Carl Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am honored to introduce the Standing with Our Troops Act of 2005. This bill addresses the needs of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who have responded so bravely to the call of our Nation. We owe it to them and their families to ensure that they are properly trained and equipped for the hazardous duties they are performing, that they are fairly compensated for their service, and that they receive their pay in the correct amount, on time. We start with the recognition that we have cut our troop strength too far to sustain current military operations. This bill would authorize increases of up to 40,000 additional active duty Soldiers and Marines over the next two years. The bill authorizes an increase in the active duty Army end strength by up to 20,000 Soldiers in 2006 and an additional 10,000 in 2007, and it authorizes an increase in the Marine Corps' active duty end strength by up to 5,000 Marines in 2006 and an additional 5,000 Marines in 2007. The Department of Defense currently reports numbers of service members killed or seriously wounded in action in our ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This bill would require a formal monthly report that includes the numbers of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who are killed in action; killed as a result of non-combat injuries incurred during combat operations; killed as a result of self- inflicted wounds or suicide; wounded in action, when the injuries prevent the service member from returning to duty within 72 hours; wounded in action when the service member returns to duty within 72 hours, insofar as this data is currently maintained; and the total number of service personnel evacuated from theater for medical reasons. To ensure that awards and decorations are expeditiously and fairly awarded to deserving military personnel, this bill would establish an Advisory Panel on Military Awards and Decorations to review the policies and practices of each of the Services for awarding medals and decorations and to report to Congress. This Panel would compare the different Service policies and practices for decorating its military personnel, and make a recommendation as to whether individual service practices should be continued or a single standard adopted that applies to all Services; recommend measures that can be taken to ensure that service members serving in combat are at least as likely to receive medals as those not exposed to combat, and enlisted personnel are just as likely as officers to be decorated for their service. This bill would create an Office of Mobilization Planning and Preparedness within the National Security Council to ensure that all of our national resources are assembled and organized to respond to a national security emergency. National resources include our military, labor, transportation, industry and financial resources. We know that current military operations are wearing out military equipment faster than we are replacing it. To address this, this bill would require the Secretary of Defense to report to Congress on the needs of our military forces for reconstituting stocks of equipment and material damaged, destroyed, and worn out in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The report will include the needs of each military service, including the reserve components, for repair and replacement of equipment; and authorize appropriation of $8.5 billion for the Army and $2.1 billion for the Marine Corps for repair, refurbishment, and replacement of equipment used in OIF and OEF. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found, and I agree, that the Department of Defense's mobilization and deployment policies were implemented in a piecemeal fashion not linked to a strategic framework. We owe it to our service men and women to have clear policies regarding lengths of deployments. The Department of Defense must clearly communicate these policies and other deployment related information to service members and their families. This bill would require the Secretary of Defense to report to Congress on DoD policies on lengths of mobilization and deployment periods and on the use of stop-loss to keep military personnel in the service beyond their service commitments. In two separate reports, the GAO has found that more than 90 percent mobilized reserve component personnel experienced pay problems. The GAO found that ``These pay problems often had a profound adverse impact on individual soldiers and their families.'' This bill would require the designation of a senior official to ensure implementation of GAO recommendations to correct these pay problems. Representation of our reserve component personnel at the highest levels in the Department of Defense has not kept pace with the increased role of our Guard and Reserve personnel. Accordingly, this bill creates a new position, a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, to speak for the Reserve Components. This bill would give tax relief to mobilized service members and employers who make up for pay lost to service members who are ordered to active duty. It would amend the Internal Revenue Code to authorize activated National Guard and Reserve personnel to make penalty free withdrawals from qualified retirement plans; allow employers a tax deduction for making up the difference between military pay and civilian income of mobilized reservists; and authorize a tax credit to small business employers who continue to compensate members of the Ready Reserve ordered to active duty and for costs of hiring a replacement employee. We know that the military pay of about a third of our mobilized National Guard and Reserve personnel is less than the pay they received from their civilian jobs. Many private employers already pay a wage differential to those who lose money, and we will encourage more to do so with the tax incentives I have just described. The biggest employer of our Guard and Reserve personnel is the Federal Government, and the Federal Government should do as much as the private employers do for those who lose money while serving our Nation. This bill would require Federal Agencies to make up the pay differences for Federal employees who are ordered to active duty. Studies have shown that 40 percent of our junior enlisted members in the reserve components have no health insurance except when they are on active duty. This bill would provide access to the military's TRICARE health care program for all members of the Selected Reserve and their families. They would pay a subsidized premium similar to the premium charged Federal Employees for health care. This will help to ensure that members of the National Guard and Reserves are medically ready when called to serve in the military. When a Soldier, Sailor, Airmen or Marine dies on active duty, his survivors currently receive a death gratuity of just over $12,000. This is simply not enough. This bill would raise the death gratuity to $100,000, and would allow survivors to receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation from the VA as well as a Survivor Benefit Plan annuity from the Department of Defense. United States taxpayers have borne a disproportionate share of the cost for the reconstruction of Iraq. The support of the international community for this reconstruction is critical. This bill would require the President to report to Congress on U.S., Iraqi, and foreign contributions to Iraq's reconstruction before any new U.S. reconstruction funds are appropriated. The bill would also require any U.S. funds for reconstruction in Iraq be in the form of a collateralized loan which the U.S. would guarantee unless the President reports to Congress that it is in the U.S. national security interest to provide the funds other than in the form of a loan. I again want to compliment the service of the young men and women serving in our military forces for their magnificent and unselfish service to our Nation. I trust that the measures included in this bill will serve as a token of the Nation's sincere appreciation for their great sacrifices and service.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today I introduce with my colleague, Senator Lugar, a bill to grant normal trade treatment to the products of Ukraine. My brother, Congressman Sander Levin and other members are introducing a similar bill in the House. It is our hope that enactment of this legislation will help to build stronger economic ties between the United States and Ukraine. The Cold War era Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions that deny most favored nation trade status to imports from former Soviet-Bloc countries are outdated and, when applied to Ukraine, inappropriate. Those restrictions were established as a tool to pressure Communist nations to allow their people to freely emigrate in exchange for favorable trade treatment by the United States. Ukraine does allow its citizens the right and opportunity to emigrate. It has met the Jackson-Vanik test. In fact, Ukraine has been found to be in full compliance with the freedom of emigration requirements under the Jackson-Vanik law. Ukraine has been certified as meeting the Jackson-Vanik requirements on an annual basis since 1992 when a bilateral trade agreement went into effect. It is time the United States recognizes this reality by eliminating the Jackson-Vanik restrictions and granting Ukraine normal trading status on a permanent basis. Our bill does this as well as addressing traditional Jackson-Vanik issues such as emigration, religious freedom, restoration of property, and human rights. It also deals with the important trade issues that must be considered when granting a country permanent normal trade relations (PNTR), such as making progress toward World Trade Organization (WTO), accession and tariff and excise tax reductions. Since reestablishing independence in 1991, Ukraine has taken important steps toward the creation of democratic institutions and a free-market economy. As a member state of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Ukraine is committed to developing a system of governance in accordance with the principles regarding human rights that are set forth in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Helsinki Final Act. On December 26, 2004, Ukraine took another historic step in its pursuit of democracy with the legitimate election of its new President Viktor Yuschenko. This election showed the world that Ukraine has joined the family of democracies. The United States can help advance this young democracy by repealing our Cold War-era laws that should no longer apply to them and welcoming them to the international economic community as a full partner. This bill will accomplish these goals. In addition to welcoming the Ukrainian government to the family of democracies, we must also take a moment to honor the Ukranian people for their commitment to democratic institutions in civil society through peaceful demonstrations. Free and fair elections were conducted only because of the courage and hard work of the Ukranian people. Without their persistence Ukraine was in danger of moving forward with an illegitimately elected president. By drawing Ukraine into normal trade relations, the international community will be helping Ukraine to achieve greater market reform and continue its commitment to safeguarding religious liberty and enforcing laws to combat discrimination. PNTR status will hopefully do more than increase bilateral trade between the United States and Ukraine and encourage increased international investment in Ukraine. Hopefully it will also stimulate the reform we all want and the Ukrainian people deserve on their way to achieving a more mature and stable democracy. It's time we recognize Ukraine's accomplishments and status as an emerging democracy and market economy by lifting the Jackson-Vanik restrictions. I hope my colleagues will support this important bill. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Stabenow and myself, I congratulate the William Beaumont Hospital on 50 years of dedicated service to the Michigan community. William Beaumont Hospital opened its doors in Royal Oak in 1955 as a result of a survey in southeast Michigan which showed an overwhelming need for medical assistance in the area. The survey was quickly proven correct. Within its first week of operation, the hospital performed over 40 major surgeries and delivered over 30 babies. As the need continued to grow, Beaumont opened a second hospital in 1977 in Troy. In the past 50 years, Beaumont has grown significantly, logging nearly 1.7 million inpatient admissions and nearly 3.3 million emergency visits. It works closely with several universities in Michigan to provide premier residency and fellowship programs and the Beaumont Research Institute conducts more than 800 active studies funded by grants. Today, Beaumont is ranked among the top hospitals not just in Michigan but in the Nation. With staff representing over 90 different medical and surgical specialties, Beaumont has been honored with numerous awards including AARP's ``Top 50 Hospitals,'' one of ``America's Best Hospitals'' by U.S. News and World Report, a ``100 Top Hospitals--National Benchmarks for Success'' by Solucient, and one of Michigan's ``Best Places to Work'' by Crain's Detroit Business. Senator Stabenow and I are delighted to have the opportunity to thank the former and current staff of Beaumont Hospital for their enormous contributions to the State of Michigan and to congratulate them on reaching this significant milestone.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I heartily support the nomination of Mr. Gutierrez to be Secretary of Commerce. In nominating Kellogg's CEO Carlos Gutierrez to be the next Secretary of Commerce, President Bush selected a Michigander who has a wealth of business experience both in the U.S. and abroad which gives him a unique understanding of our country's role and challenges in the global marketplace. He also has a proven track record of wise budget management. Mr. Gutierrez represents the quintessential American dream, emigrating to this country with his parents at the age of 7 from Cuba and working his way up the ranks of the Kellogg Company, starting with selling Kellogg cereal from a van, stocking the shelves of his customers, to becoming the highly respected President and CEO of a top American Fortune 500 Company. His story is as American as Corn Flakes and baseball. He is a passionate fan of both. Mr. Gutierrez's home is in Battle Creek, MI, a medium-sized, midwestern city in America's heartland. Mr. Gutierrez has a firm grounding in many of the values and strengths that make this country great. He also has a firm grasp of some of the challenges facing American manufacturers. The U.S. has battled for decades to open foreign markets to U.S. goods. Carlos Gutierrez knows the ropes of those markets and can provide this Nation with that invaluable experience. I have confidence that he will recommend firm action both to pry open foreign markets now closed or partially closed to American goods as well as to reinvigorate America's manufacturing base. The leadership that Mr. Gutierrez used to turn around Kellogg's financial standing is desperately needed in this country, which has seen high unemployment, record trade deficits, and an unprecedented loss of manufacturing jobs. Mr. Gutierrez will need every bit of his experience to meet the challenges of this new job. We are facing a manufacturing jobs crisis in our country. The U.S. lost a record number of manufacturing jobs during President Bush's first term, 149,000 of which were in Michigan. Michigan's unemployment rate stands at 7 percent, the third worst State in the Nation. Unfortunately, this crisis has been worsened by the administration's failure to fund many of the programs that could strengthen the manufacturing sector. The Commerce Department's Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, for example, which helps small and medium-sized manufacturing companies remain competitive and has led to $8.7 billion in sales and helped create over 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the past four years, faced an 88 percent cut in the President's 2004 fiscal year budget request and a 63 percent cut in the 2005 fiscal year request. The President also proposed eliminating the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program, which encourages public-private cooperation and focuses on improving the competitiveness of American companies in the global marketplace. Manufacturing jobs pay high wages, provide health benefits and offer retirement security. We cannot afford to lose these good jobs or let them leave our country. I am hopeful that as Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez will prove to be a strong advocate for these programs. In addition to rebuilding our base of manufacturing jobs, we need to devise a trade policy that focuses on opening foreign markets rather than employing policies that encourage jobs to move overseas or tolerating foreign barriers to our goods and expanding trade deficits. During his time at Kellogg, Mr. Gutierrez managed several of the company's international divisions, including serving as the general manager of Kellogg of Mexico, the president and CEO of Kellogg Canada, Inc., and the president of Kellogg Asia-Pacific. These experiences provide him with the expertise needed to address our soaring trade deficit and create a climate where U.S. products have the same access to foreign markets as we give in this county to foreign products. The U.S. trade deficit has soared to record levels in the past 4 years. We have a failed trade policy as a nation because we have not insisted that our trading partners grant us true reciprocity and we have not forcefully implemented our trade laws. The U.S. needs to fight much harder to open foreign markets to U.S. goods. In 2003, we had a $124 billion trade deficit with China, and it is expected to exceed $150 billion in 2004; we have a large and persistent automotive deficit with Japan; and we have tolerated currency manipulation by several of our trading partners who have rigged their currency values, making their exports artificially cheap and thus giving their companies a huge trade advantage and devastating U.S. workers, farmers and businesses. We can reduce this trade deficit by insisting on a level playing field with our trading partners; by closing tax loopholes that provide incentives to businesses to move jobs overseas; and by supporting efforts to ensure that China complies with commitments it has made to the World Trade Organization. We also need to adequately fund the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides relief for small and medium-sized manufacturing and agricultural companies that experience loss of jobs and sales because of foreign imports. These are all areas that would come under Mr. Gutierrez's jurisdiction as Secretary of Commerce. The nomination of Mr. Gutierrez is part of an overhaul of President Bush's economic team. I am hopeful that this reorganization also represents a new direction for the country, and that we are able to rebuild our manufacturing sector and reverse our trade deficit. Mr. Gutierrez's background at Kellogg has given him the experience to take the important steps that are necessary to begin to do that.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as I was sitting at the West Front of the Capitol on this Inauguration Day listening to the speech of the President and the hopes of all the speakers for a fresh beginning, I kept thinking of another fresh beginning that occurred yesterday when our daughter Kate presented her husband Howard with a second daughter and her daughter Bess with a sister, Samantha Louise. While the hopes for a new beginning of an administration are always tempered by time and reality, the hopes which spring from a new baby are boundless. And so, at the inaugural lunch today in Statuary Hall, Senator Warner and his wife Jeanne and General Myers and Mrs. Myers, as well as our other lunch partners, raised our glasses in congratulations and best wishes to the President and Vice President, but also graciously and gleefully raised their glasses with my wife Barb and me in salute to the birth of our granddaughter Samantha Louise. I know my colleagues will forgive this burst of a grandfather's pride as we undertake the serious business before us.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as we begin a new Congress, I am hopeful that the Senate will consider and pass sensible gun safety legislation for the benefit of our families, communities, and police officers. The 109th Congress has the opportunity to act together on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation that will make our streets safer for all Americans. In order to achieve a reduction in gun violence, we must commit ourselves to enacting legislation that supports this goal. The 108th Congress missed numerous opportunities to have a positive impact on safety in our communities across the nation. In the last Congress, we did not close the gun show loophole, we did not reauthorize the 1994 assault weapons ban, and we failed to make needed improvements to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that would have made it more difficult for convicted criminals to gain access to guns. Combating gun violence also requires a commitment to funding effective gun violence prevention and enforcement programs. Unfortunately, the Fiscal Year 2005 omnibus appropriations bill signed by the President in December eliminated much of the funding for one of these programs, known as Project Safe Neighborhoods. The Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative focuses on increased enforcement of existing gun laws, vigorous prosecution of crimes committed with handguns, and gun violence prevention education. The project supports organizations working against gun violence and has provided over $1 billion in funding to help prosecute gun crimes, hire personnel, provide training, and assist with community outreach activities. It is critical that we provide adequate resources to programs like the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative in order to more effectively address the gun violence epidemic in this country. I urge my colleagues to join me in working to adequately fund effective gun violence reduction programs and enact sensible gun safety legislation that will help to make our communities safer.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I will vote against objecting to counting Ohio's electoral votes. Of course I am concerned by reports of irregularities across the country during the 2004 presidential election. The 109th Congress should address these problems this year as part of election reform legislation. But voting to throw out the electoral votes of a State in the absence of clear evidence that voting fraud in that State changed the outcome would set a dangerous precedent for future elections in which the majority party of Congress could overturn the outcome of a presidential election. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today I would like to make my colleagues aware of my intention, when the 109th Congress convenes in January, 2005, to introduce bipartisan legislation, to authorize the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the Tuskegee Airmen. The Tuskegee Airmen were not only unique in their military record, but they inspired revolutionary reform in the Armed Forces, paving the way for integration of the Armed Services in the U.S. The largely college-educated Tuskegee Airmen overcame the enormous challenges of prejudice and discrimination, succeeding, despite obstacles that threatened failure. What made these men exceptional was their willingness to leave their families and put their lives on the line to defend rights that were denied them here at home. Former Senator Bill Cohen, in remarks on the floor of the Senate in July of 1995 summed it up this way: . . . I listened to the stories of the Tuskegee airmen and . . . the turmoil they experienced fighting in World War II, feeling they had to fight two enemies: one called Hitler, the other called racism in this country. Prior to the 1940s, many in the military held the notion that black servicemen were unfit for most leadership roles and mentally incapable of combat aviation. Between 1924 and 1939, the Army War College commissioned a number of studies aimed at increasing the military role of blacks. According to the Journal of the Air Force Magazine, Journal of the Air Force Association, March 1996: . . . these studies asserted that blacks possessed brains significantly smaller than those of white troops and were predisposed to lack physical courage. The reports maintained that the Army should increase opportunities for blacks to help meet manpower requirements but claimed that they should always be commanded by whites and should always serve in segregated units. Overruling his top generals and to his credit, President Roosevelt in 1941 ordered the creation of an all black flight training program at Tuskegee Institute. He did so one day after Howard University student Yancy Williams filed suit in Federal Court to force the Department of Defense to accept black pilot trainees. Yancy Williams had a civilian pilot's license and received an engineering degree. Years later, ``Lt. Col. Yancy Williams'' participated in an air surveillance project created by President Eisenhower. ``We proved that the antidote to racism is excellence in performance,'' said retired Lt. Col. Herbert Carter, who started his military career as a pilot and maintenance officer with the 99th Fighter Squadron. ``Can you imagine . . . with the war clouds as heavy as they were over Europe, a citizen of the United States having to sue his government to be accepted to training so he could fly and fight and die for his country?'' The government expected the experiment to fail and end the issue, said Carter. ``The mistake they made was that they forgot to tell us . . .''. The first class of cadets began in July of 1941 with 13 men, all of whom had college degrees, some with PhD's and all had pilot's licenses. From all accounts, the training of the Tuskegee Airmen was an experiment established to prove that ``coloreds'' were incapable of operating expensive and complex combat aircraft. Stationed in the segregated South, the black cadets were denied rifles. Months passed with no call-up from the government. However, by 1943, the first contingent of black airmen were sent to North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. Their performance far exceeded anyone's expectation. They shot down six German aircrafts on their first mission, and were also the first squad to sink a battleship with only machine guns. Overall, nearly 1,000 black pilots graduated from Tuskegee, with the last class finishing in June of 1946, 450 of whom served in combat. Sixty-six of the aviators died in combat, while another 33 were shot down and captured as prisoners of war. The Tuskegee Airmen were credited with 261 aircraft destroyed, 148 aircraft damaged, 15,553 combat sorties and 1,578 missions over Italy and North Africa. They destroyed or damaged over 950 units of ground transportation and escorted more than 200 bombing missions. Clearly, the experiment, as it was called, was an unqualified success. Black men could not only fly, they excelled at it, and were equal partners in America's victory. A number of Tuskegee Airmen have lived in Michigan, including Alexander Jefferson, Washington Ross, Wardell Polk, and Walter Downs, among others. Tuskegee Airmen also trained at Michigan's Selfridge and Oscoda air fields in the early 40s. In the early 1970s, the Airmen established their first chapter in Detroit. Today there are 42 chapters located in major cities of the U.S. The chapters support young people through scholarships, sponsorships to the military academies, and flight training programs. Detroit is also the location of the Tuskegee Airmen National Museum, which is on the grounds of historic Fort Wayne. The late Coleman Young, former mayor of the city of Detroit, was trained as a navigator bombardier for the 477th bombardment group of the Tuskegee Airmen. This group was still in training when WWII ended so they never saw combat. However, the important fact is that all of those receiving flight-related training--nearly 1,000--were instrumental in breaking the segregation barrier. They all had a willingness to see combat, and committed themselves to the segregated training with a purpose to defend their country. The Tuskegee Airmen were awarded three Presidential Unit Citations, 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses and Legions of Merit, along with The Red Star of Yugoslavia, 9 Purple Hearts, 14 Bronze Stars and more than 700 Air medals and clusters. It goes without question that the Tuskegee Airmen are deserving of the Congressional Gold Medal. According to existing records, a total of 155 Tuskegee Airmen originated from Michigan, I wish to recognize each one of them. I ask unanimous consent that their names be included for the Record. They are as follows: Kermit Bailer; Clarence Banton; James Barksdale of Detroit; Hugh Barrington of Farmington Hills; Naomi Bell; Thomas Billingslea; Lee Blackmon; Charles Blakely of Detroit, Robert Bowers of Detroit; James Brown of Ypsilanti; Willor Brown of Ypsilanti; Ernest Browne of Detroit; Archibald Browning; Otis Bryant; Joseph Bryant, Jr. of Dowagiac; Charles Byous; Ernest Cabule of Detroit; Waldo Cain; Clinton Canady of Lansing; Carl Carey of Detroit; Gilbert Cargil; Nathaniel Carr of Detroit; Donald Carter of Detroit; Clifton Casey; David Cason, Jr; Peter Cassey of Detroit; Robert Chandler of Allegan; Pembleton Cochran of Detroit; Alfred Cole of Southfield; James Coleman of Detroit; William Coleman of Detroit; Eugene Coleman; Matthew Corbin of Detroit; Charles Craig of Detroit; Herbert Crushshon; John Cunningham of Romulus; and John Curtis of Detroit. Donald Davis of Detroit; Cornelius Davis of Detroit; Eugene Derricotte of Detroit; Taremund Dickerson of Detroit; Walter Downs of Southfield; John Egan; Leavie Farro, Jr.; Howard Ferguson; Thomas Flake of Detroit; Harry Ford, Jr. of Detroit; Luther Friday; Alfonso Fuller of Detroit; William Fuller of West Bloomfield; Frank Gardner; Robert Garrison of Muskegon; Thomas Gay of Detroit; Charles Goldsby of Detroit; Ollie Goodall, Jr. of Detroit; Quintus Green, Sr.; Mitchell Greene; James Greer of Detroit; Alphonso Harper of Detroit; Bernard Harris of Detroit; Denzal Harvey; James Hayes of Detroit; Ernest Haywood of Detroit; Minus Heath; Milton Henry of Bloomfield Hills; Mary Hill; Charles Hill, Jr. of Detroit; Lorenzo Holloway of Detroit; Lynn Hooe of Farmington Hills; Heber Houston of Detroit; Ted Hunt; and Hansen Hunter, Jr. Leonard Isabelle Sr., Leonard Jackson; Lawrence Jefferson of Grand Rapids; Alexander Jefferson of Detroit; Silas Jenkins of Lansing; Richard Jennings of Detroit; Louie Johnson of Farmington; Ralph Jones; William Keene of Detroit; Laurel Keith of Cassopolis; Hezekiah Lacy of River Rouge; Richard Macon of Detroit; Albert Mallory; Thomas Malone; Ralph Mason of Detroit; J. Caulton Mays of Detroit; William McClenic; Arthur Middlebrooks; Oliver Miller of Battle Creek; Vincent Mitchell of Mt. Clemens; Wilbur Moffett of Detroit; Dempsey Morgan of Detroit; Russell Nalle, Jr. of Detroit; Robert O'Neil of Detroit; Frederick Parker; Robert Pitts of Detroit; Wardell Polk of Detroit; Walter Poole; Calvin Porter of Detroit; Calvin Porter; Leonard Proctor; Della Rainey; Sandy Reid of Southfield; Edward Rembert; Harry Riggs of Bloomfield Hills; Walter Robinson of Detroit; Major Ross of Oak Park; Washington Ross of Detroit; John Roundtree of Westland; Calude Rowe of Detroit; William Ruben; William Rucker; Jesse Rutledge of Detroit; and Issac Rutledge. Calvin Sharp; Albert Simeon, Jr. of Detroit; Paul Simmons, Jr. of Detroit; Leon Smith; Chauncey Spencer; William Stevenson; Chester Stewart of Detroit; Harry Stewart of Bloomfield Hills; Roosevelt Stiger of Jackson; Howard Storey; Willie Sykes of Detroit; Willis Tabor; Kenneth Taitt of Detroit; William Taylor, Jr. of Inkster; Lucius Theus of Bloomfield Hills; Donald Thomas of Detroit; Austin Thomas; Wm. Horton Thompson of Detroit; Jordan Tiller; Paul Tucker of Detroit; Edward Tunstall of Detroit; Allen Turner of Ann Arbor; Cleophus Valentine of Detroit; Charles Walker of Jackson; Robert Walker; Roderick Warren of Detroit; Theodore Washington of Detroit; Richard Weatherford of Aibion; Jimmie Wheeler of Detroit; William Wheeler of Detroit; Cohen White of Detroit; Harold White of Detroit; Paul White; Peter Whittaker of Detroit; Leonard Wiggins of Detroit; David Williams of Bloomfield Hills; Willie Williamson of Detroit; Robert Wolfe; William Womack; and Coleman Young.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Minnesota yield for a unanimous consent request, unless there was someone else who was in order here? I wonder if we could set up an order following the Senator from Minnesota, the Senator from Kansas be recognized, and then I be recognized following the Senator from Kansas.

Mr. LEVIN. I thank the Presiding Officer. I ask unanimous consent, instead of my proceeding, that the Senator from Florida be recognized and I be recognized following that; and following that, Senator Rockefeller, and then we proceed to Senator Byrd, who, I understand, has agreed to begin at about 12:40 instead of 12:30. I ask unanimous consent that be the order of debate.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to yield 2 minutes of my time to the Senator from New York.

Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, first, I want to state how indebted we all are to the 9/11 Commission and to the families for their work in putting us on the road to reform. That road will reach a culmination today. It is appropriate that we spent the time we did to try to put together a bill which is comprehensive and the most dramatic reform in the intelligence community that we have had in many decades. We in the Congress started out on that road with the goal of creating a strong Director of National Intelligence, or DNI. One milepost was to empower that Director with real budget power and adequate control over personnel in the intelligence community. Another milepost was the creation of a strong National counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, with the authority to conduct strategic counterterrorism planning and to assign roles and responsibilities for counterterrorism activities. The managers deserve great credit as the conference agreement represents a significant achievement in regard to those issues. Their work, the work of Senators Collins and Lieberman, is a model of bipartisanship, and I heartily commend them for it. The conference agreement contains a number of provisions that I proposed in the Senate-passed version. For example, it is critical that there be a customer focus instead of a top-down focus in setting intelligence collection and tasking requirements. There is language in this conference report to provide that customer focus. The Senate bill contains language which I offered which precludes the NCTC Director from assigning specific responsibilities directly to components of the Department of Defense. That authority would have had a negative impact on the military chain of command. That authority should remain in the Department of Defense. The conference report retains our Senate language. The legislation also contains a provision which I authored with Senator Coleman to stop money laundering and terrorist financing. The 9/11 Commission acknowledged that disrupting terrorist financing is one key to winning the battle against terrorism. Our provision strengthens bank oversight by imposing a 1-year cooling-off period on Federal bank examiners before they can take a job with one of the financial institutions which they oversaw. The need for this provision arose from our investigation conducted by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which disclosed the weak anti-money laundering controls at Riggs Bank which resulted in highly suspicious financial transactions. Among other problems, we were surprised to learn that the Federal bank examiner who oversaw Riggs and allowed the bank to continue operating for years with a deficient anti-money laundering program retired from the Government and immediately took a job at the bank, raising conflict of interest concerns. Our new provision will help eliminate such conflicts. Our provision also directs the Treasury Department to conduct a study of current Federal anti-money laundering efforts and recommend improvements to the process for setting priorities so that we direct our efforts where they are most needed. On the other side of the ledger, I want to talk about a number of provisions that were included in the Senate-passed bill but which are, unfortunately, absent from this conference report. We had a number of provisions in our Senate bill, on which we worked so hard, that are omitted from this bill. It seems to me the bill is weaker as a result. One Senate-passed provision would have permitted the new DNI to transfer military billets among activities within the intelligence community but would not have permitted the new Director to transfer individual members of the armed forces, thereby avoiding the potential for the Director to interfere with the military chain of command. That was changed and it mystifies me as to why our provision was dropped. Another Senate provision would have provided that the administration review certain Defense Intelligence Agency programs to determine whether they should be managed by the new Director of National Intelligence or by the Secretary of Defense rather than automatically transferring them to the new DNI without review. The conference report now gives that nonreviewable power to the new Director of Intelligence. The programs, then, that the new Director will have that kind of control over include the intelligence staffs of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the intelligence staffs of the commanders, and the intelligence staffs of certain communications, and control over certain communications systems which support sensitive military command and control activities within the Department of Defense. As I said, I am mystified why these two provisions, which were included in the Senate-passed bill, were omitted from the conference agreement. Did House Republicans object to those provisions even though those provisions addressed concerns that a number of us have and, as a matter of fact, that the Armed Services chairman in the House, Duncan Hunter, had about protecting the military chain of command and about the Department of Defense having a voice in budget matters which so directly and keenly affect them? There are a number of other troubling omissions from the conference report. I happen to be one who agrees that we need a new strong director of national intelligence and a new NCTC, a new national counterterrorism center, with strong authority. But their creation will not solve all or even the most critical of the problems in our intelligence community. In fact, the creation of a stronger intelligence director makes it even more important that we enact reforms to ensure that intelligence assessments are not influenced by the policy judgments of whatever administration is in power and that a stronger DNI is not just a stronger political arm of any administration. I am deeply troubled that the conference report does not contain critical provisions that were included in our Senate-passed bill on a bipartisan basis that were intended to promote independent and objective intelligence analysis. The scope and the seriousness of the problem of manipulated intelligence cannot be overstated. History has too many examples of intelligence assessments being shaped to support an administration's policy goals, with disastrous results. Forty years ago Secretary of Defense McNamara invoked dubious classified communication intercepts to support passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which was then used by President Johnson as the legislative foundation for expanding the war against North Vietnam. Director of Central Intelligence Bill Casey heavily manipulated intelligence during the Iran Contra period. A bipartisan Iran Contra report concluded that CIA Director Casey ``misrepresented or selectively used available intelligence to support the policy that he was promoting.'' The intelligence failures before the Iraq war were massive. The CIA's failures were all in one direction, making the Iraqi threat clearer, sharper, and more imminent, thereby promoting the administration's decision to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nuances, qualifications, and caveats were dropped. A slam-dunk was the assessment relative to the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The CIA was telling the administration and the American people what it thought the administration wanted to hear. In July of 2004, just a few months ago, our Intelligence Committee in the Senate issued a 500-page unanimous report setting out a long list of instances where the CIA or its leaders made statements about Iraq's WMD and, to a lesser extent, Iraq's links to al-Qaida, which statements were significantly more certain than the underlying intelligence reporting and more certain than the CIA's earlier findings. In fact, the first overall conclusion on WMD in the intelligence committee's report was that ``most of the key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate . . . either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting'' regarding Iraq's programs of weapons of mass destruction. These are life-and-death issues. We in Congress and the American people need to know that we are getting objective assessments on North Korea's nuclear program or Iran's nuclear intentions, for instance. We cannot have any doubt in our mind the intelligence assessments that we get represent the facts as they are objectively assessed and are not shaped to serve policy goals of the White House--this White House or any other White House. We need a stronger national director of intelligence, but a stronger DNI must not simply be a stronger yes man for whatever administration happens to be in power at the time. When we wrote the Senate bill, we included provisions to promote the objectivity and independence of intelligence assessments and to provide a check on the new National Intelligence Director from becoming a policy or political arm of the White House. I am troubled that the conference report excludes some of those checks and significantly weakens others. Perhaps the most troubling area in which this conference report falls short in that regard is the elimination of provisions which we had in our bipartisan Senate bill which gave Congress the tools to do effective oversight of the intelligence community. On this issue, the 9/11 Commission itself said that ``Of all of our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important.'' That is why during the Senate's consideration of the bill, we worked so hard to include provisions aimed at achieving that goal. The absence of these provisions from this conference report is deeply troubling. The bipartisan bill that we passed here in the Senate contained language that required the new Director of Intelligence, the National Intelligence Council, the NCTC, and the CIA to provide intelligence not shaped to serve policy goals. The conference report omits that language. The Senate-passed bill promoted independence of the NCTC by stating that the Director could not be forced to ask permission to testify before Congress or to seek prior approval of congressional testimony or comments. The conference report leaves out that provision. The Senate-passed bill contained a provision requiring the DNI to provide Congress access to intelligence reports, assessments, estimates, and other intelligence information and to do so within a time certain. The conference report omits that Senate-passed requirement giving us a tool to do oversight. There is a long, painful history of efforts in Congress, on a bipartisan basis, to obtain information from the intelligence community which have never been answered or have been slow-walked for weeks, months, and years at a time. It is unacceptable. A more powerful DNI could make matters worse--or better. Congress is coequal to the executive branch on intelligence issues and it baffles me why any Member of Congress, over in the House where we had this opposition, would oppose strengthening our ability to access information and carry out our oversight responsibilities and to prod the intelligence community to give us objective facts without spin. I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute.

Mr. LEVIN. I was also troubled to find out that White House staff was actually present in the room during staff negotiations of these issues. It is my understanding that the White House objected to the Congressional oversight provisions during those discussions. I know these Senate provisions were strongly supported by both the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Connecticut. I know how difficult those discussions were and I appreciate that support very much. It was not a lack of trying on their part which led to the exclusion of these provisions. It was the opposition of the White House carried by House Republicans. In the final negotiations leading up to the November 20 draft conference agreement, I even offered what I know the managers agreed was a reasonable compromise that would have simply required that the DNI report to Congress the status of outstanding requests for intelligence information from committee chairmen and ranking members. It is my understanding that the House Republicans and the White House opposed even that language. The record should be clear on this matter if we are to carry on the battle for stronger Congressional oversight, which is so essential. Other provisions directed at the production of independent, objective intelligence were also included in the Senate-passed bill but were dropped from this conference report. For example, the Senate-passed bill created a statutory ombudsman to initiate inquiries into problems of politicization, biased reporting, or lack of objective analysis. This conference report weakens that provision by requiring merely that the DNI identify an individual--and that could be any individual, including the DNI him or herself--to fill that role. The Senate-passed bill created a statutory inspector general in the office of the DNI with strong investigative powers. This conference report does not. Instead, it simply leaves it up to the DNI to create an IG or not. The Senate-passed bill created a statutory Office of Alternative Analysis or ``red team.'' This conference report weakens that by simply requiring the DNI to establish a process and assign an individual or entity--again, any individual or entity--to conduct the function of red teaming. Let me summarize. While I am pleased that we were successful in creating a strong DNI and NCTC, I am deeply disappointed that we did not reach our destination in these other equally important areas. Mr. President, on balance, I have concluded that I will vote for this bill, but I am concerned about what has been left out of this conference report. I think the managers share my concern about these omissions and would ask that they work with me to address these issues in the 109th Congress. While we have the chairman of the committee on the floor, I thank her and Senator Lieberman for the strong support they gave to the provisions I just described. We should give Congress the tools to do the oversight which is so essential if we are going to get independent, objective analysis. I don't know why the House--apparently Republicans who are carrying out the desires of the White House--took this position. But it weakens Congress. I want to create a record here, number one, acknowledging and thanking and commending our managers for the work they did in conference, trying to preserve our bipartisan provision, but asking, if I could, that they comment on what I just said relative to where the objection came from to these provisions that gave Congress the tools to do effective oversight over intelligence assessments, which we had in our bipartisan Senate bill, and whether I was correct in stating that. Perhaps the Senator can answer on her own time as to whether the objection came from the House Republicans and the White House.

Mr. LEVIN. I thank the chairman of the committee.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I want to bring to the attention of my colleagues a campaign by the Neighborhood Service Organization's Youth Initiatives Project in Detroit, MI, called ``Hugs, Not Bullets.'' This is an outstanding example of involvement by youth leaders who want to make a difference in their community by decreasing gun violence. The Youth Initiatives Project was created in 1999 to address growing community issues including violence and substance abuse in Detroit. For five years, community organizations and students have been involved in a coordinated effort to accomplish the goals of the project. Previous Youth Initiatives Project campaigns have focused on after-school programs to reduce gun violence and increase the use of trigger locks in homes. The current campaign, ``Hugs, Not Bullets,'' is intended to reduce the use of firearms during the celebration of the New Year's holiday. Youth leaders have been organizing for months and plan to enlist over 200 students and numerous community groups in support of the campaign. Several rallies and a candlelight vigil are planned to draw attention to the campaign and the issue of gun safety. In addition, the centerpiece of the campaign is a four-foot by eight-foot card which will make its way through schools and the community to be signed by those who pledge to help reduce gun violence over the New Year's holiday. The card will serve as a powerful symbol of the community's determination to fight violence, particularly involving firearms. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the members of the Youth Initiatives Project for their hard work to bring an end to the gun violence that continues to plague our society. I am hopeful that the 109th Congress will do more to support their efforts and pass sensible gun safety legislation. We owe it to them, to our police officers, and to our communities to do all we can to keep dangerous guns off of our streets.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, December 1 marked the 17th annual observance of World AIDS Day. HIV/AIDS is an epidemic that requires a global solution and the United States has a responsibility to lead the world in addressing this horrible disease. Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago, over 21 million people have died as a result of this disease. Worldwide, more than 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. It is estimated that AIDS claims the lives of over 8,000 people per day and 5 million more people are infected with HIV/AIDS each year. This year's theme for Global AIDS Day is ``Women, Girls, HIV and AIDS'' to recognize and call attention to the rapidly growing number of females with HIV/AIDS. Women, and especially young women, are almost two and a half times more vulnerable to the disease than men because of the social and educational inequalities they face in many areas of the world. Women are much more likely to be sexually abused and are less likely to be aware of the risks associated with unprotected sex and IV drug use. Women also risk passing the disease on to their newborn children. It is estimated that over 19 million women currently live with HIV/AIDS, of which 2 million will pass the disease on to over 700,000 newborn children worldwide this year alone. Tragically, more Americans lost their lives to AIDS in the 1990s than in all wars in U.S. history. Currently it is estimated that there are nearly 950,000 Americans living with HIV/AIDS, nearly one-third of which do not know they are infected. The disease continues to spread throughout the country and we have seen infection rates among women and minorities rise at alarming rates over the last few years. The vast majority of deaths from HIV/AIDS occur in the developing world, most notably in Africa where AIDS is the leading cause of death. While Africa accounts for only 10 percent of the world's population, approximately two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS cases occur there. There are an estimated 11,000 new infections per day in Africa and 57 percent of all women living with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, there have been dramatic increases in HIV/AIDS cases in Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. This is clearly not a regional issue. The disease is spreading in every corner of the globe. The industrialized world has benefited greatly from new medicines that help people live with HIV/AIDS, but most developing countries still lack access to them in sufficient quantities. In many areas, non- governmental organizations are operating small-scale pilot programs that clearly are not adequate to meet the needs of the millions who are living with the disease. In order to successfully combat HIV/AIDS on a global scale, resources must continue to be made available to developing countries to assist in integrating prevention, treatment, and education programs into a national health care system. There are no easy solutions to the problems associated with this epidemic. Researchers are continuing to work hard to find new treatments and ultimately a cure for this devastating disease. Halting the spread of the epidemic requires prevention and a commitment to supporting organizations that are vigorously working to defeat HIV/AIDS through education, humanitarian relief, and public awareness. We must recognize the sobering reality that this disease continues to spread and infect people around the globe regardless of race, gender, age, or income. Remembering those who have already lost their lives to HIV/AIDS requires us to redouble our efforts to defeat the disease and prevent its spread to new members of our communities.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, it is difficult to vote against this omnibus appropriations bill because it provides funding for many programs that I support. In fact, it contains many provisions that I worked to have included. However, we are confronted with this legislation containing funding for fiscal year 2005 which under normal circumstances would have been contained in nine separate appropriations bills and which should have been done prior to the beginning of this fiscal year last October 1. Once again, for the third consecutive year, and all too frequently in recent years, the Senate finds itself considering a massive appropriations bill, in this case totaling about 3,000 pages and spending nearly $400 billion, and containing important legislation which doesn't belong in an appropriations bill at all. We have had only a matter of hours to read and consider this bill. This is a process which reflects poorly on the Congress both because it represents a failure to get the Nation's work done on time, and because of its huge size and the inclusion of matters which were not previously considered in the Senate hinders the kind of careful consideration and debate which wise decisionmaking demands. It is certain that Senators will only learn after the fact details about many provisions which have been added. And perhaps most importantly, because these omnibus bills are delayed until the waning hours of each Congress, the White House is included in the meetings as the language is written, in order to avoid a Presidential veto. This weakens the constitutional prerogative of the legislative branch to control the Nation's purse strings and it undermines the critical oversight role which the Congress plays, in part, through its appropriations activities when they are conducted in the normal manner. One example of the consequences of this hurried and extraordinary process is a provision in the bill late yesterday by our Republican colleagues that provides the chairman of the House or Senate Appropriations Committee or his or her staff access the tax returns and other tax return information of any corporation or individual. Further, it would exempt the chairman or staffer gaining access to these returns from any provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns. The House did not debate that provision. The Senate did not debate that provision. However, somehow it ended up in this bill. This is an outrage. The Senate passed a resolution earlier tonight in an effort to eventually remove this provision from law, however if this bill is adopted, this provision violating the privacy of income tax returns will become law and we will have to hope that the House of Representatives will follow through and the President will sign the resolution to remedy the situation. For every egregious provision like the one above that we find, there could be several more that were missed. I am also concerned about the failure of this bill to adequately fund vital education initiatives. The bill before us underfunds title I by $500 million below the President's budget request; this critical program provides aid to states and school districts to help educationally disadvantaged children achieve the same high academic performance standards as other students. The bill before us also underfunds the important Individual with Disabilities Education Act by $415 million and it underfunds the National Science Foundation at $62 million below the fiscal year 2004 funding level and $278 million below the budget request. Additionally, this legislation does not provide for an increase in the maximum Pell Grant award--the very foundation of aid for many needy students. It remains at the current level of $4,050, rather than increasing toward the authorized maximum award level of $5,800. This bill also cuts funding for local law enforcement programs that could compromise the safety of communities around the country. Not only are our police on the beat essential for maintaining community safety, but they are the first line of defense against potential terrorist attacks. This bill cuts funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS, program by over $140 million from last year's funding level. This program provides vital funding to our first responders and I cannot support such a drastic cut in funding. Throughout Michigan and the rest of the country, our cities are struggling to finance urgent upgrades to municipal sewer systems to prevent discharges to the environment or private property. These communities have very high water and sewer rates and cannot handle additional debt. The State Revolving Loan Fund, which has received $1.35 billion per year from Congress in the past several fiscal years, has helped to clean up polluted waters, however more money is needed to help communities such as ours in Michigan with significant needs. This bill does the opposite; it cuts funding for the State Revolving Loan Fund which will harm our ability to clean up our waters and upgrade our aging sewer systems. This bill deletes a provision contained in both the House and Senate Labor-HHS appropriations bills that would have prohibited enforcement of the administration's overtime regulation that went into effect in August 2004. I am also disappointed that this bill provides less funding for the IRS than the administration requested. This legislation provides $400 million less than the President requested. This overall dollar figure reflects $166 million less than requested for tax enforcement, which is a non-sensical and irresponsible decision. Tax enforcement is an unusual area of the budget where a relatively small increase pays for itself many times over by increasing the amount of revenue collected. Just days ago the IRS announced that its fiscal year 2004 enforcement revenue of $43 billion represented a roughly four-to-one return rate on its overall budget of $10.2 billion, a return that is even greater when only enforcement funding is taken into account. And this return on investment doesn't even take into account the fact that vigorous enforcement also has a word-of-mouth effect that goes beyond the direct revenue generated. Unfortunately, this conference report does not give the IRS nearly the resources it needs to ensure this vigorous enforcement, so we will continue to leave honest taxpayers shouldering an unfair share of the burden while many tax dodgers escape scot free. When only one in five known tax cheats is even chased by the IRS, and when fewer than 1 percent of the estimated 1 to 2 million individuals dodging taxes by using offshore bank accounts have pending IRS enforcement actions, there is obviously a lot more the IRS could be doing to improve enforcement. Mr. President, while this bill funds many programs that I support, on balance I cannot support this legislation. For the reasons I have mentioned, and others, I will vote against this Omnibus bill.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, as we near the end of the 108th Congress, I must express my disappointment that this Congress has failed to pass sensible gun safety legislation. By ignoring these bills we are missing opportunities to increase the security of our families, communities, and particularly our police officers. The greatest of these missed opportunities has been the failure to reauthorize the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. On September 13, 2004 this legislation expired, allowing 19 previously banned assault weapons, as well as firearms that can accept detachable magazines and have more than one of several specific military features, such as a folding/ telescoping stock, protruding pistol grip, bayonet mount, threaded muzzle or flash suppressor, barrel shroud or grenade launcher to be legally sold again. Common sense tells us that there is no reason for civilians to have easy access to guns with these features. Earlier this year, I joined with the majority of my Senate colleagues in passing an amendment to reauthorize the assault weapons ban for another 10 years. However, the bill to which it was attached was later derailed. Despite the overwhelming support of the law enforcement community, the ongoing threat of terrorism, bipartisan support in the Senate, and the pleas of Americans who have already lost loved ones to assault weapons tragedies, the ban was allowed to expire, as the President and the Republican congressional leadership were unwilling to act. We also missed the opportunity to close the gun show loophole. Under current law, when an individual buys a handgun from a licensed dealer, there are Federal requirements for a background check to insure that the purchaser is not prohibited by law from purchasing or possessing a firearm. However, this is not the case for all gun purchases. For example, when an individual wants to buy a handgun from another private citizen who is not a licensed gun dealer, there is no requirement that the seller ensure the purchaser is not in a prohibited category. This creates a loophole in the law, making it easy for criminals, terrorists, and other prohibited buyers to evade background checks and buy guns from private citizens. This loophole creates a gateway to the illegal market because criminals know they will not be subject to a background check when purchasing from another private citizen even at a gun show. I cosponsored an amendment offered by Senators Reed and McCain which would have closed the gun show loophole because I believe it is a critical change needed to prevent guns from getting into the hands of criminals and other ineligible buyers. This amendment would have simply applied existing law governing background checks to individuals buying firearms at gun shows. Like the amendment to reauthorize the assault weapons ban, the bill to which the amendment was attached was later defeated, and despite the fact that a bipartisan majority of Senators voted in support of closing the gun show loophole, Republican leadership has refused to schedule another vote on the issue. This Congress has also failed to consider several other pieces of sensible gun safety legislation which would make it more difficult for convicted criminals to gain access to firearms. One such bill, the Military Sniper Regulation Act, would change the way .50 caliber guns are regulated by placing them under the requirements of the National Firearms Act. This would subject these weapons to the same regimen of registration and background checks as those weapons regulated under the National Firearms Act. These powerful weapons can accurately hit targets a mile away and tighter regulation is needed to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Another bill not considered in the 108th Congress, the National Instant Criminal Background Check Improvement Act, would have provided funding to fix the hole in the current NICS background check system caused by the failure of many states to computerize and update their criminal history records. This failure can result in delays for some who lawfully seek to purchase a gun as well as an inability to block gun sales to some unlawful purchasers. To fix this problem, States need adequate funding to input and update criminal history data. This bill would have authorized $1 billion to help states do just that. Unfortunately, the 108th Congress has retreated from the goal of creating a safer nation by keeping dangerous guns off of our streets. Instead of strengthening laws that would help prevent future gun crimes and terrorist attacks, Congress has allowed legislation like the assault weapons ban to expire, giving potential criminals and terrorists easier access to powerful weapons. The 108th Congress's record on gun safety is not one of which to be proud. I will continue to work toward passing sensible gun safety legislation to help make our communities more safe. I hope that next year in the 109th Congress, the Republican congressional leadership and the President will begin to work with the bipartisan majority who want to enact sensible gun safety legislation.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, that is not why I came to the floor, although it relates to why I came to the floor this afternoon because I came here to pay tribute to a dear friend, our Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota. This sadness is only tempered by the belief that Tom Daschle will continue to play a vital role in our Nation's public life in the future. Tom Daschle has had a distinguished career as a legislator on behalf of the interests of the people of South Dakota and all of the people of our Nation. He has fought for a fair share for the farmers of his State and for farmers around the country. He has been in the forefront of rural health, veterans' health, a fair tax system, and a very broad range of other issues. He has been as a leader of the Democrats in the Senate, both as majority leader and minority leader, through one of the most difficult periods of the Senate's history where Tom Daschle has made his mark. He has been a remarkable leader. As a principled and tireless advocate for the issues he believes in, he has led by example. On countless difficult and contentious issues, he has led by carefully listening to all sides. Time and time again, on complex and challenging legislation, he has led by tireless negotiation and by building consensus. And, where appropriate, he has been able to organize Democrats to insist on our rights as a minority in the Senate. It is, indeed, a bitter irony of the most recent election that Tom Daschle, who is a legislator to the core, and a man of compromise and soft-spoken wisdom, a seeker of dialogue, solutions, and consensus, was caricatured as an obstructionist. In the time-honored tradition of Senate leaders of both parties, he stood tall when principle required it. In reality, though, it was Tom Daschle's style to reach across the aisle, time and time again, in an effort to legislate in the Nation's best interest. Often he worked closely with the Republican leader in some of the Senate's finest and most difficult hours. In the face of a very difficult impeachment trial that tested this Senate, in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and when he himself was targeted in the anthrax attack, as in countless other instances, Tom Daschle demonstrated his talent for calm, inclusive, and wise leadership. As this session of Congress ends in the next few days, the people of South Dakota will be losing a vigorous, effective, and committed Senator. Democrats in this body, indeed, all Senators, will be losing a great leader. And all Americans will be losing a voice of reason, judgment, and wisdom. I will be losing a friend and a confidante. Tom Daschle is a beautiful human being and a nonpareil leader. His good nature will enable him to overcome this momentary defeat so that the contributions he makes to public life will soon flower in a different place. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, while Senator Dorgan is in the Chamber, he made reference to the fact there have been cloture votes required on judges throughout the years. I want to expand on the Record some of the names of judges where cloture votes were required, in fact, where cloture votes were not agreed to and led to their defeat in a number of instances: Justice Fortas in 1968; now Justice Bryer but then circuit court nominee Steven Bryer in 1980, with two cloture motions; Rosemary Barkett, to the Eleventh Circuit in 1994; Lee Sarokin in 1994, with a cloture motion required; Marsha Berzon in the year 2000; Richard Paez in the year 2000. Cloture is not a new phenomenon when it comes to the debate over judges. Yet we hear now that suddenly the requirement that there be a cloture vote is something that is new to this Senate. It is not. It has been historically used. It is appropriate, and it is rare. As Senator Dorgan pointed out, 93 percent of the judges who were nominated by President Bush were confirmed when there were votes that came to the floor of the Senate. Ninety-three percent of these judges were confirmed. And the comparison to that of the Clinton years, where so many judges could not even get a hearing, where there was a filibuster in the Judiciary Committee because of the refusal to grant judges a hearing, is quite a contrast. We do not hear much about that. Instead, hearing that the refusal to have an up-or-down vote and a requirement for cloture is somehow labeled obstructionism is altogether out of line, as far as I am concerned, and inaccurate historically, inappropriate, and needs to be contested.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I wonder if I could ask unanimous consent to line up speakers. Does the Senator from North Dakota want to do that? And is that agreeable to the Senator from Missouri and the Senator from Oklahoma that speakers be lined up by unanimous consent? When I asked Senator Dorgan to yield to me for 5 minutes, he was wondering if he could then be next in order. But I know Senator Bond is here, too.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I cannot support raising the limit on our national debt to $8.184 trillion without taking other steps to restore fiscal responsibility. The fact that this is the third debt increase in three years highlights the irresponsibility of the fiscal policies of this administration. These policies have taken the nation from two years of record surplus--when we were paying down our debt--to this administration's record deficits and debt. A crippling burden is being passed to our children and grandchildren, and the economic security of our nation is threatened as a result. The three recent increases in the debt limit reflect an astounding increase of more than $2.2 trillion. And unless we make a significant change in our fiscal policies, the outlook for avoiding future increases doesn't look any brighter. The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, forecasts that our gross Federal debt, which includes debt the Government owes to the public plus funds owed to federal trust funds like Social Security and Medicare, will climb from its 2003 level of $6.8 trillion to $13.3 trillion in 2014. And this shocking estimate doesn't even include the costs of continued military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that we all know are coming. Nor does it take into account the substantial cost of continuing to provide relief for middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax, which, when applied to them, produces totally unfair results. The fiscal burden such massive debt puts on us and our children is stupendous. By 2014, each American citizen's share of the debt will be $42,903. Paying off a debt of this size will require either extraordinary tax increases or significant cuts in critical government programs like homeland security and education. Furthermore, we will have to spend an increasing amount of our precious dollars on interest payments. Even under the CBO's conservative estimates, net interest payments on the public debt will rise from $159 billion in 2004 to $348 billion in 2014. Every family who has worked to balance its own budget knows that making interest payments diverts scarce resources from other priorities. Making these interest payments means fewer resources are available for many of our national priorities, including shoring up the Social Security and Medicare trust funds at a time when those programs' costs are about to skyrocket as members of the baby boom generation begin relying on payments from those Funds to support their retirement. Our rampant borrowing also threatens the economic security of our Nation as we are forced to go deeper into debt to foreign countries. Since January 2001, the share of U.S. Treasury debt held by foreigners has risen to 42 percent from 30 percent, and 90 percent of the new debt has been purchased by foreigners. This large amount of foreign debt leaves our nation vulnerable to the priorities of foreign creditors. For example, if foreign investors ever decide, for economic or political reasons, to stop financing our debt, U.S. and international markets could be thrown into turmoil. This provides other countries with leverage during trade or other negotiations with us. Our economic security is also threatened by the prospect that a larger debt will lead to higher long-term interest rates. This means it will be more expensive to buy a house, pay for college or pay off credit card debt. This threat is made more serious by the recent increase in indebtedness of American households. Since the beginning of 2001, mortgage debt has increased by 44 percent and now stands at $7 trillion. Home equity loans have jumped by 54 percent and installment debt, including credit card debt, has risen 17 percent. Americans have taken on these new debts largely in an attempt to maintain their living standards in a struggling economy. Since much of this private debt is set at variable rates, any increase in interest rates will have a severe and immediate impact on these families. So before we raise the debt limit today, we should commit to pursuing more responsible fiscal policies to prevent the need for future increases. We should reinstate pay-as-you-go rules to require that in addition to paying for all spending, we pay for all tax cuts as well. This concept is common sense for most families, who work to live within their means by balancing what goes out with what comes in. We should also revisit this administration's irresponsible and unfair tax cuts that have driven us so deep into this deficit ditch. It is reckless and irresponsible that the top five percent of households in our country, whose average income is over $250,000 a year, received almost half of these tax cuts. Restoring responsibility and accountability is essential to the economic and fiscal health of our nation. Simply raising the debt limit without taking other steps to restore fiscal responsibility won't lead to that result.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, let me first suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the Army's current situation is approaching crisis proportions. The Army is bearing the largest burden of the war in Iraq and of the larger war on terror worldwide as well as maintaining forward-deployed forces to deter a possible conflict in Korea. The intense operations and personnel tempo are having a severe impact on both people and equipment, and relief is currently not in sight. There are nearly 270,000 soldiers deployed overseas in 120 countries. Soldiers make up 90,000 of the 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 15,000 of the 20,000 in Afghanistan. The 495,000 active-duty soldiers have been stretched to the limit. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers have been called upon to shoulder the ever-increasing burden. For instance, the first rotation in Iraq consisted of 75-percent active and 25-percent reserve component soldiers. In the current rotation, the Active Force has dropped to 61 percent and the Reserve Force has risen to 39 percent and the next rotation is projected to continue that trend, with about 57,000 percent active and 43 percent reserve. This trend is simply not sustainable. Many reserve component soldiers are approaching their 24-month limit on active duty and many more will reach that limit as the war in Iraq drags on. The stress on reserve component soldiers, family members, and civilian employees will only grow worse, as Senator Reed has pointed out to this body on many occasions and in the Armed Services Committee, has already had an adverse effect on reserve component recruitment, and greater problems are predicted for the future. Further, as reserve component units have been mobilized, personnel and equipment shortages have been addressed by tasking other units to fill those shortfalls. This is a snowballing effect as those units that were tasked to provide personnel and equipment are then alerted and deployed to subsequent rotations and have to fill ever-increasing personnel and equipment shortfalls. Ultimately, units lose cohesion and effectiveness as they are cobbled together from disparate pieces with people who do not know each other, have not trained together, and are short of required equipment, or unfamiliar with the equipment provided. This could have disastrous consequences, as evidenced by the leadership and performance failures witnessed in the 800th MP Brigade, a brigade formed in that manner during the Abu Ghraib incidents. The Active component is and will be under increasing stress as the Reserve component commitments become unsustainable. The Army's 33 active combat brigades have all been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since those two operations began. Some units, including the 3rd Infantry, which led the initial attack into Iraq, have been alerted or deployed for a second 12-month combat tour. Two of these combat brigades had Iraq combat tours extended to 15 months last April during the Shiite uprising instigated by Moqtada Sadr. I understand that contingency plans exist to extend the combat tours of other Army brigades currently in Iraq to similarly build up troop levels prior to the Iraqi elections. Army policy is that soldiers should have at least 12 months between combat rotations or 1 month for each month deployed. However, there are already soldiers who are returning to Iraq or Afghanistan, having left there only 9 to 10 months ago. And during those 9 to 10 months, the soldiers are working long hours to repair equipment and spending several months away from their families as they train in preparation for their unit's return to combat. The Army is creating 10 additional combat brigades in an attempt to address the problems created by the high rotation rate. However, as the Army creates those additional brigades, it is reorganizing all of its brigades into brigade combat teams which are somewhat smaller than current brigades with respect to direct combat maneuver forces. Although the Army asserts that these brigade combat teams are more lethal because they have added artillery and reconnaissance assets that were previously located at the division level, it is not at all certain that the increased effectiveness that the Army expects from these redesigned brigades will make up for fewer combat troops on the ground. If more brigades than are currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are then required to make up for the fewer number of combat troops in the new brigade structure, the operation and personnel tempo of the Active Force will not be much improved. The Army is also addressing the personnel problem by imposing a stop- loss policy on soldiers in units alerted to deploy on combat rotations, forcing many to remain in the service well beyond their contracted time in the service. Additionally, the Army has had to recall over 5,600 members of the individual Ready Reserve, soldiers who have already served their contracted Active-Duty time, for involuntary tours of duty. Clearly, many of the soldiers in the ``All-Volunteer Army'' are no longer volunteers. As several critics have pointed out, this can be considered tantamount to a ``backdoor'' draft. The Army has also been suffering from the failure of the Department of Defense requirements generation and planning processes. The Department of Defense and the Army greatly underestimated the requirements for up-armored high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles--Humvees--and individual body armor for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have continually lagged behind in meeting those requirements, as well as requirements for armor for the entire truck fleet. Similarly, the Army has had to implement a crash program to equip its helicopters with aviation survivability equipment. For instance, the requirement for individual body armor was originally limited to combat arms soldiers only, even though for years the Army has been predicting a battlefield where there would be no distinct front and rear areas and where support soldiers would also find themselves in combat situations. The Army similarly failed to anticipate the need for armor for its trucks, again even though it had been predicting such a fluid battlefield. The Central Command requirement for up-armored Humvees was originally set at only 253. That requirement has been continually increased throughout the last year from 253 to 1,233 to 1,407 to 2,957 to 4,149 to 4,388 to 4,454, and now to 8,105. The Army and Congress have poured over a billion dollars in the last year into armor for trucks, but as of last month, the Army was still reporting a shortfall of $380 million to meet its requirement for armored trucks, and that is simply unconscionable. There is no one in this Congress who would deny the Army the funding needed to meet its requirements for force protection. However, force protection items are not the only funding shortfalls. The Army has had $1.6 billion in equipment combat losses, $1.4 billion of which are aviation losses. Much of that loss occurred in fiscal year 2003, and much of it has not been addressed in any of the supplemental appropriations bills to date because the Department of Defense did not choose to include all of those combat losses in its requests. This does not bode well for the Army as it continues its heavy engagement in Iraq. Similarly, Army equipment repair and replacement is not keeping up with the increased wear and tear induced by such a high operations tempo. The Army's requirement for fiscal year 2003 was $4.4 billion, of which none was funded. The cumulative requirement in fiscal year 2004 was $11.1 billion, of which only $3.4 billion was funded. If this trend continues at those emerging requirements and anticipated funding rates, by fiscal year 2007 the Army cumulative equipment repair and replacement requirement will be $28.8 billion, of which only $12.1 billion will have been funded. At that point, the Army will face a $16.7 billion maintenance backlog. This may have a severe impact on the Army's ability to sustain combat operations in the future. Several months ago, the Army estimated that it would cost over $20 billion to create the additional 10 combat brigades and reorganize the existing 33 in the Active Force into the new modular design. No estimate was provided Congress for the cost of similarly reorganizing the Reserve component. The Army expects the new and reorganized brigades for the Active Force to be completed by the end of fiscal years 2006 and 2007 respectively, and paid for through supplemental funding. It is my understanding that the Army, having received $15 billion from the initial $25 billion fiscal year 2005 supplemental appropriation provided by Congress, will send the Department of Defense a request for an additional $45 billion, a fiscal year 2005 supplemental total of $60 billion. Of this amount, only $10 billion is expected to be for equipment. How far that will go toward meeting the Army's requirement is not clear at this time. Nor is it clear the Department of Defense will actually request that larger supplemental for the Army alone. Past history does not bode well for the Army in that regard either. The challenges for the Army are huge, and the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense has certainly not been supportive of the Army's uniform leadership. In fact, it has often been hostile and vindictive. When General Shinseki, the former Chief of Staff, in answering my prewar hearing question concerning the troop level required for postwar stability and support, opined that it would take several hundred thousand troops, he was publicly ridiculed by the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense and effectively sidelined. When Army Secretary White defended the Chief of Staff, he was fired. Dr. Harvey, the nominee for Secretary of the Army, appears to have a wealth of industry experience but appears to have virtually no experience with regard to Army issues. In responding to questions for the record on his nomination before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Dr. Harvey answered one question concerning whether the Army had enough authorized Active-Duty end strength to sustain its commitments by saying he would use his ``independent judgment and past experience'' to determine the viability of Army initiatives to increase combat power and to ``reach conclusions and make recommendations accordingly.'' I have no reason to question his ability to make an independent judgment. I am concerned as to whether his past experience qualifies him to reach appropriate conclusions, under the circumstances which I have just outlined, with an Army which is under so much stress and strain. I also question whether he would be willing to make recommendations contrary to the known positions of the Department of Defense leadership given the treatment received by his predecessors when they did so. In answering a question concerning the problems in the Army's requirements generation and planning processes that resulted in such a large shortfall in individual body armor, armor for trucks, and aviation survivability equipment, Dr. Harvey said that his ``current understanding is that the underestimation of the total requirement for armor protection for our Nation's service members was not the result of problems with the requirements generation process. The primary cause of the initial underestimation was a change in the hostile conditions under which military forces are now operating in Iraq.'' Dr. Harvey apparently did not realize that is exactly the kind of hostile conditions which the Army for several years has been predicting for the future operational environment. It is an example of why I am concerned about Dr. Harvey's lack of experience as to whether he would be in a position to ask the hard questions and arrive at the appropriate recommendations under the very extraordinary and difficult circumstances in which the Army finds itself. There are numerous challenges that the Army faces, and it would be preferable that the Secretary of the Army be one more knowledgeable of the service that he will lead. Finally, I wish to comment on the comments of my good friend, Senator Warner, about Les Brownlee. I thoroughly and totally concur with Senator Warner's thoughts and feelings about Les Brownlee. He has served this Nation extremely well. He served our committee well before he went over to be the Under Secretary and then the Acting Secretary of the Army. I add my support for his service and for him personally on the Record today, as his former boss and employer has already done so eloquently and thoughtfully. I want to let Les Brownlee know, if he is listening, but more importantly let my friend, Senator Warner, know that he was right on the mark when he expressed the thoughts he did about Les Brownlee. I yield the floor.