Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Sure.

Mr. HARKIN. I do not mean to take more than 15 minutes. I might go into 18 or 20 minutes. I wasn't going to take a long time. I wanted to finish my statement without being constrained with the 15 minutes I had under morning business. That is why I went on the motion to proceed. I will speak on that for an additional few minutes. But I will take whatever time I can now. If I am cut off, I will be back.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. I did not understand I was under a time limit. I had asked to continue to proceed after morning business on the motion to proceed, but I didn't recognize there was a time limit there. I did not ask consent for 10 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. I think the record will show that I asked for consent to continue to speak in morning business, to yield the floor, to then return to the motion to proceed, and that I be recognized to continue to speak on the motion to proceed. That does not have a time limit.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, before us right now is a motion to proceed to what is called the medical malpractice bill, for short. In fact, that is what it is--to change the tort system in America to take away the right of any person who has been injured to seek redress in court for noneconomic damages and also for punitive damages. It is called the medical malpractice bill. We have had it here a number of times before. It is not going anywhere because it is not a true compromise. There may be a compromise that could be worked out on this issue, but this bill represents a one-sided view. It is not going anywhere. The Republicans know this. They know it is not going anywhere, but they brought it up. I thought the FSC bill--the JOBS bill--which they brought up earlier was a must-do bill. There was a jobs bill. They are going to put people to work. Yet it languishes somewhere. In the meantime, we brought up the TANF bill. Now we brought up the medical malpractice bill. It makes you wonder what the priorities are of the majority party in the Senate. There is a lot of talk about who is obstructing what around here. But I think it is clear to any casual observer that the majority is basically kind of filibustering their own bills, obstructing their own bills. And sometimes, as in the case of the gun bill that was up before us a few weeks ago, the Republican majority even voted against its own bill. But it chews up a lot of time. It takes up a lot of time on the Senate floor, but nothing goes anywhere. That is what we are facing again with this so-called medical malpractice bill, or the motion to proceed to it. The majority party knows it is not going anywhere. So they want to talk about medical malpractice. There has been a few speakers on the floor today on the Republican side talking about medical malpractice. I think what the country wants us to focus on and wants to hear us debate and discuss and vote on is the economic malpractice of the Bush administration. That is right, the economic malpractice of the Bush administration. I mean by that the fact we have had a loss in jobs in this country over the last 3 years unlike anything we have seen in 70 years. This chart shows that not since the Great Depression have we had a loss of jobs for any President during his first term--some more than others, but we have always had a positive indication of job creation. It is interesting to note that most of these took place under Democratic administrations--Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower had a little bit but still had some; Kennedy, we had good job creation; Johnson, very healthy job creation; even under Nixon, pretty good; Ford, back down; Carter; even under Reagan; Bush, it is down; Clinton, up a little bit more. All positive, Republicans and Democrats, until this President, the only President in 70 years to have negative job growth. That is why I call it the economic malpractice of the Bush administration--the only President in all of those years to preside over negative job growth in our country. Not only are we not discussing on the Senate floor these issues pertaining to workers, but we are precluded by the majority from even offering amendments and getting a vote on them. I tried earlier on the so-called FSC bill that everyone talks about, the so-called JOBS bill they had here, to offer my amendment to disallow the promulgation of proposed rules that would change the overtime laws in our country. Last year, to refresh everyone's memory, about this time--a year and a month ago, as a matter of fact--the Department of Labor came out with a proposed change in overtime rules. The Fair Labor Standards Act has been in existence since 1938. We have had changes in basic overtime laws. But in every single case, when it has been done, it has always been done with consultation with Congress after open hearings with the public having input. These proposed rules came like a bolt of lightning in the midnight hour. No public hearings were held. Not one public hearing was held on these proposed changes in overtime rules. No hearings were held by Congress. No witnesses were called to talk about what these proposed changes might mean in the workplace. They just put the rules out there. Now the Department of Labor is about to issue its permanent change in regulations. That is why last summer this Senator offered an amendment on the Senate floor to disallow these rules from going into effect. The Senate adopted my amendment on a bipartisan vote. We had quite a few Republicans vote for it. The House of Representatives then voted to instruct its conferees to go along with the Senate on that provision. That was on the appropriations bill. The White House came in and got it knocked out. Then we were forced to vote on the appropriations bill without that provision in it. I said at that time in January I was going to find any vehicle I could to try to revisit this issue because the Congress had spoken; that we did not want these rules to go into effect which would take away the rights of up to 8 million American workers to get paid time- and-a-half overtime if they worked over 40 hours a week. The first bill I could do this on was the FSC bill, which was brought out by the Finance Committee to the floor. They termed it a jobs bill. I pointed out then, and I point out again today: How can you have a meaningful jobs bill on the floor of the Senate if we are not going to speak about it, debate it, and vote on whether we are going to take away the rights of people in this country to get paid time and a half for over 40 hours a week? Yet that is what happened. I offered the amendment. The majority will not permit a vote on it. They tried all kinds of parliamentary maneuvers, tactics, recommits, all kinds of funny parliamentary games just to keep us from voting on it. I don't know what they are so afraid of. Are they afraid members of the President's own party might vote to say those rules shouldn't go into effect? They did last summer. I compliment them for it. That is courage. I know the President and his Department of Labor want to drastically change our overtime laws. They want to do it through the regulatory process--not through the legislative process. Quite frankly, the Bush administration thought they could put these new rules into effect quietly with no hearings before anyone knew what was going on. But they were wrong. They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The fact is, public outrage over the proposed new overtime rules has gotten stronger and stronger as Americans learn more about the details. At this point, the administration has about as much credibility on the issue of overtime as they do on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In other words, the administration has zero credibility on this issue. The Department of Labor claims it simply wants to give employers clearer guidance as to who is eligible for overtime pay. But ordinary Americans are not buying this happy talk. They know the administration is proposing a radical rewrite of the Nation's overtime rules. American workers know these new rules will strip them of their right to fair compensation. So we will continue to press for a vote on this and on a couple of other issues. Last week on the TANF bill, the temporary assistance to needy families, Senator Boxer of California offered the amendment to raise the minimum wage, now at $5.15 an hour, to $7 an hour over 2 years. The majority will not vote on that, either. So that bill has gone by the wayside, too, because they do not want to face the music and vote on whether we increase the minimum wage. Mr. President, $5.15 is the minimum wage now--mostly women, heads of households with children. I point out again, since 1967, if the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation, the minimum wage would be over $8 an hour right now. Yet we are only asking for $7 an hour. I wonder what the hue and cry would be in this country if we had indexed CEO compensation the way we indexed the minimum wage increases since 1968. We would probably be better off in this country, to tell you the truth. So we tried to bring up a minimum wage increase. We tried to stop these rules on overtime from going into effect to strip people of their overtime. We have tried to increase unemployment compensation, to get more unemployment compensation to workers whose unemployment benefits had run out. There are 1.1 million workers this last week who lost their unemployment benefits because of time running out. We want to extend that. The majority will not let us. The administration is all for an economic stimulus when it involves tax breaks for people making more than $200,000 a year. When it comes to economic stimulus involving raising the income of people at the bottom of the economic ladder, whether by increasing the minimum wage or creating jobs directly, which is what the highway bill will do, the President is even threatening to veto the highway bill. We passed a bipartisan highway bill in the Senate. The House passed something substantially less. The President has threatened to veto that. Actually, the House bill for my own State of Iowa would mean 12,000 jobs less than that passed by the Senate. Yet the President has threatened to veto even the House version. There is a frustration among American workers right now. They know they are working harder. They know they are working longer. But something is wrong. They are not getting adequate compensation. As this chart indicates American workers are working longer hours per year than workers in any other industrialized country. In fact, since 1979, every single industrial country has reduced its work hours except one, the United States. In Japan, since 1979, they have gone down 286 hours a year. Germany has gone down 489 hours per year. Even Canada went down 31 hours a year. Australia went down 44 hours per year. But the United States went up an average of 32 hours per year. We are the only country increasing the number of hours worked per year. Not only that, as we found out earlier--I quoted the New York Times Sunday article by Steven Greenhouse--unscrupulous businesses in America are cheating people out of their overtime. I may not have mentioned a guy by the name of Drew Pooters, retired member of the Air Force military police. He went to work in a Toys ``R'' Us store in Albuquerque. He was stunned by what he found his manager doing. . . . his manager was sitting at a computer and altering workers' time records, secretly deleting hours to cut their paychecks and fatten his store's bottom line. ``I told him, `That's not exactly legal,' '' said Mr. Pooters, who ran the electronics department. Then he out-and- out threatened me to not talk about what I saw. Mr. Pooters quit. Then he got a job managing a Family Dollar store, one of 5,100 in that discount chain. Top managers there ordered him not to let employee total hours exceed a certain amount each week. One day he said the district manager told him to use a trick to cut payroll, delete some hours electronically. Experts on compensation say the illegal doctoring of hourly employees' time records is far more prevalent than most Americans believe. The practice, called ``shaving time,'' is easily done and hard to detect with the simple matter of computer keystrokes. I earlier had this article printed in the Record. The article revealed in Toys ``R'' Us, in Dollar Stores, Taco Bell, Pep Boys, Wal-Mart employees, et cetera, workers are basically being cheated out of their fair compensation. Many are being cheated out of overtime. Here is what the Wall Street Journal article said about this: While employees like overtime pay, a lot of employers don't. Violations are so common that the Employer Policy Foundation, an employer-supported think tank in Washington, estimates that workers would get an additional $199 billion a year if the rules were observed. That estimate is considered conservative by many researchers. American workers are being cheated out of over $199 billion a year by unscrupulous employers. Here we have the Department of Labor legally--trying to do it legally--taking away workers' rights to overtime pay. The Steven Greenhouse article in the New York Times showed on Sunday there is a rampage in this country of illegal activities taking away workers' rights to their adequate pay. Why isn't the Department of Labor focusing its time and energy in going after these unscrupulous employers, making an example of them so others will not be encouraged to do the same thing rather than trying to legally take away workers' rights to overtime? That is why I say this Bush administration is committing economic malpractice. You do not have to be from Iowa to know that you do not fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize the roots. That is how we need to stimulate the American economy, by applying stimulus directly to the roots. There are obvious ways to do this. One, instead of tax cuts for the wealthy, you focus tax cuts on working people. Secondly, you increase the minimum wage. You put more money in the pockets of hard- working people who, by necessity, have to spend every penny. Three, you extend benefits for the long-term unemployed, again, who, by necessity, are spending every dollar they receive. Four, you pass a highway bill that is as generous as possible. We need to rebuild our Interstate Highway System in this country. Take a drive on any one of them. They are beat up. They are disintegrating. They are a patchwork here and there. They are causing delays in trucking. They are beating up our cars and taking away from the productivity of America. Our bridges need to be replaced. Sewer and water systems need to be upgraded. These are good jobs. These are jobs that employ Americans. When you think about construction jobs in this country, that is what I call insourcing jobs rather than outsourcing jobs because, you see, if you are building a bridge or a highway, a sewer and water system, or maybe a new school, when you think about it, most of the products are made in America. Think about it. The cement is made here. The rebars, the rerods, and all that for construction are made here. When you put up a building, you put up wallboard. That is made here--and electrical wiring, electrical conduits, electrical switches, electrical lights, plumbing. When you think about all that goes into construction, most-- the vast majority--of the products are made in this country. Guess what else. All of the labor done is here in America. You do not outsource those jobs. Those are American jobs. What do you get out of it? You put a lot of people to work. You improve the productivity of America. You get a lasting benefit of things that last for a long time, and that helps us be a more productive and vibrant Nation. It seems we can spend billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild those countries. We need to invest money like that here in America. For every $1 billion spent on these projects, we sustain or create more than 47,000 jobs for American workers. That is the direction we ought to be going, rather than more tax cuts for those who make over $200,000 a year. I do not have it with me, but I saw a cartoon in the paper today that I thought said it all. There was a gasoline pump, with gas that cost about $1.90 a gallon. This American worker had obviously just filled his tank, and he was up at the window paying. In back of the window sat what looked like one of the Saudi Arabian princes saying, ``Thank you,'' and taking our American worker's money. The caption below it was: There goes the tax cut. How many American workers, who are told by this President they got a tax cut for this or that, are now seeing it go to pay for imported oil, to pay for the increased price of gasoline because this administration will not take their friends in Saudi Arabia to task to keep these prices low, will not let some of the oil out of our Strategic Oil Reserve right now to counter these increased prices? So we find whatever little money the worker may have gotten in a tax cut going to pay for the increased price of gasoline. Again, economic malpractice, economic malpractice by this administration. So we can go to the medical malpractice bill. Quite frankly, again, we are focusing on medical malpractice and whether someone can sue for damages, and this and that. While there may be a reasonable compromise on this issue at some point, this bill is not it. But I wonder--I truly wonder--how many of the 43 million Americans who have no health insurance coverage whatsoever would think this is the major health care issue that we ought to be debating and voting on in the Senate Chamber. They are not interested in medical malpractice or suing. They just need health insurance. They need coverage for themselves and their families. Here we are talking about lawsuits, when what we ought to be talking about is how we are going to get health care coverage to people in America. The other side can talk all they want about obstructionism and who is holding up what. We have said, time and time again, as I said on my overtime amendment--I am not obstructing anything. I will take a time agreement. We have already had enough discussion. In 15 minutes we can have a vote. In 15 minutes we can have a vote on the minimum wage. In 15 minutes we can have a vote on extending unemployment compensation. Who is obstructing what around here? It is simply that the majority side does not want to have these votes under the time-honored tradition of the Senate to debate, discuss, and vote. It seems as if the majority side now wants to turn the Senate into just another House of Representatives--come out with a closed rule. I know that sounds kind of funny. What does that mean? What it means is the majority party brings out a bill. You cannot amend it. You cannot change it. You either have to vote for it the way it is or not vote. If they have the majority votes, they want to pass it. That is not the way to run the Senate. It is not the way to debate and vote in the Senate. The way to do it is to have our debates, have our votes, and move on. Sometimes you win; sometimes you do not. But, to me, that is what the American people want us to do. We are doing nothing in the Senate right now--nothing. The reason we are doing nothing is because the other side will not let us vote. So here we sit with bill after bill that is brought out, trying to game the system so we cannot have votes on these meaningful issues. They say: Well, these are just political games. No, they are not political. When you are talking about taking away a worker's right to overtime pay; when you are talking about increasing the minimum wage for a single mother with kids to feed, who is being cheated out of her overtime pay; when you are talking about a family whose unemployment benefits have run out, and they do not know where to turn, it is not political. It is just focusing on the real needs of America--our working families--and not focusing on giving yet more tax breaks to those who already have too much in our society. Mr. President, I will close my remarks--I see others want the floor-- to say we will be back. I do not like to quote too much the present Governor of California but: I'll be back. Time and time again, I will be back to offer this overtime amendment, until we have a vote on it, and until we can express ourselves on these onerous rules that the Department of Labor wants to foist on the American worker. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I understand that the Senate will then resume consideration of the motion to proceed.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am going to ask unanimous consent, since I had 15 minutes--I am going to ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 5 minutes as in morning business and then the Senate would then interrupt my presentation to return to the motion to proceed and that I be recognized to finish my statement then.

Mr. HARKIN. We will just go to the motion to proceed. That is fine.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time is left?

Mr. HARKIN. Which one?

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Chair and I thank my colleague from North Dakota. We might as well go on with the motion to proceed. I can make my presentation then, too.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, there is no secret that there is a great frustration in the American workplace today. There is a great anxiety among American working families. You can sense it, you can feel it, you can hear it no matter where you go in America, whether it is in Iowa or Wyoming or New York or wherever it is. Something is happening out there. You get it all the time from people who have been working, maybe have lost their jobs, maybe they took another job, they are not making ends meet. They see the economy doing much better. They read this in the paper all the time--the economy is getting better, tax cuts are going into effect, foreign car sales, the big cars, the Mercedes and all those, are up. We see all the higher end items being purchased and sold. For example, over the recent Christmas holidays, the Sharper Image, I believe, which sells high end electronics stuff, and Neiman Marcus had great sales. But Wal-Mart was down. There is a great sense among American working people that something is not quite right with what is going on in this country. Maybe most Americans don't have degrees in economics; they haven't studied it, but they sense something is going wrong. In his recent book, ``Wealth and Democracy,'' Kevin Phillips pointed out that there is a trend that different countries go through at various stages of their growth. One of those stages is where more and more of the output of a country accumulates to capital and less and less accumulates to labor, to the working people. It is with great interest I note that, after I had read Kevin Phillips' book, yesterday in the New York Times an article by Bob Herbert brought it home. The title of the piece was ``We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?'' As Mr. Herbert wrote yesterday in the New York Times: It's like running on a treadmill that keeps increasing its speed. You have to go faster and faster just to stay in place. Or, as a factory worker said many years ago, ``You can work 'til you drop dead, but you won't get ahead.'' American workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, but they are getting fewer and fewer of the benefits of this increased productivity. While the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, has been strong for some time now, ordinary workers have gotten little more than the back of the hand from employers who have pocketed an unprecedented share of the case from this burst of economic growth. What is happening is nothing short of historic. The American workers' share of the increase in national income since November 2001, the end of the last recession, is the lowest on record. Employers took the money and ran. This is extraordinary, but very few people are talking about it, which tells you something about the hold that corporate interests have on the national conversation. The situation is summed up in the long, unwieldy but very revealing title of a new study from the Center of Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University: ``The Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits and the Simultaneous Ebbing of Labor Compensation--Gainers and Losers from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003.''

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I was listening with some interest to the unanimous consent proposed by the distinguished majority leader, and I thought for a minute I was back in the House of Representatives. I remember a time in the Senate when we actually introduced amendments, debated and voted on them. I thought that was what the Senate was supposed to do. Over in the House, where I served for 10 years, they have a Rules Committee. The Rules Committee reports a bill out on the floor, and a lot of times they give them closed rules, which means you cannot add amendments. That is what I just heard propounded here. If, in fact, they get cloture, it is a closed rule. That is basically what it is. I wish we can get back to a Senate where we debate and vote on amendments.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to take a little bit of time this afternoon to talk about the economy. We are all encouraged by the essentially positive job growth reported for the month of March. However, the same report noted that the overall rate of unemployment increased in March. Strange. There are major questions surrounding the quality of the jobs that were added. For instance, there was no increase whatsoever in manufacturing jobs. Indeed, for 43 consecutive months we have either lost manufacturing jobs or have seen zero job growth. The good news on jobs appears to be largely concentrated in the services sector--jobs that generally don't pay well and many with no benefits. Meanwhile, long-term job losses have consequences. On the 1st of April, 1.1 million jobless Americans lost their unemployment benefits. They expired because the President and the Republicans in Congress are adamantly refusing any extension of unemployment benefits. In no other comparable period on record have there been so many unemployed people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits literally overnight. Think about it. Despite the scarcity of jobs, despite the fact the United States is currently in the longest period of secular job decline in our history, despite the fact that nearly 3 million private sector jobs have been lost in the last 3 years, despite the fact that more than 9 million Americans cannot find work, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of discouraged workers have dropped out of the labor market, despite all of these harsh realities, the President and his allies have slammed the door on any extension of unemployment benefits. I guess we can say: So much for compassionate conservatism. In my State of Iowa, more than 8,000 people lost their unemployment benefits in the first 3 months of this year. Nearly 9,000 more Iowans will lose their benefits in the next 3 months if Congress doesn't act. This is a cruel, unnecessary blow to these unfortunate people. It is a blow to Iowa's economy, because extending unemployment benefits would have provided more than $100 million in economic stimulus in my State alone. When it comes to economic stimulus, this administration is all for economic stimulus when it involves tax breaks for people making more than $200,000 a year, but it is adamantly opposed to economic stimulus when it involves people who have lost their jobs and have lost their unemployment benefits, or when it involves directly creating jobs. What I mean by that is, the President now is threatening to veto the highway bill and, for my State alone, the more modest House highway bill would cost 12,000 jobs compared to what we passed in the Senate. The President is threatening even to veto that bill. We are not talking just about statistics; we are talking about real people here, people who are hurting. One of those is Larry O'Brien of Cedar Falls, IA. He is 60 years old. He lost his job as a machinist when the Doerfer Engineering plant closed in October. He says he is not optimistic about his future when his unemployment runs out in 2 weeks. He already says he is not optimistic at all about getting a job. He has begun taking high blood pressure and stomach medicine every other day instead of daily. When the medicine is gone, he is afraid he won't be able to get any more. He is worried he will have to take a low-paying job with no benefits just to make ends meet--at age 60. Larry O'Brien and millions like him are hurting. They are in real distress. Their plight is being ignored in Washington. It is being ignored by the very people whose economic policies are largely responsible for their plight. Let's be clear. Despite the uptick in jobs reported last Friday, America has been stuck in a jobless recovery for several years now. It is not an accident. Since the Bush administration took office, nearly 3 million private sector jobs have been lost, including nearly 1 in every 6 in manufacturing. This administration presided over the largest job loss of any administration since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet Mr. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress remain stubbornly committed to policies that are making this problem worse. They continue to pursue a whole range of policies that are retarding job creation, driving down wages, and threatening the economic security of the American people. In January, the White House issued its annual economic report--signed by the President--explaining why we should be celebrating the ``offshoring'' of U.S. jobs. The President's top economic adviser assured us of the outsourcing of high-end white-collar jobs to Asia is ``a plus for the economy in the long run.'' The President's report praises the virtue of a level playing field for goods and services, arguing that ``when a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically.'' But do we really want American workers competing on a ``level playing field,'' head to head with factory workers in China making 20 cents an hour or software engineers in India making $10,000 a year? Would this not precipitate a race to the bottom with nations competing to slash salaries and benefits in order to ``win jobs''? We are a free market economy. Corporations have the right to move jobs overseas. However, it is wrong for the White House to be a cheerleader for this unfortunate trend, and it is wrong for our Tax Code to reward companies that outsource jobs. That is why Senator Wyden, Senator Durbin, and I are sponsoring an amendment to eliminate these tax subsidies. Our amendment, which would go on the so-called FSC bill, would eliminate the ability of companies to deduct, depreciate, or amortize costs involved in shifting jobs overseas. This would include such costs as training of replacement workers, transporting property overseas, the sale of property in the United States that is closed, administrative costs, and acquiring facilities overseas. Our amendment would also eliminate the ability of companies to not pay taxes on the profits from outsourced activity by keeping those funds overseas that were generated by outsourced workers. As I said, the Harkin-Wyden-Durbin amendment would not prohibit companies from outsourcing jobs--I do not think constitutionally we could do that--but it would stop encouraging and rewarding them under the Tax Code. This is the least we owe to America's workers. Outsourcing is not the only thing hurting job creation and suppressing wages. The Department of Labor is forging ahead with its radical rewrite of the rules governing who is eligible for time-and-a- half overtime pay. Up to 8 million American workers could be stripped of their right to overtime pay. American workers fear, rightfully so, that under these new rules they would be obliged to work 45, 50, 55, 60 hours a week with zero additional compensation. Moreover, these proposed new overtime rules are all but guaranteed to hurt job creation. It is just basic logic. If employers can more easily deny overtime pay, they will push current employees to work longer hours without compensation. With 9 million Americans currently out of work, why give employers yet another disincentive to hire new workers? So let me review. This administration sees the outsourcing of jobs as a plus. It is determined to eliminate the right to overtime pay for millions of American workers. It refuses to extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. There is one more thing. We saw last week on the Senate floor that the President and his allies remain adamantly opposed to any increase in the minimum wage which has been frozen at $5.15 for years. This is not a living wage. It is a poverty wage. A minimum wage employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earns $10,700 a year. That is $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. It has been 7 years since we last voted to raise the minimum wage. We have raised our salaries three or four times since then. So it is time we raised it to a minimum of $7 an hour. Yet, once again, my friends on the other side of the aisle are refusing to allow a vote on a key issue related to jobs. We debated the Boxer amendment to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families bill, regarding minimum wage, but as with my overtime amendment and as with the amendment to extend unemployment benefits, we were denied the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote. In fact, the Republicans on the other side would rather sacrifice the underlying bills, the FSC and TANF bills, rather than allow a vote on these issues so crucial to working Americans. It seems the administration has one approach: tax cuts, mainly for those who are wealthy. But something is missing. Most working Americans are not participating in this so-called recovery. The rich are getting richer. Tax cuts are working for the privileged few, but more and more Americans live in fear of losing their jobs, their health benefits, and their retirement benefits. The truth is, we cannot build a sustainable recovery by exporting jobs, driving down wages, and making Americans work longer hours without compensation. Moreover, such a recovery is not desirable. A true recovery must include all Americans, and it can only be built on a foundation of good jobs with good wages in America, not overseas. It must be built on a minimum wage that is a living wage, not a poverty wage. It must be built on a foundation that preserves our time-honored right: time and a half pay for overtime over 40 hours a week. So it is time for the Senate to get to work on the people's business. As my friends on the other side of the aisle like to say, the majority leader determines what bills will come before the Senate, but according to the rules of the Senate and according to our longstanding tradition, it is Senators who decide what amendments are to be proposed to those bills. It is Senators, in open, free, and fair votes, who decide how those bills are shaped on the Senate floor. All I can say is, Senators on this side of the aisle have proposed amendments in good faith that we believe are necessary for job creation and economic growth in America. On all three--the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, and the overtime issue--the Republican leadership on that side refuses to allow a straight up-or-down vote. This is not just unfair to us on this side, this is unfair to America. My friends on the other side seem desperate to change the subject. Instead of talking about jobs, they want to talk about guns, abortion, or gay marriage, whatever social wedge issue seems handy at the time. In fact, they are so eager to change the subject, they are so eager to prevent votes on overtime, minimum wage, and extending unemployment benefits, that it seems they are willing to sacrifice or at least substantially delay the underlying bills. We need to get to work in the Senate. Our economy remains fragile and hesitant. We have millions of Larry O'Briens in this country who are desperate, who need help, who want to go back to work. We need to address outsourcing. We need to boost the minimum wage. We need to extend unemployment benefits and we need to assure working Americans that they are not going to lose their right to time-and-a-half overtime pay. Strong, timely acts on these issues will give a much needed boost to the economy, and it will ensure that Friday's generally positive economic report was not just another one-time fluke. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wanted to take a moment today to speak about the American Legacy Foundation. This foundation celebrated its 5th anniversary this past month, and I wanted to express my continued support for the foundation in the future. This foundation, formed under the master settlement agreement reached with big tobacco, has worked tirelessly over the last 5 years on its mission to build a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. We know that tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in this country. Forty-seven million Americans smoke, and 400,000 people a year die because of it. Smokers have a one in three chance of dying from smoking-related conditions. Even more alarming, every day, 3,000 children under age 18 start smoking, of which 1,000 will ultimately die of smoking related diseases. Almost 90 percent of adult smokers started using tobacco at or before age 18; the average youth smoker begins at age 13 and becomes a daily smoker by age 14\1/2\. The American Legacy Foundation, through its highly effective public awareness campaign truth' alone, has helped reduce youth smoking rates to a 28-year historic low. I have heard from young people in my home state of Iowa who say that seeing the truth' television and magazine advertisements have affected their decisions about tobacco. The foundation also has a number of successful cessation programs in operation across the country. The American Legacy Foundation clearly still has work to do. Educating American young people about the harmful effects of smoking is not merely a 5-year long task. Yet this year, the foundation received its last payment from the master settlement agreement. Without increased resources, the important work of the American Legacy Foundation cannot continue. I ask that my colleagues to join with me in recognizing the achievements of the American Legacy Foundation and in pledging our support for the important work they do educating our nation about the dangers of tobacco use.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: We are under a cloture motion that has been filed on this amendment?

Mr. HARKIN. Since I have been recognized and I have the floor, is there a time limit on how long this Senator can speak?

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, first I ask unanimous consent I be added as a cosponsor on this amendment to raise the minimum wage. I strongly support the amendment offered by the distinguished Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, and Senator Kennedy. Let's be clear at the outset. The current level of $5.15 an hour as a minimum wage is a poverty wage--actually less than a poverty wage, which I will show in a minute. It is a wage that does not respect the dignity of work, including the most humble work in this country. That is wrong. I say the President of the United States ought to be ashamed of himself, this Senate ought to be ashamed of itself, the House of Representatives ought to be ashamed of itself, that we would let the minimum wage get as low as it has gotten, forcing more and more families into poverty and on food stamps. I just heard my colleague from Iowa saying, rather than raising the minimum wage, we ought to be putting more into food stamps. What kind of a solution is that? I thought we were going to give people the dignity of work. We ought to get them off welfare and get them into jobs. Now I hear some people say the best thing is giving them more food stamps. I am all for food stamps. It has been a real blessing to our society. But that is sort of a welfare answer. It sounds as if we turned the clock back and we go back on welfare again. The economic policies of this administration are simply not working as advertised. It is still sputtering. The recovery remains fragile. The President has assured us again and again that tax cuts overwhelmingly for the wealthy will stimulate the economy and create more jobs and get this country moving. Over the last 3 years we have had nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts, but we have lost more than 2 million jobs. The President's economic policies, including tax cuts, outsourcing of jobs, not increasing the minimum wage, refusing to extend unemployment benefits, are not working. Trickle-down economics simply, again, is not working. You don't have to be from Iowa or Nebraska to know you don't fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize the roots, and that is how we need to stimulate the American economy, by applying stimulus to the roots, not to the treetops. There are obvious ways to do this. No. 1, instead of the tax cuts for the wealthy, you focus tax cuts on working people who need the money and who will actually spend the extra money here in America. No. 2, you increase the minimum wage. You put more money in the pockets of people who will spend the money because they have to, out of necessity. No. 3, you extend benefits for the long-term unemployed. Today, March 31, a record 1.1 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits--this quarter. This is unfair. It is indecent. It is foolish, because it will create more drag on the economy. Again, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not extending the unemployment benefits to all these people who have now lost them. I strongly support the Boxer amendment as one step we need to take in addressing the fact we have too many people out of work, and that people on the bottom of the economic ladder are falling further and further behind. No one in America who works for a living should live in poverty. Yet for the millions of hard-working Americans with minimum wage jobs, that is exactly what is happening. In fact, if you look at what has happened over the last few years, you can see if this is the poverty line right here for a family of three, going back here to 1971, 1974, 1977, the minimum wage was pretty darned close to the poverty line. Then during the Reagan years it started coming down. During the Clinton years it went up a little bit. Now we are back down again. Look at this gap compared to where we were before, or even before 1970 when the minimum wage was actually above the poverty line. When you look at that, it is no wonder our society has problems. No wonder we are being torn apart in this country. We have more people working, yet falling further below the poverty line because we don't increase the minimum wage. The other side filed a cloture motion, I understand. I asked the Presiding Officer. He said a cloture motion has been filed on this amendment. This bill we have before us is TANF, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The other side has filed a cloture motion, saying an increase in the minimum wage is not germane, it is not pertinent to the TANF bill, to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They are saying it is not pertinent because if the cloture motion is successful tomorrow, this amendment will fall. So they say it is not pertinent. Why don't they tell that to Secretary Thompson? Here is what he said regarding TANF reauthorization: This administration recognizes that the only way to escape poverty is through work and that is why we have made work and jobs that will pay at least the minimum wage the centerpiece of the reauthorization proposal for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. It is the centerpiece. And they say it is not pertinent. Somebody better get hold of Mr. Thompson. You better start getting your story straight. He says it is the centerpiece. If minimum wage is the centerpiece for TANF reauthorization, then we ought to be about discussing how much of a minimum wage--not whether it is pertinent but how much. Bear in mind again, I heard some talk about teenagers. I keep hearing about teenagers making minimum wage. They are living at home, they have this and that. Teenagers, teenagers, teenagers, I hear that all the time. But you have to look at the facts. Facts are stubborn. Sometimes facts get in the way of stories. The fact is, 7 million workers would directly benefit from a minimum wage increase; 35 percent are the sole earners in their families--35 percent. Maybe some of them are teenagers. Maybe they are married and out of school, maybe they are 18, 19 years old. Mr. President, 61 percent of those affected are women and one-third of them are raising children; 15 percent are African American and 19 percent are Hispanic Americans. What is this all about teenagers? This is not about teenagers. This is about Americans who go to work every day. As I said, they do some of the most humble work in America. I think I heard my colleague from Iowa saying something about if you raise the minimum wage, it is bad for business because people will shop elsewhere because they will raise the price of goods and people still have choices. We are not putting the minimum wage on one company and not another, one employer and not another. This is across the board. So if all of them go up, then there is still competition out there. Maybe through the competitive urges of the free marketplace they will find other places to cut costs, be more productive. But don't take it out of the hides of those who work for a minimum wage. That is what we are basically saying. That is what Congress is saying. That is what this President is saying, when we don't increase the minimum wage. They are saying to businesses all over America: If you want to cut costs, if you want to increase your profit margins, we will help you by keeping your minimum wage as low as possible. If we raise the minimum wage, maybe businesses will find some other ways of cutting costs and being more productive. I also heard that if you increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour, it is a drain on business. It doesn't help the family that much. There would be more help with food stamps, for example. An increase to $7 an hour for full-time, year-round workers would add about $3,800 to their income. Maybe for Senators and Congressmen who make $150,000 a year--I assume most of us have stocks and different investments--when you look at the net worth of the Members of the House and the Senate, what is it? Is it 500 times more than the average American? Maybe $3,800 doesn't seem like a lot to people here, but to a family on minimum wage, for a low- income family, $3,800 would be more than a year of groceries. It would pay 9 months of rent, a year and a half of heat or electricity, or full tuition at a community college for one of the kids. That is nothing to scoff at. People say, Well, it will impact business. Again, facts are stubborn things. History clearly shows that raising the minimum wage has never had an impact on jobs, employment, or inflation. In the 4 years after the last minimum wage increase passed, the economy experienced the strongest growth in over three decades. Nearly 11 million new jobs were added at a pace of 218,000 per month. There were 6 million new service industry jobs, including more than 112 million retail jobs of which nearly 600,000 were restaurant jobs. This was after we raised the minimum wage last time. It sure made a bad impact on this country, didn't it? It is long overdue. We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it fall so low. Now we are being told we can't have a vote on the TANF bill because it is not germane. That is exactly what Secretary Thompson said. Work and jobs that will pay at least a minimum wage is the centerpiece to the reauthorization proposal of TANF. Those are Secretary Thompson's words. We also have to keep in mind that a great majority--61 percent, as I have pointed out--who would be affected are single parents, mostly women with children. Unfortunately, the kind of jobs that women who leave welfare find are minimum wage jobs, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to sustain families and meet the demands of raising children. For these people, survival is a daily goal. They work hard enough. Their hours are long enough to make ends meet, but only barely. What this means is they don't have time for their families. They cannot participate in activities with their children, especially school-related activities that most of us take for granted. I would like to do a survey in the Senate of everyone here. I wonder how many Senators know someone or a family living on the minimum wage. I wonder how many Senators would actually have some friends who are families on the minimum wage. I bet you would not find very many who would actually know anyone. They read about them, but I mean actually know them or maybe have them as neighbors or friends and meet with them and talk with them about how they are living on a minimum wage. That would be an interesting survey to take. For these people, as I said, survival is their daily goal. Bear in mind the real value of the minimum wage has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years. Here is the real value of the minimum wage shown earlier by Senators Kennedy and Boxer. We have to keep showing them because these facts are stubborn things. People are working the same. Back in 1968, in real 2003 dollars, the minimum wage was $8.50. In other words, if we had indexed to inflation the minimum wage in 1968, it would be $8.50 an hour. That is just indexed for inflation. But if you look at where people were back in 1968, look where we are now. The people who were working back in 1968 at minimum wage jobs are the same people, the same kind of people, the same class of people who are working today. They are doing the same kind of jobs. Why was that job worth $8.50 in 1968, but that same job today is only worth $4.98 an hour? You might say the minimum wage is $5.15. But if we don't increase it by the end of this year, the real value of that will be $4.98 an hour. Why? It is the same job, the same work. Why was it worth $8.50 an hour then, and it is only worth $4.98 an hour now? It is because we haven't done our job about keeping up the minimum wage. We keep pushing people down. That is why there is unrest in America. That is why low-wage people are saying there is nothing in the system for them because it is so skewed against them. They work hard and never can get ahead because the minimum wage is stuck. The minimum wage employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earns $10,700 a year. That is $5,000 a year below the poverty line for a family of three. Again, here is the poverty line. The red line is for a family of three. Here is where we were in the past. Before 1970, the minimum wage was above the poverty line. Now look at the gap. Look how far down it is. Poll after poll after poll taken of low-income Americans show that they don't believe the system is fair. You can read the polls. Look at what happened to them. You add on to that they don't have health insurance. You add on to that they do not have any retirement benefits. You add on to that their pay goes for high heating bills this last winter. You add on to that many of these people earning the minimum wage are paying one-third to one-half of their paychecks just for rent. How many of us pay one-half of our paycheck for rent? As I said earlier, the minimum wage--I stand corrected. It is not a poverty wage; it is less than a subsistence wage. And we can't ignore it any longer. Three million more Americans are in poverty today than when President Bush first took office. I am not saying that to blame it all on the President. I am not going to say that. Of course not. I am just saying it is a fact. Today, more than 34 million people live in poverty including 12 million children. I am not blaming it on the President, or anybody else. I am just stating a fact. Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has doubled since the late 1970s--from about 1.3 million to 2.6 million in 2002. Poverty has doubled since the late 1970s. There is a lot of blame to go around. Rather than blaming anybody, let's fix it. The best way to fix it is to raise the minimum wage. That is at the heart of this problem. An increase to $7 an hour would affect nearly 7 million workers. I just saw the figures as to what it would mean in Iowa. I have the figures here as to an increase in the minimum wage in Iowa. If we were to increase this minimum wage, there would be 104,000 workers in my State of Iowa who would be making more money--104,000 workers. Do you know what? They will spend that money. They will spend that money because they have to spend it, because their rent is high, their heating bills are high; if they have any health insurance at all, that is skyrocketing. They are paying for food, paying for the kids. That money gets spun around in the economy. It would be a shock of stimulus for the economy. I am proud to cosponsor the amendment. To say it again, at the heart of this problem is the fact we are just not paying people for the work they do. Why is it people who do the dirtiest kind of work, the humblest kind of work--the kind of people you walk by, and you never notice them; you go into a restaurant, you go in to eat, and then walk out, and you do not notice them; a lot of times you go into stores, they are there, but you kind of walk by them--well, it is time we noticed them. They deserve to be noticed. They are Americans, and they are working hard. They are trying to raise their families and do the right thing, and what do we say to them? Forget it. I almost hear echoes from some of the comments I have heard on this floor. I have heard echoes there should not even be a minimum wage. Now, I did not hear anybody say that. I said I sort of heard echoes of that: Well, if we set the minimum wage at $7, why can't we set it at $70 an hour or $700 an hour or $7,000 an hour or something like that? Well, that is sort of scoffing at these poor people who are working because it is almost like saying maybe we should not have a minimum wage at all. There are a lot of countries that do not have the minimum wage. I suppose we could be like them. I always tell people: When it comes to things like having a minimum wage, just keep in mind, there is always someone poorer than you, more desperate than you, lower down on the ladder than you, who will work for less than you are going to work for because they need it. There is always someone poorer, more needy, more desperate. Is that what our society says: The law of the jungle? Turn the clock backward and just have a welfare system? As Senator Kennedy said, rather than taxing the American people to provide food stamps and welfare benefits and things like that, it is better to raise the minimum wage and give them a decent living wage rather than putting them on welfare. That is bad for the people on welfare. I supported welfare to work. I believe in it. But in order to move people from welfare to work, they need some health care benefits; they need some childcare. Fortunately, we passed the Snowe amendment. We need an increase in the minimum wage, and they need housing. But keeping them at this less-than-subsistence wage will not do it. I have almost heard some echoes, also, that this is some kind of a partisan issue. I went back to look at this issue. Senator Kennedy pointed this out, and I have a chart to point it out again. I think it is very instructive. Since Franklin Roosevelt, when we got our first minimum wage in 1938, almost every President has raised the minimum wage, including Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush. Interestingly, Reagan and this President Bush are both missing. But it has been bipartisan in the past. We have had Republican Presidents who have raised the minimum wage, as well as Democratic Presidents. So I do not think it is a partisan issue at all. It is an economic issue. And it is how you view the value of work. Now if you believe people ought to go out there and work for whatever an employer wants to pay you, and if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else and try to get something better. We have tried that before in our country. We see that happening in other Third World countries because there is always some poor sucker worse off than you who will work for less than you will. I really do not think that is the kind of country we want to become. Work should have honor and dignity, and the minimum wage today is not giving dignity to the work these people do. I will close. I see the Senator from Idaho wants to speak. I will wrap up in a second. We are talking about Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The bill on the floor is food assistance. Listen to this. A 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors--these are not Democrats--looked at the hunger issue, and here is what they found: 39 percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed. Thirty-nine percent seeking food assistance were employed. This is from the Conference of Mayors. They found a leading cause of hunger was low-paying jobs. The Conference of Mayors found emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent. Fifty-nine percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were members of families--children and their parents. Fifty-nine percent of those who sought emergency food assistance--which means they were at wits end; they had no money, and they had no other place to go, so they requested emergency food assistance--59 percent were members of families--children and their parents. What did the mayors recommend? What did the Conference of Mayors recommend? They recommended raising the Federal minimum wage as a way the Federal Government could help alleviate hunger. We are being told we cannot do that; we cannot add it to this bill; we cannot even vote on it. We saw the same thing on overtime: No, we can't vote on that. Put it someplace else. No, we can't vote on minimum wage either. What is the Senate coming to? Why don't we do as the House of Representatives did, where we used to serve--have a rule where you can't do anything, just pass it. That is why the Senate is different than the House. That is why we are supposed to have open and free-form debate and be able to vote on these issues. But these parliamentary tactics keeping us from voting on things such as overtime, extending unemployment benefits, and now the minimum wage are unworthy of the Senate, unworthy of this country, unworthy of our jobs. I close by saying again, this is an issue that cuts very deeply. I remember I was in my home State in the last year, and I found an interesting thing, that more people were relying upon the food banks in Iowa. I thought to myself: Why is that happening? Our unemployment is not that high. It went up a little bit, but why were more people going to food banks in increasing numbers than the unemployment rate was rising? I found out these are low-income workers. They are minimum-wage workers. They get food stamps. But because we have cut back on food stamps, their food stamps run out about the 20th of the month, and they have to go to the food banks for the rest of the month. I have to believe if it is happening in Iowa, it is happening all over the country. It is time to give dignity to the people who do the humblest work in our country. Let's get them back up to what they had in the past. If their job in the past was worth what today would be $8.50 an hour, it is at least worth $7 an hour now. What if we took corporate CEO salaries from 1968 and said they have to now have the same percentage reduction this year as those on minimum wage? Boy, the hue and cry that would go up on that one. I have made my point. I hope we defeat the cloture petition. I hope we have a vote on increasing the minimum wage, and I hope it passes overwhelmingly. I hope the President will be on board and support it so we can give dignity to our workers. I thank the Senator from Idaho for his patience and yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I add my strong support for the Snowe/Dodd amendment to add $6 billion in childcare funding in the TANF bill. This will allow for urgently needed improvements to access and the quality of childcare. Back in 1996, Congress passed a tough welfare reform bill that demanded personal responsibility. I supported that bill. It said that if you are on welfare and you can work, you must work. Our reform has had some substantial successes, but now is not the time for a victory lap. I am particularly concerned that this bill does not provide adequate funding to address what we all know is one of the major barriers to employment--childcare. If we are going to demand personal responsibility from every American, I believe the Government has a responsibility to every American. If we are going to help struggling low-income families and those trying to leave welfare over the long term, we have a responsibility to provide those families with access to affordable, high quality childcare. Nationwide only one in eight kids eligible for childcare assistance actually receives it. In Iowa the story is worse, only 1 out of 12 actually receives assistance. Parents cannot work if they cannot afford decent childcare. But the sad reality is that many are forced, too often, to leave their kids in substandard care--or no care at all. In Iowa nearly two-thirds of mothers with kids under age six are in the workforce. That is the second highest in the Nation. This means that children in Iowa spend a large percentage of their formative years in childcare. Unfortunately the availability of quality daycare has not kept pace with the demand of daycare. I have heard countless stories of families who tell me they had to leave their kids in substandard care because they could not find quality care or because they could not afford better care. One woman told me that she knew her kids were in front of the TV most of the day, but that was the only option she had. She had to go to work. These stories are just devastating. Even when a family can find childcare, it is often too expensive. Low-income working families often spend almost 50 percent of their paychecks on childcare. Meanwhile, higher income families spent only 6 percent. In my State of Iowa, the average cost of childcare in rural areas is almost $6,000 a year. And that is just for one child. The average wage of someone on TANF is only $7.28. So if we do the math, someone making slightly more than minimum wage working 40 hours a week is spending almost half of their earnings on childcare. One single mom struggling to get off welfare in Iowa told me that she spends 45 percent of her income to meet the childcare costs for her two children--and she has to work a second job at night so they can survive. Her total yearly childcare for two kids is $12,000. And regardless of income, parents worry about the quality of childcare. In Iowa the majority of growth has been in nonregistered, unregulated care as opposed to registered and accredited centers. Nationwide there is also a major shortage of quality childcare for children in rural areas, for children with special needs, and for infants and toddlers. In fact, in a recent Midwest study, Iowa ranked the lowest in providing quality care for infants and toddlers. This is alarming, because the years through age three are a critical time for brain development and emotional development. This is when a child lays the foundation--or fails to lay the foundation--for later success in school and life. Data from the National Academy of Sciences shows that the first 3 years of a child's life are the most important--80 percent of brain development occurs before the child's third birthday. Children who do not have rich, enjoyable, emotionally, and intellectually stimulating learning experiences during these important years can be stunted for life. In fact, more than a dozen years ago, in 1991, the Committee for Economic Development, made up of business leaders, found that investing in quality childcare and other early interventions was critical to securing this Nation's economic future. CED urged Federal policy makers to view education as a process that begins at birth. We also know that good childcare prevents later crime and violence. I request unanimous consent that this op-ed, written by the Des Moines chief of police, be included in the Record. Chief McCarthy says that ``my law enforcement experience has taught me that by giving children the right start in life through programs such as pre-K and childcare, we can dramatically reduce the chances of you or someone you love becoming the victim of violence.'' Yet despite all that we know about how important good quality childcare is, we fail to support our highly skilled childcare providers. In fact, we are paying them less than bus drivers, barbers and janitors. I think it is time that changed. The average childcare worker's salary in Iowa is $14,100, well below the national average. There is also a 50 percent turnover rate for childcare providers. This is particularly harmful as stable, consistent relationships are essential to healthy development. Recognizing the inadequacy in quality as chairman of Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee of Appropriations, I began funding an additional $200 million in CCDBG to improve quality, with targeted funding directed to infant and toddler needs. The Dodd/Snow amendment will bring us a step closer to the day when all young children have the opportunities and supports they need to embark on a lifetime of learning. We talk a lot in this country about budget deficits, economic prosperity and how as a nation we have to prioritize. One of our priorities surely must be to strengthen families, encourage work, and provide decent childcare. I understand that many of my colleagues have concerns with the cost of this amendment. Well if we can find trillions of dollars for tax cuts, hundreds of billion of dollars for a prescription drug give-away to big pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, and tens of billions of dollars for a trip to Mars, then surely we can make key investments in programs like CCDBG. I urge my colleagues to strongly support the Snowe/Dodd amendment.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this year marks the 75th Anniversary of the League of United Latino American Citizens, commonly known as LULAC. This national organization was founded in 1929 to fight for the civil rights of all Hispanic Americans. The LULAC founders saw a need for an organization that would strive for equality, fight discrimination and injustice, help Hispanics to claim their rights as United States Citizens and to have access to the American Dream. Due to their success in the southwest, LULAC continued to open up chapters all over the United States. LULAC's first council was formed in Iowa in 1959 and continues to have a strong presence today. They have prospered over the past 45 years and continue to be a leader in Iowa, fighting for the rights of Latino Iowans. LULAC has worked to affect national policy so that it better reflects the different cultures living in the United States. They continue to work tirelessly to reduce discrimination, close the achievement gap and improve the immigration laws and system. LULAC seeks to reduce disparities in political representation. They work to develop leaders among the young Latino men and women in Iowa. Rita Vargas, a previous member of my staff, was nominated as ``LULAC's Woman of the Year'' in 2001, and has since been elected to the position of Scott County Recorder. The Latino community is a vital, growing part of today's Iowa. In this great country, we find strength in our diversity. Iowa is stronger economically and richer culturally thanks to the many contributions of our Latino friends, neighbors and colleagues. I would like to say thank you to LULAC for all their hard work in Iowa and throughout the country. I wish them the best as they continue their community activism.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Shane Lowenberg of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's debate.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana for giving me this time. I thank the leader for his comments and those who have fought so valiantly on behalf of American workers and their jobs. A Senator on the other side said this is about creating jobs or losing jobs. That is what overtime is about. It is about creating jobs or losing jobs, and it does not take a genius to figure it out. Common sense dictates if an employer can work you longer hours per week and not have to pay you overtime, that is exactly what they will do, and they will not hire new workers. In fact, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, establishing the 40-hour workweek, President Roosevelt said at the time this was for creating jobs so people would not be working 50, 60 hours a week; they would be working 40 hours a week and spending more time with their families, and we would create more jobs. That is exactly what happened. I agree with the Senator on the other side when he said this bill is about creating jobs and losing jobs and, yes, that is exactly what this amendment on overtime is about--creating jobs or losing jobs. Last evening, the majority leader complained about extraneous amendments blocking progress on the bill. I don't know, but I assume he may have been talking about my amendment on overtime. He did not say so directly. But how can any Senator stand here on the floor and say with a straight face an amendment aimed at protecting overtime pay for millions of American workers is extraneous to a jobs bill? Then I heard someone else on the other side say something about we have to have cloture. That is the vote coming up in about 10 minutes. We have to have cloture so we do not have these nongermane amendments on this bill. The chairman of the committee and others have already added a whole package of nongermane amendments. So I guess what they are saying is we want to add our nongermane amendments but they do not want us to even attempt to add any of our nongermane amendments. It is sort of, my way or the highway. Well, that is not what this Senate floor is about. The Senate floor ought to be about open debate, discussion, and voting on important issues that matter to our constituents. Right now there is nothing more important in front of the Senate than the issue of overtime. There is a lot of good in this FSC bill, much of which I will support. I would like to see the bill get through. But this bill, without a protection for American workers to protect their overtime, is not a bill worthy of passing, nor is it worthy of being called a jobs bill. People say we are slowing this down somehow, that we are making it impossible to pass this bill. I have been on this floor day after day saying I will agree to a time limit. I say to my friend and colleague from Iowa, if he wants a time limit, we will have a time limit and then we will have an up-or-down vote. Plus, there are other amendments people want to offer. That is, again, why the other side wants cloture. They have their package of nongermane amendments but they do not want us to offer any. I do not know if they will win but at least we ought to have the right to offer them and to have a vote on them. All we are asking for is fairness and openness on the Senate floor. I know that may sound kind of odd to people but all we are asking is just the right to offer an amendment, have it debated within a reasonable amount of time, and have a vote. I do not think that sounds too un-American to me. Yet the other side, the Republican side, is saying they do not want to vote on my overtime amendment. They are going to go through all of these parliamentary maneuvers. But we will vote on this amendment. All of this parliamentary maneuvering that we are going through right now on the motion to recommit and filing cloture just puts off the inevitable. If the other side was really interested in getting this bill through, we could have had a vote on my amendment 2 days--well, at least yesterday, and been halfway through the bill, probably have the bill done today or tomorrow. So it is not our side that is slowing this bill down at all. As I have said before, our friends in the majority leadership have tried to stymie and stop a vote on overtime. We voted on it last summer, with a strong bipartisan vote, to say no to the proposed regulations of this administration to take away overtime rights of people. The House of Representatives followed suit, but in conference the administration came in and got it taken out. The American people spoke, and I can say with no uncertainty that the vast majority of American people want their overtime pay protected. In fact, a poll taken last fall, when this question was put to a representative sample of the American people, overwhelmingly showed they wanted their overtime pay protected. This goes back to a kind of taking of the right of people to earn a fair wage, a fair salary. This is from the Wall Street Journal, and this says it all: While employees like overtime pay, a lot of employers do not. That is not surprising. Violations are so common that the Employer Policy Foundation, an employer supported think-tank in Washington, estimates that workers would get an additional $19 billion a year if the rules were observed. That estimate is considered conservative by many researchers. Think about that. Because the rules are not being enforced, American workers are being cheated out of $19 billion a year in income. What has happened is employers in various parts of the country are trying to go around these rules and some of them have gotten caught redhanded. We had a case on the west coast where people were clocking out and then coming back to work, working overtime but it was not showing up on the pay stubs. That case went to court and the jury found the company guilty. So what did the companies do? They said, well, if we are getting caught and hauled into court, we better get the rules changed. Last year, the administration proposed the most fundamental sweeping changes ever in the Fair Labor Standards Act that would deny the right of up to 8 million Americans to get overtime pay. So now they can go ahead and work them longer than 40 hours a week and they will not have to be worried about being taken to court. That is the core of what we are talking about. Quite frankly, there was a case in Oregon where a Federal jury, on December 19, found Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., guilty of off-the-clock violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was Wal-Mart--people checking out, coming back to work and not getting paid overtime. That is not fair. It is not right to the American worker, and that is why the American people, by an overwhelming margin, want us to vote on this amendment. Here was the poll taken last fall. The question was: There is now a proposal to change the Federal law that determines which employees have the legal right to overtime pay. This proposal would eliminate the right to overtime pay for several million employees who now have that right. Do you favor or oppose this proposal? I am sure it comes as no surprise; overwhelmingly 74 percent said they opposed it, while 14 percent said they would favor it. This goes to the gut of what we are talking about for the American worker in this country. We are already shipping jobs overseas. There is a small provision in this bill before us, subpart F--I will not get into all of that--that will actually make it easier for companies to ship jobs overseas. Now we are telling our American workers they have to work longer and not get any pay for it. Already American workers are working longer hours than anyone else in the industrialized world and now we are asking them to work even longer. The motion before us is a cloture motion. I say to my fellow Senators, defeat the cloture motion, because if the cloture motion is invoked, we will be prohibited from offering our amendment on overtime. That is not fair. That is not right. Two weeks ago we had a unanimous consent agreement on the Senate floor that I would be allowed to offer this amendment. They knew that. But after a week's break, we came back and they decided to go through all of this parliamentary maneuvering to prevent me from offering my amendment and to prevent us from having a vote on it. I ask my fellow Senators to think of their constituents, think of that man and woman out there who have a family, they want to be with their kids in the evenings or on the weekend, and they are being asked to work overtime. As one woman, who I quoted yesterday, said: My time with my family is premium time. My time at home is premium time. If I am asked to give up my premium time with my family, I ought to get premium time, which is time and a half over 40. So when my colleagues think about voting on this cloture motion, do not think about the President of the United States, do not think about whether we can go against the administration. I do not see it in those terms. I only see it in the terms protecting the legitimate right of our American workers to get time and a half when they work over 40 hours a week. That is what this is all about, make no mistake. I am hopeful when Senators come to vote that we will have a resounding ``no'' vote on the cloture motion. Then maybe we can get to this amendment and we can have a time agreement. We have already talked about it enough. We could have half an hour for closing arguments and then vote up or down on this overtime amendment. I think the other side may be afraid it might pass. Well, it passed last year. I think it would probably pass big time now because more and more American people are aware of what the administration is trying to do to take away their overtime. I think we have had our say. The American people are going to watch. People in the United States are working longer hours than their counterparts in any other country. They are working longer hours now than ever and they are now being told, well, guess what, we are going to work you longer but we are not going to pay you any more. Last, the people who will be hurt the most will be women. Annual hours worked by middle-income wives with children went from 895 in 1979 to 1,388 in 2000. Women with these kinds of jobs are the ones who will be hit first because they have the type of clerical jobs that will be reclassified. They are the very people who are being asked to give up their premium time with their kids and their families--their second jobs at home. As one woman said: I have a second job, at home. They will not be paid overtime. That is grossly unfair. I ask for a resounding ``no'' vote on the cloture motion.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. See, that is it.

Mr. HARKIN. Why don't I yield the floor so the Senator can be recognized. Before I do, let me thank my colleague from California, Senator Boxer, for her longtime unyielding support for our working families. No one has fought harder, more consistently, and with such eloquence than the Senator from California. I know the people of California recognize in Senator Boxer they have a fighter who will not give up and who will not back down in fighting for their families' rights. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator has done something of great value to all of us by bringing this out. A lot of the time we hear these things, but this puts it in focus. The Secretary says: Hourly workers not affected by part 541 under either the current or proposed rules. But is there anything in the proposed rules that would prevent an employer from saying: OK, you were an hourly worker. We have now reclassified you. You are now a professional. Don't you feel good? You are now a professional. And guess what. You don't get overtime. There is nothing to stop them from doing that.