Now, I offered this provision in our bill because I think it is needed. I think when you have 1 million people incarcerated, it is inhumane not to have an orderly system where they can work. I will not drag this dead cat across the table too many more times here, but I want to remind my colleagues that when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in the 1830's and went back home and wrote `Democracy in America,' one part of American life that he commented on was our prison system and how enlightened it was because we worked prisoners hard. Prisoners at that time were working 12, 14 hours a day 6 days a week, and de Tocqueville noted how enlightened it was because by making prisoners work it made life in prison bearable.

If we made prisoners work today, not only would we save money, but people when they got out of prison would have a skill that they learned working in prison. If we made them go to school at night, they would know how to read and write, and having worked 10 hours a day 6 days a week, go to school at night, serve their full term, when they get out of prison they would not want to go back.

That is not going to happen because this provision is going to be stricken out by special interests. I know it, but I want people to have to vote on it, and I want people to be able to look at their vote. Prisoners in America should be required to work. They should be allowed to work in producing things that we can sell.

Every year our dear colleague, Senator Helms, offers an amendment to ban trade with countries that make prisoners work. Every year I wonder why we cannot make our prisoners work. How is it that we have people who are working two and three jobs, struggling to make ends meet, and we are paying $22,000 a year to keep somebody in prison, and then we cannot force them to work to produce something of value to pay for their own incarceration?

It is called greedy, petty, special interests. The world ought to know about it. I hope to awaken them by putting this provision in this bill that somebody has to take out.

Now let me talk very briefly about two other language provisions in the bill. One has to do with the 8(a) program. The 8(a) program is designed to help disadvantaged businesses. The basic idea of the 8(a) program was that there are some businesses that are disadvantaged and that we want to try to help them get on the playing field and be more competitive.

The problem is that over the years, disadvantaged has come to mean minority or female. You cannot be disadvantaged, under the 8(a) contract, if you are not a minority and if you are male. So what I try to do is open up the 8(a) contract and say, no matter what your gender is, no matter what your race is, if you are operating in a depressed area, if you are a small, struggling business and you are hiring people who live in a distressed area, you ought to be treated in exactly the same way as someone doing exactly the same things you are who is from a different ethnic group or from a different gender.

We do not eliminate the 8(a) program, we simply open it up to people who are disadvantaged because they are small business people in depressed areas with high unemployment and they are hiring people from those areas.

This is a controversial subject. I understand that. But I believe, again, if we could put this proposal on the kitchen table in every kitchen in America and ask, if somebody is a small business person, if they are operating in an area of high unemployment, if they are hiring people who are from a high unemployment area, why should they be discriminated against based on race or gender? I think America has asked that question and I think America has answered it. They are waiting for the U.S. Senate to answer it and I want to give them a chance to answer it today.

The final provision I want to talk about in the bill, in terms of language, has to do with quotas and set-asides. I understand where the Senate stands on this issue. Of all people here, I understand it.