Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Labor-HHS bill has reached the floor relatively early this year. In the past few years, we have been sort of on the caboose end of the train. It is an extremely important bill. It addresses many issues that are vital to the strength of our Nation--our health, education, job training, the administration of Social Security and Medicare, biomedical research, and child care, just to name a few. Given its importance, I think it should be one of the first appropriations bills considered. But this is certainly the earliest this bill has gotten to the floor in many years. I am thankful for that. At the outset, I thank my chairman, Senator Specter, and his great staff for their hard work in putting together this bill. As usual, Senator Specter has done so in a professional and bipartisan fashion. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for his patience. This is always one of the most difficult bills to put together. This year the job has been especially difficult. I also thank the chairman of the full committee, Senator Stevens, and the ranking member, Senator Byrd, for their support this year. Their help has been invaluable. Before I say a few words about the contents of the bill, I think it is important to briefly discuss this year's budget resolution because we operate within its framework. I believe this year's budget resolution shortchanged funding for important discretionary activities, including education, health, and job training. The funds were, instead, used to give tax cuts to the wealthy and to give the Department of Defense more money than it even requested. Our subcommittee's inadequate allocation was the inevitable result of that ill-advised budget resolution. But that allocation forced our subcommittee to reach outside its normal jurisdiction to find mandatory offsets to fund the critical programs in this bill. Some may criticize the bill for that reason. Some of those criticisms are valid. For example, I hope to work with my colleagues--hopefully when we get to conference--to reverse the reductions in social services block grants. There are many good provisions in this bill. It increases funding for NIH, as Senator Specter said, by a historic amount, $2.7 billion. Education programs are increased by $4.6 billion. Head Start is increased by $1 billion. The $2.7 billion increase for NIH will keep us on our way to doubling NIH funding over 5 years. We are on the verge of tremendous biomedical breakthroughs as we decode the mysteries of the human genome and explore the uses of human stem cells. We are doing the right thing by continuing to support important biomedical research. The bill increases funding for child care from the $1.2 billion level last year to $2 billion this year. The availability, affordability, and quality of child care are major concerns for working families, and they desperately need these funds. Only about 1 in every 10 eligible children is served by this program. These dollars will go to working Americans who really need the help. Again, I want to make sure the record reflects that last year, during our negotiations, our chairman, Senator Specter, guaranteed that we would have this increase this year. He lived up to that commitment. We had a tremendous increase in the child care program, and we thank Senator Specter for his commitment and for keeping his word to get that increase for child care this year. I am proud we could also increase funding for education programs by, as I said, $4.6 billion. That includes a $350 increase in the maximum Pell grant to $3,650, the highest ever. In this year that we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the bill includes a $1.3 billion increase in funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. We have also funded a new Office of Disability Policy at the Department of Labor. At HHS, we were able to add funds for several other programs funded under the Developmental Disabilities Act. This bill also places great importance on women's health and includes over $4 billion for programs that address the health needs of women. I again might add that Senator Specter and I worked together on a women's health initiative that is part and parcel of this bill, and that is what that $4 billion is for. The bill also includes a $50 million line item to address the issue of medical errors and to help health care practitioners and health care institutions, hospitals, and other health care facilities, to begin the process of developing methodologies and ways of cutting down on medical errors. Medical errors are now the fifth leading cause of death in America. As we have looked at this, we found it is not just one person or one institution or one cause; there is a whole variety of different reasons. Quite frankly, I think our institutions and our practitioners have not kept up with the new technologies of today which in most of the private sector have helped us so much with productivity and which I believe in the health care sector can really help us cut down on medical errors. But that is what that $50 million is there to do. The bill is not without its problems. As I mentioned, we do have a problem with the social services block grant. Hopefully, we will get this bill to conference and we will be able to fix that at that time. Also, the provisions in the bill that have the money for school modernization and for class size reductions are not targeted enough. They are just broadly thrown in there. Again, we had this battle last year. When it finally came down to it, the Congress agreed with the White House, in a partnership, that we needed to put the money in there for class size reduction. I believe the same needs to be done for school modernization. We only put in 7 cents out of every dollar that goes for elementary and secondary education in America. We only provide 7 cents. A lot of that goes for, as I said, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. A lot of that goes for title I programs to help low-income areas. When it is all over with, we have just a penny or two left of every dollar that we can give out to elementary and secondary schools. So when we put in money for school modernization, we ought to make sure that is what it goes for. Schools desperately need this money. Our property taxpayers all over this country are getting hit, time and time again, to pay more in property taxes, which can be very regressive, to help pay for modernizing their schools. As we know, most of the schools need to be modernized; they have leaky roofs, and toilets that won't flush, water that is bad, and air conditioning--a lot of times they don't even have air conditioning-- heating plants that are inadequate. As I pointed out, one out of every four elementary and secondary schools in New York City today are still heated by coal. And again, these tend to be in the lowest income areas. So we need to target that money. It is not in this bill. That is one of the problems with it. Again, I hope we can work that out as we go to conference. It is a national disgrace that the nicest places our children see are shopping malls, sports arenas, and movie theaters, and the most run down places they see are their public schools. Again, we have to fix these in conference. I thank Senator Specter, once again, for being so open and working with us in a very strong bipartisan fashion. We worked together to shape this bill. Overall, it is a good bill, with a few exceptions that we have to fix once we go to conference. I want to make clear, I support the bill in its present form. I hope we get a good vote on it as it leaves here and goes to conference. I reserve my right, however, on the conference report, when it comes back. I am hopeful we can get it to conference with a strong vote, sit down with our House counterparts, and work out our differences. Hopefully, we can come back to the floor having fixed the class size, school modernization, and social services block grant problems we have in this bill. I thank Chairman Specter for working in a bipartisan fashion. I hope we can get through this bill reasonably rapidly today, hopefully get to conference next week. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield for a further question on that?

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

Mr. HARKIN. Again, it was my understanding that it was former Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole who first committed the Department to issue an ergonomic standard to protect workers on carpal tunnel syndrome and MSDs, as they are called. It has been under study for 10 years; is that right?

Mr. HARKIN. I didn't hear the unanimous consent request.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in my State of Iowa, Sioux City, seniors regularly take bus trips to Mexico to get their drugs. Drugs that cost $68 in Sioux City are $7 in Mexico. Seniors in Waterloo, IA, are being bussed to Canada to buy their drugs. Seniors in Cedar Rapids, IA, are being forced to declare bankruptcy because they have run up their credit care debt so high just to pay for the drugs they need. Mr. President, $5,000 to $6,000 a year is being paid out of pocket by seniors who cannot afford it and are being forced into bankruptcy. We are told this is not the time to do this, that we have to wait longer, that this baby is not ready to be born. The elderly have waited long enough, and they have been gouged deep enough, too deep, to pay for their prescription drugs. Now is the time to stand up for the seniors in our country and to vote aye on the Robb motion.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Microbiological Performance Standards Clarification Act of 2000. Passage of this bill is vital because on May 25th, the District Court of the Northern District of Texas struck down the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) authority to enforce its Microbiological Performance Standard for Salmonella. The District Court's decision in Supreme Beef v. USDA (Supreme) seriously undermines the sweeping food safety changes adopted by USDA in its 1996 Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and Pathogen Reduction (HACCP) rule. The District Court's decision in Supreme says that USDA does not have the authority to enforce Microbiological Performance Standards for reducing viral and bacterial pathogens. The Pathogen Reduction Rule recognized that bacterial and viral pathogens were the foremost food safety threat in America, responsible for 5,000 deaths and 33 million illnesses. To address the threat of foodborne illness, USDA developed a modern inspection system based on two fundamental principles. The first was that industry has the primary responsibility to determine how to produce the safest products possible. Industry had to examine their plants and determine how to control contamination at every step of the food production process, from the moment a product arrives at their door until the moment it leaves their plant. The second, even more crucial principle was that plants nationwide must reduce levels of dangerous pathogens in meat and poultry products. To ensure the new inspection system accomplished this, USDA developed Microbiological Performance Standards. These standards provide targets for reducing pathogens and require all USDA-inspected facilities to meet them. Facilities failing to meet a standard are shut down until they create a corrective action plan to meet the standard. To date, USDA has only issued one Microbiological Performance Standard, for Salmonella. The vast majority of plants in the U.S. have been able to meet the new standard, so it is clearly workable. In addition, USDA reports that Salmonella levels for meat and poultry products have fallen substantially. The Salmonella standard, therefore, has been successful. The District Court's decision threatens to destroy this success and set our food safety system back years. Congress cannot let a court's unfortunate misinterpretation of USDA's authority undermine our efforts to provide the safest food possible and the strongest food safety system available. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the Supreme Beef case, it is intolerable to have so much uncertainty about USDA's authority to enforce food safety regulations. The public should not have to worry about whether the products on their table have met food safety standards. This legislation provides the necessary clarification and assurance that if a product bears the USDA stamp of approval, it has met all of USDA's food safety requirements. I plan to seek every opportunity to get this language enacted. I think it is essential, both to ensuring the modernization of our food safety system, and ensuring consumers that we are making progress in reducing dangerous pathogens. I hope that both parties, and both houses of Congress will be able to act to pass this legislation before the July 4th weekend. The public's confidence in our meat and poultry inspection system is at stake.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Microbiological Performance Standards Clarification Act of 2000. Passage of this bill is vital because on May 25th, the District Court of the Northern District of Texas struck down the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) authority to enforce its Microbiological Performance Standard for Salmonella. The District Court's decision in Supreme Beef v. USDA (Supreme) seriously undermines the sweeping food safety changes adopted by USDA in its 1996 Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and Pathogen Reduction (HACCP) rule. The District Court's decision in Supreme says that USDA does not have the authority to enforce Microbiological Performance Standards for reducing viral and bacterial pathogens. The Pathogen Reduction Rule recognized that bacterial and viral pathogens were the foremost food safety threat in America, responsible for 5,000 deaths and 33 million illnesses. To address the threat of foodborne illness, USDA developed a modern inspection system based on two fundamental principles. The first was that industry has the primary responsibility to determine how to produce the safest products possible. Industry had to examine their plants and determine how to control contamination at every step of the food production process, from the moment a product arrives at their door until the moment it leaves their plant. The second, even more crucial principle was that plants nationwide must reduce levels of dangerous pathogens in meat and poultry products. To ensure the new inspection system accomplished this, USDA developed Microbiological Performance Standards. These standards provide targets for reducing pathogens and require all USDA-inspected facilities to meet them. Facilities failing to meet a standard are shut down until they create a corrective action plan to meet the standard. To date, USDA has only issued one Microbiological Performance Standard, for Salmonella. The vast majority of plants in the U.S. have been able to meet the new standard, so it is clearly workable. In addition, USDA reports that Salmonella levels for meat and poultry products have fallen substantially. The Salmonella standard, therefore, has been successful. The District Court's decision threatens to destroy this success and set our food safety system back years. Congress cannot let a court's unfortunate misinterpretation of USDA's authority undermine our efforts to provide the safest food possible and the strongest food safety system available. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the Supreme Beef case, it is intolerable to have so much uncertainty about USDA's authority to enforce food safety regulations. The public should not have to worry about whether the products on their table have met food safety standards. This legislation provides the necessary clarification and assurance that if a product bears the USDA stamp of approval, it has met all of USDA's food safety requirements. I plan to seek every opportunity to get this language enacted. I think it is essential, both to ensuring the modernization of our food safety system, and ensuring consumers that we are making progress in reducing dangerous pathogens. I hope that both parties, and both houses of Congress will be able to act to pass this legislation before the July 4th weekend. The public's confidence in our meat and poultry inspection system is at stake.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wanted to briefly discuss two important provisions regarding child soldiers and methamphetamine lab cleanup that are included in this supplemental spending package in the Foreign Operations bill before us. Over the years, Iowa and many states in the Midwest, West and Southwest have been working hard to reduce the sale and abuse of methamphetamine. But meth has brought another problem that we must address: highly toxic labs that are abandoned and exposed to our communities. We know that it can cost thousands of dollars to clean up a single lab. Fortunately, in recent years, the Drug Enforcement Agency has provided critical funds to help clean up these dangerous sites. However, last year, the DEA funding was cut in half, despite evidence that more and more meth labs have been found and confiscated. Because of these cuts, in March, the DEA completely ran out of funding to provide meth lab cleanup assistance to state and local law enforcement. Last month, the Administration shifted $5 million in funds from other Department of Justice Accounts to pay for emergency meth lab cleanup. This action will help reimburse these states for the costs they have incurred since the DEA ran out of money. My state of Iowa has already paid some $300,000 out of its own pocket for clean up since March. However, we've got another five months to go before the new fiscal year--and the number of meth labs being found and confiscated is still on the rise. The bill before us contains $10 million I added in Committee to ensure that there will be enough money to pay for costly meth lab clean-up without forcing states to take money out of their other tight law enforcement budgets. If we can find money to fight drugs in Columbia, we should be able to find money to fight drugs in our own backyard. We cannot risk exposing these dangerous meth labs to our communities. Mr. President, the Appropriations Committee also adopted an amendment I offered to provide $5 million provision in the Colombia package to address one of the most alarming aspects of the drug conflict in Colombia--the use of child soldiers. Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 19,000 youths--some as young as eight--are being used by the Colombian armed forces, paramilitary groups and guerrilla forces. Up to 50 percent of some paramilitary units and up to 80 percent of some guerrilla units are made up of children. Children are used as combatants, guides, and informants. They may be forced to collect intelligence, deploy land mines, and serve as advance shock forces in ambushes. Guerrillas often refer to them as ``little bees,'' because they sting before their targets realize they are under attack. These children are forced to carry arms and are enticed by false promises or threats to their families. They are often tortured, drugged, sexually abused, and permanently traumatized by the horror and brutality of war. Children who are turned into soldiers lose their childhood. They lose their innocence and their youth. They become instruments of destruction and atrocity. And the longer they remain under arms, the harder it is for them to heal and return to any semblance of a normal life. Some of the funds included in the supplemental for Colombia are intended to support judicial reform, human rights protection and peace negotiations. Indeed, protecting human rights and rule of law is central to the overall success of Plan Colombia. The use of child soldiers is a serious human rights abuse prohibited by numerous international treaties and conventions, including ILO Convention 182 on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor--and by the Colombian government itself. The International Criminal Court makes the recruitment or use of children under age 15 in military activities a war crime. I can think of no better use for these funds than to assist the demobilization and rehabilitation of child soldiers. The current generation of children in Colombia is the fourth generation to grow up surrounded by conflict. The $5 million in the Human Rights part of the Colombia package will help some of Colombia's children regain their fundamental right to life and peace. The money will be used by NGOs working to provide humanitarian assistance to affected children and their families. These NGO's will support programs providing counseling, education and reintegration services to former child soldiers; safe houses for escaped child soldiers; and public awareness and recruitment-prevention campaigns. Although $5 million represents less than one-third of 1 percent of the total supplemental funds for Colombia, this money may be the most well-spent of all.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to express my strong support for this amendment. I am a cosponsor because I believe that our society must enforce a message of tolerance--not hate. State and local law enforcement should not have to shoulder the burden of investigating and prosecuting hate crimes alone. This amendment allows the Federal Government to stand behind them in their effort to put a stop to hate- motivated violence. This amendment would authorize the Department of Justice to assist law enforcement officers across the country in addressing acts of hate violence by removing unnecessary obstacles to federal involvement and, where appropriate, by providing authority for federal involvement in crimes directed at individuals because of their race, color religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability. Because of my long involvement in the area of disability rights and the fact that this year marks the Tenth Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I want to focus my remarks on hate crimes' impact on Americans with disabilities. Prejudice against people with disabilities takes many forms. Such bias often results in discriminatory actions in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Laws like the Fair Housing Amendments Act, the ADA, and the Rehabilitation Act are designed to protect people with disabilities from such prejudice Sadly, disability bias can also manifest itself in the form of violence. It is imperative that the Federal Government send a message that these expressions of hatred are not acceptable in our society. For example, a man with mental disabilities from New Jersey was kidnaped by a group of nine men and women and was tortured for three hours, then dumped somewhere with a pillowcase over his head. While captive, he was taped to a chair, his head was shaved, his clothing was cut to shreds, and he was punched, whipped with a string of beads, beaten with a toilet brush, and, possibly, sexually assaulted. Prosecutors believe the attack was motivated by disability bias. In the state of Maine, a husband and wife were both living openly with AIDS, struggling to raise their children. Their youngest daughter was also infected with HIV. The family had broken their silence to participate in HIV/AIDS education programs that would inform their community about the tragic reality of HIV infection in their lives. As a result of the publicity, the windows of their home were shot out and the husband was forcibly removed from his car at a traffic light and severely beaten. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have included people with disabilities as a protected class under their hate crimes statutes. However, state protection is neither uniform nor comprehensive. The Federal Government must send the message that hate crimes committed on the basis of disability are as intolerable as those committed because of a person's race, national origin, or religion. And, federal resources and comprehensive coverage would give this message meaning and substance. Thus, it is critical that people with disabilities share in the protection of the federal hate crimes statute. This legislation will also provide local and state law enforcement officials with the resources necessary to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. In consultation with victim services organizations, including nonprofit organizations that provide services to victims with disabilities, local law enforcement officials can apply for grants when they lack the necessary resources to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. The amendment also includes grants for the training of law enforcement officials in identifying and preventing hate crimes committed by juveniles. Again, so often hate crimes on the basis of disability go unrecognized. These grants will help police identify crimes committed because of disability bias in the first place. Mr. President, for this reason and others, this amendment is vitally important. Millions of Americans would benefit from its passage. And the public clearly recognizes this. This amendment is a constructive and sensible response to a serious problem that continues to plague our Nation--violence motivated by prejudice. It deserves full support, and I am hopeful that the President will have an opportunity to sign this legislation into law this year.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, July 26 will mark the 10th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the next few weeks we'll be holding a number of events here in Washington and around the country to celebrate the ADA. And right now it looks like we can start our party a little early. I just found out that yesterday, Susan Sygall, a woman with a disability, received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Each year, the MacArthur Foundation awards 20 or so unrestricted $500,000 grants to, and I quote, ``talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication. . . .'' These so-called ``genius grants'' are among the most prestigious in the world. Susan is the Executive Director of Mobility International USA. Mobility International's mission is to empower people with disabilities, particularly women, through international exchange, and by providing information, technical assistance, and training to ensure the inclusion of people with disabilities in international exchange and development programs. Right now, Mobility International is, among other things, facilitating a program to develop relationships between the disability communities in Vietnam and in the United States. Some of Susan's genius must have rubbed off on us in the Foreign Operations Committee because we encouraged USAID to fund disability rights programs in Vietnam. I hope that we can help the program again this year. I strongly believe that for all of America's economic and military might, our greatest strength will always be our democratic principles. Those principles have served as the foundation for aspiring democracies everywhere. As our own democracy matures, and the ADA is a testament to that, it is essential that we export the lessons we have learned. I have seen personally how the ADA has fostered disability rights activism around the world and as the 10th Anniversary approaches I can think of no better person to honor than Susan Sygall. A civil rights law is only as great as the people who bring it to life every day. That's why when I hear about people like Susan, I know that the ADA's future is in good hands.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am offering a bipartisan amendment with my distinguished colleagues, Mr. Lugar and Mr. Leahy. This amendment would simply change the rules on eligibility of overseas troops for the supplemental nutrition program to be the same as the rules for troops in the United States. It corrects an inequity that would otherwise harm thousands of our troops overseas. We have had much discussion of the disgrace that some of our men and women in uniform, who are risking their lives to serve our nation, have to rely on welfare to feed their families. Thousands of our troops are eligible for food stamps and WIC, the supplemental nutrition program. This is an outrage, and I will continue to work to increase the pay of our enlisted men and women, the real solution to this problem. But it is even more outrageous that some of our troops who need this assistance cannot get it, just because of where they are stationed. WIC is administered by the States. Since our troops overseas are not in a State, in the past they have not received any support from WIC. When they are stationed here, they can get the food they need to feed their families; they get transferred overseas, and suddenly they are ineligible, and the assistance on which they have come to rely disappears. No wonder it's so hard to convince them to sign up for another tour. Last year this body passed an amendment I proposed to end this unfairness by having the Defense Department provide WIC assistance to troops overseas. The amendment simply required the Defense Department to set up a WIC program similar to those run by the states that would serve Department personnel who are overseas. The Department is proceeding to implement that program. In fact the Department is uniquely situated to efficiently run such a program because of the network of medical treatment facilities and commissaries that is already in place. But in conference a significant change was made to the provision. A sentence was added that requires the Department to include the value of on-base housing in calculating income to determine eligibility for the program. That one sentence knocked more than half of those who should be eligible from the program. It also failed to correct the fundamental unfairness. The regulations governing WIC specifically prohibit states from counting in-kind housing and other in-kind assistance in appplicants' income when determining eligibility. They bar states from doing what we required the Pentagon to do. That makes no sense. It means that people who were receiving food stamps in the U.S. still may be kicked out of the program when their period of eligibility is up, even though their income and expenses have not changed, just because they were transferred out of the country. And when my staff talked with the Defense Department officials who are setting up the program, they agreed that the rules should be changed so that eligibility overseas would match eligibility in the U.S. So this amendment strikes the one sentence, leaving the overall principle that the Secretary of Defense should seek to apply the eligibility rules in the regulations governing state implementation of WIC. Those regulations leave one ambiguity, however. I have talked about in-kind housing, that is housing on military bases. Troops who live off-base instead receive a basic housing allowance to help them pay for their own housing. As directed in the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the rules on WIC state that states have the choice in determining income eligibility of whether to count the basic housing allowance received by military personnel living off the base. I understand that as of 1994, the last time states were surveyed, not one of the fifty states had chosen to include the housing in income. That only makes sense. It would be patently unfair to let troops living on-base receive support, but withhold it from troops living off-base whose real income is no higher. In fact the troops off-base usually have higher expenses because the housing allowance usually does not fully cover their housing expense. So this amendment directs the Secretary of Defense to follow the current practice of the states in excluding the basic allowance for housing when determining income eligibility. Thus it would allow the Secretary to restore full fairness by treating troops overseas the same as troops at home, and troops who live on-base the same as troops who live off-base. And most importantly it would allow thousands of troops to receive the food they need to keep their families healthy. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their favorable consideration and am glad that this correction has been accepted as a manager's amendment.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. That is if we lease them rather than buying. So we are compounding it, adding insult to injury. The taxpayers are getting socked for airplanes the military doesn't really need, and then they are leasing them, which means we are paying even more money for airplanes we do not even need. Again, you would think with this GAO study we would say: Wait, we don't need these nine. Let's wait until we see what the requirements really are. The requirements are always couched in terms of wartime necessity. We are not at war. It doesn't look as if there is anything bubbling up on the horizon that is going to be a major war for the United States in the next couple of years. So we have time to do an assessment to find out what our requirements really are. Does Admiral or General so-and-so really need a Gulfstream V? We don't know that. Maybe they could get by with a C-21. I want to be perfectly honest. I have used these aircraft. As Senators, sometimes we travel to remote areas of the world. Because of time requirements and when we have to go, we have to utilize these aircraft. Last year, Senator Reid and I utilized a C-21. We flew commercially to Jakarta, Indonesia, and then we flew a C-21 from Jakarta to East Timor. There were no commercial flights we could take over there at that time. Then we had to fly back. Then I went in that up to Okinawa, Okinawa to Shanghai, and over to Japan, all on routes that would have been very difficult commercially to do. This is a C-21. You are cramped. There is no bathroom. You can't stand up; you can't stretch out, and there was room for about five passengers on that and we were loaded. Flying those long distances, we would have to land and refuel, and get up and go, land and refuel. I am saying, if that is good enough for a Senator, why can't a general do that? I didn't say I have to have a Gulfstream V with all the luxury and the bathroom and a chef on board and a glass of champagne--no, we don't need all that stuff. I just need basic transportation to get me from point A to point B to C to D to E. Yet I come back to the United States and look around, and I see nice luxury jets being used by generals and admirals, people flying around the United States in these luxury aircraft. I wonder, do they really need to travel that way? Why don't they fly in a C-21? It is cheaper. We have a lot of them. Lord knows, we have a lot of C-21s. We have probably 71 of them. They are cheap. They are efficient. They are fast. They are not very comfortable, but they serve the purpose. So I just say what we have here is a game of one-upmanship. General so-and-so has a nice plane. Admiral so-and-so wants one, too. Another general wants one. Again, I say to my friend from Alaska, I am not saying we don't need a number of these aircraft. Some of them we do. Some of them have to be larger for longer flights, as in the Pacific, maybe the European theater. But we do not need them here in the continental United States, and that is what we are getting stung with. We ought to come to our senses. This is waste, pure and simple. I do not even mind, as I said earlier, a little perk of office for the generals, if they have to get in a plane and fly someplace. But they don't need this kind of perk. A C-21 is fine enough to fly around the continental United States for any general or admiral, for any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And a Gulfstream III is more than adequate for any Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any admiral or general to fly from here to Europe. I would say to the Senator from Alaska, a Gulfstream III can fly from here, land in Gander, land in Iceland, it can refuel, or it can land over in Shannon, Ireland, and refuel and make any city in Europe with one-stop refueling--one stop. They do not need the Gulfstream V. Corporate executives fly all the time from the United States to Europe in Gulfstream IIIs. They don't need Gulfstream Vs. Of course, some of the bigger corporations, may have a Gulfstream V, but that is the private sector. If they want to do that, that is fine. We are talking about public servants here. Generals and admirals are no more or less public servants than the Senator from Hawaii, Iowa, Alaska, or California. They do not need to be mollycoddled. They do not need to be babied and pampered like some corporate executive. If a corporate executive wants to be babied and pampered, that is up to their board of directors and their stockholders. The American people are the stockholders of the Department of Defense. I do not believe our constituents want to spend their hard-earned tax dollars so some general or admiral can fly around in a Gulfstream V in luxurious comfort while we have troops on food stamps and while we are trying to raise the pay of those on the bottom. So I say let's take a little time here. Let's take a breather. They do not need to lease the nine aircraft right now. Let's take a look at the GAO report. Let's give the Department of Defense 1 year to come back, and let's see their justification. I ask the Senator from California again for that justification for the RFPs that just went out: Aircraft should be able to fly no-wind range of 5,000 nautical miles. Why?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am proposing a very simple amendment. All it says is the Department of Defense thoroughly test its trailers and the trucks that pull them before they spend more money to modify them or to buy new ones. I understand there is a rule XVI point of order against the amendment. So I will ask that it be withdrawn. But I wanted to take the time to at least let Senators know about and become aware of a very interesting problem in the Department of Defense which I think is indicative of some larger problems that we have in terms of testing and making sure that our weapons systems actually work before we spend our taxpayers' hard-earned dollars to buy them. For the next several minutes, I would like to tell the story of the Army trailers and why this amendment basically just says we ought to test them to make sure they work before we buy them. You would think this would be common sense. But 6,550 trailers that the Army has purchased for more than $50 million are sitting in storage right now. That is right, 6,550 trailers are now in storage because the Army never bothered to make sure they worked. The fact is that this amendment, which I think is necessary, says a lot about how waste and abuse continues to thrive at the Pentagon. I get nervous about some of these skyrocketing procurement budgets when I think about how some of the money gets thrown away. Let's go through the story of the trailers. Most of what I am about to relate is in a GAO report, which I requested last year and which was published last year. In the 1980s, the Pentagon decided it needed some trailers. I am talking about trailers that you load up with equipment, goods and stuff, and you pull them behind a truck. In 1980, the Pentagon decided that it needed some trailers for its high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, otherwise known to all of us as humvees. That is all these are--trailers to be pulled behind some all-terrain trucks. I wouldn't think that would be too difficult. The Army found that the older M101 trailers they had were unstable with the humvees. So they set out to buy some new trailers. In 1993, they signed a contract for $50.6 million to buy 7,563 new trailers. In 1995, after a couple of years, they tested the trailers and found a serious problem. The trucks, as it turns out, were never designed to pull trailers. When they tested the trailers, the rear crossmembers of the trucks tended to crack. They refer to this as ``catastrophic failure.'' Despite this problem of the trucks' rear crossmembers cracking, the Army decided that the trailers had successfully completed testing. You may wonder: How could that possibly be? Well, it was because they met the contract performance requirements. Mind you, they didn't work. They destroyed the trucks that pulled them. But they met the contract performance requirements. So the Army agreed to pay the contractor for the trailers and to pay for the modifications that would be needed. You would think in the contract specifications they would have said that the trailers should not damage the trucks pulling them. But evidently they didn't. Then in late 1996, the Army faced a dilemma. The contractor was more than a year behind schedule in delivering them, and the Department decided not to buy more trailers in fiscal year 1997--not because they didn't work, which they didn't, but because they said they were now a lower priority. In the contract that the Army negotiated, there was an escape clause which provided that during the fourth and fifth years, if the Army didn't want any more trailers, all they had to do was pay $1 million in liquidated damages and they would be out of the contract. Did the Army pay the $1 million and get out of the old contract? No. They renegotiated the contract and extended it another year. Not only that but the Army also agreed to pay the increased costs of the contractor and agreed also to increase the profit margin of the contractor in spite of the poor performance of these trailers. The net result was a 57-percent increase in the cost of the trailers. Instead of getting the 7,563 trailers for $50.6 million, which was agreed upon in the contract, the Army ended up getting 6,700 trailers for $57 million--$6 million more for 900 fewer trailers. That is not the end of it. From there, the story continues downhill. In 1997, the Army modified the truck crossmembers--the one that was cracking all the time, and the bumpers--so the trucks could pull the trailers. But as they were modifying the truck, the trailer drawbar broke. They discovered that the drawbar design had no margin of safety; it bent every time the humvee went over a bump. Nonetheless, since the Army had already accepted the design, the Army figured it was their own problem and they let the contractor off the hook. The Army continued to accept more of these trailers that they couldn't use. They couldn't use them. So the contractor kept making them and the Army kept accepting them; and they just put them in storage. In 1998, they tested the trailers a third time with a new steel drawbar. But now they found that the new, stiffer drawbar damaged the brakes on the trailers and again damaged the trucks. In 1999, they made more modifications and tested the trailers a fourth time. Again, the trailers didn't work. Meanwhile, the units still don't have the trailers they have needed for more than a decade. Now, the Army thinks they finally have the solution. They will use the steel drawbar on the trailers. They will install a more durable brake actuator on the trailers, and they will modify the trucks with reinforcement for this towing pintle. But they haven't even tested these modifications yet. So they don't even know if they will work. Furthermore, their ``conservative cost estimate'' for the modification is $22 million. Let's add it up. We were going to pay $50 million. We have already paid $57 million. Now we are going to pay $22 million on top of that. That would pay to modify only 6,700 trucks, one for each of the trailers. I can only assume that the Army does not want to dedicate a truck for each trailer. That means the Army will have to modify all 19,564 trucks that are in the units to get the trailers. The 22 million they want is only for 6,700 trucks. But they are going to need another 13,000 trucks modified. So are we looking at another $44 million, maybe another $50 million on top of it? I don't think they will dedicate one truck to each trailer. That would be foolish. I don't think we are through with the price increases yet. Somewhere down the line, the Army says, they will need another 18,412 high mobility trailers on top of the 6,700 they already have. This is a story of mismanagement, a story of misprocurement, a story of whacky contracts, a story of piling one mistake upon another, a story of letting contractors off the hook, all at the expense of taxpayers and the expense of readiness and mobility for our troops in the field. My amendment simply requires that before we dump more money down this rathole, before we modify the trailers and trucks or buy more trailers, we test them. We test the final product to see if it will meet the requirements for the all-terrain vehicles that are pulling them. We should make sure that they work, that they are safe, that they don't damage the truck, and that they can perform their intended mission. I don't know when the end is in sight. We have already spent $57 million. They want another $22 million. That is $79 million. If they are going to modify all the trucks, we are probably looking at another $44 million on top of that, and they say they want 18,000 more of them. I don't know if there is an end in sight. Whether $57 million or $79 million or $100 million, that may not in a $300 billion budget for defense seem to be a lot but it is a lot of money to me. It is a lot of money to the taxpayers in my home State of Iowa. I am afraid it is a symptom of a larger problem. If we cannot design a simple trailer that works, and test it adequately, how can we expect to build an advanced fighter plane that works or a missile defense that will hit a bullet with a bullet? We never seem to learn our lesson. Today we are buying 10 F-22 fighter planes, the most advanced and most expensive in the world, even though they haven't been fully tested and have shown problems in the tests that have been done. We are talking about spending $1 billion a year for national missile defense, even though it has had only two flight tests--one lucky strike and a near miss--and has never been tested against countermeasures that it would surely face. If we are going to spend all this money, the public should at least demand weapons that work. My amendment would set that demand in writing for the trailers. I am not getting into the fighter planes and missile defense. I am only talking about simple trailers, so that never again will we pay three times for trailers--once to buy them, again to store them, and a third time to try to make them work right. I wanted to take this time to talk about the trailer problem. I have been involved in this for some time. I think it is indicative of a larger problem. We should make sure we test all of our systems, make sure they work and are safe and meet the requirements we need before we shell out our taxpayers' dollars to buy them. Amendment No. 3355 Withdrawn

Mr. HARKIN. Having said that, I understand there is a rule XVI point of order against my amendment, so I withdraw my amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Boxer for yielding me this time. I am proud to be a cosponsor of her amendment. We have worked hard on this over the last couple of years to try to bring sense and rationality to this procurement of luxury jets for the military. I was going to ask my friend from California if we might engage in a little colloquy to let our fellow Senators know where we are coming from. It is not the intention of the Senator from California, nor mine, to say that there should be no smaller corporate-type jets within the Department of Defense. We are not trying to say ``none.'' We are not trying to cut them out. There are 364 support aircraft in the inventory right now. I ask the Senator, is it, the intention of the Senator to do away with all these types of jets?

Mr. HARKIN. What happened to the six airplanes last year that we fought against? Have they started leasing those airplanes yet?

Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator is correct, the request for proposal that delineated the requirements, the GAO said there is no real basis for those requirements. They just plucked them out of thin air. They devised, if I am not mistaken, an RFP to get the jets they wanted. But there is no basis for the RFP requirement. That is what I read in the GAO report. For example, I say to the Senator from California, in the GAO study on page 7, ``One military officer involved in the 1995 study said that using an assumption of four flights a day yielded a requirement deemed to be too high and that using an assumption of two flights a day yielded a requirement deemed to be too low.'' So it came out at three. Listen to this: ``Operational support airlift requirements are significantly affected by this single assumption of how many flights a day you have. For example, our review of support aircraft found that 55 fewer aircraft were required when assumptions of two flights a day were used rather than three for overseas theaters.'' Again, the GAO is saying there is no real rational basis for this. They say four is deemed too much, two is deemed too little. So, voila, they decided on three. But again, there is no rational basis for why they needed three flights a day. We didn't have this study last year. This study just came out in April of 2000. Last year, we offered the amendment that dealt with six aircraft, and our worst fears were realized. They put out an RFP, limited to the most luxurious jets. So we requested the study. In light of the fact that we have the GAO study that basically says we have no basis on which to procure these aircraft, now we will lease nine aircraft. Let's get this straight. Last year, we did not have the GAO study. Our amendment was defeated. The bill said they could lease up to six aircraft. This year, we have the GAO study that says there is no basis for the requests, but now nine are requested this year. Please, someone tell me what kind of sense this makes. Again, I have been a pilot all my life. I enjoy flying. I know airplanes pretty darned well. We are not trying to say that commanders in the field, theater commanders, don't need long-range airplanes. They do. What I am saying is we are playing a game here. It is sort of a game of, I am a general and guess what. I have got a nice big fancy jet to ferry me around. Well, Admiral Smith over here looks at General Jones and says, hey, he's got a big old jet that flies him around. How come I don't have one? And then the general over in the Marine Corps says, well, I have to have one, too. I am as high ranking as that other general or admiral. And the Air Force general says, I have to have one, too. Come on. There is a lot of this game involved here. I don't mind some perks for our military officers. They don't get paid a lot of money. They do a great job of defending our country. We call upon them in wartime and they lay down their lives. If you are just honest about it, this is a perk, a perquisite. But how much of a perk? Do they really need a Gulfstream V that can carry up to 19 passengers so they can put four or five people on board and travel in luxury? No, they don't need that. CINCPAC operates out of Hawaii and needs a longer range plane to go from Hawaii to Guam, Okinawa, Japan, or Korea. I understand that. But commanders in the United States don't need those. They can land at any airport in the United States and get refueled. They don't need those longer range planes. You may need one for Europe. Already in the inventory we have 13 Gulfstream III's that have a 3,500-mile nautical range. Now the Gulfstream V has a 5,500-mile nautical range. We already have one of those in inventory. I don't know where it is. I don't know who operates it. But we already have one. We have 13 Gulfstream III's with a 3,500-mile nautical range. That is not too shabby. And a Gulfstream III is a very luxurious plane, I can assure you. The GAO says it can carry up to 26 passengers, but that is maximum loading. Actually, a Gulfstream III would probably carry about 10 or 12 people at most on any flight. They already have 13 of them. Is that enough? We don't even know. The GAO says we don't even know if that is enough. I am not saying we do not need some of these planes. But I think we need a really thorough study of these inventories, to justify the requirements. The GAO said: The Department of Defense has not clearly explained the basis for the key assumptions it is using to justify the requirements or identified the assumptions that should be updated in each succeeding review. What does it mean? The Pentagon has no clue about how many planes they need; no clue.

Mr. HARKIN. Let me just finish this. The GAO found there is no justification for how many times a day airports are connected. There is no criterion for why some airports are key airports and others are not. There is no consideration of how large different planes need to be. Nobody could even tell the GAO whether the requirement for 85 aircraft in the continental United States had been considered in the 1998 review or who was supposed to look at it in the current review. So how do they come up with their assumptions? Here is what GAO said. I will repeat it: One military officer said using an assumption of four flights a day yielded a requirement deemed to be too high, using an assumption of two yielded a requirement deemed to be too low by the commanders in chief. What does that mean? They cooked the books. That is all they are doing, they are cooking the books. They are saying I would like to have this Gulfstream V, so write it up so that I need it. That is all that is happening. I am glad to yield to my colleague.

Mr. HARKIN. Frankly, I say to the Senator from California, if we have to swallow this, they ought to at least buy the airplanes, not lease them. The taxpayers are going to get stung, big time, for leasing these aircraft, but it looks as if it is less in the beginning. Over the years, we are going to pay probably, what would the Senator say, three to four times as much for these aircraft?

Mr. HARKIN. Why?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I will not take 4 minutes, but I appreciate the Senator from California yielding me time. Why? Why 5,000 miles? That is the threshold. The objective is the ``Aircraft shall be able to fly no-wind range of 5,000 nautical miles carrying a full passenger and crew complement, plus their baggage.'' Why? We do not know why, but that is what they said. The GAO report says, as the Senator from California said, there is no justification for it. They plucked the numbers out of thin air. They cooked the books, and I do not like it.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to anyone who is watching this debate, get on your computer, get on the Internet and dial up www.gulfstream.com. Dial up gulfstream.com and take a look at the Gulfstream V and Gulfstream III, I say to my constituents, or anyone who is watching--gulfstream.com. Dial it up and take a look at the Gulfstream V and ask yourself: Does a general or an admiral or anyone who is a public servant really need this kind of luxury? The answer, I think, will be obvious. I reserve any remaining time.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside temporarily so I may offer my amendment.