Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to David Dorsey during consideration of the nomination of Lester Crawford to be FDA Commissioner.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, last evening, an amendment proposed by Senator Reid, which calls on the Secretary of Defense to stop delaying the report required to be submitted to Congress on the progress being made to train the Iraqi security forces, was approved unanimously by the Senate. I was pleased to cosponsor the amendment, along with Senators Durbin and Biden. The report was required in the recent Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Act, Public Law 109-13, which became law on May 11. The first report was to have been provided by July 11. Additional reports are due every 90 days after that until the end of fiscal year 2006. This is not a bureaucratic dispute. The information requested in the report goes to the heart of our ability to succeed in Iraq. It is vital to identifying when the Iraqi forces will be able to assume responsibility for security. It is essential to estimating of the level of U.S.troops that will be necessary in Iraq in the future. Twice in the last month, President Bush has assured us that training Iraqi security forces is central to our strategy for success. On June 28, President Bush said: Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. On July 11, President Bush again said: Our plan can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. Unfortunately, the administration has not been willing to give the American people a straight answer about the number of Iraqi security forces, who are adequately trained and equipped. We are obviously making some progress, but it is far from clear how much. The American people deserve an honest assessment that provides the basic facts. But that is not what we are being given. According to a GAO report in March, ``U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped.'' The report goes on to say: The Departments of State and Defense no longer report on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are equipped with their required weapons, vehicles, communications, equipment, and body armor. It is clear from the administration's own statements that they are using the notorious ``fuzzy math'' tactic to avoid an honest appraisal. In February 2004, Secretary Rumsfeld said: We have accelerated the training of Iraqi security forces, now more than 200,000 strong. In January 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: We think the number right now is somewhere over 120,000. Yet, on February 3, 2005, in response to questions from Senator Levin at a Senate Armed Services Committee GEJJ Hearing, GEN Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that only 40,000 Iraqi security forces are actually capable. He said: Forty-eight deployable (battalions) around the country, equals about 40,000, which is the number that can go anywhere and do anything. Obviously, we need a better accounting of how much progress is being made to train and equip effective and capable Iraqi security forces. The American people want to know. Our men and women in uniform want to know. Congress has been seeking information on this issue for a long time. Section 1204 of last year's Defense Authorization Act, Public Law 108-375, required the President to submit an unclassified report on a stabilization strategy for Iraq and an effective plan to train the Iraqi security forces. The report was due 120 days after enactment. The law was enacted on October 28, 2004, and the report should have been provided by the end of February. We have still not received it from the White House. The administration has been AWOL on the report. Given the high priority the President has placed on the training of Iraqi security forces, it is unconscionable that the administration has failed to give the American people a straight answer about how many Iraqi security forces are adequately trained and equipped and able to defend Iraq's security on their own. It is time to put facts behind our policy. President Bush has not leveled with our troops and the American people and offered an effective strategy for success. He has spoken about the importance of training Iraqi security forces, but he has failed to outline a clear strategy to achieve their training and improve their capability. The American people and our soldiers deserve to know what progress is being made in training Iraqis to protect their own security. We all hope for the best in Iraq. We all want democracy to take root firmly and irrevocably. We need to train the Iraqis for the stability of Iraq. But we also need to train them because our current level of deployment is not sustainable. Our military has been stretched to the breaking point. Threats in other parts of the world are ever present. Our men and women in uniform and the American people deserve this report, because they deserve to know when the President has a strategy for success. The President says our troops in Iraq will stand down as Iraqi security forces stand up, but the administration has failed to provide a realistic assessment of the progress being made in training the Iraqi forces. The American people deserve to know when the Iraqis will be able to take over responsibility for their own security, and what impact it will have on our military presence in Iraq. It is time for the stonewalling to end and for accountability to begin.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to support S. Res. 173, which Senators Collins, Dodd, McCain, Biden, Leahy and I introduced to express support for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement as the blueprint for lasting peace in Northern Ireland. All of us are hopeful that a constructive way forward will be found, and the best way to do so is by continuing to implement the Good Friday Agreement. The 1998 Agreement was endorsed in a referendum by the overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The parties to the Agreement made a clear commitment to ``partnership, equality, and mutual respect'' as the basis for moving forward to end the longstanding conflict and achieve lasting peace for all the people of Northern Ireland. The parties affirmed their ``total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means'' to achieve the goal of peace. Our resolution reiterates our support for the Good Friday Agreement as the way forward in Northern Ireland. It rejects the statement of Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley, who said in May that the Agreement ``should be given a reasonable burial.'' Inclusive power sharing based on the defining qualities of the Agreement is essential to the viability and success of the peace process. The resolution calls on the Irish Republican Army to immediately complete the process of decommissioning, cease to exist as a paramilitary organization, and end its involvement in any way in paramilitary and criminal activity. We know that discussion of the issue is underway within the IRA, and we all await a final, positive, and decisive action. In addition, the resolution calls on the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland to share power with all the other parties, according to the democratic mandate of the Good Friday Agreement, and commit to work in good faith with all the institutions established under the Agreement, including the Executive and the North-South Ministerial Council, for the benefit of all the people of Northern Ireland. It calls on Sinn Fein to work in good faith with the police service of Northern Ireland. It also calls for justice in the case of Robert McCartney, the Belfast citizen who was brutally murdered there in January. Finally, the resolution calls on the British Government to permanently restore the democratic institutions of Northern Ireland, complete the process of demilitarization in Northern Ireland, and advance equality and human rights in Northern Ireland. The United States Government continues to strongly support the peace process in Northern Ireland. The Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland continue to strongly support the Good Friday Agreement as the way forward. The Good Friday Agreement is the only way forward in Northern Ireland, and it deserves our strong support. I urge my colleagues to approve this resolution.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, President Bush and Members of the Senate will soon have the duty of appointing a new justice to the Supreme Court. In recent days, there have been differences of opinion over whether we should consider the judicial philosophy of nominees to the Supreme Court as part of the appointment process. I hope the President's remarks yesterday make clear once and for all that judicial philosophy is an important part of a nominee's qualifications. President Bush said that judicial philosophy would be one of the criteria he used to choose a nominee, along with character, integrity, and the ability to do the job. I agree with President Bush that these qualities--including judicial philosophy--are important to whether a nominee is fit to serve on the Court. Many times in recent months, and during his campaign for re- election, President Bush has said that nominees to the Federal courts must interpret the law, not make the law. He has said that we should appoint persons who would not try to legislate from the bench. This view has been echoed by Members of the Senate, both Republican and Democrat, myself included. Senators of both parties agree with the President that we should not appoint judicial activists who would decide cases based on personal ideology rather than the law. The only way to know whether nominees have an activist judicial philosophy is to find out what their judicial philosophy is. That's the only way to know whether nominees will follow the law or attempt to rewrite it. We certainly can't tell judicial philosophy from nominees' resumes, where they went to school, or where they worked. These issues are relevant and should be considered as part of a nominee's qualifications for the Supreme Court. But a resume is no substitute for answering questions about whether the nominee respects the basic rights and freedoms on which the nation was founded. The American people deserve to know if a nominee would favor corporate or other special interests, rather than giving everyone the same fair hearing in deciding cases. They deserve to know whether nominees would respect the Constitutional power of Congress to enact environmental protections or if nominees are so opposed to such protections that they would bend or distort the law to strike them down. The American people deserve to know whether nominees would roll back civil rights laws or uphold the rights of the disabled, the elderly, and minorities. The American people are entitled to know if a nominee respects women's rights to equal treatment in our society and to privacy in making reproductive decisions. This does not mean every nominee should promise to rule a particular way in each of the cases on the Supreme Court's docket for the next term. It doesn't mean that nominees must state how they would rule in any specific case. But it does mean that the Senate should expect the nominee to answer questions about important legal principles--such as the constitutional power of Congress to protect Americans against corporate abuses, the right to equal treatment, Americans' right to privacy in making personal decisions about medical care, the principle of non-discrimination, and the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusion. The American people deserve to know the answers to those questions, and the Senate's review is the only way that they can get those answers. The nominee will need to say more than ``trust me'' in response to these important questions, because so much hangs in the balance. The importance of judicial philosophy in deciding whether to confirm a Supreme Court justice is nothing new. During the first 100 years after ratification of the Constitution, 21 of 81 Supreme Court nominations--one out of four--were rejected, withdrawn, or not acted on. Since 1968, a third of all Supreme Court nominations have failed. During these confirmation debates, ideology often mattered. John Rutledge, nominated by George Washington, failed to win confirmation as Chief Justice in 1795, when Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists opposed him because of his position on the Jay Treaty. In 1811, James Madison's nominee, Alexander Wolcott, was defeated because of his enforcement of the embargo and other trade laws opposed by Federalists in the Senate. A nominee of President Polk was rejected because of his anti- immigration position. A nominee of President Hoover was not confirmed because of his anti-labor view. The Senate failed to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to Chief Justice in 1968, when Senate Republicans filibustered his nomination because they objected to his decisions on free speech and defendants' rights. Chief Justice Rehnquist himself has stated that it is appropriate for the Senate to ask about a Supreme Court nominee's judicial philosophy, stating that this ``has always seemed . . . entirely consistent with our [C]onstitution and serves as a way of reconciling judicial independence with majority rule.'' As our colleague from Mississippi, Senator Trent Lott, stated in 1996, ``[w]e should look not only at their education, background, and qualifications, but also . . . what is their philosophy with regard to the judiciary and how they may be ruling.'' In Senator Lott's words, ``if we do not ask questions, then we will be shirking our responsibilities.'' Earlier this month, the Senator from Texas, Senator Cornyn, stated that while nominees should not be asked to promise how they will vote in a specific case, ``it's an appropriate question to ask what their views are on cases that have been decided and judicial opinions that have been written.'' We should all agree that it's appropriate for the Senate to ask nominees about the issues most important to Americans. The American people expect and deserve to learn about a nominee's legal philosophy during the hearings on any Supreme Court nominee. We should do all we can to see that the process provides clear answers, so that the American people will have full confidence in the outcome.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, Rick Santorum owes an immediate apology to the tragic and long-suffering victims of sexual abuse and their families in Boston, Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania, and around the country. His outrageous and offensive comments which he had the indecency to repeat yesterday blamed the people of Boston for the depraved behavior of sick individuals who stole the innocence of children in the most horrible way imaginable. Senator Santorum has shown a deep and callous insensitivity to the victims and their suffering in an apparent attempt to score political points with some of the most extreme members of the fringe rightwing of his party. Boston bashing might be in vogue with some Republicans, but Rick Santorum's statements are beyond the pale. Three years ago, Senator Santorum said: While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm. When given an opportunity yesterday to apologize, he refused and instead restated these outrageous statements. The people of Boston are to be blamed for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive, and inexcusable thing to say. Rick Santorum should join all Americans in celebrating the accomplishments of the people of Boston. Apparently Senator Santorum has never heard of the enormous contributions of our universities and industries to our quality of life, our economic strength, and our national security. Harvard and MIT have produced 98 Nobel laureates whose work has made an enormous difference in America's strength. Their graduates contribute to industries, Government, their communities, our Nation, and throughout the world. In fact, only a quarter of MIT graduates remain in New England. Their research keeps our Nation secure. The Pentagon and the CIA, the military, the Energy Department, the Veterans Administration--all turn to MIT and Harvard for technology and strategies to protect our Nation from those who would hurt us, and their research in cancer, children's health, housing, community development, so many other issues, continues to make an enormous difference to the well-being and the health of our children and families. More than a dozen current U.S. Senators were educated in Boston. Senator Frist was trained as a heart surgeon at Harvard Medical School. Senator Dole went to Harvard Law School. Senator Alexander went to Harvard's School of Government. Surely my memorable colleagues would not go to a school that is somehow contributing to the downfall of America. No, Mr. President, they went to a worldwide leading institution to prepare them for incredible careers of service and leadership. Senator Santorum's self-righteousness also fails to take into account the enormous amount of good will the people of Boston demonstrate for the less fortunate. They started the Massachusetts Children's Hunger Initiative, working with leaders in 20 low-income communities to end hunger among children. Boston's Children's Hospital has been ranked first in the Nation in the past decade for care and concern of sick children. The quality of life for Boston and its families is rated third in America. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the Nation. Massachusetts ranks in the top 10 States in the Nation when it comes to addressing the needs of at-risk or vulnerable children, including our efforts to address low birth weight babies, teen homicides and other challenges to our children. Pennsylvania doesn't even rank in the top 10. Boston gave birth to America's liberty, and the values that sparked our revolution continue to inspire Bostonians today--love of freedom, dedication to country, and concern for our fellow citizens. The men and women of Boston have served honorably in our Armed Forces. They fought and died for our country so that their children might live in freedom and opportunity. The abuse of children is a horrible perversion and a tragic crime, and I am proud that the good people of Boston and Massachusetts were leaders in coming forward, shedding light, and demanding accountability for this devastating violation of children. Sadly, the sexual abuse of children is a problem throughout the world, and it is not confined in any way to members of the clergy or to one town or one city. Every State in the country has reported child sexual abuse, including Pennsylvania. On behalf of all the victims of abuse and the people of Boston and Massachusetts, I ask that he retract his unfounded statements and apologize. I think the families of Massachusetts were hurt just as much by this terrible tragedy as the families of Pennsylvania. Abuse against children is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is a horrific, unspeakable tragedy. Sadly, it happens in every State of this great Nation--in red States and blue States, in the North and South, in big cities and in small. The victims of child sexual abuse have suffered enough already, and Senator Santorum should stop making a bad and very tragic situation worse.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I strongly support the Feinstein amendment which is a sensible and vital reform of the way our homeland security dollars are distributed. The 9/11 Commission wrote in its report that: Homeland security assistance should be based strictly on an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. All communities, large and small, need to be prepared for the worst. However, with limited and, frankly, inadequate resources, we have to make choices about how to prioritize homeland security spending. The 9/11 Commission stated in its report: Federal homeland security assistance should not remain a program for general revenue sharing. It should supplement state and local resources based on the risks or vulnerabilities that merit additional support. That is exactly what the Feinstein amendment does. It requires homeland security grants to be allocated based on an assessment of threat, vulnerability, and impact on the Nation. According to the Congressional Research Service, under the Feinstein amendment, 87 percent of homeland security spending would be based on risk. Today, by comparison, fully 37.5 percent of homeland security funds are allocated for distribution before any risk analysis is done. A Washington Post editorial of May 17 asked the question: What, exactly are Federal ``first responder'' grants supposed to do? Are they intended to give extra financial help to firefighters and police officers who work in places where the risk of a terrorist attack is highest? Or are they meant to spread Federal pork evenly around the country? This is not an attempt, however, to deny any Federal homeland security funding to those areas that we know are the least likely to be targets. Under the Feinstein amendment, $251 million in Federal homeland security aid would still be spread evenly across the States. However, the vast majority of funding--over $1.6 billion--would be allocated based on actual risk. In practical terms, the amendment will guarantee $300 million more than the underlying bill for high-risk areas. It means that cities like Boston, with its dense concentration of high-risk targets, will get the support it needs and deserves. The city is a major financial hub with more than 130,000 people employed in the securities, banking and insurance sectors. Any interruption in the ability of these industries to function would undoubtedly reverberate far beyond the city, and be felt across the Nation. The city was also a major part of the high-tech boom years of the 1990s. Today, it remains one of the Nation's most innovative high-tech corridors. It employs over 100,000 professionals whose inventiveness is not limited to the city, but is a major component of the Nation's economic recovery. The $7 billion tourism industry is also a major driver of economic growth. September 11 had an acute impact on Boston's ability to attract visitors. Undoubtedly, if another attack were to happen, a similar chilling affect would occur. The danger is not theoretical. In 2001, an Algerian citizen, who later joined al-Qaida entered Boston as a stowaway on an Algerian gas tanker. Security experts said that if the tanker's hull and cargo tanks had been successfully breached, the result could have been a disastrous fire in the port of Boston. Another key aspect of the Feinstein amendment is its preservation of the Urban Area Security Initiative, which has funded preparedness and prevention efforts in 56 of the most likely target regions that are home to more than 75 million people. Yesterday, the mayors of 22 cities, including Boston, wrote the distinguished majority and minority leaders expressing their support for the Feinstein amendment. They wrote: It maintains the critical partnership between the Federal government, States and the Nation's highest risk areas by maintaining the Urban Area Security Initiative program. These Urban Area Security Initiative regions have for several years been aggressively working to implement comprehensive plans for terrorism prevention and preparedness approved by their States and the Department of Homeland Security. Maintaining the Urban Area Security Initiative program will preserve and sustain the substantial planning, long-term projects, and regional decision-making processes underway. Without the Feinstein amendment, we could see a funding cut in the Urban Area Security Initiative. We all agree that every community in America deserves to receive its fair share of Federal homeland security assistance. No community should be left unprotected. But it makes no sense to use limited resources to provide maximum preparedness in the least at-risk communities, when we still have not yet achieved even the minimum level of preparedness in our most high-risk areas. The Feinstein amendment reflects that obvious priority for communities across the country, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 6 minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, President Bush met this morning with the leaders of the Senate and the Judiciary Committee, and I am sure we all have the same questions. Was this really the first step in a serious consultation process that will be meaningful and will continue in the days and weeks ahead? Will the process result in an effort to select nominees who can bring the Nation and the Senate together instead of further dividing us? I sincerely hope the answer to those questions is ``yes.'' Consultation is more than a process, it's about an outcome. I hope we are not just going through the motions. That will be up to the President. True consultation is not a one-sided conversation. The President must share his thoughts with all of us as well. I firmly believe the Nation wants and needs us to proceed in good faith and with open minds. The conditions are right for serious cooperation between the Senate and the executive, whom the Framers of the Constitution made ``jointly'' responsible for assuring the quality and independence of the Federal judiciary. The President has won a second term and does not have to run again. He is freer to carry out his desire to be a uniter, not a divider, despite the pleas from the fringes of the party he leads. Notwithstanding the constant clamor from the right, the public obviously does not support extreme right-wing positions on key court- related issues. Most Americans opposed the effort by some in Congress to order the courts to intrude into private medical decisions in the Schiavo case. Most Americans also rejected the idea that 200 years of Senate history should be reversed in order to give a narrow Senate majority the absolute power to approve extreme judges. Our constituents wonder why we seem to spend so much time shouting angrily at one another. ``Washington'' has lost the respect of many Americans because of the atmosphere of confrontation and conflict that pervades Congress and the executive branch. They much prefer us to spend more time and thought on finding common ground. They know that their families, their local governments, their schools, and their own businesses, could not function if they operated in the kind of hostile, polarized environment that often seems to prevail on issues here. Since the selection of judges is an area where the constitutional Framers placed the decision in the hands of the Senate and the President, we have a special obligation to make choices and take positions that facilitate cooperation and consensus, and avoid choices and positions that provoke confrontation and conflict. History demonstrates that the Senate and the President can work together on judicial nominations, especially Supreme Court justices. Many of us have been here for the nominations of numerous new Justices--in my case 18 of them. On 13 of those, there was a consensus, with close to 90 percent more of the Senators voting for confirmation. On 5, there was a unanimous vote in the Senate. It is not difficult to achieve that kind of consensus. We know what the Court needs and what the country expects. Nominees should be excellent lawyers who respect the Constitution, understand the law, and understand and respect the vital role of the judiciary in our Government. Most of the public do not want judges whose goal is to advance a result-oriented agenda, or to take the law on detours of their own. They want judges who proceed from the basic principles that unite us, as reflected in the Constitution and in two centuries of our shared history. Most Americans would agree with Chief Justice John Marshall that to keep the Constitution relevant and responsive, judges have to be willing to look at it not as an inflexible and technical ``legal code,'' but as a document that sets forth ``great outlines'' and important goals, with the details to be filled in later, by Congress and the Courts. Certainly, when the Framers wrote the copyright clause of the Constitution, they never contemplated computer downloading, but their objective in that clause is something on which laws and legal decisions can build. Of course, in the minds of most Americans, what defines this country, and about which our courts must be deeply concerned about is our rights and liberties. That is what our ancestors fought for two centuries ago. That is why the Framers spent so much of their time and effort on a governmental structure and a bill of rights establishing and protecting our freedoms--both freedoms to and freedoms from. That is why we fought a civil war to expand freedom. That is why our ancestors came to these shores in the 1800's 1900's why people everywhere still want to come here. There is no freer place in the world, and we must find judges who agree that their first obligation is to keep it that way: to safeguard those freedoms. Our judges must therefore be aware of freedom's history, so that they know what happens when we are tempted to dilute bedrock rights and liberties by subordinating them to short-term political expediency. The notorious ``Palmer raids'' after World War I, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the McCarthy era during the cold war are obvious examples of past abuses of which Supreme Court nominees should be well aware. Next only to protection of their freedoms, Americans expect and want fairness. That means the rights and freedoms we cherish must be applicable to all--rich and poor, popular and unpopular, powerful and powerless--especially the poor, the unpopular and the powerless who may have no other recourse. That is what makes America very special among all the nations of the world. Courts cannot cure all the ills of society, but a court system that purports to provide legal remedies for legal wrongs must make those remedies real. It cannot be credible if it erects impenetrable barriers of money, process, or theory that deprive a right of any meaningful reality. The American people understand that our system of checks and balances is a cornerstone of our basic rights and liberties. They want us to make sure that the judges we confirm will not permit unconstrained Executive power to usurp legislative power or judicial power. They certainly do not want the Congress or the President to control or interfere with the judiciary. They surely want an independent judiciary. We can look deeper into each of these general principles on which there is a national consensus, and find areas of agreement and disagreement, but they are clearly a guide for choosing a Supreme Court nominee who can achieve a broad consensus in Congress and the country. We cannot do so if we adopt an ideological standard promoted by a narrow group as the first principle of the process. It makes no sense to delegate the process to groups or their supporters within the government whose personal goal is to limit the range of nominees to those who will advance their own ideological agenda. Clearly, the choice is the President's. We can help him if he chooses the route of cooperation and consensus. Hopefully, he will not follow the advice of those who want to pick fights instead of picking judges. I would like to see a wide open process that begins with a search for Republicans in all walks of legal life--not just judges--selected for the quality of their minds and their commitment to the law, rather than for their adherence to extreme ideologies. I am confident such a search would produce a wide range of eligible candidates who might be able to gain a consensus in the legal profession, among the American people and with the Senate. President Bush has a unique opportunity to unite us, not divide us. He has an extraordinary chance to do so with this nomination and perhaps other Supreme Court nominations to come. If he does, American people and American history will thank him. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I join my friend and colleague, the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, in extending my best wishes to Justice O'Connor and thank her for her long and dedicated service to the Nation. She was a cheerful and thoughtful and highly respected member of the Court, a wise judge who served the Nation and the Constitution well. Justice O'Connor was a mainstream conservative and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. I hope the President will select someone who meets the high standards that she set and can bring the Nation together, as she did. Our Senate debates in recent weeks have included extensive discussions on the need for consultation by the President with the Senate on potential Supreme Court nominations. But such consultation was not mentioned by the majority leader in his address on judges earlier this week, and the omission is glaring, since consultation is the heart of the ``advice'' requirement in the constitutional requirement that the President appoint judges with the ``advice and consent'' of the Senate. Under the Constitution and the Senate rules, every Senator's hands are on the oars of this vessel. If a substantial number of us are rowing in the opposite direction from the majority leader, we will not make much progress. But if there is a consensus as to where we want to go, we can get there directly and quickly. The 14 Senators who reached the landmark bipartisan compromise in the nuclear option debate made a pledge to one another and a plea to the President that the advice function must not be given short shrift, and that serious consultation with the Senate in the nomination process is the key to a successful confirmation process. Separate and independent assessments of nominations by each Senator are precisely what the Framers wanted us to do. They wanted Senators to be a check on the Executive's proposed judicial selections as a safety net for the Nation if the President overreaches by making excessively partisan or ideological nominations. Mr. President, all one has to do is read the debates of the Constitutional Convention. Our Founding Fathers considered where to locate the authority and the power for the naming of the judges on four different occasions. On three occasions, they gave it unanimously to the Senate--to nominate and to approve. And only in the last 8 days of the Constitutional Convention did they change that to make it a balance between the Executive and the Senate of the United States. No fair reading of the debates at the Constitutional Convention or the Federalist Papers does not recognize that this is a shared responsibility. The best way we carried that shared responsibility was if there is a recognition by the Executive that he or she--if at a time in the future we elect a woman--has the prime responsibility to nominate; but the final aspect of consenting is in the Senate. The process works best when there is consultation. It works best when, as we have seen when the leader of the conservative movement in this country, Ronald Reagan, took the opportunity to select Sandra Day O'Connor, who received a unanimous vote in the Senate, a true conservative. But President Reagan was setting the path for that time, and for future times, about how to proceed. That is the opportunity this President has at the present time. We hope he will be inspired by what President Reagan did in terms of the nominating process. Just this past week, several of the members of the group of 14 spoke on the floor of the Senate. Just last week, Senator Pryor gave a compelling explanation of the agreement. He said that he was puzzled because people are ignoring a section of the agreement that is as important as any other section, the part dealing with advice and consent. He spoke of the past days ``of bipartisan cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of Government.'' He pointed out that he was a signatory to a unanimously supported letter from the Senate minority to the President calling for consensus and cooperation and calling for bipartisan consultation--the best path to a fair and reasoned confirmation process. He did not demand that the President sit down with the 14 or pretend that they will supplant the Senate Judiciary Committee and its leaders. But he did urge the President to seek the counsel of Senators from both parties as he makes future nominations. ``Their insight,'' Senator Pryor said, ``could help the President steer a smoother course when it comes to judicial nominations. . . . Just as the 14 Senators did their part to smooth the way for future judicial nominations, the White House [can] do their part by reaching out to the coequal branch of Government.'' How can anyone argue with that wise prescription? How can anyone ignore it, since it comes from one of those who helped bring the Senate back from the brink of disaster? A President would have to be extraordinarily imprudent not to give it great weight. Another of the signers on the agreement, Senator Salazar, wrote to the President last week with a clear message: A wide ranging and good faith consultation between the executive and the Senate, as contemplated by the Founding Fathers, is the best way to smooth the path to rapid Senate consideration for all judicial nominations but will be especially important if a vacancy arises on our Supreme Court. Another of the 14 signers, Senator Nelson of Nebraska, mentioned his own experience in selecting judges. In his letter to the President, he pointed out that even though as Governor he was not required to obtain the advice and consent of his legislature, nevertheless he consulted a great deal with them and found it ``a very worthwhile and successful process.'' He encouraged President Bush to reach out to both sides of the aisle ``so we can move forward on future nominees in a positive and less contentious manner.'' Without this consultation, he said, there could be difficulties, especially regarding future Supreme Court nominations, that might provide the basis for blocking an up-or-down vote which otherwise might not exist. Even the President has said--once--that he would consult with Senators on judicial nominations, and I urge him to do so. But as yet, there has been no meaningful consultation with the Senate. As the minority leader has made clear, off-the-cuff casual discussions about how nice it would be if a Senator were the choice is not meaningful consultation. To be meaningful, consultation should include information about who the President is really considering so we can give responsive and useful advice. White House officials made time to meet last week with prominent outside allies on the right who are so sure the President will nominate a nonconsensus candidate that they have put an $18 million war chest in place to defend their nominee. Their advice to the President was clear: They would consent to and support any rightwing judge he selects for the High Court. No wonder he likes to get their advice and consent. The American people deserve a Senate that will be more than a rubberstamp for a Supreme Court nominee. A Senate that walks in lockstep with the White House is not doing its constitutional job. It is not doing the job the American people sent us here to do: to protect their rights and freedoms. If the President abuses his power and nominates someone who threatens to roll back the rights and freedoms of the American people, then the American people will insist that we oppose that nominee, and we intend to do so. Mr. President, I hope President Bush will follow Ronald Reagan's example and ignore the advice and arguments of those who prefer an ideological activist. He knew that the best thing for the country would be someone who we could all unite behind, and he chose such a person: Sandra Day O'Connor. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator. I think I had consent for a half- hour. I do not expect to use it all.

Mr. KENNEDY. First, I commend my friend and colleague, Senator Feinstein, for her attention to this issue. She has long been an advocate for sensible and responsible nuclear arms policy. Again, this evening, she is leading the way in the Senate. All of us are grateful for her leadership. I welcome the opportunity to join with her in offering this amendment. It is intended to reverse a reckless proposal by the Bush administration to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. We do not ``provide for the common defense,'' as called for in our Constitution, by launching a new nuclear arms race and making the world more dangerous, but that is precisely what the administration plans to do. President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld want to develop a new tactical nuclear weapon called the robust nuclear earth penetrator, and their hope is that these bunker busters can crash deep into the Earth and destroy bunkers and weapons caches. They hold the dangerous and misguided belief that our Nation's interests and values are served by developing what they consider a more easily usable nuclear bomb. I think most Americans believe that is wrong. Our challenge in addressing nuclear nonproliferation issues is not that there are too few nuclear weapons in the world but that there are too many; not that they are too difficult to use but that they are too easy to use. North Korea has them and is rattling its nuclear saber every day. Iran is moving forward on the development of nuclear capability. We all hope and pray that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups never ever get their hands on a nuclear weapon. So why on Earth, in this dangerous nuclear world, with the specter of a nuclear cloud at the hands of terrorists and rogue states, should the United States be adding more nuclear weapons to the global arsenal? What moral authority do we have to ask others to give up their nukes if we are determined to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons of our own? For the past 2 years, Congress has raised major doubts about the program and significantly cut back on its funding. But the administration still presses forward for more work on these robust nuclear earth penetrators. Last year, the administration requested $15 million for it and Congress reluctantly provided half that amount. For 2005, they requested another $27 million and submitted a 5-year request for nearly $500 million. But cooler heads prevailed, and the House Appropriations Committee rejected the request. As the committee report stated, The Committee continues to oppose the diversion of resources and intellectual capital away from the most serious issues that confront the management of the nation's nuclear deterrent . . . The Committee remains unconvinced by the Department's superficial assurance that the RNEP activity is only a study . . . The Committee notes that the management direction for the fiscal year 2004 sent to the directors of the weapons design laboratories left little doubt that the objective of the program was to advance the most extreme new nuclear weapon goals irrespective of any reservations expressed by Congress. This year, nothing has changed. The FY06 budget request from the President includes $4 million for the Department of Energy to study the bunker buster and $4.5 million to the Department of Defense for the same purpose. Thankfully our colleagues in the House were wiser and decided to eliminate its funding. The administration obviously is still committed to this reckless approach. Secretary Rumsfeld made his position clear in January, when he wrote to Secretary Abraham: I think we should request funds in FY06 and FY07 to complete the RNEP study . . . You can count on my support for your efforts to revitalize the nuclear weapons infrastructure and to complete the RNEP study. The fiscal year 2006 budget requests funds only to complete the feasibility study for these new nuclear weapons. But we already know what the next step is. In the budget they sent us last year, the administration stated in plain language that they intend to develop it. Ambassador Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, claims those future budget projections are merely placeholders, ``in the event the President decides to proceed with development and Congress approves.'' But their fiscal year 2005 budget clearly shows the administration's unmistakable intention to develop, and ultimately produce, this weapon. The Bush administration would like us to believe that this is a clean, surgical nuclear weapon. They say it will burrow into underground targets and destroy them with no adverse consequences for the environment. They can believe all they want, but the science says their claims are false. The National Academy of Sciences confirms exactly what most of us thought--that these nuclear weapons, like other nuclear bombs, result in catastrophic nuclear fallout. The fallout can poison tens of millions of people and create radioactive lands for years and years to come. The study goes on to say, ``Current experience and empirical predictions indicate that earth-penetrator weapons cannot penetrate to depths required for total containment of the effects of a nuclear explosion. . . . To be fully contained, a 300 kiloton weapon would have to be detonated at the bottom of a carefully stemmed emplacement hole about 800 meters deep. Because the practical penetration depth for an earth penetrating weapon is a few meters--a small fraction of the depth for the full containment--there will be blast, thermal, initial nuclear radiation, and fallout effects from use of an EPW. This chart simulates the likely nuclear fallout from a one megaton bunker-buster detonated at a hypothetical underground target 20 kilometers east of an Iranian air force base in Dezful. This model uses the same simulation program as the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. During summer months, the nuclear fallout is predicted to travel 150 to 200 miles, across Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The radiation could kill up to 650,000 people. Even the person in charge of the program, Linton Brooks, conceded at a House Armed Services Committee Hearing on March 2 that the robust nuclear earth penetrator could not be used without significant nuclear fallout. He stated: I really must apologize for my lack of precision if we in the Administration have suggested that it was possible to have a bomb that penetrated far enough to trap all fallout. I don't believe that--I don't believe the laws of physics will ever let that be true. This chart depicts a 400 kiloton bunkerbuster hitting underground facilities at North Korea's Air Base at Nuchon-ni. Fallout from this explosion would blow southeast across the DMZ towards Seoul. This attack could kill over 4 million people. Even if the United States were willing to accept the catastrophic damage a nuclear explosion would cause, the bunkerbuster would still not be able to destroy all of the buried bunkers the intelligence community has identified. So we would have a new bomb that can kill and poison tens of millions of civilians, spread fallout for more than a thousand miles, make their lands radioactive, but still not destroy its target. The huge, one megaton weapon that the administration is contemplating cannot reach deeper than 400 meters. All an adversary would have to do is bury its bunker below that depth. Bunkerbusters also require pinpoint accuracy to hit deeply-buried, hardened bunkers. This requires precise intelligence on the location of the target. As the National Academy Study emphasized, an attack by a nuclear weapon would be effective in destroying weapon or weapons materials, including nuclear materials and chemical or biological agents, only if it's detonated in the actual chamber where the weapons or materials are located. Even more disturbing, if the bomb is even slightly off target, the detonation may cause the spread of such deadly chemicals and germs, in addition to the radioactive fallout. As we know from the Iraq experience, our intelligence isn't always accurate. In fact, the Bush administration told us there were weapons of mass destruction and there and we had to send in troops to take them out. If we had robust nuclear earth penetrators at the time, what if this White House had used them against suspected chemical or biological bunkers--which turned out not to exist? Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraqi Survey Group, shows us how dangerous this approach could have been when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last October that, we were almost all wrong on Iraq. Despite the administration's claims, Mr. Duelfer's Comprehensive Report on Iraq's WMD stated, ``There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical weapons. The intelligence community still faces many challenges in getting its intelligence right. In their report in March for the President's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Laurence Silberman and Chuck Robb found that The flaws we found in the Intelligence Community's Iraq performance are still all too common. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or ten years ago. How can we contemplate using a weapon of this destructive power, if our intelligence can't guarantee where an underground target really is? Finally, if it were clear that this weapon is needed to protect our troops, then I believe many more in Congress would support it. But that's not the case. At the House Armed Services Committee hearing in March, program chief Linton Brooks once again was asked if there was a military requirement for the bunker buster. He stated categorically, No, there is not. Robert Peurifoy, the retired Vice President of Sandia National Laboratory, one of our premier nuclear weapons labs, had this to say: If you can find somebody in a uniform in the Defense Department who can talk about the need for nuclear bunker busters without laughing, I'll buy him a cup of coffee. It's outlandish. It's stupid. It is an effort to maintain a payroll at the weapons labs. The administration's effort to build a new class of nuclear weapon is only further evidence of their reckless nuclear policy. This action contradicts the spirit of our obligations under the nonproliferation treaty to disarm our stockpiles. It demonstrates the administration's contempt for the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the foundation of all current global nuclear arms control. The nonproliferation treaty, signed in 1968, has long stood for the fundamental principle that the world will be safer if nuclear proliferation does not extend the five nations that nations lan possessed nuclear weapons at the does not extend beyond the five nations that possessed nuclear weapons at that time--the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and France. It reflected the worldwide consensus that the greater the number of nations with nuclear weapons, the greater the risk of nuclear war. The Bush administration's policy jeopardizes the entire structure of nuclear arms control so carefully negotiated by world leaders over the past half century, starting with the Eisenhower administration. This is just another example of the administration's Do as I say, not as I do policy. How can we ask Iran and North Korea to halt their nuclear research, when we fail to halt our own? By proceeding with the Robust Nuclear Earth penetrator, we are headed in the wrong direction. Our efforts will only encourage other nations to follow our example and produce nuclear weapons of their own. We have studied this issue long enough. It is ridiculous for the administration to try to keep this program going, and it could be suicidal for the Nation and for our troops. If we need this kind of weapons system, we ought to follow the conventional weapons research that is being undertaken and not support this proposal. I hope the Senate will reject it. Mr. President, I yield the time back to the Senator from California.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, It is a privilege to join Senator Enzi, Senator Grassley, Senator Baucus and many other sponsors on this bill to modernize our health care system with information technology. The United States has the best doctors and hospitals in the world, but we will soon be left behind other industrialized nations if we fail to adopt modern technology. When enacted, this bill will be the first legislation to address the glaring lack of such technology in U.S. health care. Modern information technology can transform health care as profoundly as any medical discovery of the past, and the American people deserve that transformation. The Institute of Medicine estimates that as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year because of medical errors--making it the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. Elderly patients are prescribed improper medication in one out of every 12 physician visits. Adult Americans receive recommended care only 55 percent of the time. Nearly 30 percent of health care spending, $300 billion a year, goes for treatments that may not improve health, are redundant, or are even wrong for the patient's condition. Medical experts agree that most of these shameful statistics could be drastically reduced by modern information technology in doctors' offices, hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies, clinical laboratories and public health departments across the country. It is not just quality of care that improves with use of Health IT-- the cost goes down as well. National health care spending now exceeds $1.7 trillion a year--and health spending and health insurance premiums continue to rise at rates much higher than general inflation. The Federal Government estimates that savings in the range of $140 billion a year, close to 10 percent of total health spending, could be achieved through widespread adoption of health IT. These system-wide savings would reduce insurance premiums by $700 a year for every family in America. Some States, including Massachusetts, are leading the way toward a fully interconnected health IT system, with cutting edge projects being conducted by organizations such as the Massachusetts e-Health Collaborative, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the New England Healthcare Institute and the Center for Information Technology Leadership. But, we still have much to do. Despite the obvious health benefit, most doctors and hospitals are not using this technology or preparing to do so. In fact, only 10 percent of hospitals are using computerized prescribing. Another 20 percent of hospitals are currently installing them. That leaves 70 percent out. The United States ranks far below other industrial countries on IT in healthcare--lower than 12 out of 15 European nations. Part of the problem is the up-front cost of these systems. Doctors are not always confident that the system they invest in will be able to talk to other parts of the overall system. We need rules and standards for electronic data sharing to encourage doctors to accept them, as our bill proposes. The legislation establishes a public-private partnership to create national standards for health IT--a common language for doctors' computer systems to talk to each other. Targeted funding mechanisms will help doctors and hospitals acquire the technology they need for their patients. Grants will be available for cases of special need, such as doctors practicing in underserved areas. Financial assistance will also help establish regional health information technology organizations, such as networks of doctors, hospitals, health plans and pharmacies. These networks will be a crucial testing ground to work out how all parts of the health system can communicate to provide clinical information wherever and whenever it is needed. The bill also creates a Federal-State public-private loan fund to make loans available at low rates to help health care professionals to acquire the technology. The State fund will accept private sector contributions from health plans and large systems that would benefit from having more doctors using the technology. Insurers and large hospitals stand to gain the most savings from IT, and should contribute to this national effort. The bill will also help providers improve quality by establishing a Best Practices Center where IT users can learn from the experience of others, and by funding new programs to train health professionals to use the technology. We have a responsibility to make the miracles of modern medicine available to every American. Rising costs are crushing our health care system. Premiums are going through the roof. The ranks of the uninsured grow every day. Families have to choose between health care and groceries, rent, and college tuition. When millions of Americans struggle to afford health care for their families, it is profoundly wrong to squander more than half a trillion dollars each year on obsolete administrative expenses. That's not the American dream. We can find a better way. Other nations are taking action to use this extraordinary technology to cut costs and save lives--but America lags behind. We can't continue to let the high cost of health care price American goods and services out of the global marketplace. The need for this investment is urgent. In the words of Secretary Leavitt, ``Every day that we delay, lives are lost.'' The proposals we are introducing today will improve care, save lives and make health care more affordable for every American. I commend Senator Enzi, Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus for their leadership, and I look forward to working closely with all our colleagues to see that these important proposals are enacted into law this year.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I wish my friend from Colorado were on the floor. I listened very carefully to his description of the state of our economy from 1993 on. As we remember, President Clinton was elected in 1992. I think modern economists would say we had the longest period of economic growth and price stability in this century--certainly in this century, and for at least 100 years during that period of time. That is what is reflected in these numbers. To tie those into questions about lost manufacturing jobs in terms of NAFTA, it is better to look at the various analyses, the business analyses that have been done. The EPI studies show that more than 900,000 manufacturing jobs have actually been lost due to NAFTA. I am proud of the record of President Clinton. I was proud to vote in support of his economic policies, to put that into play. As a matter of fact, it did not have a single vote here by a Republican in the Senate. It does reflect in the strong economic indicators that the Senator from Colorado showed, but relating that to what were the manufacturing jobs that were lost, in terms of NAFTA, I did not hear explained very closely. I support free trade. I have long voted for trade agreements that truly leveled the playing field for our country and for our workers. Will the Chair let me know when I have 3 minutes left?

Mr. KENNEDY. Free trade removes unfair barriers to American goods and world markets and creates a fair playing field for competition between American workers and workers abroad. Free and fair trade creates jobs and strengthens our economy. But this Central American agreement is not free trade. I urge the Senate to reject this unfair agreement. Especially at this time when American workers are deeply concerned about their jobs being outsourced overseas, the Bush administration is wrong to negotiate an agreement that refuses to protect them. I am coming back to that in a moment. It allows participating countries to use labor practices that fail to meet international standards. It means that American workers, the best in the world, will be forced to compete with countries whose workers are abused and exploited. That is not fair trade. I am for progress and economic development in Central America, dating back to President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. But this agreement does nothing to improve labor rights for the workers in the CAFTA nations. All it asks is that they enforce their existing laws. It does nothing to create a community of nations that respects the basic rights and dignity of workers. Most CAFTA nations give their workers no real rights such as an 8- hour day, overtime pay, or protection against discrimination. Laws in some CAFTA nations are even hostile to organized labor. Workers in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras can be fired for joining a union or even intending to organize a union. In Nicaragua, strikes are prohibited without government permission. Even where laws do exist, violations often cannot lead to fines or sanctions. Those working conditions are not just what I have to say. There is an excellent study that was commissioned by the Department of Labor to review the working conditions among these countries that would be affected by this agreement. When the results came in, what did the administration do? They tried to hide the report. They went out and pulled all the paper that the study had been written on. What the study showed very clearly--and I will read the excerpts. The Government-paid study concludes: Countries proposed for free trade status have poor working environments and fail to protect workers' rights. The department instructed its contractors to remove the reports from its web, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they could be made public, banned the release of the new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it could not discuss the studies with outsiders. The working countries are so bad in those countries that the administration's own independent report stated so. Do we have anything in this particular agreement that will do anything about it? Absolutely not. Have we at other times tried to do something about the conditions in these other countries? We certainly have. The agreement which stands out is the Jordanian agreement. In the Jordanian agreement they have very clear understanding about what the Jordanians were going to do to try to realize the international labor standards. No. 1, they were going to eliminate slave trade; No. 2, they were going to make advances moving ahead on child labor; No. 3, they were going to permit the organizing of various labor organizations with real enforcement going in there, and penalties and sanctions if there were a violation. In other words, under the labor provisions in the Jordanian agreement that was passed by this body, we were moving forward, upward, to meet the international labor conditions. That is what ought to be in this agreement. But is it in this agreement? Absolutely not. Were there any provisions in this agreement that, as a result of this agreement, American workers would get some kind of compensation for loss of their jobs as we have done at other times? Absolutely not. That proposal was defeated in the Finance Committee. In other words, we are leaving American workers out there, high and dry, and are asked to go ahead and pass this without any serious effort to provide at least some protection for workers in those countries where there are going to be profits that will certainly not trickle down to the workers in that country and where real American workers will pay with the loss of their jobs because of this agreement. CAFTA does not just ignore international standards for Central American workers; it also fails to include the aid for American workers likely to be displaced. When the Senate Finance Committee debated this agreement, it recommended that CAFTA include aid for displaced American workers, but the White House ignored the bipartisan recommendation. The President effectively abused his power and presented Congress and the American people with a take-it-or-leave-it plan. We know it can be better and we should reject this defective agreement, send it to the White House and go back to the drawing board. Although CAFTA is the administration's top trade priority, it actually does very little to reduce the Nation's growing overall trade deficit. Trade in the region accounts for less than 1.5 percent of total U.S. trade. It will barely lead to any improvement in GDP, an increase of only one-tenth of 1 percent. Instead of a policy to reduce our trade imbalance with China and deal with its currency manipulations and WTO violations, the administration has spent more than a year on this trade agreement that will do embarrassingly little to improve jobs and the economy. It is out of touch with sensible trade priorities for this country and ignores the needs of American families. I want to take a few moments to show the pressure American families are under and why they are wondering why we are considering this legislation that provides no protection even for the workers in those countries and why it will accelerate additional pressures on American workers. Look what is happening in this country. More than 37 million Americans, 28 percent of the workforce, work more than 40 hours a week. Nearly 1 in 5 workers work more than 50 hours a week. More than 7.4 million Americans are working at 2 or more jobs, and 300,000 have 2 full-time jobs. Americans' work hours have increased more than in any other industrialized nation. American workers are working longer, are doing better, are increasing their productivity. Is there any recognition and respect for this extraordinary achievement? I certainly do not see it. What do we have here? Workers are not benefiting from their work. This chart shows there is an increase in productivity from 2001 to 2004. Productivity is growing 43 times faster than wages. Generally, in our country, when we have seen the expansion in productivity, we have also seen a growth in American workers' wages. That is the way it has been since we have been an industrial nation, with the exception of the present, current time. Currently, workers have been increasing their productivity--they are working longer, they are working harder, and they are increasing their productivity--but effectively their wages are stagnant. What kind of life do these American workers face? They face an increase in their health insurance. Their wages are stagnant, their health insurance costs increase 59 percent; college tuition for their children is up 35 percent; housing is up 36 percent; and gas 38 percent. We just passed an energy bill. You would have thought in an energy bill we would try to do something about the cost of gas that working families and middle-income families are paying every single day. Right? Wrong. Wrong. We did nothing. We did nothing about the increased cost of gas. We took care of the major companies that are producing it, but effectively we have done nothing that has helped the workers in that particular program. Look at what has happened. This President is the first President since Herbert Hoover to lose private sector jobs. These are the figures: 2001, 111,622,000 were working in the private sector. Now we are 111,598,000 in May of 2005. We have seen the reduction of jobs that are available in the private sector. There has been some growth, but it has all been in the public sector, not the private sector. I saw the earlier presentation of the Senator from Colorado. He talked about the recoveries we have had. We have seen in this recovery of this administration, it is the lowest one we have had in recent years. What we find now is, as a result, we have 7.6 million Americans who are out of work; 1.6 million more unemployed than in 2001. These are the numbers of Americans who are out of work. The ones who are working are working longer and working harder. This is a quote from Kevin Hassed, director of Economic Policy Studies, the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative institute: Usually at this point in a recovery job creation is skyrocketing, but so far that hasn't happened: It's not a partisan issue, it's a fact. The labor market is worse than in a typical recovery. These are the economic conditions. Now we have of those 7.6 million Americans, they are trying to compete for job openings. There are 3.6 million job openings in this country. These are hard-working Americans, trying to compete for a limited number of jobs. Another very important point to know about the condition of American workers is the number of those who are long-term unemployed. We have seen that grow from 680,000 in 2001 to this in May of 2005, up 1.5 million. These are the workers who have been unemployed for 26 weeks or longer. This is an indication of the stagnation of our economy. Here we have seen 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost over the period since 2001. There it is, 2.8 million jobs lost, manufacturing jobs lost. They have been lost in virtually every one of the States; 47 States have lost manufacturing jobs. Now we are being asked to pass another piece of legislation that is going to accelerate that? That is what this legislation will do. We know what is happening to the American workforce. They are working longer, harder. They have a greater increase in productivity. Their wages are flat. The things they pay for are going through the roof. And we know those workers are going to lose their jobs. What jobs are out there for them? This is the growth in the next decade, low-paying occupations. Seven of the ten fastest growing occupations pay $27,000 a year: Retail, food prep, cashiers, janitors, waiters, customer reps, and nursing reps. We should be in the Senate debating and arguing how we can ensure our workforce is employed in the country that has the greatest economy, certainly the greatest national security, and the greatest military. We want to keep it that way. The way to keep strong is with a manufacturing base. The way to do that is invest, invest, invest; invest in those workers to make sure they have good training, upgrade their training, invest in innovative and creative ways to expand our ability to manufacture and expand. Are we debating those issues? No, we are trying to pass legislation that is going to put workers that do have jobs at greater risk. That is what this does. It is against this background I mention the latest UNICEF study from 2004 revealed Costa Rica has 127,000 children working in their plants. Guatemala, virtually the same. Those countries are virtually the same. Will this legislation get those children out of those plants and factories? No. Absolutely, no. The interesting aspect, there is one limited program sponsored by the Labor Department that permits the Labor Department to inspect plants and factories across the country regarding employment of child labor. What did this administration do? It cut the guts out of it, 80 percent of the appropriation. They cut the guts out of it. Does this add up or make sense; an 80-percent reduction in appropriations of the program that provides the inspection for child labor in these countries? The children are going to be in those sweat houses. Our workers will be losing jobs. The American workers are going to be losing jobs. There is virtually no penalty. Actually, yes, there is a penalty that could be imposed against the country but not against the specific industry. The industries really do not care. Those countries will be negotiating those penalties. It does not have to be this way. We ought to be able to have a program that is going to be fair to American workers, uplift the working conditions of those countries around the world, and also be something that all members of this Senate would be proud to support. That is not this legislation. It is heavily flawed. As a result, there will be not only enormous numbers of people in that region that are going to be exploited, but we will pay for it with the price of American workers. I yield back my remaining time.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, President Bush's address to the Nation Tuesday night on the war in Iraq was more of the same we have been hearing for so long. We all agree that our men and women in uniform are serving with great skill, dedication, and courage under enormously difficult circumstances in Iraq. The policy of our Government must be worthy of their sacrifice, but unfortunately, it is not, and the American people know it. The President chose to wrap himself in the tragedy of September 11. He spoke explicitly of the tragedy five times, and he invoked the danger of Osama bin Laden twice. He spoke about terrorists 26 times, and he spoke of terror an additional 9 times, but the American people know that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with September 11. Even after 9/11, it is wrong for this President or any President to shoot first and ask questions later, to rush to war and ignore serious doubts by experienced military officers and experienced officials in the State Department and the CIA about the justification for the war and the strategy for waging it. We all know that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. We have known it for more than 20 years. We are proud, very proud, of our troops for their extraordinary and swift success in removing Saddam from power. But as we also now know beyond doubt, Saddam did not pose the kind of immediate threat to our national security that could possibly justify a unilateral, preventive war without the broad support of the international community. There was no reason whatever to go to war when we did, in the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given. The administration's insistence that Saddam could provide nuclear material, or even nuclear weapons, to al-qaida has been exposed as an empty threat. It should have never been used by President Bush to justify an ideological war that America never should have fought. Saddam had no nuclear weapons. In fact, not only were there no nuclear weapons, there were no chemical or biological weapons either, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind. Nor was there any persuasive link between al-qaida and Saddam and the 9/11 attacks. A 9/11 Commission Staff Statement put it plainly: Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-qaida and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report stated clearly that there was no ``operational'' connection between Saddam and al-qaida. Nonetheless, President Bush continues to cling to the fiction that there was a relationship between Saddam and al-qaida. That is the same logic President Bush keeps using today in his repeated stubborn insistence that we are making progress in Iraq, and that we and the world are safer because Saddam is gone. In fact, the war with Iraq has made us less safe. It has created a breeding ground for terrorists that did not previously exist. It has created a powerful recruitment tool for al-qaida, and made it harder-- much harder--to win the real war on terrorism--the war against al- qaida. Our soldiers in Iraq need more than assurances of progress from the President. They need more than a public relations campaign. They need an effective plan to end the violence, bring peace and stability to Iraq, and return home with dignity and honor. The President did not level with our troops and the American people and offer an effective strategy for success. The President spoke about the importance of training the Iraqi security forces, but failed to outline a clear strategy to accelerate their training and improve their capability. The training of the Iraqi security forces continues to falter. The administration still has not given the American people a straight answer about how many Iraqi security forces are adequately trained and equipped. In the words of the Government Accountability Office: U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped. The President spoke about the importance of our reconstruction effort, but he failed to outline a clear strategy to create jobs and hope for the Iraqi people, and neutralize the temptation to join the insurgents. As of June 15, the administration only spent $6 billion-- one-third--of the $18 billion Congress provided last summer for reconstruction. Of the money we do spend, it is far from clear how much is actually creating jobs and improving the quality of life. We need greater focus on small projects to create jobs for Iraqis, not huge grants to multinational corporations that create profits for corporate executives instead of stability for the Iraqi people. The President spoke about the importance of the international community in Iraq, but he failed to suggest a clear strategy to bring in additional foreign troops to help us get the job done in Iraq. If NATO is willing to send additional troops to help secure Iraq's borders, the President should ask them to do so. He did not. If the United Nations is willing to send a force to help secure Iraq's borders, the President should ask the U.N. to do so. He did not. Nor did the President offer any strategy to prevent further reductions in the forces of the international coalition. A year ago, we had 34 coalition partners in Iraq. Nine of those partners have pulled out. Today, we have just 25. American forces still make up nearly 85 percent of the troops fighting in Iraq. By the end of the year, five more countries among the largest contributors of troops are scheduled to pull out. The President said nothing about how he intends to prevent more troops in the coalition from pulling out. The President spoke about the hard work of our troops, he urged Americans to send them letters and raise flags in their honor, but he did not assure them that they will have the equipment they need to fight the war. More than 400 of our troops in Iraq have died in military vehicles hit by roadside bombs, grenades, and other so-called improvised explosive devices. Yet troops don't have the protective equipment they need. The Marines are still waiting for the 495 armored humvees they ordered last year. The American people rightly believe we are bogged down in Iraq and that the President has no realistic strategy for success. A quagmire by any other name is still a quagmire. The dictionary defines a quagmire as ``a complex or precarious position where disengagement is difficult.'' That is precisely what we have in Iraq--not because of the hard work and dedication of our military, but because of the persistent mistakes made by the President and his national security team. No one has been more responsible for those mistakes than Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He has been consistently wrong about Iraq. He was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. He was wrong about the number of troops we would need in Iraq. He was wrong to keep calling the insurgents deadenders. He was wrong to send our service men and women into battle month after month without proper armor. He was wrong to exaggerate our success in training Iraqi security forces. A single word spoke volumes at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq on June 23. Secretary Rumsfeld's prepared testimony contained these words: In every war, there are individuals who commit wrongdoing. And there are mistakes, setbacks, and hardships. He repeated those words to the committee with a notable exception. He left out the word ``mistake.'' Accepting the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld is the most important first step the President can take toward a new and more successful policy in Iraq. Reality is difficult to swallow. Facts, as John Adams once said, are stubborn things. President Bush should face the facts and accept them. I say this with deep sorrow and regret for our service men and women, their families, and friends. They deserve better and they deserve it now.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, on another matter, we all wish the very best to Chief Justice Rehnquist. He has made the quality of the Federal courts the special mission of his leadership, and the Nation and judiciary are grateful for that leadership. Hopefully, he will continue to serve as long as he wishes and is able. In the event of a resignation, a new Justice should be someone who is committed to the rule of law and the rights and freedoms of all Americans and can therefore win broad support in the Senate and the Nation. Like many Presidents before him, the President can easily choose such a nominee if he follows the constitutional requirement that he obtain the Senate's advice as well as its consent. I hope President Bush chooses the path of consultation and consensus and not the path of confrontation and conflict. The Constitution requires the Senate to be an independent check on the President, especially in protecting the independence and fairness of our judges. The Founders very deliberately made the appointment of Federal judges a shared responsibility of the Senate and the President. It is ridiculous for some on the other side to claim that the Founders would not have wanted such consultation to occur. In fact, the Founders came within a hair's breath of assigning the entire responsibility for appointing judges to the Senate. It was a last-minute compromise at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 that gave the responsibility to the President but only with the advice and consent of the Senate. As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has clearly pointed out, the advice function is as important as the consent function in the exercise of the shared power of the President and the Senate in appointing judges and Justices. Presidents all the way back to George Washington and right up to Bill Clinton have consulted with the Senate on Supreme Court nominations, and when they have done so the result has been a better Supreme Court. The wise procedure was made even more explicit in the memorandum of understanding written by the 14 Senators from both parties last month when they urged the President to consult with Members of both parties in the Senate. Why are some of our Republican colleagues in the Senate so opposed to such consultation? Do they fear that if the President seeks the advice of a broad range of Senators, he may be persuaded to make a consensus nomination to the Supreme Court? Are they against consensus? Do they see the Supreme Court nominations merely as political footballs in their political games? Before any person can be appointed to the Federal court, the Senate and the President have to agree that the person will be best for the whole country, not just for a narrow ideological and radical faction. Some Presidents have ignored the requirement to obtain the advice of the Senate, but no President can avoid the requirement to obtain the consent of the Senate. I certainly hope President Bush will not heed those who think consultation and consensus are obsolete. Whether the confirmation process goes smoothly will be determined by the President's selection. He can pick judges with us as the Founders wanted or he can pick fights with us as some of his political advisers and Senate friends seem to want. The President's choice is clear. He could follow the Constitution and seek the advice of the Senate before he makes a nomination. If he does that, the confirmation process is more likely to be expeditious, constructive, and a unifying force for the entire Nation. Or he can listen only to the advice of the fringe factions of his own party, people so extreme they have even called for the impeachment of six of the current nine Justices because those Justices refuse to bow to the ideological dictates of the rightwing. If he does that, the confirmation process will be divisive and corrosive and likely unsuccessful. There are hundreds if not thousands of excellent lawyers and judges who could be consensus choices for the Supreme Court, and Senators will help the President find them if he seeks our advice. If he takes our bipartisan advice, he will have no trouble obtaining our bipartisan consent. The next person who serves on the Supreme Court will not just serve for the remainder of the Bush administration. The lives and freedoms and rights of our children and our grandchildren may well be directly affected by the decisions of that Justice in the coming decades. For their sake and the Nation's sake we cannot accept a choice based on partisan politics or ideological agendas. What the Court and the Nation need is a demonstrated commitment to the rule of law and the basic values of our Constitution. I urge President Bush to listen to a respected former Republican, Senator John Danforth: If he truly wants to appoint a conservative he should make sure it is a judicial conservative, someone who is going to apply the law, not his political or philosophical beliefs.

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, without interfering with the orderly business of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business briefly.

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

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, whatever our position on the Iraq war, we should all be concerned that the President does not have a winning strategy on Iraq. Our current strategy is not working, and Congress and the American people know it. I say this with sorrow and regret for our troops, for their families, and for our country. Administration officials repeatedly claim that the insurgents are desperate, dead-enders, and in their last throes. The American people know they are not. Secretary Rumsfeld insists progress has been solid. With American casualties currently averaging nearly three a day, the American people know it is not. Secretary Rumsfeld insists the Army is not being stretched to the breaking point, but month after month recruiting goals go unmet and generals are sounding the alarm. Secretary Rumsfeld insists that we are not in a quagmire. The American people believe we are. Secretary Rumsfeld says the administration is not painting a rosy picture. The American people know that they are. By last June, after the President declared mission accomplished, 852 American servicemembers had been killed in action. Today, the number has doubled to more than 1,700. By last June, 5,000 American servicemembers had been wounded in action. Today, the number has nearly tripled to over 13,000. A year ago, the United States had 34 coalition partners in Iraq. Today, we have just 25, and another 5 are scheduled to pull out by the end of the year. The administration has been consistently wrong about Iraq. The American people know things are not going well and that we need to correct the course we are on. The administration statements do not square with reality, and the credibility gap continues to widen. It is ironic that Americans are learning the truth not from our own administration but from an ally. The truth should come from the White House and not Downing Street. More than anything else, what America hopes to hear from the President tonight is the unvarnished truth of what is really going on in Iraq, how he plans to put a new strategy in place and assure success. He needs to clearly articulate our goals, the benchmarks for measuring progress, and the game plan to win. When President Bush addresses the Nation tonight, all of us hope he will state a new and more realistic and more effective strategy for the United States to succeed in Iraq. Our current strategy is not worthy of the sacrifices our men and women in uniform are making. The war has clearly made America less safe in the world. It has strengthened the support for al-Qaida and made it harder to win the real war against terrorism, the war against al-Qaida. The President needs an effective strategy to accelerate the training of a capable Iraqi security force. The President needs an effective strategy to rescue the faltering reconstruction effort, create new jobs, new hope for the Iraqi people, and neutralize the temptation to join the insurgents. The President needs an effective strategy to bring the international community into Iraq and to achieve the adoption on schedule of a constitution that protects all the people of Iraq. He needs an effective strategy to give our troops the equipment they need to fight the war and to ensure that veterans returning from Iraq have access to the quality health care services they so richly deserve. He needs an effective strategy to repair the damage the war has caused to our military and to our reputation in the world. Realism is hard medicine to swallow. President Bush must face the facts and accept them. Our men and women in uniform deserve no less. Our strategy is not working, and I hope the President will outline a winning strategy this evening.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it's a privilege to join my colleagues Senator Durbin, Senator Leahy, and Senator Feingold in introducing this important legislation, the ANTI-GANG Act. Gang violence is a serious problem in many communities across the Nation, and it deserves a serious response by Congress. The keys to success include aggressive steps to take guns out of the hands of criminal gang members and other violent juvenile offenders, and effective prevention programs that discourage gang membership and provide realistic alternatives for at-risk youth. As one example of what works, I urge my colleagues to consider the innovative, cooperative crime-fighting strategy developed in Boston. It engaged the entire community, including police and probation officers, clergy and community leaders, and even gang members in a united effort to reduce gang violence, strengthen after-school prevention programs, and take guns out of the hands of juvenile offenders. The project also established new and effective channels of communication between the police and neighborhood leaders. This strategy was very successful--juvenile homicides dropped 80 percent from 1990 to 1995. It succeeded without prosecuting more juveniles as adults, without housing nonviolent juvenile offenders in adult facilities, and without spending large sums of money on new juvenile facilities. The Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Safety issued a report last January which concluded unequivocally that successful anti-gang programs depend on a ``wide variety of solutions.'' Relying on recommendations by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the report noted that ``preventing youth from joining gangs is the most cost-effective long-term strategy.'' Reflecting the input from an investigative hearing and a working group of ten mayors in metropolitan Boston, the report recognized that there is ``no silver bullet for combating gang violence.'' It would be a mistake for Congress to ignore these successful efforts to stop gang violence. Since different communities may find different ways to combat these difficult issues, the bill does not adopt a one- size-fits-all approach that will only make the current problem of gang violence worse. Instead of ignoring the primary role of State and local governments in fighting violent gang crimes in their communities, our ANTI-GANG Act strengthens that role, by giving local law enforcement and prosecutors the resources they need by authorizing $862 million in grants over the next 5 years. The provisions in the bill for witness relocation and protection are particularly important. Our bill meets this need by authorizing $60 million in assistance. The urgency of preventing witness intimidation in gang-related cases can not be overstated. Effective prosecution of such violence depends upon it. In addition, our bill amends the current law on Federal witness relocation and protection to make clear that the Attorney General can use these provisions to protect witnesses in State gang, drug, and homicide cases. We also permit States to obtain the temporary protection of witnesses in gang cases, without any requirement of reimbursement. The current complex reimbursement procedures deter State and local prosecutors from obtaining assistance for witness protection from the Federal government, even in emergencies. The ANTI-GANG Act respects the primary role of State and local governments in fighting street crime, but it also recognizes that violent gangs can have a substantial impact on Federal interests. According to the most recent National Drug Threat Assessment, criminal street gangs are responsible for the distribution of much of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and other illegal drugs being distributed in communities throughout the United States. Such gang activity interferes with lawful commerce and undermines the freedom and security of entire communities. The Act strengthens the ability of prosecutors at all levels-- Federal, State and local--to prosecute violent street gangs, and it does so without increasing mandatory minimum sentences or unnecessarily expanding the Federal death penalty to include State murder offenses. Finally, the Act encourages the recruitment and retention of highly- qualified prosecutors and public defenders by establishing a student loan forgiveness program modeled on the current program for Federal employees. According to the National District Attorneys Association, this provision ``would allow prosecutors to relieve the crushing burden of student loans that now cause so many young attorneys to abandon public service.'' The provision is also strongly supported by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the American Council of Chief Defenders. I commend my colleagues for their leadership in developing this important legislation to protect American communities from gang violence without undermining fundamental principles of fairness and Federal-State relations. I urge the Senate to adopt this approach, and resist any suggestion that we need to federalize the State and local juvenile justice systems in our country.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it's a privilege to join my colleagues Senator Durbin, Senator Leahy, and Senator Feingold in introducing this important legislation, the ANTI-GANG Act. Gang violence is a serious problem in many communities across the Nation, and it deserves a serious response by Congress. The keys to success include aggressive steps to take guns out of the hands of criminal gang members and other violent juvenile offenders, and effective prevention programs that discourage gang membership and provide realistic alternatives for at-risk youth. As one example of what works, I urge my colleagues to consider the innovative, cooperative crime-fighting strategy developed in Boston. It engaged the entire community, including police and probation officers, clergy and community leaders, and even gang members in a united effort to reduce gang violence, strengthen after-school prevention programs, and take guns out of the hands of juvenile offenders. The project also established new and effective channels of communication between the police and neighborhood leaders. This strategy was very successful--juvenile homicides dropped 80 percent from 1990 to 1995. It succeeded without prosecuting more juveniles as adults, without housing nonviolent juvenile offenders in adult facilities, and without spending large sums of money on new juvenile facilities. The Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on Public Safety issued a report last January which concluded unequivocally that successful anti-gang programs depend on a ``wide variety of solutions.'' Relying on recommendations by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the report noted that ``preventing youth from joining gangs is the most cost-effective long-term strategy.'' Reflecting the input from an investigative hearing and a working group of ten mayors in metropolitan Boston, the report recognized that there is ``no silver bullet for combating gang violence.'' It would be a mistake for Congress to ignore these successful efforts to stop gang violence. Since different communities may find different ways to combat these difficult issues, the bill does not adopt a one- size-fits-all approach that will only make the current problem of gang violence worse. Instead of ignoring the primary role of State and local governments in fighting violent gang crimes in their communities, our ANTI-GANG Act strengthens that role, by giving local law enforcement and prosecutors the resources they need by authorizing $862 million in grants over the next 5 years. The provisions in the bill for witness relocation and protection are particularly important. Our bill meets this need by authorizing $60 million in assistance. The urgency of preventing witness intimidation in gang-related cases can not be overstated. Effective prosecution of such violence depends upon it. In addition, our bill amends the current law on Federal witness relocation and protection to make clear that the Attorney General can use these provisions to protect witnesses in State gang, drug, and homicide cases. We also permit States to obtain the temporary protection of witnesses in gang cases, without any requirement of reimbursement. The current complex reimbursement procedures deter State and local prosecutors from obtaining assistance for witness protection from the Federal government, even in emergencies. The ANTI-GANG Act respects the primary role of State and local governments in fighting street crime, but it also recognizes that violent gangs can have a substantial impact on Federal interests. According to the most recent National Drug Threat Assessment, criminal street gangs are responsible for the distribution of much of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and other illegal drugs being distributed in communities throughout the United States. Such gang activity interferes with lawful commerce and undermines the freedom and security of entire communities. The Act strengthens the ability of prosecutors at all levels-- Federal, State and local--to prosecute violent street gangs, and it does so without increasing mandatory minimum sentences or unnecessarily expanding the Federal death penalty to include State murder offenses. Finally, the Act encourages the recruitment and retention of highly- qualified prosecutors and public defenders by establishing a student loan forgiveness program modeled on the current program for Federal employees. According to the National District Attorneys Association, this provision ``would allow prosecutors to relieve the crushing burden of student loans that now cause so many young attorneys to abandon public service.'' The provision is also strongly supported by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the American Council of Chief Defenders. I commend my colleagues for their leadership in developing this important legislation to protect American communities from gang violence without undermining fundamental principles of fairness and Federal-State relations. I urge the Senate to adopt this approach, and resist any suggestion that we need to federalize the State and local juvenile justice systems in our country.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand we have 30 minutes; is that correct?