Mr. DODD. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I would like to return, if I could, to the basic thrust of the legislation before us, and that is the rescission bill .

You are going to almost have to hire a mountain guide to find your way through the legislative process that is unfolding here, with various amendments that are now being offered to the underlying bill and to the substitutes that have been suggested.

Let me, if I can, get back to the core set of issues here. What is primarily before us is the rescission bill that cuts into the heart of an awful lot of critically important programs that affect the most vulnerable of people in our society. It seems to me that we ought to try and keep our eye on that debate. Adding elements here that deal with Jordan and other issues, no matter how laudable and appropriate at some point for us to debate and discuss, I think it becomes rather obvious, patently obvious, to anyone who is following this debate that these are efforts to try and distract the attention from the central question.

Certainly this body ought to vote on whether or not you think the cuts in nutrition programs and Head Start and drug free schools ought to take place or not--we should not have to dwell interminably on those questions--and cast your votes yes or no. If you think that these cuts are ones that ought to be made, then you vote for them. If you do not, then you vote otherwise.

But I do not think we assist by doing this, since this is almost a self-imposed filibuster by the majority on these issues.

Mr. President, I want to, first of all, begin by commending the majority to this extent; and that is, the bill , the rescission bill , is a lot better than what existed in the House. No question, this is an improvement over what was coming over from the House.

But it is still a far cry from what I think most people in this country understand are valuable investments to the future of this Nation.

I was responsible for Head Start, Mr. President, 2 years ago, to bring the reauthorization bill of Head Start to the floor of the U.S. Senate. It was a comprehensive bill that called for many substantive changes in how Head Start was functioning, but it also called for full funding of Head Start.

Frankly and very honestly, I prepared myself to come to the floor for an extensive debate--it was a fairly controversial bill , the Head Start Program--and to extend full funding and to make other changes, many of which had been suggested, I might point out, by the distinguished Senator from Kansas, now the chairperson of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, Senator Kassebaum.

In any event, I came over with leaflets, folders, and binders to defend this reauthorization bill . I was on the floor all of about 20 or 30 minutes. There was not a single voice raised in opposition to the bill . It was unanimously adopted by this Chamber.

It is ironic--maybe that is not the best word to be using here--that we find just a matter of months later a cut coming into the Head Start Program, again, a program that has never been the subject of much partisan debate and division over the many years that the program has existed because it works. It does the job that we need to be doing to try to see to it that the young children of this country get a good start in their educational life.

It has been a program that has worked tremendously well. Regretfully, we are only getting 1 in 4 of the eligible children with it. So there it was the collective judgment that it made sense for us to try to reach as many of those eligible children as possible.

So the reauthorization bill did that, unanimously adopted, not a single amendment offered on the floor. We had extensive hearings in the Labor and Human Resources Committee and worked out, I think, a good bill . I think the best evidence of the fact it was a good bill is that there was not a dissenting voice, and not a dissenting vote on that measure.