A bill to require a report setting forth the global strategy of the United States to combat and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Madam President, how much time do I have?

Madam President, I came to the floor to speak in support of the Feingold amendment. I came purposely to talk about that issue, but I am compelled, having heard some of the remarks made by some of our colleagues, to first preface my remarks as it relates to this debate.

Yes, we are happy to have a debate, but it doesn't take 30 hours to come to the same conclusion the American people have clearly come to in this country: that continual engagement in the war in Iraq and the course we are on is not in the national interests of the United States. They have come through the common sense Americans always show. This is overwhelmingly the conclusion of a great majority of Americans. They understand. It doesn't take us 30 hours to do that. We can have an open, honest, and intelligent debate with a few Members on each side making the case for their respective points of view, but we don't have to take 30 hours in order to get to that goal so that we can move to the other important business of the Senate.

This is important business. It deserves a thorough debate. But, by the same token, it is clear that the whole process of objecting to the majority leader's effort to limit the scope of time so that we can have a robust debate but then go on to the other business before the Senate is to extend the time, is to delay us.

We have seen through a record number of filibusters the Republican minority has used in this Chamber in a way that defies all historic proportions. It is clear that what was intended to be used as a rare occasion to protect the rights of the minority, particularly on exceptional critical issues of the time, has now been abused in such a way in which it is intended to stall the work of the Senate but, more importantly, the work of the American people. That is the framework in which we start this debate. We can have a robust debate, but we don't need 30 hours to accomplish it.

Secondly, I cannot understand how some Members can come to the floor of the Senate and rail against the fact that the foreign intelligence surveillance bill has not been passed by the House of Representatives when they refused to agree to a 21-day extension of the existing law that gives the administration everything they want to do. So if this is such a critical issue, as has been described by Members of the Republican side of the aisle, why would they not have agreed to continue while the Congress debated the opportunity to extend the law that allows you to do all those things you say are critical to the protection of the American people?

I can only come to the conclusion that either it is not as critical as they define, because fear is what we sell, it seems, on the Republican side--we have been hearing fear for quite some time; the American people have caught up to that--or, in fact, they simply want to have the proposition for a political purpose. If not, we would have had the 21-day extension. Everything the administration claims they needed, they would have had, and therefore we would have been able to move forward. Those two items need to be put in context.

Let me get to the main purpose of what I came to the floor to speak about, and that is in support of the Feingold amendment.

The Senate has an opportunity, once again, to vote to transition our troops out of Iraq with honor and refocus our efforts on defeating al- Qaida. It is long past time for us to make that decision. The administration has never told us the truth about the war in Iraq. Some people want to gloss over that. But if what is past is prologue, then we need to be worried about what we constantly hear.

The budget they submitted to Congress is the latest proof of that. The budget is terrible in a lot of ways. It leaves millions of children without full access to health care. It fails to wean us off our addiction to foreign oil. It fails to adequately address climate change. It fails to repair our education system or shrink the ballooning deficit. Basically, it fails to make a serious effort to tackle the most pressing problems average Americans face in their lives each and every day.

Beyond that, the budget is dishonest about the cost of one of the most expensive wars in our history, a war that has lasted more than America's engagement in World War II. It lists the cost of the war in Iraq for next year at $70 billion. All the other calculations in the budget, including the debt and the deficit, in some way assume that $70 billion is all the war is going to cost in the next fiscal year. We have to wonder if whoever wrote the section of the budget on Iraq found their job after leaving their old post at the accounting department of Enron because it is clearly the same type of accounting.

Recently, the Secretary of Defense took a baby step toward honesty and estimated the true cost for next year at another $170 billion of America's money. He said that was just a rough estimate, because when you have already spent more than a half trillion dollars, I guess you just round up to the nearest hundred billion. This is from an administration that over 5 years of a historical engagement in Iraq knows how many troops we have, knows the projection moving forward, and therefore knows what the consequences in terms of cost are. To send a budget to the Congress that everyone knows in the context of the cost in Iraq is a farce, this type of carelessness--if one can call it carelessness--in accounting is offensive to the American people who are funding the war.

This administration is so dead set on staying in Iraq. I know some Presidential candidates have suggested that

we will do so for 100 years, if necessary. They just don't seem to care how much tax money they spend. They don't seem to care how much money they have to borrow from the Chinese to pay the bills, because we don't pay for this in terms of how we are going to afford the war. We don't domestically decide, well, this is going to be offset by some either revenue stream or cuts in programs. No, under this administration, we just keep adding it to the next generation--more debt, more debt. They don't seem to care how much wind gets knocked out of our economy because the money could have gone to creating jobs, stimulating the production of green energy, or helping families make ends meet.

As a matter of fact, we could use that money to do something that is critically important as well--protect America here on domestic soil. Because as we look at the President's budget, what does it do? It eliminates COPS funding that put 100,000 police officers on the streets of the cities. It cuts homeland security grants to States by 70 percent. It cuts port security by half. It cuts infrastructure security by half. This at a time in which every report, including those of the administration, has al-Qaida reconstituted on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and reports are coming out that they have been reconstituted with the strength and the ability to perform another attack on the United States.

The terrorists have to only get lucky once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time. How can you achieve those goals when you eliminate the very essence of the funding for those who, as we learned on September 11, came to respond on that fateful day? It wasn't the Federal Government, it was local police and firefighters and emergency management and hospital personnel. That is who came. What does this budget do? It slashes the living daylights out of those very first responders who are critical to our domestic security.

What does it do about one of the gaping wounds we have in the country in terms of security? It slashes port security. Everybody who comes to the Capitol has to go through a security device, 100 percent. Everybody who goes to the White House has to go through a security device, 100 percent. But when we talk about cargo coming from all over the world, only 5 percent has to go through the scanning process. Yet we are going to cut port security by 50 percent.

Mass transit: The Congress spoke in the last session and put mass transit up there, understanding we saw what happened in Madrid and Mumbai and other places in the world. Yet the President cuts mass transit security by 56 percent.

So to those who argue we cannot talk about the consequences of our engagement in Iraq in a financial context here at home, well, in the context of security here at home, at a time of a regrouping and restrengthening of al-Qaida on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, with the ability to ultimately commit terrorism domestically in the United States, yes, there is a real causal connection and a real consequence and we have to include that as part of the debate and part of the consequences in our continuing engagement in Iraq in an open-ended way.

Now, with what we heard the Secretary of Defense talk about with the amount of money the Secretary of Defense thinks we might spend in Iraq next year, in a different context we could have more than doubled our package to stimulate the economy this year. When Americans get rebate checks in a month or so, they should imagine them more than twice as big because that is what this year in Iraq would cost.

If we want to imagine the total financial cost of the war in Iraq over almost 5 years, if we want to imagine what $608 billion means, we could divide that up and send every American a check for $2,000.

If we want to know what the war will cost over the next decade if we continue the course we are on, that is about $2.8 trillion. Every American should picture a check for more than $9,000. That is what the war costs: more than $9,000 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States of America. If there are four people in your family, that is $36,000 that potentially could have been put in your family's economy.

When so many hard-working families are struggling to keep their homes, and so many are struggling to help keep up with the rising cost of health care and college tuition and heating oil, when so many have to care for aging parents, put food on the table, and struggle to make ends meet each month, $36,000 would go a long way. So it is a different way of looking at it.

There are many different ways of looking at the costs of the war. So here is how it all adds up. We cannot think about economic stimulus without thinking about how we can stimulate peace. We cannot heal our economy without closing the financial hemorrhage that is the war in Iraq. It seems to me that in addition to those financial contexts, there is the whole question of security--the security I talked about in a domestic capacity; the security challenges we have by overextending our troops in such a way in which all of our military leadership speaks about the challenges we would have if we had to meet another security challenge in the world; and basically an understanding that, God forbid, we had another security challenge, while we are still engaged in Iraq in the way in which we are engaged, while we have a resurgence in Afghanistan of the Taliban, with some of the latest reports talking about some very fierce fighting and the lack of response by NATO and a pumping up of our troops there; and looking at that scenario and now looking at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where al-Qaida has reconstituted. And that is, God forbid, if anything else happens in the world.

That is our challenge, in a security context, if we continue the course: a challenge that those who have the military prowess tell us we cannot meet if we continue in this way.

For 5 years, the administration has parroted the line that: ``We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here.'' But now more than ever we realize that one of the biggest impacts of the war has been we are spending our money over there and, therefore, we cannot spend it here--money that includes billions of dollars that have been misspent, including hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction projects that are unaccounted for.

I came back from Iraq about a month ago. I must say, when I see schools going wanting here in America, when I see hospitals closing in my home State, when I see roads that have deteriorated, bridges that have fallen, and see reconstruction in Iraq but no construction here at home, those are real consequences of the war.

When I see us talk about the genocide in Darfur, and we are universally committed to the proposition ``never again,'' ``never again,'' what does ``never again'' mean? That we will not repeat the legacies of the past, the failures of the past: in the Holocaust, in Rwanda, in the Armenian Genocide. No, no, we will act. Yet because of our present security challenges, and the consequences of being engaged in Iraq in the way we are, we stand by and watch people in Darfur be slaughtered. So much for ``never again.''

Not long ago, about a month ago, I had the chance to make a trip to Iraq myself. First and foremost, the trip proved something I believed for a long time: We should be incredibly proud of the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States and who are serving there. They do not ask whether this is the right or wrong mission. They just serve with honor and integrity, and they risk their lives every day.

I came away extremely impressed with their commitment, and I felt honored to be able to share some time with them, including many from my home State of New Jersey who are serving there. So we need to give them a mission worthy of their sacrifice. I believe that is what Senator Feingold's amendment does.

Beyond that, one other thing became very clear to me. The solutions to Iraq's problems lie in the hands of the Iraqis. We cannot achieve peace, we cannot achieve reconciliation, we cannot achieve power sharing, we cannot get Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to sit side by side at the point of a military gun.

As long as we continue to, in essence, be enablers of an Iraqi leadership that has become so dependent on the United

States and refuses to meet the challenges of the hard choices, compromises, and negotiations necessary for their Government to ultimately achieve, they will never, ever feel the urgency of now.

When the President sent 30,000 additional troops into harm's way in Iraq last year, the purpose--his purpose, his stated purpose; not my view of it, his stated purpose--his stated purpose was to allow Iraqis to have the opportunity and the space, the environment, to strengthen the Federal Government and achieve national reconciliation.

That, no matter how we try to paint it, has not been accomplished. Even our own benchmarks, that even the administration agreed to and the Iraqis agreed to, have largely not been accomplished. So to use a sports analogy, we keep changing the goalposts every time, further and further away from the obligations the Iraqi leadership has.

Not too long ago, Iraq's Parliament finally passed three laws, after months of bitter squabbling. We certainly should applaud them for that. But the Bush administration is touting this event as an end-all, be-all political breakthrough. But, as usual, they are taking a small bit of good news and trying to whitewash the bigger picture.

The agreement the Iraqi Parliament reached is basically temporary. The provincial powers arrangement is set to expire--guess what--in 1 year--what they passed has an expiration in 1 year--to hold the politicians over so they can have the same arguments all over again next year.

Iraqi politicians are still a long way from permanent agreements over fundamental issues because they do not have the pressures of the necessity to do so. The reason is, as long as we continue to insist in an open-ended presence in the lives of Americans and the national treasure of the United States, they will not make the hard choices and compromises necessary to achieve lasting stability.

When I went to Iraq and met with a lot of the Iraqi elected leadership and some of the tribal chiefs and whatnot, I was stunned that they kept telling me about what America needed to do. My response to them was: Iraq's future is in your hands, not in America's hands. You must make these decisions for your country.

I know we have heard a lot about the surge, and certainly it depends on what your measurement is. If you are talking about greater security in Baghdad, the answer is, yes, yes; no question--although Baghdad has become far more segregated as a city, so that one of the ways in which security has been achieved is that we segregate Sunnis and Shias into different parts of Baghdad's neighborhood. Maybe that is the cost.

But when I landed, I was supposed to go to Mosul. I was not able to go to Mosul because they could not guarantee my protection. We have millions of displaced Iraqis who are beginning to come back. And now they come back to neighborhoods and to homes where the person living there is--not only has their home been taken over, but they are not even from their same sect. So they feel they cannot go live there.

I asked: How are you ready to take on the displacement of several million of your country people coming back to the country? They have no real plan. We have 80,000 or so concerned local citizens, individuals who at one time fought us and have decided to join us but who are on the payroll--we pay them every week to be there--and their expectation is they are going to be integrated either into the security forces or get some type of employment. We do not have from the Iraqis a clear sense of how they are going to meet that challenge. These are 80,000 individuals who have weapons on them.

So when we hear about the surge, let's not forget what President Bush said was the purpose. It was to create the space and environment necessary for the opportunity for Iraqi leadership to make the hard choices, compromises, and negotiations, to pass the benchmarks we had passed and the Iraqis agreed to. That has failed. That has failed.

About security: Yes, we have created greater security in Baghdad. We also have created greater segregation in Baghdad. And we have pushed the challenges elsewhere in the country.

At Combat Post X-Ray outside of Baghdad, I met with troops from New Jersey serving in the Air Force. An IED had just killed one of their colleagues and wounded several others.

The hardest thing I have had to do in 33 years of public life is to call a family and give them my condolences because a loved one has been killed. It is the hardest thing I have had to do in public life. It is hard enough for a parent or a wife or a husband or a mother or a father to hear that when they believe their family member was fighting for freedom and for our security. It is incomprehensible when that death was about Iraqi politicians fighting for resources and power.

When General Petraeus was here last year and came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said in his testimony that what we have in Iraq going on is a fight over power and resources.

I do not think Americans believe that sending their sons and daughters into harm's way so Iraqis can fight over power and resources is a mission worthy of their sacrifice. There is no military solution in Iraq. Everyone, including General Petraeus, has admitted that.

The only way to pressure Iraqi politicians into making the choices necessary to move their country forward is to stop signing blank checks and to set a timetable to transition our troops back home. That is, in essence, what my colleague, Senator Feingold, does. He creates a transition, effective 120 days after this law is passed and signed by the President. But that still permits us to meet critical missions, to conduct targeted operations against members of al-Qaida, the real threat to the United States, and affiliated international terrorist organizations; to provide the security for our own personnel and the infrastructure of the U.S. Government; to provide training to members of the Iraqi security forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces so that we can ensure that they can ultimately be able to stand up for their own country as our major focus; and to provide training, equipment, or other materiel to members of the U.S. Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their safety and security while redeploying members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

That, in my mind, is ultimately an opportunity to transition with honor; focus our mission on whom we need to--al-Qaida; strengthen the Iraqi security forces to meet their own challenge; and send a message to the Iraqi leadership that you must do what you have failed to do. The opportunity has been given to you. We cannot continue an open check in terms of national treasure or a continuing loss of American lives.

Finally, I felt truly blessed to step onto American soil after flying back from Iraq. Too many American men and women over there do not have the option right now of taking that return flight, and too many Americans have not returned, and others may not as well. I have seen firsthand how bravely our troops have served, but let's be clear about that service: American troops cannot be waiting for Iraqis forever to make the choices necessary to achieve success in their country. They cannot be asked to serve up a functional society on a platter. They cannot be expected to be the only ones serving up a functional electric grid, sewer systems, or revenue-sharing agreements about oil. As the former Chief of Staff said, we need the Iraqis to love their children more than they hate their neighbors. That is a powerful truism, but that does not come at the point of a gun.

If Iraqi politicians think they can sit back and keep looking at the menu of options and squabble over the choices no matter what, Americans will keep delivering everything they order; they will keep picking up the tab, they will never feel the pressing urgency to build a functional country for themselves. It is time for that type of service to end. It is time for every American soldier to have the most wonderful privilege we as Senators have had who have visited Iraq: the privilege of booking a return home ticket.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Byrd), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 2633 offered by Senator Feingold.

I think it is unfortunate the Republican leadership has once again put the Senate into a stall. It seems as if the Republicans feel that it takes them 30 hours to make up their mind to do anything. They want to burn off 30 hours of Senate time. I don't know why. What Senator Reid offered them was a chance to move to this resolution, to debate it, and if amendments are going to be offered, they would be offered. They turned it down. They want to wait 30 hours before we even possibly reach that point. As Senator Reid explained it, there may be an intervening motion that slows us down there. But that is what this is all about. This is the Republicans' slow boat for America. They want to slow everything down to a snail's pace, and it is unfortunate that they do.

They know what we want to do. We want to have a good, open debate on the policy on the war in Iraq, followed this week by emergency legislation to deal with the housing crisis in America. So their strategy is to avoid that debate on Iraq, a debate that leads to the actual bill, tie us up in procedural issues, and hope we don't get to the housing crisis by the end of the week. I guess at the end of the week the Republicans will say: Job well done. The Senate went home and didn't do anything for another week. Well, I guess that is what they think the minority is all about, to stop anything from happening. Isn't it unfortunate.

If you listen to Presidential campaigning on both sides, Republicans and Democrats talking about change, they point an accusing finger at us, saying that time and again, Senators and Congressmen dream up ways to avoid facing the important issues in America. Well, it is time for us to face those issues in a timely way, to give ample opportunity to minority and majority, to debate, to amend, to move forward. Yet the Republicans, as they did last year, are doing everything this year again to obstruct, to stall, and to stop.

Why is this important? The minority leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, was complaining that we have had 35 votes on the war in Iraq. He is war weary of voting on Iraq. Well, I want to say to him I am war weary as well. I am weary of 3,972 U.S. service men and women killed in Iraq. I am weary of 29,000 injured, many seriously, and with permanent conditions they will struggle with for a lifetime. I am weary of a war this President won't pay for, that costs us $10 billion to $15 billion a month. I am weary of the excuses we have made for the Iraqis who have failed to lead their own Nation while we risk and give American lives in this conflict. I am weary of the missed opportunities in America that $1 trillion spent on this war could have bought us to make our Nation stronger at home--better schools, making certain our teachers are compensated for good work, the technology we need so our children can be successful in this 21st century, medical research funds that have been cut under this administration, funds for extending health care and insurance for families across America, putting infrastructure in place in America so our economy can grow and move forward with good American jobs building those roads and highways and airports and mass transit. I am weary of that too.

No apologies for the Senator from Kentucky for 35 votes on Iraq. That is hardly 1 vote for every 100 Americans who have been killed in that country. It certainly is worth our time to debate this. Even more important, it is worth our time to change this policy in Iraq.

I salute Senator Feingold. He has been a lone voice. There were times I didn't agree with him. I thought he had an approach for this that we weren't ready for. But over time, I have come to understand his wisdom and his insight, and his political courage to bring this issue to the floor. If he didn't fight doggedly to make sure we didn't have this Iraq war debate, we would skate along perhaps month after month without ever facing the music. What we face is a reality.

The Republican plan is to stall and wait 11 months until President George W. Bush, on January 20, 2009, can leave the White House, give a fond adieu to Washington, DC, and say: Well, I left the war; now it is up to the others to try to solve this. Well, it is going to take quite a bit to try to undo the worst foreign policy decision in modern memory in America.

Many of us remember that night in October of 2002 when here in the Senate Chamber we voted on authorizing this President to go to war. I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee then. I listened behind closed doors to classified and confidential information, and I couldn't put it together. I couldn't square with the information we received in the Intelligence Committee all of the dire predictions being made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. It didn't square away.

Where in the world were the threats they were talking about--the weapons of mass destruction, the nuclear weapons, the connections with 9/11? It turned out none of them existed--not one. We found no weapons of mass destruction. We found no nuclear weapons. We found no connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrible tragedy of 9/11. All of the pretenses and reasons given by this President to engage us in this war, to risk American lives, and to drag us on for more than 5 years in this conflict turned out to be false; all of it.

There is no greater deception in a democracy than for the leader to mislead the people of a nation into a war, to ask families to offer their children and their children's lives in service to this country for reasons that turn out not to be true. No weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, no connection with 9/11, and here we are, still bogged down, mired in this conflict.

It is cold comfort to know that as we sent 20,000 or 30,000 more soldiers into Iraq last year that things got better. I am glad they did. I have been there since then. I am glad the surge brought some peace to some sections of Iraq. But that wasn't the reason for the surge. The surge was put in place so the Iraqis could finally take responsibility for their own country, so they could make hard political decisions and govern and lead and defend themselves. Here we are, almost a year later, and what do we have to show for it? An Iraqi Parliament that when we can get them to meet won't even face the serious issues. Time and again they fail to make the decisions they need to make so their Government can govern. Time and again we find excuses from them: They need a little more time. Every day they need is at the expense of American soldiers. Every month they take to finally reach a decision means that more body bags will come home to America and more wounded soldiers will return. So as they take their sweet time making their decisions, we are paying a heavy price as a Nation. And the complaint from the other side is we have had 35 votes on this; haven't we had enough? No, we haven't had enough until we change this policy, until we start bringing the troops home.

You are going to hear a lot of things said about this Feingold resolution. I certainly hope that colleagues and Members will take the time to read it. Here is what it says: It says our future role in Iraq is going to be limited. We are not going to say to the military: Do whatever you like. We are going to say to our military in Iraq: Here is your role. This is what you can do. This is what we will provide funds for.

First: Conduct targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist organizations.

That is certainly something we all agree on. Al-Qaida was behind 9/ 11, not Saddam Hussein, and we should continue to target them. They have used Iraq as a land of opportunity now to go in and sow their seeds of division and hatred, to try to kill innocent people and to kill American soldiers. Senator Feingold says we will continue to fight to eliminate al-Qaida in Iraq.

Second: Provide security for personnel and infrastructure of the U.S. Government.

That should never be in question. We should make certain our Armed Forces are always there to protect our people and to protect important installations.

Third: Provide training to members of the Iraqi security forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces.

If the Iraqis are ever going to take over defense of their own country so that we are not in Iraq for 50 years or 100 years or even 1,000 years, as one of the Presidential candidates has said--if we are ever going to avoid that terrible outcome, the Iraqis have to stand and fight and defend their own country. Senator Feingold says that is one of the legitimate reasons we can stay in Iraq. I agree with him.

Fourth: To provide training, equipment, and other materials to members of the U.S. Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their safety and security.

No argument there.

And finally: The resources to redeploy members of the U.S. Armed Forces from Iraq.

What is missing from this? What is missing is any unilateral combat operation that opens a new part of this war. For 5 years we have given the Iraqi people all they could ever ask for. We deposed their dictator, we brought the best military in the world to their country, we gave them a chance to elect their own Government, write their own Constitution, and govern and defend themselves. What more could they ask for? We have paid for it mightily, with almost 4,000 lives, the hundreds of thousands who have served, and the thousands who have come home wounded, injured.

I will tell you, for those who think we ought to look the other way for 11 months so President Bush can get out of town, they ought to go to these National Guard deployments and redeployments and look into the eyes of our guardsmen and their families, their tear-filled eyes as they send their soldiers off for yet another deployment.

We have a young man here on the Capitol Police force who works with my office. He is about to face his second deployment with the Navy Reserve. He is taking it very well, with a smile, but he is going to be gone for 8 months--8 months away from his family, making less money serving with the Navy than he makes serving as a Capitol policeman-- taking a pay cut because the Federal Government is too cheap to provide what private corporations do for their activated employees--and he will be away from his family for another 8 months.

Easy for us to say: Well, it is only 11 months. There will be a new President. Maybe there will be a change. But what about those soldiers and sailors and marines, airmen, all of our military who are called to serve? That 11 months will be a lifetime away from their families, and during that 11 months some of them will give their lives. That is why this debate is important and why it is timely and why I am glad Senator Feingold has brought it before us.

It is unfortunate the Republican side wants to stall this debate, stall it for 30 hours in hopes we can drag everything out so we will never quite get to the issue here on Iraq and maybe never get to the issue of the housing crisis in America. That is the Grand Old Party's brandnew strategy: Stall, try to delay, find ways to make sure we don't get to the important issues. It is little wonder that the opinion of the American people of this Congress is low.

What we should do is look to the positive side. If we change this policy in Iraq, if we tell the President on a bipartisan basis that we have had enough of this, that we want to see a change in mission, we have a chance to change this country. We can take the resources that would have been spent in Iraq and spend them in America. We can make sure we are providing health care, job training, and building schools, roads and bridges. We can create an economic stimulus in the United States instead of an economic stimulus in Iraq. I think a strong America begins at home. Wouldn't it be great if we invested our precious tax revenues in that belief?

Let me tell you what the National Intelligence Estimate said about the state of this war in Iraq. Last year, they gravely noted that:

The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for

jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in

the Muslim world, and cultivating supporters for the global

jihadist movement.

That is a quote from the National Intelligence Estimate. What it says is that as we battle on in Iraq and lose American lives and spend American dollars, we are creating a magnet for the extremists around the world to come and kill our troops and to be inspired in their own sad and devilish ways to kill other innocent people around the world. Did anyone bargain for that when we invaded Iraq? Did anyone think it would make the war on terror more difficult to win? That is what the National Intelligence Estimate tells us.

This administration has recklessly diverted critical military intelligence and civilian assets from Afghanistan in the process. That was a war I voted for, without reservation--a unanimous vote in the Senate, just days after the attack on 9/11. We knew where that attack came from. It didn't come from Saddam Hussein and Iraq, it came from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and the al-Qaida forces that were running

rampant through Afghanistan. Well, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated because we have spent so much on human life and American dollars on Iraq. That is the reality of this administration's priorities.

The Taliban and al-Qaida, sadly, are regrouping in Afghanistan, and we know for sure Pakistan, the neighboring country, is increasingly unstable. In fact, the strongest military on Earth is apparently so overstretched at this moment, the administration can't even find a handful of transport helicopters to help the desperately needed people of Darfur with the U.N. peacekeeping force.

How long will we stand by this failed foreign policy, this disaster in Iraq, at such a high cost in human lives, dollars, reputation, and national security? We are hearing once again that we are seeing progress in Iraq. How many times have we heard this story? At least for 5 years--from the beginning, from Vice President Cheney's rosy scenario of the troops being greeted with parades and arms laden with flowers to welcome them to Iraq, something that unfortunately did not occur--until the present time, when the so-called surge has turned everything around. And yet 150,000 American lives are still at risk this morning, this afternoon, and this evening in Iraq.

The entire point of the surge was to carve out political space for the Iraqi political leadership. They haven't used the time; they haven't used the surge for that to happen. Does anyone honestly believe we are closer to the day that the Iraqis will take responsibility for their own future? They will if this passes, because they will know our days are numbered in Iraq. We are not going to be there for 25, 50, or 1,000 years. That is not fair to our soldiers; it is not fair to America.

This administration has no strategy beyond ``stay the course'' until January 20, 2009. We in Congress have a responsibility to change direction. Our responsibility is for those soldiers and their families, it is for those guardsmen and their families, it is for everyone risking their life today in Iraq. They need to come home. And when they come home, we know that we have our hands full.

They come home with serious problems. The suicide rate among soldiers is at a record high. It is even higher among Guardsmen who are activated to serve. Post-traumatic stress disorders of years gone by intensify in the returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

We know those who suffered serious injuries--amputations, traumatic brain injury--are going to need our help for a long time to come. This administration has shortchanged the Veterans' Administration. When we begged them to put in the billions of dollars necessary to keep our promise to these veterans and those from other wars, they said they did not need it. Then, of course, they were proven wrong.

We continued to put billions of dollars into the Veterans' Administration, and we should and we will for the future, trying to pay the long-term costs of this war, a heavy cost that future generations will carry. And those on the other side say: Well, let's just let this go for another 11 months. Let's see how this all works out, another 11 months of returning veterans, returning wounded, another 11 months of more responsibility to future generations.

Staying with the failed strategy is no strategy at all. Changing course in Iraq is long overdue. Quite simply, we cannot give this administration another blank check because we know what they are going to do with it. They are going to continue this policy as we see more and more American soldiers in harm's way. The bill before us is reasonable, it is measured, it is a thoughtful effort to put before this administration a new approach, a new policy, and a new direction in Iraq.

Starting to redeploy the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days is a reasonable thing to do. Certainly, many of them will stay there for those specified responsibilities, but as they start to leave, the Iraqis may wake up to the reality that it is their country and their responsibility. The question is no longer whether the surge, or more accurately a significant escalation of troops, has worked. The question is how we can return our focus to the original al-Qaida threat.

Sad to say, 6 years, more than 6 years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. He is still guiding in his way the al-Qaida forces that threaten us in the rest of the world. We need to help countries such as Jordan that have been overrun with Iraqi refugees. We certainly have to understand that a country that has been that friendly to the United States deserves a helping hand, and we have to start to rebuild our international image and reputation.

It is unfortunate to hear people around the world, once our friends, once our allies, once our supporters, so critical of the United States because of the colossal mistake made by the Bush administration with this invasion of Iraq. We have to turn that page, and we cannot wait until January 20, 2009, to do it.

Last year, a New York Times-CBS News poll showed that only 5 percent of Americans trust this President to successfully resolve the Iraq war; 1 out of 20 Americans trust President Bush to resolve this war. Well, I do not believe he will either. I would be with the 95 percent. But Congress has an equally important responsibility to oversee this war as it is fought, to do everything we can to protect our troops and to resolve this war so our troops can come home to the heroes, welcome they richly deserve. We need to step into the leadership void that this White House has left and change directions for our policy in Iraq.

I am going to support this bill to bring an end to this war. I was 1 of 23 who voted against it. Of all of the votes that I have ever cast in this Congress in the House and Senate, I look back with the greatest assurance that was the right vote, the right vote for America. I do not think anything that has transpired since that late October night in 2002 has ever made me waiver in my belief that it was a serious mistake for the United States to give to this President and this administration the authority to begin this war, which has cost us so much over the years.

I believe we have to be careful in our foreign policy. Of course, defend America, that is our first responsibility. But never engage in a war when we cannot understand the consequences that might follow, like this war. It is so much easier to get in a war than it is to get out of one.

Senator Feingold is engaging this Senate in a debate that is long overdue for a change in policy that is long overdue. The Republicans are going to stall, try to avoid the vote, try to speechify us to death, not going to face this vote or a vote on the housing crisis. But that is nothing new. As the majority leader, Senator Reid has said, last year 68 times they initiated a filibuster. That is a brandnew record in the Senate. Before that it was 61 filibusters in 2 years. That was the record. Well, they managed 68 in 1 year.

It shows you what they are up to. They just want to grind us down, slow us down, and make us avoid the issues that count in America. One of those issues is ending this war the right way, and another which will follow is the housing crisis which plagues our economy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will make two quick comments. Certainly I respect the majority leader's comments. He talked about the fact that violence is down in Iraq. But, of course, the suicide bombers continue to wreak havoc. We all deplore that.

I was in Israel last week at the border town in Gaza--Sderot is the name--and terrorism from Hamas continues to bedevil the people of that town with rockets coming over every day. But they cannot leave and leave the terrorists to prevail there. I think the same thing is the situation in Iraq.

The majority leader talks about the costs, and they are significant. But the costs if we had to come back in and clean up after the terrorists take over, if we left prematurely, could be far greater than what we are expected to have to pay. In any event, it is very difficult to put a price on freedom and security.

I think we have had a good debate. We have speakers on our side actually for about another about 4\1/2\ hours or so. But as I told the majority leader, we could yield back some time on our side to work with the majority leader to develop a schedule that would be convenient for all of the Members.

At this time, because of the precise nature of the unanimous consent request, I object on behalf of the minority but would suggest it should be possible this afternoon, early this afternoon, for the majority and minority leaders to sit down and work out a schedule that would meet the needs of all of our Members and convenient for the entire body.

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

Madam President, yesterday, I inserted into the Record a couple of items. I wish to speak to them briefly now.

The primary item was a letter that had been sent to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee by Attorney General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. It was a letter that tried to explain the problems we are having in gathering intelligence on terrorists as a result of the lapse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions, the so-called Protect America Act.

What we are debating right now is a resolution that focuses on when and how we should leave Iraq. Presumably, the next resolution we will be debating focuses on developing a strategy to fight al-Qaida. Most of us appreciate the fact that the best way to deal with terrorists, the very first thing we should do is to have in place a good intelligence- gathering capability, primarily in understanding the communications that terrorists are having with one another abroad.

The reason that is the No. 1 part of a strategy in dealing with terrorists is that unlike a war in which we are fighting an enemy with uniforms representing another country, these terrorists are shadowy characters who live anywhere in the world, who travel all around, who get together in cells every now and then and plan some kind of activity which is designed to terrorize, whether in London or Spain or Malaysia or the United States or wherever.

In order to fight the terrorists, we first want to understand what they are up to and then prevent it from occurring.

If we are having to react to a terrorist attack after it has occurred, we are in a very bad situation.

We created the Department of Homeland Security, and we have a lot of different plans and procedures for dealing with an attack after it has occurred. But in many respects, then it is too late.

So in this war against these radical Islamists, these terrorists who would kill anywhere they can and target innocent people, the very first thing we want to do is to be able to have good intelligence on that activity.

We collect intelligence in a variety of ways, but in modern times, one of the best ways to collect intelligence is by intercepting communications. There are a variety of means by which that is done. One of the things the Congress did was to develop a law that provides protection to American citizens and others to ensure that this intelligence collection does not impinge on our civil rights. We do not want to have the Government eavesdropping on us, and that is appropriate for us to ensure.

The problem is, because technology has outpaced the law back when it was written in the 1970s and technology now enables us to do electronic intercepts against foreign targets through some very sophisticated and new means, the law that set up the process for getting approval to do that takes far too long, it is far too complicated and, in fact, the bottom line is it just plain does not work. It is ``paperwork in an electronic era'' kind of comparison.

So the President came to the Congress and said: You have to get a new way of doing this activity that enables us to utilize this new technology we have to intercept these communications. And last August, we passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA law--it has another acronym, Protect America Act--which enables us to utilize this new technology and also, importantly, to provide that the telecommunications companies that work with us do not have to worry about somebody suing them because they are helping the U.S. Government collect intelligence.

The law we passed had two problems. No. 1, it expired after 6 months because some in the Congress felt they wanted to take another look at it; and, secondly, it did not have liability protection for these telecommunications companies for the previous work they had done for us. It was only for the work going forward. The telecommunications companies essentially said to the U.S. Government: We are not going to continue to do this work for you unless you can ensure we are not going to get sued and that the lawsuits that are currently pending go away.

I am oversimplifying. The lawsuit said: You shouldn't have done what you did because the U.S. Government shouldn't have been engaged in this kind of surveillance.

That is not the fault of the telecommunications companies. They were simply doing what the Government asked them to do. They were a volunteer to provide their services, their very essential services, to help us collect this intelligence. As with any other volunteer, you should not get sued just because you stopped to help somebody along the side of the road who got hurt in an accident. The same thing is here. The Government asked them to volunteer their services to help collect this intelligence, and they should not be sued. But lawyers being what they are filed some lawsuits, and those lawsuits need to go away.

The President said: When you revise the law and pass it in February of 2008, make sure you have liability protection not only going forward but also for the suits that have already been filed. Sure enough, the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, by a bipartisan vote of 13 to 2 or 12 to 2--but a very strong bipartisan vote--agreed to extend the law for another 6 years and add the retroactive liability protection, precisely what is needed.

However, when the bill was sent over to the House of Representatives, the House Democratic leadership said: No, we are not going to take this up and promptly went on the recess that we just got back from, a 12-day period in which Congress was not in session. During that period of time, the law lapsed and General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell in this letter made it clear that during that period of time, we lost intelligence that could be very meaningful to us. We don't know whether it is or not because we lost it. We could not collect it. But the kind of intelligence that we have been collecting under this program has been very helpful for us to know what these terrorists are up to so that we can prevent attacks.

We are now in a situation where we are not able to commence certain intelligence gathering. In addition, and perhaps more important in the long run, we have not done anything to solve the problem of these lawsuits, the retroactive liability, with the result that, as they write in this letter, the telecommunications companies are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to continue to help us. They are all responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders do not like to see their company is getting sued. It reduces the value of the company. It creates problems and costs. When they try to do business with other companies, the other companies say: Wait a minute, are you involved in these lawsuits? If so, we don't want to enter into a new contract with you.

They work with companies all over the world. A lot of these companies are concerned that American telecommunications companies are going to have this kind of exposure, and they don't want to get involved in it.

It can hurt business substantially, as a result of which some of these companies have conveyed to our intelligence community their distress, anxiety, and concern about continuing to participate in this program.

Fortunately, through negotiations, according to this letter, companies are still working with us. They are still participating, but without them we have no program. This is not something the U.S. Government can do on its own. This is something that only works if all of the companies that provide our telecommunications services are working with us.

So we have to act pretty soon or we could well be in a situation where the very companies that are critical to the operational success of this program decide that discretion is the better part of valor on their part and they are just not going to be able to continue to help us. At that point, we have lost one of the most important intelligence- gathering operations in this war against terrorists.

I want to go back to the days following September 11, 2001. There was a lot of finger-pointing. A commission was established to try to figure out what went wrong. There were a lot of areas identified where we should have known better, and had we done things differently, at least potentially 9/11 could have been prevented.

We found that the FBI and CIA were not talking to each other, and the Justice Department had constructed a sort of wall between the two, even within the FBI itself which prevented one hand from communicating to the other very important information. In fact, there is information relating to a couple of terrorists that, had they been able to talk to each other, might well have resulted in these terrorists being picked up in the United States, people who were directly involved in the 9/11 attack and, at least theoretically, could have been prevented had they been able to communicate with each other.

The bottom line is, retroactive, after 9/11, we could have been doing more but did not. That report was very critical of the Congress, of the administration, of the intelligence community, of the FBI, CIA, and others for not doing everything that could have been done to prevent 9/ 11.

If there were to be, God forbid, another terrorist attack on the United States and the commission that is inevitably going to study what happened would look at the days prior to that event in the Congress, what they would find is a House of Representatives that is sitting on its hands, that is unwilling to take up the Senate-passed bill. That bill passed with 68 Senators voting yes, obviously Democrats and Republicans voting yes, a very strong bipartisan bill. The President says he will sign it. He said we need it. The intelligence community says we need it.

Now it has been 2 weeks, and we don't have a law that enables us to engage in this intelligence collection.

What happens if before we get that law there is an attack or even an attack after that based upon communications of terrorists that we could have intercepted but didn't because we didn't have the means to do it?

There is going to be a lot of finger-pointing, and rightfully so. The Senate said we are going to do our part, we are going to pass this law so there are no gaps in our intelligence collection.

The House of Representatives continues to sit on its hands. What will it take to get the House leadership to take up the Senate-passed bill and send it to the President for his signature? I hope it doesn't take another terrorist event.

This debate we are having about our policy in defeating al-Qaida and how Iraq fits into that is part of an overall debate about our approach to the war against militant Islam, the terrorists who strike innocent people. As I said in the beginning, the most important thing that we can do in starting our effort in the war is to have good intelligence. In this case, the best offense is not going to war in some foreign country, not bombing somebody, but finding out what these bad actors are up to and preventing them from putting their plans into effect.

Partially because it has been quite a long time since 9/11, and partially because it is not possible to talk about some of these events because they are highly classified, the American public probably is not as aware as it should be of the kind of activities that go on every day. What happens every day is that there are all over the world thousands of would-be terrorists meeting, planning, communicating, training, and, in some cases, carrying out their intentions engaging in terrorist activity. And because we have had good intelligence collection, much of which is done through this electronic interception of communications, we have been able to stop specific terrorist attacks. Some of these are chronicled by the communications from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. Some are laid out in reports from the CIA and other unclassified reports--just to mention one: an effort to blow up elements of the Los Angeles Airport, LAX. There are others. I have kind of forgotten which ones are classified and which aren't, so I am not going to describe any more. But the reality is, it is going on all the time, and only by good intelligence can we find out in advance and then either infiltrate the cell, work with our counterparts in another country to round up the bad guys, or perhaps, if the plans haven't gotten to the execution stage, use our knowledge to gain additional information to track other terrorists. In any event, at some point, when it looks as if the plan may be about to be executed, either we or our allies have to come in and arrest the individuals so that the attack doesn't occur. But we can't do that if we don't know what they are up to.

It is unfortunate that a lot of the information about how we collect intelligence has gotten out, but it is fortunate that we have companies in the United States that are willing to cooperate with their Government because they are in a position to help the Government intercept these communications. It just happens to be because of the way the modern telecommunications technology now works.

We should be doing everything we can to protect these volunteers, in effect. They have relied, in good faith, on the representations of the Government that the President had the authority to engage in these operations and requested their services. This is not my conclusion, this is the conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee in its report on the legislation we passed. It pointed out that it had examined the record and found these communications companies had, in fact, acted in good faith. So there is no reason for them to be subjected to lawsuits. Unless those lawsuits go away, it is quite possible that one by one the companies that are assisting us are going to conclude that it is not in their financial best interests to do so and that, as much as they would like to, they are simply not in a position to continue to be able to do so. That would be disastrous for our intelligence gathering.

So, as I said, the fix is the legislation that passed the Senate. It is a good bill. It reauthorizes this program for 6 more years and adds the one important additional element, and that is the protection from liability.

It also adds some additional civil liberties protections, by the way, for Americans abroad. One of our colleagues, Senator Wyden, had inserted the provision that adds an extra layer of protection for an American who might happen to be abroad and find himself or herself a target of some of this interception because of a call made to the individual or that individual making a call to somebody else who is under surveillance and so on. It is a rather rare occurrence, but we have provided protections so that a warrant would have to be obtained in that circumstance, and Americans' civil liberties would be protected.

So no one should be under the assumption here that somehow or other reauthorizing this law lets the Government loose to begin spying on people. Believe me, there is so much information out there which we don't even have the time or the ability to check out that we are not going to go out of our way to spy on people on whom we have no reason to spy. This is simply a matter of trying to identify those instances in which known terrorists, or people who affiliate with these terrorists abroad, are communicating with each other.

By the way, importantly, if that communication comes into the United States, we want to know whom they are communicating with here because that could be the late stages of an operation. That could be an indication that there is an element embedded in the United States--a terrorist cell, perhaps, that is ready or at least is in the process of planning to engage in some kind of attack.

So these are the kinds of things we need to know about and which have protected the American public since 2001. It is no accident that America has not had an attack on our soil since 2001. It is also no accident that, frankly, the number of attacks in other places around the world is far less than would have been the case had we and these other countries not had in place good intelligence-gathering operations and good cooperation, I might add, among our intelligence services once we find out something that needs to be acted upon.

So as we debate these resolutions that focus on getting at al-Qaida-- our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are insistent that we should be focusing our efforts not on extraneous aspects of this war against terrorists but

on al-Qaida--I simply say to all of you that focusing on al-Qaida means first and foremost getting good intelligence on what they are up to. In today's modern world, that cannot be done without a reauthorization of this law that enables us to collect this telecommunications intelligence. That is not going to happen unless the bill passes and is sent to the President. Every day that goes by that the House leadership sits on the legislation we here in the Senate passed and doesn't send that to the President is another day of vulnerability. It is a day in which we will never get back the intelligence we might have collected.

This is not something where we can catch up. It is not something where it is not doing us any harm. As General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell pointed out, it is lost information forever. That telephone call we might have communicated is not going to happen again. Now, maybe a subsequent call will, but we will never have the benefit of the communication that occurred yesterday or the day before or later on today because we don't have the ability to engage in that collection.

I can't think of anything more important to our national security than getting this legislation adopted. It is one of the reasons we agreed with the majority leader's cloture petition to debate this question of how we should be focusing our effort on al-Qaida, because we wanted to ensure that the American people understood what is at stake here and understood what is at risk by the House of Representatives not taking up and passing the Senate legislation on intelligence collections abroad.

Madam President, I hope the House leadership will take this up quickly, will get the bill to the President so that he can sign it into law and Americans will once again be protected by the most advanced techniques and technologies we have.

I see my colleague from Tennessee is here, our distinguished conference chairman, and I will relinquish the floor so that he may speak. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, one of the most pressing issues in America today is: What will Congress do to address health care? The American people deserve a 21st century health care system--not just a delivery system of doctors and hospitals but a system that is integrated, one that recognizes society has changed.

This body, several years ago, extended a new benefit to Medicare, where we covered prescription drugs in a health care delivery system that was created in the 1960s, when drugs were not a common treatment for disease. It took us until the 21st century to recognize that if we would enhance the benefit so we could match the disease with some of the breakthroughs, that the outcome was different, that Americans actually got better, that the cost actually went down because we eliminated the number of incidents.

America's health is at risk. When I say America's health is at risk, I am talking about the physical health and the economic health of this country. It is impossible to believe that unless you transform health care so it works for everybody in this country that American business can be competitive in a global marketplace that is not coming, that we are part of today.

Now, Republicans want to propose to this body and to America one main goal. That goal is that we are committed--Republicans are committed--to providing every American with genuine access to quality, affordable health care that protects the sacred doctor-patient relationship. This is what everybody thinks of when they think of a health care plan: health care coverage that recognizes them as an individual and coverage they need to provide security for their family.

Let me restate it. We are committed to providing every American with genuine access to quality, affordable health care that protects the sacred

doctor-patient relationship. Nothing else should get between that. It should not be determined based upon an arbitrary third-party reimburser or the Federal Government. The reality is, when we provide every American with this opportunity, we have a system that functions like the marketplace is designed.

How do we get there? No. 1: access and choice. All Americans have a right to choose their doctor, to choose their hospital, and, I believe, to choose the health care plan they want, and, more importantly, they deserve. No Washington, DC, bureaucrat should deny that right.

Americans like choice. We know that. Americans do not like to have one choice. They like multiple choices. As a matter of fact, when you have one, you really do not have a choice. Some politicians want to give America one choice. It is the debate potentially of this next election cycle.

Let me teach America a new word. It is called ``universal control.'' Universal control: when one entity is in charge of the only choice, and now they control how they provide that; they control what it looks like; they control where you get it; they control what the cost is. All of a sudden, this innovative, creative health care system we have had in America--that has not worked for everybody because our target has not been to make sure every American is covered--all of a sudden it totally breaks down.

Well, one health care package, one set of doctors, one set of treatments, one set of prescriptions is not what America is looking for. America is looking for choice. North Carolinians do not want one choice, and they certainly do not want bureaucrats in Washington, DC, defining what their choices are going to be.

A majority of Americans are willing to pay a little bit more to have more choices. I strongly believe doctors and patients--not lawyers and bureaucrats--should have the power to make health care decisions.

The challenge is that Americans believe that is the most important thing. Clearly, access to health care is directly dependent upon cost. Americans must have access and choice, but they also have to have affordable coverage. Republicans believe the best health care in the world is worthless if Americans cannot afford it, and I think we would all agree.

It would drive down costs by giving Americans control over their own health care choices, making sure patients have the information they need to make good decisions, guaranteeing vigorous competition that benefits patients, and holding the entire health care system accountable to the patients' needs.

You see, in many cases we have used Government as the accountability measure. We miss the boat. The accountability measure is making sure patients hold the system, patients hold the doctors, patients hold the hospitals accountable; more importantly, patients hold the insurers accountable.

This belief that a patient cannot negotiate with an insurer--well, quite frankly, these days are over. We need to drive down costs. We need to give Americans control over their own health care choices. We need to make sure patients have the information they need to make good choices--the right choices for them, for their family, for their age, for their illness or their health conditions, and, more importantly, for their income, guaranteeing vigorous competition that benefits patients. The focus here is on patients, holding the entire health care system accountable to patients' needs.

I would suggest if health care could be more like a television--with a television, you have real competition. You have a choice of over the air, you have a choice of basic, you have a choice of cable, you have a choice of cable with premiums, and you have a choice of DirectTV. In fact, with television, you know exactly what comes with each option. You know exactly how much it costs, and you know you get what you pay for. That can be the only reason that on-demand sports has become so popular. It is because when you want to watch a sporting event, and you see exactly what the cost is, you can make a calculation as an individual as to whether that is worth it to you. Americans should have all the competition, the choice, the control, and the information they need when it comes to health care decisions. So affordable coverage.

Let me tell you a story. My oldest son is now 23. Shortly before he became 22, I was notified by the Office of Personnel Management in Washington that in the Federal Government, regardless of where you were in the Federal Government, your children, when they turned the age of 22, even if they were in school--which mine were--had to be dropped from your health insurance.

Now, forget the fact--I can see the Presiding Officer is struggling with this. That does not save any money. You are exactly right. You are taking the healthiest of America, and you are taking them out of the risk pool that helps hold down the risk for us older guys who are more susceptible to disease. But somewhere the Federal Government got this idea that they are going to save money by dropping people when they become 22 years old--the healthiest of the American population.

So I went through the realization that this is actually going to happen. There is no way you can change it. So I called OPM to say: Surely, you have negotiated coverage for our children. I would like something that resembles the plan I had with Blue Cross Blue Shield. They quoted me the exact same plan: $5,400 a year. Twenty-two years old, healthy as a bull, still in college, and all of a sudden, as a parent, I was strapped with the decision that for him to have coverage it was going to cost $5,400. If it was his decision alone, he would have said: No way. Affordability was not met from the standpoint of what he was getting in coverage for what it was costing.

I did not stop there. I picked up the phone. I called the university he was at and found out a local insurer, insurance agent, had negotiated with Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage for kids who fell into this situation where they did not have insurance. I described to him the plan. He quoted me the exact same plan that as a Member of the Senate I had, which, before, my son was covered under, with the same deductible, the same copay, the same limits--the exact same plan. But this was negotiated by an independent insurance agent in Chapel Hill, NC, against the same Blue Cross Blue Shield that the Federal Government, representing 1.3 million employees, negotiated with; and on behalf of my son, he negotiated a cost of $1,500 per year--$1,500 versus $5,400, a fairly significant savings.

We sit here and wonder: What can the American people do with the right information relative to the decisions they have to make as it relates to health care coverage? If it is that difficult to figure out how to have the coverage you need at the cost you can afford, envision how difficult it is for a patient without information to decide what type of chemotherapy they are going to take, when all of a sudden the doctor walks in and says: You have cancer and you are going to die without treatment. This is a difficult thing without the ability to go out and search for the information.

The third item is quality care and prevention. Here is a unique word in health care, ``prevention.'' It is something that probably for decades we should have incorporated into the coverage each of us has. We believe in strengthening health care by providing consistent, dependable quality and promoting the principles of prevention. What is prevention? Let's change our habits. Let's educate ourselves. Let's do the things that keep us healthy. And let's actually pay annually to let somebody go in and see the doctor and make sure there is not a health condition they have that could be prevented, early, without the incidence of an inpatient stay in the hospital.

We will harness the powerful promise of advanced research and modern technology to create innovative new treatments and breakthrough cures, promote wellness, and empower consumers with accurate, comprehensive information on quality health care that is available for them.

Choice, information: I believe strengthening health care by providing consistent, dependable quality and promoting prevention is absolutely essential.

Creating innovative new treatments and breakthrough cures: Let me ask my colleagues, if innovation didn't take place, what would the diabetics do

today, those who currently have a diabetic pump that is implanted in their side, that automatically reads their blood sugar 24 hours a day, administers the insulin when they need it. No longer do they go through a finger prick. No longer do they get an inconsistent reading. No longer do they inject themselves later than they need to keep a balance. Why is that important? Because for somebody with diabetes who can constantly maintain their blood sugar at the right level, it means none of the horrors we heard about and saw and that many families lived with before when the management was not as precise. The result was, eventually they began to go blind, eventually began to have a toe, two toes, all their toes, a foot, a leg amputated because of the effects of diabetes. Forget the number of times the person might have been admitted to the hospital to get their blood sugar in balance so they could at least delay the deterioration. Now technology allows a diabetic to insert a pump and to keep a constant read and a constant regulation of their blood sugar. The net result is the system saves a tremendous amount of money. The individual saves a tremendous amount of money. The individual's quality of life is that much better.

For a student who had diabetes, the likelihood was that they would never play organized sports because the demands on an athlete mean they have a blood sugar spike that is incredible, and without the ability to regulate that, it was impossible. Now kids are playing soccer at every age and running around with a pump that is automatically reading their blood sugar.

How about for some of us who are a little bit older and we probably are susceptible--because we haven't done everything we should do regarding healthy habits, we are susceptible to high cholesterol. Where would we be without the pharmaceuticals' breakthrough of cholesterol drugs? I will tell my colleagues where we would be. We would be funding $8,000-plus bypass surgeries at an alarming rate that would bankrupt the system, both public and private. But today we have this little pill we can take. It doesn't take the place of exercise, it doesn't take the place of diet, but it certainly enhances our chances that we are not going to be selected to have bypass surgery, open-heart surgery; that we are not going to have the recovery time, the loss of productivity at work because innovation allowed us now to inject in that quality arena a different outcome based upon innovation.

We want to promote wellness. We want to empower consumers with accurate, comprehensive information. The United States has the best health care system in the world. I will tell my colleagues, North Carolina is a big reason as to why health care is so good. We need to make sure quality stays high while improving the access. Congress needs to foster--not hinder--research and development of treatments and cures.

I just mentioned prevention and wellness. Those words need to be the first thing Americans think about when they think ``health care'' or when they think ``doctors.'' Prevention and wellness. Doctors should be paid to help people stay healthy instead of just paying them to treat individuals who are sick.

My final thought for this section: Patients should have as much information prior to using doctors and hospitals as they do prior to buying cars. What a novel idea. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is starting to provide quality, Web-based information about nursing homes and hospitals. The initiative needs to keep growing so all patients have the ability to research all aspects of health care. That happens in real time at the tips of our fingers. Access and choice, affordable coverage, quality care and prevention.

The fourth piece--and we shouldn't be shocked because this is America--personal ownership and security. But this is something our system has never incorporated. We believe Americans should own and control their health care coverage and should have the freedom and the flexibility to take it with them when they change jobs, just like a 401(k).

Hard-working Americans deserve the peace of mind to know the care they need will be the care they receive and that their financial security will be protected from catastrophic events.

Americans will achieve this security and will receive better care if the health care system is highly personalized and guarantees patient control. What does that mean? With the right information, with the right resources, any American should have the ability to construct a health care plan that meets their age, their health, their income, and have the financial security of knowing they are covered. Some might call this ala carte, the ability to construct something that meets--for those of us who are over a certain age, we have probably already been instructed by our spouses that we have had all the children we are going to have. That is a little tough in this body because we have had some Members who had them at quite a late stage in life. But I fall into that category. I can't buy health insurance coverage that doesn't come with maternity coverage. I pay for it knowing I am never going to use it.

Now, maybe I am helping to subsidize somebody else. But while we are here talking about every American being insured, the reason we are here is because that subsidy is going on today. It goes on in every company. In goes on with everybody who pays out of pocket. It is something that happens to each of us who have health insurance, and it is triggered by somebody who receives a service in health care and either won't or can't pay. So to recover the cost of the delivery of that benefit, hospitals, doctors, every delivery point in health care does what they call cost-shift. They charge that cost of delivering that service over to the people who have coverage or who can pay.

When all of a sudden you have a goal and a commitment that every American is insured, the cost-shift goes away. What is the score on that? It is $200 billion a year. So that is $200 billion that today does not go to the delivery of one ounce of care. It is shifted to people who can pay or who are covered. All of a sudden now we know the answer to why health care increases at double-digit rates of inflation on an annual basis. It is because as the pool of uninsured continues to grow, the amount of cost-shift continues to grow, and the cost-shift is directly dumped on those companies that provide coverage for their employees, for us as individuals if we go to the marketplace and we buy coverage or to us who pay out of pocket when we access health care because it is shifted evenly across the system.

Forget the fact that if we adopt this, if we achieve it, that, one, we have a more manageable system--a system, quite honestly, that incorporates access and choice, affordability, quality and prevention and wellness, personal ownership, and the security of knowing you have coverage. We drive the costs down for every American.

The goal is to continue to have the best health care system in the world, to continue to drive innovation and medical breakthroughs, and to do it in a way that brings the overall cost of health care down. If we can begin to see the trend line on inflation and health care begin to go south, it is amazing what type of an incentive it will be to individuals who now engage in the prevention and wellness section and begin to look at ways that they can control the cost of their health care because it is now theirs, they own it, they have constructed it, they can change it as they need to, and--oh, yes, by the way, to accomplish this, we have to have 50 States that have high-risk pools that take those individuals with preexisting conditions, and we collectively buy their cost of insurance down to an equal amount for those of us who are healthy. A lot of States around the country currently do it. Mine just happened to pass it last year. We are late coming to the game. But the reality is that all 50 States should and will and have to do it if we want the system to work.

There is a way to maintain the highest level of care in the world, the highest commitment to innovation and breakthroughs, to look down the road and know we are going to cure things tomorrow, that today there is only one outcome and it is to live. If we don't change and transform our health care system and begin to promote prevention and wellness and to drive the costs down, the first thing that will leave is innovation, the innovation that treats

many of us today in a totally different way, with a multitude of options we never had. If, in fact, we don't begin to change this, the system will reflect one choice, one doctor, one hospital, one delivery port.

I challenge my colleagues today that is universal control, control where one entity--the Federal Government--dictates where we go, who we see, what they are reimbursed for delivering the service, and the outcome will be the lack of innovation, the lack of breakthroughs, and no reason for the American people to make healthy choices and to engage in prevention and wellness.

That is where we are. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will engage and encourage our leadership to have a healthy debate on health care. I haven't locked in to any prescribed legislation tonight. It is the principles of the Republican Conference that I am here to present and will continue to come back to the Senate floor to present. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: let's come to the floor. Bring your legislation. Let's examine it, let's debate it, let's let America see it. Let them be the judge. At the end of the day, it is the American people who will influence where this debate goes, and that is exactly who should influence it. They are the patients of the future health care system.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is suggested we should not be discussing Iraq. Well, the last time I checked, the majority leader sets the agenda. The majority leader brought up Iraq, and if he wants to bring up Iraq, we can discuss Iraq.

I too am wondering why it is being brought up because we have other important issues we could be dealing with. For example, I wish to see the Congress turn its attention to a pro-growth economic package, a discussion of how we can help this economy move. I think once we have that opportunity to debate, we will have a good, principled exchange of ideas here.

My suspicion is that from the other side of the aisle we will hear a number of expensive spending proposals, and from our side of the aisle we will hear a different agenda, an agenda that says we want a bigger, bolder, broader pro-growth economic agenda so we can move this economy in a more positive direction.

Part of that would have to do with lower tax rates for individuals, such as to permanently reduce the dividend, capital gains, and estate tax rates to 15 percent. Part of it would be to lower corporate tax rates, reducing the capital gains tax for corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent so our companies in America can compete in the world. Part of it would be indexing the capital gains tax for inflation so that double taxation of capital would at least reflect inflation. Part of it would be something that many Members of this Chamber have talked about for a long time: a simpler, flatter tax, giving taxpayers the option of filing a 1-page return with a 17-percent flat tax rate.

I wish to see--and I plan to introduce within the next few days-- legislation that would make permanent the expensing provisions for small business that we passed in a bipartisan way before the recess in the pro-growth package to help stimulate the economy. Those provisions increased the small business expensing limits and allowed a 50 percent bonus depreciation.

Now it is not unusual to hear Republicans talking about lower tax rates. But that is only a part of--a part of--what we would propose if our debate were here for a pro-growth economic package. I wish to see us bring up Senator Isakson's proposal, which would create a $5,000-a- year, 3-year tax credit for buyers of foreclosed or new homes to get buyers back in the marketplace.

I wish to see us begin to more seriously implement the America COMPETES Act. That is part of a pro-growth agenda as well. We worked hard in this Chamber across party lines for 2 years to advance legislation to increase our nation's competitiveness in the global economy. The President made a priority of it. He said we ought to have an 18 percent increase in funding for the physical sciences in this year's budget. We should talk about that and make a commitment to make room in the budget for that so we can double funding in the physical sciences over the next 5 years so we can keep our brainpower advantage so our jobs will not go overseas.

As one Senator, I want to see that we continue to in-source brainpower for new jobs by pinning a green card on the lapel of every foreign student who earns a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics from a U.S. university, and who is legally here and passes a background check. We could have a good debate here in the Chamber about whether it is a good idea to do that. I think it is.

We have 570,000-something foreign students here. Why would we attract the brightest people in the world to study here and make them promise to go home and create new jobs in India and in China? Let's create them here.

We could make the research and development tax credit permanent. We could have a full-day debate about how to improve our schools. I see the Senator from New Hampshire is in the Chamber; he was one of the principal authors of the No Child Left Behind Act. There is a provision in that legislation which is called the Teacher Incentive Fund. It tackles one of the most difficult problems in American education. How do you reward outstanding teaching? Well, you cannot do

it from Washington. But you can fund it from Washington, so in Philadelphia and in Phoenix and in Memphis school leaders and teachers are part of plans where you pay them more for leading well and pay them more for teaching well.

I did that in Tennessee in 1983 when I was Governor. Mr. President, 10,000 teachers went up a career ladder. As soon as I left, its opponents killed it. But teacher after teacher comes back to me saying they wish it were still there. Every time we have a hearing on education, we hear the need to keep and attract outstanding teachers.

We could talk about and debate--and I am sure we would debate--Pell Grants for Kids. Why not give vouchers to poor kids so they can go to some of the schools that people with money go to?

Why not go ahead and implement the provisions in the America COMPETES Act for adding 10,000 math and science teachers, and give a million and a half more low-income children the opportunity to take Advanced Placement tests?

If we want to talk about growing the economy, we can do that. We could talk about stopping runaway lawsuits and enacting small business health plans. We can talk about lower energy costs. We can talk about lowering the cost of Government. Or we can talk about Iraq.

I have been one of those who, over time, has had some difference of opinion with the President on Iraq. I thought he should have embraced the Iraq Study Group plan as soon as it came out: Put Secretary Baker, Congressman Hamilton, and the other members of the Iraq Study Group up there in the Gallery and honor them and accept their suggestions.

Mr. President, I would be glad to yield to the majority leader.

Order Of Business

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader.

Mr. President, I would say that last year I thought I had succeeded in doing something that no one else had been able to do. I unified President Bush and Senator Reid on Iraq in their opposition to our Iraq Study Group legislation. But my point is that while I have been one on this side of the aisle who wishes the President had taken a different tact, I think in all honesty we are talking about how things have changed in Iraq.

If we look at the Iraq Study Group recommendations, what were they? First, transition of mission. Let's shift our military forces out of direct combat and into roles of supporting, training, and equipping Iraqi forces as security conditions on the ground permit. That is happening. It is happening province by province. That wasn't foreseen quite as clearly by the authors of the Iraq Study Group report. I am not sure any of us saw it. General Petraeus was wise enough to see it. He is helping Iraq have a transition of mission of U.S. forces from mainly combat to mainly support, training, and equipping. But the Iraq Study Group itself, while it set a goal for that shift of mission, explicitly rejected the idea of a deadline. As the Senator from Alabama said earlier, it explicitly rejected the idea of a deadline.

The second recommendation of the Iraq Study Group was that we maintain a long term, but diminishing, presence in Iraq, with an emphasis on diminishing. That is happening. Troops are coming out instead of troops going in. Now, they are not coming out as rapidly as many had hoped, but they are coming out. They are coming out in the spirit of the Iraq Study Group report--not as rapidly as the report originally recommended, but as quickly as conditions on the ground will now permit. The limited mission the Iraq Study Group envisioned, in addition to supporting Iraqi forces, includes protection of coalition forces, counterterrorism operations, border security, intelligence- sharing, supporting provisional reconstruction teams, and search and rescue.

Finally, the Iraq Study Group urged that we undertake a new diplomatic offensive, that we step up regional and diplomatic efforts to press others in the region to help Iraq succeed. Well, that has been happening. It may not be happening as rapidly as everyone in the Chamber would like, but these efforts are well underway, with a more expansive United Nations mission. But higher profile efforts are also needed, including by the President.

So I would not stand here and say that the Iraq Study Group legislation that Senator Salazar and I introduced--supported by eight Democrats and eight Republicans, and which we unsuccessfully urged the President and this body to adopt a year ago--I would not say we should do that today. But I would say as one Senator that I believe that is the direction in which we are moving, and the Iraq Study Group has made a significant contribution to that effort. I, frankly, believe the bipartisan approach here by those 16 Senators also helped move us in that direction.

Now, Senator Feingold's proposal and the Iraq Study Group recommendations are at odds. In the first place, the Feingold legislation sets a 120-day deadline for changing the mission of our forces in Iraq and requiring a massive withdrawal. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group specifically opposed such a deadline, saying that transition should be, as I said, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground.

The Feingold amendment and the Iraq Study Group differ in another way: the continuing mission for the troops. My reading of the Feingold bill says that it would prevent American troops from being embedded with Iraqi forces, from securing Iraqi borders, from fighting terrorists who aren't known to be affiliated with al-Qaida, and performing various intelligence operations. Those missions are all supported by the Iraq Study Group. It is part of our long term, but diminishing, role in Iraq.

As has been noted today, this is not a new subject for the Senate. We have had perhaps three dozen votes on Iraq last year. Perhaps we should have that many votes. What else is more important than Iraq? But at some point, we have come to a conclusion, and I think on the issue of the Feingold bill, this body, by a large majority, has already expressed itself. There were four previous votes on similar--not exactly the same but similar--funding cut and withdrawal proposals offered by Senator Feingold. Those were on December 18, 2007, and 71 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on October 3, 2007, 68 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on September 20, 2007, 70 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on May 16, 2007, 67 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment.

We have 100 Senators, and 49 of us are Republicans. Not all of us agree on Iraq. So that meant that a substantial number of Democrats consistently voted against those Feingold amendments.

So I know Senator Feingold is sincere and passionate in his beliefs, but it would seem to me that four votes are enough on this subject, and--as important as it is--we could turn our attention to other issues. But if the majority leader, for whatever reason, feels a need to bring this issue to the floor of the Senate, then we are ready to talk about it.

We are not all of one mind here, even on the Republican side. We have some on this side of the aisle who said when the Iraq Study Group report came out that it was a recipe for surrender. I disagreed with that and said so publicly and said so privately to the President. He was good enough to hear me out one-on-one. I find him to be a very good listener.

I, for one, am enormously impressed with General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy. I, like most of us, have had a chance to go to Iraq--in my case, two times to Iraq, and three times to Kuwait. I have had a chance last year in August to visit with General Petraeus and General Odierno and to go into the outskirts of Baghdad and to see an area where our soldiers were in camp and to have dinner with a group

of sheiks. One of the sheiks' sons had been murdered in his front yard, and they were fed up with the al-Qaida terrorists and were convinced that because the American forces were there, that the Iraqis could risk their lives by teaming with the American forces to run the terrorists out of town, which in many places they have done.

I still think it would have been better for our troops and it would send a clear message to the enemy if we had, as an administration and as a Congress, embraced the Iraq Study Group Report because it said basically what we are doing today. It said we need to change direction. We need to, No. 1, shift our mission, which we are doing. It specifically embraced the idea of a surge, if that was necessary. It rejected the idea of a specific deadline and said it should be subject to developments on the ground. It said we should identify a long-term but diminishing presence in Iraq, which we have been doing as a country. The Iraq Study Group Report said also that we should step up our diplomatic efforts. Its goal--not its binding effect but its goal-- was that all of its recommendations could be accomplished more rapidly than has been done. That is true. But at the same time, it recognized that it was all subject to security developments on the ground.

So when we have a success--or it may be more accurate to say a series of small successes in a difficult arena such as Iraq--when we have military leadership such as General Petraeus and his team who have stuck to a new counterinsurgency strategy--at least new to Iraq that took our forces out of the Green Zone and placed them on the outskirts--when we have done that, then I think we ought to recognize that for what it is.

I am glad to have this opportunity to talk about Iraq and the progress we are making there. I hope we can make more there. I would like for more of our Tennesseans to come home. In the National Guard alone, we have had more than 10,000 Tennesseans in Iraq, some for a year, some twice, some three times. They are our uncles, and they are our aunts. They are our neighbors, our deputy sheriffs, the mayor of Lexington, the postmaster from Robbinsville. They have mortgages. They have kids. Ninety have died, 90 Tennesseans in this period of time. So it is good to have this discussion. If the majority leader wants to bring it up, we should. But I think at the same time we ought to recognize it for what it is. We have changed direction. The troops are coming out instead of going in. The mission is shifting. The role is diminishing. It will be there for a long time, and the diplomatic effort is stepped up. If that is succeeding, then our country is succeeding, and we can spend more time on other issues.

Tornadoes in Tennessee

Now, if I may--I see the Senator from Florida may be wanting to speak, and if he would indulge me another 3 or 4 minutes, I wish to discuss what has happened in Tennessee with tornadoes in the last couple of weeks.

On the night of February 5, tornadoes began to hit Memphis at about 6 o'clock. While many people were watching the Tennessee-Florida basketball game safely in their homes, a tornado touched down in Macon County, TN, and stayed on the ground for 21 miles. More than two dozen people were killed.

Prior to that, it hit in Jackson, TN, nearly wiping out Union University. Fortunately, at Union University, president David Dockery had conducted drills, and the students had enough warning to get to the safest places in their dormitories, and no one was killed there. That was not by accident; it was because of good leadership. It was also because of a good early-warning system.

The point of my remarks tonight is that we sometimes hear in connection with disasters--particularly since Hurricane Katrina--that our disaster response system and our emergency response system isn't as good as it should be. I can't speak to every case, but over the last 30 years, as Governor for some years and in the Cabinet for 2 years and now in the Senate, I have seen a lot of disasters and tragedies. I have never seen an example where the local officials, the Governor of the State, and the President of the United States acted more rapidly, more effectively, or more humanely.

The Governor, Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, was on the scene immediately. He gathered all of his information--not too rapidly because he knows it needs to be accurate--and he had it to President Bush on the night of February 7 at about 7 p.m. By 10 p.m. President Bush had approved it--had called the Governor and approved individual and public assistance for five of the hardest hit counties. The Governor then went on to commit that the State would pay half of the local share of the disaster aid that needs to be paid.

I went with the President and Congressman Gordon and Senator Corker to the Macon County area on the Friday after it hit. I visited Jackson last week. What I found was that FEMA has already received 3,700 applications from 14 approved counties. FEMA has distributed $1.9 million in 14 counties. The first small business loan was approved on the day I was there.

I visited those whose homes were blown away. It is a terrifying thought that in just 60 seconds everything is demolished. You don't know where to hide. But I also visited with the emergency responding team and a couple whose home was hit in Jackson, TN. They were told via the television at 6 o'clock that the tornado was coming, and they were told 10 minutes before it hit their house that if they lived on the north side of the interstate, the tornado would be there in 10 minutes, and it was. That was the kind of early warning system they had. And in Macon County, a tornado that hit at 9:30 at night has been anticipated. By midnight, FEMA personnel from Atlanta were at the Tennessee border at Chattanooga. And by 7 a.m. the next morning, disaster recovery centers were set up in Macon County.

I wish to express my admiration, first, for the local officials for doing a first-rate job; second, to FEMA and TEMA, the Tennessee emergency management professionals who were there on the spot; third, to Governor Bredesen who could not have done a better, more thorough, more sensitive job; and fourth, to the President and the Washington officials who were on the ball.

It is important occasionally to find the good and praise it in Government service, and in this case, I believe--well, I know--every single person I talked with in the west Tennessee area or the Macon County area felt as if the Governor, the President, and the local officials were doing everything they could to be helpful, and they were deeply grateful for it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Schumer be recognized for 5 minutes; followed by Senator Tester for 5 minutes; and then Senator McCaskill for 5 minutes; she wanted an opportunity to speak; and then I be given the remaining 15 minutes. That consumes the half hour between now and 2 o'clock.

I am happy to.

Senator Schumer for 7 minutes.

Mr. President, later this afternoon the Senate will have an opportunity to vote on a procedural motion, a cloture motion, to end debate and to move to another issue. The issue we want to move to is the housing stimulus package. We are expecting resistance from the Republican side of the aisle. They don't want to debate the housing issue facing America. That is a serious mistake. I hope enough Republican Senators will step forward and join us to initiate this debate about housing in America. Our economy is in trouble. It is struggling. The first indication we had was in the housing market. We know we passed a stimulus bill recently, a bipartisan bill which the President signed. It is going to be a good bill, I hope, to help families across my State and across the Nation. But we all know intuitively that until the housing market gets well, our economy is not going to get well.

The housing market is very sick today. Last Friday, Moody's Economy.com reported that 1 out of 10 homeowners in America are holding mortgages on homes where their debt is larger than the value of their home; 8.8 million homes in America are so-called underwater, as they say. That is the greatest percentage of homes in such a state since the Great Depression. Goldman Sachs estimates that by the end of 2008, as many as 15 million homes will be in that situation, almost double the number we know today. The Center for Responsible Lending estimates 2 and a quarter million homes may be lost to foreclosure in the next couple of years. Fitch Ratings has recently estimated that for subprime loans originated in the years 2006 and 2007, 50 percent of them could end up in foreclosure.

But the crisis goes beyond the families who have their mortgages foreclosed. Forty million American families who are currently making their mortgage payments, through no fault of their own, will see the value of their homes go down because of this housing crisis. Why? Because the value of your home is based on comparable sales in the neighborhood. When that neighbor 2 blocks over has a distress sale, an auction, because his house is in foreclosure and the house sells for less than fair market value, that is a calculation that affects the value of your home. Make your mortgage payments and still lose value in your home; that is what is happening.

So when we hear from some people that this is a narrow problem for a narrow group of people, trust me, it goes, unfortunately, way beyond. A third of all residences in America will lose value because 2.2 million homes will face foreclosure at rates that we have not seen since the Great Depression.

When the President was asked today in his press conference what should we do about this, he said: Let's sit tight. We just passed one stimulus bill. The checks are going to go out in May or June. Let's wait and see what happens.

It is that kind of bold, innovative attitude that led Herbert Hoover to do nothing in the Great Depression and for the situation to go from bad to worse.

This housing crisis is our wake-up call. If we do not rally on a bipartisan basis and do something about it, the economy is going to get worse. I do not say that with any sense of pride--just disappointment. My home is going to go down in value, too, in Springfield, IL. That is a fact. Though my wife and I make our mortgage payments, we are facing that reality.

So we have to do something about this. In Illinois, the fourth worst hit State in the country, it is estimated that nearly 45,000 homes will be lost to foreclosure and over 2.5 million neighboring homes will see a loss in value. Our State will see $15 billion lost in housing values, and as property values go down, property tax receipts go down. That means that your city, your county, trying to raise money for schools, for police protection, is going to have less money coming in.

We should have seen this coming. I was on this floor sitting back there in the corner as a relatively new Member in 2001 when we considered the bankruptcy bill. I wanted to put in a provision, and here is what it said: If you are a lending institution and you are guilty of predatory practices--those are illegal practices, where you mislead people into debt--you will be limited, if not precluded, from foreclosing on that home because you do not have clean hands because you were guilty of predatory lending. You cannot take over the home of someone if you tricked them out of their money and tricked them out of their home. I lost. I lost by one vote in the year 2001.

Do you know what I said when I offered this amendment in 2005? And I thought this was a stunning statistic. I said: ``1 in 12 subprime predatory loans ends in foreclosure. And I said that is ``an astonishing statistic''--1 out of 12 subprime loans in 2005 ended up in foreclosure. Do you know what the number is today? One out of two. This is because we did not pass the kinds of laws we needed to pass to keep an eye on this industry, these mortgage bankers who are ripping people off.

Have you ever heard these stories in Colorado, in Alaska? Have you talked to these people? A lot of folks would have you believe they are people who are just smoothies, who think: We are going to make a little investment here, we are going to make this payment, and pretty soon we will have a big home, and we will not have to pay for it. Boy, those aren't the stories I am hearing. The stories I am hearing are of people, by and large elderly people, who are dragged into real estate closings, facing a stack of papers 10 times larger than this. The agent turns the pages and say: Keep signing. We will tell you when it is over. And they walk out the door with the understanding that everything is fine. Then they look at the fine print when things go bad. And what happens? There is a reset on their mortgage. The interest rate just went sky high. The monthly payment just went beyond their means.

That is the reality. There are provisions in some of those subprime mortgages where the interest rate can never go down--never--only go up.

I met a poor lady from Peoria, IL, 2 weeks ago, Carol Thomas, who is 70 years old, a widow, whose husband just died. She bought a single- level home because her husband was so sick he could not climb the stairs anymore in their old home. One of these business advisers came to her and said: Mrs. Thomas, what you ought to do is consolidate your debt. You hear that on TV all the time: Consolidate your debt. This poor lady did not know. She said: Fine. They took all her debts and consolidated them into her new home loan. They took a debt she had--a loan she received from her city for siding on her home that was a zero- percent interest loan--and threw it into the consolidation. She was now paying interest on the zero-percent loan. When did she realize it? When the mortgage reset and her monthly payment went from $500

to $900 a month. Four hundred dollars a month may not be a crisis for a Senator or a Congressman; it was a crisis for Carol Thomas. She was about to lose her home, getting the runaround day after day from the mortgage company: Well, don't make the payment this month. Now you are in default. It is a shame you are in default. Maybe you should have made the payment.

She was beside herself. Well, we got it worked out with a couple phone calls. They finally renegotiated the mortgage. But the problem Mrs. Thomas faced is shared by many others. Do you think Carol Thomas in Peoria, IL, thought she was pulling something over on people? Not at all. She thought she was taking good advice. Unfortunately, the advice was bad.

We met a family here. Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio and I had a press conference the other day with the Glicken family from Cleveland, OH. Nice folks. John Glicken came in and had his Cleveland Indians jacket on and told his story. The same thing happened to him.

Well, he decided he would try to take advantage of the Bush administration's plan for saving homes, to save his home. So they said: If you want to make an application for a loan modification under one of these new programs, it will cost you $425 to apply. John did not want to lose his home. He paid the $425. He was turned down. So not only is he facing foreclosure, he is out $425 for nothing.

In Ohio, the Center for Responsible Lending conservatively estimates that 85,000 families are at risk of losing their homes and almost 1.4 million families could lose nearly $3 billion in value in their homes. State after State--Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Indiana, Maine, North Carolina--the list goes on and on. In every one of these States, the same stories.

Well, the question is, what are we going to do about it? There is one thing we can do that can make a big difference. We need to change the bankruptcy law. Listen to this: If you are facing bankruptcy but you are not completely out in the cold--you have an income coming in--you go into something called chapter 13. You walk into bankruptcy court, and you say to the judge: I am in trouble. I cannot pay my debts. This is my income. These are my assets. Here are my debts. Is there a possibility we can work out and renegotiate these so I do not lose everything? Chapter 13.

So when you go in there, the judge takes a look at it and says: Well, let's bring in your creditors and sit down and see if we can work out some kind of payment arrangement so you don't lose everything and they don't lose everything through foreclosure.

One of the things they can do is take a look at your mortgages. Do you have a mortgage on a vacation home, a vacation condo, for example? Well, the bankruptcy court can take a look at that mortgage, bring in the creditor, modify the terms of the mortgage--change the length of the mortgage, for example--even change the amount paid on the mortgage, even change the interest rate on the mortgage. You can do that. You own a farm? Let's take the mortgage on the farm. The bankruptcy court can renegotiate the mortgage on the farm. The same thing with a ranch. But, wait a minute, what about your home? The law prohibits the bankruptcy court from modifying the terms of the mortgage on your primary home. All they can do is foreclose. That is it. Does that make any sense? A home is something that virtually everybody brings into that court. It is the most important asset we ever own, and the mortgage cannot be modified in the bankruptcy court for your home.

This provision of law in our housing stimulus package changes that. But we narrow it very strictly. It only applies if you live in the home. This puts the speculators out of business. We do not want the speculators to benefit from this.

Secondly, you have to qualify to get into bankruptcy court. You don't have any income, can't make it in there? You are not going to get into that court. They do a means test now to get you into bankruptcy court.

Third, it has to not only be an existing mortgage--not prospective, not for those 2 years from now, 3 years from now, but right now--but it has to be one of these subprime mortgages.

Then, what can the court do? The court cannot lower this new modified mortgage below the fair market value of the home. This protects the lender. Lenders are very lucky to get a fair market value out of a home that is sold at auction. But they are protected here. And judges can only reduce interest rates to the prime rate plus a reasonable premium for risk.

All of these things taken into consideration give the court the opportunity to modify the mortgage on your home so you can stay there. It is treated just like a vacation home, just like a farm, just like a ranch.

How many people will be affected by this? About a third of the people facing foreclosure. A third of those people will be eligible for this consideration. I think the good news is this: When we pass this bill, pass this change in the law, it is an incentive for these banks and lenders to sit down before you get into bankruptcy and work out terms that you can live with. That is not happening today. These lending institutions just are not doing that. They will if this provision in the law is included.

Now, who would oppose this? Think long and hard about it. It is a hard question, right? No. It is an obvious question. This change in the bankruptcy law is opposed by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Those same wonderful folks who brought us the subprime mortgage crisis oppose this change to allow people to stay in their homes--the same people.

Have you been listening to the Presidential campaign? I have. I have a colleague from Illinois who is involved in it. You know what it is about. It is about whether the special interests control this Chamber or we operate in the public interest.

Well, this will be a classic showdown when we have this cloture vote, and we need 60 votes to move forward on this housing stimulus package. The Mortgage Bankers Association is trying to stop this bill. They do not want this change in the Bankruptcy Code to give people a chance to stay in their homes, even though it has been narrowed and modified to the point where it is really strict. They do not want this. The same people who created this crisis in America by deceiving and misleading people into mortgages which were totally unfair and totally unrealistic do not want those people to have a chance to stay in their homes even if they can make a mortgage payment.

Well, it will be an interesting outcome. Let's see how this turns out. Let's see if the mortgage bankers are going to win or if the people whose homes are on the line will win this debate. It is just that simple, and it is just that straightforward. What a shame it would be--what an absolute shame it would be, if not scandalous--if at the end of the day the Mortgage Bankers Association, which created this mess in America, ends up winning on the Senate floor. If they do, I can understand the cynicism across this country about how this body works. People have a right to be cynical if at the end of the debate we cannot move to this housing stimulus bill. I think it is important we do.

Now, there is a Senator on the other side who wants to offer an amendment to give the mortgage bankers the last word in the bankruptcy court; in other words, that the mortgage bankers have to give permission before the court can modify the mortgage. Well, what is the point if they are going to have the last word? They have the last word right now. They can renegotiate a mortgage if they want to, but they are not doing it. They are not doing it on a voluntary basis. Unless and until those mortgage bankers know this mortgage can be modified, they are not going to sit down and negotiate.

Well, there is a big argument that comes back from the mortgage bankers: Oh, you know what is going to happen here. If you give a portion of these 600,000 people a chance to stay in their homes, we are just going to raise everybody's interest rate across America.

Well, let me tell you something. That is a vacant threat. The Georgetown University Law Center did a survey and study of this proposed change in the Bankruptcy Code and said it would have zero impact on the cost of credit across America--zero. So they can threaten all they want, but do they have any credibility? Does this industry have any credibility when we look at the mess we are in today?

Four years ago, we were dealing with 1 out of 12 subprime mortgages going belly up. And now half of them? When you hear those stories, State after State, family after family, of the way they were deceived into this situation, when our lack of law and lack of regulation led to this circumstance, does that tell you the mortgage bankers were the victims here? No way. It should be in their best interest to avoid foreclosure.

What happens when a property goes into foreclosure in court? Well, the lending institution spends a fortune in legal fees, and then they may end up with the property when it is all over. Then they have to cut the grass and pick up the newspapers and the mail and make sure the place is presentable, and then try to sell it at an auction, if they can. Most of them cannot, incidentally, now. They are lucky if they get a fair market value out of it. But they want to stick to their rights under the law.

The one part of it that I like the best is when the mortgage bankers come out and say this is about the sanctity of the contract. The sanctity of the contract? Sanctity suggests holiness. If you read any of these contracts I have read and hear the terms of the mortgages these people facing foreclosure had to deal with, there is nothing holy about it. It was an unholy attempt to rip these people off, to put them in homes they could not afford under terms they never understood and then let the market work. This is not about the sanctity of any contract. When that bankruptcy court modifies your vacation condo mortgage, your farm mortgage, your ranch mortgage, they are modifying a contract. What happened to the sanctity of the contract there? That basic standard should apply when it comes to a person's home.

When we get to this bill later today, it will be a procedural motion. We need 60 votes. It will be a face-off between the mortgage banking industry, the people who brought us this subprime mess and those on their side with the Herbert Hoover mentality that says: Don't get involved; let it work out; in a year or two, it will all be behind us-- and those who think we ought to stand up to allow people to stay in their homes, giving them a chance in court to modify their mortgage terms so they have a fighting chance to stay in their homes. I think that is a basic American value.

I hope my colleagues in the Senate will come down on the side of those families and on the side of bringing this housing crisis to a resolution in a responsible way.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I know we are on a 30-hour postcloture period dealing with a piece of legislation related to Iraq. I want to speak about something else today, but let me at least begin by describing a somewhat different view.

The fact is, Saddam Hussein was hung until he was dead, hung by his neck, and this brutal tyrant is dead. I suppose most of us wish that Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice, but it is Saddam Hussein who has been brought to justice in the country of Iraq. He is dead. The Iraqis have their own Constitution because they voted for it. The Iraqis have their own Government because they voted for it. The American taxpayer has spent $16 billion training 350,000 police and soldiers in Iraq for security purposes. Now the question is: Do the Iraqis who have been trained for police protection and security--both in the police force and as soldiers--do they have the will to provide for their own security? If they do not, this country cannot do it for any great length of time.

We have been in Iraq for almost 5 years. Some day we are going to leave Iraq. The question is not whether; the question is when and how. The American people are not going to have us in Iraq for 10 and 15 and 20 years. That is not the case. We are spending massive amounts of money, about $16 billion a month. Last year the President asked for more than $190 billion in emergency funding for the war. That is $16 billion a month, $4 billion a week.

It is time we begin to understand we have needs here at home, to begin taking care of things here at home. We are spending money on hundreds of water projects in Iraq. We are spending money on road- building in Iraq. We are spending money on health clinics in Iraq. Yet we get a President's budget sent to us saying we don't have enough money for those things in our country. We will dramatically cut water projects in the United States. We will cut back on all of these investments in the United States, even as we are making those substantial investments in the country of Iraq.

My point is that at some point we are going to have to bring American troops home. We can't keep doing as the President suggests, and that is spending emergency money by sending soldiers to Iraq and putting this on top of the debt so that when those soldiers come back from Iraq, they can help pay the debt. That is not the right way to approach what is happening in the country of Iraq.

All of us want the same thing for our country. We want our country to succeed. We want our country to confront and defeat terrorists. Yes, we want Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden is the person who heads al-Qaida. We are told by the Director of National Intelligence that he is safe and secure in northern Pakistan. There ought not be one square inch on the face of this Earth that is safe or secure for those who murdered Americans on 9/11. Yet more than 6 years later, this administration has not brought the leader and the leadership of the terrorist organization that attacked our country to justice. That is a failure, in my judgment, and it is a failure that results from taking our eye off the ball and having too few troops in Afghanistan and allowing Osama bin Laden to escape through Tora Bora, and then invading Iraq and committing ourselves to that over a lengthy period of time. The result is the greatest terrorist threat--according to the National Intelligence Estimate, the greatest terrorist threat against our country at this point is the leadership of al-Qaida. They are in a safe and secure haven in northern Pakistan. It seems to me that 7 years after 9/11, that has to be considered a failure. My hope would be all of us would engage in ways that begin to devote our attention to the greatest terrorist threat facing our country, and that is, as the National Intelligence Estimate says, the leadership of al-Qaida. They are recruiting and building new training camps and strengthening themselves even as we are tied down in the country of Iraq spending $16 billion a month.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 15 minutes on another subject.

Madam President, this is a picture of a man named Woodrow Wilson Keeble, a Sioux Indian. Woodrow Wilson Keeble died 26 years ago. If you take a look at this soldier's medals, you will see two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star, the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest medal given in our country, and Purple Hearts.

I want to tell my colleagues about Woody Keeble, a big man, well over 6 foot, and well over 200 pounds. On Monday of next week at 2:30 in the afternoon, at the White House, President Bush will present the Medal of Honor to Woody Keeble. As I said, he has been dead for 26 years. His wife Blossom Keeble died last summer. We had hoped this would be done before his wife died, but that was not to be the case.

I want to tell my colleagues about him because it is so unusual that a Medal of Honor will be presented posthumously to a soldier who demonstrated great acts of courage and heroism in both the Second World War and the Korean war.

He was a Lakota Sioux born in Waubay, SD, and grew up in Wahpeton, ND, and lived most of his life there. He was wounded at least twice in World War II and three times in the Korean War. Let me describe what he did so that my colleagues will know why he is being given the Medal of Honor all of these years later.

In World War II Woody Keeble served with the famed 164th Infantry Regiment of the North Dakota National Guard. Shortly after joining in 1942, he found himself on Guadalcanal, in some

of the most aggressive and dangerous hand-to-hand combat in the Second World War. He was in combat in the South Pacific until the war ended. He saw a great deal of combat. One of his fellow soldiers said the safest place to be was next to Woody. Woody earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in the Second World War. Woody was an unbelievable soldier.

Then the Korean War came along and at age 34 this Lakota Sioux Indian signed up again. He said: Somebody has to teach the kids how to fight. So he went to Korea. He was attached to George Company, 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment of the 24th Division. They were near the Kumsong River in North Korea in October of 1951. He was the acting platoon leader of the 1st platoon of ``G'' Company. Casualties were very heavy. Because the company's officers were killed, he ended up in charge of the 1st Platoon, the 2nd Platoon, and the 3rd Platoon. It was brutally cold in North Korea at the time, and the enemy, the Chinese, were entrenched on a hill with a rugged cliff, and the side of that mountain was a very difficult thing that the U.S. troops had to take.

So Woody Keeble, in charge of these three platoons, made three attempts to take that hill from the Chinese. The Chinese had three machine gun nests on top of the hill and soldiers in trenches defending that hill. Three times these platoons, with Woody leading them, went up the hill, and three times they were repulsed and rejected, with heavy casualties.

After three attempts to take that hill, Woody Keeble decided he would try it by himself. With grenades and a Browning Automatic Rifle he crawled back up the hill to the Chinese positions. Witnesses said he crawled through very heavy machine gun fire and through a blizzard of grenades. Woody Keeble scaled the hill, went around the pillboxes and knocked out all three machine guns by himself and then cleared out the trenches between them. When he returned they extracted 83 pieces of shrapnel from his body--83 pieces of shrapnel. But he wouldn't leave the battlefield until all of his men were on top of the hill and in a defensive position and only then would he allow himself to be evacuated.

Right after the engagement all of the surviving members of G Company signed a letter putting him in for the Medal of Honor. It got lost and never got from the battlefield to the Pentagon. They did it a second time a month later and it too never got from the battlefield to the Pentagon.

But in this photo, my colleagues can see the medals he did get: multiple Purple Hearts, wounded five times; two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star; the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest medal. He was a well-decorated soldier. He went to Korea to help teach those kids how to fight and it turns out he is the one who climbed the hill and saved his soldiers, knocked out three machine gun nests by himself.

Many years later the question was asked: Why was he not given the Medal of Honor? Those with whom he served began piecing together the action that day, all of those who were eyewitnesses and a part of the action on that hill in North Korea.

A woman named Merry Helm especially took it upon herself over the years to try to reconstruct Woody's story. It took a lot of time to do so. Then it was sent to the U.S. Secretary of the Army with a request that he review the original request that had never been received at the Pentagon that Woody Keeble be awarded the Medal of Honor.

The Secretary of the Army looked into the case and decided that Woody Keeble had indeed earned the Medal of Honor. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs agreed.

But then all the people involved were informed that there is a 3-year statute of limitations on the request for a Medal of Honor. The Secretary of defense could only consider Woody's case if that statute of limitations was waived.

At the request of those who had worked on it, I and my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, and our colleagues from South Dakota, Senator Johnson and Senator Thune, introduced legislation on an appropriations bill that waived the 3-year statute so the Secretary of the Defense could look at this case and decide.

The Secretary of the Defense began evaluating what happened on that hill in North Korea on a cold day when Woody Keeble was a real hero. He eventually decided, having looked at all the information, that, indeed, this Lakota Sioux Indian who served this country in two wars, was wounded five times, deserved the Medal of Honor. He sent it to the White House with the recommendation that the President approve the Medal of Honor.

This coming Monday, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I will be at the White House witnessing a ceremony at the invitation of the President in which the President Bush will present a Medal of Honor posthumously to a really remarkable, courageous American soldier named Woodrow Wilson Keeble, the only Sioux Indian ever to have received the Medal of Honor, someone who served this country with unbelievable courage and distinction and valor.

After the Korean war, he came back to Wahpeton, ND, and worked at the Wahpeton Indian School much of his life. He suffered multiple strokes, suffered significant health problems, and died 26 years later.

The moment won't pass without some notice because the President is making a presentation on Monday. However, I wanted to say something here on the floor of the Senate so those who read the Record of the Senate will understand this was an extraordinary American.

We are hearing a lot of discussion these days about the bill on the floor of the Senate dealing with Iraq and about who stands up for soldiers, who cares about American soldiers. The fact is, every single person in this Chamber cares about American soldiers and wants to support them, understands that they get up in the morning in some parts of this world--in Iraq especially--and they strap on body armor before they go out because they know there is a chance they can be killed or harmed. All of us understand what soldiers are doing for this country. I believe the one thing that unites this Chamber is we want to do right by American soldiers. The story of Woody Keeble is a story that ought to inspire all of us about what soldiers do for our country.

I have told my colleagues previously about another soldier, another American Indian. His name was Edmund Young Eagle. He was from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. He went to war. He was in northern Africa, he was in Normandy, he was in Europe. He came back and lived with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He never had very much. He had kind of a tough life.

At the end of his life, he was lying in a hospital bed at the VA hospital in Fargo, ND. His sister asked if I would get the medals he earned in the Second World War and never received. I did, and I took them to the VA hospital on a Sunday morning in Fargo, ND. The doctors and nurses crowded into his room, and Edmund Young Eagle--who at the time I didn't know was going to die 7 days later of lung cancer. Edmund Young Eagle was a sick man but very proud that morning. We cranked his bed up to a seated position, and then I pinned on his pajama top a row of medals this American Indian had earned serving his country in the Second World War. As sick as he was, he said quietly to me: This is one of the proudest days of my life--seated on his hospital bed wearing his pajama tops with his military medals.

There are so many whose names we will not talk about on the floor of the Senate today, but I do say Woody Keeble and Edmund Young Eagle are just two of thousands--millions of American soldiers over the years who have refreshed this democracy by being willing to risk their lives.

I wanted to call to the attention of the Senate Woodrow Wilson Keeble. I am enormously proud of him and his family and his memory, and I am anxious to be at the White House on Monday when he receives posthumously the Medal of Honor.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Madam President, I wish to make a couple of additional comments on another subject.

The price of oil is bouncing around at $100 a barrel, the price of gas is up to $3.00, $3.50, or more per gallon. There are people who kid about having to take out a loan at the bank to fill their gas tank. The question is, What is happening with oil?

Let me tell you something. In the Energy & Natural Resources Committee this year, we have had witnesses testify that there is not a bit of justification for the price of a barrel of oil to be over $50 or $65 a barrel right now. So why is it $100 a barrel? Two reasons. One is that we have unbelievable speculation, a carnival of greed, with hedge funds and speculators neck deep in the futures markets speculating on oil. We have investment banks for the first time that are actually buying oil storage tanks so they can buy the oil and keep it off the market in order to sell it later when the price is higher. There is unbelievable speculation in the futures market pushing up oil which has nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand, and there ought to be a full and complete investigation. I am asking the GAO to do that.

The other issue is one that I find preposterous, and I am going to do everything I can in the coming days and weeks to stop it. Do you know that even as the price of oil is bouncing up at $100 a barrel of oil, this Government, this Department of Energy is putting oil underground for storage? We are awarding royalty-in-kind contracts to companies to take oil out of the Gulf of Mexico and instead of them selling the oil and putting it into the supply to put downward pressure on price, we are putting 60,000 barrels every single day underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Having the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is fine. Save it for a rainy day, save for our security, put some away--I understand that. But why would you do that when oil prices are $100 per barrel? The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent full, and we are taking 60,000 barrels per day and sticking it underground? That is preposterous. Toward the second half of this year, the Department of Energy will be putting approximately 125,000 barrels per day underground. There ought not be one additional barrel go underground at that point. It ought to go into the supply.

I used to teach a little economics. I understand supply and demand. If you decrease supply, you increase price. It is just a fact. So this administration, by taking this royalty-in-kind oil from the Gulf of Mexico and sticking it underground into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, is pushing up the price of oil and gas.

In fact, we had a witness in the Energy & Natural Resources Committee who testified that the Department of Energy is taking light, sweet crude off the market to put into the SPR. That is a subset of oil, a much more valuable kind of oil. One witness said just that amount-- sticking it underground by this administration could have increased the price of oil by as much as $10 per barrel. What is our Government doing increasing the price of oil by 10 per barrel? What do they think? Does somebody have their wires crossed someplace, and could they please see if they can figure out maybe with some common sense what they ought to do when oil is $100 a barrel, and that is stop putting oil underground and put it into the marketplace so we put some downward pressure on gas prices?

I introduced legislation that puts an end to this practice. I am chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the Energy Department's programs, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I say to the Secretary and to those who made this decision: One way or another, I am going to win on this issue. We are not going to allow you to continue to stick oil underground when the price of oil is $100 a barrel and the price of gas is ranging up between $3.50 and $4 a gallon. We are just not going to allow you to continue to do that. This Congress is going to use some common sense and say stop it.

Mr. President, that was therapeutic to say. My hope would be that at some point soon I will have a chance to offer that amendment, and we are all going to have a chance to vote on it. I will insist we vote on it. I believe this Congress is going to tell this administration to stop it, use a reservoir of common sense; don't stick oil underground when it's $100 per barrel. Put it into the supply, and put downward pressure on the price of oil. How about standing up for the American people and American drivers? Let's do that.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to make a few brief comments in response to my eloquent colleague from North Dakota. The rhetoric he utilizes has been used for a long time.

We have heard this rhetoric before each one of our evaluations of the way ahead in Iraq. And we have each time concluded that our national interests call on us to remain active and strong in Iraq and active and strong against terrorism around the world.

I would note, to remind everyone, every intelligence agency in the world thought weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq when the war began. In fact, Saddam Hussein did not seriously deny that these weapons existed. Saddam denied the U.N. inspectors the right to look for WMD, even though he had agreed to do so after suing for peace in 1991. At that time, after he had invaded Kuwait, we agreed not to take Baghdad and grab him by the scruff of the neck. He agreed he would allow his country to be inspected by the United Nations.

He did not do that. He systematically violated 13 U.N. resolutions. As the well-known magazine, The Economist, said: We either have to give up and let Saddam break the embargo or we have to fight? They said: We believe we should fight.

That, I suggest, is the fundamental reason we had to authorize the President to use force. A lot more can be said about it, but those were some of the things we were considering at the time. I would note also that an official commission report concluded that, while U.S. forces did not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein planned to work his way out from under the sanctions and to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction.

That has been clearly established. Most of us were surprised we did not find nuclear or chemical weapons in Iraq. I have to tell you, I was surprised. In 1991, when we had the first Gulf War to repulse Iraq, which had invaded Kuwait, we discovered that Iraq's nuclear program was far more advanced than we had previously thought. That is indisputable.

We know that after 1991, and before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam had utilized weapons of mass destruction, poison gas, against the Kurds of Iraq, killing thousands of his own people. How could he not have weapons of mass destruction? It still remains baffling to me that we did not find them.

So I wish to rebut this old rhetoric that somehow President Bush lied to get us into the war. We spent months discussing this and debating all the issues. We had private briefings. We knew basically everything the President knew. And what we knew was the CIA Director George Tenet, who had been appointed by President Clinton, told the President of the United States: It was a slam dunk; that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq.

That is the kind of information that the President acted on. He was not lying to the American people. This Senate authorized the President to use force in Iraq by a more than three-fourths majority vote. A majority of both parties, a majority of the Democratic Senators, a majority of the Republican Senators voted to authorize the President to use force in Iraq. And that is how we got here.

So the question is: What do we do now? This is a great Nation. We are not some fly-by-night bunch who can change our minds every time the poll numbers change. We have responsibilities to our Nation, to our allies. We have committed our men and women to harm's way. We have lost a large number of American soldiers to execute a policy we sent them to execute.

I have to tell you, we lost far fewer in the initial invasion than I imagined, but have lost far more than I imagined in the post-invasion period. Things are never quite certain in war, however.

People who fight you and desire to kill you usually do not want to be killed themselves. Military action is a tough thing and always causes us to remember we should avoid it whenever we possibly can. It should be a last resort. It is only acceptable when we have no real other alternative.

I do not believe the Lord is happy when his children fight and kill one another. It cannot be a good thing. It is a bad thing. Sometimes, because we are so flawed and we have options that are so grim, military action becomes the best decision that can be made under the circumstances. I think that is where we were in 2003 when it came to the Iraq debate.

In the fall of 2006, in an election that came during one of the worst periods of time in Iraq, the Republicans lost control of both Houses of Congress. The President's polling numbers were terrible. The following summer we had a national debate about whether to allow General Petraeus to continue the surge. We had a commission that General Jones headed, with 15 members. I asked him at the hearing: General Jones, do you and the members of your commission believe we have a chance to be successful if we execute this surge? He said: I do. He looked around. Any of the other members want to rebut what I have said or have a different opinion? Not a single one did.

That commission unanimously reported that they thought we could be successful. We had General Petraeus testify, and we had the GAO issue a report in September after the surge had actually begun.

We noticed some progress. But it was premature to see that as a sustained trend. We knew that. And we continued again at that time to allow the surge to go forward. We believed things were going to get better. That was my conclusion after hearing everyone's opinion.

I remember asking General Petraeus: Sir, will you tell us the truth, the good and bad? And he committed in private and in public to do that.

Will you give us your best judgment? Will you let us know if you think this is not an acceptable, feasible action in Iraq; that we need to acknowledge that we can't be successful? He made that commitment.

So what has happened since? We sent five additional brigades into Iraq as part of the surge. Three have already returned to the United States. The other two are planned to be returned by summer. We will be at or possibly below the 15 combat brigades that we had in Iraq before the surge.

General Casey was asked today in the Armed Services Committee about that plan and whether it meant we could move from having our soldiers on 15-month deployments to 12 month deployments. He said: When we get back to 15 brigades--and at this time we are projected to be there by July--he believed then that we could go back to a 1-year rotation instead of the longer 15-month rotation. 15 month rotations have been so painful to our military personnel and their families. That is a long time. We need to keep it to 12 months if we possibly can.

We are anticipating three reports in April. General Petraeus will come, as he promised, to give us a report on the status of Iraq and what he thinks about our future military commitment and soldier strength there. We will also receive a report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a report from Admiral Fallon, the CENTCOM commander who has Iraq the rest of the Middle East

under his command. We will have those three reports in April. That is the time for us to begin to evaluate again what our next step will be.

General Petraeus has said that we need to be careful to consolidate the gains we have made, to help the Iraqi people and government move to a more stable footing for the long term. If we were to pass the Feingold legislation, it would be a slap in the face to our commander on the ground who is absolutely one of the finest generals this Nation has ever produced. It would be unthinkable that we would, in a time of great success, reject the commander's recommendations and the military's recommendations after we took their recommendations when things were not good a year ago. We were worried a year ago. There was cause for legitimate concern. I do not deny it. But, goodness sakes, we have had some success in recent months.

The military estimates that attacks against coalition forces and Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians have collectively fallen by 60 percent against Iraq since June of last year. Iraqi Army estimates put the number as high as an 80-percent reduction. In June there were almost 1,700 IED explosions across Iraq. That number fell to 600 in December. While one U.S. combat death is so serious that we are not able to articulate the gravity of it, we are seeing, I am pleased to say, a major reduction in casualties among our troops and Iraqi troops. It is quite remarkable. December of 2007 was the second lowest combat death total of the war for American forces behind May of 2003. January and February of this year have shown comparably low death rates. That is something for which we can be thankful. Every single life is important. But we have to understand that when we commit troops to combat, there are going to be casualties. Having a good movement in the right direction is a cause for confidence, not a basis to cut and run.

From January to December of 2007, sectarian attacks and death among Iraqis in the Baghdad area decreased by 90 percent. I want to just say, we should be skeptical of these numbers when we hear them just one time. Are the trends sustained? How accurate are these facts? Those are legitimate questions for members of Congress to ask.

When I see soldiers in the Atlanta airport--most of them are on their R&R or coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan--I speak to them about their experiences. I spend a lot of time in the Atlanta airport, more than I like. I ask them how things are going. And I am hearing, from them, information that directly confirms the reports we are getting.

Just this month, a soldier I met was saying he worked at a base in Iraq. He said they used to take incoming rounds against the base throughout the day every day. Now they go days without any attacks. Another soldier told me things were getting boring. Every morning they used to meet. There would be some emergency, some serious challenge they had to address. Now when they meet, they can go weeks without anything serious happening. These observations are from sergeants, enlisted people, junior officers. It confirms, I will just say to you, the information we are receiving.

How has this success happened? What has occurred? The ranks of Sunni volunteers who have chosen in recent months to switch sides and turn against al-Qaida as members of local citizen councils have grown to more than 91,000, according to statistics from the U.S. military. The Sunnis, who are the minority group in Iraq, used to run Iraq under Saddam Hussein. They have been taken from power. They were strong Baathists. They were attracted to al-Qaida and their false promises. Many, though not most, were in cahoots with al-Qaida. They have now rejected al-Qaida. Whole tribal regions have publicly renounced them. They said they don't care about their people. They try to run their neighborhoods. They are corrupt. They don't support them. And 91,000 have joined local citizens councils part of the awakening, they call it, to turn against al-Qaida.

Sunnis are turning these guys in. Most al-Qaida are foreigners. They don't live in Iraq. So the Sunnis know who they are. The Sunni folks know them. Once they turned on al-Qaida, we have seen a dramatic change in the Sunni areas.

Shia groups, citizens councils are growing around the country as well. More and more the people are getting tired of murderous killers and religiously driven extremists. They realize this is no foundation on which to build their future. Three critical laws have been passed. Critics say: We have to have laws passed. Surely we do, although the President and all the masters of the universe in America, I guess, determined that we would pass an immigration law. They said we had to do it. We had to have this program, this amnesty. They were going to ram it right through here. It failed flatter than a fritter. So just saying a bill needs to be passed in a democratic parliamentary situation doesn't mean that is so easy to be done.

Three critical laws were passed by the Iraqi Parliament on February 13 of this year. They enacted a $48 billion budget for 2008. They granted amnesty to thousands of Sunni detainees and passed a provincial power law defining the relationship between the central government and provinces. These last two were on the list of benchmarks demanded by Congress.

Last fall when General Petraeus was here, the critics of the war said: You are not meeting these benchmarks. We are not interested in the military side. We are only interested in the political side. Well, we are making some progress now in the political area. In one sense things are even better than they appear on the political side because, throughout the region, reconciliation has been undertaken, and Baathists have been accepted back into Government positions, even in the absence of a national law. The oil money was and is being fairly distributed, even though they haven't agreed on an absolute firm legal formula for distribution of revenues.

Last Friday, February 22, the Shiite cleric, Moqtada al Sadr, who controls the Mahdi army, instructed his followers to extend their cease-fire against the Sunnis and the Americans for another 6 months. This is a big deal. The Sunnis have come around and now al Sadr, with the Shia, has also recommended that his followers continue their cease- fire.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, with whom I have met in Iraq, said this last week:

We are indeed seeing the signs of that political surge.

Putting all of that together would have been just unthinkable

6 months ago.

Let me say this Feingold bill would be disastrous if it were passed. It would cut off funding after 120 days for any missions not approved by Senator Feingold and politicians in Washington. It would replace the deployment decisions and recommendations of General Petraeus with political decisions. Some, I guess, who are in the moveon.org camp think General Petraeus is a betrayer. That is what they put in an ad in the paper last year. I say he is one of the best generals we have had. He has had a remarkable tenure of success in Iraq.

The Feingold bill would forbid us from training any members of neighborhood councils that have sprung up under the Sunni awakening, unless we could certify that they had never been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces. Well, we want them on our side. I don't know what motivated them at one point or another to oppose the United States. But if they have made a decision, as a lot of Sunnis clearly have, to switch sides, to turn in al-Qaida, to kill al-Qaida, isn't that good enough? Why shouldn't we welcome them back into the fold of the Iraqi Government and give them a chance?

We have to be careful. In fact, I think the State Department and the military are too naive in their belief that the prisoners we now have in custody can be released in the interests of reconciliation. Many of these, I am afraid, are just killers and murderers and thugs. Releasing too many of these people can create violence in the community. I don't doubt that some have had a change of heart because many have. But we have to be careful about how many of these prisoners we release.

This bill would prevent us from attacking terrorists or sectarian militias unless we can be sure that the targets are ``members of al Qaeda and affiliated international terrorist organizations.''

How is this supposed to work in practice, let me ask? Will we ask al- Qaida to wear special hats or badges or uniforms so we can distinguish them from simple local terrorists?

The likely consequences of this legislation would be renewed sectarian violence, expanded ``breathing room'' for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, and decreased possibilities for political reconciliation. It would create major political instability in Iraq.

The frequently referenced final report of the Iraq Study Group described, in grim detail, the results of an American decision to abandon Iraq:

Because of the importance of Iraq, the potential for

catastrophe, and the role and commitments of the United

States in initiating events that have led to the current

situation, we believe it would be wrong for the United States

to abandon the country through a precipitous withdrawal of

troops and support. A premature American departure from Iraq

would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and

further deterioration of conditions, leading to a number of

the adverse consequences outlined above. The near-term

results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human

suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the

global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a

historic victory.

If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range

consequences could eventually require the United States to

return.

This was a serious evaluation by serious men and women who have studied this area in depth. I do not think anybody can deny that this is a realistic description of what would occur if we were to pass the Feingold bill.

Well, Mr. President, I see others here who want to talk, and it looks as though we will have more time tomorrow. I say to my fine colleague from Florida, I enjoy serving with him, as he is chairman of our Strategic Subcommittee in Armed Services.

I conclude by saying, we are a great nation. We made some tough decisions. We went through a full debate last summer. We decided to give General Petraeus a chance. We gave him a chance. We supported the surge in a bipartisan vote. We sent the money. We sent him the resources to carry out the surge. It has been successful beyond anything we could have imagined at the time. And now, to undertake a precipitous withdrawal, directly contrary to his opinion as to what should be done to help continue to secure Iraq, would be unthinkable. No great nation should flip-flop around like that, certainly not the United States of America.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.