A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that reform of our Nation's health care system should include the establishment of a federally-backed insurance pool.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I understand there is a previous--let me ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 40 minutes.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Amendment No. 1139

Mr. President, I want to address the Senate on two subjects this afternoon--first of all, on the subject of various memos and interrogation techniques, notably enhanced interrogation techniques, that were carried out in response to Office of Legal Counsel memos that were written by lawyers there, designed to provide guidance to our CIA interrogators after 9/11 to help them protect the country against future terrorist attacks.

I have an amendment that, because of technical reasons, we will not be able to vote on this week. But I want to assure my colleagues this issue is not going away, and we will be back to talk about it more later. But I think it is of sufficient gravity and importance that I want to highlight it here for the next few minutes.

First of all, this amendment I am referring to is a sense-of-the- Senate amendment. Let me summarize what it does because I think it is important to put it in context.

The sense-of-the-Senate amendment reads as follows. It says:

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, there

was bipartisan consensus that preventing further terrorist

attacks [against] the United States was the most urgent

responsibility of the United States Government.

A bipartisan joint investigation by the Select Committee on

Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee

on Intelligence of the House of Representatives concluded

that the September 11, 2001 attacks demonstrated that the

intelligence community had not shown ``sufficient initiative

in coming to grips with the new transnational threats''.

By mid-2002, the Central Intelligence Agency had several

top al Qaeda leaders in custody.

The Central Intelligence Agency believed that some of these

al Qaeda leaders knew the details of imminent plans for

follow-on attacks against the United States.

The Central Intelligence Agency believed that certain

enhanced interrogation techniques might produce the

intelligence necessary to prevent another terrorist attack

against the United States.

The Central Intelligence Agency sought legal guidance from

the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice as

to whether such enhanced interrogation techniques, including

one that the United States military uses to train its own

members in survival, evasion, resistance, and escape

training, would comply with United States and international

law if used against al Qaeda leaders reasonably believed to

be planning imminent attacks against the United States.

This amendment further notes that:

The Office of Legal Counsel is the proper authority within

the executive branch [of the Federal Government] for

addressing difficult and novel legal questions, and providing

legal advice to the executive branch in carrying out [its]

official duties.

It further notes that:

Before mid-2002, no court in the United States had [ever]

interpreted the phrases ``severe physical or mental pain or

suffering'' and ``prolonged mental harm'' as used in sections

2340 and 2340A of title 18, the United States Code.

The legal questions posed by the Central Intelligence

Agency and other executive branch officials were--

This amendment notes--

a matter of first impression, and in the words of the Office

of Legal Counsel, ``substantial and difficult''.

The Office of Legal Counsel approved the use by the Central

Intelligence Agency of certain enhanced interrogation

techniques, with specific limitations, in seeking actionable

intelligence from al Qaeda leaders.

The amendment further notes that:

The legal advice of the Office of Legal Counsel regarding

interrogation policy was reviewed by a host of executive

branch officials, including the Attorney General, the Counsel

to the President, the Deputy Counsel to the President, the

General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, the

General Counsel of the National Security Council, the legal

advisor of the Attorney General, the head of the Criminal

Division of the Department of Justice, and the Counsel to the

Vice President [of the United States].

Further, the amendment notes that:

The majority and minority leaders in both Houses of

Congress,--

Both in the Senate and in the House, as well as--

the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the chairmen

and [ranking members] of [both] the Select Committee on

Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee

on Intelligence of the House of Representatives received

classified briefings on [both the proposed techniques and the

Office of Legal Counsel advice] as early as September 4,

2002.

The amendment further notes that:

Porter Goss, then-chairman of the Permanent Select

Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives,

recalls that he and then-ranking member Nancy Pelosi

``understood what the CIA was doing'' [and] ``gave the CIA

our bipartisan support'' [and] ``gave the CIA funding to

carry out its activities'', and ``On a bipartisan basis . . .

asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry

out its mission against al Qaeda''.

The amendment further notes that:

No member of Congress briefed on the legal analysis of the

Office of Legal Counsel and the proposed interrogation

program of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 objected

to the legality of the enhanced interrogation techniques,

including ``waterboarding'', approved in legal opinions of

the Office of Legal Counsel.

The amendment further notes that:

Using all lawful means to secure actionable intelligence

based on the legal guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel

[of the Department of Justice] provides national leaders a

means to detect, deter, and defeat further terrorist

[attacks] against the United States [of America].

The amendment further notes that:

The enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the

Office of Legal Counsel have, in fact, accomplished the goal

of providing intelligence necessary to defeating additional

terrorist attacks against the United States.

It further notes that:

Congress has previously established a defense for persons

who engaged in operational practices in the war on terror in

good faith reliance on advice of counsel that [such]

practices were lawful.

This amendment further notes that:

The Senate stands ready to work [on a bipartisan basis]

with the Obama Administration to ensure that leaders of the

Armed Forces of the United States and the intelligence

community continue to have the resources and tools required

to prevent additional terrorist attacks on the United States.

This amendment concludes with this finding or sense of the Senate:

It is the sense of the Senate that no person who provided

input into the legal opinions by the Office of Legal Counsel

of the Department of Justice analyzing the legality of the

enhanced interrogation program, nor any person who relied in

good faith on [that legal advice], nor any member of Congress

who was briefed on the enhanced interrogation program and did

not object to the program going forward should be prosecuted

or otherwise sanctioned.

This is the amendment I sought to offer that for technical reasons is not going to be voted on now. But, I assure my colleagues, we will revisit this at a later date.

I want to take issue with some of the comments by my distinguished colleague from Illinois, the majority whip, who I believe--it was yesterday, or maybe the day before--said there was no basis for my assertion that there was actionable intelligence gained from the so- called enhanced interrogation techniques, and questioned what my source was.

I would remind the distinguished Senator from Illinois that the source is President Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, who wrote, on April 16, 2009, that ``high-value information came from interrogations in which these methods were used, and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter in which the Director of National Intelligence made those statements be printed in the Record following my comments.

Nor was this special information available to only a few. The New York Times reported it on April 21, under the headline ``Banned Techniques Yielded `High-Value information', Memo Says.'' That is a story in the New York Times which basically recounts what the Director of National Intelligence said.

I would remind my distinguished colleague from Illinois that it is, in fact, the Director of National Intelligence for President Obama who has affirmed not just the need but the usefulness of the information and intelligence derived from these enhanced interrogation techniques that were approved by the legal authority for the executive branch of the Federal Government, the Office of Legal Counsel.

My colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, argues that we need to allow prosecutors to follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead--certainly, a relatively harmless assertion; one I would generally agree with. But here, we know enough about the facts and the law to know there is no evidence that anyone acted with the intent required to prosecute under the law. I won't bore the Senate with an analysis of what the criminal law requires in this context, but I would say that the facts, as we know them, are to give our public servants the benefit of the doubt. As detailed in the Office of Legal Counsel memoranda, significant efforts were made to minimize significant harm that could arise from these techniques. Who could question the desire of both the intelligence community as well as the Department of Justice and the leaders responsible for protecting our national security--who could question the good-faith need to get information that would actually help prevent follow-on terrorist attacks?

We know al-Qaida, on September 11, 2001, used crude weapons to attack our country. Yet they were able to kill 3,000 Americans, roughly. Our intelligence community and our national leadership knew al-Qaida was not satisfied with such primitive weapons but, indeed, was seeking biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. We know how important it was for our intelligence officials to get the information they needed. We know the lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel who rendered this legal advice were doing what they thought was their responsibility in good faith. Indeed, the Members of Congress who had the responsibility to perform congressional oversight on these activities, I believe, demonstrated their good-faith desire to do what was necessary to protect our country. I believe we know enough to

say these people--all of them--acted in good faith.

It has been suggested the standard we apply is whether the advice fell within the range of legitimate analysis and within the range of reasonable disagreement common to legal analysis of important statutory and constitutional questions. I believe that has been demonstrated, and but for this technical objection to the amendment, I am confident we would receive an overwhelming bipartisan vote of support for this sense-of-the-Senate resolution.

The distinguished Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, says we should allow prosecutors and the Department of Justice to decide whether to bring a case against these officials: The intelligence community, the lawyers who drafted the legal advice, and perhaps even the Members of Congress who acquiesced and facilitated these enhanced interrogation techniques following a classified briefing. But I would suggest there is no case to be brought against these individuals. Any prosecution that arises out of this interrogation program would clearly be based upon politics and not on the law.

I would submit the amendment I have offered--and that I described and which I will reoffer again at an appropriate time--is a call for reasonableness and national unity. The calls for prosecution of good- faith patriots has simply gone too far. When bloggers and others--not to single out bloggers but even Members of this body--have suggested that we somehow need a truth commission and have suggested that prosecutions might be the appropriate outcome, when they are suggesting that prosecutions under these circumstances occur, then I think our political environment has changed in a dangerous way and one which will certainly chill our intelligence officials in gathering actual intelligence necessary to keep us safe and certainly discourage patriots who want to serve and who are willing to serve in Government. When policy differences become criminalized in ways that some have suggested, it is not helpful to our country. Indeed, I think it is dangerous to our national security.

We know there is an unfortunate history of hysterias, panics, and mob rule from time to time that occurs, whether it is from Salem through the McCarthy era. When justice is steered by passion and politics rather than by reason and the rule of law, it is not worthy of the name ``justice.'' Once you stir up an angry mob, we know it is unpredictable where that mob might lead or who might get caught up in the mob's action. But we know already too many patriotic Americans have been targeted by the present hysteria. This amendment calls for an end to the hysteria and a return to reason, civility, national unity, and the rule of law.

Exhibit 1

Director of

National Intelligence,

Washington, DC, April 16, 2009.

Dear Colleagues: Today is a difficult one for those of us

who serve the country in its intelligence services. An

article on the front page of The New York Times claims that

the National Security Agency has been collecting information

that violates the privacy and civil liberties of American

citizens. The release of documents from the Department of

Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) spells out in detail

harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA officers on

suspected al Qa'ida terrorists.

As the leader of the Intelligence Community, I am trying to

put these issues into perspective. We cannot undo the events

of the past; we must understand them and turn this

understanding to advantage as we move into the future.

It is important to remember the context of these past

events. All of us remember the horror of 9/11. For months

afterwards we did not have a clear understanding of the enemy

we were dealing with, and our every effort was focused on

preventing further attacks that would kill more Americans. It

was during these months that the CIA was struggling to obtain

critical information from captured al Qa'ida leaders, and

requested permission to use harsher interrogation methods.

The OLC memos make clear that senior legal officials judged

the harsher methods to be legal, and that senior policymakers

authorized their use. High value information came from

interrogations in which those methods were used and provided

a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was

attacking this country. As the OLC memos demonstrate, from

2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the

leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities

both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of

Congress, and received permission to continue to use the

techniques.

Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April

2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has

made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have

stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. I

like to think I would not have approved those methods in the

past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that

time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the

interrogations within the orders they were given.

Even in 2009 there are organizations plotting to kill

Americans using terror tactics, and although the memories of

9/11 are becoming more distant, we in the intelligence

services must stop them. One of our most effective tools in

discovering groups planning to attack us are their

communications, and it is the job of the NSA to intercept

them. The NSA does this vital work under legislation that was

passed by the Congress. The NSA actions are subject to

oversight by my office and by the Justice Department under

court-approved safeguards; when the intercepts are conducted

against Americans, it is with individual court orders. Under

these authorities the officers of the National Security

Agency collect large amounts of international

telecommunications, and under strict rules review and analyze

some of them. These intercepts have played a vital role in

many successes we have had in thwarting terrorist attacks

since 9/11.

On occasion. NSA has made mistakes and intercepted the

wrong communications. The numbers of these mistakes are very

small in terms of our overall collection efforts, but each

one is investigated, Congress and the courts are notified,

corrective measures are taken, and improvements are put in

place to prevent reoccurrences.

As a young Navy officer during the Vietnam years, I

experienced public scorn for those of us who served in the

Armed Forces during an unpopular war. Challenging and

debating the wisdom and policies linked to wars and

warfighting is important and legitimate; however, disrespect

for those who serve honorably within legal guidelines is not.

I remember well the pain of those of us who served our

country even when the policies we were carrying out were

unpopular or could be second-guessed.

We in the Intelligence Community should not be subjected to

similar pain. Let the debate focus on the law and our

national security. Let us be thankful that we have public

servants who seek to do the difficult work of protecting our

country under the explicit assurance that their actions are

both necessary and legal.

There will almost certainly be more media articles about

the actions of intelligence agencies in the past, and as we

do our vital work of protecting the country we will make

mistakes that will also be reported. What we must do is make

it absolutely clear to the American people that our ethos is

to act legally, in as transparent a manner as we can, and in

a way that they would be proud of if we could tell them the

full story,

It is my job, and the job of our national leaders, to

ensure that the work done by the Intelligence Community is

appreciated and supported. You can be assured the President

knows this and is supporting us. It is your responsibility to

continue the difficult, often dangerous and vital work you

are doing every day.

Sincerely,

Dennis C. Blair.

Mr. President, I am going to turn to another subject, but may I inquire how much time is remaining under the unanimous consent agreement?

I assure the Chair I will not use all that time.

Health Care Reform

Mr. President, I wish to discuss another very serious challenge in our country and that is how to reform our broken health care system to serve the needs of the American people and to help bring down the costs of health care, which now prices many people out of the market and contributes to the too large number of Americans who don't have health insurance.

I am a relatively new member of the Senate Finance Committee, and under the leadership of Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley, we have been discussing our various policy options for some time. There has been some discussion on the floor about the subject. Indeed, my colleagues from Oklahoma and North Carolina, Senator Burr and Dr. Coburn, have introduced a bill which they believe addresses the need for health care reform in a significant way.

On Monday, I am going to return to my State of Texas and travel around the State to basically talk about commonsense solutions to this health care crisis. Last Monday, I spent some time in Houston, TX, with the Houston Wellness Association and others concerned about how we can spend more of

our energy and effort on keeping people healthy and preventing disease which will, of course, avoid unnecessary human suffering but also help us contain the too high price of health care.

We know what is at stake in the health care reform debate. I believe my constituents in Texas--and I believe the American people, generally--don't want to be served up a fait accompli in Washington. They don't want to wake in July or August and find that Congress has taken a blank sheet of paper and basically deprived them of the opportunity to keep the health care they presently have and instead present them with something else which they don't want and which does not promise to make health care more accessible but, rather, will make it more expensive and less accessible. I know my constituents in Texas don't want elites in Washington to make decisions for them. They want to be informed about the debate, and they want to then discuss with me and their other elected representatives what they want--not what is dictated to them from Washington inside the beltway.

Whether you are putting together a family budget or a business plan, we all see the same problem, and that is the rising cost of health care. We know health care costs have risen faster than inflation in both good times and bad times. Health care costs, we know, force many self-employed workers and small businesses into the ranks of the uninsured. We also know that health care costs in America are twice as much per capita than they are in most of the developed world. In fact, we spend roughly 17 percent of our gross domestic product on health care. I believe the next highest country to us is Japan, an industrialized country, which spends roughly 9 percent of GDP.

But we also know there are a lot of hidden costs--there are not just the obvious costs--on families and businesses. These hidden costs show up in smaller paychecks for working men and women all across this country. All things being equal, one would think that rising productivity of the American worker would lead to higher wages, but instead, for many workers, more compensation takes the form of higher health care premiums, when they could be receiving greater compensation in terms of wages that they could then spend on other purposes. But because of rising deductibles, copays, and the rising costs, we see rising health care costs actually squeeze worker pay in America such that, in many instances, that pay is stagnant, if not declining.

Hidden costs also show up in the $36 trillion of unfunded liabilities in the Medicare Program, as well as other entitlements. Our people are concerned about the hidden costs of all the borrowing we are doing in Washington and the unprecedented spending. Nearly 50 cents on every dollar spent in Washington is borrowed, leaving the fiscal responsibility for our children and grandchildren and not taking it upon ourselves.

In fact, as we know, the Federal deficit in 2009 will be nearly as large as the entire Federal budget was in 2001. Let me say that again. This is staggering. The Federal deficit in 2009 will be nearly as large as the entire Federal budget in 2001. As the distinguished occupant of the chair, who is the former chief executive of his State, the Commonwealth of Virginia, knows, that kind of growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. Indeed, we are cruising for a disaster when it comes to unrestrained health care costs, both for individuals and for small businesses but also for the Government when it comes to entitlement spending.

I agree with what President Obama said last week. He said our current deficit spending is unsustainable. I agree with that. He said we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt. I think all Americans agree with what President Obama said, but we have yet to see the hard decisions that would lead us back to a path of fiscal discipline. It is the contrary: more spending, more borrowing, with no fiscal discipline. As we look at health care reform, our people want solutions that will lower the costs of health care, without increasing the debt, without raising taxes, and without reducing quality or access to care.

I have heard a lot of discussions in the context of the Finance Committee, talking about what options are available to the Congress in dealing with this health care crisis and, honestly, most of them deal with how we can empower the Government to make more and more decisions on behalf of patients. I think that is the opposite direction from which we ought to go to approach this problem. We ought to look at what puts patients back in charge; what gives individuals the power to consult with their own private physician and make a decision; what is in the best interests of themselves and their family when it comes to health care. Let's not put barriers in the way of that sacred relationship between a patient and a doctor, and for sure let's not use rationing--denying and delaying access to care--as government-run programs abroad use in order to control costs.

Let's put patients back in charge. That ought to be our battle cry as we approach this current crisis.

Patients should have more control, not less control, over their own health care. One way we can do that is giving them more and better information on cost and quality of their care. How in the world can we have an effective market for health care, which will provide lower costs, if, in fact, patients are denied access to information about cost and outcomes? They not only want to know how much it is going to cost them; they want to make sure it is a good, quality service, and we ought to be in the business of providing them that information. We ought to be insisting, as their elected representatives, that we have access to that information in deciding how to spend their money in entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Patients should also, I believe, have a choice of providers who compete for their business. We know that competition produces higher quality, better service, and a lower price. We can see that across the board. When the market helps discipline spending, it improves quality and lowers price. We can do that in health care by empowering individuals and giving them more access to information, greater transparency, quality, and price, making them better informed consumers.

We also know our tax and our legal system need reform so all Americans are treated fairly. We have to end the cost shifting that now goes with too low reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid, which means it is harder and harder for an individual to find a doctor who will actually accept those submarket rates to care for them.

I was in Dallas a couple years ago. I was in an emergency room at a hospital, while touring the hospital, and there was this wonderful woman who came into the emergency room and someone asked her what she wanted. She said: I need my prescriptions refilled--in the emergency room at a hospital in Dallas. She couldn't find a doctor who would accept her as a new Medicare patient, so the only place she knew where to go was to the emergency room to get a prescription, to refill her medications. That is incredibly inefficient and an incredibly costly way to deliver health care. We have to find a way to do it better.

Right now we know that for private health insurance, the costs are shifted in order for health care providers to provide care to everybody. That cost shifting results in higher premiums, smaller paychecks, tax increases, and more public debt, and we ought to attack it head-on.

We also know from experience that putting patients in charge can lower health care costs. At the Federal level, believe it or not, we actually have a Federal program that, contrary to intuition and some people's skepticism, actually demonstrates this.

This is a success of Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program. Medicare Part D gives seniors choices among entirely private plans, with no government-run plan at all, no ``public option'' at all. As a result of the successes of Medicare Part D, seniors have seen program costs that are 37 percent less than anticipated, and more than 80 percent of seniors are satisfied with the program.

I think this example proves the point I was making earlier--that greater access to information about quality and cost gives people more choices, creates competition in a market that disciplines cost, and ultimately brings down those costs and increases satisfaction.

At the State level, good ideas for Medicaid reform have come from Florida, South Carolina, Indiana, and other States. These programs have given some of the lowest income Americans more choices and more control over the dollars spent on their behalf. Again, costs are lower and participants are generally satisfied with these programs.

The private sector has some very good ideas as well. Steve Burd, of Safeway, has talked to many of us on both sides of the aisle about their successful experimenting with health care costs at their company by providing financial incentives to quit smoking, lose weight, exercise, control blood pressure and cholesterol, and get the appropriate diagnostic tests at a reasonable price.

There is also another successful program, and I am going to meet with executives and employees at Whole Foods, which is located in Austin, TX, where I live. Whole Foods has conducted a successful experiment with high-deductible insurance plans with personal wellness accounts that each employee controls. Whole Foods has seen fewer medical claims, lower prescription drug claims, and fewer hospital admissions through this program.

So why in the world would we want to dictate a single-payer system out of Washington for 300 million people when we have seen successful experiments and innovation across the country that we can learn from and adopt to empower patients and consumers, not Washington bureaucrats? Some, though, in Washington have simply given up on the private sector when it comes to delivering health care needs. They want to shift more power and control to the Federal Government. I think that is a terrible mistake.

We have heard ideas about how to increase spending to pay for more Government control, at a time when we already spend 17 percent of the GDP on health care--again, nearly twice as much as our next closest competitor in an industrialized nation, Japan--17 percent in the United States compared to 9 percent in Japan, and other countries are far lower.

Raising taxes is simply a terrible idea, especially during a recession. Raising taxes would also break the President's pledge he made in the campaign last year when he assured Americans that no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase--not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. But we can help the President keep his pledge-- not help him break it--by empowering patients and consumers, ordinary Americans, to make their decisions and not empower bigger and bigger government to take those decisions away from them and dictate them.

In the Finance Committee, we have heard a number of proposals that may improve care but are not going to contain costs--at least according to the CBO. These proposals include what I would consider to be commonsense approaches that I think are good, such as more health care technology and prevention initiatives. We have even seen a number of interest groups, provider groups, appear with the President last week, pledging they would cut the growth of health care costs, over the next 10 years, $2 trillion. That all sounds good until you start looking at it and realize there is actually no enforcement mechanism at all. It is a meaningless pledge, and there is going to continue to be upward pressure on health care costs across the board unless we do something about it.

Only in Washington, DC, would people embrace the notion that to save money, you have to spend more money. It is not just counterintuitive, it is unproven. I don't think there is any justification for that suspicion. If there is, I would just love to see it. I don't think we ought to take as a matter of blind faith that by spending over a trillion dollars more of tax money on top of the 17 percent of GDP we are already spending now, that somehow miraculously, with the wave of a wand, by suspending our powers of disbelief, we are going to bend the curve on the growth of health care costs, which are bankrupting the country when it comes to Medicare and putting health insurance and health care out of the reach of many hard-working Americans.

We have heard about some interesting ideas, such as comparative effectiveness research, which sounds good at first blush. In the stimulus plan, the Federal Government spent, or pledged, more than a million dollars on that. It sounds pretty good. Let's finds out what works. Well, I am concerned that the Government will use this research to delay treatment and deny care. The way the Government contains health care costs is by rationing, pure and simple. That is what happens in Medicare. I mentioned the woman in Dallas who couldn't find a doctor to accept her as a new Medicare patient. It is because the Government reimburses at such a low rate. So we have a promise of coverage, which everybody applauds, but it denies people access because the Government denies and delays care by using rationing as a way to control costs. We don't need that. Certainly, we don't need that, based on the ``cookbook'' medicine prescribed by Government bureaucrats, who will say: We will pay for this procedure but not that other procedure because it is not in our ``cookbook.'' Last week, Medicare refused to pay for less-invasive colonoscopy procedures. I don't think the American people are crying out for more Government control of their health care decisions based on cost-based decisions. That is what they would get if the proponents of the so-called public plan get their way.

Again, I don't know who it is in Washington, DC--there must be a little group, a cabal of individuals sitting behind closed doors, that tries to think up innocuous names, such as ``public plan,'' for some really scary stuff. A ``public plan'' is simply a Washington takeover of health care; it is plain and simple. It is not an option. In the end, it will be the only place you can go under a single-payer system.

We should take this pledge, too, Mr. President. We should guarantee that Americans who currently have health insurance that they like ought to be able to keep it--that is about 85 percent--as we look for ways to increase access for people who don't have health insurance. One think tank that looked at this so-called public plan--or Washington takeover of health care, which would drive all private competitors out of the market by undercutting them--estimated that 119 million Americans will lose their private health insurance if this Washington takeover, under the title of ``public plan,'' is embraced.

We know the Federal Government is not a fair competitor. While it serves also as a regulator and a funder, the Federal Government says: Take it or leave it. It is price fixing. Nobody else can compete with the Federal Government. The public plan, so-called, would simply shift cost to taxpayers and subsidize inefficiency, as Medicare and Medicaid do today. They are broken systems that we don't need to emulate by making Medicare for all. Why would we emulate Medicare when it is broken and on an unsustainable financial path? We need new ideas and innovations that put the people in charge and will help bring down costs. Greater transparency, more choices, and market forces will increase satisfaction while bringing down costs.

There is another scary concept out there that is called a ``pay or play'' mandate for employers. When I talk to small businesses in Texas, they tell me one of their most difficult decisions is how do they provide health care for their employees in small businesses? It is hard to get affordable health insurance. Some in Washington are proposing taking this to what I would call a ``mandate on steroids.'' Basically, it would say that if a small business doesn't provide health insurance coverage for its employees, it is going to have to pay a punitive tax. That is why they call it ``pay or play.'' New mandates on job creators would do nothing but head us in the wrong direction during a recession, where we are fighting the best we can in the private sector to create new jobs and retain the ones we have. We know the costs of this ``pay or play'' mandate are going to ultimately be passed down to the workers in the form of lower wages, just as they are today under a broken system.

I have heard good ideas about health care reform. I hope we will have a robust debate about the options available to the American people to fix this broken system. I have to tell you that many proposals out there that seem to be gathering momentum are deeply troubling. As I have said, I believe the

best way to approach health care reform--indeed, governance generally-- is from the bottom up, not the top down.

We need to take our time and get this right and not, in our haste, produce a bad bill that will even deny people the choices and coverage they have now. We need to listen to the people who are running small businesses and raising families across this country. That is what I plan to do in Texas next week. I hope my colleagues will take advantage of the next week's recess to do likewise.

This is too important to get done wrong. Let's take our time and listen to the stakeholders and people who will suffer the negative consequences if we get it wrong, and let's work together with President Obama and the administration to try to get it right.

I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that upon the completion of my statement, Senator Isakson be recognized for 5 minutes, and then that Senator Brown be recognized for 10 minutes. That will allow all of our statements to be completed prior to a unanimous consent agreement which will shortly be entered into.

I ask unanimous consent that no Budget Act points of order be in order to H.R. 2346, as amended; that at 1 p.m., Senator Cornyn be recognized for debate only for up to 40 minutes; that at the conclusion of Senator Cornyn's remarks, the time until 2 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees; that at 2 p.m. today, there be 40 minutes of debate with respect to the DeMint amendment No. 1138, with the time controlled as follows: 20 minutes under the control of Senator DeMint, 10 minutes under the control of Senators Gregg and Inouye or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of the time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the amendment; that no intervening amendment be in order to the language proposed to be stricken by the DeMint amendment.

Madam President, President Obama said in his campaign and has repeated it since the first days of his Presidency that we must keep our Nation safe and secure, but we have to do it in ways consistent with our values. That is a sentiment I share, and one that I have voiced in hearings and statements for years as well.

To President Obama's credit, to the benefit of the Nation, he has worked since his first day in office to turn these words into action to make our national security policy and our detainee policy consistent with American laws and American values. That, in turn, makes us more secure. I have supported President Obama in these steps, and I will continue to do so. That is why I have voted against amendments to withhold funding to close the Guantanamo detention facility, and to prohibit any Guantanamo detainees from being brought to the United States. These amendments undermine the good work the President is doing, and they make us less safe, not safer.

I believe strongly, as all Americans do, we have to take every step we can to prevent terrorism. Then we have to ensure severe punishment for those who do us harm. As a former prosecutor, I have never shied away from harsh sentences for those who commit atrocious acts. I point to the times I have requested and gotten for people I have prosecuted life sentences, life sentences that they served without the possibility of parole.

I also believe strongly we can ensure our safety and security and bring terrorists to justice in ways that are consistent with our laws and values. When we have strayed from that approach--when we have tortured people in our custody, or sent people to other countries to be tortured, or held people for years without even giving them a chance to go to court, to argue we were holding the wrong person, they are being held in error--we have hurt our national security immeasurably.

Our allies have been less willing to help our counterterrorism efforts, and that has made our military men and women more vulnerable and our country less safe. Terrorists have used our actions as a tool to recruit new members, which means then we have to fend off more enemies.

Worse still, we have lost our ability to respond with moral authority if other countries should mistreat American solders or civilians.

Guantanamo has become the symbol of the severe missteps our country took in recent years. Changing our interrogation policies to ban torture was an essential first step. But only by shutting the Guantanamo facility and restoring tough but fair procedures can we repair our image in the world. We have to do that if we hope to have a truly strong national security policy.

To close Guantanamo, we need our national security and our legal experts working hard to come up with a comprehensive plan for its closure. We should be funding those efforts. By cutting off that funding, we have hamstrung the President's initiative, and no matter what we intended to do, I believe we have made our Nation less safe.

Much debate has focused on keeping Guantanamo detainees out of the United States. In this debate, political rhetoric has entirely drowned out reason and reality. Our criminal justice system handles extremely dangerous criminals, and it has handled more than a few terrorists, and has done so safely and effectively. We try very dangerous people in our courts and we hold very dangerous people in our jails in Vermont and throughout the country. We have the best justice system in the world.

We have spent billions of dollars on our detention facilities, on our law enforcement, and our justice system. Are we going to say to the world, oh, my goodness gracious, we are not good enough to be able to handle criminal cases of this nature? I do not believe so.

We try those dangerous people and we hold those dangerous people in jails in Vermont and throughout our country. We are showing the world that we can do it. I know; I have put some of them there. We do it every day in ways that keep the American people safe and secure. I have absolute confidence we can continue to do it.

The Judiciary Committee has held several hearings on the issue of how to best handle detainees. Experts and judges from across the political spectrum have agreed that our courts and our justice system can handle this challenge. Indeed, it has handled it many times already.

What I am saying is, after all of those billions of dollars, after all of the superb men and women we have working in our justice system, after all that we spend on maximum security facilities, are we going to say to the world, America is not strong enough to try even the worst of criminals?

When we were hit with one of the worst terrorist attacks ever in this country, Oklahoma City, did we say we cannot try the people we have now captured? We cannot have them in a courtroom where it is secure, we will not be able to punish them? Of course not. We went ahead, and we also established for the rest of the world that we follow a system of justice in America. And having been horribly damaged in Oklahoma City, we followed our system of justice. The rest of the world looked at it, and they learned from us.

Let's not step back from that. Republican luminaries such as GEN Colin Powell have agreed with this idea. One Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Graham, said, ``The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational.''

So let's let reality come in and overwhelm rhetoric. It is time to act on our principles and our constitutional system. Those whom we believe to be guilty of heinous crimes should be tried. They should be penalized severely, and our courts and our prisons are more than up to the task. Our courts and our prisons are more up to this task than those in any other country in the world. But we also could have people who are innocent or where we captured the wrong person. If so, they should be released.

There are going to be tough cases. Instead of cutting out the money the administration needs to dispose of those cases responsibly, knowing how tough they will be, we ought to be doing just the opposite and give them the resources they need.

Let's put aside heated, distorted rhetoric. Support the President in his efforts to truly make our country a safe and strong Republic worthy of the history and values that have always made America great.

I believed that when I was a young lawyer in private practice. I believed that when I was a prosecutor. I believe that even more today as a Senator.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have listened to some of the comments by the junior Senator from South Carolina about the President's request to participate in the expansion of the new arrangements to borrow and increase the U.S. quota at the International Monetary Fund.

This authority, incidentally, is requested in order to implement decisions that were made by President Bush.

It is easy to confuse people about this issue, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page confused itself and probably most of its readers earlier this week.

If you are opposed to giving the Treasury Department this authority, the best way to scare people into voting against it is to say that it is a giveaway of $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds to foreign countries. That would scare anyone. If it were true I would vote against it myself.

But it is not true. Our contribution is backed up by huge IMF gold reserves, so the cost to the taxpayers is $5 billion over 5 years, not $100 billion. OMB and CBO agree on that, and so does the Senate Budget Committee. And besides being false, it detracts from the legitimate question of why should we do this?

The simple answer is because our economy, and millions of American jobs, depends on it.

Between 2003 and 2008, U.S. exports grew by 8 percent per year in real terms. A key reason for that was the rapid growth of foreign markets. Our exports show a 95-percent correlation to foreign country growth rates since 2000.

During that period, the role of exports in driving growth in the U.S. economy steadily increased. The share of all U.S. growth attributable to exports rose from 25 percent in 2003 to almost 70 percent in 2008.

Because of the global financial crisis our exports peaked in July of last year and have been falling since then. In the first quarter of 2009, our real exports were 23 percent lower than in the first quarter of 2008.

Our export decline is now contributing to recession in the United States.

With an export share in GDP of 12 percent, a 23-percent decline, if sustained over the course of a year, would make a negative contribution to GDP of almost 3 percent.

The stimulus plan we passed is boosting domestic demand. But the benefits of the stimulus are at risk of being wiped out by the decline in exports.

We need to help foreign countries lift themselves out of recession. It will benefit them, but it will also restore our exports as their economies recover and they begin to buy more of our goods and services.

Some foreign countries can take care of themselves with stimulus of their own, and by cleaning up their own banking sectors.

But many others, especially emerging market economies, have been hard hit. Some countries have been cut off abruptly from capital markets and shut out of credit markets by the banking problems originating in the United States and Europe.

Those countries need to fix their own problems and get temporary finance to avoid a prolonged period of economic decline.

Providing temporary finance and policy fixes is the job of the IMF.

But as the world economy grew in the last decade, the financial resources available to the IMF did not keep up. It has been caught short by the suddenness, severity, and scope of this global crisis.

The request for a quota increase, and the authority to participate in the new arrangements to borrow, will replenish the IMF's resources so it can fight this crisis.

With this money, the IMF will be able to help many foreign economies revive. With this money, the IMF will be ready in case the crisis deepens and takes more victims.

As foreign economies recover, so will ours. We will be spared an even worse decline in our exports, with greater job loss. As our exports resume, people in export industries in every State will be able to go back to work.

This may seem like an arcane issue, but it is of vital importance to the jobs of millions of Americans across this country. I, Senator Kerry, Senator Dodd, Senator Shelby, Senator Lugar, and others have agreed on substitute language which provides for prior consultation and reports to Congress, as well as greater transparency and accountability at the IMF. It also provides guidelines for the use of the proceeds of sales of IMF gold.

The real choice here is not whether or not we should provide Treasury with the authority that both former President Bush and President Obama have called for.

Rather, it is how we should do it. After we vote on the DeMint amendment, and assuming it is defeated, I will seek consent for the adoption of substitute language that is supported by the chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the chairman and ranking member of the Banking Committee.

It also has the support of the chairman and ranking member of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

The true cost of the authority requested by the President is not the $100 billion the Senator from South Carolina wants you to believe. That is a scare tactic. It is $5 billion over 5 years, and that is a drop in the ocean compared to cost to our economy, and to American jobs, by not acting.

Mr. President, this week, Senator Cornyn insisted on offering an amendment to the emergency supplemental appropriations bill that is most unfortunate. It is an amendment that is so broad in scope and, I believe, wrongheaded, that I felt I should note my disagreement. As a former prosecutor, I am troubled that the Senate is being called upon to prejudge matters that have yet to be fully investigated. This amendment is a classic example of putting the cart before the horse.

I have proposed a Commission of Inquiry in order to move these debates outside of partisan politics. An independent and nonpartisan panel taking a comprehensive approach is better positioned to determine what happened. Before the Senate starts pontificating about who should and should not be investigated, sanctioned, ethically disciplined or prosecuted, would it not be a good idea to know what took place?

I was encouraged to hear Senator Cornyn call for ``an end to the poisonous environment that has overtaken the debate about detention and interrogation policy in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001.'' I agree and that is why I proposed taking the matter out of partisanship and away from political institutions. That is not what the amendment does, however. First, Senator Cornyn styled this as a sense of the Senate making overly broad findings, now he has stripped those findings from this amendment, and is doing something even more nonsensical, trying to prohibit the use of funds for something that funds are not even provided for in the emergency supplemental.

An amendment politicizing decisions about investigations and prosecutions is not the right approach. We should have closed the book on efforts to have partisan interests infect Federal law enforcement decisions when we lifted

the veil on the Bush White House's manipulation of U.S. attorney firings. Some of us have worked very hard to restore the U.S. Department of Justice to be an institution worthy of its name and to again command the respect of the American people.

Senator Cornyn spoke on the floor this week about learning together from our past mistakes. I, again, invite all Senators from all parts of the political spectrum to join my call for a nonpartisan investigation to do just that.

The Justice Department has yet to finish a 5-year inquiry regarding whether some of the lawyers responsible for the Office of Legal Counsel opinions that justified brutality acted in ways that failed to meet professional and ethical standards. It was a Republican ranking member on the Judiciary Committee who earlier this year said that if the news reports of how those memoranda came to be generated are true, there may have been criminal conduct involved. President Obama and the Attorney General have been very forthright in saying that those who relied on and followed the legal advice in interrogating prisoners would not be prosecuted.

What needs to be determined, and has not, is how we came to a place where the United States of America tortured people in its custody in violation of our laws. Those legal opinions have been withdrawn. One of the earliest was withdrawn by the Bush administration in advance of the confirmation hearing on Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General, and others were limited in the final days of the Bush administration. What we do not know and what this amendment is geared toward covering for, is the role of the former Vice President and his staff, the role of the Bush White House in generating those opinions legalizing brutal interrogations.

Last week, the Judiciary Committee held our most recent hearing into these matters. I thank Senator Whitehouse for chairing the hearing before the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. Philip Zelikow testified about how dissent over the legal justifications and implementation of these practices was stifled and overridden. Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogator of Abu Zubaydah, testified about his success using traditional interrogation techniques, and about how ineffective and counterproductive the use of extreme practices was in that case. And Professor David Luban critiqued the released memoranda as legally and ethically dishonest.

Last week also evidenced, yet again, why the approach of an independent, nonpartisan review is the right one. Partisans defending the Bush-Cheney administration's actions chose not to look for the truth, but to mount partisan attacks. They have succeeded in fulfilling the prophecy they created--that any effort to consider these matters would break down into partisan recriminations--by themselves doing just that. They elevated the minor role of a former minority member of the House Committee on Intelligence into their principle concern, thereby ignoring the driving force of the former Vice President, other officials in the Bush-Cheney administration, and the complicity of the Republican congressional officials who were in control of both the House and the Senate. They raised straw men, went on witch hunts, and sought to distract from the fundamental underlying facts. All they really succeeded in demonstrating is that they will continue to view these matters through a partisan lens, and that they have yet to show any willingness to join in a fair, nonpartisan inquiry. Their recent actions reinforce why we need the independent, nonpartisan inquiry for which I have been calling over the last several months.

For those who have reflexively opposed my proposal for a comprehensive, nonpartisan, independent inquiry, I ask these questions: If we never find the truth and understand the mistakes we have made, what incentive is there to avoid them in the future? What guarantee is there that the Government will not repeat the same mistakes? What incentive will future administrations have to respect the very rule of law that distinguishes us as a nation? The risk that the past will again be prologue is too great to take simply because it is not easy to face the truth.

I continue to believe that we must know what happened, and why, to ensure that America does not go down this dark road, again. Before we turn the page, we need to read the page. We should proceed without partisanship, not as Republican or Democratic politicians, but as Americans who recognize, as Philip Zelikow testified last week, that torture was ``a collective failure and it was a mistake.''

During the last several weeks, we have seen the release of the Senate Armed Services report documenting the complicity of top Bush-Cheney administration officials. News reports have indicated that in April 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. arrested a top officer in Saddam Hussein's security force, and that some acting on behalf of then Vice President Cheney urged the use of waterboarding in an effort to coerce a ``confession'' supporting the link between al-Qaida and Iraq. That link, of course, has proven to be an illusory justification for the war, as were the nonexistent stockpiles of nuclear weapons and others weapons of mass destruction. Likewise, COL Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to President Bush's first Secretary of State, has written that these brutal interrogations, conducted in the spring of 2002 before the legal authorizations of the OLC memoranda were crafted, were aimed at the ``discovery of a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaida.'' Perhaps these reports help explain why former Vice President Cheney continues to adamantly support these discredited practices. Perhaps they explain why the proposed amendment's language is so vague with regard to those who, in its words, ``provided input into the legal opinions.''

There are strong passions on all sides. It is not only former Vice President Cheney and his apologists who feel strongly. There are those who will not be satisfied by anything less than prosecutions for war crimes. I have always believed that there is a fundamental middle ground, one that focuses on the most important issue at stake--finding out what happened and why.

I appreciate the support of so many who have rallied to this idea of a nonpartisan commission and a comprehensive review of what took place. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and a former State Department counselor, have both testified in favor of this idea. Former Bush administration official Alberto Mora, and the former FBI Director under President Reagan, Judge William Sessions, have both recognized the need for accountability. Distinguished former military officers, who are familiar with commissions of inquiry, have been supportive. These officers include ADM Lee Gun and MG Antonio Taguba, as well as the National Institute of Military Justice. Senators Feingold and Whitehouse, both members of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, have strongly endorsed the idea, as has Senator Robert Byrd. The Speaker of the House has spoken favorably about getting to the bottom of these matters, and she has shown her willingness to cooperate with such an inquiry.

Human rights leaders and organizations have endorsed the approach, including Amnesty International, the Constitution Project, the International Center for Transitional Justice, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the Open Society Institute, the Brennan Center, Human Rights First, and others. Prominent religious leaders such as those represented by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which is composed of a broad spectrum of religious denominations, support this idea.

Thoughtful commentators like Jon Meachem, Nicolas Kristof, Tom Ricks, Frank Rich, and Maureen Dowd have come to endorse a nonpartisan commission. Editorials in support of a nonpartisan commission have appeared over the last several weeks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and in Vermont's Rutland Herald.

Last week, the Attorney General of the United States testified that the Justice Department would, of course, cooperate with such a commission were Congress to establish one. The President of the United States has said that he, too, feels that such a pursuit would be better conducted ``outside of the typical hearing process'' by a bipartisan body of ``independent participants who are above reproach and have credibility.''

I urge those Republicans who truly believe, as Senator Cornyn said, that in looking at these matters we must ``maintain our sense of perspective and objectivity and fairness'' to join in a bipartisan effort to provide for a nonpartisan review by way of a commission of inquiry. Such a commission would allow us to put aside partisan bickering, learn from our mistakes and move forward.

Just as partisan Republicans were wrong to try to hold up the confirmation of Attorney General Holder to extort a pledge from him that he would not exercise independent prosecutorial judgment, it is wrong to shoe horn this amendment onto this emergency spending bill. I opposed the effort by some Republican Senators who wanted the Nation's chief prosecutor to agree in advance that he would turn a blind eye to possible lawbreaking before investigating whether it occurred. Republican Senators asked for such a pledge, a commitment that no prosecutor should give. To his credit, Eric Holder did not.

Similarly, passing a broad and unrelated amendment on an emergency appropriations bill that seeks to instruct the Attorney General how to fulfill his constitutional responsibilities is not the path forward. Before we even know how these legal opinions were generated and who was responsible for what, this amendment calls for the Senate to usurp the Justice Department's role in determining whether and, if so, who to investigate or prosecute. Any former prosecutor, any lawyer and any citizen should know that it is not the decision of or an appropriate role for the U.S. Senate.

Amendment No. 1156

Mr. Chairman, I was very pleased to see that the committee provided more than $3 billion for smaller, more agile, but still highly protective vehicles know as the MRAP-all-terrain-vehicle. That is $1.55 billion above what the administration requested in the fiscal year 2009 supplemental. We received a lot of testimony on this armored vehicle program from witnesses before our subcommittee, including the Chief of Staff of the Army, and I had a personal conversation with Secretary of Defense Gates. Everyone said that the MRAP-ATV, as it is known in short, is absolutely critical to achieving our goals in Afghanistan.

The Senator is so right, and I appreciated the way the subcommittee thoroughly looked at the administration's budget request, scrubbed the numbers, and listened to what our senior defense leaders had to say. The 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Vermont National Guard--the only Army brigade in the Army with a ``Mountain'' fighting designation, comprised of upwards of 1,800 proud citizen- soldiers from Vermont--will begin a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan next year. They will help train the Afghan National Army, which is critical to our success there. We want all our deployed forces--from Vermont, Hawaii, and every State, and every armed service--to have the best protection from roadside bomb attacks. That need is reflected in the urgent request from Central Command, in the so-called Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statement.

I think it is tremendous that the subcommittee has shown such leadership on working to secure funds that we all know is essential to protecting our brave men and women deployed abroad. I look forward to continuing to work with my good friend and colleague from Hawaii to hold this funding in our conference negotiations with the House of Representatives.

I thank the esteemed chairman.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Bennett, Bingaman, and Kerry be added as cosponsors of amendment No. 1189.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Klobuchar as a cosponsor of amendment No. 1189.

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

Mr. President, I now have 20 cosponsors of amendment No. 1189. I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Klobuchar, Senator Cardin, Senator Ben Nelson, Senator Brownback, Senator Roberts, Senator Grassley, Senator Burr, Senator Johanns, and Senator Schumer as cosponsors of amendment No. 1189.

Mr. President, I add these cosponsors because more and more of our Senators are learning what has happened to these dealerships that have been notified by Chrysler that they have 3 weeks to completely dissolve a business that has been part of a community for 20 years, 30 years, up to 90 years. The oldest car dealership in Texas is 90 years old--a grandfather, father, and now a son running that car dealership. They were noticed 3 weeks from May 14 that dealership will be closed.

Just to give a view of what the dealers received on May 14 and why these 789 who received this notice are so concerned is because the letter they were sent says:

As a result of its recent bankruptcy filing, Chrysler is

unable to repurchase your new vehicle inventory. As a result

of the recent bankruptcy filing, Chrysler is unable to

purchase your Mopar parts inventory. And furthermore, as a

result of the bankruptcy filing, Chrysler is unable to

purchase your essential special tools.

After 90 years of operating a Chrysler dealership, a company is now told they will have no ability after 3 weeks to sell a Chrysler automobile, nor will there be a guarantee for repurchase.

What my amendment does, which now has 20 very bipartisan cosponsors, is to say: Give these dealers 3 more weeks. Give them 3 more weeks to have an orderly transition out of a company. There are estimated to be 40,000 employees of these Chrysler dealerships who received 3 weeks' notice--40,000. We are dealing with so many issues in these auto manufacturer closings, the bankruptcies. We all want the auto manufacturers to stay in business. We do. The Government is making a huge investment in that hope. But the group that is getting nothing right now is the dealers.

The dealers also are the group that has done nothing that caused this problem in the first place. They did not design the cars, they did not manufacture the cars, but they did buy them. There is no cost to the company that manufactures because these dealerships have purchased these cars. They have purchased the parts. They have purchased the special tools to do the repairs. Yet now they are being told they cannot sell, they cannot repair and, oh, by the way: We are not going to guarantee you will have your parts and inventory bought. This is just not right. That is why there are 20 cosponsors to this amendment, and it is growing by the hour.

I submit for the Record a letter that Senator Rockefeller wrote to the chief executive officer, Robert Nardelli, in which he, too, is protesting the egregious timeframe and terms of these franchise terminations which he said ``seem unprecedented to me.''

As you know, most auto dealers have a few months of inventory of new vehicles on their lots, though some may have up to 6-months' worth. This means if the dealers stopped adding cars to their inventories last week when GM and Chrysler announced their decisions, they would still be able to sell cars for 6 months before they run out.

But Chrysler is saying they will not buy back this inventory or even parts and instead has arranged for the remaining dealers to buy the unsold cars from dealers set to lose their franchises. But there is no guarantee of that. Right now it is just a hope.

Senator Rockefeller is concerned, as many of us are, that the dealers are the roadkill in this, and they are also the people who have run successful businesses. They have sold the cars. They have employees. They have investments in the community. In many instances, these are the largest employers in the community. They support the high school football program. They support the community charitable events. We are not only knocking out 40,000 employees, we are not only knocking out the people who have given their faith and loyalty to this brand, but we are knocking out a huge chunk of community activism and volunteer service to the many communities affected by these closings.

I talked with the president of Chrysler this morning, and I believe he sincerely is trying to save the company, and we want him to do that. But it has been half a day, and I have not seen a progress report that we will be able to come back to the floor and say these dealers are going to get some help from Chrysler.

The President says he wants to help. But I think it is time now that we get some sense of what help is. If it is purchasing the inventory, getting the financing for the new and ongoing dealerships that will stay in business, we need to know that. These dealers need to know it so they can plan. My goodness, it is now probably 2 weeks or so, until June 9, and these people are having to plan for the orderly transition of their companies, hopefully not into bankruptcy, but many of them are going into bankruptcy.

I have been told some of these are Chrysler dealers, but they have other dealerships as well. The Chrysler dealership could bring down the ongoing one. I think it is time for the Government that is trying to help the manufacturers to say we need to help the dealers too. We do not need to have a bailout for the dealers, but we do need to give them time to have their orderly transition or give them credit possibilities with the dealerships that are going to stay in business and have them take the inventory. That would be the logical thing to do. But we need a commitment.

The 20 cosponsors of this amendment, when they hear from their dealers and they hear what is happening, want answers and they want answers before this bill leaves the floor. I hope I can give a better result than I have gotten so far today from the White House and from Chrysler that something is coming together. I think everyone has the right goal. We need to work together to achieve that goal.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add the following cosponsors to amendment No. 1189: Senator Landrieu, Senator Shaheen, Senator Crapo, Senator Risch, Senator Bill Nelson, and Senator Snowe.

Mr. President, I would point out that there are now 26 cosponsors of the amendment that would have tried to give the Chrysler car dealers extra time to get their affairs in order rather than a June 9 deadline. It would just give them 3 more weeks. I am still hoping the White House and the Chrysler company will come forward with something that will give some help to these dealers. I think the Senate is beginning to speak by the number of cosponsorships for this amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Inouye as a cosponsor of amendment No. 1189.

Mr. President, we are still working on language that I very much hope we can get agreement on before the end of the day. I think everyone is working in good faith. That is my hope, and I will remain optimistic that we can have something definitive for the dealers in this country who are facing bankruptcy or dissolution in 2 weeks.

As of now, 28 Senators have signed on to agree that we need to be helpful to them. I think we have a way forward, but we have to get everyone signed off on it. I hope all of the parties will do that, so there can be a definitive announcement, because these dealers need to be able to plan going forward. They need to know what the rules of the game are. I think it is the least we can do for them.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senators Feingold and Harkin to amendment No. 1189.

That takes us up to 29 cosponsors of this amendment. We are almost up to a third of the Senate saying we need to help these Chrysler dealers. I just hope we can produce something for these dealers by the end of business today that will help them begin to get their affairs in order after the blow they received on May 14.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to add more cosponsors to amendment No. 1189. They are Senators Collins, Specter, Kohl, Dorgan, Webb, Wicker, and Cornyn.

Madam President, we are up to 35 Members, over one- third of the Senate, who are saying we need to help the Chrysler dealers who got the blow on May 14 saying they had 3 weeks to basically shut down an entire dealership.

I have been talking to so many of my colleagues on the floor since I offered this amendment who have had stories of friends and people they know, people who sometimes own the largest employer in a city or a county, and the hardship these people are facing. They are facing the likelihood--unless we can get some closure--that they are going to lose, perhaps, their dealerships, and many are going into bankruptcy. They all have big real estate investments, we know that. A car dealership has large amounts of real estate. Usually, it is very expensive real estate. They still owe money, and they are in dire straits right now.

What the negotiation is right now is this: I talked to the president of Chrysler this morning at 8:30. I have talked to the people at the White House who are the task force, the people overseeing the Chrysler and General Motors project, and to Senator Stabenow from Michigan, who has been so helpful in trying to put this together and work with me in a bipartisan way because while she has a Chrysler manufacturing plant, she also has dealers in Michigan, as does Senator Levin. So the 35 cosponsors of the amendment are completely bipartisan because we all have these stories, and we know these dealers are not getting a fair chance.

I talked to the President of Chrysler, and he said there would be a letter forthcoming where he would lay out how Chrysler is going to help take the inventory off the books of these dealers that are being shut down--789 across the country. We are talking about 40,000 people working in these dealerships.

We are talking about a lot of lives that are being affected. He said they would put out a letter today--he didn't say close of business, but we agree we both want something out today--that would give these dealers a definitive plan so they would know what they could count on. Not having to worry about inventory was No. 1 on the list. These dealers buy these cars and trucks. They buy them. It is their expense. They buy the parts. They buy the equipment that is unique for the repair of these cars. So they have the risk. Yet they could be stuck with 30 cars or 100 cars. This is sinking them.

I said: I hope you are going to give us something definitive. He said and I believe he is trying to do just that without in any way delaying or disrupting the exit out of bankruptcy, which is in everyone's interest because the taxpayers are paying for the exit out of bankruptcy, and the quicker the better, that is for sure. But these dealers are about to go bankrupt too. We are talking about 40,000 employees of these dealers. I think it is important that we look at them as effective people.

It is now a quarter of six. I just talked again with the president of Chrysler. He says we will have a letter within minutes. Actually, it was 15 minutes ago that I talked with him. He said it would be just a few minutes and they would get something to me.

I am going to tell you right now, Madam President, and I am going to tell all of my colleagues, we are not passing this bill. We are not going to shorten the time. We are not going to have a unanimous consent agreement until I have a letter that will assure these dealers of what they can expect from Chrysler that will, hopefully, give them the clarity they need to be able to say: OK, I don't have to worry about cars and trucks and parts and specialized equipment. I can now worry about making the payments on my real estate. I can worry about my employees

whom we are having to let go and worry about the effect on the community. I can worry about all those things, but the big things that can be handled by Chrysler and the task force will be handled. That is what I am looking for.

I am putting everyone on notice that this bill is not going to have any shortened time period under a UC until I can see that letter. Senator Stabenow stands with me to try to make sure we are doing something that will be adequate.

I will say, Senator Rockefeller, too, is very concerned. He and Senator Byrd sent a letter to the CEO of Chrysler and General Motors to object strongly to the handling, the treatment of the dealers. Senator Rockefeller as the chairman and I as the ranking member of the Commerce Committee are now talking about having a hearing with those CEOs and representatives of the dealership group as soon as we get back. That will be the week after next.

I am waiting, hoping, with all of the good-faith efforts that have been made today by the White House, by the president of Chrysler and his team, and all of the Senators who have signed on as cosponsors of this amendment.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Lincoln be added as a cosponsor of this amendment.

Madam President, I think the Senator from Arkansas, who is working very hard on trying to get an amendment into this bill as well. She is in the Chamber. I appreciate her also coming in and saying: We are a bipartisan team, and we want results for these dealers who have been so badly treated up to this point. I am hoping that will change in the next few minutes and we will see a light at the end of the tunnel for these dealers.

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

Madam President, I state for the record that the Commerce Committee hearing on the auto dealerships has been set for June 2 at 2:30 p.m. This is a very important hearing where we are going to have representation from the automobile manufacturers, as well as the automobile dealers. I hope that will shed some light on what we can do to help these dealers.

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

Mr. President, the Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow, and I have been working all day with the Chrysler president and his team and with the White House and their team and the task force and their team to try to give the assurances to the 789 dealers who are going to be put out of business across our country by Chrysler--with the 3-week notification--that they will be able to recoup the cost of the inventory that has been left on their property and in their dealerships.

I said I was going to hold up any shortening of time period for this bill to be considered until I got a letter of assurance. The original amendment, for which we have 37 cosponsors, was to extend the time by 3 weeks to allow the dealers to be able to sell more inventory, have a more orderly transition.

In fact, what we have done, in consultation with the dealers, I think is going to be much better. It is not everything they had hoped for, but if there is good faith in this effort, it is going to be good for the dealers. But it will take good faith.

Here is the letter the president of Chrysler, James Press, has sent to me. And Senator Stabenow as well has been one of the people who has been talking about this and negotiating.

The letter says:

Dear Senator Hutchison:

I assure you that our process for redistributing the

product from OldCo dealers--

Who are the old company dealers who are going to be put out of business--

to NewCo dealers--

Who are the dealers who will survive--

is designed to assure that products flow quickly and

efficiently from every OldCo dealer. As part of this process,

we will ensure that the OldCo dealers receive a fair and

equitable value for virtually all of their outstanding

vehicle and parts inventory. We have more than 200

representatives in the field that are working to ensure that

we make good on this commitment as quickly as is practical.

We have a very robust system in place to manage the sales to

NewCo dealers as well as the inspection and shipment to the

new dealer.

Thanks to your input today we have added a new set of

assurances and information for the OldCo dealers, with the

intention of removing some of the uncertainty that naturally

surrounds this process. Each OldCo dealer will receive a

daily report which specifically outlines each unit of

inventory and its place in the transition process.

We share the objective of selling these vehicles as quickly

as possible to protect residual values. We are committed to

sell every unit possible by June 9, prior to resumption of

production [of the company].

Thank you for your time and interest today. Our goal is to

ensure that every dealer realizes a soft landing and is able

to transition smoothly.

Senator Stabenow and I called Mr. Press for a clarification of some of the parts of this letter. The biggest concern, of course, that the dealers have is getting the inventory they have paid for off their books. That is their biggest concern.

We were assured that the 200 representatives who are going out to help this orderly and quick transition will make every effort to expedite the transition to the surviving dealerships as quickly as possible. This will include specialized tools, as well as parts, inventory, and outstanding vehicles.

I said: What happens after June 9? Because the June 9 deadline is good when you are trying to expedite, but then you are not saying that you will not keep helping after June 9. They said: Absolutely not. Mr. Press said they will certainly continue to help until every part of this transition of this inventory is disposed of. And the help will be there after June 9. That was the assurance that was given.

The major thing that has happened that has been helpful is that GMAC has received--as we all know because it is public--in the range of $7.5 billion for financing, which will be available to the new surviving dealerships--Chrysler, and I am sure General Motors as well--and so the new dealers will have the ability to finance the taking of the inventory off of the dealers who are going to be put out of business.

So that is probably one of the most important components here because there had to be a lending source for the new dealers to absorb the new inventory.

I think the biggest concern left for the dealers is the floor plan loans they have for the inventory that is there and how that would change after June 9. I asked that question. And basically the answer is: We are going to try to do everything possible to get these transitions out before June 9 so you will not have, hopefully, the problem of loans being modified.

So that is the essence of the conversation and questions I asked for clarification. I ended by saying that I think we are much further ahead now than we were when the letter arrived on May 14 to the dealers saying: We are not going to buy inventory, we are not going to buy parts, and we are not going to buy the specialized tools, and you have 3 weeks to deal with this. We have come a long way from there.

I said to Mr. Press, and to his team, that I did appreciate this effort and the better clarification, but we will know in 2 weeks if the good faith that is represented in this letter is, in fact, implemented. And they agreed with that.

I think we have made a step in the right direction--when my dealers call and say: Under the circumstances, it is not what we had wanted, but we have been treated as fairly as possible and have certainly gotten the relief from the burden of inventory so we can deal with the employees who will not be with us anymore, and the land and the real estate and the other costs of closing an ongoing business.

So I will say to my colleague from Michigan, I do not think any of this would have happened without her stepping in. And hands-on efforts were made to bring the White House in, Chrysler in, my staff, her staff. So it was certainly a team effort.

I want to thank the 37 cosponsors of my amendment because I think that was a clear indication that over one-third of this Senate was not going to let this go the way it had been left at the time. So if there is good will in this whole effort for the next 2 weeks, then I am optimistic it will have a good result.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter written to me by James Press today be printed in the Record.

I yield for Senator Stabenow.

Mr. President, I wish to thank again the Senator from Michigan. It was certainly a difficult position for her to, of course, have the manufacturers--GM and Chrysler--but also to have the dealers that are all over Michigan. I think the tireless efforts we had all day today will hopefully end in the next 2 weeks with the implementation of as fair as possible dealings with the dealers that we could possibly have.

Mr. President, I wish to add Senator Thune as a cosponsor of amendment No. 1189.

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague, and I so appreciate the 39 cosponsors of this amendment who stepped up to the plate and said this has to be fixed. In the end, that made a big difference. I wish to thank my colleagues who have been very bipartisan.

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

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

Madam President, I wish to speak for a few moments regarding the President's remarks on national security today and about some national security issues in general.

At the outset, let me note that there are some points in the President's message I do not agree with and some points of plain fact he made that should help us clarify some of the issues that have been raised in recent debates over national security. President Obama endorsed the continued use of military commissions with some minor changes. These commissions are historic and certainly appropriate and have been used by nations all over the world. I will reserve judgment on those changes until I see the details, but the President is right when he states that military commissions are ``an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war,'' though some have not agreed with that.

The President correctly noted: ``Military commissions have a history in the United States dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War.''

As the President also noted, military commissions ``allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence gathering.'' That is absolutely true, and it is an important principle in defending America. He also noted that the commissions allow ``the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot be effectively presented in a Federal court.''

In other words, we have strict rules of evidence in Federal courts. Our soldiers are in a life-and-death struggle on the battlefield. They are not police investigators. They are not homicide investigators. They can not be expected to be able to comply with every rule regarding the collection of evidence. Military commissions account for that difference.

It is also reassuring to see that President Obama has stated he will exercise his power as Commander in Chief to detain as war prisoners those al-Qaida members who continue to pose a danger to the United States, but who cannot be tried by a military commission. Some detainees may not be able to be tried by military commissions for legal reasons. For years, we have heard criticism from some of the fringe groups on the left--criticisms that have been echoed occasionally in this Chamber--that we must either try every enemy war prisoner or release them. That has never been the practice in the history of war, and that is not what our law says. This is a notion that cannot be sustained and one that would pose a threat to us if it were ever adopted as policy.

I am glad to see President Obama rejected that notion. As he noted in his remarks today:

There may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted

for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a danger to the

security of the United States. Examples of that threat

include people who have received extensive explosives

training at al-Qaida training camps, commanded Taliban troops

in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or

otherwise made it clear they want to kill Americans. These

are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United

States.

As I said, I am not going to release individuals who

endanger the American people. Al-Qaida terrorists and their

affiliates are at war with the United States and those we

capture--like other prisoners of war--must be prevented from

attacking us again.

That is fundamentally true, but some people have a confused notion about that.

Under the Geneva Conventions, even lawful combatants can be detained throughout the duration of a war. When illegal combatants conduct a war outside the laws of the Geneva Conventions and other treaties and laws that deal with the conduct of civilized warfare by deliberately and intentionally bombing innocent men, women and children who are noncombatants, those people are not entitled to be released.

President Obama also stated this morning that:

We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our

national security, nor will we release detainees within the

United States who endanger the American people.

Well, that is hard to know for certain. Attorney General Holder has talked about releasing the Uighurs, a terrorist group focused primarily on China. I don't believe the administration has the legal authority to release these detainees. Recently, according to the Los Angeles Times, some of the Uighurs were watching a soccer game--they allow them to watch television at the Guantanamo Bay facility--and a lady came on with short sleeves. This offended one of the Islamic Uighurs and they jumped up and grabbed the television and threw it on the floor. I point that out simply to say it is difficult to know for certain who is a threat. Many may well harbor a secret determination to attack America as soon as they are released.

I think the President has made clear that he does not have the full and free discretion to simply release al-Qaida members and their fellow travelers into the United States. Federal law expressly bars admission to the United States of anyone who is a member of a foreign terrorist organization. A Federal law we passed some years ago bars admission of any person who is a member of a foreign terrorist organization--pretty common sense, right? If you are going to have lawful immigration policy, you don't want terrorists to be able to immigrating into the country. The law bars admission of anyone who has provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and it also bars from this country anyone who has received military-style training at a camp operated by one of these terrorist organizations. The United States Congress decided that these individuals, ones who have ties to or have assisted or who have been trained by groups such as al-Qaida pose a danger to the American people and should not be admitted into this country. That congressional enactment is now the law. It is binding upon the President and the Attorney General, who is charged by the Constitution with enforcing the law.

So when the President states he will not release detainees within the United States, I can only state that I would expect no less. The law requires the President to bar admission to al-Qaida members or material supporters or those who trained in a terrorist camp, and I think he will follow that.

I note his speech also is rather selective, however, in how it cites to: ``The court order to release 17 Uighur detainees that took place last fall.''

The President referred to a court order to release these Uighurs, but he inexplicably failed to acknowledge what happened to that case on appeal. A lower district court judge ordered that they must be released, but the Federal appellate court reversed that order which would have allowed these terrorist to be released into the United States. This February, a couple of months ago in Kiyemba v. Obama, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the district court did not have legal authority to order the release of the Uighur detainees into this country. These are individuals who have trained in a terrorist camp, a terrorist group that is connected to al- Qaida. A month ago, the U.S. Department of Treasury reaffirmed the determination that they are a terrorist organization. The appeals court could not have been more clear when it wrote:

Never in the history of habeas corpus has any court thought

it had the power to order an alien held overseas brought into

the sovereign territory of a Nation and then released into

the general population. As we have also said, in the United

States, who can come in and on what terms is the exclusive

province of the executive branches.

There are other things the President said today that I disagree with. First, President Obama committed himself to banning the enhanced interrogation of al-Qaida detainees. I certainly oppose torture of any detainees. But he went on to state: ``Some have argued'' that these techniques ``were necessary to keep us safe,'' and he said he ``could not disagree more.''

Well, that is not exactly accurate, I have to tell my colleagues.

On September 6, 2006, when President Bush announced the transfer of 14 high-value al-Qaida detainees to Guantanamo, he also described information that the United States had obtained from these detainees as a result of these enhanced interrogation programs. Most people agree many of these enhanced techniques clearly are not torture. Some argue that a few of the techniques may amount to torture; but many say they are not torture. We have a statute that prohibits torture and it defines it pretty clearly.

President Bush noted then that Abu Zubaydah was captured by U.S. forces several months after the September 11 attack. Several months later he was captured. Under interrogation he revealed that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was a principal organizer of the September 11 attacks. Zubaydah also described a terrorist attack that al-Qaida operatives were planning to launch inside this country--an attack of which the United States had no previous knowledge. Zubaydah described the operatives involved in this attack and where they were located. This information allowed the United States to capture these terrorists, one while he was traveling in the United States. Under enhanced interrogation, Zubaydah also revealed the identity of another September 11 plotter, Ramzi bin al Shibh, and provided information that led to his capture. U.S. forces then interrogated him. Information that both he and Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the person who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed also provided information to help stop another planned attack on the United States when he was interrogated. KMS provided information that led to the capture of a terrorist named Zubair, and KMS's interrogation also led to the identification and capture of an entire 17-member Jemaah Islamiya terrorist cell in Southeast Asia.

According to President Bush, information obtained as a result of enhanced interrogation techniques also helped stop a planned truck bomb attack on U.S. troops in Djibouti. Interrogation also helped stop a planned car bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, and it helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and crash them into Heathrow Airport in London. On September 6, President Bush said:

Information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a

role in the capture or questioning of nearly every single al-

Qaida member or associate detained by the United States and

its allies.

He concluded by noting that al-Qaida members subjected to interrogation by U.S. forces have painted a picture of al-Qaida's structure and financing, communications and logistics. They identified al-Qaida's travel routes and safe havens and explained how al-Qaida's senior leadership communicates with its operatives in places such as Iraq. They provided information that has allowed us to make sense of documents and computer records that have been seized in terrorist raids. They have identified voices in recordings of intercepted calls and helped us understand the meaning of potentially critical terrorist communications. Were it not for the information obtained, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we would not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives.

Well, this was information obtained in the last administration as a result of the enhanced interrogation techniques of al-Qaida detainees. It allowed us to stop terrorist attacks. It allowed us to learn about al-Qaida communications, how it responded and operated. It even allowed us to capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the organizer of 9/11. I don't think anybody here can reliably contend that this information was not valuable. It was valuable.

We have to be careful how we conduct interrogations. I believe the debate over this has helped us clarify the responsibility we have to not participate in torture. But it does not mean that we cannot used enhanced techniques to move a person to the point they are providing information that can help protect this country. We have to be careful that we don't go too far. We have a history of going too far in reaction to matters like this.

One of the things we did is we put a wall between the CIA and the FBI. We said the CIA should not deal with dangerous thugs around the world to get information. After 9/11 it was clearly determined that both of those were bad ideas, and we reversed them immediately.

Nobody in this Congress should suggest that we are incapable of making a mistake. But we have gone 8 years without an attack. That is something of significance. We should be proud of that. We have men and women in the CIA, in the FBI, and in the U.S. military, who are putting their lives on the line right now. I remember being, several years ago, in a foreign country with a history of some violence and terrorism. A man from the CIA met with us. He worked 7 days a week. He had dinner with us at 8 o'clock. He said that was the earliest he had been off duty since he had been there.

They are putting their lives at risk for us, and we need to back them up when we can. If they make a mistake, they need to be held to account for it.

Madam President, I see my colleague from Texas. I assume she would like to make some remarks. I am not sure what the expectation is, but I will just wrap up and say a few more things. This is an important issue. I just don't believe this issue has only one side. I have to tell you, I believed that the President's remarks today reflected a view that only he had the correct view of how these matters should be conducted, and that everybody else who disagreed had less decency than he. I don't think there is any doubt that the work this Nation did after 9/11 stopped further attacks and saved the lives of Americans. It can and should be done, consistent with the laws of this country. But that doesn't mean that unlawful terrorists--not legitimate prisoners of war--cannot be subjected to interrogation. They can be and they have been. I trust that they will be in the future.

The President argued today that releasing the Office of Legal Counsel memos from the Department of Justice and exposing the details of the interrogation and actually tricks that CIA has used will not harm national security because this President has decided not to use those techniques. I simply point out that the war with al-Qaida will not

end with this administration, and future administrations--and even this administration--may need to have access to reasonable interrogation techniques, and providing this information is not the right thing.

It is odd that of all the material released, we have not had further information released from the intelligence agencies that would provide evidence of interrogations that have enabled us to stop other attacks on our country. I don't know why they would not want to release that; they want to release the techniques and a lot of other things.

When the President released the legal counsel's interrogation memos, he excised certain information from the memos and left out other memos entirely. These other memos describe in detail the information that was obtained as a result of the enhanced interrogation of al-Qaida detainees.

If the President really believes these interrogations don't work, I urge him to release these other memos, the ones Vice President Cheney called on to be released. If he believes in full transparency, why don't we see that? We know some of it because it was in President Bush's September 2006 remarks.

Madam President, to sum up, we are in a great national effort. We are now sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. I think President Obama studied that carefully. I know he, like myself and most of us, doesn't look forward to having to send more troops there. He decided it was important for America and our allies and stability in the region and the world that they be sent there. This Congress supported that. So we continue the struggle. It is going to be a long time.

Intelligence is a critical component of our success against the war against the terrorists. That is what the 9/11 Commission told us. That is what the American people understood with clarity. Good intelligence prevents attacks and saves lives. Good intelligence is so valuable, it is almost invaluable. We have to be careful when we set about passing more and more rules that chill the willingness of our investigators and military people to do their job. As we have found from previous spasms, harm to our intelligence community can be the result of irrational, reactionary decisions. We didn't wisely consider this when we put a wall between the FBI and we limited the CIA in these dangerous areas of the world in getting information. I share a deep concern about that.

There is one more thing I will conclude with. The President talked repeatedly in his speech, in a most disparaging manner, about Guantanamo. I think inadvertently, and I am sure unintentionally, I believe he has cast a shadow over the fabulous men and women who serve us there, who participate in running a very fine facility. I would have appreciated it if he had taken the opportunity to clear the air about Guantanamo, our military prison.

Do you know that not one single person was subjected to waterboarding at Guantanamo? Actually, there were only three instances of it, all done by our intelligence agency in a different place. None of that occurred there. I wish he had said that. I wish he had quoted from one of the investigative reports of what happened at Guantanamo.

This is what the finder found: They found one incident in which a series of techniques were used during interrogation, not one of which would have amounted to torturing that person, but all together they concluded it put too much stress on that individual and that it violated the law against torture. Well, that should not have been done.

But to hear the talk about Guantanamo, you would think we are waterboarding people and torturing people constantly. That is just not what happened there. I have been there twice. These are great men and women down there trying to serve our country. They are absolutely committed to trying to extract as much good information as they could to protect America. They are not abusing detainees nor are they violating the law. If they cross that line, they should be disciplined for it. But it is not the kind of thing that is or was systematically occurring.

I wish the President had taken the opportunity--as Commander in Chief of our men and women who sends them into harm's way--to defend and explain that a lot of the allegations about Guantanamo were exaggerated and false.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act. My vote today does not indicate a blank check for the administration. But it is indicative of a strong desire on my part to begin to change to a new approach in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We all know about the challenges President Obama inherited from 8 long years of the Bush administration. He was left with an economy and recession, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, diminished U.S. standing around the globe, a country more dependent on foreign oil, and a resurgent al-Qaida.

Today, we have a new administration with clear priorities and realistic foreign policy objectives. We must give President Obama and his administration the resources and flexibility they need to move U.S. foreign policy in a new direction. If we were to walk away from this change in policy that is reflected in this supplemental, I think the message we are sending is for the status quo. The status quo does not deserve a vote.

Again, I repeat, my vote is not a blank check. I am voting for this bill not because I want the United States to remain bogged down in two wars, but because I want to give this administration--the Obama administration--the resources it needs to successfully end these wars, starting with the war in Iraq. Furthermore, I don't support an open- ended commitment of American troops to Afghanistan; and if we do not see measurable progress, we must reconsider our engagement and strategy there.

In particular, we must do more to sharply reduce the numbers of heartbreaking civilian casualties. As ADM Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said:

We cannot succeed in Afghanistan, or anywhere else . . . by

killing Afghan civilians. . . .

In a reference to a U.S. airstrike in the Farah Province, Admiral Mullen said:

We can't keep going through incidents like this and expect

the strategy to work.

I could not agree more. President Obama promised the American people a new way forward in Iraq and a new way forward in Afghanistan. The passage of this bill will allow him to put the pieces in place to keep his promises by finishing the mission in Afghanistan, which was shortchanged because of the Iraq war. I want to talk about that for a minute.

I voted, after 9/11, to go after al-Qaida, to go after the Taliban, to go after Osama bin Laden. The administration, instead of doing that, turned around and went into Iraq under the false premise that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. We still have former Vice President Cheney out there trying to convince the people that was the right thing to do. That was the wrong thing to do. There have been so many needless deaths in Iraq. We left Afghanistan, and the Taliban returned in force; and the people there are under the yoke of the Taliban in many parts of that country. What a tragedy, because of a mistaken policy. What a terrible legacy, because of a mistaken policy. Yet the debate rages on. So I am going to engage in that debate.

I believe we need to tackle this mission in Afghanistan, which was shortchanged. I believe we must increase the role of the State Department and our civilian agencies in working toward peace. I know my colleague in the chair, Senator Kaufman, has been very eloquent on this point--a new way to allow the Afghan people to, in essence, take back their country. We need to train Afghan security forces so we can ultimately change the nature of our mission there and bring our troops home. That is the goal.

I have heard my Republican friends say they don't know what the goal is in Afghanistan. That is OK. I don't think there is any problem explaining what it is. We want to go after al-Qaida. We want to decrease the influence of the Taliban and defeat them, if we have to. Hopefully, we can, in fact, work with some of them. I am not convinced of that, but it may be possible. We need to give the Afghan security forces the ability to defend their own people.

There is a lot more we have to do over there to protect the most vulnerable Afghans, and that means the women and the children of Afghanistan. I will talk more about that because this supplemental takes a huge step forward in protecting the women and children there.

It seems to me we have to give President Obama an opportunity to bring about the change he promised. If I see that change is not coming, I am not going to be there. But today, I believe we should give him that chance.

To think that we actually had Osama bin Laden cornered at one time, but the obsession with Saddam Hussein drove us away in those Bush years from that mission and brought us into a situation where we have lost so many of our young men and women, many of them--30,000--were injured, some with horrific injuries, and many more are suffering from post- traumatic stress and brain injury.

President Bush took his eye off Afghanistan, and so did Vice President Cheney. Frankly, sadly, we come to this day. I understand why some colleagues might just say: I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to spend any more money on it. Just forget it.

I don't think that is the way to go. I think President Obama said very clearly that he is going to bring change. I think this is the day. We either stand for change or for the status quo. That is my belief.

In the Bush years we never really had enough resources to fight al- Qaida in Afghanistan because we were waging an open-ended war in Iraq. Remember, there were no benchmarks for progress. It was day after day, death after death after death. Frankly, because the Iraq war fueled recruitment by al-Qaida, our Nation's security has been compromised. Our standing in the world has suffered. Again, most heartbreaking, American servicemembers and their families have paid the price.

In my view, there are four provisions in the supplemental that will help to correct our course.

First, the bill provides funding to get our troops home from Iraq. These provisions are essential for President Obama to meet his date of August 31, 2010, to remove combat brigades from Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011.

For those of us who want to bring the troops home, the funding to do that is in this supplemental. So, clearly, when we vote for this, we vote to begin that process. The responsibility for security must be turned over to the Iraqis--and quickly. U.S. forces cannot continue to shoulder the burden there anymore. The people there have to decide if they want to live together or die together. They have to look at these ethnic divisions and make their own decisions. We will help. We will always help. But it is their decision.

So the first part of the bill is funding to begin bringing the troops home from Iraq.

Second, this bill seeks to turn things around in Afghanistan by providing a significant investment in diplomacy and development, including, very importantly to me and to a lot of my colleagues, for the Afghan women. A military solution alone will not solve the problems in Afghanistan. We need a strategy that helps the Government provide for its people and invest in the civil society and those programs that are crucial to the long-term security and prosperity of that country.

Development is very important to the people of Afghanistan. I am very proud that this bill takes critical steps to support Afghan women and girls. Today, more than 7 years after the international community helped free Afghan women from the prison of life under the Taliban, the situation for women in Afghanistan remains dire.

I want to say to Senator Leahy and his staff: Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for working with us. Thank you for working with the women-led nongovernmental organizations.

Without Senator Leahy and his staff, we would not have this language in the bill. I wanted to make that point.

More than 80 percent of the women in Afghanistan are illiterate. More than one in six die in childbirth. These are the voices that have been forgotten. We cannot return to the days when Afghan women had to be draped in burqas against their will. If you have never tried on a burqa--and I am sure most people haven't--let me tell you what it feels like, because I did. You disappear. You become nothing. Remember when women were murdered in cold blood by the Taliban in soccer stadiums? Those days must be over.

It seems to me that walking away from this supplemental at this time says we are walking away from those women. We need to help them. We need to do everything we can to give them a chance because to not do so would be tragic.

This bill specifically appropriates $100 million for programs that directly address the needs of Afghan women and girls. In addition to Senator Leahy and his staff, I thank Congresswoman Nita Lowey and her staff. In the House bill, they also put in quite a few resources for the women-led NGOs. In our bill, we do even more to directly address the

needs of women and girls, including funding for the Afghan Human Rights Commission and Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs.

I wrote a bill called the Afghan Women Empowerment Act. Specifically, the supplemental appropriates $30 million for Afghan women-led nongovernmental organizations, which is a key component of that bill. The international community cannot stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. We know that. So this funding will help empower those organizations that will provide for the needs of the Afghan community long after the international community has left.

The supplemental includes $10 million to train and support Afghan women investigators, police officers, prosecutors, and judges with responsibility for investigating, prosecuting, and punishing crimes of violence against women and girls.

This is particularly important in a country where women have been so marginalized. No female victim of violence will ever come forward if she believes there is no system in place or resources to help her. What happens if she comes forward is that she becomes a target. I don't know how you feel about it--I think I can guess--when any of us sees little girls being attacked with acid when they are going to school. There is something deeply wrong if America turns away from that. We cannot, it seems to me, in good conscience not give this one more chance, which is what this supplemental is doing because it is taking a major step to give the Afghan people the chance to stand up for their women, children, and families.

Third, this bill recognizes the importance of Pakistan, a dysfunctional, nuclear-armed nation that has some of the most notorious al-Qaida terrorists within its borders. Pakistan is one of the greatest threats to international security that we face today. This danger is such a concern that Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who served as the coauthor of the President's review of our Afghanistan- Pakistan strategy, said that the country--this is Pakistan--``has more terrorists per square mile than any other place on Earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that has grown faster than anyplace else on Earth.'' It seems to me to walk away from that threat is the wrong course. This bill provides funds for nonmilitary aid and counterinsurgency training to enable the Pakistani Government to defeat the growing extremist threat within its borders.

Fourth, this bill provides funding to help our servicemembers and their families deal with the wounds of war and to improve their quality of life. It provides funding to increase the number of soldiers and marines to help ease some of the burdens on servicemembers and families who have served three, four, and five deployments to combat zones. How can we walk away from giving those soldiers relief at this point when they have served three, four, and five times? We see some of the fallout on the mental health of our soldiers. We have seen some tragic things happen, including a soldier who actually turned on his own colleagues and killed them. We cannot have servicemembers under this amount of stress from three, four, five, or six deployments. Some of them can handle it. Not all of them can handle it. This bill will increase the number of soldiers and marines, so we can help ease the burden of those who have given and given.

This bill includes funding to keep our servicemembers safer, including funding for mine-resistant vehicles in Afghanistan to combat the dangers of roadside bombs. It helps ease the childcare needs of our military families by funding the construction of 25 child development centers to serve 5,000 children. It provides $230 million to complete construction of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and it provides funds for the construction of nine warrior support facilities across the United States. Our soldiers need help. They cannot be expected to travel across the country to get medical care, either for physical wounds or mental wounds. We need to make sure we do this.

Finally, this bill provides funding for domestic programs that will safeguard our security. It includes $1.5 billion to prepare and respond to a global disease pandemic, such as the H1N1 influenza virus we are combating today. A lot of people say: Maybe you are overreacting. We just don't know because in other flu epidemics, we think we have conquered it, and then it comes back in a more virulent form. We need to vaccinate our citizenry. This is expensive and a must-do. I am very pleased it is in this bill. Just this week, two lives were lost in New York City to the virus. One victim was only an infant, and the other was an assistant principal of a school. Yes, we lose people to the flu every year. We know that. But we want to make sure we are not facing something for which we are unprepared. Better to be prepared, and this bill gives us the funds to prepare.

There is significant investment in shoring up our southwest border and also combating drug traffickers who operate there. We keep seeing horrific violence along the border. It is deplorable. The drug cartels must be stopped and the perpetrators brought to justice. That is also in this bill. This is an emergency spending bill.

It also includes $250 million for emergency firefighting activities. California has suffered devastating wildfires over the last few fire seasons. I know all of you have watched in horror at the recent wildfire in Santa Barbara. We know we are facing terrible challenges. We are facing warmer temperatures. We are facing more drought conditions. The funding will help ensure resources are on hand when they are needed.

I have to say that this bill should be a must-pass. I have to also reiterate that my vote indicates my support for a change in our foreign policy, a change in Iraq to bring this war to an end, a change to finally do what we have to do in Afghanistan so we do not walk out and walk away as we did before. The Taliban allowed al-Qaida to thrive, and we have to work in Afghanistan so that the people turn away from the Taliban toward something else that is positive. And we can provide that.

Strong diplomacy is in this bill. A change in policy is in this bill. It is our best opportunity to achieve these objectives. If it does not work, I will be the first one to stand up here and say so because, frankly, I believe too many of our brave soldiers have been put in harm's way.

I think this is the last use of a supplemental appropriation, according to the administration, to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I welcome that. It says that our President is going to hold true to his commitment to an open and transparent government that is held accountable to the people. We are going to have these policies funded through the regular budget process. I understand why we need this now. To bring about the change in Iraq and Afghanistan, we cannot do it on the cheap. We have to do it right. I think President Obama's quote--and I am not quoting him exactly--was that we have to get out of there very carefully even though we did not get in there very carefully. That is what we are doing. We are getting out of Iraq carefully. We are doing it right. We are funding the way to do it right. We are helping our soldiers. And we are changing course in Afghanistan, first of all, by paying attention to it, going after al- Qaida, trying to make sure the Taliban is not an option people choose there, and being very strong in our help toward the women of Afghanistan.

I will be voting yes for all those reasons and watching closely.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the next hour, this bill be open to debate only.

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