Jack Reed

Mr. REED

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. REED. I thank the chairman. I reclaim my time, and I thank him for that important and accurate input. I think, though, we have been so many months without a Secretary, and even when the nomination of Secretary Roche seemed to be in doubt, there was not the kind of response I thought necessary to show we had a permanent Secretary in place. Then, of course, Dr. Harvey was nominated in July. The chairman is absolutely right. After it became apparent that Secretary Roche would not lead the Air Force--but, July until, again, September or October, there was no movement to get someone confirmed in an office that is vital. The chairman is correct. He is entirely accurate and I accept that gratefully. One of the real issues that we have to deal with is the situation in the Army, and I think there are three areas that are of critical importance. First is end strength. Senator Levin has spoken to that. Second is the recapitalization issue, how do we repair this equipment and how do we buy new equipment. Again, Senator Levin has talked to that. Finally, there is this issue of leadership, of making sure that the Army is accountable to its peers in the legislative branch, accountable to Congress, and accountable to the values that we have all seen as the hallmark of the military. These are critical issues that the next Secretary will have to address. On the issue of end strength, during the last several months it has become increasingly clear to me, at least, that the Army needs to increase defense. It needs more Active-Duty soldiers in its ranks. Since 1989, the Army military end strength has been cut by more than 34 percent, and civilian end strength by more than 45 percent, while undergoing a 300-percent increase in mission rate. That is not illogical. At the end of the Cold War--1989-1990--with the vanishing of the Soviet threat, the notion that we needed a heavy-armored corps in Europe to stop the potential thrust into Central Europe was no longer operative. So the Army was reduced. That logic was apparent. Then mission rate began to increase not just a few years ago but through Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkan threat. Just as there was logic in the early 1990s to reduce the size of our Army, I believe there is a compelling logic today to increase the size of our Army. For the past several years, the Army end strength has been virtually constant at 418,400. In December 2001, for example, with the 482,400 end strength, there were about 100,000 Army personnel stationed abroad. Today, there are about 330,000 Army personnel stationed abroad. You can see the tremendous increase in demand for these troops to be taken from home stations and deployed overseas. Similarly, in 2004, 26 of the Army's 33 active combat brigades were deployed overseas at least once, and in 2003 and 2004 all 33 of the active Army combat brigades will have been deployed. We all recognize that our operations in Iraq were conducted by extraordinarily brave troops, and extraordinarily effectively in the opening phases. In a matter of days, the Iraqi military was destroyed. Saddam was toppled from power. Then we began what in retrospect was the most critical part of the campaign--the occupation and reestablishment of civil society in Iraq. One of the aspects of this phase is the growing recognition that it was not well planned. And we are indeed paying for that in terms of American military on the ground. Mistakes were made in the planning process. According to a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, when a lieutenant colonel briefed war planners and intelligence officers about phase 4-C--not the combat but the occupation operations, both civilian and military operations after the battle is won--he was briefing them in March 2003. But he was a little bit reticent because the slide he had simply said this: ``To be provided.'' We did not have good plans to occupy the country of Iraq. Today, we are paying for that lack of planning. The same Philadelphia Inquirer article pointed out that it is not because we didn't recognize there were potential problems in Iraq, but in the words of the article, there was a ``foot high stack of material'' discussing the probability of stiff resistance in Iraq. A former senior intelligence official stated, ``It was disseminated. And ignored.'' But we see at least some indication of the difficult path ahead when the office referred to the comments General Shinseki made in February 2003. Senator Levin asked him how many troops it would take. He said, ``Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers.'' He was immediately castigated by Secretary Rumsfeld, saying this estimate was ``far from the mark.'' Secretary Wolfowitz called it ``outlandish.'' And, once again, it raises another challenge for the next Secretary of the Army to deal with. How do we ensure that military officers will give their best advice and not suffer adverse consequences when they are asked by the Congress? We have a role to play. In fact, I think when many of us looked back, we hoped we had played a more significant role, particularly about the postwar occupation of Iraq. I think it is important for this next Secretary to develop a situation where these officers feel confident of being candid with their superiors in uniform and with Members of Congress. I know it has been pointed out that General Shinseki already had announced his plans to retire, or the Secretary had announced his plans for him. But, nevertheless, I think the treatment he received after his candid response to the committee was shabby and not comparable with the service this gentleman rendered the U.S. Army and the Nation. We understand, given the occupation unanticipated in many respects, we are going to require a significant number of soldiers in Iraq. This, again, should not come as a surprise to many people. This chart is illustrative. It basically compares the ratio of soldiers in Iraq with historical records. The first line--the blue line--is the occupation of Germany. Again, we had huge numbers of soldiers on the ground in Germany. The red line shows the troop level for Japan. The next is the Somalia level, then Haiti, and noticeably the successful operations in the Balkans. This horizontal line represents our troop levels in Iraq today, 142,000. History should have shown us that we would need a much larger Army to carry off this occupation in Iraq. You might say, Well, we succeeded in Japan. But we succeeded by essentially preempting the entire Japanese Government. Once the Emperor made his fateful visit to General MacArthur and bowed to him, our problems with insurgency and rehabilitation of the Japanese were all but over. It took years but not militarily successful; again, in Somalia and Haiti. In Somalia, we left abruptly without a great deal of grace despite the courage of soldiers who performed magnificently there. Haiti might be a special case. But it should be clear that we need more troops on the ground. If you need more troops on the ground, then you just simply need a larger Army. That is something that we have to confront. That is just one. Last summer, Secretary Rumsfeld asked the Defense Science Board, an independent group of experts, to study the transition from hostilities. Do we need more troops or less? Can we rely on technology or troops? They took a comprehensive look at missions and initiatives to reduce strain on the Army. Again, these are very sophisticated individuals selected by Secretary Rumsfeld. Their conclusion: A smaller force may be needed to defeat opponents than that needed for stabilization and reconstruction operations. Technology has not had the same leverage in stabilization sales and reconstruction that it has in conflict. Warfighting transformation is not likely to save manpower needed for stabilization and reconstruction. Consistent with history, consistent with what military officers tell us and presumably telling the Department of Defense, we need more troops for operations such as stabilization operations. We also understand that there are roughly 138,000 troops stationed in the country today. And in anticipation of the election, in January the Pentagon announced they were going to try to increase that size. Again, I think the inescapable conclusion from history and from uniformed military leaders candidly telling us their best judgment and from the result of the Defense Science Board is that we need more troops. We need a larger Army for these missions. But there are other issues that should suggest to us that we could use more troops effectively. We recently heard about a huge ammo dump that was discovered. It was apparently looted, and apparently unguarded for many months. When I was in Iraq traveling with the chairman and ranking member in July, we were in Kirkuk. I was amazed to hear a general of the 4th Infantry Division talk about the hundreds and hundreds of unsecured American ammo dumps. I don't believe they were unsecured because we believed there was no danger. It is simply because they did not have sufficient forces then to guard every ammo dump. They didn't have loyal Iraqi forces to support their efforts. Again, we have seen a situation in the last few days where we have conducted very successful and very difficult operations in Fallujah. Once again, the courage of the marines and the soldiers has been extraordinary--house-to-house fighting, difficult fighting. They have endeavored and succeeded in many respects not only in taking valuable terrain but also sparing innocent civilians with extraordinary demonstration of courage and skill. But as they reduce Fallujah, the insurgents again move operations into Mosul and Bogoba. They span out and spread out and hit us. Frankly, one of the reasons they were successful in Mosul was because there was no significant American forces there. And the local police-- some fought valiantly and a few others disappeared. Over a period of time, the whole town was under the control of the insurgents. When we went into Mosul and started injecting American forces and more reliable Iraqi forces, they now hit Bogoba and other parts of the Sunni triangle. That is another strong suggestion that more American forces might be useful in country. Finally, the borders of Iraq remain very porous. Smuggling is a venerable tradition in that part of the world, and the smuggling trade continues to operate. Could we use more troops? Yes. The administration and the Department of Defense have said that our future and our salvation is with the Iraqi security forces. I believe they are right, but that is the long term. That is years from now. We are training an Iraqi national army force. And, frankly, the training is at the level of squads and platoons. They haven't reached the level of companies or battalions that can effectively replace American units. They do not have the kind of equipment we have. The prospect of reliable, well-trained and well- disciplined Iraqi forces is many months if not years away. We have a large number in Iraq already. Some might say: Goodness gracious, you have a bigger army than the 130,000 troops that are there right now--140,000 troops. But I don't think people recognize that the troops that are deployed are just, if you will, the tip of the spear. They are behind in administration, behind in troops that are training there, and there are troops that are recovering from being there. It is important to recognize that even though there are roughly 140,000 troops in Iraq, it is clearly tasking our Army. An observer of the scene, former Army officer Phillip Carter, tried to put this in perspective. Even the simplest military task, such as moving a unit from point A to point B, requires a Herculean logistical effort. Planes have to be scheduled; trains have to be contracted and loaded; ships must be diverted and filled with equipment. Just consider what it takes to move a single tank company from Fort Stewart to Fallujah. Soldiers have to spend days inspecting and packing their vehicles before loading them onto trains to take them to port. The trains will be met by more soldiers at dockside, who will work with longshoremen and contractors to put the tanks on a ship. Then the ship has to sail across to Kuwait where it will be met by more troops and contractors. Only then can they roll them north to Iraq. Moving one tank company costs a fortune and requires hundreds of people. Now imagine you want to move an entire unit such as the 3rd Infantry Division with hundreds of tanks and thousands of other vehicles. The size and complexity of the task is staggering. It may cost as much as $1 billion to send a division to Iraq. And it can't be done quickly. Major bases in the United States have a finite ``throughput'' capacity, meaning that they can only squeeze so many pieces of equipment out the door any given day. The tip of this spear is in Iraq. But whatever we have there, we need many more back here, again raising, I think, the obvious need for additional end strength for our Army. In January 2004, LTG John Riggs, in charge of the Army of the future, stated: I have been in the Army 39 years, and I've never seen the Army as stretched in that 39 years as I have today. In July, LTG Jay Garner, who was the Bush administration's first generation in postwar Iraq, stated: I think people are worn out, equipment is run down, and we've overstressed the reserves. We're drastically short [of] infantry and MPs because the Army is too small. But all of this seems to have not made an impression on the Department of Defense with respect to the need to increase the size of the Army. I think it is not just a question of numbers. It is a question of the stress being borne by soldiers and their families. Approximately 16,000 Active-Duty soldiers have had two tours in Iraq, and if they stay in the service longer, they will have another. That is a very significant statement. In June of 2004, DOD projected that over the next 3 to 5 years it will continuously have 100,000 to 150,000 Reserve component members mobilized. It has been estimated that if we do not increase the Army size, forces that have already been deployed to Iraq will have to return two more times. Mr. President, 3,600 troops normally stationed in Korea to protect us against North Korea, a country that arguably is a dangerous threat to us with their nuclear weapons and their mentality, have been redeployed to Iraq. On July 6, the Defense Department stated it was calling up 5,674 members of the Individual Ready Reserve soldiers who have completed active duty, were in an 8-year period to be recalled, and they are being recalled, but they do not drill on a regular basis and some have not put on a uniform in 3, 4, 5, 6 years. The DOD also implemented a series of stop-loss policies, what some might call a backdoor draft. Since September 11, DOD has announced six stop-loss policies for the Army, two for the Navy, five for the Air Force, and two for the Marine Corps. Only the Army still has a stop- loss policy, which means, effectively, once the unit is alerted, until 90 days after they return, that individual soldier cannot leave the Army even if his enlistment is up. These tours are increasingly longer. It is not just 12 months in-country; it is also the training beforehand and the demobilization after. As many have pointed out, a great burden is falling on our Reserve and National Guard units. Men and women who have full-time jobs, men and women who have families far away from their mobilization point. Today, frankly, we cannot meet our requirements in the Army without the Guard and Reserve. These are extraordinarily talented, consummate professionals. The citizen soldiers have done a remarkable job for us, but the strain is immense on the Reserve and National Guard, once again suggesting we need a larger regular force. We have adopted all sorts of measures, stop-loss, relying heavily on the Reserves, but the underlying point which has to be confronted by the next Secretary is how do we increase permanently, with regular budget authority, the Regular Forces of the United States. The average mobilization for members of the Reserves and National Guard has increased to 342 days this year from 156 during the Persian Gulf, again corresponding to the increased reliance we are placing on the Reserve soldiers. As we pointed out previously, the DOD mobilization authority states that the members of the Reserve component can be mobilized for no more than 24 months. Currently, 30,000 Reserve component members are up against this 24-month cap. But in 2005, indeed, a large portion next year will bump up against this cap. So we are using the Reserves and National Guard, and they are performing well, but this underscores the need for a large regular force. A larger regular force is included in the budget, but not funded by emergency provisions through supplemental appropriations. We are beginning to see, as a result of the stress on the Guard particularly, an erosion in terms of recruitment and retention. The Army National Guard ended fiscal year 2003 approximately 7,800 soldiers below the recruiting goal. Last month, the Army National Guard announced it expected to fall 5,000 short of the goal of 56,000 soldiers. A survey by the Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences reported to us that more than one in three Army reservists plan to leave or transfer to the inactive reserve when the current enlistment ended; only a quarter will reenlist. The Active Army made the reporting goal, but they did this by pulling forward one-half of the delayed entry program. Each year, they sign up young men and women who do not expect to report until the next year. In order to make the goal, they counted those soldiers in this year's accounting. So they start off essentially in a hole for this year because they cannot double-count those soldiers. The other factor I see potentially damaging in the longer run, for the first time in a very long time, a small fraction of soldiers is being led into the Army who are normally rejected because of lower qualifications. It is roughly 2,000 out of 100,000, but that is a trend that certainly we do not want do see grow or continue, and it is illustrative of the need to make the totals because of the stress our military is under. The other aspect is we are committed to making sure that the Army is there and we are trying to do that through incentives and bonuses, which puts additional financial stress on the budget of the Army. Again, this is something we can't avoid. That is the way we have to fund and maintain a volunteer force, but it is an issue in terms of long-term ability of the Army to find the resources so that they can pay these bonuses, they can pay the benefits, they can enlist the force. One other final aspect of this issue of reliance upon a force which I believe is too small. We have seen, for the first time in a notable way in Iraq, reliance and overreliance on contractors--not contractors who do the mess halls. By the way, they are doing a magnificent job over there. The quality of life of soldiers is first-rate. But I am taken aback when I see private contractors providing security. We all recall that even Ambassador Bremer's security was provided not by military people but by private civilian contractors. That is another indication to me that we have to increase the Regular Army. Part of this was a result of a plan that did not anticipate a long- term, intensive involvement in Iraq. As mentioned before, this has been pointed out by others. In December of 2003, Jeffrey Record, of the Army's own Strategic Studies Institute, published a report that stated the ground force requirements in Iraq have forced the U.S. Army to the breaking point. He says the Army appears incapable of sustaining a commitment of 16 of its 33 active-duty combat brigades in Iraq absent a reduction elsewhere or expansion of its force structure. Again, the Defense Science Board stated that current and projected force structure will not sustain our current projected globalization. There are inadequate total numbers of troops and a lack of long-term endurance. The board recommended adding troops or cutting back missions. It is very difficult to cut back missions. I should point out that the board was aware of the attempts to reform the military, the modularity that is going on within the military. Again, this is a very positive development. I commend the Chief of Staff, General Schoomaker, and those who are trying to reforge the Army to be more efficient, but the Defense Science Board recognized these efficiencies and still stated that we need more troops. We have in the Senate, with the cooperation of the chairman and ranking member, tried to do this. Again, going back a year or so ago, together with Senator Hagel, we introduced legislation that would increase the Army by 10,000. It passed this Senate, but the Department of Defense objected to it, and it fell out of the conference report. We were successful in the last authorization to include an increase of 20,000 end strength, but once again the Department of Defense insisted that these troops be paid through emergency procedure. We have to have a situation where the end strength is increased but it is also paid for through the regular budget process. My fear is that eventually it will get more difficult to pass supplementals. Senator Levin pointed out how the Army will rethink the demand of a significant amount of money next year in the supplemental for 2005. Yet even with that money they might not be able to sustain all their needs, equipment, or otherwise. Unless we have an authorized end strength that is paid for through the regular budget process, we may end up leaving the Army in the lurch in the years ahead. When the budget comes down, the supplementals are not as robust, and they still have the missions and the troops they need to conduct those missions. That is a critical issue that the Secretary must address. I raised these issues with Dr. Harvey. He certainly listened attentively, but I received no commitment that he was going to move aggressively to do this. The other issue of equipment, which has been addressed by the ranking member, is the Army has sustained 1.6 billion in equipment battle losses in Afghanistan and Iraq. Presently it has an unfunded requirement of 1.3 billion for ammunition. The Army estimates a third of the equipment is either already in Southwest Asia or en route. In fiscal year 2005, approximately 1.6 million pieces of Army equipment will be sent back to the United States from Iraq and Afghanistan for repairs, upgrade, or replacement. The Army expects to need $7 billion for this effort. We have an extraordinary demand to keep Army equipment going, and the requests, so far, the supplemental requests have not met those demands. I personally believe we have to have a robust, dedicated fund from sources outside the Army so we can fund the simple recapitalization of the equipment needs of the military. There is another aspect of the equipment demand. We have taken a great deal of equipment from the National Guard and forces in the United States, moved it overseas, leaving our National Guard back here with a fraction of their critical equipment. As my colleagues recognize, the National Guard plays a critical role in homeland security, a critical role in aiding States and localities with disaster assistance, and they are not only deployed overseas but many of the guardsmen left behind do not have the full complement of equipment-- another issue we have to deal with. I could go on at great length talking about recurring equipment needs. There are other examples that are critically important. Nearly all the equipment, for example, in our stockpiles in Southwest Asia has already been deployed forward. We do not have those robust stockpiles of equipment necessary if there is another contingency in the area. The only area where stocks appear to be untouched is Korea, which I think is a very prudent decision. This is another example of the issues we are facing in terms of equipment. As we go forward, we have endeavored to provide the resources to our military to conduct the important operations overseas. In the past 17 months, President Bush has requested and Congress has appropriated $187 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq. We also anticipate an additional request of $70 billion in the next few weeks or months. We are spending a great deal of money, but still the needs of the Army are unmet. We have to provide for the needs. We have to provide for the necessary equipment. We have a crisis in end strength. We have a crisis in recapitalization of equipment, and we also have an issue of leadership. I have stressed this before so I will be brief. We have had two individuals serving the Army in this administration. General Shinseki and Secretary White were called upon to give their best views to the Congress. They did, and essentially they were punished for those views. That, to me, is not an effective way to use the offices of the Army or to get the kind of cooperation within the executive branch and the kind of cooperation between the Congress and the military service that is so necessary. Again, I feel the inhibitions that resulted from that very dramatic public behavior might have prevented individuals from appropriately sharing with us information about the planning problems for postwar Iraq, about the need for additional forces, about the need for recapitalization of equipment. In the long run, it is a very destructive and corrosive force. The next Secretary has to deal with that on an individual basis and on a collective basis in the Army and within the Department of Defense. Also, too, an issue that has concerned many, and one that we were shocked by, was the scenes of the Abu Ghraib prison, where individual soldiers have been held accountable, enlisted people, E-5s, E-6s, E-4s, but anyone who has read the reports and anyone who has been in the area in which the chairman has conducted it in a very professional and very courageous fashion has to understand that accountability does not stop here. We have had numerous reports by the IG, by General Taguba, by General Kern, and by others which suggests at least people at ranks beyond noncommissioned officer have to be held accountable. Yet to date there has been no accountability, in my mind. I was curious as to just simply who had the responsibility to press court-martial charges against some of the individuals notified in the report by General Karpinski. Now, that is, I am told no general officer can go before a court-martial without an IG report. The IG has conducted a report. I found out that the IG, General Mikolashek, is scheduled to retire in a few days. I don't know what the status of his report is, whether he forwarded it to the convening authority and whether the convening authority is taking steps. The convening authority is General Helmsley, who is the Reserve component commander. Colonel Pappas, who is out of the 5th Military Intelligence Brigade, and General Sanchez was originally the convening authority--he decided because of appearances, and I think appropriately, that he shouldn't be involved. It was then sent to General Bell, the USAREUR commander, and now it has been delegated to General Benny Williams. It seems to me in the course of trying to establish responsibility beyond the company grade level that we have not made much progress. I believe the next Secretary of the Army has to deal with this issue directly because it would be unfortunate--more than unfortunate--if individual soldiers were punished and it appeared that seniors who might be culpable--not directly involved in brutality but for dereliction of duty or for failure to follow the law of warfare--simply walked away or were lost in the shuffle of paperwork and reports. That is the challenge this Secretary has to deal with because the essence, in my mind, of a military officer is accountability and responsibility, and you do not get that by pushing reports and pushing paper and suddenly trying to make it go away. Maybe I am just premature in my demands for some type of finality to this situation. I don't think so. Again, I believe the next Secretary of the Army has to establish a very simple rule: Soldiers are responsible for what they do and commanders are responsible for their commands. I hope that is done because, if not, all the issues I have talked about--the lack of troops, the need for new equipment and refurbishment of equipment--will pale in comparison if people can draw the lesson that only soldiers are punished and superiors are somehow able to escape, at least the opportunity to be held accountable.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I reclaim my time. Let me, once again, commend the chairman because he took a position that was very difficult.

Mr. REED. Let me add, honestly, without his sensitivity to the importance of this issue, to the long run values of the military, it would not have received any attention. I commend the chairman for continuing his efforts. I just point out, all this might be coincidental. General Kern retired on Saturday, I believe. I hope the report and response is ready and en route to the chairman. I hope he, too, agrees with me that this is not an issue that we can ignore. I must say also this is not just an Army issue. I think there was a tendency initially to portray this as the aberrant behavior of young soldiers. As we now know, there was much more complicated and high- level involvement. What involvement is still unclear, but we cannot walk away from this issue. And because the next Secretary of the Army will have so much authority with respect to reports, with respect to reviewing at least court-martial proceedings or involved in these decisions, this issue has to be addressed. And that is one of the major challenges I think Dr. Harvey will address, I hope, if he is confirmed. Let me again conclude by thanking the chairman not only for his leadership but for the gracious way he has helped today to illustrate these issues and to assist me in my presentation. I thank him. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent a fellow in my office, Seth Gerson, be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of today's session.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, this week, a conference committee filed its report on legislation that was originally designed to repeal provisions in the tax code that have been found by the World Trade Organization to be illegal export subsidies. Months ago the European Union began imposing retaliatory tariffs on select American exports, including such important Rhode Island exports as machinery and jewelry. The targeting of the jewelry industry is especially troubling because Rhode Island is among the three biggest jewelry-producing States, and this sector accounts for 36 percent of the total trade targeted by the retaliatory duties. Without congressional action to repeal these export tax provisions, these tariffs would grow progressively until reacing 17 percent by March of 2005. Unfortunately, I have serious concerns that the conference agreement before us today would not even provide immediate relief to our jewelers and other businesses targeted by these tariffs. The Senate-passed JOBS Act included a carefully crafted transitional benefit for those firms currently receiving FSC/ETI assistance. However, the bill before us includes transitional relief that is still export-contingent and could be challenged by the EU as still not being WTO-compliant. In fact, according to an article yesterday in the Washington Post, EU spokesman Anthony Gooch suggested that this legislation would not accomplish its central goal of lifting European sanctions due to the transitional assistance. This is the reason we have this legislation in the first place, and I am disappointed that the House conferees have potentially set up a repeat of tariffs on our Nation's domestic manufacturers and exporters. That brings me to the other compelling reasons for the original JOBS Act: the bill, as passed by the Senate, replaced the Foreign Sales Corporation and Extraterritorial Income regimes with a more robust set of incentives for domestic manufacturing. At a time when domestic manufacturing, long the backbone of the American economy, is bleeding prized jobs to foreign countries, it is incumbent on Congress to put forward a responsible economic plan and provide important assistance to manufacturers that keep their operations here in the United States. While the conference agreement does include a tax deduction to provide assistance to a broad-based group of manufacturers, unlike the Senate-passed legislation, it does not make a distinction between manufacturing domestically or abroad. It removed the so-called ``haircut'' that would have provided an incentive for companies to do their manufacturing here at home instead of shipping it abroad. Yet again, we see that House Republicans are unwilling to stand up for those manufacturers, small and large, that have kept their operations here in the United States. In fact, if we look at the bill as a whole, we see that of the broad- based tax incentives, a larger net amount of money would be dedicated to international provisions than those targeted at production here at home. It is difficult to reconcile the very real challenges facing domestic manufacturers with the inclusion of huge tax breaks for multinational corporations. Ultimately, providing tax breaks to multinationals means that manufacturing jobs are going overseas. The corporate repatriation provisions in H.R. 4520 are responsible for a significant amount of these costs, but there is little evidence that they will ultimately help to create jobs. Even Secretary Snow, speaking for the Administration, seemed to understand this inequity. He wrote in a letter to Chairman Grassley, and I quote: [T]he Administration also has concerns regarding the fairness of the repatriation provision included in both bills. This provision would offer international corporations a partial ``tax holiday'' for repatriating foreign income that is currently held overseas. U.S. companies that do not have foreign operations and have already paid their full and fair share of tax will not be able to benefit from this provision. Moreover, the Council of Economic Advisers' analysis indicates that the repatriation provision would not produce any substantial economic benefits. The Administration believes the $3 billion revenue cost of this provision could be better used to reduce the tax burden of job creators in the United States. This is not the only place where this bill failed to live up to its full potential to help domestic manufacturers. I am deeply disappointed several months ago that last-minute lobbying by multinational corporations were effective in removing from the Senate bill a commonsense provision to help reduce offshore outsourcing termed contract manufacturing. Similarly, House Republicans voted to leave out the Dodd offshoring amendment, which would have prevented Federal taxpayers' dollars from being used to support outsourcing in future government contracts. This is a commonsense measure to make sure that the Government does not actively contribute to outsourcing, and its rejection by the conferees is a sign of their strong disregard of the practice of ``buying American.'' This brings me to the subject of corporate tax shelters. We have been fighting to close these loopholes benefiting large companies for a decade. A recent study commissioned by the IRS estimated that abusive corporate tax shelters cost honest Americans as much as $18 billion annually, or $180 billion over 10 years. Put another way, every month that the majority and the administration obstruct efforts to shut down corporate shelters, it costs honest taxpayers over $1.5 billion. It has been several years now since the Enron debacle, and yet the majority has still not sent to the President a tax bill to shut down these shelters. While the Senate has taken actions over and over again to target shelters, they have been blocked by the majority party. For example, in June 2002, the Senate passed tax shelter legislation as a stand alone bill and as part of the CARE Act. The other chamber did not. The Senate passed it again in April 2003 as part of the CARE Act; and the other body rejected it. The Senate passed shelter legislation as part of the energy bill in July 2003, and the other chamber rejected it. The Senate passed shelter legislation as part of the Jobs and Growth stimulus bill in May 2003, and it was stripped out in conference. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear that tax shelter provisions were included in the conference agreement. Then I had a chance to look a little more closely. The conference bill is a shadow of the Senate- passed version, raising $40 billion less by closing corporate tax loopholes than the Senate-passed version. $15 billion of this lost opportunity to make the Tax Code fairer for all Americans would have eliminated phony transactions that have no economic substance and have been used by companies like Enron to avoid taxes. Another measure modified by the majority conferees would continue to allow those individuals who promote tax shelters to make profits while doing so. In contrast, the Senate would have levied a 100 percent penalty to prevent them from making any such profit at the expense of taxpaying Americans. Sadly, while the underlying core components of the bill are flawed at best, much of the rest of the bill is deeply defective. I am perhaps most disheartened over the section on tobacco--and the notable absence of language authorizing the FDA to regulate it. This might just be the largest children's health issue facing Congress. The tobacco industry spent more last year than ever before on advertising--over $11.5 billion--and children continue to become hooked on smoking while they are young and unable to understand the health ramifications of smoking. It is now believed that smokers could lose on average 10 years off their lifespan--an entire decade. At a time when we are talking about soaring health care costs, it is vital that we regulate a substance that causes 440,000 deaths each year and results in more than $75 billion in direct medical costs annually--much of which is paid for by taxpayer-financed health care programs. The Supreme Court has acknowledged that tobacco is ``perhaps the single most significant threat to public health in the United States'' and has effectively reaffirmed that the FDA is the most appropriate agency to regulate tobacco products, given the general scope of its authority and its emphasis on protecting the public health. It is now that Congress must act to clearly give the FDA the long overdue authority it requires to protect Americans, and particularly our children. I was willing to accept the inclusion of a tobacco buyout under the clear understanding that it would remain linked to giving the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco. Americans want us to take this important step, and but this report falls short. We all know that tobacco is a substance that reduces the quality of life and results in untimely death with lifelong use. We had a unique opportunity with this bill to make a real difference in helping to protect our nation's children and the majority conferees killed this bipartisan effort that Senators Kennedy and DeWine spearheaded. The conference agreement left out other very important and widely supported worker protections that would have prevented President Bush's regulations that will deny overtime protections to 6 million hard- working men and women, including registered nurses, cooks, clerical workers, nursery school teachers, and many others from taking effect. The Senate has voted against the Bush overtime rule three times, and the other Chamber twice. The Senate FSC bill included two amendments that preserve workers' overtime--the Harkin amendment that would block only the parts of the overtime rule that strip workers of overtime rights, and the Gregg amendment that passed 99 to 0, which would preserve overtime for 55 job categories. Majority conferees, at the behest of the White House, stripped the overtime protections from the report. Even after the Senate conferees voted yet again to retain the Harkin amendment, it was stripped out. The Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in the 1930's to create a 40-hour workweek, and it requires workers to be paid fairly for any extra hours. American workers work more hours than any others in the world--1,900 hours per year. Yet, still, they need more to get by and make ends meet. With 8 million Americans out of work, and with so many other families struggling to make ends meet, cutbacks on overtime are an unfair burden that America's workers should not have to bear. Especially in times like these, it's an incentive for job creation, because it encourages employers to hire more workers, instead of forcing current employees to work longer hours. I am amazed that the majority has again stripped this provision which has overwhelmingly passed both the House and the Senate on 5 separate occasions. This is a clear example of how the majority and this administration continue to turn their backs on working families. Now, in addition to leaving out a number of the important provisions that I've just enumerated, it also contains many costly and extraneous ones; $101 million for NASCAR by changing the tax treatment of grandstand facilities; $44 million for importers of Chinese made ceiling fans; $28 million for cruise ship operators; $231 million in taxpayer funds to finance bonds for four so-called ``Green Bond'' mall developments; $247 million in bonus depreciation of some jets and planes; $5 billion over only two years for a new deduction for state and local sales taxes in a select few states; and $27 million for horse and dog gamblers. This one is especially interesting because it exempts foreign gamblers from paying taxes up front on their winnings at horse and dog tracks. My question is: Where's the special tax break that will help struggling working families in my state? How does it help American workers by giving tax breaks for Chinese fans to be imported tax free to the United States? The Administration seems to agree, and Secretary Snow also wrote in his letter to Chairman Grassley that: Both the House and Senate-passed bills include a myriad of special interest tax provisions that benefit few taxpayers and increase the complexity of the tax code. Legislation taking up more than 1000 pages of statutory language (or even 400 pages) goes far beyond the bill's core objective of replacing the FSC/ETI tax provisions with broad-based tax relief that is WTO-compliant. At the same time, the majority party voted to strip the legislation of an amendment offered by Senator Landrieu that would provide a tax break to companies for paying the salaries of activated National Guardsmen and Reservists. Lastly, it continues to employ the same budget gimmickry as previous tax bills put forward by the majority party and the administration over the past 3 years. For example, a dozen of the tax cuts in this report will expire between 2005 and 2008. Assuming that these provisions are extended, the cost to the Treasury will increase by an estimated $80 billion! This bill could have been an ideal vehicle for bipartisan efforts to shape a comprehensive economic policy for our nation's manufacturing sector. Unfortunately, it proved to be too alluring for the special interests who just could not restrain themselves. At a time of a record Federal budget deficits--most recently pegged at $422 billion for Fiscal Year 2004--this bill contains too many giveaways to corporations and not enough to help domestic manufacturers and working families. Most regrettably, its passage does not seem to guarantee that the EU will lift its harmful sanctions against numerous United States products. Companies in our home states are hurting from EU retaliatory tariffs, like jewelry manufacturers in Rhode Island, and the conferees should have taken the responsible path in assisting those who are struggling. But they did not.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I, Senators Collins, Mikulski, Bond and over 35 cosponsors are supporting a resolution designating the week of October 24-30, 2004 as National Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. The need to combat the severe threat of lead poisoning to our children's health has never been greater. It is estimated that 25 million homes nationwide have lead hazards. Many of those homes were built before 1950 when paint contained as much as 50 percent lead. Peeling chips and dust from deteriorating lead-based paint are the most common sources of childhood lead poisoning. According to the latest national health estimates, nearly half a million children under the age of 6 suffer from lead poisoning, with these children eight times more likely to come from low-income working families than wealthy families. Unfortunately, except for severely poisoned children, there is no medical treatment for this disease. Even then, for severely poisoned children treatment may only reduce the level of lead present in the body, not reverse the harm already caused. Research shows that children with elevated blood lead levels are seven times more likely to drop out of high school and six times more likely to have reading disabilities. In addition, it costs an average of $10,000 more a year to educate a lead poisoned child. We need to find the will and the resources to eradicate childhood lead poisoning in this country. Designating the week of October 24, 2004 through October 30, 2004 as ``National Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Week'' will help shine a light on this terrible problem, energize the Federal Government into playing a more active role in eliminating, and help improve local, State and Federal cooperation on this issue. With concerted effort, we can eliminate the tragedy of childhood lead poisoning so that no family in our country has to live in unsafe housing. I am committed to addressing this crisis, and I believe this resolution can encourage more communities to focus on solving this terrible problem. s. res. 458

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Madam President, I understand there is a unanimous consent agreement. I ask unanimous consent it be modified so I may be recognized now according to the time allocated under the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. REED. Madam President, as a preliminary point, let me say I had the privilege yesterday to go up to Walter Reed Army Hospital to visit soldiers who have been injured in action defending this country and also to visit the rehabilitation facilities there. And any time you go to Walter Reed, you are inspired by the courage, the selfless service, and the sacrifice of these outstanding young men and women. But I want to relay something I think is particularly appropriate but is not often said. As I was leaving the room of an injured soldier from the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, his parents--his mother and father--were there, and his father stopped me and said: Senator, I want to make sure you know something. The people in this hospital are extraordinary. They have treated my son with extraordinary care. He is my child, but all the people I have known here in this hospital treat my son as if he was their child. That is an extraordinary compliment to the men and women of Walter Reed, the Army Medical Corps, the doctors, the nurses, the technicians, the occupational therapists, the janitors, the clerks. And it is not just Walter Reed, it is Bethesda, it is the Air Force Health System. I do not think we spend enough time thanking those valiant soldiers, sailors, and air men and women for what they do. And certainly those soldiers who have suffered and are being treated, rehabilitated, we owe them more than we can ever repay. We have to match their courage with wise and thoughtful policy. Operational Deployment of the Ground-Based Missile System Madam President, I am going to spend a few moments talking about a policy which I do not consider to be the wisest and the most thoughtful, and that is the President's likely declaration, within a few days, of the operational deployment of the ground-based missile system. We have constructed a test bed in Alaska. We are trying to assemble a system that will work to protect this country. I think operational testing is in order. In fact, I would hope that the administration would actually follow the law more rigorously and provide for a scheme of operational testing. But that is not the case. To declare this immature, technologically challenged system as deployed and operational today is a political judgment, not a military judgment. I think we should refrain from blatant political judgments when the security of the United States is in the balance. Simply stated, this system is so immature and technologically challenged that they canceled the last test. And it defies me to understand how, after cancelling the test, you can turn around and say: It will work. It is operational. It defies common sense. It defies logic. It is something I think, again, that simply is a political statement. Now, intercept tests are the critical means by which a missile system, any military system that is technologically sophisticated, must be validated, must be tested. It is the only way we can truly assess whether a system will work, whether it meets a minimum criteria for deployment, to put it in the hands of American fighting forces. The last intercept flight test of the system was conducted almost 2 years ago in December 2002. It was a failure. Six days after the test failed, the President announced that the U.S. would deploy the missile defense system by the end of 2004. It is almost like watching a piece of military equipment crash and burn and then suddenly say it is operational. Again, it defies logic. It defies common sense. Since the time of the last test failure in 2002, there have been seven other planned tests. They have all been canceled. Again, we are not able to test this system. How in good faith can we say it is operationally workable? The tests have been postponed, deferred. None of these tests have taken place. None of the major components of the system, neither the new operational interceptor, nor the operational radar, nor the operational battle management system have ever been tested at all against a real test target. Yet the President will say, I assume in a few days, this system is capable of protecting the United States. In addition to all these test delays and cancellations, the administration has essentially eliminated any effective oversight over the missile defense test program, avoiding standards and laws that have been on the books for at least 20 years. Years of hard experience have shown that it is much more expensive to fix a problem with a military system after you have built and deployed it than it is to fix it before it is deployed. Because of this, more than 20 years ago, Congress passed laws which required all major defense systems to undergo a full set of realistic operational tests prior to spending large amounts of money on full production and deployment of the system. These tests were to be judged by an independent test authority called the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. This law is still in effect today. Thanks to this law, we have been able to avoid some of the mistakes we made in the 1970s and the 1980s, where we declared systems deployed and operational without adequate testing. These are high-profile systems, like the B-1 bomber, the Sergeant York gun, and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. We were able to make certain corrections to the B-1 and the Bradley. They were eventually fixed at a cost of billions of dollars. The Sergeant York gun was unable to be fixed. That was canceled. But we wasted billions of dollars by deploying these systems prematurely. If the missile system is truly as important as the administration thinks, then we should take the time to test this system to make sure it works instead of trying to convince people, by press release, that it does work. The missile system has been exempted by the administration from the oversight of the independent Director of Operational Testing, and they have plunged ahead with full-rate production of the program with no independent testing at all. Incredibly, the administration has no plans to ever conduct realistic independent operational tests on this missile defense system. This avoids 20 years of law, practice, and indeed common sense. The politics of deploying a missile defense at any cost prior to the election has trumped any desire to make sure the system actually works and, if history is any guide, will likely result in the waste of a large amount of money to fix the system after it has been deployed. If we can--and I think we should, indeed, with deliberate speed-- deploy a system that is operationally effective, we should do that. But to take a system where the major components haven't even been tested and say it works is being intellectually dishonest and deceptive to the American people. On August 18, Secretary Rumsfeld described the missile defense deployment as the ``triumph of hope and vision over pessimism and skepticism.'' Actually it is a triumph of best wishes over reality. And hope is not a plan. We found that out in Iraq. Only a system that is rigorously tested, where improvements are made test by test by test, will get us to where we want to go and must be, a system that we are confident will work if it is called upon to defend the country. Now this lack of testing is not a result of any lack of funds. The administration has lavished funding on this system. The budget request for fiscal year 2005 is $10.2 billion. It is the largest single-year budget request for any weapons program in the history of the United States. For perspective, the fiscal year 2005 budget request for missile defense is more than the Army's total research and development budget for this year. And we know we have an Army engaged in combat, in trying circumstances, that needs to develop new approaches, new sensors for the troops, new observation devices, new ways to deal with insurgencies in built-up areas, new ways to deter and defend against improvised explosive devices. Their budget is a fraction of the budget that is being lavished upon this system. It is twice the budget for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, and it is nearly twice the Department's allocation for the Coast Guard--two times Coast Guard, two times Customs and Border Protection. The ultimate costs of this system are unknown because the administration steadfastly refuses to provide to Congress any information on how much missile defense they want to buy and how much it will cost. Recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office indicate the Bush administration's Missile Defense Program could exceed $100 billion. Nowhere is that $100 billion being factored into ongoing defense budgets as we move forward over the next 5 to 10 years, and it will have to come from somewhere. Again, we need a system, but we have to be honest about how much it will work and how we are going to pay for it. That honesty is not present today. The other factor--and this is interesting--in contrast to the numbers that are being allocated for the Coast Guard and the Customs Service is that an intercontinental launch against the United States is probably less likely than other means of detonating a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. First of all, there are only two countries that currently have the capability: Russia and China. The Bush administration points--and I think rightfully so--with concern to North Korea. But that country has never successfully launched any missile capable of reaching the United States. Furthermore, North Korea has observed a self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile testing for 6 years since their last test failed in 1998. But even if North Korea develops such a capacity, why would they launch a missile against the United States? Our early warning satellites will pick up the launch. It will tell us definitely and decisively where it is coming from, and we will retaliate swiftly and with devastating force that will likely destroy that regime. Why would they want to do that, particularly if they could attack us by other means, perhaps concealing a weapon of mass destruction in a container that comes to the United States since only a small percentage are opened? Again, the budget for the Customs Service and the Border Protection Service is a fraction of what we are spending on this particular threat. Now, that is not just my conceptual view. In December 2001, the U.S. intelligence community completed an assessment of the foreign ballistic missile threat to this country. The assessment was entitled ``Foreign Missile Development and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015.'' Their conclusions: [T]he intelligence community judges that U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked with [weapons of mass destruction] using nonmissile means, primarily because such means: Are less expensive than developing and producing ICBMs; can be covertly developed and employed; the source of the weapon could be masked in an attempt to evade retaliation; it probably would be more reliable than ICBMs that have not completed rigorous testing and validation programs; and probably would be much more accurate than emerging ICBMs over the next 15 years. This is what the intelligence community said in 2001 looking forward to 2015. Yet since that time, the Bush administration has spent billions of dollars more on the development of this untested, unproven missile defense than it has on protection of our ports and borders where the real threats are likely to come from. We should be very careful about making sure we take scarce dollars and apply them to the most likely threats. Some have said: Well, don't make those comparisons. We to have defend against every threat. Frankly, the simple contrast between the money we are spending on missile defense versus the Coast Guard and border patrol seems to be directly in contradiction to the intelligence community estimate of what the most likely threat would be. That is not wise policy. There is also a huge opportunity cost for us. While we are lavishing money on this system, there are other programs--for example, the Department of Energy program called the Global Threat Reduction Initiative--which are not being adequately funded. This Department of Energy program is designed to help secure loose nuclear materials that are around the globe so that terrorists don't get their hands on them. And what is the most vital threat to the United States today? A terrorist group could obtain nuclear materials or a nuclear device, smuggle those materials into the United States, and attack us here. That is what the intelligence community assumes is the most likely threat. Yet we are not going to the source and securing and eliminating the nuclear material that is too abundant in the world. There is another program that the administration is proposing, which is the airborne laser program, another part of this elaborate construct of missile defenses. The airborne lasers are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their first stage as they blast off and start going into space. This program has been plagued by problems throughout, problems which have delayed the program by a year, reduced the laser power by more than half, and have many wondering whether this program is doomed to fail. By the way, using the same criteria of missile defense--i.e., test failures followed by numerous cancellations--I wonder why the administration doesn't declare the airborne laser operational. It works perhaps as well as our national missile defense. During the same time the administration has been spending far less on security for our Nation's ports, it has been spending a great deal of money on the airborne laser. The Bush administration's fiscal year 2005 budget proposes a $50 million cut to the 2004 level of U.S. port security funding, the grant funding that we use to help our ports all across this country. Yet there they are still investing extraordinary amounts, almost a half a billion dollars, in the airborne laser. So while it is a risky, possibly doomed program, the money keeps flowing while we do not have adequate resources to protect our ports. The other aspect of this dilemma is that the administration has never been able to open up this process to a transparent approach, where scientists can look at this data. Of course, we are going to protect the security and the proprietary information here, but they have been overly secretive. And the reason is obvious: it doesn't seem to work, and they don't want that information out as they are getting ready to declare it operational. They also never really had the opportunity or the will to have realistic tests. All of these tests have been carefully scripted. All of these tests have relied upon nonrealistic scenarios. The incoming missile has a homing beacon on it to help guide the interceptor to it. They don't use realistic decoys, which any country attacking the United States, you would have to assume, would have decoys as well as a real warhead. And there is no element of surprise. A real enemy missile attack would not be scripted, would not have a convenient homing beacon on the target, would likely have realistic decoys and would be a surprise attack. Frankly, if we had warning of the pending attack, we would take preemptive action immediately, take out the missile on the launch pad. During the entire time of the Bush administration, there has been essentially no progress made toward the goal of realistic missile defense tests against realistic targets. An effective missile defense is something we should all work for. But a missile defense that is based upon a press release and not tested is not an effective missile defense. Saying it is operational doesn't make it operational. What makes it operational is rigorous testing under realistic circumstances. This administration has never done that. I believe we should proceed forward with all deliberate speed to develop and deploy a missile system. I don't think we should allow ourselves to make a political judgment and declare it operational by press release and not validation through testing. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I support the limited effort before us today to close a loophole in Federal student loan policy that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars over the past decade. In the 1980s, when there were fears that student loans would become scarce due to high interest rates, Congress provided lenders participating in the Federal Family Education Loan, FFEL, program a guaranteed minimum 9.5-percent return on student loans generated from tax-exempt bond funds. Congress did so to ensure that there would be lenders willing to make affordable loans for students. In 1993, Congress sought to end the 9.5-percent guaranteed return on what had become a small subset of student loans due to a much lower national interest rate environment, the growth in availability of other private bank and government-subsidized student loans, and the creation of Federal direct loans. In doing so, a grandfather clause was enacted for outstanding 9.5- percent return, tax-exempt bond generated student loan funds. Rather than end the 9.5-percent loans, this grandfather clause has worked as a loophole. Owners of 9.5-percent guaranteed loans continually recycle proceeds from tax-exempt bonds originally issued before 1993--creating in effect a revolving loan fund--and the Federal Government continues to guarantee a 9.5-percent rate of return on what is today approximately 1 out of every 20 student loans. Lenders of the remaining 19 out of 20 student loans receive a much lower guaranteed interest rate--less than 4 percent. This overpayment has grown dramatically over the past few years, as this administration and Department of Education have failed to intervene and stop it. According to the Government Accountability Office, GAO, the overpayment cost taxpayers well over $600 million by the end of June 2004, up from $209 million in Fiscal Year 2001. To finally close this loophole once and for all, I joined Senator Kennedy in introducing S. 1793, the College Quality, Affordability, and Diversity Improvement Act last October, which among many provisions to expand access to higher education, would eliminate the 9.5-percent giveaway. More recently, I cosponsored legislation introduced last week by Senator Murray--S. 2861, the Student Loan Abuse Prevention Act-- which would also permanently fix the abuse of the 9.5-percent rate and redirect the estimated savings of $5 billion over 10 years to increase the maximum Pell grant for low-income students. Regrettably, the bill before us today does not contain such a comprehensive and permanent fix. This more limited effort provides only a temporary 1-year solution and it continues to allow ``recycling'' of loans, as opposed to the bonds, by which the lender uses the income from current 9.5-percent guarantee. And, instead of using the more modest savings from this bill to boost grants for low-income students struggling to afford college, the savings will be used for a different but important cause--providing help to certain teachers through loan forgiveness. Considering how long it has taken the majority to act on this situation, I am pleased we are taking this first, although, limited step. I will be working with my colleagues to fully close this costly loophole in the upcoming Higher Education Act reauthorization process and capture these savings for students. I thank Senators Kennedy and Murray and their staffs for their leadership and work on this matter.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am proud to join my colleague from Ohio, the Chairman of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Subcommittee of the Senate HELP Committee, to introduce a bill that we believe will bring us closer to helping people who experience chronic homelessness get off the streets, out of shelters and into permanent housing. The Services for Ending Long-Term Homelessness Act (SELHA) will help local communities provide health care, mental health and substance abuse services in conjunction with safe, decent and affordable housing. This bill is another essential component in the continuum of housing and supportive service programs geared towards people who have become homeless in our society. Nationwide, as many as 3.5 million people experience homelessness every year. Between 200,000 and 250,000 of them--including at least 12,000 children--experience chronic homelessness. They live on the streets and in emergency shelters for years on end or cycle between homelessness, jails, emergency rooms, and other institutions. Many also confront mental illness, substance addiction or other serious chronic health conditions. Moreover, because they don't get appropriate and regular care, these people exact a substantial toll on our public health systems. The legislation the Senior Senator from Ohio and I are proposing today would authorize funding for grants to state and local entities to offer services to individuals and families in supportive housing to help bring them out of the downward spiral of homelessness and onto the road to recovery and self-sufficiency. Permanent supportive housing combines safe, decent and affordable housing with needed services such as mental health, substance abuse, employment, health care, and other services. Research indicates that supportive housing represents a cost- effective investment toward the goal of ending long-term homelessness. In one California supportive housing program, residents experienced a 57 percent decline in emergency room visits, a 58 percent decline in the number of inpatient hospital days, and a near elimination of their need for residential mental-health facilities. A study in New York City found that each unit of supportive housing saved $16,282 per person per year in public expenditures for emergency care, court and jail costs, and other public services. After deducting the public benefits, the average supportive housing unit in New York City cost only $995 per year. In other words, it costs little more to house and offer supportive services to people than it does to leave them homeless. These remarkable findings have led the bipartisan Millennial Housing Commission, the President's New Freedom Mental Health Commission, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities to endorse the goal of creating 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing of the Senate Banking Committee, I am deeply interested in tackling the challenge of homelessness on several fronts. I have been working on a bill to reauthorize the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. My legislation would realign the incentives behind HUD's homelessness assistance programs, while more funding would flow to communities that actually demonstrate a commitment to accomplishing the goals of preventing and ending homelessness. It would also simplify and consolidate the three competitive HUD homeless assistance programs into one program and provide new flexibility in using McKinney-Vento funds. The Services for Ending Long-Term Homelessness Act perfectly compliments these efforts by making sure that communities offering permanent housing are also able to provide health, education and other supportive services that are so critical to the ultimate success of these efforts. I believe we have the ingenuity and dedication to ensure that everyone has a safe decent and affordable place to call home. We need to support innovative solutions, and this bill does just that. It gives communities some of the resources they need to develop more supportive housing and move towards ending chronic homelessness, and I am proud to join my colleague from Ohio in spearheading this initiative.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am proud to join my colleague from Ohio, the Chairman of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Subcommittee of the Senate HELP Committee, to introduce a bill that we believe will bring us closer to helping people who experience chronic homelessness get off the streets, out of shelters and into permanent housing. The Services for Ending Long-Term Homelessness Act (SELHA) will help local communities provide health care, mental health and substance abuse services in conjunction with safe, decent and affordable housing. This bill is another essential component in the continuum of housing and supportive service programs geared towards people who have become homeless in our society. Nationwide, as many as 3.5 million people experience homelessness every year. Between 200,000 and 250,000 of them--including at least 12,000 children--experience chronic homelessness. They live on the streets and in emergency shelters for years on end or cycle between homelessness, jails, emergency rooms, and other institutions. Many also confront mental illness, substance addiction or other serious chronic health conditions. Moreover, because they don't get appropriate and regular care, these people exact a substantial toll on our public health systems. The legislation the Senior Senator from Ohio and I are proposing today would authorize funding for grants to state and local entities to offer services to individuals and families in supportive housing to help bring them out of the downward spiral of homelessness and onto the road to recovery and self-sufficiency. Permanent supportive housing combines safe, decent and affordable housing with needed services such as mental health, substance abuse, employment, health care, and other services. Research indicates that supportive housing represents a cost- effective investment toward the goal of ending long-term homelessness. In one California supportive housing program, residents experienced a 57 percent decline in emergency room visits, a 58 percent decline in the number of inpatient hospital days, and a near elimination of their need for residential mental-health facilities. A study in New York City found that each unit of supportive housing saved $16,282 per person per year in public expenditures for emergency care, court and jail costs, and other public services. After deducting the public benefits, the average supportive housing unit in New York City cost only $995 per year. In other words, it costs little more to house and offer supportive services to people than it does to leave them homeless. These remarkable findings have led the bipartisan Millennial Housing Commission, the President's New Freedom Mental Health Commission, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities to endorse the goal of creating 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing of the Senate Banking Committee, I am deeply interested in tackling the challenge of homelessness on several fronts. I have been working on a bill to reauthorize the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. My legislation would realign the incentives behind HUD's homelessness assistance programs, while more funding would flow to communities that actually demonstrate a commitment to accomplishing the goals of preventing and ending homelessness. It would also simplify and consolidate the three competitive HUD homeless assistance programs into one program and provide new flexibility in using McKinney-Vento funds. The Services for Ending Long-Term Homelessness Act perfectly compliments these efforts by making sure that communities offering permanent housing are also able to provide health, education and other supportive services that are so critical to the ultimate success of these efforts. I believe we have the ingenuity and dedication to ensure that everyone has a safe decent and affordable place to call home. We need to support innovative solutions, and this bill does just that. It gives communities some of the resources they need to develop more supportive housing and move towards ending chronic homelessness, and I am proud to join my colleague from Ohio in spearheading this initiative.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I offer this amendment along with Senators Sarbanes, Schumer, Boxer, and Corzine. This amendment is, in essence, the text of S. 2453, which the Banking Committee reported out unanimously on May 6 and placed on the calendar on May 20. Since that time, we have sought to pass the bill along with the Commerce Committee's similar rail security bill by unanimous consent, but an objection has, to date, blocked the Senate from passing this bipartisan transit security legislation. Therefore, I rise with my colleagues today to continue this effort to improve the security and safety of our transit systems in the United States which on a daily basis transport 14 million Americans. Our amendment is straightforward and meets the 9/11 Commission's recommendation on page 391 for improved transportation security, which states in part: The U.S. government should identify and evaluate the transportation assets that need to be protected, set risk- based priorities for defending them, select the most practical and cost-effective ways of doing so, and then develop a plan, budget, and funding to implement the effort. The plan should assign roles and missions to the relevant authorities (federal, state, regional, and local) and to private stakeholders. In measuring effectiveness, perfection is unattainable. But terrorists should perceive that potential targets are defended. They may be deterred by a significant chance of failure. In essence, the 9/11 Commission has called for three steps: first, clear responsibility; second, risk-based policies; and third, resources to meet these threats. Our amendment corresponds to these recommendations by the Commission. First, our amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to clearly accept responsibility for transit security by signing a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Transit Administration. Unfortunately, this is something that the Department of Homeland Security has failed to do, even after numerous Senate inquiries and the passage of a Senate amendment requiring it to do so. Second, our amendment embodies the kind of risk-based priorities that the Commission recommended by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to review the security assessments conducted by the Federal Transit Administration. DHS would then use these risk-based assessments as the basis for allocating any funds. The Department would also have to annually update these assessments. Third, our amendment would authorize real resources over 3 years that are still a fraction of our investment in aviation security for a wide variety of known capital and operating security needs, including surveillance technologies, tunnel protection, chemical, biological, radiological, and explosive detection systems, perimeter protection, training, and other security improvements approved by the Department. In sum, our amendment is not overly prescriptive and relies on the wisdom of the Nation's intelligence systems and the Department of Homeland Security to identify the threats, develop solid plans, and invest in those initiatives which will do the most to make our transit systems more secure. Fourteen million Americans each day rely on transit systems. We only have to recall the horrible and tragic incident in Spain a few months ago to understand that these individuals are the potential targets for terrorist acts. It is incumbent upon us to take these steps today to protect the transit systems for the people of America as we go forward. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3908.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, we are today, in this country, convulsed by the situation in Iraq. It is an extraordinary crisis. It is taxing our men and women in uniform, and it is certainly taxing our resolve. I think one of the problems is that the administration has not focused on the reality on the ground, what is really happening on the ground. They are hoping, but hope is not a substitute for planning; hope is not a substitute for a very candid and hard look at the situation on the ground. The reality is that there is widespread violence and instability throughout Iraq. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that over the past 30 days more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to the comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants. You would think, given this information, that the administration would begin to reflect on the difficult circumstances on the ground, but that is not the case. They continue to pursue both policies and rhetoric which suggest that all is not well yet it is quickly getting there. But there is something else they have done which I think is startling, and that is in a related story in the Washington Post, information such as what I just quoted, that data from private security companies is not being recognized and evaluated. It is being suppressed. According to today's Washington Post, the USAID said this week that it would restrict distribution of reports by Kroll Security International showing the number of daily attacks by insurgents in Iraq has increased. On Monday, the Washington Post published a front-page story saying that the Kroll report suggests a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence. A USAID official sent an e-mail to congressional aides stating: This is the last Kroll report to come in. After the Washington Post story, they shut it down in order to regroup. I will let you know when it restarts. If we don't have accurate information, if we are not able to tell difficult truth one to another, we will never be able to effectively design a policy for Iraq. It is concerning to me that the administration would try to respond to the facts by suppressing the facts, but that is just one example of what is going on. I know this. The country, with some exception, is wracked by violence. The Kurds in the north have had a semiautonomous region for many years. It is under our informal protection and formal protection. That is a part of the country where there is a certain stability, but there is political tension building there because the Kurdish sense of autonomy will invariably clash with the need to create a central government in Iraq. The focal point of that clash could be the oil around Kirkuk, which is the second biggest source of oil for the country of Iraq. Those oil fields could be in jeopardy as a pawn, if you will, in a struggle between the Kurds asserting their autonomy and the central government trying to maintain its authority. We also understand clearly that Sunni provinces have ``no-enter zones''--areas in which the United States cannot even send its troops today successfully. One of these areas is Ramadi. According, again, to a story in the Los Angeles Times on September 28: The erosion of order in Ramadi illustrates the success of the insurgents' methods and the serious problems facing the interim government and its U.S. backers in maintaining stability in Iraq. It also threatens to thwart plans for a national election in January. . . . An election that omits key population centers in the so-called Sunni Triangle region would have greatly diminished credibility. In Fallujah, there are similar situations where there are areas we cannot enter. In the Shia South, there is the instability principally generated by Sadr, the young cleric who has defied the central government and also the U.S. repeatedly. We generally see the violence in Iraq as a function of attacks against our troops, but when we do that we miss a very important reality; that is, this violence is only a small portion of the violence that the Iraqi people feel each day--not from terrorists but from robbers, burglars, rapists, and murderers. In June, a poll was conducted. They asked the Iraqi people to list their top three priorities. Fighting crime represented one of the top three priorities of 92.8 percent of the people of Iraq. Stopping attacks on coalition forces represented a top priority of 17.5 percent of the people of Iraq. On a daily basis, we are seeing not just attacks against coalition forces and security forces of Iraq, we are seeing a situation in many places which is beyond chaotic to the point which the Iraqi people are quickly beginning to assume that we not only are occupying but we are inept occupiers. We cannot even provide the level of stability that they enjoyed previously. They have already decided we are occupiers. They have decided we must go. The struggle now politically, I think, is you have to recognize that in this type of conflict it is essentially a political struggle. We can win tactical victories one after another--and we will--but unless we create a political dynamic which will coalesce support around the new Iraqi Government and coalesce cooperation with us, our efforts tactically will be marginal. What is happening, though, politically in Iraq now is the fact that each of these groups and subgroups have one eye on the current situation, our presence there, but their other focus is on what happens when we go. Will they be in power? Will they survive? Will they succeed? That creates a dynamic that is very difficult for us and very difficult for stability in Iraq. How did we get there? It is in some respects a triumph, as I said before, of hope over history, of ideology, of political calculation, arrogance in some cases, ignorance that has led us to enter the country ill prepared. There is a litany of mistakes that are quite obvious: No real plans for stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq. We should have sensed that. I can recall in the fall of 2003 and in succeeding days and months leading up to the attack last year where we had a situation where we were trying to get information about stabilization. We didn't have that. We did not have that information. In addition, there were insufficient forces to stabilize Iraq and we were left unprotected for weeks and months, which today has led to a proliferation of weapons in Iraq, IEDs particularly, the improvised explosive devices that are bedeviling our forces. We cannot secure those. We could not secure the borders. We need more troops. There was a failure to secure multinational support, not only in the sense of getting the good will, good wishes, and support of the international community, but particular failures. We were not able to convince the Turkish Government to allow the use of Turkey as a point of entry into Iraq. The Fourth Infantry Division, poised to move through Turkey, to attack in the north, to roll up and envelop all of the Iraqi forces to the north, was rerouted to the south because of that lack of cooperation. The consequence on the ground was literally thousands of Iraqi soldiers were never effectively contested. They gave up, they disappeared, and apparently reformed as insurgents. That is another example of the lack of international cooperation that could have materially assisted us. We made a significant error in disbanding the Iraqi Army. Rather than disbanding the army, we should have marched them back to their barracks and tried at that point to see if we could, through some type of vetting of officers and senior enlisted people, or some procedure, get them to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. They are part of the problem today. Many of these insurgent leaders, I believe, have roots going back to the army and the military force structure, the security forces of Iraq. Then we conducted a de-Baathification program that applied across the board. We put that in the hands of Chalabi and others who had no real legitimacy in the country. As a result, for months and months and months we prevented teachers and professionals from working. It did not help in terms of getting schools going quickly. It certainly created this atmosphere among the Sunni community that they were going to effectively be marginalized as people and as citizens of Iraq. That process was a mistake. Part of that, as I mentioned, was putting misplaced reliance on Chalabi and his colleagues. I recall he sat as a guest of the First Lady at this year's State of the Union speech, yet today is accused of cooperating and perhaps spying for the Iranians. That has been a mistake. The CPA, Coalition Provisional Authority, turned out to be not up to the great task with which they were entrusted. The administration rejected the traditional agencies of the State Department and their divisions who have experience in stabilization operations in terms of political governments, reconstruction, economic development, and put together an ad hoc group of people who were the architects of what was a lost year of progress that we should have been making with respect to Iraq. And, of course, there was the failure to recognize this insurgency. We all recall Secretary Rumsfeld's remarks about a few dead-enders. It was much more than a few dead-enders. It has metastasized into a virulent and effective force attacking our troops on a daily basis and attacking the citizens of Iraq. There was a failure then simply to read the intelligence. We are debating this intelligence bill today because we have to create-- indeed, it is necessary to create--an intelligence system that is more effective. Let me point to an intelligence success. This was the national intelligence estimate. According to a report in the New York Times, The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the Director of Central Intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict. Very perceptive. It was disregarded by the administration, and I think disregarded for several reasons. They had a view, which was not substantiated by the facts, that we would be greeted with open arms. Principals in the administration said that. As we debate this intelligence reform, we also have to understand it is not just producing good intelligence; it is having leaders who understand and use that intelligence wisely. Then one of the most critical issues is that we have wasted a year to train Iraqi security forces. I can recall, as many of my colleagues recall, being briefed over the past many months. It seemed each briefing would contain another pie chart showing the growing, growing Iraqi security forces and the diminishing United States involvement. All of that was an illusion. These forces were untrained, ill equipped, unprepared. It took us a year to recognize that and we are only beginning now to recognize what we have to do to ensure that Iraqi security forces can, in fact, provide for the security of their country. Part of it was a result of the notion that we could do it ourselves, that this was just a few diehards, as Secretary Rumsfeld said, that we could root them out and we could deal with them with the coalition forces. Then it was reluctance to develop an Iraqi security force because of the fear that they would become another power player in the very complicated politics of Iraq where it seems the only institutions that have any type of strength and coherence are the mosques or the militias, and they sometimes overlap. So for all these reasons, despite the evidence of growing instability, despite the proliferation of crime, we have just gotten down to begin to train an effective Iraqi security force of police, army, national guard, and special operations. That is a year wasted, a year that should not have been wasted. The signs were quite clear. Indeed, even as we focus on this, there have been reports in the press that General Petraeus, who has been put in charge of this operation, has not yet received his full complement of American personnel to help, another example of a delayed reaction, a reaction based upon hopes that did not materialize. While those hopes were bandied about here in Washington, the situation got much worse. All of this leads to an Iraq today that is imposing extraordinary costs on this country. One of the most obvious and poignant costs is the loss from American fighting men and women in battle: 1,054 soldiers have been killed and 7,532 soldiers wounded, who have served this country with great fidelity and great courage. Their families deserve our profound respect. We owe them, and we owe their colleagues who still fight, more wisdom and more truth. That is why it is particularly frustrating to see this example of a reaction where, when the facts are uncomfortable, those facts are suppressed. That is not appropriate given the sacrifices we have seen. The costs to our Army, particularly, are significant. Personnel costs. We all understand there were misgivings about the full size of the force being deployed. When General Shinseki was asked, he did not volunteer, about the size of the force needed, he said, ``something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers,'' and was immediately castigated by Secretary Rumsfeld, saying this estimate was ``far from the mark,'' and Secretary Wolfowitz, who called the estimate ``outlandish.'' Then in his few remaining days in the Army, General Shinseki was personally shunned by the leadership and made to feel entirely uncomfortable--and I am being very polite. He did not deserve that. This is a professional soldier who was asked his honest opinion and he gave it. I wish there were more folks like him in uniform. Certainly the comments of Secretary Wolfowitz and Secretary Rumsfeld were very far off the mark. We have over 100,000 troops in place. They probably will be there for years. There is a strong sign that we need more. This is a great stress on our military, 17 months after President Bush declared the end of major combat operations, with over 138,000 troops still stationed in Iraq. They are there because of a patchwork of different policies the Department of Defense has had to undertake because they do not have sufficient soldiers. Approximately 16,000 active-duty soldiers have already had two tours in Iraq and if they stay in the service longer, they will have another. In order to keep the strength up, they have resorted to stop-loss orders, essentially telling a soldier, once your unit has been alerted, you are there until the unit returns home, even if you can leave the service in that interim. In the words of some, it is a ``backdoor draft.'' Since September 11, DOD has announced six stop-loss policies for the Army, two for the Navy, five for the Air Force, and two for the Marine Corps. Only the Army still has a stop-loss policy in place. That is another way in which to create soldiers by means other than a strictly voluntary approach. One of the greatest burdens falls on the Guard and Reserves. Today, we cannot continue our mission without the brave men and women of our Army and Air Force Guard and Reserve units. We are asking them to go way above and beyond the call of duty. Since September 11, 2001, 422,950 members of the Reserve component have been mobilized; 51 percent of the Army Guard and 31 percent of the Air Guard. The average duty days have climbed as a result. Guard and Reserve men and women are now serving, on average, about 120 days a year. In fact, back in 2002, it was only 80, and before that it was much less. We are looking at a situation which the GAO described as fraught with consequences. In their words: DOD policies were not developed within the context of an overall strategic framework. . . . Consequently the policies underwent numerous changes as DOD strove to meet current requirements. These policy changes created uncertainties for reserve component members concerning the likelihood of their mobilization, the length of their overseas rotations and the types of missions that they would be asked to perform. It remains to be seen how these uncertainties will affect recruiting, retention and the long term viability of the reserve components. We have already seen the National Guard report that they have not been able to meet their recruiting objectives for the most current year. So the evidence is beginning to accumulate. This operation tempo will mean more and more pressure on the military forces, particularly land forces, and, as a result, you will see the stress even more, in recruiting and retention, challenging our military leaders. We need more troops, I believe, as an initial response to the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. We should do that honestly and directly. We should not rely upon supplemental appropriations. We should not rely on emergency authorizations for additional troops. We should increase the end strength of the Army and provide for the payment of that end strength through the regular budget process, not by supplementals. Senator Hagel and I offered an amendment to do this last October. In March, again, Senator Hagel, joined by Senator McCain and I, introduced a bill that would increase the Army end strength by 30,000 troops. In May, we together offered an amendment to the fiscal year 2005 Defense authorization bill to increase the size of the Army by 20,000 personnel, a figure the Army says it could absorb in an efficient way in 1 year. This was accepted by the Senate, and it is now in conference with the House. One point I should make, though, is that, once again, the administration insisted--even though they oppose the end strength--if it was to be put in the bill, it still had to be paid for by emergency funds. That is not the right way to do this. We have to make sure we have a suitably sized Army. This is not a spike. This is not a temporary situation. Every time the President speaks, he talks about staying the course, our long-term commitment to Iraq. That is not a temporary promise, I do not think. I think that requires a permanent fix to the size of our Army and to our Marine Corps. Now, one of the things that has happened since our debate on the floor is that the Defense Science Board, a panel of experts appointed by Secretary Rumsfeld himself, stated: ``Current and projected force structure will not sustain our current and projected global stabilization commitments.'' There are ``inadequate total numbers'' of troops and a ``lack of long term endurance.'' That is the conclusion of experts who have studied this issue, who have looked at all the things the Army is doing through modularity, through technical improvements and technological innovations to minimize the need for additional troops, and they have concluded, as a result of the study requested by the Secretary of Defense, that we need more troops. It is not only troops. We also need equipment. The Army has sustained $2.439 billion in equipment battle losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently, the Army has an unfunded requirement for $1.322 billion for munitions. Last year, the Army spent $4 billion on equipment reconstitution-- resetting it, repairing it, and getting it ready to go again. The Marine Corps expects to need over $1 billion to reconstitute equipment next year. The GAO reports that since September 11, the Army Guard has transferred 22,000 pieces of equipment from nondeploying units to units deployed in Iraq. What we have is a huge reshuffling going on, as units back in the United States take their equipment and give it out to units that are deploying forward. It leaves these units back in the United States without equipment. If they are called upon to perform a mission, another international mission, a homeland security mission, or a mission involving a natural disaster, where are they going to get the equipment they deployed overseas? How are they going to be affected? In addition to the National Guard and Reserves, the Active Army is resetting itself under new battle formations, modularity, which is a concept that I think is ingenious, a concept that should be supported. But as they are doing this, they too are shuffling equipment about. There are some units that are not yet up to speed with all their equipment. They will have it, I am sure, before they are deployed overseas, but it is another example of the turmoil in terms of equipment we are seeing within the military. In order to respond accurately, correctly, and directly to the situation in Iraq, we have to increase our Army, I believe, and make sure they have the resources to have the equipment they need to do the job. Now, the funding for our operations in Iraq has been primarily through supplementals. In the past 17 months, President Bush has requested and Congress has appropriated $187 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For comparison, the budgets for the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Interior total $163 billion. So we have been spending in Iraq more money than we allow for discretionary spending for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Interior. The last supplemental, for $25 billion, was passed in May 2004. At that time, the administration said they would not need the funding until January or February of next year, 2005. Yet it has been reported this week that $2 billion of this fund has already been used, showing the huge, huge pressure, the huge cost of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last week, President Bush announced he plans to divert nearly $3.5 billion from Iraqi water, power, and other reconstruction projects to security, another indication, I think, that the security situation is in very difficult circumstances. We have been funding these operations with supplementals. But we cannot continue to do that because there will be a point, I believe, at which the American people will be very concerned, when each year we are forced to vote on $60, $70, $80 billion of supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. We know this effort is going to take many, many years. People talk about it as a generational struggle, and I think that is right. We have to prepare for that struggle, but we cannot do it in ad hoc supplemental budgeting. We also have seen, of course, the terrible incidents of abuse in Abu Ghraib, with too few troops in that prison to do the job, ill-trained troops in that prison to do the job, but it is not just those troops. I think it is wrong simply to single out people we know from photographs who have done despicable things. They will be punished. They are being punished. We have a responsibility to look not only at the young soldiers, but the leadership, the chain of command, the policies they adopted or did not adopt, the confusion they created and did not resolve. We have had several investigations so far. Each one goes a little bit down the road but then seems to stop. We waited, frankly, for months for the report of General Fay and General Jones, thinking this would be the final authoritative report that would look from the level of three star and four star all the way down. It turns out that for one of the most significant issues, the issue of ghost detainees--those individuals who were not properly recorded by the authorities when they came into our custody--General Jones and Fay had no real answers because they didn't get any cooperation from the Central Intelligence Agency. Now we have another investigation presumably conducted by the IG and the Department of Defense. This is not the way to get to the core of what happened. It might be an effective way of postponing real review and investigation, but it is not the way to get the answers. These answers are important, not simply because of individual culpability of soldiers up and down the ranks, but because we have to have a military force that understands that they are subject to the laws, that it is not optional for leaders to ignore some or modify them at will. This is the very challenging situation, but it is an example, once again, of the lack of preparedness, the lack of sufficient personnel, and the lack of clear guidance that has plagued our operations in Iraq from the beginning. I have spent a great deal of time talking about Iraq. The interesting thing in some respects is what we are not talking about. We are not talking about North Korea. But just this week on Monday, at the United Nations, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said North Korea had been left with ``no other option but to possess a nuclear deterrent'' because of U.S. policies that he said were designed to eliminate his country. He stated: We have already made clear that we have already reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them into arms. Reprocessing 8,000 rods would extract enough plutonium for as many as eight nuclear warheads. Here is a situation where, as we focused on Iraq, we have sat by as the North Koreans blatantly and boldly opened up the cans in which IAEA sealed the rods and, according to their comments, have reprocessed this material into nuclear weapons. One of the worst possible situations, a nuclear-armed North Korea, may have evolved. We are at this point taking troops out of South Korea to fulfill our requirements in Iraq. What signal does that send to the North Koreans? It is not a question of deterrence. We have the capability of deterring the North Koreans from coming south. But it certainly is not aiding us in what ultimately must be our objective of disarming North Korea, hopefully through peaceful means and through negotiations, not just our efforts alone but the world community, because the great fear that we all have, that transcends the current struggle in Iraq, is that terrorists will obtain nuclear material and nuclear weapons. Here we have a situation where over the last several months the North Koreans have finally said: We have them. Part of our lack of response is an internal debate within the administration that has been going on for months, if not years: Do you negotiate, which means some type of arrangement between the world and North Korea, or do you once again embark on a regime change operation? The difference over the last several months is the growing realization that Iraq has put so much stress on our military forces, that in the event of a need to disarm North Korea, there would be far fewer forces to draw on. So that is another huge cost of our involvement in Iraq. Then add another development: The Iranians continue to insist they have every right to a full, complete nuclear fuel cycle. Of course, the concern--not just of the United States but the international community--is that if they achieve that cycle, they will be able to obtain material with which to construct a nuclear weapon. Despite their protestations that that is not their objective, there is a growing suggestion, if not conclusive evidence, that certainly that possibility might exist. And once again, what are we doing? Why have we not focused attention on Iran in a more meaningful and decisive way? One has to question a strategy that has led us into Iraq, to the instability, to the costs, to the lost opportunity, when there appear to be much more serious threats abroad. We have an opportunity to be much more candid, much more truthful about what is going on. That is an opportunity I would hope the administration would embrace because unless we operate with the facts and unless we operate with the reality of the situation, there will be no way we can effectively plan to deal with the threats we face. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I strongly support final passage of H.R. 4278, the Assistive Technology Reauthorization Act of 2004. This important legislation, the product of bipartisan and bicameral negotiations, reauthorizes the Assistive Technology Act of 1998 and provides individuals with disabilities increased access to critical assistive technology devices and services, focusing on where they are needed most--in schools, on the job, and in the community. These devices and services afford individuals with disabilities a greater opportunity to participate in educational programs, employment prospects, and community activities and thereby, assist them in leading more full, productive, and independent lives. As an original cosponsor of the Senate version of this bill, I am pleased that some of its provisions on training and research and development which I authored have been included in the final version of the bill before us today. The bill requires states to carry out training activities to enhance the knowledge, skills, and competencies of individuals in local settings statewide, including educators, early intervention, adult service, and health care providers, and others who work with individuals with disabilities. These provisions ensure that local communities will have trained personnel available to meet the specific assistive technology needs of individuals with disabilities. The bill also establishes a new authority for competitive grants for research and development of new assistive technology devices and for the adaptation, maintenance, servicing and improvement of those assistive technology devices already in existence, an issue of great interest to colleges in my State. As such, among the eligible recipients for this research and development funding are institutions of higher education, including the nationally recognized University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Education, Research, and Service and the engineering programs of such institutions. Regrettably, the compromise restricts the potential funding of this program to a small level that is not sufficient to solve the large and growing need for assistive technology devices, particularly as our population ages. This is a good start, but we must do more to help individuals with disabilities forge ahead and reach their ultimate potential, and so I hope we can grow this funding in the future. There are other highlights as well. The bill increases the minimum allotment for each State assistive technology program to $410,000 which could mean an increase of nearly $110,000 in funding for Rhode Island as appropriations rise, and it repeals the sunset provision included in the Assistive Technology Act of 1998 so that States can continue to be eligible for funding. The bill also shifts emphasis toward getting assistive technology directly into the hands of individuals with disabilities through programs to provide device demonstration, equipment loan, device reutilization/recycling and financing systems such as low-interest loans for the purchase or lease of assistive technology equipment. I thank my colleagues, in particular, Chairman Gregg, Senator Kennedy, Senator Harkin, and their staffs, for their hard work in producing a bipartisan piece of legislation and moving it toward final passage. A special thanks is also due to Regina Connor, the Project Director of the Rhode Island Assistive Technology Access Partnership, ATAP, which is Rhode Island's Assistive Technology Act Project, and Tony Antosh, Director of the Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities, for their input and recommendations throughout the legislative process and ensuring that the act contained provisions important to Rhode Island assistive technology users, providers, and advocates. This is significant legislation for people in Rhode Island and across the Nation, and I am pleased to support it. I look forward to the President quickly signing this bill into law which will hopefully signal a turnaround in his support for assistive technology funding to provide individuals with disabilities the increased support they need and deserve.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the nomination of Porter Goss to be Director of Central Intelligence. I served with Porter Goss in the House of Representatives and I respect him. However, I do not believe he is the best choice for the position in these times. On September 11, 2001, our country suffered a devastating attack. Now our country is in the midst of a war on terror and a war in Iraq. There have been many examinations of our intelligence leading up to September 11, leading up to the war in Iraq, and as we continue to wage the war on terror. There are many unanswered questions about whether the intelligence was accurate, whether it was manipulated, whether our soldiers and leaders can rely on it each and every day as they make difficult decisions. I recognize that members of the President's Cabinet, like the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, must weigh political considerations as they develop policy. However, the Director of Central Intelligence is a unique position. It should stand above politics. The citizens of the United States have the right to assume that the Director of Central Intelligence is providing objective information and analysis to allow the President to make the best possible decisions. When Director Tenet resigned, the President had an opportunity to appoint a nominee who was nonpartisan, nonpolitical. He did not do so. Instead he chose Mr. Goss, who clearly knows the intelligence community well, but is also clearly partisan and political. The CIA is in turmoil. The hardworking men and women of the Agency need a strong leader who will reform the system to make sure that the information they offer is used in a proper and timely fashion. The people of this country need to know that the U.S. intelligence community is doing its best to protect and serve U.S. national interests. I do not believe that Mr. Goss is the best candidate to lead the intelligence community through a difficult task of reform and restoring confidence in the midst of a war. It is important that our intelligence not be partisan, yet Mr. Goss has been partisan in his comments over the past year. He has been fiercely critical of former President Clinton, our colleague Senator Kerry, and the Democratic Party. His comments do not lead me to believe that he will now abandon his partisanship or his political approach as the Director of CIA. No greater task lies before us today than to reform the intelligence community so that it is effective as the leading weapon in the war on terrorism. Mr. Goss certainly knows the CIA and the intelligence community, but in these times, experience is simply not enough. A leader committed to reform without regard to politics is also critical. Those attributes, I fear, Mr. Goss does not have, and therefore I oppose his nomination.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, during Senate consideration of Senate amendments 3615 and 3617, I was attending a memorial service for the father of my Rhode Island colleague, Representative James Langevin. Had I been present for these votes I would have voted against the motion to table amendment No. 3615, and I would have voted to waive the point of order against amendment No. 3617.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere condolences to Senator Smith and his family, as yesterday marked the 1-year anniversary of Garrett's passing and today would have been his 23rd birthday. The Smith family has endured a terrible tragedy, but has taken their loss and their pain and committed themselves to raising public awareness about youth suicide and the need for appropriate mental health services. Senator Smith has also worked tirelessly these past few months to move the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act. During a time of partisanship and divisiveness, a majority of members in the House and Senate have been able to set aside those differences to help expeditiously move this important legislation. I have had the honor and pleasure of working with my colleague from Oregon on this very personal tribute since the beginning. As my colleagues may recall, this legislation is comprised of two separate legislative initiatives that were introduced earlier this year, the Youth Suicide Early Intervention and Prevention Expansion Act, sponsored by Senators Dodd and DeWine and the Campus Care and Counseling Act, which I introduced along with Senator DeWine. The legislation takes a comprehensive approach to the increasing problem of suicide among our youth as well as providing additional resources to our Nation's colleges and universities as they struggle to offer the kinds of support students need to grow and achieve academically as well as personally. Information, outreach and access to mental and behavioral health services is becoming an increasingly important part of that equation. The Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act contains many important provisions that I hope will help to stem the growing numbers of youth suicides in this country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide and self-inflicted injuries remain a pressing public health concern. We hope this legislation will help to change this by enabling States, local communities and institutions of higher education to implement effective youth suicide prevention and intervention strategies. Two months ago, a unanimous Senate passed the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act. Since that time, the bill has undergone what I would consider to be considerable changes to address concerns raised by Energy and Commerce Chairman Barton and others. I have always been willing to entertain and accommodate issues that have been raised that have related to the substance of this bill. I am deeply concerned, however, by the insistence of some in the other body to inject partisan ideology in this bill. Just prior to the August recess, a few members of the other body scuttled movement on the bill when they insisted on adding language that would create a new parental consent standard, layered onto one that has been in law, under the General Education Provisions Act, GEPA, which was recently updated as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. While the majority has made it clear they will not abide changes in other parts of the No Child Left Behind Act, even common sense fixes that school administrators, principals, teachers, and parents have been called for, they insisted on language--which could prevent the very young people we are trying to help from accessing the mental health services they need. We worked in good faith over the past month to come up with a compromise, and while the language has improved from the version initially proposed, it still raises some fundamental concerns. I am appreciative of the efforts of Senator Smith to add a clarification that the language has no impact on the No Child Left Behind Act. Unfortunately, the language does not include a similar assurance on the standards for parental notice and consent included under sections 444 and 445 of the General Education Provisions Act. As a result, we have created a different standard for assessments, programs, and services in elementary and secondary schools relating to youth suicide, as compared to other health and mental health assessments, programs, and services that occur in our schools. Not only does this language set a new precedent, we are adding a confusing and burdensome layer of requirements on school personnel at a time when they are struggling to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act and trying to do the best they can to help our young people. However, in recognizing how important the overall bill is to our Nation's young people and college students, and the commitment of the Senator from Oregon to address this language in the future. I support passage of the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act. I praise my colleagues in both Chambers for their continued diligence on this bill and appreciate the willingness of the majority and minority leaders to set aside time so that this important piece of legislation can finally move to the President's desk.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to join with the distinguished Democratic Leader and Senator Murray in introducing the ``Social Security COLA Protection Act of 2004.'' I would also ask unanimous consent to submit for the Record the report by the Joint Economic Committee Democratic staff entitled, ``Rising Medicare Premiums Undermine the Social Security COLA.''

Mr. REED. Thank you. Mr. President, Social Security is the bedrock of this country's social safety net and our most effective antipoverty program for seniors and the disabled. A valuable feature of Social Security is the annual cost of living adjustment, or COLA, which was enacted to ensure that the real purchasing power of beneficiaries' checks would be preserved, and not eaten away by inflation. I would also point out that such COLA protection is missing from most private pensions. Sadly, what the JEC Democrats' report has revealed is that large increases in health care costs and the poor design of the new Medicare prescription drug plan have created a situation in which rising Medicare premiums are undermining the Social Security COLA. The problem is already serious, and we have not even begun to experience the impact of the prescription drug premium of the new Medicare Part D program that will take effect in 2006. The study shows, for example, that in the years 2011-2014, a person with a monthly Social Security benefit of $500 (in today's dollars) would see 69 percent of her COLA consumed by increases in Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. That leaves far too little of the COLA to cover increases in prices of other necessities such as food, energy, and other medical expenses. Even people with larger monthly benefits would see their COLAs substantially eroded by the increases in Medicare premiums. Finally, the study shows that by 2014, if there is no legislation to address this problem, 64 percent of beneficiaries who have their Medicare premiums deducted from their Social Security checks will lose at least 25 percent of their Social Security COLA to increases in those premiums. The JEC Democratic staff study makes a compelling case that we have a serious problem on our hands. That is why I am happy to cosponsor ``The Social Security COLA Protection Act of 2004.'' This legislation will preserve the essential safety net Social Security provides seniors, by making sure that at least 75 percent of their Social Security COLA is protected from increases in Medicare premiums and available to offset increasing cost of other goods and services seniors need in order to maintain an adequate quality-of-life.