Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of Senator Bingaman, that Jonathan Epstein, a fellow from his office, be granted the privilege of the floor during the pendency of S. 3709, H.R. 5682, and any rollcall votes thereon.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Conrad for his leadership, my colleague Senator Johnson, and so many others, Republicans and Democrats, who have worked together to try to construct a piece of legislation that would provide some disaster help for farmers, and then to try to get it through the Congress and get it to the President's desk for his signature.

This has been a long, tortuous trail. Twice before the Senate has passed disaster relief for family farmers--twice. Both times it went to a conference with the House. I was a conferee on both occasions. I was involved with my colleagues in attaching it to the appropriations bill as it went to a conference. We got to conference. Both times the President threatened to veto the legislation, to block it. And he got the conferees on the House side to require that it be taken out of the conference report. Therefore, this is the third attempt on the floor of the Senate to do this piece of legislation. And it is very important.

Let me talk for a moment about this issue of farming because we all come to work and we wear neckties and suits and take showers at the start of the day. Farmers take showers at the end of the day because their work is hard. They feed cattle. They plow the ground. They grease a tractor. They run a combine. They put up hay. They do all the things that represent very hard work out in the land, and they are economic all-stars.

The ability of the American family farmer to feed more and more people is pretty extraordinary. But they work very hard and they produce a product. If things cooperate, if they get decent weather, enough rain, the disasters don't come, the insects aren't there, then they produce a crop. They produce a kernel of corn, perhaps some wheat, a kernel of barley, some rice. What happens is the wheat gets puffed by a company someplace, after it gets hauled by railroad, and then it gets put in a box and sold as puffed wheat. The farmer gets almost nothing. The railroads take too much, and the box of puffed wheat costs an unbelievable amount of money.

The same is true with crisping rice. It goes into a box called Rice Krispies. The same is true with corn. They flake the corn, put it in a box, and call it corn flakes. The railroads get a lot of money for hauling that corn to market, the people who sell the corn flakes get a lot of profit, and the farmer gets almost nothing. That is what farming has always been about. But they only get the crop in the first place if they do not get wiped out by a natural disaster--whether disease, insects, or so on.

Now, what has happened in the last couple of years, particularly in our part of the country, the Dakotas were called the epicenter of a drought, the epicenter of a drought. So those farmers, who in the spring went out and planted their crops, discovered they did not have any crop growth at all. Nothing came up in those fields.

It is pretty unbelievable to drive by a field that is supposed to be a field of grain and see it look like a moonscape. I drove to Zeeland, ND, one day, a very small town just north of the South Dakota border. And as I drove into that town, to my left was a patch of ground that looked like moonscape--no vegetation at all. There had been no rain there. One hundred ranchers gathered in a small community hall in Zeeland, ND, to talk about what this meant to them. One after another, they stood up to talk about what it means when you don't get rain.

One fellow from another part of our country who had moved back to North Dakota said: I had never, ever understood why they measured rain in hundredths. How much rain did you get? Twenty hundredths, twenty- four hundredths. I never understood before why they measured rain in hundredths until I came to North Dakota, a State with 15 to 17 inches of annual rainfall in an entire year. And then what happens? It stops raining, and you have a drought and nothing grows; or it rains too much, and you get one-third of the annual rainfall in one day. We have had both happen. One happened the year before, in 2005; one happened in 2006.

Some will say: Well, you just come and talk about farming all the time. Family farmers this, family farmers that. There is a writer in North Dakota, a farmer, a rancher, down near Almont, I believe. His name is Rodney Nelson. He asks in some of his prose some very important questions: What is it worth to our country? What is it worth for a young person to know how to plow a field, to grease a tractor? What is it worth for a young person to know how to weld a seam, how to combine a field of grain? What is it worth to have a young person know how to build a lean-to, how to take care of cattle, how to care for livestock? What is it worth to have young people know how to work in the bitter cold and do chores in the morning in the bitter cold, or to be out in the fields when it is unbelievably hot, combining that field of grain? What is that worth? There is only one university in America where those studies are taught, and that is America's family farms.

What is it worth to us? Do we want to save those farmers when they run

through some tough times, when they reach a tough patch? That is what has happened here.

Always before our country has said: Do you know what. When you are out there alone, living under a yard light, and you and your family are trying to make a living and you get hit with a natural disaster, this country is going to help. This country wants to reach out a hand and say: You are not alone. We want to help you.

Well, in the new farm bills, they took out the disaster title. There ought to be one. I intend to offer legislation to put a disaster title back in the farm bills so we are not begging at the end of every session to try to provide some help to farmers who otherwise are going to go broke.

Let me describe, as my colleague has done, this picture of a soybean field in North Dakota. There are not any soybeans there. That is a field that is dead, with barely any green at all. Normally, these soybeans would be lush, filling that piece of ground, and would be a foot tall. But, as you can see, these plants are worthless. There is not much alive in that photograph.

I have talked to farmers who sold off their entire herds. I talked to a young farmer who built a herd of cattle for 3 years. It was his life's goal to take over from his parents. He built his herd for 3 years and was barely making it, and then this drought hit and he had nothing to feed his cattle. If you don't have anything to feed your cattle, those cows are going to market. His cows are gone. He is out of business.

Shown in this picture is a man from my State who was a rancher. His name is Frank Barnick. He is shown walking on a creekbed. It does not look like that. It looks like, again, a moonscape. That is a creekbed that would hold water for his cattle, but it is dry. Frank said this is the worst drought he has ever seen.

These people, Frank and his neighbors and friends, are not asking a lot from this country. They are asking if this country cares whether family farmers are able to live on the land and continue farming. They hope that the answer is yes and that this country understands farmers contribute something very important. Family farmers contribute something very important to this country. A fellow who I thought was a wonderful author, used to write in a book about the nurturing of family values in America. He always described that family values in America came from family farms, the seedbed of family values, and they rolled to small towns and big cities, nurturing the value system and culture along the way.

We have attempted time and time again to get some disaster aid for people who need help. We asked the President, in the middle of the drought this year, to come out and do a drought tour. He was not able to do that. I went back and recalled that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt came out for a drought tour. We don't have a lot of Presidents stop through North Dakota. When they do, we are enormously honored to have them join us and be a part of North Dakota.

I wanted to read you a couple of things that President Roosevelt said. He stopped in Huron, SD, exactly 70 years ago. Then he stopped in North Dakota--both on a drought tour, both on a train--and spoke to people. Here is what he said to our neighbors to the south in Huron, SD, on a drought inspection trip. He said:

No city in an agricultural country can exist unless the

farms are prosperous.

I understand our economy has grown in ways that make this less than an agricultural country, but it certainly has not been the case with respect to agricultural States, where a predominant part of our economic base is still agriculture and family farming.

Here is what else the President said in Huron, SD, 70 years ago, understanding that family farmers were having great trouble during that drought:

I have come out here to find you with your chins up,

looking toward the future with confidence and courage. I am

grateful to you for the attitude you are taking.

That is the only way you could ever farm. There isn't anybody who would decide to be a farmer if they didn't look forward to the future with hope. They plant a seed and hope. They hope what they planted will produce a crop. It is the only way farmers can exist.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt went to North Dakota 70 years ago on a drought tour, here is what he said:

But, when you come to this water problem through here, you

are up against two things. In the first place, you are up

against the forces of nature and, secondly, you are up

against the fact that man, in his present stage of

development, cannot definitely control those forces.

He continued:

Today, out here, I do not ask you to have courage and

faith. You have it. You have demonstrated that through a good

many years. I am asking, however, that you keep up that

courage and, especially, keep up the faith.

If it is possible for Government to improve conditions in

this State, Government will do it.

We hope that Nature is going to open the Heavens. When I

came out on the platform this morning and saw a rather dark

cloud, I said to myself, ``Maybe it is going to rain.'' Well,

it didn't. All I can say is, I hope to goodness it is going

to rain, good and plenty.

My friends, I want to tell you that I am glad I came here.

I want to tell you I am not going to let up until I can give

my best service to solving the problems of North Dakota.

Again, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 70 years ago to family farmers: If it is possible for Government to improve conditions, we will do that. He said to the farmers: You are not alone. We want to help.

Let's say that again today, let the Congress say that to our farmers: You matter. You make a difference to this country's future. Your contribution to our culture and our economy is important. This Congress has not forgotten that. We will remember it today by investing in the future and saying to family farmers: We want you to be able to continue to farm. We don't want you wandering, as you go into spring planting, whether you are going to have the ability to remain on the farm with your family, producing food for a hungry world.

We want to pass a disaster aid package, one that puts this Congress in the same position that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in 70 years ago, saying, if it is within the capability of this Government to help, we intend to help.

Again, let me compliment my colleague, Senator Conrad. I am pleased to work with him, as I have for many decades. This is an important amendment to offer now. While this is not the optimum place to offer this amendment, as this appropriations bill deals with different appropriations, we have not had the opportunity to do anything but this because we have not been given the opportunity to move this legislation separately. We offer it hoping for good will and for the support of others.

This is not partisan. It is bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats from farm country understand the importance and the value of doing this kind of legislation that says to family farmers: You matter to this country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. I understand the recognition is Senator Conrad and then a Republican slot at which point I would be recognized.

Mr. President, my colleague said it well. This is a picture of Frank Barnick walking in a creekbed that used to provide water for his cattle. One day this summer, it was 112 degrees in North Dakota. You can see the devastating drought that has occurred. The land looks like a moonscape.

Frank Barnick said this:

It is the worst drought I have ever seen. You do a lot of

praying and wondering how you are going to get through it.

One way you get through these things is when Congress decides to reach out with a helping hand and say: We want to help you, you are not alone. We have always done that. Somehow, this year it hasn't been quite as urgent to do it. I don't understand that.

Senator Burns and I have twice moved legislation through the Appropriations Committee. The Senate has twice passed agricultural disaster aid. It has moved through the Appropriations Committee a third time. My colleague, Senator Conrad, taking the lead in drafting, with many of us assisting, created the disaster legislation now pending that we should, by consent, move through the Senate. Yet somehow it remains blocked. It is not urgent for some. This isn't about the major industries--the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, or about another big industry--this is about individual families living a hard life, trying to make a living during tough times.

Will Congress help? We have helped endangered species. We can deal with them--birds, bats, butterflies, black-footed ferrets, and prairie dogs. When they are endangered, we say: Let's help. There is a species called family farmers and family ranchers who are out on the land living alone, trying to make do by themselves. When tough times come, when weather-related disasters come, they need help.

With the Katrina victims, when those who live on farms in the gulf were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, this Congress passed agricultural disaster aid for them. This Congress said yes. So did this President. They just said to all the rest of you in the country out there on the farm or ranch who got hit by an agricultural disaster, a weather- related disaster: You are out of luck, we don't support you. That was the message from the President. So he blocked it.

These are Republicans and Democrats on the floor of the Senate today working together to say this needs to get done. This is a priority. I hear the President and others go all around the world when there is trouble to say: Let us help. We are there to help you. What about here at home? Do we need to help here? You bet your life we do. We need to do it now.

The question of whether these folks will farm and ranch next year depends on whether we do what we are required and responsible to do. The answer for the last year now, and recent months, is that somehow we don't have time or the urgency and that we cannot quite get this done. That is the wrong priority for this country. This country has a responsibility to reach out to help its own, reach out to help people who are in trouble.

These are American all-stars, the people who live on the farms. They produce food for a hungry world. They don't ask for very much. When a weather disaster strikes--a hurricane, a drought, or a flood--and their entire income is washed away, they would hope, I would hope, and I think the values of our country would expect, that we would reach out a helping hand and say: We want to do this now. It is a time-honored tradition.

We are not asking for something strange or different. We have always helped during tough times. Let's make this an urgent priority this afternoon; we can do this. Let's make this a priority and decide we are going to do the right thing for America's family farmers and ranchers.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, let me just follow up on the point that this would be a bipartisan vote here in the Senate today. I want to point out that the piece of legislation Senator Conrad has worked on and that I have added as an appropriations measure twice has passed the Senate. Twice I was in conference with that. Twice it was defeated in conference. I wish to make that point because the implication was the Department of Agriculture didn't have much to do with that. The fact is the House conferees defeated this because the President threatened to veto it, and the House conferees were listening to the Department of Agriculture, which also opposed it.

Look, it seems to me we need the administration to understand what is going on here. This is bipartisan on the floor of the Senate. We need some help downtown as well from the Department of Agriculture as well as the White House to get this done.

Mr. President, I didn't come to the floor to speak about our economic situation, but I get so inspired by my colleague from New Hampshire that it is hard not to respond to at least a portion of it. Let me just make a comment about where we are with this economy of ours because the implication in the presentation was, boy, these tax cuts for wealthy Americans really did help this country.

In 2004 the economy grew at 4.2 percent. Yet the median family income in this country fell and poverty increased. This is the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to provide real income growth for the average working family in this country. The fact is, wages and salaries are now at a lower percent of the GDP in this country than they have been since they started keeping score in 1947; some progress for working people.

I admit, the folks at the top of the ladder are doing really well because the economic program provided by the majority and by this President says ``let's provide the largest tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans because we believe it will all trickle down someday to the rest of the American people.'' But, it will not and it has not and, regrettably, we now have a dramatic increase in indebtedness. We are going to borrow close to $600 billion in the coming year in budget policy and $800 billion in trade deficits. That is a total of $1.4 trillion in a $13 trillion economy. So, that puts us over 10 percent of red ink in a single year.

This is working real well? I'm sorry, that doesn't even pass remedial economics. That is not why I came to the floor to speak, but it is hard to ignore cheerleading for an economic policy that has put this country up to its neck in debt, hurt working families, and enriched the most wealthy Americans.

I came to the floor today and asked for some time because I wanted to talk about what I have been seeing in the newspapers and what I read this morning in the newspaper. The President, yesterday, went on another political trip, and the President, in Alabama, said that the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrats, are the cut-and-run party. That follows Congressman Hastert, the Speaker of the House, suggesting Democrats are coddling terrorists. That follows comments by the majority leader of the House, Congressman Boehner, suggesting that Democrats care more about terrorists than the American people.

This stuff is way beyond the pale. Cut and run, the President says? Cut and run? What kind of talk is this? I don't understand that. Is someone in this Chamber suggesting that we cut and run someplace? Not that I am aware of. Not one person I know of is suggesting we cut and run.

But it would be worth us talking about whether our fight against terrorism is a fight that is tough and smart because I don't believe the current fight is very tough or very smart.

You know, it is probably useful for us to review some history. So, let me do a bit of that, since the President is suggesting that his party is the party that

is muscular and the other party is weak.

Winston Churchill once said: The farther back you look, the farther forward you see.

Let's look back, August 6 in 2001. On August 6, 2001, the President received what is called a Presidential Daily Briefing which said that ``Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States.'' That was the heading of the briefing received by the President: ``bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.''

Here is what the 9/11 Commission report said, and I will give you the page numbers. After that briefing to the President on August 6 of 2001, ``bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.,'' here is what the 9/11 Commission said they found, on page 260: The President, ``did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General, nor did he recall whether his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had done so.''

On page 261, the 9/11 Commission found that the President's National Security Council never met to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of the PDB that said ``bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.'' Imagine that, the President was told, on August 6, 2001, that ``bin Laden determined to strike in the United States'' and nothing was done.

In fact, the 9/11 Commission found, on page 262, no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers regarding the threat of an al-Qaida strike in the United States.

The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, page 262, did not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat in the weeks prior to 9/11.

Finally, it says this, page 265 of the 9/11 Commission report:

In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response

to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have

a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened.

Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic

surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat.

State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to

implement the FBI's effort. The public was not warned.

Those are the facts of what was and was not done by the President and his advisors after they were warned on August 6, 2001 that ``bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States.'' Those are not my facts, but the facts on the record from a bipartisan commission that investigated following the specific warning of August 6.

Now the President is saying, ``Cut and run.'' Let me describe a bit more history. The President and his advisers also said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We now know they were not. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

He said the aluminum tubes were being purchased to reconstitute nuclear capability in Iraq. We now know those who told us those were facts knew that there were other facts at hand inside the administration that disagreed with their conclusion, but they never saw fit to offer that to the Congress or the American people.

Mobile chemical weapons labs, we were told, were a significant threat. The development of mobile chemical weapons labs in Iraq, we now know, came from a fellow code-named ``Curve Ball.'' He was the only source. One source. A man named ``Curve Ball,'' apparently someone who is probably an alcoholic and a fabricator. A single source tells this country there are mobile chemical weapons labs in Iraq, and this country, through the Secretary of State, tells the world that it's a fact. Yet, it turns out to be a fabrication. One source, a drinker and a fabricator, told someone about it and it becomes part of this country's national dialog.

Yellowcake. I don't need to go much further about yellowcake from Niger which turns out not to have been true either, with forged documents, mind you.

And Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, in Prague, turns out not to have been true.

As a result of all of that, the war on terrorism took a detour and we went to Iraq. We are now in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was found in a rat hole. He is now on trial. Is that good? Sure, it is good. He was a repressive, brutal dictator who murdered people. Sure, that is good that he's out of power.

We are now in the middle of a civil war. Yes, we can describe it that way, probably a low-grade civil war, but a civil war in Iraq. That is where we have American troops stationed at present. And the President just says, stay the course. If anyone suggests, maybe we ought to have a discussion about being smarter and tougher in winning that war, the President says you believe in cutting and running. Being at war deserves thoughtful debate, thoughtful debate about how to win that war, about the detour from the war on terror. Just saying cutting and running, that is thoughtless debate, in my judgment.

Stay the course? Stay the course? How? Where? When? For what? The fact is, it is a mess. We have ourselves in a mess. We cannot pull American troops out of Iraq. None of my colleagues, I believe, have suggested we should. None that I am aware of have suggested we should.

But stay the course? Shouldn't we be smarter, tougher, more effective, and make course corrections when necessary? Course corrections that will give this country a chance to succeed rather than fail? We have debates about wiretapping in the context of all of this because the President has decided he is going to speak about Iraq in the same context as the war on terrorism. Of course, they are different. They are related somewhat now because we went to Iraq, but they were different. So the President talks about wiretapping. I am for wiretapping conversations between al-Qaida and the United States.

I say, wiretap, eavesdrop, find out what terrorists are saying. But no President, no Republican and no Democratic President, ought to have the right to indiscriminate eavesdrop and wiretap on all Americans.

We do not even know what this has been about. We do not know how extensive it has been. We don't know how many Americans have been listened to, how many records have been looked at. Yes, let's wiretap and find out what al-Qaida operatives are saying in telephone calls. Let's also protect the basic liberties of this country as we do so.

Last week, we had three people testify before a policy committee hearing, with a combined service to this country of over 100 years. They were all combat veterans from Iraq. They led our troops. Two generals, two-two star generals and a colonel. One of the two star generals was offered a promotion to a third star and had a bright promising future, but he turned it down and resigned. He did that because he could no longer serve under the Secretary of Defense and follow a flawed strategy and policy.

Here is just one example of what they said. They repeatedly asked for more troops in Iraq. As commanders of their units they repeatedly asked for more troops and repeatedly were turned down.

That is at odds with what we, all of America, were told all along the way by GEN. Tommy Franks and General Myers. That is also at odds with what General Pace has stated standing next to Secretary Rumsfeld and standing next to President Bush. These Iraq combat veterans said we repeatedly asked for more troops. We needed more troops to finish the job and do the job, to prevent the growth of the insurgents in Iraq, and we were repeatedly denied. That is at odds with everything the American people have been told.

That's not all. Body armor? A young man told me he signed up to go to Iraq, felt it was his duty after 9/11, quit school to do it, and when he gets there his mother, an elementary schoolteacher, had to go online on the Internet to purchase body armor to send to her son in Iraq.

Colonel Hammas said, we know we have better armored vehicles to protect our soldiers than the up-armored Humvees. We know we have better armored vehicles. We have already produced 1,000 of them. Why are we not mass producing those vehicles? At the end of World War II we were producing 50,000 airplanes a year to support that war. This country mobilized and said, we are in a war, we are going to win it, we are going to produce what is necessary to support our troops, to protect our troops. Right now, we have better armored vehicles, but we are not producing them. We have not marshalled this country to fight this war, to protect our troops, to win. We have not mobilized this country.

Don't believe me, talk to the generals who have been there, who now are risking their reputations by being willing to speak out now on behalf of the troops who can't speak, who can't tell us these facts.

There is an old saying, ``A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on.'' But finally the truth is getting fully dressed. We need the truth and the facts to understand what this country confronts. This country has great capabilities. We should be one nation indivisible. We are not these days. There is too much shouting. There are too many slogans like cut and run.

We should be one nation as we confront this terrorism that threatens our country. We should be one nation as we search for ways to deal with the conflict in Iraq and to protect American soldiers who are there on behalf of their country.

Most importantly, we need to be tough and smart as we take on these challenges. This is a new war, a different war, the war against terrorism and the circumstances that our troops find themselves in, in Iraq, fighting a war against an insurgency that doesn't wear uniforms. This requires us to be smart and tough, requires us to change tactics and strategy when necessary and to have a national discussion about how we succeed as a country.

Yet this President will hear none of it. He will not hear and he will not listen. He is content to go to Alabama and say that those who openly question anything he does are people who suggest we should cut and run. I regret that.

What we need to do, it seems to me, is to accept advice from some of the best minds in this country. Bring people together, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, academics and others, bring them together and let's get the best of what everyone has to offer instead of the worst of each.

Let's bring people together in this country. Let's stop this nonsense, one side is coddling terrorists, one side wants to cut and run. That is a playbook we have heard before. It is tired. It is limp. It makes no sense. It divides this country.

I ask the President, the Speaker of the House, the majority leader of the House and others, stop this sort of thing. Let's join together and work together to find ways to solve problems; to, as I said, be smart and tough in ways to defeat terrorists, take on these terrorists as one nation.

If I sound upset by what I read in the paper today, I am. I don't think it is worthy of the kind of debate we ought to experience in this country.

We have seen it twice leading up to the last two elections. We saw the fellow who lay on a battlefield losing one arm and two legs bleeding for his country. We saw him tarnished in television commercials. Political commercials equated him with Osama bin Laden, questioning his courage and commitment to his country. It made a lot of people sick to see that sort of thing.

Maybe we can have a national debate that elevates the discussion of this country a bit. Maybe we can have a national debate that sets a little higher tone. I hope so. We can agree that this country is in a tough fight, one we need to win. We will not win this fight if we have these kind of political tactics continued again, one more time, the next 30 days before the election, the third election in a row questioning someone's patriotism, questioning someone's commitment to their country.

They did that even with the generals. The general, the two-star general who refused a third star and resigned instead, who commanded the first infantry division in Iraq, had his commitment to his country questioned. Why? Because he had the temerity to speak out, to say, ``I was there. I was leading my troops, I was asking for more troops and I was turned down.'' People need to know that.

We shouldn't be questioning the motives or patriotism of people who have committed themselves to their country, who have dedicated their lives to their country, our country.

Let's elevate this debate. Let's come together. Let's act as one America. And let's fight these terrorist groups. Let's succeed and prevail, together.

Yes, let's find a way to accomplish our objectives in Iraq. Let's do that. If it takes more troops, let's do that. If it takes a different strategy, if it takes changing the course, let's do that.

But let's do it together. Let's not get on Air Force One and go to a State six or eight States away and suggest that your political adversaries want to cut and run. That hardly serves thoughtful debate in this country. This country deserves better. Democrats and Republicans need to come together and speak out and speak up for the interests of this country.

But, to do that, we have to listen to each other. We have to listen to people like the generals. We have to listen to people who might disagree with us. We can't be stubborn. That's the only way, together, we will win against the terrorists.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, could you describe the circumstances of the Senate? Are we in morning business?

So the minority's 15 minutes is now available and ready for use?

Mr. President, because the truncated time on the amendments to the underlying bill includes a very short amount of time for the Specter amendment, I am going to use only 5 minutes now to talk about my support of the Specter amendment.

The Specter amendment is about habeas corpus. That is a big term, a kind of complicated term. Let me describe it by describing this picture. This is a young woman. She is a young woman named Mitsuye Endo. Mitsuye Endo looked out from behind barbed-wire fences where she was incarcerated in this country some decades ago during the Second World War. Let me tell you about her. She was a 22-year-old clerical worker in California's Department of Motor Vehicles in Sacramento, CA. She had never been to Japan. She didn't speak Japanese. She had been born and raised in this country. She was a Methodist. She had a brother in the U.S. Army, unquestioned loyalty to the United States of America, but she was incarcerated--picked up, taken from her home, her job, her community, and put behind barbed-wire fences.

Now, she eventually got out of that incarceration, and her plea to the courts was what really led to the unlocking of those camps, and let those tens of thousands of Japanese Americans out of those camps. They had been unjustly viewed as enemies of our country and incarcerated. And with one young woman's writ of habeas corpus, an awful chapter in our country's history soon came to an end. Her question to the courts was a simple but powerful one: Why am I being detained?

What is habeas corpus? Well, it answers the question, by giving access to the courts, of whether you can hold someone indefinitely without charges, without a trial, and without a right for anyone to have a review of their circumstances. When someone has the right to file a habeas corpus petition, it is the right of someone to go to the court system in this country to say to that court system: There has been a mistake. I am innocent; I didn't do it; I shouldn't be here.

The court then asks the question: Why are these people locked up? Should they be locked up? Is there a basis for it? Is it a mistake? Is it wrong?

Everyone in this Chamber will have read the story in the Washington Post about a week ago, and after I read that story, I just hung my head a bit. A Canadian in this country was apprehended at an American airport, at a U.S. airport in New York City. That Canadian citizen, apprehended in New York City by our authorities, was then sent to Syria, where he was tortured for some 8 or 9 months. He was put in a coffin-like structure, a cement coffin-like structure, in isolation, and tortured. It turns out, at the end of nearly a year of his incarceration, it was all a big mistake. He wasn't a terrorist. He wasn't involved with terrorists. But he was apprehended and held incommunicado, in fact, rendered to another country where torture occurred. A big mistake. His wife didn't know where he was. He has a young 2- or 3-year-old child.

What does all this say? Why is this country a country that is different from others? We have been different from others because it is in this country where you can't be picked up off of a street and held indefinitely, held without charges, held without a trial, held without a right to go to a court. It is this country in which that exists.

Let me make another point. Why should we care about how the United States treats noncitizens and taking away the right of habeas corpus for noncitizens? Because every U.S. citizen is a noncitizen in every other country of the world. There are 193 countries in this world. We are citizens of only one. And when an American travels--any American, anywhere--we are noncitizens in those countries.

What would our reaction be? What will our reaction be as Americans if--as an example, recently, a journalist who was detained and arrested and put in jail, I believe in Sudan, who then asked his captors to be able to see the American consulate: I need the ability to contact the American consulate.

His captors said: You have no such rights.

He complained: But I do have that right.

His captors said: No. Those you have detained in the United States are not given those rights, and you are not given those rights, either.

This is why this issue is so important, and that is why I support the Specter amendment. I hope very much the Senate will not make a profound mistake by turning down that amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as an original cosponsor to the Specter-Leahy-Dodd amendment.

Mr. President, this is an interesting time as we end the 109th Congress, at least in that portion that will start with the recess apparently this weekend, according to the majority leader and the Speaker of the House, only to return and reconvene sometime in November to do a lot of work that was not done earlier this year. Most of the appropriations bills have not been passed, and perhaps one, maybe two, will be done this week, but the rest will be done after the election.

I know my colleague who just spoke--and others will come to the floor of the Senate and talk about how fruitful and how productive the 109th Congress has been. I wish I could say the same. I serve in this Congress. I am a Member of this Congress and I hope and wish we could end a year and say we did an unbelievably good job for the American people; that we addressed the things that needed to be addressed; that we strengthened this country; and that we helped people in many ways. I wish I could say that. But as Peggy Lee's song says, Is that all there is? Is that an appropriate response to the chart that we see trumpeting the 109th Congress accomplishments? Is that all there is? Yes, that is all there is.

Let me describe a few of the things we ought to be dealing with and especially describe the things we are not dealing with.

On health care and the issues related to health care, every business in this country and virtually every family in this country--and especially our Government--bears the cost of these dramatically increasing prices in health care. No one seems to be addressing it very much. We passed a prescription drug plan a while back for senior citizens on Medicare, and that actually had a little provision in it which prevents the negotiation of lower prices on prescription drugs. That is almost unbelievable to me. Health care costs are on the rise, led, incidentally, by prescription drug prices. This Congress seems to stand with the pharmaceutical industry. It wants to prevent the negotiation for lower prices.

I have stood on the floor of the Senate holding up two identical bottles of the same pill made by the same company, both FDA approved, one sent to Canada, one sent to the United States. The difference is the one sent to Canada is half the price of the one sent to the United States.

My colleague said there is a provision in Homeland Security--and indeed there is--dealing with prescription drug reimportation. It is much to do about nothing, I regret to tell you, because it will allow people to bring a 90-day supply as they cross over the Canadian border and come back. Very few Americans have the capability of driving to the Canadian border to access that lower cost FDA-approved drug. We are charged the highest prices in the world for FDA-approved prescription drugs. That is unfair to the American people.

The provision in Homeland Security is going to do very little. In fact, we have almost always allowed exactly what that provision says we should allow. We have always allowed a personal supply of 90 days to come across the border from Canada when American consumers buy that prescription drug. This is nothing new. It doesn't address the issue.

We have been blocked on the floor of this Senate for 2 years now with a bipartisan piece of legislation cosponsored by over 30--myself, Senators Snowe, McCain, Kennedy, and many others--a big bipartisan bill. We have been blocked from getting a vote on the floor for this legislation which would allow the reimportation of lower cost, FDA- approved prescription drugs.

Why is that the case? Because on this subject the pharmaceutical industry has more influence here, regrettably, than the American people do.

We are not addressing the health care costs, and we are not addressing the issue of prescription drug costs--and we should.

Trade and jobs, think of that. Are we addressing trade issues? The only thing we are doing on trade issues is to pass more incompetent trade agreements. We just did the Oman Trade Agreement, a country that by sultanic decree has said there will not be an organization of workers; it is illegal to form a labor union in the country of Oman by sultanic decree. We do a trade agreement with a country that basically prohibits organized workers.

We have a $68 billion a month trade deficit, $800 billion a year. We are choking on red ink in international trade. Nearly 4 million jobs have been shipped from this country overseas in search of cheap labor, in search of 20-cent and 30-cent-an-hour workers working 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. Does anybody care much about that?

We not only have this running up and dramatic increase in the trade deficit, but we see the potential loss of another 40 million to 50 million American jobs, according to some leading economists. And even those that do not leave are tradeable or outsourceable jobs and competing with others in the world who are willing to work for much less, causing downward pressure on wages in this country.

Some say we see the world as it is, that it is a global economy, and there is nothing we can do about it. I see the world as it is and decide we ought to change it to what it should be--standing up for good jobs in this country, for American workers. Yet this Congress doesn't do that.

As to deficits and fiscal policy, the President made great fanfare in talking about the fact that the deficit is reduced. Interestingly enough, take a

look at what we are going to borrow in the next year--close to $600 billion in the next fiscal year. That is the off-the-rail fiscal policy of red ink, up to $600 billion in budget borrowing, and $800 billion in trade deficits. That is $1.4 trillion in red ink on a $13 trillion economy. That won't last very long.

We are going to bring additional war spending to the floor of the Senate. We are all going to vote for additional war spending. Some of us believe we ought to pay for it. This will make it, I think, somewhere around $400 billion in total--none of it paid for, not a penny paid for, all added to the debt.

We send our soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq and say, Please serve your country, fight for your country, risk your lives, and when you come back, by the way, we will have this debt waiting for you because we have chosen not to be involved in fighting to pay our bills.

That doesn't make any sense to me. That can't seriously be called an accomplishment.

We have been holding some hearings on oversight with respect to contractors. It is controversial. I see in the newspaper today a member of the majority said, well, we may take the rooms away so they cannot hold hearings. That is an interesting response to the question of oversight. The reason we have held oversight hearings in the policy committee room is because the majority party decided not to hold serious oversight hearings.

The highest ranking civilian official in the Corps of Engineers at the Pentagon in charge of major contracts, the sole-source, no-bid contracts to Halliburton and KBR that were given, has said this is the most blatant abuse of contracting authority she has witnessed in all of her career. This is a woman who is viewed as a top contracting official in this country in the Pentagon for these contracts. She said it is the most blatant abuse she has ever seen. Guess what happened to her for being honest. She was demoted.

I had her twice testify. Was there any other committee in Congress interested in her testimony to find out how the tens of billions of dollars were contracted? Nobody.

Yesterday we had an oversight hearing on the conduct of the war. We had a couple of generals and a colonel, all three of whom were distinguished folks who served in Iraq, served a combined 90 years for this country. General Batiste started by saying, I am a Republican, a lifelong Republican. It was not partisan. We invited Republicans to come to the hearing to talk about the conduct of the war. There have been no oversight hearings on that.

All of us want the same thing, it seems to me. We want us to prevail and do well. We want to protect our country. We want to defeat terrorism. All of us want those things. But it seems to me we are moving in the wrong direction in some of these areas. Incidentally, much of the information that ought to be available is classified in order not to embarrass anybody.

Let me mention that General Batiste and others who testified yesterday said this country is not mobilized. We send our men and women to war, but the country is not mobilized. They made a point I thought was very interesting. I read a book that was written a long while ago, a brilliant book called ``The Glory and The Dream,'' written by Manchester. He described in the Second World War what this country did to mobilize. This country mobilized to beat back the oppressive armies of Hitler, the Germans and the Japanese. We mobilized. Manchester, in ``The Glory and The Dream,'' described what happened with American manufacturing capacity and what they did. At the end of the war we were building 50,000 airplanes a year to fight that war.

Colonel Hammes yesterday testified there is a new armored vehicle to carry personnel that is much safer than the humvee. Are we producing those? Are we mobilizing to produce those to provide them to our troops? No. We built 50,000 airplanes a year at the end of the Second World War. This war has now lasted longer than the Second World War. Yet we have built a total of 1,000 of these stronger, better armored security vehicles in which to haul American troops. Why? Because we are not mobilized.

The majority says to the American people, not only don't you have to pay for this war, we want you to have a big tax cut--not to everyone, just a few, at the top. We want to repeal the death tax. At a time when we are at war and we are borrowing money to prosecute that war--$400 billion--not a penny of which has been paid for, the majority says our highest priority is to repeal the so-called death tax, which does not exist? No, there is no tax on death. That may come as news to some in this Chamber because they have used the moniker often. There is no tax on death. When someone dies, their spouse, if they are married, owns everything taxfree. There is a 100-percent spousal exemption. So there is no tax on death.

There is, in fact, a tax on inherited wealth and the majority party is intent on relieving the tax burden of the wealthiest Americans at a time when we are at war. We are at war, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and we are not paying for any of it. It is, in my judgment, a Byzantine set of priorities.

No, when people say they have a chart that shows the accomplishments of the 109th Congress, they might listen to what Harry Truman said to Steven Douglas in one of their debates. He described the Douglas argument:

As thin as the homeopathic soup made by boiling a shadow of

a pigeon that had been starved to death.

Bring those charts out with the accomplishments of the 109th Congress. Those accomplishments are as thin as the homeopathic soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that has been starved to death.

I wish it weren't so. I wish we could stand here and describe a set of accomplishments that makes all of us proud, but the priorities here can hardly be called accomplishments for the American people. The American people deserve, finally, to be getting what both political parties have t offer. Instead of getting the best of both, we are getting the worst of each.

This Congress needs to come together to address these issues. We do not control the Congress. The majority party does. It is the way it works. The majority party describes what the issues are that will be brought to the floor of the Senate.

Go almost any place around the world, the President says and others say, we will go and help. But they forget at home when people are in difficulty. Somehow we do not seem to find ways to say, let us help our citizens at home--health care costs, prescription drug prices.

I have not mentioned energy. Energy obviously is a very important issue. In the year 2004, the average price of oil was $40 a barrel. At that price, the largest integrated oil companies had the highest profits in their entire history. Now the price of oil has gone from that level to $70, $75 a barrel. Now it is down to $60 and just under, and everyone thinks, Isn't that wonderful? The fact is, it is still 50 percent higher than it was at which point the major integrated companies had the highest profits in history. As the money is shoveled into their company, it is taken from the consumers, from the farmer who loads the fuel, the people paying at the gas pump.

We need to deal with energy prices. It will not last for this country to be a country that consumes a quarter of the oil every single day. We have this little planet of ours and we stick straws in this Earth; from those straws we suck out the oil. We suck out 84 million barrels a day from this Earth, and 21 million barrels a day is used in this spot of the planet called the United States of America.

We use it predominantly for transportation, among other things. We have done nothing to change the basis of fuel use in transportation in nearly 100 years. We put gasoline in a 2006 Ford the same way we put gasoline in a 1924 Model T. I know that because I restored an old Model T when I was a kid. Nothing has changed. Everything else has changed. There is more computing power on a new car than there was on the lunar lander that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. Everything has changed about automobiles, except we have never changed how we fuel or power that car; just drive to the pump, stick a hose in and pump some gasoline.

We need to move aggressively toward a different future--renewables, wind energy, biofuels, especially hydrogen and fuel cells. There are so many opportunities, yet so little time, and

seemingly so little appetite on the part of this Senate and others to do something meaningful for the long term.

I wish I were part of a Congress I could say has been an enormously productive Congress for the country. We are not. We need to get busy and find a way to solve this. This President, this Congress, chart the agenda. They describe what is going to come to the Senate floor. We need to begin zeroing in on things that are important.

First, we need to win this war in Iraq in a way that satisfies our objectives. We need to fight the war on terrorism in a manner that allows us to prevail. Incidentally, this issue of cutting and running, we are going to leave Iraq at some point. That is not the issue. This country is going to leave Iraq. Our military is going to be withdrawn. The question is, When? When and under what conditions? It is appropriate to say at some point to the Iraqi people, this is your country, not ours. This country belongs to you, not to us. Saddam Hussein was found in a rat hole. He is on trial. He is not part of the government. Iraqis have their own government. And the question for those in Iraq is, do you want your country back? If so, you have to provide for your security. We are attempting to train and provide security at this point, but we are not going to provide security forever in the country of Iraq. We cannot do that. We must expect the Iraqi people to decide to take back their country, at which point we will be able to bring the American troops home. That, I hope, is sooner rather than later.

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

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Illinois. I appreciate him attending the hearing yesterday. As he indicated, we would prefer not to do oversight hearings. That is a job for

other committees. But because they have not done it, we have a responsibility to do them, and will.

We have done 10 oversight hearings with respect to contracting in Iraq. I am convinced the stories we have heard at these hearings undermine our American soldiers, undermine our troops, and cheat our taxpayers. I don't, for the life of me, understand why there is not aggressive activity in this Chamber and at the Pentagon to root out the waste, fraud, and abuse we have seen. It is almost as if there is a sleepwalk going on through these issues.

I have held hearings, and we have described all of the issues. Yesterday, a woman who worked for Halliburton went to Halliburton and said: What is happening is Halliburton is billing, in some cases, five times the amount they should be billing to the Federal Government for certain activities in Iraq.

For complaining to her superiors about the taxpayers being cheated by this contractor, she was put under guard by four civilians working for Halliburton, kept overnight, put on an airplane, fired, and shipped out of Iraq. That is what she got for being a whistleblower to talk about how the taxpayers were being cheated.

I am going to speak more about those issues this week with respect to all the hearings I have held. It is not for the purpose of injuring anybody. It is for the purpose of protecting our troops and our taxpayers.

Briefly, I want to describe something I am going to send over to the inspector general of the Defense Department today. This is a letter that was given to us yesterday at the hearing. It is a letter from Halliburton--Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. It is from Mr. Standard, a civilian contract employee who was a truckdriver in Iraq who was wounded.

By the way, Halliburton hires these contract civilian employees through their subsidiary in the Cayman Islands. Why do they have a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands? That is a tax haven country. They get American contracts from our Government and run them through the Cayman Islands so they don't have to pay taxes.

This is from Mr. Standard, a truckdriver wounded in Iraq driving a convoy as a civilian contract employee for Halliburton. Here is what Halliburton has written to this truckdriver:

I hope this finds you well and enjoying a swift recovery.

Per our conversation today, I included the medical records

release form. This form authorizes me to share your medical

records with the Pentagon Review Board for the purpose of

awarding you the Secretary's Defense of Freedom Medal.

Halliburton is saying to the truckdriver: We would like you to sign a release so that we, Halliburton, can send information on your medical situation to the Defense Department and get you a Defense medal for the Defense of Freedom.

Here is what they said to this wounded truckdriver, an employee of their subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root: Authorization and release reform, use and disclosure of protected information. It is a lengthy form. The truckdriver who signed this said: I am going to allow you to turn my medical records over to the Defense Department. And then under section 9, it says:

Release: I agree that in consideration for the application

for a Defense of Freedom Medal on my behalf that on behalf of

myself, my hires, executors, administrators, assigns, and

successors, I hereby release, acquit and discharge and do

hereby release, acquit and discharge KBR, all KBR employees,

the military, and any of their representatives, collectively

and individually, with respect to any claims and any and all

causes of action of any kind or character, known or unknown,

that I may have against any of them.

What they have said to the employee in a deceitful way, in my judgment, is: We would like you to sign a medical release form so we can apply for a Defense Medal of Freedom for you. First, there is no such thing as being able to apply for a Defense Medal of Freedom. You are either entitled to it or you are not.

In any event, they are saying to the truckdriver, buried in No. 9, in exchange for that, you should assign away all your rights against this company or any actions of the company or any employee of the company.

This is unbelievably deceptive. Here is a company, Halliburton, saying to a truckdriver that was wounded, an employee of theirs--by the way, the testimony yesterday by other truckdrivers who were wounded in action is that Halliburton knew they sent a convey right into hostile action on a road that was marked red and black, which meant no travel by a civilian convey. They deliberately sent them onto that road anyway. Seven people were killed in that circumstance.

Aside from all of that--and that is important in itself--this company has written to its former employee, a wounded truckdriver, saying: We would like to send your medical records to the Pentagon, and we would like to get for you this Defense of Freedom Medal. So would you please sign this--not pointing out to him that he is signing away all of his rights to take action against that company or anybody in that company.

I have the standards of the Defense Medal of Freedom right here. Let me show the date. It is in 2001:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced today the

creation of the Defense of Freedom Medal to honor civilian

employees of the Department of Defense injured or killed in

the line of duty. It will be the civilian equivalent of the

military's Purple Heart. The first recipients to be honored

will be the Defense Department civilians injured or killed

recently as a result of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

At the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, the medal may

be awarded to nondefense employees, such as contractors,

based on their involvement in Department of Defense

activities.

This is unbelievably deceptive, and I believe deceitful, to try to persuade a former employee of this company to sign a release form saying it is a release of medical records when, in fact, it is a release of much more.

I am going to ask the inspector general to investigate exactly what this contractor has done.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to speak about the Oman Free Trade Agreement, but I wanted to first respond to my colleague from New Hampshire who was on the floor of the Senate earlier this morning saying there is no problem with respect to what we are accomplishing here. He listed various accomplishments. He said: The only things we cannot accomplish are the things we are obstructed

from accomplishing because the minority will not let us.

First of all, that is not the case because, with respect to oversight hearings--which was the subject I raised and my colleague from Illinois raised this morning, oversight hearings--nobody is obstructing anybody from holding oversight hearings. That is the responsibility of the committees and the chairmen of the committees, to hold oversight hearings.

I have held some in the Democratic Policy Committee because the regular committees won't hold them, but let me describe a few of the things I have found in the hearings I have held--some big, some small, all of them, in my judgment, cheating American taxpayers: Contractors in Iraq paying $45 for a case of Coca-Cola; contractors in Iraq paying $7,500 for a 1-month lease on an SUV; contractors in Iraq who are buying towels for the troops, and instead of buying the hand towels for our troops to use that would cost a relatively small amount of money, they triple the amount that the taxpayers pay for these hand towels for our soldiers because they want the company name on them, Kellogg Brown and Root, embroidered on the towels. So they triple the cost of the towels.

Henry Bunting came and testified about that. He said he was the purchaser. They said: Purchase the towels with the embroidered name of our company on it. He said it costs more. They said: Don't bother about that; it doesn't matter. It is a cost-plus contract. The taxpayer pays for it.

The list of abuses is endless. At any point along the way did anybody say we ought to look into this, issue subpoenas? No, no; dead silence.

Twenty-five tons, 50,000 pounds, of nails are laying in the sands of Iraq because the contractor ordered the wrong size. What did they do? Dumped them out. It doesn't matter, the taxpayers are paying for all of that.

There were $85,000 new trucks left to be torched, put on fire on the side of the road because they had a flat tire and they did not have a tool to fix them. The contractor says: That is not a problem. The taxpayers will pay for that.

Serving food to the soldiers? The contractor that gets the contract to provide food for the soldiers is providing food that has out-of-date stamps on the food. It doesn't matter. Serve it to the soldiers anyway.

Yesterday, a woman came forward who worked in Iraq, as I mentioned earlier today, Mrs. McBride. She said they were charging the Government five times the amount of money, five times the billings of the number of soldiers who were using the recreational facilities. They were double counting and triple counting and, in some cases, submitting forms with five times the number of people. Why? To inflate the cost, to extract money from the American taxpayer.

All of this is going on and nobody seems to care. Oversight hearings? You show me where the oversight hearings have been held. Show me. They have not been held because nobody wants to embarrass anybody around here. We have one-party rule--in the White House, House, Senate. Nobody wants to embarrass anybody.

You have sole-source, no-bid contracts given at the Pentagon. The top civilian official, the top person in the Pentagon who rose to the top civilian level in the Pentagon as a contracting officer, who everyone said is one of the finest contracting officers in the Pentagon, do you know what she said? She said: The awarding of these sole-source, no-bid contracts to Halliburton is the most substantial abuse that I have seen in my service in the public arena.

What happened to her? Nobody cares.

Under the reconstruction program, I am told, we, the American taxpayers, spent $18 billion for reconstruction for Iraq. We ordered an air conditioner for a room in Iraq, and then it went to a contractor, a subcontractor, another subcontractor, and pretty soon the American taxpayer paid for air conditioners and that room now has a ceiling fan--yes, a ceiling fan. It is just unbelievable what is going on. Again, nobody seems to care.

I mentioned before that in the 1940s, Harry Truman was a Senator in this Chamber, and he put together the Truman Committee. It was bipartisan. They went after waste, fraud, and abuse. They wouldn't tolerate it. I am sure Franklin Delano Roosevelt was furious that a Congress was nipping at his heels, a Congress of his own party nipping at his heels on these issues. It didn't matter. Harry Truman, Republicans and Democrats together, went after it.

I proposed three or four times in the Senate to have votes to establish a select committee to do just that, but, sorry, no dice. Nobody wants anything to do with this issue.

I will come to the floor and give a list of what we have discovered in 10 hearings and see if anybody stands up to say: Yes, that makes sense; we support all that. None of this makes sense. It cries out, it begs for leadership. This undermines American soldiers and it cheats American taxpayers and it is unbelievable what is going on and nobody seems to care very much. So when I have the opportunity to hear someone say: We haven't held oversight hearings because we have been obstructed--nonsense. Or: We have held oversight hearings--nonsense again. Neither excuse washes. Nobody is minding the store. Nobody is watching the till.

The fact is, American taxpayers are taking a bath--and it is not just the taxpayers. It is water connected to the Euphrates River taking water to the military installations in Iraq. And, yes, the top American in the company, Halliburton, who is responsible for moving nonpotable water to the soldiers in the military installations in Iraq, is the American who wrote the report. I have seen the report. What he said was the nonpotable water that is provided to the soldiers for the purpose of showering and brushing their teeth and washing their hands and doing the kinds of things they do was more contaminated than raw water coming from the Euphrates River. And their internal report says: This was a near miss. This was a near miss. It could have caused death or mass sickness.

This event, which was a near miss, could have caused death or massive illness, it has been denied that it even happened by the company. The Pentagon doesn't seem to be very interested. The company denies it happened, despite the fact that we have it in writing from the person who was in charge and who still works for the company. It is unbelievable.

I didn't come to talk about that, but when I hear people say there has been aggressive oversight, or any oversight in this Congress--it is a sham. It is not the case.

Mr. President, I believe I had reserved 1 hour of which I had used 30 minutes previously. The vote is at noon, so I intend to speak for the other 30 minutes, if that is appropriate?

Mr. President, let me talk about the Oman Free Trade Agreement. There are nine additional free-trade agreements being negotiated right now, nine of them. This past week there was an announcement that the monthly trade deficit is now $68 billion a month; a $68 billion monthly trade deficit. If ever there was a definition of failure, this is it.

So here is what we have: We have the good old boys negotiating trade agreements--Republicans and Democrats. They happen to be Republicans now because they are in power, but it has gone on for some long while. Here is what you see: Trade deficits, which are

represented by a mountain of red ink--or a deep valley of red ink in the case of this chart--the highest trade deficit in history, an unbelievable trade deficit. No country has ever had these kinds of deficits. They will have significant consequences for our country.

These deficits must be paid for with a lower standard of living in our country. Every single day, we send $2 billion out to foreign countries because we import $2 billion more than we export. That means every single day we are selling $2 billion of this country. We are selling America piece by piece.

Does this give anybody pause? Is anybody concerned? No. You know what we need to do? Let's do another trade agreement. We have done trade agreements here, at this point on the chart, we have done them here, we have done them here, and every single incompetent trade agreement this country signs up for ends up dramatically increasing our Federal deficits. We are choking on them, pulling the rug out from under American workers, shipping more American jobs overseas. And what is the response of this Congress? You know, let's do more of it. Why? Because we live in a global economy, and this is free trade.

I once knew, in my little home, a three-legged blind dog with fleas that they used to call Lucky. Labels didn't mean much to me--didn't mean much to that dog either, as a matter of fact. ``Free trade,'' that is the label on this nonsense. It is not free and it certainly is not fair.

This country has become Uncle Sucker on trade agreements. We have signed up to almost anything. Most of our trade is foreign policy and soft-headed foreign policy at that. I am in favor of trade. I want to expand trade--the more the better, but I demand it be fair to this country. When it is not fair, I think we ought to insist. It doesn't matter to me whether it is Oman or China or Europe or Japan or Korea or Mexico or Canada, I think we ought to say it is a new day. And the way we are going to trade with you is with circumstances that are fair to our country, to our workers, and to our country's interests.

Trade ought to be mutually beneficial. When we sign up to trade with somebody, it ought to be mutually beneficial.

Let me tell you what is coming next year. Next year everyone in this country will have an opportunity to start buying Chinese cars because China has announced that they intend to start shipping Chinese automobiles to the U.S. marketplace. We have a trade agreement with China about cars. Let me describe what it is.

It says: China, when you ship a car to the United States--it will happen starting next year--we are going to hit you with a 2.5-percent tariff, a tiny little tariff, a 2.5-percent tariff you are going to have to pay on the cars you ship into our marketplace. And, by the way, any American cars that we send to China next year, we agree we will pay a 25-percent tariff.

So a country with whom we have a $2.5 billion trade deficit, we signed up, on bilateral automobile trade, that they should be able to charge a tariff 10 times higher on automobiles when we try to sell a car in their country. That is unbelievably incompetent. That is what our country has agreed to.

That is just one little piece. Most people wouldn't know about dealing with bilateral automobile trade. It affects American jobs. It pulls the rug out from under our workers. That is just one. There are dozens and dozens of similar examples.

Since I am speaking about automobiles, let me describe the situation with Korea. South Korea sent us over 700,000 cars last year. I will show you the chart. South Korea sent 730,000 cars last year into our marketplace. Do you know how many American cars we sold in South Korea? We sold them just 4,251 cars. Is it because they don't want American cars? No. It's because the Koreans largely closed their market to our product even as we opened our markets with theirs. Do we do anything about it? No. We sit around twiddling our thumbs--sucking our thumbs in some cases--and lament that this is going on. It is an unbelievable failure.

Ninety-nine percent of the cars driven on the streets of South Korea are Korean-made cars. Why is that the case? That is exactly the way they want it, and that is the way it will stay because our country doesn't seem to care. We sign up to all of these trade agreements. In fact, we are doing a new agreement with Korea now. That is one of the nine. Does anyone really care about fair trade?

So in this context, let me talk about Oman now.

There are about 400 organizations, ranging from the League of Rural Voters to the National Farmers Union to the Sierra Club to the AFL-CIO, about 400 organizations have come out in opposition to this trade agreement. What is the reason for that? Let me describe it with a letter which many of them signed which says the following:

Like NAFTA and CAFTA, OFTA [the Oman Free Trade

Agreement]--fails to include any meaningful labor and

environmental protections. The lack of effective labor

provisions in OFTA is particularly significant in light of

the recent revelations of massive labor abuses in Jordan--a

Nation with which the United States has a free trade

agreement. These violations involve widespread human

trafficking, 20-hour workdays and widespread failure to pay

back wages. More troubling is the fact the Oman FTA contains

weaker labor provisions than the Jordan FTA.

Let me describe what is going on in Jordan. This is actually a New York Times piece. I have actually spoken to the people who went to Jordan and saw these sweatshops.

Propelled by a free trade agreement with the United States,

apparel manufacturing is booming in Jordan, its exports to

America soaring twenty-fold in the last 5 years.

But some foreign workers in Jordanian factories that

produce garments for Target, Wal-Mart and other American

retailers are complaining of dismal working conditions--20-

hour days, of not being paid for months, and of being hit by

supervisors and jailed when they complained.

Here is what happens in Jordan. They fly in so-called guest workers from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, put them in a corner of Jordan in sweatshops, in factories with closed doors, and then they fly in Chinese textiles, and in sweatshop conditions, with imported workers from Bangladesh and imported textiles from China, they produce products which they ship to the United States.

Let me describe some of the conditions. Some of these workers imported from Bangladesh were promised $120 a month but in some cases were hardly paid at all. One worker was paid $50 for 5 months of work. Forty-hour shifts were common. Let me say that again. Forty-hour shifts--not weeks--were common. Forty-hour shifts in those sweatshops apparently replaced the 40-hour workweek. There were frequent beatings of any workers who complained.

What is the relevance of all this to an Oman Free Trade Agreement? First of all, the country of Oman has about 3 million people. Of that rather small population, over one-half million are actually foreign guest workers. The majority of Oman workers involved in manufacturing and construction are not from Oman. The majority of the workers in Oman are foreigners brought in from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other very poor Asian countries, under labor contracts to work in construction and in factories.

Here is what our own country's State Department's 2004 Report on Human Rights said about Oman. We are doing a trade agreement now with Oman. Our own State Department reports that:

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including

children; however, there were reports that such practices

occurred. The government did not investigate or enforce the

law effectively. Foreign workers at times were placed in

situations amounting to forced labor.

Our own State Department talks about forced labor in Oman. It doesn't matter to the people who put this agreement together. They could care less. They do not intend to put in strong labor provisions with respect to this trade agreement.

There are no labor unions in Oman that would be protective of workers or negotiate for workers. In 2003, the Sultan of Oman issued a Sultanic decree which categorically denies workers the right to organize and join unions of their choosing. In some circumstances, workers in Oman can join ``representative committees,'' but those committees, just as is the case in China--China is now advertising a lot of unions--those committees are not independent of the employers or of the Government. China now has unions that

are part of the Communist government, and the Sultanic decree that prohibits unions in Oman allows representatives of workers to get together but not independent of employers or the Government.

By the way, the Sultan of Oman has written to our U.S. Trade Ambassador and promised that he will improve Oman's labor laws in October of this year. That would be next month. How do you calculate that? That would be after the U.S. Congress votes, wouldn't it? They are going to improve their labor laws after we have voted. Yes, I guess I have heard that before. Maybe this country ought to be suggesting that some of these things be improved before they negotiate free-trade agreements.

Under fast-track rules, the Congress, in its own lack of wisdom, said: We would like to put ourselves in a straightjacket. We can negotiate agreements and treaties on nuclear arms without fast track, but on trade agreements, we must negotiate in a way that says when we come back to the Congress, we are prohibited from offering amendments. So the Congress actually votes to put itself into a straightjacket and prohibit any amendments. I don't vote for that. I lead the fight against it because I think it is fundamentally undemocratic. But the Congress has already done that. That is why there will be no amendments to the Oman Free Trade Agreement.

Let me describe one other provision in the Oman agreement, and it has been in a couple of other agreements as well.

Earlier this year, there was a big fight in this country about Dubai Ports World, which is a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, taking over major seaports in this country--six major U.S. seaports-- New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Miami--taken over to be managed by a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. There was a huge blowup as a result of that, a massive firestorm of protest. The President had already approved it, said: It is fine; don't worry about it; we think American ports can be managed by the United Arab Emirates or the company it owns, Dubai Ports World. I didn't think so, but the President said it is fine.

Brushing aside suggestions from Republicans and Democrats alike, President Bush endorsed the taking over of shipping operations at six major seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates. He pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block that amendment. But still, in all, there was such a storm of protest by the American people saying: With all of the terrorist threats, maybe we ought to manage our own seaports; there was such a storm of protest that Dubai Ports World announced they had reached an agreement and they decided they would sell or negotiate to sell their interests in managing our ports.

Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary, said during that period that the proposed takeover of terminal operations at five U.S. ports by a Dubai company would give U.S. law enforcement a better handle on security at U.S. terminal operations. Let me talk about terminally bad judgment here. Here is the guy in charge of Homeland Security who says that allowing foreign interests to take over the management of America's ports will fully actually provide better security for our country. You talk about unbelievably bad judgment. Everybody has a right to be wrong, including the head of Homeland Security. Let's just hope that when he is wrong, it doesn't result in another terrorist attack on this country.

Here is what is in the Oman Free Trade Agreement, a provision that says that the U.S. government cannot block Oman's acquisition of the following activities:

Landside aspects of port activities, including operation

and maintenance of docks, loading and unloading of vessels

directly to or from land, marine, cargo handling operations

and maintenance at piers.

That is the managing of a port. That provision says that we can't block Oman from acquiring or an Oman company from acquiring--that is in the trade agreement. This agreement says we will not be able to block, without abrogating this trade agreement, a company from Oman from operating America's seaports. This alone should defeat this trade agreement. It will not because there are 60 or 65 Members of this body who will vote for any trade agreement, almost. This provision alone should defeat this trade agreement.

Let me finish by talking about the consequences of this senseless trade policy on jobs in this country. I know it is tiresome to some of my colleagues to keep hearing about this, but I believe it is worthy to describe where we are headed in textiles, manufacturing, high tech, and other areas.

You will remember the television commercials advertising Fruit of the Loom underwear. It ran a lot of commercials talking about how wonderful Fruit of the Loom underwear would be for each of us. They paid someone to dress as green grapes and someone to dress as red grapes. I guess that is the little logo on Fruit of the Loom underwear. They danced, the green and red grapes danced and sang and played music and various things. I don't know who would actually accept money to dance as grapes, but they found actors to dance as grapes, and they danced right out of this country. They don't make one pair of Fruit of the Loom underwear in this country anymore, not one.

If you want Mexican food, go to the grocery store and buy Fig Newton cookies. They left this country. They went to Monterrey, Mexico.

Every Member of this Senate, I will bet, once had a Radio Flyer, a little red wagon. It was made in America for 110 years. You can still buy them here, but they are not made here anymore; they left for China--all made in China, the little red wagon, the Radio Flyer.

If you wear Tony Lama cowboy boots, you might be wearing Chinese shoes. I have told this story until everyone is tired of it. Americans used to make them, but they lost their jobs. When they were fired, the last job they had was to take the ``American made'' decals off existing inventory. They had an hourly job plus benefits. The jobs left our country and went to China.

They still sell these Huffy bicycles in this country, but they are made for 33 cents an hour by people working 7 or 8 days a week, 14 hours a day. The last thing those American workers did on their last day of work and leaving the parking lot was to leave a pair of empty shoes in the parking lot. They left a pair of empty shoes in their parking space. It was a way for workers to say to the company: You can ship our jobs to China, but you are not going to fill our shoes.

It goes on and on and on--yes, with product after product, textiles and manufacturing, high tech. One-half of the Fortune 500 are now doing software development offshore, overseas. It is pretty unbelievable.

In all of this, we give a tax cut, tax break. We not only manage bad trade agreements to make it easy to ship jobs overseas, we say: If you do that, we will give you a big fat tax cut. Four times I have tried to eliminate that in the Senate, and four times the Chamber of Commerce and others who support that tax cut rounded up enough votes in the Senate to preserve it. I find that appalling. Nonetheless, that is what is happening with trade.

Ultimately, this country will not long remain a world economic power if it does not retain a world-class manufacturing base. This country will not continue to expand the middle-class workers if it continues to incentivize the shipment of jobs overseas. The construct of many big companies of saying: We want to produce where it is cheap--China, Indonesia, Bangladesh; we want to sell in the established marketplace of Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Fargo, Pittsburgh, and run the income through the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes--will undermine the economic interests of this country.

This country made great progress by expanding the middle class with good jobs that paid well. We debate a lot of things in this Senate, but there is nothing we debate with respect to a social program that is more important than a good job that pays well. We would do well to remember that as we take a look at bad trade agreements and prepare ourselves, once again, as the majority of this Chamber--but not me-- votes yes in favor of trade agreements which pull the rug out from under workers, pull the rug out from under farmers, and undermine the long-term economic interests of this country.

We have the same chorus of a tired song that is being sung today in the

Senate about the virtues of another bad trade agreement. This one was with a very small country of 3 million people. I have never been to Oman. I don't know much about Oman. I am not opposed to the country of Oman in any way. I am interested in standing up for the economic interests of this country. This is one more chapter in a book of failures on international trade. This country, this Senate, has a responsibility, finally, to start getting it right.

I will vote against the trade agreement with Oman and hope that, even as this trade agreement will likely pass, as other trade agreements have, an agreement that undermines our country's economic interests, in the next nine trade agreements, all of which are being negotiated now, we will finally see some negotiations that stand up for our interests.

It is long past the time, when we have a $68 billion-a-month deficit and nearly $800 billion-a-year trade deficit, it is long past the time to ask the questions: What is wrong? How do we make it right? What is not working? How do we fix it?

This Congress, this administration, seems content, as has been the case now for the last dozen years, in snoring through all of this, saying it will be handled by someone else, sometime later, pretending somehow the consequences do not matter.

The consequences do matter. There are significant consequences.

One can make a case when the Budget is debated here that whatever the budget deficit is, it is money we owe to ourselves. One can make that case. Economists make that case. It is not a case I make, but it is money we owe to ourselves. We cannot make that case with a trade deficit. That is money we owe to others. Over one-half of our trade deficit is now held by the Japanese and the Chinese, which is used to buy American property, American stocks, bonds, to buy part of this country--drip, drip, drip, every day, $2 billion a day.

I will vote against this trade agreement and hope the next trade agreement that comes to the Senate will be an agreement that fixes previous problems rather than negotiates new agreements. The problems in the previous agreements are legend: NAFTA, CAFTA, United States- Canada. It is absolutely legend, the problems that exist, and not one of them has been fixed. All of them continue to exist. We turn a blind eye to all them as we negotiate new agreements. That disserves this country's economic interests.

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. President, I want to speak about a subject that is very important dealing with Indian health. I believe there will be an attempt to

move legislation by consent in the Senate dealing with the reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. We have had difficulty moving that legislation. Senator McCain and I and others worked on completing the legislation. It has not yet moved. My hope is that it can move through the Senate without objection today.

I want to describe why it is important because in this country, there is a lot of noise about a lot of issues. People often talk about the noise of democracy. Sometimes that noise of democracy is a very welcome noise and wonderful sound, but there are other times when it is shrill and partisan and the noise of democracy is not such a comfortable noise.

In the midst of all the discussions about all of these issues, there are day-to-day issues that affect peoples' lives, especially health care. On Indian reservations in this country, there is a very special challenge with respect to health care. We have a trust responsibility for Indians and their health care. We don't meet that responsibility very well.

There is wholesale rationing going on with respect to health care for American Indians. Nobody likes to talk about it. Around 60 percent of health care needs of American Indians are being met, and about 40 percent of the needs are unmet. That estimate comes from the Indian Health Service. It is not one they advertise, but it is one you can pry out of them if you are persistent enough.

We spent twice as much money per person on health care for Federal prisoners than we do to support our trust responsibility of health care for American Indians.

Let me say that again. We have a responsibility for the health care of Federal prisoners because they are incarcerated. We spend twice as much per person for their health care than we do to provide the health care that we are responsible to provide to American Indians. That ought not be a source of pride for anybody in this Chamber or the other Chamber who is involved in the discussions about these issues.

Let me describe, if I might, through the stories of a couple of Native Americans, what they face with respect to health care and why there is such an urgency to pass the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. That reauthorization is long overdue, and I hope it will be accomplished today in the Senate.

Let me tell you about an 80-year-old elder who is a diabetic and living on an Indian reservation. This 80-year-old diabetic fell while tending to her garden and broke her leg in two places. The break was so severe that there was a bone sticking out of her ankle. This 80-year- old woman went to the hospital. The doctor sent her home with painkillers.

She then went to another hospital and was told the condition was not priority 1, which means ``life or limb,'' and, therefore, she was not able to get care.

She went to a third hospital, limped in, and finally received some care--the third stop, with a bone sticking out of her leg.

What is this ``life or limb''? It means that under what is called contract care for American Indians--one tribal chairman on a reservation in my State said, we understand: Don't get sick after June. If you do, there is not any money available to you. If it is not ``life or limb,'' if it doesn't threaten your life or limb, we are sorry, you are out of luck; no health care service for you.

Another American Indian with diabetes called in for a prescription drug refill for insulin. He was told he should come in and get blood work done first. It was 2 weeks before he could get that blood work. So he was without the insulin he needed for almost 2 weeks. As a result, this person will likely require dialysis because he couldn't get his prescription filled in a timely manner.

This is a picture of a woman who said it was all right for me to use her picture. Her name is Lida Bearstail. Lida Bearstail went to a clinic because of knee pain. Her condition was one in which the cartilage had worn away in her knee so that the bones in her knee were rubbing against each other, causing her great pain and great discomfort.

If that happened to us or one of our families with our health care system, my guess is a doctor would recommend knee replacement surgery, and we would go in and have some knee replacement surgery. But her pain and her limb and the cartilage being gone and bone rubbing against bone was not deemed life or limb or a ``priority 1'' medical condition. She was just given pain medication. She tried a second time. Again denied.

The question is: What would happen with us? We would get knee surgery. What happens to Lida Bearstail? She limps, has trouble walking, and probably someday will not be able to walk. Knee surgery is not in her future. It is not life or limb, not a priority, not a priority for Lida.

Let me describe the circumstances of another woman. And she also has given me permission to use her picture. This is Ardel Hale Baker. I want to tell you about Ardel Hale Baker. A couple of months ago, she had chest pain--very serious chest pain--that wouldn't quit. Her blood pressure was very high. So she went to the Indian Health Service clinic, and she was diagnosed as having a heart attack. She needed to be sent immediately to the nearest major hospital.

They said: You need to go in an ambulance.

She said: Is there a chance I can go in something other than an ambulance? She was thinking--she was having a heart attack, but she was thinking: ``I am going to get billed for this and I don't have any money,'' because if you are not ``priority 1,'' you may end up having to pay the bill. And if you don't have the money, it ruins your credit rating and credit companies come after you.

Anyway, she said: I would not like to go in an ambulance. Can I go in a private vehicle?

They said: No, you have to go in an ambulance.

When she arrived at the hospital, the nursing staff was lifting her off the gurney and putting her on a hospital bed. As they lifted Ardel Hale Baker off the gurney, they found something taped to her leg. This woman was having a heart attack, and they found a piece of paper--this piece of paper--taped to her leg.

It had her name on it. It says: Hale, Ardel. Then it says: ``You have received outpatient medical services. This letter is to inform you your priority 1 care cannot be paid for due to funding issues.''

So this woman is taken off a gurney to be placed on a hospital bed, having a heart attack, and a hospital worker finds a piece of paper taped to her leg saying: Oh, by the way, this isn't ``priority 1.'' This won't be paid for.

This sort of incident is unbelievable, and it is going on in this country in Third World conditions on Indian reservations because the health care that is available--or should be available--is not available under the circumstances in which it is needed. Again, we have a tribal chairman that has said in public hearings in the Congress: ``On our reservation, we understand. Don't get sick after June because the money has run out and you are not going to get health care.'' So we have a woman going into a hospital with a paper taped to her leg, having a heart attack, that says, ``We are sorry, this won't be paid for.''

If ever there is an understanding of the need for fast reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, that ought to be it.

I expect Senator McCain and I and others who have worked for months on this piece of legislation--in fact, for several years on this piece of legislation--I expect all of us share the same hope today: that the Senate will have advanced this measure and given some hope to people who are waiting for improvement in health care on Indian reservations. In too many cases, there are people who feel left out, left behind. They feel hopeless and helpless.

I have spoken on this floor about a young girl named Avis Littlewind. Avis Littlewind was 14 years old when she killed herself. She, like others, as we find clusters of teenage suicides on reservations, apparently felt there was no hope. She laid in her bed for 90 days, missing 90 days of school. Her sister committed suicide 2 years prior to that.

The fact is, when you go talk to these kids--and I have, I talked to Avis Littlewind's classmates. I went to the Standing Rock Reservation and talked to a group of kids with no other adults present. They were high school kids, and I talked to them about their lives. There was a cluster of teenage suicides

on that reservation. We understand that just the basics we expect don't exist for them--the basic mental health treatment. When they reach out, there is no one there. One woman was in tears as she said: We don't have proper mental health treatment. We don't have enough of it here. In order to transport a kid who needs to see a professional, I would need to borrow a car. I would need to beg somebody to give me a car to take them to someone who can see them.

That is what is going on. This country can do better than that. We have a responsibility to do better than that. We have a trust responsibility for these health care needs. My hope is that today the Senate will agree by unanimous consent to pass the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, the reauthorization that is so long overdue.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of the Republican leader, I now ask that the Senate proceed to Calendar No. 565, H.R. 5684, as provided for under the order of September 14, 2006; provided further that at the conclusion of my remarks on H.R. 5684, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, that probably isn't good news to some, but that is the way it is. I want to talk about the Oman Free Trade Agreement.

It is unbelievable to me that in a week in which there was an announcement, on Thursday morning, that the trade deficit for 1 month has now reached $68 billion--a $68 billion 1-month trade deficit--in that week we bring to the floor of the U.S. Senate the Oman Free Trade Agreement. We must have a bowling alley in our brain or something. The Oman Free Trade Agreement. What on Earth can be rattling around in the collective brains of public servants? Well, maybe I should modify that. Maybe I shouldn't be quite so harsh.

Look, we are up to our necks. We are choking as a country on trade deficits. Last year it was over $700 billion a year; $2 billion a day every single day. We don't owe that to ourselves, as you can make the case with respect to the budget deficits. We owe that to other countries, and we are going to have to repay it. Over one-half is owed to the Chinese and the Japanese. Yet, interestingly enough, when it is announced this week that we have a $68 billion monthly trade deficit, the highest in history, this Congress snored right through it, just yawned right on through it, snored through it. So did the White House. Did you hear anybody talk about it? No. I came to speak about it briefly, but the fact is, it doesn't matter. Be happy. It is OK. It will be better tomorrow. In fact, let's do more of the same. Let's bring another free-trade agreement to the floor of the Senate.

We are now negotiating nine of them--nine new trade agreements. This free-trade stuff--you know, the next time I hear people use that term-- and it is used all the time--free trade, I will want to put a robe on them and get them on a street corner and give them one of those cymbals and they can chant. It is nonsense--free trade. It means nothing to me.

What means something to me is fair trade. Yes, I believe in trade, and plenty of it. Let's expand in trade. Let's demand as a country that it be fair. I have on so many occasions given dozens of examples in which we sell out this country's interests in trade negotiations. I am not going to go through all of that today because I am going to talk about this so-called Oman Free Trade Agreement. But I will, as I reserve a portion of my 60 minutes, come back Monday and provide the rest of the demonstration of how bankrupt our trade strategy has become and how determined virtually all of those who support it are to ignore the bankruptcy of that policy.

On June 29 of this year, we sent the Oman Free Trade Agreement from this Chamber, and now it comes back in the form of a conference report. Oh there are lots of things going on in the world we probably ought to talk a little bit about. We could talk about Iraq, perhaps North Korea, Iran, or terrorism. We have enormous foreign policy challenges, unlike any we have ever seen in our lifetimes. We can talk about domestic policies such as energy prices. We could talk about rising health care costs. We could talk about the fact that the Federal Government is going to borrow on fiscal policy, budget policy, very close to $600 billion in the coming year. The Federal Government is going to borrow from foreign countries in trade debt somewhere close to $800 billion in the coming year. That is well over $1.3 trillion in 1 year, or 10 percent of the entire GDP of this country.

Nobody seems very alarmed about that. They don't want to talk about it even. We could talk about all of those things, and perhaps we should. That ought to be the bull's-eye of public policy in terms of doing what we should do in matters that are important, but are we doing that? No. No, we are not doing that. We don't quite have time to do that. We have to deal with the Oman Free Trade Agreement.

Let me tell my colleagues, there are about 400 organizations across this country that oppose this free-trade agreement: organized labor, communications workers, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, League of Rural Voters, National Farmers Union, the Presbyterian Church, the Sierra Club, the United Methodist Church, United Students Against Sweatshops, the Western Organization of Resource Councils. So it is a pretty significant group of interests around this country that oppose this trade agreement. Not that they have anything against the country of Oman; most of us have never been to Oman. It is just that this country has a responsibility to start fixing the massive problems it has created in previous trade agreements before negotiating new ones. As I said, there are nine being negotiated, and they are all going to come through here, and we will have compliant Members of the Senate deciding that.

Before they come, do you know what we would like to do? We would like to put a straightjacket on ourselves so that we can be prevented from offering amendments. God forbid that we have an original thought and actually offer an amendment to improve a free-trade agreement. We will do something called fast track and prevent ourselves from offering any amendments. So that is what will happen.

Let me tell my colleagues about the ugly side of free trade, if I might. It is called sweatshops, sweatshops in Jordan. This is from the New York Times, by the way. It says that we did a free-trade agreement with Jordan, which is the only trade agreement done under the Clinton administration, the only trade agreement that had labor protections in the agreement--the only one. Oman doesn't, and none of the others do, but this one had protections for workers in the agreement, which I very strongly support.

But let me tell my colleagues about workers in Jordan. Despite the fact this trade agreement with Jordan actually had protections for workers, here is what was happening in Jordan. We had people coming over to Jordan, being sent over to Jordan from Bangladesh and from other very poor countries, and they were working in sweatshops. They were promised $120 a month and, in some cases, they were hardly paid at all. One worker was paid $50 for 5 months of work. At some factories, 40-hour shifts were common.

Let me say that again. Not 40-hour workweeks--40-hour shifts. So we had people not being paid, or being paid miserably poor wages, and being worked 40-hour shifts. There were frequent beatings of workers who complained. And these factories in Jordan were flying in plane loads of workers from countries such as Bangladesh to work in slave- like conditions. Then they fly in Chinese materials, in this case textiles, to those same factories,

and what you end up with is workers who are working, in many cases, 120 hours a week, turning Chinese cloth into clothing to be sent to the United States.

So the consumer says: Isn't that nice. Well, it is not nice. The consumer doesn't understand where it is made and the conditions under which it is made. If it happened here today, we would get law enforcement, drive down the street, open those factories' doors and arrest the folks who were employing those people. We have already had these examples which have been highly embarrassing to people who want to market products made in sweatshops. We all heard Kathy Lee Gifford cry when her products were made in sweatshops, and even Puff Daddy, I guess he actually changed his name to Puff Daddy and then just Diddy. I don't know what that is about. But Sean Combs--Puff Daddy--who was having his clothes made in Honduras--and we had two women from that factory in Honduras come and testify here about the conditions.

Now, contrary to many others, let me say a word for Puff Daddy, P. Diddy or Diddy or whatever his name might be. He actually took an interest. When he discovered those contracting to produce his clothing were putting people in conditions like that, he actually changed things in Honduras where those shirts were made. So I say: Good for him. But my point is, this is going on all over the world. When we see these examples of sweatshops, this is being done in the country of Jordan where we have these labor standards in our agreement. It didn't matter. They flew in Bangladeshi workers and Chinese textiles to produce products to send to the United States to be sold to big box retailers. And we are supposed to compete against that? And we lose half our textile industry in this country. Why? Because they can't compete. They are told: You can't compete; it is over. That is why we don't make one pair of Levi's in America. Did you know that? There is not one pair of Levi's made in America.

I have talked before about the dancing grapes of Fruit of the Loom underwear. There was one guy dressed up as white grapes, another guy dressed up as red grapes, and they danced on television and sung about how wonderful their Fruit of the Loom underwear was. Not one pair of Fruit of the Loom underwear is now made in the United States, and not one pair of Levi's. I actually brought a picture of the grapes. We don't know who these guys are. All I know is they are no longer American grapes, they are Mexican grapes because Fruit of the Loom went to Mexico and they went to China.

So the point is this: We have a serious trade problem. It is not just textiles, it is not just manufacturing. One-half of the Fortune 500 companies are now outsourcing software development.

I told the story on the floor of the Senate about Natasha Humphreys, a young woman I spoke to on the phone not too long ago. She did everything right. She is a young African-American woman who went to Stanford. She got her college degree and then went to work for Palm Pilot. By the way, her last job at Palm Pilot before she lost her job was to train her successor from India who would work for one-fifth of the price. So my point is, it is not just manufacturing and textiles, it is high tech, it is many other jobs as well.

In fact, there are some leading economists who say there are 40 million to 50 million additional American jobs that are subject to outsourcing. So what do we do? We negotiate new free-trade agreements, this one with Oman.

Let me talk about Oman for a moment. Oman is a country of 3 million people. One-half of the people--excuse me--one-half of 1 million of those people are actually foreign guest workers. And the majority of Oman's workers involved in manufacturing or construction are not from Oman. The majority of workers are foreigners brought in from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Indonesia, under labor contracts to work construction and factories.

So here is what the 2004 U.S. State Department said about human rights in Oman. Our U.S. State Department cited the country of Oman for cases of forced labor, and in 2004 put out this 2004 report on human rights in Oman:

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including of

children. However, there were reports that such practices

occurred. The government did not investigate or enforce the

law effectively. Foreign workers at times were placed in

situations amounting to forced labor.

So we now do a free-trade agreement with Oman. It doesn't matter to us. Whatever happens, happens, I guess. By the way, the Sultan of Oman, 2\1/2\ years ago, issued a Sultanic decree which categorically denies workers the right to organize. So we are going to sign up to a free- trade agreement with them. The Sultan of Oman, however, has written to the USTR and promised he will improve labor laws by October of this year--coincidentally, 1 month after we vote on the Oman Free Trade Agreement.

The Finance Committee of the Senate held a mock markup, I guess it was. They called it a mock markup; they marked up the Oman Free Trade Agreement. When they did that, Senators Conrad and Bingaman offered an amendment that said sweatshop products made in Oman under slave-like conditions would not be allowed under this free-trade agreement. That passed unanimously in the mock markup.

It is pretty unbelievable that we have a mock markup. In fact, with some markups, we may not even have to name them ``mock markups,'' but nonetheless they named this a ``mock markup.''

In the mock markup, two of my colleagues offered an amendment that said sweatshop products made in Oman under slave-like conditions will not be allowed under the Oman trade deal. That passed unanimously. But this trade deal which is before the Senate now, just a couple of months later, doesn't have that. It just got dropped. Is there somebody out there who is supporting having products coming in made under slave-like conditions in Oman? Is that how it got dropped? If that is so, who is that? Might we have their names? Is there anybody in this Chamber, anybody in the Senate who would volunteer that they support products being produced in sweatshops under slave-like conditions, and because they support that they objected to this amendment and demanded the amendment be dropped, an amendment which was passed unanimously in a mock markup? It is unbelievable to me, what is going on around here.

Let me mention something else. As you know, earlier this year we had a situation where a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, called Dubai Ports World, got the contract to manage American ports at six American cities. The contract to manage America's seaports became very controversial. I was involved in it because I don't think we ought to have a company owned by the United Arab Emirates managing our seaports. No aspersions against the United Arab Emirates. It seems to me, at a time when we are talking about the issue of security at America's seaports, which can be among the most vulnerable of American targets, it doesn't seem to be very smart to say: Let's turn the management of our seaports over to the United Arab Emirates or to a company owned by them. It just doesn't seem smart to me.

There were objections. There was a firestorm of objection from the Congress, Republicans and Democrats. The President said: I endorse the takeover of the shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports, and he pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve that would block the agreement. He said: If you pass a bill that says the UAE company, Dubai Ports World, can't manage seaports, I am going to veto the bill. But then they got, I think, Dubai Ports World to agree to back away somehow. They have not yet divested, but they are trying to find someone else to manage these ports.

But I want to make sure everybody understands. In this free-trade agreement--here is what is in the free-trade agreement with Oman, and it has been in previous free-trade agreements as well. There is a provision in this agreement that says we cannot block Oman from acquiring some things. Under the free-trade agreement, we cannot block Oman from acquiring landside aspects of port activities, including operation and maintenance of docks, loading and unloading of vessels, marine cargo handling, operation of piers--in effect, we have a provision that protects, for example, Oman's right to be managing America's seaports.

I don't understand how this works. Maybe somebody looking at me and listening to me will say: Hey, you don't. But I really don't understand the logic of putting in a free-trade agreement preferred activities that say we are going to protect the right of Oman to run America's port system; they have a right to do that.

Someone else will say to me: That is true, that is what is in the free-trade agreement, but there is also a circumstance where the President can override that as a result of national security.

Yes, but this President has already said he fully supports having a foreign government-controlled company running America's seaports. He is wrong about that; he is just dead wrong. He needs to rethink that position. But if we have a President who already said: I believe we ought to have a foreign company run America's seaports, and it is fine with me whether it is the UAE or Oman, there is no provision here that is a failsafe provision so that the President will decide: OK, I understand it is in the free-trade agreement they can do that, but I am going to invoke some sort of national security objection.

My sense is that most people do not know this is here, or if they know it is here, either they do not care or they think it is fine, to turn over the ports in New York and New Jersey and Florida and Louisiana to foreign control, foreign management.

We have spent a lot of time here this week talking about port security. I think we have 7 million containers coming into this country on container ships. We are going to spend $10 billion this year, roughly, to protect us against an incoming missile with a nuclear warhead on it. We are worried about a rogue nation or terrorist group acquiring an intercontinental ballistic missile and putting a nuclear weapon on the tip, so we are trying to create a catcher's mitt, in effect trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. We are going to spend $10 billion this year.

The most likely threat, of course, is that 1 of the 7 million containers that comes into this country has in it a weapon of mass destruction, perhaps a stolen nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal, and it pulls up to an American dock--not at 17,000 miles an hour, but it pulls up at 2 or 3 miles an hour and it pulls up to a pier at a major American city and we have a detonation of a nuclear weapon. That is far more likely than having a rogue nation or terrorist group acquire an ICBM. But we spend pennies on that and spend billions of dollars trying to create a catcher's mitt, trying to hit a bullet with a bullet in the sky. It is beyond me how this fits any thoughtful logic, and it is beyond me how this provision in a trade agreement provides individuals any security for this country at all. It does not. It injures this country's opportunity for good security, in my opinion.

This trade agreement really needs to be defeated. It will probably not be because we don't have thoughtful debates. We by and large have pretty thoughtless minidebates about trade these days. But I think one of these days, when the trade deficit is announced--this week at $68 billion just for 1 month, $800 billion a year--one of these days, the American people are going to say: Wait a second, doesn't that mean we are selling our country?

And the answer is yes. Today is Friday. We will import from other countries about $2 billion more in value of property than we will export to other countries. That means we will pay for that by putting currency in the hands of others. Over half of it will be in the hands of the Chinese and Japanese. With that currency, they then buy part of our country--stocks, bonds, companies, real estate. We are literally selling part of our country every single day to the tune of $2 billion a day.

Don't take it from me; take it from Warren Buffett and many others who understand that this is unsustainable. Two years ago, Alan Greenspan said that when you reach 5 percent of your GDP as a trade deficit, you are reaching waters--levels that are unsustainable and are going to cause serious economic harm. Now we are well over that 2 years later. He was right then, and he is right now.

We have to take action. This country has to care and begin to take action. You can't continue to sell part of your country. You can't consume 6 percent more than you produce year after year and then pay foreigners to produce it for us and put it in their hands, currency with which they buy this country.

I noticed the other day that we sold Wham-O to the Chinese. It is probably not a big deal--Hula Hoops, Frisbees, and Slip `N Slide. Every kid knows Wham-O. But if you take a look at what is being transferred from this country--our assets, company after company--to the Chinese and then you evaluate whether this is sustainable and whether this is the course on which America wants to remain, the answer should be no.

I haven't talked much about jobs. I will do that, I believe, on Monday prior to the time we will have a vote on the Oman Free Trade Agreement. But this is about the economic health and strength of our country. No country will long remain a world economic power without a strong manufacturing base, and no country will remain a world economic power without being able to expand its middle-class people. We have done that in a century. We have expanded the middle class and created economic growth unlike we have ever seen on this Earth. And now we are beginning to see that taken apart, people having more trouble finding a good-paying job.

Incidentally, of all the things we work on in this Chamber, there is no social program as important as a good job that pays well. We are now seeing American workers being told: You are going to compete against others who will work for 30 cents an hour. That means lower wages for you. We require higher productivity; we are going to give you lower wages and less retirement.

It takes apart the social compact we built in this country, that expansion of the middle class which created the economic expansion which created the greatest economy on the face of this Earth.

For all those reasons, this is a horrible trade agreement. I just touched on a part of it. I will finish on Monday. This is another chapter in a sad book of failures that no one wants to read very carefully. But my hope is that one of these days this Senate will wake up, this Congress will wake up, this President will wake up and decide: No more free-trade agreements. Let's fix the problems we have created before we negotiate new ones. Yes, let's have a goal of expanding trade. Trade can be good, but trade between trading partners must be mutually beneficial, and trade agreements that are free but not fair undermine this country's interests. We should aspire to have fair trade agreements that expand our opportunities, not retard our capabilities; help lift others up, not push us down. That ought to be our goal.