Floor Statements

I rise in support of the Byrd amendment. This amendment is important. It is offered at an important time, and it is offered during a period when we have seen so many examples of fake news, or propaganda, to use another word.

I don't think this is partisan. I think it would apply to a Republican or Democratic administration.

The question is, Should the Federal Government be involved in propaganda? Should we be observant of fake news and do nothing about it?

The Senator from West Virginia offers an amendment that is filled with common sense. Let me describe a fake news program. A report narrated by a woman who speaks in glowing terms about an administration's plan and concludes by saying: ``In Washington, this is Karen Ryan reporting.''

The Department of Health and Human Services spent $44,000 in taxpayer dollars on this type of propaganda. Is this what we want to pass for news?

I have talked often in the Senate on a subject very important to me, the concentration of broadcasting in this country. Fewer and fewer people owning more and more broadcast properties, controlling what people see, hear, and think by what is presented to them. As more and more companies are bought, they hollow out the newsrooms, get rid of the newsroom staff, and just have a shell left. Then they are interested in filling that shell with cheap media feeds.

If you read the discussion about what has prompted these television stations to run these prepackaged fake news items, they are looking for fillers for a news script because they got rid of their news people. So this, now, passes as news when, in fact, it is fake news.

In my judgment, it ought to be labeled exactly what it is. That is what the Senator is offering with respect to this amendment. This is not an amendment that is in any way radical. It is an amendment that is filled with common sense.

A few minutes ago my colleague who talked about Public Broadcasting or National Public Radio was clever and funny--and good for him--but this has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Winning debates that we are not having is hardly a blue ribbon activity in this Chamber. This debate is not about National Public Radio or anything of the sort. It is about the specific subject that my colleague from West Virginia brings to the Senate.

The subject, incidentally, has more tentacles attached to it. We learned in January a syndicated columnist, Armstrong Williams, had been paid a quarter of a million dollars, actually $240,000, to promote the No Child Left Behind Program on his television show and to urge other African-American journalists to do the same. That contract was not disclosed to the public. It was taxpayers' dollars offered to a journalist, commentator, television personality, and we only learned about it because USA Today obtained the

document through a Freedom of Information request.

That, incidentally, was part of a $1 million deal with the Ketchum public relations firm which was contracted to produce video news releases designed to appear like real news reports.

So there is more to do on this issue than just the Byrd amendment. That is why I say this amendment is modest in itself. It is not, as some would suggest, a big deal. It is a modest amendment that addresses a problem in a very specific way. We really do have more to do dealing with some of the other tentacles--the hiring of public relations firms to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

We found out in late January the Department of Health and Human Services paid $21,500 to another syndicated columnist to advocate a $300 million Presidential proposal encouraging marriage. That contract was not disclosed either.

The list goes on. Fake news. We discovered a while back the White House had allowed a fake journalist, using a fake name, to get a daily clearance to come into the Presidential news conference and daily news briefings and to ask questions. Another part of fake news, I guess, a different tentacle and a different description.

The Byrd amendment is simple on its face. The question is, Do we want fake news being produced with taxpayers' dollars with no disclosure at all; that it is, in fact, propaganda, not news?

I support the Byrd amendment. I hope we will address other parts of this issue at some future time. This amendment is modest enough, and my hope is to engage a majority of the Senate to be supportive of it.

While I have the floor, I might indicate a second time that I intend to offer an amendment that would cease or discontinue funding for the independent counsel who is still active, an independent counsel who was impaneled to investigate the payment of money to a mistress by a former Cabinet official, Mr. Cisneros. That independent counsel has spent now $21 million over 10 years. The particular Cabinet official admitted the indiscretion. He pled guilty in Federal court and he since left office and has since been pardoned by a President in 2001. Yet the independent counsel investigating this is still investigating it, still spending money.

The most recent report showed this independent counsel spent $1.26 million in Federal funds over the previous 6 months, which brings it to $21 million by an independent counsel's office that was launched nearly 10 years ago to investigate a Cabinet official who left the Government very soon thereafter, who then pled guilty, who then was pardoned. In 1995, the independent counsel was named. That was 10 years ago. In 1999, the Cabinet official pled guilty. In 2001, 4 years ago, the Cabinet official was given a Presidential pardon. Yet we have an independent counsel's office that is still spending money.

We ought to shut off that money. I will offer an amendment to do that, telling that independent counsel the money dries up on June 1. Finish your report and leave town--at least if your home is elsewhere-- but finish up the report and get off the public payroll after 10 years, 4 years after the subject in question received a Presidential pardon, 6 years after the subject in question pled guilty in court.

Some things need addressing on an urgent basis. This one does. I understand it, too, will not be, perhaps, germane to this bill, but it is one that I hope every Senator would understand we ought to shut down.

With that, I appreciate the amendment offered by Senator Byrd. I am pleased to come over in support of that amendment this afternoon.

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

Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask my colleague, the chairman of the committee, my understanding is the pending amendment is the Byrd amendment. But I heard my colleague Senator Byrd indicate he was trying to see whether there was some language that could be changed so this amendment would be acceptable. I have an amendment I had previously announced I would like to offer. It is an amendment dealing with the independent counsel expenditure of $21 million. I twice before mentioned this.

I ask the Senator from Mississippi whether it would be appropriate at this point to offer an amendment. My understanding is we would have to set aside the Byrd amendment to do so. I ask the chairman and also Senator Byrd whether that is possible at this moment.

I will be mercifully brief. This is not an amendment that will take a long time to explain, and I do not intend to delay the proceedings of the Senate at all.

Amendment No. 399

Mr. President, with that in mind and with the cooperation of the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the committee, and my colleague Senator Byrd, as well, I offer an amendment on behalf of myself and Senator Durbin has asked to be a cosponsor as well. I send the 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.

Mr. President, this matter deals with something I was quite surprised to read about, frankly, in the newspaper, and I have since done some research about it. It was a rather lengthy newspaper article disclosing that an independent counsel who had been appointed 10 years ago in 1995, a Mr. David Barrett, was still in business and was involved in an investigation that has now cost the American taxpayers $21 million.

That was an investigation dealing with a Cabinet Secretary who was alleged to have lied, I believe, to the FBI, to authorities, about a payment he gave to a mistress. So an independent counsel was impaneled and began investigating that charge.

That independent counsel has been working for some 10 years, in fact. But the Cabinet officer who was the subject of the investigation pled guilty in 1999. That was 6 years ago. That Cabinet officer was also subsequently pardoned in the year 2001.

In the most recent 6-month report, the independent counsel who was appointed for investigating this transgression is still in business, and had spent $1.26 million in just that period. And the costs are trending upward, 10 years after he started, 6 years after the subject pled guilty, and 4 years after the subject was pardoned. It is unbelievable.

I do not know anything about the case. I do not really know the Cabinet official in question. I guess I met him some years ago. But this is not about that official any longer. He has pled guilty, been pardoned, and here we are years later with an independent counsel's office still spending money.

I quote Judge Stanley Sporkin, the presiding judge over Mr. Cisneros' trial:

The problem with this case is that it took too long to

develop and much too long to bring to judgment day . . . [the

matter] should have been resolved a long time ago, perhaps

even years ago.

That was a quote from 1999. It is now 2005. The independent counsel is still spending money.

David Barrett, the independent counsel, said in 1999:

We are just glad to have this over and done with. That was

following the plea agreement of Mr. Cisneros. Here it is 6

years later and the independent counsel is still in business.

Mr. Barrett said in July 2001:

I want to conclude this investigation as soon as possible.

It is now 4 years later, with the counsel spending $1.26 million in the last 6 months.

The three-judge panel that is providing oversight to the independent counsel said:

Whether a cost-benefit analysis at this point would support

Mr. Barrett's effort is a question to which I have no answer.

Judge Cudahy, a member of the three-judge oversight panel said:

Mr. Barrett can go on forever. A great deal of time has

elapsed and a lot of money spent in pursuing charges that on

their face do not seem of overwhelming complexity.

Again, this is someone who is accused of lying to the FBI about paying money to a mistress. In the year 1995, the investigation began with Mr. Barrett and the independent counsel. In

1999, the individual pled guilty. In the year 2001, the individual was pardoned. And the independent counsel is still in business spending money. What on Earth is going on?

A former Federal prosecutor following the plea agreement, Lawrence Barcella, said this:

This is a classic example of why this independent counsel

statute was a problem. You give this person all the resources

to go after one person, and the first thing that is lost is

perspective.

Joseph DiGenova, a Republican lawyer and former independent counsel himself, said in the April 1, 2005, Washington Post:

If this does not prove [the independent counsel's]

worthlessness as a governmental entity, I don't know what

does.

I do not come here as a partisan, a member of a political party. I come here as someone outraged to wake up in the morning and read a report about an independent counsel impaneled 10 years ago to investigate a subject who pled guilty 6 years ago and was pardoned 4 years ago, and the independent counsel is still spending the taxpayers' money, $1.26 million over the last 6 months.

My amendment is painfully simple. I propose we stop the spending on June 1 and tell this independent counsel: Finish your report, finish up, move on, and give the taxpayers a break.

That is what the amendment is. It is very simple. I hope it might be considered and supported by my colleagues.

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

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4 of Rule XVI for the purpose of proposing to the bill H.R. 1268 amendment No. 398, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4 of Rule XVI for the purpose of proposing to the bill H.R. 1268 amendment No. 399, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I'm joined by Senator Levin of Michigan in introducing legislation that we believe will help the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) combat offshore tax-haven abuses and ensure that U.S. multinational companies pay the U.S. taxes that they rightfully owe.

Tens of millions of taxpayers will be rushing to file their tax returns in the next few days in order to fulfill their taxpaying responsibility by the April 15 filing deadline. Some tax experts estimate that taxpayers will spend over $100 billion and more than 6 billion hours this year trying to comply with their federal tax obligation. It's no wonder that many Americans are frustrated with the current tax system and would gladly welcome substantive efforts to simplify it.

However, this frustration changes to anger when the taxpayers who pay their taxes on time each year discover that many corporate taxpayers are shirking their tax obligations by actively shifting their profits to foreign tax havens or using other inappropriate tax avoidance techniques. The bill that Senator Levin and I are introducing today is a simple and straightforward way to try to tackle the offshore tax- haven problem.

Specifically, our legislation denies tax benefits, namely tax deferral, to U.S. multinational companies that set up controlled foreign corporations in tax-haven countries by treating those subsidiaries as domestic companies for U.S. income tax purposes. This tracks the same general approach embraced and passed by the Congress in other tax legislation designed to curb the problem of corporate inversions.

We have known for many years that some very profitable U.S. multinational businesses are using offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of U.S. taxes. But Congress has really done very little to stop this hemorrhaging of tax revenues. In fact, recent evidence suggests that the tax-haven problem is getting much worse and may be draining the U.S. Treasury of tens of billions of dollars every year.

The New York Times got it right when it suggested that ``instead of moving headquarters offshore, many companies are simply placing patents on drugs, ownership of corporate logos, techniques for manufacturing processes and other intangible assets in tax havens . . . The companies then charge their subsidiaries in higher-tax locales, including the U.S., for the use of these intellectual properties. This allows the companies to take profits in these havens and pay far less in taxes.''

How pervasive is the tax-haven subsidiary problem? Last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report that Senator Levin and I requested that gives some insight to the potential magnitude of this tax avoidance activity. The GAO found that 59 out of the 100 largest publicly-traded federal contractors in 2001--with tens of billions of dollars of federal contracts in 2001--had established hundreds of subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens.

According to the GAO, Exxon-Mobil Corporation, the 21st largest publicly traded federal contractor in 2001, has some 11 tax-haven subsidiaries in the Bahamas. Halliburton Company reportedly has 17 tax- haven subsidiaries, including 13 in the Cayman Islands, a country that has never imposed a corporate income tax, as well as 2 in Liechtenstein and 2 in Panama. And the now infamous Enron Corporation had 1,300 different foreign entities, including some 441 located in the Cayman Islands.

More recently, former Joint Committee on Taxation economist Martin Sullivan released a study that looked at the amount of profits that US. companies are shifting to offshore tax havens. He found that U.S. multinationals had moved hundreds of billions of profits to tax havens for years 1999-2002, the latest years for which IRS data is available.

Although Congress passed legislation, which I supported, that addresses the problem of corporate expatriates that reincorporate overseas, that legislation did nothing to deal with the problem of U.S. companies that are setting up tax-haven subsidiaries to avoid their taxpaying responsibilities in this country.

The legislation that we are introducing builds upon the good work of Senators Grassley and Baucus and other members of the Senate Finance Committee by extending similar tax policy changes to cover the case of U.S. companies and their tax-haven subsidiaries.

Specifically, our legislation would do the following: 1. Treat U.S. controlled foreign subsidiaries that are set up in tax-haven countries as domestic companies for U.S. tax purposes. In other words, we would simply treat these companies as if they never left the United States, which is essentially the case in these tax avoidance motivated transactions.

2. List specific tax-haven countries subject to the new rule (based upon the previous work by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and give the Secretary of the Treasury the ability to add or remove a foreign country from this list in appropriate cases.

3. Provide an exception where substantially all of a U.S. controlled foreign corporation's income is derived from the active conduct of a trade or business within the listed tax-haven country.

4. Make these proposed changes effective beginning after December 31, 2007. This will give businesses ample time to restructure their tax- haven operations if they so choose.

This legislation will help end the tax benefits for U.S. companies that shift income to offshore tax-haven subsidiaries. For example, any efforts by a U.S. company to move profits to the subsidiary through transfer pricing schemes will not work because the income earned by the subsidiary would still be immediately taxable by the United States. Likewise, any efforts to move otherwise active income earned by a U.S. company in a high-tax foreign country to a tax haven would cause the income to be immediately taxable by the United States. Companies that try to move intangible assets--and the income they produce--to tax havens would be unsuccessful because the income would still be immediately taxable by the United States.

Let me be very clear about one thing. This legislation will not adversely impact U.S. companies with controlled foreign subsidiaries that are located in tax havens and doing legitimate and substantial business. The legislation expressly exempts a U.S.-controlled foreign subsidiary from its tax rule changes when substantially all of its income is derived from the active conduct of a trade or business within a listed tax-haven country.

In 2002, then-IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti told Congress that ``nothing undermines confidence in the tax system more than the impression that the average honest taxpayer has to pay his or her taxes while more wealthy or unscrupulous taxpayers are allowed to get away with not paying.'' Last week, IRS Commissioner Everson echoed similar sentiments at a Senate Transportation-Treasury Appropriations Subcommittee hearing I attended on the IRS's FY 2006 budget request.

They are absolutely right. It's grossly unfair to ask our Main Street businesses to operate at a competitive disadvantage to large multinational businesses simply because our tax authorities are unable to grapple with the growing offshore tax avoidance problem. It is outrageous that tens of millions of working families who pay their taxes on time every year are shouldering the tax burden of large profitable U.S. multinational companies that use tax-haven subsidiaries.

I hope that Congress will act promptly to enact legislation to curb these tax-haven subsidiary abuses. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this bill.

Mr. President, today I'm joined by Senator Levin of Michigan in introducing legislation that we believe will help the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) combat offshore tax-haven abuses and ensure that U.S. multinational companies pay the U.S. taxes that they rightfully owe.

Tens of millions of taxpayers will be rushing to file their tax returns in the next few days in order to fulfill their taxpaying responsibility by the April 15 filing deadline. Some tax experts estimate that taxpayers will spend over $100 billion and more than 6 billion hours this year trying to comply with their federal tax obligation. It's no wonder that many Americans are frustrated with the current tax system and would gladly welcome substantive efforts to simplify it.

However, this frustration changes to anger when the taxpayers who pay their taxes on time each year discover that many corporate taxpayers are shirking their tax obligations by actively shifting their profits to foreign tax havens or using other inappropriate tax avoidance techniques. The bill that Senator Levin and I are introducing today is a simple and straightforward way to try to tackle the offshore tax- haven problem.

Specifically, our legislation denies tax benefits, namely tax deferral, to U.S. multinational companies that set up controlled foreign corporations in tax-haven countries by treating those subsidiaries as domestic companies for U.S. income tax purposes. This tracks the same general approach embraced and passed by the Congress in other tax legislation designed to curb the problem of corporate inversions.

We have known for many years that some very profitable U.S. multinational businesses are using offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of U.S. taxes. But Congress has really done very little to stop this hemorrhaging of tax revenues. In fact, recent evidence suggests that the tax-haven problem is getting much worse and may be draining the U.S. Treasury of tens of billions of dollars every year.

The New York Times got it right when it suggested that ``instead of moving headquarters offshore, many companies are simply placing patents on drugs, ownership of corporate logos, techniques for manufacturing processes and other intangible assets in tax havens . . . The companies then charge their subsidiaries in higher-tax locales, including the U.S., for the use of these intellectual properties. This allows the companies to take profits in these havens and pay far less in taxes.''

How pervasive is the tax-haven subsidiary problem? Last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report that Senator Levin and I requested that gives some insight to the potential magnitude of this tax avoidance activity. The GAO found that 59 out of the 100 largest publicly-traded federal contractors in 2001--with tens of billions of dollars of federal contracts in 2001--had established hundreds of subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens.

According to the GAO, Exxon-Mobil Corporation, the 21st largest publicly traded federal contractor in 2001, has some 11 tax-haven subsidiaries in the Bahamas. Halliburton Company reportedly has 17 tax- haven subsidiaries, including 13 in the Cayman Islands, a country that has never imposed a corporate income tax, as well as 2 in Liechtenstein and 2 in Panama. And the now infamous Enron Corporation had 1,300 different foreign entities, including some 441 located in the Cayman Islands.

More recently, former Joint Committee on Taxation economist Martin Sullivan released a study that looked at the amount of profits that US. companies are shifting to offshore tax havens. He found that U.S. multinationals had moved hundreds of billions of profits to tax havens for years 1999-2002, the latest years for which IRS data is available.

Although Congress passed legislation, which I supported, that addresses the problem of corporate expatriates that reincorporate overseas, that legislation did nothing to deal with the problem of U.S. companies that are setting up tax-haven subsidiaries to avoid their taxpaying responsibilities in this country.

The legislation that we are introducing builds upon the good work of Senators Grassley and Baucus and other members of the Senate Finance Committee by extending similar tax policy changes to cover the case of U.S. companies and their tax-haven subsidiaries.

Specifically, our legislation would do the following: 1. Treat U.S. controlled foreign subsidiaries that are set up in tax-haven countries as domestic companies for U.S. tax purposes. In other words, we would simply treat these companies as if they never left the United States, which is essentially the case in these tax avoidance motivated transactions.

2. List specific tax-haven countries subject to the new rule (based upon the previous work by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and give the Secretary of the Treasury the ability to add or remove a foreign country from this list in appropriate cases.

3. Provide an exception where substantially all of a U.S. controlled foreign corporation's income is derived from the active conduct of a trade or business within the listed tax-haven country.

4. Make these proposed changes effective beginning after December 31, 2007. This will give businesses ample time to restructure their tax- haven operations if they so choose.

This legislation will help end the tax benefits for U.S. companies that shift income to offshore tax-haven subsidiaries. For example, any efforts by a U.S. company to move profits to the subsidiary through transfer pricing schemes will not work because the income earned by the subsidiary would still be immediately taxable by the United States. Likewise, any efforts to move otherwise active income earned by a U.S. company in a high-tax foreign country to a tax haven would cause the income to be immediately taxable by the United States. Companies that try to move intangible assets--and the income they produce--to tax havens would be unsuccessful because the income would still be immediately taxable by the United States.

Let me be very clear about one thing. This legislation will not adversely impact U.S. companies with controlled foreign subsidiaries that are located in tax havens and doing legitimate and substantial business. The legislation expressly exempts a U.S.-controlled foreign subsidiary from its tax rule changes when substantially all of its income is derived from the active conduct of a trade or business within a listed tax-haven country.

In 2002, then-IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti told Congress that ``nothing undermines confidence in the tax system more than the impression that the average honest taxpayer has to pay his or her taxes while more wealthy or unscrupulous taxpayers are allowed to get away with not paying.'' Last week, IRS Commissioner Everson echoed similar sentiments at a Senate Transportation-Treasury Appropriations Subcommittee hearing I attended on the IRS's FY 2006 budget request.

They are absolutely right. It's grossly unfair to ask our Main Street businesses to operate at a competitive disadvantage to large multinational businesses simply because our tax authorities are unable to grapple with the growing offshore tax avoidance problem. It is outrageous that tens of millions of working families who pay their taxes on time every year are shouldering the tax burden of large profitable U.S. multinational companies that use tax-haven subsidiaries.

I hope that Congress will act promptly to enact legislation to curb these tax-haven subsidiary abuses. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this bill.

Mr. President, 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 rise in support of the amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Murray. Senator Murray, I believe, offered this identical amendment in the Appropriations Committee when it marked up the appropriations supplemental bill. I was very pleased to support her then.

I want to refer back to a time when we held a hearing with the Secretary of Defense. My colleague, Senator Murray, was at that hearing. She asked some questions, and other colleagues did, and I did, about this issue of health care, health care for soldiers and health care for veterans. One of the questions we asked was, What is the continuum here between a soldier and a veteran?

I would guess all of us in this Chamber have driven to Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed Medical Center to visit young men and women who have been wounded with respect to hostilities in Iraq. I have made many such visits. I have seen these brave soldiers lying in their hospital bed, often with an arm missing or a leg missing or other serious wounds, convalescing and recovering. In most cases, God willing, when they recover, they will get rehabilitation, and then they will, in most cases, be discharged from the service.

We asked the Secretary of Defense, at that point, What is the difference between a soldier on active duty and a young soldier who has just been released from Walter Reed Medical Center who is then discharged but continues to need medical help for the wounds they suffered in the war? Is there really any difference? And should there really be a difference in the health care that is delivered?

I am enormously proud of the men and women who work at hospitals such as Walter Reed Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital, those we see most often when we visit. That health care could not be better. They do an extraordinary job.

There was recently an article about the job they do in a publication called the Washington Monthly. I discussed that article with Mr. Principi, then the head of the VA. I said, you ought to send this article out to every single employee of the VA because without sufficient money--and they have not had sufficient money--they have done an extraordinary job.

But the question is, When someone becomes a veteran, having come off active duty with a war wound, what happens? Is there full funding in that case for the kind of health care they need? The answer is no.

My colleague from the State of Washington, Senator Murray, understands that. She has led the fight on this issue for a long while, to say: Can't we have full funding for health care for veterans?

You can go any place in this country these days and talk about America's service men and women, and people respond to it. They care about the people who wear this country's uniform, and they want to support them. But that support does not just occur with respect to when they are in a hospital such as Walter Reed or Bethesda. That support must occur with respect to VA hospitals and community-based veterans clinics.

As you know, the President's budget does not provide funding for the clinics

that were promised, the clinics that would allow a veteran who has health care issues to show up at a local storefront VA clinic instead of having to drive, particularly in rural States, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles. Well, that is not funded by the President's budget. Even though they had decided they were going to do that, the President says, no, we do not have the money.

My colleague from the State of Washington, Senator Murray, asks the question: What is more important in this country? I am not asking you for 10 things, but just give us a couple. What is more important than keeping our promise of health care to veterans? Just give me a couple of things that are more important. These are the people to whom we offered a promise, who answered the call: Uncle Sam wants you. Wear the uniform of this country. Put yourself in harm's way, perhaps lose an arm, perhaps lose a leg, maybe lose your life.

What is more important than saying to those people who answered that call that when you need medical help in our veterans medical system, we will have adequate funding to make sure you get that help?

I recall one day a father calling me and saying: I have a son who fought in the Vietnam war, and he suffered a head wound, a bullet to the brain. It was a very serious head wound that left him in devastating condition, and because of that brain wound and his incapacity, he was suffering muscle atrophy, and at some point he had to have a toe removed. They said, well, to have that toe removed, you have to take this young veteran to Fargo, ND, which was about 250 miles away--500 miles round trip.

So for this young man, who suffered a wound to the head in a war and was incapacitated as a result of it, put him in a car and drive him 500 miles round trip to have a toe removed. I said: Isn't there some common sense here? Couldn't this be done somewhere closer? We finally resolved that.

But the fact is, the money that was left out of the President's budget for the storefront community clinics for veterans, that is exactly the kind of thing they can do in many cases. Yet somehow this is not an urgent priority, with all of the young veterans coming back with wounds from this war, the Iraqi war, and with all of the World War II veterans now reaching that age where they need maximum care, the maximum claim on health care they were promised.

If ever we need to decide as a priority in this Congress that we need to keep our promise to veterans, it is now. That is all the Senator from the State of Washington is saying: Let's keep this promise. There seems to be money for a lot of other priorities around here that rank far lower than health care for America's veterans.

All of us have stories about these veterans, about those we have visited who were involved in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and now the gulf war. Those stories, individually and collectively, talk about heroism and commitment and service, duty, honor, country. Duty and honor, it seems to me, for us is to make the right choice.

It is always about choices in Congress. Who among us will decide today that it is the wrong choice to fully fund veterans health care in this country? Who among us will decide that is the wrong choice? For me, it is the right choice to decide veterans deserve to know we keep our promise. That is the import of the amendment from Senator Murray. I am proud to stand here and speak for it and support it and vote for it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, with the passing of Pope John Paul II, I take this opportunity to pay homage to one of the great spiritual leaders of our time. He was a truly gifted religious leader who touched people all over the world: young and old, rich and poor, the powerful and the underprivileged, Catholics and non-Catholics.

Pope John Paul II defied political labels and was constant in his beliefs. For him, defending life included opposing capital punishment and recourse to war as well as opposing abortion. Defending families meant a commitment to faith and moral uprightness, but it also meant standing up for just wages and a social safety net. These beliefs and convictions made him a respected leader all over the world.

One of John Paul's strengths was reaching out to young adults. World Youth Day was established by the Pope on Palm Sunday, 1984. He invited the Youth of Rome to celebrate the Holy Year of Redemption with him at Saint Peter's Square. It was a great success. Building upon this success and its popularity, the Pope held this worldwide event every 3 years.

Over the last 20 years, millions of young people from hundreds of countries have participated in World Youth

Day. One young woman who attended said that young people loved the Pope because the Pope loved them: ``People think that teenagers and young people are just out there and reckless, but he didn't see it that way. He said, `You are the future and I love you for that.' ''

The world is now mourning the death of Pope John Paul II. In parishes from the Americas to Europe to Africa to Asia, millions are paying tribute to a leader whose central message was love, respect, faith and responsibility to our fellow man. That example is his legacy, and regardless of our individual faiths, it is an example for all of us of how to live and relate to our neighbors. May God grant Pope John Paul II eternal rest and peace, and we thank him for a life lived in the service of people everywhere.

Mr. President, today I am introducing bipartisan legislation to address improvements that need to be made to the Nation's rail tracks and tank cars. I am very pleased to be joined on this bill by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

It is vital that we address this issue of track and tank car safety. Rail accidents occur in our Nation too frequently, and can cause devastating harm, ranging from economic loss, environmental or health hazards, or the worst tragedy, the loss of human life.

In my own State of North Dakota a terrible derailment took place in Minot, ND in January of 2002. At approximately 1:37 a.m. on January 18, 2002, an eastbound Canadian Pacific Railway freight train, derailed 31 of its 112 cars about \1/2\ mile west of the city limits of Minot, ND.

Five tank cars carrying anhydrous ammonia, a liquefied compressed gas, catastrophically ruptured, and a vapor plume covered the derailment site and surrounding area. About 146,700 gallons of anhydrous ammonia were released from the five cars, and a cloud of hydrolyzed ammonia formed almost immediately. This plume rose an estimated 300 feet and gradually expanded 5 miles downwind of the accident site and over a population of about 11,600 people. One resident was fatally injured, and 60 to 65 residents of the neighborhood nearest the derailment site had to be rescued. Over the next 5 days, another 74,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia were released from six other anhydrous ammonia tank cars.

As a result of the accident, 11 people sustained serious injuries, and 322 people, including the 2 train crewmembers, sustained minor injuries. Damages exceeded $2 million, and more than $8 million was been spent for environmental remediation. Imagine the devastation that could have occurred if this accident had happened in a more populated area.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated this terrible derailment, and in its report issued important safety recommendations on track inspections and tank car crashworthiness. The findings by the NTSB raised great concern. NTSB estimated that the pre- 1989 tank cars were insufficiently crashworthy. The cars were estimated to make up approximately 60 percent of the pressure tank cars in the rail system, and with a 50-year lifespan, could continue operating until 2039. The risks posed by these cars are significant, and the NTSB set forth recommendations on addressing these safety issues.

Of further concern is the fact that statistics show that there were more than 1.23 million tank car shipments of hazardous materials in 2000, the last year for which the study had data available, in the United States and Canada. Of the top 10 hazardous materials transported by tank car, 5 were class 2 liquefied compressed gases, LPG, anhydrous ammonia, chlorine, propane, and vinyl chloride, that together accounted for more than 246,600 tank car shipments, or about 20 percent of all hazardous materials shipments by tank car.

Consequently, the NTSB specifically stated concerns about continued transportation of class 2 hazardous materials in pre-1989 tank cars. Because of the high volume of liquefied gases transported in these tank cars and the cars' lengthy service lives, the NTSB concluded that using these cars to transport DOT class 2 hazardous materials under current operating practices poses an unquantified but real risk to the public. The NTSB also concluded that research was needed on improving the crashworthiness of all tank cars.

With regards to track safety, the NTSB also found that improved track inspection, such as visual inspections, and additional oversight by the FRA was necessary. The accident was caused in part because of undetected cracks in the rail tracks, and NTSB concluded that track inspections to identify and remove cracked rail components before the cracks grow to critical size are the primary preventive measure to ensure safety.

The findings from the NTSB's report are extremely troubling, and require immediate action by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to implement the safety recommendations. Our legislation incorporates these recommendations and others on track safety, and sets forth time frames for the FRA to act so that we ensure that these critical and potentially life-saving recommendations will move forward.

It is important to note that the terrible tragedy that took place in Madrid last year demonstrates that tank and track safety are vital to prevent not only against rail accidents, but also against terrorist attacks against our rail system. We cannot delay on investigating improvements to tank cars that travel every day across this country, often carrying dangerous loads of hazardous material. This is a necessary step in improving rail security.

We will now work with the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate leadership to speed enactment of this important legislation. Last year similar provisions were included in a larger rail security bill that passed the Senate, and I am hopeful that we can proceed along the same route this year, as both measures are vital to protect our rail system. I invite my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring this bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I am introducing bipartisan legislation to address improvements that need to be made to the Nation's rail tracks and tank cars. I am very pleased to be joined on this bill by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

It is vital that we address this issue of track and tank car safety. Rail accidents occur in our Nation too frequently, and can cause devastating harm, ranging from economic loss, environmental or health hazards, or the worst tragedy, the loss of human life.

In my own State of North Dakota a terrible derailment took place in Minot, ND in January of 2002. At approximately 1:37 a.m. on January 18, 2002, an eastbound Canadian Pacific Railway freight train, derailed 31 of its 112 cars about \1/2\ mile west of the city limits of Minot, ND.

Five tank cars carrying anhydrous ammonia, a liquefied compressed gas, catastrophically ruptured, and a vapor plume covered the derailment site and surrounding area. About 146,700 gallons of anhydrous ammonia were released from the five cars, and a cloud of hydrolyzed ammonia formed almost immediately. This plume rose an estimated 300 feet and gradually expanded 5 miles downwind of the accident site and over a population of about 11,600 people. One resident was fatally injured, and 60 to 65 residents of the neighborhood nearest the derailment site had to be rescued. Over the next 5 days, another 74,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia were released from six other anhydrous ammonia tank cars.

As a result of the accident, 11 people sustained serious injuries, and 322 people, including the 2 train crewmembers, sustained minor injuries. Damages exceeded $2 million, and more than $8 million was been spent for environmental remediation. Imagine the devastation that could have occurred if this accident had happened in a more populated area.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated this terrible derailment, and in its report issued important safety recommendations on track inspections and tank car crashworthiness. The findings by the NTSB raised great concern. NTSB estimated that the pre- 1989 tank cars were insufficiently crashworthy. The cars were estimated to make up approximately 60 percent of the pressure tank cars in the rail system, and with a 50-year lifespan, could continue operating until 2039. The risks posed by these cars are significant, and the NTSB set forth recommendations on addressing these safety issues.

Of further concern is the fact that statistics show that there were more than 1.23 million tank car shipments of hazardous materials in 2000, the last year for which the study had data available, in the United States and Canada. Of the top 10 hazardous materials transported by tank car, 5 were class 2 liquefied compressed gases, LPG, anhydrous ammonia, chlorine, propane, and vinyl chloride, that together accounted for more than 246,600 tank car shipments, or about 20 percent of all hazardous materials shipments by tank car.

Consequently, the NTSB specifically stated concerns about continued transportation of class 2 hazardous materials in pre-1989 tank cars. Because of the high volume of liquefied gases transported in these tank cars and the cars' lengthy service lives, the NTSB concluded that using these cars to transport DOT class 2 hazardous materials under current operating practices poses an unquantified but real risk to the public. The NTSB also concluded that research was needed on improving the crashworthiness of all tank cars.

With regards to track safety, the NTSB also found that improved track inspection, such as visual inspections, and additional oversight by the FRA was necessary. The accident was caused in part because of undetected cracks in the rail tracks, and NTSB concluded that track inspections to identify and remove cracked rail components before the cracks grow to critical size are the primary preventive measure to ensure safety.

The findings from the NTSB's report are extremely troubling, and require immediate action by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to implement the safety recommendations. Our legislation incorporates these recommendations and others on track safety, and sets forth time frames for the FRA to act so that we ensure that these critical and potentially life-saving recommendations will move forward.

It is important to note that the terrible tragedy that took place in Madrid last year demonstrates that tank and track safety are vital to prevent not only against rail accidents, but also against terrorist attacks against our rail system. We cannot delay on investigating improvements to tank cars that travel every day across this country, often carrying dangerous loads of hazardous material. This is a necessary step in improving rail security.

We will now work with the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate leadership to speed enactment of this important legislation. Last year similar provisions were included in a larger rail security bill that passed the Senate, and I am hopeful that we can proceed along the same route this year, as both measures are vital to protect our rail system. I invite my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring this bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I would like the Record to reflect that I was necessarily absent for the vote on the nomination of Paul Crotty to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Had I been present, I would have voted in support of the nomination.

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

Madam President, yesterday I offered an amendment on behalf of myself and Senator Wyden from

Oregon. I will now describe that amendment in some greater detail. I know others, including my colleague from Oregon, will be here.

It is an amendment to terminate something called TV Marti, Television Marti. It is spending money on something that does not work, spending money we do not have on something that is not needed. Even waste, of course, has a constituency in this town, so there will be those who will oppose this amendment. I will describe why this is a tragic waste of the American taxpayers' money.

This is a picture of an aerostat balloon called Fat Albert. Fat Albert has a great history. Fat Albert has been used for a number of things. At one point we had an aerostat balloon, Fat Albert, that got loose of its mooring in Florida. Eventually, it lifted fishing boats from the sea. They had to shoot it down. The Air Force had to shoot down Fat Albert.

This is the aerostat balloon, along with a 20,000-foot tether cable that broadcasts television signals into the country of Cuba to tell the Cubans how good life is in America and to give the Cubans a straight story.

We have spent $189 million on this program over a number of years since 1989. Over 16 years we have spent nearly $200 million.

We have another program called Radio Marti. I don't propose that we terminate funding for that because by and large the Cubans are receiving signals from Radio Marti. Radio Marti is beneficial. I have been to Cuba and talked to the Cubans. They can listen to commercial stations from Miami, as well, and do. But Radio Marti gets its signals to the Cuban people.

TV Marti, by contrast, has cost the American taxpayer since 1989 $189 million to broadcast television signals into Cuba that the Cuban people cannot see because the Castro Government routinely jammed those signals. In fact, for much of its existence, Television Marti was broadcasting signals from 3 a.m. until 8 in the morning--again, broadcasting signals the Cuban people could not see.

That, of course, is no barrier in this country. The 20,000-foot tether on the aerostat balloon called Fat Albert sits up there in the sky with the technicians. By the way, since they had to shoot one down and since another one got loose and went over to the Everglades and they had to round up this aerostat balloon and figure out a way to catch it, since then they now have three different ways of communicating with and controlling Fat Albert which I am sure is of great comfort to the people who might be in the way of an aerostat balloon that gets loose in this country.

Fat Albert is up there every day on the case, broadcasting television signals to the Cuban people. And every day, the Cuban people see this-- this is a television screen in Cuba--they see snow, because Castro jams the signals. So we have a program we pay for that doesn't work, that is not needed, and we keep doing it year after year.

And this year, guess what. The President wants to double the funding. Yes, that is true, a program that does not work, is unneeded, is wasting the taxpayers' money, and the President's budget says, let's double the funding.

Let me tell you what they did after they had this introduction of Fat Albert. Fat Albert gets loose, goes over to the Everglades, it is kind of a problem, and everyone is embarrassed about it. It is a worthless program that sends signals no one can receive to the Cuban people, and then they lose a balloon and they have all these embarrassing anecdotes of the fact that they are spending money to broadcast a television signal no one can receive, and so they decide they will do something different.

October 10, 2003, in the Rose Garden, the administration announced new ``get tough'' measures with Cuba which, among other things, said we will stop using Fat Albert; we are not going to use an aerostat balloon anymore. Now we are going to take Commando Solo, a C-130 Air National Guard plane, special operations C-130 airplane called Commando Solo. They are going to now broadcast television signals from Commando Solo.

The broadcast of TV Marti from Commando Solo commenced once a week for a 4\1/2\ hour broadcast. They use the same technology the current Fat Albert blimp uses. It broadcasts a signal from a high altitude which then is jammed by the Castro Government. The Commando Solo cannot overcome jammers in Havana, either. It can only reach areas if there are areas where the Castro Government is not jamming.

Commando Solo is operated by the 193rd Special Operations Wing of the Pennsylvania National Guard. It was designed for psychological warfare in military situations. It has been used to broadcast television messages in Panama, Desert Shield, Grenada, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and Iraq, largely areas where there has been combat that has occurred. There are half a dozen of these airplanes that exist. They are a precious military resource that is being used for what is now a nonmilitary operation. So now instead of Fat Albert, or in addition to Fat Albert, we have Commando Solo. There is no evidence, of course, that the Cubans can receive a signal from Commando Solo, but we are still pumping taxpayers' money into this folly.

The President's budget says we are spending $10 million a year. We have been doing that for 16 years, and we understand this is a program we do not need, a program that does not work, but we still want to keep funding it and we want to actually enhance it. Now what we want to do is go purchase a new airplane, go buy a new airplane for $8 million so that it becomes the TV Marti airplane to broadcast signals the Castro Government will jam and that the Cuban people cannot see.

If you sat around a smalltown cafe and talked about this, you would not get one person in a million who would say, well, if we have something that doesn't work, let's keep doing it; in fact, let's double it. Let's do more of it. Almost everyone would say: Are you out of your mind? What are you thinking about, funding something that does not work? If it is clear it does not work, why does it take you 16 years to decide it does not work? And if it does not work, why on Earth would you suggest doubling the funding? Yet that is exactly what we have.

Now, we have people who will, I am sure, defend this, and they will say: Well, do you know something? There are some Cubans who say they have seen it. We have 19 million people in Cuba, somewhere in that neighborhood. I think when the State Department talks about this, they say: We have 250 sitings of people who actually have seen Television Marti.

What they were doing is, they were interviewing people off the boats coming from Cuba in order to see if they could get some evidence that somebody was actually able to see something more than the snow on this screen. They got such an embarrassingly small amount of testimony from people who have said they could see this, they finally stopped asking people. So now there are no surveys because it was too embarrassing to get a survey completed that said this is a tragic, complete, total, thorough waste of taxpayer money.

What we have is a bill on the floor of the Senate that promotes the President's budget that says we will double funding for this program that is a total waste from $10.3 million to $21.1 million in fiscal year 2006. And the $10 million increase would go toward buying an airplane that would transmit 4 hours of TV broadcast to Cuba each day that would be jammed by the Castro Government and that would not be able to be received by the Cuban people.

TV Marti says it could operate a secondhand, modest twin engine plane for about $8 million. They would buy it for $8 million, and spend $2 million a year on the plane. There is not a shred of evidence--not a shred of evidence--anywhere that this would put us in a different position than now exists. The desire to use, for 16 years, an aerostat balloon called Fat Albert, and then the desire to expropriate military assets to send a highly specialized military plane, designed for psychological warfare, up in the air to broadcast for 4 hours a week signals the Cuban people cannot see--it is unbelievable.

It is one of these things that leads me to say, as I have from time to time, that even waste has a strong constituency here in the Congress. But from time to time you can see waste for what it is. This is evident. It is clear. It is not about Republicans or Democrats. It is about whether we want to spend money on something that does not

work. Do we want to continue to do that?

My colleague, Senator Wyden, and I say absolutely not. Let's finally, finally, finally--after 16 years--have the courage to shut down a program that is a total waste of the American taxpayers' money.

My colleague from New York wishes to, I think at this time, set aside and offer his own amendment; and then we will continue the debate with my colleague from Oregon immediately after the offering of the amendment.

Let me at this time yield the floor.

Madam President, I said 19 million Cuban people. I meant 11 million people who live in the country of Cuba.

Madam President, before I yield the floor so my colleague from Oregon can have the floor, let me say again, I think we will have people come to the floor and say: What do you mean ``a waste of money''? We have to deal with the Castro government. We have to get tough. We cannot back away.

I do not come to the floor to say anything good about the Castro government. The Cuban people deserve to be free and deserve to have the boot removed from their neck, the boot of oppression from a government that does not allow that kind of freedom.

But let me say this: This country has stated as its purpose for a long while with respect to China and Vietnam, both Communist countries, that the road to progress toward democratic reform in those countries is through trade and travel and engagement. We have believed that fervently, Republicans and Democrats. We trade with Vietnam. We trade with China. We travel to both countries. We believe that advances both countries toward more human rights and better human rights.

It is only with Cuba we have this obsession--believing if we can track down Americans who attempt to travel in Cuba, and slap them with big fines, restrict travel, restrict trade, and somehow waste money on things like TV Marti--it is only with Cuba we are obsessed with a policy that does not work.

Fidel Castro has lived through 10 Presidents. The fact is, the embargo this country slapped on Cuba is the best weapon he has to continue in office, to continue his power in the Cuban government. He says it is the 500-pound gorilla up North that has its fist around the throat of the Cuban people. It would be much smarter, in my judgment, to remove the travel restrictions and all the trade restrictions from Cuba and do with Cuba as we do with China and Vietnam. The quickest way to move Castro out of Cuba is through trade and travel and engagement, and I believe that strongly.

But this amendment of ours does not address that. It addresses one piece of this obsession with Cuba; and that is, the continued spending of money for TV signals into the Cuban country that the Cubans cannot see. It is one thing to do things that are wrong; it is another thing to do things that are dumb. I understand somebody shooting themselves in the foot. But after you have done it the first time, to take aim at your foot the second time--there is something fundamentally wrong and unsound about the thinking that allows you to do that. That is exactly what we are doing.

I will yield the floor so my colleague from Oregon, who is a cosponsor of this amendment, can speak.

Madam President, I wonder if the Senator from Oregon will yield for a question?

Madam President, I used a picture of Fat Albert, the aerostat balloon. I will show that once again. Fat Albert was fearlessly broadcasting television signals that no one could receive, doing it for 16 years or so. And now, in order to continue broadcasting signals no one can receive, we have expropriated the use of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard's airplane called Commando Solo, one of only a half a dozen ever made, used in Bosnia, used in Iraq, used in Afghanistan, for very sophisticated electronic psychological warfare purposes. That has been flying now for 4 hours a week, broadcasting signals, without any evidence at all that the Cuban people can see those signals.

So we have gone from Fat Albert to Commando Solo and now the next step, to purchase a new airplane, to purchase a new airplane so TV Marti has its own airplane to broadcast signals no one can see. Does it sound a little goofy? It would in my hometown, if you told this story. Sometimes there are people who serve here who think they know more than anybody else, they can see over the horizon things others cannot see.

There is a broad common sense in this country that takes a look at things like this. And wouldn't it be the case that in a small town cafe in Oregon or a small town cafe in North Dakota or Alaska, people would take a look at this and say: What on Earth are you thinking about, spending money on something we don't need and doubling the funding for something that doesn't work? Where have you been? What planet are you living on?

The point I have not made is, we don't propose to spend this money in other ways; we simply propose that we strike the funding for TV Marti, a program that doesn't work, and thereby reduce the Federal indebtedness. So we are not suggesting taking this money and spending it in some other way. Get rid of this program that doesn't work, that is unneeded, and thereby eliminate at least this small amount of Federal indebtedness.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

I simply wanted 5 minutes to respond to some of what has been said. I have no objection at all to the vote.

Madam President, I regret that we have a disagreement on the Senate floor, but I am not surprised. I would like to make a couple of comments. First, those who have opposed this amendment apparently have tried to win a debate we are not having. This debate is not about nurturing the flame of freedom. It is not about resisting tyranny. All of that is wonderful. I could stand here and tell a story about Vaclav Havel on a late night on a street corner in Prague, Czechoslovakia, hearing the Declaration of Independence for this country being recited by someone in Czechoslovakia. I could tell a story about Lech Walesa and what he did to light the flame of freedom in Poland, but I will not do that. That is not what this debate is about.

My colleague from Florida, Senator Martinez, talked about how important these television signals are and that is why the Castro Government jams them each and every day. That is the point he made. That is exactly the point I was making.

If, in fact, these are jammed--and they are--let me read the expert from the U.S. Government. He says: Even though TV Marti is jammed, it is well positioned to be an important instrument of U.S. foreign policy or a crisis will occur on the island. Transmission to Cuba ``has been consistently jammed by the Cuban government.'' That is a U.S. official saying that. So we spend $10 million a year to send television signals no one can receive in Cuba to a Fat Albert, the aerostat balloon, and

now we have decided we are going to Commando Solo, a C-130 specially equipped.

By the way, there is no new technology here. I know several people have said this is new technology. Nonsense. This is plain old-fashioned waste of the taxpayers' money by now using a C-130 airplane to send television signals into Cuba the Cubans cannot receive. This is the same technology that is used by Fat Albert, the aerostat balloon. We have been doing it for 16 years. We have wasted $189 million.

I support Radio Marti. I have been to Cuba. That gets through to the Cuban people. I believe we ought to remove the embargo and allow trade and travel to Cuba. That is the quickest way to get rid of Fidel Castro, but that is not even the subject. The subject is will this Congress, when they see colossal waste, fraud, and abuse, stand up and decide to stop the spending?

When we talk about freedom, the question is this: Is there freedom from waste, fraud, and abuse for the American taxpayer? Does that freedom exist? If it does, will we decide to take that step in this vote?

I started this morning by saying even waste has a constituency in the Congress. It seems to me quite clear that we have had our colleagues say: Well, this is not perfect. Not perfect? What do they mean, not perfect? We broadcast television signals that the receivers cannot get and spend $10 million a year, and now we are going to double funding with the ``purchase of a small airplane''? Eight million dollars to buy a new airplane now to broadcast signals the Cubans cannot receive? We are going to double the funding? I am sorry. This is simply wasting the taxpayers' money.

I am all for doing things that remove the boot of oppression from the necks of the Cuban people, but I am not for wasting the taxpayers' money. We have been told now by the opponents of this amendment that this would send a bad message if we cease TV Marti, sending signals they cannot receive. Stopping that would send a bad message. That is the point of all of this, is it not?

Are we sending a message or are we not? The point of it all is we are spending a lot of money believing we are sending a message that is never received. Sending a message to someone who does not receive it, sending a message by aerostat balloon or by a C-130 or by a new $8 million airplane to 11 million people who cannot see it is fundamentally foolish.

Where is the freedom from waste, fraud, and abuse that the American people ought to expect from this Congress? We will see whether that freedom exists in the next 5 or 10 minutes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I am submitting a resolution to disapprove of the extension of ``trade promotion authority,'' better known as ``fast track,'' for trade agreements.

In 2002, the U.S. Congress decided to tie its hands behind its back when it comes to international trade.

The Constitution, at Article I, Section 8, gives the Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce. But in 2002 we handed that authority to the President, and effectively gave him a blank check. We gave the President the authority to negotiate trade agreements in secret, and to bring those agreements back to the Senate for a vote, without the possibility of a single amendment being offered.

What was the result? We saw the signing of agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. This is an agreement that would integrate our economy with those of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.

Do the American people think this is a good idea? Not on your life, certainly not after what they've seen with the NAFTA deal with Mexico. CAFTA promises more of the same: U.S. jobs going overseas, as companies try to take advantage of low-wage labor in countries with no environmental controls.

If we were able to offer amendments to CAFTA, we could, for instance, have meaningful prohibitions on child or sweatshop labor, or pollution by overseas factories. Provisions that would protect American workers from having to compete with children working in filthy factories for pennies a day.

But that's not the kind of CAFTA agreement that big business wants.

They want to pole vault over basic labor and environmental laws in our country, and just move their factories to countries like Guatemala or Honduras.

I am going to lead the fight against CAFTA in the U.S. Senate. But I want to make sure that we get rid of this fast track authority that helped create this awful agreement in the first place.

Well, the legislation that gave fast track authority to the president in 2002 said that Congress would get to decide in 2005 whether to extend fast track. Any Senator can come to the floor of the Senate and offer a resolution saying that we should not extend fast track. And I am availing myself of that opportunity today.

But there is a catch. The supporters of fast track authority buried a provision in the 2002 bill, which says that the Senate does not get to vote on this resolution unless the Finance Committee first approves it. And the staff of Chairman of the Finance Committee has indicated that there is no way they are going to allow the Senate to vote on such a resolution.

I don't want to see any more agreements like CAFTA being negotiated in secret, and then brought to the U.S. Senate without the possibility of even a single amendment. So I am offering today a resolution of disapproval for extension of fast track, in accordance with the law.

And I am going to do everything I can to see to it that the Senate gets a chance to vote on this resolution, one way or another.

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

Mr. President, I rise this morning to talk about three areas of accountability as we begin discussing a range of things in the Senate this week. The issue of accountability rises on the question of the report offered to the American people and to the Congress by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Senator Chuck Robb. It deals with the question of intelligence preceding the Iraq war.

The 600-page report given us was largely a useless retelling of what we know already. I do not want to completely diminish the effort, and there are some things in that report that are interesting, but the fact is, we already know that the intelligence with respect to Iraq was dead wrong. The major question is, How was the intelligence used and for what purpose was it used?

We know what we were told prior to the Iraq war. All of us went to briefings up in the room in the Capitol where we receive top secret briefings, and we heard all kinds of language there and in the popular press by people in this administration and others who said that this was a certainty, that they knew where the weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq; it was urgent; there were unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver weapons of mass destruction; this is a slam dunk.

Now we know not only from this report but from previous reports that this intelligence was gathered, for example, with respect to one of the issues, as our Secretary of State told the world in the United Nations presentation, concerning the prospect that the Iraqis were developing a mobile chemical weapons lab to produce weapons of mass destruction. Now we discover that information came from a source named ``curve ball.'' It was a single-source piece of information. Some suspect that ``curve ball'' was a drunk, at least when he met with our intelligence folks. It says that he was suspected of having a hangover. We know that he was a fabricator.

So on the basis of a fabricator, a drunk, single source, we told the world through our Secretary of State that Iraq had mobile chemical weapons labs that threatened our country.

The aluminum tubes are another story. I am not going to go through all the stories, but the question is, Where is the accountability? We get a 600-page report that tells us what we already know; that the intelligence with respect to Iraq was dead wrong. Where is the accountability? Where does the buck stop?

Mr. Tenet, who was the head of the CIA--and this 600-page report points certainly to him among others--was brought to the Oval Office, to the White House, and given the Medal of Freedom after he left the CIA. Where is the accountability? Is there accountability in this country for having gotten it not just wrong but, as the 600-page report says, dead wrong? Will this Congress require accountability? I think it is very important.

This 600-page report is half the story. The other part of the story is not only bad intelligence, but how was it used, and what was the purpose of using it? Go to the Woodward book, go to the O'Neill book, and one gets some hint of the connection to this.

I think this Congress is owed additional answers. I think this report was far too narrow.

Second, I want to ask about accountability with respect to an independent investigation that is going on in this town. The Washington Post report was surprising to me because I was not aware of these facts. The Washington Post did a story that said the cost of the Cisneros probe nears $21 million over 10 years. This was a probe of Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros by independent counsel David Barrett. In May of 1995, Mr. Barrett was appointed as independent counsel to investigate allegations that a then Cabinet Secretary lied to the FBI about money that he had paid to a former mistress. That was May 1995.

In September 1999, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty, paid a $10,000 fine, and then following that he was later pardoned by President Clinton. By then, the independent counsel had spent $10.3 million on his investigation, and since that time he has spent another $10 million- plus on the investigation.

Is there a screw loose someplace? What are they thinking about? There was an independent counsel appointed 10 years ago to investigate an alleged impropriety by a Cabinet official. The Cabinet official pleaded guilty 4 years later, was pardoned a year after that. The independent counsel is still working? He is supposed to be supervised by three Federal judges, but the fact is, they are leaking money down there.

I intend to offer an amendment to the supplemental to shut off the funding. Ten years later, $21 million, investigating the question of whether a Cabinet official lied about money paid to his mistress? He pleads guilty to it and we have a guy 10 years later still investigating it?

I think waste is a disaster in the Federal Government. Talk about waste, this is shameful, and if the three-judge panel does not have the common sense to shut this down, then the Congress, I hope, will have the common sense to shut it down. I will offer an amendment during the supplemental that shuts off the money and does it now.

The third area of accountability is this: As chairman of the Policy Committee on our side, I have held a good number of hearings on the issue of contracting in Iraq. There is massive waste, fraud, and abuse going on with respect to contracting in Iraq. All of us know there is money going out of this Congress in wholesale quantities, tens of billions of dollars.

Last year, Congress passed a bill for reconstruction money in Iraq. I did not vote for it; I voted against it. In fact, I offered an amendment to shut it down, reconstruction money to the tune of nearly $19 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq. In addition to that, we have spent nearly $160 billion to $180 billion on the war in Iraq. There is an $82 billion request before the Senate right now. That is the supplemental I was referring to earlier. This is a massive amount of money being spent with respect to the operations in Iraq and also the reconstruction in Iraq.

I will talk a bit about what we have learned. One contractor was feeding our troops and charged the American Government, the Pentagon, for feeding 42,000 troops a day. It turns out this contractor was only providing 14,000 meals a day. We are getting billed for 42,000 meals, but the contractor was only providing 14,000 meals. Someplace 28,000 meals are charged for that were never offered to our troops, or perhaps not needed.

I come from a small town, and they call that cheating in my hometown. That contractor is still the largest contractor in Iraq being paid by the U.S. taxpayer.

We had testimony from truckdrivers who were hired to move goods around Iraq, including fuel coming into Iraq by contractors. Truckdrivers testified that $85,000 brandnew trucks were left on the side of the road to be torched and looted because they had a clogged fuel pump or because they had a flat tire they could not fix. What did they do? They left the truck beside the road, just abandoned the truck. That is the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that is going on.

We had a guy testify and show us a picture of the bags of cash that were used to give to contractors in Iraq. One contract company started business in Iraq with $450. They have been paid tens of millions of dollars now. Two of their employees, by the way, became whistleblowers and said: What we are seeing is making us sick, so we are going to tell somebody about it.

Here is what they said: These two people who started this company and are contracting with the U.S. Government--it is called the Coalition Provisional Authority that we created in Iraq; it was us, we paid for it--were providing security at an airport, and they were alleged by the employees to have taken forklift trucks off the airport property to a warehouse, repaint them blue, and then bring them back to the airport and sell them to the U.S. taxpayers through the Coalition Provisional Authority. Again, in my hometown, they call that fraud.

We had a big picture that one of the other whistleblowers had taken who worked in Iraq, and he said: We told contractors in Iraq that when it was time to get paid, just bring a big bag because we are going to give you cash. He showed us one picture of the contractor I discussed, the one with respect to the forklift trucks. He showed one picture of $2 million wrapped in Saran Wrap in bundles sitting on a table and the contractor comes with a big bag and they get their $2 million and waltz off.

This contractor, by the way, was also alleged to have created a subsidiary in the country of Lebanon for the purpose of buying and selling to and from itself so it could inflate prices and therefore further cheat the United States taxpayer.

It is unbelievable what we have learned about contracting in Iraq. One whistleblower came forward and said he was the buyer who was supposed to buy towels for U.S. soldiers. He said this is the towel I bought under orders from my superiors. The company wanted to pay almost double the price of the towel in order to have the company's name embroidered on the towel the soldiers used--unbelievable waste.

When you think of what is happening, this Congress is shoveling out tens of billions of dollars in pursuit of

all of this and nobody is watching the store. You hear the stories about us paying for reconstruction of a building in Iraq--and we are doing it for thousands of buildings. We decide we are going to put an air conditioner in that building, so it is subcontracted to an Iraq subcontracting company. First it goes to the contractors who are in Iraq being paid by our Government, some of whom I have described here, and then it goes to an Iraq subcontractor, and then the subcontractor for that subcontractor, and pretty soon that air conditioner in the building became a ceiling fan and we paid for an air conditioner and the ceiling fan doesn't work. So there you are.

The question is, who in this Congress is going to decide this matters at a time when we are up to our neck in debt, the largest debt in the history of this country, with a fiscal policy that is way off track, a President who sends us a budget with the highest Federal budget deficits in history, and trade deficits that are the highest in history, a combined fiscal policy and trade deficit of over $1 trillion in the past year? We are sinking and drowning in debt. Who is going to care about this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse, the most serious I have seen in all the years I have served in the Congress?

I raise this because it relates to accountability, accountability with respect to the use of intelligence prior to the war in Iraq, accountability with an independent counsel who spent $21 million 10 years after the fact when he was supposed to investigate a Cabinet official who lied about paying money to his mistress. This is an independent counsel who is still operating and has spent $21 million. Who is accountable for that? Who is accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq?

Harry Truman had the famous sign on his desk, ``The buck stops here.'' These days the buck doesn't seem to stop anywhere. Nobody seems to be accountable for anything.

I intend to offer another amendment. I don't know whether I will offer it on the existing bill or on the supplemental, but I will offer it again, setting up a Truman committee of sorts. In 1941, at the start of the Second World War, Harry Truman, then a Democratic Senator when a Democrat was in the White House, traveled around this country and saw waste, fraud, and abuse in military spending. He created a special committee and as a result of the investigation of that committee they unearthed massive fraud and massive waste. That was when a Democrat in the Congress did it, when a Democrat was in the White House.

These days nobody wants to raise any questions. You don't want to make any waves because we have one-party control and we don't want to talk about this, that, or the other thing. The fact is, I have never seen the kind of waste that now exists with respect to our operations in Iraq. It undercuts and undermines our soldiers' efforts, in my judgment. It cheats America's taxpayers, and it represents the worst of Government.

We ought to be able to hire contractors who will do the job without allowing waste, fraud, and abuse to represent the major impact of what we see happening in Iraq these days with respect to these contractors.

Part of this stems from greed. Part of it stems from the fact that many of these contracts in Iraq are no-bid contracts--one company. I have not mentioned Halliburton, but I could because a lot of it deals with Halliburton and KBR--not exclusively, but a lot of it. Any time somebody mentions Halliburton, somebody says: Oh, you are attacking the Vice President. Not a bit. This happened after the Vice President left Halliburton. These are of recent vintage, these activities in Iraq. It is not an attack on anybody. It is in support of the taxpayers of this country. We ought not allow this to happen. Republicans and Democrats all ought to stand on their feet and demand accountability and demand that the waste, fraud, and abuse stop--$8,000 a month to rent an SUV; $40 for a case of pop or soda--Coca-Cola.

There were 50,000 pounds of nails ordered by a contractor to Iraq. They were the wrong length, so they dumped them. If anybody wants to pick up 50,000 pounds of nails, they are laying in the sand in Iraq. It is unbelievable the waste, fraud, and abuse we hear about.

The reason I have held the hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee is nobody else will hold hearings. No one else wants to hold these contractors accountable. There are whistleblowers all over who are disgusted with what they saw, working for contractors and supervising contractors in Iraq.

I have only described a brief portion of what we learned in these hearings. We intend to conduct additional hearings. My preference would be that we not conduct these hearings in my committee. My preference would be that the authorizing committees and the relevant committees that should be assuming oversight of this would hold aggressive hearings, but they don't and they probably won't, and as a result we will continue to do this.

I am intending to offer an amendment to create a Truman-type committee here in the Congress, as we did some decades ago, to take a hard look at what is happening through that kind of committee, an investigative committee that would include Republicans and Democrats, all of whom I hope would be committed and dedicated to the task of deciding that waste, fraud, and abuse is not something that should happen on any of our watches here in the Congress.

Again, I think the key issue here is accountability. There seems to be none these days in almost any direction. I hope in all of these areas we can begin to decide there is accountability, at least here in the Congress.

I yield the floor and make a point of order a quorum is not present.

Mr. President, are we under a time agreement at this point?

Mr. President, let me make a couple of comments about this, and first credit my colleagues Senator Craig, Senator Baucus, and many other colleagues who have worked so hard on this. Their leadership is especially appreciated.

Go back 5 years to the year 2000 when I, then-Senator John Ashcroft, and my colleagues Senators Craig, Baucus, and others passed an amendment here in the Senate that became law. The amendment we offered which became law said that American farmers could sell food into the country of Cuba as long as Cuba paid cash for that food. Since that time, we have sold over $1 billion worth of agricultural commodities into Cuba. When we debated that 5 years ago, I was on the floor of the Senate saying I think it is almost immoral for any country to use food as a weapon. Food ought not be a weapon in foreign policy.

Does anybody here think that for 40 years when we prevented the sale of food to Cuba we injured Fidel Castro? Does anybody believe Fidel Castro missed breakfast, or lunch, or supper, or dinner, because of our embargo on food, because we decided to use food as a weapon? It didn't hurt Fidel Castro. When we use food as a weapon, it hurts hungry, sick, and poor people. That is what happens.

One day not too long ago--a couple of years ago--22 train carloads of dried feeds left the State of North Dakota, my home State, to go from our farms

to Cuba to be fed to the Cuban people. Cuba paid cash for it. It was the first shipment in 42 years.

We have people who never liked that law; didn't like the fact that Congress passed that law; still want to use food as a weapon. What has happened is the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control has decided to illegally, in my judgment, redetermine how they interpret that force of law that requires cash payment for food. Normally, when you buy something, when they give you the product, you pay cash and they give you the product. That is the way it is. You pay the money, they give you the product.

What the Department of Treasury has decided in OFAC is that the Cubans would have to pay for this. By the way, they paid cash through a European bank because they can't use a U.S. banking institution. They have to pay for it before that shipment even leaves the local country elevator. It dramatically changes the circumstances of being able to sell and be competitive. They are doing it for one reason, because those who did this don't want American farmers to sell food into the Cuban marketplace. The Canadians sell into the Cuban marketplace. The Europeans do. But they want to go back to the good old days when the American farmers were paying the cost of an embargo. They are dead wrong.

It is interesting. We are told repeatedly and have been told for years that the way to move Communist countries into the mainstream toward democratic reform is through trade and travel. I have been to the country of China; I have been to Vietnam--both Communist countries. We encourage trade and travel with Communist countries, China and Vietnam. But when it comes to Cuba, a Communist country headed by Fidel Castro, who admittedly keeps sticking his finger into our country's eye--I understand that. It is not about Fidel Castro. It is about our farmers being able to sell food into the Cuban marketplace. When it comes to Cuba and Castro, he has lived through 10 Presidents and over 40 years of an embargo.

The fact is this amendment is necessary in order to stop the Treasury from doing something that the Congressional Research Service says they do not think is legal.

Let me make another couple of comments that relate more generally to a related issue. The Office of Foreign Asset Control is an agency down in Treasury that is supposed to be tracking money supporting terrorism. That money supporting terrorism is to be intercepted by OFAC in their investigations, trying to figure out who is supporting Osama bin Laden, and how do we shut down their funding. Guess what. This little agency, which has 21 people, triple the number of people who are working on Osama bin Laden's funding supply, is trying to figure out how they shut down trade and travel to Cuba. They are investigating American citizens who are under suspicion of having taken a vacation in Cuba without a license.

I have a picture of a young woman I have shown on the floor of the Senate many times. Her transgression was she went to Cuba to pass out free Bibles on the streets of Cuba and OFAC tracked her down and fined her $10,000.

Trade and travel are two related issues that I believe would work with Cuba, as they work with China and Vietnam. I believe the Communist countries I have described, China and Vietnam as examples, have moved toward more democratic reforms, not completely, but as a result of our policy called engagement, travel, and trade.

With respect to Cuba, we have had this some 40-plus years embargo that simply hasn't worked. But the piece of the embargo, the piece of that issue my colleagues Senator Craig and Senator Baucus and I and others now want to address is to correct something that is happening down at the Treasury Department that we believe misinterprets current law to correct something the Congressional Research Service says is being done which they believe is not legal. We will find any way we can to force this correction.

My colleagues have described--I shall not go into any greater detail--the provisions. It allows generally visas for agricultural sales to Cuba. If you are going to sell and have a trade relationship, you have to go there and talk about what you have to sell. It would express the sense of Congress that we should issue visas to Cubans who want to buy U.S. agricultural goods, and want to come here. They have systematically refused to give visas to some of these top food-buying Cubans who would come to this country to purchase food. It also fixes payment and advance issues and resolves those kinds of problems that have arisen in recent months with the new ruling by OFAC.

One final point: The current Secretary of the Treasury knows, as did the previous Secretary of the Treasury, that what is happening is goofy; totally without good sense. They know that.

I had a hearing one day when I was chairing a subcommittee, and Treasury Secretary O'Neill was there. I asked him about four or five times. He didn't answer. I knew why he wouldn't answer; it was because he would get in trouble if he did. But about the fifth or sixth time I asked the question--I knew he would eventually answer--he finally answered candidly. I said, Wouldn't you, if you had the choice, rather than track people suspected of vacationing in Cuba, rather than trying to shut down agricultural trade, if you had the choice, use your assets in OFAC to track terrorist money and shut down terrorism?

He finally said, of course. The next day he was chastised publicly by the White House for saying that. We do not get that kind of answer out of anyone in the administration anymore.

This is very simple. It is not a partisan issue. It is the expression of Congress, on a bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats, that we ought not use food as a weapon. It is immoral. Farmers should not the pay the cost of this country's foreign policy. It makes no sense to allow the Treasury Department to misinterpret law and to try to shut down the ability of United States farmers to sell food to Cuba.

To close where I began, let me say again, these policies have never hurt Fidel Castro. He has never missed a meal. It hurts poor people, hungry people, and sick people in Cuba, and it hurts American farmers. The policymakers who do this know that, they know both of those circumstances and they do it, in my judgment, to perpetuate a political advantage they think exists somewhere in about two States in our country. I think they are wrong.

On behalf of this country's farmers and on behalf of the people in Cuba who would buy and who would need that food, I believe we ought to pass this amendment to the underlying bill.

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

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

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Wyden and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I visited with Senator Lugar and Senator Biden and indicated, on behalf of myself and Senator Wyden, I would offer the amendment. We would be prepared to discuss it in the morning, but we will be happy to have it set aside for other business on this legislation. I want to say also it is not our intention in any way to delay this legislation. It is a very important amendment to us and I think to the Senate. But when we come back tomorrow to spend some time talking about it, we will not necessarily take very much time, and we will hope for favorable consideration by the full Senate.

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

Mr. President, it appears there are a couple of minutes before we move on. I will debate the amendment, along with my colleague, Senator Wyden, more extensively in the morning. I will not take a lot of time. But as long as the floor was available, I wanted to indicate that the amendment we just laid down deals with TV Marti.

We fund broadcasts into Cuba on something called Radio Marti which are very effective. The Cuban people listen to Radio Marti. Of course, they can listen to Miami radio stations as well. But we also fund something called TV Marti, and we have done it for years. The Government of Cuba, of Fidel Castro, jams the signals. We have Fat Albert, an aerostat balloon up there thousands of feet in the air, and the American taxpayer is paying for a fancy studio down on the ground. And up through this cable to Fat Albert we actually send signals into Cuba, television signals that the Cuban people can't see. Traditionally, they have been broadcast from 3 to 8 in the morning, and they are systematically jammed.

We have been spending about $10 to $12 million a year, and we have been doing it for years. We have spent almost $200 million doing it. Now the President wants to double the funding. There is something called waste, fraud, and abuse. I am not exactly sure where this fits, but it is one of the three. It fits with something else called stupidity.

We ought not continue to pay to send television signals to a country that can't receive them or television signals to people who can't see them because the Government is jamming them. Let me say that the Acting Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, Mr. Brian Coniff, testified before the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights.

He said: Transmission to China has been consistently jammed by the Cuban Government. The American official said that. This transmission of television signals has been systematically jammed by the Cuban Government. We don't have any official evidence that the audience has increased due to broadcast schedule change. They did have some anecdotal evidence that just a smattering of Cubans would be able to spot the signal that we broadcast into Cuba. Before the Castro government caught the signal and jammed it, they would get a minute or two. So that is a sighting. That is a Cuban who was able to see the signal of TV Marti. They finally stopped measuring that because the audience was so miniscule as to be almost zero.

Finally their argument was, the same official says: TV Marti, though jammed, is well positioned to be an important instrument of U.S. foreign policy should a crisis occur on the island.

So there we are. We have big, old Fat Albert up there, an aerostat balloon sending signals to the Cuban people they can't see. We spend $10, $12 million a year on something we don't have. And now the President says we should double that. And do you know how we are going to do it? A balloon isn't enough and a balloon causes problems because the balloon got off of its aerostat mooring and went over the Everglades, and we had people on grappling hooks and ladders trying to tame the balloon that was broadcasting signals into Cuba. So now they want to buy an airplane.

If this were a television show, it would be a comedy. Now they want to buy an airplane for $8 million to send signals into Cuba that they can't receive. All of this would be funny were it not for the fact that this is paid for by American taxpayers. If ever there was a case of waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending, it is this.

It is not partisan. There is no Democratic waste or Republican waste. There is just plain old waste. It seems to me when you see something that doesn't work, isn't needed, shouldn't be done and doesn't function at all, maybe it is time for all of us to say: This we can get rid of.

This is not the largest amendment offered this year. It is roughly $20, $21 million. But it saves money; $21 million is a lot of money in my hometown. It saves the taxpayers money and stops doing something that has always been completely ineffective.

We broadcast in Radio Marti. That is effective. The Cubans listen to it. They can listen to commercial stations from Miami for that matter. But Television Marti has never worked because the Castro government systematically jams it. So we send signals no one can receive.

This amendment, I hope, should be simple enough. I know there will be some who may have an apoplectic seizure about my offering this amendment because there are a couple of States where the Cuban vote is very important and there are some in the Cuban community who think we are doing something very important and very worthy if we send signals from this country that can't be seen by the Cuban people. That escapes some notion of mine that would represent logical thinking. But nonetheless there may be some who will feel that way.

We will have a broader discussion of this tomorrow. I support many of the broadcasting programs we have. Many have been very effective. But this is pure, solid, thoughtless waste. It is time for this Congress to take a stand to shut this spending down.

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