John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, tomorrow--September 30, 2006--many of the SBA's programs and authorities expire. Our committee worked together to come up with a bipartisan package, a true give-and-take on ideas, including many reforms driven by needs identified in the response to the gulf hurricanes last year. That comprehensive small business reauthorization bill, S. 3778, is opposed by the administration, and is being blocked from consideration in the full Senate through various holds. We finished our work at the end of July, and the bill has been pending on the Senate calendar for consideration since August 2. The administration and other opponents have had 9 weeks to work out a compromise. But they don't want to. SBA has told the small business community that they don't want an SBA reauthorization bill this year; they only want to reauthorize their ability to cosponsor events with the private sector. In the absence of passing that legislation, which is a replay of our last reauthorization bill, S. 1375, that was obstructed, the agency is at the mercy of a continuing resolution, CR. Unfortunately, a continuing resolution doesn't extend all the authorities needed for the agency to operate. H.R. 6159 was put forward to catch some of the programs that would fall through the cracks. However, according to CRS and the Senate Legislative Counsel, as drafted, the bill still doesn't close the gaps. The gaps leave open the Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs, the New Markets Venture Capital Program, and the Program for Investment in Micro-entrepreneurs. There are disagreements over the interpretations of what needs to be authorized, and some of our colleagues have argued that even if there are disagreements on the interpretation of what programs are covered by H.R. 6159, we should move the bill anyway because we have a letter from SBA committing to cover those provisions considered ambiguous. Specifically, SBA gave Chairman Snowe a letter on September 27, 2006, committing to run the programs we are concerned about. Our colleagues argue that SBA would be bound by those written interpretations. However, I am sure my colleagues can understand why we might not feel comfortable relying on that letter given that on September 19, 8 days earlier, SBA sent a list to my staff regarding which programs are covered by a CR, those with ``hard sunset dates,'' and it contradicted the letter to our chairman. The contradictions raise valid concerns, and I am sorry that the Senate did not adopt the language that eliminates any vagueness. Neither CRS nor Legislative Counsel has an agenda with regard to SBA's reauthorization, so we prefer to go with their interpretations. What are the contradictions?: *The Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs, *The SBDC Drug-Free Workplace program, *The Pre- Disaster Mitigation program, In the e-mail, SBA said: Those marked with an * do not need authorization language in the CR to operate the core mission of the SBA on a short- term basis. Grants for the year have already been given out and other programs have the ability to operate without authorizing language or are not operating and/or do not have an appropriation. In the letter, SBA said these programs ``would not be covered by the CR and that [they] would cease to operate if H.R. 6159 were not enacted.'' Also, problematic is the date. The bill extends the programs through February 2, 2007, instead of November 17, consistent with the CR. Because the SBA has the cosponsorship authority, there is no incentive for the agency to come negotiate with us on the comprehensive reauthorization bill. We were given this bill last week, and told we had one hour to approve it. We tried, but our conversations, as referenced above, with CRS and Senate Legislative Counsel identified holes in the legislation. We asked Legislative Counsel to draft the corrections and told our colleagues that we were waiting for the draft. They moved forward without us. This take-it-or-leave-it approach is unnecessary. Let the record reflect that we have been willing to compromise all along and only asked that the language accomplish: extension of programs or authorities that would fall through the cracks based on discussions with CRS and Senate Legislative Counsel and a date change to keep folks working to pass, this 109th Congress, S. 3778, the Senate's bipartisan, comprehensive SBA Reauthorization Act. We did not include provisions outside those goals. It is disappointing that our goal was not shared. I am hopeful that the Veterans Committee will continue and that SBA will not pull resources from the New Markets Program or later argue that not addressing PRIME was a statement from the Senate that we didn't mean for it to be extended. That would be inaccurate, as reflected in S. 3778, where PRIME is moved to the Small Business Act and reauthorized.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, on May 17 of this year, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that contains a real solution to the immigration crisis in this country. S. 2611 was passed with strong bipartisan support. In a Congress that has been marred by partisan politics, the success of this bill--this truly bipartisan compromise-- was a breath of fresh air: an achievement to be proud of. What has happened now, however, is something to be ashamed of. Once again, politics has hijacked policy. Knowing they cannot go home without taking some action to address immigration, Republicans in Congress have decided that saving their seats is more important than securing the borders. You might wonder how we got here--when the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform back in May and the House passed an enforcement only bill in December 2005. Once again, the answer is politics. Rather than moving to conference to work out some sort of compromise on these bills, Republicans in the House traveled around the country holding 60 one-sided hearings under the guise of gathering evidence. This was not a good-faith effort to create effective policy. It was a stalling tactic used to run out the clock on comprehensive reform. That kind of political gamesmanship will not work on me. Everyone under the sun is for fencing on the border. A fence is an important part of comprehensive reform. I supported an amendment to the comprehensive reform bill that authorized 370 miles of triple-layered fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southwest border. And I supported $1.8 billion in funding for the construction of that fencing and 461 miles of vehicle barriers. I supported construction of this fence because I believe that it is a critical part of comprehensive immigration reform. But no one in a million years thinks this is the answer. No one in the world thinks Congress should pass this fig leaf and call it a day. If you address the reasons why immigrants come into our country--their ability to find work with a relatively small chance of getting caught-- as well as how they come in, then increased fencing makes much sense. Fencing alone simply cannot work. You don't have to take my word for it. Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a border State where much of the illegal border crossings occur, said this about the fence proposal: You show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder . . . That's the way the border works. Consider the words of the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. He said: Trying to gain operational control of the borders is impossible unless our enhanced enforcement efforts are coupled with a robust Temporary Guest Worker program and a means to entice those now working illegally out of the shadows into some type of legal status. . . . [E]ven a well- designed, generously funded enforcement regimen will not work if we don't change the immigration and labor laws that regulate how would-be workers can come to the United States. What he is saying is that only comprehensive immigration reform, such as S. 2661, will actually fix our immigration problem. And, you know what? His former boss, the President of the United States, would agree. Speaking in the Oval Office just days before the Senate passed S. 2611, the President said: An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive because all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none of them will be addressed at all. Current Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, also endorses comprehensive immigration reform: For [our] Secure Border initiative to be fully effective, Congress will need to change our immigration laws to address the simple laws of supply and demand that fuel most illegal migration and find mechanisms to bring legal workers into a regulated, legal Temporary Worker Program, while still preserving national security. Perhaps most importantly, the people on the ground in the front lines of the immigration struggle tell us that only comprehensive immigration reform can work. As Jeffrey Calhoon, deputy chief patrol agent for the Yuma sector of the Border Patrol said: We need a comprehensive immigration reform that provides additional resources for border security, establishes a robust interior enforcement program and creates a temporary worker program. A vote cast in favor of this fence--in the absence of comprehensive reform--is a vote cast in favor of a piecemeal approach that we know will fail, is a vote cast against comprehensive immigration reform. That is what this vote is about. As my friend Senator Specter, said, voting for the Secure Fence Act will undermine our chance to enact comprehensive reform. He should know. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Secretary of Homeland Security has not asked for the amount of fencing provided for in this bill. Although the bill does not authorize a specific amount of fencing, it does dictate exactly where the fencing should be put up. Some people believe the bill authorizes 730 miles of fencing, but Customs and Border Protection, CBP, however, estimates that it will require 849 miles of fencing to get the job done. We can't even estimate the amount of fencing based on funding levels because the bill contains no specific funding authorization. We do know, however, that it will be expensive. The Department of Homeland Security estimates the cost of a single layer of fencing to be $4.4 million a mile and vehicle barriers to $2.2 million. Because double fencing requires extra money for building all-weather roads, the total estimate from the Department of Homeland Security is $6.6 billion, $9 million a mile. There are many other things that we could do with that kind of money. We could hire, train, and equip more Border Patrol agents. We could purchase more detention beds to end our unfortunate ``catch and release'' policy. We could place more port-of-entry inspectors and canine detection teams in the field. We could invest in new technologies for border protection, or in an interoperable communications system for the Nation's first responders. But no, Congress would rather punt on the tough decisions and dodge the real debate. What a disgrace. I oppose this failure of the Senate to do its job and live up to its responsibility. I sincerely hope that this vote does not signify the beginning of the end of comprehensive immigration reform as I fear it does.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. If I could correct that, my time is not supposed to come from the Senator from West Virginia. I believe I have time already allocated, so it would be separate.

Mr. KERRY. Yes.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the last week before we leave for a long recess has always been extraordinarily busy--particularly when an election is only 42 days away. But, sadly, this has become too much the way the Senate does business and often its most important business. Today, the leadership of the Senate has decided that legislation that will directly impact America's moral authority in the world merits only a few hours of debate. What is at stake is the authority that is essential to winning and to waging a legitimate and effective war on terror, and also one that is critical to the safety of American troops who may be captured. If, in a few hours, we squander that moral authority, blur lines that for decades have been absolute, then no speech, no rhetoric, and no promise can restore it. Four years ago, we were in a similar situation. An Iraq war resolution was rushed through the Senate because of election-year politics--a political calendar, not a statesman's calendar. And 4 years later, the price we are paying is clear for saying to a President and an administration that we would trust them. Today, we face a different choice--to prevent an irreversible mistake, not to correct one. It is to stand and be counted so that election-year politics do not further compromise our moral authority and the safety of our troops. Every Senator must ask him or herself: Does the bill before us treat America's authority as a precious national asset that does not limit our power but magnifies our influence in the world? Does it make clear that the U.S. Government recognizes beyond any doubt that the protections of the Geneva Conventions have to be applied to prisoners in order to comply with the law, restore our moral authority, and best protect American troops? Does it make clear that the United States of America does not engage in torture, period? Despite protests to the contrary, I believe the answer is clearly no. I wish it were not so. I wish this compromise actually protected the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions. But it does not. In fact, I regret to say, despite the words and the protests to the contrary, this bill permits torture. This bill gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. It gives confusing definitions of ``torture'' and ``cruel and inhuman treatment'' that are inconsistent with the Detainee Treatment Act, which we passed 1 year ago, and inconsistent with the Army Field Manual. It provides exceptions for pain and suffering ``incidental to lawful sanctions,'' but it does not tell us what the lawful sanctions are. So what are we voting for with this bill? We are voting to give the President the power to interpret the Geneva Conventions. We are voting to allow pain and suffering incident to some undefined lawful sanctions. This bill gives an administration that lobbied for torture exactly what it wanted. And the administration has been telling people it gives them what they wanted. The only guarantee we have that these provisions will prohibit torture is the word of the President. Well, I wish I could say the word of the President were enough on an issue as fundamental as torture. But we have been down this road. The administration said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida, that they would exhaust diplomacy before they went to war, that the insurgency was in its last throes. None of these statements were true. The President said he agreed with Senator McCain's antitorture provisions in the Detainee Treatment Act. Yet he issued a signing statement reserving the right to ignore them. Are we supposed to trust that word? He says flatly that ``The United States does not torture,'' but then he tries to push the Congress into allowing him to do exactly that. And even here he has promised to submit his interpretations of the Geneva Conventions to the Federal Register. Yet his Press Secretary announced that the administration may not need to comply with that requirement. And we are supposed to trust that? Obviously, another significant problem with this bill is the unconstitutional limitation of the writ of habeas corpus. It is extraordinary to me that in 2 hours, and a few minutes of a vote, the Senate has done away with something as specific as habeas corpus, of which the Constitution says: ``[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.'' Well, we are not in a rebellion, nor are we being invaded. Thus, we do not have the constitutional power to suspend the writ. And I believe the Court will ultimately find it unconstitutional. The United States needs to retain its moral authority to win the war on terror. We all want to win it. We all want to stop terrorist attacks. But we need to do it keeping faith with our values and the Constitution of the United States. Mr. President, a veteran of the Iraq War whom I know, Paul Rieckhoff, wrote something the other day that every Senator ought to think about as they wrestle with this bill. He wrote that he was taught at Fort Benning, GA, about the importance of the Geneva Conventions. He didn't know what it meant until he arrived in Baghdad. Paul wrote: America's moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets of Iraq. It saved innumerable lives, encouraged cooperation with our allies and deterred Iraqis from joining the growing insurgency. But those days are over. America's moral standing has eroded, thanks to its flawed rationale for war and scandals like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Haditha. The last thing we can afford now is to leave Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions open to reinterpretation, as President Bush proposed to do and can still do under the compromise bill that emerged last week. We each need to ask ourselves, in the rush to find a ``compromise'' we can all embrace, are we strengthening America's moral authority or eroding it? Are we on the sides of the thousands of Paul Rieckhoffs in uniform today, or are we making their mission harder and even worse, putting them in greater danger if they are captured? Paul writes eloquently: If America continues to erode the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, we will cede the ground upon which to prosecute dictators and warlords. We will also become unable to protect our troops if they are perceived as being no more bound by the rule of law than dictators and warlords themselves. The question facing America is not whether to continue fighting our enemies in Iraq and beyond but how to do it best. My soldiers and I learned the hard way that policy at the point of a gun cannot, by itself, create democracy. The success of America's fight against terrorism depends more on the strength of its moral integrity than on troop numbers in Iraq or the flexibility of interrogation options. I wish I could say this compromise serves America's moral mission and protects our troops, but it doesn't. No eloquence we can bring to this debate can change what this bill fails to do. We have been told in press reports that it is a great compromise between the White House and my good friends, Senator McCain, Senator Warner, and Senator Graham. We have been told that it protects the ``integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions.'' I wish that what we are being told is true. It is not. Nothing in the language of the bill supports these claims. Let me be clear about something--something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. This bill gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. This bill gives an administration that lobbied for torture exactly what it wanted. We are supposed to believe that there is an effective check on this expanse of Presidential power with the requirement that the President's interpretations be published in the Federal Register. We shouldn't kid ourselves. Let's assume the President publishes his interpretation of permissible acts under the Geneva Convention. The interpretation, like the language in this bill, is vague and inconclusive. A concerned Senator or Congresswoman calls for oversight. Unless he or she is in the majority at the time, there won't be a hearing. Let's assume they are in the majority and get a hearing. Do we really think a bill will get through both houses of Congress? A bill that directly contradicts a Presidential interpretation of a matter of national security? My guess is that it won't happen, but maybe it will. Assume it does. The bill has no effect until the President actually signs it. So, unless the President chooses to reverse himself, all the power remains in the President's hands. And all the while, America's moral authority is in tatters, American troops are in greater jeopardy, and the war on terror is set back. Could the President's power grab be controlled by the courts? After all, it was the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan that invalidated the President's last attempt to consolidate power and establish his own military tribunal system. The problem now is that the bill strips the courts the power to hear such a case when it says ``no person may invoke the Geneva Conventions . . . in any habeas or civil action.'' What are we left with? Unfettered Presidential power to interpret what--other than the statutorily proscribed ``grave violations''-- violates the Geneva Conventions. No wonder the President was so confident that his CIA program could continue as is. He gets to keep setting the rules--rules his administration have spent years now trying to blur. Presidential discretion is not the only problem. The definitions of what constitute ``grave breaches'' of Article 3 are murky. Even worse, they are not consistent with either the Detainee Treatment Act or the recently revised Army Field Manual. These documents prohibit ``cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment'' defined as ``the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.'' The definition is supported by an extensive body of case law evaluating what treatment is required by our constitutional standards of ``dignity, civilization, humanity, decency, and fundamental fairness.'' And, I think quite tellingly, it is substantially similar to the definition that my good friend, Senator McCain, chose to include in his bill. And there is simply no reason why the standard adopted by the Army Field Manual and the Detainee Treatment Act, which this Congress has already approved, should not apply for all interrogations in all circumstances. In the bill before us, however, there is no reference to any constitutional standards. The prohibition of degrading conduct has been dropped. And, there are caveats allowing pain and suffering ``incidental to lawful sanctions.'' Nowhere does it tell us what ``lawful sanctions'' are. So, what are we voting for with this bill? We are voting to give the President the power to interpret the Geneva Conventions. We are voting to allow pain and suffering incident to some undefined lawful sanctions. The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. The word of the President. I wish I could say the words of the President were enough on an issue as fundamental as torture. Fifty years ago, President Kennedy sent his Secretary of State abroad on a crisis mission--to prove to our allies that Soviet missiles were being held in Cuba. The Secretary of State brought photos of the missiles. As he prepared to take them from his briefcase, our ally, a foreign head of state said, simply, ``put them away. The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.'' We each wish we lived in times like those--perilous times, but times when America's moral authority, our credibility, were unquestioned, unchallenged. But the word of the President today is questioned. This administration said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, that they would exhaust diplomacy before we went to war, that the insurgency was in its last throes. None of these statements were true, and now we find our troops in the crossfire of civil war in Iraq with no end in sight. They keep saying the war in Iraq is making us safer, but our own intelligence agencies say it is actually fanning the flames of jihad, creating a whole new generation of terrorists and putting our country at greater risk of terrorist attack. It is no wonder then that we are hesitant to blindly accept the word of the President on this question today. The President said he agreed with Senator McCain's antitorture provisions in the Detainee Treatment Act. Yet, he issued a signing statement reserving the right to ignore them. He says flatly that ``The United States does not torture''--and then tries to bully Congress into allowing him to do exactly that. And even here, he has promised to submit his interpretations of the Geneva Convention to the Federal Register--yet his Press Secretary announced that the administration may not need to comply with that requirement. We have seen the consequences of simply accepting the word of this administration. No, the Senate cannot just accept the word of this administration that they will not engage in torture given the way in which everything they have already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror. When the President says the United States doesn't torture, there has to be no doubt about it. And when his words are unclear, Congress must step in to hold him accountable. The administration will use fear to try and bludgeon anyone who disagrees with them. Just as they pretended Iraq is the central front in the war on terror even as their intelligence agencies told them their policy made terrorism worse, they will pretend America needs to squander its moral authority to win the war on terror. They are wrong, profoundly wrong. The President's experts have told him that not only does torture put our troops at risk and undermine our moral authority, but torture does not work. As LTG John Kimmons, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, put it: No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that. Any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility. And additionally, it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. We can't afford to go there. Neither justice nor good intelligence comes at the hands of torture. In fact, both depend on the rule of law. It would be wrong--tragically wrong--to authorize the President to require our sons and daughters to use torture for something that won't even work. Another significant problem with this bill is the unconstitutional elimination of the writ of habeas corpus. No less a conservative than Ken Starr got it right: Congress should act cautiously to strike a balance between the need to detain enemy combatants during the present conflict and the need to honor the historic privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Ken Starr says, ``Congress should act cautiously.'' How cautiously are we acting when we eliminate any right to challenge an enemy combatant's indefinite detention? When we eliminate habeas corpus rights for aliens detained inside or outside the United States so long as the Government believes they are enemy combatants? When we not only do this for future cases but apply it to hundreds of cases currently making their way through our court system? The Constitution is very specific when it comes to habeas corpus. It says, ``[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.'' We are not in a case of rebellion, nor are we being invaded. Thus, we really don't have the constitutional power to suspend the Great Writ. And, even if we did, the Constitution allows only for the writ to be suspended. It does not allow the writ to be permanently taken away. Yet, this is exactly what the bill does. It takes the writ away--forever--from anyone the administration determines is an ``enemy combatant,'' even if they are lawfully on U.S. soil and otherwise entitled to full constitutional protections, and even if they have absolutely no other recourse. Think of what this means. This bill is giving the administration the power to pick up any non-U.S. citizen inside or outside of the United States, determine in their sole and unreviewable discretion that he is an unlawful combatant, and hold him in jail--be it Guantanamo Bay or a secret CIA prison--indefinitely. Once the Combatant Status Review Tribunal determines that person is an enemy combatant, that is the end of the story--even if the determination is based on evidence that even a military commission would not be allowed to consider because it is so unreliable. That person would never get the chance to challenge his detention; to prove that he is not, in fact, an enemy combatant. We are not talking about whether detainees can file a habeas suit because they don't have access to the Internet or cable television. We are talking about something much more fundamental: whether people can be locked up forever without even getting the chance to prove that the Government was wrong in detaining them. Allow this to become the policy of the United States and just imagine the difficulty our law enforcement and our Government will have arranging the release of an American citizen the next time our citizens are detained in other countries. Mr. President, we all want to stop terrorist attacks. We all want to effectively gather as much intelligence as humanly possible. We all want to bring those who do attack us to justice. But, we weaken--not strengthen--our ability to do that when we undermine our own Constitution; when we throw away our system of checks and balances; when we hold detainees indefinitely without trial by destroying the writ of habeas corpus; and when we permit torture. We endanger our moral authority at our great peril. I oppose this legislation because it will make us less safe and less secure. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Smith, Conrad, and Bingaman in introducing the Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006. This legislation comes on the heels of the passage of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which makes improvements to the defined benefit pension plan system. The legislation that we are introducing today builds upon that legislation and focuses on defined contribution plans. Our pension system has shifted away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We should make it easier for employers to offer defined contribution plans and for individuals to participate in these plans. At a time when we have a negative savings rate that is the lowest since the Great Depression, we should provide appropriate incentives to help individuals save for retirement. In an effort to achieve this, the Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006 focuses on increasing retirement savings, the preservation of income, equity in divorce, improving financial literacy, and encouraging small businesses to enter and remain in the employer retirement plan system. This legislation increases savings by allowing employees to contribute a portion of their paycheck to an individual retirement account (IRA) if their employer does not offer a pension plan. Automatic IRAs will help the 71 million workers that do not have employer-sponsored plans. It is a low-cost, sensible solution that provides a stepping stone toward employer-sponsored retirement plans. More workers are likely to contribute to an IRA if the contribution is deducted from their payroll. Automatic IRAs will help combat the inertia that is a factor in our low savings rate. The bill also provides a tax credit to help small businesses with the cost of implementation. Women are often placed at a disadvantage in our retirement system because they cycle in and out of the work force. The Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006 addresses this issue by requiring employers that offer defined contribution plans to cover part-time employees that meet specific requirements. Pension coverage needs to improve, particularly for small businesses. In 2004, only 26 percent of workers at firms with fewer than 25 employees participated in pension plans. Progress has been made on providing coverage to small businesses. Currently, more than 19 million workers are covered by small business retirement plans, but more than 36 million Americans work for firms with less than 25 employees. The Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006 provides a start-up credit for new small business retirement contributions. In addition, it removes rules that discourage small employers from adopting deferral only plans.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Minority Entrepreneurship Development Act of 2006. It's especially appropriate that this bill be introduced during Hispanic Heritage Month. Millions of Latino Americans during this time reflect on their place in this country and the positive contributions they have made here. One area where we can be certain that the Hispanic community has made a significant contribution is in business. The principled and strong leadership of Hispanic Americans can be seen in corporate boards and sole proprietorships alike. As a Nation, we must support the development of the next generation of business leaders within the Latino community. I believe that this legislation will help in that effort. This legislation is aimed at giving potential and burgeoning entrepreneurs the tools they need to realize their goals. Whether those goals include creating a small business that will employ people from the community or taking a small business and making it into a major enterprise, it's imperative that we develop the tools to help minority small business owners succeed. I want to take a moment and tell you why it's so important to expand the numbers of entrepreneurs in the minority community. As the Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I have received firsthand testimony and countless reports documenting the positive economic impact that occurs when we foster entrepreneurship in underserved communities. There are signs of significant economic returns when minority businesses are created and are able to grow in size and capacity. Between 1987 and 1997, revenue from minority owned firms rose by 22.5 percent, an increase equivalent to an annual growth rate of 10 percent. Employment opportunities within minority owned firms increased by 23 percent during that same period. There is a clear correlation between the growth of minority owned firms and the economic viability of the minority community. Although, these economic numbers tell a significant part of the story, they don't tell the whole story of what these firms mean to the minority communities they serve and represent. Many of these business leaders are first generation immigrants; many are first generation business owners and many represent, for those in their communities, what hard work, determination and patience can do. We must encourage those kinds of values in our minority communities and, quite frankly, in our nation as a whole. For generations, millions have come to our shores in search of a better life. Millions of others were brought here by force and for years were not given a voice in how their lives would turn out. But how ever we got here, we all have become branches of this great tree we call America. This tree is still nourished by roots planted by our forefathers more than 200 years ago. Those men and women planted the roots of hard work, innovation, faith and risk taking. When you think about it, those words are the perfect description of an entrepreneur. It is the spirit of entrepreneurship that has made our nation great. And that is why it is absolutely imperative that we continue to support and develop that spirit in our minority communities. To that end, this legislation provides several tools to help minority entrepreneurs as they develop and grow their businesses. First, this legislation will create an Office of Minority Small Business Development. One of its primary functions will be to increase the number of small business loans that minority businesses receive. Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women have been receiving far fewer small business loans than they reasonably should. To ensure that this trend is reversed and minorities begin to get a greater share of loan dollars, venture capital investments, counseling, and contracting opportunities, this bill will give the new office the authority to monitor the outcomes for programs under Capital Access, Entrepreneurial Development, and Government Contracting. It also requires the head of the Office to work with SBA's partners, trade associations and business groups to identify more effective ways to market to minority business owners, and to work with the head of Field Operations to ensure that district offices have staff and resources to market to minorities. Second, this legislation will create the Minority Entrepreneurship and Innovation Pilot Program. This program will offer a competitive grant to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions to create an entrepreneurship curriculum at these institutions and to open Small Business Development Centers on campus to serve local businesses. The goal of this program is to target students in highly skilled fields such as engineering, manufacturing, science and technology, and guide them towards entrepreneurship as a career option. Traditionally, minority-owned businesses are disproportionately represented in the service sectors. Promoting entrepreneurial education to undergraduate students will help expand business ownership beyond the service sectors to higher yielding technical and financial sectors. Third, this legislation will create the Minority Access to Information Distance Learning Pilot Program. This program will offer competitive grants to well established national minority non-profit and business organizations to create distance learning programs for small business owners who are interested in doing business with the federal government. The goal of this program is to provide low cost training to the many small business owners who cannot afford to pay a consultant thousands of dollars for advice or training on how to prepare themselves to contract with the federal government. There are thousands of small businesses in this country that are excellent and efficient. They are primed to provide the goods and services that this nation needs to stay competitive. This program will help prepare them to do just that. Finally, this legislation will extend the Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Business Program which expired in 2003. This program provides a Price Evaluation Adjustment for Socially and Economically Disadvantaged businesses as a way of increasing their competitiveness when bidding against larger firms. This is one more tool to increase opportunities for our minority small business owners. I have outlined several ways that we can create a more positive environment for our minority small business community. These are reasonable steps that we ought to take without delay. Moreover, these are important steps that will help bolster a movement that is already underway. According to U.S. Census data, Hispanics are opening businesses 3 times faster than the national average. Also, business development and entrepreneurship have played a significant role in the expansion of the black middle class in this country for over a century. These business owners are embodying the entrepreneurial spirit that our forefathers carried with them as they established this nation. With this legislation, we will help to extend that spirit to the next generation. Not only is this vital for our minority communities, but it is vital for America. I urge my colleagues to join with me in support of the Minority Entrepreneurship Development Act of 2006.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Smith, Conrad, and Bingaman in introducing the Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006. This legislation comes on the heels of the passage of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which makes improvements to the defined benefit pension plan system. The legislation that we are introducing today builds upon that legislation and focuses on defined contribution plans. Our pension system has shifted away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We should make it easier for employers to offer defined contribution plans and for individuals to participate in these plans. At a time when we have a negative savings rate that is the lowest since the Great Depression, we should provide appropriate incentives to help individuals save for retirement. In an effort to achieve this, the Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006 focuses on increasing retirement savings, the preservation of income, equity in divorce, improving financial literacy, and encouraging small businesses to enter and remain in the employer retirement plan system. This legislation increases savings by allowing employees to contribute a portion of their paycheck to an individual retirement account (IRA) if their employer does not offer a pension plan. Automatic IRAs will help the 71 million workers that do not have employer-sponsored plans. It is a low-cost, sensible solution that provides a stepping stone toward employer-sponsored retirement plans. More workers are likely to contribute to an IRA if the contribution is deducted from their payroll. Automatic IRAs will help combat the inertia that is a factor in our low savings rate. The bill also provides a tax credit to help small businesses with the cost of implementation. Women are often placed at a disadvantage in our retirement system because they cycle in and out of the work force. The Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006 addresses this issue by requiring employers that offer defined contribution plans to cover part-time employees that meet specific requirements. Pension coverage needs to improve, particularly for small businesses. In 2004, only 26 percent of workers at firms with fewer than 25 employees participated in pension plans. Progress has been made on providing coverage to small businesses. Currently, more than 19 million workers are covered by small business retirement plans, but more than 36 million Americans work for firms with less than 25 employees. The Women's Retirement Security Act of 2006 provides a start-up credit for new small business retirement contributions. In addition, it removes rules that discourage small employers from adopting deferral only plans.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Minority Entrepreneurship Development Act of 2006. It's especially appropriate that this bill be introduced during Hispanic Heritage Month. Millions of Latino Americans during this time reflect on their place in this country and the positive contributions they have made here. One area where we can be certain that the Hispanic community has made a significant contribution is in business. The principled and strong leadership of Hispanic Americans can be seen in corporate boards and sole proprietorships alike. As a Nation, we must support the development of the next generation of business leaders within the Latino community. I believe that this legislation will help in that effort. This legislation is aimed at giving potential and burgeoning entrepreneurs the tools they need to realize their goals. Whether those goals include creating a small business that will employ people from the community or taking a small business and making it into a major enterprise, it's imperative that we develop the tools to help minority small business owners succeed. I want to take a moment and tell you why it's so important to expand the numbers of entrepreneurs in the minority community. As the Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I have received firsthand testimony and countless reports documenting the positive economic impact that occurs when we foster entrepreneurship in underserved communities. There are signs of significant economic returns when minority businesses are created and are able to grow in size and capacity. Between 1987 and 1997, revenue from minority owned firms rose by 22.5 percent, an increase equivalent to an annual growth rate of 10 percent. Employment opportunities within minority owned firms increased by 23 percent during that same period. There is a clear correlation between the growth of minority owned firms and the economic viability of the minority community. Although, these economic numbers tell a significant part of the story, they don't tell the whole story of what these firms mean to the minority communities they serve and represent. Many of these business leaders are first generation immigrants; many are first generation business owners and many represent, for those in their communities, what hard work, determination and patience can do. We must encourage those kinds of values in our minority communities and, quite frankly, in our nation as a whole. For generations, millions have come to our shores in search of a better life. Millions of others were brought here by force and for years were not given a voice in how their lives would turn out. But how ever we got here, we all have become branches of this great tree we call America. This tree is still nourished by roots planted by our forefathers more than 200 years ago. Those men and women planted the roots of hard work, innovation, faith and risk taking. When you think about it, those words are the perfect description of an entrepreneur. It is the spirit of entrepreneurship that has made our nation great. And that is why it is absolutely imperative that we continue to support and develop that spirit in our minority communities. To that end, this legislation provides several tools to help minority entrepreneurs as they develop and grow their businesses. First, this legislation will create an Office of Minority Small Business Development. One of its primary functions will be to increase the number of small business loans that minority businesses receive. Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women have been receiving far fewer small business loans than they reasonably should. To ensure that this trend is reversed and minorities begin to get a greater share of loan dollars, venture capital investments, counseling, and contracting opportunities, this bill will give the new office the authority to monitor the outcomes for programs under Capital Access, Entrepreneurial Development, and Government Contracting. It also requires the head of the Office to work with SBA's partners, trade associations and business groups to identify more effective ways to market to minority business owners, and to work with the head of Field Operations to ensure that district offices have staff and resources to market to minorities. Second, this legislation will create the Minority Entrepreneurship and Innovation Pilot Program. This program will offer a competitive grant to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions to create an entrepreneurship curriculum at these institutions and to open Small Business Development Centers on campus to serve local businesses. The goal of this program is to target students in highly skilled fields such as engineering, manufacturing, science and technology, and guide them towards entrepreneurship as a career option. Traditionally, minority-owned businesses are disproportionately represented in the service sectors. Promoting entrepreneurial education to undergraduate students will help expand business ownership beyond the service sectors to higher yielding technical and financial sectors. Third, this legislation will create the Minority Access to Information Distance Learning Pilot Program. This program will offer competitive grants to well established national minority non-profit and business organizations to create distance learning programs for small business owners who are interested in doing business with the federal government. The goal of this program is to provide low cost training to the many small business owners who cannot afford to pay a consultant thousands of dollars for advice or training on how to prepare themselves to contract with the federal government. There are thousands of small businesses in this country that are excellent and efficient. They are primed to provide the goods and services that this nation needs to stay competitive. This program will help prepare them to do just that. Finally, this legislation will extend the Socially and Economically Disadvantaged Business Program which expired in 2003. This program provides a Price Evaluation Adjustment for Socially and Economically Disadvantaged businesses as a way of increasing their competitiveness when bidding against larger firms. This is one more tool to increase opportunities for our minority small business owners. I have outlined several ways that we can create a more positive environment for our minority small business community. These are reasonable steps that we ought to take without delay. Moreover, these are important steps that will help bolster a movement that is already underway. According to U.S. Census data, Hispanics are opening businesses 3 times faster than the national average. Also, business development and entrepreneurship have played a significant role in the expansion of the black middle class in this country for over a century. These business owners are embodying the entrepreneurial spirit that our forefathers carried with them as they established this nation. With this legislation, we will help to extend that spirit to the next generation. Not only is this vital for our minority communities, but it is vital for America. I urge my colleagues to join with me in support of the Minority Entrepreneurship Development Act of 2006.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to recognize the life and legacy of a great Native American leader, mentor, and friend. This summer, Alaska and the Nation lost Jonathon Solomon, a Gwich'in Athabascan elder and lifelong environmental advocate, at the age of 74 in Anchorage. Jonathon's life was dedicated to the defense of Native rights, and he was best known throughout the country for his indefatigable advocacy of Gwich'in lands, most especially the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Born in Fort Yukon, Solomon began his advocacy for the Refuge in the 1970s through his fight for subsistence rights and the protection of the Porcupine caribou herd. This work brought him all over the country, including numerous trips to Washington DC. I had the special opportunity to meet Jonathon during one of these trips, and I quickly learned that he was an eloquent speaker, strong debater, and a masterful advocate. He spoke strongly about the importance of the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge, the birthplace of caribou upon which the Gwich'in have relied for their existence for generations. Jonathon's work will live on through the Gwich'in Steering Committee, a nonprofit group which he helped to found during the first united meeting of the Gwich'in people in 1988. I am proud to have a part in carrying on Jonathon's legacy through my continued and unwavering support for the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Please join me and many others across this Nation in honoring a fallen environmental hero.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, in order for the United States to continue to stand for the fairest, most transparent and efficient financial markets in the world, I believe we must provide assistance to America's small public companies in their efforts to comply with the Sarbanes- Oxley Act. Just a few years ago, the trust and confidence of the American people in their financial markets was dangerously eroded by the emergence of serious accounting irregularities by some companies and possible fraudulent actions by corporations like WorldCom, Inc., Enron, Arthur Andersen and others. The shocking malfeasance by these businesses and accounting firms put a strain on the growth of our economy. The misconduct by a few senior executives has cost the jobs of thousands of hard-working Americans. The lack of faith in our financial markets contributed to an overall decline in stock values and has caused grave losses to individual investors and pension funds. By all accounts, Sarbanes-Oxley has been effective in bringing accountability to corporate governance, auditing, and financial reporting for public companies. The dark days of the Enron scandal have given way to a new corporate culture that embraces responsibility and transparency, and for this we have Sarbanes-Oxley to thank. Sarbanes- Oxley has helped restore confidence in our capital markets and helped improve our nation's future economic growth. However, with compliance also comes cost. And while the cost of complying with the law is small enough to be absorbed by larger corporations, smaller public companies, particularly small minority public companies, have been disproportionately affected by these costs. Small business is the engine of economic growth in our Nation. Almost 60 percent of Americans are employed by small businesses. Small business growth has been critical in developing the high wage jobs for America's future. Unfortunately, an April 2006 report to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that small public firms are incurring much higher audit fees and increased costs in complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The report finds that of the 2,263 public firms with market capitalization of less than $75 million, just 66 have fully implemented Section 404 of the law that requires firms to construct formal internal control frameworks and filed internal control reports. These 66 firms reported paying $1.14 in audit fees per $100 of revenue, compared to just $.13 per $100 for firms with greater than $1 billion in market capitalization. I believe we must take action to help small companies comply with the regulatory burdens of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition to the costs associated with internal controls, 81 percent of small firms responding to the GAO survey said they brought in outside consultants to comply with the Act. Nearly half of the small firms reported ``opportunity costs'' related to complying with the regulatory burden placed on them by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act such as deferring or canceling operational improvements, and more than one- third of respondents were forced to defer or cancel information technology investments. Too many small firms simply do not have the resources and expertise necessary to implement the formal internal control frameworks required by Section 404, and as a result, they are disadvantaged compared to larger firms that are absorbing these costs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has provided a lengthy compliance period for small businesses to comply with the Sarbanes- Oxley regulations and is attempting to develop additional methods to ease the regulatory burden. However, I believe additional efforts are needed. In order to assist these firms with the increased costs of implementation and help our small businesses keep our economy moving forward, I am introducing the Small Business Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Assistance Act of 2006. The bill would authorize the U.S. Small Business Administration to award grants to small public companies and small business concerns to help lessen the burden of these costs. If Congress is asking these small firms to bear the burden of cost for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, the least we can do is chip in and help pay for it. My legislation authorizes $5 million to be awarded annually through 2011. My legislation also creates a task force, assembled by the SBA Chief Counsel for Advocacy, and comprising of representatives from the SEC and other appropriate bank regulatory agencies, to report semi-annually on how to assist small public companies in complying with Sarbanes- Oxley. My hope is that this task force will continually find new ways to lift the regulatory burden on small businesses attempting to comply with the law. Each report of the task force will be required to evaluate upgrades or alternatives to the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering Analysis Retrieval System so that companies might submit filings to the SEC without the need for third party intervention. The task force will also report on the potential to reduce inefficiencies related to SEC filings; the feasibility of synchronizing filing requirements for substantially similar small firms; whether the SEC and bank regulatory agencies should commit additional resources to aiding small public firms with filing requirements; whether the SEC needs to publish guidance on reporting and legal requirements aimed at assisting smaller public firms; and the feasibility of extending incorporation by reference privileges to other Government filings containing equivalent information. This legislation will help some but not all of the thousands of small firms that are public or hope to become public. As more information becomes available, I am hopeful that the task force will provide ideas on how the SEC can help more of the small, non-accelerated filers implement the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. We must do all we can to insure that small firms can demonstrate that transparency and accountability in the private sector is thriving without having to incur such a burdensome cost. This legislation is supported by the National Black Chamber of Commerce as well as Small Business Majority. I ask all my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, in order for the United States to continue to stand for the fairest, most transparent and efficient financial markets in the world, I believe we must provide assistance to America's small public companies in their efforts to comply with the Sarbanes- Oxley Act. Just a few years ago, the trust and confidence of the American people in their financial markets was dangerously eroded by the emergence of serious accounting irregularities by some companies and possible fraudulent actions by corporations like WorldCom, Inc., Enron, Arthur Andersen and others. The shocking malfeasance by these businesses and accounting firms put a strain on the growth of our economy. The misconduct by a few senior executives has cost the jobs of thousands of hard-working Americans. The lack of faith in our financial markets contributed to an overall decline in stock values and has caused grave losses to individual investors and pension funds. By all accounts, Sarbanes-Oxley has been effective in bringing accountability to corporate governance, auditing, and financial reporting for public companies. The dark days of the Enron scandal have given way to a new corporate culture that embraces responsibility and transparency, and for this we have Sarbanes-Oxley to thank. Sarbanes- Oxley has helped restore confidence in our capital markets and helped improve our nation's future economic growth. However, with compliance also comes cost. And while the cost of complying with the law is small enough to be absorbed by larger corporations, smaller public companies, particularly small minority public companies, have been disproportionately affected by these costs. Small business is the engine of economic growth in our Nation. Almost 60 percent of Americans are employed by small businesses. Small business growth has been critical in developing the high wage jobs for America's future. Unfortunately, an April 2006 report to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that small public firms are incurring much higher audit fees and increased costs in complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The report finds that of the 2,263 public firms with market capitalization of less than $75 million, just 66 have fully implemented Section 404 of the law that requires firms to construct formal internal control frameworks and filed internal control reports. These 66 firms reported paying $1.14 in audit fees per $100 of revenue, compared to just $.13 per $100 for firms with greater than $1 billion in market capitalization. I believe we must take action to help small companies comply with the regulatory burdens of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition to the costs associated with internal controls, 81 percent of small firms responding to the GAO survey said they brought in outside consultants to comply with the Act. Nearly half of the small firms reported ``opportunity costs'' related to complying with the regulatory burden placed on them by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act such as deferring or canceling operational improvements, and more than one- third of respondents were forced to defer or cancel information technology investments. Too many small firms simply do not have the resources and expertise necessary to implement the formal internal control frameworks required by Section 404, and as a result, they are disadvantaged compared to larger firms that are absorbing these costs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has provided a lengthy compliance period for small businesses to comply with the Sarbanes- Oxley regulations and is attempting to develop additional methods to ease the regulatory burden. However, I believe additional efforts are needed. In order to assist these firms with the increased costs of implementation and help our small businesses keep our economy moving forward, I am introducing the Small Business Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Assistance Act of 2006. The bill would authorize the U.S. Small Business Administration to award grants to small public companies and small business concerns to help lessen the burden of these costs. If Congress is asking these small firms to bear the burden of cost for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, the least we can do is chip in and help pay for it. My legislation authorizes $5 million to be awarded annually through 2011. My legislation also creates a task force, assembled by the SBA Chief Counsel for Advocacy, and comprising of representatives from the SEC and other appropriate bank regulatory agencies, to report semi-annually on how to assist small public companies in complying with Sarbanes- Oxley. My hope is that this task force will continually find new ways to lift the regulatory burden on small businesses attempting to comply with the law. Each report of the task force will be required to evaluate upgrades or alternatives to the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering Analysis Retrieval System so that companies might submit filings to the SEC without the need for third party intervention. The task force will also report on the potential to reduce inefficiencies related to SEC filings; the feasibility of synchronizing filing requirements for substantially similar small firms; whether the SEC and bank regulatory agencies should commit additional resources to aiding small public firms with filing requirements; whether the SEC needs to publish guidance on reporting and legal requirements aimed at assisting smaller public firms; and the feasibility of extending incorporation by reference privileges to other Government filings containing equivalent information. This legislation will help some but not all of the thousands of small firms that are public or hope to become public. As more information becomes available, I am hopeful that the task force will provide ideas on how the SEC can help more of the small, non-accelerated filers implement the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. We must do all we can to insure that small firms can demonstrate that transparency and accountability in the private sector is thriving without having to incur such a burdensome cost. This legislation is supported by the National Black Chamber of Commerce as well as Small Business Majority. I ask all my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today, I am joining Congressman Greg Meeks to submit a Senate resolution aimed at raising awareness of the prostate cancer crisis among African-American men. This Resolution urges Congress to provide the funds necessary to prevent and fight the disease, and to encourage African-American men to get screened. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related death for African-American men. They have the highest incidence and mortality rate due to prostate cancer of any ethnic or racial group. African- American men are dying at a rate of 140 percent--almost 2\1/2\ times-- higher than other groups. That is the largest disparity for any major cancer. No person of any race should have to suffer unnecessarily from a disease we have the medical science and moral obligation to prevent, detect, and treat. It should no longer rob sons, daughters, and wives of their fathers, husbands, and loved ones. Just as the doctrine of `separate but equal,' was wrong in education, it is wrong in health care. We have to reform the system so that the quality of health care for every American never depends on the color of any American's skin. We need to fund more research and greater outreach efforts. For this reason, I urge every member of Congress to support this resolution.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I thank the Senator from New York, and I thank the Senate. Madam President, I would like to speak as in morning business. (The remarks of Mr. Kerry are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Madam President, an awful lot has been written and enough has been said about the comments made yesterday by House majority leader John Boehner. I am not interested in asking Mr. Boehner for a clarification or retraction or even an apology. His statement was very clear and I believe equally despicable. And his words are, frankly, beyond redemption. They are, however, sadly, what we have seen much too much of in politics today in our country. So this is an opportunity today for the Senate to be the Senate. We talk here about ``my friend from across the aisle.'' We talk about the traditions of the Senate. We talk about civility. But in the last years, a lot of us have seen things happen here that never would have happened in the Senate of 15 or 20 years ago. We have come a long way since the days when Bob Dole and George Mitchell refused to campaign against each other. I have seen colleagues say in the cloakroom that they thought it was wrong to see the courage of their friend, Max Cleland, attacked, but on the floor of the Senate there is silence. I know there are good people here who still long for civility. I have heard it. I heard the junior Senator from Oregon say, just this summer: My soul cries out for something more dignified. My friend from Arizona, just this spring, said: The self-expression sometimes overwhelms our civility. Well, this is one of those times. But I think it is more than that. I think it is an opportunity, in keeping with these pleas for civility, for some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to actually come to the floor and not just talk about civility but express the truth, to come here and condemn Mr. Boehner's remarks in no uncertain terms if they disagree with them. I think that is the real test of the kind of place we have become and the kind of politics we are willing to tolerate. It is a test of the character of the Senate. And I think every American would benefit from hearing where Republicans stand on Mr. Boehner's words expressed yesterday.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I begin by saying, I have been listening to the debate for a good period of time. It is a pleasure to hear the Senator from Virginia, who is always civil in his approach to these debates and who always asks intelligent and probing questions. The colloquies I have had with him, and certainly the colloquy I listened to a moment ago, are what the Senate ought to be about. It has been an intelligent, healthy exchange with respect to policy in Iraq. I will speak to the question of Secretary Rumsfeld in a few moments, but I share some thoughts. Regrettably, the debate that preceded the Senator from Virginia, without mentioning Senators specifically, is relatively insulting and is not worthy of the subject and its importance. One colleague talked about how war was declared against the United States on September 11 and drummed up America's passion that we all share about opposing terrorists. However, he did exactly what a lot of people on the other side of the aisle have been doing for 4 or 5 years now, which is conflating the war on terror into Iraq. Let me remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I have not heard one person in this country who doesn't want to do everything in the power of our Nation in order to stand up to terrorists. We all voted to go to Afghanistan. We all voted to take on the Taliban and al- Qaida. If the President had kept his eye on the ball and done what was necessary in Afghanistan and not outsourced the job to Afghan mercenaries, we would have perhaps used the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne, the 10th Mountain Division, or the 1st Marines to do what the CIA, it is now known publicly, was arguing adamantly we ought to be doing, which was surrounding Tora Bora and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and those thousand or so people up there with him. The President wouldn't have had to quote Osama bin Laden yesterday if we had done the job at Tora Bora. That is what we voted to do, every single one of us. We gave the money. We have consistently voted for the PATRIOT Act-- the vast majority--and voted for the reorganization of our intelligence community and done everything in our power to fight terrorists. Let me remind our colleague who wanted to drum up the passion of the Nation about being attacked on September 11, that it was not Saddam who attacked us. It was not anybody from Iraq. It was Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. The fact is, there are more terrorists today in Iraq than there were on September 11. There are more terrorists in the world today who want to kill Americans than there were on September 11. Is that a policy that is working? More terrorists today want to kill Americans than on September 11, when the whole world was united behind the United States of America, when newspapers across the world said, ``We are all Americans now,'' and everyone was ready to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan. We squandered that. This administration has squandered it. There has been a complete and total lack of accountability for what has happened in between. I heard one of our colleagues come to the Senate and say it would be a mistake to leave before Iraq can provide its own security. We are not talking about leaving before they can provide their own security. I heard another colleague say what a mistake it would be to withdraw precipitously. Precipitously? What is precipitous about saying we are going to set a target for withdrawal a year from now? A whole year from now we are going to stand up their forces, to provide for the security of their nation. That is not precipitous. I am tired of a whole bunch of people who want to conflate, distort, and mislead Americans with a phony debate about the war on terror. Iraq was not the war on terror. Today it is not the center of the war on terror. Are there some terrorists in Iraq? You bet there are. It is the best training ground in the world for terrorists. It is a poster child for recruitment for terrorists. And they are coming. And where are they going? They are going to Europe. Europe is now the center of al-Qaida. I don't know how many people know that. There are cells in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. We are providing the training ground. The fact is that Iraqis themselves do not want al-Qaida there. If we can provide them the capacity to provide for their own security, believe me, they will drive out whatever is left of the remnants of foreign tourists because the Shia don't like them, the Sunnis don't like them, the Kurds don't need them and don't like them, and they will not survive, except to the degree that they currently provide a convenient connection between the interests of the different parties in Iraq that can only be resolved politically. Now, let's come back to that. Let's get away from this phony debate we have had in the Senate and this country. Secretary Rice said this can only be resolved politically and diplomatically. General Casey has said there is no military solution. If there is no military solution, what is the solution? The Senator from Texas said: Give me a plan, give me an idea, one idea that is different. Well, we have done it. We have suggested, many of us, including distinguished people such as General Zinni, who knows the region. He is about as good and as tough and as patriotic as there is a soldier in America. He believes, as I and others do, the only way to resolve what is happening in the Middle East and Iraq is through diplomacy and political effort. I suggested during the discussion of the amendment that I had several months ago we ought to have an international summit. The Secretary- General of the United Nations believes it. The King of Jordan believes it. The President of Egypt believes it. A whole bunch of people in the region believe that unless you get the full measure of all the parties together--the Sunni, the Shia, the Kurds, the factions of Iraq, the Iraqis themselves, obviously as a government, the Arab League, the neighbor states, including Syria and Iran--you cannot begin to resolve this problem. Ask yourselves the simple question: How is this going to be resolved? How are American forces going to come back? They are going to come back if you provide the measure of stability to Iraq that it deserves and needs. How do you provide the measure of stability it deserves and needs? By providing confidence to the people and confidence to the parties that the differences between them are adequately resolved, that there is a level of investment, of a stakeholder investment in all of those parties. How do you get there? You don't get there by not talking to each other. You don't get there by not having the kind of summitry and diplomacy that has guided the world through most of the last centuries of civilized behavior. That is not taking place. There is a total absence of the kind of effort that can help to resolve what is happening in Iraq. Our soldiers have done their job. They have provided the opportunity for democracy. They have provided for several elections, for the transfer of authority. And to measure plans--the Senator from Texas said: Give me a plan--what was the plan of the Republicans, of the administration? The plan is: As they stand up, we will stand down. What American has not heard those words from the President? ``As they stand up, we will stand down.'' Well, what has happened? Eighty-five percent of their forces are now supposedly trained. You cannot have it both ways. At some point the game has to stop. Either there really are 85 percent trained, and they are making progress--which they keep telling us--or they are not. If they are, then why aren't we able to withdraw a few troops? Either they are or they are not. And you ought to be able to withdraw some of those troops. The fact is, we are not standing down. The violence over the last month was the worst. They have just upped the number of people in the morgue, tripled it. It is the worst month in the last months. And each month keeps on being a worse month than the month before. Now, somewhere along the line, I learned in the military there is accountability. If a captain runs a ship aground, he is gone. That is it--usually with no questions asked. I noticed that the commander of the Cole was held responsible, even though it was not his fault for what happened in the bombing of the Cole, and he is not going to be promoted. These things affect careers and they affect your tenure. Ask General Shinseki. Ask the folks who were involved in Abu Ghraib, at least at the lower levels. What happened to the accountability in this administration, particularly within the military branch, the Pentagon, for the decisions that have been made along the way? Our plan says we will set a date by which time the Iraqis have to assume responsibility so that we leverage the Iraqis to assume that responsibility. Now, is that precipitous--a year from now? I do not think so, particularly when you read the language of what we laid out, which says the President has the discretion to leave troops there to complete the training. There is nothing precipitous about allowing the President to have the discretion to complete the training and leave troops there. That is not a withdrawal even, complete and total. Secondly, we allow the President the discretion to keep sufficient special forces there to fight al-Qaida. And, thirdly, we allow the President to be able to protect American facilities and forces. Now, that is pretty broad, folks. It is time we had a real debate about what is going to empower the Iraqis to be able to take control over their own future, and we had a real debate that does not try to scare the American people. The way fear has been thrown around by this administration is disgraceful. And they keep drumming up terrorism and suggesting that Iraq is somehow the center of this war on terror, which it is not now today and never has been. This administration has made our Nation less safe than it ought to be because they have focused so much time and energy and effort--and squandered it--in Iraq. They have lost allies and regional links that we ought to have traditionally because they have pushed people away from us. They do not have credibility in the region. It is extremely difficult for them to conduct diplomacy with people who, frankly, do not trust them. In fact, they have empowered Iran. Iran is stronger today because of Iraq than it would have been without Iraq. And there is no expert on Iran who will not tell you that. Are we safer because Iran is stronger today? Because we are so bogged down in Iraq we do not have the ability to do what we need to do? I listened to my colleagues talk about Secretary Rumsfeld. I heard them say that they have known him a long time, that they have a good working relationship, that there is a mutual respect, that they like him, that he is smart, and a whole host of things that are part of working with somebody through the years. I respect that. But none of that goes to the fundamental question of whether you have confidence in his judgment. None of that goes to the question of whether he has made such a series of mistakes that he is a symbol, an emblem, of our failure in Iraq and is one of the reasons you cannot get other countries and other people to the table to help resolve the differences here. I called for Secretary Rumsfeld to resign 3 years ago. Three years ago I felt that the level of the mistakes were so significant--in the deployment of troops, in the abandonment of a plan for postwar Iraq, in the choices that were made--that I thought that track record exhibited terrible judgment, poor planning, and ideologically driven decisionmaking, to which this administration has consistently turned a deaf ear. I think the office of Secretary of Defense ought to be above politics. And I think it also ought to never be beyond accountability. But under Secretary Rumsfeld it has been profoundly political, as we saw last week reemphasized again, and it has been utterly unaccountable. The Secretary's record says a lot about the question of accountability in this administration and certainly has not stopped him from speaking his mind. A few days ago, Secretary Rumsfeld gave a low and ugly political speech, smearing those who dissent from a catastrophic policy. And then he spoke of moral confusion in our country. Well, there is some moral confusion around. I think it is immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in a conflict with a strategy that is failing and a mission that has not weakened terrorism but strengthened it. I think it is immoral to not tell the truth to America about the progress in that war just to get through a new cycle or an election. I think it is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who were lost on September 11. They were attacked and killed, I remind the Senate again, not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden. And it is deeply immoral to compare a majority of Americans--a majority of Americans--who oppose a failing policy and seek a winning one; we do not seek to quit, as one Senator suggested--we seek to win. And we have a better strategy for winning. And to compare those who seek a better strategy to win to appeasers of fascism and Naziism is an insult to the quality of debate we ought to have in this country. And it is overtly political. The leaders in this administration have shown they will do anything, say anything, twist any truth, and even endanger our Nation's character as one America simply to execute a political strategy for the election. I heard one Senator talk about political strategy. Karl Rove has been pretty open about expressing where the Republicans need to go in order to try to win; and it is to exploit security. Americans, I believe, now see through this charade. They know the truth. They know we have a ``Katrina'' foreign policy, a succession of blunders and failures that have betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. In the place of accountability, we have vicious, partisan attacks on anyone who opposes those policies with a suggestion not for how you quit, not for how you run but for how you win--how you win. We have watched Iraq sliding further and further into a bloody civil war, with too few troops and no plan. Who is responsible for too few troops and no plan? The President and Secretary of Defense. I have heard Republican colleagues privately express their reservations about this policy and about this Secretary. Can we afford to trust our Pentagon to an individual who seems to be the last person to acknowledge the mistakes that have been made? Secretary Rice said there have been thousands of mistakes. Who admits to the fiasco of hubris and mismanagement that falls largely at the Secretary's own doorstep, who can only reach for a sort of clumsy, rhetorical brick to hurl at the opponents, suggesting, without an ounce of shame, that they are soft on Hitler. Soft on Hitler? We are too long overdue for some accountability. But instead of the pink slips that they so richly deserve, this administration's worst foreign policy failures are instead rewarded. You get a Presidential Medal of Freedom. George Tenet, who presided over the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, Medal of Freedom. Paul Bremer, who botched the occupation, Medal of Freedom. And somehow it seems the only people in this administration who are rewarded are those who make the mistakes, while those who tell the truth are punished. According to Secretary of State Rice, we know this has to be resolved politically and diplomatically, but it is not. Who is accountable for those mistakes? Who is accountable for young people dying as a result of mistakes? Who is accountable for billions of dollars being spent as a result of mistakes? We are all human. We all make mistakes. We understand that. But there is a point of accountability in the carrying out of a high public job, where mistake compounded on mistake compounded on mistake begs for accountability. On issue after issue, Secretary Rumsfeld has made the wrong decision. You may like him, respect him, admire his long years of public service, but he has been wrong, when he could have listened to General Shinseki, and other generals, and put in enough troops to maintain order. We have heard a whole group of other generals speak out about what happened over there. He chose not to listen. He chose not to listen. He was wrong. When he could have implemented a detailed State Department plan for reconstructing post-Saddam Iraq--guess what--he ignored it, threw it away, would not have anything to do with it. He was wrong, again. When he could have ordered the protection of American forces by guarding the ammo dumps and making sure a plan was in place to move efficiently through the territory that they were taking, where there were weapons of individual destruction, he chose not to. He was wrong. And he exposed our young men and women to the ammo that now maims and kills them because they chose not to act. Who is accountable for that? When he could have imposed immediate order and structure in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, do you know what he did? He shrugged his shoulders publicly on television and he said Baghdad was safer than Washington, DC, and he chose not to act. He was wrong. When the administration could have kept an Iraqi Army selectively intact, they chose not to. He was wrong. When they could have kept an entire civil structure functioning and provided basic services to Iraqi citizens, they chose not to. And they were wrong. When they could have accepted the offers of the United Nations and individual countries that were provided at the time in order to give us on-the-ground peacekeepers to help us and reconstruction assistance to help us so the American taxpayer and soldier did not carry the whole burden, he chose not to. They were wrong. When they should have leveled with the American people that the insurgency had grown--when many of us were on the floor of the Senate saying the insurgency is growing, it is out of control--they ignored the insurgency, chose to ignore it. And they were wrong. Wrong decisions, wrong priorities, but, tragically, no accountability. Some Republican Senators have had the courage to come to the floor and talk about this lack of accountability and talk about these judgments that were wrong. How did it get so wrong? It got so wrong because, in part, the Secretary became so enamored with ``new think'' and transformation at the Pentagon that he failed to see the limits. He believed the American military could operate lighter, smaller, leaner. A lot of people spent a great deal of time in the 1990s thinking about this. They looked at the first Persian Gulf war, and they saw how the application of air power and stealth and precision munitions, combined with the latest information technology, could radically change the way wars are fought. And operationally they were right. But at the operational level, we had a military that emerged from the Clinton administration prepared to apply its technological advantage against any enemy. Witness the fact that it was the Clinton buildup and capacity that, in effect, was used because the President had only been President for 10 months. They had not transformed the military. That was the military that succeeded in routing the Iraqi Army. It was that military that drove to Baghdad in 3 weeks. And that is an edge that we all want to maintain forever. But Secretary Rumsfeld failed to understand that the wars of the future would not be fought only at the operational level. He fell in love with the vision of the Armed Forces of the future and lost track of the reality of the current threat. He believed that a heavy dose of shock and awe was all it would take to break our adversary's will. That failure to see past the operational level was part and parcel of an administration that came to power with nothing but contempt for nation building. They scoffed at the lessons learned previously. That is why the Secretary began his tenure trying to slash Army end strength and boots on the ground to fund missile defense. He was betting, unwisely, that America would not find itself in anymore failed states. So now we have the fifth summer of Mr. Rumsfeld's tenure coming to a close, and we find ourselves engaged in massive stability operations in two failed states, Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, Mr. Rumsfeld was wrong again and again and again. American troops have had to pay the price for that, as has the American taxpayer, and too many Americans have paid with their lives. I believe personally that Secretary Rumsfeld should be held accountable for this job. When faced with widespread looting in Iraq, the Secretary quipped that freedom is messy. When he was asked by a soldier why they were sent in without the necessary armor, he said that you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want--despite the fact that parents were able to buy armor for their kids on the Internet and elsewhere. He has dismissed international law regarding military detainees and abuses at Abu Ghraib. He still refuses to acknowledge that the Army and Marine Corps are too small for the missions they face. Earlier this year, he even supported cuts to the National Guard. Mr. President, I believe his stubbornness is our weakness. He likes to talk about the war on terror as the long war, but in this long war he is stretching the Army to its limits. Its officers and noncommissioned officers are sent on back-to-back deployments with inadequate resources. Despite their heroic service, they are leaving this military. It is costing us enormous extra sums of money to hold it together. Mr. President, the Secretary's benefit of the doubt has come and gone. I think the moment of accountability is long overdue. Americans deserve leadership they can trust. We need to change the course in Iraq. We all want to be successful, but the current course is not leading to that success. And if it is, then there is no reason they cannot begin an adequate redeployment, as General Casey said--in fact, General Casy's own dates coincide with the dates of those of us who suggested to set a date about a year from now. You can always change a date if you have to. If the situation on the ground doesn't change adequately, you have flexibility. But unless you leverage the willingness of the Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own future, there is nothing that American troops can do except continue to be sent out on missions where they discover improvised explosive devices the hard way. We have too many young Americans who are in Bethesda and Walter Reed as a consequence of that policy. I believe there was a better policy to fight terror, to liberate us, and to fight broadly in some 65 countries around the world where al-Qaida is embedded. We need to fight that, and we need a greater troop level and capacity on the ground in Afghanistan. All of these things are needed, and they are all suffering because of decisions made and not made. I believe on credibility and the track record of decisions based on ideology, this Secretary is not the person for the job. I yield the floor.

Mr. KERRY

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

Mr. KERRY. I came to the floor to speak about the Middle East and Iraq, and I intend to do so. But obviously, having sat here for the last almost half hour listening to how the Senator from South Carolina is going to go back to South Carolina and report, I couldn't help but listen to him say that he is going to be proud to tell South Carolinians that he and the Republicans have been doing what it takes to make America more secure. You can tell them that. But it doesn't mean it is true. The fact is, the American people understand, I think pretty well, what is going on. Because life for the average American is getting tougher and tougher, they don't think Washington is doing very much for them at all. Health savings accounts work just fine for people who can save money. Ask how many Americans are saving money. If you can't save money and you don't have the benefit of the tax deduction, then the health savings accounts don't do anything. That is why there are now 46 million Americans without health care. It has gone up 6 million people under this President. Eleven million children have no health care at all in the United States of America--none, no health care. We are the only industrial Nation in the world that treats our kids like that. I hope he reports to the people of South Carolina, where there are a lot of kids who don't have health care, why there hasn't been a vote on the Senate floor to give children health care. When it comes to making America more secure, I hope he tells them that North Korea has four times the nuclear weapons capability that it had 4 years ago. Are we more secure? The fact is, for 3 years this administration didn't even engage with the British, the Germans, and the French in their efforts to try to reduce the potential that Iran would nuclearize. Three years standing on the sidelines, and now Iran is playing out its deadly game with Syria and Lebanon. I think by any measure--and this is not what I came to the floor to talk about--the case is powerful that America is in fact less secure. Nothing underscores that more than when the Senator from South Carolina stands there and says how important it is to separate who is willing to fight terrorists, and we are fighting terrorists, he said, in Iraq. Iraq is not a war of terrorists today. Iraq is a war principally that is civil. It is Iraqi killing Iraqi. The fact is, Iraq was never the central front in the war on terror, which was always in Afghanistan, always with respect to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. It is al-Qaida today that is in fact stronger around the world, with 60 to 80 countries in which it now has cells that it didn't have at the time of September 11, 2001. I hope we will have this debate. Believe me, we will have this debate over the next months about whether we are more secure and about how you actually stand up for the security of the United States. One of the ways you stand up for the security of the United States is to have a sensible policy with respect to Iraq. Yesterday I was at Arlington National Cemetery for the funeral of Lance Corporal Geoffrey Cayer, a 20-year-old from Massachusetts. Apart from the obvious heart-wrenching sadness of that moment, I was struck, as I walked up to the graveside, by the number of new headstones, all of which read Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom. One of those now among the fallen is Phillip Baucus, the nephew of our friend and colleague Senator Max Baucus. Phillip was a proud and brave Marine Corps corporal who gave his life serving this country last Saturday in Anbar Province in Iraq. He was an extraordinary young man from all I have read and from what Max told me personally. I know from Max what he meant to his family and what a totally devastating blow this is to all of them. We offer our prayers for Phillip and for every family that has endured this kind of monumental loss. Phillip and Geoffrey Cayer and all those who have given their lives are a very tough reminder to all of us of the incredible sacrifices that America's children are making every single day. With the violence in Iraq growing worse by the day, it was stunning to hear Secretary Rumsfeld come before the Armed Services Committee this morning with a laundry list of excuses and denials about what is happening there and its consequences for the region. General Abizaid candidly acknowledged that ``the sectarian violence is as bad as I have seen it,'' that he has rarely seen the situation ``so unsettled and so volatile.'' He warned of coming civil war and that ``failure to apply coordinated regional and international pressure . . . will further extremism'' and could lead to a widening and more perilous conflict. But this morning Secretary Rumsfeld didn't call for that kind of diplomacy, didn't talk about that kind of diplomacy, didn't lay out a plan that the administration has for that kind of leadership and diplomacy, nor has President Bush reached out to undertake the kind of crisis diplomacy needed in Iraq or to leverage the regional pressure to stop Iraq from descending into irretrievable chaos. We ought to try to strip away the labels for a minute, take away Democrat and Republican, take away the partisanship of this city, just measure this against history. How many times have any of us as United States Senators, or even previous to our being here, seen the concerted effort statesmen on an international level convening efforts in order to diffuse crises or to make peace where there was war or to try to stop war where there was conflict? Instead today Secretary Rumsfeld announced ``there are a number of good things happening . . . amidst all of this difficulty, the currency is fairly stable, the schools are open, the hospitals are open, the people are functioning.'' Secretary Rumsfeld waxed optimistic about an Iraq where you ``see people out in the fields doing things and people driving their cars and lining up for gasoline and going about their business.'' He went to say that ``despite all of the difficulties, there are also some good trend lines that are occurring, and I think the period ahead is an important period.'' I respectfully think it is a lot more than important. This may well be the moment that decides the security and the framework for the security of the Middle East itself. It certainly could be that kind of moment with the proper vision and the proper statesmanship. It is time that the administration was candid about the situation and worked on rescuing what is salvageable in Iraq. The reason that candor is important, it is the only way to get other countries engaged and involved. With now at least 2,578 Americans killed, over 19,000 wounded, and no end in sight, you can't just offer the ``same old, same old'' as more kids die for a policy that isn't working. Go to the hospitals, meet the kids, talk to them. Sure they want us to win. We all want to win. But ask them what is wounding them, what is killing them by and large. The vast majority of those killed and wounded are killed and wounded by IEDs, the new term of a new war, improvised explosive device. What are our soldiers supposed to do about an improvised explosive device except go out and find them. And how do they find them? Usually when they explode, unless they are lucky enough to come across them some other way. Americans are right to wonder why, 3/\1/2\ years into this effort, it is Americans who have to go out and do that rather than Iraqis. After all, Iraq was able to fight a 10-year war with Iran, lost a million people, fought to a stalemate, during which time, I might add, we were providing a lot of the weapons to them. I don't think we should be silent. I don't think we have the right to be. I can't be while this administration continues to deny reality and repeat the same mistakes and pursue the ``same old, same old'' policy day after day which puts more and more lives at risk, more and more lives on the line, without pursuing a policy that provides the least risk to our troops and greatest opportunity for success. I have said it before and I believe it deeply, we in Congress have a special constitutional responsibility and a moral obligation to hold the executive branch accountable for making the right choices for our troops and our country. Frankly, that begins by demanding honesty when it comes to the war in Iraq. The bottom line is--and here again the administration has not been honest--this administration is now sending more U.S. troops into the crossfire of an escalating civil war in Iraq. They still refuse to come clean with the American people about it. I don't think we should endure more half measures, and staged, phoney debates. It is time for us all to confront and deal with the truth about the consequences of today's failed policy in Iraq. No matter what the administration tells us, there is a civil war raging in Iraq. The President's policy of standing down U.S. troops as Iraqis stand up, which has been the mantra of the last 2 years or more, has now been exposed as a misleading myth. In fact, we are actually increasing the overall troop presence, even as they tell us that more Iraqi soldiers have been trained, and we have reportedly all but abandoned the hope of withdrawing significant numbers of troops this year, even as the Iraqi President tells us that Iraqis can take over the security responsibility throughout their country by the end of this year. That is what the Iraqis are telling us, even as U.S. forces are increasing Yesterday, we learned more about our dangerously overstretched military when the top National Guard general warned that more than two- thirds of the Army National Guard's brigades are not combat ready. Can you please tell me how the Secretary of Defense can come up to the U.S. Congress and explain to us how two-thirds of the National Guard's combat brigades are not ready? And their equipment--large percentages of it--is in Iraq and it will not come back to the United States. That is going to cost billions of dollars for the United States, billions of dollars to replace the equipment and the wear and tear, billions which, I might add, is not in the budget today. Worst of all, there is no end in sight and no realistic plan to turn the tide. Mr. President, if you are going to change course or set the right course, you have to do it based on the realities. I believe that starts by acknowledging the reality of the civil war that is going on right now. The administration denies it because it doesn't fit their rhetoric, but by objective standards, that is what is happening. In the first 6 months of this year, 14,338 Iraqi civilians were killed--civilians--mostly in sectarian violence. They were not killed by al-Qaida. They were not killed by Islamic terrorists from another country. They were killed by Shia on Sunni and Sunni on Shia. That is sectarian violence. Prime Minister al-Maliki acknowledged last week that an average of 100 Iraqi civilians are being killed every day--civilians. And the violence has only been getting worse. Mr. President, 2,669 civilians were killed in May; 3,129 civilians were killed in June. That is nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians killed in 2 months alone. Since the February 22 bombing of the Shia mosque in Samara, the Government reports that 30,359 families--about 182,000 people--have fled their homes due to sectarian violence and intimidation. They are refugees, which is part of the definition of a civil war. This is not just a civil war; by historical standards, it is a relatively large-scale one. A recent academic analysis published in the New York Times showed that the median number of casualties in civil wars since 1945 is 18,000. Estimates of total casualties in Iraq vary, but the number is almost certainly above twice that many. Larry Diamond, whom many Senators know and have talked to, is an expert. He was over there with Paul Bremer in the Coalition Provisional Authority. Here is what he said: In academic terms, this is a civil war, and it is not even a small one. The Iraqis from all sides understand what is going on in their country. They are not afraid to speak the truth. Haidar al-Lbadi is a prominent Shiite legislator. This is one of the people we are working with in the democracy that we have offered and that they have fought for and voted for. He said: Certainly, what is happening is the start of a civil war. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni legislator--so you have Shia and Sunni--also described the recent violence as: The start of a civil war. Another leading Sunni, Adnan al-Dulaimi, said recently: It is nothing less than an undeclared civil war. The Iraqis are ready to tell you it is a civil war. Still, the administration continues to deny the facts about that. If you don't acknowledge the facts, it is difficult to put together a plan to be able to adequately deal with them. This is the same administration, incidentally, that everyone, I hope, remembers downplayed the insurgency. Do you remember that? Do you remember when it was first clear that chaos was giving way to a determined insurgency? What did the administration do month after month? Secretary Rumsfeld told us they are ``just a bunch of dead enders.'' At one point, he even suggested that Baghdad was safer than Washington, DC. Vice President Cheney told us the insurgency was ``in its last throes.'' Just look at the results. Since then, the number of Iraqi insurgents has increased by 20 percent, and the insurgency is more than six times stronger now than in May 2003. Once again, it is our troops who pay the most significant price. In fact, the number of IED attacks on U.S. troops has nearly doubled since January. Now, in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary, the administration continues to deny that there is a civil war. The only ones, it appears to me, they are fooling are themselves. This appears to be one more inconvenient truth they prefer not to deal with. In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld said just a few months ago that if civil war did break out, Iraqi forces, not U.S. troops, would be the ones dealing with it. I hope everybody hears that. Secretary Rumsfeld, in another one of his misjudgments, or misstatements, said a few months ago that if civil war breaks out, Iraqi forces, not U.S. troops, will be the ones to deal with it. So why are U.S. troops being augmented in their number? Why did it take sending more troops to the city of Baghdad? One more misjudgment and misleading statement. So we are sending more troops into the crossfire. The administration doesn't want to say that, but that is what is happening. When the President announced his plan last week to increase the U.S. troop presence in Baghdad, he said that the troops would come from other areas of Iraq. He didn't mention that additional troops had been sent into Iraq from Kuwait and that current deployments were being extended as new troops arrive. The net bottom line of that policy, which he didn't mention but the Washington Post and the New York times did report, is that the total numbe of U.S. troops in Iraq is going to increase by several thousand. He didn't mention that the recently announced deployment schedule could bring the number of U.S. troops in Iraq even higher in the coming years. Finally--and this is the most important thing of all--he did not explain why this strategy, which hasn't been working for these past several years, is suddenly going to work, and the fact that a few months ago U.S. and coalition troops in Baghdad increased from 40,000 to 55,000. Guess what happened? The violence got worse. Now the President says we are going to send a few more thousand. The question is, Why is this going to be any different? I remember this psychology very well. Back in 1964 and 1965 when Lyndon Johnson responded to the so-called attack of the Gulf of Tonkin and we upped our troop level by 5,000 troops in Vietnam, I responded to that call and found what we all now know was a matter of history--very different from what we are being told by our own administration. One thing is clear to me under this administration's approach: It is highly unlikely that we are going to be drawing down significant numbers of U.S. troops from Iraq this year. That is despite the fact that Secretary Rumsfeld said on Wednesday that there are some 275,000 trained Iraqi security forces, with 325,000 expected to be trained by the end of the year. General Martin Dempsey, the American general in charge of training Iraqi forces, said in June that the new Iraqi Army would be formed and at full strength by the end of this calendar year. Iraqi President Talabani declared just yesterday that Iraqis could take over security in the entire country by the end of the year. If the Iraqis are standing up, as the administration tells us, why aren't U.S. troops standing down, as they told us they would? I think the rhetoric of ``as they stand up, we will stand down'' is as hollow and misleading as the rhetoric that ``we will be greeted as liberators'' or ``mission accomplished'' or, frankly, ``stay the course,'' which means more of the same and is not an adequate response to the needs of dealing with the civil war. The bottom line is this: The approach hasn't worked because the underlying assumption that more troops are the solution to the problem is fundamentally flawed. I will say that again. You can put in a lot more troops, but our own military leaders have told us there is no military solution. So why are you putting in more troops? Our own generals, the Iraqi leaders, and even the Secretary of State herself, have told us that there is no military solution to the insurgency. And just today, Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged there is no military solution to the sectarian violence. So in fact, all of us can agree that the only hope for salvaging a measure of lasting success in Iraq, which I emphasize is what we all want--the difference is not what we want, the difference is in how you get it. The evidence is mounting month by month that the course this administration is on is not the most effective, least risk, most efficient way to get it. The only way to resolve this insurgency is a political solution that all of the Iraqis can buy into. So the question then looms large: Why isn't that happening? If Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and if our own generals and if the Iraqis themselves say there is no military solution, why are we adding more troops? Why are the Iraqi troops not able to deal with the situation? The answer is simple: because until you resolve the fundamental differences that bring Sunni to kill Shia and Shia to kill Sunni, you are not going to stop this process. I believe there is only one way to resolve that, and that is to engage in the kind of intensive diplomacy that has been so inexplicably lacking from this administration in its approach to Iraq. I know what some of the wise guys say in Washington and what some of the pundits say and what the conventional wisdom is. People love to dismiss diplomacy these days. It is the easiest thing in the world. Why talk to them? We have to go out and be tough and so on. There was a time not so long ago in this country, practiced by Republican Presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, as well as Democrats, where diplomacy was exhausted before the United States resorted to military means. We used to understand that diplomacy was the primary means of advancing America's national security interests. We used to remember that war is the ultimate failure of diplomacy--and the best way to end it. Unfortunately, our current diplomacy has been almost absent--an ambassador left to his own devices on the grounds, an occasional fly-in visit from the Secretary of State or the President, but no ongoing talks or shuttle diplomacy. In fact, so much of what we used to take for granted in national security policy has now been called into question. We used to know that, despite our differences and political philosophies in the Senate--and I remember watching the Senate in those days as a young kid and a student of government--the two great parties of this country were able to cooperate to craft international policies in our national interest. We used to understand that the unique and historic role of the United States in world affairs required a farsighted and multifaceted approach to protecting our people and our interests. We used to value as a national treasure the international alliances and institutions that enhanced our strength, amplified our voice, and reflected our traditions and ideals in maintaining a free and secure world. You can look at the history of the Cold War and what Woodrow Wilson tried to do, as well as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower, with the Marshall Plan and other efforts to bring countries together and to try to honor the effort through statesmanship, to be able to forge viable alliances and peace. We used to say that politics stopped at the water's edge. We used to call on our people to share in the sacrifices demanded by freedom. Our leaders used to raise hopes and inspire trust, not raise fears and demand blind faith We used to measure America's strength and security by our moral authority, our economic leadership, and our diplomatic skills all together, as well as by the power of our military. I want people to stop and think about how much things have changed. Last week, one of the most noted, honored columnists in America, New York Times' Tom Friedman, wrote the following. He had just come back from the Middle East. He wrote his previous book ``From Beirut to Jerusalem,'' which won a Pulitzer prize: Our President and Secretary of State, although they speak with great moral clarity, have no moral authority. That's been shattered by their performance in Iraq. That moral authority is something that Presidents struggle to hold onto, to nurture and create, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. I believe the key to any hope of stabilizing Iraq is changing course and engaging in sustained diplomacy from the highest levels of America's leadership that matches the effort of our soldiers on the ground. History tells us the results of that kind of effort. In 1995, most recently, there was a brutal civil war in Bosnia involving Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. Faced with a seemingly intractable stalemate in the face of horrific ethnic cleansing, the Clinton administration took action--I might add, they took action that was opposed by a lot of people on a partisan basis--and led by Richard Holbrooke they brought leaders in the Bosnian parties together in Dayton, OH. I know at the time Mr. Yeltsin didn't even want to appear, didn't want to be part of it. But it took persuasion and leverage that ultimately helped to bring Russia, then the Soviet Union, to the table. They brought leaders of the Bosnian parties together in Dayton, OH, and representatives from the European Union, Russia, and Britain to hammer out a peace agreement that brought relative stability to the region. That is the kind of effort we have to engage in if we are going to secure Iraq and extricate ourselves ultimately. While an international process has begun to bring reconstruction and economic aid to Iraq, a real national compact forged with the support of countries in the region, is needed to bring about a political solution to the insurgency and end the cycle of Shia-Sunni violence. This strategy can work. It is the only strategy that ultimately will work. No matter what happens ultimately, the hope of bringing American troops home from Iraq is going to depend on the quality of the negotiating process which leverages a new security arrangement for the region. That is the bottom line. We are not going to be able to leave without it, and Americans ultimately are going to want to leave. A Dayton-like summit that includes the leaders of the Iraqi Government, the countries bordering Iraq, the Arab League, NATO, and I know from talking with members--recently I was in Brussels talking with members of NATO, I talked with people at the United Nations, I talked with people with respect to the Arab League--they are all waiting. They are ready to try to do this, but it takes leadership to pull those parties together. The fact is, we can enable the Iraqis to engage in the intensive diplomacy to forge a comprehensive political agreement that addresses security guarantees, oil revenues, federalism, and disbanding of the militias, and all the parties would agree on a process for securing Iraq's borders. These are the key elements of a political agreement necessary to decrease the violence, and they are not the tasks for which U.S. troops can or should be responsible. They are the responsibility of civilian personnel, particularly the Iraqis. Success is going to require the collective effort that engages members of the international community who share our interest in a stable Iraq. To enlist their support, we have to address their concerns about a security arrangement in the region after we have withdrawn from Iraq. That is why the summit should lay the groundwork for creating a new regional security structure that strengthens countries in the regions and the wider community of nations. That, incidentally, is what we should have been doing all of last year under resolution 1559 of the United Nations, when we should have been dealing with the issue of the disarmament of Hezbollah. I believe--and I think others share this belief--that the only way to ultimately be successful in Iraq is to lay down a strategy that extricates the United States because even our generals have said our large force presence is a magnet for the terrorists and adds to the problem of the insurgency. So part of the solution is to reduce that American presence. I believe if we were to redeploy those forces after we set some responsible timeframes, that is the most effective way to proceed. Let me say one or two words in closing. I keep hearing colleagues say everybody loves the politics of this, but a lot of young people's lives are on the line. They may want to play to the politics of cut and run versus stay the course, but that is not what this is about. If you were to adopt a policy that sets some timeframes and deadlines, you still leave the President the discretion to be able to keep certain forces there to complete the training; you leave the President the discretion to keep forces there to fight al-Qaida; you leave the President the discretion to use forces to protect American facilities; and you maintain over-the-horizon ability to protect American interests in the region. I think we need to get away from this simplistic sloganeering and get into a real discussion about how one makes Iraq a success and our policy in the region a success. We know that Prime Minister Maliki understands this, which is why he has talked openl about a timeframe for the reduction of U.S. forces. We know that Ambassador Khalilzad and General Casey are discussing with the Iraqi Government the formation of a joint commission to outline the terms and conditions of the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We know Mr. Rubaie has already said there is an ``unofficial `road map' to troop reductions that will eventually lead to a total withdrawal of U.S. troops.'' And we know that General Casey has drafted a plan for significantly reducing U.S. troop levels by the end of 2007. And we know that the polls of Iraqis have shown that 87 percent of Iraqis, including 94 percent Sunnis and 90 percent Shia, support their Government endorsing a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. So it seems to me that if the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi people, the Ambassador, the top military commander, and a majority of Americans can see that the time has come for an adequate timeframe to get Iraqis to fight for democracy for themselves as much as we have done it for them, why can't the Bush administration? Even as we consider the way forward in Iraq, we obviously can't lose sight of what is happening in a war raging on the other side of the Middle East. Watching the news from the Middle East these days is an exercise in continual heartbreak as Israel continues military operations to defend itself against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the missiles still rain down on northern Israel. Our hearts go out to people suffering all across the Middle East. We all want peace. The death of every child--Lebanese in Qana or Israeli in Haifa--is an unspeakable tragedy. But we know from the hard lessons of the past that lasting peace is not going to come easily, and it will not come without the kind of sustained involvement at the highest levels of the U.S. Government that, again, as in Iraq, we have not seen from this administration. In fact, the violence we are seeing now is in part the bitter fruit of a number of years of U.S. neglect in the region, neglect which I saw personally when I visited with President Abbas on the West Bank right after he was elected. It is another disastrous byproduct of being distracted and bogged down in Iraq. Our inattention to diplomacy and the failure to disarm Hezbollah and stop the flow of weapons from Iran and Syria, as required by U.N. resolution 1559, left Israel to respond to this terrorist organization's provocations with a bloody war that threatens to spread into a larger conflict. In fact, just a few hours ago, General Abizaid testified that if 1559 had been fully implemented, we wouldn't be in this situation today. It is clear that our compromised position in Iraq, combined with our diplomatic isolation in the region, has reduced our leverage and undermined our ability to bring about the lasting resolution that is so desperately needed. Obviously, the people of Israel can count on the stalwart support of the United States during these difficult times. At the same time, the Lebanese people must know that Americans also care deeply about protecting innocent civilians and preserving their fragile democracy. That is why we have to work urgently to achieve a viable and sustainable peace agreement that includes an international force capable of ensuring Israel's security and Lebanon's complete territorial sovereignty, the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, and the permanent removal of the threat caused and posed by Hezbollah. Given these dire circumstances, it is imperative that we do everything in our power to accomplish this as soon as possible and, Mr. President, we should not be afraid of talking to any country that will help us advance this objective, and that includes Syria and Iran. But that cannot be the end of our involvement. In fact, it has to be the beginning of a new--entirely new--more significant, greater Middle East initiative that we undertake in order to create the kind of sustained diplomatic engagement in the region that is the only way to resolve these crises. The unmistakable lesson is that we need more than crisis diplomacy; we need preventive diplomacy--a preventive diplomacy in the best traditions of our country that addresses the underlying problems before they explode. That means putting an end, once and for all, to state sponsorship of terrorism. And that requires a renewed commitment to work ceaselessly to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East. I yield the floor, and I thank my colleagues for their graciousness. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, a lot has changed in the last 10 years. Gasoline prices have risen, up 70 percent since President Bush took office in 2001. Child care costs have risen and now a typical family can expect to pay almost $10,000 per year for one child, which is more than the cost of public college tuition. Health care costs are soaring, and health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. In short, the cost of everyday life has greatly increased. We in Congress have certainly taken notice: we have given ourselves a pay raise eight times since 1997, totaling $30,000, and we've given the President pay raises totaling $200,000. Yet in that time we have failed to give working Americans a raise by increasing the minimum wage. Now, facing tough reelection races and a disillusioned public, my Republican colleagues are finally willing to do something about it, but only on their terms. Despite the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, my colleagues' ``solution'' to help American families is to attach the long-overdue minimum wage increase to an otherwise un-passable estate tax reform bill that will benefit just a few wealthy families. This is nothing more than political blackmail. If Congress were genuine about its care for the lives of hard-working Americans--if we truly believed that any honest American working a full time job should not have to live in poverty--we would never condition a minimum raise increase on a windfall for the wealthy. Since President Bush took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million, bringing the total to 37 million Americans who live in poverty today, 13 million of whom are children. What's even more disturbing is that over 70 percent of children in poverty live in a home where at least one parent works. So today in America we have a situation in which millions of children are living in poverty despite the fact that they live in homes with a working adult. Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has increased by 50 percent since the late 1970s. This may be surprising, but if you take a minute to understand the situation the picture becomes clear. Consider a single mother of two working a minimum wage job 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year. Without taking any time off for illness or vacation, she earns just $10,700 a year, nearly $6,000 below the Federal poverty line for a family of three. The current minimum wage equals only 31 percent of the average wage for the private sector, nonsupervisory workers, the lowest percentage on record since World War II. In the past 9 years, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has deteriorated by 20 percent, and today the value of the minimum wage is as its lowest level since 1955. What these figures make absolutely clear is that it's long past time to raise the minimum wage. Just 5 weeks ago, the Senate failed to give relief to hard-working Americans by increasing the minimum wage. What has changed? As far as I can tell, two things have changed. First, Republicans in tight races realized their failure to address the needs of working Americans would hurt their chances for reelection. Second, those in favor of repealing the estate tax realized that the likelihood of doing so was slim to none. So they agreed to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 over a 3-year period that will benefit millions of working families, but they would only do so at a cost of $268 billion in estate tax relief for a few wealthy families. I think we can all agree that the estate tax law needs to be revisited. The current policy does not make sense, but neither does relief that benefits a few. The estate tax relief before us has a long- term negative impact on our deficit. The 10-year costs from 2012-2021 are $753 billion when interest is included. That is $753 billion that will be added to the deficit or result in vital programs having their funding slashed. And there is no discussion now about how to pay for this bill. An increase in the minimum wage should not be saddled with an unrelated, unnecessary, and unfair tax provision. We should pass a clean minimum wage bill and then work on a bipartisan estate tax bill that is fiscally responsible and protects most small businesses from the estate tax. The legislation before us provides an average tax cut of $1.4 million to 8,200 estates. A minimum wage increase would provide an average benefit of $1,200 to 6.6 million hard-working Americans. The package before us clearly reflects misguided priorities. I cannot think of one reason why minimum wage legislation should include estate tax relief. When President Theodore Roosevelt advocated an estate tax nearly a century ago, he argued that, the ``man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state, because he derives special advantage from the mere existence of government.'' He further advocated that ``[w]e are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality, which means injustice; the inequality of right, opportunity, of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far as is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service.'' We need to return to a society that values hard work. We cannot let ourselves become a society divided by income inequity. Defeating this bill is a step in the right direction toward fairness and the restoration of sane, responsible fiscal policy. In addition to the minimum wage, the bill before us includes so- called expiring tax provisions that Congress should pass. There is no reason we cannot work together to extend expiring provisions such as the research and development credit and a tax deduction for the cost of a college education, which expired at the end of 2005. It is embarrassing that the Senate is leaving for our August recess without extending these provisions, especially since the capital gains and dividends rates that did not expire until 2008 have been extended to 2010. The extension of these provisions should not be threatened. The price of helping families with college education should not be estate tax relief for the wealthiest estates. Mr. President, I support raising the minimum wage. I support tax credits for research development and college education. But I cannot support them when they are tied to fiscally irresponsible so-called reforms. I cannot support a bill that continues to put the interests of the wealthy above the interests of hard-working Americans. If my colleagues are serious about increasing the minimum wage, I challenge them to do so in a clean bill. I challenge them to put the best interests of working Americans front and center. I challenge them to stand up to this political blackmail and oppose the Estate Tax and Extension of Tax Relief Act. The American people deserve better than this.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, along Main Street, in a countless number of towns, many small businesses are placed at a competitive disadvantage by our tax laws. Business owners need to remodel their store every 5 to 7 years. Consumers' tastes and needs change, and to stay competitive, a store needs to reflect those changes. If a store is owned, the owner is required to depreciate the renovation costs over 39 years, but a store that has leased space in the strip-mall across town, depreciates renovation costs over a 15-year period. The result: a Main Street store owner pays twice as much to renovate as their counterpart who leases. Today, I am introducing legislation along with Senator Snowe that will even the playing field for businesses that own the real estate where their business is located. We want parity between the business owners who own and those who lease their property. The Treasury Department, the Congressional Research Service, and private economists have found that the depreciation life for renovations is far too long. These tax rules generate high tax costs, laying the burden on small town, rural retailers who are more likely to own their property than retailers in urban areas. It is time to address this inequity by reducing the 39-year tax depreciation period to 15 years. I urge my colleagues to support our Main Street stores through support of this legislation.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Armed Forces Employment Support Act, AFESA, which will help members of our Armed Forces transition to employment after their military service. My legislation will help the Armed Forces Support Foundation, AFSF, a nonprofit organization that helps military veterans and members of the National Guard and Reserve find jobs in the private sector, create new programs that help veterans obtain jobs after their service to the Nation. This legislation is necessary to address disproportionate unemployment rates for young veterans, the cost to the Government to provide unemployment insurance, and skilled labor shortages in key industries. For instance, the unemployment rate for veterans aged 22 to 26 is three times the national average. The Government has spent $87 million on unemployment benefits for recently discharged veterans and lost an estimated $50 million in tax revenue. Further, a study sponsored by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation concluded the biggest problem facing the transportation industry is the shortage of skilled labor. The transportation industry will benefit from this legislation given that many veterans have experience in transportation from their military service. Specifically, AFESA authorizes $10 million annually through fiscal year 2011 for the National Guard to make grants to AFSF to help it pursue agreements to hire veterans with businesses in industries ranging from transportation to domestic security. AFSF is modeled on a successful veterans employment transition program, Helmets to Hardhats, which has helped more than 150,000 veterans find jobs in the construction industry and has referred 40,000 veterans into apprenticeship programs. Helmets to Hardhats evaluates each veteran it works with to identify that veteran's experiences. It then takes that information and targets various business within the construction industry that has positions that require similar skills. The agreements it enters into guarantee a long-term partnership that benefit both parties. Helmets to Hardhats has also entered into an agreement with the National Guard to assist with recruiting efforts. In 2005, it helped recruit 396 men and women into the National Guard, which is estimated to have saved the military $3.7 million in recruiting costs. The success of Helmets to Hardhats has been noted in the media, by the National Guard, the Department of Labor, 17 State Governors, senators, congressmen, and others as an innovative organization that has shown results and truly benefitted the veteran community and the construction industry. AFSF will build upon the success of Helmets to Hardhats by facilitating employment in multiple industries with positions that are applicable to skills veterans acquired in the military. I can think of few causes more important that helping those who have risked their lives defending our country find good jobs and realize the American dream. Unfortunately, many veterans of the war in Iraq and other theaters are finding it difficult to find a job when they return from service. For instance, at 15.6 percent, the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-old veterans is nearly twice that of nonveterans. This is an unacceptable fact that this legislation will help ameliorate. Indeed, I am confident that the success of Helmets to Hardhats in the construction industry will be replicated many times over by AFSF. Mr. President, this legislation is based on the premise that no one who has served our country in uniform should be left behind when they return to civilian life. AFSF's mission is a worthwhile and important cause that deserves the Government's support. I know that it will help our veterans, and I hope my colleagues will support it.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, along Main Street, in a countless number of towns, many small businesses are placed at a competitive disadvantage by our tax laws. Business owners need to remodel their store every 5 to 7 years. Consumers' tastes and needs change, and to stay competitive, a store needs to reflect those changes. If a store is owned, the owner is required to depreciate the renovation costs over 39 years, but a store that has leased space in the strip-mall across town, depreciates renovation costs over a 15-year period. The result: a Main Street store owner pays twice as much to renovate as their counterpart who leases. Today, I am introducing legislation along with Senator Snowe that will even the playing field for businesses that own the real estate where their business is located. We want parity between the business owners who own and those who lease their property. The Treasury Department, the Congressional Research Service, and private economists have found that the depreciation life for renovations is far too long. These tax rules generate high tax costs, laying the burden on small town, rural retailers who are more likely to own their property than retailers in urban areas. It is time to address this inequity by reducing the 39-year tax depreciation period to 15 years. I urge my colleagues to support our Main Street stores through support of this legislation.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Armed Forces Employment Support Act, AFESA, which will help members of our Armed Forces transition to employment after their military service. My legislation will help the Armed Forces Support Foundation, AFSF, a nonprofit organization that helps military veterans and members of the National Guard and Reserve find jobs in the private sector, create new programs that help veterans obtain jobs after their service to the Nation. This legislation is necessary to address disproportionate unemployment rates for young veterans, the cost to the Government to provide unemployment insurance, and skilled labor shortages in key industries. For instance, the unemployment rate for veterans aged 22 to 26 is three times the national average. The Government has spent $87 million on unemployment benefits for recently discharged veterans and lost an estimated $50 million in tax revenue. Further, a study sponsored by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation concluded the biggest problem facing the transportation industry is the shortage of skilled labor. The transportation industry will benefit from this legislation given that many veterans have experience in transportation from their military service. Specifically, AFESA authorizes $10 million annually through fiscal year 2011 for the National Guard to make grants to AFSF to help it pursue agreements to hire veterans with businesses in industries ranging from transportation to domestic security. AFSF is modeled on a successful veterans employment transition program, Helmets to Hardhats, which has helped more than 150,000 veterans find jobs in the construction industry and has referred 40,000 veterans into apprenticeship programs. Helmets to Hardhats evaluates each veteran it works with to identify that veteran's experiences. It then takes that information and targets various business within the construction industry that has positions that require similar skills. The agreements it enters into guarantee a long-term partnership that benefit both parties. Helmets to Hardhats has also entered into an agreement with the National Guard to assist with recruiting efforts. In 2005, it helped recruit 396 men and women into the National Guard, which is estimated to have saved the military $3.7 million in recruiting costs. The success of Helmets to Hardhats has been noted in the media, by the National Guard, the Department of Labor, 17 State Governors, senators, congressmen, and others as an innovative organization that has shown results and truly benefitted the veteran community and the construction industry. AFSF will build upon the success of Helmets to Hardhats by facilitating employment in multiple industries with positions that are applicable to skills veterans acquired in the military. I can think of few causes more important that helping those who have risked their lives defending our country find good jobs and realize the American dream. Unfortunately, many veterans of the war in Iraq and other theaters are finding it difficult to find a job when they return from service. For instance, at 15.6 percent, the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-old veterans is nearly twice that of nonveterans. This is an unacceptable fact that this legislation will help ameliorate. Indeed, I am confident that the success of Helmets to Hardhats in the construction industry will be replicated many times over by AFSF. Mr. President, this legislation is based on the premise that no one who has served our country in uniform should be left behind when they return to civilian life. AFSF's mission is a worthwhile and important cause that deserves the Government's support. I know that it will help our veterans, and I hope my colleagues will support it.

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Export Products Not Jobs Act of 2006. Tomorrow, the Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing to tackle the issue of tax reform and will hear from the chairman and vice chairman of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. The panel's report took a broad look at our current tax law and made numerous recommendations. I agree with some of the recommendations and have concerns about others, but believe that the report provides a good starting place for a thorough discussion of tax reform. In 1994, the IRS estimated that a family that itemized their deductions and had some interest and capital gains would spend 11\1/2\ hours preparing their Federal income tax return. This estimate has increased to 19 hours and 45 minutes in 2004. It is time for Congress to pass bipartisan tax legislation in the style of Tax Reform Act of 1986, which greatly simplified Tax Code. And our tax reform should be based upon the following three principles: fairness, simplicity, and opportunity for economic growth. Our Tax Code is extremely complicated. Citizens and businesses struggle to comply with ru1es governing: taxation of business income, capital gains, income phase-outs, extenders, the myriad savings vehicles, recordkeeping for itemized deductions, the alternative minimum tax, AMT, the earned-income tax credit, EITC, and taxation of foreign business income. I believe that our international tax system needs to be simplified and reformed to encourage businesses to remain in the United States. And today, I am introducing legislation that I hope will be fully considered as we begin our discussions on tax reform. Presently, the complexities of our international tax system actually encourage U.S. corporations to invest overseas. Current tax laws allow companies to defer paying U.S. taxes on income earned by their foreign subsidiaries, which provides a substantial tax break for companies that move investment and jobs overseas. Today, under U.S. tax law, a company that is trying to decide where to locate production or services--either in the United States or in a foreign low-tax haven--is actually given a substantial tax incentive not only to move jobs overseas but to reinvest profits permanently, as opposed to bringing the profits back to re-invest in the United States. Recent press articles have revealed examples of companies taking advantage of this perverse incentive in our Tax Code. For instance, some companies have taken advantage of this initiative by opening subsidiaries to serve markets throughout Europe. Much of the profit earned by these subsidiaries will stay in Ireland and the companies will therefore avoid paying U.S. taxes. Other companies have announced the expansion of jobs in India. This reflects a continued pattern among some U.S. multinational companies of shifting software development and call centers to India, and this trend is starting to expand to include the shifting of critical functions like design and research and development to India as well. Some companies are even outsourcing the preparation of U.S. tax returns. The Export Products Not Jobs Act of 2006 would put an to end to these practices by eliminating tax breaks that encourage companies to move jobs overseas and by using the savings to create jobs in the United States by repealing the top corporate tax rate. This legislation ends tax breaks that encourage companies to move jobs by: (1) eliminating the ability of companies to defer paying U.S. taxes on foreign income; (2) closing abusive corporate tax loopholes; and (3) repealing the top corporate rate. It removes the incentive to shift jobs overseas by eliminating deferral so that companies pay taxes on their international income as they earn it, rather than being allowed to defer taxes. Last month, the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Revenue held a hearing on international tax laws. Stephen Shay, a former Reagan Treasury official, testified that our tax rules ``provide incentives to locate business activity outside the United States.'' Furthermore, he suggested that taxation of U.S. shareholders under an expansion of Subpart F would be a ``substantial improvement'' over our current system. The Export Products Not Jobs Act of 2006 does just that. Our current tax system punishes U.S. companies that choose to create and maintain jobs in the United States. These companies pay higher taxes and suffer a competitive disadvantage with a company that chooses to move jobs to a foreign tax haven. There is no reason why our Tax Code should provide an incentive that encourages investment and job creation overseas. Under my legislation, companies would be taxed the same whether they invest abroad or at home; they will be taxed on their foreign subsidiary profits just like they are taxed on their domestic profits. This legislation reflects the most sweeping simplification of international taxes in over 40 years. Our economy has changed in the last 40 years and our tax laws need to be updated to keep pace. Our current global economy was not even envisioned when existing law was written. The Export Products Not Jobs Act of 2006 that I am introducing today will not hinder our global competitiveness. Companies will be able to continue to defer income they earn when they locate production in a foreign country that serves that foreign country's markets. For example, if a U.S. company wants to open a hotel in Bermuda or a car factory in India to sell cars, foreign income can still be deferred. But if a company wants to open a call center in India to answer calls from outside India or relocate abroad to sell cars back to the United States or Canada, the company must pay taxes just like call centers and auto manufacturers located in the United States. Currently, American companies allocate their revenue not in search of the highest return, but in search of lower taxes. Eliminating deferral will improve the efficiency of the economy by making taxes neutral so that they do not encourage companies to overinvest abroad solely for tax reasons. The Congressional Research Service stated in a 2003 report that, ``[a]ccording to traditional economic theory, deferral thus reduces economic welfare by encouraging firms to undertake overseas investments that are less productive--before taxes are considered--than alternative investments in the United States.'' Additionally, a 2000 Department of Treasury study on deferral stated, ``[a]mong all of the options considered, ending deferral would also be likely to have the most positive long-term effect on economic efficiency and welfare because it would do the most to eliminate tax considerations from decisions regarding the location of investment.'' The revenue raised from the repeal of deferral and closing corporate loopholes would be used to repeal the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent. The tax differential between U. S. corporate rates and foreign corporate rates has grown over the last two decades and the repeal of the top corporate rate is a start in narrowing this gap. The Export Products Not Jobs Act of 2006 would promote equity among U.S. taxpayers by ensuring that corporations could not eliminate or substantially reduce taxation of foreign income by separately incorporating their foreign operations. This legislation will eliminate the tax incentives to encourage U.S. companies to invest abroad and reward those companies that have chosen to invest in the United States. I urge my colleagues to join me in this effort, and ask for unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise today as ranking Democrat on the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, in support of a bipartisan bill being reported out of our committee, the Small Business Reauthorization and Improvements Act of 2006. This bill, which originated in our committee and which is the product of many Senators' work, was voted out unanimously, 18 to 0. While there are no official cosponsors of the legislation because it is an original bill being reported out of committee, I would have been pleased to be added as an original cosponsor, and Senators Landrieu, Cantwell, Lieberman and Vitter also asked to be added as cosponsors. I would like to thank my colleague from Maine, Senator Snowe, for making this a bipartisan process. This is the fourth Small Business reauthorization bill I have worked on, having been a member of the committee for 21 years. Our committee has the reputation for working across party lines to put what is important for small businesses first, and I appreciate that the Chair and her staff have worked with us on reauthorization with that goal in mind. The result is a comprehensive approach to reauthorizing the SBA for the next 3 years that includes not Republican or Democratic priorities but instead the priorities of America's small businesses. This reauthorization could not have came at a more opportune time to tackle some of the issues that are eating away at our small business programs and at the core mission of the SBA--which is to foster small business growth and bridge the gaps left by the private sector. One of the most important things we are here to do today is to address the shortcomings and failures of the SBA's disaster loan program. Nearly a year has passed since Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma battered the gulf coast, and in that year I have visited New Orleans on three occasions. I can tell you that many of the streets are still covered in debris, and that many of the region's small businesses are barely keeping their doors open. The SBA needs to be prepared to handle an emergency of this magnitude. Thanks in large part to the hard work of Senator Landrieu and her dedicated staff, this bill provides the tools to respond swiftly and effectively following future large scale disasters. Through federally guaranteed bridge loans, States can offer small businesses short-term access to capital so that they can remain open while they wait for other sources of assistance to come through. We provide the President with the authority to declare a new category of disaster--a catastrophic national disaster--which triggers nationwide economic injury disaster loans for businesses located outside the immediate geographic disaster area. And we improve the way SBA and FEMA coordinate disaster assistance. A greater importance needs to be placed on serving the victims, by making the process of applying for and receiving Federal assistance as painless and user friendly as possible. That is why we give the SBA the authority to work with private lenders to get disaster loans out quickly--an idea that members of our committee tried to get SBA to embrace last year. This will only work if we can ensure that these loans do not come at a high cost to disaster victims. We are hopeful that our approach will keep interest rates down. This bill also addresses the effects that the energy crisis is having on America's small businesses. Gas prices are once again approaching record highs, and for the small businesses that depend on fuel to put food on the table, rising prices mean more than having to decide whether or not to drive to work. Included in the bill is the bipartisan Small Business Energy Emergency Relief Act, a bill which has passed the Senate before, which provides low-interest loans to small businesses dependent on fuel. The loans are triggered when oil prices increase significantly over the average price from the previous two years. This proposal is complemented by Chair Snowe's 7(a) express loans for small businesses that are willing to invest in renewable energy solutions. In looking at our core programs, this bill makes a strong statement about the need for the SBA to fill the lending gap in our minority communities. It is unacceptable that since 2001, while numbers of 7(a) loans have gone up for African Americans, the actual dollars loaned have remained stagnant. In the Microloan program, African Americans received 28 percent of the total number of microloans made in 2001 as compared to only 21 percent of the total number of loans made in 2005. Native Americans went from 2 percent of the total number of microloans made in 2001 to less than 1 percent--a mere .93 percent--in 2005. If this trend continues--Native Americans alone will be completely cut out of the Microloan program. The stagnant lending in these communities represents a failure of this administration to expand access to capital to our underserved communities, communities where conventional lending is not meeting the need. The bill provides an incredible framework for the SBA to reverse this trend. It creates an Office of Minority Small Business Development at the SBA, similar to offices devoted to business development of veterans and women and rural areas, and, it creates a grant program to develop a cross campus curriculum at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions to encourage minority students in a wide range of fields to consider entrepreneurship. There is much to be done to bridge the wealth gap in minority communities and this is one approach worth pursuing. Finally, the bill incorporates legislation from my colleague, Senator Johnson, to provide financial assistance to tribal governments, tribal colleges, Native Hawaiian organizations, and Alaska Native corporations to create Native American business centers. One of the keys to ensuring access to capital is making sure that SBA-backed financing remains affordable to the small business community. As we all know, the administration insisted on eliminating all funding for 7(a) loans and shifting the cost to borrowers and lenders by imposing higher fees. The President's budget reveals that borrowers and lenders already pay too much in fees, generating more than $800 million in overpayments since 1992 because the government routinely overestimates the amount of fees needed to cover the cost of the program. This bill seeks to address overpayments by requiring the SBA to lower fees if borrowers and lenders pay more than is necessary to cover the program costs or if the Congress appropriates money for the program. The bill also reauthorizes the PRIME program through 2009 and includes a provision that Senator Bingaman and I worked closely to develop that will expand PRIME with a separate $2 million authorization to provide technical assistance and counseling to disadvantaged Native American small business owners. The bill also includes technical yet important changes in the Microloan program such as making loans to persons with disabilities as one of the statutorily enumerated ``purposes'' of the Microloan program and changing the average smaller loan size in the Microloan program from $7,500 to $10,000. In reauthorizing one of our other core programs, SBA's 504 loan program, I am pleased that we were able to come up with a bipartisan approach to preserving the local economic development focus of the program. The ability of our certified development companies, CDCs, to expand operations into multiple States, in conjunction with the growing demand for 504 loans, required that we put in place accountability measures. The 504 program was not created for CDCs to expand operations and simply create revenue from one state to another. CDCs are more than lenders and should not act like for- profit banks. This bill allows CDC board members to serve on another CDC board, but institutes safeguards to prevent control of multiple boards. The bill also incorporates legislation I have introduced to create a Child Care Lending Pilot Program to expand the availability of affordable, quality childcare in this country by using the 504 loan program to spur the establishment and expansion of childcare providers. Right now only for-profit childcare businesses are eligible for 504 loans, yet in some States a majority of affordable childcare is delivered through nonprofit providers and in the neediest communities nonprofits are often the only provider. I am pleased that our bill reauthorizes the Women's Business Centers and makes permanent the Women's Business Center Sustainability Pilot Program through the creation of 3-year ``renewal'' grants for centers with sustainability grants, and 4-year ``initial'' grants for new centers across the country. We should not be abandoning our existing centers--many of which leverage Federal dollars to do excellent work in our communities--to run and create new ones. Senator Snowe and I have been fighting for this for a long time, since I first introduced legislation in 1999: It is time we get this adopted. Our bill also reauthorizes Small Business Development Centers and builds on this excellent resource by creating a pilot program to provide regulatory assistance to small businesses, in addition to the role SBDCs play in the minority entrepreneurship initiative. One area of our bill which does not deal with reauthorizing SBA programs is just as critical to small businesses--Federal contracting. Earlier this month, we heard the new SBA inspector general Eric Thorson testify about the largest impediments to small businesses receiving their fair share of prime and subcontracting opportunities. He explained how many of the problems in applying and enforcing small business contracting statutes are simply due to contracting officer error. Contracting officers do not know or do not care about small business requirements, and small businesses suffer the consequences. This bill seeks to do something about the disregard that is shown to small businesses with respect to federal procurement policy. Procurement center representatives, or PCRs, are responsible for advocating on behalf of small businesses in cases affecting Federal contracting, such as the bundling or consolidation of contracts. Unfortunately, there are not enough of them to effectively get the job done. By requiring the SBA to assign no fewer than one PCR per major procurement center, this bill takes steps to limit the incidence of contractor error referred to by Mr. Thorson. We can no longer tolerate the level of neglect that is currently the norm. It is time for the SBA to staff up and fulfill its responsibility as a watchdog for small businesses. In addition to mandating adequate staffing levels, this bill takes many significant steps to enforce subcontracting and bundling laws already on the books. Firms bidding for small business contracts are required to certify annually as small businesses so we do not have large businesses taking small business contracts, and large prime contractors are required to certify that subcontracting goals will be met. If subcontractors are not paid on a timely basis, Federal agencies are permitted to withhold payments and to pay subcontractors directly. We must stop fraudulent misrepresentation by large firms, and require the administration to start looking out for the interests of small firms that want to do business with the Federal Government. The time has also come to implement the women's procurement program. The administration has postponed implementing a women's procurement program that became law 6 years ago. This bill tells SBA to get it done within 90 days. It also makes clear that America's service disabled veteran small businesses deserve the same advantages as other subgroups with respect to sole source contracting. Our veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and we owe it to them to give them every opportunity at fulfilling the dream of entrepreneurship. Another program sorely needing our attention: The 8(a) program was created to assist socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses, but the financial threshold for inclusion in the program is out dated and too restrictive. This bill allows for an inflationary adjustment to be made so that businesses that belong in this program aren't being shut out. Finally, let me say a few words about SBIR, the Small Business Innovation Research Program. The Small Business Committee had a hearing on SBIR earlier this month, and at that time, I made clear my concern that we were being premature in going ahead with reauthorizing SBIR when the program's authorization doesn't expire until 2008. There is a $5 million National Academy of Sciences study due to come out at the end of this year that I am certain will give us much to consider. Yet, this bill does reauthorize SBIR, making it permanent, and it includes some strong provisions to protect SBIR companies' intellectual property and to reign in excessively large awards--which are a particular problem at NIH. While SBIR Phase IIs are supposed to be $750,000, NIH Phase II are often larger. One Phase II award reportedly equalled $6 million. While the firms getting these large awards may be doing important work, we need to keep in mind that if one firm receives $6 million, there are many firms that are not getting Phase IIs at all. That is why I am glad that we have adopted Senator Bayh's proposal to increase the overall share of SBIR funds from 2.5 percent to 5 percent of Federal research budgets, so that more small businesses will have a chance to compete in this program. I also support several provisions in the bill to encourage commercialization, one of the biggest challenges facing the program. There is one provision in this bill that was added during our committee markup which concerns me, a provision which gives Federal agencies the option to direct 25 percent of SBIR funds to firms which are majority backed by venture capital investment. The firms which will benefit from this provision are primarily biotechnology firms and no one disagrees that they are doing critical work and should receive Federal support. I am committed to finding a way to help biotechnology firms but I am concerned that this set-aside may crowd out small firms that are not blessed with venture capital. SBIR is the only Federal research and development program devoted to small business and it has been universally praised for fostering innovative technologies and lifesaving therapies and medical devices that may never attract the support of venture capital firms. SBIR serves as seed funding for the companies that are willing to take on these research and development projects. It is important to retain the integrity of this program, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to find a way to strike a balance so that we can continue to support cutting edge research that is at so early a stage it has yet to attract the private sector. Mr. President, before I close, I want to note that while this bill is truly bipartisan, so was our last reauthorization bill back in 2003, S. 1375. However, the reauthorization bill that was finally adopted back in 2004, was a notably partisan product, attached to an omnibus appropriations bill, with almost all Democratic provisions dropped. I urge the Senate to maintain today's spirit of bipartisanship as we move forward, so that the final reauthorization bill truly reflects all of our efforts.