Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to visit about two issues, the first of which is a bill we passed out of the Senate Energy Committee earlier this morning. I wish to give some context to what we have done. It will perhaps not get as much notice as it should. Yet, it will be headed to the floor of the Senate to deal with energy policy, and it affects everybody virtually all of the time.

All of us get up in the morning and in most cases, flick a switch and turn something on. We plug something in or turn a key for an engine or a lightbulb or a toaster or an electric razor. In every way, energy affects our lives in a very profound manner, and what we did has a significant impact on our daily lives.

First, I will describe part of the challenge.

Every single day we stick little straws in the earth and suck out oil. Every single day, there are about 84 million barrels of oil taken out of the earth. It is a big old planet with a lot of people living on this planet, and of the 84 million barrels of oil we take out every day from the earth, one-fourth of it is destined to be used in the United States. We use one-fourth of the oil every day. Why? We have a standard of living in a big old country that is far above most other places in the world, and we want to drive vehicles. We use oil in a very substantial way. We have an enormous appetite for oil.

So here is the deal. One-fourth of all oil produced comes here because we need it and nearly 70 percent of the oil we use comes from outside of our country. Much of the oil produced comes from very troubled parts of the world, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Venezuela, and other countries. So 70 percent of the oil we need comes from outside of our country and nearly 70 percent of the oil we use is used for our transportation system. So you see the dilemma here is that we are unbelievably dependent and vulnerable on something over which we have very little control. By that I mean that if, God forbid, tonight terrorists interrupted the supply of oil coming to this country from other countries, this economy of ours would be flat on its back. We are unbelievably dependent on oil from other countries, and we have to begin reducing our dependence. How do we do that?

By the way, as dependent as we are, we need to visit the events of last year once again and remember what happened: Speculators took control of the oil market and drove the price of oil to $147 a barrel in day trading. The price of gasoline went up to $4 to $4.50 a gallon. There was no excuse or justification for it. There was nothing in supply and demand that justified the price of oil and therefore the price of gasoline going up like a Roman candle and then in July last year starting to come right back down. The speculators, who made all the money on the way up, made the same money on the way down. The consumers who drove cars and pulled up to fill up with unbelievably expensive gasoline were the victims. Still nobody has done the investigation to ask the questions who did this and how did it happen. How is it that when the supply of oil is up and demand is down even while price rose?

I was prepared to offer an amendment this morning to the Energy Committee. I didn't have the votes to offer it, so I simply described it. I will offer it on the floor when the bill gets here. It requires the investigation and gives the Energy Information Administration the requirement to investigate and authority to subpoena information to to find out what happened. We need to do that to make sure it doesn't happen again. The price of oil is on the rise now, and it has gone from $38 to $70 a barrel even as supply is up and demand is down. Describe that to me, in terms of a market, how that works. It doesn't make any sense.

That is a little background of where we find ourselves. We are unbelievably dependent upon oil, much of which comes from troubled parts of the world, over which we have little control. We need to be less dependent on oil. How do we do that? We wrote an energy bill in the Senate Energy Committee that does a lot of everything. I believe in doing a lot of everything. I believe we ought to produce more oil and natural gas here onshore and in the Outer Continental Shelf. We should conserve more because we are prodigious wasters of energy. We should make all the things we use more efficient. Efficiency is an unbelievable component of what we can do to save energy. Further, we should maximize the capability of producing renewable energy.

The fact is, energy from the Sun shines on this Earth every day far in excess of the energy we need. If we are just smart enough and capable enough of doing all the research and science that allows us to use all that energy, then we can make progress.

The wind blows every day. At least where I come from, it blows every day. The Energy Department calls my State the Saudi Arabia of wind. So we take the energy from the wind and produce electricity. The fact is, once we put the turbine up, we can gather electricity from that wind for 30 years at very low cost.

I believe we ought to do everything, and that is what we have tried to do in this legislation. Key to that is not just collecting energy from the wind and turning it into electricity; it is also about being able to move it where it is needed.

I come from a sparsely populated State. My State is 10 times the size of the State of Massachusetts in terms of landmass and has only 640,000 people living in it. We don't need the additional energy produced from wind farms. We don't need that additional energy in my State. But we need it in the larger load centers in this country. In order to get it there, what we need to do is build an interstate highway of transmission capability which is capable of producing renewable energy where it is produced and then move it to where it is used. This is not rocket science.

We did this with highways in the 1950s. President Eisenhower and the Congress said: Let's build an interstate highway system, and they moved forward. In parts of rural areas, one might say: How can you justify building four lanes between towns where very few people live? Because we are connecting New York with Seattle, that is why. That is what the interstate was about--connecting America.

The same is true with respect to the need for transmission. What we have put in this legislation addresses the issues that have so far prevented us from building the transmission capability we need in this country. What are the key issues? Planning, siting, and pricing. If you cannot plan for, site or price them, then nobody is going to build them. All of those issues are critical to building an interstate transmission system.

In the last 9 years, we have built almost 11,000 miles of natural gas pipeline in this country. During the same period, we have only been able to build 668 miles of high voltage transmission lines interstate. Isn't that unbelievable? Why can't we do it? Because we

have all these bifurcated jurisdictions that can stop it, saying: Not here; not across my State lines.

We have passed legislation this morning that carries out some important things. This includes my amendment to open the eastern Gulf of Mexico for additional oil and gas production. That makes sense to me. I have a chart that shows what I did with this amendment.

I know one of my colleagues was on the floor having an apoplectic seizure about this suggestion of opening the eastern Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration. He suggested that it was going to impede and cause all kinds of difficulties with the routes over which we have sophisticated, important military training.

I have been working with a group of retired military and business leaders on an energy plan. They are members of the Energy Security Leadership Council. In April, Senator Voinovich and I introduced the plan which we called the National Energy Security Act. Let me describe a little about the membership of that group. By the way, that group understood that the western and central Gulf are open for production. They believe that the eastern gulf should be open as well because there are substantial reserves of oil and natural gas in this eastern area. It can be done in a way that does not compromise our military readiness.

Among the membership of this group is former GEN P.X. Kelley; GEN John Abizaid; ADM Dennis Blair; ADM Vern Clark; GEN Michael Ryan; and GEN Charles Wald; and others. These are some of the highest military officials who have served this country, all of whom have retired, but all of whom also believe this area should be open for development.

Would they suggest that if this somehow would impede a military training area? Of course not. We have military training areas in the central and western gulf, and there is no issue there. There is no conflict.

This legislation is landmark in many ways. I was one of four Senators who opened this little area. Four of us--Senator Domenici, Senator Bingaman, Senator Talent and myself--offered legislation to open lease 181 in the gulf. That was about 3 years ago. That was opened, but it changed substantially before it was opened. This is another attempt to open that area, which should be open in the eastern gulf.

I understand there are people upset with it. They say: You can't open it for drilling. Let me show what my proposition is in terms of doing it responsibly: The states control the first 3 miles. After that, there would be no visible infrastructure allowed in the line of sight so you cannot see anything. Beyond, 25 miles there would not be restrictions. The fact is, I think what we ought to do this in a way in order to be sensitive to the coastal States. I am not interested in putting oil wells right off their beaches. That is not the point. My point is, if we are going to have an energy bill that solves America's energy problem by making us less dependent on foreign energy and especially foreign oil, then we ought to do something of everything to make that happen.

Does it include drilling and additional production? The answer is yes. Does it include substantial conservation? Absolutely. Efficiency? Yes. Maximizing renewables? Certainly. What else? We need to move toward a future in which we will have an electric drive system of transportation, by and large, and we will also then, in the longer term, transition to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

All of that is accomplished if we can make us less dependent on oil from outside our country by producing more here and conserving more here and then producing substantial amounts of additional energy from renewable energy such as wind and solar. We can produce electricity to put on a grid, a modern interstate highway grid, to move what we produce to where we produce it to where the loads are and where the load center is needed.

This is not some mysterious illness for which we do not know the cure. This is an energy policy that we know will work if we just will decide to do a lot of everything that represents our own self-interest: produce more, increase energy efficiency, and maximize renewables.

I have not mentioned one final point, and that is this: Our most abundant resource is coal. Yesterday I was reading, once again, a prognosis that we cannot use coal in the future. Of course, we can use coal, but we have to decarbonize it and use it much more efficiently. There are a lot of inventive scientific folks out there who are doing cutting edge research that will allow us to continue to use our most abundant resource--coal.

I talked about opening up fields of oil and gas production. I am making substantial investments through the appropriations subcommittee that I chair with respect to decarbonizing coal.

I am convinced we can build near zero emission coal-fired electric generation plants. I am convinced of that.

I know one of America's most prominent scientists who is working right now on something that is fascinating. He is working on developing synthetic microbes to consume coal from which would then produce methane gas. Wouldn't that be interesting? If you create a synthetic microbe to simply consume the coal and after consumption, the microbe turns coal into methane gas.

For example, there is another scientist in California who testified at a hearing I chaired recently about capturing carbon from a coal plant by capturing the flue gas and using the CO2 by turning it into a value-added product that for making concrete which has value in the marketplace. This would help bring down the cost of decarbonizing coal.

I don't know. We have solved a lot of difficult problems in our past. We can surely solve these problems in our future if we are just smart and do a lot of things that work well for our country.

Mr. President, I compliment my colleagues--Senator Bingaman, Senator Murkowski, and other Democratic and Republican colleagues on this committee. We have worked on this energy bill for some months. It has taken us a while to get to this point. But today, at long last, we passed this legislation by a bipartisan vote of 15-8. We will have it on the Senate floor at some point. We will have further debate about points of it. It is exactly what we ought to be discussing: How do we make America more secure? How do we make America less dependent on foreign oil and things over which we have no control or very little control? We must develop an energy program at home that makes a lot of sense, that does a lot of everything, and does it very well. I am happy say that we have made a positive step in that direction this morning in the Energy Committee.

Financial Reform

Mr. President, I wish to talk about one other issue today, and that issue is something that has been announced by the President this afternoon. It deals with the President's plan for financial regulation. I know my colleague from Utah just described it from his perspective. I have great respect for him. Let me describe from my perspective why it is necessary for us to have a financial regulation package that requires some reform in those areas as well.

I don't think there is anything we can do in the Congress or that President Obama can do that is more important for the future of this country and lifting this economy and trying to put it back on track in a way that expands opportunity and creates jobs than to try to instill some confidence in the American people.

As I have said a dozen times on the floor of the Senate, this is all about confidence. We have all kinds of sophisticated things we work on and tax policy and M-1 B and all these other issues. None of it matters as much as confidence. When the American people are confident about the future, they do the things that expand the economy. They buy a suit of clothes, they take a trip, buy a car, buy a house. They do the things that represent their feeling that the future is going to be better. They feel secure in their job and in their lives, so they do things that expand the economy.

If they are worried about their job, if they are wondering whether the economy will allow them and their family to continue to pay all their bills, when they are not confident about the future, they do exactly the opposite. They contract the economy. They defer those purchases. They make different judgments. We are not going to buy the suit of clothes, not take that trip, won't buy the car or the house. They

contract the economy. That is why everything rests on confidence by the American people going forward.

Just answer the question: How on Earth can people be confident about this economy unless we fix that which caused this wreck, that which steered this economy into the ditch and is now causing 550,000, 600,000 people every month to have to come home and tell their loved one: I have lost my job. No, not because I was doing bad work; I was told they are cutting back at the office or the plant.

This economy has in recent years been an economy with an unbelievable bubble of speculation about a lot of things, and at the same time there was unbelievable negligence in oversight by those the public has hired in Federal agencies to do the oversight of what was going on. We wake up one morning and we discover there are hundreds of trillions of dollars of exotic financial products called CDOs and credit default swaps and all kinds of strange names that are very complicated with unbelievable embedded risk. We don't know who has them, we don't know how much risk is out there. All of a sudden things start collapsing, the economy goes into a ditch, and we are in huge trouble.

How did it all happen? Was someone not watching?

Yes, that is the point; someone was not watching for a long period of time.

The President has talked about the need for financial reform, and today he has described at least an initial portion of what he would like to do. I think many of us share his feelings about the need for effective regulation. That is not rocket science given what we have been through.

Let me say this. Effective regulation is something that I think, from my personal observation, is probably not going to come from the Federal Reserve Board. Let me talk just about where the location of this regulation is or should be.

The Federal Reserve Board, in my judgment, essentially became a spectator for a long period of time under then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan who believed that self-regulation was by far the best. Let everybody do what they will and they will do in their self-interest what they believe is right and self-regulation will be just fine.

It turns out it was an unbelievably bad decision. But the problem is, to set up the Federal Reserve Board as the systemic risk regulator is to set up a systemic risk regulator that is unaccountable. The Federal Reserve Board is unaccountable. It is not accountable to the Congress, not accountable to the President.

So in addition to establishing an unaccountable entity, it is also an entity that operates in great secrecy. I give the President great marks for suggesting we have to have more effective regulatory capability. I am sure we will have discussions about exactly where should that regulation exist, who should be responsible, how do you get it right. I do hope we can have a discussion about whether the systemic risk regulator should or could be an entity that is not accountable and one that operates in substantial secrecy. My feeling is there is a much better way to do that, No. 1. No. 2, while there are a lot of details I will not describe today, I still am interested in this question of whether we will confront--and I don't know that from the President's description today whether we will--the issue of too big to fail.

It seems to me this issue of too big to fail is no-fault capitalism. That is, if we don't address this question of too big to fail--which has caused us enormous angst, in recent months especially--we will ultimately have to confront the issue once again down the road when it is very expensive again to do so.

I do think there is a requirement here for us to support the President in deciding that there needs to be regulation that gives people confidence that someone is minding the store. When I said that all of this rests on a foundation of confidence, I mean if we do not restore the regulatory functions in a manner that the American people see as just and fair, and most especially effective, I don't think we will restore the kind of confidence that is necessary to begin building and expanding this economy once again.

Again, I give the President substantial credit today for saying this is an important issue. Let us get about the business of doing it. He has offered us a description that now gives us a chance to discuss how we begin to put the pieces back together of what is the most significant financial wreck since the Great Depression. This was not some natural disaster, such as some huge hurricane or some big storm that came running through. This disaster was manmade, and we need to make sure we put in place the things that will prevent it from ever happening again.

There will be, I am sure, much more discussion about this in the coming days. Again I thank the President for beginning this discussion because it is essential, as we begin to try to build opportunity in this economy once again, to restore the confidence of the American people by saying we are going to have effective regulatory capabilities to make certain we don't have this unbelievable bubble of speculation that helped cause the collapse of our economy.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, just prior to lunch, we had a vote on a cloture motion. The vote was 90 to 3. It was not some significant piece of public policy that will shake the Earth, it was a vote on the question of whether we could actually proceed to something called the Travel Promotion Act.

For those who do not know how the Senate works, you have to have a motion to proceed. Normally, a motion to proceed to a bill such as this would be done by unanimous consent and take just a nanosecond, no problem, a motion to proceed approved, proceed then to the bill, have a debate on the bill, and then vote on the bill.

But this is something called the Travel Promotion Act, which I will describe. It is bipartisan. I have offered it along with Senator John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada. The two of us, along with many other cosponsors, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, believe this is an important piece of legislation for the Senate and for the Congress to pass. Despite that, we had to have a vote this morning on the motion to proceed: Shall we proceed to this? A cloture motion had to be filed. It took 2 days to ripen, and then we had a vote. It was 90 to 3. The answer was yes by 90 to 3. And now we have 30 hours postcloture that we have to wait until we can get to the bill. And then have another cloture motion filed. It is the most unbelievable, Byzantine example of how this place has sort of fallen off the rails--requiring cloture motions to be filed on things that then get a 90-to-3 vote, and then there is a requirement that we have to spend the next 30 hours waiting until we can actually get to the bill. Unbelievable. But it is an example of what has happened here. And the minority is requiring this of every single piece of legislation. It is a way to require the Senate to walk through wet cement and make almost no progress at all. I guess when you get nothing done and then you are able to boast that nothing has happened, maybe some people feel good. It does not make me feel very good.

But having complained about it, now let me at least describe what this bill is. We will get to the bill this week. It will have taken a difficult route to get there. Judging by the 90-to-3 vote, I assume ultimately, when the Senate passes this legislation, we will have very strong support because it is a bipartisan piece of legislation.

I am told Senator Ensign has had to leave today as a result of a family matter. I think Senator Martinez will be coming to the floor, who is also a cosponsor of this legislation. I appreciate

very much working with Senator Ensign and Senator Martinez; on this side, Senator Reid, the majority leader, a strong cosponsor, and so many others as well.

Let me describe what this issue is. The fact is, there is an effort to attract international tourism around this world. Why is that the case? Because international tourists; that is, people who visit other countries, spend a lot of money and create a lot of jobs. They support airlines, support hotels, support recreation facilities and theme parks. Plus, they have a chance to understand a little about that country before they go back home. So many countries around the world are very actively engaged in saying: Come to our country. They have very aggressive, very sophisticated promotion campaigns saying: Come to our country. We do not, but they do.

Here is an example of India: One special reason to visit India in 2009. Anytime is a good time to visit the land of Taj. But there is no time like now. Incredible India.

Well, India is very interested, very promotional, saying: Come to India.

But it is not just India. Here is Ireland, big promotional campaign: Go where Ireland takes you.

A beautiful photograph of the majesty of Ireland.

An example of Australia: Looking for an experience to remember? Arrived. Departed. An adventure we will never forget. Go find yourself in Australia.

All over the world we have campaigns now, very aggressive campaigns, saying: Come to Italy. Vacation in Italy. Come to Great Britain. Come to Spain. See the wonders of Spain.

Why are countries doing that? Well, it is interesting. The average international traveler spends about $4,500 on an overseas trip. When they go to a country, they spend money. This creates jobs. So countries are aware of that, and they are very active in trying to encourage travelers to come to their country. Not so with our country so much since 9/11/2001. In fact, it is interesting that in 2008 we had 633,000 fewer people come to this country from overseas than we had in 2000. Let me say that again. In 2008, 633,000 fewer people from overseas came to visit our country than in the year 2000. In fact, here is an example of what is happening around the world: visitors to the United States-- this is 2000 to 2008--a 3-percent decrease; visitors to other countries in international travel, a 40-percent increase. The fact is that we are losing ground and losing shares of the international travelers' tourism dollars and the ability also to explain to them a bit, by having them see this country, what America is all about.

Well, why is that happening? Headlines like this post-9/11/2001. We are very concerned about people coming into this country, and we tightened the visa requirements so that there were long lines and very long waits in order to try to come to this country. Here are some of the headlines:

Sydney Morning Herald: ``Coming to America is not easy.''

The Guardian: ``America--more hassle than it's worth?''

The Sunday Times in London: ``Travel to America? No thanks.''

Look, the fact is, we want to change that.

This legislation is bipartisan. A group of us Republicans and Democrats who want to create jobs in this country and want to attract international tourism to this country want to change this perception that somehow international travelers are not welcome here.

So here is what we believe. We believe that to have people come to this country is to see its wonders. It is the only one like it on the face of this planet. It is an extraordinary place. There is so much to see and so much to do. And when we have done polling, and so on, when international travelers leave this country, they have an unbelievably positive impression of the United States of America, and that is very important. At a time when there has been so much discussion about our country going it alone and doing this or that, we have suffered some in international areas. But the fact is, inviting international tourism to our country is job creating, it produces a boost to our economy, but it also allows people to come here and understand what this country is about and inevitably leave with a great impression.

Here is what we do with this piece of legislation. We set up a nationally coordinated travel promotion program. I might say that if somebody says: Well, you are going to set up something new, well, you know what, the Congressional Budget Office has a score for this. They have to decide what everything costs or what the consequences of everything will be.

This is one of the few pieces of legislation to be brought to the floor of the Senate that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would actually reduce the budget deficit by half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Let me say that again. This is one of the few pieces of legislation you are going to get a chance to vote on that reduces the Federal budget deficit by $425 million in the next 10 years.

How does it do that? Well, the fact is, it creates a private-public partnership and it establishes a corporation for travel promotion which will be an independent nonprofit corporation governed by an 11-member board of directors appointed by the Secretary of Commerce. It also creates an Office of Travel Promotion in the Department of Commerce to develop programs to increase the number of international visitors to our country. It sets up a travel promotion fund, and that is financed by a private-public matching program. The Federal contributions will be financed by a $10 fee paid by foreign travelers from visa waiver countries, and it will be collected in the electronic system for travel authorizations which already exists.

Let me make the point that many other countries do exactly this. It does not in any way retard international travel. Australia charges a $37 departure fee; Guatemala, $30; Mexico, $11 to $38; Thailand, a $14 departure fee. And the list goes on. We are suggesting a very modest $10 fee for international travelers, from the visa waiver countries, and that will finance this piece of legislation that we have had now to file a cloture motion on on the motion to proceed to this issue and for which there was a 90-to-3 vote, an affirmative vote.

Here is some discussion about our legislation.

I introduced this in the last session of the Congress. We had over 50 cosponsors, Republicans and Democrats. We have reintroduced it now with wide bipartisan cosponsorship.

The Detroit Free Press says:

Doesn't it make sense to encourage, at no cost to

taxpayers, foreign visitors to come here and leave us with

some money? There's no good reason not to pass this bill.

The Dallas Morning News says:

The Travel Promotion Act is a sensible first step toward

putting the welcome mat back on America's doorstep.

The Orlando Sentinel says:

Our position, charging international travelers $10 to pay

for the promotion, makes sense.

The Los Angeles Times:

Considering that the U.S. spends hundreds of millions of

dollars on public diplomacy with dubious results, and nearly

nothing on promoting tourism, it might do well to invest a

little money in wooing travelers.

The list goes on of newspapers that have endorsed the legislation.

This has been a pretty difficult decade for our country in many ways. Our country was attacked on 9/11/2001. Several thousand innocent Americans were killed by terrorists. Following that, we suffered a recession almost immediately, then a war in Afghanistan, and then a long protracted war in Iraq that cost an enormous amount of money and was very controversial all around the world. It has been a very difficult decade.

As I indicated when I started, 8 years later, we have so many fewer visitors coming to the United States. I think during part of this decade there was a notion by some that we were not welcoming visitors to the United States; we did not want them to come here very much.

That was not true, but I think that was a sense of some: You want to come to the United States, get in line, it is going to take a long time to get a visa. Why? Because we are concerned. We are screening everybody. We are doing all of these kinds of things. Well, the fact is, no one ever intended to decide we were not going to welcome people to this country. By far, the most effective way to describe to the world what America is about and the unbelievable values that exist and the openness and the wonders of this great democracy, by far, the best way to do that is to say

to people from around the world: Come here. Vacation here. You are welcome here. We want you here, to experience and visit America and some of the best attractions and some of the best people and be a part of what we are and then go home and remember what the United States is about.

So that is what we are trying to do. It has been too long, but finally we are now putting together a piece of legislation that says: We are not willing to go through another 8 or 10 years like the last 8 or 10 years where our share of international tourism dramatically decreased.

We want the next 8 or 10 years to show a substantial increase in people from around the world coming to visit America. And the fact is, it will create substantial numbers of jobs. That is important. I mean, as you know, we ran into a financial ditch, have an economic crisis of sorts. The number of unemployed Americans rises every month, and we are hoping that turns around soon. But in the meantime, this is something constructive and positive and concrete we can do to try to boost this economy. It does not even cost money. This will save almost half a trillion dollars in the next 10 years by reducing the Federal deficit.

Again, I wish some of my colleagues were not deciding to see if they could run everybody through the traps for the next few days before we get to what I think will be a very positive vote on a very constructive idea that will benefit this country. But if it takes 4 days or 2 days or 1 day, whatever the moment, I think most of us will feel as if we have done something good for the country.

In the midst of all of the other very controversial issues and very important issues, some of which are urgent, the questions of: How do you rein in increasing health care costs? What do you do about a country that is 70 percent dependent on oil that comes from foreign countries? What do you do about the issue of protecting our climate and climate change? How do you deal with the Federal budget deficit that seems galloping out of control? There are all these big issues.

In the middle of all that--all of which, in my judgment, we are required to address in order to put America on a different course toward a better future--in the middle of all that, this piece of legislation, the Travel Promotion Act of 2009, might be one small glimmer--just one small bit of hope--for more bipartisanship rather than less. Because this piece of legislation is so persuasive about the interests of this country, we have Republicans and Democrats who have come together to say: Let's do this. Let's do this in the interest of this country's economic future.

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

Mr. President, the legislation described by my colleague, the Travel Promotion Act, is legislation I wish to discuss. The Travel Promotion Act is a bipartisan piece of legislation I have introduced with Senators Ensign, Inouye, Martinez, Klobuchar, Reid, and many others. I believe in the last session of Congress, when we introduced this, we had over 50 cosponsors. Let me describe what its purpose is.

Who can be against travel promotion? Here is what has happened to our country with respect to the jobs and economic growth that comes with a decline in foreigners traveling to the United States. Measures put in place quickly after the 2001 attack on 9/11 had a significant impact on travel to the United States by foreign travelers.

We, obviously, wanted to be careful about whom we allowed into our country. We still do. But what happened following that is, instead of reaching out to the world to say: Visit the United States, this is a great place, we encourage you to come here, to vacation here, to see what the United States is all about, we backed away from that. Other countries have not. Here is what we have experienced. I have a chart here showing overseas travel between 2000 and 2008.

Since 2000 and 2008, there has been a 3-percent decrease in foreign visitors to the United States. At the same time, there has been a 40- percent increase in visitors to other countries around the world. Think of the consequences of that to our economy. A foreign visitor, overseas visitor, coming to our country spends on average $4,500 per visit--that is a lot of economic activity, a lot of economic growth and jobs. But inbound travel has decreased in our country and substantially increased in others. Why is that the case?

The rest of the world is very anxious to attract destination visitors to their country, international travelers, to say: We want you to come to our country as a destination for your trip. Take India--one special reason to visit India is this advertisement saying:

``Incredible India, any time is a good time to visit the

land of Taj, but there is no time like now.''

Not unusual to see this. It is not only India.

Australia's says: ``Arrived looking for an experience to

remember. Departed with adventure we will never forget.

Australia, come to Australia.'' If you are an overseas

traveler, deciding where to visit, be sure and come to

Australia.

Ireland says: ``Go where Ireland takes you.''

Pretty straightforward--makes you want to go to Ireland. Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Australia, India, Ireland, they say: Come to our country. Travel to our country. See what our country is about.

We are not doing that.

As a result, in the last 8 years, we have seen a 3-percent decrease in travel by foreign visitors to the United States, while the rest of the world has had a 40-percent increase in travelers destined to those other areas. It makes a big difference. It is very negative in terms of our country's economic opportunity that comes from travel and tourism.

I showed the examples of what other countries are saying in their very explicit campaigns around the world, to say to people: If you are traveling abroad, if you are planning a vacation, a trip, come to our country. Come and see Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, India.

Let me show you what is happening with respect to our country. Headlines such as these: The Sydney Sunday Morning Herald: ``Coming to America Isn't Easy.'' From The Guardian: ``America: More Hassle Than It's Worth?'' From The Sunday Times in London: ``Travel to America? No Thanks.''

There is a perception that it is difficult to come to our country, hard to get a visa, and tourists will experience long waiting lines. Many of these problems have been corrected or improved. In the construction of this legislation, we address the need to better communicate our entry and exit procedures and their improvements. We don't want these negative headlines to be the message to the rest of the world--in fact, quite the opposite.

What a large group of us in the Congress want is for our country to be engaged internationally, to say to people around the world: Come to our country. To see the United States is to understand the wonder of this great country. Come here. Stay here. Vacation here. Understand what America is about.

I can't think of anything better, in terms of our position in the world and how people think of this great country, than to invite them and encourage them to come here. That is why we have introduced this bipartisan piece of legislation called the Travel Promotion Act of 2009.

Interestingly enough, the Congressional Budget Office has said this piece of legislation will reduce the Federal budget deficit by $425 million between 2010 and 2019. We don't bring many pieces of legislation to the floor of the Senate in which the Congressional Budget Office says:

This will make money. This is a net positive. This will reduce the Federal budget deficit. That is what this bill is about.

Let me explain, for a moment, what we are trying to do with the legislation. The Travel Promotion Act will attempt to create international travel opportunities for people from all around the world to come to this country. It will set up a nationally coordinated travel promotion campaign run in a public-private partnership to communicate to the world our country's travel policies and, more importantly, communicate to the world: We want you here. We want you to explore what this great country has to offer. This public-private partnership is an ideal

method for us to improve any negative perceptions out there, particularly as we work on visas and any remaining delays in entry procedures which we have corrected, in large part. This combines public sector accountability with private sector enterprise.

This bill establishes a Corporation for Travel Promotion, an independent, nonprofit corporation, with an 11-member board of directors appointed by the Secretary of Commerce. It creates an Office of Travel Promotion in the Department of Commerce to work with that nonprofit corporation. It sets up a travel promotion fund, financed by a public-private matching program. Federal contributions will be financed by a $10 fee paid by foreign travelers from visa waiver countries and collected in what is called the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

Many other countries impose fees for people coming and going: Australia, $37 departure fee, an entry fee of $19 to $70; Mexico, an $11 departure fee, up to $38; New Zealand, $16 to $19 on the departure fee; United Kingdom, $80 to $160. There are a lot of fees around for people traveling internationally. We propose to fund this with a very modest fee of $10.

This is very simple. It should be noncontroversial. There are many of us who have worked on this and worked very hard.

My colleague from Minnesota is here, Senator Klobuchar, who has worked with us on this legislation. This is a piece of legislation Senator Reid has worked on. Senator Ensign is the lead Republican cosponsor. Other cosponsors include Senator Martinez and Senator Nelson of Florida. We have cosponsors across the political spectrum because this issue of asking people from around the world to come to America is not controversial and benefits every State. It cannot possibly be partisan, and it certainly is job creating.

Now here is what some newspapers around the country have said about the legislation.

The Sacramento Bee:

This country needs to reclaim its status as a global magnet

for visitors . . . and Congress can help by passing the

Travel Promotion Act.

The Los Angeles Times:

Considering that the U.S. spends hundreds of millions of

dollars on public diplomacy with dubious results and nearly

nothing on promoting tourism, we might do well to invest a

little money in wooing travelers.

The Detroit Free Press:

Doesn't it make sense to encourage--at no cost to

taxpayers--foreign visitors to come here and leave us some

money? There's no good reason not to pass this bill.

The Dallas Morning News:

The Travel Promotion Act is a sensible first step toward

putting the welcome mat back on America's doorstep.

And the list goes on.

I do not come from Hawaii or Florida or California, I come from the northern Great Plains. And we have a lot of tourist destinations: the Badlands in North Dakota, some of the most beautiful areas in our country. Tourism is North Dakota's second largest industry. There are so many destinations with such wonder to attract people to our region of the country.

It is where Lewis and Clark, in their epic adventure, decided to spend the winter in area about 40 miles north of Bismarck, ND. We celebrated the 200th anniversary, the bicentennial, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and we had a lot of people come from around the world to see that.

The fact is, every State in this country has something it is anxious to show the world, to say: Look at us. Look at what we are doing here. Look how beautiful this part of America is.

So what has happened is, we have been unilaterally disarmed since 9/ 11, to say: Well, we are worried about who is going to come into this country. We certainly want to keep terrorists out. We sure do, absolutely. But that message ought not be mixed with a message that we do not want to encourage foreign travelers to come to this country to vacation and to experience America.

So at long last a group of us, Republicans and Democrats, have said: If we disagree on so much, how about if we agree on tourism? Can we agree on promoting travel? To say to the English, the Italians, the Spaniards, the French, the folks from India and Thailand and China and elsewhere: You are welcome in this country. We want you to come to this country. We want you to see what our country is about?

To experience this country is to have a sense of wonder about the greatest democracy, the most significant and longest surviving democracy on Earth. We want them to go home with that understanding of what a great country this is. That is what we want.

By the way, we do not believe our nearest neighbors--Mexico and Canada--are irrelevant. We have a lot of people coming from Mexico and Canada, and God bless them. They are great neighbors. We welcome them. We are told they spend, on average, about $900 per trip.

The foreign travelers from overseas, by contrast, spend about $4,500 per trip. That is why this is such an unbelievable job generator. People who come here and spend significant money and purchase the hotel rooms and the rental cars and go to the tourist attractions and do the things people who want to experience America routinely do not only create a lot of jobs and boost economic activity, but their travel also gives us the opportunity to show the rest of the world this is an extraordinary place where they can go home and tell their neighbors they just went to one of the greatest places on Earth.

So as to the Travel Promotion Act of 2009, my hope is--after having battled here on so many different issues, and having cloture votes on everything, and then 30 hours post-cloture while we all stand around with our hands in our pockets and shuffling our shoes--my hope is, perhaps this is the issue, this is the one time, this is the occasion where everybody might say: Do you know something. There is something we can agree on that is noncontroversial, that makes sense. It creates jobs, it expands the economy, and represents the best of sending American values abroad; and that is, the Travel Promotion Act.

If, perhaps, next week we get to that point, I think the American people will have believed we have done something good. So I am pleased to be the lead sponsor. We introduced this in the last Congress and did not get it passed. In this Congress I believe we will.

I give my commendation to the majority leader and thank him for putting this on the agenda. I give my thanks to Senator Ensign as the lead cosponsor on the Republican side. But so many Republicans and Democrats have said: Yes, this makes sense. Count us in. We want to be part of expanding this economy and creating jobs and giving an opportunity for the people in the rest of the world to understand we welcome them here.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ryan Douglas, Christian Fjeld, and Lisa Hone, Congressional fellows with the Commerce Committee, be allowed floor privileges during the consideration of S. 1023.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, be recognized following my presentation.

Madam President, I wanted to compliment Senator Dodd for his work on this bill, as well as Senator Enzi and others. I want the Record to reflect something we agreed to today. Some will wonder what has happened to the legislation that I indicated I would offer on the bill we just had a cloture vote on--the importation of prescription drugs. I intended to offer it on this bill. I have received from the majority leader a commitment that it will be put on the calendar under rule XIV and brought to the Senate for a vote, and he will do that very soon. On that basis, I voted for cloture.

I know my colleagues, Senator Snowe, Senator McCain, Senator Stabenow, and many others feel very strongly about this, as do I. We have been at this for 8 or 10 years. It has been a long time, and the support for allowing the importation of FDA-approved prescription drugs is very broad

in the Senate. Senators McCain, Grassley, Kennedy, Stabenow, myself--in fact, President Obama was a cosponsor of our legislation last year. He has included in his budget a provision for this kind of legislation. We had over 30 Senators--Republicans and Democrats--who believed the same thing, and that is we ought to allow the American consumer to access FDA-approved prescription drugs from other countries--not because we want them to shop in other countries but because we believe the ability to do so will put downward pressure on prescription drug prices in our country.

Madam President, if I might, I ask unanimous consent to display these two pill bottles to show exactly what we are talking about.

This is Lipitor, produced in Ireland by the same company, shipped in two different directions. Even the bottle is identical, except one has a blue label and one has a red label. One of these went to Canada and one of them went to the United States. The American people get the pleasure of paying twice the price for Lipitor than the Canadians do. But it is not just Canada, it is virtually every other industrialized country that is able to pay a fraction of the price for prescription drugs our consumers are required to pay. Why? Because there is a law in our country that says the only entity that can import prescription drugs is the manufacturer of the drug itself.

The legislation we have put together on a bipartisan basis is very straightforward and it provides substantially greater protections with pedigree and batch lots, and so on, substantially greater protection than now exists. So don't anybody tell me there is a safety issue. This is about whether the American people should continue to be paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

At last--at long last--we ought to have a vote on this and get it through the Congress and signed by a President who was a cosponsor when he served in this body. So the majority leader has committed to giving us the opportunity to get this on the floor, and that commitment we will exchange by letter in the morning. I expect that to happen in the very near future, within a matter of a couple of weeks, and I believe that finally we will be able to dispose of this on the floor of the Senate. I believe that we have more than sufficient votes to pass this importation of prescription drugs legislation in order to put downward pressure on drug prices in this country.

What is happening in this country with drug pricing is unfair to the American people. It is as simple as that, and we aim to correct it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, June 11, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Reforming the Indian Health Care System.

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

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

Mr. President, I know we are on the 30 hours postcloture on the legislation that is the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. I support that legislation. I applaud our colleague Senator Kennedy for his leadership on this issue. It gives the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco, including ingredients in tobacco products and tobacco marketing, which I think is an important step for our Nation's health.

We talked a lot about this in the past. The fact is that smoking and the use of tobacco is dangerous to one's health. We know that. I had a doctor once say there are three things that will give you pretty good odds for a longer life. One is wear a seatbelt. The second is keep your weight down. And the third is don't smoke. Pretty sound advice. The ``don't smoke'' piece is about the health consequences of smoking.

We know especially the issue of marketing and marketing to children is a pernicious activity. We also know the best way you can get somebody hooked on cigarettes is to get them when they are kids, get them when they are young. Do you know of anybody who at age 35 is sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner watching a color television set ruminating about life and thinking to themselves: What on Earth have I missed in life? What can I do to enhance my life? What should I be doing that I so far have been unable to do and they decide: I have to take up smoking. That just doesn't happen. If you don't get them when they are kids, you don't get them. That is why we pay a lot of attention to addiction to nicotine, marketing to children, and so on.

Let me say again the leadership of Senator Kennedy and so many others on a bipartisan basis on this issue I think is very important. It deals directly with the issue of the health of the American people.

I do want to say, however, that I intend to offer an amendment tomorrow when we get on the bill itself. I want to describe why I am offering an amendment and what the amendment does.

The amendment is called the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug

Safety Act. This underlying bill deals with the FDA. So, too, will my amendment deal with the FDA. I will offer the amendment with Senator Snowe from Maine, the Dorgan-Snowe bill which we worked on for a long while. It has very wide support in this Chamber from Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Chuck Grassley, Debbie Stabenow. So many others in this Chamber on a bipartisan basis have supported this concept.

Let us give the American people the opportunity that comes with the worldwide economy and the ability in the free market to choose your products. And here is the reason it is important to do that.

The American people at this point understand the value of prescription drugs. They are enormously valuable, and I commend all of those who produce prescription drugs. Yes, the pharmaceutical industry--good for them. Yes, the National Institutes of Health and in so many other areas with public funding as well that develop the approaches that result in lifesaving prescription drugs. I commend all of them, including the pharmaceutical industry.

But it is also the case that the pricing mechanism the pharmaceutical industry uses in this country is fundamentally flawed. They have a pricing mechanism that in most cases for major brand drugs, the American people are told: You get to pay the highest prices in the world. You, the American people, get to pay the highest prices in the world for the same pill put in the same bottle made by the same company. And it is not fair.

I have an example of that, and I ask unanimous consent to show them on the floor.

Mr. President, this is the drug called Lipitor. Most people understand what Lipitor is. It is a drug that is used to lower cholesterol. This happens to be made in Ireland and sent all over the world. These two bottles were sent to two different places--one to the United States and one to Canada. The United States consumer got to pay twice as much as the Canadian consumer. It is the same bottle, same pill, same company, FDA approved, and the American people are charged twice as much. And it is not just Lipitor. It is drug after drug.

The question is, why? Why should that be the case? It is not just Canada, it is virtually every other country in the world as well that enjoys lower cost prescription drugs, when, in fact, we pay a much higher cost for the identical drug.

This happens to be the price--$4.47 per 20 milligram tablet of Lipitor to a U.S. consumer, and just north of the border, $1.82 for the same drug. I could have used other countries. It would have shown the same result.

I have taken a busload of North Dakotans to Canada because I live in a State that borders Canada. In a one-room drugstore at Emerson, Canada, I saw individuals buy their prescription drugs and saw the savings drug by drug. I sat in a farmyard one summer afternoon with an old codger in his eighties from North Dakota. He was talking about health care. He said: You know, my wife has been fighting breast cancer for 3 years. He said: For 3 years every 3 months we have driven to Canada to buy Tamoxifen to fight her breast cancer. Why did we drive to Canada? Because we couldn't afford it in the United States. We couldn't afford to pay for the drugs for my wife's fight against breast cancer. It was 80 percent less costly for the identical drug just north of the border. That is not fair.

Again, it is not just Canada. It is virtually every other industrialized country where drugs are sold for a fraction of the price they are sold in the United States. These are FDA-approved drugs, made in FDA-approved facilities, and sent all around the world. The only difference is pricing. We are charged the highest prices in the world.

The Wall Street Journal had a piece on April 15 of this year, quoting some experts:

These kinds of price increases--

Speaking of prescription drugs--

are way out of line with what's being experienced in the rest

of the economy.

Said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a consumer health care advocacy organization.

Credit Suisse's Catherine Arnold said drug companies have increased prices so aggressively in recent months to wring sales out of products before any health care cost-cutting efforts eat into profits.

That is not fair. One might ask: How can they do it? They can do it because there is something in law that prevents the importation of prescription drugs, even FDA-approved drugs, prevents the importation into this country by anybody except the drug manufacturer itself. That means the American people are not given the same opportunity to shop worldwide for an FDA-approved drug. It means it is a free-trade economy except the American people cannot participate in that free trade.

What we propose to do is to offer a piece of legislation that gives the American people the opportunity to access FDA-approved drugs, the same drug made in the same place marketed differently but priced higher in the United States to access those same drugs. Do we do this because we want Americans to buy their drugs from other countries? No, that is not the point. The point is if they can access that same FDA-approved drug sold for a fraction of the price in another country, it will force the pharmaceutical industry to reprice their drugs at a lower cost in this country in a manner that is fair to the American people.

The estimates of what this will save are $50 billion in 10 years--$50 billion in savings in this country. That is not insignificant at all.

One of the things that is always raised by those who support the practice of the pharmaceutical industry is this is going to cause all kinds of safety concerns. Can you imagine the counterfeit drugs that will come across?

I just described this drug Lipitor. This is not made here. It is made in Ireland and then shipped in. How do we know this is real? The provisions in the legislation that we have created actually provide safety requirements that exceed those that now exist with respect to batch lots and pedigrees and all kinds of new resources for the FDA to do more audits than they now do, to do more inspections than they now do.

Don't anybody come to the floor of the Senate raising those kinds of issues because they do not exist. This legislation is legislation that has very stringent safety requirements and will provide an opportunity for the American people for some basic fairness.

Here is a quote from Mr. Hank McKinnell, former Pfizer CEO. He said:

Name an industry in which competition is allowed to

flourish--computers, telecommunications, small package

shipping, retailing, entertainment--and I'll show you lower

prices, higher quality, more innovation, and better customer

service. There's nary an exception. OK, there's one. So far,

the health care industry seems immune to the discipline of

competition.

That is exactly why the pharmaceutical industry can decide this afternoon behind a closed door: Here is what we are going to do to our prices, and if you don't like it, tough luck, because we have the capability to make it stick.

I don't come to the floor of the Senate as someone who has some sort of grief against the pharmaceutical industry. As I said when I started, the pharmaceutical industry plays a very important role in health care in this country. I have a grief against their pricing policy, however.

I held hearings on this issue long ago. A group of us on the floor of the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--has tried for some long while only to be blocked to pass legislation that would give the American people the opportunity to access the identical prescription drugs that are sold for a fraction of the price in the rest of the world and do it in a manner that is fair to the American people. We have been blocked in that opportunity.

This is an FDA bill on the floor of the Senate. This is the place to offer this amendment.

I visited with my colleagues this morning, Democrats and Republicans. I talked with Senator Stabenow, Senator Snowe, Senator McCain, and many others this morning about this amendment to this bill. On a bipartisan basis, we believe this will help the American consumer. It is long overdue. And at a time and during a year in which there is a lot of discussion about health care issues and the problems confronting this country in health care, one of the most significant problems is this dramatic march of price increases in health care.

Look, we spend more money per person on health care than any other group. We spend more money than any group of people in the world per capita by far, and we rank 41st in life expectancy. Something is not working out quite so well there. One of the areas of these price increases in health care that leads the pack is the issue of prescription drugs. Prescription drugs allow us to manage disease, in many cases keep people out of an acute care bed, which is very expensive. We know the ability to manage health care conditions through the use of prescription drugs has been very helpful and has been lifesaving to many Americans and people around the world. We understand that completely.

Those who oppose the amendment I am proposing would say: Look, all that will do then is shut down or at least reduce the revenue that the drug companies have, pharmaceutical companies have and, therefore, they will do less research and, therefore, have less opportunity to unlock the mysteries of these dreaded diseases and find the very next cure for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or some other disease.

It is interesting to me that the costs or the amount of funds spent for marketing and promotion by the pharmaceutical industry, at least from information I have, exceed the amount of money they spend on research. How many people in the morning have a little television set somewhere near while they are brushing their teeth getting ready for work. The television set is on, and there is a voice on the television set and a really interesting picture and it is describing some awful symptom that you have that you want to get rid of, and they are describing the symptom and describe the 85 things that could go wrong if you take the pill they are pushing. Then they say: Go to your doctor and ask him if the purple pill is right for you. I don't know what the purple pill does; I don't know what it is about, but the commercials are so intriguing and so persuasive, you almost want to go ask someone if the purple pill is right for you.

There is so much advertising relentlessly pushing prescription medicine at consumers--who can only get it if a doctor prescribes it in the first instance--how about cutting back on some of that advertising? So don't tell me that if they have to charge a price that is competitive with other prices around the world for the prescription drugs they sell in the United States that somehow it will injure their research.

Let me say that a fair amount of the research goes on here at the Federal Government level through the National Institutes of Health and the contracts all across the country, and we are substantially increasing that investment. I believe in that and I support it. I am one of those who has pushed and pushed because there are so many things that we can unlock with respect to these mysterious diseases, and we can make this a much better future if we invest in the research necessary.

When we find the capability and research to address these diseases, very often we see that research available to pharmaceutical industry companies that then market a pill or market some medicine as a result of it. And they do some research themselves--not insignificant, by the way--and find opportunities in their own companies as well to introduce and provide life-saving medicines. So my hat is off to all of them. It is just that I insist on fair pricing for the American people, and that has not been the case for a long time.

I am offering an amendment that is going to save this country $50 billion over the next 10 years. My colleague, Senator Snowe, and I, along with many other colleagues, have introduced this piece of legislation--with more than 25 colleagues now, but we have had far more than that many in previous Congresses--and we are impatient. This has been a long tortuous trail and we are impatient to get this done on behalf of the American people.

I wanted to come today, even during the 30-hour postcloture period, to say that when we are on the bill tomorrow, I intend to offer this legislation and to do it in a way that advantages the American consumer to be able to access the same quality prescription drugs that other consumers around the world are accessing for similar prices. At the moment that is not the case. We are overcharged. The drugs are overpriced. It is unfair to the American consumer, and it is past time--long past the time--for this Congress to do something about it.

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

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing to examine Executive Branch authority to acquire trust lands for Indian Tribes.

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

Mr. President, I wish to address today's vote to confirm Mr. Gary Gensler as a Commissioner and Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, CFTC. I have serious reservations about this nomination and am voting against it. Let me explain why.

Mr. Gensler was a key proponent of deregulation in the late 1990s and he

specifically advocated that swaps and other derivatives not be regulated. I had the opposite view. I argued at the time that such deregulation would result in banks making very risky bets which would ultimately lead to massive taxpayer bailouts to save the financial system.

I regret that I was right. We now know the disastrous consequences of the push to deregulate. We will long regret repealing the protections put in place after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the view that the market knows best and regulation was the enemy.

The costs for these views and actions have been monumental. Taxpayers and American families have paid the price. Our government has spent, lent or guaranteed more than $13 trillion responding to the financial meltdown. In addition, U.S. household wealth has decreased by almost $13 trillion as home values plummet and stock markets crash.

But, that is not all. As our gross domestic product goes down, our unemployment rate goes up, getting close to 10 percent, and, when combined with those working part time who want to work full time, is actually higher than 15 percent.

However, we must not forget that the real cost of these disastrous policies is much more than dollars and statistics. The real costs are lifetime savings vanished, jobs lost, careers shattered, homes foreclosed, neighborhoods destroyed, retirements deferred, colleges unaffordable and the American dream for too many of our neighbors devastated.

Now that all this wreckage has happened and now that he has been nominated for the CFTC, Mr. Gensler has stated that he has changed his views on the need for and importance of regulation. I welcome those new views and look forward to him putting his words into action. If he does, I will be one of the first to come to the floor to applaud him.

I met with him privately and Mr. Gensler was candid and forthright about changing his views. In our meeting and in his testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Mr. Gensler made clear that he now understands how important the CFTC is as one of the key regulatory agencies charged with protecting the integrity of our markets.

I stressed to him that America can no longer afford a do-nothing CFTC. The CFTC has to be a cop on the beat. It has to vigilantly monitor the commodities markets and aggressively act to ensure that they are not being manipulated or distorted by speculators or anyone else. It has to act quickly in an unbiased and nonideological manner to protect those markets and consumers.

In my view, Mr. Gensler does not have to wait to put his words into action. Last year, the CFTC acted like the three monkeys: see nothing, hear nothing, and do nothing, as oil prices skyrocketed from $50 to almost $150 and a gallon of gas approached $5. Like a parrot, the CFTC said over and over this was caused by the fundamentals of supply and demand, ignoring all facts to the contrary, including massive speculation from Wall Street pouring investment cash into the commodities markets.

The CFTC must investigate whether or not speculators were able to manipulate and distort the commodities markets. I believe they did and they will do it again unless they are thoroughly investigated by an agency that takes its mission to protect markets and consumers seriously.

While I am prepared to be surprised by Mr. Gensler and I hope I am, I simply cannot vote for someone to lead such an important agency after he had such a critical role in ensuring that derivates were not regulated, which caused so much devastation across our country. I look forward to Mr. Gensler proving my concerns unwarranted.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for such time as I may consume.

Mr. President, this week we will once again take up legislation--and, hopefully, finish it--called the credit card reform bill. I wanted to speak for a few minutes about what the bill contains and why it is important we enact that legislation.

I have spoken many times in the last year and a half about the subprime mortgage scandal. It is another adjunct of this. A substantial amount of debt, debt to purchase a home, is not unusual. Almost no one can purchase a home by using cash because they don't have that kind of cash. So they borrow money, which is called a home mortgage. The subprime home mortgage scandal is unbelievable, and I have spoken about it at length. I have shown advertisements from Countrywide Mortgage which was the largest mortgage lender, from Millennium Mortgage and Zoom Credit, and other mortgage companies that were advertising to people with: If you have been bankrupt, if you have bad credit, if you don't pay your bills on time, come to us. We will give you a mortgage. It was unbelievable what was going on. Bad credit, no credit, slow credit, bankrupt, come to us. We will give you a home mortgage.

That sort of thing steered this country's economy right into the ditch and caused a massive amount of problems. Now we see all of these foreclosures and banks in trouble. It is an unbelievable mess. At its root is a substantial amount of greed and a massive amount of mortgage debt. In some cases mortgages were made to people who couldn't pay them, with teaser rates of 2 percent which, when reset, would be 10 and 12 percent, and prepayment penalties so that someone couldn't get out of this mess. It is unbelievable. That is the home mortgage subprime scandal. A lot of folks got rich. The guy who ran Countrywide Mortgage left with $200 million. The company collapsed, a substantial amount of people were injured and hurt, but he left with a couple hundred million dollars. He was given the Horatio Alger award. He won businessman of the year, a big deal. He steered his company right into the ditch as well.

This isn't about subprime mortgages. It is about another form of indebtedness, credit card debt. Let me talk for a moment about where we find ourselves with credit cards. It is interesting. In 2008, there were 4.2 billion credit card solicitations sent to consumers. Think of that, 4.2 billion credit card solicitations sent to consumers. We are told it was a bad year--the economy was collapsing--but apparently not in the credit card industry. The average credit card debt per household that has a balance is $10,000. That is the average credit card debt of households that have a credit card balance. Total amount of credit made available by issuers in 2007 was about $5 trillion.

This legislation will start to help to curb some of the unfair credit card practices. Let me be quick to say that I use credit cards. I am sure all of my colleagues do. There is a very significant value to credit cards. I am not suggesting there is not. I am saying, when you wallpaper the entire country with credit cards, including especially targeting kids who have no jobs, and then saying, as they did in the subprime mortgage, if you have bad credit, come to us, we will give you a credit card, there is something wrong with that. Yet that is what has been happening. Now we are seeing credit card companies who have had customers for 5, 10, 20 years, who have never been late with a payment, jack up their interest rates from 7 percent to 27 percent. Credit card holders are completely astounded by the penalties and interest rate increases, despite the fact that they have never had a late payment. Those are some of the abuses that have existed. This legislation will begin to deal with those abuses.

Let me show a couple of charts. This is an advertisement for a platinum card. It says:

Even if your credit is less than perfect.

That is just a little offshoot of what they did in the subprime mortgage. Hey, if your credit ain't perfect, as they say, come to us. You got bad credit, slow credit, no credit, been bankrupt, come over here; let us give you a hand. That is what this credit card says.

Here is a debit card. This is one by the Bank of America. It makes a point but that I think is important. You can see the colors on this debit card. Obviously, this is aimed at kids. This is obviously a children's approach to Joe Camel for cigarettes. But we have a debit card that is about the same thing.

Let me show first this chart. This shows Bruce Guiliano, senior vice president for licensing for Sanrio, Inc., which owns the Hello Kitty brand. That is the next card I will show you. It says:

We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14,

although it certainly could be younger.

Can you imagine grown men and women sitting around saying: What is our target group for credit cards. We think this is our target group for the new Hello Kitty Platinum Plus Visa credit card. Is this unbelievable? If somebody said to you in class at Harvard Business School: Here is a business proposition. What do you think it will be like if you run a company and you are putting credit cards out there and you are aiming credit cards at kids, 12-year-old kids.

This is, obviously, the Hello Kitty Platinum Plus card. I would love to know the person who thought this up, to ask: Are you nuts?

My son happened to get a credit cart solicitation a long while ago. He is in college now. He got a solicitation from a credit card company saying: We have a preapproved credit card for you, and we want you to take a trip to Paris, France. So actually I came to the floor of the Senate and explained to this credit card company, my son is only 12 years old. He is not going to Paris. He is not going to take your credit card either.

But what are the credit card companies doing soliciting young kids to get a credit card?

This is not an accident. I just showed you: Our target audience is 10 to 14. So what do we do with the targets? We design a credit card, a Hello Kitty Platinum Plus, pink and white and yellow. Unbelievable.

Let me show you a credit card for people who don't have such great credit. They get a gold card. This is First Premier Bank. Here is what they do. You don't have such good credit? We will give you a credit card. Come on. The limit is going to be $250. It is going to be gold. But here is the trick. In order to get this credit card that you can use for up to $250, you have to pay a $48 annual fee. You have to pay a $29 account set-up fee, a $95 program fee and $7 a month for servicing. Does that sound like good business to you? Not to me. It sounds like the kind of thing I used to see in the movies. They wore strange suits with big thick stripes, and they carried violin cases. They loaned each other money.

I understand this. Michigan State University. I could use this for any university. A credit card company wanting to wallpaper the dorms and fraternity houses of virtually anyone who is going to college. Most of them don't have a job; some do. I understand the value of a credit card for a college student. What I don't understand is, the credit cards are given to a college student and, in many cases, the parents will cosign because if the student doesn't have a job, you have to have the parents' cosignature. Then all of a sudden the credit card limit is increased without the permission of the cosigner. That is the game.

Here are some notes from constituents of mine. This is a couple from Minot:

My wife and I both have credit scores greater than 800 and

have never been late on any of our payments. So Capital One

just sent us a notice that our interest rate on our credit

card will almost triple.

Never been late, always made payments on time. Their interest rate is going to triple.

Here is one from Fairmount:

I just wanted to let you know how upset I am with the

credit card company (Citibank). They have decided to raise my

interest rate to 27 percent. I have always paid my bill on

time, have a good credit rating (820). Why would a company

that has been bailed out by taxpayers because of bad

practices then decide to stick it to us by raising interest

rates so high.

He refers to the local mafia, but the fact is, I know there are no local mafia there.

From Williston:

Enough is enough. We have shored up these banks with our

hard-earned tax dollars just to have them raise the interest

rates on their credit cards to 28 percent and 26.3 percent

for absolutely no reason. Something has to be done.

Let me reiterate that I think credit cards are valuable and useful. Most of us use credit cards. But what I think has happened is certain practices have evolved and developed that are pretty unseemly. A practice that says: We need to figure out how to go after kids. It reminds me of the tobacco debate. Because if you don't get a kid when they are a kid, you are not going to get them to smoke; right? Anybody know of somebody who has reached the age of 30 and they are sitting around their living room thinking to themselves, all right, I need to do something different, what haven't I yet done that I should begin doing, and decides the answer is to start smoking? Does anybody know anyone like that? The only way you get somebody to smoke is you find a kid and addict the kid to cigarettes. What about this, aiming a Visa card at 10 to 14-year-olds? It is unbelievable to me.

We bring a bill to the floor of the Senate that we think we will vote on tomorrow. We will have a cloture vote first. We will see if we can't put a stop to some of the practices that have allowed some of the same companies that have gotten substantial bailout funds to say to their customers, who have always paid their bills on time, never been late: We have a treat for you. We have a big, old surprise in your mailbox. You know that 7 percent or 9 percent interest rate you used to pay on your credit card balance? No more. Now it is going to be 27 or 28 percent.

That is not a business practice I think is justifiable. I think Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby from the Banking Committee have brought us legislation that is necessary and one that will be helpful in trying to put a stop to unfair business practices.

I know there are some who say this is none of government's business. I think it is. When consumers are injured, consumers individually and even in a significant group are no match for the size of the companies that have decided to engage in this and do this to the American people. This legislation is very simple. It sets up the conditions under which we will try to protect consumers from arbitrary interest rates, fee and finance increases, and we will prohibit interest charges on paid-off balances from previous billing cycles, prohibit interest charges on debt that is paid on time. We will require payments to be applied first to the credit card balance with the highest interest rate. We will protect students and other young consumers from aggressive credit card solicitations. We will require greater disclosure of rates and terms and billings, details by credit card companies, and establish tougher penalties for companies that violate these laws.

This is not rocket science. It is very simple. When you engage in these practices and start injuring consumers, often without their knowledge, when you are doing something that is fundamentally unfair and doing it all across the country, the Banking Committee, led by Senators Dodd and Shelby, has a right and the Senate has a right to say: We will try to put a stop to it. There needs to be some semblance of fairness and equity for the American people. There are a whole lot of folks who go to work every day, work hard, try to do the best they can to care for their family and deal with their daily lives. They pay their bills. They have credit cards. They pay those credit card bills. They have made a deal with the credit card company over time about the conditions of that credit card bill, only to discover one day when they come home from work their mailbox contains a little message from the credit card company: Yes, you are a good customer. We have news for you. You are going to pay higher fees and triple the interest rates, and there is not a thing you can do about it.

Well, do you know what? The American people can do something about it through the actions of the Senate. I think that is going to happen-- beginning tomorrow--and I think it will be good news for the American people.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that William ``Bill'' Curlin have full floor privileges during the consideration of the supplemental appropriations bill. He is a fellow in my office.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, yesterday we heard on the radio and in news accounts of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the crash that occurred in Buffalo, NY, of a commuter airline. I chair the Aviation Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee; Senator Rockefeller is chairman of the Commerce Committee. I visited with him early this morning on this subject.

I was stunned yesterday to read and hear the results of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Last evening, I met with the families of some of those who lost their lives in that commuter airline crash.

I want to make a point that the things we now have learned about that particular flight are very disturbing--the question of crew rest, the question of training, of safety issues. I am not here to suggest that when someone gets on an airplane today or tomorrow or anytime, they should worry about who is in the cockpit, but I do suggest this: In this case, what we have now learned is that one of the people in the cockpit traveled all night because the duty station was in New York and the person lived on the west coast. That person traveled all night from the west coast, stopping in Memphis, then on to New York, and then went on a flight. Well, one wonders about having an all-night flight. Many of us have it. I have been on red-eye flights from the West many times. But for a pilot in the cockpit to live on the west coast, fly to New York, and take an all-night flight, poses real questions for me in terms of crew rest.

The voices in the cockpit suggest that one of the people in the cockpit said that person had no experience with icing. Well, I have had a lot of experience with icing, and it is unfathomable to me that someone in the cockpit of a commuter airline would have no experience with icing if they are flying in the Northeast at a time of the year when icing would be present.

It appears from what we know that the person in charge of the cockpit on that airplane had 3 months of experience with that type of airplane. The question is not just experience but how much experience do you have in the cockpit of that type of equipment.

The copilot on that flight was paid $16,000 a year. Think of that. A copilot was paid $16,000 a year salary and worked part time in a coffee shop to make ends meet and lived with the parents in order to make ends meet. I don't know if most people understand this when they get on a commuter flight. A lot of flights in this country are on commuter airlines. You get on a plane that has the same markings on the tail and wings and fuselage of a major carrier, but in many cases it is not that carrier at all that is operating the flight. When people get on an airplane, they expect the same standard, the same standard of training, of crew rest, the same set of standards no matter what airplane they are on if they are flying commercially.

The Federal Aviation Administration has the responsibility to set standards and then enforce them. The National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the Buffalo crash has raised very serious questions that need to be resolved. As chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, working with the chairman and ranking member of the full Commerce Committee, I intend to be very involved in investigating what is happening.

I don't say this to alert people to be anxious or excited about having to take a flight somewhere but as someone who flies a great deal. This disclosure about these issues on this flight is

very troublesome. I want every American to believe that when they walk onto an airplane, no matter the company, that the experience, the capability in the cockpit is such that they can have comfort. I don't care whether you are flying on an Airbus 320, a Boeing triple 7 or A-8, you ought to feel, as a passenger, that that experience, the crew rest, the capability with the airplane in the cockpit gives you a substantial margin of safety.

We have an unbelievable record in the skies across the country. We have had very few accidents. In recent years when we have had accidents, most of them have been with commuter airlines. I am not suggesting in any way that we get along without commuter airlines, but I believe the FAA has some significant questions to answer. I believe the FAA has a lot of work to do. We will now have a nomination hearing for Randy Babbitt to head the FAA. Frankly, the FAA has not had consistent leadership. I hope Mr. Babbitt will provide that. I expect during his confirmation hearing he will get a great many questions about these issues.

I will have more to say about what we will do in my subcommittee as well later today. I did want to mention that I have been stunned by what has been revealed by the National Transportation Safety Board about that crash in Buffalo, NY by that commuter carrier. The family members of those who perished in the crash obviously are very concerned as well by what has been disclosed. It is a service to this country for the NTSB to have done a complete investigation. It will provide for all of us a reminder that there is much yet to do in the FAA to make certain that we maintain a good record of safety going forward. That applies to the major airlines and just as well and equally to commuter airlines.

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

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

Madam President, I have been on the floor often talking about the subprime loan scandal that led to the financial crisis we are involved in, in this country. I have held up charts on the floor that describe the solicitations from the mortgage companies and others that say: Come to us. If you have bad credit, if you have been bankrupt, come to us. We want to give you a home loan.

I have shown all of those--from Zoom Credit, from Millennium Mortgage, from the largest mortgage company in the country, Countrywide--all of them saying to people: You know what, if you have bad credit come to us. We want to loan you some money.

That subprime loan scandal was a tipping point for a significant difficult time for this country's economy and that time includes right now. I have talked about that at great length. But today we are talking about credit cards. The same influence exists with respect to credit cards. We have companies that just wallpaper this country with credit cards. Go to a college campus and try to find out how many credit cards they stick on those college campuses preapproved, saying to these kids: Get our credit card, please. Walk through the concourse of an airport and see how often you are accosted by someone who wants you to take their credit card. It is all over.

Last year the economy tipped over, and we went right into a financial crisis. But in that year, 2008, 4.2 billion credit card solicitations were mailed to consumers. Let me say that again. In the middle of an economic crisis, at a time when there was so much unbelievable leverage and debt out there, companies in this country sent 4.2 billion credit card solicitations to people.

Yes, some of them went to kids. The fact is, I spoke on the floor years ago about my 10-year-old son getting a Diners Club card saying it is preapproved, we want you to consider going to Paris, France. My son wasn't going to France. As a matter of fact, he was 10 years old, for God's sake. He had no money. He wasn't going to get a credit card. Was it a mistake that they sent him a credit card solicitation? Probably. But I went to the floor one day with a whole pile of them, saying you are preapproved, please take this piece of plastic, spend it where you want, as much as you want. Madam President, 4.2 billion new credit card solicitations went out last year alone. They don't seem to care who gets them, as I said with home mortgages, which are much larger than most of the limits on credit cards. For home mortgages they solicited people with bad credit. You have been bankrupt? Come to us. You do not pay your bills? Come to us. That is a business model I never learned about, by the way, but it is what happened. They created the house of cards and the whole thing collapsed.

With credit cards, the big companies out there--and by the way it is heavily concentrated--wallpaper this country with preapproved credit card solicitations: Come to us, load up; come on, spend what you don't have on things you don't need; come on, you can load up on my card.

Then when they got everybody with all these cards and substantial balances on the cards, here is what happened. This is a person from Minot.

My wife and I both have credit scores greater than 800 and

have never been late on any of our payments so it is odd that

Capital One just sent us a notice that our interest rate on

our credit card will almost triple.

There they are, using a plastic credit card, paying their bills on time, and they are told we are going to triple your interest rate. At least they know it. That is not an excuse, but a whole lot of folks don't even know it.

Here is another constituent who wrote to me.

I just wanted to let you know how upset I am with my credit

card company--Citibank. They have decided to raise my

interest rate to 27 percent. I have always paid my bill on

time and have a good credit rating--820. Why would a company

who was bailed out by taxpayers because of bad practices then

decide to stick it to us by raising the interest rate so high

that it is competitive with the local Mafia rate?

There is no Mafia rate in Fairmont, I might say, but I get the point.

Williston, in my State:

Enough is enough. We shored up these banks with our hard

earned tax dollars just to have them raise the interest rates

on their credit cards to 28 percent and 26.3 percent--that's

Bank of America and Capital One--for absolutely no reason.

Something must be done.

One more:

I received a letter from my credit card company--

This person from North Dakota writes--

the Bank of America, that they are upping my interest rate

from 7.99 to 18.4 on my credit card and we have not been late

with a payment. We have been with them for 15 years. I want

you to know I am really angry over this. Billions have been

going to these banks and this is what we get for it.

Here is a solicitation for a bank debit card, Visa. You might look at that and say what are they trying to solicit? Some 70-year-old codgers who are retired, sitting around worrying about their teeth? No, they are trying to solicit kids. That is the purpose of the bow. It is a little like Joe Camel and cigarettes, except this is much more obvious, a credit card for kids. It is pink with a beautiful little bow.

Here is a statement from Bruce Giuliano, a senior vice president with a company that owned the Hello Kitty brand.

We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14

although it could certainly be younger.

How much younger than 10 years old can you get people to start using credit cards? That is unbelievable.

We think our target age group will be 10 to 14.

Here, by the way, is the Hello Kitty brand I was describing. Does it seem to you like they are targeting that 10-year-old to 14-year-old? It is a nice little pink thing with a kitty, new Platinum Plus Visa credit card with world

point rewards. If they could couple this with an airline and get 10- year-old kids flying to France, they would have what my son experienced, plus a pink credit card. It is unbelievable to me. We wonder why people are upset. You have a bunch of companies out there going after your kids to see if they can put plastic in their pockets, kids who never had a job and will never get a job--at least not when they are 10 years old--saying: Load up on debt.

Here, First Premium Card says:

Get our platinum credit card. We have a platinum card. Even

if your credit is less than perfect.

Once again, a solicitation to say if you don't do so well paying your bills, we have a credit card for you.

Has anybody thought through that maybe this is what steered the country into the ditch? Has anybody thought about that? By the way, some of these financial companies are the ones that have gotten very large bailouts from the Federal Government.

This is interesting. This is a credit card, presumably, for somebody who does not pay their bills so well. So it is hard for them to get a credit card. Here is what they are going to do. It looks pretty good. It is actually a gold card with a $250 total credit limit. The problem is the annual fee is $48, the setup fee is $29, the program fee is $95, and the monthly servicing fee is $7. So if you pay all these fees to that bank, you get to have a piece of plastic in your purse or your wallet that allows you to charge up to $250. What an unbelievable opportunity for people who are not thinking or do not know or at least have been cheated by a company that suggests these terms.

This chart simply describes a college credit card. Everybody makes money on credit cards. That is why they accost you when you are going through the concourses at an airport--the airline is actually pushing credit cards. They are all making money on credit cards--including some colleges, by the way.

They wallpaper all of those college hallways with credit cards because if you can get someone at that age to start using credit cards with your company, then you have got them for a long period of time.

Now, 84 percent of undergraduates in college had at least one credit card, up from 76 percent in 2004. Midwestern students continue to carry the highest average number of credit cards, with more than half of the students--think of this--more than half of these college students have four or more credit cards. Again, a cultural lesson about debt? I don't think that is a lesson we want college students to understand. I am not suggesting college students should not have a credit card. I understand the value of that. But they ought to have a limit.

By the way, here is the other thing that happens with credit cards and college students. You cosign a credit card as a parent for the college student who does not have a job, and it is not very long before the credit card company ups the limit to the college student without telling the cosigner. I know that is an interesting business practice, to be pushing additional credit toward those who do not have income, but it is part of the culture of this country, I guess.

Undergraduates are carrying record-high credit card balances. The average balance grew to $3,100--the highest in the years the study has been conducted--and 21 percent of undergraduates had balances between $3,000 and $7,000.

My point is simple: This is some of the same culture and some of the same difficulty that has tipped this country's economy over, beginning with the subprime loan scandal in housing but very quickly going into credit cards.

Someone said to me a while back: You know something, nobody spends money like the Federal Government. I am talking about debt. The Federal Government has run up all of this debt. Shame on the Federal Government.

I said: I agree with you. This Government has to decide it can only deliver Government to the American people that the American people are willing to pay for. We cannot continue with these deficits.

But, I said, understand this: It is not just the Government. This culture has had a dramatic runup in household debt, a dramatic runup in corporate debt, you name it, all across the board, including trade debt.

But we are here today because Senator Dodd has brought a bill to the floor with his colleague, Senator Shelby, and they deserve great credit. They deserve a lot of credit from the American people for doing this. It is a piece of legislation that begins to put the brakes on, puts a bridle on those who are engaged in practices I have just described: aiming credit card solicitations at 10-, 12-, 14-year-old kids, wallpapering college campuses so that kids came up with four or more credit cards. The fact is many of these companies got involved in all of these unbelievable instruments--credit default swaps, CDOs, and shame on them. Shame on WaMu, shame on Wachovia, shame on the companies that did it. They are supposed to be banks. Banking is supposed to be reasonably conservative. Instead, they loaded up with unbelievable debt.

Now some of the same companies, by the way, that are putting credit cards out all over this country are saying to credit card customers: You know, I understand you have never been late, never missed a payment, been a customer for 20 years, but you know what, your 7.9 interest rate has now gone to 26 percent, and you are lucky we told you because some people are not going to know it. By the way, we are going to add some additional fees, and we do not care what you think about this.

This legislation says: No more. You cannot do that. It says: If you are going to go in this direction--way overboard, in many cases cheating customers--then we are going to put the brakes on.

Some people say: Well, of what business is it of the Government?

Well, you know what, we have a responsibility, it seems to me, to stand up for consumers. In this case, you have some very large companies that have engaged in this business and now, in recent years, have decided to impose very substantial fees and very high interest rates, in a way that I believe takes advantage of the people. These people are good citizens, pay their bills on time, are conscientious about it, and now discover that the company they have had a relationship with for a very long time has imposed all kinds of dramatic penalties and fees that customer does not deserve.

So this legislation is legislation that I believe will pass the Senate with a very wide margin. Why? Because I think those companies that have done this have invited this today. They asked for it. This Congress has a responsibility to stand up for the interests of the American people.

I come from a State in which Teddy Roosevelt lived for a while, and he always said: Had it not been for my time in North Dakota, I never would have been President. He was a rugged guy, and he went out there and ranched in North Dakota.

By the way, he was in the depths of despair because both his mother and his wife died in his home on the same day in New York. Think of it, losing your mother and your wife the same day on different floors of the same home. He went out to try to renew his spirit in the Badlands of North Dakota. He became a rancher and later became President of the United States.

One of the things I remember him for and the country remembers him for is as a ``trust buster,'' willing to take on the big interests, willing to stand up to the big interests when they rip into the interests of the American consumer, the American people. Thank God for what Teddy Roosevelt did in so many areas in trust busting.

In many ways, this is a smaller piece of that larger issue, taking on the bigger interests when they are taking on the American citizens in a way we believe is unfair and untoward.

So I came today simply to say to my colleagues, Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby, that I appreciate the work they have done. I am a strong supporter of this legislation, and I know we have some amendments back and forth. At some point, I am going to be proud to cast a ``yes'' vote.

I am not suggesting credit cards are bad--far from it. Credit cards are very helpful to the American people. I am suggesting there are some practices that have occurred that go way beyond that which is reasonable, and we are going to try to rein that in with this legislation.