Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am sorry. I don't know who has the floor?

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I don't understand why there is a flareup. This bill, we are moving ahead on it. Wednesday and Thursday we had good debates. We had amendments. We voted. We brought up amendments, most on our side. I think there were a couple on the Republican side that came up. I don't know why there should be a flareup. We have the amendments pending. We said let's set a time to vote on it. We can move ahead. That is the sort of comity you work out. We will work out a time. We know we are going to vote on it, so let's find a time that is agreeable. In fact, in the well Thursday night, I thought there was an agreed-upon time, for the afternoon, for two. I said that is fine; I don't care. Then when I came in Friday morning, I found out that had been blown out of the water--not by our side but by the Republican side.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we are presently on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill which is the funding bill for next year for all three of those Departments plus others--NIH, for basic medical research, and for a number of other independent type agencies, libraries, and things such as that. Perhaps the biggest part of this bill in terms of where we ought to focus our energies and our attention is in the area of education. We know that without a good education, our hopes for the future of this country are much dimmer if we do not provide a class 1, world class education for all of our kids. Our future will be bleak indeed if in fact we start leaving some kids behind. Thus, when the President talked a couple years ago about his proposal to leave no child behind, that sounded like something we could support and move ahead on because we do not want to, nor can we afford to, leave any children behind. Now that we are here this week after Labor Day, it is back to school time. Back to school time means one thing: More claims from President Bush that he is serious about leaving no child behind. When the President signed the No Child Left Behind Act nearly 2 years ago, he promised to give schools the money they need to improve. He said: We are going to spend more money, more resources, but they will be directed at methods that work. Most people probably believed him. I know I did. There were long negotiations. I also serve on the authorizing committee that worked out the agreements with the White House on the No Child Left Behind Act. One of the major reasons I voted for it was that I trusted the President. I took him at his word that in fact we were going to have the resources. In the No Child Left Behind Act, we made a major departure from what we had been doing in the past in terms of Federal funding for elementary and secondary education. This was the biggest mandate ever put upon local public schools by the Federal Government. The biggest mandate ever put on our local public schools by the Federal Government was Leave No Child Behind. So I believed then, and I believe now, that if we are going to mandate certain performance levels for our schools, and we are going to penalize these schools for failing to make adequate yearly progress--if we are going to do that--then we must, by all rights, give them the money they need to meet these mandates and to improve. President Bush seemed to agree. We took him at his word. But ever since he signed that law, the President's record on education has been long on spin and woefully short on spending. Saturday was a characteristic example of what I am talking about. The President used his radio address on Saturday to boast about how much funding he has provided for schools since he became President. He said--and again I quote; this is an exact quote from his radio address on Saturday-- My budget for next year boosts education funding to $53.1 billion, an increase of nearly $11 billion since I took office. Keep these figures in mind: $53.1 billion, his budget for next year; and he says: ``an increase of . . . $11 billion since I took office.'' Well, first, the statement is factually correct. The education budget has increased $11 billion during the Bush administration. And it is factually correct that next year's budget does call for $53.1 billion. But let's take a look at those two. The $11 billion increase during his administration has taken place, but no thanks to President Bush. The budgets increased $11 billion because Democrats in Congress insisted on it over the White House's strong objections. It is like I was saying last week about the weather, it has rained a lot around here during President Bush's administration, sometimes it has been hot during his administration, sometimes it has even snowed during his administration, but his administration did not actually have anything to do with the weather. The same thing with education funding: President Bush deserves as much credit for the recent education funding increases as he does for the weather outside. This chart will explain what I mean. In fiscal year 2001, the last budget of the Clinton administration, education funding was at $42.2 billion. The next year, President Bush's first year, in his budget he asked for an increase to $44.5 billion. That would be about an increase of $2.3 billion. Now, at the end of the day, at the end of the year, the actual funding went up to $49.9 billion. Why? Did President Bush come down here and ask for more money? No. Education got up to $49.9 billion because we Democrats insisted on it during the negotiations for the No Child Left Behind Act. We said, if you are going to have these mandates, let's get the money in there. And since the President wanted to get votes for his bill, he agreed. But he never asked for it. We insisted on it. So the next year we went up to $49.9 billion. Now, the next year, President Bush asked for $50.3 billion. That was an increase of only $400 million from the previous year, seven-tenths of 1 percent. That is what he asked for. That is all he asked for. Again, we got it up to $53.1 billion. Again, why? Because Democrats insisted on it. We fought for it hard. We fought for it on the floor of the Senate, and we got it up to $53.1 billion. Now, the real kicker is this: In his radio address, the President said: My budget for next year boosts-- --``boosts,'' ``boosts''-- education funding to $53.1 billion. . . . Mr. President, we are already at $53.1 billion. You have asked for $53.1 billion for next year. That is not a boost. That is the same as we spent last year. Well, actually I want to be factually correct. His budget would increase funding by $26 million, .05 percent over last year. It is such a minuscule amount it does not even show up on a chart. As I said before, it is true education spending has risen $11 billion during the Bush administration, but President Bush has only asked for $2.7 billion of that $11 billion. All the rest resulted from Democrats here in Congress pushing for and fighting for increased education funding. So I wanted to make that record clear. Now, what is more, the President is trying to take credit for these education increases at the very same time the White House, this President, is working to defeat Senator Byrd's amendment, one of the pending amendments on this bill, that would fully fund title I at the fiscal year 2004 authorized level. The title I program is the key to the success of No Child Left Behind because title I helps the students who need the help the most, the millions who are now being left behind--low-income, poor kids, kids from low-income areas. It is the program also, under the No Child Left Behind Act, that will hold schools accountable for improving student performance. So title I is a program that has been in existence for a long time, and it funnels Federal funding to those most in need, the kids who are now being left behind. In the No Child Left Behind Act we put in there the mandates that will hold schools accountable, that will penalize schools if they do not improve student performance. President Bush and Members of Congress spent a lot of time negotiating over how much money was needed year by year for title I. This was part of the negotiations process when we passed No Child Left Behind. What we settled on was a figure of $18.5 billion for fiscal year 2004. That is the second year after the law went into effect. That is the authorized level. Unfortunately, the bill before us provides $12.35 billion for title I. That is the amount requested by President Bush. Again, some on the other side want to play games with the numbers. They argue title I funding has risen by $2.9 billion during President Bush's administration, again, as if the President deserves the credit for it. The fact is, President Bush requested only $1.3 billion of the $2.9 billion title I has increased between 2001 and 2003. Again, the only reason title I increased more than he asked for was we Democrats here in Congress insisted on it. Again, this chart shows the story. In fiscal year 2001, title I got $8.8 billion. In fiscal year 2002, the President requested a minuscule increase of just $300 million to $9.1 billion. The authorized level was $13.5 billion. Again, we Democrats in Congress fought hard, and we got it up to $10.35 billion. Some on the other side have said, well, the Democrats ran the Senate for fiscal year 2002, and they didn't fund title I at the authorized level. Well, that is true, but remember, we only controlled the Senate, we did not control the House, and we did not control the White House like the Republicans do now, and we managed to get more for title I than the President requested. In fiscal year 2003, the year we are in right now, the President requested $11.35 billion for title I, when the authorization level had risen to $16 billion. Again, thanks to Democratic pressure here in Congress, we got it up to $11.7 billion. Now for fiscal year 2004, the President has requested $12.35 billion, $6 billion short of the authorized level of $18.5 billion. People have said: That is the authorized level. We hardly ever fund to the authorized level. In most cases that is true. But in this case, we have a different situation. We have mandates. Schools, you have to do this, this, this. You have to meet annual yearly progress of this, this, and this. We have now mandated it. We never did before. And, in the negotiations on No Child Left Behind, we agreed on these figures: $13.5 billion for 2002, 16 for 2003, and 18.5 for 2004, and so on. So this is not just like something else. This is the biggest Federal mandate ever on our public schools. The biggest part of No Child Left Behind is title I, and the President has shortchanged it by over $6 billion this next year. I think we need to help President Bush keep the promise he made when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act by approving Senator Byrd's amendment. The Byrd amendment, more than any other, will show the Nation how serious we are about leaving no child behind. Do we give the schools the money they need to improve? Or do we just give them a bunch of mandates and hang them out to dry? That is what is at stake with the Byrd amendment. I emphasize, the Byrd amendment is not just about dollars. If you want to hire good teachers, it takes money. If you want to reduce class sizes so teachers can teach, it takes money. This Byrd amendment would provide enough funding to hire more than 100,000 highly qualified teachers for the students who are at most risk of being left behind. That means over 2 million disadvantaged students would be taught in smaller classes. They would receive the full range of instructional services called for under the No Child Left Behind Act. In his radio address on Saturday, the President said: Schools are getting the Federal resources and help they need to improve. I am sorry, Mr. President. That is factually incorrect. They are not getting the Federal resources. They are not getting what you promised 2 years ago when you signed this bill into law. So I say let's help the President keep his promise. I urge my colleagues to support the Byrd amendment when it comes up for a vote. All we are asking for is $6.2 billion to get it up to the authorized level. The President says he doesn't have the money for that. We have this huge deficit. We don't have the money to get out to these schools to fully fund this. We don't have the money. Last night when I turned on my television set to watch the President address the country, he said he is going to send up a supplemental appropriations request for $87 billion for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan--mostly Iraq. We had an earlier bill this year that was $79 billion, of which $70 billion was for Iraq and Afghanistan. So 70 and now 87; in the space of 6 months this President has asked us to take taxpayers' dollars and put $157 billion into Iraq and Afghanistan. And we don't have $6 billion to leave no child behind, the poorest kids in the poorest areas, the low-income areas. We don't have it. Somehow we don't have that. Mr. Bremer is talking about rebuilding schools in Iraq. They are going to rebuild schools or build schools. I don't think we bombed schools in Iraq. Maybe we are going to build new schools. I don't know. What about the schools here in America? What about our kids here who are being left behind? One hundred fifty-seven billion dollars? At the beginning of the Iraq war, the Department of Defense estimated we were going to be spending about $2.2 billion a month after the war. In June, that went to $3 billion. As of July, they said they were spending about $3.9 billion a month in Iraq, and another $1 billion in Afghanistan. Well, if I am not mistaken, there are 12 months in a year. If we assume that is the end of it for the whole year, 12 months, $87 billion, it seems to me that comes down to more than $7 billion a month. And they told us earlier it was going to be $2.2 billion for Iraq, and going down quickly. And now it is up to $6 billion in Iraq and $1 billion in Afghanistan, if we assume they are not going to ask for any more. And I would not make that assumption. So in 1 year, $7 billion a month for Iraq and Afghanistan. In February, the administration said Iraq's oil reserves would help shoulder much of the burden for its own reconstruction. Mr. Wolfowitz said on April 6: There are enormous resources available from other sources than just the American taxpayer to help the Iraqi people in reconstructing their country. And the oil revenues of Iraq now for the first time in decades will be dedicated to the welfare of the Iraqi people. Well, it sure looks like the American taxpayer is footing the bill to me. I don't know when those oil drills are going to start coming back again and when we are going to start making money off that. Right now it is the American taxpayer. My point is, for Iraq and Afghanistan they have asked for $157 billion in 6 months. Yet we can't fund title I. That doesn't make sense to me at all. We should have--we do have the resources. Quite frankly, if we don't meet those needs and if we don't fund No Child Left Behind, then obviously children are going to be left behind. And they are going to be the kids of the poorest, low income, because their schools will not meet the annual yearly progress reports, the mandates that are out there. We are going to lose teachers because schools won't be able to pay them what they are worth. Yet we are going to ask the American taxpayer to keep coughing up money for this quagmire that we are in now in Iraq. A lot of people have said: This isn't Vietnam. I am one of those who lived through Vietnam. I was in the military during the Vietnam war. This may not be Vietnam, but, boy, it sure smells like it. Every time I see these bills coming down for the money, it is costing like Vietnam, too. No one wants this country to be vulnerable to terrorists. We want to take all reasonable diligent steps that may be necessary to protect the American people. That is the duty of the Commander in Chief. But the Commander in Chief, being an elected person, also has to be accountable for how he has gone about ensuring the security of the American people. At what cost? At what impact on our society? So the President has to be held accountable for this. I don't pretend to have all the answers for what ought to be done in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I do know something--that if we as a nation decide to go it alone in the world in anything--but especially in the war on terrorism--if we decide to go at it alone, in our way and only in our way, without the concurrence of and the help and support of our allies, old and new, and of our friends in democratic countries around the world, then I think that two things will happen. One, we will not address the scourge of terrorism as fully and all-encompassing away as it needs to be done--globally--because we are going to need the help of other countries in finding terrorists, locating them, breaking up their cells, giving you advance warning and giving themselves advance warning. That will be the first. We will do it in a military rifle- shot-type of manner. You may accomplish something for a little bit but that doesn't wipe out the terrorist network or the nests. That is the first result of our going it alone. The second result is what is quite obvious right now--the American taxpayer will foot the bill for everything. Those are the two things I see happening right now in the world. So I think it is time to have an accounting. Quite frankly, I think it is time we begin to reach out to other nations--our friends and our allies--to enlist their aid and support, and to vow that never again are we going to go marching off with just the word of the President of the United States. The threat of terrorism is not just at us; it is at people all over the world. It is not just up to our President--any President--to decide when and how to go after these terrorists. It is up to us globally. It is up to the United Nations. It is up to NATO, our allies and us working together to decide how and when to go after these terrorists. I say this because in this bill now there is a shortage of funding for education, for health care, for medical research. We are even shortchanging the National Institutes of Health on medical research. I think Senator Specter will have an amendment later on that, which I will support. But we are told we simply don't have the funds. But we do have $157 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, it is all a matter of priorities. I think we have to get our priorities back in order. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend, we will work it out. I am sure it will be worked out.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I know my friend from Louisiana wishes to speak. I want to take a couple of minutes to respond to the remarks of my friend from Pennsylvania about the education bill. I am constrained to, once again, point out some facts, as I did with this chart. I want to hold it up again. Perhaps my friend wasn't on the floor when I held this chart up before. This is education funding from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2004. In his radio address on Saturday, President Bush was boasting about the fact that he had an $11 billion increase in funding in his administration. That is true. It went from $42 billion to $53 billion. That is $11 billion. But no thanks to him. As I pointed out before, in fiscal year 2001 it was $42.2 billion, and in 2002 Bush asked for $44.5 billion--a very slight increase. In negotiations with the President on the No Child Left Behind Act, Democrats insisted and got it up to $49.9 billion. The next year President Bush asked for $50.3 billion--a $400 million increase, a .05- percent increase. We Democrats fought hard and got it up to $53.1 billion. Now the President said in his radio address that he has a boost in education funding for next year. As I pointed out, this year it is $53.1 billion, and he asked for $53.1. Those are the facts. Facts are stubborn things. You can have all the rhetoric and dress up your words but facts are stubborn things. The fact is, of the $11 billion increase for funding in education since this President came to office, the President has only asked for $2.7 billion of that increase. That is the fact. Facts are very stubborn things. My friend from Pennsylvania dresses it up. But as we say in Iowa, you can put an apron and a pink ribbon on a pig but it is still a pig. You can dress this up in all kinds of fancy language. Quite frankly, we are leaving education funding behind. I wanted to, again, bring out the facts and make sure that people had the facts in education funding and why we need to get the Byrd amendment agreed to on title I. Again, when we negotiated No Child Left Behind, the President and the Congress agreed on these funding levels for title I. Now we are $6 billion less than what we agreed upon earlier. Facts are very stubborn things. That is why we need to adopt the Byrd amendment. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her patience. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. What happens to the amendment? Will the Senator absolutely assure me if I set it aside that we will vote on this amendment tomorrow afternoon?

Mr. HARKIN. I would be glad to set it aside. I would be willing to agree on a time tomorrow and set it aside.

Mr. HARKIN. Well, there you go.

Mr. HARKIN. The minority leader on our side, Senator Reid. I was involved in the discussion. We were just talking about moving ahead and getting a vote on this amendment on Tuesday. I wouldn't say that hands were shaken and it was agreed, but someone said 3 or 3:15 on Tuesday. I said--someone said that to me. I didn't say that--I said, fine, OK, let's work it out. We will have a time on Tuesday we can work. The Senator is right. Some of this does have to do with the fact that there are a number on our side running for President. We know that. They have been out. But everyone is going to be here tomorrow. The point is, not everyone is here today, Monday, not even on your side or our side, but everyone is going to be here tomorrow; so that Thursday night there was sort of a gentlemen's agreement--the assistant leader was there, too--that we would set a time on Tuesday to vote on this. That is the kind of thing we work out here. If I could just finish? Then, when we come in Friday, I find that has been yanked away from us, that we can't have a time agreed upon to vote. That is when this Senator decided, I am going to lay down my amendment and I am going to object to going off it until we get some kind of agreement worked out. It is not blackmail. It is just trying to move this process forward.

Mr. HARKIN. Will my friend yield for a question?

Mr. HARKIN. I have a hard time seeing it over there.

Mr. HARKIN. I agree. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Mr. HARKIN. That is true.

Mr. HARKIN. That is true.

Mr. HARKIN. Well, if the Senator will yield without losing his right to the floor, I will try to respond to his question about the schedule. I do want to respond also to my friend's earlier comments on education funding, but I will do that when I get the floor in my own right. To respond to the inquiry about the schedule, I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, there are two observations on who is running the Senate. The Senate right now is 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 1 Independent. The Independent, Mr. Jeffords, caucuses with the Democrats, although he maintains an independent status. So it is not the case where we have a dictatorship. It is a case where the Senate is very closely divided and where there should be a comity in which people work together--as the Senator from Pennsylvania and I have done for 13 years, by the way, I would note for the record--in terms of accommodating and trying to reach reasonable accommodations on votes. I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, I mentioned last week I was going to offer an amendment on overtime. It was no secret. I read it into the Record. It was not my side, nor was it this Senator's decision, saying that we would only have two votes on Friday morning and then go home. We could have stayed Friday and voted. It was not this side or this Senator's decision to have one vote on Monday and then later cancel it and not even have any votes on Monday. The Senator from Pennsylvania knows as well that on Fridays there is a vote or two in the morning, everybody takes off, and then we have maybe a vote at 5 or 5:30 on Monday--what we call a bed check vote. It was this Senator's judgment that most of the votes--and we have a finite list of amendments for this bill, I say to the Senator. We agreed. Senator Reid, our assistant leader on this side, got a finite list of amendments, which is very important because that tells us we can bring closure to this bill. So it became clear that the big voting day was going to be Tuesday. Everyone is going to be here. It will be a long day. We can wrap up. We can have a whole series of votes on Tuesday, maybe bring this bill to a close by Wednesday--certainly Thursday at the latest. I say further to my friend from Pennsylvania that the record shows that in the last several years about the average length of time spent on this bill, whether it has been in Democratic hands or Republican hands, has been about 5 to 7 floor days because this is such a big bill. There is a lot in it. There are a lot of amendments, and usually a lot of debate on different aspects of this bill. So it would not be unusual for this bill, under the leadership of my friend, and very good leadership I might say, that we would be on the Senate floor for 5 or 6 days on this bill. We were on it Wednesday. We had no votes Tuesday--again not our decision. The decision was made by the majority leader that we would not vote on Tuesday. We were on it Wednesday and Thursday. That is 2 days. We had two votes on Friday. Today, we are here talking but no votes. So Tuesday and Wednesday, that would give us about 5 legislative days that we would be on it. We can probably finish this bill by Wednesday night, I say to my friend from Pennsylvania. So that is the schedule. I am not holding up anything. We couldn't vote today anyway. We couldn't vote on anything. The majority leader made the decision that we were not going to have votes on this bill today. When I heard that, I said, OK, I am going to offer my amendment, and I will object to going off of my amendment for anything else until we vote on it because we can vote on it first thing tomorrow morning. We can come in tomorrow morning and vote on it, or tomorrow afternoon we could vote on this amendment. We will vote on it. I did not mean to go on. I yield.

Mr. HARKIN. Thursday night--you don't have to take my word for it. We were in the well with the majority leader----

Mr. HARKIN. If my friend will yield further, I say why not? Tomorrow everyone is going to be here. If you want to agree on a time, you and I could agree on a time. I don't care. Everyone is going to be here tomorrow. We will agree on a time and we will move forward. There is no reluctance or resistance on our part to doing that. I don't know what the blocking is.

Mr. HARKIN. You have the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Well, no, as I say, hope springs eternal. I was hoping maybe the President might learn about this. We did get this veto message from the White House. I say to the Senator from California, this is mind-boggling. Here is an appropriations bill that funds all education, all health care, all research at the National Institutes of Health--on breast cancer, on emphysema, on diabetes; all this wonderful research done to help people live their lives better--Head Start Programs, job training programs, and he is going to veto the whole thing if we stop these rules and regulations from going through that takes away overtime. To me this is mind-boggling. Again, I hope it is his underlings doing this, and maybe he doesn't know about it yet, and maybe he will learn about it. I hope he will learn about it. Maybe he will tell his people to stop this nonsense.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from California for her observations and her questions. I again thank my colleague from California for her many years of working so hard on behalf of our working families. There is no one who has worked harder and longer and fought more diligently for the rights of working families, working men, working women, in this country than Senator Boxer of California. I say to the Senator, I am proud to have you on our side in this fight, too, because it is a fight for justice. It is a fight just to make sure people are treated decently as human beings. I guess in my fondest, perhaps, hopes, maybe President Bush didn't even know about this, and this was going on underneath him. Maybe through our debates here he will find out about it and say: What is happening? Who is doing this on my watch? Well, the buck does stop at the President's desk. Maybe he doesn't even know this is going on but the people he has hired underneath him are implementing this. So maybe our debate will enlighten the President. Maybe some word will get to him and he will say, ``What is going on?'' and he will become alarmed at what people under him are doing, and perhaps he will put a stop to it. That would be my fondest wish.

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I will have more to say about this next week. I hope we will vote on this up or down when next Tuesday comes. But I hope the American people get the word about what is happening. These proposed rules came out without one public hearing, not one. There still haven't been any public hearings. Why don't they go to Dallas, TX, or Des Moines, IA? Why don't they go to Detroit or Los Angeles? Why don't they go to West Virginia, have public hearings and listen to what people might have to say about this? No, they just want to ram them through without any public hearings. This is our public hearing. This is the public's house, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Here, as we once said, the people rule. Here we are supposed to do the work of the people, not the special interests. The American people want us to fight for them and for their rights, to support them in the workplace and to support their families. That is what this fight is about--nothing more, nothing less. That is why this Senate needs to speak, and we need to vote early next week to say no to the Bush administration's proposed changes in overtime rules and regulations. I yield the floor.