Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the Senator. We are the chairmen of our respective policy committees, Republican and Democratic parties. We have on previous occasions decided to arrange some debates on the floor of the Senate about some significant issues. I participated in previous debates. For this evening, however, the debate will occur between Senator Durbin and Senator Stabenow on the Democratic side, Senator DeMint and Senator Santorum on the Republican side. This debate is about Social Security, the larger issue, and also the merits of private accounts in Social Security.

I assume this will be a spirited discussion because it is a discussion that has been moving around the country at a very significant pace in recent weeks. It was said once that when everyone in the room is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much. I happen to think debate strengthens this democracy of ours.

I recall several years ago I picked up the Washington Post and there was a big debate going on about something very controversial, and someone was quoted in the Washington Post. They said, This whole thing has degenerated into a debate about principles. I read that, and I guess that is why I came here. I hope so. I hope that is what debate is about.

Tonight, we will one more time begin a discussion and a debate, in this case on a subject that is very important in this country. I thank the two Republicans and the two Democrats, distinguished colleagues, who have agreed to participate in this debate. As my colleague Senator Kyl indicated, this debate will be self-executing. The rules are known to all participants.

With that, let me turn this debate period over to the participants who have agreed to begin.

Mr. President, this is a critically important issue. I appreciate the work of my colleague from Montana and my colleague from North Dakota. This is about family farmers. The reconciliation instruction to take money from an account that is critically important for the survival of family farmers is just a bad instruction. My colleague from Montana wants to abolish that instruction.

Look, family farmers, in my judgment, have a lot of fights. They fight every year. They fight against bad weather, crop disease and insects, and they have to fight grain markets trying to make a living out under the yard light on the family farm. They should not have to fight the U.S. Congress and the administration.

We made a deal on the farm program. We made commitments on food programs. The family farmers should not have to face jeopardy from this Congress.

The fact is, this Congress has decided for family farmers that we want to provide a bridge across price valleys, so that when prices precipitously drop, we don't wash away all of the family farmers of this country. So we put together a farm program, an account in the budget that deals with ag. It all works together. I believe the recommendation to cut these funds is a recommendation that pulls the rug out from under America's family farmers.

Bad trade deals have undermined our farmers. Weather and insects and grain markets have undermined our family farmers. The last thing that should happen is for us to pull the rug out from under our family farmers.

I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Baucus, from Montana. I hope the Senate will adopt this amendment.

Mr. President, are we doing 1 minute a side?

Mr. President, the purpose of this amendment is to repeal the provision of the Tax Code that actually rewards companies to shut down their American plant and move their jobs overseas. Yes, we actually reward companies in the current Tax Code for shutting down their American plants and moving jobs. It is the most pernicious part of the Tax Code. In my judgment, this is only a baby step in the right direction.

A vote against this amendment is a vote against fairness and a vote against American jobs. I hope this Senate will approve this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this is amendment No. 211. This amendment adds back $1 billion to the Indian accounts. We all know we have a bona fide crisis in health care, housing, and education on Indian reservations in this country. Many of those appropriations have been cut. This amendment restores some of that cut. It is $1 billion, which would be paid for by closing a tax loophole.

Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation, along with Mr. Graham, that I believe is needed to solve our long-term energy need. It is imperative that our Nation implements a roadmap to achieving our goal of creating a hydrogen fuel-cell economy. I believe this measure is the best way to diversify our energy portfolio and protect our national security interests.

This legislation would invest $7.9 billion over 10 years in hydrogen fuel cell research and deployment. Additionally, the measure would change the current direction of the hydrogen program, allowing each program related to developing hydrogen to build off of each other. Similar to what has been recommended by the National Academies, it realizes a more conscious systems approach to program design.

You see, currently the hydrogen program is like a series of small block grants. We send money to the Department of Energy, DOE, and simply tell them to come up with a program. Under this scenario, with little accountability or direction, the program has not moved as swiftly as we would like.

Changing the structure of the hydrogen program will ensure that the long-term goal is reached and the benefits are reaped. What this legislation does is compartmentalize each program at DoE related to hydrogen development. Instead of sending a chunk of money, the funds will now be targeted to programs that will be the foundation for building and commercializing a hydrogen fuel-cell economy.

Additionally, this measure uses the successful ``learning demonstration'' technique of building institutional relationships among key industries and with the Government that has strong support from both the fuels industry and the auto sector, and applies this as a program design to all large scale systems demonstrations. These demonstrations are then linked to refining the R&D tasks again after the demonstrations complete their early phases, so that concrete learning is integrated directly into a final round of more focused R&D.

This bill enables a more strategic approach to program planning in the formation of a hydrogen economy. It also includes more interaction between R&D and demonstrations--with emphasis on development--that is the key to accelerating commercialization and movement to market.

This measure does not reinvent the wheel. Instead, it takes what we have learned thus far and focuses our efforts for the future. Providing developmental targets and accountability will also allow us to adjust our priorities appropriately.

Introduction of this measure could not come at a more critical time. Today, oil prices are at an all time high of $57.00 a barrel. This increase has directly hit consumers where it hurts most--in their wallets. Today in the State of North Dakota, consumers will spend $330,000 more for gasoline than they did this time last year. This is nothing more than an additional tax on hard working families who have to drive around during the course of their daily lives. It is no longer a question of whether you can afford to sign your children up for extra curricular activities like baseball or ballet; it is now a question of whether you can afford to even take them to these activities.

It shouldn't be this way, especially in America. However, we continue to be beholden to the same generational argument: Where can we dig and drill next? We need to jump over this debate and I believe this measure does that.

Let me describe why I think we ought to do this and why focusing our attention and resources is important. I will harken back to the Apollo program. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced our Nation was establishing a goal of sending a man to the Moon and having a safe return by the end of the decade.

The Apollo project was an enormous undertaking. The NASA annual budget increased from $500 million in 1960 to $5.2 billion in 1965. It represented 5.3 percent of the Federal budget in 1965. Think about that. In today's terms, that would be over $115 billion. NASA engaged private industry, university research, and academia in a massive way and contractor employees increased by a factor of 10, to 376,000 people, in 1965.

When President Kennedy said in 1961 it was his vision to have a man walk on the Moon by the end of the decade, there was no technological capability to do so at that moment and no guarantee it could even be done. During the height of the cold war, the Soviets had an advantage in space flight and that advantage was of great concern to us. They had put up a satellite called Sputnik and the technological barriers facing the U.S. in catching up were very significant. The expense and resolve were daunting, but yet, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stood on the surface of the Moon and pantomimed a golf game. In a single decade, the President and the country set and reached an unthinkable goal.

Now let's talk about another goal, another big idea, one that we ought to establish now for this country and for its future. That is the goal of deciding, as President Bush has suggested, that we move toward a hydrogen economy and fuel-cells for our vehicles. I will describe why I think this is important.

America's energy security is threatened by our dependence on foreign oil. Oil prices are at record highs and America now imports 62 percent of the oil it consumes. Our import level is expected to grow to 68 percent by 2025. Nearly all of our cars and trucks run on gasoline, and they are the main reason America imports so much oil. Two-thirds of the oil Americans use each day is used for transportation; fuel-cell vehicles offer the best hope of dramatically reducing our long-term dependence on foreign oil and protecting our national security interests.

The American economy is and will be held hostage by our ability to find and import oil from outside of our country's borders. Should this cause all of us great concern? Yes. This is a very serious problem. If we wake up tomorrow morning, God forbid, and terrorists have interrupted the supply of oil to this country--and, yes, that could happen--this country's economy will be flat on its back. It will be flat on its back because we rely on oil from sources outside this country, much of it from very troubled parts of the world. And our dependence is only expected to increase.

Whenever we discuss oil, the debate centers around two issues-- drilling in ANWR and CAFE standards. If it is only those two issues, we lose. We need to move beyond these issues. Yes, we can address them, but it seems to me if these are our only options, every few years we will debate exactly the same issues: Where do we drill next? and, How much more efficient can we make a carburetor, through which we run gasoline?

If our energy strategy for this country's future is simply digging and drilling, then it is a strategy I call `yesterday forever,' which means it doesn't really change very much. Every few years we can debate the issue of how dependent we are on oil imports and how dangerous it is for us. I think we should have a different debate, one that breaks our normal cycle.

That does not mean we should not dig and drill. We will, we can, and we should. We will always use fossil fuels. But these resources must be used in a sustainable and efficient manner. We will continue to dig and drill, but that cannot be all we do. If it is, we really

have not moved the ball forward at all. So what else can we do? I believe we should chart a different course.

First of all, using fuel-cells and hydrogen is twice as efficient in getting power to a wheel as using the internal combustion engine. Second, when we use hydrogen fuel-cells in automobiles or vehicles, we are sending water vapor out the tailpipe. What a wonderful thing for our environment and our economy. We double the efficiency of the energy source, while at the same time eliminating the pollution out of the tailpipe. That makes great sense to me.

In the past I have introduced legislation saying let's move to a different kind of technology, a different kind of energy economy; let's move to a hydrogen economy using fuel-cells. This bill is different from my previous bills because it would not only authorize higher funding levels, but just as importantly, it would change the way the program works.

My point is simple. We need accountability and targets and timetables in all the programs developing hydrogen. While this measure specifically states that we should set a target of 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2010 and 2.5 million by 2020, it also includes developmental milestones within each program, essentially giving us a roadmap of where we need to go and how to get there. If we do not set this out, we will not get there. If we do not have the same resolve towards establishing a hydrogen fuel-cell economy as President Kennedy had in putting a man on the Moon then we are not going to get there. Not without the focus and commitment needed.

Are there issues that need to be resolved? Sure there are, but we will never resolve them unless we implement a plan to do so. That is why I feel this legislation is the best approach. We focus on what is needed, while building on what we have. Instead of having two or more projects moving in different directions, with no connection, we set out a more focused approach where we can see exactly the progress we are making.

This commitment is what is needed and this direction is supported throughout the hydrogen industry. We cannot let this opportunity pass us by. If we sit and do nothing when the price of oil is at its highest, then I fear we will never do anything. This type of commitment and resolve is needed for our economic future, as well as to ensure our national security interests.

If we start now, I have no doubt that hydrogen fueled vehicles will be to our grandchildren what gasoline was to our grandparents.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today Senators Hagel, Brownback, Johnson and many of our colleagues are re-introducing the New Homestead Act that will help address one of the most serious threats to the future of America's Heartland--the loss of its residents and Main Street businesses.

Over the past several years, we have described for our colleagues-- and the American people--the economic devastation that population loss has had on America's Heartland. Hundreds of thousands of people have left small towns in rural areas throughout the Great Plains in search of opportunities elsewhere.

In North Dakota, we have experienced greater than 10 percent net out- migration in nearly 90 percent of our counties over the past two decades. My home county, Hettinger, saw its population dwindle from 4,257 in 1980 to just 2,715 in 2000. Its population is projected to drop to just 1,877 by 2020.

However, this out-migration problem isn't limited to North Dakota. Nearly all of America's Heartland is facing population losses of epic proportions. Seventy percent of the rural counties in the Great Plains have seen their population shrink by at least one-third.

If you are a business owner, mayor, school board member, minister or resident of one of these rural communities, you know firsthand about this problem. People who are from these areas know that you simply can't grow or run a business in an environment where the overall economy is shrinking, current and potential customers are leaving, and public and private investment is falling. Too many communities in North Dakota and other rural States lack the critical mass of people and resources it takes to keep a community alive and growing.

The New Homestead Act of2005 that we are introducing today will help stem the problem of chronic rural out-migration and allow many rural areas to grow and prosper again. This one-of-a kind bill is virtually identical to the bill we introduced in the last Congress. The New Homestead Act gives people who are willing to commit to live and work in high out-migration areas for 5 years added incentives to buy a home, pay for college, build a nest egg, and start a business--or just plain get ahead in life. These incentives include repaying a portion of college loans, offering a tax credit for the purchase of a new home, protecting home values by allowing losses in home value to be deducted from Federal income taxes, and establishing Individual Homestead Accounts that will help people build savings and have access to credit.

This legislation also would establish a new venture capital fund with state and local governments as partners to ensure that entrepreneurs and companies in these areas get the capital they need to start and grow their businesses.

Our rural areas have been fighting for their very survival for years, yet until recently, most Amen:s didn't even know about this struggle. Today, however, general awareness about the problem of chronic rural out-migration is growing. This issue has been the subject of national symposiums, forums, town hall meetings and congressional hearings.

Last year, the U.S. Senate acted on some provisions from the New Homestead Act that offer state and local governments much-needed tools to encourage businesses to locate or stay in rural areas that are suffering from high out-migration. With the help of the leaders of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ranking Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, the Senate passed two key investment tax credit measures in the New Homestead Act as part of a major corporate tax bill considered last year. These investment tax credits would have been used to encourage businesses to move to or expand their operations in high out-migration rural counties. Together, these rural investment tax provisions would have made an estimated $641 million in tax credits available for business over the next decade.

Regrettably, these tax provisions were dropped from the final tax bill sent to the President. But the Senate's action sent a message of hope and opportunity to many rural communities: Federal policymakers do understand that rural out-migration is a serious threat to the economic well-being of the Nation's Heartland and that the New Homestead Act is a serious proposal for addressing it.

I think our colleagues would agree that our Nation's rural areas are great places to live and raise a family. Most rural communities have good schools, low crime rates, and a level of civic involvement that would make any public official proud. But unfortunately it has been a constant struggle for many rural communities in North Dakota and the Great Plains to survive. This shouldn't be the case.

I look forward to working with all of my Senate colleagues to try to reverse the trend of population loss and grow the economies of rural areas in North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and the rest of America's Heartland. Enacting the policy changes recommended in the New Homestead Act is a very good place to start.

I urge my colleagues to support the New Homestead Act in the 109th Congress by cosponsoring it and helping us move this important bill forward, once again, in the legislative process.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a piece of legislation, along with Mr. Graham, that I believe is needed to solve our long-term energy need. It is imperative that our Nation implements a roadmap to achieving our goal of creating a hydrogen fuel-cell economy. I believe this measure is the best way to diversify our energy portfolio and protect our national security interests.

This legislation would invest $7.9 billion over 10 years in hydrogen fuel cell research and deployment. Additionally, the measure would change the current direction of the hydrogen program, allowing each program related to developing hydrogen to build off of each other. Similar to what has been recommended by the National Academies, it realizes a more conscious systems approach to program design.

You see, currently the hydrogen program is like a series of small block grants. We send money to the Department of Energy, DOE, and simply tell them to come up with a program. Under this scenario, with little accountability or direction, the program has not moved as swiftly as we would like.

Changing the structure of the hydrogen program will ensure that the long-term goal is reached and the benefits are reaped. What this legislation does is compartmentalize each program at DoE related to hydrogen development. Instead of sending a chunk of money, the funds will now be targeted to programs that will be the foundation for building and commercializing a hydrogen fuel-cell economy.

Additionally, this measure uses the successful ``learning demonstration'' technique of building institutional relationships among key industries and with the Government that has strong support from both the fuels industry and the auto sector, and applies this as a program design to all large scale systems demonstrations. These demonstrations are then linked to refining the R&D tasks again after the demonstrations complete their early phases, so that concrete learning is integrated directly into a final round of more focused R&D.

This bill enables a more strategic approach to program planning in the formation of a hydrogen economy. It also includes more interaction between R&D and demonstrations--with emphasis on development--that is the key to accelerating commercialization and movement to market.

This measure does not reinvent the wheel. Instead, it takes what we have learned thus far and focuses our efforts for the future. Providing developmental targets and accountability will also allow us to adjust our priorities appropriately.

Introduction of this measure could not come at a more critical time. Today, oil prices are at an all time high of $57.00 a barrel. This increase has directly hit consumers where it hurts most--in their wallets. Today in the State of North Dakota, consumers will spend $330,000 more for gasoline than they did this time last year. This is nothing more than an additional tax on hard working families who have to drive around during the course of their daily lives. It is no longer a question of whether you can afford to sign your children up for extra curricular activities like baseball or ballet; it is now a question of whether you can afford to even take them to these activities.

It shouldn't be this way, especially in America. However, we continue to be beholden to the same generational argument: Where can we dig and drill next? We need to jump over this debate and I believe this measure does that.

Let me describe why I think we ought to do this and why focusing our attention and resources is important. I will harken back to the Apollo program. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced our Nation was establishing a goal of sending a man to the Moon and having a safe return by the end of the decade.

The Apollo project was an enormous undertaking. The NASA annual budget increased from $500 million in 1960 to $5.2 billion in 1965. It represented 5.3 percent of the Federal budget in 1965. Think about that. In today's terms, that would be over $115 billion. NASA engaged private industry, university research, and academia in a massive way and contractor employees increased by a factor of 10, to 376,000 people, in 1965.

When President Kennedy said in 1961 it was his vision to have a man walk on the Moon by the end of the decade, there was no technological capability to do so at that moment and no guarantee it could even be done. During the height of the cold war, the Soviets had an advantage in space flight and that advantage was of great concern to us. They had put up a satellite called Sputnik and the technological barriers facing the U.S. in catching up were very significant. The expense and resolve were daunting, but yet, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stood on the surface of the Moon and pantomimed a golf game. In a single decade, the President and the country set and reached an unthinkable goal.

Now let's talk about another goal, another big idea, one that we ought to establish now for this country and for its future. That is the goal of deciding, as President Bush has suggested, that we move toward a hydrogen economy and fuel-cells for our vehicles. I will describe why I think this is important.

America's energy security is threatened by our dependence on foreign oil. Oil prices are at record highs and America now imports 62 percent of the oil it consumes. Our import level is expected to grow to 68 percent by 2025. Nearly all of our cars and trucks run on gasoline, and they are the main reason America imports so much oil. Two-thirds of the oil Americans use each day is used for transportation; fuel-cell vehicles offer the best hope of dramatically reducing our long-term dependence on foreign oil and protecting our national security interests.

The American economy is and will be held hostage by our ability to find and import oil from outside of our country's borders. Should this cause all of us great concern? Yes. This is a very serious problem. If we wake up tomorrow morning, God forbid, and terrorists have interrupted the supply of oil to this country--and, yes, that could happen--this country's economy will be flat on its back. It will be flat on its back because we rely on oil from sources outside this country, much of it from very troubled parts of the world. And our dependence is only expected to increase.

Whenever we discuss oil, the debate centers around two issues-- drilling in ANWR and CAFE standards. If it is only those two issues, we lose. We need to move beyond these issues. Yes, we can address them, but it seems to me if these are our only options, every few years we will debate exactly the same issues: Where do we drill next? and, How much more efficient can we make a carburetor, through which we run gasoline?

If our energy strategy for this country's future is simply digging and drilling, then it is a strategy I call `yesterday forever,' which means it doesn't really change very much. Every few years we can debate the issue of how dependent we are on oil imports and how dangerous it is for us. I think we should have a different debate, one that breaks our normal cycle.

That does not mean we should not dig and drill. We will, we can, and we should. We will always use fossil fuels. But these resources must be used in a sustainable and efficient manner. We will continue to dig and drill, but that cannot be all we do. If it is, we really

have not moved the ball forward at all. So what else can we do? I believe we should chart a different course.

First of all, using fuel-cells and hydrogen is twice as efficient in getting power to a wheel as using the internal combustion engine. Second, when we use hydrogen fuel-cells in automobiles or vehicles, we are sending water vapor out the tailpipe. What a wonderful thing for our environment and our economy. We double the efficiency of the energy source, while at the same time eliminating the pollution out of the tailpipe. That makes great sense to me.

In the past I have introduced legislation saying let's move to a different kind of technology, a different kind of energy economy; let's move to a hydrogen economy using fuel-cells. This bill is different from my previous bills because it would not only authorize higher funding levels, but just as importantly, it would change the way the program works.

My point is simple. We need accountability and targets and timetables in all the programs developing hydrogen. While this measure specifically states that we should set a target of 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2010 and 2.5 million by 2020, it also includes developmental milestones within each program, essentially giving us a roadmap of where we need to go and how to get there. If we do not set this out, we will not get there. If we do not have the same resolve towards establishing a hydrogen fuel-cell economy as President Kennedy had in putting a man on the Moon then we are not going to get there. Not without the focus and commitment needed.

Are there issues that need to be resolved? Sure there are, but we will never resolve them unless we implement a plan to do so. That is why I feel this legislation is the best approach. We focus on what is needed, while building on what we have. Instead of having two or more projects moving in different directions, with no connection, we set out a more focused approach where we can see exactly the progress we are making.

This commitment is what is needed and this direction is supported throughout the hydrogen industry. We cannot let this opportunity pass us by. If we sit and do nothing when the price of oil is at its highest, then I fear we will never do anything. This type of commitment and resolve is needed for our economic future, as well as to ensure our national security interests.

If we start now, I have no doubt that hydrogen fueled vehicles will be to our grandchildren what gasoline was to our grandparents.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today Senators Hagel, Brownback, Johnson and many of our colleagues are re-introducing the New Homestead Act that will help address one of the most serious threats to the future of America's Heartland--the loss of its residents and Main Street businesses.

Over the past several years, we have described for our colleagues-- and the American people--the economic devastation that population loss has had on America's Heartland. Hundreds of thousands of people have left small towns in rural areas throughout the Great Plains in search of opportunities elsewhere.

In North Dakota, we have experienced greater than 10 percent net out- migration in nearly 90 percent of our counties over the past two decades. My home county, Hettinger, saw its population dwindle from 4,257 in 1980 to just 2,715 in 2000. Its population is projected to drop to just 1,877 by 2020.

However, this out-migration problem isn't limited to North Dakota. Nearly all of America's Heartland is facing population losses of epic proportions. Seventy percent of the rural counties in the Great Plains have seen their population shrink by at least one-third.

If you are a business owner, mayor, school board member, minister or resident of one of these rural communities, you know firsthand about this problem. People who are from these areas know that you simply can't grow or run a business in an environment where the overall economy is shrinking, current and potential customers are leaving, and public and private investment is falling. Too many communities in North Dakota and other rural States lack the critical mass of people and resources it takes to keep a community alive and growing.

The New Homestead Act of2005 that we are introducing today will help stem the problem of chronic rural out-migration and allow many rural areas to grow and prosper again. This one-of-a kind bill is virtually identical to the bill we introduced in the last Congress. The New Homestead Act gives people who are willing to commit to live and work in high out-migration areas for 5 years added incentives to buy a home, pay for college, build a nest egg, and start a business--or just plain get ahead in life. These incentives include repaying a portion of college loans, offering a tax credit for the purchase of a new home, protecting home values by allowing losses in home value to be deducted from Federal income taxes, and establishing Individual Homestead Accounts that will help people build savings and have access to credit.

This legislation also would establish a new venture capital fund with state and local governments as partners to ensure that entrepreneurs and companies in these areas get the capital they need to start and grow their businesses.

Our rural areas have been fighting for their very survival for years, yet until recently, most Amen:s didn't even know about this struggle. Today, however, general awareness about the problem of chronic rural out-migration is growing. This issue has been the subject of national symposiums, forums, town hall meetings and congressional hearings.

Last year, the U.S. Senate acted on some provisions from the New Homestead Act that offer state and local governments much-needed tools to encourage businesses to locate or stay in rural areas that are suffering from high out-migration. With the help of the leaders of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ranking Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, the Senate passed two key investment tax credit measures in the New Homestead Act as part of a major corporate tax bill considered last year. These investment tax credits would have been used to encourage businesses to move to or expand their operations in high out-migration rural counties. Together, these rural investment tax provisions would have made an estimated $641 million in tax credits available for business over the next decade.

Regrettably, these tax provisions were dropped from the final tax bill sent to the President. But the Senate's action sent a message of hope and opportunity to many rural communities: Federal policymakers do understand that rural out-migration is a serious threat to the economic well-being of the Nation's Heartland and that the New Homestead Act is a serious proposal for addressing it.

I think our colleagues would agree that our Nation's rural areas are great places to live and raise a family. Most rural communities have good schools, low crime rates, and a level of civic involvement that would make any public official proud. But unfortunately it has been a constant struggle for many rural communities in North Dakota and the Great Plains to survive. This shouldn't be the case.

I look forward to working with all of my Senate colleagues to try to reverse the trend of population loss and grow the economies of rural areas in North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and the rest of America's Heartland. Enacting the policy changes recommended in the New Homestead Act is a very good place to start.

I urge my colleagues to support the New Homestead Act in the 109th Congress by cosponsoring it and helping us move this important bill forward, once again, in the legislative process.

Mr. President, I would ask for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I intend to support the amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Conrad, which, in effect, says: Save Social Security first. Make Social Security a priority when we evaluate what we want to do around here. There are a whole series of options that we face: increase spending, cut taxes or do both of these things. What my colleague is saying is, save Social Security. Save Social Security first.

I also intend to support the amendment offered by my colleague from Florida, Mr. Nelson. Senator Nelson's amendment is a sense-of-the- Senate amendment that Congress should reject any Social Security plan that requires deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt.

Now, why is Senator Nelson offering that amendment? Well, because we have the memorandum that was leaked from the White House in January that outlined the plan that the President's chief strategist on Social Security was offering. The plan was relatively simple. The plan is, borrow a lot of money up front, anywhere from $1 to $5 trillion, depending on how long a time you measure it. Borrow a lot of money. Put it in the stock market. Change the indexing formula in Social Security to cut benefits. Then you have borrowed money in the stock market, with Social Security benefit cuts. Then you just sit back and wait and hope that everything is going to be all right.

At the end of that memorandum from the White House it says this, which is very revealing: It says, ``This is the first time in six decades we have had an opportunity to win on Social Security.'' We know what that means. They go back to Alf Landon, when they debated this Social Security bill in the 1930s. They did not like it then. Some still do not like it. They would like to take it apart.

Now, the President began at his State of the Union Address, and around the State of the Union Address other members of the administration said the Social Security system is in crisis. They used the terms, ``bankrupt,'' ``flat broke,'' ``busted.'' None of that is true.

It is the case, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that Social Security, as a program, will be solvent until President George W. Bush is 106 years old. Let me say that again. The Congressional Budget Office says the Social Security system will be fully solvent until President George W. Bush is 106 years old. Now, they did not say the ``Bush, 106 years old'' piece. They just described how many years it would be solvent. I have calculated, then, the President would be 106 years old at that point.

Is that a crisis? No, it is not a crisis. People are living longer, healthier lives. We may have to make some adjustments to Social Security, but it does not require major surgery, and it is not a justification for President Bush's plan to begin taking Social Security apart, creating privatized accounts. It is not a justification for that.

Now, in many ways, this is about values. I respect those who believe Social Security should never have been adopted. I do not agree with them. I respect their right to take that viewpoint. I respect those who want to take the Social Security system apart right now. I do not agree with that either, but I respect their right to make that case.

But it seems to me if you go back to 1935 at a time in this country when 50 percent of America's senior citizens were living in poverty, this country decided: We cannot have that. We are not going to allow that to happen. So we created an insurance program. Yes, it is insurance not investments. The FICA, the tax that is taken out of your check every month--the ``I'' in FICA is insurance. That is what it means, insurance. It is the program that would always be there. You could count on it. It is guaranteed. It is not the risk piece. The antithesis of security is risk. It is the portion of retirement security that will be there. That is what it was created for. The woman who received the first Social Security check in 1940 and the tens of millions of American senior citizens who have received Social Security since have, in many cases, been lifted out of poverty by this single act. Some say, well, it is something that should never have been done. One of the leading voices on the far right says Social Security is a soft underbelly of the liberal welfare state. That describes the mindset of people who don't want the Social Security program to exist, the kind of people who voted against it in the 1930s.

As I said, this is about values, what is important to us. Some come to the floor and say the most important thing, by far, is to eliminate the death tax--a tax which doesn't exist, incidentally. There is no death tax in America. There is a tax on inherited wealth. I spoke yesterday about that. Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man, makes the point that if the majority party gets its way with respect to the ``death tax'' and exempting dividends from taxation and so on, the world's second richest man will be paying one-tenth the tax rate that the receptionist in his office pays. That is from him, not me. Warren Buffett says under their plan he would end up paying a 3-percent tax, and the receptionist in his office, with the payroll taxes, would end up paying a 30-percent tax.

I asked the question yesterday, why do we have the philosophy in the Chamber that seems to say let's tax

work, but let's exempt investment? Is work less worthy? Is it really less worthy? Don't we value work? Don't we honor work? Don't we connect effort and reward? There are some who come to the Chamber and say, look, there are priorities that are more important than Social Security. Cutting the tax on dividends and interest on passive income, eliminating the so-called death tax--despite the fact that there is no death tax--they spend money to do that. That is more important to them than the Social Security program.

I happen to think the Social Security program works well, and has for a long while and will continue for a long while. It will be solvent for 75 years with any kind of reasonable economic growth, with no changes. But assuming we get a pessimistic rate of growth for 75 years, 1.9 percent compared to the 3.4 percent we had in the previous 75 years, assume, as the actuaries do, that we have an anemic growth of 1.9 percent, then we would have to make adjustments.

But that is not a pretext for what President Bush wants to do. What he wants to do is simple. He said it in 1978 when he ran for Congress. In 1978, when he ran for Congress, he said that Social Security will be broke in 10 years. He meant 1988. Of course, that didn't happen. It wasn't true at the time. He said Social Security will be broke in 10 years and we ought to go to privatized accounts.

So this is not new. It is not even about economics. It is about a philosophy, about a decision and a desire to take apart the Social Security program. The question for this Congress is: Does Social Security have merit and worth for this country? Has it improved this country? Is it a part of this country's decisionmaking over the last century that has improved America?

In my judgment, the answer is yes. We have done a lot of things together. We decided in the last century about a lot of issues. Some of them were hard. We had people die in the streets of this country who demonstrated for the right for workers to organize. People literally died in the streets as a result of violence over the issue of whether American workers should be allowed to organize. Should they expect to be able to work in safe workplaces, safe plants. Should we have child labor laws. Should we have a minimum wage. Should we stop companies from dumping chemicals and sewage into the water and the air. And in the panoply of all of those decisions, one was to say it is intolerable that half of our senior citizens live in poverty. These are the people who helped build our country, the people who understood about going to a barnraising for the neighbor, about building a community, starting a church in a small town, about trying to raise a family by raising a crop, and hoping that crop produces something you can sell in the fall to keep your family over the winter. Yes, the people who worked in the factories, as well, that began to mass-produce products. These are the workers of America who helped build this great country of ours. We decided it is intolerable that one-half of them, when they reach their declining income years and retirement, should live in poverty; it is intolerable, as good as this country is.

So we contribute each month from our paycheck--all workers do--into a fund called Social Security. There are a lot of things you don't know about growing old. You don't know about your health. You don't know which of your relatives will survive to be helpful to you when you grow old. But you do know this: If you work and if you had an investment from your paycheck in the required number of quarters, Social Security will be there for you. You do know that. That is important.

Because we know that and because we now have nearly 70 years of experience with this program, we ought to understand that this ranks right near the top of the things we need to do to make this a better country: Preserve, strengthen, and nurture the Social Security system for the long term.

I oppose the President's proposal. I think it is a proposal that will begin to take apart the Social Security program. I support the amendments that will be offered and voted on this afternoon. Those amendments make good sense and they move us in the direction of deciding the following: We are going to strengthen and preserve Social Security for the long term. It ranks as a priority, the highest priority for this Congress.

Mr. President, I ask for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I am advantaged from having heard twice today the proposition by the Senator from Utah--once in committee and now on the floor of the Senate. I always enjoy his presentations. I confess--and perhaps others will, too--to some nostalgia. We used to name trains. In my hometown, the train that came through was called the Galloping Goose. I used to watch that train come in to pick up the cream cans. I loved the Galloping Goose. I admit to some nostalgia, but this debate is not about nostalgia.

There is a story about a guy who, in 1896, went to Waco, TX, where a railroad company was going to destroy a couple of locomotives they were done using. They decided to put on an extravaganza. They were going to run the locomotives together, and 40,000 people showed up to watch. They ran them together in a demonstrated train wreck, and metal flew, as did sparks and steam and fire.

There was a boy named Joe Connolly--this is a great story about Joe. He discovered that people would come to watch a train wreck. Joe Connolly thought, I am going to sponsor train wrecks. He was a guy from Iowa. He sponsored 71 train wrecks in his career. His last train wreck was in 1932 at the Iowa State Fair. He built 3,000 feet of track, got two old locomotives that were about to be abandoned, and ran them together at 50 miles an hour. He had people pay from miles around to see the train wreck. They called him ``head-on Joe Connolly'' because he sponsored 71 train wrecks. What a great story.

You don't have to go to an Iowa State Fair to see a train wreck these days. You can see it right here in the middle of this budget document. That is why Senator Byrd is on the floor with his amendment. He says that Amtrak is worthy, that rail passenger service in this country ought to be a national enterprise. I fully agree. We will always have rail passenger service connecting Boston to Florida because there are millions of people living on that eastern corridor. So that will be

self-sufficient--rail passenger service on the eastern corridor of the United States. The question is: Will we be able to maintain a national rail passenger system? Is it worthy to do so? I believe the answer is yes. Senator Byrd believes the answer is yes.

We have a train that comes through my part of the country. It goes from Chicago, up to Minneapolis, over to Fargo, up north all the way to Seattle, down to Portland. It is called the Empire Builder. It has been around for decades. When it comes through the State of North Dakota, it picks up nearly 90,000 people in a year. For them, traveling on the Empire Builder is not nostalgia, it is necessary. It is one part of a transportation system in a rural State that doesn't have very many transportation systems.

We don't have the kind of aviation service, commercial air service, they have in Chicago, for example. We don't have the bus service they have in New York. But the fact is, we have Amtrak coming through our part of the country as part of a national rail passenger service. I don't object at all to subsidizing it. Every other country in the world that has rail passenger service subsidizes the service. In fact, we subsidize every other kind of transportation service in this country, so why all of a sudden do we decide that somehow rail passenger service is unworthy of our support?

My colleague from Utah used the term ``mass transit'' this morning when describing Amtrak. Amtrak is not mass transit. I support mass transit, and we don't have any in North Dakota. We don't have a subway in Bismarck or in Fargo, or light rail. I support mass transit because I believe we ought to do that for the major cities of our country. This is not mass transit. Amtrak is rail passenger service that has been, in my judgment, spectacularly successful. Despite that, we have always had people who want to disband it, take it apart, get rid of it. Why? Because they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. This service has great value for our country. The relatively small subsidy that is required to retain a national rail passenger system is dwarfed by the subsidies in many other areas of transportation.

I understand why some would apply a profitability test to everything. I said to my colleague from Utah this morning that my guess is when they built the four-lane interstate highway system, somebody might have said there is a segment that we question: from Dickinson, ND, to Beach, ND, through the western badlands of North Dakota. There are not many people living there, and there is probably not so much traffic on that four-lane interstate highway. Or perhaps from Beach, ND, to Miles City, MT, or Billings--there is not enough traffic out there, not enough people living there to justify putting in four lanes. You know something? The country understood this was all about bridges--a bridge from here to there. So, too, is Amtrak and the Empire Builder a bridge from here to there. We understand that it stops in my State because it goes from Chicago to Seattle. It picks up nearly 90,000 people, including retired people, in the State of North Dakota.

Look, I think this is a bargain by any stretch. I support the Byrd amendment because I believe it is the right thing for this country to do.

It is all about choices. It is always, with respect to this budget when it comes to the floor of the Senate, about choices. I am absolutely surprised at some of the choices that are made and then very surprised at some of the issues other people think are unworthy for this country's enterprise.

Rail passenger service is a service that I think is important to our country. If one decides that this is all about profit and loss and not about a national transportation system that includes rail passenger service than I understand. We will have locomotives, we will have electric trains, we will have Acela trains running from Boston to Florida, and God bless them. We will wave at them as they go by, and good for all of them.

This country can, will, and should do much better and did do much better a couple of decades ago by creating a system that works. I have ridden Amtrak many times, and I like riding Amtrak. I hope that when the dust settles around here, we will have decided, once again, as a Congress that having a national rail passenger system is worthy.

I know the President believes differently. I had the president and CEO of Amtrak come into my office. I wanted to talk with him about what was happening and what was necessary. He made it plain--and I understood it before he came in--that if the President's recommendation is adopted, there will simply be no national rail passenger system. Amtrak, as we know it, will not exist.

That is a choice that perhaps the majority of Congress might want to make. I hope they will not choose to make that choice, but that is what the Byrd amendment is about. That is why it is on the floor of the Senate, and that is why it is important.

I came over to speak on this amendment because I believe an important part of this country is its transportation system, the ability of people to move around and to get around, to have access. And one part of that having a national rail passenger system that works. Yes, it requires a subsidy, and I believe that is appropriate. I am perfectly willing to do as every other industrialized country has done, and that is subsidize rail passenger service. It is not a large subsidy relative to everything else we do in the Chamber of the Senate.

My hope is, as I said, when the dust settles, we will decide to reject the recommendations of the President and this Budget Committee and continue to fund the national rail passenger system.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have listened with interest this morning to a fascinating debate and discussion about this country's budget priorities.

My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, knows of a man I have spoken about previously on the Senate floor. His name is John Smith. John Smith is called the Flying Farmer from Makoti, ND. What John Smith does is he gets these old cars and he goes to county fairs. He builds a ramp and jumps three or four other cars. He is kind of a daredevil. He works in a machine shop in Makoti, ND, and then he bills himself as the Flying Farmer from Makoti. During the summer, he goes to all these county fairs and does daredevil stunts.

The Flying Farmer, John Smith, is actually in the Guinness Book of World Records, and here is what his distinction is:

He drove a car 500 miles in reverse, averaging 36 miles an hour. Let me say that again. He is in the Guinness Book of World Records for driving a car 500 miles in reverse, averaging 36 miles an hour. That record might well be supplanted by this budget resolution, talking about going in reverse consistently for a long period of time. He may have nothing over the budget resolution that came out of this committee. This moves this country backward. In my judgment, it does nothing to address the central issues facing us in fiscal policy. I believe my colleague described the accurate numbers. If we go to page 5, for example, what we find is this: Federal debt subject to limit. Line 6 says, in fiscal year 2005, that Federal debt subject to limit is going to be $7.9 trillion, and then at the end of the fifth year of the budget, it is going to be $11.1 trillion. So this budget resolution calls for a dramatic increase in the Federal debt. Yet we have people coming out saying look at this budget resolution, what a responsible thing this is. It moves us in exactly the right direction.

That is nonsense. This is what it does. On page 5 it says we are going to dramatically increase Federal indebtedness from $7.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion over 5 years.

That is one thing. And this increase, incidentally, games the system because it doesn't include money for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It doesn't have money for many other things. But even with what it does have money for, on page 5, line 11, it tells you the truth of the matter. The truth is, this budget document calls for a dramatic increase in Federal indebtedness over the 5 years. Does that mean we are going in the right direction, or does that mean we are going in reverse? We know the answer to that.

The debate about the budget is more than just a debate about numbers. It is a debate also about values. What does this country stand for? What are our choices and priorities? What is our value system?

One hundred years from now everyone in this Chamber will be dead. Everyone now serving in the Senate will be dead 100 years from now. But the one lasting impression of who we were, what we stood for, what we thought was important, what our value system was, will be found in a budget document that says: here is what they decided to invest in. Here is what they spent money on. Here is what represented their value system. It is all historians will have to evaluate who we were and what did we decide was important in our lifetime.

This budget submission has some budget cuts. Let me describe what they are. We are spending less money on veterans than we need to spend to keep the current veterans programs funded. This budget includes a cut in veterans programs. The same is true in education, not enough money for current funding to continue, and the same for law enforcement and agriculture.

You can take a look at these and say, ``veterans,'' that's just a word. It is a lot more than a word. It is folks who

put on this country's uniform and went anywhere in the world they were asked to go and fought for this country.

I told my colleagues previously about a wonderful veteran. I pinned a medal on his pajama top one Sunday morning in a veterans hospital. He was an American Indian who fought in Africa, fought in Normandy and across Europe, came back and lived on the Indian reservation. He never had much, had a tough life.

His sister said: Can you get my brother his medals? He never got his medals from the World War II service. So I got his medals for him. He was very sick with lung cancer. At the VA hospital one Sunday we cranked his bed up to a seating position, and I pinned the medals on Edmund Young Eagle's pajama top 7 days before he died of lung cancer. And Edmund Young Eagle said, ``This is one of the proudest days of my life,'' because he served his country, and his country was saying thank you for what he did for America.

He didn't have very much in his life, but he was proud in his service. We have veterans coming back today, every day, who served in Iraq. We have World War II veterans who are reaching that age now where they need substantial health care help. At this very time we discover there is not enough money for veterans health care.

I asked the Secretary of Defense the other day, What is the difference between a soldier who is on active duty and a soldier who is now off active duty, trying to cope with a leg that is gone or a shrapnel wound in the head? What is the difference between those soldiers? They both fought for this country. There ought to be no difference. They both represent the cost of war: the cost of a soldier on active duty, or the cost of health care for a soldier who comes back and is now part of the health care system and needs some assistance.

The question is, What is our value system when we say as a country, veterans health care, that is not quite so important? That sort of gets short shrift. It takes second place to, let's say, a tax cut. In fact, this budget resolution says we need tax cuts more than we need to fully fund health care for veterans. What kind of a value system is that? Whose priorities are those?

Education--we all understand the value of education. This is more than spending. This is an investment. Our future is what our kids will be and what our kids allow America to become. So when we invest in education we invest in America's future. When we decide there are things more important than education, such as tax cuts for wealthy Americans, we shortchange our country's future. Yet we are told there is not enough money to fully fund veterans health care. There is not enough money to fully fund education.

Law enforcement: we know the scourge of methamphetamine addiction and production in rural areas of the country. This budget cuts Byrne grants, and the other programs that are so important for local law enforcement officials to wage this battle and make this fight. But we are told in this budget resolution we don't have enough money for that.

And family farming--these are America's economic all-stars. They are the ones who get up in the morning under that yard light that was lit all night long over that farm family. They say: We are going to work today to try to grow some food, make that soil produce a crop and then sell that crop at the elevator to feed a hungry world.

We are told we now have to change the rules on the farm program. That which we promised farmers, for an ability to get over periods when we have lower prices or tough times, we have to revoke that promise.

So these are the priorities in this budget resolution. We can't afford health care for veterans, education, law enforcement, agriculture.

Let's look at what they can afford. They can afford tax cuts. For example, this budget resolution allows for the permanent repeal of the so-called death tax. There is no death tax. I don't know how you permanently repeal something that doesn't exist. My colleague, the former Senator Gramm, and I had this debate on the floor before he left. I said: God forbid you die, but when you do your wife will own everything you own. There will be no death tax. There is a 100-percent spousal exemption. So there is no death tax.

However, there is a tax on inherited wealth in this country. And the majority party is intent on relieving this burden on the largest estates in this country. We have, by the way, one-half of the world's billionaires living in our country. The major party is so intent on relieving the tax burden on those multibillion-dollar estates, they are willing to make that a higher priority than funding veterans health care or funding education or funding law enforcement or funding family farmers. Permanently repealing the estate tax is a higher priority for them than doing all these things.

They do have a problem with the death tax, as they call it. They have created a Byzantine system which begins to phase out the tax on inherited wealth until the year 2010. Then in 2011, this tax on inherited wealth, or estate tax, is fully restored. So in 2010 tax on inherited wealth is completely repealed. Then in 2011 it is restored. Of course, no one understands that. It is one of the goofiest things ever done in this Chamber, but nonetheless it was done. So now they say this budget resolution allows for the permanent repeal of the estate tax.

This resolution also allows for the extension of the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends. This is an interesting issue as well. It is always a very popular subject around here, if you can reduce the tax on capital gains and other investment income. The President and the majority party would like to have no tax on capital gains. In fact, they would like to tax work and exempt all investment from tax.

Here is what Warren Buffet, the world's second richest man, said about that issue in an op-ed piece that was published in the Washington Post some while ago. He described it in terms of his receptionist working in his office. Mr. Buffet said that he, the world's second richest man, and his receptionist paid about the same tax rate of 30 percent. She pays that high a rate because she pays a payroll tax on all of her earnings. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He pays a mix of different taxes on his salary, capital gains and so on. They each end up paying about a 30 percent tax rate, the world's second richest man and the receptionist who works in his office.

If the majority party and the President had their way, and we had a tax system that taxes work and exempts dividends, Mr. Buffett said: At that point my receptionist will be paying a tax rate that is 10 times higher than my tax rate. Warren Buffett said: My tax rate will be 3 percent, and my receptionist's tax rate will be 30 percent. The world's second richest man will pay a 3-percent tax rate, and the receptionist in his office will pay a 30-percent tax rate.

It is almost everything that is wrong with the philosophy of what is in this budget. I have told my colleagues often about a line from an old song by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in the 1930s: The little bee sucks the blossom, and the big bee gets the honey. The little guy picks the cotton, and the big guy gets the money.

It is right in the middle of this budget resolution: unburden the big interests and burden the small interests. Give the big guy a break. Give the big guy a tax cut, and lay it on the shoulders of working Americans.

In addition to the budget cuts I have just described, there are other things that are omitted in this budget. For example, there is not sufficient money here for Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the fact that Congress asked for that to be included, we now have before this Senate an $82 billion emergency request for Iraq and Afghanistan. We knew Iraq was going to cost money. We are spending about $5 billion a month for ongoing efforts in those two countries. I was here a year ago and said: Look, this should be part of the budget. Let's at least have some reasonable estimate of how much it will cost. Guess what they put in the budget last year. Zero. Zero. So now we have an $82 billion emergency request before the Senate.

In the budget for the next year, what did the President have included? Zero. No money. Is this a budget game? And this gets paid how? And the Committee mark includes just a token amount. Senator Conrad talks about an amendment offered in the committee that

says, maybe we ought to pay for this. If we are going to go to war, maybe not just the soldiers should sacrifice; maybe the American people should be behind them and pay for the costs of it.

No. God forbid in this Chamber we ask anyone to pay for it. In fact, we will not even put a realistic amount of money in the resolution, let alone ask anyone to pay for it. We will have some amendments dealing with that subject.

The President does ask in his budget and this proposal assumes some spending increases. For example, we need to build, they say, a new nuclear weapons earth-penetrating bunker buster. We did not have enough nuclear weapons? There are roughly 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. We do not have enough, someone says. We need to build a new designer nuclear weapon to penetrate bunkers. We need a penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapon. What a foolish thing to be talking about. Our goal ought to be to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, not talking about building new nuclear weapons. Yet that is exactly what this budget does. We do not have enough money for veterans health care, but we have enough money to build new nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons we do not need with money we do not have.

Of course, there are other areas of spending. Sometimes you can see the broader picture by taking a look at some of the smaller issues. There is one baffling to me. The administration proposes, and this budget would fund, a doubling of the amount of money to broadcast television signals to Cuba in something called Television Marti. It is ours. We create television broadcasts and signals, and we send those signals to Cuba to tell the Cuban people what democracy and freedom are really like. Of course, they hear that every day on Miami radio stations but, nonetheless, we are telling the Cuban people with television signals how great it is in our country.

There is one problem with that. The Cuban people cannot see the signals. The signals are broadcast from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m., and Castro jams the signals. So we have something called Fat Albert, which is an aerostat balloon. At 20,000 feet on a big tether, it broadcasts television signals to Cuba that the Cubans cannot see, and we will spend $10 million to do that. And guess what. The President--and this budget--says that is not enough, let's double the funding. If the Cuban people cannot see the signals now, let's double the funding.

It is not as if this budget brings some Spartan approach to spending. There are some areas in the budget where we increase spending at the least opportune time, especially this. We might as well dig a hole and throw money in the hole and cover it up. Just throw money down a rathole. It does not make any sense at all, but they want to double the funding. Do you know why? Instead of using Fat Albert and an aerostat balloon that got away from them once and they had to chase it down into the Everglades, now they want to buy an $8 million airplane so they can broadcast signals that Castro will jam so the American people will feel better, somehow, for having sent signals to Cuba that the Cuban people cannot see. Double the funding. We cannot afford veterans health care, but, boy, there is no limit on what we want to do in building new nuclear weapons or building broadcast devices to the Cuban people that the Cuban people can never see.

When we talk about spending, maybe we ought to talk about some of the small things that represent the message about larger issues and ask the question: Why is it you want to spend so much money on all the wrong things?

My colleague, Senator Conrad, talked this morning about the long term difficulty we have, and it is serious. I notice in the Newsweek Magazine this week ``The Incredible Shrinking Dollar'' is the cover story. And then inside, on page 38:

. . . greenback's fall is stoking fears of a global crisis.

Behind the slide, a world economy wildly out of balance.

It says that if you have been following closely, you know that the dollar has been declining steadily against many foreign currencies. From recent highs, reached in mid 2001 or early 2002, the dollar has dropped 38 percent against the Euro, 23 percent against the yen, and 25 percent against the Canadian dollar. And then it goes on to explain at great length what the prospect could be:

Worst case scenario, foreign central banks and investors

might lose confidence in their dollar holdings, rush to sell

American stocks and bonds, consumer and business confidence

would drop, and a recession in the United States and abroad

might follow.

This is serious.

This year, just this year, we have a budget and a trade deficit that far exceed $1 trillion. Far exceed $1 trillion. The combined trade deficit is around $620 or $630 billion, but the merchandise trade deficit is even higher, and you add to that the budget deficit, we have a country that is seriously out of balance with respect to its fiscal policies and its trade policies. You cannot hide it. The rest of the world knows it.

It is not that the proposed resolution does not attempt to hide it. This budget, incidentally, on page 5 and 4, brings us a 5-year projection. Why? Why only 5 years? Do you know why? Because they want to tell us things are getting better when they know, and we know, if you go out 10 years, which is what we have always looked at before, in 10 years, this thing just blows out of sight--huge deficits, huge increases in Federal debt. The fact is, because they hide it and don't print it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. My colleague, Senator Conrad, described at great length this morning the danger of that.

Let me talk about a couple of other issues. The Federal Reserve sits down in this concrete bunker downtown with about $11.1 billion in accrued surplus account.

Let me say that again. The Federal Reserve system now has $11.1 billion squirreled away in a rainy day fund, in case they might suffer a loss. It is pretty hard to see how the Federal agency that creates money is ever going to lose money, but they have squirreled away about $11 billion just in case they do. This Congress has an obligation to say to the Fed, enough of this. You don't need $11.1 billion squirreled away somewhere in the vault.

By the way, I won't go into Alan Greenspan at great length except to say he has been one of the great enablers for the current fiscal policy being so widely out of balance. He is the man who stood up in 2001 at the time many of us were cautioning--I know Senator Conrad was on the Senate floor--saying you can't see 10 years when there was a prediction of 10 years of robust budget surpluses, and saying maybe we ought to be conservative. Maybe you can't see 10 years, but let us at least slow down a bit. The majority said no. President Bush said, no, we want big tax cuts right now locked in place for the long term. Mr. Greenspan, at that propitious moment, weighed in the only way he could. He said: My greatest concern is we are going to pay down the Federal debt too fast.

They need to change the air-vac system in his building. He says: My problem is I worry they are going to pay down the debt too fast. Maybe he ought to be asked now is that his problem? Because now from the largest surpluses in the history of this country we have record deficits and debt on a yearly basis. And I wonder what he is worried about at the moment. Last week he was the enabler, once again. He came back to Capitol Hill and seemed to say: I kind of like these privatized accounts in Social Security.

He didn't highlight the point, of course, that it is going to cost trillions of dollars of additional indebtedness.

I just come back to say that they have $11.1 billion squirreled away.

I say to my colleagues, Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg, maybe we ought to take a look at that. I hope to do so by amendment.

Finally, I am going to offer an amendment during the deliberation on the budget that asks us to vote one more time on an issue that ought to be simple but one we can't seem to get passed through the Senate. Under current law, we tell U.S. companies if you close your American manufacturing plants, fire all the workers and move your production to China, Sri Lanka, or Bangladesh, we will give you a big tax cut.

I previously offered on the floor of the Senate an amendment that is very simple. It says if a company shuts down its American manufacturing plant and moves its manufacturing abroad and then sells those now foreign-made products back into America,

you don't get what is called the deferral tax break. It is the most perverse tax break in our entire Tax Code.

If we can't take the first baby step to shut down the tax break that rewards companies for shipping U.S. jobs overseas, you can't do anything that is worthy in this Chamber, in my judgment. So we will vote on that amendment.

The last time we voted on it, 60 Senators said, no, we want to keep the tax break that companies get when they ship U.S. jobs overseas. We believe that is a worthy thing to do.

I wonder if now, nearly a year later, they still think it is a worthy thing to do.

I might observe that none of them in dark blue suits have been among the 2.7 million people who have lost their manufacturing jobs. No one in this Chamber has lost their job because of outsourcing. Maybe that is why there is not quite the urgency in this Chamber that there ought to be. If we can't take the first baby step to shut down this perverse tax break rewarding companies that ship American jobs overseas for the sole purpose of producing goods to be sent back into the American marketplace, then we ought to hang our heads.

I think the question for this Congress is, Where is leadership?

I have described previously as well the John Adams book written by McCullough in which John Adams would write back to Abigail as he was traveling representing our country in England and France. He would plaintively write to Abigail: Where will the leadership come from to help put this new country of ours together? Where would the leadership emerge? Who will be the leaders to put together this new country?

Then, in the next letter, he would plaintively say: There is only us to provide leadership. There is Thomas Jefferson, there is George Washington, there is Ben Franklin, there is Mason, and there is Madison. There is only us.

Every generation of Americans ask the same questions. Who will be the leaders to help steer this country toward a better future and toward expanded opportunities? Who will be those leaders?

I regret that this budget resolution provides no leadership at all on the issues critical to our future.

I admit that both sides now talk about the long-term problems we have. What is going on is unsustainable. Both sides have talked about that.

But the majority that controls the White House, controls the House and controls the Senate continues to try to hide the seriousness of that by bringing us budgets like this and then saying things are really looking up. Things are getting better. They are not.

I ask anyone who wishes to know to go to page 5 and line 11. That is all you need to know. You don't need to know 10 numbers, or 5 numbers-- just 1. In the year 2010, we will have a Federal debt of $11.1 trillion. That is the only number you need to know. Is that number increasing or decreasing? It is increasing rapidly. You know the number, you know the direction, and then draw your own conclusion. Are we moving in the right direction, or do we need to make a U-turn? Are we really a people who have decided that our highest priority is to protect from taxation the assets of those who have made billions of dollars and who are now subject to an estate tax, a tax on inherited wealth? Is that a higher priority than helping veterans who need health care? Is that a higher priority than helping little kids who are entering our classroom doors, than all of the other things we are talking about? Do we really believe that?

That is exactly what this budget says.

This country will overcome this period. We will at some point have a fiscal policy that is thoughtful, in balance, and moving this country in the right direction. But it is not this fiscal policy.

My colleague, Senator Conrad, is prone to use a lot of charts. I have kidded him saying he is the only Member of the Senate who finds charts erotic. But charts are very useful to describe what is happening.

I think the chart that he used earlier today which is so important is this chart. It shows the burden of indebtedness that the American people will have to assume, unless we change course. I admit changing course is not easy. But we don't have many choices left.

About 4 years ago, we put in place a fiscal policy that I did not vote. I thought it was the wrong approach because I worried that things would happen that we didn't anticipate; and they did--a recession, an attack on 9/11, a terrorist attack, a war in Afghanistan, and a war in Iraq. And sure enough, those budget surpluses turned to budget deficits. But that didn't seem to deter anybody on either side. They acted as if none of that happened, except to the extent they want to extract some mechanism to deal with it. They want to take it out of veterans, kids, and those kinds of priorities.

I think, again, when the question is asked by this generation of Americans, Where will the leadership come from, it is not from the White House at this point, and it is not from those who control the House and the Senate.

My hope is that in the coming days we have the opportunity to cast votes on these issues. We can consider a series of amendments, have debate, vote, and begin to turn some of this around and begin to see if we can't create an economy and create economic opportunity that will allow the rest of the world to look at this Congress and say they did something that finally recognized the dilemma we are in, and finally made a U-turn to move in the right direction.

My colleague, the Senator from New Hampshire, has said that raising taxes will not solve any problems. I don't know of anybody who is talking about raising a lot of taxes, but I am talking about choices. Deciding that protecting the wealthiest Americans from a tax on inherited wealth is more important than dealing with veterans who desperately need health care is a bad choice. I think it is a bad priority. It is not about raising taxes. We have every right to revisit tax cuts that were ill-advised.

I would like to have a longer debate, and I shall not do it now. But I would like to have a longer debate about the question of, Why do we decide work has less value than investment? Why is it that this majority decides they want to tax work and exempt investment? Is work less worthy? Why is it they want Warren Buffett to pay a tax that is one-tenth the tax paid by the receptionist in his outer office? That is by his account. He does not agree with them, by the way. He does not think they ought to do that. But that is exactly what they want to do.

It is about choices. It is about priorities. My hope is, at the end of the day, with amendments--I described a couple--we will be able to dramatically improve this budget document.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I make a point of order a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. President, this week there has been more discussion in the newspapers and around the country about the issue of Social Security. As you know, the President continues to move around the country holding forums on Social Security.

One week ago today, in fact, Senator Reid and I, Senator Durbin, and a couple of other colleagues were in New York. We held a forum in New York City on Social Security. We then went to Philadelphia, PA, and held a forum on Social Security. Then we flew out west and we held one in Phoenix, AZ, and another one in Nevada. So there has been a lot of discussion about Social Security.

The President originally said there was a crisis in Social Security, which seemed to me to be a strange choice of words because, in fact, Social Security will be solvent until George W. Bush is 106 years old. Let me say that again. I think that is important. Social Security will remain solvent until this President reaches age 106. But he and others in the administration have said there is a crisis, it is going to go broke, it is going to be flat busted.

Look, Social Security is a program that has been remarkably successful, that has lifted tens of millions of senior citizens out of poverty over many years. The fact is, people are living longer, healthier lives these days so we will have to make some adjustments, perhaps, in the future; but it is not major surgery that is required and it is not justification for saying there is a crisis or it is bankrupt or other types of language that the President and others have used.

The kind of adjustments that may have to be made--again they may not have to be made if we have robust economic growth in the coming 75 years--but the kinds of adjustments that may have to be made are not major. We can do that. But this ought not be a pretext for taking Social Security apart and talking about privatization of Social Security.

I was curious about why this comes up in this context right now. I know it is not about economics. President George W. Bush ran for Congress in 1978 and he said then that Social Security would be broke in 10 years, by 1988, and we ought to go to private accounts. Well, almost 30 years later, he is saying the same thing. So I think this is not about economics, but rather it is all about philosophy.

I respect the President. He has every right to have a philosophical objection or philosophical concern about the Social Security Program.

One of the leading voices on the far conservative right said this recently:

Social Security is the soft underbelly of the liberal

welfare state.

That is part of the political debate, I guess. If you are on the far right, you have a right to say that, and a right to think that, and a right to manifest your belief that we ought to take Social Security apart. But I don't happen to share that. I think Social Security has been a remarkable program that every worker pays into, and when you retire, you get something back at a time when you have reached declining income years in your life. That is the one portion of retirement security you can count on.

In most cases you aspire to have retirement security by doing three things. No. 1, you pay into Social Security for this insurance. Yes, it is insurance, not investment. In the FICA tax that comes out of your paycheck, the ``I'' is for ``insurance,'' not ``investments.'' It stands for insurance. So one part of retirement security is the guaranteed portion, Social Security. It will be there. You know it will be there. You know how much it is going to be. It is the guaranteed portion.

The second part is hopefully you work for a company that offers a pension. Only half of the American workers do, but we would like more companies to offer a pension. But that is a second part, a pension, private pension: a pension from your work.

The third part is private investments: 401(k)s or IRAs or the kinds of private investments that you make, much of which go into the stock market. I strongly support that. But that is not a pretext for taking apart Social Security. It is one of the three legs of retirement security: Social Security, the guaranteed portion, the portion without risk; pensions from your job; and then private investment accounts, such as 401(k)s and IRAs.

We are going to have a robust discussion about this in the weeks and months ahead. It is a worthy discussion for our country to have. This is a great country, made better, in my judgment, because of some of the things we have done to address some of our problems. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw that one-half of our senior citizens were living in poverty, he believed something should be done about that. So we created a Social Security Program that workers paid into and retirees are able to draw from, and now less than 10 percent of America's senior citizens are living in poverty. Why? Why that success? Because of Social Security, that is why. I think the task for all of us is to not take it apart but to strengthen it and nurture it and preserve it for the long term. At least that is my interest.

I started by talking about the fact that the President describes Social Security as a crisis. It is not a crisis. However, our country does face a very real, very imminent crisis, in the area of international trade.

This morning it was announced by the Department of Commerce that the trade deficit for the month of January was $58.3 billion. Let me say that again: a $58.3 billion trade deficit in 1 month. That means nearly every single day, Americans have bought about $2 billion worth of goods from other countries in excess of the amount of goods we sold those countries. Said another way, every day in the month of January other countries ended up owning 2 billion more dollars of our country. Their claim on our country was increased by $58.3 billion, nearly $2 billion a day, nearly $60 billion in 1 month of increased foreign claims against American assets. China and others end up owning more and more of our country as a result of these pernicious trade deficits.

We have a growing, serious, abiding crisis in our international trade and this country seems willing to sleep through it. By ``this country'' I mean the President and the Congress. They are perfectly willing to sleepwalk through this, while every single day and every single month China and Japan and others end up owning more of America.

Let me describe why we have this trade deficit that is growing at an alarming rate, over a $600 billion trade deficit last year. Why does this exist? Let me give you some examples.

American corporations in most cases no longer consider themselves just American if they are doing business around the world. They want to maximize profits for their shareholders and they have discovered 1 billion people in the rest of the world--1 billion out of a population of 6 billion--1 billion people whom they can employ quite easily for 20 or 30 or 40 cents an hour, because technology and capital is instantly moveable now to any place on Earth.

That is exactly what has happened. It has happened time and time again in recent years. That is why the American people who used to have good manufacturing jobs have now discovered themselves all too often jobless, and when they search for a new job they get a job that pays only 70 percent or 80 percent of what their old job used to pay because the good jobs are moving overseas.

We have a provision in our Tax Code that says if you move your jobs overseas--if you are a company and you shut your American manufacturing plant and move your American jobs overseas--we will give you a tax break. It is unbelievable, unbelievably stupid, that our country would have in its Tax Code incentives for people to shut their American plant and move it overseas. Yet that exists. I have tried to close it here on the floor of the Senate with an amendment and I have lost. But we are going to vote on that again this year and we will see whether any minds have changed.

Let me give some examples of what is happening. Levis--everybody knows about Levis. People like to wear Levis; put on Levis for the weekend. Except now Levi doesn't make Levis anymore, not one. Levis used to be American. They made Levis in America. Then they moved Levis to Mexico and to other parts of the world. Now they don't make any Levis. All they do is contract with foreign companies who make Levis for the Levi Company.

Fig Newton cookies. I grew up eating Fig Newton cookies. All American, right? Want to have some Mexican food tonight? Eat a Fig Newton cookie because that left America. Why? Cheaper wages in Monterrey, Mexico. Eat a Fig Newton cookie and you are eating Mexican food.

What about Huffy bicycles? Twenty percent of the American bike market is

Huffy bicycles. You buy them at Sears, Kmart, Wal-Mart. We had folks in Ohio who made $11 an hour who made Huffy bicycles, but they got fired. Do you know why? Because Huffy bicycles are now made in China at 30 cents an hour and American workers can't compete with 30 cents an hour and should not have to. But nonetheless they lost their jobs and Huffy bicycles are now made in China to ship back to our country, so consumers conceivably have an advantage of a lower cost bicycle.

I am not certain the bicycle costs less. I know the profits of the middlemen are inflated, and I know Americans who honored their manufacturing jobs and loved their jobs got fired from their jobs because they couldn't compete with a Chinese worker working 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, who is paid 30 cents an hour. That is what is happening to American jobs. And people say, well, that is the new economy, Senator Dorgan. You just don't understand it. No. I don't. We spent a century, we spent 100 years in this country fighting about important things: about child labor, about whether you should go down to a coal mine and work next to 12-year-old kids. We decided that is not fair; about whether you should expect to be able to work in a safe workplace and about whether you have the right to organize in America. We had people dying in the streets of this country demonstrating for the right to organize. They died in the streets of America for the right to organize as workers and for the right to a fair wage. We went through all of those things for over a century. It was hard and tough.

Now a company can decide: You know something, we don't have to care about any of that. We can hire 12-year-old kids, work them 12 hours a day, pay them 12 cents an hour, build a manufacturing plant, and throw chemicals in the water, throw chemicals in the air, and the manufacturing plant doesn't have to be safe, and if the workers decide they want to organize, we can fire them right now. We can get over all of this, we pole vault over all those issues and produce where it is cheaper. We are not encumbered by our ability to pollute the air and water. We can fire kids and ship the products to America and have American consumers go to Kmart, Wal-Mart, Sears, or Toledo or Fargo or Los Angeles or New York, and buy that product, which was in fact produced by someone who took a job from the neighbor of that consumer.

This country has not decided whether there is an admission price in the American marketplace. We sign all these trade agreements, and none of them is complied with at all. This country has no nerve, no backbone, no will to stand up for its own economic interest. I am not suggesting that we build walls around our country, but I am saying we ought to pay some attention to the basic conditions of production that we fought over for 100 years. If corporations decide, we can now go to Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or China and ignore all of those issues and have people fired if they try to organize for collective bargaining, then there is something fundamentally wrong.

Question: Why is it that in this country we imported nearly 600,000 Korean cars from the country of Korea in the past year but are only able to sell 3800 U.S. cars in Korea? Answer: Because the Korean government doesn't want U.S. cars in Korea. They want to ship all of their cars to America, but they don't want U.S. cars to be sold in Korea. And our country says that is OK; we will not do anything about that. Our country doesn't have the nerve or the will to stand up for its own economic interest.

We have a dispute with Europe over beef, so our ranchers and farmers and others suffer as a consequence of that dispute. In a rare display of backbone, American negotiators decided to get tough with the Europeans, by applying retaliatory tariffs. So what did they do? They decided they were going to impose tariffs on truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. That is going to scare the devil out of our trade adversaries--a trade adversary that is taking advantage of us. We are going to slap tariffs on truffles, goose liver and Roquefort cheese.

This country has to decide finally to stand up for its economic interests.

I haven't talked about Japan. We have had a $60 billion to $80 billion trade deficit with Japan every single year, year after year after year. They are guilty of horribly unfair trade with this country. The same is true with China. It is even worse with China. There are massive copyright violations going on, counterfeiting, and piracy. But in addition to that, their markets still, in many cases, are largely closed to our market.

I have raised this issue on the floor several times, but no one seems to care very much about this issue of bilateral automobile trade with China.

Let me give you an example of what recently happened. Time magazine says that China is revving up a huge new automobile export industry--a big industry to export automobiles from China. We just had a bilateral trade agreement with China about 3 years ago, and our negotiators agreed to this. They said to China: You can impose a tariff on U.S. automobiles we try to sell in China that is 10 times higher than we would impose on automobiles China sends to us.

This is a country with which we now have a $130 billion to $140 billion trade deficit, and we have a trade agreement that was incompetently negotiated by our negotiator, who said to China, on bilateral automobile trade: You can impose a tariff that is 10 times higher than the tariff we will impose on Chinese automobiles coming into the United States.

I do not know who did this, but it is unbelievably incompetent. Somebody ought to be fired summarily for negotiating this kind of trade agreement with respect to bilateral automobile trade with China.

This morning when the announcement was made that we had a $58.3 billion trade deficit in the month of January, if this doesn't wake up the White House and if this doesn't wake up this Congress, shame on all of us. That is an annual trade deficit of over $700 billion.

Warren Buffett, by the way, in his message to shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway this year, said what is going to happen is we are going to become a nation of sharecroppers, because every single day when we buy $1 billion more from foreign countries than we sell to them, this means that China, Japan, Korea, and other countries own that much more every single day of our country, of our stocks, of our assets, of our real estate.

Even as the value of the dollar has been declining, our trade deficit is spiking up, up, way up, and there is no economist in this country who teaches that when your currency declines, your trade deficits should go up. But I think I understand why it is happening--it's because we don't have the backbone, the will, or the nerve to stand up for this country's economic interests.

If you all read the papers last week about textiles coming in from China, the first month the limits were off on textiles, you see what is happening to exacerbate that dramatic increase in trade deficit with China.

President Bush wants to travel around the country and talk about Social Security, a Social Security system that will remain solvent until George W. Bush is 106 years old. There is no crisis there. But there is a crisis with our trade deficit. And it requires--demands, in my judgment--that this President and this Congress get serious.

I am sending another letter to the President, suggesting that he hold an emergency summit on the trade deficit.

This is a serious, abiding crisis that weakens our country significantly. It is all about jobs.

We are going to debate the budget next week. There is no social program as important as a good job that pays well. That is just a fact. The fact is, good jobs are marching out of this country at an alarming rate, and they are moving to parts of the world where those who are producing products find they can hire people for 20 cents an hour or 30 cents an hour.

Nobody wants to hear these questions much about trade, but it is gripping when you understand what is actually happening.

I talked on the floor about the young women dying in the manufacturing plants in China. How about the young children who are making rugs and carpets who have their fingertips burned with gunpowder? They put gunpowder on their fingertips, light it with a match in order to create scarring on

their fingertips--these little kids that are 10 years old--so when they sew with needles and stick their fingertips with a needle, they can't feel it because they have been scarred by burned gunpowder, so the kids can continue to sew and not bleed. Then that product, that carpet, is sent to the United States, and someone shows up and says: I would like to buy that carpet, wouldn't I? It is made with slave labor, in many cases, with children whose hands have been burned to prevent the bleeding from needles to make that carpet. Is that really what we want? Is that really the construct of trade that we believe represents a free market? I don't think so.

There is much more to say, and I will say it at some future point.

I think today's announcement--just an hour and a half ago now--about the devastating January trade deficit numbers ought to at least justify calling Air Force One back to this town and asking the President to join us, join labor, and join the National Association of Manufacturers in a meeting, a summit to talk about what on Earth we do to repair this trade deficit that is just crushing to the future economic opportunities in this country.

I will have more to say. I hope that this weekend, the White House and the Congress will reflect on what this announcement means for the future of our country and begin to deal with the crisis that does exist. No, not Social Security--it is not a crisis--but the crisis exists in these crippling, devastating trade deficit numbers.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know that the Senate is about to pass a bankruptcy reform bill, and that this bill will be signed into law. And it is with some regret that I say that I will not vote for it.

I do believe that there have been cases of abuse of our bankruptcy system, and that some reform is needed. Nobody likes to hear of wealthy people who walk away from their debts because they can game the system. That's not fair to financial institutions, and perhaps more importantly, it's not fair to Americans who pay their debts in full.

I voted for a bankruptcy reform bill twice in the past, most recently in 2001. That bill passed in the Senate with significant bipartisan consensus, and I had hoped that it would be signed into law. But the House of Representatives refused to compromise with the Senate, and ultimately the bill failed.

This time around, I would have liked to have reached another bipartisan consensus. However, the bipartisan spirit seems to have broken down.

My colleagues on the Democratic side offered a number of amendments that were reasonable, common-sense tweaks to the bill, to reflect changes in our country since the last time the bankruptcy bill was considered.

There have been hundreds of thousands of National Guard and reserve troops called up because of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. They have left behind their jobs, their businesses, and their families. When they find themselves in bankruptcy, why not allow them some consideration? My colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, offered an amendment that would have done precisely that, but it was voted down on a largely partisan vote.

Or how about victims of identity theft? In the last few years, identity theft has become a plague on law-abiding citizens. My colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, offered a most reasonable amendment, which simply said that if someone is forced into bankruptcy because of identity theft, he should receive some consideration. That amendment was also voted down along partisan lines.

Or how about Americans who suffered major medical problems and were driven into bankruptcy? A very recent Harvard Medical School study found that about half of all people that have been driven to bankruptcy have suffered a major medical problem. Many of these people have lost their homes. So Senator Kennedy offered an amendment that would have allowed such

Americans to keep their home--not a mansion, mind you, but a modest home, while they try to get back on their feet. But this amendment also was shot down.

We have not heard good arguments for why these amendments should have failed. The majority party have really only had one argument: that they want to avoid displeasing the House of Representatives, and don't dare modify the Senate bill even with modest, reasonable amendments.

Well, I am just not going to support a bill that turns its back on service members and veterans, or on hardworking people that just happen to have had a medical crisis, and have been driven into bankruptcy not because they are gaming the system, but because of circumstances beyond their control.

One other point. This bankruptcy bill was supposed to be about preventing cheating in the bankruptcy system. Well, I offered an amendment, along with Senator Durbin, that would have dealt with a different kind of cheating: the fraud, waste, and abuse that has been rampant in many of the reconstruction contracts in Iraq. My amendment said, let's appoint a bipartisan special committee of the Senate to investigate these abuses. But that amendment did not even get a vote.

In 1941, a Senator from Missouri by the name of Harry S Truman heard allegations of wasteful and fraudulent spending in the preparations for World War II. He thought this waste and fraud could undermine the war effort, so he drove around the country, visiting military bases. And when he came back, he called for the creation of a special committee. That committee, which came to be known as the Truman Committee, saved the U.S. government an estimated $15 billion--and that's in 1940s dollars.

That was a case of a Democrat calling for investigations of contracts handled by a Democratic Administration. But for Harry Truman, this wasn't about politics--it was about looking out for the U.S. taxpayer, and not squandering resources that were meant for the war effort.

We need a Truman Committee again, because the majority party is not calling for oversight hearings on these contracting abuses in Iraq. My amendment would have created a bipartisan special committee to do just that. But it did not even get a vote, because the majority party rested on a technicality in Senate rules to deny a vote.

Under these circumstances, I am, regretfully, not going to vote for the bankruptcy bill.

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

Mr. President, the business here in the Senate is the bankruptcy bill. I want to talk about an amendment I had offered to this legislation that does not get a vote now as a result of cloture being invoked.

The amendment I offered on behalf of myself and Senator Durbin was offered on a timely basis and the majority decided they did not want to have a vote on the amendment. So when cloture prevailed--and I voted against cloture--this amendment fell also. As a result of that, I do not intend to vote for the underlying bill. The Senate should have voted on my amendment. It was in order. Admittedly it was nongermane to the underlying bill, but still, under the rules, it was in order for me to offer it.

The amendment was an amendment that would create a special committee to investigate contracting waste, fraud, and abuse in the country of Iraq.

We have had almost no oversight hearings here in the authorizing committees of the Senate on how money is being spent with respect to contracting in Iraq. But we have held some Democratic Policy Committee hearings and have heard from a good many whistleblowers and others about what is happening to American taxpayers' money in the country of Iraq. Let me describe some of the testimony we have heard.

This picture is perhaps the best description. At the last hearing I chaired, this person--his face is not seen in this picture, but this person standing here holding some of this money brought this photograph with him. This is $2 million. This $2 million wrapped in Saran wrap in $100 bills was provided to

a contractor. The contractor was doing business in Iraq with our Government and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was our Government as well. Our witness, who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said that people were told when they needed to get paid on their contracts: Bring a bag. Just bring the bag and you get loaded with cash.

The witness said he heard there was a vault with billions of dollars in cash. At any rate, on the day this picture was taken a contractor showed up and collected $2 million in cash in a bag.

Let me describe this contractor, by the way, because there is some legal action with respect to this contractor. I will not use names, but the names were part of the hearing. It was on C-SPAN. This contractor was a firm started by two individuals, formerly in one of the branches of our service, retired, who showed up in Iraq and wanted to be a contractor. They didn't have any money. One of them, I guess, had $450, according to news reports, and they wanted to go into business. So they proposed to get a contract to provide security at an airport in Iraq.

They got the contract. They got $2 million in cash delivered to them. That is how they started the business. But their business was not necessarily on the level. A couple of their employees decided to become whistleblowers because they were so sickened by what they saw happening. The whistleblowers allege that this company was taking forklift trucks off the airport property, painting them blue, and then selling them back to the Coalition Provisional Authority--which, by the way, was us: Ambassador Bremer and us, the American taxpayer.

So this company, these two fellows running this company, were taking forklift trucks, sending them off to a warehouse to paint them, and shipping them back and reselling them to us, the American taxpayer.

The people who blew the whistle on this received death threats, they said, and were quite scared. But despite all the obvious problems, this company was given $100 million in contracts in Iraq.

Listening to the witnesses at our DPC hearings describe what was going on in Iraq, it was unbelievable. There were brand new $85,000 trucks used by contractors in Iraq. When they get a flat tire, what do they do with the truck? They leave it on the road to be torched; brand new $85,000 trucks. If something plugs up the fuel pump, they leave it; just abandon it. How about a company that decides to buy hand towels for soldiers ordered by the U.S. Army, small hand towels. The company that gets the contract to do it decided to nearly double the price of the hand towels because they wanted to put their company logo on the hand towels used by American soldiers. Or the company that orders 25 tons--yes, 50,000 pounds--of nails to be sent to Iraq for construction. The nails were the wrong size. They ordered the wrong size, and 50,000 pounds of nails are sitting on the sands of Iraq paid for by the American taxpayer.

The contractor that gets the contract to put in air conditioning units in buildings in Iraq paid for by the American taxpayer goes to a subcontractor, who goes to another neighborhood crew, and they pass all this money along, and pretty soon what was to have been air conditioners is just a couple of fans in a room, while the American taxpayer pays for air conditioners.

It is unbelievable what is happening with respect to waste, fraud, and abuse, and nobody cares. It is the American taxpayers that are taking a bath.

You can't get oversight hearings in this Senate. Do you know why? Because it would be embarrassing to the administration.

A couple of the contracts I just talked about involve Halliburton. People say when you talk about Halliburton you are going after the Vice President. Not at all. When you talk about Halliburton you are talking after the company that got giant no-bid contracts, and there is no accountability for the way the money is spent. Halliburton was charging the taxpayers for 42,000 meals a day served to U.S. soldiers. The problem is they were only feeding 14,000 soldiers a day. They were overcharging the American taxpayer by 28,000 meals a day.

Where is the accountability? Who cares about that? When is this Congress going to decide it matters?

We passed a nearly $20 billion reconstruction bill. I didn't support it. I offered the amendment to strip the $20 billion for reconstruction in Iraq. But the majority voted to authorize that spending. The reason I didn't support the funding was Iraq has the second largest reserves of oil in the world. A soldier told me they were standing in a depression in the sand one day and the soles of their shoes got black from oil. This is a country with the second largest reserves of oil in the world. It could easily securitize future oil that will be pumped from under the sands of Iraq and use that money to reconstruct Iraq. That ought not be the American taxpayers' job.

But this Senate and this Congress crafted legislation which was signed by this President that says we are going to actually send over nearly $18 billion. Twenty-billion dollars was the request. Senator Wyden and I got an amendment passed that cut wasteful spending by $1.8 billion. But there is still over $18 billion in the spending pipeline, $15 billion of which has not yet been spent.

I talked to this fellow holding this wad of cash which he was about to put in a bag for the people who have allegedly cheated the American taxpayers. You talk to these folks, and they will tell you that passing around there is like passing an ice cube around. Pass it to three or four hands, and pretty soon you have a lot less. It melts away.

That is what is happening to the American taxpayers' money with respect to reconstruction in Iraq.

These are some of the headlines about Halliburton and those contracts with the Department of Defense: ``Uncle Sam Looks into Meal Bills; Halliburton Refunds $27 million,'' February 3, 2004. On February 4, 2004, ``Halliburton Faces Criminal Investigation; Pentagon Proving Alleged Overcharges for Iraq Fuel.''

By the way, the recently retired person in the Pentagon who purchased fuel--it was his job to purchase fuel in the world and deliver it in war zones; he did it for over 30 years--testified that American taxpayers are being overcharged by a dollar a gallon in Iraq. A buck a gallon, adding up to tens of millions of dollars. The American taxpayers got hosed here. Nobody seems to care.

The question is, what do we do about all of that?

In 1941, on the eve of the Second World War, there was a Democratic Senator here in this Chamber. While there was a Democrat in the White House, that Democratic Senator got in a car and drove around the country to military bases and said there is massive waste and abuse going on, and we ought to get to the bottom of it. He convinced the Congress to create a special committee. The Senator was Harry S Truman, and the committee was eventually called the Truman Committee. They saved an estimated $15 billion by exposing waste. That was a Democratic Senator with a Democrat in the White House.

But the fact is, you can't get hearings now because we have one party that controls the White House, the House, and the Senate, and nobody wants to embarrass anybody.

It is not my intent to embarrass anybody. It is my intent to provide accountability and get to the bottom of how this money is being spent.

Remember the company that got the money shown in this picture, the one where whistleblowers had their lives threatened? The whistleblowers filed suit under the False Claims Act alleging that this company is defrauding the American taxpayer. But the United States Justice Department decided they would not intervene. Do you want to know why? The United States Justice Department said, Well, if they were defrauding something, it was the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and the Coalition Provisional Authority is not the same as the United States government. The Justice Department's position, according to an assistant U.S. Attorney, was that defrauding the United States is not the same as defrauding the United States taxpayer. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was created by an executive order, in a very specific document. To have the U.S. Justice Department take the position that defrauding the Coalition Provisional Authority--

which is us--is not the same as defrauding the American taxpayer is Byzantine.

The question is, why do we not allow a vote on an amendment to create a special committee of the U.S. Senate? This would be a committee with four members selected by the majority party and three members by the minority party, with subpoena power to have the kind of investigation and the kind of oversight that the American taxpayers ought to expect of this Congress. Why don't we have a vote on that?

I offered the amendment on time, and the majority party did not wish to have a vote on it.

Perhaps if we had oversight hearings we would hear more about that which I have already heard, the American taxpayers paying $45 for cases of what I call ``pop'' back home, Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, $45 a case; or renting SUVs for $7,500 a month; $2.65 a gallon for fuel delivered in Iraq when the just retired head of the Defense Energy Support Center testified they could have supplied it for half that price; $18.6 million of U.S. equipment missing that a company was given to manage, and now they can't find it, don't know where it is, and don't know what happened to it.

The question is, does anybody here care? If so, why would we not vote on an amendment to set up the kind of committee I would suggest?

As all of us know, we are rushing headlong to have a vote on bankruptcy. We will have that vote. But there is apparently no interest in trying to get to the bottom of these questions I asked. According to the Inspector General of the Coalition Provisional Authority, there was one Iraqi ministry that had 8,206 guards on the payroll, which was the responsibility of the CPA. The problem is there are only 602 working there; 8,206 were being paid for by the CPA, but only 602 were working. The Coalition Provisional Authority actually had possession of nearly $9 billion in funds that actually came from Iraqi oil that belonged to the Iraqi people. The inspector general says that money cannot be accounted for. Where did it go? What happened to it? When will someone start caring about those things?

I have asked a lot of questions. We have held hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee on these subjects, because the authorizing committees will not hold hearings on these subjects. I have offered an amendment in the Senate on a timely basis. Because cloture was invoked, the majority party knew they would not require Senators to vote on this amendment to this bill. But obviously, this amendment will come back. I will have the opportunity to offer it again, will offer it again, and we will vote in the Senate, provided there is any appetite at all about what is happening to the American taxpayers' money.

I have previously supported bankruptcy legislation. I had hoped to support it this time. But because I was precluded from getting a vote on an amendment that I offered on a timely basis, and because of other concerns I have with the bill, I don't intend to vote to advance this legislation. I say to my colleagues, we will vote on this amendment at another time because I will offer it again. We will find a way to force a vote in the Senate on creating a special committee to investigate this waste, fraud, and abuse.

It is unthinkable at a time when we have massive Federal budget deficits, a fiscal policy that is far off track at the same time we have massive trade deficits, the combination of which is well over $1 trillion a year, that no one seems to care much about waste. If ever I have seen an example of waste, fraud, and abuse that is sickening and disgusting, it is in this area. This Senate owes it to the American people to create a committee to investigate, if the authorizing committees in the Senate will not do their job and hold oversight hearings.

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

Mr. President, today I am joined by Senator Smith of Oregon and several of our colleagues in introducing legislation to extend the soon-to-expire tax credits in Federal law that incentivize the development and use of renewable energy.

Mr. President, as you know, Federal policymakers have been working over the past couple of years to pass comprehensive energy reforms that will encourage greater domestic energy production, increase energy efficiency and improve the nation's overall energy security by reducing our dependence on imported sources of energy.

This country imports more than 60 percent of its oil from abroad, and Americans have watched as oil and gas prices--and their energy bills-- have skyrocketed, in large part due to the threat of disruptions to energy supplies in volatile regions of the Middle East. The evidence also suggests that the United States is ramping up its demand for imported natural gas. At a recent Senate Energy Subcommittee hearing, for example, we heard about plans to build thirty-one new liquefied natural gas terminals in this country. The reason for this activity is that the United States is projected to import about 28 percent of our natural gas supply by the year 2025. Clearly, something must be done to reduce our reliance on energy imports. I hope that we will complete work on a comprehensive energy bill in this Congress that will help us do so.

However, there are some fiscal policies already in place that will help us move toward greater energy independence and diversity. Current law's Federal income tax credit for facilities producing electricity from wind and other renewable energy sources is among the most important of these polices. In fact, we are told by energy developers year after year that the renewable energy production tax credit, PTC, is absolutely essential for bringing renewable energy-generated electricity to the marketplace at a competitive rate. Today, for example, our country has over 6,700 megawatts of wind energy capacity, or enough electric capacity to serve about 1.6 million homes. And all that electricity is generated on U.S. soil, producing U.S. jobs.

Last year, Congress extended the availability of the PTC and expanded it to cover other forms of renewable energy--including geothermal and solar. I supported this effort. However, I am frustrated that Congress continues to undermine its own effort to develop domestic renewable energy resources by failing to ensure that the PTC is available for a longer term.

In North Dakota, we have abundant renewable energy resources including wind. In fact, North Dakota's wind development potential is so great that many energy experts call North Dakota the ``Saudi Arabia'' of wind energy. And the PTC is critical for the continued growth of this industry in North Dakota, Oregon, and elsewhere. But the PTC, which is found in Section 45 of the Tax Code, is also scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

That is why Senator Smith and I are introducing a bipartisan bill today to extend the Section 45 tax credits for producers who place new renewable energy facilities in service before January 1, 2011. Our five-year extension bill also continues the indexing of the credits for inflation and extends alternative minimum tax relief as provided under current law. Finally, the bill includes provisions to ensure that tax- exempt cooperatives, municipal utilities and Indian tribes can receive the benefit of the tax credits for their investments in renewable energy.

Billions of dollars of expected investments by the renewable energy industry will, once again, be put on hold if we fail to extend the credit. Inexplicably, Congress has allowed the PTC to expire three times since its inception in 1992. When this happens, the industry suffers a huge drop in investment and many good-paying jobs are lost. Failing to promptly extend the credit this year will prevent new renewable energy facilities from coming on line and lead to layoffs by the businesses that support this industry, including wind tower and turbine blade manufacturers.

The bottom line is that short-term extensions of the renewable energy tax credit creates a boom and bust cycle of short-term planning, painful layoffs and higher than necessary project costs. Financial lenders stop providing the capital needed for wind energy projects about 4 to 6 months before the credit is scheduled to expire because of the uncertainty surrounding the future availability of the credit. This uncertainty inevitably leads to a rush to complete projects at higher costs, and those costs are passed along to consumers.

In conclusion, I will be working hard with Senator Smith and others to get this legislation passed by the Senate as soon as possible. Unless we act quickly, renewable energy developers will, once again, be forced to suspend or cancel new projects that move us toward energy independence and create significant economic opportunities for a rural state like North Dakota.

Mr. President, I am pleased that this legislation has already been endorsed by the American Wind Energy Association, the American Corn Growers Association and others interested in renewable energy development. I urge my colleagues to work with us to get this measure enacted into law early in this session of the 109th Congress.

Mr. President, today I am joined by Senator Smith of Oregon and several of our colleagues in introducing legislation to extend the soon-to-expire tax credits in Federal law that incentivize the development and use of renewable energy.

Mr. President, as you know, Federal policymakers have been working over the past couple of years to pass comprehensive energy reforms that will encourage greater domestic energy production, increase energy efficiency and improve the nation's overall energy security by reducing our dependence on imported sources of energy.

This country imports more than 60 percent of its oil from abroad, and Americans have watched as oil and gas prices--and their energy bills-- have skyrocketed, in large part due to the threat of disruptions to energy supplies in volatile regions of the Middle East. The evidence also suggests that the United States is ramping up its demand for imported natural gas. At a recent Senate Energy Subcommittee hearing, for example, we heard about plans to build thirty-one new liquefied natural gas terminals in this country. The reason for this activity is that the United States is projected to import about 28 percent of our natural gas supply by the year 2025. Clearly, something must be done to reduce our reliance on energy imports. I hope that we will complete work on a comprehensive energy bill in this Congress that will help us do so.

However, there are some fiscal policies already in place that will help us move toward greater energy independence and diversity. Current law's Federal income tax credit for facilities producing electricity from wind and other renewable energy sources is among the most important of these polices. In fact, we are told by energy developers year after year that the renewable energy production tax credit, PTC, is absolutely essential for bringing renewable energy-generated electricity to the marketplace at a competitive rate. Today, for example, our country has over 6,700 megawatts of wind energy capacity, or enough electric capacity to serve about 1.6 million homes. And all that electricity is generated on U.S. soil, producing U.S. jobs.

Last year, Congress extended the availability of the PTC and expanded it to cover other forms of renewable energy--including geothermal and solar. I supported this effort. However, I am frustrated that Congress continues to undermine its own effort to develop domestic renewable energy resources by failing to ensure that the PTC is available for a longer term.

In North Dakota, we have abundant renewable energy resources including wind. In fact, North Dakota's wind development potential is so great that many energy experts call North Dakota the ``Saudi Arabia'' of wind energy. And the PTC is critical for the continued growth of this industry in North Dakota, Oregon, and elsewhere. But the PTC, which is found in Section 45 of the Tax Code, is also scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

That is why Senator Smith and I are introducing a bipartisan bill today to extend the Section 45 tax credits for producers who place new renewable energy facilities in service before January 1, 2011. Our five-year extension bill also continues the indexing of the credits for inflation and extends alternative minimum tax relief as provided under current law. Finally, the bill includes provisions to ensure that tax- exempt cooperatives, municipal utilities and Indian tribes can receive the benefit of the tax credits for their investments in renewable energy.

Billions of dollars of expected investments by the renewable energy industry will, once again, be put on hold if we fail to extend the credit. Inexplicably, Congress has allowed the PTC to expire three times since its inception in 1992. When this happens, the industry suffers a huge drop in investment and many good-paying jobs are lost. Failing to promptly extend the credit this year will prevent new renewable energy facilities from coming on line and lead to layoffs by the businesses that support this industry, including wind tower and turbine blade manufacturers.

The bottom line is that short-term extensions of the renewable energy tax credit creates a boom and bust cycle of short-term planning, painful layoffs and higher than necessary project costs. Financial lenders stop providing the capital needed for wind energy projects about 4 to 6 months before the credit is scheduled to expire because of the uncertainty surrounding the future availability of the credit. This uncertainty inevitably leads to a rush to complete projects at higher costs, and those costs are passed along to consumers.

In conclusion, I will be working hard with Senator Smith and others to get this legislation passed by the Senate as soon as possible. Unless we act quickly, renewable energy developers will, once again, be forced to suspend or cancel new projects that move us toward energy independence and create significant economic opportunities for a rural state like North Dakota.

Mr. President, I am pleased that this legislation has already been endorsed by the American Wind Energy Association, the American Corn Growers Association and others interested in renewable energy development. I urge my colleagues to work with us to get this measure enacted into law early in this session of the 109th Congress.