Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to strengthen the basic rights of workers to organize and to join a union. This legislation, the ``Right-to-Organize Act of 2001,'' addresses shortcomings in the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, that, over the years, have eroded the framework of worker empowerment the NLRA was designed to ensure. The NLRA, also known as the Wagner Act, was enacted to ``protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization and designation of representatives of their own choosing for purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.'' Its proponents envisioned that the commerce of the Nation would be aided by workplaces that respected and empowered workers' voices about the terms and conditions of their own employment. Its proponents envisioned that supporting workers' right to organize would help lay the basic platform for healthy economies, healthy communities, and healthy families. Grounded in lofty notions of ``full freedom of association'' and ``actual liberty of contract,'' the promise of the NLRA was a fundamentally democratic one: participatory processes as a way to guarantee basic protections and to give those affected a role in decision-making about issues of paramount concern to them. That was the promise of the NLRA. Unfortunately, today that promise is far from being realized. Indeed, today the democratic foundation we have attempted to erect for our workplaces is crumbling beyond recognition. Today, instead of celebrating the participatory voice of workers, we are faced with the stark reality that in all too many cases, workers who do participate, workers who choose to organize, workers who choose to voice their concerns about the terms and conditions of their workplace live in fear. They live in fear of being harassed, of losing wages and benefits, of being put on leave without pay, and ultimately fear of losing their jobs. In a country that celebrates democracy and freedom, the land of the free, it is unconscionable that hard working men and women can be placed in fear of losing their livelihood because they choose to exercise their legal rights to associate for the purposes of bargaining collectively and participating in decision- making about their own workplaces. Today, as one organizer told me, all too many times you have to be a hero when you try to organize your own workplace. That's true. The men and women who do this--who step up to take some ownership for what's going on in their own workplaces--are doing heroic work. But that shouldn't have to be the case. That wasn't the promise of democracy and participation--of the associational and liberty of contract values this Nation endorsed in the National Labor Relations Act. It's urgent that we take action here. Estimates are that 10,000 working Americans lose their jobs illegally every year just for supporting union organizing campaigns. The 1994 Dunlop Commission found that one in four employers illegally fired union activists during organizing campaigns. Estimates are that one out of 10 activists is fired. This is unacceptable. This is truly one of the most urgent civil rights and human rights issues of the new millennium. Working Americans are harassed, threatened and fired simply for seeking to have a voice and be represented in their workplace. According to the Dunlop Commission, the United States is the only major democratic country in which the choice of whether workers are to be represented by a union is subject to such confrontational processes. As Chair of the Employment, Safety, and Training Subcommittee with jurisdiction over the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, I am introducing the ``Right-to-Organize Act of 2001'' to shore up the crumbling foundation of democracy in the workplace that the NLRA was intended to promote. The Act will target some of the most serious abuses of labor law that unfortunately have become all too common in recent years. First, employers routinely monopolize the debates leading up to certification elections. They distribute written materials in opposition to collective bargaining. They require workers to attend meetings where they present their anti-union views. They talk to employees one-on-one about the dire consequences of unionization, such as the possibility that the individual employee or all employees could lose their jobs. All too often, at the same time that this flagrant coercion, intimidation, and interference is taking place often on a daily basis--union organizers are barred from work sites and even public areas. Second, as noted above, employers too frequently are firing employees and engaging in other unfair labor practices to discourage union organizing and union representation. They are doing this sometimes with near impunity because today's laws simply are not strong enough to discourage them from doing so. As the report, Unfair Advantage noted just last year, employers intent on frustrating workers' efforts to organize can, and do, drag out legal proceedings for years, at the end of which they receive a slap on the wrist in the form of back pay to the worker illegally fired and a requirement that they post a written notice promising not to repeat their illegal behavior. ``Many employers,'' according to this report `` have come to view remedies, like back pay for workers fired because of union activity as a routine cost of doing business, well worth it to get rid of organizing leaders and derail workers' organizing efforts.'' We need to put teeth into our ability to enforce the legal rights that are already on the books. Third, as part of efforts to discourage organizing, employers are able today to drag out election campaigns, giving themselves more time in some cases to harass workers through methods such as those I have described. Their hope may be that the climate of fear and intimidation will encourage workers to vote against the union seeking certification. While just across our border in Canada, elections take place on average within a week of the filing of a petition, here in the United States, it takes on average 80 days between petition and certification. That is an enormous amount of time for workers to live in fear of casting a vote to help empower their voice in the workplace. Finally, there is a growing problem of employers refusing to bargain with their employees even after a union has been duly certified. Achieving so-called ``first contracts'' can often be as harrowing as the organizing effort itself. I want to be clear. Most employers do not take advantage of their workers in this way. Indeed, in tens of thousands of workplaces across the country, employers are working together with employees and their unions, to create safe, healthy, productive, and rewarding work environments. I applaud the efforts these employers and workers are making. Unfortunately, however, this is not universally the case. All too frequently employers are disempowering workers and undermining their rights to organize, join, and belong to a union. That is why, that I say this is one of the most urgent civil and human rights issues of the new millennium. Civil rights and human rights is fundamentally about protecting the dignity and well-being of the less empowered against excesses of the more powerful. Nothing could be more important to protecting workers' rights to advocate for themselves and their families than securing a meaningful right to organize. The Right-to-Organize Act of 2001 is a first step in tackling some of the most serious barriers to workers' ability to unionize. In particular, the Act would do the following: First, it would amend the National Labor Relations Act to provide equal time to labor organizations to provide information about union representation. Under this proposal the employer would trigger the equal time provision by expressing opinions on union representation during work hours or at the work site. Once the triggering actions occur, then the union would be entitled to equal time to use the same media used by the employer to distribute information and be allowed access to the work site to communicate with employees. Second, it would toughen penalties for wrongful discharge violations. In particular, it would require the National Labor Relations Board to award back pay equal to 3 times the employee's wages when the Board finds that an employee is discharged as a result of an unfair labor practice. It also would allow employees to file civil actions to recover punitive damages when they have been discharged as a result of an unfair labor practice. Third, it would require expedited elections in cases where a super majority of workers have signed union recognition cards designating a union as the employee's labor organizations. In particular, it would require elections within 14 days after receipt of signed union recognition cards from 60 percent of the employees. Fourth, the bill would put in place mediation and arbitration procedures to help employers and employees reach mutually agreeable first-contract collective bargaining agreements. It would require mediation if the parties cannot reach agreement on their own after 60 days. Should the parties not reach agreement 30 days after a mediator is selected, then either party could call in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service for binding arbitration. In this way both parties would have incentives to reach genuine agreement without allowing either side to hold the other hostage indefinitely to unrealistic proposals. The need for these reforms is urgent, not only for workers who seek to join together and bargain collectively, but for all Americans. Indeed, one of the most important things we can do to raise the standard of living and quality of life for working Americans, raise wages and benefits, improve health and safety in the workplace, and give average Americans more control over their lives is to enforce their right to organize, join, and belong to a union. When workers join together to fight for job security, for dignity, for economic justice and for a fair share of America's prosperity, it is not a struggle merely for their own benefit. The gains of unionized workers on basic bread-and-butter issues are key to the economic security of all working families. Upholding the right to organize is a way to advance important social objectives, higher wages, better benefits, more pension coverage, more worker training, more health insurance coverage, and safer work places, for all Americans without drawing on any additional government resources. The right to organize is one of the most important civil and human rights causes of the new millennium. I urge my colleagues to join me in helping to restore that right to its proper place.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation to strengthen the basic rights of workers to organize and to join a union. This legislation, the ``Right-to-Organize Act of 2001,'' addresses shortcomings in the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, that, over the years, have eroded the framework of worker empowerment the NLRA was designed to ensure. The NLRA, also known as the Wagner Act, was enacted to ``protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization and designation of representatives of their own choosing for purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.'' Its proponents envisioned that the commerce of the Nation would be aided by workplaces that respected and empowered workers' voices about the terms and conditions of their own employment. Its proponents envisioned that supporting workers' right to organize would help lay the basic platform for healthy economies, healthy communities, and healthy families. Grounded in lofty notions of ``full freedom of association'' and ``actual liberty of contract,'' the promise of the NLRA was a fundamentally democratic one: participatory processes as a way to guarantee basic protections and to give those affected a role in decision-making about issues of paramount concern to them. That was the promise of the NLRA. Unfortunately, today that promise is far from being realized. Indeed, today the democratic foundation we have attempted to erect for our workplaces is crumbling beyond recognition. Today, instead of celebrating the participatory voice of workers, we are faced with the stark reality that in all too many cases, workers who do participate, workers who choose to organize, workers who choose to voice their concerns about the terms and conditions of their workplace live in fear. They live in fear of being harassed, of losing wages and benefits, of being put on leave without pay, and ultimately fear of losing their jobs. In a country that celebrates democracy and freedom, the land of the free, it is unconscionable that hard working men and women can be placed in fear of losing their livelihood because they choose to exercise their legal rights to associate for the purposes of bargaining collectively and participating in decision- making about their own workplaces. Today, as one organizer told me, all too many times you have to be a hero when you try to organize your own workplace. That's true. The men and women who do this--who step up to take some ownership for what's going on in their own workplaces--are doing heroic work. But that shouldn't have to be the case. That wasn't the promise of democracy and participation--of the associational and liberty of contract values this Nation endorsed in the National Labor Relations Act. It's urgent that we take action here. Estimates are that 10,000 working Americans lose their jobs illegally every year just for supporting union organizing campaigns. The 1994 Dunlop Commission found that one in four employers illegally fired union activists during organizing campaigns. Estimates are that one out of 10 activists is fired. This is unacceptable. This is truly one of the most urgent civil rights and human rights issues of the new millennium. Working Americans are harassed, threatened and fired simply for seeking to have a voice and be represented in their workplace. According to the Dunlop Commission, the United States is the only major democratic country in which the choice of whether workers are to be represented by a union is subject to such confrontational processes. As Chair of the Employment, Safety, and Training Subcommittee with jurisdiction over the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, I am introducing the ``Right-to-Organize Act of 2001'' to shore up the crumbling foundation of democracy in the workplace that the NLRA was intended to promote. The Act will target some of the most serious abuses of labor law that unfortunately have become all too common in recent years. First, employers routinely monopolize the debates leading up to certification elections. They distribute written materials in opposition to collective bargaining. They require workers to attend meetings where they present their anti-union views. They talk to employees one-on-one about the dire consequences of unionization, such as the possibility that the individual employee or all employees could lose their jobs. All too often, at the same time that this flagrant coercion, intimidation, and interference is taking place often on a daily basis--union organizers are barred from work sites and even public areas. Second, as noted above, employers too frequently are firing employees and engaging in other unfair labor practices to discourage union organizing and union representation. They are doing this sometimes with near impunity because today's laws simply are not strong enough to discourage them from doing so. As the report, Unfair Advantage noted just last year, employers intent on frustrating workers' efforts to organize can, and do, drag out legal proceedings for years, at the end of which they receive a slap on the wrist in the form of back pay to the worker illegally fired and a requirement that they post a written notice promising not to repeat their illegal behavior. ``Many employers,'' according to this report `` have come to view remedies, like back pay for workers fired because of union activity as a routine cost of doing business, well worth it to get rid of organizing leaders and derail workers' organizing efforts.'' We need to put teeth into our ability to enforce the legal rights that are already on the books. Third, as part of efforts to discourage organizing, employers are able today to drag out election campaigns, giving themselves more time in some cases to harass workers through methods such as those I have described. Their hope may be that the climate of fear and intimidation will encourage workers to vote against the union seeking certification. While just across our border in Canada, elections take place on average within a week of the filing of a petition, here in the United States, it takes on average 80 days between petition and certification. That is an enormous amount of time for workers to live in fear of casting a vote to help empower their voice in the workplace. Finally, there is a growing problem of employers refusing to bargain with their employees even after a union has been duly certified. Achieving so-called ``first contracts'' can often be as harrowing as the organizing effort itself. I want to be clear. Most employers do not take advantage of their workers in this way. Indeed, in tens of thousands of workplaces across the country, employers are working together with employees and their unions, to create safe, healthy, productive, and rewarding work environments. I applaud the efforts these employers and workers are making. Unfortunately, however, this is not universally the case. All too frequently employers are disempowering workers and undermining their rights to organize, join, and belong to a union. That is why, that I say this is one of the most urgent civil and human rights issues of the new millennium. Civil rights and human rights is fundamentally about protecting the dignity and well-being of the less empowered against excesses of the more powerful. Nothing could be more important to protecting workers' rights to advocate for themselves and their families than securing a meaningful right to organize. The Right-to-Organize Act of 2001 is a first step in tackling some of the most serious barriers to workers' ability to unionize. In particular, the Act would do the following: First, it would amend the National Labor Relations Act to provide equal time to labor organizations to provide information about union representation. Under this proposal the employer would trigger the equal time provision by expressing opinions on union representation during work hours or at the work site. Once the triggering actions occur, then the union would be entitled to equal time to use the same media used by the employer to distribute information and be allowed access to the work site to communicate with employees. Second, it would toughen penalties for wrongful discharge violations. In particular, it would require the National Labor Relations Board to award back pay equal to 3 times the employee's wages when the Board finds that an employee is discharged as a result of an unfair labor practice. It also would allow employees to file civil actions to recover punitive damages when they have been discharged as a result of an unfair labor practice. Third, it would require expedited elections in cases where a super majority of workers have signed union recognition cards designating a union as the employee's labor organizations. In particular, it would require elections within 14 days after receipt of signed union recognition cards from 60 percent of the employees. Fourth, the bill would put in place mediation and arbitration procedures to help employers and employees reach mutually agreeable first-contract collective bargaining agreements. It would require mediation if the parties cannot reach agreement on their own after 60 days. Should the parties not reach agreement 30 days after a mediator is selected, then either party could call in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service for binding arbitration. In this way both parties would have incentives to reach genuine agreement without allowing either side to hold the other hostage indefinitely to unrealistic proposals. The need for these reforms is urgent, not only for workers who seek to join together and bargain collectively, but for all Americans. Indeed, one of the most important things we can do to raise the standard of living and quality of life for working Americans, raise wages and benefits, improve health and safety in the workplace, and give average Americans more control over their lives is to enforce their right to organize, join, and belong to a union. When workers join together to fight for job security, for dignity, for economic justice and for a fair share of America's prosperity, it is not a struggle merely for their own benefit. The gains of unionized workers on basic bread-and-butter issues are key to the economic security of all working families. Upholding the right to organize is a way to advance important social objectives, higher wages, better benefits, more pension coverage, more worker training, more health insurance coverage, and safer work places, for all Americans without drawing on any additional government resources. The right to organize is one of the most important civil and human rights causes of the new millennium. I urge my colleagues to join me in helping to restore that right to its proper place.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the foremost responsibility given to the United States Olympic Committee when it was created by Congress is to obtain for this country ``the most competent representation possible in each event of the Olympic Games.'' However, in too many sports, the USOC is decidedly disadvantaged in achieving that goal. A key reason for the USOC's difficulty is that our colleges and universities are eliminating many of their teams in those sports each year. Colleges and universities have been the traditional route to participation in the Olympic Games in these non-revenue sports, but many of America's prospective participants in the Olympic Games are having opportunities blocked as these programs disappear. As a former college wrestler and someone who continues to follow that sport closely at the high school and college levels, I have noticed as wrestling programs have been discontinued by colleges and universities at a high rate in recent years. Too often, this occurs through a process that leaves student-athletes with few options if they want to continue wrestling at another institution. As a result of my concerns about wrestling, the sport I know best, I worked with now-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to include in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act a study by the General Accounting Office on patterns in the addition and discontinuation of athletic teams at 4- year colleges and universities. The study investigated the forces that lead to team additions and discontinuations, as well as the processes through which discontinuations have occurred. The report from that GAO study was recently released. It both reaffirms what Speaker Hastert and I already knew about the state of college-level wrestling. And it demonstrates that wrestling, where 40 percent of teams have been discontinued during the past two decades, is not alone. A number of men's and women's sports have experienced a significant net decline in the number of programs during the same period. There has been a 53- percent decline in the number of women's gymnastics teams, a 10-percent reduction in the number of women's field hockey teams and a 68-percent decline in the number of men's gymnastics programs. Most pertinent is the following fact: 16 of the sports that have lost teams during that period, which is nearly all the sports that have lost teams, are Olympic sports. In light of the Congressional directive contained in USOC's authorizing legislation, a federal response is warranted. Guided by the findings of the recent GAO report, the bill that I introduce today, the Olympic Sports Revitalization Act, seeks to counteract the problems faced by these 16 sports, plus three emerging women's sports. The first group of 16 sports consists of the following: women's gymnastics, women's and men's fencing, women's field hockey, women's and men's archery, women's badminton, men's wrestling, men's tennis, men's gymnastics, men's rifle/shooting men's outdoor track, men's swimming, men's skiing, men's ice hockey, and men's water polo. Also covered are the three emerging women's sports: synchronized swimming, team handball, and equestrian. The bill would assist in developing a competitive American Olympics program that spans the spectrum of high- and low-profile sports. Because there is no single, shared reason that each of these sports has faced difficulty in recent years, the bill has four sections, each of which seeks to address an obstacle to their vitality in the United States. First, the GAO report indicates that in some cases, declining interest in the sports is a key factor in decisions by colleges and universities to eliminate their programs. We know that those who will go on to become Olympians realize their talent and passion for their sport at any early age which means they need to become interested at an early age. Therefore, this bill establishes a grant program to assist local community-based athletic programs in providing opportunities for youngsters to participate in these sports. The bill authorizes funds for the USOC itself and the national governing bodies in the sports covered by the Act to award grants to community athletic organizations to initiate and expand youth sporting opportunities. In particular, it encourages a focus on providing such opportunities in communities where the sport has not traditionally been available as an option for young persons so that the pool of participants in the sport will expand. Of course, relatively few of the young people that will participant in these programs will ever become Olympians. But aside from building interest in otherwise declining sports, these programs will provide additional benefits for young men and women. My colleague from Alaska, Senator Stevens, for whom the existing Olympic and Amateur Sport Act is rightly named, has an ongoing commitment to enhancing the physical fitness of Americans. This program offers fitness outlets that can put young people on a path toward lifelong commitment to exercise and all its physical and mental health benefits. As someone who was given the opportunity to develop personally through the challenge of wrestling, I also know how important involvement in athletics is at an early age in building character. Sports help youngsters develop some of the most important skills for success in life: the ability to think strategically, the courage to overcome fears, and the tact of being a good winner and, yes, a good loser. I encourage my colleagues to learn more about two existing community sports programs that are exactly the type of locally-controlled endeavors that this grant program is meant to promote. Peter Westbrook grew up in the projects of Newark, New Jersey. He was lucky enough to be introduced to fencing at an early age and by focusing on that sport, he escaped the desperation of the environment in which he came of age. Peter pursued the sport as he became older and he went on to win the Bronze Medal in Men's Sabre at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Seven years later, he began a non-profit program in New York City dedicated to helping kids in the five boroughs of New York gain access to the benefits that he has as a youngster in fencing. Over the past decade, hundreds of inner-city kids have participated in the program. Like the Peter Westbrook Foundation, the ``Beat the Streets'' program begun in 1999 in inner-city Chicago is a model for the grant program to be established by this legislation. ``Beat the Streets,'' a program with which Speaker Hastert has been involved, focuses on mentoring youngsters who typically would not have access to wrestling training. The youngsters are coached in a number of wrestling techniques, conditioning and nutrition. The program also focuses on developing social and intellectual skills that go beyond the mat. ``Beat the Streets'' has grown throughout Chicago and, working in coalition with the YMCA, its advisory board recently began planning the expansion of that program to other cities around the country. I hope that this legislation can plan a role in the expansion of such an outstanding program. As I mentioned earlier, three women's emerging sports, that is, Olympic sports that have not traditionally been an option for women in this country--are also covered by the pertinent sections of this Act. That makes sense because the fact that they are not fully established sports means that the USOC faces a particular challenge in developing the most competitive team possible in those sports. The second section of the Olympic Sports Revitalization Act more direct focuses on ensuring participation in the covered sports during college. It does so by providing funding for scholarships in those sports. College and university athletic programs that have discontinued the non-revenue sports covered by this Act also cite budgetary strains as a frequent reason for those decisions. While the GAO report cites numerous cased where colleagues and unikversitues have successfully maintained existing sports while adding new sports to meet the interests and needs of women athlete, it is important to realize that colleges and universities do face real financial contraints. This portion of the Act would help protect existing non-revenue sports that might otherwise be eliminated. Through this section's provision, the USOC would be authorized to provide 4-year grants of between $25,000 and $50,000 annually to college athletic programs to provide scholarship to student-athletes participating in the sports covered by the Act. At any one school, a limit of three covered program could be grant recipients at any one time. Schools would be required to maintain the sport to continue to receive the grant money. This Olympic Revitalization Scholarship grant program will reinforce the already existing Bart Stupak Olympic Scholarship Program, also in the Higher Education Act, which provides financial assistance to athletes who are actually in training for the Olympic Games. The bill also seeks to ensure that, as they decide where they will attend college, prospective student-athletes will be able accurately to gauge the relative health of the sports programs at different schools they may be considering. Present law requires that all 4-year colleges and universities with athletic programs report to the Department of Education the number of participants and coaches in all sports, as well as further information regarding funding for their teams. This data, particularly when examined over time, gives an excellent picture of the health of the sport at that college. It also provides insight into the continued vitality of the program during the period that the prospective student-athlete would hope to participate in the sport. The problem is that, while the Department of Education has collected this required data, it is not readily available to the general public. The Olympic Sports Revitalization Act would authorize funds and require that the data over a several year period be posted on the Internet in a usable format so that the student-athletes and those involved in their college decision can have easy access to that information. Finally, one of the most troubling findings in the GAO report is that student-athletes are, quite often, given no forewarning that their sport is being discontinued by the athletic program. They also have no mechanism by which to appeal that decision. Generally, such decisions by athletic programs go into effect immediately. In addition to defying fairness, this reality means that student-athletes often have their college athletic careers disrupted in a manner that makes it difficult to stay on track for post-college amateur competition. The data in the GAO report indicates that the stories I have heard about the termination of wrestling programs in my home State of Minnesota and around the country are part of a pattern in other similarly situated sports. Therefore, the fourth section of the bill requires that colleges and universities provide written justification for a decision to discontinue a sport to team members. It also requires that a process for appealing the team's termination be established. We have a responsibility to field ``the most competent representation'' possible in the Olympic games. Just as important, we should do all we can to promote the continued vitality of a set of sports that have proud traditions I our country and that have provided health and character-development benefits for thousands of participants through the years. To quote Pat Zilverberg, a constant guardian of the sport of wrestling in my home state, from his letter supporting this legislation: ``The opportunities to develop athletes and, subsequently, good citizens, are at risk.'' This legislation would play a key role in revitalizing these sports and I strongly encourage its adoption.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, the foremost responsibility given to the United States Olympic Committee when it was created by Congress is to obtain for this country ``the most competent representation possible in each event of the Olympic Games.'' However, in too many sports, the USOC is decidedly disadvantaged in achieving that goal. A key reason for the USOC's difficulty is that our colleges and universities are eliminating many of their teams in those sports each year. Colleges and universities have been the traditional route to participation in the Olympic Games in these non-revenue sports, but many of America's prospective participants in the Olympic Games are having opportunities blocked as these programs disappear. As a former college wrestler and someone who continues to follow that sport closely at the high school and college levels, I have noticed as wrestling programs have been discontinued by colleges and universities at a high rate in recent years. Too often, this occurs through a process that leaves student-athletes with few options if they want to continue wrestling at another institution. As a result of my concerns about wrestling, the sport I know best, I worked with now-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to include in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act a study by the General Accounting Office on patterns in the addition and discontinuation of athletic teams at 4- year colleges and universities. The study investigated the forces that lead to team additions and discontinuations, as well as the processes through which discontinuations have occurred. The report from that GAO study was recently released. It both reaffirms what Speaker Hastert and I already knew about the state of college-level wrestling. And it demonstrates that wrestling, where 40 percent of teams have been discontinued during the past two decades, is not alone. A number of men's and women's sports have experienced a significant net decline in the number of programs during the same period. There has been a 53- percent decline in the number of women's gymnastics teams, a 10-percent reduction in the number of women's field hockey teams and a 68-percent decline in the number of men's gymnastics programs. Most pertinent is the following fact: 16 of the sports that have lost teams during that period, which is nearly all the sports that have lost teams, are Olympic sports. In light of the Congressional directive contained in USOC's authorizing legislation, a federal response is warranted. Guided by the findings of the recent GAO report, the bill that I introduce today, the Olympic Sports Revitalization Act, seeks to counteract the problems faced by these 16 sports, plus three emerging women's sports. The first group of 16 sports consists of the following: women's gymnastics, women's and men's fencing, women's field hockey, women's and men's archery, women's badminton, men's wrestling, men's tennis, men's gymnastics, men's rifle/shooting men's outdoor track, men's swimming, men's skiing, men's ice hockey, and men's water polo. Also covered are the three emerging women's sports: synchronized swimming, team handball, and equestrian. The bill would assist in developing a competitive American Olympics program that spans the spectrum of high- and low-profile sports. Because there is no single, shared reason that each of these sports has faced difficulty in recent years, the bill has four sections, each of which seeks to address an obstacle to their vitality in the United States. First, the GAO report indicates that in some cases, declining interest in the sports is a key factor in decisions by colleges and universities to eliminate their programs. We know that those who will go on to become Olympians realize their talent and passion for their sport at any early age which means they need to become interested at an early age. Therefore, this bill establishes a grant program to assist local community-based athletic programs in providing opportunities for youngsters to participate in these sports. The bill authorizes funds for the USOC itself and the national governing bodies in the sports covered by the Act to award grants to community athletic organizations to initiate and expand youth sporting opportunities. In particular, it encourages a focus on providing such opportunities in communities where the sport has not traditionally been available as an option for young persons so that the pool of participants in the sport will expand. Of course, relatively few of the young people that will participant in these programs will ever become Olympians. But aside from building interest in otherwise declining sports, these programs will provide additional benefits for young men and women. My colleague from Alaska, Senator Stevens, for whom the existing Olympic and Amateur Sport Act is rightly named, has an ongoing commitment to enhancing the physical fitness of Americans. This program offers fitness outlets that can put young people on a path toward lifelong commitment to exercise and all its physical and mental health benefits. As someone who was given the opportunity to develop personally through the challenge of wrestling, I also know how important involvement in athletics is at an early age in building character. Sports help youngsters develop some of the most important skills for success in life: the ability to think strategically, the courage to overcome fears, and the tact of being a good winner and, yes, a good loser. I encourage my colleagues to learn more about two existing community sports programs that are exactly the type of locally-controlled endeavors that this grant program is meant to promote. Peter Westbrook grew up in the projects of Newark, New Jersey. He was lucky enough to be introduced to fencing at an early age and by focusing on that sport, he escaped the desperation of the environment in which he came of age. Peter pursued the sport as he became older and he went on to win the Bronze Medal in Men's Sabre at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Seven years later, he began a non-profit program in New York City dedicated to helping kids in the five boroughs of New York gain access to the benefits that he has as a youngster in fencing. Over the past decade, hundreds of inner-city kids have participated in the program. Like the Peter Westbrook Foundation, the ``Beat the Streets'' program begun in 1999 in inner-city Chicago is a model for the grant program to be established by this legislation. ``Beat the Streets,'' a program with which Speaker Hastert has been involved, focuses on mentoring youngsters who typically would not have access to wrestling training. The youngsters are coached in a number of wrestling techniques, conditioning and nutrition. The program also focuses on developing social and intellectual skills that go beyond the mat. ``Beat the Streets'' has grown throughout Chicago and, working in coalition with the YMCA, its advisory board recently began planning the expansion of that program to other cities around the country. I hope that this legislation can plan a role in the expansion of such an outstanding program. As I mentioned earlier, three women's emerging sports, that is, Olympic sports that have not traditionally been an option for women in this country--are also covered by the pertinent sections of this Act. That makes sense because the fact that they are not fully established sports means that the USOC faces a particular challenge in developing the most competitive team possible in those sports. The second section of the Olympic Sports Revitalization Act more direct focuses on ensuring participation in the covered sports during college. It does so by providing funding for scholarships in those sports. College and university athletic programs that have discontinued the non-revenue sports covered by this Act also cite budgetary strains as a frequent reason for those decisions. While the GAO report cites numerous cased where colleagues and unikversitues have successfully maintained existing sports while adding new sports to meet the interests and needs of women athlete, it is important to realize that colleges and universities do face real financial contraints. This portion of the Act would help protect existing non-revenue sports that might otherwise be eliminated. Through this section's provision, the USOC would be authorized to provide 4-year grants of between $25,000 and $50,000 annually to college athletic programs to provide scholarship to student-athletes participating in the sports covered by the Act. At any one school, a limit of three covered program could be grant recipients at any one time. Schools would be required to maintain the sport to continue to receive the grant money. This Olympic Revitalization Scholarship grant program will reinforce the already existing Bart Stupak Olympic Scholarship Program, also in the Higher Education Act, which provides financial assistance to athletes who are actually in training for the Olympic Games. The bill also seeks to ensure that, as they decide where they will attend college, prospective student-athletes will be able accurately to gauge the relative health of the sports programs at different schools they may be considering. Present law requires that all 4-year colleges and universities with athletic programs report to the Department of Education the number of participants and coaches in all sports, as well as further information regarding funding for their teams. This data, particularly when examined over time, gives an excellent picture of the health of the sport at that college. It also provides insight into the continued vitality of the program during the period that the prospective student-athlete would hope to participate in the sport. The problem is that, while the Department of Education has collected this required data, it is not readily available to the general public. The Olympic Sports Revitalization Act would authorize funds and require that the data over a several year period be posted on the Internet in a usable format so that the student-athletes and those involved in their college decision can have easy access to that information. Finally, one of the most troubling findings in the GAO report is that student-athletes are, quite often, given no forewarning that their sport is being discontinued by the athletic program. They also have no mechanism by which to appeal that decision. Generally, such decisions by athletic programs go into effect immediately. In addition to defying fairness, this reality means that student-athletes often have their college athletic careers disrupted in a manner that makes it difficult to stay on track for post-college amateur competition. The data in the GAO report indicates that the stories I have heard about the termination of wrestling programs in my home State of Minnesota and around the country are part of a pattern in other similarly situated sports. Therefore, the fourth section of the bill requires that colleges and universities provide written justification for a decision to discontinue a sport to team members. It also requires that a process for appealing the team's termination be established. We have a responsibility to field ``the most competent representation'' possible in the Olympic games. Just as important, we should do all we can to promote the continued vitality of a set of sports that have proud traditions I our country and that have provided health and character-development benefits for thousands of participants through the years. To quote Pat Zilverberg, a constant guardian of the sport of wrestling in my home state, from his letter supporting this legislation: ``The opportunities to develop athletes and, subsequently, good citizens, are at risk.'' This legislation would play a key role in revitalizing these sports and I strongly encourage its adoption.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I ask for 10 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I say to my colleague from Arkansas that I think what will become clear to the American people over the next week--I certainly take very seriously the words of the majority leader that we will be here as long as it takes to pass this bill--is that this will be a test case of whether or not all Members of the Senate will be there for consumers, or whether or not the health insurance industry will be able to stop this legislation. It is that clear. There is an unprecedented lobbying effort going on right now and a tremendous amount of money is being spent with a full court press to block this legislation. I have no doubt that we will have amendments on the floor over the next week or week and a half which will be an effort to gut this bill through amendments. But I think that people in the country will have a very clear sense of whether or not we are on their side. I say to each and every one of my colleagues that I am absolutely convinced from a lot of coffee shop discussions with people in Minnesota that people do not give a darn about the labels left, right, or center. They do not care about any of it. Politics for people is much more personal. Consumers and the people we represent are saying we want to have some protection. Let me give you some examples. I will not use the real names of people to make this more anonymous. I will never forget a woman coming up to me and saying to me at a farm gathering in Minnesota: I want you to come over and meet my husband, Joe. Remember--you met him about 6 months earlier. The doctor said he only had 2 months to live. But my Joe is a fighter. He had cancer. I would like for you to come over and say hello. He was not yet in a wheelchair. But later he was because he was weakened by this struggle with cancer. He has now passed away. She said to me: I want you to meet Joe. I went over, and we talked. Then she said: Can we talk away from him? We go away so he can't hear. She said: It is a nightmare. Every day I am on the phone with the managed care company trying to find out what they will cover. Every day it is a struggle to get the coverage for my husband for the treatment he needs as he struggles with this illness. No American family with a loved one who needs that care should have to be fighting it out with the insurance companies or managed care plans to get the care their loved one deserves. That is what this piece of legislation is about that was introduced by Senators McCain, Kennedy, and Edwards with many of us supporting it. That is what this is about, pure and simple. This is the most important consumer protection legislation we will vote on this year as Senators. My colleague from Arkansas said: What about the 44 million people who have no insurance? I invite the Senator from Arkansas and other Senators to please join on a piece of legislation I have called Health Security for All Americans. I am for universal coverage. I haven't heard a lot of my Republican colleagues talking about the importance of comprehensive health care reform, universal coverage, affordable and dignified human coverage for all. I hear them talking in opposition to this piece of legislation. Why don't we first pass this consumer protection legislation? Then we will move on and we can talk about universal coverage. I remember a gathering in Minnesota--there are so many stories like this. There was a meeting that I had convened where we had some of the managed care plans there to meet with some of the parents. I do a lot of work in the mental health area. I can hardly wait to have hearings in the Health Committee and have a bill on the floor doing what Senator Domenici calls the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act to end the discrimination of coverage for people struggling with mental illness. At this gathering, a lot of the parents wanted to meet with the managed care companies. One mother said: My daughter is struggling with depression. We have asked you and asked you for coverage, and you said that it wasn't medically necessary for her to get the help she needed, to see the psychiatrist that she needed to see. My daughter took her life. Look. I can't say that she took her life because she didn't get a chance to see this particular psychiatrist. But I can tell you this: There was an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune last Sunday about the costs the State of Minnesota had to pick up because the health plans did not provide the coverage for people that the doctors said needed to get mental health coverage. What the patients and their families heard was: You need to see the psychiatrist. You need to be in the hospital for this many days. You need to have outpatient treatment. Instead, they were denied the coverage by their HMOs. Finally, the State just picked up the coverage. It happens all the time. A nurse in Minnesota told our state office about a woman who suffered with stomach pains; she saw her doctor who did some tests and then suggested further tests, that were more expensive for which she should get HMO's approval. The HMO denied the additional tests. Since the doctor recommended the tests, you would think that a patient might have some recourse to the HMO's denial of coverage. Instead, the woman endured a series of phone calls with HMO employees, being forwarded from one customer service representative to another, being put on hold for 35 minutes and ultimately being referred to a 50-page benefits manual with no change in the HMO's denial of these recommended tests. No one at the company ever instructed the patient how to file an appeal. She ultimately gave up and paid for the tests herself. It goes on and on. There is too much gatekeeping, and too much bottom-line medicine. The bottom line has become the only line. There are too many people and their loved ones who can't get the care they need or the care for their children when they need a pediatrician or to get to the emergency room to have it covered when they need to be at the emergency room or to get their parents and their grandparents the coverage they need, to get the child the coverage she or he needs for mental health coverage. It goes on and on. Too many people go without the care they deserve. Too many doctors and nurses are not able to provide the kind of humane and dignified care they thought they would be able to provide when they were in nursing school or medical school. What do we do? We say that we are going to have basic patient protection coverage for every citizen no matter what State he or she lives in, no matter what company he or she works for. That is the first part. What is the second thing that we say? We say if your plan denies you the coverage, then you have a right as a consumer to appeal the decision and go to an independent appeals board or through an independent appeals process--not an appeals process within the managed care company which is the competing proposal. That is crazy. People in the country know it. And to assist people in dealing with their insurance companies and HMOs I will be offering an amendment with Senator Reed of Rhode Island that will have an ombudsman program set up in every State that provides outreach and assistance when they have trouble getting the care they need or filing the appeal they are entitled to. This would be an important addition to this legislation. If you have headaches, severe headaches, and you go see your doctor, and you are told by your doctor that you need an MRI, and then the managed care plan says, no, it is not medically necessary, and then you, because you did not have that MRI, later find out you have a malignant brain tumor, and you die because of that--or this happens to someone in your family who dies because of that--you better believe that these companies can be taken to court. They should not have any special protection any different from any doctor or hospital or any other business. If you are denied the coverage on the basis that it is not medically necessary, of course people can go to State court, which is where it should be. And then we abide by the laws of our States: the laws of Minnesota or the laws of Illinois or whatever state the patient lives in. It is simple. This is all about whether or not we are finally going to pass legislation that provides consumers, provides patients, provides families, provides children the protection they deserve, the protection they need. That is what this legislation is all about. I think I introduced a bill in 1994, and then I know Senator Kennedy introduced a bill a couple years later, and many people have introduced bills; and we have been going through the debate now for 7 years. The time has come. It is real simple. I conclude on this note: I really believe, more than anything else, the way people judge us is not if we are Democrat or Republican, not if we are liberal or conservative, not if we are right, left or center. None of those labels mean very much.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 30 more seconds.

Mr. WELLSTONE. The question is simple. Do you, the Senator from the State of Washington or the Senator from the State of Illinois or the Senator from the State of Minnesota know us? Do you care about us? Do you understand us? Are you on our side? That is what this legislation is all about. This is an important time. Let's step up to the plate and vote to be on the side of families in our States, consumers in our States, and provide them with this protection. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Lauren Wilcox and Clara Filice be granted floor privileges for the duration of the debate on this bill.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, the majority leader is on the floor. I will limit my remarks to 3 minutes. First of all, I am a son of a Jewish immigrant who fled persecution from Ukraine and then Russia. I grew up in a family where I was taught it was wrong to discriminate against anyone. I have tried to teach my children and my grandchildren the same. I am against discrimination of people because of nationality, race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. I commend the Boy Scouts for all of the good work they have done for people. But I am very saddened that the Boy Scouts have engaged in what are discriminatory policies towards gays and lesbians. I think that is most unfortunate for what is otherwise a very fine organization. There was a piece of legislation on this floor a number of years ago which said that any school district that ``promoted homosexuality'' would be cut off from Federal funds. Then I looked at the operational definition of it down a number of paragraphs, and that included counseling. So if you have a young man in high school and he goes to see a counselor, and if he says: I am gay, my friends disowned me, my parents have disowned me, and I feel worthless--I do a lot of work in suicide prevention and the mental health field. Unfortunately, a high incidence of suicide is among boys who are gay. The way the Court has ruled, it is clear that if, in fact, community groups come into schools, so can Boy Scouts. That isn't even the issue. The question is whether or not if a school district has a policy of nondiscrimination and it chooses not to sponsor the Boy Scouts because the Boy Scouts discriminate against this group of citizens--against gays--it would no longer be able to do so, which then would provide Boy Scouts with not access but with special treatment. That is wrong. It is wrong to say to any school district in any State and to any school board that you have to change your policy; that you have to sponsor a group which goes against the very values that you have professed, which is what we should not do; that is, discriminate against any group of citizens, any children anywhere. That is why I oppose this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act may be the most important step we will take during this Congress to affect what is surely one of the most crucial interests of the country--childrens' education. I have tried to devote appropriate attention and effort toward improving this bill. That is because I have believed since Committee consideration that it contains significant flaws. At the same time, we have improved the bill in important ways, and we have added substantial new commitments of federal funds for education. In my view, these improvements, plus the prospects for further improvement in Conference, outweigh my remaining serious reservations about policy contained in the bill at the present time. Therefore, while I pledge to continue in Conference to try to improve the policy and to assure funding, I have voted in favor of the bill today. A number of weeks ago, I opposed bringing this bill to the floor in the absence of some assurance that sufficient resources would be provided to federal education programs. That issue remains among my deepest concerns and considerations. Along with other improvements we have made since that time, we have very substantially bolstered needed funding for federal education--especially by including mandatory, full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA. This provision alone will mean over $3 billion for my state of Minnesota in IDEA funds during the coming 10 years. It will mean $153 million in IDEA funds for Minnesota in fiscal year 2001. The improvements must be balanced against policy deficiencies-- primarily in the area of mandated tests and the bill's so-called ``straight-A's,'' or ``performance agreement,'' provisions. My view is that if we at the federal level are going to insist on ``accountability'' from states, districts, schools and students, then we must be accountable to the principle that every student should have an equal opportunity to succeed. That means we must sufficiently fund the federal programs, such as Title I, IDEA and others, that attempt to give all students an equal chance. We all know that not every student arrives to school equally ready to learn. That is why it really is impossible to separate our presumption of holding schools and students accountable on one hand, from our own accountability to an obligation to sufficiently fund housing, nutrition and Head Start efforts on the other hand. We have not held ourselves accountable on that measure. We have avoided even debating this bill in that context. But if we will not meet that measure, and we have not, then we must at minimum ensure that federal education programs provide schools and students an equal chance at succeeding before we impose accountability and tests whose stakes can be very high. My colleagues and anyone who has listened to much of the debate on this bill know that I have grave reservations about its annual testing provisions. Indeed, I oppose those provisions. I offered one amendment to remove the mandate for the tests if full Title I funding is not provided. I then cosponsored an amendment to allow states not to implement the tests so that they could utilize those funds instead for other means of boosting student achievement in the lowest performing schools . I continue to believe that federally mandated annual testing of every student is a mistake. If it is implemented, I believe we will regret it. I say ``if'' because I hope the Senate will realize its mistake before the year 2005, which is when the first of these new tests would be required. I still intend to attempt at least to allow states to utilize the newly mandated tests for ``diagnostic'' purposes, rather than for the purpose of meeting adequate yearly progress targets. I hope that change can be made in Conference. If I do not succeed at that, I believe that we in Congress, the states and the public may very well reject these tests before they occur. I think they are unneeded, unwanted and most likely detrimental. The debate on what is becoming a mania for testing is just beginning. We are making a significant mistake in mandating these new tests on every child, in every school, in every district and in every state. In the current context, it makes little sense. We have not even begun fully to implement the assessments we approved in 1994 with the last ESEA reauthorization. Yet we are moving to double those requirements and to expand their scope to cover every child in the country. We have not had a chance to look at the effect of those 1994 changes. Only 11 states have brought themselves into full compliance with that law. From what we have been able to look at, the evidence seems to indicate we should be very concerned about how these tests are being implemented and what their effect is on student learning. I would like to cite a few reports that should send us a clear warning about what we are about to do. The Independent Review Panel on Title I which was mandated in the 1994 Reauthorization issued its report ``Improving the Odds'' this January. The report concluded that ``Many States use assessment results from a single test--often traditional multiple choice tests. Although these tests may have an important place in state assessment systems, they rarely capture the depth and breadth of knowledge reflected in state content standards.'' The Panel went on to make a strong recommendation. It said, ``Better Assessments for instructional and accountability purposes are urgently needed.'' I would also like to quote from the National Research Council, as cited in the Report ``Measuring What Matters.'' This report was developed by the strongly pro-testing Committee for Economic Development. The report says: ``policy and public expectations of testing generally exceed the technical capacity of the tests themselves.'' Everybody wants to find a way to address the critical challenge of closing the achievement gap. In people's genuine desire to do something about our schools, I believe they have created expectations from these tests, that far exceed what the tests can ever do. In fact, Robert Schwartz, the President of Achieve, Inc., the nonprofit arm of the standards-based reform movement recently said: ``Tests have taken on too prominent of a role in these reforms and that's in part because of people rushing to attach consequences to them before, in a lot of places, we have really gotten the tests right.'' In this rush for answers, the tests have ceased their useful function of measuring the reform and have become synonymous with it. That is exactly where this bill goes wrong and I believe that the consequences will be destructive. I believe that in the not so distant future, we will regret ever having done this. In fact, I believe that by the time these new tests are to go into effect, many if not most of the Senators in this body will have changed their mind on this issue. My concerns are many and I have been over them before, but in summary, I am extremely concerned about how too much testing can subvert real learning. A Stateline News article from last week reported that: A yet to be released RAND study conducted in North Carolina found that between 50 and 80 percent of the improvements in student performance measured by tests are temporary and fail to predict any real gains in student learning. RAND, which is one of the most respected research institutions in the country, is not alone. A recent survey of Texas teachers indicates that only 27 percent of teachers believe that increases in TAAS scores reflect an increase in the quality of learning and teaching. Much of this is due to the phenomenon of teaching to the test. The Committee for Economic Development, a strongly pro-testing coalition of business leaders, warns against test based accountability systems that ``lead to narrow test based coaching rather than rich instruction.'' Test preparation is not necessarily bad--but if it comes at the expense of real learning, it becomes a major problem. There is no question, at this point, that teaching to the test has become a problem. As an example, the recent Education Week/Pew Charitable Trust study, Quality Counts found that ``Nearly 7/10 teachers said instruction stresses tests `far' or `somewhat' too much. 66 percent also said that state assessments were forcing them to concentrate too much on what is tested to the detriment of other important topics.'' Beyond this detrimental phenomenon, which has proven to be more prevalent in low income communities, there is significant evidence that, at the very time we are trying to bring more teachers into low income schools and address a teacher shortage generally, the need to teach to the test and to provide education based on rote memorization and is driving people out of the field. This is tragic at a time when we face an acute teacher shortage and we know that the single most important factor in closing the achievement gap between students is the quality of the teacher the students have. Both Linda Darling Hammond and Jonothan Kozol have addressed this issue when speaking to the Democratic Caucus. As Kozol said: ``Hundreds of the most exciting and beautifully educated teachers are already fleeing from inner-city schools in order to escape what one brilliant young teacher calls ``Examination Hell.'' I would like to quote from an article from today's New York Times that addresses this specific issue. The article explained: ``In interviews over the last month many fourth grade teachers questioned why they should stay in a job that revolves around preparation for new state exams . . . Principals say that they cannot keep experienced teachers in fourth grade or transfer them there.'' It would be remiss to talk about this issue without also addressing the fact that these tests are not perfect instruments. No one put it better than the strongly pro-testing Committee for Economic Development. These business leaders concluded that ``tests that are not valid, reliable and fair will obviously be inaccurate indicators of the academic achievement of students and can lead to wrong decisions being made about students and schools.'' For example, a study by David Rogosa of California's Stanford 9 National Percentile Rank Scores for individual students showed that the chances that a student whose true score is in the 50th percentile will receive a reported score that is within 5 percentage points of his true score is only 30 percent in reading and 42 percent on ninth grade math tests. Rogosa also showed that on the Stanford 9 test ``the chances, . . . that two students with identical `real achievement' will score more than 10 percentile points apart on the same test'' is 57 percent for 9th graders and 42 percent on the fourth grade reading test. We have to take such error very seriously if we are attaching consequences to the test results for students and schools. If we do not, and we continue to over rely on a single, less than accurate test, our ability to fairly implement any type of accountability is in jeopardy. When we rush to get them done and rush to attach stakes to them, we are ignoring the admonition of the National Academy of Sciences that our expectations for tests should not exceed their technical capacity. One of the most troubling quotations I have read in this regard is a quote from Maureen di Marco, Vice President of Houghton Mifflin company whose subsidiary, Riverside Publishing, is one of the major test publishers. She was cited in the Washington Post as saying that the Industry can only handle the Bush proposal as long as states make up the difference with off the shelf, national achievement tests that are mostly multiple choice and can be scored electronically. This would be destructive and take us in the opposite direction from where we must be going in terms of accurate, quality testing. Such tests are usually not aligned with standards and most often do not measure the depth of student knowledge or student reasoning. In fact, the Stanford-9, the test studied by Rogosa, is just this kind of test, that the companies are telling us we will have to rely on. H. D. Hoover, one of the authors of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and incoming president of the National Council on Measurement in Education said in a recent article that ``there is one heck of a capacity problem'' when it comes to meeting the testing requirements in this bill. So again, in this context, I fail to understand why we are rushing ahead with these new requirements. Why can we not at least wait until states have the knowledge and the opportunity to get the tests they have right before we move on to doing so many more. The Committee for Economic Development report clearly states ``there is more work to do in designing assessment instruments that can measure a rich array of knowledge and skills embedded in rigorous and substantive standards.'' Before we rush ahead, let's meet that challenge. But I would not be being intellectually or personally honest if I did not say that even if we had the most perfect assessments, I still would have significant concerns with the use of tests to compare all students and to punish schools because we have still done so little to ensure that every student has the same opportunity to do well on those tests. That concern runs as deep as any I have. It is a fairness question. There are few bills we will face this year where the policy proposals and the funding that must back up the proposals are so inextricably linked. Without giving more resources to low income schools so they can develop the capacity to help their children do well, we will only set up children to fail. In punishing these students and these schools for their poor performance, I am afraid that we are too blindly confusing their failure with our own. It is in fact, a failure for policy makers to close our eyes to the resource starved schools in our urban and rural areas. It is a failure to think that by testing alone we can reverse years of neglect and deprivation. A study of the Florida accountability system proves this point starkly. The study found that ``for every percent that poverty increases, the school's score drops by an average of 1.6 points.'' He showed that the level of poverty in a school in Florida predicted what the school's achievement score would be with 80 percent accuracy! Not one of my colleagues should be surprised by this. Tests have their place, but they also have their limits. They can not give a kindergartener the early childhood education that his or her parents could not afford to provide. They can not hire a good teacher, they can not reduce class size, they cannot buy students' books and they cannot fix the heater in a school in Minnesota in the winter. Until we give every child these critical tools to do well, the tests will measure less a child's potential and more the accident of his birth. My concerns with this bill are many, and they remain deep. But I also recognize that there is room for improvement and that the bill as it stands has many strengths. I very much appreciate the work that I and my colleagues have had the opportunity to do to improve this bill. I would like to highlight just a few of those improvements. In the area of testing, I want to thank my colleagues for their support for three amendments that I worked very hard on and that I think will go far to ensure that we have high quality tests that are not abused. In ensuring the proper use of tests, we move to ensure that tests most accurately measure how students learn, not what they have memorized. We can more accurately see what it is that students have actually been taught. We can get a better picture of what students need and how they can best be helped. The first is the amendment I introduced that would ensure that states show that their assessments are in compliance with the National Standards on Educational and Psychological Testing and that their assessments are of adequate technical quality for each purpose for which they are used. The amendment also would provide $200 million in grants for states to improve their assessments so that they are of the highest quality and are state of the art in terms of most accurately measuring the range and depth of student knowledge. These higher quality tests and fairer uses of tests are needed because low quality tests can lead to inaccurate assessments which do not serve, but rather subvert, efforts at true accountability and high standards. Further, if we want to avoid the negative outcomes that the wrong kind of testing can bring, such as teaching to the test and teachers leaving the field, we have to be sure that assessments measure students' depth and creativity. We have to measure what students have actually been taught and we have to measure student progress not just in a single point in time, but over time and in multiple dimensions. In doing so, teachers will not futilely train their students but rather will engage their students, and challenge them and explore with them their diverse talents. That way students will gain a deeper more enduring knowledge that translates to all different contexts and is useful when confronting all different challenges. This amendment will move us strongly in the right direction. The second amendment would achieve the same effect as the first. This amendment took the incentive bonus grants that the bill included, which would have rewarded states for completing their assessments as fast as possible, and instead awarded the bonuses to states that develop the most high quality assessments. This way we will be able to incentivize states to move in the direction of developing the most effective assessments that lead to better teacher and learning. The third was an amendment that I offered and which passed in the Committee that authorized an in depth study, conducted by the National Research Council, to address the impact of high stakes tests on individual students. I do not think there is a greater abuse of a test than to use it as the sole determinant of whether a student will be promoted or graduated. The Professional Standards on Educational and Psychological Testing, the National Research Council and virtually every major education and civil rights group agrees with this, yet states and districts persist in this practice. This amendment would look at this practice to determine what are its affects on students, teachers and curriculum. This study would serve as a guide for policy makers so they can understand better how tests can be used as a positive tool in children's education. But beyond the testing provisions, other key improvements were included. None may be more important than the inclusion of the Harkin amendment which would provide full mandatory funding for IDEA. The fact that we have finally decided to live up to the commitment we made too many years ago to fully fund the federal share of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is perhaps the greatest improvement of all. For too long we have shirked this responsibility and for too long children with disabilities have not received the services they need. We assume the responsibility to educate children with disabilities because it is their constitutional right and it is their moral right. But we must never forget that we also educate these children because we know that if given the right opportunities, the vast majority of them can succeed. Passage of this amendment helps make sure that children with disabilities are not pushed aside, that they get the services they need and that they have the opportunities to do well. With those opportunities, so many children can do well they do better than well. They excel. Beyond this most important, most deeply rooted issue is that the program has created a significant, debilitating burden on states and districts when it is our responsibility, not theirs, to provide a large portion of the funding for these critical services to children with disabilities. While states have a constitutional mandate to provide equivalent educations to students with special needs, they do not have the financial resources to do so. It is shameful that for so long, the federal government has not lived up to its promise to provide its share of that funding. And it is with great relief and happiness that this funding, which so many of us have pushed for for years, is one step closer to being realized. This amendment will bring more than $3 billion in IDEA spending to Minnesota. This would make a real difference for children with disabilities and all children in the state. I am grateful to Senator Harkin for his leadership on this issue and I believe that mandatory full funding for IDEA will make a world of difference for so many of our nation's children. I very much support this part of the bill. Another critical area is the area of teacher quality. I am particularly pleased that the Senate has adopted an amendment that I introduced with Senators Hutchison, Clinton, DeWine and Kennedy to establish a national Teacher Corps program to help states and districts recruit teachers into the nation's highest need schools. The teacher shortage we face amounts to a crisis and the problem is most acute in high need urban and rural schools. Even though research shows that the most important factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher, the rates of underlicensed teachers in urban schools is twice that of the nation as a whole and in low income areas, 50,000 under- prepared teachers are hired each year. The passage of this amendment represents a national commitment to address this very severe barrier to learning. I want to particularly applaud the work of Senator Kennedy, who has fought more than anyone in the area of teacher quality. Senator Kennedy included key provisions that would ensure that within five years, only highly qualified teachers are hired in high poverty schools. No one has worked harder on the issue of high quality teachers than Senator Kennedy. When we think about closing the achievement gap between low and high income schools, this provision is essential. Several studies have shown that if poor and minority students are taught by high quality teachers at the same rate as other students, a large part of the gap between poor and minority students and their more affluent white counterparts would disappear. For example, one Alabama study shows that an increase of one standard deviation in teacher test scores leads to a two-thirds reduction in the gap between black-white test scores. Finally, parent involvement is an area in which I believe the bill has seen substantial improvement. Parent involvement is one of the most important parts of any child's education. When families are fully engaged in the educational process, students have: higher grades and test scores; better attendance and more homework done; fewer placements in special education; more positive attitudes and behavior; higher graduation rates; and, greater enrollment in post-secondary education. For this reason, I am grateful for the inclusion of my amendment to establish local, community based parent involvement centers to help the lowest income communities and the communities like the Hmong community in Minneapolis and St. Paul where parents, because of language and cultural barriers, are most isolated from their children's educational experience. Senator Reed's leadership on parent involvement has brought the issue to the forefront and his work has helped ensure that the benefits brought by greater family involvement in education would extend to all families. In conclusion, there are many important issues with which we grapple in the U.S. Senate. But, my colleagues, I truly feel that there is nothing more important than the education of America's children. The opportunity to improve America's public education was one of the key factors that drove me to become a public servant and to run for election to this body nearly a dozen years ago. I am proud of the work I have done with many in this body on education at all levels in this country. It is that passion to improve public education that is the reason that at many points during the last several months, as we moved to this point on the reauthorization of ESEA, I have been deeply frustrated. And, it is the reason that I am frustrated with this bill today. For all the reasons that I have laid out earlier, I truly feel that in many ways we are missing a tremendous opportunity to take a significant step forward in bettering America's education system. At the time of the final vote in our committee mark-up, I voted to send the bill forward to the full Senate. I was deeply conflicted about my vote at that point. However, along with several of my colleagues on that committee, I did so with the message that, as the process continued, the expansion of resources committed to education must come to match the elevation in our expectations about our schools' performances. On the Senate floor we have made a huge step forward in achieving that goal with the mandatory funding for the IDEA program. The inclusion of mandatory IDEA funding has gotten us part of the way there on the commitment of resources that was vital, in my mind to match the dramatic increase in testing required by an act that confuses educational accountability with standardized testing. But, beyond this, we still have to make sure, that along with the passage of the Dodd-Collins Amendment on Title I, the Kennedy Amendment on Teacher Quality and the Boxer amendment on after school--there will be an adequate appropriation to match the authorization levels so we can truly help those students who are already so far behind where they should be. Without that, this bill will not work. While this is a vote on the final passage of this bill in the Senate, we all know that much work remains to be done on this bill. Whether it is in testing or funding or defining adequate yearly progress, I think that most people on this side of the aisle know that this bill has a long way to go. I am committed to remain deeply involved in that important work that must be done in the weeks ahead. Therefore, I will vote ``yes'' today with perhaps the deepest ambivalence I have ever felt on a vote during my years in the United States Senate and with a message similar to the one I laid out when I voted to send this bill out of committee. In particular, in the weeks ahead, as the Conference Committee does its work, I will continue to fight to strengthen the fairness and quality of the assessments that will be a part of the final bill. Specifically, I will continue to work toward an effective compromise. That compromise was included in an amendment which I filed and was prepared to put forward today. I decided that it would be more productive for me to wait until another day to offer that proposal. That amendment would keep in place the assessment system used for determining whether schools are achieving adequate yearly progress that was included in the 1994 reauthorization but has yet to be fully implemented. And, it would allow the annual testing to move forward. But, it would allow states and schools to use those additional annual tests only for the diagnostic purposes for which experts in the field of educational assessment say is their most appropriate use. That is, rather than being attached to sanctions for schools or individuals, assessments are best used to diagnose the academic strengths and weaknesses of individual students and to help them improve. Testing has a role in the educational system, but it should be used primarily to achieve what should be our ultimate goal: Helping our students live up to their true intellectual potential. I will also do everything I can to fight for the retention of the IDEA amendment in the Conference Report and for other funding increases for Title I, Teacher Quality, after school and other key programs. It is because of this desire to fight and because I see so much room for improvement that I am choosing to stay engaged in this process and I am voting yes. I believe we can do much, much more. After today, however, there will be one remaining vote on this bill-- on the bill that comes out of the Conference between the Senate and the House. My vote at that time will be based on the considerations I have outlined above. It is my sincere hope that the provisions in the bill related to the quality, fairness and appropriate use of tests will be stronger in the conference report than in this bill. There must also be an iron-clad commitment of resources to assist disadvantaged students in their educational opportunities. Finally, the bill must ensure full funding for the federal government's commitment to its share of our special education students' education. But, today, with deep ambivalence, I have voted ``yes'' on this bill with hope that we can continue to improve it and the education of America's students. Again, I want to congratulate the Senators who supported this bill. I voted for it with a considerable amount of ambivalence. Making the IDEA program mandatory is hugely important to Minnesota and other people in the country. There were amendments on testing, and on recruitment of teachers, and dealing with parental involvement that I am proud of, which I worked on along with others who were a part of this bill. When it goes to conference, I get to be in the conference committee. I am going to fight to make the testing diagnostic, without high-stakes consequences. The money needs to be there in appropriations. If we don't get the money for title I, if we are not able to make some of those changes, I may well vote against the conference report when it comes back to the floor. For right now, I want to keep on fighting. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. That is correct.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask the Chair whether or not we have 10 minutes altogether on our side or 10 minutes for each of us. What is the understanding from last night?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, my hope is the Senator from South Carolina will be able to be here. He spoke last night on his amendment, and he can do it with more eloquence and more persuasively than can I. But I told him, since I support his amendment, I would be pleased to try to be a fill-in for him. I see my colleague is now here. I say to the Senator from South Carolina that I will be delighted to follow him, if he is ready to speak. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from South Carolina. I will follow my colleague.

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise to support the Hollings amendment. Hearing the Senator from South Carolina makes me think that, our motto should be, perhaps: We should invest before we test. I think of what the American people said about Dr. King when he left the pulpit and went out into the community: He went out and walked his talk. I don't think we are walking our talk. If we were walking our talk, we would not only be demanding our tests, but we would be demanding that every child have an opportunity to do well on the tests. We have not done that, and I think Senator Hollings raises what I think is the most important question. I believe I am one of the few Senators who is troubled by this and agonizing over the question of whether or not the Federal Government should be telling the school board, the school district, which epitomizes the grassroots political culture of America: `You do not get to decide what is best.' We are telling them, every school district in America: You are going to test every child, grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 every year, with consequences for your school and your school district depending on how these children do in these tests. What this amendment says is we should maybe have a little more faith in people at the school board level. We should have maybe a little more faith in people back in our States to decide what they think is best, and they should have the option on whether they want to do the testing or use the resources to help children. That is what this amendment says. I am all for national community standards for civil rights and human rights and for the first amendment and in making sure there is a floor for a educational commitment below which no poor child falls. I think that is what we are about as a nation. But I think when it comes to this kind of decision, is it right for the Federal Government literally to tell every school district what to do to test every child? I think we might rue the day we have voted for this. I struggle over the question right now. That is why I think this is such an important amendment. I fully support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the Schumer- Wellstone ``Child Poverty Reduction Act.'' This bill would create a fifth goal of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF, Program to reduce poverty among families with children in the United States, and it would provide a $150 million annual appropriation for high performance bonus grants to States who reduce both the depth and extent of child poverty. Under current law, TANF has four goals: 1. provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes; 2. end dependency on the welfare system; 3. prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and 4. encourage the formation and maintenance of two parent families. The bill would add language stating that the fifth goal of TANF is ``to reduce poverty of families with children in the United States.'' The TANF program currently awards ``high performance'' bonuses to States that rank high on outcome measures related to the program's goals. A total of $1 billion was provided over 5 years, averaging $200 million per year, for this bonus. The law charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with developing the criteria for measuring high performance in consultation with certain groups representing the states. Bonuses have thus far been awarded for fiscal year 1999 and fiscal year 2000. For fiscal year 1999 through fiscal year 2001, states are judged only on measures related to promoting work for the high performance bonus. Beginning in fiscal year 2002, new measures will be added that provide bonus awards to States that increase the percent of married couple families with children and to States that take steps to increase participation in food stamps, Medicaid/SCHIP and child care. This bill would create an additional $150 million bonus category to provide high performance bonus grants to all States that reduce their child poverty rate from the previous year's poverty rate. The grant is authorized from fiscal year 2003 onward. To ensure continued improvement, States cannot receive a bonus if their child poverty rate for any given year is higher than their lowest child poverty rate from calendar year 2002 onward. In addition, even if a State reduces the overall poverty rate, a State cannot receive the bonus if the average amount of income that the State's poor children needed to get above the poverty line, the average depth of child poverty, increased from the previous year. Each State that qualifies for a grant would receive an award equal to the number of the children residing in the State as a percentage of the number of children living in the United States. A qualifying State can receive no less than $1 million per year, and no more than 5 percent of their Basic TANF grant. This bill takes the important first step toward reorienting our thinking about the purpose of welfare ``reform.'' Many people have trumpeted the ``success'' of welfare reform, pointing to the enormous reduction in the caseload as proof of this success, but such claims miss the point. Reducing the rolls is the easy part--just kick people off, close their cases, and wish them well. The more important, and infinitely more difficult, part is the reduction of poverty. When advocates of welfare ``reform'' talk about ending dependency, there is clearly a presumption that they are also advocating moving these same families toward economic self-sufficiency. But the reality of the situation is that the welfare rolls have declined much more quickly than the poverty rate, and it is not at all clear that those families who have lost their benefits have moved out of poverty. Of particular concern is the fact that too many children in this country continue to live in poverty. What do we know about the well-being of poor children in this country? We know that the number of children who live in poverty has declined. In 1998, 18.9 percent of children in the United States lived in poverty. In 1999 that figure dropped to 16.9 percent. But before we start celebrating, let's think about what this really represents. In this period of unheralded economic growth, child poverty has decreased by two percent. Two percent. Unprecedented, rewrite the economic textbooks, prosperity, and childhood poverty has decreased by only two percent. Worse, though, we also know that poor children are on average now more poor than ever before. Their families have incomes further below the poverty level than in any other year that this information has been collected. And researchers point to the decline in cash assistance and food stamps as a primary cause. The percentage of poor children whose families received cash assistance fell from 62 percent in 1994 to 43 percent in 1998; the percent of poor children who received food stamps dropped from 94 percent to 75 percent from 1994 to 1998; and a million people became uninsured in 1998. Our Nation's programs, designed to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens, are serving fewer of them. This is what we call success? I've said it before and I'll continue to say it for as long as we have this debate simply reducing the welfare rolls is not success. Reducing the rolls is not the same thing as reducing poverty, our real goal, a goal we have not come close to reaching. It is critical that we reframe the public discourse so that welfare ``reform'' is about ending poverty, not simply reducing the rolls, and we must make it part of a larger discourse about the needs of working families in this country. After all, there are about 6 million people on the welfare rolls, but there are 32 million people 12 million children living in poverty, 43 million people who are uninsured, 30 million people who are hungry, more than 13 million children who are eligible for child care assistance who aren't receiving any, more than 12 million people teetering on the edge of homelessness, and an estimated 6.9 million people in this country earning only the minimum wage unable to move their families out of poverty even by working full- time, year-round. As we begin to consider reauthorization of the welfare ``reform'' bill, we need to understand that whatever debate we have won't be just about welfare. We need to understand that what we will really be talking about is poverty, about hunger and homelessness, about whether or not our children are safe, about whether or not they come to school ``ready to learn,'' about whether or not they grow and prosper. The debate we will have is not simply about what is good for the 6 million people in this country receiving public assistance, or even the 32 million people living in poverty, but it will be a debate about what is good for our country. It will be a debate about our priorities. Any investment we make in the needs of low-income families will be paid back to us a thousand-fold in the well-being of our children, our neighborhoods, and our communities. And the cost of not investing in these families is similarly multiplied when we see our children fall behind in grade school and high school, when we bear witness to horrible acts of violence committed by children against children, and when we face a cycle of poverty that seems nearly unbreakable. I look forward to the day when the needs of all families are met, when we ensure that every member of our community leads a life of dignity, able to provide for themselves and their families. And I have to believe that such a day will come, although I worry that it may not come soon enough. We must do more to reduce both the extent and the depth of poverty in this country, and right now is the time to do so. Right now we have the resources to ensure that no family, no child, is left behind. The Schumer-Wellstone ``Child Poverty Reduction Act'' is a step in this direction. I urge each of my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the Schumer- Wellstone ``Child Poverty Reduction Act.'' This bill would create a fifth goal of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF, Program to reduce poverty among families with children in the United States, and it would provide a $150 million annual appropriation for high performance bonus grants to States who reduce both the depth and extent of child poverty. Under current law, TANF has four goals: 1. provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes; 2. end dependency on the welfare system; 3. prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and 4. encourage the formation and maintenance of two parent families. The bill would add language stating that the fifth goal of TANF is ``to reduce poverty of families with children in the United States.'' The TANF program currently awards ``high performance'' bonuses to States that rank high on outcome measures related to the program's goals. A total of $1 billion was provided over 5 years, averaging $200 million per year, for this bonus. The law charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with developing the criteria for measuring high performance in consultation with certain groups representing the states. Bonuses have thus far been awarded for fiscal year 1999 and fiscal year 2000. For fiscal year 1999 through fiscal year 2001, states are judged only on measures related to promoting work for the high performance bonus. Beginning in fiscal year 2002, new measures will be added that provide bonus awards to States that increase the percent of married couple families with children and to States that take steps to increase participation in food stamps, Medicaid/SCHIP and child care. This bill would create an additional $150 million bonus category to provide high performance bonus grants to all States that reduce their child poverty rate from the previous year's poverty rate. The grant is authorized from fiscal year 2003 onward. To ensure continued improvement, States cannot receive a bonus if their child poverty rate for any given year is higher than their lowest child poverty rate from calendar year 2002 onward. In addition, even if a State reduces the overall poverty rate, a State cannot receive the bonus if the average amount of income that the State's poor children needed to get above the poverty line, the average depth of child poverty, increased from the previous year. Each State that qualifies for a grant would receive an award equal to the number of the children residing in the State as a percentage of the number of children living in the United States. A qualifying State can receive no less than $1 million per year, and no more than 5 percent of their Basic TANF grant. This bill takes the important first step toward reorienting our thinking about the purpose of welfare ``reform.'' Many people have trumpeted the ``success'' of welfare reform, pointing to the enormous reduction in the caseload as proof of this success, but such claims miss the point. Reducing the rolls is the easy part--just kick people off, close their cases, and wish them well. The more important, and infinitely more difficult, part is the reduction of poverty. When advocates of welfare ``reform'' talk about ending dependency, there is clearly a presumption that they are also advocating moving these same families toward economic self-sufficiency. But the reality of the situation is that the welfare rolls have declined much more quickly than the poverty rate, and it is not at all clear that those families who have lost their benefits have moved out of poverty. Of particular concern is the fact that too many children in this country continue to live in poverty. What do we know about the well-being of poor children in this country? We know that the number of children who live in poverty has declined. In 1998, 18.9 percent of children in the United States lived in poverty. In 1999 that figure dropped to 16.9 percent. But before we start celebrating, let's think about what this really represents. In this period of unheralded economic growth, child poverty has decreased by two percent. Two percent. Unprecedented, rewrite the economic textbooks, prosperity, and childhood poverty has decreased by only two percent. Worse, though, we also know that poor children are on average now more poor than ever before. Their families have incomes further below the poverty level than in any other year that this information has been collected. And researchers point to the decline in cash assistance and food stamps as a primary cause. The percentage of poor children whose families received cash assistance fell from 62 percent in 1994 to 43 percent in 1998; the percent of poor children who received food stamps dropped from 94 percent to 75 percent from 1994 to 1998; and a million people became uninsured in 1998. Our Nation's programs, designed to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens, are serving fewer of them. This is what we call success? I've said it before and I'll continue to say it for as long as we have this debate simply reducing the welfare rolls is not success. Reducing the rolls is not the same thing as reducing poverty, our real goal, a goal we have not come close to reaching. It is critical that we reframe the public discourse so that welfare ``reform'' is about ending poverty, not simply reducing the rolls, and we must make it part of a larger discourse about the needs of working families in this country. After all, there are about 6 million people on the welfare rolls, but there are 32 million people 12 million children living in poverty, 43 million people who are uninsured, 30 million people who are hungry, more than 13 million children who are eligible for child care assistance who aren't receiving any, more than 12 million people teetering on the edge of homelessness, and an estimated 6.9 million people in this country earning only the minimum wage unable to move their families out of poverty even by working full- time, year-round. As we begin to consider reauthorization of the welfare ``reform'' bill, we need to understand that whatever debate we have won't be just about welfare. We need to understand that what we will really be talking about is poverty, about hunger and homelessness, about whether or not our children are safe, about whether or not they come to school ``ready to learn,'' about whether or not they grow and prosper. The debate we will have is not simply about what is good for the 6 million people in this country receiving public assistance, or even the 32 million people living in poverty, but it will be a debate about what is good for our country. It will be a debate about our priorities. Any investment we make in the needs of low-income families will be paid back to us a thousand-fold in the well-being of our children, our neighborhoods, and our communities. And the cost of not investing in these families is similarly multiplied when we see our children fall behind in grade school and high school, when we bear witness to horrible acts of violence committed by children against children, and when we face a cycle of poverty that seems nearly unbreakable. I look forward to the day when the needs of all families are met, when we ensure that every member of our community leads a life of dignity, able to provide for themselves and their families. And I have to believe that such a day will come, although I worry that it may not come soon enough. We must do more to reduce both the extent and the depth of poverty in this country, and right now is the time to do so. Right now we have the resources to ensure that no family, no child, is left behind. The Schumer-Wellstone ``Child Poverty Reduction Act'' is a step in this direction. I urge each of my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, because there are other Senators desiring to speak on this, I can do this in less than 5 minutes. An awful lot has been said. I was listening to my colleague from Nevada, and I thought I might say at the beginning, in terms of my background, all of our children went to public schools. My wife Sheila worked at the library of the high school. I think this reminds me of a debate I was involved in with Senator Hatch from Utah when I first came to the Senate, a sharp debate, but done with some friendliness and a twinkle in our eye. I said to Senator Hatch, if Democrats and Republicans in the Senate could say to me as a Senator from Minnesota, we have lived up to our commitment to leaving no child behind--I have heard so much about leaving no child behind: We have fully funded prekindergarten education so every child in America comes to kindergarten ready to learn--that is where the Federal Government could be a real player; we have fully funded the title I program for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We have lived up to our commitment to fund the IDEA program for children with special needs; We have voted for smaller class size and voted to get more teachers, good teachers into teaching, to join many good teachers who are teaching; we have voted for there to be an investment of money to rebuild crumbling schools because crumbling schools tell the children we don't give a damn; we have voted for resources for support services so there are counselors and teacher assistance and to help kids in reading; We have done it all, and none of it has worked; We have made our commitment to public education, and it has not worked; at that point in time, I might be the first person to embrace vouchers. But we have not done any of that. It is for that reason alone that I vigorously oppose this amendment introduced by the Senator from New Hampshire. Second, in my understanding in this proposal--by the way, the exclusive private schools cost a lot--I don't know how it is that low- income children are going to be able to afford this, even with the help they get here. This is fantasy land to believe that is the case. There is not a requirement to accept children, for example, who have special needs. If that is the case, and I believe it is, I oppose this amendment for that reason alone. I do not support public money that is not linked to making sure that every child will be able to benefit, including children with special needs. I have made my case. One other point. This bill is called BEST. This piece of legislation in its present form so far, beyond testing every child at every grade from grade 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and telling every school district in every State they have to do it, I see no guarantee anywhere in this legislation that provides any resources to make sure every child will have the same opportunity to learn. I don't see it in this legislation. I don't see it. It didn't happen last week with the trigger amendment on title 1. I am not aware of any agreement with the administration. This is putting the cart ahead of the horse, talking about vouchers, without making the commitment to public education. The tragedy is we have plenty of issues in our States, huge disparities of resources between children in more affluent districts and districts less affluent, States that could do better with surpluses, and Minnesota is an example. I cannot believe we are not making more of an investment in education in our own State. But at the Federal level, Senators, we have not even come close to matching the words we speak with the action we are taking. We have not lived up to our commitment to leaving no child behind, which I have said a million times, cannot be accomplished on a tin-cup education budget. That is all we have. Until we make the commitment to invest in the skills and intellect and character of all children in our country--and it starts with education, which is the foundation of opportunity--I could never support this voucher proposal. I hope it is defeated. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Was the Senator propounding a unanimous consent agreement?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Senator Hollings and I were under the impression we would vote tonight. Sometimes when colleagues are gone, it is like spitting in the wind. If we are going to do it tomorrow, could we have--and this would hold true for Senator Santorum--5 minutes each to summarize tomorrow?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, how much time do we have?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I believe I interrupted the Senator from South Carolina. I will take a couple minutes because the Senator from South Carolina has said it better than I can. Listening to the Senator from South Carolina, I want to say a couple things. First of all, I want to say one thing personally, which is unusual to say, but I hope people were able to listen carefully to the history behind the remarks. There are some people in our country--I am sorry, but the Senator was so kind and gracious, I just sound like a politician engaged in flattery--there are few people I have met who I so admire. I cannot believe the people that were at the heart of the struggle in the South who took on a system of apartheid. And this Senator from South Carolina is one of them. There are very few of us who have this history--very few of us. It doesn't mean Senators have to agree with his position on this amendment. But I just wanted to say that. There are some people who showed unbelievable courage and were prophetic. And I feel that way about Senator Hollings from South Carolina. When I was listening to the Senator from South Carolina, I was thinking to myself that actually there are a couple different issues here. On one of them, I spent so many hours I felt as if I was giving enough speeches to deafen the gods. And maybe that is what happened because I did not get a lot of votes on the amendment that meant the most to me. There were some amendments we did on testing, I say to my colleague, that make this bill better, much, much better if, in fact, it ensures that assessments do not just become standardized, multiple choice tests, and rather include multiple, high quality measures. Then there was the question of whether or not, if we are going to mandate--my colleague talks about unfunded mandates--that every child will be tested in every State, in every school district, in every grade, then I was praying for a Federal mandate or mission that would say that we would also have equality of opportunity for every child in our country to be able to do well in these tests, to be able to achieve. I think part of what the Senator from South Carolina is saying is that in some ways this is utterly ridiculous. We already know the schools where kids have two and three and four teachers during a year. We already know the schools where I would argue housing is becoming a major educational issue. In some of our towns kids, little kids are moving--little children that are my grandchildren's age--two or three or four times during the year. We already know the difference between a beautiful building, that is inviting, that tells children that we care about them versus a dilapidated, crumbling building that tells children that we don't care about them. We also know of the schools where there are toilets that work and computer technology and buildings that were warm this winter and are not stifling hot in the summer. We know that that works. As a matter of fact, most Senators can look at where their children have gone to school, and they know what works. We already know that the smaller class sizes are good. We already know that support services for teachers are really important, whether it be more counselors, whether it be additional teaching assistants to help children read or to do better in reading or to do better in math. We already know it all. I think that is part of what the Senator is saying. So this amendment says, if a State chooses, in its wisdom, to say, we don't really need to do this, but we would certainly make use of this money to help the children, to help our kids, to help our schools, to help our teachers, we leave it up to the States to do so. Is my understanding correct?

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I only have two more points to make, one point I have not made in this Senate Chamber but I have been thinking about this and thinking about this and thinking about this to the point where I just don't even know how to decide how to vote. A large part of me wants to vote against this bill. On the other hand there are strong improvements in the bill--most particularly mandatory funding for the IDEA program. That is really important. That will help a lot of our schools, I say to Senator Hollings. It really will. But the other side of the coin is clear. I have asked a question of some of my friends who are more conservative than I. There are a number of Senators who may be more conservative than I. But I have asked them: How do we get to this point where the Federal Government is now going to mandate--first of all, the NAEP test every year. Despite NAEP's high quality these are still new tests that every State is going to have to do. Seven years ago we started some testing under Title I, but we have not even gotten the results on that testing authorized in 1994. We have not begun to evaluate whether or not that testing has had a positive impact on student learning. But now we are going to move ahead and test every child every year. We have the Federal Government now telling school districts--which I always thought was the heart of the grassroots political culture in America--that it doesn't matter what you have decided you need to do. It doesn't matter how you think you can be most accountable. We, the Federal Government, are telling every school district in every State, you will test every child in the third grade, the fourth grade, the fifth grade, the sixth grade, the seventh grade, and the eighth grade. I do not know whether the Federal Government has any business doing that. I am amazed, frankly, that there is not more opposition. It would seem to me a good conservative principle would be that this is an overreach. Now people could turn around and say to me: Well, you, of all people, Senator Wellstone but, for me, when it comes to civil rights or when it comes to human rights or when it comes to the first amendment or when it comes to a floor beneath which no poor child should fall or when it comes to basic educational needs of children or that children should not go hungry, I do not think that is up to a State to decide. To me, we, as a national community, should say, no, we all live by these rules, these values. But the other part of me is a decentrist. I do not know whether I really believe the Federal Government has any business telling every school district in every State they have to do this. I think we can very well rue the day that we voted for this. On that philosophical point, as well as on the question of how we are setting a lot of kids and teachers in schools up for failure because we have not committed the resources to make sure they will all have the opportunity to learn, it seems to me this amendment speaks of that. That is why I rise to support it. I yield the floor.