Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleagues.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with and we go forward.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate what the Senator from North Dakota said about our country. And I would say to my colleague who is presiding, the Presiding Officer, that I have said probably every week, when I go home, to someone that when I come to the floor of the Senate I still get goose bumps. It is a real honor to serve in the U.S. Senate and for Minnesota. If you look at these buildings here in Washington, DC, and you think about what they stand for--my father was a Jewish immigrant who fled persecution in Russia. It is a wonderful country, and we ought to emphasize the positive. Mr. President, next week we will have debate--not hate, but rather a debate. And I would like to lay out my framework just for really not more than 10 minutes. Mr. President, I came to the floor of the Senate at the beginning of this Congress, and I had a resolution. It was nothing more than a sense-of-the-Senate amendment that it was the sense of the Senate that we would not take any action that could create more hunger or homelessness among children. Actually, it was defeated twice. Then the third time it was passed by a voice vote. I now regret that I accepted a voice vote, because I think it was a symbolic vote, because if I look at this deficit reduction, the issue becomes deficit reduction based upon what standard? Is it deficit reduction based on the path of least political resistance? Are we asking some of the citizens to tighten their belts who cannot? And are we leaving a lot of special interests untouched? I think we are. I certainly will be active in the debate next week with amendments to force some discussions on these issues, and I want to know where Senators stand. We have something like $35 billion slated for cuts in nutrition programs for children. Food stamps and the Women, Infants, and Children Program, the WIC Program, is an incredibly important program, because if you were to ask me as a former teacher what is the most important education program, I would say to make sure every woman who is expecting a child--I just had a grandson, our third grandchild, a week ago. That grandson, Joshua Paul, I think is going to have a good life. He was born healthy, but my daughter, Marcia, had an adequate diet. She had the resources to make sure she did. My God, children at birth are not going to have the same chance if their mothers have not had a decent diet. We are cutting the Women, Infants, and Children Program. The Food Stamp Program is not perfect; we ought to make it more accountable. The fact of the matter is, imperfections and all, we dramatically expanded the Food Stamp Program after the expose on hunger and malnutrition in America, and we did it in the early 1970's. We had some national standards, and we implemented this program across the country. We do not have all the children anymore with distended bellies. We do not have the same amount of hunger and malnutrition, though we still have too much. We are cutting into these programs. When it came to the Pentagon budget, which was $7 billion more than the Pentagon asked, when it came to the military contractors, when it came to star wars or Stealth or Trident, we just gave the money away. They have the clout. They are the heavy hitters, they have the lobbyists, and they did just fine. But the children in America did not, especially poor children. I just do not think there is a standard of fairness. I think there is consensus that you have to pay off the interest on the debt. That is what this is all about. There is not a Senator here that could be proud of the building up of the debt in this country. The question becomes, when you make the cuts and you do the deficit reduction, where is the Minnesota standard of fairness? That is the question. Mr. President, the Finance Committee met and came out with $245 billion of tax cuts. But here is the interesting thing. If you have family incomes below $30,000 a year, which is about half the people in this country, you have the earned-income tax credit taken away from you and you pay more. You are paying a tax all the way up to families $30,000 a year and under. But, by golly, if you are in the top 1 percent of this population with incomes over $350,000 a year, you get a $5,626 break. And if it is $200,000 a year, you get $3,416. This is a subsidy in inverse relationship to need. If you are at the top of the population income-wise, the top 1 percent, you get a huge tax break. If you make over $200,000 you do, and if you make over $100,000 you do. But if you make under $30,000 a year, you do not get any break; you pay more. This is like a subsidy in inverse relationship to need. Same issue. This is what I am going to zero in on next week: Why have the military contractors got everything they wanted? Why do the children lose some of their nutritional programs? Who has the power in America? Who has power in the Congress? Special interests dominate. Why does the top 1 percent of the population get a huge tax break and the bottom 50 percent of the population get an additional tax? Who has power? Who has the lobbyists? Who are the special interests? Who is well represented here? There is no Minnesota standard of fairness in this plan. Finally, Mr. President, I have two other issues to mention. One is student financial aid. It is not coming up enough. I was a teacher for 20 years, and when we marked up the cuts in financial aid out of committee, I asked colleagues--and maybe they have done this--but I said to colleagues, ``Have you had any town meetings on your campuses? Because the picture you seem to have of students is not the same picture I get from holding community meetings back in my State''--Moorhead State, Inver Hills Community College, Minneapolis Community College, University of Minnesota at Duluth. Because what happens to me is fully half the students, if not more, come up to me and they say, either publicly or someone who is not good at speaking in a public meeting will come up afterwards and say, ``Senator, I'm a nontraditional student.'' That is the first sentence. The next sentence, especially at the community colleges, is, ``I am older than you''--they always like to say that--``and I lost my job. I am going back to school. I don't have the resources. Don't cut the financial aid. I am a single parent. I am the welfare mother you say you want to go into workfare. Don't cut my financial aid. Senator, we can't afford it.'' Or if it is the 18-to-22-year-old group--many of our undergraduates are going to school 6 years, not 4 years and they have two and three minimum wage jobs and we are cutting financial aid for students. And then, Mr. President, there are the students who sell plasma to buy textbooks to begin the semester. What in the world are we doing ending the grace period on the interest on loans 6 months after graduation? Why are we ending the parent plus loan program for moderate- and middle-income families? Why are we putting a tax on the institutions based on their loan portfolio? Why do we not understand that 75 percent of the student financial aid package are loans now, not grants? What in the world are we thinking? The missing piece here is the impact on people. I have held these town meetings on campuses. I do not know, maybe other Senators have gotten a different picture from students, but that is the picture I get. So, again, $245 billion of tax cuts, but cuts in students financial aid; $7 billion more than the Pentagon wants, but cuts in student financial aid. Mr. President, I am not talking about Medicare and Medicaid and health care today, but I will tell you this, this is a rush to recklessness and it will not work in my State of Minnesota. We have done something of which I am proud. We have 300,000 children that receive medical assistance. It is a safety net program. Is that going to be cut? I meet with people from the developmental disabilities community, and I have people say to me--I remember a woman in another town meeting. Are we holding town meetings? Are we talking to people back in the States that are going to be affected by this? She says to me--and this Chair is a close friend of mine, I respect the Chair, the Senator from New Hampshire--she says to me, ``Paul, the Americans With Disabilities Act is going to be a cruel lie for me if I don't have someone to help me get out of bed in the morning, a personal attendant. I can't go and own my own small business, and I do own my own small business. I am intelligent and I am smart and I live a life of dignity. Do you know what you are doing with cuts in medical assistance? Are you going to restrict eligibility, less access to personal attendants? Are we going to have to be poor to be eligible for any of this? What are you doing? That is the question. Don't be so reckless with our lives.'' I hear the same thing in rural Minnesota. I could go on and on, Mr. President. But the question I have, by way of summary, because I do not want to dominate the floor today, is why, if we are going to do deficit reduction, not do it based on some standard of Minnesota fairness? Why do we have a disproportionate number of cuts that affect the most vulnerable citizens in this country, the poor, namely women and children? Why are we cutting financial aid for higher education? Why are we cutting into health care and the quality of health care that is delivered to people? I am willing to argue this issue of quality later on for 20 hours plus in terms of what this is going to do for Medicare and medical assistance. But at the same time, Mr. President, you have the tax cuts that mainly go to people on the top. You have more than the Pentagon asked for. And then, finally, and this is going to be the piece that I am looking most forward to in this debate, what about all of the subsidies that go to the oil companies and the tobacco companies and the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies? What about all those loopholes in deductions and giveaways? I will tell you something. I think what makes people more angry about the political process in the Nation's Capital is the feeling that some of these special interests who are the heavy hitters and hire the lobbyists and are the big players and the big givers get their way. This is a perfect example. I am going to come out here on the floor and I am going to say--and we are going to have votes on these amendments--if you want to have deficit reduction, why do you not ask some of these large corporations that get tax giveaways to tighten their belts? Should they not be a part of deficit reduction? You know what? Every time you do that, all sorts of colleagues think of a million reasons why we should continue to give them special tax breaks. Middle-income people do not get these breaks; working people do not get these breaks; low-income people do not get these breaks. But, oh, boy, oil companies do, pharmaceutical companies do, gas companies do, coal companies do, tobacco companies do. They all get these breaks. So I think the debate next week ought to be about, where is the standard of fairness? Who is being well represented and who is not being well represented? We will have a sharp debate, I say to my colleague from Georgia. It will not be hate, it will be debate, because I believe all of us have mutual respect for one another. We feel strongly about what we are doing, and I am sure we are all doing it in good faith. But I have a lot of indignation about the priorities of this deficit reduction plan. I believe it goes against the grain of the basic Minnesota standard of fairness. I yield the floor. Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague from North Dakota for his remarks. And I will pick up on his last point. First of all, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended for 15 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, today I rise before the Senate to comment on some of the provisions of the legislation to be reported out of the Senate Finance Committee. I want to start out by asking a simple question: Why are we reducing revenue and investment in Medicare and medical assistance and higher education and other programs, which are critical to communities and people in Minnesota and all across the country, before going after some of the tax breaks for special interests that have been embedded in the tax code for decades? If we are serious about deficit reduction, it seems to me that all these loopholes and deductions and giveaways ought to also be on the table. Mr. President, what kind of priorities are these that are reflected in this bill? They are certainly not the priorities of the people I represent, who understand the value of having funding available to take care of elderly people, understand the value of taking care of vulnerable people who are in nursing homes, of boosting kids' chances to go to college, of helping struggling families enter the middle class, of ensuring that elderly people can afford health care, of making sure that children have adequate nutrition. It makes no sense at all, Mr. President. After days of closed-door meetings, this week Republicans on the committee announced their proposal for a $245 billion tax cut. Taken as a whole, this proposal includes serious reductions and cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and, in addition, includes some enormous new tax breaks for wealthy corporations and others, further worsening our budget crisis. Mr. President, instead of scaling back billions of dollars in tax breaks, it provides billions for firms with high-powered tax lobbyists and almost nothing for working families. In fact, by slashing the earned income tax credit for working families by over $42 billion, this legislation will greatly increase the tax burden on millions of citizens throughout the country. In my State of Minnesota, there will be an increase of taxes for 172,740 Minnesota taxpayers. Mr. President, these are low- and moderate-income families that are trying to work their way into the middle class. At the same time, the bill makes only a tiny, token effort to partially scale back a few loopholes in the Tax Code. And the proceeds from these modest changes are, in turn, used to subsidize new and much bigger tax breaks precisely for those taxpayers in the Nation who least need them. For example, it relaxes the alternative minimum tax that was established in 1986. What was the idea back then? The idea was that large and profitable corporations, often multinational corporations, after taking a variety of different deductions and credits and exclusions, still are going to have to pay some minimum tax. It is a part of fairness. Now what we have is a provision to scale that back. That provision ought to be struck from this piece of legislation. It is truly outrageous. If you ask people in the country, ``Do you believe that tax cuts should be a priority while at the same time we are trying to reduce the deficit?'' most would say--and the polls bear this out--``No.'' If you ask people, ``Do you believe that tax breaks for large, profitable corporations ought to be expanded rather than scaled back?'' virtually every single Minnesotan would say, ``No.'' Even so, that is exactly what the Finance Committee is about the business of doing. I offered an amendment on the budget resolution earlier this year to require that the Senate Finance Committee close $70 billion of tax loopholes over the next several years. That amendment was defeated. Next week, or the following week when we take up the reconciliation bill, I intend to have specific proposals and amendments on the floor to close tax loopholes, with up-or-down votes. If we are going to have the deficit reduction, if we are going to pay the interest on the debt--all of which we agree on--there ought to be a standard of fairness. And rather than focusing so much on the cuts in Medicare and medical assistance, rather than focusing on cuts in benefits for veterans, rather than causing great pain for children and the most vulnerable in our country, it seems to me it is not too much to ask that large corporations, wealthy corporations, pay their fair share. That is why we ought to plug some of these narrowly focused tax breaks and loopholes which allow the privileged few to escape paying their fair share, focusing on other people and forcing other people to pay higher taxes to make up the difference. This is a question of fairness. If you are going to have sacrifice, it ought to be equitable sacrifice. Let me make a point here that is often overlooked. We can spend money just as easily through the Tax Code, through tax breaks, as we can through the normal appropriations process. Spending is spending, whether it comes in the form of a Government check or whether it is a tax break for some special purpose like a subsidy, a credit, a deduction, accelerated depreciation--you name it. Some of these tax expenditures are justified, they ought to be kept. But it does seem to me that, in a time of tight budgets, in a time when we are focusing on deficit reduction, in a time when we are cutting into nutritional programs for children and higher education and health care and environmental protection, why in the world are not the tax subsidies for the large pharmaceutical companies and oil companies and tobacco companies and insurance companies and you name it, why are they not on the table? Various groups, from all ideological perspectives, from the National Taxpayers Union to the Cato Institute to the Progressive Policy Institute to Citizens for Tax Justice, have prepared a list of tax loopholes and other subsidies which they believe should be eliminated. But, despite the logic of their approach, which is a Minnesota standard of fairness, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have chosen the path of least political resistance: Slash the programs for the vulnerable elderly, slash the programs for the vulnerable poor, slash the earned-income tax credit, slash the programs for child care, slash the programs for middle-income people. But when it comes to these large, multinational corporate interests who march on Washington every day, the big players, the heavy hitters, people who have the lobbyists, for some reason, we do not ask them to tighten their belts at all. It is only fair that this be a part of the agenda. So I want to just outline very briefly some of the areas on which I want to focus the attention of my colleagues next week. Let me give but a few examples. I already talked about the minimum tax. The effort is to scale that back for certain corporations. That's wrong. Everybody ought to pay some minimum tax. Second, let me talk about expensing for the oil and gas industry. This has been a special break for this industry. They get to expense their oil and gas exploration costs, instead of depreciating them over time. It is an expensive tax benefit for this industry. Why should the oil and gas industry receive special treatment in the Tax Code which is not generally available to other companies and industries? It is a simple question. If we are about the business of deficit reduction, we ought to close this loophole. Or take section 936, the Puerto Rico tax credit that has been debated in some detail in recent years. The Finance Committee has finally acknowledged there ought to be some change. But what it does is it repeals this over a fairly long period of time, 7 years or so, with generous transition benefits for corporations in the interim period. If we are going to repeal it, I think what we have to do is move as quickly as possible. It simply makes no sense. For those who support a flatter tax or a fairer tax or tax justice and think we ought to make the cuts and ought to do the belt tightening, this ought to be on the table. [[Page S 15314]] Or consider the special exclusion for foreign-earned income that has been in this code for decades. This little gem will cost taxpayers between $8 and $9 billion over the next 5 years. If you are a U.S. citizen living abroad, you get an exclusion of taxation for the first $70,000 you make. You get an exclusion of taxation on the first $70,000 you make. So, if you make $170,000, you do not pay anything on $70,000 of that. Again, let us talk about a standard of fairness and let us make some of these cuts, not just based upon the path of least political resistance, but on the basis of a path of some fairness.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I have 3 more minutes to conclude my remarks.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I also rise today to strongly oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [ANWR]. This has been an issue that I have been involved in from the time I first came to the Senate. There was a filibuster over ANWR that I led when I was here just a short period of time and now ANWR is back again. The Energy Committee has voted, over the objections of a large bipartisan group of Senators, to open up ANWR for drilling and to use the revenue to meet reconciliation instructions. I note a letter from former President Bush to my distinguished colleague from Alaska, that is on everybody's desk, supporting this. I am both aware of and respectful of the need to balance the budget. That is why I have stood here on the Senate floor and voted for many spending cuts. But there are other ways and measures that do not balance the budget at the expense of our natural resources. Unfortunately, though, all I see is big industry, oil companies included, winning big, and our natural resources losing big. This is poor energy policy, poor environmental policy, and it is politics that in many ways I think is profoundly wrongheaded and even cynical. First, let me talk about energy policy. The argument is that drilling in ANWR will lessen our reliance on foreign oil, but we do not really know whether there even is oil in ANWR. And if there is, we do not know how much. The latest numbers from the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that it is, at best, 4 million to 5 million barrels. This is equal to 1 year's worth of U.S. oil consumption. That is no long-term solution to energy dependence, and dependence on foreign oil. Furthermore, there is a mixed message. At the same time proponents of ANWR say that we ought to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, they are pushing to lift the North Slope oil export ban and selling off oil reserves in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I do not see how it is possible to make the argument for drilling in ANWR, at the same time that we are exporting some of our oil. It is just inconsistent, and it is bad energy policy. The discussion about ANWR supplying jobs is also way off the mark. If you just look at some statistics from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, they estimate that by the year 2010, we could generate 1.1 million jobs, by getting serious about saved energy and efficient energy use, which makes far more sense. Now, let me talk about environmental policy. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of this country's greatest treasures. The preservation of this land and its plants and its animals and the way of life they support is vital. ANWR contains the Nation's most significant polar bear denning habitat on land, supports 300,000 snow geese, migratory birds from six continents, and a concentrated porcupine caribou calving ground. Given all that ANWR has to offer, I am appalled that many of my colleagues are willing to drill in ANWR without the usual procedure of an Environmental Impact Statement as required by current law. I pushed in committee to have such an environmental impact statement but my amendment was defeated. When it was being considered, my colleagues asked me how it would affect scoring. This points to exactly what is going on here: We are selling important environmental protections, and we are mortgaging the environment for a momentary short-run budgetary gain. Mr. President, finally, let me just make a concluding point. For thousands of years, the Gwich'in people have relied on the porcupine caribou to provide their food and meet their spiritual needs. I have heard them speak very eloquently and directly about what oil drilling in ANWR would do to their way of life. In fact, many of them may have to leave a way of life they have practiced for thousands of years if drilling in ANWR happens. This is a one-sided battle. People like the Gwich'in want to save the environment. But they are not the big oil companies. They do not have the money. They do not have the lobbyists, and they do not have the lawyers here every day. I believe, once again, to open up ANWR to oil drilling through the back door of the budgetary process is profoundly mistaken. It is not the basis on [[Page S 15315]] which we should make this decision, and I think it would be a huge mistake for this Nation. Our natural resources are among the most important things we can leave to future generations. Those resources are in our care. Our children and our grandchildren--we keep talking about our children and our grandchildren--deserve more than what this bad energy policy, bad environmental policy, and shortsighted politicking would leave them. I urge my colleagues to support an amendment to the reconciliation bill to strike the provision opening ANWR to drilling. It is time to get our priorities right, and if we are serious about doing well for our children and our grandchildren, we will make the protection of the environment and the protection of ANWR our very highest priority. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 7 minutes to speak as in morning business.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I also want to speak on one other matter that I think is very important to the country.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, there is a provision right now on some of the corporate-owned life insurance that has generated some opposition from the insurance industry and large employers. Frankly, it had been abused. I refer my colleagues to an article by Allan Sloan, ``Companies Find a Premium Way To Take an Unjustified Tax Break.'' He talks about Wal-Mart taking out this insurance on virtually all their employees. The money does not go to their employees as beneficiaries, but Wal-Mart gets to take a deduction on whatever money they put into the insurance for every single employee. Again, we are talking about losing billions of dollars over the years. I am going to be talking about this at some great length when we finally get down to the debate on this reconciliation bill and when we finally get down to the point where the rubber meets the road. These are about four or five examples. I intend to come to the floor with at least some of these specific provisions. What I am going to be saying to my colleagues is: Look, eliminate them. Because what happens is, when these companies or these citizens who do not need this assistance get these kind of breaks, other citizens end up having to pay more taxes. It is not fair. It is not tax fairness. And, in addition, it is an expenditure of Government money that we can no longer afford. That is what it amounts to. If we are going to do the deficit reduction, we ought to do it on the basis of a standard of fairness. I ask the question one more time, by way of conclusion today. How come we are focusing so much on the elderly? How come we are focusing so much on the children? How come we are focusing so much on health care? How come we are focusing so much on working families, low- and moderate-income families? How come we are stripping away environmental protection? How come we are stripping away some basic consumer safety provisions that are important to all of the citizens of this country, but at the same time, when it comes to some of this corporate welfare, some of these outrageous breaks that go to some of the largest corporations in America and throughout the world that are just doing fine and can afford to tighten their belts, they are not asked to be a part of the sacrifice? These votes next week will be a litmus test of whether or not Democrats and Republicans are serious about deficit reduction based upon a standard of fairness. I look forward to the debate. Mr. President, in the absence of any colleagues here, I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended for an additional 7 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I might be granted 10 minutes to speak as in morning business.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I know we are about to go into recess, and I thank my colleagues for their graciousness. I appreciate this time. I come before the Senate to underscore my commitment to ending domestic violence in America. As I have said on the floor before, every time a person in my State of Minnesota dies at the hand of an abuser, I will make sure that their story becomes a part of the Congressional Record. As my colleagues know, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It is a month that is designated to raise awareness about domestic violence. In addition, the YWCA has designated this week as their call for a ``Week Without Violence.'' Today, in particular, their efforts will focus on confronting violence against women. So, Mr. President, it is for this reason that I have chosen this special day to come to the floor of the Senate to make this statement. It is with some sadness, pain, and anger that I will read the names of five Minnesota women and one Minnesota child who were apparently killed at the hands of someone they knew. The circumstances are described in the record compiled by the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women. Mr. President, I must state at the onset that none of the people charged in these murders has been convicted yet. Therefore, I will not use the victims' real names. I come to the floor of the Senate to describe these cases so that we will remember how deeply this violence scars our society. And most importantly, as a reaffirmation of any commitment--and I hope the commitment of all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike--to work toward ending the cycle of violence. Indeed, Mr. President, if we are ever going to stop the violence in our communities, in our workplaces, and in our streets, we are going to have to begin by stopping violence in our homes. Mr. President, domestic violence continues to be the single most significant cause of injury to women in the United States of America. Yet, this violence knows no boundaries of age, or gender, or race, or geography, or income, or education. The violence goes on year after year and generation after generation. A study by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the Department of Justice found that mistreated youngsters who grow up in violent homes were twice as likely to commit brutal crimes as were children from nonviolent homes. Not surprising. If you grow up in brutal circumstances, that can very well make you brutal. In Minnesota, in 1994, at least 19 women and 7 children were brutally killed by a spouse, a former partner, or someone they knew. So it is with pain, but also with great determination, I ask that we honor the memory of individuals who apparently died as a result of domestic violence. We should be mindful of the fact that these women could be your friends, they could be your neighbors, they could be your coworkers, they could be your sisters, they could be your mothers, they could be your wives. It is from my heart that I ask that we end this kind of violence, that we do everything we can to end this kind of violence that has such a painful cost for individuals, their families, and their communities. Individuals: Sue, 31. A sheriff's deputy found the bodies of her and her ex-husband in a bed in their home. Authorities had no doubt the homicides were murder-suicide, and believe her ex-husband shot her as she slept, and then shot himself. Both were wearing nightclothes, and a single-shot, 12-gauge shotgun was found by the side of the bed. Joyce, age 27. She and her boyfriend were found dead in the apartment they shared. The police said that the boyfriend apparently shot her and then turned the gun on himself. A shotgun was found near the bodies. Marie, 30. She was found dead from stab wounds. Her husband was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Deborah, age 51. She was found buried in a wilderness area. Her son was charged with first-degree murder in the strangulation death of his mother. He admitted to killing her because she did not like his girlfriend. He said he strangled his mother with the power cord of his radio, and then put her body in the trunk of the car and drove to the wilderness area and buried her. Carol, age 40. Her 6-year-old son reported that she and her boyfriend were seated on the couch and fighting. Her boyfriend had a rifle pointed at her head and told her he would kill her if she contacted the police. She then reportedly said, ``Go ahead.'' And her son [[Page S 15284]] said he then heard two shots. The boyfriend has been charged with second-degree murder. Anne, age 3. She died after being stabbed in the head. Her stepfather has been charged with first-degree murder in her death and attempted murder and second-degree assault in the stabbing of his wife. The details of her death are too gruesome to talk about on the floor of the Senate. Mr. President, these are the recent cases of victims only in Minnesota, and only those that have been documented and well- publicized. Looking at the national statistics, I know there must be many more cases that go unreported. An American Medical Association report cites some horrifying statistics: Nearly one quarter of the women in the United States of America--more than 12 million--will be abused by a current or former partner sometime during their lives--one quarter of the women in the United States of America; 47 percent of husbands who beat their wives do so three or more times a year; according to FBI statistics, at least 30 percent of murdered women are killed by their intimate male partner; every 13 seconds, a child in the United States of America is reported abused or neglected; and more than three children--more than three children--die each day in the United States as a result of abuse or neglect. Mr. President, we can no longer stand by and say it is someone else's problem. What are we waiting for? Too many have spoken with their voices and with their lives, and this violence must end. Last year, the Congress passed new laws to protect victims and to prevent violence. Senator Biden has taken a major leadership role in helping to pass the Violence Against Women Act. The first comprehensive piece of legislation on the subject of violence against women was milestone legislation for this Congress and for this Nation. We all must continue to fight any efforts to weaken the crime bill, including efforts to scale back the Violence Against Women Act or the funding for it. Mr. President, domestic violence is also a critical issue to me when we talk about reforming the welfare system. I said on the floor before, it took Monica Seles 2 years to play tennis again after being stabbed. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were beaten over and over and over again? We must make sure that States have the option to give exemptions to women who have been beaten or children who have experienced this. They may not be able to work in 2 years. The last thing you want to do is cut them off of assistance and give them no other choice but to go back into very dangerous homes. There is much to be done. We must be a voice for the victims; the women, the men, and the children who live in fear every moment of their lives, never knowing when the abuse will come or how lethal the next attack will be. We must be unrelenting in our campaign to say as Senators what my wife Sheila says wherever she goes in Minnesota: We will not tolerate the violence; we will not ignore the violence; and we will no longer say it is someone else's responsibility. I urge all of my colleagues to work with the survivors, the advocates, the medical professionals, the justice systems in our States, and to support full community funding and full community involvement in ending this violence. I urge my colleagues to work with passion and conviction to make this a priority of our work in the U.S. Senate. We must do everything we can to make homes the safest places that they can be. I yield the floor. I thank my colleague from North Carolina for giving me this opportunity.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. That is the question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Does the Senator agree if we do not have those standards, we will go back to the days of indiscriminate use of restraining belts and the drugging of people, and that when children visit nursing homes, will the Senator agree, that when children visit nursing homes, they want to make sure their parents are receiving compassionate care?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Yes, I want to know whether or not in North Dakota you heard any cry for removing standards for nursing homes. That is my question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I did not----

Mr. WELLSTONE. If the Senator will yield for another question, and I know the Senator from Arkansas has done a lot of work in this area of nursing homes and may want to ask some questions, but I would like to ask another question of the Senator. I have a few more, and I will not speak so much. I will put it in the form of a question. Last week I spent a lot of time, and I will not even talk about the education front of it right now, with the people in the State and also at a hearing at the State capital. I, too, visited a number of different nursing homes. In my own case, both my parents had Parkinson's disease, so it is a very personal issue with me. I think when people can stay at home, that is the way you should do it, live at home with dignity. Sometimes people describe to me a nursing home as a home away from home. A number of the caregivers said to me that they do not know--with the medical assistance, in Minnesota about 60 percent of our medical assistance funding is for nursing homes and about two-thirds of the people in the homes receive medical assistance--they said they do not know exactly how they are going to absorb these cuts. We have been hearing a lot about Medicare, but they are really frightened about these cuts and they do not know whether it means they change eligibility or whether they reduce standards. I did not hear anyone, and I want to ask you this, I did not hear any one of the administrators----

Mr. WELLSTONE. The second question I want to ask the Senator from North Dakota is, I said on the floor last week--and actually sometimes words come to you, but I actually now believe that this is exactly what is happening--that what I see going on here is a rush to recklessness, a fast track to foolishness. Is there, on the part of people in North Dakota--let us start off just talking about Medicare recipients. I want to ask you about medical assistance and some other programs as well. I mean, do you find both with the beneficiaries and with the caregivers, whether it be in the rural parts of the State--North Dakota is mainly rural--or some of your larger cities--that would be our metro area--do you find a tremendous concern about what is going on in Washington where people feel like we do not have the information of what is going on? It is not even that people necessarily reached a conclusion yet, but that they really want to know. They yearn for information. And they want to know exactly what is happening and how it is going to affect their view. How it is going to affect them? Do you sense that in your State, and what are the concerns that you hear the most from people?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, my question was based upon--I started out by saying this is what I found in Minnesota.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I wanted to ask the Senator a few questions. First of all, Mr. President, I want to ask the Senator from North Dakota--I mean, I try to spend time in cafes in Minnesota, have coffee, unfortunately too much pie, with the people and just ask people what they are thinking about. Has the Senator found in North Dakota that, when you go into a cafe, on the list of people's priorities, the Senate right now should be debating Cuba? I have a whole series of questions. Does it come up at all?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Did you have the same experience in North Dakota? That is my question, Mr. President. I want to know whether or not you found administrators in North Dakota who want to remove national standards and go back to the days of restraining belts?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I intend to vote for this job training legislation as an indication of my support for efforts to reform the Federal job training system into an integrated, comprehensive, State- based work force development system that serves the real needs of unemployed and underemployed workers. I believe the current system does need to be reformed, streamlined, and made more decentralized, and its performance must be measured more accurately. Though there are parts of this bill with which I still seriously disagree, I will vote today to move the process forward and send the bill into conference with the House. We started this process several years ago when Democrats developed our own proposal to streamline the job training system. The scores of Federal programs, which spend over $20 billion annually, must be made more coordinated and more coherent, and must better meet the actual needs of job-seekers. On that we are all agreed. We have come a long way from the original version of this bill that was put forth by Senator Kassebaum. The version we will vote on today, while still imperfect, is a more streamlined, more responsible piece of legislation than the one that was considered by the full Labor and Human Resources Committee some months ago. The governance structure established by the original bill was unwieldy, unaccountable, and open to serious abuse, potentially giving quasi-private entities approval power over billions in Federal spending. It has been much improved, and now final authority and accountability rests with the Secretaries of Education and Labor, where it should be. There are still some refinements to be made in conference, including stronger accountability mechanisms and standards, to protect against potential abuses, but it is a marked improvement over the original proposal. Since the House does not have such an unwieldy and convoluted governance structure, I hope the conferees will streamline and simplify it, making the lines of accountability clearer in the final bill. The provisions that require states to develop Statewide work force development plans, in consultation with local authorities, and that require benchmarking of their performance, with specific penalties if they have not performed well, have also been improved. The amended version of the bill retains Job Corps as a national program, with strict national oversight standards, a zero-tolerance drug policy, and other key reforms. For people in my State served by the HHH Job Corps Center in the Twin Cities, which serves hard-to-serve young people who might otherwise be effectively shut out of our social and economic life together, retaining and strengthening Job Corps, while providing for new guidelines and performance benchmarks, was a key step forward. We heard in the committee from young people who had been helped by the HHH Center's programs, and by others in Job Corps Programs throughout the country. Though some Job Corps centers are in need of reform, much of which is required by this bill, I believe strongly in the program and will continue to support it. We have also fixed the outrageous provision in the original bill that would have repealed the Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Program for workers dislocated by U.S. trade policies--including NAFTA and GATT. I was an original cosponsor of this amendment because those programs have served thousands of people in my State, providing both job training and income support assistance during interim periods while they looked for new jobs, and I did not believe we could go back on our word to provide workers with such aid. Even those who supported NAFTA made this commitment to help these workers, and it would have been truly outrageous if our amendment had not been approved. Since the House version of the bill does not repeal this program either, I am confident the final version of the bill will preserve it. There were several other key improvements to the bill that were made during Senate consideration. The Senate's adoption of the amendment to set aside funds for a rapid response fund, administered by the Secretary of Labor, for workers dislocated by mass layoffs like plant closures, disasters, or other similar contingencies, was critically important. In addition to this provision, there should also be a mandate that States must serve dislocated workers; that is not in the current version of the bill, and should be included in conference. While some States, perhaps most, will likely serve these workers, there should be a guarantee in the bill that they be served. The bill provides for at least some assistance to migrant workers, though as under current law far less than is actually needed for that often desperately poor and mobile population. It provides key job protections for people in State employment service offices, and requires health and safety, antidiscrimination, and other protections for job training program participants. It mandates that States provide at least some level of summer youth job training assistance, though I remain very concerned that efforts to virtually gut the program's funding in the appropriations process may yet be successful, leaving hundreds of thousands of American youth without jobs during the summer in some of the most desperate inner-city neighborhoods of our Nation. But I have fought the first round of that fight on the rescissions bill, and the second round of that funding fight will come later this month. The bill imposes a cap on the amount of job training funds that can be used by States for economic development activities, to ensure against their being used as just an economic development honey-pot that does not serve the primary purposes for which these Federal funds are intended--job retraining and reemployment. It also includes key provisions, which I insisted upon when the Labor Committee considered the bill, which require that representatives of veterans be given a seat on work force development boards, and be consulted along with other community leaders as State job training plans are developed. I am pleased that my efforts to include these provisions in the bill were successful. As I have said, there are still serious problems with this bill. Overall, it makes substantial cuts in job training program funding, at precisely the time we should be maintaining adequate funding, investing in the character, skills and intellect of our people. While there may be some modest administrative savings from consolidating programs, I think that the huge savings estimated by some are wildly exaggerated, and are nowhere near the amounts cut in this bill. These reduced levels undermine our ability to provide American workers with the job training, education, and employment services they need to meet the needs of the next century. It also moves us a step away from a Federal system which targets resources to those who most need it--dislocated workers, economically disadvantaged adults, and others--a trend which could prove disastrous if cash-strapped States decide they cannot afford to serve these populations. I am worried about that, and believe we in Congress will have to carefully monitor the program's implementation to ensure that those who are most in need are served by the States. In addition, I think including education programs in a job training consolidation effort is a serious mistake. I worked hard at the beginning of this legislative process to keep programs like Perkins Vocational Education Program out of this bill. I believe that program in particular should maintain its focus as an education program instead of being swept into a job training bill. Overall, this bill eliminates six separate education programs and turns them into a block grant to the States. The block grant funds are to be used for vocational education and adult education, but the bill sets no minimum level of funding for either function. We have worked hard to improve the Perkins program and to use it to help integrate vocational and academic education. By repealing Perkins we risk [[Page S 14989]] taking several steps backward in those efforts. This bill reduces funding for important education programs, including vocational education at the high school and college level. By reducing the Federal dollars allocated to education programs, and creating a block grant to serve both education and job training needs, we will likely divert much-needed funds from key education programs. I am hopeful that the education provisions of the bill will be overhauled in conference, and that some of the job training changes I have urged will also be addressed. I yield the floor.