Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking Senator Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee, for his hard work on this bill. It has been a very difficult and complicated process. He and his staff, as well as Senator Baucus, have done an extraordinary job moving a $137 billion tax benefit bill through the Senate and through the Congress over the last 2 years. We have been intimately involved in the building and crafting of this bill. There have been literally hundreds of meetings, hearings, debates, and negotiations, some public and some in private, over the last 2 years to put together a bill that is $137 billion. My colleagues will note these bills that are on their desks that have been here since Thursday morning. This was printed Thursday morning or Friday morning and distributed to us, the first time that we have had this in its entirety to read its contents and to understand what is in it. We had our version, but we sent it over to the House and then the conference version came back. Mr. Grassley, the Senator from Iowa, and the Senator from Montana have done a great job trying to provide a lot of good provisions in this bill. I am going to speak about that specifically in a moment. But before he left the floor I wanted to commend him for his work. I rise today to speak for 40 minutes and will continue to speak throughout the course of the debate, which may go on for a day or two or three or four until we finally wrap up the business of this session. I will continue to rise and speak about one item that was conspicuously and unconscionably and unjustly left out of this bill. There was one item that we had passed out of the Senate, a unanimously by voice vote, Republicans and Democrats, unanimously sent over to the House, to include in this $137 billion tax bill an amendment for the Guard and Reserve called the Guard and Reserve Paycheck Protection Act--the Guard and Reserve, the 640,000 men and women who have been called up since the conflicts started in Afghanistan and Iraq, the men and women on the front line supporting our Active troops, protecting us at ground zero of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had a provision in there to keep their paychecks whole. It was taken out by the Republican leadership of the House. Before I get into the details, let me just divert and say, to get off on a little bit of a lighter and more positive note, I congratulate our LSU team, our Southern team, and our Grambling team for winning on the football field last night. LSU came back from a very dramatic game, which I got to watch part of after being here late into the night, and won 24 to 21 over Florida. Southern beat Alabama 33 to 24, and Grambling beat Mississippi State 34 to 26. And Louisiana at Monroe beat Idaho--I am sorry to say to the Senator from Idaho--16 to 14. The teams from Louisiana won last night. I feel strongly that the people of Louisiana would like us to make our best effort to make sure that we can win throughout this week, whether the action is taken now or the action is taken sometime in the near future, for us to win for our Guard and Reserve on the front lines. I don't know why the provision was left out, but I would like to share a visual that is pretty dramatic. I have shared it before. I want to be clear: I have spoken on this on and off for several hours for the last 5 days. I don't object to anything in this bill. Although there are other Senators on both sides, Senator McCain, Senator Harkin, Senator DeWine, Senator Kennedy, other Senators have expressed real concern. I appreciate those concerns. But that is not my issue. That is not why I have stood on this floor objecting. I am objecting to the passage of this bill because it left out the men and women who are on the front line of the war on terror, whether they are at home as first responders or in Iraq or Afghanistan. Members of our Armed Forces were left out of a $137 billion tax credit bill. We could not find one page, one paragraph, one sentence to include them in. You can sit here all day and read this bill. I am going to see how many pages are in the bill. It looks like there are about 650 pages of provisions. We refer to this around here as the FSC/ETI legislation. We have been working on it for 2 years. It is supposedly a jobs bill. It supposedly provides tax relief to good companies, large companies, small companies, companies that import and export, companies that perhaps deserve the relief. The bill started out correcting a decision made by the World Trade Organization to correct basically a $50 billion problem. But as you know--because the President pro tempore is experienced and is chairman of the Appropriations Committee and one of the senior Members of this body--tax bills have a tendency to grow. They keep growing and growing and growing and getting bigger and bigger and more and more expensive because it is very tempting for individuals and corporations and people who petition their Government who want relief or some special credit or want some special provision or think they are not being treated fairly--they petition all of us. Well, there was one group that sent some of us a letter. I would like to read from this letter, the statement they sent, the Reserve Officers Association of the United States of America, the men and women on the front line. It was signed by Robert MacIntosh, who represents the major general: We continue to support tax credits for employers of reservists and National Guardsmen. This position is a result of a problem faced by employers of Reserve members who support our forces when they are mobilized. The extended mobilization and stop-loss authorities, which means basically a backdoor draft, enacted by the President and the service Secretaries to support Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan have served only to exacerbate these problems. Many employers want to extend pay and benefit coverage to the reservists but are finding this to be an unanticipated, long-term expense as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan entail multiple years of mobilization. Reservists are finding re-employment and employment difficult for the very same reason. As reservists' employers shoulder the burden of extra costs to support the employee's participation in the military, they become direct contributors to our Nation's defense. Employer pressure is listed as one of the top reasons for reservists to quit military service. The ROA is disappointed to learn of recent actions by the House that defeated, by a voice vote, an attempt to revive amendment 3123 to Senate Report S. 1637, which would have provided a credit for the replacement employees of ready Reserve and National Guard employees called to military active duty. The Reserve Officers Association of America--I am going to paraphrase here--represents the men and women who are carrying, in many ways, 100 percent of the risk, taking 100 percent of the bullets, leaving their families for hours and weeks and months and days for their training and their deployment. I am paraphrasing this to say that the ROA urges Congress to support the employer tax credit as a means to eliminate civilian employment conflict and support recruitment and retention efforts. It has come to the attention of some of us who have been involved in the Armed Services Committee--I have served on that Committee for several years and continue to support provisions through my position on Appropriations, as the Chair does, and many other Members of this body, support for our troops. I have supported provisions that support the Guard and Reserve as well as our Active because of many reasons but one in particular, which is that in the last several years, as you can see from this chart, our Government--all of us, the past President, the current President, the past Congress, this Congress, and Members from both sides--has basically rewritten the policy of defense. We have said we are going to have a total force structure, and it is going to be composed of 1.6 million Active-Duty officers--soldiers, sailors, marines, and Air Force--and we are going to have 1.2--that is the troop strength of our Guard and Reserve. One of the reasons we count on the Guard and Reserve is for the benefit of the taxpayers, because it is not as expensive. They have civilian jobs and they only go when called up. They don't have to support them 24-7, year after year. We ask them to be ready. The least we can do is send them to Iraq with a full paycheck. We didn't do that because there are higher priorities in the bill. Every Member has come to say something about a priority in this bill. It could be any number of manufacturers. But for the record, for this Senator--and I know others join me--there could not possibly be any higher priority in this country today, right now, than the men and women who are fighting on the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan, and their families who support them. As you know, Mr. President--and I do because I have visited many bases and spent a lot of time with our troops--the truth is that most of the soldiers are used to sacrificing. It is why they signed up in the first place. They think it is a virtue. That is something we can learn more about in this Chamber, including me. I don't sacrifice nearly as much as I should. They are quite an inspiration to us. They don't mind making the sacrifice. I have not had one soldier bellyache about anything, even those who lost their arms and legs. Most of them say: Stitch me up and let me go back to the front line. That is admirable. You would think we could honor their service with more than pictures and words or by putting them in a bill. They didn't ask for the whole bill or half of the bill or even for 25 percent of the bill. They asked for $2 billion out of $137 billion. We could not find it anywhere. We could not find the time, the will, the attention, or the focus to give them a little percentage of this bill. Let me tell you how many of them we call up. We seem to be able to find their phone numbers when we call them to service but not to put them in the bill. From 1953 to 1989, we called up 200,000 Guard and Reserve. This was the traditional way we operated in our Government to protect the country. We would call them up when we absolutely had to: during the Berlin crisis of 1961, we called up 148,000 of them, and 148,000 families stayed home and prayed for their safe return. During the Cuban missile crisis, we called up 14,200, and 14,200 families stayed home and prayed along with their neighborhoods, churches, and places of employment for them to come back. You can go through this list. There were 199,000 from 1990 to 2004, just in the last 14 years, 8 of which I have been a Senator in this Senate and a member of the Armed Services Committee, so I know something about this. We have called them up time and time again and told them to leave their wives, their children, their employment, and go to the front lines. And they go--proudly. They don't ask for much. They served in the Persian Gulf war, 238,000 of them. They went to Haiti, 3,680. They went to Bosnia, 29,670. They served in Operation Southern Watch, 2,038. They went to Kosovo, 5,933. And they went to Afghanistan. Today, before I came to the Senate to speak, I turned on television set and the headlines this morning across the Sunday shows is ``Elections Going on in Afghanistan.'' Who do we think made those elections happen? Did we just wish for those elections to happen? I don't think so. Our troops made those elections happen. They wouldn't be happening without our Guard and Reserve troops, and our Active Forces. I don't care how many speeches we give. I don't care how many bills we write. I don't care how many budgets we pass. The fact is, those elections would not be taking place today if it were not for these troops. They are good enough to get those elections started, but they are not good enough to be in this bill? That is why I am standing on this floor until the last possible minute that I can to delay these proceedings--not to be obnoxious, not to be ridiculous, not to be uncooperative, not because I don't support transportation, not because I don't support shipbuilding, but because I think we owe it to our troops to stand up for them. And I plan to do it. Now I am going to talk about a couple of arguments I heard. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Thank you.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Reserving the right to object.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Reserving the right to object, I am prepared to not object to this request at this time this morning, but I want to let the leadership know, respectfully, the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership, that I am prepared to stay here today and object throughout the day if this situation cannot be resolved some way on behalf of the Guard and Reserve officers. But I will not object at this time.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I respectfully wish to raise the issue this morning to the leader because I know he has been trying very hard, along with our leader, Senator Reid, to move this process along. I am here this morning because I want the leader to know that I want to work with him to do that. Since Wednesday night I have had, along with other Senators, an objection to the Guard and National Reserve being left out of the tax bill. My question is to the leader, and I know he wants to move forward, but with the chairman of the Finance Committee, could he at least give some indication of his willingness to work through this day for the next couple of hours to see if we can take that matter up by voice vote, taking no time for debate, because it has been cleared? Would that be possible for him to consider as we move through the day?

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. We are in a quorum call.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Reserving the right to object, only for the purposes of his statement, and then I would like to be recognized. Otherwise, I will object.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I don't see anyone wanting to speak. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I am going to object. Only to be recognized for the purposes of reading a statement, after which the Senator from Louisiana be recognized; otherwise, I will object.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I note the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU. We were in a quorum call.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, under the previous order, I asked to be recognized after the remarks of Senator DeWine. I really appreciate the leadership trying to work out our schedule. It has been a long couple of days. It is getting late into the night. I really appreciate everybody trying to work forward to getting some of these bills passed. But as I said, one of the most important bills that we have remaining to pass is a $137 billion tax relief bill. There are many good provisions in this bill. There are many industries, large and small, in Louisiana that are going to be helped by it. I would have liked to have voted for the bill. There are energy tax breaks. There are shipping interests that are bolstered and supported in here, which means a lot of jobs to Louisiana. I would have wanted to vote for this bill. I am not going to be able to vote for the bill, and won't vote for the bill unless we have some specific action on one provision--not the Landrieu provision, as some of the others have said, not an individual, personal Landrieu provision, but the provision for the Guard and Reserve, the men and women on the front line fighting for us whom every Republican and every Democrat in this body voted to support. Everyone, all of the Senators, from both parties, by unanimous vote, voted to send that provision over to the House to give modest tax relief to businesses, the small businesses and medium- and large-size businesses that are keeping those paychecks going to the front line. We thought it was a good idea to take $2 billion of the $137 billion to provide some tax relief for those employers so that the Guard and Reserve that make up 40 percent of our armed services that are picking up more of the burden and are taking all the bullets on the front line, whether it is in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else, so their paychecks could be made whole. I want people to understand. The Senate of the United States felt strongly about that. But we sent the provision over. And when it got over to the House, it was summarily, unjustly, unconscionably cut out by the House Republican leadership. And it is a shame. So over the course of the last few days, as we have tried to have debates about this bill in the morning and the afternoon and into the evening, I have spoken about this issue. The reason this poster is up is because it is a visual of what is in the bill and what is out of the bill. Ceiling fans are in the bill. Ceiling fans are really important in Louisiana. I know they are to the Senator from Nevada because we are from States that are very hot. We like air-conditioning, and we like ceiling fans. I am not picking on the ceiling fan industry. It is an important industry, and I am sure there is a good reason. I can't articulate what it is because it wasn't my provision. But someone could probably give a good explanation as to why the ceiling fan industry is getting a tax break. But the Guard and Reserve, going to Iraq, taking the bullets, fighting on the front line, were left out of the bill, and ceiling fans are in the bill. That is the truth. It is a shame. Many of us believe strongly that this injustice needs to be corrected. I see the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Harkin, has raised other issues that he feels very strongly about that were either not addressed appropriately or properly in either this bill or several others. I want my constituents to know, and I would like my colleagues to know, I do not want to make these schedules difficult. I do not. I understand the pressures that are on the Members of this body. But I also understand the pressures that are on the families who have their father or mother or brother or sister or husband or wife on the front line. I understand the pressures of these families. So do many other colleagues in this Chamber. If we can do something to help them, then we should. Maybe we cannot get them in this bill. But I have had conversations with the good leadership on the Republican and Democratic side, who are working as we speak to find a way to help the Guard and Reserve so they are not left out of this $137 billion tax bill with over 509 items. But they are not an item, they are not a line, they are not a paragraph or diddly-squat in the bill. So we are talking about how we could possibly get them included in some other bill that might pass before we go home for the election. I can promise you, in the elections that we are getting ready to have, Members of Congress, Members of the Senate, the President, and the challenger for the Presidency, our nominee, Senator Kerry-- everybody is going to be taking pictures with the troops. I guess that is appropriate. But this Senator thinks that is enough of the pictures. Could we please put them in the budget? I am not up for reelection this year, so this is not a campaign speech. The people in Louisiana have been supporting our troops. Our Guard and Reserve are the best in the Nation. Maybe a Senator would argue, but we have awards to prove it. We win awards. We are about the best--in the top 5 in the Nation. I know these men and women. They don't ask for much. They don't ask to be on the front of every tax break and giveaway. They are willing to sacrifice. But for Heaven's sake, we are going to pass a tax bill and give everybody in America $137 billion and leave them out? I don't think that is right. I don't think my colleagues think it is right or just. I hope that sometime over the next 3 or 4 days that we are here--I know it is Saturday night. I have two small children. I had to make arrangements so I could be on the floor. I have a husband at home. I know everybody is going to go to church tomorrow, and people were at synagogue today and yesterday. I understand that. But I think we need to spend a little time talking about this issue. Why were they left out? How could we afford $137 billion and not afford a tax cut for them? Was it too complicated to figure out? There are a lot of complicated things in here. It would make people's eyes twist if I explained how we were giving tax credits to foreign corporations so they could close down here and go to the Bahamas and open a post office box and get a tax check. There are more complicated things in here than saying to businesses in America: Thank you for being patriotic and for voluntarily sending that paycheck to the front line, closing the gap between what the reservists make as part of the Reserve and what they made for your company. We would like to honor that and give you a tax credit. You can pick up 50 percent of the burden, and the Government can pick up the other half. Evidently, this is too much for us to pick up. It is not too much for me to stand here. I know the hour is getting late. The Senator from Iowa wants to speak. I just say again that I am going to get to the floor over the course of the next few days and I will speak about this issue. I thank the leadership for working in a cooperative manner to allow that to happen because I am still hopeful that we can fix this bill. Maybe the President will veto the bill when he finds out it is not in there. Maybe it could be fixed in a different way. Maybe another bill could be attached. I know if there is a way the leadership in this body wants to fix this, they could. I think the men and women on the front line deserve our best effort in that regard. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I see my colleague from Alabama who has been waiting patiently, as I have, throughout the day to speak. He only wants to speak for 5 minutes. I yield 5 minutes of my time, and then I will reserve my right to speak for the 85 minutes remaining. Thank you.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak for the next hour and a half, and, depending on whether other Senators want to speak later in the night and what the agreements are, I may want to speak even longer because the subject I want to speak about is extremely important to my constituents and to many constituents around the country. I spent a couple of hours in the Senate yesterday speaking about the tax bill, the $137 billion tax relief bill the Senate and House have been negotiating now for 2 years. Not just the last few months, not just this Congress, but for 2 years the Congress has been putting together a tax relief bill because we basically were forced to put a bill together because of a decision made by the World Trade Organization, of which we belong and encourage, that said part of our Tax Code was not in order. I am not on the Finance Committee. The Presiding Officer and I serve together on the Appropriations Committee. I am not a member of the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee, 2 years ago, began to put a bill together to address that situation. It was about a $50 billion problem. That is a lot of money. What happens around here is every time we open the Tax Code, it is very tempting for everyone else to try to get in the bill because if you can get in the bill, you can get money out of the Treasury. You could ask for additional tax relief. You could correct something that you think was an injustice to your business, whether you are a big business or a small business, an international business or a domestic business. You could ask for all sorts of help. What happened was this bill started out as a very specific $50 billion fix for something that most everyone--not everyone but most everyone, including myself--thought we should fix. It has turned into a $137 billion tax relief bill. That is the truth. That is very troublesome. That is not even why I am speaking. There are things in this bill that are good and bad, and Senators have had all sorts of ideas and expressions of their opinion, including an eloquent speech about an important provision by the Presiding Officer for leaving out the regulations on tobacco, putting in the buyout provisions from the farmers but leaving out the companion regulation that was in the bill when it left the Senate. Other Senators have come to the Senate today to speak about different issues. I come to the Senate not saying those are not important. But there is one issue in my mind and in the minds of many of my constituents in Louisiana and around the country that transcends all of these issues and which is in a total category by itself. It is an issue that doesn't have anything to do with corporations or business; it just has to do with fairness, justice, truth, loyalty, and honesty. The truth is that in 2 years, putting this bill together that went from $50 billion to $75 billion to $100 billion to now $137 billion, we forgot one group of people. Just one group I think was forgotten. This is the bill, $137 billion--pages and pages of the bill. It is like two big phone books. Two years we put a bill together. Almost every kind of business one can think of is in this bill, from energy companies to chemical companies to farmers to hospitals, health insurance; good companies that deserve help--I am not saying they don't--and good tax provisions. But the one group that is left out--if you read the bill from the beginning to the end, read it upside down, backward, in any language, you will not find one group of people in the bill. I hate to say who that group is because the people in America do not believe we could do this. We left out our troops. We left out the men and women on the front line. This is my problem. They are so far away in Iraq on the front line that we cannot see them or we will not see them or we do not want to hear them, maybe, because they are on the front line and they do not have time to be at the Capitol lobbying for themselves, and so we just left them out. When the House Members or Senate Members come to the Senate and say they cannot understand why we are not rushing through on this bill and why some Senators are holding it up, I will tell them why. This Senator thinks it is a shame, unconscionable, to work for 2 years and put a $137 billion bill together that helps everyone--and you could argue for good, for bad--yet leave our troops out. Some of us, including the Presiding Officer, Republicans and Democrats--had put in the bill when it was in the Senate a very small but important provision that only cost $2 billion of the $137 billion-- just $2 billion for our troops. Our troops are taking 100 percent of the risk. Our troops are bearing 100 percent of the sacrifice. We only asked for less than 2 percent, and we got nothing. So this Senator is going to stay on this floor for as many hours as I can to tell the truth about this, and perhaps these words will reach to somewhere or people will be inspired or encouraged to take the political actions necessary to make sure these troops do not get left out next time or before we finish. Let me read you some of the e-mails I am getting because we put this up on our Web page, and I have been doing interviews since I found out about this Wednesday night, as many as I can. I am going to continue to speak and debate and talk to anybody who wants to interview me about it. I know some of these e-mails get a little political, but I think it is OK for me to read them here. But these are e-mails. I am happy to have them in the Record. I am not going to read all the political ones. I am trying to pick a mix of them. But I would like to start with this one to show the potential of this issue: As a Texas Republican voter, you inspired me, and now I will take a harder look at Democrats running for any office because I'm a retired military service member. I have pretty much believed the services were better represented by Republicans, and I voted that way. You showed me that my basic ideas may have been flawed, and I will now look wholeheartedly into that. Thank you for such a beautiful speech demanding that the military be represented in that bill. You really moved me and may have switched my party affiliation with that direct and memorable speech. Mr. President, my office is being flooded with e-mails like this, but let me read you another one from a Democrat: Dear Mary, I'm writing to tell you about how proud I am of work you did on the floor today. As I write, you continue to articulate a logical and, for most of us, a compelling argument as to why the National Guard and Reserve should be treated as first class citizens rather than second class citizens in the tax bill pending before the Senate. Well done. Can I convince you to move to North Carolina? This is not about me. I am reading these not because I want people to know or because I want to brag about this issue. I want the Members of this body, and particularly the House leadership, the House Republican leadership, that took this out of the bill, I want them to know, Chairman Thomas, Speaker Hastert, and Congressman DeLay, how strongly Americans of all parties feel about what was done to our men and women in the armed services. Let me be just very clear. The Republican leadership in this body supported this effort. I want to be very out front about that. The Republican leadership in this body, along with the Democratic leadership, supported this provision. And it went over to the House. Only in conference, at the direction of the Republican chairman, Chairman Thomas, was it taken out. Now let me say this: I am so tired of seeing our troops in the pictures, in the photographs, riding with us in parades, waving the flag, taking the pictures, but when it comes time to put them in the budget, to give them relief, to put them in the tax credits, they are nowhere to be found--only in political propaganda and pictures. And this Senator and my constituents have had enough. I want to talk about why this is important. This picture is up here because I want to demonstrate that one thing in the bill--and I am not trying to pick on the ceiling fan importers. I am sure it is a very legitimate request. But we have a tax provision to give help to those companies that import fans from China. Meanwhile, our troops do not get in the bill. Now, if anybody needed a fan, our troops need one because it is hot in Iraq. It is about 105 degrees. If there were any way for me to get some of these fans to them, I would put an amendment on the bill. But the fans are in. The troops are out. Now, another reason this is important is because the Members who are on the Armed Services Committee and many Senators who have served in the military understand this. I served on the Armed Services Committee for a while. I was very proud to do it. And I plan, hopefully, one day to be on the Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations so I can continue to fight for them and to articulate some of these views. But I am not sure the country understands how much we are relying on our Reserve forces. We have a total of about 1.6 million Active troops and we have 1.2 million Reserve troops. So it is about 60/40. Now, in 1953, not that long ago, during the Berlin crisis, we only called up 148,000 Reserve troops. In the Cuban missile crisis, we called up approximately 14,000 Reserve troops. To fight in the Vietnam war, we only called up 37,000 Reserve troops. This comes to a total of 200,000. So for almost 35 years, we only called up 200,000 Reserve troops. So our Reserve was operating in a place where the men and women could sign up, go do their weekend work, get a pretty decent paycheck for that, get training, and serve their country. These Guard and Reserve, some of them are retired Active military, but many of them are policemen and firemen and women who want to serve and are happy to be that citizen soldier, that part-time soldier. Their goals have not changed, but our country's needs have changed. We made the decision in the 1990s to say, to save taxpayer money, to make our forces better and stronger, we are going to rely more on our Reserve and less on our Active Duty, and we cut our Active strength, therefore relying more on our Guard and Reserve. The only problem with that is we keep forgetting them. We send them to the front line, we deploy them year after year, and then we forget about them. We are not sending them the pay they need, the benefits they need, the equipment they need. I am wondering, what is going on? In the Persian Gulf war we had to call up 238,000 Reserve troops. In Haiti, we called up 3,000 Reserve troops; in Bosnia, 29,000; Operation Southern Watch, 2,000; Kosovo, 6,000; and the war in Iraq, 410,000 Guard and Reserve--currently about 5,000 of them are from my State of Louisiana. Just 2 weeks ago, I went to Leesville, LA, the proud home of Fort Polk, where many of our troops train. It is a joint training base. I was with my mayors and my Governor, and we saluted our troops. We prayed with our troops. We were with them. We sent them off. The 256th Infantry Brigade is getting deployed. This is affecting thousands of families around Louisiana. This is not just happening in Louisiana. This is happening in the State of the Senator from Ohio, in Chairman Grassley's State of Iowa, in Texas and California. Thousands of families are being separated, husbands from wives, wives from husbands, fathers from children, to go fight on the front line. So you can see the increase and the frequently that we have called them up, so you would think that if we are calling them up more, we would help them more. But we help them less. You would think that if we have a tax bill going through, this is the group of people who should be on the front page. But they are not on any page. They are not on the front page. They are not in the middle. They are not on the last page. They did not even write a note to say: Sorry we couldn't help you this time. Maybe we can help you next time. Not even a PS. I have been proud to support tax relief since I have been here for 8 years. I haven't supported all the tax relief packages, but I believe people deserve tax relief. I wish we could live in a world with no taxes. As soon as we figure out how to do that, that would make everybody happy. I am not sure how to do it, but I am sure somebody will think of an idea someday because we sure eliminate taxes right and left for everybody. We have been spending the last 4 years providing tax relief, $2.1 trillion. This is direct tax relief, either special benefits, including military families and the earned-income tax credit, ideas like their combat pay or their severance pay would not be taxed. Tax benefits to our military basically amounted to $1.37 billion. Everybody else gets $2.1 trillion. But the guys and gals on the front line get $1.37 billion. Someone will say: Surely, Senator, some of the $2.1 trillion will go to the military families. And, yes, that will happen. Middle-class families generally are in here, and our troops are also middle-class families. The Republican side will disagree with this, but what the Democratic side says is, since so much of this tax relief is targeted to families earning over $100- or $200,000, I would argue that very little of this money is going to get to military families. Why? Because most of these families only make $50,000. The average is $30,000 in the active lower ranks. Very few people in the military make over $150,000. So who are we helping? Not the guys fighting the war. Not the guys taking the bullets. The reason I am particularly offended on behalf of the soldiers is that we can afford to help them. If we didn't have the money, if we just couldn't afford it, then I would go to them and say: Look, you all know more about sacrifice than anybody. It is in the code of the military. Sacrifice, it is what they do; it is what they are. So everybody has to sacrifice. But the fact is, not everybody is sacrificing because everybody else is not sacrificing anything. They are getting extra. And only the military is being asked to sacrifice, not just their life but their paychecks. I guess what really is upsetting, as I learn more about this and as I read the materials that are sent out by our own Government, this is the ``family readiness paradigm.'' It is www.defenselink.military, I think from the Pentagon. Secretary Rumsfeld is quoted and President George Bush on this chart. I want to quote what the President said: The National Guard and Reserve are a vital part of America's national defense. [They] display values that are central to our nation: character, courage, and sacrifice, [and demonstrate] the highest form of citizenship. And while you may not be full-time soldiers, you are full-time patriots. That is lovely. It is wonderful. Except these words are not backed up with actions because actions would have put the patriots in the bill and said: You deserve a portion of this tax cut because the Guard and Reserve that go to the front lines are taking a 41 percent pay cut, according to the Government Accountability Office study. And why is that? Because the Guard and Reserve are citizen soldiers. They work in regular life as truck drivers and architects and doctors and nurses. They might make $60-, $70-, $100-, $150,000. But when they are activated and they go to the front line, they leave their civilian paycheck at home and they pick up their Army, Navy, or Marine paycheck. And it is only $30,000 or $35,000 or $40,000. Some of these families are taking a 50-percent pay cut. So while they are on the front lines taking the bullets, their families are back home. I have a letter from one of the families in Louisiana that said: Thank you, Senator, for fighting for us. We live on a very modest and meager income. I have been pouring water in my children's cereal to make ends meet because the grocery bill is getting pretty high. I have to go home and tell that lady in Hammond that we couldn't find $1 in the bill to help her with her grocery bill. This is particularly upsetting to me. The chart says ``Self-reliant families,'' I like that word ``self- reliant.'' I think it is important for us to be self-reliant, to be strong, to not be overly dependent. I believe in self-sufficiency and economic independence and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. But why is it that we have to put a chart up for our Guard and Reserve asking them to be self-reliant, when this bill doesn't represent self- reliance? This bill represents companies and individuals who came to the Government to ask for help and aid, not self-reliance. But in the charts that we send out to these families as they wave their loved ones goodbye, we tell them: Forget about being in the bill. Here is your brochure that talks about self-reliance. And if you need help, call the outreach family readiness coordinator. Maybe we can help you organize your finances because we know your situation is tough. That is wonderful, except what they really would need from us is a whole paycheck. I am not asking for a bonus for them. I am not asking for any special tax break. Just make their paycheck whole. Just keep their paycheck whole. The way we did that in the Senate FSC-ETI bill was by giving the employers in this country, the patriotic employers who are basically subsidizing their salaries by saying: Harry is leaving us tomorrow. We can't let his family have to live on $30,000 less. So here is a small business. I can just see them now getting together in the coffee room: Harry has to go. Can we make it? Can we help him? Can we keep his pay going because he is going to be gone for a year? That small business digs deep. Harry goes to the front line. They keep sending him a check--even though he is not at work for them, he is at work for us-- and keeping that paycheck whole for that family. And all of us in the Senate thought that was the right thing to do. These are patriotic businesses. Let's give them a tax credit, at least half, so those small businesses that are doing this could be rewarded. They could be recognized, voluntarily. They don't have to pay their active duty Guard and Reserve employees. But if they are doing it, they should get a 50-percent tax credit. So, in essence, our amendment was creating a partnership between all the small businesses in America, patriotic businesses and large corporations that are keeping the front line going. But Chairman Thomas decided in his committee that this bill and the things in it represented a higher priority than keeping the paychecks whole for the men and women taking the bullets for us on the front line. I am still waiting to hear from Chairman Thomas about why he thought that or what it is that I have missed. I haven't heard a thing. I would like to read the letter I sent to the President. I put it in the Record yesterday. I will read the letter I sent to the President because I want to say again, as I said yesterday, I don't think the President of the United States knows about this. I think if he did, he wouldn't have let it happen. I want to read my letter again. I hope to get a response. I just sent it to him yesterday about 24 hours ago. Mr. President: I am writing to bring a grave injustice to your personal attention. During the Senate consideration of the FSC/ETI legislation, the Members of the Senate added a modest provision to assist our troops. GAO studies have concluded that 41 percent of our Guardsmen and Reservists called to serve their country on the front line must take a pay cut to do so. Fortunately, some companies around the country have stepped up to the plate and taken the patriotic step to make up the pay-gap of these brave men and women. The provisions that we added in the Senate would have provided a tax credit of up to 50 percent to cover the cost of these companies who make up the difference. In doing so, we hoped both to acknowledge the patriotism of the existing companies and at the same time encourage more employers to take this step. Mr. President, no doubt that you have traveled the country and you have confronted the same stories I have from some of the military families struggling to make ends meet. We have had to ask an awful lot of our Guard and Reserve. They ask so little from us. So trying to take this worry off the minds of our men and women on the front lines seems to me to be the least that we could do. So it is with deep embarrassment for our Government that I must report that this very modest release for our troops was stripped from the conference report by Congressman Thomas and the leadership of the U.S. House. While I am certain that representatives of your administration participated in this conference, I presume that you did not have personal knowledge of this decision to cut support for our military families. Regrettably, this decision has placed all of us in a very difficult position. While I endorse many aspects of this bill, I simply cannot support a measure that places so many lesser priorities ahead of our most important priority. It goes on to say that I respectfully request that the President exert his significant influence to correct this at the earliest possible time. It could be by vetoing this bill and sending it back and telling us in a veto order to fix it, which has been done before and could be done. That is unlikely. It is very difficult to do, but I think these are difficult times. Or the President and the House leadership could admit they made a mistake and promise, in writing or in other ways, to include it in the next bill through here. This letter was signed by myself and Senator James Jeffords from Vermont. Many other Senators signed a letter to the conference. For the record, I want to make sure that people understand that Senators Murray, Johnson, Cantwell, Corzine, Boxer, Kerry, Durbin, Dodd, Pryor, Reid, Lincoln, Bond, Graham, Dayton, and many others signed onto a letter to the conference committee when this bill was being decided. It is addressed to Senators Grassley and Baucus, who are very supportive of this measure. It was also sent to Representative Bill Thomas and Representative Charles Rangel. I do know that Charles Rangel, the Democratic ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, supported this. It was a decision made by the House Republican leadership, and it was a bad decision. It is a decision that needs to be changed at the earliest possible time. Mr. President, one other thing that is very disturbing to me and particularly hard or difficult to articulate is that I have met so many men and women in uniform. I have met so many men and women in uniform, and they trust us to represent them and to do our best by them. When they are on the front lines, they don't have time to have lobbyists here. They have many Members of this Senate who have put in additional benefits--I see the chairman of the Appropriations Committee here, who has worked very hard for our men and women in uniform--and we have put in time and time again help for them. So we have tried to respond in the Senate. But they trust us to look out for them. In this bill, when it left the Senate, this provision was in the bill. When it went to conference, it was taken out. Again, there are many other items that were not included. I understand that. I am not arguing that anything in this bill is not worth our attention, because some Member felt strongly about it or it would not have been in the bill. I am not arguing about what is in the bill. I am arguing about the one provision that I know about that was left out of the bill. It is not Senator Landrieu's provision; it is a provision for our Guard and Reserve, to keep their paychecks whole so they can save for their future, so they can send their children to college, so they can fight and keep their minds on the front line and not have to worry about the homefront. I am wondering why they were taken out. Again, I feel obligated and very motivated to try to spend some time in the last days, as we wind down the session, to speak about a grave injustice. That injustice is that we have 1.2 million Guard and Reserve in our country, representing about 40 percent of our total force. They are fighting on the front line in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in places all over the globe. You can see on this chart that these are percentages of our Guard and Reserve that have been activated. Thirty-six percent of my Guard and Reserve--I think I have close to 12,000 Guard and Reserve units in Louisiana--are on the front lines. If you look at Washington State on the chart, it is 46 percent. Over here in Florida, it is 47 percent. You can see the States and the percentages of the Guard and Reserve. Every one of these percentages represents thousands and thousands of families who are being called up to go to the front line. What could be more central to our security than the troops going to the front line? Why would this Congress, led by the House Republican leadership, spend 2 years putting together a tax relief bill and leave them out so that they have to take a pay cut while everybody else gets a bonus or they take a pay cut and everybody else gets extra financial help or everybody else gets their tax bill lowered, but they have to pay the same taxes, and they get not even a whole paycheck? The Senator from Iowa came down earlier to the floor of the Senate and made a couple of comments about this conference. I just have to respond, and I know he is not here, but it will be in the Record. He will be here tomorrow, and we can talk face to face about this. I have the utmost respect for the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the Finance Committee. It has been very difficult for him to put this bill together, I know. The ranking member from Montana has been very helpful in putting this bill together. I do want to take issue with something the Senator from Iowa said. He said it has been a long road to what I hope will be a final passage of this legislation. American workers, especially those in the manufacturing sector, put in the work necessary to make the U.S. the most productive economy in the world. We Senators should employ the same work ethic. We have to match our constituents' work productivity. We cannot delay this matter any longer. We cannot leave the jobsite without finishing our work. I understand we want to get this bill finished, but I think spending some time talking about the soldiers on the front line, who were left out, is something that is important to do so we can either get this fixed before the end of the time for this bill to have to be considered or we can cause the focus to be such that it can be fixed in the next tax bill that passes this body. He goes on to say that in his opinion it was a very open conference. Now, that may be his opinion, but from what we understand from Members who were there, basically the House Republican leadership laid down their mark, and out of a $137 billion bill there was only $182 million worth of amendments that were changed from the Republican leadership written bill. So of $137 billion, only $182 million--only seven items of this entire bill, which could be on one page--were added or changed from the House mark. So the House leadership wrote the bill and they left the troops out. In the conference, the seven items, it could have been any seven, but it was rural carriers, letter carriers, were added at a cost of $33 million. The SUV loophole was closed. The National Health Service Corps loan repayment was put in that added $72 million to the cost; small issue bonds; electric cooperatives; marginal stripper wells; and whatever the blue ribbon task force on tax reform was, it is no longer existing because it was taken out. So out of $137 billion, there were seven items, for a total of $182 million, that were changed. When the argument is made that it was a very open process and the Senate put in some things and the House put in some things and it was all open and everybody talked and everybody negotiated, it is not true. What is true is for 2 years in many meetings, in many hearings, in many speeches, over many hours, a bill was put together and time and time again in those meetings and on this floor and in the committee, letters were sent to the Republican House leadership, please do not forget the troops. But when the final print was done, when the bill was printed for distribution, they were left out. I have stated until this issue is addressed, I am going to vote against this bill. I have not had one person in Louisiana call me and say: Senator, how could you possibly vote against my tax relief that is in this bill? Because the people in Louisiana are very patriotic and they do not think anyone should stand in the front of the line, except the troops. Time and time again, the people of Louisiana show their respect in real and significant ways to our troops. So while there are tax credits in here for the oil and gas industry and for shipbuilders and for fishermen, and many things that are important to my State--and I want them to know I support those industries--I also know and can say with confidence there is not an industry or a business or a person in my State that thinks they should be ahead of the Guard and the National Reserve, not one. I promise that if anyone from Louisiana calls me to tell me they do think they should be ahead, I will be happy to admit I was wrong. Our troops depend on us in many ways, and in the middle of a war when we are fighting one, as we are, with a lot of rancor and different views and different opinions, it is important when we can send our words of support that our actions match those words and that in every way we can tell our troops, because it has been a difficult time, we are in an election year, there are different opinions about the way this war is being prosecuted, but I would think at this time in particular we would want to send, by our action, not our words, real support for our troops. What could we send more than a paycheck? When we do not take the opportunity to put the paycheck in this tax bill--and maybe people will come and say, Senator, we put all of the help for the Army and the Navy and the Reserve in the Defense bill,--let me say what will happen when we leave them out of this tax bill: We end up having to argue in the Defense appropriations bill whether we want to spend money for their helmets, their rifles, their covered Humvees or do we want to spend the money for their paychecks. Why are we making them choose between a helmet and a paycheck? That is what happens when we just focus on the Defense appropriations bill and divvy up the money. It is not fair to them. It is not right. It is not what we should do. When we have a tax bill moving through that could provide obviously $2 billion of the $137 billion we are giving, we could have given them tax relief. If there was a health care bill coming through, which there has been, we could provide health care provisions out of the general health care bill for our troops. Then in the Defense bill, we do our best to allocate those moneys as fairly as we can. So that is why I am particularly upset, because I have been in those discussions on the Appropriations Committee and I know how tough it is. Do we give a 10-percent pay increase or do we invest in operations and maintenance on the bases? There is never enough money to go around. For what our troops are doing for us and the times our country is in and the challenges we face, we should not make them have to make those choices when we obviously have other options. Let me read a couple of other e-mails I have received from people who feel strongly about this, because I think it is important. I am a retired Army Reservist who was activated and deployed to the Gulf during Desert Shield/Storm. Because the company where I had worked for 16 years at the time was going through financial difficulties the best they could do was to continue with my family health plan, and I really appreciated that especially in their predicament. Now, think about this. This is a guy going to the front line and he is especially appreciative that his company has decided, out of their patriotism and generosity, to keep his family receiving health care. They are not making his paycheck whole and he is not even angry about it. That is how men and women in uniform are. They do not even want to ask for help because they believe in self-reliance. They believe in sacrifice. But they also believe in fairness and honesty. It is not fair to leave them out of the bill. They deserve more. They deserve our truthfulness, our honesty, our hard work and our fairness, and we let them down. He goes on to write: Other reservists serving with me but who came from stronger financial private or public work settings enjoyed all prior pay and perks; most soldiers found themselves somewhere in between those two positions. So he is saying he went over there with very little. Some went over there with the ability of their employers to keep their pay whole, but most people fell in the middle, he says. Your proposal about the Administration and Congress backing up the rhetoric with real money would benefit employers, employees and in the long run the services in their retention efforts. I want to talk about retention. I don't know how many times the generals have to come before us to speak about retention. I don't know how many times some of us on the Armed Services Committee have to come to this Chamber to say we are having a tough time recruiting for our armed services, not because we don't have brave men and women, not because they don't want to serve, but when the compensation and the pay packages get so out of line with what people can make in the civilian world, it puts a lot of pressure on them. Believe me, I have talked with these soldiers. With tears in their eyes, sometimes, they tell me: Senator if it were up to me I would go and you wouldn't have to pay me a thing. This isn't about me. But I can't bear having to watch my wife take a second job or not be able to be home with our two children because I'm away. Please tell them I am not asking for myself, I am asking for my spouse. I am asking for my children. I want to speak for them. Could we not just keep their paycheck whole? A report last month let us know--I will supply it for the Record--that the Guard and Reserve, for maybe the first time in a long time, I don't know exactly the number of years, but for the first time in many years, fell short of its goal. It fell short by 5,000 in its recruitment. You might understand why. It is not because Americans are not patriotic. It is because of this issue. It is about pay. It is about benefits. It is about whether our Government cares enough for the soldier to take care of their family when they are away. The soldiers would fight for nothing. They don't eat very well over there, and they don't care about it. But they do care about their families and their children back home. We should care as much as they do. We can help by keeping that paycheck whole, sending it home for our soldiers on the front line. But we did not do that when we put this bill together. As I said, I am sorry to have to report to the President that is the case because I don't think he has any personal knowledge. Maybe he will have gotten the letter in the last 24 hours. He has been very busy. I know it is a very busy time. But I know somewhere in the White House they are reading that letter, and I am looking forward to them letting me know what they think about it. Do they think it was a good idea? Do they think we could fix it shortly in a different bill? Do they think we could find $2 billion to keep those paychecks whole? Here's another e-mail-- Let me start by saying that I do not reside in your State but I still listened to you on C-SPAN and I loved it. Yes, the very people who we depend on for our national security cannot make ends meet. This is something many people do not understand, because they have never been affiliated with the military. Painful to note, billions of our tax dollars go to help overseas, but not for our troops' loved ones. I, along with the other girls, we get together for our weekly quilting group. And we opened up other people's eyes about this subject matter many months ago. I don't know that we can get them to vote any differently, but it sure felt good to hear you tell the truth. I am not reading this for my own benefit. I am saying that there are many people around the country--one of the girls, probably an older woman, I would imagine--who quilts with a group of friends. They, evidently, talk about this. They know about military families. They are probably part of a group somewhere in this community that collects cans of food and other helps for the families at home. There is a great support network in this country. Why can't the Government be part of the support group? I don't understand it. The Government has more money than everybody put together, and we can't find a half a billion? $250 million? We can't find a few thousand dollars in the tax bill? And we have Americans sitting around their kitchen tables collecting food for our troops on the front line? In one way it is a wonderful thought. In another way it is awful to think about. I am happy Americans are supporting the troops. Our Government should do the same, and not just in the photographs, and not just in the pictures but in the budget. I am going to have a lot more to say about this subject. Again, for people watching, as I wrap up and put us into a quorum call for the next little bit, I want to say again, the underlying bill is an important bill, and it needs to be passed. This Congress has worked on it for 2 years. There are many important provisions in this bill. But for the life of me I cannot understand how we have 150,000 troops in Iraq, why we left them out. About 40 percent of them are Reserve. When they go to that front line they don't take a whole paycheck with them. We could have helped make it whole, but we chose other priorities. I don't know a higher priority than supporting our troops. Again, not just in the pictures, not just in the photographs, not just in the parades but in the budget, in our actions not just our words.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. May we have order in the Senate?

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I make special note of the visit to the United States by the distinguished President of the Republic of Kyrgystan, Askar Akaev. President Akaev was in the our country for the opening of the session of the United Nations and also traveled to Utah to discuss the reforms taking place in his country and to talk about the efforts his nation is taking in the war on terrorism. Today we face a global war against terror, a war we cannot win alone. It is in that spirit that we should recognize and support democracies worldwide, particularly those burgeoning democracies for which freedom is a new concept. The Republic of Kyrgyzstan, is just such an example. A small country of 5 million in Central Asia, the Kyrgyz Republic has been one of the most progressive countries in the region, especially amongst the countries which once made up the former Soviet Union. Plagued by an inflation rate of 88% in the year 1994, Kyrgyzstan under the leadership of President Akaev was successful in carrying out a number of market reforms, which allowed it to lower that inflation rate to 15 percent in just three years. President, Askar Akaev was first elected in October of 1990 and is internationally recognized for his promotion of science, human rights and democracy world wide. He has received many International Awards, including the Grand Cross of the Order of Liberty and Unity from the Association for Unity Latin America in 1995, the Prize of Javaharlal Neru's International Foundation for Unity also in 1995, the Prize of Crans Montana World Forum in 1996 and the North American-Kyrgyz Business Councils International Leadership Award in 1997. More recently, however, President Akaev's wife and first lady, Mairam Akaeva was awarded an honorary doctorate by Utah Valley State College during a trip to the United States late last month. She is also internationally known for her efforts with women and children, spreading the value of education, which is highly regarded in the Kyrgyz Republic, which enjoys a literacy rate of 98 percent. I thank President Akaev's commitment to the war on terrorism and express our gratitude for providing a military base for our troops in his country. There are a number of companies with operations in the region that have helped supply our troops with what they need to prevail. As we continue to search for allies in this critical region of the world, it is important to commend those who are trying and slowly succeeding with new found freedoms and economic opportunities.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thought I would take the next 15 minutes or so to review a couple points about the tax relief bill we are considering adopting. There are three or four major pieces of legislation that the Senate is trying to finish in the next couple of days. One of them is the reorganization of homeland security and the Intelligence Committee. One of them is the tax relief bill that we have been working on for 2 years. There are other issues that this Congress is struggling to get finished in the next few days, but the most important issue to me and the one I would like to spend a bit of time talking about now is the tax relief bill that was put together by many of us, or tried to be put together by many of us, over the last 2 years. That started out for a very good purpose and a very good reason because there was a trade decision made by the WTO that called into question the legitimacy of some part of our Tax Code relative to certain businesses. We had to take some action or our businesses would have been fined through the WTO because the European Union had prevailed in their argument. So our tax writers got busy and tried to fix that. We need to fix it. But what has happened is, we have done more than fix. We have really messed up some things. Unfortunately, inexplicably, and as a grave injustice, we didn't take care of our men and women in uniform. For the men and women who are taking care of us on the front lines and suffering pay reductions, we are letting pass the opportunity to make their paychecks whole. I am going to spend a few hours over the next couple of days talking about that. Before I do, let me share a fact that maybe some might not realize. We have always had men and women in our Guard and Reserve units supplementing our Active Forces. But never in the history of this country have we relied on the Guard and Reserve to the extent we are today. Let me share that in the Berlin crisis of 1961, we called up 148,000 reservists; in the Cuban missile crisis, we called up 14,000; in the Vietnam war, we called up 37,000--for a total of almost 200,000 from 1953 to 1989. You can see from this chart that just in the last 12 years, in the Persian Gulf War, the invasion in Haiti, the Bosnia peacekeeping, Operation Southern Watch, which is ongoing, the Kosovo conflict, and Iraq and Afghanistan--and this list is not completely up to date--we have called out 364,000 guardsmen and reservists to supplement our Active Forces, to protect this country, to defend this country. These troops have been willing to go at great sacrifice, but the least we could do is keep their paychecks whole. The least we could do, if we are giving out tax credits and tax cuts to other people, is include them in the bill. This conference report that this Senate is considering over the next couple of days, $137 billion, left them completely out. We talk about helping small business. This is a picture of one of our soldiers. We left them out but we put in ceiling fans. I know people are not going to believe this, because it is hard to believe. But the guardsmen and reservists and their employers who keep their paychecks whole while they are on the front lines so they can pay their mortgages, pay their car notes, continue to contribute to their children's college trust fund, or just keep their household together, the employers of this country, small employers and large employers, are doing the right thing, the patriotic thing, not mandated by the Government but out of their own good heart, digging deep, keeping those men and women on the front line with a full paycheck. We had the opportunity to give them a modest tax credit so they could keep that paycheck whole and hire a temporary worker to take the spot of that guardsman or that reservist who went overseas to protect us. And we couldn't find one line, one paragraph, not one word in a $137 billion tax relief bill for every conceivable commercial, industrial, or manufacturing interest in the country, for our guardsmen and reservists. I want to show you the state of our Active Reserve. Sometimes pictures help us to understand. I know this subject can be complicated, but it is actually very simple. We just didn't put our Guard and Reserve in the $137 billion tax bill. We put everybody else in, but we left them out. I am going to stand here until I get an answer why. In 1940, at the height of the Second World War in the 1940s, this was the Army troop strength. This is where we had to go in the Second World War to defend. This is in the thousands, so it was 600,000 to defend our Nation. Because we, of course, won that war, won the Cold War, defeated communism, we have dropped the active strength force of our troops down to probably the lowest level since 1942. What fills this gap is our Guard and Reserve that are called up when we need them. When September 11 hit, we needed them and we called them. And they went. And 41 percent of them are going with a pay cut. Some of us got together, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate side, Chairman Grassley and our ranking member, Senator Baucus from Montana, and fixed that. Since we have a big, fat tax bill going through, couldn't we possibly give a little bit of money to the businesses that are keeping those paychecks whole, filling the gap, giving us extra strength, Active and Reserve, to protect us? But for some reason, once the bill left here and got over to the House Republican leadership, it got taken out. I know Senator Byrd is here to speak so I will wrap up my comments in just 5 minutes. I know he wants to speak, perhaps a little about this and other subjects. But I want to say a few things that the newspapers are saying about this bill. Let me be clear. I don't oppose this bill for any other reason other than the fact that the $2.4 billion tax benefit to employers for the Guard and Reserve to help keep their paychecks whole while they are on the front line was left out. There are other provisions of this bill that are questionable. There are other important issues that have been raised by the Senator from Iowa, Mr. McCain from Arizona, and the Senator from Massachusetts. Those are legitimate arguments as well. But leaving the Reserve and the Guard out and their patriotic employers is more than I can bear to be silent about. This is some of what some of our newspapers are saying about the general bill. The Washington Post, October 8: The bill is aimed at ending a transatlantic trade war by scrapping certain illegal tax subsidies for U.S. exporters that have brought on retaliatory action by Europe. But in the version approved last night by the House, that modest goal is largely overwhelmed in a preelection package of benefits for dozens of constituencies, including NASCAR track owners and mall builders. That is the opinion of the newspaper. Again, I don't know if the NASCAR track people are deserving or not. Many people enjoy NASCAR in my State. Maybe they are. But I can promise you that nobody in my State thinks NASCAR owners or investors or ceiling fan importers deserve a tax break more than the employers who are keeping whole the paychecks of our men and women on the front line. I can promise you that--not a one. I don't know of a business or a mall or a retail establishment that thinks they should get in line before the Guard and the Reserve. It was a long line. This is what I call a long line. This is not a thin bill. This is not a one-page bill. This is a lot of lines and a long line. They didn't even get in the middle of the line. They didn't get in the end of the line. They didn't get in at all. It is a grave injustice. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Las Vegas Journal have all editorialized against this bill for different reasons. I am hoping that many of these newspapers and others that are listening will begin to focus on this issue as to a reason why we should vote against this bill, send it back to conference, redo it. We all make mistakes. This was a big mistake the House Republican leadership made. I say basically this is a paycheck that we send to our soldiers. Their average pay is $30,000. According to our own report, these soldiers are getting a 41-percent pay cut. We could have done something to help them, but we chose not to. So I am going to vote against this bill. I know other Senators are joining me in letters being sent to the conferees, which evidently did not make an impression on them--at least not to the point where they kept our provision in. That was passed by 100 votes here, Republicans and Democrats, and it would be paid for with an offset. We didn't ask for this provision to be included without paying for it. It is even paid for. But they decided--the leadership, Chairman Thomas and, I guess, Congressman DeLay and Speaker Hastert--we could not afford it. Let me again say for the record that there is $137 billion in this bill. The bill started out as being a $50 billion fix over 10 years. That was the cost of fixing the problem we originally started to correct. It grew and grew and grew. Everyone, it seems, was added in, except the men and women who are taking the bullets morning, noon, and night. It is hard for me to go back to Louisiana and explain this. I am not sure I could explain it adequately to the 5,000 families who are currently serving on the front lines. Why should they pour a little water into the cereal bowl, as one woman wrote to me, trying to make ends meet? Why did some of them lose their houses because their notes pile up and they cannot pay the bill when they get home? What could we be thinking as to the justice of losing an automobile, losing their retirement, losing their college benefit, or having to make them stretch and sacrifice when we could help them? If we could not afford it, if we didn't have the money, that would be one thing. This is $137 billion. Why could we not have given them $1 billion, or $2 billion, or half a billion? Or even if you could not give them the money, write something in the bill, for Heaven's sake, and tell them you understand they have a 41-percent pay cut and you are sorry you cannot fix it today, but when we get another bill, we will try later. Not even a comment. When they go off to war, they don't make a lot of comments to us either, other than I am going to my post, I am going to do my job; I will see you when I get back. Take care of my family. That is all they say to us. We could not even get a paragraph of gratitude in this bill. Senator Byrd is going to speak. I will speak a few more times this weekend about this. I am doing as many interviews as I can, explaining this to people and handing out material. I am still waiting for Chairman Thomas to either write me, send me a note, write a letter, make a comment in the newspaper, or meet me for a debate about why he took them out of the bill in the middle of the night, when the cameras were not on, and there is virtually no record of the discussion. I don't know. The people in my State would like to know. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes. I see other colleagues on the Senate floor. I will take the 10 or 12 minutes I have remaining, if I might.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia for the kind words he spoke before he made the very important points he has made this evening and throughout the course of actually the last few days. The challenge we face in Iraq is the most important issue before our country. I thank him for his kind words, and I want to thank him for his continued leadership. As we get toward these evening hours, I remind my colleagues--

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator. My colleague is so right that the men and women of West Virginia have served so bravely and so willingly, as so many people from our States have served in the Active Forces and in the Reserve and the Guard and, as I said earlier in my remarks, do so without the expectation of fanfare. They do not want awards. They do not even want that special attention in their communities because they are so proud to serve and they are so willing to serve. That is what makes me want to stay on this Senate floor even more for them, knowing that about these families. I will read a few things into the Record during the 10 minutes that I have to build this argument and get out these facts about this important issue. One of the three or four important pieces of legislation we are trying to make decisions about in the last 2, 3, 4 days of this Congress is whether this bill, which is called the FSC bill--it is a tax cut bill which modifies many sections of the Tax Code--should pass or if it should not. I am going to vote against it because the Guard and Reserve were left out. The people on the front lines taking the bullets, taking the cut in pay to serve us, and risking their lives were in the bill when it left the Senate, but because of the House leadership they were left out. This bill is $137 billion, and if we could not afford $2 billion of this $137 billion for them, then I do not know what we can afford because none of us would be here without them and none of the businesses benefiting from this bill would be able to actually operate, function, have a license, or have the freedom to function or enjoy the free enterprise system that has been created over 220 years without the men and women in the armed services. Some of us were silly enough to believe that in a bill that was $137 billion, they could get in at the top of the list, but we were mistaken because they did not even make the cut. I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator from New Mexico.

Ms. LANDRIEU. This is from ``Citizen-Soldiers and the Fortune 500. Employer Support Grows.'' The article reads: ``I know of no other time in our nation's history when so many employers have voluntarily offered this level of support and benefits,'' Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote in September to employers of Reservists and National Guard members called to active duty in the global war on terror. In his open letter of thanks and praise, Mr. Rumsfeld expressed the deepest appreciation of his Department and the U.S. Government for ``your unswerving support of our nation's military.'' His letters were sent on 29 September to directors of major employer associations and Government agencies that were asked to distribute them to their members so their members would know of the good works and good words of Secretary Rumsfeld. His letter went on to say: Many employers did more than was required by law by voluntarily offering continued benefits, pay differentials, and additional, creative forms of family support, which made the period of separation so much easier to bear, Mr. Rumsfeld noted. He said that without the continued support, we could not maintain a strong military or sustain the current effort to overcome the international terrorist threat directed at our country, our citizens, and all who love freedom. Those are beautiful words. My colleagues would acknowledge these are beautiful words. The problem is, they are only words, because when the administration that Secretary Rumsfeld works for and the House Republican leadership that follows his lead and his direction put together a $137 billion tax package, they did not think they could find the room, the time, the energy, or the concern to really thank the employers by giving them part of this tax cut. They decided to send them the brochures and the newsletters and the go-for-it congratulations kind of letters, but the real people who they wanted to help or the people they thought deserved the most help were actually in the bill. I think this is pretty clear evidence that the words that are sometimes written by leaders do not really convey what actually happens, that really what happens is what is in the budget. When one is in the budget, they know they matter, and if they are not, they do not. It is about as simple as that. I am going to submit a list of the employers--the National Committee for Employers supports the Guard and Reserve, outstanding employers. I have them all through my State. I am so proud of these small businesses, I do not know what to do. I had one of my mayors whose chief operating officer was called out of the city not once but twice, one of the most talented, remarkable public servants. The whole city sort of suffers when one of these skilled folks goes off, and I have heard his story out of Lake Charles, LA. But they kept his paycheck going voluntarily. Many employers keep the paychecks going. I thought, silly me, we have a tax bill. Could we not acknowledge the patriotism of these thousands of employers in our country, big companies, small companies, local governments, fire departments and police departments that are digging deep? There are no line items in their corporate budgets to pay people who are not at work, but they do it anyway. We do not even mandate they do it; they are doing it voluntarily. They do not put a line item in their corporate budget: Pay people that are not on the job that are on the front line. But you know what. They do it. They do it for a good reason--because 41 percent of the Guard and Reserve are taking a pay cut to serve on the front line. I want to submit for the record some the patriotic employers. I ask unanimous consent to have some of their names printed at the conclusion of my remarks. (See exhibit 1.)

Ms. LANDRIEU. Unlike some of the leaders who just write these employers letters and tell them what a good job they do, I want these employers--Conoco and Chevron and Alcoa and All About Music and Allianz Life Insurance Company and American Electric Power, American Express, the American Stock Exchange, and I could go on and on, 250 Central, 3M--there are pages of them--I want to tell them all that there are a few Senators, some Republicans and some Democrats, who are going to do more than send you a letter. We would like to send you a tax credit and we think you deserve it. You didn't really ask for it. We understand that because you are digging deep. But we are going to give tax credits out to everybody in the world, it looks like, because we have ceiling fan importers and NASCAR race investors; we have shipbuilders--many of which are in my State and they know I support them--but we can't find a tax credit to help these companies that are sending paychecks for the front line to keep our soldiers prepared to fight and defend our country when really it is the Federal Government's responsibility. If they said we didn't have the money, I would just sit down and say we just don't have it. We are running a deficit. We can't afford it. But for me to sit here and watch $137 billion fly through this Chamber and land in the hands of whomever, but not these companies, not our troops, not the people who are having a hard time paying their house note and keeping their household together, it makes me literally want to just get on my knees. I can hardly stand here. I really feel like just falling out. I want to read a couple more things into the Record. I only have a few minutes. This is from Kristin who called in today from Portland. Her husband is in the Army Reserve and has been in Iraq for about a month. She is anticipating a 50-percent cut in pay. Her husband was a private consultant project manager. We knew when he was activated that he was going to have to be away, but to think that some in Congress aren't even willing to do something to help employers continue to pay him is hard to believe. Gwen from Minnesota, her husband spent a year deployed in Iraq as a reservist. He is a schoolteacher. He took a significant pay cut during deployment. Because I talked to Gwen, let me add a few things to this. Her husband has a doctorate degree. He is teaching school, in either high school or elementary school. He is a real double patriotic American because, even though he has a doctorate degree and could teach at a college or get some high-paying job, he feels compelled to give his life to help children. In his spare time he goes to the front line. So what does our Government do for Gwen and her husband? Send them letters in the newsletter to tell them how proud we are. Then, when they are not looking, in the dead of night, we pass a $137 billion tax cut and leave them out? I don't think so. Sue, from New Orleans, her husband has been activated for a year and a half but has not been deployed. Even so, her family is experiencing a 60-percent pay cut during his deployment. Trish from Pennsylvania, her family is experiencing a one-third pay cut. He is on his second deployment. They may have to declare bankruptcy. Her husband is in the Air Force Reserve. He was deployed to Afghanistan last year and is headed to Iraq in the fall. We in Congress think we do a great job for these families by providing them financial counseling. Let me say one thing. Most of the people I know in the Army and Reserve do a very good job managing their money. They are happy for the help we could give them and they are happy for the counseling that they could sign up for, but I can tell you what they really want. They just want a paycheck and they want a solid paycheck. They don't want something to make them rich, not something to allow them to live in a mansion or drive around in a Lexus, but they would like a real paycheck. We could have helped them but we decided this Congress had other priorities. The last thing I want to submit for the Record is a letter to the President of the United States that I am sending right now. I am going to read it and then I am going to yield the floor to the Senator from Kansas. May I have order, please?