Plain Language in Government Communications Act of 2007

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, for the benefit of leaders' offices, after I am done speaking about the flood situation in Iowa, I have been asked by the leader to make a unanimous consent request in regard to E- Verify. So I want to notice the offices about what I am going to do. It will be down the road, in half an hour or so.

Mr. President, last night I came to the floor to ask for unanimous consent on the tax bill we referred to as the Midwest flood disaster tax relief package. I was denied unanimous consent to bring that up. I did not make a long justification for the necessity of doing that, but I wish to speak to that point now. I am not going to further ask unanimous consent the same as I did last night; I am just going to speak about why I did it last night and why it was essential.

There is one thing I want to put in the Record at this point, and it is in regard to one of the points that was made by the Senator from Illinois last night, Mr. Durbin, the Democratic whip. He said one of the reasons for denying my request for the tax relief package I am talking about for flood victims in the Midwest is because similar provisions were contained in S. 3335, the Jobs, Energy, Families, and Disaster Relief Act of 2008, and that bill did not get 60 votes. Obviously, it didn't get 60 votes for the reason a lot of other bills have not gotten 60 votes on the floor of the Senate: We in the minority want to stay on the No. 1 problem affecting this country; that is, the high cost of gasoline and the energy crisis that is facing the Nation. We want the majority party to give us opportunities to offer amendments to increase the supply of energy in this country as opposed to paying $140 a barrel to buy oil and import it from overseas, giving money to nations that want to train terrorists to kill Americans. That is the reason S. 3335 did not get 60 votes. So we are technically on the Energy bill.

But one of the things he said about that bill was to leave the impression that S. 3335 did everything that needs to be done for the disaster relief in the Midwest, and it doesn't, and I made that point last night, so I am not going to repeat that.

But even if S. 3335 had passed, we had previously had a Statement of Administration Policy, and I am only going to quote one sentence from a longer Statement of Administration Policy that I am going to put in the Record, and that sentence is this: ``However, due to other objections to the bill, should it be presented to the President in its current form, his senior advisers would recommend a veto.'' So I think that when we are under a situation where we have the trauma of floods and people being homeless because of the flooding situation in the Midwest, it doesn't do much good to pass a piece of legislation that is going to be vetoed by the White House anyway.

The point I was trying to make last night is that we shouldn't be adjourning for our summer August break and not taking care of things in the Midwest the very same way we took care of the situation for New Orleans caused by Katrina. Of course, the point is that the legislation we seek for the Midwest is the same as the legislation we sought and we actually accomplished for New Orleans.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full Statement of Administration Policy from which I quoted.

Mr. President, before I speak to the point, just so you know, in Iowa the flood situation is very much in the headlines. I think one of the problems we are having in the Midwest, in getting Congress to pay attention to the problems that remain from the flooding of June, is that it is not constantly on television. It is not on television all the time. Of course, for 2 months, 3 months, the situation

in New Orleans was constantly on television, and Congress responded.

Mr. President, I see the whip here, and maybe I said something to which he wants to react. If he does, I would be happy to yield for that purpose.

Anyway, we have here in the Des Moines Register a headline that says, ``Storm Hit One in Five School Districts,'' and then it has reports on how much it is going to cost to fix the schools. We have another headline here that says, ``At Least $30 Million Needed to Repair Roads,'' as an example.

Then we have a statement that was printed in the Davenport newspaper that was written by Charlotte Eby. I am not going to quote the whole thing. I just want to speak to parts of it.

While Congress puts off consideration of the flood relief

bill, it looks like the Iowa legislature will be rolling up

its sleeves to help out Iowa flood victims.

It speaks about a growing sense that the Iowa legislature has to step in.

The delay of a Federal response by Congress could also push

back the State response, a development that left Iowans

angry.

It quotes the minority leader of the Iowa senate. Ron Wieck, Republican of Sioux City, said action cannot wait, and if that means a special session, he is for it. It doesn't quote him, but it says he is appalled that Congress will go home for the summer recess without passing a Federal flood relief package when floods left people in the Midwest homeless.

Then the last paragraph is not anybody's quote except the author's, Charlotte Eby:

Maybe the U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House

speaker Nancy Pelosi ought to walk the streets of Cedar

Rapids. They would think twice about heading home for their

August recess without lending a helping hand.

Then I have a quote from Congressman King, who went to Cedar Rapids, I think, as recently as Monday of this week. He says:

This is Katrina. I have walked into and out of those

buildings (in New Orleans) and I tell you, you wouldn't be

able to tell the difference.

He means telling the difference between the destruction that went on in New Orleans in the 2005 hurricane and what happened in Cedar Rapids in June when it was hit by a 500-year flood.

I do applaud Senator Obama because he was in Cedar Rapids yesterday campaigning, and he was also very attentive to the problems of Cedar Rapids in his town meeting. He said he came there and wanted to listen. I have not heard reports on what questions he received, what complaints he received. He may have been talking just to a friendly audience--I don't know. But he did say that he was there to listen, and I hope after he has listened to the situation in Cedar Rapids that he will tell friends in the Congress of the United States that we need to act quickly. I hope he would say we should have acted this week--which action now, of course, is impossible because we are breaking for our summer break.

I am here once again to discuss the plight of my fellow Iowans and many others throughout the Midwest following a series of deadly tornadoes, storms, and floods. It is a multiple disaster, tornadoes and floods, and not just floods. Iowa has 99 counties. Of those, 80 counties have been designated as a disaster area by FEMA.

When looking at a map of Iowa, it is much easier to count the few counties that are not disaster areas than the vast majority that are disaster areas. Every weekend except for this past weekend since we were in session, I have been back in Iowa to meet with people affected by the storm and to see the devastation for myself. As I noted last week, estimates of damage are in the billions of dollars and are climbing every day.

I thought nothing could match my frustration at seeing so many Iowans in such great need, but the fact that we have not been able to act upon both the appropriations bill, as well as this tax bill, has frustrated me. It seems because we do not see the storm on television all the time that there is an apparent lack of desire to help the Midwest recover from these deadly tornadoes, storms, and floods, quite contrary to the quick action that Congress took after Katrina.

Before I go further, I want to display a few pictures of the flooding. The first will show one of many railroad bridges that was severely damaged. Businesses such as the one in this picture rely on this railroad track, this bridge, to receive their inputs and move their goods. Throughout Iowa there are similar bridges that are damaged. Iowa railroads play a vital part in moving our agricultural products and goods, to do it efficiently, and obviously in a more energy-efficient way. This infrastructure is important for Iowa's interstate commerce and international trade.

I have another picture that shows the museum of art at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. This is the museum of art. I believe I have heard from the university officials that this building is going to have to be torn down.

The next picture shows flooding along the Iowa River. You can see the tops of buildings. These are homes and businesses of people who just want their lives back. They are not asking for anything extraordinary or excessive, but they are in need of help to recover and rebuild. They are, in a sense, asking for the same help that New Orleans got after Katrina.

I would like to use the phrase ``so that they can get things back to normal.'' However, it is very difficult to use that phrase. It will take years before Iowa recovers, and it will not be the same, although we will still be a very strong State.

I can share, for example, the story of my hometown of New Hartford, a community of 670 just west of Waterloo, IA. An F5 tornado ripped through this area, destroying a whole section of town. The floods then came and inundated the town. Out of 270 homes in New Hartford, IA, 240 had damage or were destroyed. Businesses were also harshly affected. Many of them are trying to decide if they want to stay in business or if they can afford to stay in business. Several have already decided not to reopen.

The town I lived around all my life as a farm boy--and still as a farmer--will never be back to normal. It won't ever be the same. I think we will have a thriving community but, quite frankly, it won't be the same.

The next chart shows you a picture of downtown Cedar Rapids. I am talking about a 500-year flood. The previous flood record was about 19 feet. Levees could take up to 22 feet. But I think this flood got as high as 31 feet and has been referred to as a 500-year flood.

As you look at this picture, think of all the homes and businesses that are severely damaged and destroyed. Downtown Cedar Rapids is not going to be the same. Since Cedar Rapids and other places in Iowa are not popular as vacation spots as are other cities, you probably haven't seen or heard much of the devastation except for the week of television when it was actually underwater. I can assure everyone that the people of Iowa and the Midwest deserve the same consideration that was given to the people of New York after 9/11 and the people of the gulf coast after the hurricanes of 2005.

Last week I touched on how the response to the Midwest disasters has been different from the response to other disasters. I would like to elaborate on that point. These are some of the same points I made last night, but I only took about 2 minutes to make these points.

On August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the gulf coast, causing widespread devastation. The Congress was in recess at the time; however, the Republican Congress and the Senate Finance Committee sprang into action immediately at the staff level, even before we got back the day after Labor Day. We immediately started working with the Governors of the affected States and set out goals that we hoped to accomplish when we finally came back into session.

On September 28, 2005, less than a month----

I ask unanimous consent to continue my speech for as much time as I might consume.

Yes. About 7 or 8 minutes, I think.

On September 28, less than a month after Hurricane Katrina, I chaired a hearing entitled, ``Hurricane Katrina: Community Rebuilding Needs and Effectiveness of Past Proposals.'' Governor Blanco of Louisiana, Governor Barbour of Mississippi, and Governor Riley of Alabama all participated.

On October 6, 2005, I chaired another hearing titled ``The Future of the Gulf Coast Using Tax Policy to Help Rebuild Businesses and Communities and Support Families.'' Treasury Secretary Snow testified at that hearing.

Congress also passed tax legislation very quickly. The Katrina Emergency Relief Act of 2005 was signed by the President on September 23, 2005. This unoffset package cost more than $6 billion. That package was followed up by the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, which was signed by President Bush in December of 2005. This unoffset package was scored to cost around $8.6 billion. Neither of these packages were subject to a rollcall vote in the Senate, but both were passed by unanimous consent.

I want to make it clear that we did the right thing by setting aside our planned agenda to help the people affected by hurricanes as quickly as we could. Some of the people still living on the gulf coast still need our help, and we should be helping them, and some of these tax provisions in what we call the extenders package continue some of that help. Passing these bills without offsets was also the right thing to do. As any of my staffers can tell you, I am very careful with the money. However, when people are suffering from a massive natural disaster, it is no time to be a cheapskate.

I am also very frustrated by the desire of some House Democrats to offset this tax relief package for Iowans and other Midwesterners because that is a double standard. We did not demand offsets when we were trying to help New Orleans. I am not asking for anything more than the same consideration that was given to the victims of other major disasters.

I have learned lessons from previous tax disaster packages. We learned we need to tailor the relief so more is targeted specifically for those who suffered damages and really need the assistance. Therefore, the package I introduced, that I tried to get unanimous consent on last night, called the Midwestern Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2008, provides targeted assistance to families and businesses in 10 States throughout the central United States to help those who suffered damage from these deadly storms and floods, to help them rebuild their lives.

The estimated cost of the bill is less than $4 billion. We need to be prudent with our Federal money, and as I stated, my tax package is targeted to those who suffered loss and is a reasonable cost to help these victims of the storms and floods in the 10 States that were affected. From that standpoint, that is something we have learned in the last 3 years from the package that was passed after Katrina.

There were people who took advantage of some provisions who were not harmed by the natural disaster, so we have tailored this bill so that only people who were harmed by the flood situation are the ones we will help. We had Senators Harkin, Bond, McCaskill, Coleman, Klobuchar, Durbin, Obama, Roberts, Brownback, Lugar, and Bayh all as original cosponsors of this bill. In the House, the Iowa Congressional Delegation introduced a companion bill, and the list of the original cosponsors to this bill shows this is a very bipartisan package. We all recognize the need for targeted relief for the Midwest. The problem seems to be the ability to get the bill up in a timely fashion like we did in the case of New Orleans. I have been hearing that the Democratic leadership in the House is insisting that the package be offset, which is completely different than how we responded to disasters in the past when we didn't worry about offsets. Normally when we have emergencies, they are emergencies; you get the bill passed to help the people who need it.

Just yesterday the Senate voted against cloture on an extenders package put forward by Senate Democrats. It purported to include disaster relief. I am taken aback that the Senate Democrats would politicize the suffering of so many people just to try to get an extenders bill passed. The disaster relief in that bill was watered down. It provided substantially less assistance for Iowa and the other States in the central portion of the United States.

The Senator from Illinois is here, and I hope he hears that because I want to emphasize that that bill is quite a bit different and doesn't do as much good. It is not targeted. It is not helping people who need to be helped right now.

Its authors were apparently motivated by the twin misconceptions that the Midwestern disasters are not as severe as they really are and that we should undertake generic tax relief at the expense of the Midwest.

When I say the proponents of the Democratic extender package think the disaster is not as severe as they are, I say that noting that their package provided less assistance to the Midwest than my bipartisan tax- targeted disaster tax bill did provide.

The Democratic disaster package also had a higher revenue score than my package. I told you we tried to scale this back so we did not make the same mistakes we did in the case of Katrina, where a lot of people who did not get hurt by the disaster were able to take advantage of it--not our intention. But because we probably hastened it through to get help to Katrina victims, some people took advantage of it.

We tailored this so only people who have a disaster can benefit from it. It had a higher revenue score, as I said, than the Democratic alternative. They included the whole country instead of disasters that have not occurred. I am not arguing that we should look at putting generic assistance into the Tax Code to assist States when Federal disasters are declared the future. It seems to me that is a worthy thing for us to be discussing.

However, I do not think it is right to slow down the help for the Midwest because you want a broader national policy. People in the Midwest and Iowa are suffering now and have been for almost 2 months. They have experienced a severe event that was well above the 500-year flood level. This is an extraordinary disaster. We need the help right now.

The proper time to make a thorough a review of how we generally respond to disasters should not come at the expense of a specific massive natural disaster that has occurred and the people need immediate assistance. The author of the disaster package put forward in the Democrat's extender bill may have meant well, but I cannot help but feel that Iowa and the Midwest would be getting the short end of the stick.

Their disaster package also included a provision that only benefitted New York, at a cost of more than $1 billion. This is the second-largest provision in that disaster relief package, when people are literally trying to rebuild their homes, their businesses, and lives in the Midwest. It is simply insulting and disgraceful to use the misery of others to play politics and gamesmanship at a time when we should be able to put politics aside, as we did in September 2005, to help people going through extraordinarily difficult times.

However, there are apparently some who, because we do not see this on television or because they have other agendas, want to take advantage to get more. At the same time, I am trying to get help for my constituents.

The correct question to put is simply: How can I help?

The best course of action would be for the House and Senate to pass the Midwestern Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2008 and do it as we did in September 2005; do it by unanimous consent.

We can discuss general disaster response as well, but right now the people of Iowa are suffering and the Midwest is suffering as well. We have a moral obligation to help them as we helped the people and citizens of New York after 9/11 and the gulf coast when they needed help.

If anyone honestly believes Iowans do not deserve our help, then please come down to the floor, state your views, talk about it. I will encourage anyone who has doubts about the severity of this disaster to do like Senator Obama did yesterday, come to Iowa and I will be glad to take you around when you can come.

I am ready to yield the floor, but I had previously made a statement that

I was going to make a unanimous consent request on the immigration bill. I am not going to do that.

I yield the floor.

I object.

Mr. President, yes, I will take that opportunity. I hope I get to have an opportunity to offer a unanimous consent request as well for our side of the aisle, if you want to be completely fair. In the last few weeks in this body, we have not necessarily been fair.

So let me take advantage of the majority whip's invitation to respond. First of all, he knows, because he is in the leadership, that I gave the majority party information, at least 48 hours ago, and maybe 72 hours ago, that this week I was going to seek a unanimous consent request, and all day yesterday we were denied that opportunity, even at the point before adjournment and my speaking to Leader Reid about when can I do my unanimous consent request.

You know what I was told? After the adjournment resolution. So do not say

I did not make an attempt to do it and do not say you did not know about it. If you wanted to cooperate with us, we could have had that cooperation. But there does not seem to be that sort of comity in the Senate anymore.

Another point you made was that I had a chance to work for a tax relief package for flood victims. The bill you voted for and you asked unanimous consent on did less for your constituents than the legislation we had been working on for 2 weeks.

Then, he brings up the point about not working through committee. Well, most of the work on this bill has been so we can get a consensus package, working with even Chairman Rangel's staff, so it is not only bipartisan but bicameral, so we can put together something and get it done very quickly in the same consensus manner that we were able to help the victims of New Orleans.

Then, the other reason: Why would the Senator from Illinois cosponsor our bill if it was not the right bill for his State and for the Midwest and for this disaster?

We have always tried to do things as quickly as can be done when people hurt. That is why when we got back after Katrina--on Tuesday or Wednesday--we had $10 billion that we were going to give to New Orleans. Before the end of the week was up, it was $60 billion, in 2005.

Now, do you think the committee had an opportunity to work its will on that? No. They were responding to need. Don't you think your constituents hurt across from Burlington? They may be still underwater. I do not know. A couple weeks ago, they were when I was talking on the radio station. In Burlington you had constituents who still had just the roofs of houses showing. Don't you think they need help right now?

So I think, first of all, procedural-wise, either the majority whip does not know what is going on when I notify his cloakroom that I am going to offer it or else he does not care or he wants to mislead.

The second thing is, he is not voting for the bills and pushing the bills that will help his constituents the most, and we still do not have the relief.

So that is my response to the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Bennett, I object.

Mr. President, before the Senator from Illinois leaves the floor, I want to ask unanimous consent to bring up a bill to which he is probably going to object. But I want him to know that people on this side of the aisle want to move things along.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 3322, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the Grassley amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and the bill be held at the desk pending further House action.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to put some facts on the

table about the high cost of energy. I know many of my colleagues have left town, but some are still here. And even though today is August 1, I doubt that it is the last we are going to hear on this debate. I expect that we will hear about it all during August.

I come to the floor this afternoon to just put a few last remarks into the Record about what I think this debate has been about and what I think it will be about when we return. I know some of my colleagues have put out statements today about what they think we should do in moving forward. I think it is very important to address the issue of the high cost of energy and to put forth a realistic plan for our country to move forward.

Many times this week we heard the slogan: Find more and use less. It reminds me of the slogans we hear on oil company commercials who spend hundreds of millions of dollars saying things such as ``beyond petroleum,'' and ``look at the future we are planning.'' They are spending all of that money trying to convince us they have a plan, when in reality they are keeping us addicted to oil.

Mr. President, now is not the time to worry about big oil. They just posted astronomical second quarter profits. ExxonMobil alone made about $130 million a day--not bad for a hard day's work impacting consumers. In fact, since the Bush Administration came into office, oil industry profits have totaled $641 billion. And as this chart shows every year's profit was greater than the last.

The complexity of this issue is that many colleagues really think that drilling more is going to solve our nation's energy crisis. But the clear facts is it is not going to; drilling more will just continue to add to the profits of these companies at a time when we should be investing in clean energy solutions.

So now is not the time to give the American people the false hope that drilling is going to have any effect on oil prices or provide any drop of relief at the pump. Now is not the time to play politics and to try to continue to play the blame game.

Instead now is the time to realize that our economy can't take much more of this. We simply have to get off of oil. It is time, after 8 years of an administration with a dead-end oil policy, that we understand the long-term cost of our addiction to oil and how it is strangling our economy and our vitality. Because unless we change course, and change course soon, we soon will be sending $1 trillion abroad to cover our foreign oil addiction. No amount of drilling--no amount--in the United States will change that fact.

Just a few years ago I would come to the floor and talk about how we were 50-percent dependent, heading toward 60-percent dependent on foreign oil. Now we are talking about being 70-percent dependent and even more unless we change course.

I think it is safe to say that the last 8 years of this administration has done great damage to the continuation of our addiction to foreign oil. We have tried their approach. It doesn't work. So what we need to do today is move ahead.

We need to admit the United States consumes one-quarter of the world's oil but only has less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. We will never, ever be able to affect the world oil price. Even if we drilled in every corner of God's creation in the United States, we would not be able to affect the world price of oil.

Americans can do the math. They know we need to be aggressively putting new policies into place that will make us a 21st century leader in new energy solutions. That is what we should be doing in the Senate as well.

Unfortunately, it seems as though many of my colleagues aren't doing this simple math. Instead, they are trying to exploit the current crisis and convince us that we should continue this oil addiction. That the answer is to give big oil one of their top legislative priorities-- one they have wished for for several decades breaking the quarter- century-old moratorium on drilling off of America's pristine coast.

Pro-drilling advocates and certainly the President of the United States seem perfectly comfortable perpetrating what I think is a cruel hoax on the American people. They are willing to imply, to insinuate, and to outright pretend that drilling off our coastlines will help provide some relief at the pump. They are willing to pretend that drilling will somehow lessen our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Though my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not like to admit this, the American people can listen to experts at the Department of Energy who say:

Access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf Coast

regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude

oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

We heard that 2030 is the magic year by which drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf would produce supply. But our own Energy Information Administration said that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern gulf coast regions would not have a significant impact on the price before 2030.

I know we had a lot of discussion about the psychological impact, but oil industry experts have testified before Congress that the notion of more drilling would have no psychological effect on world oil prices. That is from oil analysts who have written books about oil and covered it for many years.

But even in 22 years the offshore drilling scheme will not provide consumers relief. This is what the Energy Information Administration said:

Because oil prices are determined on the international

market, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to

be insignificant.

So the notion that somehow our drilling is going to help us relieve the price when we are such a small player on the world market is really a hoax. We are not going to be able to have any significant impact on the price.

Even if we drilled in every last corner of our great Nation it would not have any impact. We will never be able to drill our way out of the fact that our addiction to oil leaves critical aspects of our economy in the hands of OPEC.

We do not have 22 years to wait. We need to be aggressive in getting off oil and move ahead. I know many of my colleagues really think the drilling that has been talked about here will provide relief, and they assume that oil companies would invest the tens of billions of dollars it would take to drill up and down our coastlines. I guess we should ignore for the moment that these same oil companies are not even utilizing 83 percent of the leases they already have.

But the truth is that all the drilling will do, even post-2030, is lead to 1 percent of what the United States needs. That is right, if we go ahead and lift the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling and that process starts and we get to 2030, the United States will still need over 22 million barrels of oil a day. That is what our growth rate is expected to be under the status quo. Drilling in the 600-million-acre moratorium areas would only meet 1 percent of U.S. needs in 2030. All that money, all that risk of catastrophic spills, all the years of waiting, and that is the payoff--1 percent.

It is not good enough, and the American people need and deserve better solutions. That is what, when we return, we have to focus on.

There is a way out of this hole. It is definitely not drilling deeper, and it is time to say enough is enough and that we have to change course. My colleagues who use a chart that says ``Find More, Use Less'' on the other side of the aisle have the same empty slogan as those oil company ads that pretend they are the solution.

In fact, I think the solution my colleagues on the other side of the aisle ought to consider is: Find more and hold up less. They ought to hold up less legislation that allows us to move forward on a renewable energy strategy. Find more renewable energy and sources of power and production for the United States that can impact the price consumers are paying now, can impact what they are going to have to pay in 2009, and what they can do to get us moving off our oil addiction.

I say hold up less, because if we look at what has happened in the last year or two, we have had many proposals to move ahead off oil and on to clean energy sources that would have impacted the price at the pump. In fact, what this chart shows is the dozen times the other side of the aisle held up critical clean energy bills.

Starting in June of 2007, when we had a $28 billion clean energy package that we tried to pass. This bill would have eliminated some of the subsidies that

oil companies got embedded in the Tax Code, because if we are at $126 or $140 a barrel of oil, it is pretty hard to argue that oil companies still need tax incentives.

One of the best parts of this legislative package created a consumer tax credit of up to $7,500 toward the purchase of plug-in electric vehicle. That was a provision I authored with Senator Hatch and Senator Obama. I know many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked a lot recently about the great promise of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles as a way to get us off our addiction to oil.

I talked about that 1 percent that was going to be supplied by drilling by 2030. If we invested in plug-in electric vehicles over roughly the same period of time, using electricity from our grid for fuel, we could have a 50-percent reduction in the amount of foreign oil we would need to import.

So the Republican plan by 2030 is to drill everywhere to reduce foreign oil needs by 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Our plan, which is investment in clean and alternative energy solutions, like the plug-in electric vehicles would reduce foreign oil imports by 6.5 million barrels of oil a day over the same time period.

The difference is unbelievable what we could have achieved if the Republicans would have stopped holding up these policies.

And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying: We are not supporting plug-in electric vehicles unless you give us offshore drilling. They are saying we are holding hostage the great ideas and promise of the future of reducing our oil dependence unless you agree to continue the old, insane practices of giving incentives to oil companies with record profits to continue to provide the non-solutions to one of our nation's greatest problems.

It is time to get the solutions out of the hands of the oil companies and into the hands of the American public who want tools to reduce their oil consumption.

Literally, my colleagues voted no for cars that could get over 100 miles per gallon on the equivalent of $1 of gasoline. That is right, that is what a plug-in hybrid will get you. That analysis and study is there, that our nation's electricity grid today has enough spare capacity to power 70 percent of cars on the road today if they were electric hybrids. So instead of paying $3.99 for a gallon of gas, you would only pay about one dollar for the same amount of electricity.

This was just one realistic proposal the majority offered to move our nation to where we need to go. But every time they vote no on one of these proposals, we slow up the process. Voting no in June of 2007 was holding us up to going to that transition.

So I am glad other people on the other side of the aisle realize the promise of plug-in electrics, but they are not voting to help us break through and implement these solutions that could help us today and break the shackles of big oil.

As I mentioned, this was a bipartisan bill that Senators Hatch, Obama, and I introduced over a year ago. Our bill provides scalable credits that increase up to $15,000 for large vehicles. We had this big discussion about what cars Americans drive, how big, how small, safety issues, farm vehicles, big transportation vehicles. The great thing about plug-in hybrids and battery technology moving us forward is we can put those in any size vehicle. We are not going to be limited to a small car. The legislation would also provide assistance for automakers and parts manufacturers to retool their facilities to speed up the transition time.

So the Hatch-Cantwell-Obama bill would have been very progressive in getting solutions out into the marketplace that could have gotten us toward that goal we need to get to quickly.

Unfortunately, in December of 2007, there was another blocked attempt for us to change this policy. In December of last year, the majority of Senate Republicans blocked what would have created a renewable electricity standard. That is something even President Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, supported and today Texas is the nation's largest wind energy producer for our country. But Republican obstructionism cost us over 90,000 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity by 2020. That is the equivalent of 135 new coal-fired powerplants.

If they had not blocked this legislation in December of last year, we could have been on our way in 2020 to reducing the amount of coal-fired powerplants that we would have had in our country and getting on to renewable wind energy. The billions of dollars in clean energy investment, tens of thousands of jobs could be making an incredible positive impact, more so than any drilling offshore could ever be.

Then, just a few days later, there was another blocked attempt to move toward a clean energy transition when Republicans blocked a smaller clean energy tax incentive package that also would have ended subsidies to the big oil companies that have made these record profits. Even this scaled-back approach was too much for big oil, and they basically made their voice heard on Capitol Hill. Big oil refused to give up what was $13 billion in unwarranted tax breaks over 10 years, despite hundreds of billions in profits over the last 8 years.

Mr. President, the American people should know that Senators that voted against that bill voted against solar power, against wind power, against making homes and our commercial buildings more efficient. Against incentives for homeowners to lower their home heating and cooling bills and against making the electricity grid smarter, less prone to blackouts, and against plug-in vehicles.

Last February, there was another successful effort to block $6 billion of clean energy tax incentives on the stimulus bill. This time we gave up and said: You know what, forget the oil company subsidies, we would like to get rid of them, but you don't want to get rid of them, so let's put this as part of the stimulus package and let's stimulate our economy by moving forward. The stimulus bill reported by the Finance Committee had $6 billion in clean energy incentives that would have provided a short-term extension of expiring tax credits and help us stimulate the clean energy economy instead of having it bleed a slow death.

But we failed to pass that legislation. It would have helped us with the creation of 100,000 green-collar jobs and $20 billion in energy investment over the next year. If $20 billion was not stimulus and 100,000 green energy jobs, I don't know what was. Yet that was another big hold on our ability to move forward.

The bottom line is, we cannot keep up this slogan of saying: Find more, use less. We need to find more clean energy and hold up less legislation that will let us get there. Quit holding hostage clean energy legislation that is the truer predictor of domestic energy production, of if we are going to continue to be hostage to foreign oil, of if we are going to make progress of moving the United States forward. But again our colleagues held us up on moving to that legislation.

In fact, it was interesting that during the time of this vote, some of my colleagues were actually out campaigning at a solar plant. The CEO at the solar plant during that debate said:

The only question before us today is if the Senate, which

is debating an economic stimulus bill at this very moment,

understands green and can be green. Federal tax credits for

solar energy are about to expire which will send the growing

solar energy into a tailspin, especially here in California.

But the Senate can ensure we keep the economic engine moving

forward and extend the solar tax credits as part of the

economic stimulus bill.

We know what the result was. We didn't pass that legislation. And the blockage continued.

In June of this year, blocking continued on a tri-partisan bill on the Senate floor. That is right, a climate change bill authored by an Independent, Republican, and a Democrat that would have had a low carbon fuel standard in it that would have saved an estimated 5 million barrels of oil per day by 2020. That is equal to nearly 85 percent of our daily oil imports from OPEC. Another missed opportunity, because that legislation didn't pass.

On June 10, we had another opportunity to try to pass clean energy legislation that would have helped us in reducing our critical energy needs. There were hundreds of businesses that were up here on the Hill asking for us to pass this legislation, telling us that new job creation and reduction of fuel costs depended on it, and yet, again, we had a blockage of this legislation. And it seemed, in fact, that many people

cared more about the hedge fund managers' ability to use offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes than they did whether we were going to solve this energy problem by making an investment in new energy. So again we had a blocked vote that prohibited us from taking action and taking our country in a new direction.

That same day we tried a second vote and again were blocked in a comprehensive effort to get oil companies to either reinvest a portion of their astronomical profits into these needed areas of infrastructure or pay the tax so we could help clean energy solutions. And you guessed it, it was also blocked and held up.

About 6 weeks ago, on June 17, there was another blocked attempt when we tried to come up with a resolution to the long overdue extensions of clean energy tax incentives. Again, a strict party-line discipline maintained a filibuster, and companies across America started to lose hope that we were going to keep this investment cycle.

The problem is, without the tax incentives every year, where we have failed to produce a coherent policy on clean energy, we have seen astronomical drops in investment. As this chart of wind energy investment shows there was a 73-percent drop in 2001 to 2002, and a 77- percent drop from 2003 to 2004, the two times Congress allowed the Production Tax Credit to expire. And this is where we have gotten in 2007--this level of investment in wind energy resources. Yet now it is collapsing right in front of us because certain Senators would not pass legislation to make continued investments and continued predictable policy that the clean energy industry can use to put up new power plants.

In fact, around this time I got a letter from a company that I think illustrates the mistake we made. It came from a solar company named Abengoa and the Arizona Public Service, a local utility company. They told me that the Senate's failure to pass clean energy tax incentives was going to lead to the cancellation of a 280-megawatt concentrating solar plant near Phoenix. That is a $1 billion investment down the drain, and 2,000 construction jobs that will not happen, as well as 80 full-time jobs lost that would have run the plant.

So we tried many times, but they continued blocking these critical bills. The filibustering just this week just further illustrates this issue.

It is frustrating because we have even heard from those who have been in the oil industry such as T. Boone Pickens and others who say that unless we aggressively act to reduce our dependence on oil and get off of foreign petroleum, we could see, as Mr. Pickens told us at one of our Senate hearings last week, $300-a-barrel oil.

I don't think any of my colleagues want to see that. So I hope my colleagues go home and understand that our future lies in providing opportunities to find more renewable production, not drilling hoaxes. I hope they will quit holding clean energy hostage for the oil company executives; quit holding up the good legislation that could move our country forward.

I hope my colleagues will come back to the Senate in September with the notion in mind that reducing by 50 percent our dependence on foreign oil by accelerating the transition to plug-in electric vehicles should be our goal. That they will realize that holding up good legislation hostage for the 1 percent--the 1 percent--we might get from our Outer Continental Shelf drilling is risking our country's future.

This is the time to make the transition, and I hope my colleagues will hear that and understand it is not time to keep perpetrating hoaxes backed by and focused on by the oil companies. Rather its time to stop the politics and get serious about implementing a plan that gets our country off our dependence on oil. So I hope when we get back in September the other side of the aisle will quit holding up these critical clean energy bills and work with us to move forward on a desperately needed new energy strategy for the United States that will provide real price relief for Americans.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to increase the number of full-time personnel of the Consumer Product U.S. Safety Commission assigned to duty stations at U.S. ports of entry or to inspect overseas production facilities to ensure that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the personnel necessary to adequately address the growing problem of import safety. This bill would more than triple the current number of commission staff assigned to U.S. ports of entry, by requiring that no less than 50 full-time import inspectors be in place at the beginning of the next fiscal year. Additionally, it would expressly authorize the CPSC to send such inspectors to examine the operations at overseas factories which manufacture consumer products destined for the U.S.

This legislation is critically necessary, given that an ever- increasing number of the consumer products now sold on our shelves are manufactured in countries with appalling safety and quality control standards, such as China. Sine the year 2000, foreign imports to the U.S. have increased 67 percent by value, with imports from China nearly tripling, growing from $100 billion in 2000 to $288 billion last year. Almost 20 percent of consumer products sold in the U.S. today were made in China. Particularly troubling is that Chinese manufacturers have cornered the U.S. market on toys, with over 80 percent of all toys sold in the U.S. coming from China. Since March 2007, over 8 million pieces of these Chinese-made toys have been recalled due to lead contamination alone.

Outrageously, the number of CPSC personnel dedicated to monitoring import compliance with U.S. health and safety requirements has been slashed along with other Commission resources during the very period in which trade liberalization has allowed foreign producers greater access to our markets. With over 60 percent of CPSC staff having been cut over the past 27 years--from almost 1,000 employees in 1980 to a record low of 420 employees in 2007--there remain only 15 full-time Commission personnel assigned to inspect imports at U.S. ports. According to a September 2, 2007, New York Times article, this handful of import inspectors ``are hard pressed to find dangerous cargo before it enters the country; instead, they rely on other Federal agents, who mostly act as trademark enforcers.'' Similarly unacceptable is the fact that the CPSC lacks the staff to send a single inspector to the foreign factories making the goods that we put on our kitchen counters and in the hands of our children.

These facts unquestionably reveal, as a Consumers Union official told the Senate Committee on Finance earlier this month, that the CPSC has not kept up with the globalization of the marketplace. That is why I have proposed this bill, which would rapidly shore-up the commission's import inspection staff, who are so critical to protecting us from dangerous foreign products. I urge my colleagues to support this common-sense solution to an urgent problem.

Mr. President, I rise today with Senator Kerry to introduce the Small Business Lending Oversight and Program Performance Improvements Act of 2007. I truly appreciate Senator Kerry's leadership on small business issues and his bipartisan work with me on this bill.

Small businesses have propelled our Nation's economic growth, producing more than 50 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, GDP, and creating between 60 to 80 percent of all new jobs annually. The Small Business Administration's loan guarantee programs are a vital source of financing for many of these small start-up firms, entrepreneurs seeking working capital, and small businesses that must purchase larger office space or secure factory equipment so they can continue to expand.

At the same time, the SBA's 7(a) and 504 lending programs will not endure if careless oversight, and a lack of standards, allow scandal to tarnish the good names of these programs. The 7(a) and 504 lending programs will not survive if we cannot prove to taxpayers that the money spent to guarantee small business loans actually produces economic vitality, opportunity, and new jobs, for our Nation. Make no mistake, the only way to protect these integral programs and demonstrate their effectiveness and economic growth capacity is through the use of concrete measurements.

In order for the SBA's lending portfolios to grow and allow more small firms to secure the capital they require, the SBA must quantify both quality and performance by establishing the specific criteria it will examine and then assess changes in these factors over time. Additionally, these benchmarks must be codified and transparent so that lenders and small businesses understand what is being measured.

The problem is this: although the SBA evaluates portfolio quality, and uses these assessments to conduct lender oversight, the SBA has failed to provide participating lenders with some of the criteria or formulas the Agency uses to determine if their portfolios are sound or substandard. This lack of transparency not only hinders the SBA's lender oversight capabilities, it causes participating 7(a) and 504 lenders to be critical of the SBA's ability to accurately assess portfolio quality. Regrettably, the SBA's current oversight and portfolio quality assessment methods have not prevented recent high- profile scandals from occurring.

Currently, the SBA has roughly $60 billion in outstanding loans issued to small businesses. Yet incredulously it does not track these businesses' economic performance. While the SBA's total loan volume has increased substantially over the last 10 years, the agency has no way to show how these loans benefitted the U.S. economy. Ultimately, the SBA is unaware of how many jobs these loans have created, whether company net-sales or revenues have increased after securing capital, or how many of these companies prepay, default, or go out of business. Though the purpose of these loans is to spur economic growth, the SBA does not assess the actual economic outcomes these loans help make possible. Without these measurements, how can the SBA attest to the incredible economic lift and vitality these loans help generate?

Two recent Government Accountability Office reports, one from July of this year and one from June of 2004, recommended that the SBA improve its economic performance and portfolio quality measurements. Our bill would implement the GAO's recommendations and improve the performance measures for 7(a) and 504 loans. Among other things, the bill would require the SBA to: create standards for lenders' portfolio quality; increase the transparency of the SBA's lender oversight evaluation measures; report on borrowers' economic performance; and create a 7(a) and 504 portfolio default rate that can be compared directly to commercial lenders' default rates.

We have an obligation not only to maintain, but to strengthen and improve the SBA's key loan programs that I have heard time and again are a critical lifeline to the job generators we call small businesses. The remedies that Senator Kerry and I are proposing today are necessary for the SBA's lending programs to expand, and reach all of the small businesses that must have access to capital.

I urge my colleagues to strongly support the Small Business Lending Oversight and Program Performance Improvements Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would require the Federal Communications Commission to fulfill its obligation of conducting an economic study on the impact low-power FM stations have on full-power commercial stations. The reason it is imperative the FCC perform this study is because we don't have a comprehensive understanding as to the effect that low-power FM stations have on their full-power counterparts.

When Congress imposed the three-adjacent-channel restriction on low- power licensees in 2001, we tasked the FCC with conducting two studies because we were concerned about the interference LPFM stations could cause with being too close in frequency to full-power commercial stations. The two studies were to determine the impact that the presence of a low-power channel would have with respect to interference with a nearby full-power station and the economic impact the presence of low power stations would bring to the commercial licensees. However, the FCC completed only one study--the interference analysis.

My legislation calls for the FCC to complete an economic study on the impact LPFM stations have on full-power commercial radio stations within 18 months and report its findings to Congress.

Volunteer, non-profit LPFM stations have found a niche but they also provide competition to full-power stations without having to incur the same costs as those commercial stations, particularly with the absence of licensing fees and employees' salaries. Most of us have raised serious concerns about the continued media consolidation that is occurring and negatively affecting localism and diversity.

Part of the reason for this consolidation is because local, independently owned stations are seeing lower profit margins, which are making it more and more difficult to continue broadcasting. Due to shrinking profit, these stations either go out of business or are sold out to larger, nationwide companies. The buy-out of local stations by out-of-town firms does more to harm diverse and locally oriented broadcasting than anything else. So we must actively investigate this trend and determine what is contributing to the diminishing returns of independently owned stations.

Some may question why perform this study since Mitre Corporation, the company that performed the initial interference study, recommended the FCC should not undertake the additional expense of a formal listener test program or a Phase II economic analysis. The reason is because the Phase II economic analysis was only on the potential radio interference impact of LPFM on incumbent full-power stations and did not take into account other economic impacts that were outside the scope of that effort. The Government must ensure that by opening up low-power FM broadcast opportunities we are not causing any undue harm to the full- power radio stations, which we have obligations to as the issuer of their licenses.

I hope my colleagues join me in supporting the critical legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that would preserve the Federal Communications Commission's right to deny a low-power FM license if the applicant has run afoul of basic, longstanding Federal restrictions on the transmission of radio waves, such as if the applicant has been previously fined for running an unlicensed ``pirate'' radio station.

Before the issuance of low-power licenses, numerous individuals and entities operated low-power FM stations without a broadcast license. These ``pirate'' stations many times broadcasted in open defiance of the Commission's initial ban on LPFM broadcasts. From January 1998 to February 2000, the Commission shut down, on average, more than a dozen unlicensed radio stations each month. On several separate occasions, these unlicensed radio stations actually disrupted air traffic control communications.

Congress, through the enactment of the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act of 2000, directed the FCC to modify its low-power FM rules to ``prohibit any applicant from obtaining a low-power FM license if the applicant has engaged in any manner in the unlicensed operation of any station in violation of section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934'' so the Commission could curtail these pirate stations and disruption occurrence.

My concern is by completely repealing section 632, which pending legislation proposes, it hinders the ability of the FCC to prohibit applicants from receiving low-power FM licenses. The Commission is responsible for making sure broadcasters follow the basic rules and regulations that are inherently essential to having a broadcast service that serves public interest since broadcasters are utilizing public spectrum. This legislation retains a targeted response to the problem of pirate broadcasting.

The commission is to grant a broadcast license only if the ``public interest, convenience, and necessity would be served.'' Completely repealing Section 632 could hinder the FCC from upholding this responsibility with respect to low-power FM broadcasters. For this

reason, we must act to preserve the FCC's authority to be able to prohibit low-power FM licenses to applicants that have violated basic tenets of broadcast policy--it is only logical that we do this to ensure businesses that use the public spectrum, in any capacity, adhered to laws government has put in place to serve and protect the public interest.

I hope my colleagues join me in supporting the critical legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that I believe is vital to the prosperity and competitiveness of an element of agriculture that is often overlooked: American aquaculture. Some experts estimate that to meet the demand for healthy, fresh aquacultural products, global production will have to double in the next 40 years. Yet in spite of this skyrocketing demand, America is at risk of being left behind by other nations who have thus far exhibited greater foresight than we have; putting into place a comprehensive infrastructure for sustainable seafood. While it is true that American aquaculture sales exceeded an impressive one billion dollars in 2005, this was a pittance when compared to the $70 billion market worldwide. In fact, in 2006 the U.S. had a trade deficit in seafood production of $9.1 billion. With demand rising so dramatically globally and, in particular, here at home, we cannot afford to fall behind any further.

That is why I have taken this opportunity to introduce the National Aquatic Animal Health Act. This legislation will begin the process of creating a national infrastructure that will attract investment, protect the valuable stocks of our aquaculture farmers from disease, and create a unique, flexible partnership between the Federal Government, State agencies, and industry groups. Dedicated to proactively monitoring seafood stocks for disease, this program will employ the resources and vast field experience of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, coupled with experts on disease at various State agriculture and marine agencies and industry professionals to certify the health of all participating aquaculture species.

Modeled after similar animal monitoring programs already in place at APHIS, this program will provide a nationwide set of standards, the kind of uniformity that is currently absent in the aquaculture community. Instead, a myriad of jurisdictional conflicts and competing regulations among various states creates uncertainty and erects impediments to interstate commerce. But this bill is not a set of onerous regulations imposed upon the private sector by a federal agency; under the legislation, states are required to opt-in to the program. They must choose to utilize the assets available in this legislation to assist in preserving that state's particular aquaculture products.

My home State of Maine has tremendously benefited from aquaculture. There are nearly three dozen hatcheries in the State, handling both finfish and shellfish. Our 3,500 miles of coastline has served as an ideal incubator for the expansion of the aquaculture industry. The total economic activity generated from the industry State-wide was over $130 million last year, providing jobs for over 1,000 hard-working Mainers. This sort of productivity was not always the case. In 2001, nearly all the salmon stocks in Maine had to be eliminated due to an outbreak of a crippling, infectious disease known as ISA. It took the industry years to recover. Now, the Great Lakes face the threat of the virulent pathogen known as VHS. It is my hope that with swift passage of this legislation, we will no longer have to fear this kind of widespread disease and the subsequent containment costs that could cause inestimable damage to an industry that is struggling to catch up to its global competitors. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation as we move forward on debating Federal farm policy.

Mr. President, as Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I rise today to introduce, with Chairman Kerry, the Small Business Contracting Revitalization Act of 2007. This critical legislation is a product of consensus-building and compromise over the past few years and truly reflects the bipartisan nature of our Committee. Thank you, Chairman Kerry, for working to make this a truly bipartisan bill.

This legislation addresses the numerous barriers facing small businesses in securing their fair share of Federal contracting dollars. Currently, small businesses are eligible for $340 billion in Federal contracting dollars, yet receive only $77 billion. Regrettably, the Federal Government consistently fails to satisfy its 23 percent small business goal resulting in small businesses losing billions of dollars in contracting opportunities.

I am dismayed by the myriad ways that Government agencies have time and again egregiously failed to achieve

most of their small business statutory ``goaling'' requirements. For example, in fiscal year 2006, the Historically Underutilized Business Zone, HUBZone, program met only 2.1 percent of its three percent goal, while our Nation's service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses received a Government-wide, paltry total of only 0.9 percent of its three percent small business goal. This longstanding area of concern is coupled with a litany of deficiencies that include ``contract bundling,'' sub-contracting misrepresentations, inaccurate small business size determinations, flawed reporting data, and under- utilization of key small business contracting programs.

As the Chairman is well aware, these problems are not new, and our Committee has held countless hearings on various contracting concerns throughout the years. Business opportunities through Federal contracts provide vital economic benefits for small businesses, which is why last year, my Small Business Administration Reauthorization Bill, which passed our Committee unanimously, contained a robust package of small business contracting initiatives.

Our legislation builds on the contracting provisions of that bill, by improving all of the small business contracting programs--including the HUBZone, small disadvantaged business, women-owned small business, and service-disabled veteran-owned small business programs. It equips the SBA with additional tools to meet the demands of an ever-changing 21st century contracting environment.

This bipartisan measure also includes several other priorities that I have long championed--most notably, enhancing the HUBZone program. In my home state of Maine, only 118 of 41,026 small businesses are qualified HUBZone businesses. HUBZones represent a tremendous tool for replacing lost jobs for our Nation's declining manufacturing and industrial sectors--clearly, this program should be better utilized.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to pass this bipartisan small business contracting legislation to ensure that all small business ``goals'' are not only met--but exceeded.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. President, I apologize for interrupting the Senator.

I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized following the Senator's remarks for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I come today as a United States Senator, but also as the co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. I wish to tell my colleagues that the Congress created the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in the year 2000 to monitor China's compliance with international human rights standards and to encourage the development of the rule of law there. I am proud to be a co-chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China. I think the role it performs is an extremely important one.

I come to the Senate floor today in that role. I also come as well to say that at a time when there is so much criticism of almost everybody in the political system--and I have done my share of differing with various people in politics--I come today to say to President Bush that I very much appreciate the actions he took this week when he met with several dissidents from China, all of whom have been imprisoned in China for exercising the fundamental human right of free speech.

The President met with the dissidents for the same reason I come to the floor of the Senate this morning. One week from today, the 2008 Summer Olympics begin. It is a great pageantry and a great celebration, in many ways. It is a celebration of athletic achievement from all around the globe. We will have many Americans representing our country and demonstrating their individual achievements on the field of sport. We will have basketball players and tennis players and gymnasts and track and field participants. They will participate in these wonderful Olympic games that occur every 4 years.

The Olympic games at this time, a week from now, will be held in the country of China. There was dispute about that and concern about China hosting the Olympics, but China convinced the International Olympic Committee that it would make significant progress in areas that reflect the ideals of the Olympics--especially human rights and human dignity. Because of the commitments it made, China was awarded the Olympic Games for 2008.

This is, it seems to me, not only an opportunity for athletes from our country and around the world to compete in sport, but it is also an opportunity, given that the Games will be held this year in China, for our country and for other countries to appeal to the Chinese government to open its system to greater human rights. It is also an opportunity to strongly urge the Chinese government at this point to address the issue of so many of its citizens--many of whom are its best and brightest citizens--sitting in dark prison cells, having been sent to prison for exercising the right of free speech.

China is an extraordinary country. You cannot understand the wonder of China without visiting it. You can't help but stand on the Great Wall of China and think about the history of this incredibly interesting country. Visiting China is an extraordinary experience. But, it is also the case that China is not an open society.

Our Congressional-Executive Commission on China has the largest database of prisoners, the most complete database of Chinese political prisoners that is accessible and searchable by the public. Why do we keep that database? So we can shine a bright light into the darkest cells of China, for those who have been imprisoned by the Chinese for exercising the right of free assembly and free speech, and to say to them: The world knows you are there. You are not forgotten.

The international community has the opportunity at this moments during these Olympics to speak up and speak out. I complimented President Bush for meeting with the dissidents this week. I think it was exactly the right thing to do. I compliment him and support him for what he said to the dissidents. He said to the dissidents that he intended to not only care about freedom and liberty, but when he traveled to China, and to talk to the Chinese about freedom and liberty.

All of the people President Bush met with this week have spent years in Chinese jails for advocating on behalf of religious freedom, human rights, freedom of speech in China. So when the President travels to China for the opening of the Olympics, it is vital, it seems to me--and I think I speak for the entire Congress--to say it is vital that the President express in the strongest terms possible to the Chinese that they need to address the human rights problems in their country that have been so deeply disturbing to the rest of the world.

As I indicated, we have the names of 807 political prisoners known or believed to be currently detained, imprisoned or under house arrest. These 807 records of Chinese people in jail are a subset of the nearly 4,500 records in the Political Prisoner Database. The rest of the records reflect release, death, or escape.

Our commission works very hard to get information out about those who are being held in some of the darkest cells in China. We want the world to pay attention. The President of the United States committing to go to China and to talk to the Chinese leaders about these people is very important. We have sent President Bush the list of 807 prisoners now in Chinese prisons. Let me go through a few of them, because I think it is important to attach faces and names to this list of 807 people.

This man is named Hu Jia. Hu Jia is a courageous activist who was jailed last December by Chinese authorities because he was invited to speak at a European Parliament hearing. At the hearing, he made comments in his testimony that were critical of China hosting the Olympics. The result was that he was put in a Chinese prison. His wife and infant daughter--and you see his wife and daughter in this photograph--were placed under house arrest for several months. In April, Hu Jia was sentenced to 3\1/2\ years in prison for inciting subversion of state power. Let me describe the charge again: ``Inciting subversion of state power.''

I recently talked to a man who testified at that same European Parliament hearing and along with Mr. Hu Jia. This man, however, is not in prison because he is not a Chinese citizen. He also just expressed himself like Hu Jia. At the request of a hearing of the European Parliament, he testified and expressed himself. He expressed criticism of China for being chosen to host the Olympics. For that, Mr. Hu Jia will spend 3\1/2\ years in a Chinese prison.

The next photograph is a photograph of Yang Chunlin. He has been repeatedly detained for helping farmers seek compensation for lost land in China. Last summer he organized a petition entitled ``We Want Human Rights, Not The Olympics.'' He was subsequently arrested and he was charged for inciting subversion of state power. We are told that he has suffered severe beatings, causing damage to his eyesight, all for the purpose of speaking out, exercising the right of free speech. He is a very courageous Chinese citizen who simply wants the opportunity to speak freely.

Finally, Mr. Ye Guozhu. He is pictured in this photograph alone. Three generations of his family were evicted from their Beijing home in 2003 to make way for the Olympic-related construction that occurred in Beijing. In 2004, because three generations of his family were evicted from their homes, he applied for permission to organize a protest against other alleged forced evictions in connection with preparations for the Olympics. He was arrested. He has been sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Let me describe the charge. The charge for which he is serving 4 years in a Chinese prison is ``provoking and making trouble.'' Because three generations of his family had been evicted from their homes to make room for the Olympics, he decided to circulate a petition to organize a protest against other alleged forced evictions, and he is now serving 4 years in prison. We are told he has repeatedly been tortured. He finished his sentence, by the way, and was supposed to be released from prison this week. But his release has been further delayed, presumably, because the Olympics are near.

The President of the United States--and only the President--has the power to shine the brightest light in the world into the dark cells in China and say to these courageous Chinese citizens that you are not alone. This country knows about you, about your struggle, and about your efforts to secure freedom of speech and other fundamental human rights.

We have said to the Chinese Government we want progress. They made representations to the Olympic Committee, in exchange for being able to host the Olympics, that they would make progress on human rights. I have shown photographs of some very courageous Chinese citizens who now sit in Chinese prisons precisely because their human rights have been violated.

Again, I thank President Bush for meeting with the dissidents this past week. I am someone who, from time to time, doesn't agree with President Bush. I am often critical of his work. But today I commend him for meeting with the dissidents who had previously served time in prison in China. He met with them at the White House this week. It was the right thing to do. He made commitments to those dissidents that he is going to do all he can. I hope he will--when he goes to China--take that torch of liberty and freedom to President Hu in China and say that our country will not ignore these prisoners, we will not pretend they don't exist. China has a responsibility to move toward greater human rights.

So this is the moment. I hope very much that President Bush will do what he told the Chinese dissidents he will. I commend him for that, and I hope that not just in the next 7 days, when the Olympics are prepared to start, but also during the Olympics and during the President's visit, he will offer some hope and encouragement to those who now spend their time in a dark prison cell for having the temerity to try to speak the truth in China.

I strongly feel that if we miss this moment, we will have missed something very important. I support the Olympics. They are a wonderful opportunity for the world. But I strongly believe that when the Olympics are held in a country such as China, and the Government there makes certain representations about human rights not only to the Olympic Committee but also to those who will attend the Olympics, and especially the President of the United States, who will meet with President Hu, that he will bring that message of freedom, liberty, and human rights to the Chinese Government and describe our expectation and the expectation of the international community that their citizens be allowed full and genuine freedom.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I wish to make a couple comments about energy. There has been a lot of discussion all week--in fact, the last several weeks--on energy, and the reason is obvious. When you see the runup and doubling of price of gas and oil in a year, the American people are pretty apoplectic about that. They wonder what can they do to respond to it. How do I afford to fill my gas tank to go to work? The airlines wonder: How do we afford to put jet fuel in the airplanes we fly? The truckers wonder: How do I fill the saddle tanks and be able to afford it? The farmers wonder: How do I fill the fuel tanks for the harvest? This is a big hit to the American economy.

The first step is to do the obvious thing. I have a letter, for example, from the chief executive officer of an oil refining company called Tesoro. They don't produce oil; they have to buy oil like everybody else to refine it. He believes there is a dramatic amount of excess speculation in the oil market. We need to wring out the excess speculation from the commodity markets. Seventy-one percent of what is happening in the oil futures market has nothing to do with people who want oil. They don't want a can of oil, a 5-gallon can or even a quart. They want to trade paper and make money. That market is broken and has been taken over by speculators. We should set that market right and wring out the excess speculation in that market. We have testimony before the committee that doing that can reduce the price of oil and gas by 20 to 40 percent. That is step 1. We ought to do the easy things, and then a lot of other things.

My colleagues say drill. I say absolutely. Conservation is the cheapest form of energy. Saving a barrel is the same as producing a barrel. We waste a lot. Producing and drilling and conservation and efficiency. Every light switch we turn on, every thermostat, everything we do can be much more efficient and lose much less energy, no question about that. Conservation, efficiency, production--and especially a game-changing approach away from every 15 years shuffling in here like bags of wind in blue suits, talking about the plan we had 15 years ago and 15 years before that and 15 years before that.

How about finding new energy and moving toward hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? Hydrogen is everywhere. Water vapor would come out of the tailpipe. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Battery storage technology, with substantial research, and moving to electric cars. How about doing all these things? Solar, wind, biomass, geothermal--we have so many opportunities. We can round up all the money we spend on all of it and research a different energy future, which equals what we spend in the war in Iraq in 40 hours. We ought to do everything and do it well; but we ought to decide that if we are addicted--and President Bush says we are--what do you do with an addict? Do you say I will quit tomorrow and pass the bottle tonight? That is not what you do. You decide you are going to have something that is game changing. You are going to go to a different kind of energy future.

I wish to make a final point that is very important. I support increased production, all those things. But my colleagues in the Senate have blocked--some of them in the minority--through eight votes, our determination to provide tax incentives for renewable energy. Renewable energy is so important, and we put into place permanent, robust tax incentives in 1916 to say that if you look for oil and gas, God bless you, we need it. If you find it, you will get tax incentives. We have done that for almost a century. Do you know what we did for people who tried to go find and produce wind, solar, and other renewable forms? We put into place tax incentives in 1992--short term, kind of shallow--and we extended them five times, and we let them expire three times. Start, stop, stutter step. The fact is, we shut off all the investment every time they stop. They are set to expire at the end of the year. The minority has blocked, eight times, the extension of the tax incentives so we can move toward a different energy future.

If we don't understand that when 65 percent of your oil comes from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Venezuela and outside our country and that makes America vulnerable--if we don't understand that, we ought to go back to bed; you don't need to wake up. It has been pretty disconcerting to see people thumb their suspenders and stick out their stomachs and say we need to drill another hole someplace. We suck 85 million barrels of oil a day out of this planet, and 21 million barrels of that are destined for this country. We use one-fourth of every drop of oil pulled out of this planet every day, and almost 65 percent of it comes from outside our country. If you don't understand the vulnerability of that, then you don't have the capability to understand very much, in my judgment.

We need a robust, aggressive, new energy future. It must include virtually everything, but at its root and at its foundation, it must have a game-changing device that says that 10 years from now we are going to have a different energy mix, a different construct.

Yesterday, I said John F. Kennedy didn't hang around in the early sixties and say: I am thinking of sending a person to the Moon or I am going to try to send a person to the Moon or I hope we can send a person to the Moon. That is not what he said. He said that by the end of the decade, we are going to have a person walking on the Moon. How about saying that in this country now on energy?

By the end of the next 10 years, we will have substantially changed this country's energy mix, and we are going to make the investments necessary to do it, so we are not shuffling around here 10 years from now with the same tired arguments I call ``yesterday forever.'' How about something that does advance this country's long-term interest in energy? Let's do everything we can at this point. In the meantime, let's set a goal and meet the goal as a country that makes us less dependent on foreign oil and move to a different kind of energy future.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I have been in the House of Representatives and the Senate now for about a little over 15 years. One thing you can count on that I have seen over and over is you can always count on Republicans to stand up for Big Oil. We can look in recent memory. We can look at the Energy bill 3 years ago--earlier than that. We can look at the plan Vice President Cheney wrote in the White House bringing in all the energy executives, not bringing in consumer groups, not bringing in environmentalists, not bringing in small businesses that are hit so hard by high energy costs, not bringing in truckers, not bringing in people who are paying the bills, but bringing in the producers, writing an energy plan, that legislation then written by Big Oil and other big energy producers, pushed through a Republican House of Representatives 3 years ago and a Republican Senate, having given the President everything he wanted on an energy policy.

That is obviously the best example of how always in my 15 years here I have seen Republicans protecting Big Oil. Most recently in the last year and a half, as the Senator from Pennsylvania said so well earlier, we have seen eight filibusters blocking any proposals we have had on energy--short-term proposals, medium-term proposals, long-term proposals.

As the Presiding Officer, Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, talked about, there is no silver bullet, but there are things we can do immediately. We can open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, sell 10 percent of the oil from that Reserve, bringing down prices pretty quickly. We can go after the speculators. I am not sure Senator Casey said this, but the President's Justice Department could go after the oil industry for some of the price gouging that many of us in this body, and probably most of the American public--certainly people in Steubenville and Lima and Zanesville, OH--think the oil companies are engaged in. We can do those things.

A few minutes ago, when I was the Presiding Officer, I heard the minority leader say that the Democrats are offering legislation claiming it is only speculation that is driving up prices. We have never done that. We have said: Yes, speculation is a big part of it. Senator Dorgan said speculation is like a washcloth: you wring it out and you will get an immediate 20, 30, or 40 percent price decrease overall just by wringing out the speculation.

But what the other side never talks about is that it is not just that we want to deal with speculation and open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and have the Justice Department go after the increasingly, immensely profitable oil industry on price gouging, but we also have a very specific long-term energy plan.

As Senator Dorgan said, President Kennedy didn't say: Let's think about going to the Moon. He said: We are going to put a man on the Moon. It was the early 1960s, and he said we could do it by the end of the decade. And he did it. It happened by July 1969. I was 16 then. We had just gotten our first color television, I remember. My brother had convinced my parents that because of the Moon landing, we should get a color television. My parents didn't really know this wasn't going to be in color, but it was a good move by my brother, I must admit. But I remember looking up in the sky and not seeing anything other than the big white Moon, but how exciting it was that we could do this.

The same thing could be true with the President on alternative energy. That is what the Democratic majority has been trying repeatedly to do, to take the money President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the Republican majorities in each U.S. House gave to big oil in 2005 in the Energy bill and put it into alternative energy development.

Senator Whitehouse, speaking earlier this morning, mentioned that for every $10,000 in profits Exxon has made, only $1 of the $10,000 has gone to research and development for alternative energy and $3 has gone into advertising how green they are and how much they are doing on alternative energy. Senator Casey talked about the incredible increase in oil drilling in the last few years; that the oil companies are drilling plenty, but they understand how to keep prices up.

So I am for more drilling, but I am not for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. I am for the oil companies drilling on the 68 million acres of Federal lands on which they already have leases. Let's do that first, and let's see where we are on that discussion of drilling. We can't drill ourselves out of this, it is clear.

Last point, Mr. President, and then I wish to speak for a moment about something related to energy; that is, throughout my time in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the last 15 or so years, I have always noticed that oil prices go up when one of four things happens: Either there is a refinery fire or there is a pipeline outage or there is a major catastrophe, such as Katrina, or there is an international incident that disrupts the flow of oil to our country. It is either a major refinery fire, a major pipeline outage, a major disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, or a major international incident that disrupts the flow of oil to our country.

None of those things has happened in the last couple of years. Sure, China and India are using more oil, and that is a long-term, huge issue in terms of the oil crisis, but to see the kinds of oil spikes we have seen in the last year and to look at what we have seen, frankly, in the 8 years of two oilmen in the White House--we know that story--nothing has happened that should have caused oil prices to go up that dramatically. If anything, that absolutely shows it is all, in large part, about speculation, and it is about the price gaming of the system that the oil industry and Wall Street have done.

As we talk about energy, we often talk about what that means to our Nation's infrastructure. Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Our freshman colleague, Senator Klobuchar, has spoken eloquently about that and what we need to do about that. It took the lives, as we remember, of 13 people and injured nearly 100.

The Minnesota bridge collapse was a rude awakening to Americans about the current state of our critical infrastructure and the importance of improving all aspects of bridge safety.

Corrosion, for example, which causes metal in bridges to rust and ultimately weaken, is a significant problem for our Nation's bridges but one that is resolvable if addressed by Congress.

In 1998, there was an amendment to ISTEA, the highway bill. Congress commissioned a report about the cost of corrosion--a report from the Federal Highway Administration--and that report to Congress, conducted by CC Technologies of Dublin, OH, a community near Columbus, has estimated that corrosion costs the Nation an unbelievable 3-plus percent of gross domestic product annually, or $442 billion last year. In my State alone, corrosion ultimately cost Ohio taxpayers, in damage to bridges and highways and other infrastructure, $15.1 billion. For bridges alone, this country spent $13 billion and $500 million in Ohio in 2007. In that same report, the FHA estimated a third of that cost could be prevented through existing corrosion-control technologies.

There are many bills pending before this Congress that would lessen or prevent future corrosion of our Nation's infrastructure.

S. 3319 requires that any proposal to the Department of Transportation for bridge construction or modification or renovation include a corrosion mitigation and prevention plan. When a State highway department submits a proposal to the Department of Transportation about this, under this legislation--there is no demand or other mandate--it must include a corrosion mitigation and prevention plan that looks at how much money it will cost to do the corrosion prevention and mitigation and see how much money over the next 10, 20, or 30 years the taxpayers will save because these bridges will last longer and will be safer in the ensuing years. This plan would incorporate existing technologies to enhance the safety of bridges and save Ohio and the Nation billions of dollars a year at a time when highway funding is suffering severely from a dramatic rise in construction cost.

The reason I talked earlier about energy and connected it to these highway issues and bridge issues and water and sewer issues is that the gas tax--which certainly funds much of our highway and bridge infrastructure, the construction and maintenance--the tax dollars are not increasing, and it is because it is not a percentage of the cost of oil, of the cost of gas, it is the cost per gallon of gas purchased. So as people are using less, revenues are down, and obviously construction costs are up as asphalt and other oil-based materials are included in the construction.

S. 3316, a separate piece of legislation I have introduced, would provide a 50-percent tax credit to companies for the design, materials, and installation of corrosion-mitigation technology. The tax credits would encourage further work in corrosion mitigation, expanding beyond bridges to include all kinds of infrastructure affected by corrosion, including drinking water and sewer systems, motor vehicles, pipelines, and defense infrastructure.

I know that the Senator from Pennsylvania, when he is in Erie or Sharon, close to my State, or when he is in eastern or central Pennsylvania, hears over and over from mayors, as I do, about the problems with infrastructure and what that means to the cost of people's water and sewer bills. Mayor Coleman of Columbus told me months ago what he was facing--more importantly, what consumers, what homeowners and renters in Columbus are facing--with the increased cost of water and sewer bills because of demands from the Federal Government on what we need to do to guarantee safe drinking water, demands local governments want to meet but at costs which they simply can't bear. So homeowners see double-digit increases in the cost of their water and sewer.

I met recently with the mayor of Defiance, Mayor Armstrong, in northwest Ohio at a roundtable--one of the hundred or so roundtables I have conducted in most of Ohio's 88 counties--and I talked to him about what these costs are meaning to him in terms of sewer and water bills for residents of Defiance and Defiance County.

A few months before that, I had a roundtable with the mayors of Fremont, Paulding, and Perrysburg, again in northwestern Ohio. Mayor Overmyer of Fremont, Mayor White of Paulding, and Mayor Evans of Perrysburg, where the meeting was conducted--Perrysburg City Hall in Wood County--were all telling me about the immense costs they were facing and, again, more importantly, their constituents were facing with the high cost of water and sewer.

Corrosion protection plans of this type can make a big difference in relieving the cost of all kinds of infrastructure. The new I-35 bridge project is under heightened scrutiny from everybody--public officials, the media, and obviously Minnesotans who travel that bridge regularly to and from work. Their new bridge will be equipped with the best technology available, including built-in sensors to measure corrosion.

With all these bridge projects in other places, we should have this level of attention and they should be outfitted with robust safety technology and anticorrosion technology. The technology is pretty far down the road. We are able to do an awful lot of things to arrest and almost stop corrosion and the aging of these bridges. Our legislation will not just utilize the technology that is available now, but it will spur on new technologies to arrest bridge corrosion.

Anticorrosion and corrosion-detection measures save money and lives. It is nothing but shortsighted to bypass such measures. For too long, we have governed in a way that has sort of gotten us through the day, thinking that we have to figure out how to get through today and not looking ahead. Business doesn't look often enough beyond the next quarter, and government doesn't look often enough beyond the next election cycle. This is an opportunity for the Nation to use its research and development talent to address the unnecessary and enormously costly burden we bear as our infrastructure rusts away and needs to be replaced.

We remember the Minnesota bridge collapse of 1 year ago. This body can honor the memory of those who died there and learn our lesson from looking ahead and helping local and State governments adopt these anticorrosion measures. It will ultimately save lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. It is something we can do, and it is something we should begin today.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.