Bob Menendez

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. If the Chair could, I think about 20, 25 minutes.

Mr. MENENDEZ. I thank the distinguished chairman for his kind words. I particularly thank him for his leadership in structuring a budget that I am convinced, unlike the President's budget, speaks to the shared values of the American people, speaks to the priorities that our Nation needs to pursue, meets the challenges our country has, and ultimately goes to the very heart of turning this economy in a much different direction so that it can work for working families. Under his leadership, we have a budget that I am proud to support on the floor of the Senate. And whether you live in the East or West or North or South, I think Americans will find this budget, as they become more fully aware of it, is one that has the integrity, the honesty, as well as the purposes to meet the challenges. The chairman deserves enormous credit for working with all Members on both sides to try to achieve those goals, and I appreciate his leadership. Madam President, this week in the Senate, we are fighting for the economic future of America. This is the week that we put together on the floor of the Senate the Federal Government's budget. And that budget is more than just a balance sheet of revenues and expenditures, it is a balance sheet of priorities and values. The lines of numbers come together to form a bigger picture, laying out a vision of where we plan to lead the Nation. Every year, when we make the budget, we look at where our country stands, at how we can improve the lives of the American people, and what we can do to make sound investments that brighten the future of generations to come. It is a responsibility that we cannot afford to take lightly. When we create a budget, we have to answer some fundamental questions: What are the most important problems we face as a nation? What are the challenges of middle-class working families? How do we meet those challenges? Several weeks ago, President Bush gave us his answer. And his answer was, there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by giving away more tax breaks to the wealthy, giving away more subsidies to big oil companies, continuing the war in Iraq, and never admitting what it costs. The President is fighting to keep taxes low for the wealthy and wants to make it up by charging veterans more for their health care. Apparently, that is the answer some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are giving as well. They agree with the President the American people should cover their eyes, pretend their problems do not exist, that everything magically will work itself out. I believe a vote for the President's budget is a vote for the status quo. It is a vote for the way things are going in America in terms of this economy. The Democrats see things quite differently. Here is what we see: Our economy is continuously weakening, and tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs. The price we pay for health care is spiking through the roof, while the value of our homes is falling through the floor. Baby boomers worry about whether they are going to be able to retire with dignity, and senior Americans are worried that the strong base of Social Security could crumble right under them. Our climate is in crisis, and our attachment to an umbilical cord of foreign oil means our entire way of life hangs by a liquid thread. The Government is going into debt to the tune of more than $10 billion per month to finance a war in Iraq that has not made any of us safer, while local police and fire departments are getting squeezed for funds, and crime in our neighborhoods is on the rise. If you have worked in Newark all your life and just lost your job, we hear you. If you are scared to walk through your neighborhood in Camden because there is violence on the streets, we hear you. If your family may be in danger of losing your home in Trenton or Long Branch or North Arlington; if you are teaching at a school with a budget stretched as far as it can go in Hamilton, Plainfield, or Asbury Park; if your commute to work just keeps getting more frustrating in Cherry Hill; if every day you drive by a barren industrial site that is not being redeveloped in Penns Grove or Paulsboro; if it is a struggle to pay your college tuition in New Brunswick or pay your heating bill in Toms River or pay your health care costs in Edison, Democrats understand what people--certainly I do--all across America are going through. None of us can stand and pretend one budget can be the magic bullet that makes all of these problems disappear. One year is not enough time for that. One year cannot undo 7 years of the Bush administration's mismanagement that turned a record surplus into a soaring deficit. And 1 year cannot undo 5 years of a war in Iraq that has claimed thousands of American lives and incinerated more than a half trillion dollars that we could have used to make American lives better. In one budget we cannot fully fund all of the programs that deserve our support or give the tax relief we want to middle-class working families, not under this administration. But this year, we can set the wheels in motion of the long and indispensable process of change. We can develop a plan to meet the challenges we face head on, and we can start to move our country forward. This is exactly what the Senate Democratic budget does. Here is the vision our budget puts forth for our Nation, a nation that is more prosperous, with more affordable health care, on the path to energy independence, a nation of safer neighborhoods, better schools, a nation of which we can all be proud. Above all, our budget is designed to get our economy growing, get our economy growing and moving again. That is the first and foremost priority of this budget. The Bush budget, supported by many of our Republican colleagues, creates jobs in China, while the Democratic budget creates good-paying jobs in America. The Democratic budget focuses on rebuilding our infrastructure, expanding incentives for green initiatives and industries, and investing in math, science, and engineering and technology so American businesses can create and keep the best jobs here in America. Our budget puts the family budget first. It provides middle-class tax relief by extending the marriage penalty relief, a child tax credit, a patch for the alternative minimum tax that will protect millions of middle-class families from paying higher taxes next year; it works to make college more affordable by extending a tuition tax credit; and it supports job training programs that will prepare the workforce for the 21st century. This budget moves us down the road to energy independence. It helps create a highly skilled workforce and green-collar jobs. I am proud of the push for funding for energy efficiency and conservation block grants, a provision I authored in our last Energy bill to provide cities with support for projects that foster more efficient use of energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We all know oil and natural gas prices are sky high, the sea levels are rising, along with the temperature. So this program is a key part of our strategy to meet those challenges. The Democratic budget recognizes we cannot think about national security without thinking about hometown security. While our resources are being drained day after day on the streets of Baghdad and Mosul, we are struggling to protect high-risk targets on the streets of our own neighborhoods. We know our police departments are just a phone call away during an emergency. Our brave men and women in law enforcement have dedicated themselves to serving and protecting our communities. So it is unbelievable to me that the Bush administration has reduced or eliminated nearly every major anticrime program over the course of the last 7 years, especially since crime and violence have been on the rise in the country, according to the FBI reports. Crime is going up, violent crime is going up, and the Bush administration's cuts to the most essential public safety programs, the very essence of homeland security, go down. What should be going up is going down. What should be going down is going up. How can we expect law enforcement to carry out their responsibilities and respond in a moment's notice when the Federal Government is backing out of its responsibility to support law enforcement? People in my home State of New Jersey remember on September 11 that it was not the Federal Government that provided the immediate response, it was the local police, the firefighters and emergency management and medical units from our hometowns. Yet in the years after September 11, the administration has left our local communities to shoulder far too much of the financial burden. Our budget, however, will ensure that first responders across the Nation will get the resources they need. I was proud to work with Chairman Conrad to ensure that homeland security grants that our communities rely on most were protected in this budget. The Democratic budget restores more than $2 billion in misguided cuts the President made to State homeland security grants, to port security, interoperable communications, rail and transit security. Our budget will ensure that States facing threats from high-risk targets or densely populated areas, communities that are near ports, chemical plants, airports, cities with mass transit or rail systems, will not be shortchanged. By restoring more than $750 million in grants to firefighters, we will also ensure that our fire departments can buy new equipment or ensure that our fire stations are fully staffed. Unlike the President, we will keep our commitment to fulfilling the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and we will keep our commitment to our first responders. We more than double the funding for the Byrne/JAG Program that many local law enforcement officials across the country consider the most successful crime prevention program in recent history. I am proud to have introduced the amendment that was passed unanimously in the Budget Committee setting aside a minimum of $520 million to fund it. I am going to ensure that we continue to support this vital program. We have also included language to help the FBI cut down its massive backlog in evaluating immigration applications for those who follow our rules to legally enter the country. Cutting down this backlog is essential if the FBI is going to be able to quickly separate those who have come to pursue the American dream versus those who may have come to destroy it. Our budget puts a priority on making health care more affordable and more accessible to all Americans. We have worked to create a reserve fund to block President Bush's unilateral changes to Medicaid that would severely reduce Federal health care funds to States for low- income families. This was the very essence of the social safety net that we as a society should be judged by. The reserve fund would also help protect New Jersey's FamilyCare Program from the President's Draconian cuts to children's health coverage scheduled for this summer. We have included support for other legislation, and this budget includes funding for the Patient Navigator Program, which I worked hard to have passed into law. If patients are having trouble figuring out the complicated health care system we are in, but they do not know how to get early screening or do not know about options for follow-up treatment, patient navigators make sure someone is there to help them. Our budget also keeps our commitment to our schools, our teachers, and our students. I am proud that our budget provides the largest increase for elementary and secondary education in 6 years. Instead of taking money away from our schools while asking them to do more, our budget will fund programs that provide enrichment and opportunity to our students. We do not just say education is a priority, we put our money where our values are by providing $3 billion more than the President for No Child Left Behind, and $8.8 billion more than the President for education and training overall. We soundly reject the President's proposal to freeze education funding and eliminate 48 programs in the Department of Education, including education technology, mentoring, reading programs, and vocational education. Instead of pretending our young people are not facing severe hardships when it comes to paying for college, our budget makes the needed investments in grants and scholarships for college and allows for an increase in the Pell grant maximum next year. That is the support our young people deserve, and under this budget that is the support they are going to get. I have often said, as someone who grew up poor in a tenement in Union City, NJ, the first one in my family to go to college, that would never have happened but for the power of the Federal Government being able to provide me grants and loans. That power gave me the educational opportunity and foundation that allowed me to be the junior Senator from New Jersey. The reality is, that should be a birthright for every young person in our country who is willing to work hard and give something back to their Nation. This budget meets that battle. Let me close by saying our debate over the budget is a debate over the direction of the economy, the fulfillment of our shared values, and the direction of our country. The President and those who support him are offering the same old ideas that got us into this mess in the first place, ideas that have weakened the economy and hurt the middle class. If you ask for more of the same, it seems to me, you get more of the same. Those who are happy with the economy that we are in would be happy with the President's budget. Those who are languishing, and that is the overwhelming majority of American families in this country, under the President's economic policies, the reality is they want to see change. That change is represented in the Democratic budget. Democrats have a fiscally responsible plan to get our economy moving again and strengthen our national security. The budget we are putting forth cuts taxes for the middle class, creates a half million new jobs in America, and we do all of this while working toward the balanced budget and paying down debt. It is a plan that puts forth a basic idea about what America should be. This should be a country where anyone willing to work hard can get an education and a job, a country where everyone has access to services that can keep them healthy, a country where a lifetime of hard work guarantees the right to retire with dignity, a country that knows its past and cares about its future. Let's invest in that future. Let's pass this budget. Let's begin the hard work of making that vision a reality and changing economic circumstances for families. That is what this debate is all about. That is what the Democratic budget is all about. That is why I am proud to have voted for it in committee, proud to stand on the floor to defend it, and proud to support Senator Conrad in his efforts in that regard. I yield the floor.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I rise to support the legislation we are debating. I congratulate the distinguished Senator from Arkansas who has led this effort and has done so with such aplomb on a bill that will, I hope, pass on a strong bipartisan vote later today because it is a bill America needs. Americans don't need to be convinced that we need stronger protections to keep dangerous products from entering our homes. Abigail Hartung, a 13-month old girl from New Jersey whose crib collapsed on her one night, doesn't need to be convinced. Her parents who awoke to the terrifying sound of a child in screaming pain do not need to be convinced either. I know even many of my colleagues who do not like Government intervention on the other side of the aisle do not need to be convinced the meager measures we have in place to protect consumers from hazardous products are not enough. That is why I rise today in strong support of the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act. It is long past time for us to act. Madam President, 2007 was a disastrous year for product safety. There was a record number of safety recalls. Over 400 different products had to be pulled, and more than half--more than half--of those 400 products were for children. That adds up to an astonishing number of dangerous items--almost 46 million items. Now, we saw toxic toys shipped in from China laced with lead paint that could cause permanent neurological damage or death. We saw car seats dump out the kids who sat in them. We saw beads that contained a chemical that could put children into a coma if swallowed. Too often, the recalls were too late. Last year, recalled products killed 6 children, they injured 657 more, and they destroyed the confidence of the entire Nation. So the question is, can they trust the Consumer Product Safety Commission as it exists today? I think the answer to that is no. Issues of product safety are not going away by themselves. In January, there was a recall of toys with magnets that could cause fatal intestinal blockages if swallowed. Last month, we had a scare about children's sketchbooks coated with potentially fatal--fatal--levels of lead paint. When dangerous products keep getting introduced, when 46 million items so unsafe that they have to be recalled are allowed to reach consumers' hands in 1 year, we have to believe those are not 46 million coincidences. We have to think there is at least one Government watchdog agency that is falling far short of what it needs to be. That agency is the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Now, sadly, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is nothing more than a hollow shell at this point. We talked about those 46 million unsafe products recalled last year. If you had a robust commission, as the bill will provide for, with all of the pertinent powers and resources, then we should not see that reality. Years of budget and personnel cuts have left it badly equipped for the job we are counting on it to do. Poor leadership and unethical behavior have undermined what little power and authority the Commission has. No watchdog can effectively regulate if they cozy up to the industry they are supposed to be regulating. That is why I am proud the Senate agreed to the amendment the Presiding Officer, Senator Klobuchar, and I offered to prohibit members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission from accepting travel paid for the industries they regulate. It seemed to us--and I am so glad an overwhelming vote of the Senate said the same--how is it that you can accept such travel paid for by the very entities you seek to regulate, who, in that travel, ultimately are trying to influence you so that those regulations are not as prescriptive and as onerous as they need to be in pursuit of the interests of consumers? It was a great first step. Now we have to finish the job. It is time to reform the Consumer Product Safety Commission so it can strongly enforce safety standards, prevent deadly imports from entering our Nation's borders, and restore confidence to parents that it is OK to do something as simple as give a toy to their child. Again, let me thank my distinguished colleague, Senator Pryor, for his tremendous leadership on this issue. And right by his side has been Chairman Inouye and Ranking Member Stevens, along with Senator Collins, and many Senators from both sides of the aisle. The effort to keep consumers safe should be a truly bipartisan effort. I am confident the bill we have before us is going to win some very broad-based support. Here is what the bill finally does. First, it gives the Consumer Product Safety Commission the resources it needs to do its job, boosting its budget, and expanding its staff. Second, when it has the staff and resources it needs, the Commission is going to have a greater presence at our Nation's ports. For the Senator from New Jersey, which has the Port of Elizabeth in Newark, the megaport of the east coast that sees the incredible amount, the billions of tons that come through from all over the world, I understand very clearly how this element is so critically important--to stop deadly imports from coming in and enforce a comprehensive ban of lead in children's products. Children's products will have to be independently tested and verified to be safe. Toys will have tracking labels, so if there is a problem, we will know who is responsible. The bill gets tough on violators. Not only does it ban the sale of recalled products, it makes sure companies face the possibility of real financial consequences if they break the law, so they don't simply see the fines for hawking dangerous products to our families as another cost of doing business. Right now, I am sure there are those companies that say: Well, that is fine. I will just bring this in because I am going to make more than the consequence of a fine. That is fundamentally wrong. The bill protects employees who report violations of safety standards so people will not be afraid to come forward with information that could save lives. Not only will employees be better able to speak out, consumers will be better able to speak out and listen to each other. For the first time, the bill would create an online product safety database, so we do not have to wait until tragedy strikes close to home to hear about safety concerns other consumers have already discovered. So if I know about that crib, and I go on line, and I put it on, and now another family looks and says: Let me figure this out, let me find out if this is the type of product that has any problems, and they see that information, it is a warning and preventive measure that is powerful because information is powerful. This bill will give that information to consumers in our country. Those are just a few of the specifics. But the bottom line is, this bill is about keeping our children safe and bringing us all a little peace of mind. When a parent puts a toy in the hands of a child, it is a beautiful moment--a moment we should never allow to be undermined by fear. If we take action today, if we sign this pledge, to look out for American families as conscientiously as we should, then we will be helping to see to it that nothing takes the joy of that moment away. So I urge strong support of the measure. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. MENENDEZ. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Executive Calendar No. 466, the nomination of Hector E. Morales to be Permanent Representative of the United States to the Organization of American States; that the nomination be confirmed and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 9:30 a.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``Census in Peril: Getting the 2010 Decennial Back on Track.''

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Climbing Costs of Heating Homes: Why LIHEAP is Essential'' on Wednesday, March 5, 2008. The hearing will commence at 10:30 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. in SD-430. Agenda S. 1810, Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act; S. 999, Stroke Treatment and Ongoing Prevention Act of 2007; S. 1760, Healthy Start Reauthorization Act of 2007; H.R. 20, Melanie Blocker-Stokes Postpartum Depression Research and Care Act; and S. 1042, Consistency, Accuracy, Responsibility, and Excellence in Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy Act of 2007. National Board for Education Sciences, Jonathan Baron, Frank Handy, Sally Shaywitz; National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, Jamsheed Choksy, Gary Glenn, David Hertz, Marvin Scott, Carol Swain; National Museum and Library Science Board, Julia Bland, Jan Cellucci, William Hagenah, Mark Herring; Truman Scholarship Foundation, Javaid Anwar; Assistant Secretary of Labor ODEP, Neil Romano.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 9:30 a.m in order to hold a hearing on strengthening national security through smart power.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to conduct a hearing on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 3 p.m., In room SD366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. At this hearing, the Committee will hear testimony regarding the Impacts of the capability of the United States to maintain a domestic enrichment capability as a result of the recently initialed amendment between the United States and the Russian Federation of the Agreement Suspending the Antidumping Investigation on Uranium from the Russian Federation. PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Committee on Foreign Relations

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 9:30 a.m., in open session, In order to receive testimony on the Department of the Air Force in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 2009 and the Future Years Defense Program.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet tomorrow, Wednesday, March 5, 2008 from 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in Dirksen 562 for the purpose of conducting a hearing.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The State of the U.S. Postal Service One Year After Reform''.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Personnel Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., in open session in order to receive testimony on the findings and recommendations of the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team reports, and Department of Defense and service-wide improvements in mental health resources, including suicide prevention, for servicemembers and their families.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation'' on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 10 a.m. in room SD-106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Witness list The Honorable Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to conduct a business meeting on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, at 11:15 a.m., in room SD366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. At this mark-up, the Committee will consider the nomination of J. Gregory Copeland to be General Counsel of the Department of Energy.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I am proud to stand here with the distinguished Senator from Minnesota to offer an amendment that prohibits members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission from taking trips paid for by the industries they regulate. Not long ago, this body overwhelmingly voted to prohibit Members of Congress--Members of this body--from taking trips sponsored by lobbyists-- from taking trips sponsored by lobbyists. That is what there was an overwhelming bipartisan vote for. There is absolutely no reason members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission should not be held to the same high standard, particularly given the outstanding number of products that were recalled last year because they were deemed unsafe for American consumers to use after they were placed on the shelves in our stores, bought by our families, and used by our children. Perhaps most disturbing, the most common victims of these regulatory failures were children--children who played with toys and slept in cribs that the Consumer Product Safety Commission allowed to come to market, children who were seriously injured as a result. Last year, we saw a toxic toy shipped in from China laced with lead paint that could cause permanent neurological damage or death. We saw car seats dump out the kids who sat in them. We saw beads that contained a chemical that could put children into a coma if swallowed. We saw cribs that would fall apart if an infant pulled on their pieces. This year is shaping up to be just as tragic. In January, there was a recall of toys with magnets that could cause fatal intestinal blockages if swallowed. Last month, we had a scare about children's sketchbooks coated with potentially fatal levels of lead paint. So the question Americans are asking themselves is, isn't somebody supposed to be watching to make sure this doesn't happen? And the answer is, absolutely. That is the very mission of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to make sure products sold in the United States are safe for American consumers, safe for our families. But members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission were busy doing other things. There are a lot of problems plaguing the Commission, and I will return to the floor to talk in detail about many of them another time. I certainly appreciate the work that has been done by the distinguished chair of the committee and the ranking member in moving a bill that I think goes a very long way towards achieving the goals of knowing that in America our families will be safe from the products that are put on our shelves, and for this I commend them. However, despite the progress we have made under the leadership of Senator Pryor, there are still issues to be resolved. Most notably, we see that officials of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, tasked with protecting American consumers, were too busy taking trips sponsored by the very companies they were supposed to keep an eye on. Mr. President, we should never again have to worry that our children are playing with lead-filled toys while the people who should be looking out for them are hopscotching around the world with corporate bigwigs. This is toxic travel, and we have to put an end to it. The American people deserve to have objective, professional safety inspectors, not wined and dined, pampered corporate houseguests. We need to make sure these product gatekeepers are looking out for one interest, and one interest only: the well-being of the American people. That is why Senator Klobuchar and I are offering this amendment: to prohibit product regulators from taking trips sponsored by the industry they regulate. I think Americans listening across the landscape of our country would say that is just common sense. Regulators should never be indebted to those they regulate. They should never be compelled to let a product slip by as thanks to the great golfing they shared or the fabulous trip they took, while children suffer as a result. So let me close by thanking my colleague, Senator Klobuchar, a member of the committee, for taking the lead in the committee to improve the safety of the products that end up in the hands of our children. It has been a privilege to work with her on this amendment. And I certainly hope our colleagues will join us in saying, as they did in setting the high standard for every Member of the Senate in prohibiting travel paid for by lobbyists, that those who are there to protect the very essence of our safety and our lives and those of our families should live to no less a standard. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Minnesota in advocating that all Members of the Senate support the amendment. The Senate overwhelmingly voted to do the same as it related to this institution, this body, in terms of not taking travel from lobbyists. The CPSC should have no less a standard. Consumers should feel safe that, ultimately, those products are going on the market not because of the influence of some trips a Commissioner took.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from Michigan for her attribution, and I rise this morning to echo some of the comments of my colleague and others who have lamented what the Senate did yesterday. We have a situation across the landscape of this country in which our economy is headed onto the shoals of a recession, with some economists believing that we are there already, and the very essence of that recession, which hurts American families in real terms, stems from the housing crisis that exists in this country. Instead of having responded to the storm clouds of the crisis that were on the horizon a year ago-- in the Banking Committee, of which I am privileged to be a member, I said we are going to face a tsunami of foreclosures--the administration said, oh, no, no, no, that is an overexaggeration. Well, unfortunately, we haven't even seen the crest of that tsunami. The reality is that as the administration hit the snooze button then, instead of responding to the oncoming crisis and limiting its scope, yesterday our colleagues on the other side of the aisle did exactly the same thing, opposing the majority leader's opportunity to make sure we address the housing crisis that exists in this country in a way that not only saves American families from having the American dream become an American nightmare, but also, at the same time, in dealing with the very core underpinnings of where this economy is headed--in a negative direction--and turning it around. That is what yesterday's vote was all about. Everyone except President Bush and some of his colleagues seems to understand that we are in some very serious economic situations. I saw the President's press conference yesterday. Even as gas prices in some parts of the country are already at $3.60 a gallon, when he was told what it was going to do when it hits $4 a gallon, he said: What $4 a gallon? Well, I guess if you never have to pay for gas, you are totally disconnected from the realities of average Americans. But, yes, that is where we are headed. He doesn't seem to understand we have a serious economic situation. But let us get real. It isn't largely those of us in this body who understand what is going on, it is the American people, across the landscape of this country, who are feeling the effects of this downturn firsthand. They are the ones receiving foreclosure notices; they are the ones struggling to balance their checkbooks; and they are the ones reaching out to Congress for help. Yesterday the majority leader tried to bring up a bill to help those struggling in this economic downturn, and yesterday Republican Members of this Chamber blocked that bill, in essence blocking help for those American homeowners who are on the verge of losing their home. The Foreclosure Prevention Act gets to the heart of our economic crisis--that is, the housing market. As I and others on the Banking Committee have said, the downward spiral of the housing market is the reason we are facing such a difficult economy. We cannot think we will get the Nation back on track without legislation to address the weaknesses in the housing market. The bill that Republicans blocked would have done one major thing: Keep families in their homes. Beyond the economy, this goes to the very heart of our families' ability to grow and prosper. Home. Home is where we are brought from the hospital when we are born. It is home we come to. Home is where we are nurtured as we grow. Home is where we get to celebrate, most of the time, our birthdays. Home is where, in fact, we also share moments of sorrow. Home is where we often take care of a sick or dying loved one. Home is the very essence of the American dream. Beyond what it means to us and our families in the context of the development of our lives, home is also the single foundation of the individual American's economic ability to prosper. It is the single biggest asset most Americans will have in their lifetime. It is the asset they will use very often to borrow in order to educate their child and send them to college. It is the asset they may draw upon if they have a significant illness. It is the asset they will rely upon as they grow older and seek retirement. When it means so much to us as a society, both in the personal context of what home is and the values that surround it mean, and when it means so much to us individually and collectively as communities and as a nation in terms of our economy, it is unthinkable that we could not get progress on a bill that saves the very essence of that American dream. Yet that is what happened yesterday in the Senate. The bill that was up provides funding for counseling in order to reach and help families at risk of losing their homes. Many American families are sitting around the kitchen table looking through their mortgage bills and their finances and those bank notices. Many of them have turned to their credit cards to float their personal debt. They are lost. They do not know where to turn. And these counselors who were part of the bill could help offer them real solutions and options to help in averting a foreclosure. Does not that make sense? It does to me. That is what the bill allows. The bill also provided funding to allow communities with high foreclosure rates to access an existing program, community development block grants. With these funds communities can purchase foreclosed properties for rehabilitation, rent, or resale. There are some who have said in this debate: Well, you know, those borrowers, they are responsible for making their own decisions; it has nothing to do with me. Well, for every foreclosed property in a neighborhood, those who have their properties adjacent to or nearby within that neighborhood have a decrease in value. Having a series of foreclosed properties, as we have seen in some parts of the Nation, having communities abandoned does not benefit anyone. It decreases surrounding home values; it attracts crime and vandalism. The bottom line is that foreclosures destabilize neighborhoods. The funds in this bill, which the Republicans have not allowed to move forward, allow communities to stop the spiral before it starts. Does that not make sense? The bill's most controversial piece--there are many others, many others that I think were pretty universal; that is, that should have been supported. But its most controversial piece put in by my friend, Senator Durbin, his bankruptcy provision would, in essence, change the bankruptcy law to give judges the discretion to modify loan terms for a primary residence, in essence, where you call home. Right now the law allows for modifying those loan terms for vacation homes, something that is not your primary residence. So you can have a vacation home, a time share; you can have any other second home under existing law. If you have some financial trouble, you can actually get the bankruptcy judge to modify those terms. But when it comes to your core home, your principal residence, the place where you nurture and grow your family, oh, no, you cannot do that. Does it make sense that we have greater value for a vacation or secondary home and less value for the primary residence of American families? That would be the equivalent of something along the line of: You can get a modification on Camp David, but you could not get any modification at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, of course, in this particular case, that example does create so vividly for people what we are talking about. In either case, the President does not have to pay a mortgage on either of those properties because they are owned by the American people. But my point is here is the primary residence, you cannot get any help. The secondary residence, you can get help. It does not make any sense. The thing is, most Americans do not have a Camp David, and they are asking for help to save their house on Main Street. This makes sense. Now, the majority leader and Senator Durbin and others worked out a compromise to make sure this provision that was in the bill was even more narrowly tailored. More narrowly tailored? How so? Under their compromise, the only families who could request a court-ordered change to their mortgage are families who would otherwise lose their homes to foreclosure. But that was not even all. It went on. It went beyond that and it said: Only those families who can pass a strict means test, their ability to pay in bankruptcy, and therefore can prove they cannot afford their current mortgage are eligible. That was not it. They went beyond that. They said: Only families who are currently struggling with what type of mortgage? Any mortgage? No. Only nontraditional and subprime loans, the very essence of the types of mortgages that have created the crisis in America that were spun out there in a way, attracting people into mortgages without the appropriate credit counseling, that they should have never been attracted into anyhow. So the universe was further limited, further limited. And furthermore, to give the lenders some additional guarantees, if the families, after the bankruptcy judge made some decision to make an accommodation in that loan, if they sell their home after that mortgage modification, any increase in the home value would go back to whom? To the lender. So lenders would have a chance to recoup the loss in that home value. Now, let me say, there is going to come a point in time that lenders understand that as values continue to go down and down and down, when they foreclose on a piece of property, they are not even going to get that which they, in fact, loaned against. Is it not far better to be able to sustain a family in their home and to help that value reestablish itself over time and grow and be able to make the lender more whole than to put that family out on the street? Lenders will come to that conclusion at some point. So these provisions, each time more and more and more narrower, so we were talking only of a universe of those people who were being hurt, had no financial ability to pay the mortgages that they should have never gotten into, that was offered by the industry to lure them in, lower interest rates, and then reject afterwards, and with the ability to recoup any value going back to the lender, all conditions that do not exist on a secondary residence. None of the things I talked about are part of the law as it relates to a secondary residence; they are all about only this limited prime universe, and, of course, anyone who got a conventional mortgage, anyone who did not get a subprime mortgage or a nontraditional mortgage, they were totally, under the existing law, going to continue to be under the existing law. So we had a narrow universe. This provision that was in the bill blocked by Republicans was not added to harm the banking industry, was not added to hurt mortgage brokers, it was added to help homeowners save their home. This provision is only one of the ways we can help a significant number of homeowners without costing the taxpayers a dime. It would help more than 600,000 families in bad loans keep their homes across the landscape of the country. It would help over 14,000 families in my home State of New Jersey avoid foreclosure. That would be a savings of almost $5 million in home values. But if we do not do anything, if we sit back, we risk losing much more. In New Jersey over the next 2 years, we expect more than 57,000 homes to be lost to foreclosure. That means 57,000 families who will have to hand over their keys to their home, 57,000 families who will be forced to say goodbye to the place where they were nurtured and comforted, the place they lived with the good and bad, the place they came home to every night, the place they call home. In the words of families who know what it feels like to lose a home, they will feel like they will have lost everything. But this is not even about those homeowners. Foreclosed properties have a ripple effect on surrounding homes and the community at large. In New Jersey, these 57,000 foreclosed homes could cost a $10,000 decrease in the home prices of over 2 million surrounding homes. And, overall, that loss would be about $19.6 billion in home values. That is just in my home State. The fact is, no one is immune from the ripple effect of this housing crisis. The potential loss to families and communities in New Jersey and across the Nation is far too great for us to sit this one out. I, personally, cannot stand by while Members of the Chamber play games with my home State and with the American dream of millions of people across the landscape of this country. Collectively, we have much too much to lose. I do not know if other Members of this Chamber do not watch the news, or they do not get the same memos, but foreclosures are going to happen nationwide if we do not do something. Analysts anticipate that 2 million American families will lose their homes over the next 2 years, and 40 million of their neighbors will see their home values decline due to projected foreclosures. When those neighbors see their home values decline as a result, their ability to borrow against their home for their kid's college education, to have the buffer in case of a major illness in their family or themselves, their ability to do all those things will be affected. It is not time to play games and use delay tactics. The more we delay, the more homes we risk losing. Approximately 20,000 families lose their homes every week. Every week, 20,000 families see the American dream slip away. These families are struggling. They are trying to pay their mortgages, but they cannot. Most of them cannot sell or refinance. Many of them have found, in fact, the value of their properties is less than the mortgage amount. They need other options, and they are looking to the Federal Government and those who lured them, the lenders, as the first place for help. The fact is that help simply is not there. Loan servicers could modify the loans themselves. They do not have to wait for a bankruptcy judge, would not have to wait for the Congress to act. Under existing laws, the loan officers could modify loans to make them more affordable and simply are not doing so in sufficient numbers. A report by Moody's found that loan servicers have only modified 3.5 percent of mortgages that increased to higher rates. These are opportunities to keep people in their home, and instead of dealing with the higher rates, maybe adjust those rates in a way where they would still get a borrower who can continue to pay, wait for the value of that home to build up. But they would not make as much as in the loan they lured these individuals into. A report by the Center for Responsible Lending estimates that the administration's plan that has been put out there as the solution to this problem, to streamline modifications, is only going to help about 3 percent of homeowners, 3 percent. As a member of the Banking Committee, I asked the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary Paulson, when he was before us about 2 weeks ago, and yesterday Chairman Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve: Are we willing to say 97 percent of the projected 2 million homes that are going to be lost in America, that is a market correction? Are we willing to accept that 97 percent of those 2 million homes that will go in foreclosure, that is acceptable as a societal value? You hear a lot about family values here. Well, I do not know of any greater family value than the place we call home and a place to call home. Are we willing to say we will, in our overall economy, accept a 97- percent foreclosure rate as it relates to the nature of our economy and where it is headed, an economy that is stagnant in terms of growth but rising in terms of consumer costs, on gas--notwithstanding the President's lack of knowledge of it--on energy costs as a whole, on rising food prices, and lowering home values? Are we willing to say that? Are we willing to say to 97 percent of 2 million families: Well, that is a market correction. Yet we heard the rush to get the Federal Reserve to respond to Wall Street and the concerns of shareholders. How about homeowners? How about homeowners? That is simply not good enough. Thousands of New Jersey families have already gone into foreclosure. Tens of thousands more are behind on their mortgage payments. How many more are we going to watch have their American dream turn into the American nightmare so many are facing. Let me put a face on these statistics: Charmain Perryman, a resident of Nunellen, NJ, she came home last fall to an eviction notice taped to her front door. Perryman, like so many others, had an adjustable rate mortgage that had reset not once but twice, rising from 7.5 percent to 11 percent. She was on the verge of losing her home. Luckily her story has a happy ending. A community development organization, similar to those we want to help through community development block grant opportunities, is buying her home from the bank and working out a payment schedule so she will be able to stay in her home and make responsible payments. But there are too many families across the landscape of New Jersey and the country that are not realizing that opportunity. That foreclosure notice taped to their door will soon be replaced by a padlock on their door. The Foreclosure Prevention Act, of which I am a proud cosponsor, offers real solutions for the American family, neighborhoods, and the entire economy. It would help stop the bleeding in the foreclosure crisis. I ask Members in the Chamber to think about these families when, hopefully, they have an opportunity to vote again. What happened yesterday was embarrassing. I know some camouflage is being offered that, well, we were not going to be allowed to offer certain types of amendments. The reality is, as the majority leader made clear, all relevant amendments would be allowed. Families who are struggling, at the end of their rope, 20,000 families a week losing their homes, don't want to hear about some amendments that ultimately had nothing to do with the very essence of the housing crisis as the reason they are getting put out of their homes. All we are saying is, come to the table. Offer relevant amendments. Let's have a real discussion about how to help families avoid foreclosure. With 20,000 families losing their homes every week, 10 million on the near horizon; with an economy that is bleeding dramatically and that could go, if we do not stem the hemorrhaging, into a deep recession that would have long-term consequences for us as a Nation, both as individuals, families, communities, and collectively, it is not something with which we can afford to play procedural games. I look forward to next week having a new opportunity, fresher minds' reflection, and an understanding of the grave consequences before us, and an opportunity to rescue--not to do a Government bailout but to rescue--the opportunity of the American dream being snatched away by the American nightmare. I yield the floor.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I came to the floor to speak in support of the Feingold amendment. I came purposely to talk about that issue, but I am compelled, having heard some of the remarks made by some of our colleagues, to first preface my remarks as it relates to this debate. Yes, we are happy to have a debate, but it doesn't take 30 hours to come to the same conclusion the American people have clearly come to in this country: that continual engagement in the war in Iraq and the course we are on is not in the national interests of the United States. They have come through the common sense Americans always show. This is overwhelmingly the conclusion of a great majority of Americans. They understand. It doesn't take us 30 hours to do that. We can have an open, honest, and intelligent debate with a few Members on each side making the case for their respective points of view, but we don't have to take 30 hours in order to get to that goal so that we can move to the other important business of the Senate. This is important business. It deserves a thorough debate. But, by the same token, it is clear that the whole process of objecting to the majority leader's effort to limit the scope of time so that we can have a robust debate but then go on to the other business before the Senate is to extend the time, is to delay us. We have seen through a record number of filibusters the Republican minority has used in this Chamber in a way that defies all historic proportions. It is clear that what was intended to be used as a rare occasion to protect the rights of the minority, particularly on exceptional critical issues of the time, has now been abused in such a way in which it is intended to stall the work of the Senate but, more importantly, the work of the American people. That is the framework in which we start this debate. We can have a robust debate, but we don't need 30 hours to accomplish it. Secondly, I cannot understand how some Members can come to the floor of the Senate and rail against the fact that the foreign intelligence surveillance bill has not been passed by the House of Representatives when they refused to agree to a 21-day extension of the existing law that gives the administration everything they want to do. So if this is such a critical issue, as has been described by Members of the Republican side of the aisle, why would they not have agreed to continue while the Congress debated the opportunity to extend the law that allows you to do all those things you say are critical to the protection of the American people? I can only come to the conclusion that either it is not as critical as they define, because fear is what we sell, it seems, on the Republican side--we have been hearing fear for quite some time; the American people have caught up to that--or, in fact, they simply want to have the proposition for a political purpose. If not, we would have had the 21-day extension. Everything the administration claims they needed, they would have had, and therefore we would have been able to move forward. Those two items need to be put in context. Let me get to the main purpose of what I came to the floor to speak about, and that is in support of the Feingold amendment. The Senate has an opportunity, once again, to vote to transition our troops out of Iraq with honor and refocus our efforts on defeating al- Qaida. It is long past time for us to make that decision. The administration has never told us the truth about the war in Iraq. Some people want to gloss over that. But if what is past is prologue, then we need to be worried about what we constantly hear. The budget they submitted to Congress is the latest proof of that. The budget is terrible in a lot of ways. It leaves millions of children without full access to health care. It fails to wean us off our addiction to foreign oil. It fails to adequately address climate change. It fails to repair our education system or shrink the ballooning deficit. Basically, it fails to make a serious effort to tackle the most pressing problems average Americans face in their lives each and every day. Beyond that, the budget is dishonest about the cost of one of the most expensive wars in our history, a war that has lasted more than America's engagement in World War II. It lists the cost of the war in Iraq for next year at $70 billion. All the other calculations in the budget, including the debt and the deficit, in some way assume that $70 billion is all the war is going to cost in the next fiscal year. We have to wonder if whoever wrote the section of the budget on Iraq found their job after leaving their old post at the accounting department of Enron because it is clearly the same type of accounting. Recently, the Secretary of Defense took a baby step toward honesty and estimated the true cost for next year at another $170 billion of America's money. He said that was just a rough estimate, because when you have already spent more than a half trillion dollars, I guess you just round up to the nearest hundred billion. This is from an administration that over 5 years of a historical engagement in Iraq knows how many troops we have, knows the projection moving forward, and therefore knows what the consequences in terms of cost are. To send a budget to the Congress that everyone knows in the context of the cost in Iraq is a farce, this type of carelessness--if one can call it carelessness--in accounting is offensive to the American people who are funding the war. This administration is so dead set on staying in Iraq. I know some Presidential candidates have suggested that we will do so for 100 years, if necessary. They just don't seem to care how much tax money they spend. They don't seem to care how much money they have to borrow from the Chinese to pay the bills, because we don't pay for this in terms of how we are going to afford the war. We don't domestically decide, well, this is going to be offset by some either revenue stream or cuts in programs. No, under this administration, we just keep adding it to the next generation--more debt, more debt. They don't seem to care how much wind gets knocked out of our economy because the money could have gone to creating jobs, stimulating the production of green energy, or helping families make ends meet. As a matter of fact, we could use that money to do something that is critically important as well--protect America here on domestic soil. Because as we look at the President's budget, what does it do? It eliminates COPS funding that put 100,000 police officers on the streets of the cities. It cuts homeland security grants to States by 70 percent. It cuts port security by half. It cuts infrastructure security by half. This at a time in which every report, including those of the administration, has al-Qaida reconstituted on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and reports are coming out that they have been reconstituted with the strength and the ability to perform another attack on the United States. The terrorists have to only get lucky once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time. How can you achieve those goals when you eliminate the very essence of the funding for those who, as we learned on September 11, came to respond on that fateful day? It wasn't the Federal Government, it was local police and firefighters and emergency management and hospital personnel. That is who came. What does this budget do? It slashes the living daylights out of those very first responders who are critical to our domestic security. What does it do about one of the gaping wounds we have in the country in terms of security? It slashes port security. Everybody who comes to the Capitol has to go through a security device, 100 percent. Everybody who goes to the White House has to go through a security device, 100 percent. But when we talk about cargo coming from all over the world, only 5 percent has to go through the scanning process. Yet we are going to cut port security by 50 percent. Mass transit: The Congress spoke in the last session and put mass transit up there, understanding we saw what happened in Madrid and Mumbai and other places in the world. Yet the President cuts mass transit security by 56 percent. So to those who argue we cannot talk about the consequences of our engagement in Iraq in a financial context here at home, well, in the context of security here at home, at a time of a regrouping and restrengthening of al-Qaida on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, with the ability to ultimately commit terrorism domestically in the United States, yes, there is a real causal connection and a real consequence and we have to include that as part of the debate and part of the consequences in our continuing engagement in Iraq in an open-ended way. Now, with what we heard the Secretary of Defense talk about with the amount of money the Secretary of Defense thinks we might spend in Iraq next year, in a different context we could have more than doubled our package to stimulate the economy this year. When Americans get rebate checks in a month or so, they should imagine them more than twice as big because that is what this year in Iraq would cost. If we want to imagine the total financial cost of the war in Iraq over almost 5 years, if we want to imagine what $608 billion means, we could divide that up and send every American a check for $2,000. If we want to know what the war will cost over the next decade if we continue the course we are on, that is about $2.8 trillion. Every American should picture a check for more than $9,000. That is what the war costs: more than $9,000 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States of America. If there are four people in your family, that is $36,000 that potentially could have been put in your family's economy. When so many hard-working families are struggling to keep their homes, and so many are struggling to help keep up with the rising cost of health care and college tuition and heating oil, when so many have to care for aging parents, put food on the table, and struggle to make ends meet each month, $36,000 would go a long way. So it is a different way of looking at it. There are many different ways of looking at the costs of the war. So here is how it all adds up. We cannot think about economic stimulus without thinking about how we can stimulate peace. We cannot heal our economy without closing the financial hemorrhage that is the war in Iraq. It seems to me that in addition to those financial contexts, there is the whole question of security--the security I talked about in a domestic capacity; the security challenges we have by overextending our troops in such a way in which all of our military leadership speaks about the challenges we would have if we had to meet another security challenge in the world; and basically an understanding that, God forbid, we had another security challenge, while we are still engaged in Iraq in the way in which we are engaged, while we have a resurgence in Afghanistan of the Taliban, with some of the latest reports talking about some very fierce fighting and the lack of response by NATO and a pumping up of our troops there; and looking at that scenario and now looking at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where al-Qaida has reconstituted. And that is, God forbid, if anything else happens in the world. That is our challenge, in a security context, if we continue the course: a challenge that those who have the military prowess tell us we cannot meet if we continue in this way. For 5 years, the administration has parroted the line that: ``We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here.'' But now more than ever we realize that one of the biggest impacts of the war has been we are spending our money over there and, therefore, we cannot spend it here--money that includes billions of dollars that have been misspent, including hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction projects that are unaccounted for. I came back from Iraq about a month ago. I must say, when I see schools going wanting here in America, when I see hospitals closing in my home State, when I see roads that have deteriorated, bridges that have fallen, and see reconstruction in Iraq but no construction here at home, those are real consequences of the war. When I see us talk about the genocide in Darfur, and we are universally committed to the proposition ``never again,'' ``never again,'' what does ``never again'' mean? That we will not repeat the legacies of the past, the failures of the past: in the Holocaust, in Rwanda, in the Armenian Genocide. No, no, we will act. Yet because of our present security challenges, and the consequences of being engaged in Iraq in the way we are, we stand by and watch people in Darfur be slaughtered. So much for ``never again.'' Not long ago, about a month ago, I had the chance to make a trip to Iraq myself. First and foremost, the trip proved something I believed for a long time: We should be incredibly proud of the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States and who are serving there. They do not ask whether this is the right or wrong mission. They just serve with honor and integrity, and they risk their lives every day. I came away extremely impressed with their commitment, and I felt honored to be able to share some time with them, including many from my home State of New Jersey who are serving there. So we need to give them a mission worthy of their sacrifice. I believe that is what Senator Feingold's amendment does. Beyond that, one other thing became very clear to me. The solutions to Iraq's problems lie in the hands of the Iraqis. We cannot achieve peace, we cannot achieve reconciliation, we cannot achieve power sharing, we cannot get Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to sit side by side at the point of a military gun. As long as we continue to, in essence, be enablers of an Iraqi leadership that has become so dependent on the United States and refuses to meet the challenges of the hard choices, compromises, and negotiations necessary for their Government to ultimately achieve, they will never, ever feel the urgency of now. When the President sent 30,000 additional troops into harm's way in Iraq last year, the purpose--his purpose, his stated purpose; not my view of it, his stated purpose--his stated purpose was to allow Iraqis to have the opportunity and the space, the environment, to strengthen the Federal Government and achieve national reconciliation. That, no matter how we try to paint it, has not been accomplished. Even our own benchmarks, that even the administration agreed to and the Iraqis agreed to, have largely not been accomplished. So to use a sports analogy, we keep changing the goalposts every time, further and further away from the obligations the Iraqi leadership has. Not too long ago, Iraq's Parliament finally passed three laws, after months of bitter squabbling. We certainly should applaud them for that. But the Bush administration is touting this event as an end-all, be-all political breakthrough. But, as usual, they are taking a small bit of good news and trying to whitewash the bigger picture. The agreement the Iraqi Parliament reached is basically temporary. The provincial powers arrangement is set to expire--guess what--in 1 year--what they passed has an expiration in 1 year--to hold the politicians over so they can have the same arguments all over again next year. Iraqi politicians are still a long way from permanent agreements over fundamental issues because they do not have the pressures of the necessity to do so. The reason is, as long as we continue to insist in an open-ended presence in the lives of Americans and the national treasure of the United States, they will not make the hard choices and compromises necessary to achieve lasting stability. When I went to Iraq and met with a lot of the Iraqi elected leadership and some of the tribal chiefs and whatnot, I was stunned that they kept telling me about what America needed to do. My response to them was: Iraq's future is in your hands, not in America's hands. You must make these decisions for your country. I know we have heard a lot about the surge, and certainly it depends on what your measurement is. If you are talking about greater security in Baghdad, the answer is, yes, yes; no question--although Baghdad has become far more segregated as a city, so that one of the ways in which security has been achieved is that we segregate Sunnis and Shias into different parts of Baghdad's neighborhood. Maybe that is the cost. But when I landed, I was supposed to go to Mosul. I was not able to go to Mosul because they could not guarantee my protection. We have millions of displaced Iraqis who are beginning to come back. And now they come back to neighborhoods and to homes where the person living there is--not only has their home been taken over, but they are not even from their same sect. So they feel they cannot go live there. I asked: How are you ready to take on the displacement of several million of your country people coming back to the country? They have no real plan. We have 80,000 or so concerned local citizens, individuals who at one time fought us and have decided to join us but who are on the payroll--we pay them every week to be there--and their expectation is they are going to be integrated either into the security forces or get some type of employment. We do not have from the Iraqis a clear sense of how they are going to meet that challenge. These are 80,000 individuals who have weapons on them. So when we hear about the surge, let's not forget what President Bush said was the purpose. It was to create the space and environment necessary for the opportunity for Iraqi leadership to make the hard choices, compromises, and negotiations, to pass the benchmarks we had passed and the Iraqis agreed to. That has failed. That has failed. About security: Yes, we have created greater security in Baghdad. We also have created greater segregation in Baghdad. And we have pushed the challenges elsewhere in the country. At Combat Post X-Ray outside of Baghdad, I met with troops from New Jersey serving in the Air Force. An IED had just killed one of their colleagues and wounded several others. The hardest thing I have had to do in 33 years of public life is to call a family and give them my condolences because a loved one has been killed. It is the hardest thing I have had to do in public life. It is hard enough for a parent or a wife or a husband or a mother or a father to hear that when they believe their family member was fighting for freedom and for our security. It is incomprehensible when that death was about Iraqi politicians fighting for resources and power. When General Petraeus was here last year and came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said in his testimony that what we have in Iraq going on is a fight over power and resources. I do not think Americans believe that sending their sons and daughters into harm's way so Iraqis can fight over power and resources is a mission worthy of their sacrifice. There is no military solution in Iraq. Everyone, including General Petraeus, has admitted that. The only way to pressure Iraqi politicians into making the choices necessary to move their country forward is to stop signing blank checks and to set a timetable to transition our troops back home. That is, in essence, what my colleague, Senator Feingold, does. He creates a transition, effective 120 days after this law is passed and signed by the President. But that still permits us to meet critical missions, to conduct targeted operations against members of al-Qaida, the real threat to the United States, and affiliated international terrorist organizations; to provide the security for our own personnel and the infrastructure of the U.S. Government; to provide training to members of the Iraqi security forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces so that we can ensure that they can ultimately be able to stand up for their own country as our major focus; and to provide training, equipment, or other materiel to members of the U.S. Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their safety and security while redeploying members of the U.S. Armed Forces. That, in my mind, is ultimately an opportunity to transition with honor; focus our mission on whom we need to--al-Qaida; strengthen the Iraqi security forces to meet their own challenge; and send a message to the Iraqi leadership that you must do what you have failed to do. The opportunity has been given to you. We cannot continue an open check in terms of national treasure or a continuing loss of American lives. Finally, I felt truly blessed to step onto American soil after flying back from Iraq. Too many American men and women over there do not have the option right now of taking that return flight, and too many Americans have not returned, and others may not as well. I have seen firsthand how bravely our troops have served, but let's be clear about that service: American troops cannot be waiting for Iraqis forever to make the choices necessary to achieve success in their country. They cannot be asked to serve up a functional society on a platter. They cannot be expected to be the only ones serving up a functional electric grid, sewer systems, or revenue-sharing agreements about oil. As the former Chief of Staff said, we need the Iraqis to love their children more than they hate their neighbors. That is a powerful truism, but that does not come at the point of a gun. If Iraqi politicians think they can sit back and keep looking at the menu of options and squabble over the choices no matter what, Americans will keep delivering everything they order; they will keep picking up the tab, they will never feel the pressing urgency to build a functional country for themselves. It is time for that type of service to end. It is time for every American soldier to have the most wonderful privilege we as Senators have had who have visited Iraq: the privilege of booking a return home ticket. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, how much time do I have?

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I understand morning business has ended.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess from 12:30 to 1:15 p.m.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 12:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. MENENDEZ

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, our Nation needs to take a critical step to move our economy forward. We had a chance last night to make that happen. We had a chance in the Senate to make that happen. We had a chance to pass a package that would provide relief to more Americans, would put rebates in the hands of more taxpayers, would give checks to more than 20 million seniors who were not in the House bill, would have taken the opportunity to put money in the hands of 250,000 disabled veterans, would extend unemployment benefits for those who are looking to find work but cannot in this economy and who are on the verge of finding themselves without unemployment compensation benefits, and would provide important relief for businesses suffering and help those most in need with the cost of heating their homes this winter. Enough to stop the process, many of our Republican colleagues bucked that opportunity. They said they wanted to deliver relief as quickly as possible, but when they had the chance to provide that relief to the most Americans, far more than the House bill, they said no. I listen to our colleagues and I ask myself: What is it that says so many in our country--seniors on fixed incomes with increasing demands in their fuel and heating costs, those who still own their homes or those who pay utility bills, rising prescription costs, so many different elements of their lives, and they have fixed incomes, they have worked a lifetime and find themselves with challenges they cannot meet economically--why do those 20 million not deserve to be part of a stimulus package, especially when they will put that money right back into the economy quickly, which is the whole purpose of a stimulus in the first place? If we can have a stimulus that also helps a broad section of our universe, those who have worked hard, played by the rules, helped build families and communities and now find themselves struggling, why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we take care of disabled veterans and have them be part of helping meet their challenges? They have served their Nation with honor and dignity and now find themselves challenged. Why wouldn't we have them be part of a solution that also helps to stimulate the economy? For all this talk about quickness, it is also quickness in the ability to make this happen in a way that will have a real impact on our economy but a real impact, also, in the lives of Americans who are struggling. Far too many Americans have already suffered at the hands of an economy that is sliding backward. Far too many have seen their homes taken away from them on the brink of foreclosure. Far too many have been in search of work or have been waiting in vain for their paychecks to increase. For those who have not yet felt the effects of an economy that is sputtering, they fear and worry, wondering when they will feel the squeeze. That worry is understandable. The signs are less than good. Last Friday, we learned that 17,000 jobs were lost in January alone-- the first monthly loss of jobs in more than 4 years. Growth slowed to a near halt at the end of last year, coming in under 1 percent. We saw the biggest increase in unemployment rates since after September 11. We all overwhelmingly agree on the need to take action to stimulate our economy, and fast. It is wonderful to have come to that type of consensus on the need. What we need is a genuine spirit of bipartisanship in the Senate to bring us forward to conclusion. We had that opportunity yesterday. Certainly, what the House did is a solid start. It would largely achieve what we would hope to see in a stimulus plan. But, as with many first attempts, there are clearly some significant holes. The House plan would get us almost but not quite where we should be. This was our chance--hopefully, we will revisit it--to get it right. We are not talking about adding a load of new provisions, as some are implying. We are talking about making sensible changes to make sure we will have the most benefit for those most in need, and at the same time, because we are providing a benefit for those who are most in need, we are helping achieve the goal we want: stimulating the economy in a way that we will either avoid a recession--although certainly Wall Street is telling us they are convinced there is a recession--or at least narrow the time, the scope, and the impact of a recession. The value of any plan we consider should be based on one simple benchmark: the number of people we can reach and how effectively we can put needed dollars into the economy. Based on that benchmark, the Senate clearly has a better plan. The economic stimulus package we have before us is a plan the Senate and the country can get behind. It will get money into the hands of people who have basic needs to cover, people who will spend it immediately. That is the first goal of a stimulus. Our plan puts rebates in the hands of 20 million seniors. It may not have been intentional, but the fact is, the House plan leaves out millions of seniors who are low income, whose primary source of income is Social Security. In my State of New Jersey, more than 1 million seniors are eligible for a rebate under the Senate plan. Under the House bill, they would not receive a dime. If we think there is no economic link to including seniors, the fact is, seniors spend much more of their income than any other age group. People over the age of 65 are responsible for a full 14 percent of all consumer spending. The bottom line is, a true stimulus package would help those who spend the most and are most in need. The Senate plan does just that. The Senate plan also reaches another group that is excluded from the House bill--disabled veterans. Under our plan, we ensure that a quarter million disabled veterans who would not otherwise receive a rebate will get a check. When those veterans went to war, they never forgot whom they were fighting for, and we cannot forget them now. In several ways, the Senate plan puts resources toward where economists agree they are most effective--extending unemployment benefits. It isn't just common sense, because it helps those who are suffering most. That is, of course, common sense, but it also gets the best bang for the buck in economic terms. For every dollar we invest in extending unemployment benefits, we generate $1.64 in economic activity. This universe is known. They are out there. They are facing an immediate challenge. They will have the resources in their hands much quicker than formulating a rebate check. It is another reason-- timeliness. Despite broad consensus that such a stimulus plan must include additional benefits for those who have been out of work for an extended period of time, such benefits are absent from the House bill. There is no question unemployed workers are facing tough times. Long- term unemployment is far higher than usual and nearly twice what it was when we were facing our last recession in the year 2001. In New Jersey, more than 66,000 workers will be exhausting their unemployment benefits by June of this year, joining more than a million workers nationwide facing long-term unemployment. Last week, almost 70,000 new workers filed for unemployment benefits--the highest level since Hurricane Katrina. The need to address the economic hardships facing unemployed workers is real. We have seen in the past that unemployment benefits have stimulated the economy in times of hardship, and they should be part of this plan this time around. The Senate plan also includes important extensions of tax credits for energy efficiency and the production of alternative energy, including solar energy. Credits such as these help consumers purchase new appliances and greener sources of energy for their home. We also extend the solar energy credit, which helps drive the purchase of solar panels. In New Jersey, which is only second to California in the number of solar installations, this has an enormous impact. This provision could save more than 40,000 jobs, at a time when we see increasing job losses, and it can do something to help stimulate the economy by the purchase of these products immediately--so save jobs, purchase products, make the investments and, at the same time, stem the tide of the movement toward greater unemployment that we see in the country. Finally, our plan provides needed relief to industries that are hurting and may have to lay off employees in the coming months. I am pleased this package takes into account the unique challenges facing the housing industry right now. We all know this is a sector of our economy that is under incredible strains right now. The Senate plan would ensure they are able to spread out their losses so hopefully we can stop some of the bleeding in the housing sector and, in the process, prevent thousands from losing their jobs. This stimulus package we have before us is not perfect. Some of us would have liked to have included increased Medicaid payments to States, which would have provided a needed boost to States struggling to provide health care. But the fact is, if we only pass the House version, we would be falling far short. All of what I have talked about--20 million seniors, a quarter million disabled veterans, the essence of how the provisions on the housing components were included, the whole question of the universe of the unemployed seeking to get a job, not being able to find it, and not having the resources to sustain themselves and their families--all of that would not be in the plan. All of that would not be in the plan. We can do this. Of course, that is in addition to the rebates for both single people and married couples and married couples who have children who are already a part of our package as well, building upon the House proposals. So let's pass a package that has the widest possible impact. Let's pass a package that does not leave out 20 million seniors, that takes care of a quarter million disabled veterans, and provides rebates to as many Americans as possible. That is acting wisely, and it can be done quickly. We need our colleagues to join with us in the sense of urgency that exists, and to say to those 20 million seniors, those quarter of a million veterans, the millions who are unemployed: We stand with you as fellow Americans in this time of need in turning our economy around for all of us. That was the choice we had yesterday. I hope we will have that choice again. I hope the hearts of some will be softened in this process and that they will cast a vote to move in a much different direction. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.