Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I wonder if the Senator is speaking to my amendment or her amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the two managers of the bill in setting up a timeframe for this amendment. We have discussed this issue innumerable times in this Chamber. This is the issue of whether or not we are going to fund, at the expense of low-income children, school construction. The amendment is very simple. It takes money which is not authorized--in fact, the dollars which are being spent under this school construction account, that authorization was rejected by this Congress, by this Senate on innumerable occasions--it takes the money which is being spent under this appropriations bill, which is therefore not authorized, and moves it into the authorized account of the title I targeted formula, the targeted formula being that formula which benefits low-income children in this country. The purpose of funding under the Federal education initiatives has basically two goals. Our primary responsibility as a Federal Government involves two basic areas in elementary and secondary school education. The first is special education funding, IDEA funding. I congratulate this committee and Senator Harkin and Senator Specter for the tremendous job they have done in the area of funding special education. They have added over $1 billion in the special education accounts. That is very appropriate. The second primary purpose authorized by the Federal Government and chosen by us as a Congress as to where we were going to focus Federal attention is in helping low-income children be more competitive in their school systems and have an opportunity to succeed along with kids who do not come from low-income families. Thus, we have put an exceptional commitment of resources into those accounts. Unfortunately, it is a formula which was put in place 6 years ago to target the Federal money for kids who come from low-income backgrounds. It has never been adequately funded--in fact, was never funded at all until this bill. Instead, we have peeled dollar after dollar off for other programmatic activity, which is not the primary thrust of the Federal effort. Specifically, in the area of school construction, which we have rejected as a purpose of Federal responsibility, it being traditionally the responsibility of the States and the local communities to make the decisions as to what school construction should occur, we have now put in this bill $925 million for this program of school construction which is not authorized. We have essentially taken that $925 million away from the title I children--the low-income kids. We have taken it away from the targeted funding formula. My amendment very simply takes the unauthorized construction money and moves it back to the authorized new targeted title I formula so that low-income children will get the dollars and the support from the Federal Government. The practical implications of this for each State are reflected in a chart which is going to be made available to every Member of the Senate, which I hope they will take the time to review. It shows that every State is essentially a winner under this amendment. The new targeted formula, when initially funded by the $925 million, significantly increases the money under title I that flows to low- income kids for every State. What is happening under the school construction money? It doesn't go to low-income children. It can go to rich districts. It can go to poor districts. It can go anywhere you want in the school system. It can also go, for example, for the purposes of school safety, which makes it not only unauthorized under this bill but duplicative of the money we already put into the system for school safety in the Commerce-State- Justice bill. We are spending $925 million for bricks and mortar. That was a program rejected by both the Senate and the House. It does not have any strong component of poverty in it. This basically can be a welfare-to- rich-district funding mechanism. It is being done at the expense of low-income kids. We know for a fact that our low-income children simply aren't getting what they need out of the school system. We are about to reauthorize the ESEA bill in an attempt to do a better job with the dollars that are directed to low-income schools. But we know, regrettably, that 70 percent of the children in high-poverty schools score below the most basic levels in reading; that two out of three African-American and Hispanic fourth graders can barely read; in math in high-poverty schools, they remain two grade levels behind their peers; in reading, they are three to four grade levels behind their peers; that half the students in our urban school districts don't graduate at all. It makes no sense, when we are supposed to be funding a formula targeted for low-income kids who obviously need more support as reflected by those statistics, that we end up instead funding a bricks- and-mortar program that can go to high-end school districts and which is not authorized and which is duplicative of at least three other major programs we have at the Federal level that are authorized and that are funded. The result of my amendment is essentially this. A State such as Louisiana--I see the Senator from Louisiana in the Chamber--would receive a 21-percent increase as a result of this amendment in their title I count. It would be targeted. A State such as California would receive a 37-percent increase. It would be targeted to the low-income poverty districts and students. When we pass the ESEA bill on which we reached agreement in conference, we will give those low-income districts strong, new tools to help those kids in those districts catch up with their peers. But those tools will only work if there are dollars to support them. This amendment goes a long way down the road to accomplishing the goal of getting the dollars where the Federal Government has set the priorities, the dollars to the low-income child instead of to some sort of grandiose bricks-and-mortar program that may not benefit the low- income child at all. That is the concept of this amendment. It is really pretty simple. It takes $925 million out of a program which has been on two different occasions rejected by this Senate, the school construction program, and moves it to the new targeted formula for low-income kids under title I. I hope everybody here will review how their State benefits from this in their title I accounts. Amendment No. 2056

Mr. GREGG. This is the title I dollars. School construction is not a title I program.

Mr. GREGG. That speaks to title I.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. GREGG. I do not think it is the wrong direction when one is trying to help low-income kids be more competitive in a school environment where they have been left behind. The goal of the Federal Government has been stated. Our goal as the Federal Government under title I is to help low-income kids. The problem is we have not adequately funded the formulas to accomplish that. In fact, we have not even funded the targeted formula which was passed in 1996. We funded a formula that was a pre-1996 formula or a 1994 formula, which has been nothing more than a hold harmless for a bunch of States which may or may not help the targeted populations in need. Now we create this new program, $925 million of new money being spent on a capital program for construction of facilities which can go to any school. As the Senator from Iowa said, it can go to the richest school districts. It can go to any schools. It does not go to the low-income children. It does not go to the school districts with low-income children. It can go anywhere in the school system. It can go for swimming pools. It can go for squash courts. It can go for whatever the school system decides to build. That is not our responsibility as a Federal legislature. We have been very specific as to what our responsibility as a Federal legislature is. We have said our responsibility as a Federal legislature is to, one, take care of special needs kids or be a participant in that exercise and, two, take care of kids or try to help kids from low-income backgrounds be competitive with their peers. That is what the Federal policy is. In fact, we have rejected as Federal policy in the last two Congresses the need to have a construction program. What are we funding? We are funding a construction program at the expense of low- income children who would get money under this targeted proposal. Let us talk about a few States. Under this proposal, Connecticut would go from $83 million targeted on low-income kids to $111 million targeted on low-income kids. Delaware would go from $22 million targeted on low-income kids to $28 million targeted on low-income kids. Hawaii would go from $25 million targeted on low-income kids to $35 million targeted on low-income kids. Illinois would go from $357 million targeted on low-income kids to $477 million targeted on low- income kids. Michigan would go from $349 million targeted on low-income kids to $445 million targeted on low-income kids, under the proposal I am suggesting. New Jersey would go from $209 million targeted on low- income kids to $272 million targeted on low-income kids. New York would go from $822 million targeted on low-income kids to $1.15 billion targeted on low-income kids. Washington State would go from $118 million targeted on low-income kids to $149 million targeted on low- income kids. Wisconsin would go from $129 million targeted on low- income kids to $160 million targeted on low-income kids, money which would go directly into the school systems which are trying to serve the low-income child. That is our purpose. As we pass the new ESEA bill, we are going to make it even more effective in the way these dollars are used to benefit that low-income child. So it makes no sense to me to create this new program which is in the area where the States and communities have traditionally had the responsibility, which is the area of construction of their facilities, a new program which gives a carte blanche so the money can flow to whatever district wants to get it. The district can be a high-end district or it can be a low-end district that happens to spend it on something that does not impact the low-income kids, instead of putting it into the program which we as the Federal Government have said we want to fund. There is a role for block grants in our Federal system, but the Federal Government has also said that in the education area there are certain areas which we are going to carve out and in which we are going to try to exercise our assistance. We only put 6 percent of the dollars into the local school systems. What we have said is those 6 percent of dollars are going to be focused; they are not going to be spread all over the map. The construction dollars spread it all over the map, whereas this amendment puts it into a formula which is extremely focused. It is directed right at the low-income child who today, unfortunately, has been left behind. That low-income child today simply is not getting a fair and competitive education. We are going to try to fix that under the new ESEA bill. In the same process, we need to give the dollars to support the new initiatives. That is what this amendment does. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, what is the status of the time?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield such time as he may consume to the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment offered by Senator Daschle which deals with the rights of police officers and firefighters--especially--firefighters to have the opportunity to organize in collective bargaining agreements. This amendment is timely in light of what we have seen relative to the commitment of our firefighters across the country, along with our police officers and police personnel, in that it gives them rights which are given to most American Government employees. With the enactment of this language, we will have essentially covered the majority of State and local employees in a consistent manner across the country. The language of this amendment simply requires States to provide minimum collective bargaining rights to their public safety employees in whatever manner the States choose. In other words, if the State has any form of collective bargaining, they are basically exempt from this bill. It outlines certain rights that must be protected, but it leaves the majority of decisions to State legislatures, and States that already have the minimum collective bargaining protection, as outlined in the legislation, will be exempt from Federal statutes, as will small municipalities and subdivisions. The amendment also addresses the issue of the right to strike. As we know, public employees do not have a right to strike, and this amendment does nothing to advance that right to any public employee. Further, it protects the right of each employee to join or refrain from joining a labor union organization. In other words, in States which have right-to-work laws, those right-to-work laws are not impacted at all by this legislation. This legislation is extremely important, in my opinion, at this time because it is a statement by the Congress of our understanding of the importance of the jobs which firefighters and police officers do. We saw in New York, obviously, and we saw in Washington that these individuals put their lives on the line, and it is reasonable that they have a fair opportunity to make their case in the form of a collective bargaining atmosphere which is consistent with other Government employees and which is consistent with the laws in the States in which they live and work should those States have collective bargaining agreements. I strongly support this amendment. I appreciate the majority leader bringing it forward. It did pass the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, of which I am the ranking member. There was not a recorded vote on it, but I can assure my colleagues it was a significant majority who supported the bill. I look forward to it being taken up here and adopted in the Senate.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I understand it is the purpose of the leader to go to the Treasury-Postal bill, but I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about the issue of how we as a government and how we as a people are going to address what is clearly a threat that confronts us today in the area of terrorism. Last week, the Commerce-State-Justice bill was on the floor, and a number of initiatives in the area of terrorism were included in that bill. I certainly thank the assistant leader for his strong support for that bill, for the elements which were in that bill, and his speaking on behalf of it at that time. Let me review, so we can put in perspective where we stand as a government, what we have been doing and what we need to do in a number of areas, certainly not a comprehensive review but at least a preliminary review of what has to be done. The Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary, on which I am the ranking member and Senator Hollings is chairman, has held innumerable hearings on this issue over the last 5 years in an effort to try to get our arms around what is obviously an issue that is extremely difficult to get our arms around. It seems a bit hollow now in light of what happened on September 11, but there was an attempt at least to try to put some order into our effort at the Federal level. Clearly, a dramatic amount still needs to be done, and the American people need to understand this is not going to be a simple exercise, an overnight exercise, or an exercise that can be completed in a week or a month or a year. Potentially it may take years before we as a nation are able to bring to the threat of terrorism some resolution which makes us more comfortable with our ability to manage it and deal with it, especially when there are individuals willing to kill themselves and take innocent lives in order to accomplish their goals. Let us begin with the basic threat and how we should address it. The issue of terrorism needs to be addressed on three basic levels. First is the intelligence level, both domestic and international. Second is the apprehension, the catching, of people before they commit the crime, before they undertake the act. People need to understand this is different from what is the traditional law enforcement exercise. In most law enforcement undertakings, we wait until the event occurs, until someone has committed an act which violates our laws, before we undertake to capture them or attempt to bring them to justice. In this instance, under the terrorism instance, the whole mindset must shift in the area of apprehension to one of taking action before the event occurs because, as we have seen, when the event occurs it is so horrific or can be so horrific that it simply cannot be accepted as a consequence of not having taken action. The third element is managing the crisis, managing the event. So it is intelligence, domestic/international; apprehension; and then, should an event occur, the managing of the event, both the immediate crisis and the aftermath, the consequences. In the area of intelligence, it is very clear we have some significant needs. We can divide these needs fairly easily into the needs that involve using people in the gathering of intelligence and the needs that involve technology. In the use-of-people area, we as a government in the 1990s, for a variety of reasons, basically decided we would no longer hire unsavory characters in order to get information. That was a mistake. It was known by a lot of people who were in the intelligence-gathering community to be a mistake when it was done. The decision to rely primarily on electronic surveillance and our capacity to use electronic surveillance as the main way of gathering information was a belief in a system that simply did not work, as has been proven to us. The penetration of small cells, which are for the most part clannish- oriented, usually family groups, is extremely difficult. It is extremely difficult under any scenario, but it is virtually impossible if we do not use people who are not necessarily persons of high character by our definition. Therefore, we as a government made a decision, which was wrong, and we are trying to reverse it today. This Senate has actually spoken on this point in the bill and said the policy of the Government, which up until Tuesday, September 11, was not to hire such individuals for the purposes of on-the-ground intelligence, should no longer be pursued. The CIA and other agencies which have intelligence needs have the authority to proceed with using human intelligence and people they need to hire to accomplish that. That is exactly what we should be doing today. Unfortunately, and I think we have to understand this, it takes months, years, an inordinate amount of time to put these people in place. These individuals with whom we are working in order to gather the human intelligence have to gather their credibility within the organizations they are trying to penetrate, and it literally can take years before those people will become effective. We can not suddenly turn a switch and say we have switched directions and we will be successful in this area. We need to at least begin by turning the switch and saying we are going to switch directions and start using human intelligence-gathering activities again, as we did through most of the cold war. Second, in the electronics area it is very obvious that our intelligence-gathering communities, both domestic and foreign-oriented, whether they are CIA or FBI, have severe problems because of the limitations of law that have been placed on them in the area of intelligence-gathering capability and because of the way the commercial community works today. The bill that passed as a result of the amendment offered by Senator Hatch, Senator Kyl, and Senator Feinstein made some progress in this area in the area of wiretaps and the ability to, rather than focusing on the piece of equipment, focus on getting a court order that allows monitoring of the individual. But there is a great deal more that needs to be done, and I expect within the next day or so we will see a package of proposals sent up here by the Attorney General. I hope we will act quickly. That package has been represented to me to be a package which has what is needed and what can be done without undermining our constitutional protections of search and seizure and other rights we have. The simple fact is, we do need to act in this area. In addition, the area of encryption, time after time, for 4 years, we heard in our committee was the single biggest concern the FBI had in its capacity to adequately monitor what was going on among the terrorist community, those people who wish to promote terrorism. In the area of encryption we need to have a new regime. We need to have the cooperation of the community that is building the software, producing the software, and building the equipment that creates the encryption technology. I have ideas how to do this so we do not undermine their activity to sell their product, and ideas that will allow us as a nation that wants to protect the civil rights of individuals and constitutional rights of individuals to do that, yet still allow our law enforcement community, when it sees a need, to be able to break a code. It allows the community to have the access to the keys to accomplish that under a strict structure which is legal and judicially controlled and therefore does not undermine the rights of the individuals who are producing this product or using the product but simply gets at the bad guys. I have a proposal to do that. More important, we have to recognize this is not a domestic problem. These products are made internationally. I believe we have the right to use the market of the United States as leverage for the purposes of accomplishing the protection of America. We have a huge economic market in the United States. The people making these products want to sell their products in the United States, whether it is this product or something else they make. I believe we should use the leverage of the American market as a way to say, if you are going to sell this type of equipment anywhere in the world, and you want to sell something in the United States also, you have an obligation to comply with our needs for our national security under a strict legal judicial structure. I am hopeful we can set up a regime that will be fair, that will be subject to the judicial controls necessary to protect the constitutional rights of people who are law-abiding but will also give our intelligence community the access to the information they need when they know there is somebody out there using encryption technology for the purposes of pursuing a terrorist act in the United States. There is no excuse for anybody to be underwriting that type of activity in our country. That is the intelligence level. The second level, as I mentioned, was the apprehension level. Apprehension is extremely difficult when you are dealing with the terrorist community. There is an entire law enforcement concept in this Nation that says we apprehend after the act occurs. Yet if we wait until after the act occurs in the area of terrorism, the harm is so extreme, as we saw in New York and in Washington, that it becomes very hard to justify allowing the event to occur before we have declared that the individual needs to be apprehended. We have to change our mindset and our approach, and in doing so we have to address our constitutional protections so you do not end up undermining that because it will make the terrorist successful. The simple fact is we are going to have to adjust our approach in the area of law enforcement to one of apprehending before the event approaches rather than after the event. Second, we are going to have to face the fact that our borders are incredibly porous and we have to set up a new regime for managing our borders which allows the proper flow of individuals back and forth so we can have the access that people, for example, from Mexico wish to have to work in the United States. But we also have to have controls so we know who is coming into our country. Again, I think the Guest Worker Program discussed and in the works is a way to address that. I have some thoughts in that area. This will be a key element of the United States of how we apprehend individuals who are bent on committing acts of terror in our Nation, getting control over our borders. The third element involved is crisis management and consequence management. Here the Federal Government needs to get its act under control. We have 46 agencies responsible for some element of terrorism or counterterrorism. There is tremendous overlap; that is, regrettably, turf issues. There is often indecision and lack of communication of information. In fact, in the instance we had in New York, there may have been a specific lack of communication of information. We need a centralized management structure within our Federal Government. We have proposed in the Commerce-State-Justice bill it be divided for the purposes of domestic terrorist acts--no military but domestic terrorist acts--into two areas. In the Justice Department, appointment of a Deputy Attorney General of Terrorism, with a cross-jurisdiction responsibility. Unless you have budget authority for this individual, there is no point in having such an individual. The Justice Department for crisis management, the Federal Emergency Management Administration for consequence administration, they would essentially be coordinators of the issue of how we handle domestic terrorist events here in the United States. They would function as coequals, and would be sequential, however, in their response to an event. This is just one proposal for how to do it. It is one that passed this Senate and has been strongly supported, for example, by the assistant leader, Senator Reid. I thank Senator Hollings for his support and Senator Warner and Senator Shelby, who participated in the hearings. As I mentioned, this is just one approach to accomplishing this goal, but we need to accomplish this goal, and we need to accomplish it quickly. The key to accomplishing it, as I mentioned, is whoever is given the responsibility for managing the terrorist portfolio, that individual also has to have budgetary responsibility across departmental lines because the only way you control things in this Government is if you control the dollars. If you do not control the dollars, you are not going to be able to control the activity. With the drug czar, we saw a complete failure of just naming someone to a position and claiming he has responsibility when he never got the authority to do the job. We cannot afford that on the issue of terrorism. This cannot be a public relations event. This must be an individual who has significant power and the responsibility and the capacity to carry out that responsibility because he has the power to do it. My time has run out. I know there are other people who want to speak so I will yield the floor, but I do intend to speak further on this issue of how we manage our house on the issue of terrorism. There is a lot we need to do and a great deal that needs to be thought about in this area. I especially thank the Senator from North Dakota for his courtesy.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee for the tremendous effort he has done on this bill and for his very courteous approach to the Republican membership as we brought this bill forward. I thank his staff, led by Lila Helms, who did a superb job. I especially thank my staff who worked hours, nights and days in many instances, led by Jim Morhard, who has done an extraordinary job to bring this bill to its present status. It is an excellent bill. I appreciate the support of the Senate. I thank the Members who supported this bill.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order, after passage of H.R. 2500, for the Senate to consider a Collins amendment, which is at the desk; that the amendment be considered agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Can you give me an example of how a Sub-office designation would reduce that strain?

Mr. GREGG. I would like to discuss the need to designate the Immigration and Naturalization office located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, as a Sub-office, with an Officer-in-Charge. I understand that the area serviced by the Fort Smith INS office has experienced tremendous growth in its Hispanic population and needs this designation in order to efficiently administer and enforce our nation's immigration laws.

Mr. GREGG. Yes. That is exactly how I understand the amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma. We are happy to accept this amendment. designation of the ft. smith, arkansas INS office as a sub-office

Mr. GREGG. As the distinguished Chairman of the State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Subcommittee knows, we have provided substantial funds through the years to support Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) efforts to catch child predators and pornographers engaging in criminal activity on the Internet. The FBI's first undercover operation in this field of investigation, code named ``Innocent Images,'' was initiated in 1995. Six years later, Innocent Images is an FBI National Initiative, supported by annual funding of $10 million, with undercover operations in eleven field offices. The FBI's Innocent Images Initiative utilizes undercover agents posing as children on-line to identify and investigate potential sexual predators. Under current practice, the FBI's Innocent Images Initiative relies on individual agents posing as children in on-line ``chat rooms.'' Thus, the effectiveness of the program is necessarily limited because human resources are limited. Recently, I became aware that a company called Spectre AI has developed new technology that has the potential to increase vastly the effectiveness of the Innocent Images Initiative. Spectre's technology utilizes computers that are capable of monitoring large numbers of on- line chat rooms simultaneously. These computers are programmed to search for certain key words or phrases for which agents are trained to spot when on-line looking for child predators and pornographers. When such key words or phrases are identified, Spectre's artificial intelligence program carries on a limited, two-way dialogue with the potential child predator. Simultaneously with the initiation of this two-way dialogue, the Spectre technology notifies an FBI agent, who then takes over the investigative chat-room dialogue. This new technology developed by Spectre AI has the potential to increase exponentially the number of Internet chat rooms that the FBI can monitor. Thus, it holds the promise of an enormous leap forward in the effectiveness of the FBI's ``Innocent Images Initiative'' and its goal of protecting our Nation's children from sexual predators and pornographers. Does the Chairman agree with me that Specter AI's new technology should be carefully reviewed by the FBI for possible utilization in its ``Innocent Images Initiative''?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff members be granted the privilege of the floor for purposes of debate on this bill: Jeff Kuhnreich, John Barth, Joe Lozano, and Jeff Taylor of Senator Hatch's staff.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that Rebecca Farmer and Casey McGinley, members of Senator Kyl's staff, be granted the privilege of the floor during the pending debate on H.R. 2500.