John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair, and I particularly thank Senator Biden for his courtesy. I appreciate this enormously. I also thank Senator Durbin, who is not here, but will be here shortly, for his courtesy. Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Arizona, the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, Senator Biden and others in support of this resolution. I understand the sensitivities of a great many of our colleagues and the administration to where we find ourselves. But I think that a fair analysis of what the Senate has before it and what the country has before it really mandates that the Senate be prepared to back up its own steps, the steps that we took when we supported the bombing itself. I heard a number of my colleagues in the course of the debate over this afternoon, most recently the Senator from New Mexico, say, ``Well, we need to recognize that the President made a decision and the President, having made a decision, we now need to know from the President what the strategy is; we need to know from the President what the exit strategy is; we need to know from the President what is called for.'' Frankly, I say to my colleagues, there is not a small measure of contradiction in those statements today. There may even be some measure, I think, of confusion about the road that we have traveled. The fact is that the President made it clear to us at the outset what our goal was. The goal has always been the capacity of the Kosovars to live in peace within Kosovo. The goal has been a return to the status quo before Mr. Milosevic withdrew autonomy which had been enjoyed by the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo for years, in the wake of his sudden discovery that playing the nationalist card, in fact, was a road to power, as it was also the road to some four wars and to an extraordinary amount of killing in Bosnia, in Slovenia, Herzegovina and Croatia. Now, Mr. President, we find ourselves in the situation where the Senator from Arizona and some of us are suggesting that the course that we chose in the beginning is, in fact, a correct course, and the course that we ought to follow. The truth is that it was not just the President of the United States who made a decision. So did the Senate of the United States. A majority of the Senators in this body voted to approve the bombing, and having approved the bombing and having decided to send American forces into harm's way, they embraced the goals that were then stated. One component of those goals did change, obviously, dramatically. The effort initially was to prevent the ethnic cleansing from taking place and to hope we could sufficiently degrade the military machine to prevent that from happening. That, obviously, did not occur, and the ethnic cleansing continued. We now find ourselves with more than half the population dislocated outside of Kosovo, a significant portion displaced within Kosovo, and as to how many that may be is imprecise. It seems to me that this is not a time for the Senate to engage in covering its own posterior, not a time for the Senate to engage in a wholesale set of contradictions. It is rather the time for the Senate to declare, as unequivocally as it declared 40 days ago, that we are prepared to move forward with the bombing, that the same goals and the same objectives are viable today. It is interesting. I know that some have hearkened back to the Tonkin Gulf resolution and have hearkened back to some of the lessons of the Vietnam war. There is no small irony, however, in the fact that we are beyond, in a way, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. There was a time for people to question why we were bombing, what the motives were of bombing, what we hoped to achieve through the bombing and whether or not it was appropriate to start bombing and then suddenly stop, short of achieving those objectives. That, I think, would have been appropriate. Having decided that you were going to bomb, I think most people accepted the notion that the reason for bombing was legitimate enough, that the reason for putting American forces in harm's way was legitimate enough, that the goals that we were trying to achieve were legitimate enough, and that if you were prepared to take the risks of putting those people in harm's way, you were also accepting the responsibility for achieving the goal that was set out. Back in the 1960s, when the Gulf of Tonkin resolution came to the floor, there were two Senators who stood up and, as a matter of conscience, said: I disagree with this, and voted against. One was Wayne Morse; the other was Ernest Gruening. It took a long time for history to prove those lone Senators correct. It may well be that those Senators who voted against the resolution supporting air strikes against Yugoslavia and who might choose to vote against those things necessary to achieve the goals may be proven correct by history. I do not know. At least that opposition is consistent, and at least that opposition is devoid of the disingenuity that we seem to see in those who voted to start bombing, those who have been saying for a year and a half or 2 years or more, you have to stop Mr. Milosevic, those who were crying for the United States to take a stand only a year ago, and then once the President does take a stand--the only stand that most people in the world thought he could take--all of a sudden they begin to vanish and run for the sidelines and take cover. I find that rather extraordinary, not to mention that it is, in fact, a contradiction of enormous proportions. I understand how some in this Chamber have reservations about bombing. I understand full well about how some, given the history of the Balkans, may have inherent reservations about the United States, through NATO, even being involved there. Some of those people reflected those deep-rooted beliefs and fears in their original vote. But the majority of the Senate voted by a greater margin than the majority who sent this Nation to war in Desert Storm--a greater majority. After Desert Storm, all those who had voted against it came together to suggest that the stated goals of the United States were such that we ought to guarantee the outcome. And we were committed to do what was necessary in order to achieve that, and we would support any efforts in order to achieve that. Mr. President, I think one of the great lessons of the Vietnam period--and I think Senator Hagel feels it very strongly, Senator McCain feels it very strongly, Senator Robb, myself, and others--is that if you are going to commit American forces, you make the decisions at the outset about what you are trying to achieve, and you make decisions at the outset that if you are going to send those soldiers-- airmen, seamen, all of them--into battle, you do so with the understanding that you are committed to achieving the goals that you have set out. I think it would be astonishing, in the face of the reality that the goals are achievable here, that this is so distinctly different from a Vietnam or even a Desert Storm in some ways--that we should ourselves provide these ingredients of doubt and reservation that seem to back off the original commitment that we made. I have heard many people questioning, not only today, some of the rationale for why we are there or how the war is proceeding. But some seek a reservation in the notion that the President has not asked for this authorization of force or the Joint Chiefs of Staff have not asked for it. But those same people are always quick to come to the floor and assert the powers and prerogatives of the U.S. Congress in the conduct of foreign policy. They are often the first to come to the floor to suggest some alternative policy to the President. They have often come to the floor with amendments to change Presidential policy in foreign policy, to amend it, to strengthen it. I think there is an irony that all of a sudden they are suggesting so much power to the President, so much prerogative away from the Congress, when they have spent an awful long time here asserting the very opposite. In addition to that, I have heard colleagues deeply disturbed--as anybody should be appropriately--about collateral damage and what happens in the bombing. I do not think there is an American, in good conscience, who does not feel pangs or deep reservations about any errant missile or errant bomb and what the effects are. But there is no moral equivalency whatsoever between those errant impacts and what we are trying to achieve and what Mr. Milosevic has been achieving. There is simply no moral equivalency. Let us not get confused between collateral damage and the murder, rape, organized rape, pillage, plunder, decimation of ethnicity, robbing of identities, the wholesale destruction of villages, the killing of teachers and parents in front of their children, the remarkable--remarkable--dismemberment of the people that Mr. Milosevic is engaged in and not for the first time. Having seen the record of what he did in Bosnia, to allow that kind of moral equivocation to enter into our thinking in this is, to me, to miss the point altogether. The fact is that Senator Dodd from Connecticut pointed out, and others have pointed out, that what we do here can have a profound, long-lasting, deep impact on our capacity to negotiate, to pressure, and to speak about and stand for morality and for a standard of behavior that is different from the kind of killing and marauding that has governed so much of this century. Now, some will say, ``Well, the Balkans are different.'' Some will say, ``Well, we can't always affect the outcome of these things.'' The fact is, we can affect this outcome. We can affect this result. We do have the power and the ability to be able to do this. I have heard some of my colleagues come to the floor and say this is going to affect our capacity to fight some other war somewhere. What war? Where? What are they talking about? I mean, are we planning suddenly some other war of which we are not aware? This is staring us in the face. It is here. It is now. We are at war. The question we must ask ourselves is whether or not we are prepared to win or whether we are going to put obstacle after obstacle in front of ourselves to deprive ourselves of the capacity to achieve the goals that are achievable. I hear some refer to Vietnam a lot, but other kinds of conflicts as well. I suggest that this is not a Vietnam--unless we make it a Vietnam, unless it is our own lack of resolve and pursuit. Some have said, well, if it is a mistake in the first place, you do not want to go down the road pursuing a mistake. I support that notion. I recall coming back from Vietnam and saying, ``it is pretty hard to ask somebody to be the person to die for a mistake or especially the last person to die for it.'' I am sensitive to that. But the original question is, Is this a mistake? When 58 of us voted on the floor of the Senate to send people into harm's way in order to achieve our stated goals, we were making a judgment about whether or not we thought it was a mistake to intervene. And now that we have decided to intervene, let us at least have the courage to persevere. Why did we intervene? Well, I believe that the imperatives of intervention outweigh the alternatives so far that it is hard to really measure the counterarguments. Any one of us in the Senate can hear this well of the Senate ringing out with the voices of those who would have come to the floor if the images of CNN night after night had been of Milosevic running unstopped over the people of Kosovo, unstopped, and no effort whatsoever to try to prevent him. I could hear people coming to the floor and saying, ``Where is a President with the courage of Ronald Reagan or George Bush who's willing to draw the line as they did?'' You can hear those speeches now. They would have been spoken. President George Bush, in fact, had the same policy that President Clinton has. George Bush, before he left office, said we would draw the line in Kosovo and told Mr. Milosevic, in no uncertain terms, ``Don't monkey around with this one.'' And because he had the credibility of what he had done in Kuwait, you can bet that that made a difference. That is why we are here on the floor with this resolution, to give our effort the kind of credibility that it deserves, to back up our soldiers who are running those risks on a daily basis, with the understanding that there is a rationale for our having asked them to do what they are doing. I do not, by any sense of the imagination, believe that we have exhausted the air campaign in this. It astonishes me, in some ways, that so many people are so questioning of an air campaign that--knock on wood--has not yet cost us the life of one of those pilots. I am astonished, as a former serviceperson, at the quality and care with which this has been prosecuted. We lose more people every week in the military of this country in normal training exercises and operations. The fact that this has been carried on now for 40 days, melding Dutch, British, Germans, Americans, French, Greeks, 19 different countries together, melding all of these airplanes and those multiple sorties, and bringing that together, is really a remarkable accomplishment. At the same time, day by day by day, albeit some Members of the Yugoslav Army may feel better and think, gee, we have been given a purpose in life, the fact is that on a daily basis their capacity to wage the war is being stripped away. Who in their right mind would choose Mr. Milosevic's hand to play in this versus the hand of NATO? The question before the Senate and this country is, Will we have the capacity to stay and play out the hand that we have? This is not Vietnam. This is not a country that stretches from the equivalent of New England all the way down to the tip of Florida with a Laos and a Cambodia on its borders, with a superpower, the former Soviet Union, and China sitting in the background supplying, pushing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ready to come in when we threaten to use whatever force may be available to us. This is not the United States essentially acting alone. Taken together, Serbia and Montenegro are slightly smaller than Kentucky and are essentially surrounded by friendly people. Kosovo is approximately the size of Los Angeles county. Unlike North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the time, unlike that country, where we became involved on the side of one of the combatants, where we chose to carry on years of colonial effort that had been misconstrued by the population and outright opposed and reviled for years, unlike the inadvisability of having been embroiled, we have been very careful here to suggest we are not for independence for Kosovo, we are not for the KLA ravaging their countryside any more than we are for Mr. Milosevic and the Serbs doing so. We are fighting for the standards of internationally accepted, universally accepted behavior that country after country has signed on to through United Nations conventions and other instruments of international law and through their own standards of behavior. I can't think of anything more right than taking a position against this kind of thuggery and this kind of effrontery to those standards as we leave the end of this century. Some people say to me, ``well, Senator, we are going to have some people there for a long time.'' My answer is, So what? If that is what it takes in order to try to begin to establish a principle that is more long lasting, so be it. What is the difference between 4,000 troops who have been asked to be part of a peaceful effort to change the standards of behavior in Kosovo as part of southern Europe--what is the difference between that and the 500,000 troops we had at a high point in Europe after World War II? Don't forget the way in which most Americans were skeptical of Harry Truman and the Marshall plan. How on Earth could the United States of America, having fought the Germans, turn around and put money back into their country? How on Earth could we try to bring the Germans into NATO? Well, where are we today? A united Germany, the Berlin Wall gone, Berlin about to be the united capital of Germany, and the result, Germans participating with us in standing up against the very kinds of things that stained the history of this century and of their country during World War II. Is there a more beautiful circle in terms of understanding what is at stake? I do not think so. It seems to me, Mr. President, that an investment of some 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 troops in southern Europe to guarantee that Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania can remain stable and not be dragged into this, that is worthwhile. Some would say, Senator, we heard that old domino argument before; that is the one they gave us in Vietnam. Once again, the facts on the ground are proving the reality. Can anyone here tell me with a straight face that Montenegro, without our current efforts and involvement, could possibly withstand the strains of what is happening? Can anybody tell me that if the entire population of Kosovo were driven out into Albania, you wouldn't somehow see Macedonia, Greece, Albania dragged into this? Ultimately, there isn't a person in the Senate who doesn't understand that we would have been dragged into it, too. There was an inevitability that NATO would be called on to take a stand. How astonishing it is that people find some kind of moral equivalency here between some of the difficulties of waging a fairly carefully prosecuted--not fairly, a very carefully prosecuted war, and what we are trying to achieve. How astonishing that people are so concerned about finding that equivalency measured against what Mr. Milosevic has done. I believe if we will stand our ground and be steady and show the resolve that we need to show as a great country and the leader of the free world, that we have the ability, through this air campaign, to achieve ultimately the diplomatic outcome that we would like to achieve. But we have also learned through all of history--Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon will tell you this, in dealing with the North Vietnamese in the Christmas bombing, and I hated it back then, but I have come to understand that there are, in fact, sometimes some things that do speak and make a difference to certain people. Like it or not, as I have been deeply involved in that part of the world in the last years, I have learned that that did help make a difference to people's decisions to try to come to some kind of resolution. The fact is that we are now backing up diplomacy with force. I have heard some people call for a stay in that force, that somehow it would be diplomatically nice if we were to turn around and have a bombing pause. My response to that is very simple: Do not let the politicians decide, after sending the military personnel in to risk their lives, when you are going to have a bombing pause, without adequately passing it by the military to ensure that you are not going to put your people at greater risk if you don't achieve your goals at the back side of it. I can't go into all the reasons for that, but people understand that there are a great many repercussions to a bombing halt which could have greater jeopardy to our pilots and greater jeopardy to the use of whatever force we need to use down the road. I am perfectly committed to having that happen at the right moment, but I want that to be driven by the military needs of achieving our goals and not simply the political imperatives at the time. Finally, Mr. President, let me say that I hear colleagues say: Well, we want to know what the end game is; we want to know what the strategy is. We have even heard mention of the Boland amendment and other things. Are we in this to win? There are only three or so choices in this, Mr. President. That is about it. Anybody ought to be able to figure them out. Stop the bombing and fail to achieve your goals. And if you stop the bombing; NATO would be irreparably damaged, if not simply finished. Mr. Milosevic can declare victory, do what he wants, and you will have no force in there. That is one choice. Another choice is that you continue to prosecute the air war as you press the diplomatic effort, with a guarantee that you are going to press that until you get that effort. The third is--and it is the best end game, best exit strategy of all--you win. That is the exit strategy. You achieve the simple stated goal of returning the Kosovars into Kosovo, allowing them to live in a protected structure where people won't be killing them, and at the same time have a force that has the capacity to prevent the UCK/KLA from also engaging in killing. It is called peace. I think that is an end game worth fighting for. If the impact of the air war is substantial enough to force Mr. Milosevic to yield and accept NATO's terms for ending the war, then we will have won. However, if bombing alone is not enough, then winning will require that we have the determination and resolve to do whatever is necessary on the ground to achieve these objectives--to win. I think when you measure the history of Europe and the importance of southern Europe, and the success of the integration process in Europe, you cannot question the need to achieve our stated goals in Kosovo. NATO has played an important role in the integration process--just talk to the officials in Spain or in other parts of Europe about the impact of NATO as an organizing principal, as a means of having brought countries together around democracy. They will tell you unequivocally of the degree to which the process of meeting, of coming together, of having mutual responsibilities, of needing to work together have had a profound impact on the capacity of Europe to develop so that they now have a common market and are working on the last efforts of integration, with more power in Brussels and more capacity as a European entity to speak to the world and to stand for these principles. Are we going to deny that to southeastern Europe? Are we going to ignore the lesson that we would sent to Baghdad or Pyongyang or Tripoli or to other parts of the world if we fail to do what is necessary to win in Kosovo? I hope the answer of the Senate would be unequivocally no. The lessons of history are such that they taught us that this is the right thing to be doing for the right reasons. They are, I think, efforts that are worthy of our commitment in order to see it through to the end. I am confident that if the Senate and the country were to speak with a single voice on this, in a short period of time we would see this resolved and, most likely, Mr. President, without recourse to ground troops or to prolonged war. I yield the floor. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce the Military Reservist Small Business Relief Act of 1999. I offer it on behalf of myself and 30 other colleagues: Senators Bond, Bingaman, Landrieu, Harkin, Lieberman, Wellstone, Kohl, Burns, Robb, Edwards, Levin, Graham, Snowe, Akaka, Murray, Cleland, Kennedy, Jeffords, Collins, Abraham, Leahy, Baucus, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, Grassley, Moynihan, Lincoln, Bayh, Chafee, Lautenberg, Cochran, and Daschle. I thank these Senators for their support. Mr. President, a number of those colleagues I listed serve on either the Small Business Committee, the Armed Services Committee or on the Veterans Affairs Committee. However, all have joined me in a universal concern that I think goes across the aisle for the problems that reservists face when they are called suddenly to active duty. This bill will help small businesses whose owner, manager, or key employee is called to active duty. Most immediately, we are obviously looking at the question of service in Kosovo, but the act also applies to future contingency operations, military conflicts, or national emergencies. Since 1973, we have taken pains as a result of the Vietnam experience to build an all-volunteer military. Our reservists are much more than just weekend warriors. When they are called, they are an essential ingredient of any kind of long-term or significant deployment of American forces. I think everyone knows the contributions they have made as soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and Coast Guard, serving our country in extraordinary ways in recent years. The National Guard and the Reservists have become a critical component of U.S. force deployment. In the Persian Gulf war they accounted for more than 46 percent of our total forces. The Acting Assistant Secretary for Defense for Reserve Affairs just Tuesday said that ``Reservists are absolutely vital to our national military strategy.'' To support the NATO operations in the Balkans, Secretary of Defense Cohen has asked for and received the authorization to call up members of the Selected Reserve to active duty. President Clinton has authorized deployment of 33,000 reservists, but the initial callup includes only about 2,100 personnel. These first reservists come from Alabama, Arizona, California, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A total of 1.4 million Americans currently serve in our seven Reserve components of the U.S. Armed Forces. When these folks are called up, even though they know they are in the Reserves and even though they know at some point in time they might be called to meet an emergency of our country, the fact is that nothing prepares their families or them for the remarkably fast transition that takes place. There are obviously emotional and personal hardships people have to deal with, but in addition to that there are significant financial realities. I have heard first-hand, talking to a number of vets who suffered this callup process, how difficult it is. One veteran told the ``Boston Globe'' on the 1-year anniversary of the Persian Gulf War: The Gulf War is going to wind up having caused a lot of stress for me personally and for my family. It didn't just take a year out of my life. It's going to take a minimum of another two years, because that's how long it's going to take for us to catch up. I think it is imperative that we help these families and communities to bridge the gap between the moment when the troops leave and when they return. We are talking about people who fill all of the normal, everyday positions of commerce that help to keep this country strong-- bankers, barbers, mechanics, merchants, farmers, doctors, Realtors, owners of fast food restaurants--all kinds of positions that reservists hold and ultimately leave when they go to active duty. As some veterans of the Persian Gulf War know all too well, they left their businesses and their companies in good shape. They were earning a living, they were providing a service, they were adding to the tax base, they were creating jobs, and then they returned to hardships that range from bankruptcy to financial ruin; from deserted clients to layoffs. Even if you are not a small business owner, one has to ask what happens to one's family or to one's business or company during a 6- to 7-month deployment if you or your key employee suddenly has to depart. Particularly in rural areas and small towns it can be extremely difficult to find a replacement. Let me share with you just one very quick story from my part of the country. For privacy purposes I am not going to use any names. However, I am going to talk about a physician from Raynham, MA. He was a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and was called up for Operation Desert Storm as a flight surgeon in January 1991. For 10 years he had been a solo practitioner. After only 6 months of service, he had to file bankruptcy. That bankruptcy affected not only him but his wife, his two employees, and their families. After 1 year on duty, he came home and he found he literally had no business, no clients at that point in time, and no job--no income as a consequence. We do not know for how long reservists will be called away, but whenever they return, we ought to make certain, to the degree we can, that the negative impacts are as minimal as possible. There is a way to do that. The way to do it is through this legislation. What we seek to do is to authorize the SBA, the Small Business Administration, to defer existing loan repayments and to reduce the interest rates on direct loans that may be outstanding to those who are called up. That would include disaster loans. The deferrals and reductions that are authorized by this bill would be available from the date that the individual reservist is called to active duty until 180 days after his or her release from that duty. For microloans and loans guaranteed under the SBA's financial assistance programs, such as the 504 program or 7(a) loan programs, the bill directs the agency to develop policies that encourage and facilitate ways that SBA lenders can either defer or reduce loan repayments. For example, a microlender's ability to repay its debt to the SBA is obviously dependent upon the repayments from its microborrowers. So, with this bill's authority, if a microlender extends or defers loan repayment to a borrower who is a deployed military reservist, in turn the SBA would extend repayment obligations to the microlender. Second, the bill establishes a low-interest, economic injury loan program to be administered by the SBA through its disaster loan program. These loans would be specifically available to provide interim operating capital to any small business when the departure of a military reservist for active duty causes economic injury. Under the bill, such harm includes three general cases: No. 1, inability to make loan repayments; No. 2, inability to pay ordinary and necessary operating expenses; or, No. 3, inability to market, produce or provide a service or product that it ordinarily provides. Identical to the loan deferral requirements, an eligible small business can apply for an economic injury loan from the date that the company's military reservist is ordered to active duty, again until 180 days after the release from active duty. Finally, the bill directs the SBA, and all of its private sector partners, such as the small business development centers, the women's business centers, to make positive efforts--proactive efforts--to reach out to those businesses affected by the call-up of military reservists to active duty, and to offer business counseling and training. Those left behind to run the businesses, whether it is a spouse or a child or an employee, while the military reservist is serving overseas, may be inexperienced in running the business and need quick access to management and marketing counseling. We think it is important to do what we can to help bring those folks together, to keep the doors of the business open, and to reduce the impact of a military conflict and national emergency on the economy. Some people might argue--I have not heard this argument sufficiently--but it is not inconceivable that some people would say: Wait a minute now, reservists do not deserve this special assistance because they ought to know the inherent risks of their chosen role and they ought to be prepared for deployment. It is true you may live with those possibilities and those probabilities. It is also true it is very hard to pick up from the moment of notification to the moment of departure in as little as 3 days, pulling all the pieces together sufficiently. During the Persian Gulf war, one reservist's wife, Mrs. Carolee Ploof of Middlebury, VT, reported that her family had 3 days to prepare for her husband's departure. She said: ``How do you prepare [for that]? I really think it's unfair that self-employed people have to lose their shirts to protect their country.'' So, from the moment her husband was mobilized, he reported for duty until 10 p.m. and then went home to try to teach his wife how to run the business--all in 48 hours before he was to depart. I think we should understand we are talking here about loans and extensions on loans. We are not talking about forgiveness, and we are not talking about grants. We are talking about a hand up, not a hand- out. We are talking about trying to facilitate what is obviously a very difficult process. Finally, let me just say we are the people who designed the policy that made it so our military deployments for significant kinds of conflicts are, in fact, so Reserve-dependent. We did that for a lot of good reasons, not the least of which is that we have a great tradition in this country of citizen soldiers--a voluntary civilian component of our military service. We also know it is a significant way to reduce the costs of a standing army. The costs of carrying a standing army, in lieu of having reservists as the important component they are, millions of times outweighs the very small, targeted help we are talking about in this legislation. I thank my 30 other colleagues who are cosponsors of this bill. I hope that this legislation will move very rapidly through the Senate so reservists will know, and their families will know, that, should there be a greater deployment in the future, it will not come with the kind of loss, or double hit if you will, for the notion of service to our country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce the Military Reservist Small Business Relief Act of 1999. I offer it on behalf of myself and 30 other colleagues: Senators Bond, Bingaman, Landrieu, Harkin, Lieberman, Wellstone, Kohl, Burns, Robb, Edwards, Levin, Graham, Snowe, Akaka, Murray, Cleland, Kennedy, Jeffords, Collins, Abraham, Leahy, Baucus, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, Grassley, Moynihan, Lincoln, Bayh, Chafee, Lautenberg, Cochran, and Daschle. I thank these Senators for their support. Mr. President, a number of those colleagues I listed serve on either the Small Business Committee, the Armed Services Committee or on the Veterans Affairs Committee. However, all have joined me in a universal concern that I think goes across the aisle for the problems that reservists face when they are called suddenly to active duty. This bill will help small businesses whose owner, manager, or key employee is called to active duty. Most immediately, we are obviously looking at the question of service in Kosovo, but the act also applies to future contingency operations, military conflicts, or national emergencies. Since 1973, we have taken pains as a result of the Vietnam experience to build an all-volunteer military. Our reservists are much more than just weekend warriors. When they are called, they are an essential ingredient of any kind of long-term or significant deployment of American forces. I think everyone knows the contributions they have made as soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and Coast Guard, serving our country in extraordinary ways in recent years. The National Guard and the Reservists have become a critical component of U.S. force deployment. In the Persian Gulf war they accounted for more than 46 percent of our total forces. The Acting Assistant Secretary for Defense for Reserve Affairs just Tuesday said that ``Reservists are absolutely vital to our national military strategy.'' To support the NATO operations in the Balkans, Secretary of Defense Cohen has asked for and received the authorization to call up members of the Selected Reserve to active duty. President Clinton has authorized deployment of 33,000 reservists, but the initial callup includes only about 2,100 personnel. These first reservists come from Alabama, Arizona, California, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A total of 1.4 million Americans currently serve in our seven Reserve components of the U.S. Armed Forces. When these folks are called up, even though they know they are in the Reserves and even though they know at some point in time they might be called to meet an emergency of our country, the fact is that nothing prepares their families or them for the remarkably fast transition that takes place. There are obviously emotional and personal hardships people have to deal with, but in addition to that there are significant financial realities. I have heard first-hand, talking to a number of vets who suffered this callup process, how difficult it is. One veteran told the ``Boston Globe'' on the 1-year anniversary of the Persian Gulf War: The Gulf War is going to wind up having caused a lot of stress for me personally and for my family. It didn't just take a year out of my life. It's going to take a minimum of another two years, because that's how long it's going to take for us to catch up. I think it is imperative that we help these families and communities to bridge the gap between the moment when the troops leave and when they return. We are talking about people who fill all of the normal, everyday positions of commerce that help to keep this country strong-- bankers, barbers, mechanics, merchants, farmers, doctors, Realtors, owners of fast food restaurants--all kinds of positions that reservists hold and ultimately leave when they go to active duty. As some veterans of the Persian Gulf War know all too well, they left their businesses and their companies in good shape. They were earning a living, they were providing a service, they were adding to the tax base, they were creating jobs, and then they returned to hardships that range from bankruptcy to financial ruin; from deserted clients to layoffs. Even if you are not a small business owner, one has to ask what happens to one's family or to one's business or company during a 6- to 7-month deployment if you or your key employee suddenly has to depart. Particularly in rural areas and small towns it can be extremely difficult to find a replacement. Let me share with you just one very quick story from my part of the country. For privacy purposes I am not going to use any names. However, I am going to talk about a physician from Raynham, MA. He was a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and was called up for Operation Desert Storm as a flight surgeon in January 1991. For 10 years he had been a solo practitioner. After only 6 months of service, he had to file bankruptcy. That bankruptcy affected not only him but his wife, his two employees, and their families. After 1 year on duty, he came home and he found he literally had no business, no clients at that point in time, and no job--no income as a consequence. We do not know for how long reservists will be called away, but whenever they return, we ought to make certain, to the degree we can, that the negative impacts are as minimal as possible. There is a way to do that. The way to do it is through this legislation. What we seek to do is to authorize the SBA, the Small Business Administration, to defer existing loan repayments and to reduce the interest rates on direct loans that may be outstanding to those who are called up. That would include disaster loans. The deferrals and reductions that are authorized by this bill would be available from the date that the individual reservist is called to active duty until 180 days after his or her release from that duty. For microloans and loans guaranteed under the SBA's financial assistance programs, such as the 504 program or 7(a) loan programs, the bill directs the agency to develop policies that encourage and facilitate ways that SBA lenders can either defer or reduce loan repayments. For example, a microlender's ability to repay its debt to the SBA is obviously dependent upon the repayments from its microborrowers. So, with this bill's authority, if a microlender extends or defers loan repayment to a borrower who is a deployed military reservist, in turn the SBA would extend repayment obligations to the microlender. Second, the bill establishes a low-interest, economic injury loan program to be administered by the SBA through its disaster loan program. These loans would be specifically available to provide interim operating capital to any small business when the departure of a military reservist for active duty causes economic injury. Under the bill, such harm includes three general cases: No. 1, inability to make loan repayments; No. 2, inability to pay ordinary and necessary operating expenses; or, No. 3, inability to market, produce or provide a service or product that it ordinarily provides. Identical to the loan deferral requirements, an eligible small business can apply for an economic injury loan from the date that the company's military reservist is ordered to active duty, again until 180 days after the release from active duty. Finally, the bill directs the SBA, and all of its private sector partners, such as the small business development centers, the women's business centers, to make positive efforts--proactive efforts--to reach out to those businesses affected by the call-up of military reservists to active duty, and to offer business counseling and training. Those left behind to run the businesses, whether it is a spouse or a child or an employee, while the military reservist is serving overseas, may be inexperienced in running the business and need quick access to management and marketing counseling. We think it is important to do what we can to help bring those folks together, to keep the doors of the business open, and to reduce the impact of a military conflict and national emergency on the economy. Some people might argue--I have not heard this argument sufficiently--but it is not inconceivable that some people would say: Wait a minute now, reservists do not deserve this special assistance because they ought to know the inherent risks of their chosen role and they ought to be prepared for deployment. It is true you may live with those possibilities and those probabilities. It is also true it is very hard to pick up from the moment of notification to the moment of departure in as little as 3 days, pulling all the pieces together sufficiently. During the Persian Gulf war, one reservist's wife, Mrs. Carolee Ploof of Middlebury, VT, reported that her family had 3 days to prepare for her husband's departure. She said: ``How do you prepare [for that]? I really think it's unfair that self-employed people have to lose their shirts to protect their country.'' So, from the moment her husband was mobilized, he reported for duty until 10 p.m. and then went home to try to teach his wife how to run the business--all in 48 hours before he was to depart. I think we should understand we are talking here about loans and extensions on loans. We are not talking about forgiveness, and we are not talking about grants. We are talking about a hand up, not a hand- out. We are talking about trying to facilitate what is obviously a very difficult process. Finally, let me just say we are the people who designed the policy that made it so our military deployments for significant kinds of conflicts are, in fact, so Reserve-dependent. We did that for a lot of good reasons, not the least of which is that we have a great tradition in this country of citizen soldiers--a voluntary civilian component of our military service. We also know it is a significant way to reduce the costs of a standing army. The costs of carrying a standing army, in lieu of having reservists as the important component they are, millions of times outweighs the very small, targeted help we are talking about in this legislation. I thank my 30 other colleagues who are cosponsors of this bill. I hope that this legislation will move very rapidly through the Senate so reservists will know, and their families will know, that, should there be a greater deployment in the future, it will not come with the kind of loss, or double hit if you will, for the notion of service to our country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. All right. Mr. President, let me just say a few words on the issue of the Y2K. I have been working quietly with a number of colleagues in order to try to see if we cannot come to some sort of compromise. I heard the Senator from Arizona assert that the principal reason that we are where we are right now is because the revenue stream for lawyers, for trial counsel, might be somehow impacted, and that is the sort of overbearing consideration that has brought us to this point of impasse. Let me just say as directly and as forcefully as I possibly can that there really are public policy considerations that extend beyond that. I have tried cases previously as a trial attorney. I understand the motivations and needs to certainly have a client base which allows you to survive. I have seen some ugly practices out there, and I have joined in condemning them as a Member of the Senate and also as a member of the bar. I do not think any of us who are members of the bar take pride in the practices of some attorneys who have obviously given the profession a bad name at times and have abused what ought to be a more respected and sacrosanct relationship in the country. But at the same time, just as with any business--whether it is Wall Street and brokers or businesspeople who are manufacturers who somehow put a product on the marketplace that cost lives--there are always exceptions to fundamental rules. There are also a lot of lawyers out there who work for nothing, who do pro bono work, who give their energies to fighting for the environment or for civil rights or a whole lot of other things. I think it is a mistake to sweep everybody into one basket and suggest that that is all this issue is about. We have some time-honored traditions in this country about access to our court system. We have some deep-rooted principles which allow victims of certain kinds of abuses, and sometimes even arrogance, to be able to get redress for that. That is one of the beauties of the American judicial system. And I could show--and I do not have time now--countless examples of life being made better for millions of Americans because some lawyer took a case to court and was willing to fight for a particular principle. I happened to bump into Ralph Nader a little while ago going into a Banking hearing related to an issue on privacy on the House side. I recall, obviously, his landmark efforts with respect to automobiles and safety, and millions of American lives have been saved because of those kinds of challenges. Sometimes the pendulum sweeps too far, and I well recognize that. In fact, there is a great tendency within the Congress for us to react to a particular problem, and, kaboom, we wind up with unintended consequences, and then we sort of have to pull the pendulum back. I have done that. I have joined with colleagues here to change the law on liability with respect to aircraft manufacturing because we found that there was a particular problem for small, light plane manufacturing in the country. We also changed the law with respect to securities reform, and I joined in that effort. And I joined in overriding the veto of a President with respect to those things because I thought the reform was important and legitimate. No one here ought to condone the capacity of individual lawyers to simply trigger a lawsuit with the hopes of walking into a company and then holding them up for settlement because it is too expensive to litigate. I believe that in the compromise we have on the table, as well as in other efforts that have been offered, there are legitimate restraints on the capacity of lawyers to abuse the system. There are increased specificity requirements with respect to the pleadings so that you cannot just go in on a fishing expedition. There is a 90-day period for cure; i.e., once a company is noticed that they are in fact in a particular possible breach with respect to the contract that extends for the sale of a particular computer or software program, they are given 90 days within which time they can cure the problem and there is no lawsuit. In addition to that, there are a series of other restraints which I think are entirely appropriate, and I would vote for those. Let's say somebody's mother or father is at home and you have a bank account and a bank loses your entire bank account, for whatever reason, or there is some doctor's appointment that is lost by somebody that was critical to the provision of some serum or antibiotic. Who knows what might be occurring that has been computerized and expected on a particular schedule that might be affected. There is a requirement in their legislation, the legislation currently about to be voted on, which would deny any consumer access to remedy for 90 days. You get a 90-day stay period. What is the rationale for that? That was supposed to apply to the companies, not to individuals. But we don't have a legitimate carve-out for consumers, for the average consumer, for Joe ``Six-Pack'' who might be affected by this. They are somehow going to be plunked into a basket with all of the other companies. In addition to that, there is a legitimate problem with respect to access to the system. If you have a company that does business abroad, does not have a home base here, you have no capacity to reach them with respect to service of process. We are going to say that we are going to deny somebody the capacity to have full redress or remedy, and they are going to have to go chase that other person somehow, no matter what the level of that person's responsibility is. To do that is effectively to say to people, Sorry, folks. No lawyer in the country is going to take that case. We're effectively stripping you of the rights to be able to have access to the court system. I am for a fair balance here. I have a lot of companies in Massachusetts that are high-tech companies, a lot of companies that are impacted by this. I know a lot of people in the industry whom I respect enormously who deserve to be protected against greedy, voracious sorts of wrongful, totally predatory efforts to try to hold them up in the system. I am for stopping that. I would, in our effort, put restraints on the capacity to bring class actions wrongly. And I think we have an increased standard with respect to materiality that would make it much tougher for people to put a class together without a showing of injury. So the real issue here before us in the Senate is, What is really trying to be achieved here? If we are trying to simply achieve a balanced, fair approach to protecting companies from unfair lawsuits and being balanced about the average citizen's approach to the court system there is a way to do that. But if what we are doing is a larger tort reform agenda, because of the bad name that lawyers in general have, and some lawyers in particular have earned for them, if that is the effort, in order to seek some broader change in the legal system that denies people access to the courts, then I think we have a different kind of problem. There are many people in this Chamber who have practiced law before, some on the other side of the fence, on the Republican side, who do not believe any legislation is necessary, that this is a one-time problem, that the greatest incentive you can have to avoid a problem is for people to fix it ahead of time, and the greatest way in which you will get the best and biggest and fastest fix ahead of time is to have people required to be open to the possibilities of redress if they did not do that. But if we limit people's potential liability, there is a great likelihood that a lot of people will say, Well, I'm not going to fix this. I'm not liable. I don't need to do anything about it. They can't bring suit against me. And you may, in fact, have taken away the very incentive you are trying to create. Mr. President, there are very real and legitimate substantive arguments: Access to our court system. What is the best incentive? How do you approach this fairly? How are you going to wind up with a system that is balanced? All of those issues are really at stake in this. I hope colleagues will remember that as they approach the question of what is the best compromise here which would give us the kind of balance that we need. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I will address the question of the Y2K for just a moment, if I may, and then I was going to ask unanimous consent just to make a couple comments as in morning business for the purpose of introducing a bill. Prior to doing that--do I understand the Senator from Arizona would object to that taking place at this point?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, we have a cloture vote set at a specific time; is that correct?

Mr. KERRY

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

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

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

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for yielding. I simply wanted to inform him, I wasn't on the floor at the moment the objection was raised to the Senate proceeding as Senator McCain hoped to do. I want to say that I had a discussion with Senator McCain, Senator Dodd, Senator Hollings, and others. A bona fide effort is being made right now to work with the technology community as well as with the legal community. I think there is the capacity to come together around some form of compromise. I thank Senator McCain for his leadership on this. I think it may be possible within hours to come together around something.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the Water Resources Development Act of 1999. This bill has passed the Senate under unanimous consent thanks to the leadership of its sponsor Senator Warner, and Senator Chafee, Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee and Senator Baucus, the ranking member on the Committee. I want to thank the Senators for their work. Included in this legislation is a request that the Army Corps of Engineers evaluate plans to alleviate flooding and make other improvements to the Muddy River, which runs through Brookline and Boston, Massachusetts. This is an urgently needed project. The Muddy River flows through mostly urban-residential areas in Brookline and Boston before emptying into the Charles River. The River has flooded several times in the past, with two particularly severe floods in 1996 and 1998. The 1996 flood was a presidentially declared disaster. It lasted three days, submerged parts of Brookline and Boston in knee-deep water, flooded underground Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority stations and halted commuter train traffic, and extensively damaged homes and businesses. Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci estimates that the cost of these two floods exceeded $100,000,000. Preventing future damage from floods is a top priority for the Town of Brookline, the City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts, and each has pledged to do their part to find a solution. Specifically, the Water Resources Development Act of 1999 asks the Secretary of the Army to evaluate a study called the ``Emerald Necklace Environmental Improvement Master Plan: Phase I Muddy River Flood Control, Water Quality and Environmental Enhancement'', and to report its findings to Congress by December 31, 1999. The Plan was commissioned by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department and issued in January 1999. It presents a solution that has broad community support. Residents and businesses joined with the Town of Brookline, City of Boston, State of Massachusetts and the federal government to develop this plan. It draws on research by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and others to recommend comprehensive improvements to end destructive flooding, enhance water quality and protect habitat. I believe this project embodies the kind of citizen-government partnership that is necessary for an efficient and successful use of federal resources. The Massachusetts delegation, the Town of Brookline, the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts all look forward to working with the Army Corps in Boston and Washington over the coming months to complete this evaluation by the end of the year, and to move ahead with the work of ending these destructive floods and making other needed improvements.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I am pleased to speak today as a co- sponsor of legislation to award a gold medal to Rosa Parks in recognition of her historic contributions to the civil rights movement and to our country. The word hero is one of the most overused words in our national vernacular, a term that should be reserved for those rare people whose incredible acts of courage in the face of tremendous adversity and long odds inspire us all. Surely it can be said, though, that one of the true living heroes in our country is the mother of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks. No one would deny that America is a better place today because, on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks sat down on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and insisted that she would not be moved. To those of us who were children in these years watching the news on black and white television sets, entranced by the grainy images and the reassuring voice of Walter Cronkite, it is difficult to express the singular act of courage expressed in Rosa Parks' determination--her absolute resolve--to make a stand in a part of our nation we knew was home to Bull Connor and his snarling police dogs, George Wallace and his promise of ``segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever,'' and men like Orval Faubus who pledged to stand in schoolhouse doors from Little Rock to Selma to prevent us all from living as one America, undivided by race. In one incredible moment, Rosa Parks set forth a wave of activism all across America and captured the essence of the better half of the American spirit--proud, courageous, defiant against injustice--and Americans followed her lead. 42,000 African Americans boycotted Montgomery's buses for 381 days until the bus segregation laws in Alabama were changed on December 21, 1956. The changes that Rosa Parks made possible in America transcended the realm, even, of our public laws--they literally changed a way of life. Because Rosa Parks stood firm against injustice, she not only joined with Martin Luther King, Jr. in ending the era of Jim Crowe, she helped usher in an age in America when Thurgood Marshall could serve on the highest court of the land; an America where John Lewis and so many others who marched for freedom could serve in the United States Congress; and an America in which we could all, living, working, and hoping together, envision a future--still ahead--when a still-better, still-stronger America heals itself of all the scars of racism and bigotry. Future generations of Americans need to know that this country considers Rosa Parks a hero. It should be known that we recognized Ms. Parks' contributions to our country--and that we hoped that for years to come--in our homes, our schools, in our cities and on our village greens--we wanted all Americans to learn and to remember what Rosa Parks struggled to make true for our nation. As we all join together as a Senate united in our deep respect for Rosa Parks, let us remember also that we can do more for this leader than give her a gold medal--we can make her work our own--in the House, in the Senate, and in our lives every day. We can all summon--at the edge of the twenty-first century--the best of our own spirit to wipe away the hatred, the bigotry, and the intolerance that remains in America--and we can dedicate ourselves to building a better America in Rosa Parks' image. That effort, too, will be a part of Rosa Parks' legacy in the United States, and that monument will endure long after any medal has lost its shine. Madam President, I urge the United States Senate to contemplate that challenge on this special day in the United States of America, as we honor Rosa Parks--but also as we ask ourselves how we can fulfill her promise and finally create Rosa Parks' America.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I think every American knows what today is--Tax Day, 1999. It's a day that I think no doubt leaves most Americans, certainly, tired from the all too hurried rush to file those forms--but I hope also reminded that as we pay our taxes we're really making choices about our priorities--investing in a strong national defense, making a difference in research and development, protecting Social Security and Medicare--and the truth is that while no one likes to pay taxes, this is why we do it--so we can invest in certain priorities that make our nation strong. Well, Mr. President, today I want to join with my colleague Gordon Smith to talk about one of those investments, about the commitment Americans want us to make to our public schools, and about the biggest tax cut we can ever deliver for our children and grandchildren--the tax cut you give to future generations when you insist--today--that you're going to have a committed and qualified teacher in every classroom, that you're going to make every public school work, and that you're going to put every child on the road to a life in which they can make the most of their own talents and capacities for success. Let's be honest--as a society, there is no decision of greater importance to the long term health, stability, and competitiveness of this nation, than the way we decide to educate our children. We look to public schools today to educate our children to lead in an information age where the term ``wired worker'' will soon be redundant because of an information revolution that has literally put more power in the computer chip of a digital watch than in every computer combined in the United States just fifty years ago; massive technological change and demands to improve our productivity, putting more Americans to work for longer hours and putting them in front of computer screens for hours more when they're not at work; a global economy where borders have vanished--and the wealth of nations will be determined by the wisdom of their workers--by their level of training, the depth of their knowledge, and their ability to compete with workers around the world. Mr. President, two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson told us that our public schools would be ``the pillars of the republic''--he was right then, he is right now--but today there is a caveat: those public schools must also be--more than ever--the pillars of our economy and the pillars of our communities. And I would respectfully suggest to you that there has not been a more urgent time than the present to reevaluate--honestly--the way America's greatest democratic experiment is working--the experiment of our nation's public schools. Those pillars of the republic have never before had to support so heavy a burden as they do today. In our world of telecommuting, the Internet, hundreds and soon thousands of television channels, sixty, seventy and eighty hour work weeks--there are fewer and fewer places where Americans come together in person to share in that common civic culture, fewer ways in which we unite as citizens--and caught up in that whirlwind are more students living in poverty, more students dealing with disabilities, more students with limited command of the English language. More reasons, I believe, why this nation must have a great public school system. And what can we say of the system before us today? I think we must say that--although there are thousands of public schools in this country doing a magnificent job of educating our children to a world class level--too many of our schools are struggling and too many kids are being left behind. Mr. President, I believe we have a responsibility to be the true friends of public education--and the best friends are critical friends, and it is time that we seek the truth and offer our help to a system that is not doing enough for a large proportion of the 50 million children in our public schools today--children whose reading scores show that of 2.6 million graduating high school students, one-third are below basic reading level, one-third are at basic, only one-third are proficient and only 100,000 are at a world class reading level; children who edge out only South Africa and Cyprus on international tests in science and math, with 29 percent of all college freshmen requiring remedial classes in basic skills. Mr. President, this year we have already passed the Ed-Flex Bill, a step forward in giving our schools the flexibility and the accountability they need to enact reform, making it a matter of law that we won't tie their hands with red tape when Governors and Mayors and local school districts are doing all they can to educate our kids, but also emphasizing that with added flexibility comes a responsibility to raise student achievement. But Mr. President, EdFlex was just one step in a forward moving direction--balancing accountability and flexibility--to continue the process of real education reform--and that is why I am joining with my colleague from Oregon, Gordon Smith, to introduce bipartisan legislation today--the Kerry-Smith Bill--with our colleagues the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, my colleague Ted Kennedy and with Max Cleland, Evan Bayh, John Edwards, Carl Levin, Patty Murray, Richard Bryan, as well as John Chafee, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine--legislation which together we believe will make a difference in our schools, legislation which can bring together leaders from across the political spectrum around good ideas which unite us rather than dividing us. Mr. President, for too long in this country the education debate has been stuck both nationally and locally--leaders unable or unwilling to answer the challenge, trapped in a debate that is little more than an echo of old and irrelevant positions with promising solutions stymied by ideology and interest groups--both on the right and on the left. Nowhere more than in the venerable United States Senate, where we pride ourselves on our ability to work together across partisan lines, have we-- in so many debates--been stuck in a place where Democrats and Republicans seem to talk past each other. Democrats are perceived to be always ready to throw money at the problem but never for sufficient accountability or creativity; Republicans are perceived as always ready to give a voucher to go somewhere else but rarely supportive of investing sufficient resources to make the public schools work. Well, I think it is in this Congress, this year, that we can finally disengage ourselves from the political combat, and acknowledge that with so much on the line, such high stakes in our schools, you can't just talk past each other and call it reform. We all need to do our part to find a new answer, and Mr. President I would respectfully suggest that in the bipartisan support you see for this legislation, there is a different road we can meet on to make it happen. Together we are introducing the kind of comprehensive education reform legislation that I believe will provide us a chance to come together not as Democrats and Republicans, but as the true friends of parents, children, teachers, and principals--to come together as citizens--and help our schools reclaim the promise of public education in this country. We need to ask one question: ``What provides our children with the best education?'' And whether the answer is conservative, liberal or simply practical, we need to commit ourselves to that course. Our bill is built on the notion of giving grants for schools--with real accountability--to pursue comprehensive reform and adopt the proven best practices of any other school--Voluntary State Reform Incentive Grants so school districts that choose to finance and implement comprehensive reform based on proven high-performance models can bring forth change. We will target investments at school districts with high numbers of at-risk students and leverage local dollars through matching grants. This component of the legislation will give schools the chance to quickly and easily put in place the best of what works in any other school--private, parochial or public--with decentralized control, site-based management, parental engagement, and high levels of volunteerism--while at the same time meeting high standards of student achievement and public accountability. I believe public schools need to have the chance to make changes not tomorrow, not five years from now, not after another study--but now--today. So if schools will embrace this new framework--every school adopting the best practices of high achieving schools, building accountability into the system--what then are the key ingredients of excellence that every school needs to succeed? Well, Mr. President, I think we can start by guaranteeing that every one of our nation's 80,000 principals have the capacity to lead--the talents and the know-how to do the job; effective leadership skills; the vision to create an effective team--to recruit, hire, and transfer teachers and engage parents. Without those abilities, the title of principal and the freedom to lead means little. We are proposing an ``Excellent Principals Challenge Grant'' which would provide funds to local school districts to train principals in sound management skills and effective classroom practices. This bill helps our schools make being a principal the great calling of our time. But as we set our sights on recruiting a new generation of effective principals, we must acknowledge what today's best principals know: principals can only produce results as good as the teachers with whom they must work. To get the best results, we need the best teachers. And we must act immediately to guarantee that we get the best as the United States hires 2 million new teachers in the next ten years, 60% of them in the next five years. In the Kerry-Smith Bill we will empower our states and school districts to find new ways to hire and train outstanding teachers: through a focus on teacher quality and training-- in Title V of this bill--we can use financial incentives to attract a larger group of qualified people into the teaching profession and we can provide real ongoing education and continued training for our nation's teachers. This legislation will allow states to reconfigure their certification policies and their teaching standards to address the reality that our standards for teachers are not high enough--and at the same time, they are too rigid in setting out irrelevant requirements that don't make teaching better; they make it harder for some who choose to teach. We know we need to streamline teacher certification rules in this country to recruit the best college graduates to teach in the United States. Today we hire almost exclusively education majors to teach, and liberal arts graduates are only welcomed in our country's top private schools. Our legislation will allow states to rewrite the rules so principals have a far greater flexibility to hire liberal arts graduates as teachers, graduates who can meet high standards; while at the same time allowing hundreds of thousands more teachers to achieve a more broad based meaningful certification--the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification with its rigorous test of subject matter knowledge and teaching ability. This legislation will build a new teacher recruitment system for our public schools--providing college scholarships for our highest achieving high school graduates if they agree to come back and teach in our public schools. We will demand a great deal from our principals and our teachers-- holding them accountable for student achievement--but Mr. President we also hope to build a new consensus in America that recognizes that you can't hold someone accountable if they don't have the tools to succeed. Our bill helps to close the resource gap in public education: helping to eliminate the crime that turns too many hallways and classrooms into arenas of violence by giving school districts incentives to write discipline codes and create ``Second Chance'' schools with a range of alternatives for chronically disruptive and violent students-- everything from short-term in-school crisis centers, to medium duration in-school suspension rooms, to high quality off-campus alternatives; helping every child come to school ready to learn by funding successful, local early childhood development efforts; and making schools the hubs of our communities once more by providing support for after school programs where students receive tutoring, mentoring, and values-based education--the kind of programs that are open to entire communities, making public schools truly public. And our legislation will help us bring a new kind accountability to public education by injecting choice and competition into a public school system badly in need of both. We are not a country that believes in monopolies. We are a country that believes competition raises quality. And we ought to merge the best of those ideas by ending a system that restricts each child to an administrator's choice and not a parent's choice where possible. It is time we adopt a competitive system of public school choice with grants awarded to schools that meet parents' test of quality and assistance to schools that must catch up rapidly. That is why our bill creates an incentive for schools all across the nation to adopt public school choice to the extent logistically feasible. Mr. President, we are not just asking Democrats and Republicans to meet in a compromise, a grand bargain to reform public education. We are offering legislation that helps us do it, that forces not just a debate, but a vote--yes or no, up or down, change or more of the same. Together we can embrace new rights and responsibilities on both sides of the ideological divide and admit that the answer to the crisis of public education is not found in one concept alone--in private school vouchers or bricks and mortar alone. We can find answers for our children by breaking with the instinct for the symbolic, and especially the notion that a speech here and there will make education better in this country. It can't and it won't. But our hard work together in the coming year--Democrats and Republicans together--can make a difference. Education reform can work in a bi-partisan way. There is no shortage of good ideas or leadership here in the Senate--the experience of Gordon Smith who spent years in the Oregon legislature working to balance resources and accountability to raise the quality of public education; with tireless leadership from former Governors like Evan Bayh and John Chafee; bi-partisan creativity from Patty Murray and Olympia Snowe; and the leadership and passion, of course, of the senior Senator from my state, Senator Kennedy, who has led the fight on education in this Senate, and who has provided this body with over 30 years of unrivaled leadership and support for education. We look forward to working with all of our colleagues this year to pass this legislation, in this important year as we undergo the process of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to find common ground in ideas that we can all support--bold legislation that sends the message--finally--to parents and children struggling to find schools that work, and to teachers and principals struggling in schools simultaneously bloated with bureaucracy and starved for resources--to prove to them not just that we hear their cries for help, but that we will respond not with sound bites and salvos, but with real answers. I thank my colleagues and I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I join my esteemed colleagues, Senators McCain, Burns, Wyden, Leahy and Abraham in introducing legislation that will encourage sales of US information technology products while at the same time protecting our national security interests. The Promote Reliable On-Line Transactions to Encourage Commerce and Trade (PROTECT) Act of 1999 is an important first step that recognizes that as the Internet becomes more of a presence in global commerce, there must be guarantees and assurances that business and personal information remains confidential. It also recognizes that the US companies are leaders in creating the technology that serves this vital purpose, and that these companies are integral to our growing economy. United States information technology companies have been frustrated by what they perceive as too-stringent controls on the export of their encryption products. These controls have served a vital purpose in protecting national security interests. The realities of the marketplace and the technology sector, however, suggest that it time to loosen our grip somewhat on the export controls we impose. Although the US is the leader in producing high quality, strong encryption products, other countries also have the ability to produce comparable products. We must recognize this reality and understand that while export controls can slow the spread of encrypted products, they cannot stop it. Importantly, controls that do not recognize this reality put our software industry at a disadvantage as it tries to compete in the global market. Nothing, of course, is more important than our national security. This legislation maintains strong guidelines to ensure that encryption technology is not sold to countries that pose a threat to our national security. It puts in place a number of reasonable checks to make certain that US encryption technology does not get into the wrong hands. At the same time, it takes into consideration that where encryption products are generally or publicly available, we should not unduly limit their sale to responsible entities in NATO, OECD or ASEAN countries. To do so would not only cause potential harm to US industry, but it could also have an unintended negative impact on our own security. I applaud Senator McCain for taking this first step towards resolving a complicated problem. As we work through this and other legislation that attempts to address the issue of encryption exports, I hope we can incorporate the best features into the strongest possible bill.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I join my esteemed colleagues, Senators McCain, Burns, Wyden, Leahy and Abraham in introducing legislation that will encourage sales of US information technology products while at the same time protecting our national security interests. The Promote Reliable On-Line Transactions to Encourage Commerce and Trade (PROTECT) Act of 1999 is an important first step that recognizes that as the Internet becomes more of a presence in global commerce, there must be guarantees and assurances that business and personal information remains confidential. It also recognizes that the US companies are leaders in creating the technology that serves this vital purpose, and that these companies are integral to our growing economy. United States information technology companies have been frustrated by what they perceive as too-stringent controls on the export of their encryption products. These controls have served a vital purpose in protecting national security interests. The realities of the marketplace and the technology sector, however, suggest that it time to loosen our grip somewhat on the export controls we impose. Although the US is the leader in producing high quality, strong encryption products, other countries also have the ability to produce comparable products. We must recognize this reality and understand that while export controls can slow the spread of encrypted products, they cannot stop it. Importantly, controls that do not recognize this reality put our software industry at a disadvantage as it tries to compete in the global market. Nothing, of course, is more important than our national security. This legislation maintains strong guidelines to ensure that encryption technology is not sold to countries that pose a threat to our national security. It puts in place a number of reasonable checks to make certain that US encryption technology does not get into the wrong hands. At the same time, it takes into consideration that where encryption products are generally or publicly available, we should not unduly limit their sale to responsible entities in NATO, OECD or ASEAN countries. To do so would not only cause potential harm to US industry, but it could also have an unintended negative impact on our own security. I applaud Senator McCain for taking this first step towards resolving a complicated problem. As we work through this and other legislation that attempts to address the issue of encryption exports, I hope we can incorporate the best features into the strongest possible bill.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce the Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act of 1999, and I do so on behalf of myself and Senators Bond, Harkin, Bingaman, Levin, Enzi, Domenici, Abraham, Sarbanes, Akaka, Kennedy, Edwards, Feinstein, Landrieu, Boxer, Cleland, Kohl, Wellstone, Burns, and Leahy. As the title suggests, this bill addresses the funding constraints that are making it increasingly difficult for our women's business centers to sustain the level of services that they currently provide and, in some instances, to literally keep the doors open. Some colleagues may ask the question, What is the Women's Business Center Program? The Small Business Administration started the Women's Business Center Program which provides 5-year grants matched by non- Federal dollars to private sector organizations so that they can establish business training centers for women. Depending on the needs of the community being served, the centers teach women the basic principles of finance, management, and marketing, as well as specialized topics such as how to get a government contract or how to start a home-based business. These business centers are located in rural, urban, and suburban areas, and they direct much of their training and counseling assistance towards socially and economically disadvantaged women. I might add, Mr. President, of all the changes in the social structure of the United States or in the marketplace in the last years, none has been more profound than the significant numbers of women entering the marketplace. As more and more women enter the marketplace and they assume roles as principal breadwinners or sole breadwinners within some families, it is more and more important that they have the capacity to participate fully in the economy and not be relegated simply to entry-level jobs. Congress started this program in 1988 in response to hearings that revealed the Federal Government was not meeting the needs of women entrepreneurs and that there were very little other mechanisms for entry-level women entrepreneurs. Women faced particular discrimination in access to credit and capital, and they were shut out of many government contracts and had very little access to the kind of business assistance that they needed to compete in the marketplace. We have really come a long way since that first beginning. There are now 59 centers in 36 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In addition to increasing self-sufficiency among women, the women's business centers have strengthened women business ownership overall and encouraged local job creation. The numbers really tell a remarkable story, Mr. President. In 1998, women-owned businesses made up more than one-third of the 23 million small businesses in the United States. They have accounted for some $3 trillion in annual revenues to the economy, and they employed one out of every four workers in the United States. Still, according to the data from the 1998 Women's Economic Summit, women-owned businesses account for only 18 percent of all small business gross receipts, and they are dramatically underrepresented in the Nation's two most lucrative markets--corporate buying and government contracting. This really underscores significantly the problem that I talked about a moment ago of entry-level jobs and of the nature of the small, entrepreneurial, home-grown, cottage-industry-type businesses that women begin with, which often could be grown significantly into larger businesses but for the lack of credit, the lack of available marketing skills, and the lack of management skills. Clearly, the need for women's business centers continues, and this is no time for us to diminish or to dismantle the infrastructure that the federal government has invested in for the past decade. Addressing the special needs of women-owned businesses serves not just the entrepreneurs, but it serves the overall strength of communities, as well as the economy of the whole of our country. Women's business centers help increase the growth, not just of women's businesses, but also of the large network of support businesses that are linked and affiliated with them, as well as, obviously, the general economy and the local community associated with those businesses. There are many extraordinarily run centers around the country. Let me highlight two of them--one in New Mexico and one in Massachusetts. I know my colleagues, Senators Bingaman and Domenici, are particularly proud of the one in their home State. I am very proud of one in Massachusetts which has been a model women's business center. It is the Center of Women & Enterprise in Boston. Since 1995, that center has served more than 2,000 women from more than 100 cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts. Of the women it serves every year, 60 percent are low-income, 70 percent are single, and 32 percent are women of color. Andrea Silbert is the tireless executive director of that center. She has effectively raised money, forged partnerships, and designed thorough training and mentoring programs to help women entrepreneurs. When the Boston women's business center trains an entrepreneur, that entrepreneur then knows how to approach a lender for a loan, knows how to manage her business, and understands the ins and outs and hows and whys of marketing. But notwithstanding the success of these several women's business centers, the fact is that a number of them around the country are facing increased difficulty in raising the required matching funds. There are some people who think the centers should charge higher fees. And they might think so, until you examine the makeup of the people who are being reached by the centers. We were privileged to have a person by the name of Agnes Noonan, who has spent the last 8 years as the executive director of WESST Corporation, the women's business center in Albuquerque, NM, testify before us in the Small Business Committee. As she testified in March, during her first couple of years running the center, her view was that there was a very simple way to deal with the problem of raising money, and that was to do a better job of marketing the center's services to women who could afford to pay higher fees. That would increase the center's income, and it would reduce its reliance on public dollars. But the problem is that the minute you do that, you start redirecting the energy and focus of the center away from the people who most benefit from it. And that is precisely what she told us as a practitioner. She said: Though [such a] strategy may have made economic sense, it conflicted directly with our mission of serving low-income women. . . . If we were to target our services to women who could afford to pay market consulting and training rates, then we would clearly not be addressing the needs of low-income women in New Mexico. She also gave us important information about the realities of fundraising: Nationally, only six percent of foundation money is earmarked for women, and only a tiny portion of that goes to women's economic development. So as she said to us, the executive directors of women's business centers are very experienced fundraisers. Lori Smith of the WBC in Oklahoma City said before the House Small Business Committee that she thought she could sell sand in the desert. She viewed herself as good a fundraiser and as good a salesperson as there is, but she also said that competition for foundation- and private-sector dollars has become so intense and those dollars so much scarcer with each year that Government funding has diminished. And they do not have anywhere to turn. In addition to that, bank mergers are occurring, as we know, at an increased rate around the country. And those mergers are further exacerbating the situation because the banks have been a primary source of funds for many of these centers. Take the example of the recently announced bank merger in Boston of Fleet Bank and BankBoston. Those banks separately have been very generous to the women's business center in Boston. Their combined contribution came to $150,000. But we have serious concerns that their full support continue, and not reduce as we have seen in other States, where the merged institutions rarely give the same amount of money as the two or three, or whatever number, that the prior institutions contributed. So we have seen a drying up of some of the funding sources, I might add, not just for the women's business centers but for a host of charitable institutions that rely on those contributions. So for many of the centers, they now have the added specter of losing their annual base of money. We need to guarantee that we do not add to that ominous cloud by having the base that came from the SBA also disappear at the same time when they come to the end of the original 5- year grant cycle. That money is their basic bread and butter, it is their ability to stay alive, as well as the indispensable ingredient of leveraging for additional fundraising dollars. I believe, and the colleagues who have joined me in introducing this legislation believe, that it is essential for us to find a fair way to let the women's business centers recompete for their base funding. That is competition; it is not entitlement. So here is how the legislation we introduce gets us there. First, it allows the women's business centers which have completed a funding term to compete for another 5 years of Federal funding, which, under current policy, would be up to $150,000 per year. The recompetition standards would be higher than those needed for centers applying for funds for their initial 5-year funding term. This recognizes that more experienced centers ought to be able to perform well from the beginning of their second term funding; they have been through the learning curve. And I believe this additional Federal funding is necessary to counteract the adverse impact of bank and corporate mergers I mentioned previously. Second, my bill will raise the authorization of appropriations for fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2001 for women's business center funding from $11 million to $12 million per year. It will also reserve 40 percent of those appropriations for recompetition grants. I believe that increasing the authorization to $12 million is entirely consistent with the legislation which our committee passed last year, and it would ensure that there would be adequate funding to preserve effective, established centers and to help fund new centers in States that do not have one. Mr. President, I thank those colleagues who have joined me in this effort. I hope additional colleagues will join in support of this legislation and we can rapidly pass it. It should not be contentious. We are not talking about vast sums of money, but we are talking about an extraordinary amount of leverage for a very small investment. I think that in most States in this country my colleagues will agree with me that opening the doors of opportunity to full business ownership and participation, particularly to those who have been disadvantaged for various reasons, is of enormous importance to the longer term economic well-being of our country. And when I say ``well- being,'' I am not just talking about the bottom line in terms of the return on investment to those businesses, I am talking, obviously, about the enormous importance of strengthening families, strengthening communities, and eliminating the vestiges of discrimination that remain against women in terms of their full economic participation in the Nation. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Kerry, Mr. Levin and Mr. Kennedy pertaining to the introduction of S. 791 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to proceed in morning business until I complete my statement.

Mr. KERRY. May I inquire, what is the order at 1 p.m.?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I understand we are in morning business; is that correct?

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

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce the Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act of 1999, and I do so on behalf of myself and Senators Bond, Harkin, Bingaman, Levin, Enzi, Domenici, Abraham, Sarbanes, Akaka, Kennedy, Edwards, Feinstein, Landrieu, Boxer, Cleland, Kohl, Wellstone, Burns, and Leahy. As the title suggests, this bill addresses the funding constraints that are making it increasingly difficult for our women's business centers to sustain the level of services that they currently provide and, in some instances, to literally keep the doors open. Some colleagues may ask the question, What is the Women's Business Center Program? The Small Business Administration started the Women's Business Center Program which provides 5-year grants matched by non- Federal dollars to private sector organizations so that they can establish business training centers for women. Depending on the needs of the community being served, the centers teach women the basic principles of finance, management, and marketing, as well as specialized topics such as how to get a government contract or how to start a home-based business. These business centers are located in rural, urban, and suburban areas, and they direct much of their training and counseling assistance towards socially and economically disadvantaged women. I might add, Mr. President, of all the changes in the social structure of the United States or in the marketplace in the last years, none has been more profound than the significant numbers of women entering the marketplace. As more and more women enter the marketplace and they assume roles as principal breadwinners or sole breadwinners within some families, it is more and more important that they have the capacity to participate fully in the economy and not be relegated simply to entry-level jobs. Congress started this program in 1988 in response to hearings that revealed the Federal Government was not meeting the needs of women entrepreneurs and that there were very little other mechanisms for entry-level women entrepreneurs. Women faced particular discrimination in access to credit and capital, and they were shut out of many government contracts and had very little access to the kind of business assistance that they needed to compete in the marketplace. We have really come a long way since that first beginning. There are now 59 centers in 36 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In addition to increasing self-sufficiency among women, the women's business centers have strengthened women business ownership overall and encouraged local job creation. The numbers really tell a remarkable story, Mr. President. In 1998, women-owned businesses made up more than one-third of the 23 million small businesses in the United States. They have accounted for some $3 trillion in annual revenues to the economy, and they employed one out of every four workers in the United States. Still, according to the data from the 1998 Women's Economic Summit, women-owned businesses account for only 18 percent of all small business gross receipts, and they are dramatically underrepresented in the Nation's two most lucrative markets--corporate buying and government contracting. This really underscores significantly the problem that I talked about a moment ago of entry-level jobs and of the nature of the small, entrepreneurial, home-grown, cottage-industry-type businesses that women begin with, which often could be grown significantly into larger businesses but for the lack of credit, the lack of available marketing skills, and the lack of management skills. Clearly, the need for women's business centers continues, and this is no time for us to diminish or to dismantle the infrastructure that the federal government has invested in for the past decade. Addressing the special needs of women-owned businesses serves not just the entrepreneurs, but it serves the overall strength of communities, as well as the economy of the whole of our country. Women's business centers help increase the growth, not just of women's businesses, but also of the large network of support businesses that are linked and affiliated with them, as well as, obviously, the general economy and the local community associated with those businesses. There are many extraordinarily run centers around the country. Let me highlight two of them--one in New Mexico and one in Massachusetts. I know my colleagues, Senators Bingaman and Domenici, are particularly proud of the one in their home State. I am very proud of one in Massachusetts which has been a model women's business center. It is the Center of Women & Enterprise in Boston. Since 1995, that center has served more than 2,000 women from more than 100 cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts. Of the women it serves every year, 60 percent are low-income, 70 percent are single, and 32 percent are women of color. Andrea Silbert is the tireless executive director of that center. She has effectively raised money, forged partnerships, and designed thorough training and mentoring programs to help women entrepreneurs. When the Boston women's business center trains an entrepreneur, that entrepreneur then knows how to approach a lender for a loan, knows how to manage her business, and understands the ins and outs and hows and whys of marketing. But notwithstanding the success of these several women's business centers, the fact is that a number of them around the country are facing increased difficulty in raising the required matching funds. There are some people who think the centers should charge higher fees. And they might think so, until you examine the makeup of the people who are being reached by the centers. We were privileged to have a person by the name of Agnes Noonan, who has spent the last 8 years as the executive director of WESST Corporation, the women's business center in Albuquerque, NM, testify before us in the Small Business Committee. As she testified in March, during her first couple of years running the center, her view was that there was a very simple way to deal with the problem of raising money, and that was to do a better job of marketing the center's services to women who could afford to pay higher fees. That would increase the center's income, and it would reduce its reliance on public dollars. But the problem is that the minute you do that, you start redirecting the energy and focus of the center away from the people who most benefit from it. And that is precisely what she told us as a practitioner. She said: Though [such a] strategy may have made economic sense, it conflicted directly with our mission of serving low-income women. . . . If we were to target our services to women who could afford to pay market consulting and training rates, then we would clearly not be addressing the needs of low-income women in New Mexico. She also gave us important information about the realities of fundraising: Nationally, only six percent of foundation money is earmarked for women, and only a tiny portion of that goes to women's economic development. So as she said to us, the executive directors of women's business centers are very experienced fundraisers. Lori Smith of the WBC in Oklahoma City said before the House Small Business Committee that she thought she could sell sand in the desert. She viewed herself as good a fundraiser and as good a salesperson as there is, but she also said that competition for foundation- and private-sector dollars has become so intense and those dollars so much scarcer with each year that Government funding has diminished. And they do not have anywhere to turn. In addition to that, bank mergers are occurring, as we know, at an increased rate around the country. And those mergers are further exacerbating the situation because the banks have been a primary source of funds for many of these centers. Take the example of the recently announced bank merger in Boston of Fleet Bank and BankBoston. Those banks separately have been very generous to the women's business center in Boston. Their combined contribution came to $150,000. But we have serious concerns that their full support continue, and not reduce as we have seen in other States, where the merged institutions rarely give the same amount of money as the two or three, or whatever number, that the prior institutions contributed. So we have seen a drying up of some of the funding sources, I might add, not just for the women's business centers but for a host of charitable institutions that rely on those contributions. So for many of the centers, they now have the added specter of losing their annual base of money. We need to guarantee that we do not add to that ominous cloud by having the base that came from the SBA also disappear at the same time when they come to the end of the original 5- year grant cycle. That money is their basic bread and butter, it is their ability to stay alive, as well as the indispensable ingredient of leveraging for additional fundraising dollars. I believe, and the colleagues who have joined me in introducing this legislation believe, that it is essential for us to find a fair way to let the women's business centers recompete for their base funding. That is competition; it is not entitlement. So here is how the legislation we introduce gets us there. First, it allows the women's business centers which have completed a funding term to compete for another 5 years of Federal funding, which, under current policy, would be up to $150,000 per year. The recompetition standards would be higher than those needed for centers applying for funds for their initial 5-year funding term. This recognizes that more experienced centers ought to be able to perform well from the beginning of their second term funding; they have been through the learning curve. And I believe this additional Federal funding is necessary to counteract the adverse impact of bank and corporate mergers I mentioned previously. Second, my bill will raise the authorization of appropriations for fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2001 for women's business center funding from $11 million to $12 million per year. It will also reserve 40 percent of those appropriations for recompetition grants. I believe that increasing the authorization to $12 million is entirely consistent with the legislation which our committee passed last year, and it would ensure that there would be adequate funding to preserve effective, established centers and to help fund new centers in States that do not have one. Mr. President, I thank those colleagues who have joined me in this effort. I hope additional colleagues will join in support of this legislation and we can rapidly pass it. It should not be contentious. We are not talking about vast sums of money, but we are talking about an extraordinary amount of leverage for a very small investment. I think that in most States in this country my colleagues will agree with me that opening the doors of opportunity to full business ownership and participation, particularly to those who have been disadvantaged for various reasons, is of enormous importance to the longer term economic well-being of our country. And when I say ``well- being,'' I am not just talking about the bottom line in terms of the return on investment to those businesses, I am talking, obviously, about the enormous importance of strengthening families, strengthening communities, and eliminating the vestiges of discrimination that remain against women in terms of their full economic participation in the Nation. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, tonight the Senate will vote on H.R. 440, the Microloan Program Technical Corrections Act of 1999. I urge my colleagues to support this Act which, including my amendment, makes important changes to the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Microloan program. It revises the loan loss reserve requirement for microlenders and makes changes that will more equitably distribute the microloan dollars available to each state. Ultimately, these changes will allow microlenders and intermediaries to make more loans and offer more technical assistance to our nation's small businesses. Most of my colleagues know that microloans and technical assistance are effective and powerful economic development tools because they voted to make the SBA's microloan program a permanent part of the Agency's lending programs in 1997. Let's look at the record since the SBA's microloan pilot program was launched in 1991. It has provided more than 7,900 microloans, worth some $80.3 million. For every microloan, 1.7 jobs are created. And, if a borrower was a welfare recipient, it is common for them to hire other welfare recipients. As the program was intended to do, a great percentage of microloans have gone to traditionally underserved groups, including 45 percent to women-owned businesses, 39 percent to minority- owned businesses and 11 percent to veteran-owned businesses. Voting for these measures will be a vote to make a good program better. Specifically, this legislation revises the loan loss reserve requirement (a cash reserve to guarantee that the government is paid back if a loan defaults) for microlenders by setting a 15-percent ceiling and a 10-percent floor. After a microloan intermediary has participated in the SBA Microloan program for five years and demonstrated its ability to maintain a healthy loan fund, it can request that SBA review and, when appropriate, reduce its loan loss reserve from 15 percent to a percentage based on its average loan loss rate for the five-year period. The proposed change would continue to protect the government's interest in microloans as well as enhance the program by freeing up cash which microlenders could reprogram for more microloans or technical assistance to small business owners. With my amendment, this legislation establishes a floor for the distribution of microloan funds available to the states, including the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Depending on the amount of appropriations, the SBA must provide the lesser of either $800,000 or the even division of the funds among the 55 states. For any monies that exceed $44 million ($800,000 x 55 states), the Administration has the discretion to decide how to distribute the microloan funds. The Administration also has the discretion to distribute any additional money that is left over at the beginning of the third quarter of a fiscal year. Mr. President, in Massachusetts and across the country, microloans and technical assistance are working; assisting individuals with the tools to successfully start and manage their own business. I thank my colleagues for their past support of small business and urge them to vote for H.R. 440 as amended. Amendment No. 248 (Purpose: To provide for the equitable allocation of appropriated amounts)

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the provisions for consideration of this amendment. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.