of extreme national difficulty--war against terrorists who are set on destroying our Nation and killing Americans, and have already done so--and a difficult economic period, although we are coming out of it, hopefully, a President who even during those hard times, where his attention has obviously been drawn off, and appropriately so, to defending America and trying to get us back to work, has continued his focus on making sure children are properly educated in this country, and he is especially focused on low- income kids. That is the uniqueness of what he has done. Most of us understand that a child from a better-off family is probably going to be taken care of in the educational system, but the low-income child, who comes mostly from broken homes and disproportionately lives in urban areas, has been left behind for generation after generation. Now we have a President who has said no longer and who is willing to make this his purpose, even during these very difficult times when his attention might and has been drawn off otherwise. He has supported that purpose with huge increases in funding. In fact, in the first 3 years of the Bush administration, he increased funding more for title I in 3 years than the prior administration did in 8 years by a factor of almost 70 percent. The same is true in the special education accounts, and to a lesser extent but to a significant point in the Pell accounts. This is a President who has not only put forward creative and imaginative policy to try to finally get a handle on the fact that so many kids are not learning what they need to know in order to compete for the American dream, has not only put together that policy but has backed it up with real, hard dollars. In the budget this Congress passed, we backed up the President. Today, the issue is whether we are going to hold that budget, which has these very significant increases in education, or whether we are going to dramatically expand the deficit in what seems to me to be a bit of inconsistency in relationship to what was proposed when our colleagues across the aisle were in control. This committee, under the leadership of Senator Specter, this President, has done the work that needs to be done, lifted the weights that need to be lifted in the area of funding education, and we should be supporting this committee's mark in this area. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate will consider and pass today a Substitute Amendment to H.R. 13, the Museum and Library Services Act of 2003. This substitute mirrors my bill, S. 888. Since I first introduced this legislation in April with several of my colleagues, it has been a bipartisan process. Over the past several months we have worked to build support for this language, so that today S. 888 has over 50 Senators as cosponsors. I thank my colleagues for their support. I particularly want to thank Senator Reed, Senator Frist, Senator Kennedy, and Senator Enzi for their efforts. This bill recognizes the importance of libraries and museums and provides them with continued federal support through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In addition, it authorizes a doubling of the minimum state allotment under the Grants to State Library Agencies Program, up to $680,000. That provision allows for an increase, if appropriated, of 50% for New Hampshire's Federal library allotment under the law. Recognizing the key role that libraries play in fostering the academic achievement of our nation's schoolchildren, the Museum and Library Services Act of 2003 also requires that the director, where appropriate, ensure that the library activities of the IMLS are coordinated with the school library provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Furthermore, this bill increases the indemnity limits in the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act, thereby facilitating the international exchange and display of works of art, books, rare documents and other published materials, artifacts, and films and other audiovisual media. This will ensure that people throughout the world are exposed to American culture and that our own citizens will have richer educational opportunities available as well. In addition, S. 888 supports the efforts of President Bush and Mrs. Bush to recruit more librarians by allowing funds to be used for the recruitment of persons in library and information science. Over the next 16 years, America's libraries are projected to lose 58 percent of their professional librarians, and more than one-quarter of all librarians with master's degrees will reach the age of 65 before 2009. This bill will help to alleviate this shortage. The legislation contains a number of other important provisions. It prohibits projects determined to be obscene from receiving Federal funds, requires the Institute to conduct analyses of the need for museum and library services and the effectiveness of funded projects in meeting those needs, consolidates the library and museum advisory boards into one entity, and prohibits funds appropriated under the Act's authority from being used for library or museum construction. We have worked hard to reach an agreement on this language with our colleagues in the House, and expect that when the House returns from the August recess, they will pass this bill as well and send it on to the President for his signature. Again, I thank my colleagues for their support of this important legislation.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to offer legislation to solve a pension funding crisis in our country. The approach incorporated in this bill has been supported in the past by both the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations and the American business community. As Chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, I must say that these two groups do not often agree and I want to take this historic opportunity to memorialize their agreement. These groups have supported the approach taken by this legislation because it will generate jobs, improve the financial strength of our corporations, and promote capital investment, all at a time when our economy sorely needs a shot in the arm. My colleagues will remember that Congress adopted a temporary fix to the problem raised by the artificially low interest rate set by the 30- year Treasury bond. Pension law relies on that the 30-year Treasury bond, which is no longer being issued, to determine funding levels. A low interest rate means employers must put more cash in their plans to satisfy full funding requirements. That temporary fix, enacted in March 2002, is set to expire at the end of this year. If no action is taken soon, companies will be required to divert billions of dollars from capital investment and job growth in order to satisfy the arbitrary funding rules. For example, General Motors will have to contribute $7 billion if no action is taken by the end of this year. Compounded in businesses across the nation, the total liability adds up to--as the late Carl Sagan used to say--``Billions and Billions.'' Both for collective bargaining and corporate financial planning purposes, a new fix needs to be in place this summer. In a nutshell, the Pension Stability Act, the legislation I am introducing today, does four things. First, it extends the temporary fix for a longer period of time--five years--in order to give Congress time to craft a permanent solution. The five year period is important because businesses and their unions need time to plan ahead and to make commitments that they can live up to. Second, the bill temporarily switches form the out-of-date 30-year Treasury bond as the benchmark rate and adopts for this five-year period a rate based on a high-quality corporate bond index or composite of indices. In shifting to this rate, the legislation assumes that the highest permissible rate of interest is 105 percent of the four-year weighted average of that rate for the first two years--2004 and 2005. For the remaining three years--so as not to permit long term underfunding of pensions--the highest permissible rate of interest drops down to 100 percent of the weighted average. Third, the legislation incorporates a smooth transition from the out- of-date 30-year Treasury Bond rate to the composite rate that will be used for determining funding obligations. No change in the lump sum distribution rate is made for the first two years. Then, in 20 percent increments, the new rate is phased in. My bill does not take the interest rate to 100 percent of the composite rate, as most commentators assert is the appropriate rate. But my bill makes significant progress toward that goal, and gives Congress time to make informed decisions on this important issue that affects very many lives. Finally, the Pension Stability Act acknowledges that reasonable people can differ on the best permanent solution to the pension funding issues. The amendment calls for the creation of an independent commission to consider all of the issues relevant to funding of pensions, and making concrete recommendations to Congress. The goal is to take controversy and politics out of the deliberation. The issues confronting our pension system are too important, and the dollar figures too large, for an internal task force within any administration. Stakeholders in this debate include company financial and human resources officers, stockholders, plan participants and beneficiaries, unions, and financial markets. If they are not included in the process, they are more likely to oppose the proffered solutions. The intent with this legislation is to create a bipartisan commission that includes business, union and pension rights groups. Such a panel would be able to address both the funding issues presented here, including the ``private yield curve'' approach, and evaluate other ideas for revitalizing the defined benefit system. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, today I am proud to introduce the Higher Education for Freedom Act. This bill will establish a competitive grant program making funds available to institutions of higher education, centers within such institutions, and associated nonprofit foundations to promote programs focused on the teaching and study of traditional American history and government, and the history and achievements of Western Civilization, at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including those that serve students enrolled in K-12 teacher education programs. Today, more than ever, it is important to preserve and defend our common heritage of freedom and civilization, and to ensure that future generations of Americans understand the importance of traditional American history and the principles of free government on which this Nation was founded. This basic knowledge is not on essential to the full participation of our citizenry in America's civic life, but also to the continued success of the American experiment in self-government, binding together a diverse people into a single Nation with common purposes. However, college students' lack of historical literacy is quite startling, and too few of today's colleges and universities are focused on the task of imparting this crucial knowledge to the next generation. One survey of students at America's top colleges reported that seniors could not identify Valley Forge, words from the Gettysburg Address, or even the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. Given high-school level American history questions, 81 percent of the seniors would have received a D or F, the report found. One college professor even informed me that her students did not know which side Lee was on during the Civil War, or whether the Russians were allies or enemies in World War II. A student of hers even asked why anyone should care what the Founding Fathers wrote. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, ``If a nation expects to be ignorant-- and free--in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.'' I believe the time has come for Congress to do something to promote the teaching of traditional American history at the postsecondary level, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.