Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I am here to congratulate the University of Northern Iowa Panthers football team and wish them the best of luck as they prepare to take on the Appalachian State Mountaineers today at 8 p.m. in Chattanooga, TN, for the 1-AA national championship. This is truly a historic occasion, as this marks UNI's first appearance in the national championship contest. In addition, UNI has the opportunity to be only the second Iowa NCAA school to win a national title in football. Central College in Iowa won the 1974 division III championship. This has been a season full of highs and lows for the Panthers. Starting the season at 4 and 3, the outlook looked kind of bleak, but the team did not get discouraged. They did not give up. Instead, they rattled off seven straight wins. As a result of their tenacity and determination, the Panthers find themselves tonight in the championship game. In 5 years, head coach Mark Farley has won 44 games, at least a share of three conference championships, and he has led the Panthers to three playoff appearances. Under his leadership, the Panthers have again become a national power in 1-AA football. And Coach Farley is a graduate of UNI. He was a member of the first UNI football team to play in the national semifinals. Twenty years later, after 10 playoff appearances and 5 semifinal appearances, he has led his alma mater to their first championship game. Yesterday, the Des Moines Register ran a story titled ``Panther Football A to Z.'' The article tells the story of the team's season, beginning with the letter A for adversity. As I mentioned, the Panthers record stood at 4 to 3, but after seven consecutive wins, which included five late-game comebacks, they have earned the trip to Chattanooga and the adoration of their fans. Much as linebacker John Herman stated in the article: Text messages, e-mails, phone calls--it's crazy to see how many people are excited for us to get here. The article concludes with the letter Z for zenith by quoting athletic director Rick Hartzell, who said: There's never been a better time to be a Panther. I congratulate the young men, their coaches, and the University of Northern Iowa for their tremendous season and wish them the best of luck tonight. I will be watching on ESPN2. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Des Moines Register article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I see my friend, Richard Burr, the outstanding Senator from North Carolina, on the floor. North Carolina, of course, is the home State of that great school, Appalachian State. I know that after their defeat tonight under the paws of the Panthers, it will continue to be a great school and a great football team. My good friend and I have made a little wager on the game tonight: six North Carolina pork chops versus six Iowa pork chops. You see, I say to my friend, just as Iowa is No. 1 in pork production, and North Carolina is No. 2 in pork production, after tonight, Iowa will be No. 1 in 1-AA football, and North Carolina will be No. 2 in 1-AA football. So, again, I look forward to dining on those great North Carolina pork chops. I ask my friend, please, would you throw in some of that North Carolina barbecue sauce with them? I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Des Moines Register, Dec. 14, 2005] Panther Football A to Z (By Rob Gray) Chattanooga, TN.--It's hard to describe, let alone explain. Northern Iowa's stunning run from NCAA Division I-AA football playoff longshot to championship game participant ends Friday with a first-ever title hanging in the balance. Only Appalachian State stands in the way. ``I'm sure after the season's over I'm really going to be kind of in awe, but right now we're trying to get focused on the game, trying not to get caught up in the moment,'' said Panther quarterback Eric Sanders. ``But in the offseason, I know I'm going to reflect and be pretty proud and go like, `Wow. This really did happen.' '' The No. 7 Panthers' transcendence of high-profile injuries, daunting fourth-quarter deficits and taxing road trips may defy logic, but it can be loosely quantified, or encapsulated, within a quick spin through the alphabet. So it's on to Chattanooga, via the ABCs: A is for Adversity. The Panthers (11-3) once stood 4-3, but seven consecutive wins followed, including five late-game comebacks, and overcoming obstacles has kindled adulation. ``Text messages, e-mails, phone calls--it's crazy to see how many people are excited for us to get here,'' linebacker John Hermann said. B is for Balance. Northern Iowa running back David Horne has rushed for 1,039 yards and 16 touchdowns. Quarterback Eric Sanders has thrown for 2,748 yards and 23 touchdowns. C is for Coaching. Mark Farley suffered along with teammates and fellow coaches in five Panther losses in the semifinals. This season, he helped orchestrate a breakthrough. ``We've got the opportunity to represent our school, but also our state,'' Farley said. D is for Defensive ends. Appalachian State (11-3) features two standouts at the position. Jason Hunter and Marques Murrell have combined for 22 sacks. E is for Extra credit. Northern Iowa kicker Brian Wingert has drilled three consecutive game-winners. F is for Finish. The Panthers have outscored foes, 63-14, in the fourth quarter over their seven-game win streak. G is for Grounded. Northern Iowa's defense has allowed big games from highly rated quarterbacks Erik Meyer, Ricky Santos and Barrick Nealy in the postseason, but kept them from winning. H is for History. Both Northern Iowa and Appalachian State make their first title-game appearances. I is for Interception. Matt Tharp's pick of Nealy preserved Friday's 40-37 overtime win at Texas State. ``(He) made a good play with a cast on his hand,'' fellow defensive back Tanner Varner said. ``It was just amazing.'' J is for Jeff Bates. The Indianola senior center eased into the starting role when offensive line anchor John Schabilion suffered a season-ending injury. K is for Krystal. Fans traveling to Chattanooga will encounter this southern version of White Castle. L is for Linebackers. Northern Iowa's Darin Heideman and Brett Koebcke highlight a defense that gets stingy at precisely the right moment. Koebcke is questionable for Friday, though, with a high ankle sprain. M is for Mountaineers. As in Appalachian State's nickname. The team has lost just once to a I-AA opponent this season. N is for National. ESPN2 will broadcast a Panthers football game to a coast-to-coast audience for the second consecutive week. 0 is for Overtime. The Panthers stand 2-0 in overtime games, beating Western Kentucky, 23-20, in double overtime and Texas State. ``We've definitely caught some breaks to be at this point, but you kind of have to to get this far,'' Sanders said. P is for Pecan Bowl. Way back in 1964, the Panthers won this Division II bowl game, 19-17, over Lamar Tech at Abilene, Texas. Q is for Quarterback(s). As usual, the Panthers will face a good one--whether it be Richie Williams, who could be out with a ruptured ligament, or backup Trey Elder, who led the Mountaineers to last week's 29-23 win over Furman. R is for Receivers. Justin Surrency leads the Panthers with seven touchdown catches--including an end-zone grab in four consecutive games. Patrick Hunter and Jamie Goodwin furnish downfield speed. Brian Cutright excels at tight end. ``There's no doubt in this team at any time,'' Cutright said. (see item ``A'') S is for Kevin Stensrud. The defensive lineman form Lake Mills has battled countless injuries to reach his final game. T is for Two-point conversion. Surrency's leaping catch to tie the game at Texas State came amid three defenders. ``I had just enough height on it, and not just enough height on it to get it over the first guy and in between the other two guys,'' Sanders said of the pass. U is for Upsets. Northern Iowa has topped three teams this season ranked No. 1 at some point--with two wins on the road. V is for Variety. Sanders has hit nine or more receivers in five of the past seven wins. W is for Waffle House. This franchise dots the Tennessee landscape like Casey's General Stores in Iowa. X is for X-Factor. Jason Breeland provides a spark in the Panther backfield and at wideout. Y is for Yards. Expect plenty. The Panthers average 444 yards in the playoffs; the Mountaineers average 437. Z is for Zenith. As athletic director Rick Hartzell said, there's never been a better time to be a Panther. ``For our type of institution, we've got the best athletic program in the country,'' he said.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, yesterday afternoon, the majority leader offered a unanimous consent request to take up and pass, without any amendments or any further action, H.R. 2520, a bill to collect cord blood for use in therapies for various kinds of blood diseases. I objected to that unanimous consent request after quite a bit of talk on the floor. As I explained yesterday, I support this bill. I am a cosponsor of this bill. In fact, I joined with Senator Specter 2 years ago to create the National Cord Blood Stem Cell Banking Program by including $10 million for that purpose in the fiscal year 2004 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill, of which I am ranking member. We have been funding that program ever since. So I have been in the lead in championing cord blood therapies by getting the program funded and keeping it funded. Nevertheless, I objected to the unanimous consent request because I believe the Senate should take up the cord blood bill at the same time we take up H.R. 810, which is the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. That is what the House did, and that is what the House passed. The House approved both these bills on May 24 of this year, and we have been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting in the Senate to do the same thing. We keep hearing from the majority leader that he wants to bring up H.R. 810. In fact, in what I thought was a very courageous speech the majority leader gave on July 29, he said he would vote for H.R. 810. But we can't seem to bring it up on the Senate floor. Members on the Republican side keep coming up with new bills to try to confuse things. They want to vote on five or six or seven bills, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with stem cell research. So a number of us on both sides of the aisle formed a bipartisan group to do what we could to try to bring both these bills, the same two the House passed, H.R. 810 and H.R. 2520, and do what the House did--bring them up, debate them, and pass them. When this unanimous consent request was then offered by the majority leader yesterday, I was on the floor. I had not checked with all the other people who had been involved in that effort, so I objected because I felt strongly that the two ought to be together. I said to the majority leader last night that I would take a look at it today and go over it with my staff. I have decided, after going over it and looking at it, to lift my hold--I can only speak for myself--but I have decided to lift my hold on H.R. 2520. One of the reasons I am doing so is because, quite frankly, the bill doesn't accomplish anything that we are not already doing or about to do. In 2002, under the direction of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, of which I am ranking member and Senator Specter is the chair, the registry on bone marrow units had to start including cord blood units as well. Last year, there was a 24-percent increase in the number of cord blood units in the registry. This is because Senator Specter and I put this in the bill in 2003. Then, in fiscal year 2004, I helped secure $10 million to create the National Cord Blood Stem Cell Banking Program. Our subcommittee has appropriated $19.8 million in the last 2 years for that effort. That is for the banking of cord blood. Yesterday, my colleague from Kansas, Senator Brownback, said that ``more kids will die if we don't take up the cord blood bill.'' That is simply not true. Cord blood units are being collected and saving lives as we speak today because of the funding that we appropriated through the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations subcommittee. Let's be clear, that money is there. We appropriated it. It is doing its job right now. What will help save lives and help with cord blood is if Republican conservatives would stop cutting funding for the National Cord Blood Stem Cell Banking Program that we put in a couple of years ago. In the Senate version of the fiscal year 2006 Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill, under the leadership of Senator Specter, we included $9.9 million for cord blood banking. To hear the talk last night, one would think we didn't have any money. We put $9.9 million in the bill. Guess what. The House had zero. The conference committee cut our $9.9 million down to $4 million. That means 3,900 fewer units of cord blood will be collected under the fiscal year 2006 appropriations bill than in last year's bill. I would hope my good friend from Kansas will come to the floor and implore his colleagues not to go along with the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill and get that money back in there, but I didn't hear anything said about that. The cuts to cord blood banking do not stop at the $4 million level. We are told that when the DOD appropriations bill comes back, there will be a 1-percent, across-the-board cut for every Federal program. First, the cord blood funding is cut from $9.9 million to $4 million. Now, it is going to get another 1-percent cut for good measure. As I said, if Senators want to do more for cord blood banking, they ought to increase the funding, at least not cut it in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill. But it is being cut. It shouldn't be cut. We put the money in there. So if my colleagues feel strongly about banking cord blood and using that cord blood to save lives, they ought to be out here demanding that we not cut it from what we put in the Senate bill. But I have not heard one person come on the floor and take that up and say: No, we are not going to agree to those cuts. If Senators want to do more for cord blood banking, they should increase the funding, not cut it. But if Senators want to go ahead and pass H.R. 2520, fine, I have no problem with that. There is no harm in passing language that authorizes work that is already being done by the Appropriations Committee. At least Senators who come out and talk at least ought to thank Senator Specter for taking the lead on this. There is another reason why I am lifting my hold. When we debate H.R. 810 next year--let me put it this way. The majority leader has kept saying he wants to make sure we bring up H.R. 810. Senator Hatch from Utah said we are going to bring up H.R. 810. We are going to have that debate; we are going to vote on it. Well, when we bring it up next year and debate it, it will be crystal clear who supports medical research and who does not. The question will be very simple: Are my colleagues for stem cell research or are they not? Cord blood transplants, while enormously beneficial to people with certain blood diseases, are no substitute for embryonic stem cell research. Cord blood cannot do a thing for people with Parkinson's, ALS, juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer's. These are the things we can address with embryonic stem cell research. So I wanted to make it very clear today, No. 1, that I have taken off my hold on the unanimous consent. They want to bring it out again. Secondly, Senator Specter and I have taken steps in the Appropriations Committee both to put the money in there but also to set up the registry. We have already set up the registry. There was some talk yesterday that maybe there is not a registry out there. Of course there is a registry. As I said, it went up 24 percent last year. H.R. 2520 basically authorizes what we are already doing, anyway. That is fine. But I implore my colleagues who are interested in this, as I am, come out and talk about the funding. Talk about the 3,900 fewer babies, young people, who will not get cord blood because of the cut in funding from $9.9 million now to less than $4 million. Let us hear some talk about that rather than being here and passing an authorizing bill, which does not do one single thing more than what we are doing already. What it does is make sure the funding is there for the registry and to collect the cord blood and to bank it so that people and young people who have these terrible diseases can get the cord blood to help them. I hope we do not make these cuts in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. It is there, but we should not cut it. And if they do, I will have more to say about it next year when we return in January and February. I hope we can bring up H.R. 810, have a good debate on it, and let us vote it up or down, as the House did, and send it on to the President so we can get on with the vital research that is needed on embryonic stem cell research. I conclude with this: There are some stories in the paper today-- there were a few yesterday--a front-page story today about a South Korean research doctor and the fact that he may have--I do not know all the facts--falsified some stem cell lines. There are indications, at least in my reading of the medical journal, there is some reason to believe he actually did do that, that it was falsified. Then I heard some comments such as, well, see, there is the problem with stem cell research. That points out the necessity for us to authorize it, to have the National Institutes of Health supervise it, have jurisdiction over it, so that it is done in an ethical way, where we can monitor it and make sure we do not have rogue elements riding off doing their own thing, so we have standards by which we can measure stem cell research, so we can have legitimate, ethical, moral guidelines which researchers can follow, and we can know who is doing the legitimate good work and know who the outliers are. The fact that this story has come out today makes it even more imperative that we pass H.R. 810 and we have National Institutes of Health jurisdiction oversight over this kind of research. I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. HARKIN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Further reserving the right to object, and I will object, with all due deference to my friend from Kansas, and he is my friend, these two need to be together as they were in the House. I keep hearing about we will bring this up and debate stem cells. I didn't come prepared with pictures. I can show you pictures of people dying today because they could use stem cell transplants right now. My friend from Kansas says decades. No. It will be decades if we keep diddling around and not doing anything. I hear that we will bring it up and debate it. I have heard that for half a year. Unless the majority leader can give us a date certain--give us a date--hopefully before May 24, 2006--if the majority leader can give us a date before then when we will bring up H.R. 810--if they want to bring up these other bills, fine, as separate bills, not as amendments to H.R. 810; bring them up separately and we will debate and vote on them, fine. I have no problem with that. But unless the majority leader can give us a date certain and not more of this ``maybe we will debate it sometime in the future,'' I will object. I reserve the right to object and I ask the majority leader, can he give us a date certain by which the Senate will take up H.R. 810 as a freestanding bill without amendments? If they want to bring up other bills, the cloning bill, that is fine, too--not as an amendment to H.R. 810, but as a separate bill. I ask the majority leader, can he give us a date certain by which this Senate will set aside time to bring up H.R. 810 as a freestanding bill without amendment, debate it, and vote it up or down?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to first pay my respects to Senator Frist and his leadership. He has been a leader in this area. He knows it well. We served on the same committee together when our leader came here to the Senate. I also commend Senator Frist for his leadership on the stem cell issue, a very courageous stand. I want to make it very clear that I support the cord blood bill. I am a cosponsor of it. What's more, I joined with Senator Specter 2 years ago to create the National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Program, and as our leader said, we included $10 million for that purpose in the fiscal year 2004 Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill. We have been funding that program ever since. When I say I want this bill to pass, I have a record to back that up. But I have said for months that we should consider the cord blood bill at the same time that we take up H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. That is what the House of Representatives did. On May 24, the House approved both bills. We have been waiting in the Senate to do the same thing. Senator Specter and I, along with Senators Hatch, Feinstein, Kennedy, and Smith all agree. Let's have up-or-down votes on cord blood and H.R. 810, as the House did. The House did them together. Then we can send them to the President. We keep hearing that we want to bring up H.R. 810. In fact, I pay my respects to the leader for his very courageous speech. On July 29, our leader said he would vote for the bill. But we just can't seem to bring it up on the Senate floor. Members keep coming up with new bills to try to confuse things. They want to vote on 5 or 6 or 7 bills, some of which have nothing to do with stem cells or cord blood. I understand there is a lot of pressure on Senators to take up the cord blood bill before the end of the year. I have no problem with that, but under one condition--that we also take up H.R. 810. I reserve the right to object. I ask the leader if he would modify his request to include H.R. 810 in his amendment at the desk.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, regular order.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. That is really the essence of it, Madam President. We need a better bill. We should not vote for this one. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I just said so, yes.

Mr. HARKIN. First, I say to my friend, and he is a dear friend of mine--we have exchanged chairmanships on this committee going back over 15 years--as I said earlier in the Chamber, and I say again, the bill that our chairman, Senator Specter, put together and that we brought out on the Senate floor, we worked it. Our staff worked it. We got a 97-to-3 vote, I say to my friend. The bill that the Chairman brought to the floor we passed 97 to 3. It was a good bill. We always want to do more, but given the restrictions, that was a good bill. That is the bill we ought to have before us now. The problem is that the House wouldn't go along with it. But that doesn't mean that we have to go along with it. I appreciate the position the chairman is in. I have been in that position, too, in the past. I appreciate the difficult position he is in. But I want the record to be clear that this chairman brought out a good bill, a bill that was passed 97 to 3 by the Senate. I point out that this chairman fought very hard for our priorities and for health funding. I don't want anyone to mistake what I am saying. But I am just saying that the House and I have to say the White House, maybe through inaction or not being involved, let it happen and are now confronting us with this conference report that is totally inadequate. That is totally inadequate. I might add to my friend from Pennsylvania that what we are facing now is the result of a bad budget. That is what it is. We have a bad budget forced on us. This is sort of the end result of that. But even with that bad budget, we came out with a decent bill. I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, I only wish the White House had been actively involved in this conference and came down and told the House leadership: We want nothing less than what the Senate did. If we had that, we would have had a bill out here that would pass 97 to 3 again. It might even pass unanimously. So I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, we can do better than this. I say to my friend, I do not enjoy voting against this bill. I do not enjoy it. I do not enjoy not signing the conference report. But we can do better. We do not have to accept this. We can go on a continuing resolution, a real continuing resolution, and say to the White House and the House: No, we need to do better than this. That is why I say to my friend from Pennsylvania--I have the greatest respect and admiration for him, as he knows, and he has fought hard for us--sometimes at the end of the day you have to say no, we are not going to accept it. So that is our position and that is my position on this bill. I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, I know he has other things he has to work on today on different legislation and everything, but we have to send a signal to the House and the White House that this is unacceptable. I say to my friend, I thank him for his leadership and for bringing out a good bill here in the Senate, something we were proud of and voted for. I was proud to work with Senator Specter on that bill. I am sorry the House and, yes, I say the White House--they should have been involved in this--are now confronting us with a bill that is unacceptable. I thank my chairman.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, under the rule, I have 90 minutes--some of it has already been used up in the quorum call--to speak on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that is now before the Senate. I again ask any Senator who wants to come over and speak on this time to try to be here before 10:30. I would be glad to yield time to Senators who want to come over and talk about this bill and why this bill should not be passed. At this time of the year when we are seeing all the festive holiday decorations, Christmas trees, all the lights around, there is a certain mood about Christmas. It is a mood of being generous and understanding that it is the season for giving. It is the season for thinking about those who may be less fortunate than ourselves. It is also the time of the year when most families of means get together and think about their giving, how they are going to support charities or charitable giving toward the end of the year. It is true in churches all over the country and many nonprofit organizations. This is the time of year when people decide to give money to the churches, to everything, the Salvation Army, to all kinds of nonprofits. It is the time of the year when we remember ``A Christmas Carol'' by Charles Dickens, the wonderful stories about ``A Christmas Carol'' played in high school plays and theaters all over the country every year at this time. Charles Dickens ``A Christmas Carol,'' the story of Ebenezer Scrooge. ``Bah humbug,'' remember that? That is his familiar saying about Christmas, ``bah humbug''--this tight man, ungenerous, miserly, stingy, with no feelings of compassion whatsoever to those less fortunate. We all know what happened in ``A Christmas Carol.'' He is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past and the Christmas future. He then begins to see clearly that who he has been and what he has stood for is wrong. The wonderful thing about Charles Dickens and ``A Christmas Carol'' is, at the end, Scrooge becomes compassionate and generous and changes his ways. It is a wonderful story for this time of the year. If only life in Congress imitated that, if only Congress could follow the example of Ebenezer Scrooge in the final act of the play. I am sorry to say, in terms of the appropriations bill before us, the bill that funds those things that lift people up, that help the poorest in our society these days, to reach down, to give everyone hope, and try to make our society a little bit more fair and more just--that is what is in this bill. That is what this bill is about. But, sad to say, in this bill, as it is before us, Ebenezer Scrooge--the first Ebenezer Scrooge, the one before he changed in the final act--is in this bill. Scrooge reigns in this bill. My friend and distinguished senior member of the Appropriations Committee, the Senator from Hawaii, Dan Inouye, once said of the Defense appropriations bill that it defends America. The Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill, he said, is the bill that defines America. I have thought about that over the years. He said that a long time ago. I have thought about that over the years, as I have been chairman of the subcommittee and ranking member, and chairman and ranking member. Both Senator Specter and I have changed places on this subcommittee now I think going back over 15 years. I have thought about that, that this is really the bill that defines America. So how do we want to define America? As the haves with the beautiful Christmas tree, with all the lights, nice cars, warm clothes, good food, who send their kids to the best schools, live in the best neighborhoods? That is America? That is it, that is America? And then down below we have people barely scraping to get by, who don't know how they are going to pay the heating bills in the winter, the elderly, disabled, the poor, those who want to get job training, they have lost their job, but they want to work and are looking for job training assistance; families with meager means who want their kids to get a head start in life so they want to send their kids to a Head Start Program so that their kids, too, will have a decent shot at the American dream; or families who are low income and have poor schools to go to and so they want to at least have good teachers and good facilities and good programs and textbooks and things for their kids so that their kids, too, can get up on that ladder of success; or families who live in low-income areas who have no health care insurance, have no health care, and the only thing they have to go to is the community health center for their health needs, and that is there for them. I don't know. What kind of America do we want? Do we want an America where at least at this time of the year we think generously? In this beautiful country that we have, all of the riches that we have, can we not find it in our hearts to pass an appropriations bill that at least, at least, does not back down from where we were before? You would think that would sort of be the minimum. You would think at least at this time of the year we would say, well, we are not going to do any more for low-income people, but we are not going to cut them back any more either. You would sort of think that would be the bottom line. Sad to say, of all of the appropriations bills that this Congress has passed this year, this is the only appropriations bill that is cut below last year's level. This bill, the one that funds education and health, the one that reaches down to help low-income people, this is the one that is cut, the only one, the only one that is cut. Please, someone explain this to me. Interior appropriations, Transportation appropriations, Agriculture appropriations, Military Construction and Veterans, Foreign Operations, Commerce-State-Justice appropriations, Homeland Security, Energy and Water appropriations, Legislative Branch appropriations--all above last year's level. Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education? Cut below last year's level. Ten days before Christmas, Congress is poised to deliver a cruel blow to the most disadvantaged members of our society. Sadly, unlike in the Dickens tale, there is no sign of remorse, no nagging conscience, no change of heart at the end of the day. This bill that we passed--and here I want to just, again, pay my respects and my esteem for our distinguished chairman, Senator Specter. He had a tough job. We worked it out. We passed a good bill, a decent bill in the Senate. I think it was unanimous, if I am not mistaken--I am sorry, it was 97 to 3. Well, that is almost unanimous, 97 votes. Both sides voted for the bill that Senator Specter crafted and that we worked together on. But then it went to conference, and the House came in and insisted on their position. Again, I just remind Senators and others that what happened is that it came out of conference--I didn't sign the conference report. Many of us would not sign the conference report because of these massive cuts. The bill went to the House last month, and the House rejected it. Then they reappointed conferees, as we did, and we met in conference on Monday evening, this last Monday evening, 3 days ago, for 44 minutes--44 minutes, with very little debate. The gavel was pounded, and we adjourned subject to the call of the Chair. Of course, the Chair never called us back, the Chair being the House Member. The House ran the conference this year. So they never called us back. Now they jiggled a few things around, I guess, dealing with rural health--I will have more to say about that in a second--to get the votes in the House. Well, the House passed this bill yesterday by two votes. I think it was 215 to 213, if I am not mistaken. Two votes. A very contentious bill, two votes. Now we have it before the Senate. That is sort of the history. Now it is up to us whether we are going to step back and say: No, we will not accept this bill. We will not accept cuts to these vital programs that I am about to go through here. But we will at least go on a continuing resolution until January. In January, when we come back, maybe there will be a little bit of change of heart and we can do a little better on this bill. This appropriations bill, as I said, funds things such as the Head Start Program, community health centers, special education, job training, programs that help the neediest in our communities. As I said, most people who are watching today would probably expect these programs to get an increase this year because we know the poverty rate has gone up in this country, or at least you would expect that we would not cut it below last year's level. As I said, this is the only appropriations bill cut below last year's level, and that is about $1.4 billion less than last year. This bill cuts education for the first time in a decade, the first time since 1996 has education been cut. No Child Left Behind, all of us here, I am sure, hear a lot about that when we go back to our States, the comments about No Child Left Behind. The biggest complaint about No Child Left Behind is that they are not getting the money by which to meet the mandate. In other words, it is like an unfunded mandate on our schools. Now, I voted for No Child Left Behind. I was at the table when we met with President Bush in 2001 to get this bill through. At that time, it was agreed upon--at least I thought it was agreed upon--that we would have a funding stream to meet the mandate. The President agreed to that. His people agreed to it. The President himself agreed to that. Yet we are now $13 billion less than what we said we were going to be at 3, 4 years ago. So it is no surprise that people in our communities are upset about No Child Left Behind. They are being told to do certain things, but they are not being funded to do them. Well, here we are. We are cutting it again in this bill with a 3- percent cut, so there will be $780 million this year less than last year. That now puts us at $13.1 billion below the authorized level. It leaves 120,000 children behind. Now, what do I say about that? That is title I. In my opening comments, I mentioned the fact that people who live in low-income areas and go to schools that do not have a lot of money need help. They need what we call title I services, the low-income children. It is $9.9 billion below the authorized level. That means that title I services to 120,000 children, who are currently eligible to receive them, will not receive them next year. Think about that: 120,000 children who are now eligible for title I services in our public schools will no longer receive those services next year. What is the American dream for those kids? What about it? What about the American dream for them? And because of the programs we had in the past--Head Start, title I, all the other programs--we have been able to get kids of low income through secondary school. Now they want to go to college. Well, back in the 1960s we passed a program called the Pell grants, after our distinguished Senator, Claiborne Pell. It was grants to low-income students so they, too, could go to college. Under this bill, the maximum Pell grant award is frozen for the fourth year in a row. For the fourth year in a row, we have frozen Pell grants. That means the purchasing power of a Pell grant today is about one-fifth of what it was 20 years ago. So if you are low income, and you want to go to college, it would be better if you had gotten it 20 years ago because your Pell grant would have gotten you a lot further then. Today it is worth about one-fifth of what it was then. And special education: 28 years ago, this Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to meet a constitutional requirement that we had to provide equal and appropriate education for children with disabilities--a constitutional mandate. At the time we passed that, we said our goal was to have the Federal Government provide at least 40 percent of the additional cost of educating kids with disabilities. That was our goal: We would provide 40 percent of that additional cost to our local school districts. That was 27 years ago. Last year, we had reached 18 percent. In other words, by last year, the Federal Government was providing 18 percent of the additional cost of special education. Under this bill, you would think we would be going forward to 40 percent. This bill goes backward. We are now at 17 percent. We are going in the wrong direction. How many times have we voted on this floor to fully fund special education? We keep voting to have special education fully funded. We have all these meaningless votes. When it comes down to paying for it, we are going in the wrong direction. We are going in the wrong direction, down to 17 percent this year. Well, that is the story in education. The story in education is very simple. If you come from a well-to-do family, and you live in a good neighborhood, and you have great schools and high property taxes, don't worry, the American dream is there for you. But if you live in a low- income area, with low property values, low property taxes, you have poor schools, tough luck, you were not born to the right parents. Tough luck. That is what this bill is saying to you. That is education. Look at health. Look at the health programs. What do we do about health? Again, if you are a Member of the Senate or the Congress, work for the Federal Government, you have a nice Federal Employees Health Benefits plan--like all of us do--and you do not worry about it. We have great coverage. I often think many times those of us who serve in the Senate and the House probably think: Well, probably everybody lives like we do. Everybody makes $150,000 a year. You have a couple of houses, drive nice cars, wear nice clothes. We send our kids to great schools. Well, I don't know, if I am not mistaken, as to the population of the Senate, out of 100 Senators, I think--what is it--80 now are multimillionaires? There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with having money and achieving the American dream and having nicer clothes, a nicer car, a nicer house. There is nothing wrong with that. That is a big part of the American dream. But it seems to me that those of us who have been blessed with good health and good fortune, and who have sort of made it to the top of that ladder, it is incumbent of us that we leave the ladder down for others to climb, too, not pull it up behind us. And there are Senators and Congressmen in this body and in the House who are well to do, who have been blessed with good fortune, who understand the necessity of leaving the ladder down, and who fight constantly to make sure we meet our obligations as a Congress to reach down and help those less fortunate than ourselves. Nowhere is this more true than in health. Nowhere is this more true than in health. We have tried over the years, since we cannot get a national health insurance program passed, to at least sort of block and tackle, if you will, to fill in the gaps, to help make sure people of low income can get at least some access to decent health care. One of the most important of those is the community health centers. President Bush himself said at one time that his goal was to have a community health center--it was a State of the Union Message. I was there. President Bush said his goal was to have a community health center in every poor community by 2008, and we all rose and applauded. I believe in community health centers. Obviously, the President does, too. But where is the President? Where is he? Because in this bill not one new community health center will be authorized for next year--not one. Not one will be built in the United States. Health professions. We want to recruit qualified health professionals to serve in parts of the country. It is slashed by $185 million. National Institutes of Health: 355 new research grants will be cut. It is the smallest percentage increase in NIH. Actually, it is level funded. It is less than 1 percent, so you might as well say NIH has been level funded. This is the first time since 1970--35 years--that NIH has not received an increase. Rural health programs: cut by $137 million. Now, you know there was some talk when this bill came back out of conference that they ``fixed'' the rural health problem. Not true. Not true. Not true. Rural health programs are cut by $137 million and nine vital health programs--trauma care, rural emergency medical services, health education training centers, healthy community access programs, geriatric education centers--are closed. This one I think deserves a little bit more discussion, the geriatric education centers. We know our society is aging. We know geriatric care is a kind of a specialty. We want health professionals trained in geriatric care so the elderly among us will be healthier, will have better diets and nutrition, will have better exercise, and will have more sociability. We know when you do those modest things, you keep the elderly out of nursing homes, you keep them out of the doctors' offices, you cut down on Medicare and Medicaid. Well, here is a map that shows States that will lose geriatric centers. All the stars are geriatric care centers that are going to be closed. Two weeks before the 78 million baby boomers in this country begin to turn 60--that is next month, January--we are going to close all these centers. In Iowa, we have a center at the University of Iowa School of Medicine that trains doctors, osteopaths, nurses, dentists, chiropractors. There is a big need. Iowa has the highest percentage of citizens over the age of 85--the highest of any State in the Nation. This bill eliminates the geriatric center at the University of Iowa. So that is education. Let's look at labor. We know that people are unemployed and they want to be retrained. The Department of Labor is cut in this bill by $430 million, the biggest cut ever made to the Department of Labor--the biggest ever, at a time when we keep hearing stories about how China is training all these engineers and scientists and doing all this stuff. We need to get people retrained, and this bill cuts adult job training and youth job training. Adult job training is cut and youth job training is cut. I guess we are telling people that you may have had a job and that job has ended, but you may want to get into the new economy. Do it on your own. You are not going to get any help. People cannot do that. They are broke and out of work, and they have kids and families. Rather than advancing, they will go out and find some job that will at least put bread on the table, when they could be getting job training that would allow a better job and higher income in the future. This slashes employment services by $89 million--an 11- percent cut in employment services. What are employment services? They are to help people get employed, to get a job. Yet we are cutting it, even though we know the rate of unemployment has gone up. I don't know how anybody can justify this, especially at this time of the year. Let's take one more look at LIHEAP, the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program. This bill provides no additional funding for LIHEAP. We know that fuel costs are skyrocketing. In Iowa, natural gas prices are up 40 percent from last year. Hawkeye Area Community Assistance in southeast Iowa reports that LIHEAP funds are likely to run out in mid January, one of the coldest months of the year in my State. This bill fails to keep up with this overwhelming need. I was in Iowa a couple weeks ago and I met with some people who applied for and are eligible for LIHEAP. I remember one individual who is disabled and lives by herself. Her monthly cost for fuel has gone up about 50 percent for what she pays every month. I think she qualifies for $232 in LIHEAP funding. I mentioned that to somebody after I met with these people. I mentioned I had this meeting and this one woman who was disabled lived by herself and she qualified for $232 in energy assistance to pay her heating bills. One of the individuals in the group I talked to said, ``That ought to pay her monthly bill.'' I said, ``Wait a second, that $232 is for the year.'' They thought it was for the month. I said that is for the year--October, November, December, January, February, March, and probably April. That is $232 for 6 or 7 months. ``I didn't realize that,'' she said, ``I thought it was for the month.'' I said, ``No, that is for the whole year.'' Yet we are cutting back on that. We are not providing enough money to take into account the increased price of propane and heating oil and natural gas prices. I have heard: Don't worry, Harkin, we will come back in January and, if we need to, we will pass a supplemental or something at that time. Don't hold your breath. What about the people who are out there who don't know how to pay their heating bills, who need to get propane delivered, especially in rural communities such as where I live? We have propane tanks. I have a propane tank outside of my house. You call up the company to come fill it. Well, all right, you have to pay the bill. If you have not paid the previous month's bill, you are not going to get it delivered. Unlike natural gas where they cannot cut you off, they can cut you off of propane. So we are going to come back and do this in January or February. Yet we will let anxiety rise, let people worry about it. I can tell you right now, in my State of Iowa, there are people living on the edge. They have food stamps, they are getting LIHEAP, many are disabled, and many are elderly. They are thinking, I know that next month is going to be cold--in January and February. Maybe I should not buy the drugs I need now because I will need that money next month. Maybe I will cut back a little bit on some of the food I have been buying or I will cut back on some of the things I want to do in order to have the money for the heating bills. That is what is happening now. There is anxiety out there. We are saying: That is okay, be anxious; we will come back in January or February and fix it. Is that any way to treat people? Put yourself in that position. What if you didn't know whether you could pay your heating bill next month? What if you didn't know whether you were going to be able to pay? They say don't worry about it, we will come back in January and February and we will fix it. When we passed a continuing resolution at the end of September, I took the floor to beg my colleagues to reject this part of the continuing resolution that would cut the community services block grants by 50 percent. Well, we didn't get that done. Then it was put on the DOD bill, and they told us we will take care of that. The funding for community services block grants goes out to help programs such as Head Start and LIHEAP. In other words, if you are going to apply for LIHEAP, you usually go to some agency--an area agency on aging or you go through one of these community action agencies. They help you with the paperwork and do the necessary things to show that you qualify. If you don't have that, chances are you probably would not qualify. In our continuing resolution, we cut that by 50 percent. We are told we will take care of it, we will fix it. But that was in September. We have gone through October, November, and December--3 months--and the community services block grant is still cut by 50 percent. They say we will take care of LIHEAP, too. When? In March, April or May? So whether it is health, human services, education, medical research at NIH--no matter what it is in this bill--what can I say; it is awful. This bill is awful. It is not something we ought to hold our heads up and be proud about. We ought to be ashamed of this, ashamed that we cannot find it in ourselves to meet the needs of the poorest people in our country, the neediest. This bill ought to be rejected, and we should go to an honest continuing resolution, not one that cuts programs but one that at least keeps last year's level. If we want to, then we will come back and fix it again next year. But this bill is not deserving of our support. It sends the wrong--I don't want to say it sends the wrong message, that is not it; it doesn't do the right thing. It doesn't do what a generous, compassionate nation ought to do for its neediest citizens. Mr. President, I see my distinguished colleague, Senator Kennedy, is on the floor. Again, I yield the floor to him. There has been no one who has fought harder for these programs in education and health and human services for all of his adult life, no one who has spoken more passionately and forthrightly about the obligation we have as public servants to meet the needs of our neediest citizens than Senator Kennedy. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield on that?

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, parliamentary inquiry: How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. HARKIN. I appreciate the Senator pointing this out because yesterday a big story broke in the newspapers from NIH. A lot of times people ask what happened with the human genome project, what is it leading to, mapping of the entire human genome. A couple of years ago, I paid my first visit to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, Long Island. It is run by James Watson, who is one of the codiscoverers of the structure of DNA. What they had embarked upon at that time was the beginning of mapping the genes of all of the cancers known to humans. It was a small project. It was funded and it went along. Yesterday, a story broke that Dr. Zerhouni, the distinguished and very capable head of the National Institutes of Health, announced that the National Institutes of Health was embarking upon a program to map and sequence the genome of every known cancer. They are going to go out and take cells of every cancer, take the DNA out, and map it. They think that it is going to take about 10 years to do. It will cost about $1 billion to $1.5 billion. Is it worthy? Of course. These are the bullets we will have to really get at cancer. It is phenomenal in its concept and what it is going to do. Here is the problem, as the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out. We do not give them any extra money to do it. That means if they are going to embark on this, they are going to have to take money out of other research on Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and everything else. Yesterday, I asked Dr. Zerhouni: Where is this money coming from? Already we are cutting down and cutting back on the number of grants that are being awarded, and now with this appropriations bill that we have, it is going to get even worse. I say to my friend from Massachusetts, when we embarked on mapping and sequencing the human genome back in 1991 when I was chairman, we did not take money from some other place. We came to the Congress and said this is important, let us do it, let us fund it and we did it, and we paid for it. Now, with this tremendous news yesterday that came out about mapping, sequencing the genomes of all known cancers, we are now cutting the funding basically for NIH. So I say to my friend from Massachusetts, what he pointed out, that is what we are confronting. We are confronting cutting back in other needed research to do this or maybe we will not do this after all. That is the dilemma we face. That is the position that this appropriations bill puts us in. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for pointing that out.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I don't know if any others want to come over. That is why I asked for 90 minutes to point out how bad the bill is. Looking at all the various programs that were cut, Senator Kennedy did an outstanding job of going over how devastating some of these cuts are going to be in terms of health, education, and medical research. Going through a big bill like this, sometimes your eyes kind of glaze over some of the important aspects that people do not bring to the forefront. But there is one other cut in this bill that people ought to know about. All the staff who are watching, the Senators who are watching, you ought to know about this cut. It is the maternal and child health block grant being cut by 3 percent. The real per-capita purchasing power is now 20 percent below what it was in 2002. What is the maternal and child health block grant? It helps low-income mothers get preventive health services and medical treatment for children who have disabilities and other special needs. One of the best things we have ever done here to help low-income families have healthy babies and to make sure those babies get the best start in life is the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program, which goes out to the States, and it is cut by 3 percent. Please justify that. When you vote later today on whether to accept this appropriations bill, please justify just that one thing: how you are going to justify cutting the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program. As bad as this bill is, every time I look at it, I ask: Can it get any worse? The answer to that is, yes. It is going to get worse. Here is why. This bill had a $1.4 billion cut. We have just gone over all of the things that are cut in this bill--the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant Program, to education, to medical research--all vital in defining the kind of country we are. Can it get worse? Yes. Here is what is going to happen. Hang on. Tomorrow or Saturday or sometime, we will be voting on a Department of Defense appropriations bill. That Department of Defense appropriations bill will have a bunch of things in it that do not deal with the Department of Defense. By the way, it will also have in it a 1-percent across-the-board cut. We are already told it is in there--a 1-percent across-the-board cut. All of the cuts we have talked about--Maternal and Child Health Care Block Grant Programs, title I funding, special education, geriatric training centers, and NIH--all of that is going to get an additional 1- percent cut. The way that works out is, the $1.4 billion cut in this bill is going to be a $2.8 billion cut. It will double it. As bad as this bill is now with the $1.4 billion cut, by the time we are through here tomorrow and voting on a 1-percent across-the-board cut, it will be twice as bad--a $2.8 billion cut in this bill. That is because this bill is about $140 billion. You take a 1-percent across-the-board cut, that is $1.4 billion. So get ready. That is why this bill should not be passed in its present form because there is going to be that 1-percent across-the-board cut. It is going to double. The Senator from Massachusetts mentioned the avian flu bill. We put money in here for the avian flu. I offered an amendment on DOD appropriations back in September. In December, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee said that is not the proper place for it, that it ought to be on the Labor-Health and Human Services bill. I agreed with him. But we didn't know if we were going to have a bill. So it was put on the DOD bill. Later on when we got this bill before us, we added $8 billion to get us prepared to fight perhaps the biggest flu pandemic the world has ever seen, one that could kill hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, one that could hospitalize up to 90 million people in this country. We put $8 billion in this bill. Guess what. Look at the bill. It is not in there. It is all gone, all taken out. They say they are going to put some more in the Department of Defense bill. We haven't seen it yet. But they took it out of this bill. It is going to get worse. Today is December 15. By the way, it is also the anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights to our Constitution. I hope it is not too much of a leap to ask on this anniversary of the Bill of Rights: What about the rights of poor people? What about the rights of low-income people? What about the rights of our people to be protected from the pandemic flu? What about the rights of our citizens to decent health care, the rights of our citizens to a decent education, no matter where they live or the circumstances of their birth? Should the quality of your education be decided by geography, where you live? What about our rights? This bill before us speaks to rights, human rights, the basic rights of an American citizen to decent health, housing, education, a shot at the American dream. So on this December 15, 10 days before Christmas, the anniversary of the adoption of our Bill of Rights, throughout much of the world it is a season of giving, but here in Congress with this bill it is a season of taking away education programs, taking away job training, taking away home heating assistance, taking away rural health programs, taking away maternal and child health care. But what it really takes away is hope. It takes away hope from people, hope for a better life, hope for a better shot at the American dream, hope that their children will have it a little bit better than what they have had. I remember when then-Governor Bush was running for President in 2000. He had a saying at that time--I haven't heard it lately, but he had a saying that the Government can't give hope to people. Well, I beg to differ. Government can give hope to people. It depends on who is running the Government as to who is getting the hope. As the Senator from Massachusetts just pointed out, we have a huge tax bill, more tax breaks for the wealthiest in our society. If you are making over $1 million a year, you have a lot of hope. You are going to get about $32,000 in your Christmas stocking. Thirty-two thousand, you are just going to get it, a nice tax giveaway for the most affluent in our society. A lot of hope has been given to them by this Government. But if you are low income, if you live in small rural America, if you are elderly, if you are disabled, if you need the help of the Government to lift you up and to give you some hope for a better life, you don't get hope. It is taken away from you. So what we are saying to low-income families who are working, trying to pay their bills, trying to scrape by, trying to keep their families together, trying to raise their kids, I guess what we are saying is, Merry Christmas, hang your stocking, and Congress is going to put a lump of coal in that stocking for you. That is what you get. I don't understand how anyone can vote for this bill, especially at this time of the year. I hope our conscience would come to the fore. We all know the wonderful story from Dr. Seuss. We recall reading it to our kids, ``The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.'' This bill is a bill only the Grinch could love. No funding for avian flu, lowest increase in NIH funding in 35 years, cuts education funding as No Child Left Behind requirements are going up, no increase in college aid, cuts job training. I could have added a lot more--as I said, cuts in maternal and child health care, cuts in geriatric training, cuts in Head Start. Well, if you like the Grinch, I suggest you might want to vote for this bill. But we need to reject it and insist that the leadership provide enough funding to write an acceptable bill. They have the power to do it. We did it in the Senate. I repeat, under the leadership of Senator Specter, on a bipartisan basis, we passed a bill here 97 to 3. We can do it. If only the President of the United States just said to the House leadership, We want the Senate bill, we want what the Senate did to be fair and just to all our citizens, we would have this. We would have it. That House of Representatives, they will do whatever the President tells them to do. And if he had waded in there and said, Look, we don't accept this, we will have the Senate-passed version, that is what we would have. We would all vote for it and hold our heads up high and say we did the right thing for the citizens of our country. Yes, leadership has the power to do it. They have the White House, the House, and the Senate. What is stopping them from giving us a decent bill? As I said, we did it here. We did it on a bipartisan basis in the Senate. But if we pass this bill now, this conference report, and give this very cruel rush-- well, we have to get out of here. We have to go home for Christmas. We have to pass the bill. No, we don't. No, we don't. What we need to do is to say no, go back to the drawing board, get us a bill that is acceptable, and if we have to go on a continuing resolution for a month until we come back, or 2 months, until February, we have done that before. We would be better off going on a real continuing resolution, I say to my friends in the Senate. We would be better off than accepting this bill and putting the pressure on the White House and the House to come back with a better bill.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, over the last several years, we have repeatedly heard alarming reports about the rising tide of overweight and obesity in the United States, particularly among young children. Over the past two decades, the rate of obesity has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents. Fifteen percent of the children in this country are now overweight. In fact, the United States has a higher percentage of overweight teens than any other industrialized country. This comes at a high price for our country, both in terms of the long-term physical health of our citizens and the enormous health care costs our Nation faces. Just last week, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences released a new report: ``Food Marketing to Children and Youth; Threat or Opportunity?'' The report focused on one big factor that contributes to the childhood obesity epidemic: the relentless multibillion-dollar marketing of junk food to our children. This landmark report is the most comprehensive and systematic review to date of the impact of food marketing on the diets of American youth. Its conclusions are troubling, but they hardly come as a surprise to parents who know well the effects of food marketing on their children. In a nutshell, the Institute of Medicine concluded that there is strong scientific evidence that food marketing influences food preferences, the purchases and diets of children age 12 and below. Even more important, the Institute of Medicine confirms what many had suspected before, that ``television advertising influences children to prefer and request high-calorie and low-nutrient food and beverages.'' Let me just read two sentences from the executive summary. I am quoting directly from the Institute of Medicine's finding: It can be concluded that television advertising influences children to prefer and request high-calorie and low-nutrient foods and beverages. That is a key finding. Next, on the broad conclusions: Food and beverage marketing practices geared to children and youth are out of balance with healthful diets and contribute to an environment that puts their health at risk. There you have it. Now, 2 years ago, I requested this study to be done. We put money in the appropriations bill for the CDC to do the study. They contracted with the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine to do the study. This is an unbiased landmark study. It proves conclusively that our kids are being inundated nonstop with advertising that puts their health at risk. The food industry is a $900 billion-a-year business. It spends billions of dollars promoting food products, much of it targeted at kids. The IOM report is important because it outlines in great detail how over the past decade advertising directed at our children has grown to a point where they are bombarded nonstop with ads. Indeed, food marketing has expanded in both intensity and variety into nearly all areas of kids' lives. The food industry spends more than $11 billion a year targeting kids with marketing campaigns through television, movies, magazines, Internet, in-school marketing, kids clubs, toys, coupons, and product placement in movies and books. Marketing to kids has become so pervasive and sophisticated that over the past several years marketing firms have even begun to employ child psychologists who specialize in this field to help devise their strategies. On the advice of these psychologists, advertisers make use of media fantasy figures, celebrities, and cartoon characters. They use messages crafted to imply that products will give kids power, make them popular. The aim is simply to exploit kids' imaginations and their vulnerabilities and to sell them products or to get them to nag their parents to buy certain products. What kind of foods are they marketing to our kids? We are not talking about apples and pears and peaches and broccoli and carrots. We are talking about high-fat, high-sugar, high-sodium foods with little or no nutritional value. The food industry contends it is concerned about the health and nutrition of our children, and that it is taking active steps to change its marketing practices to introduce new products that are healthier for our children. But is that really the case? In limited instances, the industry has taken some positive steps. For example, in the past year, both Kraft Foods and Pepsico have announced they will take steps to curb the marketing of unhealthy food products to children, and instead focus on the promotion of healthier products. I have commended publicly, and I do so again today on the floor of the Senate--both Kraft and Pepsico for taking a leadership position in this area. But here is the problem. This Institute of Medicine report is clear that such responsible actions are far from the industry norm. As you can see from this chart, the number of new products that the food industry has targeted to kids have gone up tenfold over the past 10 years, from around 50 to just under 500 in 2004--500 new products per year--not apples, not salad bars. According to the Institute of Medicine, these 500 products are high in calories and sugar and low in nutrients. This is what dominated those products. Let's take a look at some of the examples of what is happening to our kids. Many advertisements for junk food snacks use characters popular with children. Here is one. They range from Spiderman to Sponge Bob Square Pants. Kids know these characters. They admire these characters. Quite frankly, when I saw ``Shrek 1'' and ``Shrek 2,'' I kind of liked Shrek. He became a loveable, nice guy who wanted to do good. Now what do we see? Here is Shrek advertising Twinkies, green Twinkies with a green filling. Now Shrek has a powerful appeal to kids' minds. Kids see the movie Shrek and they like Shrek. And Shrek, why, he likes Twinkies, so Twinkies must be OK to eat. That is what that message says. What do we know about Twinkies? The nutritional value is zero, harmful to kids' health. Shrek now becomes a bad guy trying to get our kids to eat unhealthy food. Shame on the advertisers who take a likable, loveable character when he was first introduced to kids in the movies and now using Shrek to poison our kids. I use the word ``poison'' because that is what this food does, it poisons our kids by making them obese and unhealthy. Then what you can do when you see this ad, you can visit twinkies.com. I will show that a little bit later in my presentation. It is not just limited to television. Food marketing has gone on in numerous ways that we are just beginning to explore. The Institute of Medicine report was shocking. One thing--I didn't know this--only 20 percent of all food and beverage marketing in 2004 was devoted to the traditional methods of television, radio, and print. Only 20 percent. Eighty percent is going to new forms of marketing--product promotions, character licensing, school marketing. At one time, our schools were considered safe havens for our kids, places of learning that insulated our kids from crass commercial influences. No longer is that the case. Our schools have been inundated with commercial messages that are now a major advertising medium that these food companies are using to establish brand loyalty and to get kids to eat junk food. Here is a photograph of a hallway in a high school. You have the Coke machine, you have a POWERade machine. You have a vending machine with potato chips, Fritos, cookies, candy bars, M&M's. Nothing in this entire display is of any nutritional value. That is what is happening in schools. Let's not forget that a lot of these food marketing companies have exclusive contracts with schools and school districts to link the sale of soda pop to cash payments or equipment assistance to schools. These are the very foods that are making our kids obese, contributing to their unhealthy lifestyles. I often ask parents, What would you think of a parent who sat down with his or her child before they went to school in the morning and measured out 15 teaspoons of sugar, put it in a little plastic bag and told the kid: Here, you can take this to school and eat it. Or, on second thought, measure out 30 teaspoons of sugar, give it to the kid and say: Here, take this to school and eat it. You would think no parent would ever do that. But some children to buy two soda pops every day and two of those 20-ounce soda pops will have 15 teaspoons of sugar each. One 20-ounce soda pop equals 15 teaspoons of sugar. That is why others call this liquid candy. A 20-ounce Coke, liquid candy, that is all it is, 15 teaspoons of sugar. Why do we allow this? Why do we allow this in our schools? It is sending a message to our kids that this is OK? It is in school, it is promoted by the schools, so it must be OK. That is a new marketing technique they have. Now we have other techniques such as branded toys and new marketing techniques aimed at babies? Hang on, wait until you see this one: A baby with a 7-Up bottle. Here is a baby being nursed on a bottle that has a 7-Up logo on it. One might say, well, that baby can't buy 7-Up. No, but that baby's eyes are picking up things. When that baby gets older, that is going to be stuck in that baby's mind somewhere in the deep recesses, that was good because what that baby got out of that bottle was good healthy milk, formula probably. And now they are going to associate that with 7-Up. Imagine that, that early in life. You think that is bad, hang on, you haven't seen anything yet. Look, before I put this picture up here, let's agree on one thing. We all agree--I know the occupant of the Chair and I bet he agrees with this, being a doctor--that the most beneficial, nutritious food for a newborn baby is a mother's milk, breastfeeding. We all know that breastfeeding is the best, and any doctor will tell you if you are capable, you ought to breastfeed your child. Now look what we have here: A billboard with a baby breastfeeding on a McDonald's Burger. That just about borders on the obscene. It can't get any worse. I understand this did not run in the United States, but it ran on billboards in Europe. Here is a baby, obviously less than a year old supposedly breastfeeding on a McDonald's hamburger bun. Not only does this ad imply that fast food is a developmentally appropriate product for infants, it suggests that fast food is an appropriate replacement for the nutrition of breastfeeding, which is the perfect form of nutrition for babies. Equating a McDonald's hamburger with breastfeeding, while it might be intended to be humorous, is no laughing matter. It sends very subtle messages that breastfeeding is nutritious and so are McDonald's hamburgers. Now we have other ways of marketing. I tell you, these are psychologists who devise these ads. They know what they are doing. How about the candy counting books? Here we have ``Reese's Pieces Count by 5,'' ``Hershey's Subtraction'' book, the ``Skittles Riddles Math'' book, the ``Twizzlers Percentage'' book, the ``Hershey's Fraction'' book, and the ``Hershey's Kisses Addition'' book. Here is where I am going to pay tribute again to Kraft Foods. On this floor periodically in the past I have shown the Oreo counting book. Kraft Foods discontinued that practice. Kraft Foods does not allow that any longer. God bless them; good for Kraft Foods. But here is the problem: You get one company who actually acts responsibly, and look what the rest of them do. They move into the marketplace and take market share away with their counting books. Again, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds learn with counting books--Hershey's, M&M's, and Reese's Pieces. I don't have it here, but I saw one counting book where you lay it out and you actually put the M&M pieces on there, and when you count one, you get to eat that one piece, and when you count two, you get to take the two pieces of M&M's off and eat those two, until you get to 10 M&M pieces. Junk food, building brand loyalty early. Then we have toys. How about the toys? It is an emerging trend that puts the food on the toy so you don't just get it for 30 seconds, you get it all the time you play with your toys. Here we have a Coca Cola princess, whatever, a cheerleader. We have a Jell-O Barbie. We have a McDonald's Barbie. So little kids play with these and they build that brand loyalty. They play with a Barbie wearing a McDonald's logo or a Jell-O or a Little Debbie brand. That is what we have come to, where kids are inundated day after day not with just 30-second ads but with everything they play with, everything they see. Now they go to school, and they see the same thing in school. This is a recent innovation. It was not like this 20 years ago. Now we have the Internet, which is becoming a growing segment of the food marketing industry. Remember, I said earlier that Shrek urges children to visit twinkies.com, well, here you go. If one goes to twinkies.com, they go to Planet Twinkie. At Planet Twinkie, there are all of these little interactive things, visit the Twinkie shop, the Hostess Hall of Fame, the chocolate and cupcakes and snowballs. That is Planet Twinkie. So a kid sees Shrek, Shrek says: Visit my Web site, visit twinkie.com. Well, again, what are they saying to kids? They are saying: Eat junk food. It is fun and it is an adventure just to eat junk food and eat Twinkies and to eat candy and stuff, and it is good for you. And guess what, it will make you smart because we do it in school; you go there to school to learn, so since we do it all in school it makes you smart, too. So when one looks at all of these marketing techniques together, television, schools, product tie-ins, promotions, the Internet, branded baby products, what we are seeing is that the food marketers seek to do nothing less than envelop our children every day during all of their waking hours in a commercial environment that encourages them to eat unhealthy food. For years the food marketers have been saying: One cannot really prove that food marketing influences children's diets. Not anymore. With this study, food marketers can no longer say that food marketing does not influence children's diets. The evidence is quite clear that marketing has a negative influence on children's food preferences and on their diets. Some might say: Well, that is obvious. The food industry does not spend $11 billion a year on marketing to kids because it does not work, because they want to throw that money away. They spend it because it works brilliantly, inducing children to purchase it themselves or to beg, whine, and cajole their parents into buying it for them. Some might say: What about the parents' responsibility? Parents should be responsible, but parents' control is being eroded. Food marketers are inserting themselves between parents and their kids. Their control is being eroded in the face of a highly sophisticated billion-dollar industry. This is not a level playing field. Again, what can we do? Someone who has been listening to me might say: Well, OK, Harkin, what can you do? That is the way business works. What can we do about it? There is plenty we can do about it. The IOM report makes recommendations on what we ought to do. First, they say the industry needs to exhibit a greater level of corporate responsibility. Amen. Some of them have. But here is the problem: If it is not industrywide, one food company may do something good such as Kraft did, got rid of the Oreo cookie counting book. So what happens, their competitor moves in with other counting books. So it has to be industrywide. IOM calls for sweeping change in the way the food industry, the beverage industry, the fast food restaurant industry, the media, and the entertainment industries do business. They call on all of those industries to use the same creativity, resources and marketing practices that they currently use to sell junk food to instead promote healthier diets for kids. They call on the food companies to change the products they advertise as well as the products they produce. They say that business as usual has to change and has to change now. I hope corporate America is listening because if they do not change, then we in Congress will make them change. Almost 25 years ago, the Federal Trade Commission warned Congress about the dangers of advertising aimed at children. What did Congress do? We attacked the FTC and took away its regulatory authority as it pertains to children's ads. In 1978, the FTC undertook an investigation and found that TV advertising directed at young children was both unfair and deceptive. They found that the advertising of high sugar foods to children is unfair and deceptive. They suggested that restrictions on ads directed at the young and vulnerable minds might be appropriate. But the broadcast industry went nuts. The food industries went nuts. The advertisers went nuts, and they got Congress to kill the messenger. In 1981, this Congress stripped the Federal Trade Commission of its regulatory authority as it pertained to children's advertising. It expressly prohibited the Federal Trade Commission from following through on its proposals to ban or restrict advertising directed at children. This new law made it next to impossible to regulate advertising directed at kids. It is a little known fact that right now the FTC has more authority to regulate advertising at me and you and adults than it does to our kids, and here is how it does that. There are two ways the Federal Trade Commission can regulate advertising: If it is unfair or deceptive. In 1981, this Congress cut off one arm of the FTC in regulating advertising to kids. The FTC can only regulate advertising to kids if it is deceptive, not if it is unfair. Interesting point. One might say: Well, an advertisement of junk food is not deceptive, but is it unfair? It is, according to the Institute of Medicine because the Institute of Medicine said that kids lack the cognitive ability to discern between advertising, persuasive intent advertising and a program. It stands to reason, if one is a young kid, they do not understand what advertising is all about. They get inundated with all of this, and it makes an impression on them, sticks with them, but they do not understand this is advertising. That is what the Institute of Medicine says. This is a medical report. So I submit that any advertising that advertises high-calorie, high- in-fat junk food to kids that has no nutritional value, that is inherently unfair because kids do not understand the intent. Forget about deceptive. It is unfair. It may not be unfair to adults, since we understand what advertising is about--we should have that ability--but it is to kids. That is why we need to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to regulate advertising to children both on unfairness and deceptiveness, as it does to adults. I want to point out, in closing, that I have introduced legislation to give FTC that authority. In addition, the IOM talks about Government responsibility. It says that: Government at all levels should marshal the full range of public policy approaches (e.g., subsidies, legislation, regulation, federal nutrition programs), to foster the development and promotion of healthful diets for children and youth. It says, ``Government and industry should work together to set higher standards for marketing to children.'' They called for changes in the school environment, to get rid of the junk food and the vending machines. When we come back next session, Senator Specter and I will introduce the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act. This legislation will, per the recommendation of the IOM, require the Department of Agriculture to update its nutritional guidelines for school food sales and ensure that the foods available to kids during the school day promote, rather than undermine, their health and learning. We in this Congress have a responsibility to protect America's children from the sophisticated, aggressive, relentless marketing of junk food to our children. We have a responsibility to stick up for our parents. Our parents don't have a chance when our kids are inundated, day after day, hour after hour, even in places where parents don't have control--in our schools, when they watch a movie, when they pick up a book, a counting book. I was in a school not too long ago, looking at some renovations in a school, an elementary school. Do you know what the kids had to sit on? Coca-Cola chairs; little chairs with the Coca-Cola legend, red and white, with Coca-Cola written on it. I assume that they donated the chairs to the school. But this is the idea, to get it into the kid's head early, that education and having a high sugar soft drink go hand in hand. Late in her life, Jackie Kennedy said a very wise thing. She said, ``If you botch raising your children, nothing else you do in your life matters very much.'' With what we now know, thanks to the IOM report, what we know about the destructive impacts of junk food marketing to the kids, with the new insights thanks to the Institute of Medicine, it is clear by allowing the food industry to market junk foods to our kids we are botching the raising of all of our children. Again, this is enough. This report makes it clear that it is time to say to those who are enveloping our kids in this sort of 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week nonstop advertising, that it is enough. Foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt have their place. We all like to have a cookie. I enjoy a piece of candy as much as anybody else. They have their place. But they ought to be kept in their place--not in schools, not in advertising. They ought to be kept in their place and the place to start is with sensible, long overdue regulation of the advertising and marketing of junk food to children. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent Jon Miles of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I was told I had 2 minutes and then 1 minute before the vote.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, the Senate has considered cuts to food assistance programs this year on a bipartisan basis. It rejected such cuts. I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, especially Chairman Chambliss for his leadership. This motion is simple. It instructs the Senate conferees to insist upon the underlying Senate position of no cuts to Federal food assistance. First, we are at a time when hunger and food insecurity in the United States is increasing rapidly. The number of Americans experiencing food insecurity has increased by approximately 7 million people. This is no time to cut the food stamp program. Secondly, with all of the emergencies this year with the hurricanes, we have been reminded again of how the food stamp program works in emergencies. There were 2.2 million individuals affected by these hurricanes who got critical food assistance within days. Finally, again, this has nothing to do with waste, fraud, and abuse. The error rate is at an all-time low in the food stamp program. We have worked on this for over 20 some years to bring it that low. It is working very effectively. The fact is, the House reconciliation bill does not go after fraud, waste, and abuse, but they cut 250,000 people off the food stamp program. That is the wrong way to go. I thank my colleagues for standing up for hungry families earlier this year. Especially at this Christmas season, let's stand up for them once again and say we are not going to take the food out of the children's mouths. I urge my colleagues to agree to the motion, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we are now going to vote on a motion to instruct conferees. Stick with the Senate's position dealing with cuts in the Food Stamp Program. I know arguments have been made about waste, fraud, and abuse. What the House does does not cut waste, fraud, and abuse but cuts 200,000 people off the food stamp rolls. They are working poor. They work every day. They have children. This sends them back on welfare rolls. I point out there was a letter sent to Senator Chambliss on December 8 from 15 Republican Senators saying, please stick with the Senate position. I compliment those Senators. I publicly thank Senator Chambliss for his great leadership both on the Agriculture Committee and in the full Senate on this issue. This is not the time to cut food stamps from people who are working and struggling with their children.