Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for a legislative fellow, Erik Winchester, to be granted the privilege of the floor throughout today.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today is supposed to be a day to mark the importance of protecting the environment. And thankfully, many people are. But though we are all marking the day, the only people celebrating are industry CEOs and lobbyists. The Bush administration's laser-like focus on rolling back our environmental and public health protections is breathtaking, literally. The rollbacks are dirtying our air and destroying the health of the planet. Instead of packing the agencies responsible for the environment with environmental stewards as you would expect, the administration has focused on creating a public relations firm under the guise of the Environmental Protection Agency. It's been a busy PR firm: announcing environmental rollbacks on Fridays or around holidays when they think the American public is not paying attention, assigning green names to destructive policies, scrubbing regulatory actions to downplay public health risks to meet their political needs and flat out ignoring scientific facts are just a few of their favorite marketing tools. But for all their public relations maneuvering, the public recognizes the enormous and long-term effect of these policies on our environment and our health. This PR campaign is being led by the very people the administration is supposed to be policing: industry representatives often at the heart of the most egregious environmental neglect. The administration's lates rollback has the fingerprints of lobbyists all over it, the Bush retreat from strong mercury controls at coal-fired power plants. Unfortunately, the ``swoosh'' from the revolving door between industry lobby shops and the Bush administration has now spilled over to the Federal bench. The Bush administration recognizes that the courts have become the final backstop against their environmental rollbacks, blocking Bush attempts to gut the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and protection of our national monuments. The courts have ruled against Bush arguments to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act 80 percent of the time. The Bush solution, give anti-environmental, unqualified industry lobbyists lifetime judicial appointments. The debate over William Myers, a former cattle and mining industry lobbyist, may be one of the most important environmental debates we have this year. Unlike the Bush industry appointees to Federal agencies, Mr. Myers' effect on environment and public lands would survive long past this Presidency. As I have said many times, the environment is not a partisan issue but this administration has made it clear that industry interests trump the public interest.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I see my good friend, the Senator from Arizona, in the Chamber. I know the distinguished Senator from California will be joining us shortly. What is the time allocation? I know the distinguished Senator from Arizona wants to make sure we all have time, but I was just curious where we are.

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I do not see others seeking time so I reserve the remainder of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am disappointed my friends across the aisle are insisting on proceeding to this partisan asbestos bill. I say that because the legislation is not ready for prime time. It is not ready for floor consideration. I am one who believes the Senate should pass legislation to establish a national trust fund to compensate asbestos victims. Actually, I chaired the first Judiciary Committee hearing on this subject back in September of 2002. This bill would create a trust fund with unfair compensation, inadequate funding, no startup protections, delayed sunset provisions, and major solvency problems. Despite its title, this partisan bill is far from fair. It is a mistake for the Republican leadership to insist on proceeding to a bill with so many major problems still unresolved. Again, this bill is not ready for floor consideration. We did have a bipartisan dialog over the past year, and I hoped that would yield a fair and efficient compensation system we could in good conscience offer to those suffering today from asbestos-related diseases and also to those victims who we know are going to come in the future. Unfortunately, the Senate majority leadership decided to walk away from those negotiations and resort to unilateralism by introducing a partisan bill, and that is a shame. I believe so many of my friends on the Republican side would like to have a good bill, but to have a good bill of this complexity requires real work and we have to work as legislators and we have to have substance, not symbolism. We have to have reality, not rhetoric. The introduction of this bill raises many questions--most notably what the sponsors are trying to achieve because it is certainly not a fair compensation model for asbestos victims. By breaking off the bipartisan negotiations and hastily pushing a bill to the floor, the Republicans have turned their back on all of us who have worked so hard for so long to find a fair solution. Creating a fair national trust fund to compensate asbestos victims is one of the most complex legislative undertakings I have been involved with in nearly 29 years in the Senate. The interrelated aspects necessary for a fair national trust fund are like a Rubik's Cube, and that is all the more reason why we should have a fair national trust fund bill and have it be a consensus piece of legislation. Otherwise it does not work, it does not become law. That is why I have been involved in months of bipartisan negotiations. I worked so hard to encourage the interested stakeholders to reach agreement on all these critical details. I thank Senators Daschle, Dodd, Feinstein, Specter, and other Senators, the representatives from organized labor, the trial bar, and industry who worked so hard to try to reach consensus on a national trust fund that would fairly compensate asbestos victims and also to provide the financial certainty for their defendants and their insurers. We did reach bipartisan agreement on two of the four cornerstones of a successful trust fund. Senator Hatch and I brought together the Leahy-Hatch amendment that gave appropriate medical criteria to determine who should receive compensation and an efficient, expedited system for processing claims. But we have yet to reach consensus on the other two cornerstones of a successful trust fund--fair award values for asbestos victims and adequate funding to pay for the compensation. Even if we have the medical criteria and if we lowball the amounts, if we do not adequately handle it, it makes no difference. Bipartisan medical criteria have already eliminated what businesses contend were the most troublesome claims, but that kind of fair compensation is not free. The Judiciary Committee's unanimous agreement on the Leahy-Hatch medical criteria is meaningless if the majority, in effect, rewrites the categories by failing to compensate those who fall within them. Even with consensus on medical criteria, if the award value is unfair, then the bill is unfair and it is unworthy of our support. That is the case with this partisan bill. Since my first hearing on this issue nearly 2 years ago, I have emphasized one bedrock principle: It has to be a balanced solution. I cannot support a bill that gives inadequate compensation to victims. I will not adjust fair award values into some discounted amount to make the final tally come within a predetermined and artificial limit. That is not fair. It is critical that there is adequate funding at the inception of a national trust fund since there are more than 300,000 current pending cases in our legal system. Upfront contributions from defendants and insurers will be necessary to accommodate the inevitable, and that is thousands of these pending claims coming in on the very first day of the trust fund. The new Hatch-Frist bill actually provides less upfront funding and less overall funding than we voted out of the Judiciary Committee. That is not fair. The partisan emphasis in this bill on behalf of the industrial and insurance companies involved, to the detriment of victims, has produced an unbalanced bill. This bill is a reflection of the priorities that went into it. Many of us have worked hard for more than a year toward the goal of a consensus asbestos bill. So this new partisan bill is especially saddening and confounding. We could have a bill that protects defendants; it would protect the insurance companies; it would protect the corporations; and it would protect the people who have been sickened by asbestos. We could have done that. We could have brought finality to this issue. We could have ended endless litigation. We could have let corporations go on with their business. We could have made sure the victims knew they were going to get adequate compensation. We have missed a golden opportunity. After the cloture vote on this partisan asbestos bill, the Senate will take up and pass the Kyl-Feinstein-Hatch-Leahy crime victims' rights legislation. This bipartisan legislation is a good example of what the Senate can do when we work together to reach consensus. Unfortunately, the bipartisan process of the crime victims' rights legislation is being abandoned by the majority on this partisan asbestos bill. We should be asking ourselves this question: Does this partisan turn the sponsors of this bill have taken help or hurt our efforts to produce and enact a consensus asbestos bill? I say it does not help. We have enough of a debate going on behind me, so I will yield to someone in a different part of the Chamber, Senator Kennedy, so he can make himself heard for 10 minutes.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, as I came on the floor, I heard a discussion of several Senators about the passing of Mary McGrory. The distinguished senior Senator from Utah, who is now on the floor, and I were talking to editors and others at a press gathering in Washington this morning. I mentioned Mary McGrory at the beginning of that. When Marcelle and I first came to Washington, Mary was one of the first people we met. I always enjoyed my time with her. She was a great writer with searching questions, and did not suffer fools idly. She was very quick and very able in deflating those who had inflated themselves far beyond what they deserved. She also helped so many people. I remember the girl from an orphanage she helped, referring to her as ``Mary McGlory.'' Indeed, she has gone to her own glory now, but she made it possible for some others. She was a remarkable person, a remarkable person who will not be matched. There will be many others who will carry the banner, but none will do it with her ability. I also liked the fact every time she would take a vacation in Italy she would come and chat with me about it. My mother's family is still in Italy. We would discuss favorite recipes, notwithstanding our Irish names.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this past Sunday marked the start of National Crime Victims' Rights Week. We set this week aside each year to refocus attention on the needs and rights of crime victims. This year, the Senate had been scheduled to mark the occasion by taking up S.J. Res. 1, a proposed constitutional amendment. Once again, we were going to devote days or weeks debating that proposal, even though the Republican leadership knew it had no real chance of garnering the two-thirds super-majority needed to pass. We went through a similar process four years ago, in April 2000, when the Senate debated an earlier version of the amendment during the last presidential election year. I noted then, during that earlier debate, the fact that I have long worked to protect and advance crime victims' rights. As a prosecutor, I worked day to day and year to year alongside victims, seeking justice on their behalf. I have worked on and led many legislative efforts on behalf of victims throughout my service in the Senate. One of the most recent of those efforts was the creation of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, and I am grateful to have been able to take part in something that has brought some relief to so many victims. I will never forget the victims I worked with as a prosecutor or the needs of the new victims minted each day through the crimes committed against them. I believe that victims should be notified when the defendant is in court or when he is about to be released. I believe that victims should be heard at critical stages of the prosecution. I believe that victims are entitled to restitution from offenders. In recent years, the debate was never about whether victims should be protected--of course they should. Rather, the debate was about how they should be protected, and whether the proposed constitutional amendment was the best way to do that. I did not think the proposed amendment was the best way forward. The one thing about which every witness who testified on this issue agreed was that every right provided by the Victims Rights Amendment can be, or already is, protected by State or federal statutory law. We have long had it in our power to enhance victims' rights through regular legislation legislation that could pass with a simple majority and make an immediate difference in the lives of crime victims. Legislative enhancements are more easily enacted, more directly applied and implemented, and more able to provide specific, effective remedies. In addition, as Chief Justice Rehnquist and others have pointed out, statutes are more easily corrected if we find, in hindsight, that they need correction, clarification or improvement. I am delighted to be here today with the principal sponsors of S.J. Res. 1, the distinguished Senators from California and Arizona, and with others, both supporters and opponents of the constitutional amendment, to join together in our support of this crime victims' rights statute. I commend and admire Senator Feinstein and Senator Kyl for their dedication to this issue. They are deeply committed to the cause of victims' rights as are all of us who have joined together to offer this bill. It is my hope that this statute will establish more effective and enforceable rights for crime victims in the federal system, and that it can do so without delay, by a majority vote. First, unlike S.J. Res. 1, which is limited to victims of violent crime, our statute establishes enhanced rights and protections for all victims of crime. Therefore, the elderly woman who is defrauded out of her life savings will have the same rights of notice and participation as other crime victims. Second, our statute spells out how these rights are to be enforced, using language that Senator Kennedy and I developed in S. 805, the Crime Victims Assistance Act. In addition to providing victims with standing to assert their rights in mandamus actions, our statute would establish an administrative authority in the Department of Justice to receive and investigate victims' claims of unlawful or inappropriate action on the part of criminal justice and victims' service providers. Department of Justice employees who fail to comply with the law pertaining to the treatment of crime victims could face disciplinary sanctions, including suspension or termination of employment. Third, our statute incorporates additional proposals from S. 805 to help States implement and enforce their own victims' rights laws. In this way, instead of replacing programs that have already been implemented by a majority of States, our statute enables States to retain their full power to protect victims in the ways most appropriate to local concerns and local needs. Fourth, our statute calls for two annual reports, one by the Administrative Office of the Courts, and the other by the General Accounting Office. These reports will provide Congress with feedback on how the rights and procedures established by the statute are working in practice. Over time, we will be able to modify and fine-tune the statute so that it provides an appropriate degree of protection for the rights of crime victims. I emphasize that passage of this bill will necessitate careful oversight of its implementation by Congress. If, as I hope, Federal judges and prosecutors take victims' rights seriously, there should be little need for victims to bring mandamus actions to enforce their rights. But if, for whatever reason, victims feel that they are not being treated fairly, we may see a wave of new litigation in the Federal courts, with victims and their lawyers having to insert themselves into criminal cases. We will need to monitor the situation closely. I am committed to giving victims real and enforceable rights. But I am convinced that prosecutors should be capable of protecting those rights, once we make them clear. In my experience, prosecutors have victims' interests at heart. Senator Kennedy and I proposed in the Crime Victims Assistance Act a limited-standing provision, which applied with respect to the victim's right to attend and observe the trial, and under which a victim could assert her right if the prosecutor refused to do so. Passing such a provision would have allowed us to observe over a period of time whether direct participation of victims in criminal proceedings has any unanticipated consequences for the administration of justice. This Victims' Rights Act proposes a bolder experiment, entitling victims to assert a panoply of rights, regardless of whether the prosecution is already asserting the same rights on their behalf. For example, at the insistence of other sponsors, this bill will enable victims to bring mandamus actions alleging the denial of their statutory right ``to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim's dignity and privacy,'' which may be difficult claims to adjudicate. I note with some regret that our statute picks up language from S.J. Res. 1 denying victims a civil cause of action for damages in the event that their rights are violated. Allowing victims to vindicate their rights through separate civil proceedings instead of through mandamus actions in the criminal case could well be a more efficient as well as a more effective way of ensuring that victims' rights are honored. Certainly the prospect of being sued would provide a powerful incentive to take victims' rights seriously. But the Republican sponsors of the bill did not want to provide for damages. Similarly, some Republican Senators did not want to allow courts to appoint attorneys to help crime victims. It is my hope and belief that victims will seldom need representation, since they already have powerful advocates in our public prosecutors. Still, it is possible that a judge would want to appoint an attorney for a victim in an extraordinary case, as for example if there is a material conflict between the victim's interests and the interests of the prosecution. By failing to provide for this possibility, our new bill may perpetuate a system of unequal justice for victims, where the wealthy have the benefit of counsel, and the poor do not. Finally, I want to comment on the unusual genesis of this bill, and the extraordinary procedure that I expect it will follow in the Senate. As I mentioned earlier, the Senate was scheduled to begin work this week on the proposed constitutional amendment, S.J. Res. 1. On Wednesday, the Republican leadership moved to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed. I would not have opposed this motion. I voted to proceed to an earlier iteration of this constitutional amendment 4 years ago, and I would have been prepared to proceed to it again this week. Given the time this would take and the expected outcome, it could be argued that the Senate already has many pressing matters on its agenda, but I would not have opposed a debate on the constitutional amendment. Given the Republican leadership's insistence on proceeding to the constitutional amendment this week, there has not been as much time as I would have liked to craft the statutory alternative that we introduce today. And because this bill will come to a vote almost immediately, we will not get to hold hearings on it and polish the text in Committee. I would have liked to get the views of the Office for Victims of Crime. Many victims' groups and domestic violence organizations opposed the constitutional amendment, as did many law professors, judges, and prosecutors. I would have liked to hear their views on this statute. I am concerned that the statute may not adequately address the special problems raised in domestic violence and abuse situations. Fortunately, however, this is a statute, not a constitutional amendment, and it can be modified with relative ease if the need arises. I commend my good friend, Senator Feinstein, for mediating this consensus legislation. I know that she would have preferred to pass a constitutional amendment--she has made that clear. Nevertheless, she worked hard to produce a bill that we all can support, showing once again that she is first and foremost a legislator who wants to get things done. Due in large part to Senator Feinstein's efforts, we now have an opportunity to advance the cause of victims' rights with strong, practical, bipartisan legislation. I have never doubted Senator Feinstein or Senator Kyl's commitment to victims' rights. I am delighted that we have come together to advance that common cause. Over more than 20 years I have sponsored and championed legislation to help victims. I have mentioned the recent September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, and I am also proud of such other advancements on behalf of victims as a law to provide assistance to victims of international terrorism, and bills to raise the cap on victims' assistance and compensation programs and to protect the rights of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. The legislation that we introduce today should provide us the opportunity to make progress on yet another important measure to address the needs of victims, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this past Sunday marked the start of National Crime Victims' Rights Week. We set this week aside each year to refocus attention on the needs and rights of crime victims. This year, the Senate had been scheduled to mark the occasion by taking up S.J. Res. 1, a proposed constitutional amendment. Once again, we were going to devote days or weeks debating that proposal, even though the Republican leadership knew it had no real chance of garnering the two-thirds super-majority needed to pass. We went through a similar process four years ago, in April 2000, when the Senate debated an earlier version of the amendment during the last presidential election year. I noted then, during that earlier debate, the fact that I have long worked to protect and advance crime victims' rights. As a prosecutor, I worked day to day and year to year alongside victims, seeking justice on their behalf. I have worked on and led many legislative efforts on behalf of victims throughout my service in the Senate. One of the most recent of those efforts was the creation of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, and I am grateful to have been able to take part in something that has brought some relief to so many victims. I will never forget the victims I worked with as a prosecutor or the needs of the new victims minted each day through the crimes committed against them. I believe that victims should be notified when the defendant is in court or when he is about to be released. I believe that victims should be heard at critical stages of the prosecution. I believe that victims are entitled to restitution from offenders. In recent years, the debate was never about whether victims should be protected--of course they should. Rather, the debate was about how they should be protected, and whether the proposed constitutional amendment was the best way to do that. I did not think the proposed amendment was the best way forward. The one thing about which every witness who testified on this issue agreed was that every right provided by the Victims Rights Amendment can be, or already is, protected by State or federal statutory law. We have long had it in our power to enhance victims' rights through regular legislation legislation that could pass with a simple majority and make an immediate difference in the lives of crime victims. Legislative enhancements are more easily enacted, more directly applied and implemented, and more able to provide specific, effective remedies. In addition, as Chief Justice Rehnquist and others have pointed out, statutes are more easily corrected if we find, in hindsight, that they need correction, clarification or improvement. I am delighted to be here today with the principal sponsors of S.J. Res. 1, the distinguished Senators from California and Arizona, and with others, both supporters and opponents of the constitutional amendment, to join together in our support of this crime victims' rights statute. I commend and admire Senator Feinstein and Senator Kyl for their dedication to this issue. They are deeply committed to the cause of victims' rights as are all of us who have joined together to offer this bill. It is my hope that this statute will establish more effective and enforceable rights for crime victims in the federal system, and that it can do so without delay, by a majority vote. First, unlike S.J. Res. 1, which is limited to victims of violent crime, our statute establishes enhanced rights and protections for all victims of crime. Therefore, the elderly woman who is defrauded out of her life savings will have the same rights of notice and participation as other crime victims. Second, our statute spells out how these rights are to be enforced, using language that Senator Kennedy and I developed in S. 805, the Crime Victims Assistance Act. In addition to providing victims with standing to assert their rights in mandamus actions, our statute would establish an administrative authority in the Department of Justice to receive and investigate victims' claims of unlawful or inappropriate action on the part of criminal justice and victims' service providers. Department of Justice employees who fail to comply with the law pertaining to the treatment of crime victims could face disciplinary sanctions, including suspension or termination of employment. Third, our statute incorporates additional proposals from S. 805 to help States implement and enforce their own victims' rights laws. In this way, instead of replacing programs that have already been implemented by a majority of States, our statute enables States to retain their full power to protect victims in the ways most appropriate to local concerns and local needs. Fourth, our statute calls for two annual reports, one by the Administrative Office of the Courts, and the other by the General Accounting Office. These reports will provide Congress with feedback on how the rights and procedures established by the statute are working in practice. Over time, we will be able to modify and fine-tune the statute so that it provides an appropriate degree of protection for the rights of crime victims. I emphasize that passage of this bill will necessitate careful oversight of its implementation by Congress. If, as I hope, Federal judges and prosecutors take victims' rights seriously, there should be little need for victims to bring mandamus actions to enforce their rights. But if, for whatever reason, victims feel that they are not being treated fairly, we may see a wave of new litigation in the Federal courts, with victims and their lawyers having to insert themselves into criminal cases. We will need to monitor the situation closely. I am committed to giving victims real and enforceable rights. But I am convinced that prosecutors should be capable of protecting those rights, once we make them clear. In my experience, prosecutors have victims' interests at heart. Senator Kennedy and I proposed in the Crime Victims Assistance Act a limited-standing provision, which applied with respect to the victim's right to attend and observe the trial, and under which a victim could assert her right if the prosecutor refused to do so. Passing such a provision would have allowed us to observe over a period of time whether direct participation of victims in criminal proceedings has any unanticipated consequences for the administration of justice. This Victims' Rights Act proposes a bolder experiment, entitling victims to assert a panoply of rights, regardless of whether the prosecution is already asserting the same rights on their behalf. For example, at the insistence of other sponsors, this bill will enable victims to bring mandamus actions alleging the denial of their statutory right ``to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim's dignity and privacy,'' which may be difficult claims to adjudicate. I note with some regret that our statute picks up language from S.J. Res. 1 denying victims a civil cause of action for damages in the event that their rights are violated. Allowing victims to vindicate their rights through separate civil proceedings instead of through mandamus actions in the criminal case could well be a more efficient as well as a more effective way of ensuring that victims' rights are honored. Certainly the prospect of being sued would provide a powerful incentive to take victims' rights seriously. But the Republican sponsors of the bill did not want to provide for damages. Similarly, some Republican Senators did not want to allow courts to appoint attorneys to help crime victims. It is my hope and belief that victims will seldom need representation, since they already have powerful advocates in our public prosecutors. Still, it is possible that a judge would want to appoint an attorney for a victim in an extraordinary case, as for example if there is a material conflict between the victim's interests and the interests of the prosecution. By failing to provide for this possibility, our new bill may perpetuate a system of unequal justice for victims, where the wealthy have the benefit of counsel, and the poor do not. Finally, I want to comment on the unusual genesis of this bill, and the extraordinary procedure that I expect it will follow in the Senate. As I mentioned earlier, the Senate was scheduled to begin work this week on the proposed constitutional amendment, S.J. Res. 1. On Wednesday, the Republican leadership moved to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed. I would not have opposed this motion. I voted to proceed to an earlier iteration of this constitutional amendment 4 years ago, and I would have been prepared to proceed to it again this week. Given the time this would take and the expected outcome, it could be argued that the Senate already has many pressing matters on its agenda, but I would not have opposed a debate on the constitutional amendment. Given the Republican leadership's insistence on proceeding to the constitutional amendment this week, there has not been as much time as I would have liked to craft the statutory alternative that we introduce today. And because this bill will come to a vote almost immediately, we will not get to hold hearings on it and polish the text in Committee. I would have liked to get the views of the Office for Victims of Crime. Many victims' groups and domestic violence organizations opposed the constitutional amendment, as did many law professors, judges, and prosecutors. I would have liked to hear their views on this statute. I am concerned that the statute may not adequately address the special problems raised in domestic violence and abuse situations. Fortunately, however, this is a statute, not a constitutional amendment, and it can be modified with relative ease if the need arises. I commend my good friend, Senator Feinstein, for mediating this consensus legislation. I know that she would have preferred to pass a constitutional amendment--she has made that clear. Nevertheless, she worked hard to produce a bill that we all can support, showing once again that she is first and foremost a legislator who wants to get things done. Due in large part to Senator Feinstein's efforts, we now have an opportunity to advance the cause of victims' rights with strong, practical, bipartisan legislation. I have never doubted Senator Feinstein or Senator Kyl's commitment to victims' rights. I am delighted that we have come together to advance that common cause. Over more than 20 years I have sponsored and championed legislation to help victims. I have mentioned the recent September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, and I am also proud of such other advancements on behalf of victims as a law to provide assistance to victims of international terrorism, and bills to raise the cap on victims' assistance and compensation programs and to protect the rights of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. The legislation that we introduce today should provide us the opportunity to make progress on yet another important measure to address the needs of victims, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer, my good friend from Ohio.

Mr. LEAHY. That was without any time limitations, as I recall?

Mr. LEAHY. Before we recessed, was there a unanimous consent request made for the Senator from Vermont to be recognized?

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized at 2:15 p.m. to speak on the asbestos legislation.

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

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, is the parliamentary situation that we are going to recess for the party caucuses at 12:30 p.m.?

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to respond to the very serious allegations contained in Bob Woodward's book about the use of counterterrorism funds to support preparations for the U.S. military invasion of Iraq. As a Senator and a taxpayer, I am very troubled by this information. The Constitution gives Congress the sole power of the purse. The Founding Fathers did this for good reason. It is a responsibility that I take very seriously. As a member of the Appropriations Committee for more than two decades, I know there is a long, bipartisan tradition of administrations--of both political parties--informing Congress when money is going to be used for purposes different than what it was intended for, especially if it is part of a major change of policy. We do not yet know all of the facts, and we need to get the whole story as soon as possible. But I will say that in the wake of September 11, the Congress moved very quickly in a bipartisan way to appropriate billions of dollars to respond to the threat of international terrorism. In doing so, we gave the administration a great deal of flexibility, but we also made clear that we expected the administration to keep the Congress informed on the use of these funds. And administration officials gave us their word that they would keep us informed. We now learn, as a result of Bob Woodward's book, that millions of dollars that we thought we were appropriating for Afghanistan, or to respond to other terrorist threats, may have been used by the Defense Department to begin preparations for the invasion of Iraq. The problem is that there is not a shred of evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks. Even the President has acknowledged this. In effect, it appears that the administration has treated the Congress with much the same disdain as it treated our European allies. Remember? They were the ``old Europe,'' who were out of touch, whose support we did not need. Like the United Nations, they were ``irrelevant.'' So too the Congress: What do they know? They just appropriate money. They do not need to know what it is being used for. We also have learned, in even more detail, how this administration rushed into war without making adequate post-war plans or building a real international coalition. As a result, the reconstruction efforts are a mess, our credibility is in tatters, and America's soldiers are shouldering a grossly disproportionate share of the burden and the casualties. The proper use of taxpayers' money is not a Democratic or a Republican issue. As representatives of the American people, it is something that we should all be concerned about, and it may force us to change the way we do business around here. Mr. President, we also have before us an asbestos bill, the Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2004. This partisan asbestos bill is not ready for floor consideration. It is not ready for prime time, not by a long shot. I do believe the Senate should pass legislation to establish a national trust fund to fairly compensate asbestos victims. After all, I held the first hearing ever held by the full Senate Judiciary Committee in an effort to get a resolution to the problem facing victims of asbestos poisoning. But, despite the title of this bill, it is far from fair. It is very partisan. This partisan bill creates a trust fund that provides unfair compensation for asbestos victims. This partisan bill creates a trust fund with inadequate funding, no startup protections, and major solvency problems. This partisan bill contains a warped sunset provision that could trap victims in a failed trust fund for 7 years or more without having access to compensation. Look at this chart. This fund says victims could be trapped in a failed trust fund for 7 years or more and would have no compensation. If the fund becomes insolvent, then the Hatch-Frist substitute provides for a reversion to the tort system, but only after 7 years from when the fund begins processing claims, and then only in Federal court, and then only for some limited disease categories. So victims could be trapped for 7 years or more with no compensation. That is not fair. Some have claimed this bill provides for contingency funding to try to address the many uncertainties of future projections for asbestos victims, but the $10 billion for continued funding only kicks in after year 2023 and only if the funds still exist at this time. Let me show you on this chart. It is only after year 2023. We are in the year 2004. There will be very few in the Senate who will still be around to try to correct the mischief of this bill. You have contingency funding available after 2023. That means a lot will not be available to pay the pending 300,000 claims on day one. That is not a fair trust fund. So I would say it is a mistake for the Republican leadership of the Senate to insist on proceeding to a bill and have so many major problems still unresolved. The bill is not ready for prime time. Let's work at making it ready, not work at scoring partisan points. Let's do something for the victims of asbestos. Creating a fair national trust fund to compensate asbestos victims is one of the most complex legislative situations I have seen in 29 years in the Senate. The interrelated aspects necessary for a fair national trust fund is like a child's Rubik's Cube. So it is all the more necessary that a bill be a consensus piece of legislation for it to become law. I am not looking for a Democratic or Republican piece of legislation; I am looking for a bipartisan one that would work. That is why I worked so hard in months of bipartisan negotiation, why I worked so hard to encourage the interested stakeholders to reach agreement on all the critical details. I have had so many meetings in my office and in other Senators' offices with the major stakeholders across-the- board, and this is where we are. We have Senator Hatch and the majority leader introducing a partisan asbestos bill. I hoped the bipartisan dialog over the past year would yield a fair and efficient compensation system that we could in good conscience offer to those suffering today from asbestos-related diseases and to the victims yet to come. Our leader, the senior Senator from South Dakota, Senator Daschle, was entrusted by all of us to speak for our caucus and to try to negotiate an agreement. Time and again he made that attempt. Time and again he was put off. I stood there with him when he spoke to the leadership on the Republican side saying, Can't we get together on a piece of legislation? But unfortunately the Senate majority leadership decided to walk away from those negotiations and resort to unilateralism by introducing a partisan bill without Democratic support. That is a shame. They ought to pull this bill and sit down with Senator Daschle, knowing Senator Daschle will go to the table and negotiate a real bill, because the introduction of this bill raises many questions, most notably what the sponsors are trying to achieve, because it certainly is not a fair compensation model for asbestos victims. By breaking off bipartisan negotiations and pushing this bill to the floor, they have turned their backs on those of us who have worked so long for a fair solution. I was encouraged to learn this week from a news wire report that a colleague, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, who played an important role in the negotiations, favored resumption of negotiations. Senator Specter told the Associated Press: I declined to join with Senator Frist and Senator Hatch in their substitute bill because I think it is the better practice to try to work through these problems. Senator Specter, of course, has put in untold hours with retired distinguished Judge Becker in trying to work through the points of such a bill. We have all learned a great deal about the harms caused by asbestos exposure since that first hearing that convened in September of 2002. Asbestos is the most lethal substance ever widely used in the workplace. Between 1940, the year I was born, and 1980, more than 27.5 million workers in this country were exposed to asbestos on the job and nearly 19 million of them had high levels of exposure over long periods of time. Unbelievably, asbestos is still used today. What we face is an asbestos-induced disease crisis. Hundreds of thousands of workers and their families have suffered debilitating disease and death due to asbestos exposure. The disease and the death are among the most horrible ways of being sickened or to die. These are the real victims of the nightmare and they must be the first and foremost focus of our concern and effort. These are people who, simply by showing up for work and doing their job as they are supposed to, endured lives of extreme pain and suffering. Not only do they continue to suffer, and their number will grow, but the businesses involved in the litigation, along with their employees and their retirees, are suffering from the economic uncertainty created by the situation. More than 60 companies have filed for bankruptcy because of their asbestos-related liabilities. These 60 bankruptcies have a devastating human economic effect. Asbestos victims deserving fair compensation do not receive it and bankrupt companies do not create new jobs or invest in our economy. In working with Senators Daschle, Dodd, Frist, Hatch, and Specter, we encouraged representatives from organized labor, the trial bar, and industry help reach consensus on a national trust fund to compensate asbestos victims. We wanted to give financial certainty also for the defendants and their insurers. Now a successful trust fund--by that, I mean one that would provide fair and adequate compensation to all victims--would bring reasonable financial certainty to defendant companies and their insurers. To be successful, it has to have four essential components. It has to have appropriate medical criteria, it has to have fair award values, adequate funding, and an efficient, expedited system for processing claims. During the markup session of the Judiciary Committee on the first FAIR Act, we unanimously adopted the Leahy-Hatch amendment on medical criteria. This created 10 categories of disease. The medical criteria represent bipartisan agreement the national trust fund should provide monetary compensation to claimants who suffered impairment and it should provide medical monitoring to those individuals with less serious asbestos-related conditions. The bipartisan medical criteria are in this new bill. I agree with them. During the mediation process established by Senator Specter and Judge Becker--I referred to him earlier as Judge Edward Becker, retired chief judge for the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals--the interested stakeholders tried to craft a streamlined administrative process. Senator Specter and Judge Becker worked very hard on this process. They deserve the thanks of all Members. I believe their very inclusive process was crucial to the establishment of a national trust fund at the Department of Labor. Even that agreement, the agreement between the interested stakeholders, left many details unresolved. In fact, as this chart shows, Judge Becker listed 22 outstanding issues. Many involved administrative process. That list of 22 outstanding issues did not include the 2 other major components of a fair trust fund: fair award values and adequate funding to pay for it. These are the remaining issues. We cannot zip to the Senate floor and because we could not find anything else to do, we bring it up. There are many issues, including startup language, sunset time, timeframe, reversion to tort system, in what forum, pending cases, settlements in pending cases, treatment of existing trusts, worker's compensation, medical screening of high-risk workers, transparencies, setoff rules, statute of limitation language, exclusive default judgments, bankruptcies, FELA, exclusivity for asbestos-related claims, and on and on. I mention this because this is a highly complex area. Simply putting something on the Senate calendar to say we put something on the Senate calendar is a lot different than actually being legislators and trying to pass something. What we want is a decent piece of legislation, not a headline. The people who are suffering from asbestos-induced injuries and illness are not helped by a headline. They are helped by real legislation which requires real Senators doing--guess what--real work. The changes made to a few award values by Majority Leader Frist moved in the right direction. His partisan bill does not move far enough toward providing fair compensation to all impaired victims of asbestos exposure. In fact, seriously ill victims of exposure would receive significantly less compensation on average under the current version of this act than they would in the tort system. The so-called FAIR Act is not yet fair. The gravest injustice to the bill is to lung cancer victims. A victim with at least 15 years of asbestos exposure could receive only $25,000 in compensation for his or her asbestos-related disease under the new bill. Goodness gracious. I ask any Member of this committee, if somebody's negligence caused them to have lung cancer, would they feel satisfied with a $25,000 award? I don't have to poll the other 99 Senators. I know it would be a resounding no. Don't do it to the victims of asbestos just because they do not serve in the Senate. My chart underscores the fairness of the award value for asbestos- related lung cancer victims compared to compensation available in the tort system and under the proposal offered by Senator Kennedy and myself during the committee markup. The legislation we are considering today provides as little as $25,000 in compensation for victims suffering asbestos-related lung cancer. What a cruel joke on these lung cancer victims, especially those who are going to die within the next 2 years. What a cruel joke on their families who see this as the punishment because the breadwinner in their family went to work every day in one of these industries. When there is smoking and asbestos combined, the likelihood of the resulting disease is greater than the sum of the parts. Dr. Laura Welch is a well-respected medical expert who helped us craft medical criteria which was accepted by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the committee. She said: Smoking and asbestos act in concert together to cause lung cancer, each multiplying the risk conferred by the other. There is a synergistic relationship between asbestos exposure and smoking. Smokers who meet the bill's exposure requirements face a risk of lung cancer that is up to five times greater than smokers not exposed to asbestos. But they receive only $25,000 under this bill. In other words, if you go to work at W.R. Grace or Halliburton or some of the other companies that are getting a real, real big deal under this bill, and they say, ``OK, guys and gals, you can take a 10- minute cigarette break,'' if they are foolish enough to do it, that combination of asbestos and smoking--at whatever company it might be; I picked W.R. Grace and Halliburton only because they benefit so greatly under the bill; others do, too--then their risk is much greater, and then they may have their awards reduced or even eliminated to repay any insurance carrier. Now, that is a lot different than what happens now. Usually, under these programs, you do not have to repay your insurance carrier, you do not have to repay workman's compensation. Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, you do not have to do that. Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, you do not have to do that. Under the Ricky Ray Hemophiliac Relief Fund Act, you do not have to do that. But what bothers me is that when we made the medical criteria, we got a bipartisan consensus on the medical criteria. We did it in a way to guarantee that we were eliminating what were the most troublesome claims. We were setting a roadmap on which business and everybody else agreed. We all say we need to compensate the truly sick, but fair compensation is not free. The Judiciary Committee's bipartisan agreement on medical criteria will be meaningless if the majority, in effect, rewrites the categories by failing to fairly compensate many who fall within them. You cannot come to the floor and say, look, you have Republicans and Democrats who came together and worked out the medical criteria that they are all very happy about--and we met with labor, and we met with businesses, and we met with insurers, we met with the victims themselves, and we worked out a fair medical criteria--and then come to the floor and say, see, we worked it all out. However, we made one little change. And what is the little change? The little change is to take away all the money or much of the money that was going to pay these victims. If the award values are unfair, the bill will be unfair. And if the bill is unfair, it is unworthy of our support. In this case, with this partisan bill, it is unfair. It is unworthy of the support of Senators. Since the first hearing, the hearing I held, we have had one bedrock principle: It has to be a balanced solution. Whatever solution we have, it has to be balanced. I cannot support a bill that gives inadequate compensation to victims. I will not adjust fair award values into some discounted amount just to make the final tally come within a predetermined and artificial limit. That is not fair, and I will not vote for a bill that is not fair. Remember, we are taking away people's most cherished right, the right of a jury trial. If we are going to do that, we cannot do it in a bill that is not fair. Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle have insisted for months they will only support a bill that contains funding with a goal of raising $109 billion over 24 years. But it is very clear from projections of future claims that this funding is inadequate to pay fair award values. You cannot have good legislation, successful legislation, fair legislation if it is based on a false promise. The promise we have to make is, if we are going to take away the rights of a jury trial to these victims, then we have to promise them fair compensation. This bill does not do that. On the Judiciary Committee, we reported a bill that contained total funding of $153 billion. But this new partisan bill, introduced less than 2 weeks ago, contains mandatory funding of only $109 billion. All of a sudden, we have lost--we have lost--over $40 billion from the total funding approved by the Judiciary Committee under contingency funding amendments by Senators Feinstein and Kohl. Senator Feinstein--she can speak for herself; she is in the Chamber-- but she worked night and day on this issue to get a fair agreement. I do not know the number of times she buttonholed me at the committee or elsewhere, and every other Senator on both sides of the aisle, to reach an agreement; and she got it. That has been taken out. Look at this chart. Is this fair? We reported a bill, which many questioned whether it had enough money, S. 1125, at $153 billion. Now it comes back and it is $109 billion. The first bill, many complained, did not have enough money; the current bill drops $44 billion out. We also know there has to be adequate funding at the beginning of a national trust fund. Why? There are more than 300,000 asbestos claims in our current legal system, so you are going to have to have enough money in there to handle the claims that are going to be there on day 1 of this fund. However, this new bill actually provides less upfront funding than the bill reported by the Judiciary Committee. It strikes what we passed in the committee, by bipartisan majorities, a commonsense requirement that directs insurers--who, after all, have billions of dollars sitting today in current asbestos reserves--to contribute their funding within the first 3 years of the fund because that is when most of the claims would come. Another fundamental unfairness in this bill is it provides a corporate bailout for certain companies with serious asbestos liability. Take a look at another chart. I ask if this is fair. The present value of Halliburton's asbestos liability is $4.8 billion. Under this bill, they would only pay $75 million a year to a national trust fund. The reason I mention this is Halliburton told their shareholders sometime ago they could handle this $4.8 billion, they could handle the amount of money set aside for their liability. They knew they were liable. They knew they would have to pay for it. They could set this money aside. In fact, when they thought they had a settlement of that amount, their stock actually went up. But, lo and behold, by the time the Republican majority got the amount Halliburton would owe--the $4.8 billion--by the time our friends on the Republican side of the aisle got it, they only have to pay $1.2 billion. They saved $3.6 billion overnight. Not only that, they only had to pay it over 24 years. They are going to make that on the interest on their money. I am not even going to point out how much money they are making in profits in Iraq at the moment. I will leave that for another day. But they suddenly go from the $4.8 billion that basically they knew they were going to have to pay, and as soon as this Republican bill came up, it is down to $1.2 billion. No wonder Halliburton likes some of my friends on the other side of the aisle. Let's take W.R. Grace, another good friend of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle. W.R. Grace was a company that was responsible for poisoning an entire community. Some of these companies only poison a few hundred or 200 or so of their employees when they come to work. They only poison a few hundred by hiding what they are doing. W.R. Grace goes big time, to quote one of the people they support. W.R. Grace was responsible for poisoning an entire community, the whole community, whether you worked for them or not. They poisoned the whole community from its asbestos mining facilities in Libby, MT. W.R. Grace must love their Republican friends because while they had total asbestos liabilities of about $3.1 billion, under this bill they suddenly have to only make payments of $27 million over 24 years, which is pocket change for them. Instead of paying the $3.1 billion they are liable for today, they will pay only $424 million. No wonder they love Republicans. I mean, this is a walkaway. And the irony is, with a straight face there are those who call this the FAIR Act. I am sure they probably call it the FAIR Act at the board of directors of W.R. Grace. I am sure they call it the FAIR Act at the board of Halliburton. But I can tell you, in the families where they see the breadwinner with the oxygen tank suffering, coughing up blood, suffering a horrible death, they don't call it the FAIR Act. They might call it the Halliburton Relief Act. They might call it the W.R. Grace Relief Act. They don't call it the FAIR Act. As presently written, the FAIR Act would completely negate all legally binding settlement agreements between asbestos defendants and victims. It would take away their right to the courthouse. Even settlements that have already been partially paid, even those settlements--whether it is W.R. Grace or Halliburton, anybody else-- where they have agreed they are liable, where they have started to make payments, all of a sudden comes the FAIR Act, and it is like Christmas in April because they can void those agreements even though they have been making payments. In other words, if a victim agreed to take a settlement over a period of time from a defendant in return for dismissing the case, and even though that settlement agreement is an enforceable contract, the defendant, whether it is Halliburton or W.R. Grace or anybody else, gets the right to walk away. Victims are actually punished under this legislation for agreeing to settlement terms proposed by asbestos defendants. Is that fair? Absolutely not. In addition, the FAIR Act would retroactively extinguish all pending asbestos cases regardless of the stage in the litigation. The asbestos cases currently in trial or on the verge of trial would immediately be brought to a halt. Cases with jury verdicts or judgments would end, and all appeals would be suspended. Is that fair? No. It is not fair to the victims. It might be fair to W.R. Grace or Halliburton; it is not fair to the victims at home coughing out their lungs. The partisan emphasis in this bill on behalf of the interests of the industrial and insurance companies involved, to the detriment of the victims, has predictably produced an imbalanced bill. This bill is a reflection of the priorities that went into it. Remember, many of us wanted to bring certitude to the companies, to bring fair compensation to the victims. Instead, this is totally skewed. For us to succeed in reaching the consensus solution we sought for so long, a workable bill should fairly reflect and not discount the significant benefits that a fair solution would confer on the companies involved. A trust fund solution would offer these firms reasonable financial security. Even a casual glance at the way the stock values of these firms have closely tracked the Senate's work on this issue are enough to make it crystal clear. I think forcing this new asbestos bill through the Senate would prove counterproductive, even fatal, to the legislative effort. The near party-line vote within the committee on the earlier bill was more of a setback than a step forward. Proceeding further without consensus would make it worse. Many of us have worked very hard. Senator Daschle has worked extremely hard. Many of us have worked very hard for more than a year toward the goal of a consensus asbestos bill. This new partisan bill is especially saddening to me, and it is confounding. The obvious question that all of us, including those who brought this new bill to the floor, should be asking is, Does the partisan turn that the sponsors of this bill have taken help or hurt our efforts to produce and enact a consensus bill? I think the answer is clear. Instead of writing a bill that will make Halliburton and W.R. Grace very happy with some in this partisan exercise, let's restart our work to achieve the common ground needed to enact a good and fair law. That is the best way to move it forward. Remember, we are not legislating as an arm of Halliburton or W.R. Grace or a few others. We are legislating for the good of this country. The 100 of us represent 280 million Americans. We want to be fair. Let's represent them.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer. As always, it is good to see her, a longtime friend of our family, and I appreciate her service to this body.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, March 4, 2004 was the 1-year anniversary of the last, brief appearance by Attorney General Ashcroft before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was not an anniversary that we marked for celebration. Instead, we marked the day as a low point, and symbolic of the disdain shown by the administration for oversight by the people's representatives in Congress. I recognize that the Attorney General was recently incapacitated by a personal medical condition. We all wished him a speedy and full recovery. Up through March 4, however, there was no explanation for ignoring his oversight responsibilities. The Attorney General has since resumed his duties after successful surgery and a brief respite. It is time now for him to answer the call of those oversight responsibilities by appearing before this committee. Vigorous oversight is instrumental to ensuring that our law enforcement officials are effective and accountable, both in fighting crime and in preventing acts of terrorism. The lack of attention this Justice Department has given to oversight by the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding issues of national importance, including implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act, is, quite frankly, appalling. Reticence by the Nation's chief law enforcement officer to appear before the authorizing committee of the Senate would be disappointing any time. During these trying times in which the administration has chosen unilateral action it is inexcusable. The written questions I posed to General Ashcroft in connection with last year's hearing did not get any response for 9 months, and even then, the so-called answers were incomplete and unresponsive. In fact, the Justice Department has delayed answering numerous written oversight requests until answers are moot or outdated, or they respond in vague and evasive terms. This approach stymies our constitutional system of checks and balances. The checks and balance on the executive intended by the Founders and embodied in the Constitution are being put to the test by a secretive administration. More importantly, such flagrant avoidance of accountability fuels the sort of public distrust that is now associated with federal law enforcement and, in particular, with this Attorney General and his department. Let me provide a few of what could be many, many examples: On June 19, 2002, Senator Grassley and I sent a letter to the Office of the Inspector General, regarding allegations made by an FBI whistleblower that posed several important questions about the problems in the FBI's translator program that have never been answered. The Attorney General has yet to intervene despite the unseemly delay. I raised the issue of translators in our first meeting on September 19, 2001, as we began the process of constructing what became the PATRIOT Act. I have attempted to follow up in the months and years since that time and have been given the run around with conflicting responses virtually each time I inquire. With the implications proper translation and translation capacities have for the country's security, these delays and this unresponsiveness is simply unacceptable. Over 2 years ago, I began asking about the FBI's translation program. Yet, questions I posed to the Assistant Attorney General Wray during an October oversight hearing were greeted with a virtual blank stare and no knowledge about the issue at all. On March 2 of this year, I sent a letter to the Attorney General and FBI Director Mueller repeating some of what I have asked before and asking about new issues that have since been raised. Needless to say, no answers have been forthcoming. On January 10, 2003, Senator Feingold, Senator Cantwell and I sent the Attorney General a set of questions regarding the Department's data-mining practices. On February 19, we were informed that our letter had been referred to the FBI for a response, and that a response would be provided no later than March 31. On March 18, we were advised that the FBI's response had been delivered to the Department for review and approval, and that the Department would transmit the final response to us directly. That was the last we heard on this matter. It has been over a year since we inquired. American's privacy interests should not be so easily sloughed aside. On May 23, 2002, I wrote to the Attorney General to request a full accounting of any problems the Department or the FBI might be experiencing with regard to the PATRIOT Act amendment authorizing ``roving wiretaps'' under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA. In particular, I asked the Department to detail any problems involving technical and operational implementation of the new authority, the current statutory language, construction of that language by the FISA court, or a combination of any or all of these factors. I have received no response. Roving wiretaps were one of the more controversial authorities that we provided following September 11. Americans across the country are concerned and fearful that their privacy is being invaded by a federal government that may be repeating historical excesses. To reassure the public and to correct problems, we need answers--prompt answers. Ten months is too long to have to wait for such an accounting. Other oversight letters that have remained unanswered for 6 months or more include questions about the Department's death penalty procedures, the status of regulations for reporting suspicion child exploitation matters, concern about the Wen Ho Lee espionage case, and the release of Office of Legal Counsel opinions. Despite his having recently been a Member of the Senate and of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it would seem that in his current role as Attorney General, former Senator Ashcroft has forgotten that effective oversight of the Justice Department requires the Department's full and timely cooperation. When stale and incomplete responses to questions trickle in after months of delay, one has to wonder whether the Department is incapable of responding in a timely fashion or is deliberately stonewalling. Congress is not the only one asking questions. In the past year, several Federal courts have criticized the Justice Department's use of tools to pursue terrorism-related activity and the unilateral power asserted by the executive branch. I regret that when Congress is not vigorous in its necessary oversight and when the Executive ignores our oversight, it falls to the courts as the only remaining check on Executive power to review its actions. That is why the Supreme Court will be spending so much time this year on terrorism cases. That is not the way it should be or needs to be. That is apparently the intention of the Executive, however. That contravenes the Constitution and denigrates our Government. Last March, I was hopeful that the Attorney General's appearance before the committee would be the first of a series of hearings building on the important oversight activities we began in the last Congress, including the first comprehensive oversight of the FBI initiated in decades. Unfortunately, that important mission too seems to have fallen by the wayside. With the change in Senate leadership to the Republican Party, little interest has been shown in effective congressional oversight. Our security and the American people are the losers in this regard. Late on a February Friday afternoon--a time often used by the current administration to bury news stories--the FBI quietly released a report on its broken ``Office of Professional Responsibility.'' The report was occasioned in part by FBI whistleblowers who had the courage to stand up and denounce longstanding problems in the way the FBI disciplined itself. One recommendation of the OPR report was to adopt a reform Senator Grassley and I have introduced over the last few years as part of our FBI Reform Act. Like oversight, our legislative efforts to improve the practices of the Executive branch also seem stymied. This Republican-controlled Senate will not even consider enacting reforms we all know are needed, that watchdogs within the Executive have endorsed. So here we are, over 13 months after we last saw General Ashcroft, and we have no schedule for the long overdue appearance by the Attorney General of the United States before the oversight committee of the Senate. Republican Senators may have disagreed with Attorney General Reno's leadership on certain issues, but they cannot say that she did not appear before the Judiciary Committee for hours and hours at a time and listen to our questions and seek to answer the questions of all Senators, Republicans and Democrats. By contrast, the current Attorney General found the time to make a 19-city cross country tour last year in which he appeared before friendly, hand-picked audiences and delivered a series of statements seeking to defend his use of the PATRIOT Act. He finds time to attend virtually every press conference on an indictment or case development in high profile cases. Yet he has not, and apparently will not, appear before the people's elected representatives to answer our questions, hear our concerns and work with us to improve the work of the Department of Justice. We in Congress have the constitutional obligation and public responsibility to oversee the Department of Justice's operations. After September 11, after we expressed our sorrow for the victims and our determination to respond while preserving American freedoms, I publicly noted my regret that we had not performed more effective and thorough oversight of the Department of Justice in the years before 2001. During the 17 months in 2001 and 2002 when I chaired the Judiciary Committee I worked with all Members, Republicans and Democrats, to provide real oversight. There were times when the Attorney General used our hearings as a forum to attack us and our patriotism but we persisted to perform our constitutional duties. It is with deep regret that I report to the Senate and the American people that it is now more than a year since the Attorney General of the United States last appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is with sadness that I note the lack of effective oversight the Committee and the Senate are conducting on matters that threaten the freedoms and security of the American people.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, we have had months of bipartisan negotiations on legislation to enact a national trust fund for victims of asbestos-related diseases. I am concerned that our distinguished majority leader and Senator Hatch have now introduced a partisan asbestos bill. We all agreed over the past couple of years of hard work on this issue that only a bipartisan bill will pass. I held the first hearing on the problem of asbestos litigation a couple years ago. We worked closely with Republicans and Democrats, and I had hoped the bipartisan dialog over the past year would yield a fair and efficient compensation system that we could, in good conscience, offer to those suffering today from asbestos-related diseases and also to victims yet to come. But I am afraid the Senate majority has decided to walk away from those negotiations and to report to unilateralism by introducing a partisan bill. I have offered, as has Senator Daschle, to work very hard on this issue. When I heard one was going to be introduced yesterday, I actually tried very hard to see if I could get a copy of it. Hours after it was introduced, we were finally given one. We have all learned a great deal about the harms wreaked by asbestos exposure since that first Judiciary Committee hearing I talked about that I convened in September of 2002. Asbestos is the most lethal substance ever widely used in the workplace. Between 1940 and 1980, more than 27.5 million workers in this country were exposed to asbestos on the job. Nearly 19 million of them had high levels of exposure over long periods of time. Even with all that, unbelievably, asbestos is still used today. What we face is an asbestos-induced disease crisis--hundreds of thousands of workers and their families have suffered debilitating disease and death due to asbestos exposure. These are the real victims of the asbestos nightmare, and they must be the first and foremost focus of our concern and effort in this body. These are people who, by simply showing up for work, now must endure lives of extreme pain and suffering and often early death. Not only do the victims of asbestos exposure continue to suffer, and their numbers to grow, but the businesses involved in the litigation, along with their employees and retirees, are suffering from the economic uncertainty created by this legislation. More than 60 companies have filed for bankruptcy, and their bankruptcies have a devastating human and economic effect. Those victims who deserve fair compensation, of course, cannot get it from a bankrupt company. I worked with Senators Daschle, Dodd, Frist, Hatch, and Specter. We asked representatives from organized labor, from the trial bar, from industry to help us reach a consensus on our national trust fund to fairly compensate asbestos victims and to provide financial certainty for asbestos defendants and their insurers. A successful trust fund--one that will give fair and adequate compensation, would bring reasonable financial certainty to defendant companies and insurers--includes four essential components: appropriate medical criteria, fair award values, adequate funding, and an efficient expedited system for processing claims. During the markup session of the first FAIR Act, we unanimously adopted the Leahy-Hatch amendment on medical criteria. During the mediation process established by Senator Specter and Judge Edward Becker, the interested stakeholders focused on crafting a streamlined administrative process and both Judge Becker and Senator Specter deserve credit for the enormous amount of work they put in on this. But we have not reached consensus on two other essential components: fair award values and adequate funding. Although the changes made to a few award values by Senator Frist moved in the right direction, the bill introduced last night does not move far enough. In fact, seriously ill victims will receive less compensation, on average, under the current version of the FAIR Act than they would in the tort system. Actually, the FAIR Act, as I say on this chart, is not fair. Victims with asbestos-related lung cancer with at least 15 weighted years of asbestos exposure could receive only $25,000 in compensation, basically a crude joke of the victims, especially given most lung cancer victims are going to die within 2 years. It is a cruel joke also on their families. Not only that, we find they may have their awards reduced or even eliminated to repay insurance companies. That is so contrary to most existing compensation programs. For example, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, and the Ricky Ray Hemophiliac Relief Fund Act all contain strong antisubrogation language to protect awards to victims under these compensation programs. Our bipartisan medical criteria have already eliminated what businesses contended were the most troublesome claims. We all say we need to compensate the truly sick, but fair compensation is not free compensation. Our bipartisan agreement on medical criteria is going to be meaningless if the majority, in effect, rewrites the categories by failing fairly to compensate those who fall within them. We need a balanced solution. We need one that can be supported by all Members in this body. Even with consensus on medical criteria, if the award values are unfair, the bill will be unfair and unworthy of our support, which sadly is the case with this partisan bill. Since the first hearing on this issue, I have emphasized one bedrock principle: The solution we reach must be a balanced solution. I cannot support a bill that gives inadequate compensation to victims. I will not adjust fair award values into some discounted amount to make the final tally come within a predetermined, artificial limit. That is not fair. We have been told, however, the majority will support a bill that contains funding with a goal of raising $109 billion over 24 years. But it is clear from projections of future claims this funding is inadequate to pay fair award values to present and future asbestos victims. Indeed, it is a cut of more than $40 billion from the total funding approved in the Judiciary Committee under contingency funding amendments by Senators Feinstein and Kohl. It is not fair. All reflections show it is not enough. The partisan emphasis in this bill on the interests of the industrial and insurance companies involved, to the detriment of the victims, has predictably produced an imbalanced bill. This bill is a reflection of the priorities that went into it. For us to succeed in reaching the consensus solution we have sought for so long, a workable bill should fairly reflect, and not discount, the significant benefits a fair solution indisputably would confer on the companies involved. A trust fund solution would offer these firms reasonable financial security. Even a casual glance at the way the stock values of these firms have closely tracked the Senate's work on this issue is enough to make this fact crystal clear. Given all of these serious problems, I believe forcing this new asbestos bill through the Senate in its present form would prove counterproductive, even fatal, to the legislative effort. The near party-line vote within the committee on the earlier bill is more of a setback than a step forward even after all of our work. Proceeding further without consensus would be another mistake. Instead, we should go back to work, build on those areas where we have bipartisan consensus, and then produce a bill that will help the asbestos victims in this country, will bring certainty to the companies that are laboring under possible liability, and will let the country go on with its business.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is remarkable that in 29 years here in the Senate--several times the Senate under the control of Democrats, several times the Senate under the control of Republicans--I have never seen so little accomplished and I have never seen so much political posturing on the Senate floor which then gets put into fundraising letters and fundraising appeals. I have never seen so much special interest legislation. But the bottom line is I have never seen so little accomplished. Probably there is a corollary. Instead of doing the people's business, we seem to be doing political action committee business. And that is why, of course, nothing gets done. Let's talk about this. If there were ever a piece of legislation on which politics is being played, it is the medical malpractice bill. It is a one-size-fits-all bill for a problem that is really different from State to State. Basically we are telling the 50 State legislatures and Governors that the Members of the U.S. Senate know a lot more about their States' needs than they do and that the U.S. Senate will dictate a change. We will override their courts and their legislatures. We will override their laws and we will make life better for them. But when we do, of course, we yank away the rights of the States and the people there. Whenever we target the rights of the public and we try to figure out ways to run roughshod over a State, we ought to be pretty careful how we do it. Normally you would think we would have committee hearings. We would try to have a bipartisan bill. We would have something that would demonstrate to the States, as we take away their rights, that such a move has been considered by all 100 Senators and there is a consensus. Instead, we have a piece of legislation written by lobbyists and special interests that is so bad nobody even dares send it to a committee--not even friendly committees. They send it right to the floor. This is the third time the Republicans have taken this partisan approach. Last July they employed this partisan tactic and failed to pass legislation. Earlier this year, they tried to rush through the Senate a bill to limit the legal rights of the most vulnerable patients--mothers and infants--and they failed. Now they are again rushing an extreme bill overriding the laws of each of the 50 States. This time, however, the bill is not limited to obstetrical and gynecological care. Now they want to extend the restrictions on legal rights to trauma and emergency care. The third time for this partisan approach is no charm. Republicans' mad dash to push through this proposal in this election year under the guise of reducing health care costs is a blatant attempt not to reduce health care costs, which we would all support, but to exploit their own political agenda. I remember the article last year in Washington Monthly, titled ``Malpractice Makes Perfect: How the GOP Milks a Phony Doctors' Insurance Crisis.'' This article was so good, it was nominated for a National Magazine Award. It shows how Republicans launched a sophisticated lobbying campaign with business interests to manipulate the medical malpractice debate and change it from one about medical errors and fair compensation, pitting one political constituency against another. I commend to my colleagues the article to which I referred from the Washington Monthly of October 1, 2003, by Stephanie Mencimer. Mr. President, the article points out clearly that even if we passed this legislation, insurance rates would not have come down. There is no one who with a straight face can say that if we pass this legislation, then insurance rates will come down. Insurance companies would not be spending so much money trying to get this passed if they thought so. Once again, Republicans have proposed a plan that would cap non- economic damages across the Nation at $250,000--whether you live in California, Ohio, Vermont, or anywhere else; no matter what the injury, that is the cap. The so-called medical malpractice reform debate too often ignores the men, women and children whose lives have been dramatically--and often permanently--altered by medical errors. I will give you a real-life example in my State of Vermont. On April 7, 2000, Diana Winn Levine had a severe migraine headache. That is something that has probably happened to most of us at one time or another. She went to a health center in Plainfield, VT. She was a musician. She received a painkiller and an injection of a mild sedative, Phenergan. This combination was injected into her artery rather than her vein, and resulting circulatory problems led to this musician having to have two amputation surgeries on her right arm. Ms. Levine sued the corporate giant, Wyeth, for improper instructions for using its drug, Phenergan. As she said: I never expected to sue anyone in my life; I'm not the suing type. Sometimes it takes something like this to make it known when a drug is not being used right. There was a full trial. I remember reading the account of the trial. When they went to swear Ms. Levine in for her testimony, the bailiff asked her to raise her right hand. Of course, she had no right hand. That jury in Vermont--and our juries are pretty careful--found that Ms. Levine deserved $2.4 million for her past and future medical expenses, and $5 million for the ``daily pain she does suffer and for the loss of enjoyment of her life.'' Of course, most of that would have been slashed by this legislation. Crowds of the children Ms. Levine had worked with on musical projects--children she'd brought joy to as a musician--sat in the courtroom of the Montpelier Superior Court. She said: That was the day they actually showed pictures of my dead hand . . . before amputation, with the gangrene. I worried about how the kids would react to my disfigurement. I told the mom to cover her eyes. But afterward she came up to me and said, ``We just didn't know what you have been through.'' Now, Wyeth, of course, was well represented. They had a team of six lawyers--two from Vermont and four from Washington, DC. They did, after all, have 2003 revenues of $15.8 billion and keep a $1.3 billion reserve fund because of the ongoing litigation over their diet drugs. Again I say: This musician would have been cut out entirely if the U.S. Senate were to overwrite the laws of our State. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article from the Burlington Free Press be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY. We know a lot of our health care system is in crisis. We know some of the giants of our health care system would probably like this legislation to go through so they can make higher profits. Much of our health care system is in crisis. That is what we ought to attack. Dramatically rising medical malpractice insurance rates are forcing some doctors to abandon their practices or to cross State lines to find more affordable situations. Patients who need care in high-risk specialties, such as obstetrics, and patients in areas already underserved by health care providers, such as many rural communities, are too often left without adequate care. But this bill does nothing to actually reduce medical malpractice insurance rates. Of course, each State has a different experience. Insurance remains largely a State-regulated industry because the States found that is the way it works best. But each State ought to look at and be left to solve their own unique problems. We should not tell their Governors and legislatures we are not going to let them solve their own problems because we will take it over for them. We don't have the kind of crisis in Vermont that others do. We have worked very well with our legislature, and we are still working hard to find answers, as other States have. You know, it is funny. We hear so many speeches that we want to get power out of Washington. We want States to be able to do what they want. We don't want Washington dictating everything. Well, not exactly. When you get some very wealthy contributors and very powerful PACs and say, Yes, but if you don't let Washington take care of our special interests, nobody will--suddenly it changes. This is an attempt to tally points on some election year political scoreboard for powerful special interests at the public's expense. I am looking at the big picture. Some States, such as my own, Vermont, while experiencing problems, do not face as great a crisis as others. Vermont's legislature is considering legislation to find the right answers for our State, and the same process is underway now in other States. In contrast, in States such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, and New Jersey, doctors have walked out of work in protest over the exorbitant rates being extracted from them by their insurance carriers. Instead of letting States find solutions that are best for their citizens, the Republicans prefer this attempt to tally points on some election year political scoreboard for powerful special interests, at the public's expense. Instead of looking at the big picture--at overly broad antitrust immunity, ways to reduce medical errors, and at other real issues that could make a real difference--the majority has chosen to coddle big insurance companies instead of to cure the problem. Instead of letting the States continue to find solutions that are best for their citizens, they would take a chainsaw to the legal rights of the American people and to the prerogatives of each of the 50 States we represent here in the United States Senate. Thoughful solutions to the situation will require creative thinking, a genuine effort to rectify the problem, and bipartisan consensus to achieve real reform. Unfortunately, these are not the characteristics of the bill before us. Indeed, S. 2207 is a partisan bill that was introduced only a few days ago without any committee consideration. Ignoring the central truth of this crisis--that it is a problem in the insurance industry, not the tort system--the majority has proposed a plan that would cap noneconomic damages across the Nation at $250,000 in medical malpractice cases. The notion that such a one-size-fits-all scheme is the answer runs counter to the factual experience of the States. Most importantly, the majority's proposal does nothing to protect true victims of medical malpractice and nothing to prevent malpractice in the first place. We are fortunate in this Nation to have many highly qualified medical professionals, and this is especially true in my own home State of Vermont. Unfortunately, good doctors sometimes make errors. It is also unfortunate that some not-so-good doctors manage to make their way into the health care system as well. While we must do all that we can to support the men and women who commit their professional lives to caring for others, we must also ensure that patients have access to adequate remedies should they receive inadequate care. High malpractice insurance premiums are not the direct result of malpractice lawsuit verdicts. They are the result of investment decisions by the insurance companies and of business models geared toward ever-increasing profits as well as the cyclical hardening of the liability insurance market. In cases where an insurer has made a bad investment, or has experienced the same disappointments from Wall Street that so many Americans have, it should not be able to recoup its losses from the doctors it insures. The insurance company should have to bear the burdens of its own business model, just as the other businesses in the economy do. And a nationwide arbitrary capping of awards available to victims--as the majority has proposed again and again--should not be the first and only solution turned to in a tough medical malpractice insurance market. The problem at hand deserves thoughtful and collaborative consideration in committee to achieve a sensible solution that is fair to patients and that supports our medical professionals in their ability to practice quality health care. One aspect of the insurance industry's business model requires a legislative correction: Its blanket exemption from Federal antitrust laws. Insurers have for years--too many years--enjoyed a benefit that is novel in our marketplace. The McCarran-Ferguson Act permits insurance companies to operate without being subject to most of the Federal antitrust laws, and our Nation's physicians and their patients have been the worse off for it. Using their exemption, insurers can collude to set rates, resulting in higher premiums than true competition would achieve--and because of this exemption, enforcement officials cannot investigate any such collusion. If Congress is serious about controlling rising premiums, we must objectively limit this overly broad exemption in the McCarran- Ferguson Act. More than a year ago, I introduced the ``Medical Malpractice Insurance Antitrust Act of 2003,'' S. 352. I want to thank Senators Reid, Kennedy, Durbin, Edwards, Rockefeller, Feingold, Boxer and Corzine for cosponsoring this essential and straightforward legislation. Our bill modifies the McCarran-Ferguson Act with respect to medical malpractice insurance, and only for the most pernicious antitrust offenses: price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations. Only those anticompetitive practices that most certainly will affect premiums are addressed. I am hard-pressed to imagine that anyone could object to a prohibition on insurance carriers' fixing prices or dividing territories. After all, the rest of our Nation's industries manage either to abide by these laws or pay the consequences. Many State insurance commissioners police the industry well within the power they are accorded in their own laws, and some States have antitrust laws of their own that could cover some anticompetitive activities in the insurance industry. Our legislation is a scalpel, not a chainsaw. It would not affect regulation of insurance by State insurance commissioners and other State regulators. But there is no reason to continue, unexamined, a system in which the Federal enforcers are precluded from prosecuting the most harmful antitrust violations just because they are committed by insurance companies. Our legislation is a carefully tailored solution to one critical aspect of the problem of excessive medical malpractice insurance rates. I had hoped for quick action by the Judiciary Committee and then by the full Senate to ensure that this important step on the road to genuine reform is taken before too much more damage is done to the physicians of this country and to the patients they care for. But our legislation to narrow this loophole in the Nation's anti-trust laws for medical malpractice insurers has languished for more than a year in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead of conducting hearings and a markup on our bill, the majority now rushes a ``tort reform'' agenda item to the floor without any committee consideration. If Congress is serious about controlling rising medical malpractice insurance premiums, then we must limit the broad exemption to Federal antitrust law and promote real competition in the insurance industry, as well as attack this problem at its core by reducing medical errors across our health care system. Unfortunately, the partisan bill before us is not designed for creating a solution to a serious problem. Instead, it is designed purely for politics, and that is not only a waste of the Senate's time and of the public's trust; it is also a shame. Overly broad antitrust immunity, which the insurance companies have, allows them to fix prices any way they want, whether it is justifiable or not. Antitrust immunity allows them to take their failed investments and try to make it up by charging doctors higher malpractice insurance. We ought to find ways to reduce medical errors. But the big thing is we end up coddling these insurance companies. We don't call them to task. We don't get them to say whether they are spending out this money on malpractice awards. Of course, they are not. A lot of their losses came because they speculated wrong in the stock market. Suddenly, we have to bail them out. Get rid of their antitrust immunity, something that makes no sense in today's day and age with conglomerates. Make them actually say what they base it on. You will find that they are not beginning to pay out the amounts their malpractice claims say they are. We are fortunate in this Nation to have so many highly qualified medical professionals. This is especially true in Vermont. But you have to know sometimes good doctors make mistakes, just as sometimes a good engineer will make a mistake. But it is also unfortunate that sometimes not-so-good doctors manage to make their way into the health care system. I think we should do all we can to support the men and women who commit their professional lives to caring for others, but we also ought to have some way of responding when somebody gets highly inadequate medical attention. When you have a case, as I said before, like the Levine case in Vermont, when you have somebody whose livelihood was playing musical instruments and they lose an arm because Wyeth Pharmaceuticals made a mistake, then there should be some way to respond. Under this legislation, they would not be able to. The bottom line is, we have a piece of legislation that is designed to be introduced not to improve the question of medical malpractice insurance, it is designed not to make hospitals safer, it is designed not to make patients safer, it is designed not to save money. It is designed to raise money. I guarantee you after the vote on this issue, all the fundraising letters will go out: Isn't it terrible, isn't it terrible, the Senate is standing in the way of much-needed malpractice reform? It will not say: There were some in the Senate who were willing to stand up and not let the Senate run roughshod over our State legislatures. It will not say: There are some in the Senate who were willing to stand up and say the insurance companies are not telling the truth on this issue. It will not say: Some in the Senate were saying the very powerful contributors to the Republican Party with their $1 million ads are wrong and somebody had to say no. It won't say that. But what it will say is the Senate would have wasted another week and a whole lot of fundraising letters will go out. Judicial Nominations

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the thought occurred to me, even though we have not done much here in the last few days, the last few months, or so, we see a number of people come to the floor and say we have to have immediate votes on the handful of the remaining judicial nominations. They say there is a handful out there we have to have. Interestingly, they are ignoring that 173 judges have already been confirmed, ignoring the fact that when Democrats were in control of the Senate we moved President Bush's judges through a lot faster than Republicans have. But I suppose if they talk enough about it, people will not realize the Republicans have moved far slower on President Bush's nominees than the Democrats did. But there is another point. What they are really saying is that we have to give $163,000 a year lifetime jobs to three of the most controversial judicial nominees submitted by President Bush. To hear them talk, one would think this is the number one priority on the part of the American people: is giving three judges--highly controversial, highly political, highly ideological--a lifetime job paying $150,000, $160,000, $170,000 a year. Frankly, I think a lot more people are worried about the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and the millions more who worry they are going to be the next victims of outsourcing. I think that is really what is on the mind of the American public, not three more highly paid lifetime judicial appointments. They are far more worried about the millions of Americans who are out of jobs, millions of Americans who are seeing their jobs go to India and everywhere else, and millions of American families where both mother and father bringing in paychecks are barely making the mortgage. They are not the ones getting the $160,000 a year lifetime jobs. For the public and for the Democratic Members of the Senate, our higher priorities right now have to do with the millions of Americans who are trying to find or keep their jobs. Our higher priorities have to do with securing adequate health care for the members of our National Guard and Reserves. Our priorities have to do with getting decent health care for our veterans and our service men and women who have brought the injuries home from service in Afghanistan and Iraq. To be charitable, these crocodile tears about judicial nominations are just a tad disingenuous. Let's review the record. The earlier Democratic-led Senate confirmed more Bush judicial nominees than the Republican-led Senate has. We confirmed 100 of the 173 Bush judicial nominees. Democrats actually did better for the President than the Republicans have. So 173 have been confirmed. Six of the most controversial have been blocked. Two of them have been unilaterally appointed by the President during Senate recesses. One has withdrawn to rejoin a lucrative job with a law firm. So three were blocked. I have never heard so many tears shed for these three. I don't see any tears shed for the millions of Americans out of work. I don't see any tears shed for the millions of Americans whose jobs are being outsourced, but one would think that, with these three, the whole Nation is collapsing. The irony is the same people coming down here to the floor and crying about these three, sobbing about these three, did not say one word when they blocked 61 of President Clinton's nominees. They blocked 61, and you would think the sky is falling because we stopped three. Oh, give me a break. Let's look at what they do not want to do. During the past two weeks, we have wasted so many hours in quorum calls and cloture votes to serve the Republican leadership's goal of avoiding votes on votes that will help American families. The Republican leadership is blocking a vote on raising the minimum wage. They are blocking a vote on extending unemployment benefits. They are blocking a vote on protecting people from the new overtime regulations of the Department of Labor. Why? During these past two wasted weeks, 687,000 more Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance, yet Republicans are only talking about three jobs. Give me a break. I suspect the reason they are talking about these three is because they do not want the American people to know they blocked unemployment benefits, they blocked raising minimum wage, they blocked protecting overtime compensation. These are the people who actually have to go out and pay their mortgages. These are the people who actually try to figure out how they are going to pay to send their children to school. These are the people who live from paycheck to paycheck. I say they blocked the Senate from extending unemployment benefits. According to figures recently released by the Labor Department, the unemployment rate held steady at 5.6 percent because hundreds of thousands of people stopped looking for work. They could not find work. This has left too many unemployed Americans without benefits for months. They call it an economic recovery. It is a jobless economic recovery if it is an economic recovery at all because millions of Americans still cannot find jobs. Our law gives them 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, and up until the last day of 2003, if you were still looking for a job, our law would offer a 13-week extension. We tried to make a 13-week extension. Can we do it? No. Do you know why? Because the Republican leadership will not even allow us to vote on it. Are they afraid that maybe some of their own Members might now be feeling more compassion for these millions of Americans who are out of work than they do for three lifetime appointments? Which priorities are they serving? Apparently not most working Americans. They would not even allow a vote on the Cantwell amendment. Then we tried to raise the minimum wage. Why now? The last minimum wage was signed into law by President Clinton almost eight years ago. While they are caterwauling about a $160,000 lifetime job for three nominees, do they really believe that families could meet their basic needs on a minimum wage of just $5.15 an hour? The people who are making $5.15 an hour are real Americans, and the Republicans will not even allow us to vote for the first time in eight years to raise the minimum wage. The purchasing power of today's minimum wage is already below that of the minimum wage before 1996. To save the same purchasing power as it had in 1968, the minimum wage would need to be $8. Even in Vermont, where our state leaders have helped working Vermonters earn wages that are somewhat more livable, the minimum wage is still worth less than it was 35 years ago. More people are out of work, underemployed, and struggling to keep roofs over their family's heads and food on the table than at any time since the administration of Herbert Hoover. Today there are more economic pressures squeezing them, with health care costs becoming unaffordable and gasoline prices reaching the highest level in my age. Despite the millions of American families with children who would directly benefit from a raise in the Federal minimum wage, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on the Boxer-Kennedy amendment to the welfare bill that would raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour in three steps over a 2-year period. The Republican leadership is also blocking the Senate from making sure hard-working Americans are fairly compensated for working overtime. The Bush administration will soon be releasing final regulations changing the Federal rules on overtime pay. They will cut eight million middle-class Americans out of the ability to earn overtime pay. We give tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks to the people who go to these large fundraisers, but we take away overtime for eight million Americans who are barely making it? In fact, the regulations are so slanted against American workers that they will include a list of cost-cutting suggestions for big businesses to show them precisely how they can avoid paying overtime compensation to workers not singled out in the rules. Bipartisan majorities in both the Senate and in the other body oppose what the Bush administration wants to do in taking away overtime pay from eight million Americans, but this year the President threatened to veto the Omnibus appropriations bill if it included provisions to overturn the overtime regulations. After all, too many people who attend these large fundraisers have been told we will find a way for them to take those eight million workers off the overtime rolls. And unfortunately the Republican leadership in this and the other body said, yes, Mr. President, if you want to take those eight million off, we will go along with you, we will take them off. Of course, we want to have another vote, a vote on the Harkin amendment, to express our disapproval of the labor regulations, either vote it up or down. After all, the Republicans are in the majority in this body. If they want to approve of the move of the administration of President Bush to deny overtime pay to eight million Americans, then they can vote and say they agree with it. We want a vote one way or the other, but they will not allow the vote. They are blocking that vote. So I think we ought to talk about real people, people who live from paycheck to paycheck. We ought to talk about the votes that are being blocked to extend unemployment insurance, the votes that are being blocked to raise the minimum wage, the votes that are being blocked that might allow them to collect overtime pay for overtime work. One can imagine in the corporate boardroom they suddenly say, wait a minute, we could just have somebody work another 20 hours and we do not have to pay any overtime, we do not have to hire extra people, man, this is wonderful for us. And they can talk about it when they go out to the golf club. We ought to ask, where are the priorities of the American people? Where are the Democratic priorities in the Senate? Where are the Republican priorities in the Senate? Should our top priority be right now to find good six-figure jobs for a handful of the President's most controversial activist judicial nominees, or should we give our time and attention to the millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck who need help, the eight million Americans who are suddenly going to find they cannot earn overtime pay, and millions of Americans who have not had a raise in the minimum wage for eight years? I think the priorities of the Democratic Members of the Senate are the people's priorities. Unfortunately, the priorities of my friends on the other side seem to be the priorities of the very privileged few. I yield the floor, and suggest the absence of a quorum.