Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. HARKIN. OK.

Mr. HARKIN. Not once until 2 years ago they did it once, and that was corrected. Now they want to do it again. Once was once too many. Now they want to change the underlying structure of the farm bill. I am telling you, it is not right to do so. I thank the Senator from Arizona for giving me the time to explain why I am doing what I am doing. I thank the Senator.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Arizona. I did not hear what he said.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator for that kindness.

Mr. HARKIN. My plans are to fight for what we in the Agriculture Committee----

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator asked what my plans are. My plans are to protect my farmers.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Arizona. I did not hear what he said.

Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry: Are we not in a quorum call?

Mr. HARKIN. I object.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Arizona, my plan is to fight for an agreement that was hammered out in the Agriculture bill a couple or 3 years ago that everybody signed up on, everyone agreed, the President signed it. It is not right. I tell my friends, it is not right to treat farmers in one area of this country different than the other. For the last 50 years, this Congress has responded to disasters, whether they are earthquakes or tornadoes or floods or hail or fire or hurricanes. For 50 years, we have responded, and not once, not once have we offset it. It has always been in emergency spending.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, America is stuck in a jobless recovery. This jobless recovery is not an accident. It is in large measure the result of failed economic policies, policies that the Bush administration stubbornly clings to. Despite the loss of millions of private sector jobs over the last 3 and a half years, this administration has embraced offshore outsourcing. It has been against extending unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed. It is adamant against raising the minimum wage. And it has been determined to eliminate time-and-a-half overtime pay for millions of American workers. It is time, I believe, for us to chart a new course. It is time for Washington to listen to ordinary working Americans. They are telling us loudly and clearly that their No. 1 issue is economic security. They are telling us that they fear losing their jobs, their health care, and their retirement. Now they also fear losing their right to time-and-a-half compensation for overtime. They fear, with good reason, that under the Department of Labor's new rules, they will be obliged to work a 50- or 60-hour week with zero additional compensation. For millions of working Americans this is unacceptable, and it is the last straw. Accordingly, we have repeatedly offered an amendment to stop the Bush administration's new rules to eliminate overtime pay protections for millions of American workers. That amendment was voted on numerous times in the Senate and passed both by strong bipartisan majorities. It also has the overwhelming support of the American public. Yet despite this clear expression of the will of Congress and the public, my overtime amendment was stripped earlier in the year from the Omnibus appropriations bill in conference and again this week in the conference on the FSC-ETI bill. But my overtime amendment will be back, and it will be back by popular demand. It amazes me, wherever I travel in the United States, people come up to me to talk about this overtime issue. They know what the administration is doing. They are angry. They want action to stop these new overtime rules. Frankly, at this point, the administration has zero credibility on this issue. The Department of Labor claims that it simply wants to give employers a clearer guide as to who is eligible for overtime pay. But ordinary Americans are not buying this happy talk. They know the administration has put into effect a radical rewrite of the Nation's overtime rules. They know these new rules strip millions of workers from the right to fair compensation. The American people are right. Plain and simple, the new overtime rules are a frontal attack on the 40-hour workweek, proposed initially by the administration without a single public hearing. The new rules could effectively end overtime pay in dozens of occupations, including nurses, police officers, clerical workers, air traffic controllers, social workers, even journalists. Indeed, the new criteria for excluding employees from overtime are deliberately vague and elastic, so as to stretch across vast swaths of the workforce. Listen to Mary Schlichte, a nurse in Cedar Rapids, IA. Here is what she said: Many nurses just like me work long hours in a field with very stressful working conditions and little compensation. . . . Our patients rely on us, and our families depend on us. We need overtime pay so we can stay in the profession we love and still make ends meet. Ms. Schlichte told me about her nurse colleagues in Cedar Rapids who also rely on overtime pay. One nurse is married to a struggling farmer, and she relies on overtime pay to cover their insurance premiums. They already fear losing their farm, she says, and now they fear losing their health care, too. Dixie Harms is a longtime trainer of nurses in Des Moines. Ms. Harms told me: If overtime is changed for hospital nurses, we will see a mass exodus of registered nurses from the hospital setting because they will get fed up and refuse to ``volunteer'' so many hours doing what they love doing. Three years ago, after the terrible September 11 attacks, many here in Washington spoke eloquently about the heroism of our firefighters, police officers, first responders, and public safety workers. Ever since, America's first responders have worked long hours to protect us from terrorist threats. But the administration even wanted to deny these workers time-and-a-half compensation for those longer hours. This is wrong. Since passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, overtime rights and the 40-hour workweek have been sacrosanct, respected by Presidents of both parties. But alas, it is not sacred to this administration. For 65 years, the 40-hour workweek has allowed workers to spend time with their families instead of toiling past dark and on weekends. At a time when family dinner is becoming an oxymoron, this standard is more important than ever. These radical revisions are antiworker and antifamily. And given the fact that we are stuck in a jobless recovery, the timing of this attack on overtime could not be worse. It is yet another instance of this administration's economic malpractice. Bear in mind that time-and-a- half pay accounts for some 25 percent of the total income of Americans who work overtime. With average U.S. incomes declining, the proposed changes would slash the paychecks of millions of white-collar workers. Moreover, the new rules are all but guaranteed to hurt job creation in the United States. Isn't this just basic logic? If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will push their current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With millions of Americans currently out of work, why would we give employers yet another disincentive to hire new workers? It is bad enough to deny 6 million workers their overtime rights, but what is striking is the mean-spiritedness of the Department of Labor. The Department offered employers what amounts to a cheat sheet. It offered employers helpful tips on how to avoid paying overtime to the lowest paid workers, the same workers who are supposedly helped by the new overtime rules. For example, the Department suggested cutting a worker's hourly wage so that any new overtime payments will not result in a net gain to the employee. It also recommended raising a worker's salary slightly to meet the threshold at which eligibility for time-and-a-half pay ends. This is just disgraceful. But it gets worse. The administration's scheme specifically targeted veterans, categorizing many as professionals even if they do not hold a professional degree or receive the same salary as degreed professionals. Think about it: The administration opted to deny overtime pay to first responders, police officers, and firefighters who put their lives on the line protecting us here at home. It also aimed to take away overtime from veterans who put their lives on the line overseas. This may seem outrageous to most Americans, but some major employers are very pleased. Here is a portion of the Boeing Corporation's comments on the Department's rules: Many of [Boeing's] most skilled technical workers received a significant portion of their knowledge and training outside the university classroom, typically any branch of the military service . . . Boeing thus supports the department's focus on the knowledge used by the employee performing her job rather than the source of the knowledge or skill . . . The National Association of Manufacturers made similar comments. Let me quote: NAM applauds the department for including this alternative means of establishing that an employee has the knowledge required for the exemption to apply. This addition is entirely consistent with the realities of the current workplace and the purpose of the Fair Labor Standards Act. For example, many people who come out of the military have significant knowledge based on work experience but have not had ``a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.'' Understandably, veterans were deeply disturbed by the administration's proposed new rules. For example, Vietnam Veterans of America wrote to the Secretary of Labor and said: [Veterans] who have received military training equivalent to a specialized degree could now be classified as a professional employee and lose their right to overtime. This will be true even if the veterans in question do not earn the higher pay afforded to those with an advanced degree or with supervisory/management positions. The organization further complained that this legitimizes the already extensive problems of discrimination against veterans. And this is from the national president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Thomas Corey: Therefore, we would like to make you aware that the proposed modification of the rules would give employers the ability to prohibit veterans from receiving overtime pay based on the training they received in the military . . . The proposed rule changes will make these veterans and their families unfairly economically vulnerable in comparison with their non-veteran peers. We hope you will agree that the men and women who have served our Nation so well in military service should not be penalized for having served. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I understand there is no quorum call in progress.

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. HARKIN. What amendment?

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Well, I don't know if that is right. We would have to look at that to see if that is right. Thirteen thousand Iraqi civilians killed? How many women, how many children? The rest of the world is asking, what has happened to you, America? America used to be the moral leader in the world. You were the ones we looked to for guidance and direction, to be honest and open, not secretive, not lying to the rest of the world. When we confronted Nikita Khruschev in 1962 when they put missiles in Cuba, we had the photographs. We had the positive proof. The world has looked upon us like that. And now? Now the rest of the world is looking at the United States and saying: You are just lying. You lied about this. You covered it up. And look at the mess you have created now. And still President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, the whole crowd of them still continues to insist that everything they did was right. They still continue to insist that they would do the whole thing just as they did it. In any other country in this world, if the leadership of that country had done this, they would have to resign in disgrace. They certainly would not be seeking reelection. I am surprised this President and Vice President and their team are asking the American people to put them there again after this--1,061 Americans dead; several thousand, 8,000, severely injured for the rest of their lives. Now we have this report about 13,000 Iraqi civilians dead. It is a country in chaos. America is isolated in the world community when, after September 11, 2001, the world was on our side. They were with us. They wanted to help us go after al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the terrorists because the rest of the world knew then, as they know now, they have a stake in going after terrorists. But they had no stake in going into a misguided war, a war that we were taken into with falsehoods--absolute, total falsehoods. I would be the first to say I don't have all the answers on how we get out of Iraq. It is just like dropping a ceramic bowl and it breaks and you have to put it together again. It is very tough. But I do know this: We will never solve our situation in Iraq, we will never get our troops out of Iraq with the leadership we have in the White House right now. This President has burned his bridges; he has poisoned the well with every country in the world. People know they misled us and continued to mislead us in Iraq. I mentioned the lives. How about the money--$200 billion and counting. Well, they say $130 billion or $140 billion. Come on, it is going to be well over $200 billion, and we know that. Yet we cannot provide health care to our people. We cannot fund No Child Left Behind. We cannot pass a highway bill to rebuild our highways because we don't have enough money. No, I don't have all the answers in Iraq. I am the first to state that. I know one thing: We will never be able to get out of Iraq and solve that mess with the leadership that has so misled us and the world in the past. We need new leadership with fresh credibility to give them a chance to go to the rest of the world and say there is someone new here, and we are going to rebuild those coalitions and alliances. We are not going to continue to go down that road. There is one thing about being consistent; there is another thing about being stubborn and reckless.

Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, just when you think things have gotten about as bad as they can get with the situation in Iraq and what got us into Iraq, another shoe drops. This morning we open up our newspapers and we read that the Duelfer report came out yesterday. This is the person whom the Bush administration picked to investigate Iraq's weapons programs. And here is what the headline reads: U.S. ``Almost All Wrong'' on Weapons. It is not that we were just slightly wrong, 50 percent or 60 percent or 40 percent--99.9 percent of everything that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell said prior to the war in Iraq and right after it was wrong. Where did they come up with this stuff? Where did they come up with the sayings they had on Iraq? Here is Colin Powell: There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. That was in a February 5, 2003 address to the U.N. Security Council. Where did he get that nonsense? Did he just pluck it out of thin air? Here is Condoleezza Rice: We have found, in Iraq, biological weapons laboratories that look precisely like what Secretary Powell described in his February 5th report to the United Nations. That was from May 28, 2003. She says: We found them. Where are they? Don't these people have any shame at all? Here is President Bush: Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding facilities used to make more of those weapons. Absolutely false. Donald Rumsfeld, March 11, 2003: . . . we know that he continues to hide biological or chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential neighborhoods. Totally false. Here is President Bush before the United Nations, September 16: Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the U.N. Work at testing and production facilities shows that Iraq is building more long-range missiles that can inflict mass death throughout the region. President Bush, United Nations, September 16, 2002. Totally false. Totally false. Here is Vice President Cheney: Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute . . . We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. Vice President Cheney, March 16, 2003--every single one of them telling mistruths to the American people to get us sucked into the Iraq war. Now we have--I don't know what happened yesterday--1,061 dead, 8,000 of our young people casualties, injured for life. How many countless innocent Iraqis, women, children? They didn't like Saddam Hussein either, but they are now injured, many of them killed. The country is in chaos. Iraq is a quagmire. The rest of the world is looking at this, and we are the laughingstock of the world. They are saying, what happened to you, America? What happened to you?

Mr. HARKIN. I didn't hear that.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Thirteen thousand Iraqis have been killed?

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wanted to close up anyway. We hear a lot about consistency. I tell people this: Imagine you are a passenger in a car. You are on a steep mountain road, and you want to get to the bottom of the mountain. You look over, and your driver is President Bush. He has his hands gripped tightly on that wheel, and he is looking straight down that road. You see a bend in the road up ahead and you say: Mr. President, there is a bend in that road. But the President is hunched over that wheel, he is gripping it tightly, and he is looking straight ahead and squinting those eyes, and he says: I don't care. I started out straight, and that is the way I am going. Then he drives you over the cliff. You get to the bottom, but your car is wrecked and you are either dead or severely injured. Imagine yourself a passenger in a car on that same steep mountain road. You look over and your driver is John Kerry. You say: Look, Mr. Kerry, there is a bend in the road. He says: I see that bend, and I know how to take it. So he takes that bend and another couple bends, and he gets you safely to the bottom of the mountain. The car is secure and you are safe. That car represents our country, and you are the ``passenger''--the people of this country. I am sorry, Mr. President, it is not enough to be stubborn and reckless. That hurts our country. That hurts our people. It is better to be tough and smart. It is better to know that sometimes our enemies are going to shift their tactics. The terrorists are not always going to do one thing. We better be able to respond. Yet we are bogged down in one quagmire in Iraq, and that is where we are headed. That is dragging our country down. It is hurting our people. That is stubborn. That is reckless. That is not consistent. That is ignoring the fact that any military leader will tell you that when you go into battle, you have a plan. But if the enemy does something different, you have to be able to maneuver. George Bush cannot maneuver. He is stuck in the quicksands of Iraq, while al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden go about their business. Better to be tough and smart than to be reckless and stubborn. I yield the floor.