[Pages S3592-S3603]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

NATIONAL SERVICE REAUTHORIZATION ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 1388, which the
clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

Motion to proceed to consideration of the bill (H.R. 1388)
to reauthorize and reform the national service laws.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
previously scheduled 6 p.m. cloture vote now occur at 5:45 p.m., and
that 10 minutes immediately prior to 5:45 p.m. be divided as previously
ordered, and that all other provisions of the previous order remain in
effect.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. Madam President, for the information of Members, a number
of Senators wanted us to start the vote earlier tonight, and we are
happy to do that. For those who aren't going to arrive until 6 o'clock,
we will drag the vote out so they will not miss it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I am proud today to bring the
legislation to the floor entitled Serve America Act. This bill is the
result of extensive bipartisan work by Senators Kennedy and Hatch who
have worked more than a year on this legislation but who have devoted
their lives to this bill. I know in a short time I will be joined by
the distinguished Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, who was one of the
prime sponsors of the bill. Senator Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking member
of the Health, Education Committee, was also going to be here. He is in
a snowstorm in Wyoming. Senator Enzi will bring his remarks to the
floor tomorrow.
Let me just say that I want to, first of all, salute Senators Kennedy
and Hatch for designing this legislation because it expands the
opportunity to serve this country. At the same time, Senator Enzi and
Senator Dodd worked assiduously to strengthen the bill.
Senator Enzi brought very key legislative analysis to the bill, and
his background as an accountant gave us

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very much needed reforms in the area of greater accountability and
stewardship. I want to, on behalf of our side of the aisle, thank him
for his insight and know-how. We have adopted every single one of the
Enzi stewardship recommendations.
Our colleague, Senator Dodd of Connecticut, himself a former Peace
Corps volunteer, has also brought additional thinking to the bill to
make sure that volunteers are rewarded by making sure we could expand
the summer of service and the semester of service.
Madam President, I have been no stranger to this bill, and one of the
things I have done was be the appropriator for appropriations from the
time of its inception, from 1993 to 2004, when the VA-HUD and
Independent Agencies Committee was dissolved by Mr. Delay of Texas in
the House, and the Senate followed suit. That is a chatty way of saying
that Senator Kit Bond, who chaired that subcommittee as my ranking
member, was able to keep national service functioning and also very
much needed reforms.
In 2004, Senators Harkin and Specter got the appropriations portfolio
for national service, and they have done an outstanding job. I say all
this to say that when we bring up this bill, it is not a Democratic
bill; it is a bipartisan bill and an American bill. Ever since the
framework for the underlying legislation was created more than a decade
ago, we have worked on both sides of the aisle, with Presidents of both
parties, to give our young people an opportunity to serve.
This has been an outstanding effort. Today, the legislation I bring
to the Senate floor on their behalf is the result of considerable
experience, lots of lessons learned, and also the recognition and
knowledge that there is a new invigorated spirit in the United States
of America. Some are calling it the ``Obama effect'' because there are
so many people who want to give back to the United States of America,
to use their own sweat equity to be involved in our communities to make
them a better place to be, for our schools to be able to be more
effective, for there to be structured afterschool activities for
children, and volunteer efforts to add to more housing for Habitat for
Humanity--item after item, we could go on. There is this fantastic
spirit, and we want to be able to make use of that energy, that
passion, those good intentions, and be able to help them truly to serve
America.
Senator Kennedy and I have worked on this legislation for some time.
Way back in 1990, Senator Kennedy and I introduced the National
Community Service Act with then-Senator Nunn, and also with the help of
Senator McCain, to establish a corporation for national and community
service, and also to create a demonstration project that would then
become the AmeriCorps.
When President Bill Clinton came in, we worked to create the National
Community Service Act. In 1993, we passed the AmeriCorps legislation.
Since then, it has been a profound success. We took that landmark
legislation and, working with President Clinton, created a framework
for today's national service programs.
Let me be clear, Madam President. We were not in the business of
creating another new social program. What we were in the business of
was creating a new social invention. What do I mean by that? In our
country, we are known for our technological prowess, the great
technological inventions. From the rocket ship to the microchip,
America has been in the forefront of technology and science.
But also often overlooked, and sometimes undervalued, is our social
inventions--those things that the genius of America invents to create
an opportunity ladder for our country, to create empowerment
opportunities for our constituents.
Let me give a couple of examples, and you can see the American
philosophy at work in AmeriCorps. In terms of our social inventions,
what are some? Well, you know we are the country that invented night
school. At the turn of the old century, with so many immigrants coming
from Europe, with Lady Liberty raising her hand saying: Give me your
tired, your poor, your yearning to be free--and they also wanted to
learn to read English, write English, and learn citizenship. But they
were working night and day to be able to do that.
Out of the great settlement houses--primarily the great settlement
houses out of New York and Chicago--they said: If you work during the
day, we are going to give you an opportunity to learn at night. Out of
that settlement house movement came a new social invention called night
school. It was never done anywhere else in the world. Look how night
school changed the face of America.
Then, while our GIs went overseas and then came back home, we had
another social invention that said: We want to thank you not only with
words but with deeds. So another empowerment legislation was called the
GI bill, which created one great, gigantic opportunity ladder for
generations of men who would have never had the opportunity for either
education or home ownership to be able to move ahead.
Along the way, they knew they could not go off to 4 years of college.
They were adults. They had seen war and they had liberated death camps.
They could not come back and go ``bula bula''; they had to go to work.
So we invented something else, too, called the junior college, or the
community college, which in and of itself was a social invention.
So you see, every generation comes up with a new idea to build and
add to that important opportunity ladder where you can do something for
yourself and your country. But government is on your side.
What is it we wanted to do? A social invention for the nineties? What
did we face? We saw two things: No. 1, students had incredible debt--
and they still do. Their first ``mortgage'' was not a home but what
they owed in terms of their college debt. Also, we saw a new trend
coming to America called the ``me'' generation. Articles and books were
being written about it. There were those on both sides of the aisle who
wanted to change the ``me'' generation to the ``we'' generation. We
also wanted to say: How can we help with student debt? That is when we
thought about national community service, where you could give back to
your country, learn the habits of the heart that de Tocqueville talked
about--neighbor helping neighbor, the signature of America, from barn
raising to Habitat for Humanity, and habits of the heart and Habitat
for Humanity.

We created national service as a form. We didn't want it to be
service only for idealistic, affluent kids who could afford to take 2
years off to find themselves. We wanted them to find opportunity to be
of service and also to make an important contribution.
That is how we created the original national service legislation. We
wanted to strike a balance between precollege and postcollege to help
pay for college, get ready for college or to learn a trade. We also
wanted to provide the opportunity for retired people to be of service
and also, while being of service, to earn a modest voucher to pay down
student debt.
We wanted to make sure we could do this in a way that was sensible,
affordable, and also would involve the flexibility and creativity of
the local community.
We allow not only full-time volunteers but the opportunity for part-
time volunteers. Actually, the part-time volunteer was my idea. Putting
on my social work hat again, what I saw in our communities was not
everybody can go away and not everybody wants to go away. It could be
someone disabled, where their whole support system is in that
community. And although they have a physical challenge, they can still
give. How about that single mother who graduated from a community
college and wants to reduce her debt as she is moving on with her
career? This would give her a chance to do that.
There were important lessons learned, and for more than a decade we
worked on it. But not all was rosy, not all was smooth. What we then
saw in 2003, when I was the ranking member on the appropriations
subcommittee funding national service, is they created a debacle. God,
did they get sloppy. One of their most colossal errors was that they
enrolled over 20,000 volunteers and could not afford to pay for it.
That is how sloppy they were in their accounting.
I took to the floor and called them the ``Enron of nonprofits.'' I
called for

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a new board, a new CEO, and new rules of engagement. President Bush
responded, and he gave us the right people to right the ship of
national service.
I must say, in those 6 years since then, they have worked to do so.
They have righted the ship, they have good financial accounting, and
people continue to volunteer.
But all that is history. What about the 21st century now? Wow, people
want to volunteer like never before. Do you know that last year 35,000
college seniors applied for Teach America? There were only 4,000 slots.
There were 35,000 young people who wanted to do it. The Peace Corps got
13,000 applicants last year for 4,000 slots. People want to serve.
While we saw this new flourishment of desire and passion to serve,
Senators Kennedy and Hatch put their abilities and key minds and
passion for this issue together and have come up with the Kennedy-Hatch
Serve America Act. It is a great bill. Let me tell you about it.
First of all, it improves the number of national volunteers. Over a
7-year period, it would take the volunteers from 75,000 slots to
250,000 slots. But this bill is more about creating opportunities and
for people to serve. It is about meeting compelling human needs.
We are going to also expand this bill with lessons learned on
focusing some of our AmeriCorps activity into specialized corps. These
are what we found: One, an education corps; another, a health futures
corps; another, a veterans corps; and another called opportunity corps.
These are not outside of AmeriCorps. They will be subsets because we
find this is where compelling human need is and at the same time offers
great opportunity for volunteers to do it.
What does the education corps do? It improves student engagement. It
works with young people in schools in supplemental services, such as
tutoring, field trips, and particularly in these structured school
activities. We have found that where they have focused on education,
they have improved student academic achievement and graduation rates.
Also, we have something called the clean energy service corps. This
is going to work to weatherize more low-income households to be more
energy efficient.
We have a health futures corps that will work to increase access to
health care among low-income and underserved populations but at the
same time work on health promotion and wellness, primarily in schools,
to teach our young people the kind of cool, new, edgy ways of doing
those healthy habits that will change their lives for a lifetime.
We also are working on a veterans corps to help create housing units
for deployed soldiers and to help also with voluntarism to assist
military families when a military family is deployed.
I heard of a very innovative approach in Hawaii called Grannies for
the Troops. That is grandmothers in the area who want to volunteer to
help women whose husbands are deployed with some time off for
themselves to go shopping, get other family business done, whatever.
You need a volunteer coordinator to make that happen. That is the kind
of innovation we are going to have.
We also have in this program help for retirees. We keep all our
senior programs and we provide something called an encore fellowship
for an older generation to serve. We also provide the opportunity for
professionals called volunteers for prosperity to serve overseas. Those
two ideas from Senator Hatch were very helpful.
This bill takes AmeriCorps and focuses it in a way that we think
offers greater efficiency and provides some other new opportunities to
serve, such as the summer of service and the semester of service. It
also concentrates on improving the capacity of our nonprofit
organizations in some other very innovative ways.
This is just a brief summary of the history that brought us to today
and the framework that will take us to tomorrow.
In the last Congress, there was a lot of talk about bridges to
nowhere. National Service is a bridge to somewhere. I wish to note in
the health corps programs, we already have one that will continue to
function under this health umbrella in AmeriCorps. Not only do we help
people get connected to the services for which they are eligible, but
85 percent of the young people who work in the National Community
Health Corps Program go on themselves to health care jobs. Some decide
on a career in medicine. Some think: Wow, although I already have my
degree, I think I will go into an accelerated program and go into
nursing, where they have the accelerated program for people with
degrees. Others are looking at careers in public health or in x-ray
technology. They get turned on.
For people who go into education, they say: You know, I was going to
do this for a stint. I want it to be my life's work. They then will go
into the field of education as teachers and getting extra degrees and
doing a good job. They are the reformers of the next generation. What
we do in national service serves the community immediately today, but
the impact on the volunteers continues for the rest of their lives.
I think this is a great social investment, and it is a public
investment in our young people to help our communities that I think
will pay dividends long beyond anything we can imagine.
I hope this bill is adopted by late tomorrow. I hope we can keep
amendments to a minimum. I do believe we have had excellent help on
both sides of the aisle. We talk about changing direction in this
country. I think people do want a new direction. They want to rekindle
the habits of the heart. There are a lot of people out there, as we
talked about bonuses, who might be talking about ``me,'' but there are
a lot of young people who want to be part of the ``we'' generation.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time
during the quorum call be charged equally, and I suggest the absence of
a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, last May, then-Senator Barack Obama gave
a commencement address at Wesleyan University. Senator Ted Kennedy of
Massachusetts had been originally scheduled to speak to the graduates,
but Senator Kennedy had taken ill and Senator Obama spoke in his place.
In a tribute to Ted Kennedy's lifetime of service to America, Senator
Obama spoke to the graduates about the importance of national service.
It was a remarkable speech. In fact, what he told the graduates was his
life story, about how Barack Obama, after graduating from an Ivy League
college, could have gone to law school or Wall Street with many of his
classmates. But, instead, he took a job as a community organizer on the
south side of Chicago.
Many people know this story because they have heard Barack tell it.
They may have read about it when the President published his
autobiography, ``Dreams From My Father,'' of how he ended up with a
broken down little car, taking a job that didn't pay very much as a
community organizer in a section of Chicago that had been wracked by
the closing of steel mills and all the unemployment and hardship that
followed. It wasn't easy work for him. He went church to church trying
to organize people in the neighborhoods. The pay wasn't very good, but
he knew he was making a difference. He made friends and connections. He
learned a lot about life, and he learned a lot about himself. He found
direction in his life from those moments that he spent volunteering and
giving back to his community.
President Obama--then Senator Obama--called on the graduates at

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Wesleyan to find their own direction through service to the country.
Here is what he said:

There's no community service requirement in the real world;
no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk
off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the
nice suits and all the other things that our money culture
says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns
and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story
separate from America's. But I hope you don't. Because
thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants
and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it's only
when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself
that you realize your true potential and discover the role
you will play in writing the next great chapter in America's
story.

President Obama repeated this call to service throughout his campaign
and now into his Presidency. He has called on all Americans to find a
way to serve their neighbors and their community to make this Nation a
better place.
Over the last few months, we have heard too many stories about the
so-called successful people who have followed their ambitions, and
sometimes their greed, and the economy and country have suffered. But
there are so many other stories to be told--community organizations
across this Nation that are reporting record numbers of volunteers
coming through their doors as we face this troubling economy. Many of
these new volunteers have recently lost their jobs, but they still want
to answer the President's call and give back to their communities.
That is the spirit that truly makes America great. Even in the most
troubling times, Americans think of those who are suffering, those who
have lost their homes or can't put food on the table, and they want to
help. There isn't a community in America where you can't find that
spirit, and you can find it on the street corners, in church basements,
in afternoon and weekend efforts of people just wanting to give a
little bit back and to help those less fortunate.
In my State of Illinois, each year 2.7 million volunteers dedicate
over 300 million hours of service. The estimated economic contribution
of those hours is $5.9 billion annually. More than 66,000 of these
volunteers participate in national service programs through 144
different projects. In Chicago, the City Year program is one of my
favorites. It places young volunteers to work full time in some of
Chicago's neediest schools. There they serve as tutors, mentors, and
role models for Chicago's students.

They usually call me in once a year to meet the new class--and I love
them. They are just so bristling with energy and determination and
commitment. Many of them are doing something in a communal sense that
they have never done in their lives. Some of them are in Chicago for
the first time, dazzled by the city but dazzled as well by the people
they are working with.
We know we need them. A student drops out of school every 26 seconds
in this country. City Year volunteers are helping to keep Chicago
students in school and on the road to success.
When asked to share the impact of the City Year corps members on
their classroom, teachers recently said:

All of my students who are being tutored are more
interested in reading. They are more confident in themselves
as striving learners.

It works and it works in both directions. The students are better
off; so are the volunteers.
This week we are considering a bill that will dramatically expand
national service programs, giving more Americans the chance to serve
their country. I thank Senator Mikulski for leading us in this effort,
bringing this to the floor. The original cosponsors of the bill, of
course, were Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Orrin Hatch. I joined a
long list of Democrats and Republicans as cosponsors as well. Both
Senators Kennedy and Hatch have a long personal commitment to service,
and this bill is a testament to their public legacy. Senator Mikulski
is bringing this to the floor in Senator Kennedy's absence. I know she
will handle this bill well. She always does.
The Serve America Act will triple the number of national service
participants to 250,000 participants within 8 years. Along with this
dramatic expansion, the bill will also create new corps within
AmeriCorps, focused on areas of national need that include education,
the environment, health care, economic opportunity, and helping our
veterans.
We are expanding opportunities to serve for Americans in every stage
in life. Middle and high school students will be encouraged to
participate in service projects during the summer and after school. By
serving their communities early in life, these students will be put on
a path to a lifetime habit of service.
For working Americans who cannot commit to full-time service, the
bill provides funding to community organizations for recruiting and
managing part-time volunteers; retirees will be given new opportunities
to serve through the Senior Corps, as it exists, and through new
initiatives. The bill also increases the education award for the first
time since its creation. A lot of the people in the AmeriCorps
projects, for example, at the end of their service, earn credits they
can use to go on to pursue higher education.
The education award in this bill will be raised to the Pell grant
level, which will make it easier for college students with significant
student loan debt to consider national service--and the award will be
transferable, so that older volunteers can actually transfer the
education award to their children or grandchildren. What a great gift
to give to your family.
There is a story Senator Kennedy often tells about national service.
On the fifth anniversary of the Peace Corps so many years ago, Ted
Kennedy asked a young volunteer why he decided to sign up, and the
answer was simple. He said: ``It was the first time someone asked me to
do something for my country.''
With the Serve America Act we are asking again. We are asking
Americans of all ages to give back to their communities and to America.
Each American has the power to make a small difference in the success
of a child or the health of the environment or the lives of hungry
neighbors. All those small differences, repeated over and over, can add
up to something truly powerful.
Passage of this bill is a priority of our new President and should be
a priority for every Member of the Senate. I encourage my colleagues to
support this bill and I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. I ask consent the time remaining under the quorum call be
equally divided between both sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. I suggest absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, today the Senate begins consideration of
the Serve America Act, which is the title of what will be the Senate
substitute for H.R. 1388. It is my hope this legislation will help
strengthen a culture of service, citizenship, and responsibility in
America, and I am proud to join a bipartisan group of Senators in
support of this bill as it comes to the Senate floor.
I am sure it goes without saying that Senator Ted Kennedy's absence
is deeply felt by all of us as we work on this particular piece of
legislation. I, personally, continue to pray for his full and speedy
recovery.
To begin, I would like to discuss the context in which this
legislation has moved forward to give us some perspective as to what is
about to happen. After months of discussion, negotiation, debate, and
flatout argument, Senator Kennedy and I introduced the original version
of the Serve America Act last September in the middle of what was often
a hotly contested campaign season. Despite the overly partisan
atmosphere at the time, a bipartisan group of Senators offered their

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support for this bill. Even though the differences between the two
Presidential candidates were played out on news shows every night, both
of them were willing to put their debates aside and become original
cosponsors. That pleased me.
I would like, once again, to thank Senator McCain for his continued
support, not only for this particular piece of legislation but for
volunteer service in general. He has truly been a leader on this issue
throughout his life and has rightly won the admiration of those on both
sides of the aisle.
In addition to the Kennedy-Hatch legislation, the Serve America Act,
the Senate bill also includes legislation that will reauthorize the
Corporation of National and Community Service. The reauthorization
effort has been led on the Republican side by the distinguished ranking
member of the HELP Committee, Senator Enzi, who has worked tirelessly
with both Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski to reach a bipartisan
accord on these much-needed provisions.
In addition to Senators Kennedy and McCain, I have to extend my
thanks, my deep-felt thanks to Senators Enzi and Mikulski for their
outstanding work on the legislation before us today. Both of them are
outstanding legislators. They are both beloved people in this body. I,
personally, feel that way toward each of them.
At the same time all this work has been going on in the Senate, we
have been working with both Democrats and Republicans in the House of
Representatives to ensure that both Chambers reach similar conclusions
with their national service legislation. This has all been accomplished
during a time when, for the most part, partisan hostilities have done
anything but subside. Since the beginning of the new Congress, we have
seen debates on legislation such as the SCHIP bill, the stimulus
package and the Omnibus appropriations bill that, in many ways, have
deepened the divisions between the two parties. Here in a few weeks, as
we begin debate on the budget, we are sure to see even greater clashes
between the principled beliefs and ideologies between those on both
sides of the aisle.
However, the bill we have before us today is the result of a
bipartisan and bicameral effort. In our opinion, this is nothing short
of remarkable, given the current political climate.
Once again, the Senate effort has been spearheaded by myself, Senator
Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and Senator Mikulski. I doubt any other piece of
legislation we consider this year will be the product of such a
diversity of views. Senator Mikulski has carried this matter on behalf
of Senator Kennedy. I have nothing but tremendous respect for her.
I will not be foolish enough to claim the credit for all this good
will, but I am certainly grateful to be a beneficiary.
Service has been one of the golden threads of our Democracy, and the
roots of our tradition run deep. Ronald Reagan put this powerful
tradition of volunteer service in its appropriate context when he said,
speaking of the Mayflower Compact:

The single act--the voluntary binding together of free
people to live under the law--set the pattern for what was to
come.
A century and a half later, the descendants of those people
pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to
found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their
lives; none sacrificed honor. Four score and seven years
later, Abraham Lincoln called upon the people of all America
to renew their dedication and their commitment to a
government of, for and by the people. Isn't it once again
time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other
all that is best in our lives; all that gives meaning to
them--for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?
Together, let us make this a new beginning. Let us make a
commitment to care for the needy; to teach our children the
values and the virtues handed down to us by our families; to
have the courage to defend those values and the willingness
to sacrifice for them.
Let us pledge to restore, in our time, the American spirit
of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and
community initiative; a spirit that flows like a deep and
mighty river through the history of our nation.

President Reagan had a very good way of putting things.
President Reagan was not alone in his call for service. Presidents
down the generations, Republicans and Democrats alike--Teddy and
Franklin Roosevelt; Eisenhower and Kennedy; Johnson and Nixon; Carter
and George Herbert Walker Bush; and Clinton and George W. Bush--have
all worked to awaken the national consciousness to their duties and
responsibilities as citizens, to light in every individual that spark
of voluntary service, the seed of compassion that makes us serve causes
larger than ourselves.
They have done so particularly in times of crisis: during the Great
Depression, during our world wars, and after 9/11. Times of trial have
always summoned the greatness of our people, and we are right now in a
time of challenge today.
Service can take many forms in a free country, and we all have
choices, not only as to whether we will serve but how we will serve.
There is no greater example of service than those who put on the
military uniform and go into battle for our country. Many men and women
who choose military service make the ultimate sacrifice. They put their
lives on the line for our country. Millions have lost their lives so we
might be free.
There are more than 26 million Americans alive today who have served
in our armed services. They epitomize American values, the values of
duty, honor, and country. They also inspire new generations to ask what
they can do for their country.
Other Americans may decide to go into public or Government service.
This is a choice that is made by State and municipal workers, by
teachers and police officers, and, yes, even by Senators and their
staffs--to serve the public interest through their public institutions.
I have to admit, I left my own law practice, where we had just started
it a few years before. I had left Pittsburgh, moved to Utah, formed a
law firm. We were going like gangbusters. My partner is worth a lot of
money today. I am not. But I made this choice to come and work for our
country. It is made by all these good people, to serve the public
interests through our public institutions.
Service to country can take other forms. Many Americans want to serve
for a full year or part of a year of national service. Others may want
to volunteer to serve in countries abroad for short-term or long-term
assignments. We had two people come back last night from a mission over
in Africa. He served his whole working life as a chaplain in the
military. She is a beautiful woman who has been married to him for all
these years. They, at their own expense, volunteered and went to Africa
to work in Kenya and Nairobi with unfortunate people and to build
esteem in the hearts of people over there.
They came back last night and spoke in our church. I was so proud of
both of them--terrific people.
Others may want to volunteer to serve in countries abroad for short-
term or long-term assignments. Still others, in fact the vast majority
of Americans, will perform services as traditional episodic volunteers
working in schools, houses of worship, workplaces, nonprofit
institutions, and neighborhoods.
America is a generous nation and Americans are compassionate people,
and our volunteer spirit knows no bounds. In all these cases,
everything is a choice. Service in our military is voluntary as is
service in our soup kitchens. Public service is not only a voluntary
activity, but for many of us subject to regular elections where the
citizens get to exercise their own choice of whether a particular
candidate for office will exercise the privilege of serving them.
Consistent with our All-Volunteer Army and volunteer opportunities
and individuals' choice in communities, nothing in this legislation is
mandatory. This bill simply provides more Americans more choices and
opportunities to give back to their neighborhoods and their country all
through the means which they freely choose.
With a backdrop of this rich history of citizen service in America,
Senator Kennedy and I began discussions more than a year ago about what
we might do together to build on the tradition of service in America. I
know part of this is because both of us love his sister, Eunice Kennedy
Shriver. We have watched this woman year after year after year give
service to this country and to children all over the world; not just
through the Special Olympics--but especially through the Special
Olympics--but in so many other ways. I admire her about as much as any
woman

[[Page S3597]]

in our society today for what she has been able to do with her life.
She is a 90-pound dynamo who just keeps going. I think--well, I will
not say it because I know it can be embarrassing to her. But the fact
is, she is a terrific human being.
I have chatted with all kinds of other people who are giving
tremendous service to their fellow human beings, men and women,
children, throughout our society. You know, Senator Kennedy and I and
others drew on ideas from Republicans such as my friend Senator John
McCain, who introduced his own bill almost a decade ago and, as I
mentioned, endorsed the Serve America Act in the midst of his
Presidential campaign.
We drew on ideas from Democrats, such as the godmother of national
and community service, that is Senator Barbara Mikulski. We hear of
godfathers; she is the godmother, a great woman who has a great heart,
and who worked as a social worker for many years, and for whom I have
deep affection, no question about it.
From the outset, Senator Kennedy and I talked about marrying two
formerly competing visions of service: first, by supporting traditional
volunteering, in the tradition of President Reagan's Private Sector
Initiative; George H. W. Bush's Points of Light; and George W. Bush's
USA Freedom Corps; and, second, by supporting full-time national and
international service in the tradition of Presidents Kennedy, Nixon,
for senior service, Clinton and again George W. Bush for both domestic
and international service.
We have the attention of our new President. He has talked to me about
this. I know he has talked to Senator Kennedy about this. He completely
supports this. He knows how important it is. I have respect for him for
jumping right in and helping us with this.
We decided we wanted to create more opportunities for Americans to
serve over their lifetimes, so schoolchildren can learn the importance
of giving back at a young age, for tapping into the talents of the
longest living, healthiest, best educated, and most highly skilled
generations of older Americans in our history.
We wanted to tap the ingenuity of our people working through schools,
faith-based institutions, workplaces, and communities in America and
across the world to tackle challenges large and small.
So today I am very pleased to be here as this legislation makes it
over what I hope will be the final few obstacles before becoming law.
With this bill, our efforts to expand service will begin early in our
schools all across America, and where we can marry learning in
classrooms with service in our communities, for those who choose such
service learning.
We have a high school dropout epidemic in America, with almost one-
third of all students, and nearly 50 percent of African Americans,
Hispanic, and Native Americans, failing to graduate with their class.
For each of these kids a decision to drop out is a million dollar
mistake, since they will earn that much less over a lifetime than their
college graduate friends.
For our country, this is a multibillion dollar mistake in increased
welfare, prison, and health care costs, and lost revenues from the lack
of productive workers. Service learning has been shown to keep students
engaged in school, and to boost student academic achievement. So we
will offer competitive grants to local and State partnerships to carry
out these efforts in our schools.
Again, all of this will be voluntary activity, and it holds the
promise of keeping so many of our young people engaged in school. In
addition to elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities
can play a critical role in the culture of service, so we will
authorize the Corporation for National Community Service to recognize
and provide additional funding to ``campuses of service'' that do an
outstanding job in engaging their students in important community work.
The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that nearly 61 million Americans
volunteered through or for an organization last year. Most Americans
did so through religious organizations, followed by nonprofits, related
to education and youth. While many charities believe volunteers are
essential to meeting their missions, only a small percentage of them
actually invest in recruiting, training, and utilizing volunteers to
meet those missions.
There are always waiting lists of volunteers who want to use their
time and talents, but too often they are turned away or they do not
come back after a bad experience. So we will invest in a new volunteer
generation fund, which will include matching funds by the private
sector to increase the capacity of organizations to use volunteers to
meet local needs, especially among the poor and disadvantaged.
America is known for its innovation in business and the power of its
markets. This bill will fuel the spirit of entrepreneurship in
America's nonprofit sector by creating a social innovations fund to
foster and support the next generation of great ideas in the social
marketplace, such as Teach for America, City Year, Habitat for
Humanity, and the U.S. Dream Academy, which are some of the many
innovative ideas of our day.
Having mentioned the U.S. Dream Academy, that was started by a
wonderful African-American man named Wintley Phipps. Wintley is a
Seventh Day Adventist minister. But he decided there were too many of
our young African-American kids and others who were children of
prisoners, children of people who had been sent to prison, and that a
high percentage of them would wind up in prison themselves unless we
did something about it. So he has brought computers into the inner
cities. He has brought wonderful teachers and others who could be
making themselves wealthy outside of this program, who are teaching
these kids how to live in a modern world. He has had an amazing
transformational change in so many children.

These are the types of things we have to encourage. The idea behind
service clearly has always been about transforming the person who
serves. I saw how it changed my own life when I served a 2-year mission
for my church in the Great Lakes mission. That was Ohio, Indiana, and
Michigan. A lot of our young missionaries serve all over the world,
such as the young couple I mentioned last night. They came back from
Kenya and Nairobi, where they served I think about a year and a half.
Their main job was humanitarian, to help people to be able to know
there is a better way; to find water for people, to help them with
food, to help them with so many of their problems, to help them to know
there is a future. They did that voluntarily, at their own expense.
Think about it, at their own expense.
I did my voluntary 2-year service at my own expense. I actually
presided over congregations, and I helped out thousands and thousands
of people who had problems, and in the process, the one who was helped
the most was myself. It was a great blessing in my life. I would not
change it for being a Senator, as a matter of fact. It was 2 years out
of my life, but the most important 2 years, outside of marriage to
Elaine and raising a family with 6 kids, now 23 grandchildren, and 3
great-grandchildren. That was an important time in my life. My folks
were poor. They were not wealthy. They helped me and assisted me on my
mission. We paid for it all ourselves, and I gave 2 solid years every
day, 18 hours a day. I was very dedicated.
But service is also about solving problems in our Nation, and
bringing real hope and impact on the ground in our communities with
real accountability for results. Some people have written off this bill
as promoting ``paid volunteerism.'' This mistaken view is as a result
of a fundamental misunderstanding about these programs. National
service programs give Americans opportunities for us to serve for a
full year or more to tackle tough problems, and that they, in turn, can
leverage Federal investment in them to mobilize more traditional
volunteers to help.
When you look at the numbers, you can see it is a very smart return
on investment. Let me illustrate how this works. Today about 75,000
people participate in national Federal service programs every year. I
am not counting the State programs at this point, although I know some
of these work in the States as well. But on AmericaCorps and programs
such as this, Peace Corps, et cetera, the currently existing programs,
there are about 75,000 volunteers who participate

[[Page S3598]]

in national service programs every year.
Now, as a result of their efforts, 2.2 million traditional persons
every year come out to work on the same projects without pay. That is
nearly 30 volunteers who get nothing from Government, for every 1
participant in a national service program, who receive a below-poverty
stipend and a small education award to defray the cost of higher
education.
Let's do the math. If we assume that as we expand national service,
as this bill does, the same ratio of participants to leveraged
volunteers holds, we will eventually be seeing roughly 7.5 million new
unpaid volunteers every year serving throughout our great Nation.
My gosh, that is something worthwhile doing. Personally, I think it
would be more than that. Because with the bill we are also improving
the efficiency and the accountability of these programs. Far from
promoting paid volunteerism, this bill is all about encouraging
traditional volunteerism. We find that people, once they get into this,
will love it and want to continue.
We will be targeting national service opportunities to build upon
this multiplying effect in order to tap the power of our Nation's
greatest asset, our people, to take on some of these large challenges.
Now, some have argued that the priorities outlined in this bill are
specifically designed to advance the President's domestic agenda or his
priorities with the recent stimulus bill. Well, quite honestly, these
people must ascribe to Senator Kennedy and me abilities that neither of
us would claim to have, including psychic powers and precognition. It
was more than 2 years ago that I began a dialogue with former officials
from the George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush administrations
and other leaders of the national and community service field regarding
this proposal.
At that time, we agreed we wanted to harness the power of our
citizens to solve urgent national problems. It was then, 2 years ago,
that we identified five specific areas in which citizens could make a
significant difference in addressing needs. We looked at education, and
particularly the high school dropout crisis, in the aftermath of the
2006 report, ``The Silent Epidemic.''
We identified clean energy, opportunity, health and disaster response
as key areas in which citizens could make a significant difference and
we discussed specific indicators of progress that would bring new
accountability for results.
These five areas were identified long before there was even
discussion of an economic stimulus and well before the Presidential
campaign got in full swing. Since that time, we have added veterans
assistance as a key area of national need for the bill. But that is
hardly an issue on which President Obama has cornered the market. I
hope this clarifies the record on this point.
Having said all that, I am pleased that President Obama sees the
value of this bill and wants to support it and will support it and has
supported it. It has been a matter of great uplift to me.
So it is with these particular challenges in mind that we drafted the
Serve America Act. Gone are the days when national service participants
will be able to go about their work without direction or
accountability. Under our bill, their efforts will be directed at these
specific areas of national need. In all of these efforts, State and
local organizations will lead the way. Volunteers will be leveraged and
urgent needs will be met not by distant Government bureaucracies or
Government programs but by people working on the front lines of our
communities and neighborhoods.
Americans can also spread American compassion around the world. There
have been good efforts over the last 7 years and good bills in the
Congress to fulfill the promise of President Kennedy's Peace Corps and
expand its numbers. It has been a bipartisan effort. Two former
Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, grew the Peace
Corps during their 8 years in office. As a complement to the growth in
the Peace Corps, the Serve America Act will authorize and fund
Volunteers for Prosperity, which last year alone mobilized 43,000
doctors, nurses, engineers, and other skilled Americans to meet urgent
needs abroad, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, such as medical procedures
to help children who have cleft palates or helping kids to see again.
I could go on and on about what is being done by volunteers all over
the world. This cost-effective program puts skilled Americans in the
field for flexible term assignments often ranging from a few months to
more than 1 year and at extremely low cost to the Federal Government.
President Kennedy said that his Peace Corps would be truly serious
when 100,000 Americans were working abroad every year. Well, Volunteers
for Prosperity, working together with the Peace Corps, could help
fulfill that dream and would show the world the compassion of our
people and lead to a more informed foreign policy.
Having mentioned the Peace Corps, why don't I mention Eunice
Shriver's great husband. Sargent Shriver, when he fought for the Peace
Corps, it wasn't an easy job. By gosh, he had to take on his own
administration and everybody else. But he did. What a wonderful,
decent, honorable leader and human being that man really is. If you
want to read a great biography, read his, how ebullient he always was
and how he kept being positive about life and what he was trying to do.
I feel fortunate that I have become very good friends of the Shrivers
and their children who now are giving volunteer service, and so many
others.
I don't mean to center on this one family because there are so many.
In our church alone, we have some 55,000 serving all over the world.
That is just missionaries. If we go beyond that to humanitarian
service, there are a lot of people serving in those areas. Almost every
major national disaster in the world, the first two churches in there
with food, clothing, pharmaceuticals, et cetera, happen to be the
Mormon Church and the Catholic Church. They work together. We have
worked together all these years to do this type of work.
Volunteers for Prosperity, working together with the Peace Corps,
could help fulfill the dreams of so many and would show the world the
compassion of our people, leading to a more informed foreign policy. In
all cases, we must promote accountability for results and be mindful--
very mindful--of cost.
As investments are made in service efforts, programs that are
achieving real results should continue, and those that are not working
should be defunded.
We also need to do a better job collecting data on the results of
these programs and our civic health as a nation. The Nation collects
good data about its economy, but it can do a better job collecting
information about our country's civic health. This bill will address
those needs by establishing a civic health index, building on the good
work of the NationalConference on Citizenship and the Corporation for
National and Community Service, to collect regular data on
volunteering, charitable giving, and other indicators of our civic
life, so Americans can work to strengthen these platoons of civil
society that have always been the backbone of our democracy. I truly
think that this data collected for this index will inform our
decisionmaking throughout the policy spectrum.
Those of us supporting this bill--Republicans and Democrats alike--
believe an investment in the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of
our people is one of the best investments our country can make. At a
time wroth with economic uncertainty, we should be all too willing to
tap the greatest resource at our nation's disposal--the American
people. Our citizens are the most generous, energetic, and innovative
people in the world. I believe this bill will inspire them to do much
of the heavy lifting in their own communities. At a time when many
people would argue that what we need is more Federal Government
bureaucrats going into neighborhoods to fix things up, this bill will
help private groups and individuals to continue their good work and to
inspire other people to join in their efforts.
The Serve America Act has strong bipartisan support because it
advances a good American idea that has echoed down the ages. You see,
when Americans want to solve problems, they don't first look to
government or the State--they look to themselves and their communities.
The innovation and

[[Page S3599]]

enterprise of the American people will always have a comparative
advantage over big government solutions. I know this from my own
personal experience, serving as a Mormon missionary when I was only 20
years old, 20 to 22. I am proud to be associated with this effort to
remind Americans of their duties to their country, to provide them more
opportunities to serve it, and to fulfill the promise of the American
experiment, which is truly based on their participation in making it
all work. I have faith in the American people that they will make this
work, and we will all be very happy when they do.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, let me begin by thanking the Senator from
Utah, whose leadership on this effort has been absolutely spectacular
and who obviously, from the words he just spoke, has a deeply personal
and historical understanding of the importance of this kind of service.
We are all very grateful to him for his partnership with my colleague,
Senator Kennedy, and for the leadership he has offered along the way. I
would concur with every word he has spoken about it, all of the good
things he said it would do. I couldn't agree more. It will do all those
things and more. This is one of the better moments and better bills for
which we get an opportunity as Senators to vote.
May I also thank Senator Mikulski. She has been tenacious and
unbelievably engaged and enthusiastic and wonderful in her commitment
to help bring us to this moment. I know how much Senator Kennedy and
Senator Hatch both value the contribution she has made. We all value
it. We are grateful to her for stepping in. She has been a tiger.
Perish the thought for anybody who has wanted to run counter to her
intent to get this done.
I want to speak for a couple moments. I yield myself perhaps 5
minutes. I think we have about 7\1/2\ remaining.
This effort we will vote on is going to generate the largest
expansion in national service since President Kennedy inspired the
creation of VISTA and the Peace Corps. For many of us in public life
today, that was the formative moment. That was the demarcation point
that excited many of us about public service and brought a lot of us
into this arena.
It is particularly fitting that this legislation comes at a time when
a new President is inspiring a whole new era of volunteerism, much as
President Kennedy did nearly half a century ago. It is equally fitting
and appropriate that this legislation bears the name of our friend and
beloved colleague, my senior Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy.
As President Obama observed in his first address to Congress, Senator
Kennedy is ``an American who has never stopped asking what he can do
for his country.'' It was under Senator Kennedy's leadership as
chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
that this bill was crafted.
This is nothing new for Senator Kennedy. In 1990, Senator Kennedy
worked with the first President Bush to pass the original National
Community Service Act, the Thousand Points of Light Foundation.
President Bush called that particular effort, helped by Senator
Kennedy, the hallmark of his Presidency. When President Clinton needed
a champion for the proposed Corporation for National Community Service,
he didn't have to look any further than Ted Kennedy.
As Senator Kennedy notes, ``Service is a bipartisan goal.'' Indeed,
Members of Congress from across the political spectrum have pledged
their support for this measure, which is a clear indication that the
ethic of service is spawned not by faithfulness to party but by
devotion to country and community.
The Serve America Act is also the work of our colleague from Utah,
Senator Orrin Hatch. Senator Hatch has on many occasions been Ted
Kennedy's partner in these kinds of bipartisan efforts. Senator Hatch
points out that volunteer service is the lifeblood of our Nation and
that it benefits the volunteer as much, if not more, than the country
the volunteer is serving. We just heard those words a moment ago from
Senator Hatch when he talked about his own experience as a young
person, about the mission for faith that he called the greatest of his
life. Service is what has always made America, America.
Many times in 2004, when I was running for President, I talked about
de Tocqueville's visit to our country and how he found something
special here. He wrote about it. He wrote that ``America is great
because Americans are good.'' What he meant by that was he had observed
this extraordinary spirit of voluntarism, a kind of patriotism that was
defined by Americans who would voluntarily give back to their community
or help other people or do something openly on behalf of their country
and that community. He clearly had not seen or witnessed that kind of
giving in his experience in Europe.
Just as it was in de Tocqueville's day, Americans in many ways, big
and small, are looking for opportunities to do more for their country.
Last year, 62 million Americans gave 8 billion hours of service to the
country. Last month, AmeriCorps had tripled the number of applications
over the same month as a year ago. I note that my own kids who
graduated recently from college commented to me how so many of their
classmates in college were all engaged in some kind of local activity,
not necessarily fighting on the national stage, but they were involved
mentoring kids or helping in a homeless shelter. Indeed, many of our
colleges and universities across the country boast unbelievably high
percentages of voluntarism.
They are sending us a signal, telling us why this is a good moment to
create a new corps of 175,000 volunteers who are going to be organized
and assist in their efforts to do the things we need to do in America.
That means that in addition to the other volunteer programs, we will
have as many as a quarter of a million Americans serving full time or
part time working to meet some of our most pressing challenges:
modernizing schools, building homes, serving as mentors or tutors in
schools, helping with the sick in hospitals and clinics. And with the
Serve America Act, it is going to be a lot easier for professionals and
retirees, the baby boomers, the people who were first challenged by
President Kennedy's call to service in 1961, it is going to be much
easier for them to get involved once again.
So we face great challenges. We should have no illusion about the
magnitude of those challenges. But we also have extraordinary
opportunities staring us in the face. With the Serve America Act, with
more Americans involved, with Americans pulling together, I am
confident that is going to be the definition of America's future, and
it will be a definition we will all be proud of.

So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this
important piece of legislation. I pay tribute, again, to my colleague,
Ted Kennedy, and his partners in this effort, Senator Mikulski and
Senator Hatch, who have brought us to this time. Thank you.
I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our time.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, we are only minutes away from voting
on the cloture motion to proceed to the bill. I really urge all of my
colleagues to vote yes on this motion so we can proceed to this
excellent, dynamic, bipartisan bill called the Serve America Act.
Madam President, in November, people voted for us to change the tone
in this country and change the direction and to work on a bipartisan
basis to find that sensible center that Colin Powell has so often
talked about, to meet America's compelling needs and challenges.
Now, we are not going to turn the economy around quickly, and we are
not going to solve some of our great foreign policy challenges
immediately. But we can embark upon a major initiative to be able to
meet compelling human needs in our society.
We have a bipartisan effort, crafted by Senators Kennedy and Hatch,
to do

[[Page S3600]]

exactly that. It is a bipartisan measure to strengthen service and
volunteer opportunities. It expands opportunities for individuals of
all ages to serve. Its passage is important now, when so many
communities are struggling with so many pressing problems and so many
people want to serve.
This act invites many more Americans to give a year of service to
solve specific challenges in the areas of education, healthy futures,
clean energy, even helping our veterans. When they come back from
overseas, they are going to have somebody to be with them to get
connected to the services and to help those military families while
they are serving abroad.
We can do this by passing this legislation. It expands the number of
national service corps participants to 250,000 a year. But we do that
over a 7-year period. We will be able, through prudent pacing of both
recruitment and funding, to do it over a 7-year period.
It also increased the Eli Segal Education Award from $4,725 to
$5,350, pegging it to Pell grants, helping those who want to serve be
able to reduce their student debt or to get a voucher to be able to
pursue higher education.
It supports increased service opportunities for students,
particularly very young people in the Learn and Serve Program, and
middle and high school students through a summer of service and a
semester of service.
It also recruits retirees. Many retirees are ready, able, and willing
to be involved through Senior Corps programs--RSVP, Senior Companions,
and Foster Grandparents.
We have a program called Encore Fellowships to help retirees
participate in longer term public service. It also supports
international service opportunities. Senator Hatch is too modest to
talk about his own fine hand in this bill, but he has offered an
excellent suggestion that has been incorporated. It strengthens the
current Volunteers for Prosperity Program, which enables people who are
retired, who have skills in business, public works, engineering, et
cetera, to provide short-term international service opportunities in
developing nations.
This is what America is all about. De Tocqueville, when he studied
our Nation, said: What is unique about this new country called America?
Well, he called it the ``habits of the heart,'' where neighbor helps
neighbor, whether it was the barn raising of another era, to also
building Habitat for Humanity here.
We need to harvest all of that goodwill and good intention to help
turn our country around. I believe the Serve America Act does this. We
will be debating this legislation further tomorrow. I encourage people
to vote yes on the cloture motion to proceed. I encourage all who have
amendments to come forward tonight and tomorrow morning so we can move
it and get the job done. That is what the people want us to do.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator from
Maryland. She has played such a pivotal role on this bill, she and
Senator Enzi in particular. And, of course, Senator Kennedy and I both
feel very deeply toward her and Senator Enzi.
I also want to thank Pastor Rick Warren. A little over a year ago, he
came to see me in my office. He heard I was interested in doing a
service in America bill, and he came and went over it with me and was
very interested and has done a great deal to inspire a number of us on
both sides of the floor to be able to do some things in this area.
I also want to thank John McCain. I have mentioned President Obama
and Senator McCain, both of whom are supporters of this bill. And you
talk about bipartisanship--I think it shows the great character of
Senator McCain that he would come and support this type of legislation
and, as he is want to do, in so many ways. I have such respect for him
and for the President himself. He has been nothing but a great help to
us in this matter.
Like I say, this is an opportunity for all of us to vote for a
program that will get people involved from teenage years through senior
citizen years, the vast majority of whom will not be paid a dime, the
vast majority of whom will be leveraged into working because they want
to serve the communities. They want to serve these organizations. They
want to be part of doing good.
Like I say, with 75,000 for AmeriCorps, and some of the others we
have mentioned, we estimate there are 2.2 million people, extrapolated
out, who basically are leveraged out, to where they want to get
involved, and not one of them is paid for doing it.
If we figure it out mathematically, in just real terms, with this
bill, calling for 175,000 new workers, at low pay, stipends for school,
we believe we will have upwards of 7 million-plus people who will be
giving voluntary service to their fellow human beings, fellow women and
men, in their communities and children in their communities. It will do
so much good for our society.
Madam President, I have worked on a lot of legislation in my 33 years
here, a number of which happen to be landmark pieces of legislation. We
should pass this, and I hope we can with a large majority. Should we
pass this? I don't know anything that will do more good in a general
way for our society than this particular bill.

I hope everybody will vote for cloture tonight. I also hope we can
pass this bill in a relatively short period of time, and I hope we can
make it truly bipartisan in every way. We have endeavored to do that. I
think we have done a good job on it.
I yield the floor.

Cloture Motion

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to Calendar No. 35, H.R. 1388, a bill to reauthorize
and reform the national service laws.
Harry Reid, Barbara A. Mikulski, Barbara Boxer, Tom
Harkin, Daniel K. Akaka, Tom Udall, Patty Murray,
Patrick J. Leahy, Bernard Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse,
Christopher J. Dodd, Jon Tester, Mark R. Warner, Robert
P. Casey, Jr., Benjamin L. Cardin, Blanche L. Lincoln,
Kent Conrad.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call is waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to proceed to H.R. 1388, a bill to reauthorize and reform the
national service laws, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Begich), the
Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer), the Senator from Iowa (Mr.
Harkin), the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Inouye), the Senator from
Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Nelson), the
Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Pryor) are necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Iowa
(Mr. Harkin) would vote ``yea.''
Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi), the
Senator from Florida (Mr. Martinez), and the Senator from Louisiana
(Mr. Vitter).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn)
would have voted ``nay.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 74, nays 14, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 108 Leg.]

YEAS--74

Akaka
Alexander
Barrasso
Baucus
Bayh
Bennet
Bennett
Bingaman
Bond
Brown
Burr
Burris
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Chambliss
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagan
Hatch
Hutchison
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson
Kaufman
Kennedy
Kerry
Klobuchar
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lugar
McCain
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (NE)
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)

[[Page S3601]]

Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden

NAYS--14

Brownback
Bunning
Coburn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Inhofe
Kyl
McConnell
Risch
Roberts
Sessions
Shelby
Thune

NOT VOTING--11

Begich
Boxer
Cornyn
Enzi
Harkin
Inouye
Landrieu
Martinez
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Vitter
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warner). On this vote, the yeas are 74,
the nays are 14. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn
having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
Mr. REED. I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that
motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Green Jobs

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in recent weeks and months, a new phrase
has been born that has gained in popularity and support. The new phrase
that is so in vogue in the Halls of Congress and at the other end of
Pennsylvania Avenue is ``green jobs.''
I have no fault with the term. Everyone wants to create green-collar
jobs. Green jobs are believed to be a critical component of getting us
out of the economic doldrums in which we find ourselves. A new White
House middle-class task force recently focused on the creation of green
jobs as a means of fueling our economy and creating jobs for the middle
class. Vice President Biden has defined a green job as one that
provides products and services that use renewable energy resources,
reduces pollution, and conserves energy and natural resources.
I don't disagree that the creation of these types of jobs is a very
worthy ambition. This newfound desire for so-called green jobs has led
me to remind my colleagues of an existing industry that is making great
strides to reduce pollution, conserve natural resources, and contribute
significantly to our economy.
The U.S. renewable fuels industry has been creating good paying jobs
in rural America for years. It has been 30 years since a tax incentive
for ethanol was passed and 17 years since I fathered the wind energy
tax credit. These alternative energies have been producing a renewable
resource right here at home that is reducing our dependence on foreign
oil and fossil fuels, and it has contributed to a cleaner environment.
U.S. domestic renewable fuels have been doing all these things long
before it was cool or in vogue. So don't be surprised that this is the
nature of America's farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs. They do
things because of the intrinsic value to our country and to our
economy, whether it is a fad on the east coast or not.
I happen to think it is great that there is a newfound zeal for
creating renewable resources here at home. I have been supporting our
domestic renewable fuels industry for nearly 30 years as a means to
reduce our dependence on volatile nations for our energy, mostly for
petroleum. I have been promoting clean wind energy since I fathered the
wind energy tax credit back in 1992. I am pleased to see the success
and the support wind energy now receives because of my tax incentive.
I hope my colleagues who tout the benefits today of the so-called
green jobs fully realize the contribution the domestic ethanol and
biodiesel industries have been making for years in this area. Farmers
across this country produced more than 9 billion gallons of homegrown
renewable fuels last year. Ethanol production displaced 321 million
barrels of oil last year. That is the equivalent of our imports from
Venezuela for 10 months. The use of 9 billion gallons of ethanol saved
American consumers $32 billion last year.
Yet even with this success, our farmers and the biofuel industry have
been under constant attack--at least constant attack over the last 2
years. In a high-priced public relations smear campaign, the food
manufacturers and the Grocery Manufacturers Association have tried
tirelessly to denigrate the efforts of our farmers. In a baseless
campaign, they tried to blame the ethanol industry for raising food
prices, even though corn makes up about a nickel of the cost of a box
of Corn Flakes. The grocery manufacturers thought they found a weak
link in the food chain that they could target and scapegoat as a
culprit behind the rising cost of food. It was clearly proven that the
cost of energy had a significantly greater impact on food prices than
did other commodity costs.

The fact is, the ones responsible for the high cost of food are the
companies whose names stare back at us as we go through the grocery
stores and supermarkets, and they have never hidden their motive during
this smear campaign. It was stated clearly at the time the smear
campaign was started that it was about ``protecting our bottom line.''
Consumers are still seeing the impact of that pocket lining by big
food companies while commodity prices have dropped by half since their
highs last summer. But food prices are still at record highs. Even the
price of oil has dropped more than $100 a barrel. Yet food companies
continue to keep prices high.
You don't need to take my word for it because we have the grocery
store chains themselves fighting back now. SuperValu, Safeway, and
Wegmans are just a few chains that are speaking publicly against the
price increases pushed on them by Kellogg's, General Mills, Kraft,
Nestle, and others. An article in the Los Angeles Times as recently as
March 2 stated:

Our large grocery companies operating in Southern
California have seen the wholesale price for a carton of
Kellogg's Corn Pops rise about 17 percent since June, despite
a 52 percent plunge in corn prices from their peak this
month.

The chief executive for Safeway was quoted as saying:

It is disingenuous to consumers that all commodity costs
are coming down, interest rates coming down, everything is
coming down, and the national brands are taking their prices
up.

The chief executive of SuperValu described the situation as a
``battleground'' with manufacturers right now over prices.
I am pleased to see others in the food chain call on these food
producers to lower prices in light of the large drop in commodity
prices, but this isn't the reason I came to speak today. I would like
to take just a few more minutes to share with my colleagues another
assault that is taking place on biofuels.
In the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, Congress enacted
and expanded a renewable fuels standard to greatly increase the
production and use of biofuels. A component of that renewable fuels
standard was a requirement that various biofuels meet specified life
cycle greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. The law specified that
life cycle greenhouse gas emissions are to include direct emissions and
significantly indirect emissions from indirect land use changes. This
means that the emissions from planting, growing, and harvesting the
feedstock to the production of biofuels must be included in the
calculation. It also means that the Environmental Protection Agency
must determine and must measure the greenhouse gas impacts if there is
a significant conversion of forest or prairie-to-tillable land because
of our biofuel policies.
For the past few months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been
working on what we call a rulemaking--notice of proposed rulemaking--to
implement the updated renewable fuels standard. While it hasn't been
finalized or made public, there are great concerns about this rule
within the biofuels industry surrounding the science behind indirect
land use changes. And, of course, when you think of the Environmental
Protection Agency, isn't science what EPA is all about?
President Obama, during his Presidential campaign and as President

[[Page S3602]]

now, has stated that his administration will return to decisions and
actions based on ``sound science.'' In January, he said:

Rigid ideology has overruled sound science. Special
interests have overshadowed common sense.

Well, I would encourage President Obama and his staff to take a close
look at what the EPA is doing in this rulemaking process called a
notice of proposed rulemaking on renewable fuels standards. There are a
couple of people in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation who firmly
believe--do you believe this?--they can quantify the indirect land use
changes that result from our biofuels policies. I am afraid that the
bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency are going down a
path of blaming our biofuel producers for land use changes around the
globe, and specifically even outside of the United States.
The fact is, measuring indirect emissions of greenhouse gas reduction
is far from a perfect science, and dozens of credible scientists agree.
There is a great deal of complexity and uncertainty surrounding this
issue. One study last year claimed that biofuels, as a result of these
indirect impacts, actually led to greater emissions and greenhouse gas
emissions than did gasoline. This conclusion defies common sense. Under
careful scrutiny, credible scientists on the other side disproved these
conclusions, and I want to quote some.
Dr. Wang of the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory
replied to these assertions by stating:

There has also been no indication that the United States
corn ethanol production has so far caused indirect land use
changes in other countries, because U.S. corn exports have
been maintained at about 2 billion bushels a year, and
because U.S. distillers' grain exports have steadily
increased in the past 10 years.

May I add that really what EPA--through indirect land use--is talking
about here, in the most common denominator, is they figure that because
Iowa or Missouri or Minnesota or Illinois corn producers are growing
corn, and some of it is going into ethanol, that someplace down in
Brazil, farmers are just sitting around trying to calculate and are
going to plow up acre for acre the amount of land that is maybe being
used for production of ethanol at this point. Well, I think the
practical matter is that just isn't happening, and that is exactly what
Dr. Wang is saying here. And if that were the case, what can the
farmers of our country do about it? Are we going to be at the point
where something that happens in some other country is going to affect
our policy here in the United States as to what we can grow and what we
can use that crop for? I don't think that is a credible position to
take.
Now, I quoted one study, but there are a number of credible studies
that have demonstrated that our biofuel policies will have little, if
any, impact on international land use. A recent study by Air
Improvement Resource found that the production of 15 billion gallons of
corn ethanol by the year 2015 should not result in new forests or
grassland conversion in the United States or abroad. Let's look at the
University of Nebraska. A peer-review study conducted there and
published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology found similar
conclusions. They concluded that corn ethanol emits 51 percent less
greenhouse gases than gasoline. A third study, conducted by Global
Insight, found that it is virtually impossible to accurately ascribe
greenhouse gas impacts on indirect land use changes to biofuels.
There are a number of assumptions that can affect the conclusion
about indirect land use changes. With any model, if you put garbage in,
you will get garbage out, and I want to make sure the EPA isn't putting
garbage in. I want to make sure they know yields per acre for corn have
doubled between 1970 and today. I want EPA to know that nitrogen
fertilizer used per acre has been declining since 1985. The
Environmental Protection Agency also needs to know that the ethanol
industry today is vastly more efficient than it was just a few years
ago. Ethanol producers use one-fifth less energy today than they did
just 8 years ago. More fuel is being produced from the same amount or
even less land.
The California Air Resource Board is also trying to grasp this issue.
They are developing a low carbon fuel standard which is penalizing
biofuels with an indirect land use change. On March 2, 2009, to
counteract this, 111 scientists sent a letter to California Governor
Schwarzenegger on this very matter. The scientists are from leading
research labs such as Sandia, Lawrence Berkeley, and the National
Academy of Sciences, as well as leading educational institutions,
including MIT, UCLA, Michigan State, and Iowa State. Scientists
criticized the California Air Resource Board for proposing a regulation
that alleges an indirect price-induced land conversion effect around
the globe caused by a demand for agricultural production and biofuels.
In other words, they said in this official report what I just said:
There isn't some Brazilian farmer just sitting around nervously
awaiting whether he can plow up another acre of grassland in Brazil
just because some more ethanol is being used out of products we grow
here.
The letter of these 111 scientists sent to Governor Schwarzenegger
stated:

The ability to predict this alleged effect depends on using
an economic model to predict worldwide carbon effects, and
the outcomes are unusually sensitive to the assumptions made
by the researchers conducting the model run. In addition,
this field of science is in its nascent stage, is
controversial in much of the scientific community, and is
only being enforced against biofuels.

The two primary conclusions of these scientists are that science
surrounding indirect land use changes is far too limited and uncertain
for regulatory enforcement. Second, indirect effects are often
misunderstood and should not be enforced selectively.

Several of us in the Senate are trying to get the Environmental
Protection Agency to wake up and reconsider some of their thoughts.
Last week I had the opportunity to join my Iowa colleague, Senator
Harkin, as well as 10 other Senators, in appealing to EPA Administrator
Lisa Jackson to be cautious on this issue and as doctors would say
about medicine: First do no harm.
Because of the incomplete and limited science, we urge in our letter
against any premature and, of course, inaccurate conclusions on
indirect land use changes. Instead, the EPA should move forward by
allowing for public review and refinement of the methodology that they
have developed. I am afraid the climate folks at EPA are heading in the
wrong direction on this issue. I do not think they are bad people, but
I am afraid they do not understand much about American agriculture. I
do not think they are aware of the significant crop yield improvements
we have seen in recent years or the great potential for the next 20
years.
I will just give my own farming operation as an example. In 1959,
when I started farming, we were raising, on average, about 60 bushels
of corn per acre. It happened that the first year I farmed I produced
considerably less than that amount, but eventually, within 15 years,
this farmer, as well as the Iowa average, had gone to about 90 bushels
of corn per acre.
Last year, in my county, we raised 175 bushels of corn per acre.
During that period of time, we went from tilling the field probably six
or seven times over to produce a crop to now a point where we are only
tilling the field once or twice before harvest. In each of these
processes, we are producing more corn, we are producing it more
efficiently, and at the same time we have an abundance.
When I started farming, farmers were producing about enough food for
44 other people. A family farmer today produces enough food for 140
other people.
I think we have made great progress, but I am not sure EPA
understands the efficiency of the American farmer today and for sure
they do not understand that people in Brazil are not just sitting
around, seeing how they can take advantage of the fact that American
farmers might be producing some of their crop for sustainable energy
production in this country as opposed to importing more oil.
I also do not think these people fully understand the benefits of
valuable ethanol byproducts, which further reduce the effective land
used for fuel production.
Along this line, do they understand that when you take a bushel of
corn to make 3 gallons of ethanol that corn is

[[Page S3603]]

not gone forever, that 18 pounds of the 56 pounds that is in a bushel
of corn is left over for animal feed? So it is not all going to
production of energy.
To me, it defies common sense that the EPA would publish a proposed
rulemaking with harmful conclusions about biofuels based on incomplete
science and inaccurate assumptions and especially in light of President
Obama's commitment to use sound science in decisionmaking by the
bureaucracy carrying out the laws we pass. The Environmental Protection
Agency's action, if based on erroneous land-use assumptions, could
hinder biofuel development and extend America's dependence upon dirtier
fossil fuels from parts of the world that are not very stable.
Agricultural practices and land-use decisions in other countries are
not driven by U.S. biofuel policies. In other words, there is no
Brazilian farmer sitting around in Brazil, waiting to see what Iowa
farmers are going to do with their corn--for food or export or for
fuel. Even if they were, we have no accurate way to measure it
scientifically and we need to ensure that in that measurement, biofuels
get credit for these increased efficiencies of production--of the basic
commodity as well as the increase in efficiency producing the ethanol.
President Obama was, and as far as I know is still, a strong
proponent of our domestic biofuels industry and he especially was
during his time in the Senate. I know he recognizes the benefit of
producing homegrown renewable fuels, and I doubt he would agree with
the conclusion that biofuels emit the same or more lifecycle greenhouse
gas emissions as does gasoline.
I hope the EPA will reconsider its conclusions on this or not hastily
draw conclusions.

____________________