Jack Reed

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. He was subject to a filibuster and subject to cloture votes before he was ultimately confirmed, and then ultimately went on to the U.S. Supreme Court. So this is not a procedure or a device that has not been used by the Republicans, because, in fact, it is part--indeed, a significant part-- of the procedural devices of the Senate, something that is appropriate. As I pointed out yesterday, what I find disconcerting and indeed somewhat contradictory to the argument of the Republicans today is that they were quite adept during the Clinton administration of using delay and denial of hearings to frustrate the nominations of so many individuals, so many potential judges, because many of these individuals never even reached the floor of the Senate for a vote. It was, in my words, a pocket veto. We are all familiar with the notion of a pocket veto. The President of the United States, in the last 10 days of a session, can simply put the bill in his pocket, not sign it, not comment on it, and it essentially dies as legislation. Well, that was done all too often in the Clinton administration. The most significant case is the one I mentioned before. In fact, the Senator from Pennsylvania and I yesterday had a bit of a colloquy about this. That is a nominee, Elena Kagan, who was nominated in 1999, spent 18 months waiting for approval, no action was taken, and her nomination expired. Fortunately for Ms. Kagan, she has found other employment. She is now the dean of Harvard Law School, which might suggest that she certainly had some legal abilities that could have been used on the Federal bench. But that is an example of a pocket veto. Again, we are engaged in this discussion, this debate. It is a serious one, but it is taking place at a time when there are other very serious issues pressing this country. As my colleague from Nevada, Senator Harry Reid, pointed out in his long floor statement preceding this debate, that as we worry about four individuals who have not yet been confirmed, other Americans are seeing their jobs undercut. We are looking at unemployment rates of about 6.0 percent. They are hovering there. They seem to be persistent. Long-term unemployment is growing. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people to maintain their employment with good, solid jobs. We see the poverty rate going up. Meanwhile, the vacancies on the Federal courts have diminished significantly. We are at almost record levels of Federal judicial employment. But as we look at the people throughout this country, the poverty rate is growing. It is affecting children particularly. The rate of the uninsured, or people lacking health insurance, is increasing. Our budget deficit is soaring. The national debt is soaring. These are difficult issues, and yet we are here today talking about 4 individuals, out of 172, who have not been confirmed as judges and not been confirmed based, I think, on sound analysis and sound review of their records. So I think, again, to place this in context, we are performing our historic responsibilities that have been used and deployed by countless other Senates, both by Republicans and Democrats, throughout the course of this country's history. And indeed I think that is our responsibility and we are doing it. What I regret, and I hope after the conclusion of the votes this morning we can get back to, is critical business such as how do we expand economic opportunity in this country? How do we reinvigorate our manufacturing base, which is eroding dramatically? How do we give working families additional resources by raising the minimum wage? That would be something that would be very beneficial to millions of Americans. Can we pass good legislation that allows us to continue to invest in our infrastructure, in our highways, in our roads? And then in international affairs, how do we come to grips with the increasing crisis overseas in Iraq, a crisis that sees our soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors each day engaged in conflict over there in a very difficult insurgency? As Senator Pryor mentioned, yesterday several of us had the opportunity to go up to Walter Reed Army Hospital. I have been there a few times over the last several months and have seen a Rhode Island military police unit, National Guard, assigned to Baghdad. They have suffered, unfortunately, casualties. To go there and see these young men, to see them having suffered, having served so magnificently, it makes you wonder why we are spending so much time on this debate, and not more time talking about the way ahead in Iraq, not talking about other situations of international concern. I find it startling just a few days ago the Central Intelligence Agency released a report concluding the North Koreans likely have several nuclear devices and likely will be able to deploy those devices without testing. That they have apparently mastered a technological means to circumvent testing is startling, in fact, horrific information, but this is being lost in the shuffle with the Iraq situation. This is a fact that is startling and is pressing on our national security and our future security. But there is no extended debate on North Korean policy. There is no extended debate on the way ahead in Iraq. We have committed ourselves as a nation to a course of conduct that requires sacrifice, and yet we are not fully coming to grips with the nature of that sacrifice and what we should do. For many of these reasons, although this debate is certainly appropriate--that is one of the great things about the Senate, you can talk of the issues of the moment, the issues of the time, but certainly there are so many more pressing issues, so many more critical issues to the future of this country and to the future of America's families the continued obsession with this topic does disservice.

Mr. REED. Mr. President. Once again, we are engaged in the early hours of the morning in a discussion about judges and the role of the Senate, and our role is stark. We have the responsibility under the U.S. Constitution to give advice and consent to the nominations of the President of the United States, not advice and approval, not just advice, but advice and consent. That requires the Senate to take a very active role in reviewing the qualifications of nominees who come before us and making judgments about their ability to serve as members of the Federal judiciary. We take that seriously. I think that responsibility implies that at times we have to disagree with the President. It is not unusual that such disagreements take place. This whole debate, I believe, might begin and end with a very simple statement of fact, 168 to 4. One hundred sixty-eight of President Bush's nominees have been reviewed by this Senate and have been confirmed. Four have not. It suggests to me that the Senate is properly discharging its responsibilities to advise and consent with respect to the nominees of the President to the Federal judiciary. In fact, of those 168 individuals, they represent, I would suspect, jurists who have a conservative outlook, probably a different outlook than I have, on certain issues. Yet they represent both in terms of their conduct personally, but just as importantly their judicial temperament and their judicial philosophy, individuals who uphold the tradition of the Federal judiciary at the level of the district and circuit court individuals who follow law, not try to make it, who do not impose their views on the case before them but, in fact, follow precedence, who follow the guidance of the Constitution and the Congress in establishing the law. It is in those cases and the very few cases, 4 out of 168, where there seems to be a record of ideological commitment rather than legal scholarship, of political--with a small p--interest, rather than a judicial temperament that is fair and balanced, that the President's nominees have not passed the test. An example of this is the comment I made in May of 2003 when I contrasted the nomination of Judge Edward Prado to the pending nomination of the Texas Justice Priscilla Owen. Judge Prado served 19 years on the United States district court. He is someone who has a record of fairness and evenhandedness. I would suspect, since he is a nominee of President Bush, that he has a conservative outlook in his approach to cases. But he is an appropriate judge. He follows precedence. He does not insert his particular philosophy, his particular ideology, into the cases before him. As a result, he was confirmed, an example of the 168 judges who have been confirmed by this Senate on behalf of President Bush. The four who did not pass the test were those whose record suggested that they were not evenhanded, they were not balanced; that indeed they inserted political or ideological bias in the conduct of their decisions. In that case, I think it is not only appropriate but it is our responsibility, as the constitutional body entrusted with advice and consent, to register our consent and to register our protest. And we have. This is not an unusual circumstance in the history of this Senate and of this country. There have been instances several times when Republicans have used the device of cloture votes and filibusters to express their concern about the qualifications or quality of a judicial nominee. It goes back many years, and it certainly continued into the administration of President Clinton. Abe Fortas, whose nomination as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was subject to cloture votes, was subject to attempted filibusters by the Republicans. So were Rosemary Barkett and Stephen Breyer as a judicial nominee for the circuit court. Justice Breyer is now a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, I was here yesterday morning and listened to my colleague, the junior Senator from Missouri, talk about how Justice Breyer was at a conference he was attending and how he was articulate and appropriate, and might not be someone he philosophically agreed with but that he was a good judge--but Justice Breyer was the subject of cloture motions and a filibuster.

Mr. REED. Could I just continue?

Mr. REED. Reclaiming my time, I like your hypothetical. I like the context.

Mr. REED. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED. I think you are being overly generous. I like to believe if the nominee was of the quality to serve on the Federal bench as a circuit judge, he or she would be approved, which is the rule that applies so far to 168 of the nominees of President Bush. I do say quite sincerely that, indeed, if someone was nominated by a President who did not measure up to those standards, the 168 judges who have been affirmed, they would not be voted in because they lack ability, skill, or judicial temperament, or the other criteria, and they would be opposed. Again, the record suggests that in dealing with President Bush's nominees, 168 have been confirmed. I suspect all of them are more conservative than any nominee suggested by President Clinton. All of them are individuals who, had a Democratic President been in office, would not have been nominated. That is the nature of the nomination process. Nonetheless, they were confirmed. Now, the last 2 days of a legislative session, with a change of power, et cetera, that introduces a unique aspect.

Mr. REED. There might be an attempt to do that, but your question to me is, what do I believe. Maybe this is an expression of my beliefs. I would like to think that, as in the case of 98 percent of President Bush's nominees, they would receive not only careful review but ultimately confirmation.

Mr. REED. I think the Senator is trying to refer to the more philosophical than pragmatic logistics. The reality is if someone, either someone who is a sitting judge or otherwise, was nominated----

Mr. REED. Nominated in November, simply the FBI, background checks, the questionnaires, reviews, all those things, take time. In fact, the reaction, frankly, if any President did that, President Bush or President X or President Y did that, the public reaction would be very adverse, regardless of the Senate. I would like to move on.

Mr. REED. My point was Justice Breyer was subject to a cloture vote, subject to a procedure that is being used here.

Mr. REED. Let me reclaim my time. The circumstances might have been extraordinary but, again, this was an example of Republicans using the device of cloture votes, of threatened filibuster, of extended debate, to make a point that they felt uncomfortable with a judicial nomination. That is the principle. There is no special rule for the last 20 days of a session. There is no special rule that says that is when the filibuster is OK. There were sincere, well-meaning Senators, Republican Senators, who felt that because they did not have a chance to evaluate his record or because they felt his record was too liberal, they needed to do what they did. Justice Breyer, in fact, was well known to every person in this body. He had been the counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and worked for Senator Kennedy on the deregulation of the airline industry. He was someone who had personal knowledge of every Senator in this body at the time. So this was not a question of who is this person. This was a question of some people expressing their sincere belief that because of his judicial philosophy, because of his temperament, because of the way he conducted himself, the Senate should not go forward in this automatic fashion. The point remains the same. This notion of the unprecedented, unconstitutional, un-American use of cloture votes and filibuster is quite wrong. It has been used before by both sides. The question must be back to the original hypothetical posed by the Senator from Pennsylvania, What is the criteria we are using. I urge that criteria has to be based upon a careful review of the conduct and temperament of the nominee. That is a better construct of the individual. Is this person someone who recognizes the careful balancing a judge must perform daily? Is this someone who, although he has very strong beliefs, strong ideas about the way the law should be interpreted, respects the fact that as a circuit judge or a district judge he or she has to follow precedent? Is this someone who does not try to impose their views on the law but tries to faithfully judge based on the law? That is the issue. That is the issue of all of these nominees, and 168 of President Bush's nominees have passed that test with flying colors. Four have not. That, I believe, is what we have to focus on. Once again, as we move forward--and this is an appropriate debate, this is one of the virtues, the glories of the Senate. We can stand here at 4:50 in the morning and talk about great issues that affect this great country. However, this is not the only issue. I would say there are so many more pressing issues. We will conclude this extended debate this morning. We will vote, and then we have the responsibility of getting back to some very critical business the business of this economy, of this country, both here and across the globe. There is one issue among many issues we have to be particularly concerned about and that is the issue of our long-term economic vitality. We have a situation in the country where we are losing jobs left and right. We are particularly vulnerable to the loss of manufacturing jobs. Under the Clinton administration, in a huge jobs growth of the late 1990s, we saw an increase of 257,000 manufacturing jobs. Now we are seeing a contraction of employment generally, and particularly in manufacturing. We have lost about 2.45 million jobs in manufacturing. We have to do something. I hope we can. So far we have not taken action aggressively or as aggressively as we should. What we have seen in many respects is our manufacturing sector are jobs being lured overseas by lower wages, poor environmental quality standards, very little in the way of labor rights. It is attractive to employment. We have to do something about it. We operate in a context of international trade rules where we cannot simply put up a wall of tariffs around our country, so we have to be more creative and innovative. One of the problems that inhibits our creativity and our innovation is the fact that to help manufacturing concerns we have to provide some resources, in terms of manufacturing tax credits, in terms of a solution or at least progress when it comes to the issue of health care costs to companies throughout this country, which is probably one of the key problems facing every business enterprise in this Nation. That does not come cheap. When you look as it as we are, not only erosion of jobs but an erosion of the Federal budget moving in this administration from a surplus projected to be in the trillions of dollars over a decade, to deficits which are equally now being projected into the trillions of dollars, it constrains our ability to respond to these issues, to provide some type of benefits to alleviate the cost of health care for the manufacturing sector, to provide incentives for manufacturing, to provide tax credits and other programs so we can help manufacturing companies particularly deal with environmental concerns. One of the consistent complaints I get in Rhode Island is it is not fair, Senator, I have to abide by very strenuous rules on environmental emissions, yet I see competitors in China and other countries spewing smoke out of their smokestacks and pouring solids into the wastewater streams. I cannot do that. In fact, up my way, the manufacturers have been zealous in protecting the environment. But they are in a terrible dilemma. How do we help them? We could provide tax credits for environmental improvements. But again that costs money. It costs something else, too. It costs the time and attention of this Senate on this issue. It costs the same time we are spending to talk about judges to invest in the future of our economy and the future of this Nation. I hope we can spend the time. We have seen over the course of the last several years an economy that is beginning to at least show some signs of life, but we are not back yet by a long shot. There is a real fear we are leaving millions behind, a real fear in parts of this country that those jobs that were there 3 years ago, particularly in manufacturing, have not only been lost temporarily but have been lost forever. That goes not just to the individual families that have been affected, it goes to the fabric of the lives of those families. When a manufacturing plants closes, it is not just a sad day in the lives of the workers, it is a community feeling a loss. We are seeing too much of that. We have not only this challenge, we have the challenge of the tumultuous world. Again, when we look at the requirements and demands on our economy, and the requirements and demands of protecting ourselves internationally, we have to ask ourselves where are we going to get the resources, given the budget, to fund our military? To provide the resources to conduct a very expansive and aggressive foreign policy? Just a few days ago this body voted $87 billion for reconstruction of Iraq. That is $87 billion in the context of a deficit in which we are spending money literally we do not have. I am sure that will not be the last time we consider additional resources for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries. Yet we are not doing those things we need to do to ensure fully that our nation is entirely protected. So we have serious challenges before us. I hope again at the conclusion of this very extensive debate and at the conclusion of these votes this morning, we can get back to that critical business. Interestingly enough, we interrupted Senate proceedings at a juncture where we were ready to pass the HUD-VA appropriations bill to get on to the discussion of these judges. At that point, we were considering how we could strengthen further, increase further, the resources going to our Veterans Administration. That is another area of concern I have and I am sure we all have. We have to make sure those young Americans who are today struggling--and the fact those young Americans I visited yesterday who are being sent literally from Walter Reed Army Hospital to a VA facility, many of them amputees because of the nature of the conflict in Iraq that 5 years, 10 years from now they have the same quality of services they are getting today. That is a challenge. And it is a challenge we cannot meet unless we focus our attention and our time and our effort on this bill. That was the very bill we left to come on to this discussion of judges. How much time remains?

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Let me just say my recollection is she was not given a vote after being nominated to the court.

Mr. REED. I suggested it because that is my understanding, that she was nominated for the District of Columbia circuit and she is now the dean of the Harvard Law School. She is a remarkable dean. I am somewhat prejudiced since I graduated from Harvard Law School, but she is a remarkable personality.

Mr. REED. Let me reclaim my time. I would simply say regardless of the residue of judges in the Bush administration versus the end of the Clinton administration, the point I am making is there was apparently a very consistent effort on the part of Republicans to deny votes to all manner of judges. I think 64 of President Clinton's nominees never got a vote, never got to the floor. I have the time. I think what it amounts to is a very deliberate protest, which the majority has the power to do, of using the committee process to deny hearings and to deny votes. It is a contradiction then to come to the floor and say: We can use the rules of the Senate. We can use these rules and we can deny judges, but if the Democrats choose to use the rules of the Senate to challenge a judicial nominee of the President, Bush or otherwise, that represents a violation of the Constitution. That is my point. The point is borne out regardless of the residue of judges of either administration. The record today, this Senate and the Senate under the leadership of Tom Daschle, shows we have done a remarkable job in confirming this President's nominees. That was not suggested in the treatment of President Clinton's nominees. I yield to my colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. REED. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. REED. A question has come up about Elena Kagan's nomination. I have some information. Ms. Kagan was nominated in June of 1999. For 18 months, there was no action on her nomination. I believe her nomination was certainly available for action by the committee and by the relevant bodies of the Senate for 18 months, yet she never received a hearing and there was no floor vote.

Mr. REED. I am happy to yield.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, we are here this morning to discuss the status of judges. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been rather adamant in claiming they may have been mistreated. I think there is a contradiction in their argument. Frankly, what I witnessed here as a Member of this body over the last several years in the Clinton administration was a process of systematically denying the nominees of President Clinton--qualified, indeed, very qualified nominees in their positions on the Federal bench--doing it not on the floor as we are doing here openly, but using what I would describe as a pocket filibuster. We are all aware of the notion of a pocket veto. The Constitution allows the President a certain number of days to exercise his veto, but at the end of a session he doesn't have to exercise that. He simply has to put the bill in his pocket and it will not become law. That is essentially what the Republican majority did here to so many of President Clinton's nominees. They refused to give these individuals hearings. They refused to take up the nominations or to seriously allow a process for the committee to deliberate and to consider and to recommend them for an up or down vote. Today, for the majority to come and claim they are being mistreated and that the Constitution is being violated is to me a profound contradiction because they have very determinedly and consistently denied even a hearing to so many well-qualified individuals who were nominated by President Clinton. That is not to suggest we are in any way trying to match their conduct. The fact we are here on the floor exercising our rights under the rules of the Senate and the Constitution of the United States to make a statement about judges, to make a statement about individuals who we feel for many reasons lack either the qualifications or the judicial temperament to serve successfully on the Federal bench, makes the record quite clear. That is in contrast to the pocket filibusters. We have been very active and cooperative in moving 168 judges through the committee process to the floor of the Senate and to ultimate confirmation by the Senate. It is a remarkable record. In the last year alone, I believe we have confirmed more judges than were confirmed under President Reagan's tenure with a Republican Senate at the time. This is not a record of evasion of our constitutional responsibilities. This is a record of meeting our constitutional responsibilities, one of which is to exercise our individual judgment as Senators as to the qualification of anyone to serve on the Federal bench. But as I mentioned before, what we saw so consistently and so persistently under the previous President was a Republican strategy of blocking judges by a pocket filibuster; not here on the floor, but off the floor, denying them right to a hearing. Let me suggest this has a very pernicious effect on so many women who were nominated by President Clinton. This is a report of some of the judges nominated by President Clinton for consideration by this Senate: Kathleen McCree-Lewis for the Sixth Circuit--again, my colleagues have been going on and on about the importance of the circuit judges. They are important. What happened when President Clinton nominated Kathleen McCree-Lewis to the Sixth Circuit? She never got a vote; never got around to the process of hearings, a debate in committee, a recommendation to the floor of the Senate; never got through to us for a vote. Helene White to the Sixth Circuit, never got a vote; Elena Kagan to the D.C. Circuit, never got a vote. By the way, Ms. Kagan is today dean of the Harvard Law School. Is there anyone who would suggest she was not qualified to be a Federal judge? I think that would be quite an extreme statement. She was more than qualified to be a Federal judge, but she never got a vote. Elizabeth Gibson to the Fourth Circuit, never got a vote; Christine Arguello to the Tenth Circuit, never got a vote; Bonnie Campbell to the Eighth Circuit, never got a vote; Patricia Coan to the District of Colorado, never got a vote; Valerie Couch to the District of Oklahoma, never got a vote; Rhonda Fields to the District Court for the District of Columbia, never got a vote; Dolly Gee to the Central District of California, never got a vote; Marian Johnston to the Eastern District of California, never got a vote; Sue Myerscough to the Central District of Illinois, never got a vote; Lynette Norton to the Western District of Pennsylvania, never got a vote; Linda Riegle to the District of Nevada, never got a vote; Cheryle Wattley to the Northern District of Texas, never got a vote; Lynee Lasry to the Southern District of California, never got a vote; Wenona Whitfield to the Southern District of Illinois, never got a vote; and Anabelle Rodriguez to the District of Puerto Rico, never got a vote. That is the record of the pocket filibuster; nominated by the President of the United States; qualified; and, indeed one of these individuals I point out is now the dean of the Harvard Law School, but they never got a vote of any kind. That is what we saw: The rules of the Senate being used by the majority to frustrate the nominees of the President of the United States. Then to come to this floor and claim this is now unprecedented and a usurpation of the Constitution of the United States when we are simply exercising our rights on the floor under the rules of the Senate to express our opinion as to the quality and qualifications of nominees to the Federal bench is I think certainly a contradiction. With respect to some of these judges, I think the key issue here is judicial temperament. Indeed, there is a certain degree of sensitivity about judicial temperament as one goes from the district court to the court of appeals. It is often the case that a district court judge is younger and the thought is that person will mature on the bench and maybe in future days will be of such experience and demonstrated judicial temperament that she or he would be promoted to the circuit court of appeals, and then there are direct nominees to the circuit court. But again, you have to look at someone's breadth of experience, maturity, and intellect, and again their judicial temperament. The nominees who have been identified and have been questioned by Democrats are individuals by and large whose judicial temperament is quite questionable. Priscilla Owen has had a long history of putting her own personal opinion above the law, of injecting political ideology into the law, rather than following precedent. One of the things about a circuit court judge is you have to follow precedent. The Supreme Court can try to create law, but a circuit court must follow precedents of the Supreme Court. In case after case after case, there were such situations in which she just defied precedent. There is a case of medical malpractice, Weiner v. Watson, when one of our colleagues, the junior Senator from Texas, was on the Texas Supreme Court Justice, and he unequivocally rejected Judge Owen's argument, stating it was contrary to the Texas State Constitution. Are we going to put people on courts of the United States who have a predilection to not follow the Constitution? I think not. That is one example. You can see the same with Justice Brown who is a justice of the California courts. She has been criticized on the bench for injecting her own personal views and not following precedent. On a number of occasions, Republican colleagues have criticized her dissenting opinions for their judicial activism. In one case, Brown was ``chastized for imposing a personal theory of political economy on the bench contrary to established precedent.'' In another, she was chastized for refusing to accept acknowledged previous judicial precedent. That charge is extremely serious when you are dealing with a judge who is charged with following the precedent, following the Constitution, and following the law. The same may be said about Judge Kuhl; again, ideology rather than legal temperament and legal reasoning seems to be her forte. There is case after case after case. There are reasons, solid reasons to question these nominees. Our job as Senators is to raise those questions. There have been 168 judges confirmed by the Senate for President Bush, a record number, a remarkable number. In fact, vacancies on the Federal judiciary are the lowest they have been in recent memory. It is because we have been working together. But that does not mean we surrender our obligation to question and challenge those judges who do not meet the test of judicial temperament, nonpartisan application of the law, and nonideological application of the law. And there are those whose nominations have failed. That is what the Founding Fathers envisioned when they created a system of advise and consent. It is not advise and approve. It is advise and consent. The Senate plays an active role. There is no group of people who played a more active role in considering the nominees, certainly of President Clinton, than the Republican majority today. They did it persistently. They did it deliberately. They did it consciously. We are exercising constitutional powers. One of the examples that was used and one of the judges who was an eminent jurist in California, nominated for the Ninth Circuit, is Judge Richard Paez. He was subject to cloture votes. He was subject to situations in which he was challenged. That is the rule. You get to do that. In fact, Judge Paez waited 1,500 days even to get a vote. That is not the case with these nominees. There were 1,500 days in which he was nominated to the Ninth Circuit. His nomination was in limbo. Finally, there was a vote and people rose up. Some supported a motion for cloture; others rejected it. So this notion that it is unprecedented to challenge a nominee for the Federal judiciary through the cloture process is fanciful. It has happened very recently. It happened with Judge Paez. He is not the only one. Sixty-four of President Clinton's nominees never received a floor vote. One nominee, Ronnie White, was defeated on a floor vote. We have a situation where the deeds and actions are not wrapped in the dim mist of history. These nominations were before the Senate 2 or 3 years ago. The deeds don't match the words we are hearing today. All of the outrage about the constitutional challenge and crisis. That outrage was certainly not manifested a few years ago when Judge Paez was waiting 1,500 days for a hearing and then was subject to a cloture vote just as these nominees are being subject to cloture votes. That is one point. But there is a larger point. We are spending hours and hours and hours to demonstrate a supposed crisis, the fact that 4 individuals out of 172 have not been confirmed by this Senate, when in fact there are much greater problems facing this Nation. We have an unemployment rate that continues to hover around 6 percent, a budget deficit that is exploding and inhibiting appropriate action by this Senate on so many important issues--education reform, worker training, dealing with issues both large and small. We have a crisis internationally that is costing us the lives of our soldiers and military personnel and billions of dollars from our Treasury. We are spending all night, long, precious hours conducting a demonstration, when we should be working on appropriations bills and we should be dealing with the issues that confront the families of America. I think it is really a demonstration of listen to what I say, don't watch what I do. Because when we watch what the Republicans do, the record is remarkable, the high number of President Bush's judicial nominees who have gone through. It is extraordinary compared to the treatment President Clinton received. I would hope when we finish this exercise, we can in fact go forth and deal with the issues which are essential and should be dealt with. We have a minimum wage that has been stuck for years now. It should be increased. We have a host of other issues that need addressing. I hope we can. I yield to my colleague, Senator Corzine.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor of Senator Clinton's amendment relating to VISTA. Since its creation in 1965, as part of the War on Poverty, over 120,000 Americans have performed national service as VISTA volunteers. VISTA, Volunteers In Service To America, members serve in hundreds of nonprofit organizations and public agencies across the country, helping to find solutions to the problems caused by urban and rural poverty. VISTA volunteers fight illiteracy, improve health services, increase housing opportunities, bridge the digital divide, create businesses, and so much more. Unfortunately, VISTA volunteers have been shortchanged for more than a year. Since the creation of education awards in 1994, VISTA volunteers, upon completion of their service, have been eligible to receive either a $4,725 education award or end-of-service stipend of $1,200. Education awards can be used to pay education costs at qualified institutions of higher education or to repay qualified student loans. However, the Corporation for National and Community Service has refused to offer education awards to last year's and this year's volunteers. This summer, I was alerted to this unfortunate change in policy by several Rhode Islanders. Section 129(b) of the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 contains the following language: Reservation of Approved Positions--The Corporation shall ensure that each individual selected during a fiscal year for assignment as a VISTA Volunteer under title I of the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973 . . . shall receive the national service educational award described in subtitle D if the individual satisfies the eligibility requirements for the award. Funds for approved national service positions required by this paragraph for a fiscal year shall be deducted from the total funding for approved national service positions to be available for distribution under subsectons (a) and (d) for that fiscal year. Given this clear language in the statute, I wrote to the Corporation seeking its rationale for denying the opportunity for VISTA volunteers to elect education awards. In his response, the General Counsel for the Corporation argued that the Corporation, not this language, determines whether a VISTA volunteer is in an ``approved national service position'', and only if that is the case, is the volunteer entitled to the opportunity to elect to receive an education award. The General Counsel has ruled that all VISTA slots are not ``approved national service positions.'' Moreover, the General Counsel states that the Corporation has the authority to modify program rules based on funding levels. As a result, 3,200 volunteers in fiscal year 2003 have been denied the option of an education award that has been of great benefit to countless volunteers. In Rhode Island, this has affected nearly 20 VISTA volunteers at City Arts, AS220, Providence Public Library, Family Life Center, RI Training School, RI Free Clinic, Southside Community Land Trust, New Urban Arts, and RI Coalition for Domestic Violence. In order to continue to attract high quality and talented individuals willing to serve as VISTA volunteers, the Clinton amendment requires the Corporation to offer individuals, selected after October 31, 2002, for initial enrollment or reenrollment as a VISTA volunteer the option of receiving a national service education award. This is an important amendment as we look to revitalize service in our country after months of mishaps at the Corporation for National and Community Service, and I urge its passage.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to express concern about the current discussion on Medicare, particularly the prescription drug bill. The first point I would make is that the process has been, I think, subverted because all the conferees are not invited to participate in conference meetings. Many of my colleagues in the Democratic caucus who have voted for the bill and are named as conferees have not been given access to all of the deliberations and discussions. I know Senator Baucus and Senator Breaux have been there and are doing an admirable job representing the viewpoints of the Democratic caucus, but this is not the way procedurally to conduct deliberations on such important measures as Medicare reform and prescription drug benefit for seniors. But those are procedural issues. The substance also troubles me, particularly the discussion of cost containment, premium support, income relating--all of these are euphemisms but have extremely important consequences in the lives of seniors and, indeed, in the lives of everybody throughout the country. The conference is examining these proposals and exploring ideas that are not just about prescription drug benefits for seniors. In fact, the conference discussions have taken on a rather controversial cast because we are talking seriously now about Medicare reform. But we are not just talking about Medicare reform; I would argue we are talking about proposals that would perhaps lead to the end of the Medicare program, eventually, as we know it. Back in 1995, Newt Gingrich said that his approach to Medicare was to let it ``wither on the vine,'' to undercut it, undermine it, underfund it, so that eventually it would become a remnant, not a vital part of the American fabric. That, I fear, might be taking place right now in its first steps. Of course, as we deliberate these issues with respect to Medicare drug benefits, one major issue that concerns me is that we have allocated $400 billion. That seems like a great deal of money but, frankly, it is not. When we consider, over the 10-year period we are talking about, that seniors will spend $1.8 trillion on pharmaceuticals, $400 billion is not a lot of money. Indeed, compared to what we are spending on some efforts overseas--Iraq being the most prominent at the moment--that $400 billion over 10 years is not an astounding total. In fact, I would argue it is insufficient to give the benefits that most seniors expect to receive and believe we are discussing at the moment. One of the particular issues that I am disturbed about is first this notion of cost containment. My impression of cost containment is that we would somehow be able to contain the cost of prescription drugs we are buying and seniors are buying, but that is not the view of the conferees about cost containment. Cost containment is really Medicare expenditure containment. I think that is a fallacy. If we can't control the cost of pharmaceuticals through market forces, then we will never catch up with the explosion of costs. But then to arbitrarily say we are going to cap what we will put into Medicare, to me, is a fundamentally erroneous approach to this very difficult problem. In fact, the cost containment issue the conference is discussing is not directed precisely at the pharmaceutical program. It is going to be applied across the board to all Medicare expenditures. Ostensibly, what the conferees are talking about now is capping the general fund contribution to Medicare. There are two sources of financing for the Medicare program. First is the Medicare trust fund, then second is general revenues. The conference position today, I am told, is if our general expenditures exceed 45 percent in any two consecutive years, we arbitrarily stop funding Medicare--not just the pharmaceutical portion, but the whole program. To me, that is the wrong approach--setting arbitrary limits not based upon the health conditions of our seniors but based upon our fiscal situation here in Washington. Indeed, we all understand that Medicare is an extremely popular program. A Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health survey found that 80 percent of seniors have a favorable impression of Medicare, and 62 percent believe the program is well run. Seventy-two percent of people age 65 and over thought seniors should be able to continue to get their health insurance coverage through Medicare over private plans. It is an extremely popular program. It is efficiently run with very low overhead. And it is in danger of being scuttled because we are attempting to apply arbitrary limits to our contributions to Medicare. There is another aspect that concerns me very much in this whole debate; that is, this notion of premium support. These euphemisms sound innocuous but the consequences could be quite severe to the long-term health and viability of Medicare. Premium support is the notion that we are going to entice private health insurers to go in and take the place of the Medicare Program. If the market would allow for that, that is great. We want competition and choice. It provides for more efficient allocation of resources. But what the conferees are proposing is a $12 billion slush fund that will favor private companies over the government-run system. I think the only reason we have to do that is, in reality when you look at the Medicare system today, it is in many cases more efficient than private health insurers. The way these private health insurers are going to be making their money is not to serve every senior, but to be very careful and very selective--to cherry-pick the senior population--and get the healthiest seniors into their plans; and in addition to that, get subsidies from the Federal Government to their bottom line by simply saying we can't make enough money to participate in this market--not that we can't serve enough seniors. I think that is wrong. That will severely and significantly undercut the Medicare Program. It has been estimated that a result of premium support will be that rates for seniors across the country will no longer be uniform. They will be variable based upon the region and based upon how many private plans are participating. They could vary from one area to another. Rhode Island and New England is a small area. We could have one rate in East Providence, RI, and 10 minutes away in Massachusetts the rates could be entirely different. Today, seniors count on predictability, reliability and the certainty that the rates are stable and uniform. We could lose that. That is a major concern of mine. There is another concern also; that is, the fact that we are on the verge of accepting this notion of means testing. The euphemism of the moment is income relating Medicare Part B premiums. They have laid out a situation where seniors who are making over $80,000 a year would gradually see their Federal subsidy reduced from a current level of 75 percent. Certainly at that level of income there is an argument to be made that seniors can afford to pay more than the majority of seniors whose incomes are much less than $80,000, and are probably closer to $15,000 to $20,000 a year. We are fracturing the program by means-testing premiums. We are giving incentives for wealthy seniors to ask, Why should I participate at all? This is not a program that helps me. I can get my health insurance coverage in the private market, and I will do that. The fragmentation--both in terms of geography because of premium support, and in terms of income because of this notion of means testing--will begin that slow, I am afraid, and irreversible process of withering Medicare. It makes no sense. One of the reasons we enacted the Medicare Program in 1965 was because private health insurance companies would only insure the wealthiest and healthiest seniors, leaving the vast majority of seniors with nothing. The burden of those seniors was the burden of every family in this country. As I grew up in the 1950s and the 1960s, it was not uncommon to have a grandmother or a grandfather living in your home because they simply could not support their health care needs. They could not support themselves. Medicare changed that more than any other program in this country. It is widely popular, and based on the simple notion that, first, we are going to provide the benefit equally to all of our seniors. We are not going to fragment it by region or by income. We will provide a system of care. We essentially are going to do what insurance should do--take the broadest possible risk pool of all seniors--healthy seniors, unhealthy seniors, the frail and elderly seniors, and the young and vigorous seniors. They are all going to participate. That is the efficient, fair, and sensible way to do it. We are on the verge, I fear, of ruining that system--not just for the moment but for all time. I hope in the next several days we can resolve these issues favorably. But I am concerned if we proceed on this course we will not really be doing anything for seniors, the prescription drug benefit might be illusory, and the long-term effect will be severe and perhaps cause fatal damage to Medicare. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to engage in a colloquy with the distinghished Chairman and Ranking Member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, as well as my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Chafee, regarding the presence of Avian Influenza in Rhode Island. Since March of this year, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management's Division of Agriculture has been working to contain an outbreak of Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza in a poultry operation in Foster, Rhode Island, as well as a live bird market in Providence. The virus has been definitively identified as H7N2 Avian Influenza, of the same genetic sequence as the virus recently found in nearby poultry operations in Connecticut. Little Rhody Farms, the last of the traditional egg houses in Rhode Island, currently houses 32,000 hens producing brown eggs for sale in markets and food stores. Sales and distribution of eggs from the farm have declined due to customers' concerns that the produce may be tainted, and a federally imposed quarantine that has frozen the operation at half capacity. To eliminate the risk of the disease spreading further and to give the farm a greater chance to survive, state officials have strongly recommended depopulating the infected flock and disinfecting the premises. We have been unable to secure financial assistance from USDA to make depopulation possible. I look forward to working with the Chairman and Ranking Member to include language in the fiscal year 2004 Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill to direct USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to provide assistance to Rhode Island Egg producers who have depopulated their flocks.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to engage in a brief colloquy with the distinguished ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Agriculture, Senator Kohl, regarding language in the Committee's report to accompany S. 1427, the fiscal year 2004 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. I thank the Senator from Wisconsin for including language in the committee's report recognizing the importance of eelgrass habitats to marine ecosystems along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, and urging the Department of Agriculture to make funds available for projects in Rhode Island to enhance these habitats. I understand that it was the Committee's intention to encourage USDA to make such funding available through the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), rather than through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) as stated on page 101 of Senate Report 108-107. The purpose of our colloquy today is to clarify that the report language should have read as follows: ``The Committee urges the Department to give consideration to the use of WHIP funding for projects in Rhode Island, and similar areas, that will enhance these habitats.''

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the National Consumer Credit Reporting System Improvement Act of 2003, which would reauthorize expiring provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. I commend Senator Shelby and Senator Sarbanes for their hard work in addressing this issue and for putting forward a bipartisan bill to strengthen our Nation's credit system. The Banking Committee has held numerous hearings on all aspects of this issue over the past year that have highlighted the concerns of consumers, regulators, and private companies. One of the cornerstones of our national economy is consumer access to credit. Access to credit allows for smooth functioning of our national economy with consumers able to get loans for homes, cars, and commercial purchases. This is all made possible by having a national credit system, as first put into place by the Fair Credit Reporting Act in 1970, and then standardized by the 1996 amendments to the act. Uniform national standards have improved the efficiency of the system by reducing the regulatory burden on lenders, thereby allowing them to pass on better service and lower costs to consumers. Automated underwriting systems translate to quicker credit decisions and more convenience for borrowers and lenders alike, while making risk-based decisions more accurate. Failure to reauthorize national standards would balkanize our national credit system and potentially hurt every consumer in America. The Banking Committee recognized this and voted unanimously to report S. 1753. This important legislation includes numerous consumer protections against identity theft. I am alarmed by the abuses that have resulted in identity theft. With more and more financial and personal information being exchanged through electronic channels, there is an inevitable trade-off--sensitive information can fall into the wrong hands. Over the past several years, identity theft has become a significant problem in the United States. According to a recent survey by the Federal Trade Commission, 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2002, at a tremendous cost to consumer victims of $5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses and $48 billion in losses to business and financial institutions. Indeed, complaints to the FTC about identity theft have nearly doubled every year for the past 5 years. By its very nature, this challenge requires coordination between the public and private sectors and between local, State, and Federal government. Identity theft is costly to consumers, costing New England alone over $44 million in 2001. The impact on private financial institutions should be no less obvious, and these companies are essential to any attempts at prevention and consequence management. S. 1753 represents a major step in this public-private effort to combat identity theft. Among many provisions, it would allow victims of identity theft to place fraud alerts in their credit reports, block fraudulent transactions from being reported, and prevent false information from ``repolluting'' credit reports in the future. It would require businesses to truncate credit and debit card account numbers on printed receipts. And it empowers consumers to ensure the accuracy of their own credit history by granting them a free annual credit report from national credit reporting agencies. These are good steps. However, I believe that S. 1753 can be improved to address several other closely related consumer and privacy issues. We are seeing an increasing number of successful breaches of security at banks and processing companies, and we should address this trend head on in this debate. Just this past February, a computer hacker accessed 10.2 million credit card and debit card account numbers by breaking into a database maintained by a third-party transaction processor. This was the biggest credit card security breach ever in terms of the number of cards affected. Citizens Bank, located in my home State of Rhode Island, felt that this breach posed a significant enough risk to cancel the debit cards of nearly 8,800 customers and issue them new cards. I applauded this quick effort to protect consumers. Unfortunately, not every bank matched Citizen's level of consumer care, and many decided that the cost of reissuing cards or informing their customers exceeded the risk to consumers. In light of this less than comprehensive response, I would like to highlight one particularly troubling practice during this incident. According to media reports, even though some credit card issuers learned of the database intrusion early in February, they waited several weeks before disclosing the incident. Even with the zero- liability policies for the vast majority of major credit cards, debit card holders could see their bank accounts depleted, and all affected customers still run the risk of being victims of identity theft, even months or years after the security breach occurred. Senator Corzine has introduced an amendment that would require financial institutions, creditors, and users of credit reports to notify the FTC when the security of consumer financial information is accessed in an unauthorized manner. A mandatory and timely disclosure of such breaches will allow the Federal Government, along with the institutions and consumers, to closely monitor transaction information and mitigate the resulting damage from the breach. An amendment from Senators Cantwell and Enzi would further enhance these identity theft provisions with language from a bill passed unanimously by the Senate last year. Their amendment would establish a single uniform procedure for individuals to establish that they are victims of identity theft, requiring a notarized FTC affidavit, a government identification, and a police report. It then gives these victims access to any business records related to their identity theft-related fraud, which today is a time- consuming and difficult task. I would also be remiss if I did not address the much broader topic of privacy, a topic that is one of the most important issues to the American public. Privacy is important to Americans, as evinced by the overwhelming outpour of support for the national do-not-call registry, financial privacy legislation in California, and the Senate's unanimous vote against email spam. Indeed, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis championed the right to privacy, calling it ``the right to be let alone, the right most valued by a civilized people.'' I believe that we must continue the privacy debate that we began with the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act and find the appropriate balance between consumers' privacy and the efficient operations of financial institutions. I commend Senators Shelby and Sarbanes for including a targeted opt- out for affiliate sharing for marketing purposes in this bill, but I am not convinced that this step is sufficient. When Congress passed the amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act in 1996, affiliate sharing had a very different meaning. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act had not yet been passed, and massive financial services holding companies had not emerged. Today, according to the Federal Reserve's National Information Center, the largest bank holding company has at least 1639 affiliates as of June 30, 2003. The meaning of affiliate sharing has changed, and will likely continue to change as the financial services industry adapts to changing times. In its report to Congress on the economics of financial privacy, the Congressional Research Service argues that in a world with imperfect information, financial institutions would have an incentive to offer some compensation to their customers if they had to obtain their consent to use and share their information. The CRS report makes a good point. Consumers' financial information is inherently valuable, and they should have the right to prevent it from being shared for marketing or other profitable purposes. Indeed, as personal financial information gets passed from affiliate to affiliate and is handled by an increasing number of people, consumers will be placed at a higher risk of becoming victims of identity theft. The choice of how that information is spread should ultimately be theirs. Senators Feinstein and Boxer have put forward a reasonable compromise on the matter of privacy and affiliate sharing. This amendment on affiliate sharing was drawn from the California Financial Information Privacy Act, which was negotiated over the course of four years with industry and consumer representatives. There is no reason for me to believe that the situation has changed dramatically since the interested parties supported that legislation. Finally, I would like to speak in support of one of Senator Feinstein's other amendments on medical information. Even more than financial data, health-care related information should enjoy a special protection so that individuals will feel free to seek appropriate medical interventions and share all pertinent information with their doctors. Senator Feinstein's amendment would fix the definition of medical information in S. 1753 to include mental and behavioral health information and health-related information that was collected for other purposes like for worker's compensation or casualty and property insurance. As we debate S. 1753 and vote to strengthen our Nation's national credit system, we must renew our commitment to working to ensure consumer privacy amidst changing practices and standards in the market. With this in mind, I urge all of my colleagues to support this important bill.

Mr. REED

Mr. REED. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, we are faced with a very difficult vote this afternoon. There are many of us who have questioned the wisdom of our policy in Iraq, dating back to October of last year, no one more eloquently or intelligently than Chairman Byrd, and his speech today echoes that sentiment so well. But for me this is a question of providing the resources necessary to support our soldiers, marines, airmen, and naval personnel in the field. Despite the questions of policy, I do believe we have to render such support, but I have reservations about particular aspects of the bill which I would like to address today. During the debate on the bill, I offered two amendments. The first was to increase the resources allocated to acquire uparmored Humvees. These are the tactical vehicles that are armored that provide increased protection against the improvised explosive devices being used throughout Iraq. Particularly I was concerned about the exposure of some of our National Guard forces. The Presiding Officer and myself represent the State of Rhode Island. We have two military police companies. The Presiding Officer supported me and worked with me closely in trying to craft this amendment so we could increase the number of uparmored Humvees. My original proposal was to increase the number in this bill by 800. I am very pleased to say this bill contains an additional 318 uparmored Humvees. I thank Senator Stevens particularly because on the floor he not only accepted this amendment, but he did his utmost with his staff to ensure these additional uparmored Humvees would be available to our troops in the field. This is good news to me, but better news for the troops who will use them and the families back here who each day monitor the newspapers and the television and watch and hope their soldiers, their military personnel, have every margin of safety and protection they need. The second amendment I offered was with respect to the end strength of the active U.S. Army. Unfortunately, this proposal, although it succeeded on the floor of the Senate--it resisted a motion to table by a vote of 52 to 45--was dropped in conference. I believe eliminating this provision is a mistake. We do need additional troops. There are some who argue very strenuously we need additional troops right now in Iraq. If one considers what has happened with the tragic loss of a Chinook helicopter, with 16 soldiers killed, and others injured, the fact that there are multiple, perhaps hundreds, of ammunition dumps throughout Iraq that are unsecured most of the time and subject to looting, the fact we are continuing to see a stiffening resistance throughout the Sunni triangle around Baghdad, all of that argues to many that we should, in fact, increase the forces on the ground. Even if you do not concur, even if you believe, as the Secretary of Defense says over and over again, that we have enough American troops on the ground, if we are going to maintain such a deployment over the next several years, we need additional soldiers in our Army for rotation, because otherwise we will wear our Army out, and the first signs of that will be a diminution in the retention of our reservists and National Guard men and women. The new threat we are facing in Iraq with shoulder-fired missiles is a very ominous one. These are mobile, lightweight, missile systems that can be operated by one person. They can be transported in a vehicle, easily hidden. They can be popped up, made ready to be fired within minutes, and then they can be discarded, and the individual can flee. It is a very effective weapon. Indeed, one of the ironies of history is we supplied these types of weapons to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, and they played havoc with Soviet helicopters, Soviet aircraft. It is one of the factors that caused the Soviets to consider their efforts in Afghanistan as futile and to leave. We have a new threat and that, I think, argues against not only new tactics and strategies but a reconsideration of the forces we have in Iraq and the strength we have there. Again, I point out we have approximately 1 million tons of ammunition unsecured throughout Iraq. There are about 100 of these sensitive sites reported by the New York Times that are guarded around the clock. The rest are guarded intermittently. They are a source, one could infer, for some of the munitions that are being used against our troops. Our convoys have been attacked by improvised explosive devices, by RPGs, and all of this is leading to the casualties we see each day. I think we should be very prudent and very responsible in terms of our end strength in the Army and our forces within Iraq. Both should be increased, I feel, and I am not alone. James Dobbins, a former Ambassador, who is one of the leading experts on reconstruction, said, in his words: Everyone agrees that we need more troops on the ground in Iraq; they just can't agree on more of what. Conservatives want more U.S. troops. Liberals want more allied troops. The Pentagon wants more Iraqi troops. My view is that they're probably all right: We're going to need all three. Frankly, given the current end strength of the Army, we do not have enough to provide additional American forces on the ground on a sustainable rotation basis. The Pentagon, Secretary Rumsfeld, is focusing on creating Iraqi security forces. That is an important goal. But there seems to be some confusion on the number of troops. This weekend, Secretary Rumsfeld stated that over 100,000 Iraqis were reporting to duty. Just a few days before that, Secretary Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice said it was 80,000 or 90,000. The numbers are unclear. What is also unclear is the capabilities of these troops. The Iraqi Army was being trained in 8 week courses and is now being trained in about 6 weeks so we can get them into the field. This raises questions of reliability, questions of adaptability, all of these things. Many suggest that we increase our international component. Frankly, the Turkish troops were apparently willing to come, but the Iraqis objected. It has been reported that Portugal and Bangladesh have decided against contributing troops. South Korea is delaying its decision. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the burden will fall not just in the next few months but in the next few years on the United States forces. As a result, I do believe we need more forces. We are beginning to see already the stress on our National Guard and Reserves. Currently, more than 130,000 Guard and Reserve soldiers and airmen are deployed. Approximately 29,000 National Guard soldiers are in Iraq and Kuwait. More than 10,000 Reserve forces are in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. We also have National Guard forces in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Sinai. This is tremendous stress. We are seeing, for the first time, reports--although they are still preliminary--that National Guard units are not able to make their recruiting goals. There was a report on NBC News by Jim Avila, who referred to: New figures, released this week, show the Army National Guard nearly 10,000 short of its 2003 goal of 62,000 recruits. Those are the first signs that recruiting and retention are becoming a problem in the Reserve component. They will only be made up, I think, by increasing the number of Active Forces we have. There is a very difficult challenge for Reserve Forces. They have a career. They have families. They are not full-time soldiers, although they are excellent soldiers, they are professionals. They have taken their missions on with great skill and great patriotism. In fact, we could not perform the missions of the modern military today without the Reserve and National Guard. But they have separate careers and separate lives, and eventually they will have to give some credit and some interest to those separate lives. I believe very strongly we have to ultimately increase the end strength of our military forces. I regret it is not in this supplemental. I will endeavor in the future to continue to urge this position. I hope someday we will have it. In the meantime, I thank, again, the chairman and Senator Byrd for their efforts. Because ultimately this bill is putting resources into the hands of our fighting men and women who are engaged in combat today, I will support the measure. I yield the floor.

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to use the Democratic leader's leader time.