Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I am introducing a piece of legislation aimed at changing the course of our international trade policy.

Part of the problem with our current trade agenda is that there is no mechanism to gauge whether the trade agreements we enter into are successful--and there is no mechanism to withdraw from agreements that have not been successful.

So I am joining with Senators Brown and Casey in introducing the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act, which aims to fix that.

This is how the bill would work.

The legislation would create a point of order in the Senate against any future bill implementing a new trade agreement unless it included benchmarks to gauge the success or failure of the agreement.

The benchmarks would include, at a minimum, the trade agreement's impact in four respects.

First, the number of U.S. jobs created and lost.

Second, the impact on U.S. wages.

Third, the extent to which U.S. exports gain foreign market access in key sectors.

Fourth, the extent to which labor and environmental laws are followed and enforced.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office could include additional benchmarks in the implementing legislation, at their discretion.

Every 5 years, the U.S. International Trade Commission, ITC, would assess whether the benchmarks in the implementing legislation had been met.

If the ITC determined that any of the benchmarks were not met, there would be an expedited process under which the House and the Senate would consider a privileged resolution to pull the United States out of the trade agreement.

The resolution would be considered under expedited rules. The resolution would first be referred to the Ways and Means and Finance committees. If those committees failed to report out the resolution within a set period of time, either favorably or unfavorably, the resolution would be automatically discharged to the full House and Senate.

The resolution would not be amendable, and a floor vote in the House and the Senate on whether to approve the resolution would be mandatory.

Let me explain why something like this is necessary.

When NAFTA was sent to Congress for a vote in 1993, its advocates said that there would be 200,000 new jobs created annually as a result.

The proponents relied on a study by economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott. Hufbauer and Schott actually predicted that NAFTA would create 170,000 new jobs by 1995. But proponents of the deal in the administration and the Senate rounded this number up to 200,000 jobs.

Well, we now know that NAFTA has resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses. About 412,000 U.S. jobs have been certified as lost to NAFTA, under just one program at the U.S. Labor Department.

In 2003, 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service, which identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA, between 1994 and 2002.

To come up with its data, CRS turned to the Department of Labor, which has a ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' program that gives temporary benefits to workers laid off due to NAFTA.

This program requires companies to certify that they intended to eliminate U.S. jobs specifically because of NAFTA. This means that we can directly attribute these job losses to NAFTA.

These 100 companies accounted for 201,414 U.S. jobs lost specifically due to NAFTA. In every instance, the companies doing the layoffs certified that the jobs were being cut directly because of NAFTA.

If you look at all U.S. companies that participated in the Department of Labor program, the total number of U.S. jobs lost due to NAFTA is 412,177--and that is just under this one program alone.

There are some very familiar products, which many people consider all-American, now being produced in Mexico.

Levi Strauss laid off 15,676 U.S. workers due to NAFTA, and now makes its jeans in Mexico.

In March 2003, Kraft Foods closed the Nabisco plant in Fair Lawn, NJ, that made Fig Newtons. About 240 jobs were lost right there. Those jobs are now in Monterrey, Mexico. Kraft Foods has cut about 955 jobs due to

Mr. President, today I am introducing a piece of legislation aimed at changing the course of our international trade policy.

Part of the problem with our current trade agenda is that there is no mechanism to gauge whether the trade agreements we enter into are successful--and there is no mechanism to withdraw from agreements that have not been successful.

So I am joining with Senators Brown and Casey in introducing the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act, which aims to fix that.

This is how the bill would work.

The legislation would create a point of order in the Senate against any future bill implementing a new trade agreement unless it included benchmarks to gauge the success or failure of the agreement.

The benchmarks would include, at a minimum, the trade agreement's impact in four respects.

First, the number of U.S. jobs created and lost.

Second, the impact on U.S. wages.

Third, the extent to which U.S. exports gain foreign market access in key sectors.

Fourth, the extent to which labor and environmental laws are followed and enforced.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office could include additional benchmarks in the implementing legislation, at their discretion.

Every 5 years, the U.S. International Trade Commission, ITC, would assess whether the benchmarks in the implementing legislation had been met.

If the ITC determined that any of the benchmarks were not met, there would be an expedited process under which the House and the Senate would consider a privileged resolution to pull the United States out of the trade agreement.

The resolution would be considered under expedited rules. The resolution would first be referred to the Ways and Means and Finance committees. If those committees failed to report out the resolution within a set period of time, either favorably or unfavorably, the resolution would be automatically discharged to the full House and Senate.

The resolution would not be amendable, and a floor vote in the House and the Senate on whether to approve the resolution would be mandatory.

Let me explain why something like this is necessary.

When NAFTA was sent to Congress for a vote in 1993, its advocates said that there would be 200,000 new jobs created annually as a result.

The proponents relied on a study by economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott. Hufbauer and Schott actually predicted that NAFTA would create 170,000 new jobs by 1995. But proponents of the deal in the administration and the Senate rounded this number up to 200,000 jobs.

Well, we now know that NAFTA has resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses. About 412,000 U.S. jobs have been certified as lost to NAFTA, under just one program at the U.S. Labor Department.

In 2003, 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service, which identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA, between 1994 and 2002.

To come up with its data, CRS turned to the Department of Labor, which has a ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' program that gives temporary benefits to workers laid off due to NAFTA.

This program requires companies to certify that they intended to eliminate U.S. jobs specifically because of NAFTA. This means that we can directly attribute these job losses to NAFTA.

These 100 companies accounted for 201,414 U.S. jobs lost specifically due to NAFTA. In every instance, the companies doing the layoffs certified that the jobs were being cut directly because of NAFTA.

If you look at all U.S. companies that participated in the Department of Labor program, the total number of U.S. jobs lost due to NAFTA is 412,177--and that is just under this one program alone.

There are some very familiar products, which many people consider all-American, now being produced in Mexico.

Levi Strauss laid off 15,676 U.S. workers due to NAFTA, and now makes its jeans in Mexico.

In March 2003, Kraft Foods closed the Nabisco plant in Fair Lawn, NJ, that made Fig Newtons. About 240 jobs were lost right there. Those jobs are now in Monterrey, Mexico. Kraft Foods has cut about 955 jobs due to

Mr. President, we are required from time to time to make tough votes in the Senate, but this isn't one of them. This is not a tough vote. The question is, Shall we try to stimulate the economy? The answer, clearly, is yes. I think most people feel we should do that.

So then, if we are going to give a rebate, some kind of rebate to people who should get the rebate, perhaps we should think of it in terms of a family sitting around a supper table and they are talking about who is going to get this rebate. So somebody says: Well, you know what, let's make sure grandpa and grandma don't get it. Let's not give grandpa and grandma a rebate. They don't need to be in it. And by the way, Uncle Carl is unemployed. He doesn't need it. He ought not get a rebate. Or Cousin Ralph, he is a disabled veteran. He is not going to need a rebate.

Do you think any family sitting around a supper table would make those choices; that they are going to throw grandpa and grandma off the train and the disabled veteran who served this country and put his life on the line?

So here is the deal. We are told by some: Well, you know, they haven't earned income, so, therefore, they are not going to qualify for this rebate. Oh, really? You haven't earned your Social Security check? Seems to me that is a lifetime of earning. You didn't earn your disability payment? You earned it by putting your life on the line for this country.

So let's include the 20 million people who are senior citizens, many of whom live near poverty trying to stretch their reasonable income--in many cases a very small income--through the month to pay for both food and medicine. Let's include senior citizens, let's include veterans who are being paid veterans disability, who otherwise would not be included.

And let's do what we have always done during economic downturns: Let's extend unemployment benefits. That is the economic stabilizer we have always used. Let's do the right thing and vote for the finance bill and move it into conference. Let's do that now.

This is not a tough vote. We know what the right thing is.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act of 2007. This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to suspend filling of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, SPR, for 1 year. I appreciate that Senators Bingaman, Levin, Kerry, Collins, Lieberman, and Wyden have joined me as original cosponsors of this legislation. This bill directs the Secretary to stop filling the reserve through direct purchase, royalty-in-kind or any other measures. The secretary may only resume filling if the price of a barrel of crude oil drops below $50 per barrel during the remainder of 2008.

The price of a barrel of oil is reaching record highs and global supplies of oil continue to shrink. During this period of volatile markets and short supply, it makes no sense to me for the U.S. Government to continue to take highly valuable crude oil, especially light sweet crude, off the market to store underground in a reserve that is at least 96 percent full. Continuing to

``top off'' the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with highly valuable crude oil is putting upward pressure on oil prices and raising energy prices for consumers.

I believe that we must take a ``time out'' from filling the reserve in order to send a signal to the market to reduce rising energy prices that are hitting American consumers' pocketbooks. Lowering energy costs will put additional money back into consumers' hands and will help provide a real stimulus to our economy in my judgment.

Historically, the average price of oil used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been about $27 per barrel. The Administration is now filling the Reserve with oil that averages over $90 per barrel, including highly sought after light sweet crude. This is a bad deal for American taxpayers and consumers.

On January 8, 2008, the Secretary of Energy sent me a letter stating that our Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains only 57 days of import protection and that the 50,000 barrels per day they are filling with is a small amount of the oil used on the global market daily. This is only part of the story. The fact is that the SPR, combined with our private oil stocks and refining inventories, total more than 118 days of import protection. The current levels in our strategic petroleum stocks are more than adequate to meet our international treaty obligations requiring 90 days of import protection for all OECD countries. I also disagree that taking 50,000 barrels per day off the market, especially light sweet crude, has no impact on energy prices. During the Clinton administration, Congress signaled that it wanted more than $200 million sold from the SPR in 1996, the price of oil dropped precipitously in the market. The market looks at many factors, including our filling of the SPR. This is another reason we can afford to temporarily suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Further, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides directional guidance to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The provision in law clearly states that filling the reserve must be achieved ``without incurring excessive cost or appreciably affecting the price of petroleum products to consumers.'' I think filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in today's environment is indeed impacting the price of petroleum so that we must defer filling for now to ease pressure on the market.

Finally, the Congress enacted and the President signed historic legislation in December 2008--the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. That legislation established a strong foundation to put our Nation on an alternative energy security pathway. This includes strong fuel economy standards and an expanded renewable fuels standard. Conservative estimates provided by the Securing America's Future Energy Coalition show that the new legislation would reduce net oil imports by 1.75 million barrels per day by 2020, increasing to 2.26 million barrels per day in 2022 and rising thereafter. These estimates represent roughly half of the theoretical SPR drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels per day. They also increase the number of days of protection afforded by a given quantity of oil in the SPR. Thus, our enactment of historic Energy legislation will, over time, increase the insurance value of the SPR, even if the actual inventory level is frozen or slightly decreased.

Let me be clear. I believe maintaining a Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in the economic and national security interests of this country. However, during this time of record oil prices, rising energy costs for consumers, economic downturn and tight global oil supplies, the U.S. Government should suspend taking highly valuable oil off the market to store underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

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

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act of 2007. This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to suspend filling of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, SPR, for 1 year. I appreciate that Senators Bingaman, Levin, Kerry, Collins, Lieberman, and Wyden have joined me as original cosponsors of this legislation. This bill directs the Secretary to stop filling the reserve through direct purchase, royalty-in-kind or any other measures. The secretary may only resume filling if the price of a barrel of crude oil drops below $50 per barrel during the remainder of 2008.

The price of a barrel of oil is reaching record highs and global supplies of oil continue to shrink. During this period of volatile markets and short supply, it makes no sense to me for the U.S. Government to continue to take highly valuable crude oil, especially light sweet crude, off the market to store underground in a reserve that is at least 96 percent full. Continuing to

``top off'' the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with highly valuable crude oil is putting upward pressure on oil prices and raising energy prices for consumers.

I believe that we must take a ``time out'' from filling the reserve in order to send a signal to the market to reduce rising energy prices that are hitting American consumers' pocketbooks. Lowering energy costs will put additional money back into consumers' hands and will help provide a real stimulus to our economy in my judgment.

Historically, the average price of oil used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been about $27 per barrel. The Administration is now filling the Reserve with oil that averages over $90 per barrel, including highly sought after light sweet crude. This is a bad deal for American taxpayers and consumers.

On January 8, 2008, the Secretary of Energy sent me a letter stating that our Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains only 57 days of import protection and that the 50,000 barrels per day they are filling with is a small amount of the oil used on the global market daily. This is only part of the story. The fact is that the SPR, combined with our private oil stocks and refining inventories, total more than 118 days of import protection. The current levels in our strategic petroleum stocks are more than adequate to meet our international treaty obligations requiring 90 days of import protection for all OECD countries. I also disagree that taking 50,000 barrels per day off the market, especially light sweet crude, has no impact on energy prices. During the Clinton administration, Congress signaled that it wanted more than $200 million sold from the SPR in 1996, the price of oil dropped precipitously in the market. The market looks at many factors, including our filling of the SPR. This is another reason we can afford to temporarily suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Further, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides directional guidance to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The provision in law clearly states that filling the reserve must be achieved ``without incurring excessive cost or appreciably affecting the price of petroleum products to consumers.'' I think filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in today's environment is indeed impacting the price of petroleum so that we must defer filling for now to ease pressure on the market.

Finally, the Congress enacted and the President signed historic legislation in December 2008--the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. That legislation established a strong foundation to put our Nation on an alternative energy security pathway. This includes strong fuel economy standards and an expanded renewable fuels standard. Conservative estimates provided by the Securing America's Future Energy Coalition show that the new legislation would reduce net oil imports by 1.75 million barrels per day by 2020, increasing to 2.26 million barrels per day in 2022 and rising thereafter. These estimates represent roughly half of the theoretical SPR drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels per day. They also increase the number of days of protection afforded by a given quantity of oil in the SPR. Thus, our enactment of historic Energy legislation will, over time, increase the insurance value of the SPR, even if the actual inventory level is frozen or slightly decreased.

Let me be clear. I believe maintaining a Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in the economic and national security interests of this country. However, during this time of record oil prices, rising energy costs for consumers, economic downturn and tight global oil supplies, the U.S. Government should suspend taking highly valuable oil off the market to store underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

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

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

Madam President, I have listened with some interest today to many of my colleagues who have come to the floor to speak about what is called a stimulus package. I have never quite understood the word ``stimulus'' as it applies to economics. I did teach economics in college at one point. I guess the notion of a stimulus is to excite the economy, to do something to expand the economy.

The fact is, until a couple of months ago, the President was telling us the economy was doing really well; we have a strong, sound economy. The Secretary of the Treasury was telling us the economy is solid and we are on solid ground. Of course, most Americans knew better. Now we discover that the economy needs a stimulus. Let me describe why that is the case, and a response to some of the discussion on the floor of the Senate today.

We have had an almost unbelievable 7 years. President Bush came to the Congress at the start of his Presidency, and he said: President Clinton has left a large budget surplus. Alan Greenspan said he couldn't even sleep; the surplus was so big. He was worried the surplus was so large it was going to be a problem.

President Bush saw this projected surplus, a surplus in the first year of his Presidency and then projected for the next 10 years. He was so excited, he rushed to the Congress and said: You have to help me. We need to get rid of this projected surplus. We need to provide very big tax cuts. By the way, if you earn a $1 million a year in income or $10 million a year, brace yourself, I have big things in mind for you. I am going to give you a very big tax cut.

Some of us said: Mr. President, you said you were a compassionate conservative. Where is the conservative part of this? What if something goes wrong? These are just projections. Let's wait and see if these surpluses materialize.

The President said: Don't worry. Be happy. We want to give tax cuts, with the biggest tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

Sure enough, he got that through the House and the Senate--but not with my support. I did not vote for it. But almost instantly we saw, No. 1, the country move into a recession in 2001. Then we had 9/11 and the devastating attack by terrorists. Then we had a war in Afghanistan pursuing Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Then we went to war in Iraq and had all of the homeland security issues. All of a sudden, we had all of this extra expense, and we had a downturn in the economy. What had been budget surpluses turned into very large budget deficits.

The President, oblivious to all of that, said: It doesn't matter. Things are the same, as far as I am concerned. We want more and more tax cuts for upper income Americans.

So that has been the fiscal policy for 7 years: ignore the obvious, ignore reality, and just preach the positive message and hope everything turns out all right.

The fact is, everything has turned out all right for some. If you are at the top of the income ladder, you have to be ecstatic. Your share of the assets and wealth of this country has dramatically increased. But if you are someone at the bottom of the economic ladder, working two jobs, trying to make ends meet for your family, if you are someone who is trying to buy a home, somebody who is trying to hang on to a job in a plant that the owners want to move to China in search of 30-cent labor, if you are someone who works in a company that has now told you times have changed, you no longer get health care and your retirement program is gone and if you don't accept a $2-an-hour decrease, your job is going to Shenzhen, China, you are somebody who is having a tough time with things in recent years.

Then, all of a sudden, we see the subprime mortgage scandal. The subprime mortgage scandal is an unbelievable scandal with greed in every direction, the brokers making massive amounts of money with fast- talking sales pitches to a lot of folks, putting them in a new subprime loan at a 2-percent interest rate that will reset 3 years later at rates people have no capability of paying; just buy it and flip it in 2 years, and you will make a lot of money.

The mortgage companies that were advertising on television were saying: Hey, get a mortgage from us. If you have had bankruptcy, no problem. You have trouble, you have bad credit, no problem. Can't pay your monthly home bills, no problem. We will give you a loan. Come to us. Bad credit, come to us.

You saw the ads. All of us saw those ads. Those mortgage companies and brokers together ratcheted up this huge bubble. Then what they did is, when they sold these subprime mortgages, they cut them up like sausage. Just like meat-packing plants filled sausage with sawdust for filler, they sliced up these mortgages, collateralized debt obligations--some subprime, some decent loans--and securitized them and sold them, and nobody knew what they had. All of a sudden, people can't pay their house payments. Interest rates get reset. They have no capability of paying. We have substantial bankruptcy, home foreclosures--it is a huge mess. It has caused a serious drag on the economy.

Couple that with this President's fiscal policy in which we have a $600 billion requirement to borrow in this fiscal year alone and a $700 billion trade deficit, $2 billion a year that we import more than we export. That is $1.3 trillion in debt this year on a $13 trillion economy. That is a 10 percent indebtedness in 1 year on top of the greed that comes from a subprime loan scandal and an economy that seems to have come to a dead stop.

Then they say: We need to stimulate the economy. Yes, we probably do. This economy probably needs a lot more than stimulus. We need to hook up some jumper cables to something.

The Federal Reserve Board--a board that has gotten a lot of my attention over the years--has taken aggressive action. They seldom take aggressive action on anything. They did two cuts, a three-quarters of a percent interest rate cut and a half a percent interest rate cut. The fact is, that is a bold move for the Federal Reserve Board.

Now it is up to Congress to do something on the fiscal policy side. But it is just a step, an important step. Psychologically, we must take this step, or markets and others would have an apoplectic seizure. So we write a piece of legislation in the Finance Committee, try to bring it to the floor of the Senate, and we have people doing all kinds of gymnastics on the floor. They say: Well, this is loading up a bill with ornaments and goodies and projects and so on.

I guess they want to avoid the obvious. The obvious difference that exists with this stimulus package is very simple. This stimulus bill, coming out of the Finance Committee, is supported by the Democratic chairman and the Republican ranking member. Senators Baucus and Grassley said this: If you are going to stimulate the economy and you are going to give $500 rebates, you need to include the 20 million lower-income senior citizens who would not get a rebate under the House-passed stimulus plan.

Folks who work in this Chamber, take a shower in the morning, put on a blue suit, and come to work, are not, in most cases, trying to count their pennies to see if they will have enough for soup and medicine the rest of the week. But there are a whole lot of folks, senior citizens especially, living on fixed incomes who have an awful time making it stretch month to month. I meet a lot of them, especially a lot of older women living alone in many cases, trying to figure out: How do I make this income stretch to be able to pay for my medicine and to buy the food and pay the rent?

I mentioned medicine. Senior citizens are about 12 percent of the population. They consume one-third of all prescription drugs. One of the fastest growing elements of health care is the cost of prescription drugs. You can't do a stimulus package and decide that some 20 million senior citizens should not participate. You are going to give a rebate to the American people to try to stimulate the economy, and you are going to say grandpa and grandma don't apply, they don't count? What kind of approach is that? Grandpa and grandma don't count? We inherit this place from them. They were the stewards of this country of ours. They helped build this country. They provided the roots by which we, the branches, have been able to succeed. But now we have people in this Chamber who say grandpa and grandma don't count; millions of senior citizens shouldn't be a part of this.

The difference in the stimulus package being debated is one that is pretty stark: 20 million lower income seniors, many of whom need it most, under our proposal would get a rebate check of $500. To some, that doesn't mean much, I suppose. There are people around here who lose a cuff link worth $500, I reckon. But to a lot of people, $500 is very significant. We cannot--I emphasize--we cannot pass a stimulus package and walk out of that door with our heads high if we decide 20 million senior citizens don't count, that these senior citizens won't be included.

There is another issue in this piece of legislation that we passed out of the Finance Committee. It is something that for anyone who has studied rudimentary economics 101. It is one of the economic stabilizers in our economy: When there is an economic slowdown, you extend unemployment benefits. It is axiomatic that when there is a slowdown in the economy, you must extend unemployment insurance benefits. We have always done that. Yet those who object to what we have passed out of the Senate Finance Committee are saying, no, you can't do that. Don't support that. We don't support giving rebates to senior citizens who need it and we don't support extending unemployment insurance benefits to those at the bottom of the economic ladder who have lost their jobs.

Again, there is no one in this Chamber who would have lost their job during this slowdown. No one in this Chamber is going to go home and say, Honey, today wasn't a very good day. I was given notice that my job was over. It wasn't my fault. I worked pretty hard, but I was given notice that I am no longer needed. Nobody in this Chamber will have to get that message. But there are a whole lot of people in this country who have experienced that.

So when we talk about the economic stimulus package that came out of the Finance Committee, the major differences are simple and easy to understand. We say 20 million senior citizens cannot be left out of an opportunity for the rebate check. They too will stimulate this economy. They especially need that help. We say when those who have lost their jobs during an economic downturn and have run out of unemployment benefits, that their benefits should be extended, as we have always extended them during an economic downturn.

Yesterday, President Bush sent us a new budget, and it reflects much of what I have described of the priorities that seem to be completely backwards. The President's priorities are: Let's continue to borrow, borrow, borrow more money. Let's decide to cut substantially here at home the investments we should make in this country.

I spoke to a group about a half an hour ago that is very interested in rural water investments. All of us who come from rural States understand the urgency of getting good water to our communities. Rural water systems are unbelievably important. The President, as one example in this budget, said: Let's cut funding for the Corps of Engineers by $851 million. Let's cut funding for the Bureau of Reclamation by $183 billion. He said: Let's cut water funding for projects that will bring quality drinking water to people around this country in rural areas; let's cut that by about $1 billion.

I say consider this: In the President's budget, he said, let's cut water project funding in our country--the infrastructure investment that will bring dividends for years--let's cut that by $1 billion. This is from the Special Inspector General for Iraq. The Special Inspector General for Iraq says, we are now, American taxpayers, funding 967 water projects in the country of Iraq. We are going to cut $1 billion in water projects in this country, and we are funding 967 water projects in Iraq. We are designing and constructing the Ifraz main water supply project, $194 million. We are doing the Haditha project, the Baladrooz water supply project; we are building the water supply project at Meshkab. We are designing and constructing the water supply project at Nassriya. The list is long--I could read this for a long while. The water treatment plant in Sadr City, the water treatment plant in Al Wathba.

There is plenty of money, apparently, as long as it is overseas someplace. There is just not enough money to take care of things here at home. It is unbelievable to me.

By the way, while I am at it, most of this is done with contract work. We hire contractors. There is the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country with the hiring of those contractors. I brought this item to the floor a number of times--and I want to do it again, because I held about 17 hearings on this subject. I ask unanimous consent to show this towel on the floor of the Senate.

This towel was brought to us by Henry Bunting. Henry Bunting was a purchaser in Kuwait for the Halliburton Corporation, their subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root. I had a hearing about waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting which is hair raising: $45 for a case of Coca Cola, $7,500 to rent an SUV per month. How 50,000 pounds of nails that were ordered to Iraq and they were too short. They are laying in the sand now, discarded, because none of that matters. Henry Bunting said Halliburton said: Don't worry about it. The taxpayer picks up the tab. He held up this towel. He said: This is an example of everything that is wrong. My job was to order towels for the troops, among many other things. He said: I filled out a requisition to order towels for American troops in Iraq, and I ordered white towels. He said: My supervisor at Kellogg, Brown, & Root said, No, no, no, that is not the towel we are going to order. You are going to order a towel that has KBR embroidered on the towel, the initials of the contracting company, the Halliburton subsidiary. Henry said: Yes, but that is going to quadruple the cost. It is going to cost four times more to buy a towel like that. His supervisor said: It doesn't matter. This is a cost-plus contract. The taxpayers are going to pay for this. This is just a towel. It is a towel that costs four times what it should have cost for the American taxpayer. But it is not just a towel; it is a brand new $85,000 truck that has a flat tire, and because it has a flat tire and they cannot fix it on the road because they didn't have the right wrench, they leave it there to be torched; or an $85,000 brand new truck that has a plugged fuel line that is left to be set on fire. Why? The American taxpayer will pay for all of that. That is not a problem. Nobody will even know, except I know, and some of my colleagues know. Nobody seems to care, however, in the executive branch. Nobody.

When I see what is now coming to us in this budget--it is interesting. When I talk about this issue of a hand towel with the embroidered initials of the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, that cost four times more, but they said, don't worry, it doesn't matter, the taxpayers pay for that. We don't care about that. All of this is funded out of these emergency requests sent to us by the President. Here is what he has done. It starts again this year.

In 2002, the President said: We are going to fight a war, and I want $49 billion, and I want it now, and I want it declared an emergency, and we are not going to pay for it. We are going to put it on top of the debt.

In 2003, he said: I want $76 billion. I want all of it declared an emergency and we are going to put it on the debt. We need that for the war. In 2004, he said: I want $87 billion. We are not going to pay for it. Add it to the debt. In 2005: I want $82 billion. In 2006: I want $92 billion. In 2007, he said: I want $103 billion. Last year, for fiscal year 2008, he said: I want $193 billion. That is $16 billion a month, $4 billion a week. He said: I don't want any of this paid for. I want to add it to the debt, because I am sending soldiers to war and they are going to come back and help pay the bill. Now, that is nearly $700 billion--nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars, not a penny of it paid for. Not a cent.

Don't ever talk to me again about what is liberal or what is conservative. If this is a conservative President, as he claims, saying let's add almost three-quarters of a trillion dollars to Federal indebtedness because we don't have the courage to ask the American people to do what we should do, and that is pay for that which we are pursuing in Iraq--on top of this added to the debt, the budget we received yesterday is an almost unbelievable description of what has gone wrong and what will continue to go wrong as long as this administration doesn't recognize the unbelievable danger that comes from fiscal policy debt and trade debt.

As I indicated earlier, we are doing a stimulus package. I strongly support that which came out of the Senate Finance Committee. I strongly support the notion that we must include lower income seniors; we must include, for example, the stabilizers we have always included of extending unemployment insurance. All of that is very important. When we are finished with that, we must say to this President and to the next occupant of the White House that we have structural problems that cannot wait. We cannot possibly have a growing, vibrant American economy that expands opportunity for the American people unless we put our fiscal house in order. In terms of priorities, we can't be American leaders and say: Oh, by the way, let's cut $1 billion in water projects in the United States, and Katy bar the door, here are 967 separate water projects we want to fund in Iraq. We are going to say we can't build hospitals in the United States, but we will build hospitals in Iraq. We say we don't have enough money to rehabilitate the schools in the United States, but we will build the schools in Iraq.

My point is it is long past the time to start taking care of a few things here at home, and this President's budget is a completely bankrupt budget. This President's budget says the following: This President's budget says he will take our Federal debt from $8.9 trillion to $12.2 trillion in the next 6 years. Think of that. That is a complete abdication of responsibility. It means we have no leadership. It falls on our shoulders, it seems to me, to begin using some modicum of common sense, and we intend to do that.

I have some other things I was going to visit about today, but I want to wait because some of my colleagues are on the floor. I don't know whether Senator Reid is ready with the unanimous consent request, but when he is, I certainly would want him to do that. I also know my colleague Senator Sanders from Vermont is on the floor as well.

I would be happy to wait until after Senator Sanders makes a presentation. But I want to make a presentation about a couple additional issues that relates to some of this.

At this point let me relinquish the floor, and perhaps I could ask unanimous consent that after Senator Sanders is finished, I be recognized.

I will be no more than 10 minutes and probably not that long.

Mr. President, I had wished to conclude a couple of comments in morning business, after which I believe the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, will want to begin discussing an amendment. I talked about the stimulus package and about the economy generally. I wished to talk about two issues I have been working on that I think need to be resolved.

First, it is almost unbelievable to me, but there is a tiny little issue--not so tiny perhaps to some--that needs to get fixed. This administration decided they wanted to farm out the collection of taxes owed to the Federal Government to private debt collectors. A number of us--myself, Senator Murray, and others--objected strenuously. We tried that before, and it didn't work. The administration pushed ahead. We passed a funding prohibition through the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full U.S. House passed a bill saying don't do this. Nonetheless, the Internal Revenue Service and the Bush administration pushed and pushed very quickly. So they decided to farm out tax debt collection.

What they did was put taxes that were owed and not paid in the hands of private debt collectors. Now we have had 1 year of experience with it, and I want to share with my colleagues what has happened. It is almost breathtaking to hear.

What has happened at the end of a year is the cost of administering the program to provide these delinquent taxes to debt collectors for collection has exceeded the revenue by $50 million. In other words, we have a project where the Internal Revenue Service

says we are going to take some of these areas where the taxes haven't been paid, we are going to give them to private debt collectors, and we are going to give them a commission for collecting it. So at the end of a year, the IRS lost $50 million.

I don't know how you lose $50 million when you are collecting taxes. That takes some genius apparently. It was estimated by the National Taxpayer Advocate that if the same money, just over $70 million that was invested in this program, had been invested in hiring the agents at the Internal Revenue Service, generally based on what they calculate, they would have collected $1.4 billion. So for this investment, the IRS could collect $1.4 billion or they could lose $50 million. Talk about staggering gross incompetence.

It would be kind of nice to put in the Record the names of every person who was involved in the administration so they can somehow be recognized in a ``Hall of Shame.'' How on Earth do you lose $50 million at the Internal Revenue Service with a program as goofy as this one? Again, take delinquent taxes, give them to private debt collection, and lose $50 million, or take the same amount of money and invest it in IRS collection and collect $1.4 billion.

What is the choice? The President's people said the choice is to give it to the private collection agencies because we like to privatize everything, and they end up losing $50 million. That is unbelievable.

We are going to try once again this year--and I think we will succeed--to shut this program down. Aside from losing $50 million, we have had experience with this program before. It was tried before. It was a miserable failure when it was tried previously. We have examples of what happens when private debt collectors get ahold of these things. First of all, you have very sensitive information about people's lives, the financial information on tax returns. There are criminal penalties for dealing with that information. You are going to farm that out. They say: We will farm it out, but we will protect the information.

It makes no sense at all to have been through this and then to farm it out to a private debt collection agency and find one elderly couple who gets 150 telephone calls over 27 day from a collection agency. It turns out they were not the taxpayers who were being called but, nonetheless, their phone rang 150 times. That is the kind of thing that goes on and shouldn't, in addition to the incompetence of losing $50 million.

Senator Murray, myself, and many others are going to fix this problem. It is important the American people understand what happened, and someone needs to be accountable for it.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

I wish to mention one additional point because tomorrow Secretary Bodman is coming to Capitol Hill. He is the Secretary of Energy. I have great respect for Secretary Bodman. I work closely with the Department of Energy. I chair the appropriations subcommittee that funds all the water and energy projects in our country. So I have a relationship with the Department of Energy. I like the Secretary and I like some of the people who work for him down at the Department of Energy. But there is something going on down there that bothers me a lot, and I intend to talk to the Secretary about it tomorrow.

At a time when oil is priced at $90 to $100 per barrel and when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--that is oil we stick underground that is saved for a rainy day, a national emergency or a time when we desperately need the oil--at a time when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled, this administration is taking oil through royalty-in-kind payments from producers in the Gulf of Mexico and sticking it underground. They are taking oil out of the supply pipeline that should have gone into the supply pipeline, at a time when we have these unbelievable prices for oil, and sticking it underground in domes to increase the supply in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is exactly the wrong thing to do at this point in time. It is exactly what we should not be doing.

From August of 2007 to January 2008, 8.4 million barrels of oil were taken out of the supply. That is oil that was given as a payment in kind for the royalties our Government was owed. Instead of taking that and putting it into the supply, using the money to reduce the Federal debt and having the oil in the supply pipeline, the Dept. Of Energy stuck it underground. So at nearly a hundred dollars per barrel, we are putting oil underground, which tends to price gasoline at a much higher rate because you are diminishing supply at a time when that is the last thing we should do.

Now, the strategic petroleum reserve is filled with about 700 million barrels of oil. The administration's approach is: Well, let's top it off. Let's fill it to 727 million barrels of oil. The administration just awarded three companies contracts--Shell, Sunoco Logistics, and B.P. North America--to place an additional 12.3 million barrels of royalty-in-kind oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next 6 months. So that means another 12 million barrels will be taken out of supply and stuck underground.

I mean, can anybody think of something that makes less sense at a time when $100 or $90 or $80 a barrel of oil exists? People are driving to the gas pump and having to consider a mortgage to fill their tank. Can't anybody think of something that we should rather do than take oil out of the supply pipeline and stick it underground? It makes no sense to me at all.

So I am going to propose legislation that says no more for filling the strategic petroleum reserve for the next year, unless oil drops below $50 a barrel. Let's take that royalty-in-kind oil and put it in the supply pipeline and make sure it contributes to an increasing supply and, therefore, lower prices for gasoline. Instead, the administration is intent on taking that oil and sticking it underground. That will have the impetus of pushing gas prices up.

Now, some would say: We are not talking about a large portion of oil here. Well, no, it is true, we are only talking about 12.3 million barrels in the next 6 months--8.4 million barrels from August to January. Is that a massive quantity of oil? No. But we have had witnesses testify before the Senate Energy Subcommittee and the Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that the government is taking light sweet crude, which is part of a smaller subset of more valuable oil, and putting it underground that has the effect of increasing the price of gasoline.

So I am going to ask the Secretary a lot about this issue tomorrow when he appears before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, and I intend to address this in the appropriations process this year so that we can prevent this from happening further. At least until the point we have seen the price of oil come back down. My legislation proposes a prohibition from filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for 1 year or at least until a time when the price of oil comes back below $50 a barrel.

Again, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is nearly 96 percent filled. Why would we put upward pressure on gas prices? Because the Federal Government has decided to do things that would put upward pressure on gas prices by putting oil underground at a time when we have hundred- dollar-per-barrel oil. It defies common sense. You couldn't find two people in Mike's Bar in Regent, ND, to make a judgment like that after they have been there a couple hours. Just common sense would tell you this makes no sense and we ought to stop it, and I intend to visit about this at some length with the Secretary tomorrow when he comes before the Senate Energy Committee.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, February 7, at 9:30 a.m., in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Robert G. McSwain to be Director of the Indian Health Service.

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

committee on rules and administration

Madam President, I was on the floor during the debate and vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 5140. My vote was not recorded. I would like the Record to reflect that, had my vote been recorded, I would have voted ``aye.''

Madam President, are we in morning business?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for such time as I may consume.

Madam President, we will have a piece of legislation come to the floor, we believe tonight--and perhaps tomorrow morning--that deals with the economic stimulus package, as it is called, to try to stimulate the economy. We are either in a recession or near a recession.

The Federal Reserve Board today took additional action to cut interest rates by another half of 1 percent. That follows the three- quarters of 1 percent cut recently by the Fed, within the last week and a half. So the Federal Reserve Board is using monetary policy tools to jump-start the economy, and the thought was that the fiscal policy side coming from the Congress and the President would require--or recommend, at least--some kind of stimulus package. So there is a stimulus package being developed that would provide payments--rebates of sorts--to American taxpayers. The discussion in the U.S. House is $600 per taxpayer. The Senate bill that has been proposed is $500 or $1,000 per couple.

One can make a number of observations about this, wondering about the advantage and the importance of a fiscal policy that has a stimulus package. I think it is probably necessary for psychological reasons, if not for economic reasons. It is about 1 percent of the GDP that is being proposed. We have a $13-plus trillion economy, and I don't know how about 1 percent of that--$130 billion, $150 billion--for a stimulus

package is going to stimulate the economy so much, but I think it is probably psychologically important that we do something here, so I expect to support it.

There are a couple of things I intend to recommend. And I don't know how many amendments we will be moving on this bill, and I don't know what the circumstances might be. I know the bill will be brought to the floor with an unending appetite for amendments, so I understand and expect that we will have to limit some amendments. I want to suggest, however, two amendments that I think have some merit and that ought to be considered.

The first one ought to be really easy, in my judgment. The first one is a message we should put on every check that goes out. If we are sending checks to American taxpayers, we ought to have on this check this statement, in my judgment: ``Support our economy--buy American.''

Now, why is that the case? Well, because of the trade deficit we have in this country. You will see the hemorrhaging of red ink as a result of our trade deficits year after year. They have grown unbelievably. We now have roughly an $800 billion trade deficit in a year. We have so much in consumer goods that are being purchased from overseas, with cheap labor overseas, and being brought to the big box retailers in our country and purchased by American consumers. So the proposition of sending a rebate to American taxpayers, $500 or $600 per taxpayer, the purpose of which is to have them spend that and to boost consumer spending and, therefore, boost the economy--it does not do much to boost our economy if, in fact, we are providing a rebate, a check to taxpayers, and they spend it on imported goods. In my judgment, that is supporting foreign labor, not American labor.

This is American money spent in a way that is designed to boost the economy, and so it seems to me it ought to be sent with a check that reminds Americans: Support our economy--buy American. We are going to send, what, probably 150 million checks out in the coming months with the stimulus package? Why not have 150 million messages just to remind people, to the extent they can, that it is very important to buy American, because we are trying to stimulate the American economy, not the Chinese economy, not the Japanese economy, and not the European economy. We are trying to stimulate the American economy. So it would be very helpful if they pay a bit of attention to the notion of what this money is about: Support our economy--buy American.

I hope there isn't one person in this Chamber who would object to that. It won't cost anything. This would add no cost to the check that is to be printed, and it seems to me an important and timely message to American consumers. To the extent they can and to the extent they will, they should be reminded that spending these funds in support of the product of American workers is what invests in and expands opportunity in the American economy. That is an amendment which I think should be added. I hope it will be added by unanimous consent, absent a managers' package. It is something that should be easy to do, and I would suspect no one would object to the message: Support our economy--buy American.

Second, I wanted to make a point about another amendment that I think should be included. I think this is more problematic at this point, but it is a piece of legislation I will introduce as well.

Part of the economic difficulty in our country is the substantial runup in the price of oil and gasoline. It is interesting to me that even as we have seen the price of oil go up, up, up, we see that the Energy Department continues to put oil underground; that is, we receive royalties from certain oil wells, and they take those royalties in kind--that is, they take the royalties in the form of barrels of oil and they stick it underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Well, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now about 97 percent full. Even though it is 97 percent full and the price of oil has gone to $80, $90, and then $100, we are still taking oil and putting it underground. What that does is it takes oil out of supply and puts upward pressure on prices. It seems to me we ought to at least take a holiday during this calendar year, as long as oil is above $100 barrel. Why would you go into the market to purchase very high-cost oil and take it off the market and stick it underground? That puts upward pressure on gas prices, and it makes no sense for the Government to be doing that given the fact the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now 97 percent filled.

So I hope--and I have encouraged the Energy Secretary to do this, but he has resisted. So my hope will be that either now or at some point in the future on some appropriate occasion, the Congress will decide to tell him: Do not be buying oil at these prices, taking it off the market and putting it underground. By ``buying it,'' I mean taking it as royalty in kind. That makes no sense to do that. You talk about stimulating the economy, the way to stimulate the economy is to help bring some of these energy costs down.

Now about 8.5 million barrels have gone underground in the last 6 months. Some will say: Well, that is a pretty small part of the amount of oil we have and the amount of oil we use. Well, we held a joint hearing between the Energy Committee and the Homeland Government Affairs Subcommittee on the issue of energy markets, and particularly oil markets. At that hearing we heard from Dr. Phillip Verleger, who is an investigative researcher and energy expert. He pointed out that even a seemingly small decision with this issue of putting oil back into the SPRO at a time when we are short can have significant consequences. He says the DOE is taking what is highly sought after, light sweet crude that is needed right now, and putting that underground in the petroleum reserve. He pointed out the volume of light sweet crude that they want to put into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve underground has only been three-tenths of a percent of the total global supply available, but it was adding as much as 10 percent to the price of light sweet crude.

Yet the Department of Energy insists and maintains that putting this royalty-in-kind oil underground has no consequence at all on the price of oil. Clearly it does. That is at odds with testimony we received before our committees. Clearly it has an impact on the price of gasoline. Filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when we have market record-high oil prices, as I said, puts upward pressure on the price of oil because even small volumes of oil off the market can have a dramatic price impact. That is especially true with what is called light sweet crude.

In recent days we saw President Bush visiting Saudi Arabia to ask the OPEC countries, particularly the Saudis, to increase production to help ease oil prices in our country. Well, the fact is, the OPEC cartel is going to meet this Friday to discuss whether any change to production is warranted. Their decision will impact the price of gasoline in this country this spring.

But there is another decision that will impact it. That is the decision by the Department of Energy to continue taking royalty-in-kind oil off the market and sticking it underground. This is exactly the wrong thing to do at the wrong time.

I have always been in favor of a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But with prices where they are, and an economy that is sluggish, it makes no sense to continue to do this. I believe what we ought to do is pass some legislation. If I were writing the stimulus bill, I would include this provision in the stimulus bill.

Those are two ideas that I think should be considered. The first I would hope would be considered by unanimous consent. I can't believe anybody would object to putting on a check that goes out to 150 million people: Support Our Economy. Buy American. I do not think anybody believes that we want to provide a bunch of money and hope they will spend it on goods made in China. That hardly expands opportunities and the economy in this country. I am not saying they have to spend it on American-made goods, but what I am saying is, we ought to remind them, to the extent we can, what we are trying to do here, and what this stimulus rebate check is all about.

(The remarks of Mr. Dorgan pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 437 are located in today's Record under ``Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, Marty began in the House Post Office to help pay his way through graduate school at Georgetown. He then worked to the Senate parking office. Then, in 1979, 29 years ago, Marty began working in the Senate Democratic Cloakroom. Marty worked his way up the ranks until being appointed Secretary for the Minority in 1995.

It is impossible to overstate Marty's importance to everything that we have done on the floor of the U.S. Senate: what comes to the floor, what gets off the floor, what gets amended or not.

But Marty has not just been indispensable on procedure and tactics. Marty has also been an invaluable strategic adviser to me, to the Democratic leadership and, I say with confidence, to every Democratic Senator and to more than a few Republican Senators

There just aren't many people I could say that about.

We have relied on him and will miss him because of his tireless work ethic, his excellent judgment and his ability to be the calm in the middle of the storm. And for anyone who has been in the middle of a storm around here, staying calm is no easy task.

Marty has also put in the hours. Early days and late nights were the norm. But, he is always been here. For that, we will always be grateful.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention his family and our gratitude to them for all the time he was here helping us rather than at home with them.

His wife Ruby is part of our Senate family and has endured Marty's very tough job, as have his children: Alexander, Stephanie, and Tommy.

To each of them, I want to say thank you for putting up with him and our demands on him.

I also want to mention Marty's mother, Evelyn, who is 95 years young. His mother is very proud of him and all that he has accomplished. And I want her to know that we are all very proud of him as well.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge Marty's successors. We are all so pleased that Lula Davis is our new secretary. Having more than 25 years of Senate service and many years of working with Marty, we all know she will fill these very big shoes and serve us all well.

Tim Mitchell is replacing Lula as Assistant Democratic Secretary. He has 16 years of Senate service and a wealth of experience and we look forward to working with him as well in his new capacity.

And Jacques Purvis will move from the cloakroom and join Trish Engle as one of our floor assistants and I congratulate him on that move as well.

Mr. President, I am going to be introducing legislation-- I have previously introduced this--that deals with the construction in the Congress of what is called a Truman Committee.

In fact, President Truman was from the home State of the Presiding Officer and the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee on the floor. So the two Senators from Missouri, of course, I know harbor great pride in Harry Truman.

One of the interesting things about Truman's tenure here in Washington, DC was not just his service in the Senate and not just him being President, but one of the sources of pride was his stewardship of something called the Truman Committee.

At a time when a President of his own party was in power in the White House, he and the Congress created a committee here in the Senate to take a look at waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting, particularly in the military. It cost him $15,000 to start it. Estimates are they saved $15 billion--in dollars from that time. Think of that: $15,000 to start the committee and saved $15 billion.

Now I know there are some who will disagree, but I happen to think it is long past time for us to be far more aggressive to find out what is happening to all this money. I will give you a couple of examples. One I have used a lot--I shall not today--by bringing a towel to the floor of the Senate, but I have held up a towel that Henry Bunting brought. He was a buyer for Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. He was a buyer stationed in Kuwait. One of the things he was to do was buy hand towels for American soldiers. So he filed out the order for hand towels. His supervisor saw it and said: No, we are not going to buy those hand towels; we are going to buy hand towels with the initials of our company embroidered on the hand towels, KBR.

He said: Well, that will almost triple the cost. He was told: That does not matter; this is a cost-plus contract. The American taxpayer is going to pick up that tab.

So they ordered the towels that cost four or five times more. It did not matter; the taxpayers pick up the tab. That little towel is a very small reminder of what has been going on and how much the taxpayer has been fleeced. There is so much more.

Why do we need to track these things? Well, Paul Mullinax is a good reason. I called Paul Mullinax one Sunday. He was a truck driver in Florida. Here is what Paul Mullinax did. This is a good example of contracting in FEMA.

Paul Mullinax drives a refrigerated 18-wheeler. He was in Florida. He got a call from FEMA when Hurricane Katrina hit. They needed ice down in the Gulf of Mexico. So Paul Mullinax, God bless him, drove up, and he picked up some ice in New York for a FEMA contract; picked up a load of ice in his refrigerated truck. They said: Take it to Carthage, MO. This is ice that is destined for the Gulf of Mexico for the relief of the Katrina victims.

He drove his truck from New York to Carthage, MO; got there, they said: No, you are not supposed to be in Carthage, MO; you are supposed to be in Montgomery, AL. So he turned his truck south and east and went to Montgomery, AL. When he got there, he said there were over 100 18- wheel trucks. They had him park. He sat there for about 12 days with his refrigerated unit running on his truck. After about 12 or so days they sent him to Gloucester, MA, to offload his ice. This is ice destined for victims of Katrina. He picked it up in New York, went to Carthage, went to Alabama, and then they said: Offload it in a warehouse in Massachusetts, 15,000 bucks for that truckload of ice.

There were another 100 18-wheelers sitting where he was sitting. Should somebody ask questions and say: Who on Earth is responsible for this? The answer is yes. Waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting is epidemic. It is unbelievable.

Connected to the Katrina issue, this is a photograph, of course, of 8,420 brandnew, never-used FEMA trailers clogging an unused airport. The question is: Who made that decision and why? Were there any consequences as a result of this decision? I do not know.

This is money wrapped in Saran Wrap. Hundred dollar bills. This guy, by the way, told me--this is in a basement in Baghdad. This guy told me that they wrapped this money in Saran Wrap and occasionally threw it around like a football because it is about the size of a football--I have never wrapped hundred dollar bills. I have never seen that many hundred dollar bills. But if you wrap hundred dollar bills in Saran Wrap, I guess that is what it looks like. He said they actually threw them around like footballs in that room in Baghdad. The reason these were wrapped in Saran Wrap, with some rubber bands around them, is because this guy was in charge of distributing the money. He said we were paying contractors and subcontractors in Iraq, and our motto was: We pay in cash; you bring a bag.

This payment happened to be a $2 million payment. We pay in cash, so bring a bag. He said it was just like the Wild West.

Question: Who is watching over all of this? Who is tracing it all? There is, I think, substantial evidence, with the release just 2 days ago of the Special Inspector General for Iraq, and another report, if you go through all of those reports, not just with Iraq, go through the reports on Katrina, and so many other similar examples, there is, I think, substantial evidence to lead one to conclude this is the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country.

Harry Truman, at a time when there was substantial concern about that, was able to get a select or special committee created here in the Congress, bipartisan; cost $15,000 to create, they saved $15 billion. Pretty successful. It ought to happen again. I am going to introduce legislation today, once again. We have voted on it several times previously. I propose that we once again create a Truman Committee, a bipartisan committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse, and on behalf of the American taxpayer say: This cannot continue. This has to stop.

I am going to make a longer presentation at some point, but I wanted to simply indicate that there is so much that needs to be done on this issue, and my hope is that at last, at long, long last, this Senate will adopt a select committee or a special committee similar to the Truman Committee.

If ever the American taxpayer deserved good Government, it is now, with something like this in which we can begin to unravel who got what and how we stop this from happening again.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, this is a complicated and certainly an important issue. It seems to me that it takes two sides to compromise. One of the things I am curious about, as I listened to this and to the Senator from Kentucky, the minority leader said we are ready to move forward. He said he is disappointed in the delays. Isn't it the case, however, that last week, when the cloture motion was filed by the Senator from Kentucky, they decided at that point to block everything else and stop everything from happening until this week? It seems to me this delay has occurred because the other side has blocked the ability to offer amendments. Had we offered amendments, we would have probably been done with that at this point.

I say that there is not anyone in the Senate I am aware of--no one-- who doesn't believe we ought to extend this FISA law. Nobody is in that position. Isn't that the reason for the delay and the reason we have not moved forward--that we were blocked when the Senator from Kentucky filed his cloture motion?

Mr. President, I have listened with great interest this morning. It has been fascinating for me to see a party block access to making progress in the Congress and then several days later come and complain that progress hasn't been made. That is a Byzantine approach to legislating.

I do agree, however, that we don't want bad habits to exist here. And even though I am honored to serve in this place, I have often called this the place of 100 bad habits, which would include myself, of course. It is hard to get things done in this place, but I am not suggesting one side or the other side is all wrong.

I am reminded of Ogden Nash's poem:

He drinks because she scolds, he thinks. She scolds because

he drinks, she thinks. Neither will admit what is really

true: He is a drunk; she is a shrew.

I understand both sides bear responsibility for difficulty from time to time, but let me say this: On this issue of FISA, it strains credibility for a party that says: You may not move; we will block you. We insist that we get 60 votes on every amendment. Every amendment has to have 60 votes, otherwise we filibuster. If that is the case, we don't make progress. And I don't think you can say: Well, we are going to object to progress, and then we will complain that progress isn't made. That makes no sense to me.

I don't know of anybody in this Chamber who doesn't want the FISA amendments to be extended and resolved. Let's do that and get it done. Let's have a little cooperation. But cooperation takes two parties, and it is long past the time to do that. As I have said, we have had a lot of bad habits in this legislation.

Let me ask unanimous consent that my time be extended, however, for the minute or so the Senator wishes to inquire.

Mr. President, it certainly does not make sense. In fact, exactly the opposite. That is nonsense, to bring a bill to the floor and say: Look, regular order would be to bring up amendments. If a majority of the Senators agree with them, those amendments are approved. But we don't like regular order. Let's decide every amendment that shall be brought up shall have to have 60 votes. Why? Because if not, they will filibuster every amendment and then complain nothing is getting done. No, it does not make sense, I would say to my friend.

Now, I didn't come to talk about that, but let me talk a moment about this issue of the economy. This is a discussion about starting the engine, or getting the engine working on this ship of state so that we move the country forward. It is about jobs and expanding opportunities for the American people because when the economy contracts, people run into trouble.

They are the ones who get laid off, the folks who are working in plants and working at the bottom for minimum wage. They are the ones who lose ground during an economic contraction.

Well, it used to be on the old automobiles, when you started an engine, you had to crank it. And then we went from a crank to a starter, so you push a button or turn a key. Well, some people think our economy is simple as that. It is not, of course. A large component of our economy is people's confidence. If they are confident in the future, they do the things that represent that confidence--they make that purchase, they buy a washer and dryer if they need it, they buy a car, they take a trip. In doing so, because they are confident about the future, they expand the economy. If they lack confidence in the future, they do exactly the opposite--they defer the purchase of that piece of equipment for their home, they defer the purchase of the car, they defer the trip--and the economy contracts.

We have a problem with this economy for a lot of reasons. I have described some of them on the floor of the Senate recently. But the Federal Reserve Board recognized that problem and took a very bold action--three-quarters of a percent interest rate cut--and likely will do more in the next couple of days. The impression is that we also should do something called a stimulus package; that is, stimulus with respect to fiscal policy. I do not object to that. In fact, I think we probably have to do that because a whole lot of what is going on in the market these days is about psychology.

I have indicated this before. I have called the field of economics psychology pumped up by helium. I think that is a pretty adequate description of what it is. People think it is science. It is not. It is a circumstance in which we know very little about the way this economy works. We do have more stabilizers in the economy than we did decades ago, so we have been able to even out a bit some of the recessions and the downturns. All of that has been helpful. We may be in a recession now. No one knows. We probably will not know that until we see it in the rearview mirror. But if we do a stimulus package on fiscal policy-- and I think that is a reasonable thing to do--I do

not think it is going to have a significant impact on the economy. Suggesting 1 percent of our GDP as a stimulus--it is not going to have a dramatic impact. But psychologically, I think we must do a stimulus.

Let me say that I do think what the Finance Committee chairman is talking about makes a lot of sense. If you are going to do a stimulus package and you are going to provide some kind of rebate, make sure you include senior citizens, many of whom are living on lower incomes. They are the ones who are going to spend it. They are the ones who are going to contribute to additional purchasing power in the economy. So you should not leave out the millions of senior citizens if you are going to do a stimulus package. I support including senior citizens in that stimulus package.

You know, the President and a couple of my colleagues just said: Well, you cannot change it. The House did it. The President wants it. You cannot change it. They come here, and they always suggest that this is like a loose thread on a cheap sweater: you pull the head of the thread, and the arms fall off. That is not the case at all.

The House did its version of a stimulus package. We should do ours. We have some better ideas. But we ought to get it done quickly, and we ought to resolve it with the House and send it to the President. Extending unemployment benefits is something we always do in an economic downturn, and we should do it again, in my judgment.

But let me say that in a stimulus package that is brought to the floor of the Senate that does not have a cap on who is going to get the rebates makes no sense at all. And there is talk about that, that we will get a stimulus package and have no cap on the rebate. We are going to send Bill Gates a $500 check to see if we can stimulate the economy a little bit. That makes no sense. You have to have a cap. This ought to go to middle income and lower income families. They are ones who will spend it and the ones who will be able to give a jump-start to this economy, to the extent the stimulus package actually does that. But as I said, psychologically I think we have a responsibility to use fiscal policy to do something in this general direction.

Now, the Senator from Connecticut just came to the floor, and he has been working on something I am very interested in; that is, infrastructure investment. If we just do a short-term stimulus of 1 percent of the economy and that is all, we are not going to give this economy the kind of boost or give the investment to this country that it needs. We need a second step, and the second step ought to be the big step, and we ought to take a look at what is going on in the infrastructure of this country.

My colleague has a bill, the Dodd-Hagel bill, that I think makes a lot of sense. We had a meeting on that on Friday, a rather lengthy meeting with a lot of people. Here is the situation.

Infrastructure investment is job creating. When you invest in infrastructure, you create jobs and you create a better country. Fly into Bagram Air Base and then get in a vehicle, drive to Kabul, take a look at the road, and ask yourself about infrastructure in a country such as Afghanistan. Fly into Tegucigalpa and then drive in a car to Juticalpa in Honduras, take a look at the road, and ask yourself about infrastructure investment. Or go to Haiti and land at Port-au-Prince, travel across the island to Jacmel, and consider for a moment what infrastructure means to a country. The fact is, you fly over Nicaragua and look down, and you do not see many roads because they do not have much of an infrastructure.

Then fly from any of those countries back to our country, come into an airport, get in a vehicle and drive down the road, and then think about infrastructure and what we have built over a long period of time that makes us proud of this country and allows this country to expand and grow and create opportunity. Then take a look at what has happened recently. This country stopped investing in infrastructure in any significant way. Our infrastructure is crumbling, in desperate disrepair. Big bridges fall down, and highways are crumbling. The fact is, we have schools that are in shameful condition in this country, water programs that are desperately needed for water treatment that are waiting for money to do it.

Now, when the Federal Government buys this highlighter pen for me--at my office, we have a supply of highlighter pens--this is expensed. Now, anybody who takes accounting understands you expense something on day one. But the fact is, when we spend $200 million building a piece of highway or invest $500 million in an airport, we expense that as well. No other enterprise that I am aware of in this country--none--will do what the Federal Government does and say: When you spend on infrastructure something that will last 50 and 100 years for this country, you have to expense it on the first day. We need a capital budget. We need an infrastructure investment bank. We need a whole series of things that represents a second step so that we can in the longer term invest in and expand opportunities in this country through infrastructure investment.

It is about jobs; it is about having pride in your country; it is about investing in your country in the kinds of things that allow economic progress. I don't want people to come out here and say: Let's do this stimulus and, boy, that will fix things. This is putting a little patch on something here; it is not going to fix things. It is something we should do, but if we do not do something much bolder, do something with much greater consequence in the longer term, that invests in this country's future, we will have missed a very substantial opportunity.

In the New York Times this morning, there is an op-ed piece by Bob Herbert that talks about the catastrophe in New Orleans. He talks about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the underground steam pipe in midtown Manhattan that blows up, the manhole cover that is blown out of the streets here in Washington, DC. He talks about South Carolina, where there is a long stretch of grievously neglected rural schools that has been dubbed ``the corridor of shame.'' You know, I have been in those kinds of schools. I have been in schools where kids were going to school in parts of the building that were condemned that were 100 years old, where sewer gas was coming up back through some of the rooms and they could no longer use those rooms. We have all seen those things. This country has to do better. And we can do better if we put together the kinds of infrastructure investment banks and the capital budget, and advance this country's interests by building this country.

I want to make one final point. We were told this morning that the President is going to ask for another $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. That is on top of the $196 billion he asked for last year in this fiscal year that we are in now. That is $16 billion a month, $4 billion a week. He wants another $70 billion. That will take us well over two-thirds of a trillion dollars. I ask the question: Is it not time we started investing some at home? It is not time we started taking care of things here at home? The sky is the limit for these kinds of investments.

This morning, my colleagues were talking about fiscal responsibility. Not one penny of the war costs has been paid for. The President has insisted that we send soldiers to war and we spend this money and charge it to future generations. They will fight the war and come back and inherit this debt. That is not fiscally responsible either. How about suggesting there is a priority here at home for investing in this country, expanding opportunity in this country, and taking care of things that have been too long neglected?

So I wanted to say that in the context of this discussion we will have about the stimulus program. It is important, but what is much more important is for ourselves to have a longer view of investing in this country and expanding opportunity in this country by making this the kind of place we are proud of.

The folks who came before us did that. They had some real vision. Dwight Eisenhower said: Let's build an interstate from coast to coast. That would not happen under some of the folks who exist in this Chamber these days. It just would not. But what a boon to this country, to connect America with interstate highways. So we can do a lot better, and must if we are interested in the long-term well-being of this country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator would yield for a question.

Mr. President, I was going to inquire of the Senator from Ohio if he found, as I did last night, it very unusual to have the entire State of the Union Address talking about the economic difficulties in our country and the need for a stimulus plan and so on without ever mentioning the real root causes at all of what has put us in this position: For example, a $700 billion, going to an $800 billion-a-year trade deficit; a fiscal policy budget deficit that is going to require us to borrow $600 billion in this fiscal year, just that combination is $1.3 trillion in red ink, 10 percent of our GDP in 1 year.

You know, the fact is, everyone in the world, including American citizens, look at that and understand that is so far off the track there is no way that works.

I support a stimulus package. I think it is fine to do for psychological purposes. But I am wondering if the Senator from Ohio wonders, as I do, why the President does not even seem to recognize the underlying causes of the economic difficulty in our country.

I agree with that analysis. I sat in that Chamber last evening. A joint session is always a wonderful privilege, to hear the President give the State of the Union Address. I was thinking, everyone is sitting here in dark suits and pretty well dressed up for a big occasion. Not one person in that Chamber is going to have their job lost because it was shipped overseas someplace in search of cheap labor. Nobody in this Chamber, nobody in the Senate has ever lost their job because somebody decided to outsource it to China for 30 cents an hour labor.

A lot of working people have to come home at the end of the day and say: Honey, I was given notice today. I lost my job because they found somebody halfway around the world who will do it for 20 cents an hour. They told me I can't compete with that. Our family can't live on that.

Just talking about the trade piece of this, the President completely ignores that. There ought to be a summit meeting at this point, if you have $1.3 trillion of red ink in 1 year. They say the budget deficit is only $300 billion, $275 billion. It is not. Take a look at the budget policy and find out how much we are going to increase the debt in this year. The debt is going to increase by $600 billion on the budget side and $700 to $800 billion on the trade side. That is $1.3 trillion off the track in one single year, 10 percent of our economic output. The fact is, that is unsustainable and is going to run this country's economy into a ditch. If we are going fix it, we have to diagnose it. This President hasn't come close to even acknowledging the difficulty on those two issues, fiscal policy and trade policy, let alone the issue of the scandal of the subprime loan which is regulators falling asleep or unbelievable hedge fund speculation outside of the view of regulators because they don't want to be regulated.

Would the Senator from Ohio agree that these are the underlying causes of concern about this economy?

The fact is, it is not something I enjoy doing, to talk about the difficulties. I would like to talk about the opportunities for this country. We will not get to the opportunities until we decide we are going to start taking care of some things here at home.

This President, in this past fiscal year, the one we are in right now, sent us a request for $196 billion of emergency money and said: I want it put on top of the debt. Don't pay for it. Add it to the debt. That is $16 billion a month, $4 billion a week for Iraq and Afghanistan, to replenish the military accounts for that purpose. Now we are told he is going to send another $70 billion on top of that. That takes us to close to three-quarters of a trillion that will have been spent, none of it paid for, all of it requested by this President as an emergency so it didn't have to be paid for. You look at that and you say to yourself: We have so much that needs doing, including not just on the budget side getting our act together but on the trade side, standing up for our country's interests, demanding fair trade, and, on the investment side, investing in infrastructure, all these things.

Last night it was almost as if the President was oblivious to the fundamental causes of the economic difficulty. This is a great economic engine we have, but the fact is, it needs some work. It doesn't need somebody to polish it with a rag and hum a nice tune. It needs real work to get this engine going again. The American people are innovative, great workers. It is an inspired country in which we live. That is why we have progressed the way we have over 200 years. But the American people need something to work with. We need to invest in working people. We need to have faith in working people. Instead what we have done is pulled the rug out from under working families.

I have used so many examples in the Senate, and my friend from Ohio knows all of them because a good number of them come from the State of Ohio, Huffy bicycles and Etch A Sketch and so many examples, all those jobs now in China that used to be in Ohio.

One of my favorites is to talk about Fig Newton cookies. The National Biscuit Company, NABISCO, took Fig Newton cookies from New Jersey to Mexico. Why? They could find somebody who would shovel fig paste apparently at a much lower cost than it cost to pay somebody to shovel fig paste in New Jersey. If you want to buy some Mexican food, buy Fig Newton cookies, made in Mexico, still called the National Biscuit Company, except it isn't so national anymore. Now they are made in Mexico.

That is one example of a hundred, a thousand, a million we could give and have. It is the question of whether this country is going to stand up for its workers and whether we are going to have the courage not just to stand up for workers in fair trade agreements but whether we are also going to put on track fiscal policy, trade policy, regulatory authority in a way that gives people confidence about the future of this economy and jobs and opportunity.

Mr. President, the Senator and I are working on a piece of legislation we intend to introduce that would establish benchmarks for trade agreements. We had a $1.5 billion trade surplus with Mexico. We did a trade agreement. Guess what. We turned that surplus into a huge deficit, a giant deficit, $60 billion to $70 billion a year. So we turned a surplus into a deficit, shipped a lot of U.S. jobs to Mexico. What we need is a trade agreement with benchmarks and accountability. Is this trade agreement meeting the objectives we developed for our country? After all, we are stewards of our country. We want our country to do well. Yes, we want to lift others. We want to it be a more prosperous world. But first we want this country to do well.

Wouldn't it be the height of irony, an unbelievable perversion, if we passed a ``stimulus package,'' and we borrow the money from China to put money in the hands of American families who can take it to Wal-Mart and buy a Radio Flyer little red wagon made in China. We borrow the money from China, give to it an American consumer who goes to Wal-Mart to buy a Chinese wagon. I say Radio Flyer because that is one of those great American brands. Almost every child in this country has hooked a ride on a Radio Flyer, either theirs or their neighbor's. Do you know how Radio Flyer got its name? It was an immigrant who came to Chicago, IL, and decided to start trying to make some wagons. He made a few of them. Everybody liked them. He was a guy who came to our country and was so pleased with being able to come to our country. He liked two things. He loved airplanes and somehow he liked Marconi and the radio. So he decided he was going to put Radio Flyer on the side of the little red wagon, and it began. For 110 years, they built Radio Flyer little red wagons in America, the dream of this immigrant innovator. They don't make them here anymore. They are all made in China. They closed their doors, went in search of cheap labor.

It is interesting that when we talk about this, some will listen and say: The guy from Ohio, the fellow from North Dakota, they don't get it. They are a bunch of xenophobic isolationist stooges who can't see over the horizon. It is a global economy. Get over it.

It is a global economy. But the rules have not kept pace with galloping globalization. The result is pushing down standards in the United States, moving jobs from the United States overseas, a hemorrhaging trade deficit that is dangerous for our country's interests, $2 billion a day every day that we import more than we export. The largest export from the United States by volume is wastepaper to Asia. Think of that.

My point is simple. I appreciate the work the Senator from Ohio and others have done on this issue. We have to put this country on track. I am for trade and plenty of it. But I demand and insist that we stand up for this country's interests and demand fair trade. We have to bring this trade deficit down. That is putting dramatic amounts of money in the hands of the Chinese and Japanese and others. Don't be surprised when you open the paper to find out what they have purchased next, one of our major investment banking companies, you name it.

We to have fix this. I know the Senator from Ohio came here with a statement and I interrupted him, but what I wanted to do was to say, I was very surprised last night to sit in the State of the Union Address and hear talk about a stimulus and hear talk about the economy and not even hear one whisper about the real vulnerabilities of this economy--a trade deficit out of control, reckless fiscal policy, combined with adding $1.3 trillion in debt, 10 percent of the GDP in 1 year, and then regulators asleep and apparently applauded for being asleep, while we have unregulated hedge funds, leveraged transactions, $43 trillion of notional value, something most people can't understand, notional value, credit default swaps. Sounds like a foreign language. There is $43 trillion of notional value out there in credit default swaps. There is a totally unregulated hedge fund industry with derivatives.

There are a lot of things we need to care about and we need to fix. The Senator from Ohio is absolutely right in talking about it on the floor of the Senate tonight. I deeply appreciate his willingness to let me interrupt him for a couple minutes because these are very important issues for our country.