Floor Statements

Mr. President, yesterday I introduced, with Senators Ensign, Inouye, Martinez, Klobuchar, and others, the Travel Promotion Act of 2009. We seek with this bill to increase travel to the U.S. and rebuild the country's place in the global travel market. After 9/11, the number of overseas travelers to the U.S. decreased dramatically and has still not recovered. In addition, the current U.S. economic downturn has caused many American families to cut back on vacation plans and our travel industry is struggling.

Travel and tourism are a crucial part of our economy. Travel expenditures in the U.S. are estimated to be $775.9 billion for 2008. Yet other countries have gained market share to our detriment. Foreign travelers are going elsewhere.

The absence of Federal leadership in travel promotion has resulted in States having to step in to fill that void. An example is the effort made by my home State of North Dakota, where tourism is the State's second largest industry. Research by North Dakota State University found that in 2007 out-of-State visitors spent $3.96 billion in North Dakota. The investment that North Dakota made to encourage travel and tourism has reaped enormous benefits. But we can only imagine how many tourists would enjoy each of our States if we did not just leave the promotion to the States, but made that investment as a Country.

The lack of a coordinated Federal campaign creates a comparative disadvantage with countries that have

centralize ministries or offices to encourage international travel to their countries. The example of North Dakota should be a lesson for the entire country. The U.S. offers unique and diverse destinations for travelers--a small investment in national coordination has the potential to create a significant windfall for our economy.

The Travel Promotion Act of 2009 will promote travel to the U.S., including areas not traditionally visited, highlighting the U.S. as a premier travel destination. The bill will improve communication of U.S. travel policies and perceptions of the process--negative perceptions can often deter foreigners from traveling here. Our communities will benefit from growth of this multibillion-dollar industry--with an increase in visitors they will experience an expansion of jobs and local economies.

The bill initiates a nationally coordinated travel promotion campaign established in a public-private partnership to increase international travel to the United States. It creates a Corporation for Travel Promotion, an independent, nonprofit corporation, to run the travel promotion campaign. The program will be funded equally by a small fee paid by foreign travelers visiting the U.S. and matching contributions from the travel industry.

This is a great country, and we should welcome visitors to our shores to meet our people and experience our culture.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 10:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate office building to conduct a business meeting to consider the nomination of Larry J. Echo Hawk to be Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior.

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

Madam President, on Thursday I was privileged to host a bipartisan lunch of the Senate Democratic and Republican policy committees, in honor of a team of Green Berets who earned the Silver Star for extraordinary bravery in combat operations in Afghanistan. These are true American heroes, and their actions were in the proudest traditions of our Armed Forces in general, and of our Special Operations forces in particular.

On April 6, 2008, this team's mission was to capture or kill several very high-ranking members of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, HIG, militant group. The insurgents were in their stronghold, a village perched in Nuristan's Shok Valley that is normally accessible only by pack mule.

During a harrowing, nearly 7-hour battle on a mountainside, this team and a few dozen Afghan commandos they had trained took fire from all directions. Outnumbered, the Green Berets fought on even after half of them were wounded--and managed to kill an estimated 150 to 200 enemy fighters.

For their heroism in battle, 10 members of Operational Detachment Alpha 3336 from the 3rd Special Forces Group received the Silver Star, one of the highest awards for valor in the U.S. Military. This was the highest number of such awards for a single engagement since the Vietnam war.

The men who earned these Silver Stars were CPT Kyle Walton, SFC Scott Ford, SSG Luis Morales, SSG Seth Howard, SSG Ronald Shurer, SSG John Walding, SSG Dillon Behr, SGT David Sanders, SGT Matthew Williams, and SPC Michael Carter.

I will ask to have printed in the Record a copy of their Silver Star citations. I will also ask to have printed in the Record a copy of a Washington Post report describing the battle on that Afghan mountainside.

Mr. President, as I mentioned earlier, it was our privilege to honor these heroic Green Berets, who were joined at the lunch by SSG Robert Gutierrez, Jr., an Air Force special tactics combat controller who targeted airstrikes during the mission. For his actions, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with ``V'' device for valor.

No words can truly express the depth of our gratitude to these men and all the other members of our Armed Forces who have answered their country's call.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have the materials to which I referred printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about a couple of issues that relate to the Department of Defense and to defense issues, but I want to especially today talk about the work that has been done by my colleague, Senator Levin, and my colleague from Arizona. The work they have done on procurement reform is very important.

I listened to some of the presentations earlier today by Senator Levin and Senator McCain about the overruns in various weapons programs, the cost overruns, and the significant dislocations with respect to decisions that have been made or not made with certain weapons programs.

I think there is real need for reform, and the bill they have brought to the floor of the Senate is a great service to the American taxpayer. I think it is also a great service to our defense structure. We have limited funds. We have to use them effectively. We have to fund weapons programs that are essential to the defense strength of this country. That is what both of my colleagues are saying. And they are saying, when we have a program that has outlived its usefulness, a program that has cost overruns that never stop and seem completely out of control, we have to address that and deal with it and respond to it.

So we have been going through a long period here of unbelievable cost overruns in some programs without much notice and without much action attending to it. I think my two colleagues are doing a great service. I hope, as I know the chairman does, we will be able to move quickly to address this legislation, perhaps without even amendments, and go forward and get it through the Senate. We will have done, I think, a great service to strengthen our defense capability and protect the American taxpayer at the same time.

Defense Duplication

Mr. President, I want to raise an issue that does not directly relate to this bill but relates to all the considerations of this bill because it is a follow-on and one I think we will deal with in the next bill, defense authorization. That bill will also be chaired on the floor of the Senate by my colleague, Senator Levin. It deals with the issue of duplication.

In addition to contract and procurement reform--in this case procurement reform--the issue of duplication of our services at the Department of Defense is a very important issue. Every service wants to do everything. That is just the way it is. I wish to give an example of something I have been working on, so far unsuccessfully, but I am going to raise it and push it during Defense authorization because it relates to the very same things that my colleagues have talked about today.

These are pictures of unmanned aerial vehicles; UAVs they are called. It is sort of the new way to fly, particularly over a battlefield for reconnaissance purposes and so on. Many of us are familiar with what is called the Predator B, which the Air Force refers to as the Reaper. That is this airplane. The Predator B is used extensively and has been used extensively in the war theater in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in that region. It is an unmanned aerial vehicle, unmanned aerial aircraft without a pilot. The pilot sits on the ground someplace in a little thing that looks almost like a trailer house, and they are flying this aircraft. In some cases, the pilot is 6,000, 8,000 miles away from where the aircraft is, flying it at a duty station perhaps at a National Guard base or somewhere else.

But, anyway, the Air Force has what is called the Predator. That is built by General Atomics, and it is a worthwhile program that has provided great service to us and to our country in terms of our defense capability.

This, by the way, is called the Sky Warrior. This is the Reaper. It is owned by the Air Force. This is the Sky Warrior. That is the U.S. Army.

Why does it look alike? Well, it is because it is made by the same company. It is made to different specifications because the Army wants a slightly different vehicle, but the Air Force has the Predator B, and the Army has the Sky Warrior.

Why does the Army have a Sky Warrior? Well, because they want to run their own reconnaissance. So what we have in these circumstances is, the Army, in the next 5 years, wants to spend $800 million to buy more than 100 of the Sky Warriors, and eventually they want to have 500 Sky Warriors. The Air Force wants to spend $1.5 billion to buy 150 more Predators, Predator Bs.

Here is what the Predator B and the Sky Warrior look like. As you can see, they are nearly identical. Both carry intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors so they can find and track targets on the ground. Both can fire missiles so they can hit a target they might find, both can fly over 25,000 feet high for more than 30 hours which gives them range and endurance, but it seems to me a complete duplication of effort.

We are not talking about just the UAV mission itself; we are talking about the duplication of acquisition programs--engineering, contracting. I don't understand it.

For years, the Air Force used U-2s, F-15s, F-16s, even B-52s from time to time to provide surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance, and close air support for the Army. They used manned aircraft to provide all of those services for the U.S. Army. It is not clear why that ought to be different just because we are using unmanned aircraft.

The Army says they plan to assign each set of 12 Sky Warriors to a specific combat unit. Of course, since most combat units in the Army are at their home base at any given time, most Sky Warriors will be based in the United States or perhaps Europe at any given time. The Air Force has a different approach. They have a streamlined operation concept. They have been working nearly 8 years in almost constant combat operations, and almost every single

Air Force Predator is at this point in the Central Command of Operations--CENTCOM.

It seems to me the services ought to do what they do best. What the Army does best is fight a war on the ground. What the Air Force does best is to provide timely intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance for the troops on the ground and to attack ground targets from the air. That is what each does best.

However, the Army wants to do exactly what the Air Force does and have a separate acquisition program to do so.

So we ought to be asking the question: Does this make sense to send thousands of airmen to Iraq and Afghanistan to be truck drivers in Army convoys while the Army plans to have thousands of troops operating unmanned aircraft? Yes, that is happening. Putting all of our large UAVs under the Air Force will result, in my judgment, in streamlined and more efficient acquisition of UAVs and allow the Army to concentrate its manpower on Army tasks.

Let me be clear. There are some surveillance--at low-altitude, over- the-battlefield surveillance with unmanned aircraft--that are just fine at 500 feet, 1,000 feet with various kinds of unmanned devices. I understand why the Army would want to operate that, and should. However, I don't understand the Army flying at 25,000 or 30,000 feet, a duplicate mission for which the Air Force exists.

So given the budget problems we face, with nondiscretionary and discretionary spending, we can't afford duplication of effort.

A few years ago, the Air Force proposed that it be designated as the executive agent for all medium- and high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles. That made sense to me. The Air Force is the logical choice. They already have the infrastructure to deliver that combat power.

In 2007, by the way, the Pentagon's Joint Requirements Oversight Council endorsed that proposal, but the proposal didn't go anywhere because of intense opposition from the Army and those who support the Army in this Congress.

I don't think this should be an intramural debate between supporting the Army and supporting the Air Force. I support both. I want the Army to be equipped in an unbelievably important way to do its mission, and I want the Air Force to be similarly equipped. I just don't want the taxpayer to be paying for duplication of effort, and I don't want every service to believe it should do everything because that clearly is a duplication of effort.

The legislation that is before us today is about procurement reform, procurement reform itself. It does not address this specific issue of duplication, but this issue is certainly the second cousin to it. We will be discussing this when we get to the Defense authorization bill, and that, too, is a very important part of how we can strengthen our defense; how do we make certain the taxpayers are getting their money's worth; and how do we make certain the men and women who serve in defense of this country are equipped to do what they do best.

I raise this issue of duplication because I think it is so important that we find a way to begin to unravel the unmistakable duplication that exists in so many areas within the Pentagon. This is one that should be self-evident to virtually everyone.

I wish to mention as well today the issue that will also come up in Defense authorization that is the first or second cousin to procurement reform, and that is contracting reform. I know my colleague from Michigan and my colleague from Arizona are very concerned about this as well, and I look forward to working with them on the Defense authorization bill.

A couple of points about contract reform: I have held, I believe, 18 hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee that I chair on contracting issues over a good number of years now. I wish to show a couple of photographs that describe some of the unbelievable circumstances that have existed and that we must take steps to correct, and I know my colleagues, the chairman and ranking member, are already doing so.

This, by the way, deals with contracting. I understand during wartime there are going to be contracts sometimes that are let without a lot of scrutiny and somebody is going to make a lot of money, or perhaps somebody doesn't quite measure up, but this is different. I think we have seen some of the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country in contracting.

This is a picture of a couple million dollars wrapped in Saran wrap, a couple of million dollars in cash. Franklin Willis is the guy with the white shirt. He is holding one of these. This happens to be in a palace in Iraq, one of Saddam's palaces. I assume the chairman of the committee has been in one of Saddam's palaces. I have been in one of Saddam's palaces in Baghdad. So we took over all of those palaces for headquarters, or a good many of them. This happens to be a couple of million dollars in cash put on a table because the contractor was coming to pick up the cash. Franklin Willis--a very respected guy, by the way, who went over from the Federal Government to work on these issues and testified in one of my hearings--said the word was to contractors: Bring a bag because we pay cash.

We were contracting for everything in Iraq. Just all kinds--they had over 130,000 contractors, I believe, at one point. So the company who was going to pick up this cash, by the way, was later indicted in criminal court. But Franklin Willis was showing us how reimbursements were made in Iraq. This is bills wrapped in Saran wrap. He would say from time to time he would see people playing football catch with 100- dollar bills wrapped in Saran wrap waiting for the contractors to bring a bag, to pick up a couple million dollars on this day.

It is not an isolated problem that the contractor that was going to show up to pick up this money was later convicted--indicted and convicted--in a U.S. court for stealing millions of taxpayers' dollars. Franklin Willis said it was just like the old Wild West. That is what he said to us: It was like the Wild West. Bring a bag. We have cash.

So during this period of time, in Baghdad, as they began to try to set up a provisional government--which was the U.S. Government trying to set up a government, and we sent Ambassador Bremer over to set up a government--during that time, we know that pallets of cash were shipped to Iraq. This cash left the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. This pallet, each pallet, contains 640 bundles of 1,000-dollar bills and weighs 1,500 pounds. They sent 484 of these pallets to Iraq on C-130s. That is more than 363 tons of cash that was sent to Iraq in C-130s, totaling $12 billion. Think of that: $12 billion with reports of distributing cash onto the back of pickup trucks. Do you wonder why we were stolen blind?

A woman who has had a substantial amount of experience who has never gotten her due, but one of the most courageous women I have met in Washington, DC, Bunny Greenhouse, and for her testimony and for her courage she lost her job. Here is what she said. She was the former chief contracting officer at the Corps of Engineers. She was the top civilian working for the Army Corps of Engineers, and she was in the room when the logcap project was negotiated.

Let me describe to you what she said. This is the top civilian official in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She had 25 years of great service to our country with two masters degrees, unbelievable qualifications, and performance appraisals that said she was outstanding every single time--until she spoke publicly.

Here is what she said:

I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the

contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root--

A subsidiary of Halliburton--

represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I

have witnessed during the course of my professional career.

For that, this woman was demoted and lost her job; for the courage to speak out, she lost her job. Pretty unbelievable. This is an extraordinary woman.

We have seen from all of these circumstances unbelievable waste in contracting. It is not just--it is what Bunnatine Greenhouse said, the way the contracts were negotiated. She said they were illegal and so on.

Let me give an example, and I could give 100 examples. This shows $40 million spent on a prison in Iraq they

called the whale. This is when most of the money had already been spent. You can see there is virtually nothing done. The Parsons Corporation got that money. This now sits empty, never having been used. A top floor was never finished. The U.S. Government says: Well, we gave it to the Iraqis.

The Iraqi Government says: Are you kidding me? We wouldn't take that in a million years. We don't want the prison. We would not use the prison. It was never given to us.

So $40 million was spent of the taxpayers' money. Procurement reform and contractor reform are all related. I don't want to come and provide a message that steps in any way on anything that the chairman is doing on procurement reform because that is critically important.

We have to follow it with its first cousin, contract reform. The stories are so legend. In this photo is a young man who was killed. He was a Ranger and a Green Beret. He was electrocuted while taking a shower. This is his mother Cheryl. He was electrocuted because KBR got the contract for wiring facilities in Iraq and didn't do a good job. He was killed in a shower. Another man was power washing a Jeep or humvee and got electrocuted. The Army said: We think he took a radio or an electrical device into the shower. But he didn't.

It is not just this, but it is providing water to military bases that was more contaminated than the Euphrates River.

I will be on the floor when we come to defense authorization with a good number of amendments on contracting reform because we have to put a stop to this. It has gone on way too long.

Let me finish by coming back to where I started, and that is the issue of procurement reform. Our colleagues on the Defense Authorization Committee are trying to deal with virtually unlimited wants and resources. That is not new. We understand the problems that creates. So they have decided they have to put together procurement reform legislation. It is so important to this country to get this done and to get it right. Procurement reform is essential. It is the foundation of fixing the problems that exist with respect to these major weapons programs.

Then, I hope we can segue into contracting reform and the issues of duplication, on which I wish to work with the chairman and ranking member. I thank Senators Levin and McCain for their leadership. I requested that I be made a cosponsor of the procurement reform legislation. I look forward to visiting and working with them on amendments on contracting reform in the coming month or two, when we get to the defense authorization.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 7, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in Room 628 of the Dirksen Senate office building to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Larry J. Echo Hawk to be Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior.

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 have come to speak about the subject of energy, but before I do that, I wish to speak about the issue of Roxana Saberi and the fact that she sits this morning in a 10-foot by 10-foot cell in Evin Prison just outside of Tehran, Iran.

Let me describe, as I have previously done so, this young woman. This is a picture of Roxana Saberi. She was born and raised and educated in Fargo, North Dakota. Her father came to this country from the country of Iran about 35 years ago. As a result, Roxana, born and raised in this country, is an American citizen. However, her father was an Iranian citizen and has Iranian citizenship. Thus, this young woman is considered an Iranian citizen as well.

Let me tell you a bit about her. She was an all-star scholar, an all- star athlete. She graduated from high school in Fargo, North Dakota. She got a bachelor's degree. She competed in the Miss North Dakota Pageant and was Miss North Dakota. She competed in the Miss America Pageant and was one of the 10 finalists in the pageant. She went to Northwestern University and got a master's degree at Northwestern University. She then went to Cambridge, England, and in Cambridge received a master's degree in international studies. She worked for a television station in North Dakota in the middle of all of that. Later, she went to Iran because she was very interested in her heritage. While in Iran, she reported for National Public Radio and BBC in England. She reported for those entities and many others.

At the end of January of this year, she was arrested by the Iranian authorities and put in prison. She was arrested, presumably for purchasing a bottle of wine. They threw her in prison. She was there incommunicado, unable to communicate with anyone for a good long while. She was later told her arrest was not for purchasing a bottle of wine but, rather, for reporting without a license--being a reporter and reporting without a license.

She was finally allowed about a 1-minute telephone call to her parents in the United States. Then she was allowed to see an attorney. Then they held a very brief, closed-door trial in Tehran, Iran and found her guilty, sentencing her to eight years in prison for espionage.

The Iranian Government went from purchasing a bottle of wine which justified her arrest and detention in prison, to reporting without a license, to espionage, and to an 8-year prison sentence. Today, Roxana Saberi sits in a 10-foot by 10-foot cell with two other women in that prison.

I visited this week with the Swiss Ambassador to Iran, who came to this country and stopped in to see me. The reason I mention the Swiss Ambassador is because we do not have an embassy in Iran nor do we have an ambassador there. We do not have diplomatic relations with this country, so the Swiss Embassy is our protectorate. So we have an intercessor. They have been working with us to talk with the Iranian officials.

This is an unbelievable miscarriage of justice and needs to be rectified. The fact is, the Iranian officials should understand that they have detained this young journalist and thrown her in prison. They have charged her with espionage and sentenced her to eight years in prison, thus the spotlight of the world is on them. Their credibility is at stake.

I hope the Iranian officials will do the right thing: release her from prison and allow her to leave the country of Iran. It is past time, long past the time for them to make the right judgment. They have made a number of wrong judgments in recent weeks and months. This young woman has been in prison since the end of January. It is a complete miscarriage of justice. For them

to charge her with being a spy and find her guilty of espionage is almost unbelievable. They know better than that. I call on the Iranian Government to release her from prison and allow her to leave the country of Iran.

Most governments in the world have now communicated with the country of Iran about this case. I hope we will not have to be talking about this case much longer. I hope the Iranian authorities and its Government will do the right thing.

Roxana Saberi should not be in prison. She is a very accomplished young woman who was in the country of Iran because she treasured her heritage. Because she was in Iran, she was apparently arrested on what I believe are trumped-up charges and has been sentenced in a way that completely defies any reasonable sense of justice.

Again, my hope is Iranian officials will begin to do the right thing and do it very soon. I call on them to release this young woman from prison and allow her to leave the country of Iran.

Energy Policy

Mr. President, I wish to talk about energy policy. There are so many different issues we confront in this country, and we have been leapfrogging from one issue to another. We have a very serious financial crisis and financial collapse in this country. We have seen, month after month after month, 600,000, 650,000 people losing their jobs, in an economy that has substantially collapsed, and we are hoping now is at bottom. We are hoping we will begin to rebuild once again. But when we talk about 3.7 million people having lost their jobs just since this recession began. This is a very serious situation.

So the financial crisis that is one issue. On top of that, day after day we hear of other significant challenges--a crisis now that might turn out to be a pandemic dealing with swine flu, and requiring the U.S. Government to move very quickly to address that. I just described one issue in Iran. The reality is that we have a country that wishes to build a nuclear weapon and imprisons innocent young women. Further, there are concerns about North Korea and their actions in recent weeks. We have no end to challenges. We are trying to figure out what and where we go with respect to Afghanistan and Pakistan. What do we do about Iraq? How do we address the issue of terrorism? There is no end to the issues we face.

I have been in both Afghanistan and in Iraq and that region dealing with, not only the internal issues of both countries which are very difficult, but the issue of terrorism in the region is something very important to us.

My point is that we are working on many issues and all of them critically important. But let me describe one issue that, if something catastrophic happened some night about midnight, would put this country flat on its back. That concern is energy and our unbelievable dependence on foreign energy.

Let me put a chart up that shows oil consumption. This is a chart showing the top oil consumers in the world. At the top of the chart is the United States. The next largest is China and so forth. We put little straws in this planet and suck oil out. We suck 85 million barrels of oil every day out of the Earth--85 million barrels a day! One-fourth of it is needed for the United States. Think of that: One- fourth of everything that is taken out of this planet in the form of oil is needed in this country. We have an unbelievable appetite for oil to turn into energy.

Another statistic: Of the 21 million barrels a day that we use in the United States, nearly 70 percent comes from outside our country. We are 70 percent dependent on oil supplies from outside of our country. Another statistic: Nearly 70 percent of all the oil that we use is used in the transportation sector. We get behind a steering wheel, put the key in the ignition, get the seat real comfortable, put whatever we are going to put in the cup holder, and away we go using oil. As I said, 70 percent of that which we use is used in transportation, and nearly 70 percent of that which we use comes from outside our country.

Think through for a moment: If somehow terrorists interrupted the supply of oil to this country or were able to destroy one of the major supply lines or one of the major facilities in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, then we would be in very significant difficulty. This demonstrates how we are unbelievably dependent on oil.

I think we are going to continue to use oil, natural gas and fossil fuels in our future for a long time. We are going to need to use them differently by decarbonizing them and have less CO2 emitted, but the fact is we are going to continue to use fossil energy. Much more importantly, how do we, even as we continue to use that oil, make the U.S. less dependent on that oil which others produce? Well, the way we do that, it seems to me, is to define a different kind of energy future. To decide that, we are going to produce renewable energy and that we are going to do so by maximizing the production of renewable energy domestically. If we are producing a lot of energy from the wind and a lot of energy from the sun, or biomass or other alternatives, it means we need to import less oil. That is a fact.

We are going to have a lot of debates, and it wasn't too many months ago on the floor of the Senate that we had folks coming with big signs that said: Drill, baby, drill. Drill, baby, drill. The whole notion was you have to drill more. Well, you know what, I am for drilling more. It makes sense to me.

By the way, if you are going to drill more, the place you would go, it seems to me, is in the eastern Gulf of Mexico--where you have substantial opportunities to achieve more production. The only area that has been newly opened in the Gulf of Mexico in recent years is something called lease 181, which four of us, myself, Senator Bingaman, then-Senator Talent, and Senator Domenici introduced legislation to open. It got narrowed some, but we got it done, and that became law. They had a lease sale, and we now have the opportunity to get some energy from lease 181, which is a reasonably small area in the eastern gulf.

My point is: We should drill more. Let us drill where it makes sense and add to our stock. But the fact is, that in itself will not solve our problems. Senator Voinovich and I introduced legislation in recent weeks called the National Energy Security Act of 2009. It is bipartisan and addresses a wide range of issues of things we have to do to address this energy issue. Right now, in the authorization committee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, we are beginning to write a new energy bill as well, and I am pushing very hard to include those kinds of provisions in a new energy bill that will, I hope, come to the floor of the Senate reasonably soon.

Here are the kinds of things this represents--the achievements I think we have to strive for in a new energy bill. It is what we have included in the National Energy Security Act. Number 1, reduce our dependence on foreign oil; Number 2, increase domestic production--and that is not just oil but production of all sources of energy--Number 3, electrify and diversify our vehicle fleet because as I indicated, 70 percent of our energy is used in transportation; and by doing this we can move toward an electric drive future with respect to vehicles, and then even beyond that, hydrogen fuel cells with respect to the long- term future--Number 4, create a transmission superhighway; and, Number 5, train the energy workforce of tomorrow.

The transmission superhighway is a critical part of this because we don't have a transmission superhighway similar to the interstate highway system in this country. We have a transmission system that is kind of like an old inner tube with patches on it. Much of it is old, with some new, but it does not have a transmission capability that connects all of America. What we need to do is maximize the potential of renewable energy.

How do we do that? Well, the wind blows especially hard from Texas to North Dakota. What you need to do is to capture that wind energy and move it to where it is needed. For example in North Dakota, while it can produce a lot of wind energy--the Department of Energy calls it the Saudi Arabia of wind--North Dakota doesn't need the additional wind energy. But if it can produce it, it must move it to where it is needed. From Texas to California, in the heartland of our country, where you can produce a lot of energy from the wind, you need to have a modern grid that connects it to areas of the country that can use, and must have, the product of that wind energy.

I mean, this is simple. You take energy from the wind and, through a turbine, turn it into electricity. You can do a lot of things with it, but most notably you would put it on a grid and move it to where it is needed. Or you can, through electrolysis, separate hydrogen from water and store a hydrogen fuel from it.

This is an example of an interstate transmission system. We have all seen these. Actually, there are new technologies now that would allow it to be put underground and perhaps would be much more efficient and much less costly. But anyway, if you don't modernize the transmission grid and create a superhighway of transmission capability connecting all of America, you cannot possibly maximize wind energy or solar energy or biomass or others. You can't possibly do it. If we can get a bill to the floor of the Senate that is tepid or halting with respect to how we want to do this, or even whether we want to do it, we can talk until we are blue in the face. But we will not have done this country any favors in maximizing the production of renewable energy.

I mentioned a transmission system. The transmission system is necessary for wind and solar energy, and so on. Most of us now understand what this wind energy means. I know it was a fanciful idea not too many years ago to talk about getting energy from the wind, but with the new technology with respect to the turbines, you can put a big old tower up and some very large blades and you can grab energy from the wind and produce electricity. Once you put that tower up, you can make a few adjustments here or there, but for the next 30 years, you are going to be getting wind energy for virtually nothing. I understand we have to talk about maintenance, but understand that wind is free.

By the way, free energy comes from sun as well. As we know, the wind comes from different warming trends of the Earth, the sun shines all the time and has an unbelievable amount of energy that it focuses on the Earth, both in solar energy and wind energy. We need to harvest it and we need to take advantage of it with solar cells and a whole range of different approaches using solar and wind energy.

The only way it will work, however, is if we have, as I said, an interstate transmissions system. This system has three components to it that make it controversial: Who is going to plant it? Who is going to site it? And who is going to pay for it? Now, let me give a statistic. In the last 9 years, we have produced 11,000 miles of natural gas pipeline in this country, moving natural gas all around the country. During those 9 years, we have been able to build only 640 miles of high voltage transmission lines. Let me say that again. We have built 11,000 miles of natural gas pipeline, and during the same period we could only build 640 miles of high voltage transmission lines.

Why is that? It is because it is hard to build transmission lines. Nobody wants them to cross their interstate transmission lines. Talking about interstate now. They have proven very difficult to build because you have several different jurisdictions that have to give approval and a good many of them simply say, ``Not in my back yard. Take a hike.'' We have to address those issues. Is it controversial? Sure it is. But if we don't address it, I guarantee you this country can talk and talk and talk about moving toward more renewable energy, but we will never get there. We will not get there. Now, if we do that--move toward more renewable energy and put it on transmission lines to move it where it is needed--it will allow us to move toward an electric drive future for our vehicles, which I think is very important.

I have often mentioned my first vehicle as a young kid was an antique--a 1924 Model T Ford. It is interesting--I will not tell the whole story about my Model T Ford--but I restored it in 2 years as a young teenage kid. I loved to do that stuff. When I got it running again, got it painted and all fixed up, it was a car that was serviceable, right? It was running. The Model T ran. The interesting thing about vehicles is that everything--everything--in a vehicle has changed since they made a Model T--everything. It doesn't matter what you talk about--tires, the radiator, the spark plugs, you name it--it has all changed. There is now computer capability. But the one thing that hasn't changed is the gas tank. The gas tank on that car that was built nearly a century ago is the same as the gas tank on the current vehicle. You filled it the same way as you do now: You looked for a gas pump, drove up there, stuck a hose in the tank and started pumping.

Nothing has changed about the way we fuel vehicles. But we have to change that. If 70 percent of our oil is used in the vehicle fleet--in transportation in this country--then we have to decide if we are going to be less dependent on Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Venezuela and Iraq and so on, and change the way we fuel vehicles.

Here is a picture of an electric drive vehicle. I don't quite know the form, but we have electric drive vehicles on the road today. There is much more sophistication in the development of these vehicles. In my subcommittee, I put in $2 billion in the economic recovery program for grants for battery technology because we want to lead the world in battery storage. That is part of the key to an electric drive future. We want to lead the world in storage capacity.

Some of the electric vehicles, perhaps--whether you have plug-in vehicles, plug-in hybrids, there are all kinds of different approaches--will run on batteries, and when the battery runs a bit low, there will be a tiny engine someplace that starts and provides some additional charging for the battery. There are all kinds of different approaches, but the fact is we need to move in this direction, and I believe we will. But it will happen only if we decide as a country to embrace the policies that allow us to do it, and that is substantial additional development of renewable energy--the capability of building an interstate transmission system and getting it done with high voltage wires. If we do all that, we can change our energy future. That is a fact.

I mentioned a few moments ago about drilling. The fact that I want to maximize renewable energy doesn't mean I don't want to produce what we need to produce, and that is additional oil and natural gas, and continue to use coal as we decarbonize the use of coal. But in the legislation Senator Voinovich and I have introduced, we open the entire eastern gulf for expansion of drilling. This is a very important area where there is substantial additional opportunity for drilling. It is now closed, by the way. This little area, lease 181, is the area we opened, the four of us, by legislation in recent years. That is the only area that has been opened. We need to do this, and we need to demonstrate we are serious about energy and all forms of energy.

I have talked a lot about production and then moving it to where it is needed. Conservation is critically important, and in the legislation we have introduced, we have substantial conservation capability as well. But the fact is, when you save a barrel of oil, it is the same as producing a barrel of oil. I believe we have great opportunity to conserve.

While I am speaking, there are a whole lot of folks who left their homes to go to work today. They have all kinds of appliances plugged in. It is true at this point that the toaster is not pushed down, toasting bread, you know. Many of the appliances are not actually triggered, but they are still using some energy because they are plugged into the wall. At midnight and 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock in the morning, almost every home is still heating water. You tell me the name of somebody who is going to shower at 3 a.m. The whole country is heating water at 2 a.m.--for what? The point is, we can do a lot more and do it a lot better through conservation. That deals with the issues of smart grid and smart metering and a whole range of issues of that type.

If someone wonders whether all of this is important, I want to show you this black spot on the map. This is a map of the United States of America, and the lights show where electricity is used at night. You can see the population centers. But over here, there is one big black hole. That is because it is August 14, 2003, and 50 million people lost their electricity. Do you see that? Ohio to New York, 50 million Americans discovered the switch they used to flick up doesn't yield any energy, the toaster they used to push down doesn't produce any energy; no energy at all,

and all of a sudden you have a huge dark spot for 50 million Americans. If you wonder about the importance of this, I am talking about the reliability of a system for something we take advantage of every single day.

We are drafting a bill right now in the Energy Committee, and there is a great deal of disagreement about a renewable energy standard requirement that at least 15 percent of electricity is produced from renewables. That should not be controversial at all. In fact, I think a couple dozen states have gone way beyond the Congress on this issue. That should be a slam dunk, but it is not.

Building a transmission system--we are going to have a lot of opposition. But no country gets where it wants to go unless it sets a course. There is an old saying: If you don't care where you are, you are never lost. This country has to set a course and say: Here is where America wants to head for a decade. If, at the end of that decade, we are not less dramatically dependent on foreign oil for this country's energy needs, we are going to be held hostage for a lot of interests around this country. We need to do this, we need to do it right, and we need to do it soon.

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

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, April 30, 2009, at 9:30 a.m., in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a business meeting to consider the following:

1. Nomination of Dr. Yvette D. Roubideaux to be Director of Indian Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;

2. S. 151, the Indian Arts and Crafts Amendments Act of 2009; and

3. S. 443, the Hoh Indian Tribe Safe Homelands Act.

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

Mr. President, this is a photograph of Roxana Saberi. Yesterday, April 26, was her 32nd birthday. She was born and raised in Fargo, ND. Her father Reza Saberi is an Iranian citizen who moved here over 35 years ago. Her mother Akiko is Japanese.

This young woman is a 1994 honor graduate of Fargo North High School, active in music, soccer, dance, a member of the North High School Hall of Fame, and an outstanding athlete. In 1997, she was voted Miss North Dakota. That year, she was made one of the 10 finalists in the Miss America pageant, winning the Scholar Award. In 1999, she completed her master's degree in broadcast journalism at Northwestern. In 2000, she earned a master's degree in international relations from Cambridge University in England. I tell you all that about this young woman because she sits in a 10-foot by 10-foot prison cell in Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran.

I spoke to her father this weekend. Her father and mother are in Tehran.

Roxana was arrested in Tehran and put in prison, and she has been there 86 days. When she went to Iran, she did so because she was proud of her Iranian heritage. Even though she was born, raised, and educated here in the United States, she was interested in going to the country where her father had come from, and so she went to Iran. She is a woman who was trained in journalism. I met her when she practiced journalism in North Dakota. She has reported for National Public Radio, BBC, for FOX News, and others, from Tehran. She stayed in Iran after her credentials as a journalist were rescinded in 2006. She stayed to write a book about Iran and to complete work on her degree in Iranian studies and international relations.

As I said, as of yesterday she has spent 86 days in prison in Iran, in a 10 foot-by-10 foot cell with three cell mates. She was arrested January 31 and was convicted of spying just a week ago and given an 8- year sentence in prison. It is an absolutely preposterous miscarriage of justice. This young woman is not engaged in espionage and is not a spy. She is a young woman who went to Iran because she was proud of her cultural heritage. She was arrested and held in an Iranian prison without the capability of access to an attorney. Her parents didn't know where she was. She was held there incommunicado. She is a young woman caught in the grips of a judicial system and the politics in Iran from which she can't seem, at this point, to escape. She is an innocent woman sitting in a prison cell in Iran.

Roxana has been on a hunger strike for the past 7 days in protest of her sentence. Her father told me when I visited with him on Saturday that he was going to the prison today in Tehran to visit Roxana, and he tried to convince her to cease the hunger strike. She does not want to do that.

She has already lost 10 pounds. Her father said she looked very weak and said she intends to continue the hunger strike until she dies or is released from jail. The only nourishment she is taking is water with some sugar.

The entire world has protested this arrest and conviction and sentencing, which is a miscarriage of justice. As I said, she was held for 10 days without an ability to communicate with anyone. It took a month before the country of Iran admitted they were holding her. It was more than 5 weeks before she was allowed to see a lawyer.

The charges kept changing. First, the Iranian Government said the charge was that she purchased a bottle of wine, and the person who sold it to her told the Iranian Government, and therefore she was arrested. That was what she was told she was put in prison for. She had bought a bottle of wine.

Then she was accused of working as a journalist without a valid press license. That was the second accusation.

Then, weeks later, she was accused of being a spy. The court has not released any evidence against her. They held a \1/2\-day trial--behind closed doors. There was no release of any evidence against her. According to her attorney, she was not allowed to speak in her own defense.

To us that is a completely foreign notion of what justice should be. Apparently, at least in some circles in Iran, they consider that some kind of perverted justice.

Let me say there is at least some hopeful signs. President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to Iran's prosecutor saying Roxana's rights must not be violated and asking him to ensure that she is allowed to offer a full defense on the appeal. Her attorney, as I understand it, is now set to offer the appeal. The Ayatollah Shahroudi, who is the head of Iran's judiciary, has requested a quick and fair appeal of Roxana's case. That also gives some of us hope.

Perhaps some of Iran's leaders understand that what is also on trial is the credibility of those who govern Iran.

This has been very difficult for our country because we do not have an embassy or ambassador in Iran. We must communicate through the Swiss Embassy, which is the protecting power for American citizens in Iran. So it is very hard for us to know what is going on there.

I want to say, again, this young woman is not a spy. It is preposterous for her to be charged with espionage. It is an unbelievable miscarriage of justice for her to be sitting in a 10-by-10 prison cell. Yet on her birthday she sat in that cell in Evin Prison in Tehran facing an 8-year sentence in a circumstance in which she was not even allowed to defend herself. The basic tenets of justice have somehow been denied to this young woman.

What I believe Iran should do is release her from prison and allow her to leave the country and return home with her parents to the U.S. I hope the Iranian Government is listening--not just to us, not just to me, but to virtually everyone in the world who cares about fairness and justice and human rights. All of them have weighed in on Roxana's behalf saying: How on Earth can you do this? How do you justify this?

Iran leaders understand the spotlight of the world is on their country and on those who decided to arrest this young woman, a young woman so proud of her heritage that she was there wanting to write a book about her heritage. I hope they understand the injustice of what they have done and what the rest of the world sees of that injustice and what it means to Iran in the eyes of the rest of the world.

If they do, if they understand that, most surely they will decide to release her from prison, exonerate her, and allow her to go home. I hope they do that soon. They face great risks with the health of this young woman who is now on a hunger strike. President Ahmadinejad and the people who run the judicial system of Iran should pay close attention and do the right thing.

I have spoken to the Permanent Iranian Representative to the United Nations on numerous occasions about this case, and I intend to keep pushing. I hope today perhaps the Iranians will understand the unfairness of what they have done and finally, at long last, make it right.

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

Will the Senator yield?

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the remarks of the Senator from Connecticut.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut. I also thank my colleague from Utah for his forbearance so that I might make a few comments. I appreciate the courtesy of Senator Hatch.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my statement be printed in the morning business section of today's Record.

Mr. President, I am chairman of the Congressional- Executive Commission on China, and I want to say a few words about China and a very courageous man in China who we believe now is in a Chinese prison and likely being tortured. I think it is very important for our country to speak out about this issue.

Let me say first, there are many thoughtful and independent people in China today who understand the importance of fundamental rights and the role of strong and independent legal institutions. A few of these people work for the Chinese Government. Many work at universities or with U.S. companies and law firms. They care about the rule of law. Some of have cooperated with US agencies to increase food

safety and improve security for coal miners, and others. Those are the folks in China who get it.

There are also independent men and women in China who take a different approach. They apply what they know about the rule of law and the role of fundamental rights in very much the same way. Except that they choose to sound the alarm when the rights of vulnerable people are violated. And in so doing, they go to great lengths and place themselves at enormous personal risk. They defend the interests of consumers whose children are poisoned by powdered milk. They help the families of earthquake victims. They seek to represent the rights of illegally detained Tibetan monks. They stand up for their country and its people. By doing this, they are claimed to be enemies of the state. So who are the enemies of the state?

I want to tell you about one man today, a man who is very courageous, a man named Gao Zhisheng. His wife is visiting Washington, DC, today. I want to tell you about him because it is so important for me to do so.

This is a photograph of this courageous lawyer from China: Gao Zhisheng, with his son, his wife, and his daughter. He disappeared 80 days ago and has not been heard from since. We know 2 years ago he was arrested by the Chinese secret police and put in prison and tortured-- tortured with electric shock and other devices I will not describe.

What was his transgression then? He wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress asking us to pay some attention to the lack of human rights that existed in China. For writing an open letter to Members of the U.S. Congress, in 2007, Gao Zhisheng, one of the most noted and distinguished human rights lawyers in China, was imprisoned for over 50 days and brutally tortured.

Now, in 2009, he taken from his bed by 10 members of the secret police, and has not been heard from since. Let me tell you what has transpired.

Mr. Gao Zhisheng has represented some of the most vulnerable people in China. They include persecuted Christians, exploited coal miners, banned Falun Gong practioners, and so many others. He has always believed in the power of law, using the law to battle corruption, to overturn illegal property seizures, to expose police abuses, to defend religious freedom. He is a devout Christian. He has fought to protect those who engage in peaceful spiritual and religious practice in China.

In 2005, the government took away his license to practice law, closed his law practice. As I said, in 2007, they arrested him, threw him in prison, and tortured him. Eventually, he was released and brought back home and placed under house arrest. The police surveillance proved almost harsher than prison. In fact, authorities monitored the family's every movement, stationed an officer in the family's living room, prevented his daughter from going to school, a kind of collective punishment. His 16-year-old daughter was barred from attending school. There was 24-hour surveillance of this traumatized family.

The treatment for that family in recent months was so brutal they decided their survival depended on escaping China. But Gao was too closely monitored and could not think of leaving them without placing his family at even greater risk.

So in January, Gao's wife, 6-year-old son, and 16-year-old daughter were smuggled out of China. They then traveled to the United States. After his family fled China, security agents seized Gao from his bed and he has not been seen or heard from since.

We know this situation is extremely grave because we know what the Chinese have done to him in their prison system previously. They have not offered the slightest word about his whereabouts, despite repeated requests from United Nations agencies, the US government, foreign governments, NGOs, and the media. All have asked for information about the whereabouts of this courageous human rights lawyer, and the Chinese Government has said nothing.

The Chinese Government has signed or ratified many international human rights commitments about Mr. Gao Zhisheng that require it to come clean about Mr. Gao. I call on, and we call on, today, the Chinese Government to allow Mr. Gao to have access to a lawyer, access to his family, and for the government to publicly state and justify the grounds for the continued detention of this courageous person.

The right to speak freely and the right to challenge the Government-- all of these are enshrined in the Chinese Constitution. Yet it appears the Chinese Government and the Communist Party that runs that Government is intent on upholding the violation of these basic constitutional rights in the case of Mr. Gao.

As I indicated, I am chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. We have the largest and the most significant publicly accessible repository of political prisoners in China. We have the largest, publicly accessible data base of information about many thousands of Chinese political prisoners.

There are many people today who languish in dark cells--dark cells-- of Chinese prisons because they spoke out to defend the rights of others. None has done so more than Mr. Gao, who is a noted and celebrated human rights lawyer, who has lost his law office, lost his legal license, been imprisoned multiple times, has now been ``disappeared'' into the prison system, was tortured before, and we expect has been tortured again. We need to put a stop to it.

We need to find a way to convince the Chinese Government to tell us what has happened to Mr. Gao. What have they done with him? How do they justify it? And when, when, when will they tell us they will release this man to be with his family and begin to accord people like Mr. Gao and others, who stand up for the rights of others, the same human rights we would expect them to be given?

China will be a significant part of our future. I understand that. My plea today is to the Government of China to do the right thing with respect to this courageous and brave man.

As I indicated, his wife, Geng He, is with us today here in Washington, DC. I am not permitted to point her out in the Senate galleries. But she, too, is a very courageous woman, and she wishes very much to have this courageous man, her husband, released from detention in China and be given his freedom.

Yes.

Mr. President, I know the Senator from Utah will be recognized. I wish to say that earlier this week and later today I will be here to talk about Roxana Saberi, who is imprisoned in Iran. She is a constituent of mine. I have great concern about these circumstances in Iran and China and elsewhere, as all of us do. My thoughts and prayers are with Roxana and her family. Similarly, my thoughts and prayers are with the family of Mr. Gao.

I am happy to yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, April 23, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate office building to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Yvette D. Roubideaux to be Director of the Indian Health Service.

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 will in a period of time offer an amendment with my colleague, Senator McCain, dealing with a select committee of the Senate. We are waiting for Senator Dodd, and as soon as Senator Dodd arrives I will relinquish the floor so he might proceed.

As we are waiting, I wish to commend my colleagues, Senator Isakson and Senator Conrad, on the legislation they have introduced dealing with a commission. The formulation of a commission seems to me to make some sense.

I offered something called the Taxpayer Protection Act in late January of this year. One of the five provisions of that act called for the creation of such a commission. Frankly, Senator Isakson and Senator Conrad have substantially improved on that idea. Their amendment is very well done. It is something I very strongly support and I think will advance the interests of the Congress and the American people in trying to understand what exactly has happened here.

I do want to mention that the amendment I will offer following a discussion in a few minutes by Senator Dodd will be an amendment that relates to S. Res. 62, a Senate resolution Senator McCain and I jointly submitted about 2 months ago calling for the creation of a select committee to investigate, through the use of subpoenas and other approaches, the narrative of what has happened. While I think a commission is valuable in making recommendations, having some of the best minds around the country serving on an independent commission, I also believe there is a responsibility in the Senate for a select committee of the type that has existed in history on a number of occasions to do the work to understand what is the master narrative here, what has happened to cause this unbelievable financial crisis. I will talk more about the

issue and the need for the establishment of a select committee when I introduce the amendment, but for the moment I wanted to say a couple of things.

One, I believe this issue of a commission that my colleagues have advanced is something very worth supporting. Both my colleagues, Senator Isakson and Senator Conrad, have done a lot of work on this, and it is very good work and it deserves, in my judgment, our support.

I also want to say, in the context of these discussions, that before our colleague, Senator Dodd, who is coming to the floor in a bit, and who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, now lies the task of trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle and to find out how all of this works. He has done an enormous number of hearings. What Senator Dodd is doing in these hearings in the committee and under his leadership is trying to figure out how do you lift this country out of the ditch? How do you put this system back together? How do you fix what is wrong in this banking system? How do you put the pieces together so they fit and represent the public interest so this doesn't happen again?

Senator Dodd has done so many hearings on this in the recent months. Very few Members of the Senate, I think, understand the hours it has taken Senators Dodd and Shelby, leading that committee. But I must say again, they are forward looking to try to figure it all out. This country is in a huge hole. We have a banking system in chaos. We have a financial crisis. How do you get out of this hole? How do you lift this country? How do you put the pieces back together? How do you fix what is wrong in order to make it right so we can provide for recovery in this country?

I want to say again that our colleague, Senator Dodd, and let me also say the ranking member of that committee, has an enormous burden. Under Senator Dodd's leadership, I think they have done an extraordinary job and they are at that work even today as I speak.

As we talk here on the floor about these issues, I don't want anybody to misunderstand the responsibilities of the committee and what that committee is trying to do. I don't serve on that committee, but we have some awfully good Senators who do--Republicans and Democrats--and we have a good chairman--who are all trying to figure out how you put this together going forward.

You know, this country has not seen this kind of financial collapse for a long time--the first time in my lifetime, certainly. It is a collapse of the sort that harkens back to the Great Depression. And the question isn't whether this country will recover--it will. This is a great country, very resourceful, and full of great people who want to lift this country up. We need to do that work together. The question isn't whether; the question is when and how we will effect this recovery. And that is part of what all of us are grappling with, most notably, of course, the Senate Banking Committee. The discussions that are underway this afternoon are discussions about a commission, a committee, and so on. They are very important.

Let me make one other point. The legislation that is the subject of amendment is legislation brought to us on a bipartisan basis by Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley and others. That is a piece of legislation that is very important as well, and I will speak more about that at some later point. But the underlying legislation is another piece of trying to grapple with something that should never have happened but now must be fixed. They are talking about providing the resources necessary for the investigators, for the prosecutors, for the law enforcement functions that need to be exercised here to find accountability--who did what. We don't know.

It is interesting, there are a lot of things that have caused us problems and that steered this country into a financial ditch--a lot of them. Debt, deregulation, and dark money are just three, and I could describe all of them at great length. But our colleagues, Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley and others, on a bipartisan basis, are bringing something to the floor that says let us have the resources to go after some of these kinds of practices.

Let me show you something. I went to the Internet today. This is on the Internet today. This is an advertisement: You want to get a loan? These folks want to give you a loan. It is called speedy bad credit loans. Isn't that unbelievable? With all this country has faced, you can go to a company called speedybadcreditloans.com. You have bad credit? They say that is okay. You have no credit? Well, that is OK too. If you have been bankrupt, that is no problem. Come to us, we will give you some money. These are the same shysters who have been involved in this and who ran this country into the ditch.

I was wondering if I should spell that word. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word, but the fact is it is the same kind of folks who ran this country into the ditch in the first place by putting out subprime mortgages and saying: If you have bad credit, come to us. No credit, slow pay, no pay? Come to us. Doesn't matter. We want to give you some money. It is unbelievable to me.

So here on the Internet today--bad credit mortgage, no credit, bad credit, bankruptcy, no downpayments, no delays. You certainly don't need delays if you don't have a good credit rating. You want to get some money from somebody? By the way, these folks are making a fortune. They put money out there on the street and then they would securitize it, pass the risk on up, and everybody was making a bunch of money.

My colleagues, Senators Leahy and Grassley and others, are saying: You know what, the resources needed to go after these kinds of people and prosecute this bad behavior and hold people accountable, those resources need to be passed by this Congress. And I agree with that.

Here is another on the Internet today. CC&G Financial Group working together to build your dreams. Bad credit? Poor credit? We can get you in your dream home. In fact, we will finance the current home that you have. Isn't that something? CC&G Financial Group says, you have bad credit? You have poor credit? Hey, we have a deal for you. Borrow some money from us.

Let me tell you the little trick these folks have been doing. They put you into a mortgage with a teaser loan. They say: You know what, you are paying way too much on your monthly payment. We will give you a loan with a 2-percent interest rate. We can cut that monthly payment by hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month. Oh, they don't tell you that it will reset; and yes, that 2-percent interest rate that gets that payment way down in about 2 or 3 years will reset to 10 percent or 12 percent, and then you won't be able to afford to make the payment. And by the way, we will lock in something called a prepayment penalty-- which you will never hear about. It means you can never repay it.

Now, why do they do that? So they could pack these up like sausages. They used to pack sawdust in sausages for filler. They would pack them up like sausages with sawdust, and then slice them and dice them and sell them as securitized loans. And they say to these hedge funds, investment banks, and others that wanted to buy all this nonsense, all this investment trash, they would say, we have a good deal for you. We have a bunch of loans in here with prepayment penalties, so they can't get out of it, and by the way, the yield is good. All these smart people in the room didn't understand that nobody was going to be able to repay those loans.

They also say: Do you want a loan with no documentation of your income? It is called a no doc. No documentation. We will give you a loan on your home and you don't even have to document your income. We don't care. No doc. You want a loan you don't have to pay any principal on, just the interest? If that is not good enough, you can't pay the interest even? We will do this for you. You don't have to pay any principal, or all the interest. We will wrap it around the back side of the mortgage. Or even better, we don't have to document your income, you don't have to pay any principal, any interest, and we will make the first 12 payments for you.

That is how lucrative this business was. You got bad credit, can't pay your bills, are you a bad risk? Come to us. The biggest mortgage company in the country--Countrywide Mortgage--here

is what they said--the biggest mortgage company in the country. And by the way, they went belly up, and the folks at the top of that company went home with hundreds of millions of dollars--hundreds of millions of dollars. Here is what the biggest mortgage company in the country said in the middle of all this. They said: Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you have late mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders? Call us. We consider you a buddy, because we can make a bunch of money off of you.

Well, Mr. President, I will discuss more about this later. I have been waiting for my colleague from Connecticut, who I indicated was on his way, and I wish to yield the floor now, and following my colleague's presentation, at that point I wish to offer an amendment with my colleague from Arizona.

Would the Senator yield on that point?

We are not on opposite sides, necessarily. I said I support the Isakson-Conrad-Dodd Commission; I don't think it is a case of either/or. I think it is a case where both are necessary. But I wish to make the point I am not at odds with my colleague from my State or Senator Dodd or Senator Isakson on this issue.

Mr. President, I, too, rise in support, as I have indicated earlier, in support of the proposal that was offered by my colleagues, Senator Isakson, Senator Conrad, Senator Dodd. I think it is a worthy thing. As I indicated, I offered a Taxpayer Protection Act in late January that included a commission involved in that 5-step proposal. But I think they have dramatically improved on that. I think this bill they have offered is one worthy of support, and I certainly support it. I think an outside commission makes a great deal of sense.

But as I indicated, it is not either/or. It cannot and should not be either/or. This notion that somehow this is too much politics in the Congress to be evaluating what has happened here and what you need to do about it--I don't know. John F. Kennedy used to say that every mother kind of hopes her child might be able to grow up to be President, as long as they don't have to be active in politics. Oh, yeah? Politics is what we do. The political system is the system in which we make decisions. I happen to agree--the New York Times wrote a piece about this, and I agree with it fully:

The investigation should not be performed by outside

experts . . . whose report the Congress is free to accept or

reject. It should be a part of the Congressional process and

include an investigator with subpoena power and the right to

participate in the questioning of witnesses, as well as to

prep lawmakers for the hearings.

Let me make this point. This is not either/or. I support this Commission. This Commission makes sense. My colleague from Georgia is here, and I wish my colleague from North Dakota were here because, as I read the proposal of theirs, they have done some good work. I strongly support it.

But let me make this point. In addition to an outside commission taking a look outside of this institution, it is this Congress that has offered up $700 billion of funding to the Secretary of the Treasury. That is what this Congress has done: Here is $700 billion. We are the ones who appropriate the money. Accountability exists to do what is necessary to find out what has happened, to do the master narrative of what has occurred here and what are the things we can and must and should learn from that.

Let me describe a select committee. Let me describe a committee in 1940 named the Truman Committee. Harry S. Truman on the floor of this Senate, with a member of his own party in the White House, said there is unbelievable waste and fraud going on in defense spending and we ought to investigate it. They investigated for 7 years with a special committee. They did 60 hearings a year. Think of that. The committee spent $15,000 to be created and saved the taxpayers $15 billion over 7 years.

What an unbelievable value that was for the Senate to have done, the Truman Committee. In fact, you know, I spoke a while back to Herman Wouk, one of the great authors in America, the author of ``War and Remembrance'' and so many other great works. He is in his nineties, one of America's great authors. He is still writing, by the way.

One of the things he talked about, he said, I do not know a lot going forward, but I know from about 1950 back, 1945 back.

He talked about the Truman Committee as a part of the history of what the Senate has done in the middle of the Second World War, a special committee established by the Senate, the Truman Committee, bipartisan, subpoena power, 60 hearings a year, 7 years. Saved the taxpayers $15 billion, we are told.

Well, you know, I am on the floor with my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, because both of us believe there is a requirement for a select committee in this case. The Truman Committee, Kefauver Committee on Organized Crime, Church Committee, Kerry-McCain on POWs-MIAs I mean there have been a lot of examples of committees that have done some extraordinary work here on very big issues.

I said before my colleague from Connecticut came in something that will embarrass him, I am sure. I said the Banking Committee with my colleagues Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby is doing extraordinary work that most of us are not aware of, because we are not sitting over there hour after hour after hour trying to put together the notions of what are the solutions to get us out of this ditch.

The Banking Committee has done extraordinary work and continues to do it and will be required to do that for months now to try to lift this country. So my hat is off to the work of Senator Dodd, the leadership he offers us, and all of those who are working on the Banking Committee. This proposal for a select committee is not a reflection on their work at all.

But I would say this: There is not one committee in the Congress-- that includes the Banking Committee--there is not one committee here that has anything more than three or four or five investigators at best. No committee has the capability that ought to exist and ought to be required to discharge the responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of this Congress and this Senate, in my judgment.

I know the Speaker of the House last week talked about a Pecora committee. In fact, they called it a Pecora Commission. Pecora, that was not a select committee, but that was right after the financial collapse and the Great Depression. He held a lot of hearings, a lot of hearings. He was I believe the chief counsel to the Senate Banking Committee. History records the Pecora committee or Commission, the Pecora effort. We remember it in 2009 it was so significant, because he was looking back.

Senator Dodd does not have that luxury at the moment. We have got to look forward and lift this country up and put the economy back together. And we have got to do it in a hurry. We do not have 3 years or 5 years. We have got to lift this country out of this ditch. This is a financial crisis unlike anything we have seen since the Great Depression. So they do not have a lot of luxury over in the Banking Committee to say, you know what, we are going to spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. But I will tell you this: If we do not fully understand the narrative of what has happened here, we are destined someday to repeat it. We are destined to allow it to happen again.

I said this, and this relates to the underlying bill on the floor that Senators Leahy, Grassley, and others have brought here. Go to the Internet today and take a look at this. This is one. I could have brought many. This is a company who says--it is called speedybadcreditloans.com.

After all we have faced and the financial collapse and the subprime loan scandal, with a bunch of bad actors leaving with hundreds of millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains and leaving victims in their wake all over this country, massive foreclosures and the financial collapse--after all of this, go to the Internet today, and find a company that is called speedybadcreditloans. They say on the Internet: Do you have bad credit? That is okay. Do you have no credit? That is all right. Do you have bankruptcy? No problem. Come and get a loan from us. Is that unbelievable? Just unbelievable.

There is one more, CC&G Financial Group. If you have bad credit, you got poor credit--I could do 40 of these, by the way--come to us. We can get you into your dream home, by the way. They say: With all of these values due to foreclosures and short sales, now is the time. Got bad credit, got an appetite to get a new home.

I wonder if they are doing what those mortgage companies did that steered us into the ditch to say to potential borrowers: Hey, come over here. You are paying $700 a month house payments. You know what, we will give you a mortgage to pay $200 a month. Why should you pay more than triple what you ought to pay? You get a mortgage from us, $200 a month. Oh, by the way, you do not even have to document your income. We do not care. We will charge you an extra quarter percent, but you do not have to document it. Well, maybe 2.25 percent will be your new mortgage, maybe $210 a month. We are going to put a little deal in there, it is going to reset in 3 years, it is going to be 12 percent. That may be a problem, but do not worry, that home value is going like that. You can sell it if there is a problem. But we are going to allow that to reset. And we are not going to mention this to you. We are going to put a prepayment penalty in it so you cannot get out of this.

Then what we are going to do is we are going to wrap it into a big piece of sausage, like they used to fill sausage with filler. Then we are going to chop it up and we are going to sell it. We have got hedge funds and investment banks that are yearning for these kinds of instruments. So we sell the risk. I am a big old mortgage company that advertises: We want bankrupt people to come to us. We want people with bad credit to come borrow with us, because, you know what, we are not going to sit across the desk and look into their eyeballs to see whether they can repay this loan. No, we are not going to do that. We are going to sell the risk. So we do not have to do what is called underwriting. That means sitting across the desk, and the lender evaluates whether the borrower can actually repay it. It is the old way you used to do things, not the modern way. It is the old way. You do not have to underwrite if you are going to sell the risk. In fact, sell it two or three times.

Then, by the way, when someone is being foreclosed upon, the new technique is to say in court: Show us the original mortgage. And they are having a devil of a time trying to find an original mortgage because it has been sold upstream. Disconnect the borrower and the lender from the risk--well, not the borrower, but the lender from the risk. And meanwhile they are all making massive amounts of money.

You know, the year before last, I looked up to see who was the biggest income earner in the country in the middle of this unbelievable avalanche of financial good news. Who earned the biggest income in the country, individually?

Well, a guy who ran a hedge fund earned the biggest income, $3.6 billion. Now, that person earned in 3.5 minutes what the average worker in America earned in a year. When that person comes home and says: I had a pretty good day, and the spouse says: Well, honey, how are you feeling?

Well, I made $10 million today.

Mr. President, $10 million every day. How is it that people were working those kinds of stratospheric incomes, $3.6 billion, or even much lower, a CEO from one of the biggest mortgage banks in the country that went belly up, and he left with a couple of hundred million dollars, much lower income? How is it they ended up with all of this money? They ended up with all of this money by creating all kinds of fancy instruments and getting payments by moving all kinds of money around and a lot of victims in their wake. So the question is, what do you do about all of this? Well, the first thing to try to understand here is what has happened. I am talking now about subprime mortgages.

But you know what, that is one piece. It is like a book with several chapters, many chapters. It is one piece. But I am describing how unbelievable this piece is. So the question is, what do we know at this point? What really do we know about what has happened that has caused this collapse?

I talked about dark money a bit ago. Debt helped cause this collapse. Some of that is here. Federal budget debt. Federal trade debt, by the way, $800 billion a year trade debt. That is money we owe to other countries, $800 billion a year.

So debt, part of our responsibility. Somebody said to me, well, it is the Federal Government that is spending more than it has. I said: Oh, really, have you taken a look at credit card debt and household debt? Doubled in a reasonably short period of time. Corporate debt. Take a look at household and credit card and corporate debt. Dramatic increases. Take a look at Federal debt by the Congress. Substantial increases. Trade debt. Debt is a problem. We know that.

Deregulation. You decide, you know what, we are going to loosen the rules and not look. We will hire regulators who want to boast that they do not have the foggiest interest in seeing what is happening. Boy, that is a recipe for disaster. And yet that is exactly the case. Dark money, all of this money.

Did anybody know I wrote a piece in 1994, 1994, that was the cover story for the Washington Monthly magazine? My article was the cover story for the Washington Monthly magazine 15 years ago that was titled: ``Very Risky Business.'' It was about the notion that at that point there were $40 to $50 trillion dollars of notional value of derivatives in this country. So there is a lot to discuss about the narrative of what has happened with this financial crisis. Some take the position that we should do only a commission and they oppose a select committee of the Senate. I support a commission because I think that would provide another view, another way of outside experts. I think as I said before my colleague from Georgia came in, Senator Isakson and Senator Conrad have produced a piece of legislation that I think is very smartly done, very well crafted, makes a lot of sense. I stand here to strongly support it.

But I disagree with my other colleague who seemed to suggest that it is an either/or. Doing an outside commission does not absolve the responsibility of the Congress, in, I think, one of the most significant and momentous events of our lifetime, that is, the financial collapse that has, at its root, so many different causes.

It does not absolve us of the responsibility to do what is necessary to investigate that cause, understand it, and make sure it can never happen again.

Again, let me read from the editorial I started with from the New York Times:

Investigation needs to be a part of the Congressional

process, and include an investigator with subpoena power and

the right to participate in the questioning of witnesses, as

well as to prep lawmakers for the hearings [and so on.]

We have done that in the past with the Watergate hearings. We have done it in the past with the Church hearings. We have done it in the past with the Truman Committee, which I think is a shrine to what this Congress can and should do when it puts its mind to it.

If we decide we cannot do it now and should not do it now, we will have missed a very significant opportunity, and we will have abrogated a significant responsibility of this Congress. It is our job as well. So I stand here to say, I strongly support the commission proposal. We will vote for it. I am very pleased my colleagues have offered it.

But I also believe, as Senator McCain does, that there is more to do and there is a responsibility that cannot be delegated. And that responsibility that cannot be delegated is our responsibility to empanel a select committee to do what is necessary to investigate from the standpoint of the Congress what has happened to cause this very substantial financial crisis.

I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment, and I offer the amendment I have described.

Let me withhold my request.

I will withhold that request for a moment. While I am waiting, let me say that the underlying bill we are dealing with is a piece of legislation that will address the opportunity to prosecute, which is another issue, prosecute wrongdoing and illegal behavior and some of these financial shenanigans that we have seen and that I have discussed.

The underlying bill as well as a piece of legislation is something I would strongly support.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so that I can offer an amendment.

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

Mr. President, I have spoken on this amendment previously. I have spoken of the underlying bill Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley and others have brought to the floor and my admiration for that bill. That bill falls right in with what the responsibility of the Senate should be at this point. I commend them for that. It is not my intention, nor would it be the intention of my colleague, Senator McCain, as we offer this amendment to in any way interrupt the legislation on the floor. We believe our amendment enhances it.

Second, let me say to my colleague, Senator Dodd, the chairman of the Banking Committee, I have spoken at length about what they are doing to try to put the pieces together to lift this country out of the ditch and try to figure out how to put this financial system together in a way that makes it work again.

Having said all of that, I indicated earlier that I offered an amendment with my colleague, Senator McCain, that would establish a select committee of the Senate, in the tradition of the Truman Committee and the Watergate Committee and other select committees, to try to do a narrative of what has happened with respect to the financial crisis. I believe that a commission is fine, but we cannot delegate all responsibility. There is a responsibility for Congress to do comprehensive oversight on this issue, which I think is the largest financial issue we have faced--the financial crisis, the financial collapse--since the Great Depression.

I am happy to yield.

Mr. President, I would certainly agree with that. It is a fair request. Let me finish so my colleague, Senator McCain, can say a few words as well.

This amendment doesn't do a disservice to the underlying bill. It is exactly in the tradition of what the Senate ought to do. We cannot delegate the responsibility. This financial crisis has imposed an enormous burden on this country. All of us hope and pray that we can lift this country out of this difficulty. We are all working to do everything we can.

Do you know what. We need to understand what is the dimension, the narrative of what happened, what caused all of this, and make sure we put into place things that will prevent it from happening again. That is our responsibility. In the grand tradition of the Senate of select committees on big issues, this ought to be a bipartisan select committee with subpoena power to understand what happened and to make sure it can never happen again. That is why I have offered this with Senator McCain.

I have one final point. I hope we will be able to get you to take this without a recorded vote. Maybe only one person in the Senate has suggested maybe a recorded vote is necessary. We can talk to this person, and we can talk to that person. Whatever the request will be by the chairman, I will be amenable to it.

I yield the floor so that my colleague from Arizona may speak.

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

Mr. President, let me just make another brief comment about the amendment that is pending. I will be mercifully brief. I mentioned earlier the grand tradition of the Senate, as demonstrated by the Truman committee, Harry Truman, a former Member of this body, who had a select committee established in 1940 to investigate waste and abuse and fraud with respect to defense contracting. When I talked about the Truman committee, I said I had talked to one of America's great authors, Herman Wouk. I mentioned his book, ``War and Remembrance.'' He also wrote ``Winds of War'' and ``Caine Mutiny.'' He is an unbelievably wonderful man who is now 92 or 93 years old. I had the opportunity, last year and the year before, to visit with him. He is still writing; he is writing a new work. He talked about the Truman committee. He said something interesting because he wrote so much about especially the Second World War.

He said, ``I don't know much beyond 1945, but I know everything just before 1945.'' He put it in his wonderful books. Then he talked about the contracting going on in Iraq and the stories of waste, fraud, and abuse--perhaps the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in this country-- those are my words. He said, ``You ought to create a Truman committee.'' He described to me the select committee headed by Harry Truman.

I went back and read the record of what they did in 1940--Truman with a member of his own party in the White House. He traveled around the country to military installations and met with contractors on military bases, and he concluded there needed to be an investigation. They put together a bipartisan committee with subpoena power. It cost $15,000 to create a select committee and it met for 7 years and held 60 hearings a year and it saved the taxpayers by cutting down on the waste and abuse in defense contracting. They did it in the middle of a war. Think of it.

My point earlier, when I mentioned Herman Wouk, was to describe the Truman committee in the grand tradition of what the Senate can do when it should do what is necessary to make certain that the economy works and the taxpayers' money is spent effectively. So now we find ourselves in a circumstance unlike any we faced in my lifetime--an unbelievable financial wreck that has occurred. The victims of that wreck are all over. We have lots of folks--millions--looking for a job.

Can you imagine one person coming home--just one--saying: Honey, I have lost my job today. I worked there for 20 years, and I have done a good job. It is not my fault. I have tried hard, but I don't have a job anymore because I was told they are laying off at the office or plant. Think of that conversation--to tell the kids that dad or mom doesn't have a job anymore. Not just one time or 100,000 times--think about the millions of times that it happened in recent months; 3.6 million people since the recession began have had to come home and say: I have lost my job.

These are people who want to work. It describes why it is so important for an economy to expand and lift opportunity in this great country.

We have been blessed for a long time. It is not some inherent right of ours to live in an economy that grows in an unrelenting way. That is not an inherent right. This economy will grow and will produce expanded opportunities for the American people if we do the right things. We have been through a period where a lot of people in very important positions did a lot of wrong things, trading a lot of paper that didn't have any value at all, making money on both sides, buying things they never had from people who will never get it, and making money on both sides of the trade. That is not real finance. That is not real investment, real productivity. That is a paper economy that is built on speculation and is destined to come down.

I described a while ago just the subprime loan scandal. That is just a part of it. I described it, and it almost makes me sick to see the greed and avarice that existed under the name of responsible business. Shame on all of those people who were making a lot of money. They were making so much they could not count it, and they were leaving victims in their wake. They created this circumstance where the economy collapsed.

Our job is to find out what happened and try to lift it back up. You have to put the pieces of the puzzle together and decide and understand what happened. We owe it to ourselves and the American people to understand all of what happened to make sure we never allow it to happen again.

We cannot delegate that responsibility. I supported the commission, and I complement my colleagues who offered it. Having an outside group of experts to look at this and make recommendations, that makes sense. But we cannot delegate our responsibility. It is our responsibility. That is why this amendment I have offered with Senator McCain is so important.

Finally, the underlying bill to which we are talking about amendments is so important because it is part of the solution--to say those folks who have been doing those things--there has to be a responsibility and funding for prosecutors and investigators to get to the bottom of that and make people accountable for the actions and behavior that steered the economy into a ditch.

I have great hope for the future of this country if we do the right thing. I believe we can. The step offered by Senator Leahy is a step in that direction.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Nation's charitable community has been damaged from the harsh realties of the economic downturn. Dwindling contributions and devastating market losses have hit many charities and philanthropic activities, and the trusts and funds that support them.

Experts at the Congressional Research Service suggest that charitable assets could have lost more than $400 billion in value from the stock market's peak in October 2007. Some foundations with narrow investment portfolios have lost close to 50 percent since that time. Donations are down at many charities across the country.

Yet, the work of these organizations to assist low-income families and individuals facing financial difficulty is more important than ever. The economy is in trouble--20,000 jobs are lost every day and the unemployment rate is approaching 9 percent. It is not surprising that many charities are seeing an increase in those seeking help for food, rent or mortgage payments or utility bills, along with an increase in the number of working poor seeking services, more generally.

The Senate recently sent a strong message to our charitable community that we understand their financial challenges and will do what it can to help. During consideration of the fiscal year 2010 Budget Resolution, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment I authored with Senator Snowe that gives a green light to pass legislation to extend and enhance the soon-to-expire charitable individual retirement account, IRA, rollover tool that charities have used to help raise money. This tax incentive allows individuals to make gifts to charities from their IRAs without suffering adverse tax consequences.

Today, I am joined by Senator Snowe and 9 of our colleagues in introducing the Public Good IRA Rollover Act, which would permanently extend and expand the tax-free charitable IRA rollover incentive.

Congress added a provision to the Tax Code in 2006 that permitted taxpayers age 70\1/2\ or older to give money

directly from their IRAs to charities, tax-free. This provision is modeled after an approach for direct charitable gifts that we have advanced in the Public Good IRA Rollover Act.

The results of this provision have been very exciting for many in the charitable community. According to one survey, approximately 900 charitable organizations had reported more than 8,500 individual IRA distributions, with a total value of nearly $140 million.

Unfortunately, the tax-favored benefit of the charitable IRA rollover is only available for a temporary period and is scheduled to expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts. The Public Good IRA Rollover Act will not only extend the charitable IRA rollover, it will modify it in a manner that we believe will result in more gifts to charity without busting the budget. These changes include: allowing taxpayers to make life-income gifts from their IRAs to charities at age 59\1/2\, eliminating the current dollar cap, and making the charitable IRA rollover benefits available to more charitable organizations.

Adopting these provisions will result in more charitable giving, particularly allowing taxpayers to make life-time gifts from their IRAs starting at the age of 59\1/2\. Many charities secure funds from life- income gifts, which involve the donation of assets to a charity, where the giver retains an income stream from those assets for a defined period. While this provision would stimulate additional giving, evidence also suggests that people who make life-income gifts become more involved with charities. And, because the income payouts for most gift annuities and charitable trusts will be higher than IRA payouts, IRA rollovers to life-income agreements may produce immediate taxable revenues and score positively. In short, the life-income gift provision would greatly benefit charities in a fiscally-responsible manner.

The Public Good IRA Rollover Act has strong bipartisan support in the Senate and House of Representatives. It has garnered the support of the Independent Sector, the Council on Foundations, and the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning. I am very pleased that the North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations, which represents the interests of more than 140 nonprofits in my State, has also offered its support for this legislation that could help North Dakota charities raise millions of dollars in the coming years.

I also ask my colleagues to review this legislation and consider cosponsoring it.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the Nation's charitable community has been damaged from the harsh realties of the economic downturn. Dwindling contributions and devastating market losses have hit many charities and philanthropic activities, and the trusts and funds that support them.

Experts at the Congressional Research Service suggest that charitable assets could have lost more than $400 billion in value from the stock market's peak in October 2007. Some foundations with narrow investment portfolios have lost close to 50 percent since that time. Donations are down at many charities across the country.

Yet, the work of these organizations to assist low-income families and individuals facing financial difficulty is more important than ever. The economy is in trouble--20,000 jobs are lost every day and the unemployment rate is approaching 9 percent. It is not surprising that many charities are seeing an increase in those seeking help for food, rent or mortgage payments or utility bills, along with an increase in the number of working poor seeking services, more generally.

The Senate recently sent a strong message to our charitable community that we understand their financial challenges and will do what it can to help. During consideration of the fiscal year 2010 Budget Resolution, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment I authored with Senator Snowe that gives a green light to pass legislation to extend and enhance the soon-to-expire charitable individual retirement account, IRA, rollover tool that charities have used to help raise money. This tax incentive allows individuals to make gifts to charities from their IRAs without suffering adverse tax consequences.

Today, I am joined by Senator Snowe and 9 of our colleagues in introducing the Public Good IRA Rollover Act, which would permanently extend and expand the tax-free charitable IRA rollover incentive.

Congress added a provision to the Tax Code in 2006 that permitted taxpayers age 70\1/2\ or older to give money

directly from their IRAs to charities, tax-free. This provision is modeled after an approach for direct charitable gifts that we have advanced in the Public Good IRA Rollover Act.

The results of this provision have been very exciting for many in the charitable community. According to one survey, approximately 900 charitable organizations had reported more than 8,500 individual IRA distributions, with a total value of nearly $140 million.

Unfortunately, the tax-favored benefit of the charitable IRA rollover is only available for a temporary period and is scheduled to expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts. The Public Good IRA Rollover Act will not only extend the charitable IRA rollover, it will modify it in a manner that we believe will result in more gifts to charity without busting the budget. These changes include: allowing taxpayers to make life-income gifts from their IRAs to charities at age 59\1/2\, eliminating the current dollar cap, and making the charitable IRA rollover benefits available to more charitable organizations.

Adopting these provisions will result in more charitable giving, particularly allowing taxpayers to make life-time gifts from their IRAs starting at the age of 59\1/2\. Many charities secure funds from life- income gifts, which involve the donation of assets to a charity, where the giver retains an income stream from those assets for a defined period. While this provision would stimulate additional giving, evidence also suggests that people who make life-income gifts become more involved with charities. And, because the income payouts for most gift annuities and charitable trusts will be higher than IRA payouts, IRA rollovers to life-income agreements may produce immediate taxable revenues and score positively. In short, the life-income gift provision would greatly benefit charities in a fiscally-responsible manner.

The Public Good IRA Rollover Act has strong bipartisan support in the Senate and House of Representatives. It has garnered the support of the Independent Sector, the Council on Foundations, and the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning. I am very pleased that the North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations, which represents the interests of more than 140 nonprofits in my State, has also offered its support for this legislation that could help North Dakota charities raise millions of dollars in the coming years.

I also ask my colleagues to review this legislation and consider cosponsoring it.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I trust we are not in a quorum call.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business and that Senator Brownback be recognized following my presentation.