Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to talk just for a moment today about the cloture vote on climate change legislation earlier today, but first, while I am getting some charts together, I wanted to mention also that this is the 40th anniversary that was yesterday of the death of Robert Kennedy.

I was driving to the Capitol listening to a news report about that day 40 years ago when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, CA, and I was thinking about the fact that I was a very young man back then working on the Robert Kennedy Presidential campaign in my State when I heard that he had been assassinated. It was such an unbelievable blow to me and to all of the others who worked on the campaign and to so many other Americans who believed his campaign for the Presidency held such great promise.

Most young people in this country today know nothing about a 1968 Presidential campaign by Robert F. Kennedy. It was an extraordinary time, and he was an extraordinary man. I wish to read just a couple of comments by the late Robert F. Kennedy, who was, by the way, a Senator and served in this body, as well as served as Attorney General of this country.

He gave a speech once that I have often quoted. It was a speech he gave in South Africa. Many will know these words. In his speech he said this:

Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us

can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the

total of all these acts will be written the history of a

generation . . . it is from numberless diverse acts of

courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each

time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot

of others, or strikes out against injustice, they send forth

a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million

different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a

current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of

oppression and resistance.

He gave that speech June 6, 1966, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. People often talk about those ripples of hope that can sweep down the mightiest walls of resistance and oppression, and that passion and that dream and belief still exist today.

I reread this morning the speech Robert Kennedy gave during his Presidential campaign in Indianapolis, IN, on the evening of April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated. The crowd that had gathered for Robert Kennedy's appearance did not know that Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated and Robert Kennedy came to that area of Indianapolis. He was asked not to go because of concerns about his safety. He went anyway and he gave one of the most wonderful speeches. It was without a note, just an extemporaneous speech that had so much passion. I shall not read it today, but I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. President, the vote this morning was a vote dealing with climate change. This vote, however, was not a yes or no on climate change legislation; the vote was on a cloture motion to invoke cloture. I voted against invoking cloture. I wish to make sure those who have worked so hard on the legislation we were considering do not feel that vote diminishes the work they have done.

I believe there is something happening to the climate of this planet. I believe there is something dealing with global warming that threatens our future. I believe we have a responsibility to address it. I commend those who worked on the legislation and brought it to the floor of the Senate. It was a good start. It was not perfect and needed amendments in my judgment. A tangled web was created on the floor of the Senate through no fault of the majority leader who brought this to the floor. He indicated at the first moment that he wished this to be an open process with open debate and open opportunity for amendments. The tangled web that then ensued was a web that led us to a cloture motion and the filing of a cloture motion. Voting for cloture meant that we would be prevented from offering an amendment post cloture. I did not believe I wanted to put myself in that position because I have two amendments that have been filed. I had two amendments which I wished to offer and get them pending. Because of procedural hurdles, I was prevented from doing so because I was prevented from calling up amendments, even though they were filed. I wasn't very interested in supporting a cloture motion which would then prevent me from having the amendments considered by the Senate as we move forward to finish the piece of legislation. So that represents my view of why I would not support cloture.

I filed an amendment dealing with additional funding for coal and carbon capture and storage programs. I think we need to do a couple of things if we are going to have a global climate change bill work. First of all, at the front end, for the first 5, 10, 12 and 14 years, we have to have a kind of Manhattan Project in which we decide for renewable, efficiency and clean coal energy resources that we are going to break out of the box and move forward very, very, very aggressively.

If we are going to deal with this issue, we have to move solar and be serious about developing substantial capabilities in solar energy. That requires a massive amount of research and development. We have to be serious about wind energy and geothermal and biomass as well. We have to be serious about a whole range of renewable energy resources.

We have not been serious in this country. In 1916 we said to oil and gas companies: If you want to go find oil and gas, good for you, God bless you. We want to provide big tax breaks for you for doing it. These permanent tax breaks have lasted forever regarding oil and gas.

What did we do with those who were pursuing renewable energy? In 1992 we said: We will give you some tax incentives. By the way, they will be temporary and kind of shallow, and we will extend them five times for a very short term, and we will let them expire three times. That is a pathetic, anemic response for a country that ought to, in my judgment, gallop full speed ahead toward the use of renewable energy. But you have to have conservation and renewable energy research and development commitments to achieve that goal.

In addition to that, we are going to have to continue to use coal in our future. Forty-eight percent of our electricity comes from coal. We are not in a position where we can simply say we are not going to use coal. At the front end of this bill, we need to create a substantial amount of resources to engage in the research and development, demonstration and commercial deployment of projects that allow us to use coal to produce electricity without injuring our environment. That means capturing carbon and sequestering carbon. That is central to the future use of coal and other fossil fuels.

Now, it is not as if it can't be done. We are doing it in some areas, but we need so much more work on the research and development end.

This is a plant in North Dakota. It is the only one like it in North America. We produce synthetic natural gas from lignite coal. We take pieces of coal, and we produce synthetic gas from it. It works very well. In fact, it is one of the world's largest demonstrations for capturing and storing carbon. We capture 50 percent of the carbon from this plant; put it in a pipeline; move it to Saskatchewan, Canada; and invest it underground into Canadian oil wells to pump up and produce more oil.

Most oil that is drilled from underground pools only provides about 30 percent of its potential. The rest remains in the ground. If you can use CO2 from fossil fuels at electric power plants and other facilities, that CO2 would not be released into the atmosphere to impact the climate. At the same time, you can use that CO2 instead for beneficial purposes and invest into an oil well. Thus, you not only put the CO2 underground and sequester it, you also enhance domestic oil development and production.

There are a lot of things going on. But the underlying bill didn't have nearly enough funding at the front end, in my judgment, for the research and development component. My filed amendment would shift $20 billion in funding in the bill to say we are going to get serious. This is going to be a Manhattan-type project to find ways to continue to use our most abundant resource and do so without spoiling our environment.

There is research going on but not nearly enough. I can give you a couple of examples.

A Texas company came to see me. They are taking coal for electricity. They have a couple of small demonstration projects which burn coal to produce electricity. They are treating the effluent that comes from the plant chemically, and as it comes out of the plant, they are capturing the CO2 and producing byproducts, including hydrogen, chloride, and baking soda. The baking soda contains CO2. In fact, this company brought me some cookies and said these come from coal. They are making the point that, by capturing the CO2 from a coal plant, you can end up with baking soda used for baking cookies. It is a clever way to describe that there are innovative ways to capture CO2 and protect our environment, even as we use our most abundant domestic resource.

This photo is of single-cell pond scum, called algae. I was in Arizona recently and saw a demonstration plant that is producing algae by taking CO2 off of a plant and putting it in greenhouses that produce algae. Algae is produced in water which need sunlight and CO2 to grow. So it consumes CO2 by producing algae, single celled pond

scum. It grows quickly, increasing its bulk in hours. They can harvest it for diesel fuel. So you actually capture the CO2 and produce a beneficial use which is a biodiesel fuel. There are ways for us to do this.

My point is that if we are going to have a bill that works, you need to have dramatic funding commitment for research, development and demonstration up front. That was not the case with the pending bill. I know some will argue that it is. This is known as the kick-start fund for coal and is largely for demonstration and deployment. That is different from the massive need for additional research we need. We need a Manhattan Project to make these investments. That is a different kind of funding than the research and technology we need if we are going to decide that we are going to unlock the mystery and use our most abundant resource in the future. We continue to need investments in research and development as well as demonstration and deployment programs for coal to thrive in a carbon constrained world.

I am also a fan of wind energy, energy from the wind, for producing electricity. It makes sense. That doesn't contribute environmental problems like emitting greenhouse gases. Also, there is geothermal and biomass, the production of ethanol, and hopefully cellulosic ethanol in the future.

I was visited by Dr. Craig Venter the other day who is working to create microbes and bacteria that would essentially eat the coal or convert it into liquid fuels as it is being processed by these microbes while underground. That is pretty exciting. I also mentioned the other day that we are studying termites in the science area of our Government. These are the kinds of things people might ridicule. They say why are we spending all this money to study termites. Termites eat your house. When they eat wood, we understand now they produce methane gas, as a lot of living things do. We are trying to figure out what in the 200 microbes in the gut of a termite might allow them to eat your house. If we can figure out how to break down woody products, it is important in terms of producing future energy from cellulosic ethanol.

There is a lot to do. If we are going to be serious about climate change and global warming--and we should be, in my judgment--two things are necessary: One, we need to have kind of a Manhattan Project that in a very short period of time is going to find ways to dramatically increase the use of renewables. Second, we are going to dramatically accelerate our effort to determine how we can use coal and other fossil fuels and still protect our environment by capturing and sequestering carbon or providing a beneficial use of carbon. That is expensive, but we can get that done. That was the amendment I had, which would shift $20 billion to the front end of this to say: Let's do this in a serious manner.

I wanted to indicate that my vote on cloture earlier today should not diminish the work and effort and intent of others with respect to climate change. I think something is happening in our climate. Most of us believe we will be seeing climate change legislation passing through the Congress at some point in the near future--perhaps as early as next year. When it is done, it needs to be done in a manner that is reflective of all of strengths and resources of our country to move ahead in unison in doing the right thing in the right way.

Mr. President, I spent part of this morning visiting with some experts about the issue of energy speculation and the price of gasoline. I am very concerned about the price of gasoline. I come from a State that not only produces a lot of energy but uses a lot of petroleum products. We are a farm State and a big State with a sparse population. North Dakota is spread over the equivalent of 10 Massachusettses in landmass. We use a lot of energy per capita. When the price does what it has been doing recently, it is very harmful to a rural State that does a lot of family farming and requires people to travel a lot because of its sheer size.

Here is what happened to oil prices in the last year: They have doubled. There is no justification for that--none. There is no justification for this at all. Get this, crude oil futures hit a record $139 per barrel today.

I used to teach a little economics in college--not in a serious way. I taught the supply and demand intersection and what happens to price. I understand all that. If we take a look at supply and demand, there is nothing that justifies what is happening in the futures market with respect to oil prices.

Now back up 14 months, in fact, to the time prior to the price of oil doubling and ask yourself what happened in this world. Were we oblivious then to the fact that India and China were going to want more fuel in their economies? I understand there are probably 150 million Chinese who want to drive cars. Where are they going to get the fuel? A lot of folks in India want to drive cars too. I understand all of that. These signals were already in the market 16 and 18 months ago. That is not different.

Here is also what I understand. Since the first part of this year, our inventories of petroleum stocks have been going up in this country and use has been going down. People are driving slightly less and using less. So what is happening to price? It has doubled.

I will tell you what I think is happening. On the oil commodity markets, we have a dramatic orgy of speculation and carnival of greed. Are all of the speculators who are neck deep in these markets there because they want oil or want to hold oil? Have they tried to lift a 42-gallon drum? I don't think so. They want to make money speculating. As a result all of this excess speculation, they are driving up the price of a commodity. That damages this country and injures most Americans.

This is what has happened to speculation. This Congress and this President have a responsibility to stop it. When excess speculation damages an economy, damages the country and its people, we have a responsibility to stop excess speculation.

This is a picture of NYMEX, where they trade commodities. Most people have seen pictures of the floor of a trading session like this. In fact, I think it was 80 years ago when Will Rogers talked about these guys buying things they will never get from people who never had it. At NYMEX, they trade futures contracts.

Let me describe what one fellow testified before the Energy Committee. By the way, he has had 30 or 35 years as an executive analyst in these markets. Fadel Gheit said this:

There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I am absolutely

convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a

barrel. I called it the world's largest gambling hall. It's

open 24/7. Unfortunately, it is totally unregulated. This is

like a highway with no cops and no speed limits, and

everybody is going 120 miles an hour.

Mr. President, the New Jersey Star Ledger wrote:

Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say

financial speculation in the energy markets has grown so much

over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent to

the cost of a barrel of oil.

The president of Marathon Oil, Clarence Cazalot, Jr., said:

$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the

market.

Here is an oil executive saying this price isn't justified.

Stephen Simon, a senior vice president at Exxon, said on April 1, 2008:

The price of oil should be about $50 to $55 per barrel.

Mr. President, how did we get here? On December 15, 2000, in this Chamber, one of our colleagues, Senator Gramm from Texas, stuck a little provision into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which was included in a very big piece of legislation that was being enacted. I believe it was the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2000, a large supplemental bill being done. That little provision changed everything. Prior to that time, prior to Senator Gramm from Texas putting this provision into law, every futures contract in this country was subject to regulation and oversight. Senator Gramm stuck a provision in a very big piece of legislation that said essentially certain commodity provisions need not be subject to regulation and oversight. Then it started. That was called the Enron loophole.

I know something about that because I chaired the hearings at which the late Ken Lay, the CEO and president of Enron Corporation, testified. He raised his hand, took an oath, sat down, and

then took the fifth amendment. He ran one of the biggest energy companies in this country. We found out that at least part of it was a criminal enterprise. It benefitted greatly by the actions of the Congress, and only a few in the Congress knew what they were trying to do. That created this loophole by which Enron and others down the road could create an energy market that was unregulated, outside of the view of regulators and of the grasp of regulators.

So now, going forward from December 15, 2000, to today, what is happening is that we have seen, outside of the purview of regulators, a dramatic amount, an obscene amount of speculation in energy markets.

I have met with experts who have said that there is no speculation here. Yesterday, I met with a person yesterday, someone who is an expert in this area and runs a major corporation, who said there is no speculation here. That is just wrong. That is false on its face. All one has to do is look at what is happening in these markets. Can anybody, anyplace, anytime, anywhere tell us that something has happened in the last 14 months in terms of the market fundamentals that justifies doubling the price of oil or gasoline? There is nothing that justifies that.

This Congress cannot sit around any longer. I know the President and the Vice President opposed responding to the electricity crisis out West when they first came to office. I recall when some of us in Congress were trying to take some action against what was happening to hijack wholesale electric prices on the West Coast by the Enron Corporation that they stood by idly. I and others pushed and pushed. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said there is nothing going on there. Dick Cheney made fun of us, saying these markets are working, we just don't like markets. The President didn't want to do anything. We finally found out what was something illegal happening. Every day was criminal. They were manipulating supply in a criminal way, and there are people sitting in prison for it. Ken Lay died beforehand, but he was on his way to prison because it was a criminal enterprise he was conducting. And the Vice President was belittling those of us in Congress who were trying to do something about it. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was dead asleep, very content to do nothing.

That cannot continue to be replicated now. We have to do something to soak the speculation out of these futures markets. There needs to be a futures market for energy, I support that. There are legitimate hedging requirements, I understand that. There needs to be liquidity, I understand that. But when you have excessive speculation that damages this country and runs up the price of oil to double the price when, in fact, the market fundamentals do not justify it. Hedge funds, investment banks, and many others rush into these markets in order to make profits through speculation and the public be damned. It doesn't matter what it does to the country, then something is wrong, and it is the responsibility of the Congress to act. It is our responsibility and requirement. We cannot sit around and ignore this any longer.

I had a call from the owner of a trucking company in North Dakota the other day. They have been running a trucking firm for years. His dad ran it, and his family has been running it for four or five decades. He said: I don't think we can continue. We can't afford the price of diesel fuel.

I understand we have had 12 airlines that have gone into bankruptcy. I know of five in the last 6 or 8 weeks. The fact is, this country cannot exist without a vibrant aviation industry. We have to have airline companies that are able to move Americans back and forth across the country. The price of jet fuel is even worse than the description I just offered with respect to gasoline and oil.

We need to work on this issue in a very aggressive and urgent way, and we need to do something that shuts down this speculation. I indicated yesterday that I am working on legislation to try to do that and to try to make certain we have a completely regulated system with respect to the trading of these contracts.

First of all, they ought to be regulated. Some say that, if we try to regulate them here, they will move offshore. We ought to be able to regulate it. If you are in this country, you want to play games in the commodities markets as a speculator, if you are picking up a telephone and trade commodities in this country, as far as I am concerned, you ought to be regulated with respect to your order of commodities contract.

A lot of work is being done. As I said, I spent part of this morning with experts who understand the complexities and the vagaries of these commodity markets and especially the oil markets and the speculation that is occurring. I side with those who believe there is excessive speculation and that there is a requirement that we do something about it.

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

Mr. President, my understanding is that I am recognized for 20 minutes. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, we will be once again taking up the pending bill dealing with global warming. It is a substantial piece of legislation. I am planning to speak later in the day as well, but I wish to take some time during morning business to talk about the overall bill as well as an amendment I may file later today on this legislation.

In terms of the issue of global warming, first let me say that there is little question left that something significant is happening to our planet. There is something happening to our climate that sometimes we don't quite understand. But among almost all scientists, there is nearly universal consensus that in the last 100 years, the temperature of the Earth has slightly warmed by 1.1 to 1.6 degrees. Through 2050, we expect further temperature increases unless we begin to address the continued concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

We are seeing evidence of these impacts. While no specific event is directly linked, we see droughts occurring more often, and this is certainly happening in my State of North Dakota. Heat waves are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more damaging. Further, the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has nearly doubled in the past 50 years. It is quite clear something is happening that we have

not seen before. I think the consensus of scientists now is at a point regarding this climate change that is beyond natural change, and we certainly ought to take some no-regret steps. At least at the very minimum, we should be taking more substantial steps to try to respond to it and deal with it.

Now, one of the interesting things about this bill that is on the floor of the Senate is that it requires a commitment to emission reductions, technology investments and other actions through 2050. It is sometimes hard to see ahead 5 years or 10 years, let alone 30 or 40 or 50 years. We have economists who can't remember their own phone numbers who make predictions 10 and 15 years into the future. At the same time, we still have to be seriously thinking about our future pathway for action. What is our destination? What do we aspire to achieve for this country? What do we want to have happen as we move ahead?

Let me say that almost everyone believes that our present energy course is unsustainable. Energy use primarily from fossil fuel combustion in the U.S. and around the world is a significant contributor to climate change, according to most energy and climate change experts. We cannot maintain the current path.

So what do we have to do? Well, the legislation in front of us is significant. It says that we ought to do a lot of things. Yes, some of the proposals here are controversial. Some will likely be changed during this debate or future deliberations, but the reality is that a debate on mandatory emissions cuts must occur.

I will offer an amendment I will describe a little later, but chief among the things we need to do are the more rapid development of new sources of energy, especially with advanced technology. There are renewable sources of energy that do not emit greenhouse gases or other pollutants. They produce no effluents or no carbon dioxide. This includes wind, geothermal, and solar energy, and we ought to be moving much more aggressively on these and other opportunities. This has not been what the U.S. has done historically though. We have initially been early leaders in cutting edge energy technologies and then fallen behind.

Let me give an example of how pathetic this country's response has been in recent years and how much more aggressive it must be in future years. When the U.S. started exploring for oil and natural gas at the start of the last century, this Congress adopted, in 1916, long-term, permanent, very substantial tax incentives to encourage that development.

It gave a clear signal that, if you go out and discover oil and gas, then we have big tax incentives for you. Industry understood that it was beneficial to find oil and gas through these long-term, permanent tax incentives.

What do we do for wind energy, solar and other renewable energy technologies? The Congress put in place a production tax credit in 1992. These ended up being very short term and rather shallow. It has been extended for the short term, in many cases by 1 year, five times since we first passed it. It is a stutter step approach--start, stop; start, stop. It has been a pathetic, anemic, and weak response by a country that should be much more aggressive and bold in providing a direction to develop our renewable energy resources.

There are substantial renewable energy resources available in this country, and we need to get about the business of providing the funding for research and the aggressive incentives for a long-term determination of where we are going to head with renewables.

In 2007, I introduced legislation to encourage a broad range of renewable and clean energy approaches as well as additional infrastructure. That legislation signaled that our country should be on a course to say to the investors in the U.S. and around the world, where we are headed for a decade. Count on it. Believe in it. The production tax credit which will expire at the end of this year should be extended not for 1 year, it ought to be extended for a full decade to let America know where we are headed. We want more renewable energy that is not polluting.

Now, having said all of that, there are so many things we can do. We need much more extensive deployment of conservation and efficiency, including more efficient vehicles and buildings. We are going to increase fuel economy standards with a 10-mile-per-gallon increase in 10 years that we required with the Energy Independence and Security Act passed by Congress in December 2007. I was proud to be a part of that effort to increase fuel economy standards. We are doing a lot of things that make it easier to move forward with efficiency and conservation measures. Further, I wish to talk for a moment about an amendment that I am going to offer with respect to the advancement of clean coal technologies.

Now, I understand some say that, in order to deal with climate change, you are going to have to find a way to wean yourself off of fossil fuels. I understand they say that, but I also understand that is not going to happen in the very near term. Let me tell my colleagues what is happening with respect to energy use in this country. Almost 50 percent of our electricity comes from coal. Without questioning it, we get up in the morning, flick on a switch, turn a knob, and turn a dial. We do all of these things with our hands, and energy flows. One-half of those activities are made possible because of the electricity that comes from coal. Does anybody really think we are not going to use coal in the future? The problem is, when we use coal, we have CO2 that is emitted into the air. This CO2 and other greenhouse gases contribute significantly to cause global climate change. So we need to find a way to capture that CO2 and to store or sequester CO2 in geological formations or other means.

How do we use coal in the future? We use coal in the future by being able to capture this emitted CO2. So how do we do that? The question isn't whether we are going to use coal. The question is how are we going to use coal in the future.

There are some who say: Well, it is not possible to capture CO2. It is possible. Of course it is possible. At this point the technology isn't fully proven, and it is expensive. Yet, we can see several technology options ahead.

Let me describe to my colleagues a plant in North Dakota, the only one of its kind in North America. It produces synthetic gasoline from lignite coal. Let me tell my colleagues what we do with the CO2 in that plant. We capture the CO2 and use it for enhanced oil recovery. It is one of the world's largest examples of CO2 capture at an industrial facility. Half of the CO2 produced at this facility is now captured. This CO2 is put in a pipeline under pressure and sent to Saskatchewan, Canada. Oil industry interests there pump it underground to enhance oil recovery. We are successfully using CO2 by capturing it, keeping it out of the atmosphere, investing it underground in Canada, and enhancing their oil recovery. That makes a lot of sense, and we need more of these types of projects. Is it possible? It is very possible. That one of the world's largest applications is being demonstrated in Beulah, North Dakota.

Now, what else can we do dealing with carbon and the capturing of CO2? If you are going to unlock the mystery of how you continue to use fossil fuels that we must use without impacting our environment and our planet, we need to have kind of a moonshot approach. We can't just tiptoe around the issue. We have to decide we are going to significantly commit funding--billions of dollars--to the research and demonstrations in science and technology.

Let me give you some examples. I was in Phoenix, Arizona recently, and I toured an electric utility called the Arizona Public Service. The organization in Arizona is producing CO2 at a coal-fired electric generating plant. What they are doing with it is very interesting. They are taking a stream of CO2 off their stack in a coal-fired electric generating plant and putting it in very long greenhouses, and they are producing algae. This pictures shows one example of greenhouses where they are doing it in tubes.

Most of us know what algae is. Algae is single-cell pond scum. Every kid knows what that is. You have been to a little pond where stagnant water has hung around for a while and you see green slime or single- cell pond scum called algae. Algae grows in water. What does it need to grow? It needs two things--sunlight and CO2.

When I became chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee on the Senate side, I discovered that the research that used to go on with respect to algae was discontinued nearly 15 years ago. Last year, for the first time, I reestablished funding to continue algae research.

Let me tell you what they are doing in Arizona. In Arizona, they are trying to demonstrate growing algae in these greenhouses which are next to a coal-fired electric generating plant. They take the CO2 from the plant and use it to grow this pond scum. In these very long greenhouses where they are producing algae from the plant's CO2, they harvest the algae and produce diesel fuel. So what they are doing is taking something that we want to get rid of to grow single-cell pond scum called algae, which increases its bulk in hours.

By the way, an equivalent acre of corn produces, in terms of ethanol fuel, about 300 or 400 gallons. An equivalent acre of soybeans I believe is around 80 to 100 gallons.

An equivalent acre of algae harvested for diesel fuel produces 3,000 to 4,000 gallons. Think of this. We use much coal to produce electricity and that increased manmade CO2 is destructive to the atmosphere. Yet capturing the CO2 and producing fuel is very beneficial.

An Austin, TX, company came to see me. They have two demonstration projects in Texas. They are taking flue gas off a coal plant, and they are producing several byproducts hydrogen, chloride, and baking soda. Isn't that interesting? These small demonstration projects take the flue gas from a coal electric generating plant, chemically treat it, and then produce these byproducts.

Take a look at this chart. Here is the baking soda, and it contains the CO2. Instead of emitting it into the atmosphere, it is embedded in the CO2. It can be put in a landfill, but you can also make cookies. I happen to like the idea of eating cookies from this process. They said: Do you want to have some cookies produced from coal? It tasted pretty good because it was produced with, among other things, the baking soda which was a byproduct from coal.

Here is another example of what we can do. I have in my hand some sandstone. You can find this in many geologic formations, including 10,000 to 15,000 feet underground in North Dakota. There also might be a very viable way to capture and store the CO2 underground. The carbon dioxide under pressure is pumped underground, attaches itself to sandstone and is therefore sequestered. We have examples, as I said previously, of CO2 being used in marginal oil wells.

We suck out oil all across the planet every single day. We stick straws into the Earth, and we suck out 85 million barrels a day. We use one-fourth of that oil produced every day in the United States. We have a prodigious appetite for this energy. When you stick a drilling rig into the ground and find oil, in many cases, you are only getting about 30 percent of the oil pool pumped up. At that point, it is difficult to produce any more without some extra help or advanced technology. If you pump CO2 down into that ground under pressure, you enhance oil recovery. You have a way to get rid of the CO2 by putting pressure on the oil to bring it up. You have gotten rid of the CO2, protected the environment, are still able to use coal and have enhanced the recovery of oil from domestic sources.

Why do I tell you all this? I think we need to produce substantial wind and other forms of renewable energy. We also have all kinds of needs for efficiency and conservation opportunities. But, if we don't find a way to unlock the opportunities to continue to use our fossil fuels, especially coal, we will not solve the problem that is brought to us with this piece of legislation on the Senate floor. How do we solve the problem of being able to use coal in a carbon constrained future? Perhaps by producing baking soda or algae, we can end up producing more cookies or biodiesel. Perhaps it's a dozen other innovative approaches.

How do you do that? By investing in research and technological capability. This will require substantially more funding. I was visited by Craig Venter, who is one of the two fathers of the Human Genome Project and an unbelievable American. He has now turned his attention to energy. They are working on sophisticated things that I have a difficult time fully describing in simple terms. They are working on creating new kinds of organisms and bacteria that could eat coal in underground seams and produce liquid fuels. The Department of Energy's Office of Science is also studying the gut system of termites with our scientists because we know there are 200 microbes in the intestinal tract of a termite. When they eat your house, and they love to eat wood, it produces methane. Most living things do. But termites are able to break down cellulose. If we are going to have a revolution in the use of biofuels, we need to understand what these termites accomplish naturally. We are trying to figure out what is it in the gut system of termites that allows this insect to eat wood and break down cellulosic materials. If we can figure that out, we unlock another part of the mystery of how to produce more non-oil based fuels.

So here is the proposal I will offer today. It is an amendment that would shift a substantial amount of money and dramatically increase the amount of money available for research and technology for advancing coal research. We would unlock the mysteries of going from research to demonstration to commercial application of carbon capture and storage or other beneficial uses. If they don't do that, the goals of this bill will fail. If we don't solve the problem without solving how to expand technology to use coal in a near zero emissions way, we can not meet the goals outlined in this bill.

We have to make substantial investments in technology, science, and research. I was part of six of us in the Senate who said, some years ago, pushed to double the amount of money we spend at the National Institutes of Health because it is not spending, it is an investment in the future. If we invest in cures for cancer, ALS, Parkinson's, diabetes, heart disease, and so many more diseases, it will be beneficial to generations around the world. We made the commitment and doubled the amount of funding at the NIH.

We need the same kind of commitment with respect to our energy future. We need to decide we are going to make a commitment. Just as NIH deals with the health of people. This bill and the technology we need to develop relates to the health of our economy, of our country, and of the expanded opportunities in this country. We need to make a similar commitment right now.

I propose an amendment that would take the underlying bill which has about $17 billion for advancing coal research in the first 12 to 14 years. This is a good start but is not enough. I propose to shift about $20 billion to that $17 billion and try to provide about $37 billion in total. That $37 billion in this cap and trade bill would be coupled with the $500 million that I have each year through appropriations for clean coal research. By the way, this President's funding recommendation on research in fossil fuels has largely been largely flat and very inadequate to our needs. He has mostly paid lip service to our tremendous needs. There is no evidence the White House is very interested in this. Through such an amendment I propose to create a fund of at least about $3.5 billion a year, starting in 2009, because these can start with the first auctions and the funding can be available on the first opportunity after passage of a piece of legislation. If this could be accomplished, we would have about $3.5 billion a year for 12 to 14 years.

I am convinced we can do this. I am convinced that investments in these technology opportunities allow us to address the climate change challenge and still continue to use the most abundant source of energy in this country without injuring our environment. There are people out there who are some of the best and the brightest scientists and engineers in our country. We need these people working on this issue. There are many technological leaps that need to be made. The best minds should be working on ways to take CO2, produce baking soda, and make cookies. They should be working on ways to have beneficial use of carbon, which is destructive to our environment, but can be constructive if you invest it in algae and harvest the algae for diesel fuel.

Frankly, the amount of money that has been committed to research and

technology and development has been pathetic, just pathetic. It is not just this, it is also solar, wind, and other technologies. But Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, has written a wonderful essay in Time Magazine this week. I commend him for saying we need a moonshot here. My amendment is going to give us that opportunity--$37 billion invested in the opportunity to unlock the mysteries of how we use our most abundant resource and still protect our environment.

We can do this, but we cannot move forward and will not move forward in a way that says to our country we need to make investments. I believe we can produce a number of zero-emission, coal-fired electric generating facilities. It will not happen by accident. I chair the Committee on Appropriations that funds all our national laboratories. The thousands and thousands of the best scientists in this country are a national treasure. We are now seeing many of them being furloughed and leaving our Federal payroll. We have so much to do, in such a short time, to unlock the opportunities to address this issue I have described. I hope we can move forward very aggressively.

Finally, in closing, I will speak at greater length on the floor today on this subject, and I may file an amendment today. But this, it seems to me, is the first key to unlock the opportunities that will give us a future in which we can protect our environment and continue to use the resources we must use. This must be part of the step if the promise of not only this bill but future bills dealing with the great challenge of global warming are to be fulfilled.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time remains in morning business?

Mr. President, I heard my colleague on the other side of the aisle, from Louisiana, on the floor of the Senate, with the usual sharp partisan scalpel, talking about what the price of gasoline was when this Congress was seated, the new Congress--presumably with a Democratic majority was his point--and what the price of gasoline is now, suggesting somehow that the Congress has conspired in increasing the price of gasoline. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. But I want to explain my concern about what is happening with the price of gasoline and the price of energy in this country. I also want to make the point while I do this that those, including perhaps my colleague who was speaking earlier this morning, who have always felt that regulation was a four-letter word, ought to understand that part of what we are experiencing today is regulatory agencies in the Federal Government taking a Rip van Winkle nap while they ought to be regulating, while they ought to be watching on behalf of the public interest what is going on.

We have people who came to Government who did not like Government, who aspired not to do anything. A good example of that is the folks who were put in place prior to Enron, running roughshod on wholesale electricity prices--which we later found out was a criminal enterprise. People on the west coast were bilked out of billions and billions of dollars. Why? Because regulators were not watching and didn't care, because they were regulators who were selected by the very companies they were regulating. In fact, I am told that Ken Lay actually was conducting some interviews on behalf of the administration.

Ken Lay is dead. He is gone. He came before my committee. I chaired the hearings on the Enron scandal over in the Commerce Committee. He came before the committee. We subpoenaed him. He raised his hand, took an oath, sat down and took the fifth amendment. He has now died but many of his colleagues in Enron are spending years at minimum security prisons somewhere around the country.

Effective regulatory oversight is very important. It is unbelievably important. Let me explain why that is the case with respect to the price of gasoline and the price of oil.

Here is what has happened to the price of gasoline. These are oil prices, but gasoline prices track them. This is the price of a first month contract on the NYMEX. You can see what is happening--up, up, and up.

Is there a reason that oil prices should go up like that? Let's explore that a bit. Stephen Simon, senior vice president of ExxonMobil, testified a month and a half ago before the House of Representatives. Here is what he said:

The price of oil should be about $50-55 per barrel.

A big oil executive saying the price of oil ought to be about $50 or $55 a barrel.

Here is Clarence Cazalot, the CEO of Marathon Oil. He says:

$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the

market.

An oil executive saying the current price at $100--it is much higher now--$100 is not justified.

During a question-and-answer period he suggested a more reasonable range for crude oil prices was between $55 and $60 a barrel.

This is from the Newark Star Ledger on January 8.

Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say

financial speculation in the energy markets has grown so much

over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent or

more to the price of a barrel of oil.

Again, an oil company executive.

Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer, with 30 to 35 years experience:

There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I'm convinced that

oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel.

I call it the world's largest gambling hall. . . .

He is talking about the futures market now, for oil.

I call it the world's largest gambling hall . . . It's open

24/7 . . . Unfortunately, it's totally unregulated . . . This

is like a highway with no cops and no speed limit and

everybody's going 120 miles an hour.

Fadel Gheit came and testified before our Energy subcommittee and said the same thing. There is no justification for the current price of oil.

Then what is happening? This is what a market looks like at NYMEX. It is hard to see much order there, but I have actually visited that market. It is a bunch of traders on the floor who wear colored jackets and logos and have pieces of paper. It doesn't look like anybody can keep track of what they are doing. They apparently are doing it well. At any rate, in this market, which is supposed to provide liquidity for the price of oil--that is you have a market where you have people who hedge and people who buy contracts and so on--there is now an orgy of speculation, an unbelievable amount of speculation.

Let me show what has happened with respect to speculation. This line shows the percentage of oil owned by speculators, January 1996 to April 2008. This is oil purchased by people who do not have any interest in having oil. These are speculators. They buy things they will never get from people who never had it, expecting to make money on both sides of the trade.

This market is now infested with speculators. We heard testimony yesterday that said the largest holder of home heating fuel in the Northeast, in the United States of America, is Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. Does anybody here think that Morgan Stanley decided as part of its corporate charter we aspire to gather a bunch of heating oil because we want to be in

the heating oil business? No. It is an investment bank that is in the speculative business.

Hedge funds and investment banks are deep into speculation in these futures markets, very deep. Investment banks for the first time, as I understand it, are actually buying storage capacity to take energy, that is heating fuel and oil, off of the market and put it in storage to keep it in the market. They believe it would be more valuable in the future than to convert it to dollars, which they think will depreciate. So they buy oil and store oil because they are speculating.

The question is, What do we do about that? If, in fact, the fundamentals aren't at work here--and, by the way, there is no free market. Everybody says: What about the free market? Let the free market work. There is no free market. That is absurd. You have a cartel, a bunch of folks who represent the OPEC countries. They all have ministers--Mr. Minister this, Mr. Minister that. They go lock a door someplace and this cartel decides how much they are going to produce and what price point they want. You have a cartel at the front end. Second, you have bigger oil companies. They have all merged. They all like each other so they all married and the fact is nobody cared much how big they got and now they have two names, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, the list goes on. So they are bigger, stronger, and they have more muscle in the marketplace. Cartel, bigger oil companies--and third and most important you have an unbelievable amount of speculation in a market that ought to work but doesn't work anymore at all.

Who is injured? The country is damaged. Our economy is damaged. Everybody who drives up to a service station and wants to use a gas pump to fill their car with gas is now actually siphoning money right out of their pocketbook right into the bank account of the major oil companies, right into the bank account of the OPEC countries. They have ``permagrin.'' They love this. They smile all the way to the bank because they are depositing our money. But it is injuring our country, damaging our economy, and hurting American consumers.

So if this is not just about fundamentals, and if the fundamentals don't justify the current price, what then can we do? We have done at least a couple of little things. I introduced a bill we have now passed and the President has now signed it--he didn't like to sign it, but he signed it--that said at least stop putting 70,000 barrels a day underground of sweet light crude. That is a law. They have not stopped doing it because they are filling out the current contract until the end of June, but 70,000 barrels of sweet light crude will go into the supply line when that goes into effect at the end of this month.

What can we do to end and wring out the speculation? Let me say, first, we need oil. I am not here to trash oil. We need oil. I understand that. We put in place in 1960 generous tax breaks that are permanent to say: If you are looking for oil or gas, we want to give you some tax incentives to do that. That is what this country did a long time ago.

I was on an oil rig about 2 weeks ago in the area of our country that has the largest oil play, I believe. It is called the Bakkan Shale in western North Dakota and eastern Montana. It is fascinating what they are doing. The reason I say we need oil--I encourage drilling. I was one of four Senators who helped open up Lease 181 off the Gulf of Mexico. We are now going to get more oil and gas off of that area and still protect our environment.

Let me talk about the sophistication of the drilling rig I visited 2 weeks ago. They drill down 10,000 feet, make a big curve with the same rig, and drill out 10,000 feet. They are searching for a seam that is 100 feet wide called the shale seam. They divide that seam into three parts--the upper part, middle part, and lower part. They go down 2 miles with a drilling rig, make a big curve, go out 2 miles, and they are targeting only the middle part of a 100-foot seam to get oil and they end up 2 to 4 feet from where they expect to be with their drill bit. It is unbelievable technology. There is a lot going on and I commend them for it. We want to encourage them. We want more production, but we cannot sit around here, as a Congress, and say it doesn't matter what the current price is.

If the price at the pump is $4, the price of a barrel of oil is $125 or $130 or $135, it doesn't matter. It matters to the airlines that went belly up recently. I had a discussion yesterday with an executive who told me the name of an airline he thinks may well be liquidated in the next couple of weeks. I was flabbergasted. We have had a good many airlines file for bankruptcy recently. We have trucking companies all across this country, especially mom-and-pop truck businesses, that cannot afford to buy fuel and have gone belly up and many others will. We have people who can't afford to put gas in their tank to drive to work. That is unbelievable to me.

If it were about fundamentals, I would understand this, but this has nothing to do with fundamentals of supply and demand or the free market. It has to do with an unbelievable amount of speculation. We have a right, in my judgment, we have a responsibility, to begin wringing that speculation out of those futures markets.

There are a number of ways to do that. I have talked before about a piece of legislation that would increase margin requirements for those who want to engage in speculation. If you want to buy stock on margin, you have to put up 50 percent of the money. That is a requirement--50 percent of the money. If you want to go buy an oil contract, 5 to 7 percent. If you want to control $100,000 worth of oil, it will cost you $5,000 to $7,000. If you want to control $100,000 worth of stock on margin, it will cost you $50,000.

It seems to me first we ought to identify a way to decide what is speculation and what is not and then go after a way to wring out the speculation from these markets. I understand markets need to work, they need liquidity, they need to have an opportunity for legitimate hedging. I understand all of that. But I also understand what has happened here is we have galloped into this box canyon with speculators making massive amounts of money.

The other day I was on the floor and I talked about a man who has been involved in hedging and betting--mostly betting, not hedging--and has made a massive amount of money. He doesn't have any interest in oil. He has never had oil run through his fingers. He has probably never changed the oil in his car, let alone wanting to buy oil. He wouldn't have a place to store it if he got it. He is very interested in gambling on the contracts, back and forth, to make money.

That is what Mr. Gates said. As I indicated, Mr. Gates is a fellow who has over 30 years' experience. I have talked to him by telephone a number of times. Mr. Gates says: This is the world's largest gambling hall. It is open 24/7, totally unregulated.

Now, we have seen speculation and bubbles exist in our country before. We have seen them in history. There are books written about bubbles and speculation. You know when tulips were sold for $25,000 a piece, 400 and 500 years ago, it did not matter so much, nobody needed to have a tulip to do well during the day.

But oil is different. The price of oil affects every American, every consumer, every business. It affects our economy. What are we going to do if this price keeps moving and if we do not find a way to wring the speculation out of this and bring it back to where supply and demand or where a real marketplace would render the price to be?

How many airlines will go bankrupt? Will trucking companies be able to purchase fuel? What will consumers do? What will it mean to the economic growth potential of this country?

I am working on a piece of legislation that does a couple things, that addresses this speculation in a way to free it, to wring it out of the futures market. The futures market should exist. It is a legitimate market. The futures market for oil is necessary. You need to hedge. But we need to find a way to have complete transparency, to be able to regulate both here and also on the intercontinental exchanges. We probably need to increase the margin requirements and say to speculators: Your day is over. Your day is done. This market will exist, but it will exist without you.

I intend to work on that amendment with my colleagues in the coming days and offer it and hope we push it to a conclusion.

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

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, June 5, at 9:30 a.m., in Room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Predatory Lending in Indian Country.

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

Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous consent--and I ask it not be taken out of my time--that H.R. 980 remain the pending business.

Mr. President, I want to start by acknowledging the tremendous work of Senators Conrad, Harkin, and Chambliss. This farm bill has taken countless hours of patience and perseverance. Thank goodness they have all that in abundance, along with great skill, wisdom and vision

I especially want to recognize Senator Conrad's work here in the Senate and Congressman Pomeroy's work in the House. We wouldn't be where we are today without their efforts and I wanted to publicly thank them.

Mr. President, the Congress has made a major decision today. That decision is to say to this President: It is time to start taking care of things here at home. It is a pretty substantial message-- notwithstanding the objections of the President, this Congress said we need to stand for family farmers and have voted overwhelmingly to decide that we will override the President's veto and voted overwhelmingly to decide that we will override the President's veto. Sometimes there is not much distance between the right track and the wrong track. But with respect to the farm bill, the distance here between the right track and the wrong track, between the President and the Congress, is a country mile. It surprises me, in fact.

This Congress has said: Let's start taking care of things here at home for a change. Now, family farmers have always been the bedrock of this country's family values. They, in many cases, work alone. They raise a family out under yard lights, out in the country. They take big risks every year.

They live on hope. They do not come to work in blue suit. They put on work shoes and work clothes and work hard, and all they ask for is a decent return on their investment, despite the substantial risks they take. Because of that this Congress, for a long period of time, over many decades, has decided to create a safety net so that when family farmers run into a patch of trouble, this Congress and this country say: You are not alone. We want to help you through these price valleys and through these tough times.

So that safety net was significantly what we voted on today. The President began last year threatening to veto a farm bill, and consistently threatened that veto, and finally decided to exercise that veto, and the Congress said: You are wrong, Mr. President.

The President came to my State of North Dakota. He said to farmers: When you need me, I will be there. But when farmers needed him, he was not there. That is a matter of fact. This Congress has used awfully good judgment in overriding the President's veto.

About a year ago, a little over a year ago, I introduced an agriculture disaster bill here in the Congress. For 3 years in a row I have added an agriculture disaster piece to the supplemental appropriations bill because we did not have a disaster title in the farm bill. For 3 years as an appropriator I put disaster money in the Appropriations supplemental bill. Finally, on the third opportunity, we got it in a bill the President had to sign. But we had to go on bended knee when they had disasters over much of farm country to get disaster help. Now we have a farm bill that has a disaster title. That is a significant step forward.

A lot of folks do not understand much about farming. They think that Corn Flakes, oatmeal, and puffed rice come in boxes. They do not. But those who put it in the boxes make much more money than those who plow the ground and plant the seeds that produce the corn and the oats and the wheat.

Now, this is a pretty substantial day for those of us who care about family farmers and want good farm policy. This veto override is good public policy.

Rodney Nelson, a cowboy poet from North Dakota, who is a rancher and a farmer out near Almont and Judd, ND, wrote a piece. I have mentioned it before to my colleagues. But he asks this question rhetorically in his piece: What is it worth? What is it worth for a kid to know how to weld a seam, to drive a combine, to fix a tractor? What's it worth for a kid to know how to pour cement? What is it worth for a kid to know how to work livestock, work in the hot summer sun and the cold winter day? He asks: What is it worth for a kid to know how to teach a calf to drink milk out of a pail? What is it worth for a kid to know how to build a lean-to? What is it worth for a kid to know how to fix a tractor that won't run?

There is only one place in this country where all of those skills are taught, and that is on America's family farms. That is the university where all of those courses exist, and we lose it at our peril. That is why we write farm legislation. What is it worth? It is worth plenty to this country to say to family farmers during tough times: You are not alone, because we have created a farm bill to say here is a helping hand during tough times. That is what this is all about. I think the action today is something we ought to be proud of.

Is this bill everything I would have liked? No. My colleague and I, Senator Grassley, offered an amendment on the floor of the Senate that was critical in terms of policy dealing with payment limits. We lost. We got 56 votes, we needed 60.

The fact is, this bill remains a good bill. It is late. It should have been done months ago. We fought through 9 or 10 months of Presidential veto threats. But it is done and finally I think farmers who are working their fields now in the spring and trying to figure out how they are going to do this year, I think farmers are going to be able to look at this bill and say: Congress cared. Congress cared enough to override the President's veto and put in place a farm bill that once again says: America cares about family farming and its future.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, our go-it-alone foreign policy over the last 8 years has severely damaged our image and stirred up anti- American sentiment around the world. We have lost the international goodwill we had following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the failed strategy of the war in Iraq has cost us a good number of allies.

A worldwide survey conducted last year of 28,000 people, asking them to rate 12 countries, put the United States at the bottom, along with Iran and Israel, when it comes to having the world's most negative image. In fact, even North Korea ranked higher than the United States in that survey. Another survey found that our favorability rating around the world dropped considerably from 2000 to 2006. For example, in Germany, we went from a favorability rating of 78 percent in 2000 to 37 percent in 2006. In Spain, only 23 percent of people have a favorable opinion of the United States. I could go on and on, but I don't think anyone can dispute the fact that our image and credibility in the world has dropped dramatically. This negative trend hurts us. It makes it more difficult to implement our foreign policy, and even threatens our national security by making the United States a target.

With that being said, as the most powerful country in the world we still have an unprecedented opportunity to both help those in less fortunate countries and help our country regain the moral authority we once held.

A lot of interesting ideas have been proposed to repair our damaged image. Some of the most creative suggestions have come from students, such as the paper I recently received from Occidental College in Los Angeles. That paper makes recommendations for United States policy changes on issues like the war in Iraq, oil and energy issues, and illegal immigration, just to name a few. Calling for the United States to lead rather than dominate, to be a beacon more than a bullhorn, this paper presents a possible path to help repair our standing in the international community. I don't agree with everything in the paper, but it is full of interesting ideas that can make a difference. It is encouraging to see that the youth of this country have taken a serious interest in our country's image. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to take a serious look at this and other proposals to see what Congress can do to help ensure that future generations inherit a government that is well respected throughout the world.

It is my hope that with the new administration, our country will be able to turn the page of the past 8 years and focus on a foreign policy that is more constructive. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the next President to make this happen.

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

Madam President, midday today during our Democratic Caucus, when we learned our colleague Senator Kennedy is now facing some very serious health problems, it is an understatement to say we were all shocked by that news and saddened by it.

Senator Kennedy has for decades been a major presence in this Senate Chamber. He is a friend, a colleague, and all of us have said prayers today for his recovery.

Senator Kennedy has faced much adversity in his life, but he has also contributed so much to this country. I know he will meet this challenge with the same strength and the same grace he has met other challenges. It is my purpose today to say it is my prayerful hope, and I know the prayerful hope of all Members of this Chamber, that in the row behind me and four desks to my left we will once again at some point in the future see Senator Kennedy among us to continue his service to his country.

My thoughts and prayers are with our colleague for a full recovery.

Madam President, I wish to visit for a few moments on the piece of legislation in front of us which includes the GI bill. We have had a GI bill in this country for many decades. There is a new GI bill in the underlying legislation that is brought to the floor of the Senate. I am so proud to be a cosponsor of it and to be a part of what so many in this Chamber have put together. The GI bill is such an important part of what this country does and says to those who serve this country.

This weekend I traveled, and at an airport in Minneapolis there was a family--a man, a woman, and three children; three very young children-- getting on the same plane I was boarding. They were from North Dakota but they lived on a military base in Georgia. The wife came up to me and said hello. She said: My husband has done three deployments in Iraq. I hope--I so hope--that you can find a way to end this war.

This is a woman who has watched her husband leave for Iraq three times; a woman who is taking care of her three young children while her husband is deployed three times to the country of Iraq. I visited with her husband and her children, and I know that family is proud to serve their country. I know the entire family is proud of that soldier's service. But I also know the costs of that service, because you could see it in the eyes of that soldier's spouse.

Also on Saturday morning I went to an event in one of our cities. It was a homecoming event for 35 soldiers who had just come back from deployment in Afghanistan. These were National Guard soldiers. They too were so proud to have served their country, and some of them had been deployed twice; two deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. One or two had been on their third deployment. Their families were there and all of them were enormously relieved and pleased to have their loved ones home.

I was thinking about those events: meeting a family at an airport, a soldier who is stationed in Georgia but who is a North Dakota native, and visiting with the family members at the National Guard event and saying thank you to them from a grateful nation.

I was thinking about a day much earlier when I was asked to present medals earned by an American Indian who served in the Second World War but had never received his medals. His name was Edmund Young Eagle. He was a Standing Rock Sioux Indian. He was someone who enlisted in the Army in the Second World War and went to war. He served in northern Africa, Normandy, and across Europe. He served with great distinction as an American soldier in some very difficult fighting.

He then came back to the Indian reservation and lived kind of a tough life. He never had very much. He never married. He never had very much in his life, but he lived a good life nonetheless. At the end of his life, he was in the veterans home and then got sick and was put in the veterans hospital in Fargo, ND. His sister contacted my office and asked if her brother could receive the medals he had earned during the Second World War but had never received. We said of course. On a Sunday morning in Fargo, ND, I went to the veterans hospital with the medals for Edmund Young Eagle. The doctors and the nurses and others from the hospital crowded into his hospital room that Sunday morning. Edmund was sick with lung cancer. I didn't know it at the time, but he didn't have many days left. He died about a week later of lung cancer. But on that morning he was fully aware of what was happening, and I was there granting the wish of his sister to get the medals from the Department of Defense that Edmund Young Eagle had earned in the Second World War. We cranked his hospital bed up to a seated position and then I pinned a row of medals on Edmund Young Eagle's pajama top there at the veterans hospital and told him: Thank you from a grateful nation for serving this country in the Second World War. This very sick man looked up at me and said: This is one of the proudest days of my life. He died about a week later. But he served his country and was enormously proud of it.

There are so many circumstances around this country where one by one or in groups we honor our soldiers because they put on America's uniform. This morning, soldiers halfway around the world not only put on a uniform, but put on body armor and went out in harm's way, some to be shot at. They didn't ask why; they just did what their country asked them to do.

Now the question is: When it is all over, when they come home and their service is done, what will their country say then? What will their country say to them, other than thank you?

What we said in the Second World War with a GI bill was when those soldiers came home, we offered them an opportunity to go to college, to help them to be able to purchase a home. So a substantial number of returning soldiers went to college and got a college degree. They went back home and married their sweetheart. They built a home. They built a community. They built their churches. They expanded the middle class. They created an economic boom in this country. Later, it was estimated that for every dollar we spent on the GI bill, $7 was returned because it was an unbelievably good investment for our country.

Senator Webb, Senator Warner, Senator Hagel, Senator Murray, and so many others--myself included--as cosponsors of this bill have said it is time again to write a GI bill that is appropriate for wartime and for returning veterans. When soldiers return and become veterans, the question is: What will the GI bill offer for them? How will we invest in their lives, and thereby invest in this country?

The previous GI bill was the Montgomery bill written during peacetime. Frankly, it does not do what we have historically been able to do and willing to do for those who serve our country, in addition to saying thank you. The Montgomery bill existed--and we are pleased it did--but this new GI bill is something very different. It tries to say to soldiers, as we did some 60 years ago, not only thank you, but we want to invest in your lives and invest thereby in this country. It is a new GI bill. It allows an opportunity to go to college and to be able to pay the in-State cost of college with a stipend for living during that period of time that you get your college degree. It invests in the lives of those who have invested their lives in this country. This is a very important piece of legislation.

I am told there are some who now come to the floor of the Senate, nearing three-quarters of a trillion dollars having been spent on emergency supplemental appropriations bills requested by President Bush to prosecute the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and say: Well, we can afford that and we have to do that on an emergency basis, but we don't have the money to try to help veterans when they come home. A veterans program is the cost of war.

It is the cost of war. How does anyone say that somehow the three- quarters of a trillion dollars for so many hundreds and thousands of different accounts and contractors and replenishment of various accounts is more important than the single account of the GI bill, which says we want to invest in our soldiers? How does anybody say those myriad other accounts are more important than investing in our soldiers when they become veterans? I don't understand that. It makes no sense.

It is a significant claim and priority for this country to understand that part of the cost of war is to provide health care that is promised to veterans and a GI bill this country can be proud of, which invests in those veterans and our country. That is what this bill is about. This new GI bill is every bit as important--perhaps more important-- than any other provision that exists in this large emergency supplemental requested by this President.

The Congress undoubtedly, at some point, in some way, will enact this legislation providing for some supplemental appropriations. When it does, in

my judgment, it must do more than just say thank you to veterans, as we do, but it must invest in veterans, which this new GI bill will do. This makes a lot of sense for our country.

I commend especially those I have mentioned previously, including Senators Webb, Warner, Hagel, Murray, and so many others. I am proud to be one among them to say that this too is a priority for this country. I hope when the sun sets at the end of this week, if we have passed this legislation called the emergency supplemental appropriations bill, it will include something that ought to give all of us a reason to be proud and that it will include a new GI bill to say to veterans in this country: You matter. It matters to us what you did for our country. I hope we manifest that by passing a new GI bill in the name of their service.

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

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

Madam President, I know we are on the emergency supplemental bill. However, I want to talk a bit about the energy issue, so I will begin on that. I want to make a couple of points.

First, we sent a bill that the President signed, I believe, this morning, which I offered here along with my colleague Senator Reid in the Senate last week. We passed it on Thursday. It said stop putting oil underground when oil prices are bouncing around at $128 a barrel or so. We told the Department of Energy stop putting 70,000 barrels a day underground. We have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve--which makes sense to me because if you run into trouble, you will have oil you have put away. But we have put that oil away, and it is now 97 percent full. Yet the DOE and the Bush administration are topping it off by putting 70,000 barrels a day every day underground.

Our legislation says stop that. When oil is going through the roof and the price of gasoline is so high, stop putting it underground. It makes no sense. You are putting upward pressure on prices, which is the last thing we should do.

I am pleased the President signed the bill today. Some have said it won't make any difference, that there are factors other than the 70,000 barrels going underground that are at play here, and I will talk about them. But it certainly doesn't hurt to put additional oil, and therefore gasoline, into the supply pipeline. That ought to bring prices down. It is common sense.

I used to teach a little economics and the supply/demand curve hasn't changed. If demand remains unchanged and supply is increased, prices are going to be lower. So I never understood why they decided when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent full, why they are taking sweet light crude from the Gulf of Mexico and sticking it underground for a rainy day. It is raining at the gas pumps these days. Stop that and put it into the supply chain and put downward pressure on oil and gas prices.

I am pleased that we finally did it last week. The House passed the bill. We got it to the President and he signed it. That is one step in the right direction. A big step, giant step? Probably not, but it is a step in the right direction in dealing with the question of the price of gasoline.

Now, there is something curious going on in this country. It is not explainable, frankly. This chart says oil prices nearly doubled in 1 year--up, up, up, and up. They doubled in 1 year. What would cause that? Well, here is speculators' activity in the oil futures market. It looks like oil prices, doesn't it? It also goes up, up, and up. There is more and more speculation in the oil futures market. These are not people who want to buy oil--oh, no. They want to buy a contract. They don't ever want to take delivery or get their hands dirty with oil; they want to speculate and gamble in the oil futures market. They want to buy what they will never get from people who never had it, and walk away grinning and deposit their money in the bank--big profits, by the way. It doesn't matter what the consequences are. The wreckage can lie in the gas pump lines, on the family farms, and elsewhere, because they push up prices with this speculation. As you can see on the chart, the speculation looks exactly like the runup in the prices.

The senior vice president of ExxonMobil Oil, on April 1, last month, said:

The price of oil should be about $50 or $55 per barrel.

But it is not. It is $128 a barrel, $129 a barrel today, and is headed north. So an oil company senior vice president said it ought to be $50 or $55 a barrel.

Clarence Cazalot, CEO, Marathon Oil, said:

$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the

market.

He is president of an oil company.

In January, the Newark Star Ledger said:

Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say

financial speculation in the energy markets has grown so much

over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent, or

more, to the price of a barrel of oil.

Fadel Gheit, 30 years with Oppenheimer Company, senior energy trader, said this:

There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I am absolutely

convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a

barrel. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It's

open 24/7. Unfortunately, it is totally unregulated. This is

like a highway with no cops and no speed limits, and

everybody is going 120 miles an hour.

Andrew Hall--I don't know him. I have said I would not know him from a cord of wood. All I know is that the Wall Street Journal reports this trader hit the jackpot on oil as the commodity boom roars on. When they say commodity boom, they are not talking about oil wells, or drilling rigs, or oil tanks; they are talking about the commodities market. Again, it is a market in which speculators abound--an orgy of speculation, with people buying things they will never get from people who never had it, nobody wanting the oil, but wanting to speculate in this class called speculators. Mr. Hall earned a quarter of a billion dollars--$250 million--in 5 years. That is a pretty big payout, actually.

All of these folks who are neck deep in futures markets include hedge funds, investment banks, unbelievable speculation in the futures market, which is driving up the price of gasoline and the price of oil.

Now, it is interesting to me, and I think important for us to understand, that as the price is going up, and it is going up again today, that more pressure will push prices higher. In this country, people will drive to the pumps tonight and try to figure out, how do I pay for this tank of gas? I need it and I have to drive to work. Or as the farmer tries to figure out, how do I fill that farm gas tank and pay for that? Or a small family trucking company tries to figure out how do I make ends meet, or will I have to close the doors, perhaps, like one of the CEOs of the five airlines that have filed bankruptcy at this point because of fuel prices?

As all of this is happening, let me make a couple of points. One, we have more oil in our inventory and more fuel in our inventory right now than we did in January of this year. We are somewhere over 30 million to 40 million barrels of oil in inventory above where we were in January. So go figure. Inventory is up. Shouldn't prices come down a bit? You would think so. Not only is inventory up but demand is also down because our economy slowed down some, and because the price of gasoline and fuel is very high, people are driving a bit less. Some estimate that demand has dipped around 4 or 5 percent. So our inventories are up, demand is down, and what is happening to oil prices? They are continuing to go up.

Refiners are actually refining less at the moment, by their own design, because they believe there is an excess of inventory, so they want to catch up a bit, or allow the inventory to catch up with demand. So they are refining less than they previously refined. You would think, then, if supply is up, with millions more barrels of oil in inventory, the supply of gasoline having increased sufficiently so that refiners are cutting back refining capability, that the price of gasoline and oil would begin to come down. But it is not true. What is happening today is it is reaching record highs. So what does that tell

us? It tells us there is this unbelievable amount of speculation in which speculators have taken over the commodity markets and driven oil prices to levels that are doing great damage to this economy, great damage to this country, great damage to America's families, and great damage to businesses in this country. They don't care much about that. All they care about is going to the bank with a pile of money. All they care about is making all this money.

I am telling you, at the top, take a look at the compensation of the top hedge fund managers in this country. It is unbelievable. It almost makes you ill. They are all making a lot of money, and they are doing it by speculating in a market that is driving up prices beyond where the fundamentals of oil and gas supply and demand would justify. There is no justification for this at all.

American families have a right to ask the question of this Congress: What on Earth are you going to do about it? Does anybody care? Or are the consumers just pawns in this big game while the speculators run off with all the money?

It seems to me, when markets don't work we have a responsibility to do something about it. If you have a computer handy, you can find a search engine and find excesses of speculation. In fact, over the last decade and a half, we have seen two bubbles already, and now a third. We saw the tech bubble, and it burst. We saw the housing bubble, and it burst. Now we see a bubble on the commodities exchanges, and it will burst at some point. The question is when and what damage will be done between now and then.

These exchanges are supposed to be regulating certain kinds of activities. I have a little experience in this--not a lot, but a little. I chaired the hearings in the Senate on Enron. We did it in a Commerce subcommittee. I had Ken Lay come in front of me in my committee. He raised his hand and swore an oath to tell the truth, sat down, and took the fifth amendment. We had Jeffrey Skilling come. He is now in prison. He wouldn't stop talking, by the way. Through it all, the suggestion was, there is nothing going on here.

There was this unbelievable runup of wholesale electricity prices on the west coast during that period. We now know it was criminal activity, a criminal enterprise. We now know they were fixing things. They were shutting down plants. They were manipulating supply. They were speculating.

I am not suggesting speculation is necessarily, or even in most cases, criminal behavior. It is not. But the combination, going back to Enron, of not being able to see the dark money, the money that moves in the shadows behind the regulatory opportunities that some agencies have, means consumers can be manipulated and injured dramatically.

There is a lesson, it seems to me, as we take a look at what is happening in energy. I remember when President Bush came to town. He appointed a new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I believe his name was Harvey Pitt. He said when he took office there is going to be a new attitude around here. This was the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulatory body.

He said: There is going to be a new attitude around here, a business- friendly attitude. And sure enough, it sure was business friendly, and not just there but virtually every agency. We don't want to regulate. Yes, we are a regulatory body, but we don't want to regulate. Yes, regulators are supposed to be the referees, wear the striped shirts, call the fouls; we don't want to do that. We don't even like Government very much. We just come here and say it is business friendly, so do what you want.

Over the past 7 years we have seen an unbelievable amount of avarice and greed and speculation. Is it any wonder that we saw the bubble burst with respect to housing? Who wasn't minding the store? We know what happened then.

We had ads on television from these mortgage companies. Anybody who watched one of them would have known this doesn't work.

The ads said: Hey, you have been bankrupt, you can't pay your bills? Are you missing your house payments? Come over here. We will give you a new mortgage. You don't have to worry about all that. You have bad credit? Come to us. We will give you credit. In fact, we will give you a mortgage where you don't even have to pay all the interest. In fact, we will give you a mortgage loan where you don't have to pay any interest the first year; we will pay the interest for you, and the principal. We will say to you: You don't even have to document your income to us. You have to pay a slightly higher interest rate, but you get a mortgage with us, and you don't even have to document your income. It is called a no doc loan.

So, no documents, no interest payment for the first year and no principal payment for a long while. And by the way, when we set your interest rate, you pay an incredibly low interest rate.

I saw an advertisement that said pay one-fourth of 1 percent interest rate--not telling them, of course, it is going to reset at 10 percent in 3 years. They don't have a ghost of a chance of making those payments, and they are going to lose their house. We are sorry. They never tell them that.

Where were the regulators? Were they watching? No, they weren't watching. They didn't care.

So you have this buildup of speculation, mortgages, housing, and now the entire economy pays a price for that.

On top of that, we have this unbelievable buildup of speculation in the commodities market and oil, which is an essential commodity for every part of this economy, and the cost is going through the roof. Today it is setting a record.

Think of this economy and the national result. Does it matter that oil is different? Sure does. We suck 85 million barrels of oil out of this world every single day. We take 85 million barrels and suck it out of this planet. We need to use one-fourth of it in this country. We use 25 percent of all oil pulled out of this planet every day, and we only produce 10 percent. We use 25 percent of the world's oil, and we produce only 10 percent. That means we have to get a lot of it from elsewhere, and we do. Mr. President, 60 percent plus comes from offshore, much of it from troubled parts of the world.

We have a major issue with respect to oil. We have to deal with it. In the short term, though, we have to deal with this. John Maynard Keynes said in the long run, we are all dead. In the short run, we drive to the gas pumps and say: How can we possibly afford this? How can we pay this price? Then we understand this price isn't even justified. There is nothing in supply and demand that justifies this price. The supply is up, demand is down, and the price of oil is going through the roof. That is not about market system. Those are arteries clogged in the free market system, and this Congress has a responsibility to do something about it.

What do we do? There are a number of approaches a group of us are working on. It includes trying to find ways to make certain we know what is happening on all of these exchanges. The folks who run the exchanges in this country say: The problem is, if you increase the margin requirement, all this stuff is going to go to the Intercontinental Exchange, called ICE, over in London. You can't do that; it goes offshore and you never see it.

That is another part of the dark money strategy in this country where they all make money and injure this economy. We are looking for ways, and I believe we will find a way in a couple of days, to get our arms around this issue called regulatory need with respect to excess speculation on all markets. This is damaging this country's economy, and we cannot and should not stand for it. Speculators have had their day. They have made their money. They have injured this country. Now it is time for us to wring that speculation out of those commodity markets.

We need commodity exchanges. We need futures markets. We need them for liquidity. We need them for hedging. But when we have speculators grab these markets by the neck and pervert them, this Congress has a responsibility to act.

I conclude by saying the price of oil is setting new records today despite the fact that we in this country have an increased supply of oil since January, month after month after month, and demand is going down by the consumer because of price. So supply is up,

demand is down, and this perversion in the marketplace is producing the highest price for oil we have seen. That is an unbelievable perversion of what the free market ought to be.

We hear people say free market. There is no free market here. You have an OPEC cartel sitting behind closed doors. It would be illegal in this country. That does not contribute to a free market. That is a fixed market. And we have oil companies bigger and stronger. They almost all have two names now--ExxonMobile, ConocoPhillips--because they all merged and everybody thought that was fine, at least in this administration. So they are bigger and stronger and have more muscle in the marketplace. Then we have this perversion in the futures market.

That combination is a combination that I say damages this economy. We mean to address it. In the coming days, I intend to talk about legislation that will tie into this speculation, wring it out of the markets and say: You can't continue to damage the economy of this country; you can't continue to injure the consumers in this country because we are not going to stand for it.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 22, at 9:30 a.m. in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Follow Up on the status of Backlogs at the Department of the Interior''.

This is a resolution of disapproval of an FCC rule dealing with media ownership. The Commerce Committee has passed this out to the floor of the Senate. I will not go into great length on the merits of the issue except to say we have visited this issue previously. I think there is too much concentration in the media. The FCC rule moves in exactly the wrong direction, adding more concentration.

I ask that Members of the Senate who wish to would be able to make statements that appear prior to this vote. I believe we have agreed to a voice vote.

I yield the floor. I reserve my time.

Under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution of disapproval is intended to overturn a specific rule, not other parts of an agency's order. The waivers are not rules.

The resolution is written in a specific way referring to an order, but it is the rule that is nullified. These waivers could have been granted alone or under the previous cross-ownership ban. It is not the intention of this resolution to affect the waivers in the order.

I ask the Senator from Washington to use the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.