Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I was not aware that time had to be yielded for the purpose of offering an amendment. I appreciate that, but the Presiding Officer was asking ``who yields time.'' My understanding is a Senator can seek recognition and, therefore, offer an amendment on his own volition.

Mr. President, I offer an amendment on behalf of myself, Senator Dodd, Senator Boxer, Senator Reed of Rhode Island, and Senator Lieberman. I send the amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, this is not a new subject. It is one myself, Senator Dodd, and others have spoken about on the floor, as a matter of fact, in recent days and weeks.

Let me describe briefly that it is, in fact, an amendment that is identical to the legislation we have offered that would create a windfall profits tax on profits of the major integrated oil companies, profits above $40 a barrel for oil, the purpose of which would be to collect that money and rebate it in its

entirety to consumers. Or in the alternative, if the major integrated oil companies are using that money to invest into the ground or to build refineries above ground to expand the supply of energy and, thereby, bring down the price, they would be completely exempt from the windfall profits tax.

If they are using their profits above $40 a barrel for the purpose of buying back stock, ``drilling for oil on Wall Street,'' as I will describe in a few minutes, or for other purpose that will not expand the supply of oil or the supply of energy, then they would be paying a windfall profits tax on profits above $40 a barrel at the rate of 50 percent--a 50-percent excise tax--all of which would come into the Federal Government, all of which would be rebated by check to individuals in this country in order to help pay for the higher cost of energy that individuals are now facing.

This is very simple. This is not a complex amendment. We are not trying to recalculate income or do things that are particularly difficult. The proposition is simply this: Last year, the major integrated oil companies in this country earned the highest profits in their history. The average price for a barrel of oil was $40 a barrel, and at that price the major integrated oil companies had the highest profits in their history.

Now the price is dramatically above that. It has bounced around from $50 to $60 to $70 a barrel, well above the $40 a barrel, and the profits by the major integrated oil companies--and that is all our amendment deals with, the major integrated oil companies--the profits have been extraordinary.

The third quarter profits: $9.9 billion for ExxonMobil. I have a list of a number of them I can show. But the third quarter profits are very substantial--the highest in the history of corporate America. So you have all of this gain by the major integrated oil companies, and then all of the pain on the other side. The major integrated oil companies have all of the gain. Who has all the pain? All the American people who are trying to pay for the price of a tankful of gas or trying to figure out how they are going to heat their home in the winter or trying to figure out, if they are a farmer, how on Earth they can order that next load of fuel so they will be able to go into the field in the spring. How do they pay for all that? That is where all the pain is. You have all the gain on one side, and all the pain on the other side.

Now, we are told this is just a free market. In fact, I had kind of a mini-lecture about that from the president of Exxon, the CEO of Exxon. He came to the Commerce-Energy Committee hearing we had, the joint hearing, and he kind of gave me a short little mini-lecture about the marketplace: This is the marketplace. Interestingly, he did not say: The free market. He said: The world market.

Well, let's think about this for a moment: the world market. For ExxonMobil, $9.9 billion in profits they made just in the last quarter. The world market, he says. Well, let me tell you about the world market. The world market, first, is the OPEC ministers sitting around a table someplace in a closed room talking about production and, therefore, the impact on price. Second, it is the major integrated oil companies that are larger by far than they have ever been because of blockbuster mergers. They all have two names now. It used to be Exxon and Mobil. Now it is ExxonMobil. It used to Chevron and Texaco. Now it is ChevronTexaco. We didn't know they were dating, and they got married. Now, pretty soon, it is going to be ``ChevronTexacoShellExxonMobil.'' It will be all one name. They don't seem to drop any names; they just get bigger and bigger.

So the second part--after the OPEC ministers talk about production and price--is these folks, the major integrated oil companies, that are bigger because of blockbuster mergers and have more raw muscle in the marketplace than they have ever had before.

Third, and finally, we have what are called futures markets. The futures markets are supposed to provide liquidity for trading. Instead, it has become a speculative bazaar, a grand bazaar of speculation. And that then gives us what is called the world price--not a free market price. This has no relationship to either freedom or the marketplace. This is not a free market. What we have is all of this gain and all of the pain on the part of the consumers.

Let me describe a little about what is happening here. Last year, we had the highest profits in our history for the major integrated oil companies. BusinessWeek wrote an article. BusinessWeek is not some liberal rag someplace. We are not talking about some progressive magazine. BusinessWeek is a solid, conservative business magazine. Here is what they say: Why isn't big oil drilling more? Rather than developing new fields of oil, giants have preferred to buy rivals, drilling for oil on Wall Street.

All right. They were talking about last year. Last year, ExxonMobil made $25 billion in net income. They spent almost $10 billion to buy back their stock. Does anybody think that expands the supply of oil? No. No. No. That is an approach that certainly makes the stock options of the CEOs much more valuable. It enhances and enriches the corporation. It does nothing at all with respect to expanding America's energy supply and thereby bringing down prices.

So BusinessWeek says: Why are they drilling for oil on Wall Street? Oil has been over $20 a barrel since mid-1999. That should have been ample incentive for companies to open new fields since projects are designed to be profitable with prices as low as the mid-teens. Nevertheless, drilling has lagged. Far from raising money to pursue opportunities, oil companies are paying down debt, buying back shares, and hoarding cash.

That, from BusinessWeek. Question: If this was the case at $40 a barrel, and oil goes to $60, $65, and $70 a barrel, and consumers bear all of this pain--an increased pain from high prices that in many cases they cannot afford--for a product they must have to drive to work, to heat their homes, to prepare for spring planting, is that fair?

The answer clearly is no.

Will somebody do something about it? Will somebody stand up and say it is time to do something about it? I hope the answer to that is yes.

Just a few headlines. This is from last month: High energy prices lift profits of ConocoPhillips by 89 percent. Its third-quarter profits almost doubled, the first big American company to report earnings for the third quarter. Net income jumped 89 percent.

ExxonMobil, from October 27: $9.9 billion in one quarter, up 75 percent.

From earlier this year: Big Oil's Burden of Too Much Cash. The world's ten biggest oil companies earned more than $100 billion in the year 2004, a windfall greater than the economic output of Malaysia. Their sales are expected to exceed $1 trillion for the year 2004, more than Canada's gross domestic product.

It goes on to say: ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded company, earned more than $25 billion last year and spent $9.95 billion to buy back its own stock.

I mentioned that earlier, but that, in fact, is the case. At the hearing with the major CEOs of the big oil companies, I asked that question of the CEO of ExxonMobil. These were people that run ExxonMobil gas stations in the Washington, DC-Virginia-Maryland region. September 9, this is titled, ``Finger Pointing Begins As Gas Prices Jump 24 Cents in 24 Hours; Exxon Dealers Say They Are Chafing Under Higher Prices Decreed From Atop; Station Owners Accuse Big Oil Company of Profiting From Impact of Hurricane Katrina.''

That is very important to point out. Hurricane Katrina hurt these oil companies. Oil was well over $60 a barrel before the first hurricane started circulating in the gulf. That is not what got us $60-plus-per- barrel oil. You have gasoline station dealers saying that Exxon was the one that said, through wholesale prices, you must charge 24 cents more in a 24-hour period. They said: What is going on here?

So I asked Mr. Raymond. Well, he wasn't sure that happened. I said: This was a public charge about your company. Didn't you investigate it?

No. We didn't. We might have. I don't know. He wasn't sure.

Let me back up a step to talk about the slightly larger picture and then come back to this question of fairness. We have a serious problem with energy, there is no question about it. This old planet of ours hosts the U.S. citizens in this little part of the planet. There are

about 6.4 billion people who live on this planet as we spin around the Sun. We have a prodigious demand, a huge demand for oil in this little spot called the United States. We suck up--when I say ``we,'' the royal ``we''--everybody sucks up about 84 million barrels of oil every day from this earth. Eighty-four million barrels a day are produced from underneath this earth. We also use 84 million barrels a day on this planet. It turns out that 21 million of that 84 is used right here in this country. This country uses one-fourth of all of the oil that is pulled out of the ground.

Is that going to change? Sure. China now has 20 million cars on the road. By the year 2020, 15 years from now, it will have 120 million cars. Add 100 million cars to the mix and the demand to run something through those carburetors or fuel injectors, probably gasoline, ask yourself, in a planet where you are pulling up 84 million barrels a day and this country is using 21 million, one-fourth of it, and we have a demand that now comes from other countries saying, We want some of that, and by the way, we want to have more vehicles on the road--China, as an example--where does the additional oil come from? We have serious issues and significant long-term problems that we have to deal with.

I have my own feelings about that. I largely helped write the hydrogen fuel cell title in the Energy bill. I have ideas about what we need to do. We need to grow energy in our fields with renewable fuels, ethanol, biodiesel. There are so many other things we need to do, including encourage the transition of hybrid cars as we move toward a hydrogen fuel cell future. All of those things I will discuss at greater length at some other time. But at the moment, we live now. We can talk about the longer run. John Kenneth Galbraith used to say, in the long run, we are all dead. But we go into this winter, as consumers in this country, confronting a fuel bill that has dramatically increased over last year, and then reading in the newspaper in the morning, wearing a sweater in a home that you have to keep a couple of degrees cooler in order to afford to heat your home, that ExxonMobil has a 75-percent or 89-percent profit or all the majors are showing massive profit increases. So while they sit there fat and happy, racking up the profits, everybody else is trying to figure out how they pay the price. How do you scrape up the money to heat the home, to fill the car, to fill the tanks so that your tractor and farm equipment is ready in the spring?

People say: Well, if that is a problem for you, that is tough luck. There are a couple of economists writing in recent days--I won't name them--who can tell us everything about the future but can't remember their home phone number. You know the type. They are telling us what will happen here is if people can't afford to pay the cost of energy, it will force them to conserve more. Easy to say for one of these economists who drive around town in their Volvo or Mercedes cogitating about the future. What about the people who have to use a car to drive to work, have to fill the tank with gas but don't have the money to do so, or the people who understand they live in the northern part of this country where we have tough winters and they have to pay the heating bill and it costs a lot of money and they don't have it? What about that?

Senator Dodd and I have offered a proposal. It is widely reviled by the major oil companies. I understand that. For them, it is the hog rule: Give us what we want, we want everything, and what you don't get doesn't matter to us. After all, energy is not something that is like every other commodity.

I did an interview with a radio person the other day, and he said: If you are going to have a windfall profits tax with respect to oil profits above $40, what about a windfall profits tax on the shares of Google? I said: Do you drive up to your gas station and say, Fill it up with Google? Gasoline is different. Gassing up your car, providing natural gas or home heating fuel for your home is different. It is a necessity. Everybody needs to do it. It is part of what we are as Americans. It is the way we live. In the long term, we have to make some changes, maybe so. But in the short term, we live now at a time when the major oil companies are exhibiting the highest profits in their history, and everybody else is trying to figure out how on earth to pay the bills.

Senator Dodd and I put together the simplest possible plan. We have said: If oil continues at this level, understanding that last year, at $40 a barrel, they had the highest profits in their history for the major integrated companies, we say, for the major integrated oil companies, if the price of oil is over $40 a barrel, we believe that is a windfall profit having nothing to do with fairness or the free market. If the oil companies, however, use that extra money to sink back into the ground for exploration and drilling or to build refineries above ground, to do the things that would expand the supply of energy and thereby reduce energy prices, our proposal will not impact them at all. They will not be taxed. We still don't like the prices, but it won't affect them. They are doing the right thing to expand the supply of energy, which will ultimately bring down the price of energy. But if they do not do that--and they are not; they are buying back their stock, hoarding cash, drilling for oil on Wall Street; they are not doing the right thing--then they would be subject to a 50-percent excise tax on those windfall profits above $40.

Senator Dodd and I, unlike others, would not suggest we bring that money into the Federal Government and let it rest here. We suggest that money be brought here and sent out immediately in its entirety as a rebate to the consumers of this country who are paying the bills. They are the ones who are hurt. They are the ones from whom these profits came. They are the ones entitled to have the rebate, if the oil companies are not going to use those profits to expand the supply of our country's energy and oil.

This is a hard proposal to misunderstand. Let me just say, there are many who have deliberately done so. Yesterday, a study came across my desk that appeared to have been paid for by an entity called Investors- Shareholders Alliance. Actually, I Googled them on my computer to find out who on Earth this is. But they have been able not to leave traces, even with a Google search. But I don't need to know who they are without understanding who funded that study. That study purported to evaluate a windfall profits tax by number, which was our bill, and the two authors of the study had not bothered to read it, misdescribed it, and analyzed it in a way that was dishonest.

So the press people called me and asked for my reaction. I said: It is a complete joke, perhaps a Ph.D. joke. These people have really big degrees and tiny glasses and think they are pretty smart. It is just that they forgot to read our legislation because they evaluated something else and attached our number to it. I am assuming that was paid for by the big oil companies. God bless them. They have plenty of money. They will have lots of money to defend themselves against this proposal that we offer today.

I wish no ill will toward the oil companies. I don't. That is not the purpose of this. We produce oil in my State, and I have done plenty of things to be supportive of those who really want to expand America's energy supply and drill for oil. But when I see $65-a-barrel oil and I see people who can't afford to pay the price struggling to figure out how to live day to day, putting gas in the car and heating homes, and then I see record profits announced every single day in the newspapers, I say something is wrong, something is disconnected. It seems to me it falls on the shoulders of this Congress to stand up and do something about it.

On this vote, the question is, Who do you stand with and who do you stand for? We have separate interests, the interests of the largest oil companies who would like even higher profits. When one person said to me, Well, why is it a windfall at $65 a barrel, I said, Let me ask you a question. What if it were $165 a barrel? Would you think that was too much, or doesn't that matter to you?

At $40 a barrel, I would say, finally, last year the major integrated oil companies, larger by far than they have ever been because of blockbuster mergers, made the highest profits in their history. Now they have dramatically expanded those profits at the expense

of American consumers. I believe it is unfair. Our amendment would at least begin down the road to try to do something about it. I am pleased to have offered the amendment with my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd.

I yield the floor so he may amplify on my comments.

Mr. President, will the Senator from Utah yield for a question?

Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Utah will yield on that point.

I say to the Senator from Utah, I have 20 minutes left, and I will use them after the Senator from Utah is completed. It may take all the 20 minutes to correct the errors of his presentation.

Almost all of it was wrong.

I asked if he would yield for a question. I will ask one simple question.

I wonder if the Senator from Utah has seen the chart I used on the floor that comes from BusinessWeek, not a progressive rag or a conservative business journal, that says this about the major oil companies which the Senator defended so aggressively at the moment:

Rather than developing new fields, oil giants have

preferred to buy rivals, drilling for oil on Wall Street.

While that makes financial sense, it is no substitute for new

oil.

They are the ones saying the oil companies are not using these profits to drill and build refineries. They are the ones saying it, not us.

Yes. How do you justify what you said with what is in the BusinessWeek article, and virtually everyone else knows that they are buying back stock, hoarding cash, and drilling on Wall Street?

Mr. President, I object. We are on an amendment on the reconciliation bill.

I ask the Senator to make his unanimous consent request.

Did he not just ask for time in morning business?

Mr. President, this has been entertaining, if not enlightening, to see my colleague get a full tank of indignation in almost a nanosecond, on two subjects in fact. Let me cover the first at least.

My colleague is a good-natured fellow--I like him--my colleague from Utah. In fact, he didn't get angry at me one day some years ago in a full-scale debate when I said to him, if there were an Olympic event for sidestepping, he would win the Gold Medal by far. In fact, he demonstrated that agility again today by sidestepping this point. The center of our colleague's agitation was he said: You cannot produce any more oil because those leftwingers, those environmentalists, will not let you do it.

So I ask, well, how does one explain this then? The Wall Street Journal says the major oil companies are drilling for oil on Wall Street. They are paying down their debt, buying back their shares, and hoarding cash. That is what they are doing with their money. How does one explain that? Did not hear anything, did we? No explanation.

My colleague said he was sick--he said three times he was sick. It is interesting, I suppose I have felt sick about some debate on the Senate floor over these years. I do not think I have ever admitted that, but I would much prefer to see a colleague of mine agitated about the price of energy in a full-scale agitation about what this is doing to consumers, agitated about what it is going to do when somebody on a fixed income cannot figure out a way to heat their home this winter. I would much sooner see a colleague agitated about that than having just come fresh yesterday from, as he described, a meeting with a major oil company, come to make the case for the major oil companies on the Senate floor, and say: You know what the problem is in this country? It is those populists dripping with venom--that word ``populists''--those leftwingers, those environmentalists on this side of the Chamber, they are what is wrong with this country.

Let us see if we can peel back a little bit and expose the truth, if I might. My colleague says those environmentalists and those leftwingers have shut down all of these refineries. Oh, really?

No, that is not true. Take it from me, that is not true. By the way, if my colleague would like to come back to the floor of the Chamber at some point, I would love to have a wide-open debate. Let us just talk back and forth and figure out where the facts are.

Let me give a few facts about refineries. I will not read them all, but I could. Do my colleagues want to know the names of the refineries that were shut down in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000? Do my colleagues want the names of the refineries? I will give names of refineries, and when I tell the names of the refineries I will say who shut them down. The oil companies shut them down.

Now, they did not do that so somebody could come to the Senate floor and blame somebody else. They did it because they were approved for big mergers. They became bigger and bigger, and they decided to shut down refineries. Why? They wanted to tighten

the refining capacity and therefore increase margins. And they have done it.

I will not say I get sick about somebody coming to the Senate floor to blame others for the oil companies shutting down refineries. But do I think it is fair, and do I think it is truthful? Absolutely not. The evidence is exactly the opposite of what my friend from Utah said. He has a right to say it, and he even has a right to say it with a full tank of indignation. That does not make it right. The American people need to know the truth about these issues.

Shutting down refineries has, in fact, occurred in this country. Why? Because as the oil companies merged and merged and became bigger, they were shutting down refineries. And I will read the names if anyone would like me to. But my colleague has gone and will not be interested in these names, I guess. I would be happy to yield.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. These record profits, the highest profits in history, are accompanied, by the way, in most cases--let me give an example. Exxon reports a 75-percent increase in net profits to $9.9 billion and they produced 5 percent less oil and gas at the same time.

Part of that was due to the hurricane. But the company admits that even without the hurricane, they would have produced less oil and gas at the same time they had the highest profits in history. How does that square with what our colleague from Utah said? What our colleague from Utah said is not accurate. It is not. He said it with great conviction, he said it with great agitation, and it is wrong. Flat wrong.

There are plenty of other things to talk about with respect to this issue. Our colleague raises the suggestion that we can't drill anyplace. You can't drill anyplace.

Look, I support drilling in Lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico. The only place he was accurate about was the issue of ANWR. Do I think we should drill in ANWR as a first resort? The answer is no. I think it ought to be the last resort if we ever drill there. We have people on the floor who want to open up all these pristine places, especially ANWR, that we have set aside and let's drill. Katie bar the door, drill anywhere. We have set ANWR aside, but there are plenty of places I think we ought to drill.

This was one of the most partisan rants I have heard for some while on the floor of the Senate. We are used to it. The minute you offer an amendment that does anything to a particularly large industry, I am telling you we have people coming through these doors saying, Who do I stand for? Let me stand for the big interests here.

My colleague said he met with a major oil company executive yesterday. Good for him. As I said before, I don't bear ill will toward the major oil companies. But I wish he were as agitated about the impact of these prices on America's consumers. He is not. He has raised a lot of questions about why the oil companies are not producing more oil, why prices are where they are. The fact is, point after point after point has been inaccurate.

I say to my colleague with respect to Exxon, let's take Exxon. He says the problem is these Senators and all the environmentalists and all the others prevent them from drilling.

What did Exxon do last year? They made $25 billion and used $9.9 or $10 billion to buy back their stock. How does he square that with what he said to the Senate? He is flat wrong.

Sigmund Freud had a grandson named Clement. I was thinking about it, as my colleague was supporting the major oil industries' profits tonight. Clement, Sigmund's grandson, said this: ``When you hit someone over the head with a book and get a hollow sound, it doesn't mean the book is empty.''

We have offered a proposal here in the Senate that has great merit. It has been misdescribed by the oil industry for reasons I understand-- I am talking about the major integrated companies--misdescribed by our colleague from Utah tonight as something that would reduce the supply of oil. In fact, the single largest incentive that would exist for expanding the supply of energy in this country would be our proposal because the major integrated oil companies would have a choice. They can either use these windfall profits above $40 a barrel to sink back into the ground, exploring for oil, or building refineries. They can either do that, and therefore be exempt from the windfall profits tax we propose, or they can choose to pay a 50-percent excise tax on the windfall profits--one of the two. Which would you choose? There is no question what you would choose. You would choose to expand the supply of energy and reduce energy prices as a result. That is the incentive in our piece of legislation. That is why it makes so much sense and it is why I was sitting here gritting my teeth, listening to the caricature of this legislation offered by my colleague from Utah and the spirited defense of the highest prices in history by the major integrated oil companies and the disparaging comments about the efforts to see if we can give some relief and give some help and stand on the side of consumers.

I chaired the hearings on the Enron scandal several years ago in the Commerce Committee. I had a lot of people there under subpoena, understanding what they did on the west coast with price manipulation.

I must say this issue of pricing, pricing of energy is critically important because this is not some luxury item. This is a necessity for every family, for their daily needs. We need to get this right. The question is, when we vote on this: Who do you stand with and who do you stand for?

Let me yield some time to my colleague. How much time remains on our side?

Let me yield 8 minutes to my colleague from Connecticut.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Let me yield myself 4 minutes. I want to reserve 4 minutes. But let me make a comment. I agree with my colleague from Connecticut. Spirited debate is fine on this floor. I didn't like the representation that was made by our other colleague that somehow what we were proposing here is not only unworthy but part of some cabal that is trying to injure this country and, second, using information that is simply not accurate.

The refineries have been closed by the oil companies, not environmentalists. That is a fact. What has happened is when they merged, they closed refineries in order to restrict supply and boost the yields of the refineries. The fact is, we had experts come in. I am talking about experts, I am not talking about politicians. The so- called experts came to the committee. We said, Why are refineries closing? One reason, because their yields are too low and the major oil companies are closing them. That is exactly the case.

My colleague from Utah talked about tax breaks he had sponsored for the oil industry. He talked about yesterday he was visiting with an executive of the big oil industry--which is fine. He talked about the price they pay in Europe, $3 or $4 a gallon. The interesting thing is in Europe the money between the cost of oil and the $3 or $4 a gallon doesn't go into the pockets of the oil companies, it goes to build infrastructure in Europe. They collect it in taxes and use it to invest in the infrastructure of Europe.

But I think it is important to point out what happens here on this floor. When you offer a proposal such as we offered, it doesn't matter if it is the tobacco industry or pharmaceutical industry or oil industry, we will have people trot through these doors of the Senate and rise to the defense of the pricing policy of the pharmaceutical industry or rise to the defense of the pricing policy of the oil industry. I will ask this. If you are going to get agitated in this Chamber, get agitated about something worthwhile. The agitation ought to be on behalf of some families who are trying to figure out how on Earth will I pay the bill? As I read in tomorrow's paper of the largest profits in the history of this country coming into the treasury of the oil companies, how am I going to pay a 50-percent increase in the bill to heat my home? You want to get agitated, get agitated on behalf of those folks and help us do something.

This notion of partisan blame, coming to the Chamber and ignoring the substance of a proposal and then casting partisan blame, in my judgment is a little tired and a little old. This proposal stands on it own merits. If you don't like it, that is fine. I understand that. Vote against it. But don't suggest somehow you are on the side of the consumer if your interest here on the floor of the Senate is to come and stand with the big oil companies, and to believe that profits above $40 a barrel is fine. It is not. It is not fair.

We believe one of two things should happen: Either it all ought to be sunk back into the ground or above ground for exploring for oil and building refineries and expanding America's supply of energy and bring down prices, or it ought to be recaptured and sent back as a rebate to the people in this country who are having trouble paying their bills, as a rebate to every American using energy.

That is our proposal. Controversial for some? Maybe. Is it the right thing to do for the American people? I believe it is, and I hope this Congress, I hope this Senate will as well.

I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I have listened with some interest and curiosity over in my office to this fascinating discussion about Social Security, especially the chart about the trust fund.

I would like to take my colleagues on a short visit back to the year 2001 when, in fact, we had surpluses. The surpluses came from a fiscal policy that looked truth straight in the eye and put this country back on track. Big budget surpluses were beginning to develop, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: You know something, even before these surpluses exist, for 10 years let us pretend they do, and let us start getting rid of the money and give big tax cuts, most of which will go to wealthy Americans, by the way. And now we end up years later with very large deficits.

We will borrow $550 billion this year. My colleague seems surprised by that. Somehow it didn't work out quite the way it was supposed to, and somebody is now using the Social Security trust fund.

Interesting. I know who is using the trust funds. It is when the President sends a budget down here with the biggest deficit in history, and he is taking Social Security trust funds to finance the tax cuts. Yes. He is taking money from Uncle Harold and Aunt Gladys to provide some of the biggest tax cuts ever given to the wealthiest Americans. That is the fact. Everybody is entitled to their own opinions in this Chamber. Not everybody is entitled to their own set of facts.

I wish to spend a little time talking about the history because I think it is important for people to know. There are important statistics, useful statistics, truthful statistics.

I remember I was at a town meeting once, and I used kind of a throwaway piece of information. An old fellow in the front row stood up. I said to this group of senior citizens: Do you know that there are 4 women for every man over the age of 85 living in the United States? Some old codger in the front row got up, leaned forward on his cane, and said: Young man, that is the most useless statistic I have ever heard given.

Well, there are useless statistics and then good statistics. There is the truth, and then there is stretching the truth.

Let me talk a moment about where we find ourselves and why. What fascinated me is these charts coming from people who want to take apart the Social Security system, the chart that comes to the floor this evening that suggests somehow they are the ones that really support this.

I will tell how the Social Security system got started and supported--a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

By the way, when he died, there was a poignant story written about the long lines of people waiting to see the body of Franklin Delano Roosevelt then lying in State. It was written that a news reporter walked up to a man, a working man who had waited hours in line with his hat in his hand, and the reporter, as this man was waiting to file past the coffin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said to this fellow: Did you know the President? Do you know Franklin Delano Roosevelt? This man said: No. I didn't, but he knew me. He knew me.

What he meant is this President knew the American people, knew and understood working men and women, cared about retired folks.

Yes. He knew me.

It was under this President that we decided to stop what was happening with senior citizens in this country. They reached retirement age--and at that point one-half of the senior citizens in America were living in poverty. They reached that age where their incomes declined, they could no longer work, and one-half of them were living in poverty in this country, this great country.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and others said, We can do better than that, we can do something about that, and created Social Security. Controversial? You bet your life it was controversial. There were some in this Chamber who said it is socialism, it is going to wreck this country, it is going to throw this country into bankruptcy. Guess what. Now less than 10 percent of our senior citizens live in poverty; 90 percent of them don't. Do you know why?

Social Security. The word ``security'' means something. It is there. It is what they can count on when they retire. We have folks all around this Senate, particularly the other side, who think we should privatize it, take it apart. Some of them never liked it. Take it apart and privatize it and stick it in the stock market, in fact.

There are a lot of people in this country who rely on Social Security, whose lives are enriched and made better by Social Security. There aren't perhaps many in this Senate who understand its value because perhaps none here will find themselves at the end of their income-producing years having to rely only on Social Security. I know plenty of people who do. I wish more people understood the consequences of that in this Senate.

Someone once asked a question: If a person died and you knew nothing about them, had never met them, and you only had their check register as a piece of information about their life, what could you write as an obituary about that person? What would a check registry tell you about a person you have never met if you had to write the obituary? It would tell you plenty. What did they think was important? What did they spend money on? What were their investments? How did they live their life?

The same can be said of a country. Look at what we do, what we think is important, what we invest in, what we spend money on. It will tell something important about the character of this country. What do we support? Do we support the fundamental promise of Social Security? Do we stand for it and believe in it? Do we believe it has strengthened this country?

I see Members serving who do not believe that. They come to the Senate with big charts, save the Social Security trust fund. Really? Perhaps the time to have thought about that was when they were called on to vote in the Senate and they decided to provide very substantial tax cuts for the highest income Americans with money we did not yet have. And now we have very large Federal budget deficits.

Let me give a couple statistics. Twenty years ago American corporations paid one-sixth of our income taxes. Twenty years later, they are bigger, much bigger, and more profitable, and they now pay one-tenth of this country's income taxes. Guess who makes up the difference. Yes, real people.

Let me give another statistic. There are 400 Americans who are the wealthiest Americans--who file income tax returns, in any event--and their average yearly income is $110 million. About 8 years ago their tax rate was 30 percent to the Federal Government. Now it is 22 percent. It has dropped nearly 25 percent. I am talking now about the wealthiest of all Americans, those who have been most generously treated by this country, many of whom are brilliant, I am sure. They make a good deal of money. Good for them. I hope they expect and want to pay taxes to pay for the common needs of this country--defense, roads, bridges, education; you name it.

The point is, those very people who now say they are the ones who care about the trust fund of Social Security are the ones who voted to be able to take money out of the Social Security system, take money out of the Social Security trust fund so they can provide a tax cut for somebody who gets $110 million a year in income.

It is unbelievable. Just own up to it, in my judgment. If that is what you did, own up to it. Do not bring a big chart to the Senate saying save the trust fund. There was a time to save the trust fund, and you did not do it.

Let me take you back to 1993. This country inherited then the biggest debt, which is now small by comparison from the first President George Bush. I recall that President Bush came to office and he proposed a very controversial fiscal policy. It was cut some spending, it was raise some taxes. It raised taxes, by the way, on the wealthiest Americans. But it was tough. It was a hard vote for a lot of Members. Incidentally, in this Senate, when the roll was called--because we were off track and headed down the wrong direction with budget deficits

that were increasing that had now reached the highest level in history--when the roll was called, there wasn't one Member of what is now the majority party, not one Member in the Senate of that side of the aisle who was willing to vote for it. It passed by one vote. A new fiscal policy, a new direction got one vote--One vote in the Senate and one vote in the House.

Guess what. With all of that controversy--and man, there was plenty-- 8 years later, we were on track. Instead of having record Federal budget deficits, we had no budget deficits. We had surpluses. Those budget surpluses gave us the opportunity to begin putting this country on a solid foundation, a solid financial foundation for Social Security and for many other needs. The estimate was we would have surpluses as far as the eye could see. In fact, Alan Greenspan, who is about to retire as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was worried we would have too much of a surplus. I remember what he said because I thought-- I know he is not a drinker so I was trying to figure out where this came from. He said: I worry we are going to pay down our debt too fast.

Oh, really? Where does that worry come from? Do you have a crystal ball, a strange-looking sort of crystal ball? He was an enabler. As an enabler, he gave permission, gave aid and comfort to the majority that said, you know what, let's take surpluses for the long term that do not yet exist, that are simply projections, and decide we will give them away in the form of tax cuts tilted toward the wealthiest Americans. And they did. So here we are, now 5 years later, borrowing $550 billion this year to this country's debt.

The other day I went through the speeches I made at that time. I said, what if something happens and we do not get the surpluses, if there is an unforeseen event? Should we be a bit conservative? Don't worry, the sky is the limit. Things are fine. Be happy.

So what happened? They passed their big tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy Americans and then all of a sudden we had a recession. Then we had a terrorist attack; a war in Afghanistan; a war in Iraq; natural disasters. Things went off track. Now we have very large Federal budget deficits.

Then we are told, one of the ways to deal with that is to privatize Social Security. The President said, I am taking Air Force One, I am getting that old plane up and I am going across this country. I am going to sell this program. Privatize Social Security. And it did not sell. It did not sell. Because people know better. The word ``security'' means something to people. Social Security works. It has worked for decades, and it will work for decades to come.

One of my colleagues says the genesis of this notion of privatizing Social Security is the phrase ``we're all in this alone.'' But in fact we are not. As a country, part of the genius of Social Security is to understand we are all in this together. We have real challenges to try to hang on to the Social Security system with a President who wants to privatize it, with Members of the Senate who come to the floor with big charts talking about raids on Social Security.

I didn't bring a chart tonight because I wasn't aware we were going to talk about raids on Social Security. But I would love to give a history lesson on who has been raiding Social Security. Paint that money purple and I will point you to the purple pockets in this Senate. I will tell you who has been raiding Social Security funds right along. It is a fact that hooking up a pipe to the Social Security trust fund, hook up the pipe on one end and hook it to pockets at the top of the income ladder for corporations, because that is where the money is going--big, old tax cuts.

The philosophy is trickle down. Pour it in on top and somehow it all trickles down and even the people at the bottom are helped. One day a fellow said to me, I have heard about this trickledown for 8 or 10 years and I ain't even damp yet.

I happen to think there is a better approach called ``percolate up.'' Give the American families something to work with, good jobs and an economy that expands opportunity, and things do pretty well in this country.

It is fascinating to watch this discussion, especially given the history of where we have been in recent years, a discussion about people who have embraced a fiscal policy that has injured the foundation of this country's finances, who now suggest they are the ones who want to protect Social Security. That is a curious thing to watch. It is a little like an illusion in an amateur magic act. It is an illusion that is attempted, but you can see all the moves so it does not look like magic, does it?

My understanding is the President has now parked Air Force One, at least with respect to Social Security, and has decided not to continue to try to push that. My hope is that we as a Congress will decide, Republicans and Democrats together, that Social Security is something worth saving. Should we stop the raid on the trust fund? You bet your life we should. We have been trying to do that for a long time. But those who aid and abet the raid on the trust fund by hooking that hose up to the trust fund and giving it out in big tax cuts do no favor to senior citizens.

This country has many challenges. It will not be made a better country by taking apart the Social Security system. Let me say those who come to the Senate and say the Social Security system is broken, it is bankrupt, it is busted--in fact, President George W. Bush said in 1978 when he ran for Congress, Social Security is busted and it will be bankrupt in 10 years, so we have to privatize it. That was in the year 1978, which tells you this is not about economics, it is about philosophy. Those who say Social Security is bankrupt or busted should remember this: Social Security will pay full benefits under every circumstance without any alteration or any change of any type until George W. Bush is 106 years old. That is hardly a crisis.

People are living longer and healthier lives. Does that mean we have to make some adjustments in Social Security from time to time? You bet. Of course we do. We have, and we will. But the basic framework and promise of Social Security, if we have the people with the courage and strength in this Senate to protect it, will be there for the next century and the century beyond.

I understand part of the success of Social Security and Medicare in our country has been the increased longevity of people living longer. I have spoken of my Uncle Harold before in the Senate. My Uncle Harold did not discover he could run until he was 72 years old. But at age 72 he went to these State meets where you have races in various events for people of different ages. He discovered there was a category age 70 and above. He entered three races. He entered the 400 meter, the 800 meter, and the 3K. He entered three events. The first time he and his wife Evelyn took the RV and parked it and he entered three races at age 72. He won all three easily. And he thought, this is amazing. I am faster than people my age. So pretty soon he started going elsewhere to run. He went to Minnesota. He entered the Minnesota Senior Games Races. He went to South Dakota. He entered South Dakota races. Pretty soon he was running in California, running in Arizona. He became a 400 meter specialist, and at age 82 my uncle had 43 gold medals and can probably outrun about 80 percent of the Senators--at age 82.

People live longer, healthier lives. Thirty years ago he would have been on a Lazy Boy because at age 65 you are supposed to retire, get a Lazy Boy recliner, and stay at home--and do not drive, by the way. Things have changed. People are leading active, wonderful lives. That is born of success, success by increasing the longevity of the American people. My Uncle Harold is one example of that.

Are there some strains on Social Security and Medicare from time to time? Yes, a few. Nothing we cannot handle, and nothing that would justify anybody coming along and saying, by the way, let's take Social Security apart. That is a philosophy rooted half a century ago. It is one that those who never liked it cannot seem to overcome.

There was a fellow at a meeting I held some months ago with Senator Reid, the minority leader. At the end of this meeting on Social Security, this old fellow, in his eighties, blind, aided by someone walking beside him holding his arm, came up to me and he said: I am old, I am blind, and Social Security is the only thing I have. This 80-

plus-year-old man came to that meeting just to deliver that message: I am old, I am blind, and Social Security is the only thing I have.

It is so important. This is not just some usual debate. This debate about Social Security is about who we are as a country; about whether we will stand up for things that matter; whether we are going to stand up for people who have lived their lives in this country and helped build America and now reach declining income years and are told they can count on Social Security. Yes, they can count on it, as long as we don't let those who come along and decide they want to privatize it begin to take it apart because they never liked it in the first place.

Mr. President, I see my colleague is waiting to speak. I was not even intending to come over until my attention was piqued by a big, old sign that said, ``Stop Raiding Social Security Trust Funds,'' and I thought: Well, that is a curious message from those who supported a fiscal policy that helped drain the trust funds in the first place. I thought I would mention that and talk a little about how important this Social Security fight has been and why the American people--not the Congress, why the American people--have said no to the President and others who want to privatize this important program.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I was just asked by a news reporter about the President's trip to Asia. The President is now going to Japan, Korea, and China and will be talking, presumably, about a wide range of issues, including trade. My hope certainly is that he will talk about trade.

Last month, we had a trade deficit of $66 billion--in 1 month--one- third of it from China. When the President goes to China, he could visit a lot of American jobs because the jobs that used to be here in America exist now in China--jobs that made bicycles, Radio Flyer's Little Red Wagon, Tony Lama boots. The jobs that used to make a wide range of products now exist in China. An American President--any American President--visiting China could visit a lot of American jobs. They are not the same kind of jobs that existed in America because in America, in most cases, those jobs were performed by employees who made a decent wage and who had benefits. No longer, in most cases. Those jobs in China are being performed by people who are being paid a small amount of money and no benefits.

By the way, if they complain about the working conditions, they will be either fired or put in prison.

As the President goes to China in the shadow of last month's devastating announcement of a $66 billion monthly trade deficit, one- third of it coming from China, what should the President do? It seems to me the President, with respect to China, Japan, and Korea--all three of those countries--should begin to get tough and exhibit on the part of this country a backbone that says to countries with whom we do business, we expect and demand and deserve fair trade.

Fair trade means it is mutually beneficial. It is not fair, and it is not mutually beneficial when last month--when the last month for which we had reporting--we bought one dollar's worth of goods from China, and for every dollar's worth of goods from China we sold them 10 cents' worth. A dollar and 10 cents--that is not fair trade. With a $66 billion trade deficit, with nearly 20 percent of it coming from the country of China, we ought to expect something substantially different.

The Commerce Department announced that the trade deficit that shattered all records was in the month of September. Our country had a trade deficit of $66 billion.

This is what it looks like. Our country is choking in red ink. Behind this red are American jobs leaving for China. Companies know they can simply get rid of their American workers and save a lot of money by hiring people in Third World countries--in this case, China--and they can presumably boost their profits believing, apparently, that people are like wrenches and pliers. You just get rid of them when you are done with them and find something less expensive. Go and hire that less expensive commodity--in this case ``commoditizing'' labor.

This is what our trade deficit looks like with China. We have a $220 billion annual deficit with China. You can see what has happened. We are sinking into a deep abyss with respect to the trade deficit with China.

One of the reasons for the trade deficit is piracy and counterfeiting. That is just one of the reasons.

Let me describe something interesting. This happens to be the logo for the 2008 Chinese Olympics. It says: Beijing 2008. It is a great- looking logo. It actually belongs to the Chinese. The Chinese know how valuable a logo like this is because in Greece they had the logo for the Greek Olympics, and I am told they raised something over $850 million with this logo. So the Chinese know.

First of all, this logo belongs to them. Secondly, it is very valuable. And some people on the streets of China decided they were going to counterfeit this logo. They decided, We are going to pirate this logo. They started selling mugs, coffee mugs, banners, all kinds of things with the official Chinese logo on it for the 2008 Olympics.

Guess what. The Chinese Government can, in fact, control piracy and counterfeiting. They demonstrated it.

The President, if he gets out of the car and walks down the street in Beijing, will not find someone selling counterfeit goods. They are gone. They are in prison. They are off the streets. The Chinese Government shut them down, just like that, in an instant.

So when it is their money that is at stake, they understand how to stop piracy and counterfeiting. They do it.

Two-thirds of all counterfeit and pirated goods coming into this country come from China. Does China lift a finger to stop it? Not a finger; don't care; doesn't matter to them. It mattered when it was goring their ox, when they were about ready to lose money. Then it mattered.

So the question is, What do we do about this? I could put up a chart that shows Japan, a $60 billion to $70 billion a year--every single year--trade deficit.

I could put up a chart that shows Korea and talk about my favorite subject with Korea: that little old Dodge pickup truck called the Dodge Dakota. I kind of like the name because it is named after my State-- Dakota. It is so wonderful they named a pickup truck after it.

At a time when 700,000 vehicles come into this country over the high seas from Korea to be sold to the American consumers, we are able to sell, if we are lucky, about 3,800 to 3,900 vehicles in Korea. So 700,000 this way, and 3,800 to 3,900 going to Korea.

Why is that? The Koreans don't want American cars in Korea, and 99 percent of the vehicles on the roads in Korea are Korean-made vehicles. That is what the Korean Government wants.

The Dodge Dakota folks thought they would have a niche in Korea selling Dodge Dakota pickup trucks. For the first 3 or 4 months they started selling some. All of a sudden, the Korean Government shut them down just like that. With Japan, with Korea, and with China, the fact is, in all of these cases, governments take action to complete trade arrangements with us that are not mutually beneficial--trade arrangements that hurt us, ship our jobs overseas and help them.

This trip by the President is very important. The question is, Will this country stand up for its own economic interests? There is no evidence in the past that it will.

My colleague, Senator Graham, and I have offered several pieces of legislation on these very issues. But there is a giant yawn on the part of the U.S. Congress, not very interested; giant yawn at the White House, not very interested.

Why is that? It is because most of these policies--I am talking about policies that affect the jobs of our citizens, policies that affect this country's economy, and whether we grow or not, whether people have a good job that pays well with benefits--are viewed through the lens of soft-headed foreign policy and not hard-nosed economic policy.

That is the problem. You have to run all these things by the U.S. State Department to see if we could begin to be a little bit tough and take some action, maybe, with respect to some unfair trade practices of the Chinese. Oh, no. We are worried about offending the Chinese. Don't do it.

They are engaged in managed trade and hard-nosed economic issues, and we are engaged in soft-headed foreign policy.

I would be happy to yield.

I don't have a numeric answer to that. But I think it is self-

evident that most of the trade deficit we have with China has to do not with fair competition but a manipulation of currency, a refusal to deal with piracy and counterfeiting, a refusal to open their markets. I think that is what it is about.

To give you a point of reference, the U.S Trade Ambassador's Office, on April 29 of this year, issued its report. This is our official Government report. It concludes that Chinese piracy was at epidemic levels and that the Chinese had broken promises.

Despite the fact the Chinese continued to break promises, piracy of our intellectual properties was at epidemic levels, and two-thirds of the pirated products coming into this country are coming from China, despite that, our Trade Ambassador says it is not ready to file a WTO case against China. Why? Because, instead, we are going to put China on a watch list. Boy, that will teach them. You put somebody on a watch list, and that will strike fear in the hearts of almost anybody. A priority watch list.

Here are the deficits with China. Going back to 1996, $39 billion. Go back another 7 years, and we had a balanced trade with China. But it is sinking deeper and deeper into this abyss. Now, all of a sudden we are going to put them on a priority watch list.

On behalf of farmers in North Dakota, I can say I know that inside the administration, in the Trade Policy Review Group, they made a recommendation that we should take action against China with respect to unfair trade dealing with wheat. But the State Department said they thought it would be too much ``in your face.'' So they wouldn't do it. They ran it through the State Department. Would this offend somebody if we decided they ought to play fair?

Yes. It might offend them. Let us not do that.

I have said many times there is not anyone in this Chamber whose job is jeopardized by this unfair trade with these three Asian countries.

I could also describe it with Canada, Mexico, and the European Union as well. But because the President is on a trip to Asia, I am talking about the problems we confront there. It is safe to say there is no one in this Chamber serving in the Senate who is going to lose his or her job due to a bad trade agreement, or due to us not having the backbone to demand of other countries that they play fair. Nobody here is going to lose their job. We will just sit around, thumb our suspenders, toot our horn, and put on our blue suits every morning. But nobody's job is in jeopardy. It is just a lot of other people's jobs that are in jeopardy.

Do you remember that little Etch A Sketch? Everybody played with Etch A Sketch. There were two knobs on it. You had some sand in there, and you tried to draw a picture on your Etch A Sketch. Gone--gone to China. They are all gone.

I could go through a list of 100 companies. In fact, I should bring over just the first 6 months of this year, the Department of Labor's report which is 33 pages, on both sides, single-spaced, of the names of companies that have sourced jobs off our shores. It is 33 pages, single-spaced, the names of companies--not people, companies.

It is unbelievable what is happening. They are selling this country piece by piece. When today we import $2 billion more than we export, the financial transaction is we put in the hands of foreigners the currency or securities by which they own part of America. Each day they buy $2 billion more of this country. It doesn't seem to mean a whit to anybody.

Last week was the announcement of the $66 billion monthly trade deficit. Did you hear any outcry from this Chamber? I came over and gave a little speech--but nothing. It is almost like everybody pulls their sombrero down and takes a big siesta and sleeps forever on this subject.

Then what is going to happen someday--because I think every economist understands this cannot stand. You can't keep doing this. You add this $700 billion trade deficit to a $550 billion budget debt increase this year--yes, this year--that is $1.2 trillion that we sunk deeper in debt in this country. We cannot keep doing that. Every economist understands that. But nobody is saying much because we are all for the jingoistic ``free trade.''

Give folks some tambourines and robes, put them on the street corner, and let them bang around out there chanting ``free trade.'' But when the American people have had enough of it, they will say stop already. We fought for 100 years for good jobs with good benefits and the right to organize; now you will pole-vault over that and ship the jobs elsewhere and go visit them as you talk about trade? At some point when this collapses--and it will; this cannot continue--when it collapses of its weight, we are all going to stand around, thumbing our pockets and saying: We knew it could not last.

Really? Read the Washington Post. By the way, if you do read the Washington Post, you will not read both sides of this debate because the Washington Post will run only one side. I have actually gone back for 6 years. We did a column appraisal of what the Washington Post runs with respect to trade. If you are for free trade, which is jingoistic nonsense about shipping America's jobs overseas and running our trade policy through the eye of the needle called foreign policy, if you are for that, God bless you, send some op-ed pieces our way, we would love to run them. If you are on the other side, if you believe in fair trade and that free trade and the monumental deficits are hurting this country and shipping jobs overseas, try to get an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post. Good luck. Take some medicine, it will take some while. It just will not happen. The whole town is like that on this issue.

I understand, when we have that much invested in failure, you certainly want to defend it. But there will come a time, in my judgment, when everyone has to understand this is not representing the long-term economic interests of our country.

Producing products for 30 cents an hour with kids working 7 days a week so you can ship them to a big box retailer in this country and sell them for pennies might be good, in the short term, for corporate profits, but it is not good for the long-term economic interests of this country. One day enough Members will wake up. It has not happened yet. It did not happen on the Central America Free Trade Agreement which we had in this Senate, another chapter in the book of failures. It did not happen. Enough said.

First, let's agree that we will bind our hands and not allow any amendments. So agree not to be original and let's not think about this stuff. And second, when we have the vote, we will also agree to vote for a treaty--and it is a treaty but was called an agreement so it does not need 67 votes--we will agree to something that was negotiated behind closed doors somewhere else. And we will continue to open the new testament of trade dogma believing that somehow it will have a happy ending. It will not.

President Bush is on his way to Asia. I want him to succeed. But I doubt whether he will raise these hard-nosed, tough trade issues in a significant way that tells these countries, ``Enough is enough.'' I want our country to stand up for its economic interests. Its economic interest is rooted, yes, in some expanded trade. No question about that. But it is rooted especially in the demand to require full trade.

If I might make one additional observation, the same companies shipping companies overseas all in the name of profit because they do not say the Pledge of Allegiance in those boardrooms anymore, those same companies do not want to pay taxes in most cases. Here is an interesting statistic: In the Cayman Islands, there is a five-story white building. That five-story white building is home to 12,748 corporations. They do not all live there. No, no, they get their mail there. It is a mail box. The mail box is for the purpose of being able to say they belong to the Grand Cayman Islands and they can avoid paying taxes in the United States.

Isn't that interesting, and also disgusting, that 12,000 companies are claiming one white five-story building in the Cayman Islands as their home?

Finally, as part of all of this, this Congress--yes, this Congress-- decided to give a special gift to those that have exported jobs. The gift was to say that in this year, if you have moved jobs overseas, if you have created foreign subsidiaries and you are doing business overseas, we will allow you to repatriate your foreign earnings on which

you expected someday to pay a tax in the United States, we will allow you to repatriate those earnings, and you get a special income tax rate that no other American gets. It is a 5.25 rate. Does Mrs. Smith pay that? Mr. Jones? Mr. Johnson? The people of North Dakota pay that? The people of Tennessee? No, no, only one group. Just the group that moved their jobs overseas, made a lot of money overseas, who expect to have to pay income taxes on it. When they bring it back to this country, they are told, Bring it back, we will give you a sweetheart deal, 5.25 percent.

That was called a JOBS Act. In fact, we now see the result. Companies are bringing somewhere around $300 billion back, and the very companies that are repatriating these earnings and paying 5.25 percent income taxes--a fraction of what the lowest income American is paying--they are cutting jobs and moving jobs overseas.

My colleague who sat in this desk, the amendment that would have stripped that little sweetheart deal for these companies. I supported him, spoke for him, and he lost. Why? Because as in the rest of trade, there are sufficient numbers who will stand up in this Senate and say: Sign me up. Let me give a special deal to those companies that not only do business in that five-story white building in the Caymans but also give them an opportunity to pay 5.25 percent income tax when they repatriate the money to the United States.

I hope one day all of those workers in America who had good jobs, who were proud of them, and who were taking care of their families someday march on this Capitol and ask the question: Where is my job? What did you do to my job? How much did you reward the people that took my job and moved it overseas? It would be an interesting question and one that ought to be answered by people in this Senate, by people in the White House, and people in the House as well.

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

I would like to ask the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, for clarification on funding that was included in the fiscal year 2006 Energy and Water appropriations conference report. Under the fossil energy research and development section, the report provided $6,000,000 for the Energy and Environmental Research Center for cooperative research and development. Was it not the intent of the conference committee that the funding identified for the Energy and Environmental Research Center be split with their partners in the fossil fuel research, the Western Research Institute, WRI, in Wyoming?

Was it also the case that the $1,000,000 in funding for the Energy and Environmental Research Center under the fuels & powers account was meant to be exclusively for the Energy and Environmental Research Center in North Dakota as described in the report?

I thank the Senator from Nevada.

Department of Energy National User Facilities

Mr. President, I would like to commend the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, and the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, for their work in completing the fiscal year 2006 Energy and Water appropriations bill and conference report. I am aware of the very difficult choices they had to make in order to fall within their tight spending allocation. I appreciate their leadership on this important piece of legislation.

If I could, I would like to ask the Senator from Nevada a question regarding an activity at Lake Sakakawea, a Federal lake in North Dakota operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. For the past couple of years, Congress has asked the Corps of Engineers to extend docks and boat ramps around Lake Sakakawea as a result of the low lake levels.

Is it not the expectation of the conference committee that the Army Corps of Engineers continue its work on these recreation upgrades within the Corps' fiscal year 2006 operation and maintenance budget for Lake Sakakawea?

I thank the Senator from Nevada, and I yield the floor.

(At the request of Mr. REID, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

FutureGen Funding

Mr. President, my colleague from Michigan has said it pretty well. This is not an unusual time. The money we have spent with respect to the war in Iraq and the reconstruction of Iraq are not usual expenditures. We have been asked, and the Congress has complied, with support for legislation that moves $50 billion, $60 billion, $20 billion--huge chunks of money--to pursue, first of all, the war in Iraq to support our troops and also to pursue what is called the reconstruction of Iraq.

Almost all of that--I think perhaps all of it--was done without any requirement to pay for it. It was all designed as an emergency, just to add it to the debt of this country.

My colleague, Senator Levin, said we have not in any way, nor would we refuse any request that would be helpful to our troops. When we ask men and women in uniform to risk their lives, we have a responsibility to them, and that is to give them everything they need to carry out the mission they have been asked to carry out. That is not what is at issue with this amendment.

This amendment is designed to respond to what we already know, and everyone in this Chamber knows, is a massive amount of waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayers' money. I spoke yesterday about this, but can anyone here justify having the American taxpayers purchase $85,000 trucks to be used on the roads of Iraq by contractors, and when the trucks get a flat tire, what do they do with them? They leave them beside the road and let them be torched. An $85,000 truck with a plugged fuel pump, what do they do? Abandon it. It is a plus-cost, sole-source contract. The American taxpayer will pay for that; don't worry about it. The list is almost endless.

A company--Halliburton in this case--charged the taxpayers for 42,000 meals served to American troops. It turns out they were only serving 14,000 meals. They have overcharged us by 28,000 meals. The people who last were responsible in the Pentagon, now retired, for managing all the fuel contracts to move fuel to the battlefield, after they retired they came back and testified and said: What has happened since is just unbelievable. The massive overcharges to move fuel to the battlefield by these contractors is almost unthinkable.

The stories go on and on. Renting a car for $7,500 a month, buying towels for the troops, double the price so you can put the company logo on it because the company tells their buyers that is what they are required to do: Double the cost of the towels so we can put our company logo on it.

How many of these stories do we need? Do we need 100 more stories like it? There is rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.

Why is that the case? Because massive quantities of money are being shipped over there in pursuit of reconstruction. Massive quantities of money are going, in many cases, to no-bid, sole-source contracts under the buddy system, and the taxpayers, I think in many of these cases, are being robbed blind. Will someone do something about it?

This amendment I have offered would establish what I call a Truman- type committee. Harry Truman stood on this floor in the 1940s in the middle of a war with a President of his own political party in the White House, and said: I think there is substantial waste, fraud, and abuse in military contracting and in military spending. They formed a special Truman committee, and he went after and uncovered tens of billions of dollars, in today's dollars, of waste, fraud, and abuse.

Normally, we would do this through oversight hearings, but we have not had many oversight hearings. In some cases, in other venues, none at all; in other venues, a few but really no aggressive oversight hearings designed to track this massive amount of money.

Yesterday, I showed a picture of a fellow who testified at a hearing I chaired that we have been doing in the Policy Committee. Why? Because the regular committees don't want to have oversight hearings. Why don't they want to do that? I guess they don't want to embarrass anybody. It would be embarrassing to the White House, I guess, if we had hearings about no-bid, sole-source contracts under the buddy system to big companies that then waste a lot of money. It would be embarrassing to display that in public.

The fact is, we owe it to the taxpayers to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse. Yesterday, I showed a photograph of money that was in the downstairs vault of a building that was occupied by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, which was us, by the way. CPA is us, not anything else. It is a fancy name for us. They were dealing in cash. I showed a photograph of one hundred dollar bills wrapped in Saran Wrap in bundles. The guy who testified at my committee and who was pictured in that photograph said: We told all the contractors, show up with a bag because we pay in cash. He said this was like the Old West. Bring a bag, we pay in cash. He said: We actually threw around like a football those bundles of one hundred dollar bills wrapped in Saran Wrap. You would be able to play catch with them. It was the Old West.

After all, when we provide funding for these contracts, it doesn't come out of the pockets of the 100 Members of the Senate. It is taxpayers' money, and we have a responsibility to the taxpayers to make sure it is spent appropriately.

If all of the 100 Senators would sit and listen to the stories I have listened to in many hearings now from contractor employees who were sickened and disgusted by the waste, fraud, and abuse they saw, if all of the Members of this Senate could hear that and then vote against an amendment that asks for this kind of long-term investigation, I don't know how they can sleep at night.

We have had this vote previously, and sufficient Members of the Senate have said it does not matter what the evidence is; I don't intend to support a special type committee to investigate this waste, fraud, and abuse. And they have prevailed. So we will have another vote today.

I say to those Senators who have voted against this amendment previously, if they still believe this waste, fraud, and abuse doesn't matter very much, then vote against it. If they still believe it is OK for the regular committees of the Senate not to hold any significant oversight hearings, not to do their due diligence, not to meet their accountability responsibility, and they don't care about that, then vote against this. Just vote against it, it doesn't matter. But then they should not stand up at home and say to their constituents that they care about how this money is spent when there is such dramatic evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse.

I used some newspaper headlines yesterday to describe the charges: $18.6 million worth of Government equipment missing at the moment that a contracting company was given to manage. One-third of the equipment that company was entrusted with at this point cannot be accounted for. Does it matter? Is somebody looking into this? It doesn't look like it to me. It is really pretty unbelievable. I have spoken before. I am guessing nobody in this Chamber--at least only a few in this Chamber-- care.

My colleague from Michigan was at a hearing we held with Bunnatine Greenhouse who rose to become the top civilian contracting official in the Corps of Engineers. She was the top civilian contracting official in the Corps of Engineers. She had outstanding recommendations every single year. She was an outstanding Federal employee, and she was in charge as the highest civilian in the Corps of Engineers for making sure contracting was done properly.

As the war in Iraq ramped up and some companies began to get substantial no-bid contracts under the old buddy system, she said this doesn't meet the test of the law; you are violating the procedures of the Corps of Engineers. You are not doing things

the right way; there is a right way and wrong way to do things. You do it this way. We are going to see substantial waste, abuse, and fraud. When she started raising those questions, something important happened to her. She was told one of two things will happen: You will either be fired or you will be demoted.

This public servant had the courage to speak up and speak out against practices she thought were horribly unfair and were going to hurt this country, and she paid for it with her career.

What a message to send to those who have the courage to blow the whistle and speak up. Does anybody care about that? It doesn't appear so. It really doesn't appear that way. We have asked Secretary Rumsfeld. We sent many letters to Secretary Rumsfeld. It is like sending those letters into a deep abyss someplace. You get a little one-paragraph reply saying: Got your letter, get back to you later. And there will never be a later. That is the way it works. Zip it up, cover it up, sew it up, it doesn't matter and, oh, by the way, ask Congress for more money; they will certainly appropriate it. Don't worry where it is going. If it is waste, nobody cares very much and, by the way, if somebody does care and raises the issue, we will have sufficient votes on it to say we won't do anything about it. And those sufficient votes will go home and talk about the fact, boy, they are tigers watching out for the American taxpayers. Hardly. Hardly.

We will see, once again, in a few minutes whether people really do care about this and whether they are willing to own up to the oversight responsibility Congress has, to care about how the taxpayers' money is spent.

This case is made. This is not an open case, it is not an argument that has to be made. This case is made. The evidence is all around us. The question is whether enough Senators will care.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of the time.

How much time remains?

I ask unanimous consent for 30 seconds.

The Senator from Virginia is quite right that we have twice before voted on this amendment and I believe ignored the value of the amendment. In almost all cases, there is virtue in being consistent, but being consistently wrong is hardly virtuous. My hope is the Senate will understand the value of this amendment this morning as we vote on it for the third time.

Mr. President, respond on this amendment?

In 30 seconds, I say the Senator has just made my point. He recited a long description of people interested in this, none of whom reside in the Congress. The oversight responsibility belongs to the Congress. It belongs here, and it is not happening here. That is precisely the point I believe the Senator made on the floor just a moment ago. That is precisely why we ought to support this amendment.

Mr. President, I have an amendment to offer, an amendment I have shared with both sides. It is, in fact, an amendment that we have previously debated. It deals with the subject of contracting abuses, especially contracting abuses in the reconstruction in Iraq-- the money that is paid by American taxpayers, through our Government, to major contractors that are given no-bid contracts, spending billions of dollars, and the stories about contracting abuse are horrifying. Yet nothing seems to happen.

I have described previously something that happened in the 1940s. Harry Truman was in the Senate. Harry Truman was a Democrat. A member of his party was in the White House, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He couldn't have been very happy about Harry Truman because Truman came to the floor of Senate and said: I have substantial evidence of wrongdoing, of contracting, of military waste with respect to defense contracts and defense spending. I think it needs to be investigated.

They began holding a series of hearings. He finally was able to get a committee together called the Truman Committee. They began a series of hearings. It lasted a number of years. At a time when a member of his own political party was President, it was probably embarrassing for everybody that Harry Truman was leading the charge while FDR was in the White House. But they uncovered a substantial amount of abuse and waste and fraud. Good for them. The memory of the Truman Committee lives on today as an example of what should be done with respect to oversight by the Congress.

We spend a dramatic amount of taxpayer money. The question is, Is it spent wisely? If it is not, when it is wasted or stolen or subject to cheating of the taxpayers, shouldn't somebody know it? Shouldn't somebody see it and do something about it? That is the issue.

I have held a number of hearings as chairman of the Policy Committee on this subject, only because no one else is holding any substantial hearings on it. We will have a couple people come to the floor and say: We have held a good number of hearings. That is not true. Very few if any hearings have been held on this issue.

I wish to go through a few examples of the hearings that we have held, along with some of the headlines. I wish to say this before I get into this too far: Some of this deals with a company called Halliburton. The minute you mention the company Halliburton on the floor of the Senate, they say: Aha, this is a criticism of Vice President Cheney because he used to be president of Halliburton. It is not about Vice President Cheney. Vice President Cheney is not now president of Halliburton. He left that job when he became Vice President. This is not about him.

All of these actions have occurred after Vice President Cheney left the Halliburton Corporation. But this is about Halliburton and some other companies--Halliburton being the largest--that have gotten big, fat, multibillion-dollar contracts, no-bid, sole-source contracts, and, with all of the evidence in front of us, have been charging American taxpayers for services they have not delivered or overcharging the taxpayers for other services.

We need to aggressively root out that waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me give some examples. The committee that I chair, the Policy Committee, had a hearing. We heard from a man named Rory Mayberry. Rory Mayberry is the former food production manager for KBR, which is a Halliburton subsidiary. Halliburton has gotten billions of dollars to deliver all sorts of things to our troops in Iraq, including feeding the troops.

Here is what Mr. Mayberry, who was the food service supervisor, told us:

Food items were being brought in to our military base that

were outdated or expired by as much as a year and we were

told by the food service managers, feed them anyway, use them

anyway. So the food was fed to the troops, expired food with

expired date stamps. For trucks that were hit by convoy fire

and bombings we were told to go into the trucks, remove the

food items and use them after removing the bullets and any

shrapnel from the bad food that was hit. And we were told

then to remove the bullets and turn them over to the managers

of the food service operation as souvenirs.

We had hearings at which Bunnatine Greenhouse testified. Bunny Greenhouse was the top civilian official at the Corps of Engineers. She rose to the very top, the highest civilian official in the Corps of Engineers. That is the area of the Pentagon where they actually do the contracts for these firms. In that position, she was responsible for reviewing all contracts worth more than $10 million. After she objected to special treatment given Halliburton on a number of occasions, including an occasion where the company was brought into the meeting at which the contract was being discussed, the specs developed, and who it was going to be awarded to, after objecting to all that, she was forced to either resign or face demotion.

This is a woman who was the highest civilian official in the Corps of Engineers, given stellar performance reviews always, an outstanding employee. But then she started raising questions with the good old boy network about giving billions of dollars of sole-source contracts under the buddy system. She said:

I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to

contracts awarded to KBR [Halliburton] represents the most

blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during

the course of my professional career.

That is pretty strong.

Now let me go through a couple of headlines. Boston Globe, June of this year: Internal Pentagon audits have flagged about $1.4 billion in expenses submitted by Halliburton for services the firm is providing in Iraq. Charges include $45 for a case of soda, $100 per bag for laundry service, and several months preparing at least 10,000 daily meals that the troops didn't need and ultimately went to--by the way, in this meal issue, there is another complaint. The other complaint is they were charging for 42,000 meals a day and preparing 14,000 meals a day. That meant they were charging the taxpayers for 28,000 meals they were not serving the troops.

``Ex-Halliburton Workers Allege Rampant Waste: They say the firm makes no efforts to control costs, overspending taxpayers' money in Iraq and Kuwait.'' One former employee: ``They didn't want to control costs at all. Their motto was don't worry about cost. It's a cost plus contract.''

The supervisor described an arrangement in which Halliburton provided 10 percent of additional payment on its phone calls to a Kuwaiti company for providing cellular phones although nothing in the contract between Halliburton and the company called for the payments.

They just added 10 percent.

Well, I won't go through it at great length, but $7,500 a month to rent ordinary cars and trucks; $85,000 new trucks left on the side of the road because they had a flat tire, to be trashed and torched. Yes, the taxpayer paid for them. How about a fuel pump that was plugged. Leave the truck on the side of the road. It gets torched. It is all over. The taxpayer pays for it. It is all cost plus.

``Millions in U.S. Property Lost in Iraq, Report Says; Halliburton Claims Figures Only `projections'.''

``Halliburton Unable to Prove $1.8 Billion in Work, Pentagon Says.''

``Halliburton Faces Criminal Investigation,'' Houston Chronicle. ``Pentagon Proving Alleged Overcharges for Iraq Fuel.''

``Uncle Sam Looks Into Meal Bills; Halliburton Refunds $27 million as a Result.''

You would think with all of this you would have committees in the Congress saying: Wait a second, we are going to pull back the curtain. We are going to have tough investigations to evaluate what is happening, what is happening to the American taxpayer, what is happening with contracts that are given without any competition, soul- source, no-bid contracts.

Of course.

Mr. President, that gives me some hope, and I hope as a result of that the Senator would support my amendment as well. The fact is, we have not had many oversight hearings. We have now been in this conflict for several years, and a substantial amount of money has been spent. A very substantial amount of it has been wasted, regrettably.

But I think anything that any committee or subcommittee does to shine a spotlight on this makes some sense. I must say, however, as my colleague knows, there is substantial brushback from the administration. They do not want anything to do with this. And I understand why. But the fact is, what happened here was wrong. A top contracting official gets demoted because she blows the whistle on bad practices, and the taxpayer takes a bath to the tune, I think, of billions of dollars.

So whatever subcommittee or committee wants to dig into this, I think that would be great, and I certainly will commend my colleague if he convenes these hearings. But I would say this: I think there are substantial pressures on many of our committees and subcommittees by the administration not to move too far. We had an example of that on the issue of intelligence recently, and I won't explore that more, but there has been a lot of foot dragging in a lot of areas.

The point of this on behalf of myself, Senator Durbin, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Boxer, and others, the point of it is to establish what we know works, and what we know works is the Truman committee. Yes, it is an old model, but it is a model that really did work-- nonpartisan, bipartisan. Take a hard look at what is going on. Don't care where the chips fall, investigate it all. If somebody is cheating the American taxpayer, hold them accountable for it. I mean how do you miss 28,000 meals, overbilling somebody by 28,000 meals a day? I come from a town of 300 people, so we had a small restaurant. You can understand somebody missing a cheeseburger or two but 28,000 meals a day? That is cheating. And it ought not take twice to learn the lesson. Do business with companies that cheat. Cut them off. Shut it down.

I am not going into this at great length, but I can give the example of companies that in the same week that they were paying multimillion dollar penalties for cheating and defrauding the Government, in that same week they were signing new contracts for new business with this Government. Are we that lamebrained that we can't understand when somebody cheats you once you don't need a second chance?

In my hometown, again, a town of 300 people, you wouldn't need to learn that lesson twice. You do business with somebody who cheats you, you don't do business with them again. Not in this town. It is a slap on the wrist, a pat on the back. Atta boy. That is not the way it ought to work.

I could spend a lot of time on this. I will not do it now, but I could spend a lot of time talking about the abuses--the taxpayer pays to air-condition a building under reconstruction in Iraq. Well, that contract that goes to a subcontract, that goes to a local subcontract and pretty soon it is all done. We pay it. It is like an ice cube; it melts in your hand like money does as it goes through to--guess what-- pay for air-conditioning, and it is a ceiling fan in a room in Iraq some place. Cheating? You bet it is.

I want to show you a picture of two million dollars. Incidentally, this guy wearing the striped shirt, he worked in this area. These are hundred-dollar bills wrapped in Saran Wrap. What would they be doing with a pile of bills wrapped in Saran Wrap? He testified: I was over there with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is really us, as you know.

He says: We were telling people that when you come to pick up the cash for your contracts and so on, understand it is going to be in cash, so bring a bag. We deal in cash. He said we actually threw these around as footballs from time to time in the office, hundred-dollar bills wrapped in Saran Wrap.

I don't know how that would feel. But you can look at what it looked like, how they appeared. He said: Bring a bag. We deal in cash. He said: It was like the Old West

I have spoken at some length about this with a company called Custer Battle. A couple guys show up in Iraq, and they decide: We are going to be contractors. Pretty soon they are contractors. Pretty soon they have millions of dollars, millions of dollars in contracting, and then they start setting up offshore subsidiaries and selling to them, cheating the Federal Government. A couple of their employees decide that is not right and they are going to disclose it. Then their lives are threatened.

There is so much going on that it is just almost unbelievable to me.

The inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority issued a report about the use of funds that actually belong to the Iraqis. It came from the oil revenues which was under our control then. There were 8,206 guards at one Iraqi ministry, 8,206 guards at one of the ministries. And that is what we were paying for through this $9 billion. It turns out, in paying 8,206 security people, there were only 602 of them. But 8,206 were paid. Where did the money go? If we could have dyed all that money purple and walked around to see who had purple pants pockets, we could have figured it out. This is a massive cheating and abuse scandal.

This is like a Rip Van Winkle operation. We sort of doze through it all, don't offend anybody, upset anybody.

I am delighted to hear my colleague is going to hold some hearings in December, but I am telling you this is a cesspool of trouble, digging into this.

The guy who used to buy towels for our troops, from K.B.R. Halliburton, bought hand towels--you know, the little hand towels. He told us how he ordered the hand towels. Need some thousands and thousands and thousands of hand towels for the troops? Well, you just order them, don't you? Oh, no, no. His supervisor said you don't just order hand towels, you order hand towels embroidered with the company's logo on it so it can double the price. You think when the troops are washing their hands and face they are going to want just a plain towel? No, they are going to want one with our company logo on it, so order the more expensive one.

The sky is the limit. It is all cost plus. Don't worry. Be happy. We are all making money--except the taxpayer is taking a bath.

I have raised this issue now for about 2 years on the floor of the Senate, to dead silence.

There was a silence back in the forties when Harry Truman raised it. They empowered a committee to take a look and they discovered billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. The taxpayer was taking a bath and the Congress did something about it. The question is, Will it now?

We haven't received one answer from the Pentagon about all these issues. We haven't received one single answer. This has all been transmitted to the Pentagon, all of the testimony from five or six hearings. It is just unbelievable.

By the way, do you want 50,000 pounds of nails? I know where 25 tons of nails are. They are laying in the sand in Iraq, 25 tons of nails, 50,000 pounds ordered for reconstruction of Iraq. But they are the wrong size, and it does not matter, I guess, so they throw them on the ground and they reorder. It is just the taxpayers' money. It is all cost plus. Order 50,000 pounds of nails the wrong size. Don't sweat it. We are all going to get paid.

What a mess. So the point is, Congress has the responsibility. Congress has a responsibility to legislate, and Congress has a responsibility for something called oversight--oversight with respect to the funds that the Congress appropriates. These funds, after all, come in from the American taxpayers

and then are used to be expended on various operations, various projects, in this case reconstruction in Iraq or contractors that are contracting to provide assistance to the troops in Iraq. Some of that assistance to the troops manifests itself in food that is expired, manifests itself in charging for food that wasn't delivered.

Now, Mr. President, I was tempted to go through the whole list of those who have testified. I shall not do that in deference to my colleague who is on the floor ready to speak. But I think the point is made. The Congress can continue to decide, No, we don't want to do anything about this, and vote against this amendment. They have done it previously. But it is pretty hard, it seems to me, to look in the mirror and think you have done a good job for the people in this country, the taxpayers who pay the taxes, if you don't believe this deserves your special attention and you don't believe that Congress has failed in its responsibility of oversight. If you don't believe that, then you should vote against my amendment. But if you understand the responsibility for oversight and understand there has been virtually nothing done except for the hearings I chair in the Policy Committee and with those hearings have uncovered dramatic examples of massive waste, fraud, and abuse, if you believe that is a real serious problem, then you ought to support this amendment.

I hope every Senator will ask questions of the Pentagon about Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking civilian in the Pentagon with outstanding performance reviews, outstanding reviews all along the way until she began to say: You can't do this. You are violating the regulations of the Pentagon in the way you are proceeding with respect to no-bid contracts, no-bid, sole-source, cost-plus contracts, the minute she started telling those at the top of the Corps of Engineers who wanted to award these kinds of contracts to say: Look, you are violating the very rules that exist. The minute she started doing that, her career took a dramatic turn for the worse. At that point, she was told you are either going to be fired or demoted.

If the Congress does not care about that, then it does not care about anything. If those who have the courage to speak up and tell the truth, as they see it, are told the consequences for that will be their career, then this Congress doesn't care much about those who have the courage to stand up and speak out when it is necessary. There has been a deafening silence, with the exception of a few Members of Congress, on that point as well.

This woman fights on alone. Why? Because not enough people here seem to care, not even to care to ask the basic question of those who run the Pentagon. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Durbin, Senator Lautenberg, and Senator Boxer, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I inquire, how much of the 30 minutes allowed to the proponent of the amendment has been used?

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. Senator Durbin, I know, wishes to speak on this amendment. I reserve the remainder of the time on this amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, we have come from a Commerce-Energy Committee joint hearing with the CEOs of the major energy companies. They came to talk to us about the price of energy.

I made the point this morning--I know the Presiding Officer was also there and made the points she wished to make--as we go into the winter season, those who are trying to figure out how they afford home heating fuel, natural gas, propane, and so on, take a look at the newspapers and see the highest profits in history for the oil companies. They are the ones, the consumers, who will have to bear the pain. Heat your home in the winter or try to figure out how you are going to pay the fuel bill in the spring if you are a farmer or a rancher. These prices are going to eat away all the profit that existed, and then some, with respect to family farmers in my State. That is according to estimates that come from the farm organization and from economists who have looked at it.

The question for family farmers who are being ripped by these energy prices or people who drive to the gas pumps or people who are figuring out how to heat their homes is, Is anybody going to do anything about it? You have all the gain on this side and all the pain on this side. All the gain with the big energy companies, the big oil companies, the major integrated oil companies, bigger, stronger, with more raw muscle power in the marketplace because of block buster mergers, and all the pain on the other side, the consumers.

Especially in a State that is an agricultural State where we rely on family farmers as a significant part of our economic base, knowing that those family farmers operate on a thin margin, knowing that they are trying to figure out how to pay energy costs going into spring planting and fertilizer costs and so on, knowing that it is going to wipe away any net profit they would have, any opportunity for a net profit next year, they are saying to this Congress: Talk is cheap. What are you going to do? Will Congress take some action? Will Congress take action to ease the pain and provide some fairness and restore fairness? I hope so.

I won't go into great detail about the action I think we should take. I have done that many times on the floor with respect to a Windfall Profits Rebate Act, to rebate to consumers a portion of these profits.

My hope is that in the shadow of the hearings we held today, Congress will be ready to take some action with respect to energy price issues.

Madam President, I have received a press statement, issued moments ago, from the Amtrak National Rail Passenger Corporation board of directors. Four members on the board of directors represent membership appointed by the President. Two of them are recess appointments not given the stamp of approval by the Senate. The four members of the board of directors at Amtrak this morning decided to fire David Gunn, president of Amtrak.

David Gunn is not anybody's crony. He happens to be an appointment that is smart, tough, with experience in the area. He has run Amtrak like a true champion. He ran afoul of the White House when the White House decided they wanted to shut down Amtrak, shut down long-distance trains and effectively get rid of Amtrak.

David Gunn was the president of Amtrak. He and others fought to maintain rail passenger service and fought to persuade this Congress to fund Amtrak. The administration recommended zero funding for Amtrak. The Congress didn't agree. So the Congress funded Amtrak in a manner that would allow it to continue to be a national rail passenger system. Apparently, David Gunn doesn't measure up to the White House, and so they got the board of directors this morning to fire him. Incidentally, two of the recess appointments on the board of directors, one from New Jersey, one from Florida, will have some kind of rail passenger service no matter what happens to Amtrak. All those folks who live on the east coast, from Boston to Florida, they probably are always going to have a train running down that little strip on the eastern seaboard. I can understand these two members of the board, neither of whom were confirmed by the Senate, both of whom were given recess appointments by the President and cannot continue beyond this Congress, I can understand if the President or somebody in the White House said: Let's get rid of this David Gunn. They say: That's all right because even if we get rid of Amtrak, we will have rail passenger service on the east coast.

I wish to say what a horrible mistake it was for the board of directors of Amtrak to do this. I understand where it came from. It came from the White House. It came from the Secretary of Transportation. I understand meetings were held in recent days, and the decision was made. That decision was carried out by the President's board of directors.

I am saying this: A national rail passenger system, Amtrak, is beneficial to this country. In my State, 100,000 people used Amtrak last year. Many of those people don't have alternative transportation opportunities. Yet when Amtrak, the Empire Builder, in this case, runs from Chicago to Seattle, 100,000 North Dakotans have used it. It is an important part of our Nation's transportation system. But there is a disagreement about Amtrak. The President wants to shut it down. He doesn't want it. That is why he proposed no funding for it. The Congress, the majority from his own party, said: No, we want to fund it. We believe Amtrak advances this country's transportation system. We believe it is worthy, something we should do.

The president of Amtrak, David Gunn, is a first-rate executive. He has experience. He has done a great job. I say that as a member of the committee that authorizes Amtrak, so I have watched this enterprise. I have spent time with Mr. Gunn. I have spent time with Amtrak officials. I know what is happening there. This guy is nobody's crony. As a result, he gets fired.

The ``you are doing a great job, Brownie stuff,'' I am sick of that. I would like to see people who are qualified to run things running things in this Government. They had one running Amtrak. Today he gets fired because somebody got their nose out of joint and decided, apparently, the Congress won't allow us to shut down Amtrak so we will fire the president of Amtrak.

It is a big mistake for the country. I don't know how others in Congress will react, but for me, this is a setback and a setback for those who care about rail passenger service. It was a travesty to treat David Gunn, an executive who came out of retirement to run Amtrak and who did a first-rate job, this way. Shame on those who made that decision. This is all about politics. It has nothing to do with performance. I thought, especially in the wake of what happened with Hurricane Katrina, maybe we would get back to performance and decide that when people know how to do things and organize well, they are appreciated. That is not the case with respect to the decision by the board of directors at Amtrak this morning.

Those of us who feel that way probably won't have a chance to overturn this because the board of directors made the decision coming from the

Secretary of Transportation, coming from the White House, I guess. But I still think it is a setback for the country. I hope others know it as well.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use 6 minutes of the time that is allocated to Senator Harkin on the amendment that is pending, if in fact the Harkin amendment is now pending. I believe it is.

Mr. President, the Harkin amendment is a very simple

amendment. Let me describe it. We have something called Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, AFRTS, a worldwide radio and television broadcast. It serves a million American service men and women and their families stationed at bases and American diplomatic posts in 179 countries around the world.

Armed Forces Radio and Television is paid for with taxpayers' dollars. It is a wonderful service to our troops and the families who are stationed overseas and at diplomatic posts. One of the questions that we raised recently was the question of programming on Armed Forces Radio and Television, not that anyone would want to censor any programming, far from it, but the question of whether there is balance and diversity on the programming that is on these stations.

I visited with a woman named Allison Barber, who is apparently in charge of some of this. She actually came to my office and we visited. And we spoke on the phone earlier this year. I have since tried to reach her again, unsuccessfully, with I think three or four telephone calls. First, she was traveling in Europe. She is back but not returning her telephone calls at this point.

I talked to Allison Barber because I felt they were doing the troops a service by providing a certain kind of programming. They have conservative talk shows on Armed Forces Radio and Television, Armed Forces Radio specifically, which is fine. Some of them are enormously successful, entertaining, have a wide listener audience, and that makes a great deal of sense that they would offer that to the troops abroad. The question I asked Allison Barber is, If you are going to offer conservative talk shows, do you not think that you would want to offer a counterbalance so that the troops abroad would have both sides of issues?

The reason I asked that is when I began to look at what the 33 local stations in Armed Forces Radio broadcast, it was this: Of the programming that is essentially political programming or defined as conservative programming, there was 100 percent on the conservative side and nothing on the progressive side.

I said: Well, I would never suggest that conservative programming be taken off. I think it is probably there because it is entertaining, interesting, well done, and the troops want to hear it. Do you not think, since our country is split very close to 50-50 in terms of political preference, the other side might well be represented? In fact, are not your rules such that they say--I am talking about the directives now that the Department of Defense refers to--the political programming shall be characterized by its fairness and balance? How would one characterize this as fairness and balance? One cannot.

The amendment offered by Senator Harkin does not suggest anybody ever be taken off the air. Continue to air all of these things but provide both sides of political dialogue, which is not the case today. That is what my colleague says should be done. I agree with him.

Our colleague from Oklahoma comes to the Senate floor and talks about a second-degree amendment. He says, I kind of like what is going on now. Boy, I would guess he would. He belongs to a political party that is heavily supported by the programming on Armed Forces Radio. I can well understand why he would enjoy that sort of decision.

I believe Allison Barber, the Department of Defense, and all of those involved in selecting programming should do both things. They ought to provide this kind of programming, conservative talk shows and the rest, to the troops in the field and their families, and they ought to provide what their directive requires, fairness and balance, so that the other side has the same opportunity to be heard by those troops and their families. That is not now the case. That case does not now exist. My colleague from Iowa has offered an amendment that would begin to remedy this.

I know this debate will be characterized by the talk shows on the far right as trying to take them off the air. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do not recommend that for a moment. I simply believe that Allison Barber and the others involved in these decisions have a responsibility. The responsibility is to provide balance in the political programming on the Armed Forces Radio system that is paid for by the American taxpayer, so that all of those who have access to that radio signal have access to balanced programming, both sides being heard.

The other thing is--I assume it is a joke. I assume it is a joke, but I cannot be sure because I have heard it more than once. My colleague from Oklahoma says: Well, Rush Limbaugh is balanced by National Public Radio. How one could actually make that assertion without openly laughing is hard for me to understand. That surely must be a joke. National Public Radio does not counterbalance rightwing talk. National Public Radio, if there is something in this country that is fair and balanced--National Public Radio is not about political programming on the right or the left.

We hear a lot of excuses. The question is, Will the Armed Forces Radio system do what is required of them in their directive? The answer apparently is no. So what my colleague from Iowa would do would be to codify in law what the directive now requires them to do, but what they now fail to do.

So that is the amendment. It is simple and fair. I do not see how anyone could possibly oppose that amendment. I would hope that we will have a successful vote on it.

Yes.

Well, if the Senator would allow me to respond, let me propose an idea which I have proposed to Armed Forces Radio. I said, What about putting someone on from this side with a progressive talk show that would counterbalance this? The answer apparently is, no. So would that not suggest that they are censoring this side of the aisle, censoring this side of the political debate? Is that not censorship?

Mr. President, if I might respond.

That is an unbelievable assertion. I have great respect for the Senator from Virginia, but it is unbelievable. I, too, drive down the road, and on my radio, for example, would listen to Rush Limbaugh, very entertaining, very smart. It is a program a lot of people listen to. What he does is, he relentlessly kicks the living daylights out of the opposite party. Is that found on NPR?

The implication and the suggestion on the Senate floor and elsewhere that

NPR is some sort of leftwing political show is absolute rubbish. I am sorry. It is absolute nonsense. I am so tired of hearing it.

Mr. President, I do not know if the Senator is willing to lend me more time, I would just say this to the Senator: There is one person in public service who tried to demonstrate what the Senator just said, and that is that National Public Radio is inherently biased. He just resigned last week. His name is Kenneth Tomlinson. Why did he resign? Because the Inspector General took a look at what he did. He hired some nut case from Indiana to do an evaluation of programming on NPR. The guy was so unprofessional--by the way, he was sending his reports from the fax of a Hallmark shop in Indiana, paid Federal money for it, Federal funds for it, inappropriately, a guy who had no experience and a guy who was a rightwinger who came up with the concoction that somehow NPR was not balanced. It is unbelievable that we keep hearing this nonsense.

Look, Rush Limbaugh has a fine radio program. A lot of people listen to it. I admire his capabilities. I just believe that our troops ought to be able to hear both sides of this debate on radio, and that is not now the case. That is the only point I make. The Senator should not suggest that National Public Radio somehow leans to the left or jumps to the left, or because it has a modulated voice is leftwing. It is not. It is the only fair and balanced radio program out there, in my judgment.

Mr. President, let me say to my colleague from Virginia, I do not mean to be irritated about this at all. My only point is this. I believe there are wonderful, talented people on the political right who are on the radio. They are very successful. Good for them. I believe there are talented people on the other side of the political spectrum who are on the radio dial. Good for them. Both ought to have an equal opportunity to be heard with respect to Armed Forces Radio programming. That is the point of it.

They are not now. Those on the progressive side are prevented from getting on that dial. We believe that is wrong with respect to a taxpayer-funded radio network. We believe it is inappropriate for the troops not to have access to both sides. The amendment of Senator Harkin, the one I cosponsored, is very simple. It says keep all these folks on, the conservative side, good for them; but put on the other side as well, be fair to them, so the troops have a chance to hear both sides. My friend from Virginia is a good friend, and I didn't mean at all to be irritated, but the NPR allegation does sort of spark my interest from time to time. We will talk about that at some point later.

My hope is we can fill in this gap and have our soldiers have a generous discussion on both sides of the political system with radio programming from the right and the left. That does not now happen, and I believe it should on a radio program that is funded by the American taxpayer.

Mr. President, I voted to reject the conference committee's report on the fiscal year 2006 Agriculture appropriations bill. There is much about this bill that I support. It funds important research in North Dakota and across the country that will greatly benefit American agriculture.

I voted against the conference report because of how it treats an important issue called country-of-origin labeling. The 2002 farm bill required that fruits, vegetables, seafood, and meat sold in grocery stores and supermarkets be labeled with its country of origin. This is a consumer-friendly, farmer-friendly, rancher-friendly law, and I strongly supported it. After all, if we can look at a label on our T- shirt and know where it came from, we should be able to do the same with the T-bone steak on our dinner plate.

Country-of-origin labeling, or COOL, was supposed to begin in September 2004. If we had followed the law we passed in the farm bill, American consumers would today be able to know where their food comes from, and our farmers and ranchers would be reaping the benefits. Unfortunately, 2 years ago, opponents of this commonsense law hid a provision in a massive spending bill that delayed the start date for COOL until 2006.

COOL is the law of the land. The Senate has voted overwhelmingly in favor of it. It should have gone into effect years ago. So I was outraged to learn there was another 2-year delay of COOL in this year's Agriculture Appropriations bill.

I knew some opponents of COOL wanted to delay this important program. But I expected that when the conference committee met to write a final version of the Agriculture appropriations bill, we would get a chance to debate this issue and vote on it, in public. Instead, a handful of Republican Senators and Representatives went behind closed doors and decided on their own to delay the program for an additional 2 years.

That is an outrage. I voted no today because I think we should send this bill back to the conference committee and force the conference committee to vote on this issue.

Madam President, some things in the Senate are heavy

lifting and tough to deal with. This is the easiest decision ever to be offered to this Senate. The question is, for what purpose do we offer a farm program in this country? The answer is, because family farmers cannot make it over the valleys of despair. With precipitous drops in international prices, devastating weather disasters, we will not have family farmers left unless we have a basic bridge across the valleys.

That is the purpose of the farm program. Instead of a bridge across valleys to help family farmers populate the prairies of this country, the farm program has become a set of golden arches for the biggest and the wealthiest farms in the country.

Senator Grassley and I proposed something that is kind of novel here. We proposed that the farm program be redirected to help family farms. What we say is this: At a time when we are going to cut price supports and cut the safety net for family farmers, we say maybe the better approach would be to restore those cuts and get the money by shutting down the millions of dollars in checks going to the corporate agrifactories in our country. Is that a novel solution? No. It is what the farm program was supposed to have been.

Let me describe what we have in this country. This is from a story in the Washington Post a couple years ago.

A prominent and well-respected businessman who lives in a

million-dollar home, sits on a local bank board and serves as

a president of a tractor dealership with sales last year of

$30.8 million . . .

He is also, by some definitions a farmer--the principal landlord of a 61,000-acre spread, $38 million from the Federal Treasury in 5 years.

Like other large operations this farm was structured to get

the most from government programs.

In other words, this was farming the farm program. A novel idea, farming the farm program. Perhaps we ought to stop people from farming the farm program.

Some of my colleagues say you have to be big in some parts of the country. That does not mean the taxpayer has to be shipping checks totaling $68 million or $38 million to those operations. Want to farm the whole country? God bless you. You have every right in this country to do so and we sure hope you are successful. But I don't see that the taxpayer ought to be the one who bankrolls the financing operation if you want to farm the entire county. That is all this is about.

My colleague Senator Grassley and I offer this not to penalize any part of the country. It is to refocus the farm program to where it ought to be, to help family farmers through tough times.

I mentioned that millions of dollars go to corporate megafarms. I also pointed out this is not what I came to the Congress to fight for. I want good support prices to go to family farms to help them through tough times so that in the long run we still have yard lights around this country with families living on the farm producing America's food. That is the purpose of a safety net.

Now, I described some of the megafarms, the corporate agrifactories getting millions of dollars. The Grassley-Dorgan amendment says, let's put some limits on it. We asked the USDA, who gets the farm program payments? Do we have some evidence about how much goes to the big interests? It is interesting, the USDA does not know to whom it is making the farm program payments. It does not know. In our piece of legislation, we require it to know. When they are shoveling millions out the door at USDA, they should figure out where they are sending them.

I was thinking about the payments that are made to farmers in the country. We care about family operations. That is the whole purpose of this. By the way, if the purpose is not to support family farming, we ought not have a farm program. We ought to get rid of it if it is not the purpose. I believe it is the purpose and should be the purpose.

Remember that movie, ``Weekend at Bernies,'' while they haul around a dead guy for the whole weekend? They put him in the car, by a swimming pool with sunglasses on, and hauled around a dead guy. The movies don't have anything on the USDA. The USDA sees dead people on farm subsidy rolls. In fact, you have to be ``actively engaged,'' the law says, in farming. And yet they are making payments to dead people. How can you be ``actively engaged'' as a farmer if you are dead? But the USDA does not know who it is sending money to so we could not expect them to answer this question: Why are 55 dead farmers receiving more than $400,000 each in farm program payments?

I understand my colleagues exerting a lot of muscle trying to help live farmers. Maybe at least we could agree on dead farmers not receiving nearly half a million each.

Let's back up for a moment. Let's try to ask ourselves, why do we have a farm program? Of what value is it to our country? My great- grandmother actually ran a farm. She lost her husband, an immigrant from Norway, took a train to Eagle Butte Township, and with six kids, pitched a tent, worked a farm, had a son who had a daughter who had me, which is how I came to southwestern North Dakota. It was a family farm. Think of the courage to run this family operation.

Over time, this country said we will not have them left on the prairie if we do not provide some basic support over tough times, a bridge over price valleys. So we did. It is called price supports, to try and help family farmers.

Boy, has that grown. This little price support program trying to help family farmers through tough times has grown to become a huge boon to some of the biggest operators in the country, having nothing to do with families, having to do with corporate agrifactories. Is that what we want the program to be?

The choice Senator Grassley and I offer is a simple choice. The committee brings to the Senate a proposition that says let's cut farm program payments for every farmer. Let's cut farm program price payments for every farmer. We say there is a better way. How about rather than pull the rug out from other family farmers, we decide to do what we should have done long ago, and that is, shut off the spigot on the money that is going to the big corporate agrifactories that have nothing at all to do with families. I am not suggesting they are unworthy, the corporate agrifactories. I am not suggesting that at all. I am saying if they want to farm the whole county, half a State, or they want to get bigger and bigger and bigger and decide to separate into 49 or 69 or 89 entities in order to farm the farm program, God bless them. I just don't think there is a requirement that the American taxpayer or the Federal Government has to bankroll them. I don't think that is our requirement.

The urge and the urgency for Congress should be to want this country to maintain a network of family farms for the people who risk everything. We are not trying to define exactly what a family farmer is. Some are quite large. But I know what it isn't. Michelangelo was asked, how did he sculpt David? He said, I took a piece of marble and chipped away everything that wasn't David. We can have a family farm and chip away that which it is not.

That which it is not, which we are defining today in some respects, represents the enterprises that do not need the Federal Government's help to grow. They have already grown to the point where they are farming a substantial part of our counties around the country.

This is a choice. We can decide to cut farm program payments for everybody and pull the rug out from under a lot of families out there barely making it, given energy costs and the price of grain, or we can provide the kind of program payments over tough times that we told family farmers we would provide and get the money to do that by limiting the payments that go to people who are getting $38 million in the case of the first enterprise I talked about. That is sensible.

The question is very simple: What do you think the purpose of the farm program is? Whose side are you on? Who are you trying to help?

I suppose my discussion about dead farmers was tongue-in-cheek, but it raises an important question. If we had 55 farmers who are dead who receive $400,000-plus, each of them, nearly half a million each, it raises a pretty important question about the golden arches that exist here for some of the biggest enterprises out there in rural America.

This is not difficult. I understand, and I don't denigrate my colleagues

who are forced to support the biggest corporate farms and to support the way things are. I understand that. Everyone has a constituent interest here. But our interest, the interest of Senator Grassley and myself, is not to try to injure anybody or injure any part of the country. Our interest is to say this country should aspire to say to family farmers, You matter in America; we want you to be able to make it through tough times. That is why we have a farm program.

When the choice is, do we pull the rug out from under you with the cuts coming from the proposal today, or is there a better way by which we can limit payments to the largest corporate farms and use that money to restore the kind of help we have always said we wanted to provide family farmers, isn't that a smart thing to do? Isn't that the right thing to do? Isn't that what public policy was designed to do, to help America's family farmers?

Take a poll, any time, any place in America, and ask the question about whether they value family farmers. They do. Farmers and ranchers who live on the land risk everything. Every spring all they have is hope, the hope that maybe they will get a crop. Maybe it won't hail. Maybe it won't rain too much. Maybe it won't rain too little. Maybe somehow they get a crop, after they put all the money in, in the spring. And when they harvest it, the hope they get a price and maybe they will make a living. That is all they have, is hope.

That is why this Congress has in the past said, let's try to make sure they have some capability with a safety net to make it across these price valleys and these tough times. That is what Senator Grassley and I are trying to preserve. Every year people try to chip away more and more and more. We are trying to preserve that hope, trying to preserve a way of life, something we think is important to the future of this country.

We can have corporations farm from California to New York, I suppose, big agrifactories. But what are the consequences of that? We lose something very important in this country when we lose America's family farm producers and family ranchers.

How much time did I consume?

I reserve the final 4 minutes of my presentation.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining for the entire debate?

Mr. President, I want to correct, I think, an impression that was made. I do not think it was intentional, but the impression was that the Grassley-Dorgan amendment would prohibit the largest corporate farms from getting payments. We do not do that. They are limited in the payments they would receive. We do put a limit on it. We do not prohibit them. They will still get payments right up to the top limit. But that is all.

To further make my point, in one case, a Mississippi cotton farmer set up a web of 78 corporations and partnerships that collected $11 million in subsidies. The name of one of his companies was Get Rich Farms.

The farm program is not about getting rich for anybody. The farm program is to try to provide some protection and some help for family farmers, who are left to the vagaries of a marketplace that whipsaws up and down with weather, natural disasters. This is not about getting rich. It is about getting through tough times. That is what Senator Grassley and I wish to do.

Now, Mr. President, my colleague from Iowa has arrived. I know he wishes some time. We have very little time left, but I will truncate my remarks so the remaining time will be available to Senator Harkin, who is also a cosponsor of this legislation.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. President, let me provide the 6 minutes that is available to Senator Harkin.

I say to Senator Harkin, there are 6 minutes available on this debate. I will yield my time at this point in order to make that available.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague for yielding. The chairman of the Agriculture Committee used the word ``resent''--I don't remember the exact context--and suggested that somehow what has been presented on the floor of the Senate about the size of the corporate agrifactories sucking money out of this farm program is inaccurate. I stand by my statement and say there is plenty of evidence. I will put even more in the Record about the size of these enterprises that are sucking massive amounts of money out of the farm program at a time when family farmers are seeing their farm program payments cut. That is the purpose of our amendment.

I don't wish to extend this any great length. I only respond because the Senator used my name. I will be happy to put in the Record the specific and exact representations about the size of family farmers, the largest corporate agrifactories taking massive amounts of money out of the program trough. I want family farmers to be available to have access to that farm program payment that they need in order to survive. That is the purpose of the amendment.

I thank the Senator from New Mexico for allowing me to respond.

Amendment No. 2365

Reserving the right to object, I assume the request means we will go back and forth in rotation across the aisle.

I believe I am yielded 10 minutes per the instructions of the Senator from Wisconsin.

Mr. President, first I will say a word about the leadership of this subcommittee, Senator Bennett from Utah and my colleague, Senator Kohl, from the State of Wisconsin. I appreciate the work they have done. This is not easy to do. The product that came out of the Senate was a good subcommittee bill. To the chairman, the ranking member, and their staffs, I thank them for all of the work they have done on this legislation.

As they might know, while they are complimented, there is something that comes behind the compliment. They both know that I did not sign the conference report, having nothing to do with their actions or their activities. I refused to sign the conference report because of what happened in the conference. I wish to describe just a little of that.

The process by which we went to conference with the U.S. House was one in which we expected we would be treated with some respect and we would, through the normal course of things, make judgments and decisions and have votes. That did not happen. It did not happen on the issue especially of the country-of-origin labeling for meat--something my colleague just described. This is a commonsense, farmer-friendly, rancher-friendly law that has always been opposed by the big meat- packing plants and those who do their bidding. The fact is, it is the law of the land and should have been implemented last year.

One day, I brought a porterhouse steak to the floor of the Senate. I had to ask consent to show it on the Senate floor. I held up a porterhouse steak and I said: I would like to know if anybody can tell me where this piece of meat came from. Anybody? Well, nobody could tell where the piece of meat came from. It is just a piece of raw meat in cellophane. It comes from the store.

I asked the question: Might it have come from this particular packing plant? This packing plant, by the way, was only inspected once by a USDA inspector. It happens to be in Mexico. Here is what he said he found. This is a packing plant sending meat to our country. The inspector found:

Shanks and briskets were contaminated with feces, a U.S.

Department of Agriculture official later wrote of his tour of

the plant on the floor. In the refrigerator, he wrote, a

diseased, condemned carcass was observed ready for boning and

distribution in commerce.

The audit noted paint and viscera containers, condensation

from dirty surfaces dripping into the exposed product . . .

Did anyone know if that piece of meat came from that plant? No one could tell because it was not labeled.

I thought then about something I read when I was in school. Upton Sinclair wrote the book ``The Jungle'' in 1906. He described the conditions in the packing plants of Chicago. He said:

There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the

water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of

rats would race about on it.

Then he described how they would lace loaves of bread with poison and lay them around, and the rats would eat the poison and die, and they would shove it down a hole and grind it up and ship it out as meat.

People read ``The Jungle'' written by Upton Sinclair and demanded something be done in this country, and it was. We have a wholesome supply of meat in this country that we are proud of. Our farmers and ranchers who produce it have a wholesome supply that is inspected. We are proud of it.

``The Jungle,'' 1906--I just read what he said in the book. May 1999, one inspector goes to Mexico--by the way, he has never gone back. This plant was closed, opened immediately thereafter with new owners and a new company name, and has never been inspected since. Condensation from dirty surfaces dripping into the exposed product . . . Carcass shanks and briskets [were] contaminated with feces. . . .

Does it sound like 1906? Sound like ``The Jungle''? Or if you are reading ``The Jungle,'' 1906, by Upton Sinclair:

There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in

the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit

uncounted billions of . . . germs.

The employees' feet touched carcasses . . . a diseased

condemned carcass . . . was observed in the chilling room

ready for boning and distribution in commerce.

How much progress have we made?

So we go to conference and there is a requirement there be meat labeling, and the big packing houses and those that do their bidding in this Congress say it would be way too complicated.

We can drive a remote car on the surface of the planet Mars, and we can't stick a label on a piece of meat, for god's sake? We did require that of seafood. Go to the local grocery store and buy some seafood and you will find a label.

Let me tell you what the manager of the meat department at a supermarket had to say about implementing labeling for seafood. On April 4, 2005, asked about labeling seafood, this fellow at a supermarket said, ``It's just a matter of putting a sticker on the package.''

Not a problem. So why, then, are the American consumers now told, as a result of this conference, that not only are you not going to get country-of-origin labeling last year when you were supposed to have had it--and then we extended it, the folks over there on the House side extended it--so now they extended it 2 more years. And they did that after they recessed the conference and extended the date for implementation of this law--and it is a law--by 2 years, never having a vote, never notifying anybody.

I would expect the chairman and ranking member of this subcommittee should be furious about that. They probably are. I wrote, by the way, the chairman of the conference and said to the chairman of the conference: That will only happen once because you will not have a second conference in which we sit around and somewhere between the issue of thumb-sucking and daydreaming, believe there is a crevice to do the right thing.

If you decide you are not going to allow votes and then get rid of the conference and go behind a closed door with one party from one side of the Capitol and decide you are going to change the law and shove it down everybody's throat, you are only going to get to do that once. The next time you go to a conference like that, it is going to be a much different circumstance because we now know how at least some are willing to treat others in the conference.

It wasn't so much about treating us, it was about how you are treating farmers and ranchers who are proud of what they produce, and it is about how you are treating consumers in this country. Oh, in this Congress, regrettably, the big interests still have a lot of sway, a lot of influence. They somehow at the end of the day get their way. They especially get their way when the door is closed, when the lights are out; the door is closed, and it is done in secret. And that is exactly what happened here. People should be furious about what has been shoved down the throats of the Congress as a result of a few people in that conference.

So the result will be bad public policy. The result will be consumers consuming food, consuming meat that they do not know the origin of. Why? Because the Congress said: You don't

deserve to know the origin of that meat.

There is much to say about this subject. My colleague from Montana described his disgust. My colleague from Iowa will as well. I probably should, in the middle of this angst, say again that this is not the fault of the Senator from Utah, Mr. Bennett. It is not the fault of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Kohl. They did not do this.

My guess is--I have not talked to them at great length--they would have provided a conference that is the regular order: have debate and have a vote, have a debate and have a vote, and you count the votes and, in this system of ours, determine who has the votes and what policies prevail.

That is not what happened with respect to this conference with the House, and I regret that. We will have another opportunity. In the meantime, the consumers lose, the ranchers lose, the farmers lose because those, whose names I don't have in this statement, behind closed doors, in secret, decided to pull the rug out from under all of those interests.

I assume they are applauded today by the big economic interests, as is always the case in this Congress. But one day soon, I think consumers and others will say: There is no cause for applause for you. In fact, you really should be doing something else.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to follow the Senator. I would like to speak as well in morning business. I would like to speak for 15 minutes. I ask unanimous consent to speak following the presentation by my colleague.