Amy Klobuchar

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business and that my remarks be printed at the appropriate place in the Record.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the floor today to express my deep disappointment and the disappointment of so many people in my State with the President's expected decision to veto the supplemental funding bill delivered to him by the bipartisan majority in Congress. This bill provided our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with all the equipment and the resources they need to continue the duties they have been so bravely performing for more than 4 years. The amount appropriated by Congress rose well above the amount the President requested to give our soldiers on the battlefield. Let it be clear: Congress has given our soldiers on the battlefield all the funding they need. It is the President who will now be blocking it. A few weeks ago, I was driving in Minnesota. It was a beautiful spring day outside of Ortonville, MN, and as has happened too many times in my short time as a Senator, I called one of the mothers of the Minnesota soldiers who died in this war. Of the 22,000 troops the President has included in this surge, 3,000 of them are Minnesota Guard and Reserves who were expected to come home in January and February and now have been extended. Now the moms I am calling are the moms of these soldiers who would have been home in January or February. I asked this mother: How are you doing? She said: You know, people keep asking me that, and I don't really know what to say. Do you have any ideas about what I should say? I thought, and I told her: Well, I can tell you what all the other mothers have been saying. They have been saying that they wake up every morning and they try hard to hang together for their family, and then something happens. They see a picture or they remember something, and they are never the same for the rest of the day. They have their good moments, but their lives will never be the same. I told her that her son stood tall, and that now is the time for people in Washington to stand tall. After 4 years of extensive American military involvement in Iraq, the President refuses to accept the prudent change of course recommended by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and supported by a clear majority of the American people. By passing this bill, we in Congress fulfilled our constitutional duties to, first, continue funding for America's Armed Forces in harm's way and, second, to ensure that our Government pursues policies in the best interests of our soldiers and of our Nation. As we work with the President in the days and weeks and months to come, we must continue to advocate for the necessary changes in our strategy in Iraq. It is with this spirit that we in Congress continue to reach out to the President for a responsible change of course in Iraq. Last month, I visited Baghdad and Fallujah. I saw firsthand the bravery and commitment of our troops. The very best thing we can do for these young men and women is not only give them the equipment they deserve but to get this policy right. This means sending a clear message to the Iraqi Government that we are not staying there indefinitely. This means, as recommended by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, that we begin the process of redeploying our troops, with the goal of withdrawing combat forces by next year, while acknowledging that some troops may remain to train the Iraqi police and special forces to provide security for those who remain and to conduct special operations. This means not a surge in troops but a surge in diplomacy and economy and Iraqi responsibility. When I was over in Baghdad and Fallujah, I saw many things, including the bravery of our troops. I was struck a few weeks later when another delegation of people from Congress went there, and one of the Congressmen returned and said he had been visiting a market there. He said it reminded him of a farmers market in Indiana. Those are not the enduring memories of my trip to Iraq. My most enduring memory is standing on the tarmac in the Baghdad Airport with nine firefighters from the Duluth National Guard, who called me over to stand with them while they saluted as six caskets draped in the American flag were loaded onto a plane. As every casket was loaded on, they saluted. They were standing tall for their fallen soldiers that day. Now is our time for Congress to stand tall. Our troops have done everything they have been asked to do. They have deposed an evil dictator, and they gave the Iraqi people the opportunity to vote and establish a new government. It is now the Iraqi Government's responsibility to govern. But stability and progress in Iraq depend on the political reforms Iraqi leaders have promised many times yet failed to deliver. After 4 years, despite many promises, Iraq has yet to approve a provincial election law. After 4 years, despite many promises, Iraq has yet to approve a law to share oil revenues. After 4 years, despite many promises, Iraq has yet to approve a debaathification law to promote reconciliation. After 4 years, despite many promises, Iraq has yet to approve a law reining in the militia. Our men and women in uniform cannot deliver these kinds of reforms to Iraq. This is up to the Iraqis themselves. As the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended, Iraqi leaders must pay a price if they continue to fail to make good on key reforms they have promised the Iraqi people. After 4 years, what have we gotten? Benchmarks without progress, promises without results, claims of accountability without any consequences. Why should we expect the Iraqi leaders to do any better when they know the President continues to accept their excuses for inaction and fails to impose any penalties for their lack of progress. That is why the bipartisan Iraq Study Group made clear that ``if the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government.'' That report was issued 5 months ago. Meanwhile, the President has simply stayed the course he has continued to pursue for the past 4 years and, not surprisingly, little progress has been achieved in Iraq. The Iraqi Government will understand and finally take responsibility only when it is crystal clear to them that our combat presence is not indefinite and that American combat troops are going to leave. That is the responsible change of course we in Congress are seeking. The American people are looking to their leaders in Washington at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to work together to get this policy right. Two weeks ago, I went to the White House and met with the President, along with three other Senators, including two Republicans. I appreciated the time he took to honestly discuss our points of agreement and disagreement on the war. I told him that now is the time to forge cooperation with our Democrats in Congress. But the President has chosen instead to veto this bill. As we move forward on the funding of this war, we in Congress will do nothing that threatens the safety of American soldiers in the field. But we must continue to fulfill our constitutional duty to exercise oversight of American policies in Iraq. A critical part of this oversight must be demanding accountability for the way in which funds are spent on the reconstruction projects in Iraq. For the past 4 years, the administration has demanded--and received-- a blank check to spend in Iraq. Now we are seeing the consequences of this lack of planning, management, and responsibility. On Monday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction released a report that details widespread failures in the most basic reconstruction projects. The report finds that, in many cases, Iraq's infrastructure and utility systems are worse off than they were before the war. On closer inspection, it turns out that even projects which were declared ``success stories'' were considerably less than that. In fact, seven out of eight of these projects which were called success stories were not operating properly due to plumbing and electrical failures, improper maintenance, possible looting, and the fact that expensive equipment was available but never used. Prior to the 2003 invasion, Iraq's power system produced 4,500 megawatts a day. Today, the same system produces 3,832 megawatts a day. In Baghdad, the city enjoys an average of 6.5 hours of electricity a day. A year ago, Baghdad received 8 hours of electricity a day. Before the war, the city received an average of 16 to 24 hours a day. Congress has provided $4.2 billion for reconstruction of Iraq's power system, and the result has been a more than 50 percent decrease in the length of time the citizens of Baghdad have access to electricity on any given day. Congress has provided nearly $2 billion to provide clean drinking water and repair sewer systems. But according to the World Health Organization, 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to clean drinking water. The Defense Department has estimated that the unemployment rate in Iraq is anywhere between 13.6 percent to 60 percent. In a recent survey, only 16 percent of Iraqis said their current incomes met their basic needs. So after 4 years, we are facing a security situation that continues to deteriorate, an economic situation that continues to stagnate, and a reconstruction effort that cannot provide even the most basic services. My colleagues and I have been asking the difficult questions and demanding answers from this administration. The supplemental bill demonstrates that Congress is reclaiming its rightful role in setting Iraq policy and, more broadly, in our system of government. The President's veto only strengthens our resolve. Madam President, I also wish to speak briefly in support of a few other provisions in this bill that I believe respond to critical challenges our Nation faces and that the administration has deemed unnecessary. The White House and many of my friends on the other side of the aisle have argued that this bill should not contain funding for anything other than the current war. If we were sacrificing funding for our troops in order to meet domestic priorities, I would agree. But having given our troops all they need and continuing to ignore crises at home would be irresponsible. Veterans funding is one of the key parts of this bill. This bill adds an increase in veterans funding that was long overdue. In the last 2 years in my State, veterans would come up to me--particularly from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars--and they would tell me about how they had difficulty getting treatment. They clearly had mental health issues. I didn't know if there was truth to this. I wasn't sure, because of the state of their minds, whether this was true. Then I got here, and I started looking at the numbers. In 2005, the Department of Defense estimated that about 24,000 soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan would need health care. The actual number is four times that amount. Last year, they were 87,000 soldiers short in their estimate of how many soldiers would need help coming back from this war. Now I know why those people were wandering around asking for help. It is because they weren't getting the help they deserve. Another critical problem that has been ignored by this administration--and one that is particularly important to the people of my State--has been the tremendous damage recent national disasters have been inflicting on our farmers and ranchers. The supplemental spending bill was a combination of a 2-year effort to secure disaster assistance for America's farmers. Minnesota farmers have been hit with heavy losses for 2 consecutive years--storms and flooding in 2005 and, again, drought in 2006. All told, they lost more than $700 million in crop and livestock losses. The supplemental funding would have provided $3.5 billion to compensate farmers for a portion of their crop and livestock losses over the past 2 years. Our farmers have waited too long for this disaster relief. I am deeply disappointed that the President has turned his back on the urgent need for their assistance. The bill we sent to the President of the United States provided the resources and support our soldiers need on the battlefield and after they return home. A few months ago, I attended a funeral of one of the brave men who was killed in the line of duty. The priest stood up, and he said to the thousand people in the cathedral: You know, this was a good kid. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall, but he was still our child. When we send our kids to war and they are 6 feet tall, they are still our kids and they are standing tall. We need to stand tall. The traumatic brain injury victims I have seen at the veterans hospital in Minnesota, even in their wheelchairs, are standing tall. Those moms whom I talked to on the phone, as they struggle every day just to get out of bed to deal with the loss of their kids who were killed in this war, are standing tall. Now it is time for the President of the United States to stand tall. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I wish to add my voice to those asking that today, the 24th of April, 2007, be a day of reflection and remembrance for those Armenians who perished in the genocide that occurred between 1915 and 1923. As many as one and a half million Armenians lost their lives during this systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing conducted in Turkey while the world was preoccupied by the First World War and its aftermath. That the major powers, including the United States, did not prevent or intervene at any point to stop this killing represents one of twentieth century's ugliest stains on humanity. While today we all would like to believe that had world leaders been acutely aware of the atrocities occurring they would have acted to stop them, recent episodes make a clear that we as a people continue to struggle with the obligation to speak out when our neighbor's blood is shed. In Bosnia, Rwanda, and right now in Darfur, the world has stood by while hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are slaughtered. Any action on the part of the international community has been too little and far too late. Because I believe we cannot prevent future genocide unless we recognize past genocide, I am a sponsor of Senate Resolution 106, which calls upon the President to ensure that this Nation's foreign policy reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the U.S. record relating to the Armenian genocide. I join many of my colleagues today in urging the Senate to pass this resolution. Turkey is good friend of the United States and a critical ally in the fight against terrorist networks. I hope that the ties that bind our two nations only grow closer in the coming years, as we continue to work through NATO to ensure cooperative security. And I will join my colleagues in pressing for Turkey's admittance to the European Union. However, I believe that the Armenian genocide must be acknowledged. Today, the 92nd anniversary commemorating this incident, we pause to pay tribute to those who died and renew our commitment to ensuring that similar atrocities never again occur.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 19, 2007, at 10 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the importance of basic research to U.S. competitiveness in science.

Mr. KLOBUCHAR

Mr. KLOBUCHAR. Mr President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 19, 2007, a 9:30 a.m., in open session to receive testimony on the Department of Defense's management of costs under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOCGAP) contract in Iraq.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct hearing on ``Department of Justice Oversight'' on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 9:30 a.m., in Hart Senate Office Building room 216. Witness The Honorable Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 19, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. to hold a hearing.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet Thursday, April l9, 2007 from 10 a.m. to noon in Dirksen 562 for the purpose of conducting a hearing. Agenda Biodentical Hormones.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 2 p.m. for a hearing entitled, ``The Road Ahead: Implementing Postal Reform.''

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces be authorized to meet in open and closed sessions during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 19, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., to receive testimony on military space programs in review of the defense authorization request for fiscal year 2008 and the future years defense program.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am speaking in favor of S. 378, the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007. I have had a personal experience with court security issues when I was a prosecutor, the chief prosecutor in Hennepin County. We had a very tragic incident, where a woman who had emotional difficulties came into our courthouse with a gun and gunned down a woman--an innocent woman--who was the guardian of her father's estate and was simply there to help. This had been a long-standing litigation battle. She tracked her down at the courthouse and shot her to death, and shot her own lawyer. Fortunately, he did not die. He survived. But this happened only a few floors below my office. We went on to prosecute this woman, and she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder and an additional 15 years for the attempted murder. That is why I am such a strong proponent of this bill. The Court Security Improvement Act will significantly improve our ability to protect judicial officials and all those who help to protect the fair and impartial justice system in America. The bill is going to improve court security by, first, enhancing measures that protect judicial personnel, witnesses, and family members of judicial personnel. I should note there is a provision in the bill that allows for State courthouses to apply for grants for things such as witness protection. I will say, coming from running an office of nearly 400 people, but operating in a local court system as opposed to the Federal system, there are increasing problems for local prosecutors with witness protection. I can't even count the number of witnesses we had threatened during trials. We had a juror threatened who actually had to get off the case after a call was made to her home during a trial in a gang case. We are seeing an increasing number of cases where we have witnesses threatened. Obviously, we don't have the Federal Witness Protection Program in a local district attorney's office, so I am very pleased there are some provisions for this and some realization that this is a growing issue. This bill would also increase funding for judicial security at the Federal and State levels. It would strengthen the relevant criminal penalties. It would authorize funds for the U.S. Marshals Service for judicial security. This is a good bill, and I stand in support of it. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, when Congress passes a law, the American people have every right to expect that their elected representatives will do what is best for them. But the country did not get a fair deal in 2003 when Congress passed the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. Today, the Senate had the opportunity to remedy this problem, and politics won out over providing affordable prescription drugs to our seniors. Providing prescription drug coverage to millions of seniors is a very important benefit, and I very much support it, but Part D got off to a very rocky start. Seniors were overwhelmed and confused. Many were not enrolled in a timely fashion. When they were enrolled, there were serious, even life-threatening delays in getting the medication they needed. A number of States, including my own, declared public health emergencies and had to step in to fill the gap. At the time, my mom, a former second grade teacher, told me that Medicare Part D got the grade it deserved from the beginning. Since then, many of these early problems with implementation have been remedied. Even today, however, Medicare Part D remains needlessly complex and confusing, with dozens of insurance companies involved, hundreds of different plans, and countless benefit structures, pricing tiers, and drug formularies, not to mention the ``doughnut hole'' which each year eats deeper into the wallets and pocketbooks of millions of seniors. However, by far, the most serious flaw in the original law is the noninterference clause that expressly prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices from pharmaceutical companies. This prohibition is contrary to how Medicare handles its purchases of other goods and services. It is contrary to how both Medicaid and Veterans Affairs purchase medications for their beneficiaries. It is contrary to good business practices and to good government. This prohibition has imposed substantial and unnecessary costs on America's taxpayers and seniors who are paying excessive prices for prescription drugs. An analysis last year by Merrill Lynch found that after Part D took effect, prices on popular brand-name drugs increased by 8.6 percent. This week, there is a new analysis from Families USA. It finds that the prices charged by the largest Part D plans for the 15 most commonly prescribed medications increased by an average of 9.2 percent during the past year. This increase is almost four times the general inflation rate, and it is nearly three times the cost of living adjustment that seniors received this year for their Social Security income. By banning the Government from negotiating discounts, Congress saddled seniors with inflated prices for their medications, while handing a huge financial windfall to the pharmaceutical industry. As I travel throughout my State, Minnesotans tell me they are mystified and frustrated that the Government has tied its own hands when it comes to achieving huge cost savings with prescription drugs. The people of my State repeatedly tell me they want Medicare to use every possible tool to get the best prices. It is a simple principle of economics that consumers strike better deals when they band together and exercise their bargaining power. The power of many has much more leverage than the power of the few. Congress rejected this commonsense principle when it barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices. This is just plain wrong. When appropriate, the Government should be empowered to harness the collective bargaining power of 43 million Americans on Medicare to deliver low-cost medication to seniors. We are now poised to give the Government the power to negotiate. The House has already passed a measure to do so. Now it is our turn, and it is our responsibility. This is a matter of fairness for our seniors who deserve affordable prices for their drugs, and it is a matter of fairness for American taxpayers who pay 75 percent of the bill for Medicare Part D. Under current law, only individual insurance companies can negotiate Medicare drug prices. The pharmaceutical industry has tried to reassure Americans that this will inevitably produce the lowest prices because of competition. This explanation is unconvincing. Evidence and experience shows us that the present system often does not produce the fairest prices. The pharmaceutical companies like to say that Part D Program costs are lower than projected, but beating artificial projections has not resulted in lower prices. Numerous studies show that Part D prices are significantly higher than prices for drugs and programs where negotiation is permitted. For example, a review of drug prices in Florida last October reported that the lowest retail price--the price you get by just shopping around--is usually cheaper than the Medicare price for popular drugs. In January of this year, a study by Families USA found that the top five Medicare Part D insurance companies serving two out of three enrollees charged prices at a median rate that were 58 percent higher than the same drugs provided to veterans through the VA. The study compared the lowest price available under Part D and the lowest VA price for the 20 most common medications prescribed to seniors. Celebrex, for arthritis, was 50 percent more expensive under Medicare Part D; Lipitor, for cholesterol and heart disease, was 51 percent more expensive; Nexium, for heartburn and acid reflux disease, was 65 percent more expensive. If these aren't bad enough, consider these: Fosamax was 205 percent more expensive under Part D. That is for osteoporosis; Protonix, for heartburn and acid reflux disease, was 435 percent more expensive; and Zocor, for cholesterol and heart disease, was over 1,000 percent more expensive. With this tremendous disparity in drug prices, it simply defies common sense to assume Medicare is giving our seniors a good deal. They should be negotiating for better prices. Maybe the discounts would not be as great as the VA gets because of the differences in those two programs. But how can anybody be satisfied when Medicare is paying prices that are, on average, 58 percent higher? Can we not at least try to get a better deal? Can't we even allow the possibility of negotiation by our Government with the drug companies? Yet this administration and its Secretary of Health and Human Services have shown absolutely no interest in the potential of negotiation. In fact, the Secretary has been aggressively defiant about even the idea of it. This needs to change. There is another reason we should not trust the assurances of the pharmaceutical industry that America's seniors are already getting the lowest prices possible. The Government can often negotiate bigger discounts than insurance companies, which represent smaller numbers of seniors. There is no good reason to arbitrarily foreclose this opportunity for gaining a price cut. By Medicare's own calculations, Part D private plans are negotiating prices that are 73 percent of the average wholesale prices. But Medicaid pays only 51 percent, and the VA pays only 42 percent. The Congressional Budget Office also agrees that the Government could be more effective than private plans in negotiating prices for unique drugs that have no competition. Even limited savings on popular drugs could translate into billions of dollars. Consider Zocor and Lipitor, two top-selling prescription medications. If Medicare could negotiate prices in line with what the VA gets, the savings from those two drugs alone could be more than $2.8 billion each year. Even a fraction of this amount would still represent substantial savings. That would mean cheaper drugs for seniors, a better deal for taxpayers, and less Government spending. The only real winners from a prohibition on negotiation are the pharmaceutical companies. They vigorously lobbied for the ban, knowing it would boost their profits, while denying fair prices to seniors and taxpayers. They paid big money to make sure they got a Medicare drug program that prohibited price negotiation, and now they are spending big money to keep that profitable ban in place. Since 1998, the pharmaceutical industry has spent over $650 million on lobbying. In the past year and a half, they have spent a record $155 million. What are America's seniors supposed to think all that money goes for? The drug industry employs some 1,100 lobbyists. That is two drug lobbyists for every Member of the Senate and House of Representatives. The pharmaceutical industry has fired up its lobbying machine again to oppose efforts to lift the ban. The industry lobbying organization, PhRMA, has been running a massive advertising campaign in opposition to negotiating lower prices. It includes full-page ads in newspapers across the country. They have been buying these ads in my State, too. The most recent full-page ad appeared earlier this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It tells Minnesotans how they are supposed to think. It uses quotes from USA Today and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. With all due respect to these good newspapers, we Minnesotans know how to think for ourselves and how to reach our own conclusions. When it comes to Medicare Part D, the people of Minnesota have made up their minds. A statewide survey earlier this year found that fully 93 percent of Minnesotans want Medicare to have the power to bargain for lower prescription drug prices. But the drug industry keeps using scare tactics, throwing around words such as ``rationing'' and ``price controls.'' It ignores promising negotiation approaches that don't limit the drugs available to seniors and that do not involve price setting. I have dealt with this before. In the last few years, I was actually accused of trying to ration Lipitor. That simply isn't so. My mom takes Lipitor. If people think I would advance a proposal that would take my mom's drugs away, they don't know my mom. Allowing negotiation would not mean rationing, but lifting the ban on negotiations would cut into the hugely profitable windfall the drug industry has enjoyed, thanks to Medicare Part D. In the first 6 months after Medicare Part D went into effect, the profit for the top 10 drug companies increased by over $8 billion, which is a 27-percent jump. It should be no surprise. Medicaid Part D has provided the drug companies with a surge of new Government-subsidized customers. And Congress has allowed the drug companies to charge excessive prices. This has been especially true with the more than 6 million Americans who were transferred from Medicaid to Medicare under the Part D law. They are known as dual beneficiaries or dual eligibles because they are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare. They now account for more than 25 percent of all Part D enrollees. Before the Part D law took effect, Medicaid was already buying prescription drugs for these individuals under a ``best price'' rule. This meant the price a drug company offered Medicaid could not exceed the lowest price it received for that same drug in the private market. These dual-eligible individuals are now covered only under Medicare Part D, which has no ``best price'' rule and, of course, no negotiating power either. Two economists have analyzed last year's financial filings from the top drug companies. In a study released earlier this month, the two economists concluded these companies have gained substantial new profits because they no longer had to provide the rebates and discounts previously demanded by Medicaid. That is great for the drug industry, but it is not so great for all of us. I grew up believing every dollar, every quarter, every penny counts. I remember saving all my quarters from baby sitting in a box in my room. I also believe that is true for our Government, for our taxpayers, and especially for our seniors. The average income for a retiree is about $15,000, with most living on a fixed income. Seniors need medications more than any other age group. For those over age 75, they depend on an average of almost eight prescription medications. So for seniors, money and medications are a very serious matter. It must be a serious matter for us, too. By lifting the ban on price negotiations, we will continue to give seniors access to the medications they need and the same broad range of plans. The difference is that the Federal Government, representing all 43 million Medicare beneficiaries, will also be at the bargaining table. It is time to lift the ban. It is time to negotiate with the powerful drug companies. It is time to help our seniors get the lower, fairer prices they deserve for the life-saving and life-enhancing medications they need. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly about the security funding the State of Minnesota and the State of Colorado need to prepare for the Presidential and Republican National Conventions. The Republican Convention is going to be held in Minnesota in September of 2008. I know the Senator from Oklahoma disagrees with our efforts to get funding for this important convention, for its security, but today I stand tall to protect the security of Republicans across the country when they come to my State. The need for funding is obvious and urgent. As my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are well aware, preparations for the convention have already begun. I imagine they would want security to be a high priority on the list of preparations. As a former law enforcement person, and someone who was a prosecutor, I know you have to plan ahead for these things. Delaying this funding until the normal appropriations process would prevent Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies from conducting the proper planning they need to do. This is an enormous effort that involves law enforcement from all over our State. We have to be reimbursed or taxpayers all over our State will have to foot the bill. The Secretary of Homeland Security has already designated next year's event to be held in Minnesota a national special security event based on threat assessment. There is clear precedent for Congress providing convention cities with security funding. Four years ago, Congress gave $50 million each to New York and Boston, the two cities hosting Presidential nomination conventions, to help them defer their security costs. This included a total of $50 million designated as emergency spending. The bill provides an equal amount of money this year to Minnesota and Colorado, and nothing more. The funding was approved by the Appropriations Committee with bipartisan support, including Chairman Byrd and Ranking Member Cochran. Senator Coleman also supports this funding. I support this funding, and I join my Minnesota colleague and my friends from Colorado in insisting that the States we represent receive support equal to that support which Congress has provided in the past, and that the funding for security for the Republican Convention in Minnesota be protected in this bill. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here to speak on behalf of the budget resolution and to share some statistics about what has been going on in this country for middle-class families. I have to tell you this before I show the statistics. Having met with people all over our State and having sat in living rooms and had meetings with people, they could not really understand why their kids who just graduated from college could not buy a house, and they could not understand why they were struggling to send their kids to college and why they were struggling to go on vacations because of the high gas prices. While having meetings with these people, lightbulbs would go on in their heads about these things. That is what is going on with a lot of people in this country. That is what the statistics show. That is why it is so important to have a budget that gets these families and kids on a strong fiscal track. At least this budget brings us back to the pay-as-you-go rule. At a time when the wealthiest have been getting wealthier and wealthier, at least this budget says how can we help the middle class going forward. Let's look at the statistics. First, look at the productivity. Typically, real compensation for workers--the wages and benefits--tends to track productivity growth. That is what it did in the late 1990s. This hasn't really happened since the 2001 recession. Our productivity growth, as you can see, has been strong, as the blue line on this chart represents, but compensation growth has been relatively weak. That is the red line there. Recent gains in real compensation have not significantly narrowed the gap that has been opened. Workers have a long way to go to catch up with the gaps they have missed out on so far in this recovery. So it is because of their work that we are seeing this productivity gain, but they are not getting their piece of the pie. That is what we see in the increasing gap every year. We have to look at the next chart reflecting real earnings growth. This looks complicated at first, but it makes sense when you look at what the lines represent. The bluish-purplish bars are for the kinds of real earnings growth we saw in the late 1990s. If we focus on usual weekly earnings of full-time workers, we see only modest gains--and that is the red here--in the distribution from 2000 to 2006. This contrasts sharply with the gains you see in the late 1990s, which is the blue part of the graph, when productivity first accelerated. I note this marked difference between what you saw from 1996 to 2000 and from 2000 to 2006. This doesn't even include bonuses of highly paid executives or capital gains and other nonwage income earned at the very top of the income distribution. This chart shows how real earnings growth has been weaker and more unequal than in the late 1990s. For me, when I think about those people in the living rooms in Brooklyn Park, MN, as they talk about how they could not afford health care, this is what it is about, because their real earnings growth has been much weaker and it has been harder for them to afford these important parts of their expenditures, such as health care, gas, and those things. Those prices have gone up. Now, at the same time we have this going on, we have this: CEO compensation, right now, is 350 times average work pay. I think the average person has to work an entire year to make up for what so many of our top CEOs make in the first day of the year. In 1980, the average CEO made about 50 times as much as the average worker. In 2004, that ratio was nearly 350. The average CEO made 350 times the pay of the average worker. So you can see what has been going on with the share of wealth in this country and why we have these people all over the country who are working hard and who are the engine of the economy--the middle class-- and it is harder and harder for them to keep up and to get by. That is what we are trying to do in this budget resolution--start the process of getting the country back on track so that we respect the people doing the work, the middle class, the hard-working men and women of this country. The last thing I wish to share with you is about the distribution of wealth in this country. This is a similar way of looking at the CEO distribution issue. In 2004, the wealthiest 1 percent of households had more net worth than the bottom 90 percent of households. So here you have the top 1 percent. This is their portion of the pie, 33 percent. Here is the bottom 90 percent, the middle class people; 9 out of 10 people are here, and their wealth is actually less than this top 1 percent of the people in this country. Even when you go to the next 9 percent, which is about 36 percent of the wealth, when you include them until you have the top 10 percent, the wealthiest 10 percent of people in this country, they have more than two-thirds of the total wealth. So statistics are important, but what really matters is the people in this country. When you look at the statistics, you understand why, for a student from the University of Minnesota, Jay Boler, it was hard to get by day after day and to afford college tuition when it had gone up 110 percent at 4-year colleges in the last 2 years. He is not in that top 1 percent. That is not where he is. You can understand why Jeanne O'Hearn, who owns a drycleaner in Robbinsdale, MN, is trying to get by with few employees. It is hard to afford health care for her employees. You can understand because she is not in that top 1 percent. You can understand why a mom in Mahnomen, MN, whose child had been called back to Iraq for the third time, cannot sleep at night and why she is upset because he is probably not going to get the benefits he needs when he gets back. She is not in that top 1 percent. What this budget resolution does is at least acknowledge the fiscal issues of this country by putting back pay-as-you-go, because this interest doesn't hurt the top 1 percent, but it hurts everybody else in this country. It also says we are going to start helping the people who have helped us; that is, the middle class. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. That would be acceptable. He is on his way.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Yes, we would like to do that. We are awaiting the arrival of Senator Casey. I thank the Senator.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the budget resolution currently before the Senate. I particularly wanted to speak in support of the additional funding that the resolution provides for the Veterans' Administration, funding that will help one of the most important challenges facing the Nation today. That challenge is how do we repay our men and women in uniform who have sacrificed for us on the frontlines, on the battlefield, when they return home, and how do we ensure they have all the support and services they need to resume their lives. But before I turn to the VA funding, I want to first speak about the current economic situation in America and how this resolution will help to even the economic playing field for the people of this country. When I would go around, especially in rural America, which I think you understand, Mr. President, and start talking about economic issues, I would be in a situation where I would think 10 people would come to a small cafe and 100 people would show up. When the price of gas goes up over $3 a gallon, such as it did last summer, people who have a longer way to drive will feel it first. When they have two kids they are trying to send to college, and tuition at the University of Minnesota goes up 110 percent, they feel it first. When their health care premiums go up 60 percent in 7 years, such as they have been in our State, middle-class people feel it first. When it is their kids who are going to war and their neighbors and their cousins and their grandkids, they feel it first in their hearts. That is what this is about, at the national level, the economic policies that produce record deficits and ever-mounting debt. What was a $128 billion Federal budget surplus in 2001 turned into a $258 billion deficit in 2006. A $5.6 trillion 10-year projected surplus in 2002 has turned into a $2 trillion projected deficit. Federal deficits have gone up by $1.5 trillion, with most of it being held by Government and companies in China and India and many of our economic competitors. This resolution will begin the effort to restore fiscal sanity and responsibility to our Government. It includes a strong pay-as-you-go rule that requires that we pay for any new mandatory spending or offsets or else get 60 votes to approve it. There will be no more spend-as-you-like bills. This does not mean there will be no new mandatory spending or tax cuts to help working families. In fact, the resolution includes a reserve fund for new tax relief measures but only if we find appropriate offsets. It means we have to work to implement them in a fiscally responsible way. The resolution also makes it much harder to push through budget reconciliation measures that are now used in the opposite way than they were intended, to increase the budget deficit or decrease the budget surplus. This resolution signals an end to the spend-as-you-like policies that have created our current fiscal problems at the national level. My colleagues and I have, in the Budget Committee, started reversing this trend and putting the interests of middle-class families front and center. This budget resolution is a good start. I would like to address the veterans provisions in the resolution, which I think are also very important to the middle-class families in our country. In the past 4 years, American military service personnel and their families have endured conditions that are unprecedented, including repeated deployments. I cannot tell you how many families I speak to where their kids have been asked to serve not once in the National Guard but to be repeatedly called back, and every time they say ``yes.'' One and a half million American service men and women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are creating a new generation of veterans who need their country to stand with them. These are men and women who have served our country on the frontline, and when they come back to the country, they are too often shunted to the end of the line waiting for health care, waiting for education benefits, and now as the shocking revelations from Walter Reed have shown us, some have been left waiting in the most squalid of conditions. I wish to commend you, Mr. President, and members of the Budget Committee for recognizing that the President's request for fiscal year 2008 severely shortchanged the needs of veterans in this country. Passage of this resolution, with $3.5 billion added to the President's request for a total of $48.1 billion in discretionary veterans spending should be our highest priority. At a time when we are spending billions on awards of reconstruction projects overseas, we can certainly afford this increase in veterans funding at home. In addition to providing billions more for veterans health care and other support programs, this resolution rejects the President's apparent belief that now is the time to increase mandatory fees that veterans must pay under TRICARE. The President's budget called for an increase in TRICARE pharmacy copayments from $8 to $15. It calls for an annual enrollment fee based on a veteran's family income. It proposed to require veterans to cover their entire copayment for nonservice- connected disabilities. This budget resolution blocks those outrageous proposals. This administration has shockingly underestimated the number of veterans who would require medical care. To give you an example, in fiscal year 2005, the Department of Defense estimated it would have to provide care for 23,500 veterans when they came home from Iraq and Afghanistan. In reality, Mr. President, more than four times that number required help. Last year, the Pentagon underestimated the number of veterans who would require care by 87,000. That this administration underestimated and underfunded veterans programs should not come as a surprise. Ever since the war in Afghanistan and Iraq began, the administration has seemed oblivious to the fact that when you send hundreds of thousands of solders into battle, you must have a plan to provide for the hundreds of thousands of veterans whom you are creating and Active-Duty soldiers who will require substantial support when they return home. With this additional discretionary spending, we can begin to seriously address the repair of traumatic brain injury and polytraumatic injuries suffered by the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that have so tragically become the signature injuries of this war. We can enhance and expand the recovery and rehabilitation centers for the 30,000 wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. We can provide increased counseling and create greater awareness of the tens of thousands of veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses. According to a Veterans Health Administration report, roughly one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who sought care through the VA have been diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse or other mental disorders. On an issue that is particularly important to Minnesotans, we can increase benefits for National Guard members and Reservists who are being asked to play the role of Active-Duty soldiers on the battlefield but then are treated as second-class veterans when they return home. This past weekend, I traveled to Iraq with three of my colleagues to visit our troops in the field and assess the situation on the ground. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to thank the brave men and women from my State for their sacrifice. The sacrifices our troops are making and the risks they are taking was driven home in a poignant and powerful moment at the Baghdad airport, when I stood with nine Duluth firefighters who are members of Minnesota's National Guard. They were there to show their respect for fallen soldiers. They stood there and saluted as six caskets were loaded onto an airplane, all of them draped in the American flag. I watched these men stand stoically but sadly, and then I saw them return to their task at hand. With all the political noise in Washington about the war in Iraq, we often lose touch with what the perspective is of the men and women on the frontline. I went to Iraq to find that perspective. I met marines in Fallujah from Roseville and Rochester. I met a Navy Seabee from Appleton, MN. I met Army soldiers assigned to help train Iraqi troops from Minneapolis and St. Paul. I met Army Reservists based out of Fort Snelling. I met National Guardsmen attached to the fighter wing in Duluth. These soldiers and National Guard members I met in Kuwait, Baghdad, and Fallujah, they did not ask about the resolution the Senate was debating, they did not ask me about what my plan was to bring them home to their families; they did not ask about the shortages in equipment and body armor; they did not ask about repeated tour extensions. They only asked about two things: First, they wanted to know what the results were of the Minnesota High School Hockey Tournament. But they asked one more thing. They asked that we take care of them when they return home. I pledged to them, and I bring that point to the Senate floor today, that their sacrifice will not be overlooked, that their service will not be forgotten, and their debt will be repaid. The VA funding in this resolution is the first in a series of payments toward the debt we owe these soldiers on the frontlines who have sacrificed for us. I have always believed when we ask our young men and women to fight and to make the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation, we make a promise we are going to give them the resources they need. This has always been a country that believed in patriotism, and patriotism means wrapping our arms around those who have served us. In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln reminded the American people that in war, we must strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan. Today, Americans are again called to bind up our Nation's wounds and to care for those who have borne the battle, as well as their families who have shouldered their own sacrifice. Let us live up to this solemn obligation to bring our troops home safely and to honor our returning soldiers and their families by giving them the care and the benefits they have earned. That is why I support the veterans funding included in this budget resolution. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, as a former prosecutor, I am here to speak in behalf of S. 214. I would first like to thank the members of the Judiciary Committee for introducing and reporting out this important bill, and I am proud to be a cosponsor. I returned from Iraq yesterday, and I look forward to reflecting on lessons learned from that trip later on this week. But I will say that my Senate colleagues and I had extensive discussions with Iraqi political leaders as well as the American military about the need to restore the rule of law in Iraq. I have always been proud that our judicial process has been the gold standard for the rest of the world. It is ironic, then, that even as I spoke with Iraqi leaders about their challenges, we Americans were learning a very public lesson about how the rule of law can be undermined in even the most advanced democracies. We have learned this past month that our Nation's chief law enforcement officer, our leading guardian of the rule of law in this country, has allowed politics to creep too close to the core of our legal system. This administration has determined that Washington politicians, not prosecutors out in the field--and perhaps, in some cases, not even the facts--will dictate how prosecutions should proceed. The consequences are unacceptable. Good prosecutors, by all accounts doing their jobs, upholding their oaths, following the principles of their profession, basing their decisions on the facts before them, were pressured and/or fired and/or unfairly slandered by this administration. All of this, it would seem, was motivated by rank politics. That is simply not how we do things in this country. That is why, last week, I called for the Attorney General to resign. Before I came to the Senate, I was a prosecutor. I managed an office of nearly 400 people, and we always said in our office: If you do the right thing, if you do your job without fear or favor, at the end of the day, you have no regrets. It may not be easy; whatever your decision is, it may not make everyone happy, you may have to explain it, but if you do your job without fear or favor, you have no regrets. That was true, even though I was elected through the political process. I checked politics at the door when I came to my job. I remember when I first came to my office there were two prosecutors in the office who supported my opponent. I went and met with them the day after I was elected, and I said: I heard nothing but good things about you two, I heard you are great prosecutors, and I would like to know what are the jobs you want in the office. One of them wanted to be head of the drug team, the other wanted to be head of the gang team, and I put them in those jobs and never regretted it. They did incredible jobs, got along well with the police, and they worked well with the community. That is because we knew, when it came to prosecutions, there were boundaries. Those boundaries, this month in Washington, we found out were crossed. Another case I will always remember is a case where we prosecuted a judge who had stolen $400,000 from a mentally disabled woman he was supposed to protect. This young woman lived in a world of stuffed animals and dolls. She needed people to take care of her. He was the person who was in charge of her money in her accounts, and he systematically stole all $400,000 in those accounts. He was a politically connected judge. He was a Democrat. When that case came into our office, I got so many calls, dozens of calls, from people in the community, political people, saying: You know, he messed up, but he is a good guy. He should not go to jail. He went to jail. We asked for a 4-year sentence, and we got that sentence. I still remember that courtroom packed with all of his friends, all of his pals, but we did the right thing, and at the end of the day we had no regrets. This is a tradition in our country, a simple and deeply rooted tradition that our party affiliation should not get in the middle of decisions about whom we prosecute and how we enforce the law. That tradition is as true--perhaps even more true--in our Federal prosecutor's office as it is in the local DA's office. This tradition emerged because our justice system is ultimately built on a foundation of trust. Without that trust, the system does not work. When our leaders play politics with the judicial process, we lose that trust. When people get fired for political reasons, we lose that trust. When good prosecutors are removed to make room for political cronies, we lose that trust. In losing that trust, the very lifeblood of our justice system comes under threat. The legislation we are considering will not undo the damage this administration and this Attorney General have caused, but it will prevent this Attorney General and future Attorneys General from ever doing something like this again. It is time once again to allow Federal prosecutors to do their jobs without fear or favor. It is time to place much needed limits on an administration that has far too often and far too flagrantly exceeded its authority and abused the public trust. Today, by passing this bill, we seek to curb that abuse and to give trust back to those who gave it to us--the people of this country. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask that the time be charged equally to both sides.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask to proceed for 5 minutes.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to our brave soldiers fighting overseas and in particular the nearly 3,000 Minnesota National Guard members who recently had their stays extended in Iraq. I wish to speak about our duty to these soldiers for their sacrifices on behalf of our Nation. It is an issue that must transcend partisanship. Whether one supports the President's escalation or opposes it, as I do, there is one point on which we can agree: We must support the soldiers on the battlefield, and when they return home, we must give them the support they need. In the past 4 years, American military service personnel and their families have endured challenges and stressful conditions that are unprecedented in recent history, including unrelenting operational demands and recurring deployments in combat zones. Mr. President, 1.5 million American service men and women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are creating new generations of veterans who need their country to stand with them. Many of the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing it not only to serve their country but also to provide for their families. One of these soldiers was Army SGT William ``B.J.'' Beardsley, who lived in Minnesota. Sergeant Beardsley joined the Army just after high school and completed one term of service. But when his wife Stacy encountered medical ailments, Sergeant Beardsley decided to reenlist, in part so that his health insurance would cover the medical treatment his wife required. His personal sacrifice to family and country allowed his wife to successfully undergo surgery. Tragically, the day Stacy left the hospital, Sergeant Beardsley was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. I have always believed that when we ask our young men and women to fight and die for this Nation, we make a promise that we will give them all the resources they need to do their job and when they return home, we will take care of them and their families. Sergeant Beardsley will not be coming home, but for too many of his fellow soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who do return, our promise to take care of them has repeatedly been broken. As a nation, we have an obligation to wrap our arms around the people who serve us and who have sacrificed for us. Today, our veterans need us more than ever. While the President pushes ahead with his surge of additional troops into Iraq's civil war, at home we are already experiencing a vastly larger surge of returning soldiers, many of them citizen soldiers from the National Guard and Reserves. More than 3,000 have returned having made the ultimate sacrifice, leaving behind grieving families and communities. Tens of thousands have come home physically wounded. Tens of thousands more return suffering from post-traumatic stress, depression, and substance abuse as a result of their service. These are men and women who have served our country on the front lines, but on returning home too many have found themselves shunted to the end of the line, left waiting to get the health care they need, left waiting to receive the benefits they have earned and, as the shocking revelations from Walter Reed show us, some have been left waiting in the most squalid of conditions. We are now learning this is not an isolated incident. In Minnesota, one of those left waiting was Jonathan Schulze. Jonathan, from Stewart, MN, was a 25-year-old marine who had fought in Iraq and earned two Purple Hearts. He told his parents that 16 men in his unit had died in 2 days of battle. When he returned home in 2005, the war did not leave him. He suffered flashbacks and panic attacks. He started drinking heavily to stave off nightmares. According to VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, Jonathan was seen by the VA 46 times in Minneapolis and St. Cloud, MN, but this was not enough. In January, this young war veteran hanged himself. We now learn that the VA Medical Center in St. Cloud has 15 acute inpatient psychiatric beds, while a decade ago there were 198 beds. That means the number of acute psychiatric beds available for veterans there has declined by more than 90 percent in the past decade. It is as if nobody even realized that we have been at war for the past 4 years and that tens of thousands of Minnesotans have returned from combat, with many more to come. Our veterans didn't stand in long waiting lines when they were called up or volunteered to serve our Nation. So why are we asking them to stand in line now for medical care? As a former prosecutor, there is a saying that ``justice delayed is justice denied.'' I would add that, for our veterans, ``health care delayed is health care denied,'' and that, too, is an injustice. We need to do better, much better, and we can. In fact, we know what needs to be done. First, we need to stop shortchanging our veterans during the budget process. Just as this administration sent our soldiers into battle without a plan for victory, it also failed to develop a plan to address their needs once they got home. The administration shockingly underestimated the number of veterans who would require medical care. In its fiscal year 2005 budget request, the Department of Defense estimated that they would have to provide care for 23,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. In reality, more than four times that number required assistance. Last year, the Pentagon underestimated the number of veterans seeking care by 87,000. The Department of Veterans Affairs operates the largest medical system in the Nation. It has a reputation for high-quality care, with many talented, dedicated doctors, nurses, and other staff. The VA's resources, however, are now severely strained. The waiting list and delays get longer. The shortages are especially severe in mental health care. Last year, the VA underestimated the number of new post-traumatic cases by five times. For the past several years, this administration has submitted a budget request for the VA that significantly underfunded the needs of America's 25 million veterans. This is from the same administration that each year asks Congress to authorize tens of billions of dollars for projects in Iraq. I was pleased that the continuing resolution, passed a few weeks ago, increased funding for the VA by $3.5 billion over fiscal year 2006 levels. However, this should only be the beginning of a renewed commitment to our service men and women, both on the front lines and on the home front. When the President's budget comes to the Senate floor later this month, I will join my like-minded colleagues in pressing for a substantial increase in VA funding. Second, we need to start treating our National Guard and Reserves like the soldiers they are. Up to 40 percent of the troops fighting in Iraq have been National Guard members and reservists. Minnesotans know all too well the burden being placed on our Guard forces. The National Guard was not built to serve as an Active-Duty force for prolonged periods of time. Yet that is exactly what we are requiring them to do. Guard funding and benefits have not gone up correspondingly to match its increased duties. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is stripping Guard units of their equipment in order to make up for shortages in supply. States rely on the presence of a strong and well-equipped Guard in order to respond to domestic emergencies. Department of Defense policies have weakened the Guard to the point that a recent commission found that 88 percent of Guard units in the United States cannot meet preparedness levels. It is time we recognize the elevated position and importance of the National Guard to our national security. As a member of the National Guard Caucus, I support the National Guard Empowerment Act, which will promote the commander of the National Guard to a four-star general and make him a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It will also grant the Guard more responsibility over coordinating Federal and local agencies during emergencies. We must also upgrade Guard members from their perceived status as second class veterans in other areas, including health care, pension plans, education, and reintegration programs. We need to do a better job of integrating our returning veterans back into our communities when they return. This is particularly hard for National Guard members when they do not have a base to go home to and have to go to literally thousands of communities and small towns across this country. In Minnesota, we are proud to have created the Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Program, which provides counseling and support to National Guard members and their families. Across my State right now, the National Guard is sponsoring a unique series of Family Reintegration Academies. Several weeks ago, I had the honor of attending one of these academies in Alexandria, MN. This pilot reintegration program has helped ease the transition for soldiers and their families, and it has gotten fabulous reviews from the participating families. What works in Minnesota can work in every State across the Nation. As we enter this appropriations process, I will be working with my colleagues to insist that the Federal budget include funding for reintegration programs for Guard members and reservists. Third, we need to improve health care for all of our soldiers. The problems found at Walter Reed are all too common at veterans hospitals and centers nationwide. I have joined my colleagues in legislation that will begin to solve the personnel and building shortages at Walter Reed Hospital and similar centers across the Nation. I also will join the Democratic leadership in the Senate in their HEROES plan to provide more oversight to veterans affairs and develop legislation to address these problems. One of the most glaring needs in veterans health care today is funding for research and treatment of poly- traumatic injuries. As Bob Woodruff of ABC News showed us so vividly last week, with his own example and that of many other wounded soldiers, brain trauma has become a signature injury of this war in Iraq. Minnesota is home to one of the VA's systems four polytrauma rehabilitation centers. The others are in Palo Alto, Richmond, and Tampa. These centers were created in recognition of the large number of service members sustaining multiple severe injuries as a result of explosions and blasts. These centers provide a full array of inpatient and outpatient services, with specialized programs for traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injury, blind rehabilitation, and post-traumatic stress disorder. I have visited the VA polytrauma brain center in Minneapolis. We need more of these centers and more research into the permanent effects of brain trauma caused by explosions on the battlefield. Our current VA infrastructure is not equipped to deal with these injuries and to care for brain-injured vets once they leave these specialized centers and return home. This must be a priority. Another issue that is only beginning to receive sufficient attention is the proliferation of mental health disorders among veterans. According to a Veterans' Health Administration report, roughly one- third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who sought care through the VA were diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse, or other mental disorders. The Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act, introduced by my colleagues from Iowa, will help ensure 24-hour access to mental health care for veterans deemed at risk for suicide. It will create VA programs to help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses that too often lead them to take their own lives. Nearly 1,000 veterans who receive care from the VA commit suicide each year. It is too late for Jonathan Schulze, but it is not too late for the many other suffering soldiers who are at risk for suicide. In the coming weeks and months, I hope to engage my colleagues to cooperate on new legislation that will increase the funding and commitment to veterans mental health services. In past years, veterans, such as my father, could count on the fact that their Government would stand by them. After World War II, our Government did just that, adopting the GI bill to provide health, housing, and educational benefits that gave returning veterans the help they needed to heal, to raise families, and to prosper. At a time when we are spending billions on the reconstruction of Iraq, funding for health care for veterans is far below what is needed. Those are the wrong priorities for our country. We cannot abandon the brave soldiers who fought for us once they return. In his Second Inaugural, President Lincoln reminded the American people that in war we must strive to ``bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.'' Today, Americans are again called to bind up our Nation's wounds and to care for those who have borne the battle, as well as their families who have shouldered their own sacrifice. Let us live up to this solemn obligation to bring our troops home safely and to honor our returning soldiers and their families by giving them the care and the benefits they have earned. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Amendments Nos. 383 and 384, En Bloc, to Amendment No. 275