An Ample Agenda

AN AMPLE AGENDA -- (Senate - September 05, 2006)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I salute the Democratic leader for his opening remarks. This is the beginning of the September session of this Congress, as we roll toward the election. The majority leader has suggested we will be here for perhaps 3 or 4 weeks. I hope we can work together, as Senator Reid suggested, in a bipartisan fashion. There is certainly an ample agenda before us, a lot of things we should be considering.

I spent most of August traveling up and down Illinois, in the city of Chicago and cities large and small. It is clear to me that there is much we need to do.

Yesterday was Labor Day. Yesterday I noted in the State of Illinois that 330,000 workers are making less than what we are proposing as an increase in the minimum wage. That means 330,000 individuals got up this morning and went to work in Illinois, taking on some of the tougher jobs, some of the dirtier jobs, some of the jobs that demand more time away from your family, and they are faced with a wage which cannot sustain their families.

Imagine living in a State governed by the Federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour--the same wage, the same level of wage it was 9 years ago. For 9 straight years, the Republican Congress and the Republican President have refused to increase the minimum wage for the lowest paid workers in America. This breaks with tradition.

Historically, this was a bipartisan issue. We didn't quarrel between Democrats and Republicans. We said: For goodness' sake, justice and fairness require that you give people who are working so hard for so little money an increase once in a while. The cost of living goes up; we know that. But for 9 years, the Republicans have said no, no increase in the minimum wage.

But there is an interesting thing to note. During that same 9-year period, when we have said that the lowest paid workers in America should be stuck at making around $10,000 a year, Congress has voted itself an increase in pay of $31,000 a year. We say no to millions of American workers, some of them single moms trying to raise their kids as best they can. We say no to increasing their minimum wage, and we increase the salary of Members of Congress.

We have taken a stand on the Democratic side. It is not going to happen this year. If the Republican majority
refuses to increase the minimum wage for millions of these workers, there will be no increase in congressional pay. It is a small thing, maybe only symbolic, but it is an important symbol. Finally, Members of the Senate and Members of Congress have to realize there are consequences to their actions.

Yesterday, on Labor Day, I went to Rock Island, IL--one of our better Labor Day parades. Former Senator John Edwards was there. My colleague LANE EVANS, who is retiring from the House of Representatives, and a number of local people all came out to speak to those who gathered to recognize the contributions of every working American. The No. 1 issue was the minimum wage. We are lucky our Governor, Rod Blagojevich, has raised the minimum wage in Illinois by State law. Some States have done that. They have given up on waiting for the Federal Government to do it.

If we want to do something before we leave for the November election, wouldn't it be good to return to those days when there was bipartisan support for an increase in the minimum wage? Couldn't we pass even this week an increase in the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour phased in over a few years? Shouldn't we at least say to these hard-working Americans that we are going to give them a helping hand to raise their children and keep their families together, pay for daycare, pay for medicine, and food and clothing? That is something we could do.

There is something else we could do. We have a Medicare prescription Part D which provides the possibility of lowering the cost of prescription drugs to millions of seniors across America. Before we leave, on a bipartisan basis, why don't we say that the Medicare Program can bargain with the pharmaceutical companies to get the best low prices for seniors across America? That was a glaring omission in the original bill. As a result, our seniors under this program are paying more today than they should. How do we know this? Because under the Veterans' Administration policies, they bargained with the drug companies, and for the 22 most frequently prescribed drugs for seniors, the VA price for those drugs is substantially lower than what seniors are paying today under the Medicare Program.

So why don't we, on a bipartisan basis, say that we will give to seniors across America the same benefit, the same helping hand that we give to our veterans; that we will give them lower drug prices? Most of these people we are talking about are on fixed incomes. They are trying to get by, and the cost of prescription drugs is going up. A helping hand for these Americans is something we can achieve, something we can do. It is something we ought to focus on in a bipartisan effort in the closing days of this session to really help those Americans.

There are so many other things we can do, and I sincerely hope that we do. When you consider the national energy situation, we have noticed in the Midwest the price of gasoline started coming down again. I don't know if other Members have noticed that. Interesting timing, isn't it? As the vacation season ends and Americans are no longer driving across the country with their families, burning up more gasoline, the price is starting to come down. I would like to believe that this is a trend that will continue and the prices will get much lower, but I am not confident because what we have seen is that the oil companies that are recording the highest profits in their history have the ability to raise these prices just as they raised them at gasoline stations around your hometown. And we don't have any control in Washington. The best we could get was a comment from the President and some of the Republican congressional leaders about how unhappy they were with gasoline prices but nothing more. There was no serious effort to penalize the oil companies that have run up these profits at the expense of families and businesses and farmers across America. We need a national energy policy.

As I travel around my State and the country, it is very clear that elements of that policy are obvious to most people. We need to have more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. The fuel economy of the vehicles we drive will do more to lessen our dependence on foreign oil than anything else. Sixty percent of the oil we import goes right into the tank. So if we want to have a serious effort toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil, we need to have more fuel-efficient cars and trucks.

I have tried three different times over the last 4 years to put in a new CAFE standard for America so that the makers of these cars and trucks will start building better cars and trucks with better technology that use less fuel. I can't get a majority, but I think the numbers are starting to change. For the first time I am noting that some of my Republican colleagues are seriously considering that possibility. We should do it. We could put in a new CAFE standard before we leave for the election and say to America: This is the important first step in moving us toward less dependence on foreign oil.

Today, as we fill up our tanks, hand over our cash and credit cards to pay for it, understand that a portion of the money that we pay at the gas station ends up in the hands of foreign governments, some of which are not on the same wavelength or on the same agenda as the United States when it comes to foreign policy. Sadly, some of the countries that we are sending money to for oil are using the proceeds from that oil to support terrorism. That is unacceptable. We need to have an energy policy which reduces our dependence on foreign oil and, in fact, burns less fuel when we drive our cars and trucks, not only saving us money as individuals and families and businesses but also reducing pollution in the process and reducing the threat of global warming.

A lot of families across Illinois come up to me and talk about the cost of health care. It has reached a point for some that is sad and painful and many times embarrassing. At one of my town meetings, a man came up afterwards and said: I am one of those families, those uninsured families. I have a sick child. I worry about him. Anyone would.

To think that we have reached a point in America where it is acceptable that more and more people have no coverage, no health insurance, is something that is not consistent with the values of our Nation. We should be working on a bipartisan basis to extend health insurance--affordable, quality health insurance--to every American family. Estimates are that 48 million Americans are without health insurance today, which is roughly 1 out of 6 Americans. That doesn't count the millions who have health insurance that is worth little or nothing.

Why are we not taking this on? Why isn't this an issue on which Congress focuses? It could be a good bipartisan issue for us to work on. When I think of what we have been considering over the last several months before the August recess, it is very clear to me that instead of a clarion call from Capitol Hill to unite behind an inspired program that really moves us forward as a nation, what we have heard is the death rattle of a Congress that is dominated by special interest groups and those who are looking for a political advantage as we approach the November 7 election.

The first special interest domination is obvious by the trifecta bill. If you go to a racetrack--and I have been to a few in Illinois--and you bet $2 on a trifecta, you know your odds of winning are very low. It is a high-stakes bet. It is a high-risk bet. Many more people will lose than will win. So it is the right name for the Republican program--the trifecta bill--that would give a tax break to the wealthiest families in America. Two-tenths of 1 percent--that is, 2 families out of every 1,000--would get a tax break, and they are the wealthiest families in America.

Senator Frist and his colleagues on the Republican side have said this is our highest priority. In the midst of a war when we are asking for sacrifice from our brave soldiers, in the midst of a war in Iraq when we are asking the families of those soldiers who pray every night for their safety to stand by our country, in the midst of a war in Iraq where we have spent over $300 billion, with no end in sight, as we fight a war that costs us up to $3 billion a week, which requires that we cut back on spending at home for education and health care, in the midst of this situation, this President and his Republican counterparts in Congress have identified as their highest priority cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in America.

This is the first President in the recorded history of the United States of America to ever ask for a tax cut in a war, for obvious reasons. If you have a budget for the country and then a war on top of it, every other President in our history has understood that you cannot cut taxes. Most of them have raised taxes to try to pay for the war. But not this President, not this Congress; they are cutting taxes in the midst of a war, driving us deeper and deeper into deficit--a debt which our children and their children will carry for generations. That is not fiscally sound. It doesn't add up. To think that is a much higher priority to many in the leadership on the other side of the aisle is an indication of how far we have moved away from mainstream thinking in America.

A lot of people are dissatisfied with this country's direction. A recent poll announced last week that two out of three people in America say our Nation is on the wrong track, that we need a new direction, that we can do better. We asked them: What is it you are thinking of when you speak of this? They say, No. 1, the war in Iraq. Something is wrong here. This is not what we were told we would get into. We were promised by this administration that removing Saddam Hussein would result in the Iraqi people greeting us with open arms, that we would see them move toward a democracy and set a standard for the rest of the world. Well, here we are in the fourth year of this war, having lost so many of our brave soldiers, and we are not close to that goal. There is no end in sight. The President's answer is a throwaway phrase: ``Just stay the course.''

The President has said that there won't be a serious discussion of removing American troops under his watch. That is up to the next President, he said. That means waiting more than 2 years to really start bringing American troops home. Is it any wonder the American people are upset with that, that they think we need a new direction in Iraq?

They understand that when it comes to the war on terrorism, we were attacked on 9/11 by al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, and the al-Qaida terrorists. I served on the Senate Intelligence Committee at that time. The best estimates we had were that there were 20,000 of these willful killers around the world who launched that attack on the United States. Our intelligence agencies report today that they estimate there are 50,000 members of al-Qaida around the world. We know that before our invasion of Iraq, there was virtually no evidence of al-Qaida in the nation of Iraq. Today, al-Qaida has become a potent force, sowing seeds of discord within Iraq and launching attacks against American soldiers. Al-Qaida's franchise has arrived in Iraq since we invaded.

So we have a big job ahead of us to make America safe in a dangerous world, protect against terrorism. We should go back to where we started, when the overwhelming majority of the Senate voted to go after al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is a mission not yet accomplished. We need to do more to go after al-Qaida. Unfortunately, this administration has not focused the resources necessary. They have disbanded the effort to find Osama bin Laden in the CIA, a special group put together for that purpose. I believe it is time to renew that effort, that commitment toward removing al-Qaida to make America safe.

Mr. President, as we see the agenda before us in the next few weeks, there are several things we can move forward with on a bipartisan basis: the minimum wage, doing something about Medicare prescription Part D, and making certain we move toward a nation with an energy policy that will sustain the growth of our economy and not destroy the environment in which we live. We can accomplish these things--and we should--in the days ahead.

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