Dear Fellow Citizens,

Over the past few weeks the Senate has been debating and amending legislation to enact the remaining recommendations of the 9/11 Commission regarding homeland security.  On March 13, the Senate successfully concluded action on this important bill.  The vote came 2 ½ years after this bipartisan commission first made its recommendations to Congress.

Following the 9/11 Commission bill, the Senate debated and voted upon three resolutions concerning  Iraq.  I voted for all three resolutions, the most important of which was to establish a new direction for our involvement in Iraq.  That resolution, which failed 50-48 on a procedural vote (60 votes needed) did five things:  (1) plainly states that Congress and America support our troops; (2) recognizes that the shift in conditions in Iraq demands a new direction; (3) sets the goal of redeploying by March 31, 2008, U.S. troops not engaged in training Iraqi troops, conducting targeted anti-terrorism operations or protecting US personnel and infrastructure in Iraq; (4) encourages the President to continue recent efforts to work cooperatively with Iraq's neighbors to develop a comprehensive diplomatic, political and economic strategy for a stable Iraq; and (5) demands real action from the President by requiring a report to Congress every 60 days on his progress.  I want the U.S. to succeed in Iraq.  That requires the Iraqi government taking responsibility for ending the civil war among its sects.  U.S. troops should not be a police for the Iraqi civil war.

Looking forward, the Senate may shortly take up stem cell research legislation already passed by the House.  The rest of March will likely be taken up with consideration of the proposed Iraq/Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriations bill and the Fiscal Year 2008 budget resolution.  The week of March 18, the Senate is considering S.214, a bill by Sen. Feinstein and co-sponsored by me, introduced in response to the disturbing revelations about the Administration's firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. Current law allows the U.S. Attorney General to fill U.S. Attorney vacancies for an indefinite period of time, avoiding the Senate confirmation process. S. 214 restores the law in place prior to 2006, which allows the Attorney General to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney for 120 days. If no replacement/nomination confirmation occurs, the authority to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney falls to the U.S. District Court.

On March 24, I will be co-hosting the 2007 Colorado New Energy Summit in Denver.  Joining me as co-sponsors of this event are Governor Ritter, Senator Allard, Representatives DeGette, Udall, Musgrave, Salazar and Perlmutter, Denver Mayor Hickenlooper, State Senate President Fitz-Gerald, and State House Speaker Romanoff.  For more details on this event, or to sign-up to attend (registration to attend is required) please go to my Senate website at salazar.senate.gov

I want to also update you on my other activities since the February newsletter.

NREL Visit and Farm Bill Hearing.  On March 12, I hosted Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (IA) on a visit to Colorado.  We visited Golden's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the morning where we toured the Alternative Fuels User Facility to learn more about the challenges and opportunities involving cellulosic ethanol as an alternative fuel for powering motor vehicles.  We next visited NREL's National Wind Technology Center where we were briefed on the promise of next generation wind power technology.  That afternoon Chairman Harkin chaired a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on the 2007 Farm Bill at the Adams County Fairgrounds, the first hearing this year on the Farm Bill outside of Washington, D.C.  Approximately 180 people attended the hearing which was held in Colorado at my request.  Chairman Harkin and I heard from agriculture, energy, nutrition and conservation program experts representing Colorado farmers, ranchers and rural residents.

President's Day Week Colorado Activities.  During the President's Day district work week in February, I visited a veterans appreciation event at a long-term care facility in Denver, helped FedEx roll out its new environmentally-friendly fleet of delivery trucks and hosted U.S. Attorney General Gonzales, Senator Wayne Allard, and Representative Doug Lamborn on a tour of the federal Supermax prison in Florence.  The purpose of my second visit to this prison was to have Attorney General Gonzales see and hear from prison staff and local community concerns about staffing and security needs in and around this high level facility housing the al Qaeda and domestic terrorists.

I also joined NREL Director Arvizu, the leaders of University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines, Governor Ritter, Senator Allard and Congressmen Udall and Perlmutter in a signing ceremony at the state capitol ratifying the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory Agreement.  The Collaboratory is an association of the three universities and NREL dedicated to performing world class research and to developing new energy technologies and to transferring these advances as rapidly as possible to the private sector.  I proposed this initiative following the Energy Summit I hosted last year and was able to obtain state legislative support and approval of this unique collaboration.  I am hopeful this effort will go a long way to making Colorado the renewable energy capital of the world!

Also during President's Day week, I delivered the keynote address at the Northern Colorado Clean Energy Summit on "Making Colorado the Country's Renewable Energy Capital," visited the Salud Family Health Center in Fort Collins to discuss child health care issues, visited CSU's Foothill Campus Photovoltaic Lab where they are developing a new technology to convert ordinary window glass into solar panels, and visited the children in a school assembly at Greeley's Bill Martinez Elementary School, after which I met with teachers and administrators to discuss the No Child Left Behind Act.  At the end of that week I also convened a meeting in Colorado Springs of the stakeholders involved in negotiating the many issues surrounding the Preferred Storage Option Plan (PSOP) for the Pueblo Reservoir, encouraging the many disparate parties to continue working for resolution of outstanding issues so the Colorado delegation can push through a unified bill in Congress.  I also met with several command officers over lunch at Fort Carson and listened to their concerns and comments about needs on a variety of issues at the Fort. 

Homeland Security.  During consideration of the 9/11 Commission bill, the Senate adopted by a vote of 82-1 my amendment to create a Rural Policing Institute to address the unique challenges facing rural law enforcement in our country.  I introduced this proposal as a separate bill earlier this year (S. 560), as described in my February e-newsletter.  The Senate also adopted another amendment I offered requiring the Department of Homeland Security to develop a Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, a strategic plan every four years similar to the Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review.  The Review will be a comprehensive examination of the homeland defense strategy, inter-agency cooperation, preparedness of federal response assets, infrastructure, budget plan and other elements of the homeland defense program and policies of the United States.  Securing the homeland requires planning ahead using clear goals and benchmarks for defense.  This quadrennial review is designed to facilitate that planning.

Protecting Our Active Duty Troops.  While the debate over our continued presence in Iraq rages on, as long as our troops are there in harm's way there is no real debate over whether they should have the best protection possible.  A January 25, 2007, report from the Inspector General indicates continued shortages in force-protection equipment for our soldiers in Iraq and other "forward areas," including shortages in body armor, up-armored vehicles, communications equipments and electronic countermeasure devices.  This is, quite frankly, shocking.  I joined Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in leading a bipartisan group of Senators in sending a letter to Defense Secretary Gates demanding immediate steps be taken to ensure that U.S. troops receive complete body armor sets and that the DOD provide us with accurate information on force-protection equipment availability and distribution. 

Immigration Reform.   I continue to work with key Democratic and Republican colleagues to move forward with a comprehensive immigration reform bill.  The likely vehicle to jump start the legislative process will be the Senate's immigration bill we passed last year on a bipartisan basis.  That bill provided for strong border security, expanded enforcement against employers knowingly hiring illegal workers, a temporary guest worker program, and a multi-year, earned path to citizenship for those illegal immigrants who want to become Americans - no amnesty.

Veterans Health Care Scandal.   In response to the unfolding scandal involving allegations of substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and inter-agency confusion over the transition of wounded vets from inpatient to outpatient medical care, on March 7, I wrote to Defense Secretary Gates and Veterans Affairs Secretary Nicholson proposing the two departments work together to prepare for Congress a series of joint recommendations for improving care for the Nation's service members and veterans.  I called on the two Secretaries to make specific improvements in three key areas to move DOD and VA closer to "seamless transition" for America's troops and veterans:  (1) Clear accounting of America's service members and veterans (currently, the Administration continues to underestimate the number of troops and veterans linked to the war on terror, as evidenced by repeated inadequate funding requests for VA healthcare); (2) medical record portability; and (3) fixing the bureaucracies at DOD and VA to avoid the substandard care and seamless condition difficulties in the future.

A New Energy Policy.  On March 2, I met with President Bush at the White House to discuss energy policy and to push for more funding for NREL.  The Vice President, Energy Secretary Bodman and nine fellow Senators also attended.  At the meeting I pushed for the creation of an Administration-Congress working group to develop a robust, comprehensive energy bill focusing on promoting the development and use of alternative energy and an increase in funding for energy research.

Global Warming and Carbon Sequestration.  Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere increased by 30%, a byproduct of the combustion of fossil fuels.  This greenhouse gas is now considered a significant contributor to global climate change.  Recent research suggests the possibility of preventing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by storing them in the ground in geologic formations, a process called "carbon sequestration."  I introduced S. 731, the "National Carbon Dioxide Storage Capacity Assessment Act of 2007," requiring a U.S. inventory on the potential for storing this greenhouse gas in deep underground geologic features and other natural basins. 

Promoting Renewable Energy.  I have introduced a trio of renewable energy incentives targeting rural communities.  (1) S. 672 creates a 5-year wind energy investment tax credit for farmers, ranchers, rural homeowners and small businesses to help reduce the installation cost of small wind energy systems, up to 100 kilowatts.  The tax credit would be tied to the actual performance of these wind systems, and would be the first federal wind tax credit aimed at such small producers in more than 20 years.  (2) S. 673 creates tax-exempt renewable energy bonds to promote local and community-based wind farms and other renewable energy projects, up to 40 megawatts in size - enough to power between 900-1200 homes, small farms, or small businesses each year.   Currently, this tax-exempt status is only open to large utilities companies.  The last bill is (3) S. 590, a bill I joined Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) in introducing.  It extends through 2017 the fuel cell and solar power generating equipment tax credits created in the 2005 Energy bill.  Again, the tax credits would be tied to the performance of such technologies.

Promoting Energy Efficiency.  I also joined a bipartisan group of Senators in introducing
S. 822, the EXTEND, the Energy Efficiency Incentive Act of 2007.  This package of energy saving incentives (1) provides a new tax credit for home retrofits that save energy, (2) extends through 2012 the tax deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings, (3) extends through 2011 tax credits of certain residential energy efficient equipment and other tax credits for energy efficiency programs.

Promoting School Safety.  Each day, roughly 160,000 children nationwide miss school because they are afraid of a violent incident, 100,000 children take a weapon to school, 14,000 young people are attacked on school property, 6,250 teachers are threatened and 260 teachers are assaulted.  Against this backdrop, I joined Senators Boxer, Lautenberg and Schumer in introducing S. 677, the School Safety Enhancement Act.  One of the bill's provisions will help schools establish hotlines or tiplines for reporting potentially dangerous situations.  This proposal is modeled after Colorado's statewide "Safe2Tell Program" which I helped develop while Colorado's Attorney General, in partnership with local law enforcement and others, in the wake of the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999.  Our bill would also assist schools in purchasing surveillance cameras and other capital improvements to improve school security and require the Departments of Justice and Education to cooperatively develop and publish a set of advisory school safety guidelines to help school districts establish their own.

Helping Our Returning Veterans.  "Troops to Teachers" is a program created in 1994 that provides a $5,000 stipend to veterans to help cover the costs of teaching certification in exchange for three years of service in a "high-need" school.  This program has certified and placed nearly 10,000 veterans as educators in classrooms across the Nation with an 83% retention rate.  When the "Troops to Teachers" program was reauthorized in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), an error in the drafting of the bill resulted in two conflicting definitions of "high need" schools to benefit from "Troops to Teachers."  Until 2005, the Department of Education chose to use the broader definition of "high need."  However, two years ago the Department switched to the more limited definition, significantly reducing the number of "Troops-to-Teachers"-eligible schools.  For Colorado, this change meant that "Troops to Teachers" veterans went from being eligible in 98% of Colorado school districts to only 26% of Colorado school districts.  I  have introduced S. 769, legislation to restore the broader standard of school district eligibility.

Help for Rocky Flats Workers.  A recent front page news story detailed past efforts by some within the Administration over the years to limit or even block health assistance to sick and dying nuclear weapons workers, including thousands from the old Rocky Flats plant.  I reintroduced S. 729, a bill that would give benefits to approximately 10,000 Rocky Flats employees who became ill after working at the former nuclear weapons plant if they suffer from one of the 22 specified cancers known to be linked to their radiation exposure.  Reps. Udall and Perlmutter have introduced companion legislation in the House.

Rural Teachers Assistance.  Rural school districts face a difficult challenge in retaining experienced and qualified teachers in their classrooms.  This of course impacts the education of our rural students.  To help rural school districts overcome this hurdle, I re-introduced S. 583, the Rural Teacher Retention Act, to provide teachers in rural districts with bonuses to help retain them in underserved rural districts.

Army's Pinon Canyon Expansion Proposal.  In the ongoing debate over whether the Army should expand its existing Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeast Colorado, local residents are concerned about the effects any such expansion could have on their livelihoods, their way of life, their land and the agricultural economy of the region.  With these concerns in mind, I am urging the Army to do all it can to craft a "win-win" solution for both the residents and the Army that does not include the exercise of eminent domain.  In a March 8 letter to Assistant Secretary of the Army Keith Eastin, I requested the Army to explore a variety of options, such as (1) creating an economic development fund that will sustain growth and new investments in southeast Colorado, (2) allow grazing to continue in any expansion area, (3) use goods and services from the communities of SE Colorado, (4) minimize any tax impacts on citizens who choose to sell land to the Army, and (5) allow public access to cultural and historic sites at the Site.  I also stressed that the Army should demonstrate that any expansion plan (1) not involve the use of eminent domain, (2) is fiscally responsible, (3) is fully necessary for the training of our soldiers, (4) protects the agricultural, natural, cultural and environmental heritage of the region, (5) thoroughly considers alternate acquisition sites and smaller acreage levels for expansion, and (6) is available for public scrutiny, discussion and comment.

South Platte River.  Nebraska's Senators Nelson, Hagel, and Senator Allard and I joined together to introduce S. 752, the "Platte River Recovery Implementation Act of 2007."  Our bill provides funding and authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to proceed with implementation of an agreement between Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Interior that I helped initially fashion as Colorado's Attorney General to improve and maintain habitat for threatened or endangered species along the South Platte River while allowing continued necessary water use and development. 

Endangered Species Protection.  I joined a bipartisan group of Senators in introducing S. 700, legislation aimed at providing tax incentives for private landowners - including specifically ranchers and farmers - who work to save endangered plants and animals. 

Four Corners TV.  Finally, I introduced S. 760, legislation to allow southwest Coloradans in the Four Corners area to receive both Denver and Albuquerque, NM, television stations.  Currently, many residents in the area are only able to receive, under existing arrangements, Albuquerque television stations.   This longstanding situation has prevented fellow Coloradans from receiving Colorado-based televised news coverage, sports entertainment including the Denver Broncos, and the Colorado Emergency Alert System.

As always, for more detailed information on my Senate activities in Colorado and in Washington, I urge you to visit my Senate website at salazar.senate.gov

Sincerely,

Ken Salazar
U.S. Senator