Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Montana.

Dru's Law

Before I comment on this piece of legislation, let me mention that last evening we passed a piece of legislation called Dru's Law, that deals with sexual predators. I did not say, and I should have last evening, that Senator Dayton, Senator Coleman, Senator Conrad, and others were cosponsors. But especially, although I mentioned Senator Specter, I did not say that Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania played a very significant role. I want to make sure the Senate and the American people understand that Senator Specter played a very significant role, not only being an original cosponsor with me of Dru's Law, but also allowing it to pass the Senate last evening. I thank him for his wonderful leadership.

This Interior appropriations bill was a hard bill to get done because we have

over one half billion dollars less in spending than the previous year. If anybody asks is anybody cutting any spending any place, you don't have to ask beyond this bill. This bill cuts one half billion dollars plus out of what we are spending in the current fiscal year. That means we will spend half a billion dollars less in the next fiscal year. It is not easy to put a bill together under those restraints, but we did it. It is not a perfect bill. Some things in it I feel good about, some I feel not so good about. I will talk about that in a moment. This bill carries the $1.5 billion appropriation for veterans health care. That is very important. We need to keep our promise to America's veterans. This country cannot fight wars and ask young men and women to serve their country if we do not demonstrate we are going to keep our promises. One of those promises is providing veterans health care to those who served.

No one has been more tireless, no one, perhaps, has offered more amendments on the floor of the Senate on this subject--relentlessly, over time--than my colleague from Washington, Senator Murray.

I yield 4 minutes to Senator Murray.

Mr. President, first let me say a special thank you to my colleagues from the State of Washington and the State of Texas. They have said it well. Again, I am enormously proud our bill has carried this $1.5 billion for veterans health care. There is a verse that goes:

When the night is full of knives, and the lightning is

seen, and the drums are heard, the patriots are always there,

ready to fight and ready to die, if necessary, for freedom.

Our soldiers are our patriots and when they come back from duty, duty our country called them for, we must keep our promise for veterans health care and that is what this $1.5 billion helps to do.

Let me for a moment talk about the underlying bill again. There are some good things and some things I wish were better in this bill. I compliment my colleague, Senator Burns from Montana and his staff: Bruce Evans, Virginia James, Leif Fonnesbeck, Ryan Thomas, Rebecca Benn; and also on this side, Peter Kiefhaber and Rachel Taylor.

We worked very hard to put a bill together with over $500 million less money than in the past year. That was not easy.

Indian Health Service--I regret to say, we are still underfunded. I am told we are funding about 60 percent of the need in Indian Health Service. We just must do better in the years ahead. We have responsibility for Federal prisoners' health care. We also have trust responsibility for the health of American Indians. We spend twice as much per person on Federal prisoners' health care than we do in per capita spending for American Indians for whom we have trust responsibility for health care.

My colleague described the tribal colleges, and we have together been able to increase that funding for tribal colleges. That is a good feature in this bill. The reason we have done this is that it is a priority to help people step out of poverty and toward opportunity, and that comes from the tribal colleges. There are so many stories of people whose lives have improved by the ability to access tribal colleges.

We have some other areas in the bill that I wish were better.

BIA school construction, we need funding increases, not funding cuts, and yet the President's budget proposed very significant cuts and we were not able to add all of that back. Also building for new hospitals and health clinics is down. My hope is that in the next year, we can find a way to add back some funding in these critical Indian health areas.

Having said all that, this is a big bill, dealing with so many other areas of the Government--EPA, the Forest Service, and so many other areas of Government. We have worked in a bipartisan way.

Let me also say that Senator Byrd wishes consent to speak for 5 minutes prior to vote on Interior at some point later this morning. I talked to the ranking member and also the chairman of the full committee.

Finally, let me say the chairman of the full committee should understand that this is the first time in 17 years that we have gotten to the Senate floor this early with an Interior appropriations bill. The last time Congress passed an Interior appropriations bill this early, those pages who serve in the Chamber were not yet born. So I think that says something about the leadership of Senator Cochran and Senator Byrd, who are the two leaders on the Appropriations Committee, and I for one like the notion that we are going to make the trains run on time in the appropriations process. It is the right thing to do and the right way to do it, and I am very blessed that in the month of July, we are in the Chamber passing this conference report. So hats off to Senator Cochran and Senator Byrd as well.

Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor and yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I thought I had done that, but if I have not asked that consent, I so ask.

Mr. Chairman, can I ask you to clarify something regarding Section 703? It is my understanding that by creating an alternative compliance mechanism that essentially we are creating a system that will allow more technologies to receive credit under the EPAct program without specifically naming them.

So, for instance, neighborhood electric vehicles or low speed electric vehicles would now qualify under this program even though they are not specifically named?

I thank the chairman and yield the floor.

foreign utility--section 203

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing bipartisan legislation to remedy a long-standing and glaring inequity in our so- called free-trade system. There are significant and costly differences in prices between agricultural chemicals sold in Canada and similar-- and in some cases, identical--chemicals sold in the United States. This disparity in prices puts an extra burden on American farmers, and it puts them at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to competing in the world market.

Currently, American and Canadian farmers use many of the same products on their fields. These products use the same chemicals, are made by the same company, and are sometimes even marketed under the same name; but they are often sold at a much lower cost north of the border.

For example, U.S. farmers use the pesticide Garlon, which is sold as Remedy in Canada. It is manufactured by the same company, with the same chemicals. But American farmers pay $8.02 more per acre than their Canadian counterparts. The pesticide Puma, which is widely used on wheat and barley, costs farmers in North Dakota $2.82 more per acre than Canadian farmers pay for Puma 120 Super, which is the same product, made by the same company. That means North Dakota farmers paid nearly $7.9 million more to treat their fields with Puma than they would have paid if they could have accessed it at prices paid by Canadian farmers.

This legislation would address that inequity by setting up a process that would allow American farmers to access these chemicals, which are lower priced, but identical to those already approved for use in the United States.

Data collected by the North Dakota Department of Agriculture show that farmers in just my home State of North Dakota alone would have saved nearly $11 million last year if they had been able to access agricultural chemicals at Canadian prices.

But this problem does not just affect farmers in North Dakota. Farmers all across the northern tier of the United States would benefit if they were able to access U.S.-approved pesticides at Canadian prices.

I have come before the Senate time and again to talk about the hidden inequities of trade. For trade to benefit our country, it must be fair. But the pricing inequities in the Canadian and U.S. pesticide markets are a failure of our current trade system.

This legislation I am introducing today, along with the Senator from Montana, Mr. Burns, authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to require that certain agricultural chemicals which have already been approved in the U.S. carry a joint label, which would allow them to cross the border freely.

The new labels would still be under the strict scrutiny of the Environmental Protection Agency, as would the use of these products. The EPA would continue to insure the health and safety standards that govern the products we use in our food supply. This bill keeps those priorities intact.

This bill is not an ending but a beginning. Hidden trade barriers and schemes riddle the fabric of our trade agreements. We cannot continue to accept trade practices that, on the one hand, hamstring Americans, and on the other hand, unduly promote our competitors. We ought not accept second best all of the time, and this bill is a step in bringing American producers back to a level playing field.

Mr. President, today my colleagues Senators Smith, Pryor and I are introducing legislation to ensure the sustainability and longevity of the Universal Service Fund and to support the deployment of broadband to unserved areas.

Section 254 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act sets forth the principles of universal service. Section 254 states that all citizens, including rural consumers, deserve access to telecommunications services that are reasonably comparable to those services provided in urban areas, at reasonably comparable rates.

This goal to ensure that rural consumers are not left behind continues to be critical, particularly as technology advances in leaps and bounds in this 21st century. Access to a robust communications infrastructure is a necessity for all Americans.

Our bill will further that goal in two ways. First, it will ensure that the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, will address reform of universal service and intercarrier compensation to support the cost of a national, quality communications network.

Over time, the Universal Service Fund has become increasingly strained, with the burden of support placed on only a limited class of carriers, creating inequities in the system and incentives to avoid contribution.

Reform is needed, and our bill directs the FCC to embark upon this reform, with specific guidelines to ensure equity and fairness and continuing sufficient support for networks.

In addition, our legislation will set up an account within the Universal Service Fund for broadband deployment to unserved areas. This will enable deployment of broadband to areas of the country that remain prohibitively expensive to serve, leaving consumers in those areas behind the technological curve.

This legislation is only a starting point. I believe more dialogue is necessary among my colleagues and industry, in order to achieve comprehensive universal service reform. I invite my colleagues to join me in this dialogue and in cosponsoring this bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a summary of this bill be printed in the Record following my statement.

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing bipartisan legislation to remedy a long-standing and glaring inequity in our so- called free-trade system. There are significant and costly differences in prices between agricultural chemicals sold in Canada and similar-- and in some cases, identical--chemicals sold in the United States. This disparity in prices puts an extra burden on American farmers, and it puts them at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to competing in the world market.

Currently, American and Canadian farmers use many of the same products on their fields. These products use the same chemicals, are made by the same company, and are sometimes even marketed under the same name; but they are often sold at a much lower cost north of the border.

For example, U.S. farmers use the pesticide Garlon, which is sold as Remedy in Canada. It is manufactured by the same company, with the same chemicals. But American farmers pay $8.02 more per acre than their Canadian counterparts. The pesticide Puma, which is widely used on wheat and barley, costs farmers in North Dakota $2.82 more per acre than Canadian farmers pay for Puma 120 Super, which is the same product, made by the same company. That means North Dakota farmers paid nearly $7.9 million more to treat their fields with Puma than they would have paid if they could have accessed it at prices paid by Canadian farmers.

This legislation would address that inequity by setting up a process that would allow American farmers to access these chemicals, which are lower priced, but identical to those already approved for use in the United States.

Data collected by the North Dakota Department of Agriculture show that farmers in just my home State of North Dakota alone would have saved nearly $11 million last year if they had been able to access agricultural chemicals at Canadian prices.

But this problem does not just affect farmers in North Dakota. Farmers all across the northern tier of the United States would benefit if they were able to access U.S.-approved pesticides at Canadian prices.

I have come before the Senate time and again to talk about the hidden inequities of trade. For trade to benefit our country, it must be fair. But the pricing inequities in the Canadian and U.S. pesticide markets are a failure of our current trade system.

This legislation I am introducing today, along with the Senator from Montana, Mr. Burns, authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to require that certain agricultural chemicals which have already been approved in the U.S. carry a joint label, which would allow them to cross the border freely.

The new labels would still be under the strict scrutiny of the Environmental Protection Agency, as would the use of these products. The EPA would continue to insure the health and safety standards that govern the products we use in our food supply. This bill keeps those priorities intact.

This bill is not an ending but a beginning. Hidden trade barriers and schemes riddle the fabric of our trade agreements. We cannot continue to accept trade practices that, on the one hand, hamstring Americans, and on the other hand, unduly promote our competitors. We ought not accept second best all of the time, and this bill is a step in bringing American producers back to a level playing field.

Mr. President, today my colleagues Senators Smith, Pryor and I are introducing legislation to ensure the sustainability and longevity of the Universal Service Fund and to support the deployment of broadband to unserved areas.

Section 254 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act sets forth the principles of universal service. Section 254 states that all citizens, including rural consumers, deserve access to telecommunications services that are reasonably comparable to those services provided in urban areas, at reasonably comparable rates.

This goal to ensure that rural consumers are not left behind continues to be critical, particularly as technology advances in leaps and bounds in this 21st century. Access to a robust communications infrastructure is a necessity for all Americans.

Our bill will further that goal in two ways. First, it will ensure that the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, will address reform of universal service and intercarrier compensation to support the cost of a national, quality communications network.

Over time, the Universal Service Fund has become increasingly strained, with the burden of support placed on only a limited class of carriers, creating inequities in the system and incentives to avoid contribution.

Reform is needed, and our bill directs the FCC to embark upon this reform, with specific guidelines to ensure equity and fairness and continuing sufficient support for networks.

In addition, our legislation will set up an account within the Universal Service Fund for broadband deployment to unserved areas. This will enable deployment of broadband to areas of the country that remain prohibitively expensive to serve, leaving consumers in those areas behind the technological curve.

This legislation is only a starting point. I believe more dialogue is necessary among my colleagues and industry, in order to achieve comprehensive universal service reform. I invite my colleagues to join me in this dialogue and in cosponsoring this bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a summary of this bill be printed in the Record following my statement.

Mr. President, my agreement with the majority leader was that we would pass by consent S. 792 which the Senate passed by consent last year. We are now passing it once again to go to the House. This deals with sexual predators. This legislation is called ``Dru's Law.''

My colleagues and I who have joined together to pass this legislation tonight do so in honor of this wonderful young woman who was tragically murdered in a parking lot in Grand Forks, ND. The man accused of murdering Dru Sjodin spent 23 years in prison. He was a violent sexual predator who was let of prison with a wave. So long. Check in now and then. Compare that, for example, to Martha Stewart, who was let out of prison but had to wear an electronic ankle bracelet.

Violent sexual predators judged to be at high risk for committing another violent sexual act are let out of prison with a wave. As a result, this young woman, Dru Sjodin, was tragically murdered. This is the man who spent 23 years behind bars. The psychiatrists said before he was released that he was a high risk for committing another violent sexual act. Within 6 months, he is now accused of murdering this young woman.

It is not only this man. It is Mr. Duncan. Remember the last couple of weeks, the two young children kidnapped, one murdered. The other is still alive, with her family dead. We know about this man. He raped a 16-year-old boy at gunpoint, a violent sexual predator. Last April, he was put in the arms of law enforcement and let out on $15,000 bail. More Americans are dead because of it.

This is not some mysterious illness for which we don't know the cure. We know what causes it and we know how to stop it. Again, if Martha Stewart has to wear an electronic ankle bracelet ordered by a judge, then surely violent sexual predators, when and if released, can be highly monitored by local governments. Surely, we ought to decide that if violent sexual predators are a high risk for reoffending, then the local State's attorney ought to be notified in case they want to seek a civil commitment to protect the public at large.

This bill does three things: One, create a national sex offender registry; No. 2, if a violent offender judged to be at high-risk is to be released from prison, the local State's attorney must first be notified so they can seek additional civil commitment; No. 3, if a high-risk sexual predator is released, then there must be maintenance and monitoring of that sex offender. No more ``so long, see you at the prison door,'' for a violent sexual predator.

We must stop this. How many more Americans will lose their lives? How many kids are going to be killed before we do the right thing?

Tonight the Senate takes an important step in the right direction. Senator Specter and I and others who have authored this legislation-- Senators Dayton, Clinton, and others--have decided that enough is enough. It is long past time to do what is right with respect to dealing with sexual predators and protecting the American people. We do this in the name of and in honor of Dru Sjodin, a young woman who tragically lost her life.

Perhaps in her name, with this legislation, we can save other lives. I feel good about what we do tonight in passing Dru's Law.

Mr. President, CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is one more failed chapter in a book of trade failures. How deeper must the hole get before we understand we are in trouble? How many more Americans must lose their jobs, with manufacturing, engineering and, yes, more white-collar jobs going overseas, outsourced, before we understand we are in trouble?

We have the largest trade deficit in the history of this country, $2 billion a day every day, 7 days a week. This is unsustainable. Everybody in this room knows it.

When will we understand that the next trade agreement is one in which we ought to stand up for the economic interests of our country, stand up for the interests of American workers? Let's not be ashamed of believing that our interest is in this country's economic opportunity, supporting our workers, our manufacturers, our farmers. This trade agreement pulls the rug out from under our sugar beet growers, from under our farmers, pulls the rug out from under American workers one more time.

The House passed this bill by two votes last night. There is a 15- minute vote in the House. This one lasted well over an hour, while they were trying to get the rest of the votes. Let me describe what they had to do to get the votes, because this trade agreement is awful. It is bad for the country. It is going to pile debt on top of debt and make more American jobs disappear overseas. Here is what they said, from today's paper: The last-minute negotiations for Republican votes resembled the wheeling and dealing on a car lot. Republicans who were opposed or undecided were courted during hurried meetings in Capitol hallways, on the House floor, and at the White House. GOP leaders told their rank and file that if they wanted anything, now was the time to ask, lawmakers said, and members took advantage of the opportunity by requesting fundraising appearances by Cheney and the restoration of the money for their programs. Lawmakers said many of the favors bestowed in exchange for votes will be tucked into the huge energy and highway bills Congress is scheduled to pass this week before leaving for the August recess.

Why do my colleagues think it was necessary to do what they did last night in the House to try to buy these votes with side deals and special deals and keeping the vote open for over an hour? Because this is a terrible agreement, and everybody knows it. When will we have the backbone to stand up for this country's economic interests? What will it take? How many more bad trade agreements? This isn't rocket science. This is our trade deficit. Year after year after year we are drowning in trade debt, and there is not one person on the floor of the Senate who wears a blue suit who is going to lose their job because of a bad trade agreement. It is working folks who lose their jobs, who find out their job left for China because they were making $11 an hour and the company can hire somebody for 30 cents an hour and work them 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. So the American people lose their jobs.

No politicians are going to lose their jobs. That is why they keep writing bad trade agreements. That is why the country is deeper in debt, the largest trade deficit in the history of this country. NAFTA, CAFTA, ``SHAFTA,'' GATT, you name it. With every single step we have taken with this trade strategy, the country has gone deeper into debt, and more Americans have found their jobs in peril. When, oh when, will it stop? Apparently not tonight.

Last night they bought CAFTA by two votes in the House. It passed by a slim margin in the Senate. But what this demonstrates to me is this Congress has not yet awakened to the reality of what it is doing to this country. Kids and grandkids wondering about their economic future will find they have less opportunity than their parents did. The one thing we all aspire to have happen always is that we want things better for our kids. We want to leave a place that is better for our children. That is not going to happen with these kinds of trade agreements in which we trade away American jobs, in which we decide that jobs that used to be performed by proud Americans to build products in this country are gone.

There is no social program in this Congress we deal with that is as important as a good job that pays well, with good benefits. That is the way people are able to take care of their families and pursue a career and have the opportunity to expand this great country of ours. Yes, we live in a global economy, we are told. It is a global economy, all right. The global economy has galloped along for the major corporations so they can produce where it is cheap and sell into this marketplace. But it is unsustainable. This won't last. The global economy has galloped along but without rules.

Now a corporation can decide to do business through a mailbox in the Bahamas. It can decide it wants to produce in China or Indonesia or Sri Lanka and hire people for 20 cents an hour and force them to work in unsafe plants. They can hire 12-year-olds to

work 12 hours a day and pay them 12 cents an hour. All of that is just fine with this trade strategy.

It is not fine with this Senator. It is not fine at all. Because I understand where it takes this country. We will not long remain a world economic power without a first-class manufacturing capability. And our manufacturing base is shrinking dramatically. Why? Because major corporations have decided they don't want to produce here. Is it because our workers don't do well? Not at all. That is not what it is about. It is about corporate profits by hiring people to work for 30 cents an hour and then selling the product at 30-cents labor to the grocery stores or on the store shelves of Toledo and Fargo and Brainard, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York.

I am telling my colleagues, this will not work much longer. Yet this Congress acts completely deaf and blind to the realities of what has come from our recent trade agreements. The North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the last agreements. We had all these economists tell us how many jobs it was going to create in our country. The fact is, our country has lost massive numbers of jobs as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. That bad agreement turned a modest trade surplus with Mexico into a huge deficit, and turned a modest deficit with Canada into an even larger deficit. Yet people still say that agreement worked. That is total rubbish.

I hope the Senate will turn down this agreement. I know they have voted for it once before, but now is the time to have some backbone, some nerve, some will to turn down this bad trade agreement.

I yield back my remaining time.

Mr. President, late this evening or perhaps tomorrow morning, there will be a vote in the U.S. House on something called the Central American Free Trade Agreement. I have come to the Senate floor to speak about trade issues, but I especially want to discuss the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which passed in the Senate by a very narrow margin. The estimate is that the votes do not exist to pass this agreement it in the House.

Lord knows how many bridges and highways have been promised in the last 48 hours, and it may very well be, at midnight tonight, magically the votes sufficient to pass this trade agreement will appear and we will have miles of highways and all kinds of bright bridges built in this country in order to persuade wavering House Members to vote for this awful trade agreement. It will be one more chapter in a boom of failed trade strategy and will mean more Americans will lose their jobs.

Incidentally, there are some people today from the textile area of this country saying there will be some changes in CAFTA to protect the textile industry, which presumably would require some other legislation to be passed to implement these changes.

Let me just say to anybody who thinks there are going to be any changes to this, there will be nothing coming through this Senate that will not be slowed down to the nth degree, and we will try in every way possible to block it. But also if anybody promises you that they will do something in a trade agreement, don't believe it, it is not worth the paper it is written on. I have papers in my desk going all the way back to the United States-Canadian Free Trade Agreement, that have promises in writing from the Trade Ambassador, Clayton Yeutter, that didn't mean a thing, wasn't worth the paper it was written on. The same is true with sugar and sweeteners in Mexico. It could go on and on.

My hope is that those few who have been promised the Moon with respect to some changes for the textile folks will not swallow that minnow tonight.

(Mr. CRAIG assumed the Chair.)

I hope they will vote against CAFTA, and I hope the CAFTA trade agreement will be defeated. Let me say why. Similar to all the other trade agreements, it sets us up for losing more jobs.

I am going to talk about a company I have spoken about a number of times on the Senate floor, but there is new news about this company which is what brings me to the floor at a time when we are all talking about international trade. This company is kind of a poster child for what is going wrong in our economy. It is called the Huffy Bicycle Company.

Now I have talked about this company before, and the reason I come to the floor tonight is there is new news about Huffy Bicycles. Huffy Bicycles makes a lot of bicycles. At one point in one plant I believe they were making 19,000 bicycles a day. Huffy Bicycles had a substantial portion of the bicycle market in our country. They could be bought in Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears Roebuck. Everybody remembers Huffy Bicycles. They can be found in most of our communities.

The problem is, Huffy Bicycles left this country. Their first plant in Dayton, OH dates back to 1898. They made bicycles under the brand name of Huffy for many decades. In fact, between the handle bar and the front tire they had a little emblem on it that had the U.S. flag. When Huffy escaped our country, as have so many companies, to produce their bicycles in China, they replaced the flag with a little decal of the globe. I am told it was the last job that the U.S. employees had when that company moved its jobs to China. They had to take the existing inventory of bikes and change the U.S. flag on the bicycle to a globe.

Well, let me talk about the production plant in Celina, OH. This was the headline in the Dayton Daily News, June 29, 2005. Now I told my colleagues that Huffy Bicycles are not made in America any more. All the folks that work for Huffy lost their jobs because these jobs are now in China. Here is what happened last month: Huffy Corporation, a 117-year-old bicycle and sporting goods company, on Tuesday, announced it wants to quit paying pension benefits and become a Chinese- controlled company.

Let me read that again. Huffy wants to quit paying its pension benefits and become a Chinese-controlled company.

So how did that come to pass? Well, in 1998, the company celebrated its 100th anniversary by laying off 1,800 workers from its three plants. The jobs were outsourced both to Mexico and a plant in Shenzhen, China. That plant is located in the very same Chinese city where Wal-Mart held its annual board meeting last year. Eight hundred fifty workers got fired by Huffy, and they earned $11 an hour, plus benefits. The company felt that was way too much money to pay people to build bicycles.

Now those employees were not getting wealthy but they liked their jobs. I have talked to some of them. They enjoyed working at Huffy. Many of them worked there for a lifetime, but their jobs went to a plant in Shenzhen, China. The workers there make 33 cents an hour. They work 15-hour shifts, according to the reports from those who visited the plants, they work from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m., 7 days a week. They are housed in crowded barracks and fed two meals a day. They have no health benefits, and when they get sick, as many do, they are fired. If, of course, they tried to organize--there is no evidence that these workers tried to organize--they not only would be fired, but precedent would suggest some of them would be sent to prison for organizing for workers' rights.

Even though the jobs are gone, the bicycles are still sold in America, made in China but sold in America. Now, Huffy wants to become a Chinese company. The vice president of the Chinese company that is planning to buy Huffy said this:

We look forward to Huffy's future growth as one of

America's leading bicycle brands . . .

Notice he did not say one of America's leading bicycles because those bicycles are not made here any more, just ``one of America's leading bicycle brands.''

Meanwhile, the U.S. workers who lost their jobs read this in the Dayton Daily News: Huffy to quit paying pension benefits and become a Chinese company.

This is a letter that former Huffy employees received a couple of weeks ago. I obtained a copy of this letter from a former Huffy Corporation worker in Ohio with whom I spoke yesterday. This says that as a result of its Chapter XI, Huffy will be filing a motion asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to approve a distress termination of the Huffy retirement plan. If approved, the PBGC, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Government agency that ensures these plans, will take over. It says: You are still going to get your benefits. That will not be affected by this action. It is just that the PBGC, or the American taxpayer, the Federal Government, will pay your retirement.

Then, down in the other portion, it says, but some may lose a portion of their retirement. You may not get all of your retirement.

So they want to become a Chinese company, make all their bikes in China, sell their bikes in America and pawn off pensions that were promised to workers who used to work for Huffy to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is guaranteed, of course, by the American taxpayers.

The letter says: Your retirement benefits will not be affected by this action, but after it states that retirees will receive their full pension benefits, it says some may lose benefits. That is the fine print.

As I said, I recently spoke to a former Huffy employee. The reason I am talking about this company is that it is symbolic of so many companies in exactly the same position. He told me that there are many people who worked a lifetime for Huffy, and now they are worried sick. They earned a pension because they worked every day, came to work every day, liked their job, were proud of the work they did, and now they are worried sick. Many older workers could only find low-wage jobs after being laid off and losing their jobs to China, so they were counting on their pensions to be there.

The workers at the Celina, OH, plant took a 30-percent wage and benefit cut to keep their jobs at one point, only to have Huffy decide it did not matter.

The Huffy worker whom I spoke to yesterday told me something poignant. He said, when the workers at the plant in Celina, OH, lost their jobs, on the last day of work, as those employees left the parking lot for the last time, they left a pair of shoes in the place where their car had been parked. So when the last car left the lot, there was a parking lot full of shoes. Workers wanted to tell this company that they had worked a lifetime for that company and loved their jobs. They wanted to say to that company: You are not going to find people to fill our shoes, you just will not find people to fill our shoes. You can find people who will work for 30 cents an hour. You can find people whom you can fire who want to join a labor union. You can find people whom you put in a plant working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, but you will not find people who will fill these shoes.

Another worker who worked at the Celina plant was Ruth Schumaker. I did not know Ruth Schumaker, but I came across her name when I began looking at this case--I looked at many cases, Fruit of the Loom, Levis, Fig Newton cookies, I can talk forever about these companies who have left our country and taken their production elsewhere--Ruth Schumaker was one of those employees who made bicycles. She had been paid $12 an hour. She worked 28 years and was very proud of her job. When she was told she was going to be laid off, she was going to lose her job because it was going to China, she was not able to retire because she still had many costs to deal with.

The only job she could find at that point was a part-time job at $7 an hour at the breakfast bar at the Holiday Inn. Her daughter said she never quite got over the stress of losing that job. Ruth died 2 years ago of cancer.

At the time they closed this plant, by the way, and moved these jobs to China and laid off Ruth and the last car left that parking lot with shoes in the parking spaces saying you will not fill these shoes, the CEO of that company was paying himself $771,000 a year. And, oh, by the way, Wal-Mart has expanded now in Celina. A Wal-Mart supercenter has been built on 50 acres that used to belong to Huffy. So it comes full circle.

I talk about Huffy only because of this news, this venerable old bicycle company with bicycles built by American hands that were proud of their jobs, announces that it wants to become a Chinese company after having moved all of its production to China. I have 33 pages-- single-spaced, front and back--of information from the Department of Labor that describes jobs lost in this country this year by companies that have certified to the Department of Labor, so their employees can get trade adjustment assistance, that they have moved certain jobs overseas or that certain jobs have been displaced by overseas trade. I have 33 pages--front and back, single-spaced, in small lines--of the names of the companies and the number of employees. That is just since the first of this year.

The question is: Does anybody care? The answer likely is, not people who matter, not people who can affect the outcome of this, certainly not this Senate because by a handful of votes this Senate said, let us just keep doing this. Let us continue to give tax breaks to companies that move their jobs overseas. Let us keep rewarding those who fire American workers and move those jobs overseas. Let us say to the American worker, you ought to have to compete against 30-cent-an-hour labor, you ought to have to compete against people who work in unsafe plants and are put in jail if they try to join a labor union.

Tonight there will be a vote in the House on CAFTA, and likely the message coming from the House will be, let us do more of the same. My colleagues from the South have all of these sayings, and former Congressman Stenholm always used to talk about the law of holes: When you find yourself in a hole, you ought to stop digging. But that does not seem to be the case with this Congress and international trade.

It is obvious to everyone this is not working. We have the biggest trade deficit in the history of this country. We have massive job loss. We have jobs that are moving outside of this country very quickly, and when American workers can find a job to replace the job they have lost, in most cases, they find a job paying 75 or 80 percent of their former income.

The question for our kids and their kids is what kind of a country will they inherit? We fought for a century over the conditions of production. We became the most productive country in the world. We are the world's leading economic power and military power. But we will not long remain the world's leading economic power without our major manufacturing base, and that manufacturing base is shrinking dramatically. Again, nobody seems to care very much.

I have introduced legislation to address this. We get blocked. It cannot even come to the Senate floor, regrettably. When the next trade agreement comes to the floor that does exactly the same thing and sets up American workers against unfair foreign competition, this Congress embraces it like a teddy bear.

In September, I intend to provide three or four lengthier discussions about international trade and talk about the specifics and remedies. Today, on the eve of the CAFTA vote in the House, I wished to call the attention of my colleagues to this company's story. It is so symbolic of the failure of our trade policy.

My hope is that perhaps, instead of talking about the general and instead of talking about the theory of it all, perhaps we can start thinking about and talking about real Americans who go to work every morning proud of their jobs, and who believe that this country they have inherited ought to give them an opportunity to do well if they play by the rules and do the things that are necessary.

The Pledge of Allegiance is not said everywhere these days. There is a pledge in the board room, and a pledge to profits, but not necessarily a pledge to this country's long-term economic health. I hope very much that is going to change, and I hope that the circumstances that existed for these employees will one day call to action the conscience of this Congress, and that it will say, this ought not to continue, this country can do better than that.

These people in this company, similar to the people in so many other companies I have talked about, did not lose their jobs and were not fired because they were not good Americans. It is because they could not compete against 30-cent labor, and they could not compete against a country that says: Try to organize, and we will fire you. They could not compete against a country that says to companies: Come on in, build your plants here and dump your chemicals into the streams and into the air. They could not compete against a country that says: Come on in and put your workers in an unsafe plant because we are not going to have OSHA here, and we are not going to enforce safe workplaces. We cannot compete against countries in which little kids are taken into a workplace at ages 9, 10, 11, and 12 and locked into that workplace, and where then the work product comes out and goes to the shelves of stores in Fargo or Toledo or St. Louis, and then the American worker is told: Compete with that, compete with, that; if you cannot, you lose your job.

That is not the way we built this country. It is not the way Congress should allow this trade strategy to continue. It is my hope that at some point, some way, somehow in the days ahead we will be able to take action on the floor of the Senate and further strengthen this country's long-term opportunities, help rebuild a manufacturing base, and give people the opportunity in this country, and the belief in this country there is an opportunity, for them and their families to have a good job that pays well, with job security.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will take a few minutes to pay tribute to a group of people whose tireless, dedicated service to those in need too often goes unnoticed--North Dakota's and our Nation's health care providers. As I travel around North Dakota, I frequently stop in to visit hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes. I am continually impressed by the quality, compassionate care that I see being provided by doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, and other medical staff, as well as by the administrative and support staff.

Rural America depends on its small town hospitals, its tertiary hospitals, on physicians and nurses, nursing homes, those who provide emergency ambulance services, and many others to provide a seamless system of care. There are a range of challenges facing rural health systems, from difficulty recruiting and retaining staff and inadequate reimbursement to rising costs and reams of paperwork to fill out. Despite these challenges, our health care providers do an admirable job remaining focused on providing quality care.

Our hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics are also important engines driving North Dakota's economy. Health services account for 8 percent of North Dakota's gross State product. And health care providers are often among the largest employers in a rural community, representing about 15 percent of direct and secondary employment.

In short, a strong health care system is an important part of our rural infrastructure, and the people who make up that system have my deep respect and thanks. Over the years, we have determined that rural electric service, rural telephone service, an interstate highway system through rural areas, and rural mail delivery, to name a few services, make us a better, more unified nation. The same is true of rural health care, and I will continue fighting for policies that reflect rural health care as a strong national priority.

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, am I now recognized for 15 minutes?

Mr. President, my colleague has sought to have the yeas and nays on his amendment. Let me do the same. I have two amendments pending. Should there be cloture invoked on this underlying bill, as my colleague from Oklahoma has suggested, I would like my amendments to be considered prior to cloture. I have an amendment No. 1429, which is offered. I ask for the yeas and nays on both of my amendments. Then I will speak on the amendments ever so briefly.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I ask that we consider amendment 1429. I previously filed that amendment.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on amendment No. 1429.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we consider amendment No. 1426, which I previously filed.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on amendment No. 1426.

Mr. President, I will briefly describe amendment No. 1426. I thank my colleagues for their cooperation. That amendment one that I described at some length on Friday. It has to do with the joint inquiry of the two Intelligence Committees into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It has to do with the 28 pages in this joint inquiry that have been redacted and classified as top secret. The American people should see these 28 pages. The chairman and the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee at the time said they believe the American people should see these 28 pages. The Government of Saudi Arabia said the American people deserve to see these 28 pages. This book went to the White House for publication. The White House redacted it and classified it as top secret.

I have read the 28 pages. My colleagues have had an opportunity to read them. My former colleague from Florida, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described the question of whether the hijackers on 9/11--and 15 of the 19 were Saudi citizens--whether the hijackers received support from foreign interests and, if so, what kind of support, which foreign interests. The American people have a right to see this.

I hope the Senate will finally vote on asking the President to declassify these pages and give the American people the right to understand what is in those 28 pages.

Again, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the ranking member, a Republican and a Democrat, believed at the time those 28 pages should not have been classified.

I will now turn to amendment No. 1429. It deals with waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting in Iraq, and it deals especially with Halliburton, but not exclusively with Halliburton. I have offered this amendment previously as well.

It is unbelievable to me the billions and billions of dollars being spent. A substantial portion of it is being wasted. We know that, and yet no one seems to care or do much about it.

Let me show some charts, if I may. This is a chart of someone who testified before a policy committee hearing I held. This fellow--you cannot see his face--this fellow in the blue striped shirt testified. He was in Iraq when this picture was taken. This is Saran-wrapped bundles of 100-dollar bills, some millions of dollars in 100-dollar bills. He said in this particular area they often played football with these Saran-wrapped bundles of 100-dollar bills.

What was he doing with bundles of 100-dollar bills? The area where this cash was stored, subcontractors in Iraq were told: Bring a bag because we pay in cash; bring a bag. Show up here and want to get paid for whatever you are doing? Bring a bag because we pay in cash.

Let me talk for a moment about the five hearings we held. We heard about cash transactions that were unrecorded, $9 billion that was unaccounted for. ``Uncle Sam Looks into Meal Bills: Halliburton Refunds $27 Million as Result.'' A company that was a Saudi subcontractor doing business through Halliburton billed the Government for 42,000 meals a day, but they only served 14,000 meals to our troops. Let me say that again. They were charging the Government for 42,000 meals served every day to our troops; they were only serving 14,000 meals.

This was not the first time Halliburton has been questioned about this. This was in February 2004.

Also in February 2004, ``Halliburton Faces Criminal Investigation.''

They focus on efforts to solicit bids that transport fuel to Baghdad. Prices Halliburton charged for that work were substantially higher than the cost of trucking in fuel from Turkey. Pentagon launches criminal investigation for possible fraud.

``Ex-Halliburton Workers Allege Rampant Waste.'' Said one employee: They did not control costs at all. Their motto was do not worry about costs. It is cost plus.

Henry Bunting--who testified, incidentally, before one of our Policy Committee hearings--said that they spent $7,500 a month to rent ordinary vehicles, cars and trucks, when the vehicles could have been rented for less than $2,000 a month through the Internet. He also held up some towels. He said they had purchased monogrammed towels for $7.50--these are hand towels for the troops--that should have cost $2.50. Why $7.50? Because Halliburton wanted their logo on the towels.

Now it is May. In February, they talked about overcharging 42,000 meals when they only served 14,000 meals. Now it is May of last year, 4 months later, and the Pentagon says: We are suspending $159 million in meal charges to Halliburton for feeding soldiers because the fact is they were charging for meals they were not serving.

They are still engaged in the same contract, still cheating, and nobody does a thing about it.

``Millions in U.S. Property Lost.'' Halliburton lost $18.6 million in Government property in Iraq. Auditors could not account for 6,975 items on the ledgers of Halliburton's unit.

``Halliburton is Unable to Prove $1.8 Billion in Work, Pentagon Says.'' This has gone on and on. Has Congress done a thing about it, any oversight hearings? None. Nobody seems to care much.

Let me read from a hearing we held in the Policy Committee, a hearing we held because the oversight committees do not hold these hearings. Let me read what the top civilian in the Corps of Engineers, who is engaged in these contracts and approves these contracts, said. This is a woman named Bunnatine Greenhouse. She rose to the highest level in the Corps of Engineers for civilian employees, and now she is losing her job because she was honest. Here is what she said: I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to

contracts awarded to Halliburton represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.

This courageous lady comes forward to testify to say these things, and now her career pays a price for it because we do not want to upset the good old boy network around here. They want to give a sweetheart deal to a company, suspend the rules, and give a sweetheart deal. They cheat you, cheat you again and again, do not worry about it. Do a little investigation down at the Pentagon, but don't anybody in Congress call attention to it. It would be uncomfortable and embarrassing to somebody.

In 1941, Harry Truman, the Senator from Missouri, served in this Chamber. He was a flinty, tough independent. A member of his own party was in the White House, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A Democrat in the Senate took on the task of identifying the waste, abuse, and fraud that was occurring in spending on our defense. They held hearing after hearing, and they unearthed a massive amount of fraud, waste, and abuse. I am sure that was uncomfortable for the Democrat in the White House, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, because a Democrat Senator was leading the fight. He did it through the Truman Committee that took a hard look at this kind of fraud and abuse.

My amendment would reestablish a Truman-type committee, with Members of both parties on it. When we are shoving tens of billions of dollars out the door to companies such as Halliburton in sole-source contracts, somebody has to watch the cash register.

We had a fellow named Rory testify recently at the Policy Committee. Again, we are holding hearings only because there are not aggressive oversight hearings held in the rest of the Congress because the majority party worries it would embarrass somebody. So Rory comes to testify. He is running a food service unit for Halliburton in Iraq and he says: We are getting food that is in some cases over a year expired on the date stamp for the food. What do they do? They are told: Feed it to the troops.

We get food that comes in on a convoy that has been attacked. What do they do? The supervisors say go into those trucks and remove the shrapnel and remove the bullets and save the bullets as souvenirs for the Halliburton supervisors and feed the food to the troops.

Yes, this fellow ran one of those agencies. Here is what he said: When I was an employee for Halliburton and they were doing this sort of thing, we were told if a Government auditor comes around, do not dare talk to the Government auditor. If you do, one of two things will happen: You will either be sent to a fire zone in Iraq, one under attack, one with significantly more danger than where you work now, or you will be fired summarily. Do not talk to Government auditors.

The question is: When will someone care enough to begin to take a hard look at the money we are spending? Nearly $200 billion has gone out of here, all of it emergency funding, none of it paid for. A substantial portion of that goes to contractors and much of it sole- source contractors, no-bid and cost-plus contracts. The American taxpayers, in my judgment, are paying the price for very substantial abuse and very substantial waste and fraud.

The moment someone comes to the Senate floor and mentions the word ``Halliburton,'' they say: You are attacking the Vice President. I am not. The Vice President used to run Halliburton Corporation. He does not and has not since the year 2000. None of the examples I have cited have happened prior to that time, they have happened since that time. This is not the Vice President's corporation. It is not on his watch as CEO of Halliburton. But these are sweetheart contracts, sole-source contracts.

Fifty thousand pounds of nails are ordered to the country of Iraq, and they are the wrong size. So if one wants some nails, they are laying on the ground somewhere there in the sand, just another piece of waste. Seventy-five hundred dollars to rent a vehicle for a month. Buy new trucks for $85,000, get a flat tire, leave them by the roadside to be trashed. Buy new trucks for $85,000 and have a fuel pump plugged, leave them by the roadside to be trashed and looted. All of that comes from testimony from people who used to work for Halliburton. They have come before our Policy Committee and told these stories that describe outrageous amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse. The question is: Why does no one in this Congress seem to care? My hope is that this Congress would agree to create a Truman-type committee, a committee of Republicans and Democrats that would take a hardnosed, flinty look at how money is being spent.

How much time remains?

Mr. President, some of my colleagues have said they would like a vote on their amendments prior to cloture. My hope is that we will not have a cloture vote, by the way. I think the best Defense authorization bills that we have had in the Congress have been those that have been debated on the Senate floor for a week or two where we have had a substantial opportunity to think through and debate significant and difficult issues. So I would hope we will not have a cloture vote tomorrow. If in fact we do, I will join my colleague from Oklahoma and others who suggest that I would like a vote prior to cloture because his amendments and mine would fall postcloture. That is one of the dilemmas of cloture.

Clearly, my amendment deals with something that is very important, that attends to the money we are spending on defense and the money we are going to authorize to be spent on defense, but because of the way it is written and the subject, it will fall postcloture. For that reason, I hope we will not invoke cloture tomorrow.

I thank my colleagues for the time and hope they will seriously consider both amendments I have described today.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to offer a couple of amendments. First I will say a few words about the amendment offered by the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from California. Senator Feinstein was speaking on it when I came to the Chamber today. That is the question of money that is designated to begin research on the construction, hopefully, according to those who want it, of an earth penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapon.

There is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons on this Earth. Mr. President, 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons exist on this Earth. And now we have people talking about building new nuclear weapons in this country, building designer nuclear weapons, creating a new category of nuclear weapons, beginning to test nuclear weapons once again. That strikes me as pretty foolhardy because our responsibility as the world's superpower is to lead in a direction that tries to prevent nuclear weapons from ever entering into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations or adversaries. Our leadership responsibility is to try to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, to convince others not to build nuclear weapons.

Let me read from Time magazine, March 11, 2002.

For a few harrowing weeks last fall, a group of U.S.

officials believed that the worst nightmare of their lives--

something even more horrific than 9/11--was about to come

true. In October, an intelligence alert went out to a small

number of Government agencies, including the Energy

Department's top secret Nuclear Emergency Search Team based

in Nevada. The report said terrorists were thought to have

obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal

and planned to smuggle it into New York City.

The source of the report was an agent code name Dragonfire

who intelligence officials believed was of ``undetermined''

reliability. But Dragonfire's claim tracked with a report

from a Russian general who believed his forces were missing a

10-kiloton nuclear weapon.

Since the mid-'90s, proliferation experts have suspected

that several portable nuclear devices might be missing from

the Russian stockpile. That made this Dragonfire report

alarming. So did this: Detonated in lower Manhattan, a 10-

kiloton bomb would kill some 100,000 civilians. . . . And

counterterrorist investigators there went on their highest

state of alert.

That was from Time magazine, March of 2002. Many of us heard reports of this before. It said following 9/11 in October of that year, there was a rumor that intelligence officials took seriously that terrorists had acquired a nuclear weapon and were intending to smuggle that nuclear weapon into a major American city and detonate it.

Interestingly, no one believed it was impossible for someone to have obtained a nuclear weapon. There are 25,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons on this Earth. We hear the stories about the then-Russian nuclear stockpile of thousands of weapons without adequate control and maintenance, some reports about the command and control of those weapons being dealt with with pencil notations and notebook paper. So it was not beyond the pale that someone could have stolen a nuclear

weapon. Neither did intelligence officials doubt that having stolen a nuclear weapon, terrorists would be able to find a way to detonate a nuclear weapon.

Why do I mention this? Because with the thousands of nuclear weapons that exist in this world, the acquisition of one nuclear bomb by a terrorist group detonated in a major city in this country or in other countries will cause a catastrophe unlike any we have ever known.

(Mr. LUGAR assumed the Chair.)

That ought to persuade us that our responsibility is to do everything humanly possible, as the world's most powerful nation, to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, to prevent terrorists in rogue nations from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, and to begin reducing the number of nuclear weapons. That is our leadership responsibility. That responsibility falls to our country and yet we have people who say, well, not to worry about that; in fact, let us talk about building new nuclear weapons; let us design different nuclear weapons. There is even talk about potentially using a nuclear weapon. There is discussion about beginning testing nuclear weapons. I think that sort of thing is reckless because it sends a signal to the rest of the world that we are not really serious about trying to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in this world.

We should be serious about it. It ought to be the highest priority for this country to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, halt the ability of terrorists to ever acquire a nuclear weapon with which they would threaten thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.

This Defense authorization bill is spending a great deal of money on an antiballistic missile defense system, kind of a catcher's mitt, in case a terrorist organization or rogue nation would launch an intercontinental ballistic missile against our country with a nuclear warhead. This antiballistic missile program is kind of a catcher's mitt to go up and catch a speeding bullet and hit it with another speeding bullet. Frankly, it is the least likely threat to this country. The threat that a terrorist organization or a rogue nation would acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead and then shoot it at our country, that is one of the least likely scenarios.

The most likely scenario would be a terrorist or rogue nation acquiring a nuclear weapon through theft or some other device and then deciding to put it in the trunk of a rusty car sitting in a dock in New York City or putting it in one of the many containers that show up at an American port on a container ship. After all, there are 5.7 million containers that show up at our ports. Only a very small percentage are ever inspected. That is a much greater, much more likely threat to this country.

I have great concern about those who talk so easily about our country building new nuclear weapons, perhaps even using a nuclear weapon. We have heard that language in recent years, talking about the need to create designer nuclear weapons. Our responsibility is far greater than that. I believe our responsibility as a world leader is to lead in the direction of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; to do everything humanly possible to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons; to do everything humanly possible to control the nuclear weapons that now exist and safeguard those nuclear weapons that now exist.

Since the Presiding Officer is from the State of Ohio, I will show something I have shown many times that is in my desk. I ask unanimous consent to show my colleagues two pieces of information.

This happens to be from a wing strut of a backfire bomber that the Soviets used to fly when we were in the Cold War. My assumption perhaps is that this bomber carried nuclear weapons. In the Cold War, the nuclear weapons on top of missiles were aimed at our country. The nuclear weapons carried in the bomb bay of a backfire bomber did not mean good things for our country.

How did I acquire a piece of an airplane that was part of a Soviet bomber? This happens to be sawed off the wing of that airplane. It was sawed off the wing of an airplane at American taxpayer expense, one of the most successful things we have ever done. The reason I mention it now is the Presiding Officer's name is on that legislation, and through a program advanced by Senators Lugar and Nunn, we have had remarkable success in reducing the weapons delivery systems.

This is from a bomber. This is the ground-up copper wire of a submarine that used to stealthily move under the waters of our oceans, again with nuclear weapons, with warheads prepared to aim at American cities. How did I acquire copper wire from a submarine that belonged to the Soviet Union? That submarine was taken apart, dismantled, as a result of arms control agreements that dismantled weapons delivery systems that at one point threatened America.

It is now in this form, a piece of a bomber and copper wire from a submarine, which I hold in my hand on the Senate floor because programs like the Nunn-Lugar program, things like arms control agreements, do work and can work to reduce the threat in this country. I have had this in my desk for some while and have used it only to demonstrate that our responsibility as a world leader is to lead in the direction of doing everything humanly possible to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on this Earth, to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue nations, terrorists, and other countries that desperately wish to acquire them, and to safeguard the nuclear weapons that already exist in our arsenal to make certain that they are not acquired by other interests.

That is a diversion from the point I was making but an important one, I think. I came here to say that I support the amendment that has been offered today. I do not support the spending of money for the development of a designer nuclear weapon, bunker busters, whatever it might be called. It seems to me that is moving in exactly the wrong direction.

Since I think the most likely threat is a stolen nuclear weapon put in the trunk of a rusty car at an American dock or an American city, I would hope that we would begin to spend as much time and resources dealing with the most likely threats as we do dealing with the most unlikely threat, and that is the spending of billions and billions of dollars to create an electronic catcher's mitt, an antiballistic missile system, in the belief that a rogue nation or a terrorist would acquire an ICBM and then arm it with a nuclear warhead.

Could that conceivably happen? Perhaps, but it is the least likely threat we face from terrorists. The most likely threat is the theft of a nuclear weapon and the placement of that in the trunk of a car or in a container on a ship, and I hope we will spend as much time worrying about that and dealing with that as we do the other.

Again, that is sort of a long way of saying I support the amendment that has been offered to strip the funding for the robust nuclear earth penetrator bunker buster.

Amendment No. 1426

I send an amendment to the desk, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

This amendment that I have offered is a sense-of-the- Senate amendment and it deals with this booklet. It is, as published, December 2002, ``A Joint Inquiry Into the Intelligence Community Activities Before and After The Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,'' a report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, dated December 2, 2002.

It was the first evaluation of intelligence related to the attack against this country on September 11, 2001.

On page 395, and I will read a portion of it, it begins a discussion about something that is very sensitive and then it turns to 396 and subsequent pages. As we can see, those pages are blank. There are 28 pages in the middle of this book that are blank. They are blank because they are classified at the moment as top secret. Members of Congress can, under certain conditions, go and read this top secret material. I and a good number of my colleagues have. Previously, I and other colleagues have as well brought to the attention of the Senate the need for this information to be declassified.

The amendment that I offer is very simple. It says that the President should declassify the 28-page section of the joint inquiry into the terrorist attacks of September 11 that deals with foreign sources of support for the hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001, attack.

The American people have been prevented from seeing this. I will, in a moment, quote from Senator Shelby and Senator Graham, then-chairman and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, both of whom felt that this information should be made available to the American people. But it has never been made available to the American people.

Let me read the page prior to the 28 pages that have been redacted. Page 395:

Finding: Through its investigation, the Joint Inquiry

developed information suggesting specific sources of foreign

support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they

were in the United States.

Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. The finding says they developed information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. The joint inquiry's review confirmed that the intelligence community also has information, much of which has yet to be independently verified, concerning these potential sources of support.

Instead, the Joint Inquiry referred a detailed compilation

of information it had uncovered in documents and interviews

to the FBI and CIA for further investigation by the

Intelligence Community and, if appropriate, law enforcement

agencies.

It talks then at the end of this page about the joint inquiry, which states:

It was not the task of this Joint Inquiry to conduct the

kind of extensive investigation that would be required to

determine the true significance of such alleged support to

the hijackers. On the one hand, it is possible that these

kinds of connections could suggest, as indicated in a CIA

memorandum, ``incontrovertible evidence that there is support

for these terrorists,'' blank, blank, blank.

At that point, it is redacted.

This was classified at the White House. These documents went to the White House, then to be published publicly, and prior to publication 28 pages were classified top secret. That is why in the middle of this booklet we see 28 pages with no information.

There was a call to declassify it because a substantial amount of information in the press and elsewhere raised questions about this issue.

I will read from The Washington Post at this point in time, December 12, 2002:

Leaders of the congressional panel ending an investigation

of the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks yesterday

accused the administration of refusing to declassify

information about possible Saudi Arabian financial links to

U.S.-based terrorists because the material would be

embarrassing and would heighten political tensions with the

desert kingdom.

Continuing from The Washington Post:

In releasing the panel's final report on the intelligence

agencies' performance before the attacks, Sen. Bob Graham (D-

Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the vice chairman, said the

information on Saudi Arabia should be made public to inform

the public about a continued source of support for anti-

American terrorism groups. Doing so also would put more

pressure on the U.S. government to force the Saudis to sever

their financial links to charities and individuals who

support terrorism, they said.

In other comments, Senator Shelby said that he believed 90 to 95 percent of this should be made available to the American people and would not compromise any intelligence sources.

The President was asked about this issue. He was asked actually in a Rose Garden appearance back at that point before a meeting with King Saud, where the President said he had no qualms at all about rebuffing the request to release this information publicly because he said there is an ongoing investigation into the 9/11 attacks, and we do not want to compromise the investigation.

Well, even the Ambassador from Saudi Arabia to the United States called for the release of this information because there was substantial speculation about what it said. I cannot say what it said on the Senate floor because it is top secret. I can read what Senator Shelby has said and what Senator Graham said on the Senate floor. I can show that in this report there are 28 pages which the American people are not allowed to see. I can say that there are published reports--and I have read them into the record now from The Washington Post and others and I will read into the record, if it is necessary, the comments from my two colleagues who were the chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, that references Saudi Arabia. The point is even the Government of Saudi Arabia suggested and said publicly that this material should be declassified and made public.

Senator Shelby, the vice chairman of the congressional inquiry at that point, reiterated his view that 90 to 95 percent of the classified pages could be released without jeopardizing national security.

My point is this. I have reviewed the top secret material. I am sure many of my colleagues have. They all should. It contains information that the American people have a right to see.

Let me again read the lead to the 28 redacted pages. Again, I am reading from the Joint Intelligence Committee Report:

Through its investigation, the joint inquiry developed

information suggesting specific sources of foreign support

for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the

United States.

Every Member of the Senate should read that top secret material. But every American citizen should have access, to understand what it says, because it should not be classified. It is unfair. It is unfair to the American people, and I submit it is unfair to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian Government has said it ought to be unclassified.

I have on a previous occasion offered this amendment to the Senate. There was an objection, so I offer the same amendment again today. It is now 4 years from the date of that attack. It is now long past the time when investigation is ongoing. The President said he would not declassify this because

there is an ongoing investigation into 9/11, and we don't want to compromise it. That investigation by the 9/11 Commission, authorized by the Congress--that investigation is over. So this excuse is no longer an excuse.

I submit the American people have a right to know if there were those who provided support to the 9/11 terrorists who were in this country and preparing to launch the attack on 9/11. If there were those foreign governments, foreign interests, or as the report indicated simply, ``foreign sources of support,'' then the American people have a right to know.

My amendment is a very simple amendment, painfully simple. Once again, I offer it to say it is the sense of the Senate that this information shall be declassified. We ask the President to declassify this information and see that it is made available to the American people.

I was intending to read this. I think I shall not--perhaps just a paragraph or two of it.

My colleague, Senator Graham from Florida, who in fact stood at this desk and made this statement, he was then-chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Senator Shelby, who I described as chairman, was chairman at one point, and then Senator Graham as the ranking member, and then it switched and Senator Graham was chairman. During this particular time, Senator Graham, as chairman, and Senator Shelby, as vice chairman, both agreed that the bulk of this ought to be made available to the American people. Let me just quote the statement made on the floor of the Senate by our colleague, Senator Graham, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He is describing this.

This report makes a very compelling case, based on the

information submitted by the agencies themselves, that there

was a foreign government which was complicitous in the

actions leading up to September 11, at least as it relates to

some of the terrorists who were present in the United States.

There are two big questions yet to be answered. Why would

this government have provide the level of assistance--

financial, logistical, housing, support service--to some of

the terrorists and not to all of the terrorists? We asked

that question. There has been no response.

My own hypothesis--and I will describe it as that--

I am continuing to quote Senator Graham--

is that in fact similar assistance was being provided to

all or at least most of the terrorists. The difference is

that we happened, because of a set of circumstances which are

contained in these 28 censored pages, to have an unusual

window on a few of the terrorists. We did not have a similar

window on others. Therefore, it will take more effort to

determine if they were, in fact, receiving that assistance.

I continue to quote Senator Graham of Florida.

An even more serious question is what would lead us to

believe that if there was this infrastructure of a foreign

government supporting some of the 19 terrorists, that as soon

as September 11 concluded, as soon as the last flames were

put out at the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and on the

field in Pennsylvania, all that infrastructure was

immediately taken down? Again, this is my hypothesis: I don't

believe it was taken down. I believe that infrastructure is

likely to still be in place assisting the next generation of

terrorists who are in the United States.

Those are very fundamental questions, and if the public had access to these 28 pages, they would be demanding answers.

That is a response from the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, not some partisan, with sentiments echoed largely by the vice chairman of the committee, about the top secret classification of those 28 pages.

My amendment, once again, simply says I believe the American people have the right to know what is on these pages. These 28 pages are blank. I know what is there. Some of my colleagues know what is there because we are able to see top secret material. The American people don't know what is there, and they should.

Having read it, I simply say they ought to have the right to see it as well, and my amendment is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment that would ask the President to make available, to declassify this material, so there are no longer questions about what it says.

Mr. President, I am not finished. I thought you were asking me to yield for a question.

I have one additional amendment.

I indicated to my colleague I would be speaking about 20 minutes, but I have one additional amendment that probably will take about 10 minutes.

Mr. President, my understanding was we had ample time this afternoon. I will truncate my remarks. I had intended to speak longer than 10 minutes, but I don't want to disadvantage my colleague on the floor or disadvantage those managing the bill. I will come back on Monday and speak at greater length about the amendment I will offer now and keep my comments short at this moment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I offer an amendment for myself, Senator Durbin, and Senator Lautenberg. I send the amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is an amendment that deals with a subject I have previously brought to the floor of the Senate, so far unsuccessfully, but my hope is this time perhaps I will have better luck. It deals with the question of dramatic waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting, particularly with respect to the war effort in Iraq.

In the early 1940s, 1941 to be exact, Harry Truman, a Democrat from the State of Missouri, serving here in the Senate when a Democratic President was in the White House, decided that he wanted to have an investigation of what he considered substantial waste, fraud, and abuse in Pentagon spending and spending by contractors. I am sure it was uncomfortable for a Democrat in the White House to have a member of his own party in the Senate pushing, but he did. He kept pushing as only Harry Truman could, and created finally a Truman committee, a special committee. They held hearings all around the country. They were relentless. They found massive amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse in spending--yes, even during the war effort. It was, perhaps, uncomfortable for everybody that this was going on, that this kind of inquiry existed. But Harry Truman was not about to take a ``no'' answer

from anybody, so he pushed and pushed.

Finally, it came on the radar screen in the Senate that when you spend money, particularly when you are at war, you can't have people profiteering. It has to be spent effectively in support of this country's interests in support of our troops.

We have a war in Iraq. We have soldiers in harm's way in Afghanistan. We are moving massive quantities of money out the door in the Congress--$81 billion here, $45 billion there, $55 billion there. It is, in many cases, going to contractors--some substantial amounts to replenish Defense Department accounts, but a substantial amount to contractors.

We hear substantial waste, fraud, and abuse. It almost makes you sick. This is a picture of $2 million wrapped in Saran wrap. In fact, the guy standing right here said they were playing football, playing catch with bundles of hundred-dollar bills. What were they doing with this? They were actually giving money to contractors in Iraq. Contractors were told: Bring a bag, we pay in cash. Bring a bag because we pay in cash over here.

This picture shows what was going on. The guy who did this testified before a committee at a hearing that I held. I don't need to go through a lot of charts, but ``Uncle Sam Looks Into Meal Bills, Halliburton Refunds $27 Million.''

We had one example: Halliburton corporation charging the American taxpayer. They were feeding 42,000 a day--at least that is what they were charging for, 42,000 meals a day. Guess what. They were only serving 14,000 meals a day.

I came from a small town that had a really small restaurant. I can understand them missing a cheeseburger or two, but a corporation that overcharges the Federal Government for feeding soldiers by 28,000 meals a day?

Then we had another hearing. We had one of the food service supervisors in Iraq who works for a subsidiary of Halliburton. He said we were feeding food that was outdated and expired, expired stamps on it by as much as a year.

I see the Washington Times had a little blurb today. They mentioned that. People were writing in and saying: That is nothing, we used to eat old K rations. Does anybody believe it is right that when we send our soldiers to Iraq and we have food hauled over by a contractor and we pay for good food to be fed to our troops, and then they end up with food that is expired for a year, they say that is OK, serve it to the troops; and if a convoy comes through and is subject to attack the supervisor says, you grab that food out, pull the shells out and shrapnel out, and feed it to the troops. I put that testimony in the Record.

Let me tell you, a top civilian official at the Corps of Engineers, involved in awarding sole-source contracts to companies like Halliburton--and there are more involved--the top civilian official is a wonderful woman with a wonderful record who has worked for years for this country. Here is what she said. And by the way, she is paying for it with her career because whistleblowing is not looked upon with favor by the old boys network. Here is what she said, Bunny Greenhouse:

I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the

contracts awarded to K.B.R. Halliburton represents the most

blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during

the course of my professional career. She is paying for this

bit of honesty with her career because the good old boys

don't like to hear that.

The question is, for all the things that are being done--payment to have a room air conditioned, have the contractor come pick up a bag of cash, and it goes to a subcontractor--pretty soon the American taxpayers' payment to have room air conditioning, turns out the room has a little fan in it and we paid for air conditioners.

It is unbelievable what is going on. There are 85,000 brand new trucks left on the roadside because they had a flat tire, to be trashed and torched. Plugged fuel pumps? Dump the truck.

It is unbelievable what is going on in waste, fraud, and abuse. I have held five hearings in the policy committee on this. We had whistleblowers who have the courage to show up and talk about what is going on. There are 50,000 tons of nails laying in the sands of Saudi Arabia because they ordered the wrong size, so they dump them on the sands. The American taxpayer will pay for that. Need some towels for troops? The Halliburton subsidiary orders towels for troops and they nearly doubled the cost of the towels so they could put their logo on the towels.

Yes, it is going on all the time. It is unbelievable. And nobody does a thing about it. Nothing. Do you think this Congress is holding aggressive oversight hearing? None. Nobody is interested. Why? Because it would embarrass somebody. Meanwhile the American taxpayer is taking a bath and the troops are being poorly served, in my judgment, with this sort of nonsense.

My amendment is simple. I will speak at some length on Monday. I want to truncate this for the sake of the time problems my colleagues have. My amendment is very simple. My amendment calls for the establishment of a Truman-type committee again that would do the oversight that is not being done by this Congress. It will be bipartisan. It seems to me we have an obligation to the American people and we have an obligation to our troops. I offer the amendment and I will come back and speak later.

In the interest of time problems, I yield the floor.

If I might I make one comment, I defamed my friend, the Presiding Officer. I suggested some while ago he was from Ohio. He, in fact, is from Indiana. I have known that all along, and those in the Northern Great Plains see everything out there as east. But my distinguished colleague Senator Lugar, to whom I refer, is from Indiana. I talked about Nunn-Lugar and the wonderful work done. I want to make sure I identify it correctly.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, I am curious; my sense is that in years past, we have on occasion had the Defense authorization bill on the Senate floor for some significant length of time. The reason for that is this bill is a very large bill, it has significant policy questions engrained in it, and some are very controversial.

I observe, as did my colleague from Nevada, I have great admiration for the Senator from Virginia. He provides real leadership, as does the Senator from Michigan. I do hope we will not have cloture filed on this bill.

I am going to debate an amendment that will be offered in the morning. I will offer an amendment around lunchtime tomorrow, a separate amendment. I am sure many of our colleagues have amendments they wish to offer. I hope the opportunity for full debate will be available because this area is so critically important.

If I might take another moment, the amendment tomorrow deals with, as I understand it, the earth-penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapon, the amendment I will offer with respect to the development of a Truman- type commission to deal with contracting abuses--waste, fraud, and abuse, massive abuses which I will describe tomorrow. These are important issues. These are not small issues. They are big issues that require and demand significant debate and consideration.

I hope we will take the time we need as a Senate to sink our teeth into this bill, to improve on the wonderful work that has been done by the chairman and the ranking member. I hope we can avoid cloture. I do not believe it is necessary. I hope we will work through next week and finish a Defense authorization bill that we can all be proud of, that will strengthen and advance this country's efforts.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator McCain in introducing this historic legislation. This bill is a necessary starting point to begin resolution of the longstanding claims in the Cobell v. Norton litigation, which involves the Federal Government's mismanagement of hundreds of thousands of individual Indian money accounts. The bill was drafted in a bipartisan manner and attempts to address the principles recently developed and set forth by Indian Country.

I want to thank the National Congress of American Indians and the InterTribal Monitoring Association for leading the consultative process utilized in developing these principles. Those principles helped guide the drafting of this bill. The current language of the bill, however, is not perfect. Rather, it is intended to be a starting point for substantive and productive dialogue between the parties. Recently, the parties engaged in a 9-month mediation process that failed to result in any type of potential resolution. This litigation is nearly a decade old and has no end in sight. It is my hope that this bill will assist the parties in reaching some type of resolution of this litigation.

The individual Indian trust account system was not a voluntary system elected by the individual Indians, but rather one imposed upon them by the federal government more than one hundred years ago. The Federal Government serves as trustee of these accounts and the individual Indians are beneficiaries. Unfortunately, the Cobell litigation has brought to light a very disturbing problem: the Federal Government, as trustee, may not be able to provide an accurate and proper historical accounting of these accounts. Moreover, the Federal Government may not know the proper balances of these accounts nor have sufficient documentation to determine the value of these accounts. Further, government officials have stated that a full transaction-by-transaction accounting, presuming one can be performed, would cost more than $10 billion. This cost would not include any monies determined to be unaccounted for or the interest on those monies.

The claims in the Cobell litigation on examples of broken promises and trust responsibilities to the Native Americans of this country, but it is my hope and desire that this bill will help us keep those promises, fulfill our responsibilities to Native Americans, and restore trust and faith in our government. If Congress continues to allow the Cobell litigation to proceed, the individual beneficiaries of these accounts will not be alive to reap the benefits these accounts and the trust resource management system were intended to bestow.

It is an honor to serve as Vice Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs alongside chairman McCain. We have publicly pledged that we will make our best effort to resolve this long overdue injustice to the first Americans. The introduction of this bill is the first step toward that goal.

Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask consent that I be recognized following the debate on the Coburn-Boxer amendment to offer my amendment. I would say I only require 15 minutes for myself on my amendment. My guess is we would want to allocate 15 minutes to perhaps the Presiding Officer or others in the Chamber who would oppose the amendment, but that would be acceptable. I want to get it locked in so I could offer that amendment following the debate on the Coburn-Boxer amendment.

I make that unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, are we in a quorum call?

Mr. President, I am waiting a minute for something to be delivered from the cloakroom. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I am offering an amendment. The amendment I offer today is very simple. It is an amendment that will eliminate the $21 million in this appropriations bill for something called Television Marti and will instead use that $21 million to restore funding for the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps has been cut by $25 million. This would restore most of that $25 million. It would restore, in fact, the $21 million that is allocated for Television Marti.

Let me talk for a moment about Television Marti. It is for the purpose of broadcasting signals into the island of Cuba, apparently to tell the Cubans the truth, to tell them Castro is an awful person. I would agree with that, that they ought to live free. We ought to find a way to move Cuba toward freedom.

We have Radio Marti that sends radio signals into Cuba. I have been to Cuba. The Cuban people told me they receive the radio signals. Of course, they can also receive the signals of the Miami radio stations, but Radio Marti is something that is valuable, is important, we should fund and will fund. I support it.

Television Marti, on the other hand, is a tragic, complete waste of money. We have now spent a substantial amount of money, $189 million, sending television broadcast into Cuba that the Cuban people cannot see.

Let me tell you how we do that. This is a picture of Fat Albert. Fat Albert is an aerostat balloon. We have this balloon go way up into the air and then, on a big tether, it broadcasts television signals into Cuba. Castro, through his technology, blocks the signals so the Cuban people cannot see them. So we have $189 million we have spent to send broadcast signals to Cuba that the Cuban people cannot receive.

We will hear people say today: That is not true, the Cuban people are receiving it. I am sorry, they are not. They just are not. There is no evidence they are receiving it, except very sporadically and in only a few spots in Cuba.

In fact, there have been some surveys that used to be taken and they have discontinued them because they could not find anyone who saw Television Marti and it was kind of embarrassing. On June 6, 2002, Brian Conniff, the acting director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, testified before the House subcommittee and said this. He is speaking of TV Marti:

Transmission to Cuba has been consistently jammed by the

Cuban Government.

Let me say that again. This is not me. This is the person in the administration who is the acting director of the International Broadcasting Bureau. He said:

Transmission of these signals to Cuba has been consistently

jammed by the Cuban Government.

So we spend $189 million to send television signals that they cannot see in Cuba. Maybe it makes people feel better to waste that money. It does not make me feel any better. There is $21 million proposed in this appropriations

bill. I say better use that to restore the funding for the Peace Corps where we need the money.

This Fat Albert aerostat balloon was up on a tether broadcasting signals no one could see. Fat Albert actually got loose once. They tracked it down. It flew over by the Everglades. They had to grapple up and find the hooks to get ahold of Fat Albert.

In all, $189 million of the taxpayers' money has been spent to send television signals into Cuba that the people cannot see. That was not enough, however. The President announced he was going to get tough with Cuba recently so he restricted the right of people to travel in Cuba. I am talking about United States visitors to Cuba, including, by the way, Sergeant Lazo, who earned the Bronze Star Medal for bravery in Iraq. He came back to this country and had a sick child in Cuba and was denied the freedom by this Government to visit his sick child. We had a vote on that issue on the floor of this Senate. Sixty Senators voted to let him see his child. We needed 63 votes. So this Senate decided to deny a soldier who won the Bronze Star Medal in Iraq the freedom to see his sick child in Cuba. That is another debate for another time, but it shows the obsession of this policy with Fidel Castro.

Castro has lived through 10 Presidents. This embargo doesn't work. We understand it. This is a big, fat batch of politics dealing with particularly Florida, also New Jersey, and a couple of other spots in the country.

The President announced he is going to get tough. On October 10, 2003, in the Rose Garden, he said: We are going to get tough with Cuba. He says now instead of just Fat Albert, we are going to use Commando Solo C-130s. There are only a few of these planes. These are some real technology-laden airplanes that have been developed to use in combat areas for communications, specific communication areas. And so they fly this airplane.

I didn't mention, by the way, that the broadcast signals from old Fat Albert into Cuba occurred from 3:30 in the morning until 8:30 in the morning. Under the best of circumstances--let's assume nobody is jamming signals--one would wonder what kind of audience exists at 3:30 in the morning in Cuba. Notwithstanding that, they come up with this airplane. They expropriate this airplane from the National Guard, one of a few airplanes called Commando Solo. The C-130, with very special equipment, is now flying 4\1/2\ hours a week--let me say that again, 4\1/2\ hours a week--broadcasting signals into Cuba--signals, by the way, which are still jammed.

They say this jamming has now been overcome by this Commando Solo, this new airplane. Let me quote Chris Courson, former chairman of the President's Board Of Advisers on Broadcasting to Cuba. He was appointed to that position by the first President Bush. Until 6 years ago, TV Marti used to conduct exit interviews with Cubans coming to the United States on rafts and to determine whether Cubans, in fact, watch TV Marti. From the interviews, it was clear TV Marti was seen by virtually no one in Cuba. And finally, they stopped doing interviews altogether, and they have no idea whether anybody from Cuba is watching these programs. In fact, these programs are being jammed.

We are going to hear, I am sure, today somehow somebody in Cuba is picking up the television signal. There is no credible evidence of that, except at most for a few sporadic reports from isolated spots in the Cuban hinterlands.

This is a terrible waste of the taxpayers' money. First with a big, old balloon, an aerostat balloon called Fat Albert, and second with Commando Solo. And now to top it off--failure is not anything that slows anybody down around here or at the White House--to top it all off, they want to buy a new airplane. They took one from the National Guard, Commando Solo, a handful of special airplanes, but that wasn't enough. Now they want to buy an entirely new airplane. They get $21 million this year. Better it should be used, in my judgment, for the Peace Corps.

I have often wondered whether everything has a constituency in this Congress. It is quite clear, to me at least, that waste has a constituency. Waste has a relentless constituency. This is not the first time we have tried to shut this funding down. I think my colleague Dale Bumpers and I some years ago were trying to shut this down. But this keeps moving along. Waste has an enormous constituency here. Keep doing it. It doesn't matter if they can't see it; if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter what the facts are, keep doing it. It is as if the taxpayers have pockets with no bottoms. Have them ante up for a big balloon, ante up for an airplane, and send signals nobody can see.

People in Cuba are jumping on rafts to come here. They deserve to be able to have a new government. They deserve freedom and democracy. Radio Marti gives them the hope of that; it gives them some information. So, too, does Cuban radio off the radio stations in Miami or the regular radio stations in Miami which they can pick up. But Television Marti? If they can't get the signal, do we keep sending it?

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I send my amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

I send this amendment to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Wyden.

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

Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Kentucky how we allocate the time. I know we have two Senators who want to speak in opposition.

Mr. President, I am yielding on the time of the Senator from Florida. I will be happy to.

Mr. President, since my colleague from Florida is going to oppose my amendment, I will not give him a lot of satisfaction with my answer except to say this: Sending another airplane closer to Cuba to send signals that the Cubans cannot receive does little for the American taxpayer, in my judgment.

How much time remains?

Mr. President, let me just say that the case with respect to this country's dealing with Cuba is a case study in failure. I will not debate that at the moment, but it is absolutely absurd. We plead that the way to move China and Vietnam in a more constructive direction, both Communist counties, is through trade and travel and engagement. We take exactly the opposite position with respect to Cuba. This policy is the best friend Fidel Castro ever had, and that is why he is still in office.

Aside from all of that, this amendment does not deal with the whole Cuba trade policy. It deals with the issue of Fat Albert, and, yes, the new airplane they want to buy. They say they are going to get a new little airplane, fly it off the coast of Florida, and we will get some television signals into Cuba.

The fact is, they have already wasted $189 million. Apparently, now after 10 years, or however many years it is, there is a new approach. I don't believe it will work.

Let me read something from the Chicago Tribune Foreign Correspondent, October 2004. He went right to the heart of this. Do the Cubans see these signals with Commando Solo or Fat Albert, the balloon? He says: In interviews on the island, speaking of Cuba, it is difficult to find anyone who says they have ever seen TV Marti, although one Havana resident said she picked up some of the audio portion of a Saturday evening broadcast.

That viewer said: There was no picture but I could hear it and the static was very loud.

One person hearing a voice without a picture on a television station.

My colleague from Florida, Senator Martinez, said at the start of his presentation that Fidel Castro jams these signals. Yes, he does. That is exactly my point.

I am willing to do all kinds of things to send additional information to Cuba, to give them additional information, but I am not willing to sit by and say: Let's keep wasting money. If we send big fat balloons up in the air or send Commander Solo or buy a two-engine plane and run it off the coast of Florida and believe we are doing something, all we are doing is wasting the American taxpayers' money.

Maybe I am confused. Maybe I am just hopelessly confused and misguided. I thought when you spend money that is not yours--and the money here is the taxpayers' money--I thought you should spend it wisely. When you find somebody wasting it, you stop it. Maybe I am confused about that. I thought surely if all the evidence--I am talking about the evidence of the people who ran this thing, TV Marti--if all the evidence is you are sending television signals that no one can receive and spending $189 million doing it, maybe at some point you would stop and say this doesn't make any sense. This doesn't pass any litmus test.

What I suggest is this: $21 million, once again, $21 million more to send a television signal that no one can see. That $21 million is better spent by sending it to the Peace Corps, which is underfunded by $25 million. The Peace Corps is something of which I am enormously proud. It gives me great pride, these people moving around the world representing our country in the Peace Corps in all corners of the world. Underfunding $25 million to the Peace Corps and sticking $21 million into this? Maybe next time it will not be Commander Solo or an aerostat balloon, or maybe they will train an eagle with some sort of transmitter. Who knows? No matter what it is, no matter what the waste is, no matter they spend millions and millions--now $180 million--no matter, there will be people here representing that waste.

Vote for this amendment. Move this money to the Peace Corps where it will be used for the good of this country.

Have the yeas and nays been requested on my amendment?

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, yesterday on the floor I suggested that I might offer an amendment to this bill dealing with the CNOOC Chinese oil company's purchase of Unocal. I wanted to tell the ranking member that I decided not to offer this amendment to this appropriations subcommittee bill. There are other avenues with which to discuss and describe that issue. It is very controversial. It is something which I believe very strongly the Congress--the Senate needs to deal with, but I have elected not to do it on this particular piece of legislation because other opportunities will exist in the days ahead.

Mr. President, we have now spent $198 million sending television signals to Cuba that the Cubans cannot see. It is called Television Marti. The President proposes to spend another $21 million in the coming year, including buying an airplane to send these signals. Let me say that the Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent recently reported on this and said he couldn't find anybody who had ever seen TV Marti. In all of the surveys that have been done on people who came over by raft and so on, they couldn't find anybody who saw TV Marti. Why? Because it was jammed. So we are spending another $21 million in the next year to send television signals the Cubans can't see. Meanwhile, we have now cut $25 million in this bill from the President's budget request for the Peace Corps. I say let's take the $21 million we now spend on television signals the Cubans can't watch and spend it on the Peace Corps which will invest in the future of this country and promote a better world.

I don't think I need to say much more about this. I could speak about Fat Albert and Commando Solo and the aerostat balloon, but I shall not do that at the moment.

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

Mr. President, I will just take a few minutes. Later this afternoon, at 5:45, we have ordered a vote on the nomination of Dr. Lester Crawford to be Commissioner of the FDA. I had intended to come and speak prior to that vote. My understanding is that there is only a 30-minute time period for debate, equally divided, just prior to the vote on that nomination, so I will take a couple of minutes now to explain why I am going to vote against this nomination.

I have spent most of my time in the Senate voting for nominees sent to us by Presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, because I believe those who win the Presidency largely have the right to select their own team and to have their own advisers. So I have, in most cases, voted for the nominees who have come before the Senate to serve in the President's Cabinet and other important positions in the administration.

This position is the head of the Food and Drug Administration, a very important agency--one, incidentally, that

has had a substantial amount of controversy in recent years. I have been particularly interested in the FDA because we--myself along with others in the Senate--have spent a lot of time working to try to see if we can put some downward pressure on prescription drug prices.

Much to our chagrin--to those of us on both the Democratic side and the Republican side who have been working toward this end--the opposition, in many cases, has come from the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has alleged safety issues where, in fact, there are no safety issues at all. It has been the Food and Drug Administration that has been shaking the pom-poms for and cheerleading with the pharmaceutical industry on these issues.

Let me describe the issue just for a moment.

The American consumer pays the highest prices in the world for brand- name prescription drugs. Consumers who purchase those prescription drugs are charged much higher prices in the United States than elsewhere around the world. The pharmaceutical industry says it charges these prices because it can. I held a hearing on this issue when I chaired a subcommittee some years ago. The result is, the drug industry said: Well, we can charge that amount here in the United States, but we can't charge it in other countries because other countries have price controls on prescription drugs.

Yet I notice--because of a sweetheart little tax provision that was put in law about a year ago--that the drug industry has made substantial profits overseas. The sweetheart deal allows those companies that have started enterprises overseas and are earning profits overseas to now pay taxes at a 5.25-percent rate for the income they repatriate to this country, quite a deal for big companies that move their jobs overseas. According to newspaper reports, the pharmaceutical industry now has as much as $75 billion in profits they have made in other countries that they are set to repatriate to this country for a 5.25-percent income tax rate.

Interesting. They tell us they have to charge higher prices to the American consumers for prescription drugs, and they charge lower prices elsewhere because they are required by pricing policies in those countries to do so. They say they do not make much money in those countries, yet now they have $75 billion in profits from overseas sales in countries in which they have charged dramatically lower prices. So, obviously, they are making substantial profits in their sales in other countries even though the consumers in those other countries enjoy lower prescription drug prices.

Mr. President, let me, by unanimous consent, show two pill bottles, if I might.

Mr. President, this is a medicine called Celebrex, made by Pfizer. These bottles are large containers that happen to be empty. It would contain 500 capsules; 200 milligrams, the usual adult dosage, it says. As you can see, this other bottle is also Celebrex. It is the same pill, made by the same company, put in the same bottle. The only difference in these bottles is the color on the labels is a bit different, but the pills that were inside were the same. This one bottle is sold in the United States and the other is sold in Canada.

What is the difference? Well, the U.S. consumer pays $2.93 per capsule out of this bottle. The Canadian consumer pays $1.32 out of the other bottle. So the one costs almost $3, the other just over $1. The American consumer is charged double the price of the Canadian consumer. It is the same pill, put in the same bottle, made by the same company, at an FDA-approved plant, sent to two different places, and the American consumers pay two and a half times more than the Canadian consumer.

Why is that the case? Well, the drug industry says they charge that price in the United States because they can and because they must in order to gather the funds for research and development. But, of course, the record shows that is not the case either. The drug industry actually spends more money on marketing and advertising than they do on research and development. And they actually spend about the same amount on research and development in Europe that they do in the United States when, in fact, in Europe they charge lower prices for exactly the same prescription drugs.

So what does all of this have to do with Dr. Crawford and the FDA? Well, for those of us who are working to allow for the importation of FDA-approved drugs from other countries--notably from Canada and Europe--one of the most significant areas of opposition has been from the FDA.

Dr. Mark McClellan was the head of the FDA for a while. He was an aggressive advocate on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry could not have had a better cheerleader than Dr. McClellan. And during that time, Dr. Crawford has also been at the FDA serving as deputy. He has been there as acting commissioner for much of this administration, both before and now after Dr. McClellan. And during that time, the FDA has continued to be a roadblock to try to get lower prices on prescription drugs for American consumers.

The problem is that there is a law on the books that says the only entity that can import a prescription drug from another country is the manufacturer of that prescription drug. So a licensed pharmacist in Minot, ND, cannot go to Regina, Canada, for example, and buy an FDA- approved prescription drug, even one made in the United States and shipped to Canada. A licensed U.S. pharmacist cannot go to a licensed pharmacist in Canada, buy the FDA-approved drug at half or a third of the price and bring it back and pass the savings along to the customer.

Why is that the case? Well, because once again there is a sweetheart deal. Under this deal, trade should apparently only work for everybody but the little guy, the consumer. One would think, with free trade and the opportunity to cross boundaries, that if you are talking about FDA- approved medicines, that American consumers, particularly American pharmacists, would be able to also take advantage of the global marketplace, but they cannot.

So I, along with a bipartisan group of colleagues, have been trying to change the law. We are not proposing price controls but instead competition. Very simple: Allow an American pharmacist, a main street drugstore owner to access the identical prescription drug in Canada or Europe at a fraction of the price and bring it back and pass the savings along to the consumer. We are told that American consumers could save as much as $38 billion--that is with a ``B''--a year if that were to happen.

As a point of fact, if we were able to get our legislation passed, we would not have people shopping in Canada for prescription drugs. But the very fact that they could would force the repricing of prescription drugs based on market forces here in the United States. Unfortunately, we have been thwarted in our efforts. Senator Olympia Snowe, John McCain, myself, Senator Kennedy, Senator Grassley, Senator Stabenow, and many others have all worked on this for a long, long time. The first bill I introduced on this was in 1999, and still drug importation has not been allowed because it has been blocked.

Opponents have said there would be safety issues. Well, let me give you an example of the safety issue. In Europe, what we propose is done every single day: cross-border trading in prescription drugs. A pharmacist in Germany wants to buy a prescription drug from Spain, that is not a problem. If you are a pharmacy in England and want to buy a prescription drug from France, that is no problem either because they have something called parallel trading. In fact, we had the person who headed the parallel trading association come and testify before a U.S. Congressional committee. That person said there are no safety issues. But it opens the market, so consumers see lower drug prices as a result of it. But in this country, we are told we apparently cannot do it. It does not take rocket science to understand there is no safety issue.

Let me talk about Canada just for a moment. Canada has nearly an identical chain of custody for the prescription drug that comes from the manufacturer that goes to the consumer. The Canadian system is nearly identical to ours. So if an American licensed pharmacist were to buy a lower

priced FDA-approved drug from a licensed Canadian pharmacist, how on Earth could there be any kind of safety issue? There simply is not.

This is not about safety. It is about profits for the pharmaceutical industry. Now, I understand that issue. If the pharmaceutical industry were represented by people here--rather than serving in the Senate, they served the pharmaceutical industry--I would understand why you would make the case you want maximum profits. But that is not the way our economic system works. It works best for consumers when you have competition and open borders and an opportunity to trade. That is what we have been trying to do.

It is disappointing that over 6 years now we have found a lot of opposition to something that is so filled with common sense. The opposition comes from the pharmaceutical industry, from allies of the pharmaceutical industry here in this Chamber in the Senate, and from the FDA. Now, the FDA is supposed to regulate, not represent. The FDA is to regulate the pharmaceutical industry, not represent the pharmaceutical industry.

These are, in many cases, lifesaving drugs. I don't diminish the importance of prescription drugs. They provide miracles in many cases. But miracle drugs offer no miracles to those who cannot pay for them. We have all heard from people who go to the grocery store and go to the pharmacy in the back of the store first to buy the pharmaceuticals in order to understand how much money they have left for groceries. We also know that senior citizens are especially hard hit. They make up 12 percent of America's population, yet they consume one-third of the prescription drugs. It is not unusual to talk to a senior citizen who is taking 5, 7, 12 different prescription drugs every single day. Many of them simply can't afford it. America's most vulnerable population represents those who are hardest hit by prescription drugs prices.

I was at a farm in North Dakota last summer, as I was touring around. One fellow, who was about 85 years old, and his wife, who was in her mid 80s, sat on a hay bale and told me their story. He said: My wife has been fighting breast cancer for 4 years. For 4 years we have driven to the Canadian border to buy Tamoxifen because you can buy Tamoxifen at 80-percent less cost in Canada than in the United States. He talked about the number of trips they made. The only reason they could afford Tamoxifen was because they could drive to the border and get it. A small supply of drugs for personal use, a 3-month supply, has been allowed to come across the border for individuals. But very few Americans can reach that Canadian border and, on a routine basis, find a way to buy their FDA-approved drugs from Canada.

I took a group of American retired folks to Canada in a bus. We went to a little, one-room drugstore in Emerson, Canada. I saw person to person the prescription drugs they had to buy and the savings with each of them. You should have seen the look of surprise on their faces when they found out what the price was in Canada versus what they had been paying here in the U.S. This is unfair pricing. We need to do something about it. But the cavalier attitude at the FDA, the attitude of representing the drug companies rather than regulating the drug companies, means that we will continue to have to battle the FDA. Having to battle the FDA to do something that is so filled with common sense is a frustrating thing for those of us who have been working on this for years and years.

Incidentally, there are some other issues with this Commissioner, and I will not spend my time talking about those.

My colleagues, including Senator Kennedy, with whom I spoke the other day, will make the point eloquently that we need an FDA Commissioner. It is unbelievable that we have gone all this time without having an FDA Commissioner. We have had someone who is acting for the bulk of this administration. I don't disagree with that notion. It doesn't make any sense that we have not had a full-time, permanent FDA Commissioner filling that term. But that doesn't mean that Dr. Crawford is the right person. He is not in my judgment. I wish I could vote for him, but I don't intend to.

My hope is that in the coming months, we will persuade the majority leader and others, to get a vote on drug importation legislation. If necessary, we will offer amendments at the right time and on the right bills that forces the hand of those who oppose the work we are trying to do.

My hope is at the end of the day, we will get a vote. If we get a vote allowing the reimportation of prescription drugs, there is no question it is going to pass the Senate. It will get 60-65 or more votes in the Senate. The question is getting the vote. We thought we had a commitment in the last Congress for a vote. The Senate majority leader and I had a disagreement about what the commitment said, and so we didn't get the vote. What has happened is, the majority has successfully blocked it, and the White House that stands with the pharmaceutical industry has successfully blocked it. There is now a very strong bipartisan group of Senators. I mentioned Senator Snowe, Senators Vitter, McCain, Stabenow, Kennedy, and many others. We have over 30 Senators who have now joined as cosponsors of this legislation. One way or another we are going to prevail. When it is passed, we will see reasonable and competitive prices for prescription drugs.

I regret to say that I will vote against Dr. Crawford's nomination when the vote occurs. I wish I could come to the floor and say I will vote for the nominee. But I don't want to put further roadblocks in the way of those of us who are trying to get fair prescription drug pricing for American citizens. I believe it is critically important that we understand prescription drugs are something different, something unusual. Most countries have already understood that. If you need a prescription drug, a lifesaving drug that can either save your life or keep you out of an acute care hospital bed, you don't have a choice. You have to try and buy it, at prices that are double, triple and, in some cases, 10 times the cost for the identical drug in other countries. That is unfair to the American consumer.

Some day we will force enough people on the floor of this Senate to stand up and vote. When we do, we will have sufficient votes to move this through the Senate. I will say this: I doubt whether it will be with anything other than the obstruction of Dr. Crawford. He and Dr. McClellan before him have run the play called by the pharmaceutical industry. I really regret that is the way it is going.

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 am going to be filing an amendment and also noticing an intention to suspend the rules for such an amendment. I want to preserve the right to address it on this piece of legislation. This is an amendment that would prohibit the sale of Unocal, an American oil company, to CNOOC, a Chinese Government- controlled and owned oil company.

I mentioned Friday that I think that this is a fairly simple proposition. The Chinese Government would never, ever allow an American company, let alone an American oil company, to buy a Chinese oil company. The Chinese oil companies are controlled by the Chinese Government. What we have here is a proposal by CNOOC, which is a Chinese oil company controlled by the Government, wishing to purchase an American oil company. You don't have reciprocal capabilities.

They say: Let the free market deal with this. Let's let the marketplace decide.

There is no free market or marketplace in a circumstance where the Chinese Government controls a company and the controlled company, through deeply subsidized Government loans, wishes to buy an American company, especially in something as strategic as oil.

I don't bear any ill will toward the Chinese. They are a big and growing country with a significant impact around the world. They will be a significant part of our future. But we do

have an extraordinary trade deficit with China which is dangerous for us. It is headed to over $200 billion this year. That is completely unsustainable. It is dangerous for us. Our relationship with the Chinese should and must be mutually beneficial, especially in the area of trade. Regrettably, it is not.

We are a cash cow for the hard currency needs of China. They continue to ratchet up these deficits in a significant way. In many cases, the Chinese markets are closed to our country. We also find on the streets of China a substantial amount of counterfeit and pirated goods that come from intellectual property in this country. The Chinese say they have trouble controlling all that. They don't have trouble controlling it. In fact, the logo now that belongs to the Chinese Government for the Olympic games, the minute that showed up on the streets in China under counterfeiting, the Chinese Government took immediate action, and you can't find it any more because the Chinese Government had an interest in stopping counterfeit and piracy when it came to the logo for the Chinese Olympic games.

We have a lot of issues with the Chinese--counterfeiting, piracy, trade deficit, many more. This issue is simple; should we allow a Chinese-controlled and largely Chinese-owned oil company to purchase an American oil company, especially in circumstances where they would not allow that same transaction to take place?

My answer to that is no. I don't think it makes sense for this country's strategic or economic future, and it does not make sense from the standpoint of national security. I don't believe it makes sense from the standpoint of reciprocal trade opportunities, and I don't believe those who say this is some sort of marketplace transaction. There is not a marketplace when you have government control of both the industry and the companies in the industry trying to buy American businesses.

I am filing the amendment and noticing along with it an intent to suspend the rules which would be required for me to do when I offer such an amendment. I mentioned that I also likely would offer a funding limitation amendment in the Appropriations Committee, and the House of Representatives has done the same. The funding limitation would apply to the Treasury Department, where approval for such a transaction would be required to take place.

This is not a reflection of whether I think the Chinese country is trying to do harm to our economy or anything of the sort. China is a large and growing country with 1.3 billion people, an economy that is growing by leaps and bounds. I have been to China a couple of times, and it is quite a remarkable place. But with respect to our relationship with China, that relationship must be mutually beneficial, especially in the area of international trade. It is not now mutually beneficial. There is one-way trade going on, and we are up to our neck in trade debt to the Chinese.

This transaction does not advance our interest. It might advance the Chinese interest by giving them more access to oil, but it does not advance America's interest. I hope that it is viewed through the prism of what advances our country's interests. What is it that represents the best policy choice for our country?

My sense of that is that we ought to prohibit this sale. The amendment is very simple. It doesn't beat around the bush. It is very short. It is an amendment that would prohibit the sale of an American oil company to a Government-controlled and deeply subsidized oil company in the country of China.

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