Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. I think there is time that has been allocated to the Senator from Massachusetts. Am I correct?

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. I understand the concerns of my colleague. In many places for-profit hospitals are the only providers. I will work with her to address these legitimate needs in conference. food safety

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we have been hearing a steady drumbeat of complaints from our Republican colleagues about the pace of judicial confirmations by the Senate. For all who know the facts, there is no basis for the charge that Democrats have engaged in delay tactics on judicial nominees. In fact, the Democratic Senate has been significantly more diligent in confirming judges under the Bush administration than the Republican Senate was at any point under the Clinton administration. In the 5 months since Democrats gained control of the Senate, the Judiciary Committee has already held 11 hearings on judicial nominees. Under Chairman Leahy's leadership, we held hearings during the August recess, and also just 2 days after the terrorist attacks. In addition, we held a hearing in the Capitol Building, when the Senate offices were closed by the anthrax contamination. As a result, 27 judges have already been confirmed in the 5 months since Democrats took control of the Senate. By the time the Senate adjourns, we are likely to have confirmed more than 30 judges--more than were confirmed during the entire first year of President Clinton's first term in office when Democrats controlled the Senate, and more than double the number confirmed during the entire first year of the first Bush administration. Our record is good by any measure. It becomes even better when we compare it to the record of the Republican majority when they controlled the Senate during the Clinton administration. We have held 11 judicial nomination hearings in just 5 months, almost all of which have included several judges per hearing. In 1999 and 2000, the Republicans held an average of only seven hearings for the entire year. In confirming 24 judges since the August recess, we have had a more productive post-August-recess period than any Republican-led Senate did for a comparable period in the last 6 years. Some Republicans are now blaming Democrats for the current number of vacancies on the Federal bench. But these vacancies were largely caused by the tactics of the Republican majority over the last 6 years. We know that our colleagues worked to impede President Clinton's executive branch nominees such as Bill Lann Lee, nominated to head the civil rights division, and Dr. Satcher, the nominee for Surgeon General. Our colleagues also blocked or attempted to block President Clinton's judicial nominees by delaying or refusing to hold hearings, and refusing to allow the Senate to vote on some nominees. The average length of time a circuit court nominee waited for a hearing under the Republican Senate was about 300 days. Some nominees waited up to 4 years for a hearing. In 6 years, the Republican Senate failed to confirm nearly half of President Clinton's nominees to the circuit courts. As a result, vacancies in the Federal courts increased by 60 percent. No one suggests that Senate Democrats should follow the example the Republicans set over the past 6 years. The Judiciary Committee should and will continue to move forward in confirming nominees to the Federal court in a prompt manner. But it is wrong for any of us in the Senate to abdicate our responsibility to thoroughly review the record of each nominee. Lifetime appointments are at stake. The need for careful review is important not just for Supreme Court nominees but for nominees to the lower Federal courts as well. These courts hold immense power. Many important legal issues in this country are decided at the Court of Appeals level, since the Supreme Court decides fewer than 100 cases per year. I voted to confirm most of the judges nominated by President Reagan and the first President Bush. The Senate's constitutional duty of ``advice and consent'' does not mean that the Senate should be a rubber stamp. It certainly does not require the approval of Federal judges who have displayed hostility to core Federal constitutional and statutory protections, or who have an extreme ideological agenda. Judges who are highly qualified, have a balanced judiciary temperament, and who are committed to upholding the Constitution and Federal law are judges that Senators on both sides of the aisle can support. But we should not support nominees with records that suggest they will roll back the rights and protections that Americans consider vital. All nominees should have their records examined thoroughly, and they should have hearings to answer questions about their records. Because these are lifetime appointments to courts that make decisions deeply affecting the nation, full and fair review is the least the Senate owes the American people. The Senate has worked well together this year on a number of bipartisan efforts, including education, airline security, and bioterrorism. On the issue of judges, all of us on the Senate Judiciary Committee know that we can work well with the administration and with Senators on both sides of the aisle to confirm nominees for our Federal courts who are highly qualified, fair, and committed to upholding the Constitution and the Nation's laws. I look forward to greater efforts in the time ahead to achieve that very important goal. I am reminded of the fact, in reviewing the Constitutional Convention, that perhaps the last major decision made at the Constitutional Convention was to change what had been initially accepted by the Founding Fathers, and that was the Senate was going to appoint Federal judges. The Senate would do it by itself. One of the last decisions made by the Founding Fathers was to have this as a shared responsibility. It seems to me that is something that sometimes this institution loses sight of, as do the American people sometimes. They believe that once nominated, we, in effect, should be a rubber stamp to these nominees. In reading constitutional history, we will find, to the Founding Fathers this was an issue of enormous importance and consequence. They made it extremely explicit that they believed the responsibility ought to be an equally shared responsibility between the President and the Senate. It does seem to me we should meet that responsibility in ways that are fair, that reveal the qualities of the individual, and make a judgment and a decision based upon that process.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is a privilege to take this opportunity to remember my friend John T. O'Connor, who passed away on November 30, 2001. A lifelong fighter for social justice, John died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 46 while playing basketball, a sport he loved, at the YMCA near his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. John O'Connor's zest for life and boundless energy were apparent from the moment you first met him, and those extraordinary qualities continued to amaze even those who knew him best and longest. His undeniable charisma helped win an enormous circle of friends. But his life was always about causes larger than himself. He credited his passion for social justice to the example of his parents, Katherine and George, to the Catholic faith and training he felt so deeply, and to his many inspiring teachers, especially at Clark University in Worcester, his alma mater. John's public journey began when he was still in college in the late 1970s, organizing fellow students to volunteer at the Mustard Seed, a Catholic worker collective in Worcester dedicated to feeding the poor and homeless. There he perfected his trademark eggplant parmesan. After graduation, John went to work for Worcester Fair Share, knocking on the doors of the three deckers of Grafton Hill in a successful campaign to end arson-for-profit in that neighborhood, a pattern he identified through disciplined research. The fire station built in response to that campaign remains a testament to John's first venture into grassroots organizing. The combination of community organizing and strategic research led him to understand that the environment was also an urban issue, affecting the quality of life in low income neighborhoods as surely as in the great outdoors. He began this new work by organizing citizens to resist an ill-conceived landfill proposal and to negotiate with local factory owners to reduce emissions. Soon, John moved on to a large national campaign, setting out to rid the country of environmental threats such as the asbestos contamination he lived next to in his hometown of Stratford, CT. At a time when environmental activism was out of fashion among some in Washington, he began traveling across the nation, speaking out against polluters, and convincing more than a million Americans to sign petitions to support toxic waste cleanup. He built his organization, The National Toxics Campaign, into a grassroots campaign to mobilize people from across the country, providing timely and passionate support for the appropriation of $8 billion for the Federal Superfund law in the mid-eighties, and helping to realize the promise of that historic legislation. First and foremost, John was a community organizer. He took on a remarkable range of issues, and he always did so with great dedication and effectiveness. He worked with scientists to document health concerns for veterans of the Gulf War. He made the case for environmental cleanup programs from Boston Harbor to the Rio Grande. He argued against the misuse of pesticides and other chemicals in agriculture. He was a strong believer in the importance of organized labor, and he fought alongside union members for strict protections for health and safety in the workplace. He co-authored a number of books on organizing and the environment, and a book on agricultural democracy was near completion. He was also interested for many years in responsible energy policy, and he led an effort in 1998 to repeal a Massachusetts electricity deregulation law, which he felt was unfair to consumers and the environment. For John O'Connor, environmental- ism was always as much about people as about our physical surroundings. It was logical that he would turn in recent years to the cause of assuring the best possible health care for every citizen. In 1999, he led efforts that obtained more than one hundred thousand citizen signatures in support of a health reform measure for the Massachusetts ballot. Momentum generated by that successful signature drive led to the passage of important but long-delayed legislation on the rights of patients in managed care. Looking ahead, he was poised to play an important and growing role in revitalizing prospects for universal coverage in Massachusetts. John O'Connor was also an intense and tireless champion of racial justice. He was endlessly fascinated by the diversity of human experience. As an American of Irish heritage, he led the 1997 drive to create the first permanent U.S. memorial to the victims of the Irish Famine on Cambridge Common. To John O'Connor, ethnic background and culture were intended to enrich the world, not divide it. He was proud to be known as an ``ABC''--an Armenian-by-Choice--after his marriage to Carolyn Mugar, an outstanding leader and activist in the Armenian community. John enthusiastically joined her to make his own impressive contributions to that community. His passionately-held beliefs made John an intense and frequent critic of the status quo in general, and of politics in particular. Yet he was profoundly optimistic about what this nation could achieve. He believed deeply in democracy. He looked for inspiration to the early years of our country and the nation's founders, and he read widely about them. In his campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, he told voters he wanted an America that truly reflected the basic values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--not an America that was simply the sum of its commercial enterprises or parochial concerns. Although he did not prevail in that campaign, he ran a strong race that impressed many people and made countless new friends along the way. With John O'Connor's death, we in Massachusetts have lost one of our state's most active and effective champions of working families, consumers, and the environment. John left us much too soon. I mourn his loss, and I extend my deepest sympathies to his wife, Carolyn Mugar, his daughter, Chloe, his parents, his brothers and his sister, his nieces and nephews, and his many godchildren. In his memory, we pledge to recommit ourselves to the many great causes in which John did so much to lead the way.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself an additional 2 minutes of the leader's time.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 4 minutes to my friend and colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry understands that leadership in local schools makes an extraordinary difference. We have seen constant examples of that. He has had a focus and attention particularly on having good principals in the schools. He has introduced a number of pieces of legislation. We have drawn on them heavily. He is one who is deeply concerned and involved in the education issue. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Florida.) The Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri. As he mentioned in his comments, he, as a Governor, was involved in the Parents as Teachers Program. We have developed a different way of recognizing this as a national problem, a national challenge, and different ways to bring people into the teaching profession. His is one of the imaginative and creative programs. We always welcome his continued interest in this program. Before yielding 3 minutes to the Senator from Louisiana, I take a brief moment to respond to the Senator from Minnesota. I gather there are three major points the Senator made, one about the funding for the IDEA program. I am in strong support of that program. It seems to me we are only meeting 17 percent of our responsibilities. We are pitting children, title I children, against disabled children. Two-thirds of those who receive the funding under special needs are title I children. We are talking about a similar group of children. We are trying to bring about significant reforms in this program. We will bring about the reforms next, but we should move ahead and recognize we are going to try to be of assistance to them. I am sympathetic and a strong supporter of that. However, I don't know whether the Senator has read the conference report when it comes to testing because we have effectively accepted the Senator's amendments. The Senator is quite correct, testing is not performed. We have a situation with some States spending $1.46 per student in one State and another State is $3.16, another State is $3.21. In this legislation we are committing with a trigger that says, if the resources are not there, these provisions do not apply. We have the most overtested group of students in the country. We understand that. However, what we do not have are content standards established by the States, curriculums established by the States, well- trained teachers to be able to teach the curriculum, and assessments about how the children are doing so they can be assisted in academic achievement and accomplishment. That is what this bill is committed to, not off-the-shelf tests. We do a disservice in describing this bill as the off-the-shelf test. It is not. It has been rejected. If the Senator read page 458, he would see his language is effectively accepted to enable States or consortiums of States to collaborate with institutions of higher education, other research institutions, other organizations, to improve quality, validity, and reliability of State academic assessments beyond the requirements for such assessments described in the act, and measuring students' academic achievement using multiple measures from multiple sources. We have leaned over backwards to do it right. The Senator was right in his amendment. We have it right in this program. To try to distort it does not serve the issue well. It is not an accurate reflection of what is in the bill. I do not yield to the Senator from Minnesota or anyone else in terms of getting additional resources. We started with modest resources, the 3-percent increase in terms of the title I program. That happened to be increased to 20 percent. We started off with only a third of the children covered. It is true, we are facing recession and there will be 600,000 more children covered under this program. They are going to be eligible this year because of the state of the economy, but we only reach 40 percent of the Head Start children. Are we against Head Start because it only reaches 40 percent? Are we breaking our promises? We are out here to try to get full investment in these reforms. That is what I am committed to do. I think we have made some progress. It is always easy to criticize the failures, but I think, along with our colleagues, this is one of the most important efforts made by the Congress in terms of enhancing academic achievement and accomplishment. We might come back to the other areas, but I thought this was the time to respond. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Louisiana. I thank the Senator. There is additional targeting. Under this bill, Minnesota would get $20 million more for title I. But the targeting, both in urban areas and rural areas, is a direct tribute to the Senator from Louisiana. She fought for that and built a coalition. It is always difficult to alter or change formulas. It is a significant alteration to reach the neediest children. We are grateful to her for her commitment in this area.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of this vote, the staff be entitled to be make technical amendments.

Mr. KENNEDY. We are going from one side to the other.

Mr. KENNEDY. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I had indicated we were going to alternate. The last time I saw Senator Mikulski she was a Democrat, so now we will go to the Republican side. That is what I indicated earlier. That is the way we proceeded yesterday. That is our understanding today, and that is the way we will proceed right now.

Mr. KENNEDY. I thought the Senator might be here a little after 10:30 a.m., if that is convenient to the Senator. We are trying to do the best we can, but we do have an order. I am glad to yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it is a pleasure to yield 3 minutes to our friend and colleague, the only Member of this body who has been both a teacher and a school board member and has led the country, really, understanding that smaller class sizes give the best opportunity for children to learn. She has been an invaluable member of our Education Committee and our Human Services Committee. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut. The Senator from Connecticut has been a strong advocate in terms of accountability in schools and also investing in those children. So I welcome his comments.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Jeffords for his work on this legislation. He was chairman of our committee when we reported out the Senate version. Sometime after that, we had a change in leadership. As a matter of fact, the bill itself was on the floor. I had the opportunity to chair the legislation. The Senate should know that on this legislation, the first parts were reported out of the committee when Senator Jeffords was the principal architect. Although we come to different conclusions in terms of the outcome on this legislation, I express our great appreciation to him for his longstanding commitment to funding the IDEA. He has been passionate about that and has worked on it. He makes a compelling case. We are closer to the day when I think we will get there. I think we will get there, and we are going to. When we do, Senators Jeffords, Harkin, and Hagel will all have been enormously helpful in our achieving it. The final point I will mention: We have in this legislation expanded the afterschool program by 200,000 children. We still have a long way to go. I am mindful that that program started out in 1994 sponsored by Senator Jeffords. It started out as a $50 million program and several thousand students. Now there are probably more subscriptions for that program than any other program in these last years because of the recognition of the difference it makes in terms of being a resource for children to get assistance after school. I thank him for his good work. I wish he had come to a different conclusion, but the Senate should know. I see the Senator from Minnesota. We expect him to talk. If I may, I yield for 30 seconds to the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. KENNEDY. When I think of teacher recruitment, principal recruitment, rebuilding schools, or full funding, I think of the Senator from New York. I yield to the Senator from New York for 2 minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY. I will yield 5 minutes of our time.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Florida who took a special interest in bringing greater targeting of funds to be used more effectively and also for further evaluation of the students to consider some of the challenges they are facing in their ability to learn.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, after the Senator winds up, I was hoping we were going to go to Senator Mikulski. The Senator had been recognized for 15 minutes and then the tentative agreement is that Senator Mikulski was going to be able to respond. We are trying to work out an accommodation.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 2 minutes to our friend from Michigan, Senator Stabenow.

Mr. KENNEDY. We are trying to go from one side to the other.

Mr. KENNEDY. I thought the Senator was trying to get Senator Dayton after himself.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield for a question.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Helen Yuen, a fellow with my education policy office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of this debate.