Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, last Thursday, September 6, after less than 12 hours of debate, the Senate passed by a vote of 81 to 12 the fiscal year 2008 State, Foreign Operations appropriations bill. I think it was the shortest amount of time we have taken to debate and pass this bill. I also think that on the whole we can be satisfied with the outcome. It is a bipartisan bill, and while neither I nor Senator Gregg, the ranking member of the subcommittee who played an indispensable role in getting it done, supports every provision in the bill, that is the nature of the process. I also know there are things in this bill the administration supports and things they don't like. I would remind them that our allocation was $700 million below the President's budget, and the President underfunded a number of programs that have strong bipartisan support-- the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria, to give one example. I would hope the White House would recognize that we tried hard to fund not only the President's priorities but also the requests of Senators of both parties. This is, as sometimes the White House needs to be reminded, a government of equal branches. Senate conferees were named immediately after final passage, and I look forward to sitting down with the House to finish this bill so we can send it to the President for signature as soon as possible. Mr. President, the last vote on the State, Foreign Operations bill did not occur until late at night, and Senators were anxious to go home. I want to take this opportunity to again thank Senator Gregg and his staff, Paul Grove, minority clerk for the subcommittee, whose good humor and penchant for thoroughness and bipartisanship have served the committee extremely well. I also want to thank Michele Wymer, who joined the subcommittee's minority staff this year. Michele has been a pleasure to work with. She did a superb job last week on the floor keeping track of the flurry of amendments. On the majority side, I want to thank Kate Eltrich, who for the past 5 years has handled the State Department Operations appropriations. Kate's budgetary skills, dating from her time at OMB during the Clinton administration, are a great asset to the subcommittee. She has done an excellent job and is someone whose judgment I have great confidence in. Nikole Manatt joined the subcommittee staff earlier this year, and she has already distinguished herself as energetic, willing and capable of taking on any project, and is a pleasure to work with. J.P. Dowd, my legislative director, spent most of last Thursday on the Senate floor helping out in more ways than I can count. I want to thank Tim Rieser, the majority clerk, who has worked for the Senate for 22 years, either as a staff member in my office or, since 1989, for the Appropriations Committee. Tim was my lead staff member on this bill. Tim and Paul Grove have worked together to draft these bills year after year, and to deal with the amendments on the floor. Last Thursday, we disposed of 73 amendments. That is no small feat, and the staff deserves our thanks for the long hours and hard work that made it possible. Among the other Appropriations Committee staff whose contributions to this process were indispensable are Richard Larson and his outstanding staff in Editorial and Printing, and chief clerk Bob Putnam and Jack Conway, who make sure our numbers add up as they are supposed to. The funds in this bill support lifesaving programs for the poorest people in Africa. They help protect the economic and security interests of this country and our allies from South America to South Asia. In a world as complex and dangerous as this, we should be doing far more to exert U.S. leadership, particularly in countries and regions plagued by poverty, injustice, and conflict or where the United States is regarded unfavorably or misunderstood. We have done our best with what we have to spend, and if used wisely, the funds in this bill will advance U.S. interests and improve the lives of countless people less fortunate than we are.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer. I see the distinguished Senator from North Carolina and the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator. I note that when we confirm these three nominations today--and I fully anticipate we will; I will support them and I know Senator Specter will support them--the Senate will have confirmed 29 nominations for lifetime appointments by the middle of September this year. That is 7 more than were confirmed in all of 2005 when the Senate had a Republican majority which was considering nominations of this Republican President. I mention that because consistently, for the Republican President, President Bush, when the Democrats have been in charge, we have moved his nominations faster than Republicans have. You would not know this, certainly, with some of the rhetoric that comes out of the White House; but, you know, sometimes facts get in the way of rhetoric. It is a pesky thing. Incidentally, there were 12 more confirmations that were achieved during the entire 1996 session, when Republicans stalled consideration of President Clinton's nominations by pocket-vetoing them. It is actually a little-known fact that during the Bush Presidency, more circuit judges, more district judges, and more total judges have been confirmed in the time we have had Democrats in control and I have been chairman, than during the 10 years that either of the two Republican chairmen were working with Republican Senate majorities. Taking into account today's confirmations, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts lists 46 judicial vacancies. The President has sent us only 24 nominations for these 46 remaining vacancies. Twenty-two of these remaining vacancies--almost half--have no nominee. Of the 19 vacancies deemed by the Administrative Office to be judicial emergencies, the President has yet to send us nominees for 8 of them, more than a third. Of the 16 circuit court vacancies, 6, more than a third, are without a nominee. If the President had worked with the Senators from Michigan, Rhode Island, Maryland, California, New Jersey, and Virginia, we could be in position to make even more progress. Of the 22 vacancies without any nominee, the President has violated the timeline he set for himself at least 13 times--13 have been vacant without so much as a nominee for more than 180 days. The number of violations may in fact be much higher since the President said he would nominate within 180 days of receiving notice that there would be a vacancy or intended retirement rather than from the vacancy itself. We conservatively estimate that he also violated his own rule 11 times in connection with the nominations he has made. That would mean that with respect to the 46 vacancies, the President is out of compliance with his own rule more than half of the time. William L. Osteen, Jr., is a partner at the two-person law firm of Adams & Osteen in Greensboro, NC, where he has worked for his entire legal career. His practice focuses primarily on Federal criminal litigation and State civil litigation. Martin K. Reidinger is a partner at the Asheville, NC, law firm of Adams, Hendon, Carson, Crow & Saenger, where he has worked his entire 23 year legal career as a civil litigator. His legal practice concentrates primarily in the areas of general business litigation, land disputes, municipal matters, and employment law. Janis L. Sammartino is the presiding judge in the Superior Court of San Diego County in California. For 12 years, she served on the State trial court bench as a municipal court judge in San Diego, and she worked for 18 years as a deputy city attorney in the San Diego City Attorney's Office. I congratulate the nominees and their families on their confirmations today. How much time is remaining for the Senator from Vermont?

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from North Carolina is on the floor and wishes to speak. Obviously, I will yield her more time if she wants, but I ask unanimous consent that she be yielded 10 minutes out of the time reserved for the distinguished senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, among the important issues I wish to discuss this morning is an important issue, an international border issue with our friends and neighbors in Canada and Mexico, that could have severe implications for the social and economic ways of life for border communities in my own State of Vermont but all across the country. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a number of new border security measures have been put in place, all with the express goal of preventing another terrorist incident. I worked hard to provide balance and needed resources and to ensure that in the intervening years we did not focus solely on our southern border. I also have tried to convey to the administration and to this body something of the special relationship we have with our northern neighbor, Canada. It is convenient to forget that most of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States with legal visas. They would not have been stopped at any border. Some were on secret watch lists by this Government, but they were not being watched. And even later on, the Bush administration sent them official letters after they had killed themselves and thousands of innocent people in their attacks. The Bush administration had them on a watch list but did not watch them. In reaction, after these mistakes, the administration has demanded billions of dollars for constructing border fences, seeking to develop and to deploy surveillance technologies, and adding troops along our borders. Now in doing this, we have snared some illicit drug shipments, we have snared a few criminals. We have not picked up many terrorists. Nobody questions that any country has a right to protect its borders, as we do to protect ours, but we should do it sensibly and intelligently. Instead, the administration's policy threatens to fray the social fabric of countless communities that straddle the border. They have needlessly offended our neighbors, they have sacrificed much of the traditional good will we have enjoyed, and they have undermined our own economy in border States. Local chambers of commerce along the border estimate that the costs of the administration's plans will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars and, I might say, the loss of thousands upon thousands of American jobs. I have heard from many Vermonters about problems they have encountered at U.S. border crossings, from long traffic backups to invasive searches and questions, to inadequate communications from Federal authorities about new facilities and procedures. Such a top- down approach does not work well in interwoven communities along the border where people cross daily from one side to the other for jobs, shopping, and cultural events. I live an hour's drive from the Canadian border. Traditionally in my State, as in most border States, people go back and forth all the time. Many of us have family members in Canada. We have enjoyed an over 5,000-mile-long unguarded frontier. Canada has been an important trading partner. It has been a friendly neighbor not only to Vermont but to the rest of the United States for more than 200 years. It is in the best interest of both of our countries to keep those relationships as positive and productive as possible. Post 9/11, everyone on both sides of the border recognized the potential threat and security needs. We have hardened security around the U.S. Capitol, hardened it around the White House, and built fences near San Diego. But those procedures do not work on Canusa Avenue in Beebe Plain, a two-lane road where one side of the road is Vermont and the other side is Quebec. That is actually true. This is a street, an avenue. On one side, you are in Vermont; on the other side, you are in Quebec. What are we going to do, put an enormous barrier down the middle of the street? People are used to going back and forth to their neighbors to borrow a cup of flour or something such as that. Are they going to take two hours to go through some kind of an unnecessary, baseless search? And we have the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Derby Line, VT, and Stanstead, Quebec. The library and opera house is half in Derby Line, VT, half in Stanstead, Quebec. It straddles the international border. Mr. President, I invite you to come see that some time. It is a beautiful piece of architecture. That is why I am so troubled by the so-called Western Hemisphere Travel Initiatives, which would require individuals from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean to present passports or other documents proving citizenship before entering the United States. This is a dramatic change in the way border crossings have been processed in the western hemisphere since the Treaty of Paris set up the international boundary to Canada in 1783. That is already costing us greatly. The Departments of State and Homeland Security have been charged with implementing this law. They should be coordinating their efforts with our neighbors in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean to ensure a smooth transition at our borders. Unfortunately, as I detailed to Secretary Rice and Secretary Chertoff on several occasions, there are serious problems in the ways in which their agencies have pushed forward with implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, before any of the necessary technology installation, infrastructure upgrades, or training takes place in our border stations. If these critical features of deployment are not in place, we are going to see severe delays at our border, and law-abiding citizens from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean will have great difficulties moving between our countries. Most importantly, a hasty implementation without assurances that the technology to be used is truly effective can actually result in a less secure border. Month after month, and despite hearing after hearing, the Department of Homeland Security, one of the least functional Departments in our Government, and the Department of State has highhandedly rushed to impose this new border crossing plan on the America people before they are ready with the necessary technology, infrastructure, and training, and at every step their rosy assurances to the Congress and the American people have been wrong. The administration's record on implementing the new passport program is clear, and it has been abysmal. Hundreds of Vermonters have been calling my office for assistance in salvaging their travel plans. I know that Americans from other States have experienced high levels of concern and problems as well. We have been doing what we can, passport by passport, but a large backlog persists. The huge passport backlogs prompted by the launch of DHS's requirement for air travel passports earlier this year are just a taste of the chaos that is likely next summer when they want to start enforcing passport checks at our land and sea borders. DHS, which has difficulty implementing most of their programs, said it will be very easy; look how well it is working for those who are flying to have the passports. They had press conferences, they had announcements, they got their talking points in the press on how well it is working. And then, within weeks, they had to pull it back. Why? Because it was not working. They did not have anything in place to make it work. And that is only about 5 to 10 percent of the actual traffic that will go across these borders. Well, think what is going to happen next summer when they start enforcing passport checks at our land and sea borders. If they cannot handle the small percentage, what is it going to be like when they have to do it for 100 percent? I have been urging the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security not to rush into establishing rules and procedures that shut our borders to legitimate travel and trade and, instead, work with our neighbors, coordinate with our neighbors on security plans that might actually work. We can be smarter and more effective, rather than arrogantly insulting our traditional friends in Canada and Mexico. We have worked with them on joint intelligence operations to identify and target terrorists. I would much rather see, instead of wasting tens of billions of dollars on a program that is not going to work, lose hundreds of billions of dollars in jobs in America, that we spend a tiny fraction of that talking about our northern border now, working with our friends in Canada, and do a better job of intelligence and identifying possible terrorists. Unfortunately, my calls and the pleas from border communities from Maine to Alaska--for that matter, from California to Texas--have been largely ignored. This administration is setting the American people up yet again for a fiasco of failure and frustration. Since DHS and State keep saying WHTI is a congressionally mandated program, they should stop opposing the bicameral and bipartisan flow moving through Congress to shift the new requirement to June of 2009. They have been warned repeatedly that they are not ready. Even the fresh embarrassment of this passport debacle does not humble these arrogant purveyors of a failed program. In the memorable words of President Bush: They are doing a ``heck of a job.'' The incompetence that led to the human and economic tragedy of Katrina and its aftermath, a tragedy that has not been rectified for more than 2 years, is striking again. By maintaining the fiction that they will be ready to implement the largest phase of this program next January, they are recklessly risking the travel plans of millions of Americans, but they are also risking the economies of scores of States and communities. Today is September 10. Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the attacks. I remember that day so well, being right here in Washington. The administration's failure to prevent those attacks, to connect the dots, to take seriously the warnings of Richard Clarke, to listen to FBI field agents in Minnesota and Arizona, all because of the preeminence of its ideological agenda, is no longer subject to denial. Those failures before 9/11 are no excuse to indulge in authoritarian excesses now and in the future. When we sacrifice our freedoms, Americans lose and the terrorists have taken from us what they cannot by force of arms. As we commemorate the sacrifices of so many that took place 6 years ago tomorrow, we need to rededicate ourselves to American principles and values. In the days ahead, the Judiciary Committee will be holding a series of hearings into important security matters. Today I am writing to the Director of National Intelligence inviting him to join us on September 25 for a hearing into warrantless surveillance of Americans. I am not convinced that the sweeping scope and lack of checks and balances in the recently enacted temporary amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are necessary to address the national security concerns the administration had identified. As elected representatives of the American people, we need to consider whether there are more effective mechanisms to ensure appropriate oversight of surveillance involving U.S. persons. We need to restore the proper balance in order to maintain our security while preserving the constitutional rights of Americans and providing appropriate oversight of executive action involving private communications of Americans. Just this past weekend, we saw reports indicating that the President's surveillance program of Americans was much more extensive than he had led us to believe. The New York Times reported that the FBI was not just concerned about known or even suspected al-Qaida operatives, as the President spokespeople repeated over and over since the programs became known in December 2005, but with casting a much wider net for information about what they termed a ``community of interest.'' We need to examine how far this so-called link analysis has gone, how far down the daisy chain it has gone, what use was made of the private call information, and whether private information of innocent Americans has been collected and retained in Government databases without any authorization. How many innocent Americans who called someone else, who may have had some innocent contact with someone else, are now in a Government database and suddenly wonder why they didn't get a job promotion or why their child wasn't able to get a student loan? It is telling that as this story became public--this always happens only when it becomes public--the FBI responded by saying that this data is ``no longer being used'' and, of course, ``was used infrequently.'' Is the administration nonetheless going to prevent Congress from obtaining the information it needs to provide appropriate oversight? Will our patriotism be threatened anew if Congress seeks to examine the administration's overreaching and ineffectiveness? I hope not, but we will have to see. The very first hearing we held before the Senate Judiciary Committee this year was on data mining. With the leadership shown by Senator Feingold, we have passed a reporting requirement on Government data mining. Now we need to follow up and get the information we need and exercise oversight authority. The first week in October, we are looking forward to hearing from Professor Jack Goldsmith, who served at a critical juncture in 2004 as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel to the Department of Justice. In that capacity, he considered the constitutional underpinnings of the President's program of warrantless wiretapping and helped lead the way to changes in that clandestine surveillance affecting the rights of every single person in this Chamber and all other Americans. This past week, we were reminded yet again of the need to improve the operations of the Terrorist Screening Center, which failed to make watch list records of suspected known terrorists available to front- line screening agents but continues to list the names of innocent Americans in its watch list database. I won't go through all of the stories that come out of some of these things: a year-old child having to get a passport to fly and prove they are not a 45-year-old terror suspect or one of the most senior Members of the Senate being blocked 10 times from taking a flight he has been taking for 30 or 40 years because he is on a terrorist watch list. Somehow, they got the names mixed up. We saw a recent Government Accountability Office report on the Department of Homeland Security with its failing grades, having failed to achieve half its performance expectations since 2003. If you or I in college were to get a 50 or less on all our exams, we would be out on our ear in a moment. This is what we have seen from the Department of Homeland Security. We heard from an independent commission and former military leaders who indicated the Iraqi police force is so riddled with corruption and sectarianism that they should be disbanded, and after 4 years and hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars, we should start over from scratch. We can't even find half the weapons we have given them until they turn up in terrorist hands. But we send these hundreds of millions of dollars to the Iraqi police force and we tell the police in America: We have to cut out the COPS Program. We don't have money for our American police. We can't afford to improve our American police because we have to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the Iraqi police. If I have to call a police officer, I am going to call an American police officer. I would like to know that some of that money was spent on them. This past week also provided a reminder of the need to refocus our efforts on bin Laden. Six years after 9/11, he has not been brought to justice but continues to taunt us. He should never have been allowed to escape when our forces had him cornered in Tora Bora. One of the greatest mistakes of this administration--not counting the great mistakes made before 9/11--was withdrawing our special forces and not providing the support needed. That was another mistake driven by ideology. Think how much better it would be today had they actually succeeded in the one thing the whole Congress agreed on--to go and get bin Laden. They failed. The bipartisan leaders of the 9/11 Commission are right that the occupation of Iraq has provided a recruiting bonanza for al-Qaida and a costly distraction. Iraq, a country that didn't have al-Qaida, is now a recruiting bonanza for them. We need to be smarter and more focused in countering terrorism. How many costly mistakes are the American people going to be asked to bear? I hope all Senators, Republicans and Democrats, will join together in the days ahead as we did 6 years ago, when so many of us stood on this floor and joined hands to do the things that needed to be done. The American people deserve a government that works and that works for them. American freedom and values need to be defended and reinforced, not mortgaged to fleeting and ill-considered promises of security.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. I hope we will do that. In a few minutes, it will be our intent to begin a series of rollcalls. Apparently, there are a number of amendments Senator Gregg and I were willing to accept, but the Senator said he would prefer having rollcalls. That means we will be here for a few more hours than we needed to be. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. LEAHY. We are willing to have a voice vote on it right now.

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

Mr. LEAHY. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Senator Gregg and I are trying again to get a finite number of amendments. I appreciate that we have had two amendments that could have gone to rollcall votes. We accepted them and saved time. We have a number of other amendments that fall into that same category. But I guess as the hour goes on, people want to demonstrate how good they are, and if we want to accept it, they want a rollcall vote. I have never been able to figure that out, but that is their right. Of course, it keeps everybody here beyond the time we otherwise would have to be here. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I send a package of amendments, that are agreed to, to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration en bloc and ask that the amendments be deemed to be read en bloc and agreed to en bloc.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am advised by the leader there will be one vote tomorrow at 10:15.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, before we go to third reading, I wish to thank Senator Gregg for his tireless efforts on this bill and the Members of the Appropriations Committee which passed this bill originally 28 to 1. I will say more about Senator Gregg's staff and my staff tomorrow so as not to hold up third reading.

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Senator from Hawaii for bringing this issue to my attention. I agree about the importance of continuity and momentum in natural resource management research. I will work to ensure that your concerns are communicated to the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and that the Agency is encouraged to utilize funds appropriated for 2008 to accelerate the RFA process for a Soil, Water, and Ecosystems Services CRSP in 2008.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, if I might answer my friend, the senior Senator from New Mexico, it is my understanding from the leadership that this will be the final vote tonight. I understand the leadership has scheduled something for tomorrow morning, but this will be the final vote tonight.

Mr. LEAHY. I agree that we should encourage the Department to consider providing such dedicated infrastructure, especially if it will help to alleviate the backlogs that have occurred all over the country.

Mr. LEAHY. I share Senator Boxer's concern about extrajudicial violence in the Philippines and will continue to monitor this situation carefully. I will consider additional limitations on future U.S. military assistance if the Philippine Government fails to adequately address this issue.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House, and that the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all votes after the first vote be 10-minute votes.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I compliment my colleagues for moving so rapidly through the Military Construction legislation. It brings us to the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill, which Senator Gregg, my friend and neighbor from New Hampshire, and I will be handling. I want to make a couple comments. If there are Senators who have amendments, I urge that they bring them to the floor. I understand because of the policy luncheons, it will probably be about an hour before we get to an amendment. But if there aren't any amendments pending, it would be my intent, if the Senator from New Hampshire has none, to go to final passage. We would like to wrap up this bill, if we can, today. I thank both Senator Reid and Senator McConnell for calling up this bill. I also thank Chairman Byrd and Ranking Member Cochran for the allocation we have. I do want to say, at the risk of causing political problems for him back in my neighboring State of New Hampshire, how appreciative I am to Senator Gregg and his staff for the bipartisan way they worked with me and my staff. Senator McConnell and I had established this way of doing things for a number of years, when he was chairman and I was chairman. We realized that, almost like the Vandenberg rule, bipartisanship has to begin at the water's edge. We have tried to do that with this bill. We have a balanced bill. When it was reported out of the Appropriations Committee, 28 of the 29 members of the committee voted for it. As a housekeeping matter, I remind Senators that on August 2, 2007, by a vote of 83 to 14, the Senate approved S. 1, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, clearing the measure for the President. This act will significantly improve transparency and accountability in the legislative process. The President has not yet signed it, but I want to inform Senators that we intend to abide by the requirements of that legislation during the consideration of this bill. The legislation requires that the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction certify that certain information related to congressionally directed spending be identified and that the required information be available on a publicly accessible congressional Web site in a searchable format at least 48 hours before a vote. The information required includes the identification of the congressionally directed spending and the name of the Senator who requested it. With regard to this legislation, I notify my colleagues that the committee bill and report do not include any congressionally directed spending as defined by S. 1. A description of how the committee addresses this issue is contained in the committee report numbered 110- 128, dated July 10 of this year. It has been on the Internet for a couple months. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the certification by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. LEAHY. Senator Gregg and I did, of course, do our best to address the many requests we received. We have made some difficult choices. The bill contains a total of $34.4 billion in budget authority. The President has threatened to veto all appropriations bills that are above his budget request. This bill is $700 million below the President's budget request. In case anybody did not hear that, it is $700 million below the President's budget request. We have a significant increase for State Department and U.S. Embassy operations and security costs. We provide $1.35 billion for assessed contributions to international peacekeeping missions. These are peacekeeping missions the U.S. Government has voted for in Sudan, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Lebanon, and other nations. We provide $5.09 billion to combat HIV/AIDS. That is $940 million above the President's request but within the overall budget limits. This includes $590 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Added to the $300 million in the Labor, Health and Human Services bill, it is a total of $890 million for the Global Fund, an increase of $166 above last year's budget. The bill contains $476.5 million for Child Survival and Maternal Health. These programs address the most basic public health needs in the world's poorest countries. In our country, we are blessed with so many riches. For a child born here, almost always maternal health care and child health care is available. They can believe the water they are going to drink will be clean water. They can be given a schedule where the child will be given certain shots, inoculations, and so on, at certain times. In all likelihood--barring an accident or rare disease--that child is going to grow up. In so many of these other countries, they do not even list a child's birth until they are 2 years old because of the enormous number who die either in childbirth, where the mother can die also, or die of diseases easily controlled--dysentery, malaria, things such as that--before the child is even old enough to walk. I would say it is not an economic issue with us. We are blessed with the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth. We are so blessed. I think it is a moral responsibility for us to help in these areas. We provide $509 million for educational and cultural exchange programs, particularly to build bridges with predominantly Muslim countries. We should have these exchanges. We should have as many students coming to America as possible, and as many of our students going over to these other countries as possible. Maybe they will learn some languages. Maybe they will learn different cultures. Maybe our own students will come back having learned there is a world outside our borders, but those who come here will learn something about the United States. We provide lifesaving programs for millions of destitute refugees and displaced persons in Darfur, Iraq, the Middle East, and Colombia. More than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes. Many of these people have worked for the U.S. Government or U.S. contractors or the U.S. news media and are being targeted because of those affiliations. They cannot even get help in getting out of there. They supported us. Now--whether one was for or opposed to the war in Iraq, these people helped us--it is time for us to help them. Other Iraqis are being killed simply because they are academic scholars or officials of Iraq's Ministry of Education. We have a moral responsibility to help these people. There is up to $1 billion in the bill for humanitarian and reconstruction programs in Afghanistan to help counter the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaida. The bill provides $1.2 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation. We support the Millennium Challenge Corporation, but they have had $6 billion appropriated since 2004, and they have only disbursed about $100 million. I felt they ought to use some of the undisbursed money they already have, to give us some of the other money for much greater needs. There are provisions in the bill considering international family planning the President said he would veto. That is no surprise. We have had these provisions in past bills. These are the same provisions that have been in the State, Foreign Operations appropriations bill year after year. Every year, the President says he will veto it because of it. We will have time for that debate later on. But I recall what Senator Mark Hatfield, the then-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said. Mark Hatfield--a strong right- to-lifer, as strongly opposed to abortion as anybody else I have ever met--pointed out those family planning moneys actually cut down on abortions around the world. When they have been cut off, abortions have gone up. Sometimes we should get beyond the sloganeering. President Reagan, God rest his soul, used to give some speeches about how we needed a Constitutional amendment to ban abortions. Of course, he never supported one here and never asked to have one introduced. But it was a great speech. Many objected to President Clinton because he was pro-choice. Now we are back to somebody who is a right-to-lifer. But do you know what. As a matter of curiosity, abortions went up under President Reagan. They went down under President Clinton. Now they are going back up again. I wish we would never have abortions, but let us give alternatives to abortion in family planning. Sometimes the reality shames the rhetoric. The fact is, abortions went up during President Reagan's time, and they went down during President Clinton's time, and they are going back up now. The same thing can happen here. Give people family planning money and abortions will go down. We saw this in Russia. We have seen it categorically in other parts of the world. But that will be a debate for later on. My main point coming here was to say we would not have gotten the bill out with this kind of huge bipartisan support without the strong help of the former Governor, now Senator, Judd Gregg. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I am prepared to accept the amendment, as modified, by the Senators from Florida and New Jersey.

Mr. LEAHY. I am not sure I understand. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.