Patrick Leahy

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. With today's vote, the Senate will confirm its 11th judge to our Federal Courts of Appeals and our 59th judicial nominee since the change in Senate majority little more than one year ago. The Senate confirmed the first Court of Appeals judge nominated by President Bush on July 20 last year and now, less than one year later we are confirming the 11th. That is almost one per month. By contrast, the Republican majority that preceded us averaged seven Court of Appeals confirmations every 12 months. During an entire session of Congress, 1996, the Republican majority allowed no circuit court nominees to be confirmed, not one. The Republican majority confirmed 46 Court of Appeals judges in 78 months. While they were in the majority vacancies on the Courts of Appeals more than doubled, going from 16 to 33. Since the change in majority the numbers are going in the right direction--vacancies are going down and confirmations have significantly increased. We would be doing even better with a little cooperation from the Administration and the Republican leadership, which created roadblocks to the consideration of all judicial nominations by the full Senate since May. The nominee voted on today, Richard Clifton, was one of the 78 nominees to receive a hearing in the first year since the reorganization of the Judiciary Committee on July 10, 2001. In that period, we held more hearings for more circuit court nominees than in any of the prior six years of Republican control. In fact, we have had hearings for more judicial nominees in the past year than in 20 of the last 22 years under Republican or Democratic presidents. Those who wish to paint the Senate as obstructionist ignore the facts and the fair treatment by the Senate of President Bush's judicial nominees. They focus instead on the most controversial nominees who do take more time, rather than the vast majority who have received hearings and been confirmed in bipartisan votes of the Senate. They would rather use misleading percentage calculations that obscure the fact that the Democratic-led Senate is considering President George Bush's nominees at one of the fastest paces in recent history. I commend Senators Inouye and Akaka for the statesmanship they have shown in connection with this nomination. I remember very well their important efforts to establish the Hawaii seat on the Ninth Circuit and to try to fill it with a qualified nominee. I voted with them and supported their effort to ensure that every State, even States as small as Hawaii and Vermont, are represented on our Courts of Appeals. I recall the saga of the nomination of James Duffy to fill the Hawaii seat on the Ninth Circuit, how hard they worked to find a consensus nominee and how that nomination was stalled for years. Despite the ``Well Qualified'' rating he received from the ABA and the strong support of both his home-state Senators, Mr. Duffy never received a hearing or a vote. He was nominated at the beginning of 1999 and remained pending for over two full years until it was withdrawn by President Bush in March 2001 without any Senate action of any kind. Despite that recent history, the Hawaii Senators support Mr. Clifton for that same vacancy. In contrast to the treatment that Mr. Duffy received, Mr. Clifton's nomination was scheduled for a hearing less than 60 days after his file and paperwork were completed. Mr. Duffy waited 791 days and never got a hearing. When partisan critics charge Democrats with tit-for-tat and seeking revenge, they ignore the facts. The confirmation of Richard Clifton is another example of Democrats treating President Bush's judicial nominees far better than Republicans treated President Clinton's. Today's vote on Mr. Clifton's nomination should provide some relief to the Ninth Circuit, which has four vacancies that have been classified as ``judicial emergency'' vacancies by the U.S. Courts. Two of those vacancies are more than five years old. They date back to 1996 and 1997, and there were two outstanding nominees to those seats. I have mentioned the nomination of James Duffy. The other nominee was Barry Goode of California, whose nomination also languished for years without ever getting a hearing or a vote. When Barry Goode was first nominated to a Ninth Circuit vacancy in 1998 it was already a judicial emergency. Both of his home-state Senators supported the nomination but the Republican leadership refused to act. Mr. Goode was nominated not once, not twice, but three times to the Ninth Circuit and he never was given the courtesy of a hearing or a vote during almost 1,000 days (998 days). In March of 2001, President Bush withdrew Mr. Goode's nomination but he has not nominated anyone to this judicial emergency vacancy. It remains one of a number of judicial emergency vacancies for which there is no nominee and one of the 43 judicial vacancies for which there is no nominee. The Ninth Circuit vacancies are a prime and unfortunate legacy of the partisan obstructionist practices during the Republican control of the Senate. Some are now complaining that a few nominees are waiting a year for hearing. Even though the anniversary of the reorganized Judiciary Committee with a Democratic majority was July 10, and we have already held hearings for 16 Court of Appeals nominees among the 78 total judicial nominees who had hearings in our first year. I also recall how all confirmations to the Ninth Circuit from California were stalled by the demands of a Republican Senator not from that State to be given the ability to name a Court of Appeals judge from his State. With the support of the Republican leadership in the Senate, that Republican Senator succeeded in getting President Clinton to accord him that prerogative in order to break that logjam. Just as the May 9th hearing on Mr. Clifton's nomination was the first hearing on a Ninth Circuit nominee in two years, earlier this year we had the first hearing for a Sixth Circuit nominee, Judge Gibbons, in almost five years. Similarly, the hearing we held on the nomination of Judge Edith Clement to the Fifth Circuit last year was the first on a Fifth Circuit nominee in seven years and she was the first new appellate judge confirmed to that Court in six years. When we held a hearing on the nomination of Judge Harris Hartz to the Tenth Circuit last year, it was the first hearing on a Tenth Circuit nominee in six years and he was the first new appellate judge confirmed to that Court in six years. When we held the hearing on the nomination of Judge Roger Gregory to the Fourth Circuit last year, it was the first hearing on a Fourth Circuit nominee in three years and he was the first appellate judge confirmed to that court in three years. Large numbers of vacancies continue to exist on many Courts of Appeals, in large measure because the recent Republican majority was not willing to hold hearings or vote on more than half--56 percent--of President Clinton's Courts of Appeals nominees in 1999 and 2000 and was not willing to confirm a single judge to the Courts of Appeals during the entire 1996 session. Democrats have broken with that recent history of inaction. I would like to commend in particular the Senators from Hawaii and also the members of the Judiciary Committee for their efforts to consider scores of judicial nominees for whom we have held hearings and on whom we have had votes during the last several months.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, due to time constraints, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, estimate was not included in the report to accompany S. 2621, an act to provide a definition of vehicle for purposes of criminal penalties relating to terrorist attacks and other acts of violence against mass transportation systems. The report is now available and, therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the attached CBO estimate be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, ``Lavenski Smith is a young Arkansas political appointee, who has had a total of 7 years experience practicing law, has had minimal Federal experience, minimal appellate experience, and no experience at all arguing in front of the Federal Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to which he has been nominated. He is nominated to the judgeship held by Judge Richard Arnold, one of the most distinguished judges ever to serve on the 8th Circuit. Mr. Smith served a brief term on the Arkansas Supreme Court, after being appointed by the Governor and before running for election to a lower State court judicial vacancy and losing. He also spent several years as the volunteer executive director of the Arkansas chapter of the Rutherford Institute, an organization devoted to, among other things, doing away with a woman's constitutional right to choose, and supporting efforts against Governor, and then President, Bill Clinton.'' The following is what the Arkansas Times had to say about Mr. Smith's qualifications: Lavenski Smith of Little Rock is not the best-qualified Arkansan President Bush could have chosen for the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, nor even close. Marginally acceptable, if that, Smith was nominated by Bush, on the recommendation of Senator Tim Hutchinson, because Smith is racially, ideologically and politically correct--a black conservative Republican, avidly anti-abortion and anti- Clinton, whose nomination will, it is hoped, aid Hutchinson's re-election effort. Not much there to suggest a distinguished judicial career. Still, there are worse things than mediocrity, and Bush has nominated them, too. It is difficult to vote in favor of a nominee to a lifetime appointment on a Federal appellate court with this kind of record, but he is supported by both of his home-State Senators. Senator Blanche Lincoln worked hard to be sure that Mr. Smith was included in a hearing earlier this year and she supports his nomination. Based on Senator Lincoln's confidence in this nominee's ability to do the job and based on the nominee's assurances that he will not seek to impose his personal views in his legal decisions, I have reluctantly decided to vote in favor of this nomination. Smith seems like an honorable person, and despite his political views and political activism, I am hopeful that he will be a person of his word: that he will follow the law and not seek out opportunities to overturn precedent or decide cases in accord with his private beliefs rather than his obligations as a judge. This is one of 17 nominations that have been reported by the Judiciary Committee to the Senate but were stalled for the last 2 months. In addition, nearly two dozen Executive Branch nominees reported by the Judiciary Committee are also awaiting action. The delay in final Senate action on these nominees has been due to the failure of the administration to fulfill its responsibility to work with the Senate in the naming of members of bipartisan boards and commissions. Last week I congratulated the majority leader for overcoming this impediment and for his patience and determination in achieving some movement on these matters. I understand that he hopes to be able to resume voting on judicial nominations once cloture is achieved on the Smith nomination today. Democrats are taking extraordinary efforts to overcome impediments to action on nominations. Had the administration not caused this delay, and had Republican Senators not placed ``holds'' over the last several months, I am confident that the Senate would have confirmed more than 70 judicial nominees by now. We were able to overcome the other obstacles created by the administration and proceed to confirm 57 judicial nominees in our first 10 months in the majority, a record outpacing any Republican total in any 10-month period in which they held the majority. We have also addressed long-standing vacancies on circuit courts caused by Republican obstruction of President Clinton's judicial nominees. We held the first hearing for a Fifth Circuit nominee in 7 years, the first hearings for Sixth Circuit nominees in almost 5 years, the first hearing for a Tenth Circuit nominee in 6 years, and the first hearings for Fourth Circuit nominees in 3 years. We have reformed the process for considering judicial nominees. For example, we have ended the practice of anonymous holds that plagued the period of Republican control, when any Republican Senator could hold any nominee from his home State, his own circuit or any part of the country for any reason, or no reason, without any accountability. We have returned to the Democratic tradition of holding regular hearings, every few weeks, rather than going for months without a single hearing. With a positive vote on the nomination of Lavenski Smith, the Senate will have confirmed its 10th Court of Appeals nominee of President Bush since the reorganization of the Senate Judiciary Committee a year ago, on July 10, 2001. During their recent 6\1/2\ years of majority control, Republicans averaged seven Court of Appeals confirmations a year. The Democratic-led Judiciary Committee has had a record-breaking first year fairly and promptly considering President Bush's nominees, which I detailed last Friday. For example, in 1 year, we have held hearings for 78 of the President's nominees. That is more hearings for this President's district and circuit court nominees than in 20 of the past 22 years. Under Democratic leadership, the Senate confirmed more circuit and district court judges, 57, than were confirmed during all 12 months in each of 2000, 1999, 1997, 1996, and 1995, 5 of the prior 6 years of Republican control of the Senate. The Judiciary Committee has since last July voted on 15 circuit court nominees. In our first year, we held more hearings for more of President Bush's circuit court nominees than in the first year of any of the past three Presidents. More of President Bush's nominees have also been given committee votes than in the first year of any of the past three Presidents. Unfortunately, one-sixth of President Clinton's judicial nominees-- more than 50--never got a committee hearing and committee vote from the Republican majority, which perpetuated longstanding vacancies into this year. If the Republicans had not left more than 50 of President Clinton's nominees without a hearing or a vote, the current number of vacancies might be closer to 40 than 90. In addition, large numbers of vacancies continue to exist on many Courts of Appeals, in large measure because the recent Republican majority was not willing to hold hearings or vote on more than half--56 percent--of President Clinton's Courts of Appeals nominees in 1999 and 2000 and was not willing to confirm a single judge to the Courts of Appeals during the entire 1996 session. From the time the Republicans took over majority control of the Senate in 1995 until the reorganization of the Committee last July, circuit vacancies increased from 16 to 33, more than doubling. Democrats have broken with that recent history of inaction. During our first year in control of the Judiciary Committee, we held 16 hearings for circuit court nominees. That is almost the same number of circuit court nominees, 17, who were never given a Committee vote by Republicans in 2000. Democrats are working hard to reduce judicial vacancies and we have moved quickly on these nominees, as well as many, many others. I have noted that we could have been even more productive with a little cooperation from the White House, but that has not been forthcoming. Moreover, of the current vacancies, more than half do not have a nominee. We are almost out of district court nominees ready to be included at hearings, because the President has been so slow to nominate district court nominees and insists on delaying the ABA peer review process until after the nominations are made. Today's vote on the nomination of Lavenski Smith to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is the third Eighth Circuit nominee the committee has considered in the past year. This is in sharp contrast to the treatment of Eighth Circuit nominee Bonnie Campbell by Republicans. Ms. Campbell is now a partner at the distinguished Washington law firm of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, where she acts as an adviser, negotiator, advocate, and litigator, representing employers in personnel, labor relations, employment discrimination, benefits, and other employment-related matters. A graduate of Drake University and Drake's law school, Ms. Campbell has an outstanding record of public service. She was nominated by President Clinton early in 2000 to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She was supported by both of her Senators, Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Chuck Grassley, given a ``Qualified'' rating by the ABA, and afforded a hearing before the Judiciary Committee a few months later, in May of 2000. However, despite a noncontroversial hearing, Ms. Campbell was never scheduled for a committee vote. No explanation for this failure to give her a vote was ever given, and her nomination was eventually returned at the end of the 106th Congress. Other individuals nominated after Ms. Campbell were given committee hearings and votes and were confirmed later that year, while Ms. Campbell's nomination languished. She seems to have been the victim of the Republican practice of anonymous, indefinite holds. In January of 2001, President Clinton re- nominated Ms. Campbell, but President Bush failed to seize the opportunity for bipartisanship, and withdrew her nomination shortly thereafter. At the time of her nomination Ms. Campbell was nearing the end of a distinguished term at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served as Director of the Violence Against Women Office, a position to which she was appointed by President Clinton in 1995. In that capacity, she oversaw a $1.6 billion program to provide funding to States to strengthen their efforts in the areas of domestic violence and sexual abuse. She also directed the Federal Government's efforts to implement the new criminal statutes created by the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. Ms. Campbell oversaw the Justice Department's efforts to combine tough new Federal criminal laws with assistance to states and localities to fight against violence against women. Bonnie Campbell had, before coming to Washington, served as the Attorney General of Iowa, the first woman ever elected to that position. During her tenure in office, she was instrumental in pushing the State legislature to strengthen Iowa's domestic abuse statute, and in 1992 she authored one of the Nation's first anti-stalking laws. In 1997 Bonnie Campbell was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential people in America. Ms. Campbell's record of distinguished public service and her experience in private practice combined to make an excellent nominee to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a fact with which both of her Senators obviously agreed. Yet once afforded a hearing, Bonnie Campbell was left to linger in an indefensible limbo. She was not granted a committee vote, but neither was she confronted with any objections to her nomination to the Eighth Circuit proceeding. Contrasting the treatment of the nominations of Bonnie Campbell and Lavenski Smith to the Eighth Circuit evidences the difference in how the Republican majority and the current Democratic majority have handled judicial nominations and highlights the fairness that has been restored to the confirmation process.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to compliment the majority leader for turning to the Sarbanes bill and the issue of corporate responsibility. I also want to thank Chairman Sarbanes for his leadership on the impressive bill that he has produced in the Banking Committee. So many times all that the public hears about Congress is about turf and partisanship. This comprehensive reform effort disproves those claims. Thanks to the leadership of the Majority Leader and Senator Sarbanes, the bill that we are about to vote on is a tough, comprehensive reform package that enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Senate. It brought together the best ideas from many Senators, from many Committees, and from both parties. From my standpoint, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, this has been an opportunity to benefit once again from the wonderful partnership that we have forged between the Banking Committee and the Judiciary Committee. After September 11, our two Committees worked together to write the anti terrorism provisions of the USA Patriot Act that dealt with money laundering. Here, with the 97-0 vote to adopt of the provisions of the Corporate and Criminal Fraud and Accountability Act, as a Leahy-McCain amendment to this bill, Senator Sarbanes and I have again united the forces and expertise of our Committees. This time we have done so to craft comprehensive laws to deal with financial wrongdoing, and again done so with bipartisan support in both Committees. I think that the final product is better and more complete because of our joint work. Thank you Chairman Sarbanes. But the joint effort did not stop with Senator Sarbanes and myself. Senators Biden, Hatch and the Minority Leader offered provisions that were also adopted by the Senate, adding aspects of the President's recent proposal. That is an impressive show of bipartisanship because those proposals were only made after the Senate had already begun debate on this bill. Despite the White House's refusal to help us shape our more comprehensive proposal, we did not hesitate to include the President's suggestions in our final product. The bill was further perfected by Senator Edwards' thoughtful amendment dealing with the conduct of corporate attorneys. Once again, we were able to draw on the expertise of a particular Senator to enlist the help of lawyers in stopping corporate fraud, not designing it. In short, we started with a fine bill from Senator Sarbanes, and have strengthened even further, never losing our strong bipartisan support. We need to remind ourselves of the underlying reasons for the bipartisan support behind these measures. Enron brought it to light, but it goes deeper. It's about a basic fairness and equity that transcends party lines. It's about rewarding people who play by the rules and punishing people who don't. It's about the basic American ideal of treating all people equally under the law. We cannot have a system where a pickpocket who steals $50 faces more jail time than a CEO who steals $50 million. The integrity of our financial system depends on accountability. The mounting scandals and declining stock market have damaged the integrity of our public markets and we must restore it. I was proud that the Judiciary Committee, joined by the Majority Leader and a bipartisan group of Senators including Senator McCain and others was able to make such an important contribution to this effort by contributing the provisions of S. 2010, the ``Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act,'' as it was unanimously reported out of the Judiciary Committee in April, as an amendment to the Sarbanes bill. Both in Committee in April and again last week on the floor, not a single Senator from either party has voted against the provisions of the Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act. We worked hard to reach across party lines on this measure, and I hope that the House of Representatives acknowledges that fact. I was glad to see in last Friday's newspapers that Speaker Hastert also endorsed the joint Sarbanes-Leahy measure after its adoption. I hope that the President can follow the leadership of Speaker Hastert and support the Senate measure as this bill moves forward. Recent events have served as a stark reminder that we need to reexamine our laws to make sure that they reflect our important and shared values of honesty and accountability. Enron has become a symbol for the torrent of corporate fraud scandals that have hit the front pages and battered our financial markets. Tyco, Xerox, WorldCom, Adelphia, Global Crossings, the list goes on. The things that happened at Enron did not happen by mistake. They were not the result of one or two ``bad apples.'' Senior management at Enron, assisted by an army of accountants and lawyers spun an intricate web of deceit. They engaged in a systematic fraud that allowed them to secretly take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the company. This kind of fraud is not the work of a lone fraud artist. Rather, it is symptomatic of a corporate culture where greed has been inflated and honesty devalued. Unfortunately, as I have said and as the experts warned at our February 6 hearing, Enron does not appear to have been alone. Each week we read of corporation after corporation that has engaged in misconduct, and these are not small or marginal corporations. These are major mainstays of corporate America. The web of deceit woven by such publicly traded companies ensnares and victimizes the entire investing public who depend on the transparency and integrity of our markets for everything from their retirement nest eggs to their children's college funds. That is why this comprehensive reform is urgently needed to restore accountability in our markets. The Leahy-McCain amendment to the Sarbanes bill, approved 97-0 by the Senate, provided important provisions to ensure just such accountability. The Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act which I authored provides tough new criminal penalties to restore accountability and transparency in our markets. It accomplishes this in three ways: punishing criminals who commit fraud, preserving evidence to prove fraud, and protecting victims of fraud. Here are some of its major provisions as adopted by the unanimous Judiciary Committee in April and the unanimous Senate last week: It establishes a new crime of securities fraud, with a tough ten year jail sentence. It breaks the ``corporate code of silence'' by providing, for the first time, federal protection for corporate whistleblowers who report fraud to the authorities or testify at trial. It closes loopholes and toughens penalties for shredding documents as we learned had occurred at Arthur Andersen. It requires audit documents to be preserved for 5 years and provides tough criminal penalties for their destruction. It protects victims the right to recoup their losses by preventing fraud artists from hiding in bankruptcy or concealing their crime and using an unfair statute of limitations to hide. With these bipartisan provisions and others incorporated, this bill we have produced is truly a comprehensive measure. It tightens regulation of corporate misconduct, but it now also provides an important deterrent to fraud artists. This bill is going to send wrongdoers to jail and save documents from the shredder, which sends a powerful and clear message to potential corporate wrongdoers ``dont do it.'' As a former prosecutor, I have discovered that nothing focuses attention to morality like the prospect of a long prison sentence. In the Senate, as we have been debating and shaping specific and comprehensive reform proposals, we had been trying for months unsuccessfully to get the President's support. The Administration had stayed on the sidelines during this important debate . For whatever reason, perhaps the mounting scandals or the declining market, the President decided last week to speak out against corporate fraud. He spoke again today on our economy. I welcome his participation and hope that he will follow up his speeches by supporting real reform. It is amazing to me that with such broad bipartisan support and now on the verge of Senate passage, that the Administration has still not given a clear statement supporting the bill on which we are now about to vote. Although I now understand that a White House official reportedly said that they agreed with the ``goals'' of this reform bill, I was disappointed that the President has not yet voiced his support for this bipartisan measure about to pass the Senate. Supporting the ``goals'' is a good first step but it is nonetheless a baby step. I read in the paper last week that the President does not want to ``tip his hand.'' This is not a game of poker, however. This is the time for Presidential leadership with the integrity of our markets at stake. When there are specific proposals passing the U.S. Senate by an overwhelming majority of Senators from both parties and the Speaker of the House is supporting the measures as well one wonders what it will take for the President to express his opinion. For those of us in the Senate, like myself, Senator Sarbanes, Senator McCain, Majority Leader Daschle, and others who have worked hard to come up with specific and bipartisan reform proposals, the ``goals'' have been clear for a long time. It is now time for comprehensive action. While the President's proposal was short on details, some of it did sound familiar to those of us on the Judiciary Committee. Three of the President's proposals are found in S. 2010, the Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act, which we adopted 97-0 in the Senate: One, The President advocates for strengthening the laws punishing document shredding and obstruction of justice. That is in our bill. Two, The President wants the Sentencing Commission to raise penalties for corporate misconduct. That is in our bill. Three, The President wants the Sentencing Commission to raise the penalties for the existing fraud laws. That is in our bill as well. I am glad the President adopted three proposals from my bill, even if he will only say that he supports the `` goals.'' As I said, we were also quick to write up his ideas into concrete proposals and include them in our bill. Unfortunately, the President's proposal failed to include many of the important provisions in the bipartisan Leahy amendment. It fails to create a new crime to punish securities fraud to directly punish corporate wrongdoers. It fails to provide whistleblowers with protection that will break the corporate code of silence. Remember, you can put whatever criminal laws you want on the books but unless there are witnesses who are not scared to help prosecutors prove what happened no one will be held accountable. It fails to protect victims of fraud by allowing them to recover their losses from a fraud artist who declares bankruptcy. It fails to establish a realistic statute of limitations to allow victims to recoup their losses when a fraud artist can manage to conceal his crimes for long enough, a change that has received strong bipartisan support dating back to the SEC under former President Bush. As I said, I was glad to hear the President finally join this reform debate. Now is not the time, though, for half measures. We need comprehensive action. We were glad to include the President's proposals in the Senate bill, but we unanimously agreed to more comprehensive reform, including the Leahy bill. Now I hope that the President will support such comprehensive reform as is found in this bill. I hope that his rhetoric is backed by action and that his generalities are backed with specifics. Speaker Hastert has now publicly supported the Sarbanes bill and the Leahy amendment. I hope that the President will support the bill's provisions as it moves forward to conference and will appeal to other Republican House members not to water it down. That will be the true test of his resolve to restore accountability to our markets. It is time for action, comprehensive action that will restore confidence and accountability in our public markets. The Sarbanes bill, including the unanimously approved Leahy-McCain amendment incorporating the Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act, provides just such action. Let's pass this comprehensive bill and send the President a strong measure to sign into law. Congress must act to restore integrity in our capital markets to strengthen our economy.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this week marks the first anniversary of the reorganization of the Senate Judiciary Committee following the change in majority last year. This past year has been a busy one for our committee . Just this week the Senate adopted as an amendment to the accounting reform and investor protection bill the text of S. 2010, the Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act. That is a bill we reported in May after committee action in February and April. The Senate also acted on important amendments offered by Senator Biden, Senator Hatch, and Senator Edwards to that bill and many members of this committee have made important contributions to improve these measures over the last several months. In the days and months following the terrorist attacks on September 11, members of this committee led the Senate in its responses leading to enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, the Terrorist Bombings Convention Implementation Act, and the Mychal Judge Police and Fire Chaplains Public Safety Officers' Benefit Act. The committee also reported a number of resolutions to honor the victims of those attacks with the Public Safety Medal of Valor and the Law Enforcement Tribute Act, S. 2431. We continue to work on important matters for victims of terrorism. We have reported a number of other law enforcement related measures including the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention and Treatment Act, S. 304; the Federal Judiciary Protection Act, S. 1099; the National Child Protection Improvement Act, S. 1868; the Safe Explosives Act, S. 1956; the National Cyber Security Defense Team Authorization Act, S. 1989; a bill clarifying the definition of ``vehicle,'' S. 2621; and an annual authorization for the Department of Justice, S. 1319 and its House counterpart H.R. 2215. The committee reported the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, S. 625, which is an important hate crimes bill; and the COPS Reauthorization Act, S. 924, which extends the highly successful COPS Program. We have also reported legislation on identity theft, such as the Social Security Number Misuse Prevention Act, S. 848, and the Restore Your Identity Act, S. 1742. In addition, we have reported a number of measures to improve competitive business conditions and protect consumers, such as the Drug Competition Act, S. 754; the Motor Vehicle Franchise Contract Arbitration Fairness Act, S. 1140; and the Product Packaging Protection Act, S. 1233. We have acted on important intellectual property legislation, such as the Madrid Protocol Implementation Act, S. 407; the TEACH Act, S. 487; and the Patent and Trademark Office Authorization Act, S. 1754, as well as related House measures H.R. 1866 and H.R. 1886. We have reported and worked on a number of immigration matters, including the Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act, S. 864; the Child Status Protection Act, S. 672, and its House counterpart, H.R. 1209; a bill for children of Vietnamese refugees, H.R. 1840; bills to provide work authorization for spouses, H.R. 2277 and H.R. 2278; and others. Among our most important work has been our aggressive oversight efforts involving the Department of Justice, the FBI, the INS, and the Civil Rights Division. Our oversight efforts have already led to the committee's reporting a bipartisan FBI Reform Act, S. 1974, which is awaiting Senate action. This week the committee finally began its consideration of a most important legislative initiative we began years ago, the Innocence Protection Act, S. 486. All in all, in our first year we reported 80 legislative matters and over 250 Presidential nominations to the Senate. We have held more than 100 hearings during our first tumultuous year. We have had a record year in considering this President's nominees. Partisans have perpetuated an untrue and unfortunate myth that the Democratic-led Senate and Judiciary Committee have blocked the President's nominees. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Democratic-led Judiciary Committee has had a recordbreaking year fairly and promptly considering President Bush's nominees. In addition to the dozens of high-ranking Justice Department officials for whom we held hearings, and our work in connection with more than 180 executive branch nominees the committee reported, we have had a record year with respect to judicial nominees. In this, our first year, we held hearings for 78 of the President's nominees. That is more hearings for this President's district and circuit court nominees than ever held in any of the 6\1/2\ years that preceded the change in majority last summer. In particular, we held more hearings for more of President Bush's circuit court nominees, 16, than in any of the 6\1/2\ years in which the Republicans controlled the committee before the change in majority last summer. For that matter, we held twice as many hearings for court of appeals nominees than were held in the first year of the Reagan administration when the Senate was controlled by Republicans and five times more than in the first year of the Clinton administration when the Senate was controlled by Democrats. Those are the facts. Under Democratic leadership, this Committee in its first year also voted on more judicial nominees, 74, than in any of the 6\1/2\ years of Republican control that preceded the change in majority. We voted on almost twice as many circuit court nominees, 15, than the Republican majority averaged in the years they were in control. In fact, this last year we voted on more nominees than were voted on in 1999 and 2000 combined and on more circuit court nominees than the Republicans allowed during 1996 and 1997 combined. And the committee voted on an additional court of appeals nominee yesterday. We have achieved what we said we would by treating President Bush's nominees more fairly and more expeditiously than President Clinton's nominees were treated by Republicans. By many measures the Senate Judiciary Committee has achieved almost twice as much this last year as Republicans averaged during their years in control. The Senate has confirmed more circuit and district court judges, 57, than were confirmed during 2000, 1999, 1997, 1996, and 1995, 5 of the prior 6 years of Republican control of the Senate. Republicans averaged 38 confirmations a year. By contrast the Democratic Senate achieved 57 judicial confirmations in our first 10 months, before the Administration's obstructionism stalled Senate floor actions on nominations for more than 2 months. There are another 17 judicial nominees on the Senate Executive Calendar. The delay in the votes on these nominees has been due to the delay in the administration's fulfilling its responsibility to work with the Senate in the naming of members of bipartisan boards and commissions. I congratulate the majority leader for overcoming this impediment and for his patience and determination in achieving some movement on these matters. I understand that he hopes to be able to resume voting on judicial nominations as soon as next Monday. Had the administration not caused this delay, I am confident that the Senate would have confirmed more than 70 judicial nominations before the end of this week and far outdistanced any Republican total for any preceding year. Nonetheless, we were able to overcome the other obstacles created by the administration and proceed to confirm 57 circuit and district court nominees in our first 10 months in the majority, a record outpacing any Republican total in any 10-month period in which they held the majority. We have also addressed longstanding vacancies on circuit courts caused by Republican obstruction of President Clinton's judicial nominees. We held the first hearing for a Fifth Circuit nominee in 7 years, the first hearings for Sixth Circuit nominees in almost 5 years, the first hearing for a Tenth Circuit nominee in 6 years, and the first hearings for Fourth Circuit nominees in 3 years. We have reformed the process for considering judicial nominees. For example, we have ended the practice of anonymous holds that plagued the period of Republican control, when any Republican Senator could hold any nominee from his home State, his own circuit or any part of the country for any reason, or no reason, without any acknowledgment or accountability. We have returned to the Democratic tradition of holding regular hearings, every few weeks, rather than going for months without a single hearing. It would certainly have been easier and less work to retaliate for the unfair treatment of the last President's judicial nominees. We did not. We have been, and will continue to be, more fair than the Republican majority was to President Clinton's judicial nominees. More than 50 of Clinton's nominees never got a vote; many languished for months and years before they were returned without a hearing. Others waited years--not just a year, but up to more than 4 years to be confirmed. Some never were accorded a hearing, some were finally confirmed after years of delay. Those who now seek to pretend that the Democratic majority in the Senate caused a vacancy crisis in the Federal courts are ignoring the facts. Under Republicans, court vacancies rose from 63 in January 1995 to 110 in July 2001, when the committee reorganized. During Republican control before the reorganization of the committee, vacancies on the courts of appeals more than doubled, increasing from 16 to 33. That is what we inherited. But in 1 year of Democratic control, and despite 45 additional vacancies caused largely by the retirements of many past Republican appointees, we have reduced the number of district and circuit court vacancies. Vacancies continue to exist on the court of appeals, in particular, because a Republican Senate majority was not willing to hold hearings or vote on more than half--56 percent--of President Clinton's circuit nominees in 1999 and 2000, and was not willing to confirm a single circuit judge during the entire 1996 session. Republicans caused the circuit vacancy crisis, and it has taken a tremendous effort to evaluate and have hearings for 16 circuit court nominees in less than a year. We are hard at work evaluating the records of the few remaining nominees who have not yet had hearings. While we have moved as quickly as possible to evaluate all of the nominees, the Senate is not, and should not be, a rubber stamp. If this President is successful in filling all of the vacancies he inherited due to Republican obstruction as well as the new vacancies that have arisen on the circuits, Republican appointees will constitute the majority, and often a two- thirds majority, on 11 of the 13 appellate courts below the Supreme Court. Such a takeover would affect the next 20 years of judicial decisions coming from the courts of appeal. The President and his advisers know this and, aside from the few relatively moderate nominees we have been able to confirm quickly, they have also chosen a number of people with records of judicial activism or out-of-mainstream ideology, including several young men in their thirties and early forties, for many of these lifetime appointments to the federal bench. What the President and his advisers acknowledge they are doing is nominating ideologically conservative judicial nominees to stack the fifth, sixth, and DC Circuits with judicial activists of their choice. That is part two of the Republican strategy. In part one, several Republicans in the Senate prevented many of these vacancies from being filled in the first place, so that whatever balance there might be, or might have been, on those courts is missing. They kept off well qualified moderate nominees, not chosen because of any litmus test or ideology. They did so to provide a Republican President with the opportunity to load the bench, especially the appellate court bench, with right wingers. Advice and consent does not mean giving the President carte blanche to pack the courts. The ingenious system of checks and balances in our Constitution does not give the power to make lifetime appointments to one person alone, to remake the courts along narrow ideological lines, to pack the courts with judges whose views are outside of the mainstream, and whose decisions would further divide our Nation. We have worked hard to balance these competing concerns over the past year: how to address the vacancy crisis we inherited, while also not being a rubberstamp and abdicating our responsibilities to provide a democratic check on the President's choices for lifetime appointment to the Federal courts. These are the only lifetime appointments in our system of government, and they matter a great deal to our future. In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson, the first President who was not a member of the Federalist Party was elected, he faced a similar situation. The Federalists in Congress had passed, and the lame duck President Adams had signed, a bill creating a number of new seats on the Federal courts. President Adams then appointed a number of Federalists who have been called ``midnight judges.'' One of the first things President Jefferson did was to get that law repealed and to refuse to sign the appointment papers of some of those judges. That is part of the story of the famous Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison. Thus, it took only 12 years of our new Nation for an effort to pack the courts to occur. It took the first transition in political parties for one to give in to the temptation to try to stack the deck and affect the outcome of cases through the appointment of judges. The best-known attempt to pack the courts occurred during the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt. President Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court with justices of his choosing, to get more votes on the side of cases he wanted to win, was rejected by Congress and the American people. If one thoroughly examines the types of nominees this President is sending us, one might conclude that we are facing another attempt to pack the courts. The Senate Judiciary Committee is working very hard to analyze all of President Bush's judicial nominees fairly, one by one. In our first year, we have already had 21 hearings on 78 judicial nominees, including 16 circuit court nominees. We are planning another hearing for next week. In the meantime, Republicans have been unfairly critical that not every nominee has yet had a hearing or been confirmed. Some have asserted that there is some sort of ``honeymoon'' period for Presidents in getting confirmation of their first choices for the courts. Of course, the Constitution provides for no such abdication of responsibility for a President's first few lifetime appointees or his last. To support this extra-constitutional theory, Republicans assert that the last three Presidents had a 100-percent confirmation rate of their first several circuit court nominees. When they say this, they conveniently leave a few details out. First, it took previous Senates more than a year to confirm 11 circuit court nominees of past Presidents. We have only had a year and the Senate has already confirmed nine of this President's circuit court nominees and five more are awaiting a vote by the full Senate. President George W. Bush has said previously that he would choose judges in the mold of two ideologically conservative activists, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. No judicial nominees should be rubber-stamped by the Senate, not even a President's first few choices. All nominees for these lifetime positions merit careful review by the Senate. When a President is using ideological criterion to select nominees, it is fair for the Senate to consider it as well. Federalist Society credentials are not a substitute for fairness, moderation or judicial temperament. When a President is intent on packing the courts and stacking the deck on outcomes, consideration of balance and how ideological and activist nominees will affect a court are valid considerations for Senators entrusted by the Constitution to evaluate these lifetime appointees. The high dudgeon expressed by Republicans about the order in which we have been considering this President's circuit court nominees is especially unwarranted in light of the objectively unfair way they treated President Clinton's circuit court nominees. Some of the vacancies we inherited date back to 1990, 1994 and 1996. Partisans conveniently ignore the Republicans' terrible record of obstruction when they complain that a few of President Bush's nominees have not yet had a hearing. Those nominees chosen without consultation with both parties in the Senate and, in particular, those who do not have home-State Senator support do not get hearings, according to longstanding Senate tradition. Republicans have tried to measure our achievements by standards they never met but surely even they are not now suggesting overriding the longstanding Senate tradition of consent or blue slips from both home-State Senators on which they themselves insisted. Republicans averaged only seven confirmations a year for President Clinton's circuit court nominees. We confirmed nine in our first 10 months. I have tried to work with the White House on judicial nominations. I have gone out of my way to encourage them to work in a bipartisan way with the Senate, like past Presidents, but in all too many instances they have chosen to bypass bipartisanship. I have encouraged them to include the ABA in the process earlier, like past Presidents, but they have refused to do so even though their decision adds to the length of time nominations must be pending before the Senate before they can be considered. This past January, I again called on the President to stop playing politics with judicial nominations and act in a bipartisan manner. Just last month I sent a detailed letter to the President on these issues. My efforts to help the White House improve the judicial nominations process have been rejected. My most recent effort met with a perfunctory acknowledgment or receipt, which I will ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks. Unfortunately, this letter is about the most constructive response that I have received from the White House to my many efforts to improve the process and speed up the filling of judicial vacancies with qualified, fair-minded judges. Republican statements on judicial nominees regularly rely on superficially appealing but misleading statistics to gloss over the types of nominees they are choosing for our Federal courts. For example, they complain that Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton got 97, 95 and 97 percent, respectively, of their first 100 judicial nominations confirmed. What they conveniently fail to mention is that it took 2 full years for President Reagan to have 89 of his judicial nominees confirmed, and well into year 3 to reach the 100 mark. Similarly, the first President Bush had only 71 judicial nominees confirmed after 2 full years, and it took well into year 3 to reach 100 confirmations. We are moving quickly, but responsibly, to fill judicial vacancies with qualified nominees we hope will not be activists. In our first year we confirmed 57 judges and reported 74 judicial nominees. Partisans ignore these facts. The facts are that we are reporting President Bush's nominees at a faster pace than the nominees of prior Presidents, including those who worked closely with a Senate majority of the same political party. We have accomplished all this during a period of tremendous tumult and crisis. The Judiciary Committee noticed the first hearing on judicial nominations within 10 minutes of the reorganization of the Senate, and held that hearing on the day after the committee was assigned new members. Yesterday was the 1-year anniversary of that first hearing for Judge Roger Gregory, who was initially nominated by President Clinton, but like so many other judicial candidates, including other African- American nominees to the Fourth Circuit, his nomination languished without a hearing by the Republican-controlled Senate. Because of this history of inaction on such nominees to that court, President Clinton made a recess appointment to make Roger Gregory the first African- American judge in history to sit on the Fourth Circuit, and he sent his nomination for a permanent position on that court back to the Senate at the beginning of the 107th Congress. Unfortunately, President Bush withdrew Judge Gregory's nomination in March of 2001, but he finally sent it back to us later that year. When the Senate Judiciary Committee held the hearing on the nomination of Judge Roger Gregory to the Fourth Circuit last year, it was the first hearing on a Fourth Circuit nominee in 3 years, although five nominees to that court during that period were never given hearings by Republicans. Subsequent to that hearing, we held unprecedented hearings during the August recess last year and proceeded with a hearing 2 days after the 9 11 attacks and shortly after the anthrax attack. We will hold our 22nd hearing for judicial nominees next week. We are doing our best to address the vacancy crisis we inherited. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the Democratic-led Senate has a record of achievement and of fairness to be proud of on this anniversary. I thank the Members who have worked cooperatively with me to make progress in so many areas over the last year. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter previously referred to be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I am pleased to introduce the Transitional Housing Assistance for Victims of Domestic Violence Act of 2002 to provide grants for transitional housing and related services to people fleeing domestic violence situations. I witnessed the devastating effects of domestic violence early in my career as the Vermont State's Attorney for Chittenden County. Today, a growing number of homeless individuals are women and children fleeing domestic violence. More than half the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2000 cited domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness. Shelters offer short-term assistance, but are overcrowded and unable to provide the support needed. Transitional housing allows women to bridge the gap between leaving a domestic violence situation and becoming fully self-sufficient. A transitional housing grant program was last authorized for only one year as part of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000. This program would have been administered through the Department of Health and Human Services and provided $25 million in FY2001. Unfortunately, funds were never appropriated for the program, and the authorization has now expired. The grant program established in the bill I am introducing today would be administered through the Department of Justice, in consultation with the Departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development. This program would have the benefit of a wide range of expertise in the three departments, and has enormous potential to improve people's lives. This new grant program will make a big impact, in many areas of the country, availability of affordable housing is at an all-time low. There are many dedicated people working to provide victims of domestic violence with resources, such as Rose Pulliam of the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, but they can not work alone. We should all be concerned with providing victims of domestic violence a safe place to gain the skills and stability needed to make the transition to independence. This is an important component of reducing and preventing crimes that take place in domestic situations, ranging from assault and child abuse to homicide, and helping the victims of these crimes. I urge the Senate to take prompt action on this legislation.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I am pleased to introduce the Transitional Housing Assistance for Victims of Domestic Violence Act of 2002 to provide grants for transitional housing and related services to people fleeing domestic violence situations. I witnessed the devastating effects of domestic violence early in my career as the Vermont State's Attorney for Chittenden County. Today, a growing number of homeless individuals are women and children fleeing domestic violence. More than half the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2000 cited domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness. Shelters offer short-term assistance, but are overcrowded and unable to provide the support needed. Transitional housing allows women to bridge the gap between leaving a domestic violence situation and becoming fully self-sufficient. A transitional housing grant program was last authorized for only one year as part of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000. This program would have been administered through the Department of Health and Human Services and provided $25 million in FY2001. Unfortunately, funds were never appropriated for the program, and the authorization has now expired. The grant program established in the bill I am introducing today would be administered through the Department of Justice, in consultation with the Departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development. This program would have the benefit of a wide range of expertise in the three departments, and has enormous potential to improve people's lives. This new grant program will make a big impact, in many areas of the country, availability of affordable housing is at an all-time low. There are many dedicated people working to provide victims of domestic violence with resources, such as Rose Pulliam of the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, but they can not work alone. We should all be concerned with providing victims of domestic violence a safe place to gain the skills and stability needed to make the transition to independence. This is an important component of reducing and preventing crimes that take place in domestic situations, ranging from assault and child abuse to homicide, and helping the victims of these crimes. I urge the Senate to take prompt action on this legislation.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. I keep hearing this discussion by the senior Senator from Texas that my bill somehow changed the Securities Litigation Reform Act. It does not. It does not do that at all. It changes no provision in it at all. The PSLRA did not establish the current statute of limitations. It did not deal with that issue at all. The Leahy bill does not impact on these provisions. It was a 5-to-4 Supreme Court case that overturned years of established law to set the current limitation periods in Lampf v. Gilbertson. In fact, interestingly enough, former Secretary General Kenneth Starr and I take the same position on these statutes of limitations. In the dissent in that case, two of the dissenters, Justices Kennedy and O'Connor, said the one in three statute of limitation makes the possibility of injured investors recovering basically a dead letter. Here are some numbers. Florida lost $335 million because of Enron; the University of California, $144 million--all the way down to Vermont; we lost millions of dollars. These are people who would like, in these kinds of cases, at least to have a statute of limitations such that we can go after them. We are not suggesting changing in any way--I want everybody to be clear on this--we are not suggesting changing the basic standards of the law on a statute of limitation. We are talking about extending the time. We are talking about extending the time so it will not be, as the Supreme Court said, with a short statute of limitations, a dead letter. We are saying we want enough of a statute of limitation--still very short but a long enough one so people can recover. We are perfectly willing to have exactly the same words as the law says now, with the exception the statute is slightly longer. I cannot speak for an activist Supreme Court that seems to be meddling in most of our laws, but their case law, their stare decisis impacts on every single Federal court in this country--district level, court of appeals level. So there, with the exact same law, the stare decisis is Lampf v. Gilbertson. That would be controlling except it would be a longer statute of limitations. The Senator from Texas, or anybody else, if they think that statute of limitations is too long, fine, vote against it. But I am here to try to protect people and give them an opportunity--when there has been such enormous fraud and all the pension funds have been lost, and all the people who have lost their life savings--give them at least some chance to recover something, especially as the executives of these companies walk off with tens of millions of dollars. We go two-five instead of one-three. It makes sense to me. That was negotiated and voted on in the Judiciary Committee, and the final bill was passed unanimously.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, for his kind words earlier this morning. He is the supporter of the Leahy-McCain-Daschle, et al, amendment pending before the body. I will speak further at an appropriate time when I am not imposing on the time reserved by our colleagues. I wanted to thank Senator McCain for his support of the amendment and for his kind remarks. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, if the Senator will yield, there is another way, of course, for the Senate to work its will. The reason I mention it, this is a critical part of the legislation. It is nice to say, and we should say, my cosponsor of the Sarbanes bill, which I think is superb--we should say we should have better accounting methods, we should say we should have more accountability, but we have a lot of these executives who have proven by their past behavior they are not going to do squat unless they think they are going to go to jail for what they do. The Leahy-McCain, et al, amendment makes it very clear that these people are going to face jail terms if they loot the pension funds, if they defraud their investors, if they defraud the people of their own company. And I might suggest if the Senator from Texas agrees, there ought to be real penalties; let's vote on Leahy-McCain. Let's vote on it, not divide it up. If he believes there is something he may want to do better--such as shield some of these people with a shorter statute of limitations or with a more restrictive statute of limitations--he has every right to do whatever he wants to shield these people. But bring it up as a separate amendment and let the Senate vote up or down on that. When I look at places such as Washington State alone where the pension funds of firefighters and police lost $50 million because of the fraud of the leaders of Enron, I don't feel too sympathetic. We already have a very short statute of limitations in here anyway. We ought to at least have that so people might be able to recover some of the money they have lost, if it is at all possible, instead of just a few executives going up and building their $50 million mansions and hiding it there. There ought to be some way for the people who lost their pensions, lost their live savings, to get it back. We ought to have criminal penalties for those who did this in the first place so they end up in the slammer.

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, if I might step in for just a moment, if the Senator from Maryland will not mind?

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

Mr. LEAHY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Vote On Amendment No. 4188

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 30 seconds without taking the time reserved for my colleagues.

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, would the distinguished senior Senator from Maryland yield me, say, 5 minutes?

Mr. LEAHY. I thank the distinguished Senator from Maryland. I appreciate his comments also about last fall after the tragedies of September 11. He and I and our committees worked closely on the terrorism legislation. Realizing it was more than simply having a penalty against terrorism, we had to have the tools against terrorism, and the distinguished senior Senator from Maryland was very helpful in putting together the money-laundering legislation so we could come out with a counterterrorism package on which the Senate could vote for 99- 1. That is what we are trying to do today. I am a proud cosponsor of Senator Sarbanes' legislation before the body. After years of experience in this body, I know how helpful it is if you have bills where the jurisdiction of various aspects may be in different committees. And considering having turf battles, when you work together, as we have in the Banking and Judiciary Committees, and others worked, you usually end up with a better package for the Senate. The final product becomes better and more complete because of our joint work. Having served here for a quarter of a century with the Senator from Maryland, I know such things can be done. With the members of his committee, he has had to craft a very complex, worthwhile bill on the issue of how do you account, how do you keep records, of all the various things to come under the SEC, to come under the jurisdiction of his committee. What I am concerned about, from the Judiciary Committee, is, if you get these people, you get them; that if you have somebody who has gone and spent all their efforts to defraud their own company and the pension holders in their company and the investors in their company, that they not walk off scot-free with their mansions in protected States and their offshore money. When you look at what has happened, when you look at the out-and-out fraud of some of these executives as they have ruined their own company, actually damaged their own country as well, at the same time lining their pockets as if anybody could even have pockets as huge as the amounts of money they have put in, and they walk away scot-free and they say: This is such a tragedy. I hate to see my company collapse like that and tens of thousands of people out of work and all those pensioners gone and all those States defrauded. And I am just going to have to comfort myself for the rest of my life with my $100 or $200 or $300 million I have absconded with. Their comfort might be a little bit less if they find that those same pension holders and stockholders have the ability to go after the money they are walking away with, and their comfort might be a little bit less if instead of a very large mansion they are in a 12-by-12 cell behind steel doors. Instead of a complacent board of directors, they may have to be dealing with their fellow inmates who may not take very kindly to them. Why do we have to have that kind of a tough law, and why do we have to have the statute of limitations? Just take a look at this chart. This is what Enron did. Does this look like a company that wants to be transparent in their dealings? Does this look like a company that wants to be on the up and up? These are their off-the-book transactions, hidden debt, fake profits, inflated stock. What were some of the companies they were hiding this behind? Here is one named Ponderosa. If you look at that, you do not know it belongs to Enron. Or Jedi Capital or Big Doe--that is not D-O-U-G-H--or Sundance or Little River or Yosemite or OB-1 Holdings or Peregrine or Kenobe. I guess Kenobe is a different company than OB-1. And we have Braveheart and Mojave and Chewco and Condor. It seems the only time they had free between trying to hide the money was going to movies, when you look at some of the secret partnerships they created here, Jedi II, OB-1, Kenobe. My point is, do you think if anybody stumbled across one of these companies they would think for even 1 minute that it belonged to Enron? Of course not. If you were the person who was to protect the pension rights of the employees, do you think if you found Ospry or Zenith or Egret or Cactus or Big River or Raptor you would think the money that was being tucked away and hidden in there could actually belong to the employees of Enron? But Kenneth Lay comes up here, sidles up to the table where he is going to be called to testify and says: I wish you could know the whole story, but not from me. I am taking the fifth. Well, he has that constitutional right. But he doesn't have a constitutional right to steal and defraud, and other people like him don't have the constitutional right to steal and defraud and hide the money. This isn't a question of whether they walk away with only $100 million instead of $200 million. It is a question of a middle-age couple reaching retirement time and having virtually all their retirement save Social Security tied up in a pension fund such as this and seeing it wiped out that day. They are not facing a question of whether they will have $200 million or $100 million. They are going to face the question of whether they can even keep their home, whether they will have the money to visit their grandchildren, or have the money to take care of their medical needs in their old age. That is what we are talking about. Or the people who work so hard, show up for work every single day, help make the fortune for the Ken Lays of the world, but they suddenly find they can't make the mortgage payment, they can't make the car payment, they can't pay for their children's braces. They can't do any of these other things because the big guys have walked off with all the money. That is why I wrote the legislation I did. I wrote legislation that is going to punish criminals. I wrote legislation that will preserve the evidence of fraud and protect victims. As one who has prosecuted people, I know nothing focuses their attention more than knowing they will not go to jail. Suddenly that overlooked ethics course when they were getting their MBA, or that overlooked ethics course in the accounting school or law school, they are going to start looking at it again. If they think, because they can walk away from this, they will go to jail, they are going to go to jail. It is not going to be a complacent board of directors they will deal with. It will be a criminal in the cell next door. That is what they have to worry about. These people deserve to go to jail. They have ruined the lives of thousands of people, good people, hard-working people, honest people. They have destroyed much of the confidence in Wall Street. They have destroyed the confidence in people who should be investing. I am proud to be an American and proud to be in a country such as ours where you can invest, where people can grow companies, where they can make money if they do the right thing. But I am not proud of these kinds of people who destroy that sort of American dream. The President says he is outraged. I suspect he is. But I am also outraged. I would hope the President's outrage will go to the point of supporting this kind of legislation, this kind of legislation which doesn't just say it is wrong for you to do that, but if you do it, you are going to go to jail. Those iron bars are going to close. We have worked hard on this legislation. That is why I compliment the distinguished senior Senator from Maryland. He and the members of his committee worked very hard. The people of my staff, including Ed Pagano, Steve Dettelbach, Jessica Berry, and Bruce Cohen worked so hard. They brought in people from across the political spectrum, Republicans and Democrats alike, to join us. I think all of those who joined it joined in one basic thing. They set aside their philosophical or partisan differences. They set aside their feelings of party and said they were overwhelmed with feelings of outrage. Even in my own little State of Vermont, pension funds were damaged because of the excesses of Enron. And then we see WorldCom and Tyco and Xerox, and we say we had better look back 5 years. That is not the American way. That is the way of some of the most arrogant, self-centered, spoiled criminals. That is what they are; they are criminals. They cooked the books in California during an energy crisis, so millions of people in California paid more for their electricity. Their arrogance was such that they did not care because all of those offshore corporations were hiding the money. Lord knows how much money is still there. You are not going to find out from these executives because they will take the fifth. They have the constitutional right to do that, and I will defend that right, as I will the rights of everybody else. But let us not shed tears for them. Just as Democrats and Republicans will join in voting for this, I call on the President and the Attorney General to step forward and say they support it. And I call on our Justice Department to go forward and find some of these people not just to say maybe we will find a corporation guilty of a crime; let's send some of these people to jail for what they have done. Let's send them to jail, and let's do everything we can to let the people defrauded by them recover some of their ill-gotten gains. I see the Senator from Michigan has taken over the chair. Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. LEAHY. I would be delighted if the distinguished chairman did.

Mr. LEAHY. I note that the Senator from Michigan is a cosponsor of this amendment.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I want to make sure people understand what the Leahy-McCain amendment is. I realize there may be those who want to amend it to make life easier.

Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LEAHY. I object.

Mr. LEAHY. Will the majority leader yield?

Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I seek recognition in my own right.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, since my first days in the U.S. Senate, I have expressed strong concerns about nuclear power. The claims made in the 1970s that nuclear power was going to bring our country cheap, reliable and clean energy have turned out--as many warned at the time-- to be far from the truth. While electricity from nuclear power has been reliable, it is neither cheap nor clean. The waste from these plants is an enormous and undisputed economic liability for the Nation, and it is far from environmentally clean. After all these years of coasting on these false promises about nuclear power, the bill has come due. Today we have 29 years of nuclear waste in Vermont in the form of spent fuel in temporary storage on the banks of the Connecticut River, and we cannot ignore that it needs to be managed. Part of that management, especially since September 11 and all of our heightened security since then, is to better secure on-site waste until it can be transported to a safer location. And part of that management is to create that safer location, officially designating Yucca Mountain as the single, high-security site for the bulk of nuclear waste that is now dispersed across our country. While I know that some waste will always be located on-site at operating nuclear plants, we must locate the bulk of the waste at a single, secure site. Governor Dean and the Vermont Public Service Department have consistently called on me to support the repository, and today I again respect the wishes and long-term interests of my State. The vote in the Senate today was about establishing a single national repository for tons of hazardous nuclear waste. I voted in favor. But the question of how nuclear material is safely transported to the Yucca Mountain site brings up a new set of difficult decisions that Congress has yet to face. For the past several months, I have expressed my strong concerns about prematurely transporting nuclear waste across the Nation without a plan that addresses growing concerns of State governments and local communities. Especially in light of fears after September 11, nuclear waste transportation concerns need to be discussed, debated and addressed by our Nation's leaders. Congress has worked with the administration to improve security at airports, border crossings and public buildings. Yet throughout this Yucca Mountain debate, the Bush administration has failed to fully inform Congress about security improvements envisioned for shipping nuclear waste. It has failed to respond to repeated questions from the American people and their local communities, and that is unacceptable. Vermonters, in the tradition that has so distinguished our State, have actively studied the issues involved in the Yucca decision. Many have shared their views and suggestions with me, on both sides of this question, and I deeply appreciate their counsel. The approval of Yucca as a repository is one issue that has taken years for Congress to debate and address. This vote does not end the federal government's obligation, by any means. I believe the administration must answer the concerns raised by many Americans in many States about nuclear waste transportation security before any material moves across the country and through hundreds of large cities and small towns. Until then--and until the Yucca Mountain site is truly operational--we must focus our energy on ensuring that all nuclear waste is secured in the safest, strongest on-site storage facilities possible.

Mr. LEAHY

Mr. LEAHY. Will the Senator yield for a question? We are on, am I correct, the Leahy amendment which was pending to it the McConnell amendment?