Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor to make a brief statement on something I know the majority leader and also the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, have been speaking about in recent days, and that is the issue of the creation of an independent commission to evaluate exactly what kind of preparedness exists in this country and to evaluate this country's response to a natural disaster or to a terrorist attack.

It is important, it seems to me, in this case, to stare truth in the eye. We don't do that with fiscal policy. We don't stare truth in the eye with respect to trade policy. Both have the highest deficits in the history of the country at this point. There are many areas where we try to ignore what is going on, and we do so successfully, regrettably, much to the detriment of the future of this country. The question of what we do with disaster relief and disaster preparedness, preparedness to try to deal with a terrorist attack, is a different issue.

I noticed today in the newspapers and on television, the folks in New Orleans are beginning to clean up. Even as there remains the search for bodies and survivors, and so on, there are folks out sweeping the sidewalks in front of businesses, those businesses that have not been inundated with water. There are folks hauling away trash. There is a resiliency, a spirit that is irrepressible. Already people are starting to talk about their future, to clean up. So must we. So must we clean up and begin to repair.

None of this discussion should ever be about Republicans or Democrats. It is about success or failure. All of us looking truth in the eye must understand that the response by this country to what happened in the Gulf was a failure. Whose failure? I don't know. Perhaps the failure of all of us: Congress, the President, State and local officials--perhaps all of us. But I believe we ought to get to the bottom of it and evaluate how we change that which failed so miserably.

When you wake up this morning to the news that 34 people were left to die in a nursing home--yes, in the United States of America 34 people were left to die in a nursing home at the advent of an oncoming hurricane and breached dike and flood--you ask the question, Is this really the United States? What on Earth could have happened? We need to find out.

I know some of the Members of Congress have talked about creating a special committee in Congress to look at it. All right. It doesn't substitute for an independent commission, in my judgment. The President talked about his investigation, and, that is fine. What we need, most of all--what we did with respect to 9/11 is an independent commission with the kind of authority and power to get to the bottom of what happened. Why? Because if we do not fix what went wrong and make it right, we will remain unprepared in the advent of a terrorist attack or another natural disaster.

This was, we think, the worst natural disaster in this country's history. It can happen again. But we know terrorists will want to commit a terrorist attack in this country. We know there are thousands of nuclear weapons that exist in this world. We know there are people worried about terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon, detonating it in a trunk in a rusty Yugo sitting on a dock in one of America's major cities. What kind of response, what kind of disaster preparedness exists to deal with a terrorist attack?

I know why there are some who do not like independent commissions: you can't control them. You can't control information. You can't control direction. You lose control with an independent commission.

But we need an independent commission to investigate exactly what has happened, what went wrong at all levels, and try to evaluate how we put together a process that really does work, that represents the best of this country.

We know this country works. It has great ingenuity, great capability, but something happened that went wrong in a very significant way. This was a mess. It is not about blame, it is about accountability. Who is accountable? How are they accountable? How do we make them accountable?

So I believe we have a desperate need at this point to move quickly to put together an independent commission that can begin putting the pieces together. Even as the folks in New Orleans begin putting their city back together and cleaning up, so, too, should the President and Congress begin putting this together and cleaning up and evaluating it through the best work of some of the best minds in our country, some of the best people we can call on to serve on an independent commission to evaluate and investigate what went wrong and how do we, as a country, fix it.

Mr. President, there is one additional point I would like to make on legislation I have introduced. I notice the Energy Information Administration just released its short-term outlook. They forecast dramatic increases for residential energy costs this upcoming winter.

I come from North Dakota. We don't exactly have balmy weather in February and January, the middle of winter. We can sometimes have some pretty tough winters. It is a great State, but we have some tough winters. The ranges for heating fuel expenditures for natural gas in the Midwest, according to the EIA, are 69 to 70 percent increases in the winter in the Midwest.

We have a lot of folks who are going to have a devil of a time trying to pay these costs. I made the point before, and I know there are people in this Chamber who chafe at this, that the major integrated oil companies have gotten larger through mergers. They are much more powerful. They have the capability, working with others, to determine what happens in pricing and supply. We have OPEC people sitting around a table talking about pricing supplies. Then we have a futures market which is supposed to provide liquidity--which it does, but it provides much more than that nowadays. It is rampant speculation in spot markets. The result of that is the highest prices we have seen in this country.

Last year, the price of oil was $34.50 a barrel--January 31, 2004. At that price the oil companies are making record profits. Now it is $30 above that. That is $7 billion a month in extra profit, $80 billion on a yearly basis of extra profit. That, in my judgment, is unfair. Flowing through it is a 70-percent increase in natural gas prices to those trying to heat their homes, or flowing through the gas pump where you put in 15 gallons and pay $52. That is unfair. I think there ought to be a windfall profits tax recapturing that windfall and using it in rebates to consumers. I don't begrudge anyone a fair profit, but this is not a fair market and I believe Congress should take some action. This issue existed long before Hurricane Katrina formed and hit this country, and I believe it behooves this Congress to address these issues, especially before we go into the winter heating season and the folks, particularly in the northern Great Plains and other States, are going to pay 70 percent increases--in some cases a price they simply cannot afford to pay for something as basic as heating their homes.

This Congress needs to act. I hope one of the actions will be to consider the legislation I have introduced.

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

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

Mr. President, let me ask that morning business be closed.

Mr. President, with respect to the list of amendments that has been filed to the pending bill, the amendment that Senator Salazar has filed dealing with the hurricane, I ask unanimous consent that amendment be attributed to Senator Bingaman.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1670, which I have filed at the desk.

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

Mr. President, I will describe very briefly this amendment--I shall come to the floor and talk about it more later--and then I will use the remaining minutes that are available to talk about an amendment I have previously offered to the bill.

This amendment, very simply, deals with the contracting that our country is paying for, particularly with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. It especially deals with establishment of a special committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse.

Now, I indicated yesterday that whenever you speak of the company Halliburton, people think you are coming to the floor to criticize the Vice President. Let me say that is not the case. The Vice President was the president of Halliburton but not during any of the time that any of this has happened. But Halliburton has been, I believe, the largest contractor in Iraq. Halliburton and some other companies have been cited in ways that make my blood boil, and I believe it has the same reaction with the rest of the American people.

Let me read some headlines, if I might. Nobody, by the way, seems to want to investigate this, and nobody seems to care much about it.

``Halliburton Has Failed to Account for $1.8 billion in Charges'' for work performed in Iraq and Kuwait. That is from the Wall Street Journal of August 11, 2004.

``Pentagon Auditors Have Recommended Withholding 15% of Payments to Halliburton.'' That is from the Wall Street Journal of December 10, 2003.

. . . the [Pentagon's] top financial officer . . . alerted

[Secretary] Rumsfeld of ``significant issues regarding the

timeliness and adequacy of KBR price proposals'' and

``deficiencies'' in its billing, purchasing, and estimating

systems.

``Whistleblowers Have Documented Halliburton Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.''

``Halliburton Overcharged $186 Million for Meals.'' That is from the Federal Times of June 21, 2004.

``Halliburton Overcharged $212 Million for Oil Deliveries.''

I could go through this. I have a sheet that is eight pages long. And, yes, it talks about $85,000 new trucks that are dumped on the side of the road because they have a flat tire or a fuel pump that is plugged. What do they do with it? Well, this is direct testimony from people who worked for Halliburton who drove the trucks, abandoned the trucks, let them torch the trucks for a flat tire. The list is unbelievable when you hear what has happened.

A contractor pays $45 for a case of soda, $100 for cleaning a 15- pound bag of laundry. We had one fellow who was buying towels--towels-- for our soldiers. He held up two towels: This is a towel we would normally purchase, but we were asked by Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, & Root, KBR, to buy towels with their logo on it. So you doubled the price of the towel to ship to the soldiers because it has the logo of the company on the towel.

In 1941, Harry Truman was in this Chamber. We had a Democrat in the White House. A Democratic Senator demanded an investigation of waste, fraud, and abuse, and a special committee was established called the Truman Committee. They went after waste, fraud, and abuse. I am sure it was not very pleasant for Franklin Delano Roosevelt down at the White House with a Democrat in the Senate demanding an investigation of waste, fraud, and abuse. The fact is, the Truman Committee uncovered massive waste, fraud, and abuse.

Now we have a President and a Congress controlled by one party. We do not even have oversight hearings on these things. I am the only one who has been holding hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee and having the whistleblowers come forward and talk about the massive waste, fraud, and abuse that exists. No oversight hearings. No accountability. Nobody seems to care.

My amendment, very simply, says there ought to be established a special committee to investigate this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me say to those who say, Well, you are trying to legislate on an appropriations bill, yes, I am. I am. I tried to offer this on the Defense authorization bill, which is where it belongs. I did offer it to the Defense authorization bill, and the Defense authorization bill was taken off the floor of the Senate; we are told never to reappear again. So the only option we have is to offer this kind of amendment on this appropriations bill.

So I wanted to describe what this amendment is. It would establish a type of Truman Committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. It is not about politics. It is about, on behalf of the American people, asking the tough questions about waste, fraud, and abuse. We are shoveling money out the door, shoveling money--billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars--to be spent in the country of Iraq for rebuilding Iraq. Then we hear stories about the American taxpayer paying for the air-conditioning of a building in Iraq, and then it goes to a contractor and a subcontractor and somebody else who subcontracts from that, and by the time it gets installed, it is a ceiling fan, and the American taxpayer paid for air-conditioning.

Guess what. It is going on all over. The company orders 50,000 pounds of nails, 25 tons of nails, and they order the wrong size, so Halliburton's nails are lying in the sand somewhere in Iraq. Does anybody care about that?

We are talking about billions of dollars of no-bid contracts. I am going to hold a hearing on Friday with the woman who rose to the highest rank--the highest civilian employee in the Corps of Engineers, Bunnatine Greenhouse. And what is happening to her? Well, she had the guts to speak up and

speak out, saying these no-bid contracts were being awarded to Halliburton in an inappropriate way without following the rules.

Well, guess what happened to Bunnatine Greenhouse for raising those questions. She is losing her career over in the Pentagon at the Corps of Engineers. She is being demoted. She always had excellent, sterling evaluations--until she said: You can't do this. This isn't a buddy system. You can't be awarding contracts this way.

For her honesty and for her courage, she is told she is either going to be fired or going to be demoted, against, I might say, the wishes of the inspector general who is investigating it.

Amendment No. 1665

Mr. President, let me talk for a moment about the other amendment I have offered to this bill. As you know, today's trade announcement is we had a $58 billion--$58 billion--trade deficit in the last month; about $700 billion a year, we are going to see. That is $700 billion a year more than we send out in exports that we purchase in imports. So let me talk about this.

Here is what is happening in American trade. We are drowning in trade deficits. As you know, attendant to that, we are sending jobs overseas at a rapid rate.

Fruit of the Loom--you all remember the people dressed up as grapes, singing their little Fruit of the Loom songs. It used to be American underwear. But American underwear is no longer American. If you are wearing Fruit of the Loom somewhere in America today, you are wearing Mexican shorts or probably Chinese shorts and T-shirts. So Fruit of the Loom is gone, and 3,200 people who used to work for Fruit of the Loom are no longer employed.

PalmPilot--if anybody has worked on a PalmPilot, here is the last message from a young woman--I have her name, and I will not go through it, but I will at some other time when I have the time to do that. Here is the last message from a women who worked for PalmPilot. By the way, she was forced to train her replacement, who is a worker from India, because those jobs went to India. Here is her last message on her PalmPilot: ``My job's gone to India!!''

I have spoken at length about Huffy bicycles. I will not speak longer about them today, but all the folks in Ohio were fired. They used to make Huffies. Incidentally, this little thing between the handle bars and the front fender, that used to be an American flag decal. They cleverly changed it to a globe once the jobs went to China, and all the American workers were fired. Oh, it is still an American brand, it is just that Americans do not get a chance to make them any more because the American workers were paid $11 an hour, plus benefits, and now they are made in China, but with workers who make 33 cents an hour and work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. They are still sold in Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears. They are called an American bicycle. They are not. They are not an American bicycle.

And the Maytag repairman--all those television commercials about this old bloke having nothing to do. Well, 1,600 U.S. Maytag jobs went to Mexico and Korea.

I could do this for a long time.

Even as it proceeds to lay off up to 13,000 workers in

Europe and the United States, IBM plans to increase its

payroll in India by more than 14,000 workers.

That was 2 months ago in the New York Times.

Now, what does all this mean for our country?

It means our country is losing economic strength, losing jobs. We are hollowing out America's manufacturing base. In the last 20 years, our manufacturing base has shrunk by half. We are told it is all right, and it is going to be fine in the long run if those who produce, yes, American companies that produce, search for the lowest cost production anywhere in the world and then they land in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China or somewhere else and hire someone else for 16 cents an hour. And, yes, they do. They will hire 12-year-old kids for 12 cents an hour and work them 12 hours a day. If you doubt it, I will show you where it happens.

People say: Well, that is all right because all those jobs, they are going to go elsewhere, but we will have higher wage, higher skilled jobs in this country. They are all wrong. It does not work that way. This country is losing economic strength and losing economic opportunity. The people who are losing their jobs because American jobs are moving elsewhere, in search of lower wages, those are people who are not able to find jobs that are equivalent jobs. In almost all cases, they find the next job at a lower wage rate.

This is a race to the bottom. Rather than aspiring to lift other countries up, it is driving down wage rates and opportunities in our country.

There is a man named James Fyler. James Fyler died of lead poisoning. He was shot 54 times. I suppose that is acute lead poisoning. He was shot 54 times long ago because he had the temerity to stand up for the ability and the right of workers to organize. So he lost his life. I could cite many others who lost their lives standing up for the right of people to organize as workers. Apparently, there are companies who have decided to pole-vault all over that and produce elsewhere where workers cannot organize; produce in China, where if a worker tries to organize, he or she can be sent to prison. If you want names, I will give you names of at least a dozen people--and there are hundreds more--who are sitting in prisons in China because they wanted to organize workers.

Producing in China is easier, producing in other countries is easier because you don't have to worry about child labor, about dumping chemicals into the air and water. You don't have to worry about workers organizing.

What is going wrong in trade is going to dramatically injure this country and its future and opportunities. I am offering an amendment because we have trade negotiators now negotiating in the Doha round who have indicated it is all right and we will consider negotiating away our opportunity to protect ourselves against the dumping of products into this country, into our marketplace at below their cost of acquisition, which is an opportunity to ruin the domestic industry and drive domestic industry out of business.

We protect ourselves with antidumping laws. We protect ourselves against deep subsidies of products that are dumped into our marketplace with countervailing duties. Our trade negotiators have signalled that that which our trade partners want, to get rid of our countervailing duties or antidumping laws, basic provisions that protect American workers, protect American jobs against the unfairness of trade, our trade negotiators have said: It is on the table. We are willing to consider that.

My amendment says no money will be used by the folks in the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade ambassador's office negotiating these trade agreements to weaken trade protections for American workers and businesses. It is a simple amendment but important in terms of the future.

I notice my colleague from West Virginia has arrived. I know he is set to assume his address to the Senate. Let me, in courtesy to him, close my remarks and simply say, I intend to come to the floor later this afternoon to speak again about both of these amendments which are important, the addition of which will add significantly to this appropriations bill.

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

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

Mr. President, I have offered an amendment that is pending on this appropriations bill, and I wanted to speak to that amendment in the hope that we will be able to get a vote on that amendment at some point soon.

The amendment deals with trade, and because this appropriations bill deals with funding for the Department of Commerce and also the U.S. Trade Representative, this is the right place to propose that amendment.

Let me begin by talking for a moment about what is happening in trade. As you know, we have the largest trade deficit in the history of our country by far. It continues to grow and grow and grow and grow. This trade deficit is dangerous. It is irresponsible for us to continue to run these kinds of trade deficits. Yet nearly every day in this country, 7 days a week, all year long, we are importing about $2 billion more than we are exporting. We are importing a substantial amount of product--yes, energy and food but shirts and shoes and trinkets and trousers--from every part of the world, and the fact is we are exporting American jobs.

Let me describe a couple of those jobs, and then I am going to describe what my amendment does.

A young woman named Natasha Humphries did what we are supposed to do in this country. She did everything American workers are supposed to do to compete in this global economy. She got a degree from Stanford University in 1996. She went to work for Apple Computer. She continued to acquire all kinds of new skills in high tech through classes and seminars. And she moved down to become a senior software testing engineer at palmOne, the company that makes the well-known hand held computing device called Palm Pilot. I want to show you the last message that this young woman left on her Palm Pilot. Natasha Humphries left this message on her Palm Pilot:

My job has gone to India.

She lost her job. Natasha Humphries got fired and the company moved all those jobs to India. Oh, there is one more thing. Natasha was required by her company to train the Indian workers who took her job. And so the company, searching for lower priced labor, fires American workers and moves their jobs to India. That was 2002 that palmOne's management decided to move all their product testing to India and China where they can pay $2 an hour and less. They learned that some of those workers were not quite as productive as the American workers, but they decided to make a change, so that the workers in India were more productive, by sending American engineers to India. And so they sent American workers to India, trained the Indian engineers and then came back and fired the American workers. And so Natasha was laid off August 2003, along with 40 percent of her U.S. coworkers. She sued palmOne for wrongful termination. She also filed a reverse discrimination case.

Then she found herself on the unemployment line struggling to cover health care costs for her 6-year-old son who has sickle cell anemia. So this is a message from this Stanford graduate, this engineer:

My job has gone to India.

It could have been a message repeated 1.5 million times. Oh, not by anybody who wears a blue suit, though, who is in the Senate; nobody who wears suspenders and smokes cigars and wears blue suits and in big business or politics ever loses their jobs. It is the other folks who lose their jobs.

Let me describe a few. You recognize this. Fruit of the Loom. You know Fruit of the Loom; they had advertised with the folks who wear grape outfits, red grapes, apples, the fruit folks, catchy little commercials on television, except that Fruit of the Loom has now left America. If you are wearing Fruit of the Loom shorts today, you are wearing Chinese shorts or Mexican shorts. Or you are wearing Chinese T- shirts or Mexican T-shirts. Yes, it is clever and cute, except that 3,200 people who worked for Fruit of the Loom in the United States of America don't work for them anymore because these shirts and shorts and the things that Fruit of the Loom makes are gone. They are gone in search of 30-cent-an-hour labor.

I will not speak at great length about Huffy bicycles because I have spoken at great length about Huffy bicycles so often, except to say this. This is a new decal between the handlebars and the fenders, and you will see it is a decal of the globe. That used to be an American flag when American workers produced them, but the American workers made 11 dollars an hour plus, so all those jobs went to China.

Now Huffy pays its workers 33 cents an hour, 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day and, by the way, there is no more American flag on this bike. It is a globe. Oh, they still call Huffy an American brand. It is just not made in America, and all the American workers who used to make it lost their jobs.

You remember the television commercials about the Maytag repairman really struggling to stay awake because you don't repair a Maytag. Well, 1,600 Maytag U.S. jobs have gone to Mexico and Korea.

Big Blue, IBM. It is interesting, the paper trail from IBM; 13,000 IBM workers in Europe and the United States went to India where they hired more than 14,000 workers, and if you look at the internal documents, IBM said, Oh, by the way, we do not want to suggest to our employees this is offshoring or outsourcing; never use those words.

The last thing they wrote to their employees was: This has nothing to do with your performance. Oh, no, it is never personal, is it? It has nothing to do with your performance that you are losing your job.

Trade deal after trade deal, trade agreement after trade agreement, through Democratic and Republican administrations, have been incompetent, fundamentally incompetent in standing up for the economic interests of this country. Who on Earth is going to stand up for the interests of American workers?

People say: But you don't understand, Senator Dorgan, this is the way of the future; this is a global economy. It is global all right. We galloped along toward the global economy, but the rules have not kept pace. So we are now able to go to the big box stores and buy products that were made by sweat labor of people who all too often are earning 20, 30, 40 cents an hour, maybe $1 an hour, and no benefits, working 6 days a week, 7 days a week. And we say to the American workers, that is what you should compete with?

We have been through a trade agreement called GATT, a trade agreement with the United States and Canada, one with the United States and Canada and Mexico called NAFTA, a trade agreement called CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We have been through all these free-trade agreements. Every trade agreement we

approved--I should say without my vote in support--has resulted in a larger trade deficit for this country.

Why is that the case? They are negotiated incompetently by American negotiators who do not stand up for the economic interests of this country. They feel they have nothing to protect.

Right now we have something called the Doha round. Have you been to Doha recently? I suspect not. There is a reason they do these trade rounds in far, out of the way places. In Doha, they are negotiating new trade agreements behind closed doors, in secret. Does anybody here know what those trade agreements are, what might be in them? We know this: There are 100 separate proposals in this round of trade negotiations, 100 separate proposals by other countries that would weaken the remedies in American trade law to protect our interests.

We also know our trade negotiators have said everything is on the table, meaning they are willing to negotiate away, if necessary, the protections in our trade laws. These are the laws that allow us to impose countervailing duties on other countries that wish to sell unfairly subsidized products into our marketplace and destroy a domestic industry. They are willing to negotiate away our antidumping laws that would allow another country to dump products into our country at below cost and destroy an American industry or business and jobs.

Why would American negotiators be willing to put that on the table? Are they not willing to stand up for this country's economic interests, for this country's jobs, good jobs?

The amendment I have offered is very simple, painfully simple. Interestingly enough, the White House has issued a veto warning should my amendment prevail in the Senate today.

My amendment is very simple. My amendment says no funds in this act funding the U.S. Trade Representative's office and the Commerce Department may be used to be involved in negotiations that will weaken America's protections in trade law, the protections that exist-- countervailing duties, antidumping--nothing shall be done or can be done using these funds in this act to weaken America's trade laws to protect our economic interests.

For that, we get a letter from Secretary Gutierrez and Rob Portman, the U.S. Trade Representative, saying they strongly oppose this amendment. We heard all morning the administration will recommend a veto if this is adopted.

Let me give a bit of background. On May 14, 2002, 61 Senators voted for an amendment that Senators Dayton, Craig, and I cosponsored. That amendment said that any trade agreement that weakened U.S. trade laws, especially remedies that protect our country against unfair trade, could not be considered by the Senate under fast-track rules. Sixty-one Senators voted for that amendment. It is essentially the same as the amendment I am offering today.

The question is, Are you going to stand up for the economic interests of this country?

I don't even know where to start or stop when I talk about trade because the pain of bad trade agreements is not a pain inflicted on those who are privileged, and that includes all of us because we have not lost our jobs. But no country will long remain a world economic power if it does not have a strong, vibrant manufacturing base. The manufacturing jobs traditionally and historically in this country have been the jobs that pay well, the jobs that have good benefits.

It is interesting, when we take a look at the changes from 30, 35, 40 years ago, the largest corporation in our country was General Motors. They paid good wages, they paid very substantial benefits, and most people who went to work for General Motors worked there for a lifetime. Now the largest American corporation, I am told, is Wal-Mart. Their wages are not so hot, do not have many benefits for a lot of their workers, the average wage is $17,000 a year, and their turnover is about 70 percent. If those figures are wrong, perhaps someone can correct me.

The point I am making simply is this: Times have changed. Those who control the economic levers in this country--bigger and bigger enterprises--have decided that it is in their interest to find the lowest cost labor in the world with the least nuisance attached to that labor. That is the nuisance of not being able to hire children, the nuisance of not being able to pollute the rivers or pollute the air. If they can find labor under those circumstances, employ it, and then produce the shirts, socks, shoes, trinkets, and toys, and ship them to the American marketplace, have them sit on the store shelf in Los Angeles, Fargo, Denver, Tampa, or New York and have the consumers buy those products, that somehow everyone will be better off. That is as flawed a set of economic assumptions as I have seen in my studies of economics. This is not working, and yet everyone insists it is.

Let me put up the chart that shows our trade deficits. I went to a small school, I told my colleagues before, a high school senior class of nine in a small farming community. I was in the top five, and that qualified me for the Senate from back home. But I was smart enough coming from that school to understand what this is. This is a barrel full of trouble--deep, deep, and deeper Federal trade deficits every single year. This is running in the wrong direction and hurting our country.

Does anybody seem to care much at all? Is the President paying any attention to this? Does Congress pay much attention to this? Nobody. No, we all have to pretend this is working well, like this is good for our country. We put on our pressed blue suits every morning and talk about how wonderful all of this is.

Maybe if the politicians' jobs were at stake, maybe if some CEOs' jobs were at stake they would have a different view.

Let me give a couple examples of what concerns me. I have talked at great length about unfair trade. I could give you a good many examples. One example: We are now negotiating with Korea. Let me talk about automobile trade with Korea.

Last year, we took from Korea about 680,000 automobiles into our marketplace for the American consumer to purchase; 680,000 Korean cars came here from Korea. Guess how many American cars we sold in Korea-- 3,800. That is right, 680,000 coming in this direction, and we sold 3,800 cars in Korea. Is that because they don't want American cars in Korea? No, it is because the Koreans don't want cars sold in Korea coming from the United States, and they have all kinds of policies and interesting devices to try to shut down the sale of U.S. automobiles to Korea; otherwise, what would explain that dramatic imbalance?

That is how out of whack our trade policy is. Let me describe to you another example of this incompetence. This country did a bilateral trade agreement with China just a few years ago. The agreement said that after a phase-in, any U.S. cars we would sell in China would bear a tariff of 25 percent. Any Chinese cars they would sell in America would bear a tariff of 2.5 percent. So our negotiators sat down with a country with whom we had a trade deficit of somewhere around $100 billion a year and said: With respect to automobiles, you can charge a tariff that is 10 times higher than that which we will charge on bilateral automobile trade.

That is just incompetence, in my judgment, and a failure to stand up for this country's economic interests.

Oh, yes, this is a footnote: China is ramping up a very significant automobile industry. General Motors, as a matter of fact, has sued an enterprise in China called Chery, C-h-e-r-y, one letter away from ``Chevy.'' By the way, General Motors sued them for stealing production line blueprints for a car called QQ. And China is moving very rapidly to develop an automobile industry, a robust industry, and one that will be an export industry.

Mark my words, Chinese cars will be sold in this country because our negotiators agreed to a proposition that they could impose a tariff 10 times higher on U.S. cars sold in China than we would impose on Chinese cars sold in the United States.

I would like to find the name of the negotiator who agreed to that because that person was not standing up for American workers, American business, or America's economic future.

I talked about cars from Korea, and a bilateral agreement on automobile trade from China. I could talk about dozens and dozens of similar circumstances. The list goes on and on.

The letter I received from the White House with respect to this amendment is a letter that says:

By taking off the negotiating table any agreements that

would lead to changes in U.S. trade remedy law, the amendment

would prevent us from negotiating agreements to improve

protections against foreign unfair trade practices.

What a lot of rubbish. Does anybody really think that they are going to negotiate an improvement to protections for this country in trade? I don't think so. They don't intend to negotiate improvements. What is going to happen is, they will put the antidumping and countervailing duty laws on the table for negotiating. They have said they are willing to put them on the table, and they will get negotiated away.

These negotiations are not about any strengthening of our trade protections. I know ``protection'' is a dirty word among those who stand on the street corners in robes and chant free trade, but we do have to protect our interests when another company decides to dump into our country products that are produced at a much higher cost than they are willing to be sold in this country because they want to destroy a domestic industry. We have to protect ourselves in that circumstance.

The Commerce Secretary and Mr. Portman, the trade ambassador, are saying this amendment would prevent them from improving protections. Please. Our foreign trading partners don't come to the negotiating table looking to strengthen America's trade protections. They come to weaken them. And our negotiators are all too willing to trade away our trade laws.

No one wants to address this trade crisis. The President has been busy gassing up Air Force One trying to privatize Social Security the last 9 months or so.

What I think we ought to do is stare this problem straight in the eye, just stare this problem straight in the eye and say: This is a problem for our country. This is about America's future. It is about economic growth. It is about opportunity and jobs for our kids. But nobody wants to do much of that anymore.

Oh, we can compete, they say. Go to school, get a little better educational resume, and we can compete. I just described the circumstance of a young woman who competed, and her last message on her Palm Pilot, as that young engineer from Stanford lost her job was: My job is going to China.

This is not a tough choice, it seems to me. This amendment I have offered is very straightforward. It will, I am sure, not be the subject of substantial debate. I would love to have a debate on the floor of the Senate about this issue. I do not expect to have much of a debate because those who support all of this trade strategy that has begun to weaken this country, the trade strategy that has produced choking trade deficits, they don't talk much about it publicly; they just vote for all of this nonsense.

My hope is we will have a vote on this.

My guess is that at some point in the future, we are going to look back and we are going to say, What on Earth happened in this country? It is not as if we didn't have notice. There has been a lot of discussion these days: Did we have notice? Were we prepared? Did we take action?

Let me talk about this crisis, about the loss of American jobs, a lot of them. Ask yourself, Did we have notice about this? In the last 10 years, did we have notice that company after company after company did not say the Pledge of Allegiance in the boardroom anymore because they are not American companies, they are international enterprises responsible to their stockholders, believing if they can find 30-cent- an-hour labor in Indonesia or India or Sri Lanka or China or Bangladesh, that is where they ought to produce and they ought to do that at the expense of American jobs? My guess is somebody is going to look back at some point soon and say, What on Earth were we thinking, sleeping through this problem, deciding that once we had lifted ourselves up as a country, once we had lifted America up as a country, with minimum wage, safe workplaces, the right to organize, the right to understand you should not pollute the air and the water as you produce, all of those things we did that made this a better place in which to live and all those things we did that grew a middle class in America-- that once we decided that, that we ought not to protect it? We are going to say, Why didn't we decide to protect that? Instead of pushing us down, that our goal would have been to pull the others up? Yet that has not been the case. That has not been the strategy. Our strategy is, if companies can find cheaper labor, then you just get rid of American workers.

I wish to make this point. We have a century of history about these issues that many people, especially those who debate this trade issue, want to forget. I mentioned this morning, and I probably should not have, a man named James Fyler. I said James Fyler died of lead poisoning--he was shot 55 times. I should not make light of that at all. James Fyler was a hero. He died being shot 55 times because on April 20, 1914, he was out demonstrating with other workers in coal mines, demanding fairness for workers, demanding the right for workers to organize, demanding to lift themselves up for that. He gave his life for that. Think of what people have given of themselves in a century to build what we built in this country: an understanding that workers have rights, an understanding that we have obligations to each other.

James Fyler is dead. But what he and others built is an understanding about the freedom to organize--something very important. I could give you names of people who are sitting in prison right now in China who decided to organize their workforce. They were prosecuted, and they are sitting in prison in China because you can't organize a workforce there. It doesn't matter what they do to you as a workforce, they have a right to do that to you, and if you try to organize, you go to prison. First you get fired, and if you are lucky that is all that happens. Otherwise you go to prison. All of this somehow seems forgotten when you pole-vault over all these issues.

Because no one else is here to speak, I wish to make this point a little differently. I know it is somewhat off of this specific topic, but it relates to it. I was asked some while ago by a young high school kid: What is the best speech you have ever heard?

You know, I heard a lot of great speeches at various venues, but one of the memorable speeches I told him about was a speech in the House of Representatives to a joint session of the Congress, a speech at which the House and Senate are seated and they normally receive a message from the President, in most cases the State of the Union. On this date, perhaps 15 years ago now, I was seated in the House Chamber when the Speaker was announced by the doorkeeper to the joint session of Congress. He walked to the front of the room. He was kind of a chubby fellow, about 5 foot 8, handlebar mustache, and the applause waved over him for a long period of time. And then he began to speak. His speech was so unbelievably powerful.

He described something we knew from our history books at that moment. He described a Saturday morning in a shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. He said he had been an unemployed electrician and had been fired from the job because he was leading a strike against the Communist government for the right of laborers to be free to organize. On that Saturday morning, he was beaten severely with clubs and fists and, bleeding, he was taken to the edge of the shipyard, hoisted to the top of the barbed-wire fence, and thrown over the shipyard fence into the dirt. He told us he lay in the dirt facedown, bleeding, wondering what to do next.

Our history books tell us what he did next. He pulled himself back up, and he climbed right back over the fence into that shipyard. Ten years later, this unemployed electrician was introduced to a joint session of Congress as the President of his country. His name was Lech Walesa.

He said to us this. He said: The Communists in Poland had all the guns. We had none. The Communists had all the bullets. We had none. We were armed only with an idea--that people ought to be in control of their own destiny. Workers ought to have the right to organize. He said: Ideas are more powerful than guns.

This common man with uncommon courage--no diplomat, no scholar, no military general, no politician, an unemployed electrician--became President of his country on the power of an

idea, an idea that this country has embraced for well over a century, an idea that seems somehow to be diminished these days by those who believe it doesn't matter what workers are used. Workers are like wrenches--use them, discard them when you are done. Find a wrench on the other side of the globe that is this much less expensive and somehow it will benefit a consumer on this side of the globe, that somehow none of this matters because it is not interconnected. They are dead wrong in a manner that is hurting this country and will hurt this country's future. I want things to be better in other countries, but I want our country to take care of things here at home first and then aspire to help others to lift themselves up. But it is important that our first obligation is to take care of things here in this country. These trade negotiators and these trade agreements are trade agreements that I believe have undermined the economic strength of our country.

Once again, I would love to spend 2 hours someday on the floor debating trade issues with my colleagues, but that likely will not happen. That is because while there are plenty of votes for fast track and plenty of votes for trade agreements, and it doesn't matter what they contain, there are not many people who want to debate specifics of bilateral trade with China or Korea or Europe or Japan. I would love to talk about beef and Japan. I would love to talk about trade sanctions we have taken against the Europeans. Oh man, are we tough. I talk about our trade negotiators having no backbone or spine or willingness to stand up. We took action against the Europeans when we got upset. We decided to slap duties on truffles, Roquefort cheese, and goose liver. That is going to make our trade partners quake in their boots. My God, you are going to put tariffs on truffles and goose liver.

When will this country's trade negotiators and its politicians have the backbone to stand up for the economic interests of that which we have built--a country that produces good jobs that pay well and have benefits, a country that produces that without having to apologize for it but that decides it is good for our country to have good jobs that pay well with good benefits?

Mr. President, I spoke far longer than I intended. This amendment is an amendment that I have offered. It is germane. It will require a vote. My hope is that enough of my colleagues, sufficient numbers of my colleagues will vote to support this and we will send another very strong message to our trade negotiators.

I have said earlier that this has happened through Democrat and Republican administrations. Nothing has changed. I would like to see it changed, and I would like to see it changed now. Perhaps with this amendment we can take a first step in making that change.

I yield the floor.

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

Are we in morning business?

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

Mr. President, I read an item on the front page of the Washington Post yesterday which was both surprising to me and also extraordinarily disappointing: ``Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan.'' The strategy includes preemptive use of nuclear weapons. Let me read a portion of this and describe why I am so dismayed.

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of

nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting

presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a

nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass

destruction. The draft also includes the option of using

nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear,

biological or chemical weapons.

The draft Pentagon document is titled ``Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations.'' It is written under the direction of Air Force GEN Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the article in the Post, the document is currently available on the Pentagon Web site. It describes new circumstances might call for preemptive use of nuclear weapons by this country.

We saw what has happened with respect to a natural disaster in the Gulf Coast of this country. We saw the devastation of that. Yet that would perhaps be a fraction of the devastation if we have a nuclear device go off in one of America's cities, a terrorist acquiring a nuclear weapon and detonating it in one of America's cities. This country has a responsibility to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, to preach to the world that nuclear weapons must never again be used. Yet this country is now developing policies and putting them on the Web that say here is a new approach in which we might use a preemptive strike of a nuclear weapon.

If we get the Defense authorization bill back in the Senate soon, we will have a debate about the development of a new kind of nuclear weapon, a bunker buster nuclear weapon, an Earth-penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapon. Why? Because this Administration thinks we need a new designer nuclear weapon to bust bunkers.

We ought not be building nuclear weapons. We ought not build new nuclear weapons. We have stockpiles of thousands of nuclear weapons, the detonation of one of which by a terrorist group would kill thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people.

The role for this country is to provide world leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, not to be talking to the world about conditions under which we might use nuclear weapons preemptively. It is stark raving nuts to be doing this. I cannot understand what they can possibly be thinking about.

The fact is we have American soldiers fighting in the country of Iraq. This Senate authorized the President to initiate hostile actions against Iraq based on a substantial body of intelligence given to us by our intelligence

organization, most of which turns out to have been absolutely wrong. Dead wrong. Yet we are talking about preemptive strikes with nuclear weapons. I don't understand it.

If I might, by consent, I will show something from my desk. Mr. President, I ask I be permitted to show this. It is a portion of a wing strut from a Soviet Backfire bomber.

Why do I have this in my desk? We did not shoot this bomber down. We sawed the wing off this bomber, paid for with American taxpayers' money. Does anyone know why? Because of arms control agreements by which we reduced the number of nuclear weapons and the number of nuclear delivery systems--and that includes missiles, bombers and submarines. So I have in the Senate a piece of a wing from a Soviet bomber that used to carry nuclear weapons that would threaten this country.

How did that happen? Because Senators Nunn and Lugar and others, along with President Clinton, working on arms control agreements, had the foresight to put together a program by which we reached agreements by which we reduce the number of nuclear weapons and reduce the number of carriers of those nuclear weapons. So I have part of a wing strut from a Backfire bomber.

I also have ground-up copper wire from a Soviet submarine that used to carry nuclear tipped missiles aimed at this country.

That is our job. Our job is to reduce the nuclear threat. Not use the threat of nuclear weapons against other countries or talk about conditions under which we would use the nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike. This is nuts.

We will start debating this once again in the Senate. We have these folks, and we have plenty of them here, who want to build new nuclear weapons. They want to start testing the ones we have. We do not need to test nuclear weapons. We know they work. And they want to build new nuclear weapons, Earth-penetrator bunker busters. It is exactly the wrong thing for this country to do.

Mr. President, over the past few days, as we have talked about the heartbreak of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, I have noticed that certain firms have been hired now to go in and provide assistance. One of the firms is the Halliburton Corporation. I have held hearings in the policy committee about this company, because there have been numerous serious allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse involving it, and yet none of the Senate's authorizing committees will investigate it.

Every time you talk about Halliburton someone says, you are criticizing the Vice President because he used to be president of Halliburton.

Well, this has nothing to do with the Vice President. It has to do with the American taxpayers getting bilked by a company that is overbilling. I will not go through the whole list of scandals. We have had hearing after hearing to explore them, because the authorizing committees will not. But this is a company that was paid to feed 42,000 soldiers in Iraq; yet they were only feeding 14,000. That means they are overbilling by 28,000 meals a day. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. It is unbelievable the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that is going on.

And now, when it comes to dealing with Katrina, no-bid contracts, once again, win Katrina work. And we hear that Halliburton is now getting millions of dollars to do hurricane related work. I wonder who is minding the store? And when will someone start to care?

Incidentally, a woman by the name of Bunnatine Greenhouse was demoted last week in the Pentagon. She was the highest ranking civilian ever in the Corps of Engineers. She rose to that position, getting outstanding reviews all along the way. And then she spoke up. In the good old boy network, when they wanted to award no-bid contracts to Halliburton in Iraq, she spoke up. All of a sudden she gets demoted. She spoke up because she said what was going on was scandalous. The American taxpayer takes a bath as a result of all of this.

Let me tell you what she has told the Congress. Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking civilian employee in the Corps of Engineers, who refused to sign the no-bid contracts that went under a buddy system to Halliburton in Iraq, says:

I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the

contracts awarded to KBR [Halliburton] represents the most

blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during

the course of my professional career.

For blowing the whistle, she gets demoted. This is a woman who has had outstanding reviews by everyone along the way.

We have heard from people who worked for Halliburton who testified that the managers of this company said, When U.S. Government auditors come, do not dare speak to them. If you do, one of two things will happen. You will be fired or we will send you to the hot spots where there is active fighting in Iraq.

These are people who testified that they are providing food service to American soldiers and routinely serve food, the date stamp of which is expired, and they are told by Halliburton managers, feed it to them anyway.

I hope some day, some way, the people in Congress who have the capability to issue subpoenas and hold oversight hearings will finally start doing their job. We ought not go back to the same well for the reconstruction with respect to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The victims of that hurricane need help. They need good help. The American taxpayer shouldn't be taking a bath while that help is given.

I yield the floor.

In response to the Senator from Louisiana, I understand in circumstances such as this, we will not go out and get bids and ask for 30 days. We want people in the field working quickly. But the fact is we have a lot of great companies out there in this country with a great ability to mobilize and move quickly. My only point is, I want the victims of this hurricane to receive help now, immediately. I want the American taxpayer to find that help was delivered effectively and efficiently. I don't want it running through people's hands into people's pockets where it shouldn't go.

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

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, Senator Graham, and Senator Stabenow.

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

Mr. President, this is an amendment that is relatively simple. It would prohibit funding in this bill for our trade negotiators to enter into any agreement that would weaken U.S. trade laws, such as antidumping laws and countervailing duty laws. Let me describe why these are important.

We have provisions in our law that establish some level of protection for American industries if some foreign company or foreign country decides to dump products into our country at artificially low prices in order to capture a market or destroy an industry. These are the antidumping laws. We also have laws that provide for the opportunity to apply countervailing duties on products that come into this country that are unfairly subsidized and attempt to undercut American businesses.

Why do I offer this amendment? Because we have U.S. negotiators who are engaged in WTO negotiations who are saying that everything is on the table; we are willing to negotiate away the protections that exist for fair trade for American businesses, American jobs, and American industries.

We have the highest trade deficit in the history of this country. We have massive numbers of American jobs moving overseas every single day. American companies are closing their businesses, and American jobs are moving overseas.

I have told the story repeatedly--and I will not tell it in great depth again--about Huffy bicycles. They used to be an American company. No longer. Huffy bikes are now made in China. Those proud workers in America made $11 an hour plus benefits. They all got fired. Were they bad workers? No. That company makes Huffy bicycles in China now and pays 33 cents an hour, working workers 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, and then they ship the Huffy bicycles back to this country to be sold.

Interestingly enough, since they moved to China, Huffy has declared bankruptcy. It has now been purchased by a Chinese company, and they say they still want this to be one of the leading brands in America. Notice that I said ``brands.'' They don't want to make them here. It is too expensive to pay $11 to American workers to produce bicycles in this country; they just want the right to sell them here.

I have given long speeches about the fact that Levi's doesn't make a single pair of Levi's anymore. That great American brand is now produced offshore. They are made by contract production in Haiti, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, and China.

I have given speeches about the fact that if you wear your Tony Lama cowboy boots, they may not be American; they may be Chinese.

I have given speeches talking about the fact that if you like Mexican food, you can eat Fig Newton cookies, because Fig Newton moved to Monterey, Mexico. So if you want Mexican food, go buy Fig Newtons.

I have given speeches at length about jobs leaving this country. We have the biggest trade deficit in this country. It is dangerous. The question is, When will this country have the nerve, the backbone, and the will to stand up for the economic interests of this country?

I am not suggesting putting walls up around this country; I am just suggesting demanding fair trade. We had people die on the streets of this country for the right of workers to organize. In the last century, we decided issues about minimum wage, about child labor laws, about rules that say you cannot dump chemicals into the air and the water from your production plant.

We had people work very hard over a century to achieve these rules and regulations, which establish decent conditions of production. One can now escape all that by pole-vaulting over it. Move the plant to China, move the plant to Bangladesh, move the plant to Honduras and hire workers who will work for pennies on the dollar. Hire workers who will work for 33 cents an hour. Hire 12-year-olds and pay them 12 cents an hour and work them 12 hours a day and then ship the product to Los Angeles, Detroit, Fargo, or Mobile. Meanwhile, who is going to buy these products when American jobs have been lost, American workers are told they are no longer affordable, their jobs are gone?

Little Red Wagon Radio Flyer, we all rode in that Little Red Wagon when we were kids. For 100 years that company produced in this country, and now it is all gone. So it can be produced more cheaply, less expensively by hiring workers who will work for pennies an hour.

As we engage in new trade negotiations, which threaten to once again pull the rug out from under American workers and American businesses, this amendment says something very simple: We will not allow the funding we have approved in this appropriations bill to be used to weaken our trade laws.

The United States-China Commission, a bipartisan commission established by Congress, sent us a letter August 1, 2005, that warned that the proposals that our trade negotiators are discussing with respect to antidumping and countervailing duties ``could severely limit our ability to protect our economic interests.'' That is from the United States-China Commission, a bipartisan commission.

The Commission reiterated the proposals put on the table by foreign negotiators ``could have substantial impact on our nation's ability to utilize our trade laws and ensure that American farmers, workers, and businesses have the tools they need to respond to unfair and predatory foreign trade practices.''

So the question for us is, Are we going to do anything about that? I hope the answer is, yes. I hope the answer is to say to our trade negotiators that we understand that foreign negotiators are proposing to weaken our trade laws. Our trade negotiators must have the backbone and the will to stand up for our economic interests, something they have not been willing to do for a long time.

I offer this amendment, which is a prohibition on funding. It is germane, and I hope to have a vote on it when we have had a proper amount of time to discuss it.

One final point. I intend to offer another amendment which I cannot offer at this moment. It is an amendment that I will offer to other appropriations bills as well if it is not acceptable here, and that is to establish a Truman-type committee to investigate the waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting that is going on in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. I have described the conditions of Halliburton and other companies that have been given billions of dollars, have wasted a substantial amount of money, are now under criminal investigation, and are given a slap on the wrist and a pat on the back and more money and nobody seems to care. I believe there ought to be a Truman-type committee of the type Harry Truman headed long ago when there was a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic Senator said: We must investigate this kind of spending and profligate waste and abuse.

I will ask that the Senate at some point decide that there ought to be oversight on what is happening to the taxpayers' money. I will offer that amendment tomorrow. I have offered this amendment today for its consideration, and I hope that as we go along that we will be able to get a vote on this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4 of rule XVI for the purpose of proposing to the bill H.R. 2862 the following amendment:

Mr. President, yesterday I introduced legislation called the Windfall Profits Rebate Act of 2005 that attempts to address the spiraling cost of oil and gasoline. Let me explain why I introduced this measure.

I come from a State of 642,000 citizens spread out in a landmass 10 times the size of Massachusetts.

As a result of being a large Northern Great Plains State with a small population and being a predominately agricultural State, we use a substantial amount of energy, specifically gasoline.

In fact, North Dakota uses twice as much gasoline per capita than New York does. Though these price spikes hurt all Americans, they are especially devastating to citizens who live in rural States.

Let me say first that the tragedy that we are witnessing on the Gulf Coast is devastating. The effects of Hurricane Katrina will be felt by the people of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama for a long time to come and my prayers go out to them in this time of need. The people in the gulf region have lost so much.

It is also the case that the hurricane has affected America's energy supply in the short term. A number of refineries were shut down. A couple of major pipelines were unable to operate and there has been and will be an impact on our energy supply and marketing as a result of this hurricane.

But it important to understand that the price spikes we have seen with the price of oil and gasoline cannot be blamed exclusively on this hurricane.

We were headed down this road long before Hurricane Katrina hit.

In fact, since the beginning of 2004, we have seen the price of oil double from $35 a barrel to nearly $70 a barrel and that has resulted in consumers having to pay more than $3 a gallon for gasoline in many parts of the country.

It is important to point out that at $35 a barrel, the energy industry was making record profits. Now the oil industry claims that these higher prices are a result of supply-and-demand issues and that they need these additional profits for exploration.

However, I believe that the extra $30 per barrel that is tacked on to a barrel of oil these days represents a windfall or excess profit to the major integrated oil companies, and I propose that we recapture part of that with an excise tax and rebate it to consumers who are paying these inflated gas prices.

Here are some numbers to remember: We use 21 million barrels of oil a day in this country. Forty percent of that comes from domestically produced oil. The major integrated oil companies are larger and have more economic clout than they have had previously. They are experiencing the $30-a-barrel increased price above the $35 price that existed in January 2004, and that means they are reaping $7 billion a month in windfall or excess profits. That is $80 billion a year in excess or windfall profits. That is being paid by consumers who drive up to the service station and now receive the sticker shock of paying an arm and a leg for a tank full of gas.

A friend of mine gassed up his car and his son's car with 15 gallons in each car the other day and paid $103.00 at the gas pump.

In addition to the windfall profits being gathered by the major integrated oil companies in our country, it is also the case that 60 percent of that which we use comes from off our shore. That has become a type of forced revenue sharing from American consumers to the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and others. There is not much we can do about that in the short term except to implement policies that try to wean us away from the addiction we have to foreign oil.

However, with respect to domestic companies and domestic production and domestic pricing, we can do something.

My legislation calls for a 50-percent excise tax on crude oil profits over $40 a barrel when those prices are earned by the largest oil companies with the most ability to control the overall price. These are companies that, in many cases, move oil from the ground to gas pumps and control all of the processes in between. The revenue that would be collected from this excise tax would be used to provide a rebate to American consumers to help them offset the burden of higher energy costs that they are now forced to pay.

But my legislation also has a very important exemption. If the oil company is using the revenue from the extra $30 a barrel they are receiving to increase exploration, or make investments to search for additional sources of energy, or to increase refining capacity, or to pursue investments in other renewable forms of energy, then that money would be exempt from this windfall profits tax.

In other words, these large companies would decide themselves whether they pay this tax. If they are buying back their stock or hoarding cash with which to engage in mergers and acquisitions, then they would be paying the excise tax and the consumers would be receiving the benefit of that excise tax.

I am not trying to hurt the oil companies or put them out of business. I want additional robust domestic exploration that would be exempt from the windfall profits tax.

However, American consumers should not pay these inflated prices just to fatten the corporate treasury of the major integrated oil companies.

The substantial rise in the price of oil and gas has produced both pain and gain. The pain is for American consumers and the gain has been for the major integrated oil companies and OPEC countries, and I think Congress ought to weigh in on behalf of American consumers. That is what my bill attempts to do.

And with its exemption for investment in exploration, it does not attempt to help consumers by punishing oil companies.

I hope Congress will immediately consider adopting this measure and provide some help to American consumers at a time when gasoline prices are providing sticker shock every single day.

Mr. President, my colleagues today have spoken about the almost unbelievable disaster that has occurred in the Gulf region. Only now are we fully beginning to understand the lives lost and the complete devastation of the region. I know there will be a lot of time, perhaps, to evaluate what kind of emergency preparedness existed or why proper preparedness did not exist. This is the moment and the time for all of us to concentrate on finding the survivors.

There are so many victims. We know that many of those who have died in this disaster have not yet been found. We know there are survivors who have not yet been found. We are nearly certain of that. This is an important time to marshal the resources of this country, to effectively organize the resources to search for survivors, and then to help those who have been made victims by this devastating hurricane.

Many of us have suffered disasters. In North Dakota, in 1997, there were the Red River Valley floods, when the entire city of Grand Forks was evacuated. It was an enormous evacuation of people. Thank God at that point we did not lose lives. We lost a great deal of property and people suffered and had very tough times, but there was not loss of life with respect to those floods. But an entire city of over 50,000 people was evacuated from those floods. I recall President Clinton flying into Grand Forks on Air Force One and meeting with a large number of people who had crowded into a hangar at the Air Force base. I remember what President Clinton said to them that day. He said very simply: You are not alone.

That is the message that our country must give to all of those who are victims of Hurricane Katrina: You are not alone. This country doesn't move ahead by leaving some behind. This country knows your plight, knows the despair of having lost what you have lost, joins you in sympathy for the loss of lives, and extends a hand to say we want to help you during these difficult times.

There are so many needs and so many things that have to be done: housing, basic needs such as food and shelter, jobs, education, short- term spending money to get on your feet if you have lost everything. Those are the things that, in a package of assistance by the Congress, need to be addressed quickly.

I know there are some who tend to believe that Government ought not exist. They think Government is the problem. But when something like this happens, we together, through our Government, work to extend a helping hand. This Congress cannot be reticent about arriving at that point to extend a helping hand to provide for the needs of people who have been displaced, who have suffered and are victims of this devastating hurricane.

My thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims of this devastating hurricane that has displaced, some say, 1 million people and caused massive loss of life. While there are public policy issues that we should discuss and will discuss in the coming days and months, all of us, as a country, will pray for those poor people who have suffered immensely in recent days. We hope the searches to find survivors continue to move forward and that we find additional survivors. And we hope in every possible way those who have been the victims of this hurricane understand this is a great country and this country extends its hand to say to them: You are not alone. Actions by this Congress will manifest that. We ought to do that quickly and urgently.

Mr. President, I also wish to speak about a subject that has some relationship but an issue that the American people were facing before the hurricane hit. Prior to the devastating Hurricane Katrina, the Senate Energy Committee had scheduled a hearing on gasoline and oil prices. That hearing is now going on. I spent the last 2 hours attending it. It was scheduled before this hurricane. Obviously, when the hurricane hit, a number of oil refineries and a couple of major pipelines shut down. It has had an impact beyond that which was occurring prior to the hurricane.

Prior to the hurricane hitting, oil prices had already risen $30 a barrel above that which existed a year and a half to 2 years ago. The major integrated oil companies that have become larger through mergers and concentration in recent years were already earning record profits.

Last evening, a friend of mine went to a gas station and pumped gasoline into his car and his son's car, about 15 gallons in each car. The bill was $103 dollars. Every American citizen understands that sticker shock when they pull up to the gas pump. We are told by some: It is the free market.

Here is what has happened to the profits of U.S. major oil and gas companies in billions of dollars from 2002, at which point they were $20 billion, to this year, when they are going to be over $100 billion. This is not a free market; this is a market with clogged arteries. It is OPEC pricing. It is a few countries that live on top of sand that is undergirded by substantial deposits of oil sitting around and deciding how much they are going to produce and what price they want to extract. So it is OPEC pricing. It is a concentrated domestic industry through mergers. It is rampant speculation. And it is also substantial windfall profits for some very profitable oil companies.

The question is, Where is the gain and where is the pain? Here is the gain.

We use 21 million barrels of oil a day. Sixty percent comes from outside of our country, which means we now have revenuesharing going on between the American drivers and consumers and the OPEC countries, including the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and the Iraqis and others. It is forced revenuesharing. We pull up to the pump, we pay an inflated price for gasoline, and we send the money to the Middle East. Forty percent of that which we use is produced domestically by larger and larger oil companies, grown larger by mergers in recent years. That 40 percent has increased by $30 a barrel. That means the profits have increased by $7 billion a month for the domestic producers.

The integrated domestic producers in many cases have control of oil from the discovery in the ground to the gasoline pump. Eighty billion dollars a year in extra profits will exist in the coming year if the price of oil stays where it is now. That profit doesn't emerge out of thin air. It comes from extracting it from the consumers who drive up to the gas pump and take out their credit card or their currency and pay for a tank of gasoline.

Something needs to be done. Tomorrow, I intend to introduce windfall profits rebate legislation. The bill will establish a price point for a barrel of oil. A portion of the windfall profits above that amount would be captured and sent back to the consumers who are paying the excess or windfall profits to the companies. I would exempt from that windfall profits recapture that amount of additional money that is being used by the companies for domestic exploration or for increasing refinery capacity. If it is being used for that, I say fine. At least we are trying to search for a better future with a greater energy supply. But some of the

major oil companies are now buying back their stock with that profit. That doesn't benefit this country.

These are windfall profits at the expense of consumers to enrich the larger integrated oil companies. I believe part of it ought to be recaptured and sent back as a rebate to the American consumer. I will introduce that legislation tomorrow.

I know it is controversial. I know some people may think the best way to address all of this is to sit around with your hands in your pocket and wipe your brow and wring your hands and fret about it and essentially do nothing. These represent the windfall profits on 40 percent of that which we use. Twenty-one million barrels a day. Forty percent of that comes from domestic producers. That has increased over $30 a barrel with no additional cost incurred by the major oil companies. It amounts to $7 billion windfall profits a month or $80 billion windfall profits a year. I believe some of that ought to be collected and sent back to consumers as rebates.

Again, I know that is controversial. I know some won't want to do that. The plain fact is, if we do nothing, you have a massive transfer of income from people who can't afford it to people who shouldn't get it to interests that shouldn't get it. I believe Congress should take action. I understand that this is a shorter term issue, but John Kenneth Galbraith said: In the long run, we are all dead. So let's deal with the short term.

Yes, I want to shed our addiction of running gasoline through carburetors and fuel injectors. I wrote the provision in the Energy bill, signed by the President, that has a $3.7 billion title dealing with hydrogen and fuel cells. That ought to be our future, hydrogen and fuel cells. If you run on hydrogen--and hydrogen is ubiquitous, it is everywhere--you get water vapor out the tailpipe, and you have twice the efficiency of power to the wheel. That is wonderful. Put up a wind turbine and collect energy from the wind and use the electricity collected from the wind to separate hydrogen from water with electricity--something called electrolysis--and then put that hydrogen in a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The Energy bill has a pretty good title on that. I wrote that title.

We need to shed our addiction to this oil. We need to shed our dependence on Middle East oil. In the meantime, in the short term, when you drive up to a gas pump with 2 cars and pump 15 gallons in each and pay $103, the question is, Who is pocketing that money and why? There is no justification for that kind of windfall profit.

If the oil industry wants to have substantial profits to invest back into the ground or to build additional refineries, that is fine. That wouldn't be captured by a windfall profit. But when the oil industry is getting windfall profits to the tune of $7 billion a month, which they are doing right now, and some are busy buying back their stock, the American consumers deserve a break. They have had a bellyful of this. We have seen it all over this country where the big interests get bigger. They extract more from the rest, and nobody seems to care much.

One final point, there is also a provision in the final Energy bill that requires the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation of oil and gas prices within 90 days. I wrote that provision as well. But frankly, I have minimum hope that the Federal Trade Commission is going to be an ambitious referee with respect to pricing. This Congress should take action.

Here is what we face from now to Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas with respect to $226 million a day of windfall profits. That is $30 a barrel above that which existed when you already had record profits in the domestic industry. I believe some of it ought to be recaptured and given back to American consumers.

I saw an old car with an old bumper hanging down. That car had seen a better day--rust in the fenders and the bumper hanging halfway on the right. I saw it at a stop sign near Mohall, ND, one day. The bumper sticker had a plaintive message. It said: We fought the gas war and gas won.

The fact is, American consumers ought to be given an even break. That is why I am introducing this legislation tomorrow.

I wonder if the Senator will yield for a moment.

There are many companies involved in hydrogen fuel cell technology, including United Technologies, that are very active in this area. The Senator is absolutely right with respect to activities in Connecticut. I also want to point out my point on the floor of the Senate is not to tarnish the oil industry. I have been a supporter of it in areas where I felt we should support it. We produce oil in North Dakota. My point is that as the major integrated companies become bigger and more concentrated, they in some cases work oil from the ground to the gas pumps with tremendous pricing capabilities. They are beneficiaries from the enormous amount of excess profit. If they pump those back into the ground or to increase refinery capacity, that is fine. But when they are buying back their stock, I believe they ought to give that windfall, ill-gained profit back to the consumers from where it came.

I looked forward very much to having a debate on stem cell research in the month of July. It now appears that that will not be the case. Nonetheless, I compliment the Senator from Tennessee, the majority leader, on his statement this morning.

I did want to make this point and ask a question of the Senator from Illinois. Is it not the case that those unused frozen embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics can become one of a couple of things? First and foremost, at the moment when they are unused and discarded, they become hospital waste. Second, and importantly, they can, if used in stem cell research, be used in the important medical research to preserve and to save lives.

I say to my colleague from Kansas, I have lost a daughter to heart disease--many of us have lost loved ones. I will never, ever, on the floor of this Chamber, be a part of those who wish to shut down promising medical research, especially when the ability to provide that research comes from embryos that otherwise would become hospital waste.

My colleague from Illinois asked the pertinent question, and perhaps when we have this debate some day we will have a greater description of that, but if in fact that is a human life which is now thrown in the waste basket as hospital waste, unused embryos that are discarded, if in fact that is a human life--it is not, by the way--should the destruction of that as hospital waste not be treated criminally? That would be the logical extension of some of those who are on the Senate floor wishing to shut down this promising area of research.

My hope is that we can thoughtfully, with ethical guidelines, proceed with research that is pro-life, that will save lives, that will give a lot of Americans greater hope for the future who suffer from dreaded diseases. I look forward to this debate. I wish very much it had been in the month of July, but nonetheless we will have this debate. When we do, I hope we will have a full and open discussion about it and advance the cause of saving lives in this country and around the world.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.