Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Then I will object to that unanimous-consent request.

Mr. HARKIN. I want to ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Iowa be recognized for up to 20 minutes after the disposition of this bill.

Mr. HARKIN. I don't understand why it has to be in morning business.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that after disposition of this bill, the Senator from Iowa be recognized to speak on the fast-track bill. That is all.

Mr. HARKIN. I understand that after the vote on this bill, the pending bill is the fast-track bill.

Mr. HARKIN. No.

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent to amend that unanimous consent so the Senator from Iowa would be allowed 20 minutes in morning business after the disposition of it.

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, since everybody else seems to be getting in line, I wonder if I can amend that to ask unanimous consent that after the disposition of this bill, after the voice vote, which I understand is included in your disposition, after the disposition of this bill, that the Senator from Iowa be recognized.

Mr. HARKIN. Thirty minutes of debate, a voice vote and then there will be no pending business after that? What will the pending business be after that voice vote?

Mr. HARKIN. It will be a recorded vote.

Mr. HARKIN. And then we will vote.

Mr. HARKIN. As I understand this, we now have an hour of debate?

Mr. HARKIN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I will reclaim the floor in my own right and let these Senators work it out if they want to come back.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I believe I have the floor. I only yielded for the purpose of a unanimous-consent request.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have the floor, I believe, and I yielded only to the Senator for the purpose of a question.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield without losing my right to the floor for a unanimous-consent request.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, Every year thousands of Americans are victimized by fraudulent telemarketing promotions. And, unfortunately, these scam artists prey most often on our senior citizens. The losses every year are estimated to be in the billions of dollars. My amendment will help law enforcement to more effectively combat these abuses. Today, it's all to easy for telemarketing rip-off artists to profit from the current system. How do these rip-offs occur? Advertisements regarding sweepstakes, contests, loans, credit reports and other promotions appear in newspapers, magazines, and other direct mail and telephone solicitations. The operators of many of these phoney promotions set up telephone boiler rooms for a few months in which a number of phones are operated to receive calls responding to their ads. They steal thousands--even millions--of dollars from innocent victims and then they simply disappear. They take the money and run--moving on to another location to start all over again. Here's just one example. Not too long ago, 30,000 Iowans received postcards from an organization calling itself Sweepstakes International, Inc. The postcard enticed recipients to call a 900- number and they were charged $9.95 on their phone bill. Based on a Postal Service investigation, civil action was initiated in U.S. District Court in Iowa. As a result, the promotion was halted and $1.7 million was frozen. This represented just one and a half month's revenue from the scam! My amendment will protect telemarketing victims by providing law enforcement the authority to more quickly obtain the name, address, and physical location of businesses suspected of telemarketing fraud. Phone companies would have to provide law enforcement officials ONLY the name, address and physical location of a telemarketing business holding a phone number if the officials submitted a formal written request for this information relevant to a legitimate law enforcement investigation. It will make it easier for officers to identify and locate these operations. This is similar to the procedure that is already in place for post office box investigations. Mr. President, it is necessary to crack down on serious consumer fraud. With this change, we will have many more successful efforts to shut down these rip-off artists like several recent cases in my home state of Iowa.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. In my remaining time, Mr. President, I would like to explain why my amendment that I will be offering on fast track deals specifically with exploitative child labor in a way that will enhance and strengthen the President's position. Now, there are other labor provisions that ought to be put into this bill, and there has been a lot of debate and disagreement on ways to address labor, environmental, and health and safety issues in this legislation. I understand the reasons for these disagreements. But, honestly, I do not see how there can be any disagreement on the need to address exploitative child labor and to ensure that the President and our trade negotiators do not have their hands tied when it comes to negotiating and concluding agreements on this issue. This is the benchmark that I believe should be applied to exploitative child labor in examining the bill before us. It is simply this. The President's authority and our directions to him to negotiate on exploitative child labor should be no less than that for the other important issues contained in this bill. Using that benchmark, I would invite my colleagues to examine the fast-track bill that we have before us. This bill has numerous principal negotiating objectives dealing with a wide range of issues-- trade in goods, trade in services, foreign investment, intellectual property, agriculture, unfair trade practices, a host of them. Again, with respect to all of these other issues, the bill is drafted to articulate objectives, to give guidance and direction to the President, to ensure that the President has sufficiently broad and expansive negotiating authority and to encourages him to use it--a far cry from the limiting way child labor is addressed in this bill. Look at the language dealing with intellectual property. The bill sets ambitious goals here and confirms the President's broad authority to negotiate and submit any resulting agreement under fast track. In fact, one of the principal negotiating objectives on intellectual property is ``the enactment and effective enforcement by foreign countries of laws that recognize and adequately protect intellectual property.'' Now, when it comes to intellectual property, the President is not limited to negotiating under fast track only to prevent other countries from lowering or derogating from existing standards. Nor is negotiation limited only to those cases where a country is seeking to attract investment or inhibit U.S. exports. To protect intellectual property, the President is to seek agreements in which other countries commit to adopt and enforce higher standards if they need to. Not so for child labor. And his negotiating authority to protect intellectual property covers the broad range of ways in which intellectual property rights may be violated. Again, not so for child labor. My amendment regarding exploitative child labor simply tracks the language in the bill on intellectual property. It is basically the same language, with conforming modifications. My amendment ensures that the President has the same authority to negotiate on exploitative child labor as he has on protecting intellectual property. It puts into the bill that one of our trade negotiating objectives includes the enactment and effective enforcement by other countries of laws against exploitative child labor. It adds exploitative child labor to the bill as a negotiating objective. My amendment does not tie the President's hands. It does not say there has to be a predetermined outcome on child labor in trade negotiations. It just says that in dealing with exploitative child labor, the President has the authority, the same authority, as he has to protect against the pirating of a song, a computer chip or a compact disc. We ought to ensure this bill gives the President the same authority to seek protection against exploitative child labor as a means of unfair competition as he has to seek protection against the misappropriation of intellectual property as a means of unfair competition. My amendment says that exploitative child labor will be on the table during negotiations. It will be one of our principal trade negotiating objectives. It will have the same status and stature as intellectual property. Mr. President, again I am not talking about 18-year old kids working, or 17-year-old kids, no. This is what I am talking about right here. This picture is of a young girl working in a field in Mexico after NAFTA. We have more children working in Mexico today after NAFTA than we did before. And I do not mean just teenagers. I mean kids 8, 9, 10 years of age, too. And yet we had some side agreements covering child labor on NAFTA, but they are not being enforced. We have over 200 million working kids in the world today, more and more being put into factories and plants and, yes, agriculture. My Iowa farmers can compete against anyone in the world, but they cannot compete against that girl because that girl is a slave laborer. That is slave labor. This girl has no choice. She has no options. She cannot go to school. She cannot go to school because she is out in the fields all day, the same as a kid working in a glass factory, a shoe factory, a garment factory, or a rug factory. And these are often kids that are 8, 9, 10 years old. Now, I believe that our trade negotiators and the people down at the White House have the best of intentions. I am sure there is no one there who likes exploitative child labor. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they sent a bill to us such as they did and why they will go along with such a weak bill relating to exploitative child labor. If they would only compare this bill with the one in 1988, they would understand that the bill before us curtails, circumscribes and limits the President's authority on exploitative child labor relative to the 1988 bill. I have been talking to people down at the White House about putting exploitative child labor in this bill at the same level as intellectual property, but for some reason they just cannot quite seem to get on board. There was a time not too long ago when intellectual property rights were regarded as extraneous to trade, just as some argue child labor is today. I remember when I was in the Navy back in the 1960s. People would go to Taiwan and they would get records for perhaps 10 cents each--books and encyclopedias for just pennies--because Taiwan was pirating the records; they were pirating the books and printing them. I remember people I knew in the Navy would go to Taiwan and load up with books and records, but today there are international rules in trade agreements to protect intellectual property. So there was a time when intellectual property was considered extraneous to trade agreements. Not so today. Exploitative child labor should not be extraneous today. Yes, we are in a new era. We are in a new world economy, but we are also in a new world community. And just as we have taken the lead in the world economy, as we have taken the lead in breaking down trade barriers--and I believe we should--we must take the lead in stopping this, the last vestige of slavery in the world today, exploitative child labor. We can debate and discuss labor issues, environmental issues, and there are all kinds of different perspectives and arguments about them. There should be no argument on exploitative child labor. There should be no disagreement on this. There are distinct lines. Children should not be working like this. Our trade negotiators, when they sit down at that table, ought to be negotiating on exploitative child labor. It ought to be a trade negotiating objective. It ought to have the same stature, the same force, the same effect as intellectual property because not only is this a moral imperative of ours; it is imperative to stop it as unfair competition because that child laborer, that child slave, is producing goods that are sent to this country, that compete against our products. My farmers cannot compete against that. Our workers cannnot compete against that. They should not have to compete against it. This bill is fatally flawed and the administration needs to send get behind the amendment that I will be offering. We need to adopt that amendment to make sure that stopping exploitative child labor has the same force and effect, and the same level of authority, in trade negotiations as stopping the pirating of intellectual property. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and my good friend, Senator Specter, for yielding this time. I especially wish to thank Senator Specter, our chairman, and his staff for the skill they have demonstrated and the cooperation which they have given us in putting this bill together and working out the many compromises that were necessary to come up with this very bipartisan conference agreement. It took a lot of staff meetings, a lot of give and take, but the result is one that merits the support of all Senators. This conference report, I believe, is the most important bill we will pass this year after the balanced budget agreement. It includes a number of very important advances. First, the agreement significantly expands our Nation's commitment to quality education for our children. We have provided the largest increase for special education in our history. I repeat that. We have provided the largest increase for special education in our history. We have made college more affordable by increasing the maximum Pell grant to $3,000, the highest ever. We have expanded support to make sure schoolchildren have access to computers and other technology and for training teachers on how to use this technology. Computers in the classroom are of little value if the teachers do not know how to use them. I am especially pleased that the conference committee agreed to my proposals to place greater emphasis on making sure that every American child enters school ready to learn. The agreement before us increases Head Start funding by $374 million. That is $50 million more than the President requested, and, more significantly, I believe this bill doubles the Early Head Start Program, that is, the birth-to-2-year-old program, at $279 million, so we have doubled the early intervention program for Early Head Start. The conference agreement also provides an 11-percent increase in funding to $350 million for the early intervention program for infants and toddlers with disabilities under part H of IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That is an 11 percent increase for that part H. Finally, the conference report includes an additional $50 million for the child care and development block grant to increase the quality of child care for infants. We all know that these are front-end investments that will pay dividends for us in the future. Mr. President, as most of my colleagues know, our subcommittee has worked for many years to combat fraud, waste and abuse in the Medicare Program. A recent audit by the HHS inspector general found that somewhere in the neighborhood of $23 billion was lost last year alone just to this problem of fraud, waste and abuse. I am pleased to say that the agreement before us significantly expands our efforts to stop this Medicare waste. Coupled with mandatory increases, our bill provides a full 25-percent increase in support for audits and other fraud-fighting activities, from $440 million to $550 million. In addition, we have included bill language that provides Medicare greater resources to more aggressively target problem providers who are bilking the system. We need to do even more, including, at long last, to get to competitive bidding in Medicare just like they have gotten in the Veterans Administration. But the reforms in this will save Medicare and the taxpayers billions of dollars. One major concern I have about this bill is our inability to adequately address our health services and training needs and simultaneously provide generous increases for health research. I am pleased that we have included nearly $1 billion additional for NIH, a total of over $13.5 billion, for medical research. But I am concerned that most health services programs received small or no funding increases. We just cannot continue to have this battle between the challenge to adequately fund biomedical research, which we have to meet, and the lack of increased funding for health services programs and training. Now, I will not go into it at length here--I have given many speeches on the floor about this--but I feel strongly that the money we provide for biomedical research must come from outside of the discretionary pot of money we have. Mr. President, during this session of the Congress, the Senate went on record 99 to nothing to double the funding for NIH over the next 5 years--99 to nothing. In other words, 99 Senators stood up and voted and said, yes, we should double funding for NIH in the next 5 years. Now, if we did that within the constraints of the balanced budget agreement, with the pot of money that our committee has, at the end of this 5-year period of time there wouldn't be one penny for any other discretionary health program. In other words, the Senate has said 99 to nothing we want to double NIH funding. OK, if we do it through our Appropriations Committee, through the discretionary money that we have, there will not be anything left for any other health program. There would be no Centers for Disease Control, no Ryan White funding, no health training funding, nothing. That would all have to be zeroed out, and we still would not have enough money to double NIH funding. So if we are really serious, and I hope we are, about doubling NIH funding over the next 5 years, then we have to find some source of funding that is outside of the normal appropriations process. I am also concerned that our agreement does not adequately assure that the rerun of the Teamsters election will be supervised. I think that is vitally important. This bill does not adequately assure that. I am hopeful that is eventually what will happen. It is a commitment that we cannot back away from. I am hopeful that we can take some steps, when the Congress comes back in January and February, to make sure that the next Teamster election is in fact supervised. But overall, as I have said, this is a very good agreement. It is a bipartisan agreement that deserves our support. I again compliment Senator Specter and his staff and mine for a job well done. I want to specifically thank Craig Higgins, Betilou Taylor, Jim Sourwine, Dale Cabaniss, and Jack Chow of the majority staff and Marsha Simon and Ellen Murray of my staff. In addition, I want to thank Bev Schroeder, Laura Hessburg, and Peter Reinecke of my personal staff for their contributions. Mr. President, I urge all Senators give wholehearted support to this conference agreement. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. How much time does Senator Specter have remaining?

Mr. HARKIN. I yield 5 minutes off Senator Specter's time to the Senator from Alabama.