Patty Murray

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator from Montana yield for a question?

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as I was saying, Secretary Paulson has been complaining about the need for mortgage counseling, and he said: For this public outreach campaign to be successful, there must be enough trained mortgage counselors to answer the phone when homeowners call. The administration requested funding for NeighborWorks America and other nonprofit mortgage counseling operations in its budget. But the appropriations bill has yet to be finalized; Congress needs to get it done quickly. That was not me, that was Secretary Paulson. We can do that right now. In fact, we could have done it last month. We are trying desperately to send this bill in its final stages that includes critical investment in housing counseling to the White House, just as Secretary Paulson said he wanted us to do. The bipartisan conferees on this bill agree that the amount the President asked for was too low to meet the demand for housing counseling, given the size of the problem. Congress acted. We increased it substantially. But even though every Republican conferee on our bill signed onto that plan, we are now being blocked from sending it to the White House. I only wish the Senate Republican leadership would follow the words of Secretary Paulson and Secretary Jackson about the need for this urgent initiative. Yesterday's Washington Post published an article on our $200 million housing counseling initiative. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Washington Post article.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to make sure the record is clear on the difference between what is being said in Washington, DC, today and what is actually taking place. Yesterday, President Bush took to the microphones to complain for the second day in a row that Congress was not getting its work done. For a second day in a row, he complained that Congress is not sending him appropriations bills that fund the most basic functions of Government. And for a second day in a row, our minority leader, Senator McConnell, followed suit. He came out on the Senate floor and complained that Congress has not sent the appropriations bills to the President. Let's be clear, I made a request to pass the final conference bill for the transportation-housing appropriations bill so it could be sent to President Bush. What was the result? The Republican Senators blocked it from going to the White House, and that was not the first time that happened. They blocked the transportation-housing appropriations bill from going to the White House twice before. Mr. President, 2\1/2\ weeks ago on November 15, they blocked it; 2\1/2\ weeks ago on November 16, they blocked it; and then they blocked it again today. Let me tell you what is going on here. President Bush and the Senate Republican leadership are trying to quietly block our progress on funding the needs of the American people while loudly complaining about our failure to make progress. I would understand the actions of the Senate Republican leadership if our transportation-housing bill was partisan or divisive, but the conference agreement we are trying to move again today has the support of every single Republican who sat on the conference committee in the House and in the Senate. That bill originally passed the Senate with 88 votes. That conference agreement has already passed the House with 270 votes. This is not a controversial bill. It makes critical investments in some of the most urgent needs of the American people and their local communities. That bill provides $195 million to replace the I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, an issue all of us came out on the floor and said we would move rapidly to take care of. It is sitting right here in the Senate, one step away from getting it to the President to be signed into law, and the Republican leadership said no. So they are loudly complaining about our failure to make progress. I would understand the actions of the Senate Republican leadership if they had not taken a look at this bill and realized the critical funding in it. Besides the $195 million for the I-35W bridge, we have $1 billion in enhanced highway formula funding so all our States--all 50 States--can inspect and make repairs to their most deficient bridges, an issue we all agreed was important. We have $75 million in new housing vouchers that will shelter homeless veterans, including our struggling veterans who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. This is critical funding for which our communities and our veterans are waiting. It rejects hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts that were originally proposed by the White House, cuts that would have thrown Amtrak into bankruptcy and made the congestion at our airports worse, not better. Our bill also includes $200 million which is urgently needed to provide housing counseling services to keep struggling mortgage holders in their homes. I wish to take a moment to talk about that last item, the $200 million for housing counseling. This Nation is in the middle of a housing crisis. Millions of homeowners are at risk of losing their homes in the next few quarters as interest rates on billions and billions of dollars in mortgages are being adjusted upward. On Monday, a few days ago, the President's own Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, and his Housing Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, made speeches on the need for Congress to address the many steps necessary to minimize this crisis. Secretary Paulson complained at a national housing forum about the number of borrowers who were entering foreclosure without contacting either their lender or their mortgage counselor. He said: For this public outreach campaign to be successful, there must be enough trained mortgage counselors to answer the phone when homeowners call. The administration requested funding for NeighborWorks America and other nonprofit mortgage counseling operations in its budget.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 3074, the Transportation-HUD, related agencies appropriations, 2008; that there be 20 minutes of debate with respect to the conference report, with the time equally divided and controlled between Senators Murray and Bond or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote on adoption of the conference report, without further intervening action or debate.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. I do.

Mrs. MURRAY. That is included in my request. I ask additionally that Senator Menendez be allowed 10 minutes as well as the end of that unanimous subsequent request.

Mrs. MURRAY. I add that to the consent request, that if there are Republican Senators who would like intervening times, in between, we include those as well in the unanimous consent request.

Mrs. MURRAY. Ten minutes to the Senator from Texas, 5 minutes to the Senator from Montana, 10 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended to include 4 minutes for myself, the Senator from Washington----

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we have a number of Senators on our side seeking recognition. Perhaps we can put that together fairly quickly.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for 4 additional minutes to finish my statement.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss H.R. 3688, the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement. Washington State is extremely trade dependent, and this agreement will have direct impacts to my constituents at home, particularly farmers growing asparagus. In addition, I am concerned about existing labor practices for miners in Peru. The domestic asparagus industry has been economically injured by the Andean Trade Preference Act's, ATPA, extended duty-free status to imports of fresh Peruvian asparagus. There has been a 2000-percent increase in Peruvian asparagus imports into the U.S. since ATPA was enacted. The asparagus industry suffered the greatest negative impact from the ATPA, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission's analysis of the agreement. The effects of the agreement to Washington State's asparagus industry were dramatic. Prior to the ATPA, there were over 55 million pounds of asparagus canned in Washington State, roughly two-thirds of the industry. By 2007, all three asparagus canners in Washington relocated to Peru. As asparagus production fell, I fought to provide assistance for these hard-working men and women whose industry had been devastated. To mitigate the impacts to growers, I tried to get them trade adjustment assistance. I have secured funding over the past several years to conduct research on a mechanical harvester to make this labor- intensive crop less costly to produce. Most recently, I helped secure $15 million in the farm bill for a market loss assistance program for asparagus growers. This funding will help farmers who have continued to grow asparagus despite the challenges ATPA has presented. I am hopeful that this program will help growers continue to invest in asparagus. Many of our asparagus growers have turned to other crops, and this Peru trade bill will help them, along with many other farmers in Washington State. While I have serious concerns about the continued effects on the asparagus industry in the U.S. and in Washington State, overall this bill will have a positive impact for agriculture in Washington State. I would also like to note my concern about labor practices for miners in Peru and the unintended negative impact that this agreement may have on them. A report by the Congressional Research Service indicates that while Peru endorses the International Labor Organization's core labor standards in the PTPA, concerns remain about their compliance with and the enforcement of these standards. I was discouraged to learn that while Congress was considering the PTPA, the Peruvian Government stalled in its efforts to secure statutory protections for miners and declared it illegal for metal miners to continue striking in support of stronger labor laws. As chair of the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety and an advocate for labor rights and workplace protections, I am concerned that the Peruvian Government's most recent actions do not convey a good-faith effort to reform its labor laws. I have worked tirelessly to ensure that miners in our own country have the safety protections on the job that they deserve. In light of the tragic mine disasters in West Virginia, I was proud to help write and pass the landmark MINER's Act last year. Miners put their lives on the line every day to provide for their families, and we must work to ensure they have a respected voice at the table and that their rights are protected. While I believe this agreement will ultimately do more good than harm, I hope my colleagues will join me in encouraging the Peruvian President, Congress, and Labor Minister to fulfill their promise and pass much needed labor reform legislation without hesitation. As you may know, Washington State is the most trade dependent State in the Nation. From apples to potatoes to Microsoft and Boeing, we rely heavily on international trade. This trade agreement, when taken as a whole, will do more to bolster the economy of my State and the Nation, and thus merits support.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, today we have an opportunity before us. With the bill we will consider, we can do what the American people have asked us to do. We can begin to bring the war in Iraq to a close. More than 3,800 of our servicemembers have died. In fact, as we know, 2007 has been the deadliest year so far in Iraq. And while we spend billions of dollars in Iraq, the list of safety, health, and infrastructure needs at home is stacking up. Today it is time to begin redeploying our troops, rebuilding our military, and getting back to fighting the war on terror. I was one of the 23 Senators who voted against the war in Iraq, and since then I have voted time and time again to get us out of this war. That is why I support the bridge funding that is being offered by Senator Reid this morning that we will consider. This bill provides $50 billion to make sure our troops have what they need to do their job and it requires the President to begin redeploying troops out of Iraq within 30 days after he signs this into law. Our goal with this legislation is to be out of Iraq by the end of next year. And importantly, unlike the bill being offered by the other side, it is not a blank check. It requires American personnel, including the CIA, to follow Army Field Manual rules on torture, it requires the military to give our troops at least a year to rest in between tours of duty, and to ensure that they are battle ready before going into war. So this morning I urge our colleagues to seize this opportunity and put American lives, American security, and America's future first and begin to change direction in Iraq. Earlier this year, President Bush promised us his troop surge was going to improve security and allow Iraqis to stabilize their own country, but that is not working. The Washington Post reported Thursday that senior military commanders in Iraq are now saying that the inflexibility of the Shiite government is the key threat facing the U.S. effort there. We have given the Iraqi Government every chance to step up and take control. We have done our part. The Iraqi Government has not done its part. And in the meantime--while more than 150,000 of our troops are policing a civil war in Iraq--we have become more vulnerable overseas. Terrorist attacks have risen almost fivefold since 9/11. The President has hidden in his bunker and stubbornly refused to pursue the strategy needed to bring stability in Iraq. It is time for him to face facts. It is time for the Iraqis to take control of their own country and for us to redeploy our troops where they are most needed. Our bill will allow us to rebuild our military, which is stretched too thin. Generals have testified to Congress that the war in Iraq has weakened our military readiness, destroyed our equipment, hurt our ability to respond to disasters here at home, and left our troops stressed and without fully rounded training. We need to make sure our troops are trained for whatever conflict they face, and changing the direction in Iraq allows us to do that. We need to fight and win the war on terror and rebuild our military. We also need to be there to support our servicemembers, our veterans, and their families. Our veterans have had to struggle to get basic care because this administration has put them on the back burner. We learned this week that, tragically, thousands of our veterans didn't get the help they needed and they took their own lives. CBS reported that in 2005 alone, 6,256 veterans committed suicide--a rate twice that of other Americans. That is shocking. The bill we are working on today, and that we hope we can get enough votes for, will ensure we are meeting our veterans' needs every step of the way, from the day they are recruited, while they are trained, while they are deployed, and as they transition back home. Finally, while President Bush has waged war overseas, he has insisted on paying for it in ways that have left us tragically underfunded here at home. Democrats have taken the right steps to reinvest in the many parts of our budget that have been neglected. We have got to move forward. I hope we can move this legislation that has been offered on our side, because the war in Iraq is not making us more secure, it is making us less secure. It is hurting how our Nation is perceived around the world, it is hurting our military, it is hurting our veterans, and it is hurting our security at home. Today we have an opportunity to make progress, and I urge my colleagues to support the bridge funding and send a message to the President that it is time to change course in Iraq. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we are about to begin one of the busiest travel seasons of the year--the week of our Thanksgiving holiday. The millions of Americans who will take to our Nation's roads, rails, and airways probably won't have the country's transportation budget on their minds. But we had them in mind as we put together this bipartisan Transportation-Housing appropriations bill and negotiated the conference agreement before us today. Unfortunately, the Senate Republican leadership has now formally blocked our ability to have a vote on this conference agreement and move it to the White House. And that is shameful. Our conference report invests in rebuilding our infrastructure and modernizing our safety systems. It spends the money needed to adequately staff our air traffic control towers and hire the safety inspectors for aircraft, pipelines, and railroads that are needed to protect us. It rejects misguided budget cuts proposed by the White House to slash the number of safety inspectors, underfund our highway needs, and throw Amtrak into bankruptcy. This bill also keeps faith with another American Thanksgiving tradition--giving back to those who are less fortunate. It rejects the President's proposals to slash housing funds for the elderly and the disabled and provides necessary increases to shelter the homeless and keep federally subsidized tenants in their homes. Finally, this holiday, millions of families will worry that they won't be able to keep their homes for another year. Millions are facing foreclosure on their homes in the coming months as their mortgage payments rise to unaffordable levels. This agreement helps address that crisis by targeting a quarter of a billion dollars to ensure these families get counseling that will allow them to stay in their homes. We are working to stop the rising number of foreclosures and increasing despair among the millions of citizens who pursued the American dream of homeownership. Throughout this process, I have worked closely with a very able partner, my ranking member, Senator Bond of Missouri. We held numerous hearings together. We negotiated every line of a very complicated spending bill together, and we negotiated the details of a conference report with the House together. Senator Bond and I didn't agree on every issue or every funding level, but we continued to make compromises so that we could keep the team together, press forward with our joint responsibilities. We were able to put together an appropriations bill that was reported by our committee without one dissenting vote. That bill passed the Senate with 88 votes. We then negotiated a conference agreement that earned the signature of every single conferee, on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of Capitol. I am so proud of how well we were able to work together to get this important bill done. This is truly a bipartisan bill. Sadly, President Bush threatened to veto this agreement--despite the years of neglect it seeks to reverse--and even though it has strong bipartisan support. The President says he opposes this bill because it spends about $3 billion more than the levels he requested for these programs back in February. I think it is unconscionable that he wants to spend $196 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--in this year alone. Yet he refuses to invest just $3 billion on some of the basic needs of every American--transportation and housing. What is even worse is that instead of standing up for programs they believe in--that they supported already--the Republican leadership here in the Senate has decided to stand in the way in order to protect President Bush from having to veto these important projects. The Senate Republican leadership put their loyalty to this failed Presidency above all the good this bill can do--and above the fact that 88 Members of the Senate supported it. Clearly, when the Senate Republican leadership calls for bipartisanship--as they have several times since they became the minority--they don't necessarily mean it. When we have a truly bipartisan agreement, they might still kill it just to score a political point. And that is a tragedy for the Senate and for Americans. So I think it is important to point out why this bill spends more than the President's request. It is because all the conferees-- Democrats and Republicans alike refused to let our bridges and highways crumble. They refused to go into the busiest travel week of the year by slashing funding for airports and railways. They refused to let our families lose their homes without an opportunity to work with their lender and professional counselors to keep it. And they refused to let our returning heroes lie homeless on the street in need of shelter and mental health services. Now let me share some examples of why this bill should move forward. We have all heard the stories this year about record flight delays that have disrupted people's travel plans across the country. Customer service complaints are at an alltime high. Our airports and runways are now more congested than they have ever been. And that is on a normal nonholiday week--some 27 million Americans will take to the airways this Thanksgiving. We also face a huge challenge as we work to replace the thousands of air traffic controllers and safety inspectors who are scheduled to retire over the next several years. The void they will leave threatens the safety and reliability of our airlines. Many of our controllers are still using equipment that is two decades old or older. But if the President had his way, we would cut funding to modernize our air traffic control system by more than $50 million. Well, not one Democratic or Republican conferee on our bill stood up for the President's dramatic cuts in airport investment. And no one agreed that the cutting our investment in modernized equipment was a good idea. The President just doesn't get it. Just yesterday, he voiced concern about flight delays even as he continued to threaten to veto this bill. Only someone who flies on Air Force One could make those two statements at the same time. Travelers will have President Bush and the Senate Republican leadership to thank as they wait at the gate and on the runway, this holiday weekend. Mr. President, the next is train travel. This coming Wednesday--the day before Thanksgiving--more than 125,000 Americans will use the Amtrak system in just 1 day. Our overcrowded highways and runways aren't able to absorb those travelers. We have to keep up our investments in options like Amtrak, which will cut down on highway congestion and air pollution caused by cars stalled in traffic. Yet the President proposed to decimate Amtrak's funding, which would have thrown the railroad into certain bankruptcy. Well, all the conferees--House and Senate--Democrats and Republicans--refused to slash funding for Amtrak by nearly 40 percent-- or almost $500 million. Not one wanted to lose our Nation's passenger rail service to the President's misguided budget priorities. Thirdly, we agreed to spend more than the President requested because the conferees recognized that the millions of holiday travelers who take to the highways next week will cross over 600,000 bridges that the Federal Highway Administration has rated as ``Deficient.'' Mr. President, 80,000 of those bridges have been deemed to be functionally obsolete, meaning they don't meet today's design standards for safety, and they are handling traffic far beyond what they are designed for. These are not just remote bridges in sparse parts of the country, either--6,000 of those deficient bridges are on the National Highway System--the core network of highways that connect our major cities and towns. We still have a tragic reminder of the cost of neglecting our highways and bridges. In the city of Minneapolis, tens of thousands of Thanksgiving travelers will be required to take alternative routes due to the collapse of Interstate 35W bridge. This conference report includes $195 million to help complete the reconstruction of the I-35W bridge. It also includes additional spending authority of $1 billion dollars from the Highway Trust Fund to allow all 50 States to beef up bridge inspections and rebuild or renovate their most deficient bridges. That additional spending authority came about as a result of my amendment, which passed on the floor back in early September. I want to thank the many Republican Senators who supported me on that vote. Now the President's budget was formulated and delivered to Congress before the Minneapolis tragedy. But I just think it is wrong that the President hasn't altered his budget priorities one penny in the wake of that reality. Both sides of the aisle in Congress have heard the wake-up call on the need to address our most critical, deteriorating infrastructure. Yet the President would rather spend $196 billion on the war than help our communities ensure their safety. Our conference agreement also helps protect homeowners who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. It spends more than the President's request because the conferees--Democrats and Republicans alike--didn't hide from the subprime mortgage crisis that is threatening to destroy many middle-income communities across the Nation. In the next two quarters, more than 2 million homeowners throughout the Nation will see their mortgage payments rise. Many of them will struggle or fail to meet these new, higher payments. We are now seeing communities where every other home--or every third home--is being abandoned by homeowners who can't meet their payments. Whole communities are having their economic underpinnings ripped from beneath them. Many of these near-ghost towns have been concentrated in the industrial Midwest. But Senators must know--if something isn't done to address this crisis soon, we will find these communities all across the country. Our conference agreement includes a special infusion of $200 million to boost housing counseling efforts to help keep struggling mortgage- holders in their homes. It is the same level that was included in the Senate version of the bill--a 500-percent increase over the current level. And rather than send this additional funding into the HUD bureaucracy, we have sent it out for competitive grants through the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation--a federally chartered corporation that specializes in this area. I am especially proud that this agreement helps protect our veterans, who-- tragically--now make up a quarter of the homeless population. Veterans Day just passed. In the speech I delivered in my home State, I said we ought to be asking what we can do--as a community, a state, and a nation--for our veterans. The conferees on our Transportation- Housing bill--Democrats and Republicans alike--refused to turn their back on the realities facing our returning heroes from Iraq and Afghanistan and all past conflicts. So our bill took one step in the right direction for our veterans. It includes $75 million for additional housing vouchers, which provide housing assistance through HUD, as well as supportive services through the VA to help get our heroes back on their feet. This isn't the first year the President has tried to underfund our Nation's housing and transportation system. The cuts this Congress refused to adopt this year are the very same reckless cuts proposed by the Bush administration in 2007, in 2006, in 2005, and every other year. The President has been proposing to slash funding for the CDBG Program, for elderly and disabled housing, for Amtrak, and for airports--year, after year, after year. This year was no different--and Congress responded the same way. The only difference between this year and prior years is that this year President Bush is threatening to veto the bill. And the Senate Republican leadership is determined to protect him from having to make that hard decision. But the American people don't care about party politics. They care about whether their bridges are safe enough to travel on. They care about whether they will have to sit for hours in the airport because their flights were delayed. They care--when they are sitting on a train platform--about whether the train is actually going to arrive. And they care about our homeless veterans and the need to keep struggling mortgage-holders in their homes. Our conference committee addressed those realities head-on and came up with a bipartisan solution. I only wish the Senate Republican leadership had these concerns of the American people on their minds rather than their need to protect a misguided President who is so out of touch with the American people. We learned today where bipartisanship begins and ends for the Senate Republican leadership. It begins with empty, insincere rhetoric on the Senate floor. And it ends when it comes to the need to protect President Bush. When the American people wonder why important legislation is not passing out of the Senate, they should look at this example, one where the Senate Republican leadership is blocking progress on a bill that bears the signature of every Republican who worked on it--one where the needs of the American people are thrown out the window in favor of the need to protect a failed President.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, could the majority leader yield for a question?

Mrs. MURRAY. I say to the majority leader, I thank him for trying to move forward. I hope our minority leader will work with his caucus to try to help us move this forward. It is critical infrastructure that thousands of communities are counting on this week, heading for a jampacked Thanksgiving holiday. Everyone is going to realize the impact of not investing in our infrastructure. I hope we can continue to try to work something out. I thank the majority leader.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am listening carefully to what you said. I am here on the floor working very hard trying to get the Transportation and Housing bill to the President, as he has asked us to do. We worked together in a strong bipartisan way. All of the Republicans and all the Democrats in both the House and Senate signed the conference committee report. This is critical infrastructure. I note the Senator from Minnesota is on the floor. He had a bridge collapse in his State. We have had a housing crisis we addressed within this bill. We know airport expansion is a critical infrastructure piece. I see the Senator from Louisiana is on the floor. There is very important infrastructure there. If I heard the Senator correctly, we are not going to be able to move forward on this critical piece of legislation that only has one hurdle left to get to the White House. If I could, in effect, clarify it, my understanding is there is an objection and we will not be able to move it past the final hurdle?

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. I am delighted we are here today to talk about one of the most important things this Congress has done for our children, and that is the Head Start Program. I thank the Senators from Massachusetts and Wyoming for shepherding this important bill to the floor today, where it is in its last final step before it reaches the President for his signature. For over 40 years now, Head Start has helped children from low-income families build the confidence and skills they have to have to succeed in school. As the Senator from Massachusetts said, I am a former preschool teacher, parent, school board member, and U.S. Senator. I can tell you, I have seen from every aspect how this important program benefits our children. Today, I am very excited we are taking a vote to renew this important program. The bill we have in front of us now strengthens Head Start by making it more efficient, more accommodating, and more sensitive to our children's social, emotional, and developmental needs. It will allow us to better serve millions of children and improve on this already successful program. This bill will help raise the quality that Senator Kennedy talked about of our Head Start services across the country so that we ensure all of our children, no matter where they live, receive high quality, consistent services. Also, it will help ensure that all Head Start partners from our early childhood centers to our elementary schools, our childcare centers, our health care providers, our family service centers, are all working together in a coordinated way so we can best serve our young children and their families. This bill increases funding authorization for Head Start each year from 2008 to 2010, and that will enable even more of our kids to start school ready to learn than ever before. I hope all of our colleagues will support this important bill, and I urge the President to sign it as soon as possible so we can put these new tools to work for our kids. As the, I believe, only former preschool teacher here in the Senate, I feel a personal obligation to stand up for all of our young children. And standing up for our children, particularly our most vulnerable children, means standing up for Head Start. Each year, nearly a million poor children across this country attend our Head Start programs. Those kids didn't choose to be poor, but fortunately, since they live in this Nation, which values our young people, many of them are enrolled in Head Start where they can get the tools and the training they need to prepare them for school. I thank Senator Kennedy and his staff as well as Ranking Member Enzi for working so hard on this bill. I am particularly proud of the provisions that increase Head Start access for our homeless and for our foster children. This bill will help improve transportation and services for these children and places a priority on enrolling them. These are some of our kids who face some of the greatest barriers to learning in our society, and I am glad we are making their success in school and in life an immediate priority. I also fought to make sure that parents of children enrolled in this program have a voice in the decisionmaking process on local Head Start issues. I think our parents need to be involved in these programs and to have responsibility, and I think as their kids get a jump on learning through Head Start, this program will help our parents begin to understand that they have a very important and critical role in shaping their children's education. So I am very proud we were able to work out that language and move forward in a positive direction. To name a few other quick additions, this reauthorization improves the transition of Head Start children to school by making sure that the curriculum they get matches their State early learning standards and kindergarten skills, which is very important. It also reserves 40 percent of new Head Start funds to improve programs as well as increase salaries for staffers, and it enables Native-American and migrant Head Start programs to expand, which will increase access to early learning for those particularly vulnerable populations. I have visited Head Start centers all across my State. I have talked with teachers, I have talked with the parents, and I have talked with advocates about ways we can improve Head Start. I am very pleased that a number of their suggestions have been put into this bill. Washington State, my home State, is a leader in early learning efforts. I think we can all be proud of this bill, and I hope all of our colleagues will support it. I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes this morning to talk about a subject that has tragically received far too little attention, and that is the number of veterans who take their lives because our Nation has failed them. In a breakthrough report last night, CBS News revealed that far more veterans commit suicide than has previously been reported by the Defense Department and the VA. CBS, in fact, found that in 2005, at least 6,256 veterans took their lives. That is a rate that is twice that of other Americans. CBS also found that veterans who are aged 20 to 24--those most likely to have served in the war on terror--are taking their lives at a rate that is estimated to be between two and four times higher than nonveterans in the same age group. CBS should be commended for pushing past this administration's stonewalling and digging to get those numbers. The administration told the network that even the VA hadn't counted the nationwide numbers. Those findings are sad, they are horrifying, and they should be preventable. Frankly, they are a reflection of something that many of my colleagues and I have said over and over. They reflect an administration that has failed to plan, failed to own up to its responsibilities, and failed even to complete statistics on the impact of this war on our veterans. From inadequate funding to a lack of mental health professionals to a failure to help our servicemembers make the transition from battlefield back to the homefront, this administration has dropped the ball. The Defense Department and the VA, in particular, must own up to the true cost of this war and do a better job to ensure that our heroes are not lost when they come home. We in Congress are taking steps to try to understand and care for the mental health wounds our troops are experiencing, but we clearly have to do more. If those numbers CBS is reporting do not wake up America, I fear nothing will. It is time for all of us to wake up to the reality and the consequences of this war. It is time to wake up our neighbors and our communities. It is time to wake up our employers and our schools and ask if we are doing enough for our veterans. It is time to wake up the White House and demand better care for our veterans, those men and women who have sacrificed for all of us. As I stand here and speak today, a generation of servicemembers is falling through the cracks because of our failure to provide for them, and that is shameful. Five years ago, when the President asked us to go to war in Iraq, he talked to us about weapons of mass destruction, he talked about al- Qaida, he talked about the mission to fight the war on terror, but he never talked about policing a civil war. He never talked about the stress of living months without a break and constantly waiting for the next attack. He has never talked about, in my opinion, taking care of those men and women who have served us honorably when they finally come home. In the past, our servicemembers were always given a rest, time to relax, time to regroup for battle. But we are today waging this war with an all-volunteer military. Some men and women are now serving their second, third, fourth, and now even fifth tour of duty. They are stretched to the breaking point. Too many of them are sustaining traumatic brain injuries. Too many are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. A third of our servicemembers are coming home with mental health conditions, and when they finally do come home, they struggle with the memories of battle. In their nightmares, they see their friends being blown apart. Some of them are turning to drugs and alcohol to numb themselves from the pain they are in. The sad truth is that all too often the system we have set up to provide care for them does not help them, and we do not find out how much pain they are in until, obviously, it is too late. I have taken the time to talk with these servicemembers. I have taken the time to talk with their families. I have heard their stories, and I wish to share a few with my colleagues today that illustrate, I believe, why it is so critical that we take action. These are young men and women. They are in their early twenties. They are young men and women who have served our country. They are someone's son, brother, sister, wife, best friend. Losing them is shameful. Let me tell my colleagues about a young veteran named Justin Bailey. Justin joined the Marine Corps when he was 18, a few months after he graduated from high school. He was about to separate from the Marines in 2003 when his service was involuntarily extended because of the war in Iraq. Justin went to Iraq. He was injured, and he returned home in pain and suffering from PTSD. He underwent several surgeries, and over a 2-year time period was prescribed a slew of medications, including hydrocone, xanax, and methadone, and he became addicted. Justin slipped through the cracks. Despite seeking help for his addiction, he was allowed to self-medicate. Despite warnings from the FDA, he was prescribed drugs that were inconsistent with the treatment of PTSD. Justin tried to find help, but after 6 weeks in a VA program for addicts with PTSD, he never once saw a psychiatrist. Justin's parents had assumed that he would get proper supervision in the VA program, but he didn't. This past January, Justin took too many pills and he died of an overdose. The next young man I wish to tell my colleagues about is Joshua Omvig. Josh, I am told, was an eager soldier who dreamed of being a police officer. He insisted on graduating from high school early so he could join the military and begin his career. He was sent to Iraq. But after one visit home his parents could see he was shaken. Ordinary things, they said, made him nervous, and he was having nightmares that made him shout out in his sleep. When he completed his tour of duty, he was transitioned back into civilian life after only a couple of weeks. His parents saw he was not the same. They said he didn't say much about Iraq, but he did talk about hearing voices and seeing faces and he was very jittery. His parents wanted him to get care, but he refused to see a doctor for fear it would hurt his career. Despite his parents' efforts to help him, Josh could not get over the trauma he experienced in Iraq. It got worse and his world slowly unraveled. Josh took his life at the age of 22. Josh's and Justin's stories came to light because their families came here and asked Congress for help. As a result, we passed the Joshua Omvig Veteran Suicide Prevention Act this year because his family pushed and pushed for legislation that would require the military and the VA to better understand and treat psychological trauma for our servicemembers. Are these extreme examples? Well, maybe, but they are not isolated examples, and the reality is many others are slipping unnoticed through the cracks today. It would be one thing if we had no idea what the mental health strains are for our veterans, but that is not the case. We have seen servicemembers come home with mental wounds in every military conflict in which we have ever been involved. When I was a young college student in the late sixties, I volunteered at the Seattle VA. I was assigned to the psychiatric ward. I worked with Vietnam veterans who were my age at the time coming home from Vietnam. I saw what was in their eyes. For some, it was a blank stare. For many, it was anger. For a lot, it was talking and talking and talking about what they had been through. There was no word called post-traumatic stress syndrome when I worked at the VA with those Vietnam veterans. But we know now the strains of war and what it causes, and we should be doing so much more for the thousands and thousands of young men and women who are coming home today and feeling lost and alone in their homes and communities because no one has reached out to help them. Our understanding of the impact that warfare has on the minds of servicemembers has evolved since I worked at the VA as a young student many years ago. One thing we know is that the mental wound suffered by men and women in uniform can be as devastating as their physical injuries. So it is long past time that the military knock down the stigma associated with mental health care. It is long past time that the military provide the care our veterans desperately need and deserve and back it up with adequate funding. We must acknowledge that this is a cost of war we cannot ignore. What can we do to prevent more stories such as Josh and Justin? We have to better understand the trauma our troops have experienced. The Joshua Omvig Act we passed takes steps to do that, but it is so clear we have more to do. We need more mental health care clinics, and we need more providers. We need the VA to be proactive. We need them to reach out to these veterans who are not enrolled in the VA system and who are at risk for suicide. And we in Congress have to provide the money to fully fund their care. The Senate has passed a bill that will increase funding for veterans by almost $4 billion over what the President asked. I hope we can get those improvements to our veterans as quickly as possible. We have to finally provide a seamless transition for our servicemembers when they come home, and that starts with making sure that veterans can get their disability benefits without having to fight through the system. It is unconscionable to me that our heroes return home from the battlefield today only to have to fight a bureaucracy to get the benefits they were promised. Veterans Day was a few days ago. Many of us went home and took part in ceremonies to thank our servicemembers for securing our safety and our freedom--well-deserved. In my own speech in Kitsap County, at home in Washington State, I said I believe that Veterans Day should not be just a day for ceremony. It should be a day to consider whether there is something more we can do for our veterans. And what are the implications for not doing enough? As the ``CBS News'' report found, too often the implications are that many veterans are stretched to the breaking point. That is a tragedy. We have to wake up to the reality that we have already lost too many. Ours is a great Nation. No matter how any of us feel about this current conflict, we know our troops are serving us honorably. But we owe them so much more than we have given them so far. We can do better. We must do better. I ask anyone who is listening to me this morning, anyone who watched the CBS report and saw those families talk about the tragedy of losing a son or a daughter to suicide after they had come home from this war, to reach out and say: Am I doing enough? Do I know of a family who is suffering? Do I know of someone at my child's school whose parent has come home? Do I know an employee who has come home from Iraq? Have I reached out myself and said: I am here for you if you need me? All of us can do more. Congress needs to act and do more as well. We are a great nation. We should do much better. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

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

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about something that has been a priority for me and for many of my colleagues; that is, our veterans. As we all know, Sunday is Veterans Day, the day that is designated for us to thank our Nation's heroes for their service to our country. It is also a time to ask whether our country has done enough to repay our veterans for all they have given to secure our safety. As thousands return home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some now from their fifth tour of duty, I wish I could say the answer to that question is yes. But, tragically, this has not yet been an issue of priority for this administration. We have too often failed to provide the care our heroes have earned. From the shameful conditions at Walter Reed and VA facilities around the country we saw earlier this year, to a lack of mental health counselors, to a benefits claims backlog of months--and I am even hearing years--our veterans have had to really struggle to get basic care. Fighting overseas takes a tremendous toll, as we know, on the lives of our troops and their families. It is unacceptable to me that those heroes have had to fight their own Government for the treatment they have been promised. So today I wanted to come out on the floor to talk to my colleagues and to talk to President Bush about the hurdles our veterans have faced. As we approach this Veterans Day, I hope all of us, especially the President, will reaffirm our commitment to our veterans by providing the money, the attention, and the leadership they deserve. I know from personal experience how military service affects veterans and their families and how the wounds veterans suffer from their military service will shape their lives forever. When I was a student in college at Washington State University, I was there during the Vietnam War, and I chose to do my internship at the Seattle VA. I was 19 years old when I headed off to the Seattle VA, a time when men and women who were my own age were coming home wounded from Vietnam. Every day I got on the elevator at the VA Hospital and rode up to the seventh floor and walked into the psychiatric ward, where those big, heavy doors shut behind me. Day after day, during my entire internship, I sat and watched these young men and women, who were my age, as some of them just stared blankly, some of them screamed in anger, many of them felt cut off from their own country, and most of them felt their lives had changed forever. As a volunteer at the VA during that time, I learned how some of these veterans can easily slip through the cracks. That experience also taught me that the doctors and the nurses who are there at the VA are really dedicated to trying to take care of these young men and women. It convinced me that the VA system is where our veterans can get the best care. Our VA system is uniquely positioned in this country to recognize and treat those specialized injuries, those medical conditions, and those mental health challenges which are caused by combat and military missions. Private medicine doesn't always have the knowledge base or the resources to deal with the unique challenges of a war. That is one reason I will continue to fight for better access to the VA, access that allows our veterans to get the care they need without the endless waits and redtape. Rather than kicking our veterans into yet another maze of processing and another maze of paperwork, we ought to be working every single day until we get it right, to provide better access to one of the best health care systems in the country to those men and women who have answered the call. I know from my own experience in my own family veterans are sometimes reluctant to seek attention or care they need. My own father was a veteran of World War II. He was one of the first soldiers into Okinawa. When he arrived, he was greeted with mortar. He was injured quite badly. He was put on a ship and sent to Hawaii, where he was in a hospital for weeks, recovering from those wounds. I believe he was there about 3 months. At the end of that time, he was then sent back to war. He was a courageous young man of 19 at the time. I didn't know him, obviously. He hadn't yet married my mother. I wasn't even a thought for him. I grew up with my dad. He was a disabled veteran. He was in a wheelchair for most of my life. Yet the story I told you he never told me. How had I found out that my dad was wounded and sent to a hospital and recovered under painful circumstances and sent back to war? I found out after he died, when I found his diary. That is the typical thing I hear from veterans. They are reluctant to tell us of the heroes they are. Those two experiences in my life, working at the VA when I was 19 and finding my dad's diary years later, help to illustrate a larger lesson that applies to many of our veterans that we need to remember in the Senate and Congress as we develop our policies, and that is often these veterans do not want to call attention to their service. Sometimes they are suffering so much they don't ask for the help they need. That is why I am so devoted to making sure we have a VA system that is ready and able and capable of taking care of all the men and women who served our country--all of our veterans. Sadly, as we both know, we are now 5\1/2\-plus years into the war in Iraq. Today we know that the VA is struggling to provide some of the basic services for our veterans. It is surprising to me it took President Bush nearly 3 months to announce his head of the VA to lead this beleaguered system. For 3 months, our VA has been languishing without strong leadership to address the challenges they have. His lack of leadership on that critical appointment sent a signal to me, and to a lot of people, that he is not focused on that cost of war and he is not focused on our aging veterans who are now going into the system, who are facing long waiting lines and not getting appointments. It underscores to me his failure to count our veterans as a part of the cost of this war. This week we learned the year of 2007 will go down as the deadliest year of the war in Iraq; this year, right now, the deadliest year of the war in Iraq. I know my heart and the heart of the Presiding Officer go out to the families of nearly 4,000 brave Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in this war and to the tens of thousands more who have returned with physical and mental illness. The physical wounds our veterans have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrendous. I have worked, along with the Presiding Officer, as a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee to help shine a light on the mental wounds so many of our veterans are suffering from this war. As he and I know, these injuries are very deep and very personal and they can be very devastating, both to that servicemember and to his family. This problem is still not getting the attention it needs from this administration. We all know our troops are under tremendous strain. In the past, we were always able to give our servicemembers a break in service to allow them time off from the frontlines to recover from their physical or psychological or emotional demands. We also know some of them are now serving in their third and fourth and even fifth tours in this war in Iraq. All of that increases the likelihood they will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health conditions when they come home. In fact, according to our VA's own numbers, fully a third of all our returning Iraq veterans suffer from a mental health condition. That is an astounding statistic, one-third of the men and women who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan come home with mental health conditions that need treatment and support. But I also know that statistic is probably too low. That is because many of our veterans today do not seek care, either because of the stigma of mental health problems or because they live in a community where they do not know whom to ask. Today the VA is not reaching out and trying to find these men and women, to bring them in, to give them the support and services they need. I have talked to one too many veterans myself who has told me: I didn't know that I could get care at the VA. I didn't know whom I could call. We have a lot of work to do. Earlier this year, I went to Camp Murray and spoke with some of the National Guard members who told me they did not want to be labeled with PTSD or traumatic brain injury. They had gone to Iraq and come home and they were deathly afraid of having that label on them because they thought it would hurt their career. One soldier even told me that to be labeled with a mental trauma, ``jeopardizes his life outside the service.'' Clearly, this administration and every American needs to work to change that perception, because a soldier who is at home and doesn't seek the needed care is an explosive timebomb in his family and his community. More than that, we owe them the support and care they deserve. That is part of our job, to make sure these soldiers aren't lost when they come home. We have a lot of work to do as well to ensure that when our servicemembers do try to get care, they do not have to struggle to navigate this horrendous system they are thrown into to get the treatment they need. So far we have not seen that happening. Last year, a VA official revealed some of the clinics in this country do not provide mental health care or substance abuse care. Or, if they do, and this was a VA official himself who said this, ``waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible.'' In other words, that VA official was saying, because the care is not there, we are denying the servicemembers the treatment they need. I held a hearing on the issue of mental health care in Tacoma, WA, my home State, a few months ago. Dan Purcell--he is an Iraq veteran--spoke to me and summed up the frustration I think is felt by so many of the servicemembers I have taken the time to talk to. He said to me he felt like he was being ``treated as a tool that could be casually discarded when broken or found to be no longer useful.'' Can you imagine? A young man who went to serve his country in Iraq, served all of us, fought for our safety and security--no matter how we feel about this war--felt like he was discarded when he came home. That is not how any of us want the men and women who serve this country to feel. I think it is shameful our veterans today, across this country, are forced to fight to get the mental health care they need. A lot of them struggle to even see a doctor, and they are forced to wait months or even years to get their claims processed. Across the country, veterans who have health problems are given different ratings and different benefits. In 2003, the administration, surprisingly, closed the door to VA health care for new Priority 8 veterans. Some veterans tell me it feels like the VA is fighting them instead of fighting for them. That is unconscionable. When this war ends--and we all pray it will be soon--when the news fades and the conflicts become another page in our history books, we have to be here to make sure the commitment to our veterans does not fade along with that. I wished to come to the floor this afternoon to highlight, on Veterans Day, how important it is that we recognize the men and women who serve us; how important our job is to make sure we provide the care. But I am not here just to say what they should do. I think it is important to talk about what we should do. I think there are three clear areas where we can do a much better job, where we can improve. First of all, I believe we can work to make sure the mental health care needs of our veterans are met. We need to work to make sure the VA does all it can to raise the awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder and combat-related stress. We have to do everything we can to make sure they hire more counselors to help treat everyone, from the 20-year-old veteran returning from Iraq to the Vietnam veteran who is still struggling with his legacy of war. We need to make sure all the employees throughout our VA system understand PTSD, so it isn't the receptionist who answers the phone who, when a veteran says to her: I can't get to sleep at night or I am having nightmares or I can't remember where my keys are or my kids don't understand me anymore, says: Well, let me see if I can get you an appointment. We have one 3 months from now. We need everyone, including the people who answer the phone, to understand post-traumatic stress syndrome and make sure we are reaching out and finding these veterans and getting them the care they need. Next, we need to work with the VA to clear up that horrendous backlog of complaints our veterans are facing so they can finally get timely care. I hope the President signs legislation soon to ensure the Department of Defense and the VA are working with the same disability rating system and that records are not lost between those two systems. We have worked hard in the Senate to address that issue, since the Walter Reed scandal broke. That legislation is within the Defense authorization. I hope we can get it to the President soon, that he signs it, and that the VA and DOD finally break apart those barriers that tell them they cannot talk to each other or will not talk to each other, and they can figure out a disability system that does not put our veterans into some kind of chaos between two bureaucratic systems. Finally, most important, we, Congress, have to provide enough money so our veterans do get the quality health care they deserve. The Senate has approved a bill that provides about $4 billion more than the President asked us for that is going to take some important steps. It is going to improve the conditions at our VA facilities around the country--such as we saw at Walter Reed. That was symbolic of what is happening in our country, and we have to put the resources into these VA facilities so our veterans do not face these dilapidated conditions. We have to invest in new ways to treat military health ailments such as PTSD and traumatic brain injury. We don't know the best care for our veterans yet. We don't know all the outcomes of PTSD and all the treatments available, and our VA has to have the dollars to do that research so we can provide the best care possible. That bill provides funding for better prosthetics for thousands of troops who have lost limbs in battle. I know the Presiding Officer and I have both talked with veterans and I have to tell you, the veterans coming home today who lose a limb in this war, they want to be able to climb Mount Rainier. They want to be able to run in a marathon. They want to be able to get up and be part of our society, our communities, and their families. We owe that to them, and better research on prosthetics and the capability of providing that to them is incredibly important. We provide for the research and the dollars in this bill to do that. It is so frustrating to me that this administration has ignored these problems for so long. We, in the Democratic-controlled Congress, came in this year and we have taken action so now I hope the President supports this critical bill and proves his commitment to veterans as well. The men and women in uniform have answered the President's call to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan without hesitation or complaint. They have left their loved ones for years. They have put their own lives on the line. Some have come home without limbs; others have returned with mental scars. Some, thankfully, have escaped without any injury. But everyone, to a person, has earned the respect and the best care possible when they come home. If we do not care for our servicemembers now, we will be weakening our military for decades to come. President Bush has been more than willing to use our veterans as props when he argues in favor of this misguided war. I think it is time to turn that lipservice into reality and give our veterans the care they need and they deserve. We owe it to our country to ensure we are there to support our servicemembers, to support our veterans, and to support their families every single step of the way. Mr. President, I know, as you do, that this country is willing to do that, unlike in some of our previous conflicts. I did not support the war, but I support the men and women who serve in it, and I will work every day to make sure we do our job to care for them when they come home, and I know all Americans feel the way I do. The men and women who serve us are part of the cost of war, and may we never forget that. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.