Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I am fully aware of the effect of the Senator's amendment. Let me ask the Senator this question, if he would like to respond to my question. The Senator asked if I was aware that his amendment did not affect the repeal of the estate tax in the final year of this bill. I am aware of that. Does the Senator from New York agree with me that the estate tax repeal should be permanent and should not terminate at 9 months? Would the Senator from New York support the Senator from Arizona in attempting to make permanent the repeal of the estate tax?

Mr. KYL. I will not yield to the Senator to give a speech.

Mr. KYL. I yield to the Senator from New York.

Mr. KYL. The Senator from Arizona might need to ask for a little more time.

Mr. KYL. I stand corrected--from 55 percent to 53 percent. So we are still taking more than half. More than half of the value of the estate is going to be taken by the U.S. Government rather than passed on to the heirs. I stand corrected. It is not 55 percent; it is 53 percent. But because of the bubble effect, I am sure the Senator from New York would agree that the effective rate is closer to 60 percent, the result of which is that the rate relief that we have provided people--which caused a lot of people to vote for this bill--will be wiped out if this amendment is adopted. Death tax or estate tax relief is very popular in this country. In one poll, it is supported by 89 percent of the people. A Gallup poll last year had one of the lowest percentages of support I have seen: 60 percent. In that poll, over three-fourths of the people acknowledged they would not even benefit from the relief but they understood it to be fair. Anytime more than half of your assets are being taken by the Government, Americans understand that is unfair. Even if they are not going to benefit from the relief, they realize there should be some relief from that. Let me note a couple of the studies that demonstrate the pernicious effect of the rates as they exist today and why we decided to bring them down in this bill. A February 2000 study by the National Association of Women-Owned Businesses, the Independent Women's Forum, and the Center for the Study of Taxation found that the death tax costs female entrepreneurs nearly $60,000 on death tax planning, money obviously they could be using in their own businesses. They report that 39 jobs were lost per business due to the cost of death tax planning over the last 5 years and that the cost of death tax planning will prevent the creation of 103 new jobs per business in the next 5 years. There is study after study after study that demonstrates the effect, not only in the macroeconomic sense in terms of gross national product lost, capital formation reduced, and the like, and jobs lost, but the effect for the average small business which, as I pointed out, is a woman-owned business in this country. That is why groups as diverse as the National Federation for Independent Businesses, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Women-Owned Businesses, and the National Association of Neighborhoods--and on and on and on--50-some organizations have all joined in urging the Congress to enact death tax relief.

Mr. KYL. The Senator from New York has decided to pay for the benefit in his amendment by taking the top rate, which is an effective rate of 60 percent, and leaving it right there. Is the Senator from Arizona incorrect in what the Senator from New York just said?

Mr. KYL. The top rate----

Mr. KYL. The Senator does dispute that because as the Senator from New York should be aware, under the relief in the tax bill that is before us right now, the exemption he is speaking of, or the unified credit, does not take full effect until the final year of the legislation. So it is not true what the Senator from New York has just said. The rate relief provided in this bill currently before us takes the rate from the current level down to 45 percent. It does that over a period of time. We do not even do that immediately, nor does the unified credit lock into effect immediately.

Mr. KYL. I am happy to yield.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me first echo what the Senator from Montana has just been saying with respect to support for education. As he noted, this bill already has substantial benefits for education. Unfortunately, the amendment of the Senator from New York, in order to provide the money for those benefits, has to get money from someplace else in the bill. It is called an offset. What I want to talk about is the offset here because in order to try to help education, he is pitting one group against the other. The group that would be the big loser here is all the small businesses, all the entrepreneurs, the small family farmers, and the others who were looking forward to some death tax relief, to a reduction in the rates of the estate tax. That would be gone under this amendment. All of the rate relief that was provided for in this bill would be eliminated. So instead of the rates going from 60 percent, which is the effective death tax relief rate, down to 45 percent under the bill here--which is still far too high--this would take all of that and put it back up to the effective 60-percent rate. It is morally wrong. I think everybody on the committee who voted for the bill agrees that it is morally wrong for the U.S. Government to take more than half in any tax. And I don't think we have another tax that taxes people at the rate of 50 percent. This would be the highest rate in the world except, I believe, for the country of Japan. Most Americans believe it is morally wrong to take more than half of all of the assets that somebody has saved in their life, assets that could be passed on to their children. The American dream in this country has always been to leave the next generation better off than your generation, to do a little bit to pass on for the next generation. Especially that has been true of the small entrepreneurs, more than half of whom are women in the United States of America. That is why in the committee we decided to use some of the tax relief available for us to reduce the rate that estates were charged. What this amendment by the Senator from New York would do is wipe out all of that rate relief for which we provided. That is an unfair tradeoff. It is an improper tradeoff. Regardless of how much more someone might want to do for more education, it should not be paid for in this way.

Mr. KYL. Ten minutes.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I inquire of the Senator from Vermont, about what time, then, would the next two votes occur? Would that be roughly in 1 hour--1 hour 10 minutes, excuse me?

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, we are debating the education reform act. Debate over this bill is increasingly boiling down to debate over one question: What is Congress' solution to the problems in our schools, specifically, lagging overall achievement and the fact that too many children are failed altogether? Anyone watching this debate will realize there is a divide between those of us who believe that the solution lies in reform and those, on the other hand, who believe that the solution is to spend more of your money. This morning, the Senator from New Hampshire was very clear in pointing out how the expenditure of billions and billions of dollars over the years has not resulted in any improvement in the test scores of our children, and, indeed, after the expenditure of over $120 billion for the last 30 years, our children are actually falling further behind than ever before. Granted, those of us who advocate that reform have committed to significant funding increases. Again, as the Senator from New Hampshire noted earlier today, the budgets offered by President Bush and supported by the Republicans in the Senate have called for substantially increased spending on the education program. Of course, granted, most who focus on spending pay lipservice to the need for reform but just not too much of it. I think that is the fundamental divide in this debate. I am concerned that as we proceed with amendments the spending side is making up a great deal of ground, while the reformers who are looking to change the system in order to help our kids are losing by contrast. Our achievements are looking very meager in contrast. As politicians, we will likely benefit, at least in the short term, from producing a bill that gives the special interests a taxpayer- funded windfall, in exchange for a bare minimum of reform. But our political exercise will not serve America's children; 6 or 7 years from now, we will be making the same excuses to the taxpayers who were promised improvement. We should stop making excuses for failure and begin by retiring the most tired excuse of all, which is that a lack of resources explains why our public education system is failing so many of our children--a lack of resources, of course, in the form of taxpayer dollars for education programs. The education special interests may come up short in educating the children who most desperately need the help, but they are experts at excuses. Here are some in the education sector who have moved beyond excuses. This is a book called ``No Excuses,'' by Samuel Casey Carter. It has lessons from 21 high-performing, high-poverty schools. It shows how these schools have implemented commonsense reforms and overcome the challenges that others use as excuses for failure. The successes of these schools were not achieved by the expenditure of large quantities of new funding but by the innovations of caring people. Most of the programs are in very poor areas, minority areas, and the schools that have some of the best achievements are either charter public schools or private schools. They have overcome modest budgets, typically budgets more modest than many public schools have. They have overcome the psychological and material impediments to learning, which many young people suffer from today. In short, they have overcome big excuse No. 1, the ``more money excuse,'' and big excuse No. 2, also known and characterized by President Bush as the ``bigotry of low expectations,'' which attempts to excuse failure by saying disadvantaged children can't learn and excel. The book is full of stories. For example, Patsy Burk's story of Owen Elementary School in Detroit, MI, in which 82 percent of the students at the school come from low-income families. Yet, the reading and math scores have improved dramatically as a result of people who care, the innovations in that particular school, and a very innovative team approach to teaching in that school. Then there is Michael Feinburg School and the Kip Academy in Houston, TX. ``There are no shortcuts'' is the simple motto of the Kip Academy. They have 9\1/2\ hour days, classes on Saturday, school during the summer, and a lot of homework. These are all nonnegotiable at this school. They are 95 percent low-income. Yet, the math and reading scores are very, very good. Example after example is identified in this particular book. It shows how these schools have implemented commonsense reform and overcome the usual excuses for failure. I think there are practices that parents would like to see employed in their own schools, in the schools that they would like to have their children attend, that are similar to those innovative practices identified in this particular book. But most of these parents don't have the same opportunity as the parents of the kids identified in this book. These kids had a choice; their parents had a choice on where they were going to send their kids. It was that very choice that enabled them to provide the kind of education they knew was best for their particular kids. When you don't have that choice and you are stuck in a failing school, there is a great deal of frustration. We have seen that not only in the debate today but also throughout the country in the last several years. That is what President Bush has tried to get away from-- the idea that you are stuck in a failing school system. As the lessons in this particular book show, when you have a choice where you can send your children, not only are you able to take them to the school that best fits their needs and where they can excel but the competition that is provided by those schools to the failing schools tends to bring the failing schools up as well because as kids leave those schools, obviously people begin asking questions. Sometimes the State dollars leave the school as well. So those schools have an incentive to improve. I can remember in my own State of Arizona opening the paper one day and seeing a full-page ad from a public school--frankly, a public school that was pretty good--advertising for students to come back to this particular public school. I inquired into it. What I found was that in this very fast-growing area of one of the Phoenix suburbs, a lot of the kids were joining up with the private schools that were available or the charter schools that had opened up in the area. Therefore, the enrollment in the large public school was essentially flat. The superintendent, rather than complaining about it or making excuses, had gone to these charter schools and private schools and asked why so many kids were leaving his public school district and the larger schools and attending these others. He found that they were innovating, providing things that the parents of the students really wanted. So he chose from among those innovations those that he thought could best be incorporated into the large public schools of which he was superintendent. When those reforms were instituted, he then advertised them to the parents of the kids in the school district. He said: We have changed. We have instituted some reforms now. We think you are going to like these things. Come back to the public schools. It has been one of the best examples of a public school system which was not doing too badly but could improve. The competition caused it to reexamine what it needed to improve, and it did so. The enrollment since then has gone up. The students are doing very well on scores, and I think but for the competition, that school would not be able to brag about that today. We need to ask the parents of children in failing schools: Would you rather the Federal Government appropriate funds to fully fund your failing school or would you rather be given the freedom to enroll your child in one of these no excuses schools? The kind about which I am talking. I think we all know the answer. I am afraid the new 900-page negotiated bill that is going to replace the old 800-page bill passed by the committee, while it provides for some modest enhancement of school choice, does so only under very rigid conditions with significant limitations, and that concerns me greatly. There will be amendments to broaden that choice, to extend the benefits of education freedom to more of America's families and children. I look forward to the debate on those amendments, and I certainly look forward to supporting them. I believe that giving parents that freedom is the most certain path to improvement in education because parents, unlike politicians, are not going to accept excuses for failure. I look forward to the amendments when they are offered. I look forward to offering an amendment on my own which will show through a tax credit for contributions to special scholarship funds which can provide scholarships for children in low-income areas to attend the school of their choice, we can enhance this kind of competition and enhance freedom as a result. I look forward to the debate, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I begin by complimenting the Senator from Alabama and before him the Senator from New Hampshire, both of whom made extraordinarily important points about the need for improvement in our education in the United States and about the single ingredient that can do more to enhance their performance than any other single thing; that is, more choice, more freedom in our education system, choice for parents so that their kids have a chance, and freedom of local schools to experiment and to do what is in the best interest of the kids in their local communities rather than having policies dictated from Washington, DC. In starting this process, I had very high hopes that we would be considering legislation in this Chamber that embodied this concept of choice, of more freedom for parents and students to go to the schools that were succeeding rather than being relegated to the poorer schools that characterize all too many of our communities today. I had hoped we would be able to pass and enact legislation that embodied an entirely new approach to education in our country. Sadly, I no longer have those hopes because the bill that came to us from the committee to the floor is a bill which does not embody all of the President's ideas as he put forth. It is, in effect, the lowest common denominator, a bill that represents the consensus of all of those people who had anything to do with it and, as a result, instead of embodying those new principles, those principles of reform, relies far too heavily on the ideas of the past, the old model of Federal education which assumed that improvement in student performance could be secured through bureaucratic initiative alone. The old model ensured that when policy details were hammered out, there was a seat at the table for any special interest with a vested interest in existing arrangements but literally no voice for students and parents. Of course, the old education model was built on the premise that Congress' commitment to expanding opportunities to the disadvantaged, as well as to overall academic excellence, could be measured primarily by how many taxpayer dollars were spent. I believe we need a new model, and we should begin by recognizing that if we want to see revolutionary improvement in education, we will need to consider the benefits of a system that is more dynamic than the monopoly model in place today. An old rancher friend of mine told me, if you want to get out of a hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging. The hole that our educational system is in today means that we have to stop making it worse by continuing the same policies. The only way we are going to improve is if we allow freedom and choice of the local communities and the parents to do what they think is best for their kids and for their students. We have to begin by declaring independence from special interests. In covering other areas of public policy, the news media constantly insinuate that politicians are putting the well-being of the special interests that help their campaigns ahead of the consumers' well-being. That pretty well sums up the relationship between many politicians and the defenders of the status quo in education. We need a debate about the premise that more spending equals better results in education before we pass legislation influenced by that premise. In fact, the history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act makes it clear that spending more taxpayers' money does not buy better results. As an alternative hypothesis, I submit we will improve education to the extent that we provide more freedom for families to obtain the kind of education they know is best for their children. I hope we will legislate accordingly. Let's look at the state of elementary and secondary education in our country today. America is not educating a workforce that meets the needs of the 21st century, let alone the needs of each student. Last year Congress authorized the issuance of 297,500 new visas for highly skilled temporary workers to come to our country, and we had just raised the ceiling 2 years before. The reason? Not enough qualified American workers were available to fill the jobs in the new American economy. This situation is not likely to reverse itself based upon current trends. The results from the third international mathematics and science study show that American high school seniors rank 19 out of 21 industrialized countries in math and 16 out of 21 nations in science. Over the past decade, the number of college degrees earned overall has increased by 25 percent, but the number earned in the fields at the heart of the new economy--engineering, computer science, and things of that sort--has grown by only 1 percent. Moreover, too many people are being left behind in our education system: 37 percent of fourth graders test at the so-called below basic level in reading. That means essentially they are illiterate. For Hispanic fourth graders the proportion is 58 percent. For African American youngsters it is 63 percent. That is unacceptable. Only a third of all fourth graders have attained proficiency in reading. Since 1983, over 10 million Americans have reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. Over 20 million have reached their senior year unable to do basic math. As President Bush has repeatedly noted, too many of America's most disadvantaged youngsters pass through public schools without receiving an adequate education. The President has correctly identified these shortchanged young Americans as victims of the soft bigotry of low expectations. For some the response to these problems will be to call for more money. I might note that Republican majorities in the Congress have provided more money; for example, a record increase of 18 percent last year. We will see even bigger increases this year given the priority President Bush has placed on this in his budget. But simply spending more money on schools and school personnel has not produced educational improvements. Since 1965, real per pupil expenditures have increased from less than $3,000 to more than $7,000. During the same period, reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have been static. So we have well more than doubled the spending per pupil on education, and we have no improvement in the test scores. Between 1960 and 1995, average class size fell from 25.8 to 17.3. Inflation-adjusted average salaries for U.S. public school teachers grew 45 percent from 1960 to 1995. Over that same period, SAT scores plummeted. As Secretary of Education Ron Paige has noted: After spending $125 billion over 25 years, we have virtually nothing to show for it. Education special interests and the politicians who represent them have lost the battle. Their last resort is to say we are not spending enough money. But we don't need a bidding war. What we need are reforms that will bring results. President Bush's original plan contained a number of worthwhile reforms in existing education programs. It called for cutting Federal redtape while bolstering accountability through meaningful assessments. In addition to its accountability provisions, that plan contained a modest school choice provision. To the President's great credit, the Bush blueprint recognized that competitive pressure, and the threat of it, is essential to triggering the meaningful accountability that can spur improvement. That is the insight upon which we should be building. We know that the benefits of education freedom are real and they are dramatic. One talented researcher, Harvard's Caroline Hoxby, has found that expanding choice raises the demand for teachers with initiative and strong academic backgrounds. Currently, these are the teachers most likely to leave the profession. Professor Hoxby also found that when families are given a real choice of schools--as, for example, they have been in Cleveland and Milwaukee--significant improvements in test scores, graduation rates, and future incomes are registered by the students who leave their old schools and by those who stay because those schools have responded to the challenge of competition and have improved accordingly. Unfortunately, efforts to ally public policy with an agenda of promoting freedom in education have had only limited success. I am very proud that Arizona was ranked No. 1 last year on the Manhattan Institute's Education Freedom Index, which ranked all 50 States. My State's reforms, for example, have led the way with the type of reforms I think we need at the Federal level, including the most liberal charter school law in the country, a law that has led to the opening of more than 400 charter schools in Arizona, which is about a third of all the charter schools in the country; open enrollment, which allows parents to enroll children in any public school and has the funds to follow the student; finally, an idea I plan to propose as a Federal policy--a tax credit that offsets contributions Arizona families make to organizations that help give students the opportunity to attend a school of their choice. This tax credit proposal builds on an idea that has already taken off, thanks to private philanthropists. In 1997, two distinguished business leaders, Ted Forstmann and John Walton, invited applications for 1,000 partial tuition scholarships for families in the District of Columbia. Nearly 8,000 applications were received. In 1998, they formed an organization called the Children's Scholarship Fund to apply the idea on a national basis. They planned to offer 40,000 scholarships, and 1.25 million applications were received. This is an idea whose time has come. It is a concept Americans embrace. As impressive as these numbers are, these testimonials were offered by parents who have been pleading for better options. One mother said the following about her experience: We would not be able to afford this without your help. Our daughter is really excited to be learning spelling and grammer (which was not being taught in public school). She's an aspiring writer and thinks this is great. My son has autism, and his new school had more services in place for him on the first day of school--without me even asking--than we've been able to pull out of the public school in six years! They both love their new schools and are doing well. Here's another mother's testimony: I am so excited that my son has been chosen to receive a scholarship . . . One evening I sat on my bed and cried because I really wanted him to attend a private school but I know that I cannot afford all of the tuition. Therefore your scholarship fund was my only hope. Yet another mother wrote, I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for this opportunity to send my children to a private school. As a low-income mother of four wonderful children with great potential, I would not be able to provide this change for them without your help. This particular mother goes on to say, I have chosen a school that will help nurture the seeds of greatness in them. I am sure that with this opportunity to succeed, my children will be successful and contribute greatly to society in the future. In 1997, leaders in my state settled on a plan to help the private sector to satisfy that vast unmet demand for options. They instituted a state credit that allows Arizona residents to claim a dollar-for-dollar income tax credit for donations to school tuition organizations--like the Children's Scholarship Fund. Thanks to that program, 4,000 Arizona students--nearly all of them from disadvantaged backgrounds--have received scholarship assistance that has made it possible for them to enroll in a school of their choice. The number of organizations offering scholarships in the state has shot up from two to 33. Arizona's leaders understand the need for adequate resources for education. Last fall, Arizona voted to spend an additional $438 million on education. But first they laid the predicate to ensure that the money would be well-spend by reforming the system. We should do the same. If we define success as success in sending more of taxpayers' money to sustain a system that cannot improve and will not change, we may do great things for the buildings and personnel involved in education, but we will have left behind the children. We should be judged by our willingness to make changes that promote innovation, competition, and parental choice--in short, freedom. Those are the changes that will ensure no child is left behind.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator for his information.

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator.

Mr. KYL. So the significant threat override authority would apply to any of the three items that we just talked about--mass marketing, foreign availability, or component parts; is that correct?

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Wyoming might respond to a question I have. As I read the bill, the section that he cited before, which relates to an override of sections 204 and 211, does not apply to section 213. Section 212 has to do with foreign availability, 204 deals with incorporated parts and components. The mass marketing section is 213. As I read the President's authority under enhanced controls in that section the Senator referred to, on page 183, it deals with sections 204 and 211 only.

Mr. KYL. Apart from the steps the President has to take if he is going to obtain this national security waiver, so that the item would be controlled, how long does that order last? And isn't there a limitation so that he can only issue that three times, for 6 months at a time, after which the President no longer has any control? In other words, the longest period of time he can control an item is 18 months. And after that, even the President has no authority.

Mr. KYL. Will the Senator from Tennessee yield for a question?

Mr. KYL. Not October. We will either have to pass a resolution extending the date beyond that, which I presume would be relatively easy to do, or act on the reauthorization of the EAA in some form prior to that time. Frankly, that is fine with me. As I have said now several times, the effort of the Banking Committee to rewrite this legislation in light of changed circumstances in the last decade is a laudable effort, and there are a lot of changes that need to be made in the legislation. There is no argument about that. That, frankly, is what President Bush campaigned on and what he said he was for. That is perfectly appropriate. We are talking about details. It is evident that reasonable people-- or at least I hope the chairmen of these committees would be deemed to be reasonable; certainly my friends in this administration are extraordinarily competent on these matters. I believe with a little bit of time reasonable people will be able to resolve whatever differences exist. I know some are not quite that sanguine about those prospects. I also am aware of the fact that the administration has an idea which is a good one. That is, not everything in this regard ought to be put in the legislation itself, which can become relatively inflexible. As we have seen, it is a little bit harder to change than an administrative action. Therefore, the administration has in mind developing an Executive order that would implement this legislation and related legislation in such a way as to provide the President with a little more flexibility to handle particularly those situations that arise very quickly. The shelf life of some of the equipment we are talking about is very short, and therefore sometimes there may be a need to act with alacrity. Under the provisions of the bill, it may be too slow, though they intend to speed it up. There are also intelligence considerations which I cannot go into at this point, but they, too, can be dealt with by means of an Executive order. I applaud those members of the administration who raised this as a possible way of dealing with some of these issues. The fact is they have not had time to do this, and I fully appreciate that. Those of us who have concerns about the legislation would very much appreciate the opportunity to await the drafting of that order. As I said, I suspect that will remove many of the concerns some of us have just about the bill itself. That said, I go back to the point I made in the beginning, which is, this is the wrong time to bring up this legislation. I also, again with some trepidation, make the following point: Some of my colleagues have said: Look, bringing it up now actually helps you because you are able to talk about a situation that has rubbed the American public pretty raw these days, and that is a belligerent and overly hostile China. In fact, China has obtained a lot of its technology in the past, not all of it properly so, as pointed out before. So actually this is a good time to bring this up because you will be at your strongest in arguing we should not be passing this legislation right now when it could only make it easier for China to obtain this equipment. At the same time, some of these folks say: Look, this legislation is actually tighter; it is more strict; it is more conservative than ever in the past. We are actually tightening the law; we are enhancing national security. Mr. President, you cannot have it both ways. It is my view the legislation is not tight enough, that it could result in technological acquisition by countries that would use that technology against the United States and that we do not want to do that; there are ways to prevent that. Our argument is over some relatively narrow points. If we appreciate that, then we can also appreciate that it is possible to come together on those, come to closure on those without necessarily engaging in a great long public debate which I really do not think serves anybody's purpose at this point in time, especially given the circumstances that exist with respect to our current relationship with China. My hope is the authors of the legislation on this Thursday afternoon will say, all right, let's talk about this for a little bit, get a date certain to bring up the legislation, and see what additional fixes are needed, if necessary, and get additional amendments that might be offered so we can persuade colleagues, if there are certain changes to make, we can do that and take it up at a time when perhaps nerves are not quite as raw. Frankly, I fully expect the administration to engage at that point in time because they have a great deal of expertise and they are all people whom I know people on this side of the aisle respect a great deal. So we will be taking their views very much into consideration. That is my hope. I hope our leadership will focus on elements of this President's agenda of which everybody on our side of the aisle is very much in favor, including this tax cut and education proposals. By virtue of the fact I had to be on the floor, I missed discussion of the tax proposals that I very much hoped to attend because we are trying to put together the final package that will effectuate President Bush's campaign promise of tax relief for all Americans. I hope we can take that up next week. If not, we will take up education reforms next week and take the tax bill up the week after that. If we are stuck debating the Export Administration Act, all of that gets delayed. That is not good for the American people. My hope is the authors of the legislation will be willing to work with us and defer this until we take care of these other items that are a little bit more important, in my view, and then come back to this with plenty of time to do it prior to the time the authorization expires. If need be, we can clearly do a temporary resolution extending the time of the EAA until we are able to act upon it later this year. With that, I relinquish the floor at this time.

Mr. KYL. To think it would work very well to have a regime in place where the President is going to have to continually be waiving its requirements I think is going at it the wrong way. Therefore, while it is important for any President to have a waiver component--we frequently have national security waivers of one kind or another--if you set up the presumption that it is going to be sold and require only the President to stop it, you are going to be putting a pretty big burden on him. In the past, the presumption has been effectively the other way. Part of this is due to the fact that there is no really clear way of defining availability. I talked to that before the Senator arrived. Mr. President, my colleague from Wyoming may wish to join in this. If so, that is perfectly fine with me. I stand corrected. The authorization for this current extension of the EAA runs through a date in August--August 31?

Mr. KYL. That is absolutely correct, and I would be happy to cite the provision of the legislation. To think it is going to work very well-- --