A resolution establishing as a standing order of the Senate a requirement that a Senator publicly discloses a notice of intent to object to proceeding to any measure or matter.

Mr. President, I was going to go next, but I note the attendance of the distinguished Senator from Louisiana. He would like to speak, and I will yield to him.

Let me make one or two observations regarding the speech just delivered. First, I thank the Senator from Texas for the reasonableness, the rationality of his discussion. He would not believe, the people who have listened to the debate over the last couple of days would not believe the facts as you have described them, which are the facts, with reference to MTBE. This bill does not say if somebody misuses MTBE, negligently spills it, if they have tanks that leak, if they are not careful to keep it where it is supposed to be, it doesn't say those kinds of actions are rendered nonactionable in tort liability.

The safe harbor is very narrow. It says the producer of the product, which has been determined by the Government and to date determined by scientists to be totally safe and very effective, it says those who made the product are not liable for the mere fact of making it and selling it. They are not liable. If it causes harm because of other actions with reference to it, then the hold harmless does not apply. That is what the Senator has been telling us today; plus, he has enlightened us that, even as we speak today, contrary to the elaborate statements regarding people who have been damaged and hurt, the scientists in the Government still say, as a product, it is safe; as a product, it is tremendously effective; and as a product, the Government isn't even considering doing anything about it. They are not out there saying we want to stop it. I have not heard that from the EPA or anyone else--I think because they would have no evidence--that there is anything wrong with the product.

I say to everybody in this country who wants ethanol, ethanol may prove, as an additive, in 15 years to cause some damage. Are we going to go back 15 years and say to the farmers who grew the crops that went into ethanol: You are collectively, as the farmers of America, liable for producing the corn that produced ethanol that produced a problem 15 years later? I doubt it, because I don't think anybody would be down here saying we want to stick all these hundreds of thousands of farmers. But right now we are saying: Have at it, trial lawyers, we hope you can get after these guys because somebody got hurt. Sue the companies that produced it. People are saying: After all, they are rich companies.

That is not the American judicial system. Liability is not based on whether you have a successful company. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons some people are upset about this safe harbor is that they think the ones with money are the ones that are going to be in this safe harbor; namely, those that produced a product. They don't think there is going to be enough money for them out there in the marketplace where other things have gone wrong. They don't want to have to look for people who had leaky tanks and sue them and their insurance companies. They want to leave that to somebody else, right? They want to go after one of these companies--I don't know which one--and a number of them are in Texas. People will say: There is that old Texas again.

Well, Texas has about 13 companies that produce various products related to this whole area, not just this. Some of them produce this product. If I were the Senator from Texas, I would be right here doing what he is doing. The Senator is not opposed to those companies, right, or embarrassed by them? He is saying: Good luck. He is not embarrassed that they are making money. I assume they pay a salary to people in his State. I assume these towns like them. They are not doing anything to these towns. There is no pollution in the towns where it is being produced.

Those who would kill this bill over this issue have said to the farmers of the United States who want to use their crops to produce ethanol--if you vote this bill down based on this MTBE issue, you are saying to the farmers in your States--there are 12 or 15 of them--that have lots of corn and soybeans: We are taking the trial lawyers over you. You are saying: We have a choice to make and tomorrow morning we will make it, and we will choose the trial lawyers; we want to help them and forget about the farmers. That is the issue, as I see it. This will not end because we are going to go into MTBE today in a little more detail.

I yield to the Senator from Louisiana.

(Mr. GRAHAM from South Carolina assumed the chair.)

Mr. President, I struck an agreement with a couple of Senators who have been waiting to speak. Senator Nickles would like to follow me. I ask unanimous consent that he follow me. Secondly, the Senator from California, who was just here a bit ago, asked that she proceed next, and I ask unanimous consent she proceed next.

No, we are not.

The Senator can speak after the Senator from California. That is fine. She is right here.

And I am going to speak for 20 minutes now.

I have no objection, but I would like to add, with that agreement, that the distinguished Senator from the State of Kentucky would like to speak, and he will either speak before the Senator from Vermont, if the quarter of 2 has not yet arrived, or after the Senator from Vermont speaks.

That is the junior Senator from Kentucky who is asking for time.

Mr. President, I sure hope the people in this country and those who have written about MTBE were privileged to hear the few remarks that took place this morning about the issue from the distinguished junior Senator from Texas and the Senator from Louisiana. I don't plan to speak anymore about MTBE now, but before the afternoon is finished, I will speak to it with a little more detail so people will understand that the House asked us to do this, and they didn't ask us for anything unreasonable. This is a very valid approach to a problem that cries out for a solution, other than to turn it loose and let anybody sue however they would like and see what happens.

Having said that, I wish to talk about this bill that is before us from the standpoint of what is going to happen if those who have come to the floor and been so critical of the bill prevail and we don't have this bill.

I don't want to go back and spend a lot of time duplicating the words that have been used about this bill. Suffice it to say, there have been enough negative words used about this bill that one might consider it is the worst thing that ever happened.

I would like to tell each and every one of the Senators and each and every American who is concerned what is going to happen if this bill doesn't pass.

The impression is this is just a big bill that somebody put together that has a lot of pieces to it. We don't like some of them and some of them we think are giveaways, so we ought to just kill it. I am going to use the word ``kill'' for a little while because I assume those people who have gotten up and talked that way would like to kill the bill.

First, if we kill this bill, fuel diversity efforts that will help reduce our dependency on foreign oil and gas will be killed along with it. In other words, this bill is a conscientious effort to help American industry, large and small, produce alternative sources of energy for America and, in many instances, to do that, they have been given a tax incentive. All of those alternatives will be dead when this bill is killed, if it is.

The ethanol program, which many have wanted for years--a few in this body don't like it, but let's just take it for what it is--everybody should know the ethanol program is dead, killed, gone, out the window.

Now, there are some who would applaud it, but the overwhelming number of people, and the entire agribelt of America, is cheering that we pass it, not that we defeat it. I, frankly, do not see any way, I say to all the farmers in this country, of ever getting an ethanol bill anywhere like this if this bill is killed.

So to repeat, for those who think we need ethanol to provide an alternative 5 billion gallons a year to the use of crude oil gasoline, and for farmers who want an alternative crop, kill the bill and you have killed that forever.

The renewable fuels provision would replace 5 billion gallons of oil with 5 billion of domestic-produced ethanol. I have alluded to it. It will die with the death of this bill.

Over 800,000 job opportunities for our citizens will go out the window, dead, killed, for those who relish speaking about killing this bill.

Clean coal initiatives, which for the first time say to America, America, you are king, K-I-N-G, King Coal, and we want to provide some incentives so you might use some of that coal. Well, for those who want to kill this bill, ``King Coal'' will remain a dead product. We can inventory it, we can take note of it, and we can brag that America has coal that will run the country for--I do not know how long. The last time I read something, it would run it for 500 or 600 years. Out the window, no chance to use it because we will be using every other fuel led by natural gas and we will soon be importing liquefied natural gas because there is no way we are going to use our coal.

So let me repeat in simple phrases, ``King Coal'' will remain dormant but for the small amount being used. Not a new powerplant will be built using coal. It is dead.

Yesterday there was a report by a commission. The commission worked since the Northeastern blackout. They issued a report, and the summary of the report is two or three pages long. What they have concluded, I say to my colleagues, is that the principal reason for the Northeast blackout is that some companies were not following the voluntary reliability standards. Then those who made the study conclude that if this bill is passed, there should not be another blackout because the reliability standards are made mandatory and they will be enforced by criminal penalties. So nobody is going to run around taking a chance with overloading and breaching the reliability standards. Reliability means that one is doing what is prudent and there is no more reference to the use of these lines.

So let us summarize that one. For the time being, and I think for some time to come, the blackouts in America will remain alive and possible because we will have thrown out the window the reliability standards that are in this bill because some want to make the case on an issue such as MTBE or the like which we are talking about today.

There is regulatory certainty required for the utility industry. If we fail to provide that, FERC, with congressional direction on issues such as standard market design and transmission pricing, will be gone. They will be dead. The repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act will be killed.

Some people have said if nothing else was in this bill, the repeal of PUHCA, a 1935 vestige that hangs around over the utility industry, prohibiting investment over some kind of fear that is no longer a reality--and look how long we have been waiting to get rid of PUHCA--I think it would be fair that I could say if this bill is killed, PUHCA is here forever. So industry that is waiting for an injection of money, they can sit by and eke out investment because the principal impediment will still be there. The repeal will have been killed.

There are some who say because their States have had some unlucky or unfortunate situations, such as Enron, that consumer protections are necessary and then, of course, they look at this bill and say, I know what protections I want and they are not exactly the way I want them in the bill, so they come to the floor and say there are no protections. But I say if this bill is killed, you kill the consumer protections in this bill which are against fraud, manipulation, which force increased transparency, which increase penalties for violation of the Federal Power Act and Natural Gas Act, and they close the Enron fraud loophole.

Now, you can throw all of those out the window for people who want to find fault and want to talk about a turkey and want to talk about the goodies in this bill, but I am telling you what you lose when you lose this bill. I am ready for anybody to come and say it is not true.

How are we going to get these if this bill dies? Will the House come marching down the aisle, just having gone through this exercise, and say, oh, well, let's just start next week and do another one? Does the Chair think so? I think not. Do my colleagues think this Senator spent the better part of a year on it, and do they think I am going to march to my committee and start hearings and saying, oh, well, we did the best we could but we better just start over again because we heard so many speeches? Not on your life. The speeches had little to do with the important provisions in this legislation.

They had to do with things that were put in the legislation, as everyone knows, when it is run through both the House and the Senate and individual bodies and then through a conference.

Tax credits--let me say I am aware of the tax credit game, and this bill is filled with tax credits that people wanted and needed and on which I am sure some of my good friends are quite certain we were too generous. I note the presence of my great friend Senator Nickles and I am sure he is not going to get up and speak about MTBE and we ought to take it out, but he is going to wonder whether we put in too many tax credits.

For every newspaper article and editorial that said: let's kill this bill, it is no good, there are hundreds of letters of support from the people affected. They do not write editorials. They write and tell us their problem.

The people who build and sell windmills and have giant windmill projects going, they are very clear. This is the best thing that ever could have happened to them. We have made permanent the production tax credit that is sending windmills soaring in the United States, and I do not mean soaring in the air, I mean soaring in numbers.

Some ask: Do you really want those, Senator? And I sometimes chuckle. I drive around and see some of them, and I am not sure. But they will build them pretty before they are finished. They will even be good looking. Right now, some people write us letters and say: We don't want any more of those. Some people in Massachusetts wanted us to put something in this bill saying the local community could stop them if they didn't want them. We couldn't get that done if we tried. In any event, the credits for that are gone. If we pass the bill, we will see it soar.

Regarding solar, we received all kinds of congratulations and support from the solar industry, saying it will finally go now. It will go, but it is dead in its tracks when this bill dies, if it dies. I don't think it is going to. At least I hope not.

You can go right on through. Biomass and all the others are anxiously waiting so they can begin to produce alternatives, adding to the totality of what we will use for energy in America.

We have been so bold that we say the next generation, economically speaking, will be the hydrogen generation. I am not sure about that, but this bill starts us down that path. I don't know where we are going to pick up a bill that will put together the kinds of things that are involved, such as $1.6 billion to start joint ventures with the automobile companies to build this.

Then there is nuclear. France leads the world. While we tremble, they build. While we worry, they have 78 percent of their electricity from nuclear power. While we run around worrying where are we going to put this waste product, do you want to take a trip to France? They will show you where they put theirs. It is a building that looks just like a schoolhouse.

You walk into it and look around and you ask: Where is the spent fuel?

They say: You are standing on it.

What?

It is right there. It is encased and they put in solvent and put in water, glass put upon it, and they are smart enough to say that will be safe for 50 to 100 years. Guess what. They say: We will find a solution or a use for it in that period of time.

We stopped producing nuclear powerplants, one of the reasons being we don't know what to do with the waste. An engineering problem, and nothing more, has killed nuclear power in America. We have said maybe somebody would like to try it and we will give them some incentive to get around the difficulties involved. I hope we do it this way. Because if we don't, I think we can probably say, during my lifetime--I am not sure about the lifetime of the occupant of the chair, who is a very young Senator and very much waiting around to see this happen. You may see it, but I don't think I will, because you have to give some incentives to get started and then the public will see the new generation, something we ought to have going on in our country.

I could go on. Before I stop, though, I want to talk about Alaska and natural gas. First there was a program--it is not in this bill--to capture crude oil that is in ANWR. We were told: If you put it in the bill, it will be filibustered. Isn't that interesting, Senator Nickles? You weren't for taking it out; you wanted it in. Now we have left it out and we have somebody filibustering because of the MTBE hold harmless clause.

I wish we had known we were going to have cloture votes down here. Maybe we should have put it in and had cloture on a lot of things, including ANWR. But we didn't put it in, in good faith, because the minority leader said he had enough votes to kill it. So we left it out.

Alaska is loaded with energy. What do we do in this bill if we can't utilize some of their energy? We tried very hard to assure the delivery of natural gas to the lower 48 because it will not be longer than 10 years until we will be short of natural gas and we will be using it from other countries. Won't it be interesting? With a State of ours loaded with natural gas, America, which is using natural gas like it went out of style, will be importing LNG from all over the world. We will say: Here we are again. Instead of getting independent, we are getting dependent.

But we did try our best. This bill says bring it down through a certain area and bring it to Chicago. We said we will help the companies that will build it. We did what we could by way of credits and accelerated depreciation, but as of today we have no assurance that it will be done. We have hope, and at least we have done what we could, and it may happen. If you throw this bill out, that is not going to happen either. I don't know how long before you get anything going in Alaska, with the kind of fear and trepidation that happens every time you mention capturing some of their resources.

There are many other provisions in this bill. There are all kinds of great research programs. They are misunderstood because they are not paid for; they are authorized. They are saying if, in the future, Congress wants to pay for some additional research in--let's just pick one--nanotechnology, this gives them authority but doesn't pay for it. That is one. If you add it up, you will say this bill costs all these things, but it doesn't cost those things, because those are part of-- like when you fund an education bill, you fund it for a lot more than you need and later on you pay for what you can afford.

I could go through some more, but my good friend Senator Nickles wants to speak. He will be to the point. He will cite some problems with the bill, I am sure, and will also tell us some of the things that are reasonably good about it.

I am glad people have not come down here and made a lot of noise about the whistleblower protection because we did continue protection of whistleblowers, contrary to what some of their main groups are saying. They just wanted more, not continued protection. But we have continued them.

There are at least 10 other major issues we have done that I truly don't believe will get done in the near future. They are more or less moribund--that means dead--if we finish this bill by not voting for cloture and voting for the bill.

I thank the Senator for listening. To the extent there are programs in here that others have worked hard to get in here and are very proud of and I haven't mentioned, please understand I did not mention everything. I mentioned what I could. What I didn't, I am glad, in our spare time, to get on the phone and suggest to others the rest of the things that are here.

I close by saying there are a lot of ways we could have done this bill. We have been chastised, we have been ridiculed, we have been put upon because of the way we put the bill together. All I want to say to my fellow Senators is we got a bill. We tried this before. We have gone through a year, year and a half and got nothing. I started this with the idea we would get a bill and it would be reasonably close to what we would have gotten had we spent much more time collaboratively with many more scriveners, many more writers, than we had. I think that is the case. Most people who were interested saw the product long before it came to the floor.

You notice I did not mention electricity reform, other than indirectly. But I will say for those who want FERC to run the entire grid, they will have that if this bill fails. For States

that think we ought to have FERC doing it, they can be gleeful.

We thought we ought to phase it in and we thought we ought to let some States provide differently for themselves, but we made sure they couldn't close out investors who wanted to come into their States and put in utilities. We didn't make it simple, but we let it happen and we let them get their money back, too.

Those are tough issues. You don't get the bill, and you might get what some people like, or you might get that chairman over there who thinks he knows how to run it all by himself. You might get that. I didn't think that is the right way to go. But I didn't have the luxury of writing four versions. We had to write one version the best we could for everybody. We did that.

I yield the floor. I thank the Senate.

Thank you, Mr. President. I will not take too long.

I wish to speak a moment to the Senator from Kentucky.

First, I say to the Senator, I chair the Energy Committee, and I am very pleased that Kentucky has contributed you to the committee. You bring to us an enthusiastic approach to America's self-sufficiency, not the gloom and doom of: We can't make it, we can't do it. You are always there saying: We ought to do it. Why don't we do it?

I am very pleased we were able to put in this new law a series of provisions that permit the Senator to come to the floor and speak with optimism about coal of the future, coal and America's future. Of course it is parochial but it is national.

The Senator's State is a coal producer but it is a part of America. Kentucky is a State in the Union. Your State does not want to go down in coal. As I understand it, you want coal to go up. You do not want ``King Coal'' dead. You want ``King Coal'' alive.

The first thing I want to do is say to the Senator, it is very interesting to see how you interpret this and how others interpret it-- that all these coal provisions are a giveaway to big business. I did not hear the Senator mention big business once, not because they are not going to be involved, but I think it is because the Senator understands you are not going to produce new, clean coal generators with nonprofit organizations.

I guess the Senator assumes, as I do, that some coal company is going to apply to the Department of Energy to do this. Is that not right, I ask the Senator?

So one can stand up and say: There must have been great lobbying from the coal companies.

Well, the coal companies did not have to lobby. All we had to do was have a brain and to know there is coal and say: Well, what are we going to do so somebody will invest money in coal, servicing our country in a bigger and better way?

If it turns out some choose to come to the floor and label that indecent lobbying by a big company, I am sorry, we could have done this if no coal company ever visited us, I assure you.

I say to the Senator, we have Senators like you who told us about it.

Absolutely. The truth is, whatever you lobbied for as a Senator, that is your privilege. Nobody could say you should not work for coal in this bill, that you ought to just abandon it, that you should not do that because that is representing an interest. Of course. Well, if there are no interests, there is nothing going on. Right? We just as well might go to sleep and forget about it.

Another thing that is interesting, we have had at least three Senators come to the floor, including my cohort from New Mexico, saying they are against electricity provisions because they wanted FERC to have more power.

Now, I did not have the luxury of making speeches about FERC. I had to write something. And here we have one Senator saying FERC should have run the whole electric system in the country. Right?

Then we have this Senator. He is over here saying: You almost went too far, where we skinnied back on FERC's power. We said it can phase in over time. Right?

You were not sure of that. If you had been writing it, and did not have anybody else pressuring you, you would have written it more in favor of your State. But, you see, I did not have the luxury of writing one for each State, one that affects you up the road.

Then there is another State--such as Pennsylvania--saying: We don't do business like they do. We want a whole different electricity provision. I heard that. I could not write one for them, too. Right?

The last time they used to write two was before the Civil War. They wrote one for the South and one for the North. But I told them: Why don't you cut it in four pieces and we will write four of them? Right? But there aren't four countries; there are just the States. So we did the best we could. I think it is a good provision.

Now, what else about it? I share with you, right now, on the electric provision that here is the study. So everybody can see it--it is the first time it has been on the floor of the Senate. It is entitled ``Interim Report: The Causes of the August 14th Blackout in the United States and Canada.'' I do not think I will ask that it be printed in the Record. I will refer to it. We have gone through it and we have looked at what they said.

Let me say to my friend, it says that the principal reason we had a blackout was that all of the States, with their various utility systems, had what are called reliability standards.

Now, I am not a technician, but reliability means something pretty common and ordinary. I can talk reliability at home in an evening with my wife. We talk a lot about this, and she should know what that is. Reliability standards means that you appropriately and prudently load your electric wires so they are not so overloaded that something happens, or that they are clean and they do not have things imposing upon their reliability.

This said it was nothing dramatic. It was not that we have an old, wornout system. Somebody said we had a Third World system. No, no, we do not. We have a first world system, not a third

world system. When we have a blackout, it is big news. That is because we have a first-rate system. You know the third-rate systems nobody cares about because they are not working anyway.

So the truth is, this little report says the biggest reason it went out was reliability.

Well, guess what. For all the things we did so wrong in this bill, one of the principal things we provided was mandatory reliability standards. No more cheating, fudging, hiding a little, and overloading the lines during heavy use, and saying: Well, nobody will do anything-- except when it blows out. Then we all find out.

So I say to everybody, we did the report. You wondered what happened. You got the study. You got a bill. The bill says, if you pass this bill, it is fixed. Right?

Contrary-wise, do what some have suggested, throw the bill out, and you are right back where we were. You are right back where we were. You can sit around and wait for a blackout, just playing with your hands, worrying, sweating, saying: When will it occur?

At least this bill says we know why it occurred, and we are not going to let it occur again. The Feds are going to fine anybody who is lazy and loafs around and doesn't clean up the lines. In fact, the report is pretty good that they are going to be on them to get the trees off the lines. That would be good news; we don't have to go out there line by line. But that is part of the reliability.

The point I make is, for every issue people have raised on the floor that this bill doesn't do or fails to do, on the other hand it does and it doesn't fail to. Every time people say ``we don't like it because,'' there is something in it to say, ``but we do like it because.'' I regret that it can't be every single Senator taking the floor and saying: Everything in it is precisely what I want.

I am glad we have people such as the Senator from Kentucky who knows that can't happen.

Under the order, the distinguished Senator from Texas is next; is that correct?

She has been waiting. I assume she asks she be next. Will the Senator let me use 5 minutes before she proceeds?

Mr. President, I want to take 5 minutes on the issue my good friend from Illinois raised here today. Has anybody thought how in the world there would be MTBE being used in all these different parts of the United States even today, even today? Has anybody wondered why it is still being used? Because it is still valid according to the laws of our land, and it is approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. This MTBE product was produced because the U.S. Government sought an additive to be applied to gasoline so it would be cleaner than gasoline without it.

I want to assure everybody in this country. The Senator makes it sound as if the product is an illegal product. If he doesn't, then I would sure say, if per se this product is this dangerous, it ought to be banned. But isn't it interesting?

He could say it should be, but the truth is, it is not. It has not been, and there has only been a little ripple of talking around here about perhaps shutting it down.

Why has there been none? Why is the Environmental Protection Agency, not just this one, the one in the Clinton and the one before that--why did they not do something about it? The reason is there is nothing wrong with the product. The product is being used. If it is used right, it is a good product. We are going to do better when we do ethanol.

But the good Senator from Illinois--I don't know how many times he will come back to the floor, how many times the Senator from Illinois will return to the floor to speak about MTBE. But his State is the second largest producer of corn in America, and the reason he is down here talking about MTBE is because he is scared of his farmers because he is not going to vote for the thing they want more than anything else--ethanol. That is what they want. He has been working on it. I have been working on it. Everybody has been working on it. And this Senator has decided, the Senator who just spoke, from Illinois, decided he would rather defend the trial lawyers who want to go after the companies that produce MTBE.

I also assure you that the language in this bill does not say that anybody is immune from liability. It merely says you can't sue the producer of the product just because they produced the product.

What is happening is it is being used improperly. When it is used improperly, it is producing all these ill effects across the country.

Does that mean we sue the people who produced it? I repeat, it is a legal product that has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. The United States of America approved it and now it is being used but people don't use it right. Underground tanks leak and it leaks into the water system. Does that mean the company 2,000 miles away that manufactured the product should be responsible to clean up those water systems? Of course not.

But I guarantee they are chomping at the bit to do it--do what? Not to sue the people whose tanks leaked because they are not fat enough. They are chomping to sue the big oil company that manufactured it for the last 20 years.

Now I want to read the statute. The statute says: No product shall be deemed defective--

if it does not violate a control or prohibition imposed by

the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

(hereinafter referred to as the ``Administrator'') under

section 211 of such Act, and the manufacturer is in

compliance with all requests for information under subsection

(b) of such section 211 of such Act. . . . If the safe harbor

provided by this section does not apply, the existence of a

claim of defective product shall be determined under

otherwise applicable law. Nothing in this subsection shall be

construed to affect the liability of any person for

environmental remediation costs--

Clean up the water, sewer systems and water systems.

It says:

Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to affect the

liability of any person for environmental remediation costs,

drinking water contamination, negligence for spills or other

reasonably foreseeable events, public or private nuisance,

trespass, breach of warranty, breach of contract, or any

other liability other than liability based upon a claim of

defective product.

Frankly, there is no defective product. You can go on saying where it is all over America and that is because it is legal to use it. But it is not legal to abuse it. When people abuse it, should we really, as a nation, say the people who manufactured it are liable for all the consequences? I think not. That is all we did in this legislation.

If the distinguished Senator is so worried about this, I suggest he ought to vote for this bill and take care of the ethanol producers in his State and other States. He may be the deciding vote that decides we are not going to have ethanol. I wouldn't like to be in that position, I tell you, not on a weak proposition that the reason I did it was to protect the big lawyers who want to file these lawsuits. I say to all of them: File your lawsuits. When this thing is over with, file your lawsuits. It is just that you will not be able to sue the company that made the product which is legal and allowed. You can sue anybody else who caused the damage.

It is like somebody who drinks some soup in a restaurant and somebody in the restaurant, instead of putting soup in the bowl, they put some poison in it. You drank it and got sick.

Do you sue Campbell's Soup Company for producing the soup or do you go look for the people who put the poison in it?

The truth is, maybe we would all like to see MTBE go away. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not we should deny the passage of an Energy bill and ethanol for the farmers of this country, a great, giant substitute for the crude oil that we are going to use; whether we are going to do that or not.

If we are not, we surely ought not do it based upon the excuse that a valid product licensed by the United States improperly used is causing damage to people and we don't want to let them sue the people who produced the product but let them sue anybody else--the leaking tank owner, the distributor who distributed it wrongly, or anybody else who caused this--just because you made a legal product and somebody got hurt later on down the line, go back and sue the company that made it legally, validly, under what one might say is almost a license from the Federal Government.

I thank the Senator from Texas for yielding. I yield the floor.

Fifteen to twenty minutes.

There is no particular time set.

Mr. President, there is so much to say about this Energy bill, I hope I am able to be coherent on why I think it ought to be defeated.

It is a bill, first of all, that is a tax giveaway to the biggest corporations in this country. Actually, the multinational corporations--$30 billion is the size of the giveaway; $30 billion of debt. When this administration came into power, we had a surplus. Now we are reaching a $500 billion deficit. This is adding $30 billion to it.

The attitude around here is, just let our kids and grandkids pick up that deficit. It is absolutely the wrong policy for right now.

This bill is an unfunded mandate because it gives a free ride to the makers of a poisonous chemical called MTBE that never was mandated by any government and was the oxygenate of

choice of the oil companies. They knew it was poisonous and they kept on putting it into the gasoline. It has contaminated water systems all over this country. By walking away from this problem and giving a pass to the people who polluted our areas, in my opinion--and this is just my own words--I think it is immoral. That is why we have the cities of this country against this bill, the counties of this country against this bill, the water agencies of this country against this bill.

The more we let this bill hang out there, the more it smells. MTBE smells. This bill has a similar smell, a sour smell, a bad smell, a poison smell.

The chairman of the committee wrote this bill with one other person in a locked room. It is extraordinary. I thought when I went to school that I learned a bill becomes a law this way: They pass a bill in the House, they pass a bill in the Senate. If they are different, there is a conference committee. The conference committee is made up of people from both sides of the aisle, both bodies. They cannot add new and extraneous things into the bill that were not at least in one of the bodies--the Senate or the House. Then it goes back to each respective House of Congress. If it is passed, it goes on to the President's desk. We have a bill, therefore, that would be a compromise, that would be genuine, which would reflect the broad views of the conferees and, therefore, by extension, all sides of the debate reflected among the American people.

What did we have in this case? Two people of the same party from big oil States sitting in a room having a party. And what we are going to have if this bill passes is one huge party, with the biggest corporations in this country, the oil companies, nuclear--believe me, they will not be drinking water tainted with MTBE. They will be drinking the bubbly stuff, and it might even be imported. But it will be expensive. This bill is expensive. Thirty billion dollars is added on to our debt from the very people who say we have to be fiscally responsible.

Then the chairman of the committee says, in a most angry fashion, and it is his right--I am angry, a little bit different type of anger--says in his angry way: If you do not take this, you will never have another Energy bill because I am not going to do it.

This is a government of laws, not men. We can have a good Energy bill if we defeat this bill. We can have one that looks toward the future. We can have an Energy bill that is a 21st century Energy bill, not an Energy bill that is a 20th century Energy bill.

So the sky will not fall for my friends who want ethanol. And I understand they want that. By the way, there are some good provisions in there for my State regarding making ethanol out of rice straw. I worked for those provisions.

I am going to go through this bill: What is good in the bill, what is bad in it, and what is left out. I worked hard to examine this bill. But when all is said and done, it is an Energy bill that is a giveaway to the special interests of this country. It is an Energy bill which turns its back on people on the west coast who suffered from companies that ripped us off and owe us $9 billion just in California alone. It is an Energy bill that really just gives a wink and a nod to some of the possible ways that we can work ourselves out of dependence on foreign oil.

Now, again, the chairman of the committee is very ecstatic about this bill, and it is his right. Why wouldn't he be? He wrote it. He likes big oil. He is defending the makers of MTBE. He loves nuclear energy. The last I checked, we still do not have a safe way to dispose of the waste from nuclear powerplants. The last time I checked, in some places in Europe they are beginning to close down nuclear powerplants. Oh, but we are going to build a new one--we, the taxpayers, $1 billion, as I understand it--in Idaho.

Now we have reports--we were going to send all of our nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain--and now we hear, in Nevada, a new scientific report saying, watch out, that material can leak.

So this is not the time to be subsidizing the building of nuclear powerplants. My God, you would think this is the 1940s after World War II, ``Atoms for Peace.'' It does not work.

By the way, I hope taxpayers understand that what is also in this bill is a 20-year extension of the Price-Anderson Act. What is that, you ask? That takes the nuclear companies off the hook if there is a nuclear accident. They pay for some of the damage but the mammoth amount of damage, which could go escalating to God knows where, you taxpayers are picking up the tab. So first you are building them the nuclear powerplant. Then, if there is an accident, you have to pick up the tab.

This is some Energy bill. This is the worst bill. I cannot think of the names--let's hear what some of the editorials are saying from around the country for this great Energy bill.

USA Today: ``Congress forgets promises made in blackout's wake.'' The Brattleboro Reformer: ``It's time to shift gears.'' The Billings Gazette: ``Energy bill lacks critical balance.'' The Boston Globe: ``A polluted energy bill.'' The Brunswick Times Record: ``This energy bill is appalling.'' That was their word.

The Buffalo News: ``Oil and grease. Energy bill fails country as it dispenses favors to the industry.'' The Cape Cod Times: ``Misused energy.'' Des Moines Register--now imagine, this is in a place where they love the ethanol issue, and even with that, this is what they say: ``The MTBE outrage.'' And I will go into how the MTBE outrage impacts my State.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram: ``Coming up short.'' The Great Falls Tribune: ``Senate should stall Energy Policy Act of 2003.'' Absolutely they are right. Count me in. I am going to try to stall this bill. I am going to try to kill this bill. I am going to try to stop this bill in every single way I can because it is bad for the people I represent and it is not the kind of bill we want for this country at this time.

Jackson Clarion-Ledger: ``A `P' Perfect Bill: Pork, Politics, Pollution.'' That is a good one. Lakeland Ledger: ``Senate, derail the energy bill.'' The Los Vegas Sun: ``Mixed bag on national energy plan.'' The Lewiston Sun: ``Proposed law is lousy legislation.'' Their words.

Memphis Commercial Appeal: ``Pork barrel bill, not worth the energy.'' Missoula Missoulian: ``Energy bill uses tax dollars for fuel. Legislation larded with massive subsidies is a parity of effective energy legislation.'' That is from the Deep South.

The Nashua Telegram: ``Rushing energy bill is a bad way to set policy.'' New Jersey Star Ledger: ``Defeat GOP energy bill.'' Orange County Register--and this is in a part of my State that is predominantly Republican--do you know what they write? ``Energy bill is a waste.''

Palm Beach Post: ``A powerless public.'' The Phoenix Arizona Republic: ``Energy overload. Overstuffed bill has it all, except coherent national policy.''

I just have to say, the more this bill is subjected to the light of day, out of that closed-door conference committee, with two people from the same party, from big oil States--the longer that bill sees the light of day, the more people will see it.

Now, yes, there are a few good things in this bill. I am going to tell you what they are. I am going to show you what they are. Then I am going to show you what was left out of it. And then I am going to talk about the bad things in the bill.

A good thing: Drilling in the Arctic Refuge in Alaska is not in this bill. As the person who wrote the amendment that stopped it before, I say thank you to all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who stood tall and said: We will never allow this to be put in an Energy bill. Thank you. That is a good thing.

No offshore inventory of oil--I thank the House on that one. My friend Lois Capps over there was fighting hard. You cannot go into a pristine coastline that is supposed to have a moratorium on it and then drill to see how much oil there is in it. Either it is pristine and it is left alone, and there is a moratorium to keep it left alone, or you might as well just go in and destroy it. The conferees said no to that because that would have been a poison pill, too. So thank you. It is not in there.

Something that is in there that I wrote has to do with incentives for making ethanol from agricultural waste. Now, this is something that is forward looking because we have rice straw and biowaste and sugar waste

from beets and we know we can use that waste to compete with corn ethanol. We think it is exciting. If we can develop those industries in our State, then we do not have to ship that corn ethanol all the way across from the Midwest. That kind of shipping is going to add to the price of gasoline for my people who need to have their cars to go to work.

Energy efficiency by the Federal Government--I am very pleased we have that in this bill. That is an important thing to undertake.

Hybrid car tax credit--ditto. It is good.

Increased funding for energy assistance in LIHEAP--for the poorest of the poor. That is good.

I understand there are some solar tax credits in there, which I think are very important, to put solar energy on some kind of equilibrium. These provisions are very small.

Now, this is what is missing from this bill which would have made it at least relevant to what has happened in our country.

There are no refunds for the people of my State. We have been told by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that we have been ripped off, robbed. They have stolen our money with phony schemes to create artificial shortages. You all remember some of those schemes. The fact is, FERC, which can order these refunds, has refused to do so. This administration refuses to order FERC to get those refunds back to our people. Our new Governor has his hands full with tremendous deficits. That is our money, and we want it back. No, they would not go there.

No. 2, there are no long-term contract renegotiations for my State or other States on the west coast. What does that mean? These thieving companies, as they were robbing us blind, and had us over a barrel, negotiated long-term contracts for the future. They said: Oh, we are giving you a good deal. We are going to charge you a lot less than the spot price. Well, we were negotiating with them under duress. It was a phony price. A phony price was out there, and our Governor was trying to get the best deal.

Yes, he got a lot lower than the current price, but it was way over what the market is today. So we are asking for new long-term contracts. We want to do away with those. No, they didn't do that.

No end to electricity market manipulation schemes: Ron Wyden was very good on that point. We had schemes that had every name in the book. They made up names that you can't even believe. The one I hated the most was Get Shorty. Because I am a little person, I hated the name. But they were shorting us of electricity. They were doing all these things, and they were giving them all these names. By the way, why isn't someone in jail on all of that Enron stuff? No, we didn't go there.

No CAFE standards: Unbelievable. It has been pointed out that even China, that has a bad environmental record--I went there; they are building dams that are destroying mountains and homes and valleys,

I just got sick to see it--has set CAFE standards because they know pollution is bad for their people.

When cars pollute, kids get asthma, workers get sick. And if you can't work, that hurts productivity. It is just common sense. Forget the fact that it is the right thing to do to have CAFE standards and spare the air. No, they couldn't do this.

There is a huge SUV loophole. It was about $25,000, and in the last tax bill it went up to $100,000. The Senate tried to bring it back to $25,000 but the House rejected that effort.

No increased use of renewable sources for electricity: They walked away from the formula that Senator Bingaman had gotten into the Senate bill.

By the way, any resemblance between this Energy bill that is before us and the Energy bill the Senate wrote is purely coincidental. This is a completely different bill, written by two people from big oil States, who love nuclear energy and have walked away from fighting for the consumer. It is a sad thing. This is what is missing from the bill.

Now let me tell you what is bad about the bill. Unfortunately, it is a long list. We talked about giveaways to the oil industry. I want to give you a few examples of that: $10.5 billion in tax breaks would be provided to the oil and gas industries. The bill provides millions of dollars' worth of subsidies to the oil industry by reducing the amount of royalties--that is kind of like rent--that they have to pay to drill off our coasts and on our Federal lands. So they use our Federal land that all the American people own. They are supposed to pay royalties when they find oil there.

This bill provides royalty relief for marginal oil and gas wells or wells that are relatively less productive. They give this royalty relief to oil and gas development off the coast of Alaska as well as deep wells and deep water operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Wake up, America. If you want to count, listen to these things. One of the things that I find happens, I went on TV and I did an interview on one of the issues we are going to be talking about, MTBE. The person interviewing me said: I know this is very complex but let's discuss it.

It isn't complex. It is pretty simple. This bill is a giveaway to the biggest companies. It walks away from the consumers. It lets the polluters go free. It is a 20th century Energy bill.

People say it is confusing; it is complicated. It is not so complicated. That is the way to say to people: You better tune out the argument; it is too complicated.

America, tune in. It is your future. It is your kids who are going to have to pay this $30 billion. It is your kids who are going to have to breathe the dirty air. It is your kids and your cities that are going to have to pick up the tab to clean up MTBE. So listen.

The bill would also reimburse energy companies for their costs to reclaim abandoned wells on Federal lands under a new program forcing taxpayers to pay these costs rather than industry. It would provide a broad liability waiver to oil and gas operators reclaiming sites on Federal lands. So they go on the Federal lands. They mess them up. They pollute them. They walk away.

These are our lands. The bill will take $150 million from royalties and fund research on ultradeep wells, unconventional natural gas petroleum, and the Federal Government may well give $50 million extra to this fund. This research would be done to benefit the industry.

You know what, let them pay for their own R&D. They get a great tax break. I am all for it. I give big tax breaks for R&D. We don't have to give them cash on the barrel.

Giveaways to the nuclear industry: I mentioned before the Price Anderson Act. If there is a nuclear catastrophe, don't worry about it, we will pick up the tab. Your children will pick up the tab, my children, my grandchildren. Not the nuclear industry, a 20-year extension.

If it is so safe, why can't they get insurance in the private sector for the possible damage it would do? I believe in checks and balances. The insurance companies are checks and balances. If a nuclear person comes in to an insurance company and sits down and says: Well, I might have an accident.

What would it cost?

Oh, $100 billion.

Well, I won't cover you for more than $10 billion. It would just break our back.

Oh, OK.

Maybe that is a signal, Uncle Sam, that this isn't safe yet. No, we are going to back up the nuclear industry for another 20 years. It raises the cap, which is a good thing, but it is still a cap nonetheless. They don't have to pay full insurance premiums. Why should they? This bill is for them. It is not for us.

If there were an accident, nuclear companies don't have to pay the costs of the damages because the taxpayers are on the hook. That is a great idea.

A $6 billion production tax break is in here for utility companies that operate new nuclear reactors. So while they are closing down nuclear reactors in Europe and while we are reading reports that Yucca Mountain is not safe, we are going to give tax incentives for new nuclear reactors.

It goes on on the nuclear side, but I will move on to one more point here: public health and the environment.

The placing of these nuclear plants is just not going to live up to the highest level of protection. There is concern to me in terms of dumping the waste and

the injuries that could occur due to the fact that we don't know what to do with the waste. These people want to give tax breaks for dirty industry--$29 billion in tax incentives for the energy industry, and more than 70 percent of the tax breaks go to polluting and mature industries, including coal, oil, gas, and nuclear.

Yes, we gave some tax benefits to some of the new and clean energy but very small in comparison. It is $1.8 billion for the clean technologies versus $28 billion; it is about 28 to 1. That is a 20th century Energy bill. Now, we repealed consumer protections in the electricity market. That is another thing that is bad. The most eloquent Senator I have heard on this of all time is Senator Maria Cantwell. I am sure if she hasn't spoken already, she will explain to you what this means. I have to say that the Senator from New Mexico, who wrote this bill, with the Congressman from Louisiana, a big oil, big nuclear power State--he said: This is your last chance. You will never get to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act if you don't do it today.

I have one word for that: Wrong. We are going to be here every day. If he doesn't like PUHCA, you can try to do it another day, just like he can try to get his nuclear money another day, just like he can do tax giveaways another day, just like he can give a liability waiver to his big oil friends another day. You don't have to pass this bill today. That is the biggest bunch of baloney I have ever heard. We are supposed to be working here all year. We don't have to pass this today or tomorrow or the next day. I hope we will not because this Public Utility Holding Company Act is the main law to protect consumers from market manipulation and fraud and abuse in the electricity sector.

It is unbelievable that we have uncovered evidence about what Enron did, and we are repealing the one law that could help us in the future. It is, to me, outrageous. Again, I will leave that for Senator Maria Cantwell to talk about.

We see drilling and development of our public lands. In my State, I have to tell you that this bill has a special interest provision to site a high voltage electricity transmission line through the Cleveland National Forest. The State of California, through the PUC, said, no, it is not needed and not wanted. I wonder why, in the midst of the terrible fire that we just had, we are now going to put a high voltage line through a national forest. Can someone tell me why? Can someone tell me why we would permit the siting of a high voltage electricity transmission line through a national forest?

I will tell you why. It is a special interest provision, and the State didn't want it and the local people didn't want it. The State said no, but somebody put that into the bill. The more you read the bill, the more you learn. The bill would also put the Department of Energy in charge of permitting rights of way across public lands for utility corridors.

The bill would require the Department of the Interior to process applications for permits to drill for oil and gas on Federal lands within 30 days, even though people said we need more time to look at the facts.

So the USGS would be required to identify restrictions and impediments to oil and gas development. They are allowed to look at fish and wildlife, cultural and historic values, and other public resources. In other words, they can call these things ``restrictions'' and ``impediments'' when, in fact, the law has always said they should be respected. Now they are impediments.

Diminished protection for our coasts: The first provision would grant the Secretary of the Interior broad new authority to permit energy development and support facilities anywhere on the Outer Continental Shelf. Authorized facilities would include those that support exploration, development, production, transportation, or storage of oil and gas. There are no standards for issuing or revoking easements, and the provision does not require consultation with the Secretary of Commerce.

There is no requirement that the Secretary of the Interior even consult with the States before making this decision on the Outer Continental Shelf.

I will explain the Outer Continental Shelf. The first 3 miles off of the coast are State waters. Where does the Outer Continental Shelf start? It starts after that. So you can, as a State, put all the restrictions on damaging projects that would occur because you believe your coastline is God-given. You believe your coastline is also an economic resource. You believe that your coastline and your ocean is important to protect the fish because, in fact, it is a big industry in my State. You do all these protective things.

Now they are going to say it is 4 miles out, or 3 miles plus an inch, and they are going to start looking on that Outer Continental Shelf and destroying it. This is what is in there.

They weaken the coastal zone, which is important to weigh in on what should be done.

Section 325 of the Energy bill erodes States' rights to review and respond to Federal decisions affecting coastal waters. Section 330 would also reduce States' rights to review and comment on pipelines and other energy-related projects off their coast by limiting appeals.

It is taking me a long time to tell you what is bad in this bill. There are more things, but I want to give you a sense of some of them.

Clean air rollbacks: Actually, they have amended the Clean Air Act. They have amended the Clean Air Act in this Energy bill. ``Great news'' for the American people. I am sure they are dancing in the streets that the Clean Air Act has been rolled back in this bill that was written by two people of the same party from big oil States, behind closed doors, who are threatening that we will never see the light of day on any Energy bill if we don't pass their ``masterpiece.'' The last I heard, every Senator is equal to every other Senator.

There is a provision tucked into this conference report designed to delay cleaning ozone pollution in some of the most polluted areas of our country. Under the Clean Air Act, the schedule is established for areas to clean up their air. How much they have to do, and in what timeframe, depends on how dirty or clean their air is. If these deadlines are missed, an area is bumped up into the worst air quality category. When this happens, a greater amount of air pollution must be reduced and additional requirements are imposed, but on a longer timeframe.

This provision will allow areas to avoid the additional requirement if some of the air pollution comes from upwind areas. Why this provision and why now? Because the Republicans are trying to overturn several court decisions holding that this type of an extension is illegal under the Clean Air Act. Their argument says it is unfair for a community to be forced to clean up air pollution coming from somewhere else.

Unfortunately, it appears that every community with poor air quality can meet this test because ozone pollution travels in the air. Somebody is going to be able to say we don't have to clean up our air because it is coming from somewhere else. Who gets hurt? The people who breathe the air.

Why would we delay cleaning up the air as it gets worse and worse? Do you think a child who is in a hospital because of asthma--do you think the mom will say: Why does my kid have asthma?

And the doctor will say: Because the air is filthy dirty.

And she will say: Oh, my God. That is awful. I am going to write my Senator.

Then the Senator writes and says: Your kid has asthma from dirty air, but it wasn't coming from your community. It came from another community, so please forgive us.

Wrong. This is what is done in this bill. Remember, this was written by two people of the same party from big oil States.

(Mr. SUNUNU assumed the Chair.)

Mr. President, the net result of this could be that no one will ever have to clean up the air until someone else cleans it up. It is unacceptable. Ozone pollution must be cleaned up. There are 130 million Americans living in communities that violate ozone smog clean air safeguards. Inhalation of smog is linked to respiratory illness, such as asthma, especially for children.

There you have that mother, as a matter of fact, in the hospital with her child because hospital admissions for children due to asthma alone increased 30 percent between 1980 and 1999. Overall admissions for respiratory problems

increased 20 percent in the same time period. We had a 30-percent increase in asthma admissions in hospitals, but only a 20-percent increase for other things.

Let me say to all my colleagues who might be listening, and even to those who might read my remarks, go to any school in your State--it could be a public school, it could be a private school, it matters not--ask the children to raise their hands if they have asthma. Ask them to keep their hands up or new hands for someone who knows someone who has asthma or someone in their family, and you will see almost 40 percent of the children in that classroom respond.

In California alone, there will be 42,000 additional asthma attacks, 499 additional hospital admissions, and 68,000 lost schools days. What are we doing in an Energy bill to help those children? Are we going to clean energy? Of course not. Are we even moving to increase the fuel economy of our cars by 2 miles per gallon or 3 or 4 or 5? Are we? No, of course not. This is a bill for big oil. We do a little bit for hybrid vehicles. I am glad. We do a little bit for solar. But $28 billion to $1 billion in favor of big oil, big nuclear--big, big, big, big, dirty.

Clean water rollbacks: This might surprise you. This is an Energy bill. We have clean water rollbacks in this bill. The oil and gas industry is exempted from storm water runoff cleanup. This conference report contains language exempting oil and gas construction activities, including roads, drill pads, pipelines, and refineries from obtaining a permit and controlling their pollution runoff as required under the Clean Water Act.

Explain to me why this is necessary. Are these some poor startup companies that need our help and, oh, for a while we will let them be free of these requirements? No, these are multinational big companies that have fought so hard that we no longer have a real, important Superfund Program anymore because they don't even want to be taxed a tiny bit to clean up the mess they made. This bill gives them more rollbacks. They don't have to worry about clean air and clean water.

What is going on here? Then the chairman of the committee says: Oh, there will never be another bill; kill this bill and you will never see another Energy bill. Forget about ethanol. Forget about tax breaks for the things you believe in that might work because you will never get them. You are going to have to swallow all this bad stuff to get a bill.

I want to talk about some more of the bad items, and I will close on the MTBE issue.

Here is a picture of our country. All the States in black--and, Mr. President, I know this is an issue that is near and dear to you--all the States in black are the States that have either ground water contamination from MTBE or drinking water contamination. The ones with the little orange stickers have drinking water contamination.

Sad to say, my State has an orange sticker. When this came to me, I was stunned to hear that my town of Santa Monica in southern California had lost one-half of its drinking water. When the town tried to figure out what to do about it, they found out it would cost millions of dollars--$200 million to $400 million to clean up. This is a small city, relatively speaking in terms of California. We are a big State, but it is a relatively small city--$200 million.

They said: Oh, my God, what are we going to do? They did what every other city, every other county, every other water agency is going to have to do, be they in New Hampshire, be they in Minnesota, be they in Iowa, be they in Nebraska, be they in Nevada. They went to court. They filed a lawsuit, and they made a claim and said: Please, to the people who put this in our gasoline and it got into our water, please, help us clean it up. That is Santa Monica.

Many of you know of Lake Tahoe. It is a magnificent lake and a beautiful lake. It was getting polluted with MTBE. MTBE was leaking from the boats that were on the water into the lake. They went to court. They tried to sue under three grounds--nuisance, negligence, defective product liability. The judge in that case said on the nuisance claim: You haven't proved nuisance because you have to prove who did what to whom, when, and what day. Negligence, same thing. You have to find the people, you have to track the people. But defective product liability, that makes sense because in discovery they learned-- that is a legal term when they are getting ready for the court case-- they learned that the makers of MTBE knew this product was bad. As a matter of fact, they joked about it. I forget what exactly they said. One of them said: Major threat to better earnings, MTBE, because they knew some day the truth would come out. They joked about it. We found that out.

Here is the jury verdict on the Lake Tahoe case. They found the makers of MTBE knew beforehand that this was bad. This is the verdict: MTBE was defective in design because they failed to warn of its environmental risks. Gasoline containing MTBE refined by the other defendants at trial was defective in design because the environmental risks from MTBE outweighed the benefits and refiners failed to warn of its known risks. The refiners failed to warn, failure to warn. There is clear and convincing evidence that the companies acted with malice-- acted with malice--as they developed, promoted, and distributed their defective MTBE product.

I say in the strongest of terms, when you are told and I am told that these companies acted with malice, why on God's green Earth would we give them a get-out-of-jail-free card in this bill? They acted with malice. They knew it was poison, and now this bill is saying, this bill that was written by two people of the same party behind closed doors from big oil States: You are off the hook.

I also want to tell you that the cost of MTBE contamination--this is a 2-year old estimate--is $29 billion. That is what this cost 2 years ago. We are looking at probably 50, 75, to 100 because all those States I showed you before are just now beginning to understand how dangerous this contamination is.

This bill is an unfunded mandate on New Hampshire. This bill is an unfunded mandate on California. This bill is an unfunded mandate on 43 out of our 50 States that have MTBE contamination.

Now, you can dress it up, you can make it look pretty, you can put lipstick on it and rouge, but the bottom line is, it is ugly. It is an ugly thing to do to the people.

I will show my colleagues our little ``get out of jail free card.'' Here it is: MTBE producers not responsible for pollution, get out of jail free.

Is this why I came to the Senate? No. It certainly is not why the Senator from New Hampshire came, and it should not be why any of us came--to give a ``get out of jail free card'' to the very polluters who have harmed our people.

Senator Domenici talks about how many people are for this bill. I understand that. But the fact is that the League of Cities are against this bill, the National Association of Counties are against this bill, the Water Agency is against this bill, the Association of Metropolitan Water Districts, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the list goes on.

This bill should not be passed. This bill should never be passed. This bill is a giveaway to the biggest multinational corporations, to encourage them to do things they should not be doing. This bill rolls back environmental laws.

In summation, there were jokes on the floor about those of us who want to stop this bill because of MTBE, that we are taking some small step here, that this is not important. Well, this is important. When people cannot drink the water coming out of their tap and they have to go buy bottled water, this is important. This is important when people are fearful that their kids are going to get cancer from MTBE.

Remember, no matter what they say, the Government never mandated MTBE. The Government mandated an oxygenate. The oil companies picked MTBE and they kept using it after they knew it was dangerous. By the way, they even used it before an oxygenate was mandated.

If we can just put up that map one more time, I would like the Senator from Vermont to see this because he has not seen it as clearly as this. His State of Vermont has MTBE, as he knows, in the ground water; luckily, we do not think in the drinking water

yet, but who knows. The orange shows the States where it is actually in the drinking water. My friend from Vermont, who stands every day for justice, for the people of this country, understands why we have to stop this bill.

I thank the Chair for his hard work in representing his State so well on this really tough issue, and I hope we have a chance to stop this bill in its tracks, send it back and have it come back without some of these provisions that are so harmful to the very people we are supposed to help, the people of the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am happy to yield to the Senator from New Mexico, who has asked permission to speak for a few moments.

I say to the Senator, whatever time you would like, I would be happy to yield for that purpose.

Mr. President, obviously, I am in opposition to this Energy bill. The Senator from New Mexico is my friend. We go nose to nose and toe to toe and fight on a lot of issues. We are in real disagreement over this bill. But I respect him and like him very much. When we do come together on issues such as mental health parity, it is a wonderful feeling for us to be on the same side fighting together. Unfortunately, today that may not be the case, but tomorrow I hope it is. I have a great deal of respect for him and for all the hard work he and his staff and so many others put into this legislation.

What I like about Senator Domenici--I guess most of all--is his candor. He tends to play cards with the cards face up. You know what you are dealing with. He is very honest and plain-spoken. That is a refreshing virtue and quality in this world of politics. He was quoted on the floor the other day, talking about this Energy bill:

We know that as soon as you start reading the language, we

are duck soup.

That is what he said. I have to say to the Senator from New Mexico that I have read some of the language. It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, and it sounds like a duck. It is a duck. And we are in the soup if we enact it.

There are provisions in this bill that are very good for America and very good for my home State, provisions which I have long fought for throughout my congressional career: Expanding the use of ethanol, expanding the use of biodiesel. These are positive steps to help farmers, rural communities, to clean up air pollution in a sensible way, to provide energy resources which are not being used as much as they should. You might not expect to hear that from a Senator from Illinois because we have the largest ethanol production in the Nation. I have been honored to represent a congressional district that includes Decatur, IL, home of Archer Daniels Midland, the largest single ethanol producer in the Nation.

I came to this issue with some knowledge and with an inclination to try my best to expand ethanol. Throughout my public career, I have done it. I have been chairman of the congressional alcohol fuels caucus. I have introduced legislation, sponsored it. I have led efforts with letters and speeches, just about all you can do to promote ethanol. If it is enacted, the ethanol provision in the bill will be the most dramatic expansion in the Nation's history. I certainly support it.

To all of my friends in the farm community back home who are disappointed because I oppose this bill, trust that my commitment to ethanol is not going to change. I am just going to hope that the next venue, the next opportunity to discuss ethanol, will be in a much different bill, a much better bill.

Sadly, what is included in this bill, beyond the ethanol provisions and the biodiesel provisions and efforts to look for new ways to burn coal in an environmentally safe way, many of the provisions are very bad, very troublesome.

Tomorrow we will have a vote. That vote will decide whether this bill goes forward to final passage. It really is the key vote. It is going to be close, probably within one or two Senators' votes. They will decide what happens to this Energy bill. It is my hope that the Senators who are on the fence now or worried about the vote will consider several things.

First, we can do better. If this is supposed to be an Energy bill for America's future, we can do so much better. Take any family in your State, wherever you are from--Tennessee, Illinois, New Mexico, or Delaware--sit down with them and say: When it comes to the energy future of America, what is the first thing we ought to look at? My guess is that most of those individuals, with no particular scientific or technical knowledge, will say: How about all the gasoline we are burning in our cars and trucks? That is the most obvious use of energy in America.

It is the No. 1 use of imported petroleum products, conversion into gasoline to fuel our cars and trucks. So you would assume that in this lengthy bill, the first chapter of the bill would relate to how we can burn this gasoline more efficiently, how we can reduce our consumption of gasoline, how we can make our cars and trucks more fuel efficient so there is less pollution and less dependence on foreign oil.

Most Americans would assume that.

Well, there is bad news. You can search this new law that is being proposed, page after page after page for 1,400 pages, and find precious little, if any, reference to fuel efficiency and fuel economy of America's cars and trucks. Why? How can we in good faith say to the American people that we are concerned about our energy security and energy independence without addressing the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks?

There was a time, in 1975, when the average fuel efficiency was about 14 miles a gallon. Congress passed a law that almost doubled that fuel efficiency to 27.5 miles a gallon by 1985. That was 18 years ago. You ask yourself: How good are we today? Have we improved on that mark? Are we doing better than 27.5 miles a gallon on average? The answer, sadly, is no. We have gone in the opposite direction. We are closer now to 22 miles a gallon.

What has happened in 18 years? No leadership--not from Congress, not from the President--no leadership that leads us to more fuel efficiency. Instead, we have left it to the forces of the marketplace. There are many here who believe that is all we need to worry about; let the market work its will.

The market has worked its will and, as a result, we are selling cars that are less and less fuel efficient. We are importing more oil from overseas and burning it to fuel heavier, less fuel-efficient vehicles. In fact, this Congress, if it has shown any leadership, has gone in the opposite direction. We have created tax incentives for people to buy the most inefficient cars and SUVs in America, these monstrous Humvees that come rolling down the highway. We are going to give you a great big tax credit if you will buy those. Do you know why? Those big old monsters get between 9 and 15 miles a gallon. We will give you an incentive to buy those.

Yet when it comes to incentives to buy fuel-efficient cars, hybrid vehicles, we are going to have to phase that out. We do have a deficit.

Isn't that upside down? Shouldn't we be thinking about encouraging more

fuel-efficient vehicles if we truly want to lessen our dependence on Saudi Arabia and Middle Eastern oil? That is obvious to most people in the State I represent. It is obvious to most Americans. It certainly was not obvious to the sponsors of this Energy bill. They wrote this bill listening to Detroit. The automobile manufacturers in Detroit--I have worked with them on a number of issues--are just plain wrong on this. They have fought tooth and nail every proposal to bring more fuel-efficient vehicles to America.

Do you want to hear the irony of this situation? The irony was brought out by a disclosure--quoting here from the Baltimore Sun of November 19, 2003. Listen to what they wrote:

Chinese leaders are worried about their nation's growing

dependence on imported oil. What's more, pollution from such

fossil fuels threatens to become a parallel concern as

China's booming economy matures.

So they've hit upon an obvious energy strategy that somehow

has eluded U.S. lawmakers: conservation.

In what should be an embarrassing juxtaposition for leaders

here, China is moving to impose tighter fuel-efficiency rules

on cars and SUVs than the U.S. requires, while Congress is

adopting an opposite approach--boosting domestic

production of fossil fuels to meet all-but-unchecked

demand.

. . . adds insult to injury by subsidizing the purchase of

monster gas-guzzlers, such as the Humvee.

They conclude:

The Senate still has a chance to stop this monstrosity [the

Energy bill]. It should take a cue from China and prepare for

the future, instead of squandering precious resources trying

to maintain an unsustainable past.

Chinese thinking on energy is very clear, I might say. It is the thinking of American politicians that is inscrutable. How in the world can we be talking about energy independence and ignore fuel efficiency for the cars and trucks we drive? That, sadly, is the reality of this legislation. That is why it cannot be taken seriously. You cannot believe this is the best the Congress in America can produce to deal with energy, without addressing that issue.

There is another issue here which I think goes to questions of justice and fairness, maybe even morality. I hate to raise that question, but we hear a lot about morality and virtue and values on the floor of the Senate. Occasionally, we should apply those same words to the legislation we consider. That relates to section 1502 of this legislation.

Section 1502 of this legislation has created a ``get out of jail free card'' for the producers of MTBE. What is MTBE? It is a substance that has been added to gasoline for years in America to reduce the tailpipe emissions and to make your engine run more smoothly. It is what is called an oxygenate. You probably didn't even know it was there. But it is blended with gasoline for those purposes, as an oxygenate. It is a product of waste products of the oil-processing procedure. So it is a pretty cheap commodity. It has been blended, for years, with gasoline in the United States. Other oxygenates include ethanol, which I referred to earlier, and, like alcohol, it is benign and doesn't really threaten the environment.

But MTBE--this additive--turns out to be extraordinarily dangerous. It is a poison, a toxic substance which, if it leeches into a water supply, can make it undrinkable, at best, and dangerous, at worst, leading those who consume it to a greater likelihood of serious illness and disease, even the potential of cancer.

So what has happened across the United States is that the oil companies that use MTBE as an additive learned that when the underground storage tank at your gas station started to leak--little drips day after day--ultimately, that MTBE-blended gasoline would reach the water table under the ground, and the water supply of the community where the gas station was located. As it reached the water supply, it didn't biodegrade but continued to be toxic and lethal. As a result, the consumers, the families, the children, and the schools that consume this water were at a public health risk.

Well, this contamination has now spread across the United States. It is in Illinois and in many other States. Let me show you how bad this is.

Here is a map showing States with MTBE contamination in ground drinking water. The Presiding Officer's State of Tennessee does not have contamination in drinking water but does have contamination sites. Tennessee has 1,394 MTBE contamination sites. Illinois, where I live, has 9,546 MTBE contamination sites. Look at this map of America. You can see that where MTBE has reached the ground water, and now the drinking water, we have the public health hazard that has swept across America. Only six States in the continental United States have not been touched by this. Hawaii has not but Alaska has. Alaska's drinking water has been contaminated as well.

Why is this important? Because, for the first time in my memory, and I have asked my legal staff to keep looking--I may be wrong--we have decided to put into legislation protection from liability for product liability cases that are filed against MTBE producers. If you are an oil company that had MTBE blended with your gasoline and it ended up contaminating drinking water, causing a public health hazard, this bill, in section 1502, says, for you, you are in luck, you get a ``get out of jail free card.''

How can we do this? How can we, in all fairness, say the corporations and businesses that made a conscious decision to use this additive, and because of the use of this dangerous substance are endangering the public health and lives of Americans, will somehow be free of liability?

One of the first things we decided in America--those who sat down and, in their wisdom, created our Constitution--was that we would do away with royalty; we weren't going to give people titles such as ``princes'' and ``viscounts'' and whatever it happened to be in the old country. No, in America it is different. There is no royalty. We are all the same. People are treated the same. The highest and the lowest in rank in America are held accountable.

But that is not the case when it comes to this Energy bill because if you happen to be an oil company with MTBE contamination, we are going to treat you like royalty with a ``get out of jail free card.'' We are going to say that you are not going to be held responsible as will the business next door selling another product. That is just plain wrong.

Senator Domenici came to the floor and said repeatedly--understand, he turns the cards over so there is no doubt what is going on. He says: Understand what this bargain was. If you want ethanol, you want to sell more ethanol--the oil companies hate ethanol; they don't make ethanol. In order for them to go along with this bill, in order for the oil company giants to agree to promoting ethanol in America, we had to give them this MTBE waiver of liability. Those are not my words. I think they are an accurate paraphrase of Senator Domenici's words, repeated many times on the floor of the Senate. He said: If you don't give the oil companies this protection from liability for their own wrongdoing, from product liability lawsuits, frankly, there is going to be no ethanol in your future.

Isn't it a sad outcome that we would turn our backs on 153,858 MTBE contamination sites in America and say to the communities, to the towns and cities, the subdivisions and the families, to the individuals who are harmed by this MTBE: We are sorry, you will not have a day in court. You will not be able to hold the people accountable who ended up endangering your family. Why? Because we had to strike a political deal. We had to say that when it came to using ethanol--which is a benign substance, environmentally acceptable--we had to swallow hard and say to the makers of MTBE and the oil producers that we are going to let them off the hook.

Do you know what else is in this bill? It is not just a protection from liability. Imagine this, if you will. We provided in this bill that you can continue to sell MTBE in the United States until 2014. Now, here is a substance that we know is damaging the environment in 153,858 contaminated sites, and this bill gives the companies the express permission to continue to sell it in America. It goes on to say that any Governor or the President can stop the MTBE ban for any State or region, which means 2014 is not a real deadline. Then, to add the ultimate insult, it gives to the industry $2 billion to transition away from MTBE.

My mind is spinning to think that Congressman DeLay of Texas, who supposedly is the author of this, was so audacious as to walk into the conference

and say: Here is the deal, my friends. This lethal chemical in gasoline can continue to be sold in this country for 11 or 12 more years, and any Governor or President can extend the sale of that beyond that period; any company that wants to stop selling it is going to get a Federal subsidy to a total tune of $2 billion; and, furthermore, while this MTBE additive continues to contaminate water supplies and endanger public health, we are going to make sure that those who are injured, the innocent victims across America, cannot go to court and sue under a product liability claim.

How can we do this? How can we in good conscience do this? How can we ignore this section of the bill, this outrageous section of the bill?

Frankly, this is good reason to say to our friends who have worked long and hard on this conference report: Enough; send this bill back for more work. Remove this outrageous section about MTBE. Protect innocent American families and communities, and do it now.

There are those who argue, frankly, that there are other lawsuits that can be filed, that you don't have to use the product liability theory. Here is a lawsuit that was filed in Lake Tahoe, CA, South Tahoe Utility District v. ARCO, Atlantic Richfield Company. Here is what the jury verdict was in the case.

Lyondell--the maker of the MTBE additive--Lyondell's MTBE was defective in design because Lyondell failed to warn of the environmental risks.

They went on to say: Gasoline containing MTBE refined by the other defendants at trial was defective in design because the environmental risks of MTBE outweigh the benefits and the refiners failed to warn of its risks.

They went on to say: There is clear and convincing evidence that Lyondell and Shell acted with malice as they developed, promoted, and distributed their defective MTBE products.

What this tells us is that the companies which were sued knew they had a dangerous product, they continued to make it, continued to sell it, and continued to endanger people. Not only are they clearly guilty under a product liability standard, they are guilty, I think, in the worst scenario. As I recall from law school, it is whether they knew or should have known. This is not a ``should have known'' situation. The wrongdoers with MTBE actually were found, in this case, to have known it was a dangerous product.

Yesterday, I came to the floor and talked about this MTBE issue. I no sooner left the floor than the oil industry decided to put out a rebuttal to the remarks I had made on the floor. It is a lengthy rebuttal, but I would like to address the elements in it.

Frankly, they were plain wrong and the record should be set straight. I stated in my floor statement yesterday and I repeat again today, there were alternatives to MTBEs in the 1990s. Some would have you believe we had no choice when it came to oxygenate; it was MTBE or nothing. But listen to this: The MTBE manufacturers knew conclusively by 1984 that MTBE was a dangerous product that could contaminate water wells throughout the United States. They misled the Environmental Protection Agency in direct responses to inquiries in 1986 when they claimed they were unaware of MTBE water contamination.

Because of this deception by the MTBE companies about the dangers of their product and their efforts to discredit anybody who said otherwise, the industry increased its production at the expense of the alternative oxygenate, ethanol.

It should be noted, MTBE, as I said earlier, is a waste product, cheaper than ethanol. Had the manufacturers of MTBE disclosed the truth about MTBE contamination, the ethanol industry would have done quite well, and Congress might or could have prohibited this product at a very early stage. But because of the active deception of the MTBE industry, starting with their knowledge in the 1980s of the danger of their product, this didn't happen.

I went on to say that MTBE was found to be a probable cause of cancer. I spent a lot of my years on Capitol Hill fighting the tobacco companies. I know how they work. The MTBE gang is up to the same bag of tricks. They are now starting to dispute medical evidence as to whether MTBE is dangerous.

The industry, in rebuttal to my remarks, said:

MTBE is one of the most widely studied chemicals in

commerce, including pharmaceuticals, and that the

overwhelming majority of scientific evaluations to date have

not identified any health-related risk to humans from the

intended use of MTBE in gasoline.

Then they go on to cite ``numerous government'' and ``world-renowned independent health organizations'' having found no sufficiently compelling reason to classify MTBE as carcinogenic.

Let me tell you, the MTBE industry, like the tobacco industry, when it comes to playing games with medical evidence, is plain wrong. The University of California at Davis concluded that MTBE is a known animal carcinogen.

In addition, the director of the General Accounting Office's Office of Natural Resources and Environment testified before Congress in May 2002 and stated:

An interagency assessment of potential health risks

associated with fuel additives to gasoline, primarily MTBE,

concluded that while available data did not fully determine

risk, MTBE should be regarded as a potential carcinogenic

risk to humans. . . . A primary rule in epidemiology is

``Absence of evidence of risk is not evidence of absence of

risk.''

The data has been coming in leading community after community, jury after jury, to conclude that this dangerous product might or could have endangered the health of Americans.

The removal of MTBE, as I said yesterday, is a growing problem. Their industry spokesman said:

It's more water soluble and can be transported more readily

in soil and water than other gasoline constituents.

I will tell you this: The largest MTBE manufacturer in the United States, Lyondell, has already been forced to revise its product safety bulletin and state, in their own industry safety bulletin:

A relatively small amount of MTBE, less than 1 part per

billion, can impart a displeasing taste and odor to water.

The U.S. Geological Survey has determined MTBE is the second most frequently detected pollutant in the United States, second only to chlorine, which is intentionally added to water, to give you an idea of how pervasive this issue is.

I also stated that the defective product claim is the most effective to secure relief against MTBE. The industry denies it. Yet what we have found is this: We have had to, in most communities across America, dig up gasoline storage tanks because they leaked. It was through the Leaking Underground Storage Trust Fund--the LUST fund--that a lot of this was paid for. We did it because we found this leaking gasoline was contaminating underground wells and aquifers.

The point I make is this: Despite our best efforts to dig up these underground storage tanks, the problem across America has not abated. About half of the States have reported finding MTBE they can still attribute to leaking tanks and suspect it came from other sources, even above-ground tanks to store fuels.

The point I would like to make is this, for those who are attempting to rebut my remarks of yesterday: The problem with MTBE has not gone away and is not likely to go away soon. What this legislation is designed to do is to hold those wrongdoers, those producers of MTBE, harmless from liability in product liability lawsuits for selling an inherently dangerous and defective product, a product which the industry has known since 1984 would contaminate water supplies and endanger public health.

This, in my mind, is the ultimate in irresponsibility. Frankly, I would like to say to my friends in the farm community who have said to me, You have to look the other way; we have to allow ethanol to expand even if it means endangering the lives of people from contaminated water in public water supplies--I would like to say to them, remember what you said yourself.

The president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, Ron Warfield, a good friend of mine, called and spoke to me about this issue. He has testified before Congress, and he said:

We recognize the urgency of ending MTBE use to protect

drinking water supplies.

Mr. Warfield went on to state:

MTBE has adverse human health and environmental impacts.

He went on to state:

The farm bureau's belief--

This is the Illinois Farm Bureau--

that any legislation that addresses MTBE must be national

in scope. Allowing States that have different programs will

not allow us to achieve our national energy goals.

This bill goes directly against the Illinois Farm Bureau's position. This bill says, when it comes to MTBE we are going to allow them to escape liability. We, who have said for years that MTBE was a dangerous contaminant, cannot forget our own word.

My colleague in the Senate, Senator Fitzgerald, I believe in 2002, introduced legislation to ban the use of MTBE and to move toward the use of a safer oxygenate, specifically the use of ethanol. My colleagues in the House of Representatives, Congressman Shimkus from Illinois, and Congressman Ganske, introduced similar legislation.

Senator Fitzgerald said in his press release, March 6, 2000: Despite relatively limited MTBE use in Illinois, the Illinois EPA reports that at least 25 communities across the State have detected the chemical in their water supply, and three towns have had to discontinue use of wells as a result of MTBE contamination.

That is a quote from Senator Fitzgerald's press release in March of 2000. He understood the seriousness of this risk. He understood the danger to Illinois and its communities. Frankly, the situation has not gotten better. It is worse.

Taking a look at this chart, we can see that in Illinois we have 9,546 contaminated MTBE sites, including drinking water sites. So for my colleagues, Senator Fitzgerald, Congressman Shimkus, my friends at the Illinois Farm Bureau, and other farm organizations, I hope they can understand how this bill, frankly, makes a mockery of what we have said in the past.

If we have said, under oath at times, that MTBE is dangerous to the public health, how can we in good conscience now support this bill, which includes section 1502, which lets the producers of MTBE off the hook? How can we say to the communities and families of Illinois, or any other State affected, that we are going to limit their opportunity to come to court?

Yesterday, Senator Domenici likened lawsuits against MTBE producers to lawsuits against McDonald's because a woman was scalded when hot coffee was spilled on her lap. I might say to the Senator, there is all the difference in the world between the two of them. The lawsuit against the MTBE producers is a lawsuit based on the fact that this industry had knowledge, almost 20 years ago, that what they were selling was environmentally dangerous. They continued to sell it. They deceived the Government. They secreted information away from the public, and now they are trying to escape liability for their fraud and trickery.

Why should we be party to their fraud? Why should we say that they will not be held accountable for their wrongdoing? Is it not a premise of law and the rule of law in America that each and every individual and business will be held accountable for their wrongdoing? Why, then, do we cut this wide swath and say that these contaminants, the companies that made them, and the lawsuits that might come from them, should somehow be changed by this law? That is fundamentally unfair. Why would we do that at the same time that we offer $2 billion in taxpayer money to these companies as they phase out the use and production of that product?

I can think of plenty of businesses in my State of Illinois, or the States of New Mexico, West Virginia, and Texas, that are struggling to survive, that could use a Federal subsidy to get through a transition. We are not giving them a subsidy, but we are giving a subsidy to the oil and chemical companies that make MTBE a $2 billion subsidy. That, to me, is unconscionable, unreasonable, and indefensible. It is good reason for us to stand and oppose this bill.

When we look at the States that are affected by this--New Mexico, 1,126 contaminated sites; the State of West Virginia, 1,333 contaminated sites; Texas, 5,678 contaminated MTBE sites, and the list goes on and on--it says to each one of us that this crisis is not over. This crisis will continue. If we fail to hold the wrongdoers accountable, others will pay the price. There will be injured individuals and families who will have to bear the brunt of this environmental crime. There will be cities, towns, villages, and States which will have to pay to put infiltration systems in, new water systems and cleanup because of these polluters.

Why is it that this administration, and its friends in Congress, are dedicated to polluter protection instead of the basic principle that polluters should pay?

Polluters should pay for their own pollution. This is a classic example. Section 1502, which absolves in product liability lawsuits MTBE manufacturers from their responsibility and their liability, I think that is classic in terms of special interest legislation.

As I mentioned at the outset, Senator Domenici said there was a real danger--and let me quote him directly: We know as you start reading the language, we are duck soup. That is what Senator Domenici said on the Senate floor.

Well, we have read the language and, as we read it, we are saddened and troubled that in the Senate we would have such an egregious carve- out, such a blatant effort to reward one special interest group. I understand Congressman Tom DeLay's political strength, his persuasive ability, but to think that he could walk into a conference and force this provision into this conference committee is something that I do not think we should accept.

This is what we have to face. Those of us from States with MTBE contamination cannot walk away from our responsibility. We have to acknowledge that this bill, so long as it contains this provision, needs to be defeated. This bill must be stopped in its tracks. We must say to those who spent so much time on it, they need to go back and tell Congressman DeLay, the oil companies, and those who are pushing for this provision, that this is patently unacceptable and it is, frankly, unprecedented in American law that we would exempt one company from its own wrongdoing. But that is exactly what we are doing.

Once we have removed this offensive provision, we need to sit down and write a real Energy bill, an Energy bill which tries to encourage alternative fuels and renewable fuels, an Energy bill which focuses once and for all on ``conservation,'' which seems to be a blasphemous word in this administration, in this Congress, but one that most Americans understand. We need an Energy bill that deals with fuel efficiency and fuel economy. Sadly, this bill does not.

We need an Energy bill that looks to reducing our dependence on imported oil in the future. Maybe we should invite the Chinese to come over and give us some guidance on how we could move toward conservation and fuel economy and less dependence on foreign oil because, frankly, they understand it far better than we do. We need an Energy bill that does not have to get passed by being larded up with a gusher of giveaways. If one wants to talk about oil exploration, there is a gusher of giveaways in this bill, giveaways to cities, towns, States, Congressmen, and Senators. Is that what it takes to develop an energy policy in America? I hope it does not.

I am no newcomer to Capitol Hill, and I understand that sometimes one has to keep the process moving along and they have to help one State or this region or one industry or that industry, but when it goes to this extreme, when it goes to the extreme of absolving a polluting and contaminating industry from their legal liability in products liability lawsuits for contamination of 153,000 sites across America, then it has gone entirely too far.

I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the motion for cloture. If that motion is stopped, this bill is stopped. When it is, it can go back to conference.

Let us hope that for the first time we will have an open process. This whole energy policy started when Vice President Cheney created a secret task force with secret meetings, producing a secret bill, leading to the administration's energy policy. It continued apace through the congressional process and returned to secrecy when two individuals, my friend the Senator from New Mexico and the Congressman from Louisiana, Mr. Tauzin, sat down in a room without other Members and without anyone from the minority party and wrote this bill.

The reason there is such resistance today is the fact that this was not an open process. It should have been more open. Had it been more open, I do not believe anyone could, in good conscience, have proposed this MTBE exclusion from liability. You could not have brought this out in public with a straight face. But in private you can, and that is what happened.

Now the bill is on the floor and America gets a chance to read it. Having read it, I urge those who happen to be from the States with contamination of MTBE--and I put this map up here for those who are following the debate, for my colleagues to note. If your State is in black on this map, you know you have MTBE contamination. If it has one of those gold circles as well, it is contamination of drinking water.

If you vote for this legislation, you are saying to the people living in your State and your communities: We are closing the opportunity for you to go and hold the people accountable who have created this environmental disaster in your State.

I wouldn't want to go home and try to explain that. And I am not, because, frankly, I am going to oppose this bill so long as it contains this provision.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I see no other Senators seeking recognition so I will speak for a few moments about one aspect of this bill.

First, I thank my colleague from California for her statement. She has been extremely involved in these issues from the beginning as a member of the Energy Committee. She has taken a leadership role on many aspects of the legislation in trying to see that the provisions we came up with were good for her State and good for the country.

Let me try to talk about one part of the bill. There are 16 titles to the legislation. It does go on for 11 or 12 hundred pages. I want to talk about one of those 16 titles; that is, title XII, which relates to electricity generation and transmission and distribution.

That is a very important part of the bill and one that is complicated and difficult for us to understand but one we need to focus on because of the extreme importance it has to our economy. In my view, some of the biggest changes in law that are contained in the bill are located in the electricity title. I would also argue that the biggest retreats we are making from consumer protections are perhaps in this section as well.

During the last few years, there have been three very notable publicized developments or events in the electricity industry that have come to our attention as a nation. Not in chronological order, but first, at least in what is on the front page today and what is most immediately in mind when we think about electricity, is the blackout we experienced in the eastern part of the United States and some of the Midwest that shut down nearly a third of our Nation; the problems of how to have a reliable system for transmitting electricity and ensuring that if there is a failure somewhere, it does not cascade to the 18 States that were affected by this blackout, for example. So reliability is a serious issue, and we were made very aware of that. The President's phrase was that this was a wake-up call. I would suggest that this was a wake-up call we have not heeded adequately in the bill. I will go into why I believe that.

A second issue, of course, is what happened in California and the west coast, Oregon and Washington in particular, a couple of years ago when they had the market meltdown there and prices spiraled out of control and people saw their utility bills go up very substantially. Unfortunately, those bills have remained very high. It has had a significant impact on the economy of that part of our country. Some of that, of course, was due to manipulation of those markets, ineffective market rules. That is another area of concern that clearly should be addressed in this legislation.

The third area of concern that I cite is the financial collapse of many utilities, due in large part to the investments they have made in markets that are not central to the business of producing and selling electricity. That financial collapse has become a serious problem for many in our country as well.

This bill, in my opinion, fails to adequately address each of these problems, whether it is a liability or protection of the consumer. In the conference report before us, it blocks implementation of market rules that could prevent market manipulation. There, I am thinking about the provisions in the bill that delay FERC's ability to act not only to issue a standard market design rule, but to issue other orders of general applicability within the scope of that standard market.

It also addresses only one form of market manipulation--round-trip trading. I will get into more of a description about that, but there are other types of market manipulation we should be prohibiting in this bill. It

fails to do so, and it repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which was passed back in the 1930s, without providing the necessary level of protection for consumers, by strengthening the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's authority to oversee mergers and acquisitions of other entities. It makes the likelihood of blackouts greater by stalling the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's attempts to create regional transmission entities through the delay of this standard market design, or any other order of general applicability within the scope of that rule, it discourages the construction of needed transmission, and it discourages regional transmission organization formation by imposing an unwise pricing policy called participant funding. I will try to explain the effect of the language related to participant funding and why that has become such a central part of the concern about the bill.

First, let me talk a little about the effects the bill would have on reliability; that is, the blackout problem. The United States-Canada Power System Outage Task Force yesterday released its interim report. The report dealt with the causes of the August 14 blackout both in the United States and Canada. Secretary Abraham had a press conference. I saw him last night on Jim Lehrer's show explaining it again. He has been very aggressive in trying to explain what this report includes.

The report contains no recommendations at this point. It is the first of several reports. It is an interim report. It is primarily technical in nature. It tries to establish a timeline for the events that led up to the blackout and then during the blackout. The report tells the story of a day when the power system was not unusually overloaded, but on which a series of events that you could expect to be controllable led to an outage that cascaded through 18 States in the United States and a number of Canadian provinces. It shut down power to tens of millions of customers, paralyzed our major cities--New York, Cleveland, Detroit. Some areas were blacked out for as long as 3 days, and the economic cost of this was enormous, as we would expect it to be.

I could go into some detail about what the report found, but I am sure everybody can read that in their morning paper. The report doesn't draw many conclusions or make many recommendations. In my reading of it, it is clear that the lack of communication, the lack of coordination of response, the lack of consistency of rules and equipment were major causes of what occurred. If anything is clear, it is that the major transmission system that we depended upon is a large regional machine that is not bound by political borders but is only bound by physics and by commerce. What happens in one part of the country has far-reaching effects on areas that are very far from the initial occurrence. That fact leads to the inescapable conclusion that the control and management of that transmission system needs to be on a regional basis if it is going to respond to events that happen across these regions.

This event cascaded across two countries, 18 States, 4 transmission regions, 4 reliability councils, and it did all of that in 7 minutes. The FERC, which is the Federal agency that is authorized to oversee this enormously complex part of our economy, has been trying to encourage voluntary regional control and management of the transmission system for nearly 6 years now, since the issuance of order No. 888 in 1998. If the Midwest ISO--independent system operator--is the result of the voluntary process that has been going on over this period--and it is--then it is clear that voluntary process has not worked as it should.

The Midwest ISO is the best that could be negotiated in the voluntary program for this region. It still has 23 different control areas, inadequate communication, inadequate coordination to respond to a series of events such as those that occurred during a 7-minute period on August 14. The FERC has more recently tried to take some stronger steps to be sure that the regional transmission organizations, such as the Midwest ISO, are up to the task of ensuring the reliability of the system. The standard market and design rule that was proposed by the FERC proposed that we have mandatory regional transmission organizations; that is, that FERC could require utilities to join these regional transmission organizations. This bill stops that effort in its tracks. This bill doesn't have any suggestions as to what should be done to accomplish regional transmission control, except further encouragement of these utilities to do it on a voluntary basis. But it stops the effort that is underway today to require utilities to take these steps.

I think the report gives one more strong piece of evidence that the electricity title, as proposed, is unwise and inadequate. The participant funding provisions--let me talk about those because that is an abstruse but important part of this legislation. It is one about which there is substantial controversy. When we wrote the Energy bill in the last Congress, there was substantial controversy about it in the development of this conference report. It is an issue that we need to try to do right.

In my view, provisions in the bill related to participant funding will also have a negative impact on reliability. Let me explain how I conclude that.

This provision in the bill would require that the Commission, FERC, approve participant funding for the expansion of transmission by a regional transmission organization, or by any utility. Now, what participant funding means is that the participant in the market who wants the transmission constructed, or the expansion of transmission constructed, has to pay the full freight for getting it done. The Commission may not authorize the recovery of costs on a rolled-in basis, or it may not rule that the costs should be shared among those who will benefit from the upgrade in transmission, or the expansion of transmission. Unless the native load ratepayers have stated they require the transmission, they are not to be charged for it. This amendment takes the mantle of consumer protection by supposedly protecting retail ratepayers from bearing the costs of transmission system expansions that are built in order to ship power to a far distant region of the country. In reality, there are very few transmission system expansions that are for the benefit only of one user.

In a properly planned system, expansions that take place are ones that support the entire load in the region, including the need to export power from the region where that exists. This provision has three problems.

First, it would cause customers to have to pay for costs they did not cause and for benefits they are not receiving.

Second, it would deprive local customers of the rights to the lines that are built in their area.

Third, it is not always clear or true that only one participant is creating the need for new transmission and benefiting from that transmission.

The restriction on allocating costs to Native load ratepayers sounds good at first blush. The effect, however, is to shift the cost to other ratepayers for facilities that the Native load ratepayers in question are able to use and, in many cases, are benefiting from without having to pay.

One simple example, to try to bring this home to people, is each of us has a couple of filling stations we go to, to fill up our vehicles. If we were asked, Do you need another filling station in your part of the city, most of us would say: No, we don't; we found a way to do this. But if one is built that is convenient for our use, we will use it; we will benefit from it.

The question is, Does everyone hold back and say, I will not suggest the need for expansion of a transmission facility because I am going to be stuck with the whole bill; I will wait until someone else suggests the need and then, of course, I can get the benefit without having to pay my share?

This is supposed to be aimed at generators who want to sell into the competitive market. The real victims, in my view, are the consumers who buy electricity from municipal or cooperative utilities or from utilities other than the ones that are required to pay under this participant funding language.

The likely effect of this policy is that needed transmission would not get built. If customers who need transmission expansion have to pay for the full cost of the expansion, those who need the transmission expansion may

not be able to finance either the purchase or the sale they are contemplating because it becomes prohibitively expensive.

The transmission either doesn't get built or, if it does, it is at a cost that gives the incumbent utility a competitive advantage.

The second effect is the utilities would be encouraged not to join regional transmission organizations or, if they are already members of regional transmission organizations, to leave those, and they are perfectly free to do so under the legislation. This is not my conclusion. This is the conclusion of many experts who have written to us in opposition to this participant funding language.

If the utilities gain this kind of competitive advantage and get their transmission built at no cost to themselves, why should they join a regional transmission organization and talk to others about the need to cooperate and share costs?

This proposal on participant funding is anticompetitive and it is antireliability, in my view. If transmission construction is needed to relieve bottlenecks to prevent blackouts, this provision discourages that.

Under current policy, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued in 1995, new transmission is paid for by those who benefit from the transmission. If there is a single entity or single group of ratepayers who benefit, then they are the ones who pay. If the system as a whole benefits, then everyone shares in the cost. Often, there is a combination of the two and there is a sharing of the cost. The single beneficiary pays for part of the cost; the rest is rolled into the rates for all of those who use the system.

This provision that is in the bill assumes there is always a single beneficiary rather than there is a benefit to many, as is the case in most circumstances. The provision requires something FERC already has the authority to do. As I said, it can allocate the total cost to one participant. But we should not be legislating the way FERC has to deal with these issues. They should be able to deal with them on a case-by- case basis. The provision prevents them from doing that.

We have letters in opposition to this participation funding language from a great many people. I will cite a few: Public service commissions of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and many other States; utilities in California, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and many other areas of the country. We have many organizations that have come out in opposition to this provision-- from APPA, NRECA, Elcon--Electric Consumers Resource Council, the large industrial customers group including General Motors, Dow Chemical, Air Products, steel companies, aluminum companies--Louisiana, Energy Users Group, the American Chemical Council, the American Forest and Paper Association, American Iron and Steel Institute, Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, Portland Cement Association, Electric Power Supply Association, Consumers for Fair Competition National Grid, American Transmission Company, International Transmission Company, Electric Power Supply Association, many individual municipal and cooperative utilities, and many others.

Congress, in my view, should not be meddling in this area. It is too complex. It is too dependent upon the facts of individual cases for us to try to be writing legislation directing how FERC allocates cost. We should not legislate what they do in this area. In my view, that is counterproductive.

The bill also contains a delay in the issuance of the standard market design rulemaking which I mentioned before. The delay is until January of 2007. That is a much longer delay than I think is wise. That is over 3 years from now. Clearly, in my view, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission may well have circumstances to which they need to respond. They may well identify problems for which they need to issue rules of general applicability in that period, and we should not be tying their hands.

The bill would prohibit under its current language ``rule or general order of applicability on matters within the scope of the standard market design rule.''

The truth is, the standard market design rule covers everything but the kitchen sink. So if you are saying you cannot issue rules of general applicability on matters that are within the scope of that rule, you are basically saying you are blocked from issuing orders for the next 3 years.

What kind of actions could this prevent? It could prevent the Commission from doing its job in many respects. FERC currently has a rule in process on interconnections to the transmission grid. No matter what that rule said, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would be prohibited from issuing it.

Other matters that are dealt with in the rule that FERC would be prevented from dealing with in a generic manner are such things as market oversight, market mitigation, transmission pricing, scope of the regional transmission organizations, the adequacy of rules for transactions across regional transmission organization boundaries, and, in short, just about anything the Commission does about transmission or markets, because this standard market design rule, which we are blocking the implementation of, touches on all of those items. All of those subjects are within the scope of that rule, and we are legislating a prohibition not only against the rule but against any rule of general applicability within the scope of standard marketing.

I also believe some of the orders FERC issued in the western market crisis would be defined as orders of general applicability and would have been prohibited had this language been on the books at the time FERC was trying to deal with that crisis.

If another crisis occurs in the next 2 or 3 years, would we not want FERC to bring order to the market to deal with the crisis? Hopefully, we will not wind up legislating a prohibition on their doing that.

I offered amendments to try to correct this language on the Senate floor. They failed. I offered another amendment when we had our one meeting of the conference on Monday of this week.

That was agreed to by a majority of Senate conferees but was rejected by the House. Then, of course, the Senate conferees receded to that. So I think this is a serious problem that undermines our efforts as a nation to ensure reliability of the system.

Let me go on to this issue of the crisis in western markets, and any possible future market crises that we may face. It is surprising to me how soon we can forget. Just over a year ago, maybe 2 years ago now, we were in the middle of a daily diet of newspaper stories and headlines about the excesses of Enron and other power marketers and their manipulation of California and other western markets. Now it seems as though those shocking stories, that public outcry for Government to do something about that, is all gone, and we are on to other matters.

We have outlined many times before, and many of my colleagues in their statements have outlined, a parade of horrible schemes, deceitful schemes, that were put in place to defraud utilities and to ultimately defraud consumers. The names are well known to all of us: Get Shorty, DeathStar, Ricochet, Black Widow, wash trades. This conference report prohibits wash trades or roundtrip trades, and that is good. I favor that prohibition.

By doing so, the bill acknowledges that the Federal Power Act should protect consumers against fraudulent and deceptive practices, but we only mention one such practice: Roundtrip trading, these wash trades. That is a circumstance where two participants in the market sell to each other the same amount of electricity at the same price in order to make it appear they have more volume of transactions than they really have; there is more going on. This also creates a sales volume for both the sellers. This can be used to pad the reports of stockholders and analysts and make the company look as if it is a better place to invest. This practice should be prohibited.

The other practices involve creating artificial congestion on transmission lines so that one can claim to have relieved the congestion in order to collect a congestion rent. There were a number of colorfully named practices that were of this nature. Those clearly should be prohibited as well.

Some would argue that we do not need to prohibit those; they are prohibited elsewhere. I do not believe that.

When FERC commissioners came before the committee last year, they told us these practices were not prohibited, that there was not much they could do to deal with them. When other Senators seemed not to be concerned about giving this authority, I could not really understand that point of view. Clearly, there can always be other prosecutions for fraud, general fraud and all, but FERC, the agency with responsibility for overseeing this sector of our industry, should have the authority to impose penalties and prohibit these practices. We need to give regulators who are charged with controlling these markets the tools they need to do the job that needs to be done.

Senator Cantwell from Washington offered, and the Senate approved by a vote of 57 to 39, an amendment that bans all forms of manipulation. Unfortunately, the conference report does not contain that language now, language which was strongly supported in the Senate.

The other problem I mentioned when I started my comments, that I want to say a few more words about, is the problem of the financial meltdowns that we saw as a result of unwise investments by utilities in nonutility ventures and the risk that brings to ratepayers.

The conference report repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act. I have supported repealing the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and I will explain why. But this conference report repeals that act without providing adequate protection for consumers to replace the necessary protections that were in that act. I have always taken the position that we should repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act because it is no longer a useful device, but at the same time we should add authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to review mergers and to review dispositions of property by utilities so we can be sure consumers and ratepayers are protected.

The conference report purports to contain such strengthening of authority, but I would argue that, in fact, it weakens the authority of FERC to review mergers.

There are three problem areas that I see with this language. One is, the jurisdiction over mergers; second, the failure to guard against cross-subsidies, which I think is very important and which was in the bill we passed through the Senate earlier; and third, the language which shifts the burden from the company to the Government if a merger that is occurring is going to be stopped. It automatically occurs if the Government does not act to keep it from occurring under this language, and I think that is bad public policy.

FERC's merger authority is essential in this industry, which has been based on a system of local and regional monopolies but which is moving toward depending almost entirely on a competitive wholesale market for electricity generation.

The industry is highly concentrated. Consolidation of generation and distribution of transmission can prevent the development of a competitive market. One of the key failures in the bill, as I see it, is that the bill does not make the generation of energy or power a subject that is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Without authority over this generation of power, FERC would have to stand by and watch while this industry or parts of it reconcentrate. A single company could acquire every generator in the United States and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would have no authority under this act to deal with that problem. Or a single company could acquire every generator in a particular region and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would be unable to deal with it. This is surely incompatible with the idea that we want to develop competitive markets.

Even when the transaction is only the sale of a facility, there are serious issues at stake. Many of the utilities that are in the headlines lately are there because they are facing deep financial problems that have come as a result of the utilities spinning off their generation capacity, their powerplants, to affiliates which then are in the unregulated electricity market. Companies such as Xcel and Allegheny are experiencing extreme financial distress because of the activities of their generation and marketing affiliates.

A second failure of the proposal is that it does not require FERC to create real protections against cross-subsidy and encumbrance of assets in the new merged company. In the bill that we passed in the Senate, we had protections against cross-subsidy. We said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must determine that if someone is going to buy something that is not part of their utility business, they are not going to be cross-subsidizing some kind of nonutility activity.

Now, that is an essential protection for ratepayers. Otherwise, the ratepayers find their electricity rates going up because the company is losing money in some unrelated business. Clearly, we should protect consumers against that.

The provisions we had in the Senate bill, the one we sent to conference, required that the transaction do no harm either to competition, consumers, or the capacity of regulators to regulate, and it required that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determine that there would not be a cross-subsidy to an affiliate company and there would not be an encumbrance of the assets of the utility for the benefit of some affiliate. That is a very important provision which, unfortunately, has been dropped from the bill.

In the past, all generation was owned by utility companies. Clearly, that was under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. If a utility merged with another utility, the merger was under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under the Federal Power Act.

But we are in a new world now, and generation can be separated from the utility company, either sold to a stand-alone generation company or spun off to an affiliate of a holding company that owns the utility, and such sales or spinoffs would not be under their jurisdiction either under the Federal Power Act, since the generation facilities are not under the jurisdiction of FERC, or of course under PUHCA, since we are going to repeal PUHCA, the Public Utility Holding Company Act. So mergers of stand-alone generation companies would not be something FERC could look at.

A third key weakness of the proposal is that it requires FERC to act on a merger within a certain timeframe. It says that within 180 days, FERC needs to act. If FERC determines that is not enough time, it can extend that for another 180 days. But if it does not rule against the merger at the end of the second 180 days, then the merger is approved. That is putting the burden on the wrong end, in my view. I favor requiring FERC to issue an order approving the merger, as is current law. This is a major weakening of current law we are being presented with here.

These are only some of the problems in the electricity title. I have also expressed concerns about the provisions that give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission a role in monitoring markets that cut the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and States out of such activities; also, over a provision that raises the bar for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission review on whether contracts are resulting in rates that are just and reasonable. I know others are going to address those problems in their comments.

We have tried, at every opportunity during the long course of this legislation, to correct these problems. We tried to offer amendments that would strengthen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's merger authority, amendments to ban all forms of market manipulation, amendments to clarify FERC's authority and to strike participant funding language. We have not succeeded in making those changes. As a consequence, we have a bill that in my view, I regret to conclude but I do conclude, weakens consumer protections and reliability protections with regard to electricity.

There are others here seeking the floor, wishing to speak. I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Let me see what this means. Are we doing this under a particular time?

The Senator from Vermont would like to speak on two different issues: the energy issue and wants his experiences here in Washington at the time of President Kennedy's assassination. I want to get some idea of time.

Mr. President, Senator Domenici was saying the Senator from Oklahoma and then the Senator from California. Might I ask the Senator from Oklahoma--I am not going to object--how long will the Senator speak?

The Senator from California?

I wonder if I might ask, to make sure in case Senators wish to speak longer, to amend the unanimous consent request so the senior Senator from Vermont could be recognized at a quarter of 2 for up to 20 minutes.

But at quarter of 2, the Senator from Vermont is to be recognized.

I thank the Chair, my neighbor across the Connecticut River in the great State of New Hampshire.

Those of us who have wiled away the time sometimes on long airplane trips reading a bad book, we know a lot of bad books have ghostwriters. Well, a lot of bad bills that come before the Congress also have ghost writers.

If one reads through this 1,100-page Energy bill, they can tell actually who the ghostwriters were: The oil, the gas, the coal, and the ethanol industries that--surprise, surprise--are going to get almost $200 billion in tax subsidies from this bill. The voices of those ghostwriters echo throughout the bill.

The cost to the taxpayers does not stop there. If taxpayers feel their wallets are getting lighter this week, it is because this bill will cost them another $70-plus billion in other subsidies over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, the 1,100 pages of this bill are full of special interest giveaways, but they are empty of innovative and sustainable energy policy, a policy that would ensure Americans a clean, reliable, and affordable policy in the future.

Some of our colleagues are trying to sell this bill to the American public as a balanced energy plan, something that would give our Nation energy security over the decades to come. It is not that. It only increases our reliance on unsustainable petroleum-based energy sources. It undercuts recent progress in developing renewable energy sources and technologies that reduce pollution. It undermines the reliability of our electricity markets by opening the door to more manipulation and mergers in stalling regional efforts to improve the transmission grid.

The Senate sent a decent Energy bill to conference. What did we get back? We got a frog. We went from the prince to the frog, not the other way around. The roster of squandered taxpayers' dollars and squandered opportunities in this bill is breathtaking to behold.

Now the American people might have expected us to learn from this summer's blackout. After all, it should be fresh in our experiences and our minds. It cost governments and businesses billions of dollars. We could have used this bill to address what went wrong. We could have used it to build upon what is right. Incredibly, the bill does the opposite.

New England, where we rely on energy--as all parts of the country do--is also a part of the country where we can get 10, 20, 30 below zero sometimes. We have already created a regional organization to increase reliability of our transmission lines. In fact, that was able to stop the blackout from cascading further into Vermont and other States. Instead of using an organization that we know works as a model, this bill actually discourages utilities in other regions of the country from joining regional organizations. It would also discourage badly needed new investment in the transmission grid.

Apparently, we can only invest in transmission grids if they are in Iraq. We cannot invest in them when they are in our own country.

There is also no prohibition on the price gouging schemes employed by companies such as Enron, even though the Senate, on a wide margin, voted for that.

The bill repeals a 70-year-old law to restrict mergers of utility companies with other companies where they have no expertise. In the past, that has caused financial troubles for utilities and consequently the ratepayers.

One might have hoped the bill could have done more to emphasize technological innovation, promote clean and sustainable energy, but it does not. Instead of working to advance technologies to create jobs and reduce pollution, we have a bill that gives oil, gas, ethanol, and nuclear companies enormous subsidies.

One of the things it does, in my own State of Vermont, is it hands Vermont drivers a double whammy by mandating the use of 5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012 while threatening deep revenue losses in the highway trust fund. Under this bill, Vermonters and drivers in other States can expect higher prices at the pump due to this mandate and more potholes in the road due to the trust fund cuts.

We have heard talk about MTBE producers. We know this protects producers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability, but in Vermont and around the country States and communities face multimillion-dollar bills for cleaning up the MTBE that is already in the ground water. And, to stop the cases filed, the Energy bill makes the provision retroactive. It wipes out cases filed in September by several New York communities, cases filed by the State of the distinguished Presiding Officer, New Hampshire. The list goes on and on but so do the echoes of the ghostwriter's voice in this bill.

This turkey would waive environmental analyses for energy projects on public lands, exempt them from the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, open coastal areas to oil and gas development, reduce support for clean coal technology, and this bill will simply mean that more toxic pollutants like mercury will get dumped on Vermont's forests and our lakes and our rivers.

Shortly after the administration entered the White House, it closed the doors to the public and they started to put together the energy industry's wish list of subsidies--environmental and consumer protection rollbacks. If we pass this bill, we are going to say Christmas came before Thanksgiving for these special interests.

I don't see how, at a time when we are justifying drastic cuts to vital social programs, we can push through a $100 billion counterproductive budget buster for the energy industry.

As I said, many a bad book has a ghostwriter, and so do many bad bills. When you read through this 1,100-page energy bill, it is clear who the ghostwriter were: the oil, gas, coal and ethanol industries that--surprise, surprise--would reap almost $20 billion tax subsidies from this bill. The voices of these ghostwriters echo throughout this bill.

But the cost to taxpayers does not stop there. If taxpayers feel their wallets getting lighter this week it's because this bill will cost them another seventy-plus billion dollars in other subsidies over the next 10-years.

Unfortunately, the 1,100 pages are full of special interest giveaways but empty of innovative and sustainable energy policy that will ensure Americans clean, reliable and affordable power in the future.

Some of our Republican colleagues are trying to sell this bill to the American public as a balanced energy plan to give our Nation energy security over the decades to come. It is not.

It will only increase our reliance on unsustainable, petroleum-based energy sources. It undercuts recent progress in developing renewable energy sources and technologies that reduce pollution. It undermines the reliability of our electricity markets by opening the door to more manipulation and mergers and stalling regional efforts to improve the transmission grid.

The Senate sent a decent energy bill to conference, and we got back a frog. The roster of squandered taxpayers' dollars and squandered opportunities in this bill is breathtaking to behold.

The American people could have expected that we could have learned from this summer's blackout--still fresh in our experience and on our minds--and used this bill to address what went wrong and build upon what went right.

Incredibly, this bill does the opposite. In New England, we have already created a regional organization to increase reliability of our transmission liens. It was able to stop the blackout from cascading farther into Vermont and other States. Instead of using this organization as a model, this bill actually discourages utilities in other regions of the country from joining regional organizations. It could also discourage badly needed new investment in the transmission grid.

The bill also does not do enough to protect consumers and ratepayers from manipulation of energy markets. There is no prohibition on the price-gouging schemes employed by companies like Enron, even through the Senate supported such protections by a wide margin.

The bill repeals a 70-year-old law to restrict mergers of utility companies with other companies where they have no expertise. In the past, this practice has caused financial troubles for utilities and consequently, the ratepayers.

The American people could have hoped that this bill would do more to emphasize technological innovation that would promote clean and sustainable energy. Instead, it barely holds on to the status quo in incentives for renewable and energy efficiency. If we are going to avoid future blackouts, we have to decrease demand on the electricity grid as well as make improvements to it.

But instead of working to advance technologies to create jobs and reduce pollution, we have a bill that gives oil, gas, ethanol and nuclear companies enormous subsidies.

At the same time, this bill fails to address one of the biggest energy and environmental issues facing our country: how to improve fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. In fact, the bill actually would enlarge a loophole for huge SUVs that will actually encourage more people to buy these gas guzzlers. We all have heard of the SUV dealerships that actually use the existing tax loophole in their TV ads.

The bill also hands Vermont drivers a double whammy by mandating the use of 5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012, while threatening deep revenue losses to the Highway Trust Fund. Under this bill, Vermonters and drivers in other States could expect higher prices at the pump due to this mandate, and more potholes in their roads due to the Trust Fund cuts.

While the bill fails to take any steps forward on energy policy, it takes a giant step backward on environmental protections. When the Clinton administration strengthened the requirements for reducing smog around cities, it was hailed as a major step toward reducing asthma and other chronic illnesses. Well, by postponing these ozone attainment targets, no one will be breathing easier after this bill except the special interests.

Although you won't be able to see much through the smog when you're looking up, you might see more when you're looking down, and what you see will be unwelcome.

This bill includes several new provisions that let polluters off the hook when it comes to reducing contaminates in groundwater and drinking water. It protects producers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability if their product is found to be defective. In Vermont and around the country, States and communities face multi-million dollar bills for cleaning up the MTBE that already has leached into the groundwater.

At least one court has already found MTBE producers liable for these cleanup costs because of product defects, and several other cases are pending. To make sure these cases are stopped, the energy bill makes the provision retroactive, wiping out cases filed in September by several New York communities and New Hampshire.

The list goes on and on, and so do the echoes of the ghostwriters' voice in this bill. This turkey would waive environmental analysis for energy projects on public lands. It would exempt oil and gas drilling from requirements of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. It would open coastal areas to oil and gas development. It also would reduce support for clean-coal technology in favor of the conventional dirty power plants.

This will simply mean that more toxic pollutants like mercury will get dumped on Vermont's forests, lakes and rivers.

Days after this administration entered the White House, they closed the doors to the public and started to put together the energy industry's wish list of subsidies and environmental and consumer protection rollbacks. Well, Christmas came early this year for the special interests.

The energy bill now before Congress is stuffed with everything on that wish list, plus just about everything else that these special interests could dream up when they were given the chance.

The bill before us now costs three times more than the proposal that the administration first put on the table 2 years ago.

When you look at the list of special-interest giveaways, it is no wonder the bill was written behind closed doors.

The President and the Congress had a real opportunity to produce a bill that would lead the Nation toward balanced, sustainable, clean energy production. This bill fails on all counts.

Instead, we have 1,100 pages worth of policies that will increase our dependence on fossil fuels, prop up wealthy energy corporations, repeal consumer protections and threaten environmental and public health. I do not see how my Republican colleagues can any longer justify their drastic cuts to vital social programs while pushing through this $100 billion, counterproductive budget-buster for the energy industry.

Tribute To John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I would like to talk for a moment about a more personal matter. Here we are today, November 20, 2003, just two days away from November 22. I think back to 40 years ago on November 22, 1963. I was living in Washington, D.C., at that time, as a young law student. My wife, Marcelle, and I were living in a small basement apartment. She was working as a nurse at the VA hospital, then called Mount Alto, up on Wisconsin Avenue, where the Russian Embassy is now. I was going to Georgetown Law School downtown here in Washington.

They say that anybody who was old enough to remember on that November 22 remembers exactly where they were when they heard the news about President Kennedy's assassination. That is true of anybody I have ever spoken with.

I was in the law school library and one of my classmates, who was not a supporter of President Kennedy, came in and told me the President had been shot. I told him this was really not funny, and then I realized he was crying. He was a person who had never voted for President Kennedy but realized the enormity of what had happened. When I saw his tears, I knew it had to be true.

My wife and I did not own a car at the time. I went outside and hailed a cab to head back to our apartment. My wife had worked the whole night before, and she was home asleep. I did not want to call her. I wanted to tell her in person what had happened.

I think I probably got in the only cab in all of Washington that did not have a radio. You can imagine my frustration as we started through the Washington traffic. As we drove down K Street, where many stockbrokers have their offices, we could see the screen that normally displayed stock prices was blank. That was an obvious signal that they had closed the markets in New York.

I saw Mrs. Kennedy's brother-in-law. As he would be chauffeured in a Rolls-Royce to his brokerage house each morning, I would watch with envy from the bus as I went to work. I saw him running into the street, frantic, trying to hail a cab. I saw a police officer directing traffic with tears coming down his face.

When I got to our apartment, I banged on the door and woke up my wife. We turned on the television to see the now famous announcement by Walter Cronkite--taking off his horn-rimmed glasses, announcing the President was dead.

Just a short time before, President Kennedy had given a speech at American University, a speech that I thought laid out his focus for that term and what most people believed would be a second term. That was the speech in which he said, ``We must make the world safe for diversity.'' I would like to include a copy of this speech with my statement.

We should think about this quote these days. President Kennedy said, ``make the world safe for diversity.'' He did not say we should make the world an exact copy of the United States. If everybody knew they could follow their beliefs and they could follow their system of government, it would be a safer world. But that was not to be.

I remember the next day when my wife and I stood on Pennsylvania Avenue with a half a million people watching as the cortege went from the White

House up to the Capitol. It was silent. It was so silent that as we stood there, we could hear the traffic lights. Even though the street was blocked off, the traffic lights were still operating, and from eight lanes away, you could hear the click of the lights as they changed. This is with half a million or more people on that street.

Where we were standing, near the National Art Gallery, almost from the moment the cortege left the White House, we could hear the noise of the drums and the horses. I remember vividly the riderless horse, the boots turned backwards. It was a very spirited horse. I recall his name was Blackjack. He was skittering, his feet dancing on the pavement. I can still hear the click, click of his hooves. I remember a car going by with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy in it, his chin on his hand, just staring straight ahead, not seeing any of the crowd. And, of course, I remember the coffin being brought here to lie in state in the Rotunda.

We heard the distinguished majority leader at that time, Mike Mansfield, a very close friend of John Kennedy, give a eulogy. He spoke of President Kennedy's and Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding rings. She took her husband's ring from his finger. It was 40 years ago, but I remember it so well.

I did not meet Senator Mansfield until more than 10 years later when I was the Senator-elect from Vermont. I got to know him well and realized the depth of his affection and his friendship for President Kennedy, with whom he had served in the Senate. It must have been so difficult for him to give that eulogy.

For two days, there were people--not just officials from Washington, D.C., but people from all over the country--who were stretched literally for miles, waiting to pay their respects. I can still see them huddled in their coats with frost from their breath in the air as they stood in line all night.

We stayed at our apartment to watch the funeral, because we were expecting our first child. We felt the crowd would have made it too difficult to go back downtown.

At the funeral, there were heads of state marching from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to St. Matthews. There were Prime Ministers, Presidents, Kings, Princes, and dictators. Someone came up with the idea of having the representatives march based on the name of their country. The head of France marched next to head of Ethiopia. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia marched next to Charles de Gaulle.

The interesting thing about this is the way the world came together. In fact, for a while there was a rumor that Premier Khrushchev might come. Remember, this was the height of the Cold War. This was when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev had stared across oceans at each other during the Cuban missile crisis. Khrushchev was dissuaded from coming by security considerations. Instead, he personally went to the American Embassy to sign the book of condolences. This was the kind of unity that was felt around the world.

Actually, I cannot think of any time when we felt that kind of unity and support for the United States, until the tragedy, 38 years later, of September 11.

Everybody watched the television, listened to the radio, or stood downtown to watch the funeral. We saw on television planes fly by in a missing man formation followed by Air Force One tipping its wing in salute. We ran outside just in time to see the planes which we had seen seconds before on television fly over our heads.

Looking around, everybody else had run outside too. We stood there, neighbors and strangers.

At that time, there was so much optimism, so much hope, even though it was at the height of the Cold War, and even though we had just experienced the Cuban missile crisis. After the death of President Kennedy, we felt so much of this optimism was lost.

I saw the unity come back after September 11. I don't know if the optimism will ever came back fully. We were optimistic of many things.

In my lifetime, we have seen so many wonderful advances in science. When I was young, we had to worry about polio. Our children and my two grandchildren will never have to worry about those kinds of things. Our country has had many wonderful advances and much to be optimistic about. There was unity and support from around the world for the United States right after that event, as there was right after September 11. We are now in a time where that unity is missing. I hope it will come back.

I hope this weekend all Members of this body--most of us are old enough to remember that day--I hope we stop and think what is best for this country. It is time to start working together more closely, with more support for each other and the country, and it is time to help restore some of the optimism. We are a great country. We have survived world wars, civil wars, Presidential assassinations, and terrorist attacks. We can survive much more--if not for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print President Kennedy's 1963 commencement address delivered at American University.