Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2006

Mr. President, today Senator Smith and I are introducing ``The Fallen Heroes Family Savings Act'' that will help military families that have suffered a tragic loss. In recent years, the Congress has generously raised the amount of the military death gratuity to $100,000 and expanded eligibility to all in uniform.

Our current tax laws do not allow the recipients of this payment to use it to make contributions to tax-preferred accounts that help with saving for retirement, health care, or the cost of education. Our legislation would allow families who already have given so much to contribute the death gratuity to certain tax-preferred accounts. These contributions would be treated as qualified rollovers. The contribution limits of these accounts will not be applied to these contributions.

This legislation will not ease the pain of military families that suffer the loss of a loved one, but it can help families put their lives back together. It will enable military families to save more for retirement, education, and health care by being able to put the death gratuity payment in an account in which the earnings will accumulate tax-free.

These changes to our tax laws will help military families with some of their financial burdens. It can not repay the sacrifices that they have made for us, but it hopefully demonstrates the gratitude of a Nation that will not forget the families of the fallen.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Minority Entrepreneurship and Innovation Pilot Program, legislation aimed at addressing this Nation's growing economic disparities through entrepreneurship and business development. It is the spirit of entrepreneurship that has made America's economy the best in the world. And it is through the energy and vitality of the small business sector that we will help all sectors of American society benefit from our robust economy.

Exactly one year ago, the National Urban League released a report on the State of Black America, which discussed the growing economic gap between African Americans and their white counterparts. The report states that the median net worth of an African American family is $6,100 compared with $67,000 for a white family. The report makes clear that closing the racial wealth gap needs to be at the forefront of the civil rights agenda moving into the twenty-first century.

Disproportionate unemployment figures for minorities versus their white counterparts have also been a persistent problem. Even as the administration has been touting the current low nationwide unemployment rate, the African American unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, the Hispanic unemployment rate was 6 percent, while the unemployment rate for whites averaged 4.1 percent.

As the Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I have received firsthand testimony and countless reports documenting the positive economic impact that occurs when we foster entrepreneurship in underserved communities. There are signs of significant economic returns when minority businesses are created and are able to grow in size and capacity. Between 1987 and 1997, revenue from minority owned firms rose by 22.5 percent, an increase equivalent to an annual growth rate of 10 percent and employment opportunities within minority owned firms increased by 23 percent during that same period. There is a clear correlation between the growth of minority owned firms and the economic viability of the minority community.

We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go if this country is going to keep the promise made to all its citizens of the American dream. In 2005, African Americans accounted for 12.3 percent of the population and only 4 percent of all U.S. businesses. Hispanics Americans represent 12.5 percent of the U.S. population and approximately 6 percent of all U.S. businesses. Native Americans account for approximately 1 percent of the population and .9 percent of all U.S. businesses. We can, and should do something to address what is essentially an inequality of opportunity.

I have long argued that there is a compelling interest for the Federal Government to create opportunities for business and economic development in all communities--throughout this Nation. It is appropriate for the Federal Government to lead the efforts and find innovative solutions to the racial disparities that exist in this country, whether they are in healthcare, education, or economics.

Economic disparities in this country are a very complex issue, particularly when racial demographics are involved. I am well aware that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and there is no single piece of legislation that will level the playing field. However, I strongly believe that education and entrepreneurship can help to close the gap in business ownership and the wealth gap that exists in this country. Many minorities are already turning to entrepreneurship as a means of realizing the American dream. According to U.S. Census data, Hispanics are opening businesses 3 times faster than the national average. Business development and entrepreneurship have played a significant role in the expansion of the black middle class in this country for over a century.

The Minority Entrepreneurship and Innovation Pilot Program offers a competitive grant to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, and HispanicServing Institutions to create an entrepreneurship curriculum at these institutions and to open Small Business Development Centers on campus to serve local businesses. The colleges and universities that participate in this program will foster entrepreneurship among their students, the best and brightest of the minority community, and develop a pool of talented entrepreneurs that are essential to innovation, job creation, and closing the wealth gap. The bill would make 24 grants, for $1 million each, available to institutions that include entrepreneurship and innovation as a part of their organizational mission and open a business-counseling center for those graduates that start their own businesses as well as the surrounding community of existing business owners.

The goal of this program is to target students who have skills in highly skilled fields such as engineering, manufacturing, science and technology, and guide them towards entrepreneurship as a career option. Minority-owned businesses already participate in a wide variety of industries, but are

disproportionately represented in traditionally lowgrowth and low- opportunity service sectors. Promoting entrepreneurial education to undergraduate students at colleges and universities expands the pool of potential business owners to technology, financial services, legal services, and other non-traditional areas in which the overall development of minority firms has been slow. Growing the size and capacity of existing minority firms and promoting entrepreneurship among minority students already committed to higher education will have a direct relationship on the employment rate, income levels and wealth creation of minorities throughout the nation.

The funds are also to be used to open a Small Business Development Center (SBDC) on the campus of the institution to assist in capacity building, innovation and market niche development, and to offer traditional business counseling, similar to other SBDCs. The one-to-one counseling offered by the business specialists at these centers has proven to be the most effective model available for making entrepreneurs run more effective, more efficient, and more successful businesses. By placing the centers on campus, the institutions will be able to leverage the $1 million grant for greater returns and coordinate efforts with the school's academic departments to maximize the efficacy of the program.

While the funding in this bill is modest relative to the multi- billion dollar budgets we discuss on a daily basis, these funds can go a long way and be leveraged to create economic growth in the most needed areas of this country. With this legislation, we will help foster long-term innovation and competitiveness in the small business sector. Mr. President, this bill is a small investment in the future of this country that I am sure will do much to foster economic growth in our minority communities and beyond. I urge my colleagues to join me as cosponsors of this important piece of legislation.

Mr. President, every three years, our Committee reviews the majority of the Small Business Administration's (SBA) programs to see what's working, what's broken, and what can be improved. As ranking member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee currently, and a member for more than 20 years, I have worked on many reauthorizations. I can tell you that the SBA reauthorization process is a great opportunity to examine programs, to work with the small business groups and SBA's partners--those who use these programs on a day-to-day basis--and the SBA, to ensure that they serve their intended purpose and make the dream of a small business a reality to those who might not be eligible for business loans through conventional lending, don't have an MBA but need some management counseling, or need help cutting through red tape to get government contracts.

Today I am focusing on the SBA's largest small business programs. Specifically, I am introducing legislation to reauthorize the 7(a) Loan Guaranty Program for three years. This bill, the ``7(a) Loan Program Reauthorization Act of 2006,'' authorizes the SBA to back more than a combined $58 billion in 7(a) loans to small businesses, gives borrowers more options when choosing SBA financing, reduces program fees on borrowers and lenders if the government charges excess fees or has excess funding, creates an Office of Minority Small Business Development within SBA to increase the availability of capital to minorities, and creates a National Preferred Lenders program to streamline the application process for exemplary lenders to operate on a national basis and reach more borrowers.

7(a) loans are the most basic and widely used loan of the SBA business loan programs. These loans help qualified, small businesses obtain financing which is guaranteed for working capital, machinery and equipment, furniture and fixtures, land and building (including purchase, renovation and new construction), leasehold improvements, and debt refinancing, under special conditions. The loan maturity is up to 10 years for working capital and generally up to 25 years for fixed assets. A key concept of the 7(a) guaranty loan program is that the loan actually comes from a commercial lender, not the government.

This excellent private/public partnership has made this program one of the agency's most popular, with over 400,000 approved loans in the past six years. Last year alone, almost 96,000 small businesses received $15 billion in 7(a) loans, creating or retaining an estimated 460,000 jobs. To ensure that we continue to have enough authorization levels to manage the increasing demand, my bill reauthorizes the 7(a) Loan Program for three additional years at $18,500,000,000 fiscal year 07, $19,500,000,000 fiscal year 08 and $20,500,000,000 fiscal year 09. These authorization levels ensure that program levels are sufficiently high to enable the SBA to back the maximum amount of loans as possible and avoid credit rationing or shutdowns.

Providing appropriate authorization levels to adequately address the capital needs of small businesses is as important as ensuring that eligible borrowers have access to both fixed asset financing and working capital to address all of their small business needs. Currently, borrowers who need working capital under the 7(a) program and fixed asset financing through the 504 loan program are not able to utilize both SBA loan guaranty programs to their maximum amount and are therefore forced to choose between the two programs. To prevent a situation where a borrower is forced to choose between getting a much- needed facility or getting working capital, my bill specifies that the borrower can have financing under both loan programs at the maximum level, given they qualify for both programs. In previous years, both 7(a) and 504 loans were subsidized by appropriated funds to pay losses. It was therefore appropriate to restrict small businesses to choose between the two programs. However, both of these programs are now self- supporting, and it makes no sense to continue this restriction on borrowers.

One of our jobs on the Committee is to make sure that SBA-backed financing remains affordable to the small business community. As I just referenced, the 7(a) program is now self-funding. The Administration insisted on eliminating all funding for the loans, shifting the cost to borrowers and lenders, by imposing higher fees on them. The administration spins this as a ``savings'' of $100 million to taxpayers while the small business community considers this a ``tax.'' In addition to this ``tax,'' the President's budget shows that borrowers and lenders already pay too much in fees, generating more than $800 million in overpayments since 1992 because the government routinely over-estimates the amount of fees needed to cover the cost

of the program. This is part of the reason that many of us in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, opposed eliminating funding for the program. This legislation seeks to address overpayments by requiring the SBA to lower fees if borrowers and lenders pay more than is necessary to cover the program costs or if the Congress happens to appropriate money for the program and combined with fees there is excess funding to cover the cost of the program. The Senate adopted this provision, offered by me and Senator Landrieu last year, to the fiscal year 2006 Commerce Justice State Appropriations bill.

In this reauthorization process, as I mentioned previously, I think it is important to look at specific programs and examine whether or not they are meeting their goals and intended mission. Part of the agency's mission is to fill the financing gap left by the private sector. According to a recent study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Loan Express, availability of capital remains a priority for all small businesses, but for Hispanics and African Americans, it is one of their top three concerns. They are still more likely to use credit cards to finance their businesses, and they fear denial from lenders. Knowing of this need, I was deeply disappointed to see that although SBA's loan programs have increased lending overall, the figures surrounding the percentage of small business loans going to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and women have not changed much since 2001. The administration will tell you that SBA has been ``highly successful'' in making business loans to minority groups facing competitive opportunity challenges. They claim that in fiscal year 2005, almost 30 percent of 7(a) loans and about 25 percent of 504 loans were made to minority groups. However, according to the SBA's own data, since 2001, while numbers of 7(a) loans have gone up for African Americans, the dollars have remained at 3 percent of all money loaned. In the 504 program, loans to women have decreased from 19 percent in number to 15 percent, and dropped from 16 percent to 14 percent in dollars. In the Microloan program, African Americans received 28 percent of the total number of microloans made in 2001 as compared to only 21 percent of the total number of loans made in 2005. Their microloan dollars have also decreased from $7.1 million to $5.7 million in 2005. Native Americans went from 2 percent of the total number of microloans made in 2001 to less than one percent--a mere .93 percent-- in 2005.

These statistics are of great concern and demonstrate that the SBA has not been highly successful in playing an active role in fostering and encouraging robust entrepreneurial activity and small business ownership amongst these minority groups. The stagnant percentage of small business loans in these communities represents a failure of this Administration to provide an alternative means of obtaining capital to our underserved communities where funding has not been available throughout conventional lending methods.

To break this trend and increase the proportion of small business loans to minorities, and the percentage of loans to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians relative to their share of the population, my bill creates an Office of Minority Small Business Development at the SBA, similar to offices devoted to business development of veterans and women and rural areas. In charge of the office will be the Associate Administrator for Minority Small Business and Capital Ownership Development with expanded authority and an annual budget to carry out its mission.

Currently this position is limited to carrying out the policies and programs of SBA's contracting programs required under sections 7(j) and 8(a) of the Small Business Act. To make sure that minorities are getting a great share of loan dollars, venture capital investments, counseling, and contracting, this bill expands its authority and duties to work with and monitor the outcomes for programs under Capital Access, Entrepreneurial Development, and Government Contracting. It also requires the head of the Office to work with SBA's partners, trade associations, and business groups to identify more effective ways to market to minority business owners, and to work with the head of Field Operations to ensure that district offices have staff and resources to market to minorities. The latter is important because when SBA implemented its extensive workforce transformation plans several years ago, it eliminated lending-related jobs with a partial justification that remaining staff would be trained to do outreach and marketing to the community. However, district offices are not provided with sufficient funds or resources to do the job.

In addition to setting sufficient program levels, giving our borrowers maximum loan options, reaching the underrepresented, and lowering fees to our borrowers, my bill makes great improvements in our lender operations. Lenders are key to providing these loans to small business borrowers throughout our nation. An exceptional lender in the 7(a) program will often become a ``preferred lender,'' with the authority to approve, close, service and liquidate loans without the lender obtaining the prior specific approval of the agency. SBA requires that lenders request preferred lender status in each of the 70 districts it desires to operate. There are many problems with this system, and this bill streamlines and makes uniform the process, an advantage to borrowers, lenders and the SBA.

This preferred lender problem is not a new issue. During our last reauthorization in 2003, lenders complained that applying for lending autonomy in each of the 70 district office and branches is administratively burdensome, both for them and for the Agency staff, and that some district offices have taken advantage of the power to approve or disapprove lenders when they apply for this special lending status. I was very disappointed that this issue was not resolved in our last reauthorization. My bill attempts to alleviate this administrative burden on lenders and SBA staff who must process the application. My bill creates a National Preferred Lenders Program to allow lenders that have already demonstrated proficiency as a preferred lender the authority to operate in any state where it desires to make loans. To ensure that national preferred lenders are proficient and experienced, this bill requires the Administrator, no later than 60 days after enactment, to establish eligibility criteria for national preferred lenders but suggests that the criteria established include several things--consideration of whether the lender has experience as a preferred lender in not fewer than 5 district offices of the Administration for a minimum of 3 years in each territory, uniform written policies on the 7(a) loan program, including centralized loan approval, servicing, and liquidation functions and processes that are satisfactory to the administration.

If a national preferred lender fails to meet the eligibility requirements established by the Administrator, the lender shall be notified of this deficiency and allowed a reasonable time for correction. Failure to correct the deficiency may result in suspension or revocation as a national preferred lender.

Last, my legislation directs the SBA to establish a simple and straightforward alternative size standard for business loan applicants under section 7(a), similar to what is already available for borrowers in the 504 loan program, which utilizes maximum tangible net worth and average net income as an alternative to the use of industry standards. Currently, in order to be eligible for an SBA business loan, the borrower must meet the definition of small businesses. Pursuant to the Small Business Act, SBA has promulgated size standards by industry utilizing the North American Industry Classification System. The SBA table based on this system is over 20 pages, single-spaced, which has made this size standard very complicated for lenders to utilize.

In closing, I want to commend the community of 7(a) lenders for the tens of thousands of borrowers they reach every year, and for working with us to understand how to improve the program to attract more lenders and reach more borrowers. I hope that the Committee will act on this bill and other similar reauthorization bills before the current laws governing the 7(a) loan program expire on September 30, 2006. I ask unanimous consent that my remarks be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today, as Ranking Democrat on the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I am introducing a reauthorization bill for the Small Business Administration's (SBA) 504 Loan Guaranty Program. This legislation goes beyond simply reauthorizing the 504 loan program. Not only does this bill provide adequate authorization levels in the 504 loan program, but it also takes on important oversight and accountability issues pertaining to the operation of Certified Development Companies (CDC). The issues that I will present in detail below are well overdue and failure on Congress's behalf to deal with them before the end of the fiscal year when the program expires will shortchange our borrowers, and ultimately our communities who reap the benefits of the local economic development that the 504 loan program is intended to provide.

For more than 20 years, the 504 loan program has provided long-term financing for growing businesses with long-term (up to 20 years), fixed-rate financing for major fixed assets, such as purchasing land and making improvements, including existing buildings, grading, street improvements, utilities, parking lots and landscaping; construction of new facilities, or modernizing, renovating or converting existing facilities; or purchasing long-term machinery and equipment. The 504 loan is made through a collaboration between the Certified Development Company (which provides 40 percent of the financing), a private sector lender (covering up to 50 percent of the financing) and a contribution of at least 10 percent from the small business being helped. This program is a national leader in federal economic development finance programs and demonstrates it through, creating or retaining over 1.4 million jobs, backing more than $25 billion in loans, and leveraging over $30 billion in private investment.

These incredible returns to our community could not be possible without the solid mission of the program that drives the types of projects and borrowers it serves. This program was not established to simply make loans--it was established to promote local economic development and to create jobs. I cannot think of another federal economic development program that has created over 605,000 jobs, as the 504 program has done. Last year alone, the 504 program created over 145,000 jobs. As the demand for 504 loans continues to grow, it is more important than ever to reaffirm the mission of the 504 program and to ensure that the 504 program is reauthorized at adequate levels to meet this growth.

To address this issue, my bill reauthorizes the 504 Loan Program for three additional years at $8,500,000,000, fiscal year 07, $9,500,000,000 fiscal year 08, and $10,500,000,000, fiscal year 09. These levels are based on the current pace of program growth to ensure that there is more than adequate authorization. The fiscal year 06 504 demand is projected to exceed $7 billion, and the last 3 years have shown growth rates of 28 percent, 26 percent, and 26 percent. A low authorization level would either force the SBA to shut down the program or to ration credit throughout the year to avoid a shut-down.

As I mentioned previously, this bill goes beyond simply reauthorizing the 504 loan program for an additional three years. It makes some much- needed changes to the structure of our CDCs, which are responsible for the delivery of this program and which are essential to the success of the 504 loan program.

Year after year, I have heard about the dangers that structural changes pose to the CDC industry and the 504 loan program in maintaining the mission of economic development. One of the major changes experienced by CDCs includes the centralization of all 504 loan processing, loan servicing and liquidation functions from 70 SBA district offices to one or two centers in the country. This has resulted in a huge backlog, estimated at 900 loans waiting to be liquidated. This backlog results in a loss of revenue through delaying or completely writing off defaulted loans. This has the potential to drive up subsidy costs of the program and therefore fees on borrowers, CDCs and lenders. This bill puts forward a solution to this issue by decentralizing liquidation functions and allowing CDCs, if they choose, to foreclose and liquidate defaulted loans or to contract with a qualified third-party to perform foreclosure and liquidation of defaulted loans in its portfolio. However, CDCs are not required to liquidate until SBA has come up with a program to compensate and reimburse them for all expenses pertaining to foreclosure and liquidation. The expenses would be approved in advance by the Administrator or on an emergency basis.

The biggest structural change that has had a tremendous impact on our not-for-profit CDCs is the ability to expand operations into multiple states. This structural change, in conjunction with the growing demand for 504 loans and CDC operations in providing these loans to small businesses, requires Congress to set a statutory course that preserves the local economic development intent and mission of the program through accountability measures. The 504 program was not created for CDCs to expand operations and simply create revenue from one state to another. CDCs are more than lenders and should not act like for-profit banks. My bill ensures that local communities continue to be the main focus of CDCs by requiring that the 25 members of their board and board of directors be residents of the area of operations. In addition, CDCs will be required to annually submit to the SBA a report on the use of all excess funds and local economic development activities in each state of operation. This ensures that the members engage, invest, and are held accountable to the communities they serve.

In addition to preserving and growing the 504 loan program, I think it is very important to ensure that low-income communities have access to 504 loans. As you may know, in 2000 Congress enacted the New Markets Tax Credit program to facilitate private sector investment in low- income communities.

Theoretically, the program was designed to encourage private investors who may never have considered investing in low-income communities to do so, thereby attracting new sources of private capital for a variety of projects, including retail, childcare and primary healthcare centers, which in turn attracts jobs, services and additional opportunities to areas that have historically had a difficult time sustaining economic development. My bill creates a new public policy goal for the ``expansion of businesses in low-income communities'' and defines low-income areas as those areas which would be eligible for new market tax credits. Under public policy goals, a borrower can get a higher loan than the standard limit of $1.5 million. For example, a borrower could receive a 504 loan of up to $2 million if the proceeds will be directed toward this new public policy goal, or any of the currently established eight public policy goals. It is my hope that this incentive will increase the number of 504 loans in low- income communities and therefore build wealth, economic security, and employment opportunities which benefit the entire surrounding community.

I want to thank Senator Pryor for his sponsorship of this legislation, and thank the many members of the 504 community for working with us to identify ways to make this program better than ever. I look forward to working with them to enact this legislation before the fiscal year expires on September 30, 2006, and ask unanimous consent that my statement be included in the Record.

Mr. President, 39 years ago this week Dr. Martin Luther King gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York about the war in Vietnam. He began with these words:

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because

my conscience leaves me no other choice.

His message was clear. Despite the difficulty of opposing the government's policy during time of war, he said, ``We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.''

I am here today to speak about Iraq. There should be humility enough to go around for a Congress that shares responsibility for this war. I believe the time has come again when, as Dr. King said, we must move past indecision to action.

I have many times visited the Vietnam Memorial Wall, as many Vietnam veterans have. When you walk down the path of either side of that wall, east and west of the panels, you walk down to the center of the wall where it comes together in a V. That V represents both the beginning of the war and the end of the war because the names start at that V and go all the way up one end, east, and then they come back from the west.

I remember standing there once after reading ``A Bright Shining Lie,'' by Neil Sheehan, Robert McNamara's memoirs, and many other histories of that war. One cannot help but feel the enormity of the loss, of the immorality that our leaders knew that the strategy was wrong and that almost half the names were added to that wall after the time that people knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion with respect to our policy in Iraq.

Obviously, every single one of us would prefer to see democracy in Iraq. We want democracy in the whole Middle East. The simple reality is, Iraqis must want it as much as we do, and Iraqis must embrace it. If the Iraqi leadership is not ready to make the changes and the compromises that democracy requires, our soldiers, no matter how valiant--and they have been valiant--can't get from a humvee or a helicopter.

The fact is, our soldiers have done a stunning job. I was recently in Iraq with Senator Warner and Senator Stevens. I have been there previously. No one can travel there and talk to our soldiers and not be impressed by their commitment to the mission, by their sacrifice, by their desire to have something good come out of this, and by the remarkable contribution they have made to give Iraqis the opportunity to create a democratic future for their country. Our soldiers have done their job. It is time for the newly elected Iraqi leadership to do theirs. It is time for America's political leaders to do theirs.

President Bush says we can't lose our nerve in Iraq. It takes more nerve to respond to mistakes and to adjust a policy that is going wrong than it does to stubbornly continue down the wrong path.

Last week, Secretary Rice acknowledged ``thousands'' of mistakes in Iraq. Amazingly, nobody has been held accountable for those mistakes. But our troops have paid the price, and our troops pay the price every single day. Yet the President continues to insist on a vague and counterproductive strategy that will keep U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely.

I accept my share of responsibility for the war in Iraq. As I said in 2004, knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war, and I certainly wouldn't have done it the way the President did. My frustration is that many of us all along the way have offered alternatives to the President. Countless numbers of Senators, Republican and Democrat alike, have publicly offered alternative ways of trying to achieve our goals in Iraq.

I have listened to my colleagues, Senator Feingold, Senator Biden, Senator Hagel, the Presiding Officer, and others all talk about ways in which we could do better. But all of these, almost all of them without exception, have been left by the wayside without any real discussion, without any real dialog, without any real effort to see if we could find a common ground. My frustration is that we keep offering alternatives.

In 2003, in 2004, 2005, 2006, year after year, we put them on the table, but they get ignored and then we get further in the hole, the situation gets worse, and we are left responding, trying to come back to a worse situation than the one we were responding to in the first place. And we keep putting out possibilities, and the possibilities keep being left on the sidelines.

Time after time, this administration has ignored the best advice of the best experts of the country, whether they be our military experts or former civilian leaders of other administrations or our most experienced voices on the Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. House and Senate.

The administration is fond of saying that we shouldn't look back, that recrimination only helps our enemies, that we have to deal with the situation on the ground now. Well, we do have to deal with the situation on the ground now, but we have to deal with it in a way that honors the suggestions and ideas of a lot of other people who have concerns about our forces on the ground and our families at home and our budget and our reputation in the world and our need to respond to Afghanistan, North Korea, and Iran.

Frankly, accountability and learning from past mistakes is the only way to improve both policies and institutions. Let me, for the moment, go along with this idea, the administration's idea. Let me focus on the here and now and let's face that reality honestly and let's act accordingly.

You have to live in a fantasy world to believe we are on the brink of domestic peace and a pluralistic democracy in Iraq. One has to be blind to the facts to argue that the prospects for success are so great they outweigh the terrible costs of the President's approach. And you have to be incapable of admitting failure not to be able to face up to the need to change course now. Yes, change course now.

Our soldiers on the ground have learned a lot of terrible lessons in Iraq. All you have to do is talk to some of the soldiers who have returned, as many of us have. It is time those of us responsible for the policies of our country learn those lessons. It is clear the administration's litany of mistakes has reduced what we can reasonably hope to accomplish. Any reasonable, honest observer--and there are many in the Senate who have gone over to Iraq and have come back with these views--knows that the entire definition of this mission has changed and the expectations of what we can get out of this mission have changed.

I, for one, will not sit idly by and watch while American soldiers give their lives for a policy that is not working. Let me say it plainly. Withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq over the course of the year in a timely schedule is actually necessary to give democracy the best chance to succeed, and it is vital to America's national security interests.

Five months ago, I went to Georgetown University. I gave a speech where I said that we were then entering the make-or-break period, a make-or-break 5-month, 6-month period in Iraq. I said the President must change course and hold Iraqis accountable or Congress should insist on a change in policy. And I set a goal then, back in November, that we should try to reduce American combat forces and withdraw them by the end of this year.

The situation on the ground has now changed for the worse since then. In fact, we are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first war was against Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction. The second war was against Jihadist terrorists whom the administration said it was better to fight over there than over here. And now we find our troops in the middle of a low-grade civil war that could explode into a full civil war at any time.

While the events in Iraq have changed for the worse, the President has not changed course for the better. It is time for those of us in Congress who share responsibilities constitutionally for our policy to stand up and change that course. We have a constitutional responsibility, and we have a moral responsibility not to sit on the sidelines while young Americans are in harm's way.

That is why today I am introducing legislation that will hold the Iraqis accountable and make the goal of withdrawing the most American forces a reality. I personally believe that most of those forces could be and should be out of Iraq by the end of the year. This war, in the words of our own generals, cannot be won militarily. It can only be won politically.

General Casey said, of our large military presence, it ``feeds the notion of occupation'' and it ``extends the amount of time that it will take for Iraqi security forces to become self-reliant.''

That is General Casey saying that the large force of American presence in

Iraq contributes to the occupation and extends the amount of time. Zbigniew Brzezinski put it:

The U.S. umbrella, which is in effect designed to stifle

these wars but it is so poor that it perpetuates them, in a

sense keeps these wars alive . . . and [is] probably

unintentionally actually intensifying them.

Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, breaking a 30- year silence, summed it up simply:

Our presence is what feeds the insurgency.

The bottom line is that as long as American forces remain in large numbers, enforcing the status quo, Americans will be killed and maimed in a crossfire of vicious conflict that they are powerless to end. We pay for the President's reluctance to face reality in both American dollars and in too many lives. American families pay in the loss of limb and the loss of loved ones.

I don't think we should tolerate what is happening in Iraq today. We can no longer tolerate the political games currently being played by Iraqi politicians in a war-torn Baghdad. No American soldier, not one American soldier, should be sacrificed for the unwillingness of Iraqi politicians to compromise and form a unity government.

We are now almost 5 months since the election. What is happening is the daily game being played by Iraqis who listen to the President say we will be here to the end. There is no sense of urgency, there is no sense of impending need to make a decision. The result is they just go on bickering and they go on playing for advantage while our troops drive by the next IED and the next soldier returns to Walter Reed or to Bethesda without arms and limbs.

Given the recent increase in deadly sectarian strife, Iraq urgently needs a strong unity government to prevent a full-fledged civil war from breaking out and becoming the failed state that all of us have wanted to avoid. I believe the current situation is actually allowing them to go down the road toward that sectarian strife rather than stopping them.

Thus far, step by step, Iraqis have only responded to deadlines. It took a deadline to transfer authority to the provisional government. It took a deadline for the first election to take place. It took a deadline for the referendum on the Constitution. It took a deadline for the most recent election. It is time for another deadline, and that deadline is to say to them that they have to come together and pull together and put together a government or our troops are going to withdraw. And under circumstances over a period of time, we will withdraw in order to put Iraq up on its own two feet.

Iraqi politicians should be told in unmistakable language: You have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military.

I know some colleagues and other people listening will say: Wait a minute. You mean we are going to automatically withdraw our military if they don't pull it together?

The answer is: You bet we ought to do that. Because there isn't one American soldier who ought to be giving up life or limb for the procrastination and unwillingness of Iraqis who have been given an extraordinary opportunity by those soldiers to take hold of democracy and who are ignoring it and playing for advantage. We all know that after the last elections, the momentum was lost by squabbling interim leaders. Everybody sat around and said, coming up to this election, the one thing we can't do is allow the momentum to be lost. Guess what. It has been lost. It has been squandered, again. We are sitting there with occasional visits, occasional speeches but without the kind of sustained diplomacy necessary to provide a resolution. It has gone on for too long, again.

If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in 5 months, then how long does it take and what does it take? If they are not willing to do it, they are not willing to do it. It is that simple. The civil war will only get worse. And if they are not willing to do it, it is because there is such a fundamental intransigence that we haven't broken, that civil war, in fact, becomes inevitable, and our troops will be forced to leave anyway.

The fact is, we have no choice but to get tough and to ratchet up the pressure. We should immediately accelerate the redeployment of American forces to rear guard, garrisoned status for security backup, training, and emergency response. Special operations against al-Qaida in Iraq should be initiated on hard intelligence leads only.

If the Iraqi leaders finally do their job, which I believe you have a better chance of getting them to do if you give them a timetable, then we have to agree on a schedule for leaving, withdrawing American combat forces by the end of the year. The only troops that remain should be those critical to finishing the job of standing up Iraqi security forces.

Such an agreement will have positive benefits in Iraq. It will empower and legitimize the new leadership and the Iraqi people. It will expedite the process of getting the Iraqis to assume a larger role of running their own country. And it will undermine support for the insurgency among the now 80 percent of Iraqis who want U.S. troops to leave. In short, it will give the new Iraqi Government the best chance to succeed in holding the country together while democratic institutions can evolve.

This deadline makes sense when you look at the responsibilities that Iraqis should have assumed by then. Formation of a unity government would constitute a major milestone in the transfer of political responsibility to the Iraqis. Even the President has said that responsibility for security in the majority of the country should be able to be transferred to the Iraqis by this time. If the President believes that it should be able to be transferred to the Iraqis by this time, why not push that eventuality and make it a reality? By the end of the year, our troops will have done as much as they possibly can to give Iraqis the chance to build a democracy. I again remind my colleagues, we are still going to have the ability to have over-the- horizon response for emergency, as well as over-the-horizon response to al-Qaida. And we will have the ability to continue to train those last forces to make sure they are in a position to stand up for Iraq.

The key to this transition is a long overdue engagement in serious and sustained diplomacy. I want to say a word about this. I am not offering this plan in a vacuum. Critical to the achievement of all of our goals in Iraq is real diplomacy. Starting with the leadup to the war, our diplomatic efforts in Iraq have ranged from the indifferent to the indefensible. History shows that effective diplomacy requires persistent hands-on engagement from the highest levels of America's leadership. Top officials in the first Bush administration worked directly and tirelessly to put together a real coalition before the first Gulf War, and President Clinton himself took personal responsibility at Camp David for bringing the Israelis and Palestinians together and leading the comprehensive effort to resolve the conflict in the Middle East. This type of major diplomatic initiative has proven successful in many places in American history.

Most recently, in 1995, there was a brutal civil war in Bosnia involving Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. Faced with a seemingly intractable stalemate in the midst of horrific ethnic cleansing, the Clinton administration took action--direct, personal, engaged action. Led by Richard Holbrooke, they brought leaders of the Bosnian parties together in Dayton, OH, with representatives from the European Union, Russia, and Britain to hammer out a peace agreement. NATO and the United Nations were given a prominent role in implementing what became known as the Dayton Accords.

In contrast, this President Bush has done little more than deliver political speeches, while his cronies in the White House and outside blame the news media for the mess the administration has created in Iraq. We keep hearing: They are not telling the full story. They are not telling the story.

Secretary of State Rice's brief surprise visit to Iraq a few days ago pales in comparison to the real shuttle diplomacy that was practiced by predecessors such as James Baker and Henry Kissinger. Given what is at stake, it is long since time to engage in that. I can remember Henry Kissinger going from one capital to the next capital, back and forth, engaged, pulling people together. Jim Baker did the same thing.

There was a genuine and real effort to leverage the full prestige and full power of the United States behind a goal. That is absent here.

Ambassador Khalilzad is a good man, and he has done a terrific job, almost by himself, left almost to his own devices. That is not the way to succeed. Given what is at stake, it is past time to engage in diplomacy that matches the effort of our soldiers on the ground. We should immediately bring the leaders of the Iraqi factions together at a Dayton-like summit that includes our allies, Iraq's neighbors, members of the Arab League, and the United Nations. The fact is, a true national compact is needed to bring about a political solution to the insurgency. That is how you end the sectarian violence. Our soldiers going on patrol in a striker or a humvee, walking through communities will not end this violence. Our generals have told us, it can only be ended politically. Yet where is the kind of political effort that our Nation has seen in history now, trying to effect what our soldiers have created an opportunity to effect through their sacrifice?

Iraqis have to reach a comprehensive agreement that includes security guarantees, disbanding the militias, and ultimately, though not necessarily at this conference, confronting some of the questions of the Constitution. All of the parties must reach agreement on a process for reviving reconstruction efforts and securing Iraq's borders. Our troops cannot be left hanging out there without that kind of effort to protect them.

At this summit, Shiite religious leaders must agree to rein in their militias and to commit to disbanding them. They also have to work with Iraqi political leaders to ensure that the leadership of the Interior Ministry and the police force under its control is nonsectarian. Shiite and Kurdish leaders must make concessions necessary to address Sunni concerns about federalism and equitable distribution of oil revenues. There is no way the Sunnis are going to suddenly disband or stop the insurgency without some kind of adequate guarantee of their security and their participation in the process. That was obvious months ago. It is even more obvious today. It still remains an open question.

The Sunnis have to accept the reality that they will no longer dominate Iraq. Until a sufficient compromise is hammered out, a Sunni base cannot be created that isolates the hard-core Baathists and jihadists and defuses the insurgency itself. We must work with Iraqis at the summit to convince Iraq's neighbors that they can no longer stand on the sidelines while Iraq teeters on the edge of a civil war that could bring chaos to the entire region. Where they can help the process of forming a government, they need to step up. And for my colleagues who suggest that somehow withdrawing American forces will put that region at greater risk, I say ``no.'' I say that an over-the- horizon deployment, a deployment in Kuwait and elsewhere, diffusing the insurgency, and an adequate effort to diplomatically pull together this kind of summit is the only way to diffuse the insurgency and ultimately strengthen the region.

The administration must also work with Iraqi leaders in seeking a multinational force to help protect Iraq's borders until finally a national army of Iraq has developed the capacity to do that itself. Frankly, such a force, if sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, could attract participation by Iraq's neighbors, countries such as India and others, that would be a critical step in stemming the tide of insurgents and of encouraging capital to flow into Iraq.

To be credible with the Iraqi people, the new government must deliver goods and services at all levels. It is absolutely stunning--I don't know how many Americans are even aware of the fact--that today, several years later, electricity production is below where it was before the war. It is at 4,000 megawatts compared to the 4,500 before the war. Crude oil production has declined from a prewar level of 2.5 million barrels per day to 1.9 million barrels per day. We were told that oil was going to pay for this war. That has to change. Countries that have promised money for reconstruction, particularly of Sunni areas, haven't paid up yet. The money is not on the table.

We can also do our part on the ground. Our own early reconstruction efforts were--now known to everybody--poorly planned and grossly mismanaged. But as I saw on a recent trip to Iraq, the efforts of our civilian military provisional reconstruction teams, which have the skills and capacity to strengthen governance and institution building around the country, are beginning to take hold. We need to stand up more of those teams as fast as possible. If we do that in the same context as we find the political resolution, then you have a chance.

We must also continue to turn the job of policing the streets and providing security over to Iraqi forces. That means giving our generals the tools they need to finish training an Iraqi police force that is trusted and respected on the street by the end of the year. It also means finishing the training of Iraqi security forces with U.S. troops acting only on the basis of hard intelligence to combat terrorist threats.

The withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is necessary not only to give democracy in Iraq the best chance to succeed, it is also vital to our own national security interests.

We need to pay more attention to our own vital national security interests. We will never be as safe as we ought to be if Iraq continues to distract us from the most important war we need to win--the war on Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the terrorists who are resurfacing even in Afghanistan.

To make it clear, despite everything this administration has said, today, al-Qaida, and the Taliban, even, are more dangerous in northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan than Iraq is to us at this moment in time. There is a greater threat from al-Qaida, which has dispersed cells and through its training and abilities to organize, in Afghanistan than in the place that is consuming most of America's forces and money.

The way to defeat al-Qaida is not by serving as their best recruitment tool. Even Brent Scowcroft, George H. W. Bush's National Security Adviser, has joined the many experts who agree that the war in Iraq actually feeds terrorism and increases the potential for terrorist attacks against the United States. The results speak for themselves: The number of significant terrorist attacks around the world increased from 175 in 2003 to 651 in 2004, and it has continued to increase in 2005.

The President keeps talking about al-Qaida's intent to take over Iraq. I have not met anybody in Iraq--none of the leaders on either side, not Kurds, the Shia, or Sunni--who believes a few thousand, at most--and by many estimates, less than a thousand--foreign jihadists are a genuine threat to forcibly take over a country of 25 million people. And while mistake after mistake by this administration has actually turned Iraq into the breeding ground for al-Qaida that it was not before the war, large numbers of United States troops are not the key to crushing these terrorists.

In fact, Iraqis have begun to make clear their own unwillingness to tolerate foreign jihadists. Every Iraqi I talked to said to me: When we get control and start moving forward, we will deal with the jihadists. They don't want them on Iraqi soil, and they have increasingly turned on these brutal foreign killers who are trying to foment a civil war among Iraqis. This process will only be complete when Iraqis have taken full responsibility for their own future, and resistance to a perceived occupation no longer provides them any common cause with jihadists.

As General Anthony Zinni said on Sunday, building up intelligence- gathering capability from Iraqis is essential to defeating the insurgency. He said:

We're not fighting the Waffen S.S. here. They can be

policed up if the people turn against them. We haven't won

the hearts and minds yet.

Once again, I remind my colleagues, the hearts and minds of the Iraqis will be more susceptible to being won when American forces are not there in the way they are now, in a way that can be used as the recruitment tool that it has been, when 80 percent of the Iraqi people suggest that American forces ought to leave.

After the bulk of U.S. forces have been withdrawn, I believe it is essential to keep a rapid reaction force over the horizon. That force can be over the horizon within the desert itself, or it can

be in Kuwait, and that can be used to act against terrorist enclaves. Our air power--the air power we used to police two-thirds of the no-fly zone in Iraq before the war--will always ensure our ability to bring overwhelming force to bear to protect the U.S. interests in the region. The bottom line is that working together with Iraqis from inside and outside Iraq, we can prosecute the war against al-Qaida in Iraq more effectively than we are today.

Withdrawing U.S. troops will also enable us to more effectively combat threats around the world. But winning the war on terror requires more than the killing we have seen from 3 years of combat. The fact is that just taking out terrorists, as our troops have been doing, is not going to end the flow of terrorists who are recruited, for all of the reasons that we understand. The cooperation critical to lasting victory in the region is going to be enhanced when Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, civil chaos, and mistake after mistake in Iraq no longer deplete America's moral authority within the region.

This is also key to allowing us to repair the damage that flag officers fear has been done to our Armed Forces. I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--members of the Armed Services Committee and Intelligence Committee--have heard from flag officers in private about what is happening to the Armed Forces of our country. We know it will take billions of dollars to reset the equipment that has been lost, damaged, or worn out from 3 years of combat. In the National Guard alone, units across the country have only 34 percent of their authorized equipment, including just 14 percent of the chemical decontamination equipment they need. That is a chilling prospect if they are ever asked to respond to a terrorist incident involving weapons of mass destruction.

The fact is the Army is stretched too thin. Soldiers and brigades are being deployed more frequently and longer than the Army believes is best in order to continue to attract the best recruits. Recruiting standards have been changed and recruitment is suffering. The Army fell 6,700 recruits short of their needs in 2005--the largest shortfall since 1979. Recruitment is suffering today. Not only are American troops not getting leadership equal to their sacrifice on the civilian side, but our generals are not getting enough troops to accomplish their mission of keeping the country safe.

The fact is that in the specialties--special forces, translators, intelligence officers, for the Marines, for the Army, for the National Guard--our recruitments are below the levels they ought to be.

Withdrawing from Iraq will also enable us to strengthen our efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, is absolutely delighted with our presence in Iraq. Why? Because it advances their goals, keeping us otherwise occupied, and it allows them to make mischief in Iraq itself at their choice. Their President is so emboldened that he has openly called for the destruction of Israel, while defying the international community's demands to stop developing its nuclear weapons capability. Could that have happened prior to our being bogged down the way we are?

North Korea has felt at liberty to ignore the six-party talks, while it continues to stockpile more nuclear weapons material.

Any effort to be stronger in dealing with the nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea is incomplete without an exit from Iraq. It will also enable us to more effectively promote democracy in places such as Russia, which is more than content to see us bogged down while President Putin steadily rolls back democratic reforms.

China benefits from us throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq instead of into economic competition and job creation here at home. Our long-term security requires putting the necessary resources into building our economy and a workforce that can compete and win in the age of globalization. We cannot do as much as we need to--not nearly as much as we need to--while the war in Iraq is draining our treasury.

Finally, we have not provided anywhere near the resources necessary to keep our homeland safe. Katrina showed us in the most graphic way possible that 5 years after 9/11, we are woefully unprepared to handle a natural disaster that we know is coming a week in advance, let alone a catastrophic terrorist attack we have no notice of. Removing the financial strain of Iraq will free up funds for America's homeland defense.

The time has come for the administration to acknowledge the realities that the American people are increasingly coming to understand--the realities in Iraq and the requirements of America's national security. Stop telling us that terrible things will happen if we get tough with the Iraqis, when terrible things happen every single day because we are not tough enough. If we don't change course and hold the Iraqis accountable now, I guarantee you it will get worse.

Ignoring all of the warnings, and ignoring history itself, in a flourish of ideological excess, this administration has managed to make the ancient cradle of civilization look a lot like Vietnam. But there is a path forward if we start making the right decisions.

As Dr. King said so many years ago:

The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it

otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human

history.

Now is the moment of choice for Iraq, for America, and for this Congress.

Mr. President, I am proud to join with Senators Specter, Kohl, DeWine and others on a new bill, the Oil and Gas Industry Antitrust Act of 2006, which includes, as its centerpiece, our NOPEC legislation, which many of us have worked together on for years.

This measure--The No Oil Producing And Exporting Cartels Act, NOPEC-- would make OPEC accountable for its anticompetitive behavior and allow the Justice Department to crack down on illegal price manipulation by oil cartels. It will allow the Federal Government to take legal action against any foreign state, including members of OPEC, for price fixing and other anticompetitive activities. The tools this bill would provide to law enforcement agencies are necessary to immediately counter OPEC's anticompetitive practices, and these tools would help reduce gasoline prices now.

The Congress should pass this measure immediately instead of waiting until the price of gasoline at the pump is $4 a gallon. OPEC has America over a barrel, and we should fight back. If OPEC were simply a foreign business engaged in this type of behavior, it

would already be subject to American antitrust law. It is wrong to let OPEC producers off the hook just because their anticompetitive practices come with the seal of approval of this cartel's member nations.

It is time for the President to join the bipartisan majority in the Senate which already said ``NO'' to OPEC by passing NOPEC and by sending it to the other body, where it was killed.

The Senate has already passed this bill, which would make OPEC subject to our antitrust laws. In fact, the Judiciary Committee has approved the NOPEC bill three times. Regrettably, even though President Bush promised in 2000 that he would ``jawbone OPEC,'' the Bush administration and its friends in the House have scuttled the NOPEC bill and the direct and daily relief it would bring to millions of Americans.

In addition, this bill makes it unlawful to divert petroleum or natural gas products from their local market to a distant market with the primary intention of increasing prices or creating a shortage in a market. This solves a real problem where products are being shipped for sale in that market but are later diverted and sold for less in another market.

We have an obligation to address these and other issues caused by oil cartels and by greedy companies who have money--that they have extracted from the American people--to burn. That is why I am also pleased that the bill includes provisions to conduct several studies that address serious competition, information sharing, and other antitrust problem areas related to the oil and natural gas industries. The American people deserve answers, and this bill also provides a path to getting those answers.

Authorizing tough legal action against illegal oil price fixing, and taking that action without delay, is one thing we can do without additional obstruction or delay.

The artificial pricing scheme enforced by OPEC affects all of us, not the least of whom are hardworking Vermont farmers. The overall increase in fuel costs for an average Vermont farmer last year was 43 percent, meaning that each farmer is estimated to pay an additional $700 in fuel surcharges in 2006 alone. Vermonters know what the terrible consequences of these high prices can be: forcing many farmers to make unfair choices between running their farms or heating their homes. No one should be forced to make these choices, certainly not our hard- working farmers.

In summary, this bill will provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to fight OPEC's anticompetitive practices immediately, and help reduce gasoline prices now. I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and to say ``NO'' to OPEC as we have done in the past.

Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the ``Honest Services Act of 2006,''--a bill to provide new tools for Federal prosecutors to combat public corruption in our government. The purpose of this bill is to strengthen the tools available to Federal prosecutors to combat public corruption. This bill articulates more clearly for lobbyists, members of Congress, and Congressional staff the line that cannot be crossed regarding links between gifts or special favors and official acts, without incurring criminal liability.

Just recently, the Senate passed the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006, S. 2349--the first lobbying reform bill in Congress in over a decade. I voted for the lobbying reform bill and I believe that this legislation takes an important step toward restoring the public's confidence in Congress.

I was disappointed, however, that I did not have an opportunity to offer the bill that I now propose as an amendment to the lobbying reform bill because cloture was invoked very early in the floor debate. My amendment would have offered an important and needed new dimension to the lobbying reform bill by strengthening our criminal public corruption laws.

Although it is certainly important to have high ethical standards within Congress and more transparency in the lobbying process, vigorous enforcement of our Federal public corruption laws is also an important component of this effort to restore public confidence in government. Indeed, it was only with the indictments of Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, and Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham that Congress took note of the serious ethics scandals that have grown over the last years. If we are serious about restoring public confidence in Congress, we need to do more than just reform the lobbying disclosure laws and ethics rules. Congress must send a signal that it will not tolerate this type of public corruption by providing better tools Federal prosecutors to combat it.

This bill will do exactly that. The bill creates a better legal framework for combating public corruption than currently exists under our criminal laws. It specifies the crime of Honest Services Fraud Involving Members of Congress and prohibits defrauding or depriving the American people of the honest services of their elected representatives.

Under this bill, lobbyists who improperly seek to influence legislation and other official matters by giving expensive gifts, lavish entertainment and travel, and inside advice on investments to Members of Congress and their staff would be held criminally liable for their actions. The law also prohibits Members of Congress and their

staff from accepting these types of gifts and favors, or holding hidden financial interests, in return for being influenced in carrying out their official duties. Violators are subject to a criminal fine and up to 20 years imprisonment, or both.

This legislation strengthens the tools available to Federal prosecutors to combat public corruption, by removing some of the legal hurdles to public corruption prosecutions. Under current law, Federal prosecutors often have great difficulty bringing public corruption cases because it is difficult to prove a specific quid pro quo under the Federal bribery statute. In addition, the current honest services fraud statute--18 U.S.C. 1346--requires that prosecutors must also show that misconduct occurred via the mail or wire, even when there is clear evidence of an improper link between gifts and an official act. My bill makes it possible for Federal prosecutors to bring public corruption cases without having to first overcome these hurdles.

The bill also provides lobbyists, Members of Congress, and other individuals with much-needed notice and clarification as to what kind of conduct triggers this criminal offense. For much of the 20th Century, honest services fraud was a common law offense which courts read into the federal mail and wire fraud statutes. In 1987, the Supreme Court invalidated this common law concept in the case of McNally v. United States. In response to the McNally case, Congress subsequently added an honest services mail and wire fraud statute--18 U.S.C. 1346--to the Federal criminal code. Section 1346 has been regularly relied upon by prosecutors in public corruption cases ever since. However, that provision is often criticized for being too vague or for failing to give public officials sufficient notice about what type of conduct is covered by the statute. Courts have also disagreed about exactly what this statute means. My bill will help to resolve the confusion about honest services fraud in the legislative context, by setting out a well-defined honest services fraud offense for violations involving Members of Congress. In addition, the bill's intent requirements ensure that corrupt conduct can be appropriately prosecuted, but that innocuous actions will not be inappropriately targeted.

Lastly, my bill authorizes $25 million in additional federal funds over each of the next four years to give federal prosecutors needed resources to investigate public corruption. According to the FBI's 2004-2009 Strategic Plan, reducing public corruption in our country's Federal, State, and local governments is one of the FBI's top investigative priorities--behind only terrorism, espionage, and cyber crimes. However, an August 2005 report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General, found that, since 2000, there has been an overall reduction in the number of public corruption matters investigated by the FBI. That report noted that, in 2004, the FBI referred 63 fewer public corruption cases to the United States Attorney's offices across the Nation than it referred in 2000. My bill will give the FBI and the Public Integrity Section within the Department of Justice new resources to hire additional public corruption investigators and public corruption prosecutors.

If we are serious about addressing the egregious misconduct that we have recently witnessed, Congress must enact meaningful legislation to strengthen our public corruption laws and give investigators and prosecutors the resources they need to enforce these laws.

The unfolding public corruption investigations involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Representative Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham demonstrate that unethical conduct by public officials has broad ranging impact. Just last month, the Washington Post reported that, as an outgrowth of the Cunningham investigation, federal investigators and the Pentagon are now looking into contracts awarded by the Pentagon's new intelligence agency--the Counterintelligence Field Activity--to MZM, Inc., a company run by Mitchell J. Wade, who recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe Mr. Cunningham. The Cunningham case demonstrates that our democracy and national security depend upon a healthy, efficient, and ethical government.

The American people expect--and deserve--to be confident that their representatives in Congress perform their legislative duties in a manner that is beyond reproach and that is in the public interest.

Because I strongly believe that Congress must do more to restore the public's trust in their Congress, I urge all Senators to support this bill.

Mr. President, I join with Senator Jeffords today to introduce the Vermont Wilderness Act of 2006, to designate two new wilderness areas and to make a number of additions to existing wilderness areas in Vermont's Green Mountain National Forest. This legislation will also designate a new National Recreation Area (NRA) in the Green Mountain National Forest in the area commonly known as Moosalamoo.

The U.S. Forest Service has recently released its Record of Decision (ROD) and Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the revision of

the Green Mountain National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan. This has been an effort encompassing several years, a lengthy process including significant public involvement, and a great deal of difficult and detailed work on the part of the Forest Service staff in Vermont and our region.

I want to extend my appreciation and thanks to the staff of the Green Mountain National Forest for their perseverance and professionalism throughout the plan revision process. This has been by no means an easy task, with Vermonters and other interested citizens who care deeply about the National Forest weighing in with sincere and often conflicting views on land, resource and forest management decisions.

While there is much of interest in such a comprehensive plan, the primary role of the Congress lies with wilderness and other related special designations, such as National Recreation Areas. The Vermont Congressional Delegation has taken this responsibility seriously as we have sought a compromise between those who would prefer significant additions in wilderness areas and those who would prefer none. If this recommendation were enacted, about a quarter of the current Green Mountain National Forest would be designated as wilderness.

Just as the recently released Land and Resource Management Plan for the Green Mountain National Forest has elicited abundant feedback across the spectrum of interested citizens and organizations, we expect our proposal to do the same. We offer this legislation as a good-faith effort to find a middle ground, and once this proposal is referred to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry--of which I am a member--we will welcome constructive comments and criticisms to improve the bill. Since the Vermont Congressional Delegation has long been on the public record in favor of additional wilderness designations within the Green Mountain National Forest, comments that are as specific as possible will be especially helpful in helping to refine our proposal.

In specific terms, this legislation proposes a new wilderness area in the Glastenbury Mountain area of approximately 28,500 acres. In the Romance, Monastery and Worth Mountain areas the bill proposes adding approximately 12,500 acres, which together would become the Battell Wilderness in honor of Joseph Battell, who once owned some 9,000 acres in this area and bequeathed thousands of acres to Middlebury College, which eventually became the core of the north half of the Green Mountain National Forest.

The bill also proposes designating approximately 4,200 acres for addition to the existing Breadloaf Wilderness, 2,200 acres to the Lye Brook Wilderness, 800 acres to the Peru Peak Wilderness, and 40 acres to the Big Branch Wilderness. The proposed Moosalamoo National Recreation Area covers approximately 17,000 acres.

This legislation does not include additional acreage for the George D. Aiken Wilderness Area or the Bristol Cliffs Wilderness Area. It does not propose a wilderness designation for the area known as Lamb Brook, and it does not propose a new National Recreation Area in the Somerset region.

Our legislation builds on the recommendations of the Forest Service. In many areas the Delegation bill closely tracks the Forest Service plan--Breadloaf, Big Branch and Peru Peak areas are nearly identical. In the Glastenbury area, the Forest Service added more than 8,000 acres to their original plan, and we have further increased the acreage of a proposed Glastenbury Wilderness Area. In addition, this legislation adds about 2,000 acres to the Lye Brook Wilderness, above the Forest Service recommendation. Finally, we are proposing the new Battell Wilderness Area, which encompasses lands the Forest Service included in a Remote Backcountry management category, which is essentially managed as a wilderness area.

In the Moosalamoo area, this legislation codifies the Moosalamoo National Recreation Area, which has the strong support of the various communities and local partners in the area. We believe this designation best represents the actual goals of the various stakeholders and merits this national designation. Furthermore, we have included the Forest Service's Escarpment management category in the designated area and have also included previously agreed upon management guidelines in the bill.

I would offer the following thoughts which we have returned to on those numerous occasions over recent years whenever this subject has been brought up for discussion in our State.

In sponsoring this legislation today, the Vermont Congressional Delegation is demonstrating our commitment to additional wilderness designations on the Green Mountain National Forest. The Green Mountain National Forest is the largest contiguous public land area in Vermont and within a days drive for over 70 million people. We are committed to protecting some National Forest lands for future generations under the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Our proposals have not been driven by acreage quotas, but rather by data supplied by the Forest Service and by interested Vermonters. Therefore, what is too much for some will be too little for others.

The timing of this introduction was conditioned so as to allow the Forest Service process to reach its conclusion and, at the same time, to enable Vermonters and other interested parties to review both the Forest Service and the Delegation recommendations. Throughout our deliberations, we have appreciated the help of the Forest Service staff and have recognized their commitment to their planning regulations, guidelines and timetable. We invite all Vermonters to join us in thanking the Forest Service staff for all the hard work in their planning effort.

While this legislation proposes to add significant wilderness to the Green Mountain National Forest, it bears noting that most of the lands designated in this bill are not suitable for timber harvesting. This legislation would retain many thousands of acres available for timber harvesting which will have to be managed in a fair, open and professional manner. We are committed to the development of such a process and we know the Forest Service shares this commitment. We invite all interested parties to join in this effort. It is our hope that given the superior manner in which the Forest Service conducted the Forest Plan Revision process, unnecessary appeals and litigation of the plan and future management activities can be avoided.

The Green Mountain National Forest has expanded since the last wilderness designations were made. As Senator Stafford, then Congressman Jeffords and I remember, during the consideration of the last Vermont Wilderness bill in 1984 there were many perspectives on the use of our National Forest. We assume there will be again this time. As we were 1984, we remain committed to carrying on the strong conservation legacy that generations of Vermonters, like Senator Robert Stafford, have fostered over the decades.

We urge anyone who is interested in the Green Mountain National Forest to review the whole Plan, as the Forest Service has recommended, and to look beyond their own primary areas of concern so that we can all do what we can to help implement the Plan.

In closing, I would note that the Delegation knows that you cannot undertake every possible use on every acre of National Forest land, and we believe most Vermonters support our approach to this issue. In recognition of this fact, we are introducing this legislation as a vision for the Green Mountain Forest for this and future generations.

Mr. President, I have sought recognition in these waning hours of the 109th Congress to provide a summary of the good work accomplished over the last 2 years on behalf of America's veterans, and to comment on comprehensive legislation that is now pending in the Senate. I provide this summary in my capacity as chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, a title I will soon pass on to my friend, Senator Danny Akaka of Hawaii.

Before the 109th Congress convened, I made a decision to serve as chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs

for two fundamental reasons. The first and most important was that our country was at war and continues to be at war, and a nation at war, with hundreds of thousands of young men and women having spent extensive tours overseas in hostile lands, fighting for our country, deserves the full attention of the Senate. Many have died during the course of combat operations. Others have been seriously wounded. Thousands more will transition out of the military service in the coming years and will attempt to reenter the workforce or go to school under the Montgomery GI bill. There simply was no greater calling than for me to assume the leadership role to ensure our Government was effectively assisting the current generation of America's veterans and their families.

Second, I have always been nonplused, I guess, at the characterization that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs was a ``B'' committee. This characterization exists despite these facts. Mr. President, 24 million Americans have served in the military and are potentially eligible for VA-administered benefits. In addition, VA will soon have a budget over $80 billion, which is one of the largest and fastest growing budgets within Government. And finally, VA has the second largest Federal workforce of any Government agency.

Therefore, it was my goal to elevate the committee's profile and the importance of the veterans' benefits and services by embarking on a course of vigorous oversight and legislative effort and, I believe, accomplishment.

It is my humble opinion that I share the credit with 13 other members of the committee. One of them is here on the floor with me, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who also served not only on the authorizing committee with me but chairs VA MilCon and has played a critical role in veterans issues. We have been diligent and active participants of the committee, and the business of this committee, in my opinion, has been extremely productive in the last 2 years.

The committee held 52 hearings during the 109th Congress. From the start, our focus was on the combat wounded, the combat deceased, and their families. We held a hearing on the difficulty that surviving spouses have in getting timely and effective, consistent information regarding their benefits following the active-duty death of their loved one.

We held several hearings on whether returned combat veterans are provided with a seamless transition--many of us have heard those words used--from active duty to civilian life. We are still working with DOD on that, to make sure it is truly seamless.

We focused on medical and vocational needs of our severely wounded. We examined the research being done within the VA to advance our understanding of various diseases and disabilities confronting veterans in the hope that advances in medical science and technology could one day improve their lives. And there is clear evidence today that that very thing is happening.

The committee was particularly active in examining VA's budget needs, and no one can argue about the high priority this Congress placed on funding the VA system.

The total VA budget will have increased from approximately $63 billion at the end of fiscal year 2004 to over $80 billion upon enactment of a fiscal year 2007 appropriations bill, an increase of 27 percent.

In addition to resources provided, this Congress has put in place a system of accountability to ensure that the appropriations provided to VA are being used to meet the needs of those who rely on the vital health care provided by VA facilities around the Nation.

By law, VA now submits quarterly reports to the Congress on its budget that contain a comparison between VA's planned expenditures and actual expenditures.

More importantly, VA is required to include quality indicators in this report, such as the percentage of primary care appointments scheduled within 30 days of a patient's desired date.

I am confident that the Congress has the mechanisms in place to know, on short order, if VA's budget needs are outpacing its resources, and is therefore equipped to take swift remedial action if necessary.

On the legislative front, the Senate has continued to do the work expected of it by the men and women we serve and represent. Let me give a quick accounting of the legislative provisions that were enacted into law during this Congress:

First S. 1234 and S. 2562. In both the first and second sessions of the Congress, cost-of-living-adjustment legislation was enacted to increase the rates of disability compensation and survivors' compensation. Benefit rates were increased by 4.1 percent for 2006 and will be increased by 3.3 percent for 2007.

Second, Traumatic Injury Protection under Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance, T-SGLI. In many instances the wives, parents, and other family members of servicemembers who are traumatically injured incur substantial financial obligations in order to spend time with their loved ones during recovery periods at military hospitals.

Under the provisions of Public Law 109-13, those traumatically wounded since the start of OIF and OEF as a result of combat wounds are eligible for financial payments which range from $25,000 to $100,000 for qualifying injuries, depending on severity. To date, more than 2.500 wounded servicemembers have received payments as a direct result of this legislation.

As of December 1, 2005, all servicemembers and Reservists insured under the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance program are also covered under the T-SGLI benefit. The coverage extends to all qualifying injuries regardless of whether injuries are incurred as a result of combat.

Under the provisions of H.R. 3200, the maximum coverage for members of the Armed Forces and veterans of the Service Members Group Life Insurance and the Veterans Group Life Insurance benefit was increased from $250,000 to $400,000.

The bill, as enacted, also requires that spouses be notified when members insured under T-SGLI elect less than maximum coverage or designate a beneficiary other than the spouse or the children or the child.

In fiscal year 2006, the National Defense Authorization Act, H.R. 1815, under provisions of H.R. 1815 and as a result of veterans committees oversights, the Department of Defense was directed to provide customized integrated information to survivors of those killed on active duty about their future Federal benefits through an Internet Web site.

I was amazed when we started these hearings that we were still dealing with a hodgepodge of approaches of how we dealt with the surviving spouse of a lost one.

DOD was also directed to develop a uniform policy on providing casualty assistance to survivors. I would like to especially thank Senators Warner and Levin for their cooperation on that bill.

Also under H.R. 1815, a provision was adopted to prohibit military funeral honors and burial in VA national cemeteries and in Arlington National Cemetery to any person who is convicted of a Federal or State capital murder for which a sentence of death or life in prison may be imposed

We had an example of a fellow from Maryland who had killed two elderly people and was sentenced to death, died in prison, and was buried at Arlington. This provision was adopted following our committee's oversight and hearing of that double murder that I just expressed. I will speak more to my colleagues about the status of the double murder incident in a moment.

In June of 2006 President Bush signed into law S. 1235, a bill to help severely injured servicemembers in their transition from the military to their civilian lives. It authorizes VA to make grants available--ranging from $2,000 to $14,000--to assist with housing adaptations on a family member's home in which a severely disabled veteran is living.

It allows servicemembers, who have been legally determined 100 percent disabled when they separated from the military, up to 2 years from that date to apply for premium-free Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance coverage. Finally, it enables them to convert their coverage to Veterans' Group Life Insurance, or an individual plan or policy, during the same 2-year period.

As to H.R. 5037, undoubtedly most of my colleagues are aware of the fringe

group which has used its protected free speech rights to deliberately disrupt funerals of our military heroes. That is why the Senate voted unanimously to put reasonable restrictions on demonstrations at VA cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery.

An amendment was put forward on the floor of the Senate balancing the rights of grieving families to a dignified funeral ceremony; the rights of private property owners who live near cemeteries to be free from overly intrusive Federal laws; and the rights of demonstrators to have their message heard. The amendment was accepted, the bill was passed, and it is now Federal law.

In addition to the bills already enacted into law, the House and Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs have agreed on a comprehensive substitute amendment to S. 3421, which has cleared the House and awaits Senate action. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

S. 3421, the ``Veterans Benefits. Health Care, and Information Technology Act of 2006,'' contains provisions that would: enhance veterans' health, education, memorial affairs, and other benefit programs; improve VA's information technology infrastructure; authorize the construction of needed VA medical facilities; improve services for homeless veterans; remove the remains of a convicted double murderer from Arlington National Cemetery; and, I am proud to say, repeal an outdated and paternalistic law that limits the ability of veterans to hire an attorney to represent them during the VA claims process.

While a fuller accounting of the provisions of S. 3421 can be found in the Joint Explanatory Statement language accompanying the amendment text in the Congressional Record--and I ask unanimous consent that the Joint Explanatory Statement be printed in the Record along with the text of the substitute amendment to S. 3421,--I will make a few remarks about three provisions of note that I have championed.

Mr. President, currently, veterans and other claimants seeking veterans' benefits may not hire an attorney until the VA administrative proceedings have been completed--a process that often takes several years.

That law flows from a Civil War era policy intended to protect veterans from unscrupulous attorneys. That policy arose at a time-- unlike today--when attending law school was not required to become a lawyer and there was no effective professional oversight of lawyers.

In recent months, it has become abundantly clear that many veterans and their survivors want the option of hiring an attorney to help them navigate the increasingly complex VA system. In fact, the prohibition against veterans hiring attorneys is considered to be unfair and outdated by a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations, including veterans' organizations, veterans' advocates, judges, law professors, and bar associations.

For these reasons, I am very pleased that a compromise version of legislation I authored was accepted that would allow veterans to hire attorneys after a veteran files a Notice of Disagreement with VA's initial decision on their claim.

A provision of S. 3421 will enable the spouses of seriously wounded veterans to obtain educational assistance benefits sooner than they have ever been able to before.

The need for the educational assistance provision was brought to my attention by U.S. Army SFC Jeff Mittman, a young man who was blinded after an attack in Iraq and is being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Sergeant First Class Mittman's wife would like to begin receiving educational assistance benefits from the VA while her husband undergoes treatment in order to improve her job opportunities once he is officially discharged from service, but is now prevented from doing so by law. If enacted, S. 3421 would remove that barrier.

Finally, S. 3421 would remove the cremated remains of a convicted double murderer from Arlington National Cemetery.

In the summer of 2005, we learned that the remains of a brutal murderer--Russell Wayne Wagner--were placed in the Nation's preeminent military cemetery, Arlington National Cemetery.

I was appalled to discover that the law enacted in 1997 to deny capital offenders from burial in national cemeteries did not apply to Wagner.

This was also quickly brought to my attention by the Senator from Maryland, Barbara Mikulski. We joined together in that effort. The answer was it couldn't happen, it couldn't be removed because of the law.

While we moved swiftly to close the loophole that permitted Wagner's burial in the first place, the question remained: Should his remains continue to be included among the scores of honored dead in Arlington? For me and Senator Mikulski, who joined me in this effort, the answer was ``no.''

That is why I am so pleased that S. 3421 would direct the Secretary of the Army to remove Wagner's remains from Arlington.

As I stated last summer, we must not dishonor the sacrifices made by those memorialized at our Nation's military cemeteries by including among them individuals who, through their own heinous acts, have grievously dishonored themselves because at another time in their life they were veterans.

S. 3421 is an impressive assortment of legislation. It contains the collective work of more than 44 Senators. I want to take some time to single out a few of them.

Senators Burr and Obama for their work on the homeless assistance provisions of the bill; Senators Hutchison, Feinstein, Graham, Landrieu, and Murray for their work on the construction provisions; Senators Thune, Salazar, and Burr for their work on the rural health components of the bill.

And lastly, the committee's ranking member, and a true friend of veterans, Senator Akaka.

I ask my colleagues for their vote. And I thank every Senator on the committee and in the Senate for their support in seeing this, and all of the other veterans' bills, through the Senate.

I also want to thank my House colleagues, in particular Chairman Buyer, Ranking Member Evans, and Acting Ranking Member Filner. We were able to come together in the spirit of compromise in the final hour on some key provisions, and it is a fitting way to end this Congress.

As we head into a new Congress, I want to extend my best wishes to my friend, and soon-to-be chairman, Senator Akaka. It has been a pleasure working with a Senator of his quality, and I pledge that as ranking member I will strive to emulate the kindness, cooperation, and ``aloha'' that he showed me during my time as chairman of this great committee.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a comprehensive energy bill, one that I call Breaking Our Long-Term Dependency, or the BOLD Energy Act.

As President Bush has stated, our Nation is addicted to oil. Our economy requires over 20 million barrels of oil a day to fuel our cars, our trucks, heat our homes, and bring goods to market all across the country. Sixty percent of our consumption--60 percent--is from imports. Many of these imports are coming from the most volatile parts of the world, the most unstable parts of the world, and we have to take serious steps now to reduce our growing dependency. That is what this bill is all about.

This legislation, which is comprehensive in nature and which we have worked on for over 6 months, I believe is a serious contribution to the discussion. Let me make clear: These are not tepid steps. This legislation is bold because that is what the situation requires if we are to seriously reduce our dependence.

This legislation invests approximately $40 billion over the next 5 years to meaningfully reduce our dependence on foreign energy. Much of our imported oil comes from unstable parts of the world. Forty-five percent of our oil comes from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iraq. A major disruption to oil supplies in any of those areas could send oil over $100 a barrel. Threats to oil supplies and surging demand have contributed to a 95-percent increase in oil prices over the past 2 years.

Imported oil now accounts for $266 billion of our trade deficit. That is more than a third of our total trade imbalance.

Our Nation faces other challenges on the energy front as well. Fluctuating natural gas prices threaten the livelihood of our Nation's farmers and manufacturers. Electricity sales are projected to increase by 50 percent over the next 25 years. Transmission capacity constraints prevent development of power production in many parts of the country, including North Dakota.

Fortunately, the United States has the domestic resources and the ingenuity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and meet our energy challenges. It is time, I believe, to look to the Midwest rather than turning to the Middle East for our energy resources. We can turn to our farm fields to produce more ethanol and biodiesel.

Brazil shows what can be done. Thirty years ago Brazil was 80 percent dependent on foreign energy. They have reduced that dependence to less than 10 percent. At the same time, our country has gone from 35-percent dependence to now 60-percent dependence. We have been going the wrong way. Brazil has demonstrated what can be done to dramatically reduce one's energy dependence. How did they do it? They did it by aggressive promotion of biodiesel, by aggressive promotion of ethanol, and by creating a fleet of flexible fuel vehicles.

We could do that here. Brazilian officials are now predicting they will be completely energy independent this year--this year. We can use our abundant domestic reserve of coal to produce clean, clear fuel as part of a plan to reduce our dependence, in addition to the use of those renewables.

Coal-to-liquid fuel technology has tremendous potential. Converting America's 273 billion tons of coal into transportation fuel would result in the equivalent of over 500 billion barrels of oil. That compares to Saudi Arabia's reserves of 262 billion barrels.

Why are we continuing to be dependent and vulnerable to foreign sources of energy? It makes no sense. It is time to do more than talk about the threat; it is time to act. That is why I am introducing the BOLD Energy Act today.

My legislation would accomplish the following: It would increase production of renewable energy and alternative fuels. It would reward conservation and energy efficiency. It would provide more research and development funding for new energy technologies. It would promote responsible development of domestic fossil fuel resources, and it would facilitate upgrades to our Nation's electricity grid.

First, the BOLD Act takes aggressive steps to increase alternative fuel production and use. It extends the biodiesel and ethanol tax credit. It requires ethanol use in the United States to increase from 4.7 billion gallons in 2007 to 30 billion gallons in 2025. It creates a new biodiesel standard. It promotes alternative fueling stations, and it establishes a $500 million grant program for the expensive front-end engineering and design of coal-to-liquid fuel plants. These steps will allow us to substitute home-grown fuels for foreign oil, dramatically reducing our dependence on imported oil.

Second, the experts tell us the single most important thing we can do to reduce our reliance on foreign oil is to improve the efficiency of our cars and trucks. My legislation provides a new rebate program for cars and trucks that achieve above-average fuel economy. The most fuel- efficient vehicles would qualify for rebates of up to $2,500. This will encourage consumers to buy, and manufacturers to produce, more fuel- efficient cars. We don't do this with the command-and-control structure of CAFE standards; we do it with incentives for the marketplace.

My bill also requires that all vehicles sold in the United States by 2017 must include alternative fuel technologies, such as hybrid electric or flex-fuel systems. Auto makers will be eligible for a 35- percent tax credit or retiree health care cost relief to make this transition. We have had extensive discussions with the automobile industry on how to design these incentives so they would be effective.

North Dakota E85 fueling systems will allow drivers to dramatically reduce gasoline usage. And in urban areas such as Washington, D.C. where most drivers commute fewer than 20 miles a day, new plug-in hybrids will allow most trips to be fueled by electricity rather than gasoline.

Third, the BOLD Energy Act promotes environmentally responsible energy development here at home. It increases the existing enhanced oil recovery tax credit to 20 percent for any new or expanded domestic drilling project that uses carbon dioxide to recover oil from aging wells. Again, we have consulted broadly with industry on what would be the most effective incentives to seriously increase domestic energy production.

It also includes language authorizing energy development in the Lease Sale 181 area in the Gulf of Mexico that prohibits this development from occurring within 100 miles of the Florida coast or interfering with military activities in the gulf.

These steps will allow us to substitute American oil and natural gas for imports, creating jobs here at home and improving our energy security.

Fourth, my BOLD Energy Act promotes new technologies to improve energy efficiency and develop renewable energy, such as wind and solar. It extends the renewable energy tax credit for 5 years and establishes a national 10-percent renewable electricity standard.

My energy bill also creates a clean coal energy bonds program to allow electric cooperatives, tribal governments, and other public power systems to finance new, advanced clean coal powerplants.

Finally, my legislation will improve the electricity grid in the United States by making it easier for State governments to finance the construction of transmission lines through the issuance of tax exempt bonds. Again, we have consulted broadly with industry over an extended period to find the things that would make the greatest difference to dramatically reducing our energy dependence. That is what this legislation is about. That is why I call it the BOLD Energy Act. It is seriously designed to break our long-term dependency. That is why we called it the BOLD Energy Act.

A few weeks ago I met with the President and a bipartisan group of Senators at the White House to talk about energy policy. I told the President he was right to identify our addiction to oil as one of our challenges. I also told him it is time to be bold. No more tepid plans, no more plans that fundamentally do not make a difference. It is time for the United States to stand up to this challenge of seriously reducing our dependence on foreign energy.

Make no mistake, this is a bold plan. This plan calls for the investment of approximately $40 billion over the next 5 years. That is what it is going to take. If we are going to be serious about reducing our dependence, it is going to take more than half steps. It is time to put politics aside and assemble our best collective ideas into a new, comprehensive energy policy. I ask my colleagues and I urge them to look at this bill, to examine it. I urge them and hope that they could cosponsor it. If not, I welcome their constructive criticism about what could be done to make it better.

I don't think we have any time to waste. There is no time to lose. We need bold action. We need this BOLD Energy Act.

I send the bill to the desk for its assignment to the appropriate committee.

Mr. President, I thank very much the dozens of organizations that have contributed to writing this legislation. As I have indicated, we have spent 6 months in preparing this legislation. We have consulted with literally dozens and dozens of organizations across this country. We have consulted with Members in both the House and the Senate. We have consulted with Governors. We have consulted with every relevant energy group in the State of North Dakota and in the Midwest. I am delighted that so many of them have already endorsed this legislation.

It is time for us to get serious about reducing our dependence on foreign oil. I am delighted today to be presenting this BOLD Energy Act. I believe it is the direction we should take. I again ask my colleagues to give it their close consideration.

Mr. President, might I get the attention of the Senator for just a moment? I say to him, first of all, I appreciate very much his thoughtful remarks, as always. When you have a chance to look at this, this is a comprehensive bill. We have spent months talking to everyone we thought had a good idea. We have talked to people who sponsored legislation in the House and the Senate, trying to cull those legislative offerings for the best ideas. We have talked to the people who were sponsored by Hewlett-Packard to do a review of national energy policy in America.

As you know, they spent several years in a serious effort to come to grips with what we could do that would dramatically reduce our energy dependence. The Senator is quite right. That is why so much of this legislation is focused on fuels; that is where a significant part of our imported energy is going--to fuel the fleets of our country.

Let me say with respect to wind energy, I truly believe that is a component of a comprehensive bill. Let me put it in perspective. In terms of our legislation, it is a very small part because I think that is the appropriate level of commitment to make in terms of comprehensive energy policy. There are many other things that have much more prominence in terms of where the investment is being made. I would say to my colleague, in North Dakota we have extraordinary wind energy capacity. We have the ability to relieve our dependence on coal-fired plants and our dependence on plants that are fueled by natural gas, and we have extreme problems, long term, with natural gas in this country. That is why natural gas prices have had such a runup.

Wind energy is a great part of an overall plan to reduce peaking load. Obviously, you cannot count on the wind blowing--although in North Dakota you almost always can. So you have to marry it with other energy-generating sources. That is what we have done with this legislation. I very much welcome my colleague's kind comments, and I look forward to his consideration of what we have tried to do.

Let me just say, I gave my staff an assignment 6 months ago. I told them I wanted an energy bill that anybody could look at and objectively say: If this were enacted, it would make a serious contribution to reducing our energy dependence. I have supported the past energy bills that have come through here. I was pleased to do so. But I think we all know none of them make a dramatic change in our long-term dependence. That is what this bill is designed to do, I say to my colleague: make a dramatic reduction in our dependence.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2006, at 3:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing on ``Reauthorization of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold an Executive Session to begin at 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 22, 2006.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 10 a.m. The purpose of

this hearing is to receive testimony on S. 2747, to enhance energy efficiency and conserve oil and natural gas, and for other purposes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 9:30 a.m., to hold a hearing on Energy Security in Latin America.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 2 p.m., to hold a hearing on a nomination.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 10 a.m., in SD-430.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 485 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a business meeting voting out the report on the Indian Lobbying Misconduct Investigation, and other pending matters.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 9:30 a.m in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226. The agenda will be provided when it becomes available.

I. Nominations: Brett L. Tolman, to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah.

II. Bills: S. 2453, National Security Surveillance Act of 2006, [Specter]; S. 2455, Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, [De Wine, Graham]; S. 2468, A bill to provide standing for civil actions for declaratory and injunctive relief to persons who refrain from electronic communications through fear of being subject to warrantless electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, and for other purposes, [Schumer]; S. 3001, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Improvement and Enhancement Act of 2006, [Specter, Feinstein]; S. 2831, Free Flow of Information Act of 2006, [Lugar, Specter, Graham, Schumer, Biden]; H.R. 1036, Copyright Royalty Judges Program Technical Corrections Act, [Smith-TX]; S. 155, Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2005, [Feinstein, Hatch, Grassley, Cornyn, Kyl, Specter]; S. 2703, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 [Specter, Leahy, Grassley, Kennedy, DeWine, Feinstein, Brownback, Durbin, Schumer, Kohl, Biden, Feingold]; and S. 1845, Circuit Court of Appeals Restructuring and Modernization Act of 2005, [Ensign, Kyl].

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 22, 2006, to mark up pending VA legislation:

The markup will take place in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building at 10 a.m.

The bills to be considered are:

S. 2562 (Chairman Larry E. Craig), the ``Veterans' Compensation Cost- of-Living Adjustment Act of 2006'';

S. 3421 (Chairman Larry E. Craig), A bill to authorize major medical facility projects and major medical facility leases for the Department of Veterans Affairs for fiscal years 2006 and 2007.

Committee Print of S. 2694 (Chairman Larry E. Craig), the ``Veterans' Choice of Representation and Benefits Enhancement Act of 2006''. The Committee Print contains the following provisions:

From S. 2694, as introduced: Attorney representation in veterans benefits cases before the Department of Veterans Affairs;

From S. 2659 (Ranking Member Daniel K. Akaka): Eligibility of Indian tribal organizations for grants for the establishment of veterans cemeteries on trust lands;

From S. 1759 (Chairman Larry E. Craig): Requiring the Secretary of the Army to remove the remains of Russell Wayne Wagner from Arlington National Cemetery;

From S. 3069 (Senator Christopher Dodd): Extending the provision of government grave markers;

From S. 2416 (Senator Conrad Burns): Expansion of education programs eligible for accelerated payment of educational assistance under the Montgomery GI Bill;

From S. 3363 (Senator Mike DeWine): Accelerated payment of survivors' and dependents' educational assistance for certain programs of education;

Original Provision (from Chairman Larry E. Craig): Extend reporting requirement on the operation of the Montgomery GI Bill program;

Original Provision (from Chairman Larry E. Craig): Reducing amounts available for State Approving Agencies in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 paid from VA's readjustment benefit account;

From S. 2121 (Senator Charles Schumer): Residential cooperative housing units;

From S. 1252 (Ranking Member Daniel K. Akaka): Supplemental insurance for totally disabled veterans;

Original Provision (from Chairman Larry E. Craig): Reauthorization for use of certain information from other agencies;

Original Provision (from Chairman Larry E. Craig): Clarification of correctional facilities covered by certain provisions of law.

From S. 1537 (Ranking Member Daniel K. Akaka): Establishment of Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis Centers of Excellence.

From S. 2634 (Chairman Larry E. Craig): Sections (a)(1) and (b)(1) of it the bill pertaining to Term Limits for the Positions of Under Secretary for Health and Under Secretary for Benefits.

From S. 2762 (Ranking Member Daniel K. Akaka): Requirement for VA to pay full costs for certain service-connected veterans residing in state homes, provide medications for certain service-connected conditions to veterans residing in state homes, and create a limited authority for the Secretary to designate certain beds in non-state facilities as state homes for purposes of per diem payments.

From S. 2433 (Senator Ken Salazar): A provision to create an Office of Rural Health in the Office of the Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

From S. 2753 (Ranking Member Daniel K. Akaka): A provision to authorize a pilot program to provide care-giver assistance and noninstitutional care services.

From S. 3545 (Chairman Larry E. Craig, Ranking Member Akaka, Senators Burr and Obama):

Improvements to services, housing, and assistance provided to homeless veterans.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 22, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed briefing.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 3 p.m. to conduct a hearing on ``The AT&T and BellSouth Merger: What Does it Mean for Consumers?'' in room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The witness list is attached.

Panel I: Edward E. Whitacre Jr., Chairman and CEO, AT&T Inc., San Antonio, TX; F. Duane Ackerman,

Chairman and CEO, BellSouth Corporation, Atlanta, GA; James F. Geiger, President and CEO, Cbeyond Communications, Atlanta, GA; and Jonathan L. Rubin, Senior Research Fellow, American Antitrust Institute, Washington, DC.

Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. the Subcommittee on Clean, Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety be authorized to hold an oversight hearing on the regulatory processes for new and existing nuclear plants.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. for a field hearing regarding ``Lessons Learned? Assuring Healthy Initiatives in Health Information Technology.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on National Parks of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 2:30 p.m.

The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on the following bills: S. 574, a bill to amend the Qunebaug and Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor Act of 1994 to increase the authorization of appropriations and modify the date on which the authority of the Secretary of the Interior terminates under the Act; S. 1387, a bill to provide for an update of the Cultural Heritage and Land Management Plan for the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, to extend the authority of the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission, to authorize the undertaking of a special resource study of sites and landscape features within the corridor, and to authorize additional appropriations for the corridor; S. 1721, a bill to amend the Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act of 1996 to extend the authorization for certain national heritage areas, and for other purposes; S. 2037, a bill to establish the Sangre De Cristo National Heritage Area in the State of Colorado, and for other purposes; and S. 2645, a bill to establish the journey through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area and for other purposes.

Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Trade, Tourism, and Economic Development be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 22, 2006, at 10 a.m. on the state of the U. S. Tourism Industry.