Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, today I wish to describe my disappointment at the vote yesterday, a vote on whether we were going to shut down the drain in this tub of ours down which we are draining American jobs. We are trying to create jobs and put new jobs into the economy. Now what we have discovered is that the drain is wide open. Even as we talk about this, we have American jobs going overseas in search of cheap labor. We actually give a tax break in our IRS Code for allowing companies to shut their American plant, get rid of their American workers, and move jobs overseas. We tried very hard to change that. I have tried that in the past on four occasions. Yesterday was the fifth vote to say, at least let's stand up for American jobs. Let's not give a tax break to move American jobs outside of the country, especially at a time when millions of Americans are out of work. Let's not do that.

The proposal was to shut down that unbelievable tax break. The vote was, no, we can't do it. Apparently on the floor of the Senate there is plenty of support for Chinese jobs. I didn't notice anybody got up in the morning to come to this Chamber to support Chinese jobs. It seems to me the hard work here is to support American jobs.

I see the two leaders. When they wish to seek the floor, I will continue my discussion.

I can't tell you how disappointed I am. Every member of the minority voted against a bill that stands up for American jobs and shuts down the tax break for moving jobs overseas. We did get 53 votes. In other eras of the history of the Senate, that would be enough to pass legislation. Here it is not because everything needs 60 votes.

Let me yield the floor with the understanding that when the leaders are completed with their work, I know they have some important work trying to wrap up the business of the Senate, I want them to be able to do that, and then I will be recognized when their activity transpires.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this unanimous consent agreement means we are now on a timeline to finish passing a continuing resolution very soon. I appreciate the work everyone has done. I do want to finish what I was saying.

It was a profound disappointment to me that after all of this time, going back 9 years and five votes, that we were not able to get sufficient votes in the Chamber, 60 votes to shut down a tax provision that rewards people who actually move their jobs overseas from this country. I won't go through the presentations I made previously, but it is quite clear that we need, on behalf of the American people, to say: Our job is to stand up for jobs in this country. Our work is to help people get back to work here and to support businesses which produce in this country, which decide to rent the building and hire the employees and produce here. That is what we ought to stand for. Yet those who produce here and stay here are at a disadvantage, because there is a tax break given to those companies that move overseas and hire foreign workers and then sell back into this country. That was the debate yesterday and the vote. Regrettably, not one Member of the minority voted with us. That is a profound disappointment. We will all get over that. But the people who are unemployed will not, if these jobs keep moving overseas. That is the point.

New York Philharmonic in Cuba

I did want to come for another reason. I will do this quickly. A long while ago I was on the floor talking about something that I think should happen, and it needs the approval of this government to make it happen, the approval of a license to make it happen. That is for the New York Philharmonic to be able to perform in Havana, Cuba. It would be a wonderful thing. They had to cancel a previous appearance because they couldn't get a license from their government to allow them to do it.

Let me describe with a couple charts what brings me to this point and the reason I want to talk about it for a moment. This is in the middle of the Cold War with Russia. This is Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic shown here performing in Moscow in 1959. It is the oldest symphony orchestra in America, since 1842, one of the most renowned cultural ambassadors for this country. It has performed all around the world in 59 countries on 5 continents. It performed many times in Communist countries with the full blessing of the U.S. Government. At the height of the Cold War the orchestra was enthusiastically received in Moscow. The audience applauded for 30 minutes following their performance. Conductor Bernstein took the New York Philharmonic to Moscow. Think of it.

In addition to performing in Moscow, the New York Philharmonic has performed elsewhere. They have performed in North Korea. I have seen the DVD of that performance. It was quite extraordinary, February of 2008 in the capital of North Korea, the first ever concert by a U.S. orchestra within the boundaries of that secretive state. We know that there is a lot wrong with North Korea, but the conductor and the president of the Philharmonic told me and a group of Senators that the State Department encouraged the visit of this orchestra, assisted with arrangements. The concert In Pyongyang was broadcast live on State radio and television. They played music by George Gershwin in North Korea's capital, even played the Star-Spangled Banner. I saw the video. The audience continued to applaud long after the orchestra had completed its music and left the stage.

This is a photograph of Hanoi, Vietnam in 2009.

The New York Philharmonic orchestra performed there, in Hanoi, Vietnam. The demand for tickets was so great they simulcast the concert live out on the streets of Hanoi.

The only country in the world in which the Philharmonic, at this point, is not able to perform in is Cuba. They had to cancel a previous visit to Cuba in October 2009. It was planned. But it was cancelled because they could not get a license from our government to travel to Cuba.

The U.S. government allows anyone, including an orchestra, to travel to North Korea, to Iran, to any other country in the world; but you have to have a license to travel to Cuba. Why is that the case? Because the Castro brothers have stuck their fingers in America's eye for a long time. We have an embargo against the country of Cuba, and we decided we were going to take care of the Castro brothers in Cuba by punishing the American people and restricting their right to travel to Cuba, unbelievably, in my judgment. We say to the American people: We are going to fix you. We will restrict the rights of the American people to travel to Cuba. So they have.

Senator Enzi and I have a bill with a large number of cosponsors in the Senate that would lift that travel restriction.

The reason I brought this issue to the floor of the Senate today is, I feel it is time to get a positive answer from this government--the Treasury Department and the State Department--to give a license to the New York Philharmonic to make this trip and perform in Havana, Cuba. They should not have to keep cancelling their plans because of U.S. government restrictions.

Some say: Well, what is the difference? What matter does it make if they are not able to travel? Do you know what? If you watch the DVD of the New York Philharmonic performing in North Korea in 2008, and then take a look at the clips and the pictures of them in Moscow in 1959, and then ask yourself whether it makes a difference for us to be able to send, in a cultural exchange, this wonderful, unbelievably world- class orchestra to perform in these countries. I think it makes a difference.

We are in a circumstance at the moment where if you do not have a license to travel to Cuba, violators, U.S. citizens, can be fined up to $50,000 by their government. It does not make any sense to me. That needs to change. Criminal penalties could be $250,000 and

10 years in prison for violating the travel ban. We need to change all that.

In the meantime, I believe this government needs to provide a license, and they can do it under existing circumstances without changing the policy at all. They need to provide that license to allow the New York Philharmonic to be able to perform in Havana, Cuba. I am talking to the Treasury Secretary and the Secretary of State and asking for their cooperation. This is not something that is difficult. This can be allowed under existing rules. Members of the New York Philharmonic, and those who work with them and those who sponsor them, who would participate fully in the youth programs in Havana, Cuba, can be, in my judgment, approved with a license from the Treasury Department. I hope Secretary Geithner understands that and will take appropriate action. I know the Secretary of State wishes to see this happen. I believe the Treasury Secretary would as well. I hope within days they will make it happen.

I intend to work next week with all of those principals to see if at last, at long last, we might be able to resolve this issue. This makes no sense to me, to decide that the way we are going to conduct diplomacy is to prevent our Philharmonic Orchestra from playing in Havana, Cuba, given the fact they have played in the capital of North Korea, in Russia, in Vietnam, and more.

Mr. President, I was going to talk a little about energy and my profound disappointment that we are going to end this session without having done something in energy, and how some of us are trying very hard between now and the lameduck session to at least get what is called a renewable electricity standard or at least perhaps get that plus the Electric Vehicle Deployment Act moving so we can advance our country's energy interests. I will find another time to talk about that issue.

I do want to finally say, in addition, before this Congress adjourns sine die at the end of the year, there must--there must--be a solution to two things. One is the Cobell settlement, because American Indians deserve that settlement. It has been negotiated, is done, is ready. This is an abuse of 120 and 150 years. It must be corrected, and that settlement needs to be done. No. 2, what is called the Carcieri fix needs to be resolved.

My colleague, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, well understands this. Every Indian tribe that was recognized after 1934 has every parcel of land they took into trust since that time now in legal question. The Congress cannot possibly leave this session without addressing that issue. The issue arises from a court decision that in my judgment was wrong, but it places in jeopardy a wide range of facilities on Indian reservations with respect to the status of their property ownership and their lease. I hope and I know Senator Inouye shares my feelings that we must, before the end of this year, address both of these issues.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a brief question? I know my colleague is waiting to speak.

I want to make the point--and then ask a question--this is probably a fitting description near the end of at least this portion of this session of the almost total lack of cooperation that exists in this Chamber. The House of Representatives passed this almost unanimously. On commissions that are important--the Three Mile Island Commission, the Commission on 9/11, the Financial Crisis Commission-- they were all given subpoena power. Why? Because you need that if you are going to force and compel people to produce the records.

I was on the Energy Committee, and we heard the three parties that were out there drilling in that well site: BP, Transocean, and Halliburton. They were all involved. All of them were pointing at each other. The only way this commission can function is with subpoena power. What on Earth can they be thinking of to block subpoena power for this commission four successive times?

I would ask the Senator--first of all, I thank the Senator for doing this. Second, it is unthinkable to me that we see continued blockage. It represents a complete lack of cooperation. They did not do that in the House of Representatives. The minority was very interested in seeing that this works. Here the minority seems very interested in seeing that the commission cannot work.

I would ask, is this not the fourth occasion on the floor of the Senate that the Senator has made this request, and on four successive occasions the minority has objected, in some cases for other--they have a new excuse each time--but isn't this the case that four times the Senator has asked for this consent and four times it has been denied?

Mr. President, I believe by consent I am to be recognized for 30 minutes.

Mr. President, we have heard a couple of very spirited defenses this afternoon on behalf of jobs in China, which I pose is a wonderful thing if you live in China and have a job in China. The issue here is what about jobs in our country. What about the people who woke up this morning unemployed in America looking for work who could not find it? Who is standing on this floor speaking for those folks?

I have heard a lot of discussion about support for jobs in China, Mexico, or elsewhere. But who is standing up talking about the jobs at home?

Let me describe what this issue is about, if I may.

I think this issue is something most Americans understand because they have heard it over and over. In recent years, we have seen millions and millions of manufacturing jobs gone from America because the very manufacturing plants that were open in this country to manufacture goods that had a label on it that said made in America are gone from America. They are now in China, they are in Mexico, they are in Thailand, they are in South Korea, and elsewhere. Let me talk about those jobs and why they have left this country.

Listening to my colleagues--and, of course, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, all of the usual suspects who get in the same tub and make the same thumping sounds--one would believe that what has happened is that we have actually increased manufacturing jobs in this country and that moving American jobs overseas does not hurt anybody; it helps our country. Of course, that is just patently untrue.

My colleagues were talking about something called deferral. That is not something people sit around a coffee shop talking about--deferral. It means, in certain cases under this bill, those companies that shut their American manufacturing plant, get rid of all

their workers, and move the manufacturing to China or Mexico, for example--let's take China--actually get a tax break from our country that says if they are on one side of the street and their competitor is on the other side of the street, and they close their plant, fire their workers, scat out of town, go to China, hire people there, manufacture the same product, ship it back here, their country will be generous enough to say: Good for you, we will give you a tax break for doing it. That is what is called a deferral.

In the narrow scope of what is in this amendment they object to, deferral says if they leave this country with their jobs, shut them down here, move over there, manufacture there with foreign workers, and then ship the product back into this country to compete against the business men and women who stayed here, who manufacture here, who employ people here, they are not going to get a tax cut anymore. It is just not going to happen.

My colleagues say we have to have this principle called deferral. What about having every American have the opportunity for deferral? How about every American having the opportunity to defer their income taxes until it is more convenient for them? No, not everybody gets these things. Just the interests at the very top.

Then when we tried to narrow it a little bit because it gives a pernicious incentive to move jobs overseas, we have people standing up saying: We support those companies that are moving American jobs overseas. We support those jobs in China. God forbid you want to interrupt this process.

My colleague says: In 1962, there was this carefully crafted tax agreement on deferral--48 years ago. Do not interrupt that after 48 years. We made this careful agreement 48 years ago.

Let me tell my colleagues what has happened since then. I have shown this on the Senate floor before. In the last 48 years, the tax system has changed a little bit. This is a five-story white house on Church Street in the Cayman Islands called the Ugland House. The first time I showed this chart--by the way, this is enterprising reporting by David Evans from Bloomberg--there were 12,748 companies in this building. It is only a five-story small white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. It was inhabited by 12,748 corporations. A little crowded, I would say. Were they there? No, they just got their mail there. Why did they get their mail there? So they could slip under the American Tax Code and not pay taxes to the U.S. Government.

When I first showed this chart some years ago, it was 12,748 corporations. But there was room for more. Now there are 18,857 entities that call this building home. Is that unbelievable? They must enjoy each other's company, or at least their mail must fraternize.

Mr. President, more than 18,000 companies claim that little building. We made this careful agreement in 1962 on deferral? How dare you deal with the Tax Code in a way that you would upend that 1962 agreement. Everything has changed. There is not a ghost of a chance in 1962 that American companies would have even thought of trying something that audacious--just gather together in a mailbox in a white building someplace to avoid paying your obligation to this country.

I have shown this as well. Wachovia Bank (formerly First Union Bank) bought a sewage system in Bochum, Germany. Why? Did they have sewage specialists on their staff? I don't think so. Did they put out television advertisements: Come do business with Wachovia Bank because we know about sewers or we want to buy sewers in foreign cities? No, they did this to avoid paying U.S. taxes. This is Wachovia Bank. They did not pay $175 million in U.S. taxes because they bought a sewage system from a German city.

Did they move the sewage pipes? No. Do they know anything about sewers? No. They bought it from the German city and leased it back so they could depreciate it and not have to pay U.S. taxes. Unbelievable.

The Tax Code has changed, I say to my friends. It is a punch board of gimmicks allowing people to do things they could not previously have done before, and the most significant enterprise is to move American manufacturing jobs overseas and get a tax break for doing it.

This amendment is very misunderstood based on the discussions by the two previous speakers. There is discussion on the floor of the Senate about what is the motivation for moving jobs overseas--to serve, for example, a foreign constituency; want to move jobs to China to be able to sell into Thailand or Korea. The tax deferral piece of this amendment does not affect you. You can win that argument we are not having, if you wish, but you are misstating what the amendment suggests. The deferral part of this amendment does not do anything of the kind.

This amendment is narrow--narrower than I would have it, as a matter of fact. But it says if you are going to get rid of your American workers, close your plant, move those jobs elsewhere, and then ship back into this country to compete with the American businesses that stayed here, you do not get the advantage of deferring the payment of U.S. taxes. It is just very simple.

The question today is not just who is going to stand up for American jobs on this floor, who is going to stand up for American businesses that stayed here, manufactured here, hired workers here, paid the rent here, who is going to stand here and support that? I have not heard it yet.

Let me go through some points. Before I do, let me mention one other thing. One of my colleagues just said: There are some things you cannot make here. So if you make them abroad, we do not want to punish you in our Tax Code from selling them in this country.

They previously used bananas. I want my colleagues to understand, we actually have a banana exemption. We do not actually spell out bananas, but because the specter of fruit was raised the last time this was discussed, we included a banana exemption.

Of course, we do not grow bananas in the United States. If somebody ships them back here, they will not be affected by this amendment either.

There are a lot of points raised that have nothing at all to do with what we are describing in terms of public policy.

Let me go through a few items. Some people may not know this. I described previously in unsuccessful attempts to try to do what we are doing that in New Jersey, there are a lot of folks who loved their jobs and they worked for a company call Fig Newton. Some actually shoveled fig paste. By the way, the company's name was Nabisco, which stands for National Biscuit Company. But it was not quite so national because Nabisco, the National Biscuit Company, decided the pay they had to provide for people to shovel fig paste in New Jersey was way out of line, so they just took Fig Newtons right off to Mexico. If you want Mexican food, buy some Fig Newtons. It goes on and on. The list is so long.

I want to mention, as I have mentioned before, some of these same stories because it is important to understand what motivates people who want to stand up for American jobs.

Pennsylvania House Furniture--I was in Pennsylvania this weekend--was made in this country for over 100 years with fine Pennsylvania wood. It was a wonderful company making high-end furniture. One day it was sold to La-Z-Boy. La-Z-Boy decided: We are going to move Pennsylvania House Furniture to China, and we are going to ship Pennsylvania wood to China and have Chinese workers put the wood together and ship it back to be sold in the United States. It had nothing to do with whether the folks at Pennsylvania House Furniture were slothful, indolent workers not doing their job. It had nothing to do with that.

What it had to do with is La-Z-Boy did not want to manufacture Pennsylvania House Furniture in the United States. They wanted to acquire 50-cent an hour labor, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in China.

On the last day at work at the Pennsylvania House Furniture manufacturing company, these craftsmen--nearly 500 craftsmen--as the last piece of furniture came off the line, they turned the cabinet over, and then they all gathered round to sign their name on the bottom of the cabinet. These wonderful American craftsmen signed that cabinet. Somebody has a piece of furniture they are probably not aware has all the names of those workers who were fired as those jobs went to China.

Why did they do that? Because they cared about their jobs and were proud

of their work, but they could not compete with 50-cent-an-hour labor.

Stanley Furniture in Virginia is a furniture company that was started by Tom Stanley, a young dairy farmer in Virginia. He started it in a city that now is named Stanleytown. A couple of months ago, it was decided that Stanleytown was going to have some pretty bad news. Stanleytown was going to find out that these jobs were no longer going to be in Stanleytown. Stanley Furniture, another fine furniture manufacturer, was going to China.

Let me read from the Journal of Commerce of this year:

Stanley Furniture's decision to close its plant in the

small town that bears its name fell like a hammer blow on

southern Virginia and resounded across an industry,

increasingly now moving overseas. More than 500 workers will

lose their jobs this year as the manufacturer shuts down

its Stanleytown, VA, plant, where the company has made

furniture since 1924.

So it goes--moving jobs overseas. Let me, if I might, go through a couple of others.

I notice the Hershey company--speaking of Pennsylvania--Hershey company's York Peppermint Pattie is that silver pattie with the ``York'' in the middle and the advertisement that says: ``The cool, refreshing taste of mint dipped in dark chocolate will take you miles away''--in this case, of course, to Mexico because Hershey decided it is time to move. So York Peppermint Pattie moves 260 jobs to Monterey, Mexico--part of a longer term job strategy by Hershey, they said. Well, that is a peppermint pattie. America's manufacturing strategy probably doesn't depend on peppermint patties--who knows.

I have previously mentioned a series of American manufacturers, and I have used this one often because they announced with great fanfare some years ago that they were going to leave America altogether. Not another piece of underwear was going to be made by Fruit of the Loom in the United States. The dancing grapes, for all their advertisements, must have been unhappy. Their advertisements were always happy and upbeat, with guys dressed as grapes and such marching in the meadow. They can't have been very happy when Fruit of the Loom said: We are not going to make underwear in America anymore.

Radio Flyer's little red wagon. This was a 100-year-old company in Chicago. All gone. Now made in Mexico.

Here is another company. I have been talking about this one for a long time. Last week, my colleague from Ohio talked about this company--Huffy Bicycles. You can buy them at Walmart and Kmart and Sears. They were made in Ohio--except, no more. No more. All those workers lost their jobs. All those jobs are in China. All those jobs are done by people who make 50 cents an hour, working 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. Huffy said to the workers in Ohio: You know what, you can't compete, so you are done. On the last day at work, where they parked their cars in the parking lot, those workers who were fired that day left a pair of empty shoes in the places where their cars were parked. It was the only thing they could do to say: You can move our jobs to China, but you can never replace American workers.

So I could go on and on, but I want to describe what so many here in this Chamber wish to ignore. This is a quote from Mr. Paul Craig Roberts, one of the top Treasury officials in the Reagan administration. Here is what he said this year:

Outsourcing is rapidly eroding America's superpower status.

Only fools will continue clinging to the premise that

outsourcing is good for America.

Only fools will cling to that premise. And I agree with him.

Again, another quote from Mr. Paul Craig Roberts:

In order to penetrate and to serve foreign markets, U.S.

corporations need overseas operations. However, many U.S.

companies use foreign labor to manufacturer abroad the

products that they sell in American markets. If Henry Ford

had used Indian, Chinese, and Mexican workers to manufacturer

his cars, Indians, Chinese and Mexicans could possibly have

purchased Fords but not Americans.

Again, he is absolutely right. It seems to me the question is, Will America remain a world-class economic power without a world-class manufacturing capability? Does anybody really believe that could be the case? You are going to decimate and erode a manufacturing base in this country and then say: Things will be just fine; don't worry about it. We can all sell hamburgers to each other and things will be just great? We know better than that. What is happening before our eyes is a hollowing out of America's manufacturing capability.

There is a lot of discussion about what do we do about jobs, what do we do about trying to create new jobs in the country, and that has to do with what is called the faucet. If we are trying to put new jobs in the tub, they say, turn on the faucet. That is fine, and I support a range of policies that try to turn on the faucet to create more jobs in this country. But what about the open drain? As we work on the faucet, what about the drain, when Stanley Furniture says: Well, I know you are trying to create jobs, but we are out of here; or Etch A Sketch in Bryan, OH, says: Yeah, we know every kid plays with Etch A Sketch. We know we have always made it in America. But we were told by Walmart that if we couldn't produce it for $9.99 or less, they wouldn't sell it. If they don't sell it, we are out of business, so we are closing down our plant and moving to China.

The list goes on and on. The question is, What do we do about all of this? My colleagues--too many of them--say: Let's do nothing. Let's act as if nothing is really going on. In fact, let's come in here and say: You know, we made an agreement in 1962 on some deferral tax issue, and let's stick with it.

One of my colleagues earlier today said: You know, we have to worry about American corporations because they pay some of the highest tax rates in the industrial world. Well, that is a little like Penn and Teller talking about fiscal policy, and only one speaks and the other is silent. It is true that our corporate tax rates, I believe second from the top of the OECD countries. But there is another truth. The other truth is that our corporations in America pay an effective tax rate that is right near the bottom. What is the difference? One is a statutory rate--that is what the law says you should pay--and the other is how much you pay, which is right near the bottom. Why? Because we have a punchboard of gimmicks to allow that to happen. I have described a couple: American banks and other companies buying German sewer systems, buying German railcar systems, streetcars, buying German city halls for the purpose of sale-leasebacks so they can avoid paying taxes to the United States. It is pretty unbelievable, when you think about it.

The only reason I have mentioned some of the companies over the years when I have talked about this is to give them full credit for what they are trying to do. They and all their neighbors should understand that they want all the benefits America has to offer, but they don't want to sign up for the responsibilities that exist for Americans, including an American company.

I want our corporations to do well. I want American corporations to be profitable. But I will tell you this: If you have two kinds of corporations, and one decides to stay here and manufacture in our country and the other decides to take the jobs and move to a low-wage, lower tax alternative, I want to be helpful to that corporation that stays here, that hires workers here, that keeps the plant open here and is proud to put a made-in-America label on their product.

There is a company called HMC in this country that makes very substantial industrial products. You can see that this is a company everyone admires. Let me tell you what this corporate CEO has said. The CEO of HMC corporation, Robert Smith, said this:

Offshoring in search of higher profits is a mistake because

it ignores manufacturing's larger purpose in U.S. society.

Here is something else Mr. Robert Smith said, and I compliment him because you will find precious few who will say it.

It is my belief that every American citizen, not only me,

should feel strongly about maintaining one of the most

important cultures we have, and that is manufacturing. Now,

why is it important? Does anybody think we would have

prevailed in the Second World War without the prodigious

manufacturing capability of our country? If anybody is

interested in that, go read Manchester's ``The Glory and the

Dream'' and understand what we did and how we did it in

manufacturing war planes and ships and tanks and

trucks. We had the most unbelievable manufacturing capability

in the history of humankind.

Some say that none of this matters--why should we pick winners and losers? If the marketplace says we manufacture products in China or Mexico, if, in fact, we actually import more cars from Mexico than we export to the entire rest of the world, so what? Don't worry, be happy. That is the way the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants it, and it is what the National Association of Manufacturers wants to have happen, apparently--except I know of companies that belong to both those organizations that have called me and written to me and said that they are dead wrong. How about having a chamber in the U.S. Senate stand up for American manufacturing?

I know that when I talk this way and when I say these things, there are people in this room--and the Washington Post would be a good example--who will instantly say: Aha, I hear all that nonsense. This is about protectionism. It is about America becoming protectionist and building walls around its country to keep goods out.

Are you kidding me? Are they nuts when they talk that way? Last month, we had a $50 billion trade deficit in 1 single month. In a recent year, we had a $750 billion trade deficit. You can make a plausible case that our fiscal policy budget deficit is what we owe to ourselves. You can make that case, and we will pay it back to ourselves. You can't make that case with a trade deficit. The trade deficit is what we owe others in the world, and we will repay that with a lower standard of living in this country inevitably.

The question is, When will we start to decide that this trade strategy is not working? We are dealing with other countries that are engaged in managed trade, and yet we are saying it doesn't matter what happens to us. It just doesn't matter.

We, by the way, spent a century doing what other countries wouldn't or couldn't--in most cases, couldn't--and we lifted up this country. We had unbelievable battles.

The other day, I described the battle on workers' rights. In the first book I wrote, I described James Fyler. James Fyler was shot 54 times. I said--and I shouldn't have--that he died of lead poisoning. He died because he was shot 54 times in 1917 in Ludlow, CO. He was shot because he believed that people who worked underground digging for coal ought to work in a safe workplace and ought to be paid a fair wage. And for that, he gave his life.

There are many things we have done over the past century that people have died for to lift up standards in America, and now they are routine--decent wages, fair labor standards, and safe workplaces. We did all that. Other countries, in many cases, have not. So now the question is, Is it important for us to lift up others around the world or to allow ourselves to be pushed down in terms of the standards we have created and fought for over a long, long time? To me, the answer is self-evident: Let's stand up for what this country has done.

I am all for helping others. I want to lift them up, create standards that hopefully can mirror ours. I am not interested at all in having a Huffy Bicycle management team say to the Huffy workers in Ohio: If you can't compete with China's wages and China's workers, you are out of work, and we don't care what you think.

Well, the workers of Ohio said: You know what, we just can't live on 50 cents an hour, and we can't work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day.

The law won't allow U.S. companies to hire kids, so the company said: That is tough luck. You need to understand that it is a new world out there. If you can't compete, you lose.

Well, this is a race to the bottom in terms of standards.

Some say: Well, we can innovate. We are the innovators, yes, that is true. I chair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and so I held a hearing last week on counterfeiting and piracy. Do you know what? We innovate, and then we see it stolen. Intellectual property is stolen and produced elsewhere. It is always produced elsewhere. We invented the television set--gone, produced elsewhere; computers-- largely produced elsewhere. I could go through a whole list.

The question is, What kind of a country do we want to have? For example, we have done a lot of free-trade agreements. In fact, let me do this. I want to just mention a free-trade agreement with South Korea, and I could go through all of the free-trade agreements and show how unbelievably ignorant our country has been with respect to its own economic self-interest. But let me give one example.

This chart shows the number of cars in South Korea. In South Korea, 98 percent of the cars driven on the streets and roads are made in South Korea. Now, you might think that is really interesting, that they have an appetite for buying those South Korean-made cars. It is not an appetite, it is what that country decides it wants. They do not want South Koreans to buy foreign cars, so 98 percent of the cars on their streets are South Korean cars.

So let's talk about our relationship with South Korea, and it is this: Last year, because we had a recession, we didn't sell as many South Korean cars in our country. At one point, it was close to 800,000 a year. Last year, the South Koreans put 467,000 cars on ships and shipped them to America to be sold here in our country. That is 467,000. Does anybody want to guess how many cars we could sell in Korea last year? Six thousand. So 467,000 to 6,000. Why? Because South Korea doesn't want us to sell American cars in South Korea, and they have dozens of clever devices to stop it.

Our country negotiates a trade agreement with South Korea--guess what, they don't even mention the bilateral automobile problem, not even a word.

Our country did a bilateral agreement with China, a country with which we had a $200 billion trade deficit. We had a huge deficit with China, biggest in the world. Here is what our country said. We said, on bilateral automobile trade we will do this: When you ship a Chinese car to the United States we will only impose a 2.5 percent tariff on your car, but if we ship an American car to be sold in China, you may impose a tariff of 25 percent. You may impose a tariff that is 10 times higher than we would impose in bilateral relationship with a country with which we had a $200 billion trade deficit. If that is not defined as ignorance, then I have missed the definition of ignorance.

Why wouldn't we step up for our economic interest? China, by the way, right now is ratcheting up a very aggressive automobile industry. You are going to see a lot of Chinese cars on the streets in this country in the years ahead.

But I rest my case. I mentioned automobiles. I could mention lots of other issues. I have written books about this. But the fact is, the issue before us today is not somebody coming here and saying, in the 1962 agreement on deferral--or another speaker talking about how if you let people go overseas there will be more jobs here at home.

Let me finally say, this issue of deferral is that in some cases these companies know they never have to pay taxes. The reason? Because they defer and defer on foreign profits. This amendment is only about if you have profits in a foreign subsidiary, from selling back into America, into this marketplace. Some of them can leave to go overseas knowing they will get the advantage of deferral and pay lower taxes than the company that stayed here, but they will get an even better deal. If they hang, we will have somebody in one of these Chambers thumbing their suspenders and shuffling around and harrumphing about maybe what we should do is say all of those people who have money overseas, let's let them bring it back here and pay a 5.25 percent tax rate. You say: Oh, they would never do that. Oh, they sure did. It is the rest of the people who do not get to pay the 5.25 interest. It is just the biggest interests who closed their American companies and moved their companies overseas and produced overseas after they got rid of their American workers. They were told in addition to getting a tax break for doing it, we want to give you something on top of that, the cherry on top of the sundae: If ever you do bring it back, you get to pay a tax rate that is one-half of the lowest tax rate that the lowest income American has to pay. What an unbelievable deal.

Let me say, as I started, if ever someone wishes to hear the strongest defense possible of sending American jobs to China, listen up because in the next few hours we will hear some more of it. We have already heard some.

They don't say it quite this way: We think it is nice that if China is not competitive, and their government decided they don't need to do certain things that we have done to increase standards and lift the American standards, we think it is OK if American jobs migrate elsewhere because we do not believe we have to long remain a world economic power in manufacturing to really be a world economic power.

They could not be more wrong. This is not a big step. This is the smallest of steps that you would take in the direction of saying: You know something, we are going to do something about a very serious problem. We are trying to work the faucet to put more jobs into this country, into this economy, at a tough time. We are also trying to shut the drain in circumstances where our Tax Code rewards those who now leave our country and move their jobs overseas.

If we cannot do that now, then, in my judgment, we can perhaps never do good public policy that lifts this country's economy, stands up for American businesses and American workers.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to propound a unanimous consent request that will extend FAA authority until December 31 of this year. This is another extension. We have had extension after extension of the FAA Reauthorization Act, which expires, so we extend it.

Let me in 1 minute say we have worked on a bill that would reauthorize the FAA. It has many component parts dealing with safety and other issues. It deals with the modernization of our entire air traffic control system. The Europeans are going full steam, and we need to work on this for a wide range of reasons: safety in the skies, better environment, more direct flying routes, less time in the air, and a whole series of things. Yet this piece of legislation that represents the investment in airport infrastructure, modernization of our air traffic control system, and so many other things is continuing to be blocked, and it is a profound disappointment to me.

Senator Rockefeller and I and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and others have worked to write this legislation. It is bipartisan. It passed through the Commerce Committee, passed through

the full Senate, and now we are trying to negotiate an agreement with the House. Someone said to me as I came in today, I understand FAA reauthorization is dead for this session. I said: That is not the case. Senator Rockefeller and I remain hopeful that between now and the end of the year we will be able to solve those remaining few points and get this done. It is critically important--very important--that we get this done.

So I make this unanimous consent request with the understanding that I am continuing to work on it, as is Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison and many others to try to get the FAA reauthorization bill done through the House and the Senate and get it resolved.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 324, H.R. 4853.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

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

Mr. President, I will be mercifully brief. I wished to come to the floor to briefly speak about a couple issues.

First and foremost, the raging debate that is occurring in the country about the expiring tax cuts--the so-called Bush tax cuts that were enacted in the year 2001 that cut taxes across the board. They cut taxes more generously for the wealthiest Americans, but nonetheless they cut taxes for all Americans as well, and they were designed, in 2001, to expire this year.

I did not vote for them in 2001. I voted in 2001 against those tax cuts and not because I wouldn't want to provide tax cuts to the American people, but the proposition, I thought, was flawed. The President inherited the last year of President Clinton's fiscal policy, which produced the only budget surplus we had had in 30 years. From that budget surplus that year, the projection by economists was that we were going to have budget surpluses for the next decade. As a result of that, Mr. Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, had an apoplectic seizure. He said he couldn't sleep because he was worried we were going to pay down the debt too fast.

The Bush administration said: If we are going to have these surpluses, we must return surpluses to the American people. We have to do that through these tax cuts.

I stood on the floor, at my desk, and I said: Why don't we be conservative? Let's decide to wait and see what happens. If we do, in fact, have surpluses, let us provide some tax cuts. But all we have are 10 years of projections. We don't have the real surpluses; we just have projections.

The response was: No, we are not going to do that. We are not going to wait. We are going to have big tax cuts, with the biggest tax cuts going to the wealthiest Americans.

So they were enacted. I did not vote for them, but they were enacted nonetheless.

Almost immediately, we were in a recession. Almost immediately after that, our country was attacked, on 9/11, by terrorists. Then we were in a war in Afghanistan. Then we were at war in Iraq and a war against terrorism generally. We began sending soldiers overseas in harm's way, and thousands were killed and tens of thousands were injured in war. Still the question has always been and remains now, even while we are watching our soldiers walk into harm's way, when do I get my tax cut? Will I continue to get my tax cut next year?

Let me read something Franklin Delano Roosevelt said at a time of war. He said:

Not all of us can have the privilege of fighting our

enemies in distant parts of the world. Not all of us can have

the privilege of working in a munitions factory or a

shipyard, or on the farms or in the oil fields or the mines,

producing the weapons or raw materials that are needed by our

Armed Forces. But there is one front and one battle where

everyone in the United States--every man, woman and child--is

in action. . . .That front is right here at home, in our

daily lives and in our daily tasks. Here at home everyone

will have the privilege of making whatever self-denial is

necessary, not only to supply our fighting men [and women],

but to keep the economic structure of our country fortified

and secure. . . .

``Everyone will have the privilege of making whatever self-denial is necessary.'' We all know self-denial when we see it. We go to the events when the soldiers and National Guard organizations mobilize to leave our country, leave their families, leave their jobs, and go to Afghanistan to fight, go to Iraq to fight. In the morning, they strap on ceramic body armor, load their weapons, and go on their way. Yesterday, nine of them were killed in Afghanistan.

The question here at home is not are we going to pay for the costs of war, because we have not, never have in years. And President Bush, who pushed the tax cuts, said: You will not pay for them. Some of us stood on the Senate floor and said: If we are at war, how about paying for the costs of war? Why do we send soldiers to war and charge it and say to the solders: You come back and pay the bill.

We are still at war, we have a $13 trillion debt, not having paid for a penny of the war, having put all the debt on the shoulders of those who will come home, then, to assume this debt. And now the question is, Can we extend the tax cuts for everyone?

Here is what I think we should do. I understand this economy is weak. I am not going to give a speech about what caused that. I have done that many times. This economy is still weak. I understand the virtue of saying to those earning under $250,000: We will continue to extend that tax cut. I would extend it for 2 years. That is what I think we should do in terms of being able, 2 years from now, to take a look at what is happening in our country, what are our needs in order to lift our country's economy back up. We need to tighten our belt on spending. We need to cut some spending. We also are going to need some additional revenue.

The question is, for those who are making $1 million a year in income and getting an $80,000 tax cut from the 2001 tax bill that was passed by this Congress, should they continue to get that $80,000-a-year tax cut at a time when we have a $13 trillion debt and we are still sending men and women to war, when they are risking their lives and we are not paying for any of it? Should we still do that? The answer, in my judgment, is no.

The American people are waiting and watching for some semblance of seriousness here, some serious approaches that will begin to address what ails this country. I think what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said is dead-on accurate: Not all of us can have the privilege of fighting our enemy in distant parts of the world, but for most of us, the front is right here at home in our daily lives and daily tasks, and here at home everyone would have the privilege of whatever self-denial is necessary, not only to supply our fighting men but to keep the economic structure of our country fortified and secure.

Is anyone going to think about the economic fortunes of America or is it just about ourselves individually? Isn't there a higher calling and higher purpose here in terms of making judgments about these things?

I think it would be wonderful if no one had to pay any taxes. That would be wonderful. But that is not the case. Who is going to pay the costs of some of the things that make this a great country? Who is going to build the roads? Who is going to build the schools and maintain the schools? Who is going to pay for the Centers For Disease Control? How about the Department of Defense? How about the U.S. Forest Service? It goes on and on. We can tighten our belt. Yes, we can spend less in a number of areas. I support that. But we have to have a fiscal policy that is serious. How on Earth, at a time when we are at war, can we decide that our priority is to give an $80,000-a-year tax cut beyond next year--an $80,000-a-year tax cut to someone making $1 million a year? That makes no sense to me.

I think it is time for our country to understand that our national security is not just about our soldiers who are fighting in the field. It is a requirement that we support them, not just by saying we support them but by at least some semblance of self-denial, at least by those who are making millions of dollars a year. The proposition is only to ask that they pay at the same tax rate that they paid throughout the 1990s when the country was booming, sufficiently booming that we had a budget surplus. That is the tax rate the wealthiest in America paid back then. It did not diminish the economy; it lifted up the economy, the fact that we had a fiscal policy that was not moving us deeper into debt but a fiscal policy, rather, that was leading us toward a balanced budget and finally a budget surplus.

I think there is a higher purpose, and all of us need to be called to that higher purpose. It is not about, will we get our tax cut tonight, tomorrow, or next month? Will the wealthy get it? Will everybody get it? That is not what is of interest. What is of interest to everybody in this country, I hope, is, what kind of a future will our children have in the United States of America? Will we allow them to inherit a country that is growing and expanding and providing opportunity for our kids?

I think it is very disappointing that we end this year having done so little because so much has been blocked in the Senate.

I noticed yesterday that another billionaire died in America. Boy, let me make sure I say that when someone makes $1 billion in this country, in most cases I say: You know what, you are extraordinary. That is a pretty extraordinary thing. Many of them have great talents, and good for them. But when billionaires die today, they pay zero estate tax. Think about that. Five billionaires died this year, and this is the year the estate tax went to zero. Some said it is the ``Throw Mama From the Train'' year. This is the year in which there is no estate tax on the assets of billionaires who have never borne a tax. Some of the wealthiest people in this country who have billions of dollars of assets have it through growth appreciation of stock, and they have never borne a tax on that to help pay for a kid to go to school or build a road or help support our Department of Defense and our national security. What a disappointment.

This country deserves better from all of us, to get this done. Again, I believe the best approach at this point is to say, yes, let's go ahead and extend these tax cuts for middle-income workers up to $250,000 a year. Let's do it for 2 years, and then let's see where we are and let's see what the needs of this economy are in order to be sure we have the opportunity to lift this country going forward and provide some economic opportunity in the future.

I wanted to mention one other issue. That is something that I and Senator Bingaman, Senator Brownback, and others introduced yesterday. It deals with something called RES. That is not a foreign language, it is a renewable electricity standard. It is a policy that many other countries have and many of our States have. I believe there are 29 States and the District of Columbia that have renewable electricity standards saying it is our policy that electricity shall be produced from renewable sources for a certain percentage of the electric load.

We proposed 15 percent. We passed that on a bipartisan basis out of the Energy Committee. Why is this important? Because if we are going to be less dependent on foreign oil, move to less dependency on oil from countries that do not like us very much in many cases, if we are going to be less dependent on that, we have to change our energy mix. That means we have to produce more energy from renewable sources. We have to gather energy from the wind and the Sun, where the wind blows and the Sun shines, put it on a wire, and move it to the load centers. That changes the energy mix in our country. The way to do that is the way other countries and the way many of our States have already done it: drive it with a 15-percent renewable electricity standard. I prefer 20, but 15 is what we passed out of that committee, the Energy Committee.

It appears to me that now we are not going to get a larger energy bill in this Congress. That is too bad because we passed a bipartisan bill that would provide greater energy security for our country out of the Energy Committee. At the very least, let's pass a renewable electricity standard that is bipartisan, that will drive the production of new capability in wind and solar and other renewable sources.

In the second quarter of this year, we had a 70-percent reduction in wind energy production--that is the production of facilities to build wind energy. From last year, a 70-percent reduction. The reason? Because we do not have a renewable electricity standard. There was an expectation that we would, and we do not.

Let's not leave this Congress this year with so much unfinished business that I believe is essential to this country.

While I am speaking about it, let me make one additional point, and that is on another piece of legislation that must pass by the end of this year. It rests now in the Senate Finance Committee and it reauthorizes the Special Diabetes Program in this country that is so unbelievably important. The Special Diabetes Program helps all Americans, but it is especially targeted at Native Americans, who in some cases have rates of diabetes that are 10 and 12 times the rate of the national average. We must reauthorize the Special Diabetes Program. If my colleagues could walk into a dialysis center and see the number of people--on Indian reservations especially--hooked up to a dialysis machine, in some cases with only one leg or having lost an arm--the ravages of diabetes are unbelievable, and the number of new cases of diabetes among children of this country is just startling.

I want to show one chart about this. This chart shows the number of people in America over the past 30 years who have been diagnosed with diabetes. This is a full-blown, full-scale, unbelievable epidemic.

The Special Diabetes Program that I and Senator Domenici and Senator Collins and so many others have worked so hard on for a long time has to be reauthorized. I hope very much my colleagues will understand that this is not optional. Go to an dialysis center. Go to an Indian reservation and go to a dialysis center and talk to the people hooked up to those machines and see the amputations and talk to the relatives of people who have died in circumstances where people, over 50 years old on average, 50 or 60 percent of them are affected by diabetes. Especially take a look at the rate of diabetes among children on Indian reservations--and children all across the country. Then say to yourself that this bill doesn't matter. You cannot possibly say that. We must address this issue.

This Congress has done some big things, some important things, and there are some things yet to be done. It is not the end of the year. We have some additional time. My hope is that our colleagues can attempt to give us the best of what both political parties have to offer rather than the worst of each. The American people expect more and deserve more from us.

I wonder sometimes how the majority leader is able to have the patience to try to find a way to steer almost anything through this Chamber. I said yesterday that even a Mother's Day resolution would likely engender a filibuster. It is very hard because we have people who see themselves as a set of human brake pads, whose only destiny is to try to stop everything. The problem is that there are a number of things that must get done for the economic health of this country and for the health of the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 583.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be agreed to, the resolution, as amended, be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration en bloc of the following resolutions which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 640, S. Res. 641, S. Res. 642, and S. Res. 643.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Friday, September 24; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, there will be no rollcall votes during tomorrow's session of the Senate.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator will modify his request so I might be recognized following his 15 minutes.

Mr. President, there is a lot of talk and politics on the floor of the Congress always about something called the American dream. People talk about the American dream. I suppose we reflect on that and think the American dream is about a time the American people have a job that pays well, a job with security, a career with a growth ladder to it, a family, a home, living in a nice community, living on a safe street--the American dream.

We look at the history of this country and discover that beginning early in the last century, we started changing things in America-- lifting up people, doing a whole series of things to develop a group of middle-income Americans. We have been enormously successful, perhaps more than any other country in the world. We expanded a middle class.

Now things are changing, and we see that people are upset, nervous, and in some cases angry. We see reports that they worry their children will not have it as good as they have it. They worry about the future.

What is at the root of all of that, and what can we do about all of that? Everyone wants to do well. All of us have hopes and aspirations for ourselves, our children, our families--the American

dream. Someone once asked J. Paul Getty: How is it that you can be successful? Give me the elements of success.

He said: It is very simple. No. 1, go to school and get the best education you can get. No. 2, get a good job and work really hard. And, No. 3, strike oil. That is the advice of J. Paul Getty.

I suppose that works if you are J. Paul Getty. But his advice, of course, makes a lot of sense on the first two points: get the best education you can and get a job and do well, work hard.

The problem is today, in late September of 2010, a lot of people woke up this morning without a job and cannot find one. It is estimated there are about 20 million Americans this morning who woke up unemployed. Most of them put on their clothes and went out looking for work, a triumph perhaps of hope over experience because many of them have tried for a long while and have not been able to find a job. And they are very worried there may not be a job for them in the future.

We had 2.1 million workers in the past two years having to leave manufacturing plants, losing their jobs as manufacturing workers. Those are often the very good jobs. They pay well with good benefits, in most cases. Mr. President, 2.1 million of them have lost their manufacturing jobs in the last 2 years; more than 5 million have lost their jobs since 2000.

What do we do about that? What can we tell the American people when they see their neighbors, their friends, and their relatives searching for a job, having been laid off from somewhere they worked for 15, 20, 25 years? Then they read in the paper that in Stanleytown, VA, a company was started by a man named Thomas Stanley, a young dairy farmer in southern Virginia, who decided he wanted to create furniture that was of superior craftsmanship and affordable still, so he started making furniture. It became Stanleytown, and he employed highly skilled craftsmen, 1,300 people who carried on his vision at a manufacturing plant of 1.7 million square feet.

Then those who make Stanley furniture woke up a couple months ago and read this in the paper:

Stanley Furniture's decision to close its plant in the

small town that bears its name fell like a hammer blow on

southern Virginia and resounded across an industry

increasingly moving overseas. More than 500 employees will

lose their jobs this year as the manufacturer shuts down its

Stanleytown, VA, plant, where the company has made furniture

since 1944.

Where is it going? It is going to Asia. Those 500 people--I do not know their names. I cannot tell you who they are. I would not recognize their faces because I do not know any of them. But I am sure those 500 people are paying an enormous price in their lives for having lost jobs at a plant in a company that produced a product about which they cared very deeply. Gone to Asia. Why? Were these bad workers? Did they decide it was a job, but just a job, so they were going to loaf all day and not do their work? No, it was not that at all. In search of low wages, this company decided: We are going to Asia to produce this furniture.

I mention Stanley Furniture. The other day I mentioned a furniture company from Pennsylvania because I had just been to Philadelphia-- Pennsylvania House Furniture. It has a very similar story in many ways. Pennsylvania House Furniture, made for a century in Pennsylvania, upper level furniture, fine furniture made by craftsmen, one day it was purchased by La-Z-Boy, and La-Z-Boy decided: We do not want to make Pennsylvania House Furniture in Pennsylvania. We want to take the Pennsylvania wood and ship it to China, have them put it together, and ship it back to America to be sold. They told all the workers: You are done. It is over. The plant is closed.

On the last product of the day, on the last day at work, these craftsmen who made this fine furniture for Pennsylvania House Furniture turned over the last cabinet that came down the line, the last one they had made, and they all signed their names--proud craftsmen working for a company that existed over 100 years, the last piece of furniture ever to be made with American hands. Jobs gone.

The list is endless. This is not a short list. Hershey chocolates, York peppermint patties: ``The cool refreshing taste of mint dipped in dark chocolate will take you miles away.'' In fact, it will take you so far away it will take you to Mexico because that is where they moved those jobs when they shut down the mint Hershey's plant in the United States of America. It will take you miles away. It certainly took away the jobs of those who were working there.

I am not going to go through all these charts because I have done it before. I know what repetition means around this place. But I want to talk just for a moment about the consequences of this to a lot of people whose names we do not know and faces we would not recognize but who are living as victims of something they cannot control. That is the erosion of America's manufacturing base with jobs shipped overseas wholesale and the hollowing out of America's manufacturing capability.

Why does that matter? No. 1, because a lot of people are losing jobs who need jobs in this country. And, No. 2, this country will not remain a world economic power unless we have a world-class manufacturing capability. That is just a fact.

The question is, When will we stand up for this issue and decide we have to do something about the export of American jobs?

Paul Craig Roberts--I have met him--former Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Reagan said:

Outsourcing--

He means outsourcing of jobs--

is rapidly eroding America's superpower status. Only fools

will continue clinging to the premise that outsourcing is

good for America.

Another quote, if I may, from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:

In order to penetrate and serve foreign markets, U.S.

corporations need overseas operations . . . However, many

U.S. companies use foreign labor to manufacture abroad the

products they sell in American markets. If Henry Ford had

used Indian, Chinese and Mexican workers to manufacture his

cars, Indians, Chinese and Mexicans could possibly have

purchased the Fords but not Americans.

Because they would not have had the jobs. Pretty prescient. Pretty interesting.

This is a chart that shows Stanley Furniture's workers in the manufacturing plant. But, of course, that was then, and now it has gone to Asia.

I want to show this picture only because the Los Angeles Times needs to know this. I spoke of this subject some while ago and showed a picture of the dancing grapes that represented the advertising campaign for Fruit of the Loom underwear. They left America and are produced elsewhere. The Los Angeles Times wrote a piece saying I was on the floor of the Senate talking about underwear, not describing that I was talking about trade and the movement of jobs overseas. If they write about it again, they might mention I was talking about jobs moved overseas that were performed by American workers to produce Fruit of the Loom.

I have described often Radio Flyer--a little red wagon made in Illinois for over 100 years by an immigrant who put together a company--that almost every child has experienced. Almost every American child has ridden in a Radio Flyer little red wagon. But they are not made in America anymore. They have gone to China.

Huffy bicycles, gone to China; left Ohio, gone to China. Not made for $11 an hour by an Ohio worker, as was the case, but made now by Chinese workers who make 50 cents an hour, working 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day.

I have often mentioned, and will mention again, that all of these folks, on the last day of work, when they walked out to the parking lots after having been fired so their jobs could be moved to China, left pairs of empty shoes in the parking lots saying: Yes, you can move our jobs, but you will never replace us. They are never going to replace these workers.

This represents a photograph of a company called HMC. Not everybody is moving overseas. There are some manufacturers--and I want to pay attention to what the owner of HMC said recently. They make high-tech gearboxes, high-tech machinery. HMC--made in America and enormously proud of it.

Let me mention what the president and CEO of HMC said:

Offshoring in search of higher profits is a mistake . . .

because it ignores manufacturing's larger purpose in U.S.

society.

This is from the CEO of an American manufacturer. Further he says:

It's my belief that every American citizen, not only me,

should feel strongly about maintaining one of the most

important cultures we have, and that is manufacturing.

Good for Mr. Robert Smith, wherever he is. Good for Mr. Smith, president and CEO of HMC, believing that manufacturing is important in this country.

What does all this mean? Our economy is in some significant trouble for a couple of reasons. No. 1, for about a decade and a half or two decades, we have pursued a different trade strategy--a trade strategy in which we have refused to stand up for our economic interests.

For the first 25 or 30 years after the Second World War, it was just understood that we were the biggest, the best, the strongest--we were American. Whether it was trade competition or any other competition, we could beat anybody in this world with one hand tied behind our back. Much of what was imported were trinkets that were inexpensive trinkets that were pretty worthless. We made products that were made in America, products that lasted, products that worked, products on which you could count.

But in the second period following that first quarter century after the Second World War, things have changed. We have largely had concessional trade practices. It used to be we just did outright foreign aid to help other countries. Not anymore. We have for the last 20 years or so done concessional trade practices to help other countries. We have said: We will do a trade agreement with you that is unfair to us because we are bigger and stronger and better than you are. So here is a trade agreement. We have done that time after time. Therefore, we now have very large trade deficits.

Let me show the consequences of a trade agreement.

We have trade agreements with Korea. Here is the issue of automobiles with Korea. Last year, because we had a deep recession, we were not buying as many cars. Last year the Koreans put on boats and sent to this country 467,000 cars made in Korea--467,000 Korean cars. Those are Koreans who go to work in the morning to a job. They are making cars. They are pleased as punch they make cars because they sell them in Detroit, Bismarck, and Denver.

Here is what we were able to sell in Korea: not 467,000 cars, Korea allowed us to send 6,000 cars to Korea.

One might say: Is that an accident? Of course, it is not. It is exactly what the Korean Government wanted. They want the jobs in their country. They want to make the cars in their country and send them here, and they do not want our workers making cars we send to Korea.

If you wonder about that, I have another chart that shows what you will confront on the roads in South Korea. If you drive down the road in South Korea, what you will see are a lot of vehicles, and you will see almost no foreign vehicles. Ninety-eight percent of the cars on the road in Korea are made there. They are made and manufactured in that country. Now, is that an accident? That is exactly what the Korean Government wants. They do not want foreign cars, and they do all kinds of things to keep them out. They want jobs for their people.

So we now have a trade agreement with Korea that we have not yet ratified or voted on in the Senate, and they didn't address the automobile issue. It is unbelievable to me. Why would they do that? How about standing up for our interests, for our workers?

So, Mr. President, the reason I came to the floor of the Senate is that there is now on the calendar a piece of legislation that would at least begin the process of trying to even up some of the trade issues. We actually, strangely enough, give a tax benefit for U.S. companies who decide they are tired of manufacturing in America. If a company says: Let's get rid of those workers. Let's lock up that manufacturing plant. Let's send the jobs to Senshen, China, and manufacture there. Then we will ship those bicycles and wagons and trailers and trucks and garage door openers back, and we will sell them to Americans. That is what we will do. And our country says: You know what. That would be good. Why don't you do that--fire your workers, get rid of your manufacturing plant, go to China, and I tell you what we will do. We will give you a tax break for doing it.

We have voted four times in the Senate to eliminate that tax break. I have offered that piece of legislation four times. On all four occasions I have lost the vote. We are now about to vote again in the coming days. Maybe at last--at long last--when 20 million Americans can't find work, maybe we will see if we plug the drain just a bit on these jobs that are moving out of this country at a rapid pace to be located in low-wage countries around the rest of the world. Maybe now is the time. Maybe people here will say: You know whose interests I stand up for? The workers in my State, American workers, people who are producing good products that say made in America.

When I speak this way, there are some who will say: Well, you are being a protectionist. You want to change things. You are being a protectionist. You are a xenophobic isolationist stooge. You don't get it at all. It is a new world order. We have all these countries who can do things cheaper than we can do them, and you don't seem to understand that. So you are just a protectionist.

Well, let me plead guilty to wanting to protect our country's economic interest. I would hope every desk in this Chamber would be occupied by someone with similar instincts and wanting to stand up and protect the economic interests in this country.

I am not interested in withdrawing from the world. I am saying, however, that after a long struggle and doing the things that are necessary to improve things, as we have done in the struggle for workers' rights, the struggle for safe workplaces--and people were killed over those struggles. I described in the first book I wrote about James Fyler who was shot 54 times. You know why he was shot 54 times in Ludlow, CO? Because he believed people who went underground and dug for coal ought to be able to work in a safe workplace and be paid a decent wage, and for that he was killed.

We have struggled for a century to raise standards, to get safe workplaces and decent wages. Now, all of a sudden we are told it is a new world order. We should compete with workers who are going to work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, for 50 cents an hour. If we can't compete with that, tough luck.

That is what they told all the folks at Huffy bicycles. They said: If you can't compete with the Chinese prices, you are out of luck because that is our standard. The list is endless. Just about every kid has played with Etch A Sketch. Everybody knows what Etch A Sketch is, a toy made in America. It was the principal employer of a town in this country. But no more. Walmart told Etch A Sketch: You won't be marketing at Walmart unless you meet this price, and Etch A Sketch has gone to China. All those people who were proud of making a children's toy are now not working.

I would be happy to yield.

I would say to the Senator from Ohio that it is a business plan these days for too many companies. Not all, but too many. There are some companies--and I just described a company, a CEO, and I was giving him credit because what he said is important--a company called HMC. It is a company that manufactures very high-tech products in this country. He says:

It's my belief that every American citizen, not only me,

should feel strongly about maintaining one of the most

important cultures we have, and that is manufacturing.

The fact is, we are in a situation where a lot of companies have decided they would like to produce elsewhere, hire other workers, but they would like American consumers to buy their products. The question in the longer term is, Who is going to buy those products if American consumers don't have jobs? I mean, that is the question.

I have talked a little about China. I am chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, and I just chaired a hearing for 2 hours about the issue of piracy and counterfeiting and so on in China. One of our witnesses described something I had written about in my book as well; that is, American businesses should know their intellectual property is not secure in China. It will be stolen.

I am not a big fan of them--in fact, I have fought the pharmaceutical company pretty tough on the floor of the Senate--but Viagra, made by Pfizer, was quickly reengineered in China and just sold without any respect for property rights or intellectual property rights. In fact, the witness over at the hearing this afternoon said the Chinese, once they reengineered Viagra and sold it on their own basis, had a new twist on it. They were putting it in soft drinks and hot dogs. So it was kind of interesting to hear this guy, who is an expert in intellectual property rights, describe his view.

He finally said, by the way, Pfizer has won a case against the Chinese for reverse engineering of Viagra. But this discussion is not about that, it is about jobs in virtually every industry in this country. There are service industries that can never leave, of course. You can't take a taxicab driver's job and move it to China or India because they have to drive a cab up and down an American street. But Alan Blinder and others have said we are talking about the potential of tens of millions of additional American jobs leaving unless there is a strategy to understand that our participation in the global economy is designed to raise up others, not push down our standards. It is designed to be in our economic self-interest to try to keep Americans employed in good jobs that pay well.

So we have a lot to do. I mentioned, Senator Brown, that we are likely to have another vote in the Senate in the coming days on the question of shutting down this unbelievably ignorant provision in tax law that says if you leave America and get rid of your workers and padlock your plant and then go produce the jobs in China or India and then sell back here, we will give you a tax break for doing that. We would like to reward you for doing that. The other side of that is that a lot of American business men and women who started their companies here don't intend to go anywhere. They are here and they are proud of it and they are not leaving. They are going to hire their friends and neighbors in their communities, and they are going to make the best products possible. They are going to stick a made-in-America label on it. But they are disadvantaged. It is not just the workers but those American business owners who are now having to compete against the one that was across the street and then went to China and now has a lower tax rate because our Tax Code says that is fine.

I hope at long last that maybe we will have enough people here with the courage to say: It is not fine with us. It is not fine with people who are unemployed in this country. It is not fine with business men and women who are disadvantaged because of it.

I will be happy to yield.

Well, I thought it was interesting that when the Senator from Ohio and I worked hard on putting together the Economic Recovery Act to try to put a net under this economy and stop it from collapsing--and we were probably close to having a complete collapse. Despite the folks who come to the Senate floor who say no jobs were created, the CBO says 3 million jobs were created or saved. But when we put that together, Senator Brown from Ohio and I and others wrote something called a ``Buy American'' provision, and people nearly had apoplectic seizures here. They were doing cartwheels in the Chamber, so upset and concerned and nervous about what this would do, if with our money, in order to employ our people, we decided to buy our products. How selfish is that, they would say.

It was exactly the right thing to do. Why would we try to stimulate economic recovery in America by buying goods from China or Japan? So what we tried to do is to say that there should be a preference with these funds to buy American. But even that was unbelievably controversial. We got it done, and I am pleased we did.

While the Senator is here, I wanted to make the point that the Huffy bicycle story is almost the perfect storm of everything that is wrong. These are workers in Ohio who made $11 an hour plus benefits and then they all got fired. I have described about their leaving their empty shoes in the parking lot on the last day of work and so on. But the Huffy bicycle was sent to China. I described the conditions under which they are now made. This brand still exists. It is still sold in major American stores, Wal-Mart and Kmart and so on. But once it was sent to China, it declared bankruptcy and then

the Chinese bought the brand. The bankruptcy meant that not only did the workers in Ohio lose their jobs, the Federal Government here, under the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, assumes the pension of the fired workers, and China ends up with the brand. We still buy the bicycles but the people are out of work and we are stuck with the pensions.

It is almost a perfect storm of what is wrong with what we are doing in this country. The question is, when will it ever change? The minute we talk about it the Senator from Ohio will be called--well, he's one of those protectionists. He has a narrow head; doesn't understand the breadth and depth of this new global economy. They say that about me and all of us who say this doesn't add up.

We have to stand up for this country's economic interests. We don't need to put a fence around America. We don't need to decide there is not a world economy--there is a global economy. We need fair rules and to stand up for our economic interests, and that has not been the case; it has not.

The question is what do we do about that. At least you can take a baby step in the right direction. One of my regrets, serving in this institution, is that I may well leave this institution without having succeeded, at least on this issue. I have been proud to participate in a lot of things that have been successful in advancing public policy but this has meant a lot to me. I think America is losing its capability, its energy, it manufacturing base. People are losing hope, with nearly 20 million of them out of work. I think it is very important for us to understand we have to address this issue.

There is no social program in this country as important as a good job that pays well. That is a fact. We have to find ways to put people back to work in this country. People say innovation--I am all for innovation. But we innovate, we create the product, but they manufacture it somewhere else and the jobs are gone. It is very important for us to rebuild our manufacturing capability in this country.

I said at the start we will not long remain a world economic power unless we have world class manufacturing capability. The American people need to see some hope from this Chamber. At least one step, one ray of hope would be if we decide in the coming several days to enact legislation that is now, I believe, rule XIV'ed at the desk, that we likely will have debate on--and I will be here during that debate--that will say finally, at long last, we will stop, put an end to this insidious provision in the IRS code that says if you move your American jobs to China we want to reward you with a tax break. That has to end. It has to end, the sooner the better.

Let me end by saying there is plenty in this country that needs fixing but there is a lot to work with because there is plenty right in this country as well. I have spoken previously about the New York Times 1-inch story about a man named Stanley Newberg. Stanley Newberg, with his father, left his country in Europe to flee the persecution of the Jews, landed in New York, went peddling fish with his dad, went to school, an immigrant kid, went to college, became a lawyer, went to work for an aluminum company, managed the place, finally bought the place, then died. When they opened his will he left his $5.7 million to the United States of America, he said, with gratitude for the privilege of living in this great place. What a wonderful thing to hear. What a wonderful thing to do. It is a wonderful reminder, it seems to me, how important this place called America is in the heart of many people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to speak today for a few moments about the unfinished business of the Senate, but I will focus on only one issue.

We come now to September of an even-numbered year. We will have an election in November, and then we will have a lameduck session, apparently, and the Congress will end its session. Then the question is, What is left on the table? What is the unfinished business? What has not been done that needs to be done for this country? It is a very long list, unfortunately. I would say the reason, in most cases, is we have experienced in this Congress less cooperation and more determination to block almost anything than at any time I have seen in the 30 years I have served here. It doesn't matter what the issue is. We have had issues that are noncontroversial, that get 94 or 98 votes in favor of the issue, that have been blocked when brought to the floor on a motion to proceed. We have a noncontroversial issue, a motion to proceed brought to the floor on something on which there is no controversy, and it is subject to a filibuster, and then a cloture motion has to be filed. Then 2 days have to pass before it ripens. We have a cloture vote, and then following the cloture vote, the minority says: Well, we insist that the 30 hours postcloture be used. So 30 hours has to be burned off. Only then can you get to a vote on a noncontroversial issue. Then you have the vote, and it is 98 to 1. That has happened throughout this year--continual efforts to block everything; deciding that the best strategy politically, apparently, for the minority here in the U.S. Senate is to block everything.

The result is that the list of unfinished business in this Senate is unbelievable. Not one appropriations bill will be done when we break for October. An energy bill which I intend to speak about today is critically important for this country's future and has not been done. Extending the tax extenders, the research and development tax credit, and so many other issues that are important have not been done. It is not because Senator Reid hasn't tried as majority leader. He has tried in every way to make progress on these issues. We have just not been able to get it done.

Let me speak for a moment about one issue that will represent the unfinished business, regrettably, unless there is a change of heart somehow and perhaps at the end of this session, in a lameduck session, we are able to get it done; that is, energy.

Energy affects everyone's lives. They don't think about it, but they get up in the morning and perhaps take a shower. That is energy coming from a hot water heater. They turn off an alarm clock first. That is energy coming from electricity. They then go down and perhaps have a slice of toast. That is energy from the toaster. They have some coffee, which uses energy from a stove. They put a key in the ignition and drive to work--energy from the gas tank of that vehicle. Almost every waking moment is blessed with abundant energy resources in this country. We don't even think about it. We do all of those things in the first hour of our day and never think about the fact that energy played such a central role.

Here is the dilemma. Our country, in large part, runs on oil--not exclusively but in large part--oil and natural gas. Coal is a very important part of producing electricity, but oil is 70 percent of our transportation, and here is the circumstance we face. Nearly two-thirds of the oil we use in America we have to get from somewhere else. We use one-quarter of all the oil that is sucked out of this planet every single day. We put straws in this planet, called drilling rigs, and we drill holes very deep into the surface of this planet, and we find oil and we suck oil out of the planet, and one-fourth of it must come to this little spot on the globe called the United States of America. That is the prodigious appetite we have for energy, and it enhances our lives in every way. But it doesn't add up. We use one-fourth of all the world's energy in our country, but we produce only 10 percent of the world's energy, and we have only 3 percent of the world's energy reserves. That is not an equation that adds up.

So if two-thirds of our oil comes from outside our country--some of it from countries that don't like us very well--what are the consequences of that? Does that represent adequate national security when we are dependent on that amount of oil from others? It does not. It represents a very deep vulnerability that one day that supply of oil could be cut off from our country, and our economy would be flat on its back.

What do we do about that? Well, we should produce more, to the extent we can, and we are, and I will talk about that in a moment. We should conserve more. We should be concerned about the efficiency of its use. We should find new sources of energy. We should convert the automobile fleet, to the extent we can, to an electric fleet. We should continue to invest in the longer stream strategies such as fuel cells and hydrogen. All of those things are necessary. We should have a renewable electricity standard that drives the production of electricity from renewable energy that says: Here is where America needs to go. Here is what we want to produce in our future. Count on it, believe in it, invest in it, because this is America's policy for the next decade. We should do that. It is called a renewable electricity standard. We should build a transmission capability around the country, just as we did interstate highways--an interstate transmission grid that allows us to produce energy where the wind blows and the sun shines and move it to the load centers that need the energy. All of these things are necessary. Yet the prospect is that they will all be left on the drawing table at the end of this session of the Congress.

Let me describe, if I might, what we have done and what we threaten to lose. A year ago last June, we passed on a bipartisan basis out of the Energy Committee here in the Senate a piece of legislation that reduces our dependence on foreign energy; increases our domestic production of energy from virtually all sources; establishes a renewable electricity standard; helps create a transmission superhighway; electrifies and diversifies our vehicle fleet;

enhances our energy efficiency; expands clean energy technology; and will train the energy workforce of tomorrow. We did all of that, passed that out of the Energy Committee and did it on a bipartisan basis. And we threaten to lose all of that progress at the end of this session unless we get some cooperation on the floor of the Senate.

I have described a bit of this, but let me do it by chart. Our dependence on foreign energy--and this translates mostly to foreign oil by sector. You can see that the most significant sector that increases our dependence on foreign oil is the transportation sector. We use 70 percent of our oil in the transportation fleet. Seventy percent of our oil is used in transportation. That is why all of us understand that we have to convert.

By the way, moving to an electric transportation fleet--and I will talk a bit about that later--it is not new; it is back to the past in many ways. When President Taft decided that the horse and buggy had outlived its usefulness as a mode of transportation outside of the White House--he ordered an electric vehicle, the Baker electric vehicle. So the fact is, it is not as if electric vehicles haven't been around; they have.

When Henry Ford decided that the Model T shall have an internal combustion engine because Thomas Edison suggested that was the way to go, that determined for the future what we were going to be doing for a long, long time. Then in 1916 our country said: You know what we want to do, we want to reward anybody that goes and finds oil and gas because we are building this automobile fleet with the internal combustion engine that needs to use gas stations every week or two, so we need to have gasoline at these gas stations. In 1916, we decided as a country to say: If you are looking for oil and gas, God bless you. We want to reward you. We are putting in place deep, permanent tax incentives to say: You go look for oil and gas because that is good for the country.

So here we are nearly a century later, and the problem is that we now know that being dependent on others for two-thirds of our oil--70 percent of which is used to run our transportation fleet--holds America hostage. It holds our economy hostage and holds our future hostage. So what do we do about that?

Here is a chart that shows the use of energy in this country. At this point, coal fuels about half of the electricity generated in our country. That comes from coal. There is a problem with coal, and that is, when you burn it to produce electricity, it puts carbon into the atmosphere, and we now know that contributes to climate change and global warming, putting more and more carbon into the atmosphere is troublesome.

So now we come to an intersection that is different from any other intersection we have been at before: trying to ensure a better energy future and at the same time address climate change. That is a pretty difficult proposition but not impossible.

By the way, our energy future will not be a future without coal, so the question is, How do we deal with the fact that burning coal produces carbon? Well, the energy legislation we have produced begins to address that by saying that there are a lot of ways to separate carbon when coal is burned and to use that carbon in a lot of different ways, one of which is to put it underground to enhance oil recovery from an oil well. If you put carbon deep into the ground in an oil well that is almost depleted, you can move oil out of that oil well. That is called enhanced oil recovery. Another way is just storing this carbon underground. Another is to understand there are uses for carbon that can produce additional fuel. You can take the carbon from a coal plant, strip the carbon from the emissions, and use it to feed algae. Algae is that single-cell pond scum that you see--the green scum on top of water. But if you grow algae--and how does algae grow? In water, sunlight, and CO2. To grow algae, you take the CO2, grow algae with it and then harvest the algae, and you then get diesel fuel. So you create something--you have a problem that creates a solution. Solve a problem by creating a product. That is another approach. There are more. There are other ways to address this.

There is a patent by a guy in California who says he has the silver bullet. You can use coal and get rid of the CO2, because he mineralizes the entire effluents from a coal plant and turns it into a product that encompasses all of the CO2 that is harder and more valuable than concrete. So that brings the cost of capturing and containing CO2 down to near zero, he says. I don't know whether that is accurate; all I know is there are a lot of interesting ideas out there about how to continue to use coal and protect this country's environment at the same time.

I would say one other thing about this. A woman scientist from Sandia National Laboratory testified before a subcommittee that I chaired, and she said: You think of carbon, CO2 emissions, as a problem. Why don't you think of carbon as a product? Then she described what you can do with carbon as a value-added product. She is absolutely right.

I believe that in 5, 10, 15, 20 years, if we make the right investments, we will almost certainly be able to continue to use coal, our most abundant resource, and do it in a way that protects this country's environment by sequestering and providing a beneficial use for carbon.

So 48 percent of the fuel used for electricity comes from coal. As you see, some comes from natural gas, some is hydroelectric, and that represents a descriptive use of the various kinds of resources in this country.

I mentioned a while ago that the Energy bill had what is called a renewable electricity standard--RES. Why is that necessary? Because you have to decide where you are headed. You have to drive toward a goal. I support a 20-percent renewable electric standard. If I buy a kilowatt hour of electricity, I want 20 percent of that to come from renewables. Twenty percent of that, by 2020, would create 100,000 more new jobs. But much more important than that is it would put us on the road to what we should be doing; that is, maximizing the production of renewable energy.

The fact is, taking energy from the wind makes a lot of sense. It is not polluting. Somewhere in this country, the wind blows almost all the time. Perhaps I have a vested interest because the Department of Energy says the State of North Dakota is the windiest State in America. We are born leaning to the northwest. There is just a lot of wind in our State. So we have the capability all across this country to produce substantial amounts of wind energy.

This picture shows what we are doing these days in sunflower fields, where we grow sunflowers and harvest energy from the wind. It is really pretty simple and works very well.

This chart describes how dependent and how addicted we are to oil. The top oil consumers in 2008--you can see the green line is the United States. It far exceeds the use of oil by anyone else on this planet.

China is next but, of course, China has, I think, 1.4 billion people.

Tomorrow there will be, on Capitol Hill, a Nissan LEAF. I am not advertising for Nissan, I have never driven one. I will drive one tomorrow, because they have a new electric car coming here for people to test drive. I have described a bit about the electric vehicle future, and I, along with Senators Alexander and Merkley, from Oregon, have introduced legislation that would move this country toward an electric drive future. I think it is a great piece of legislation.

This country needs to decide where it is headed and then create incentives and a roadmap to get there. There is an old saying that if you don't care where you are going, you are never going to be lost. It is true for this country as well. I believe it is far better for this country to set a course, create a destination, and then say to people and investors--to everyone--here is where we are headed. You can count on it, believe in it, and invest in it, because here is where America is going. That is what we ought to do.

There is not a lot of time left in this legislative session. One of the very important pieces of unfinished business reflects what I have described in general form; that is, energy production, conservation, excessive dependence on foreign oil, a concern about the environment, energy conservation and efficiency, and all of this is critically important.

I come from a State that is producing a lot of energy, no question about that.

When I was a little boy, in my hometown of 300 people, there was never much going on. So we would drive up and down Main Street forever seeing if something was going on, and it never was. Sometimes we would go to an adjoining town 20 miles away to see if there was anything going on there, because that was a town of about 800 people--much larger--and there was never anything going on there either.

What happened one day is that news reached our town that somebody was going to drill an oil well 2 miles west of Regent, ND. We thought this was unbelievable, something is going to go on. So they hauled in these big rigs with a truck, and lots of metal, and they built this little pyramid, and all these strange, new people were in our town, and then this oil rig went up--a drilling rig. Then they put lights on it. At night, in a town where there was nothing to do, we would drive out and park our cars and look at the lights on the oil rig because there was something happening. It was so exciting. I can remember as a little boy looking at that oil rig thinking that this is unbelievable, something has come to our town--it and a circus, but they were in different years. It took some while to put it up. They do it now in 30 days. But it took a while to drill this well, and then our town was like a balloon that lost the air, because they discovered it was a dry hole. So that was my acquaintance with oil and drilling and the people who decide to go out and look for a source of energy, and remembering the lights as a young boy.

Now, in my State, I asked the U.S. Geological Survey about 3, 3\1/2\ years ago, to do an assessment of what is called the Bakken shale. That is a formation that is in most of western North Dakota and a fair amount of eastern Montana. It is a formation of shale rock that is 10,000 feet, or 2 miles, below the surface of the ground. It is very extensive. They do core samples way down so they know where that shale exists. It is 100 feet thick. When I had the U.S. Geological Survey assess how much oil would be recoverable from the Bakken formation-- which you could not have gotten 10 years ago, because we didn't know how--the USGS said: We believe there is up to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil from that. That is the largest amount of recoverable oil, using today's technology, that we have ever assessed in the history of the lower 48 States. We have 120 or 130 oil rigs in western North Dakota drilling wells, and they each drill a new well in 30 days, and then it moves. At each well site, there are 1,000 discrete truck visits back and forth. You can imagine the activity that is going on. They go down 10,000 feet, with 1 drilling rig, 2 miles down, and make a big curve with that rig and go out 2 miles searching for the middle third of a 100-foot seam. That is how sophisticated it is. When they find it, they go out 2 miles, and then they fracture that rock with hydraulic fracturing--water under high pressure--and the oil drips, and they put a pump in, and they are getting up to 2,000 barrels per day out of this Bakken formation in some of these wells. It is unbelievable.

I didn't intend to describe it at that length, but the point is we are producing more oil in this country. We are producing more, but not nearly enough to make us less dependent, or even close to independent. We are still so unbelievably vulnerable to foreign oil. If nothing else would drive the Congress to decide we have to do better and do more in energy, it ought to be that we are unbelievably dependent. God forbid that some day somebody wakes up in this country and understands that none of their electricity works because terrorists have interrupted the supply of oil, they have brought down the grid system, and somehow we don't have electricity and we don't have oil.

This country needs better security and more energy security than that. That is the reason to have an energy bill. I have said often that I believe in doing everything. I come from a high school class of nine. There were no foreign languages in that class, so I didn't take Latin, but I have always felt these Latin words describe my approach on energy: totus porcus. I think that means ``whole hog.'' I believe we ought to do everything we can and do it well. Should we maximize renewables? Yes. Should we drill in areas where there is oil and gas domestically? The answer is yes. Should we proceed with ethanol and the biofuels? You bet your life. Should we continue to work on coal and make the investments necessary to sequester carbon or use it to produce other fuel? The answer is, of course, that we should do all of that.

Should we be more conservation minded? We are prodigious users and wasters of energy. I also think of the words totus porcus when I pull up to a stop light in Washington, DC, and somebody pulls up next to me driving a Hummer; it is like driving a tank down the streets of a major American city, and it is getting probably 6 miles per gallon. Now I will hear from them, I am sure.

This country can do better in every single area of energy: conservation, efficiency, energy production, and also distribution, and the pipelines that are necessary, and the transmission lines that are necessary.

I mentioned earlier that the Energy bill we passed has the capability of helping produce an interstate highway of transmission. That is very important. When the winds blow--if you are going to gather energy from the wind and use it, you have to transmit it someplace on transmission lines. We can't build them in this country. We have built 11,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in the last 9 years, and do you know what we have done on high voltage interstate transmission lines? It is 660 miles. Why? You can't build them. There are a dozen ways for people to say no, and they do: not on my property, not in our State--not here or there. So you have planning problems, siting problems, and price problems.

We are probably not going to be able to get to this bill now, which will represent the important unfinished business this year and addresses these important issues. I may well be the only person who cares. There is not a big fuss here about leaving on the floor an energy bill that was bipartisan and was passed by the Energy Committee a year and a quarter ago now. I think others in this country understand the vulnerabilities of this country. We respond sometimes to catastrophes. We respond sometimes when something awful happens. So some day if, God forbid, we wake up and flip the switch and the lights don't come on, or we get in our vehicle and go to find oil and it doesn't exist, so there is no gas for the cars, then we will understand that somehow, some way, we should have done something that addresses what we know is a vulnerability for this country.

The intersection of better energy policy and policy that addresses the issue of climate change is an intersection we can't ignore. We are at that intersection, and there is about to be an accident unless we make smart choices. I hope in the coming weeks in the Congress we might, all of us, decide let's try to reduce that list of unfinished business by at least doing something that represents a bipartisan consensus out of a committee, a major committee, in this Congress, the Energy Committee. This is a good bill that deserves passage. It will strengthen this country's energy and America's security generally.

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