Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. In the past five years, five million more citizens have fallen into poverty. Thirty-seven million Americans live below the poverty line. Three million more working Americans live in hunger or on the verge of hunger today than in the year 2000. The long-term unemployment rate is at historic levels--1.4 million Americans are unemployed. Wages are stagnant throughout the United States, yet gas prices, housing costs, and heating oil costs are soaring. Families stay awake at night worrying how to make ends meet. Many parents wonder how they will feed their children and pay their bills. It is shameful that in the richest and most powerful Nation on Earth, nearly 20 percent of all children go to bed hungry at night because their parents, even working full time, still can't make ends meet. So how does the Republican leadership in Congress respond? By cutting one of the key programs intended to help these families and children through times of difficulty. These cuts are even more incomprehensible when we see the needs of our fellow citizens who have lost everything in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The needs of the poor in America had already been ignored by the Bush administration. But those devastating storms have shone a bright new light on the unacceptable poverty that continues to plague our communities today. We all watched the heartbreaking scenes of countless low-income residents with no cars, struggling to escape the path of the hurricane, and then struggling again to escape the flood waters. These were real people in real poverty left largely on their own, fending for themselves. American people expect their leaders to stand for fairness, freedom and opportunity. Those values are the cornerstone of the American dream. We believe that if you live right and work hard, you should be able to care for your family, afford rent in a safe neighborhood, and to send your children to college. We also believe that when life deals you a setback, you can count on your neighbors to pitch in. If you lose your job or become seriously ill, we all want to help out. If you lose your home, your belongings, and your security from a natural disaster, it is some comfort to know at least that you haven't been deserted and that help is on the way. You deserve a chance to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start over again--to reclaim the American dream for yourself and your family. That's the American way, the American spirit. The State agencies and the community action agencies funded by the community service block grant program know that spirit well. They fight poverty and encourage self-sufficiency in low-income communities every day. Their services include literacy, child health care, afterschool activities, low-income housing development, food stamps, and emergency shelter assistance--all building blocks for a better future for families facing misfortune. Unfortunately, the administration and the House of Representatives have closed their eyes to the needs of the poor and to the important work of these community service agencies across the nation. This bill takes the unconscionable step of cutting funds for the community service block grant program in half--just at the time that these services are needed most. At a time when poverty is increasing, and in the wake of the devastation of the hurricane, the House has decided to limit funds to the very agencies that came forward to help people least able to help themselves. As Hurricane Katrina hit, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade Horn acknowledged the unique role of the community-based agencies in disaster relief and called them to action in a memorandum of September. He said that community action grantees ``particularly those in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee [should] open [their] doors to those displaced families who have sought refuge in [their] community and seek new ways to support individuals, families and children impacted by this disaster.'' These local agencies responded to that call by providing support and other help to those in need. I recently heard of a community action agency in Georgia. A woman lost her home and her employment to Hurricane Katrina. She and her husband had evacuated New Orleans without their medication and little more than the clothes on their backs. The woman came to the Union County Community Resource Center. She and her husband were provided with food, vouchers for clothing at local thrift stores, and were referred to the local free clinic to obtain the prescriptions they needed to replace those that were lost. They were helped to find jobs through churches, organizations, and businesses. In fact, the woman was placed in a position within the same week. In Arkansas, community service block grant funds helped a single mother and her four children move from a shelter into federally assisted permanent housing. Funding paid for the security deposit, a deposit with the electric company, and a new washer and dryer because there were no facilities in the building. These actions are repeated every day thousands of times over to help people get back on their feet. According to the National Association of State Community Service Programs, community action agencies have assisted over 171,000 evacuees. Much of their time was volunteered. But the services and facilities they are using will draw from the funds allocated by the government. The services for new residents, even temporary ones, will change the community priorities already set for dwindling block grant resources. How can the administration encourage these agencies to do more while simultaneously cutting their funds? Over the past 3 years, community service block grant funds have been eroding, and a lack of funds has impaired the ability of these agencies to reach out to the poor. If the community service block grant is cut in half, their services will be compromised even more, and the agencies will face a crisis of their own that will strain their reserves. Programs that depend on grant resources for support such as fuel assistance, the earned-income tax credit, Medicare outreach, and food pantries will be seriously hurt, and in some cases will be eliminated. With rising home energy costs, a 50-percent cut in funding will jeopardize the LIHEAP program. October and November are especially busy months for the community action agencies that administer it. The program year begins October 1, and many agencies sign up the vast majority of LIHEAP participants right away. Most States get almost 90 percent of their annual allotment in the first quarter. In 3 months, the loss to Massachusetts will be $2 million. Half of the State's 4,000-person staff will face layoffs. Yet our State serves more than 400,000 persons, including many from the Gulf States. According to Action Inc., a community action agency in Gloucester, MA, a temporary 50-percent cut in funds will result in the elimination of its housing and family legal services. Three hundred fifty very low- income local families who face housing problems will be at risk of homelessness. The family law program will also be eliminated. Yet it helps 75 very low-income residents a year by providing legal assistance on issues such as divorce, custody, visitation and child support. Four hundred twenty-five families will not have the legal assistance that helps prevent evictions and solve critical family issues. Action Inc. is only one example of the numerous agencies in Massachusetts and across the Nation facing lay offs and program cuts or even elimination because of the harsh cuts in continuing resolution. It is wrong for the administration and the House of Representatives to shred America's safety net even further when so many Americans are already falling through it. We know how to mend it. All we lack is the will and the leadership to do it. The community services block grant agencies have been fighting to alleviate poverty with great skill. It is time the Government stopped forcing them to do so against such heavy odds. The challenge is too critical for Americans to ignore any longer. We can no longer remain indifferent to the least of those among us. Personal responsibility, community responsibility, government responsibility--they go hand in hand. When one of them breaks down, as it has now, we have to fix it. I am saddened by Congress's harsh treatment of those most in need. We should fully fund the community service block grant, not cut it in half. It may be inconvenient for House Members to take a plane ride back to Washington to fix the problem they created, but it does not compare to the hardships millions of poor people face today and every day.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I first pay tribute to my friend, colleague, and the chairman of our HELP Committee, Senator Enzi, for his comments and his statements. We have worked very closely together and will continue to do so on a variety of different health-related issues. We are working together on the challenges that we are facing from Hurricane Katrina, and we are also working on health and education, as well as issues of pensions and higher education. We come at this with somewhat different viewpoints. First, I commend Secretary Leavitt for an excellent briefing and presentation yesterday. All of our colleagues have had the opportunity to read in our national newspapers the dangers associated with avian influenza, including the potential threat that it presents and why it is different from the seasonal flu that concerns families all over this country, particularly to the elderly. We have to be reminded that 36,000 people every year die from the flu, even when we work to make sure they have access to the appropriate flu vaccine. But that is the number that we lose, and that certainly is a tragedy. We heard an outstanding presentation by Secretary Leavitt, as well as an outstanding presentation by Dr. Julie Gerberding, who is the head of the CDC and who has been enormously perceptive in terms of looking at the avian flu that we are facing. We also heard from General Michael Hayden, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and others. The one thing that came out of that meeting, that I think all of us were impressed by, is the sense of immediacy. I think that is what Senator Harkin is reacting to and responding to, the real potential danger which would be devastating to potentially tens of millions of Americans. Perhaps we are being overly sensitive to this issue by adding this amendment to the Defense appropriations bill because of the recent tragedy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Obviously Katrina has been particularly devastating, and Rita was certainly enormously harmful as well. There were several of us in that briefing who left saying if we are going to make a mistake, it will be on the side of taking too much action. The Secretary outlined a very vigorous program that he himself is involved in, working with the other agencies of Government and working with other members of the Cabinet. Avian flu is going to involve just about every kind of public policy issue, including transportation, health, commerce, and so many others. He gave us the assurance that he is going to have his own plan that will be released in the next few weeks. As Senator Harkin and others have pointed out, this particular legislation outlines the areas where funding should be directed, and also gives great flexibility to the administration in terms of its expenditures. Senator Harkin says that the funds will be available until spent. By passing this amendment today, we will not get caught at a time when either the Senate or the House is not in session. We now have an opportunity to make the necessary resources available, as well as direct the ways that it ought to be expended. During the presentation, the Secretary pointed out that their goal was to buy enough antiviral treatment to cover 80 million people, which is about one-quarter of the Nation's population. That was going to be at the cost of $20 a course of treatment. It was brought up by our colleagues that if this pandemic strikes the United States, there is not going to be a family that is not going to want to make sure that they have protections for their children and for themselves, for their spouses, for their parents, and for their grandparents. Every family is going to want to make sure they are able to afford and obtain that antiviral treatment. If one is affected by avian influenza and the antiviral treatment is taken immediately, the risk of death is diminished in a dramatic way. I think it is going to be very difficult to accept that this Nation will be satisfied with just one out of four Americans having access to this treatment. Even more so, when we already know the potential dangers of a pandemic by what we have seen in the places affected and impacted by avian flu. This legislation will only cover 50 percent of the population. It does not cover three out of four Americans. And, it does not cover the whole population. It costs $1.6 billion just to cover a quarter. We doubled that roughly to $3.2 billion, which puts us into the range suggested by experts. The point that was made very carefully by the Secretary is that we are going to have to deal with surge capacity, and that our hospitals do not have this capability at the present time. That is going to be very important. Previously, we have provided help and assistance to local communities and to State agencies to help them meet their surge capacity needs. Beyond that, it is going to be enormously important that we invest funds, as this legislation does, in surveillance--not only detection in this country but detection in foreign countries. That is the best way that we are going to be able to deal with this avian flu, to get the earliest possible detection. As a result of that briefing yesterday, I do not think any of us would feel that we have a full alert system working around the world. We had reports from various countries. A number of the countries, large countries as well as small, have effectively buried this health challenge and denied that they ever had it. We have to be very proactive if we are going to protect Americans. We have to be able to develop a system internationally where we can identify early warning signs of a pandemic. That kind of surveillance, is included in this legislation. We have to make sure we have the capability in our States to be able to detect this when it first affects a community. We have to set up a system for our health clinics and for our hospitals to make sure that the first indications of this kind of health challenge are going to be addressed. We need the detection and then we need the containment. To contain flu, we need to build our public health infrastructure in the local community. We are very far away from that kind of capability. A year ago, I think the Department submitted a public report about how many States actually had moved ahead in terms of developing their plans. About half of the states have yet to develop pandemic preparedness plans, and those with plans have yet to be evaluated for quality and feasibility. When I entered the Chamber, I was listening to my friend, Senator Enzi, talk about the BioShield Program which we put in place in preparation for the kind of challenge that we might face from bioterrorists. It focused on different bioterrorism agents that might pose a direct health threat, and allows the Secretary to put in place a system to respond quickly and effectively to those kinds of challenges. Our colleague, Senator Burr from North Carolina, has held an extraordinary number of hearings in these areas. I know he has been preparing legislation to deal with a number of these items that I am mentioning today. He has done a magnificent job in the development of those hearings. But that still does not mean that with the kind of challenge avian flu presents, which can be so devastating, that we should not be alert and ready to go. We can point out that our whole system of vaccines is woefully lagging in the United States for a variety of different reasons. Today, we do not have the direct capability and capacity to develop the kind of avian flu countermeasures we need, including vaccines or producing enough antiviral medication. The best estimate is even if we were to give all the contracts out today, it would be well into the year 2007 before we were able to provide important coverage for all Americans. So we are talking years into the future before we can even provide Tamiflu, something that we know can make a difference. It does seem to me that we do not have a day to waste. This is something that is very dangerous. Finally, one could ask, Is it appropriate to be on a Defense appropriations bill? Well, if we were talking about something like nuclear weapons, I would say, yes, because we are concerned about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. I, quite frankly, believe avian flu presents a much greater threat, because it is imminent, highly lethal, and we have few countermeasures. I do not see a great difference myself--certainly it will not be much of a difference to the families who are affected, whether it is terrorism or the fact that this kind of influenza has spread to this country and their family is infected with a deadly virus. That is why I believe that action is necessary. Very quickly, we have seen reductions in two very important agencies. One is HRSA, which provides grants to help hospitals in the area of preparedness so that they can develop a response plan, get clearance with the State and HHS. Hospitals have begun working on plans, but they are woefully far behind, and this program was cut again this year. Then we have the Centers for Disease Control that will be certainly a lead agency--I would hope that it would be a lead agency--and we know that their public health expenditures have been reduced. I think this is tragic myself. It is a jewel of an organization in terms of American public health, and it has done extraordinarily well. It is extremely well led at the present time, and it does not seem appropriate to me that we ought to be reducing the CDC budget, when the agency has such great responsibility in this area at this time. Yesterday, when I asked Secretary Leavitt whether we could actually use the BioShield money--I think we have close to $6 billion in that-- he said that it was set up and structured so that the funds are not applicable to this particular kind of challenge. I think the amounts we are talking about are appropriate, given the essential nature of the potential disaster. The new flu strain poses a deadly threat. One of the important points made by Secretary Leavitt yesterday is that even this very deadly strain they are most concerned about can mutate further. It is always somewhat difficult to develop the vaccines and antivirals because these strains can alter and change, making the vaccines no longer effective. But having said that, they believe the treatments they have developed can have an important impact on saving the lives of those infected with avian flu. In the areas already affected with avian flu, we see a death rate of 44 percent in Vietnam, 71 percent in Thailand, almost 100 percent in Cambodia--and an average of 50 percent for all of Asia. The great challenge, as we heard yesterday, occurs when it moves from the birds into human beings. That is a big leap. I will come back and make a longer talk about how that comes about and how rare that process is, but that has happened. Then, the next leap is whether it is easily spread from person to person. For example, if one member of the family--if a child has it, is it easily communicable to the child's siblings? There is only one recorded instance, as we were told yesterday, where that has taken place. But it has taken place. That is a very important warning sign because it suggests that this influenza has the potential to become a pandemic and be absolutely devastating. We were reminded yesterday, during the briefing, there are usually three pandemics every 100 years. They talked about what happened in the immediate postwar period of 1918, when soldiers had been at the front and they contracted dangerous influenza. In the US, over 500,000 people died from that pandemic flu, and another 50 million worldwide died. We do not want to be unduly alarmist, but we have to be serious about it. This meeting we had was in S-407. It was going to be top secret, evidently. I said to the Secretary, now that we have heard all this news, it seems to me the public ought to know about it, they ought to understand it, and it ought to be explained by the top health officials in the country so we get accurate information. We have a number of those--Secretary Leavitt, Dr. Tony Fauci, Dr. Julie Gerberding--who are enormously competent, thoughtful scientists, researchers, who have a lifetime of commitment trying to understand these dangers. The more Americans listen to them and read the information on this and the authentic science, the better off they are going to be. But I believe this Harkin amendment is saying we have been put on notice. If there is an avian flu outbreak, they will say, Didn't you go to the briefing upstairs in 407 where they laid this out to you? You are on the HELP committee. You know the dangers. You worked with Senator Frist when we passed BioShield. Senator Burr, when he was in the House, was a principal sponsor--even before 9/11. The elements of preparedness, detection, and containment that are in this amendment were included in BioShield as well. These are thoughtful ideas. There is strong support for them in the HELP Committee. Today, we have an opportunity to take action on the floor. The administration is going to be responsible for that when this amendment is passed. I join with my colleague and friend, Senator Enzi, and with Senator Burr, our other colleague who has provided great leadership in the committee, to get legislation on preparedness out as early as possible. My chairman, Senator Enzi, likes to do it the old-fashioned way. He likes to listen to witnesses make the presentations, mark up the bill and get it to the floor, and he does it with extraordinary success. I would say, on this particular occasion, we ought to get the resources out there now. Senator Harkin has outlined the general areas which I think are justifiable, where the resources should be spent. I would also like to see the Secretary bring together all the major drug companies, which I think he intends to do, and go over this and get a plan from them about how we can maximize the safety and security for all Americans. This is what this amendment is all about. I thank my colleague from Wyoming for his comments and statements about avian flu. I look forward to working with him on this issue. Our only real difference is whether we move ahead now, trying to at least provide those essential resources for the Secretary, the President, and the administration, to act now and prepare us for the threat of avian flu or wait until it's too late. We can work with our colleagues within our committee to try to develop additional legislation to further improve our preparedness and develop effective treatments for avian flu. That is certainly a responsibility that we have. I welcome the opportunity to do that with my friend from Wyoming and also the Senator from North Carolina. I yield the floor.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, my friend and colleague, the Senator from New York, is here. He wants to speak briefly. I know the time is divided for the next hour. I ask unanimous consent that he follow my remarks.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will probably speak 8 or 9 minutes. My colleague wanted to speak for about 4 or 5 minutes. That would not interfere with the previous agreement. I ask unanimous consent that he be recognized following me.

Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, the Supreme Court of the United States is the ultimate arbiter of our Constitution and, as such, it is the final protector of individual rights and liberties in this great Nation. So when we vote to confirm a justice for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, we have an awesome responsibility to get it right. And when we vote to confirm the Chief Justice of the United States, we have an even greater responsibility, because the stakes are even higher. The Chief Justice sets the tone for the Court and, through leadership, influences Court decisions in ways both subtle and direct. Indeed, during the course of his confirmation hearings, Judge Roberts expressly acknowledged the important role that a Chief Justice can play in persuading his fellow justices to come along to his way of thinking about a particular case. During my discussion with him of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, I mentioned that the decision was a unanimous one. Judge Roberts responded: Yes. That represented a lot of work by Chief Justice Earl Warren because my understanding of the history is that it initially was not. And he spent--it was re-argued. He spent a considerable amount of time talking to his colleagues and bringing around to the point where they ended up with unanimous court. . . On another day, when I again mentioned Brown and the indispensable role played by Chief Justice Warren, Judge Roberts said: Well, Senator, my point with respect to Chief Justice Warren was that he appreciated the impact that the decision in Brown would have. And he appreciated that the impact would be far more beneficial and favorable and far more effectively implemented with the unanimous court, the court speaking with one voice, than a splintered court. The issue was significant enough that he spent the extra time in the reargument of the case to devote his energies to convincing the other justices--and, obviously, there's no arm-twisting or anything of that; it's the type of collegial discussion that judges and justices have to engage in--of the importance of what the court was doing and an appreciation of its impact on real people and real lives. I have thought long and hard about the exchanges I had with Judge Roberts, and I have read and re-read the transcript and the record. And try as I might, I cannot find the evidence to conclude that John Roberts understands the real world impact of court decisions on civil rights and equal rights in this country. And I cannot find the evidence to conclude that a Chief Justice John Roberts would be the kind of inspirational leader who would use his powers of persuasion to bring all the Court along on America's continued march toward progress. Therefore, I do not believe that John Roberts has met the burden of proof necessary to be confirmed by the Senate as Chief Justice of the United States. Sadly, there is ample evidence in John Roberts' record to indicate that he would turn the clock back on this country's great march of progress toward equal opportunity for all. The White House has refused to release documents and information from his years in the Reagan administration and in the first Bush administration that might indicate otherwise, but without those records we have no way of knowing. Both in committee and on the floor, some have argued that those of us who oppose John Roberts' nomination are trying to force a nominee to adopt our ``partisan'' positions, to support our ``causes,'' to yield to our ``special interest'' agendas. But progress toward a freer, fairer Nation where ``justice for all'' is a reality--not just a pledge in the Constitution--is not a personal ``cause'' or a ``special interest'' or a ``partisan'' philosophy or ideology or agenda. For more than half a century, our Nation's progress toward a just society has been a shared goal of both Democrats and Republicans. Since Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen led his party in supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, equal rights for all has been a consensus cause, not a ``partisan cause.'' Since Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and began the process of spreading true democracy to all Americans, it has been a national goal, not a ``special interest'' goal. Fulfilling the Founders' ideals of equality and justice for all is not just a personal ideology, it is America's ideology. Surely, in the 21st century, anyone who leaves the slightest doubt as to whether he shares it fully, openly and enthusiastically should not be confirmed to any office, let alone the highest judicial office in the land. Our doubts about John Roberts' commitment to continuing our national progress toward justice was, quite appropriately, a major issue in the committee hearings. The fundamental question was whether his record and his answers suggested that he would be an obstacle to that progress, by treating cases before the Supreme Court in a narrow legalistic way that resists and undermines the extraordinary gains of the past. For all his brilliance and polish, he gave us insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the John Roberts of today is not the ideological activist he clearly was before. The strong evidence from his own hand and mind, the crucial 3-year gap in evidence because of the Administration's refusal to release his papers as Deputy Solicitor General, and his grudging and ambiguous answers at the hearing left too many fundamental doubts, and could put the entire Nation at risk for decades to come. Some argue that John Roberts was just doing his job and carrying out the policies of the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. But his own writings refute that argument--these were clearly his own views, and were enthusiastically offered as his views. If he didn't agree with those policies as a lawyer in the Justice Department in 1981 and 1982, he would not have applied for the more political and more sensitive job in the White House Counsel's office when he left the Justice Department. He knowingly chose to be a voice for their policies, and often advocated even more extreme versions of those policies. He certainly knew what was expected of him when he chose to become Deputy Solicitor General in 1989. That position was explicitly created to be the political monitor over all Department of Justice litigation. He was eager to advance the ideological views that his earlier memoranda show he personally supported. He obviously wasn't just ``following orders''--he was an eager recruit for those causes. That was the evidence he needed to overcome in the hearings, and his effort to do so is unconvincing. I hope I am proven wrong about John Roberts. I have been proven wrong before on my confirmation votes. I regret my vote to confirm Justice Scalia even though he, too, like John Roberts, was a nice person and a very smart Harvard lawyer. I regret my vote against Justice Souter, although at the time, his record did not persuade me he was in tune with the Nation's goals and progress. But as the example of Justice Scalia shows, and contrary to the assertions of my colleagues across the aisle, I have never hesitated to vote for a Republican President's nominee to the Supreme Court whose commitment to core national goals and values appeared clear at the time. In fact, I have voted for seven of them, more than the number of nominees of Democratic Presidents I have voted for. Our Senate responsibility to provide advice and consent on the Supreme Court Justices and other nominations is one of our most important functions. The future and the quality of life in this Nation may literally depend on how we exercise it. If we are merely a rubberstamp for the President's nominees, if we put party over principle, then we have failed in this vital responsibility. Even more important, if we go along to get along with the White House, we will be undermining the trust the Founders placed in us, and we will diminish the great institution entrusted to our care. Every thoughtful and reasonable ``no'' vote is a vote for the balance of powers and for the Constitution, so we must never hesitate to cast it when our independent consciences tell us to do so. I yield the floor.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, 40 years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed landmark legislation into law creating the Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. I was privileged to be one of the cosponsors of this measure, which created the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and bring a new nationwide focus to the creative community across America in the fields of literature and history, the visual arts, and the performing arts. Throughout these four decades, the Endowments have provided impressive leadership in enhancing the cultural life of the Nation. The budget for the two agencies is relatively small, but they have distributed Federal grants to a wide range of deserving educational and cultural organizations in communities in all parts of the country. The best of our cultural heritage has broad appeal to peoples everywhere. The scholarship, the history, and the arts of America are admired around the world. Each generation of scholars and artists has much to share with the rest of the world, and with the generations to come as well. The important role of the Endowments is to support the museums, the galleries, and the theaters in our communities, and assist them in presenting these artistic achievements so that audiences, students and scholars can study them, and learn from them. Down through the ages, the arts have inspired generations after generations with their beauty, tolerance and understanding. They enable individuals to reach beyond their own experience and know something of other peoples and other cultures. In this shrinking world, it is even more important to respect our neighbors, and build cultural bridges to reach out to one another in our shared world. The arts and humanities offer indispensable opportunities to achieve this important goal. The Endowments help disseminate the creative work being done at the local level. In Massachusetts, we are privileged to have an extraordinary range of cultural institutions that document the story of our Commonwealth from its earliest days to the present. We are very proud of the cultural landmarks that tell of our history, so that future generations too will understand the challenges that faced the Pilgrim settlers in Plymouth, the struggle for independence that began in Boston Harbor and at Concord Bridge, the harrowing era of one stop on the Underground Railroad, the rugged life in the fishing community of New Bedford, and the early years of the China trade. So, too, in every other State in our Nation, the story is told of discovery, development and achievement, the continuing story of the American journey. The important task of the Endowments is to honor and preserve this legacy. Over the past four decades, they have compiled an impressive record of vital support for both the arts and humanities. The Arts Endowment has funded major arts exhibitions, dance tours by large national companies, and performances by smaller regional companies. The Humanities Endowment has provided vital research and educational support in colleges and universities across the country. It has supported a national effort to preserve important documents, brittle books and important artifacts. Its public programs have underwritten brilliant documentaries on topics ranging from the story of the Civil War to the story of baseball. These two great Endowments have amply fulfilled the early hope that they could improve the quality of the arts and humanities and expand their reach, and we in Congress are very proud of all they have accomplished. There have been times of controversy and criticism as well, but the Endowments have clearly earned the bipartisan respect and support that they now enjoy. The arts and humanities are an essential part in the life of the Nation and in all of our lives, and the Endowment's mission is to ensure that they always will be. I commend the current chairmen of the Humanities Endowment and the Arts Endowment, Bruce Cole and Dana Gioia. They follow in impressive footsteps of their illustrious predecessors, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. We are grateful for all that they and their outstanding staff members do each day to fulfill their important mission. It is gratifying on this 40th anniversary of the creation of the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities to recognize their superb record of achievement, and I congratulate all those who have done so much to make it so.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, along with a vote to authorize war, the vote on the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice, especially a Chief Justice, is one of the most important votes that Senators ever cast. Because the Supreme Court is the guardian of our most cherished rights and liberties, the vote on any Supreme Court nominee has enormous significance for the everyday lives of all Americans. Supporting or opposing a Supreme Court nominee is not--and should not be--a partisan issue. Indeed, in my time in the United States Senate, I have voted to confirm nearly twice as many Republican nominees to the high Court as Democratic nominees. To be sure, there are also some nominees that I have opposed. But that opposition was not based on the political party of the President who nominated them, but on the record--or lack of record--of the testimony and writings of each individual nominee. In hindsight, there are some votes--either for or against--that I wish I had cast differently, but each vote reflected my best, considered judgment at the time, based on the information and record before me. That is what the Constitution calls us to do as Senators. Yet some of our friends on the other side of the aisle have tried to portray a vote against John Roberts as a reflexive, partisan vote against any nominee by President Bush. Still others have made the sweeping statement that any Senator who can't vote for Roberts can't vote for any nominee of a Republican President. These broad statements are patently wrong and suggest partisan posturing that does serious injustice to the most serious business of giving a lifetime appointment to a Justice on the highest Court in the land. With full appreciation and awareness of the Senate's solemn obligation to give advice and consent to this all-important Supreme Court nomination by President Bush, I have read the record, asked questions, re-read the record, and asked even more questions. But after reviewing the record such as it is, I am unable to support the nomination of John Roberts to be the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Our Founders proclaimed the bedrock principle that we are all created equal. But everyone knows that in the early days of our Republic, the reality was far different. For more than two centuries, we have struggled, sometimes spilling precious blood, to fulfill that unique American promise. The beliefs and sacrifices of millions of Americans throughout the history of our Nation have breathed fuller life and given real world relevance to our constitutional ideals. With genius and foresight, our founders gave us the tools--the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--that have aided and encouraged our march towards progress. The guarantees in our founding documents, as enhanced in the wake of a divisive Civil War, have guided our Nation to live up to the promise of liberty, equality and justice for all. We have made much progress. But our work is not finished. We still look to our elected representatives and our independent courts in each new generation to uphold those guiding principles, to continue the great march of progress, and never to turn back or give up hard-won gains. The commitment to this march of progress was the central issue in the John Roberts hearing. We asked whether he, as Chief Justice, would bring the values, ideals and vision to lead us on the path of continued equality, fairness, and opportunity for all. Or would he stand in the way of progress by viewing the issues that come before the Court in a narrow and legalistic way, thereby slowly turning back the clock and eroding the civil rights and equal rights gains of the past. We examined the only written record before us and saw John Roberts, aggressive activist in the Reagan Administration, eager to narrow hard- won rights and liberties, especially voting rights, women's rights, civil rights, and disability rights. As Congressman John Lewis eloquently stated in our hearings, 25 years ago John Roberts was on the wrong side of the nation's struggle to achieve genuine equality of opportunity for all Americans. And, despite many invitations to do so, Judge Roberts never distanced himself from the aggressively narrow views of that young lawyer in the Reagan administration. Who is John Roberts today? Who will he be as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States? John Roberts is a highly intelligent nominee. He has argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, and won more than half of them. He is adept at turning questions on their head while giving seemingly appropriate answers. These skills served him well as a Supreme Court advocate. These same skills, however, did not contribute to a productive confirmation process. At the end of the 4 days of hearings, we still know very little more than we knew when we started. John Roberts said that ``the responsibility of the judicial branch is to decide particular cases that are presented to them in this area according to the rule of law.'' Of course, everyone agrees with that. Each of us took an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, and we take that oath seriously. But the rule of law does not exist in a vacuum. Constitutional values and ideals inform all legal decisions. But John Roberts never shared with us his own constitutional values and ideals. He said that a judge should be like an umpire, calling the balls and strikes, but not making the rules. But we all know that with any umpire, the call may depend on your point of view. An instant replay from another angle can show a very different result. Umpires follow the rules of the game. But in critical cases, it may well depend on where they are standing when they make the call. The same is true with judges. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated: The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.'' He also said that legal decisions are not like mathematics. If they were, we wouldn't need men and women of reason and intellect to sit on the bench--we would simply input the facts and the law into some computer program and wait for a mechanical result. We all believe in the rule of law. But that is just the beginning of the conversation when it comes to the meaning of the Constitution. Everyone follows the same text. But the meaning of the text is often imprecise. You must examine the intent of the Framers, the history, and the current reality. And this examination will lead to very different outcomes depending on each Justice's constitutional world view. Is it a full and generous view of our rights and liberties and of government power to protect the people or a narrow and cramped view of those rights and liberties and the government's power to protect ordinary Americans? Based on the record available, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that Judge Roberts view of the rule of law would include as paramount the protection of basic rights. The values and perspectives displayed over and over again in his record cast doubt on his view of voting rights, women's rights, civil rights, and disability rights. In fact, for all the hoopla and razzle-dazzle in four days of hearings, there is precious little in the record to suggest that a Chief Justice John Roberts would espouse anything less that the narrow and cramped view that staff attorney John Roberts so strongly advocated in the 1980s. On the first day of the hearing, Senator Kohl asked, ``Which of those positions were you supportive of, or are you still supportive of, and which would you disavow?'' Judge Roberts never gave a clear response. Other than his grudging concession during the hearing that he knows of no present challenge that would make section 2 of the Voting Rights Act ``constitutionally suspect''--a concession that took almost 20 minutes of my questioning to elicit--John Roberts has a demonstrated record of strong opposition to section 2, which is almost universally considered to be the most powerful and effective civil rights law ever enacted. Section 2 outlaws voting practices that deny or dilute the right to vote based on race, national origin, or language minority status--and is largely uncontroversial today. But in 1981 and 1982, Judge Roberts urged the administration to oppose a bi-partisan amendment to strengthen section 2, and to have, instead, a provision that made it more difficult some say impossible to prove discriminatory voting practices and procedures. Although Judge Roberts sought to characterize his opposition to the so-called ``effects test'' as simply following the policy of the Reagan administration, the dozens of memos he wrote on this subject show that he personally believed the administration was right to oppose the ``effects test.'' When Roberts worried that the Senate might reject his position, he urged the Attorney General to send a letter to the Senate opposing the amendment, stating, ``My own view is that something must be done to educate the Senators. . . .'' He also urged the Attorney General to assert his leadership against the amendment strengthening section 2. He wrote that the Attorney General should ``head off any retrenchment efforts'' by the White House staff who were inclined to support the effects test. He consistently urged the administration to require voters to bear the heavy burden of proving discriminatory intent--even on laws passed a century earlier-- in order to overturn practices that locked them out of the electoral process. Judge Roberts wrote at the time that ``violations of section 2 should not be made too easy to prove. . . .'' Remember, when he wrote those words there had been no African-Americans elected to Congress since Reconstruction from seven of the States with the largest black populations. The year after section 2 was signed into law, Judge Roberts wrote in a memorandum to the White House Counsel that ``we were burned'' by the Voting Rights Act legislation. Given his clear record of hostility to this key voting rights protection, the public has a right to know if he still holds these views. But Judge Roberts gave us hardly a clue. Even when Senator Feingold asked whether Judge Roberts would acknowledge today that he had been wrong to oppose the effects test, he refused to give a yes-or-no answer. Judge Roberts responded: ``I'm certainly not an expert in the area and haven't followed and have no way of evaluating the relative effectiveness of the law as amended or the law as it was prior to 1982.'' So we still don't know whether he supports the basic law against voting practices that result in denying voting rights because of race, national origin, or language minority status. You don't need to be a voting rights expert to say we're better off today in an America where persons of color can be elected to Congress from any State in the country. You don't need to be a voting rights expert to know there was a problem in 1982, when no African American had been elected to Congress since Reconstruction from Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, or Louisiana--where African Americans were almost a third of the population--because restrictive election systems effectively denied African Americans and other minorities the equal chance to elect representatives of their choice. You don't need to be a voting rights expert to say it's better that the Voting Rights Act paved the way for over 9,000 African American elected officials and over 6,000 Latino elected officials who have been elected and appointed nationwide since the passage of that act. And you don't need to be an expert to recognize that section 2 has benefited Native Americans, Asians and others who historically encountered harsh barriers to full political participation. Yet Judge Roberts refused in the hearings to say that his past opposition to section 2 doesn't represent his current views. Judge Roberts also refused to disavow his past record of opposition to requiring non-discrimination by recipients of federal funds. These laws were adopted because, as President Kennedy said in 1963, ``[s]imple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers . . . contribute, not be spent in any fashion which . . . subsidizes, or results in . . . discrimination.'' He supported a cramped and narrow view that would exempt many formerly covered institutions from following civil rights laws that protect women, minorities and the disabled. Under that view, the enormous subsidies the Federal government gives colleges and universities in the form of Federal financial aid would not have been enough to require them to obey the laws against discrimination. That position was so extreme that it was rejected by the Reagan administration and later by the Supreme Court. Although Judge Roberts later acknowledged that the Reagan administration rejected this view, he would not tell the committee whether he still holds that view today. He also never stated whether he personally agrees with the decision in Franklin v. Gwinnett, where the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his argument that title IX, the landmark law against gender discrimination, provided no monetary relief to a schoolgirl who was sexually abused by her schoolteacher. A careful reading of the transcript of his testimony makes clear that he never embraced the Supreme Court's decision to uphold affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School, nor did he expressly agree with the Supreme Court decision that all children--including those who are undocumented--have a legal right to public education. He emphasized his agreement with certain rationales used by the court in those cases, but he left himself a lot of wiggle room for future reconsideration of those 5-4 decisions. Finally, a number of my colleagues on the committee asked Judge Roberts about issues related to women's rights and a woman's right to privacy. On these important matters, too, he never gave answers that shed light on his current views. No one is entitled to become Chief Justice of the United States. The confirmation of nominees to our courts--by and with the advice and consent of the Senate--should not require a leap of faith. Nominees must earn their confirmation by providing us and the American people with full knowledge of the values and convictions they will bring to decisions that may profoundly affect our progress as a nation toward the ideal of equality. Judge Roberts has not done so. His repeated reference to the rule of law reveals little about the values he would bring to the job of Chief Justice of the United States. The record we have puts at serious risk the progress we have made toward our common American vision of equal opportunity for all of our citizens. There is clear and convincing evidence that John Roberts is the wrong choice for Chief Justice. I oppose the nomination. I urge my colleagues to do the same. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, today, I join Senator Enzi in introducing a relief bill that will bring aid to hundreds of thousands of people affected by Hurricane Katrina. I commend Chairman Enzi and our colleagues on the Committee for moving so quickly to meet the many urgent health needs of the victims. We have all seen the images of despair of those who felt so abandoned by their government in their time of need. We have also seen hope reborn in the faces of families reunited after surviving this massive catastrophe. We have seen great heroism too, not only in the spectacular images of rescues by helicopter, but in the quiet courage of neighbors helping neighbors survive the heavy winds and rising waters. It's been three weeks since Hurricane Katrina brought havoc to the Gulf Coast. Every day, we have a clearer picture of physical destruction of beloved American communities, and a deeper understanding of what our fellow citizens have lost. Survivors have begun the slow and difficult process of rebuilding their lives. Most have , only the clothing they wore as they tried to cope with the hurricane. Another picture is also emerging--a report card filled with failing grades for government at every level in the preparations and response for such an emergency. The natural disaster was compounded many fold by the inadequate response, despite the bravery and sacrifice of relief workers, rescue personnel, and the hurricane survivors themselves. With new destruction in Texas and Louisiana from Hurricane Rita, we had little time to learn from these past lessons. Already, we responded sooner by insisting on the evacuation of people in flood-prone areas and shipping food and supplies quickly into the hard hit areas. Unfortunately, this means that many Hurricane Katrina evacuees had to relocate again. They halted their individual rebuilding processes, and once again, now find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings dealing with anguish, fear, loss, and uncertainty. The recent evacuations reveal additional lessons to be learned. Massive gridlock on evacuation routes, gasoline shortages, and overwhelmed airports are just the beginning of many challenges that lie ahead. We need to learn faster and learn better, so that we can prepare more effectively before disasters happen, react more effectively as they take place, and respond more effectively in the aftermath. I commend Chairman Enzi for convening two roundtable discussions that provided impressive expertise about what can be done immediately to protect the health of those affected by the hurricane and help them begin to rebuild their lives. Our committee listened carefully and prepared a relief package to address the immediate health needs of the survivors for the next 90 days. We have a long road ahead of us, but this bill is an important start. As the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita continues to unfold, we will learn of additional needs, and be reminded again and again that we have much more to do to improve the nation's ability to respond to disasters, whether man-made or natural. In this legislation, we are focusing on what we can do to immediately remove the perennial red tape and make sure that each and every survivor has access to good health care. For those with health insurance, the bill provides temporary assistance on premiums, so that individuals and small businesses affected by the hurricanes maintain their existing coverage. I'm hopeful we can work together to extend similar help to persons in larger firms who need temporary assistance. We also authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to extend insurance deadlines, so that hurricane survivors have time to make important decisions about their coverage. In preventing disease outbreaks and epidemics, time is of the essence. The bill removes barriers to existing public health programs, such as by allowing the Vaccines for Children Program to contribute to the vaccination campaign already under way, in order to prevent outbreaks of disease in responders and in persons relying on the same shelter. It is especially urgent to monitor the survivors and responders, in order to identify both the short-term and the long-term risks they face. I will continue to work with my colleagues to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to work closely with other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to begin monitoring health outcomes and exposure to environmental toxins, and to develop a registry of people screened, so that we can identify long- term consequences. As we focus on preventing and treating physical illness, we must not ignore the emotional challenges ahead for both survivors and responders. Thousands are facing the silent battle of coping with bereavement and catastrophe. All are at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Today, we are reauthorizing the emergency mental health services program of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's and giving priority to awarding its grants to states and areas most affected by the hurricanes. This measure is only the beginning. It ends restrictions on existing Federal programs, so that we can help immediately with the relief efforts and expand access to health care for the survivors. I'm encouraged by how well our colleagues have worked together to rapidly develop this relief package, and I urge the Majority Leader and the full Senate to make passing this legislation a priority and bring help to the thousands affected by the hurricane. I'm also optimistic that our bipartisan cooperation here will lead to further relief measures that fully address the longer term health needs of the victims, and prevent the kind of mistakes that happened in connection with Katrina and Rita from happening again. Congress has a major responsibility to help the survivors of this tragic ordeal rebuild their communities and their lives. Today, we make a clear commitment to the survivors. Our promise to them should not simply be to turn back the clock a month or two--it should be to fulfill the true promise of the American Dream by committing ourselves to better health, better education and better job opportunities for survivors, and for all Americans as well.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, today Senator Enzi and I are introducing legislation to protect the workers who are laboring to clean up the Gulf Coast after its recent disasters. The heroism of America's workers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is unparalleled. As they did in response to our national disaster on September 11, thousands of men and women have been working around the clock to find and rescue families, to provide them with food and shelter, and to evacuate them from the area. In the coming days thousands more will be on the ground reestablishing communications, cleaning up debris, restoring services, and rebuilding infrastructure. They are now facing additional challenges because of the new damage and flooding from Hurricane Rita, but they continue to make progress in cleaning and rebuilding New Orleans and the entire disaster area. This work is critical, but it is also dangerous. Many of these tasks pose significant safety and health threats: conditions in New Orleans are of particular concern, where the widespread flooding has led to widespread biological and chemical contamination. We learn more each day about the oil spills, the Superfund sites, and exposure to E. coli that these workers are facing. It is imperative that workers and volunteers be protected from these serious hazards. That is why our legislation includes language to protect the health and safety of workers. It urges OSHA and other health and safety agencies to follow the Worker Health and Safety Annex protections of our National Response Plan. This includes keeping track of workers who are being exposed, coordinating health and safety training for workers and volunteers, and monitoring the hazards that workers and volunteers are facing. It also authorizes funds to be spent for additional personnel, enforcement of health and safety standards, critical safety information for workers and employers, and safety and health training. I hope that as Congress continues to allocate money for disaster relief that we also provide money to protect our workers and volunteers. We need to track how our efforts are working, and so we have provided for Congressional oversight. OSHA will be required to brief the HELP Committee in six months, and provide a written report within nine months, so we can see what progress has been made and what still needs to be done. We have also mandated oversight by the Executive Branch. The Inspector General of the Department of Labor will audit and investigate the Department's efforts to implement the protections established in this bill, and will report back to both Houses of Congress on the success of these response and recovery efforts. Finally, the bill also provides temporary relief to many companies, unions and individuals who are required to meet financial and other reporting obligations during the next few months, but cannot satisfy these obligations due to record destruction and other problems associated with Katrina.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, today, I join Senator Enzi in introducing a relief bill that will bring aid to hundreds of thousands of people affected by Hurricane Katrina. I commend Chairman Enzi and our colleagues on the Committee for moving so quickly to meet the many urgent health needs of the victims. We have all seen the images of despair of those who felt so abandoned by their government in their time of need. We have also seen hope reborn in the faces of families reunited after surviving this massive catastrophe. We have seen great heroism too, not only in the spectacular images of rescues by helicopter, but in the quiet courage of neighbors helping neighbors survive the heavy winds and rising waters. It's been three weeks since Hurricane Katrina brought havoc to the Gulf Coast. Every day, we have a clearer picture of physical destruction of beloved American communities, and a deeper understanding of what our fellow citizens have lost. Survivors have begun the slow and difficult process of rebuilding their lives. Most have , only the clothing they wore as they tried to cope with the hurricane. Another picture is also emerging--a report card filled with failing grades for government at every level in the preparations and response for such an emergency. The natural disaster was compounded many fold by the inadequate response, despite the bravery and sacrifice of relief workers, rescue personnel, and the hurricane survivors themselves. With new destruction in Texas and Louisiana from Hurricane Rita, we had little time to learn from these past lessons. Already, we responded sooner by insisting on the evacuation of people in flood-prone areas and shipping food and supplies quickly into the hard hit areas. Unfortunately, this means that many Hurricane Katrina evacuees had to relocate again. They halted their individual rebuilding processes, and once again, now find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings dealing with anguish, fear, loss, and uncertainty. The recent evacuations reveal additional lessons to be learned. Massive gridlock on evacuation routes, gasoline shortages, and overwhelmed airports are just the beginning of many challenges that lie ahead. We need to learn faster and learn better, so that we can prepare more effectively before disasters happen, react more effectively as they take place, and respond more effectively in the aftermath. I commend Chairman Enzi for convening two roundtable discussions that provided impressive expertise about what can be done immediately to protect the health of those affected by the hurricane and help them begin to rebuild their lives. Our committee listened carefully and prepared a relief package to address the immediate health needs of the survivors for the next 90 days. We have a long road ahead of us, but this bill is an important start. As the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita continues to unfold, we will learn of additional needs, and be reminded again and again that we have much more to do to improve the nation's ability to respond to disasters, whether man-made or natural. In this legislation, we are focusing on what we can do to immediately remove the perennial red tape and make sure that each and every survivor has access to good health care. For those with health insurance, the bill provides temporary assistance on premiums, so that individuals and small businesses affected by the hurricanes maintain their existing coverage. I'm hopeful we can work together to extend similar help to persons in larger firms who need temporary assistance. We also authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to extend insurance deadlines, so that hurricane survivors have time to make important decisions about their coverage. In preventing disease outbreaks and epidemics, time is of the essence. The bill removes barriers to existing public health programs, such as by allowing the Vaccines for Children Program to contribute to the vaccination campaign already under way, in order to prevent outbreaks of disease in responders and in persons relying on the same shelter. It is especially urgent to monitor the survivors and responders, in order to identify both the short-term and the long-term risks they face. I will continue to work with my colleagues to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to work closely with other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to begin monitoring health outcomes and exposure to environmental toxins, and to develop a registry of people screened, so that we can identify long- term consequences. As we focus on preventing and treating physical illness, we must not ignore the emotional challenges ahead for both survivors and responders. Thousands are facing the silent battle of coping with bereavement and catastrophe. All are at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Today, we are reauthorizing the emergency mental health services program of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's and giving priority to awarding its grants to states and areas most affected by the hurricanes. This measure is only the beginning. It ends restrictions on existing Federal programs, so that we can help immediately with the relief efforts and expand access to health care for the survivors. I'm encouraged by how well our colleagues have worked together to rapidly develop this relief package, and I urge the Majority Leader and the full Senate to make passing this legislation a priority and bring help to the thousands affected by the hurricane. I'm also optimistic that our bipartisan cooperation here will lead to further relief measures that fully address the longer term health needs of the victims, and prevent the kind of mistakes that happened in connection with Katrina and Rita from happening again. Congress has a major responsibility to help the survivors of this tragic ordeal rebuild their communities and their lives. Today, we make a clear commitment to the survivors. Our promise to them should not simply be to turn back the clock a month or two--it should be to fulfill the true promise of the American Dream by committing ourselves to better health, better education and better job opportunities for survivors, and for all Americans as well.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, today Senator Enzi and I are introducing legislation to protect the workers who are laboring to clean up the Gulf Coast after its recent disasters. The heroism of America's workers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is unparalleled. As they did in response to our national disaster on September 11, thousands of men and women have been working around the clock to find and rescue families, to provide them with food and shelter, and to evacuate them from the area. In the coming days thousands more will be on the ground reestablishing communications, cleaning up debris, restoring services, and rebuilding infrastructure. They are now facing additional challenges because of the new damage and flooding from Hurricane Rita, but they continue to make progress in cleaning and rebuilding New Orleans and the entire disaster area. This work is critical, but it is also dangerous. Many of these tasks pose significant safety and health threats: conditions in New Orleans are of particular concern, where the widespread flooding has led to widespread biological and chemical contamination. We learn more each day about the oil spills, the Superfund sites, and exposure to E. coli that these workers are facing. It is imperative that workers and volunteers be protected from these serious hazards. That is why our legislation includes language to protect the health and safety of workers. It urges OSHA and other health and safety agencies to follow the Worker Health and Safety Annex protections of our National Response Plan. This includes keeping track of workers who are being exposed, coordinating health and safety training for workers and volunteers, and monitoring the hazards that workers and volunteers are facing. It also authorizes funds to be spent for additional personnel, enforcement of health and safety standards, critical safety information for workers and employers, and safety and health training. I hope that as Congress continues to allocate money for disaster relief that we also provide money to protect our workers and volunteers. We need to track how our efforts are working, and so we have provided for Congressional oversight. OSHA will be required to brief the HELP Committee in six months, and provide a written report within nine months, so we can see what progress has been made and what still needs to be done. We have also mandated oversight by the Executive Branch. The Inspector General of the Department of Labor will audit and investigate the Department's efforts to implement the protections established in this bill, and will report back to both Houses of Congress on the success of these response and recovery efforts. Finally, the bill also provides temporary relief to many companies, unions and individuals who are required to meet financial and other reporting obligations during the next few months, but cannot satisfy these obligations due to record destruction and other problems associated with Katrina.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator for making her statement and particularly her comments about the effort by the Judiciary Committee to seek some 16 of the 300 cases in which Judge Roberts was involved as a Deputy Solicitor General. As Judge Roberts pointed out during the hearings, when he was acting as the Solicitor General, he was acting as America's lawyer. That was not being a part of the Republican administration. The Solicitor General is to act as America's lawyer. That is why even Robert Bork, when he was Solicitor General, gave the information to the committee; and Brad Reynolds, who was in the Solicitor General's Office, also gave the materials from the Solicitor General to the committee. As I have listened to the Senator, this is basically Judge Roberts' job interview for America. The members of the Judiciary Committee are just instruments to try to help the American people understand this nominee. It seems to me if the material had been favorable to Judge Roberts, they probably would have made it available. I imagine the American people are wondering, since others have made it available, why they did not make it available for him and why they denied the American people additional helpful information so they would be able to make up their own minds during the course of the hearing. I underline the point the Senator made about the importance of information and the importance of documents. Would the Senator not agree this is basically Judge Roberts' interview with America, that the Judiciary Committee is the instrument by which the American people are forming an impression? It is a worthwhile part. This is no more a client-lawyer relationship than the man in the moon, although some have suggested that. This is a longstanding process where that material has been made available to the Judiciary Committee. I have had the good opportunity to sit for some 20 nominees, I have seen the different procedures followed, and I have seen when it has worked the best. The information has been made available to the American people, and this is the point the Senator is making. I wanted to ask the Senator if she agreed with me that this is his job interview with America?

Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. KENNEDY. The point being this was only a request for 16 cases out of the 300 cases he actually participated in directly. There were many more where he expressed an opinion. These 16 directly involve constitutional issues. One was on a case involving affirmative action where the Federal Communications Commission asked the Solicitor General's Office to support their program on affirmative action because no major television stations were available to any of the minorities, Black or Brown, in this country, and they were trying to work out a process where there could be greater availability and they would be able to participate in these various bids that were coming in. They requested the Solicitor General to help them. They had a program. It had been approved. They asked the Solicitor General's Office to help them with their program. What happened is not only did Mr. Roberts decide he wouldn't help them, he filed a brief for the Solicitor General's Office in opposition to the agency's program that would have opened up greater competition, greater diversity in terms of communication and ownership. That is exceptionally done, rarely ever done. All we were trying to find out was the circumstances--why did this happen, this unique set of circumstances? Clearly, if we had enough time, I suppose we could have had the Federal communications lawyers at that time come in, and we could have tried to do our own kind of investigation on this particular case. But that is not what these hearings are all about, and that was illustrative of the type of case that was being requested and was denied to the Judiciary Committee, which had a direct relevancy as to his competency--whether we were going to continue to march toward progress in striking down the walls of discrimination, the walls of denial of opportunity, the gender discrimination which we have had in this country and which we made very substantial progress in over the period of the last 30 years with title IX, the actions that we have taken in terms of the 1964, 1965 Act, the 1968 Housing Act.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield further?

Mr. KENNEDY. On those memoranda, I think the Senator quite appropriately recorded that he had written those a number of years ago. And he, when he was asked about those memos, indicated he was just working for the administration. Of course, he made the application to work for the administration; he was vetted for the administration; he got the job with the administration. So this was something he very much wanted to do. He was constantly promoted within the administration. He could have very easily worked in another area. As John Lewis pointed out, this was a key moment in American history in terms of the march toward progress and moving ahead in terms of knocking down walls of discrimination. I say, as a member of the committee, I was disappointed that Judge Roberts would not say whether those were his views today. That was the key. You can accept that, well, he was just an attorney in the Ford administration and was carrying on the administration's policy, although I think that is a stretch in many of the different memoranda that he wrote, when he explicitly said ``this is my opinion'' and ``I believe,'' as compared to ``we believe'' or ``it is our position.'' I think that is very distinguishable. But, nonetheless, he was asked repeatedly, as I mentioned in my comments earlier, by Senator Kohl, by Senator Feingold, by Senator Biden, and other members of the committee, are those his views today? I expected he would say, ``well, you know, times have changed. I wouldn't have used those words. I wouldn't have come, perhaps, to those conclusions,'' which would have been very understandable. But there is not a single instance--not a single instance--during the course of those hearings where he said: Those are not my views today. I have changed my position. I think the Senator appropriately points out that aspect of the hearings and why that is troublesome. Because we only can conclude if he does not disown those positions, they may very well be his positions today, which would be very disturbing.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee and the Senator from Utah for his courtesies. I know he is eager to get on with the legislation, and I am particularly grateful to him for the courtesy that he has extended this morning.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, our Founders proclaimed the bedrock principle that we are all created equal. But everyone knows that when we started, the reality was far different. For more than two centuries, we have struggled, sometimes spilling precious blood, to fulfill that unique American promise. The goals, the principles, and the sacrifices of millions of Americans breathed an ever-fuller life into our constitutional ideals. The Constitution itself has been the inspiration for this march of progress. The open-ended principles that our Founders had the wisdom to bequeath us have acquired ever-deepening meaning over the years--a remarkably steady movement toward greater protection for individual rights and liberties, and an increasing assurance that governments at all levels have the authority to defend ordinary Americans from overreaching by those who would discriminate against them or exploit them. We have made much progress. But our work is not finished, and we still look to our elected representatives and our independent courts to uphold those founding principles in each new generation, to continue the great march of progress, to never turn back and never give up our hard-won gains. This was the basic issue in our hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to become our next Chief Justice. Would he bring to that high office the values and ideals that would enable our struggle for equality and opportunity for all to continue, or would he stand in the way? The only records made available to us were those of John Roberts as an aggressive activist in the Reagan administration, eager to limit basic values that we have achieved at great cost and sacrifice over the years, especially in basic areas such as voting rights, women's rights, civil rights, and disability rights. He is an outstanding lawyer who says he could represent clients on any side of a question. As Congressman John Lewis eloquently stated in our hearings, 25 years ago, John Roberts was on the wrong side of the Nation's struggle to achieve genuine equality of opportunity for all Americans. Now, we need to know which side he is on today. We need to know that as Chief Justice of the United States, his sole client would be all the American people. John Roberts is a highly intelligent nominee. He has argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court and won more than half of them. He is adept at turning questions on their head while giving seemingly appropriate answers. These skills served him well as a Supreme Court advocate. These same skills, however, did not contribute to a reasonable confirmation process. At the end of the 4 days of hearings, we still know very little more than we knew when we started. In answer to another question about his views, he stated again: I will confront issues in this area as I would confront issues in any area, . . . and that would be to fully and fairly consider the arguments presented and decide them according to the rule of law. In yet another instance, he proclaimed: The responsibility of the judicial branch is to decide particular cases that are presented to them in this area according to the rule of law. And again: I became a lawyer or at least developed as a lawyer because I believe in the rule of law. The rule of law--everyone in the Senate agrees with that. In fact, we have each taken an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, and we take that oath seriously. But it reveals little about how we will vote on the important questions of the day, and what values and ideals we bring to our decisions. Judge Roberts said that a judge should be like an umpire, calling the balls and strikes but not making the rules. But we all know that with any umpire, the call may depend on your point of view. An instant replay from another angle can show a very different result. Umpires follow the rules of the game. But in critical cases, it may depend on where they are standing when they make the call. The same holds true of judges. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated: The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. As Justice Stephen Breyer offered in his confirmation hearing: I always think law requires both a heart and a head. If you do not have a heart, it becomes a sterile set of rules, removed from human problems, and it will not help. If you do not have a head, there is the risk that in trying to decide a particular person's problem in a case that may look fine for that person, you cause trouble for a lot of other people, making their lives yet worse. The rule of law is not some mathematical formula for meting out justice. It is our values and ideals that give it real meaning in the case of the Constitution, not our personal values and ideals but our values and ideals, derived from the meaning of the constitutional text. We all believe in the rule of law. But that is just the beginning of the conversation when it comes to the meaning of the Constitution. The Constitution of Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas is a very different document from the Constitution of Justice Stevens and Justice Souter. Everyone follows the same text. That is the rule of law. But the meaning of the text is often imprecise. You must examine the intent of the Framers, the history, and the current reality. And this examination will lead to very different outcomes depending on each Justice's constitutional world view. Is it a full and generous view of our rights and liberties and of government power to protect the people, or a narrow and cramped view of those rights and liberties and the government's power to protect ordinary Americans? Based on the record available, there is clear and convincing evidence that Judge Roberts' view of the rule of law would narrow the protection of basic voting rights. The values and perspectives displayed over and over again in his record cast large doubts on his view of the validity of laws that remove barriers to equal opportunity for women, minorities, and the disabled. His record raises serious questions about the power of Congress to pass laws to protect citizens in matters that they care about. In fact, there is nothing in the record to indicate otherwise. For all the hoopla and all the razzle-dazzle, the record is no different in its bedrock substance than it was the day the hearings started. When Senator Kohl and others asked Judge Roberts whether he would disavow any of the positions he took over the years, he refused to do so. On the first day of the hearing, Senator Kohl asked, ``Which of those positions were you supportive of, or are you still supportive of, and which would you disavow?'' in order to try to determine what his views are today. Judge Roberts never provided a clear response. In the area of voting rights, he has a long and detailed record of strong opposition to section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is widely acknowledged by scholars and civil rights experts to be one of the most powerful and effective civil rights laws ever enacted. It outlaws voting practices that deny or dilute the right to vote based on race, national origin, or language minority status--and is largely uncontroversial today. Before it was passed, there had not been a single African American elected since Reconstruction from seven of the Southern States with the greatest of African-American populations. But in 1981 and 1982, Judge Roberts was one of a small group of attorneys in the Justice Department urging the administration to oppose a strong section 2, which allowed discrimination to be proved by demonstrating its results, not just its intent. Although Judge Roberts sought to characterize his opposition to this critical amendment as simply following the policy of the Reagan administration, the dozens of memos he wrote on this subject show that he personally believed the administration was right to oppose the ``effects test.'' In fact, he pressed to keep others from changing their minds about opposing the law. When the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Brad Reynolds raised concerns about sending the Senate a letter on this issue, John Roberts urged the Attorney General to send it, stating that ``my own view is that something must be done to educate the Senators on the seriousness of this problem. . . .'' Of course, the problem he saw was the amendment, not the discrimination it was designed to end. He also urged the Attorney General to assert his leadership against the amendment to section 2. He wrote that the Attorney General should ``head off any retrenchment efforts'' by the White House staff who were inclined to support the amendment. He consistently urged the administration to require voters to bear the heavy burden of proving discriminatory intent in order to overturn practices that locked them out of the electoral process. Judge Roberts clearly knew that his position would make it harder for voters to overturn restrictive voting laws. As he wrote at the time, ``violations of section 2 should not be made too easy to prove. . . .'' That was his quote, remember, when he wrote this there were no African Americans elected to Congress from the States with the largest Black populations, and only 18 in Congress overall. And there were only 6 Latinos in Congress. There is no indication in any of his writings on the Voting Rights Act that he was the least bit troubled by this obvious discrimination. The year after section 2 was signed into law, Judge Roberts wrote in a memo to the White House counsel that ``we were burned'' by the Voting Rights Act legislation, even though it was signed by President Ronald Reagan. Given his clear record of hostility to this key voting rights protection, the public has a right to know if he still holds these views. But Judge Roberts gave us hardly a clue. When I asked him if he holds these views today, he refused to answer. He repeatedly tried to characterize his views as the views of the administration. He declined to say whether he agreed with them--then or now. That answer strains credibility, when the memos themselves declare: ``my own view is that something must be done. . . .'' In fairness, he did concede that he no longer believes that section 2 is, to use his words from the 1980s, ``constitutionally suspect.'' But the fact that it took almost 20 minutes for him to provide this obvious answer to a straightforward yes-or-no question is not reassuring. Both Senator Feingold and I tried to find out whether he came to agree with the strengthened Voting Rights Act after President Reagan signed it into law. Even when Senator Feingold asked whether Judge Roberts would acknowledge today that he had been wrong to oppose the effects test, he refused to give a yes-or-no answer. Senator Feingold asked: What I'm trying to figure out is, given the fact that you've followed this issue for such a long time, I would think you would have a view at this point about . . . whether the department was right in seeking to keep the intent test or whether time has shown that the effects test is really the more appropriate test. Judge Roberts responded: I'm certainly not an expert in the area and haven't followed and have no way of evaluating the relative effectiveness of the law as amended or the law as it was prior to 1982. So we still don't know whether he supports the basic law against voting practices that result in denying voting rights because of race, national origin, or language minority status. You don't need to be a voting rights expert to say we are better off today in an America where persons of color can be elected to Congress from any State in the country, as opposed to the America of 1982, in which no African American had been elected to Congress since Reconstruction from Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, or Louisiana, because restrictive election systems effectively denied African Americans and other minorities the equal chance to elect representatives of their choice. In these States, African Americans were a third or more of the population, but they were effectively blocked from electing any candidate of their choice decade after decade throughout the 20th century. Yet Judge Roberts repeatedly refused to give even this simple reassurance about the act. Is that what he means by the rule of law? Another very important area in which Judge Roberts refused to disavow his long history of opposition to civil rights is the prevention of discrimination by recipients of Federal funds. These laws were adopted because, Congress believed, as President Kennedy said in 1963, that ``[s]imple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers . . . contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in . . . discrimination.'' As an assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, John Roberts argued that these important laws should be narrowed. In fact, his position was even more extreme than the Reagan administration's. In 1981, he supported a recommendation to exempt institutions from civil rights laws if the only Federal financial assistance they received was in the form of loans to their students. Under this view, the enormous subsidies the Federal Government gives to colleges and universities in the form of Federal financial aid would not have been enough to require them to obey the laws against discrimination. Can you imagine that? Those were just the type of things that President Kennedy was addressing. These are the universities, the colleges that are getting all this help and assistance from grants and loans which are essential to the running of it. He said oh, no, we are going to have to look at the other requirements. Because they get all these loans, it is still done meaning they have to conform to the nondiscrimination, title XI, the women, on hiring on race or the disabled. Let me continue. At many private institutions, financial assistance to students was the only form of Federal aid, so Judge Roberts' suggestion would have left those institutions largely free to discriminate against women, the disabled, and minorities in both education and hiring. In fact, Judge Roberts's position was so extreme that it was rejected by the Reagan administration and later by the Supreme Court. But in his testimony, Judge Roberts ignored this aspect of his record. He refused even to acknowledge that his past positions had gone beyond the administration's. Instead, he stated repeatedly that he was just doing his job. He said: I was articulating and defending the administration's position. . . . The position that the administration advanced was the one I just described. The universities were covered due to Federal financial assistance to their students. It extended to the admissions office. That is an accurate statement of the administration's position but the view Judge Roberts advanced in his December 8, 1981, memo was quite different. I also asked whether he still agreed with the statement he made in 1985, that ``[t]riggering coverage of an institution on the basis of its accepting students who receive Federal aid is not too onerous if only the admissions office is covered. If the entire institution is to be covered, however, it should be on the basis of something more solid than Federal aid to the students.'' Again and again, Judge Roberts refused to say whether he still agrees with those words. He said only, ``Well, Senator, the administration policy was as I articulated it. And it was my job to articulate the administration policy.'' That is no answer at all. I never asked about the policy of the Reagan administration. I asked only whether today, he still believed, or would disavow, his earlier position. Given his repeated refusal to answer, I can only conclude that he still holds those views today, given his failure to respond. In other words, his position was the following: It really doesn't make a difference, if a university is getting financial aid through grants or through loans, that they can go ahead and discriminate if they are not going to discriminate in the admissions office. So if they do not discriminate in the admissions office, then they can discriminate in the other areas of the university. That happened to be the holding in the Grove City case. The question was: Was that what the Congress meant when it said we were not going to provide funds and permit any entities to discriminate? The overwhelming majority in the House and the Senate said: That is what we intended. If they are going to get this aid and assistance through college loans and grants, they can't discriminate against women in sports, against hiring of black professors or against the disabled, overwhelmingly. Not Judge Roberts, no, no. He wanted it program specific. Say they had 15 in the admissions office, and if they didn't discriminate based on race, disability or against women, it doesn't make any difference what the rest of the university did. That position was absolutely, completely rejected by the administration and overwhelmingly in a bipartisan way. We asked Judge Roberts now what his position still was on this issue, and we could not get an answer. In addition, in response to questions from Senator Biden, Judge Roberts refused to say he no longer agrees with his former position that laws against discrimination should be narrowly interpreted to apply only in the parts of the institution that directly receive Federal funds. Under this view, a college that received Federal financial assistance through its admissions office could not discriminate in admissions, but it could discriminate in every other aspect of its operations--in hiring teachers, in instructing students, and in athletics. When Senator Biden reminded Judge Roberts that he had written in 1982 that he ``strongly agreed'' with this view, Judge Roberts never said he no longer holds that position. Instead he testified under oath, ``So if the view was strongly held, it was because I thought that was a correct reading of the law.'' Is that his view of the rule of law? Another very important area in which Judge Roberts failed to give any reassurance was his position protecting women and girls against discrimination in educational programs under title IX. In the case of Franklin v. Gwinnett County, in 1991, Judge Roberts argued that title IX did not allow a high school girl who had been sexually abused by her teacher to recover damages. Judge Roberts' argument would have left the victim with no remedy at all. Senator Leahy asked him, ``Do you now personally agree with and accept as binding law the reasoning of Justice White's opinion in Franklin v. Gwinnett?'' Judge Roberts replied that, ``It certainly was a precedent of the court that I would apply under principles of stare decisis.'' That answer sounds reassuring, until you realize that Judge Roberts never answered whether he personally agreed with this unanimous decision of the Court. Senator Leahy offered Judge Roberts several chances to disavow his position in the Franklin case. He asked, ``Do you now accept that Justice White's position [in Franklin v. Gwinnett County] was right and the government's position was wrong?'' Judge Roberts replied again, ``I certainly accept the decision of the court--the 9 to 0 decision, as you say--as a binding precedent of the court. Again, I have no cause or agenda to revisit it or any quarrel with it.'' That also sounded reassuring, until I recalled that Justice Thomas repeatedly used the same words--``I have no quarrel with it''--to evade answers during his nomination hearing. Justice Thomas testified, for instance that he had ``no quarrel'' with the test established by the Supreme Court in the Lemon v. Kurzman case for analyzing claims under the first amendment's prohibition on the establishment of religion. But just 2 years later, Justice Thomas joined a dissent ridiculing the test and saying it should not be applied, and Justice Thomas has consistently opposed the Lemon test ever since. I wonder why it was so difficult for Judge Roberts simply to say, ``Yes, in hindsight, I personally believe that Franklin v. Gwinnett was correctly decided, and that victims of intentional sex discrimination in educational programs do have a right to relief under title IX.'' Why was that so difficult an answer for Judge Roberts to give? Could it be that it was contrary to his view of the rule of law? Judge Roberts's record is also one of consistent and long-standing opposition to affirmative action. In the 1980s, he urged the Reagan administration to oppose affirmative action. In the 1990s, in the administration of the first President Bush, he urged the Supreme Court to overturn a Federal affirmative action program. In private practice in the late 1990s and as recently as 2001, he litigated cases challenging affirmative action. That includes his repeated challenges to the Department of Transportation's disadvantaged business enterprise program, which has been upheld by every court that has reviewed it, and endorsed overwhelmingly by bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. On affirmative action, his view of the rule of law seems to be that established court precedents have little meaning, even though they have been found again and again to advance our progress on civil rights. In 1981, he advocated abolishing race- and gender-conscious remedies for discrimination, although he admitted this position was in ``tension'' with the Supreme Court's opinion in United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, upholding affirmative action in employment--a case that had been decided only 2 years earlier. He wrote that the administration did not see that opinion--Supreme Court opinion--as a ``guiding principle.'' In the same memos dealing with the Weber decision, Judge Roberts even suggested that the opinion might be overturned because of changes in the Court's composition. Given his long and consistent opposition to affirmative action, Senators were entitled to seek some reassurance from the nominee that he would not use the power of the Chief Justice to continue his past efforts to end affirmative action. I asked Judge Roberts: Do you agree then with Justice O'Connor, writing for the majority, who gave great weight to the real-world impact of affirmative action policies in universities? He stated: I can certainly say that I do think that that is the appropriate approach, without commenting on the outcome or the judgment in a particular case. But you do need to look at the real-world impact in this area, and I think in other areas as well. So he thinks that we should consider real world impact, but he never stated whether he agreed with Justice O'Connor that the University of Michigan case was correctly decided. On that issue, we don't know any more than we did before the hearing. Senator Feinstein also asked Judge Roberts his views on affirmative action, but he avoided her question as well. She asked, Do you personally subscribe, not to quotas, but to measured efforts that can withstand strict scrutiny?'' Judge Roberts replied, ``A measured effort that can withstand strict scrutiny is . . . a very positive approach.'' Well, that sounds as though he agrees, but then he also said, ``And I think people will disagree about exactly what the details should be.'' When Senator Feinstein stated she specifically wanted to know his view of Grutter v. Bollinger, the University of Michigan case upholding affirmative action, Judge Roberts gave a long--answer that was no answer at all. ``In the Michigan case, obviously, you have I always forget whether it's the law school--but I think the law school program was upheld and the university program was struck down because of the differences in the program. But efforts to ensure the full participation in all aspects of our society by people, without regard to their race, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, all those are efforts that I think are appropriate.'' But of course, Senator Feinstein had not asked about efforts to ensure participation without regard to race. She asked his view on a particular affirmative action program at the University of Michigan Law School that took race into account. We still do not know whether he agrees with that important Supreme Court decision. His refusal to tell us is very troubling. I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY. I will try and do it in a shorter time. I am also troubled by Judge Roberts' refusal to distance himself from his past criticism of the very important Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe that held that the basic principle of equal protection requires all school-age children to have the same access to public education, including the children of undocumented immigrants. In a very real sense, the Plyler decision is as important to the children of undocumented workers as the Brown decision is to African-American children. Yet Judge Roberts strongly criticized the decision. On the day the case was decided, he coauthored a memo criticizing the Solicitor General's office for failing to file a brief, arguing that these children could be denied public education. Senator Durbin asked Judge Roberts: Did you agree with the decision . . . then? Or do you agree with the decision now? Judge Roberts avoided the question, saying: I haven't looked at the decision in the Plyler v. Doe in 23 years. Senator Durbin asked: Is this settled law, as far as you are concerned, about our commitment in education . . . ? Judge Roberts avoided this, saying he had not looked at the case recently, and that when he wrote the memo he was doing his job. So we are left with nothing to reassure us he has changed his mind from his harsh criticism of that opinion in the past. His many statements of support for the rule of law yield no clue about his true convictions on this important question today. Finally, a number of my colleagues on the committee asked Judge Roberts about issues related to women's rights, women's right to privacy. On these important matters, too, he never gave answers that shed light on his current views. No one is entitled to become Chief Justice of the United States. The confirmation of nominees to our courts, by and with the advice of the Senate, should not require a leap of faith. Nominees must earn their confirmation by providing full knowledge of the values and convictions they will bring to the decisions that may profoundly affect our progress as a nation toward the ideal of equality. Judge Roberts has not done so. His repeated allegiance to the rule of law reveals little about the values he would bring to the job of Chief Justice of the United States. The record we have puts at serious risk the progress we have made toward our common American vision of equality of opportunity for all of our citizens. Supporting or opposing nominees in the Supreme Court should not be a partisan issue. In my 43 years in the Senate, I have supported more nominees for the Supreme Court by Republican Presidents than by Democratic Presidents, but there is clear and convincing evidence that Judge Roberts is the wrong choice for Chief Justice. I oppose the nomination. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is an honor to join Senator Enzi in introducing the Community Services Disaster Assistance Act. The bill contains additional support for State Community Service Block Grant offices, and community action agencies. Community Service Block Grant agencies provide low-income communities with the support they need to achieve self-sufficiency on a daily basis. Their programs and services include literacy, child health care, afterschool activities, low-income housing development, food stamps, and emergency shelter assistance. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, these agencies have been on the front lines. According to the National Association of State Community Service Programs, 32 States and their community action agencies have assisted over 65,000 evacuees. In this time of massive crisis, these agencies have been indispensable. This bill will help the State offices and agencies continue their amazing work. Community action agencies are already able to receive emergency funds from FEMA, and this bill expresses the sense of the Senate that emergency assistance should be made available immediately. The bill also authorizes State offices to transfer a portion of their funds for Community Service Block Grant administration or discretionary programs to the Gulf Coast States. Offices that wish to provide monetary support will be able to do so. The bill establishes a temporary income eligibility waiver for services funded by Community Services Block Grants in places designated as disaster areas. Evacuees will not have to worry about having the right paperwork ready, they will receive the services they need exactly when they need it. The bill also permits agencies and State offices to send their staff to federally designated disaster areas in other parts of the same State or in other states to provide disaster assistance. Support for this emergency work is more important today than ever. The States hit hardest by the Hurricane and flood were also some of the poorest. We in Congress have a responsibility to do all we can to help these States rebuild and thrive again. Passing this bill is a needed early step because it provides urgently needed assistance to invaluable community service organizations, and I urge my colleagues to approve it.

Mr. KENNEDY. As we send hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal aid to the areas devastated by Hurrican Katrina, we must remember that we are just rebuilding highway and schools--we are rebuilding communities and neighborhoods. And the foundation of such communities is good jobs with fair wages. The winds of Katrina exposed to all of America just how much more work remains to be done to achieve equality and fairness in this country. We are a stronger country when we are a fairer country. Yet, as the Administration awards billions of dollars in contracts to many of their corporate friends, they decide that the men and women of the gulf coast don't deserve to be paid a fair wage. The victims of Katrina have lost everything, and now President Bush says it is okay for them to lose their fair wages too. That is why I am introducing this legislation to ensure that that the workers involved in the recovery and reconstruction effort after Hurricane Katrina will earn a prevailing wage. Many people harmed by Hurricane Katrina were already struggling to make ends meet. Mississippi and Louisiana rank 1st and 2nd among States by the percentage of people below the poverty line. Moreover, Mississippi and Louisiana rank 2nd and 3rd by the percentage of children below the poverty line. Now the devastation of hurricane has caused the jobs and businesses they relied on to disappear. Experts have said that from 400,000 to 1 million workers may become unemployed as a result of the hurricane, with the unemployment rate reaching 25 percent or higher in the gulf region. Many affected workers will be unemployed for 9 months or longer. The new jobs in the clean up, recovery, and rebuilding of the area will be a major source of new employment, and we need to be sure that they pay decent wages. This is all that Davis-Bacon does: it simply ensures that workers on Federal Government projects earn a typical wage. Otherwise the large size of Federal contracts can overwhelm a local labor market lead to bidding wars that drive wages down. Indeed, Representative Davis and Senator Bacon were Republicans who wanted to protect local contractors, who would not be able to compete in such a price war. Workers who take these jobs will already face special hazards. Each day the administration reveals more details about workers' exposure to elevated levels of e.coli, toxic chemicals from flooded Superfund sites, and contaminants from massive oil spills. These workers should not have to suffer below-market wages, too. But the President apparently believes that workers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Florida don't even deserve to earn a decent wage for a day's work. He would have you believe that Davis- Bacon wages are exorbitant--nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, in areas affected by Katrina, some typical wages include: $9.16 per hour sheet metal workers, in Pearl River County, MS, $10.00 per hour for laborers in Livingston Parish, LA, $8.54 hour for truckdrivers in Mobile County, AL. And Federal spending post-Hurricane Katrina should be lifting workers up, not forcing them into a race to the bottom. I urge the Congress to reverse the President's decision and to stand with the hardworking men and women of the gulf coast as they rebuild their towns and their lives.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is an honor to join Senator Enzi in introducing the Community Services Disaster Assistance Act. The bill contains additional support for State Community Service Block Grant offices, and community action agencies. Community Service Block Grant agencies provide low-income communities with the support they need to achieve self-sufficiency on a daily basis. Their programs and services include literacy, child health care, afterschool activities, low-income housing development, food stamps, and emergency shelter assistance. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, these agencies have been on the front lines. According to the National Association of State Community Service Programs, 32 States and their community action agencies have assisted over 65,000 evacuees. In this time of massive crisis, these agencies have been indispensable. This bill will help the State offices and agencies continue their amazing work. Community action agencies are already able to receive emergency funds from FEMA, and this bill expresses the sense of the Senate that emergency assistance should be made available immediately. The bill also authorizes State offices to transfer a portion of their funds for Community Service Block Grant administration or discretionary programs to the Gulf Coast States. Offices that wish to provide monetary support will be able to do so. The bill establishes a temporary income eligibility waiver for services funded by Community Services Block Grants in places designated as disaster areas. Evacuees will not have to worry about having the right paperwork ready, they will receive the services they need exactly when they need it. The bill also permits agencies and State offices to send their staff to federally designated disaster areas in other parts of the same State or in other states to provide disaster assistance. Support for this emergency work is more important today than ever. The States hit hardest by the Hurricane and flood were also some of the poorest. We in Congress have a responsibility to do all we can to help these States rebuild and thrive again. Passing this bill is a needed early step because it provides urgently needed assistance to invaluable community service organizations, and I urge my colleagues to approve it.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. As we send hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal aid to the areas devastated by Hurrican Katrina, we must remember that we are just rebuilding highway and schools--we are rebuilding communities and neighborhoods. And the foundation of such communities is good jobs with fair wages. The winds of Katrina exposed to all of America just how much more work remains to be done to achieve equality and fairness in this country. We are a stronger country when we are a fairer country. Yet, as the Administration awards billions of dollars in contracts to many of their corporate friends, they decide that the men and women of the gulf coast don't deserve to be paid a fair wage. The victims of Katrina have lost everything, and now President Bush says it is okay for them to lose their fair wages too. That is why I am introducing this legislation to ensure that that the workers involved in the recovery and reconstruction effort after Hurricane Katrina will earn a prevailing wage. Many people harmed by Hurricane Katrina were already struggling to make ends meet. Mississippi and Louisiana rank 1st and 2nd among States by the percentage of people below the poverty line. Moreover, Mississippi and Louisiana rank 2nd and 3rd by the percentage of children below the poverty line. Now the devastation of hurricane has caused the jobs and businesses they relied on to disappear. Experts have said that from 400,000 to 1 million workers may become unemployed as a result of the hurricane, with the unemployment rate reaching 25 percent or higher in the gulf region. Many affected workers will be unemployed for 9 months or longer. The new jobs in the clean up, recovery, and rebuilding of the area will be a major source of new employment, and we need to be sure that they pay decent wages. This is all that Davis-Bacon does: it simply ensures that workers on Federal Government projects earn a typical wage. Otherwise the large size of Federal contracts can overwhelm a local labor market lead to bidding wars that drive wages down. Indeed, Representative Davis and Senator Bacon were Republicans who wanted to protect local contractors, who would not be able to compete in such a price war. Workers who take these jobs will already face special hazards. Each day the administration reveals more details about workers' exposure to elevated levels of e.coli, toxic chemicals from flooded Superfund sites, and contaminants from massive oil spills. These workers should not have to suffer below-market wages, too. But the President apparently believes that workers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Florida don't even deserve to earn a decent wage for a day's work. He would have you believe that Davis- Bacon wages are exorbitant--nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, in areas affected by Katrina, some typical wages include: $9.16 per hour sheet metal workers, in Pearl River County, MS, $10.00 per hour for laborers in Livingston Parish, LA, $8.54 hour for truckdrivers in Mobile County, AL. And Federal spending post-Hurricane Katrina should be lifting workers up, not forcing them into a race to the bottom. I urge the Congress to reverse the President's decision and to stand with the hardworking men and women of the gulf coast as they rebuild their towns and their lives.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for taking the parliamentary steps that are going to permit us to consider some emergency help and assistance for New Orleans and the gulf area, in the area of education in particular. We are going to have more to say about that in a very short period of time. We want our friends there to know help really is on the way, particularly in the areas of education and health. On Friday, 13 of my colleagues and I visited the stricken city of New Orleans and the gulf coast to see Katrina's devastation firsthand and hear from the affected residents. Like so many millions of Americans, I have been moved by the news coverage of Katrina and her brutal aftermath for the past 3 weeks. But nothing I have seen on television, nothing I have read in the newspapers, and nothing I have heard from the survivors we have embraced in Massachusetts could prepare me for the staggering scope of the devastation when witnessed firsthand. The destruction is massive in its scope. In many areas, the destruction is total. Much of New Orleans is a ghost town. Troops and police patrol eerily quiet streets. The desolation is frighteningly real. At least 40 percent of New Orleans was devastated by the calamity. We could see the high water marks on buildings, far above our heads. Debris is strewn everywhere. Massive amounts of muck, black as ink and ringed with the rainbow swirls of oil and chemicals, cover everything. For so many of our fellow citizens--from New Orleans and throughout the gulf region--there is nothing to return to. In Mississippi, entire communities are completely gone. All that is left of entire blocks is the concrete slabs where families once lived. Even the old oaks that graced Mississippi's historic shoreline for generations could not withstand Katrina's wrath. Survivors' stories are heartwrenching. Three babies died at the New Orleans convention center from heat exhaustion. A first responder at the convention center found he was the only doctor for 10,000 people. Dozens of elderly residents died of heat stroke or kidney failure. One woman waded through the floodwaters to Charity Hospital, floating her husband's body alongside her on a door. In Pass Christian, MS, the police heroically stayed behind and braved the storm to rescue as many people as they could. Finally, as the flood waters were rising, they saved themselves by climbing onto the roof of the police station and watched their cruiser below tossed by the surging tide. Rescue workers we spoke with there found some 80 bodies--many in the attics of their homes, dead after desperately trying to claw their way through the roof to survival. Scratch marks were visible on the rooftops. The city's mayor is still missing. But the city attorney has been named acting mayor and has stepped up as a leader with determination and compassion, helping people recover and rebuild their lives. So much has been destroyed. But the spirit of the people we met remains strong. Like Job of the Old Testament, these people have had everything they own and cherish torn from their grasp. But they are determined to recover and rebuild their lives. They still have hope-- and we must do all we can to help them. I was inspired by the heroism of the relief workers, the military, the churches, neighbors, friends, strangers--all coming together to support those in need--truly America at its best. Those we met on Friday were physically and emotionally exhausted. There still does not seem to be enough time each day to help all those who need our aid--not enough energy to heal the many broken hearts. Relief workers have suffered broken bones, sprained ankles, sunburns, dehydration, and infections from the contaminated floodwaters. But they press on, for they know there is so much remaining to be done. Those we met have an unyielding determination to rebuild that treasured region and rejuvenate its unique spirit. The work they do every minute, every hour, every day since Katrina struck, helps us all--our whole American family. They need to know that we are listening, and that we hear their concerns. We will not ignore them or put them aside. They deserve our leadership and our support, and we must prove to them that we are equal to the task. My wife Vicki and her family hail from the New Orleans area, and Vicki lived several years in the city. Her family's deep roots there lend a special perspective to our concerns about the many affected by this terrible storm. Such a treasured and vibrant part of our Nation deserves nothing less than our best efforts as Senators to help it rebuild better than ever. States across the country are responding, and I am proud of Massachusetts's efforts. Almost 500 Army and Air National Guard soldiers and airmen from our State have been sent to provide direct support to the hurricane victims as part of Operation Helping Hand. They are performing functions as diverse as security, command and control, law enforcement, communications, medical care, including mental health care, and spiritual guidance. The Massachusetts Guard has also activated an additional 150 persons for indirect support, staffing the joint operations center and helping with logistics and airlifts. We have shipped more than 200 tons of cargo using 17 aircraft, including humvees, trucks, trailers, generators, a field ambulance, meals ready to eat, water, cots, tents, and medical supplies. There are almost 200 evacuees now living at Camp Edwards on Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. We have enrolled them in health care plans, helped children find their parents, offered mental health counseling, and enabled those who qualify for veterans benefits and Social Security benefits to continue to receive them without interruption or delay-- anything to make them feel welcome and at home. For the evacuees who express interest in staying in Massachusetts, we are working with local housing authorities to have them placed in our towns, and the Black Ministerial Alliance has welcomed them into our congregations. FEMA will pay for plane tickets anywhere in the United States to reunite the evacuees with their family and friends. Finding employment for evacuees and schooling for their children are top priorities, and Massachusetts businesses and schools are eagerly lending a hand. Some have already found employment, and a job fair at the base has helped others. Massachusetts colleges have been eager to pitch in as well. Sixty public, private, and community colleges have enrolled over 1,000 displaced students and offered to assist them with financial aid. Displaced undergraduates will be able to attend public colleges and universities tuition-free. And many campuses have offered to expedite admission, waive fees, and help secure housing. UMass Amherst has already enrolled more than a dozen undergraduate students and is housing them in local hotels until more permanent housing is secured. Boston University has accepted 321 displaced students. Boston College has accepted 150 students from Loyola and Tulane. Amherst is taking in students from Xavier and Tulane. Amherst and Williams College have invited faculty from Xavier to join their campuses for the semester. Katherine Barnett, a graduate student from Tulane, is now attending Boston University. ``I didn't think attending BU was going to be an option, but everyone there has been totally great,'' she said. When the tsunami struck Indonesia in December, and when earthquakes devastated Armenia, EI Salvador, and Iran, the courageous team of health professionals from Massachusetts General Hospital was always among the first to respond. The team's response to Katrina is no different. Dr. Susan Briggs from Massachusetts General is leading the effort. She told me progress is being made with the team's two mobile clinics, and they are reaching those in more remote areas. But in New Orleans, they are discovering many new storm-related medical needs as people begin to return to the city. Three medical teams from Boston and one team from Worcester have been on the scene since the earliest hours of the disaster, and they have kept up a steady pace. Additional truckloads of medical supplies left Massachusetts at 5 o'clock this morning for the gulf. I talked with a wonderful doctor at Mass General, Dr. Larry Bronner. He talked about calling up Broderick Chevrolet and saying they needed three big trucks for transport. The founder of that automobile distributorship said: You tell us where you want the trucks and when you want the trucks; you've got the trucks. That is typical of the kind of reaction across the board in my State, and I know in many others. Now they are involved in a 35-hour trip down to New Orleans, even as we talk this afternoon. As we traveled in New Orleans and Mississippi, I was heartened by the spirit of determination to overcome this disaster and improve the lives of those most affected. I saw it on the faces of those who stayed behind to help with rescue and relief efforts, just as I have seen it in the faces of those who have had to leave all they know and go to safe havens across the country. It is the same spirit of determination that will carry them down the long road to rebuilding. The residents of the gulf region and New Orleans take pride in their cities and towns. They want to lead the way in reviving their own communities. That should not be ignored. First and foremost, this means we cannot have big businesses and outside contractors taking over the process of rebuilding. Local businesses, big and small, should get the lion's share of the work. And local people should get the lion's share of the jobs. The businesses and residents of New Orleans should rebuild New Orleans. Bay St. Louis should rebuild Bay St. Louis. Their communities should rebuild their communities. Pass Christian should rebuild Pass Christian, and we should be there to help. Community leaders I spoke with in New Orleans mentioned the 9/11 families and their ability to band together as a voice for change, successfully pressuring the White House and Congress to form the independent 9/11 commission. Katrina survivors, they told me, don't need veto power over every proposal to rebuild their region, they just need a voice in the rebuilding of their own communities. There has been much discussion of the economic despair of those who were stranded in New Orleans and other areas, because they did not have the resources to escape the storm and flood. An enormous tragedy has afflicted a forgotten segment of our society, and it shames us all that in a country as rich as ours, we were not able to provide for the safety and security of all our citizens, but allowed race and class to devastate them. Our collective effort for rebuilding and reconstruction is an opportunity to make amends for decades of neglect, and genuinely address the needs of those most direly affected by this disaster. Estimates of the Federal Government's investment in this rebuilding effort are now as high as $200 billion. We must be certain that these funds go to the rebuilding of the new Gulf Coast and not to the accounts of the biggest contractors with the best political connections. The enormous job of rebuilding New Orleans and the gulf coast must be done right. The national government can help most by seeking to develop a common plan for the redevelopment of the region. We should have a commission on which everyone has a say--mayors, governors, community leaders, business leaders, citizens, the Federal Government--everyone. There should be hearings throughout the area to listen to the people's views of the kind of future they want. We should listen to the people of New Orleans on how they wish to revive the vitality of that special city. We should involve the best flood control engineers, the best community and urban development specialists, the best city planners, the best of everything. Redevelopment should not be determined by the biggest most powerful contractors. We need to work from a shared vision for the future in which we all do our part to build the new gulf coast. I commend President Bush for making the rebuilding of this damaged region a high priority for the Federal Government, and I believe a commission would give all of us the plan we need to get the job done right. We must cultivate and promote public-private partnerships that are so important to successful community redevelopment. Already, many organizations are setting about the business of rebuilding in the gulf coast region. Private companies such as Starwood Hotels and Resorts in New Orleans have already set a re-opening date of November 1, and local small business owners are beginning to set up shop again. National and local philanthropic organizations such as the Baton Rouge Area Foundation are beginning to examine the long-term housing needs of the area. National efforts such as those of ACORN are underway to organize residents who have been displaced and given them a fair voice and fair representation in the process. All of these groups and many others are key partners in the Federal, State, and local efforts to rebuild the gulf coast communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. It is essential, too, for contracts for rebuilding to include training for local people to do the jobs. That means training local residents for debris removal, environmental clean-up, construction trades and other skills necessary to get the region back on its feet. Billions of Federal dollars will be devoted to the effort. We must make sure that it is the residents of the region that benefit through jobs and training. We must give urgent attention to the few hospitals and clinics that are still operating, but they are working with reduced staff and few resources. Many, like East Jefferson General Hospital in the New Orleans area, do not have the resources to remain open much longer without government help. We should also give urgent attention to schools, to help that few that can reopen to do so, and to build new ones that can become the anchors for new communities. We must also make sure that we rebuild in a thoughtful way, drawing on the many lessons that we have learned from this disaster and other efforts at community building. We need to build water control systems that will be able to withstand giant hurricanes and floods in the future. We need to rebuild roads and sewers and power lines and whole public transportation systems. We need to restore the ecological resources of the region. The rebuilding process should not merely involve reproducing structures and systems in the way that they existed before the hurricane and flood. The people of the region have an opportunity to create better water control systems to ensure that this does not happen again. They have a chance to improve schools and rely on technologies necessary in the new economy. They have a chance to build the gulf economy of the future--and in doing so to improve the entire Nation's economic destiny. They have a chance to build a new economy that works for everyone--with diverse housing and more job opportunities. This new economy will of course still include a vibrant tourism industry, and there will continue to be jobs for the many service workers who call New Orleans home. A local union representative stressed to me that New Orleans can't just be a city in which only millionaires can afford to live. I am deeply concerned that the Department of Labor in Washington has taken harmful steps that will hurt the effort to revive the region. They have said that the big outside contractors moving into the area can pay construction workers sub-standard wages. These workers have lost everything, and they are desperate to rebuild their homes and their lives and their communities. Yet now these giant contractors can come in from outside and deny fair wages. We are talking about $8-, $9- and $10-an-hour wages. That is what the prevailing wage is for basic construction trades in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. That doesn't sound like exorbitant wages for workers who are putting in a hard day's work. It sounds like fair wages to me--rather than bringing in outside workers who are going to work for depressed wages--not even the minimum wage. This is important. The Department of Labor also says these big contractors don't have to reach out to minority workers. The greatest devastation is for the poor, poor white and poor black, and we want to make sure that those workers--white and black--are going to have opportunities. But the idea that they are waiving all requirements to try to include local participation does not make sense. Yet more than 40 percent of the people of New Orleans are African- Americans. They represent a vast share of the people in the shelters who are left with nothing. How can the Labor Department say that these outside contractors can come into Louisiana and Mississippi and thumb their nose at African-American workers there? That, too, is gravely wrong. In his speech to the Nation last Thursday, President Bush acknowledged that we must address the legacy of poverty as we rebuild. But authorizing substandard wages and turning our back on minority workers is not the way to meet that goal. We have the ability in Congress to help New Orleans and the gulf coast area to rebuild themselves better than ever. All we need is the will to do it. I have talked with my colleagues from the region in their offices and I listened to them on Friday as we saw the storm- ravaged areas. Senators Landrieu, Vitter, Lott, Cochran, Sessions, and Shelby are determined to get the gulf coast back up on its feet, and I have appreciated the opportunity to discuss this with them. I appreciate, also, the leadership that Senator Enzi has provided on this issue as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Under his leadership, we introduced a strong bipartisan relief measure on education that should be before the Senate very soon. And we hope to have measures to meet the health and employment needs very soon. Senator Landrieu in particular has been an inspiration to us all. She was tireless in her efforts to expedite the Federal response to the hurricane and is extraordinary in her resolve to help New Orleans recover. Her strength is a comfort to her constituents--and to the Nation. Senator Frist, our leader, deserves praise as he returned briefly to his earlier career as Dr. Frist. I truly admire his courageous efforts to provide medical care in the early days at the makeshift hospital at the New Orleans airport. Friday was not a one-time visit; it was just one day, but it will be a day I will not forget. We will not simply move on to a new issue tomorrow. This wound in our Nation runs deep, and our response must be equal to the task. The hurricane destroyed communities, but it did not and could not destroy their spirit. They will rebuild, and we will help them to the very best of our ability, because in the end, we are one Naion, one people, one family. It is in this way that we can best tap the true wealth of Nation. We must get it right.