Tom Harkin

To this Senator, it makes eminently good sense. We are talking about education and safety in education. Senator Lautenberg has an amendment on gun safety. That is what the Republicans do not want to vote on. Yet the Senator from New…

Oh, relevant amendments. See, there you go. The last ESEA bill we had up was 4 years ago. We had amendments offered on the Republican side that were not relevant. We didn't say anything. We debated them. We debated them and we voted on…

It is the Republican side that is running the floor that schedules the bills, not the Democrats. My friend from New Hampshire just said he would be willing to have seven amendments on either side.

Yes. I think all of us are committed on this side. I don't speak for the Senator from Pennsylvania. But in my conversations with him, I understand that he is committed to replacing the social services block grant. Clearly, we cannot live…

While I support improving impact aid around the country, we are getting to the point where we accepted a $10 million cut in administrative costs, and we accepted some more before that, did we not?

Again, it was my understanding that it was former Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole who first committed the Department to issue an ergonomic standard to protect workers on carpal tunnel syndrome and MSDs, as they are called. It has been…

Would the Senator tell us under which Secretary of Labor and how long ago this proposed ergonomics rule was promulgated? How many years of study have we put in on it?

I say to anyone who is watching this debate, get on your computer, get on the Internet and dial up www.gulfstream.com. Dial up gulfstream.com and take a look at the Gulfstream V and Gulfstream III, I say to my constituents, or anyone who…

Why? Why 5,000 miles? That is the threshold. The objective is the ``Aircraft shall be able to fly no-wind range of 5,000 nautical miles carrying a full passenger and crew complement, plus their baggage.'' Why? We do not know why, but that…

Frankly, I say to the Senator from California, if we have to swallow this, they ought to at least buy the airplanes, not lease them. The taxpayers are going to get stung, big time, for leasing these aircraft, but it looks as if it is less…

What happened to the six airplanes last year that we fought against? Have they started leasing those airplanes yet?

What is at the essence of our problem is the big disparity, as Jonathan Kozol has pointed out time and time again, between those who happen to be born and live in a wealthy area and those who are born and live in a poor area.

It should not depend on the roll of the dice of where you were born as to what kind of school you attend.

It raises in my mind this question, again, of why that is. Why is it? I ask the Senator, where is it in the Constitution of the United States that public education in America is to be funded by property taxes? Why is this so? I asked a…

However, the real issue in the case before the Supreme Court and in the legislation before Congress is not about banning late term abortions. The real issue is about a systematic effort to overturn Roe V. Wade and to criminalize all…

This has to do with pension plans. All too often when the pension plans are changed, older workers who have been there a long time see nothing added to their pensions; younger workers see their pensions grow. This is age discrimination…

I thank the Senator. He is absolutely right. The nondiscretionary budget we have to work with is $7 billion below a freeze. It is not a 14-percent increase. As the Senator knows, we took some of that BA last year and put it into this year…

We have to get away from thinking that agriculture is some sort of a minor entity out there, some kind of a sidebar issue. Agriculture is still, if I am not mistaken, something like 20 percent of our gross national product. I think we are…

It is exactly what we are talking about. I point out that in the administration's proposal for their farm support this year, they will use a 5-year average of gross income--gross income. Look, what about the increased price of fuel…

All I can say is, I wish they could put Senator Specter and me in a room. I think we would come up with a good bipartisan bill. We have already. Because of some outside influences, we are going to have some real problems. That is a shame…

I might just say that I think the $400 million in disaster payments for this year...is still inadequate, too low. From all of the indications we get from disasters up and down the east coast, in the Mid-Atlantic States, plus some of the…

As I look at the bill, you have reduced the livestock and dairy portion of the Cochran amendment from $325 million to $250 million.

I ask the author of the amendment exactly how this differs from the last package, the Cochran amendment, which is set aside right now. As I look at it, the difference between this package and what we voted on yesterday, the Cochran…

I think farmers by and large got very confused by that. They were told by our friends on the other side of the aisle you had to have Freedom to Farm to get flexibility. That is not so. What happened with Freedom to Farm is that it took…

In the Republicans' proposal, the maximum payments that an individual can receive--by setting up partnerships or corporations to maneuver around the limits--would be $460,000. Nearly half a million dollars to one individual.