Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, is there still time available on this side?

Mr. LEAHY. The yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I know the distinguished Senator from Virginia is going to be recognized, but I have a quick housekeeping issue. The distinguished chairman, the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, and I want to make sure we go back and forth, side to side. So following the distinguished Senator from Virginia, we will go to the distinguished Senator from North Dakota. Following the next Republican, I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, back in May 2005, with the leadership of Senator Specter, Senator Biden, Senator Kennedy, and others, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved an important child safety bill, S. 1086. The committee worked tirelessly to craft a prudent, bipartisan bill that would assist States in their ongoing efforts to protect children through tighter monitoring of known sex offenders. It was a good bill, and it passed the full Senate in May of this year by unanimous consent. Now, extensive bipartisan discussions with the House have produced a revised version of the bill, which the Senate is voting on today. The new bill is better in a few ways than the Senate-passed bill that we produced and also, regrettably, takes some steps backward. While this new bill is not the bill I would have written, I intend to support it and expect that it will pass. As a former prosecutor, and as a father and grandfather, I know that there is no higher duty than to protect our society's children, to take every step possible to prevent them from coming to harm, and to punish those who attempt to or succeed in harming them. We have never debated whether children should be protected. Of course they should. The only debate is about how they should be protected, and how best to deploy and utilize limited resources to deter and punish those who would prey on them. Over the last 30 years, I have worked closely with others to write and enact legislation aimed specifically at protecting children and assisting victims. In the last Congress, Senator Hatch and I joined to introduce the PROTECT Act, which provided prosecutors and law enforcement with tools necessary to combat child pornography and human trafficking. The final legislation passed by Congress included a number of provisions that I had either authored or supported, such as the National AMBER Alert Network Act; the Protecting Our Children First Act, which reauthorized funding for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; and legislation to amend the Violence Against Women Act to provide transitional housing assistance grants for child victims of domestic violence. In addition, I am pleased that the Senate has acted on other legislation for children and crime victims that I have sponsored. These include the 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act, which among other things included important grant funds for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, and established the Violence Against Women Office in the Justice Department. In 2004, the President signed into law the Justice For All Act, a package of criminal justice reforms that, among other things, authorized funds to reduce rape kit backlogs and enumerated crime victims' rights. I am glad that this new consensus legislation to protect children honors the efforts of John and Reve Walsh, who have worked so hard to ensure that other families would not experience the tragedy that befell their family. It has been my privilege to work for many years with the Walshes and with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in which they have played such an instrumental role, to take many important steps to keep children and families safe. I commend and thank John Walsh once again for his passionate advocacy on behalf of the Nation's children over many, many years. I am also glad that members of both parties in both bodies ultimately agreed with me and with the distinguished Senate Republican and Democratic leaders that we should prioritize finishing and passing legislation to protect children from sexual predators, without tying this crucial legislation to other more difficult issues. The Senate has passed court security legislation, for which I was a principal cosponsor, as part of S. 2766, and we have been working to settle differences between our legislation and the other body's court security proposals. Court security legislation should pass this year, but it would not have been right to endanger either the court security bills or this crucial child protection legislation by tying them together. Gang legislation is on a separate track entirely. It is just getting started in the Senate. Passing legislation to protect children from sexual predators has been my first priority. Seeking simultaneously to resolve extensive differences over provisions in the gang bill and other crime legislation could have caused us to miss this chance. It is commendable that, in the end, both bodies chose to focus on passing sex offender legislation and not to jeopardize this by tying this bill to more controversial measures. The gang bill is just now before the Judiciary Committee, which is the appropriate place to start work on a complex and important piece of criminal justice legislation. It is a new and very different version of this bill. It will be important to hold a hearing on this bill to listen to the Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers who are combating gang violence on a regular basis, and from the organizations that are working to keep kids out of gangs. Gang violence is a disturbing and difficult menace in our communities, and as we craft solutions to help address these issues we should strive to get it right. We have done the right thing by finalizing this important child protection legislation first, before turning to that and other difficult tasks. When S. 1086 was first introduced in May 2005, serious concerns were raised by members of the Judiciary Committee, State attorneys general, the Department of Justice, and others. Through an impressive, bipartisan effort these concerns were largely addressed. I appreciate that Senators, and now House Members, of both parties took these concerns to heart and revised this bill in ways that will increase the protection of children from the most dangerous sex offenders, while not overwhelming the States with requirements that could hinder their own efforts. I believe that this new bill takes a few unfortunate steps back from the well thought out Senate version, but it still achieves many of the crucial goals we identified. The resulting bill ensures that each State will have an effective sex offender registry and that all States will share registry information--all of which will help keep our children safer. I am glad that this bill addresses my concerns and that of many others of both parties in the Senate in giving significant discretion to the States in the handling of juvenile offenders. Juvenile justice has always been a province of the States, and State legislatures, prosecutors, and judges have developed significant expertise in distinguishing which juvenile offenders represent a continuing threat to society and which juveniles, with appropriate treatment and monitoring, can turn themselves around and become contributing members of society. This bill correctly allows the States, in many cases, to use their expertise--and they know more about these issues than we do here in Washington--to decide which juveniles should be on sex offender registries, to what extent, and for how long. It also appropriately requires the States to include the most egregious juvenile offenders, who do represent a threat to others, on their sex offender registries. I think the bill goes too far in a few cases in limiting States' discretion to determine which juveniles should be placed on registries and to allow those juvenile offenders who have lived cleanly and turned their lives around to get off of registries. But overall, this bill strikes an acceptable balance on this issue, and I am glad that those of us who were concerned about appropriate deference to the expertise of the States spoke out and were heard to some extent. This bill takes a good if small first step toward what should be one of our most important priorities in keeping our children safe from sex offenders: treatment. While the most dangerous sex offenders may be predisposed to re-offend and should be treated accordingly, many studies have shown that people who commit less serious sex offenses often, with appropriate treatment, do not present a significant risk of recidivism and can become responsible members of society. One of the best ways to protect our children is to help as many low-risk offenders as possible turn their lives around, so that our scant law enforcement resources can be focused on those dangerous offenders who are a demonstrable threat to our children. In addition to the Bureau of Prisons Program included in S. 1086, the current bill includes a new program directed specifically to the treatment of juvenile sex offenders, who have been proven to be especially responsive to treatment. This is a welcome addition to the bill, and one we should build on in the future. I want to direct the attention of my colleagues to title V of the bill, which makes substantial amendments to section 2257 of title 18. By way of background, Congress passed the original version of section 2257 in 1988, as a means to help ensure that minors were not being exploited by the adult, hard-core pornography industry in violation of the child exploitation laws. In 1989, the District Court for the District of Columbia found that this original version violated the first amendment. In 1990, Congress responded to the District Court decision by significantly narrowing the scope of section 2257. The House bill proposed an expansion of section 2257 beyond what was held unconstitutional before the 1990 amendments, and beyond the pornography industry and those who exploit children. The proposed expansion of section 2257 gave rise to legitimate concerns, expressed by groups as far-ranging as the Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, the American Library Association, and the American Conservative Union, that its record-keeping and labeling requirements, and associated criminal liability, might now affect an array of mainstream, legitimate, and first-amendment-protected activities and industries. These industries are leaders in protecting children employed in their industries and are far removed from the problem that the legislation purportedly sought to address. Subjecting them to the burdens of a recordkeeping and labeling statute intended for the pornography industry would create substantial burdens of compliance without any added benefit in the wholly legitimate and vital cause of actually safeguarding the security and welfare of children. Because the focus of these requirements is adult pornography and the protection of children, not mainstream visual depictions and activities that do not threaten children, the new bill includes provisions intended to limit the reach of these requirements to those who are actually exploiting children. Most notably, section 2257A(h) enables law-abiding, legitimate businesses, which create and commercially distribute materials that are not, and do not appear to be, child pornography, to certify to the Attorney General that, pursuant to existing laws, labor agreements, or industry standards, they regularly and in the normal course of business collect the name, date of birth, and address of performers employed by them. This recognizes that such legitimate, law-abiding industries in fact routinely collect the information necessary to demonstrate their compliance with the child protection laws and that for this reason they were never intended to be the focus of this more extensive recordkeeping and labeling statute. Businesses that so certify and thus exhibit their good faith can avoid some of the more onerous requirements, and associated criminal liability, rightfully placed on others whose compliance is more likely to further the interest of protecting children. By way of illustration, the motion picture industry currently operates under a panoply of laws, both civil and criminal, as well as regulations and labor agreements governing the employment of children in any production. They check work permits, require parents or guardians to be present at all times during production, and in some cases even obtain court approval for the employment of the children in films and television shows. It is fair to say that the film and television industries are a leader among industries in safeguarding the interests of children in the workplace. Yet in the absence of the certification provision in section 2257A(h), these studios would be subjected to the same extensive recordkeeping and labeling requirements as a hard-core pornographer is under this bill, as would a host of other legitimate entities throughout the distribution chain for mainstream motion pictures and television shows. The focus of the underlying statute should remain on helping apprehend child predators and not on legitimate businesses that have no role in harming children. Under section 2257A(h), motion picture companies that certify to the Department of Justice that they collect the name, date of birth, and address of all the performers employed by them, for purposes of compliance with existing laws, such as filling out an I-9 form or W-4s for tax purposes, or pursuant to labor agreements or their normal business practices, will not be subject to the more burdensome requirements of this statute. Establishing this regime will have the additional benefit of allowing the Department of Justice to focus their limited resources in areas where they should be focused--pursuing those who harm children. This provision has been in effect for 18 years and yet has not been used. It is my hope that the Department of Justice, having obtained the amendments they sought, will begin to enforce the law and focus on those who harm children, and not on those legitimate businesses that do not. Other exemptions in the bill exclude from the recordkeeping requirements and annual certification regime providers of Internet access, telecommunications, and online search tools, as well as online hosting, storage, and transmission services, so long as the provider does not select or alter the content. It is ironic that the broadest exemptions are granted to the providers of various types of Internet and telecommunications services, even though the advent of the Internet is cited in the original version of this bill as greatly increasing the ease of transporting, distributing, receiving, and advertising child pornography in interstate commerce. Notwithstanding these exemptions, nothing in this bill can or should be construed to impair the enforcement of any other Federal criminal statute or to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property against these entities. Regrettably, the core, bipartisan bill to strengthen State sex offender registration programs was joined in both the House and the Senate to unrelated provisions aimed at creating additional mandatory minimum sentences. I agree with the U.S. Judicial Conference and the vast majority of Federal judges and practitioners that harsh, inflexible mandatory sentencing laws are a recipe for injustice. In its letter dated March 7, 2006, regarding the House bill, the Judicial Conference, headed by Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote that mandatory minimum sentences undermine the sentencing guideline regime Congress established under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 by preventing the systemic development of guidelines that reduce unwarranted disparity and provide proportionality and fairness in punishment. Mandatory sentences also tie prosecutors' hands in these cases where it is most important that they have the discretion to plea bargain, especially considering how difficult it can be to prepare children emotionally and psychologically to testify against their abusers. When addressing this issue in committee last year, Senators from both sides of the aisle agreed to limit the imposition of new mandatory minimum sentences to the most serious and violent crimes against children, rather than to myriad lesser crimes as was originally proposed. The new bill backslides from this agreement to an unfortunate extent. If we are going to establish mandatory minimum sentences, we should at least proceed in a thoughtful and coherent way, with some understanding of the range of offense conduct that may be covered and the sorts of sentences that are being imposed under current law. Instead, we simply pluck ever-higher numbers out of thin air. Congress greatly increased the penalties for most sex offenses just 3 years ago, in the PROTECT Act. Nothing has changed since then to warrant this new round of arbitrary sentence inflation. Another controversial measure included in the House-passed bill was a proposal to strip Federal courts of jurisdiction to review constitutional errors in sentencing that a State court has deemed harmless. The Senate Judiciary Committee reviewed this jurisdiction- stripping provision last year, during its consideration of the so- called Streamlined Procedures Act, S. 1088. That bill--and this provision in particular--was strongly opposed by a broad coalition of organizations, including the United States Judicial Conference. Following hearings, the committee specifically rejected this provision by adopting a substitute amendment that stripped it out in its entirety; the substitute then died in committee without further action. To include such an extraneous and deeply flawed provision in the current bill would have been wrong, and it is a credit to this bill that it has been removed. Another area of concern is a provision that was also included in the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill. The provision prohibits the approval of a visa application for the relative of a U.S. citizen or legal resident based on the citizen or resident's conviction for any of the sex offenses enumerated in the bill. This provision casts a wide net, and in many cases will harshly and unnecessarily penalize people seeking entry to the United States who have a family member in the country, but where the citizen or resident poses no threat to the individual seeking entry. The bill gives the Secretary of DHS discretion to assess these applications on a case-by-case basis and waive the denial, and I hope this will turn out to be more than just an empty gesture. Given that this bill greatly expands the crimes sufficient to deny an application, I urge the Secretary to give thoughtful consideration to each case in which a waiver is sought. In a case of a citizen who is on the path to rehabilitation or whose crime was relatively minor, denial of a family member's support would serve no rational purpose and would undermine the goals of family unity. I hope the Secretary will actively use this waiver authority to limit the broad reach of this provision to those cases where a citizen or legal resident genuinely poses a threat to a family member seeking entry. This legislation requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create a national registry of substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect which would, when fully implemented over time, serve the purpose of enabling child protective service agencies to identify an adult's past child maltreatment history in other States, without having to check every individual State child protective service central registry. Improving the ability of child protective service agencies to collect information on prior cases of child maltreatment by a named adult is a worthy objective. However, to rush into the creation of such a national registry, without deliberate consideration and evaluation first of the wide variation in how State child abuse and neglect data on substantiated cases identifies the perpetrator of the abuse or neglect and the specifics of their maltreatment--what the bill calls the nature of the substantiated case--would be reckless. For that reason, the legislation also mandates the HHS Secretary to conduct a study on the feasibility of establishing data collection standards for a national child abuse and neglect registry. Clearly, such a study should be completed before the Federal Government begins to implement the creation of such a registry and to collect registry information from the States. We need to know what we are working with before we create a system which might give the public a false sense of security or violate the due process rights of children and families alike. Caution is advised in moving forward on this matter in order to develop an information system which is both fair and reliable. The legislation also requires the HHS Secretary to establish standards for how, and to whom, this national registry information will be disseminated. In view of the sensitivity of this registry, which is to include information historically maintained only at the state or local child protective service agency level, I urge the Secretary, in consideration of these standards and before collecting any national registry data, to be cognizant of past congressional concerns related to the protection of legal rights of families, as reflected in 42 U.S.C. 5106(b)(2)(A)(xix), and for a fair appellate process for individuals who disagree with a substantiated finding of abuse or neglect, as reflected in 42 U.S.C. 5106(b)(2)(A)(xv)(2). Both of these are provisions of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Significantly, the legislation does not provide any new financial or technical assistance to States to improve or standardize their child protective services substantiated case recordkeeping systems, or to support States in the added burden of preparing for, and transferring data to, a new national registry. Not all States maintain the same registry information. Some States do not record registry entries by name of perpetrator but rather by name of child; some States no longer maintain registries at all. Most tribes, which are included in the legislation, maintain no registries at all. Without this important additional technical and financial assistance to the States, the quality of the information collected would likely be uneven and at times unreliable. This is a serious deficiency in the legislative mandate for the creation of a national registry of child abuse and neglect cases, one that I hope will be corrected through a targeted appropriation that focuses on helping State child protective service agencies upgrade their central registries or comparable systems of case-specific data. I am pleased that the bill includes my proposal to authorize grants to Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America and the National Crime Prevention Council. Big Brothers and Big Sisters provides valuable mentoring services to young people across the country, and supporting their mission is a valuable investment that will reap measurable rewards. The National Crime Prevention Council helps communities across the country understand and address the causes of crime. Grants to this organization help communities become active in crime prevention at the grassroots level, and encouraging their continued efforts is something we should all strongly support. I am also pleased that the sponsors of this bill agreed to incorporate S. 2155, popularly known as Masha's Law. This legislation, named after a Russian orphan who was sexually exploited by her adoptive father, will increase the civil statutory damages available to victims of child exploitation. It will also ensure that victims of child pornography whose images remain in circulation after they have turned 18 can still recover when those images are downloaded. I am also pleased that the bill includes authorization of $12 million for grants to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, known as RAINN, for operation of its National Sexual Assault Hotline and for the other important work RAINN does to assist victims of sexual assault and to help prevent and prosecute sexual assault. I want to congratulate RAINN for recently logging the one-millionth call to its 24-hour telephone hotline. RAINN, in helping a million crime victims, has not only made their lives better, but has also contributed greatly to the decrease in sexual violence in this country. I am honored that RAINN's founder and president, Scott Berkowitz, thanked me in connection with this important milestone for having supported the establishment of the National Sexual Assault Hotline. Finally, I want to thank the Vermont Attorney General's Office and other concerned Vermont officials for prompt and constructive comments on multiple drafts of this legislation. Vermonters have worked hard to produce and improve our State's sex offender registry program in ongoing efforts to make it useful to law enforcement agencies and the general public in providing information regarding individuals who have proved a demonstrable threat to the public. In light of the mobility inherent in American society, cooperation and coordination among the various States improves the effectiveness of each State's registry, and the Federal assistance this bill provides will enhance that cooperation and coordination.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate will pass a bill providing needed corrections to the Violence Against Women Act, VAWA, and the Department of Justice authorization bill we passed last year. Among the improvements made in the amendment, the changes ensure that the VAWA public housing provisions allow a landlord to bifurcate a lease to evict an abuser while allowing a cosigning lessee as well as an authorized resident to remain as tenants. The bill also makes technical improvements in the administration of STOP grants and the Campus Grant Program. The bill improves the administration of grants to tribal governments and ensures that the 10-percent designation of VAWA grants to Indian tribes applies throughout all sections of the law. I commend the efforts of all those who worked hard to improve this important law, and I am glad to support the improvements in this amendment that will sustain this law as a vital tool in our efforts to put an end to domestic violence. In the last 25 years I believe that we have only been successful twice in passing authorization bills for the Department of Justice. I was pleased to be involved in both of them, working with Chairman Sensenbrenner and the Republican leader on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time. This bill improves the most recent authorization we considered and passed in a bipartisan manner.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, recently I was pleased to introduce with Senators Kohl, Grassley and Schumer, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act of 2006, S. 3582. That bill was designed to improve the timely and effective introduction of generic pharmaceuticals into the marketplace. It is no secret that prescription drug prices are rapidly increasing and are a source of considerable concern to many Americans, especially senior citizens and families. In a marketplace free of manipulation, generic drug prices can be as much as 80 percent lower than the comparable brand name version. Unfortunately, there are still some companies driven by greed that may be keeping low-cost, life-saving generic drugs off the marketplace, off pharmacy shelves, and out of the hands of consumers by carefully crafted anticompetitive agreements between drug manufacturers. In 2001, and last Congress, I introduced a related bill, the Competition Act. That bill, which is now law, is small in terms of length but large in terms of impact. It ensured that law enforcement agencies could take quick and decisive action against companies seeking to cheat consumers by delaying availability of generic medicines. It gave the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department access to information about secret deals between drug companies that keep generic drugs out of the market--a practice that not only hurts American families, particularly senior citizens, by denying them access to low- cost generic drugs, but also contributes to rising medical costs. The Drug Competition Act, which was incorporated in the Medicare Modernization Act, was a bipartisan effort to protect consumers in need of patented medicines who were being forced to pay considerably higher costs because of collusive secret deals designed. It is regrettable that we must come to the floor again today and take additional action to prevent drug companies from continuing to find and exploit loopholes. The bill I am introducing tonight with Senators Rockefeller and Schumer is very important. It will provide incentives for generic companies to make the investments needed to introduce low-cost generic medicines for all our citizens. The bill assures all Americans that the original intent of the Hatch- Waxman law is carried out. That law was to provide incentives for generic companies to challenge the validity of patents on medicines and provide incentives for generic companies to manufacture low-cost medicines. That incentive was simple. Under Hatch-Waxman law, the first generic company, called the first- filer, which successfully develops a generic version of a patented drug and meets certain other requirements, can get a 180-day exclusivity period to be the only generic company to have permission to make and sell that generic drug. That was called an exclusivity period because that is what the Congress intended--that generic company would have the exclusive right for 180 days to make the generic version of the patented medicine. The problem is that recently brand-name companies have been labeling their own patented drugs also as a generic version of itself, or licensing others to make it, and selling both the brand-name version and the so-called generic version. This undercuts the potential profits of the ``real'' generic company and denies them what the Hatch-Waxman law promised and for a long time delivered--an exclusivity period lasting up to 180 days. When the brand-name company offers a competing ``fake'' generic version of the drug, that can cut the profits of the real generic manufacturer greatly--thus making it less likely that a real generic company will even want to make the product. The Rockefeller bill prevents the brand-name company from doing that for the 180-day exclusivity period. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this effort.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, There are few things as critical to our Nation, and to American citizenship, as voting. Like the rights guaranteed by the first amendment, the right to vote is fundamental because it secures the effective exercise of all other rights. As people are able to register, vote, and elect candidates of their choice, their interests and rights get attention. The very legitimacy of our democratic Government is dependent on the access all Americans have to the electoral process. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 transformed the landscape of political inclusion. As amended, the act contains important provisions for language assistance. Section 203, added as part of the second reauthorization of the Voting Rights in 1975, broadened this landscape by allowing millions more American citizens to participate fully in our democracy. Section 203, which requires bilingual voting assistance for certain language minority groups, was enacted to remove obstacles to voting posed by illiteracy and lack of bilingual language assistance resulting in large measure from unequal educational opportunities available to minorities. These provisions helped overcome discriminatory barriers which limited access to the political process for language minority groups and resulted in low turnout and registration. Along with section 4(f)(4), section 203 has led to extraordinary gains in representation and participation made by Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans. Hispanic-American populations have been one of the primary minority language groups to benefit from the protections of the bilingual provisions of the Voting Rights Act. For example, effective implementation of the bilingual provisions in San Diego County, CA, helped increase voter registration by more than 20 percent. And voter turnout among Hispanic Americans in New Mexico rose 26 percent between 2000 and 2004 after television and radio spots were aired in districts with Spanish-educated listeners about voter registration and absentee ballots. Yet more needs to be done. Historically, Hispanic Americans have low voter turnout and less than 1 percent of all elected offices in the United States are held by Hispanic Americans. I was troubled during the immigration debate that the rhetoric of some Members of the Senate appeared to be anti-Hispanic in supporting the adoption of an English language amendment. Senator Salazar and I wrote to the President following up on this provision. We asked whether the President will continue to implement the language outreach policies of President Clinton's Executive Order No. 13166. A prompt and straightforward affirmative answer would have gone a long way. Sadly, we have received no response from this White House. I have, however, raised the matter when the opportunity presented itself with the Secretary of Commerce and the Attorney General and both have assured me that the Bush administration will continue to adhere to the outreach efforts of the Clinton Executive order. I understand why those efforts to amend the immigration bill to make English the official or national language provoked a reaction and seemed mean-spirited to so many. It elicited the extraordinary May 19 letter from the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza and the National Puerto Rican Coalition and from a larger coalition of interested parties from 96 national and local organizations. Until that vote, in our previous 230 years we had not found it necessary or wise to adopt English as our official or national language. I believe it was in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that the State legislature shortly after the Revolutionary War authorized official publication of Pennsylvania's laws in German as well as English to serve the German-speaking population of that State. We have been a confident Nation unafraid to hear expressions in a variety of languages and willing to reach out to all within our borders. That tradition is reflected in section 203 of the Voting Rights Act and in President Clinton's Executive Order No. 13166. It is an honorable and just tradition. We demean our history and our welcoming tradition when we disparage languages other than English and those who speak them. I have spoken about our including Latin phrases on our official seal and the many States that include mottos and phrases in Latin, French and Spanish on their State flags. We need not fear other languages. We would do better to do more to encourage and assist those who wish to be citizens to learn English, but we should recognize English, as Senator Salazar's amendment suggested, as our common and unifying language. I hope that the President will join with us to protect language minority voters. As a presidential candidate, then-Governor Bush told a New Hampshire audience in September 1999, ``English-only would mean to people `me, not you.' As the Washington Times noted recently: Mr. Bush speaks some Spanish and occasionally peppers speeches and conversations with words and phrases from the language. Speaking to a group of adults taking civics lessons yesterday at the Catholic Charities-operated Juan Diego Center, he lapsed into Spanish. Asked whether Mr. Bush planned to drop Spanish from his stump speeches, a White House spokeswoman said she does not expect that to happen. The White House, government agencies and a number of Senators include Spanish language outreach on their official government Web sites. I am glad that they do. Ironically, some who pushed most strongly for some variant of English-only treatment in the immigration bill have bent our rules to address the Senate in Spanish. We have been engaged in a contentious debate about immigrants who are not yet citizens, which is unfortunate. I wish we could join together to pass fair and comprehensive immigration reform. But the issue related to section 203 and section 4(f)4 of the Voting Rights Act affects American citizens. These provisions provide assistance to Native Americans and indigenous peoples, who speak languages which preceded the first English speakers on this continent. These are citizens who are trying to vote but many of them are struggling with the English language due to disparities in education and the incremental process of learning. It is imperative that all citizens be able to exercise their rights as citizens, particularly a right as fundamental as the right to vote. Renewing the language provisions of the Voting Rights Act that are expiring and continue to be needed, will help make that a reality. At this time I would like to summarize some of the evidence received by the Senate Judiciary Committee demonstrating the continuing need for sections 203 and 4(f)4. We received extensive testimony about past and continuing educational disparities in jurisdictions covered by section 203 and section 4(f)4. According to multiple witnesses, many Alaska Natives, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans suffer from inadequate educational opportunities to learn English. Unfortunately, our Judiciary Committee record demonstrates that the high illiteracy rates experienced by language minorities result from the failure of State and local officials to afford equal educational opportunities. Several witnesses testified that these educational disparities are the major form of discrimination against language minorities. John Trasvina, president of MALDEF, testified, ``while they may speak conversational English well, these U.S. citizens may not be fully proficient because they were intentionally denied the academic instruction necessary to vote effectively in English-only elections that employ complicated language and terminology.'' The problem of unequal educational opportunities existed before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 and continues today. Language minority children who were educated in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and given unequal education opportunities are the adults that today need the assistance of sections 203 and 4(f)(4). Children who are in schools today where they receive unequal education will need the assistance of these provisions to fully participate in the political process as adults. Over the course of nine hearings, we heard and received testimony that not only are all states with the most limited English proficient students covered by section 203, but all the school districts with most limited English proficient students are also covered by section 203. These children will first begin to vote over the next 25 years while this proposed reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act is in effect, and they will not have had equal access to education and the opportunity to learn English. In Alaska, which has the single largest indigenous population in the United States, an attorney for Native American Rights Fund testified about the dramatic educational disparity between Native people and non- Natives. Only 75 percent of all Alaska Natives completed high school compared to 90 percent of non-Natives. And still Alaska persists in holding all-English elections--in violation of section 203--which has impacted Alaska Natives' ability to vote with their turnout lagging behind statewide voter turnout by 17 percent. According to the 2000 Census, the educational attainment of Hispanic Americans nationally is also lacking. Only 52.4 percent of all Hispanic Americans have a high school education or more, compared to 80.4 percent for all persons in the United States. Efforts to combat this educational disparity have resulted in dozens of lawsuits against states for failing to provide equal education to native and nonnative English speakers. We received testimony that successful school funding cases have been brought in half of all the section 203 covered States and are pending in many others. In Arizona in 2005, a Federal court cited the State of Arizona for contempt for failing over the course of the preceding 13 years to provide opportunities for Spanish-language students to learn English in the public schools. The court has been fining the State at least $500,000 a day until the problem is corrected and equal opportunities are provided to the 175,000 English language learner students estimated to be in Arizona's schools in 2006. And I personally understand the challenges of learning English as your second language. As I have said before, my wife was born of immigrant parents and English became her second language. My mother was born of immigrant parents, with English as her second language. Fortunately, they learned it as young people. But for adults learning English, it can be much harder. We received extensive testimony that classes for adult students to increase their English proficiency are too few and oversubscribed. Senator Kennedy told us that in his own section 203 covered jurisdiction of Boston, the waiting period for English as a second language, ESL, classes is 17,000 students long which translates into a wait of as much as 3 years. In New York City, the ESL need is estimated to be 1 million, but only 41,347 adults were able to enroll in 2005 because of limited availability. It is a sad fact that most adult ESL programs no longer keep waiting lists because of the extreme demand, but use lotteries in which at least 75 percent are turned away, and the waiting time can be several years. Continuing acts of discrimination against language minorities, such as those contained in the committee record, chill minority voting participation denying these citizens equal access to the balloting process. We heard countless examples of the continuing discrimination that minority language citizens face when participating or attempting to participate in the political process. These experiences will no doubt stick with each voter for some time. Civil Rights organizations testified about numerous instances of discrimination that were documented while monitoring elections in covered jurisdictions in New York. For example, in the 2001 elections at Public School 228, a polling site coordinator, trying to thwart bilingual interpreters from performing their duties, yelled ``You f--- ing Chinese, there's too many of you!'' In 2002, at Public School 82 and at the Botanical Garden, some of the comments made to Asian- American voters included poll workers calling South Asian voters ``terrorists'' and mocking the physical features of Asian eyes. While monitoring the 2003 elections, independent observers reported that in Public School 126 in Manhattan's Chinatown, poll inspectors ridiculed a voter's surname--Ho; in Public School 115 in Queens, disparaging remarks were directed at South Asian voters, with one coordinator continuously referring to herself as a ``U.S. citizen'' and that she, unlike them, was ``born here'' and that the other workers needed to ``keep an eye'' on all South Asian voters; at Flushing Bland Center in Queens, the site coordinator complained that Asian-American voters ``should learn to speak English.'' During the 2004 election, a Hispanic voter in San Antonio, TX, was told by an election judge that she was not on a voter registration list and could not cast a provisional ballot, despite the recently enacted Help America Vote Act which provides for provisional ballots in such situations. She and her family had been voting at the same polling station for over 20 years. The election judge refused to unlock the provisional ballot box until a Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund--MALDEF--attorney arrived and negotiated on behalf of the voter. And the House of Representatives received equally disturbing testimony which was incorporated into our own Record. In 2003, the chairman of the Texas House Redistricting Committee stated that he did not intend to hold redistricting hearings in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, where many U.S. citizens are limited English proficient Spanish speakers, because only two members of the Redistricting Committee spoke Spanish. Chairman Crabb stated that the members of the committee who did not speak Spanish ``would have a very difficult time if we were out in an area other than Austin or other English speaking areas to be able to have committee hearings to be able to converse with the people that did not speak English.'' Many citizens living in areas of Texas with high concentrations of limited English proficient citizens would have been excluded from participating in local Redistricting Committee hearings had Hispanic advocates not interceded on their behalf. In another part of the country, due to a lack of sufficient bilingual ballots, Hispanic voters in Pima County, AZ, were forced to crowd around one translated poster of more than a dozen initiatives left in a poorly lit area during the 2004 elections. Sadly, these examples are not isolated incidents of discrimination. Assistant Attorney General Wan Kim testified that the Department of Justice has brought more lawsuits to enforce the language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act in the previous 5 years than in all previous years combined. These facts and all the other testimony we received in Committee clearly demonstrate the ongoing need for section 203's protections and the need that we reauthorize these provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Of course there are critics. There are critics who say that the language assistance provisions in the Voting Rights Act should be eliminated entirely because immigrants must learn English to pass the citizenship test and therefore should be able to vote in English. This argument is unsound for two reasons. First, we received overwhelming testimony that the level of English proficiency required to pass a citizenship test does not approach the level of proficiency required to register to vote or to understand ballot measures. Naturalization requires a third or fourth grade knowledge of English. Sample test sentences on the Immigration and Naturalization Services Web site reveal that no sentence is more than 10 words long and most are seven or less, containing one or two syllable words. In addition, most candidates for citizenship are exempt from the English language requirements of the citizenship test because they are over the age of 50. Between 1986 and 2004, 9,055,732 people were naturalized of which 4,925,553 or 54 percent were over the age of 50. Voting requires English proficiency at levels much higher than the citizenship test. A survey of voter registration materials reported on the Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, admitted into our Record, found the English grade level of the materials just to register to vote was much higher than third or fourth grade knowledge. In Texas, a ``covered jurisdiction'' for section 203 purposes, the voter registration material required nearly a twelfth grade English comprehension for completion with an average of 21 words per sentence. The situation is similar in Arizona--ninth grade level with 15 words per sentence--California, college freshman level with 22 words per sentence, and New Mexico, twelfth grade level with 19 words per sentence. This survey only covers materials required to register to vote. We also heard testimony about the complexity of actually casting votes on ballot initiatives and directions to operate voting machines as examples of other English language barriers to language minority voters. Ballot initiatives are often long and complicated requiring high school level education or higher. Deborah Wright, Acting Assistant Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk for Los Angeles County, testified that written translations are provided in L.A. County because of the complex nature of the issues facing the voters in that state. Complex ballots are not limited to California. We received evidence of numerous examples. Perhaps the one that struck me the most was a 2004 Fargo, ND, election ballot, where a single question concerning tax increases for infrastructure improvement was one sentence which contained 150 words written at the graduate school level. Second, most language minorities protected by the Voting Rights Act are United States citizens by birth. The vast majority of language minorities are not immigrants. In fact, 3.4 million of the 4.5 million language minority students in the public schools are native-born U.S. citizens. Hispanic Americans are the single largest minority group covered by Sections 203 and 4(f)(4). According to 2000 Census data, 84.2 percent of all Hispanic American citizens in the United States were born here. Nearly half of the 11.9 million Asian Americans citizens in the United States were born here. Further, 98.6 percent of all Puerto Rican persons in the United States are native born and the language of Puerto Rican public schools is Spanish with English taught as a subject. The committee received testimony that although there are costs associated with implementing the minority language assistance provisions, they are reasonable. Los Angeles, the largest and most diverse local election jurisdiction in the United States, provides assistance to voters in six languages other than English, and its compliance with section 203 requirements costs 10 percent or less of its annual election budget. And the Secretary of State for New Mexico testified before the House Judiciary Committee characterizing the costs of complying with section 203 as, ``a minimal cost to the State of New Mexico.'' One witness testified that she believed the costs of section 203 to be extremely burdensome. Linda Chavez, president of One Nation Indivisible, testified that Los Angeles County spent $3.3 million in 2002 to comply with section 203, which she thought was too much to ask the County to bear. However, as Deborah Wright's testimony on behalf of Los Angeles County made clear this number is a small percentage of the overall election budget, and is proportional to the 12.9 million limited English proficient voters in her jurisdiction. Ms. Chavez also alleged that ``[f]requently the cost of multilingual voter assistance is more than half of a jurisdiction's total election costs,'' citing a 1997 General Accounting Office report. However, a close look at that GAO report shows that only 3 out of the 34 jurisdictions surveyed spent over 50 percent of their total election budget on multilingual voter assistance. Contrary to Ms. Chavez's testimony, the report reveals that the costs of providing language assistance made up, on average, a little over 10 percent of total expenditures. Ensuring full access to American's right to vote certainly is worth this reasonable cost. For jurisdictions that struggle with the costs of implementing sections 203 or 4(f)(4), the Department of Justice, DOJ, provides commendable assistance in managing the costs. Acting Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman testified that ``the Civil Rights Division recognizes, of course, that States and municipalities do not have unlimited budgets, and we have thus designed our enforcement strategy to minimize unnecessary costs for local election officials.'' The DOJ urges covered jurisdictions to avoid costly and unhelpful expenditures such as publishing Spanish language notices in English language newspapers that are not read by those who rely on the Spanish language. Election officials are encouraged to identify the most effective and efficient channels of communication that are used by private enterprise, service providers, tribal governments, and the like to get information effectively to the language minority community at low cost. The DOJ also encourages the use of fax and e-mail ``information trees,'' whereby bilingual election notices are sent at no cost to a wide array of businesses, unions, social and fraternal organizations, service providers, churches and other organizations with a request that these entities make announcements or otherwise disseminate the information to their membership's language minority voters. And the DOJ has incorporated ``best practices'' from around the country to help jurisdictions recruit sufficient numbers of bilingual poll workers. As a consequence of the testimony submitted on costs of implementation, we determined that costs are both reasonable and manageable. There has been some discussion about allegations that in some jurisdictions no one uses the translated materials, but we also received hard research showing that limited English proficient citizens utilize the written and oral assistance offered in jurisdictions, but must be made aware it exists. According to a November 2000 exit survey of language minority voters in Los Angeles and Orange Counties in California, 54 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander voters and 46 percent of Hispanic voters reported that they would be more likely to vote if they received language assistance. These numbers are consistent with other exit surveys done in the same counties in March 2000 and November 1998. Examples of ``low use'' of bilingual election materials are not evidence that bilingual materials are not needed. ``Low use'' more likely suggests that a jurisdiction is not conducting sufficient outreach to the communities that would most benefit. In a survey of 810 section 203 covered jurisdictions, nearly two-thirds of election officials admitted they do not engage in community outreach to covered language groups. How are people supposed to know the help is there, if there is no community outreach? We can, and we must do better. I am nonetheless happy to report, that when sufficient outreach to language minorities is accomplished, materials are being used to assist in voting according to evidence received in Committee. In the 1990 general election, bilingual assistance was used by 25 percent of Hispanic voters in the State of Texas, and 18 percent of Hispanic voters in the State of California. In the 1988 general election, bilingual assistance was used by 20 percent of Hispanic voters in the State of New Mexico, 19 percent of Hispanic voters in the State of Texas, and 10 percent of Hispanic voters in the State of California. Being from a small state, I know the importance and the power of community involvement, but perhaps the best evidence we heard that shows the power of community outreach was the experience of Chinese- American voters in King County, WA, which includes the city of Seattle. One witness who urged an opt-out provision in section 203 for low use cited King County's experience in 2000, the first year it became a covered jurisdiction for voters who speak Chinese. That year, according to the witness, only 24 Chinese ballots were used, demonstrating that ballots were not needed. But that is not the full story. The real story is that after that election, officials in King County worked with Chinese-American community organizations and increased the publicity about the availability of bilingual election materials. In 2005, the number of requested Chinese ballots increased by more than 5,800 percent. It shows the power of community outreach cannot be overstated. Much has been made by some witnesses in committee, and even in the press, that any provision of bilingual election materials contribute to the balkanization of American society. Research offered in committee shows this allegation to be faulty. On the contrary, making bilingual election materials available has encouraged more language minorities to participate in all political aspects of American society. After the section 203 coverage was expanded to include a numeric trigger during the last reauthorization, the number of Asian Americans registered to vote increased dramatically. Between 1996 and 2004, Asian Americans had the highest increase of new voter registration--58.7 percent. And we received testimony that in districts where the Department of Justice has conducted enforcement ensuring bilingual election materials, participation not only in voting but in running for political office has increased. After an enforcement proceeding in Harris County, TX, the Vietnamese-American voter turnout doubled, and the first Vietnamese-American candidate in history, Hubert Vo, was elected to the Texas Legislature--defeating the incumbent chair of the Appropriations Committee by 16 votes out of over 40,000 cast. These voting rights provisions work--they tell new citizens and citizens by birth who may not always feel they are afforded all of the opportunities they deserve that they are welcome to join our political process. They help new citizens and first time voters to overcome cultural differences which further contribute to disenfranchisement for limited English proficient citizens who are often unfamiliar with the American voting process and do not know about registration, referenda and voting machines. The charge of ``balkanization,'' as one witness put it is ``a loaded term of mythical proportions that has absolutely no basis in fact, and is used as a divisive measure.'' Based on the evidence we received, it is clear that the provisions of Sections 203 and 4(f)(4) have led to increased participation and representation. These provisions, that caused significant problems in the House of Representatives, have enabled language minorities to overcome what are tantamount to literacy tests at the polling place so that they can access their fundamental right to vote. Section 203 and section 4(f)4 of the Voting Rights Act must be reauthorized.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the Copyright Royalty Judges Program Technical Corrections Act, H.R. 1036, a bi1l that makes several important, noncontroversial, technical corrections to the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004. In particular, I am grateful to Senators Specter and Hatch for their efforts in the important work we have done, on this bill and so many others, over the years to strengthen our Nation's intellectual property laws. When Senators from different parties can collaborate as productively as we have on these tough issues, the legislative process is working the way it should. The Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004, which Senator Hatch and I jointly authored, modernized and improved the process by which certain royalty rates, such as those for small webcasters, are determined. Passage of the act was an important step toward creating laws that adequately protect and compensate makers of creative works. The Technical Corrections Act, H.R. 1036, makes truly technical corrections that shore up those laws and further preserve the traditional role of important intellectual property protections. In addition to these technical corrections, I, along with Chairman Specter and Senator Hatch, offered an amendment that makes one more correction. Several copyright holders had brought it to our attention that under current laws, copyright royalty judges do not have the ability to allocate portions of cable and satellite royalties before the end of royalty distribution proceedings. This has resulted in more than $1 billion in cable and satellite royalties being withheld from rightful recipients. Our amendment rectified the problem by providing copyright royalty judges with explicit statutory discretion for partial distribution of royalties and was included in the legislation that the Judiciary Committee approved last week. Now that the bill is on the floor, I urge my colleagues to move it quickly, by unanimous consent.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, recently I was pleased to introduce with Senators Kohl, Grassley and Schumer, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act of 2006, S. 3582. That bill was designed to improve the timely and effective introduction of generic pharmaceuticals into the marketplace. It is no secret that prescription drug prices are rapidly increasing and are a source of considerable concern to many Americans, especially senior citizens and families. In a marketplace free of manipulation, generic drug prices can be as much as 80 percent lower than the comparable brand name version. Unfortunately, there are still some companies driven by greed that may be keeping low-cost, life-saving generic drugs off the marketplace, off pharmacy shelves, and out of the hands of consumers by carefully crafted anticompetitive agreements between drug manufacturers. In 2001, and last Congress, I introduced a related bill, the Competition Act. That bill, which is now law, is small in terms of length but large in terms of impact. It ensured that law enforcement agencies could take quick and decisive action against companies seeking to cheat consumers by delaying availability of generic medicines. It gave the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department access to information about secret deals between drug companies that keep generic drugs out of the market--a practice that not only hurts American families, particularly senior citizens, by denying them access to low- cost generic drugs, but also contributes to rising medical costs. The Drug Competition Act, which was incorporated in the Medicare Modernization Act, was a bipartisan effort to protect consumers in need of patented medicines who were being forced to pay considerably higher costs because of collusive secret deals designed. It is regrettable that we must come to the floor again today and take additional action to prevent drug companies from continuing to find and exploit loopholes. The bill I am introducing tonight with Senators Rockefeller and Schumer is very important. It will provide incentives for generic companies to make the investments needed to introduce low-cost generic medicines for all our citizens. The bill assures all Americans that the original intent of the Hatch- Waxman law is carried out. That law was to provide incentives for generic companies to challenge the validity of patents on medicines and provide incentives for generic companies to manufacture low-cost medicines. That incentive was simple. Under Hatch-Waxman law, the first generic company, called the first- filer, which successfully develops a generic version of a patented drug and meets certain other requirements, can get a 180-day exclusivity period to be the only generic company to have permission to make and sell that generic drug. That was called an exclusivity period because that is what the Congress intended--that generic company would have the exclusive right for 180 days to make the generic version of the patented medicine. The problem is that recently brand-name companies have been labeling their own patented drugs also as a generic version of itself, or licensing others to make it, and selling both the brand-name version and the so-called generic version. This undercuts the potential profits of the ``real'' generic company and denies them what the Hatch-Waxman law promised and for a long time delivered--an exclusivity period lasting up to 180 days. When the brand-name company offers a competing ``fake'' generic version of the drug, that can cut the profits of the real generic manufacturer greatly--thus making it less likely that a real generic company will even want to make the product. The Rockefeller bill prevents the brand-name company from doing that for the 180-day exclusivity period. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this effort.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my perspectives on the issue currently being debated by the Senate, stem cell research. The debate over this issue in the Senate is long overdue. The promise this research holds for finding treatments or cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's disease and cancer is immeasurable. It has been 5 years since the President announced his administration's restrictive policy on stem cell research, a policy that limited the number of stem cell lines available for use with Federal funding. All of these lines are contaminated by the use of mouse feeder cells and will likely never meet the standards required for human treatment. The United States leads the world in the medical expertise that can find cures and treatments for these scourges. But it has become abundantly clear that the President's restrictive policy is hindering scientific progress toward the discovery in the United States of possible cures and treatments for many fatal diseases that affect millions of Americans, and millions more around the world. More than a year ago, our colleagues in the House passed legislation that would reverse the President's limiting policy. Since then, as we have all waited for the Senate to act, many more who suffer from catastrophic illness and could have been helped by research of this kind have passed away. Many of us are grieving the loss of Dana Reeve, a vocal advocate for stem cell research, who lost her battle with cancer last March. She and her husband, Christopher Reeve, had become two of the public faces in the struggle for advancement of stem cell research. The Senate will vote on three stem cell bills today. However, H.R. 810 is the only bill that will give real reason for hope to millions of Americans and their families. Take the case of a woman from my State of Vermont who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. Forced to give up her career as a musician because she could no longer use her hands to play the piano, she began working as a clerk in a gift store, only to have to give up that job because she had trouble handling money and sometimes broke the items in the store. Her plea to me--and really to all of us--is deeply moving. Listen to her appeal: ``If there is any chance stem cell research might help MS, it must be done. There is nothing else for MS patients to look forward to . . .'' I would like to address two of the arguments that opponents of this stem cell research offer against the passage of H.R. 810. They contend that there is no need for public funding of this research because private funds are available in some situations. While there are private dollars being used for embryonic stem cell research, public funds are needed to spur on this research, to lead this research effort to the cutting edge of progress, and to harness the work of our National Institutes of Health. Public funding is also needed to keep the United States competitive with other countries in this arena. At the University of Vermont, for example, researchers are using bone marrow stem cells to repair damaged tissues in various organs. This work could be expanded with the infusion of Federal research dollars. A second misdirected argument is that this embryonic stem cell research is not needed because alternatives to embryonic research hold more promise than the current method. Some argue that embryonic stem cell research is not needed because it has not yielded any results. However, none of the proposed alternatives has proven successful for deriving human stem cells, and there is no guarantee that any of them ever will. While it is true that embryonic stem cell research has not yet led to human therapies, it is important to remember that this field is only in its infancy. This is because President Bush's restrictions have prevented federally funded investigators from fully exploring the potential of this research. The President has indicated his intent to veto H.R. 810 should the Senate pass this bill. I join my colleagues in urging him not to use the first veto of his administration to block funding for this research. H.R. 810 is a bill that has garnered support across the faith community and across political lines. I respect those who raise concerns grounded in what they believe are moral and ethical issues surrounding this issue. I would assure them that this bill contains provisions that will ensure donor consent for the use of the embryos for medical research. The bill also maintains that research on these stem cells will be conducted in an ethical manner. Those who oppose stem cell research seemingly ignore the fact that embryos used for this research will be otherwise discarded. Women at fertility clinics are given an option of what to do with unused fertilized embryos. At the discretion of the donor, embryos can be preserved, donated for medical research, or discarded. In the United States, there are more than 400,000 frozen embryos which are stored for infertile couples, and many ultimately will be thrown away. The options of discarding these embryos or allowing them to be used for lifesaving research would seem to offer a clear choice to those on both sides of this debate. I am proud to be a cosponsor of S. 471 and I urge the Senate to pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act so we can begin realizing the promise of this research.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, more than 2 months ago I joined the Chairmen of both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, the Democratic and Republican leaders of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and Members of Congress from both parties to introduce a bill to reauthorize and reinvigorate the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The bicameral, bipartisan introduction of this bill reflects not only its historic importance as a guarantor of the right to vote for all Americans, but also the broad consensus that the expiring provisions must be extended this year without delay. Unfortunately, we in the Senate have been delayed in getting this bill to the Senate floor by repeated cancellations and postponements of committee hearings and markups. The bill was also delayed in the House of Representatives for a month by a small group of opponents. Fortunately, the House was able to pass this legislation last week with 390 Members voting in favor. Now it is time for the Senate to do its part and pass this bill. At my request, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has agreed to hold a special executive business session of the committee so that after a month of delay we can report out the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. I hope that this vital civil rights legislation will be ready for full Senate consideration without further delay and that we can proceed with deliberate speed to pass the House-passed bill so that it may become law before Congress takes its summer vacation. The U.S. Constitution specifically provides that Congress has the power to remedy discrimination under both the fourteenth and the fifteenth amendments. Over the course of nine Judiciary Committee hearings we received testimony from a range of constitutional scholars, voting rights advocates, and Supreme Court practitioners. There was agreement among these witnesses that Congress is at the height of its powers when giving enforceable meaning to these amendments by enacting laws that address racial discrimination in connection with voting. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments have not changed. As long as these amendments are in our Constitution, Congress has the authority to enforce them, especially on matters of racial discrimination in connection with the right to vote. These are matters of fundamental importance. The Senate Judiciary Committee held several hearings this year on the continuing need for the provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires covered jurisdictions to ``pre-clear'' all voting changes before they go into effect. This provision has been a tremendous source of protection for the voting rights of those long discriminated against and also a great deterrent against discriminatory efforts cropping up anew. Some academic witnesses suggested in their committee testimony that section 5 should be a victim of its success. In my view, abandoning a successful deterrent just because it works defies logic and common sense. Why risk losing the gains we have made? When this Congress finds an effective and constitutional way to prevent violations of the fundamental right to vote, we should preserve it. Now is no time for backsliding. Since section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965 and last reauthorized in 1982, the country has made tremendous progress in combating racial discrimination. Certain jurisdictions disregarded the fifteenth amendment for almost 100 years and had a history of pervasive discriminatory practices that resisted attempts at redress from the passage of the fifteenth amendment in 1870 to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Section 5 is intended to be a remedy for violations of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, in place for as long as necessary to enforce those amendments and eliminate practices denying or abridging the rights of minorities to participate in the political process. In fact, due in large measure to the remedies provided in the VRA, many voters in jurisdictions covered for the purposes of section 5 have gained the effective exercise of their right to vote. However, based on the record established in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights, which builds on the extensive record established in the House of Representatives, there remains a compelling need for section 5. The Judiciary Committee received three categories of evidence supporting the continuation of this remedy. First, there is evidence that even with section 5 in place, covered jurisdictions have continued to engage in discriminatory tactics. Often, this recurring discrimination takes on more subtle forms than in 1965 or 1982, such as vote dilution, which relies on racially polarized voting to deny the effectiveness of the votes cast by members of a particular race. Second, there is evidence of the effectiveness of section 5 as a deterrent against bad practices in covered jurisdictions. Finally, there is evidence of the prophylactic effect of section 5, preserving the gains that have been achieved against the risk of backsliding. Today, I would like to provide some of the evidence received in the Judiciary Committee about the persistence of discriminatory practices in covered jurisdictions that supports reauthorization of this crucial provision. The robust record compiled in the Senate Judiciary Committee includes voluminous evidence of recurring discrimination in section 5 covered jurisdictions. Often, this recurring discrimination takes on more subtle forms than in 1965 or 1982, such as vote dilution and redistricting to deny the effectiveness of the votes cast by members of a particular race. Notably, many jurisdictions are repeat offenders, continuing a pattern of persistent resistance dating back to the enactment of the VRA. Debo P. Adegbile, Associate Director of Litigation of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., testified about some examples of the types of evidence in the record: The Record before this Congress presents continued evidence of such violations, and highlights the necessity for continued review of voting changes to protect minority voters in covered jurisdictions. For example, since the VRA's 1982 renewal, violations of minority voting rights have taken the form of last minute election date or polling place changes, discrimination at the polls, and familiar dilutive tactics of ``cracking'' and ``packing'' minority voting districts. Objections to voting changes interposed by DOJ are one category of evidence relevant to the persistence of discrimination in covered jurisdictions. Although several witnesses pointed to a recent reduction in VRA objections as a reason to oppose extension of section 5, in fact there have been more objections in covered jurisdictions since the last reauthorization in 1982--608--than there were before that reauthorization, including 80 statewide section 5 objections. However, these objections only reveal a chapter of a much longer story. Mr. Adegbile also testified: Although many VRA opponents and commentators point to a recent reduction in DOJ objections as evidence of the decreasing need for Section 5--this analysis oversimplifies the many ways in which the law serves to protect minority voters. Excluded from the category of objection statistics are other categories of deterred and rejected voting changes. These include matters that were denied preclearance by the Washington D.C. District Court; matters that were settled while pending before that court; voting changes that were withdrawn, altered or abandoned after the DOJ made formal More Information Requests, MIRs; as well as any recognition that the very existence of preclearance deters discriminatory voting changes in the first place. Taken together, these categories provide a more holistic view of the sizeable impact, deterrent effect, and continued need for section 5's provisions. Moreover, without the section 5 preclearance provisions many jurisdictions that have experienced a long history of exclusionary practices in voting would have lacked the incentive to tailor their electoral changes in a non-discriminatory fashion. Even with section 5 in place, many covered jurisdictions made voting changes that disadvantaged minority voters without preclearing them with the DOJ. This is the Testimony of Debo P. Adegbile, Associate Director of Litigation of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, June 21, 2006, citing generally Luis Ricardo Fraga & Maria Lizet Ocampo, More Information Requests and the Deterrent Effect of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, June 7, 2006--unpublished essay, submitted to Senate Judiciary Committee on June 9, 2006. The following are only a small set of examples from the robust record compiled in the Senate Judiciary Committee: Vote Suppression Through the use of illegal devices, State and local officials in covered jurisdictions have suppressed the ability of minority voters to effectively exercise their right to vote. In 2001, Kilmichael, Mississippi's white mayor and all white five-member Board of Alderman abruptly cancelled an election after census data revealed that African Americans had become the majority in the town and an unprecedented number of African-American candidates were running for office. Even after DOJ objected, concluding that the cancellation was an attempt to suppress the African-American candidates, the mayor and board did not reschedule the election. Only after DOJ forced Kilmichael to hold an election in 2003 did it elect its first African-American mayor, along with three African-American alderman. This is from Caroline Fredrickson and Deborah J. Vagins, Promises to Keep: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, March 2006, at 12. In March, 2004, in Prairie View, Texas, home to historically black Prairie View A&M University, two students decided to run for the local governing body. The white criminal district attorney threatened that any student who voted in the election would face felony prosecution for ``illegal voting'' and only withdrew his statements when the NAACP filed suit. Shortly thereafter, the Commissioner's Court voted to reduce the availability of early voting at the polling place closest to the college from 17 hours over two days, to 6 hours on one day. This would have severely limited the students' political participation, as most planned to take advantage of early voting since their spring break coincided with the primary date. The county did not restore the voting hours until the NAACP filed a section 5 enforcement suit. This is from Laughlin McDonald ``The Case for Extending and Amending the Voting Rights Act,'' A Report of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union at 65-66. In a 2004 opinion invalidating South Dakota's redistricting plan, a Federal district judge documented the State's long history of discrimination, including persistent efforts to suppress the Native American vote since 1999. The judge documented illegal denials of the right to vote in certain elections, barriers to voter registration, intimidation and unsubstantiated charges of vote fraud, lack of access to polling sites, non-compliance with the Voting Rights Act's language assistance provision, and dilutive voting schemes. The opinion also quoted legislators expressing prejudice against Indians. For example, when debating an unsuccessful bill to make it easier for Indians to register, one legislator said, ``I'm not sure we want that kind of person in the polling place.' '' This is from National Commission on the Voting Rights Act, ``Protecting Minority Voters: The Voting Rights Act at Work 1982-2005'' February 2006 at 44. The Mayor of the Town of North Johns, AL intentionally discriminated against African-American candidates for city council when he frustrated the attempts of these candidates to acquire the required forms for their candidacy and refused to swear them in when they won their elections. The court found that the mayor acted to undermine the candidacy of two African-American men because their election would result in the town council becoming majority black. This is from Dillard v. North Johns, 717 F. Supp. 1471, M.D. Ala. 1989. Discriminatory Redistricting Due to racially polarized voting, the reality in many jurisdictions is that the ability of minorities to have the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice is often dependent on the racial composition of a voting district. Consequently, the seemingly neutral task of drawing district lines can, in fact, be used strategically to abridge minorities' right to vote using techniques called ``packing'' where a very large percentage of minorities are placed in a single district and thereby denying them influence except in that one jurisdiction, or the obverse ``unpacking,'' which fragments minority communities into numerous jurisdictions, denying them influence anywhere. The impact of racially polarized voting is significant. In the 2000 elections, only 8 percent of African Americans were elected from majority white districts. This is from National Commission on the Voting Rights Act, ``Protecting Minority Voters: The Voting Rights Act at Work 1982-2005'' February 2006 at 38. As of 2000, neither Hispanics nor Native Americans candidates had been elected to office from a majority white district. Id. This is true throughout covered jurisdictions. Every African-American representative currently holding office in Congress from Louisiana, or in the Louisiana State Legislature, has been elected from a majority African-American district. This is from Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 9. In Mississippi, the State with the highest percentage African-American population, not a single African-American candidate has won election to Congress or the state legislature from a majority-white district, and no African-American candidate has won a statewide office in the 20th Century. This is from Robert McDuff, ``Voting Rights in Mississippi: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 13. After failing to redistrict for over two decades, following the 1980 and 1990 census, the city of Seguin, Texas was 60 percent Hispanic, yet only 3 out of 9 city council members were Hispanic. After a successful section 5 challenge by Hispanic plaintiffs, the city redrew its discriminatory districts in 1994 and again following the 2000 census, but cut short the filing deadlines for the upcoming elections, ensuring that the white incumbent would run unopposed. Another section 5 suit was necessary to prevent this change, called by some merely de minimis even though it determined the election's outcome, from going into effect. This is Testimony of John Trasvina, Interim President and General Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund MALDEF, before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, June 13, 2006, at 4. At a 2001 section 2 hearing, while testifying in defense of the St. Bernard Parish School Board's illegal plan to eliminate its only African-American district, Louisiana State Senator Lynn Dean, the highest ranking public official in St. Bernard Parish, admitted that he uses a term considered by many to be a derogatory, even offensive, word in referring to African Americans, had done so recently, and does not necessarily consider it a racial term. Dean had served on the school board for 10 years. This is from Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2005,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 26. In the post-1990 redistricting cycle, the Department of Justice objected to Georgia's Senate redistricting bill twice and to Georgia's House redistricting bill three times. The newly adopted plans were then challenged by litigation in which the state admitted to constitutional violations. After losing the lawsuit, the state claimed to remedy the problem. However, its newly adopted plans reduced the black populations of numerous districts, thereby drawing DOJ objections to both plans yet again in March 1996. This is from Robert Kengle, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982- 2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 14. The 2001 legislative redistricting plan in South Dakota, which divided the State into thirty-five legislative districts, altered the boundaries of District 27, which included Shannon and Todd Counties, so that American Indians comprised 90 percent of the district, while the district was one of the most overpopulated in the State. Had American Indians not been ``packed'' in District 27, they could have comprised a majority in a house district in adjacent District 26. South Dakota refused to submit the plan for pre- clearance, leading Alfred Bone Shirt and three other residents from Districts 26 and 27 to sue the State in December 2001. The plaintiffs claimed that South Dakota failed to submit its plan for pre-clearance and also that the plan unnecessarily packed Indian voters in violation of section 2. A 3-judge court ordered the state to seek pre- clearance and the Attorney General pre-cleared it, concluding that the additional packing of Indians in District 27 did not have a retrogressive effect. However, the district court, sitting as a single-judge court, heard the plaintiffs' section 2 claim and invalidated the State's 2001 legislative plan as diluting American Indian voting strength, finding that there was ``substantial evidence that South Dakota officially excluded Indians from voting and holding office.'' This is from Bone Shirt v. Hazeltine, 200 F. Supp. 2d 1150, 1154 D.S.D. 2002. In 2001, the Louisiana State Legislature sought judicial pre-clearance of its statewide redistricting plan for the Louisiana House of Representatives, which eliminated a majority African-American district in Orleans Parish. According to the legislators that drew that plan, the district was eliminated because white voters in Orleans Parish were entitled to ``proportional representation,'' despite significant population growth among African-Americans in Orleans Parish over the course of the prior decade. Although the legislators ultimately dropped their selective ``proportional representation'' argument, the court found that the state ``blatantly violate[ed] important procedural rules'' through its litigation tactics and condemned the state for its ``radical mid-course revision in [its legal] theory of the case.'' The evidence, obtained over plaintiffs' resistance via a motion to compel, showed significant levels of racially-polarized voting in virtually all electoral contests, as well as retrogressive purpose and effect in the adoption of the plan. The evidence also showed that the Speaker Pro Tempore, who was a plaintiff in the action, removed long-standing language from the State's redistricting guidelines that acknowledged the State's obligations under the VRA at the start of the line drawing cycle. The litigation resulted in a settlement on the eve of trial that restored the opportunity district in Orleans Parish. The 2001 Louisiana House redistricting plan followed the standard practice in Louisiana as no initial redistricting plan for the Louisiana House of Representatives has ever been pre- cleared by DOJ since the inception of Voting Rights Act in 1965. This is Testimony of Richard Engstrom before the House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, October 25, 2005. This is also Debo P. Adegbile, Voting Rights in Louisiana, 1982-2006, at 16. After finding Point Coupee Parish, Louisiana's redistricting plans retrogressive, the Department of Justice objected 3 decades in a row: in 1983, 1992, and 2002. After the first 2 census cycles, the parish attempted to pack minority voters into a single district while fragmenting the remaining African-Americans into majority-white districts. In 2002, without explanation, the parish eliminated one majority African-American district, despite an increase in the African-American population of the parish. Unfortunately, the experience in Point Coupee Parish is typical in Louisiana: ``[b]etween 1982 and 2003, 10 other parishes were ``repeat offenders,'' and 13 times the DOJ noted that local authorities were merely resubmitting objected-to proposals with cosmetic or no changes.'' This is Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 27. In 1983, African-American legislators were excluded from legislative sessions held to develop Louisiana's post-census redistricting plan after negotiations stalled. The governor had threatened to veto a proposed plan that would create one African-American majority district and the Senate rejected the governor's plan to create all white majority districts. In the absence of minority legislators, a compromise--Act 20--was reached that sacrificed the majority-minority district despite the fact that--after a marked increase in the previous decade--the highly-concentrated African-American population now made up 48.9 percent of the voting age population in Orleans Parish. Act 20 was struck down by a 1982 section 2 case. The remedied district led to the election of Louisiana's first African-American congressman since reconstruction. This is also from Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 16. In 1991 and 1992, the Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, Police Jury drew district lines in an attempt to pack African- American voters in the city of Bastrop multiple times in defiance of DOJ objections. After a 1991 section 5 objection to its attempt to draw the same districting plan several times the Morehouse Parish Police Jury made cosmetic changes and resubmitted the same plan. After DOJ lodged another objection, the police jury resubmitted the same plan with only cosmetic changes. Only after DOJ objected a third time in 1992 did the police jury address the substance of the first objection and draw district lines that did not result in an over-concentration of African-American voters. In 2006, election officials in Randolph County, Georgia, moved the board of education district lines to include Henry Cook, the African-American chair of the board of education, from District Five of the county board of education, which is majority black, to District Four, which is majority white. In District Four, Cook would almost certainly be defeated given the prevalence of racial bloc voting in the county, depriving the African-American community of an incumbent elected official who had their strong support in past elections. Although Randolph County was covered by section 5, county officials refused to submit the change for pre-clearance. African-American residents of the county filed suit on April 17, 2006, to enjoin use of the change absent pre-clearance. On June 5, 2006, the 3-judge court issued an order enjoining further use of the voting change because of failure to comply with section 5. In 1991, Mississippi legislators rejected proposed House and Senate redistricting plans that would have given African- American voters greater opportunity to elect representatives of their choice, referring to one such alternative on the House floor as the ``black plan'' and privately as ``the n- plan.'' DOJ objected, concluding that a racially discriminatory purpose was at play. In the 1992 elections, the cured redistricting plans boosted the percentage of African-American representatives in the legislature to an all time high: 27 percent of the House and 19 percent of the Senate--up from 13 percent and 4 percent respectively in a state where 33 percent of the voting age population is African-American. This is Robert McDuff, ``Voting Rights in Mississippi: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 9-10. In late 2001, Northampton County, VA proposed a change in the method of electing the board of supervisors by collapsing six districts into three larger districts. The DOJ objected, finding that three of the six districts were majority- minority districts in which African-American voters regularly elected their candidates of choice. The new plan would have diluted the minority-majorities and caused them to completely disappear in 2 of the 3 new districts--clearly having retrogressive effects. Two years later, the county provided a new 6-district plan, which had the same retrogressive effects of the 3-district plan. DOJ objected and provided a model non-retrogressive, 6-district plan, which has yet to be followed by the county. This from Anita S. Earls, Kara Millonzi, Oni Seliski, and Torrey Dixon, ``Voting Rights in Virginia, 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 27-28. In 1989, in section 2 suit, a Federal district court knocked down Chickasaw County, Mississippi, illegal plan to have all majority-white supervisors' districts. Sent back to the drawing board, the county then passed 3 different plans over the next 6 years. Not one passed section 5 pre- clearance. Finally, the Federal court drew its own plan for the 1995 elections, providing for 2 majority-black districts to reflect a population that was nearly 40 percent black. Only then did the county adopt a plan that met no objection by the Department of Justice. This is Robert McDuff, ``Voting Rights in Mississippi: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 6. In 1992, DOJ objected to a Justice of the Peace and Constable redistricting plan in Galveston County, Texas, that fractured geographically compact African-American and Hispanic voters and provided no opportunity districts among the 8 districts in the plan, even though African Americans and Hispanic comprised 31 percent of the county's population. This is from Nina Perales, Luis Figueroa and Criselda G. Rivas, ``Voting Rights in Texas, 1982-2006'', RenewTheVRA.org, at 17-18. In 1992, DOJ objected to the Terrell County Commissioners Court redistricting plan. Although the Hispanic population in the county had increased from 43 percent to 53 percent, the proposed redistricting plan cracked the Hispanic population by substantially decreasing the number of Hispanic voters in one of the two Hispanic majority districts and packing them into the other to create a district with an 83 percent Hispanic district. This is from Nina Perales, Luis Figueroa and Criselda G. Rivas, ``Voting Rights in Texas, 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org, at 19. In 2005, DOJ objected to the redistricting plan for the Town of Delhi, LA, which eliminated an African-American opportunity district, rejected an alternative plan which would have been better for minority voters, and was adopted with the intent to worsen the position of minority voters. According to the 2000 Census, Delhi's population was majority African-American, yet local officials attempted to reduce minority voting strength in the town. DOJ denied pre- clearance after determining that town officials sought to worsen the position of minority voters by looking first to the historical background of the city's decision, which revealed that the plan was adopted despite steadily increasing growth in the town's African-American population. In its April 25, 2005, objection letter, DOJ stated, ``[w]ithout question, Black voters are worse off under the proposed plan,'' which was adopted despite the counsel of the Town's demographer, who noted the retrogressive effect of the plan. This is from a Letter from R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, to Mr. David Creed, Executive Director, North Delta Regional Planning and Development District, April 25, 2005. In 1992, the Department of Justice objected to Florida's redistricting plan for the State Senate, observing that ``[w]ith regard to the Hillsborough County area, the State has chosen to draw its senatorial districts such that there are no districts in which minority persons constitute a majority of the voting age population. To accomplish this result, the State chose to divide the politically cohesive minority populations in the Tampa and St. Petersburg areas.'' This is from JoNel Newman, ``Voting Rights in Florida, 1982- 2006'', RenewTheVRA.org, at 9. The Department of Justice interposed an objection to the 2002 redistricting plan for the Florida House of Representatives, stating that the plan reduced ``the ability of Collier County Hispanic voters to elect their candidate of choice [and] the drop in Hispanic population in the proposed district would make it impossible for these Hispanic voters to continue to do so.'' As a result of the Department's Section 5 objection to the 2002 reapportionment plan, Hispanic majority-minority district was preserved in Collier County. This is JoNel Newman, ``Voting Rights in Florida, 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org, at 10. In 2002, the Department of Justice objected to Arizona's state legislative redistricting plan because it fractured Hispanic voters and reduced Hispanic voting age population in 5 districts below their 1994 benchmarks, despite the growth of the State's Hispanic population and the ability to draw three compact majority-Hispanic districts. The State court responded by accepting an interim plan recommended by a Special Master that restored one district to its benchmark level and created 2 new Hispanic-majority districts in metropolitan Phoenix to replace some of the other four majority Hispanic-majority districts that had been eliminated. In 1991, Hispanic plaintiffs and Monterrey County, California, which was 33.6 percent Hispanic, reached a settlement plan which, unlike Monterrey's initial plan, did not dilute the vote of the county's Hispanic population. However, after voters struck down the county's redistricting plan in a required referendum petition, the county issued a new plan to which the Justice Department objected under section 5, stating that the County's plan ``. . . appears deliberately to sacrifice Federal redistricting requirements, including a fair recognition of Hispanic voting strength, in order to advance the political interests of the non-minority residents of northern Monterey County.'' Subsequently, the district court adopted the plaintiffs' plan. As a result of the implementation of the plaintiffs' plan, a Hispanic was elected to the Board of Supervisors for the first time in over 100 years. This is Gonzalez v. Monterey County 808 F.Supp. 727, 729 (N.D. Cal. 1992); Joaquin G. Avila, California State Report on Voting Discrimination (forthcoming May 25, 2006, manuscript at 9. After the 1990 census, Merced County, CA, adopted a redistricting plan that ignored the presence of its growing Hispanic population which at the time constituted 32.6 percent. In doing so, the county disregarded its demographer's recommendation to create a supervisor district with a Hispanic majority and instead chose a plan that fragmented the county's Hispanic population. The Justice Department issued an objection rejecting the county's redistricting plan because the plan fragmented the Hispanic population. Following the objection, the county created a new redistricting plan that both avoided the fragmentation of the county's Hispanic population and created a supervisory district with a Hispanic majority. The plan was later approved and a Hispanic Supervisor elected. This is Joaquin G. Avila, California State Report on Voting Discrimination, forthcoming May 25, 2006, manuscript at 11. Discriminatory Polling Place Changes Another method used in covered jurisdictions to deny minorities the right to vote has been to move or even eliminate polling places, often without notice. Moving a polling place can appear to have little impact or importance, but the record demonstrates that these changes have been used systematically to deny minorities their constitutional right to vote by injecting intimidation and confusion into the electoral process. Some have cited polling place changes as ``de minimis'' changes for which there should be an exception to section 5 pre-clearance. However, making such an exeception could lead to substantial violations of minority voting rights. As Robert McDuff, a civil rights attorney in Mississippi who has worked on preclearance testified, ``polling place changes can be retrogressive and should not be dismissed as per se de minimis. With section 5 preclearance requests the context is critical and DOJ has an expertise in assessing the context.'' Robert McDuff, Answers to Written Questions from Senator Coburn. The following examples demonstrate that far from being ``de minimis,'' polling place changes can be one of the most effective means of denying minorities the right to vote. In 1992, the Attorney General objected to a proposal by the Wrightsville, GA, to relocate the polling place from the county courthouse to the American Legion Hall, an all-white club with a history of refusing membership to black applicants and a then-current practice of hosting functions to which blacks were not welcome. This is Laughlin McDonald ``The Case for Extending and Amending the Voting Rights Act,'' A Report of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union at 333, 334. In 1995, Jenkins Parish, LA, attempted to relocate a polling place from a predominately black community easily accessible to many voters by foot to a location outside the city limits in a predominately white neighborhood which had no sidewalks, curving roads, and a speed limit of 55 mph. The Attorney General rejected the change, concluding, ``the county's proffered reasons for the selection of this particular polling site appear to be pretextual, as the selection of this location appears to be designed, in part, to thwart recent black political participation.'' This is Deval L. Patrick, Assistant Attorney General, to William E. Woodrum, Jenkins County Attorney, March 20, 1995. In 1985, the Apache County Board of Supervisors proposed to eliminate the last remaining polling place on Arizona's Fort Apache Reservation, reduce the daily hours of operation for those voting stations that remained open, and implement a rotating polling place system that would make it even harder for Navajo voters to reach the polls. Yet, absentee voting opportunities were not provided to Indian voters. Pointing to the clear discriminatory purpose and effect of the proposed changes, the Department of Justice objected. This is James Thomas Tucker and Rodolfo Espino, ``Voting Rights in Arizona 1982-2006,'' RenewtheVRA.org, 46, 2006. In 1994, after receiving word that whites were uncomfortable walking into an African-American neighborhood to vote at the Sunset Community Center, the St. Landry Parish, LA, Police Jury moved the polling place to the Sunset Town Hall, the site of historical racial discrimination. The police jury did not hold a public hearing, seek any further input, or advertise the change in any way. If not for the section 5 pre-clearance process, minority voters would not have known of the change until Election Day. This is Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana, 1982-2006,'' RenewtheVRA.org, at 31. In 1999, after the Davills Precinct polling center burned down and the County Board of Supervisors of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, moved the polling place to the Cut Bank Hunt Club, privately owned with a large African-American membership, one hundred and five citizens submitted their signatures to have the precinct moved to the Mansons United Methodist Church, located three miles southeast of the Hunt Club. The petition's stated purpose for moving the precinct was for a ``more central location.'' Before the board's meeting to discuss moving the polling place, the Mansons United Methodist Church withdrew its name as a possible location. The board then placed an advertisement for a public hearing on changing the polling place which stated that if any ``suitable centrally located location [could] be found prior to July 15, 1999,'' they would consider moving it there. On July 12, 1999, the Bott Memorial Presbyterian Church members offered their facilities for polling. On August 4, 1999, the board approved changing the polling place to Bott Memorial Presbyterian Church. The church is located at the extreme east end of the precinct, however, and 1990 Census data showed that a significant portion of the black population resides in the western end of the precinct. DOJ objected to the change, finding that the polling place was moved for discriminatory reasons. This is a Letter from Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. DOJ., to Benjamin W. Emerson of Sands, Anderson, Marks & Miller, October 27, 1999. Methods of Elections Officials have used their authority to set the methods of elections as ways to abridge or even deny the ability of minority citizens to vote and elect candidates of their choice. The following are examples of the use of at-large election systems, dual registration systems and other methods since the last reauthorization of section 5. In 1995, the State of Mississippi resurrected a form of the dual registration system, which a Federal district court had struck down less than a decade earlier as racially discriminatory in intent and effect. Mississippi then refused to submit its voting procedures for pre-clearance until ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the unlawful system, voters who registered pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act, NVRA, would only be eligible to vote in federal elections, but not in State and local elections. The majority of voters registered under the NVRA were African-American. In addition, while one state department provided its mostly-African-American public assistance clientele with only the NVRA registration forms, another department registered its mostly-white driver's license applicants through the state forms, which enabled them to vote in all elections. In its objection letter, DOJ noted the state had merely breathed new life into the dual registration system originally enacted by Mississippi in the 19th Century with an aim to eliminate the African-American vote. This is Robert McDuff, ``Voting Rights in Mississippi: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 16. In 1992, Effingham County, Georgia proposed an at-large election system despite anticipating that, due to racially polarized voting, after the change, African-Americans would no longer be able to elect the commissioner who would serve as chairperson. This decision came on the heels of the county's decision to eliminate the position of vice- chairperson, long held by an African-American commissioner. The county's justification for the change--that the proposed system would avoid tie votes in the selection of a chairperson--was tenuous at best because under the new system, an even number of commissioners would invite tie votes to a greater extent than the existing system. This is Robert Kengle, ``Voting Rights in Georgia: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 9-10. Ten years after a successful lawsuit that forced the adoption of single-member districts in the city of Freeport, TX, minority candidates had gained two seats on the city council. The City then sought to revert to at-large elections, garnering an objection from the Department of Justice. Similarly, the Haskill Consolidated Independent School District sought to revert to at-large voting after significant gains by minority populations. After the Washington Parish, Louisiana, School Board finally added a second majority-African American district in 1993, bringing the total to 2 out of 8, representing an African American population of 32 percent, it immediately created a new at-large seat to ensure that no white incumbent would lose his or her seat and to reduce the impact of the two African American members, to 2 out of 9. The Department of Justice objected to this change. (See Letter from James P. Turner, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. DOJ, to Sherri Marcus Morris, Assistant Attorney General, State of Louisiana, and Jerald N. Jones, City of Shreveport, September 11, 1995, cited in Debo Adegbile, Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006, February 2006, at 21.) A Federal district court found that the at-large method of electing the nine member Charleston County Council in South Carolina violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In particular, the court found evidence of white bloc voting and concluded that in 10 general elections involving African- American candidates, ``white and minority voters were polarized 100 percent of the time.'' The court also noted that there was a history of discrimination that hindered the present ability of minority voters to participate in the political process; significant socio-economic disparities along racial lines; a negligible history of African-American electoral success; and significant evidence of intimidation and harassment of African-American voters at the polls. Following the court's decision, which was affirmed on appeal, a single-member district plan was put in place with four majority African-American districts that eventually led to the election of four African Americans to the County Council. This is Laughlin McDonald ``The Case for Extending and Amending the Voting Rights Act,'' A Report of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union at 591- 592. In 2005, a three-judge Federal court enjoined the city of McComb, MS, from enforcing a State court order it had obtained that removed an African-American member of that city's board of selectmen from his seat by changing the requirements for holding that office, holding that the order clearly altered the pre-existing practice. The court ordered the selectman restored to his office and enjoined the city from enforcing the change unless preclearance was obtained. This is Robert McDuff, ``Voting Rights in Mississippi: 1982- 2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 8. In 1991 the Concordia Parish Police Jury in Louisiana announced that it would reduce its size from 9 seats to 7, with the intended consequence of eliminating one African- American district, claiming the reduction was necessary as a cost-saving measure. However, DOJ noted in its objection that the parish had seen no need to save money by eliminating districts until an influx of African-American residents transformed the district in question from a majority-white district into a majority African-American district. This is Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 24. Annexations The following are examples from the record where jurisdictions changed their boundaries in order to diminish the voting power of minorities by selectively changing the racial composition of a district. Numerous jurisdictions have annexed neighboring white suburbs in order to preserve white majorities or electoral power. In 1990, the city of Monroe, LA attempted to annex white suburban wards to its city court jurisdiction. In its objection, DOJ noted that the wards in question had been eligible for annexation since 1970, but that there had been no interest in annexing them until just after the first-ever African-American candidate ran for Monroe city court. This is Debo P. Adegbile, ``Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006,'' RenewTheVRA.org at 24. Pleasant Grove, Alabama was an all-white city with a long history of discrimination, located in an otherwise racially mixed part of Alabama. The city sought pre-clearance for two annexations, one for an area of white residents who wanted to attend the all-white Pleasant Grove school district instead of the desegregated Jefferson County school district, the other for a parcel of land that was uninhabited at the time but where the city planned to build upper income housing that would likely be inhabited by whites only. At the same time, the city refused to annex to two predominantly black areas. The United States Supreme Court upheld the District Court's denial of pre-clearance. This is from City of Pleasant Grove v. United States, 479 U.S. 462, 1987. In 2003, the Department of Justice interposed an objection to a proposed annexation in the Town of North, SC, because the town had ``been racially selective in its response to both formal and informal annexation requests.'' DOJ found that ``white petitioners have no difficulty in annexing their property to the town'' while ``town officials provide little, if any, information or assistance to black petitioners and often fail to respond to their requests, whether formal or informal, with the result that the annexation efforts of black persons fail.'' Though the town argued that no formal attempts had been made by African-Americans to be annexed into the town, DOJ's investigation revealed that at least one petition had been signed by a significant number of African- American residents who sought annexation. The fact that the town ignored or was non-responsive to the requests of African-Americans, while accommodating the requests of whites, led DOJ to determine that race was ``an overriding factor in how the town responds to annexation requests.'' This is a Letter from R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, to H. Bruce Buckheister, Mayor, North, SC, September 16, 2003.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I strongly oppose the amendment offered by Senator Menendez to drastically cut the base allocation of Homeland Security grants for all States. I heard the statement of the distinguished Senator from Maine, Senator Collins. I associate myself with her words. She has stated it far more eloquently than I as to why this amendment should be defeated. The Senator from New Jersey has the right concerns about the administration's underfunding of first responder assistance programs. His concerns are absolutely right. I happen to agree with him on those. But he has chosen the wrong target to try to fix that problem. Senator Menendez and his cosponsors are understandably outraged over how threat-based Homeland Security grants were recently distributed. If it were not so serious a situation, the recent explanation by Homeland Security officials and how they distributed these funds would be laughable. We are not debating the competence of Homeland Security. If we were, we would hear all the statements of Homeland Security that if there is a sudden terrorist attack, they are ready; had there been a sudden terrorist attack with no notice at all on New Orleans last year, they are ready to do everything possible to help the people. Of course, when they had a week's notice before Hurricane Katrina, they still have not responded. It is not their competence we are debating. Yesterday, the Senate once again attempted to correct the Bush-Cheney administration's woefully inadequate request for Homeland Security. Unfortunately, the amendment of the Senator from New York, Senator Clinton, to restore $750 million for first responders' assistance, was defeated. I had voted for that. I am sure the Senator from New Jersey did. Now we come to this amendment that purports to correct the blunders of the Homeland Security threat assessments by slashing the base amounts to every single State in the country. Unfortunately, as the Senator from Maine has rightly pointed out, this amendment does pit State over State in how to divide inadequate overall funding for Homeland Security. That is not the way to correct the incompetence of the Department of Homeland Security's determination of how to allocate grants based on risk. It is the right issue; it is the wrong solution. When the Senate last year considered a similar amendment proposing this misplaced change in support for first responders, the Senate soundly rejected it with 65 of our colleagues voting against it. The terrorist attacks of September 11 added to the responsibilities and risk of first responders nationwide. I wrote the all-State minimum formula as part of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 to guarantee each State receives less than 1 percent--actually 0.75 percent of the national allotment to help meet the national domestic security needs. Every State, rural or urban, small or large, has basic domestic security needs and deserves to receive Federal funds to meet these needs and the new Homeland Security responsibilities the Federal Government demands. Large urban areas and high-risk areas have even greater needs, and they should be addressed. Both should be addressed. I don't mean to be parochial, but my little State of Vermont, the second smallest State in the Union, is a State that borders another country. We are a State with a nuclear reactor. We have been called upon by the Federal Government to help out on border security, to help out because we are in a direct line from Canada down to two very large urban areas--Boston and New York. We are constantly getting requests to help. Our little State of 660,000 people, loyal Americans all, wants to help every way we can, but we are saying if we are asked to help out a whole lot of other States, at least let us have some basic help. Whether it is going to require us to put in new radio systems, telecommunications systems, or anything else, to protect not just us but to help protect other urban areas, let us do it. I would remind everybody, when we had the tragedy of 9/11, for weeks after that happened, the air support over New York City, the armed response, the F-16s flying over New York City were flying out of Burlington, VT. Vermont provided people from our military, from our law enforcement, from everywhere else. We did not ask to be reimbursed, even though it cost us a lot. We responded within an hour. And it was the Green Mountain Boys who flew over New York City, providing that security at a time when nobody knew if there was going to be another attack. They did it around the clock. They did it with people canceling vacations. We had one mechanic driving down the interstate with his family on their way to their vacation. He was a mechanic for the Air National Guard. He heard on the radio about the attack, and at the first place he could do a U-turn on the interstate, he did. He headed back. He told his wife and kids: Drop me off here; they are going to need me. I will call you when I get my first break. And 3 days later, when he had an hour's break, he called and said: Send me some clean clothes. Don't take me home. Go back to your vacation. Send me some clean clothes. He kept on working. Now, every State would have done the same. We respond. But if you pit States against each other, that ignores the real problem. The real problem is the administration has failed to make first responders a high enough priority. Congress, instead, should be looking to increase the overall Federal commitment to the Nation's first responders. We have plenty of money to spend on Iraq's first responders. Let's spend some of that money on the first responders of the United States. The smaller States, especially, would never be able to fulfill those essential duties on top of their daily responsibilities without Federal support. My colleagues should be warned that if the minimum drops any further--and you compound that by the substantial drops in overall first responder funding--then small- and medium-sized States will not be able to meet those Federal mandates for terrorism prevention, preparedness, and response. Again, if we can send money to Iraqi first responders, let's find the money for American first responders. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, we worked together in the Senate--Republicans and Democrats alike, from large States and small States, and we have done it with the other body--to meet the needs of all State and local first responders from rural and urban areas. Our fire, police, and rescue teams in each State in the Nation deserve support in achieving the new homeland security responsibilities the Federal Government demands. The taxpayers in my State never questioned the fact that we would help in the disasters of Katrina or the disasters of 9/11. All States were in this together. But representatives of urban areas have been arguing that Federal money to fight terrorism is being sent to areas that do not need it, that it is being ``wasted'' in small towns. They have called the formula highly politicized and insisted on the redirection of funds to urban areas that they believe face heightened threat or terrorist attacks. What critics of the all-State minimum seem to forget, though, is that since 9/11, the American people have asked all State--all State--and local first responders to defend us as never before on the frontlines in the war against terrorism--a war that will not end in my lifetime or the lifetimes of the other Members of this body. Vermont's emergency responders have the same responsibilities as those in any other State to provide enhanced protection, preparedness, and response against terrorists. We have to ensure that adequate support and resources are provided for our police, our fire, and our EMS services in every State, if we expect them to continue protecting us from terrorists or responding to terrorist attacks, as well as carrying out their routine responsibilities. I understand the concerns of my friend from New Jersey. He is an extraordinarily able Senator, as he was an extraordinarily able Member of the other body. I have enjoyed our friendship, and I have enjoyed the fact that we have worked together many times. But I would say to him and others, do not foster divisions between States because that is going to ignore the real problem. The real problem is that the President has failed to make first responders a high enough priority. We should be looking to increase the funds to our Nation's first responders, not pit State against State. We have seen cuts in State and local first responder formula grants in the Homeland Security Department by 59 percent--from $2.3 billion in 2003 to $941 million in 2006. That is $941 million for all first responders in America for the whole year. That is about what we have spent this week alone in Iraq. This week already we have spent about $941 million. That is what we are going to say we are going to spend for the whole year in the United States to protect us and to give our first responders the money they need. Now, those cuts--those huge cuts--are going to affect every State, whether it is a small State or a large State. We are looking at another year of subpar funding for our State and local first responders. For 2007, the President proposes a 52-percent overall cut, or $1.3 billion, in funding for State and local law enforcement agencies alone. That, incidentally, is about what we spend in 1 week in Iraq. The Senate Homeland Security spending bill we now consider cuts both the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program and the State Homeland Security Grant Program by $50 million each over the current year. Grants for high-threat, high-density urban areas--such as the ones the Senator from New Jersey is rightly concerned about; these are what the larger cities and metropolitan areas have been wrangling over in recent weeks--they face a $20 million cut over last year and a $140 million cut from 2 years ago. These programs play a critical role for all States and communities for the purposes of training, procuring equipment, planning, and conducting exercises. Clearly, the domestic preparedness funds available are insufficient to protect our people and prepare for and respond to future domestic terrorist attacks anywhere on American soil. I am not saying we should not help the Iraqi people. I am saying, let's give at least the same kind of priority to the American people. It would be comforting if we could at least tell Americans their Government was doing everything possible and practical to keep them safe. We cannot truthfully tell them that. There is much left undone in securing our Nation. That is why we are not abandoning the small- and medium-sized States that suffer under this amendment. This came up last year. The Senate roundly rejected it last year. I hope it will again this year. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the underlying issue today on this amendment is that the administration has slashed Homeland Security funding. It has mismanaged the grants it has awarded. We would not be in the situation of pitting State against State if the President adequately funded Homeland Security. Grants are being cut from $2.3 billion in 2003 to under $1 billion this year--$1 billion for the whole year, this Homeland Security grant. We spend over a billion dollars a week in Iraq. If we can spend money for homeland security in Iraq, we ought to be able to spend a tiny fraction of that here. I commend Senator Collins for her leadership on this issue. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. If the Senator will yield, I must say what a thrill it is to work on the staff of Senator Boxer and to be able to help her. I wonder, Senator, if it is OK to go to work for Senator Jeffords?

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to make the Senate aware of a report I recently became aware of by the Advocacy Forum, a respected organization which documents human rights violations in Nepal by both government security forces and the Maoists. The Forum's latest report, released this week, describes the widespread use of torture on persons in custody. The overwhelming majority of documented cases are attributed to the Nepalese police, military and armed police. There are also cases attributed to the Maoists. The descriptions of the use of torture in this report are difficult to read. It is appalling that such barbaric acts of cruelty occur in the 21st century. Unfortunately, we know that this is not unique to Nepal. Torture is routine in dozens of countries. Nepal today is at a crossroads. Since popular demonstrations forced King Gyanendra to back away from his foolhardy power grab last February 1, there has been progress towards strengthening Nepal's fledgling democratic institutions and beginning a dialog to resolve the conflict. The future is unpredictable, however, and we continue to receive disturbing reports of extortion and abductions by the Maoists, and of resistance by the Nepalese military to much needed reform. Addressing these issues, and ending the use of torture and other human rights violations, will require new laws to protect the rights of detainees in accordance with international norms, reform of the judiciary so it is fully independent and has the resources to effectively carry out its responsibilities, reform of the military and police so they are placed fully under civilian authority and subject to the rule of law, and prosecutions of those responsible for violations. The international community can and should help support Nepal in taking these difficult, essential steps. All Senators should be aware of the cases documented by the Advocacy Forum, and I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the report be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today we consider a nominee for the new position of Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. All too often, in the Bush-Cheney administration, national security has been cited as a justification for overriding the rule of law and for imposing unprecedented secrecy. With the acquiescence of the Republican-controlled Congress, this administration may be the most unresponsive in history and the most unaccountable. Ken Wainstein is President Bush's selection to be the first Assistant Attorney General for National Security, a new position created by Congress. I will not oppose this nomination in the hope that Mr. Wainstein will work with us and be responsive to the Senate. I have concerns about this administration's unilateral approach to national security issues. Four years ago, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department issued a secret legal opinion concluding that the President of the United States had the power to override domestic and international laws outlawing torture. The memo sought to redefine torture and asserted that the President enjoys ``complete authority over the conduct of war'' and asserted that application of the criminal law passed by Congress prohibiting torture ``in a manner that interferes with the President's direction of such core war matters as the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants would be unconstitutional.'' It seemed to assert that the President could immunize people from prosecution for violations of U.S. criminal laws that prohibit torture. This Justice Department memo was withdrawn only after it became public because it could not withstand public scrutiny. We have learned through the media of warrantless wiretapping and data-mining conducted by this administration. This, despite the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act and its express provisions and the actions on the Senate in voting to curtail the data-mining programs by Admiral Poindexter at the Defense Department. We have yet to be provided with a convincing legal justification for these programs. We have yet to be able to investigate or hold the administration accountable. Instead, every effort at oversight and accountability have been obstructed or curtailed by the administration. The administration refuses to follow the law and submit matters to the FISA court and claims state secrets to force court challenges to be dismissed. The administration tells the Senate when, what and how it may investigate. The Department of Justice's own, internal Office of Professional Responsibility's probe of whether or not lawyers at the Department violated ethical rules in justifying these activities was shut down by the Attorney General and the White House. As this administration continues to expand its power, the Department of Justice should be advising the President to obey the law and respect the Congress and the courts, not just helping to rationalize actions and forestall oversight. In theory, this new position might help Department of Justice attorneys to act responsibly on national security issues, rather than just to do the White House's bidding. It should put national security issues into the hands of experts, not political cronies. In fact, the WMD Commission recommended in March of last year that the different components of the Department's dealing with national security, terrorism, counterintelligence, and foreign intelligence surveillance be combined to eliminate deficiencies and inefficiencies in the Department's national security efforts. Congress acted to create the post. This new Assistant Attorney General position can only serve a useful role if the person who occupies it is willing to think independently. This administration has consistently prized loyalty over independence and expertise. Mr. Wainstein has some experience as a prosecutor, but he has also been a loyal official of this administration for some time now. I hope that he will be able to look at the crucial national security issues to be handled by this new office with a critical eye and a view toward respecting law and the Congress. If he does, he will be a breath of fresh air in the Bush-Cheney administration. Recently, Judiciary Committee Chairman Specter and I received a letter from the Fraternal Order of Police. The FOP ``endorsed'' Mr. Wainstein ``in order to facilitate his departure from the U.S. Attorney's Office.'' They criticized him for being ``unwilling to perform'' the function of investigating and prosecuting an alleged attack on a police officer. That is not what I would term high praise for his judgment. I ask that a copy of the letter be printed in the Record

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President. I am pleased to introduce, with Senators Kohl, Grassley, and Schumer, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act of 2006, S. 3582. It is no secret that prescription drug prices are rapidly increasing and are a source of considerable concern to many Americans, especially senior citizens and families. In a marketplace free of manipulation, generic drug prices can be as much as 80 percent lower than the comparable brand-name version. Unfortunately, there are still some companies that may be keeping low-cost, life-saving generic drugs off the marketplace, off pharmacy shelves, and out of the hands of consumers by carefully crafted anticompetitive agreements between drug manufacturers. This bipartisan bill will improve the timely and effective introduction of generic pharmaceuticals into the marketplace. In 2001, and last Congress, I introduced a related bill, the Drug Competition Act. That bill, which is now law, is small in terms of length but large in terms of impact. It ensured that law enforcement agencies could take quick and decisive action against companies seeking to cheat consumers by delaying availability of generic medicines. It gave the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department access to information about secret deals between drug companies that keep generic drugs out of the market--a practice that not only hurts American families, particularly senior citizens, by denying them access to low- cost generic drugs but also contributes to rising medical costs. The Drug Competition Act, which was incorporated in the Medicare Modernization Act, was a bipartisan effort to protect consumers in need of patented medicines who were being forced to pay considerably higher costs because of collusive secret deals. It is regrettable that we must come to the floor again today and take additional action to prevent drug companies from continuing to find and exploit loopholes. I had faith that we were on the right track. However, two appellate court decisions from 2005 overturned the FTC's longstanding role of ``policing'' these activities and making case-by-case determinations on the appropriateness of proposed settlements, especially those that involved ``reverse'' payments. That refers to payments from a brand- name company to a generic company as opposed to payments from a generic company to the brand-name company for a license to make a particular patented drug. The FTC rightfully sought U.S. Supreme Court review of the Schering- Plough v. FTC Eleventh Circuit decision. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court refused to hear that case, leaving in doubt the continuing role of the FTC in policing settlements between brand-name drug companies and potential generic competitors. Moreover, in an unprecedented move, the U.S. Solicitor General opposed the request by the FTC for the Supreme Court to hear this case. The inaction of the courts and the choice of the administration to side with large drug companies over seniors and families has provoked us to take action and introduce this important bill. This matter arises at the intersection of patent law and antitrust law. The drug companies naturally deny that their agreements violate the antitrust laws, presenting them as private preliminary settlements between companies engaged in patent disputes. The problem is that the whole point of the Drug Competition Act is to have an independent body, the FTC, review these deals and to advise the companies if terms or conditions in the deal need to be changed to comply with existing antitrust laws. Agreements to delay the production and sale of generic medicines in exchange for cash from the brand-name companies need to be carefully reviewed by the FTC under standards that give the FTC authority to act where necessary to enforce antitrust laws. Companies holding patents on medicines should not be permitted to pay millions of dollars to potential generic competitors for the purpose of delaying the research, development, and sale of competing generic versions of medications when those generic companies believe they have the legal right to sell such products. I remain hopeful that during the process of working on this bill, a way can be found to give the FTC some discretion, on a case-by case basis, to continue to evaluate these deals. Under this approach, only the deals that are consistent with the intent of that law will be allowed to stand. There will be some deals that involve the payment of money which, on balance, could be good for the companies involved and for consumers. The original intent of the Drug Competition Act was to provide the FTC and DOJ with an opportunity to provide the companies with useful and timely information so the drug companies could conform their deals to the law through confidential advice from the law enforcement agencies. I want that process to be continued. Senators Grassley, Kohl, Schumer, and I are not the only ones who share the goal of ensuring effective and timely access to generic pharmaceuticals that can lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, for families, and for all Americans. I sincerely thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who are working together on that goal. We have devoted considerable attention to this matter in recent years, and I look forward to passing this important bill. In closing, I praise the FTC for spending so much time and energy on protecting competition in the pharmaceutical sector. This represents a massive workload for the FTC on top of all its other important responsibilities to protect consumers and the American enterprise system. Years ago, the FTC dealt with latter-day robber barons destroying smaller companies; now the FTC has to try to restrain corporate drug giants from robbing the elderly when these seniors buy prescription medicines. I also appreciate the work of the FTC on the authorized generics issue and look forward to the report they are preparing for the Congress on that matter.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, both are beautiful States. Maine is the largest land area, the largest State in New England. Most people are surprised to know that Vermont is the second largest. We beat out New Hampshire by about 90 square miles--larger than Massachusetts, larger than Connecticut, larger than Rhode Island. Smallest in population, but we take a back seat to no one in our independence. I am glad to see my friend, the Presiding Officer, the distinguished Senator, and distinguished former Governor. I commend the senior Senator from Connecticut for his outstanding statement last night and the senior Senator from Illinois, our Assistant Democratic leader, for his cogent observations on this matter. The statement this morning by the Senator from Vermont, a veteran, a man of principle and courage, made me proud to serve with him in representing the people of our great State. I thank the Senator from Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the Constitution Subcommittee for his statement, and the Senator from Delaware, another veteran, for his well-chosen words, as well. This morning we awoke to read the latest example of this administration's incompetence. Because of bureaucratic bungling, widows of those who have served this Nation and sacrificed for all of us have been denied the survivors' benefits to which they should be entitled. A leader of the Gold Star Wives of America, a group of 10,000 military widows, was quoted as saying: It is shameful that the government and Congress do not deliver the survivor benefits equally to all our widows with the same compassion and precision the military presents the folded flag at the grave. Edie Smith is right and we should be ashamed. This news follows other recent public reports that posttraumatic stress disorders among our veterans are on the rise. Instead of seeking to turn the flag into a partisan political weapon and the Constitution into a billboard for political slogans, for partisan gain, we should be working to fulfill the pressing needs of our veterans and their families. I wish the Senate would use its time to discuss and solve the real problems that real Americans are facing right now, instead of trying to stir public passions for political ends. The Republican leadership so rushed this amendment to the floor that there was not a single Senate hearing on it in this Congress. It was marked up in a side room off the Senate Chamber rather than in the regular public hearing room for the Judiciary Committee with very little debate, and it was reported without a committee report. This is the second time in a month that this Senate is rushing to debate a constitutional amendment without following the procedures that ensure thoughtfulness in such an important debate on a proposal to change our fundamental charter and, in this instance, cut back on the Bill of Rights for the first time in our history. It was noted today in one of the newspapers that the U.S. Senate--the conscience of the country--is expected to spend 4 days debating this amendment--1 for each incident of flag burning that purportedly occurred this year in a Nation of 300 million people. I respectfully suggest that in the less than 10 weeks left to us in session this year, the Senate's resources would be better spent working to improve veterans' health care services, survivors' benefits and protecting veterans' and Americans' privacy. We have just witnessed the largest theft of private information from the Government ever, the loss of information on more than 26.5 million American veterans, including more than 2 million who are in active service, nearly 80 percent of our active-duty force and a large percentage of our National Guard and the Reserve. Why? Because this administration was so incompetent they did not think to lock the door. This same administration says we need a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning in order to protect our veterans. We are not going to do anything to protect their credit records; we are not going to do anything to protect their privacy. We will leave the door open on that. But we have to watch out for the flag. Let me quote what a spokeswoman for the American Legion said recently: Our armed forces personnel have enough on their plates with fighting the global war on terror, let alone having to worry about identity theft while deployed overseas. A spokesman for the VFW said: This confirms the VFW's worst fear from day one--that the loss of data encompasses every single person who did wear the uniform and does wear the uniform today. What does the Bush-Cheney administration say? If you are over there fighting in Ramallah and your identity has been stolen, don't worry. We have an 800-number you can call and maybe buy some insurance or something to protect your credit. Well, call once you are not getting shot at. Because of the Bush-Cheney administration's recklessness, our veterans and our active-duty servicemembers are now worried whether their personal information is being sold on the black market or available to foreign intelligence services or terrorists. That adds up to a heckuva bad job for America's veterans and our men and women in uniform. Compounding the incompetence was the misguided impulse of the administration to keep everything secret for as long as they could. Three weeks after the theft, it was finally disclosed. Three weeks after that, the administration finally announced that it would do what it should have done from day 1 by making credit reporting available to those affected. And the administration is still fighting paying for its mistakes. It is resisting the efforts by Senators Byrd and Murray to provide the money needed to pay for credit monitoring and proposing to take the money from veterans health care or other programs. That is wrong. Such incompetence at the Bush-Cheney Department of Veterans Affairs is worse than anything I have seen in the six Presidential administrations I have served with. At some point, this administration better stop appointing and hiring cronies, and at some point it might really take responsibility. Then we could have some real accountability for their incompetence. The American people suffer, the veterans are at risk, but those in responsibility get medals and promotions and the Republican Congress never gets to the bottom of what happened to make sure it will not happen again. Rather than work on our privacy and identity theft legislation, rather than proceed on a bill protecting veterans, such as Senator Akaka's or Senator Kerry's, we are being directed to another divisive debate on a proposed constitutional amendment. The White House calls the tune, and this Republican-led Congress is quick to dance to it. This is a White House that does not even list ``veterans'' as an issue on its Web site. The Nation's veterans--who have been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country--deserve better. In his second inaugural, while the Nation was fighting the Civil War, President Lincoln concluded with words that became the motto of the Veterans Administration and remains on metal plaques around the Vermont Avenue doors of the VA office here in Washington: To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan. In this fundamental mission, this administration has lost its way. What the Bush administration's budget says is that honoring veterans is not a priority, especially when it comes to medical care. The President's budget requests consistently fall short of the levels needed to provide necessary services and care. Secretary Nicholson had to admit a billion dollar shortfall last year after first issuing inaccurate and unfounded denials of his mismanagement. Secretary Principi before him had testified that the Veterans Department asked the White House for an additional $1.2 billion but that it was denied. Veterans groups and families know that even these budget requests are inadequate--nearly $3 billion less than what veterans groups like the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America recommend in the Independent Budget. These organizations know what it will take to meet veterans' health care needs. And when Democratic Senators, such as Senators Murray, Akaka, or Nelson, offer amendments to fund veterans programs, Republicans refuse to support those amendments to bring funding up to the levels recommended by the independent budget and just plain common sense. We heard in March 2004 from the chairman of the Citizens Flag Alliance, Major General Patrick Brady, that ``we have never fully met the needs of our veterans.'' This echoed General Brady's frank admission following our April 1999 hearing that ``the most pressing issues facing our veterans'' were not flag burnings but rather ``broken promises, especially health care.'' Sadly, it appears that playing politics with veterans' emotions rather than sustaining their health care is nothing new. During the past 5 years, Congress has had to add billions of dollars more to the President's budget request just to fill gaps in basic services. If we had done as the President asked year after year, veterans' medical care would be in even worse shape. Unfortunately, this year the Congress is not off to an encouraging start. The most recent supplemental spending bill excluded almost $400 million in additional spending for the veterans' health care. Again, the administration said it did not need the additional funding--but our veterans need it. The Bush-Cheney administration's budget for veterans does not account for the increase in demand for VA services during the Iraq war. With nearly 20 percent of those returning from Iraq reporting mental health problems and 35 percent of Iraq war veterans needing health care services, we are cutting the money. Consider the cost of inflation and the increased costs for medicine and services and you can understand why the American Legion projects that more than $1 billion is needed in further funding just to meet annual payroll and medical inflation costs. Most disturbing is the move to make veterans contribute a larger share to provide their own health care. The Bush-Cheney administration continues efforts to impose onerous fees and copayments on our Nation's veterans. This parallels the demands on families to buy armor, helmets, and other supplies for their family members serving overseas in our Armed Forces. It is the first time since the Revolution that we have sent our forces out there having to buy their own equipment when they went to war. The Bush administration plans to increase by almost $800 million this year the fees and collections from third parties for veterans' health care. They plan on imposing an annual enrollment fee and doubling prescription drug copayments for certain veterans. Veterans are being forced to subsidize their government health care. So much for the words on the veterans building in Washington. I could go on and on describing the claims backlog, the longer waits, and the cuts in service. To add insult to injury, the GAO reported recently that hundreds of battle-wounded soldiers are being pursued for collection of military debts incurred through no fault of their own, due to long-recognized problems with military computer systems. The bottom line is that the administration's rhetoric toward veterans simply does not match its real priorities. We seem headed back to the time after World War I when veterans had to come to Washington and live in tent cities to demand that the Government honor the words of President Lincoln and care for them and those others had left behind. Instead of debating polarizing issues that we have talked about in election years, we should be acting to provide real resources for our men and women who served this country with honor and sacrifice. I will ask to have printed in the Record a collection of recent newspaper articles on veterans needs. I have stated my position on this flag-burning amendment before. I have stated before that Vermont, the 14th State to join the Union, joined the same year that the Bill of Rights was ratified, then joined by the 15th State. And that became the flag that we had for many years in this country, with 15 stars and 15 stripes. But we Vermonters want to make sure that our rights are being protected. We amend the Constitution according to the Constitution when there is an urgent need to do so. We have never amended the Bill of Rights-- never, ever. Since World War II, since the Civil War, no matter what the threat, we have never amended the Bill of Rights. Now we are being asked for the first time to amend the first amendment. We are told there is an urgent need. My God, what is the urgent need? Especially since 9/11, more Americans fly the flag probably than any time in my lifetime. I fly the flag outside of my home in Vermont whenever I am there. I flew it for my son when he joined the Marines. I flew it when he finished his time in the Marines. My flag is protected. If anyone were to steal it, destroy it, desecrate it, they could be prosecuted. I fly my flag because I want to, and I protect it because I want to. I do not need a law to tell me to do so. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the aforementioned articles be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President. I am pleased to introduce, with Senators Kohl, Grassley, and Schumer, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act of 2006, S. 3582. It is no secret that prescription drug prices are rapidly increasing and are a source of considerable concern to many Americans, especially senior citizens and families. In a marketplace free of manipulation, generic drug prices can be as much as 80 percent lower than the comparable brand-name version. Unfortunately, there are still some companies that may be keeping low-cost, life-saving generic drugs off the marketplace, off pharmacy shelves, and out of the hands of consumers by carefully crafted anticompetitive agreements between drug manufacturers. This bipartisan bill will improve the timely and effective introduction of generic pharmaceuticals into the marketplace. In 2001, and last Congress, I introduced a related bill, the Drug Competition Act. That bill, which is now law, is small in terms of length but large in terms of impact. It ensured that law enforcement agencies could take quick and decisive action against companies seeking to cheat consumers by delaying availability of generic medicines. It gave the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department access to information about secret deals between drug companies that keep generic drugs out of the market--a practice that not only hurts American families, particularly senior citizens, by denying them access to low- cost generic drugs but also contributes to rising medical costs. The Drug Competition Act, which was incorporated in the Medicare Modernization Act, was a bipartisan effort to protect consumers in need of patented medicines who were being forced to pay considerably higher costs because of collusive secret deals. It is regrettable that we must come to the floor again today and take additional action to prevent drug companies from continuing to find and exploit loopholes. I had faith that we were on the right track. However, two appellate court decisions from 2005 overturned the FTC's longstanding role of ``policing'' these activities and making case-by-case determinations on the appropriateness of proposed settlements, especially those that involved ``reverse'' payments. That refers to payments from a brand- name company to a generic company as opposed to payments from a generic company to the brand-name company for a license to make a particular patented drug. The FTC rightfully sought U.S. Supreme Court review of the Schering- Plough v. FTC Eleventh Circuit decision. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court refused to hear that case, leaving in doubt the continuing role of the FTC in policing settlements between brand-name drug companies and potential generic competitors. Moreover, in an unprecedented move, the U.S. Solicitor General opposed the request by the FTC for the Supreme Court to hear this case. The inaction of the courts and the choice of the administration to side with large drug companies over seniors and families has provoked us to take action and introduce this important bill. This matter arises at the intersection of patent law and antitrust law. The drug companies naturally deny that their agreements violate the antitrust laws, presenting them as private preliminary settlements between companies engaged in patent disputes. The problem is that the whole point of the Drug Competition Act is to have an independent body, the FTC, review these deals and to advise the companies if terms or conditions in the deal need to be changed to comply with existing antitrust laws. Agreements to delay the production and sale of generic medicines in exchange for cash from the brand-name companies need to be carefully reviewed by the FTC under standards that give the FTC authority to act where necessary to enforce antitrust laws. Companies holding patents on medicines should not be permitted to pay millions of dollars to potential generic competitors for the purpose of delaying the research, development, and sale of competing generic versions of medications when those generic companies believe they have the legal right to sell such products. I remain hopeful that during the process of working on this bill, a way can be found to give the FTC some discretion, on a case-by case basis, to continue to evaluate these deals. Under this approach, only the deals that are consistent with the intent of that law will be allowed to stand. There will be some deals that involve the payment of money which, on balance, could be good for the companies involved and for consumers. The original intent of the Drug Competition Act was to provide the FTC and DOJ with an opportunity to provide the companies with useful and timely information so the drug companies could conform their deals to the law through confidential advice from the law enforcement agencies. I want that process to be continued. Senators Grassley, Kohl, Schumer, and I are not the only ones who share the goal of ensuring effective and timely access to generic pharmaceuticals that can lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, for families, and for all Americans. I sincerely thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who are working together on that goal. We have devoted considerable attention to this matter in recent years, and I look forward to passing this important bill. In closing, I praise the FTC for spending so much time and energy on protecting competition in the pharmaceutical sector. This represents a massive workload for the FTC on top of all its other important responsibilities to protect consumers and the American enterprise system. Years ago, the FTC dealt with latter-day robber barons destroying smaller companies; now the FTC has to try to restrain corporate drug giants from robbing the elderly when these seniors buy prescription medicines. I also appreciate the work of the FTC on the authorized generics issue and look forward to the report they are preparing for the Congress on that matter.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator. As we close this debate and move on to a vote on this proposal, I commend to all Senators the words of the senior Senator from Hawaii, a war hero and veteran, a patriot, an American of the first order. He was long denied the Congressional Medal of Honor that he earned long ago and paid for dearly. He knows why he fought and sacrificed. No one on this floor has fought harder for this country, for its flag, for our freedoms or for our veterans and their families. He has shown characteristic leadership and courage in his statement today against doing damage to our Constitution through this proposed amendment. I am honored to stand with him in this fight to preserve our Bill of Rights. I commend the other veterans, as well, Senators Lautenberg and Kerry. I thank the Senators from West Virginia and Massachusetts for their statements and the Senator from New York. The action by the Republican leadership on this amendment reminds me of the action they forced in connection with the Terri Schiavo case. Then the President hurried back from a vacation with great fanfare to sign a bill rushed through the Republican-led Congress to intrude into a family and personal tragedy. The politicians overreached and the American people saw through it. Here, too, this election-year exercise will be seen for what it is. This is the second constitutional amendment that the Senate has considered this month in the Republican runup to the November election. Of course, among the amendments the Republican majority has chosen not to consider is the one promised by the 2000 Republican Party Platform, to require a balanced budget. Even Republican partisans must be embarrassed at the deficits that the Bush-Cheney administration and the Republican Congress have generated as they turned an historic budget surplus into an historic deficit. This proposed amendment regarding flag desecration is another in a series of amendments Republicans have pressed that would result in restricting the rights of the American people. It is one of more than 65 constitutional amendments introduced so far in this Congress alone, and more than 11,000 since the First Congress convened in 1789. Can you imagine what the Constitution would look like if even a small fraction of these amendments had been adopted? The Constitution that we now revere as fundamental law, that provides us with unity and stability in times of trouble, would be like the old French Constitution--filed under ``p'' for ``periodicals.'' We honor our Senate oath when we ``support and defend'' the Constitution. That is what I will be doing by voting today to uphold the Constitution and by voting against amending it. I am encouraged by the Senate's bipartisan rejection of action on S.J. Res.1, the proposal to federalize marriage by way of a constitutional amendment. Forty-eight Senators voted against cloture, and I believe that others who voted in favor of more debate were nonetheless troubled by the proposal. The failure of the Republican leadership to obtain even a simple majority of Senators to support their efforts, on a procedural vote, should indicate to them how unwise it is to abuse the Constitution in a partisan election-year tactic. Like the marriage amendment, the flag amendment would artificially create division among the American people. The timing of this consideration, 4 months before the mid-term election, raises concerns, again, that the Constitution is being misused for partisan purposes. That is wrong. We act here in the Senate as stewards of the Constitution, guardians and trustees of a precious legacy. The truly precious part of that legacy does not lie in outward things--in monuments or statues or flags. All that these tangible things can do is remind us of what is truly precious: our liberty. This proposed amendment would be the first amendment to the Constitution that would narrow the precious freedoms enjoyed by Americans under the Bill of Rights. The infringement would fall on the first amendment, the cornerstone and foundation of all of our rights, of which we must be especially protective. The first amendment has stood up in times of war, during times of bitter protest. It has been one of the rocks on which our national unity and our national stability are built. The proposed amendment is a wrong-headed response to a crisis that does not exist. It would be an unprecedented limitation on the freedom Americans enjoy under the Bill of Rights and would do nothing to bolster respect for the flag. Respect for the flag flows from the freedoms we enjoy and from the sacrifices of those who have protected that freedom. Our cherished flag is the symbol of our Nation and of the Constitution that is the foundational keystone of our Republic, and of our freedom. This is about defending the Constitution, my friends, for which our flag stands. Each generation of Americans owes the next generations the effort and the dedication it takes to pass along the torch of freedom, undiminished. We owe it to them, and to those who have sacrificed so much for us, to cherish and to protect freedom, and the Constitution which is the written promise of that freedom. Rather than face the solemn responsibility of justifying an amendment to the Constitution, proponents of S.J. Res 12 have urged that we just pass it on to the States and let them decide. They said that Senators should abdicate their responsibility to exercise their best judgment and simply pass the buck. I could hardly believe my ears. Have we utterly forgotten the words of James Madison and the conservative conception of amendment the Founders built into our Constitution? The Constitution intentionally makes it difficult to pass amendments to our fundamental law. No amendment can pass unless every level of government, from the House to the Senate to the States, overwhelmingly supports it. Our system is undermined if each institution of government does not exercise independent judgment, if we do not fulfill our constitutional responsibility. This is the fifth time that this body has considered a constitutional amendment to punish flag burners. Some of us have voted on the proposal before; others have not. But either way, we are undertaking the gravest of responsibilities. We are taking in our hands the inalienable rights of Americans, today and the generations that follow long after we have gone. We are handling the most precious heirloom that we have, the finest thing that we can hope to pass on to our children and grandchildren. I would hope that at this of all times we would give the Constitution the respect that it deserves and support and defend it. This week we returned to use what little time left to the Senate this year to revisit a debate on that has wisely been rejected in this chamber four times in the last 17 years: a proposed amendment that would roll back our first amendment freedoms for the first time in our Nation's history. While we devote precious floor time to debate this matter, the Nation is gripped by the ongoing war in Iraq, the continuing threat of terrorism, soaring energy and health care prices, rising inflation, and a burgeoning deficit. Indeed, this debate is another illustration of the Republican leadership's disregard for the needs of the American people and the institutional responsibilities of this body. They continue to mistreat our Constitution as if it were a bulletin board on which to hang political posters or bumper stickers. The Constitution is too important to be used for partisan political purposes, and so is the American flag. The timing of this debate raises the question of why the Republican leadership has made this issue its top priority in the face of an unfinished agenda of legislative matters that do concern Americans day in and day out. The Senate has hardly made progress on a legislative agenda. We have yet to consider any of the 13 appropriations bills for the year. We have yet to enact a budget resolution, which was required by law to be in place on April 15. We have yet to enact a lobbying reform bill, a comprehensive immigration bill, or pension protection legislation. We have yet to consider or pass asbestos litigation reform legislation, patent reform legislation or the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. We have yet to pass a long overdue raise in minimum wage, to take action to lower gas prices, health care costs or health insurance costs. Instead, with less than 10 weeks left in this session of Congress, the Republican leadership will work on none of those important matters. The amendment we consider today would artificially create division among the American people, and the timing of this debate--squarely in the middle of an election year--demonstrates, again, that the Constitution is being misused for partisan purposes. The Constitution deserves our respect, vigilant protection and in the words of our Senate oath our ``support''. We have a duty to defend it. The Constitution is not a blog for venting political opinions, curry favoring with voters or trying to bump up sagging poll numbers. The flag is an important symbol of all that makes America great. But the cynical use of symbolic politics in an election year will not address the very real needs of veterans and other Americans that are being left unmet by this administration and the Republican Congress. I know that many veterans support the flag desecration amendment and I respect their views. We must not forget though that there also are many veterans who oppose it. I appeared with a number of distinguished veterans on Flag Day who spoke about their dedication to the principles that make this country great and for which they fought and sacrificed. Those principles include our precious freedoms under the first amendment. These veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War and Iraq made clear that they fought for what the flag stands for, not just the symbol itself. Former Senator John Glenn, a combat veteran, wrote: ``The flag is the Nation's most powerful and emotional symbol. It is our most sacred symbol. And it is our most revered symbol. But it is a symbol. It symbolizes the freedoms that we have in this country, but it is not the freedoms themselves.'' The late John Chafee, a distinguished member of this body and a highly decorated veteran of World War II and Korea, opposed this amendment because, he said: ``We cannot mandate respect and pride in the flag. In fact taking steps to require citizens to respect the flag, sullies its symbolism and significance.'' Flag desecration is a despicable and reprehensible act. We agree with that--all of us agree that it is contemptible. That is not the issue, instead, the issue before us is whether we should amend the Constitution of the United States with all the risks that that entails and whether, for the first time in our history, we should narrow the precious freedoms ensured by the first amendment. Should we amend the first amendment so that the government can prosecute the handful of individuals who show contempt for the flag, those General Powell called miscreants? Such a monumental step is unwarranted and unwise. We are being tested. This generation of Americans is being tested by the threat of international terrorism. America wins when it meets that challenge without allowing those who threaten us to compromise us. We suffer losses not only when we suffer attacks as we did toward the end of President Bush's first year in office, but also when we give up those freedoms that define us as Americans. For the Congress to surrender our fundamental rights as Americans as proposed in the constitutional amendment is wrong. Following the very real attacks on 9/11, Americans embraced the flag like never before, proudly displaying flags and flag symbols as a sign of unity and strength in the wake of those horrible acts against our nation. People around the world grieved for us, cared for us, and joined with us to fight terrorism. Over time, missteps and arrogance by the Bush-Cheney administration have alienated much of the world. Still, Americans of all political persuasions have not needed a law to tell them how precious our freedoms are or how to honor the Stars and Stripes. Supporters of this constitutional amendment seem to believe that Americans need rules about respecting the flag punishable by law. I strongly disagree and the American people have already proven them wrong. The American people do not need a lesson in cherishing and honoring our flag and the Republic for which it stands. That may be necessary in Saddam Hussein's Iraq or in Stalin's Soviet Union or in Castro's Cuba, but not in America. In fact, respect cannot be coerced or compelled. It can only be given voluntarily. We respect and love our country, but not because we are told to. Americans do not love our country because we would be punished if we did not. Some may find it more comfortable to silence dissenting voices, but coerced silence creates resentment, disrespect, and disunity. I proudly fly the flag at my farm in Vermont because, as an American, it is what I choose to do. In every hamlet and city and on every rural route in America, you can see our flag being flown with pride. Americans in overwhelming numbers are honoring our flag, not defacing it. Of course, there are times when individuals deface the flag or violate the rules for its care. For example, President Bush was captured on film signing a hand-held flag at a campaign rally in the summer of 2004. Appropriate or not, these acts are protected by our Constitution. They do not need to be punished by Congress after we pass a constitutional amendment restricting the first amendment rights of all Americans. In all of the hearings, all of the debate that we have devoted to this topic over the past 17 years, not one single person has testified that he respects the flag less because a protestor burned it, wrote on it, sewed it in the seat of his pants, or otherwise misused it. Not one. Not one single person has testified that they love our country less because Americans are free to express themselves in this way. Not one. There is not a single indication that any act of flag burning has lessened the respect that any American has for the flag or for our country. It would be pathetic if our love of country or respect for its fundamental principles was so weak that it could be diminished by such an act. We know that it is not. The truth is just the opposite. Occasional insults to the flag do nothing to diminish our respect for it. Rather, they remind us of our love for the flag, for our country, and for our freedom to speak, think and worship as we please. Our flag is a cherished symbol. As are the freedoms for which it stands, including the freedom to express unpopular speech or ideas-- even extremely unpopular ideas. As I have said many times throughout this debate, I wish the Senate would, instead, use its time to discuss and solve the real problems that real Americans are facing right now, instead of trying to stir public passions for political ends. I respectfully suggest that in the less than 10 weeks left to us in session this year, the Senate's resources would be better spent working to improve veterans' health care services, survivors' benefits and protecting veterans' and Americans' privacy. There are so many issues that we could turn to that would help improve the lives of our veterans and their families. Why not focus on them? Just today on the front page of the newspaper, we learned that this Government's bureaucratic bungling has resulted in widows of those who have served this Nation and sacrificed for all of us are being denied the survivors' benefits to which they should be entitled. This news follows closely public reports that post-traumatic stress disorders among our veterans are on the rise. Instead of seeking to turn the flag into a partisan political weapon and the Constitution into a billboard for political slogans, for partisan gain, we could be spending time debating these real issues or much-needed funding for services to our veterans. This President's budget requests have consistently fallen short of the levels needed to provide necessary services and care. President Bush's budgets force our veterans to subsidize their government health care and simply does not account for the increase in demand for VA services due to the Iraq war. We could also be taking real action to prevent the kind of data losses that just affected millions of our veterans. We just witnessed the largest theft of private information from the Government ever, the loss of information on more than 26.5 million American veterans, including more than 2 million who are in active service, nearly 80 percent of our active-duty force and a large percentage of our National Guard and the Reserve. Last year, Senator Specter and I introduced the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, which requires Federal agencies and private data brokers to give prompt notice when sensitive personal information has been breached or stolen. The Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved this bill last fall, but almost a year later, the Senate has still not acted on this legislation. Had this bill been enacted, it would have required the VA to promptly notify the millions of veterans now at risk of identity theft about the theft of their personal data. Our bill also addresses the Government's use of personal data by putting privacy and security front and center in evaluating whether data brokers can be trusted with Government contracts that involve sensitive information about the American people. The Nation's veterans--who have been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country--deserve to have the best tools available to protect themselves and their families from identity theft. The Senate should be acting to consider and pass comprehensive data privacy and security legislation. Sadly, the list of what we are not accomplishing goes on and on. The way things are going, under Republican leadership, this session will make the ``do nothing'' Congress against which President Harry Truman ran seem like a legislative juggernaut. The days we have spent on this amendment could be spent more productively on any of the matters I have mentioned. There are less than 10 weeks remaining in the Senate's scheduled work year. It seems that even with all that remains undone, at this point in this election year, floor time is available only for matters that advance the Republicans narrow political agenda. Republicans have the Senate majority; they control the schedule, they set the priorities. In my view, it reflects a strange set of priorities to think our national interest is best served at this time by debating a constitutional amendment to roll back the Bill of Rights for the first time in our history. I treat proposals to amend the Constitution with utmost seriousness, for it is a serious responsibility. I began this debate by noting my home State of Vermont's tradition of independence and commitment to the Bill of Rights. Vermont did not and would not become a State until 1791, the year the Bill of Rights was ratified. At one time, we declared ourselves an independent republic. I plan to proudly uphold that tradition today by voting against this amendment, and I hope, although likely in vain, that the Senate will move on to more pressing matters that directly affect the lives and livelihoods of the American people.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, in 1791, the year that the Bill of Rights became part of our Constitution, the State of Vermont joined the Union, and then the State of Kentucky followed. Then Congress saw fit to change the design of the American flag to include 15 stars and 15 stripes, one for each State. In fact, it was this flag, the one recognizing the addition of Vermont and Kentucky to the United States, that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814 and that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the ``Star-Spangled Banner.'' Fifty years after that famous battle that inspired our National Anthem in Baltimore's harbor, President Abraham Lincoln visited that city as our country confronted its greatest test. It was a time in which this Nation faced grave peril from a civil war whose outcome could not yet be determined. Many flags flew over various parts of the United States, and our existence as a nation was in doubt. President Lincoln used the occasion to reflect on a basic feature of American democracy. President Lincoln observed: The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty. The American people just now are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty, but using the same word we do not mean the same thing. I would hope that all of us in this Chamber champion liberty. If any of us were asked, we would say: Of course we do. But when I hear some talk about the desire to restrict our fundamental freedoms by cutting back on our first amendment rights for the first time in our history, you see why people wonder. The danger of this amendment is that it would strike at the values the flag represents and the rights that have made this Nation a vibrant democratic republic in which we have enjoyed freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and freedom to think as individuals. Along with Vermonters, I find the American flag inspirational in all its incarnations, whether it is the current flag with 50 stars that was carried in formation at Parris Island when my youngest son Mark became a proud member of the U.S. Marine Corps; whether it is the American flag with 48 stars under which Vermonters joined in fighting World War II, including members of my family; the flag commemorating Vermont's becoming a State; the Bennington flag that commemorated our Declaration of Independence; or the revolutionary flag with 13 stars in a circle said to be designed by George Washington and sewn by Betsy Ross. Ultimately, the debate over this amendment turns on the scope we think proper to give to speech which deeply offends us. For two-thirds of the Senate to vote to amend the Bill of Rights to amend the U.S. Constitution because, as the Constitution requires, that we deem it ``necessary'' in 2006, strikes me as extraordinary. The Senate oath of office, which the people of Vermont have authorized me to take six times, requires that we ``support and defend the Constitution.'' And I believe that doing so means opposing this effort to cut back on Vermonters' constitutional rights and freedoms. Regrettably, the Senate leadership is returning again and again to using constitutional amendments as election year rallying cries to excite the passion of voters. That is wrong. The Constitution is too important to be used for partisan political purposes--and so, in my view, is our American flag. With the rights of Americans being threatened in so many ways today by this administration, this is most especially not the time for the Senate to vote to limit Americans' fundamental rights or to strike at the heart of the First Amendment. The chairman has referred to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was Justice Holmes who wrote that the most imperative principle of our Constitution was it protects not just freedom for the thought and expression we agree with, but ``freedom for the thought that we hate.'' He also wrote that ``we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.'' We all know that the First Amendment never requires people to defend it when it is upholding popular speech. It needs defense when the speech is unpopular. What is so distinctive about America is that our Government does not endorse religious or political orthodoxy. The price of our freedom of expression is our willingness to protect the expression of those with whom we disagree. America does not impose a state-designed dogma on its free people the way totalitarian regimes do. We value our freedom and we protect the freedom of others. Justice Robert Jackson made this point with unsurpassed eloquence in a Supreme Court decision made during World War II. He did this in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. His decision for the Supreme Court upheld our fundamental tradition of tolerance, holding that State school boards may not compel teachers and students to salute the flag. Remember, Justice Jackson was writing during World War II--during wartime. He wrote: [F]reedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. That was a powerful statement by Justice Jackson, at a time when certainly the attention of this country was focused on a real war effort, the effort of World War II. But he knew what unifies our country is the voluntary sharing of ideals and commitments. Americans are free, free to offend but also free to respond to crude insults with responsible action--the way many of us remember and applaud--when that crowd at Dodger Stadium responded by spontaneously singing ``God Bless America'' when a couple of miscreants attempted to burn the American flag in the outfield 30 years ago, shortly after the end of the Vietnam war. When I am home in Vermont, our family home, I fly the flag--not because the law tells me to but because, as an American, I want to. I fly the flag out of pride. I remember my parents, still alive, when they used to look with pride to see that flag flying and they knew their son was home from Washington. It is the same sense of pride I felt when I saw my son march in uniform under that flag, our flag, our American flag. It is the same sense of pride I feel when I see that flag flying over this Capitol Building when I come to work each day, and I stop and look at it sometimes when the Senate leaves at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. I look at the dome and I see that flag illuminated and flying there. One of my colleagues, former Senator Bob Kerrey, a man of great bravery, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in battle, said in a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, ``Real patriotism cannot be coerced.'' It has to be a voluntary, unselfish, brave act to sacrifice for others. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of his op-ed be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is my understanding we are now on the constitutional amendment.

Mr. LEAHY. The French philosopher Voltaire once remarked that liberty is a guest who plants both of his elbows on the table. I think what Voltaire meant by that is that liberty is sometimes even an unmannerly, vulgar guest, yet liberty requires we tolerate rudeness even when admittedly it is hard to do so. That is what allows us, in turn, the individual freedoms that we cherish for ourselves. Despicable, outrageous gestures like flag burning are hard to tolerate, but we do so because political expression is so central as to what makes America great and what protects the rights of each of us to speak, or to worship as we choose, and to petition our Government for redress. The flag is a symbol of the greatness that the American ideals of freedom and liberty have helped foster in this blessed land. The Constitution ultimately goes beyond symbols. The Constitution is the real bedrock of our rights. In a letter to me expressing his opposition to the constitutional amendment, my friend General Colin Powell said it very well. Let me quote Colin Powell in this regard. He said: We are rightfully outraged when anyone attacks or desecrates our flag. Few Americans do such things and when they do they are subject to the rightful condemnation of their fellow citizens. They may be destroying a piece of cloth, but they do no damage to our system of freedom which tolerates such desecration. . . . I understand how strongly so many of my fellow veterans and citizens feel about the flag. . . . I feel the same sense of outrage. But I step back from amending the Constitution to relieve that outrage. The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will still be flying proudly, long after they have slunk away. What powerful, powerful words from General Powell. I ask unanimous consent a copy of his letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. Another American who honorably served our country, Gary May, Chairman of Veterans Defending the Bill of Rights, wrote in a letter: This country is unique and special because the minority, the unpopular, the dissident also have a voice. The freedom of expression, even when it hurts the most, is the truest test of our dedication to the principles that our flag represents. I ask unanimous consent a copy of his letter be printed in the Record.