John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a letter from the Professional Services Council in support of my amendment to apply standard contracting laws to the Transportation Security Administration printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to inform the Members that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship will hold a staff-led public roundtable entitled ``Reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research Programs: National Academies' Findings and Recommendations,'' on August 1, 2007, at 10 a.m. in room 428A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, every American who has ever visited a hospital knows that nurses are on the front lines of our health care system. Our Nation's nurses treat patients, work with doctors, and perform complex duties critical to providing care to all patients. For these reasons, I am joining Senator Kennedy in introducing the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act. I have done so for the last three sessions of Congress and will continue to do so until this vital legislation is enacted. At the heart of the bill is the belief that nurses should not be forced to work beyond their ability to offer exemplary care to patients. Mandatory overtime requires nurses, given very short notice to work excessive hours in our hospitals and other institutions that provide health care services. Nurses are left with no recourse when mandatory overtime is applied. They continue treating patients, despite fatigue in many instances, impacting the delivery of care to patients. It is time that we answer the call made by nurses from across the Nation to immediately address this issue. Individual States have begun to respond to this call. Massachusetts is one of several States seeking to tackle adverse nursing conditions and curb requirements of mandatory overtime for its nurses. This bill would give nurses the necessary tools to continue putting patient care first by prohibiting mandatory overtime and providing protections if nurses report cases of it happening. Each year, 98,000 deaths are attributed to medical errors, and so addressing this issue is critical to the safety of our patients and the well-being of our nurses. The Safe Nursing and Patient Act is the first step toward addressing important issues in our Nation's health care system. Our legislation offers support and protections to nurses. It is time that Congress act to create a healthy and safe work environment for nurses so that they can continue to create healthy environments for patients.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I would like to inform Members that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship will hold a hearing entitled ``Oversight: Gulf Coast Disaster Loans and the Future of the Disaster Assistance Program,'' on Wednesday, July 25, 2007, at 10 a.m. in room 428A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I have a second-degree amendment to this amendment. I call it up.

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, if we are going to vote--and clearly this is blue slip material--No. 1., No. 2, it is not germane. And No. 3, it is not paid for. Madam President, $872 billion is what is contained in that. So if we are going to do the AMT, which all of us believe we ought to do, we ought to do it in a responsible way that raises the question of unnecessary spending, closing tax loopholes, and doing what is necessary to try to pay for this. That is what my amendment suggests. If you want to vote somehow to do something about the AMT, let's vote in a responsible way, do it in a way that repeals those loopholes, looks at the Tax Code, and pays for that purpose. So accordingly, Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable sections of that act for the purpose of the consideration of this amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to Calendar No. 139, S. 163; that the committee-reported amendment be withdrawn, and I have a substitute amendment at the desk; that the Bond amendment to the substitute amendment be considered and agreed to, the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that the bill, as amended, be read the third time; that the Senate then proceed to the consideration of H.R. 1361, the House companion, which is at the desk; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 163, as amended, be inserted in lieu thereof; that the bill be read the third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the Senate insist on its amendment and request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses; that the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees, with the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship appointed as conferees; that S. 163 be returned to the calendar, and the above occurring without intervening action or debate.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me speak for a minute about this legislation. I understand Senator DeMint's need to object on behalf of the Senator from Oklahoma. This is legislation that has broad--I do mean broad--bipartisan support. It was passed out of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee on a unanimous vote. It now represents a very broad compromise worked on with the administration and with all of the members of the committee, both Republican and Democrat. I will review very quickly what this bill does. As everybody knows, when Katrina hit, we had a terrible time getting small business assistance to the countless thousands of small businesses that were impacted, not only in New Orleans but in Baton Rouge and across into Mississippi, Alabama, and elsewhere, where there were many services being provided by other folks. A lot of small businesses were impacted. We learned there was not an adequate capacity within the Small Business Administration to deliver this kind of assistance in a rapid way. So we have worked now, after a series of hearings and over the course of 2 years, to pull together the Small Business Disaster Response and Loan Improvement Act. It does a number of things. It creates a new elevated level of disaster declaration, referred to as catastrophic national disaster. That triggers nationwide economic injury disaster loans for adversely affected small businesses. In addition, it requires the SBA to create an expedited disaster assistance business loan program to provide businesses with expedited access to short-term money. A lot of the businesses in New Orleans could have survived and might have survived or chosen to try to if there had been some bridge money or available working capital. But the absence of it forced a lot of them to close their doors. If we can provide assistance in a timely fashion, obviously subject to the administration's approval--and there is discretion in the bill--we would have the ability to do a better job. In addition, there are improvements to the existing loan program which have been written in the bill. There is improved agency coordination and marketing. It directs the SBA to coordinate with FEMA in a more effective way. It directs the SBA to create a proactive marketing plan to make the public aware of the disaster response services. In addition, it provides improved planning and oversight and directs the SBA to update the hurricane response plan to address all future disasters. This is, as I say, with bipartisan support. I have a letter from the Administrator of the SBA, Steve Preston. He writes saying: I am writing to express my thanks for the efforts you and your colleagues have made to work with the Small Business Administration and to address the administration's concerns with some of the provisions in S. 163, the Small Business Disaster Response and Loan Improvement Act of 2007. At this point, if amended by the Bond amendment-- And that is what we just sought to do-- the administration has no objections to Senate passage of S. 163. However, the administration would consider a longer extension of the authorization language in section 3 to avoid the need for concern over unintended expiration of programs and activities. We would obviously love to do that. It appears there is one person in the Senate, the Senator from Oklahoma, who is opposed to moving forward with this legislation. As I say, there was a unanimous vote by our committee, which wants to see if we could achieve this disaster assistance. Nobody understands how critical this is more than the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, who has been fighting from the moment Katrina hit to try to get this kind of disaster assistance. I wish to ask the Senator if she would share with us her observations as to why this legislation is so critical and what specifically we have done to address some of the concerns of those who had previously expressed those concerns in order now to have a consensus about this legislation. I ask the Senator from Louisiana if she would explain the situation in New Orleans, not just then but now, and why this legislation is so critical.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. She has been not only a terrific member of the committee but has represented to the whole Senate countless numbers of times on the floor the plight of those folks down in New Orleans and in the immediate surrounding area. I wish to emphasize what she has said and what I said previously, and that is this has been worked on now for 2 years in a bipartisan way. Senator Snowe, the ranking member, who was, incidentally, the Chair when we first began working on this legislation, has supported the efforts to try to make certain that we address these concerns. Other Republican members of the committee have contributed significantly to this effort. Senator Bond had concerns about the energy program. We have addressed those concerns. I hope we can move forward. We tried actually to reach out to whatever opposition there is with respect to this bill. We are happy to sit down and address any legitimate concerns. But at this point, this is long overdue. We are into the hurricane season now, about a month and a half into it. Our predictors have been pretty accurate in these past years, and they are suggesting we are going to have a very significant number of named storms and maybe as many as 10 projected full-blown hurricanes this year, with 13 to 17 named storms. Last year, they hit the number of named storms and hurricanes, but we were very lucky; they didn't blow into the shore and we didn't get hit. Obviously, we cannot sit around and be lucky all the time. We cannot afford another Katrina-like response. There are specific actions this legislation empowers the SBA to do to take steps proactively, to be in a position to address the concerns of small businesses rapidly. In addition, this bill helps private lenders get in early on and be immediately on the scene and assist in the process of providing those loans. So it streamlines that process. I wish to comment on Senator Landrieu's reference to that cleaning place we visited in East New Orleans. We made arrangements to go down and see that place because we knew it needed help. We had talked with the CEO before going there. About a week and a half later, when we got there, we went into this cleaning facility, which had been completely flooded, as the Senator said. They cleaned it out themselves. They worked diligently to get the equipment up and working, what they could. Much of it was ruined and was going to have to be disposed of. But these folks were working this place. Since they were dependent on the services of hotels and others for the work they did, they were at the time mostly doing the hospitals that had reopened, and that was it. But the CEO was so despairing in the span of that week and a half or so between our making the appointment and getting there that when we arrived, the CEO had left with his family, taken off; that was it, he had enough, and left in charge was one of the workers who was the ``acting CEO'' who was desperately trying to hold onto this business. When people are working like that and run into that kind of desperation, we have to be able to look them in the eye and say we have done everything possible. We put in place the mechanisms they pay for and that they have a right to expect will be there to assist in that kind of an emergency. That is what we are trying to do here, in a bipartisan way, to make certain we don't lose CEOs, lose jobs, lose workers, and lose hope as a consequence of our inaction in the Senate. So I hope we are going to be able to come back to this in short order. As I say, I think we have worked in good faith with every legitimate question that has been raised with respect to this legislation. We will happily sit down if another Senator still has a concern, but we certainly will not tolerate--and at some point I hope the leader will allow us to take the time in the Senate to continue on the floor with this legislation. There is one Senator who is opposing it, without any rationale whatsoever.

Mr. KERRY. I will yield to the Senator.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. As I said previously, she has been tireless on this. Louisiana has been lucky to have her intervention every step of the way. The billions of dollars that have gone down there is a consequence of the hard work she has done. Let me summarize what is being obstructed. First, expedited assistance from the SBA to small businesses injured by a disaster; second, private disaster loans. Private disaster loans. The ability of private-sector lenders to become involved in the process quickly, extending credit to the folks who need it as a consequence of that disaster, which, incidentally, can only occur when the President of the United States has legitimately declared a disaster; third, improvements to the existing program; why we wouldn't want to improve the existing program after we saw how it was incapable of meeting the problems of Katrina is beyond me. That is what we are doing here in a complete and total bipartisan, unanimous committee vote that suggests these improvements are important and will make a difference; improved agency coordination in marketing. These are the things that make a difference. When you can get the bureaucracy out of the way, when you can streamline, you are getting better production for the taxpayers' dollars, and that is exactly what we are doing; improved planning and oversight and disaster assistance staffing, necessary to be able to deliver the services because we didn't have sufficient personnel to be able to process the loan requests that came in. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Small Business Administrator, Steve Preston.

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

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, on behalf of the leadership, I do object.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I join with the senior Senator from Wyoming in congratulating the new Senator, the junior Senator, for his comments. All of us miss Senator Thomas. I had the occasion to work with him on committee. He was a very fair, decent person and really looked for the center ground here and tried to make things happen. I certainly hope his successor will follow in that good tradition. We thank him for his comments. Mr. President, I listened, as we all have, to portions of the debate up until now, and it struck me--particularly, I listened to the Senator from Minnesota who was speaking prior to the vote we just had. He made a lot of points that I think most of us would agree with, which is one of the problems with this debate--that Senators on the other side are setting up a lot of straw men and then knocking them down, talking about the strategic interests we have in the region, but then drawing a quick, and in my judgment, inappropriate conclusion that the change in strategy being proposed in the amendment we are debating is somehow going to play into the negative side of those particular strategic interests. For instance, we have heard again and again how al-Qaida is the central focus, and how if we were to start withdrawing our troops, Iraq is going to be taken over by al-Qaida and America's interests will be hurt. Well, that conclusion is, first, speculative and, secondly, erroneous even in speculation. Why do I say that? Because al-Qaida was not in Iraq until we invaded it. Al-Qaida was not the threat it is today in Iraq until we made a series of errors, which are compounding now with the strategy we are pursuing. The fact is our presence has been used by al-Qaida as an organizing tool, a recruitment tool, and it has been easier for al-Qaida to play Sunni and Shia off against each other because of our presence than it would be absent it. The experience in al-Anbar Province recently underscores the point we are making on our side of the aisle, which is that once the sheiks, the chiefs, in al-Anbar made the political decision that they were going to take on al-Qaida and actually stand up for their independence, they began to drive al-Qaida out of al-Anbar. Most of the Iraqis I have talked to in the course of the visits I have made there have indicated to me--I haven't met one Iraqi, Sunni, Shia, or Kurd, or various factions within Shia or Sunni, who believes that al-Qaida is a long-term threat in Iraq. Why? Because they don't want al-Qaida in Iraq and because, ultimately, if we are not there acting as the magnet and cohesive glue of al-Qaida's organizational efforts, and if we don't make al-Qaida in fact important to the ability of the militias or insurgents, Sunni and Shia, to use al-Qaida as a convenient tool to target American forces, or even to target civilians of the other sect, the minute that dynamic changes, then their need for al- Qaida changes. That is a fundamental sort of reality that has escaped a large part of this debate. Al-Qaida is not able to survive, in my judgment, in the long run because of this nationalism, as well as fundamental commitment by each of those people to their own regions and interests that are indigenous to Iraq itself. I think foreign jihadists are going to have a hard time in the long run under those circumstances. Moreover, to talk about the strength of al-Qaida right now as the threat to the United States in Iraq is to ignore the National Intelligence Estimate that has recently been read--some of the public accounts--in the news media. Those of us who have had briefings, and some of us who have spent time pursuing this issue, understand that al-Qaida is reconstituting. They are as strong today as they were on 9/11. That is the latest estimate. That fact totally contradicts the main message of the President and his administration--that we have to be over there to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here. The ``here'' is broadening all around the world. If that were true, then what is going on with the Secretary of Homeland Security when he tells us that his gut is telling him that we are likely to have another attack now. It seems to me the chatter we are hearing reflected in the reports from the intelligence briefings we are getting is the same kind of chatter I heard from George Tenet in July of 2001, when he told us in room 407 that he was absolutely confident there was going to be an attack, they just could not tell us where. I might add that in the face of that confidence about the attack and the lack of ability to tell us where, the President took the longest vacation in history, and there were no briefings and nothing happened until September, when the attack of 9/11 took place. It is a matter of record, when we measure what the administration is saying today, what will happen and the challenge to us; you have to measure it against the record. This is not an administration that has been correct, conceivably, about anything, but certainly about almost everything with respect to Iraq. So with each step that has been made, whether it was the early steps made by Paul Bremer, or subsequent steps made with respect to the disbursement of funds, or the promises of a transition to democracy, and so forth, not one expectation has been met. Not one basic political transformation that is essential to resolving this has taken place. We are in the fifth year, 5 years into it, and the administration says wait another 6 weeks until September before you do this because then we will know what we don't know after 5 years; we will know what we don't know after Senator after Senator has made trips to Iraq and spoken privately with generals, colonels, majors, all the way down the ranks into the noncommissioned officers and those going out on patrols; we have heard from them. Let me say one thing quickly about what is not happening there. This is also profoundly about those troops. There is no question on either side of the aisle about the respect we have for the quality of the service that American troops are providing our country--no question at all. These are the best trained, most capable and dedicated people I have ever seen. One of my interns is serving over there now. He was an intern a couple years ago. We get regular e-mails from him. He writes us about the losses in his unit. He writes us about the patrols he is going out on. He sends us photographs. We sort of feel in our office like family with his unit. He is First Cavalry, and we are proud of his service and of the service of all of those men and women. They are-- most of them--dedicated to the mission. There is not a lot of griping that we hear, and there is a tremendous pride of service. It is wonderful to see. The bottom line is they deserve missions that make sense. They deserve an overall policy that is equal to the sacrifice and the commitment they show on a daily basis. I am not a Vietnam veteran who believes everything that happened or comes out of that particular period is governing for what happens now, obviously. But there are certain lessons. If you don't learn lessons of history, as we have read and know, you are doomed to repeat the mistakes you make. Secretary Colin Powell, who was very influential in my own decision to give the President authority to have this big stick of the potential use of force, told me at length in a conversation that I had prior to voting how he thought it was important to apply the lessons of Vietnam to what we may or may not do in Iraq. That was part of the Powell doctrine about the use of overwhelming force and the commitment to know that you are going to do for the troops what the troops have been willing to do for you and their country, and that you are going to go through the diplomatic process and build up the kind of support we never had in the course of the war he served in and I and others served in. I particularly remember the difficulties we faced on the ground in Vietnam, trying to distinguish between friend and foe, going into a village in the night and seeing people with ID cards that looked the same as everybody else's, and names that were misspelled, and our lists didn't work and they were misspelled. You tried to figure out who was who. It was chaotic. So it is in Iraq, where they go out and they have an interpreter, and you try to interpret, which is difficult anyway, and there is a huge cultural gulf, an enormous difficulty within the tribal context and cultural context to try to penetrate and figure things out. Our troops are doing an amazing job with the mission itself, but we are struggling with that. This mission is as flawed as the mission was years ago. You send troops out to find IEDs--the hard way. You are driving down a road and you go through a community and, kaboom, there is an explosion. You get your wounded out and you turn around and you look at each other and say what did we accomplish? What did we get out of that? Did we secure any territory? Did we in fact make the community more secure? The greater likelihood is that the people who were hiding in some house, or the people who blew up that IED are sitting there congratulating themselves, saying we took out another 6 or 10 soldiers, and the headlines are there and that is what they want. Every time we go out and do that, we add to the fragility of the community and the chaos, in the sense of the entire stake. We all know that military mission is not going to reduce the long-term violence, which is being driven by the political stakes that both sides--or all sides, as there are a bunch of entities vying for power here--but all of them are playing us off against those interests. That is what is going on here. So how many times do we have to listen to generals, particularly, but also to even the President, or the Vice President, or the Secretary of State, or our colleagues say to us there is no military solution? If there is no military solution, then what are the troops accomplishing in these proactive forays out into the community where they ``show the flag'' and show a presence? For a moment, the insurgents may melt into the background but, believe me, the minute those guys have disappeared--and there are not enough of them in Iraq, and there won't be, because we understand the dynamics, to secure all of the communities--the minute they disappear, the currency of daily life in the indigenous community takes over. That is the nature of the beast. That is what an insurgent guerilla-type effort is about, which is why the initial flaw of never committing enough troops to guarantee you can do the job remains so critical to where we are today. Now, the fact is that the young men and women who are being sent out on those missions have no more hope today than they did yesterday, or the week before, or a year ago. They won't have any more hope in September than they do right now when we are here on the floor with the potential of this vote. They have no more potential of resolving the fundamentals of what is causing those IEDs to be exploded. The fact is that IEDs are being exploded for one most significant reason, which we need to focus on in the context of this debate: because there are factions within the Sunni and Shia who are vying for power. As long as you have this open-ended presence of Americans, we remain the target and they remain committed to use us to foster the insecurity and fear that allows them to continue to maneuver among each other. Unless you change that dynamic, what happens here by continuing this policy, which is what our colleagues on the other side are prepared to do--at least through September, which raises a significant issue that in a moment I will come back to--but if you continue it, you are guaranteeing that those young men and women will continue to go out in the same posture they are going out today, without any resolution whatsoever of the fundamental political issues. Now, I don't think that is very smart. It is plain not smart. Most Americans today get that. I heard the Senator from Minnesota and others come to the floor and say: What is driving this? Why now? Why are we doing this now, having this debate when we know that in September someone is going to make a report? Well, I think the reverse is the question: Why are you waiting until September when you know what is happening today and you know the dynamic hasn't changed? Why do you send those troops out day after day on a mission you know cannot accomplish the goal and put them at risk without a mission that is achievable? Why do you sit here and say that somehow in September there is going to be a report that will change the dynamic, when we know not one benchmark has yet been met and you are talking about 6 weeks from now and we are losing 100 troops a month? What do you say to those families of the 100 who may be lost over the course of the next month: Gee, we were waiting for a report, even though we knew basically what the report would say. I don't think there is a colleague on the other side who doesn't hope the White House is going to start trying to pull back some troops in September. We have talked to generals and we have had Senators over there in the last weeks, and they have been told in certain regions they believe some troops can come home. So we are going to sit here and wait for a policy that will continue to put young soldiers at risk for a mission that is not going to change the fundamental dynamics. Let me speak to that for a moment, the question of changing the fundamental dynamics in this mission. The escalation of troops in Iraq was supposed to be the precursor to the willingness of the Iraqi politicians to have the ``cover of security'' to be able to make certain kinds of decisions. I have to tell you that I think that thinking is fundamentally flawed. I think it is the other way around. I think if you want the people in your country to believe there is going to be some security, the political leadership has to stand up and make decisions that indicate there is a willingness to put the fundamental stakes in place that help create that security. When we know we don't have enough troops there to secure every community, and you know there is this power struggle going on between these factions, you are not going to change those fundamentals by putting in a few troops here and a few there, melting down certain pockets of resistance that move, as they have, from Baghdad to Diyala, or Kirkuk, or to some other community, and you simply move the violence and the terror continues. The politics has to change. There has been no indication whatsoever of the ability or willingness of Prime Minister Maliki, or the others who make up this Government, to make those fundamental decisions. What are we talking about? We are talking about an oil law. Is it that hard to sit down and decide how the revenues of the oil will be divided--by population, by community, by presence, by need? It hasn't happened. We have been promised month after month, oh, it is just around the corner, just about to happen. And it doesn't happen. I have sat with some folks over there who have indicated to me that it is, in fact, the open-endedness of the presence of the United States that relieves the pressure. I have even heard that from some of our top U.S. diplomats who have been charged with the effort to negotiate, and they happily and gladly use the pressure of the Congress as a stick to try to leverage some of the transition we want. But frankly, I have also heard them say that when the President and the administration stand up and say: We are there, don't worry about us, we are going to keep on doing this, they just back off because they don't think they have to listen to the Congress and they know they have this open-ended ability to play their game. It is that simple. That is what we are trying to change. When I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle run through this list of red herrings, of straw men, it disappoints me, frankly, because we ought to have the real debate. I have heard colleagues over there come with a map and say: You have Saudi Arabia here and Lebanon here, Israel here, and you have all of these interests and Iran. Iran is growing in its influence. Well, Iran has loved our presence in Iraq. Iran has grown in its influence because of what we have been doing in Iraq. We have empowered Iran. In fact, Iran doesn't want an Iraq that is completely disintegrated for a lot of different reasons. There are fundamental and profound differences between Iran and Iraq in the end, not the least of which is that Iran is Persian and Iraq is Arab. That Arab/Persian line existed long before the United States went there. Believe me, when we are not there, it will continue to exist and play out in influence with respect to the region. You hear people say: This precipitous withdrawal. ``Precipitous'' is the favorite word of the other side. First, it is not a withdrawal; it is a redeployment. Yes, some troops come home, absolutely, as they ought to, because there are limits to what American troops are able to do in the middle of a civil war. I ask my colleagues, go read the authorization we sent those troops to Iraq with. There isn't one mention of what is going on there today. There isn't even one mention that is active today. The authority we gave the President to use to send the troops there was related to Saddam Hussein, to weapons of mass destruction, to a whole series of things, none of which are applicable--not al-Qaida, incidentally. This is a war which has completely morphed into what it is today, without congressional authorization. But for the fact that the troops are there, the Congress wouldn't send them there for what they are doing today. Just because you are there is the last reason to be sending young Americans out to continue to put their lives in harm's way. We hear this issue of precipitous. I guarantee you, in September, the President is going to start redeploying some troops. And well into next year, we all know we can't sustain the current level of deployment. Everybody knows that. Talk to the military; talk to the Pentagon. We can't sustain it. There is a looming, huge reality standing over the Senate which is the reality of the deployment schedule itself, that at the current levels of our Armed Forces, at the current rate of deployment, we are not able to sustain the numbers we have there well into next year without busting the Armed Forces completely. That doesn't seem to enter the debate, according to the other side. This isn't sustainable beyond next year. We don't even move most of the troops out until beyond that period of time. So there is a complete logic to the date that has been chosen. It is not arbitrary. It was not picked out of the air, and no poll has set what is happening here. In fact, if you followed the polls, you wouldn't be in Iraq at all. That is not what we are suggesting. We acknowledge that there are interests. Yes, there are interests in the region. Yes, there are interests we have with respect to our ally Israel. Yes, there are interests with respect to Lebanon. Yes, if we just up and walked away, al-Qaida would use that. But that is not what this debate is about or ought to be about. What we are talking about is, how do you best take the sacrifice and commitment of our troops and honor it with a policy that in fact can achieve what we want to achieve in the region? It is the judgment of many of us, including some Republicans, that we have reached a point where you best achieve what we need to try to achieve in Iraq by this fundamental change in what our troops are there to do. What we are doing is changing the mission from a mission where we are proactively going out into the community, into homes, proactively engaged in doing what the Iraqis ought to, after 5 years, be doing for themselves. The Prime Minister of Iraq himself has said that they are prepared to take over the security. The Prime Minister has said they don't need us there in the same way we are. The people of Iraq don't want us there in the numbers that we are there today. In fact, I think one of the things we ought to vote on in this authorization is whether there should be a plebiscite in Iraq. Let's ask the Iraqis in an open vote whether they want the United States to be there in the way we are there today. Let's do that. I am confident of what the outcome would be. The fact is, we are talking about how you get from here to there, which is where we all want to be, with a sufficient level of stability so that Iran cannot have increasing influence the way it does, that Iraqis will be able to stop going down this spiraling downward course of violence which is consuming their society. Most of the middle class of Iraq has now already moved out of Iraq. Much of the middle class is in Syria, Jordan, other communities. What has happened is, the very core that we relied on to achieve what we wanted to, because of the violence and because of the misjudgments, isn't there anymore. That even complicates matters more. I heard the Senator from Minnesota say the other day that this is not an open-ended commitment that we have today. I don't know how it is not open-ended unless, of course, he knows that General Petraeus is going to recommend that we bring some troops back in September because in the absence of that, it is open-ended. There is nothing that says to the Iraqis: Something is going to happen if you don't do X, Y, or Z. Last year, we heard Ambassador Khalilzad and then General Casey and General Abizaid say the Iraqis have about 6 months, and if they don't do the following things in the next 6 months, it is going to be really difficult. Guess what, Mr. President. We are a year beyond that now. We are 6 months beyond the 6 months. What happened? Nothing.

Mr. KERRY. For what purpose?

Mr. KERRY. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I agree with all but the last judgment that was made by the Senator. Any appropriate apolitical reading--and I am going over to read the full NIE, but I have read the public accounts of it and I have talked to some people about it. I would agree that, of course, we have done some hard work. Of course, it is more difficult to penetrate our country. Absolutely, one would hope. My God, after all the money we have spent, after the reorganization of Homeland Security, after what we have done at airports alone, let alone some of the efforts of the FBI and others with respect to foreign cooperation, of course, we have hardened. I don't question that. Have we done even as much as I and others want to do? The answer is no. We have a lot of undone work with respect to chemical plants and nuclear facilities and ports and communities. Frankly, I would have had every bit of our baggage x-rayed and inspected. We put passengers through this incredible rigmarole, but you can put a piece of baggage on an airplane that hasn't gone through it. That is absurd. Not to mention our ports and the question of port security. We had a vote here not so long ago to guarantee that we upgrade our port security even more so that the containers that come in by the millions are more secure. There is a lot we can do still. But, yes, we have hardened. I agree with that. Are we a tougher target today vis-a-vis al-Qaida than we were on September 11? Yes, we are a tougher target than we were on September 11. But that doesn't refute at all what has happened with respect to al-Qaida. Al-Qaida was on the run. We had 1,000 al-Qaida in the mountains of Tora Bora within months after invading Afghanistan, which I voted for and supported and completely believed was the right thing to do--go in and take them down. But I will tell you, I have heard from four star generals that we ran a risk-averse policy with respect to the effort to go after al-Qaida in Afghanistan. When we had them surrounded in the mountains of Tora Bora, we didn't pull the trigger on the 10th Mountain Division or the 1st Marines or on the 101st Airborne, all of which were in the locality. We didn't use them. We outsourced the job going after the biggest criminal in American history. We outsourced the job to Afghan warlords who 1 week earlier had been on the other side fighting against us. What happened, we all know. Al-Qaida escaped, went into the northwest Pakistan territories where they have been reorganizing now for 4 years. What that intelligence report does tell us is that they are reconstituted, and they are exporting their lessons learned in Iraq to Afghanistan now, which has become far more fragile, far more of a challenge, and they are exporting it to Europe. If you talk to the authorities in Europe--Germany, in particular, but some other countries--there is an increase. That is where the center of al-Qaida is today, according to many people in the intelligence community. It is growing. That threat is a threat not just to the United States but a threat globally. I continue to say--and I think the NIE is saying this to us--that al- Qaida as an entity is as strong today as it was on September 11. After almost $600 billion and over 4,000 lives and all of the turmoil we have created in Iraq because we are supposedly fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here, there is no way to escape the fact, the reality that al-Qaida is in a better position to do whatever it wants to do, wherever it may be, including trying to attack us, notwithstanding our hardening. It is a lot tougher to get into the United States today. It depends on where you come from. There are a lot fewer people from Middle Eastern and other Islamic connected countries who are getting visas to come into the United States. It is a lot tougher today. It should be; we understand that. The reality is that al-Qaida is a threat. But let's come back to Iraq, which is the key. Al-Qaida wasn't in Iraq. The focus of this war was in Afghanistan and in other places. We shifted it to Iraq. We have put far more resources and far more personnel into Iraq, and Afghanistan is getting worse. I have talked to people who spend every day of their lives focused on defense and security issues who are unbelievably concerned about what is happening in Afghanistan as opposed to concern about what is happening to Iraq in terms of the threat to the United States. I come back to the point I was making a moment ago, and that is that this remains open-ended fundamentally with respect to the demands on the Iraqis to live up to their obligations, whether they are the provincial elections or the constitutional challenges or the reconciliation process. I met with Prime Minister Maliki earlier in the year. We talked about the reconciliation process. He sat there and said: Yes, we are going to meet tomorrow and the next day, and we are very confident about what is going to happen with the reconciliation. We are working at it. I think the meeting was postponed. I think they held it a little later. They got together. Nothing happened. There has been no reconciliation. Everybody understands that we haven't been going forward with that. The question before the Senate, the real question is, Are we going to be able to vote on something that is as critical as this without the parliamentary intercession? Let's let the chips fall where they may. That is the way we have approached the Defense authorization bill historically. The other question behind that is the question of how do we best protect American interests in Iraq. There is a difference of opinion there. Many of us have come to believe that it is by setting a date for legitimate transformation of responsibility, that people's behavior will change. I have seen that historically. Essentially, to whatever degree one was able to try to give the Vietnamese an opportunity to be able to survive, it was because we transferred authority and responsibility. I remember that as long as the Americans were carrying the full weight out there doing whatever, nobody else felt they had to do any lifting. These politicians in Iraq are not going to make fully sort of preservational choices until they are faced with the reality that they have to. As long as the U.S. security blanket is there, it protects them from actually having to come to grips with those choices. It empowers them to be able to play out whatever power struggle is going on with respect to one sect versus another, one region against another. So they can sit there and say: Well, within the next months, these guys are going to get wiped out, and my interests will be different than they are today. We believe that you have to change those perceptions of interest and you have to change them now. In addition, there is nothing in this amendment that deprives the President or the Congress or the country of the ability to protect our interests in the region. Those interests, incidentally, we believe very deeply are being injured by the current policy. We are creating more terrorists. The CIA has told us that. We have even had reports that al- Qaida--the Osama bin Laden-al Zawahiri al-Qaida based in northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan--is using what is happening in Iraq as a recruitment tool, as a fundraising tool. It has become a magnet for jihadists. The way you deal with that is to be smarter than we are being today, which is diffuse the American presence, have surrogates legitimately doing what we are in the same interest. We ought to be demanding more of the surrounding communities but, frankly, they have lost confidence both in Maliki and this administration. The ability to do that is now much harder than it was. We in this amendment do not withdraw all the troops from Iraq. Some people don't like this amendment because of that. There are some in the country who think it should just be done tomorrow. That is not what happens here. There is nothing precipitous about it at all. It begins a process that most people in the Senate know is probably going to begin in September, but it begins it with a clarity that begins to change the dynamics on the ground so you begin to best leverage the political transformation that needs to take place. It does so in a way that leaves the President the discretion to be able to have troops necessary to complete the training of Iraqis. It leaves the President the discretion to have troops necessary to continue to prosecute al-Qaida. And it leaves the President the discretion to be able to have the troops necessary to protect American facilities and forces. Five years--going into the sixth year--of this war, that is a recipe for transforming America's presence there, for transforming Iraqi responsibility, and for achieving the political settlement that is absolutely unachievable as long as there is simply the kind of military commitment that has been on the table to now. To date, the administration has not shown anybody what their route is, what their path is, for the kind of political settlement that seems to escape them every time they make the promise. The fact is that the way the troops--I feel this as strongly as I feel anything. I remember personally, when I thought a policy was not working very well, how we wished that people were responding to the realities of what was going on on the ground, and that we wanted people in Washington to be more thoughtful and knowledgeable about what the dynamics were on the ground. I think the same is true of our troops over there, who are committed to achieving what they can, but who also--and I have talked to many of them--feel as though they are trying to put a square peg in a round hole, that they do not have the right tools and the right dynamic to be able to accomplish what needs to be done. So I say to my colleagues if you know what you are doing is not working, if you know what you are doing is counterproductive, if you know what you are doing is, in fact, working against your ability to most effectively prosecute the war on terror, if you know what you are doing is creating casualties out of missions that do not accomplish your ultimate goal--which is providing the security that allows the transformation of the politics; and there is no indication the politics are about to follow--if you know, in fact, you have strengthened one of the primary entities you are concerned about in the region--Iran--if you know you have lost ground with respect to Hamas and Hezbollah-- because you have been focused elsewhere and not leveraging what needs to be done there--if you know so many interests of your country are being set back, you ought to change your policy. You do not just change it on the military front. In the face of the advice of our own generals that there is no military solution, you have to change it on the political and diplomatic front. This amendment has a very significant, leveraged, diplomatic approach, where it requires a very significant effort, where it has been lacking. And believe me, I have gone over there enough and talked to enough people to understand the degree to which it is lacking. It is critical we leverage that kind of behavior. So I hope we are going to--in the debate, we ought to have a real debate. I have heard colleagues on the other side talk about a recipe for defeat. If we continue down the road we are going now, we are setting ourselves up to empower al-Qaida even more. If we continue down the road we are going now--without the political resolution, without legitimate leverage in the region that is more reasonable, and without the transfer of legitimate responsibility and accountability to the Iraqis--then we are going to have more American soldier casualties, we are going to stay in the same position we are in today, and a month from now, 2 months from now, 6 months from now, the judgments we are going to be called on to make will be exactly the same as they are today, only worse, because more time will have been spent, because opportunities will have been wasted, and because the opposition will have been empowered even further. That is what the choice is for all of us here. I hope we are going to have sort of a real debate. It is legitimate you might differ over whether a particular move is going to accomplish what you set out to do, but please do not debate something that is not on the floor. This is not a precipitous withdrawal. It does not abandon our interests. It addresses our interests in a different way. It redeploys our troops. It keeps a significant presence, not just there but in the region. We have troops in Bahrain. We have troops in the gulf. We have troops in other parts of that region, in Kuwait. The fact is, America has the ability to protect its interests vis-a-vis Iran. None of us wants to see chaos in the long term, but there is chaos that is growing on a daily basis, worse and worse, as a consequence of our presence. If we have not learned that lesson by now, then we have learned precious little at all. I hope we will have the real debate we deserve as we go forward. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, our Nation's children are our greatest resource. They represent the future of this country and we should do everything we can to foster their growth and ensure they lead happy and productive lives. That is why I am proud to cosponsor the Mentoring America's Children Act of 2007 which was introduced today by Senator Clinton. This important legislation highlights the significant impact mentoring can have on a child. Research has shown time and time again that mentoring is an important component to a child's development. Often these children come from broken homes or communities affected by violence. The relationship formed between a mentor and a child helps support their studies in school, their relationships with their families at home, and gives them the confidence they need to withstand the pressures they are faced with. Our children are confronted with much more than some of us even realize. By providing a mentor, parents and teachers have another line of defense in allowing our children to grow up in a safe nurturing environment. The consequences of letting young people grow up without a support system are dire. In 2006 America's law enforcement officers arrested approximately 250 teens an hour, and it's estimated that 900,000 of our children are victims of abuse and neglect. Studies show that most teens that use alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana do so before they are 14. This is unacceptable. We must do more to foster these children so they stay in school, keep clean and out of trouble. Mentoring can help improve the social and mental well being of a child so they can deal with the myriad of challenges they face. Massachusetts has many notable mentoring programs that have affected thousands of children's lives. Strong Women, Strong Girls is a program started by a Harvard graduate that matches local university women with girls in targeted communities to help create another generation of strong women through mentoring. The Boys and Girls Club has a long and storied history in my State as does the Big Brother Big Sister program. A study of Brother Big Sister showed that children that benefited from their program were 46 percent less likely to use drugs, 52 percent less likely to skip school and have fewer conflicts with their families. The Mentoring America's Children Act would help these programs and others like them across the country. It builds on the mentoring programs already put in place in the No Child Left Behind Act by ensuring that they are as effective as possible. The bill provides for additional training and technical resources as well as studies the efficacy of these various programs. More importantly, it widens the net of children that can be helped by mentors by focusing on children in the foster care system and those that live in communities with high suicide rates. We should be focusing our energies on helping the children most in need and providing them with mentors that can enrich their lives and help them succeed.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, our Nation's children are our greatest resource. They represent the future of this country and we should do everything we can to foster their growth and ensure they lead happy and productive lives. That is why I am proud to cosponsor the Mentoring America's Children Act of 2007 which was introduced today by Senator Clinton. This important legislation highlights the significant impact mentoring can have on a child. Research has shown time and time again that mentoring is an important component to a child's development. Often these children come from broken homes or communities affected by violence. The relationship formed between a mentor and a child helps support their studies in school, their relationships with their families at home, and gives them the confidence they need to withstand the pressures they are faced with. Our children are confronted with much more than some of us even realize. By providing a mentor, parents and teachers have another line of defense in allowing our children to grow up in a safe nurturing environment. The consequences of letting young people grow up without a support system are dire. In 2006 America's law enforcement officers arrested approximately 250 teens an hour, and it's estimated that 900,000 of our children are victims of abuse and neglect. Studies show that most teens that use alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana do so before they are 14. This is unacceptable. We must do more to foster these children so they stay in school, keep clean and out of trouble. Mentoring can help improve the social and mental well being of a child so they can deal with the myriad of challenges they face. Massachusetts has many notable mentoring programs that have affected thousands of children's lives. Strong Women, Strong Girls is a program started by a Harvard graduate that matches local university women with girls in targeted communities to help create another generation of strong women through mentoring. The Boys and Girls Club has a long and storied history in my State as does the Big Brother Big Sister program. A study of Brother Big Sister showed that children that benefited from their program were 46 percent less likely to use drugs, 52 percent less likely to skip school and have fewer conflicts with their families. The Mentoring America's Children Act would help these programs and others like them across the country. It builds on the mentoring programs already put in place in the No Child Left Behind Act by ensuring that they are as effective as possible. The bill provides for additional training and technical resources as well as studies the efficacy of these various programs. More importantly, it widens the net of children that can be helped by mentors by focusing on children in the foster care system and those that live in communities with high suicide rates. We should be focusing our energies on helping the children most in need and providing them with mentors that can enrich their lives and help them succeed.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. I would like to inform Members that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship will hold a hearing entitled ``Increasing Government Accountability and Ensuring Fairness in Small Business Contracting,'' on Wednesday, July 18, 2007, at 2:00 p.m. in room 428A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce today the Military Reservist and Veteran Small Business Reauthorization and Opportunity Act. As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I am gratified that I was able to work with Ranking Member Senator Snowe on behalf of the 25 million veterans currently in America, including over 1 million who have left military service since September 11, 2001. As the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the number of veterans, including service disabled veterans, will increase and reservists will continue to carry more of the burden then ever before. As veterans and reservists reenter civilian life, the small business programs provided by the Federal Government will become even more critical. I am serious about addressing the problems affecting veterans and reservists who wish or are already engaged in small business and this bill is another step forward in doing so. The Military Reservist and Veteran Small Business Reauthorization and Opportunity Act of 2007 reauthorizes the veteran programs in the Small Business Administration. Specifically, this legislation increases the funding authorization for the Office of Veteran Business Development from $2 million today to $2.5 million over three years. In light of the large numbers of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and increased responsibilities placed on this office by Executive Order 13360, it is high time that the Office of Veteran Business Development receive the funding levels that it needs. The bill also creates an Interagency Task Force to improve coordination between agencies in administrating veteran small business programs. One of the biggest complaints that our Committee heard at the ``Assessing Federal Small Business Assistance Programs for Veterans and Reservists'' hearing held on January 31st was that Federal agencies do not work together in reaching out to veterans and informing them about small business programs. This task force is an attempt to improve that. The task force is composed of representatives from Small Business Administration, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Labor, General Services Administration, Office of Management Budget and four veterans service organizations appointed by the President. The task force will focus on increasing veterans' small business success, including procurement and franchising opportunities, access to capital, and other types of business development assistance. This bill also permanently extends the SBA Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs. The committee was created to serve as an independent source of advice and policy recommendations to the SBA, the Congress, and the President. The veteran small business owners who serve on this committee provide a unique perspective which is sorely needed at this challenging time. Unfortunately, continuing uncertainty about the Committee's future has, at times, distracted the committee from focusing on its core function. Therefore, I have called for its permanent extension. It is clear to me that more needs to be done to address the issues facing veterans and reservists, and the role this committee plays will continue to be important. Additionally, I have taken a number of steps to better serve the reservists who are serving their country abroad while their businesses are suffering at home. Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has increased its reliance on the National Guard and reserves. This has intensified since September 11, 2001, and increased deployments are expected to continue. The affect of this increase on reservists and small businesses continues to remain of concern. A 2003 GAO report indicated that 41 percent of reservists lost income when mobilized. This had a higher effect on self-employed reservists, 55 percent of whom lost income. In 1999, I created the Military Reservist Economic Injury Disaster Loan, MREIDL, program to provide loans to small businesses that incur economic injury as a result of an essential employee being called to active duty. However, since 2002, fewer than 300 of these loans have been approved by the SBA, despite record numbers of reservists being called to active duty. It is clear that changes need to be made, so that reservists are informed about the availability of the MREIDL program and that the program better meets their needs. At the hearing on January 31, we heard suggestions for a number of changes which would improve the Military Reservist Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, and I have included those changes in this bill. They include increasing the application deadline for such a loan from 90 days to 1 year following the date of discharge; creating a predeployment loan approval process; and improved outreach and technical assistance. This bill also increases to $50,000 the amount SBA can disburse without requiring collateral under the MREIDL program. Reservist families have already sacrificed enough when a family member goes away to serve their country and when their business is harmed as a result. This loan program would allow reservist dependent businesses to access the capital they need to stay afloat without having to sacrifice beyond the service of the key employees. In order to give reservists time to repay the loans, the non-collaterized loan created in this bill would not accumulate interest or require payments for one year or until after the deployment ends, whichever is longer. While addressing the funding needs of reservists is essential, I also want to make sure that reservists receive the technical and management assistance they need to succeed. For that reason, this bill also includes the establishment of the Reservists Enterprise Transition and Sustainability Task Force. This grant program would allow Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers and veteran centers to compete for grants to create programs that help small businesses prepare for and cope with the mobilization of reservist- employees and owners. There are two more provisions which will help this Nation's service members. One section of the bill will require the SBA to give priority to MREIDL loans during loan processing. Another provision will give activated service members an extension of any SBA time limitations equal to the time spent on active duty. This will make it easier for service members to serve their country while continuing to meet their obligations at home. Lastly, this bill calls for two reports. One report will look at the needs of service-disabled veterans who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. As a result of the war on terror and improved medicine, we are seeing more service-disabled veterans than we have seen in decades. For some service-disabled veterans, entrepreneurship is the best or only way of achieving economic independence. Therefore, it is essential that we understand and take steps to address the needs of the service-disabled veteran entrepreneur or small business owner. This bill also calls for a study to investigate how to improve relations between reservists and their employers. In January, the Committee heard that recent changes by the Department of Defense to policies regulating the length and frequency of reservist deployments is harming the ability of reservists to find jobs and the ability of small business owners to continue hiring them. Witnesses testified about reservists being turned down or not considered for jobs because they are reservists. I have heard reservists talk about being pressured to leave the reserves if they would like to continue to advance at work. I have also heard the concerns of small business owners who want to support servicemembers; however, they cannot do so if it means the survival of their business. Understanding more about this issue is important and essential to making sure that policymakers can continue to support citizen soldiers and the small businesses that employ them across the Nation. Veterans possess great technical skills and valuable leadership experience, but they require financial resources and small business training to turn that potential into a viable enterprise. A recent report by the Small Business Administration stated that 22 percent of veterans plan to start or are starting a business when they leave the military. For service-disabled veterans, this number rises to 28 percent. This bill is another step forward in providing the necessary resources for veterans and reservists to succeed in starting or growing a small business. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce today the Military Reservist and Veteran Small Business Reauthorization and Opportunity Act. As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I am gratified that I was able to work with Ranking Member Senator Snowe on behalf of the 25 million veterans currently in America, including over 1 million who have left military service since September 11, 2001. As the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the number of veterans, including service disabled veterans, will increase and reservists will continue to carry more of the burden then ever before. As veterans and reservists reenter civilian life, the small business programs provided by the Federal Government will become even more critical. I am serious about addressing the problems affecting veterans and reservists who wish or are already engaged in small business and this bill is another step forward in doing so. The Military Reservist and Veteran Small Business Reauthorization and Opportunity Act of 2007 reauthorizes the veteran programs in the Small Business Administration. Specifically, this legislation increases the funding authorization for the Office of Veteran Business Development from $2 million today to $2.5 million over three years. In light of the large numbers of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and increased responsibilities placed on this office by Executive Order 13360, it is high time that the Office of Veteran Business Development receive the funding levels that it needs. The bill also creates an Interagency Task Force to improve coordination between agencies in administrating veteran small business programs. One of the biggest complaints that our Committee heard at the ``Assessing Federal Small Business Assistance Programs for Veterans and Reservists'' hearing held on January 31st was that Federal agencies do not work together in reaching out to veterans and informing them about small business programs. This task force is an attempt to improve that. The task force is composed of representatives from Small Business Administration, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Labor, General Services Administration, Office of Management Budget and four veterans service organizations appointed by the President. The task force will focus on increasing veterans' small business success, including procurement and franchising opportunities, access to capital, and other types of business development assistance. This bill also permanently extends the SBA Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs. The committee was created to serve as an independent source of advice and policy recommendations to the SBA, the Congress, and the President. The veteran small business owners who serve on this committee provide a unique perspective which is sorely needed at this challenging time. Unfortunately, continuing uncertainty about the Committee's future has, at times, distracted the committee from focusing on its core function. Therefore, I have called for its permanent extension. It is clear to me that more needs to be done to address the issues facing veterans and reservists, and the role this committee plays will continue to be important. Additionally, I have taken a number of steps to better serve the reservists who are serving their country abroad while their businesses are suffering at home. Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has increased its reliance on the National Guard and reserves. This has intensified since September 11, 2001, and increased deployments are expected to continue. The affect of this increase on reservists and small businesses continues to remain of concern. A 2003 GAO report indicated that 41 percent of reservists lost income when mobilized. This had a higher effect on self-employed reservists, 55 percent of whom lost income. In 1999, I created the Military Reservist Economic Injury Disaster Loan, MREIDL, program to provide loans to small businesses that incur economic injury as a result of an essential employee being called to active duty. However, since 2002, fewer than 300 of these loans have been approved by the SBA, despite record numbers of reservists being called to active duty. It is clear that changes need to be made, so that reservists are informed about the availability of the MREIDL program and that the program better meets their needs. At the hearing on January 31, we heard suggestions for a number of changes which would improve the Military Reservist Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, and I have included those changes in this bill. They include increasing the application deadline for such a loan from 90 days to 1 year following the date of discharge; creating a predeployment loan approval process; and improved outreach and technical assistance. This bill also increases to $50,000 the amount SBA can disburse without requiring collateral under the MREIDL program. Reservist families have already sacrificed enough when a family member goes away to serve their country and when their business is harmed as a result. This loan program would allow reservist dependent businesses to access the capital they need to stay afloat without having to sacrifice beyond the service of the key employees. In order to give reservists time to repay the loans, the non-collaterized loan created in this bill would not accumulate interest or require payments for one year or until after the deployment ends, whichever is longer. While addressing the funding needs of reservists is essential, I also want to make sure that reservists receive the technical and management assistance they need to succeed. For that reason, this bill also includes the establishment of the Reservists Enterprise Transition and Sustainability Task Force. This grant program would allow Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers and veteran centers to compete for grants to create programs that help small businesses prepare for and cope with the mobilization of reservist- employees and owners. There are two more provisions which will help this Nation's service members. One section of the bill will require the SBA to give priority to MREIDL loans during loan processing. Another provision will give activated service members an extension of any SBA time limitations equal to the time spent on active duty. This will make it easier for service members to serve their country while continuing to meet their obligations at home. Lastly, this bill calls for two reports. One report will look at the needs of service-disabled veterans who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. As a result of the war on terror and improved medicine, we are seeing more service-disabled veterans than we have seen in decades. For some service-disabled veterans, entrepreneurship is the best or only way of achieving economic independence. Therefore, it is essential that we understand and take steps to address the needs of the service-disabled veteran entrepreneur or small business owner. This bill also calls for a study to investigate how to improve relations between reservists and their employers. In January, the Committee heard that recent changes by the Department of Defense to policies regulating the length and frequency of reservist deployments is harming the ability of reservists to find jobs and the ability of small business owners to continue hiring them. Witnesses testified about reservists being turned down or not considered for jobs because they are reservists. I have heard reservists talk about being pressured to leave the reserves if they would like to continue to advance at work. I have also heard the concerns of small business owners who want to support servicemembers; however, they cannot do so if it means the survival of their business. Understanding more about this issue is important and essential to making sure that policymakers can continue to support citizen soldiers and the small businesses that employ them across the Nation. Veterans possess great technical skills and valuable leadership experience, but they require financial resources and small business training to turn that potential into a viable enterprise. A recent report by the Small Business Administration stated that 22 percent of veterans plan to start or are starting a business when they leave the military. For service-disabled veterans, this number rises to 28 percent. This bill is another step forward in providing the necessary resources for veterans and reservists to succeed in starting or growing a small business. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Reserving the right to object, I would not object, but it is my understanding we are trying to go back and forth. Is there a Republican who is lined up at this point? If not, I think the Senator from Arkansas is going to speak for about 10 minutes and if I could proceed after her.