Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I was intending to speak earlier this week on the subject of trade, but because of the Senate schedule I decided to wait until today, when we don't have Senate business that would require votes.

Before I get to the subject of trade, I first want to mention that this morning in the Congressional Daily, there is a lead story that says:

Growing GOP resistance might doom farm money in homeland

funding bill.

It says here that House Republican leaders are digging in

against a package of drought assistance that Senators added

to the Homeland Security appropriations bill.

The House Republican leaders say that the drought amendment doesn't have a head of steam.

I am wondering how is it these leaders seem to think that spending is very important when it comes to funding the reconstruction of Iraq-- which ran through here like a big old truck in fifth gear--but when it comes to spending here at home to help people, in this case helping family farmers through a real tough time, they say we don't know that we can do that. They are going to dig in our heels.

The Senate passed disaster relief for farmers. We also supported disaster relief for the victims of hurricanes. I have never in all the time I have been in Congress opposed disaster relief for those who have been victims. It seems to me, whether it is the fury of a hurricane that hits your area or drought or some other act of nature or God, when people are victimized, the rest of this country will extend its hands and say, you are not alone, we want to help. And we have always done that.

For those poor folks in Florida and the rest of the Southeast who have been hit by hurricane after hurricane, we have a responsibility to help them and we did and we will. We will do more. But it is also the case, for example in my State, where torrential rains meant that 1.7 million acres of ground couldn't even be planted and family farmers who rely on that planting to make a living will lose their opportunity and perhaps lose their farm if they don't get help. In August there was a freeze, and that freeze dramatically injured crops. And there was a drought in the southeast part of my State, where between January and July they received 2.2 inches of moisture in 6 months, and they too need some hope.

So when we pass disaster assistance, whether it is for the hurricane victims or for those in agricultural areas that suffer weather-related disasters, and then we hear that there is opposition to this by the GOP in the House of Representatives, I ask myself this: Why is it that they are so anxious to help everybody except the people in this country?

I offered an amendment last year on the floor of the Senate to strip about $20 billion out of the bill for Iraq reconstruction which the President sent to us. That was the single largest cut in spending proposed on the floor of the U.S. Senate last year. Why did I offer that amendment? Because the President said, let's spend this money for reconstructing Iraq, when, in fact, Iraq has plenty of money to reconstruct itself. Iraq has the second largest reserves of oil in the world. It is perfectly capable, especially with oil prices where they are. Iraq is now pumping slightly less than 3 million barrels a day-- about 2.5 million. But they clearly have the capability to pump oil and sell the oil and raise the money to reconstruct themselves.

Instead, what we have is a roads program in Iraq paid for by the American people; we have an education program in Iraq paid for by American taxpayers; we have a jobs program in Iraq paid for by American taxpayers; we have a health care program for Iraq paid for by American taxpayers. You name it, We have all of these programs in Iraq paid for by us, the American taxpayers. The supporters of that bill were rushing to get that through the Congress and couldn't get it through quickly enough.

Now when some folks in this country are hurting and we pass a disaster relief bill to say, you are not alone, we want to give you some help, we have the GOP leaders in the House saying, you can't do that. Why not? That is investing here at home, at least. You were so quick to rush $20 billion to Iraq to reconstruct Iraq; how about returning some money to help those family farmers who have suffered weather-related disasters?

This isn't over. There is going to be a big fight. If that is the attitude of other side, we are going to have a big fight about this because we owe it to those producers across the country who live on the land, who go to the fields in the morning alone to plow with nothing but hope that somehow things will work out. When they have weather- related disasters, they too need some help. They too deserve our help. So this is going to be a big fight.

We are not going to sit idly by and have GOP leaders in the House say that this isn't going to happen. It is going to happen one way or the other. We are going to make this happen. If we can spend nearly $20 billion on reconstruction in Iraq, this country can surely open up its pocketbook and provide some much needed help for family farmers in a significant part of this country who have suffered weather-related disasters. That is a fact.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the Senate floor to speak about international trade, a subject about which I've spoken many times before.

I have just finished reading a book by Lou Dobbs. It is a quite remarkable book. And I wanted to share some of its observations with my colleagues.

At the outset, let me say that Lou Dobbs describes himself in this book as a lifelong Republican. This issue of trade is not the ideas of one political party or the other; the book is about a failed trade strategy which undermines the strength of this country by shifting American jobs overseas. The title of his book is ``Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed is Shipping American Jobs Overseas.''

Lou Dobbs has been vilified for writing this book. But it is a rare and wonderful book. I am not in the business of selling anybody's books, but to those who are interested in this issue of what is happening to American jobs, who are interested in what is happening with our trade strategy, this is a good book to read.

We have lost nearly 2 million private sector jobs in this President's term, a fair amount of it to outsourcing. The outsourcing issue is one we need to explore in some depth.

I offered an amendment on the Senate floor not long ago. It says, let us eliminate out of our tax system incentives for American companies to shift their jobs overseas. If companies decide to ship jobs overseas, we ought not give them a tax break. That makes no sense at all.

Now, on page 19 of this book, Mr. Dobbs writes:

. . . American multinational companies that are outsourcing

and offshoring are also essentially firing their customers.

India can provide our software; China can provide our toys;

Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan can make our cars. But

at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what

will the Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one

I've asked in government, academia, or even the private

sector has been answering those questions.

On page 31, Mr. Dobbs says:

Big business is saying that all we need to do to become the

most competitive nation on Earth is to cut wages, throw out

our environmental, worker safety, investor protection,

product liability, and consumer laws, and eliminate corporate

tax obligations altogether--and while we're at it, let's

repeal those unfriendly antitrust laws. There's no doubt the

result would be sharply lower wages and higher profits, but

the result would also be a plummeting standard of living and

the shattering of the American dream.

For writing a book that expresses a radical thought that we ought to be standing up for American jobs and try to find ways to stop shipping American jobs overseas, Mr. Dobbs has been wildly vilified.

The executive director of the Business Roundtable says this of Mr. Dobbs:

It's as if whatever made Linda Blair's head spin around in

The Exorcist had invaded the body of Lou Dobbs and left him

with the brain of Dennis Kucinich.

That's from John Castellani, executive director of the Business Roundtable. It is such a colorful quote. But it isn't even original. Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal had written those same words about Lou Dobbs just 2 months earlier.

Let me share a few other of Mr. Dobbs' observations. One of the points he makes, which I have also made on the floor of the Senate often, is that the actual rules of trade are now being set by corporations. They have no allegiance to nations, much less individual communities or towns. They certainly

have no allegiance to government. And the corporations set the rules of trade. Mr. Dobbs says:

Corporations have overwhelmed governments in the borderless

global economy. And corporate logos in many cases have more

powerful symbolic importance than national flags. In part,

that's because more than half of the largest 100 economies in

the entire world are corporations.

Mr. Dobbs in his book used figures from the year 2000 to come up with his conclusions. At the time, Wal-Mart was equivalent to the 25th largest economy in the world. I have actually looked at the figures from 2003. What you see is that Wal-Mart, when you compare countries and corporations by size, is number 20 in the world. Wal-Mart is bigger than Austria, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Denmark, and Poland, to name a few. But, then, the list of top 100 economies also includes ExxonMobil, so is General Motors, Royal Dutch/ Shell, Ford Motor, DaimlerChrysler, and dozens of other corporations.

On page 40 of his book, Lou Dobbs says this:

We might begin by reminding our business leaders and

politicians that Americans want to be regarded as citizens,

not just consumers, and that they need to see this country of

ours first as a nation, not [just] a marketplace.

It seems to me it is a good starting point for this discussion. There is so much effort these days to outsource almost everything, not understanding that it begins to diminish and erode the basic economic strength of our country.

Forty state governments are now outsourcing what were

American jobs.

Again, this is from Mr. Dobbs's book.

The state of Indiana's Department of Workforce Development

is responsible for helping out of work Indiana citizens find

jobs. Ironically, the department awarded a $15 million

contract to update its computers to a firm in Bombay, India.

The project would have provided employment to sixty-five

workers coming from India on L-1 visas.

Why would they do that? Because of the millions of dollars it would save. But I expect the taxpayers of Indiana would have preferred their tax dollars be used to help those who are out of work in Indiana.

Again, this is quoting Lou Dobbs:

Only after a loud public outcry did the governor of Indiana

cancel the contract.

A recent survey found that 40 States plus the District of Columbia have food stamp help desks that use operators in foreign countries.

In January of 2004, the Times of India ran a story with this headline: ``Silicon Valley Falls to Bangalore.'' It says:

BANGALORE: The inevitable has happened. Bangalore, which

grew under the shadow of America's Silicon Valley over the

last two decades, has finally overtaken its parent.

Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco

and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while

employing a total number of 150,000 engineers.

Service jobs are being exported from this country. It is true in almost every single area.

Massachusetts General Hospital had a firestorm on its hands when it was learned that the hospital was sending x rays and MRIs to India for examination, even though it is illegal for technicians in India to diagnose U.S. patients. And even though Medicare does not pay for work done outside the United States, hospitals have found a way around that. They just have an American doctor do a cursory review of the work and then sign off on it.

This again is from Lou Dobbs's book.

Recently, we had a statement by Mr. Greg Mankiw, who is the head of domestic policy, the top economist in the Bush administration, that caused a great deal of consternation. He said that this administration supports outsourcing.

Lou Dobbs, I think correctly, points out in his book that both Democratic and Republican administrations have done very little to address these issues and, in fact, in many cases have made them worse. So this is not about one party or the other. Neither political party, in my judgment, has developed a set of policies that would address this. I think both political parties have largely been silent on this issue or have done things that have made this problem worse.

But the current administration has said that outsourcing is really a good policy. In February, the Los Angeles Times reported that the administration, the White House, was endorsing outsourcing.

This is what Lou Dobbs had to say about Mr. Mankiw. He said:

A number of people on Capitol Hill thought Mankiw should

have resigned, but I disagreed. On my broadcast . . . I

called for the President to fire him. Not merely because I

obviously disagreed with him, but because Mankiw's statement

raised the administration's support of overseas outsourcing

to a declaration of government policy.

To drive home the point, Mr. Mankiw, the chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters that the President plainly supported shifting jobs overseas, provided those jobs could be done more cheaply overseas. This is what Mr. Mankiw said to reporters:

Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade.

More things are tradable than were tradable in the past.

And that's a good thing.

Maybe we will outsource a few radiologists. What does that

mean? Well, maybe the next generation of doctors will train

fewer radiologists and will train more general practitioners

or surgeons. . . . Maybe we have learned that we don't have a

comparative advantage in radiologists.

And the President's report said this about outsourcing:

One facet of increased services trade is the increased use

of offshore outsourcing in which a company relocates labor-

intensive service industry functions to another country.

In fact, the President's report says when it comes to trade, white- collar jobs should be no different from manufacturing jobs.

Well, after many of us raised some real questions about this, including Lou Dobbs, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan said:

We certainly don't want to do anything that would undermine

free trade.

Mr. Dobbs concludes: I believe this is a declaration of Government policy with respect to outsourcing.

So this is what is happening in the private sector with respect to the outsourcing of jobs.

The Wall Street Journal ran a feature article that I read some while ago that was interesting to me. It was an article on IBM's outsourcing practices. It described internal company memos which described a strategy to systematically outsource American jobs overseas.

This is from an IBM memo. It says: ``Do not be transparent regarding the purpose/intent'' and cautions that the ``Terms `On-shore' and `Off- shore' should never be used.'' The company expects to shift about 3,000 jobs from the U.S. overseas. So they advise managers on how to communicate the news to the affected employees. The memo says that anything written to employees should first be ``sanitized'' by human resources and communications staffers.

The plan IBM had, according to the Wall Street Journal, would move jobs from U.S. locations, including Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Colorado. It would transfer them to India, to China, and to Brazil. It says:

Some of the foreign programmers will come to the U.S. for

several weeks of on-the-job training by the people whose jobs

they will take over.

That's an aspect of offshoring that many high-tech workers regard as particularly humiliating.

So this internal memo directs managers to say this to workers about to lose their jobs:

This action is a statement about the rate and pace of

change in this demanding industry. . . . It is in no way a

comment on the excellent work you have done over the years.

So see you later. We are going to move your job to India or China or Brazil. Thank you. You have done excellent work. The fact that you have lost your job is in no way a comment on the excellent work you have done.

Now, what are our trade officials doing about this? I will tell you what--they are trying to facilitate even more outsourcing, by enabling corporations to use even cheaper overseas labor.

Let me review some of the trade agreements we have been doing recently. Let me talk about CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. This would integrate our economy with that of El Salvador, among others.

This is from a recent news story, describing how El Salvador is scarred by child labor. Subsistence work in sugarcane fields leads to injuries, continuing poverty.

Jesus Franco, 14 years of age, has scars crisscrossing his

legs from his ankles to his

thighs and more on his small hands. For more than half of his

young life, he has spent long days cutting sugarcane. He has

the machete scars to prove it, and so do his four sisters,

age 9 to 19. His story is repeated countless times across

Latin America, where children even younger than he are found

working in cane fields at subsistence wages, $75 a month,

which isn't even enough to pay for basic food needs.

So we are now going to integrate our economies with those of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica in a Central America Free Trade Agreement and set up our sugar producers for failure. That is what this is about, among other things.

Let me tell you about some kids who came to a hearing we had, who were working in a factory overseas producing rugs. These were kids who were locked in the factories, young kids 10, 11, 12 years old, producing carpets and rugs. We discovered that some of them had gun powder put on the tips of their fingers, and then it was lit so that it would burn the tips of their fingers and create big scars on all their fingertips. They did that so that when these young kids were sewing with needles, when they stuck their fingers, it wouldn't hurt because they had been scarred by the burns. Young kids with scarred fingers using needles to produce carpets to be sent to our stores. Free trade? Hardly.

Let me give some other examples. I have spoken often about Huffy bicycles. They were made in Ohio, manufactured in a plant by people who made $11 an hour and were proud of their jobs. Huffy bicycles were 20 percent of the American marketplace for bicycles. They were sold in Sears and Wal-Mart and K-Mart. Huffy bicycles had a decal on the front of the American flag.

Well, Huffy bicycles aren't made in the United States anymore. They are made in China. They closed the plant, fired the workers, and said: $11 an hour is too much for workers in Ohio who make bicycles. We will make them in China. And, by the way, the last job was to take the flag decal off the bike and replace it with a decal of a globe. Now Huffy bicycles, if you buy them, are made in China, made by people who work for 33 cents an hour. They work 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Should we compete with that? Can we compete with that, with kids and others making 33 cents an hour? Huffy bicycles are gone. The people in Ohio who made them were fired. And Chinese workers now work 7 days a week at 33 cents an hour to make Huffy bicycles.

Another American company that moved its production overseas is Radio Flyer. They made the little red wagons. Everybody has ridden in a little red wagon. It was American for 100 years. This is pure Americana, except Radio Flyer is not made here any longer. After 100 years, the jobs of the American people who made the little red wagon are gone. The workers were fired. The jobs moved to China for low labor costs.

The list goes on and on. Fig Newton cookies. That is an all-American cookie. Every kid grew up with a Fig Newton cookie someplace on the shelf. But Fig Newton cookies are now made in Mexico. So when someone says to you, let's have some Mexican food, you can say: How about Fig Newtons. They left the United States. The people who made them are out of jobs.

The list goes on and on and on. The question is, Where will it end and when will it end? Should American workers be asked to compete with a 14-year-old working in a sugar field for subsistence wages? Should American workers in a textile plant be asked to compete with a 9-year- old kid who has gun powder burns on his or her fingertips to spare them the pain of the stabbing of needles when they make the carpets? Should an American worker be asked to compete with someone who makes 33 cents an hour working in a plant in China making bicycles or Radio Flyer little red wagons?

Let me describe the plight of a young woman in China and describe the circumstances under which we are asked to compete these days by those who want to find the lowest wages available on the face of the Earth and fatten profits, even while they diminish the standard of living. This is a story from the Washington Post. It is entitled ``Worked Till They Drop. Few Protections for China's New Laborers.''

This picture is of a girl named Li Chunmei.

It reads:

On the night she died, Li Chunmei must have been exhausted.

Co-workers said she had been on her feet for nearly 16

hours, running back and forth in the Bainan Toy Factory,

carrying toy parts from machine to machine. This was the busy

season before Christmas when orders peaked from Japan and the

United States for the factory's stuffed animals.

Long hours were mandatory, and at least two months had

passed since Li and the other workers had enjoyed even a

Sunday off.

Lying on her bed that night, staring at the bunk above her,

the slight 19-year-old complained she felt washed out. The

factory food was so bad, she said, she felt as if she had not

eaten at all. ``I want to quit,'' one of her roommates . . .

remembered her saying. ``I want to go home.''

Her roommates had already fallen asleep when Li started

coughing up blood. They found her in the bathroom a few hours

later, curled up on the floor, moaning softly in the dark,

bleeding from her nose and mouth. Someone called an

ambulance, but she died before it arrived.

The exact cause of her death remains unknown. But what

happened to her last November in this industrial town in

southeastern Guangdong Province is described by family,

friends, and co-workers as an example of what China's more

daring newspapers call . . . ``over-work death.''

The story of her death highlights labor conditions that are

the norm for a new generation of workers in China, tens of

millions of migrants who flock from the nation's impoverished

countryside to its prospering coast.

The question for this country is, Do we want to ask the American consumer to compete against companies that work a young girl to death, that put a young boy in a cane field with scars on his legs and arms, or put a young child in a factory making carpets? Is that what we want to ask our economy to do? Clearly that is importing low wages to this country. It is not just exporting American jobs, it is importing low wages.

I want to turn for a moment to a Nobel prize-winning economist named Paul Samuelson. I studied Samuelson in college.

Samuelson wrote the textbook on economics. If you went to college in the last 30, 40 years, you studied Samuelson. Professor Paul Samuelson is now 89 years old.

I have such respect for this man, Paul Samuelson. He has, just this month, started weighing in, at age 89, on the issue of outsourcing.

He has always been a free trader, a believer in Ricardo and the doctrine of comparative advantage, and Adam Smith. You know, the common sense notion that if you can produce the textiles in England--the sheep and the wool and the textiles--and you can raise the grapes in Portugal to produce the wine, it makes good sense for England to trade the textiles for the wine, and the English can drink and the Portuguese can wear wool. That is the trade we have all learned in textbooks--classic economics, the doctrine of comparative advantage.

The New York Times reports, however, that Paul Samuelson is rethinking the effects of outsourcing.

At 89, Paul Samuelson, the Nobel Prize-winning economist

and professor emeritus at MIT, still seems to have plenty of

intellectual edge and the ability to antagonize and amuse.

His dissent from mainstream economic consensus about

outsourcing and globalization will appear later this month in

a distinguished journal, cloaked in clever phrases and

theoretical equations, but clearly aimed at the orthodoxy in

his profession.

I will give you a couple quotes:

Being able to purchase groceries 20 percent cheaper at Wal-

Mart does not necessarily make up for the wage losses.

If you don't believe that outsourcing changes the average

wages in America, then you believe in the tooth fairy.

That is Paul Samuelson, speaking today.

The fact is, when we talk about the issue of trade and fair trade, for some reason, we have just lost common sense.

Let me describe our trade with Korea in the area of automobiles. In 2003, we imported from Korea 692,000 cars. Guess how many American cars we sold in Korea? We sold 3,800. I will say that again. Ships brought Korean cars here, nearly 700,000 of them, and we were able to sell not quite 4,000 cars in Korea. Why is that? Is it because we produce a dramatically inferior car? No. The Koreans want access to our marketplace. They want to sell to the American consumer, but they don't want American vehicles in Korea. They just don't.

We sit around thumbing our suspenders and smoking cigars and pontificating about free trade, never willing to say to the Koreans: If you want to trade with us, I will tell you what, then be fair. If our market is open to you, your market must be open to us. If not, sell your cars in Zambia. Go try to sell them there. You don't sell them in the American marketplace unless your market is open to our product.

How about China? It is interesting. We did a bilateral trade agreement with China. I would love to find the negotiator who made that deal for us.

Here is what our negotiator agreed to. After a phase-in, the Chinese will impose a 25-percent tariff on American cars that would be sold in China. And we will only have a 2.5-percent tariff on Chinese cars they want to sell in the United States. The Chinese can have a tariff 10 times the size of ours on reciprocal automobile trade.

I think that is stark raving nuts. Who on Earth could have negotiated such an incompetent deal? Do we not have people who will stand up for the interests of this country for a change?

Here is what I suggest for that trade negotiator. That trade negotiator should have worn this shirt during the negotiations.

You know we just finished the Olympics. We asked the Olympic athletes to wear a uniform so we could look down and see where they are from, and it always says USA. God bless them. I would love our trade negotiator, just once, to wear a uniform that says USA.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

I would love, just once, to ask our trade negotiators to wear a uniform so at least they know on whose behalf they are negotiating.

I am so tired of what is happening in international trade negotiations. Will Rogers said, 70 years ago, that the United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference. He must surely have been thinking about our trade negotiators. It doesn't matter what it is--the United States-Canada FTA, CAFTA, NAFTA, WTO--all our negotiators have to do is show up and lose. They do it routinely.

This isn't a partisan issue, international trade. I think both Republicans and Democrats have let this country down. We need a new trade strategy.

Globalization is here, that is true. We are not going to turn back globalization, but we at least, by God, ought to have rules that are fair to this country and to the workers of this country and to the businesses of this country that do business here and stay here.

I have one final point. This Senate did not even have the strength and the backbone to at least shut down the perverse tax incentives that reward companies that export U.S. jobs. If we cannot take the first baby step in the right direction, it is a pretty hopeless situation.

We will have an opportunity to address these issues next year. I hope Republicans and Democrats today will decide in unison that exporting these jobs hurts this country, and there are policies and approaches we can do to change the fortune of this country's economic future.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I do not have a long presentation. My guess is the 3 o'clock briefing is one most Senators want to attend. I do want to, however, visit a bit about this issue of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

We have been through pretty tough times with respect to intelligence in this country, and this is a critically important position. The President's choice is an important choice, especially given what we have been through. Let me make a couple of comments.

First of all, I am going to vote for this nomination, but I do so without great enthusiasm, and I would like to explain why.

Porter Goss, I think, is qualified to assume this role. There is little in his record that suggests he is a reformer, and there is some piece of that record that suggests there is some partisanship, which bothers me. But I know Porter Goss. I have known him for a long while. When I served in the House of Representatives, I knew him.

While I would not have made this choice had I been President, the President has the opportunity to make the selection and deserves, in this case, his own team. My hope is the questions asked of Mr. Goss at his hearings will make certain he will run the CIA with a reformist attitude, with an understanding that things need to change, with an understanding that this cannot, under any circumstance, be a position from which partisanship flows, and that we have to get straight answers, as does the President, from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Over the years, we have had many, many failures in intelligence. For those of us who have been through top secret briefings in room 407 of the Capitol Building, it is nearly unbelievable what they told us they knew from all their different kinds of intelligence-gathering devices and their analysis, and what we subsequently learned were the facts or the truth of the matter.

I am telling you because we need a good intelligence system to protect our country and protect our homeland. I worry about all of this, knowing that the intelligence system was deeply flawed. In candid moments, most Members of the Senate would tell you that which was told them as top secret intelligence information has often turned out to be fundamentally wrong.

We now read, for example--and I am not now discussing that which comes from top secret briefings; I am discussing things that come from the periodicals--we read, for example, that the intelligence we were given in briefings about the issue of mobile chemical weapons laboratories, it turns out came from one source, a source they call ``Curve Ball.'' I am describing this from Newsweek and Time magazine, not from top secret briefings. One source turns out to apparently have been a drunk and a fabricator and, as a result of that source, we get top secret briefings and the Secretary of State makes a presentation at the United Nations about something that apparently we now know was untrue. What kind of intelligence system is that?

We learned that Germans provide the name and information of a terrorist to the CIA here in the United States and the telephone number and nobody checks on him, nobody follows up at all. Our intelligence folks cannot find a couple of alleged terrorists living in San Diego when their names and telephone numbers are in the phonebook? What on earth is this? I suppose it is Keystone Kops, except this is about the security of the United States of America.

I want the CIA and the Intelligence Community to succeed. Our country depends on it being able to succeed in gathering good intelligence and protecting this country.

There is so much that is wrong here. Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector, said he was ``not impressed'' by the intelligence presented by the administration regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Blix team checked every site where U.S. intelligence indicated weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and there was nothing.

It goes on and on.

David Kay, the CIA chief weapons hunter, said the intelligence community failed.

On the 9/11 issue, the intelligence community failed to connect the dots. I am not talking here just about the CIA; I am talking about the FBI. The list goes on.

When we are talking about 9/11, we also ought to talk about a report that was done by the Joint Intelligence Committee in December of 2002 that was published with 28 pages missing. Those 28 pages are about the Saudis. Fifteen of the 19 who attacked this country were Saudi citizens. But when the report was published for the public to read, the White House redacted or eliminated the 28 pages that dealt with Saudi Arabia.

On October 29 of last year, I offered an amendment to the Foreign Operations appropriations bill, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, calling on the administration to declassify those 28 pages. If one is talking about 9/11, and talking about intelligence, I believe the American people and every Member of this Senate and the Congress need to understand what is in those 28 pages dealing with Saudi Arabia.

It is interesting, even the Saudi Ambassador and the Saudi Foreign Minister, publicly insisted that this information be declassified. Senator Shelby, the top Republican Senator on the 9/11 inquiry, said that 95 percent of the classified pages of these 28 pages could be released without jeopardizing our national security.

I say once again to the administration and to my colleagues that the 28 pages dealing with Saudi Arabia and 9/11 needs to be released to the American people. This Congress and the American people should not be evaluating 9/11 and our intelligence without releasing those 28 pages, so that the American people see what was deemed required to be classified. It should not have been classified.

Whether we are talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, or back even further, Libya or the old Soviet Union, there have been intelligence failures. We spend a great deal of money on U.S. intelligence. We want it to work. I do not want our intelligence system to fail our country, because our country requires a good intelligence system to prevent the next terrorist attack and to attack terrorists where they live.

The attack on Iraq was a preemptive strike that the President said was necessary to protect our country. Well, it is very important when talking about preemption, which is a doctrine that has been foreign to this country's interests in the past, to have good intelligence. Preemption can never occur based on what one thinks. Preemption could only occur based on what one knows. What one knows must come from good intelligence.

We have discovered, since the time preemption was discussed by this administration, that the intelligence was just plain horrible on major points delivered in top secret briefings to Members of this Congress. Our intelligence community was just flat wrong. So we all need to fix it.

There is no Republican or Democratic way to deal with intelligence. We need to fix this system in the interests of this country. Our safety depends on it.

I am going to vote for Mr. Goss. I think he is qualified to do this job. As I indicated, I am concerned about some things he has done in the past. I hope that is over. I am concerned about the intelligence agencies themselves. I believe they are in desperate need of reform. I hope Mr. Goss will be a reformer. Most importantly, our country, all of us, each of us, needs to work together to create an intelligence system that works for the safety of this country and works in a way that a President, a Congress, a Director of the CIA can rely on good intelligence from all around the world.

My understanding is that we will be in recess for 1 hour until the hour of 4 p.m.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, if there is to be an agreement soon, I would like to be a part of that agreement. I would like to offer a unanimous consent request to set a date for a vote on the reimportation of prescription drugs. If we reach an agreement, I would like to be a part of that so I can offer a unanimous consent request that the Senate be able to consider that issue.

Mr. President, I also seek the same 7 minutes.

Yes.

Mr. President, first, I am proud to be in the Senate. I have always been proud to be a part of our political system. It is a remarkable privilege to participate in this system of ours. I have run for Statewide election 11 times, since I was in my midtwenties. I must say there are times when I see and hear things in American politics that fill me with disgust.

Two years ago, we had a colleague, Max Cleland, who sat in that desk near the door. Max Cleland was charged in his campaign with lack of commitment to our country's national security. They ran an ad against Max Cleland that had an image of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. This is a man who left three limbs on the battlefield. He sat in this Chamber missing two legs and an arm. Back home on television, he was accused of not standing up for this country's national security. It stretches my threshold of forgiveness to excuse those who do that to someone like Max Cleland, who went to Vietnam, came back, and wrote a book entitled ``Strong at the Broken Places.'' He ran for the Senate to become a U.S. Senator, only to be attacked that he was not somehow standing up for the national security interests of this country. Shame on them.

This Sunday, I saw that ugliness again raise its head. It is the worst of American politics, in my judgment. This is a newspaper called the Rapid City Journal. I have it because this comes from a neighboring State of

mine. On Sunday, Republican challenger John Thune accused Democratic Senator Tom Daschle of encouraging America's enemies and damaging U.S. troop morale with a headline, ``Emboldening the Enemy?''

For those who engage in this kind of politics, attacking the Democratic leader in the Senate as emboldening the enemy, encouraging America's enemies, and damaging U.S. troop morale, the Rapid City Journal says, all I can say is, shame, shame. Is there decency left in American politics? There was not in the attack on Max Cleland, a man who nearly died on the battlefield, and there is not in this unforgivable attack on the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Does anyone really believe that which occurs here, that the actions of the Democratic leader embolden the enemy, encourage America's enemies, and damage U.S. troop morale? It is so disgusting to see the tactic of questioning someone's commitment to their country, questioning someone's patriotism, or when someone says a critical word, suggesting somehow that they are giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. That is not what ought to be the best in this democracy. It is the worst in American politics. The shrill, ugly, corrosive, relentless attacks in this political system ought to stop. There is so much to be done. Obviously, I support my colleague, Senator Daschle.

There is reason to have an aggressive debate in our State to the south about a range of issues. But there is no reason, no excuse for the challenger in that race to be suggesting the Democratic leader here in the Senate, my colleague and friend Senator Daschle, somehow is encouraging America's enemies and damaging U.S. troop morale. That is not below the belt, that is below the radar screen of American politics. My hope is that the American people, my hope would have been that the citizens of Georgia, and my hope certainly is that the citizens of the United States see it for what it is. It is an outrage, and this country should not stand for it. This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much.

But we have people around today who believe if you raise any questions at all, you are somehow unpatriotic. What a load of nonsense.

I came into American politics and into this political system proud of politics and the way we make decisions. John F. Kennedy used to say that every mother kind of hopes her child might grow up to become President as long as they are not active in politics.

He was kidding, of course. Politics is an honorable venture in this country. It is the way we have made decisions for over 200 years. There is nowhere else like this place on this globe. We spin around the Sun with 6 billion of us and somehow through divine providence we landed right here right now. What a wonderful event for us. It is our job to be caretakers of a political system, a democracy that is the most successful in the world. There is plenty of reason for us to have aggressive debates. Aggressive debate is wonderful. It is invigorating and refreshing to our democracy. But this is not aggressive debate. This is the worst of American politics. I hope it stops.

I would be happy to respond or yield the floor.

Senator Daschle is an Air Force veteran. He is a patriot. He is someone who has a strong record on national defense and national security issues. He doesn't need me to come to the floor to defend him. I come to the floor only because I am disgusted at this sort of nonsense. This represents the worst of American politics. If you want to have a debate about energy, taxes, foreign policy, name it, have that debate. But don't accuse your opponent of somehow not standing up for the interests of this country. Don't accuse your opponent of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. That is beneath, in my judgment, thoughtful politics. That is the kind of thoughtless and low blow in politics that is uncalled for. The only reason I came to the floor is I am disgusted by this.

I am part of this political system and I have always in my campaign tried to wage a positive campaign. When challenged, I am aggressive, no question about that. But I hope no one is accusing me of the low road because I never take the low road. I believe this is about a positive future of jobs and hope and opportunity for the American people. There is so much to talk about and so much to do. In my judgment, it betrays rather than serves the public interest in this country to be somehow questioning the patriotism or questioning the commitment of a Member of this body, especially the leader of our caucus, questioning the commitment of the leader to the ideals and goals of this country and saying instead that somehow what the leader of our caucus has done is to give aid and comfort to the enemy or to embolden the enemy, as the headline states. That is not what we should expect from our political system or the candidates who are in that political system.

I would be happy to yield.

Mr. President, later this month, the North Dakota Stockmen's Association will hold its Diamond Anniversary Convention in Medora, ND. I would like to recognize this organization, which has served our State's ranchers and cattle producers for the past 75 years.

On June 6, 1929, a group of cattle producers gathered in Watford City, ND. The men all grazed cattle on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and they

all had a problem with cattle rustling. Andrew Johnson, a Watford area cattleman, was determined to do something about it. He established a reward of $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of cattle rustlers. The men at the meeting contributed $5 each to start that fund.

This group called themselves the Western North Dakota Stock Association. They would later change their name to the Western North Dakota Stockmen's Association, and finally they took the name they hold today; the North Dakota Stockmen's Association.

This year the North Dakota Stockmen's Association is celebrating its 75th year of operation, and that $1,000 reward still stands.

Today the North Dakota Stockmen's Association has more than 2,700 members from across the State. From education efforts that help new ranchers get a start in the cattle industry to brand registration and enforcement of the State's livestock laws, the Stockmen's Association plays an important role in all aspects of the ranching industry. And, as those of us in elected office know, the North Dakota Stockmen's Association is a strong, effective voice on behalf of its members.

In addition to serving its members, the North Dakota Stockmen's Association plays an important role in the communities in which its members live. The association worked with other members of the beef industry in North Dakota to host a Beef Industry Appreciation Day during the 2004 North Dakota State Fair. The association served free beef dinners to active duty military, Reserve, and National Guard members, and their families. The association offers college scholarships to young people who are interested in studying animal or range science, preveterinary medicine, farm and ranch management, and other subjects that help maintain a healthy farm economy.

I thank the North Dakota Stockmen's Association for their hard work. I wish them continued success and congratulate them on their 75th anniversary.

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

Thank you. Not yield the floor. I am asking if the Senator would yield for a question when he is finished.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for yielding for a question.

Mr. President, this morning, again in a Congress Journal, it says: ``Frist Decision to Delay Reimportation.'' This is the issue of the reimportation of prescription drugs, in order to put downward pressure on drug prices, as I mentioned to the majority leader last week on the floor of the Senate.

I harken back to about midnight, March 11, in the Senate, on the floor of the Senate, when we were in session very late, to a statement put in the Senate Record by the majority leader saying ``the Senate will begin a process for developing proposals that would allow for the safe reimportation of FDA-approved prescription drugs.''

I say to the majority leader, I hope very much that his decision on what the remaining schedule will be for this Senate will include an opportunity for us to, on the floor of the Senate, consider legislation dealing with the reimportation of prescription drugs.

We have bipartisan legislation in the Senate. We also have a House- passed bill that is on the calendar. As I indicated to the Senator from Tennessee last week, it is my intent, and the intent of others-- Republicans and Democrats--to push this issue to the floor. But I hope we would not have to push it in light of the statement by the majority leader on March 11, 2004.

I ask the Senator to respond.

If the Senator would allow me the courtesy of a reply in leader time, the Senator has taken a lengthy period of time to describe why this may not happen. Let me make a couple of observations.

The Senator knows what we discussed at midnight on the floor on about six or seven occasions prior to midnight on March 17. There were plenty of days left in the session at that point to consider a bipartisan bill on the reimportation of prescription drugs. We agreed there would be a process for developing proposals that would allow for the safe reimportation of prescription drugs, with the understanding that it was going to happen this year.

In the HELP Committee, which the majority leader referenced, there have been three markups scheduled and three markups cancelled. That is not a process that leads to allowing the reimportation of prescription drugs.

I have great respect for my colleague from Tennessee, but there is no safety issue here. Europe does this every day routinely in something called parallel trading. The question for this country will be, Will we decide to put downward pressure on prescription drugs by allowing reimportation or won't we? I believe earlier this year the representation was given to the Senate that we would be allowed the opportunity on the floor of the Senate to deal with this issue.

It is my determination, as with others in the Republican and Democratic caucuses, to push this issue. We need to make time for this in the coming days because this Congress is going to have to consider it. I believe we were given a commitment that it was going to be considered. Three markup sessions that were scheduled and then canceled is not the development of a process that would allow for reimportation. If those of us who have developed our bill on a bipartisan basis don't push it, we will end this session with no opportunity for reimportation of prescription drugs and no opportunity to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices.

This is not a partisan issue for me. It is not a political issue. It is about some poor soul out there this morning who is trying to buy prescription drugs and using his or her grocery money to do it because they are paying double, triple, quadruple, 10 times the price they pay when they go north of the border to buy the same drug put in the same bottle and made by the same company. It is unfair. We ought to do something about it. We have waited far too long.

I respect the majority leader. I simply wanted to point out there has to be time to consider this in the coming 17 days. There was in March, and there needs to be now.

I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his courtesy.

Mr. President, I support the Mikulski amendment because I think that it includes important funding for firefighter grants. The amendment includes $200 million for firefighter grants--the authorized level--so that we can increase the resources available for our first responders.

In its current form, this amendment does not include any offsetting reductions to pay for the new investments. If this amendment is adopted today--and I hope that it will be--I intend to work with the conferees to offset these increases by reducing funds that have been earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. I believe these expenditures should be offset with these other spending cuts.

Iraq is a nation that sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. My view is that Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction.

Last year, this Congress acted in an expedited way to appropriate $18.4 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. And yet, 10 months later, most of that money is still unspent. Less than $1 billion has been actually expended and only about $7 billion has been obligated.

Therefore, I support Senator Mikulski's amendment. But my intention is to push for the rescission of those unobligated Iraqi reconstruction funds and use them to offset these needed security investments.

Mr. President, I support the Clinton amendment because I think that it includes important funding for high risk areas. The amendment provides additional funds for those areas that are under the highest threat alert.

In its current form, this amendment does not include any offsetting reductions to pay for the new investments. If this amendment is adopted today--and I hope that it will be--I intend to work with the conferees to offset these increases by reducing funds that have been earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. I believe these expenditures should be offset with these other spending cuts.

Iraq is a nation that sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. My view is that Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction.

Last year, this Congress acted in an expedited way to appropriate $18.4 billion Iraqi reconstruction. And yet, 10 months later, most of that money is still unspent. Less than $1 billion has been actually expended and only about $7 billion has been obligated.

Therefore, I support Senator Clinton's amendment. But my intention is to push for the rescission of those unobligated Iraqi reconstruction funds and use them to offset these needed security investments.

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

Mr. President, I have been in a markup of the Appropriations Committee for the past several hours. I wanted to be here when my colleagues offered the disaster relief legislation. I was not able to be here at that point, but let me add to the comments that have been made by my colleague from Montana, Senator Baucus, and my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, and many others.

The amendment that has been offered, as a bipartisan amendment on behalf of Republicans and Democrats who represent a significant part of farm country, is to ask the Congress to consider passing a disaster bill to respond to weather-related disasters in our part of the country.

Let me begin by saying it is my intention that I would support all and any resources that are necessary to respond to those who have been devastated by successive hurricanes.

Those in Florida and other parts of the Southeast, and now those in the gulf area who may well be hit by another hurricane, have had a devastating time of it. It is sad to see the plight of the victims on television when these hurricanes come through and destroy property and destroy homes and destroy livelihoods. It is a pretty awful scene. When that happens, this country has an obligation to extend its hand to those victims and say: You are not alone. This country wishes to help.

I have always voted in favor of disaster assistance and always will because it is part of what this country needs to do for those who have been hit with tough times. That is certainly the case with respect to those hit by the successive hurricanes in the southern part of our country. My colleague from Montana and others have said that as devastating as those hurricanes are--and it is hard to adequately describe the devastation--there are, in addition to the damage from those hurricanes, other areas of the country that have suffered weather-related disasters.

My State is one of those States. I will describe what has happened in my State.

I have toured throughout the entire State of North Dakota in the past months. In the northern part of our State, torrential rains in the spring that came and stayed in a torrent of moisture meant that 1.7 million acres of ground could not even be planted in North Dakota. Obviously, that is a serious economic problem for our State, but it is a devastating circumstance for a farmer that had all of their ground inundated by these torrential rains and couldn't plant an acre. That is a personal circumstance that is very difficult because they will lose all of their revenue. Many of them will go out of business. That is a time when disaster assistance is necessary.

In other parts of North Dakota in the southwestern corner, I had ranchers tell me that from January 1 to July 1, they received 2.2 inches of moisture total in 6 months. One can imagine what their crops look like.

These are two pictures from my State. They describe the circumstances faced by producers. This is a field inundated with water. It would not have been planted, and this farmer would not have an opportunity to make a living by planting this field because the field will be prevented from being planted by this water.

This, in the same State, looks like a moonscape. It is an area that is completely without moisture, a pastureland that has no growth. These are from the same State in the same year.

We had, in addition to the torrential rains and the drought in different parts of the State, in the month of August, strangely enough, a frost, and then a freeze. What happened as a result? My colleagues can look at a cob of corn. This shows a healthy cob of corn. That is what you get when you produce it and you have the heat units and you are able to harvest and pick the corn. Here is what happens when you have a freeze in August, exactly when corn needs heat units to grow. Perhaps even more dramatic, here is what a healthy field of soybeans looks like. We have a lot of acres of soybeans. It looks great, a beautiful green field.

Here is what that same field looks like after you have a freeze in the month of August when you need the heat units to be able to have these beans reach maturity and growth.

It is estimated by North Dakota State University that in North Dakota,

the impact of these weather-related disasters was about $1 billion total. The impact on farmers is more than half a billion dollars. And that which is above that, which crop insurance would pay, is over a third of $1 billion. That is a weather-related series of disasters that is significant and troubling to the producers in our State.

My colleague described the circumstances in Montana. Others will describe circumstances in their States. The point is, this damage was not from a hurricane that came with a fury and in just a matter of days blew its way through and devastated a lot of property. In most cases, this was either a slow motion drought that just drained the life from the soil, or torrential rains, as happened in the northern part of North Dakota that made 1.7 million acres unplantable. Those, too, are weather-related disasters and circumstances in which the Congress should want to--and I expect will want to--reach out its hand to say you are not alone to family farmers and ranchers trying to make a living, trying to survive tough times, trying to deal with weather- related disasters by themselves.

I hope this Congress will, once again, say to those family farmers and ranchers: You are not alone. You don't have to deal with this by yourself because we know you can't. When you lose all sources of revenue for an entire year, then we want to help.

I have served in the House and the Senate. I don't believe I have ever failed to support disaster assistance when it is necessary. I will continue to aggressively support disaster assistance again now for the people of Florida, the Southeast, the people in the gulf region who may be hit. We need to pass that disaster assistance. I will strongly support that.

The amendment being discussed is offered by my colleague and me and others who say there are other weather-related disasters as well that we need to deal with in this bill. We expect our colleagues will understand that. But it should not in any way be misinterpreted as wanting to hold up the necessary resources to deal with and to help make whole those--I guess we probably never make whole people who have suffered a disaster, but at least to say to those folks who have been hit over and over again by the vicious hurricanes: You are not alone. This country wishes to help. We are determined to do that.

I am pleased to at least raise my voice to say I am going to be one person who supports aggressively that which is needed for the citizens of Florida and other parts that have been affected by hurricanes. My hope is that they, too, will help our family farmers and ranchers in South Dakota and North Dakota, Montana, and other regions of our northern Great Plains that have been hard hit by weather-related disasters this year.

I am happy to yield for a question.

Senator Johnson has described well the circumstance in a number of areas.

I have seen big, strong family farmers and ranchers with tears in their eyes describing circumstances where they approached this year with some hope and then discovered that almost everything they intended to do was gone. The grain they planted was washed away, or the field they intended to plant was inundated with water and they couldn't plant it, or in the Southwest they planted seeds and they never grew because they got no moisture. It is a devastating circumstance.

The network of farmers around this country who live on the land, under that yard light all by themselves, they live on hope. They risk everything in the spring to put a seed in the ground. They live on hope that somehow it will grow, that somehow they won't get too much rain but they will get enough rain, that they won't have crop disease, that all of these things will happen, and they will be able to harvest and maybe somehow there will be a good price when they harvest.

But it has been devastating when they can't plant a seed that will grow because there is no moisture, or when they can't plant a seed at all because the water has inundated their land. They set their jaw and they act like, well, they will get through this. But many of them have told me that they won't get through this. You can't live without income, especially with the cost of doing business on family farms these days.

That is why at this time, in this circumstance, my colleagues who have joined in offering this amendment are simply saying let's say to these folks as well you are not alone. They have had a tough time. This, too, is a weather-related disaster. Let's recognize it and deal with it in an appropriate way. That is what this legislation does.

We have done this before. It is time now, and there is a need to do it again--to say to family farmers and ranchers in this country: You matter; we care whether you exist out there. You are part of the culture of this country in which family values exist, nurturing, refreshing families' values from small towns to big cities.

That is part of the important culture of this country. When they are in trouble, this country is in trouble. I hope we will agree to advance this amendment as we will advance all the help necessary for the hurricane victims.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the managers of the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, Senators Cochran and Byrd, for agreeing to accept an amendment that I cosponsored. This amendment will ensure prompt funding for the accelerated deployment of Northern Border Air Wing run by the Department of Homeland Security.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Congress mandated the establishment of a Northern Border Air Wing. The Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for implementing this initiative, intends to have 5 bases, in Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Michigan, and New York, from which planes can be dispatched to track, identify, and intercept any unauthorized aircraft detected on the northern border.

I have been working with Department officials in particular on their plan to base one of those air wings in Grand Forks, ND, which is a major aerospace center, and would be an invaluable base in this effort.

Despite the urgency of this initiative, the dollars were simply lacking for its prompt implementation. At the funding levels called for in the administration's budget and the original appropriations bill, the Northern Border Air Wing would not have been fully established, staffed, and equipped until 2008.

This amendment will allow the Department of Homeland Security to procure aircraft for, and begin operations at, all 5 air bases on the northern border in fiscal year 2005.

I believe that this is an essential step, and I thank my colleagues for accepting our amendment.

Mr. President, I support the Byrd amendment because I think that it includes important investments in our homeland security. For example, the amendment includes over $500 million for interoperability for our first responders. It includes $125 million for port security grants so that we can increase our surveillance of the thousands of containers that enter our country. And it includes $111 million for border security. Overall, the amendment provides $2 billion in 11 key areas that desperately need increased funding.

In its current form, this amendment does not include any offsetting reductions to pay for the new investments. If this amendment is adopted today--and I hope that it will be--I intend to work with the conferees to offset these increases by reducing funds that have been earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. I believe this expenditure should be offset with these other spending cuts.

Iraq is a nation that sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. My view is that Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction.

Last year, this Congress acted in an expedited way to appropriate $18.4 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. And yet, 10 months later, most of that money is still unspent. Less than $1 billion has been actually expended and only about $7 billion has been obligated.

Therefore, I support Senator Byrd's amendment and I will vote for it today. But my intention is to push for the rescission of those unobligated Iraqi reconstruction funds and use them to offset the needed security investments that have been identified by Senator Byrd.

Mr. President, I support the Murray amendment because I think that it includes important investments in port security. The amendment includes $300 million for port security grants so that we can increase our surveillance of the thousands of containers that enter our country.

In its current form, this amendment does not include any offsetting reductions to pay for the new investments. If this amendment is adopted today, and I hope that it will be, I intend to work with the conferees to offset these increases by reducing funding that have been earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. I believe these expenditures should be offset with these other spending cuts.

Iraq is a nation that sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. My view is that Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction.

Last year, this Congress acted in an expedited way to appropriate $18.4 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. And yet, 10 months later, most of that money is still unspent. Less than $1 billion has been actually expended and only about $7 billion has been obligated.

Therefore, I support Senator Murray's amendment and I will vote for it today. But my intention is to push for the rescission of those unobligated Iraqi reconstruction funds and use them to offset these needed security investments.

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

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

I ask unanimous consent to speak for 8 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss the issue of the reimportation of prescription drugs. I do that because we have a very short time remaining in this Congress. We actually began last evening with a couple of votes. I read this morning that the majority leader would like to finish by October 8. There are very few days in which to advance some of these issues. The issue of reimportation of prescription drugs is a very important issue.

We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Many of my constituents who live in North Dakota go across the line and purchase identical prescription drugs, FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada, the same pill put in the same bottle made by the same company sold in Canada and the U.S. The difference is price. One example is Lipitor, a very popular cholesterol-lowering drug. If you buy Lipitor in Canada, it is $1.01 per tablet. If you buy it 5 miles south of the Canadian border, it is $1.82 per tablet, nearly double the price for the American consumer. That is the case with drug after drug, when you compare.

A group of us--Senator McCain, myself, and many others--has been working on reimportation legislation that would allow more than just personal use reimportation to come across from Canada, and I have talked to Senator Frist at great length about this issue.

On March 11 of this year, about midnight, when we were in session that evening dealing with the budget, Senator Frist and I reached agreement. He put in the Record that he would announce that in consultation with the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, along with Senator Dorgan, Senator Stabenow, Senator McCain, Senator Cochran, and others, that the Senate would begin a process for developing proposals that would allow for the safe reimportation of FDA-approved prescription drugs. Now we face the time period when, nearing the end of the session, we have not yet had that vote. There is a bill at the desk that was passed by the House of Representatives. That is one possibility. The other would be bipartisan legislation Senators McCain, Stabenow, others, and I

have introduced. Still other opportunities might be an amendment to another bill.

The reason I take the floor at this moment is in this morning's Congressional Quarterly, it says:

It appears increasingly unlikely that the Senate will vote

this year on legislation that would allow Americans to import

prescription drugs from abroad, despite wide public support

for the idea.

An aide to [Senate] Majority Leader Bill Frist . . . said

Tuesday that consensus on permitting the practice remained

elusive and that the issue could get swamped by more pressing

issues leading up to Election Day.

That was from the majority leader's aide.

Senator Grassley was quoted as saying that Senator Frist, the majority leader, ``is intentionally keeping drug reimportation off the Senate floor because it would pass by a wide margin.'' That is a direct quote from Senator Grassley.

I have spoken at great length with Senator Frist about this issue. I know others have different views and they have their own interests. But I believe there has been a commitment for us to at least try to have votes on reimportation. Some of us feel very strongly about it. It is not partisan because we have Republicans and Democrats who have joined on a bipartisan piece of legislation.

It is my hope that in the coming days we will find a way either to take the bill that is at the Senate desk, which is a bipartisan House- passed bill allowing for the reimportation of prescription drugs, or alternatively to have an opportunity to vote on the bipartisan legislation we have developed here in the Senate.

I have said many times, my own view is that the pharmaceutical industry is a big industry. They do a lot of good. They produce lifesaving medicines. But miracle medicines offer no miracles to those who can't afford them. It is unfair that we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

I believe one way to begin putting downward pressure on prices is to let the market system work. The market system would do for our country just as it does in Europe where they have something called parallel trading. Parallel trading means that for approved prescription drugs, if you are in Germany and want to buy a prescription drug from Spain, that is not a problem, you can do that. If you are in France and want to buy a prescription drug from Italy, that is not a problem. The parallel trading plan works in Europe, works for the safety of the European consumer.

Why should the American consumer not be able to purchase or why shouldn't pharmacists from our country not be able to purchase an FDA- approved drug from a licensed pharmacist in Canada? That is the absurdity of all this. A pharmacist from Grand Forks, ND, cannot go to that one-room pharmacy in Emerson, Canada, a licensed pharmacy in Emerson, and purchase that Lipitor at a savings and pass the savings along to the American consumer.

We want to change the law to allow that to happen so that pharmacists and licensed distributors can access FDA-approved drugs that are sold in every other country in the world at a lower price and bring them back and allow the savings to be passed along to the American consumer. Ultimately, what it will mean is a repricing of those drugs in our country. The market system will force a repricing and a lowering of prescription drugs prices. That is the goal, and that is what the result would be if the market system is allowed to work.

Again, we are only talking about FDA-approved drugs. We are not talking about anything other than FDA-approved drugs that were produced in FDA-inspected plants, sold by a licensed distributor and pharmacist in Canada and/or the United States.

That is the issue. I came to the Senate floor only because I saw the statement this morning by Senator Frist's staff suggesting that maybe this won't get done. Again, I refer the majority leader to March 11, the statement in the Congressional Record in which the majority leader said: The Senate will begin a process for developing proposals that would allow for the safe reimportation of FDA-approved drugs, not ``maybe'' but that would allow for the reimportation. The fact is, I feel there is a commitment here, and my hope is that commitment will be kept in the coming couple of weeks as we work to finish our work in this Congress.

We have a lot to do. There is a lot of politics running around this Chamber. My hope is that on big issues and important issues, we can decide we want to do the right thing and engage on issues that are important to this country and important to the American people.

I yield the floor.