Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, a report from Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition on the link between nutrition and cognitive development in children states that even before results are detectable, inadequate food intake limits the ability of children to learn, affecting their social interactions, intuitiveness, and overall cognitive functions. Come on, we have to stop having all of these conferences on early childhood development and talking about children, and now we know that we have some 8 million children who don't get a chance to participate in this program, we know there are many children who are malnourished, and we know for $5 million a year out of this budget, which is $265 billion, $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon asked for, we can't even make this kind of small commitment to children in America? That is what this vote is about. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Might I ask whether or not the other side intends to respond at all? If not, I will finish up. I am trying to wait for Senator Harkin, but I will go ahead and conclude. Might I ask whether the other side has yielded back its time?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, how much time do I have left?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this should be an easy vote for Senators: $5 million out of over $2 billion more than the Pentagon asked for to have an outreach program and enable local school districts to buy refrigerators so they can have a school breakfast program so that we can make sure that all of our children go to school and are able to learn. It is that simple. I mean, where are our priorities? We can't even come up with $5 million? This is not a mandate. This just simply authorizes the Secretary of Defense to transfer this. This is a way that we as a Senate can, in fact, commit a little bit more by way of resources to make sure that there is an adequate nutritious breakfast for more children who go to school in America. How in the world can you vote against it? I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that a variety of letters of endorsement be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am waiting for my colleague, Senator Harkin. I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Harkin as an original cosponsor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, might I ask how much time I have?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment, which is an amendment that I have offered with Senator Harkin, from Iowa, is very simple and straightforward. It authorizes, so it is not subject to a point of order, it just authorizes the Secretary of Defense to transfer to the Secretary of Agriculture $5 million over the next 5 years, $25 million altogether. That is $5 million out of a $265 billion Pentagon budget, a budget that is some $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon itself has requested. So out of that $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon has requested, this is an amendment that says take $5 million and transfer it to the Secretary of Agriculture; that is to say, authorize the Secretary of Defense to transfer this to the Secretary of Agriculture. This $5 million program per year was eliminated. We should never have done that. This is to correct an egregious mistake that we made. This has everything in the world to do with malnutrition and hunger among children. This $5 million has been used effectively nationwide--a small amount of money--as a catalyst, as an outreach program, to enable States and school districts to set up and expand the School Breakfast Program. As a matter of fact, I think one of the reasons it was eliminated was that it had been so successful, in fact, in enabling school districts to expand the School Breakfast Program, the argument then being we would have to invest more resources in the School Breakfast Program. I read from a letter received from the Food Research & Action Center that points out that only ``seven of ten, 71.4 percent, of the schools that offer school lunch participate in the School Breakfast Program. This represents only 65,000 of the almost 92,000 schools that'' participate. ``Additionally, just 39.6 percent of low-income children participating in the National School Lunch Program also participate in the School Breakfast Program. While more than 14 million low-income children participate in the National School Lunch Program, only 5.6 million participate in the School Breakfast Program.'' Is it too much to ask, as we keep talking about our children being our most precious resource, given the fact that all these children are God's children, is it too much to ask for $5 million to be put back into this program that has been so successful? That is what this amendment is all about. Mr. President, there are 8 million children who don't participate, and if these children had a chance to get a good breakfast and these children, therefore, were not hungry, they would be in a much better position to learn. When children are hungry and children do not have a good breakfast and can't start out the day, they are not going to be able to learn, and when they are not able to learn, as adults, they are not able to earn. This amendment should be adopted with 100 votes. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague. The respect is mutual. I just wanted to say--it was going to be a question, but I can just make a comment instead--as a matter of history, the School Lunch Program was created by the Congress 50 years ago, and I quote, ``As a measure of national security to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children.'' It was a direct response to the fact that many of the young men who were drafted in World War II were rejected due to conditions arising from nutritional deficiencies. So there is, in fact, a direct linkage to national defense. It is, in fact, very much a national security issue to make sure that children have full nutrition and that we do not end up with men and women later on who have not been able to learn, not been able to earn and may, in fact, not even be healthy enough to qualify to serve our Nation. So it is an interesting history, and I just wanted my colleague to know that this program is very much connected to national security. My second point is I too look forward to working with my colleague in the future. But I hope to win on this amendment now. This is simply a matter of saying, look, we have a budget that is $2.6 billion over what the Pentagon asked. There have been plenty of studies which have pointed out excesses in the defense budget. Can we not at least authorize the Secretary of Defense to transfer this $5 million. And then, finally, I say to all my colleagues that I think there is going to come a point in time where people cannot--and I know the Senator from Arizona is not trying to do this--but people cannot say, well, we shouldn't vote for this now; we can't vote for this now; we won't vote for this now; there will be a more appropriate place; there will be a more appropriate time. And I find that when it comes to all these issues that have to do with how can we refurbish and renew and restore our national vow of equal opportunity for every child, the vote always gets put off. It always gets put in parenthesis. So I absolutely take what my friend from Arizona said in good faith. I look forward to working with him. But I do think that on this bill, on this amendment, this is the time to vote for such a small step for a good many very vulnerable children in our country. I thank my colleague for his graciousness. Amendment No. 705 (Purpose: To authorize base closure rounds in 1999 and 2001)

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield at this moment.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just as a courtesy to my colleagues, let me say that I am not offering a new amendment. This is an amendment that I introduced yesterday morning. I wanted to take advantage of this time to speak about this amendment. This amendment would authorize the Secretary of Defense to transfer $5 million out of the $265 billion Pentagon budget--some $2.6 billion more than the President himself asked for--to the Secretary of Agriculture, to be used for outreach and startup grants for the school breakfast program. Mr. President, this amendment involves a very small amount of money. While it involves a small amount of money--at least given the kind of money we are dealing with here--it actually speaks to a very large question. I think the question has to do with what our priorities are. I think it is a distorted priority to provide the Pentagon with $2.6 billion more than it originally asked for. For the third year in a row--these are one of the few times I can remember in my adult life that the Congress actually wants to provide the Pentagon with more money than the Pentagon has actually asked for. At the same time, when it comes to some really vitally important programs that dramatically affect children's lives, we don't make the investment. By way of background: In the welfare bill that passed last Congress, $5 million was eliminated from a critically important program, which was a program that on the one hand provided States and school districts with the information they needed--call it an outreach program--about how they could set up a breakfast program, and on the other hand, it provided some badly needed funding for some of the poorer school districts to actually, for example, purchase refrigerators in order to have milk. It is difficult to understand how this could have been cut, especially given the heralded success of the school breakfast program. Some things I guess we do not know enough about, but we do know that a nutritious breakfast really is important in enabling a child to learn. We also know that if a child is not able to learn, as I said yesterday, when he or she becomes an adult they may very well not be able to earn. This is a small amount of money that makes a huge difference. So this amendment says that out of a $265 billion Pentagon budget, some $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon asked for, can't we authorize the Secretary of Defense to be able to transfer $5 million--$5 million--for school breakfasts? For what I would call catalyst money that gets necessary information out to the States and school districts and some needed assistance by way of refrigerators and resources to enable them to expand the school breakfast program. Mr. President, I want to point out by way of context that there are still some 27,000 schools that do not have school breakfast programs available. There are some 8 million vulnerable, low-income children, therefore, who are not able to participate. Too many of those children go to school without having had a nutritious breakfast. This may seem abstract to many of us in the Senate, but it is a very concrete and a very important issue. This amendment has the support of FRAC, the Food Research Action Center, which has a longstanding history of working on childhood hunger and nutrition issues. It has the support of the Elementary School Principals Association, the American School Food Services, and Bread for the World. Mr. President, I might point out that these organizations have a tremendous amount of credibility for all of us who care about hunger and malnutrition. These are organizations that have been down in the trenches for years working on these issues. I don't think anybody can quarrel with the values and ethics of Bread for the World and the work that they have done, much of it very rooted in the religious community, and the American School Food Services. These are food service workers. These are the people who know what it means when they can't provide a nutritious breakfast to low-income students. This is a special endorsement for me because my mother was a food service worker. What the Elementary School Principals Association is saying by endorsing this amendment is simply this: If a child hasn't had a nutritious breakfast, how is that child going to be able to learn? Mr. President, let me talk a little bit about the extent of hunger and the scope of the problem. This is from the Food Research Action Committee. Approximately 4 million American children under the age of 12 go hungry, and approximately 9.6 million are in risk of hunger. According to estimates based on the results of the most comprehensive study ever done on childhood hunger in the United States--this was the community childhood hunger education project--based on the results of over 5,000 surveys of families with incomes below 185 percent of poverty, applied to the best available national data, FRAC estimates that of the approximately 13.6 million children under age 12 in the United States, 29 percent live in families that must cope with hunger or the risk of hunger during some part of one or more months in the previous year. Let me just raise a question with colleagues before we have this vote. I just think that this goes to the heart of what we are about. This goes to the heart of priorities. I, as a Senator from Minnesota, tire of the symbolic politics. We have had the conferences on early childhood development. The books and the reports, the magazines, the TV documentaries have come out. We know--let me repeat this--we know that in order for children to do well, it is important that they have a nutritious breakfast. We know that when children are hungry, they don't do well in school. We know, as parents and grandparents, that we want to make sure that our children and our grandchildren start school after having a nutritious breakfast. And we also know, based on clear evidence, that sometimes we don't know what we don't want to know--that there is a significant amount of children who still go to bed hungry or still wake up in the morning hungry and go to school hungry. Why can't the U.S. Senate make this small investment in this program which was so important in enabling States and school districts to expand the school breakfast program? Mr. President, I am going to bring this amendment to the floor of the Senate over and over and over again starting with this defense authorization bill. Let me just read. I am assuming that my colleagues are interested in this information, and I am assuming that we want to address the problem. Let me just talk a little bit about this relationship between hunger and nutrition and learning. Undernutrition increases the risk of illness and its severity. Undernutrition has a negative effect on a child's ability to learn . . . Iron deficiency anemia is a specific kind of undernutrition and is one of the most prevalent undernutritional problems in the United States especially among children. Even mild cases lead to shortened attention span, irritability, fatigue and decreased ability to concentrate . . . Hunger leads to nervousness, irritability, disinterest in the learning situation, and an inability to concentrate . . . Hunger . . . disrupt(s) the learning process--one developmental step is lost, and it is difficult to move on to the next one. A United States Department of Agriculture study of the lunch and breakfast programs demonstrated that these programs make nutritional improvements in children's diets. I could go on and on, but--I see my colleague from Arizona in the Chamber--I will try to summarize. Let me just make it clear that the data is out there. And over and over again, in report after report after report, we see clearly that malnourished children are not going to do well in school, and we know that 8 million low-income children are not able to participate because there is no School Breakfast Program. We had a $5 million USDA outreach program that enabled school districts to get started, provided them with badly needed information, provided them with refrigerators if they needed that, and we eliminated it. And at the same time we have a Pentagon budget that is $2.6 billion more than the Pentagon asked. We all say we care about children. We are all referring to these studies that say children have to do well in school, we are talking about the importance of good nutrition, and here we have an opportunity to make a difference. So, Mr. President, I want to over and over again come to the floor with amendments that speak to this question. One more time, just in terms of looking at the endorsements for this amendment, we have endorsements from FRAC, which is Food Research and Action Center--FRAC has been as involved in children's nutritional issues as any organization I know--the Elementary School Principals Association--they are saying to us, colleagues, at least make sure that children are able to have a nutritious breakfast. I think the elementary school principals know something about learning and something about children at this young age--American School Food Services and Bread for the World. I hope we will have strong support for this amendment. I point out by way of conclusion that if you look at participation in the School Breakfast Program from 1976 to 1996 --and remember, once upon a time, I say to my colleagues, we used to think this program was only for rural areas, for students with long bus rides, students who were not going to be able to eat at home. Now what we find is the reality that in many of these families there are split shifts, different shifts, both parents working, and all too often these kids in urban areas and suburbs come to school and they really have not had a nutritious breakfast. We saw a good increase in participation in the School Breakfast Program from 1976 to 1996, but now what has happened as a result of eliminating this small $5 million outreach program is there is tremendous concern from USDA all the way to the different child advocacy organizations that the participation is going to begin to decline. So here is an opportunity, colleagues, to invest a small amount of money in the basic idea that each child ought to have the same opportunity to reach his or her full potential. This is an opportunity for all of us to come through for these vulnerable children, understanding full well--and I know my colleague from Arizona is out here, but I say to him and this really is my conclusion--understanding full well that, indeed, there is a linkage to reform and to the work that he and others are doing on trying to get the money out of politics. There are a number of us who are absolutely convinced we have to act on this agenda. That is to say these children and these families are not the heavy hitters; they are not the big players; they are not the givers; they do not have the big lobbyists; they all too often are faceless and voiceless, and that it is profoundly wrong. I hope to get 100 votes for this amendment. I yield the floor. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up amendment 670.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just a very brief response. I appreciate the comments of my colleague from South Carolina. I always appreciate what he has to say. I do want to point out that one of my amendments--and I am hoping we can have some agreement on it--just says we should really follow the action of the House and do not eliminate a program within DOD which is a critical testing program for atomic veterans to find out what happened to them. The second amendment I have has a lot to do with defense. It has to do with veterans who found out after the fact that in the budget resolution we essentially put into effect cuts in veterans' health care. I just have to say to all my colleagues, these veterans are very much about our national defense. I don't think it is too much out of a $2.6 billion excess of what the President and Pentagon even asked for to say, look, let's take $400 million and put that into the VA health care budget. These veterans are all about our national defense. I think this is going to be a critically important vote, and I look forward to the debate on it. The third amendment I offered was an amendment which dealt with the School Breakfast Program. I again have to say, it would seem to me when we are talking about $2.6 billion more than what the President asked for, it is not so much to take $5 million which is so critical to enabling States to start up school breakfast programs and put it towards making sure that children have a nutritious breakfast before they go to school. This is all about priorities. It is not a question, I say to other Senators, of not wanting a strong defense. This is a small amount of money we are saying the Secretary might be authorized to transfer, a small amount of money with a very big bang. I just finished talking about how my Pell grant amendment, too, impacts our national defense. So, again, these amendments all focus on the $2.6 billion above and beyond what the President requested for the Pentagon. These amendments say we ought to at least give the Secretary the authority to transfer some of the small amount of funding to make sure veterans get the health care that they need or to make sure that we re-establish startup grants for the School Breakfast Program, to make sure we keep the program that we have had for the atomic veterans, and, finally, I have raised questions about an investment in education, but it is all done within the framework of an excess $2.6 billion. This is a debate about priorities, it is not a debate about who is for a strong defense. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, we have a budget plan that provides an excess $2.6 billion to the Pentagon above and beyond what the President requested. This amendment would authorize the Secretary of Defense to invest that $2.6 billion in Pell grants instead of $2.6 billion into the Pentagon budget. If this amendment passes, we would see the maximum Pell grant go up to $3,800, and Pell grants stretch to reach 4,278,000 students. This would make a huge difference. There was an excellent piece by Larry Gladieux in Monday's New York Times. Gladieux made the argument that what is now being proposed--and by the way, I am trying to provide a rigorous, if you will, critique of both Republicans' and Democrats' plans on this--both the President's plan and what is being done here in the Congress through tax deductions and tax credits does not reach those families for whom higher education really has not been attainable. He pointed out, for example, that if a tax credit program is not refundable, many families with incomes under $28,000 and many community college students are not going to benefit at all. Talk to your financial aid offices. Talk to your students. Talk to people in your States. I know this is the case in New Mexico as well. I know that Senator Bingaman has been a huge advocate of the Pell Grant Program. You talk to many in these community college programs, many of whom are older and going back to school, and they will tell you that the Pell Grant Program is the most effective, efficient way of meeting their needs. Mr. President, I do not remember exactly the statistics, but there has been something like a flat 8 percent graduation rate for women and men coming from families with incomes under $20,000 a year since the late 1970's. That is a disgrace. We know higher education is key to economic success. All of us wish that higher education will be there for our children and our grandchildren, but still we have a lot of families for whom it is not affordable. The best way to make sure they have the assistance they need, the best way to make sure the Pell Grant Program can help working families, moderate-income families, even reach into the middle-income range, is to expand the Pell Grant Program. I suggest that when we have all sorts of reports that there are tens of billions of dollars the Pentagon cannot even account for in its expenditures-- Senator Grassley from Iowa has done an excellent job in continuing to focus on this issue--and when you have a situation where the Pentagon in the budget resolution receives more money than the President even requested, it would seem to me we could take that $2.6 billion in excess of what is needed or has been requested and instead put it into a very successful higher education program which is all about our national defense. We do not do well as a nation unless we have a skilled work force. As we look to the next millennium, when so many of the industries are going to be womenmade and manmade--and many of them, Mr. President, since you are a strong advocate of small business, are small businesses--let us make sure that higher education is affordable. Let us do something that will make a huge difference. And one of the things we do is take a small amount of money--it is a small amount of money in the context of the Pentagon budget--and put it into expanding the Pell Grant Program. There is not one of my colleagues, Democrat or Republican, who is going to hear from the higher education community, the students or their families that more of an investment in the Pell Grant Program is not extremely important to them. It is very important to the families we represent. It is very important to the future of our States. It is very important to the future of our country. I look forward to a full debate about our priorities as we go forward with this defense authorization bill and get back to debate on each of these amendments. With that, Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for their graciousness in letting me introduce these amendments today and I will yield the floor.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. I call up amendment 666.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce some amendments so that my colleagues have some knowledge of them. We will get back to them when there is more time to debate these amendments. The School Breakfast Program was established back in 1966 as a pilot program. It was primarily located in rural districts. The idea was that children who lived in rural areas with long bus rides might not be able to have time to eat breakfast at home. Since then, the School Breakfast Program has really become a wonderful program upon which parents and students heavily rely. In many families, a single parent is working or both parents are working, and school breakfasts are recognized as one of the most beneficial nutrition programs we have. Let me make it clear that a hungry child cannot learn and will likely grow up to be an adult who cannot earn. We are talking about a very wise investment. One more time. Sometimes we debate in this Chamber and we make issues out to be so complex. This is simple. A hungry child cannot learn and later on that child is quite likely to end up being an adult who cannot earn. To give some context, we still have some 27,000 schools that are not able to make breakfast available or that do not make breakfast available to eligible students, and 8 million low-income children who need breakfast but do not participate. What my amendment does is correct an action that we as Congress took which was egregious. In the welfare bill that we passed, we eliminated a $5 million fund which was an outreach and start-up grant for school breakfast programs. It was created in 1990, and it was made permanent in 1994. These outreach grants are one-time grants that help States develop school breakfast programs. Let me be crystal clear as to what is going on here. Every low-income student who is eligible for a free lunch is eligible for breakfast as well but only 40 percent of those students are able to get the assistance they need for a healthy and nutritious breakfast. The $5 million grant program was eliminated because it was an effective catalyst toward school districts expanding both their School Breakfast Programs. The welfare bill eliminated it because it was a success. Now, why in the world do we want to eliminate a small grant program which was such an important tool in providing a nutritious breakfast for low-income children in America? What this amendment does is to point out that in the budget plan we have $2.6 billion for the Pentagon above and beyond what the President requested. Can we not authorize the Secretary of Defense to take $5 million out of $2.6 billion more than the President even requested and put that into a grant program for States and local school districts so they can start up school breakfast programs? I submit that part of our definition of national security has to be the security of local communities--where every child is able to reach her and his full potential--because when our children do well, we do well. It is unconscionable that we eliminated an effective, crucial $5 million grant program when so many low-income children who need a nutritious and healthy breakfast are not able to have it. So this is an amendment which gives the Secretary of Defense the authority to transfer to the Secretary of Agriculture $5 million from the $2.6 billion above and beyond what the President requested for the Pentagon. Is that too much to ask, $5 million to help State and local school districts expand the School Breakfast Program so more of the vulnerable children in this country can at least have a nutritious breakfast? That is what this amendment speaks to. This is amendment 670. Mr. President, I now would ask unanimous consent that this amendment be laid aside.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, before I go any further, I ask unanimous consent that Justin Page, who is an intern, be allowed to be in the Chamber during the duration of this debate.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up amendment 670.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I would ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be laid aside.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this amendment would not be subject to any point of order. It authorizes the Secretary of Defense to transfer some $400 million to the VA budget for the health care for veterans. Mr. President, this amendment is an effort to ameliorate some damage that was done in the budget resolution that--I say to my colleagues, I do not think any Senator was really familiar with--made significant cuts in VA health care. My amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill would, again, authorize the Secretary of Defense to transfer $400 million from the DOD budget to restore cuts in VA discretionary health care spending. This amendment responds to the health care needs of veterans by restoring some badly needed funding for programs to the fiscal year 1997 level. Mr. President, even with this restoration, chances are remote that the VA health care funding for fiscal year 1998 will exceed fiscal year 1997. We all know--I just want to make this clear to my colleagues-- that we have an aging veteran population. We all know that as more veterans live to be over 65 and over 85, there is more of a strain on the health care budget. We want to be sure that the cut that took place in the budget resolution--which I don't think hardly any Senator was aware of, although all of the veterans organizations were aware, and there is a fair amount of indignation around the country on this question--we want to make sure that these cuts in veterans health care don't end up forcing veterans who were either disabled, ill, or poor to have to shift from VA health care to other health care. That would be a travesty for the veterans and their families, and it would also have negative consequences for VA health care in our country. Mr. President, it has become clear that the cuts in the veterans' discretionary programs that were agreed to as part of the budget resolution are going to have some severe, if not devastating, consequences on the quality and availability of VA health care for disabled and needy veterans. The fiscal year 1998 cuts will limit VA's ability to serve all patients entitled to VA health care. If veterans health care benefits are delayed because of reduced staffing--you have to make your cuts somewhere--or a longer waiting period, then we are going to be shortchanging men and women who have risked their lives for our country. Let me give you some sense of the impact of the $400 million reduction in VA discretionary spending in fiscal year 1998. Mr. President, to give you some idea about it, a $400 million reduction in VA discretionary spending in fiscal year 1998 is roughly equivalent to the cost of operating one of the smaller of the VA's 22 integrated service networks. I held a forum, I say to my colleagues, in May. It was unbelievable. We had a huge turnout of veterans representing, I think, all of the veterans organizations that I can think of--Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled Americans, Paralyzed Veterans, Military for the Purple Heart, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, atomic veterans, you name it. The Minnesota veterans were unanimous in denouncing the cuts in some really essential VA health care resources. Like my colleagues, I supported the sense-of-the-Senate amendment that was introduced by Senators Daschle, Domenici and Rockefeller on May 21, which called for full funding of the VA discretionary programs, including medical care for fiscal year 1998. I supported it for two reasons. First, I don't think many of us were aware that in the budget resolution there were going to be cuts in our investment in resources for VA health care. Second, I think it is simply the wrong thing to do. I think there is a sacred contract with our veterans, and if we are going to be making cuts and do deficit reduction, we ought not to be doing it on their backs. So, Mr. President, I am convinced that this amendment is appropriate. I am convinced that it is really quite appropriate to pass an amendment that gives the Secretary of Defense the authorization to authorize this transfer of funding because, after all, these veterans were fighting for the defense of the Nation. That is what it was all about. I think it is critically important that we live up to this commitment. Mr. President, let me just finish up again and say to colleagues that I am just introducing these amendments because, as I understand this process, we are going to have a cloture vote this afternoon and we may not have votes for about a day and there will be more time to discuss these amendments. At least, that is my understanding. I do want colleagues to be familiar with each of them. I think that the atomic veterans, unfortunately, have been out of sight and out of mind for all too many people in the country. This is a critically important amendment to those veterans so that they can know what happened to them. That is the very least we can do for those veterans, their children and grandchildren. On the second amendment, I am absolutely convinced that very few Senators were aware of the fact that the budget resolution made these cuts. It was all done in good conscience. Some of my closest friends worked on the budget resolution and supported it. My amendment simply says that we should take $400 million and heal these cuts. My amendment authorizes the Secretary of Defense to do that. I know Dr. Ken Kaiser came out to Minnesota and met with veterans, and he wasn't aware of these cuts. I have not met one person in charge of delivering health care for veterans who believes that this can be done in such a way that it will not seriously damage the quality of health care. I am not just giving some kind of trump speech on the floor of the Senate. This is very important. We ought to, at the very least, be able to transfer this small amount of money and restore this funding for our VA health care. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I see my colleague from Georgia. Mr. CLELAND addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up amendment number 668.