Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire for her great leadership on the subject about which she just spoke; that is, the necessity of moving beyond our old system of having appropriations bills every year. I have advocated, for a long time, exactly what she is taking the lead on; that is, every 2 years do the appropriations and then we can do oversight. As the Senator from New Hampshire correctly pointed out, we don't do oversight because we are always wrapped up in some appropriations measure or budget measure every single year. It is time we move and move as rapidly as possible to biennial budgeting so we can fulfill one of our most important obligations, which is to find out what is working and what is not working so we can have oversight. I thank my colleague from New Hampshire for her leadership in this area. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Just make sure I am on your bill, OK?

Mr. HARKIN. Put my name in because you are right on--and Senator Isakson. It is a bipartisan effort and it should be a bipartisan effort. I talked to a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who believe the same way we do about this. Hopefully, we can have a good, bipartisan approach. I wish to take a few moments to talk about the budget and what we are confronting right now in the Congress. First of all, we all agree--I think we should all agree--the deficits we have now are unsustainable. They are a drag on our economy, they jeopardize our future, and they have to be brought under control. I am committed to finding a bipartisan approach to try to get us through this and to attain this important goal of bringing the budget under control and balanced for the future. I might just say for the last three decades, I have been proud that my party, the Democratic Party, has been the party of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets. Well, that may come as a shock to some people, but let's review the history. When Bill Clinton became President in 1992, he inherited at that time the largest deficits in U.S. history. Well, he joined with Democrats in Congress to pass a balanced deficit reduction law that resulted in the largest surpluses in history and put us on a path, by the year 2000, to completely eliminate the national debt within a decade. I was here for that. Every single Republican voted against it, every single one. Likewise, President Obama inherited from President Bush a deficit in excess of--are you ready for this one--$1 trillion and a deep recession that made it even worse. Once again, we Democrats are committed to bringing this under control and to do it in a fair and balanced way. But as a former President once said: Here we go again. In December, my friends on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, insisted that we extend tax cuts largely benefitting the wealthy, add $354 billion to the deficit this year, and even more next year. Then they voted to repeal the health reform law on the House side, which would add $210 billion to the deficit over the next decade. Now these same people are shedding crocodile tears and claiming to be worried about the deficit. Let's be clear. There is a right way to balance the budget and there is a wrong way. We can balance the budget in a way that is fair or we can do it in a way that is manifestly not fair, that will deepen the gulf between the rich and the poor and further erode the middle class in our country. H.R. 1, which I assume we will be voting on shortly, embodies the Republican approach to reducing deficits, driven by ideology that absolutely rules out any tax increase. It kind of holds the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy to be almost sacred. Instead, they take a meat ax to the essential parts of the budget, everything from cancer research to education to safety net programs for our most vulnerable citizens. Well, we have seen this movie before--you know, give tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest people in our society. Then balance the budget on the backs of the middle class and low-income in America. These are bad priorities, they are bad policies, and they are bad values. The right way is a balanced approach. This must include spending cuts. We have made cuts in my own appropriations bill. But it also includes necessary revenue increases while making room for critical investments in education, job training, infrastructure, research, things that are essential to economic expansion and job creation in the future. We know this balanced budget approach can work. As I said, that is what we did in the early 1990s under President Clinton. We did both. We cut spending and we raised revenues. As I said, every Republican voted against it. But that single act of Congress, that bill signed by the President, led to the largest budget surplus and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history and created 22 million new jobs. Now, H.R. 1, which has come over from the House, their approach on how to bring the budget under control, will kill jobs. Mark Zandi, top economic adviser to Senator McCain's campaign in 2008, estimates H.R. 1 will kill some 700,000 jobs. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke estimates it will kill 200,000 jobs. Nobody knows for sure. But what they all agree on is it will kill jobs. With about 9 percent unemployment, a fragile economy--we are just now starting to increase employment in this country--why would we be asked to vote for a bill that we know, that everyone agrees, will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs? Well, we do not reduce the deficit by increasing unemployment. That is what H.R. 1 will do. It will slow economic growth, drag us back into a recession, and make deficits even worse. H.R. 1 slashes the entire gamut of education programs that are so essential to provide a ladder of opportunity for our younger generation in this country. It slashes the safety net for our most vulnerable citizens--infants, children, seniors, and people with disabilities. So if you vote for H.R. 1, the House bill, you are voting to slash title I grants to school districts by nearly $700 million. It means that 2,400 schools serving 1 million disadvantaged students could lose funding. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash community health centers by about $1 billion. That means you eliminate funding for 127 clinics in 38 States. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash Head Start Programs. Why would you want to take it out on kids? Why would you want to say: Oh, we have to balance the budget so we are going after Head Start kids? But that is what it does. It eliminates services for about 218,000 children and their families next year, about a 25-percent reduction in Head Start. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash childcare. The child care development block grant would be cut by H.R. 1. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to undermine Social Security. Well, people say: How is that? Social Security is not involved in H.R. 1. Well, it is in this way: We know because of the recession more and more people have applied for SSI, supplemental security income. They have applied for disability. They have gone on disability or basically they have just retired. Well, in order to take care of this huge increase in the number of people applying, we have to have people who will take the cases in, review them, make sure people are eligible, cut the checks, and get the money out. That is called the Social Security Administration. Well, H.R. 1 cuts the funding for doing this $125 million below last year's funding level. That means every American filing for benefits this year will have to wait even longer. Right now, it is almost 400-and-some days. That is over a year. That is over a year. Think about if you are on disability, if you are disabled and you cannot work and you filed for a disability claim. You are waiting a year and a half in order to even get your first check. Well, H.R. 1 would cut it even more and would probably increase waiting times up to 2 years or maybe even more than 2 years. So it undermines the safety net of Social Security. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash student aid. It cuts the maximum Pell grant by $845. That is 15 percent below where we are now. You might say: Well, that is not that big a deal. Well, it is. I tell Senators, check two things. Check with your private not-for-profit schools in your States. They do a great job of educating low-income students because they are able to utilize Pell grants plus endowments. They put them together. They do a great job in every one of our States educating poor kids. Start taking away that Pell grant, we lower that Pell grant, that means a lot of poor kids will not be able to go to school. That means the private non-profits would have to raise the tuition on other kids. That means some of them would not be able to go, and we start an escalator effect in our colleges. I just had the President of the University of Iowa, President Mason, in to see me today talking about one of our great universities in Iowa, the University of Iowa. She told me, President Mason said that cutting Pell grants would affect probably close to 5,000 students at the University of Iowa. Sometimes this is the difference between whether they are in school or they are not in school or it could be the difference between a Pell grant or they have to go out and borrow more money and take on more debt. So if you vote for H.R. 1, you are cutting student aid. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are going to slash job training programs. The House bill that came over, H.R. 1, completely eliminates Federal funding for adult training, dislocated worker assistance and youth training programs, completely eliminates it. These programs provide job training and reemployment services to about 8 million Americans every year, 8 million. They just do away with it. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash the community services block grant. Well, they cut about $305 million from that. That provides services to some of our lowest income people and elderly. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to cut investments in infrastructure, highway funding, sewer and drinking water funds, and rural economic development funding because H.R. 1 slashes community development block grants by 62 percent. Now, I say go out and talk to your mayors, talk to your city council, talk to your boards of supervisors in your counties. Ask them if they can take a 62-percent cut in their community development block grants and what it is going to mean to them. Well, I cannot help but also speak to my own constituents in Iowa about what this means for my own State. If H.R. 1, the House bill which passed the House, if it were to be passed and enacted into law--well, I mentioned about the cuts that we are having in the Job Corps. It would basically kill the Denison, IA, Job Corps Center, which employs 163 people. It provides training to 450 at-risk students each year, and we have a new Job Corps Center just being built, just being opened in Ottumwa. That will probably just come to a screeching halt. It is supposed to be opening later this year. It would shut down at least the community health center in Centerville, IA. That is H.R. 1. H.R. 1 would be cutting down the community services block grant and would shut down the Red Rock Community Action Agency serving Boone, Jasper, Warren, Marion, and rural Polk County. H.R. 1, as I mentioned, would completely eliminate funding for job training programs, which assisted more than 35,000 Iowans in the last year. As I mentioned, it would slash Pell grants for our kids who go to all of our colleges in Iowa, the private not-for-profits and our Regents institutions. Two thousand low-income Iowa kids who now attend Head Start would be cut off. Lastly, it is not only just the cuts and the slashes to these vital programs which will increase unemployment and send us back into another recession, there are riders in this bill, what we call legislative riders, that are pernicious. They do terrible damage to our country. For example--just one--there is a rider in the bill that says no money can be used or spent to continue the implementation of the health reform bill that we passed last year. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means right now, in law, because of the Affordable Care Act we passed last year, kids can stay on their parents' policy until they are age 26. That would be gone. The question would be, the ones who got on before this, will they be able to stay on? But I can tell you, no new kids would ever be allowed to stay on their parents' policy until they are age 26. We put in--and as you know, it is in law right now--that an insurance company cannot impose a lifetime limit on individuals. That was in the bill last year. That would be gone. They can start reinstituting lifetime limits and annual limits. Also we had a provision in the bill that provided for a medical loss provision. Let me try to explain that. In our bill we said insurers and health insurance companies have to pay at least 80 cents of every dollar of premium they collect on health care rather than profits, bonuses, overhead, fancy buildings, and corporate jets and all of that. They had to pay--80 cents of every premium dollar has to go for health care. It is done away with under H.R. 1. We cannot enforce that at all. So, again, for those who have seen benefits to themselves from the health care bill we passed, whether it is keeping their kids on their policy or elderly people now who get free mammograms and free colonoscopies and a free health checkup every year with no copays, no deductibles, that ends. That ends with H.R. 1. So the bill passed by the House is just, as I said, bad policy, and it is bad values. It is not the values of our country, and I hope the Senate will resoundingly--resoundingly--defeat H.R. 1, consign it to the scrap heap of history, the history of ill-advised ideas, of ill- advised programs. There have been a lot of them that have come along in the history of this country. Fortunately, I think the Congress in most instances has turned them down, and we moved ahead. We can't afford to go backward. H.R. 1 would do that. It would take this country back. We would lose jobs. It would cut kids out of getting an education, close down Head Start centers. It would widen that gulf between the rich and the poor. We can't continue to go down that road. We don't want to wind up another Third World country where we have a few at the top and everybody at the bottom and nobody in between. The middle class built this country, and we cannot continue to erode the middle class. That is what H.R. 1 would do, erode the middle class and widen the gulf between the rich and poor. I hope the Senate will recognize H.R. 1 for what it is, a detriment, a body blow to our recovery efforts. I hope the Senate will resoundingly defeat it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, I commit to working with the Senator. I commit to the Senators that we will specifically allocate in the CR that will pass the Senate the amount of funds that are necessary to ensure a smooth transition in July.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senators. The Senator is absolutely correct, the 2011 continuing resolution that was proposed by Senator Inouye will not reduce any services or treatment available to responders in the World Trade Center Health Program. In fact, we have been assured by the staff at HHS that there are sufficient funds for treatment and screening of the responders and victims to continue without interruption.

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, the $70.7 million provided to the program in the fiscal year 2010 omnibus remains available to NIOSH to use until expended. It is our understanding that $13 million remains of that $70.7 million and that it will be used to continue access to the program.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to join with Senators Klobuchar and Franken to reintroduce the Federal Response to Eliminating Eating Disorders Act, or the FREED Act. The FREED Act is a comprehensive legislative effort to confront eating disorders in the United States, to learn more about their devastating impact, and to offer support and care to those who suffer from these illnesses. Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are widespread, insidious, and too often fatal. Today, at least 5 million Americans suffer from eating disorders. Because these conditions often go undiagnosed and unreported, the actual number may be closer to 11 million Americans, including 1 million males. These disorders don't discriminate by gender, race, income, or age. Eating disorders are dangerous conditions, though their consequences are often underestimated. Eating disorders are associated with serious heart conditions, kidney failure, osteoporosis, infertility, gastrointestinal disorders, and even death. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one in 10 people with anorexia nervosa will die of starvation, cardiac arrest, or some other medical complication. Let me repeat that--one in 10. That is deeply disturbing, and demands a much more aggressive federal response. Moreover, fatalities resulting from eating disorders are grossly underreported, because deaths are typically recorded by listing the immediate cause of death, such as cardiac arrest, rather than the underlying cause, which is the eating disorder. Nonetheless, despite the prevalence and very serious health impacts of eating disorders, we simply do not know enough about the causes of eating disorders, or how to stop them from developing in the first place. Research suggests a genetic component to eating disorders, but we must learn more in order to effectively prevent these deadly conditions before they start. The good news is that eating disorders are treatable. With appropriate nutritional, medical, and psychotherapeutic interventions, those who suffer from eating disorders can be successfully and fully treated and go on to live full and healthy lives. But right now, only one in 10 people receive treatment. We know how to help people with eating disorders and we need a renewed commitment to do just that. The FREED Act takes an important step forward in authorizing resources for research, screening, treatment, and prevention of eating disorders. First, the FREED Act expands research efforts at the National Institutes of Health to examine the causes and consequences of eating disorders. In order to effectively prevent and treat these conditions, it is imperative that we understand them. The FREED Act also improves surveillance and data collection systems at CDC so that we will have accurate information and epidemiological data on eating disorders. Such surveillance will provide us with the necessary information to be as effective as possible with our interventions. Second, the FREED Act expands access to treatment services and screening for eating disorders for Medicaid beneficiaries, and authorizes funds for a patient advocacy network that will help individuals with eating disorders find treatment. Furthermore, the FREED Act improves the training and education of health care providers and educators so they know how to identify and treat individuals suffering from eating disorders. Too often, eating disorders go undiagnosed when health care providers lack the necessary training to identify these illnesses. Finally, we need to step up crucial efforts to prevent these disorders from occurring in the first place. As I have said so many times, we don't have a genuine health care system in America; we have a sick care system. In other words, if you get sick, you get treatment. But we spend just pennies on the dollar to prevent disease and illness in the first place and need to place a much more robust emphasis on wellness, nutrition, physical activity, and public health. With this in mind, the FREED Act authorizes funds to develop and implement evidence- based prevention programs and promote healthy eating behaviors in schools, athletic programs, and other community-based programs, where we can reach Americans at risk of developing these conditions. Eating disorders touch the lives of so many of us and our families and friends; nearly half of all Americans personally know someone with an eating disorder. We must do a better job at the federal level of conducting research, understanding treatment, and preventing these conditions. The FREED Act builds on the investments we made in prevention, wellness, and mental health in the Affordable Care Act and mental health parity. Millions of American will benefit from our attention to this significant public health problem. I thank Senators Klobuchar and Franken for partnering with me on the reintroduction of this bill, and urge our colleagues to join us in supporting this important federal response to eating disorders. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to join with Senators Klobuchar and Franken to reintroduce the Federal Response to Eliminating Eating Disorders Act, or the FREED Act. The FREED Act is a comprehensive legislative effort to confront eating disorders in the United States, to learn more about their devastating impact, and to offer support and care to those who suffer from these illnesses. Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are widespread, insidious, and too often fatal. Today, at least 5 million Americans suffer from eating disorders. Because these conditions often go undiagnosed and unreported, the actual number may be closer to 11 million Americans, including 1 million males. These disorders don't discriminate by gender, race, income, or age. Eating disorders are dangerous conditions, though their consequences are often underestimated. Eating disorders are associated with serious heart conditions, kidney failure, osteoporosis, infertility, gastrointestinal disorders, and even death. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one in 10 people with anorexia nervosa will die of starvation, cardiac arrest, or some other medical complication. Let me repeat that--one in 10. That is deeply disturbing, and demands a much more aggressive federal response. Moreover, fatalities resulting from eating disorders are grossly underreported, because deaths are typically recorded by listing the immediate cause of death, such as cardiac arrest, rather than the underlying cause, which is the eating disorder. Nonetheless, despite the prevalence and very serious health impacts of eating disorders, we simply do not know enough about the causes of eating disorders, or how to stop them from developing in the first place. Research suggests a genetic component to eating disorders, but we must learn more in order to effectively prevent these deadly conditions before they start. The good news is that eating disorders are treatable. With appropriate nutritional, medical, and psychotherapeutic interventions, those who suffer from eating disorders can be successfully and fully treated and go on to live full and healthy lives. But right now, only one in 10 people receive treatment. We know how to help people with eating disorders and we need a renewed commitment to do just that. The FREED Act takes an important step forward in authorizing resources for research, screening, treatment, and prevention of eating disorders. First, the FREED Act expands research efforts at the National Institutes of Health to examine the causes and consequences of eating disorders. In order to effectively prevent and treat these conditions, it is imperative that we understand them. The FREED Act also improves surveillance and data collection systems at CDC so that we will have accurate information and epidemiological data on eating disorders. Such surveillance will provide us with the necessary information to be as effective as possible with our interventions. Second, the FREED Act expands access to treatment services and screening for eating disorders for Medicaid beneficiaries, and authorizes funds for a patient advocacy network that will help individuals with eating disorders find treatment. Furthermore, the FREED Act improves the training and education of health care providers and educators so they know how to identify and treat individuals suffering from eating disorders. Too often, eating disorders go undiagnosed when health care providers lack the necessary training to identify these illnesses. Finally, we need to step up crucial efforts to prevent these disorders from occurring in the first place. As I have said so many times, we don't have a genuine health care system in America; we have a sick care system. In other words, if you get sick, you get treatment. But we spend just pennies on the dollar to prevent disease and illness in the first place and need to place a much more robust emphasis on wellness, nutrition, physical activity, and public health. With this in mind, the FREED Act authorizes funds to develop and implement evidence- based prevention programs and promote healthy eating behaviors in schools, athletic programs, and other community-based programs, where we can reach Americans at risk of developing these conditions. Eating disorders touch the lives of so many of us and our families and friends; nearly half of all Americans personally know someone with an eating disorder. We must do a better job at the federal level of conducting research, understanding treatment, and preventing these conditions. The FREED Act builds on the investments we made in prevention, wellness, and mental health in the Affordable Care Act and mental health parity. Millions of American will benefit from our attention to this significant public health problem. I thank Senators Klobuchar and Franken for partnering with me on the reintroduction of this bill, and urge our colleagues to join us in supporting this important federal response to eating disorders. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this has nothing to do with OSHA and the cockpit at all. Frankly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the people who work in the airline industry, people who handle the airplanes, flight attendants, have one of the highest rates of accidents and illnesses in any part of the private sector. What happened is Congress urged the FAA to consult with OSHA about workplace safety. They entered into a memorandum of understanding. All this bill says is that FAA should consult with OSHA, work together to increase workplace safety in the airline industry. OSHA will have no regulatory power, they will have no subpoena power, they cannot issue citations, they cannot get in the cockpit. FAA merely consults with them. FAA still retains all of their authority, and it will not change in any way the way airline safety is regulated. FAA will continue to keep all of that authority. It will be the sole purview of the FAA. In addition, by terms of this memorandum of understanding, the FAA will not adopt any OSHA standard unless there is no impact on airline security. So that is a nonissue. Keeping OSHA out of the cockpit--OSHA is not about to get into the cockpit. What we do want to do is to have the FAA get the best expertise and advice on what they should do for safety around our airplanes and in our airports. Mr. President, I move to table the Paul amendment No. 18. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in accordance with Rule XXVI.2 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the rules of procedure for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, as unanimously adopted by the committee on February 16, 2011.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions I report favorably the following nomination list which was printed in the Record on the date indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that this nomination lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes, if I can. I listened carefully to the statement of my friend, the Senator from Maine. Frankly, I wonder if we are in parallel worlds and we are talking about the same thing but in a different context. My friend, the Senator from Maine, seems to be ignoring the very careful limitations that TSA has placed on collective bargaining rights. For example, under the provisions of TSA, the transportation security officers cannot bargain over pay. They cannot bargain over pay. They cannot bargain over deployment procedures--who works where. The Senator mentioned the incident involving Great Britain; they had to train people overnight. Well, they cannot bargain on training either. That is not part of the bargaining rights they would have. The Senator mentioned about the deployment of people to Denver because of a blizzard. Well, deployment procedures, who works where, is not again subject to collective bargaining. Emergency response measures, that was the one dealing with Great Britain. On emergency response measures, who goes where, how long they have to be there for an emergency response, is not negotiable. It is not part of the collective bargaining agreement. So I am at a loss to understand what the Senator from Maine was talking about. They cannot bargain over emergency response procedures, deployments or other security issues. So, again, this is not something that is part of the collective bargaining agreement. Last week, the Transportation Security Administration said--the Administrator, John Pistole, testifying before the House subcommittee, said that the employee morale is a security issue--employee morale. Why did he say that? A recent survey ranked TSA 220 out of 224 Federal employers as the best place to work. In other words, 224 would be the worst place to work in the Federal Government. TSA was rated at 220. They have a high turnover rate, they have a high injury rate, and extremely low morale. So what we are trying to do is give them that boost in morale. Here is what the TSA Administrator said last week: The safety of the traveling public is our top priority, and we will not negotiate on security. But morale and employee engagement cannot be separated from achieving superior security. While some of my colleagues have suggested that providing collective bargaining rights could jeopardize security, nothing could be further from the truth. Unionized security personnel are just as effective, dedicated, and willing to put their lives on the line in an emergency. I point out, for example, Border Patrol personnel have collective bargaining rights. Immigration and Customs officials have collective bargaining rights. Our Capitol police officers who protect us have collective bargaining rights. Why should TSOs be any different? To suggest that unionized security personnel are somehow less effective, less dedicated, less willing to put their lives on the line in an emergency I believe is an insult to every man and woman in uniform in this country who works under a collective bargaining agreement. I only need to remind everyone, remember 9/11. Remember that image of all the people in New York running away from those towers as they came down, the thousands of people running away from that calamity, and the picture was of other people running into it--our police, our firefighters, our emergency personnel, who not only risked their lives but gave their lives to help save people in that tragedy. Every single one of them, every firefighter, every policeman, the emergency personnel, were all union people, belonged to a union with collective bargaining rights. Yet look at what they did during that emergency. So, again, I think it is important to add that under this agreement, they get limited collective bargaining rights. They cannot bargain over security procedures and policies, deployment, disciplinary standards or ``any action deemed necessary by the administrator or his or her designees to carry out the agency mission during emergencies.'' They cannot negotiate on that. So, again, we just want to help raise the morale there, to give these people bargaining rights so----

Mr. HARKIN. I yield myself 1 additional minute.

Mr. HARKIN. Here is what they can bargain on: grievance procedures-- that helps on morale--nonemergency scheduling--that helps on morale-- awards and recognitions, uniforms, bidding on shifts and procedures used for how they bid on shifts--who gets the 2 a.m. shift, who gets the 7 a.m. shift--all nonemergency types of situations. This will help give them better morale and will help in terms of ensuring security. Do not take my word for it. Take the Administrator's word for it, Administrator John Pistole, who said this will help ensure the safety of the traveling public. I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. HARKIN. I just ask for 30 seconds. I gave him 2 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. I just gave him 2 minutes. I did not object.

Mr. HARKIN. Would the Senator yield? How much time is remaining?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, listening to my friend from Mississippi talk about deficits--and we have to be concerned about deficits. The first thing on which they cannot bargain is pay. That is not something they can bargain on. Generally, Federal employees do not bargain on pay, I might add. So I do not know what that means. I mean, he is talking about deficits, but they cannot bargain about pay anyway. Then he talked about the FBI and the CIA and the Secret Service, that they did not collectively bargain. Those agencies all deal with very highly sensitive national security information. What are we talking about here? We are talking about the people who check your bags. We are talking about the people at screenings and who do the patdowns, but we are also talking about an agency that has one of the highest turnovers of any Federal agency. I do not want a high turnover rate among those people at the airport. I want them to be highly skilled, highly trained, highly motivated. I want a good morale system there. Everyone says it is one of the lowest in terms of morale and has one of the highest turnovers of any Federal agency. Giving these people the right to organize and to bargain collectively on things that are not of national security measures--not pay, not emergency procedures, but other things that make life a little bit better for them so they know basically: What is the procedure for me being posted here, what is the procedure for me working at 2 a.m. or 7 a.m., so they have a system whereby they know what is expected of them--to me, that is the way to build morale. Lastly----

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to discuss for a few moments a few amendments that are pending that I think would undermine the basic rights and protections of American workers. In these difficult economic times, working families are struggling enough. Wages are stagnant. In fact, I saw a report the other day that, in real terms, if you take inflation into account, wages right now for working men and women are about where they were in 1974--almost 40 years. Job security is harder to find. More and more companies facing financial pressures are deciding to cut corners on fundamentals such as worker safety. Now more than ever, workers need the basic protections our laws provide. The last thing we need to do is take a step backward and make working people even more vulnerable than they are today, especially in terms of their safety and health. That is exactly what the Wicker amendment and the Paul amendment would do for two groups of very dedicated people--flight crews and transportation security officers who work every day to keep us safe when we travel. First, the Paul amendment would undermine valuable safety and health protections for flight crews. I do not think it would come as a surprise to any of us that working on an airplane could be a dangerous job. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, flight attendants, as well as other employees in the air transportation industry, suffer occupational injuries and illnesses at rates far higher than workers in nearly every other sector of private industry. This industry raises unique safety challenges, and we need to make special efforts to keep these workers safe on the job. The Federal Aviation Administration regulates all workplace safety issues on airplanes. However, at Congress's urging, FAA has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that is supposed to facilitate consultation and coordination between the two agencies about safety issues. This is entirely appropriate since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has the expertise in this area. But that coordination has not been effective in recent years. While a 2000 OSHA/FAA report identified areas where flight crew safety could be improved, after that report, coordination essentially stopped, and the FAA has failed to take additional action to review and implement the recommended workplace safety standards. The bill we are considering on the floor would restore and improve the level of coordination between the FAA and OSHA so that they can complete the valuable work outlined in that memorandum of understanding. It would basically require the two agencies to put their heads together and consider whether any OSHA standards should properly be applied to people working on aircrafts. I wish to be very clear on this point. The bill does not supplant FAA's authority. OSHA would not be conducting investigations or issuing fines for FAA-covered employees. That is the sole purview of the FAA. All the bill says is that the two agencies should continue to talk and to coordinate. This seems to be eminently sensible. It simply defies explanation to preclude this kind of coordination, and it could put workers' lives and workers' safety at risk. For example, flight crews are currently exposed to a variety of dangerous chemicals, including jet fuel vapors, compressed oxygen, commercial cleaning agents, deicing chemicals. Yet there is no current rule requiring that the employees be informed of hazardous materials in their workplace. OSHA has a safety standard about hazard communication requiring that workers be informed of such hazardous materials. This simple, easy-to- comply-with standard saves workers' lives. The 2000 report I referred to earlier found that FAA could implement the OSHA standard on hazard communication without any implications for flight safety. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing. Despite finding that the OSHA standard could improve safety for airline employees and that it would not impact aviation safety, the cooperative effort stalled in its tracks. This bill would resuscitate that cooperation. This is just one of a number of important reforms that would improve workplace safety without compromising flight safety. Hard-working flight attendants and other flight crew workers deserve our best efforts to make these reforms a reality. Again, I wish to make one point very clear. The legislation does not change or undermine FAA's role at all. It simply fosters cooperation between two government agencies--one that has a lot of technical expertise, the other one which has the jurisdiction. Again, I think this would be something where one would say: Sure, they should cooperate and communicate. The amendment before us would undermine a common sense practice--collaboration between agencies--and would make people less safe on the job. I urge my colleagues to protect the safety of our workers by opposing this amendment. I am equally concerned about the impact the amendment by Senators Wicker and Collins would have on the hard-working people who keep our airports and planes safe. I have spoken about this amendment before. I would like to bring it up again. In legislation creating the Transportation Security Administration, TSA, Congress gave TSA the right to determine whether transportation security officers, TSOs, have the right to collectively bargain. Those are the people we see every time we go through the airport. They check our IDs. They run the machines and check our bags. These are the transportation safety officers. The Transportation Security Administration found that collective bargaining could improve security by addressing the agency's chronic low morale and employee engagement. However, certain subjects remain off limits for bargaining, including pay, deployment, training, and any TSA emergency response measures. Right now, the TSOs, under what the TSA wanted to do, would be allowed to collectively bargain but for those certain items. As I said, they could not collectively bargain on pay or deployment or training or emergency response measures. As I mentioned when I previously addressed this issue on the Senate floor, a recent ``best places to work'' survey ranked the TSA 220 out of 224 Federal employers. The agency's turnover and injury rates are among the highest for any Federal agency. Low morale and high turnover at a front-line security agency are a recipe for disaster. TSA determined that collective bargaining will address those problems and improve the agency's ability to fulfill its mission. The TSA's decision is well reasoned and sound. It states that a ``one-size-fits- all model of labor relations that undermines initiative and flexibility would not serve TSA or its workforce well.'' That is exactly what this amendment by Senators Wicker and Collins would do. It would lock into place one model of labor relations--the most adversarial model--that is most harmful to employee morale. As I just said, we know employee morale at the TSO level is very low, and there is a very high turnover rate. While my colleagues who support this amendment cite concerns about disruptions to security procedures, the agency believes--and I agree-- that those concerns are misguided. First and foremost, I question the assumption underlying this concern: that men and women who take a job protecting our Nation would cast that duty aside if they were granted basic labor concessions such as collective bargaining. I think that is an insult to every man and woman in uniform who works under collective bargaining agreements across this country. To suggest unionized security personnel are somehow less effective, less dedicated, less willing to put their lives on the line in an emergency is just plain scandalous. Most Federal security employees, including Border Patrol personnel, Immigration and Customs officials, our Capitol police officers who protect us, Federal Protective Services officers--they all have collective bargaining rights. I always point out that famous picture of September 11, 2001, when that awful tragedy happened in New York and those buildings came down and we saw the thousands of people running away from this disaster and the buildings falling down, while running into the buildings were our police, our firefighters, and our emergency personnel. Those workers were members of a union and covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Did they shirk their duty? Did they shirk their responsibility? Not a bit. We are proud of them. Why should TSOs be any different? Again, the exclusion of deployment and training and emergency response measures from bargaining will prevent any disruptions to security procedures. I firmly believe collective bargaining is the best way to bring dignity, consistency, and fairness to a workplace. It will make our TSO workforce safer and more stable. Restoring these essential rights is long overdue. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Wicker-Collins amendment. Finally, while I think it is critically important that the bill we are considering must not be a vehicle for rolling back worker protections, I regret that it will not be a vehicle to correct an outrageous attack on workers' rights that was enacted on this legislation in 1996. In a rider to the 1996 FAA reauthorization bill, Congress made it harder for employees of an express carrier to organize a union in order to unfairly advantage one company--FedEx Express. The bill carved out employees of an express carrier delivery company--which meant only one company: FedEx--from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act and placed them under the Railway Labor Act. As a result, it is much more difficult for FedEx employees to organize and bargain collectively. What is the difference? Under the National Labor Relations Act, workers can act locally in seeking to organize and bargain collectively. Under the Railway Labor Act, workers must organize nationally--an enormous challenge in today's labor environment, especially for workers who do not necessarily work in mobile industries. Under the current law, if package sorters in Des Moines, for example, want to organize a union, they would have to go to New York and Georgia and Texas and California to get every warehouse worker in the country to join them, which is obviously extremely difficult. This quirk in the law is not only illogical, it is the worst kind of political favoritism. Why do I say that? Obviously because one of the biggest competitors of FedEx is United Parcel Service. United Parcel Service is under the National Labor Relations Act. Not every single one of their employees is unionized, but they are allowed to organize and bargain collectively locally. In certain States that are covered by union shop, then they would all be covered. In a State such as Iowa, which is a right-to-work State, some of the employees of United Parcel Service would be members of a union and some would not. But they would all be covered by a collective bargaining agreement. United Parcel Service workers, doing the same exact job as FedEx workers, can organize and bargain collectively locally. FedEx workers cannot because they are under the Railway Labor Act, not the National Labor Relations Act. That was a rider to this bill in 1996 to favor one company. Again, identical jobs for FedEx and another company, different rights under the law--that is unfair. Congress should ensure that companies compete on a level playing field. We should not be picking favorites, especially not by silencing the voices of employees of one company. In past Congresses, I have introduced legislation to eliminate this special treatment and ensure that employees who have nothing to do with air transport have all the rights they are entitled to under the National Labor Relations Act. There are tens of thousands of truckdrivers and warehouse employees who have nothing to do with airline travel, and the rules of the game are rigged against them. I had hoped this bill would provide an opportunity to right these past wrongs, but I know it is important to complete our work on the FAA reauthorization in short order. This bill will create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It will make crucial investments in our Nation's infrastructure. As a pilot myself--and my friend from Oklahoma has been flying even longer than I have, I think, but we have both been flying for a long time--I have been waiting for the NextGen to come on board because it will enhance flight safety and make it a lot easier for our general aviation pilots to fly in this environment and it is important to get the bill done. So that is why I support the bill. Again, I had hoped we would address this inequity that exists as regards the Federal Express, but we did not, so we will have to carry on the battle on another bill on another day. It is just an issue of fundamental fairness for workers, so I expect that we will revisit this again in the future. I thank my friend from Oklahoma for being so patient, and I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. If my friend would yield just for a second, I would just tell him the first plane I owned had an old--I called it a coffee grinder in it, you would get the ANN--annuls--and that would take you into the airport. So I can remember those days quite well. Thank God we have GPS now.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair so that we may welcome the Prime Minister of Slovenia and guests on the Senate floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ashley Waddell, David Kerem, and Brian Burroughs of my staff be granted the privileges of the floor during the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today we are honored to have as our guest the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, the Honorable Borut Pahor. He is the sixth Prime Minister since Slovenia won independence in 1991. As many of my colleagues know, the Republic of Slovenia holds a very special place in my heart. My mother came to America from the village of Siha in what is now Slovenia nearly 90 years ago, and I have been tremendously impressed with the great strides Slovenia has made since breaking away from the former Yugoslavia. For the last 2 years, Prime Minister Pahor with great skill has continued to lead his nation on a successful course of democratic and free market economics. So make no mistake, the success of independent Slovenia, like the success of the young American Republic two centuries ago, was no accident. It was secured by visionary leaders and by a determined people. Nine decades ago, my mother left Slovenia--a Slovenia that was impoverished, ruled by autocrats, and dominated by foreign powers; a nation that sent forth immigrants desperate to find a better life. Today, a free, prosperous, and democratic Slovenia sends forth statesmen, diplomats, and humanitarians helping to build a better world. Again, on behalf of the Senate, I welcome our honored guest, Prime Minister Pahor.