Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I regret to say I will be voting against the nomination of Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Treasury Secretary in the new Obama administration. I say ``regret'' because I believe strongly that, save extraordinary circumstances, any President should have the right to select his own team and because I believe Mr. Geithner is a person of obvious talent and experience. I certainly bear no ill will toward him on a personal basis whatsoever. Moreover, I know President Obama believes Mr. Geithner is the best person for the job, and it pains me to go against the President's wishes on this matter. However, after careful deliberation, I simply have not been able to overcome my very serious reservations about this nominee. As Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner would oversee the Internal Revenue Service and would be responsible for ensuring that Americans pay their taxes as required by law. Yet it has come to light that while he was serving as a senior official at the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Geithner failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. He has stated this was an innocent mistake and that there was no intent to deliberately avoid paying the required taxes. However, the IMF informs us that in order to avoid exactly this kind of situation, its U.S. citizen employees are fully informed of their obligation to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes and must sign a form acknowledging that they understand this obligation. Moreover, the IMF gives its U.S. citizen employees quarterly wage statements that detail their U.S. tax liabilities. The IMF pays its U.S. citizen employees an amount equal to the employer's half of the payroll taxes with the expectation that the individual will use that money to pay the IRS. So a serious question is raised as to how a person of Mr. Geithner's financial sophistication could run the gauntlet of these many warnings and quarterly reminders and still somehow innocently overlook his obligation to pay these payroll taxes. I am also troubled by the fact that when the IRS audited Mr. Geithner in 2006 and discovered that he had not paid his payroll taxes from 2001 to 2004, he, Mr. Geithner, repaid the taxes only for 2003 and 2004. After that audit, he chose not to repay the taxes for 2001 and 2002, years for which the statute of limitations had expired. Surely, if the failure to pay the payroll tax was an innocent mistake and oversight, then Mr. Geithner would have been eager to make amends by willingly paying the payroll taxes for 2001 and 2002, regardless of the statute of limitations. But he chose not to do so until he learned he was going to be nominated for Treasury Secretary. Given this record of failing to pay taxes, if confirmed as Treasury Secretary, how could Mr. Geithner speak with any credibility or authority as the Nation's chief tax enforcer? Would his admonition be: Do as I say, not as I do? That is not acceptable. Unfortunately, on another point, Mr. Geithner has been equally unwilling to accept responsibility with regard to his role in the current financial meltdown. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr. Geithner was a key regulator of the large, mostly New York-based financial institutions that have been at the center of this meltdown. Their reckless practices--reckless practices--have brought America's financial system to its knees, pitching our economy into what could be the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression. I am specifically concerned about Mr. Geithner's history vis-a-vis Citigroup, which has now received $52 billion in taxpayer money. As a regulator of Citigroup, Mr. Geithner made a number of troubling decisions that relaxed oversight of Citigroup, including, one, lifting a prohibition against Citigroup's acquiring new firms; second, ending the requirement that Citigroup file quarterly risk management reports; and third, allowing Citigroup to use ``hybrid capital,'' which, I might parenthetically say, was a product of the Greenspan Fed back in 1996-- using hybrid capital to prop up its capital base. These decisions allowed Citigroup to increase its already sizable risks and allow Citigroup to claim that it had a healthier capital ratio. I am troubled that instead of taking enforcement actions in the face of a weakened capital ratio, Mr. Geithner chose only to write a letter to Citigroup criticizing its risk management practices. I bet they shuddered when they got that letter. Given this action, it is clear that Mr. Geithner was aware that Citigroup's capital base was not sufficient. Yet he did not take the appropriate steps to correct this glaring problem; he wrote a letter. While I would be much more supportive of the nominee if he had taken responsibility for these failed decisions, he has not done so. For example, in a written response to questions from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, Mr. Geithner wrote: Citigroup's supervisors, including the Federal Reserve, failed to identify a number of their risk management shortcomings and to induce appropriate changes in behavior. He says Citigroup's supervisors, including the Federal Reserve, failed. Why didn't he say ``I''? Why didn't he say Citigroup's supervisors, including me as the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, I did, I failed to identify those risk shortcomings, and I failed to induce a change in their behavior? He says it is the Fed. He was the head, he was the person making those decisions. And yet he kind of brushed his hands and said: That was the Fed. No, Mr. Geithner, it was you. We need to know what specific failures occurred under his supervision, what he has learned from those failures, and how the nominee believes he can correct them in the future. After all, again, Mr. Geithner was the key decisionmaker in the Federal Reserve on these points. Without the answers to these questions, I am not convinced that Mr. Geithner is the right person to lead the Treasury Department at a time when we need a strong regulator in charge, one who will act with transparency and accountability and forcefulness. I am sure these big bankers and these Wall Street people are nice people, but they are tough and they are going to protect their turf. Yet what they don't need is a Treasury Secretary who is going to write them a letter. We need a Treasury Secretary who will start banging some heads around and will stick up for our small bankers, our independent bankers, the people in your State, Madam President, and mine who are out there loaning the money for small businesses and small business expansion, who are getting mortgages on houses that have 30-year fixed rates, they are conservative about it. We don't need to focus all of our efforts and money on the big city banks and then allowing the big city banks to get bigger by buying up other banks with taxpayer money. I want a Treasury Secretary, as I say, who is going to start banging some heads, who is going to call in these big city bankers and say: You know what, you have had a free ride for many years. We have deregulated you. We deregulated all these financial institutions. We have allowed you to engage in what I call--this is my own term--``casino capitalism.'' But it is over. It is over. You are now going to be regulated, and I am going to lead the charge in imposing stiff new regulations. We are going to be looking over your shoulder, and we are going to make sure you are accountable to the taxpayers of this country. The issues of responsibility and judgment are extremely important as we go forward. Two weeks ago, I voted in favor of releasing the second installment of the TARP funding, but it was after several phone calls with now-Vice President Biden when he assured me--and I spoke about this on the floor; he said I could say it publicly--that President Obama will sign off personally on any significant future disbursement of TARP money and Vice President Biden will be consulted and be a part of it. So now at least we know where the buck stops with President Obama. I am glad he is willing to say the buck does stop there. Yet here is what bothers me. If Mr. Geithner is confirmed, he will be the principal person making recommendations to President Obama regarding TARP expenditures. In short, President Obama will sign off on future disbursements, but he would do so on the recommendation and judgment of Mr. Geithner. I wonder, I really wonder what that means for some of these big city banks in New York and what is going to happen with Wall Street and what is going to happen to my small banks in Iowa or independent banks all over this country. What is going to happen to our farmers who need an adequate supply of low-cost capital coming up this spring. And they are having a hard time finding it, by the way. They are in a terrible cost- price squeeze right now. Is all that TARP money going to be focused on the big banks or are we going to start thinking about the little guy out there? Mr. Geithner made serious errors of judgment in failing to pay his taxes. He made serious errors in his job as chief regulator of the financial institutions at the heart of our current crisis. So at this point, I cannot vote to promote Mr. Geithner to the all-important post of Treasury Secretary. I cannot do so at this time. As I told Mr. Geithner on the phone, I bear him no ill will. I do not know him personally. I have friends who say he is a very nice person, and I am sure he is. But I wonder, again, about his approach. As I told Mr. Geithner on the phone, I hope I can come back to the floor a year from now, 2 years from now and say my vote against him was wrong. I hope I can do that, but I will have to be shown. There is no question Mr. Geithner will be confirmed by an overwhelming vote in the Senate. As I said, I bear him no ill will personally or anything else. I wish him every success as Treasury Secretary. To repeat what I said, nothing would make me happier than for Mr. Geithner to prove me wrong by serving with distinction as Treasury Secretary and cracking down on some of this casino capitalism that is going on in this country. I will be joining those rooting for his success.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, it is unbelievable to me that more than four decades after the passage of the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act women are only making 78 cents on the dollar for every dollar a man makes. Discrimination takes many forms. Sometimes it is brazen and in your face, like Jim Crow and apartheid, and sometimes it is silent and insidious. That is what is happening in workplaces all across America today. Millions of female-dominated jobs--social workers, teachers, childcare workers, nurses, and so many more--are equivalent in effort, responsibility, education, et cetera, to male-dominated jobs, but they pay dramatically less. The Census Bureau has compiled data on hundreds of job categories, but it found only five job categories where women typically earn as much as men, five out of hundreds. Defenders of this status quo offer all manner of bogus explanations as to why women make less. How many times have I heard the fairy tale that women work for fulfillment but men work to support their families? This ignores, first of all, so many single women who work to support themselves and their families, and married women whose paycheck is all that allows their families to make ends meet and educate their kids. It also ignores the harsh reality that so many women face in the workplace that they have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously or they get pushed into being a cashier instead of a more lucrative sales job. These acts of discrimination deny women fair pay, but they also deny women basic dignity. Let me cite one example of what I am talking about. Last year, in a hearing before our Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, we heard testimony from Dr. Philip Cohen of the University of North Carolina. Dr. Cohen compared nurses' aides, who are overwhelmingly women, and truckdrivers, who are overwhelmingly men. In both groups the average age is 43. Both require ``medium amounts of strength,'' and in some cases nurses' aides have to be stronger than truckdrivers. Truckdrivers now have power steering and power brakes and stuff like that. Nurses' aides have to pick up patients and turn them over and stuff like that. Nurses' aides on average have more education and more training than truckdrivers. But nurses' aides make less than 60 percent of what a truckdriver makes. Given that this discrimination is so obvious and pervasive, you would expect that women would have no trouble obtaining simple justice through our court system, but in a major decision in June of 2007 in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, the Supreme Court took us back. In a 5-to-4 ruling, the Court made it extremely difficult for women to go to court to pursue claims of pay discrimination, even in cases where the discrimination is flagrant. A jury acknowledged that Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor at Goodyear, had been paid $6,000 a year less than her lowest paid male counterpart. But the Supreme Court rejected her discrimination claim. Why? The Court held that women workers must file a discrimination claim within 180 days of their pay being set when they were first hired, even if they were not aware at the time their pay was significantly lower than their male counterparts. That is important to note. The Court said you have to file your discrimination claim within 180 days of your pay being set when you are hired, even if you don't know, even if you did not know that your pay was significantly lower than your male counterparts. As Justice Ginsburg said in a forceful dissent, this is totally out of touch with the real world of the workplace. In the real world, pay scales are often kept secret, employees are often kept in the dark about coworkers' salaries. Lacking such information, how can you determine when your pay discrimination begins? Furthermore, the vast discrepancies are often a function of time. If your original pay was just a little bit lower than your colleagues' pay, but you worked there for 20 years and you all get pay raises, you can see over 20 years that gap widens and widens and widens. So what started out to be a small gap winds up being a big gap over a period of time. Now, in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, not only was she discriminated against for all of her lifetime of work at Goodyear because she started out at a lower pay scale, that gap widened over time, but she is also now going to be discriminated against for the rest of her life in terms of her pension. Because she is making so much less than her male counterparts, her pension is going to be less. But Lilly Ledbetter did not get discriminated against once, she got discriminated against for over 20 years, and now for the rest of her lifetime in terms of the pension she gets. So what the Supreme Court decision means is that once that 180-day window for bringing a lawsuit is passed, this discrimination gets grandfathered in. This creates a free harbor for employers who have paid female workers less than men over a long period of time. Basically, it gives the worst offenders a free pass to continue their gender discrimination. Think about it. Once the 180 days has passed, the employer is home free. So you hire women, you pay them a little bit less than their male counterparts, but they do not know that because you do not publish the coworkers' salaries. After 180 days, you are home free. You can continue that discrimination for the next 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and there is not a darn thing a woman can do about it under that Supreme Court 5-to-4 decision. Well, now, I also heard several businesses were complaining that if we peg, if we peg the 180-day limit to the continued payment of discriminatory paychecks, which is what this bill before us does, they will keep accruing liability. So the companies will continue to accrue liability. Well, there is a simple answer to that. They can stop the clock anytime they want. Go through the books one day, make sure all the women are being paid fairly. On that day, you stop sending everyone discriminatory paychecks. On that day, everyone gets a fair deal. On that day, you stop accruing liability. The very thought that an employer would say: Well, we cannot have this bill, the Lilly Ledbetter bill we are talking about, because, gee, you know, after 180 days I keep accruing liability. Well, stop it. Stop paying the discriminatory pay. Go through your books, find out what the discrimination is, if it exists, and pay everyone fairly. Ledbetter was a bad decision. As Justice Ginsburg says, it ignores the reality of today's workplace. I am glad to work together with Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski, champions of this effort, to reverse the damage done by that decision. This bill would establish that the unlawful employment practice under the Civil Rights Act is the payment, is the payment, of a discriminatory salary, not the original setting of the pay level. It would be a great miscarriage of justice for this Senate to tell Lilly Ledbetter that her 20 years of discrimination, and the resulting loss of income in retirement, in her pensions should go unchecked because she did not have a crystal ball telling her what her coworkers were making at the time her pay was set. She had no way of knowing that. While the need for the passage of this legislation is critical and immediate, it is not enough. It is not good enough to go back to the way the law worked 2 years ago, because at that time, women were still making only 78 cents on the dollar as compared to men. That should be intolerable in our society. Moreover, if pay scales are kept secret, if there is not some transparency, how can women know if they are being discriminated against? That is why we need to pass the Fair Pay Act, which I have introduced in every Congress starting in 1996, the Fair Pay Act. Not only does that act require that employers provide equal pay for equivalent jobs, my bill also requires the disclosure of pay scales and rates for all job categories at a given company. This will give women the information they need to identify discriminatory pay practices. This could reduce the need for costly litigation in the first place. Now, I am not saying a company has to publish the salary of every single person. That is not what I am saying. What our bill says, the Fair Pay Act says, is you have to make transparent what the pay scales are in categories, certain categories. Now, I asked Lilly Ledbetter, when she appeared before our committee a year ago, I think it was, I asked her about the Fair Pay Act. I said: If you had had this kind of information when you first went to work, could you have negotiated for better pay and avoided the litigation? And she said: Yes. But she did not have that information. Well, there are countless more Lilly Ledbetters out there who are paid less than their male coworkers but will never know about it unless they have this kind of information. My Fair Pay Act amends the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to prohibit discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, race, national origin. Most importantly, it requires each individual employer to provide equal pay for jobs that are comparable in skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. We know about the Paycheck Fairness Act. I support that also. But we have the Equal Pay Act that was passed in, I think, 1963--1963--which says that, if a woman has the same job as a man, equal pay for equal jobs, you have to pay them the same. That has been in law since 1963. To be sure, it has not been enforced enough, and that is why we need the paycheck fairness bill that is here, to enforce it more. But the fact is, it has been the law since 1963, equal pay for the same job. What we now need to address 45, 49, 46 years later is equal pay for equivalent work because so many jobs in our society are kind of denoted as ``women's jobs.'' Are they crucial to our society? You bet they are. But for some reason, because they are ``women's jobs,'' they get paid less. I used the example of a truckdriver. Philip Cohen, from the University of North Carolina, testified before our committee, and he gave this example. They did a large study. I will repeat it again for emphasis sake of truckdrivers and nurses' aides. Truckdrivers, overwhelmingly men; nurses' aides, overwhelmingly women; medium age for all of them, 43. They both require median levels of strength. Truckdrivers do not need a lot of strength anymore; they have power steering and power brakes and everything else. Nurses' aides still have to lift people and duties such as that. So a median amount of strength is required. Nurses' aides actually have more education and more training than truckdrivers. Yet nurses' aides are paid less than 60 percent of what a truckdriver makes. Why is that? Is it somehow nurses' aides are not as important as a truckdriver? I will be glad to debate that any day of the week. When you are ill or when you need long-term care, do you want a truck driver or a nurses' aide? Answer me that question. I think a truckdriver is important, I do not mean to denigrate them, but I am saying nurses' aides are every bit as important. Childcare workers. What could be more important to our country than taking care of our country's youngest children? Mostly women, grossly underpaid, compared to male workers in terms of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. A lot of people say: Well, you know, we cannot--this is all nice pie- in-the-sky stuff. We cannot do it. But 20 States, 20 States have fair pay policies in place for their State employees, including my State of Iowa. I would point out the State of Iowa passed a fair pay bill for all State employees in 1985, when we had a Republican governor and a Republican legislature. Oh, the sky was going to fall. This was going to cost our taxpayers enormous sums of money. Well, the sky did not fall. Women are making more money, and our State is better for it. I might point out that our neighbor to the north, Minnesota, not only has fair pay policies for their State employees, they have it for their municipal and local workers also. Twenty States have done this for State employees. So, again, this should not be any kind of partisan issue. Some people say: We do not need any more laws, that market forces will take care of the wage gap. But experience shows there are some injustices the market simply will not rectify. That is why we did pass the Equal Pay Act in 1963, why we passed the Civil Rights Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the bill that has my name on it, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Were there market forces out there pushing to end discrimination against people with disabilities? No. But we did it. We are better off. That is the same way market forces are not going to take care of this, this issue of unequal pay for women in so many jobs in our country. I guess now that we are on the Enzi amendment, which would eliminate the language saying that those affected by discriminatory pay practices can sue--well, I am glad about one thing, that my colleagues are acknowledging discrimination hurts everyone because it does. It hurts everyone in two ways. First, an injury to one is an injury to all. But, second, I defy you to find a person in America who does not have a woman in their family, a person of color, someone with a disability, someone who observes a different or any religious practice. That is the point we have been trying to make all along. But this bill, as written, does not allow all those very indirectly affected parties to bring suit. This is patterned after language in the 1991 Civil Rights Act, and that legislation has not resulted in all the people who are hurt by discrimination to bring suit. It has been interpreted all those years to mean the party directly injured by the discriminatory practice. However, if we strike this language, we risk failing to fix the full extent of the problem caused by the Ledbetter decision. It is important to use precise language to make sure all the employees affected by discriminatory pay decisions by their employer are covered, not just the one who was discriminated against but all those employees affected. I would like to close with a story from a woman from my State, Angie. She was employed as a field office manager at a temp firm, temporary workers firm. The employees there were not allowed to talk about pay with their coworkers. Only inadvertently did Angie find out that a male office manager at a similar branch who had less education, less experience, was earning more than she was. Well, in this case, the story has a happy ending. She cited this information in negotiations with her employer, and she was able then to get a raise. But the experience left her feeling bewildered and betrayed, and this ultimately led her to quit her job. Had she not inadvertently found this out, she would have continued to have been discriminated against. So I think there is a twofold lesson in this true story. The first lesson is that if we give women information about what their male colleagues are getting, they can negotiate a better deal for themselves in the workplace. The second lesson is that pay discrimination is a harsh reality in the workplace. Not only is it unfair, it is also demeaning and demoralizing, and it should cease its existence in our society. Individual women should not have to do battle in order to win equal pay. We need more inclusive national laws to make equal pay for equal work a basic standard and a legal right but also equal pay for equivalent work so that we don't discriminate against whole classes of people just because of the job they do. Childcare workers, social service workers, nurses aides, nurses, homemakers--why should people who are cleaning houses make less than janitors? People who clean houses are generally women and janitors happen to be men, but they are both doing the same kind of work. We have to come to grips with this before we will ever really end discriminatory pay. The Lilly Ledbetter bill before us is a step in the right direction. But unless and until we pass the Fair Pay Act, which has been supported by the business and professional women of America since we first introduced it in 1996, until we pass that, discrimination against women will continue wholesale in America. We will continue to demean the kinds of jobs so important to us-- childcare, nurses, nurses' aides, teachers, Head Start workers, the women who clean our homes, take care of our elderly in long-term care facilities. Go into any long-term care facility, go where your grandparents are or maybe your parents. Who is taking care of them? Nine times out of ten, it will be a woman. Their responsibilities are immense. Their effort, the training they need is important. They have to have all that. Yet they are making much less than their male counterparts in other parts of society. The Lilly Ledbetter bill is important. We have to pass it, but we have to get the Fair Pay Act passed one of these years. As I said, I have been introducing it since 1996. Then they get the paycheck fairness bill up. We have to do that. That is important. Don't get me wrong, that is important. But the biggest discrimination in our society is the discrimination that occurs against women who have what has been denoted as ``women's jobs'' in our society. It is time to end that discrimination. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at 1 p.m. the Senate resume consideration concurrently of the pending Enzi amendments No. 28 and No. 29, that they be debated concurrently for 1 hour, and that the time be equally divided between Senators Enzi and Mikulski or their designees; following the use or yielding back of time on the Enzi amendments, the Senate resume consideration concurrently of the Specter amendments No. 26 and No. 27; that they be debated concurrently for 1 hour, and that the time be equally divided between Senators Specter and Mikulski or their designees; following the use or yielding back of time on the Specter amendments, the Senate proceed to votes in relation to the Enzi and Specter amendments in the order listed below: Specter No. 26, Specter No. 27, Enzi No. 28, and Enzi No. 29; further, that no amendments be in order to the pending Enzi and Specter amendments prior to the votes; that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided between the votes; and that all rollcall votes after the first vote be limited to 10 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, while I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 7 on amendment No. 25, had I been present I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I take to the floor right now to talk about my good friend, the former Governor of Iowa and our soon to be Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack. Before I do, I would be remiss if I did not at this time talk about what it was like to be at the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. This is my ninth inauguration. My first was Jimmy Carter when I was a freshman Congressman in 1977 and then two Reagans, Bush, two Clintons, two more Bushes. And so this is my ninth. I can tell you, I have never seen anything such as this. To be out there today, I mean this is once in history that something such as this happens. I was watching a television program yesterday, a news program, and Jim Clyburn, our colleague on the House side, was talking about the importance of today and what it meant to him. He went on to talk about not only himself but so many people from where he is from in South Carolina and other places, elsewhere. He said, I remember my grandparents telling me about their parents being slaves and how close the connection was. And to think that today America saw inaugurated as our 44th President an African-American. Not only does this say a great deal about Barack Obama, but it says a great deal about America and how far we have come. Someone asked me what I thought earlier about his speech. I thought three things: uplifting, sobering, and challenging. I think that is what we want from a President. We want a President who will lift us up, a President who will be honest and square with us but a President who also challenges us. That is what I thought President Obama did in his speech today. So it was a great day, not only for President Obama and Michelle and their family, for our great friend, Joe Biden, now our Vice President, and Jill and his family, a great day for America, a real turning point, I think, in our history. So we look forward with confidence and with optimism to the future. I wished to take the floor today to say a few words about my friend, Tom Vilsack, who I hope the Senate today will concur in his being passed through for being Secretary of Agriculture. I have known Tom well since the 1980s. He was a lawyer in Mount Pleasant, IA, at that time. We had a terrible catastrophe in agriculture; farmers were going broke, a lot of suicides were being committed in my State and around rural America. Tom Vilsack was a small-town lawyer. I did not know him from anybody. But he took upon himself the job of defending a lot of these small farmers, helping them to work through their problems, and getting them through these hard times. That is the first time I ever came in contact with him. I thought he was one of those rare individuals who saw something that was wrong which needed to be done and he would involve himself in it. He did not make any money doing this. There was no money to be made. But he got involved in it, and I can tell you, he helped many small farmers hang onto their farms. Well, later on, by then a tragedy happened in Mount Pleasant, IA. Tom Vilsack was then on the city council. There was a terrible tragedy in which the mayor had been murdered, and they asked Tom to take over as mayor--again, another catastrophe in that small community. So Tom Vilsack then took over as mayor of Mount Pleasant, pulled the city together, kept it going, and lifted it up. Shortly after that then, he ran to be a State Senator and was elected as a State Senator. He served very admirably there. He then later ran to be Governor and served for two terms as the Governor of our State of Iowa. He had a great two terms--8 years, 4 years each--as our Governor. Again, he showed he could bring people together. That is why I think he is going to be good with our former colleague, now President Obama. For the entire 8 years Tom Vilsack was Governor, he had a Republican legislature, but he worked with them. They worked together. We got some good things done in the State of Iowa, both with a Republican legislature and a Democratic Governor. I think that showed his method. That, plus what he had done earlier, I think showed the true mark of this individual. So I could not have been happier when I found that President Obama had picked him to be Secretary of Agriculture. Tom Vilsack knows production agriculture. He knows what is happening out on the farms. He also is one of the strongest proponents of the conservation of natural resources and clean water and clean air. Suffice to say, I think all my friends at Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited and all the people I go hunting with every year love Tom Vilsack because of all he has done to encourage wildlife habitats and the conservation of our natural resources--something, again, I feel very strongly about. Then, again, in his hearing before our Agriculture Committee, he talked about nutrition and the role nutrition plays in health care reform and how we have to think about prevention and wellness. That starts with our kids. And what starts with our kids? School lunches and school breakfasts and the foods they eat in school, the women, infants, and children's supplemental feeding program, what kind of food are they getting? Now, before the Agriculture Committee this year, Senator Chambliss and I will be working together on our committee to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. That is the school lunch, school breakfast, and the WIC program, the women, infants, and children's supplemental feeding program. We have to do better for our kids. We have to get better food, locally grown foods, healthier foods, fruits and vegetables, and things such as that for our kids to eat. He talked about this in his hearing before our committee. So I do not wish to take any more time of the Senate. I see our distinguished leader is in the Chamber. But I wished to thank President Obama for asking Governor Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture. I have asked Senator Chambliss. We know of no objections--not one objection on our committee--to his nomination. So I hope the Senate will, this afternoon, by unanimous consent, clear him so tomorrow he can be at the door. He said: As soon as I am confirmed, the first thing I want to do is go to the Department of Agriculture and stand outside at 7 o'clock in the morning to greet all the people coming in because I want them to know I care about them, that I honor their work and look forward to being Secretary of the Department. The one Department I always say, of all the Secretaries we have--the Secretaries of State and Treasury get all this publicity, and they travel around the world and all that and get a lot of publicity-- the Secretary of Agriculture hardly gets any publicity. But no Department--no Department--touches every American every day as closely and as intimately as the Department of Agriculture: the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the food safety programs. Things happen to our kids in school, what they eat--all this is in the Department of Agriculture. So I hope the Senate will, by unanimous consent, follow the lead of the Agriculture Committee in unanimously approving Tom Vilsack to be our next Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter, dated January 20, 2009, be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I wish to make it clear from the beginning that no vote--well, there have been a few votes I have cast in my 24 years, now going on 25 years, that I have regretted. We are all human. We make mistakes. We try to get the best information we can, and then we vote. Last fall, the information we got is we were on the verge of collapse, we had to do something, we had to get this TARP bill through, so I voted for it. Then I became more and more dismayed as the weeks went by and the months now to see how it was mishandled completely, not in accordance with what we in Congress were told they were going to do. They said they were going to purchase toxic assets. But then Secretary Paulson and his friends did the old bait and switch. Instead of doing that, they pumped tens of billions of dollars into purchasing equity in major banks. I said many times it is sort of like Secretary Paulson and his buddies doing all for whom I call the graduates of Goldman Sachs, sort of taking care of their buddies and bailing out their buddies in the banking industry. So when this new TARP came up, I must tell you I was adamantly opposed: no more of this, we are not going to put any more money out there like this. Then I began discussions with the new administration coming in. They have come up and talked with us a number of times. I had about three phone calls last night with my good friend, Senator Joe Biden, who will be our next Vice President. He said: What is troubling you? I said: What is troubling me is that no one seems to be responsible for what happened to the first 350. You have Paulson, but then there is President Bush, and somebody else seems to be responsible. I said: Secondly, they didn't use the money for what we wanted and there is no transparency. We don't know what happened to a lot of it. And I said: Third, there has to be more of this money put out there for middle-class America. It has to be put out there for them--not this trickle down where you put it in investment banks--but put it down below so it can percolate up. He talked with the President-elect. We had three phone calls last evening. I see a letter from Lawrence Summers was sent up to us today which reiterates what soon-to-be Vice President Biden said to me last night. First, no substantial amount of money will go out of this fund unless it is signed off by President Barack Obama. He has to sign off on it. So we know where the buck stops. Second, the way the system is set up, Vice President Joe Biden will be in there, he will be a part of this process, and the President will rely on him for his input into this process. I know Joe Biden. There has never been a stronger fighter for middle-class America and for working families than Joe Biden. So that reassures me we have another source of input into this effort. And third, they are going to make it absolutely transparent and put it out for everyone to see where they are going. Again, there were a couple of other things they agreed to do. No. 1, executive compensation cannot go above a certain threshold until the Government has been repaid. That is good. No. 2, shareholders will not be rewarded until the Government has been repaid. For firms receiving exceptional assistance, quarterly dividend payments will be restricted to 1 penny per quarter until the taxpayers are repaid. That is pretty darn reassuring to me. And now this: preclude the use of Government funds to purchase healthy firms rather than to boost lending. That is exactly what happened with the last 350. I find myself now in a position of saying: Look, we still have problems out there, we have credit problems out there. We didn't answer these problems. We have a new team. Barack Obama--and I served with him in the Senate as all of us have--said time and time again--and I know where he is coming from--that we have to help middle-class America, that we can't just put the money in at the top anymore. Joe Biden has said the same things. With these assurances that there is a new team down there, now I am going to be able to support the release of the next $350 billion. I close with this: I felt a little bit, after the last one, like Charlie Brown and Lucy--she is always pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown. I said: That is not going to happen to me again. Well, Lucy is not holding the ball now. We have someone new holding that ball, someone by the name of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and their team. I am going to put my trust in them based on this letter that has been sent up, which I understand was made part of the Record earlier today. With those assurances that we can get that money out, down to homeowners, to help on foreclosures, to help out some of our smaller banks with their credit problems, I see my way clear now to vote to make sure we get this money released for the new administration. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today, I am reintroducing legislation--the Derivatives Trading Integrity Act--which calls for establishing stronger standards of openness, transparency and integrity in the trading of financial swaps and other over-the-counter derivative contracts as a critical step toward rebuilding and restoring confidence in the financial system. Over the years, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and laws enacted by Congress have allowed instruments that are in form and function futures contracts to be privately negotiated without the safeguards provided through trading on exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC. The economic downturn in this country is forcing us to examine all contributing factors to the crisis in our financial markets. By restoring reasonable safeguards and regulation of swaps, including credit default swaps, along with all other futures contracts, this legislation will go a long way to restore confidence in the markets and reestablish soundness and integrity in the financial system. My bill will end the unregulated ``casino capitalism'' that has engendered great risks in swaps trading. And it will bring these transactions out into the sunlight where they can be monitored and appropriately and responsibly regulated. This legislation will establish authority and safeguards to ensure that parties can meet their obligations to manage and reduce danger and risk to the entire financial system and economy. Virtually all contracts now commonly referred to as swaps fall under the definition of futures contracts and function basically in the same manner as futures contracts. This bill amends the Commodity Exchange Act to eliminate the distinctions in the regulatory treatment of futures contracts among ``excluded'' and ``exempt'' commodities, and the transactions in them, and regulated, exchange-traded commodities and transactions in them. Futures contracts for all commodities would be treated the same in the law and regulations. In addition, the bill eliminates the statutory exclusion of swap transactions from regulation, and it ends the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority to exempt such transactions from the general requirement that a contract for the purchase or sale of a commodity for future delivery can only trade on a regulated board of trade. In effect, this proposed change in the law means that all futures contracts must trade on a designated contract market or a derivatives transaction execution facility. The requirement for exchange trading would thus include over-the-counter trading of financial derivatives just as it does for futures contracts in physical commodities such as corn, soybeans and petroleum. We have seen large negative consequences from the lack of price transparency and the failure to properly measure and collateralize the risk in trading over-the-counter derivatives. The problems have not been seen in the trading of financial futures on regulated futures markets, subject to the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This legislation I am introducing will establish the standard that all futures contracts trade on regulated exchanges. The regulated exchanges will work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to ensure that trading on the exchange is fair and equitable and not subject to abuses. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the experience and expertise to oversee these matters. Bringing necessary openness, transparency, soundness, and integrity to trading in contracts which are now unregulated over-the-counter swaps and related derivatives is a key element in restoring trust and confidence in the financial system so that we can rebuild our economy on a solid foundation. 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 reintroducing legislation--the Derivatives Trading Integrity Act--which calls for establishing stronger standards of openness, transparency and integrity in the trading of financial swaps and other over-the-counter derivative contracts as a critical step toward rebuilding and restoring confidence in the financial system. Over the years, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and laws enacted by Congress have allowed instruments that are in form and function futures contracts to be privately negotiated without the safeguards provided through trading on exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC. The economic downturn in this country is forcing us to examine all contributing factors to the crisis in our financial markets. By restoring reasonable safeguards and regulation of swaps, including credit default swaps, along with all other futures contracts, this legislation will go a long way to restore confidence in the markets and reestablish soundness and integrity in the financial system. My bill will end the unregulated ``casino capitalism'' that has engendered great risks in swaps trading. And it will bring these transactions out into the sunlight where they can be monitored and appropriately and responsibly regulated. This legislation will establish authority and safeguards to ensure that parties can meet their obligations to manage and reduce danger and risk to the entire financial system and economy. Virtually all contracts now commonly referred to as swaps fall under the definition of futures contracts and function basically in the same manner as futures contracts. This bill amends the Commodity Exchange Act to eliminate the distinctions in the regulatory treatment of futures contracts among ``excluded'' and ``exempt'' commodities, and the transactions in them, and regulated, exchange-traded commodities and transactions in them. Futures contracts for all commodities would be treated the same in the law and regulations. In addition, the bill eliminates the statutory exclusion of swap transactions from regulation, and it ends the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority to exempt such transactions from the general requirement that a contract for the purchase or sale of a commodity for future delivery can only trade on a regulated board of trade. In effect, this proposed change in the law means that all futures contracts must trade on a designated contract market or a derivatives transaction execution facility. The requirement for exchange trading would thus include over-the-counter trading of financial derivatives just as it does for futures contracts in physical commodities such as corn, soybeans and petroleum. We have seen large negative consequences from the lack of price transparency and the failure to properly measure and collateralize the risk in trading over-the-counter derivatives. The problems have not been seen in the trading of financial futures on regulated futures markets, subject to the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This legislation I am introducing will establish the standard that all futures contracts trade on regulated exchanges. The regulated exchanges will work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to ensure that trading on the exchange is fair and equitable and not subject to abuses. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the experience and expertise to oversee these matters. Bringing necessary openness, transparency, soundness, and integrity to trading in contracts which are now unregulated over-the-counter swaps and related derivatives is a key element in restoring trust and confidence in the financial system so that we can rebuild our economy on a solid foundation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Mitch Schaben of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, during a long and distinguished career in many fields of public service, Ambassador Kenneth Quinn has received countless awards and honors. But I daresay that the award he will receive tomorrow from the Department of Defense is the longest delayed and hardest earned of his distinctions. Ambassador Quinn will become the first civilian ever to receive the Air Medal for Combat Service, an award created during World War II to honor courageous and meritorious service in aerial combat. From November 1968 to June 1973, Kenneth Quinn served as a Foreign Service officer in Vietnam. For his first 2 years in that country, he was assigned to Advisory Team 65 in Sa Dec Province, replacing an Army major as senior adviser to the team. In that capacity, he took part in the same military activities and combat operations as his military predecessors. All totaled, he participated in some 250 hours of helicopter combat operations. He served in night helicopter patrols over Viet Cong-held sectors and took part in helicopter operations to insert and extract troops from the battlefield. On other occasions, he directed helicopter gunship operations from a command-and-control helicopter flying just several hundred feet above the battlefield, repeatedly coming under enemy fire. On still other occasions, he participated in ground combat operations, night ambushes, and brown water naval combat operations. This is just one chapter in the remarkably accomplished career of this Dubuque, IA, native. He served for more than three decades in the Foreign Service, becoming one of the most decorated and respected American diplomats of his generation. Ambassador Quinn was one of the U.S. Government's top experts on Indochina, having written his doctoral dissertation on Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia. Indeed, he is widely acknowledged to have been the first westerner to discover and report on the holocaust being perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Later, while serving as Ambassador to Cambodia, he played a key role in the 1999 capture of the last remaining Khmer Rouge general. Upon his retirement as Ambassador to Cambodia, he was presented the Secretary of State's Award for Heroism and Valor for protecting Americans citizens exposed to danger in Cambodia and for his participation in four lifesaving rescues in Vietnam. The common theme in Ambassador Quinn's career has been his commitment to serving causes higher than himself. He has undertaken humanitarian missions that have saved countless thousands of lives. In 1978, under a special exchange program with the Foreign Service, he was allowed to return to Iowa to join the staff of Governor Robert Ray. He played a lead role in the Governor's program to resettle Indochinese refugees in Iowa, and he served as executive director of the 1979 Iowa SHARES Program, which sent Iowa medical personnel, supplies, and food to Cambodia during a period of mass starvation there. Following his retirement from the State Department 8 years ago this month, Ambassador Quinn returned to Iowa to assume leadership of the World Food Prize Foundation, the Des Moines-based organization dedicated to ending hunger around the world by promoting the sustainable production and distribution of an adequate and nutritious food supply. The World Food Prize--created by Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Iowa native Dr. Norman Borlaug and supported for many years by Iowa business leader and philanthropist John Ruan--is the most prestigious international award recognizing exemplary work in improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. Mr. President, Ambassador Quinn has served our Nation as a diplomat, a soldier, and a passionate humanitarian. At every stage of his brilliant career in public service, he has embodied America's highest ideals, and he has earned renown for his courage, initiative, and selfless dedication. I join with my colleagues in the Senate in congratulating Ambassador Quinn as he becomes, tomorrow in Washington, the first civilian ever to be awarded the Air Medal for Combat Service.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I want to join my colleagues today in honoring the extraordinary service and accomplishments of the senior Senator from West Virginia, the Honorable Robert C. Byrd. It was exactly 50 years ago today, on January 7, 1958, that he was first sworn into the Senate. Senator Byrd is the longest serving Senator in U.S. history, and he truly is a living legend in this institution that he loves so dearly and defends so fiercely. The Almanac of American Politics says: Robert Byrd ``may come closer to the kind of Senator the Founding Fathers had in mind than any other.'' I couldn't agree more. He is a person of wise and mature judgment, a patriot with a deep love of his country. He is passionately loyal to the Constitution and a fierce defender of the role and prerogatives of Congress and the Senate in particular. Senator Byrd was once asked how many Presidents he had served under. He answered that he had not served under any President, that he had served with 10 Presidents as a proud member of a separate and coequal branch of Government. During his five decades in this body, Senator Byrd has witnessed many changes our country has gone through. Think about it. Our population since 1958 has grown by 125 million people. There have been new technologies. I was thinking about this. In 1958, I graduated from high school in Des Moines, IA. The year before the Russians had launched Sputnik, and we were trying to catch up. We had not established ourselves in space. I was out of high school that summer, getting ready to go to college. I found a job working on this new construction project called the interstate highway system which was just beginning at that time. Jet air travel was just starting. I remember my first flight. The airplane was propeller driven. We didn't have jet aircraft. There were some in the military, but it hadn't started for commercial air travel at that time. We had no computers, no cell phones, and nine out of ten TV sets were black and white. That was 1958, the year Robert Byrd came to the Senate. There have been many changes that have happened over the last 50 years. Across this half century of rapid change, there has been one constant--Senator Byrd's tireless service to this country, his passion for helping bring new opportunities to the people of West Virginia, and his dedication to this institution, the Senate of the United States. Senator Byrd is a person of many accomplishments and a rich legacy. But above all, I will mention his commitment to improving public education and expanding access to higher education, especially for kids from poorer families. As many of my colleagues know, Robert C. Byrd was raised in the hardscrabble coalfields of southern West Virginia. That is one thing he and I have always talked about. My father was a coal miner also in the State of Iowa. His family was poor but rich in values and faith. His parents nurtured in Robert Byrd a lifelong passion for education and learning. He was valedictorian of his high school class but too poor to go to college right away. Those were the days before Pell grants and Byrd scholarships. So he worked as a welder in a shipyard, later as a butcher in a coal company town. It took him 12 years to save enough money to start college. He was a U.S. Senator when he earned his law degree. No other Member of Congress before or since has started and completed law school while serving in the Congress. But degrees don't begin to tell the story of the education of Robert C. Byrd. He is the ultimate lifetime learner. It is as though for the last 50 years he has been enrolled in the Robert C. Byrd school of continuing education. You won't get a better, more thorough education at any school, Harvard, Yale, or anywhere else. Senator Byrd's erudition has borne fruit in no less than nine books he has written and published over the last two decades. He literally wrote the book on the Senate, a masterful four-volume history of the institution that has become a classic. What my colleagues may not know is that he also authored a highly respected history of the Roman Senate. For those of us who have been here--in my case 24 years--we have listened, either here on the floor or later when we got television, on closed circuit in our offices, to the many speeches Robert Byrd gave about the Roman Senate, wonderful descriptions of the Roman Senate and how it operated. We could hear how he weaved in the operations of our own Senate. There are some who think Robert C. Byrd actually served in the Roman Senate. But that part of the Byrd legend I can absolutely say is not true. I have talked at length about Senator Byrd's education because it explains why he is so passionate about ensuring that every American has access to quality public education, both K-12 and higher. The one thing Senator Byrd and I have in common is our fathers were coal miners with very little formal education. Coming from a poor background, Senator Byrd believes, as do I, that a cardinal responsibility of Government is to provide a ladder of opportunity so that everyone, no matter how humble their background, has a shot at the American dream. I said ladder of opportunity; I didn't say an escalator. On an escalator, you get a free ride. You get on and you get a free ride. But with a ladder of opportunity, you still have to exert energy and effort and responsibility to get to the top. But with that ladder there have to be rungs so you can actually climb. The most important rungs on that ladder of opportunity involve education, early childhood education, Head Start programs, quality K-12 public schools, access to college and other forms of higher education. During my 24 years in the Senate, no one has fought harder for public education than Senator Robert Byrd. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he has been the champion of education at every turn, fighting to reduce class size, improving teacher training, bringing new technologies into the classroom, boosting access to higher education. In 1985, my first year in the Senate, he created the only national merit based college scholarship program funded through the U.S. Department of Education. Congress later named them in his honor. Originally, the Byrd scholarships consisted of a 1-year $1,500 award to outstanding students. Today, Byrd scholarships provide grants of up to $6,000 over 4 years. How many kids of meager means, coming from low-income families but very bright, very capable, have received these Byrd scholarships which got them through college. Senator Byrd has also been outspoken in challenging the current administration for failing to keep its commitments under the No Child Left Behind Act. To the last fiscal year, No Child Left Behind has been underfunded since 2002, when it first came into existence. It has been underfunded by over $70 billion. Think what that would mean for our local school systems in America had we kept our commitment to funding No Child Left Behind. But I will tell you this: It would have been a lot worse if Senator Byrd had not been here on our Appropriations Committee, either as chairman or ranking member, sponsoring the key amendments to boost the funding above what the Bush administration had proposed. Senator Byrd is a great student of literature, and I am sure he knows ``The Canterbury Tales''--probably a lot of it by heart, as he knows a lot of things by heart, by memory. Describing the Clerk of Oxford, Chaucer might just as well have been describing Robert C. Byrd. Here is what Chaucer said about the Clerk of Oxford: Filled with moral virtue was his speech; And gladly would he learn and gladly teach. Madam President, Senator Byrd is a great Senator, a great American, a great friend. He has both written our Nation's history and left his mark on it. It has been an honor to serve both in the Senate and on his Committee of Appropriations with Senator Byrd for the last 24 years. The good people of Iowa have now reelected me, so I will be here for another term. I look forward to serving with Senator Byrd in this body and on the Appropriations Committee for many years to come. So today on this historic anniversary, we honor his service, we express our respect and our love for this very remarkable Senator, Robert C. Byrd, from the great State of West Virginia. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk a little about the so-called auto bailout bill that is someplace out there wandering around. We don't know where. I was in Iowa last week and traveling around and talking with people. A couple things kept coming up from time to time. One was the money we put into the so-called TARP program, the money we gave to Secretary Paulson before we adjourned in October and went home for the campaign, the $700 billion. As we know, they got $350 billion of that, and now there is some talk that they will come back for the other $350 billion sometime, probably not this year but early next year. As we look at what happened to that $350 billion, a lot of people are quite disturbed, and count me among them. Rather than using the money to put out to banks to help extend credit, some of the banks were using it to buy other banks and get bigger. Some banks are using this money to invest in private equity firms, buy up businesses. One came to my attention last week when I was in Iowa--a company I don't need to name--a company that had gone into bankruptcy. The owner of the company had wanted to buy it out of bankruptcy for a certain amount. His bank was Bank of America. They wouldn't extend him the credit. So a private equity firm came in and bought the company, and their bank is Bank of America. So here is a small businessman who couldn't get his own company out of bankruptcy, but a private equity firm could. And they both had the same bank, Bank of America. If this is what is happening with that TARP money, count me out. No more. I voted for that so-called bailout. The more I look at it, the more I wonder if I did the right thing. I wonder where that money is going. Is it going to help anyone? Quite frankly, at the time I had suggested that an important thing we ought to do is extend the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ceilings on independent banks from $100,000 to 1 million or to 2 million. Then the compromise came in. They extended it from $100,000 to $250,000, which was not much of anything except keeping up with inflation from the time the $100,000 was set. My thought was always that these independent banks, quite frankly, do a much better job of investing your money and my money than those big city banks in New York. They do a better job. They are investing in small business growth, modernization of companies. To the extent they are in mortgages, they are good, solid mortgages, not tightening anything out there. So I wanted to make sure that more money would flow to independent banks around America that could get credit out to someone who wants to buy a car or perhaps refinance a house, expand a small business, invest in new technology. These are the independent banks. This is what they do. But, no, we kept that at $250,000 and put all that money into the big banks. Well, I hope we get to address this issue again early next year, because I wish to see more of this directed to the small, independent banks. It doesn't quite seem as though the money we gave to the big banks is trickling down much. It is sort of staying in New York City, places such as that. That is where it is staying. It is right there. And private equity firms are using that money to buy up companies at 10 cents on the dollar, companies that they know, when we are through this recession and things start getting better again, are going to be good companies, have good products. But right now, because of the recession, they are in dire straits. So they are being bought up. Of course, 3 or 4 or 5 years from now, they are going to be great companies, and people bought them at 10 cents on the dollar. Quite frankly, from all appearances, it seems that some of this TARP money is going into that. We need more investigation to find out how much. That is a prelude to what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the auto deal, this auto bill that is going around. I got to thinking about our approach earlier on the big bank bailout. We gave money to the big banks and nothing to the little banks. Not much is going out to help the consumer. Then I looked at this automobile bailout. It started at $25 billion. Then it went to $34 billion. Now I hear it is $15 billion and some billions later. The more I read about it, they are going to be back next spring for more, and it might take as much as $100 billion to get them through this period of time. So what do we do? The first inclination is to take a big bunch of taxpayer money and put it in at the top, as we did last fall with the big banks. So now we are going to give the manufacturers all this money. I am not certain giving these manufacturers all this money is going to help them for long. We can give them all the money we want, but if no one is buying their cars, what good does it do? Quite frankly, people aren't buying cars, which is one of the major reasons we are in a recession. If we look at this chart, this is total U.S. light vehicle sales annual rate. You don't need to read all the numbers. What you can see is from November of last year until now, it is a steady decline, especially in the last couple of months, a tremendous drop in the adjusted annual rate of sales of cars. It has been coming down, down, until now it is just about dropping off the chart. Or we can look at the monthly rate, the big three 2008 sales per month. You see kind of the same thing. My figures say that sales of the big three auto companies--GM, Ford, and Chrysler--fell from 895,000 in January to 363,000 in November. People aren't buying cars. So is the answer to give more money to the manufacturers? I got to thinking about that and thinking about what we had done last fall. I got to thinking, why don't we take some of this money we are talking about and put it in at the bottom rather than putting it in at the top--$34 billion, $25 billion, pick your number. What if we said, rather than giving it to the auto manufacturers, let's say we are going to make a deal. We are going to provide to low- income and modest income Americans something almost like a voucher where they can go buy a new car. Why don't we give a lot of people in America $10,000 and say: Here, go buy a car, put it in at the bottom rather than the top? So I am working on legislation which I will be introducing shortly which will do that. Basically it says, if you have an adjusted gross income of $40,000 for a household, $25,000 for an individual, and if you have a car that is over 10 years old which you have had registered in your name, titled in your name before now, then you can go to an automobile dealer anywhere in the country, buy a new car, and you will get $10,000 from the Government towards buying that car. So if you bought a car for $15,000, a new car, $10,000 of it is paid for by the taxpayers of this country. Now think about this. Also in my bill I am stipulating that to do this, you have to have a car that is older than 10 years, the new car you buy has to get at least 5 miles per gallon more than your old car, and the new car has to get at least 25 miles per gallon adjusted; that is your average fuel mileage. Look at this: 2008 vehicles sold by the big three that get 25 miles per gallon. Seventeen percent get more than 25 miles per gallon; 83 percent get less than 25 miles per gallon. I am interested in these cars in here: those getting more than 25 miles per gallon. I am interested in the low-income and modest income Americans who can't even afford to buy a new car. I am interested in helping the automobile companies. You tell me: Is it better to take all of our taxpayer money and put it in at the top, or how about getting rid of that inventory out there of all these new cars that no one is buying? We need to build the market for cars, putting more people to work at the big three and all of the parts manufacturers and all of the others that get jobs when cars are sold. Think about the benefits of this. Let's say you are a low-income person and you are going to work and you have an old jalopy you are driving and it breaks down all the time. This happens every day in America. You cannot afford a new car, so can you keep repairing your old one, fixing it up, patching it up? It is putting out all kinds of bad emissions. It is getting low mileage. You want to get it off the road, but you cannot afford to buy a new car. You cannot afford it. But we would like to get those old cars off the road. We would like to have people have a new car that is more fuel efficient. How do we do it? Well, this is one way of doing it. And look at it this way: In terms of what we might see here, for example, as shown on this chart, right now a six-cylinder Chevy Malibu gets 20 miles per gallon, but the four-cylinder gets 26 miles per gallon. So it is 30 percent more--30 percent more. So people could buy a Chevy Malibu under this proposal. Those that can use the program will select the more efficient motor and will have lower fuel bills year after year. And, we will have lower pollution and we will need to import less oil. Now, there is one other piece of this proposal: that if you do partake of this program, you need three things. You need to show your 1040 about what your adjusted gross income is and you need an old car that is at least 10 years old and you need to buy a car that gets at least 5 miles more per gallon than your old car and gets a minimum of 25 miles per gallon. It needs to be from one of the big three and made in America. If you do that, you get $10,000 towards that new car. There is one other stipulation. That old car you have? You have to turn it in to the dealer. The Government takes possession and the Government destroys it, smashes it up, destroys it, chops it up, sells it for scrap, so we get millions of these old cars off the road. They will not be put back into the used car market. Low-income Americans can get a new car, and it helps the auto industry. Isn't that what we want, a demand pull? We have a demand pull, and they start selling all these cars they have in inventory they cannot sell right now. My bill would stipulate this program could run from enactment through all of next year and end on December 31 of next year. So if we are going to be throwing $100 billion at the automobile companies, or $55 billion--no one knows--why don't we take those billions of dollars and give it to consumers, low-income consumers, to buy a new car that is more fuel efficient, has better emissions controls? It seems to me that is what I call percolate up economics--percolate up--not trickle down economics. But no one is talking about this. Why shouldn't we be talking about it? Think about all the elderly people in this country who are retired who are driving old cars, but they cannot afford a new one. So they are stuck driving an old car they have put a lot of money into, to repair this and repair that, paying more for gasoline. Well, here is a chance for an elderly person, a couple on a fixed income, to get a new car. Think about it. You can buy a new car. I do not know what a Chevy Malibu car costs. But you can buy a new car for about $15,000, $16,000, and $10,000 of it will be paid for by the Government. That is not a bad deal. Quite frankly, more credit would be available for that purpose. Well, you can understand that. If I am going to buy a car for $15,000, and $10,000 of it is going to be paid for by the Government, and I only have to finance $5,000, you can get all kinds of credit for that because the car's asset is going to be worth more than that. It is going to be worth a lot more as you go down in years. So credit will be available easily for something such as that. So, again, this bailout plan the Bush administration and congressional leaders--I have not been involved in that--this plan they are drafting fails to answer these two very big questions. In the midst of a severe recession, how do we boost demand for new cars? And, secondly, how do we give consumers compelling incentives to purchase fuel-efficient cars, especially at a time right now when gas prices are plummeting? We know they are going to come back, but right now they are plummeting. So, again, I will be introducing the Selling Fuel-Efficient Cars Act of 2008--it might be 2009, by the time we get back in January. That is my proposal. Do not put it in at the top. No, do not give it to the big boys. Let's let the consumers--low-income and modest income Americans-- buy millions--millions--of new cars made in America, made here. Get rid of all that inventory. I tell you what, I think you would see that the automobile companies could probably get lines of credit if something such as that happened. Then they could get back into the market without relying upon the taxpayers anymore. So I guess I would sum it up by saying this: Go to your average taxpayer out there and say: Look, we are probably going to do something to save the automobile industry. Now, the taxpayer may say: I don't want to do anything to save them. Well, OK, fine. That is a legitimate point. But let's say that is not your choice. Your choice is: We are going to put money into the automobile industry. How would you like it done? Would you like it done by taking your tax money and putting it in at the top--there will be some restrictions on it; they have to do certain things such as that--putting it in at the top, or would you rather have your money go out so the little guy, the little woman, the little poor people, the retired people can buy a new car, have a little more of an asset, get the old clunkers off the road, have more fuel- efficient cars, with less bad emissions, and we will destroy all those old cars they turn in? We will destroy them, chop them up. You take that to any average taxpayer out there, and I will bet you my bottom dollar, if given that choice, if those are their two choices--put it in at the top or put it in at the bottom for consumers--they will pick the second choice. They will want to put it in for consumers, not just give it to the big boys. So I do not know why no one is talking about this. We should talk about it. We should talk about it more. I do not know. The bill they bring up may not be amendable. That is what I hear. But we ought to offer this. We ought to have the chance of saying: We can have a different approach to bailing out the automobile companies than just putting it in at the top. I believe the plan I am proposing will work. It will be better for America. It will help a lot of low-income people and elderly people in our country to have a new car and we will get millions of old clunkers off the road and we will destroy them and we will have a better system for our consumers. So for those who say we have to help the automobile companies, I say, OK, but is there only one way or is there another way? Well, I think there is another way, and I think the proposal I have laid out is the way we ought to go. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended to 3 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we do not intend to wait until the new Congress convenes in January to begin work on health care reform legislation. The fact is, health care reform was one of the signature changes promised by President-elect Barack Obama during the campaign. This legislation is too important and too urgent to put off until tomorrow, to wait until the new President and the new Congress are sworn in. I applaud both Senator Baucus, Chair of the Finance Committee, and Senator Kennedy, Chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, for plunging right into the ambitious and historic task of creating a comprehensive health care reform bill. Last week, Senator Baucus came forward with a 98-page white paper setting broad parameters for prospective legislation. Earlier this week, Senator Kennedy brought together members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to kick off the long process of crafting a bill. At that meeting, Senator Kennedy designated three working groups to oversee the principal components of the bill. Senator Clinton was asked to chair the health insurance coverage working group. Senator Mikulski will chair the health system quality working group. I will chair the prevention and public health working group. As I said, the working group I will chair will focus on the wellness, disease prevention, and public health components of this legislation. Again, this has been a longstanding focus of mine. Indeed, in the past, I have already introduced comprehensive wellness legislation. Several elements of that bill, and others, have been enacted into law. Prevention and wellness as a component are absolutely critical to transforming the way we approach health care in the United States. To be honest about it, we don't have a health care system in America; we have a sick care system in America. Well, think about it. If you get sick, you get care, either through insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, community health centers, charity--one way or the other--but that is the most expensive way to do things. That is sort of trying to patch it up later on. We have spent untold hundreds of billions of dollars a year on pills, on surgery, hospitalization, disability, but we spend peanuts--3 percent--less than 3 percent of our health care money for prevention and wellness. Again, there are huge untapped opportunities in this area of wellness and prevention. If we think about where we are right now, we will see that we spend a staggering $2 trillion annually on health care--more than any other nation in the world and more than most nations put together. Yet the World Health Organization ranks U.S. health care 37th among the nations of the world--37th. We are 20th of 21 industrialized nations in the quality of health care for children. We are No. 20--20 out of 21 industrialized nations--in terms of the quality of children's health care. If you want evidence of the failure of our current sick care system, consider these facts: Tens of millions of Americans suffer from preventable diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and, of course, some forms of cancer. In tandem with a childhood obesity epidemic now, we have new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics advising that some children as young as 8 years old should be put on cholesterol-lowering drugs. That is the American Academy of Pediatrics. We have an epidemic of children with adult-onset diabetes-- unheard of until just recently. Unheard of until just recently. We are now seeing young Americans, as young as age 25, getting heart bypass surgery because of clogged arteries. So again, it is almost as though we have lost our capacity to be shocked when we hear these statistics. How much evidence do we need that America's approach to health care or, as I say, sick care is simply not working? The good news is that President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Baucus, Senator Kennedy, and other key players here in the Senate and in the House kind of get it when it comes to real health care reform. It is not enough to just talk about how to extend insurance coverage or how to pay the bills, as important as those things are. That is not enough. If all we are going to do is figure out a better way to pay the bills, we are sunk. We have to start keeping people healthier and preventing disease in the first place. Again, I would lay down this marker right now. If we pass a health care reform bill that greatly extends health insurance coverage but does nothing to implement a national prevention and wellness structure and agenda, then we will have failed the American people. It simply makes no sense to legislate broader access to a health care system that costs too much, delivers too little, largely because it neglects wellness and prevention. We need to craft a bill that mobilizes our society to prevent these unnecessary diseases and conditions, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. It is time to recognize obesity as a disease that needs to be attacked-- not cured but prevented. A robust emphasis on wellness is about saving lives and saving trips to the hospital and saving money. It is the only way--the only way--we are going to get a grip on these skyrocketing health care costs. As I said, there are a lot of opportunities here in terms of cost savings but also in terms of helping people live healthier, happier, and more productive lives. We want to be more productive in this country. Not all of this is going to come under what we think of as the health care umbrella. Not all will come under what I would say we think of as medicine and doctors and hospitals and things such as that. A lot of this is going to be outside of that sort of health care regimen. I think of things such as schools. The Presiding Officer and I serve on the Agriculture Committee in the Senate. Next year, we are going to be reauthorizing the child nutrition bill. This is a bill that basically sets up the parameters for school lunch, school breakfast, school snacks, the WIC Program, the Women, Infants and Children Program. It seems to me this ought to be thought of also as a part of preventive health care. Our kids in school have to start eating better, more wholesome foods, less starches, less fats, less sugars, less sodium. I just mentioned the onset of type 2 diabetes and childhood obesity. We have to get a grip on this. We can't continue to do the things with our school lunch and school breakfast programs as we have been doing in the past. Obviously, another component of this--it doesn't fall within our Agriculture Committee jurisdiction, I say to the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Colorado--we also have to start making sure that schools that get any sort of Federal funds have exercise programs. Schools are being built in America today without a playground, without a gym, without any kind of exercise equipment for kids. It is nonsense. I don't know about the Senator from Colorado, but I would wager that when he was in grade school, he had to go outside and run around for a half an hour or so a day. In my grade school, we had 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the afternoon, and a half hour after lunch. One hour a day we were out running around, sometimes in the snow, and it was pretty cold in the wintertime. We always had exercise. We were always doing something. Of course, we didn't have Game Boys and a lot of TV and things such as that at that time. My point is that schools--as we attack feeding programs and the vending machines and what goes into vending machines in schools--again, when the Senator from Colorado was in school, I bet they didn't have vending machines. Now we see Pepsi and Coke and candy bars and all sorts of things in vending machines. Why should that be so? School is where you go to learn, to be healthy, not to get stoked up with junk food and sugar and starches and sodium. So I digress a little, but that is another component of it that we have to be thinking about. It may not be in the health care reform bill as such. I intend to have it in the health care reform bill as guidance directions for other committees that are involved in other things to be able to start looking at wellness and prevention components. I would go this far: I think we need a direction in this health care reform bill to every committee of Congress that whatever you are working on, you have to think about how it impacts prevention and wellness--does it add to that or does it subtract from that and are there things we ought to be doing in this legislation? Again, I digress a little bit, but take the recent highway reauthorization bill. That was 3 or 4 years ago, and now we are going to reauthorize it again in 2010. I offered an amendment which didn't succeed, but I think, over the passage of the years, the more I have talked to others about it and we have conferred about it, I hope it has a good chance on the next reauthorization bill. It was simply this: any community or region or State that uses Federal highway monies, the Federal gasoline tax monies for road improvements and such, if they are building roads, improving them, or building bridges or whatever, they have to incorporate in their planning bike paths and walking paths along with them. I am not saying they have to build those; I am just saying that at least they ought to have them in their plans. Again, thinking about kids going to school, they ought to have sidewalks along their streets going to school so they can walk to school. Many places don't have sidewalks and bike paths and walking paths. My point is that there are a lot of things outside of the health care environment we normally think of that can be very helpful for prevention and wellness--workplaces, workplace wellness. There are some companies in this country doing a great job with this. They have set up wellness programs, nutrition guidance programs, antismoking programs for employees, and in every case I have ever looked at where you have the incentives and the company really goes to work at this, they find some amazing results. They find their absenteeism goes down, they find workers are much more productive than they had been in the past, and they find their health care costs going down. Now, we need to make this available to every business in this country--small businesses, people who employ 10 people or more. There has to be something including a component of prevention in the workplace. So I mentioned schools, workplaces, communities. Communities have to be involved. We need to promote community wellness programs. The Trust for America's Health earlier this year came out with a study they had done on community-based wellness programs and the return on investment. Most times when you talk with people about prevention and wellness, they say: Oh, that is all fine, but you don't get a payback for 20 or 30 years. The Trust for America's Health did a study State by State and they showed that in these cases where the communities had community wellness programs, that actually, in the first year--in the first year--there was almost a 2-to-1 return. For every dollar they invested, they got $2 back the very next year, and it increased every year after that. So we have to think about how we promote community-based wellness programs. The elderly. I can't think of how many times I have been to senior citizens centers, congregate meal sites, some independent living centers, and those types of places where we see so many elderly on drugs. They are on so many drugs. They can't keep track of the 15 pills they have to take every day. Well, there have been some very good studies done, on the fact that if you give the elderly better nutrition, better exercise, better social ability, you can get them off some of those drugs--maybe not all of them, but you can get them off of half of the drugs or more that they are taking. So there are a lot of things we can do just, as I say, outside. Within health care, there are a lot of things too. Students are going to medical school today, taking all of these courses on medicine and drugs and pharmacology year after year; very intensive, very hard studies. I think I would not be wrong in saying that most medical school students today, at most they might have one 3-hour credit course at the end of their study where they take something dealing with prevention. It is just not a factor in medical schools. It should be. It should be a factor in nursing schools. Any health care professional, any health care profession should have that component, including physicians assistants, nurse practitioners, and anyone involved in the health professions. So that is another part also. We need to be thinking about how we can beef up our public health service in this country. When I was a young kid going to public school, we had school nurses, and they came around and made sure we had our vaccinations and things such as that, and that we exercised. We don't do that anymore. We have to restructure our public health service in this country, to think about how we better utilize the public health service. If you go to medical school now, Medicare is one of the biggest funders of medical schools now, or if you go into the military, the military will put you through medical school and then you pay it back in 8 to 10 years for your medical school training. But what if you wanted to be a public health service officer, you wanted to go to medical school and maybe take one of the courses in public health? Well, that would apply there too. Why not pay their way through college, and then they pay it back for working in the public health service for a number of years. We think about the several hundred community health centers we have in this country, doing a great job. Why aren't they a part of the Public Health Service Corps in America, and utilize them for prevention and wellness, diagnostics? Quite frankly, people should not have to pay a copay or a cost share to get a colonoscopy, or breast cancer screening or a host of other things for diagnosis. Annual physical checkups; there shouldn't be a copay or cost share for that. That is just keeping people from doing it. When you detect things early and you can intervene early, that is part of prevention also, earlier diagnostics. Again, this has to be a big part--I think the centerpiece--of health care reform because it is the only way we are going to actually save money. Well, you may save money in a bigger pool and better insurance, that type of thing, yes, but the big bucks we will save and will make our people more productive and healthy is to have prevention and wellness. Yesterday, I convened a meeting of the key groups that have been active in the wellness and prevention field, including the Trust for America's Health, the Partnerships for Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the YMCA, the American Medical Association, and many others. This was yesterday. It was an excellent session, with a room full of people who all realize this is the time for bold thinking and real change. In addition, I intend to hold additional hearings in December. This working group that Senator Kennedy asked me to chair will reach out broadly. We wish to capture the best ideas, the best practices. Our goal is nothing less than to transform America into a genuine ``wellness society.'' To borrow a phrase, that is change you can believe in. It is also change that is long overdue. To date, wellness and prevention have been the missing pieces in the national conversation about health care reform. It is time to make them the centerpiece of the conversation--not an asterisk or a footnote but centerpiece of our conversation on health care reform. As chair of the Prevention and Public Health Working Group, I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to solicit ideas and input. Promoting wellness and preventing disease is not about party or ideology; it is about pragmatism and common sense. It is about what works--keeping people healthy and keeping costs down, making people more productive in their daily lives. We have a big job ahead of us, but I am confident the new President and the new Congress can deliver on health care reform, and we can do it in the next calendar year. Yes, we can greatly expand access to the health care system--or as I call it, the ``sick care'' system. At the same time, if that is all we do, we will have failed. We can and must transform America's sick care system into a true health care system, one that makes preventing illness and staying well every bit as important as curing the illness later on. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HARKIN

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

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing legislation--the Derivatives Trading Integrity Act--which calls for establishing stronger standards of openness, transparency and integrity in the trading of financial swaps and other over-the-counter derivatives as a critical step toward rebuilding and restoring confidence in the financial system. With the total face value of swaps reaching a high of some $531 trillion at the middle of this year--8-and-a-half times the world GDP of $62 trillion--it is long past time for accountability in these markets. Over the years, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Congress have responded to concerns of the the swaps industry by allowing instruments that are in form and function futures contracts to be privately negotiated without the safeguards provided through exchange trading. The economic downturn in this country is forcing us to examine all contributing factors to the crisis in our financial markets. By restoring reasonable safeguards and regulation of swaps, including credit default swaps, along with all other futures contracts, this legislation will go a long way to restore confidence in the markets and reestablish soundness and integrity in the financial system. My bill will end the unregulated ``casino capitalism'' that has engendered great risks in swaps trading. And it will bring these transactions out into the sunlight where they can be monitored and appropriately and responsibly regulated. This legislation will establish authority and safeguards to ensure that parties can meet their obligations to manage and reduce danger and risk to the entire financial system and economy. Virtually all contracts now commonly referred to as swaps fall under the definition of futures contracts and function basically in the same manner as futures contracts. This bill amends the Commodity Exchange Act to eliminate the distinction in futures contracts among ``excluded'' and ``exempt'' commodities and regulated, exchange-traded commodities; futures contracts for all commodities would be treated the same. In addition, the bill eliminates the statutory exclusion of swap transactions from regulation, and it ends the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority to exempt such transactions from the general requirement that a contract for the purchase or sale of a commodity for future delivery can only trade on a regulated board of trade. In effect, this means that all futures contracts must trade on a designated contract market or a derivatives transaction execution facility. Last month, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry heard dramatic testimony about the impact of unregulated financial derivatives on the U.S. economy. We have seen large negative consequences from the lack of price transparency and the failure to properly measure and collateralize the risk in trading over-the-counter derivatives. The problems have not been in the trading of financial futures on regulated futures markets, subject to the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This legislation I am introducing will establish the standards that all futures contracts trade on regulated exchange. The regulated exchanges will work with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to ensure that trading on the exchange is fair and equitable and not subject to abuses. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the experience and expertise to oversee these matters. Bringing necessary openness, transparency, soundness, and integrity to trading in contracts which are now unregulated over-the-counter swaps and related derivatives is a key element in restoring trust and confidence in the financial system so that we can rebuild our economy on a solid foundation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, in Iowa and across the United States, a new school year is well underway. As you know, Iowa public schools have an excellent reputation nationwide, and Iowa students' test scores are among the highest in the Nation. I would like to take just a few minutes today to salute several dedicated public servants at the Iowa Department of Education, and to report on their successful involvement in a unique Federal partnership to repair and modernize school facilities. This fall marks the 10th year of the Iowa Demonstration Construction Grant Program. That is its formal name, but it is better known among educators in Iowa as the program of Harkin grants for Iowa public schools. Since 1998, I have been fortunate to secure a total of $121 million for the Iowa Department of Education, which selects worthy school districts to receive these grants for a range of renovation and repair efforts--everything from updating fire safety systems to building new schools or renovating existing facilities. In many cases, this Federal funding is used to leverage public and/or private local funding, so it often has a tremendous multiplier effect in a local school district. The Federal funding has made a real difference for the 304 Iowa school districts that have received Harkin grants over the past decade. The grants have helped school districts from Waukon to Glenwood and from Keokuk to Rock Rapids build new schools, add new classrooms, renovate facilities and bring buildings up to fire codes. The progress we have witnessed is due, in large part, to the hard work and leadership of the Iowa Department of Education. When this program began, the department did not have experience in administering a grant program of this kind, but key personnel stepped up to plate to create and implement the successful program we have today. In the last 10 years, department staff have received, reviewed, processed and scored 1,370 grant applications which resulted in 820 grant awards and completion of 773 projects. The department processed thousands of payment requests for project costs, conducted more than 300 site visits to monitor the program and provided the professional administration that taxpayers deserve. I salute the entire staff, administration, and governance of the Iowa Department of Education for their excellent work. In particular, I would like to recognize C. Milton Wilson, Leland Tack, Ann McCarthy and Ted Stilwill for their leadership in helping create the program in 1998. They provided a strong foundation that was built on by their highly capable successors--Gary Schwartz, Janice Evans, Jeff Berger, Jim Addy and Judy Jeffrey. I would also like to express my appreciation to the individuals who have served on the School Budget Review Committee--Cynthia Eisenhauer, Michael Tramontina, Charlie Krogmeier, Clark Yeager, Wayne Drexler, Marilyn Perkins, Connie Cook, Su McCurdy, Don Hansen, and Jane Babcock--for their skilled oversight of the program and to the Iowa State Board of Education for their leadership and support. As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Harkin school grant program in Iowa, I am obliged to point out that many thousands of school buildings and facilities across the United States are in dire need of renovation or replacement. In my State of Iowa alone, according to a recent study, some 79 percent of public schools need to be upgraded or repaired. The harsh reality is that the average age of school buildings in the United States is nearly 50 years. Too often, our children visit ultra modern shopping malls and gleaming sports arenas on weekends, but during the week go to school in rundown or antiquated facilities. This sends exactly the wrong message to our young people about our priorities. We have to do better. That is why I am deeply grateful to the professionals at the Iowa Department of Education. There is no question that a quality public education for every child is a top priority in our state. I salute them and wish them well.