Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, former Iowa State Senator Minnette Doderer, who passed away last month, was one of the true giants of Iowa politics. Born into very humble circumstances in Holland, IA in 1923, she served 12 terms in the Iowa House and two terms in the Iowa Senate, where she was the first woman to serve as President pro tempore. Martin Luther King once said that ``Life's most urgent and persistent question is: What are you doing for others?'' During a long, feisty, and distinguished career in Iowa politics, Senator Doderer answered that question in spectacular fashion. She was a mentor and role model for women all across our State, a passionate champion of the Equal Rights Amendment, and an indomitable advocate for the poor, the neglected, and the voiceless in our State. Some people run for public office to be somebody. Senator Doderer ran in order to get things done. She saw injustice, discrimination, and sexism, and she fought it with tremendous skill and courage. Above all, she made a practical difference, especially for women. She championed and passed legislation on equal rights, rape law reform, child care, and juvenile justice laws that made a concrete, tangible difference in the lives of Iowans. Minnette Doderer was passionate about her family and her friends. She was a tough, tenacious fighter for what she believed in. She cared deeply about justice and fairness for ordinary people. Most of all, she was a good, decent, humane person--the kind of person that makes Iowa such a special place. I valued Minnette's friendship and counsel. Though I regret she is no longer with us, I celebrate the living legacy she left behind: a better, fairer, more just and equal Iowa, especially for our daughters. May she rest in peace.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, let me try to explain as briefly as I can what the House did. The House sent over to us a continuing resolution that says we will continue funding programs from last year at last year's level, or the lower of what the House had passed earlier in their budget. For most programs, that doesn't mean much. This is a continuing resolution until when? November, November 18? Most education money goes out next year. So for 2 months it doesn't mean it is a big deal. Two or three months--maybe through December when we will finally adjourn. However, there is one program that is deeply affected by what the House did. It is called the Community Services Block Grant Program. This money goes out quarterly. It is used quarterly. It means tomorrow the community services block grant will be cut 50 percent--not next year, tomorrow. In real dollars, this isn't some phony baloney stuff. What is even worse--as I took the floor last night, I did not know this--in 1990, an amendment was put on and agreed to on the Community Services Block Grant Program. It is a trigger formula. It is a little bit complicated, but I will try to explain it. It says if the total funding for a fiscal year exceeds $345 million, each State shall receive not less than one-half of 1 percent of the total amount. It protects small States. OK? However, if the funding is less than $345 million, then no State shall receive less than one- fourth of 1 percent. Here is what the House did. Last year, it was $336 million, and the House cut it back to $320.6 million. That is the level it was at in 1986. What does that mean for Alaska? Alaska is one of 13 States--small States--that will be cut 75 percent, not 50 percent. Thirteen States--Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming--are not cut 50 percent. The total allocation for those States would fall from $3,356,645 to less than $800,000. I say to those of you who are from those 13 States, if you believe the LIHEAP Program is important in your State, you ought to pay attention to this amendment. The LIHEAP Program in Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming, for all intents and purposes, will cease next week--October, November, maybe December. So small States are hurt the worst. You might ask, What is this Community Services Block Grant Program? What are we talking about here? Who does it serve? It serves the poorest of the poor; 6.5 million Americans, 2 million children, private food banks that rely on the space, refrigerators, and transportation supported by the community services block grant and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will be affected. Housing, weatherization assistance, emergency shelter, rental assistance, the food stamp programs, home-delivered meals, emergency food banks, senior day care, senior centers, foster grandparents, Head Start Programs, parenting education, domestic violence programs--all of these. That is who is served--the poorest of the poor in our country. That is who is going to be affected. These are the programs that will be cut 50 percent, or 75 percent-- not next year. This isn't phony stuff. This isn't, Oh, someone will take care of it. Because of Hurricane Katrina, we have right now 171,000 people being served by community action agencies that get their money from the Community Services Block Grant Program. Not only do we have poverty up in America, but we have all of these people who were evacuees who are being helped. The mayor of Baton Rouge was here this week and came to see us about increasing the Community Services Block Grant Program to the community action agencies because of all of the evacuees. When they told him it was being cut by 50 percent, he couldn't believe it. He absolutely couldn't believe this was actually happening. One might say, Well, we will come back and fix it later on. Maybe we will. When? November? December? I don't know when. Think about October and think about November and early December or the end of December. People will be evicted from their homes. People will have utilities cut off. The elderly will still need transportation to the doctor, and it won't be there. It won't be there because this will be cut either 50 percent in most States or in the smaller States by 75 percent. I refer my colleagues to two letters, one from the Ozark Community Action Agency and one from the East Missouri Community Action Agency, which were printed in the Record of yesterday. I ask unanimous consent a letter from the National Governors Association be printed in the Record. It talks about CSBG, urging we keep it at the appropriated levels.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator please ask the question again? Is the question about the States making up the difference?

Mr. HARKIN. Will you ask the question again?

Mr. HARKIN

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

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. HARKIN. With the understanding I would be able to offer an amendment as soon as the bill is laid down.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wanted the amendment I sent to the desk read because I want those who are not here, who are maybe in their offices, and their staff to understand what it is. It is not that long of an amendment. It basically tracks what I said earlier in my opening statement. I wish to respond a little bit to what was said on the floor just a minute ago. First of all, I point out to the Senator from Alaska that maybe this might be more appropriate on the Labor-HHS bill, the Labor- Health and Human Services appropriations bill. I remind people, tomorrow is the end of the fiscal year. They have not brought the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill to the floor. We do not know if they are ever going to bring it to the floor. So we do not have an opportunity to offer it there. The Defense authorization bill was up, and they took that off the floor. So I have not had an opportunity to offer it there. Now we have Defense appropriations. Quite frankly, this is about defense. It is about defending our people--not against a terrorist but against terrorism, the terrorism of an avian flu pandemic. That is what this is about. Now, I heard the Senator talk about BioShield. Well, I think maybe we ought to understand that BioShield money cannot be used for this because BioShield money can only be used for drugs for which there is no commercial market. Obviously there is a great commercial market for Tamiflu. So they can have all kinds of study groups and stuff going on down at the White House, but they have been privy to this information for a long time down at the White House, I say to my colleagues, more privy to this information than we have been. So if people are saying, ``Well, why are you offering this now?'' I am offering it now because it is the midnight hour. We have to do something about this. We have to put the money up there. We have to get moving on it now--not next year, not after some study group in the White House has banged this thing around for another 3 months. Who is in charge of this study group? I do not know. We had a briefing yesterday by Secretary Leavitt, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Gerberding, others. I thought it very unusual we would have a top-secret meeting, a briefing. Be that as it may, that is what they wanted to do. It became clear to me we have to do something. We can't dawdle any longer. The Senator said there is a task force at the White House working under BioShield. That is not what this is about. BioShield, fine, that has its own process. There is a reason for BioShield, for developing drugs that have no commercial market. That is not what this is about. This is about money for surveillance, quarantine. It is about money for building up local public health facilities, buying antivirals to cover half of our people. There is a market for that. We just don't have them; that is all. It is about putting money into vaccine production. We only have one flu vaccine manufacturing plant in America. I am told the reason for that is because there is not much profit in vaccines, not like Viagra or Cyalis, drugs such as that. I can't fault the drug companies. There is no money to be made from this. They are in the business of answering to their shareholders. This is a proper place for Government interference, interjection. Some of the things I heard from Alaska didn't comport with what we are trying to do. H5N1, the virus that struck in Southeast Asia, was isolated. We brought it back to NIH. They have been developing a vaccine based on H5N1. Preliminary reports are promising, but we are not there yet. The problem is, if we run off on a tangent, all we do is make the vaccine for H5N1, we might be invaded by H5N2 or 3, or 4 or 5, some other mutation, and that vaccine may not be adaptable for that. That is why we need to build up the vaccination manufacturing capability in this country. Yes, we need to be preparing the vaccine for H5N1, but we have to build up capacity for rapidly developing other vaccines in case it is a mutation and is not that virus. Keep in mind, this is not some scenario of maybe. When you talk to the people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or NIH, they say it is not a matter of if, it is when. We have to be prepared. We had warnings before. We had warnings about Katrina. We knew things weren't adequate in New Orleans and the gulf coast. We had a lot of warnings before 9/11 about terrorists blowing up the World Trade Center, using airplanes as weapons. We had all those warnings. We ignored them. We cannot afford to ignore this. The chairman raised all kinds of arguments as to why this should not be on the Defense appropriations bill. Well, we don't have any other bill. It is before us. This is a money matter. It has to do with using Government money to get us ready. Quite frankly, I can think of a better place than the appropriations bill. The Senator from Alaska also said this has never happened where we have done something that didn't pertain to our troops and defense on an appropriations bill. I am sorry. About 14 years ago, I offered an amendment to increase funding for breast cancer research to the Defense appropriations bill, and it was adopted. Quite frankly, I must say, the DOD has done a great job in utilizing those funds ever since, and the money we put in after that. They have done some of the best grant programs on breast cancer research. That didn't have anything to do with troops in the field, but it was added to the Defense bill. That is not the only example. There are others. I mentioned that one because I happened to be involved. To say we have never done this before on a Defense appropriations bill is not factual. I am hopeful we can get to a vote on this amendment and have a strong bipartisan vote on this bill to get us ready and to reassure our people that we are going to defend them to the maximum extent possible from an outbreak of avian flu. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend, if he will yield further, I appreciate it. I would like to work with him on this, and I think our staffs have been, but again I am not certain when we are going to get to the appropriation on that. That is what I don't know. When will we ever get to an appropriation on that? I say to my friend, I don't know. As I said, there is a logic in what he is saying. I am saying because of the problem of avian flu, because it could be so imminent, I don't think we have any days to wait. That is all I am saying. Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have an amendment I send to the desk.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I was yielded to for a question.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HARKIN. Okay.

Mr. HARKIN. Absolutely. I thank the Senator. He is a very thoughtful individual and chairman of the Bioterrorism Subcommittee on which I sit. He has given a thoughtful response. I respect that. I think there is a certain logic to what the Senator has said. I might use the phrase ``seductive logic,'' because obviously there is a lot more out there than just this. I respond to my friend by using an analogy: Just as I thought, it was wrong to put FEMA under Homeland Security because they are two different things. Homeland Security has to do with terrorism, that kind of threat; FEMA, natural disasters. I still think those should be separate. I thought it was wrong before to put them together. This is also the same kind of thing. The bioterrorism the chairman has been doing a great job at, that is one thing. The surveillance that is needed for terrorism and things such as that is different than the kind of surveillance needed by the CDCP in terms of a flu outbreak. You are talking about different people, different disciplines, a whole different set of parameters other than fighting some kind of biological terrorist threat. So while there may be logic, at some point, for doing this in a broader authorization bill--that is fine--I am saying to my friend, I don't think we have time to wait for that. I don't know when the bill would come up. Secondly, as I said to the chairman of this committee, this probably ought to be on the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill. But that has not been brought up, and I don't know if it is ever going to be brought up. So my thinking is that because of the urgency of this--and the Senator and I heard the briefing yesterday--I thought we ought to at least do something to get this thing moving and moving now rather be waiting to January or February or who knows when. So I submit to the chairman that while he has logic in what he says in putting this together, I think in this one case it has to be separated out right now. That is all I am trying to say.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, I come to the floor at this time to discuss a matter of grave national security. If recent Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita have taught us anything, it is that we have to do a dramatically better job of preparing for diseases before they strike so we are not left picking up the pieces afterward. I am very gravely concerned that the United States is totally unprepared for an outbreak--and a subsequent international pandemic--of avian flu. We have had two disasters in the last 4 years--9/11 and Katrina followed by Rita. And the Federal Government was totally unprepared for both, despite clear warnings. Similarly, we have been warned in no uncertain terms about avian flu, but our preparations so far have been grossly inadequate. I think I got my first briefing on this about a year ago from CDC in Atlanta. I have been following it closely in our Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. As it has unfolded over the last several months, it is clear that it is not a question of if avian flu is going to reach us, it is a question of when--not if, just when. As many of my colleagues know, avian flu--or as it is called in the technical jargon, H5N1--has been known to pass first in bird species. It was passed from bird to bird, chicken to chicken, and that type of thing. It has then gotten into migratory waterfowl, which has spread from countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. And they have now found it as far away as Kazakhstan and as far north as the northern regions of Russia. It is just a matter of time before it gets here. We have known this passed from bird to bird. We now know it has passed from birds to mammals, certain types of cats, particular tigers. We also know now it has passed from birds to humans. We have some cases. Now we have a few cases that have been reported of passing from human to human. So the virus is mutating. It is getting smarter. It knows that it has now gone from bird to bird, bird to mammal, and bird to human, and now from human to human. Experts in virology at the Department of Health and Human Services and others tell us that it is only a matter of time until the virus mutates from human to human to human, and then it becomes widespread. When that happens, we are in deep trouble. An outbreak in China, Vietnam or Cambodia could trigger, within a couple of weeks' time, a worldwide outbreak, facilitated by air traffic and the mass movement of people across borders. And the data so far shows that of the 150 cases of the human avian flu--H5N1--that we know of, 54 have died. Almost 50 percent of the people infected have died. This is a virulent form of the flu virus. It is a nightmare scenario--a kind of 21st century Black Death. It is not hard to picture that could happen within a few months' period of time. Again, as I say, many experts say it is not a matter of if, it is when. We have to ask tough questions. Where do our preparedness efforts stand? What could we be doing better? At some future time--I have it on charts, but I didn't have time to put it together--I will have charts to show what happened with the last great flu pandemic that hit the world in 1918 and 1919. Understand this: 500 million people were infected worldwide. This was almost 100 years ago--20 million to 40 million deaths worldwide. There were over 500 deaths in the United States. In one month alone, October 1918, 196 people died in the United States from this influenza. I have been told by experts that this H5N1 and how it manifests itself mirrors the influenza of 1918 and 1919. Where do our efforts stand, and what can we be doing better? First, where do we stand? The Centers for Disease Control, under the great leadership of Dr. Gerberding, is doing a fine job working in cooperation with the World Health Organization and governments in affected regions to detect the disease and to help to stop its spread. Surveillance can alert us to an outbreak and governments can then take measures to isolate the disease so that widespread infection does not occur. Again, we know how to do this. The CDC knows how to do this. They had great success with surveillance, isolation, and quarantine during the SARS outbreak, and they managed to control its spread. We never got SARS in the United States because we were able to isolate it and quarantine it in other countries. We also learned valuable lessons from this SARS episode. We need to be doing a better job of surveillance. We have had some problems with some countries which do not have a very good public health infrastructure. They may not report illnesses and deaths as do we or some other places. But we have CDC personnel on the ground in these countries. They know what to do. But they are woefully inadequate in funds. They don't have the funds needed to conduct adequate surveillance in these countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, and places such as that. They need some more support for surveillance. I will get into that in a little bit. In order for us to get the necessary vaccines for this drug, it is going to take a few months. The best thing we can be about in the initial stages is surveillance, finding out where it is outbreaking, control it, isolate it, and quarantine it. As I said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention know how do that. There are other things we can be doing better. The World Health Organization is encouraging the purchase of antiviruses, medicines that help mitigate the infectious disease once you have already gotten it. Unfortunately, the United States only has enough antiviral medication for 1 percent of our population. That is not enough. We need to invest approximately $3 billion to build an adequate stockpile of antiviral medications. That would get us enough for about 50 percent of the population. The experts tell us that we ought to be prepared for that kind of an infectious rate in the United States; that it could be up to 50 percent or more of our people in the United States affected by this--140 million people. If we stay where we are, and we only have 1 percent or 10 percent, then you raise the question: Who gets it? How is it distributed? We need to reassure our people that we have enough of these antivirals. These antivirals have a long shelf life--7 to 10 years, and maybe even more. It is not as if we are buying something that is going to disintegrate right away. These antivirals have a long shelf life. In addition, the President's budget cut $120 million from State and public health agencies. These are the agencies that will be on the front lines of both surveillance and disease prevention should an outbreak occur. We have to restore this funding. But that is not adequate. In the future, our public health infrastructure would be stretched to the limits by an outbreak of avian influenza. We need to invest in more public health professionals, epidemiologists, physicians, laboratory technicians, and others. As I said, if we have an outbreak and it gets to the United States, the first thing we want to do is have good surveillance, isolation, and quarantine. That costs money. Lastly, we also must take measures to increase our Nation's vaccine capacity. Currently, there is only one flu vaccine manufacturing facility in the United States. I have wondered about that. Why is that so? In meetings with the drug industry and others, I have learned that vaccine production is not very profitable compared to other types of drug development and manufacturing. Plus, they do not know if there is going to be a market for it. This is a classic point of market failure--where the market really can't respond to a future need. This is where the Government must step in to provide incentives for more manufacturers to build facilities in the United States. Many will remember what happened during the last flu season, when overseas manufacturing facilities were shut down for safety reasons. Because we had no manufacturing capacity domestically, we were stuck. We should learn from this lesson. We cannot afford this problem when faced with the threat of avian influenza. So the Federal Government can and must do more to improve domestic vaccine capacity. What does that mean? That means we are going to have to have some kind of guarantee that if you make this vaccine, we guarantee we will buy so many millions of doses of this vaccine. Why is that important? For this strain of the avian flu--in technological terms, H5N1--the virus that we have isolated in people who have contracted it in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, the National Institutes of Health and Infectious Disease, under Dr. Fauci, has been developing a vaccine. The initial reports that came out in July were that this vaccine has great promise. However, what we don't know is will the virus that mutates and comes to this country be H5N1 or will it be H5N3 or H5N5? We don't know. Therefore, if a manufacturer were to manufacture all these doses of vaccine for H5N1, that may not work for the kind of viruses we might get later on. I am told it might work for some; it might slow it down a little bit. That is why we need to have incentives for vaccine manufacturers in this country so they know if they manufacture the vaccine, it will be purchased. We may not use it all. We may have to develop new vaccines later on down the road. But at least we will have these vaccines in case H5N1 is the virus that gets here because we know that virus. That is why we have to move and we have to move right now. We do not have much time to invest in preparation for avian flu. Some may ask, Why wasn't this done before? Perhaps we should have done something better before. But after Katrina, maybe a lot of our eyes were opened that we were not prepared and that we have to do something different from what we are doing. Also, the virulence and the spread of avian flu has taken new leaps in the last several months that we had hoped might not happen. So we are faced right now with an urgent situation. We need to start right now. Later on, I will be offering an amendment to this bill that will basically do the following things: One, double our global surveillance of the avian flu through the Centers for Disease Control to identify and contain as soon as possible. In my conversation with CDC and others, this figure is about $33 million to adequately do the surveillance. Second, to restore the budget cuts to local and State public health departments and emergency preparedness activities to help communities prepare to recognize, treat, and quarantine the avian flu virus if it reaches our country. The President's budget cut $122 million from grants to State and local public health departments for emergency preparedness activities. These were grants that were first funded under our Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services in 2001 in response to the September 11 attacks. Again, as best as we could determine in talking to those who administer programs, in order to get it up to the point where they would be prepared for an avian flu outbreak, it is about $600 million nationally. Next, we need to increase the stockpile of antivirals. I mentioned earlier the World Health Organization recommended that each company stockpile enough Tamiflu--that is a brand name made by Roche Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland. They have the patent which has been very effective. The World Health Organization recommended each country stockpile enough for 40 percent of their population. As I mentioned, right now we have enough for about 1 percent. Other countries have heeded this warning and have gotten in line to purchase this. The United States, as I said, has 2 million doses on hand, enough for 1 percent of the population. We need additional resources. We need to build this up to serve at least 50 percent of our population. This comes at about $20 per dose as it is a multidose vaccine. It is not just one vaccine, you have to take a couple, three doses but only if you get infected. The tab for this is about $3 billion. Why, again, do we need to do that? Because we do not have any company making it in this country. Roche has the patent. I want to be respectful of patent rights, but other companies in America could, under patent law, make an agreement with Roche, for example, to manufacture it under their patent. Again, they are not going to do it if there is no buyer out there. Who is buying it? If we are to have enough of a stockpile to protect 50 percent of our population, we are going to need to come up with the money right now to guarantee a buyer out there to get more antivirals manufactured in a hurry. Consider the nightmare scenario if next year, God forbid, avian flu does mutate, it does reach the United States, and we only have enough doses for a million or 2 million people? Who will get it? How will it be distributed? The next part of the amendment builds up and strengthens our vaccine infrastructure. We only have one manufacturer of flu vaccine in the United States, and they do not have the capacity to rapidly ramp up and make enough vaccine for what we need. In the event of a pandemic, the United States would have to rely on imported vaccines which countries may be unwilling to export to us; They will want it for their own people. Again, the estimate to get a guaranteed order out for the vaccines would be about $125 million. To provide new resources for outreach educational efforts to health providers in the public, the estimate is $75 million. What this all adds up to, to be prepared for an outbreak of avian flu, is going to require somewhere around $4 billion, a little bit less than $4 billion. That is a big chunk of change. I remind my colleagues that is less than what we spend in Iraq in 1 month in order to start reassuring the people of this country that we are going to do whatever is necessary to respond to this threat that is looming on the horizon. I don't have my charts. I will have some later that will demonstrate the kinds of deaths we can expect in this country. When we looked at the flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919, there were about 500,000 deaths in the United States, 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide. We are looking at the possibility in the United States of deaths that can range anywhere from 100,000 up to 2 million, anywhere in that range. Hospitalizations could go anywhere from 300,000 to 10 million. Illnesses--we do not really know, but it could go from 20 to 30 to 40 million up to 100 million or more. That is the kind of pandemic we are looking at. When I first had my briefing on this at CDC last year, it was perhaps hoped that this avian flu would not mutate as rapidly as it has. But it has. So now we are in a situation of waiting until that next shoe drops when we find it has gone from a human to a human to a human. When that happens, we have to be able to react immediately. It is almost the midnight hour right now. I hope it never hits, obviously; but since the experts say it is not a matter of if but is only a matter of when because this is a virulent virus, I hope it is put off long enough so we can get the vaccines made, buy the antiviral, and put in place the surveillance and quarantine that we need so that when it does happen--because we are assured by the experts that it will--we can respond, we can quarantine, we can isolate, and if it starts to spread we can give the people who are infected the antivirus they need and we can vaccinate other people so they do not get it. I am hopeful we can reach some agreement on an amendment to do that. I hope to be offering that sometime later. It is being worked on right now. I hope we can find the money to do this. This is an emergency basis because I think this is an emergency basis. We passed an emergency to respond to Katrina; no one objected to that. We passed emergencies to respond to September 11; no one objected to that. I am tired of looking in the rearview mirror. I don't want to have us looking in the rearview mirror a couple of years from now when the avian flu has struck. It is time to look ahead. That is what this is geared to do, start putting these things in place. Keep in mind, it is less than 1 month's expenditure of money in Iraq. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have another letter from East Missouri Action, again outlining what is going to happen here: In the event that a continuing resolution is passed which would effectively fund CSBG at the FY-06 House appropriations level-- A cut of 50 percent-- serious cuts in services provided to low-income families in Southwest Missouri would occur. . . . In-home visits will no longer be a priority. This will require more volunteers for clients who are home bound. Other catalytic activities such as life skills training workshops will be scaled back if not totally eliminated. [East Missouri Action Agency] serves as the point of service for most other helping organizations in seven of our eight counties. . . . Families will be referred to other helping agency with little or no follow-up . . . we will not have the staff to effectively work with them. I ask unanimous consent that this letter from the East Missouri Action Agency also be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, people say, What do community services block grants do? Here are some of their activities: Parenting education to 175,000 Head Start families, helping people be good parents; transportation for elderly Americans to medical appointments, which I mentioned earlier, such as the community health centers; home ownership counseling for the low income, how they might be able to afford and pay for their own home; mentoring and counseling for at-risk youth; in-home chore services for homebound elderly. Think about that. Domestic violence services. I mentioned refrigerators and transportation services for food banks; transitional housing for homeless families. You wonder what happens to homeless families? Community service action agencies find them transitional housing and especially now with winter coming on. Lead inspection programs, screening homes for lead-based paint, and we know how devastating that is on low-income children. Food stamp outreach, going out to make sure low-income people know they are eligible for food stamps, that they do not have to go hungry. Community services block grant networks, let me talk about who these people are. Their local networks were made up of 1,090 local eligible entities, of which 88 percent were Community Action Agencies. The local agencies use CSBG funding for their core operations developing and for developing and coordinating programs to fight poverty in 99 percent of the counties in the United States. Who are the participants? Who are served? Twenty-two percent of all persons in poverty--I said about 1 out of 5; we are going to make it even lower than that--more than 15 million individuals who were members of almost 6 million low-income families. Data provided by 4 million families show that more than 2.7 million had incomes at or below the poverty guideline. Think about this. Of these, 1.1 million families were ``severely poor'' with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty guideline. That means for a family of 4, we are talking about less than $7,000, probably $7,500 a year; 1.1 million families with less than $7,000 a year. That is who is being served by the community services block grant. Another 1.6 million families had incomes between 50 percent and 100 percent of the poverty guideline; almost 1.7 million working poor families who relied on wages or unemployment insurance and collectively made up 44 percent of all program participants; nearly 430,000 families were TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families; twenty-two percent of TANF monthly caseloads are CSBG clients; and about 1.4 million families are headed by single mothers. These program serve more than 3.7 million children in poverty, 1.8 million adults who had never completed high school, 1.1 million people who were disabled, 3 million who lack health care. That is who is served. I just mentioned all the programs that serve these people. In my own State of Iowa, northwest Iowa, northeast Iowa, southwest Iowa, they are talking about how much they are going to have to cut back. In a five-county area in northwest Iowa, services at seven outreach centers which assist over 10,000 each year, have been scaled back. This is a 50-percent cut. This is not phony stuff. This is real. In a seven-county area in northeast Iowa, the Community Action Agencies already had to reduce office and staff hours in eight family service offices due to reductions in CSBG funding over the last 2 years. With a 50-percent reduction in CSBG, the family services staff will likely be reduced from 16 full and part-time individuals to 7 individuals employed less than 40 hours a week. That is to serve a seven-county area in northeast Iowa. In Iowa, this is the time of the year temperatures are starting to drop and food supplies are running short as gardens stop producing. I think I just picked the last tomato off my tomato plant last week. Without staff to take and process applications and provide assistance, the LIHEAP program year starts October 1. That is what, Saturday? That is Saturday. The LIHEAP program year starts October 1, Saturday. In northeast Iowa, the CAA there faces an inability to ensure that those in poverty will continue to receive home heating assistance and food assistance. If CSBG is reduced--this is southeast Iowa--by 50 percent, the agency will have to reduce staff and close one very rural outreach center. That will mean clients who need emergency assistance for food, utilities, disconnect notices would have to drive about 45 miles to apply for assistance. These are people who probably do not even have transportation. They do not own cars. The centers--I am reading here from the report--are terribly busy with the increase in the number of families coming to the outreach centers because they have been evicted, about to become homeless, have a disconnect notice from their utilities or their utilities have already been disconnected. President Bush, September 15, 2005: We have a duty to confront poverty with bold action. I hope someone in the bowels of the White House is listening to a little bit of my remarks. They do not have to buy it all. I hope they listen to a little bit of it. I hope that something will click up in one of those heads in the White House and say: Wait a minute. Is Harkin right? Could this possibly be happening? He must be wrong. He is just up there doing his thing. But just in case, we better check on it. I hope somebody at the White House is saying, maybe we ought to check on this. When they check, they will find out I am right. What the House has sent us will cut it 50 percent starting Saturday, and it will have these effects. One may say, Oh, no, it will not, but it will. That is why I have not come out on the floor to bemoan the CR for the cuts in education because we are going to fix that. The money for education does not go out until next summer. We have time to take care of that. The other cuts that are in the CR, we can take care of that. I would not go on like this if it was just education because we are going to have time to fix it later on. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about something that is right now, needs the money now, the money goes out now, not next year--now, October 1. October 1, they will be cut 50 percent just like that. There is no carryover money. There is not a lot of money sitting someplace that they can carry over. We have already cut this program, as I said, in each of the last 3 years. This Senate--well, I should say the Appropriations Committee, I cannot say the Senate, the Appropriations Committee passed it at last year's level, bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats. I hope someone in the White House may have picked up on this. I hope they are going to check it, and I hope one of them will say: We cannot leave our boss hanging out there. Our boss said this and our boss meant it. I believe he did mean it. But he probably does not know. The President is busy. I am not faulting him for that. He probably does not know what the House did. I would like to believe that if this person in the White House who may have listened to this or picked up on it and checked out and found out that that is exactly what the CR does, the continuing resolution does, they will get to someone higher up the food chain to get to the President to let him know about this, and maybe the President will get on the phone and he will call the leadership and say: You have to do this. You have to adopt this amendment. You cannot leave me hanging out there having said this and then turn around and expect me to sign a continuing resolution that cuts the poorest of the poor. That is what we would be saying. He said that last week. Now he is going to get something and he has to sign it. I would hope the President might get on the phone or at least have his Chief of Staff or somebody do it and tell them we have to fix this. If it means the House of Representatives comes back on Friday afternoon or Friday evening or Saturday morning to fix it, so be it. So they are going to be a little uncomfortable--oh, my goodness. I assume some Congressmen have probably gotten on a plane, and they went someplace, they have gone home. My goodness, they will have to get on an airplane--not at their expense. The Government will pay for it. They do not have to pay anything for it. They have to go to an airport, get on an airplane, fly back to Washington, put on a suit and tie and go back to the House floor and correct this. I know it is a terrible burden. It is a terrible thing to ask of someone making $160,000 a year, or whatever we make around here now. Well, I jest, tongue in cheek. It is not too much to ask. They should do it, and the President should tell them to do it. Come back here and fix this. Do not leave him hanging out there having said that last week. Heaven forbid that we should have the House come back and work on a Friday. My, my, work on a Friday? Whoever heard of such a thing? The working poor work on Friday. Or maybe they have to come back Saturday and fix it, Saturday morning or Friday night. Poor people work at night. They are working two jobs. No, I am sorry, I do not mind making Members of the House uncomfortable if they have to get on a plane or come back to the House and fix this. That is a small price to pay to make sure that we live up to what the President said a week ago. This is not even bold action. This is continuing to do what we have been doing in the last year. It is not too much to ask. It is time that we made the comfortable a little bit uncomfortable so we can give some comfort to those who are uncomfortable. We will be voting on this tomorrow. I hope that Senators will not be swayed by this, ``Well, we cannot do this because the House has gone home.'' Well, let us comfort the uncomfortable. Let us tell the poorest of the poor we are not going to leave them in the lurch, we are not going to cut them by 50 percent, and let us have them come back and fix this tomorrow night. They can do it. I appreciate the indulgence of the occupant of the chair for allowing me to talk about my amendment because I will not have much time in the morning. I only have 30 minutes. Some other people may want to talk. I know no one is here. I hope some people may be watching and taking heed of this. I will be back tomorrow morning, in a more succinct manner, obviously, to lay out this case on why we have to adopt an amendment to keep the community services block grants at last year's level. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN. We are saying to the poorest in our country: We are going to take you back to 1986. I have a modest proposal. Why don't we take our Tax Code and move it back to 1986? Whatever people were paying in taxes, we will move everything back to then. How would the most comfortable in our society, the wealthiest, the richest, like that? I rather doubt that that would be something you would ever accomplish around here. Yet for the poorest people in our country, we can take them back to 1986. I have been here 30 years. I have never seen anything like this: 170,000 victims of Hurricane Katrina; in Texas, 72,000 evacuees have been served by this program; in Louisiana, more than 43,000 hurricane victims. Almost all the community action agencies in the impacted area were up and running by the second day after the storm. They were finding shelter, feeding people, clothing people, getting them medical attention. Now they are helping victims find employment. Community action agencies have been actively working with faith-based organizations all across the gulf coast to provide relief services. I mentioned what the mayor of Baton Rouge said. He was up here wanting to get more money for community services block grants. What does he get hit in the face with? Not only are you not getting more, they are cutting you in half. He couldn't believe it. Nationwide, this cut would eliminate or disrupt essential services for some 6.5 million low-income people, including nearly 2 million children. A majority of rural outreach centers will be closed, denying entire rural communities access to services. Many of the one-stop neighborhood centers in suburban and urban areas would also be shut down. Here is a chart that gives you an idea of what this 50-percent cut means. I mentioned 6.5 million people, 2 million kids. Communities will lose 21 million CSBG-supported volunteers. These are the volunteers the CSBG people pull together to do things. These are volunteers who want to, for example, volunteer their time to drive some elderly, low-income people to a community health center. These are good people, many of them church based, who volunteer their time to drive people to a meal site for a senior citizen meal. They volunteer their time to take low- income kids to a Head Start Program, for example. They are volunteers doing good things, but they need someone to pull it together, organize it, manage it, and get the transportation. That is what CSBG does. So we are going to cut it by 50 percent. These volunteers are going to say: I would like to volunteer my time to drive these elderly, but you don't have any vehicle for me. Who is setting up the time? Who is making sure they are going to be there when I get there? No one. As a result, we are going to lose all these wonderful volunteers. Private food banks all over the Nation rely on space, refrigerators, and transportation supported by CSBG. Think about all of the food banks all over America that are already being stressed to the limit. They are supported by the community services block grants. Now we are going to cut them in half. What happens to the space, what happens to the refrigerators, the transportation? Several million Americans will lose nutritional services and emergency food--not next year; this is not prospective. This is next week. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is administered by CSBG. This cut will reduce staff in half, while home heating costs are expected to rise 50 to 70 percent. Cold weather is coming. Heating costs are going up. Cut CSBG. That is something we can be proud of right? We can be proud of what we are doing here. What a shame. These cuts are callous, ill advised, and they are cruel. This is cruel. I have no other way to say it. They are cruel. It couldn't come at a worse time. We know the rate of poverty is going up. Winter is coming on. We have had a couple of disasters, Rita and Katrina. What we are saying is, guess what, we are going to pull the rug out from underneath you. We are going to hurt you a little bit more. Maybe the House didn't know what they were doing. Maybe they didn't know this was in there. I don't know. What my amendment does is, it simply continues the level at last year's level. It ought to be increased by all rights. We know the number of Americans living in poverty has increased in each of the last 4 years. The purchasing power of community services block grants continues to decline. Each year, about 1 million more people qualify for community services block grant services. There is not any money to meet their needs right now. As bad as this is, the picture I am painting, right now community service agencies provide services to only 1 in 5 people in poverty; with $636 million, 1 in 5 are served. Now we are going to take that down even more. I don't understand why the majority party in this Congress again and again proposes to slash programs from those who have the least in our society while adamantly insisting that tax cuts for the most fortunate are untouchable and sacrosanct. We can't touch them. We all recognize that after 4 years of tax cuts, war and emergency spending, budget deficits are out of control. We all know this must be addressed, including with appropriate spending cuts. But what I don't understand is why we are asking the poor to bear the lion's share of the burden when it comes cutting the funding. Why are they on the front line? Why are they being cut this weekend? I object to repeated efforts by the majority party in this Congress to try to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Even before Katrina struck, the majority party was already planning to slash food stamps by $3 billion and Medicaid by $10 billion. Katrina stopped that. But who is the target of spending cuts? The poor, those who rely on Federal programs for health, education, disability, and veterans benefits. Last week, a group of House Republicans launched what they call Operation Offset. They insist that all of the tax cuts of the last 4 years are off limits and untouchable, including the huge tax cuts for the most privileged and wealthy people in our society. Instead, Operation Offset would pay for Katrina recovery by slashing programs for the least fortunate among us, including deep cuts in Medicare, cuts in Medicaid, cuts to the School Lunch Program, cuts to the Children's Health Insurance Program, cuts in college aid, needy students, and on and on. In short, with the leadership in this Congress, tax reductions for the rich are sacred and cannot be touched, while programs for the poor are fair game for deep cuts. I object. I object to this. I believe the clear majority of Americans reject this approach also. It offends their sense of fairness and equity. This has to stop, and this is the place to stop it on this continuing resolution. We have to stop this one. This is so unconscionable. I don't know how anyone could ever feel good about this or feel we have done our job. It is unconscionable, it is drastic, and it is cruel to cut the community services block grants in this manner. I know what people are going to say tomorrow. They are going to come out here and say: Well, the House passed the continuing resolution and they have gone home. If my amendment is adopted, why, it has to go back to the House and they went home, and we will be accused of shutting down the Government. Mr. President, I am sorry. The House of Representatives can come back on Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday, they can come back to vote on the Terri Schiavo situation. Regardless of what you think about it, right or wrong, I am saying, if they can call the House back for that, if they can do that, they can call the House back to protect the poorest in our society from the cuts in the CSBG. We can pass it in the Senate, call the House back, and they can vote on it. We would not be shutting the Government down. If the House does not want to come back, they will be shutting the Government down. We are supposed to put a knife in the backs of the poorest in our country because the House did this? They can come back. We ought to force them to come back. We ought to force them to do what is right. It is up to us in this body to have the correct response. We have to seize this opportunity and correct the misplaced priorities of the last 5 years and correct this one. Last week, September 15, President Bush in New Orleans said: We have a duty to confront poverty with bold action. Let me repeat that. You may not have gotten it the first time. President Bush said on September 15: We have a duty to confront poverty with bold action. OK, so what we are going to do is pass a continuing resolution that cuts community services block grants by 50 percent--starting this weekend--that service the poor in our country. They are going to cut it by 50 percent. I guess that is pretty bold action. I guess they are going to confront poverty with bold action; yes, they are going to make more poor people. We have a duty to confront poverty with bold action. I wonder if the President knows this. I wonder if anyone around the President has told him what the House did. I wonder if he is saying: Yes, that is the thing to do. Is the President okaying this? Has he sent word to the House that this is perfectly fine with him, that this comports with what he said last week? I would like to hear from the President on this one. I would like to hear if he supports cutting community services block grants by 50 percent. I would like to quote from a letter I recently received from a number of faith-based groups urging Congress to drop plans on the budget reconciliation to cut CSBG. I want to talk about it because it is appropriate to this. The group said the budget: continues to ask our Nation's working poor to pay the cost of a prosperity in which they may never share. It is clear that programs, such as Medicaid and the Food Stamp Program that are slated for cuts by Congress, will, in fact, have greater burdens placed on them as a result of Hurricane Katrina. These programs represent the deep and abiding commitment of the Nation to care for the least among us. I could not have said it better. As we look for ways to assist the least among us, we should not hesitate to ask the most among us to help share some of the burden. We need to restore this funding. I said I was going to give an example of who is hit by this. I have two other letters. One is from Ozark Action, West Plains, MO; Ozark Community Action Partnership: The result of a Continuing Resolution as proposed, which would be the reduction of CSBG funds by 50 percent, Ozarks Action, Inc., located in rural southern Missouri (Douglas, Howell, Ozark, Oregon, Texas and Wright counties), would be faced with reducing its current staffing levels by 50 percent. As a result many of the services to low-income families would become unattainable. Currently we have staff located in 10 communities on a full time basis in each of these six counties. The reduction would mean that 5 [full time employees] would be reduced. The issue then becomes which of the six counties no longer will be served or will have significantly reduced services. In addition to serving the resident low-income population in this high poverty service area, these ten staff carry out the function of providing services to those individuals that have come to the area as a result of the two devastating hurricanes (Rita and Katrina). . . . CSBG staff also conducts LIHEAP services for both the Energy Assistance program as well as providing the emergency energy services. I did not mention that. Sometimes low-income people, especially elderly, get caught with the first or second cold snap. They have not thought ahead, and maybe they don't have enough oil in the tank. They need some help right away. They don't have credit, and they don't have money. The community services block grants provide for that, to get them enough fuel oil, heating oil--whatever it might be--to get them through that snap. They say: This in and of itself will put a large burden on the State to provide adequate service to those in need of energy assistance. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter from Ozark Action, Inc., be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thought the CR--the continuing resolution, as it is known around this place--was going to be laid down tonight. I guess it will not be laid down until tomorrow. But I will be offering an amendment the first thing in the morning on behalf of myself and a number of other cosponsors: Mr. Kohl, Mr. Jeffords, Mr. Levin, Mr. Bingaman, Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Stabenow, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Pryor, Mr. Carper, and Ms. Cantwell. I think by tomorrow morning there are going to be a lot more on this list. It is basically a very simple amendment. All it says is: Notwithstanding section 101 of this joint resolution, amounts are provided for making payments under the ``Community Services Block Grant Act'' at a rate not less than the amounts made available for such Act in fiscal year 2005. Well, what that means is that this amendment, then, will continue the community services block grants at last year's level. Now, you might say: Well, wait a minute. Isn't that what a continuing resolution does, it continues everything at last year's level? Well, we have a continuing resolution the likes of which I have never seen. I have not seen it in the last 10 years. I have asked my staff to go back 20 years or so to see if we had something like it. Here is what the House has done. They have sent us a continuing resolution that continues funding either at last year's level or at the House budget level, whichever is lower--whichever is lower. Now, what you will find out in there is that there are cuts in education, cuts to a whole lot of things. But most of those cuts do not take effect until next year. Education money goes out next summer. So for the continuing resolution, from now until--what?--November 18, I think it is, or something like that--a couple months--they will not be hit. But there will be a 50-percent cut in the Community Services Block Grants, which means by Saturday they will be cut 50 percent--right now. Now, the occupant of the Chair, a former distinguished Governor of Virginia, I know he knows about the community services block grants. They do a lot in his State, as they do in our States: the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, housing, Head Start, transportation for the elderly, job search, all kinds of things, even helping low-income people apply for the earned income tax credit. There are a whole host of things done by Community Services Block Grants. It will be cut 50 percent, not next year, Saturday, Sunday. It will be a 50-percent cut immediately. Now, I am going to read it into the Record this evening. I am sorry I have to keep the distinguished Senator in the chair for a little while tonight, but I think it is important for people to understand what we are doing here. If this were just affecting programs like education next year--we are going to fix that by November, granted. But this is now. This happens now. The poorest of the poor in our country are going to get hit Saturday, Sunday, Monday, because of the wording of that continuing resolution, with a 50-percent cut, including victims of Hurricane Katrina, children all across the country. We just had the mayor of Baton Rouge here the other day, Kip Holden. He was up here asking for more money for community services block grants. When he found out from my staff what the continuing resolution did in cutting it 50 percent, he couldn't believe it. He said they have been invaluable in assisting Katrina evacuees, getting things done that FEMA could not. He was up here pleading for more funding for community services block grants. He said it was beyond belief that Congress would be cutting this program at a time when it is most urgently needed. But that is exactly what the Congress will do if it passes this CR. Once again, we are 1 day from the end of the fiscal year. Like an irresponsible schoolchild, the Congress has not completed its homework. It has finished 2 of the 11 appropriations bills. Why do we find ourselves once again in this sorry state of disarray? Consider the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill, which is the bill that funds community services block grants. Under the very capable leadership of our distinguished chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, our subcommittee did its job in a timely, orderly manner. We passed the Senate Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill 2\1/2\ months ago, July 14. But once it left our committee, it seemed to disappear into a black hole. It hasn't been brought up on the floor. It is not even scheduled to be brought up on the floor. This is the bill that funds the community services block grants. We didn't cut it. It was bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats on the subcommittee and on the full Committee on Appropriations voted to continue the funding for community services block grants at last year's level. Here we are, 1 day away from yet another end-of-fiscal-year train wreck. Like actual train wrecks, this one will have real human casualties and victims, real hardship. This has not been done before. I know no one is here. There are no more votes tonight. Senators have all gone home. But I will be back on this floor tomorrow. We get 30 minutes tomorrow morning, 30 minutes to do something to protect the poorest of the poor, those who have no one to fight for them, those who rely upon our community service agencies out there to help them get through a tough time, to provide the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program. Even in Virginia, as well as Iowa, up in the northern part of the country, cold weather is starting to set in. It is in the 30s at night. Pretty soon it will get down to freezing, in October and November. We are going to need to get LIHEAP money out to these people. How are we going to do it when we have cut funding 50 percent? We are not supposed to speak about the other body here, but what could have been on their minds in doing something like this? Now we are going to bring this up tomorrow. I assume the leadership is going to want us to rubberstamp it, a continuing resolution that will mandate drastic cuts to these vital services for the poorest of the poor, rubberstamp it, get it out of here, 30 minutes of debate tomorrow. We will talk about it. We will rubberstamp it, and we will get on our planes and go home. We are comfortable. We are going to be able to afford heat. We will be able to afford food for our families. We don't have anything to worry about. We make a lot of money around here. Eighty percent of this place is filled with millionaires. That is fine. We are comfortable. Think about those who are not so comfortable. We are going to see devastating cuts. I mentioned serving victims of Hurricane Katrina. One hundred seventy-one thousand people, estimated not by me but by those involved with the evacuees, 171,000 people are being served under the community services block grants right now. It is 50 percent, this weekend--not next year, now--a 50-percent cut now. I don't know if people understand this. Poor people are going to suffer. For the record, in fiscal year 2005, the CSBG was funded at $637 million, $636.6 million, to be accurate. The House provided $320 million for next year. Therefore, under this continuing resolution, which says you either take last year's level or the House level, whichever is less, that is what you do. Well, the House level is $320 million, a 50-percent cut. I have a chart that shows the funding levels for community services block grants. In each of the last 3 years, it has been cut. The last time it was raised was in the fiscal year from 2001 to 2002 to $650 million. Ever since then, in fiscal years 2003, 2004, and 2005, it was cut from 650 to 645 to 642 to 636.6. Now they want to cut it in half. What is interesting about this chart is they want to cut it to 320 million. That is the level it was at in 1986. That is how much we provided in 1986 for the community services block grants. I ask unanimous consent that this chart be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, on Sunday, September 18, just outside of Chicago, Farm Aid staged its 20th annual concert, playing to a sell-out crowd of more than 28,000. Over the years, Farm Aid has raised more than $27 million to fund national, State and local efforts of various kinds to support and strengthen family farm agriculture and rural communities. The first Farm Aid concert, on September 22, 1985, was organized by a great American who is richly acquainted with the heart and soul of rural America, Willie Nelson. Originally conceived as a way to raise money to help struggling farm families, the first Farm Aid concert also served to highlight the crucial challenges facing family farms and rural communities. I have vivid memories of that first Farm Aid concert 20 years ago. I remember getting on the train in Carroll, IA, west of Ames, and riding it all the way to Champaign, IL. That was a trainload of people with high hopes and good spirits. But more important, that train was packed with people who understood firsthand the severity of the farm crisis, and who had a deep, passionate commitment to doing something about it. We spent the train trip discussing ideas for turning the situation around, and by the time we arrived in Champaign, we were fired up to push for big changes. The mid-1980s were a tumultuous time for rural America. In my own State of Iowa, the economic devastation experienced by family farms and small towns was the worst since the Great Depression. As in the 1930s, the human toll of the crisis was poignant and profound. There were many tens of thousands of people who had spent their lives working hard and playing by the rules, but who were losing their farms, their homes and their livelihoods. That affected me personally, as it did most Iowans and people all across America. And like so many others, I was convinced that we needed new ideas and better policies to save America's family farm agriculture and to revitalize our rural economy. The first Farm Aid concert drew a tremendous amount of national and even international attention to the crisis in rural America. Farm Aid opened people's eyes to the plight of family farms and small towns. It helped farm families directly and it led to policy changes that have made a positive difference. Family farms and rural communities are still struggling, and so Farm Aid is as important as ever. And in that same spirit, this year's concert highlighted and helped support a special Farm Aid Family Farm Disaster Fund to provide aid to farm families and rural communities that have been devastated by hurricanes across the gulf region, drought in the Midwest or other natural disasters elsewhere. In the tremendous response to the hurricanes, we have seen the same outpouring of concern and compassion by the American people that has supported Farm Aid over the years. I salute Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Dave Matthews and all the others who have devoted themselves to making Farm Aid a success in helping family farms and rural communities throughout the years--including David Senter, Carolyn Mugar and Corky Jones. I wish them and Farm Aid many more successful years supporting family farms and rural communities and raising awareness of their vital importance to us all.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent Elizabeth Leef of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, every year the Iowa Council for International Understanding honors immigrants and refugees in Iowa who have, in the words of the council, ``achieved, belonged and contributed to our community in a significant way.'' The ICIU began in 1938 when a group of volunteers joined forces to aid immigrants fleeing the war in Europe. Since their founding, the ICIU has continued to provide cultural services to both the immigrant community and to native-born Iowans. The United States has always been a beacon of hope for many around the world seeking refuge from oppressive regimes, and it is my belief that each generation of immigrants has enriched our Nation both culturally and economically. My mother was an immigrant from Slovenia, and I am proud to be a first generation American. I take this opportunity to join in honoring the recipients of this year's ICIU awards and to thank and congratulate them for all they have achieved and contributed to Iowa's communities. Joe Gonzalez was born in Mexico and immigrated to Des Moines in 1957. In 1971, he joined the Des Moines Police Department. He was one of the first Hispanic officers in the department and has garnered numerous awards, on both the State and national level, over his 33-year tenure. Among other things, Officer Gonzalez has been particularly active in aiding crime victims and victims of sexual and domestic abuse. After the September 11 attacks, he worked at Ground Zero. Sonia Parras Konrad immigrated to the United States 9 years ago from Granada, Spain. She was trained as a lawyer and is most recently a graduate of Drake University Law School. Today she practices law in Iowa. Ms. Konrad is being honored today for her passionate dedication to helping victims of domestic and sexual violence, particularly within Spanish speaking communities. Among the programs she has founded is LUNA, Latinas Unidas por un Nuevo Amanecer--Latinas United for a New Dawn--designed to prevent and deal with the effects of domestic and sexual violence. This program has aided countless Iowans and has been used as a model in other states. Juliet Cunningham emigrated from Kirkuk, Iraq, to the United States in 1979 to pursue advanced educational opportunities. She is actively involved with many Iowa institutions, including the Iowa State University Engineering and Research Complex, Des Moines Science Center, Society of Women Engineers and the West Des Moines United Methodist Church. In 1994 Mrs. Cunningham cofounded TEAM Services Inc., a soil, environmental, and construction materials consulting firm with her husband. Of particular note is her role in helping get a TEAM Services laboratory in central Iowa accredited for the testing of construction materials, making it the first laboratory in Iowa with these capabilities. Dr. Liansuo Xie was born in 1958 and grew up in China's Hebei Province. He worked as a mechanic in a paper manufacturing plant there before studying to receive a B.S. from the Beijing Agricultural Engineering University in 1982. Shortly thereafter, he married and came to the U.S. to study further at Iowa State University where he eventually earned a Ph.D. and was honored with a Research Excellence award. He is widely considered to be one of the best engineers at the Townsend Engineering Company in Des Moines, where he has worked since 1990, for his work on project design and design productivity. Finally, Dr. Liansuo is a longstanding contributor to his community, serving as a founding member of the Iowa Chinese Language School, the Sister States of Iowa, Hebei Committee, and acting as a tour guide for Chinese delegations to Iowa and the United States. B.J. Do arrived in Iowa in 1975 at the age of 13. He arrived wearing only shorts and speaking very limited English, having fled Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. Despite his humble beginning, he went on to earn both B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Iowa. From there the sky was the limit, as Mr. Do went on to work on, design for, and manage projects for major international companies all over the United States. He has since returned to Iowa where he is the co-founder and CEO of ABC Virtual Communications, a software product and services company based in west Des Moines. He has received recognitions for his accomplishments from myriad institutions, including the University of Iowa and the State of Iowa, along with receiving the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1999. We are proud of their achievements and are pleased they are members of our communities. I am sure that ICIU would agree that for every story told here today, countless others remain untold.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, tomorrow the Senate will vote on the nomination of John Roberts to be the 17th individual to serve as Chief Justice of the United States. I have put an enormous amount of contemplation and consideration into my vote on this nomination. Some may wonder why this has been such a difficult decision for me. Clearly Judge Roberts is an individual of great accomplishment. He has an outstanding educational background and keen legal skills. He is a thoughtful, decent, modest person, impressively knowledgeable about constitutional law and the Court. I watched much of the judiciary hearings. I have reviewed briefs and court decisions written by Judge Roberts. And, thanks to his generosity, I met with Judge Roberts for more than an hour in my office last week, talking one on one. What I did not find in the hearings or in Judge Roberts' writings or in our meeting was a clear indication that Judge Roberts understands the critical role the courts play in protecting the civil rights of Americans and in allowing those who have suffered discrimination to be able to seek recourse and affirm their rights in Federal court. I was seeking some indication that Judge Roberts understands that the issues that come before the high Court cannot always be viewed with a cool, legal dispassion and detachment, but that the Court and its members play a critical role in protecting the powerless in our country. This is of grave concern to me because the individual who fills this Supreme Court vacancy will have the ability to enhance and strengthen or undermine and weaken the Americans With Disabilities Act. Judge Roberts' nomination comes at a time when there is a very significant clash occurring between the Supreme Court and Congress over whether Congress has the authority to require the States to comply with antidiscrimination laws. Unfortunately, the law caught at the center of this clash is the Americans With Disabilities Act. As I have deliberated on this nomination, the first and foremost question in my mind has been this: What kind of Court would the Roberts Court be? Would it be a Court that serves as a refuge of last resort for the powerless in our society? Or, would it be a Court that will continue down a disturbing path seen in the later years of the Rehnquist Court, a path that limits the ability of Congress to pass legislation that provides meaningful protections to individuals, including the 54 million Americans with disabilities? Unfortunately, after carefully reviewing the record and talking with Judge Roberts, I am unable to conclude that a Roberts Court would guarantee the rights of the powerless and those with disabilities. Earlier this year we celebrated the 15th anniversary of passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The ADA, as it is known, prohibits discrimination in employment against people with disabilities. It requires that the services and programs of local and State governments be accessible and usable by individuals with disabilities. Since its enactment, the ADA has provided opportunity and access for 54 million Americans with disabilities who, prior to the law's enactment, routinely faced prejudice, discrimination, and exclusion in their everyday lives. As Members of this body know very well, I was the lead sponsor of the ADA. I championed it because I had seen discrimination against the disabled firsthand, growing up with my brother Frank, who was deaf. During his childhood, my brother was sent halfway across the State to a school for the ``deaf and dumb.'' He was told his career path would be limited because surely someone who is deaf cannot contribute to society. Throughout his life, Frank experienced active discrimination at the hands of both private individuals and government, and this served to limit the choices before him. Frank's experience was by no means unusual, as Congress documented extensively prior to enactment of the ADA. As part of the writing of that bill, we gathered a massive record of blatant discrimination against those with disabilities. We had 25 years of testimony and reports on disability discrimination, 14 congressional hearings, and 63 field hearings by a special congressional task force that were held in the 3 years prior to the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. We received boxes loaded with thousands of letters and pieces of testimony gathered in hearings and townhall meetings across the country from people whose lives had been damaged or destroyed by discrimination. We had markups in 5 different committees, had over 300 examples of discrimination by States. I know; I was there. I was the chairman of the Disability Policy Subcommittee. Yet since enactment of the ADA the Court has repeatedly questioned whether Congress had the constitutional authority to require States to comply with the ADA. Amazingly, it questioned whether Congress adequately documented discrimination. In 2000, the Supreme Court held in a 5-to-4 decision that an experienced nurse at a university hospital--who was demoted after being diagnosed with breast cancer because her supervisor did not like being around sick people--was not covered by the ADA. Why? Because she had the misfortune to work for a State hospital. In contrast, last year, by a 5-to-4 decision, the Court held that Congress did have the authority to require States to make courthouses accessible. This year, the Court will look at whether a State is required to make a prison accessible. There is no guarantee that the Court will come to the same result. Instead, we could end up with a crazy patchwork where courthouses are accessible, but maybe libraries are not, perhaps prisons are accessible, but employment offices are not. When we passed the ADA, we in Congress did not forbid employment discrimination against the disabled unless they worked for the State. We didn't say some services must be accessible. But that is what the Court has been saying. Talk about judicial activism. I would point out here, in those years when we were developing the Americans With Disabilities Act, my friend Senator Hatch was ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. They had their staffs look to make sure we passed the constitutional tests. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, a great supporter of the Americans With Disabilities Act, had the Department of Justice look and make sure we were passing constitutional muster. Boyden Gray, in the White House Counsel's Office, looked at it to make sure we passed constitutional muster. Fifteen Ronald Reagan appointees to the National Council on Disability, working with constitutional law experts, looked at the bill to make sure it passed constitutional muster. Yet the Court, by 5-to-4 decisions, is undermining all we did. As a result, 15 years after passage of the ADA, the rights of those with disabilities still hang in the balance. Those rights will be determined in a very significant way by a potential Roberts Court. As Chief Justice, Mr. Roberts personally will have a major role in determining whether the balance swings for or against people with disabilities. If Judge Roberts lends his voice to those on the Court who believe in the rights of States over the rights of people, individuals with disabilities in this country will face enormous setbacks. Judge Roberts was asked many questions at his hearing about congressional power, the ADA, and the rights of the disabled. I posed similar questions in our meeting. Judge Roberts chose not to answer those questions in any significant or revealing detail. Without some greater assurance that he would give deference to the policies passed by Congress, without solid assurance that he would be a defender of the ability of the less powerful to go to court and have their rights vindicated, without those assurances, I am left guessing and speculating, and that is not good enough. Without clear assurances from him personally, I am left only with Judge Roberts' paper record and, quite frankly, it is a record that does not bode well for people seeking to vindicate their rights. In the interests of brevity, let me cite one example from Judge Roberts' tenure with the Department of Justice, the 1982 case of Board of Education v. Rowley. In the Rowley case, a trial court ruled that Federal law required the State to provide a sign language interpreter for an 8-year-old student who was deaf. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. The case then went to the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice had to decide whether to support the student and argue in favor of an interpreter, or support the local school board and the State and argue against an interpreter. In a memo to the Attorney General, Judge Roberts said the lower court decisions amounted to an exercise of judicial activism and the lower courts had inappropriately ``substituted their own judgment of appropriate educational policy.'' This was not the language of a lawyer merely representing the views of a client. This was the language of an attorney in a policymaking position at the Department of Justice, suggesting that the Government should have weighed in against the right of a deaf student to have access to an interpreter under the Education of the Handicapped Act, a predecessor of today's Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. In other words, Judge Roberts thought that this law, the primary Federal law to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the same educational opportunities as all other students, should be interpreted narrowly rather than broadly. That is not the quality I am looking for in a Chief Justice. I want a Chief Justice who brings a passion for justice to the law; who does not lose sight of the real people whose lives and livelihoods are at stake in the Court's decisions. Some supporters of Judge Roberts have argued that the Rowley case was more than two decades ago and Judge Roberts' views on statutory interpretation and on the ability of individuals to protect their rights through the courts may have evolved since then. But how are we in this body to know that, particularly when the White House has failed to provide us with all requested and directly relevant documents? Of greatest interest to me are the decisionmaking memoranda written by Judge Roberts during his tenure as Principal Deputy Solicitor General. Again, in his role as Principal Deputy Solicitor General--a position sometimes referred to as a ``political deputy'' because it is a political appointment--Judge Roberts was not merely representing a client but was involved in crafting the Department's legal positions in some of the most important cases in recent years. During his tenure as Principal Deputy, Judge Roberts argued before the court that individuals shouldn't be allowed to go to court to enforce their rights under the Medicaid statute, that children shouldn't have access to courts to enforce their rights under the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, and that courts should take a restrictive view of remedies available under title IX and other civil rights laws. Given the decision of the White House to withhold these documents from the Senate, I am forced to draw my conclusions on what I do know. Before I conclude my remarks, I would like to describe an example of one of the ``real people'' I referred to earlier, a woman by the name of Beverly Jones. Ms. Jones, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Judge Roberts' nomination, has been using a wheelchair since a 1984 traffic accident in 1990, the year we passed ADA. She completed court reporting school and set out to work as a courtroom stenographer in order to support her family. But what she found as she traveled throughout the State of Tennessee was she couldn't get the jobs in a great majority of Tennessee's courthouses. She was forced to choose between asking complete strangers to carry her into the courthouse or into inaccessible rest rooms or simply turn down employment opportunities. That is an unacceptable choice for a single mother supporting two kids. Ms. Jones testified to the committee that she spoke to Federal, State, and local officials about the problem of inaccessible courtrooms, but her entreaties were met with indifference, until she filed suit. I would like to quote from Ms. Jones' testimony about her experience because I think it vividly illustrates what is at stake. She said: The door that I thought had been opened [with passage of the ADA] was still closed and my freedom to live my dream was still a dream, and turning into a nightmare. Nobody took either me or the law seriously until I and others brought a lawsuit. That is what is at stake today--the right of 64 million Americans with disabilities to live their dreams, the right of the powerless in our society, the disenfranchised, to turn to the courts to take them seriously. Unfortunately, I am not yet persuaded that a Roberts Court would protect these rights. For this reason, I will be voting no on this nomination. Certainly, I bear no personal animosity whatsoever toward Judge Roberts. Within this body, there are many people on the other side of the aisle whom I respect, admire, and value as friends. But I don't often vote with them because I have a different viewpoint on many issues. As I said, in our personal meeting, I found Judge Roberts to be a very decent, modest individual. I hope the future will prove me wrong about Judge Roberts. I hope he proves to be a Justice who recognizes that discrimination in this country occurs in many areas and that Congress has both the authority and the duty to remedy it. Judge Roberts will have an immediate opportunity to do just that. In this upcoming term, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will once again examine the question of whether Congress had the authority to order States to make public facilities accessible to people with disabilities. Knowing this, during our meeting I tried to convey to Judge Roberts how discrimination against people with disabilities was deeply ingrained across the decades and across the centuries prior to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I talked with him in detail about how prior to passage of ADA people were institutionalized, segregated, taken from their families, taken from their communities, excluded from schools, excluded from educational opportunities, excluded from employment opportunities, excluded from all aspects of daily life, shopping, going to the movies, playing golf, on and on, simply because of a disability. I explained how people with disabilities were excluded in the same way African Americans were excluded prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In closing, let me quote from Thurgood Marshall in the Cleburne case, City of Cleburne v. Texas. Here is what Justice Thurgood Marshall had to say. Here is a sense of real injustice and that something needs to be done about it. This is what Justice Marshall said: The mentally retarded have been subject to a ``lengthy and tragic history,'' of segregation and discrimination that can only be called grotesque. . . . A regime of state-mandated segregation and degradation soon emerged that in its virulence and bigotry rivaled, and indeed paralleled, the worse excesses of Jim Crow. Massive custodial institutions were built to warehouse the retarded for life; the aim was to halt reproduction of the retarded and ``nearly extinguish their race.'' Retarded children were categorically excluded from public schools, based on the false stereotype that all were ineducable and on the purposed need to protected nonretarded children from them. State laws deemed the retarded ``unfit for citizenship.'' That has been the experience for the last 200 years or more in this country. We stepped in to remedy that with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I hope Judge Roberts keeps these things uppermost in his mind and in his heart. Only time will tell. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I would like to take a moment and comment about an important program that I worked to include in the 2002 farm bill. I wish to engage Chairman Bennett, manager of the fiscal year 2006 Agriculture appropriations bill, in a colloquy regarding the Farmers Market Promotion Program. The House of Representatives has already passed its Agriculture appropriations bill, which includes $1 million in funding for the Farmers Market Promotion Program. As the Senate wraps up its work on the pending bill and looks ahead to conference, I would like to request that the chairman do all he can in those negotiations to secure full funding for this important program. Authorized in section 10605 of the 2002 farm bill, the Farmers Market Promotion Program would provide critical Federal grant dollars to local governments, chambers of commerce, farmers market alliances, coops, and economic development organizations to support the expansion, development and maintenance of farmers markets and other direct marketing opportunities. An initial investment of $1 million will help to get this program up and running, bringing critical resources to communities nationwide. I make this request of the chairman understanding the budget pressures and competing interests within this bill. I would like to say at this time, however, this $1 million would be very well spent. Consumers are demanding locally grown farm raised agricultural products and producers want to meet this demand. In my State and across the Nation exciting things are happening in the area of new markets for agricultural products, but many communities lack the needed seed money to get off of the ground.