Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank my chairman, friend and able leader on this appropriations bill. I think we all wish we had a little bit more 302(b) allocation but that is for another time and place. Earlier today I spoke about offering an amendment that would basically prohibit the administration from moving ahead on implementing a proposed rule that would basically undermine and do away with the 40- hour workweek that we have had in the Fair Labor Standards Act since 1938. Earlier this spring, the administration proposed some rule changes. Not one hearing was held on it. As we looked through these proposed rules this summer and dug into them, it would drastically undermine the ability of working families, working men and women in America, to get justly compensated for overtime work in the future. I was talking to one of my colleagues today about this, and he said to me, I have not really had a big clamor in my State for these changes. I got to thinking about it. I got to thinking I really have not had anybody in the past year or 2 years ago, or earlier this year-- I have seen no real groundswell or anything about the fact that these rules as they exist now need to be changed. I do not know where this comes from. All of a sudden they are proposing this massive change in the way people's work is defined in this country and whether they are exempted from overtime pay or not. So I have an amendment that I drafted that basically is just very simple. It says: None of the funds provided under this Act shall be used to promulgate or implement any regulation that exempts from the requirements of section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 207) any employee who is not otherwise exempted pursuant to regulations under section 13 of such act (29 U.S.C. 213) that were in effect as of September 3, 2003. So this is an amendment that I will be laying down sometime tomorrow. I mention again that this proposed rule change could affect up to 8 million workers, but the first wave of people that will be affected by this rule change will be women who are working in salaried positions that today would be paid overtime if they worked more than 40 hours a week. These would be women who work as bookkeepers, accountants, secretaries, nurses, nurse's aides, a whole host of different occupations. I say women because the way that theworkforce is structured, where the salary level is, they will fall in that lower spectrum of salary level where it will be above the minimum but it will be in the range where they will now be exempted from overtime work. That will be the first wave. That is just the first people who would be affected by it. After that, there would be many other people affected by it--police officers, firefighters, first responders, and others. There is no carve-out in the proposed rules and regulations for police, firefighters, and emergency personnel. They are thrown in with everybody else. So somehow I keep hearing this kind of a rumor or statement that keeps floating around that, oh, police officers will not be affected. Well, would someone show me in the proposed rules where it says that police officers will not be affected? It is nowhere in there. So I do not know what they are talking about. They are thrown in with everybody else. Again, I do not want to take too much more time. I will lay down the amendment tomorrow morning at the appropriate time. For the life of me, though, I cannot understand why the administration is proposing this drastic change when there has been no big groundswell for the change. I have heard some people in this room say we have to change it because it has not been changed since 1938. That is nonsense. We have changed the Fair Labor Standards Act several times since 1938. In fact, a number of times this has been changed without taking away overtime for people in our country. So to say it has not been changed since 1938 is simply erroneous. A number of times we have addressed ourselves to new types of work, new definitions, new people in the workforce, by changing some of the definitions. In every case in which these definitions were changed they were changed to make it easier, to include more people in the overtime provisions, not to exclude people. For example, the Department of Labor revised the overtime regulations in 1940, 1949, 1954, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1975, and 1981. In not one of those instances was the framework narrowed to exclude more people from overtime protections. These changes were made basically to enlarge, enhance, and to better define who was covered, and that is why it never really invoked much debate or consternation because we recognized that we wanted to protect people for overtime pay. The minimum salary threshold has been raised seven times since 1938. So to say that somehow we have never touched this since 1938 is absolutely wrong. What is correct is that since 1938 we have not circumscribed, we have not narrowed, the definitional framework to exclude more people from overtime pay. That is what these proposed regulations would do, and that is why the Senate has to speak strongly, I hope next week sometime, in supporting this amendment that would basically prohibit them from moving ahead with this kind of a regulation. I would point out that the House of Representatives narrowly defeated this 213 to 210, with a number of Republicans supporting not allowing the administration to proceed with these changes in rules. So, again, I hope next week we can have a further debate. I intend either tomorrow or Monday to again point out the people who are going to be affected, what it means for their families and their income. What it basically means is that we are going to have people working longer hours but they are not going to be compensated for it. As I said, many of them are women who are now paying for childcare. Well, now they have to pay to keep their children in daycare maybe longer but they do not get any extra pay for that. So that is why this proposed change in rules and regulations is one that we have to say no to. We have to make sure we continue to protect and enhance the 40-hour workweek and make sure people who work over 40 hours, if they want to work over 40 hours or if they are compelled to work over 40 hours, are justly compensated with it for time and a half over 40 hours. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, shortly, I am going to offer another amendment dealing with school renovation and construction on behalf of myself and Senator Clinton from New York. This is an issue I have been involved with for over almost 12 years now. I first started talking about the need for the Federal Government to be involved in school construction and renovation back in 1991. At that time, when I was seeking my party's nomination to be the candidate for President, I had come up with sort of a blueprint for America. But one of the cornerstones was the need to invest in the infrastructure of our country. In that infrastructure, aside from water and power generation and transportation, communications, one of the elements of the proposal was for the Federal Government to provide for meaningful funds for the renovation and reconstruction of schools throughout the country. I had picked up on this after reading ``Savage Inequalities'' by Jonathan Kozol from which it became clear to me that Mr. Kozol had provided a great service to our country by pointing out that all over America, the poorest schools--the worst schools, I should say--the schools that are the most rundown and in the most need of repair were those located in very low-income areas. It became obvious the reason they did is because they were in low- income areas where they had low property tax values, and they simply didn't have the wherewithal to fix up the schools. However, the schools that were in high-income areas basically were in pretty good shape. Thus he termed it ``Savage Inequalities.'' Based upon that, I said: We ought to embark upon an effort to get the Federal Government involved in reconstructing schools. One of the reasons I proposed that and have been proposing it for the last 12 years is that I do firmly believe in local control of schools, local control in terms of curriculum, teachers, hiring, the general sort of thrust of the schools, how they are operated. That has been one of the geniuses of the American educational system. We have had this diverse approach to education in our country. The fact is, giving construction money to the schools in no way takes away from local control. It just provides the funds they need. I also thought at the time that we would have a matching. We would have the States then come up with funds. For example, a low-income area that has low property tax values could take, let's say, a grant, a Federal grant of money that would lower the total cost of the bond or whatever is needed to be passed to provide for new construction; thus they might not only be more willing but at least able to build new schools or to reconstruct and renovate old schools. Nothing happened on that in the early 1990s. Obviously, I did not get my party's nomination. I tried to get the Clinton administration to provide some of this. In fact, in 1994, we did get money for school renovation and reconstruction. It was rescinded the next year. I then embarked upon an effort to test my theories in the State of Iowa. So beginning about 1997-1998, I got some money to go to the State of Iowa for school construction and renovation. And the State department of education handled that money and put out a requirement that there had to be certain local matches to get this grant money. Local communities, at least in my State, could match that money one of three ways: They could either pass a bond, raise money through further bonding, they could have a local option sales tax, which we have in Iowa, or they could do it with what we call a plant and equipment levy. In the State of Iowa local jurisdictions are allowed to do that. When we first put out several millions of dollars for this to test this theory, it turned out that the leveraging was incredible. The leveraging was over almost 20 times. In other words, for every Federal dollar we put out, we got about 20 times that in local moneys coming in to help. That is because they got the grant money, and they could see they could get maybe $100,000 or $200,000. And if they matched that with a local option sales tax or something or a bonding, then they get it. Many of these jurisdictions that had trouble passing bonds in the past found that with this carrot approach they were able to get the bond passed because obviously they didn't have to pass as big a bond as what they had in the past. Therefore, their local property tax levees would not be that great. So it worked very well. In fact, there are schools all over the State of Iowa that have gotten these Federal grants now going back almost 5, 6 years. There are new classrooms; there are new schools; there are renovated buildings all over the State of Iowa that are testament to the fact that the theory I had actually does work. So in 1991, we had $1 billion we had put into this program nationwide. That $1 billion was cut down to about $800 million in conference, but we got about $800 million out for school construction and renovation all over the United States. Every State has participated in this. Again, not all that money has been spent because it took some time to get the money out. People had to make contracts for construction, things such as that. But the reports we are getting back are that this has been something the States have found they can use and, as I said, multiply the amount of money. There is a multiplier effect to every Federal dollar that goes out. It is estimated 14 million children in this country attend schools that are deteriorated. Just this morning, the American Society of Civil Engineers, a decidedly nonpartisan group, issued one of its periodic report cards which assess the condition of the Nation's physical infrastructure. In 2001, the ASCE awarded the Nation's schools a grade of D minus, the lowest grade for any individual category. That is bridges, water systems, sewage disposal systems, of all the infrastructure of America, schools got D minus, the lowest grade. This morning, the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded there had been no progress in the condition of our schools. The report states: Due to aging, outdated facilities, severe overcrowding, or new class sizes, 75 percent of our Nation's school buildings remain inadequate to meet the needs of schoolchildren. The ASCE also found that the average cost of capital investments needed to upgrade and replace our schools is $3,800 per student. That is more than half the average cost to educate that student for 1 year. They estimate the total cost to fix our schools at more than $127 billion nationwide. I have said many times, it is a national disgrace that the nicest places that our children see are shopping malls, sports arenas, and movie theaters. The most rundown place they see is their public school. What kind of signal, what kind of message are we sending to our kids when the nicest things they see are shopping malls and movie theaters and sports arenas, and one of the most rundown places is the public school they attend every day? What message does that say about the value we place on their education and their future? It is not just a matter of appearances. Numerous studies demonstrate the link between safe and healthy school buildings and student performance. That is basic common sense. If buildings are making teachers and students sick, obviously, they will not learn as well. The Healthy Schools Network has reported many such problems around the Nation. For example, several parents have complained that their children were getting sick at a large city school near Albany, NY. The county inspected the school and found unsafe levels of lead and mold. The school has not been able to correct the problem, citing a lack of funding for repairs, but children are still attending the school. A child in North Carolina missed several days of school suffering from headaches and stomachaches. During the summer break, the child's illnesses abate but come back when school resumes in the fall. The child attends class in an old trailer that has a musty odor and poor ventilation and mold. A Virginia parent said her son felt sick at school and was doing poor in social studies. An inspector found nonfunctioning ventilators and several water-stained ceiling tiles. We talk a lot about leaving no child behind but children such as these are being left behind all over the country today in bad school buildings. It doesn't have to be this way. Last year I visited Longfellow Elementary School in Council Bluffs, IA. Longfellow school was built in 1939, the year I was born. Now you know how old I am. That was the year the school was built. Basically, in the 2001-2002 school year, Longfellow recorded 4,893 student absences. The next year, after all the modifications and changes and everything, absences dropped by more than a half, to 2,357--cut in half in 1 year. Why? Well, that school received this Federal grant to make improvements to the school. Before this, they had an old boiler in the basement, an old water heating system. It was always leaking and it was many years old. There was mold all over the basement and mold on the ceilings. Kids were getting sick, plus there was poor ventilation. When you have these hot radiators in the middle of the winter, if you have a mild day, they are still hot. They just had all these problems, so they put in a new geothermal heating and cooling system. They put in better plumbing. They put in new window glazing with double-paned windows. They cleaned up everything. The mold and mildew has disappeared. The indoor air quality has risen dramatically. The building is not just a nicer place; it is a healthier place. In 1 year, they cut absences in half just by putting in this new system. Another bonus came with the school's utility bill. As I said, they put in a new geothermal system. I looked at all the wells they drilled for this new system. Last winter the custodian at the school told me that when they first fired up this system on one of the coldest days of the year, the gas company called him to report what they thought was a broken meter in their school because they weren't using very much gas. The meter wasn't broken; it was just that the new system was so efficient. So this school district is now going to save money every single year because it won't be paying the high utility bills. Here is a story of another school from a recent report by the Rural School and Community Trust, titled ``Save a Penny, Lose a School: The Real Cost of Deferred Maintenance.'' This report cited a 1998 incident in which the failure of a $12 gasket caused the flooding of a 6-year-old gymnasium, as well as the main building of the school. The problem might have been prevented by some routine maintenance. Instead, classes were canceled for 2 days and the gymnasium closed for 5 weeks. The total bill was nearly $200,000-- $26,000 for emergency response and $160,000 for repairs. Now, compare that with what happened in Waterloo, IA, where the school district in 1999 received another one of these Federal grants to upgrade their fire alarm system at West High School. A few months after they had put this new system in, an incident at the school one evening caused the water pipes to burst. But the upgraded alarm alerted authorities of the problem and an immediate response was taken to contain the damage. Without this early warning, the problem would not have been discovered until the next morning. Not a single day of instruction was lost. In addition, the new alarm saved the district money. The district officials estimated if the water had not been contained immediately, large areas of the school would have been flooded and over $400,000 in damages sustained. I wish more schools could see results such as these. Unfortunately, the Federal Government is doing virtually nothing to help school districts address this critical problem. As I said, in fiscal 2001, we provided $800 million for school repair. This program was extremely well received all over the country. Unfortunately, President Bush zeroed out the program in his fiscal year 2002 budget, and we never have been able to restore it. That is why Senator Clinton and I are introducing an amendment today to provide $1 billion, as we did in 2001, for a national school repair program. Grants would be made to school districts to make urgent repairs to fix a leaky roof, replace faulty wiring, or make repairs to bring schools up to local safety and fire codes. Funds could also be used to expand existing structures to alleviate overcrowding or make the school more accessible to students with disabilities. Under this program, my own State would receive about $5.2 million, enough to create 125 jobs. Now, the amendment was fully offset and achieves this by rescinding the fiscal year 2004 advance appropriations and reappropriating those moneys in 2003. This is the exact same mechanism that the committee used in adding $2.2 billion to the base bill. The Harkin-Clinton amendment builds upon this and adds a billion dollars more for school renovation. Let me also add a couple of other items I wanted to mention. I mentioned Longfellow school that was built in 1939 and the problems the kids were having and how sick they were getting with the mold and mildew and old heating system, and how absences were cut in half after they got the new system in and how the utility bills are lower. There is one other thing about that school I found. When I went into the school, I noted that it had been built in 1939 because it says so on the cornerstone. The principal of the school showed me the actual bill for the new school--how much it cost and everything. The interesting thing was, guess who built the school. It was called the WPA, the Work Project Administration, instituted under President Franklin Roosevelt, supported by Congress. So it was a Federal Government project. They built that school in 1939. Imagine that. It is still being operated today, with these modifications made with the new Federal grant. So this idea that somehow it is unheard of for the Federal Government to provide construction money or renovation money to local public schools is not so. It may have been unheard of in the recent past, in the last few years; but back in the 1930s and 1940s, we put a lot of Federal dollars into building new schools around the United States. So we have precedents for this. Many of the schools that are still being operated today were built by the WPA in the 1930s and early 1940s. Secondly, this grant money that goes out to the schools, as I said, is money that would be used to reconstruct, renovate, make sure it is healthier and safer, and the results we have had back not only from Iowa but from around the country that this is not only needed but the amount of multiplier effect we get from this is much more than 10 to 1 nationally. In fact, it is approaching, if I am not mistaken, probably closer to 15 to 1 nationally for every dollar we put out. Mr. President, I am proud to support this amendment with my colleague from New York. I will refrain from offering it until the Senator can be on the floor. I know Senator Clinton is tied up, and I know she wants to speak on this amendment. I will go ahead and send the amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Clinton, Senator Corzine, Senator Kerry, Senator Bingaman, and Senator Murray.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first, I am very pleased to join my colleague and friend, Senator Specter, in bringing to the Senate floor the fiscal year 2004 Labor, Health and Human Services, and related agencies appropriations bill. Let me begin by thanking my good friend and partner in this endeavor, Senator Specter, and his excellent staff, for always working closely with me and my staff in putting this bill together on a bipartisan basis. It is always one of the most difficult bills to put together and it is also one of the most important. Our Nation's health and the strength of our tomorrows are shaped by the critical health, education, and labor investments made by this bill. I will say at the outset that this bill is not perfect--at least in my estimation. I will also say that my distinguished chairman did the best he could with the bad hand he was dealt by a very shortsighted budget resolution. As we have done in our over 12-year partnership working on this subcommittee--sometimes I am chair and sometimes he is chair, and it goes back and forth. But it has been a great partnership working together on this subcommittee over all these years. This bill is no different. It is truly the product of bipartisan work and negotiation. We have worked closely to shape it. We have done our best to accommodate the literally thousands of requests. I assume Senator Specter has gotten about the same number as I have--which adds up to about a thousand, I suppose--to try to accommodate those requests we have received from colleagues. Again, at the outset, I don't think our subcommittee allocation was adequate to meet the demands we face in job training, health care, and, of course, education. I will be speaking again shortly on the pending amendment that was just offered by Senator Byrd because we are very short in the area of education. I look forward to the Senate debate. There will be a number of amendments offered. I don't know the exact number that will be offered, but this bill always attracts a number of amendments, and rightfully so. As I said, I think we are short in the bill in meeting the critical health, education, and labor-related issues that confront the country. For example, with this allocation, we are only able to increase education funding by 2.8 percent over fiscal year 2003. The President promised that the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act would be accompanied by the money needed to implement those reforms. In that act, we put a lot of mandates on local school districts and authorized monies to back up those mandates. We are $8.4 million short of meeting those funding goals. I look forward to the Senate debate as we consider this important bill and hope to work with my colleagues to increase funding for a number of important programs funded in this bill before the bill leaves the Senate floor. amendment no. 1543 Mr. President, I will speak for a few minutes on the amendment offered by Senator Byrd. First, I thank him for his leadership in offering this amendment on title I funding for education. This amendment, more than any other that will be offered on this bill, will show the Nation--our parents, teachers, kids, and school boards--how serious we are about leaving no child behind. Do we give schools the money they need to improve or do we give them just a bunch of mandates and leave them out to dry? That is what is at stake with Senator Byrd's amendment. Now, to make the record clear, as most Senators, I supported and voted for the No Child Left Behind Act. Being a member of the authorizing committee under the able leadership of the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Gregg, and the ranking minority member, Senator Kennedy, and also being the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee that funds these programs, I followed the development and was involved in the discussions with the White House as the bill was developed. The No Child Left Behind Act, more than any other educational bill in our history, holds schools accountable for performance. It demands that we hold every student, including those most disadvantaged, to the same high standards. That is fine. We all agreed on that. We all want high standards. We want those standards to be met even among the most disadvantaged of our kids. But the bill we passed also says that schools should have the money to do the job, that they should have the resources to hire the teachers, reduce class sizes, update their curricula, get the new technologies that are out there, and make all the improvements they need to leave no child behind. Now, in particular, the No Child Left Behind Act sets specific authorization levels for title I. We did that because title I is the key to the success of the No Child Left Behind Act. This program is designed to help the children who are most at risk of falling behind. It is also the program that includes the loss accountability measures. President Bush and Members of Congress spent a lot of time negotiating over how much money was needed for title I. This wasn't something just plucked out of the air. This was during a long period of negotiation. What did we need to put into title I so that the most disadvantaged kids could really be held to the same high standards because they would be given the resources they need to achieve those standards? Well, we settled on an authorization of $16 billion for fiscal year 2003, $18.5 billion for fiscal year 2004, and so on, for every year through fiscal year 2012. Looking back on it now, as I voted for the bill, perhaps I was a little bit too overeager to believe that the President would, indeed, step forward and ensure that we had the resources to do the job. I believed him when he said he was serious about increasing funding for education to meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind. Well, now we have a bill before us that underfunds title I by more than $6 billion. As I said, the authorization for fiscal year 2004 is $18.5 billion, which we negotiated and put into the law. This bill provides $12.35 billion, which is exactly the amount requested by President Bush. So, again, my question is, if the President was serious about both the mandates and the resources needed to meet those mandates--the President was very eager to sign the bill and get the mandates but when it came time to get the money out, he shortchanged it by $6 billion. That is his request. Again, I don't blame anybody on our committee. I don't blame our chairman or anyone else. We worked together closely. I am sure a lot of us would have liked to have provided more for title I but we simply didn't have the resources. We were hemmed in by the budget agreement. So now the bill is exactly where President Bush wanted it for title I. It is nowhere close enough. It is $6 billion short. That is why we need Senator Byrd's amendment to fund title I at the level we agreed during the negotiation process. We need to fulfill the commitment we made to the students, parents, and educators of this country when we passed No Child Left Behind. I can already tell you what some on the other side will say about this amendment. They are going to say President Bush has already done a lot to increase funding for title I. They will say title I funding has increased from $8.8 billion to $11.7 billion during his administration. I love that phrase, ``during his administration.'' When my friends on the other side say ``during his administration,'' they want people to think title I funding went up because of President Bush's administration. But they cannot truthfully say that, so they use the phrase ``it went up during his administration.'' It is like the weather: It has rained a lot during President Bush's administration. Sometimes it has been very hot during President Bush's administration. It has even snowed during his administration. But his administration did not have anything to do with any of that. It is the same with title I. President Bush deserves as much credit for recent title I increases as he does for the weather outside. The fact is, President Bush requested only $1.3 billion of the $2.9 billion we increased during his administration. The only reason title I increased more during his administration was because we Democrats in the Congress insisted on it over the White House's strong objections. And now President Bush wants to underfund title I by more than $6 billion. I guess what Senator Byrd is saying and what I am saying and I know a lot of others will be saying is we have to help President Bush keep the promise he made when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act, and we intend to help him keep his promise. This is back-to-school time across the Nation. I was driving in this morning, seeing kids waiting on a corner for a school bus, remembering when I used to walk my daughters down to the same corner to catch a school bus. Parents were standing there. The kids were eager and excited, looking forward to going to school. I met teachers in Iowa when I was there in August, excited about the new school year and the prospect of getting these kids interested in learning, expanding their horizons and their knowledge of the world around them. But mixed with that excitement was a lot of worry about this new education bill. I have not met one teacher, I have not met one principal, I have not met one school board member who is afraid of reforms, who is afraid of accountability, who is afraid of high standards. They all want those standards. What they are really afraid of is the law is going to designate their school as failing, leaving them out to dry with no additional funding. Throughout the summer, we have gotten our first look at how big a challenge we face, as States have been reporting how many of their schools are making ``adequate yearly progress''--that is the phrase, ``adequate yearly progress''--under the No Child Left Behind Act. It is not a very pretty picture. In many States, more than half the schools are falling short of their goals. If they do not turn it around, they will face sanctions. They get tougher and tougher every year until ultimately the school can be taken over by the State or everyone who works in the school can be fired. It is a whirlpool effect, and once they get in the whirlpool, they cannot get out unless something reaches in to either stop that whirlpool or yank them out, and that is what title I does. But we are underfunding title I. What is going to happen is the schools that are located in high- income areas, where they have a high property tax base--and we see them in the suburbs. Both my kids were privileged to go to Fairfax County public schools, one of the great public school systems in America. A lot of wealthy people live in Fairfax County. The county has a high tax base. How about kids who are not so fortunate, kids just across the river, maybe in southern Prince George's County or maybe in places in Iowa, my home State. We have the same problem. In some places there are great schools located where they have a good property tax base. Others schools, where they have a low property tax base, cannot make it. That is where the kids are disadvantaged. The mandates we put on schools under No Child Left Behind do not distinguish between those schools that are located in high-income areas and those schools located in low- income areas. They all have to meet these annual yearly progress reports. What is going to happen if we do not pass the Byrd amendment and if we do not step up and fund title I as we previously agreed we were going to with the administration? Simply, the schools that are already in trouble are going to get in worse trouble. They simply have no other recourse. The schools that are in good shape are going to be fine; they have a high property tax base. They are in affluent areas. They are going to be fine. So we are going to have a division in this country. We are going to have two educational systems: One that will be moving up, meeting the mandates of No Child Left Behind, and schools that will be going down because we are not reaching in to help fund the mandate. Make no mistake about it, No Child Left Behind is the biggest Federal mandate on public schools ever enacted by the U.S. Congress. It is a Federal mandate. I hear all this preaching around here all the time about local control of schools and letting the States run the schools and local communities run the schools. The great genius, I think, of our education system in America is it has been widely dispersed because they have experimentation and new programs happening in different parts of the country. We do not have top-down bureaucratic control of all these schools, as they do in some countries. We have had a wide dispersal of control of education in our country, and that has been the real genius of our school system. The failure of our education system is how we pay for it: paying for it on the basis of property taxes. I have asked many times: Would someone please show me in the Constitution of the United States where it says that public education is to be funded by property taxes? We will not find it anywhere. But that is the way the system evolved in our country. Public education is basically funded on the basis of property taxes. Congress came along after a couple hundred years, first in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s, and later with the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, IDEA, and title I, and said we need to help provide additional resources, and that has been good. Then the Federal Government comes along and lays a heavy mandate on these schools to meet certain requirements and they refuse to come up with the money. The burden lies upon President Bush, but if he will not do it, then we have to do it. We do not want these schools to be taken over. We do not want them to fail. We want them to meet these high standards. Again, we will hear people say: Money is not just the answer. They will say: Harkin, all you want to do is throw money at this problem. I do not think money is the only solution for our schools, but I ask this question: If we want to hire good teachers, can we hire them on the cheap? We already know how many teachers are leaving education today, especially in the elementary schools, because today the private sector can compete for those teachers, and when those teachers find that their hands are tied, that they have all these mandates, and they do not have the resources to meet their annual yearly progress, they become frustrated. They want to teach, but, quite frankly, they can get paid more and put up with less of those frustrations on the outside. So today there is a huge exodus of teachers in elementary education in America. These mandates are one of the causes of it. If you want to hire teachers, it takes money. If you want to reduce class sizes, with fewer kids per teacher, guess what. That costs money. If you want to replace 20-year-old textbooks and get new technologies in the classrooms, guess what. It takes money. If you want to fix up some of our crumbling schools that now have inadequate heating and ventilation systems which have mold--I visited a school in Council Bluffs, IA, a couple years ago. This is a school that was built in 1939. It is in not a very high income area of Council Bluffs. It is an elementary school. They had an old heating system in the basement, a boiler, and there was mold all over everything. Every year, kids would get sick from all of this mold. Well, they received a grant through our committee. They replaced the heating system with a brandnew heating system. They put in new windows. They fixed up the school. In the first year, the number of kids staying home from school because of illness fell 90 percent, simply because they were not getting sick. Now they are proud of their school. It is well lit. It is a wonderful thing to see. But that costs money. When one is in a low-income area and they do not have the property taxes to pay for it, that is when we have a responsibility to step in. So again, Senator Byrd's amendment meets the other half of No Child Left Behind. We have already fulfilled one-half of it, and that is put in the mandates. That half has been enacted into law and it is proceeding right now. Schools have to meet those mandates. The other half, which was President Bush's assurance that we would have the money to do that, is not there. It is about $6 billion short. That is why Senator Byrd's amendment helps us help President Bush keep his promise to the teachers, the kids, and parents of our country. I urge my colleagues to give us the 60 votes necessary to overcome the point of order. This is the education amendment. This is the amendment that will send the signal whether or not we really care about the future of our kids and care about making sure all of our schools can meet these annual progress levels, making sure our kids and our teachers have the wherewithal to meet these mandates. This is the amendment. Make no mistake about it. I hope we get the 60-plus votes. I hope we get 70 or 80 votes to send a strong signal that we are not going to leave any kid behind, especially those who are disadvantaged. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am a long-time supporter of policies designed to open foreign markets to our Nation's exports through new trade agreements. I have fought to break down the barriers that many other countries have erected to block our exports, and I have sought to reduce the practices by which many of them seek to compete unfairly in world markets. More fair trade can create jobs here at home, and American consumers can benefit from the resulting competition. In 1991, I took a trip to Chile to gauge the prospects of entering into a free trade agreement with Chile, and I returned favorably disposed. I thought that we should negotiate a free trade agreement with Chile before doing so with Mexico, and I communicated that to the President at the time. However, trade is not just about commercial transactions and whether or not imported products become cheaper and exporting companies increase their profits. Trade policy and the consequences of trade are linked with the preservation of the natural environment in both countries that are party to an agreement, as well as the legal rights and working conditions of workers. I take these matters into consideration when I determine whether or not to support a given trade agreement, as well as the economic gains that may be generated. I am aware that U.S. groups representing a considerable variety of agricultural products support the Chile FTA. A total of 32 farm groups, producer groups, and agribusiness interests signed a letter in July, urging support for the agreement. Even some of those organizations have concerns about market access for specific products, or about addressing trade reform through a bilateral, rather than a multilateral agreement. Over the 1998-2001 period, U.S. companies shipped an average of $125 million worth of agricultural goods to Chile, accounting for about 10 percent of their total agricultural imports. Until now, or major competitors in the hemisphere, Argentina and Brazil, have had an advantage in the Chile market because of their proximity and Chile's status as an associate member of Mercosur, the South American regional trade agreement. This FTA should help to level the playing field, although the cost of shipping goods more than 5,000 miles to the Chile market will always be a factor in determining the attractiveness of U.S. products. Both of the trade agreements we are considering--the Chile and the Singapore agreements--also are good for the U.S. financial services sector. The president of Principal International, Norman Sorensen, testified recently before the Senate Finance Committee, and he listed a number of benefits for Principal and for other financial services companies. I note that Principal Financial Group is a major private employer in my State of Iowa. Trade agreements--on the right terms--promise many benefits and opportunities. Notwithstanding these benefits, we have increasingly come to realize in recent years that issues previously not considered to be trade issues in fact are trade issues intellectual property being one of those most prominent. That is why I have worked hard to improve the labor provisions in various trade measures, concentrating particularly on abusive and exploitative child labor. I want trade agreements to promote fair trade, fair competition, environmental protection and good labor conditions in all countries. That means trade agreements that support and reinforce existing international child-labor standards, not undercut them. In examining any trade agreement, we must weigh the balance of these considerations. In the cases of the agreements now before us, I have reluctantly concluded that the benefits do not outweigh the potential harm. As many of my colleagues know, I have been working on reducing abusive and exploitative child labor around the world for over a decade. I first introduced a bill on this issue in 1992. According to the best estimates by the International Labor Organization--ILO--there are at least 352 million child laborers between the ages of 5 and 17 who are engaged in today's global economy. Of these 352 million child laborers, 246 million have never seen the inside of a classroom. These 246 million powerless children are working in the most hazardous conditions in mines in fishing operations and on plantations. It is appalling that this is still occurring in the 21st century. These children are robbed of their childhoods. Many are denied any hope for a brighter future. In this new century, they will grow up illiterate and exploited, creating a wellspring of future social conflict and strife. We have made some progress over the years by increasing funds for programs to rehabilitate child laborers through our contribution to the ILO's International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labor--IPEC. In 2000, I and Senator Helms successfully amended the Trade and Development Act with a provision directing that no trade benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences--GSP--be granted to any country that does not live up to its commitments to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. We required that the President submit a yearly report to Congress on the steps being taken by each GSP beneficiary country to carry out its commitments to end abusive and exploitative child labor. I want to explain clearly to my colleagues what I mean when I refer to abusive and exploitative child labor. It is not children who work part-time after school or on weekends. There is nothing wrong with that. That is not the issue. What I am referring to is the definition set out by ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. This is not just a Western or a developed world standard; it is a global standard that has been ratified by 138 countries. It has been ratified by Chile. It has been ratified by Singapore. The United States, I am proud to say, was the third country to ratify this convention. Unfortunately, the implementing legislation now before the Senate for free trade with Chile and Singapore actually would take us and the world a step backward when it comes to protecting children. That is right. This freetrade agreement with Chile, which replaces GSP provisions in governing the trade between our two countries, will take us backward with respect to abusive and exploitative child labor. Under GSP, the President must report to Congress annually regarding Chile's child labor practices. And under GSP, if Chile is not meeting the obligations that Chile undertook as a signatory to the ILO Convention 182, if Chile is not acting to eliminate the worst forms of child labor, then trade sanctions are available to us to require enforcement in Chile of internationally recognized child labor standards. That is so that our companies, and our workers here in America, are not subjected to the unfair competition that abusive exploitation of children allows. Under this new implementing legislation for free trade that we have before us now, if it is enacted, neither of those things I just mentioned will be true. The President will not be required to report on Chile's practices or Singapore's. And even if egregious violations of international child labor standards are reported, no trade remedy will be available. This new agreement merely allows voluntary cooperation between the two countries on issues such as abusive and exploitative child labor. Our trade negotiators, for some reason, in this agreement before us, explicitly weaken existing protections against abusive and exploitative child labor. They took us from mandatory Presidential reporting, with trade sanctions available, to the mere possibility of voluntary cooperation with no recourse to trade sanctions as enforcement. My colleagues, we voted here in the Senate 96 to 0 in the year 2000 to include these protections. Senator Helms and I offered that amendment to the GSP. This Senate voted--with our eyes open, ears open--96 to 0 to include these protections in the GSP. It received unanimous, bipartisan support. None of us in this body have voted for, and I am sure none of us have sought to have, those child labor protections undercut by our trade negotiators in an agreement with Chile or Singapore or any other country. But that is what they have done. And now, thanks to fast-track rules, which don't allow us to amend this legislation, we will not even be able to restore the protections we voted for 3 years ago in this agreement. If we vote for this trade agreement, we are voting to remove the protections that all of us here--96 Senators--voted 3 years ago to put into place to end the practice of abusive and exploitive child labor. I would like to support a free-trade agreement with Chile. As I said, I went there 11 years ago to help promote a free-trade agreement. But I cannot vote for this because our negotiators took away from us the one thing we put in 3 years ago to end abusive and exploitative child labor. This takes us in the wrong direction with respect to the world's children. Supporting abusive and exploitative child labor abroad does not help create jobs in America, it is just the opposite; it hurts that effort. Our workers and our local businesses should not be competing with the worst forms of child labor abroad. Our trade negotiators should not be weakening protections that we in Congress put in place to ensure that free trade can be consistent with respect for international child labor standards. What our negotiators did is wrong. It has been said that these trade agreements with Chile and Singapore can be a model for future trade agreements, for example, with Central American countries. In the area of abusive and exploitative child labor, I hope that is not the case. A better model would be the free- trade agreement with Jordan, which we adopted in September of 2001. That agreement had broad support from business and labor. I supported it. In that case, we successfully moved the issue of abusive and exploitative child labor and other labor rights right into the body of the agreement where they rightfully belong. I cannot understand why we would turn back from that agreement and from the GSP provisions. I am sorry to say this is not an academic or rhetorical issue in the case of labor practices in Chile. Chile is far from the worst government, even in our hemisphere, when it comes to meeting its international obligations to protect its children. I don't mean to single Chile out. In fact, Chile has done a great thing in getting rid of the Pinochet dictatorship and returning democracy and free markets to Chile. But there is broad agreement among international observers--our own Department of Labor, the Department of State, UNICEF, the International Labor Organization--that the problem of abusive child labor persists in Chile. Approximately 65,000 Chilean children between the ages of 12 and 17 are working rather than attending school as they should. This is according to the ILO, UNICEF, and our own State Department. These kids are engaged in mining, agriculture, including street children, domestic workers. The Government of Chile may be seeking to reduce the problem, as it should. But we should not be weakening our sole existing trade mechanism that allows us to monitor their progress and to back up the international standard with trade action. That is not the way forward for free and fair trade. That is not the way to lift up the Chilean economy or working families in the United States. Abusive child labor perpetuates the cycle of poverty across generations. No country has achieved broad-based economic prosperity on the backs of working kids. Weakening our existing protections against the worst forms of child labor certainly should not occur in an agreement that might be a model for free trade with Central America. Lastly, I am also concerned about the selective changes in immigration law on these trade agreements. These trade agreements would allow 1,400 foreign workers from Chile per year and 5,400 workers from Singapore per year to obtain 1-year visas to work in the United States, visas which are renewable indefinitely. That is a significant change from our current H-1B visa policy, where workers are granted 3-year visas that can be renewed only once. We should not be promoting the importation of skilled foreign workers for indefinite stays in the United States when there are 9 million Americans currently out of work. I have a further concern with a provision inserted in the Singapore free-trade agreement. The integrated sourcing initiative, or ISI, allows predominantly information technology goods produced in third countries to be treated as if they had been produced in Singapore for the purpose of satisfying rules-of-origin provisions. This ISI provision could allow goods produced in countries that routinely violate workers' rights, such as Indonesia, and possibly Burma, to be transshipped through Singapore in order to avoid United States limitations and bans. That is in the Singapore free-trade agreement. I regret that our negotiators have presented us with flawed agreements. In the case of Chile, it is either sloppy work or they deliberately changed the child labor provisions. By allowing third countries to transship through Singapore, again, it is either sloppy work or deliberately trying to undercut United States limitations and bans on certain countries. I particularly hoped that I could support an agreement for free trade with Chile. I started working for that over 10 years ago. But I do not believe trade can be called free when it promotes the exploitation and abuse of children by weakening our existing protections against the worst forms of child labor. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I would like to amend that request so that after the Senator from Texas speaks, this Senator from Iowa be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object, I understand the consent request is for the Senator from Arkansas, then the Senator from Louisiana, and then the Senator from Texas. For how long is the Senator from Texas going to speak?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Alabama be recognized for 3 minutes after which I then be recognized for my 15 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am appalled at the House's refusal to provide needed emergency supplemental funding to AmeriCorps. There was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday describing their rationale for the House position. The WSJ says, ``the concept of federally subsidized volunteerism strikes us as something the country can't afford '' and ``if Congress lacks the nerve to kill AmeriCorps, then we're glad it at least won't throw good money after bad.'' The Wall Street Journal can say that this is something the country can't afford. But I know differently. AmeriCorps is something the country can't afford to do without. I will be the first to say that the administration's mismanagement of funds is disappointing to say the least. It is further upsetting that they are unwilling to put up the money it takes to keep those mistakes from hurting the volunteers. I am also disappointed that the President promised to promote and grow the program, but is unwilling to put up the money to do so. It is really unfair for the President and the House to talk out of both sides of their mouths, supporting volunteerism, but then refusing to pay the comparatively small cost involved in keeping volunteerism afloat. But this is not a problem with AmeriCorps volunteers, or with the communities they serve. Senators Mikulski and Bond in the ``Strengthen AmeriCorps Act'' are doing the things that need to be done to prevent future financial discrepancies. These funding cuts don't punish those who are guilty for the problems. These cuts punish volunteers, and communities, and the beneficiaries of the volunteers' work. In Iowa, AmeriCorps volunteers have improved 30,000 acres of wildlife habitat. They work to improve water quality, they restore prairie land, they prevent soil erosion, they fix trails, they provide interpretive centers, and they work with communities to teach people to do these things year-round on their own. AmeriCorps volunteers give presentations on disaster preparedness. In Dubuque, Iowa, 13 year old Korey Monahan took one of those classes. She went home, and helped her family develop a plan in case of a fire. Around midnight on April 1, their house did catch fire. But Korey, her mother Kristy, and her four brothers and sisters survived that fire because they had a solid plan. Korey won a national award from the American Red Cross for her outstanding preparedness. In Davenport, IA, vandalism and crime in city parks have been reduced sharply in just two months, as AmeriCorps members have begun patrols through a Park Ambassador program. AmeriCorps members provide a welcoming presence and act as ``eyes and ears'' for local law enforcement. They walk through parks, and provide a welcoming presence. They connect with nearby neighborhood watch groups to recruit volunteers to join them in helping keep the parks safe and clean. The REACH, Rural Education and Community Help, AmeriCorps program provides assistance to battered women and children in rural Iowa and minority communities where services for victims of domestic violence are minimal or non-existent. REACH members also provide programs in schools, including conflict resolution, sexual harassment, diversity and dating violence. During the 2001-2002 program year, members made 5,994 victim contacts. Members also provided court accompaniment to battered women as they navigate the legal system. In both 2001 and 2002, members provided legal advocacy at over 600 court hearings. The original goal was to ensure that no battered women would need to drive more than thirty miles to receive services. They are well on their way to making that dream a reality. Four stand-alone offices are now open. They have secured other sources of funding and have hired full-time staff. In addition, members have opened offices in sixteen counties and provide additional coverage to surrounding communities. Before AmeriCorps, roughly a third of Iowa's 99 counties had services, now only four in Iowa are without a victim outreach program. Apparently, helping people like Korey Monahan to save her family from fire, repairing our environment, reducing crime, and assisting battered women is ``throwing good money after bad.'' that's not what I call ``bad money,'' and I am glad that Congress saw fit to appropriate it. I will do all I can to see that we continue to spend ``good money'' for great purposes. the amtrak board of directors

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Joanna Bush, Angela Wilson, and Michael Kuehner, interns in my office, be given the privilege of the floor during the debate and vote on amendment No. 1419.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. For 10 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Washington for yielding to me. I want to help her on this amendment. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor to the Cantwell amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in March of 2001, President Bush visited Western Michigan University to stump for his tax cuts. He said: . . . we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens. Of course, today we know that what the President said that day was not true, and I think it is time now that the White House comes clean on this issue. We do not know whether the President was aware at the time he made this statement that it probably was not true, but somebody should have known. Surely, someone in this administration knew that trillions of dollars of tax breaks, combined with a downturn in the economy, would lead to massive budget deficits. Following that speech, this administration gave trillions in tax breaks to the wealthy, the economy softened, and we have gone straight from record projected surpluses to record projected deficits and debt. In fact, just 2 years later, the United States now faces massive, prolonged, record-setting projected deficits--over $450 billion this year, $475 billion next year, and trillions of dollars of deficits over the coming years. So, what the President said that day in 2001 was in fact woefully false. Now, I know the other side is going to accuse me of making a mountain out of a molehill on this issue. They will say I am just taking 16 words from one speech and blowing them out of proportion in order to challenge the President's credibility. They will ask: How can 16 words in one speech be the test of a President's credibility? Yes, I can hear the President's defenders already. They will say: This speech was cleared by the Council of Economic Advisors. It is not the President's fault. He relies on the technical advice of experts on these matters. Maybe that is the case. Maybe the President thought he was telling the truth when he said we could reduce Government revenues by huge amounts without causing deficits. But somebody should have known it was not true. If not one in this administration knew that passing enormous tax breaks for the wealthy, combined with an economic downturn, might lead to exploding deficits, that does not exactly inspire a lot of confidence, either. The President's defenders on this issue may also say: Well, actually, the statement is technically accurate, and did not mislead anyone. After all, it says we can proceed without fear of budget deficits. It does not say we will not actually experience massive budget deficits. It just says we do not need to fear them. Unfortunately, that explanation will not work, either. As Alan Greenspan has reminded us repeatedly, large deficits do matter, and they are something to be concerned about. In truth, it is pretty obvious that the White House intended to communicate that the President's massive tax cuts would not create corresponding massive deficits. It is now apparent that someone misled the public in that speech by the President. ``Well, but even if what the President said was not true,'' I can hear his defenders say, ``it does not matter. What matters is that we did what we really set out to do. We provided the most affluent Americans with large tax breaks. We rewarded our largest campaign contributors with millions.'' Now, I hope that is not the real explanation. But that is what actually happened. These days the administration does not want us to pay too close attention to what the President actually says. In fact, sometimes they would rather we disregard it altogether, especially when it is only 16 words. They say it does not really matter. In this case, as in others, what the President of the United States says does matter. The President needs to come clean about these remarks. He needs to admit his mistakes. Otherwise we are left with the distinct impression the President, his advisers, or both, purposefully misled the American people about the economy in order to get tax breaks for the wealthy. If they were a mistake, these 16 words, then the President ought to admit it. The resulting policy is driving our economy into the ground. If they would acknowledge the statement was wrong, hopefully we could all come together to remedy the President's economic malpractice and get the economy moving again. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, after listening to Senator Cantwell's exposition of the crimes, manipulations, and the fraud perpetrated on the American people by the Enron Corporation, it is, again, amazing to this Senator that we have not done something about this situation before now. I am amazed this is not taken care of in the underlying bill. We know that what Enron did can happen again if we do not address it. If we do not ban it, as Senator Cantwell does in her amendment, it will keep happening over and over. In the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, Congress realized one of the most important factors was the collapse of the electric utility industry. It turned out this basic industry had been built on fraud after fraud, shell game upon shell game, and when economic troubles hit, it collapsed like a house of cards. Congress's attempt to prevent this from happening again was the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, otherwise referred to around here as PUHCA. That was our attempt in the 1930s to prevent what was happening then from happening again, with all the frauds and the collapse of the house of cards of the electric utility companies. Then we go forward 60 years to about the midnineties, and we were told that the restructured electric utility industry would be built upon markets and trading, that the markets would ensure the soundness of the industry, that the PUHCA now was just a hindrance to cheaper power, more available power, for all of our consumers; that PUHCA was not only irrelevant but probably even a hindrance. Enron was both the leading participant in and the leading advocate of this new scheme of electricity markets. They were not the only one, but they were the leading one. They were the ones that had the closest ties to people in Congress and to the Bush administration. It turned out that Enron, like the electric companies of the 1910s and 1920s, was also built upon frauds, shell games, and out-and-out criminal activity. When troubles hit, Enron, too, collapsed like a house of cards. Again, this is what we saw in the 1930s. As Senator Cantwell has brought out, we had a whole new set of terms of art that entered our vocabulary: Fat Boy, Get Shorty, Death Star, and many more. Enron had legions of employees who were paid to dream up ways to defraud the public and manipulate prices of electricity and transmission capacity. They ranged from affiliate structures, creative loans, trading strategies. We have heard about Wheel Out, about how they tried to sell electricity through nonexistent lines. Again, Enron was not the only one. FERC has found dozens of companies were involved in fraud, that market manipulation was epidemic. The whole energy industry still has not recovered. In fact, the whole economy is hurt by investors who have lost their trust in American corporate management. Now we see that PUHCA, the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, was, in fact, irrelevant to Enron schemes. Why? Because FERC had determined that Enron was exempt from the law. Even that was not enough for Enron's chairman Ken Lay, who later threatened to remove the FERC chairman if he did not back his beloved markets and schemes more strongly. Where is Ken Lay today? Is he in prison? Is he behind bars? Well, of course not. I understand he had to sell a couple of his big houses, one in Colorado and one someplace else, but he is out free. He may be on the French Riviera for all I know. I do not know where he is. He made a lot of money. He sacked it away and he is living a grand life. Now I guess a couple of his underlings went to jail because they got caught, but Ken Lay, the brains behind the whole scheme, the person who threatened to remove the FERC chairman, is scot-free. So much for justice in this regard. At this point I doubt this Justice Department is going to do anything to really go after Ken Lay because of his closeness to the Bush administration. But Enron showed more clearly than any episode since the Great Depression that strong Federal oversight is needed in the electric industry; that fraud hurts consumers, investors, and our whole economy. The Domenici substitute bans one particular trading scheme, round- trip trading, but it leaves all the other schemes with these names we have heard of from Star Wars. It would still leave them there, and Senator Cantwell just laid all of those out for us. So it would leave all of those untouched. Why just ban one and leave all the other ones there? Well, as one step to restoring confidence in the energy industry and thus getting the economy moving again, we need to ban all such market manipulation. That is what the Cantwell amendment does and that is why I support it. The Presiding Officer is from the State of Missouri, the home State of one of my political heroes, Harry Truman, a great Democrat. Harry Truman once said when he was campaigning in 1948 in the Midwest and talking to a bunch of farmers who had lost a lot in the Depression and he was telling them that his opponent, Mr. Dewey, was going to turn the clock back and they were going to get rid of all of the support they had had for agriculture. Truman uttered one of his great lines. He said: How many times do you have to get hit on the head before you figure out what is hitting you on the head? Well, I would like to take Harry Truman's line and apply it to us and the electricity industry. How many times do we have to get burned by fraudulent schemes in this industry before we figure out what we ought to do about it and ban all of these activities? How many times do we have to get hit on the head before we figure out there are deep problems in the electricity industry and they have to be solved? Because if they do not, it is going to continue to hurt our economy. Our economy right now is in terrible shape. I will divert just a little bit from this bill for a few minutes if the Senator does not mind.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Senate and the House of Representatives have passed S. 1399, legislation that names the Glenwood, IA Post Office for former Iowa Congressman William J. Scherle. I understand that the President will soon sign that measure--I hope this week. Congressman Bill Scherle--or Bill, as his friends call him--and his wife Jane live on their family farm just outside of Henderson, IA, in Mills County. Glenwood is the county seat of Mills County. Bill served 4 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning with 3 terms in 1967 in what was then Iowa's 7th Congressional District, and a term in the redistricted 5th Congressional District. I think it is appropriate that Glenwood's Post Office will soon permanently bear Congressman Scherle's name. Bill long served this Nation. He started with military service in the navy and Coast Guard during World War II, then afterward served in the Naval Reserve. He chaired the Mills County Republican Party for almost a decade starting in 1956. He served in the Iowa legislature from 1960 through 1966. He then was elected to the U.S. Congress and served through 1974, including service on the Education and Labor Committee as well as on the Appropriations Committee. His public service continued in 1975 and 1976, when he was appointed to a senior position at the Department of Agriculture. In January 1968, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, imprisoning and torturing the crew. Congressman Scherle led the effort in Congress to free the crew of the Pueblo. I have always admired Bill's tenacity in never letting the Pueblo crew be forgotten. Bill was the only member of Congress invited to attend Pueblo reunions, and, as their health has allowed, Bill and Jane always have attended. Bill and I are at different places on the political spectrum, and I ran against him for Congress twice. He won the first time, and I won the rematch. We disagreed on many issues, but I always understood that he acted on the basis of strongly held views about what he considered were the best interests of those he represented and of the Nation. Long after we ran as opponents, I got to know Bill and visited on his farm. He is a good person who cares deeply about his community and rural America. Politics has always had a certain amount of rough and tumble. But while Bill was certainly a good Republican who wanted to see consistent victories for the GOP, he also could see the good in all people. One area of our mutual interest was the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs. Bill always did what he could for the school my brother attended years ago, and for deaf people in general. Congressman Scherle always cared about children and their welfare. He wrote a children's book, ``The Happy Barn.'' He gave away thousands of copies to schools, hospitals and individual families in Southwest Iowa and the Omaha area, reading to young children time after time. He had lots of fun reading to children, and I believe that there are few more valuable things we can do as adults than to read to children and get them started on that most important activity. Bill was a businessman and farmer, proud of both professions. He received the Alegent Health Mercy Hospital Heritage Award for his contributions to business in Southwest Iowa. Bill Scherle remains a good father to his two sons, and a good husband to his wife of 55 years, Jane. He is blessed with six grandchildren--five girls and a boy. Bill has lived a dedicated life, full of patriotism, family and public service. I am please that my colleague, Senator Grassley, joins me in sponsoring this legislation. Congressman King introduced the companion legislation in the House of Representatives, which was cosponsored by the entire Iowa delegation. I thank my colleagues for helping us all to honor Congressman Bill Scherle, and I look forward to hearing that the President has signed this bill--hopefully this week.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am pleased that my amendment to the Energy bill to create a demonstration program on production of hydrogen from renewable resources was adopted at the end of last week. The hydrogen title in the Energy bill contains a number of important provisions, many of which closely overlap with the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Energy Act of 2003, which I introduced in April. Perhaps most important, it authorizes several significant demonstration programs for various applications of fuel cells. These programs are the critical next step in bringing hydrogen and fuel cells from the laboratory bench into widespread commercialization. They provide a realistic test of how the laboratory technologies work in the real world, and they provide funding for pre-commercial prototypes of the technologies, including starting to build a hydrogen fueling infrastructure. However, there were no demonstration projects in the title on how we will obtain the hydrogen to run the fuel cells. The bill reauthorizes the Matsunaga Act to continue and improve research on a variety of hydrogen technologies, which we have been trying to enact for more than 2 years now. Elsewhere, the bill contains a massive and dubious subsidy for a nuclear plant in part to produce hydrogen, as well as support for production of hydrogen from coal, but there is nothing to demonstrate production of hydrogen from renewable resources. Currently, most hydrogen is made by reforming natural gas. This is a relatively clean and efficient way to use natural gas. But there are still emissions of greenhouse gases and some pollutants. Equally important, use of natural gas for hydrogen continues our dependence on natural gas supplies. As the recent price runup on natural gas has shown us again, supplies of natural gas may not always meet demand, and prices can be volatile. I support use of natural gas to make hydrogen in the near future, but in the long run, hydrogen and fuel cells must help us reach an economy based on clean, domestic, renewable sources of energy. This amendment will help us get there. It authorizes $110 million over 5 years to conduct demonstration programs on production of hydrogen from renewable resources. The resources might include biomass, such as switchgrass and ethanol, wind energy, solar power, and other sources. The program would help prepare a variety of emerging technologies for renewable hydrogen production for widespread use. These demonstration programs would be conducted using competitive merit review of funding proposals from a wide variety of companies and organizations, and they would require cost sharing from awardees. Technologies that combine production of hydrogen with other activities show particular promise for clean, efficient production of hydrogen at this time. Two approaches are specifically included in the scope of the program. Biorefineries can make hydrogen, along with other products, from biomass. And in ``electrofarming'' the hydrogen is produced and used on the same farm or in nearby facilities. The hydrogen might be made by growing and reforming biomass, from wind energy, or from farm waste; it could be used in farm vehicles and equipment and for heat and electricity in farm buildings. By placing production and use together, this approach saves on transportation of the fuel or the hydrogen. It also avoids any large-scale energy facilities that might present security risks. I am pleased this program will be in the portfolio of measures in the hydrogen title of the Energy bill that will help develop and commercialize hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, and turn into reality a vision of cars that don't pollute, of power that won't go out, and of feeling less dependent on an area of the world where we recently fought the second war in recent years.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Becca North and Haley Wallace of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the day.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am introducing today the Wind Power Tax Incentives Act of 2003. I am pleased to be joined by Senator Dayton. This legislation makes it easier for farmers and others around the country to invest in wind power for commercial electricity production. Wind power is a clean, economical, and reliable source of renewable energy abundant on farms and in rural areas in Iowa and elsewhere. With this legislation we can help farmers help themselves by developing a new source of income, and help the rest of the country in the production of renewable energy. Farmers are ready to take on this effort. A recent study found that 93 percent of corn producers support wind energy generally. They also strongly support the farm bill's historic energy title. This bill complements the farm bill's energy programs and other wind power initiatives currently being considered by this body. The bill would make changes to Federal tax law to make the section 45 wind production tax credit more widely available to farmers, farm cooperatives, and other investors. Section 45 of Federal tax law provides a tax credit, currently 1.8 cents per kiowatthour, for electricity actually produced and sold during the first ten years of the life of a wind turbine. The credit has been extraordinarily successful in spearheading the installation of new wind power capacity by utilities and in bringing down the cost of this sustainable energy source to consumers. However, certain barriers have prevented wide use by farmers and other investors. It's time to take the next step and help our family farmers and other investors benefit from the credit as well. Our legislation does this by making three changes to the tax code. First, under current tax law most losses, deductions, and credits from passive investments cannot be used to reduce taxes on wages or other income. So a farmer who passively invested in wind energy could not use the tax credits to offset taxes on farm income. This bill creates an exception to passive loss restrictions for an interest in a wind facility that qualifies for the section 45 credit. The wind facility's loss or tax credits could then offset the income or taxes on the taxpayer's farming business. Similar exceptions currently apply to oil and gas investments. To prevent potential abuse by wealthy taxpayers, the exception is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million. Second, under current law individual and corporate taxpayers are subject to an alternative minimum tax (AMT) if their tax rates fall below certain levels. Taxpayers subject to an AMT cannot currently use the section 45 wind tax credit. This bill allows a farmer or other taxpayer who invests in a wind electric generating facility to use the resulting tax credit against the taxpayer's alternate minimum tax (AMT). Similar provisions already exist for several other tax credits. Again, this provision is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million. Third, the bill allows cooperatives to invest in qualified wind facilities and pass through the section 45 credits to cooperative members. This will allow farmers to join together and pool their resources in a cooperative and still take advantage of the credit. The benefits of this legislation are obvious. Increased renewable energy production lessens our dependence on foreign oil, provides environmental and public health gains, bolsters farm income, creates jobs and boosts economic growth, especially in rural areas. The Nation must move toward energy independence, and domestically produced wind power, along with other forms of renewable energy like biofuels, play an important part in this endeavor. I want to thank Senator Dayton for co-sponsoring this legislation with me. His leadership in this area will be instrumental to moving the bill forward. I am hopeful we can pass this legislation soon to help secure a brighter future for our Nation's farmers and fellow citizens. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am introducing today the Wind Power Tax Incentives Act of 2003. I am pleased to be joined by Senator Dayton. This legislation makes it easier for farmers and others around the country to invest in wind power for commercial electricity production. Wind power is a clean, economical, and reliable source of renewable energy abundant on farms and in rural areas in Iowa and elsewhere. With this legislation we can help farmers help themselves by developing a new source of income, and help the rest of the country in the production of renewable energy. Farmers are ready to take on this effort. A recent study found that 93 percent of corn producers support wind energy generally. They also strongly support the farm bill's historic energy title. This bill complements the farm bill's energy programs and other wind power initiatives currently being considered by this body. The bill would make changes to Federal tax law to make the section 45 wind production tax credit more widely available to farmers, farm cooperatives, and other investors. Section 45 of Federal tax law provides a tax credit, currently 1.8 cents per kiowatthour, for electricity actually produced and sold during the first ten years of the life of a wind turbine. The credit has been extraordinarily successful in spearheading the installation of new wind power capacity by utilities and in bringing down the cost of this sustainable energy source to consumers. However, certain barriers have prevented wide use by farmers and other investors. It's time to take the next step and help our family farmers and other investors benefit from the credit as well. Our legislation does this by making three changes to the tax code. First, under current tax law most losses, deductions, and credits from passive investments cannot be used to reduce taxes on wages or other income. So a farmer who passively invested in wind energy could not use the tax credits to offset taxes on farm income. This bill creates an exception to passive loss restrictions for an interest in a wind facility that qualifies for the section 45 credit. The wind facility's loss or tax credits could then offset the income or taxes on the taxpayer's farming business. Similar exceptions currently apply to oil and gas investments. To prevent potential abuse by wealthy taxpayers, the exception is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million. Second, under current law individual and corporate taxpayers are subject to an alternative minimum tax (AMT) if their tax rates fall below certain levels. Taxpayers subject to an AMT cannot currently use the section 45 wind tax credit. This bill allows a farmer or other taxpayer who invests in a wind electric generating facility to use the resulting tax credit against the taxpayer's alternate minimum tax (AMT). Similar provisions already exist for several other tax credits. Again, this provision is limited to taxpayers with income under $1 million. Third, the bill allows cooperatives to invest in qualified wind facilities and pass through the section 45 credits to cooperative members. This will allow farmers to join together and pool their resources in a cooperative and still take advantage of the credit. The benefits of this legislation are obvious. Increased renewable energy production lessens our dependence on foreign oil, provides environmental and public health gains, bolsters farm income, creates jobs and boosts economic growth, especially in rural areas. The Nation must move toward energy independence, and domestically produced wind power, along with other forms of renewable energy like biofuels, play an important part in this endeavor. I want to thank Senator Dayton for co-sponsoring this legislation with me. His leadership in this area will be instrumental to moving the bill forward. I am hopeful we can pass this legislation soon to help secure a brighter future for our Nation's farmers and fellow citizens. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the subcommittee chair and ranking member for their work on this bill. A difficult task was set before them in marking up this first appropriations measure for the new Department of Homeland Security. September 11 changed much about how Americans view the role of the Federal Government and its most basic function--providing physical security for American citizens. We cannot protect the nation completely from every conceivable threat. We have to devote available resources to those threats we judge to be the likeliest and most serious. This poses difficult choices for Congress and the administration, as well as for local communities who face similar decisions. Deciding which threats to public safety it is most important to prepare for is perhaps most difficult for first responders, those men and women most directly tasked with the job--men and women whose bodies and even lives are regularly on the line. One of my first goals upon being appointed to the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee has been to attempt to address directly the needs of these people in Iowa who are on the front lines, the people who are most responsible for public safety throughout the State. My staff and I have had a number of conversations with the Governor of Iowa, his staff and with others in State government. I also asked members of my Iowa staff to visit each of the State's 99 officials. I asked my staff to check in with people in each of these local communities to find out what they think is most important when it comes to homeland security, what they think is working and what is not. I think the meetings have been a big success. Not surprisingly, Iowans were pleased to be asked what they think are the top priorities in this area of policy. Security is on people's minds, and the communities that my staff visited have provided me with great insight about how to approach homeland security issues here in Washington. Mr. President, I ask consent that two items be printed in the Record at the end of my statement: first is a letter I have sent today to Homeland Security Secretary Ridge regarding the findings of my staff from their meetings around Iowa; second is the list of the locations in Iowa for those meetings, along with the dates they occurred.

Mr. HARKIN. When Senator Lieberman first proposed creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, in his role at that time of chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, I supported his effort. We knew then that balancing, and probably shifting, among competing priorities would be a challenge. We must do all we can to safeguard the vital interests of the Nation form the threat of terrorism. But it remains essential that we don't disregard the need to protect people from other, more likely hazards, especially in areas away from large towns and critical assets. We must not merely redirect funds badly needed current programs, creating new holes in our security infrastructure. In fact, we should seek wherever it is possible to expand and strengthen existing emergency response mechanisms. We should increase their capacity in ways that allow local authorities to prevent or respond to terrorist threats while also helping them to deal better with the much more common threats and emergencies they face. I believe this is possible. Iowans told my staff that the biggest challenges Iowans face today include many of the same problems they faced in June of 2000: crime, the methamphetamine scourge, natural disasters. Over the past several years, FEMA, now part of Homeland Security, has become a truly remarkable and world-class organization for dealing with fires, floods, tornadoes and earthquakes. These occur every year, regardless of other threats, and they continue to take away lives and livelihoods. Earlier this week, a tornado hit Cedar Rapids, IA, and caused damage to 25 homes. We cannot back away from our commitment to help people in need due to these natural disasters. One example of making sure we continue that commitment is the successful fight that I and others have undertaken to ensure that the fire grant program is retained. There is also no question that many Iowans feel that their world changed on 9/11. People want their families to be safe from terrorist threats. Larry Hurst is County Emergency Management Director in Glenwood, IA, which is in Southwest Iowa. He is afraid that Iowa could be comparatively neglected in this regard, that we might ``find it easy to cut public safety, defense and health funding, betting that nothing will happen here.'' Of course, we hope that no terrorist incidents do occur in Iowa. But, we are only as strong as the network of first responders throughout the Nation. First responders in my State tell me that they are frustrated. When the alert level changes, they learn about it from CNN, not from the Department of Homeland Security. They don't know why the alert level is raised, or which kinds of threats they ought to look for. Mahala Cox, the Emergency Manager in my home county. Warren County, says that ``we cannot afford to be behind the curve and reacting to a media message.'' People like Ms. Cox must respond to vague mandates they don't fully understand, taking time away from other pursuits. Mandates are unclear, and can be costly. While some money is flowing, communities are unsure how exactly they should be spending it, and they fear spending it in a way that might not meet a later mandate. At the same time, some current reporting requirements are onerous and illogical. One county emergency manager in Iowa relayed to my staff that they are required to report on contingency plans in case there is a tidal wave, and they understand they are not allowed to answer ``not applicable.'' I suspect if a tidal wave big enough to cause damage in Iowa were to hit the U.S. our least concern would be what a given county emergency manager plans to do about it. These increased burdens are coming at a time when State and local governments are hurting. Many already are laying off police, fire, and emergency management personnel. The vast majority of firefighters in the United States are volunteer, increased training requirements for these personnel, while useful, might be very burdensome at a time when we are already losing firefighters in Iowa. If we at the Federal level are to create mandates, funds must follow those, mandates. Walter ``Ned'' Wright is the Emergency Management Director in Linn County, IA, which is home to Cedar Rapids, one of the State's larger cities. He spoke to my staff about reporting requirements. He talked about ``analysis paralysis,'' which he described as ``assessment after assessment, and blue ribbon panel assessments, but no real results. Law enforcement and first responders are being watchful of Government waste. They are worried that we are reinventing the wheel. I share their concern. I was concerned to hear of the great costs incurred by certain communities in my State to protect critical asset bridges. I want to make sure that communities are made whole for necessary expenses, but I also want to make sure that The Department spends its money in a way that isn't wasteful. The security of our homeland is so critical that we can't afford to waste a single penny. I would be happy to work with my colleagues and the Department to help to identify ways to be more efficient. I am pleased with language in the report requiring the Department to establish clearly defined standards for all levels of government emergency preparedness, and detailing the costs of meeting these standards, and to take into account heir opinions. I think the committee has done a commendable job at trying to maintain funding for the kinds of programs I was most concerned with, particularly three emergency programs that are close to my heart-- Emergency Management Performance Grants, Firefighter Assistance Grants, and Hazard Mitigation Grants, through I was disappointed with the cuts to the Hazard Mitigation Grants last year from 15 percent of public and individual assistance to only 7.5 percent for post-disaster mitigation and $150 million for pre-disaster mitigation. I would like to see this returned to the 15 percentage level. In Iowa, this program has been successfully used to reduce the damage from future disasters. In many cases, it saves the Government money in the long run by avoiding the costs of repairing dangerously placed structures that are repeated damaged. Finally, I would like to mention the subject of agri-terrorism. As my colleagues know, a major agri-terrorism event could easily cause billions of dollars in losses. Anyone who has spent time in rural America knows the difficulty in trying to guard against every avenue through which agriculture could be attacked. It is impossible. The key for protecting U.S. agriculture is making sure our intelligence and response capacities are in place to both prevent acts of terrorism in the first place, and respond quickly, should an attack occur, to limit the damage. I think we are still falling short on response. I am very disappointed not to see more resources directed to building the capacity of our agricultural first response system. I think we really need to take a hard look, and make sure we are doing all we can to protect U.S. agriculture and rural communities. I have been working closely with the State of Iowa, particularly with the state Homeland Security director, Ellen Gordon, on appropriate State and Federal responses to agi-terror. The State has been working overtime trying to map out a comprehensive plan to deal with this very difficult issue. I applaud their work, and look forward to working with them and with my colleagues as we move forward to improving our capability to respond to this very serious and very real threat. Exhibit 1 U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, July 21, 2003. Secretary Tom Ridge, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC. Dear Secretary Ridge: This June and July, members of my staff traveled to every county in Iowa to better understand the needs of local first responders and emergency management officials. Please find enclosed a more thorough summary of the comments provided to me by those public officials. I hope that you find it as helpful as I have. I would appreciate it if the Department could comment on some of the broader recurring themes of their reports, including, but not limited to, those items I will discuss in this letter. As a member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee in the Senate, I understand some of the difficulties inherent in pulling together a broad agency with a unified mission. I fully supported legislation creating this agency. We knew then that balancing, and probably shifting, among competing priorities would be a challenge. We must do all we can to safeguard the vital interests of the nation from the threat of terrorism. But it remains essential that we don't disregard the need to protect people from other, more likely hazards, especially in areas away from large towns and assets that have been identified by the Department as critical. As evidenced by the Oklahoma City bombing, anyone could be targeted. Also, it is critical to maintain the ability local departments currently have to respond to the things they always have; fires, floods, tornadoes, and crime. In order to do so, I think it is critical to make sure that we keep the lines of communication open between the rule makers and public safety officials. To that end, allow me to summarize the administrative issues that seemed to arise most often. Topping almost everyone's list was the desire for more information about terror alert level elevation. Public officials have complained that they learn of the increased alert level from CNN before they hear from DHS. Upon receipt of this information, they are not sure how they should alter their current behavior, if at all. It was suggested in these meetings between my staff and local officials that better intelligence from DHS as to specific threats could eliminate unnecessary cost to departments and limit complacency among citizens. Another near-universal concern is the relationship of mandates to funding. The time and manpower needed to complete various emergency management plans come out of local budgets that are already stretched. One county emergency manager in Iowa relayed to my staff that they are required to report on contingency plans in case there is a tidal wave, and they understand that they are not allowed to answer ``not applicable.'' At the same time, these communities are laying off firefighters and police officers due to budget constraints. Training requirements are also difficult to cover for many small departments. While they may be reimbursed for the training itself, they may also have to pay overtime to cover for the missing staff. The vast majority of fire departments in Iowa are volunteer, so leaving a duty station for training means using vacation time from a paying job. This costs many departments valuable personnel. On the other hand, there are funds flowing for equipment, but localities claim that guidance on how those funds could be best spent is not available from the federal level. If that is the case, is guidance planned in the near future, and if so, would that guidance require further equipment expenditures? I understand that many communities still have cold war era siren alert systems. What is the feasibility of more advanced equipment, like radios, or more advanced siren technology? There is broad support for many of the grant formulae, such as Fire Grants, that go straight to local departments from the federal level. I have been a long time supporter of the program, first in the authorization, then as a member of VA/ HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, and now as a member of Homeland Security. It is my hope that DHS will list programs like Assistance to Firefighters, Hazard Mitigation Grants, and Emergency Management Performance Grants individually in its budget request to Congress, and will request increased funding for these accounts in future years as needs grow. Law enforcement and first responders are being watchful of government waste. They are worried that we are ``reinventing the wheel.'' It is my hope to work with you to make sure that we do our best to weed out duplicative and overly burdensome requirements so that we may find best practices to more effectively strengthen the nationwide network of first responders. Sincerely, Tom Harkin, U.S. Senator. Summary of Comments From Counties Homeland Security Alerts are received via CNN instead of through formal Homeland Security Channels. Homeland Security staff at the federal and state level is increasing, but stagnant at the local level. All coordination, reporting, and emergency response is being done at the lowest level, which receives the least funding. In order to qualify for grant funds, a great deal of planning efforts and reports are required, but local emergency management cannot spare resources to do this work. Each country needs a full time emergency management staff person. All counties have the same requirements regardless of county size or the number of paid employees. Many rural communities do not have the means for protecting the community well or sanitary lift station. Funds should be used to fix security problems rather than study them. More decision making should be local, to respond to the unique needs of the community. More funds are needed for training and to cover overtime for replacement workers when others are away at training. Grants are increasingly important with dwindling state and local budget capacity. The feasibility of developing regional capabilities for training, planning, exercising and equipment should be explored. State, county, and city fiscal restraints, combined with certain other unfunded mandates to local jurisdictions, limit growth of public safety and emergency management budgets. Administrative burden of regionalization will be huge and cannot be borne by local jurisdictions without funds or staff. Local jurisdictions are just now beginning work on bioterrorism, and have not started work on agriterrorism. Due to the specific work that the public health agencies have to accomplish in this federal fiscal year, they are finding it difficult to become leaders in pulling the community resources together for multi-agency planning and are depending upon emergency management to assist in this endeavor. Instead of a nationwide security upgrade to level orange, a state by state, or region by region analysis of the situation would be better. There is a need to update the sirens or early alert system. Most are 30-40 years old and there is no longer funding available to replace them. Food processing sites want to be notified of threats directly when relevant intelligence is received by the Department. The rapid production in many food processing plants require this because of the length of time between processing and distribution. Farm Service Agencies and veterinarians expressed concern about the easily spread hoof and mouth disease. The plan for quarantining a contaminated herd is critical. There is no known action plan in the event of this or any other infection. There is talk that the State's Department of Emergency Management is working to compile a plan, but many fear not fast enough. Regional storage facilities for equipment would be useful for communities to share equipment they otherwise could not afford. Forms are confusing with requirements that don't apply to the state. Some forms require an explanation of country plans in case of tidal wave. The applicant may not answer ``not applicable.'' Hazmat teams need more funding. Interoperability should apply to training as well as equipment. Information technology funding is needed. Pre-Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 hazard mitigation plans require a rework of every community's plan with new standards that are very difficult to meet. Training requirements are difficult. There is no compensation to cover overtime to fill in for those away at training. Most fire departments are volunteer, and training requires that firefighters take vacation from paying jobs. More training should be available over the internet or the fiber-optics Iowa Communications Network. Communities need more education on the nature of possible agriterrorism threats, and how to respond. Grants that require a local match can be difficult for small communities to obtain, due to budget constraints. Schedule of Staff Meetings with Local Emergency Management and First Responders--Senator Tom Harkin--Summer, 2003 June 9--Muscatine, Wapello, Mount Pleasant, Burlington, Fort Madison, Keosauqua. June 12--Bloomfield, Centerville, Corydon, Chariton, Albia, Ottumwa. June 13--Fairfield, Washington, Sigourney, Oskaloosa, Montezuma, Marengo. June 16--Iowa City, Tipton, Anamosa. June 17--Waverly, Allison, Charles City, Cresco, New Hampton. June 18--Osage, Northwood, Mason City, Hampton, Eldora. June 19--Waterloo, Independence, Cedar Rapids. June 24--Webster City, Fort Dodge, Dakota City, Algona. June 25--Forest City, Garner, Clarion. June 26--Vinton, Toledo, Grundy Center. July 1--Elkader, Waukon, Decorah, West Union. July 2--Manchester, Dubuque, Maquoketa. July 7--Boone, Jefferson, Guthrie Center, Adel. July 8--Nevada, Marshalltown, Newton, Knoxville, Indianola. July 10--Bedford, Corning, Atlantic, Greenfield. July 11--Clarina, Sidney, Glenwood, Red Oak. July 15--Ida Grove, Sac City, Rockwell City, Pocahontas. July 16--Logan, Council Bluffs, Audubon, Harlan. July 18--Cherokee, Primghar, Sibley, Rock Rapids, Orange City. July 21--Spencer, Spirit Lake, Estherville, Emmetsburg. July 23--Sioux City, LeMars. July 24--Onawa, Denison, Carroll, Winterset, Creston, Mount Ayr, Leon, Osceola. July 30--Storm Lake.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the Senate floor on a number of occasions concerning the exploding deficits being built up by this administration, as well as the very poor performance of the national economy since this administration took office. The recent Office of Management and Budget, OMB, projections are especially noteworthy. We now see the White House foresees a 5-year debt increase of $1.9 trillion, a record $455 billion deficit this year, a $475 billion deficit next year. Each of those numbers signifies a terrible record of performance and record-setting deficits. With each report the deficits get deeper and deeper. Next year's $475 billion deficit represents over $1,600 for every man, woman, and child in America. That is the equivalent of adding to each citizen's credit card $1,600 upon which we will be required to pay interest year after year after year ad infinitum. In the past 3 years, we have seen the worst record of job creation since the Presidency of Herbert Hoover, with over 3 million jobs lost. This is the only administration in 70 years with a decline in private sector jobs. Long-term unemployment has tripled. We are in the slowest economic growth in over 50 years. And one other item: A huge drop in the value of pensions. A $100,000 pension invested in Standard & Poors stocks at the beginning of this administration is now worth $26,000 less. We do not hear a lot of talk from the administration, at least openly, about privatizing Social Security any longer. Just think, if you are just getting ready to retire, and this administration's privatization policies for Social Security had been in effect, and you had $100,000 in your pension funds in something that everyone believed would be very safe, it would now be worth $74,000. You would have lost $26,000 in 3 years. That is why I have said this administration is committing economic malpractice. It is economic malpractice at its worst. We keep hearing about medical malpractice, but this is economic malpractice because for the long term we face millions of retiring baby boomers and large increases in Social Security and Medicare. We have a great need to invest in the education of our children and to protect our children with homeland security. But this administration has one answer to all our problems: More tax cuts for the wealthy. I think it is worth looking at history. Faced with high unemployment, President Franklin Roosevelt said to Congress on May 24, 1937: We know that overwork and underpay do not increase the national income when a large portion of our workers remain unemployed. Reasonable and flexible use of the long- established right of Government to set and change working hours can, I hope, decrease unemployment in those groups in which unemployment today principally exists. Those are the words of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937. So what did Congress do? Congress passed time-and-a-half pay for overtime to increase jobs. Yet, faced with rising unemployment, this President wants to take away time-and-a-half from millions of Americans who receive a higher income because of it. This President, through the promulgation of new rules and regulations, wants to remove the incentive that overtime pay provides to employers to hire more workers. This is an anti-job-growth policy. In fact, this President threatened to veto a House appropriations bill if that bill said no to cutting time-and-a-half for overtime--again, economic malpractice. The President's OMB Director says the projected budgets are ``manageable.'' But when we look at the operating budget for next year, using OMB's own numbers, we face a deficit equal to 5.7 percent of our GDP, our gross domestic product, the second largest since 1946. These are the budget deficits expected just for the next few years. In 2000, as we can see, we had budget surpluses. During the 1990s, we paid off our debts, we had wise tax-and-spend policies, and we built up a surplus. That surplus was intended to be used to pay off our debt to provide for security for those who are going to be retiring very soon. Now, because of the economic malpractice of this administration, the forecast is for even bigger deficits than what we have had in the past, going on into the future with no end in sight. So the President's policies eat up all the reserves we were going to use for Social Security and they have turned them into debt. Under this President's program, these explosive deficits just keep going on and on and they keep getting worse. We tried this supply-side economic tax policy in 1981, and both the deficits and unemployment skyrocketed, resulting in our prior deficit record. In 1993, we tried to reverse supply-side policies. I just might note for the record, every Republican in the Senate and every Republican in the House voted no. They all predicted economic disaster. Instead, we got out of the hole and we got into record surpluses. Unemployment dropped year after year, wealth increased all over America, average people saw their incomes rise. So when this President came into office in 2001, what did he do? He pushed a huge tax cut primarily aimed at the wealthy. Deficits skyrocketed, jobs were lost, and the unemployed stayed that way for longer and longer. In 2003, it is a repeat of what they did in 2001-- economic malpractice. On February 12, Mr. Greenspan said: There's no question that as deficits go up, contrary to what some have said, it does affect long-term interest rates. It does have a negative impact on the economy unless attended. We are not attending to it. In fact, what is happening with this administration is that it is getting worse, the deficits are getting bigger. On July 16, Mr. Greenspan said: There is no question that if you run substantial and excessive deficits over time, you are draining savings from the private sector, and other things being equal, you do clearly undercut the growth rate of the economy. That is what is happening. Some on the right say they have a way to reduce the deficit that will grow larger and larger. They say reform Social Security and Medicare. What they mean is, by privatizing it, cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut them deeply. They see too much being spent on our children's education. They think that ought to be cut, too. I have an alternative view. I think the economic malpractice of this administration and supply-side economics must end and we have to return to economic sanity in this country. Look at those who are unemployed for 3 months, 6 months, a year--hurt economically, families hurt, marriages destroyed, futures lost. Look at our African-American community and the Hispanic community, which are suffering huge unemployment levels. Look at teenagers who cannot find jobs and wonder how they are going to be able to afford rising college tuition, which in many cases has doubled in the last couple of years. Look at the disabled who are being fired to cut health care insurance, and they are not being rehired and people are not reaching out the hand to hire people with disabilities because of the rising cost of health insurance, and the pressures are growing to cut Social Security and Medicare as these deficits grow. Only an ideologue who thinks of shrinking Government, whatever the cost, could possibly think we are on the right path. As Congressman Spratt in the House has said of the policies of this President and what the Congress is now following: There seems to be no shame, no shock, and no solution. We must reject these policies. We must reject the economic malpractice of this administration and move back to economic sanity in our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Ten minutes.