Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am introducing legislation today in two ways, and I will send the bills to the desk following my comments. The first bill is called the Iraq Self-Sufficiency and American Energy Independence Act, and, the second is called the Rescission of Unneeded Iraq Reconstruction Funds Act of 2008.

In a nutshell, the bills say this: We are going to take up to $11.48 billion that has been appropriated but not yet expended for Iraq reconstruction, funds that are American taxpayers' dollars and that the Iraqi Government says it does not need, and bring that money back to this country. In the first approach, we would use the funds to substantially increase our renewable energy and make us less dependent on foreign sources of oil. Alternatively, in the second approach, we would use those funds to reduce the deficit. Either is fine with me, and I am introducing it both ways.

Here is the Special Inspector General Report for Iraq Reconstruction. This report shows that there are now $11.48 billion in U.S. funds destined for Iraq reconstruction.

And let me quote, if I may, the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq: ``Iraq does not need financial assistance.''

That is for sure. The price of oil has gone way up like a Roman candle. They are producing 2 million barrels a day in Iraq. They have, by all accounts, somewhere around a $49 billion surplus in bank accounts for the Government of Iraq, and there have been estimates that will reach a $79 billion surplus. Meanwhile, our country is deep in debt, and yet we have money going to Iraq for reconstruction coming from American taxpayers' dollars while Iraqi money sits in the bank? It doesn't make any sense to me.

There is $11.4 billion that has already been appropriated and is as yet unspent. My feeling is let's take the Iraqis at their word: ``Iraq does not need financial assistance.''

All right, I agree with that. Then let's not provide that financial assistance, and let's tell the Iraqis they have the capability to use their own surpluses to invest in their country.

It is interesting to me that we are now funding something like 900 water projects in the country of Iraq, and President Bush, in his budget, says let's cut back water projects in our country by a very substantial amount. We are going to take American taxpayers' dollars and build water projects in Iraq and stop building infrastructure in this country at a time when they have a big surplus and we have a big deficit? I don't think so.

I have a chart that shows what has happened to the price of oil from July 2003 to July 2008: $27 a barrel to $128 a barrel. The country of Iraq is producing 2 million barrels a day, and therefore their treasury is fattening in a way that is very significant.

I have a New York Times story on August 6, just a month ago:

Soaring oil prices will leave the Iraqi Government with a

cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year's

end, according to an American federal oversight agency. But

Iraq has spent only a minute fraction of that on

reconstruction costs, which are now largely borne by the

United States.

That makes no sense to me. It just makes no sense. I want to show something on page 10 of the special inspector general's report, which is a description of what is going on in Iraq. This is a picture of something called the Whale. This is referred to as the Whale in Iraq. It is actually the Kahn Bani Sa'ad Correctional Facility. U.S. taxpayers paid $40 million to build that prison in Iraq. I am told the Iraqis said they don't want the prison, but $40 million went to the Parsons Corporation.

Take a look at this photo. I will bring it to the Senate floor in a chart. It is in unbelievable disrepair. Apparently, after the $40 million, they kicked the contractor off the site, brought another contractor in, and spent another $10 million. So they have $50 million invested in something called the Whale, a prison the Iraqis did not want, is not now being used, will never be used, and sits in the desert rotting with 50 million of American taxpayers' dollars having been spent on it. Reconstruction, American taxpayers' dollars, construction in Iraq, in some cases even construction Iraqis don't want.

The question, it seems to me, for us is, are we going to continue this? At some point, is some common sense going to prevail? We shouldn't take money from American taxpayers and send it to Iraq, a country that has substantial surplus in the bank, and build projects in Iraq even while we cut infrastructure projects in our country.

The legislation I am introducing will say we will take $11.48 billion that is appropriated but as of yet unspent and rescind that spending and use it either to reduce this country's budget deficit or use it to substantially change our energy future so we are less dependent on that part of the world for our energy future.

The funds I am proposing to eliminate are in three categories. One is the IRRF2. It is called the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, which covers many projects, including, as I just described, the prison which sits unused and falling apart, a $50 million prison called the Whale. The ISFF is the Iraq Security Forces Fund. A country with currently about $50 billion in the bank in surplus surely should have the ability now, after these long years of the American taxpayers footing the bill, to provide for infrastructure for their own army and their own police. Finally there is the ESF, the Economic Support Fund, which includes funding for provincial reconstruction teams, microfinance, and so on.

I would note that I am not proposing to cut the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which gives field commanders some discretion to provide funds for local projects.

But I do suggest it is long past the time for this Congress to use just a small amount of common sense. Instead of shoveling money out the door in support of reconstruction projects in Iraq, money we don't have, money we are borrowing from the Chinese and Japanese, by the way, instead of shoveling money out the door to provide money in a country that is piling up its

own surpluses from oil sales, let's decide that which we previously decided to spend will no longer be spent and brought back home. It seems to me we must do that if we are going to begin to put this country's fiscal house in order.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, Thursday, September 11, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing on (1) S. 3128, the White Mountain Apache Tribe Rural Water System Loan Authorization Act; (2) S. 3355, the Crow Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act of 2008; and (3) S. 3381, a bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Commissioner of Reclamation, to develop water infrastructure in the Rio Grande Basin, and to approve the settlement of the water rights claims of the Pueblos of Nambe, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Tesuque, and Taos.

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

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. President, I apologize for interrupting the Senator.

I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized following the Senator's remarks for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I come today as a United States Senator, but also as the co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. I wish to tell my colleagues that the Congress created the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in the year 2000 to monitor China's compliance with international human rights standards and to encourage the development of the rule of law there. I am proud to be a co-chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China. I think the role it performs is an extremely important one.

I come to the Senate floor today in that role. I also come as well to say that at a time when there is so much criticism of almost everybody in the political system--and I have done my share of differing with various people in politics--I come today to say to President Bush that I very much appreciate the actions he took this week when he met with several dissidents from China, all of whom have been imprisoned in China for exercising the fundamental human right of free speech.

The President met with the dissidents for the same reason I come to the floor of the Senate this morning. One week from today, the 2008 Summer Olympics begin. It is a great pageantry and a great celebration, in many ways. It is a celebration of athletic achievement from all around the globe. We will have many Americans representing our country and demonstrating their individual achievements on the field of sport. We will have basketball players and tennis players and gymnasts and track and field participants. They will participate in these wonderful Olympic games that occur every 4 years.

The Olympic games at this time, a week from now, will be held in the country of China. There was dispute about that and concern about China hosting the Olympics, but China convinced the International Olympic Committee that it would make significant progress in areas that reflect the ideals of the Olympics--especially human rights and human dignity. Because of the commitments it made, China was awarded the Olympic Games for 2008.

This is, it seems to me, not only an opportunity for athletes from our country and around the world to compete in sport, but it is also an opportunity, given that the Games will be held this year in China, for our country and for other countries to appeal to the Chinese government to open its system to greater human rights. It is also an opportunity to strongly urge the Chinese government at this point to address the issue of so many of its citizens--many of whom are its best and brightest citizens--sitting in dark prison cells, having been sent to prison for exercising the right of free speech.

China is an extraordinary country. You cannot understand the wonder of China without visiting it. You can't help but stand on the Great Wall of China and think about the history of this incredibly interesting country. Visiting China is an extraordinary experience. But, it is also the case that China is not an open society.

Our Congressional-Executive Commission on China has the largest database of prisoners, the most complete database of Chinese political prisoners that is accessible and searchable by the public. Why do we keep that database? So we can shine a bright light into the darkest cells of China, for those who have been imprisoned by the Chinese for exercising the right of free assembly and free speech, and to say to them: The world knows you are there. You are not forgotten.

The international community has the opportunity at this moments during these Olympics to speak up and speak out. I complimented President Bush for meeting with the dissidents this week. I think it was exactly the right thing to do. I compliment him and support him for what he said to the dissidents. He said to the dissidents that he intended to not only care about freedom and liberty, but when he traveled to China, and to talk to the Chinese about freedom and liberty.

All of the people President Bush met with this week have spent years in Chinese jails for advocating on behalf of religious freedom, human rights, freedom of speech in China. So when the President travels to China for the opening of the Olympics, it is vital, it seems to me--and I think I speak for the entire Congress--to say it is vital that the President express in the strongest terms possible to the Chinese that they need to address the human rights problems in their country that have been so deeply disturbing to the rest of the world.

As I indicated, we have the names of 807 political prisoners known or believed to be currently detained, imprisoned or under house arrest. These 807 records of Chinese people in jail are a subset of the nearly 4,500 records in the Political Prisoner Database. The rest of the records reflect release, death, or escape.

Our commission works very hard to get information out about those who are being held in some of the darkest cells in China. We want the world to pay attention. The President of the United States committing to go to China and to talk to the Chinese leaders about these people is very important. We have sent President Bush the list of 807 prisoners now in Chinese prisons. Let me go through a few of them, because I think it is important to attach faces and names to this list of 807 people.

This man is named Hu Jia. Hu Jia is a courageous activist who was jailed last December by Chinese authorities because he was invited to speak at a European Parliament hearing. At the hearing, he made comments in his testimony that were critical of China hosting the Olympics. The result was that he was put in a Chinese prison. His wife and infant daughter--and you see his wife and daughter in this photograph--were placed under house arrest for several months. In April, Hu Jia was sentenced to 3\1/2\ years in prison for inciting subversion of state power. Let me describe the charge again: ``Inciting subversion of state power.''

I recently talked to a man who testified at that same European Parliament hearing and along with Mr. Hu Jia. This man, however, is not in prison because he is not a Chinese citizen. He also just expressed himself like Hu Jia. At the request of a hearing of the European Parliament, he testified and expressed himself. He expressed criticism of China for being chosen to host the Olympics. For that, Mr. Hu Jia will spend 3\1/2\ years in a Chinese prison.

The next photograph is a photograph of Yang Chunlin. He has been repeatedly detained for helping farmers seek compensation for lost land in China. Last summer he organized a petition entitled ``We Want Human Rights, Not The Olympics.'' He was subsequently arrested and he was charged for inciting subversion of state power. We are told that he has suffered severe beatings, causing damage to his eyesight, all for the purpose of speaking out, exercising the right of free speech. He is a very courageous Chinese citizen who simply wants the opportunity to speak freely.

Finally, Mr. Ye Guozhu. He is pictured in this photograph alone. Three generations of his family were evicted from their Beijing home in 2003 to make way for the Olympic-related construction that occurred in Beijing. In 2004, because three generations of his family were evicted from their homes, he applied for permission to organize a protest against other alleged forced evictions in connection with preparations for the Olympics. He was arrested. He has been sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Let me describe the charge. The charge for which he is serving 4 years in a Chinese prison is ``provoking and making trouble.'' Because three generations of his family had been evicted from their homes to make room for the Olympics, he decided to circulate a petition to organize a protest against other alleged forced evictions, and he is now serving 4 years in prison. We are told he has repeatedly been tortured. He finished his sentence, by the way, and was supposed to be released from prison this week. But his release has been further delayed, presumably, because the Olympics are near.

The President of the United States--and only the President--has the power to shine the brightest light in the world into the dark cells in China and say to these courageous Chinese citizens that you are not alone. This country knows about you, about your struggle, and about your efforts to secure freedom of speech and other fundamental human rights.

We have said to the Chinese Government we want progress. They made representations to the Olympic Committee, in exchange for being able to host the Olympics, that they would make progress on human rights. I have shown photographs of some very courageous Chinese citizens who now sit in Chinese prisons precisely because their human rights have been violated.

Again, I thank President Bush for meeting with the dissidents this past week. I am someone who, from time to time, doesn't agree with President Bush. I am often critical of his work. But today I commend him for meeting with the dissidents who had previously served time in prison in China. He met with them at the White House this week. It was the right thing to do. He made commitments to those dissidents that he is going to do all he can. I hope he will--when he goes to China--take that torch of liberty and freedom to President Hu in China and say that our country will not ignore these prisoners, we will not pretend they don't exist. China has a responsibility to move toward greater human rights.

So this is the moment. I hope very much that President Bush will do what he told the Chinese dissidents he will. I commend him for that, and I hope that not just in the next 7 days, when the Olympics are prepared to start, but also during the Olympics and during the President's visit, he will offer some hope and encouragement to those who now spend their time in a dark prison cell for having the temerity to try to speak the truth in China.

I strongly feel that if we miss this moment, we will have missed something very important. I support the Olympics. They are a wonderful opportunity for the world. But I strongly believe that when the Olympics are held in a country such as China, and the Government there makes certain representations about human rights not only to the Olympic Committee but also to those who will attend the Olympics, and especially the President of the United States, who will meet with President Hu, that he will bring that message of freedom, liberty, and human rights to the Chinese Government and describe our expectation and the expectation of the international community that their citizens be allowed full and genuine freedom.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I wish to make a couple comments about energy. There has been a lot of discussion all week--in fact, the last several weeks--on energy, and the reason is obvious. When you see the runup and doubling of price of gas and oil in a year, the American people are pretty apoplectic about that. They wonder what can they do to respond to it. How do I afford to fill my gas tank to go to work? The airlines wonder: How do we afford to put jet fuel in the airplanes we fly? The truckers wonder: How do I fill the saddle tanks and be able to afford it? The farmers wonder: How do I fill the fuel tanks for the harvest? This is a big hit to the American economy.

The first step is to do the obvious thing. I have a letter, for example, from the chief executive officer of an oil refining company called Tesoro. They don't produce oil; they have to buy oil like everybody else to refine it. He believes there is a dramatic amount of excess speculation in the oil market. We need to wring out the excess speculation from the commodity markets. Seventy-one percent of what is happening in the oil futures market has nothing to do with people who want oil. They don't want a can of oil, a 5-gallon can or even a quart. They want to trade paper and make money. That market is broken and has been taken over by speculators. We should set that market right and wring out the excess speculation in that market. We have testimony before the committee that doing that can reduce the price of oil and gas by 20 to 40 percent. That is step 1. We ought to do the easy things, and then a lot of other things.

My colleagues say drill. I say absolutely. Conservation is the cheapest form of energy. Saving a barrel is the same as producing a barrel. We waste a lot. Producing and drilling and conservation and efficiency. Every light switch we turn on, every thermostat, everything we do can be much more efficient and lose much less energy, no question about that. Conservation, efficiency, production--and especially a game-changing approach away from every 15 years shuffling in here like bags of wind in blue suits, talking about the plan we had 15 years ago and 15 years before that and 15 years before that.

How about finding new energy and moving toward hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? Hydrogen is everywhere. Water vapor would come out of the tailpipe. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Battery storage technology, with substantial research, and moving to electric cars. How about doing all these things? Solar, wind, biomass, geothermal--we have so many opportunities. We can round up all the money we spend on all of it and research a different energy future, which equals what we spend in the war in Iraq in 40 hours. We ought to do everything and do it well; but we ought to decide that if we are addicted--and President Bush says we are--what do you do with an addict? Do you say I will quit tomorrow and pass the bottle tonight? That is not what you do. You decide you are going to have something that is game changing. You are going to go to a different kind of energy future.

I wish to make a final point that is very important. I support increased production, all those things. But my colleagues in the Senate have blocked--some of them in the minority--through eight votes, our determination to provide tax incentives for renewable energy. Renewable energy is so important, and we put into place permanent, robust tax incentives in 1916 to say that if you look for oil and gas, God bless you, we need it. If you find it, you will get tax incentives. We have done that for almost a century. Do you know what we did for people who tried to go find and produce wind, solar, and other renewable forms? We put into place tax incentives in 1992--short term, kind of shallow--and we extended them five times, and we let them expire three times. Start, stop, stutter step. The fact is, we shut off all the investment every time they stop. They are set to expire at the end of the year. The minority has blocked, eight times, the extension of the tax incentives so we can move toward a different energy future.

If we don't understand that when 65 percent of your oil comes from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Venezuela and outside our country and that makes America vulnerable--if we don't understand that, we ought to go back to bed; you don't need to wake up. It has been pretty disconcerting to see people thumb their suspenders and stick out their stomachs and say we need to drill another hole someplace. We suck 85 million barrels of oil a day out of this planet, and 21 million barrels of that are destined for this country. We use one-fourth of every drop of oil pulled out of this planet every day, and almost 65 percent of it comes from outside our country. If you don't understand the vulnerability of that, then you don't have the capability to understand very much, in my judgment.

We need a robust, aggressive, new energy future. It must include virtually everything, but at its root and at its foundation, it must have a game-changing device that says that 10 years from now we are going to have a different energy mix, a different construct.

Yesterday, I said John F. Kennedy didn't hang around in the early sixties and say: I am thinking of sending a person to the Moon or I am going to try to send a person to the Moon or I hope we can send a person to the Moon. That is not what he said. He said that by the end of the decade, we are going to have a person walking on the Moon. How about saying that in this country now on energy?

By the end of the next 10 years, we will have substantially changed this country's energy mix, and we are going to make the investments necessary to do it, so we are not shuffling around here 10 years from now with the same tired arguments I call ``yesterday forever.'' How about something that does advance this country's long-term interest in energy? Let's do everything we can at this point. In the meantime, let's set a goal and meet the goal as a country that makes us less dependent on foreign oil and move to a different kind of energy future.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, how much time remains in this half-hour allocation?

Madam President, I came expecting to be recognized at 12:10, so I think what I will do, I believe my colleague from Minnesota apparently is seeking time as well. I assume my colleague from Minnesota is seeking time in the second half-hour allotted; is that correct?

Madam President, let me, in the spirit of allowing the two Senators from Minnesota to be able to complete their discussion of the bridge collapse, which is truly a tragedy, let me ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Minnesota be recognized for that 8-minute period, and that the majority side be allowed to claim 8 minutes in the next half-hour, if that is what the Senator is suggesting.

The next half-hour belongs to the minority. If the Senator wishes to agree to a unanimous consent request that our side use 8 minutes in the next half-hour, I would be happy to have him go now.

Mr. President, the pending business of the Senate is S. 3268, the Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act. That is currently the pending business. That has been objected to. I would like to try, once again, to see if perhaps we can do what every one of us as kids has been told by our parents to do--first things first. We need to do a lot of things and a lot of things well--produce more energy, produce different energy, and conserve more energy. I understand that. I think almost all of us agree with that. But first things first.

We have a broken oil futures market, and let me describe it. Seventy- one percent of those who are trading in the oil futures market are speculators. They don't know about oil. They do not want any oil. They do not want to carry a 5-gallon can of oil. They want to trade paper and make a lot of money.

A couple months ago, the vice president of ExxonMobil says the price of oil should be about $50 or $55 per barrel. The CEO of Marathon Oil has said the same thing. Finally, in testimony before the Congress, Fidel Gheit, 30 years in this business at Oppenheimer and Company--the top energy person at Oppenheimer and Company--said:

There is no shortage of oil. I am absolutely convinced that

the price of oil shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel.

In speaking of the futures market, he said:

I call it the world's largest gambling hall, open 24/7 and

totally unregulated. It's like a highway with no cops and no

speed limits and everybody going 120 miles per hour.

The result. The price of gas has doubled in a year. There is nothing in the supply-and-demand relationship of oil that justifies doubling the price in a year. It is because the market is broken and infested now with oil speculators.

We say first things first. We have crafted a bill to try to wring the speculation out of that market and preserve it for ordinary hedging, for which it was originally created.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act, that we are recognizing as the pending business, we proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 882, S. 3268; that the bill be read three times, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I say to the majority leader, I yielded 8 minutes to the Senator from Minnesota today in order that his statement could be coterminous with Senator Klobuchar. If you don't mind, this is the last unanimous consent request--and let me do that by saying I think all of us in this Chamber understand the way you produce energy, and we support virtually every mechanism and approach to produce energy. Drilling for oil is one of them. But drilling a hole in the ground is not the only way you produce energy. You can use turbine and blades to produce energy from the wind and produce electricity. You can take energy from the Sun and produce electricity. There is biomass and biofuels. There are many ways to produce.

The problem is we do not aspire to set any national goal or national standard to require or to push that production of alternative energy.

I think we need something around here that is game changing. Every 10 or 15 years people are content to shuffle on the floor and talk about what do we do about the next box canyon we have ridden in. Then they say let's drill some more. I am all for drilling, but what about other ways of producing energy, wind and solar and the alternatives?

I am going to offer a unanimous consent request on an issue that has been kicking around for a long time. I know some people oppose it strongly. I respect their views but respectfully they are wrong. We ought to have a national standard--many States now have it--to provide a renewable energy standard, saying when you are producing electricity, a certain percentage of that should come from renewable sources.

This proposal at the desk requires a 15-percent renewable energy standard. If we are ever going to change the game, we have to do this by deciding that America is going to produce energy and produce different energy. So this would be a 15-percent renewable energy standard. Many States have taken the lead. I regret they have had to take the lead, but we ought to have a national set of goals and a national standard to say there are a lot of ways to produce. This is about producing energy for this country.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 6049

I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a bill to establish the renewable electricity standard which is at the desk, that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Madam President, those of us who serve in the Senate serve in a political system. John F. Kennedy used to say that every mother hopes a child might grow up to be President as long as they do not have to be active in politics. But, of course, politics is the process within which we make decisions--a very honorable process. But it is not new to the political system to hear evidence of false claims. In fact, it is a time-honored tradition in politics to hear at least some people in striped pants stand up and make all kinds of false claims.

It has reached, I must say, some new heights on the floor of the Senate in the last couple of weeks. As I was listening to some of these things in the Senate, particularly on energy and some of the claims that have been made, I was thinking about when I was a little boy and the carnival would come to my small town of 300 people. You can imagine the size of a carnival that would come to a town of 300 and actually pitch a tent.

One of the things I remember about a carnival coming to town is it had a sideshow. And the sideshow in every carnival, I suppose, is the same. They paint the canvas on the sideshow with unbelievably bright paintings, and then they have a barker, a carnival barker, and they say: Come in here and see the woman with two heads; come in here and see the world's fatest man; come in and see the sideshow and see the man born with an alligator's tail. And my eyes were like dinner plates, thinking, boy this is going to be something. And none of that was in there. I mean, it was, you know, these big old claims.

Well, let me talk a little about big old claims that are not true here in the Senate. We have been hearing them now for 2 weeks.

We have an energy problem. It is a significant problem. The price of oil and gas doubled in a year, bouncing up to $120, $140 a barrel. The price of gasoline--$4, $4.50 a gallon--doubled in a year.

So our colleagues on the minority side come to the floor of the Senate. They have this voice track. It goes over and over and over; it is called looping. They say: Do you know what the problem is? We know what the problem is: The Democrats will not let anybody drill.

Well, it is an interesting discussion but not true. It reminds me of Will Rogers, who said: It is not what he knows that bothers me, it is what he says he knows for sure that just ain't so.

It is not true that people on this side of the Senate Chamber do not want anybody to drill. It is simply not true. I have brought out chart after chart showing so much that is open for drilling. In fact, I was one of four Senators who helped open what is called lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico, 8 million acres. Four of us--myself, Senator Domenici, Senator Bingaman, and Senator Talent from Missouri--introduced a bill saying: Let's open 8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico that has substantial oil and natural gas deposits. Let's open that. You know what, we did it, in a bipartisan manner. And 2 years later, there is not a bit of activity on that 8 million acres.

Our colleagues rush over to the floor of the Senate and say: Well, the Democrats are at fault. They will not let you drill.

It is not true. There are many areas that are open for drilling, and we have supported that. Oh, I do not support a goofy proposition that is ricocheting around here that says: You know what, let's go to the Outer Continental Shelf, which belongs to all of America and which is not yet open, and let's let Governors of States decide whether it should be opened. I mean, that stands goofiness on its head. The Outer Continental Shelf belongs to all of the American people. That does not belong to a State. That does not belong to a Governor. That is an absurd proposition.

So they come to floor of the Senate with their chart, and it says: Produce more, use less. But you know what the problem is: the actions do not match the words. Let me describe what I mean by that.

Let me say that I support producing more. I am fine with drilling holes. I am fine with finding oil and gas. But our colleagues have this mindset of yesterday forever. Every 10 or 15 years, they shuffle into this Chamber, sort of slouched over with their hands in their pockets, saying: Let's drill some more. That is just yesterday forever.

I am for drilling, but what we ought to be doing is other things to change the mix, to change our energy future. You know, almost 65 percent of the oil we use comes from off our shore, from the Saudis, Kuwait, Iraq, Venezuela. That makes us enormously vulnerable. We need something that is game changing, that means different kinds of energy.

Yes, let's produce more, then let's produce different energy, and let's conserve more as well. But when you talk about the issue of production, it is not just drilling a hole for oil. That is what our colleagues believe. Production is also taking energy from the wind and producing electricity. Production is taking energy from the Sun and producing electricity. Production is the biofuels from corn or cellulose to produce gasoline and ethanol. Production is biomass and geothermal. Production is all of that.

Now, eight times in a little over a year we have had votes on the floor of the Senate to extend the tax incentives for renewable energy. Eight times, those who come to the floor with their little charts talking about producing more, eight times they have said: No, we will not support it. Now, let me tell those who listen to this why they will not support it--because it costs some money in the short term to provide tax incentives to get people to invest in renewable energy.

We ought to do renewable energy in a big way. This ought to be game changing. It ought to make us much less dependent on the Saudis and Kuwaitis and others. You do that, it seems to me, by changing the energy mix.

My colleagues do not support that on the other side of the aisle. Do you know why? Because it costs money to provide tax incentives. So we pay for that. We are deep in debt in this country, but we pay for it because it ought to be paid for in the bill we have offered. So my colleagues vote against it.

Let me describe why. One of our pay-fors to help provide these tax incentives for renewable energy is to shut down this unbelievable tax break that exists by which hedge fund managers can take their billions of dollars and move them through tax shelters overseas and avoid paying taxes to the United States of America. My colleagues oppose closing that loophole. They stand with the ability to move hedge fund income overseas to shelter it so they do not have to pay taxes. That is unbelievable. I mean, part of the process in this Chamber, at least, is: Who do you stand for? How on Earth do you want to go home and say: You know what, I decided to vote eight times against incentivizing substantial additional production of renewable energy, energy from the wind, from the

Sun and so on, to make us less dependent on the Saudis. I voted against that because I demand and insist that hedge fund managers have a right to run their income through the Cayman Islands and avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Get a chart. If you want to get a chart, print that up in a chart and take it to the Rotary Club and say: Here is who I stand with. Here is what I stand for. Explain that at home.

How on Earth do you get by with that? I do not understand it at all. You bring a chart to the floor and say ``produce more.'' Well, let me tell you how you produce more--the renewable energy production tax credit.

Let me tell you what we have done in this country. We said a long time ago, 1916: If you go looking for oil and gas, we like that. We want you to find oil and gas because we have an economy that needs it. So you go drilling, good for you; we give you robust permanent tax incentives. We have done that for nearly a century. Here is what we did for people who tried to do new technologies that take energy from the wind and the Sun and so on--a production tax credit for renewable energy.

In 1992, we said: We will give you tax incentives to expand renewable energy, kind of shallow tax incentives. By the way, they are going to be short term, so they will expire. We extended them five times for a short term. We let them expire three times. It was stutter, stop, start, stutter, stop. It was an unbelievably pathetic approach.

Some of us believe we ought to go 10 years and say: Here is where America is headed. You want to join us, we are going to be here for 10 years trying to develop America's renewable energy so we can become less dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

That is what we ought to be doing. But my colleagues from the minority come to floor of the Senate and have opposed it all along the way. They have opposed it eight times. In fact, the people who oppose this have come to the floor of the Senate and said: We need more electric-drive vehicles. We need to move toward plug-in hybrid vehicles. You bet we do. That means substantial investment in battery technology. That is in the bill, by the way, that you voted against. That means substantial investment in renewables. If you are going to drive electric vehicles, you are going to have to have electricity.

They vote against that, vote against all of this, and then come to the floor and say: We need the product of this to do what we want to do to drive electric vehicles. It is unbelievable.

I have described this probably 20 times in the Senate. Perhaps some get tired of it, but we are trying to do something here. We have been stopped, which is frustrating. It is the easiest thing in the world to stop progress. The minority has demonstrated that now for 2 weeks. I have described Mark Twain when he was asked if he would engage in a debate once. He said: Sure, I would be happy to engage in a debate, as long as I can take the negative side. They said: No one has told you the subject of the debate. Mark Twain said: The subject doesn't matter. The negative side will require no preparation.

It doesn't require any skill or preparation to take the negative side of anything. So for 2 weeks we have tried to pass legislation to wring the speculation out of the oil futures market. Seventy-one percent of that market is now controlled by speculators who don't want a thing to do with oil. They wouldn't lift a quart of oil. They want to trade paper and make money. We are trying to shut down excess speculation. What we have found is our colleagues, when the question is, who do you stand with, they say: We will stand with the oil speculators. We will block that.

Eight times we bring a bill to the floor that says, let's at least provide incentives to try to change the plan at this point and begin substantially increasing the use of renewable energy. Eight times our colleagues have voted against that.

Let me go through what this would have provided, what we tried to do: a renewable energy production tax credit, solar and fuel cell investment tax credits, clean renewable energy tax credit bonds, tax incentives for plug-in electric drive vehicles. The list goes on and on, all things we should be doing. Eight times we have lost the vote to proceed because the minority, which says they support all of this, has decided they don't want to close the a loophole that allows hedge fund managers to run their incomes through the Cayman Islands and other tax havens in order to avoid paying taxes. We close the loophole to help pay for all of this, and our colleagues have an apoplectic seizure. You can't do that, they say.

I don't understand. It is beyond me that they believe it is going to work to come to the floor of the Senate and make a claim that is a false claim that somehow the majority party doesn't support drilling. Of course we do.

Let me describe it from a parochial standpoint. The biggest drilling play in America right now is in eastern Montana and western North Dakota. The U.S. Geological Survey did an assessment at my request. The U.S. Geological Survey and I announced about 3 months ago that that is the largest assessment of recoverable oil ever made in the lower 48 States; 3.6 billion barrels to 4.3 billion barrels of oil using today's technology are going to be recoverable. We have up to 75 drilling rigs active right now, drilling a well about every 30 or 35 days, moving every 30 or 35 days to a new well site. It is the biggest oil play in our country. I fully support that. It makes a lot of sense. I was the one who got the U.S. Geological Survey to do the assessment. I was the one who helped get lease 181 opened up, 8 million acres in the gulf.

It doesn't wash with me or my colleagues to have people come to the floor with their little charts talking about this side doesn't support production. Of course we do. But production by drilling a hole searching for black gold called oil is not the only way to produce energy. We are never going to get out of this fix of needing 65 percent of the oil we use from the Saudis and others, unless we change the game completely. That means completely changing our energy future.

I have described often our situation. We have this big old planet that circles the Sun. We share it with about 6.6 billion people. We stick straws in the planet and suck oil out, about 85 million barrels a day, and 21 million barrels is destined for here because we need one- fourth of all the oil produced on the planet. One-fourth of the oil coming out of this planet every day has to come to this country because we have a prodigious appetite for oil. The fact is, we need to continue to use oil, and will. But we need to find ways to change our energy mix in the future. The only conceivable way to do that is to begin substantial research dollars and to pass these kinds of tax incentives to move toward other kinds of energy use, solar, geothermal, wind, and so on. You can add up all the money we spend on this sort of thing to change our energy future and make this country less dependent and more secure, and it's equivalent to what the Pentagon spends in 40 days. That makes no sense.

If we are going to invest in this country's future, we have to pass legislation such as this. We can't have a Senate in which we have people who fashion themselves as human brake pads coming over here to stop everything just because they want to support hedge fund managers who want to wash their U.S. income through foreign subsidiaries and avoid taxes. That is not a sustainable policy, to continue protecting tax avoidance and stopping investment in renewable energy.

This country can have a pretty terrific future, but we face big challenges. We are not going to solve or address this country's challenges unless we think in very different ways.

I understand there will be some perfectly content for this Congress to adjourn or leave town and go on the August break having done nothing. I will be one of those who is not content. It makes no sense that there are those out there with projects on the shelf right now for new wind energy farms, for solar energy applications, for geothermal and biofuels, all of the other renewables, and they are not going to go ahead unless they have some notion that this country will extend the tax incentives for that renewable energy. On eight separate occasions, the minority has come to the floor of the Senate and said, when asked, will you extend these tax incentives, they have said: No, no, no, eight times. That is not in this country's interest.

Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 4137

On behalf of the majority leader, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30

today, the Senate proceed to the conference report to accompany H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, and that there be 130 minutes for debate divided as follows: 50 minutes under the control of Senator Mikulski or her designee, 30 minutes each under the control of Senators Enzi and Alexander or their designees, and 20 minutes under the control of Senator Coburn; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to a vote on adoption of the conference report, without further intervening action or debate. I note for the Record that this agreement has been cleared on both sides of the aisle.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the reauthorization of the Tribally Controlled College or University Assistance Act of 1978, which is included in H.R. 4137, the Higher Education Reauthorization and College Opportunity Act of 2008.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, I worked closely with the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the House of Representatives to ensure that provisions enhancing tribal colleges and universities were included in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act.

H.R. 4137 reauthorizes the Tribally Controlled College or University Assistance Act of 1978. Additionally, it will authorize two tribally controlled postsecondary career and vocational technical institutions: United Tribes Technical College and Navajo Technical College. Both of these institutions are critical to strengthening tribal higher education and providing the necessary resources for Indian students.

I have been a longtime supporter of tribal colleges and universities because of the benefits they provide to both the community and the individual student. There are 36 tribal colleges and universities throughout the United States. I am very fortunate to have 5 of these tribal colleges in my State of North Dakota.

Tribal colleges and universities offer a wide range of accredited programs from business administration to nursing. In addition to college-level courses, tribal colleges and universities also offer high school completion programs, job training, and college- preparatory courses.

These colleges and universities are essential to their communities, often serving as community centers, libraries, tribal archives, career and business centers, economic development centers, public meeting places and childcare centers.

Because most tribal colleges and universities are located on or near Indian reservations, they provide a greater level of access to higher education for a group of Native students who would otherwise be unable to attend college.

Approximately 28,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students attend tribally-controlled colleges and universities across the country. Characteristics of American Indian students enrolled in tribal colleges differ from those of most other undergraduate students: Students attending these schools often come from geographically isolated communities with high unemployment rates where the average family income is $13,998.00. This is 27 percent below the Federal poverty level. Most students attending tribal

colleges are the first generation in their family to go to college. American Indians who earn a bachelor's degree or higher can expect to earn two times as much as those with a high school diploma and four times as much as those with no high school diploma.

I am committed to finding ways to strengthen tribal colleges because they are truly a success story in Indian country. The reauthorization of the Tribally Controlled Colleges or University Assistance Act is a strong step in that direction.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the conference report was agreed to, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the presentation by the Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the time in morning business until 12:30 be divided equally between the two leaders or their designees and the time consumed by Senator Murkowski count toward the time in this agreement. I ask the following Senators on the Democratic side be recognized: Dorgan, 15 minutes; Durbin, 10 minutes; Baucus, 12 minutes.

Mr. President, this has been an interesting morning to watch the Senate debate. It reminds me a bit that the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. Debate that I have heard this morning is quite extraordinary. We have people come to the floor of the Senate, and they say that something like 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is not open and available for leasing and drilling. That is not true. Two-thirds is open and available for the Minerals Management Service to lease.

I want to talk a little about where we are with respect to this issue of production. I have seen the big old sign that my Republican colleagues have been using. It says: Produce more and use less.

We will have a chance again today to decide whether members actually want to produce more. Some people believe the only way you produce energy is drill a hole someplace and search for oil and gas. I support that. But another way to produce energy is to produce homegrown energy from solar, wind, biomass or geothermal sources--another homegrown energy plan.

We have had a chance for at least six separate times to vote to extend the tax credits to support renewable forms of energy to produce more energy. Six times we have been stymied. I will talk about that a bit in a moment.

The first car I got as a very young man was a 1924 Model-T Ford I bought for $25 and lovingly restored it for 2 years. I have described this often.

I discovered as a young boy that you couldn't date very well in a 1924 Ford. So I sold my model T. But it was interesting restoring an old Model T Ford. I understood that you put gasoline in a 1924 vehicle the same way you put gasoline in a 2008 vehicle. Nothing has fundamentally changed. You to go a gas pump someplace, stick a nozzle in your tank, start pumping and then pay the price. It is drive and drill approach. It has been that strategy forever. Some of my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate dragging a wagon of the same old drive-and-drill policies. Keep driving and drilling, and things will be fine. The problem is the hole gets deeper every single year. They come here once a decade and say: Our strategy is to drill more.

I support drilling for oil, but I also think we ought to do a lot more than that. We ought to have a game-changing plan, some sort of a moonshot plan that says: Ten years from now we need to have a different approach to energy. John F. Kennedy didn't say: I think we will try to go to the Moon. I would like to send a person to the Moon. I hope we can go to the Moon. He said: By the end of this decade, we will send a person to the Moon. We will have a person walking on the Moon.

That is what this debate ought to be about. In the next 10 years, here is the way we are going to change America's energy plan. That ought to be the debate.

There are a lot of things we can and should do together. There are far too few things we are engaging in together on the floor of the Senate. We had a energy future speculation bill defeated, or at least the minority that puts up the sign that says produce more and use less voted in unison to stop movement of it. We had a bill on the floor that said: Let's get rid of excessive speculation in the futures market that is driving up prices. We had people who testified before our various committees who said as much as 30 to 40 percent of the current price of gas and oil is due to excess speculation. In 2000, 37 percent of the oil market was speculators. Now it is 71 percent. It is unbelievable how rampant speculation has become in the oil futures market. But the oil speculators have a lot of friends here, enough friends so they could stop that kind of legislation that would put the brakes on some of this speculation and put some downward pressure on prices. The oil speculators have a lot of friends here.

Big oil companies have a lot of friends here. With record profits, the largest oil company, ExxonMobil, spent twice as much money last year buying back their stock as they did in investing in infrastructure for producing more oil. Let me say that again. The biggest oil company in the world spent twice as much money buying back its stock as it did exploring for more oil. We are paying at the pump enormous prices so one would hope at least a substantial portion of that money would go back into the ground to find more energy resources. But sadly it is not.

Again, these Big Oil companies have plenty of friends in this Chamber. They view their role as a set of human brake pads to stop whatever is going on. They don't support anything. Just make sure you stop things.

Let me describe one of the things that makes so much sense to me that has been stopped dead in its tracks. It was stopped last year on June 21, 2007. It was stopped December 7, 2007. It was stopped December 13, 2007. They stopped it on February 7, 2008. What is it? It is our ability, as a country, to change the game and say: We want to encourage production by taking energy from the wind, solar, wave, and other forms of renewable energy. We had a vote on all those occasions to provide tax credits and stimulus to say: Here is the kind of energy we want to produce in the future. This is a new energy future. On each and every occasion, the minority that comes to parade with a big, old sign calling for producing more, on each occasion those who hold up that sign today voted against producing more. Isn't that interesting? They voted against producing more.

Let me tell you what we did in this country with respect to energy. In 1916, we put in place long-term, permanent, robust tax incentives to say to people: If you want to explore for oil and gas, God bless you because we need it. We want to provide big incentives for you to do it. Almost a century ago we put in place those tax incentives. That is how much we wanted to encourage people to find oil and gas. Contrast that with what we did to encourage people to wean ourselves off the need for fossil fuels. At least 60 to 65 percent of that oil comes from off our shores.

In 1992, we put in place a tax credit for renewable energy, a production tax credit which was short term and not particularly robust. We extended it five times. We let it expire three times. We have had a stop-and-start, stutter step approach.

Look at this chart. Here is what has happened. This shows you what has happened to wind energy. When the credit expires, the investment goes to zero. Put the credit is extended, the investment goes up. When the credit expires, the investment drops off. It is unbelievable, what a pathetic, anemic response by a country. So we have a piece of legislation that says: Let's extend the wind energy tax credit. Let's extend the tax credit that takes energy from the Sun. Let's produce energy from the wind and the Sun and geothermal and so many other forms of renewable energy. The minority side says no. They don't want to do that. On June 21, 2007, we failed to get cloture by one vote. A large portion of the minority side said no. The same ones who

are holding the sign that says produce more said: We don't want to produce more. On December 7, the same folks who hold the sign said: No, we don't want to produce more. December 13, they still said: No, we are not interested in producing more. February 7 of this year: We still are not interested in producing more.

But during the last week or so, they show a big, old, oily chart on the Senate floor that says produce more, use less. Well, perhaps we will have a chance to vote once again. Then the question is, Is their policy just drill a hole, which is a yesterday forever strategy, or is their policy a game-changing policy to join us and say: Let's do something different for a change.

Given the circumstances we have, those who decide it is in their interest to block everything, should rethink that plan. I have said often, Mark Twain was once asked to engage a debate. He said: Yes, as long as I can have the negative side. They said: But, Mr. Twain, we haven't even told you the subject. He said: It doesn't matter. The subject doesn't matter. The negative side will take no preparation. So it is on the floor of the Senate. Coming out here simply to block everything and then hold a sign that says: We support producing more. That takes no preparation. It takes a little bit of gall, I might say, but it certainly takes no preparation.

The question is this: Should we do everything? You bet your life. We should drill more, in my judgment, and there is two-thirds of the Outer Continental Shelf that is open for leasing and drilling. I support that. We ought to conserve more too. We are prodigious wasters of energy. We ought to have much more energy efficiency for every single thing we do. Everything that is turned on from a switch that we flick on or off should be examined. So produce and conserve, and most importantly have a game-changing plan to say: We want renewables in this country.

T. Boone Pickens was in town last week. He was like a big old boat coming through, leaving a big wake in the background of the boat. He said: You can't drill your way out of this problem. What we need to do is wind from Texas to North Dakota, in the area where we have all this wind energy potential. We need to develop more solar in the Southwest, where we have a tremendous capability. We need to produce that way and develop an interstate grid system for transmitting energy all around the country, just as we did with the interstate highway system.

That makes a lot of sense to me. But we can't do that with the pathetic approach that exists on providing incentives to renewables. As I indicated, we put in place permanent, robust incentives for looking for oil and gas in 1916. We have these short-term incentives, and we can't get them passed. Because on occasion after occasion, time after time, the folks who now come and hold a sign that says produce more said: No, I will not vote to produce more. When it comes to renewable energy, I am going to vote to stop it.

We can get oil from the ground. I understand that, but we can also produce biofuels from a whole series of feedstocks. We are using a lot of corn. But the bill we have tried to get passed has a significant tax incentive for the cost of facilities that produce cellulosic biofuels. Does that make sense? You bet your life it does. That is production for America. If you say you are for production, don't hold up a sign. Just vote for this legislation. Then you will really be for production. The new credits for qualified plug-in electric drive vehicles, how important is that? It is unbelievably important for us to convert from the internal combustion engine to an electric drive vehicle and then, eventually, to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. That is game changing. But the legislation in which this occurred, that is legislation the minority that has been holding the signs all morning opposed.

All I say is this: You want to do a lot of everything. Let's do a lot of everything. Let's advance America's energy future. We go to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Venezuela, or Kuwait and say: In order for America's economy to run, we need a large portion of our oil and gas from you, you need to provide that to us. It impacts so many other parts of our country that we can't possibly control.

Should we continue down this road? I don't think so. It is a disappointment to me that it is toward the end of July, and we still have this kind of discussion on the floor of the Senate. We should have had 100 Senators in support of legislation to shut down this unbelievable speculation that is going on. I understand oil speculators have a lot of friends here now. They have a lot of friends in this Chamber, enough to have stopped this oil speculation legislation last week. We ought to have 100 votes for people who say we are going to support homegrown energy. We are going to support big, aggressive tax incentives to produce energy here at home, and that includes wind, solar, geothermal and biomass, and we are going to change the game. Ten years from now, America is going to have a different energy future. Instead, we got the ``yesterday forever'' crowd who comes to the Chamber and slouches around with their hands in their pockets and says: We always liked what we did, and we want to do it some more. Then, 10 or 15 years from now, the same crowd will be back saying the same thing. They will say no to anything that will change the ground, and yes to anything that continues this unbelievable dependence.

My hope is we can find a way, perhaps, to join together and decide we ought to produce more in a smart way. We ought to be much less reliant on foreign energy, on the need for oil from overseas. We ought to be much more vigilant on aggressive conservation and energy efficiency measures. This Congress in particular ought to decide that it is finally, at long last, going to vote to produce energy in a good way. That is, to produce homegrown energy from wind, solar and so many other sources of renewable energy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, a week from Friday we will see the start of the Olympics, held every 4 years, where people from all over this globe come together and compete on the athletic field. And with the start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, I wish to talk for a moment about what is happening today in China.

I wish to be clear that I have great respect and admiration for the Chinese people. I have visited their country and enjoyed long conversations. I have had an opportunity to stand on the Great Wall of China and understand some of the history of this great country. But no one should confuse the Chinese people with their unelected Government. The differences I have are with the Government of China regarding human rights, the rule of law, and freedom of speech, and they are very significant.

The Government of China was awarded the Games by the International Olympic Committee only after it pledged to respect the Olympic Charter and to improve its human rights record. The charter of the Olympics states that the goal of the Olympic Games should be to promote ``a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.''

The world had high hopes that China's leaders would ensure that the Olympics took place in an atmosphere that advanced freedom and openness and reflected genuine progress on human rights. But those hopes have been sadly dashed. Human rights conditions, unfortunately, have worsened in China.

Individuals who have publicly spoken out about the Olympics, or who have spoken about abuses in China and Tibet, and have been punished or harassed as a result include lawyers, bloggers, journalists, community activists, NGO workers, Tibetans, Muslims, Christians, parents of children who died in earthquakes. The list goes on and on.

Now, every country that has ever hosted an Olympics has had critics, both at home and abroad. China has also had critics of it hosting the Games. But instead of being tolerant of dissent, what China has done is hit back hard with a combination punch of intimidation and, too often, imprisonment.

I am the cochairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and we maintain the most complete database of China's political prisoners accessible and searchable by the public. We now have 4,400 records in that prison database, and I wish to discuss three of those prisoners today. I call them Olympic prisoners of conscience.

The first is Hu Jia. This is a picture of Hu Jia. Hu Jia is a courageous activist jailed last December by the Chinese for comments he made at a European Parliament hearing. He was invited to speak at the hearing, were he made some statements that were critical of his country hosting the Games. He was then detained and his wife and infant daughter were put under house arrest for several months. In April, Mr. Hu was sentenced to 3\1/2\ years in prison for ``inciting subversion of state power.'' Since then, his young family continues to be harassed and is still under surveillance. Hu Jia is quite ill in a Chinese prison, where he is being held for simply speaking his mind at a European Parliament hearing.

Here is a photograph of Mr. Yang Chunlin. He is a laid-off worker, an unemployed worker in China. He has been repeatedly detained for helping farmers trying to seek compensation for lost land. Last summer, he organized a petition titled ``We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics.'' He was subsequently arrested, and he was charged with inciting subversion of state power.

Let me say that again. The charge was ``inciting subversion of state power.'' Now in prison, he has reportedly suffered severe beatings, which have caused damage to his eyesight.

Finally, I wish to mention Ye Guozhu. This courageous Chinese citizen is pictured in this photo alone, smiling. In 2003, three generations of his family have been evicted from their Beijing home to make way for the Olympics-related construction. In 2004, he applied for permission to organize a protest against other alleged forced evictions in Beijing in connection with preparations for the Olympics. Mr. Ye was arrested and sentenced to 4 years in prison for provoking and making trouble. The charge is ``provoking and making trouble.'' He has reportedly been tortured in prison. Having served his sentence, he was finally expected to be released from prison this week, but his release has now been further delayed, allegedly due to the concerns that he might speak to the foreign press during the Olympics.

The right to speak freely and the right to challenge the Government in China, all of these are enshrined in China's constitution. Yet all are being violated in the run up to the Olympic Games.

Now, here is list of 807 cases of political prisoners developed by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, CECC. I have shown the photographs of three Chinese prisoners, prisoners who have been sentenced to prison terms because they had a determination to speak out. They wanted the ability to criticize their Government. This list of 807 cases is part of 4,500 case records contained in our database. This document is published by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. This particular document has 807 cases of political prisoners, all the detailed information on political prisoners known or believed to be detained in prison in China. The Commission notes that ``there are considerably more cases than these 807 cases. These represent a subset of 4,500 case records contained in the political prisoner database created by our commission.''

That database, if anyone is interested, is accessible and searchable by the public at www.cecc.gov. I have just described the CECC political prisoner database, as well as three of the prisoners contained in this document, for this reason: A week from Friday, President Bush will be attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Today, President Bush met with four Chinese dissidents, including Rebiya Kadeer, Harry Wu and others. I commend the President for that meeting. I know he has an interest in this issue, the issue of liberty and of freedom of speech in China. But I hope and I implore the President not to miss the opportunity of while going to the opening ceremony of the games in China, at the same time providing the CECC list on political prisoners to the Chinese leaders. If the President is going to attend the opening of the Olympics, I believe there is a responsibility to make the trip genuinely count, and not just to celebrate the Olympics.

The Olympics are a wonderful way for people around the world to come together. All of us support the Olympics. I certainly do. But I believe very strongly that the 807 people in China now in prison, contained in these records must not be forgotten. I believe strongly the leaders of the Chinese Government should continually be confronted with the names of these individuals who are imprisoned merely for their belief and speech. The Olympic charter talks about respect and human dignity. The Chinese Government made representations to the international community if it was given the privilege of hosting the Olympics, it would meet the test of that charter. Regrettably, it has not.

Again, I commend President Bush for meeting with the four Chinese dissidents today at the White House. I think that was an important step. I hope when our President goes to the opening games in China a week from Friday, he will take this prisoner list with him--which we will send to him tomorrow at the White House--and that he will, when he meets with Chinese leaders show them the names of the 807 brave and courageous men and women contained in the list, who believe in the right of free speech, who desire freedom for themselves and their families, who in most cases are unfairly imprisoned for transgressions that are things we would take for granted in this country where we have such great freedom.

We will be sending this to the President in the hope that he will continue to raise these names with the Chinese Government. In conclusion, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China maintains the most significant publicly accessible database that exists in the world of those who now sit in prisons in China for having the courage to speak the truth, for having the courage to do and say the things we take for granted every single day in the United States.

My hope is looking at just one of these cases, and knowing there are many more than the 807 in this list, all of us will use the opportunity of the Olympcis to say to the Chinese Government: Stop the harassment and detention. Stop imprisoning innocent people. Live up to your own Constitution's protections for the Chinese people. My hope is our country, including our President, will continue to raise these subjects with the Chinese leaders.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, Thursday, July 31, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a meeting on pending legislative issues, to be followed immediately by a hearing entitled ``Indian Health Service Management: Lost Property, Wasteful Spending and Document Fabrication.''

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

Mr. President, I have listened for the past 20 minutes or so to the narrative on the floor of the Senate. My colleague from Idaho and I have introduced legislation last year dealing with expanding production in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and in Cuban waters. We do not disagree on the issue of whether we should expand production in this region. In fact, we agree on that issue. But I have heard several of my colleagues come to the floor to create false choices this afternoon, and I want to talk about those false choices.

We are witnessing a time when it is very hard for people to figure out how to scrape enough money together to put $70 worth of gas in their tank when it is near ``e'' on the gauge. It is fascinating and very disappointing to me how it's possible to fill your farm tank in order to harvest your crop, how an airliner is going to be able to afford fuel, or how is a family going to be able to afford enough money to put gas in their tank to go to work. These decisions are being made at a time when we face oil prices bouncing between $120 and $140 a barrel and gasoline at $4, $4.50 a gallon. When that ought to invoke and spark cooperation on the floor of the Senate, there is none.

My colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and say: Let's open up the entire Outer Continental Shelf. The Energy Information Administration carried out an assessment that shows what production would look like without lifting the moratorium and with lifting the moratorium. What it shows is that we get some extra production in the year 2020. I understand talking about next week, next decade. What is the impact going to be to families, to truckers, to farmers, to airlines, and others if someone comes out here and says: You know what, we have a real serious problem right now, but here is a solution for 2020.

Sign me up for the solution in the long term, although I might have a different approach to it. I hope by 2020 we are not quite as addicted to oil, particularly foreign oil from the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, Iraqis, or Venezuelans. Maybe we can shed the some of that addiction in 10 years. Maybe that ought to be our strategy. Maybe we ought to do game changing. The way to do away with our addiction is not to do more of the same so that we are still addicted. That makes precious little sense to me.

I will be happy to yield.

Mr. President, it appears a Federal agency has arisen from the dead. Good for the CFTC. I have been talking a long while about the CFTC being dead from the neck up. This is, after all, the regulatory agency that is supposed to wear the striped shirts, blow the whistle, and call the fouls.

This apparently is manipulation of the market. We are talking about manipulation. Good for them, if they have risen from the dead, if they are taking action against someone manipulating the marketplace.

The acting CFTC Chairman, whom the Senator from Illinois described, spent the last seven months saying there is no problem with the marketplace, it is working fine. The doubling of the price of oil and gas in the past 12 to 14 months has been because of supply and demand, he says. About a month ago, the acting Chairman had an epiphany. He must have had a good night's sleep, woke up from his dream saying: OK, I have been saying supply and demand justifies the doubling in price, but, in fact, we have been doing an investigation for seven months.

So which is it? Here is what it is. In the year 2000, 37 percent of the trades in the oil futures market were speculation trades, having nothing to do with hedging a physical product between consumers and producers; 37 percent of the trades by speculators. Today 71 percent of the trades are by speculators. They don't have any interest in buying oil, taking delivery of oil, carrying a 5-gallon can of oil, or putting a quart of oil in their car. They don't have the foggiest interest in oil. They have interest in buying and selling contracts and making big profits. They have taken over this marketplace and broken the market.

The proposition on the floor of the Senate is to try to wring out this excessive, relentless speculation in this market. My colleagues come to the floor of the Senate, and they have developed another narrative of more

drilling because they don't want to tackle this issue of speculation. I said before, 47 Members of the Senate in the minority have all indicated, in one form or another, that speculation is a problem. If you believe that, help us get this bill to the President. Yet, they come to the floor of the Senate and say we need more drilling.

As I described in the year 2020, we will have more to bring on more supply. I don't disagree with that point. Let's talk about it; offer some amendments. In fact, the majority leader has offered to the minority to bring your amendment to the floor. We will have a vote on it.

But what about next month? What about 6 months from now? How about let's do some things that are game changing in this country? How about the next decade? Between now and then, let's work to change the game.

I said two days ago that, in the 1960s, John F. Kennedy did not say: I would like to have us try to go to the Moon. I think we should think about going to the Moon. I think we should make an effort to go to the Moon. He didn't say that. He said by the end of the decade, we are going to put a man on the Moon, and we did just that.

The plan of all of those who have come to the floor of the Senate diminishing this legislation, degrading this legislation, saying we shouldn't deal with speculation and getting this market right. We shouldn't spend time on that. Let's instead focus on drilling. If that is the only thing they focus on, then that is what I call a yesterday forever strategy. If you want to wake up 10 years from now and keep the same position, good for you. I don't.

I think what we ought to do is this: Let's at least address something that has broken the marketplace and has doubled the price of oil and gas in the last year, something that experts have come to the Congress to testify about and some have said up to 40 percent of the current price of oil is not and cannot be justified by the fundamentals of supply and demand. It is because speculators have taken over this marketplace.

Don't take it from me. Take it from the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. Here is what he said in April:

The [oil] fundamentals are no problem. They are the same as

they were when oil was selling for $60 a barrel.

If that is the case, what is the problem? The problem is, as I described in the chart, this market has been taken over by the speculators.

My colleague comes and says: NYMEX and ICE, describes all that is going on, what an aggressive regulator we have. You know what, this regulator has been sending out no action letters. Isn't that a wonderful thing to perfectly describe a regulatory agency that wants to take no action for anything? It said: Let me be willfully blind and not see what is happening. By the way, because of these no action letters, I can't see what is happening in the over-the-counter market, the intercontinental exchange, and all of the unregulated trades because I have decided I don't want to see it. Then let me go to the Congress and testify, and with a straight face--I am sure suppressing a grin--at least with a straight face say, I don't see anything that represents anything other than supply and demand.

My question to them was: I understand you don't see that. Is it the case you see very little because you have chosen, through no action letters and other limitations, to decide you don't want to see it all?

We brought a bill to the floor of the Senate that says we have a lot of problems. First and foremost, let's set this market straight, putting pressure downward and preserving the oil futures market for that which was intended in 1936. It was for the hedging of a physical product between consumers and producers. That is what it was for. It has now been taken over by the carnival of greed. Speculators control these markets, have driven up the price despite the fact there has been no change in the fundamentals.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say drill. I have had a bill in for a year and a half to say drill more in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and allow U.S. companies to produce in Cuban waters. I am also one of the four Senators who opened up lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling. I support that. I am fine with drilling. But if drilling is your only answer, boy, that, in my judgment, is a pretty pathetic future. Here is what Boone Pickens says. Boone Pickens and I have disagreed on a lot of things, but he came to Congress this week:

I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency

we can't drill our way out of. But if we can create a new

renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to

foreign oil.

Think of this. What if between now and 2020, if we start now we can actually have a new barrel of oil by 2020, and you say to somebody down the block: Cheer up, things are going to be better in 12 years--that is one position to take, I guess.

What if the other position is as Mr. Pickens suggests? What if we did this: We are going to produce oil. We want to be less dependent, however, on the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Venezuela, and so on, because if we didn't get their oil for some reason, we would be flat on our back as an economy. This makes our country vulnerable. We have to be less dependent on them. We are going to use oil we produce.

How about if we decide to do something dramatically different? How about in the wind belt from Texas to North Dakota where we produce a massive quantity of wind and have the capability of taking the energy from the wind and producing electricity? And how about in the Sun Belt where we move dramatically to solar energy and create a superhighway of transmission lines to be able to move that energy all around this country? How about if we do that for a decade and then say: You know what, all that natural gas we are using for coal-fired generating plants, we can displace a fair amount of that with wind and solar and a superhighway of transmission lines, and we can dramatically change America's energy future.

We need more conservation and energy efficiency and dramatic increases in renewables. There are so many exciting things we can do to change America's future. Yet, my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate for a different pursue. They plant their flag, and say: We want our future to be the same as our past, and every 10 or 15 years, they will be content to come here and say: Yes, we have an urgent problem and what we ought to do is more of the same. That is not a future that makes much sense to us.

Again, coming back to this issue, we are saying with this legislation on the floor of the Senate requires that we do first things first. We should do a lot of things, we agree with that. Senator Bingaman is introducing a bill I fully support as a cosponsor. It deals with a whole range of other issues with which we have to deal. First things first. At least let's address this issue of excess speculation that has broken the commodity futures market for oil.

To my colleagues who say, you know what, this is all about drilling, I say to them: Come to the floor of the Senate and tell me what has happened in the last year, what has happened in supply and demand that justifies a doubling of the price of oil. They will not come and cannot come because they don't have an answer to that.

I can give them a partial answer. If anything would have been expected to happen to the price of oil and gas, it should have gone down because we have driven nearly 6 billion fewer miles in America than we did in the previous 6 months. So we are using less energy and less gasoline. So one would expect, if you are using less, you would put some downward pressure on prices. But that is not the case. Prices go up like a Roman candle, double in a year.

The only conceivable reason given us is by the experts who don't have a vested interest in this issue of the oil futures markets, and they say that the market is now broken. Fidel Gheit has been an Oppenheimer analyst for 30, 35 years--the top energy analyst for Oppenheimer--and he says: Look, this is like a casino, open 24/7, like a highway with no speed limit, he said, and no cops, and everybody is going 120 miles an hour.

Is that really what we are willing to allow an oil futures market to be, if it drives up the cost of oil and gas, doubles it in a year, and imposes this kind of burden and financial penalty on every American family and every American business; imposes this kind of burden on some of our major industries, such as airlines and trucking

companies and farmers and others? That is a back breaker. Are we really willing to stand on the floor of the Senate and say: Yeah, that is OK. It is OK. Let's do something that will increase the production of a barrel of oil in 2020.

That seems to me to be a false choice that we are being offered. I think it was Will Rogers who once said:

It is not what he knows that bothers me, it's what he says

he knows for sure that just ain't so.

I think about that as I hear this debate on the floor of the Senate; all this assertiveness about one answer. Do something now so we have more oil in 2020. What about tomorrow, next week, or next month? What do you want to do about that? What about a market that is broken; do you ever care about fixing it? What about the fact that investment banks and hedge funds have marched right directly into the oil futures market?

The Wall Street Journal writes about investment banks that are actually purchasing oil storage so they can purchase oil and keep it off the market. Pension funds--CalPERS and others--are moving money into the oil futures market as if it is just another share of stock. That is just pure speculation. That massive quantity of money flooding into this market has dramatically changed the market.

Now, I have had a lot of people come and see me about these issues because some are very upset with what we are trying to do. They like the speculation in the marketplace because a lot of people made a lot of money by speculating in this marketplace. I think this marketplace needs to exist. You have to have a market that represents a place for legitimate hedging of a physical product. But when the market is broken, you also have to have a regulator with the strength, the capability, and the willingness to stand up and do what is necessary to fix it.

The current regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has not done that, has not demonstrated a willingness to do that, and it seems to me Congress must. Our legislation does a couple of things. It says to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission: You determine who is trading out there and distinguish between them. Those who are engaged in legitimate hedging of a physical product between consumers and producers, that is fine. That is what the market was created for. All others are pure speculators, and we establish strong position limits on those speculators to try to shut down that speculation, that excess speculation in the marketplace. Relatively simple. But it does cause a firestorm of protest by those who are making a lot of money having broken this marketplace.

I suppose there is room--I shouldn't say I suppose. There is room for disagreement. I respect those who disagree. But it seems to me that this country will pay a very high price if we don't understand the need to cooperate. There is no Republican or Democrat label on the fuel gauge on a car. There is just ``full'' and ``empty.'' And all too often these days it is empty because of what has happened to prices. I think the American people expect and demand we do something that addresses these issues.

The first step--the first step and most important step, in my judgment--is to set this market straight and to distinguish between excess speculation and legitimate hedging and establish position limits in order to put downward pressure on gas and oil prices. We are told by some very distinguished people who have testified before our committees that we could see as much as a 40-percent decrease in the price of oil and gas just by wringing the oil speculators out of the futures market.

If we did that, it would be a good thing, a good thing for our country. Then, yes, we have much yet to do. I don't disagree at all with that, and some of it is drilling. But as I said before, if our future is just to continue down that road, without understanding the need for a game-changing, moon-shot plan to make us less dependent on the Saudis, less dependent on foreign oil, this country will have missed an enormous opportunity and put its future in jeopardy.

I remain hopeful. It is now Thursday, and we have been largely at parade rest most of the week. The minority has required us, in effect, to spend 30 hours postcloture--30 hours postcloture--doing nothing, which makes precious little sense. I think the country senses some emergency here, but some of my colleagues in Congress sense no such emergency. So we spend 30 hours largely doing nothing, and then we will come to a cloture vote to shut off debate to see if we can perhaps get to a vote to end this relentless speculation.

My hope is we will have sufficient votes to do that.

Mr. President, how much time have I consumed?

Mr. President, I believe a couple of my colleagues are coming, so I will reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record for Senator Durbin a story that he described on the floor titled ``Traders Manipulated Oil Prices.''

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

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

Mr. President, I believe the majority leader is coming over, but I would like to speak until he arrives, at which point I will continue later.

Mr. President, we had a hearing yesterday before the Senate Appropriations Committee that I had requested. That followed a hearing that I had conducted on the Democratic policy committee, the 17th hearing I have conducted and chaired, looking into the issue of contractor irregularities and waste, fraud, and abuse involving contractors with respect to the war in Iraq.

I want to talk just for a moment about what is happening with respect to these contractors.

We are shoveling money out the door. Three-quarters of $1 trillion has been spent, and much of it ends up in the pockets of contractors, and much of the work by contractors not only fleeces the American taxpayer, but it represents, I think, the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country. I think it is also the case that it endangers the lives of American soldiers.

So what I would like to do for a moment is to describe the hearing that I held recently and show a photograph of Cheryl Harris and her son, SSG Ryan Maseth.

Ryan Maseth was an Army Ranger and a Green Beret. He was killed in Iraq. He wasn't killed by an insurgent or killed by enemy fire. He was killed because he was electrocuted while he was taking a shower at the Army base. He was electrocuted while taking a shower.

It turns out the contractor that wired that particular area didn't know how to wire and didn't properly attach ground wires. So when this Army Ranger reached up and touched a pipe, he was electrocuted and died.

The Army initially told Cheryl they thought perhaps her son had taken an electrical appliance into the shower and, therefore, was electrocuted. Not true. It is not true. Halliburton--or Kellogg, Brown & Root, its former subsidiary--had been given the contract for wiring these facilities at Army bases and were hiring, among others, third- country nationals who had very little electrical experience. Two people who were electricians and working there in Iraq and Afghanistan for Kellogg, Brown & Root came and testified and said the work done by KBR was the most shoddy, unbelievably sloppy work.

Thirteen people have been electrocuted in Iraq as a result of these kinds of things. So I don't understand the recent order by the Defense Contract Management Agency, and announced by General Petraeus, that the Pentagon is going to have the same contractor that caused some of these problems--the contractor that has in a number of instances failed to fix faulty wiring--do a comprehensive review of these problems throughout U.S. military installations in Iraq. It makes precious little sense to me that would be the case.

This is Larraine McGee. Her son was killed as well. Larraine McGee's son was killed while power washing a humvee. He was killed not by an enemy combatant but power washing a humvee vehicle. Again, improper wiring and grounding meant this soldier was electrocuted.

How do these things go unfixed? What kind of work is done by contractors, and who cares about all this? We had testimony from Debbie Crawford, who was an electrician who worked for the contractor in Iraq. She described work by people who were not qualified. She described KBR supervisors who said: Well, this is not the United States. There is no OSHA here.

Mr. Jeffrey Bliss, an electrician for KBR, said there was pervasive carelessness and disregard for quality electrical work at Kellogg, Brown & Root.

Again, I say to you that we are told, with the news of all of these problems, with 13 people, 11 of them soldiers, being electrocuted in Iraq because of shoddy wiring by contractors, the Pentagon has asked the same contractor to go out and review the work. It is nearly unbelievable to me.

Mr. President, there are so many problems in Iraq contracting that I am going to try to come tomorrow and talk about the 17 hearings I have held and how much money the American taxpayers have been charged for such shoddy work. It is not just fleecing the American taxpayers, it is also injuring American soldiers when we have contractors not doing the job for which they were contracted to do.

Again, this is a photograph of Larraine McGee, who is Sergeant Everett's mother, and Sergeant Everett, as I indicated, was electrocuted as a result of improper grounding. Ms. McGee learned from a newspaper that 10 other soldiers were electrocuted in Iraq due to faulty electrical grounding and faulty wiring. So she came to Congress pleading for help, pleading that somebody do something. She said:

Anger has now taken over my grief. I plead with you to do

something to bring an end to this unnecessary cause of death

to our soldiers. They should not have to worry about stepping

into a shower or using a power washer in the safety of an

established base.

As I indicated, the Pentagon ordered there be a comprehensive inspection of electrical installations at the Army bases in Iraq, but it hired the same company to do the inspections, the same company who had hired two electricians who came to this Congress to say the electrical work was unbelievably shoddy and done, in some cases, by people who didn't have the foggiest idea what they were doing.

I sent a letter to General Petraeus last Friday, signed by Senators Casey, Cantwell, Klobuchar, and Whitehouse, urging him to replace KBR in these inspections. The inspections should be done by objective, qualified electricians. KBR has shown itself to be incapable of fixing electrical hazards that had been known for years. It is an insult to the memory of these soldiers that KBR has now been assigned to conduct the inspections.

There is more to this story. I will, tomorrow, visit about a wider range of these issues.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, I have overseen five hearings this Congress that confirm a longstanding and life threatening public safety crisis on many of our Nation's American Indian reservations.

One of the primary causes for violent crime is the disjointed system of justice in Indian country that is broken at its core. The current system limits the authority of Tribes to fight crime, and requires tribal communities to rely completely on the United States to investigate and prosecute violent crimes occurring on reservations.

This is a system that the United States created. With this responsibility, comes a legal obligation to provide for the public safety on Indian lands. Unfortunately, we are not meeting our obligation.

Between 2004 and 2007, the United States has declined to pursue an average of 62 percent of reservation criminal cases referred for prosecution. This means that 75 percent of adult and child sex crimes and 50 percent of homicides on Indian lands went unpunished in those four years.

This is an inherent flaw in the system. The system vests the prosecution of reservation crimes in the federal courts which are often located hundreds of miles away from the crime scene, the evidence, and the witnesses needed to prosecute these difficult cases.

The results of this system include an epidemic of domestic and sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women. The Department of Justice reports that 34 percent of Native women will be raped in their lifetimes. This past February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 39 percent of Native women will be subject to domestic violence. These rates are more than twice the national average.

This broken system of justice has also drawn the unwanted attention of criminals to Indian lands. In recent years, reservations have been targeted as safe havens for criminal activity. One Federal prosecutor said that Indian lands are being used as pipelines by drug organizations to funnel their poison to tribal and nearby communities. These drugs eventually reach larger metropolitan areas.

To address this crisis, I am pleased to announce the introduction of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2008 with the support of my colleagues Committee Vice Chairwoman Murkowski, and Senators Biden, Domenici, Baucus, Bingaman, Lieberman, Kyl, Johnson, Smith, Cantwell, Thune, and Tester.

This bill seeks to take initial steps at mending this broken system by arming tribal justice officials with tools to protect their communities.

The bill would expand on a program to enable tribal police to enforce violations of Federal laws on Indian lands.

The bill would also provide police greater access to vital criminal history information.

Further, the bill would enable tribal courts to sentence offenders up to 3 years in prison for violations of tribal law, an increase from the current limit of 1 year.

Title I of the bill would provide for greater consultation and coordination between federal law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, and community members. Increased communication and coordination at all levels of government responsible for crime on Indian lands is vital to combating this public safety emergency.

To increase coordination of prosecutions, the bill would require U.S. Attorneys to file declination reports and maintain data when refusing to pursue a case. Maintaining consistent data on declinations will enable Congress to direct funding where the additional resources are needed.

This bill was developed over the past 18 months in consultation with tribal leaders, tribal, federal and state law enforcement officials, and many others.

I want to again thank my colleagues for their support of this legislation, and urge the Senate to act to meet our public safety obligations to all tribal communities.

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

Mr. President, as Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, I have overseen five hearings this Congress that confirm a longstanding and life threatening public safety crisis on many of our Nation's American Indian reservations.

One of the primary causes for violent crime is the disjointed system of justice in Indian country that is broken at its core. The current system limits the authority of Tribes to fight crime, and requires tribal communities to rely completely on the United States to investigate and prosecute violent crimes occurring on reservations.

This is a system that the United States created. With this responsibility, comes a legal obligation to provide for the public safety on Indian lands. Unfortunately, we are not meeting our obligation.

Between 2004 and 2007, the United States has declined to pursue an average of 62 percent of reservation criminal cases referred for prosecution. This means that 75 percent of adult and child sex crimes and 50 percent of homicides on Indian lands went unpunished in those four years.

This is an inherent flaw in the system. The system vests the prosecution of reservation crimes in the federal courts which are often located hundreds of miles away from the crime scene, the evidence, and the witnesses needed to prosecute these difficult cases.

The results of this system include an epidemic of domestic and sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women. The Department of Justice reports that 34 percent of Native women will be raped in their lifetimes. This past February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 39 percent of Native women will be subject to domestic violence. These rates are more than twice the national average.

This broken system of justice has also drawn the unwanted attention of criminals to Indian lands. In recent years, reservations have been targeted as safe havens for criminal activity. One Federal prosecutor said that Indian lands are being used as pipelines by drug organizations to funnel their poison to tribal and nearby communities. These drugs eventually reach larger metropolitan areas.

To address this crisis, I am pleased to announce the introduction of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2008 with the support of my colleagues Committee Vice Chairwoman Murkowski, and Senators Biden, Domenici, Baucus, Bingaman, Lieberman, Kyl, Johnson, Smith, Cantwell, Thune, and Tester.

This bill seeks to take initial steps at mending this broken system by arming tribal justice officials with tools to protect their communities.

The bill would expand on a program to enable tribal police to enforce violations of Federal laws on Indian lands.

The bill would also provide police greater access to vital criminal history information.

Further, the bill would enable tribal courts to sentence offenders up to 3 years in prison for violations of tribal law, an increase from the current limit of 1 year.

Title I of the bill would provide for greater consultation and coordination between federal law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, and community members. Increased communication and coordination at all levels of government responsible for crime on Indian lands is vital to combating this public safety emergency.

To increase coordination of prosecutions, the bill would require U.S. Attorneys to file declination reports and maintain data when refusing to pursue a case. Maintaining consistent data on declinations will enable Congress to direct funding where the additional resources are needed.

This bill was developed over the past 18 months in consultation with tribal leaders, tribal, federal and state law enforcement officials, and many others.

I want to again thank my colleagues for their support of this legislation, and urge the Senate to act to meet our public safety obligations to all tribal communities.

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

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, July 24, at 9:30 a.m., in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing on Tribal Courts and the Administration of Justice in Indian Country.

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