Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to address the issue of education. This budget also fails to make education a priority. In this shrinking world, education is an even greater priority than ever before, and our budget should reflect that. As a nation, we must invest in Americans by ensuring access to the highest quality educational opportunities. We need to have the best educated, the best trained, the most sophisticated individuals, and we need to nourish the capacities of every person in the Nation. Yet the President's budget has proposed the biggest cut to education in the 26-year history of the Department of Education. Here is what we have seen on the No Child Left Behind Act--I will have an opportunity in the debate to go through this in greater detail--but the commitment to No Child Left Behind, an Act signed into law by the President, is to take every child who is not up to proficiency and to make sure they are going to have the support systems to get them up to proficiency--smaller class sizes, better trained teachers, supplementary services, and greater involvement of parents in these various programs. However, what we have seen is that we are not living up to that commitment--instead, we are leaving children behind because of inadequate funding. This year alone, 3.5 million to 4 million of the nation's students will be left behind. We are seeing now under the current program that 29 States are going to lose Title I funding, which are funds for the schools in greatest need. Under this budget, there are going to be some 29 States, including the State of Virginia, that are going to lose funding. Many of the programs that the President has slated for elimination-- GEAR UP, TRIO Upward Bound and Talent Search--have been incredibly successful in terms of providing students who might not have had the opportunity to continue their education with the support they need to do so. In the TRIO Upward Bound program we find that when measured against students of similar backgrounds, nearly 70 percent of the students who participate in these programs go on to higher education. If we take a similar review of the students who don't participate, only about 54 percent of them attend college. Now let's look at what is happening in higher education. This chart shows the cost of attendance at a 4-year public college versus the maximum Pell grant. In 2001, we look at the gap between the cost of going to a 4-year public college, and we look at it today, and we see how this gap has grown to about 8,000 dollars. We have about 400,000 young Americans who would be able to go to college and who want go to college, who have the intellectual ability to go to college, but who just cannot afford it. And those numbers are increasing dramatically over time. At an appropriate time, I intend to offer an amendment, hopefully with my colleague Senator Menendez and others, that will increase the maximum Pell grant from $4,050 to $4,500, restore the eliminations of TRIO, GEAR UP, the LEAP program, and Perkins loans, and further increases the funding for all student aid programs, including what they call the SEOG, work study and graduate education, and restores cuts in vocational education and job training programs. The cuts in the job training program make no sense whatsoever. We have 73,000 jobs that are going begging in my State of Massachusetts. We have 156,000 people who are looking for jobs. What is missing is the connection between the training of those people who want the jobs and the jobs that are there, and in this particular budget, we are cutting those training programs, cutting the education programs, cutting the training programs, and even reducing the title I programs that are so essential.

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, please let me know when I have 30 seconds left. At some time, we will have an opportunity to see the Senate vote for an increase in the areas of education, offset by closing a loophole that has been accepted here in the Senate by 80 votes or more that are available out there at the present time. As many of us have seen, in a recent report, it was stated that about 650,000 engineers will graduate from China this year. There will be 330,000 engineers graduating from India, and 72,000 engineers from the United States--and half of those are foreign students. We are falling further and further behind. We are not talking just about outsourcing, we are talking about outsourcing basic research. When we find IBM opening up their new research centers in Bangalore, Intel opening up their new research centers abroad, hiring 2,500 engineers over there, we have to ask: Where are we here in the United States? Are we giving the appropriate kinds of support for students to continue their education? We have seen the request and the statements that have been made in a bipartisan way by Senator Alexander and Senator Bingaman, the reports of the Academy of Engineers, the National Academy of Sciences, all of which say that we need to respond here in the United States the way we responded at the time the Russians sent up Sputnik, and that is to have a major investment in the young people of this country. Yes, we can give focus and attention just narrowly to math and science, and certainly we ought to provide that, but in order to really meet the challenge we are facing because of globalization, we have to make sure we have the best trained, best educated young people and that they are ready to meet these challenges. We need to equip every single American with the ability to compete and succeed, and we need to equip our country to be able to deal with globalization and ensure that we are well-educated, that we will be an innovative economy, and that we will provide innovative research. And when we have an innovative economy, we will have an innovative defense. This is a matter of national security. This is a matter of national security and national defense, making sure that we are going to be at the cutting edge of all of the research that is possible over a period of years. That is going to be the issue in question on which we will have an opportunity to vote during the course of this debate and discussion, and I look forward to the opportunity to do so. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Today's Senate action adding $1 billion for the Low- Income Home Energy Assistance Program for this winter is a step in the right direction. It is the best we can do, and it deserved to pass. But no one should be under the illusion that we have now provided adequate assistance to millions of struggling families around the country, many of whom are elderly and disabled. The additional $1 billion is less than half what is needed to fully fund LIHEAP and guarantee the assistance these families need and deserve. A small step is better than no step, but it is still far from meeting the obvious need. Countless citizens in communities throughout America live year-round in constant fear of power shutoffs because they can't pay their energy bills, and they have no confidence that either Congress or the President is on their side. According to a report by the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, since the winter of 2001-2002, the average yearly cost of heating oil has soared from $627 to $1474, natural gas from $465 to $1000, and propane from $736 to $1286. Yet the Republican Congress and the Bush administration continue to ignore the fact that millions of Americans can't afford these steep increases. Democrats have pressed for months to fund LIHEAP at the authorized level of $5.1 billion for the current fiscal year. We have urged Congress to act, but the Republican majority has blocked our efforts at every turn, and they continued to try to block our efforts to obtain an additional $1 billion for the program today. Families are paying a steep price for this neglect. The average LIHEAP grant has decreased by almost 10 percent since 2002 and is now only $288. In Massachusetts, the State government has provided $20 million in additional funds for LIHEAP this year. Low-income families are more fortunate in our State than in most other States on this issue, but we have exhausted all Federal funds, and need is still great. Even the poorest households with the highest bills will get no more than $840--less than half what is needed to get through the winter. As Self Help, a community action program in Avon, MA, ``Many of our clients have exhausted their benefits . . . The bottom line is that we need some kind of relief, as quickly as possible.'' ABCD, a community action agency in Boston, reports that as of January 17, the number of applicants applying for fuel assistance for the first time increased by 26 percent. Its clients are currently exhausting all of their fuel assistance benefits. Even a benefit of $765 buys only one tank of oil at today's price of $2.40 per gallon, when at least two or three tankfuls are needed to get through the winter, and no other source of funding is available. These aren't just numbers. They represent real people facing real hardships. For example, an elderly couple lives in a modest home on the outskirts of Haverhill and both receive Social Security benefits. Their home is heated with oil, and they use an old woodstove in the basement to supplement their steam boiler. Their $525 LIHEAP grant covered one delivery of 256 gallons of oil in late November. Attempting to cut wood for the woodstove, the husband fell from a ladder and was injured. If LIHEAP had been funded fairly, his injury could have been prevented. With this bill, the chances are 50-50 that his injury could have been prevented. We could have done better, and we should have done better. It is wrong to let people like this suffer.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, for months, we have been ready to roll up our sleeves and get back to work on the PATRIOT Act, but the White House has continued to block bipartisan efforts to improve the original bill and accept oversight of its intrusive surveillance programs. Again, and again, the administration has refused to join in serious negotiations with Republicans and Democrats on matters of national security, including the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretaps and the FBI's use of national security letters. The latest proposal offers improvements and deserves to pass; however, it is unacceptable and undemocratic that further amendments could not even be considered. We need to implement these improvements quickly given the administration's disregard of congressional oversight. The proposed reauthorization bill requires public reports on the use of two of the most controversial provisions: section 215 and national security letters. It also requires the inspector general to audit their use, and it mandates a report on any data-mining activities by the Justice Department. Americans deserve national security laws that protect both our security and our constitutional rights, and more changes are clearly needed. One of the most glaring omissions in the proposal is the failure to include a 4-year sunset provision on national security letters, even though it would be consistent with the new reporting and auditing requirements that will take effect. The latest changes provide some additional protection for libraries, but these safeguards should apply to all of the means used by the Government to obtain sensitive information, including financial documents and library records. We also need a report on the Government's use of computerized searches from all Federal agencies, and we will continue to seek such a requirement as part of efforts toward other reforms. We have not yet achieved the 9/11 Commission's goal to maintain governmental powers that enhance our national security while ensuring adequate oversight over their use. With so much at stake, the administration's refusal to work with Congress can only weaken our national security and further undermine the public's trust in their Government. So this battle will go on, and I regret we could not accomplish more in this needed legislation.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, these have not been easy times for vast numbers of Americans. In many ways, the American dream is in peril for millions of our fellow citizens as global forces have caused the economy to shift against them. Complacency is not the answer. Few things more affect the way we live than our shrinking and rapidly changing world. Unless we begin to address this immense challenge more effectively, the Nation will pay a high price for years and years to come. Now is the right time to reinvest in America's future, which is why I am today introducing the Right TRACK Act. American families across the Nation know the problem. It is measured in jobs moving overseas, stagnant or even falling wages and benefits, our schools losing ground compared to other nations, and fewer opportunities to attain the American dream. Indeed, the course we are on today is a course that will make the American dream the impossible dream. America cannot move forward if we cut back on investments in education, invention, and innovation, as the administration has proposed. We cannot compete in the world if our companies and our workers are saddled with soaring costs for health care. We cannot advance if we fail to invest in our own employees by paying them a decent wage, by taking steps to enable companies to keep jobs here at home, and by investing wisely in our own economic growth. The 20th century was widely hailed as the American century, but the 21st century is up for grabs. No nation is guaranteed a future of lasting prosperity. We have to work for it. We have to sacrifice for it. We have a choice. We can continue to be buffeted by the harsh winds of the global economy or we can think anew and guide the currents of globalization with a new progressive vision that strengthens America and equips our citizens to move confidently to the future. Competing better in a race to the bottom is not the answer. Equality of opportunity--a bedrock principle of our democracy--is suffering already. Today, children born of parents in the bottom 20 percent of income have only a 1 in 15 chance of reaching the top 20 percent in their lifetimes. Also disturbing is the fact that those born in the middle are more likely to sink to the bottom than to rise to the top. And those born at the top are likely to stay at the top. We cannot and should not compete by lowering wages. Instead, we must open new doors and new avenues for all Americans to make the most of their God-given talents and rekindle the fires of innovation in our society. By doing so, we can turn this era of globalization into a new era of opportunity for America. As Thomas Jefferson said, ``Every generation needs a new revolution.'' And I believe the revolution for this generation is to master our own destiny in the new global economy. What is most required is a new vision for America's future in the global community. Our goal is to rekindle the American Dream, so that if people work hard and play by the rules, they can succeed in life, be better off than their parents, live in good neighborhoods, raise strong families in safe surroundings, work in decent jobs with decent pay and decent benefits and a decent retirement. To do all that, we must make a commitment to lifelong education, to prepare every man, woman, and child for the new world of intensifying competition and increasingly sophisticated technologies. We must create high-quality jobs for the years ahead by investing in research and development, encouraging innovation, and modernizing all aspects of our infrastructure. We must level the playing field for American businesses and employees, to ensure fair worldwide competition and preserve good jobs in the United States. And we must make a fair commitment to assist and care for workers and communities harmed by the forces of globalization. We can do all that, but only if we make the right choices, and the time to start is now. I strongly believe that our highest priority must be a world class education for every American. We must seek a future where America competes with other nations, not by reducing our employees' pay and outsourcing their jobs but by raising their skills. As a Nation, we must invest in Americans by ensuring access to the highest quality educational opportunities. We must make the American worker and manager the best educated, best trained, and most capable in the world. We need to nourish the capacities of every person in the nation. To do that, we must begin in the earliest years. Research proves conclusively that what we do for children's early education and development does more to ensure their later success in school than any other investment we can make. It is far less costly to society to spend millions to put young children on the right track from the start, instead of spending billions to rescue them from the wrong track later. In fact, one study concludes that in the long run, we save $13 for every dollar invested in the early education of our youngest citizens. Prevention works in health care, and it can work in education too. For generations, we have treated education as a three-legged stool-- elementary and middle school, high school, and college. To create a solid foundation for the future, we have to add a fourth leg--early childhood education. In elementary and secondary education, the No Child Left Behind Act was a pioneering reform that held great promise when it was signed into law by President Bush 4 years ago. No Child Left Behind was not just an abstract goal. It was a moral commitment to every parent and every child and every school in America, and I was proud to stand with President Bush when he signed it. It soon became clear, however, that to the administration, it was more a slogan than a promise. Too many parents, too many children, too many schools are still waiting for the help we pledged. We can't reform education without the resources needed to pay for the reforms. Promises alone won't provide the qualified teachers, high standards in every classroom, good afterschool activities, and the range of supplemental services that every good school needs if it is to provide the right help for students who need it. No Child Left Behind was also a promise that every child counts-- Black or White or Brown, rich or poor. It was a promise that disabled children too will have the qualified teachers and individual support they need to succeed in school and in life. We must also do more to help students prepare for college, afford college, be admitted to college and complete college. In 1950, when I graduated from school, only 15 percent of jobs required some postsecondary training. Today, the number is over 60 percent and rising rapidly. However, we are witnessing a growing gulf in college attendance between the rich and poor. The gap is shameful. Each year, 400,000 college-ready students don't attend a 4-year college because they can't afford it. Never before has the financial challenge of attending college been greater for young students. It is time for America to agree that cost must never be a barrier to college education. Every child in America should be offered a contract, when they reach eighth grade, making clear that if they work hard, finish high school, and are accepted for college, we will guarantee them the cost of earning a degree. The Right TRACK Act authorizes Federal grants to States to support the creation of ``Contract for Educational Opportunity'' grants to cover students' unmet need up to the cost of attendance at 2-year and 4-year public colleges in that State. Perhaps nowhere is it more obvious that we are falling behind than in math and science. For a nation that prides itself on innovation and discovery, the downward slide is shocking. In recent years, we have dropped to 28th in the industrial world in math education. Each year, China graduates three times as many engineers as we do. Other nations are gaining on us because they give higher priority to education. The last time America was shocked into realizing we were unacceptably behind in math and science was in 1958, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Republican President Eisenhower and a Democratic Congress responded by passing the National Defense Education Act, and almost overnight we doubled the Federal investment in education. In fact, throughout our history, we have remade American education to conquer the challenges of each time. In the mid-1800s, with the Industrial Revolution in full swing, we created free and mandatory public schools before most other nations did. And to stay ahead, we rapidly established public high schools at the start of the last century to keep pace with a growing economy. Once again, we did something comparable at the end of World War II. We passed the GI Bill of Rights and gave every returning veteran the chance for a college education. The Nation reaped a $7 return for every dollar it invested in their education. The result was the ``greatest generation,'' and it would never have happened without the GI bill. That is the kind of initiative we need today, because the need is just as great. We need a new Education Bill of Rights, a new National Defense Education Act, for our own day and generation in science and math. Let's make college free for students training to become math or science teachers. Let's make college and graduate school free for low- and middle- income math and science students. Let's see that our standards are internationally competitive, so that our high school graduates can succeed in this new economy. Let's offer incentives and other support for schools to develop and implement rigorous standards and courses in math and science. The Right TRACK Act responds to each of these challenges. The legislation provides grants to low- and middle-income students studying in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, as well as critical-need foreign languages. The bill provides larger grants to students studying to become teachers in these fields who agree to work in a high poverty school for at least 4 years. It also provides teachers with tax credits, increased loan forgiveness as additional incentives to continue to teach where they are needed the most and invests in teacher training programs supporting their continuing education. The Right TRACK Act also provides resources to states to create P-16 Preparedness Councils to help States with their efforts to improve State standards and ensure that they are aligned with the expectations of colleges, employers, and the armed services. The bill also provides funding to States working in collaboration to establish common standards and assessments. The bill also directs resources to high need schools so they can invest in math, science, engineering, and technology textbooks and laboratories to ensure their students have equal access to a curriculum that will provide them with the skills they need to be successful in the 21st century global economy. It is becoming increasingly important for students to become exposed to and immersed in other languages and cultures. In recent years, foreign language needs have significantly increased throughout the public and private sector due to the presence of a wider range of security threats, the emergence of new nation states, and the globalization of the U.S. economy. American businesses increasingly need employees experienced in foreign languages and international cultures to manage a culturally diverse workforce. Foreign language proficiency is a consideration in 44 percent of hiring decisions and 66 percent of retention decisions. Currently, the U.S. Government requires 34,000 employees with foreign language skills in 100 languages across more than 80 Federal agencies. The Right TRACK Act responds to these needs by providing grants for elementary and secondary critical-need language programs, summer institutes to improve teachers' knowledge and instruction of foreign languages and international content, and study abroad and foreign language study opportunities for high school students, undergraduate, and graduate students. We must also continue to invest in our current workforce. The Right TRACK Act builds on existing formula funds for job training with competitive grants to support innovative strategies to meet emerging labor market needs. From our earliest days as a nation, education has been the engine of the American dream. Our country is home to the greatest universities in the world, and our education system has produced the world's leading scientists, writers, musicians, and inventors. We cannot let these achievements stall now. Slogans aren't strong enough. We have to put first things first and give children, parents, schools, communities and States the support they need to refuel the amazing engine of education and keep our country great in the years ahead. Beyond education, we must recognize that the foundation of our prosperity in this global world is to remain on the cutting edge of technology and medical and scientific breakthroughs in the years ahead and translate those advances into reliable products and services. A strong and fully developed infrastructure will provide the backbone for that success. America has always been a world leader in research and development, but we can no longer take our success for granted. Even in highly skilled industries, where our technology and infrastructure have preserved our competitive advantage we are increasingly at risk today. Rapidly growing economies in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America are now formidable competitors, developing their economies into engines of growth based not just on low wages but on well-educated citizens, advanced infrastructure, and well-run businesses. In Bangalore, India, a G.E. center employs more than 2,200 Ph.D.s. These workers are not sewing buttons on shirts; they are carrying out advanced research on jet engines and developing mathematical models for investment. An Intel research and development center in the same city employs 3,000 engineers designing the next generation of computer chips. However, despite increasing international competition, the Federal commitment to research outside the defense arena has declined under the Bush administration. Of particular concern is the drop in funding for basic research. Much of the research conducted by private companies is focused on getting a product quickly to market. That is not the basic research that lays new foundations for new discoveries. Funding for basic research has declined in the past few years at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and other key scientific agencies. And overall the Federal investment in research which once exceeded one percent of our GDP is now less than half a percent. We cannot allow this trend to continue. The Right TRACK Act will help America maintain its position as the leader in innovation. The Right TRACK Act will not only make the R&D credit permanent but expand it to encourage small businesses, universities, and Federal laboratories to collaborate on research. And it will increase R&D funding for major Federal research agencies by 10 percent that we double it in 7 years. Innovation is important for its own sake, but it is also what creates jobs. We are currently seeing our investment in R&D paying dividends in high growth, high technology industries such as nanotechnology. We need to help usher these new technologies out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. The Right TRACK Act would encourage investment in nanotechnology businesses and increase support for critical programs at the Department of Commerce that help manufacturers adopt and commercialize new technologies. We also must invest in innovation and infrastructure--highways, mass transit, new sources of clean energy, health I.T., and more. The Right TRACK Act will authorize funds for capital improvements to Amtrak and expands and increases tax credits for school renovation and construction that will equip schools with 21st century technology. These investments not only improve the quality of our lives, but they also create the quality jobs that drive our economy forward. Broadband infrastructure is a perfect example. Two years ago, President Bush declared that every American should have access to affordable broadband technology by the year 2007. But the administration still has no plan to get us there. In the meantime, we have fallen to 16th in the world in broadband access behind countries such as Japan and the Netherlands that have broadband speeds four and five times faster than ours. Widespread use of basic broadband would add $500 billion to our economy and create 1.2 million jobs. Clearly, this is the kind of infrastructure we should invest in to produce good jobs and economic growth in the future. The Right TRACK Act also puts us on the ``right track'' to take full advantage of that economic opportunity. We also live in an age exploding with medical miracles. A generation ago, few could possibly have imagined the advances in science and biology that have revolutionized the practice of medicine. No one today can predict how new discoveries in the life sciences will improve our lives and change the world, but we can be certain the effects will be profound. Thanks to the genius and dedication of scientists, doctors, and business leaders, the potential of medical research is virtually limitless. Diagnosing a faulty heart valve or blocked artery once meant risky and traumatic exploratory surgery. Today, doctors make the diagnosis with a miniature camera and fiber optic cable, and the patient can walk out of the office moments later. A few years ago, it seemed inconceivable that anyone could decipher the entire genetic code--the very blueprint of life. But today, doctors across the globe can read that sequence on their computer screens and use the information to search for new ways to treat cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other major illnesses. Continuing at the forefront of the life sciences may well be the most important way for America to retain its leadership in the world economy in the coming years. Another of the fundamental challenges of the global economy is that our companies are losing business and our people are losing jobs because they are not competing on a level playing field. Foreign governments manipulate their currencies to give their products an unfair advantage. They refuse to enforce basic labor protections like a minimum wage. They use abhorrent practices like child labor and forced labor. As a result, these countries can produce goods much more cheaply and dominate the global marketplace. Our own trade deficit is skyrocketing because we are producing less at home and buying more from other nations. Last year, we imported a record $726 billion more than we exported--an alltime high. We can't continue down this reckless path. It is too damaging to our economy. Over $2.2 trillion of our national debt today is owed to foreign investors and foreign governments. America has always controlled its own destiny but when foreigners are bankrolling our Government, our destiny is no longer in our hands. It is not just our companies that suffer--our workers are also struggling because the playing field is so uneven. More and more of our companies are shipping U.S. jobs overseas. Fifty-four percent of America's top companies have already done so. Even governments are part of the offshoring bandwagon. In my home State of Massachusetts, the State government has hired contractors that used workers from India to process Medicaid data and answer questions about food stamps. The Nation as a whole has lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001. The pain is widespread--48 States have lost manufacturing jobs under President Bush. These are not just blue-collar jobs. Millions of high-paying, white-collar jobs are also at risk of being shipped overseas, especially in the fields of medicine and computers. The disappearance of these good jobs is reducing our standard of living and threatening the very existence of the American middle class. President Bush's so-called economic recovery has the worst job creation record of any recovery since World War II. Those fortunate enough to have jobs are finding that their wages are stagnant even though other costs are soaring. College tuition is up 46 percent since 2001. Housing costs are up 49 percent. Health insurance is up 58 percent. Gasoline is $2.33 a gallon--40 percent higher than it was 5 years ago. The foundation of the America dream is weakening. That is because more of what our economy produces in this recovery now goes to business profits and executive suite salaries, and less to employees, than at any time since such records began in 1929. Wages are down, but profits are up by more than 60 percent. There is a better way. We need policies that reject the Walmart- ization of the American workforce. We must level the playing field in the competition for good jobs and demonstrate leadership in promoting fair wages for workers around the world. This is not just an economic issue--it is a moral issue. The Right TRACK Act will help raise living standards worldwide by prioritizing the elimination of forced labor and child labor in U.S. trade agreements and providing incentives for multinational corporations to treat their foreign workers with respect. It will also level the playing field for American businesses by ensuring that countries cannot manipulate their currencies to give their goods an unfair advantage in the global market. Rejecting the race to the bottom also means reaffirming our commitment to workers here at home. We must stop rewarding companies by giving them favorable tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. The Right TRACK Act corrects this nonsensical policy by eliminating the tax loophole that allows companies to avoid paying taxes on money they have earned overseas. The act also addresses the offshoring epidemic by requiring companies to give workers better notice when their jobs could be offshored to other countries and ensuring that the Government does not use hard-earned tax dollars to ship jobs overseas. Our commitment to workers at home also demands that we give them their fair share of the economic growth that globalization brings. In this century, just as in the last, we must ensure that workers can organize and have a voice at work. The Right TRACK Act preserves the basic rights of American workers by protecting employees who try to organize from employer intimidation, supporting the democratic right of a majority of workers to choose a representative through fair and neutral card-check procedures, and requiring employers to come to the table and negotiate a first contract. We owe a particular duty to those Americans who lose their jobs due to the effects of trade or economic downturns. When workers lose their jobs in the global economy, we should help in the difficult and painful transition to new employment with top-notch job training and income assistance for their families until they get another paycheck. The Right TRACK Act gives workers and communities harmed by trade the support they deserve. It expands the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program to include service workers and workers who lose their jobs due to increased trade with countries like China and India. It also improves funding levels for training programs, provides wage insurance for older workers who lose their jobs, and helps workers to retain their health care coverage during times of transition. And it is a scandal that the minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for the past 9 years, below the poverty line for a family of three. It is the lowest the minimum wage has been in real value in more than 50 years. How can so many Republicans in Congress keep voting against any increase? Why can't we all at least agree that no one who works for a living in America should have to live in poverty? The Right TRACK Act gives these hardworking Americans a long overdue raise by increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps. America has to rise to each and every dimension of this challenge. We can do it by creating a new culture of innovation and creativity that keeps our Nation in the lead in the global market place--by equipping every American to compete and win in the new global economy. Only then will our economy continue to grow and prosper. Only then will the good jobs of the future be made in the U.S.A. The same can-do spirit of innovation, invention, and progress that brought us the automobile, the airplane, and the computer can do it again. Those advances brought the American dream closer for all, and we can't afford to let it slip away now. The essence of the American dream is the ability to provide a better life for yourself and your family. At its very heart are a good job, first-class education, good health care, and a secure retirement. Some say the dream is out of reach in today's global economy. But I am here today to tell you it doesn't have to be that way. We can revitalize the American dream. I have full confidence in our ability to meet these challenges and reach new heights of discovery prosperity, and progress. Passing the Right TRACK Act that I've introduced today is an important step towards ensuring that the American dream remains attainable for generations to come, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, these have not been easy times for vast numbers of Americans. In many ways, the American dream is in peril for millions of our fellow citizens as global forces have caused the economy to shift against them. Complacency is not the answer. Few things more affect the way we live than our shrinking and rapidly changing world. Unless we begin to address this immense challenge more effectively, the Nation will pay a high price for years and years to come. Now is the right time to reinvest in America's future, which is why I am today introducing the Right TRACK Act. American families across the Nation know the problem. It is measured in jobs moving overseas, stagnant or even falling wages and benefits, our schools losing ground compared to other nations, and fewer opportunities to attain the American dream. Indeed, the course we are on today is a course that will make the American dream the impossible dream. America cannot move forward if we cut back on investments in education, invention, and innovation, as the administration has proposed. We cannot compete in the world if our companies and our workers are saddled with soaring costs for health care. We cannot advance if we fail to invest in our own employees by paying them a decent wage, by taking steps to enable companies to keep jobs here at home, and by investing wisely in our own economic growth. The 20th century was widely hailed as the American century, but the 21st century is up for grabs. No nation is guaranteed a future of lasting prosperity. We have to work for it. We have to sacrifice for it. We have a choice. We can continue to be buffeted by the harsh winds of the global economy or we can think anew and guide the currents of globalization with a new progressive vision that strengthens America and equips our citizens to move confidently to the future. Competing better in a race to the bottom is not the answer. Equality of opportunity--a bedrock principle of our democracy--is suffering already. Today, children born of parents in the bottom 20 percent of income have only a 1 in 15 chance of reaching the top 20 percent in their lifetimes. Also disturbing is the fact that those born in the middle are more likely to sink to the bottom than to rise to the top. And those born at the top are likely to stay at the top. We cannot and should not compete by lowering wages. Instead, we must open new doors and new avenues for all Americans to make the most of their God-given talents and rekindle the fires of innovation in our society. By doing so, we can turn this era of globalization into a new era of opportunity for America. As Thomas Jefferson said, ``Every generation needs a new revolution.'' And I believe the revolution for this generation is to master our own destiny in the new global economy. What is most required is a new vision for America's future in the global community. Our goal is to rekindle the American Dream, so that if people work hard and play by the rules, they can succeed in life, be better off than their parents, live in good neighborhoods, raise strong families in safe surroundings, work in decent jobs with decent pay and decent benefits and a decent retirement. To do all that, we must make a commitment to lifelong education, to prepare every man, woman, and child for the new world of intensifying competition and increasingly sophisticated technologies. We must create high-quality jobs for the years ahead by investing in research and development, encouraging innovation, and modernizing all aspects of our infrastructure. We must level the playing field for American businesses and employees, to ensure fair worldwide competition and preserve good jobs in the United States. And we must make a fair commitment to assist and care for workers and communities harmed by the forces of globalization. We can do all that, but only if we make the right choices, and the time to start is now. I strongly believe that our highest priority must be a world class education for every American. We must seek a future where America competes with other nations, not by reducing our employees' pay and outsourcing their jobs but by raising their skills. As a Nation, we must invest in Americans by ensuring access to the highest quality educational opportunities. We must make the American worker and manager the best educated, best trained, and most capable in the world. We need to nourish the capacities of every person in the nation. To do that, we must begin in the earliest years. Research proves conclusively that what we do for children's early education and development does more to ensure their later success in school than any other investment we can make. It is far less costly to society to spend millions to put young children on the right track from the start, instead of spending billions to rescue them from the wrong track later. In fact, one study concludes that in the long run, we save $13 for every dollar invested in the early education of our youngest citizens. Prevention works in health care, and it can work in education too. For generations, we have treated education as a three-legged stool-- elementary and middle school, high school, and college. To create a solid foundation for the future, we have to add a fourth leg--early childhood education. In elementary and secondary education, the No Child Left Behind Act was a pioneering reform that held great promise when it was signed into law by President Bush 4 years ago. No Child Left Behind was not just an abstract goal. It was a moral commitment to every parent and every child and every school in America, and I was proud to stand with President Bush when he signed it. It soon became clear, however, that to the administration, it was more a slogan than a promise. Too many parents, too many children, too many schools are still waiting for the help we pledged. We can't reform education without the resources needed to pay for the reforms. Promises alone won't provide the qualified teachers, high standards in every classroom, good afterschool activities, and the range of supplemental services that every good school needs if it is to provide the right help for students who need it. No Child Left Behind was also a promise that every child counts-- Black or White or Brown, rich or poor. It was a promise that disabled children too will have the qualified teachers and individual support they need to succeed in school and in life. We must also do more to help students prepare for college, afford college, be admitted to college and complete college. In 1950, when I graduated from school, only 15 percent of jobs required some postsecondary training. Today, the number is over 60 percent and rising rapidly. However, we are witnessing a growing gulf in college attendance between the rich and poor. The gap is shameful. Each year, 400,000 college-ready students don't attend a 4-year college because they can't afford it. Never before has the financial challenge of attending college been greater for young students. It is time for America to agree that cost must never be a barrier to college education. Every child in America should be offered a contract, when they reach eighth grade, making clear that if they work hard, finish high school, and are accepted for college, we will guarantee them the cost of earning a degree. The Right TRACK Act authorizes Federal grants to States to support the creation of ``Contract for Educational Opportunity'' grants to cover students' unmet need up to the cost of attendance at 2-year and 4-year public colleges in that State. Perhaps nowhere is it more obvious that we are falling behind than in math and science. For a nation that prides itself on innovation and discovery, the downward slide is shocking. In recent years, we have dropped to 28th in the industrial world in math education. Each year, China graduates three times as many engineers as we do. Other nations are gaining on us because they give higher priority to education. The last time America was shocked into realizing we were unacceptably behind in math and science was in 1958, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Republican President Eisenhower and a Democratic Congress responded by passing the National Defense Education Act, and almost overnight we doubled the Federal investment in education. In fact, throughout our history, we have remade American education to conquer the challenges of each time. In the mid-1800s, with the Industrial Revolution in full swing, we created free and mandatory public schools before most other nations did. And to stay ahead, we rapidly established public high schools at the start of the last century to keep pace with a growing economy. Once again, we did something comparable at the end of World War II. We passed the GI Bill of Rights and gave every returning veteran the chance for a college education. The Nation reaped a $7 return for every dollar it invested in their education. The result was the ``greatest generation,'' and it would never have happened without the GI bill. That is the kind of initiative we need today, because the need is just as great. We need a new Education Bill of Rights, a new National Defense Education Act, for our own day and generation in science and math. Let's make college free for students training to become math or science teachers. Let's make college and graduate school free for low- and middle- income math and science students. Let's see that our standards are internationally competitive, so that our high school graduates can succeed in this new economy. Let's offer incentives and other support for schools to develop and implement rigorous standards and courses in math and science. The Right TRACK Act responds to each of these challenges. The legislation provides grants to low- and middle-income students studying in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, as well as critical-need foreign languages. The bill provides larger grants to students studying to become teachers in these fields who agree to work in a high poverty school for at least 4 years. It also provides teachers with tax credits, increased loan forgiveness as additional incentives to continue to teach where they are needed the most and invests in teacher training programs supporting their continuing education. The Right TRACK Act also provides resources to states to create P-16 Preparedness Councils to help States with their efforts to improve State standards and ensure that they are aligned with the expectations of colleges, employers, and the armed services. The bill also provides funding to States working in collaboration to establish common standards and assessments. The bill also directs resources to high need schools so they can invest in math, science, engineering, and technology textbooks and laboratories to ensure their students have equal access to a curriculum that will provide them with the skills they need to be successful in the 21st century global economy. It is becoming increasingly important for students to become exposed to and immersed in other languages and cultures. In recent years, foreign language needs have significantly increased throughout the public and private sector due to the presence of a wider range of security threats, the emergence of new nation states, and the globalization of the U.S. economy. American businesses increasingly need employees experienced in foreign languages and international cultures to manage a culturally diverse workforce. Foreign language proficiency is a consideration in 44 percent of hiring decisions and 66 percent of retention decisions. Currently, the U.S. Government requires 34,000 employees with foreign language skills in 100 languages across more than 80 Federal agencies. The Right TRACK Act responds to these needs by providing grants for elementary and secondary critical-need language programs, summer institutes to improve teachers' knowledge and instruction of foreign languages and international content, and study abroad and foreign language study opportunities for high school students, undergraduate, and graduate students. We must also continue to invest in our current workforce. The Right TRACK Act builds on existing formula funds for job training with competitive grants to support innovative strategies to meet emerging labor market needs. From our earliest days as a nation, education has been the engine of the American dream. Our country is home to the greatest universities in the world, and our education system has produced the world's leading scientists, writers, musicians, and inventors. We cannot let these achievements stall now. Slogans aren't strong enough. We have to put first things first and give children, parents, schools, communities and States the support they need to refuel the amazing engine of education and keep our country great in the years ahead. Beyond education, we must recognize that the foundation of our prosperity in this global world is to remain on the cutting edge of technology and medical and scientific breakthroughs in the years ahead and translate those advances into reliable products and services. A strong and fully developed infrastructure will provide the backbone for that success. America has always been a world leader in research and development, but we can no longer take our success for granted. Even in highly skilled industries, where our technology and infrastructure have preserved our competitive advantage we are increasingly at risk today. Rapidly growing economies in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America are now formidable competitors, developing their economies into engines of growth based not just on low wages but on well-educated citizens, advanced infrastructure, and well-run businesses. In Bangalore, India, a G.E. center employs more than 2,200 Ph.D.s. These workers are not sewing buttons on shirts; they are carrying out advanced research on jet engines and developing mathematical models for investment. An Intel research and development center in the same city employs 3,000 engineers designing the next generation of computer chips. However, despite increasing international competition, the Federal commitment to research outside the defense arena has declined under the Bush administration. Of particular concern is the drop in funding for basic research. Much of the research conducted by private companies is focused on getting a product quickly to market. That is not the basic research that lays new foundations for new discoveries. Funding for basic research has declined in the past few years at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and other key scientific agencies. And overall the Federal investment in research which once exceeded one percent of our GDP is now less than half a percent. We cannot allow this trend to continue. The Right TRACK Act will help America maintain its position as the leader in innovation. The Right TRACK Act will not only make the R&D credit permanent but expand it to encourage small businesses, universities, and Federal laboratories to collaborate on research. And it will increase R&D funding for major Federal research agencies by 10 percent that we double it in 7 years. Innovation is important for its own sake, but it is also what creates jobs. We are currently seeing our investment in R&D paying dividends in high growth, high technology industries such as nanotechnology. We need to help usher these new technologies out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. The Right TRACK Act would encourage investment in nanotechnology businesses and increase support for critical programs at the Department of Commerce that help manufacturers adopt and commercialize new technologies. We also must invest in innovation and infrastructure--highways, mass transit, new sources of clean energy, health I.T., and more. The Right TRACK Act will authorize funds for capital improvements to Amtrak and expands and increases tax credits for school renovation and construction that will equip schools with 21st century technology. These investments not only improve the quality of our lives, but they also create the quality jobs that drive our economy forward. Broadband infrastructure is a perfect example. Two years ago, President Bush declared that every American should have access to affordable broadband technology by the year 2007. But the administration still has no plan to get us there. In the meantime, we have fallen to 16th in the world in broadband access behind countries such as Japan and the Netherlands that have broadband speeds four and five times faster than ours. Widespread use of basic broadband would add $500 billion to our economy and create 1.2 million jobs. Clearly, this is the kind of infrastructure we should invest in to produce good jobs and economic growth in the future. The Right TRACK Act also puts us on the ``right track'' to take full advantage of that economic opportunity. We also live in an age exploding with medical miracles. A generation ago, few could possibly have imagined the advances in science and biology that have revolutionized the practice of medicine. No one today can predict how new discoveries in the life sciences will improve our lives and change the world, but we can be certain the effects will be profound. Thanks to the genius and dedication of scientists, doctors, and business leaders, the potential of medical research is virtually limitless. Diagnosing a faulty heart valve or blocked artery once meant risky and traumatic exploratory surgery. Today, doctors make the diagnosis with a miniature camera and fiber optic cable, and the patient can walk out of the office moments later. A few years ago, it seemed inconceivable that anyone could decipher the entire genetic code--the very blueprint of life. But today, doctors across the globe can read that sequence on their computer screens and use the information to search for new ways to treat cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other major illnesses. Continuing at the forefront of the life sciences may well be the most important way for America to retain its leadership in the world economy in the coming years. Another of the fundamental challenges of the global economy is that our companies are losing business and our people are losing jobs because they are not competing on a level playing field. Foreign governments manipulate their currencies to give their products an unfair advantage. They refuse to enforce basic labor protections like a minimum wage. They use abhorrent practices like child labor and forced labor. As a result, these countries can produce goods much more cheaply and dominate the global marketplace. Our own trade deficit is skyrocketing because we are producing less at home and buying more from other nations. Last year, we imported a record $726 billion more than we exported--an alltime high. We can't continue down this reckless path. It is too damaging to our economy. Over $2.2 trillion of our national debt today is owed to foreign investors and foreign governments. America has always controlled its own destiny but when foreigners are bankrolling our Government, our destiny is no longer in our hands. It is not just our companies that suffer--our workers are also struggling because the playing field is so uneven. More and more of our companies are shipping U.S. jobs overseas. Fifty-four percent of America's top companies have already done so. Even governments are part of the offshoring bandwagon. In my home State of Massachusetts, the State government has hired contractors that used workers from India to process Medicaid data and answer questions about food stamps. The Nation as a whole has lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001. The pain is widespread--48 States have lost manufacturing jobs under President Bush. These are not just blue-collar jobs. Millions of high-paying, white-collar jobs are also at risk of being shipped overseas, especially in the fields of medicine and computers. The disappearance of these good jobs is reducing our standard of living and threatening the very existence of the American middle class. President Bush's so-called economic recovery has the worst job creation record of any recovery since World War II. Those fortunate enough to have jobs are finding that their wages are stagnant even though other costs are soaring. College tuition is up 46 percent since 2001. Housing costs are up 49 percent. Health insurance is up 58 percent. Gasoline is $2.33 a gallon--40 percent higher than it was 5 years ago. The foundation of the America dream is weakening. That is because more of what our economy produces in this recovery now goes to business profits and executive suite salaries, and less to employees, than at any time since such records began in 1929. Wages are down, but profits are up by more than 60 percent. There is a better way. We need policies that reject the Walmart- ization of the American workforce. We must level the playing field in the competition for good jobs and demonstrate leadership in promoting fair wages for workers around the world. This is not just an economic issue--it is a moral issue. The Right TRACK Act will help raise living standards worldwide by prioritizing the elimination of forced labor and child labor in U.S. trade agreements and providing incentives for multinational corporations to treat their foreign workers with respect. It will also level the playing field for American businesses by ensuring that countries cannot manipulate their currencies to give their goods an unfair advantage in the global market. Rejecting the race to the bottom also means reaffirming our commitment to workers here at home. We must stop rewarding companies by giving them favorable tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. The Right TRACK Act corrects this nonsensical policy by eliminating the tax loophole that allows companies to avoid paying taxes on money they have earned overseas. The act also addresses the offshoring epidemic by requiring companies to give workers better notice when their jobs could be offshored to other countries and ensuring that the Government does not use hard-earned tax dollars to ship jobs overseas. Our commitment to workers at home also demands that we give them their fair share of the economic growth that globalization brings. In this century, just as in the last, we must ensure that workers can organize and have a voice at work. The Right TRACK Act preserves the basic rights of American workers by protecting employees who try to organize from employer intimidation, supporting the democratic right of a majority of workers to choose a representative through fair and neutral card-check procedures, and requiring employers to come to the table and negotiate a first contract. We owe a particular duty to those Americans who lose their jobs due to the effects of trade or economic downturns. When workers lose their jobs in the global economy, we should help in the difficult and painful transition to new employment with top-notch job training and income assistance for their families until they get another paycheck. The Right TRACK Act gives workers and communities harmed by trade the support they deserve. It expands the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program to include service workers and workers who lose their jobs due to increased trade with countries like China and India. It also improves funding levels for training programs, provides wage insurance for older workers who lose their jobs, and helps workers to retain their health care coverage during times of transition. And it is a scandal that the minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for the past 9 years, below the poverty line for a family of three. It is the lowest the minimum wage has been in real value in more than 50 years. How can so many Republicans in Congress keep voting against any increase? Why can't we all at least agree that no one who works for a living in America should have to live in poverty? The Right TRACK Act gives these hardworking Americans a long overdue raise by increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps. America has to rise to each and every dimension of this challenge. We can do it by creating a new culture of innovation and creativity that keeps our Nation in the lead in the global market place--by equipping every American to compete and win in the new global economy. Only then will our economy continue to grow and prosper. Only then will the good jobs of the future be made in the U.S.A. The same can-do spirit of innovation, invention, and progress that brought us the automobile, the airplane, and the computer can do it again. Those advances brought the American dream closer for all, and we can't afford to let it slip away now. The essence of the American dream is the ability to provide a better life for yourself and your family. At its very heart are a good job, first-class education, good health care, and a secure retirement. Some say the dream is out of reach in today's global economy. But I am here today to tell you it doesn't have to be that way. We can revitalize the American dream. I have full confidence in our ability to meet these challenges and reach new heights of discovery prosperity, and progress. Passing the Right TRACK Act that I've introduced today is an important step towards ensuring that the American dream remains attainable for generations to come, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it's a privilege to join Senator Burr and other colleagues in supporting the Puerto Rico self-determination act. Puerto Rico and its four million residents have enjoyed a positive relationship with the United States since the island's commonwealth status was established over 50 years ago. But it's important for all of us to protect the right of the Puerto Rican people to self- determination, and this legislation will do so. Our bill calls for a constitutional assembly in Puerto Rico composed of delegates elected by the Puerto Rican people. The delegates will determine the appropriate options for inclusion in a referendum to enable the Puerto Rican people to decide the future status of the island. Congress will have the final say on the referendum, but the process should start with the people of Puerto Rico and not in Washington. A constitutional assembly will best serve their interest by letting us know their wishes. The people of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, and many of them have served our Nation with great courage and sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the very least we owe them a fair and democratic process in determining their future. The recommendations in the report released in December by the White House task force on the status of Puerto Rico do not adequately address this basic issue, since the options suggested in the report do not give Puerto Ricans the fair choice they deserve. The possibility of change in the current status has stirred intense debate in recent years, and this bill is intended to allow a fair solution that respects the views of all sides in the debate. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation as the most effective way to resolve this issue and give the people of Puerto Rico the respect they deserve.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, it's a privilege to join Senator Burr and other colleagues in supporting the Puerto Rico self-determination act. Puerto Rico and its four million residents have enjoyed a positive relationship with the United States since the island's commonwealth status was established over 50 years ago. But it's important for all of us to protect the right of the Puerto Rican people to self- determination, and this legislation will do so. Our bill calls for a constitutional assembly in Puerto Rico composed of delegates elected by the Puerto Rican people. The delegates will determine the appropriate options for inclusion in a referendum to enable the Puerto Rican people to decide the future status of the island. Congress will have the final say on the referendum, but the process should start with the people of Puerto Rico and not in Washington. A constitutional assembly will best serve their interest by letting us know their wishes. The people of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, and many of them have served our Nation with great courage and sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the very least we owe them a fair and democratic process in determining their future. The recommendations in the report released in December by the White House task force on the status of Puerto Rico do not adequately address this basic issue, since the options suggested in the report do not give Puerto Ricans the fair choice they deserve. The possibility of change in the current status has stirred intense debate in recent years, and this bill is intended to allow a fair solution that respects the views of all sides in the debate. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation as the most effective way to resolve this issue and give the people of Puerto Rico the respect they deserve.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I understand that in the order that has been printed, the first instruction is by the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, which includes both the alternative minimum tax relief and the tax cuts for dividends and capital gains. I understand that he has 2 minutes to speak in favor of that and there are 2 minutes in opposition to it. I, at this time, will use part of the 2 minutes in opposition. I see the ranking member and I would suggest a brief quorum call so he may speak in opposition to the Grassley motion. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand, the pending instruction is mine.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, this Senate is not going to have a clearer opportunity in terms of the Nation's priorities than on this next vote. Under the current proposal before the Senate, it provides the dividends and capital gains of $50 billion. The President's proposal which was submitted is $50 billion in Medicare and Medicaid budget cuts. We have the choice of $50 billion for the further tax reductions for the wealthiest individuals or we are going to stand up on Medicare and Medicaid. If we care about the culture of life, we will vote for this amendment since one-third of all the children born are born under Medicaid and receive well-baby treatment and mothers are treated. If Members care about our seniors and disabled and those mentally challenged and disabled, they will vote for this motion because it protects Medicare. If Members are talking about children, nursing homes, and the frail and elderly, Members will vote for this motion because it will preserve Medicaid. If Members care about research and NIH and believe this is the life science century, Members will not tolerate the extraordinary cuts in the NIH budget in cancer and Alzheimer's research, the whole range of research, and will vote for this motion. If Members care about fairness for America's families, vote for this motion over giveaways to the very wealthy. It is as plain and simple as that. I hope our colleagues will support it.

Mr. KENNEDY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I send to the desk a motion to instruct conferees and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, Americans are wondering what has happened to their Government. They are working hard to raise strong families and to live the American dream. But with each passing day, they find the American dream farther and farther out of reach as they juggle just to make ends meet. Over the past 5 years, the cost of health insurance has jumped 73 percent. Gasoline is up 74 percent; college tuition, 45 percent; housing, 44 percent. The list goes on and on and up and up. Working families do not ask for much. Low- and middle-income families are doing their part. But they could use a little fair play from their Government as they are facing such hard times. But that is not what is going on in Washington today. Again and again and again, under this Republican President and this Republican Congress, they have seen trillions of their tax dollars given away in tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations while the rest of America is asked to sacrifice. And this bill and the budget President Bush sent to Congress last week are yet another example. The House version of the bill before us provides tax breaks on capital gains and dividend income that will take $50 billion over the next 10 years and give it to people who are already wealthy. At the same time, the President's budget cuts almost $50 billion from Medicare and Medicaid for the next 5 years, harming health care for our seniors, for the disabled, and for the poor. And it robs key funds from other health priorities as well. Those are the wrong priorities for America, and the motion I offer today gives the Senate a chance to set things right. My motion says it is wrong to give away $50 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy while cutting $50 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care needs. If we are honest about reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy, we need to stop lavishing tax breaks on the rich and start investing in the health and well-being of all families. Nowhere is the crisis facing working families more apparent than in health care. Overall costs are soaring. Families have been losing their health insurance at the rate of 4,000 people per day--per day--since President Bush was elected. Close to 2 million Americans in 2001 were involved in medical bankruptcy--an increase of 2,200 percent from 1981. Around 50 percent of all bankruptcies in America today are caused, at least in part, by illness or medical debts, and of those, 60 percent were caused by high medical bills. High drug costs were responsible for half. Most involved had some health insurance but suffered from coverage gaps. Out-of-pocket medical costs averaged $11,854. For cancer patients, out- of-pocket costs averaged $35,878. These are not people trying to game the system. In the 2 years before filing for medical bankruptcy, 22 percent of filing families went without food, 30 percent had a utility shut off, 50 percent failed to fill a doctor's prescription, and 61 percent went without needed medical care. Let's look especially at what Republicans are doing to Medicaid and Medicare. The Medicaid Program is key to promoting a real culture of life in America. A third of all mothers giving birth receive their care through Medicaid. The Medicaid Program provides the prenatal and pediatric care their children need to be healthy. The Medicaid Program is our statement that we will do everything we can to help women bring their babies to term and give them the health care they need as they grow up. That is the way it should be in a true culture of life. But rather than stand by women in their time of need, Republicans are abandoning this culture-of-life program. Mere hours after the President had declared in the State of the Union Address that the Government would meet its responsibility to provide health care for the poor and the elderly, the House of Representatives sent to the White House a bill to impose draconian cuts on the Medicaid Program. Did the President stand up for this culture of life program and veto the House bill? No. He signed it. According to the Congressional Budget Office, under the Republican Medicaid bill, the poor and the disabled, those with mental illness, will lose: 45,000 enrollees will lose coverage over 5 years; 65,000 enrollees will lose coverage over 10 years; 60 percent of those losing coverage will be children; 13 million of the poorest Americans will have to pay more for prescriptions by 2010; and 20 million will have to pay more by 2015. You may ask where we get these numbers; do they represent what is going to happen? All you have to do is look at the examples. It is already happening in States across the country. In Maryland, a quarter of the families subject to increased premiums disenrolled, and those premium increases were extremely modest. In Oregon, higher costs caused disenrollment, and 67 percent of those who disenrolled became uninsured. The list goes on. In Rhode Island, nearly one in five families subject to the new premiums lost coverage. In Vermont, 11 percent disenrolled for nonpayment 1 month after the premiums increased. This is what is happening. This is an attempt to destroy the Medicare and Medicaid systems, make no mistake about it. Not satisfied with the cuts in Medicaid already enacted, the President's budget proposes another $14 billion in reductions in the program that meets the health needs of the poorest Americans. Some will try to say this does not have any effect on a family's health, but the facts say otherwise. When copayments rise for the poorest, health declines. This chart reflects a study of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It shows that increased copayments for medication for poor families caused an 88-percent increase in adverse events. This is from a study by the American Medical Association. The reference is printed in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. This is what happens with copays: a dramatic increase in serious adverse events. You almost have a doubling of adverse events when individuals have a nominal copay of $2 to $3. Look at what happens in this chart: A 78-percent increase in emergency room visits when a copay is required. This represents emergency visits with no copay, and this is with a nominal copay. With $3 to $4 for the copay, we see a significant increase in emergency visits. What is the result? It is going to cost the system a great deal more money. This is dollar foolish and, from a health point, a disaster for individuals adversely impacted. It will fall on the States and local communities to pay for this. It is a transfer of obligation. The people who will get hurt are going to be those who have the potential for an adverse event or who need prescription drugs in order to prevent a disease from continuing to disable them. This debate isn't about statistics. It is about the real harm these severe cutbacks will do to the most vulnerable Americans. A single mother with two children who makes $8 an hour currently pays $3 when she visits the doctor, and she does not have any cost sharing when her children go to the pediatrician. Under the new law, when her child goes to the pediatrician with an ear infection, she may be charged $20. When she goes to a doctor for treatment and tests for diabetes, she will be charged $50, and she will have to pay as much as $832 a year. That is what you are going to get as a result of Medicaid cuts, as the chart before showed us. A single mother with two children earning $25,000 a year now pays no premiums or cost sharing for her children's medical care and pays $3 copayments for herself under the existing system. Under the new law, she will now be charged monthly premiums for Medicaid coverage for herself and her children. Even if she manages to pay the premiums, she may now have to pay $40 for a pediatric visit. And she will have to pay as much as $1,250 for Medicaid. This is the wonderful Republican scenario. We've had no increase in the minimum wage; it has been 9 years and no increase in the minimum wage. And we are going to put more pressure on that mother, who is making $25,000 and has two children, for her family's health care. Why? Because we want some $50 billion more in tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals. That is what this is all about. Being in the Senate is a question of voting on priorities. The Senate will have a chance to say whether they want to give $50 billion more to the wealthiest individuals, or take that $50 billion and put it right back in the Medicare and Medicaid Programs which this President has cut, now and into the next several years. The President's policies, if enacted, will cause serious hardship for the most vulnerable Americans. But the administration's cuts to Medicaid are not the only assault on our health plans. The botched Medicare drug plan and the President's Medicare cuts further harm working families. When it comes to the new prescription drug benefit in Medicare, we had a good Medicare bill in the Senate, supported by a broad, bipartisan majority. Over 70 votes supported it. But that bill was hijacked once the White House entered the negotiations. Ideology trumped common sense. Instead of building on the Medicare Program that seniors know and trust, the drug bill was turned over to HMOs and private insurance plans enticed to participate by massive subsidies, funds that should have gone to strengthen benefits. The result has been a disaster. But that is not how the administration's spin machine sees it. According to the budget the President submitted to Congress, the Medicare drug program is off to a good start: The Medicare prescription drug benefit program is off to a good start. I wish those in the administration who thought so had the opportunity to visit with seniors in Massachusetts trying to figure their way through this. My office is filled with letters of the sadness and grief from individuals who are confused and can't find their way through the 45 different alternative programs. And as they search, they ask: ``Why couldn't they just give us the prescription drug benefit under the Medicare Program? I know the Medicare Program. It takes care of hospitalization. It takes care of doctor's fees. I know it. I trust it. I support it. I wonder, in these 45 programs, where the Medicare Program is?'' They can search and search and search, and they won't find it because this administration is opposed to it. So the seniors in my State are going to have to fight their way through those 45 different programs to find out which one suits them and then, after they sign it, they find out that the program can change the formulary and raise the premium. That is quite a deal, isn't it? Once you are enlisted, the program can change like that. And if the senior doesn't get involved in one program or another, they will pay an extraordinary penalty for not becoming involved. Some deal. This is off to a good start? This is how it has been described: ``Prescription for Disaster; Medicare Mess Cuts Cash Flow to Pharmacists,'' The Washington Times, February 6; ``Medicare Drug Mess,'' New York Times, January 22; ``Pharmacists Decry Medicare Chaos,'' the Tennessean, January 17; ``New Medicare [Prescription Drugs] Causes Numerous Headaches,'' Chicago Sun Times. This is what is happening: cuts in Medicare, refusing to build on the solid Medicare system which is tried and tested and proven and would give the greatest advantage to our seniors. That is what the administration is doing. Across the country, seniors and disabled individuals facing the challenge of mental illness have been denied the medications they need to maintain their health. They have been forced to pay massive fees for the drugs they counted on. States, cities, and many pharmacies have stepped into the breach and incurred millions of dollars in expenses to fill the gaps left by the administration. The reality is that 15 million seniors lose under the Republican Medicare law. This chart shows what is happening across America today. Retirees are being dropped. Low-income seniors are paying more in premiums. The dual eligible is also losing. Premiums are costing more than the benefits. This represents another 6 million who will lose under the Republican Medicare law. You add those together, and you have 15 million beneficiaries who are somehow going to lose. That is the reality. Who is going to gain? If all of these seniors and disabled Americans are losing, we have to ask: Who wins from the Republican drug plan? Someone must win. The answer is clear. The drug companies and the insurance industry win. The Republicans turned Medicare into the ``sugar daddy'' for the insurance industry by dolling out $67 billion in subsidies. Here is the latest chart: $67 billion, with a $10 billion slush fund built in. You also have the overpayment and the risk inflator. We know that any individual that is in an HMO program is 15 percent healthier than the average Medicare recipient. That is a given. CMS knows that. And what did we do? We gave the HMOs the inflator, close to 7 percent, representing an advantage of more than more than 15 percent. I thought the private sector was supposed to be more competitive and was supposed to save money. But instead, we have given $67 billion to the insurance industry. Those are the sweeteners in the Medicare prescription drug benefit. People back home in Massachusetts ought to understand why they are paying more in their copays--because a sweetener was needed for the insurance industry, for the HMOs. Those are the figures. Now what about windfall profits for the drug companies? This chart represents the difference between the money that is being paid now in this particular Medicare program and what would have been paid to drug companies if they had negotiated with the administration, similar to the VA system. So now we have to pay $67 billion to the HMOs and $139 billion to the drug companies. That makes over $200 billion, adding the $67 billion and the $140 billion, $200 billion, Mr. Senior Citizen. We could have lowered your premiums, lowered your copayments, and gone a long way toward closing what they call the donut provisions in here. Even with all of these sweeteners, we have a disaster. Why? Because the bill blocked Medicare from negotiating the same kind of discounts for seniors that the VA is able to get for veterans. In order to promote competition under this part, and in carrying out this part, the Secretary may not interfere with the negotiations between the drug manufacturers and the pharmacies and the Prescription Drug Providers. There it is. That effectively prohibited the administration from being involved. They pay effectively almost what the companies want. Does the administration propose to make things right? Does President Bush propose to kick the insurance industry and companies out of Medicare and provide a real benefit? The answer is ``no.'' Instead of strengthening Medicare, the new budget proposes $36 billion in Medicare cuts over the next 5 years and $105 billion over the next 10. The Medicare cuts will mean higher premiums for seniors and the disabled. This will result in reductions in the quality of care at hospitals and at home health agencies. In my State of Massachusetts, President Bush's Medicare cuts will mean that our hospitals will have to cut their budget by $213 million, home health agencies by $50 million, nursing homes by $150 million. Cuts in public health programs mean that our State program to screen newborns as early as possible for hearing loss will be eliminated. Seventeen rape crisis centers across the State would face significant financial hardship. Our programs on violence prevention and suicide would effectively be eliminated. Over 35 programs that train health care providers who deliver care in underserved areas and that support diversity in the health professions will be eliminated. Why should patients pay the price while this bill gives away billions in tax breaks to people who don't need them? But, of course, Republicans have never liked Medicare and Medicaid. Even though retirees and the poor were hurting, Republicans fought against Medicare and Medicaid tooth and nail when Democrats fought to create those two important programs in the 1960s. I was here on the Senate floor in 1964 when Medicare was defeated. I was here in 1965 when the Medicare Program was enacted. Republicans defeated Medicare when it was debated in Congress in 1964. When Republicans came under fire for their opposition in the 1964 election, enough crossed over to join Democrats in passing the Medicare and Medicaid Programs in 1965. Republicans never gave up their opposition. When they gained control of the White House and Senate in the 1980s, they tried to break Medicaid's promise of health care to poor families. They proposed converting the program into a block grant, and Democrats in Congress stopped them only after a pitched battle. Once again, in the 1990s, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America wanted to eliminate Medicare. Even though seniors and Americans with disabilities relied on the program and Americans respected it, Gingrich said Medicare should just ``wither on the vine.'' Democrats stopped them again. More recently, Glenn Hubbard, who was President Bush's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in his first term, said Medicare and Medicaid should be replaced by so-called health savings accounts, which would primarily benefit the healthy and the wealthy. He said: There is no reason to have a separate Medicare and Medicaid arrangement if you had these souped-up HSAs. That is the architect of President Bush's health savings account, Glenn Hubbard, proposing to abolish Medicare and Medicaid. That is what this is really focused on, Mr. President. We ought to understand that. Meanwhile, the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress continue to chip away at Medicare and Medicaid. Now they are at it again. In the budget the President just submitted to Congress, no health priority is safe. Medicare, Medicaid, cancer research, newborn screening, trauma services for children, and many other essential programs will be severely reduced or even eliminated. Look at this, Mr. President. Here is how these cuts affect the budget and undermine medical progress. This is how much they would need to have current services, to keep the inflator in the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Take the National Cancer Institute. Right now, we are in the age of the life sciences--with the human genome project, the sequencing of the genome, potential stem cell research, and a whole range of different opportunities. Right now, under the human genome project, researchers are sequencing genes from cancers, which are the greatest danger to families, using computers and other kinds of advanced technology. Those who are involved in this research believe that it is going to open up such hope and opportunity for the families affected and impacted by cancer. Yet we are cutting those programs $208 million. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: we are cutting that $123 million. What are the reasons for this? To provide additional tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals. This is your choice. Do you think we ought to have the investment in cancer research and the Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute? At the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which funds diabetes research, we are cutting back. Yet $1 out of $4 from Medicare is now spent to try to deal with diabetes, along with $1 out of $10 Medicaid dollars. That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Of course it does not make sense. Then there are neurological disorders and stroke and mental health, and we are cutting back on understanding these challenges, even as so many young people in this country are suffering with increased rates of youth suicide. We're also cutting back on Child Health and Human Development, which is so important. All of this money should go into programs at the National Institutes of Health, but instead it is coming out and going right into additional tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals in this country. Under the President's budget, NIH will receive $1 billion less than is needed to keep up with inflation. Its budget will be flat for 2 years running. That has not been allowed to happen in more than half a century. Mr. President, 18 of the 19 NIH institutes will lose funding, which means that NIH will fall behind in the race for new cures. At the time when we are in the life science century, we are cutting back on those opportunities for individuals and families who are affected by cancer and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Is that what we want to do in the Senate? Is that the vote we want to cast? Senators will have that opportunity later on, but I believe it is the wrong priority for our Nation. The amount saved by these dangerous reductions is dwarfed by the payouts that the tax bill now under consideration in the Senate gives to the wealthy. The tax break is particularly unfair because more than 75 percent of the tax benefits will go to people with incomes above $200,000 a year. Over half of the benefits--53 percent--will go to people with incomes over $1 million a year. This amounts to a $35,000 gift each year from Uncle Sam to the average millionaire, but it is highway robbery for the millions of seniors, disabled Americans, and poor families who will see a cut in Medicaid and Medicare services. The Republicans cynically claim that capital gains and dividend income deserve special treatment because they will stimulate investment. The facts do not substantiate that claim. The stock market grew more rapidly in the early and mid-1990s when investors' income was taxed at the same rate as wages. President Bush cut taxes on capital gains and dividend income in 2003. More tax cuts that America cannot afford will hurt the economy, not help it. There are some provisions in the Senate bill that we need to address. The alternative minimum tax was never intended to apply to middle-class families, and they deserve tax relief. In a truly outrageous move, House Republicans took AMT relief for the middle class out of their reconciliation bill so they could fit in more tax breaks for the rich. The research and development tax credit is important to our international competitiveness and should be retained. However, those worthwhile tax cuts should be paid for by rolling back some of the extravagant tax breaks that this Republican Congress has already given to the Nation's wealthiest taxpayers. We simply cannot afford more tax breaks at a time when we are facing record deficits. If we are honest about reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy, we need to stop lavishing tax breaks on the rich and start investing in the health and well-being of all families. The economic trends are very disturbing for any who are willing to look at them objectively. The gap between the rich and the poor in this country has been widening in recent years. Thirty seven million Americans now live in poverty, up 19 percent during this Bush administration. One in five American children lives in poverty; 14 million children go to bed hungry every night. Wages are stagnant while inflation drags more and more families below the poverty line. Mr. President, 2.8 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, and long-term unemployment is at historic highs. The bill before us has the wrong priorities for the Nation. The Senate should instruct our conferees to reject any House proposal to extend the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. The funds those cuts would consume would be much better spent on Medicare and Medicaid and the Nation's other health needs. The Senate should instruct our conferees to follow the right priority and the right course. I know the point will be made at some time during the discussion that, while this is a nice instruction, under the Senate rules we cannot really instruct, even if we were able to carry the vote. Even though it involves $50 billion, we can not reallocate funds in this particular way. It is interesting that the $50 billion giveaway for capital gains and dividends is exactly the amount of the cuts for Medicaid and Medicare--$36 billion cut from Medicare and $14 billion cut from Medicaid. Effectively, what you are doing is continuing the extension of the 2- year dividends and capital gains tax cuts over the period of the following 5 years, reaching up to 10 years. This is the $50 billion that we are talking about here. So we know what is really going on, Mr. President. This is an opportunity for choice and for making a decision about what priorities you want. We know the continued assault on the Medicare Program, which is happening by undercutting that program, is going to mean that our seniors are at greater risk. Our children and expectant mothers are going to be at greater risk with cuts in Medicaid. And by failing to deal effectively with the Medicare prescription drug program, our seniors are going to be more poorly served. In 1965, the Medicare prescription drug program was not included for a very simple reason; that is, 97 percent of private plans at that time didn't have a prescription drug program. Now they do. I was there when President Johnson signed the Medicare Program. He said: Pay your dues in Medicare and your health care needs will be attended to. That is what the Medicare prescription drug legislation did, right? Wrong. Our seniors are not attended to unless they have an effective prescription drug program. They are not getting it with this legislation, Mr. President. To at least give our seniors the same alternatives for prescription drugs that they have for medical services in the hospital and for doctor's fees under Medicare--to say that we are going to give you these same alternatives under the Medicare prescription drug program-- is effectively what over 70 Senators voted for in the Senate in a bipartisan way. Then that program was effectively hijacked by the industry, as well as by AARP, I might add, which poorly served our seniors and now regrets it. We have an opportunity to do something about it. But, Mr. President, without an expression by our colleagues here in the Senate, we are going to see that the rush will be on to continue the kind of expenditures that will increasingly threaten the most vulnerable in our society: the elderly, the disabled, those who are facing challenges with mental health, and the children of the Nation. Those are not the priorities, I know, for my State. I hope that at the time we vote later this evening, they won't be the priorities for the Senate as a whole. I yield the floor.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, will the Chair remind me when I have 5 minutes remaining.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the asbestos legislation which is before the Senate is both unfair and unworkable. It is unfair because many seriously ill victims of asbestos are completely excluded from compensation under the trust fund, and it is unworkable because the bill does not have adequate funding to ensure that all the victims who are eligible for compensation under the trust fund will actually receive what the legislation promises them. These are fundamental flaws that cannot be corrected by a few last- minute amendments. They go to the heart of the bill. This bill will end up hurting the seriously ill victims of asbestos disease whom we are trying to help. S. 852 fails the test of fairness for many of those most in need of assistance. Now is the time to take a serious look at how the proposed trust fund would operate--now, before it is too late. Who would be excluded from receiving compensation even though they are seriously ill from asbestos exposure? Who would be left in legal limbo, ineligible for the trust fund and unable to pursue their claims in court? I have said many times that the real crisis which confronts us is not an asbestos litigation crisis, it is an asbestos-induced disease crisis. We cannot allow the tragedy of these workers and their families' enduring to become lost in a complex debate about the economic impact of asbestos litigation. The litigation did not create these costs. Exposure to asbestos created them. They are the cost of medical care, the cost of lost wages, incapacitated workers, the cost of providing for the families of workers who died years before their time. Those costs are real. No legislative proposal can make them disappear. All legislation can do is shift those costs from one party to another. Unfortunately, S. 852 would shift more of the financial burden onto the backs of injured workers. That is unacceptable. Let's look at what this legislation would really do to victims. It would close the courthouse doors to asbestos victims on the day it passes, long before the trust fund will be able to pay their claims. Their cases will be stayed immediately. Seriously ill workers will be forced into legal limbo for up to 2 years. Their need for compensation to cover medical expenses, basic family necessities, will remain, but they have nowhere to turn for relief. Under this legislation, even the exigent health claims currently pending in the courts, will be automatically stayed for 9 months as of the date of enactment. These cases all involve people who have less than a year to live due to mesothelioma or some other disease caused by asbestos exposure. Nine months is an eternity for someone with less than a year to live. Many of them will die without receiving either their day in court or compensation from the trust fund. The stay language is written too broadly. It would stop all forward movement of a case in the court system. A trial about to begin would be halted. An appellate ruling about to be issued would be barred. Even the deposition of dying witnesses cannot be taken to preserve their testimony. The stay would deprive victims of their last chance at justice. I cannot believe the authors of the bill intended such a harsh result, but that is what the legislation does. I strongly believe, at a minimum, all exigent cases should be exempted from the automatic stay in the legislation. Victims with less than a year to live certainly should be allowed to continue their cases in court uninterrupted until the trust fund becomes operational. Their ability to recover compensation in the court should not be halted until the trust fund is open for business and they are able to receive compensation from the fund. It is grossly unfair to leave these dying victims in legal limbo. For them, the old adage is especially true: Justice delayed is justice denied. We should not deprive them of their last chance, their only chance to receive some measure of justice before asbestos-induced diseases silence them. They should be allowed to receive compensation in their final months to ease their suffering. They should be allowed to die knowing that their families are financially provided for. S. 852 in its current state takes that last chance away from them. I intend to offer an amendment that allows these severely ill victims to have their day in court. I am particularly upset by the way lung cancer victims are treated in this bill. Under the medical criteria adopted by the Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly 2 years ago, all lung cancer victims who had at least 15 years of weighted exposure to asbestos were eligible to receive compensation from the fund. However, that was changed in S. 852. Under this bill, lung cancer victims who have had very substantial exposure to asbestos over long periods of time are denied any compensation unless they can show asbestos scarring on their lungs. The committee heard expert medical testimony that prolonged asbestos exposure dramatically increases the probability that a person will get lung cancer even if they do not have scarring on their lungs. Deleting this category will deny compensation to more than 40,000 victims suffering with asbestos-related lung cancers. These victims, many of whom will have their lives cut short because of asbestos-induced disease, will not receive one penny from the fund. They are losing their right to go to court. They are being denied any right to compensation under the fund. They are, in essence, being told to suffer in a legally imposed silence with no recourse whatsoever. One of the arguments we hear most frequently in favor of creating an asbestos trust fund is that in the current system too much money goes to people who are not really sick and too little goes to those who are seriously ill. Lung cancer victims who have had years of exposure to asbestos are the ones who are seriously ill. They are the ones this legislation is supposed to be helping. Yet they are, under this legislation--not the previous legislation but under this legislation-- completely excluded. Any person who was exposed to asbestos for 15 or more years and now has lung cancer should be eligible for compensation from the trust fund. Their cases would be reviewed individually by a panel of physicians to determine whether asbestos was a substantial contributing factor to their lung cancer. These 40,000 victims of asbestos should not be arbitrarily excluded from receiving compensation. They were included in the original legislation. It was agreed to by medical experts for both business and labor. That provision should be restored to the bill. I will be proposing an amendment to rectify this serious injustice. Another major shortcoming of this legislation is its failure to compensate the residents of areas that have experienced large-scale asbestos contamination. S. 852 simply pretends this problem does not exist. It fails to compensate the victims of all asbestos-induced diseases, other than mesothelioma, whose exposure was not directly tied to their work. There is very substantial scientific evidence showing that the men, women, and children who lived in the vicinity of asbestos-contaminated sites, such as mining operations and processing plants, can and do contract asbestos-induced diseases. The reason this legislation needs a special provision to compensate the residents of Libby, MT, is because it does not compensate victims of community contamination generally. The residents of Libby are certainly entitled to compensation, but so are the residents who live near the many processing plants from my State of Massachusetts, in western Massachusetts, to California, that received the lethal ore from the Libby mine. The deadly dust from Libby, MT, was spread across America. W.R. Grace shipped almost 10,000 pounds of ore to processing facilities in the 1960s through the 1990s, including Easthampton, MA, in western Massachusetts, where the operations of an expanding plant spread the asbestos to the surrounding environment, into the air and onto the soil. I intend to discuss this problem in great detail as the debate moves forward. I raise it now as a dramatic example of the unfairness caused by the arbitrary exclusion of a large number of asbestos victims from compensation under the trust fund. These red spots on this map are in States all across the country with similar problems. Yet every one of them is excluded. Community asbestos contamination can result from many different sources. Medical experts, for example, say it may result from exposure to asbestos after the collapse of the World Trade Center. Because of the long latency period, we often do not learn about community asbestos contamination until long after it occurs. Certainly these victims of asbestos are entitled to fair treatment, as well. They should not be arbitrarily excluded from compensation, as if somehow their suffering is somehow less worthy of recognition than the suffering of asbestos victims. Yet that is what S. 852 does. There are many of those victims. I have talked with the extraordinarily brave and courageous workers who came to the sites of the Trade Towers on September 11, working on those areas for days and weeks for an intense period of time, and their exposure to asbestos fibers during that work will pose an enormous health threat to them in the years to come. We all know there can be a significant period of latency. Are we going to exclude those extraordinary men and women who were out there trying to do an incredible job for the people, not just of New York but for our country? This legislation excludes them. The asbestos trust fund is being presented as an alternative source of compensation for victims suffering from asbestos-induced disease. If that alternative runs out of money and can no longer compensate those victims in a full and timely manner, their right to seek compensation through the judicial system should be immediately restored with no strings attached. There is no principle more basic. Yet this bill violates that principle. Our friend and colleague from Delaware intends to offer an amendment that if we run out of money, the provisions will be there for them to go back into the tort system. Just accept the Biden amendment. It makes it extremely clear and eliminates the roadblocks for going back into the tort system, as the current legislation does. As I understand it, there is not a willingness to accept the Biden amendment. Another major flaw in this legislation is it lacks adequate funding. Putting it bluntly, S. 852 does not provide sufficient money to compensate the victims of asbestos diseases that it promises to cover. That is the essence of the budget debate we are having about the bill. The sponsors claim the budget point of order against the bill is technical, but the financial inadequacy of the trust fund to meet its obligation is very real. Should the trust fund fail, both asbestos victims and the taxpayers will pay a heavy price. A broad range of experts have analyzed S. 852 and concluded that the asbestos trust fund created by this legislation is seriously underfunded. Senator Conrad has addressed this in great detail. I certainly hope our colleagues will read his remarks carefully. If S. 852 is enacted, the United States will be paying a commitment that hundreds of thousands of seriously ill asbestos victims will be compensated, but it will not have to ensure that adequate dollars are available to honor its commitment. That will precipitate a genuine asbestos crisis and this Congress will bear the responsibility for it. Since the trust fund will be borrowing from the U.S. Treasury in the first few years of operation, if it becomes insolvent it will have a direct impact on American taxpayers. Let me point out, we do not do very well in setting up these trust funds to compensate individuals. We certainly have not done it with regard to the downwinders in other trust funds. There is little reason to believe we are going to do it or would do it in this circumstance, either. The argument that there are serious inadequacies in the way asbestos cases are abjudicated today does not mean that any legislation is better than the current system. Our first obligation is to do no harm. We should not be supporting legislation that excludes many seriously ill victims from receiving compensation that fails to provide a guarantee of adequate funding to make sure these injured workers covered by the trust fund will actually receive what the bill promises them. This bill will do harm to these asbestos victims. I intend to vote no. There is no reason, if we reject this legislation, we cannot come back with legislation that builds on a trust fund that is adequate and will do the job. That is what many Members believe is the way we ought to go. This is not such a bill.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will talk for a few moments about the budget that has been submitted by this administration in the last few days and how it fails to address those needs. Effectively, in the budget the President has set up, we are going to see a very serious and significant decline in supporting some enormously needed programs that help to provide opportunities for so many of our people in this country, such as educational programs and health programs, all in order that we provide a tax break for individual Americans at the cost of $45 billion or $46 billion this year. That is what a budget is about: priorities. When I go back to Massachusetts, one of the first orders of business people are talking to me about is: What in the world did the Congress ever do in passing that prescription drug program? I take pride in the fact we passed in the Senate a very good prescription drug program with Senator Bob Graham from Florida. We received over 70 votes in the Senate. We built that program using the Medicare system, which is tried, tested, and depended upon by millions of Americans. Medicare was defeated in 1964 and accepted in 1965 in the Senate. Right after that, we accepted the Medicaid Program to look after the neediest people in our society--primarily children, women, and disabled individuals--to take care of the poorest of the poor. Those programs were implemented in 11 months--11 months. It has been over a year for this program to be implemented. And they did not have a computer in 1965 to implement it, but it worked on the principle of building the Medicare system similar to Social Security. American people had confidence in it, and it worked. Well, we went to conference with the House of Representatives, and that is when the influence of the insurance industry and the drug industry came to play. They basically hijacked what was going to be a Medicare prescription drug program for our senior citizens, in a way, and drafted that program to serve not the senior citizens--not the senior citizens--but to serve the special interests. I opposed that on the floor of the Senate. Our Republican friends forced that on through. And now it is chaos in my State of Massachusetts with that prescription drug program. Why, at least, didn't our Republican friends say: All right, let's have some real competition; let's put the private sector and Medicare--let them compete and let our senior citizens make the choice. Do you think they would do that? No. They would not bring a program back here that was built on the Medicare system. They would not permit the seniors in my State to be able to make a choice. But they will say: We trust Medicare. It provides for our doctors' bills. It provides for our hospitalization.

Mr. KENNEDY. In 1964 and 1965, when you passed that, you did not include prescription drugs because 97 percent of the private sector did not include prescription drugs. Why didn't we do the prescription drug program just like we did the Medicare Program? Simple, workable, understandable--finished. No, no, we can't do that. We have to do it a different way. We are going to have--instead of the Medicare system, which is tried and tested and people understand--we are going to give the seniors in Massachusetts 45 different programs with different copays, different formularies, different deductibles. There is mass confusion with that program. Not only is there mass confusion, but you have the extraordinary circumstance that when a senior says: OK. I like this formulary. I can afford this deductible. I can afford this copay. I think I will go into this because of the cost of prescription drugs--and they sign on to it. There is an enormously interesting fact; that is, the company they sign up with can change their formulary, can change the deductible and copay. Do you think the senior can get out of that program without paying a penalty? Of course, they cannot. What kind of business is it? They feel, if the private sector can do it so well, why don't we have the competition? Why did we have to provide a 9-percent inflater cost for all the HMOs, when people who are in the HMOs are 18 percent healthier than they are in Medicare? Add that together, my friends, and it is 25 percent more if you are in the HMO than if you are in the Medicare system. Why? Well, if that is the private sector, why isn't the private sector able to compete? Because this amounts to about a $40 billion subsidy. Do you hear me? A $40 billion subsidy, just like it is about a $170 billion subsidy for the drug industry. People wonder why the copayments are higher. Would people wonder why the doughnut is there? There it is, my friends. And with all the reforms we hear talked about, do you think we are going to get a chance to support a change in that program by adding a--build it on Medicare. Let's do that. Let's add that. Have a real even competition and see what happens out there. But many of my colleagues feel that way. We are going to press to try to do it. The point I am making is, I care deeply about these asbestos victims. It is enormously important we get it right. This bill does not do it. But we are in this Congress, on a Friday, at 10 minutes of 11, with an empty Chamber. Why aren't we dealing with the challenges and the problems of the people back home? I can tell you what they are concerned about. Why aren't we debating this Medicare today, this afternoon? Why are we so busy in what we are doing that we are not dealing with this issue? Why aren't we dealing with their home heating oil and the priorities? We have the President in his budget recommending, for this year, $500 million less for home heating oil than even last year, with record profits for the oil industry--unconscionable profits for the oil industry. Paid for by whom? Average Americans. Unconscionable. Why doesn't this President today, on this Friday, bring in the heads of the oil companies all over the country and say: You have drunk at that trough long enough. There are people up in New England and the upper Midwest and around this country who cannot afford it--who are on a fixed income--with the explosions in the cost. Because of the war in Iraq, oil costs $60 a barrel. They did not have anything to do with it. The oil companies are reaping profits because we have turmoil in the Middle East. And we are doing virtually nothing about that this afternoon, except facing a budget that is going to make it even more difficult. In my State, the average home owner uses three tankfuls a year--three tankfuls a year--of oil. And the neediest people in our State who qualify for this program are going to get, this year, about one tankful. And what is the prospect for next year with the home heating oil price that we have today? They are not even going to get a full tank for the next year, unless we are--well, Mr. President, I am going to seek recognition in my own right at the present time. My time has expired?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for recognition.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we are talking about priorities. We are giving examples of what has been happening in terms of the cost of LIHEAP and the fuel assistance programs. Shown on this chart are all the costs going right up through the roof. We have the challenges we have been facing out in the Middle East. Education. Why are people so concerned about a culture of corruption that has taken over in Washington? Why are they so concerned about lobbyists? Why are they so concerned about special interests? We have that debate. We are going to try to get action on this, which I will certainly support. What we have not talked about is what those lobbyists have been doing, what the impact has been on various programs that affect working families in the middle class. I will give you one of them. Higher education. The bill that came out of the Senate had $8 billion in student assistance. The bill that came out of the House had $3.8 billion in student assistance and provided $12 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy people of this country. I call that a tax on middle class people, my friends, in order to give a tax break to the wealthiest individuals. Do you understand what I am saying? The lobbyists were able to make the student loan program work for the banks and the wealthy in this country at the expense of the middle-income families who are paying those debts now for their children to go on to education. In my State, 67 percent of the children who go to those schools and colleges in my State get student aid and assistance. That does not include what they earn at summer jobs and what their parents contribute. They need these programs. We have seen an explosion in student loans over the period of the last 5 or 7 years. Who has been working and who has been profiting? It has been the banks--the banks. Do you think this Senate would stand for a competition for who would provide the lowest rates for students so we could take the total student loan program and put it out for bid--for bid--similar to competition, free enterprise? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. There is that cozy relationship that exists now with Sally Mae and the loan industries that pay their executives hundreds of thousands of dollars, contribute millions and millions of dollars. And they are getting it their way. The American people ought to understand that the lobbying has direct results. President Bush, in his last campaign and his campaign previously, said: We are going to get the Pell grants up to $4,500-- $4,500. Do you think it is in that budget? Do you think it is even in his budget requesting $4,500? No. I have read the space. Do you think that is in there? No. That is not even in there. So if you are talking about what is bothering people, pick up today's newspapers. Here it is: ``Mining fines among smallest.'' Laws limit size and allow reduction. This is the difference between the mines' penalties and the fines that are paid for other consumer product safety violations of the FCC, SEC, EPA, even OSHA. The bottom is on mine safety. That might not have saved all the lives. That might not have even saved half of the lives of those miners who have been lost, but why aren't we debating what is on the minds of the people in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other States today? Why aren't we dealing with their business? Here we have on the front page of another newspaper: ``White House knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm.'' This is all about Katrina and what has been going on. Sure, we have had some hearings, but why aren't we talking about some of this that is on the minds of the people? Certainly, it is on the minds of the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Why aren't we talking about that this afternoon? Why aren't we doing some of that business? And then, if you look in the Washington Post: ``Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq.'' The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of ``cherry-picking'' intelligence. . . . And this goes all the way through, basically saying: ``Our official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,'' . . . Instead, he asserted, the administration ``went to war without requesting--and evidently without being influenced by--any strategic level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. People want to know. American sons and daughters are dying over there. Why aren't we talking about this? My point is, this budget the President has put forward is not what the American people expect. It is not what they deserve, not what they are entitled to. Many of us are going to work every possible way. It is the allocation of resources. Money does not solve everything, but it is an indication of a nation's priorities--a nation's priorities as to lower heating oil costs, a nation's priorities in terms of lower drug costs, a nation's priorities in terms of education costs, a nation's priorities in having an increase in the minimum wage. These are the things that are of concern to people. I would hope we would get back to the Nation's business and get back to it soon. Americans are entitled to it, and we have waited too long to be able to do it. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I request recognition after the Senator and that I be allocated 30 minutes as well.

Mr. KENNEDY. Reserving the right to object, I wonder if the Senator would extend the unanimous consent request to include that I be recognized following him and that I be recognized for 30 minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY

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