Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we are on the supplemental appropriations bill, I understand. I heard the presentations by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the ranking member earlier today. I would be remiss if I didn't first compliment both of them. This is not an easy job. It is difficult putting together legislation such as this and bringing it to the floor of the Senate. I compliment Senator Cochran and Senator Byrd for their diligent work.

I know that others will speak at some length about various pieces of this bill. I know the bill itself is controversial. I know there will be amendments perhaps to strip provisions that are in the bill. I wish to speak specifically about legislation that I added, along with Senator Burns and others on the Appropriations Committee, dealing with agricultural disasters. I wish to do that because I think there is a feeling by some that somehow this extra money that is a part of this legislation to try to respond to agricultural disasters or disasters faced by family farmers is something called pork, as some would put it, or is unnecessary, is extraneous, is unworthy. I wish to talk about that.

There is not a lot of talk on the floor of the Senate about family farming because I think, with the exception of perhaps one person here, we are not farmers. We don't get up in the morning on the farm. We don't milk cows in the morning. We don't check the cattle at night. We are Senators. We work here on the floor of the Senate. We give speeches, go to committee hearings, and travel back and forth on weekends, but we don't run a family farm.

Family farmers in this country by their very nature are risk takers. They don't know what is ahead. They are going to plant a seed and hope it grows. They plant a seed in the spring, and they hope that somehow they will harvest in the fall. They hope that after they plant that seed, they will get enough rain but, they hope, not too much rain. They hope they don't face a drought. If they get just enough rain, then they get a crop. Then they hope when they get the crop that between when the rains come and the crops are ready to harvest, they don't have bugs, they don't have grasshoppers, they don't have disease on that crop. And then if, by chance, they are able to harvest that grain, they truck it to the elevator, and they are told by the elevator: This is the price. This is what the world price is. This is what the market price is. This is what the posted price is. If it is not what you expect, if it is below what it cost you to produce it, that is tough luck, that is the price.

So farmers take all those risks. Because they are substantial, we have decided for many decades in this country to build a bridge across those price valleys, to say to farmers: When times get tough, you are not alone. You are living out there on the land, under the yard light all by yourself taking those risks, and we want you to know when times get tough, this country wants to keep farmers on the farm. That is why we have a farm program.

The farm program used to have a disaster title. It doesn't any longer. I wish it did. I think it should, but it doesn't. We have had to do disaster programs now on an ad hoc basis. So we added a disaster provision to this supplemental appropriations bill. We do that because we have had weather-related disasters all around the country. In the Gulf Coast we had a devastating disaster, perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of this country, called Hurricane Katrina. I can't pretend to know what it did to the Gulf of Mexico, to the people who live in the Gulf Coast region, in Louisiana and Mississippi and elsewhere. But my heart goes out to them, and I have wanted to be a part of everything that is done here in the Congress to extend our hand to them to say: You are not alone. This country wants to help. This country insists on helping in a time of need.

Family farmers in the gulf, I understand, got hit hard as well and, in many cases, lost their entire crops, just gone. We should and we will, and with this legislation, we did provide help to them. With this legislation, we say: If you planted a crop or if you couldn't plant a crop and your crop was destroyed, we are going to help you with a disaster plan. Our point was that there are farmers in the gulf who desperately need help, and there are farmers in other parts of the country who need help as well.

I want to show you a couple of pictures. This is of a little town called Souris, ND. This town called Souris, ND, as you can see, was inundated with water in June of 2005, with torrential rains that were just devastating, torrential rains that came to this area and several other areas of my State. The result was over 1 million acres--over 1 million acres--couldn't even be planted. Those farmers who had those acres, they didn't have a crop. They had a building and a family and a yard light, but they had nothing to harvest because they couldn't get anything

planted. Another nearly 1 million acres was planted and then washed away by these torrential rains.

Another scene in Souris, ND. I could show many pictures of exactly the same circumstance in parts of my State that suffered devastating flooding. These farmers need help. Other farmers in States such as Illinois, for example, where they had the third driest year last year since 1895, are facing a drought. They too need help.

Last December, I offered a disaster amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill when we were in conference. The Senate conferees accepted it, and the House conferees rejected it. That is what brought us to this position on this emergency supplemental of offering another disaster bill. The support in bringing that package to the floor of the Senate by Senator Cochran, who has always been a very strong advocate and supporter of family farming and American agriculture, and the support by Senator Byrd and others when we offered this in the Senate Appropriations Committee, was very heartening. It was approved unanimously in the Appropriations Committee. So it now exists on the floor of the Senate. It is, in many cases, the distance between being able to continue farming and being forced off the land for a good many families in this country.

We have a fellow in North Dakota named Rodney Nelson who writes. He is a farmer and a rancher in Elmont, ND. He wrote a question once. He wrote a question on a piece of paper, and then asked this. He said: What is it worth?

He was talking about farming. He said: What is it worth? What is it worth for a kid to know how to weld a seam? What is it worth for a kid to know how to build a lean-to? What is it worth for a kid to know how to drive a tractor, grease a combine? What is it worth for a kid to know how to butcher a hog? What is it worth for a kid to know all of these things? What is it worth for a kid to know how to teach a calf to suck milk from a pail? What is that worth? What is it worth to have a kid know how to plum a door? What is that worth?

We know what it was worth in the Second World War. This country sent millions of young men, particularly off America's farms, all around the world to fight. They could do anything. They could fix machinery, they could overhaul an engine, they could do anything. They knew how to weld, they knew how to build, they could do anything. There is only one university in America where they teach that, and that is the American family farm. It is the only place where you get that education. And the question is, What is it worth? What is it worth to a country?

That is the question I ask when we offer legislation to say that when family farmers get hit by torrential rains or drought, when family farmers get hit by devastating occurrences of weather that destroy their crops, destroy their ability to make a living, the question then is, Will Congress want to help? Should Congress help?

The answer, in my judgment, is yes. It is important not just for those families living out on the farm; it is important for the character of this country.

There was a wonderful author who wrote some remarkable books about small towns and family farms, and he talked about the seedbed of family values in America, in American history coming from family farms. And that seedbed of family values that comes from family farms and rolls on to small towns and big cities and nurtures and refreshes the character of this country is something that is very important to that which we call America. That is why the desire that I and my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, have to offer a disaster piece on this emergency supplemental bill is so important. This isn't about words; it is about saying to families who were devastated by weather disasters, who are living out on the farm, far from town, under a yard light, struggling to try to make a living, raising a family, to say to them: We understand what you are facing. You are not alone, and we want to help. That is why this piece is in this legislation.

Again, I compliment the chairman and I compliment the ranking member for their work.

Let me mention one additional piece. A number of my colleagues today have mentioned the energy issue, particularly with respect to the price of gas and oil and the price of fuel. There isn't anybody hurt much more than family farmers with what is happening to the price of energy, and the price of gas and diesel, especially. Family farmers are heavy users of fuel. It is the way they plant their crop in the spring, and it is the way they take their crop out in the fall, with the heavy use of fuel and the heavy use of nitrogen and fertilizer. So there is nobody that is hurt more by what is happening with the price of gas and oil than family farmers. It is devastating to them.

This legislation also includes a partial offset with respect to a percent of direct payment that farmers receive as a result of what is happening on energy prices. But with respect to that, I want to make another point. We hear these days that what is happening with respect to the price of gas and oil is the function of the market. There is no market price that is a fair market price for oil. First, you have OPEC ministers that sit around a table from OPEC countries and talk about how much we should produce and how much we expect to get for it. That is No. 1. That is called a cartel; that is not a free market.

Second, we have oil companies. They used to have one name, now two names, and sometimes three names. Why? Because they all got married, decided to merge; big, blockbuster mega mergers, bigger and stronger, with more raw muscle in the marketplace.

Third is the futures market which is supposed to be a market that establishes pricing strategies, but the fact is it has become an orgy of speculation. It is an unbelievable orgy of speculation.

So you have three things: The OPEC ministers, the bigger oil companies, bigger by merger, and then a massive amount of speculation on the futures market. Then we are told: Here is the price of oil, it is $73. If you don't like it, tough luck. If you don't like it, you do not understand; it is the free market. That is total baloney. There is no free market here. All the pain is on the side of the consumers who pay 50 bucks or 60 bucks for a tank of gas, and it is like hooking a hose right up to the pocketbook of the American people to suck money right into the treasury of Exxon. That is what this is about. I am not anti-oil. We produce oil in our State. We also are heavy users of energy in our State. But what I am feeling strongly about is not about profits, it is about profiteering.

When companies decide they are going to ride this price in a way that injures the American people--and I believe what is happening today does do injury to the American people and is unfair and is not part of the so-called capitalistic market system--then I think Congress has a responsibility to act.

The President said this morning the Federal Trade Commission should do an investigation. I and a couple of my colleagues wrote a piece of legislation last year that became law as part of the Energy bill that requires the Federal Trade Commission to do the investigation. If the President had called the FTC, he would have understood that they have been doing an investigation and will report sometime toward the end of May.

I have to confess, however, that I believe the Federal Trade Commission has been dead largely from the neck up for some long while. I don't expect great results at the end of May, but, nonetheless, they are required and will be reporting the results of an investigation sometime in mid to late May.

I believe there should be investigations. I believe the issue of market manipulation is real. When you have market manipulation or potential price gouging, the way the system works in this country, there ought to be a mechanism by which you investigate it and take action if necessary. But I believe in the meantime, when the price of oil goes where it has gone, and where, with the historical circumstance that in 2004, at $40 a barrel average price, the oil industry had the highest profits in their history; and now with the price of oil at $65 and $70 and $72 a barrel, we have profits far in excess of that, despite the fact that the oil companies haven't done anything to generate those profits. They have just come. I believe those profits above the $40-a-barrel pricetag is a windfall.

The oil companies say: Well, we need all those profits because we are sinking

that back into the ground to look for more energy. If they were doing that, I wouldn't be here talking. But that is not what they are doing. They are buying back their own stock. They are drilling for oil on Wall Street. And, oh, by the way, there is no oil on Wall Street. That doesn't come from me, that comes from Business Week: Drilling for oil on Wall Street, and that is all about using the capital on Wall Street to become bigger through mergers, buying back stock, drilling for oil on Wall Street, or paying a retired CEO, according to press reports, up to $400 million for a retirement package. That is not a golden parachute, that is a platinum parachute, one that I have not heard of before.

Does that anger the American people? It sure does, and they have a right to be angry. Something is wrong with this system.

My colleague, Senator Dodd, and I offered an amendment last year that would have imposed a windfall profits rebate on profits above $40 a barrel at which price the oil companies have the largest profits in their entire history, and then we said this: But if those profits are used to sink back into the ground for additional exploration or to build refineries above ground, if those profits are invested back to expand the supply of energy which will inevitably, hopefully, reduce the price of energy, the price of gasoline, then they will not be subject to the windfall rebate. If the oil companies, in short, are doing what they say they are doing, then they will not be affected. If they are not, if they are buying back their stock and drilling for oil on Wall Street and paying executives $400 million for a retirement package, then they get hit with a windfall profits rebate. All of the money will be sent back to the American consumer as a rebate. All of it.

It is not a revenue-raising measure. It is not designed for the purpose of raising money for the Government. It is designed for the purpose of righting a wrong: Taking the windfall profits and sending it back to the consumers as rebates from whence it came.

We expect to offer that again. We didn't succeed last fall. I suppose someone could make the point that you didn't succeed because it wasn't a very good idea. I would disagree strongly. I think it is the right idea. My hope would be that when we offer it again on this supplemental that we will be successful. One way or another, I think the American people want this Congress and this President to stand for their interests.

I know we have larger energy problems, longer term energy problems; I understand all that. We have price-gouging legislation, and we have all kinds of issues that we need to deal with. A good start would have been in early 2001 with the meetings for which we still have not received public information. Notwithstanding that, we are where we are today and we need to find our way out of this. The point I was trying to make is that no industry, no group of people are hurt more, in my judgment, than family farmers. All Americans are facing pretty stiff penalties with these prices, but family farmers are devastated by these gas and diesel prices. For that reason, I think it is ever more important for us to support the disaster package that has come as a part of this emergency legislation brought to the floor of the Senate today.

Again, I will speak at another time on the floor about a couple of other pieces of this legislation. I am enormously proud to be a part of the Appropriations Committee. I think we have a great committee. We work well together. It is a bipartisan committee. I think the legislation we have brought to the floor, while not perfect, and while we might alter it in one way or another, I don't know, but I think given the President's request, this Senate is responding.

Let me make this final point. One of the responses with this legislation is to replenish the accounts in the Department of Defense with respect to what we are asking our men and women to do in the service of our country. I think each time we have done that, the chairman and ranking member and every member of the Appropriations Committee has indicated that when we ask men and women to wear America's uniform and go abroad and serve in harm's way, we are going to do everything conceivable, everything possible to fund that which is necessary for them to do their job. That is at least a part, a significant part, of this legislation as well.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. President, I listened with some interest to my colleague. I have to observe, though, he said that now we are going to see the blame game, and he tells us where the fault lies. Well, that is the first chapter of the blame game. I have not been out here with respect to amendments. I have been chairing a hearing for a couple of hours. But I say this to those who are talking about these amendments: Those of us on this side of the aisle have certainly had a great deal of experience with having our amendments not considered by the Senate. Most recently, we had an amendment to a bill that would have dealt with this issue of the Dubai company taking over American ports. The United Arab Emirates' wholly-owned company, Dubai Ports World, was going to take over the management of American shipping ports. We attempted to offer an amendment, but it shut the Senate down because the majority party didn't want an amendment such as that offered.

I have been trying for a couple of years to offer an amendment on the reimportation of prescription drugs to drive down prescription drug prices in this country. We have been thwarted on that. I could go on at some great length. To the extent there is a complaint that some have not been able to offer amendments, we understand that pretty well. We have been in that position for a couple of years now, including my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, who offered an amendment that would have effectively prohibited our country from engaging in torture with respect to those whom we have apprehended during wartime. That amendment on the prohibition of torture shut down the consideration of the Defense authorization bill last year month after month because the majority didn't want to vote on the McCain amendment on torture. So there is plenty of practice that has existed in this Chamber for prohibiting amendments.

Again, I don't know what the approach has been this morning on the floor because I have not been here. When I listen to discussions about why can we not offer amendments, that is a cry that has been echoing in this Chamber for a couple of years, much to the regret of those of us who have had amendments to offer. It is a cry that has not been heard by the majority party, which now jumps to the front of the line to complain today.

I want to talk about this issue of the underlying bill, the immigration bill and guest workers. I should also start by saying I don't have any particular claim to understanding or expertise in this area. I don't serve on the Judiciary Committee. I was not someone who helped write the underlying bill. So I don't come to the floor to claim to be an expert on the legislation. But I have spent a great deal of time in the last year or so doing research in a range of areas for a writing project dealing with American jobs and American workers, so I claim to know something about that.

I claim to know, for example, that we have lost somewhere around 3 million-plus jobs in this country, most of them having moved to China or Indonesia or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka--but most perhaps to China. We have lost millions of jobs in this country in the last 3\1/2\ to 4 years. American workers, middle-income workers, and particularly workers at the bottom of the economic ladder, have been devastated by what has happened with this race toward globalization and the race by the largest American corporations to produce where it is cheap, and then sell their products in our marketplace. All of that is going on in a very accelerated way.

Now we see, with the bill brought to the floor of the Senate, not only do we have a strategy in this country of allowing the export of good American jobs, now we will have a strategy of importing additional low-wage jobs.

I will review some numbers, if I might. We have somewhere around 11 million to 12 million people who have come into this country illegally and have stayed here. Some have been here a long while, and some recently arrived.

Is it surprising that we have a lot of people who have come into this country and stayed in violation of the law? No, it is not surprising to me. We live in a big world, and a lot of people in this world don't have the opportunities we have in this country. We have built something very special in the United States. This is a country that provides basic rights for people. It took us some while to perfect all that, but having struggled through the issues of civil rights, workers' rights, and women's rights, we have created an extraordinary country in which workers can band together to collectively bargain and negotiate. We have made decisions about the workplace and the right of a worker to work in a safe workplace, child labor laws, minimum wages, environmental protection, so you cannot produce a product and emit poisonous chemicals into the air and water.

At the same time, we have created circumstances where businesses can earn a profit, and a good one. This is an economy in which we have a vast consumer base, with the most affluent consumers in the world. All of that coming together created a country that is unparalleled on the face of this planet. So if you go anywhere in the world, and particularly impoverished areas in less developed countries, you will find, in discussing this with those people, that many would say they want to come to the United States of America. If you ask the question ``why,'' they will say it is because there is opportunity there, jobs there, better income, better pay. That is what you find. I have found that in many parts of the world, particularly in less developed countries.

Think for a moment what would be the case if tomorrow the United States said: Look, what we have built here is quite wonderful. We understand it is unique and we want to share it with everyone. We have no immigration quotas and anybody who wishes to come here can come. Tomorrow, you are all welcome. Come and stay as long as you want.

What would be the consequences of that? We all know the consequences of that. Those who are living in impoverished conditions from other parts of the world will find their way to this country. We will be importing poverty and we will have a massive number of people migrating to the United States of America, because they would see this as an opportunity. So we don't have a circumstance where we say that anybody who wants to come tomorrow, come on, this is wide open, and stay as long as you want. No. We have a series of quotas for immigrants. We have immigration quotas by country, by category, and then we allow people in based on these quotas.

I will describe exactly what we now face. We have 11 million to 12 million people who are here illegally. Last year, according to data I have seen, 1.1 million additional people tried to cross the border from Mexico into this country, but they were denied access. So 1.1 million were kept out who wanted to come in. And 400,000 to 700,000 who wanted in illegally got in illegally and are here. They came last year. Another roughly 150,000 people--according to estimates I have seen--are here on a temporary basis, H-2A or H-2B. Another 175,000 people came in last year legally, as family members and quotas, just from Mexico. That is what we face.

Now, at the same time we face these pressures of people wanting to come into our country, particularly in most cases low-skilled and low- wage workers, we face the largest trade deficits in the history of the world. We face the wholesale movement of American jobs overseas. So we see the two elements of the worst marriage of public policy; those are the export of good American jobs to China and elsewhere, and the import of low-wage workers to take the jobs of those in this country who are at the bottom of the economic ladder. That is about corporations, big companies, about their strategy, which has been embraced and given a bear hug by this President and the Congress, controlled by the President's party, standing for corporations and their interests. Export American jobs, do another trade deal, cause more American jobs to leave this country. Import cheap labor.

Why? They say: We want to import more cheap labor because we cannot

find Americans to do the work. So not only does the bill on the floor of the Senate describe that we will create a legal status for 11 million to 12 million people who are here because, practically speaking, nobody is going to round them up, or arrest them, or detain them, or export them--we will create a status for those folks--but in addition to that, it says let's also create a new guest worker program of 400,000 people per year each year, with an escalator of being able to increase that by 20 percent each year, which over 6 years could amount to 4.7 million more people coming into this country who now live outside of this country.

And so the bill provides a guest worker program saying we not only want to deal with the legalization of those who are here illegally-- millions and millions and millions of them--we also want to add potentially another 4.7 million. And, by the way, there is more than that, but that is just the piece about which I am talking. On top of that would be the provisions dealing with the new agricultural workers, which was an amendment offered in the committee.

So where do these 4.7 million people go--the ones who are now living outside of our country who come into our country legally--under this legislation? They go to find jobs in competition with American workers.

Let's talk about low-skilled, low-wage American workers.

This Congress, as stingy as it has been for low-wage, low-skilled workers, has decided for 8 years it will not increase the minimum wage. Boy, it is Katy bar the door if it comes to helping somebody at the top--tax breaks, unbelievable tax breaks for people at the top.

One of the world's richest people told me the other day when I was talking with him that he pays a lower income tax rate than the receptionist in his office. Why? Because the priority in this Chamber, the priority in this Congress, the priority of the President, is to drive down income tax rates for people who have capital gains. Who has capital gains? The wealthy. They have most of the capital gains. The wealthiest Americans are now paying the lowest tax rates, and this Congress can't be quick enough to see if they can't offer another gift to those at the top of the income scale.

I have nothing at all against those at the top of the income ladder. God bless them, that is what America is about; it is about success. But that does not justify saying that those who are the most successful shall pay the lowest income tax rates in our country, and that is what is happening. At the same time, Congress can't move quickly enough to provide the lowest tax rates to those with the highest incomes. It says to the people with the lowest incomes: We don't have any interest in increasing the minimum wage. Sit there for 8 years, let inflation work against your purchasing power; doesn't matter to us, we don't intend to increase it. I think that is a terrible mistake, but that is the way people at the bottom of the economic ladder have been treated in this country now for many years.

Now they will be treated again to the prospect of saying: Let's have some more people come in; let's not just deal with this 11 to 12 million, let's have more people come in on top of that because we can't find Americans to do that work.

Why can't we find Americans to do that work? Let me read something from Robert Samuelson, a Washington Post editorial. I fully agree with this. He talks about:

It's a myth that the U.S. economy ``needs'' more poor

immigrants.

He is speaking especially of the guest worker provisions.

The illegal immigrants already here represent only about

4.9 percent of the current labor force, reports the Pew

Hispanic Center. In no major occupation are they a major-

ity. . . .

Hardly anyone thinks that most existing illegal immigrants

will leave--

Or be rounded up, arrested, or deported. I understand that. I think all of us probably understand that. I think there should be some enforcement of employer sanctions which we created but have not enforced, which would make a big difference with respect to illegal immigration. Here is what Samuelson said:

In 2004, the median hourly wage in Mexico was $1.86

compared to $9 for Mexicans working in the United States,

says Rakesh Kochhar of Pew. With high labor turnover in the

jobs they take, most new illegal immigrants can get work by

accepting wages slightly below prevailing levels. . . .

But what would happen if new illegal immigration stopped

and wasn't replaced by these guest workers?

That is an assumption. First, I don't buy the assumption that even if this bill is passed with legalizing 11 to 12 million immigrants and then allowing up to 4.7 million new people to come in who are now living outside our country, I don't buy the notion that we have plugged the border. I don't think we in any way inhibit illegal immigrants from coming across the border. I know my colleagues are talking about tightening the border and employer sanctions, and I will talk about that in a minute. Employer sanctions was the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. That was a miserable failure, and I will explain why.

Again quoting Samuelson:

But what would happen if new illegal immigration stopped

and wasn't replaced by guest workers?

At some point higher wages would be going to American workers.

President Bush says that his guest worker program would

``match willing foreign workers with willing American

employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs.''

But at some higher wage, there would be willing Americans.

As long as you can bring illegal immigrants, which is what has been happening, into the country and they can work in the shadows and employers can employ them for subminimum wage, I understand why employers would not be employing American workers because they have a steady stream of workers they can employ below the minimum wage.

Business organizations understandably support guest worker

programs. They like cheap labor and ignore the social

consequences.

That is what is at work here. What is at work here is the same corporate interests who are exporting good American jobs are supporting this bill because they cannot only export good American jobs on the production side, but for those jobs you can't export, you can import cheap labor. And that is what this is about: Export good jobs and import cheap labor.

Let me talk for a moment about the debate over the Simpson-Mazzoli bill two decades ago at a time when we were told we had a significant immigration problem. That was a bill about border enforcement, strengthening enforcement at the border, and also creating employer sanctions.

The purpose of that bill was to say to employers: Don't you dare hire illegal immigrants; if you are hiring workers who are illegal, you are going to be in trouble, you are going to be slapped with a fine and subject to enforcement actions. So I went back and read the 1985 and 1986 debate about Simpson-Mazzoli. I won't embarrass anybody by reading it on the floor of the Senate. It was fascinating debate in the House and the Senate. This was nirvana. This was the entire solution. It was going to work like a charm because if you say to employers you dare not hire people who are not here legally, you shut down the job, you shut down the magnet, you shut down illegal immigration, end of story.

The fact is it didn't work at all. We have people in my State, the State of North Dakota, today--in fact, I think there is a story in today's paper about illegal immigrants working on some energy plants in the middle of North Dakota, found to be illegal. The question is: Is anybody going to take action against the employer? That would be a Minnesota employer, by the way.

Most of our troubles come from Minnesota. We joke about that.

If a Minnesota employer hires illegal workers, and he is caught, are there any problems for the Minnesota employer? No, no, not even a slap on the wrist; just a pat on the back. Nobody is going to prosecute. Nobody is going to fine them. Nobody is going to take enforcement action. It is exactly why we are in the situation we are in today. There are no sanctions for employers who hire illegal aliens.

I want to say very clearly that I don't in any way, because I oppose this guest worker program that will bring 4.7 million people in to compete with American workers at the bottom of the economic ladder, I don't in any way want to diminish the dignity and self-

worth of immigrants. I don't mean that at all. I know in most cases these are hard-working people, good families. Most of us have come from immigrant families at some point in our lineage. Because someone would come out and say, as I do today, that I don't support this proposal offered by the President and offered on the floor of the Senate, saying not only are we going to legalize or give legal status to 11 or 12 million people who came here illegally, but in addition to that, we are going to allow 400,000 people a year with a 20-percent escalation clause for the 4.7 million additional people potentially in 6 years to come into this country, I am not going to support that. That is a strategy for corporations to provide a ladder of cheap labor coming into this country, displacing American workers.

We have a serious crisis in this country with respect to the plight of America's workers. A lot of people who worked hard all their lives, worked for companies and were proud of it are now discovering their jobs are not safe, their jobs are not secure. In many cases, their jobs are gone--gone to China, gone to Indonesia. Yes, they can find another job. The statistics show they find another job at 20 percent less income. In most cases, they have lost their pensions; they have lost their health care. These are middle-income American workers, and the low-income workers, the people at the bottom of the ladder, the people who are high school dropouts, they work hard, they struggle, and now what they have confronted in recent years is a corporate strategy of being able to hire illegal immigrants at subpar wages, so the jobs are not there for them.

We have a lot of people come to this floor and want to offer amendments. They say they speak for this immigration bill, and they say they speak for immigrants. Again, let me emphasize, I don't want to diminish their concern for immigrant families. I don't want to do that. That is not what I am about. But I want to come to this floor to say a word on behalf of American workers because nobody is coming to this floor to talk about American workers, American jobs, and what it means to our country's future to have good jobs that pay well with retirement benefits and health benefits.

The current strategy we are employing in this country today, a strategy embraced by this President and this Congress, a corporate strategy that says let us export good jobs and import cheap labor, that is a strategy that undermines our economy.

I am interested in the long-term economic health of this country. We have a lot of kids who will grow up in this country, American kids, who want opportunity. Every single set of parents wants to leave a country that is better for their children. They want to leave a country that provides more opportunities for their children, and that is simply not the case these days, regrettably. It is because we have an economic strategy that is off track, and we need to put it on track. I have ideas about how to do that. Others do as well. But one of those ideas would not include suggesting that we ought to displace American workers with 4.7 million additional immigrant workers who now live outside of our country but who will come into our country to assume low-wage jobs and displace jobs for low-wage American workers. That would not be included in my suggestion of how to fix what is wrong in our country.

There is so much to say about this subject. I know there is great passion. I have heard it from all of the groups. I have used a lot of statistics. This is not, after all, about statistics or data. It is about hopes and dreams and aspirations. It is about human misery. It is about living in the shadows. It is about all of those things. So I understand the passion that exists on the floor of this Senate about this matter. But I also, as one Member of this body, lament that there seems to be so little effort and so little activity on this floor about the passions and the hopes and the dreams and the inspiration American workers have about their future.

I have indicated previously, I know we have this global economy and I know part of that global economy plays a role in this immigration debate. People say you are a hopeless xenophobe who doesn't get it. We all see over the horizon, and you somehow are nearsighted. My sense is that we as a country will have our better days ahead of us if we adopt public policy which is thoughtful and, yes, which has as a self- interest the long-term economic well-being of our country.

But this global economy has marched and now galloped forward without adequate rules with respect to jobs and income and opportunity in this country, and too few people seem to care about the diminished circumstances facing most American families and most American workers. That, too, should play a central role in this discussion. That, too, should be a part of the consideration here in the Senate. Regrettably, it has not been. My hope is that perhaps in the next 48 hours it will be, finally.

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

Will the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I--and I know the time is being divided--be recognized as the next Democratic speaker following Senator Kennedy's presentation, intermingled with Republican speakers as well.

I wish to follow the next Republican speaker.

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

Mr. President, I believe we are going back and forth, but since there is no one on the other side of the aisle seeking to claim time, let me claim time on our side. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 25 minutes against our time.

Mr. President, at a time when our country sees so much of the outsourcing of good jobs and now the proposal to continue importing cheap labor, I think it is a strange set of circumstances that has a proposal on the floor of the Senate saying let's deal with immigration and the immigration problem in this country by adding to the immigration bill a so-called guest worker program that would allow 400,000 additional people who now live outside our country to come into our country's labor force. They would do that with an escalator of potential 20 percent more than the 400,000 each year or, over 6 years, if they use the maximum, another 4.7 million immigrant workers into this country.

Open the newspaper these days and take a look at the news: outsourcing of American jobs; good American jobs that pay well, with benefits, retirement, and health care, going to China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh--outsourcing American jobs. In addition to outsourcing good American jobs, we are also insourcing, importing cheap labor.

We now have 11 million immigrants in this country who are here illegally. This Chamber is full of talk these days about immigrants because we are on an immigration bill and will be until the end of this week. The question is, Where is the talk about American workers as we discuss the issue of immigrants and immigration reform? Where is the description of the plight of the American worker? Who is here describing the circumstances faced by American workers? There are many here speaking for immigrants, and I don't ever want to diminish the dignity or the worth of the immigrants who have come here over the life of this country and helped us build something very unusual on the face of this Earth.

This country is a country made up of immigrants. I think everyone who stands on this floor would likely describe their great-grandparents or their grandparents or great-great-grandparents who came here from somewhere--mine from Norway, for example, and Sweden. But what we have built on this Earth is a country that is unique and unusual. It is a country that has created a standard of living which is almost unparalleled in the world: good jobs that pay well, the creation of a middle class, an expanded middle class where people had good incomes and those good incomes allowed them to increase their standard of living.

Now we see a different kind of circumstance in our country. We see the largest corporations that have become the preeminent economic entities, very large corporations that have described a different set of circumstances for themselves. What they like to do is produce somewhere else--send their jobs to China, for example--and then send the product back to this country to sell and then send their income through a Grand Cayman Island bank so they don't have to pay taxes. They ship the jobs overseas, ship the products here, and run the money through the Cayman Islands.

In addition to all of that--and there is plenty of evidence that is going on wholesale; 3 million jobs lost to that sort of activity just in the last several years--in addition to that, at the same time these jobs are moving overseas and hurting the middle class in this country and shrinking opportunities for the people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, we have people trying to get into this country.

Why? Our country is an attraction to them because this is a place they want to come to get a job and make some money. In much of the world, they pay various substandard wages--different economies, less developed countries, undeveloped countries--and so this country has become a magnet for people who want to come here.

I have described the circumstance some years ago when I was on a helicopter that ran out of gas somewhere between Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, up in the mountains in the jungles. After we ran out of power, after the fuel tank was empty, we landed, and the compesinos came to our helicopter to see who came through. I, through an interpreter, talked with some of them.

I talked with a woman who had three children. After describing who we were and asking about her life, I said: What is it you would like to do with your life?

She said: Oh, I would like to come to America; I would like to come to the United States.

Why would you like to do that, I asked?

Because that is where opportunity is, she said. Get a job, make some money, have opportunities for me and my children.

That is not unusual. It wasn't unusual to hear that in Nicaragua or El Salvador, and it wouldn't be unusual to hear that in most parts of the world. If we had no immigration laws at all and we said tomorrow to any one else of this world's population of roughly 6.3 billion who want to come here: Come on along, you are welcome in this country. Come and stay. Come and grab a job, if you like--why don't we do that? Why do we have immigration laws? Why do we have quotas of the number of people we can allow in each year--and we do allow people in--why do we have those numbers? Simply because we can't absorb a massive inflow of immigration from around the world willing to work at substandard wages. We can't absorb that. The social services that are required to attend to it, the jobs they take, we can't do that. So we have a process called immigration by which people legally come into this country.

People have come to this country illegally. It is estimated we now have 11 million people here illegally. I heard an actor--well, actually he is not much of an actor--but I heard this fellow on television yesterday on CBS, I believe it was, and he was doing his commentary about immigration. This is a fellow who has been wrong about most things, so it didn't surprise me what he said about immigration. He said: No one should call this illegal immigration.

Well, I am sorry, but if people come here illegally, it is illegal immigration. We have 11 million people here illegally.

In addition, 1.1 million people tried to come across our southern border last year, but were stopped--1.1 million were stopped at our southern border trying to come into this country. In addition to that, somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 people we estimate came into this country across the southern border illegally last year. Finally, above that number, 175,000 immigrated from Mexico last year legally. That is in addition to the other quotas from the other countries. So the fact is, we have a very significant number who come into this country, and many of them come in illegally.

So my colleagues bring an immigration bill to the floor and the President describes the need for an immigration bill, as well as the President of Mexico. What they say is: We can't arrest and detain and deport 11 million people. I understand that. I am not sure I know the solution to all of this, but I understand there is not going to be a sweep in this country to detain or deport or arrest 11 million people who are here illegally. We will have discussions about that portion of the bill and we will have amendments about that portion of the legislation. We will also have amendments about employer sanctions.

I was here when the previous immigration bill was passed. The presumption was that if you make it illegal for employers to hire illegal aliens then, in that circumstance, they will have to pay a significant fine--the employer will--and they won't be hiring them. If the job is not the magnet to come here, it will shut down immigration at the border. That was all nonsense. It didn't work. I think last year three immigration cases were brought by this administration against employers who hired illegal immigrants. There has been no enforcement at all. So we are going to have discussions and amendments about that portion of the legislation.

Let me talk about the other piece, if I might, and that other piece is a guest worker program attached to this, saying, In addition to all of the other things that will be done in this legislation, including making legal 11 million people who came here illegally or giving them legal status, we have an addition called a guest worker program. The guest worker program is the proposition that 400,000 additional workers will be allowed in. These are people who are now living outside of our country. They will be allowed into our country with a 20-percent escalator per year and, by the way, at the end of 6 the escalator works and they let these folks come in years, if, we will have 4.6 million additional guest workers who have come into this program in the 6-year period--4.6 million.

Why are people saying this is necessary? They are saying it is necessary because Americans won't take these jobs. We can't find Americans who will take these jobs. Well, why do you suppose that might be the case, if it is the case? I dispute that, but let's assume it is the case. One of the reasons is those jobs don't pay enough. Since the big businesses don't want to raise salaries at the bottom, they say the solution to not having to raise salaries is to bring in immigrant workers who will work for less. Let's not worry about the Americans. If we can't find Americans to take the jobs at the minimum wage and, by the way, this Congress has decided for 8 years it will not increase the minimum wage--those folks, the working poor and others who work at the bottom of the economic ladder, have not had an increase in the minimum wage in 8 years. So the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, big business, and others say, What we need to do is to have a separate and additional guest worker program. In addition to the 11 million people, we need to have a guest worker program that could reach 4.6 million people in the next 6 years.

Let me respond to this question of jobs that Americans won't do. This is what the research says. Construction jobs: 86 percent of the workers are American workers and other legal workers. Food preparation: 12 percent are illegal immigrants; 88 percent of the food preparation workers are American workers and other legal workers. Manufacturing: 91 percent American workers. Transport: 93 percent. These are the jobs that corporations and others say Americans won't take and, therefore, they have to bring in immigrant labor, new guest workers, 4.6 million additional people.

While we are doing that, let's take a look at this issue of change in income for the American people. This happens to measure 1979 to 2003. You can see the top 1 percent of the American income earners are doing very well--lots of extra income, massive growth in their income. The bottom fifth: almost no growth in 25 years. In fact, some studies show they have actually lost ground. This shows that they have been stagnant for 25 years. So at the same time we have people saying, We need to bring in more immigrant workers to take these low-income jobs, we have people at the lower end of the economic scale in this country--and we have the middle-income workers as well--struggling, trying to figure out, What do they do next? How do they find a good job?

About 30 years ago, the largest corporation in this country was General Motors. General Motors paid well, had good benefits, good retirement, good health care. Most people not only got good pay when they went to work there, they worked there for a lifetime. Now, the largest corporation is Wal-Mart--Wal-Mart. In the first year of employment, turnover I understand is about 70 to 80 percent. Wal-Mart pays very low wages. I believe the average income at Wal-Mart is $18,000 a year, and they pay very little benefits. Very few have health care. I think a third to just over a third have health care benefits, and those who do pay substantially more than is the employee's share in most other companies. That is what we have come to. So the middle- income workers are looking for a replacement for those jobs that have been shipped overseas.

I have spoken at length about the issue of outsourcing of jobs, and I won't do that today, but whether it is Huffy bicycles or Little Red Wagon Radio Flyer, Fig Newton cookies, Fruit of the Loom, or Levis or Tony Lama boots--I could go on forever--these are jobs Americans used to have, good jobs that paid well, almost always jobs with benefits-- gone, gone to China for somebody who will earn 33 cents an hour, probably working in Shenzhen, China, 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, to produce the product and ship it back to Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears to be sold to the American public, and then have the same companies run their income through the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes. That is interesting but not very good for this country, and exactly the wrong strategy for the long-term economic health of America.

Employment rates for individuals lacking a high school diploma, you will see that nearly one-half of U.S.-born workers without a high school diploma are without a job. Immigrant workers, on the other hand, many of whom come here without a high school diploma, find work in high numbers. I have a picture of some immigrant workers that was given to me recently. These, by the way, were workers who came in by a contractor who hired them to help do work after Hurricane Katrina, undocumented workers who came into this country, and--by the way, at the hearing I held on this, one of the people who testified was a fellow who ran a Louisiana construction firm. His firm was hired by a Halliburton subcontractor to do electrical repair work in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. But the Halliburton subcontractor changed its mind, and they hired a good number of people to come in who were undocumented workers and who didn't have adequate training to do electrical work at this particular base. It is the sort of thing that is going on all the time, and I think it is hurting this country.

So the question is for this Congress, Who is going to talk about American workers? I know the subject is about immigration, but it has a profound impact on American workers. So who is going to come here today to talk about American workers?

We are told that the corporate strategy here is that they can't find additional American workers without paying higher wages and they don't want to pay higher wages because they want to keep costs down, so they are going to import additional workers. They are now called guest workers. By the way, these are nonagricultural, these guest workers. This is in addition to H-2A and H-2B workers, agricultural and nonagricultural, who will still exist

under law. I haven't even described the people coming in under those two provisions. Yet we have people saying we must have this additional guest worker program.

I understand people listening and those who feel very strongly that we have to have this immigration bill, including the guest workers, who will say: What you are talking about is anti-immigrant. That couldn't be further from the truth. I indicated that I think immigrants contribute a great deal to this country. Most of us come as a result of some immigration back a generation or several generations in our family. But the question is: What are we going to do to fix this issue, and what are we going to do to balance the immigration legislation and the proposal for guest workers against the needs of American workers? I think what is going on here is going to pull the rug out from under American workers. I don't understand this at all.

Let me put up a chart that shows the average wages--perhaps I should show you the New York Times story of March 17, a couple of weeks ago, about a businesswoman in New York. Sister Ping is her nickname. She was sentenced to 35 years for running one of New York City's most lucrative immigrant smuggling rings and for financing the infamous Voyage of Golden Venture, the rusty freighter that ran aground with 300 starving immigrants in its hold. Sister Ping said she would be happier in prison in the United States than free in her rural village in China.

Let me describe what persuades Sister Ping and others to attempt to bring low-wage income earners to this country. A typical unskilled labor wage in Russia is 51 cents an hour. In Nicaragua, 37 cents an hour. In China, 33 cents an hour; in Bangladesh, 33 cents an hour; in India, 11 cents an hour; and in Haiti, 30 cents an hour. We are suggesting that we are short of workers here. We want another 400,000 plus 20 percent every year for 6 years, or 4.7 million additional workers because we don't have enough workers in this country.

What we don't have is enough courage and enough common sense to, first, increase the minimum wage and second, to tell those who are trying to employ immigrant labor at below standard wages, which they have done for years now, that you have to pay a decent wage at the bottom to get people to work, and that includes Americans. That includes our country's workers. If this Congress has some common sense, we don't need guest workers. That is the other side of this immigration debate, the extra guest workers. We don't need them. What we need employers to do is to pay a decent wage. What we need the Congress to do is to increase the minimum wage.

We need to understand that American workers have worth. They want jobs. What is happening to them is good jobs are being exported overseas for these kinds of wages overseas, and then low-income jobs in this country are now going to be filled and have been filled by immigrant labor. So we are importing low-wage workers for jobs here and exporting high-wage, good jobs for jobs there. I am telling you I think that is a strategy to injure this country's economy. It is a strategy to hurt low-income American workers. It has been going on for some while now. But this memorializes it in an immigration bill.

I don't understand at all why this is being seriously proposed. In fact, the President's proposal would have no limit. I talked about the 400,000 plus a 20-percent escalator per year for so-called guest workers who now live outside of our country who will be told to come on in legally. The Congress has a 400,000-person plus a 20-percent escalator which, as I indicated, would relate to about 4.7 million workers over 6 years. But the fact is, the President's proposal has no limit at all; the sky is the limit. I am telling you, this is a U.S. Chamber-big business strategy. It is probably good for them. It allows them to import cheap labor. It probably keeps their costs low. But I will tell you what else it does: It pulls the rug out from American workers in a way that is very unfair.

Having said all of that, it is not my intention to suggest that we don't have to deal with immigration issues. We do. I understand that. It is not my intention to suggest that anybody can round up or should even seriously consider rounding up 11 million people and deporting them. That is not going to happen. I was in the Congress when the Simpson-Mazzoli bill was passed dealing with immigration. It was going to fix immigration. Immigration problems have become much worse.

This proposal, the Simpson-Mazzoli proposal, was described as a proposal that would say that the attraction--the magnet--for immigrants coming into this country is a job. Take away the job, you take away the attraction or the magnet. How do you take away the job? You tell employers in this country, if you hire people who are here illegally, you are going to pay a real price for it. You are going to be slapped with a big fine. You are going to have a big problem.

Guess what--they didn't even get hit with a feather duster. Not a thing. As I said, last year there were three enforcement cases against American businesses that hired illegal labor. I just heard of one the other day in our part of the country. An employer from one of the big cities up near our area hired some illegal immigrants to come in and do a construction project. They were caught. The question was, for the local State's attorney, the question for the attorney general's office and others, is anything going to happen? No, nothing is going to happen. No action is going to be taken. It has been that way for years. The result is that the so-called Simpson-Mazzoli bill meant nothing.

My colleagues say now we are going to really enforce things at the border. If we have a guest worker provision, somehow we will not have additional people coming across the border because we will allow about 4.7 million of them in illegally in addition to the 11 million who are here. I don't understand why they believe allowing 450,000-plus a year, or 4.7 million in 6 years, potentially--how that is going to stop others who want to come in. We have an inexhaustible number of people working around the world at dirt-cheap wages. We have an inexhaustible appetite in this country, for businesses, apparently, to hire people at substandard wages. So how is it you are going to plug this border? I don't see it in this bill.

We are told we don't really plug the border. What you really do is invite up to 4.7 million additional people in, and therefore that cuts the appetite for people to come in. It is total nonsense. That is not going to do it at all. It just isn't. All it is going to do is undermine American workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. That is what it does. I don't understand why this issue is brought to the floor of the Senate with guest workers.

I mentioned the other day a story about FDR. Let me close with that.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's funeral was being held. Before his funeral, his body lay in State here in the Capitol Building, and there were long lines to view the casket of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The journalists were trying to get color pieces for their stories. A journalist walked up to a man who was holding his cap in his hands, a working man. He had been standing for some long while in line to file past the casket of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The journalist asked him: Did you know President Roosevelt?

The working guy said: No, but President Roosevelt knew me.

The question is, Who knows American workers now? Yes, President Roosevelt did know American workers. He is the person who got us the Fair Labor Standards Act. He stood up for American workers. Who knows American workers now? Is there any discussion about American workers as we talk about immigration on the floor of the Senate, a subject that will have such a profound impact on jobs in this country? Is there any discussion about American workers? I don't hear it, regrettably.

Amendment No. 3223 to Amendment No. 3192

I am also today going to offer an amendment numbered 3223, which I believe is at the desk. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

I ask that we call up amendment No. 3223.

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

Mr. President, this amendment is cosponsored by Senator Snowe, Schumer, Burns, and Jeffords. I will just briefly describe the amendment that I hope we will consider this week. It deals with cross- border traffic between the United States and Canada and the issue of the card that is being considered by the State Department in lieu of a passport that would be required for United States-Canada cross-border traffic.

The amendment is quite simple. It would provide, for children under 18--that is, 17 and under--who are accompanied by parents moving cross- border, they would not need one of these new cross-border cards. It would provide that there be an opportunity for the State Department to offer 3-day passes for those who are simply on a 1-day cross-border trip and would also provide that these new cards which would be required in lieu of passports cost no more than $20.

As you know, it takes over $90 to purchase a passport. That is not an inconsiderable sum. It takes some while to get a passport. If you have a family of four or five going up to Winnipeg or Regina, the northern part of our State--we have a 4000-plus mile border--for a family of four or five going to see a relative, if we have a passport requirement, that is pretty dramatic. We have always been able to use our driver's license, and the Department of Homeland Security says that is going to be replaced by a passport. We complained about that. They said: All right, what we will require is a passport card. We don't know the specifics of that card, but what we want to make sure of is that card not be prohibitive for families. I don't have any problem with requiring a standardized card, but I don't believe it should cost more than $20. I don't believe it should be required for children under 17 traveling with their parents. There also ought to be exceptional circumstances, with proper identification, for those who make day trips.

As I said, I am joined in this amendment by many of my colleagues from the border States, including Senator Snowe from Maine, Senator Schumer from New York, Senator Burns from Montana, and Senator Jeffords from Vermont. I hope we can have some discussion and debate and hope in the conduct of the debate on this immigration bill that we may include that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, some long while ago, I was on a helicopter flying in Central America between Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, in the mountains and jungles, with two other Members of Congress. We, unfortunately, ran out of fuel. So we abruptly landed. It is a universal rule that if you are in a flying machine and you run out of gas, you will be landing soon and we did. We were there for 4 or 5 hours until someone found us and sent other helicopters in to get us out.

The campesinos in the area had seen the helicopters landing and they decided to walk up and see who we were. So 30, 40 campesinos came to the helicopter that landed, and we talked with them. We had an interpreter with us.

I visited with a young woman with her three children in tow. We talked about her life. She had never met anybody from the United States. I asked about her life and I said: What would you aspire to do with your life? She said: I would like to come to the United States of America. I said: Why would that be the case? She said: Well, that is where there is opportunity--in the United States of America. This young woman, in the jungles of Nicaragua and Honduras, saw opportunity in the United States.

It is true that in much of the world, if you ask people what are your aspirations, they would like to go to the United States. We are a beacon of hope and opportunity. We have created a country that is quite extraordinary--a country in which we have developed a broad middle class. That middle class helped create jobs that paid well, that had retirement and health benefits, raised families, built communities, built churches, built schools, sent their kids to schools. What a remarkable country.

At the start of the last century, leading all the way up to this century, we had debates, which sometimes turned violent, about what are the conditions of freedom, what are the rights in this country. People died in the streets. James Fyler died. Not many remember his name. He was shot 56 times. Do you know why James Fyler was shot 56 times? It was because he believed that people who were going down into the coal mines ought to have a better deal. He stood for coal miners, for the right to form labor organizations and bargain collectively. He paid for that with his life.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the first third of the century, helped write and signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created rights for American workers. It changed the conditions of work in our country. When Roosevelt died--there is the story that I have mentioned previously on the floor of the Senate about the journalist covering his funeral. As his body lie in state in the Capitol of the United States, a long line of people formed to file past the body of the President. A working man holding his cap, with tears in his eyes, stood in the line a long while. The journalist came up to him and said: Did you know President Roosevelt? And the working man said: No, I didn't, but he knew me.

His point was that this was a President who stood with working men and women. Who knows the working men and women today? Who stands with them and for them today? Well, we

built a place that is quite extraordinary, and a lot of people want to come to this place. Now, if you fast forward to 2006, we see a strategy in this country with respect to trade, the outsourcing of American jobs, and now with respect to immigration, of insourcing cheap labor.

I know this is a sensitive subject and a very difficult one for the Congress and the American people. There are two elements of what is being discussed by President Bush and by those in the Chamber of the Senate. One deals with those who have come to this country illegally-- the 11 million or so--and the second deals with an add-on to that, offered in unlimited quantity by President Bush and in the quantity of 400,000 workers per year by the underlying bill discussed in the Senate, called guest workers.

I will talk a little about this. This chart shows the illegal immigration over the past two decades. People don't like to use the term, but you have to use that term. We have processes for immigration here. Let me describe what that process is. We allow people, through H- 2A visas and H-2B visas--agriculture and non-agriculture work--to come into this country legally. In addition, people immigrate to live here permanently. In 2004, 175,000 people immigrated here legally from Mexico. By comparison, last year, 1.1 million who attempted to come into this country illegally were stopped at the border.

Last year, we understand--although we don't have hard numbers--in addition to the 1.1 million who were stopped at the border, another 400,000 to 700,000 came across illegally, to add to this growing number of illegal immigrants in this country.

My colleagues say--and I understand the comment--nobody is going to round up 11 million or 12 million people and prosecute them and deport them and all that. I understand that. We are going to discuss the conditions of all of that, and that is important to do. I don't want to, nor would any of my colleagues want to, diminish the worth, the dignity of those who are part of this pool. They came here illegally, but many have been here a long time. I understand that is a difficult issue. But let me not talk about that.

Let me talk instead about the add-on by President Bush and by the underlying bill in the Senate dealing with guest workers. I want to talk about that because as we outsource American jobs through terrible trade deals and because big American corporations want to find cheap labor in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, as we outsource those jobs and decide to insource cheap labor to take the jobs on the bottom of the economic ladder here, the question ought to be asked: Mr. President, who knows today's American workers--especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder?

I know the folks at the top have had it real good for a long time. They have an increasing share of America's income. But the folks at the bottom have struggled, lost ground, lost jobs, lost retirement, lost health care. Now this Congress is saying we want to change the status of 11 million people who are here illegally and make them legal, No. 1; No. 2, in addition to that, we want to have a guest worker program by which 400,000 people who now are outside of this country are going to be allowed in, in the next year, and that can increase 20 percent each year. As this chart shows, that guest worker provision, in my judgment, will likely lead to 4.6 million additional people coming into this country who now live outside of the country.

What is the purpose of this? I don't think there is much question at all. Why does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American business want this? They want to bring in cheap labor. We have seen lots of examples of this. Let me show a picture. This photograph shows immigrant workers who were doing work in response to Hurricane Katrina. I will tell you about this for a minute because I want to talk about motives and what is happening with respect to this proposal for guest workers which is of, by, and for American business that wants to import cheap labor.

On October 17 of last year, I chaired a Democratic Policy Committee hearing to talk about contracting practices with respect to the recovery effort due to Katrina. I heard from Al Knight and Mike Moran from Louisiana. They run a small business in Louisiana. Al and Mike run a New Orleans company. They were hired by a subcontractor of the Halliburton Corporation to provide 75 qualified electricians to work on a project they had begun at the naval air station in Belle Chasse, LA. The Halliburton subcontractor very quickly replaced their 75 local workers with workers from outside the region, many not trained as electricians and not from that region. Here is what Al Knight said, manager of the New Orleans company that lost that job, who had 75 workers who lost jobs:

Almost all of the workers were from out of State. Most did

not speak English. Few seemed to be qualified electricians.

According to the Halliburton subcontractor, they were being

paid two-thirds of our prevailing hourly wage, with no

benefits. At the time, they were living in small tents off

base.

Another person who testified had this picture of the living conditions of immigrants being brought in at subpar wages to do this work. That is at the root of much of this discussion with respect to guest workers.

Five days after I held that hearing, the Washington Post ran an article that pointed out that there was a raid and they found the illegal workers down at that job site on a U.S. naval air base.

Look, I am not unsympathetic to people who want to work and come into this country. But I am much more sympathetic, as an American, to those people at the bottom fifth or the bottom fourth of the wage scale in this country who are struggling to find good jobs, to hang onto those jobs.

We are told by companies: We cannot find American workers to take these jobs. Oh, really? I am telling you that there is a price at which people will take those jobs. You just want to pay dirt poor wages. How? Just bring in immigrants who work for lower level wages, and that way you never have to raise the income by which you attract American workers.

That, in my judgment, undercuts our economy, it disserves our workers, and it sends a message when you ask the question: Who knows American workers? Not this Congress, not this President. My hope is that we will start understanding what we are doing here. We are talking about American workers who all too often these days are seeing lost jobs, lost wages, lost retirement programs, lost health care, and lost opportunity. Now we are talking about a Congress that is talking not just about the 11 million people who came here illegally but about a Congress who says on top of that: Why don't we see if we can find a way, a formula by which we can add 400,000 a year; and at the end of 6 years, you conceivably could have said we want 4.6 million more workers who are now living in our country to come back to do this job. Is this about good government, about good economics? Is this sensible? Is this standing up for American workers? No.

I will tell you, it is about American businesses, big businesses who run most of the agenda around here, who want to continue to have access to a pipeline of cheap labor, because if you have cheap labor coming in, you never, ever have to increase wages at the bottom.

It has been 8 years since this Congress has increased the minimum wage for American workers--8 years. We have increased everything else-- tax breaks for wealthy Americans, opportunities for companies to move jobs overseas. But we have not increased the minimum wage in 8 years. That is unbelievable. It is unforgivable, just in terms of values.

Now, we have quotas in this country by which we allow people in. Some don't like that. But the fact is, if tomorrow we had a new public policy and said as a country, look, there are no restrictions, no more quotas, no more immigration issues, whoever in this world wants to come here, God bless you, come and stay. If we did that, we all know what would happen. We share this small planet of ours with about 6.3 billion people; half of them live on less than $2 a day. Half of them have never made a phone call, and they don't have access to clean, potable water. We simply cannot, as a country, having built what we built to increase our standard of living, decide that we can be the sponge for everybody everywhere who wants to come to our country. We cannot do that.

As a result, we have immigration laws. Those immigration laws provide opportunities for others to come to our country. Last year, for example, our Southern border allowed 175,000 people to immigrate legally. Second, through the processes of the visas that are issued for agricultural workers and temporary, seasonal nonagricultural workers, tens and tens of thousands more came across temporarily. That is the way we have always done business.

I understand those who have come to this floor saying let's try to find a way to address the status of the 11 million people who are already here. I don't understand this Congress, this President saying: Oh, by the way, we have this huge problem that has become a mushrooming problem, so let's bring in 400,000 more workers each year, and let's add to it by putting a formula in this bill that says we will have an expansion of 20 percent more each year, if you reach the 400,000 in the first quarter. I don't think that makes sense.

I understand all those who speak for immigrants, and I don't want to do anything to diminish their value, their worth, their dignity. God bless them all. But I also want to be here standing for American workers who are struggling trying to find their footing, trying to find a job.

There is no social program in this country, there is no social program that we work on in this Congress, as important as a good job that pays well because that allows everything else to be possible in a family. A good job allows people to take care of their kids. It allows people to do the things they want to do. There are fewer and fewer of those kinds of jobs.

To suggest on top of dealing with the 11 million-plus guest worker program to bring 400,000 a year in with a 20-percent expansion program on top of that, I think it defies all common sense. This is clearly a corporate strategy to keep wages low. It clearly will replace the jobs of American workers.

Let me describe a study that was recently done. Professor George Borjas of the John F. Kennedy School of Government did a study on the impact from 1980 to 2000 on U.S. wages by ethnicity. What he said is the kind of integration occurring with people taking substandard-wage jobs--and incidentally, corporations have been wanting to do that because if someone is illegal, they can pay them little or nothing. They don't have a lot of leverage with the employer. What he said is it has decreased income for the average American worker. It has decreased income for the Hispanic workers more than anyone, talking about the Hispanic workers who are part of the workforce legally, and it has decreased income for African Americans, Whites, and Asian. But Hispanics and African-Americans have been the hardest hit of all.

The fact is, with this illegal immigration and now on top of that, hundreds of thousands of so-called guest workers on top of the visas that already exist, there isn't any way to describe what this is going to mean other than it is going to depress income for the lowest 20 to 40 percent of the American workers, and it is going to take jobs from the lowest 20 to 40 percent of the American labor force.

I remember Ross Perot when he talked about NAFTA, the horrible trade agreement that has dramatically injured our country. He was then talking about American jobs going to Mexico. He called it that giant sucking sound, that giant sucking sound, sucking American jobs to Mexico. He was right about that. All the economists, all the hotshots who got paid all the money on behalf of American businesses particularly supporting NAFTA told us: Some jobs will go there. They will be low-skilled, low-wage jobs.

Oh, I am sorry. We have some experience now. Mr. President, do you know what those jobs are? The three biggest imports into this country from Mexico are automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics, all of them the product of high-skilled jobs but not high wages. They displaced high-skilled, high-wage jobs in this country. Now that giant sucking sound will be heard from the other direction. That giant sucking sound will be sucking 400,000 immigrant workers into this country each year at the bottom of the economic ladder to displace workers in this country. I am not talking about the 11 million; I am talking about 400,000 additional workers who will displace American workers and continue to put downward pressure on wages.

I don't understand what the thinking is of people who decide that they want to find a way to continue to diminish opportunities in our country for our workers. I think of what a turnabout this has been for this country in a century. There was a time when American workers were valued, work was valued. No one stood quite as tall as those who had a good job.

I am going to speak on this next week again, and I know others have some time, but I do want to make one final point. I have not yet spoken about the security on our borders. Senator Domenici and I introduced legislation dealing with real border security, which I expect we will talk about additionally. While I have talked about jobs and income and immigration, the issue here is in addition to security, a country targeted by terrorists has to have secure borders. A country that is such a magnet for illegal immigration has to have secure borders. A country that cares about its workers has to have secure borders. A country that cares about the ability of a worker to find a job and have a decent wage and have retirement benefits has to care about the security of its borders. It is just that simple.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, this coming month it will be 2 years since the body of a young woman named Dru Sjodin was found in Crookston, MN.

Dru Sjodin was a young woman, a college student at the University of North Dakota, who walked out of a North Dakota shopping center at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. She was abducted, a search was made for her, and some months later her body was found near Crookston, MN. She had been brutally murdered.

I have visited with her parents a number of times. The more I have come to know the details of her abduction and her murder--and since that time I have come to know the details of other abductions and murders, in many cases of young children in our country--it is clear that Congress needs to take some action to deal with some of these issues.

What happened to Dru Sjodin was a vicious, almost unspeakable crime for which a man will soon be tried for murder.

The man who has been arrested and will be on trial shortly for the murder of Dru Sjodin is Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr. He has served prison time for rape. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison for a violent rape. At the end of his sentence, he was deemed by prison officials-- including psychiatrists and psychologists--to be at high risk of reoffending.

Despite that, he was let out of prison with little or no supervision. The State's attorney in the jurisdiction where he was prosecuted was not notified of his pending release. He was released without any significant supervision. And within 6 months--it is alleged--he murdered Dru Sjodin.

I have proposed a piece of legislation called Dru's Law, and gotten it passed by the Senate twice. It still has not passed the House. Dru's Law is title II in a comprehensive piece of legislation reported out October of last year by the Senate Judiciary Committee, yet that bill has also not been brought to the floor of the Senate.

Let me describe the legislation I put together because I was astounded when I took a look at Federal and State laws that so little information is available about those who have committed violent sexual offenses.

First of all, there has not been a national database of convicted sex offenders. A year ago, I met with the Attorney General and talked to him about Dru's Law. When the Attorney General took office he began the development of a national database, administratively. We need to do that in law. And provisions of Dru's Law would require the development of a national database of sex offenders that is accessible to the public. So the bill requires the development of a national database of sex offenders accessible to the public.

Second, it requires States to notify prosecutors of impending release of high-risk sex offenders. When we have sex offenders who have committed violent acts, there is a substantial amount of information demonstrating it is very likely, upon release, they will recommit those violent acts. When seen by psychiatrists and psychologists and evaluated for high-risk activities upon their release, it seems to me when those high-risk offenders are about to be released from prison, their names should be given to the local State's attorney where they were prosecuted so the State's attorney would have the time and capability to determine whether they wanted to seek civil commitment, which is to say further incarceration to protect the public. That is a procedure that many States have allowed.

In this case, the alleged murder by Alfonso Rodriguez, who the experts alleged would be at great risk for reoffending, if he had been civilly committed, he would not have been on the streets.

What is happening too often now, violent sex offenders are let out of prison at the end of the term without so much as a wave, ``so long, good luck.'' That is not what should happen, and this brings me to the third piece of the bill. If, in fact, a high-risk sex offender is released from prison, there must be monitoring by the States upon their release for at least 1 year.

Martha Stewart is put in prison and let out of prison and she wears an ankle bracelet. Martha Stewart is wearing an ankle bracelet, and high-risk sex offenders are let out of prison with a wave, ``so long, see you later.'' Then they abduct and murder children. It is not just Dru Sjodin. I can go through an entire list of young people who have been abducted and murdered by people we knew about, people whose names we had, people who had been serving time in prison but were let out with a wave, to say, ``so long, see you later.''

Now, I mentioned that Dru's Law, which has the three provisions I described, has twice been passed by the Senate by unanimous consent. But the House has not taken it up and as a result it is not now law.

I have not stopped trying to get Dru's Law passed. In fact, Dru's Law has now been incorporated into S. 1086, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, has been authored by Senators Hatch and Biden, both former chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is legislation I fully support. It is terrific legislation. I commend both of them for doing a great job.

Title II of that legislation incorporates all of Dru's Law. That legislation is cosponsored also by Senator Specter, who is the current chairman of the Judiciary Committee. And I'm happy to say that S. 1086 passed out of the Judiciary Committee in October of last year.

Yet S. 1086 has not been considered by the full Senate. I don't understand that. The majority leader has told us what we are going to consider. We are going to consider constitutional amendments on gay marriage, constitutional amendments on flag desecration. The list goes on and on and on, but we do not have time to consider this? This is important. This is life or death in many instances.

We have had time for a free trade agreement with the country of Bahrain. Boy, that is a priority. What would have happened if we had not had a trade agreement with Bahrain? We passed the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area Improvement Act. We did the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial Commemoration Act. We have done a lot of things here, but we did not have time to bring up S. 1086, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act? I don't understand that.

There is a recent study that found 72 percent of the highest risk sexual offenders reoffend within 6 years of being released from prison. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has determined that sex offenders released from prison are over 10 times more likely to be arrested for a sexual crime than individuals who have no record of a sexual assault.

This legislation is endorsed by a good many people. Dru's Law has 18 cosponsors in the Senate. Senators Hatch and Leahy have worked closely with me to pass Dru's Law separately, as a standalone bill.

Mark Lunsford, the father of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, is a strong supporter of this. Jessica Lunsford, this country might remember, was abducted a year or so ago from her bedroom in her Florida home. Her body was found a month later. The crime was committed by a 46-year-old convicted sex offender with a 30-year criminal history. After committing the assault of Jessica and the murder of Jessica, John Couey, the man who committed this crime, fled across State lines to Savannah, GA. Had he not been recaptured, he very likely would have reoffended in Georgia, as well.

Mr. Lunsford wrote me a letter about Dru's death:

If my daughter's death is going to have any meaning, it

will be efforts such as yours that strengthen existing laws

by making our streets safer for all children. My heart

continues to break as I mourn the loss of my beautiful little

girl. I do not want other families to suffer as mine has done

and I believe that your effort will go far toward that

important goal.

This bill is endorsed by Marc Klaas, the father of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was kidnaped and murdered by a previously diagnosed sex offender. Mr. Klaas wrote:

I would like to reiterate my full support of this important

effort.

It does not take the recitation of 100 cases, but let me mention Sarah Michelle Lunde, 13 years old. She disappeared and was found dead. David Onstott, a convicted sex offender, who once had a relationship with the girl's mother, has confessed to killing her.

Jetseta Gage of Cedar Rapids, IA, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered. Roger Paul Bentley was arrested for that crime, a convicted sex offender on Iowa's sex registry.

The list goes on and on and on and on. I held a meeting in Fargo, ND, about a year ago to describe how important it is to track sex offenders' movements across State lines. I held a town meeting in Fargo, ND, to talk about the issue of violent sex offenders. This was an outgrowth of the information I had developed as a result of Dru Sjodin's murder.

Before that meeting in Fargo, I checked the registry in North Dakota to find out the names of convicted sex offenders living within walking distance of the place I was going to have a meeting.

One name kind of jumped out to me and I described the case to the people at the meeting: Joseph E. Duncan. I did not know him, I had never previously heard of him. But in 1980 when Joseph Duncan was a 16 year old, he abducted a 14-year-old boy who had been walking in his neighborhood, sexually assaulted the boy twice at gunpoint, pled guilty to rape in the first degree, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released from prison July 14, 2000, after completing a 20-year sentence. Because he completed his full term, he was released without parole and without probation. He went to live in North Dakota within walking distance of city hall in Fargo.

So I mentioned to the people in Fargo about five cases of people who were convicted sex offenders who lived within walking distance of city hall, just to describe the people who were living in our midst. What I didn't know when I mentioned it that day in Fargo was that 1 month earlier, Joseph E. Duncan had been charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a playground just across the river in Detroit Lakes, MN. He appeared in court on April 5, 2005. A county judge set the bail at $15,000 and Duncan was released after paying the cash. A friend apparently posted the cash for him.

The next I heard of this man was July 2. He was arrested in Idaho for kidnaping 8-year-old Shasta Groene and her 9-year-old brother Dylan Groene. The children had been missing since May 16 when the bound and bludgeoned bodies of their mother, older brother, and mother's boyfriend were found at their rural home. This case is another tragic reminder of the urgent need. Duncan has now been charged with abducting and molesting this young girl, three counts of first-degree murder.

These predators, in many cases, are not strangers. We know who they are. They have been in prison. They have violently molested, violently sexually assaulted other people. I am not necessarily suggesting we put them in prison and throw away the key, but I am saying when we know someone is a violent sexual predator and they are about to be released from prison and the psychiatrists tell us they are at high risk for reoffending and recommitting another violent sexual act, then it seems to me the local people ought to be notified to determine whether the State's attorney wishes to recommit them for a civil commitment to protect society at large. And, second, if that person is released, it cannot any longer be ``so long and good luck,'' with nothing much more than a wave. We cannot do that. There must be a high level of monitoring.

Kids are dying. People are being murdered. We have not had a national registry of sex offenders that is complete and that works. We let people out of prison who we know are going to offend again, or at least we know will offend again, and we let these people out of prison with virtually no monitoring at all by the Government.

Again, isn't it interesting, Martha Stewart--and, incidentally, I don't even watch her television show, but she sure got a lot of press for going to prison. Martha Stewart goes to prison, and when she is let out, she is walking around with an electronic ankle bracelet. Yet these people are going to prison and they come out after having been guilty of violent sex offenses, they are judged to be at risk for committing another sexual offense, and they do not wear any electronic bracelet, any electronic monitoring device. It is ``so long, see you later.''

That has to change. That is what Senator Hatch and Senator Biden say in their bill. It is what I say in Dru's Law. And it is long past the time for the majority leader to schedule this for a debate in the Senate.

Last October, this Hatch-Biden bill was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is bipartisan. It has strong support in the Senate. There is no longer any excuse for that not to come to the Senate and to be debated and passed. Will it take the next vicious murder, the next brutal murder of some young child, to understand that violent sexual predators exist and are being let out of prison with little monitoring? I hope not. I hope before we have the next set of headlines the majority leader will decide this represents a priority, a priority far higher than some of the other priorities he has suggested for floor action, and that we can see in the Senate very soon the legislation offered by Senator Hatch and Senator Biden.

I commend them for the legislation they have written. I appreciate the fact that title II is Dru's Law. I have worked with them, as have many of my colleagues. They have done this country a great service by putting S. 1086 together. Now the majority leader can do this country a great service by scheduling the Senate's consideration of this bill, after these many months following its favorable reporting from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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

Madam President, I am going to be offering an amendment. I have noticed an amendment dealing with Indian program funding. I think most who understand these issues understand that we have a bona fide crisis in Indian health care, Indian housing, and Indian education. We have had hearings. I have had hearings in my State, and we have had hearings in the Indian Affairs Committee, and we have to address these issues. The issue of Indian health care is not an optional issue. When there is a young child on an Indian reservation or an elder on an Indian reservation who is sick, they need health care.

This is interesting. We have trust responsibility for health care for a couple of groups of Americans. One is Federal prisoners. If they are incarcerated, we have a responsibility to Federal prisoners for their health care. We also have trust responsibility for health care for American Indians. That is our trust responsibility. We spend nearly twice as much--twice as much--per person to provide health care for Federal prisoners as we do for American Indians. That is wrong.

Housing: We have a bona fide crisis in housing. In many cases on many of America's Indian reservations we have people living in Third World conditions.

Education: Do we really want a young child who is 6 or 8 years old to be walking through the doorway of a grade school and receiving an education that is much less of an education than other children are simply because we don't have the money? Shouldn't these young Indian children be given the opportunity for a good education? I think with respect to education, the GAO report shows quite clearly that facilities in BIA schools are inferior to other schools.

My point is this: When we take a look at our priorities, what is important, what we should be doing, we see that we have Americans living in Third World conditions on many of these Indian reservations. We have a crisis in health care, in education and housing, and we ought to do something about it. You can't go to these places and look at their health care system or look at their schools or look at people living in substandard housing and believe that it is not a priority for this Congress to meet its responsibilities.

I have offered this legislation before in the form of an amendment. I do so again today. I have a number of cosponsors I would like to add for the Record.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, might I, with the indulgence of my colleagues, simply read the cosponsors? They are Senators Cantwell, Murray, Bingaman, and Johnson are added as cosponsors.

Madam President, let me ask for consideration of amendment 3102, as I had previously filed. That is the legislation I described previously. Senators Cantwell, Murray, Bingaman, and Johnson join me in proposing this amendment as cosponsors. I ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, I will be very brief.

This is an amendment which I offered last year. It adds $1 billion to the account dealing with American Indians.

All of us in this Chamber know there are neighbors among us in this country who live in Third World communities. We have a bona fide Federal crisis in health care, education, and housing on Indian reservations. We have a trust responsibility for the health care of American Indians.

Did you know we also have a responsibility for Federal prisoners' health care? We spend twice as much per person for the health care of Federal prisoners as we do to meet our trust responsibility for the health care of American Indians.

We all know we underfund these accounts. This adds $1 billion to a multitude of Indian accounts dealing with health care, housing, and education. It is funded by closing some tax loopholes.

I hope this Senate will decide this is the right set of priorities.

The proposed merger between AT&T and BellSouth is controversial. The proposal should trigger a serious evaluation by both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission.

A recent column in the March 20 issue of Business Week by Leo Hindery caught my eye, and I want to share it with my colleagues. I don't necessarily share all of his conclusions, but I think his perspective is an interesting one. I hope that others will weigh in as we try to make a judgment about whether this proposed merger is in the interest of the American people.

For me, it remains an open question whether this merger should be allowed. In the meantime, it is useful to hear many different perspectives about it and I wanted to share Leo Hindery's column with my colleagues.

I ask unanimous consent to print the column in the Record.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I would like 5 minutes.

Mr. President, this has been fascinating. I came in at Senator Gregg's presentation, nearly at a fever pitch, depending on what appears to be the indefensible. But it reminded me of how one argues in court. You take the best you have and then go at it with volume--if possible, as much volume as is possible--and hope some of it sticks. It reminded me a little bit, too, of the message that Gen. George Armstrong Custer received just before they actually got to Harden, MT, with the 7th Calvary. His scouts came back and said: Things look pretty good up ahead. Things look pretty good.

General Custer got that message. It is the message I heard this morning as I walked onto the floor of the Senate from our colleague, Senator Gregg: Things look pretty good up ahead.

Let's look up ahead for a moment. On page 28 of the resolution that sits on the desks of Members of the Senate, let's look up ahead, see if things look pretty good up ahead. It doesn't matter how many trees you cut down to produce the charts, how much ink you use to create your bar graphs. That doesn't mean a thing. Let's look up ahead just a bit.

In 2011, what is going to happen to this country under the best of circumstances, under the most optimistic circumstances offered by the majority party in their resolution? In 2011, we will be required as a country to borrow over one-half of a trillion dollars. That is how much the debt will increase in 2011. So somebody brings this to the floor of the Senate and says: We have a plan. Our plan is to put our fiscal house in order, and 5 years from now we are going to borrow over half a trillion dollars and we call that order.

I said yesterday, I yearn for the old Republican Party. Both political parties provide grand opportunities for this country, and have for two centuries. They both contribute to the well-being of America and to the building of this great Nation. But there was one thing you could always count on the Republican Party to do, and that is they wore gray suits. They were conservative. They would wear wire rim glasses, and they would look like they just swallowed a lemon. They were very serious. You could always trust them to stand for fiscal responsibility--always. Pay your bills, they would say. Balance your budget. That is what you would count on them for.

That has changed a lot because the new majority party here says this is paying our bills and balancing our budget, page 29. Five years from now, they say, their plan will have us borrow over one-half trillion dollars in that year alone. During the entire 5 years, as my colleague has said, we will borrow over $3.5 trillion. And that is putting our country back on track? I don't think so.

It is time that even when we look in the mirror we be honest. It is time this Congress be honest with itself. It doesn't take charts, doesn't take the ink on charts. It reminds me of that old western movie line: What are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

Let me choose to believe my own eyes. Let me choose to believe what is in the most optimistic assessment in this fiscal policy. This country is deep in debt, going deeper in debt. And, by the way, we are going to borrow about $600 billion this year, and that doesn't include the $700-plus billion of trade deficit. So we are going to borrow about $1.3 trillion this year alone, just in this year alone, and we are told: Gee, things are good. Things are good. Just like General Custer's scouts,

things are really good up ahead. They are not. This country deserves the seriousness of purpose on the part of Republicans and Democrats who are willing to stare truth in the eye. The truth is on page 28.

This country is off course, off track, and it is unsustainable. Yes, in trade it is off track. We are shipping jobs overseas at a wholesale rate, we are closing American plants, and we are up to our neck in debt. We are selling America piece by piece, $2 billion a day, 7 days a week, all year long.

In fiscal policy, we are borrowing and borrowing. My colleague from New Hampshire talks about taxes. I understand the issue of taxation. I especially understand the issue of those who don't want to tax but want to borrow and spend and say let the kids pay for it. That is not conservative. That is a new conservatism that, in my judgment, doesn't do well by this country's future.

Madam President, I am proud to be a cosponsor of the amendment that has been offered. I was thinking that people listening to this debate must surely think this is a foreign language: noninterference clauses and doughnut holes, and so on and so forth. This is very simple. Let me try and do it in English, if I can.

When Congress passed the prescription drug benefit to provide benefits to senior citizens, a little clause was put in there. My colleague calls it a sweetheart deal. It is even sweeter than that. A clause was put in that says: By the way, the Federal Government cannot negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. Cannot do it. The Defense Department does it. The VA does it. The evidence is that those negotiations produce about 50 percent of the savings that is reducing the drug prices by 50 percent, but the Medicare prescription drug plan cannot have that happen. The Government cannot negotiate for lower prices.

My colleague describes this as a noninterference clause. About the time you think you get a handle on something here and have an aggressive debate, they change the titles and change the subject. This is not about noninterference. There is no noninterference involved. The question is, Should the Federal Government be able to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices in this plan, as we do in the VA and as we do in the Defense Department? The answer is yes.

My colleague talks about 10-year savings, 10 years out. Look, economists who can't remember their home phone numbers are telling us what they think is going to happen in 10 years. I know what is going to happen. We are going to break the back of this Government financially if we don't negotiate lower prices. This is similar to hooking a hose up to the tank and sucking the tank dry. Let the pharmaceutical companies decide to tell us what they are going to charge us and, by the way, we can't negotiate better prices as we do in the VA system for veterans. That doesn't make any sense to me.

The toughest job in the Senate is to come to the floor and justify or defend a proposal that we can't negotiate for lower prices. The second toughest job is for those who vote against this amendment to go home and explain to their constituents how they defied common sense.

It makes common sense for us to say: Let's get the best price we can from these pharmaceutical companies. How do you do that? You do that by the power of the purse, having the Federal Government negotiate for lower prices. We have done it in the VA, we have done it in the Defense Department. We saved 50 percent of the cost by doing it. My colleague is dead right. Yes, this is a sweetheart deal. This is not about noninterference; it is about whether we can negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry for lower prices. The answer ought to be, of course, we ought to do that. We ought to do it aggressively in order to save the taxpayers money; otherwise, we are going to break the bank. I thought fiscal conservatism was about trying to save the taxpayers money.

This amendment will do more to save the taxpayers money in the next 10 years than almost anything else we can do.

Twenty minutes, yes.

Mr. President, I have enjoyed the debate, the discussions today, and I have watched some of it from my office. The budget is a discussion about this country's value systems. It is very simple. I have mentioned many times on the floor the proposition that if someone asked you to write an obituary for someone you had never met but who had died and the only information you had about that person was their check register, what would you write? Well, you would write a little something about what that person felt were his priorities in life, what was his or her value system. What did they invest in? What did they spend money on? That would represent their value system. That is what you would tell about that deceased person you never met.

One hundred years from now, we will all be dead. Historians will be able to look back at this moment and say: What were our values? What was our value system? By looking at the Federal budget, they will say: Here is what the United States held dear; here is what they invested in; here is what their priorities and their values were.

Now, because this budget represents a set of priorities and values, it is important to take a look at the first step in the budget process, and that is the budget sent to us by President.

I recall, in the year 2001, the debate on the floor of the Senate about the President's fiscal policy. This President came to town at the time when we had a very large budget surplus for the first time in many decades, and were predicting surpluses in future years.

This President said: Let's give away this future surplus. This money doesn't belong to the Government; it belongs to the taxpayers.

Some of us said: Well, we don't have that surplus yet. Yes, the year that we are in is a surplus, but we don't have the next 10 years as a surplus. What if something should happen? Maybe we should be a little conservative.

The President said: No, don't worry about being conservative. Let's give back money we don't have but are expected to have because experts tell us we will have a big surplus during the next 10 years.

So the President got his way and gave very large tax cuts. The most significant amount went to the wealthiest Americans. And those large tax cuts which now eat quite a hole in our revenue stream for this Government turned out to be tax cuts, cutting revenue at the time when we hit a recession some months later, the 9/11 attacks in 2005, about 9 months, 8 months later; then we had the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq. So these large budget surpluses turned into very large budget deficits.

My colleague, Senator Conrad, has described with this chart where this administration will take us. This doesn't take an advanced degree from Wharton School of Economics to understand. All you have to do is look at this red ink and evaluate where this fiscal policy is taking America.

I believe both political parties have contributed mightily to this country. These are political parties, Democrats and Republicans, that have a grand tradition of offering good ideas to America.

One of the things you used to be able to count on the Republicans for was fiscal policy. The caricature was that they wore wire-rimmed glasses and gray suits, they looked like they just swallowed a lemon, and you could always count on them saying: We demand a balanced budget; we demand a fiscal policy that adds up for the good and for the wealth and for this country's future. There is no such thing as those conservative Republicans anymore. There is a Republican in the White House, and Republicans in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate who have a completely different fiscal policy. It is a fiscal policy that steps us up year after year after year after year toward greater debt.

I told you, things didn't turn out quite the way the President suggested. He got his way here in the Congress because he had the votes to get his way. So we have a fiscal policy that cut taxes mostly for the wealthy--a few crumbs for the rest but mostly tax cuts for the wealthy--and increased spending, especially relating to the aftermath of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. We had the Emergency Terrorism Response Supplemental Appropriations Act and DOD Appropriations Act, $17.6 billion added to that as an emergency in the fiscal year 2002; emergency supplemental, $13.6 billion, 2002; emergency supplemental, $65.9 billion, 2003; emergency supplemental, $85 billion, 2004. I could go on and on. Over $400 billion sent to us by this President as an emergency request passed by the Congress, none of it paid for, all of it piled right on our children's debt which they will pay for at some point in the future.

Now, did Congress vote for this? Sure. Is anybody going to say: Let's send our troops, but let's not provide the equipment they need? No, I don't think so. I think most of us have the same view on that. You send troops to go into harm's way, then you have a responsibility to provide the things they need to do their job. But shouldn't there be some requests of the rest of the American people--not just the troops but the rest of the American people--to weigh in here and to help pay for some of these things? If we are going to ask that it be spent in support of the troops, shouldn't we ask that it also be paid for?

As I said, we have a fiscal policy that is out of balance, out of control, and we need to put it back on track. Let me describe what is happening with some of this emergency money. It is the case that we have been hit with a lot of things: a recession back in 2001--and no, President Bush didn't inherit a recession. Let's set the facts straight, if we can. The recession that began on this President's watch, then 9/11, and then a series of others things, including Hurricane Katrina.

Not only do we have a fiscal policy that is completely and thoroughly out of whack, adding debt after debt after debt to our children year after year, we also have a sea of incompetence almost never before seen. Let me describe that with respect to Hurricane Katrina.

This is a picture of Paul Mullinax. Do you see Paul there? He has a portable radio, he has a couple of bottles of water, it looks like maybe he has some chips, and I think this is a little stove.

Paul is a really interesting guy. I met him, actually. He is an independent truck driver from Florida. As you see, he is sitting out in front of his truck. This is Paul's truck. He was sitting with a long line of trucks, and that picture was taken on a base, Maxwell Air Force base in Montgomery, AL. There were 100 refrigerated trucks at Montgomery, AL.

Mr. Mullinax was instructed by FEMA, in the post-Katrina Hurricane period, to take a truckload of ice from Newburgh, NY, to Montgomery, AL. Actually they said take it to Carthage, MO, first so he picked up the ice at Newburgh, NY, and then he went to Carthage, MO, and the minute he got there they told him you need to go to

Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL, so he got there.

Then Mr. Mullinax sat there in front of his refrigerator truck for 12 days with 100 other refrigerator trucks that were also hauling ice. The victims of Katrina desperately needed this ice, but it just sat there at an Air Force base in Alabama.

So here was Paul, a Florida trucker who hauled the ice to Missouri, then was told you need to go to Alabama, and with 100 other truckers, Paul sat in front of his truck for 12 days. Then he was told by FEMA, you need to take this ice to Massachusetts. You think I am kidding. I hear someone giggling about that. The folks who were the victims of Katrina needed the ice but he was told by FEMA to deliver it to Gloucester, MA, and so he did. I don't know what happened to the other trucks. There were 100 trucks lined up there.

It cost $15,000 to have the American taxpayers have Paul pick up ice in New York and deliver it to Massachusetts by way of Carthage, MO, and Maxwell Air Force Base, AL. In the meantime, the victims of Hurricane Katrina could not get any ice. So Paul sat. Then he went to Massachusetts to offload his ice. One load of ice, and there were hundreds and hundreds of such trucks--and just one load of ice cost $15,000, and was hauled from New York ultimately to Massachusetts.

A Mississippi sheriff, in the middle of all this, got so frustrated with the ice truck fiasco that he ended up commandeering 2 trucks full of ice and sending them directly to the relief centers for Hurricane Katrina. Sheriff Billy McGee saw trucks sitting at a staging area in Camp Shelby, MS, so he ordered two of the trucks to be sent to Brooklyn and Sheeplow, MS, and a National Guard man tried to stop the sheriff from rerouting these two trucks. The sheriff had the guardsman arrested and got the trucks where they were to be offloaded for the victims, and now the sheriff is being prosecuted for a misdemeanor.

Why do I tell you all this? Because we are spending a massive amount of money with parts of a Government that are fundamentally incompetent.

It is almost unbelievable to see the way some of this money is wasted. I think a lot of people take a look at the Federal Government and they say there is a lot of waste, and I agree with that. We ought to tighten our belts. We ought to get rid of some of this waste.

But there are lots of programs that are vitally important, and that deserve funding. This includes, for instance, health programs for people who live in rural areas of America. The President doesn't distinguish between good spending and bad spending. The President doesn't do that. He says my biggest priority is to preserve a 15- percent tax rate on capital gains and, oh, by the way, everything else can go by the wayside to pay for it.

So the community service block grant--it doesn't matter, we can get rid of that if we want to. Rural health, we can get rid of that. All these issues are less important to this administration than the issue of preserving the 15-percent tax rate on capital gains. That is a fact.

I have worked with Senator Conrad for many years. We both come from the same State. There is nobody better prepared on the floor of the Senate to make the case on thoughtful and solid budgeting than Senator Conrad. He understands common sense, understands the numbers.

I see another of my colleagues volunteering for recognition here--and I will say that the chairman of the committee and the ranking member of the committee have had an impossible job.

Trying to make sense of the budget sent to us by this administration is like trying to connect two ends of two plates of spaghetti. It is impossible. It cannot work because this is a budget that does not add up under any set of circumstances.

Social services, that is the money that goes in grants and direct appropriations to both agencies and nonprofits to help people around this country--they are the ones that take a hit in many of these areas. I held a meeting with social service groups and nonprofits in North Dakota and asked them about this budget. They told me about the people who are going to get hurt as a result of this. None of those people serve here in this Chamber. They are just people who try to make a living every day or try to exist in retirement with little income.

One of the stories that was interesting to me was a nonprofit group which the day before had an 81-year-old woman show up applying for a job. This is a group that helps people get work. The 81-year-old woman wanted a job. Why? Because she lost her last job. What was her last job, at 81 years old? Cleaning office buildings at 1 a.m. Go in at 1 in the morning and clean office buildings at age 81. The company downsized a little bit and she lost her job and now she wants another job. Why? Because her payment under Social Security was $170 a month. That is what she was left with. So she has to work at 81.

Should this budget reflect the needs of this woman who is cleaning buildings at 1 in the morning at age 81? Sure it should. There are a lot of people in this country who are vulnerable, who are in difficulty, who understand they need some help. A good budget, a thoughtful budget reaches out to those folks to say here is a helping hand. We want to help you up. This budget doesn't do that.

This budget offers a helping hand only to the rich. In fact, every budget since 2001 has been a budget that says let's give a helping hand--to those who have much. That is the way the budget has been working. It is unbelievable.

I want to put up another picture. I have used this a fair number of times. I do it because a budget is about how much revenue do you have and how much spending are you going to have. Let me tell you why we don't have enough revenue, and why the President wants to cut funding for key programs, especially program cuts that will hurt the most vulnerable in our country.

This is a nice picture of something called the Ugland House. It is a five-story white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. According to David Evans, an enterprising reporter who did the story about this building, this building houses 12,748 companies. The companies are not all there in person. I am not suggesting that. But this is the official home in the Cayman Islands, on Church Street, for 12,748 companies.

Do you know why? It is their mailing address. They need a formal mailing address in a tax haven country so they can run their income through a tax haven country and avoid paying the taxes they would owe to the United States of America.

This goes on, getting worse. Is anybody talking about cutting that? No, not really. In fact, this issue of cutting taxes for those who are the most well off in America is not abating at all. This administration believes its highest priority is to retain that 15 percent.

Interestingly enough, we don't have enough money for community development block grants, rural health, the Byrne grants and so on, but last year there was enough money in this Chamber to decide that these companies and many more should get a 5.25-percent tax rate. That is right, 5.25-percent tax rate on money they repatriate from abroad. The expectation was they were going to pay a 35-percent tax rate. That was the statutory rate. But we said--I didn't vote for it--but we said as a Congress, we want to be generous so all of those big companies with standard brands out there you would recognize, they want to repatriate $30 billion worth of income, bring it back to this country. Did they pay 10-percent income taxes on it as most people would at the lowest income Americans? No, they didn't. Fifteen percent or 25 percent or 30? No, they didn't pay any of that. They paid 5.25 percent. They saved $102 to $104 billion.

This Senate had enough resources to decide we want to give the biggest interests of this country a $102 billion tax break by allowing them to pay a 5.25-percent tax rate but now we say we are out of money, we can't afford to deal with those ends of the spending side that affect the most vulnerable in our country.

I think those are very strange priorities. There is much to be said about this budget. I am mindful, also, that it is easier to criticize than it is to propose. I think it was Mark Twain who was once asked if he would be engaged in a debate and said, Of course, as long as I can take the negative side. They said, We haven't told you the subject. He said, It doesn't matter, the negative side takes no preparation.

This takes even less than no preparation, to look at this budget and look at what this is doing to America and understand that this is to fiscal policy like mud wrestling is to the performing arts. This is an abysmal failure that is dragging this country down, down, down into deeper debt. The question I think most people would ask--they certainly ask those who propose this from the White House, and those who construct it here, is do you believe adding additional debt is a move toward greater sensibility in fiscal policy?

The answer has to be no.

I have a whole series of recommendations on where we should cut funding. I will not go over them at the moment and I will be happy to come back at some point. I would start with programs such as TV Marti. We actually spend money--we bought a new airplane last year to send television signals to Cubans that they can't see. We have spent close to $200 million on that program. It ought to be shut off immediately, but we can't do it because too many of the Members of the Senate keep voting for it. Why? Because of Florida. Why? Because of politics.

That is for another day. I have a whole series of recommendations. These are areas where we can and should cut Federal spending. I think we ought to. We ought to begin collecting revenues from companies that have been generously provided tax breaks from the Senate and our colleagues in the House, pushed by this President. We ought to get our fiscal house in order.

As I started, I said I watched some of this debate today. This is very important. This establishes some of the priorities for this Congress and I hope finally this year we might get them right.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, there are two other issues that relate to a tax hike, because a budget is about how much revenue you have coming in and how much you are preparing to spend. I mentioned this little Christmas gift--it is not really little--$102 billion given by the Congress to companies that had parked income overseas but were anticipating having to repatriate to this country and pay a 35-percent corporate tax rate. This Congress and the President felt: Gee, we probably should--maybe I should not include the President so much; it was more the Congress decided that we really ought to give those corporations a 5\1/4\-percent tax rate or a $102 billion tax break. So the Congress did, and not with Senator Conrad's vote nor my vote, but nonetheless the Congress did that. About $330 billion was repatriated.

Very quickly, we learned that the pharmaceutical industry repatriated at the early stages--I am not sure what the final stage was--$75 billion which they earned abroad. The interesting thing was the pharmaceutical industry said: We charge the highest prices to American consumers because we don't make money elsewhere. We have to charge lower prices in other countries because we are prevented from charging higher prices. Now we discover they were making a lot of money overseas because given the chance to pay a 5\1/4\-percent tax rate, when they repatriated it, they repatriated a bunch of money they earned overseas at lower prices for the same prescription drugs. We not only saw the taxpayers short shrifted by the highest prices in the world, but now we see the drug companies getting $75 billion of their income being taxed at 5\1/4\ percent.

If I might make one additional point, we also have a provision in tax law which says to companies: Shut down your plant in America, fire your workers, move it to China, and we will give you a tax cut. And by the way, the Joint Tax Committee says that is worth $1.2 billion a year or $12 billion in 10 years. So we will spend $12 billion in the next 10 years giving tax cuts to companies that shut their American plants, fire their American workers, and move their jobs overseas. If there is any perversity in this Congress, it is those who refuse to be willing to shut down that kind of a tax break. We have had four votes on it. I have offered it four times. We have lost all four times. And on four occasions, people stood up here in the Senate and supported a tax break to companies that would ship their jobs overseas. It is almost unbelievable.

The reason I mention this is that in the case of putting together a budget,

you ought to be able to at least shut down those drains on the revenue side that run against the public interest in this country. Is it in the public interest to pay those companies to shut down their American plants and fire their workers? I don't think so. Certainly it is not. It is just nuts for the Congress to be saying: Let us reward that behavior. And that is exactly what is happening this year to the tune of $1.2 billion.

I say to my colleague from North Dakota that there are many areas in revenue where we would try to plug a drain on our revenue, and the other side will say: You are increasing taxes. Yes. I am increasing taxes for those who aren't paying, for God's sake.

Maybe somebody camped out in the Ugland House, an official address in the Cayman Islands, with a lawyer camped out, so they can move their jobs to China, sell their products in America, and run their income through a house in the Cayman Islands and avoid paying taxes. Do we want to increase their taxes? Darned right. Why? Because they are not paying their fair share. Everybody else does. What about them? Yet the majority party keeps saying that if you are going to plug these loopholes, you are increasing taxes. That is a strange viewpoint, and I think one we need to fix. We need to solve these problems.

I appreciate the work of Senator Conrad.

Mr. President, I talked earlier about the $12 billion expenditure, $1.2 billion a year over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Tax Committee, that we use to reward companies that move their jobs overseas by giving them a tax break for such activity.

I have previously offered this on four occasions. I have lost it on four occasions in the Senate. I can't believe there is anyone left in the Senate who, having thoughtfully evaluated this, would believe we should continue to give tax breaks to those who ship jobs overseas.

In the hope that other of my colleagues have seen the light or felt the heat or some way or other found an epiphany about this subject, I anticipate offering this again and consider my previous statement to be an opening statement when I would offer such an amendment, so I wouldn't require any particular time on it. I have already spoken on it, and perhaps my two colleagues would consider at an appropriate point accepting the amendment. It is infused with such wildly common, common sense my hope would be that my colleagues would decide to simply accept the amendment on this fifth occasion on the floor of offering the amendment, especially inasmuch, I might say, as Ford Motor announces that they are going to close plants and get rid of 30,000 workers, General Motors is going to get rid of 25,000 to 30,000 workers--and the list goes on. By the way, not only get rid of their workers but cut their pensions and run them through with health care problems and payment of corporate health care accounts.

Given all that news, my guess is that perhaps the sentiment would have changed, believing maybe now is the appropriate time to shut down this perverse tax incentive that rewards companies that fire their American workers and move their jobs overseas.

At some appropriate point, I will consider offering it. I would not need time to debate it.

Again, I say to my two colleagues that my hope and expectation would be that you would just accept the amendment at some appropriate time. And this would stand as some future discussion, if I offer that amendment at the appropriate time.

Madam President, I have listened to the thoughtful comments this morning. I understand there is some controversy, some passion and anxiety about all of this. It is not partisan. There is nothing partisan about an amendment dealing with the Dubai Ports World issue. This is a significant issue. As my colleagues have said, the bill that is on the floor is also a significant issue. Both need to be dealt with. Both should be considered by this great deliberative body. But this is not about partisanship at all.

I understand partisanship. I regret that there is too much of it in this town. I left the House many years ago, decided I was going to leave the House. I did run for the Senate, but I was done with the House of Representatives. What did it for me was when they established, through then-Congressman Gingrich--I guess it is all right to say his name--something called GOPAC. And they word-tested through polls and then sent out a missive to everyone in his political camp that said: Here is the way we deal with this. When you are describing your opponent in a political election, use the words ``sick,'' ``traitor,'' ``pathetic,'' ``antifamily,'' ``antiflag.'' That was sent all over this country by an organization that said: This is the way you should engage in politics. Here are the words you should use to describe your opponents. And we poll tested them. They work. Describe your opponents as sick, pathetic, traitor, antiflag. That was sent around the country. That is what polluted the House of Representatives. I had been there long enough when I saw that sort of thing.

I love the Senate. I respect the Senate. I like being here. It is a great privilege to serve in the Senate. I regret there is probably too much partisanship here as well. I don't think we have had the kind of partisanship that infected the House beginning in the late 1980s, but I realize that this body and the House and the President, for that matter, are not in good standing with the American people these days. That circumstance exists because the American people take a look at us and they say: Here is what we face in our daily lives, and you are not addressing it. You are doing nothing about it. Why aren't you sinking your teeth into the significant issues of the day? The issue that faces me when I pull up to the gas pump, why aren't you sinking your teeth into that issue?

Someone stood up in North Dakota recently from a human service nonprofit organization and said: I just had an 81-year-old woman come in looking for a job. She just lost her last job. Do you know what her last job was at age 81? Cleaning office buildings starting at 1 a.m. Then they cut back that employment, so now she needs another job because her Social Security is $170 a month. So at age 81 she is looking for a second job to clean buildings. Why aren't you doing something about that? Why isn't the Congress addressing that?

An hour ago, this Government announced that last month's trade deficit was $68.5 billion in 1 month, the highest in the history of the human race. What does that mean? It is not just 68.5 billion dollars, it is jobs, massive numbers of jobs moving overseas, and it is the selling of this country piece by piece; at a rate of $2 billion a day we are selling America. Why don't we sink our teeth into that? Stem cell research, reimportation of prescription drugs, why don't you sink your teeth into that, they wonder.

At least part of the reason in the Senate that we can't sink our teeth into these issues is because we are prevented from offering amendments to do so. My colleague has offered an amendment on a controversial issue, I understand. The issue of whether a United Arab Emirates company called Dubai Ports World should be managing America's seaports. Should they manage some of America's largest seaports? Is this issue controversial? I suppose it is. Is it urgent that the Congress address this? Of course, it is urgent. The House Appropriations Committee, controlled by the President's own political party, yesterday by a vote of 62 to 2 slapped an amendment on an emergency supplemental appropriations bill designed to provide money for the Department of Defense and for Hurricane Katrina recovery. They slapped an amendment on there to stop this ports deal. Good for them. So there has been offered in

the Senate an amendment to stop the ports deal. All of a sudden the Senate is stopped, dead cold in its tracks. Why is it that a proposal such as this becomes a set of brake pads for the Senate? Who decides it should shut things down because someone offers an amendment to stop this takeover of the management of U.S. ports by a company from the United Arab Emirates? Why wouldn't we vote on it? How about yesterday when it was offered, after people got over being upset that we had to deal with it, how about voting on it and then moving ahead?

The underlying bill by Senator Collins and Senator Dodd is a bill we should do.

I am enormously pleased with their leadership. That has not been easy to bring that bill to the floor. Senator Lieberman, Senator Lott, the two I have mentioned should be commended. Look, this is leadership. They have brought a bill to the floor that is important. We need to do it. But there is nothing that suggests that just because an amendment was offered dealing with Dubai Ports World, it ought to shut down the Senate. It didn't shut down the House yesterday when Congressman Lewis offered it to an emergency supplemental appropriations bill. They just voted. Why have we not voted? Senator Frist, I guess, has decided we won't vote on it. So we will stop the Senate cold in its tracks. We will pull down on the side of the road and hang out for while.

Does that make any sense to anybody? This doesn't make sense to me. Seventy, seventy-five percent of the American people--polls tell us-- think that it is stark raving nuts to have a company owned by the United Arab Emirates manage our major ports. I know we have some people who are the elitists in Washington and who think they know better than all of the American people. They think they have greater wisdom and the American people just don't get it. These elitists think that the American people are isolationist xenophobes and cannot see over the horizon. So we have people in Washington who think this deal with Dubai Ports World is fine. It is not fine with me. It is not fine with 70, 75 percent of the American people.

If we get a vote on it in the Senate, it will not be fine with an overwhelming majority of the Senate. The question is, Will we be able to do in the Senate what the House did? That is, have an opportunity to vote on this proposition: Should a company owned by the United Arab Emirates be managing America's ports?

Well, it is interesting to read some of the things that have been written in recent days about this. United Arab Emirates, to the extent they have cooperated with us since 9/11, good for them. We hope they will continue. But there are questions about the extent to which they were involved in 9/11--yes, two of the hijackers were from there; yes, a substantial amount of evidence exists that the financing for the 9/11 plots went through financial institutions in the UAE. Dr. Khan from Pakistan was moving nuclear materials that were being pirated and shipped around the world to North Korea and Iran and other countries, and that was accommodated by the UAE ports.

Interestingly enough, the 9/11 Commission report--I have cited the page in a previous discussion--talks about when we knew where Osama bin Laden was in 1999. We knew where he was, because our intelligence pinpointed his location. They readied the cruise missiles to shoot at this location. Overnight, they decided they had to withhold and would not do it. Why? Because George Tenet later said we might have wiped out half of the royal family of the UAE, who were visiting Osama bin Laden at the time.

The 9/11 Commission report puts it a bit differently. It says UAE royal family members were there. But it is written and spoken by the head of the CIA. The reason the attack wasn't launched when we knew where Osama bin Laden was that he was being visited by the royal family of the UAE.

My point is this: That country has had some ties to terrorism. It was one of three countries to recognize the Taliban government, which accommodated Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It has ties to terrorism. When the American people learned about CFIUS and all these goofy acronyms and the work these folks have done in secret that says it is OK for a company such as this, owned by UAE, to manage our ports, the people of this country ask: Why is it that a country such as the United States cannot manage its own seaports? If we are so concerned about national security--and we are--and if we are threatened by terrorists consistently--and we are--and if seaports and airports are two of the important elements of national security--and they are--and if you go to the airport and try to board a plane, they will have you take off your shoes and belt, and as you go through the metal detector you will see a 6-year-old kid spread-eagle and being wanded because we are concerned about security, and if that is the case, why then would we turn to seaport security and decide this? With 5.7 million to 5.9 million containers coming in every year to our seaports, we have decided it is OK for a Middle Eastern country--the UAE--with its history, to manage our seaports through a company owned by that government. Does that make sense?

My former colleague, Fritz Hollings, who used to sit at this desk, used to talk about seaport security a lot. We don't have any seaports in North Dakota. But we went back and checked the Record: I came to the floor 13 times from 2001 until the end of 2005 to talk about seaport security--13 times. Almost every time I was here, Senator Fritz Hollings was also here talking about seaport security. We offered and offered and offered amendments to heighten and increase inspections and seaport security. Now we inspect only 4 to 5 percent of the containers that come in; 96 percent are not inspected. Does that make any sense?

This administration has not been willing to support the substantial enhancement that is necessary for real security at our seaports. One day, God forbid, there may be a terrorist attack that comes from America's seaports. We are spending somewhere close to $10 billion a year now on the issue of antiballistic missile protection, thinking that a rogue nation or a terrorist will acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile, put a nuclear weapon on the tip of it and shoot it at us at 15,000 miles an hour. That is the least likely threat America faces. A much more likely threat is a ship pulling up to a port at 2 to 4 miles an hour, up to the dock in a major American city, full of containers, one of which might have a nuclear weapon in it. Then we are not talking about 3,000 casualties; we are talking about 100,000 or even 300,000 casualties.

So is seaport security important? It is critical. We need to deal with it. We need to send a message to this administration and to all those involved in what is called CFIUS the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--that we don't improve security at our seaports by deciding we should have the UAE wholly owned company manage our seaports. Mr. Chertoff said it will actually improve security to have the UAE company managing America's seaports. That is so unbelievable that it is almost laughable. But you should not laugh when you are talking about national security issues.

This proposal is going to improve security at our seaports? Hardly. The reason the American people are concerned about it, the reason the Congress is concerned is that we understand this will diminish security. This will erode security at our seaports. Security is already too weak, and it must be dramatically strengthened.

Now, we are here in the Senate chambers with virtually nothing happening. The same thing happened yesterday afternoon. The bill is on the floor of the Senate and the Senate rules are such that you can offer amendments to that bill and they don't have to be germane prior to any cloture motion; they don't have to be relevant to the bill.

I will give you some examples of the problems of the Senate, the way the Senate works these days. I was promised--and others were as well-- that we would have a vote on the issue of reimportation of prescription drugs. Reimportation would drive down the price of prescription drugs in the United States because we pay the highest prices in the world, and the same drug, made by the same company, put in the same bottle, made in the same manufacturing plant, is sent to Canada and is sold for one-tenth of the price. I recently sat on a hay bale talking with an old codger who is about 85-years-old.

He said: My wife has been fighting breast cancer for 3 years, and we have driven to Canada for 3 straight years, every 3 months, to get her medicine, and we have saved 80 percent on her medicine bill; the same pill I could have gotten on the North Dakota side of the border, but it is priced much higher in the United States.

So for several years now, we have had proposals that are bipartisan to allow for reimportation, but we have been prevented from having an opportunity to vote on it on the floor of the Senate, despite the fact that the majority leader at midnight one night made a commitment to do it. He thinks he didn't. It is written in the Congressional Record and somebody can look at it and see whether or not the commitment was made. But we didn't get a vote on it. So it is frustrating.

The Senate is a place where you ought to get a vote. The complaint now, I guess, is that the amendment was offered. It wasn't offered in violation of the rules. The rules allow it to be offered. Perhaps if somebody says let's not vote on it this afternoon but tomorrow, or let's vote on it next Tuesday, my guess is they can make an arrangement to have that happen. But this is a voluntary rest for the Senate. Deciding not to move forward with the bill is a decision by the majority leader. He has decided that he doesn't want to vote on an amendment offered under the rules and which deals with a very relevant issue that was voted on yesterday in a House Committee by the majority party on a piece of legislation that had nothing to do with the amendment. It was OK in the House to do that.

But the majority party in the Senate, even though it was offered under the rules of the Senate, said: No, no, if you are going to force us to talk about and vote on this issue of whether a UAE company should be managing America's ports, we are going to stop the process, stop progress of the Senate, and we are going to sit around and look at each other. That doesn't make any sense. Let's run the Senate the way it ought to be run. If you have amendments, let's debate the amendments and vote on the amendments. This isn't rocket science. If somebody offers an amendment, you have a debate. If you think the people are talking too long, get an agreement on restricting the debate, or get a time agreement and, at the end of the debate, you vote and count them. You don't weigh them; you just count them. It is very simple.

Apparently the majority leader wants to run this body like the House Rules Committee. They would have kind of a Rules Committee on the floor of the Senate that says you can offer this amendment, but you cannot offer that one. They have been doing that for a long while now. This body is run by people who want to emulate the House Rules Committee and prevent people from offering amendments that are perfectly allowable under the rules of the Senate. We are told, if you offer an amendment under the rules, we are going to shut the place down. We are going to stop and complain. So now that the majority party has decided that it doesn't want to move, it complains that we are not moving. A very strange complaint. They can fix this in 5 minutes.

I said the other day it doesn't take me 45 days to figure out the UAE ports issue. We have a 45-day review period--paradoxically requested by the company rather than our country. Our country should insist on that because it is our security. But the company asked our country to do a 45-day review. My point is I don't need 45 days, or even 45 minutes, to figure this out. Nor do most Americans. This deal erodes America's security. It should not take us 5 minutes to get this place back on track.

The underlying bill is important. It is brought to us by four pretty distinguished legislators. Let's proceed with that bill. How do you do that? Let's vote on this amendment in the next half hour or so and then move ahead. If you say there is a scheduling issue, then let's not vote on this amendment today and give us time on Tuesday. That would be all right.

I want to make one other point. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but I am on the Appropriations Committee, and on the emergency supplemental bill, when we mark that up, I intend to offer the identical amendment that a Congressman offered in the House Appropriations Committee so that we can have a vote on it and go to conference with the House on the emergency supplement with identical amendments. I think the Senate should pass an identical amendment in the emergency supplemental, no matter how this comes out, as a backstop. I intend to offer that in the future when we mark up the emergency supplemental bill.

Madam President, I wish to take an additional minute to talk about the news this morning about the $68.5 billion trade deficit, and then I will yield to my colleague from Connecticut, or whoever wishes to speak. The news is once again devastating: our trade deficit last month was $68.5 billion, which is the highest in our history. This relates to a trade policy that is fundamentally bankrupt and a Congress and a President that are not only asleep at the switch but have their heads buried deeper in the sand every month. And the trade deficit widened substantially with China again. I will not go through all the stories about unfair trade. But if this Congress and the President continue to ignore this issue, at some point, this country's currency will suffer a fate that I don't want to see. It will have enormous economic consequences.

This is a strategy that is unsustainable. It is hurting Americans and is shifting Americans' jobs overseas and selling part of America. By the way, this is related to the Dubai Ports World deal because all of this offshoring and outsourcing and globalization and the decision that anybody could do anything, anywhere, and there really are no rules. And the minute somebody says maybe there ought to be rules, they are xenophobes and isolationists. And I will talk about that at another time.

If this $68.5 billion is not a wake-up call, if this doesn't wake up the Congress and the President--and it likely won't--then I suggest this coma is probably irreversible, and I worry about the future of this country.

This country needs to stand up for its own economic interests. Whether it is trade with Japan or trade with China, trade with Europe, trade with Canada, trade with Mexico--we have very large deficits with all of them--and if we don't find a way to address this issue, this country's economy will not remain a vibrant world-class economy in the long term.

Again, we are in this deep sleep, or probably a coma, wanting to either deny or ignore the central facts of a trade policy that is awful. It is trading away American workers, trading away the middle class. We are hollowing out the center of this country. We are saying to this country's workers: If you can't compete with Chinese wages, if you can't compete with Indonesia, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka wages, shame on you; your job is gone.

I have gone on at length talking about Huffy bikes, Radio Flyer, little red wagons--a whole host of products and companies that have moved offshore.

By the way, the thank-you for moving offshore from this Congress is to give them a big tax break. We voted to end this tax break four times, four amendments I have offered. All four have lost. I will continue to offer those amendments because I still believe that the last thing we ought to do is offer tax breaks to those who shut their American plants and move their jobs overseas. It is pretty unbelievable we do that, but it is part of the willingness to both ignore the circumstances of our trade deficit and the willingness to believe that a completely bankrupt strategy remains workable.

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

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

Mr. President, in news reports last evening and this morning there was a suggestion that some sort of deal was being reached in the Congress, between the Congress and the administration, on the issue of the Dubai

Ports World Company managing six of America's large seaports. Let me point out there is no deal that I am aware of, but if there is a deal, it is being made by people who have not consulted many of us in the Congress.

In any event, I think this proposal still lacks basic common sense. I want to speak about it for a couple of minutes.

In the Wall Street Journal, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Chertoff, says: ``U.S. ports takeover''--again, by the Dubai Ports World, the United Arab Emirates-owned company--the head of our Homeland Security Chertoff says: ``U.S. ports takeover would tighten grip on security.''

So he actually makes the case, the head of our Homeland Security agency, that allowing the management or the takeover of our six major port facilities, seaport facilities, would strengthen America's security. That is an unbelievable statement. I will describe why he says it. He said:

Assuming the deal would go through, we intend to have a

deep look into their practices, certainly in the U.S. ports.

That is a direct quote. That is almost unbelievable. So they apparently haven't had a deep look into their practices before the deal goes through. This is a circumstance where most of the American citizens understand what is being proposed and very strongly react to it in opposition.

This country is the subject of many terrorist threats. We understand that terrorists from around the world want to strike inside this country. We have all this security in this country--some judged to be quite good, some very deficient. Go to an airport and see what happens when you want to board an airplane. You are going to have to go to a line and you are likely to have to take off your shoes and you are probably going to have to take off your belt and wristwatch and then they are wanding some little 6-year-old boy, spread eagle against a wall someplace because he set off the buzzer. So all of that happens before you get on an airplane. Why? Because airport security is very important.

So is seaport security. We don't have seaports in my home State, but we are recipients of those containers that come on ships into our seaports. Somewhere between 5.7 million and 5.9 million containers a year come into our seaports at 5 or 6 miles an hour to go into the dock where those containers are lifted off by that crane and trucked off all across the country. All of us are recipients of what is coming into our seaports.

Seaport security, frankly, is miserable; 5.7 to 5.9 million containers come into this country and 4 to 5 percent is inspected, all the rest is not inspected, and we believe somehow we are protecting our country?

You will recall shortly after 9/11, there was a fellow from the Middle East, from Egypt I believe, who decided to put himself in a container, get it nailed up and put on a container ship, shipping himself to Canada. He had all the amenities you would need to travel in a container: he had a cot, a GPS locator, a radio, apparently, and a heater. He was in a container on a ship. He was a fellow they thought to be a terrorist shipping himself into Canada in a container for the purpose of coming into the United States.

So seaport security is critically important. We have had vote after vote in the Senate to improve seaport security but the majority doesn't want to spend the money to do that.

Now, with respect to the issue of seaport security, we are told that a United Arab Emirates wholly owned company called Dubai Ports World has been approved by something called CFIUS, one of those God-awful acronyms, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. They have approved the takeover and management, which would include security, by the way, of ports, six major seaports in this country, including New York and New Jersey and Baltimore and New Orleans, and so on.

CFIUS, which is 16 or 18 of the agencies of the current administration getting together, said they think this will be just fine, so they approved it. They approved it without even the 45-day extension you would normally have if someone expressed some concerns about it.

Now Mr. Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, says our security will actually be better if the United Arab Emirates company takes over our ports. Chertoff says, ``U.S. ports takeover would tighten grip on security.''

I don't know. Maybe he's not drinking the same water most Americans are drinking. I don't know how you come to this conclusion. Allowing a United Arab Emirates company to manage our ports is going to manage and improve our security? I don't think so. That doesn't make any sense.

Let me describe the United Arab Emirates. I will do it in terms that do not suggest this is a bad country. That is not my point, although I must say that two of the hijackers who attacked this country on 9/11/ 2001 came from the United Arab Emirates, a substantial portion of the financing for those terrorist attacks came through the financial institutions of the United Arab Emirates, Dr. Kahn from Pakistan, who was moving nuclear materials and nuclear knowledge and knowhow around the world, did that through the UAE ports. There are serious questions to be asked.

But let me make another point; that is, the relationship of the United Arab Emirates to Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 report described a circumstance in which we had discovered, in 1999, where Osama bin Laden was at that time and our country was attempting to target Osama bin Laden. This is in early 1999. The CIA learned that Osama bin Laden could be found at a camp in the Afghan desert, and the U.S. military began to plan a strike against that camp. But the strike was called off because Osama bin Laden was apparently being visited by members of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.

In fact, let me read to you from the 9/11 Commission report. You will find this in the booklet published by the 9/11 Commission:

No strike was launched.

This is the strike against Osama bin Laden whom our Intelligence Committee said they had discovered. They knew where he was.

No strike was launched. . . . According to the CIA and

defense officials, policymakers were concerned about the

danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other

senior officials who may be with bin Laden.

That is on page 138 of the 9/11 report, the former CIA Director George Tenet explaining why an attack against Osama bin Laden at a Afghan camp was called off said:

You might have wiped out half of the royal family in the

United Arab Emirates in the process, which I'm sure entered

into everyone's calculation in all of this.

The administration says the UAE has been helpful to our country in the fight against terrorism. If they have, and there is some evidence they have since 9/11, then this company appreciates that. But that appreciation, in my judgment, should not and will not extend to inviting the United Arab Emirates-owned company to manage America's seaports. It just defies common sense.

The administration says: What about offending the United Arab Emirates by saying no? We would offend this country by saying no? What about offending common sense by saying yes? Most of the American people understand. They understand if you are going to have security in this country, security includes the United States deciding to provide security at its seaports. The United States can't manage its seaports? I don't understand that.

I was interested in a piece yesterday in the Washington Post by Sebastian Mallaby. I don't know Sebastian Mallaby, but he is a pretty good reflection of those who are pushing this issue, saying that those who oppose having the United Arab Emirates company manage our seaports are demagogs. He said:

The demagogs are poised to strike again.

He said:

If demagogs can turn a tiny ally such as Dubai into a

villain, you can bet they will do that with China.

He's talking about China trade.

The Dems will next play the China card.

One of the things he points out, he says we have a trade deficit with China. He doesn't seem to care much about that. But he says if we are going to get serious about dealing with the trade deficit, we need to get serious about balancing the Federal budget. This person must have missed Economics 101. We did balance the trade deficit under the final years of the Clinton administration and the deficit continued

to rise. We keep hearing these folks say the reason we have a trade deficit is because we have a fiscal policy budget deficit, which is not true. We actually created a surplus here before President Bush took over, and the trade deficit continued to rise. Now we have the highest trade deficit in history and a substantial portion of that trade deficit is with the Chinese.

It is interesting to me, all of these columnists, of course, tend to be apologists for public policies that don't work. But to suggest that somehow those who stand and oppose the management of American ports by a United Arab Emirates company are demagogs is elitist and it is wrong.

The so-called group called CFIUS, which, by the way, almost turns down nothing. They have reviewed lots and lots of proposals, and they have approved them all, virtually. I think they disapproved eight of them out of many proposals. But the Coast Guard had written a classified memo to CFIUS--on February 27 that was disclosed publicly by Senator Collins, I believe, at the hearing. The report said the following:

There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential

for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations

and that precludes an overall threat assessment on the

potential DPW and P&O Ports merger.

In fact, the Coast Guard restored a large number of potential vulnerabilities. That is directly from the Coast Guard's memorandum.

One of the so-called intelligence gaps that the Coast Guard referred to was that no one had checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE company that would manage our ports. So when the Coast Guard's secret report was made public, the administration said the Coast Guard ought to say something pleasant. So the Coast Guard came out and issued a statement the next day saying:

Upon subsequent and further review, the Coast Guard and the

entire CFIUS panel believe the transaction, when taking into

account strong security assurances by DP World, does not

compromise American security.

Interesting--the Coast Guard statement doesn't say anybody had checked out the backgrounds of the officials at the UAE company. That is what their secret memo had said represented the vulnerability. But the highest ranking official in the Department of Homeland Security, who was part of this group and who reviewed this port deal, said this:

The CFIUS review did not include background checks on the

senior managers of the company.

It is quite clear the Coast Guard, in a classified memorandum, expressed concerns about the terrorist threat, about vulnerabilities as a result of the takeover of American ports by a UAE-owned company and then the Coast Guard, when the classified memo became public, was ordered--the Coast Guard, of course, works for the President, the Coast Guard said something softer, but the Department of Homeland Security's ranking official, Stewart Baker, quite clearly said:

The CFIUS review did not include background checks on the

senior managers.

This is a fascinating description of trying to put a patch on a hole that is too big. None of this adds up very much.

I do want to make another point. This is about offshoring and outsourcing, and so on. The question is, Why would we be contracting with a foreign government, essentially--through a foreign company they wholly own--to manage our ports? This is the new global economy, we are told. If you don't get it, you are an isolationist, xenophobic stooge who can't figure it out. This is all part of the global economy.

President Bush went to India last week. If you are asking the question: How is it that the management of American seaports should be done by the United Arab Emirates company and you don't understand it, you won't understand what the President said last week in India either. What the President said in India, in several speeches, was you need to understand this global economy of ours. He said things have changed. This is about outsourcing of jobs.

I have some quotes from the President. The President says, about globalization: I guess generally outsourcing--you know outsourcing is not bad. People do lose jobs as a result of globalization, and it's painful to those who lose jobs, but the fundamental question is how does a government or society react to that? One of two ways. One is to say losing jobs is painful, therefore lets throw up the protectionist walls and the other is to say losing jobs is painful so let's make sure people are educated so they can find or fill the jobs of the 21st century.

I have news for the President. Those 21st century jobs for educated Americans--he was visiting them in India. He was looking at them. He's looking at the engineers who are now working at jobs American engineers used to have. Why did those engineering jobs go to India? Because you can hire an engineer in India for one-fifth the cost of an American engineer. So the solution is not to say let's have an American lose his or her job and then get better educated. How better educated than going to school to get a degree in engineering and then losing it to somebody in the country of India who is able to work for one-fifth the price?

So he said:

You don't retrench and pull back. You welcome competition.

Understand globalization provides great opportunities.

It is fascinating to me, the people who always talk about this are people who will never be outsourced. The President of the United States is never going to be outsourced. Do you think they are going to move his job to India? I don't think so--or China or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or Indonesia? I don't think so.

Our first great purpose is to spread prosperity and

opportunity to people in our own land and to the millions of

people who have not known it.

How does that fit, spreading prosperity and opportunity by moving American jobs to China and to India?

How does it spread prosperity and opportunity by deciding that a United Arab Emirates country will come and manage American seaports? How does that spread opportunity?

The President says the United States will not give into protectionists and lose these opportunities. So the President, very much like the columnist, Mr. Sabastian Mallaby from the Washington Post, all use the same language. It is code language. They all understand it. It is elitist language: protectionist, building walls, isolationist xenophobes.

We have a trade deficit of some $720 billion. Every single day, 7 days a week, all year long, we actually import $2 billion more in goods than we export to the rest of the world. Every single day, 7 days a week, we sell $2 billion worth of our country to foreigners.

I am not suggesting we shouldn't trade. I believe expanded trade is beneficial. But I am suggesting that we have a backbone, nerve, and a little will to stand up for our country's economic interests.

Can we not tell China, for example, that they can't have a trade relationship with us that has a $202 billion surplus every year? Last year it was a $202 billion deficit with China. Do we not have the nerve to say to China trade is mutually beneficial, a two-way street, that is the way we insist on it, and if they are going to sell to us then they are going to buy from us? Don't we have that nerve and will. If not, why not?

The same is true with others, especially Japan. With Japan it has been a couple of decades where we have had very substantial deficits year after year after year. And our country doesn't have the nerve or will to do anything about it.

We still have folks walking around thumbing their suspenders and puffing on their cigars talking about globalization and how wonderful it is. No one ever lost a job to outsourcing--it is just American workers who lose those jobs.

It is not just the jobs that are gone. It is the jobs left here that become priced by the China price--downward pressure on wages, downward pressure on benefits, stripping away retirement benefits and health care benefits. That is what is happening all across this country.

The issue I started talking about--the issue of managing an American port by a United Arab Emirates firm--wouldn't even have been discussed here 20 years ago. It would have been laughed at. Are you kidding me? Are

you really serious? We will have America's ports managed by the United Arab Emirates given the climate we face today?

Twenty years ago, you wouldn't be talking about a $700-plus billion trade deficit. Things have changed a lot.

We have a President who cheerleads now for that trade strategy despite the evidence--all of the evidence year after year--that this is a bankrupt trade strategy. It is bankrupting this country. It is selling part of America piece by piece of every single day. All of these things relate.

I only wanted to speak briefly--it turned out not to be so briefly-- about those who announced to the press or those who talked to the press resulting in news stories last evening that there is a deal in the works; perhaps the United Arab Emirates company could buy an American subsidiary and actually run the ports through a U.S. subsidiary. There is no deal in the works that I am aware of.

I have introduced legislation that would overturn this decision. In one way or another we are going to vote on these things. I believe there are other colleagues who believe the same.

We are going to go vote on these things no matter what kind of deal somebody else comes up with. I think there needs to be a good healthy dose of common sense expressed on some of these issues, and that is certainly lacking on trade, on national security, and on port security.

I hope, perhaps, we can get those before the Senate soon.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for as much time as I consume.

Mr. President, there is a lot of discussion this week in the Congress, in committees on which I serve and in other committees, dealing with the issue of the company that is owned by the United Arab Emirates, a Dubai company owned by a government called the UAE, managing six of America's major seaports. I wish to make a couple comments about that.

First, I introduced legislation this week that would simply disapprove the transaction. I don't think I need 45 days, and I don't need 45 minutes to make a judgment that it doesn't make any sense for our country to have a company owned by the United Arab Emirates managing six of America's major seaports. It doesn't make sense to me, and I will explain why.

In a time when our country is severely threatened by terrorism--and we read about it all the time that terrorists threaten this country--we understand that terrorists would love to commit another major act of terrorism inside the United States. Go to an airport this afternoon and try to board an airplane. You will find they want you to take your belt off. They want you to take your shoes off. They want you to take your wristwatch off. And then as you get through the metal detector, you see they have some 6-year-old spread-eagled against the wall, wanding that 6-year-old, or perhaps a Catholic priest, because they set off the metal detector.

We understand what is happening at airports. There is massive security. We have all these folks who are trying to get to their airplane, and yet we have them lined up in all kinds of ways because of security issues.

What about our seaports? We know our seaports are also a target for terrorists. We have over 5.7 million containers coming in on ships into our seaports.

The administration says it is concerned about a rogue nation or a terrorist group getting access to an intercontinental ballistic missile and putting a nuclear bomb on the tip of the missile and firing it at this country at

14,000 or 18,000 miles an hour. So we are spending, I don't know, somewhere around $10 billion this year to build an antiballistic missile system. Some of us think that is not a very wise expenditure because it is one of the least likely threats. Instead of worrying about the threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile coming at us from a rogue nation or a terrorist, a very unlikely threat, we should worry about a ship pulling up to a dock at 6 or 8 miles an hour with a container loaded on board that ship that contains a weapon of mass destruction, pulling up to a dock or a pier at one of America's major cities. Then we are not talking about 3,000 people dead; we are talking about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people killed. Yet think of this: We only inspect about 4 or perhaps as much as 5 percent of all of those containers coming into our country.

We know that just after 9/11, when there was a lot of discussion about this, there was a fellow who tried to ship himself to Canada, someone who they thought was a terrorist, who loaded himself into a container and actually had a cot to sleep on and a water supply; he had a radio connected to a GPS monitor, a whole series of things. He was shipping himself in a container to the country of Canada. They happened to find that person. The assumption was that he was going to find his way into Canada in a container and come into this country across our border. We know the dangers that exist with these ships and the containers. Yet there is very little, frankly, very little seaport security.

I went to a seaport once. We don't have seaports in my State, but I toured a seaport and asked about security and asked about things, and I mentioned previously on the floor that I saw a container that had been taken off a ship and was being opened.

I said: What is in the container? Why is that being opened?

They said: That is a refrigerated container; that is just one we decided to open.

I asked: What is in it?

Frozen broccoli from Poland.

I said: How do you know what is in the middle of that container? I see what you have pulled off the end of it and you cut open some bags and found some frozen broccoli. But how do you know what is in the middle of that container? Well, we really don't, is the answer, and they inspect somewhere around 4 to 5 percent of those containers.

So with all of the potential threat at our seaports, we are now learning that a company owned by the United Arab Emirates has been cleared by the administration to provide management and, yes, security, because security is a part of management, at six major seaports in our country.

My colleagues, a number of them, have described the United Arab Emirates. It is not my intention to offend this country. The administration says they have been helpful to us with respect to the war on terrorism. I don't know the specifics about that, but if they have been helpful, we appreciate that. We do know, however, that two of the hijackers who crashed into our World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 were United Arab Emirates citizens. We know from the 9/11 Commission Report that the United Arab Emirates was a crossroads that helped finance the terrorist operations. We know that the United Arab Emirates ports were crossroads through which Dr. Khan of Pakistan moved substantial amounts of nuclear knowledge and material to North Korea and Iran and other parts of the world, and that will pose very much danger to us and to our children. So we know some things about the United Arab Emirates.

My colleague, Senator Hollings, whom I have described a few times on the floor and who used to sit at the desk right behind me, my colleague just wrote an op-ed piece, and he described the United Arab Emirates. He said that in some countries, women are allowed to vote. In the United Arab Emirates, neither men nor women are allowed to vote. There are a lot of questions about the United Arab Emirates.

Let me mention something from the 9/11 Commission Report as well, about the United Arab Emirates. On page 137, it describes in 1999 the fact that we had found Osama bin Laden, presumably, knew where Osama bin Laden was, and he was near a hunting camp in the Afghan desert being used by visitors of a Gulf State from the United Arab Emirates. On page 138, it describes how in 1999, once our intelligence had decided they knew where Osama bin Laden was, they were going to launch a military strike against him. Page 138 describes that on February 10, 1999, the military was doing the targeting to hit the main camp with cruise missiles. No strike, however, was launched. Osama bin Laden then disappeared.

The reason the strike was called off is that intelligence officials were worried that a strike against bin Laden would kill an Emirate prince, somebody from the United Arab Emirates. Part of the Royal Family was visiting with Osama bin Laden at the time, and our intelligence officials were worried that if they launched a strike against Osama bin Laden, they would kill someone from the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates. This is on page 138 of the 9/11 Commission Report.

My point is very simple. The United Arab Emirates may very well have been helpful to us in the fight against terrorism in the last couple of years, and if they are being helpful to us, good for them. This is not about offending the United Arab Emirates by saying that we don't want a company owned by that country to manage American seaports. I don't wish to offend the UAE, but neither should we be offending common sense. A whole reservoir of common sense would tell us that this country, given the fact that we are the No. 1 target for terrorists, ought to be managing our own ports, our own major seaports, and ought to be providing our own security and ensuring our own security.

If I might also make a couple of points. The Committee on Foreign Investment of the United States, which is made up of somewhere around a dozen agencies within the administration, studied this proposed port deal and said it was okay for the United Arab Emirates-owned company to manage our major seaports. Well, on February 27 we learned that the Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report that was made public this week, and here is what the report said. This is the Coast Guard. It says:

There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential

for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations

that preclude an overall threat assessment of the potential

of the merger.

In fact, the Coast Guard referred to a large number of potential vulnerabilities, and then it listed them, and one of the intelligence gaps that the Coast Guard referred to was the fact that no one had checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE-owned company.

So when the secret Coast Guard report was made public this week--I believe by Senator Collins, who was holding a hearing at the time--the administration had the Coast Guard make another statement, and here is what the Coast Guard said on February 28:

Upon subsequent and further review, the Coast Guard and the

entire CFIUS panel believe that this transaction, when taking

into account strong security assurances by DP World does not

compromise U.S. security.

The Coast Guard obviously works for the President, and they made this statement dutifully in line with the administration's interests. But it is interesting. The Coast Guard's statement does not say that anybody checked the backgrounds of the officials of the UAE company. That was what the Coast Guard cited as one of the major vulnerabilities.

The highest ranking official in the Department of Homeland Security who reviewed this port deal is Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker. Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker told The New York Times on February 17 that the CFIUS review did not include any background checks on senior managers of the company. In fact, the review didn't involve gathering any information from outside sources like the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, because the committee kept the proposed transaction secret. In fact, Baker said the committee's investigation lasted just a couple of months, beginning in November, ending in mid- January, so there wouldn't have been time to do very thorough background checks anyway.

So here is what we have. We have the Coast Guard saying in a secret memorandum that there are real vulnerabilities here with respect to potential terrorism, and in that memorandum, they say one of the vulnerabilities is that no one had checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE company. So then the Coast Guard, when this becomes public, says: No, no, it is okay. We have pretty much been satisfied. And then the Department of Homeland Security official, the top official who did this, says: Well, no, we didn't check those backgrounds.

Question: How could the Coast Guard be satisfied when the conditions weren't met, when they had just said previously that there was a potential threat here? They said, ``There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations,'' and one of the bases for that is they hadn't checked the backgrounds of the people in charge. And then the Coast Guard says: But that is OK, now we are in sync with the administration on this. Then Homeland Security comes out and says: Well, we never did check the backgrounds of the people in charge.

This really gives you confidence that the transaction was properly vetted, doesn't it?

Let me just mention that in 2002, May of 2002, the U.S. Military Special Operations Command obtained a document produced by al-Qaida in which al-Qaida claimed to have infiltrated the United Arab Emirates. Referring to the UAE, the 2002 al-Qaida document, which was written in Arabic, says: We have infiltrated your security, censorship, and monetary agencies along with other agencies that should not be mentioned.

I have no idea whether there is any credibility here or not, but I do know that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE and the financing for the attacks flowed through UAE financial institutions. And it seems preposterous to me that the administration would just dismiss issues which were raised in a secret memorandum by the Coast Guard, even after there is an admission that the conditions that resulted in that concern about terrorism were never met.

The point is simple. This relates in many ways to the larger question of outsourcing, offshoring, contracting out the global economy. This global economy has galloped along. The rules, of course, have not kept pace. We now discover that in this so-called global economy, there are things which cause great concern. Among those would be deciding that America's seaports, largest seaports should be managed by a state-owned company, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. Does that make sense? Is the reaction of the American people so out of sync with common sense? I don't think so. I think the American people are in perfect sync with common sense, and the folks in the administration who did CFIUS and the folks in the administration who are now defending this are the ones who are out of sync with any common sense.

The President says: I have made up my mind. If the Congress passes legislation and sends it to my desk, I am going to veto it because I want the UAE company to be able to manage these ports. I say if you want to veto it, then go right ahead, but I think this Congress should pass legislation that says very simply that we don't want a state-owned company from the United Arab Emirates managing America's seaports. There are, in fact, security issues, national security issues that trump all of the other issues, and we don't believe that is appropriate. I have introduced legislation to do that, and we will see whether in the coming days and weeks we will be able to pass that legislation. I, frankly, think we will.

A colleague over in the House, Congressman Duncan, said something today that I believe is useful to repeat. He said:

People call this attitude protectionism. If that is what

they call it, then count me guilty of wanting to protect this

country's interests.

I always liked this so-called four-letter word, ``protection,'' the notion of being a protectionist on international trade. What is wrong with standing up for protecting this country's interests? Yes, economic interests, national security interests. What is wrong with that? Does anybody really think it makes sense to be outsourcing and offshoring all of this?

I believe we have the most sophisticated economy in the world. We have a wonderful education system. We have a lot happening in this country. And if we had no immigration restrictions at all and just had an open country, I tell you what, a fair part of the world would be headed in our direction. So it is a great place. And we don't have the resources in this great place of ours to manage our own seaports at a time when we see daily and weekly threats of terrorism against our country? We don't have the resources and we don't have the ingenuity and we don't have the capability to manage our seaports? What on Earth are they thinking about when they suggest that? Of course we do. It is just a matter of national will to decide that we want to stand up for the economic interests of this country and protect the national security interests of this country. That is what our responsibilities are.

I wish that I could, in this case, be supportive of the administration and the folks who reviewed this from CFIUS. But the fact is, in carpenter's terms you would call it a half a bubble off plumb, maybe a full bubble off plumb. This makes no sense at all. You are going to turn over our major seaports to a United Arab Emirates-owned company about which there are substantial questions about national security. I said before, it is nuts. There is no other way of describing it. So count me as somebody who is going to try, in every way possible, to scuttle this approach.

The interesting little dance that is going on here, because everybody wants to look as though they have been able to win, is: Now we have asked, the company has actually asked our country to extend the 45-day investigation. You talk about Byzantine. The United Arab Emirates-owned company is asking the United States of America to extend its investigation because they cut it off prematurely? It is bizarre. That is the only way you can describe it. I don't need 45 days; I don't need 45 minutes to figure out this doesn't make sense. That is why I introduced the legislation I introduced.

Contracting Fraud

Turning to another subject, and I will be brief, yesterday I introduced legislation with 28 of my colleagues. I will ask unanimous consent that Senator Cantwell be added to the piece of legislation.

The bill we introduced yesterday is about accountability in contracting. It is called the Honest Government and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006.

I have held seven hearings, chairing the Democratic Policy Committee, on the issue of contracting. It has been all over the newspapers in the last 4 or 5 years, the massive fraud, waste, and abuse in contracting. I will not go through all of it, but let me put a couple of things up.

This is Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking civilian official in the Corps of Engineers. She is in charge of all contracts in the Corps of Engineers, and virtually everything being done by contract in Iraq is going through the Corps of Engineers. She, incidentally, has since been demoted. The reason she has been demoted is this career official, who had great ratings and performance evaluations throughout her career, told the truth.

I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the

contracts awarded to KBR [that is Halliburton, a subsidiary

of it] represents the most blatant and improper contract

abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional

career.

Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking procurement official in the Corps of Engineers is paying for it with her job, but thank God we have people with the courage to do this.

When you mention Halliburton, everyone thinks you are talking about the Vice President because he used to run Halliburton. This is not about the Vice President. This is about a company that got huge no-bid, sole-source contracts to do work in Iraq, and it is unbelievable--the whistleblowers from Halliburton described the waste. I will give an example. We had a witness who used to work for KBR--Halliburton. He used to buy things for them.

He held up two towels. He said, I was supposed to purchase hand towels for the soldiers. Here is the towel I would

have purchased. It would have cost $1.80 a towel, something like that. And here is the towel I did purchase. It cost triple that. Why? Because the company said to me I want you to purchase the more expensive towel so it has the company name embroidered on the towel that goes to the soldiers. Waste? Of course it is.

Mr. President, $85,000 trucks, brand new, were left on the side of the road to be trashed because they had a flat tire; $85,000 trucks were trashed and left to rot because they had a plugged fuel pump. Do you think that is not happening? Listen to the whistleblowers or the people who drove the trucks.

A guy named Rory, on behalf of Halliburton, runs a cafeteria and food service. We know there is one allegation of one billing for 42,000 soldiers being fed a day when in fact they were feeding only 14,000. Rory said they missed it by about 5,000 in the place he was feeding them, charging for 5,000 more than actually were eating. He said, By the way, we were feeding the soldiers food that had expired date stamps on it, and when we told our supervisors they said, No, no, feed it to them; an expired date stamp doesn't matter. Feed them to the soldiers. He also said the convoys bringing the food in would come under attack and our supervisors said you go through and pull out the bullets and shrapnel in the food, pull it out, and then we will feed the food to the soldiers. And by the way, if they are good bullets, save them for the supervisors for souvenirs.

Are these unusual circumstances? The answer is no. I could go on and talk about fuel delivery and water contracts, but that is enough, just to say there is massive waste and fraud and abuse going on with respect to contracting in Iraq.

By the way, this fellow in this picture testified, this fellow wearing this white striped shirt. These are hundred-dollar bills wrapped in Saran wrap. This is the way they paid contractors in Iraq. He said we told contractors in Iraq, when you come, bring a bag because we pay in cash. He said, we used to throw these around like footballs in the office, hundred-dollar bills, wrapped. They had a bill vault downstairs. So the contractors are told, bring a bag because we pay in cash. He said it was like the Wild West. Someone else said we do a contract, the American taxpayers are going to pay to get a building air conditioned in Iraq, that goes to a subcontractor, it goes to a local contractor, another little contractor, and pretty soon we pay for it. We get a ceiling fan where we should have gotten an air conditioner. It is like the Wild West. Bring a bag and we give you cash.

Finally, a man named Mr. Custer and a man named Mr. Battles. ``Sixty Minutes'' did a recent program on them. They showed up with virtually no money. Eventually, within a very short period of time--nearly 2 years--they got $100 million in contracts from the Federal Government. It is pretty unbelievable.

I have a chart that describes what one of the airport managers said about them.

This is the chart:

Custer Battles have shown themselves to be unresponsive,

uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war

profiteers. Other than that, they are swell fellows.

From the Baghdad Airport, Director of Airport Security. The allegation is, they took the forklifts from the airport, that belonged to the airport, took them to a hangar, repainted them blue, and then sold them back to the Iraq Provisional Authority.

My point is there is substantial abuse going on in contracting.

We have introduced legislation that has a number of components. No. 1, a piece of legislation that includes as its first section something Senator Leahy had offered in the last Congress: punishing war profiteers with substantial penalties. Those who would profiteer in a wartime situation are despicable and they ought to bear substantial penalty.

The bill cracks down on substantial cheaters. It restores a Clinton administration rule, a rule that was made during the Clinton administration on suspension and debarment. If you are a contractor and you have exhibited a pattern of overcharging the Federal Government or failing to comply with the law, basically you have been somebody who has cheated the Government and have a pattern of that, you are out. You are going to be debarred. You are not going to be able to bid again. When the present Bush administration took office they immediately rescinded that rule. We would restore that rule by law, requiring full disclosure of contract abuses.

Section 103 provides for greater transparency in contracting. It would require agencies to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the committees in Congress all contractor reports that found contractor misconduct, and put them on a Web site as well.

The bill would force real competition, no more no-bid, sole-source contracts. It would also ban corporate cronyism in contracting. No more circumstances where someone works in a certain area and then goes to the private sector and gets contracts in the same area for which that person worked in the government. It ends cronyism in key government positions.

This is pretty radical. We are daring to suggest that people who are being hired for key jobs ought to be qualified for them. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, used to be, I think, one of the stars of the Federal Government. My understanding is 7 of the 11 top positions in FEMA were filled by people who had no experience, just cronies. You want a job for Al or Ken or Vern or Mary? Stick them over there. So 7 of 11 positions were filled by cronies with no experience.

Then take a look at what happened, see what happened when Katrina hit the shores, the largest national disaster in our country's history, and you see a FEMA that is completely incompetent.

The stories are unbelievable. We had a hearing about that. We had a guy who drove an 18-wheel truck. He was supposed to haul ice in this 18-wheel truck for the Katrina victims, at FEMA's direction. He got a whole truckload of ice and away he went to provide ice to the victims of Katrina. The problem is, he didn't quite get there. FEMA had him drive around the country. He was sent to an airbase here and another place there, and he finally, after sitting at a military base for a long while--with hundreds of other trucks, by the way--he finally had to drive back to New York and offload his ice in New York. This is unbelievable.

By the way, I have asked the Department, FEMA agency, how did this happen? How did you spend taxpayers' money to have ice run around this country that should have gone to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and instead we end up paying tens of thousands of dollars and the ice never gets there?

I got a letter from FEMA this week which says: That wasn't our responsibility. That was the Corps of Engineers. FEMA has since corrected that with an e-mail that is disjointed, were they admit that the responsibility was theirs. Their recent reputation for incompetence is pretty well deserved. That is something I am going to the bottom of.

My point is, we need to decide, if we are going to put people in key positions to do key jobs, it ought not be cronies, it ought to be people who have some basic experience that would suggest they can do those jobs.

Finally, we will strengthen whistleblower protections. People who have the courage to blow the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse ought not be penalized, they ought to be applauded.

That is the legislation I introduced yesterday with 29 cosponsors. Senator Cantwell will be the 29th sponsor. I ask unanimous consent Senator Cantwell be added as a cosponsor of this legislation, which is 2361.

This is not Republican or Democratic, conservative or liberal. It is about being smart and doing the right thing. We have had a lot of circumstances in recent weeks and months where our country has dropped the ball. I mentioned the response to Katrina. I mentioned contracting in Iraq and a range of things. I believe we must do better than that.

Some of it stems from these big sole-source, no-bid contracts. That is too sweet a deal. What you need is competition. We do not want to have this Government favoring one company versus another with sole- source, no-bid contracts. That is an invitation for waste, in my judgment.

I know we have a pretty substantial schedule. I know Senator Frist has indicated his agenda, what he wants to bring to the floor of the Senate in the coming weeks and months. But let me say I hope we will have time to deal with this issue of honest government and accountability in contracting. That is a piece of legislation that is urgently needed to be passed.

I also hope, in the near future, whether it is 45 days or whatever the days, they are going to continue to review the question of whether the United Arab Emirates should be managing America's ports. Whenever that is done, my hope is we will have up-or-down votes here in the Congress about whether we think this makes any sense at all.

I agree with Congressman Hunter. Put me down on the side of wanting to protect this country's interests. I guarantee this: We will not be protecting this country's interests to continue down this road of offshoring and outsourcing and deciding this great country of ours does not have the capability to manage its own seaports. What are we thinking about? Of course, we have the capability. The question is, do we have the national will and enough common sense, is there a reservoir of common sense to finally have us doing the right thing?

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak and have my speech recorded as if in morning business. I will use the time allotted with my hour postcloture.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.