A resolution to eliminate certain restrictions on service of a Senator on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Reid and myself, I send to the desk an amendment in the nature of a substitute and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with Senator Reid and the majority and Democratic leaders, an amendment to a resolution to reform the Senate's oversight of intelligence and homeland security matters. If enacted, it will mark the most significant changes made in this body since the 1970s relating to the way the Senate operates.

Let me speak for a moment about why we must make significant reforms. The world did not change on September 11, 2001, only our perception of it did. In fact, the world had changed long before that particular clear September day. Frankly, we are nearly a decade late realizing it.

The first clue the world had changed and that a new enemy lurked in the shadows occurred on February 26, 1993, when Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring hundreds.

These terrorists had ties to al-Qaida, which was busy then building its army of terrorists in the Sudan.

Four years later, on August 7, 1998, al-Qaida attacked two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.

And on October 12, 2000--nearly 4 years ago today--these same al- Qaida terrorists attacked the USS Cole while it was in port in Yemen. These terrorists killed 17 soldiers and injured 40 more.

And yet it took the carnage of September 11 to awaken America, the Congress, our governmental institutions, and our CIA analysts to the magnitude of the threat that Islamic terrorism poses to the American people.

It took September 11 to show us how much the world had changed since the days of the Cold War.

In the wake of those attacks, Congress and the President swung into action--and brought the fight to the enemy.

We in Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, which reformed the FBI and provided our law enforcement agencies with greater tools to combat terrorism. We fast-tracked the procurement of specialized equipment such as the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for our military forces in Afghanistan.

Congress created the Department of Homeland Security to consolidate and coordinate Government activities that protect America, and to solve some of the problems that contributed to the failure to anticipate September 11.

The administration has issued important executive orders reforming the intelligence community in a way that facilitates coordination of essential information.

Today, the Senate passed the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, which dramatically reforms our intelligence agencies. These reforms will improve the collection, analysis, and integration of our Nation's most vital intelligence, assuring that red flags are no longer ignored.

What we have not done, however, is reform ourselves.

Congress, as did our intelligence agencies, failed to appreciate the threat prior to September 11. We certainly appreciate it now. And I hope we can reform this institution in a way that allows us to better monitor and influence the executive agencies tasked with keeping America safe.

It is time to put our own house in order.

In August, Senator Frist and Senator Daschle--in response to the 9/11 Commission recommendations--asked the Senate to do just that. They created a working group of 22 senior Members of the Senate, and asked Senator Reid and me to chair it.

We worked closely with these Members to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the 9/11 Commission recommendations, and also to brainstorm new ideas and improvements to our oversight of the intelligence community and Department of Homeland Security.

I want to thank these Members for their many good ideas and for their patience and willingness to work on a bipartisan basis to do something that is very difficult but also very worthwhile.

After convening a number of meetings with our Members, Senator Reid and I met frequently to hammer out a list of recommendations that broadly reflects the consensus or majority views of our group.

Not every Senator will be happy with each and every recommendation. But such is the nature of compromise. We have endeavored to be honest brokers, and I hope we have achieved that goal.

Some Members will complain this reform goes too far. Others will complain it does not go far enough.

I hope most Members will agree with me that it is an appropriate balance of reform that improves our ability to conduct oversight of intelligence and homeland security during a very serious time for our country.

Neither Senator Reid, nor I, nor the 20 other members of our working group have a monopoly on wisdom. And were our recommendations part of the New Testament, they would not be written in red ink.

The resolution before us today is not a final product. It is a work in progress. And we hope Members who want to improve upon this resolution will come to the floor and offer amendments.

We would like to accept non-controversial amendments, and to allow Members to vote on amendments that may be a bit more contentious. We want the Senate to work its will.

But before ceding control of this resolution to the will of the Senate, let me describe the philosophy behind our recommendations, as well as some of the recommendations themselves.

The most sweeping change we recommend is to consolidate Congressional jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security. If you don't think this is major reform, ask the roughly 25 Senate committee or subcommittee chairmen who currently have jurisdiction over Homeland Security agencies or programs.

Trust me. They have made sure Senator Reid and I know how significant this reform is.

The current system of homeland security is broken. These 25 different Senate committees or subcomittes can only have a narrow view of part of the department's activities.

Congressional oversight is like a team of blindfolded scientists, each examining a different part of a horse and trying to describe what kind of animal it is. No committee can step back and look at the horse as a whole.

The Department of Homeland Security deserves its own authorization committee. We wouldn't divide jurisdiction over the Department of Defense by creating an Army committee, a Navy/Marine committee, and an Air Force committee. So why have we done so with Homeland Security?

The status quo also hampers the Department's ability to do its primary job: protecting the homeland.

Currently, the department has to report to 88 House and Senate committees or subcommittees.

This year alone, Secretary Ridge or his subordinates have testified at 164 hearings. They have given over 1300 briefings. And the year isn't over yet.

Mr. President, that's almost 40 briefings a week. In fact, there are probably Homeland Security personnel crawling around Capitol Hill right now, when they should be back in their offices working to keep us safe.

We didn't create the Department of Homeland Security so that it can provide us with a gluttony of power point presentations but to keep America safe. We should consolidate jurisdiction so that both Congress and the Department can do their job more effectively, and more efficiently.

To do this, we recommend that jurisdiction over the Department be integrated under the Governmental Affairs Committee, which should be renamed the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

There will be exceptions to this jurisdictional consolidation. And we encourage Members who are concerned about jurisdictional issues to file amendments to work with the chairman and ranking member of Governmental Affairs to reach agreements about appropriate jurisdictional arrangements.

We welcome amendments and debate on these issues.

On Intelligence oversight, the working group believed that our oversight of intelligence must be strengthened.

The task force wanted to work with the committee to help structure it so it was comprised of devoted experts who have the time and expertise in the intelligence field. The members now serving on the committee have done so with great distinction. But they need better tools and fewer competing demands on their time in order to conduct focused and comprehensive oversight.

And so we have recommended the status of the committee be raised from B to A. This may seem like a minor and arcane detail, but it means a great deal. On my side of the aisle, Senators can serve on the committee without having to give up any other assignments. Some Members serve on three or four other committees in addition to intelligence.

Quite simply, they cannot devote the time necessary to conduct effective oversight with so many other obligations.

This elevation in status will require Senators interested in intelligence to make a choice to serve on the committee. But once on the committee, they will not be term limited, and each member of the committee will be able to play an integral role in conducting oversight.

The Intelligence Committee is an important committee, and a popular committee, and I am confident that a good number of members will want to serve on it.

As I have said, we also have removed term limits, in order to allow members to develop the expertise needed to conduct effective oversight. No other Committee in the Senate says after you've spent 8 years becoming an expert that you get the boot. Now the Intelligence Committee won't have to say goodbye to its most experienced members.

We have allowed members to hire personal designated staff, to give them a trusted representative on the committee. There was strong support for this recommendation, which will reinstate previous committee policy.

In addition to the 14 suggested improvements to the Select Committee on Intelligence, we also have recommended the Appropriations Committee create a Subcommittee on Intelligence.

Appropriations jurisdiction over oversight is currently dispersed throughout multiple subcommittees. We propose the creation of an Intelligence Subcommittee of Appropriations that would consolidate the roughly 80 percent of the intelligence budget that will come under the jurisdiction of the national intelligence director.

This subcommittee will improve the Appropriations Committee's ability to live up to its responsibility to exercise oversight over the national intelligence budget. For the same reasons that homeland security jurisdiction should be consolidated, so, too, should intelligence appropriations jurisdiction.

Not all of us agree on this recommendation, and I fully expect that Senators will offer an amendment to implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendation to create a combined authorization and appropriations committee.

These recommendations require us to use a different set of muscles in our oversight. And some of these reforms are not easy. But few things worth doing are.

We have a historic opportunity to reform this Chamber for the better, and I believe we should not shirk our responsibility to do so. We must do it now in order to do all we can to protect the American people from the next major terrorist attack.

This is a partisan body, and we have pointed fingers for 3 years about who was to blame for the failures of our intelligence and homeland security prior to 9/11. Some blamed the Clinton Administration, others blamed the Bush Administration. Some saw fault in the FBI, others in the CIA, and still other in the military's aversion to covert operations. We are good at pointing fingers at others, but we have not pointed them at ourselves.

Just as our CIA analysts failed to piece together the clues about al- Qaida's intention to attack our cities with hijacked airplanes, so, too, did we fail to question their assessments. We failed to question their focus on old threats. We failed to challenge them to take risks. We failed to question the lack of CIA operatives in Iraq, or why our human intelligence capabilities had become so eroded. Despite the numerous attacks on American targets by Islamic radicals, we failed to put more money in the intelligence budget to hire Arabic linguists.

These are not the faults of the Clinton administration or the Bush administration. They are our fault, too, and we have a chance today to correct them.

I say to my colleagues, I believe we have an opportunity to improve our oversight of the arms of Government that keep America safe. Let us not cause some future generation to look back 50 years from this moment and ask the question: Why did they not act?

Now is our opportunity to do just that, and I encourage my fellow Senators to come to the floor and offer amendments so that we can move this package forward as soon as possible.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the pending amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, we have hotlined in both cloakrooms all offices asking for an indication of how many amendments might be offered to the underlying resolution. Regretfully, it is roughly 50.

I am authorized to say on behalf of the majority leader, it is our intention to wrap up business this week. We have

no intention of trying to shut out any Senators who want to offer amendments. We had hoped some might come over tonight and offer them. We will certainly have all day tomorrow to deal with any and all amendments that Senators feel strongly about and on which they would like to have votes. But we really must move the process along, and that is the reason the majority leader wished to file a cloture motion tonight.

Yes, I yield to my friend and colleague from Nevada.

Mr. President, I send a second cloture motion to the resolution to the desk as well.

Mr. President, as my good friend from Nevada has indicated, we hope to process all of the amendments that Members of the Senate feel strongly about. We will be open for business on this resolution all day tomorrow, and there should be ample time to deal with all of the amendments that our colleagues feel strongly about and wish to offer.

Mr. President, the assistant Democratic leader has clearly outlined what the goal of the two leaders, both Republican and Democrat, are for the balance of this session before we adjourn for the election. We are hoping to complete all of those items no later than Friday.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I object. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator be yielded 5 minutes and that I be given 15 minutes after the Senator.

Mr. President, I think it is worth a minute or two to respond to some of the comments by the Senator from Iowa. I find them to be so inconsistent with the facts as they exist on the ground that it is difficult not to respond to them.

The Senator from Iowa is doing an excellent job of Monday morning quarterbacking. However, the information that the President made his decisions on, the information that our military made decisions on was the same information available to us in the Senate at the time. It was the exact same information that led the Senator from Massachusetts, the nominee of the Democratic Party, to conclude--I will paraphrase him, and I think it is fairly close--that Saddam Hussein must be removed from office, and anybody who doesn't understand that, he should be removed from office, is not qualified to be President of the United States. He said that in a debate in New Hampshire, or in one of the debates running up to the primary, during the primary process. He went on after that to say that he had seen the information and he presumed that the information was reasonably accurate as to the threat Saddam Hussein presented.

Not only did the Senator from Massachusetts say that, but, of course, President Clinton's administration said exactly that relative to the weapons of mass destruction and relative to the threat of Saddam Hussein. In fact, not only did the Senator from Massachusetts say that, not only did the prior President, President Clinton, say that, but the United Nations, in 17 different resolutions, said exactly that to the people of Iraq. As part of the world community, they told Saddam Hussein to disarm, open up his nation, stop killing his people. But he, of course, did not.

I now find it extraordinarily ironic, extremely inconsistent, and reflective, in my opinion, of poor judgment that we have a nominee for the national party whose positions are being parroted by the Senator from Iowa, who is essentially saying that a policy of appeasement and defeat toward Iraq is the appropriate policy for us to pursue.

They have a nominee for their national party who has said he would rather have Saddam Hussein than the chaos that is there. That is in direct contradiction to what he said before, which was that Saddam Hussein represented a threat that should be removed, and anybody who didn't understand that should not be elected President.

Of course, he has said such things as the war in Iraq is ``the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.'' And we have ``taken our eye off of the ball.'' The problem with that philosophy, which he essentially says as a Monday morning quarterback that he is going to change positions from the original position relative to the war in Iraq, is that it not only undermines his credibility as a potential leader of this Nation, it undermines his ability to be able to communicate effectively with the other world leaders who are relying on our leadership.

One thing we have found over time is that both troops in the field and world leaders like to know that the United States stands for something and that we do not change with the political winds or whoever our opponent happens to be as of that day.

When you have a Presidential nominee of a national party, in the sense of the Senator from Massachusetts, who is essentially adjusting his message as the polling data comes in and adjusting his message as he confronts different opponents, whether it is Howard Dean in the primary when he becomes much more passive or, as he moves through the primary process, he becomes much more aggressive and then becomes much more passive again as the numbers come in, it is very hard to look to that person for the leadership you need if you are going to lead the world community. This President has done an aggressive job leading the world community.

I think it is ironic that so many Members on the other side of the aisle so easily disregard the commitment and basically disrespect the commitment some of our allies have made, especially Britain which has committed thousands of troops and lost many people in this war on terrorism, both in Iraq and around the world, or Australia or Poland or Italy. These are countries which have stood by us.

Granted, France is not there. France is not in Iraq. France is, however, in Afghanistan. France is working with us relative to Iran. France has chosen not to pursue the course we have pursued in Iraq, but I do not think we can let our national policy, our national defense, or our national security be determined by where France is and how

France stands on issues. We, obviously, encouraged them to join us, but they decided not to. When it comes to our national security, I do not think we can have our policy decided by the French.

The reason why Iraq is so critical has to be restated. We have a tactical war we have been pursuing which is essentially this: The President, with an incredible amount of energy and expertise of the military and the intelligence community, has chased the terrorists around the globe, has kicked over the rocks under which they live and has tried to bring them to justice. That is called a tactical strategy, and that, unfortunately, is going to go on for a lot of years. We are going to have to continue to hunt these people down.

On the fact which reflects the inconsistency of the position of the Senator from Iowa--and there has been considerable success in this area even though the Senator from Iowa may not be willing to acknowledge it--over 75 percent of the leadership of al-Qaida has been captured or killed, Afghanistan is free, there is no longer a Taliban government there, and they will hold elections this weekend with 10 million registered to vote, 40 percent of whom are women. Those women were not even allowed out of their house prior to action there. That is significant progress. But that is a tactical effort, chasing the terrorists around the globe.

We are not going to succeed in this war unless we convince the Islamic world that Western values are not a threat to the Islamic values, unless we can prove to the Islamic community at large, especially in the Middle East, that being free, that having liberty, that having the right to vote, that having a market economy, that giving the women a right to participate in society is not a negative but is rather a positive. If we are successful in setting up a nation in Iraq which has liberty, which has individual rights, which has the rule of law, which has a form of democracy, which gives women the right to participate in society at a fairly high level of equality with men, we will have fundamentally undermined the capacity of Islamic fundamentalism to recruit throughout the world because we will prove to the mainstream Islamic community in this world that Western values, rather than being a threat, is a plus.

I hope that rather than being sunshine supporters of our efforts in that part of the world, we would recognize that we are involved in what is a major strategic effort to try to win the war on terrorism. We are not in Iraq to benefit the Iraqis. We are in Iraq to keep America safer, and the way we keep America safer is by having Iraq turned into a successful free nation where people have liberty, people have freedom, women have rights, and there is a democracy where people can vote.

They are going to hold elections in January. As Prime Minister Allawi said when he was here, Iraq has become the cutting edge in the area of the fight on terrorism. It is hope which is confronting the fear of the terrorists. We should be supporting people such as Prime Minister Allawi trying to protect their nation.

It is noted that 13,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq. That is a huge number of people, and it is a sad commentary, but those individuals have died in a process to try to obtain freedom for their nation, in many instances. Certainly, that number compares rather dramatically with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were murdered under the Saddam Hussein regime.

Our goal, of course, is to create an Iraq where death is the exception rather than the rule, where the rule of law is the rule, and where liberty exists and where, as a result, the freedoms that encourage people to flourish are allowed to flourish themselves. We will have, in that way, undermined the role of the terrorists, and the hope that Mr. Allawi is seeking will be realized. The accomplishment will significantly improve our safety and lead directly to America being safer.

That is a quick response to the very long statement of the Senator from Iowa. I thought some comment should be made.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. President, I wish to speak to the recent conference which was completed on the FSC bill, which is the foreign tax bill, which is a fairly complicated piece of legislation, a major piece of legislation. Certainly, I congratulate the adeptness of the people who led that bill through both the House and the Senate, because passing a bill through the House and Senate of that size is a challenge, to say the least, and the success of their getting it through is very impressive, especially in light of the fact that so much of the bill that passed the Senate did not appear in the final product as it came out of the House, and vice versa.

The bill was modified significantly. The reason I did not sign the conference report--and I thought I should come to the floor to explain this--is that I do not find the bill compelling on balance. Yes, the bill does something that has to be done, which is to correct the problems the WTO has assessed against us relative to the duty that the European Union assessed against us relative to the duties and our tax law and the fact that many of our manufacturers are now being assessed a fairly significant duty as a result of penalties assessed under that finding. That needed to be corrected.

That, however, was a $50 billion exercise. It could have been done in a revenue-neutral way, and it should have been done. But the bill ended up being about a $140 billion bill, of which the majority, the balance of the tax reductions in this bill are targeted toward interest groups and initiatives which are at the margin, to say the least, relative to need and are significantly, in my opinion, questionable. I will just point to one, and that is the manner in which the ethanol subsidy is proposed in this bill.

Remember, ethanol is alleged to be a renewable fuel which will give us some sort of energy independence, but most of the studies have concluded--at least a major study in this area has concluded--that you actually use as much energy to produce ethanol as you use ethanol and, therefore, it really is a wash relative to whether it is a true renewable that gives us some sort of energy independence. Maybe down the road it can be produced more efficiently, but certainly right now it cannot be produced that way.

It also has huge environmental impacts. In fact, ironically, the recent study by the Oceans Commission, set up by this Congress, concluded that the most significant pollutant in the oceans today is the nitrates runoff from the Midwest which is creating a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and that is having a major impact on pollution in the oceans. That is a function of agricultural practices which are basically encouraged, in many ways, by this ethanol subsidy.

The way this ethanol subsidy is handled in this bill is a masterful piece of legislative activity. I do admit to that. It is masterful in that basically they take the ethanol subsidy, and today we pay 13 cents tax on ethanol, 18 cents on a gallon of gas, and they raise the tax to 18 cents for everything.

All ethanol products now are paying the full gasoline tax, so there is a 5 cent per gallon revenue increase to the Federal Government, theoretically--theoretically because it is purely theoretical but beautifully done.

They take that 5 cents which was going into the general fund and they move it over to the highway fund where it is absolutely required to be spent because the highway fund spends under a formula. That 5 cents is actually spent on roads, and I guess one can argue that that is good policy.

Then in a movement of undeniable brilliance when it comes to raiding the American coffers of the taxpayers, they take the 5 cents and they refund it to the ethanol producers through a tax credit. So having raised the tax, they guarantee it will be spent and then they guarantee that on top of spending it they will actually refund it to the producers.

Who are the producers? Well, in this instance one company produces one-third of the ethanol in this country and so they are going to get about a $2 billion windfall out of this proposal.

That may be good policy if one is from the Midwest, but it is not good policy from the standpoint of producing a renewable because as a practical matter ethanol is not defensible as a renewable right now because it costs as much in energy costs to

produce it as it does to use it. Its production costs equal its value. It is creating significant pollution concerns. As a result of this bill, we have created a huge new subsidy for the producers which was not there before.

I have more to say on this topic. I appreciate the courtesy of the Senate in allowing me this time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Senator McCain has introduced an amendment to address the 9/11 Commission's recommendation for the creation of a committee on intelligence with appropriations powers.

I have a great respect for the 9/11 Commission. They are dedicated members who have the Nation's best interests in heart and mind, and, for the most part, they have done an excellent job. Like the Commission members, I want our Government to take steps that will help ensure that our Nation will never again suffer a catastrophe like 9/11. But, I fail to comprehend how giving a legislative committee its own checkbook will help avoid another such disaster. Legislative committees have their plates quite full with evaluating policy. They should not take on the heavy lifting of appropriating public monies as well.

The fact that the Commission made this recommendation left me wondering just how it came up with such a proposal.

First, I looked at the Commission's report to see what evidence they cited for making this recommendation. I was startled to find that the Commission provides no specifics in its report to substantiate or justify this revolutionary proposal. The Commission offers no examples, no rationales, no justifications, no explanations. In short, the Commission provides no evidence that the appropriations process is flawed when it comes to intelligence matters. There simply is no substantive rationale for the need for this kind of drastic recommendation.

According to the Commission, this recommendation was garnered from interviews with ``numerous members of Congress from both parties, as well as congressional staff members. . . . We found that dissatisfaction with congressional oversight remains widespread.'' But curiously the report never mentions any specific member or any staffer by name or position. Who are these phantom critics? Why were they especially qualified to comment? The point is, unspecified dissatisfaction from unidentified Members of Congress and unidentified congressional staff offers very little basis for embracing such a precedent-setting proposal.

While I do not know who the Commission interviewed to reach this determination, I do know who they did not interview. They did not speak to Senator Stevens, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and chairman of its Defense Subcommittee. I know they did not talk to Senator Inouye, the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee. Both Senators Stevens and Inouye are long experienced legislators and appropriators in the field of intelligence. Why weren't they interviewed? Nor did they talk to me, and I am the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and the former chairman of the committee.

Knowing just whom the Commission did and did not interview is important because of the makeup of the Commission. While undoubtedly sincere, well-meaning, and honorable, only 4 of the members of the 10 individuals on the 9/11 Commission had ever served in Congress, and only 2 of them had experience with the appropriations process.

This recommendation, to grant both appropriation and authorization powers to a legislative committee, in my judgment reflects this lack of experience. Moreover, it belies a lack of familiarity with the history of the appropriations process.

This particular recommendation would blur the existing oversight process which tends to ensure a more thorough examination of intelligence matters because of a focus on policy matters which is separate from the focus on budgetary matters. In other words, the commission wants to increase oversight of intelligence matters by paradoxically lessening and collapsing oversight on intelligence operations.

The Commission's recommendation would limit the watchdog duties over secret intelligence functions to a tiny group of Senators, thereby fomenting an environment that would probably promote ``group think,'' and secrecy. In other words, the Commission wants to end, or, at the least, reduce ``group think'' and incestuous oversight in intelligence matters, but it is making a recommendation that would create an environment that would likely promote both.

Most importantly, the historian in me marvels at the degree to which the Commission's recommendation flies in the face of history. The current Appropriations Committee just happens to be the carefully considered antidote to several past failures of the same sort of decentralized appropriation's fixes which the 9/11 Commission now incredibly recommends. There is nothing new or innovative in this Commission recommendation. It has been tried before, and it has failed miserably.

In 1816 the Senate established the Committee on Finance and assigned it appropriations responsibilities in an effort to enhance congressional fiscal control. But as the country grew, the problems did too.

The War with Mexico, 1846-1848, for example, caused Federal spending to nearly triple, and this dramatic explosion placed great pressures on Congress to revamp its appropriations process. In 1850, the Senate adopted its first rule governing appropriations. It banned amendments for additional appropriations not previously authorized by law.

The Civil War, 1861-1865, as one might expect, vastly expanded and complicated Federal spending. Congress abruptly learned how the lack of centralized control in the Senate played to the strong advantage of the President. Congressional control of the power of the purse went out the window as President Lincoln spent millions of dollars without even bothering to secure formal congressional appropriations. He could be forgiven because he was trying to hold the union together, but the Constitution was circumvented and congressional power of the purse was, for a time, effectively seized.

Following the Civil War on March 6, 1867, the Senate established a Committee on Appropriations in an effort to bring unity, authority, conformity, and order to the Federal spending process.

As soon as the Appropriations Committee was established, however, authorizing committees began a vigorous struggle to regain their lost appropriations authority. Several House committees first grabbed appropriations authority. Soon, Senate committees were demanding the same. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. What kind of Pandora's box are we opening if we grant appropriations power to the Intelligence Committee? Why not also the Department of Homeland Security? Once the box is opened, the grabbing begins. In the late nineteenth century the grabbing gathered steam even amid stern warnings.

Congressman Samuel Randall, D-Pa, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at the time, warned that combining authorizing and appropriating authorities under one committee's jurisdiction would lead to greater Federal spending. ``Experience and observation,'' he pointed out, ``demonstrate such distribution leads to continually increasing appropriations, and renders it more difficult to keep expenditures within the limits of receipts.'' In other words, blending authority and appropriating leads to deficits.

When the Senate debated granting the Committee on the District of Columbia the right to make appropriations in 1883, members of the Appropriations Committee argued against the move. Pointing out that the Appropriations Committee serves as a necessary, coordinating agent with the legislative committees, Senator Beck of Kentucky argued, ``it is not wise legislation to vest any committee with absolute power as to the amount of money necessary to carry those laws into effect. . . . We ought to have one committee as a check upon another, one guard placed upon another, so that no body of men sitting as a committee of Congress should have absolute power over the money of the people.''

Again, that is another important lesson for us today. The Appropriations Committee is a needed, important partner with Congress's legislative committees. When the 9/11 Commission argues for more supervision of intelligence matters, it is bogus to suggest that we start by decreasing oversight.

But, in the late 19th century, these members of the Appropriations Committee were ignored. After the DC Committee had sought appropriations powers, more and more authorizing committees began seeking appropriations authority. Responding to pressure, the Senate returned appropriations authority to most Senate committees. The result, a repetition of all of the past problems. Without central authority, oversight and a central controlling mechanism, Federal finances again fell into disarray. Legislative committees were off pursuing their own individual agendas. Budget requests were submitted piecemeal. The practice known as ``coercive deficiencies,'' wherein executive agencies went through their year's appropriation within a matter of months, and then appealed to Congress for additional funds to get them through the year, again became common. Most importantly, the decentralized system of appropriations was simply not capable of managing the expenditures of a Federal Government that was growing large in size and in expense. No one was minding the fiscal store.

I would urge any Senator who thinks that giving appropriation power to an authorizing committee will help restrain spending or increase discipline to study Congressional history. Congressman James Tawney, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee from 1905 to 1911, concluded that ``division of jurisdiction and responsibility in the matter of initiating appropriations has contributed more than any other single cause to the enormous increase in appropriations during recent years.'' Everyone always wants to get an oar in the water.

A number of scholarly studies support Congressman Tawney's observation, including the 1987 study by David Brady and Mark Morgan, Reforming the Structure of the House Appropriations Process, and the book by Charles Stewart, Budget Reform Politics. These works document that without a central authority to impose overall budgetary discipline on the legislative committees, accountability all but vanished, and the public's money was spent with abandon.

World War I, like both the Mexican and Civil Wars, forced the Congress to confront the financial mess that decentralized funding had created, and to establish a supervisory control over the appropriations process. In 1922, the Senate returned jurisdiction over all appropriations measures to the Appropriations Committee. Thus, they created the system that has now served us well for more than 80 years.

Now, the 9/11 Commission proposes to return to the failed system of the past, and I adamantly oppose it. It is a formula for less accountability over public funds and for even larger deficits.

The lessons of history must not be brushed aside.

Most of us probably know the historical truism that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. History really does repeat itself because human nature does not change. In our desire to correct the reasons for our intelligence failures, let us avoid past mistakes. In our understandable desire to improve our intelligence system following 9/11, at least, we can try to avoid so-called solutions which have a proven track record of disaster.

While it also endeavors to preserve its Constitutional purpose and traditions the U.S. Senate has an obligation to adapt to new challenges.

I know that Senators Reid and McConnell examined the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission with those thoughts in mind. I know that the Working Group they co-chaired has proposed changes that will implement many of the reforms of the 9/11 Commission, while respecting the rights of Senators and the institution of the Senate.

I cannot say the same about this amendment.

Authorization committees and appropriation committees have very different mandates, one to oversee policy, the other to oversee budgets. Different authorization and appropriations committees ensure checks and balances and better oversight.

The amendment would result in fewer Senators looking into intelligence matters. It would eliminate the double punch of oversight with an authorization committee focused on policy matters and the Appropriations Committee focused on budget matters.

The message of the 9/11 Commission was to increase, not decrease, the role of the Congress in intelligence matters. It asked the Congress to pursue more vigorous oversight and to ask tougher questions. This amendment would take us in the opposite direction.

I urge the defeat of this amendment.

Mr. President, today, the Senate is considering the resolution which responds to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to revamp the congressional oversight process for intelligence and homeland security. I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about this matter.

The Commission recommended two options for Congress to consider regarding intelligence oversight. First, they suggested that the Congress could create a joint bicameral committee modeled after the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, as they said, to streamline the congressional review over intelligence functions. They supported this idea because they believe we need to have a very powerful Intelligence Committee which can stand up to the administration and speak authoritatively for the Congress. I understand there is virtually no support within the Senate for this suggestion.

The other alternative suggested by the Commission was to give the Intelligence Committees the authority to appropriate funds, and this is the matter now being discussed. The Intelligence Committee--some of the members--believes the inability to appropriate funds allows the administration to play the Intelligence Committee off against the Appropriations Committee. They argue this weakens congressional oversight. My colleagues are undoubtedly aware that granting an authorization committee such authority would be unprecedented in modern times.

Chairman Stevens and I were surprised that neither one of us was contacted by the members of the 9/11 Commission as they conducted their review

and prepared their recommendations. We were shocked that, without even consulting us or our House counterparts on the Appropriations Committee, they would recommend that Congress eliminate our role in intelligence oversight. As such, I cannot offer any personal explanation for the Commission's recommendation.

Furthermore, their report provides scant explanation why they believe the Appropriations Committee should be excluded from its mission to fund all Federal agencies. In fact, there is not a single word in the 9/11 Commission's report to suggest that the appropriations subcommittee was at fault in its oversight of the intelligence budget. Never once were we accused of that shortfall.

I believe the Intelligence Committee's role in spending authority is already powerful enough without any new authority. Under the National Security Act of 1947, as amended by section 504, the intelligence community cannot spend appropriated funds unless the funds are specifically authorized. Now, I think this is worth repeating. The intelligence community cannot spend appropriated funds unless the funds are specifically authorized. As such, the Select Intelligence Committee already has more authority than any standing committee.

Let me be clear about what that means. If the Appropriations Committee were to fund programs that were not included in the annual intelligence authorization bill, the appropriated funding for those programs cannot and will not be spent by the executive branch.

This authority is virtually unheard of in other budget functions. The authority was granted to the Intelligence Committee to ensure that the executive branch could not use the wide latitude provided in appropriations law to circumvent the will of the Congress. Appropriations acts are written with broad authority to hide the amounts for classified programs in large lump sums. This ensures that the amounts for these programs remain undisclosed. As such, the limits on spending for classified programs are very broad. The authorization requirement ensures that both committees agree on how much should be spent to provide a better check on the administration.

More important, I believe the idea of centralizing congressional oversight is not only a bad idea, it could be dangerous to the Nation. In all areas of Government, except intelligence, our system requires and allows public scrutiny. The media, nongovernment organizations, and even lobbyists all provide information and insight to Members of Congress on everything except intelligence.

Congress needs to have a system of checks and balances internal to the legislative branch because there are no other checks. We all remember Iran-Contra, which was able to go unchecked even though multiple committees had some degree of intelligence oversight. What chance would we have of uncovering that type of abuse if only one committee were examining intelligence matters?

We know there have been other abuses by the intelligence community. I remember a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee expressing outrage to discover that the National Reconnaissance Office was spending significantly more money to build a new headquarters than the chairman was aware. I recall how Chairman Stevens uncovered a slush fund in the same agency that had been accumulating outside of the knowledge of the Congress.

Do any of my colleagues really believe that having only one committee perform oversight of the intelligence community's budget will provide more effective oversight?

In addition, a single committee overseeing intelligence for the Senate would create a powerful czar. Little opportunity would exist for meaningful debate on intelligence budgets because so few Members would be aware of the details of intelligence matters. Of equal concern, a more powerful chairman could end up being co-opted or at least overly influenced by the intelligence community and potentially lose objectivity. The Senate would be at his or her mercy with little outside scrutiny. That is not an appropriate or effective form of oversight for the Congress.

Having a few committees cleared for intelligence programs, such as Armed Services, Appropriations, and Intelligence, and each with some role in determining how resources are provided would ensure that fewer bad ideas get legislated, and it would also create more effective oversight and competitive analysis by the Congress.

I also note that maintaining the link to the Appropriations Committee is beneficial to the intelligence community. Intelligence funding is protected by inclusion under the Appropriations Committee. By combining all appropriations resources, the committee has historically solved many intelligence shortfalls.

If the Appropriations Committee is removed from intelligence matters, it will be less likely to support intelligence requirements. First, the committee will not be as knowledgeable of intelligence needs. Second, it is human nature for chairmen and ranking members to care about the programs over which they have jurisdiction. If they do not have some oversight over intelligence programs, they will not have the link to the intelligence providers or necessarily the desire to help.

The Intelligence Committee would be subject to 302 budget reductions and other general reductions levied against all committees by the Budget Committee. To believe that they would be held harmless in across-the-board cuts or other cutbacks I think is very naive. Their funding level is more likely to be decreased than increased.

Linking Defense and Intelligence is critical. DOD cannot operate without good intelligence. The Defense Subcommittee has ensured that intelligence resources support the needs of the warfighter. Today, the Defense Subcommittee reviews the recommendations of both the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. The Appropriations Committee can minimize redundancies and make sure that the needs of both Defense and Intelligence are met. Separating Defense from Intelligence through the creation of an all-powerful Intelligence Committee would hurt oversight and hurt the community they hope to help.

In recent testimony before the House Intelligence Committee former Deputy Defense Secretary, Defense Comptroller, and staffer to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Dr. John Hamre stated that the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees worry too much about input and not enough about output.

His counsel was to let the Appropriations Committee worry about input in the budget process, to determine what we should spend money on and let the authorizing committees worry about how the agencies are performing with these resources. He noted that the authorizing committees spend far too much time on the budget and therefore had insufficient time for oversight. I am pleased that the leadership has decided to recommend creating an Intelligence subcommittee on oversight to highlight its importance.

Since the Civil War it has been the mission of the Appropriations Committee to balance needs among competing priorities. While the 9/11 tragedy exposed problems with intelligence oversight, it did not expose problems with the appropriations process for intelligence. Certainly, nothing was uncovered that would be resolved by giving the Intelligence Committee the authority to appropriate funds.

The intelligence budget should not be considered in a vacuum. It needs to be considered in conjunction with the Defense budget. While some speculate we can simply separate national intelligence from military intelligence, it is not that simple. Many programs have both national and military, strategic or tactical, components. Military personnel provide a large proportion of the intelligence community workforce. The Defense Department and Intelligence Community both need to support maintaining this relationship and benefit from doing so. It should remain the Appropriations Committee's responsibility to ensure that the needs of both defense and intelligence are met.

The Collins-Lieberman bill that the Senate adopted yesterday recognizes the need for maintaining a close working relationship between DoD and intelligence. Creating an Intelligence Committee that could separate itself from all the other actors in the intelligence support arena would be, quite simply, a colossal mistake.

Some of our colleagues think that the Congress needs to reorganize dramatically to meet the challenges of the 21st century. There are also those that believe that the Intelligence Committee needs to be stronger. The resolution that has been offered by the leadership in fact will provide some significant enhancements to the authority of the Intelligence Committee which will hopefully improve oversight. However, I believe the real key to better oversight is for our authorizing committees to focus on outputs as Dr. Hamre noted and for the Appropriations Committee to focus an allocating resources as efficiently and effectively as possible.

I was the first chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I have great regard for the work of that committee and a great fondness for its chairman and vice chairman. I have also served on the Appropriations Committee for the past 30 years. I understand the critical role that this committee plays in our Nation's security both in defense and intelligence. I can say with no false modesty that the work that Chairman Stevens and the committee does in overseeing the intelligence budget with the assistance of our very experienced professional staff is unmatched anywhere in Congress.

As powerful as the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was, it did not control appropriations. Maintaining Appropriations Committee control over funding would preserve a check on unlimited spending by an authorizing committee and would allow at least one other committee to have some review of Intelligence matters. I for one do not think that this is sufficient oversight, but it is clearly the minimum that the Senate should accept.

This is a very important matter. Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have spent the past 3 weeks deliberating on this issue. They have consulted with many Members who have competing interests in this arena. The resolution they propose represents a compromise that balances these many and varied views. I cannot say I am completely happy with their recommendation, but I can say this: Their recommendation is far superior to the alternative that is being proposed by the Senator from Arizona.

I urge all my colleagues to vote to support the bipartisan leadership and defeat the McCain amendment.

Will the Senator yield?

I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized after the distinguished Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, I rise to support Senator McCain and his amendment to the McConnell-Reid measure amending S. Res. 445.

First, I pay tribute to the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Graham. I thank him for his service to our country. He is retiring, although that certainly does not describe the Senator, but I thank him for his leadership and his suggestions as we go through this very difficult task of reforming how we do our oversight responsibilities in reference to our intelligence obligations.

Back to Senator McCain and his amendment, if we approve the McCain amendment, Senators will implement what is the most important recommendation of the 9/11 Commission for improvement of congressional oversight of intelligence activities--most important by the 9/11 Commission.

Now, why is John McCain getting in the middle of what would have to be termed a sheep and cattle war, if one goes back to the history of Arizona, and taking on the challenge of suggesting that the Intelligence Committee, or any authorizing committee, have appropriations power? That is tough. I mean, that really is tough.

I think everybody knows there is more than one way to skin a cat that is sticking his head in a bootjack than simply pulling on his tail. That is hard work. That is where nobody wants to reach their hand into, but there again that is John McCain.

John is from Arizona. I used to reside in Arizona. There is a lot of cactus in Arizona. One does not have to sit on each and every one of them. Sometimes people think that Senator McCain does that. Why is he doing this? Why is he fighting this sometimes lonely battle? Well, on page 420 of the 9/11 report, the Commissioners wrote this:

Under the terms of existing rules and resolutions the House

and Senate intelligence committees lack the power, influence

and sustained capability to meet this challenge.

He is right. He is dead on. He is pulling that cat by the tail in the bootjack. And in terms of being right, there are times that one can take on tough measures and sort of let them go and slide or one can do the right thing. The truth of it is that I can tell my colleagues, as chairman of the Intelligence Committee and an 8-year veteran of that committee--and it has been a privilege--we are fractionalized when we talk to Lee Hamilton, Governor Kean, Bob Kerrey, the former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, and others. They came to visit before the Intelligence Committee with Senator Rockefeller and myself, Senator Rockefeller being the distinguished vice chairman and my bipartisan partner in trying to do what is right on behalf of our national security--and we think we have done a good job, by the way, backed up by 22 professional staffers, the most of any committee. So, consequently, what happens to us is that when we do our work as quoted by the 9/11 Commission--and after the visit by the 9/11 Commission to the Committee, they agreed with us that we are fractionalized, that our job is pretty tough, that in terms of being an authorizing committee we probably are expected to have the most obligation, independence, leadership, clout in regards to oversight in reference to intelligence and national security of any committee in the Congress, but we have the least.

Why is that? It is because we are fractionalized in terms of sequential referral on demand. I am not going to get into that speech again because I think we are trying to work it out. I think we have a compromise, or I hope we have a compromise, and I thank Senator Rockefeller for being a leader in this instance.

Whatever we do, we know that we have to then first go to the Armed Services Committee and then, of course, we have to go to the Appropriations Committee.

Now, that is not a bad thing because we have many fine people serving on the Appropriations Committee. I do not mean to perjure the Appropriations Committee. Far from it. They have many obligations. They have their constitutional authority to do this. But what happens? The intelligence community comes before us during the long session of 6 months, 8 months, 9 months when we do our authorization and make priority changes and make recommended changes and make reform changes, some of which have been very dramatic. And I think they understand that, obviously, then we are going to have to go to the Armed Services Committee and then, obviously, we are going to have to go to the Subcommittee on Defense of the Appropriations Committee where they have done, I might add, a splendid job of doing their very best in terms of their obligations to meet our national security obligations vis-a-vis the intelligence community.

Now, what would someone do if they were a member of the intelligence community? They would appear before the authorizing committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee--and I am not saying it was wink them, blink them, and nod to a committee that has no authority, but one can sort of make that case--and I do not perjure anybody who has come before the committee because they are great people. They are laying their lives on the line. They are dedicated people. That is not my point.

What they do, however, is go to the Senate Armed Services Committee and then they also go to two primary members of this Senate whom I personally call friends and admire and respect, and there have been no two people in the Congress of the United States, perhaps in the history of the United States, who have done more for the military and done more during those times where we were stretched thin and hollow and addressing the tremendous problems we have today. I am talking about the distinguished Senator from Alaska, who is chairman of the committee, Ted Stevens and his counterpart, the Senator from Hawaii, Dan Inouye. I do not know who has been the stagecoach driver and who has ridden shotgun. During these particular years, they both worked equally well.

But what happens to them is that time demands come in and the intelligence community comes in and says: Wow, we have a problem. We have just had an ``Oh, my God'' hearing before the Intelligence Committee. Oh, my God, how did this happen? Khobar Towers, embassy bombings, USS Cole, the lack of really trying to figure out what happened when we missed the India nuclear explosion, 9/11, Somalia--do you know what. It was all tied together.

So the Appropriations Committee is faced with this urgent need, and they

respond. And the intelligence community pretty well gets what they want. That is not all bad, especially when we are facing some kind of emergency, but it basically cuts out the Intelligence Committee's authorization process to some degree. It cuts out what the Armed Services Committee does as well. It is time based.

The 9/11 Commission took a look at this and said: Congressional oversight for intelligence and counterterrorism is now dysfunctional. Congress should address this problem. We have considered various alternatives. The primary suggestion: a single committee in each House of Congress combining authorizing and appropriating authorities. The McCain amendment will accomplish this alternative. The McCain amendment will accomplish this by giving appropriations authority to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a man whom I admire, a man who has been a great friend, basically cited the example between 1865 and 1885 that when they took away powers from the Appropriations Committee, storm clouds arrived, lightning struck, and it was doom and gloom time until they restored that authority.

Let me suggest another number. It is called 9/11. Let me suggest all the hearings we have held in the Intelligence Committee--I call them ``Oh, my God'' hearings: Oh, my God, how did this happen?--indicated the systemic failure of the global intelligence community in regard to WMD and the situation in Iraq--not just the United States, everyone, including the United Nations.

The chairman of the Appropriations Committee and his counterpart, the ranking member--when he says there is no turf battle, I believe him. I don't know of any two Members who would put turf over conscience and turf over performance and the obligations of what they have already done. I know the chairman has mentioned that he and the members and the qualified staff of the Appropriations Committee have gone the world over, and they have. I know. I have been with them on many occasions, looking at intelligence and looking to see how the money is spent on the ground, taking a hard look. I understand that.

But we have 22 staffers, 22 professional staffers who have background and experience in regard to being an analyst at the DIA, being an analyst at the CIA with at least 10 years' experience. We have the staffers who put together the 521-page WMD report, where the chips fell where they may. Guess what happened. The intelligence was wrong. Some people try to put that at the foot of the President. He made very declarative and aggressive comments. Others in this Congress received the same intelligence and made the same statements. Now, of course, a lot of that has changed because it is an even-numbered year, and you know what kind of situation we are in.

But I am trying to say your Intelligence Committee stands ready to do a professional job in regard to budget authority, should we be granted that privilege, with 22 professional staffers. We have done that. There have been occasions where we have been granted access. I don't mean that in a cynical way because the Appropriations Committee usually is in a big hurry with what they have to do, meeting obligations that are emergencies--where we have made our suggestions. Some of them, not all of them--as a matter of fact, not very many of them--were accepted by the Appropriations Committee or, for that matter, the Armed Services Committee. Some of them, a lot of them, ended up on the cutting-room floor.

In some cases we were not granted access because of the time equation, and wouldn't you know that many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and many of the problems we have experienced that nobody wants to see that we have had hearings on are the same kinds of things we have tried to fix in the Intelligence Committee and maybe could have had we not had this fractionalized process that the 9/11 Commission has talked about.

I have talked about what a hard job this is. I talked about the courage Senator McCain has had to approach this topic. It is a tough topic. Really, this is not hard. Members have a choice. They have a choice to make. A vote for the McCain amendment enhances the congressional oversight by addressing the findings of the 9/11 Commission, period. The amendment will enhance the power, influence, and sustained capability of the Senate Intelligence Committee; that is, to conduct oversight of this Nation's intelligence activities. It couldn't be any more simple.

Members, you should vote for the measure if you want to enhance the Senate Intelligence Committee's ability to conduct congressional oversight as recommended by the 9/11 Commission and, by the way, virtually every other commission that has studied this. So the McCain amendment is in harmony with the 9/11 Commission's major recommendation for improving congressional oversight and intelligence activities.

I am not saying the appropriators or the Armed Services Committee has done anything wrong, egregious, dysfunctional, whatever. They have done a great job under the circumstances with the setup of the Congress as it has been. But we stand ready with 22 professional staffers to do the job. I believe we can do the job.

I am voting for the McCain amendment. In behalf of our national security, I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, just when you think things have gotten about as bad as they can get with the situation in Iraq and what got us into Iraq, another shoe drops. This morning we open up our newspapers and we read that the Duelfer report came out yesterday. This is the person whom the Bush administration picked to investigate Iraq's weapons programs. And here is what the headline reads:

U.S. ``Almost All Wrong'' on Weapons.

It is not that we were just slightly wrong, 50 percent or 60 percent or 40 percent--99.9 percent of everything that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell said prior to the war in Iraq and right after it was wrong. Where did they come up with this stuff? Where did they come up with the sayings they had on Iraq?

Here is Colin Powell:

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological

weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many

more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons

and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and

destruction.

That was in a February 5, 2003 address to the U.N. Security Council. Where did he get that nonsense? Did he just pluck it out of thin air?

Here is Condoleezza Rice:

We have found, in Iraq, biological weapons laboratories

that look precisely like what Secretary Powell described in

his February 5th report to the United Nations.

That was from May 28, 2003. She says: We found them.

Where are they? Don't these people have any shame at all?

Here is President Bush:

Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and is

rebuilding facilities used to make more of those weapons.

Absolutely false.

Donald Rumsfeld, March 11, 2003:

. . . we know that he continues to hide biological or

chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often

as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential

neighborhoods.

Totally false.

Here is President Bush before the United Nations, September 16:

Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with

ranges beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the U.N. Work

at testing and production facilities shows that Iraq is

building more long-range missiles that can inflict mass death

throughout the region.

President Bush, United Nations, September 16, 2002. Totally false. Totally false.

Here is Vice President Cheney:

Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute . . .

We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire

nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact,

reconstituted nuclear weapons.

Vice President Cheney, March 16, 2003--every single one of them telling mistruths to the American people to get us sucked into the Iraq war. Now we have--I don't know what happened yesterday--1,061 dead, 8,000 of our young people casualties, injured for life. How many countless innocent Iraqis, women, children? They didn't like Saddam Hussein either, but they are now injured, many of them killed. The country is in chaos. Iraq is a quagmire.

The rest of the world is looking at this, and we are the laughingstock of the world. They are saying, what happened to you, America? What happened to you?

I am delighted to yield.

I didn't hear that.

Thirteen thousand Iraqis have been killed?

Well, I don't know if that is right. We would have to look at that to see if that is right. Thirteen thousand Iraqi civilians killed? How many women, how many children? The rest of the world is asking, what has happened to you, America? America used to be the moral leader in the world. You were the ones we looked to for guidance and direction, to be honest and open, not secretive, not lying to the rest of the world. When we confronted Nikita Khruschev in 1962 when they put missiles in Cuba, we had the photographs. We had the positive proof. The world has looked upon us like that.

And now? Now the rest of the world is looking at the United States and saying: You are just lying. You lied about this. You covered it up. And look at the mess you have created now.

And still President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, the whole crowd of them still continues to insist that everything they did was right. They still continue to insist that they would do the whole thing just as they did it.

In any other country in this world, if the leadership of that country had done this, they would have to resign in disgrace.

They certainly would not be seeking reelection. I am surprised this President and Vice President and their team are asking the American people to put them there again after this--1,061 Americans dead; several thousand, 8,000, severely injured for the rest of their lives. Now we have this report about 13,000 Iraqi civilians dead. It is a country in chaos.

America is isolated in the world community when, after September 11, 2001, the world was on our side. They were with us. They wanted to help us go after al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the terrorists because the rest of the world knew then, as they know now, they have a stake in going after terrorists. But they had no stake in going into a misguided war, a war that we were taken into with falsehoods--absolute, total falsehoods.

I would be the first to say I don't have all the answers on how we get out of Iraq. It is just like dropping a ceramic bowl and it breaks and you have to put it together again. It is very tough. But I do know this: We will never solve our situation in Iraq, we will never get our troops out of Iraq with the leadership we have in the White House right now. This President has burned his bridges; he has poisoned the well with every country in the world. People know they misled us and continued to mislead us in Iraq. I mentioned the lives. How about the money--$200 billion and counting. Well,

they say $130 billion or $140 billion. Come on, it is going to be well over $200 billion, and we know that. Yet we cannot provide health care to our people. We cannot fund No Child Left Behind. We cannot pass a highway bill to rebuild our highways because we don't have enough money.

No, I don't have all the answers in Iraq. I am the first to state that. I know one thing: We will never be able to get out of Iraq and solve that mess with the leadership that has so misled us and the world in the past. We need new leadership with fresh credibility to give them a chance to go to the rest of the world and say there is someone new here, and we are going to rebuild those coalitions and alliances. We are not going to continue to go down that road. There is one thing about being consistent; there is another thing about being stubborn and reckless.

I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes.

Mr. President, I wanted to close up anyway. We hear a lot about consistency. I tell people this: Imagine you are a passenger in a car. You are on a steep mountain road, and you want to get to the bottom of the mountain. You look over, and your driver is President Bush. He has his hands gripped tightly on that wheel, and he is looking straight down that road. You see a bend in the road up ahead and you say: Mr. President, there is a bend in that road. But the President is hunched over that wheel, he is gripping it tightly, and he is looking straight ahead and squinting those eyes, and he says: I don't care. I started out straight, and that is the way I am going.

Then he drives you over the cliff. You get to the bottom, but your car is wrecked and you are either dead or severely injured.

Imagine yourself a passenger in a car on that same steep mountain road. You look over and your driver is John Kerry. You say: Look, Mr. Kerry, there is a bend in the road.

He says: I see that bend, and I know how to take it. So he takes that bend and another couple bends, and he gets you safely to the bottom of the mountain. The car is secure and you are safe. That car represents our country, and you are the ``passenger''--the people of this country.

I am sorry, Mr. President, it is not enough to be stubborn and reckless. That hurts our country. That hurts our people. It is better to be tough and smart. It is better to know that sometimes our enemies are going to shift their tactics. The terrorists are not always going to do one thing. We better be able to respond.

Yet we are bogged down in one quagmire in Iraq, and that is where we are headed. That is dragging our country down. It is hurting our people. That is stubborn. That is reckless. That is not consistent. That is ignoring the fact that any military leader will tell you that when you go into battle, you have a plan.

But if the enemy does something different, you have to be able to maneuver. George Bush cannot maneuver. He is stuck in the quicksands of Iraq, while al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden go about their business. Better to be tough and smart than to be reckless and stubborn.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, at this moment there are several matters pending before the Congress before we recess and/or adjourn. One of them is something that is extremely critical to a lot of people in our country and that is disaster assistance. It is not only the hurricanes in Florida, but it is the droughts farmers and ranchers have faced throughout our country, obviously especially in rural parts of America, and in my State, Montana, quite severely.

Montana has faced a drought, mostly around the southwestern part of our State. There are parts of Montana that are not droughted out. It is precarious. Because of the almost arbitrary patterns of nature, it is hard to know where it is going to rain or where it is

not going to rain, but the fact is, a lot of people are in very tough shape. They need disaster assistance just like the folks in Florida. Maybe Louisiana and Alabama need disaster assistance as well.

It is important for us to remember that we are here, frankly, to help Americans. We are not 50 different nations. We are one country. We are one Congress with one Senate and one House. We have one President. It is true that we have 50 States, but we are one country and we have one Congress. The Constitution provides Congress will enact legislation and the executive branch will administer the legislation, but it is up to us to do what is right for our country, for America.

Sometimes an argument is made, and I even heard this argument made on the floor, that hurricanes are sudden and when there is damage those folks deserve assistance, but droughts are over time; therefore, they don't deserve disaster assistance because it is not really a disaster. It is something that is an adverse consequence that happens over time.

Responsible Senators are making that argument to me. Actually, I question whether they are responsible if they are making that argument. It is a totally fallacious argument. It is wrong for a Senator to say, even if it is in private: You folks don't need agricultural disaster assistance because that's over time; that's not a sudden, immediate occurrence.

The problem, obviously, is that whenever there is a hurricane--and it is too bad, the damage it causes--our national networks focus on it because it is a sudden, at that time, at that one moment disaster, so the TV cameras are there, the correspondents are there. How many times did we see the shots of disaster in Florida? And well we should, because it is terrible what those people are going through. There were parts of Florida hit several times and we should help those people who need help. There is no doubt about that.

But, as I said, we should help those people who need help, and there are some other people who need help on account of nature's disastrous occurrences and they are farmers and ranchers. It is true that droughts have occurred every 4 or 5 or 6 years. But that does not diminish the argument that they need help, too. It is nature that caused the problem. They didn't cause the problem. They deserve help just as everybody else deserves help. We are one country, one Congress, one Senate, and one House, and we should very quickly give that aid, not only to the folks in Florida but also to the folks across our country who suffered disaster because of drought.

Many times on the floor Senators have shown photographs of drought in the country. It is real. I ask all Members--of course they don't have the time--to get out of Washington, DC. Get out of the cities. Go across America and see where the drought is. They are droughted out.

There are also floods which have totally destroyed crops. There are floods in eastern North Dakota, for example, near the Mississippi River. Take North Dakota, it is flood at one end of the State and it is drought at the other end of the State--they are both disasters. That is, both phenomena have destroyed the crops.

This is pretty simple stuff. It is very simple. It is basic. I don't know why we can't get together and help folks who suffered losses around the country, natural losses--we are talking about natural losses here--just as folks in the South, particularly Florida, suffered natural losses.

Then there is the other argument: There is a farm bill. The farm bill takes care of farmers. There is a farm bill and it is a pretty big farm bill.

Let's look at the facts. How much of that farm bill actually went to farmers? A very low percentage. Most of the farm bill, I might say, went to other programs--the Food Stamp Program. In fact, only about 18 percent of the total farm bill is dollars allocated to farmers and ranchers, essentially support payments. Why? To fight other countries that have bigger support payments for their farmers which make our crops even less competitive, so we have to have a farm bill to make sure our farmers are competitive, too. Clearly, that is one reason for the next round of the WTO talks, the Doha Round; namely, for producing nations to begin working together to lower some of their price supports, particularly export subsidies. That is the most heinous form of subsidy. Get rid of those export subsidies, as the Europeans have agreed they will begin to do, and then we can address the problems of the farmers.

But the main point is only 18 percent goes to farmers; the rest goes to other programs, mainly food stamp programs.

Add to that, that 18 percent is irrelevant to the phenomenon we are talking about. It is irrelevant. Why is it irrelevant? It is irrelevant because that is a farm program which pays farmers essentially only when they produce crops. It is a support payment program. It depends upon the price of crops. But when farmers do not produce any crops because of a natural disaster, the farm program does not help them. It doesn't help them and that is why we have agricultural disaster assistance programs. We have had several--many in the past. That is the same kind of program we should have right here today.

So I say to my colleagues who are now negotiating agricultural disaster assistance, the real question is, What do we do now? The House passed a $3 billion agricultural disaster assistance bill. It is folded into the hurricane assistance dollars. It is now over here in the Senate. The conferees are trying to decide whether that should be put in the Homeland Security appropriations, which is in conference.

I don't care about the process. That is irrelevant to me. I only care about the result. The result should be that, while we give aid to folks who suffer damage on account of the hurricanes, we should also give aid to our farmers and ranchers across our country who have suffered an equally devastating natural disaster. Let's just do it and do it now.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, what is the pending business?

Mr. President, I have an amendment to the underlying bill which I send to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, I offer this technical clarifying amendment to the underlying resolution. It

delineates committee jurisdiction. Part of it is with respect to the Customs Service, which the Finance Committee has had jurisdiction over for 188 years. Now the Homeland Security agency appropriately should handle all national security matters in protecting American security. It is appropriate that those functions be transferred to that department which has that jurisdiction.

It is also important that the Finance Committee maintain jurisdiction over not the national security aspects of Customs but the commerce aspects of Customs. This amendment clarifies that distinction. It is in no way intended to have jurisdiction over the security aspects of homeland security--only the commercial side, for which customarily the Finance Committee has the appropriate role.

Yes.

That is correct.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I have an amendment I send to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I begin my remarks by praising both Senators Reid and McConnell for the important work they have done on this underlying amendment. They have accomplished some very good things that will strengthen the intelligence system in this country and, in so doing, strengthen our Nation's security.

I have had the honor of serving on the Intelligence Committee for the last 3 or 4 years. During that time, I have developed some grave concerns about the strength of that committee and our ability to exert the kind of oversight and leadership in the area of strengthening the Nation's intelligence that these difficult times demand.

Senators Reid and McConnell have addressed some of those concerns very directly. Tenure on the panel is made permanent, which will allow those of us who serve there to develop the kind of expertise needed for the very intricate, sophisticated decisions that need to be made.

It will also enable us to exert the kind of oversight necessary to make

sure the executive branch carries out its functions in the way they need to be carried out.

They also provide resources to the committee to discharge our duties. Currently, the resources are not available and I am afraid that too often the Intelligence Committee gives the appearance of exerting oversight without effective oversight in fact. These things, and many others, are significant steps forward in addressing the concerns about what changes we need to make to have meaningful intelligence oversight and leadership in the intelligence area by the Congress.

I would also like to praise my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner. There is not a Member for whom I have more esteem and regard than the Senator from Virginia. It has been my privilege over the last year and a half to serve with him on the Armed Services Committee. In that capacity I have learned firsthand that there is no Member of this body who has a greater devotion to the national well-being and our Nation's security than the distinguished senior Senator from Virginia.

With that by way of background, I would like to extend my remarks in the following way. I know the Senators who worked on this issue have worked hard. In some respects, Senators Reid and McConnell have been given by our leaders almost an impossible task. They are asking them to reorganize this Congress in ways that touch upon the prerogatives and institutional interests of the Members. This is a very sensitive topic which often has failed to achieve results in the past. I salute them for their efforts.

It is said by some that this is the best we can do, and perhaps that is so. But I believe there are some ways in which we can do better, and we will not know if we can do better until we try. If we are unable to do better, it is not the fault of Senators Reid and McConnell but instead resides with the rest of us who have the privilege of serving in this institution.

It is also occasionally said that we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good, and that is absolutely true. That is an aphorism I have subscribed to on many occasions. This needs to be a practical process, focused upon results. It is what distinguishes us from political scientists, editorial writers, and pundits. We have to get things done.

But during these critical times, it is my heartfelt belief that we should push the envelope on what is possible and insist that we do everything we possibly can to strengthen this country and, along with it, Congress, and our ability to exert oversight and leadership in the area of intelligence. We should not settle for 75 percent or even 90 percent without an effort to do everything humanly possible to safeguard this country. Lives hang in the balance. That is why I am offering the amendment I offer today.

My amendment reflects the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Today, former Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton issued a statement supporting our efforts. I spoke with Congressman Hamilton yesterday, and he characterized our amendment as ``much better, much better, a definite step in the right direction.''

Our amendment represents the sensible center. I know there may be other amendments that touch upon the topic of consolidating appropriations and authorizations in a single committee. Our amendment does not touch upon that sensitive topic. Instead, it gives full meaning to what Senators Reid and McConnell are attempting to do in their amendment, and that is to elevate the Intelligence Committee and the function it discharges to the priority it deserves and to create a process and structure to match that priority.

Their proposal makes the Intelligence Committee what is called an A committee. It is important that we give that full meaning and no longer require that committee to defer to others through what is called ``on- demand sequential referral.'' To the viewers at home, on C-SPAN, this sounds like Washington-speak, and essentially it is. What it essentially means is the Intelligence Committee must seek the approval of other committees for its other recommendations, unlike the other A committees that exist in this body. If we stick with this proposal, it will mean that the Intelligence Committee and the function it discharges will have less authority than the Agriculture Committee, less authority than the Banking Committee, less authority than the Commerce Committee, the Energy Committee, the Environmental Committee, the Governmental Affairs Committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and the Judiciary Committee. Certainly these critical times require that the Intelligence Committee and the important national security function that it discharges be placed on a par with these other committees and that it be given a structure and authority to match.

As a practical matter, the current structure means that the appropriations process takes precedence over the authorization of intelligence. As a practical matter, too often it means that the intelligence authorization function itself is subservient to other authorizing committees. This is not the structure these times demand. This is what my amendment addresses.

Finally, this is an important moment for this institution and for each of us as individuals. This is a great institution, and I, among all our Members, have special reason to cherish its prerogatives and its rich tradition, having grown up in the shadow of the Senate.

Everyone who serves in this body is a patriot. Everyone is devoted to the national security interests of this country. All of us seek to do not what is easy but what is right. Yet it is too often the case that we are afflicted by tunnel vision. Too often we get caught up in institutional concerns and prerogatives without stepping back to take the broader view of what is important for the country as a whole. That is what we are attempting to address in this debate today. It requires a sacrifice from us all. That is what this amendment would accomplish-- giving up a small amount of our individual power and prerogatives in the greater national interest. It is what the times demand. It is what this amendment would accomplish. It is why I speak strongly in favor of its consideration.

Mr. President, I will yield the floor.