Floor Statements

Mr. President, February is American Heart Month. As cochair of the Congressional Heart and Stroke Coalition, I rise today to urge my colleagues to commit to the fight against this devastating disease.

Heart disease remains the Nation's leading cause of death. Stroke is the No. 3 killer. More than 70 million adults in the United States suffer from heart disease, stroke, or other cardiovascular diseases. Cardiovascular diseases will cost our Nation an estimated $403 billion in 2006, including more than $250 billion in direct medical costs.

Although we need to continue to fund research to unlock the many mysteries that remain, we can make real progress in the fight against cardiovascular diseases by applying the knowledge that we already have today. A recent study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute found that by quitting smoking, reducing obesity and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels, you can add 10 years to your life.

Thanks to our prior investments in cardiovascular research and prevention programs, we are now at a point where we have the tools in hand to make substantial progress. Yet, we find ourselves at a crossroads. As the population ages, the number of Americans affected by cardiovascular diseases will rapidly increase if we don't take the right steps today. It is estimated that by 2050, the number of deaths from heart disease will increase by nearly 130 percent.

Now is the time to redouble our efforts to fight heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, not back away from our commitment. Yet, the President's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 would cut funding for medical research and cardiovascular disease prevention programs.

The administration has even proposed eliminating a program to help rural communities purchase automated external defibrillators, AEDs. Last year, over my objection, Congress cut funding for this program by more than 80 percent. This makes no sense to me. AEDs are small, laptop size devices that help restore normal heart function after cardiac arrest. AEDs save lives, especially when placed in areas where large numbers of people congregate and in rural communities where emergency medical personnel are not readily available.

That is why I was pleased to see the Architect of the Capitol announce last month that AEDs will be placed around the Capitol complex. However, I find it highly ironic that Congress decided to purchase AEDs for its own buildings while slashing funding for programs that help rural communities purchase the same devices.

In the next several weeks, we will have a serious debate in the Senate about the administration's budget proposal. The decisions we will make will clearly show our priorities. I urge my colleagues to make the fight against heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases a top priority.

Mr. President, the Commerce Committee is having a hearing this afternoon--and I have been at a portion of that hearing--dealing with the question of Dubai Ports World, which is a company largely owned by the United Arab Emirates. This is a company that has been given the green light by this administration to manage six of America's largest seaports.

This has caused a substantial amount of controversy and discussion. In the last couple of days some of that controversy has been resolved, at least in the minds of some, because the company owned by the United Arab Emirates has asked the administration for a 45-day review of the circumstances of this deal, and they will not take control of the management of the American ports for these 45 days.

It is rather unusual for a company to be asking that the United States Government do a 45-day review of the circumstances of whether a United Arab Emirates company should be managing America's ports. Speaking for myself, I don't need 45 days to understand this. I don't need 45 minutes to understand it. I know a bad idea when I see one.

The President has made up his mind. President Bush has said he will veto any legislation that is offered here in the Congress that would upset this deal which would allow the company owned by the United Arab Emirates to manage America's ports. If the President feels he should veto a piece of legislation, that is his right. He has not vetoed any bill since he became President of the United States, but if his proposition is he wants to veto a piece of legislation and turn over America's seaports, six of America's large seaports, to management by the United Arab Emirates, so be it. But I think the President would be making a very serious mistake.

Our country is under a terrorist threat. We get regular briefings on that in the Senate, and the American people know that from watching the news. We understand the terrorist threats take the form of threat to air travel because the terrorists, as we know, last used commercial jet airplanes to fly into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. We understand the threats at our airports. That is why when you go to the airport and try to board a plane they have you take off your belt, take off your shoes, and run you through a metal detector. There is great concern about the threat of terrorism and security at our airports.

There is also great concern about security at our seaports.

I have spoken, I am guessing, about a dozen times on the floor of this Senate about the security at our seaports since the time of the 9/ 11 attacks.

I recall shortly after 9/11 when a fellow from a Middle East country decided to ship himself in a container on a container ship. He got inside a container, and he got loaded on a container ship. Here was this man with a container. He had a cot to sleep on, he had a GPS device, a radio, a supply of water, and he was shipping himself, I believe, to Canada, and there was concern that he was a terrorist and he was going to enter the country by shipping himself in a container on a container ship.

I have spoken here, I suppose, almost a dozen times talking about the danger of having anywhere from 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into this country every year, millions of containers on a container ship coming into this country every year, and somewhere around 4 percent of them and perhaps as much as 5 percent are inspected; the rest are not.

I went to a port facility once. We don't have ports in North Dakota. But I went to a port facility to visit and see what the security was. They were showing me a container they had taken off a ship. The container they opened

happened to be frozen broccoli from Poland, bags and bags and bags of frozen broccoli. I said, How do you know what is in the middle of this container? I see there are bags of frozen broccoli. How do you know that is all that is here in the container? Well, we don't know. That is why we are inspecting this particular container. How many containers do you inspect? We know the answer to that. Out of every 100, 96 are not inspected.

That is a threat to our country's seaports.

What about a terrorist organization deciding they want to try to steal a nuclear weapon someplace? After all, there are tens of thousands of them--somewhere, we believe, between 20,000 and 30,000 nuclear weapons that exist in this world. Steal a nuclear weapon and put it in a container, on a container ship and run it up to a dock, appear at one of America's major cities. What about the prospect of that happening? Then we would not see 3,000 deaths. No, we would see 100,000 deaths or more.

Seaport security is a very serious issue.

Now, in the midst of all of these issues of national security, we hear that something called CFIUS--the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, composed of some 12 Federal agencies coming together as a committee, evaluating foreign investment in the United States--decided it is all right if this company called Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, is allowed to manage six of America's largest ports, including ports in New York, New Jersey, Miami, Louisiana, and Maryland.

That is not all right with me.

I just came from a committee hearing where we had some people say, Well, you are going to offend somebody here. The United Arab Emirates is a country that has been very helpful to us in the fight on terrorism. The last thing we want to do is offend them.

What about offending common sense? Should we be offending common sense here in the Senate? I don't think so. Common sense would say to us when threatened by terrorist threats, security in this country ought to be security provided by the United States. We can't provide for our own security in our management of U.S. ports?

The United Arab Emirates is probably a perfectly wonderful country. It is not a democracy, I will tell you. And two of the hijackers on 9/ 11/2001 were UAE citizens. And the United Arab Emirates was only one of three countries that recognized the Taliban Government which played host to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Let me read something from the 9/11 Commission report. On page 137:

Early in 1999, the CIA received a recording that Osama bin

Laden was spending much of his time at one of several camps

in the Afghanistan desert south of Kandahar. At the beginning

of February, bin Laden was reportedly located at the vicinity

of Sheik Ali Camp, a desert hunting camp being used by

visitors from a Gulf State. Public sources have stated that

those terrorists were from the United Arab Emirates.

I will not read all of this.

According to the reports, the military was doing targeting work to hit the camp where Osama bin Laden was thought to be, to hit it with cruise missiles. But no strike was launched. And Mr. bin Laden apparently soon moved on and the immediate strike plans became moot.

According to the CIA and defense officials, the reason the strike was not launched against bin Laden was that policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill a prince from the United Arab Emirates who was visiting with bin Laden.

The 9-11 Commission report also talks about an official airplane for the United Arab Emirates at a landing strip there. They believed the UAE officials were visiting with Mr. bin Laden. So apparently, any opportunity for this country to target Mr. bin Laden before 9/11 was in part fouled by the relationship between at least some in the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates and Mr. bin Laden.

One of our Cabinet officers said, Well, this issue is not just about national security, but also about trade and about commerce.

Look, trade and commerce do not ever trump national security. If there are national security issues, then they have to be dealt with and have to be recognized.

We are told, Well, everyone signed off on this; there is not a problem here. But now we find out today that not everybody did sign off on this. Yesterday we found out that the Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report, which had already been made public. The report said:

There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential

for DPW or PNO assets to support terrorist operations. That

precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential DPW

and PNO ports merger.

So don't tell me that the Coast Guard signed off on this. They raised questions about it, as they should have.

I have a GAO report that I showed a few moments ago in the Commerce Committee. This is the title of the July 2005 GAO report: ``The DOD Cannot Ensure its Oversight of Contractors Under Foreign Influence is Sufficient.''

If the Department of Defense cannot ensure proper oversight of foreign contractors, the Department of Homeland Security can? I don't think so. The Department of Homeland Security, after all, responded to Hurricane Katrina. Look at the mess they made with that. Now they are saying, even though the Department of Defense cannot ensure oversight of foreign contractors, Homeland Security is going to be able to do that with respect to the security of our ports? I don't think so.

So national security is an issue. And saying so is not a slap in the face at any country. It is just recognizing the obvious.

Something else that has not been talked about should be talked about. We have moved at a full gallop toward globalization. We are in a global economy, we are told. Well, the fact that we are in a global economy should not persuade us not to think. One of the questions ought to be raised by all is--aside from the national security interests, which are significant interests--one of the other questions is, why would our country not have the capability to provide its own port management, its own port security?

There are certain things we do that we know we must do. Again, go to the airport and see what they tell you about your shoes and belt and see a little 6-year-old boy spread-eagle against the wall being ``wanded'' and ask yourself: Why is that happening? Because we have decided there is a security threat at airports. Terrorists use a commercial airliner as a guided missile to destroy buildings in our country and to murder Americans. So we have issues of national security to respond to a threat with airport screening.

What about our seaports? Does anyone think there is any less danger with somewhere around 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into our country, with 96 percent of them not having been screened? Does anyone think there is less danger to America to have just one of those containers be pulled up slowly at an American pier or port or dock that has a weapon of mass destruction?

We are spending billions and billions of dollars building an antiballistic missile defense system that does not work, regrettably. We have spent billions of dollars and are spending billions more trying to hit a bullet with a bullet because we are concerned that a rogue nation or a terrorist will get hold of a ballistic missile, put on its tip a nuclear weapon, and send it to us somewhere around 15,000 miles per hour. By far, the more significant threat is for a ship to pull up at one of our docks at about 5 miles per hour, leaded with containers, most of which have never been inspected, containing in one circumstance a weapon of mass destruction. That is by far a more significant threat to our country.

I have spoken, I suppose, a dozen times over the years since 2001 about port security. Not because we have any ports in North Dakota, because we do not. But it is obvious to me that if you are going to begin to provide security for this country, we do not just do it by metal detectors at airports; we do it at seaports and rail security, as well. And with respect to seaports, it seems completely illogical to me from a national security standpoint that we would decide to turn over to foreign countries the management of our ports, our seaports.

People have said today: Are you kidding? This is done all the time, for God's sake. Get a life. This is going on

everywhere. You do not understand the global economy. We have had other countries managing our seaports.

This has become an issue that most American people recognize is a problem. But a number of Members in the Congress do not recognize it as a problem. Some do. But I heard opening statements at a committee hearing suggesting this debate is about racial profiling, it is about offending a good neighbor. Well, that is all nonsense. This is about demanding at least some level of common sense be used in establishing public policy.

The President says: We did the right thing. I have already made up my mind, he says, and we approved it. And I will veto anything that would overturn that approval.

Then he says, when asked by the company that is owned by the United Arab Emirates to review it for 45 more days, the President says: Yes, we will review it for 45 more days. But, again, he put out a statement today saying: I've already made up my mind.

At a committee hearing this afternoon, others on the committee said: Well, some of you have already made up your mind. Shame on you.

As I said, it would not take me 45 days to figure it out. It does not take 45 minutes to figure it out. We ought to, as a country, be able to find ways to manage our seaports. And we ought to, as a country, take responsibility for our own national security. After all, it is not every country in the world where you pin a little pin on the map that says: Here's target one, here's the bull's eye of the target for terrorists. They want to attack this country. This is where they want to attack. We understand that.

All of us feel fortunate we have not been attacked again since 2001. But we all know, as well, that there is much yet to do. Seaport security is one of those areas in which we have to do much better.

My colleague who sat behind me some years, Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina, would come to the Senate and speak at great length about this. He would offer funding for more seaport security. It was routinely turned down. All of us offered this and were routinely turned down. We did not have the money. And we are inspecting 4 to 5 percent.

Someday, God forbid, if something happens at a seaport, we will all stand and scratch our heads and say: Why didn't we try to find a way to do this better, more inspections? Why didn't we understand that is more vulnerable even than airport security? Why didn't we figure that out?

This is an opportunity. I understand this will be controversial. I understand the President is going to be upset if the Congress takes action.

I will offer legislation today that is very simple. It does not tiptoe around 45 days and all these things. It just says this should not happen.

If that offends someone, I am sorry. But I do not want to offend common sense. And it seems to me, in this country there is a deep reservoir of common sense at the local cafe or down at the hardware store to say it would make the most sense, given the fact we are targeted by terrorists, it would make the most sense for our country to take responsibility for itself. This is not about globalism. It is not about the global economy. It is not about offending someone. It is about deciding as a country to assume responsibility for your security.

Let me make one other point. Yes, we need friends. Yes, we need the United Arab Emirates to be our friend and other countries as well to cooperate with us. But wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if we had more cooperation when Dr. Kahn in Pakistan was arranging to have nuclear materials and nuclear plans and nuclear parts sent around to North Korea and to Iran and to other countries? Our children will pay for that, unfortunately. And most of that material went through the United Arab Emirates' ports.

Wouldn't it have been nice if we had more friends? We need more friends. But, it seems to me, we ought not buy friendship by deciding that we will put a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates in the position of managing America's ports. Once again, this is merely common sense.

The GAO report of last summer ought to be instructive to us. If the Department of Defense cannot ensure its oversight of contractors under foreign influence, how on Earth can Homeland Security ensure oversight of a contractor that is owned by a foreign government in the Middle East? How on Earth can we expect that to happen?

I come to the Senate to talk a lot about trade. In this age of globalism people say: You are just a xenophobic isolationist stooge who does not get it. The world has changed. It is a global world. Everyone does everything everywhere.

It seems to me it is not inappropriate even in a global economy to pursue our own interests from time to time, and that is especially true when it deals with the subject of terrorism. Does the global economy mean that you outsource or offshore everything? Is there anything you cannot do without?

Some 15 years ago, I used to question Carla Hills, the trade ambassador, at various hearings. Managed trade was anathema to her, and it has been to virtually every administration. Yet virtually every country we do trade with has managed trade. They have managed trade with a set of objectives. I used to continually ask Carla Hill: Is there anything the loss of which would give you problems?

For example, if, in a completely open system of trade we lost our entire steel industry--it was gone, no steel mill and no steel produced domestically--would that give you a problem? The answer was, no, whatever happens, happens. That is nonsense. There are certain things that a country must hang on to to remain a strong economic power, a world economic power.

Maybe this, also, in addition to the national security issues--which I think are very important--maybe it is also an opportunity to wake up and answer the question: What is appropriate in a global economy? Is everything on the table? Everything for sale? Everything up for trading and grabs? Is offshoring just fine, notwithstanding what it means to the American economy?

Perhaps, if we use this opportunity to ask those questions, we will have done this country a favor.

In the meantime, I will introduce the simplest piece of legislation introduced on this subject. It simply says: ``Just say no.''

Mr. President, the Commerce Committee is having a hearing this afternoon--and I have been at a portion of that hearing--dealing with the question of Dubai Ports World, which is a company largely owned by the United Arab Emirates. This is a company that has been given the green light by this administration to manage six of America's largest seaports.

This has caused a substantial amount of controversy and discussion. In the last couple of days some of that controversy has been resolved, at least in the minds of some, because the company owned by the United Arab Emirates has asked the administration for a 45-day review of the circumstances of this deal, and they will not take control of the management of the American ports for these 45 days.

It is rather unusual for a company to be asking that the United States Government do a 45-day review of the circumstances of whether a United Arab Emirates company should be managing America's ports. Speaking for myself, I don't need 45 days to understand this. I don't need 45 minutes to understand it. I know a bad idea when I see one.

The President has made up his mind. President Bush has said he will veto any legislation that is offered here in the Congress that would upset this deal which would allow the company owned by the United Arab Emirates to manage America's ports. If the President feels he should veto a piece of legislation, that is his right. He has not vetoed any bill since he became President of the United States, but if his proposition is he wants to veto a piece of legislation and turn over America's seaports, six of America's large seaports, to management by the United Arab Emirates, so be it. But I think the President would be making a very serious mistake.

Our country is under a terrorist threat. We get regular briefings on that in the Senate, and the American people know that from watching the news. We understand the terrorist threats take the form of threat to air travel because the terrorists, as we know, last used commercial jet airplanes to fly into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. We understand the threats at our airports. That is why when you go to the airport and try to board a plane they have you take off your belt, take off your shoes, and run you through a metal detector. There is great concern about the threat of terrorism and security at our airports.

There is also great concern about security at our seaports.

I have spoken, I am guessing, about a dozen times on the floor of this Senate about the security at our seaports since the time of the 9/ 11 attacks.

I recall shortly after 9/11 when a fellow from a Middle East country decided to ship himself in a container on a container ship. He got inside a container, and he got loaded on a container ship. Here was this man with a container. He had a cot to sleep on, he had a GPS device, a radio, a supply of water, and he was shipping himself, I believe, to Canada, and there was concern that he was a terrorist and he was going to enter the country by shipping himself in a container on a container ship.

I have spoken here, I suppose, almost a dozen times talking about the danger of having anywhere from 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into this country every year, millions of containers on a container ship coming into this country every year, and somewhere around 4 percent of them and perhaps as much as 5 percent are inspected; the rest are not.

I went to a port facility once. We don't have ports in North Dakota. But I went to a port facility to visit and see what the security was. They were showing me a container they had taken off a ship. The container they opened

happened to be frozen broccoli from Poland, bags and bags and bags of frozen broccoli. I said, How do you know what is in the middle of this container? I see there are bags of frozen broccoli. How do you know that is all that is here in the container? Well, we don't know. That is why we are inspecting this particular container. How many containers do you inspect? We know the answer to that. Out of every 100, 96 are not inspected.

That is a threat to our country's seaports.

What about a terrorist organization deciding they want to try to steal a nuclear weapon someplace? After all, there are tens of thousands of them--somewhere, we believe, between 20,000 and 30,000 nuclear weapons that exist in this world. Steal a nuclear weapon and put it in a container, on a container ship and run it up to a dock, appear at one of America's major cities. What about the prospect of that happening? Then we would not see 3,000 deaths. No, we would see 100,000 deaths or more.

Seaport security is a very serious issue.

Now, in the midst of all of these issues of national security, we hear that something called CFIUS--the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, composed of some 12 Federal agencies coming together as a committee, evaluating foreign investment in the United States--decided it is all right if this company called Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, is allowed to manage six of America's largest ports, including ports in New York, New Jersey, Miami, Louisiana, and Maryland.

That is not all right with me.

I just came from a committee hearing where we had some people say, Well, you are going to offend somebody here. The United Arab Emirates is a country that has been very helpful to us in the fight on terrorism. The last thing we want to do is offend them.

What about offending common sense? Should we be offending common sense here in the Senate? I don't think so. Common sense would say to us when threatened by terrorist threats, security in this country ought to be security provided by the United States. We can't provide for our own security in our management of U.S. ports?

The United Arab Emirates is probably a perfectly wonderful country. It is not a democracy, I will tell you. And two of the hijackers on 9/ 11/2001 were UAE citizens. And the United Arab Emirates was only one of three countries that recognized the Taliban Government which played host to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Let me read something from the 9/11 Commission report. On page 137:

Early in 1999, the CIA received a recording that Osama bin

Laden was spending much of his time at one of several camps

in the Afghanistan desert south of Kandahar. At the beginning

of February, bin Laden was reportedly located at the vicinity

of Sheik Ali Camp, a desert hunting camp being used by

visitors from a Gulf State. Public sources have stated that

those terrorists were from the United Arab Emirates.

I will not read all of this.

According to the reports, the military was doing targeting work to hit the camp where Osama bin Laden was thought to be, to hit it with cruise missiles. But no strike was launched. And Mr. bin Laden apparently soon moved on and the immediate strike plans became moot.

According to the CIA and defense officials, the reason the strike was not launched against bin Laden was that policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill a prince from the United Arab Emirates who was visiting with bin Laden.

The 9-11 Commission report also talks about an official airplane for the United Arab Emirates at a landing strip there. They believed the UAE officials were visiting with Mr. bin Laden. So apparently, any opportunity for this country to target Mr. bin Laden before 9/11 was in part fouled by the relationship between at least some in the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates and Mr. bin Laden.

One of our Cabinet officers said, Well, this issue is not just about national security, but also about trade and about commerce.

Look, trade and commerce do not ever trump national security. If there are national security issues, then they have to be dealt with and have to be recognized.

We are told, Well, everyone signed off on this; there is not a problem here. But now we find out today that not everybody did sign off on this. Yesterday we found out that the Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report, which had already been made public. The report said:

There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential

for DPW or PNO assets to support terrorist operations. That

precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential DPW

and PNO ports merger.

So don't tell me that the Coast Guard signed off on this. They raised questions about it, as they should have.

I have a GAO report that I showed a few moments ago in the Commerce Committee. This is the title of the July 2005 GAO report: ``The DOD Cannot Ensure its Oversight of Contractors Under Foreign Influence is Sufficient.''

If the Department of Defense cannot ensure proper oversight of foreign contractors, the Department of Homeland Security can? I don't think so. The Department of Homeland Security, after all, responded to Hurricane Katrina. Look at the mess they made with that. Now they are saying, even though the Department of Defense cannot ensure oversight of foreign contractors, Homeland Security is going to be able to do that with respect to the security of our ports? I don't think so.

So national security is an issue. And saying so is not a slap in the face at any country. It is just recognizing the obvious.

Something else that has not been talked about should be talked about. We have moved at a full gallop toward globalization. We are in a global economy, we are told. Well, the fact that we are in a global economy should not persuade us not to think. One of the questions ought to be raised by all is--aside from the national security interests, which are significant interests--one of the other questions is, why would our country not have the capability to provide its own port management, its own port security?

There are certain things we do that we know we must do. Again, go to the airport and see what they tell you about your shoes and belt and see a little 6-year-old boy spread-eagle against the wall being ``wanded'' and ask yourself: Why is that happening? Because we have decided there is a security threat at airports. Terrorists use a commercial airliner as a guided missile to destroy buildings in our country and to murder Americans. So we have issues of national security to respond to a threat with airport screening.

What about our seaports? Does anyone think there is any less danger with somewhere around 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into our country, with 96 percent of them not having been screened? Does anyone think there is less danger to America to have just one of those containers be pulled up slowly at an American pier or port or dock that has a weapon of mass destruction?

We are spending billions and billions of dollars building an antiballistic missile defense system that does not work, regrettably. We have spent billions of dollars and are spending billions more trying to hit a bullet with a bullet because we are concerned that a rogue nation or a terrorist will get hold of a ballistic missile, put on its tip a nuclear weapon, and send it to us somewhere around 15,000 miles per hour. By far, the more significant threat is for a ship to pull up at one of our docks at about 5 miles per hour, leaded with containers, most of which have never been inspected, containing in one circumstance a weapon of mass destruction. That is by far a more significant threat to our country.

I have spoken, I suppose, a dozen times over the years since 2001 about port security. Not because we have any ports in North Dakota, because we do not. But it is obvious to me that if you are going to begin to provide security for this country, we do not just do it by metal detectors at airports; we do it at seaports and rail security, as well. And with respect to seaports, it seems completely illogical to me from a national security standpoint that we would decide to turn over to foreign countries the management of our ports, our seaports.

People have said today: Are you kidding? This is done all the time, for God's sake. Get a life. This is going on

everywhere. You do not understand the global economy. We have had other countries managing our seaports.

This has become an issue that most American people recognize is a problem. But a number of Members in the Congress do not recognize it as a problem. Some do. But I heard opening statements at a committee hearing suggesting this debate is about racial profiling, it is about offending a good neighbor. Well, that is all nonsense. This is about demanding at least some level of common sense be used in establishing public policy.

The President says: We did the right thing. I have already made up my mind, he says, and we approved it. And I will veto anything that would overturn that approval.

Then he says, when asked by the company that is owned by the United Arab Emirates to review it for 45 more days, the President says: Yes, we will review it for 45 more days. But, again, he put out a statement today saying: I've already made up my mind.

At a committee hearing this afternoon, others on the committee said: Well, some of you have already made up your mind. Shame on you.

As I said, it would not take me 45 days to figure it out. It does not take 45 minutes to figure it out. We ought to, as a country, be able to find ways to manage our seaports. And we ought to, as a country, take responsibility for our own national security. After all, it is not every country in the world where you pin a little pin on the map that says: Here's target one, here's the bull's eye of the target for terrorists. They want to attack this country. This is where they want to attack. We understand that.

All of us feel fortunate we have not been attacked again since 2001. But we all know, as well, that there is much yet to do. Seaport security is one of those areas in which we have to do much better.

My colleague who sat behind me some years, Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina, would come to the Senate and speak at great length about this. He would offer funding for more seaport security. It was routinely turned down. All of us offered this and were routinely turned down. We did not have the money. And we are inspecting 4 to 5 percent.

Someday, God forbid, if something happens at a seaport, we will all stand and scratch our heads and say: Why didn't we try to find a way to do this better, more inspections? Why didn't we understand that is more vulnerable even than airport security? Why didn't we figure that out?

This is an opportunity. I understand this will be controversial. I understand the President is going to be upset if the Congress takes action.

I will offer legislation today that is very simple. It does not tiptoe around 45 days and all these things. It just says this should not happen.

If that offends someone, I am sorry. But I do not want to offend common sense. And it seems to me, in this country there is a deep reservoir of common sense at the local cafe or down at the hardware store to say it would make the most sense, given the fact we are targeted by terrorists, it would make the most sense for our country to take responsibility for itself. This is not about globalism. It is not about the global economy. It is not about offending someone. It is about deciding as a country to assume responsibility for your security.

Let me make one other point. Yes, we need friends. Yes, we need the United Arab Emirates to be our friend and other countries as well to cooperate with us. But wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if we had more cooperation when Dr. Kahn in Pakistan was arranging to have nuclear materials and nuclear plans and nuclear parts sent around to North Korea and to Iran and to other countries? Our children will pay for that, unfortunately. And most of that material went through the United Arab Emirates' ports.

Wouldn't it have been nice if we had more friends? We need more friends. But, it seems to me, we ought not buy friendship by deciding that we will put a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates in the position of managing America's ports. Once again, this is merely common sense.

The GAO report of last summer ought to be instructive to us. If the Department of Defense cannot ensure its oversight of contractors under foreign influence, how on Earth can Homeland Security ensure oversight of a contractor that is owned by a foreign government in the Middle East? How on Earth can we expect that to happen?

I come to the Senate to talk a lot about trade. In this age of globalism people say: You are just a xenophobic isolationist stooge who does not get it. The world has changed. It is a global world. Everyone does everything everywhere.

It seems to me it is not inappropriate even in a global economy to pursue our own interests from time to time, and that is especially true when it deals with the subject of terrorism. Does the global economy mean that you outsource or offshore everything? Is there anything you cannot do without?

Some 15 years ago, I used to question Carla Hills, the trade ambassador, at various hearings. Managed trade was anathema to her, and it has been to virtually every administration. Yet virtually every country we do trade with has managed trade. They have managed trade with a set of objectives. I used to continually ask Carla Hill: Is there anything the loss of which would give you problems?

For example, if, in a completely open system of trade we lost our entire steel industry--it was gone, no steel mill and no steel produced domestically--would that give you a problem? The answer was, no, whatever happens, happens. That is nonsense. There are certain things that a country must hang on to to remain a strong economic power, a world economic power.

Maybe this, also, in addition to the national security issues--which I think are very important--maybe it is also an opportunity to wake up and answer the question: What is appropriate in a global economy? Is everything on the table? Everything for sale? Everything up for trading and grabs? Is offshoring just fine, notwithstanding what it means to the American economy?

Perhaps, if we use this opportunity to ask those questions, we will have done this country a favor.

In the meantime, I will introduce the simplest piece of legislation introduced on this subject. It simply says: ``Just say no.''

Earlier this month, Lynette Mund, a teacher and coach from West Fargo, ND, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee about the importance of women's athletics.

Lynette is a great athlete in her own right. She was a three-time national champion in basketball. Her home State of North Dakota has always been proud of her and is lucky to have her contributions at West Fargo High School.

Her excellent statement laid out the struggles of providing the opportunity for young women to participate in sports. I ask unanimous consent that her statement be printed in the Congressional Record.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Levin, DeWine and Bond to introduce the Kidney Transplant Clarification Act of 2006. This legislation will help save lives by increasing the number of kidney donations made by living donors.

There are currently 90,608 people in the United States who are on the national organ transplant waiting list. More than two-thirds of those on the waiting list suffer from end stage renal disease and are in need of a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, the number of people on the waiting list continues to grow far faster than the number of organ donors. In North Dakota alone, there are currently 91 patients who are waiting for a kidney transplant.

The good news is that patients with end stage renal disease who require a kidney transplant no longer need to wait for a kidney from a deceased donor or from a blood relative. Advances in medical science now make it possible for friends and spouses to donate a kidney to a patient in need. Of the 16,004 kidney transplants in 2004, 6,647 were from living donors.

The bad news is outdated Federal laws inappropriately stand in the way of widely adopting several innovative approaches that would increase the number of kidney donations from the living.

One of these strategies is called a paired kidney donation. Here is how it works: Joe wants to donate a kidney to his wife Kathleen but can't because of incompatibility. Likewise, Suzy wants to donate a kidney to her husband Scott but can't because of incompatibility. A paired donation helps match up these couples so Joe can donate a kidney to Scott and Suzy can donate a kidney to Kathleen.

The other approach is called a kidney list donation. Here is how it works: Rebecca wants to donate a kidney to her husband Grant but can't because of incompatibility. In this case, she decides to donate a kidney to someone who is already on the national waiting list. Once the donation is made, Grant is added to the waiting list but is given allocation priority for a kidney that becomes available in the future.

The Kidney Transplant Clarification Act will clarify that paired and list kidney donations are allowed under the National Organ Transplant Act, removing a barrier that has prevented more kidney donations from living donors from occurring.

The National Organ Transplant Act, which was enacted in 1984, prohibits any person to acquire, receive or donate any human organ for anything of value. The purpose of this law is to prohibit the buying and selling of human organs. I agree with this law. The last thing that we want to do is sanction organ trafficking. Yet, when this law was enacted, paired and list kidney donations did not exist. It is important that we clarify that these innovative strategies to increase the number of kidney donations from living donors are allowed under current law.

The Kidney Transplant Clarification Act will not only save lives, it will save the federal government and taxpayers money. Patients with end stage renal disease require dialysis, which is covered by Medicare. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare spends about $55,000 per patient per year for dialysis. On average, patients with end stage renal disease wait 4 years before receiving a kidney transplant. This means that every kidney donation made from a living donor has the potential to reduce the number of people on the waiting list and save the government as much as $220,000.

Mr. President, I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Levin, DeWine and Bond to introduce the Kidney Transplant Clarification Act of 2006. This legislation will help save lives by increasing the number of kidney donations made by living donors.

There are currently 90,608 people in the United States who are on the national organ transplant waiting list. More than two-thirds of those on the waiting list suffer from end stage renal disease and are in need of a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, the number of people on the waiting list continues to grow far faster than the number of organ donors. In North Dakota alone, there are currently 91 patients who are waiting for a kidney transplant.

The good news is that patients with end stage renal disease who require a kidney transplant no longer need to wait for a kidney from a deceased donor or from a blood relative. Advances in medical science now make it possible for friends and spouses to donate a kidney to a patient in need. Of the 16,004 kidney transplants in 2004, 6,647 were from living donors.

The bad news is outdated Federal laws inappropriately stand in the way of widely adopting several innovative approaches that would increase the number of kidney donations from the living.

One of these strategies is called a paired kidney donation. Here is how it works: Joe wants to donate a kidney to his wife Kathleen but can't because of incompatibility. Likewise, Suzy wants to donate a kidney to her husband Scott but can't because of incompatibility. A paired donation helps match up these couples so Joe can donate a kidney to Scott and Suzy can donate a kidney to Kathleen.

The other approach is called a kidney list donation. Here is how it works: Rebecca wants to donate a kidney to her husband Grant but can't because of incompatibility. In this case, she decides to donate a kidney to someone who is already on the national waiting list. Once the donation is made, Grant is added to the waiting list but is given allocation priority for a kidney that becomes available in the future.

The Kidney Transplant Clarification Act will clarify that paired and list kidney donations are allowed under the National Organ Transplant Act, removing a barrier that has prevented more kidney donations from living donors from occurring.

The National Organ Transplant Act, which was enacted in 1984, prohibits any person to acquire, receive or donate any human organ for anything of value. The purpose of this law is to prohibit the buying and selling of human organs. I agree with this law. The last thing that we want to do is sanction organ trafficking. Yet, when this law was enacted, paired and list kidney donations did not exist. It is important that we clarify that these innovative strategies to increase the number of kidney donations from living donors are allowed under current law.

The Kidney Transplant Clarification Act will not only save lives, it will save the federal government and taxpayers money. Patients with end stage renal disease require dialysis, which is covered by Medicare. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare spends about $55,000 per patient per year for dialysis. On average, patients with end stage renal disease wait 4 years before receiving a kidney transplant. This means that every kidney donation made from a living donor has the potential to reduce the number of people on the waiting list and save the government as much as $220,000.

Mr. President, I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation.

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

Mr. President, I understand the current business. I ask unanimous consent that my presentation appear in the Record as in Morning Business.

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

Mr. President, I will spend a few minutes talking about energy.

There was a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, I believe, this morning or yesterday morning, responding to an editorial where I had given a response to an editorial. The writer to the Wall Street Journal was taking me to task for saying there is not a ``free market'' in energy or in oil. My point was there is no free market in oil. He said he doesn't know what I have been drinking or where I got these thoughts. He said there is a free market in oil.

Let me describe all of this in the context of President Bush's State of the Union Address in which he suggested that we are ``addicted'' to oil and we need to move toward greater independence with respect to oil, especially coming from off our shores.

First, on the subject of a free market, there is no free market in oil. A substantial portion of oil comes from halfway around the world, under the sand in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran. A substantial part of the world supply of oil comes from that region. And those OPEC ministers, having formed a cartel, sit around a room and decide how much they are going to pump and at what price. That is a cartel. Cartels are the antithesis of the free market system. Yet the OPEC countries have this cartel, produce a great amount of oil, and they decide how they are going to manipulate price and supply. That is No. 1.

No. 2, you have the large oil companies, bigger and much stronger because of the blockbuster mergers in recent decades, especially in the last one. These oil companies used to be one company, and now they are a company with several names, such as ExxonMobil. That used to be Exxon, and that used to be Mobil. They decided to fall in love and get married, and now it is ExxonMobil. Last year, ExxonMobil made $36.1 billion--the highest profit ever recorded in corporate America. ExxonMobil.

Then there is Chevron-Texaco. It used to be Chevron, and there was Texaco. They discovered they liked each other and they got hitched, making it Chevron-Texaco.

And then we have ConocoPhillips, which used to be separate companies. Once they decide to marry up and merge, they save all these names.

So there is ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, and ConocoPhillips. Maybe some day they will all merge, and when you put them all together, they will be ExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips--just one company. The blockbuster mergers mean these companies are bigger, stronger, and have greater capacity to influence the marketplace.

So you have the OPEC ministers in a closed room talking about supply and price and how they affect supply and price and the manner in which they want to affect it. You have the oil companies, larger and stronger, having more muscle to influence the marketplace. And third, you have the futures market. The futures market, rather than simply providing liquidity for training, has become an orgy of speculation. So those three things are what determine the price of oil and the price of gasoline. It has very little to do with the so-called free market. Yet we hear all these people talk about the free market.

Do you think it is the free market that gives us a company such as ExxonMobil, with profits of $36.1 billion last year? That is not a free market. That is the price of oil which is somewhere between $60 and $70 a barrel. That is up from $40 a barrel average price of the year before, at which point this company had the highest profits in their history. So it went from an original price of $40 a barrel to over $60 a barrel, and the company had no additional expenses at all. That price went to that level and it stayed relatively at that level, and it has dramatically boosted the profits of all of these oil companies--Shell, $25.3 billion; B.P., $22.3 billion; $36.1 billion for ExxonMobil.

Listen, all the gain is here with the big oil companies and the OPEC countries. All the gain is here, and all the pain is on the side of the consumers, people trying to heat their home in the winter, people driving to the gas pump trying to figure out how much it is going to take to fill up their tank. They are paying the higher prices, and all that goes into these coffers, higher profits. And that is sent also to the OPEC countries.

The President talks about an addiction to oil. I would use that term. We are hopelessly addicted to oil. I don't suggest that we have an oil anonymous organization where we show up on Wednesday nights and confess that we drove our Humvee 10 blocks to pick up a bagel. What do we confess to? Well, we have a 6,000-pound vehicle and we decided we needed to run an errand to buy a piece of ribbon. That is not what I suggest, nor is it what I expect the President suggest.

Addiction to oil. Let's think about that. We suck 84 million barrels of oil out of this Earth every day. Every single day, 84 million barrels are sucked out of the Earth. One-fourth of it, 21 million barrels of oil, goes to this country, the United States of America. We use fully one-fourth of all the oil that is extracted from this planet every single day. Sixty percent of all that oil we use in this country comes from off our shore, and much of it from troubled parts of the world. If, God forbid, something should happen to the supply of oil from Saudi Arabia tomorrow, we would have a huge problem.

Our economy is, in fact, attached to the ability to get oil from other parts of the world that are very troubled parts of our planet. If terrorists, for some reason, interdicted the supply of oil, shut off the supply of oil tomorrow morning, our economy would be in deep trouble. Obviously, there are national security interests here. Does it make sense from a national security standpoint to have the American economy running on 60-percent foreign oil, much of it coming from troubled parts of the world? The answer to that is no. Of course not. So in addition to national security issues, you have the issue of the unfairness, of huge profits for the major oil companies, huge profits for the OPEC countries, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others, and then substantial pain for people, many of whom can't afford it, pain in the form of higher prices.

Energy independence: That is the watchword. Energy independence, they say. What does all this mean? Let me go back for a moment to January 13, 2002. January 13, 2002 is the day the Ambassador for Saudi Arabia showed up at the White House in the Oval Office. Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador, was then told at a meeting in the White House on January 13 that this country was going to attack Iraq, invade the country of Iraq. It is interesting that not until the next day did the President notify the U.S. Secretary of State.

On January 13, at a meeting in the Oval Office--and again, this comes from Bob Woodruff's book ``Bush at War''--the President called in and notified the Saudi Ambassador to the United States that we were going to war with Iraq. The following day, the President notified his own Secretary of State that he had made a decision to

go to war with Iraq. Interesting. It describes something about the relationship this country has with Saudi Arabia and the importance it places on that relationship.

This occurred, by the way, as my colleagues know, following 9/11/ 2001. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Of the 19 hijackers who flew the planes that hit this country, 15 of them were Saudi citizens. We had Saudi citizens rounded up on private airplanes leaving this country. Then in January of 2002, the President calls the Saudi Ambassador to the Oval Office and tells him we are going to war with Iraq. The following day, he tells our own U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that he has decided to go to war with Iraq. I recite that because it describes a very special relationship this country has had with Saudi Arabia, and perhaps a very unhealthy relationship. Under the Saudis' noses and eyes, I believe, there has existed a network of madrassas, schools and other activities in which terrorist organizations developed and flourished, and we bore the brunt of that on 9/11/2001. As long as they left Saudi Arabia alone, it was going to be all right; They could develop their terrorist cells.

The fact is when we go to the gas pumps in this country and fill our tank and pay the kind of money we are paying for that petroleum, there is a fair amount of evidence, and it is written evidence coming from numerous studies, that we are actually helping to finance terrorism. There are many steps we have to take to deal with that.

The first and most important step, however, is for us to understand this addiction to oil from the Middle East. The addiction to oil from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Iraq and elsewhere is a very unhealthy circumstance for our country. It is relatively easy to talk about addiction and fairly simple to talk about the need for energy independence. It is quite another thing to get there. I mentioned a moment ago driving a 6,000-pound car to go get a bagel. By that I meant a Humvee. Understand, I have never driven a Humvee, but I understand they weigh about 6,000 pounds, and I don't mean to demean anybody who would drive a 6,000-pound Humvee. But I do have, as I have indicated before, only broken knowledge of Latin, and when I drive up to a stoplight beside a Humvee and look over and see a Humvee on the street next to me, I think of a Latin phrase I learned in high school, not in formal class, but the phrase was ``totus porcus.'' I look at Humvees, 6,000-pound vehicles, and I understand that no one has been serious in this country about suggesting that we change the way we do things.

Are we suggesting that we get better gas mileage in our automobiles in any significant way? I looked at a vehicle the other day that is an identical vehicle to the same model that was produced 10 years ago. Guess what. It has exactly the same rated gas mileage. In 10 years, we can't add 1 mile per gallon. Whether it is conservation, efficiency, better gas mileage, or any dozens of other issues on the side of using petroleum products, or if it is on the side of producing petroleum products, we don't have a national plan. We don't have a plan that represents this country's crucial interests in actually getting to some kind of independence or some percentage of independence of foreign oil. We need one, and if the President's call in his State of the Union is an honest attempt to get there, I am with him. But it is not so much what we say, it is what we do that will determine our energy future.

I was proud in the last week or two to join my colleagues Senator Domenici, Senator Bingaman, and Senator Talent in offering legislation to open the Gulf of Mexico for additional production. We believe there is somewhere around 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available for production in lease 181. It was ready for production in 2001 and the President took it off the books because his brother was Governor of Florida and didn't want it produced, so it has not been produced. But the fact is on a bipartisan basis here in the Senate we have a fair number of people on the bill that has been introduced. So let's produce, let's get that natural gas and get it into the pipeline.

The issue of additional production, especially coming from renewable fuels, makes a great deal of sense to me. I talked about lease 181, that is drilling, and that is production from drilling, oil and natural gas. We have a pipeline that needs to get done that we have already supported, from Alaska to the United States, transporting substantial portions of natural gas to the United States, but those who are supposed to be doing that have been dragging their feet on that. We do need fossil fuels to be producing more. But we also in the area of renewable fuels need to understand, we can decide to substitute for traditional fuels a substantial amount of renewable energy if we decided our country could do that.

Wind energy. Wind energy has great potential. Taking energy from the wind and producing electricity from it, perhaps even using electricity in the process of electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water and creating hydrogen fuel to run a hydrogen fuel-celled vehicle. All of that makes great sense. But you only do that as a country if you set goals and decide that is the direction you want to head.

Biofuels, ethanol. I was part of a group that set a new renewable fuel standard, saying we are going to get to 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by the year 2012, doubling the use of ethanol in our country. That means you go in the farm fields on a renewable basis every year, produce corn, as an example, and produce ethanol fuel from corn that extends America's energy supply and also produces a new market for family farmers. All of these things are doable. Other countries have done them. Brazil is an example of a country that has done remarkable things with the extension of renewable fuels. Our country has not because we have not had a plan. Now we are getting there.

Last year's energy bill was a start. The bill we have introduced on lease 181 is another piece. There is much more to do, but we will not do anything close to move toward something you could call energy independence unless we as a country have a rational plan, a thoughtful plan.

There has been a lot of discussion about who created this energy plan of ours. It goes all the way back to the year 2001 when there were secret meetings and we had people coming to town to participate in these meetings, and virtually all of these countries, I understand, played a role in meetings such as that, although we can't find the names because they claim that the meetings were not public. The Vice President and others convened meetings, developed an energy policy, but it has not been a policy that has done anything other than lead us toward greater dependence on foreign sources of oil.

Slightly over 60 percent of our oil is coming from off our shores. That is scheduled in a very short order to go to nearly 70 percent. It has been an inevitable climb, from 60 to now 70. We are going to have to decide as a country, are we going to change that or aren't we? There is not much more we can do for this country's economic security and national security that is more important than to take this kind of energy plan and to decide to embark on something that will strengthen this country and make us less dependent on unstable parts of the world for the production of our energy and for the transport of our oil.

It is interesting to me that we never see that which goes in our gas tanks. My father ran a gasoline station, among other things. So when I was a kid, on nights and Saturdays and weekends, I was pumping gas. Some people say my occupation hasn't changed very much. But I pumped gas, and people would drive up and I filled their car with gas. I did that when I was a kid for years and years. When you think about this, we never see that product. So it comes from under the sands of Saudi Arabia. The Lord has seen fit to give us this wonderful bounty called the United States of America. There is no other country quite like it. Yet we have this prodigious appetite for energy. We use one-fourth of all the oil that is sucked out of this earth every day, and a substantial part of the oil, for some reason, exists halfway around the world under the sands of a very troubled part of our globe.

So in Saudi Arabia, where there are dramatic deposits of oil--we are not quite sure how large those deposits are because the Saudis won't let anyone verify all that--it is pulled out of that sand. It is cheaper to pull it out of that sand than anywhere else on the face of

the Earth, and then it is put in a pipe, it goes to a refinery, put in another pipe, goes to a dock, put on a ship, comes to this country on a tanker, is offloaded into a refinery, goes on a pipeline, perhaps goes to a truck, gets sent to a gasoline station, pumped through an underground tank and pumped through a hose into your car, and no one has ever seen it. Nobody has ever seen that gallon of gasoline. That is the way it works. But literally in this country our economy and our future are held prisoner by this unbelievable dependence on foreign oil.

It affects everything we do. It affects our foreign policy. We have gone to war over oil. It affects everything. So the question for this President and this Congress, not tomorrow but today, is how do you reach some sort of independence? How do we make our country less dependent on something we desperately need for our future economic opportunity and growth, less dependent on oil from overseas? I know there are as many suggestions on how to write a new energy policy as there are Members of the Senate. But I do not believe, with all due respect, that there is a Republican or Democratic way to write an energy policy or a conservative or liberal way to write an energy policy. I think there is a right way and a wrong way and a smart way and a pretty stupid way. But it seems to me that we need to begin to find the best of what each of our political parties has to offer in terms of an energy policy and find a way to construct, from the best of what both have to offer, something to assure us that our economy will have the energy that it needs for the future.

This is not some academic discussion, as is often the case on the floor of the Senate. There are people who, this winter, do not have enough money to heat their homes because prices are too high. That does not, by the way, have anything to do with supply and demand. You see these profits, the highest profits in history for the oil companies. You don't see gasoline lines. Has anybody seen any gas lines around here, people lining up for hours to get gas? No. There is no shortage. In fact, something came across my desk yesterday--an oil company is shutting down a portion of its refinery because it wants to restrict supply. Why? It wants to keep prices where they are. They like these high prices.

There are a lot of ramifications. There are enormous riches for the big oil companies and enormous pain for the American consumer, and that is the short term. The question in the short term is always: Who is going to stand up for the American consumer? I introduced a bill, along with my colleague, Senator Dodd, from Connecticut, a couple of months ago, that would have imposed a windfall profit tax on these oil company profits, only on the profits above $40 a barrel. Incidentally, last year, 2004, represented the highest profits in history at $40 a barrel. We proposed a windfall profits tax at 50 percent on profits over $40 a barrel, with all the proceeds to be sent back to the American consumers as a rebate.

Interestingly enough, I guess it was 65 Senators voted against that because they do not want to take money from the oil industry and provide it as a rebate to consumers. I think you ought to even the score a bit. There is no justification for these profits. These companies have not exhibited additional expenses. These are extraordinary profits, the highest in the history of corporate America, and all the American consumers are feeling the pain. That is the short term. We have tried, in the short term, to address it with the windfall profits tax rebate bill and we have not been successful. But that is not over.

Then in the intermediate to longer term, we have to do more. We need a real plan for energy independence, a real plan, one that addresses alternative fuels and renewable fuels, enhances the recovery of fossil fuels in a way that is protective of our environment. We need to be doing all of that together, reaching a set of goals that our country establishes. You can't do this without leadership.

So my hope is that, both from the White House and also from here, we will begin to see some leadership toward energy independence--I mean some real leadership. Talking about it is one thing. It doesn't mean anything. People have been talking about this forever. It is a waste of breath unless it results in real planning.

I have mentioned before the book McCullough wrote about John Adams. It was a fascinating book and had lingering questions from John Adams as he was traveling around the world representing this new country they were trying to form. He spent time in France and England. He would write back to his wife Abigail. At least as I read the book, it would seem that he would write to Abigail and lament to her in his letters: Where will the leadership come from to form this new country of ours? Where will the leadership emerge to put this new country we want to form together? Then in the next letter he would write: Well, then, there is really only us--there's me, there's George Washington, there's Ben Franklin, there's Thomas Jefferson, there's Madison, there's Mason--and of course in the rearview mirror of history we know the ``only us'' now represents some of the greatest human talent ever assembled. But every generation of Americans asks the identical question: Where will the leadership come from? Where will the leadership emerge, real leadership, to steer this country in the right direction?

With respect to energy policy which relates to both our economic security and our national security, time is wasting, and there is not a more important subject for us to address, beginning now. The question remains: Where will the leadership come from? That question is addressed to both the White House and the Congress, asking for, finally, what the best of both political parties ought to have to offer this country.

Mr. President, we are voting on a motion to waive the Budget Act in order that the bill creating an asbestos trust fund can continue to be considered on the floor of the Senate.

For the past couple of years, I have encouraged the creation of some kind of a trust fund to settle the many asbestos claims that are clogging our court system.

The current tort system does not work at all, in my judgment, with respect to asbestos-related claims.

According to the RAND study, lawyers on both sides of the issue are getting 58 cents of every dollar spent on asbestos litigation, which means that the victims are only getting 42 cents of every dollar expended. In addition, there are some very sick people who are getting no help while some people who will never get sick are getting awards. Frankly, that isn't fair or equitable.

So I have been sympathetic to the creation of some kind of a trust fund, and I know that the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee have worked very hard to develop the trust fund proposal now being considered.

I also know that the motion to waive the Budget Act is considered by some a technical issue. But some recent studies, including one done by my colleague Senator Conrad, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, suggest that the potential budget exposure to the United States Government is substantial.

The Conrad study indicates that this trust fund could fall short by more than $150 billion, which in the out years will put powerful pressure on the Congress to fund the shortfall.

This country has a Federal budget that is increasing its indebtedness by $704 billion in this fiscal year alone. We also have a trade deficit of $720 billion this year, for a combined $1.4 trillion debt problem. Our country's economic future is threatened by this massive debt, and I am reluctant to put in place anything that might substantially add to that burden.

The prospect that this trust fund could fall far short of that which is necessary to reimburse asbestos victims makes it a very real possibility that the Federal Government would be forced to add to its debt by covering the extra liability for those asbestos victims.

Until or unless those issues are resolved, I feel that the best course is to support the point of order in the hope that the authors of the legislation can resolve these differences and offer us greater confidence that this legislation will not add to the crushing debt that America already faces.

Therefore, while I will support the point of order, I will continue to work with my colleagues to find a solution that addresses this important issue.

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

Mr. President, this morning about 8:30 the administration released the information with respect to the 2005 trade deficit that our country has experienced. The trade deficit for all of 2005 was described this morning as $728 billion. That means about $2 billion a day every day, 7 days a week. That is $2 billion a day more in imports from other countries into our country's marketplace than we are exporting to them, and it relates to the lost jobs that are such a problem in our country. When you import products from abroad, twice as much as you are able to export to other countries, you are in effect exporting America's jobs.

The chart I show now shows the number with China alone. Almost one- third of the trade deficit is with China. We can see what has happened with China from 1996 to 2005. The trade deficit has gone up, up, way up every single year. It is out of control. This trade deficit is reflective of, once again, a massive number of American jobs being shipped to China. Then they produce products and ship the products back to our country. It weakens our country. It means we lose jobs. We lose economic strength, especially in the middle class. It is a crisis we must address.

There is no social program as important as a good job that pays well in this country. We will debate social programs now for weeks and weeks because the President this past Monday sent us his budget for the next year. We will debate about the need for social programs. But as I said, there is no social program, in my judgment, as important as a good job that pays well. That makes everything else possible for an American family.

Let me talk a minute about these good jobs. The good jobs are leaving. Ford Motor says 30,000 people will be laid off. At General Motors, 30,000 people will be laid off. It goes on and on. Increasingly, companies are moving their jobs from the United States to China, to India, to Bangladesh, to Indonesia. So the jobs that remain are jobs that have a downward pressure on wages, more and more pressure to get rid of retirement programs, more pressure to strip health care benefits. In my judgment, that is going to head this country toward serious trouble.

This economy works because we built a broad middle class and people go into their jobs often with job security for nearly a lifetime. At Ford Motor Company and General Motors, when people went to work there 40 years ago, they often stayed there for a lifetime. Now, of course, that is not the case.

General Motors called its 300 top parts suppliers to a meeting in Detroit recently and said, by the way, we think you need to be moving your jobs to China to cut costs. So General Motors says it. The parts supplier which split off from General Motors, called Delphi, which is now in bankruptcy, says it. They want to pay $8 to $10 an hour.

What is going to happen to this economy if we continue to see downward pressure, fewer jobs, fewer good jobs that pay well, downward pressure on wages, and we see more and more of these jobs being exported to other countries? I think I know the answer. The answer to that is we will have less and less opportunity in our country, less economic growth, and we will have fewer good jobs left.

My colleague Lindsey Graham from South Carolina and I yesterday announced a piece of legislation we have introduced that would change what is now called PNTR with China. PNTR is permanent normal trade relations. That means China now has normal trade relations with our country. It is permanent. It did not used to be that way. We used to have to vote every year on whether to extend what was then called ``most favored nation status,'' now called ``normal trade relations.'' We used to vote on that every year. But it became permanent in 2000 and we no longer vote on it.

My colleague Lindsey Graham and I decided we wanted to revoke permanent NTR and restore again an annual debate in this country about China and about trade with China. I don't mean to say China is the only issue because it is not. Obviously, with this chart we can see the single largest trade deficit is with the country of China. It is

growing, it is significant, and it is dangerous.

By the way, most of this Congress and the White House will simply sleep through all of this. They are not awake for these issues; no one thinks this is a problem; no one cares much about it. So what if it is $2 billion a day more than we import than export? Who cares? Another 30,000, million or 2 million jobs shipped overseas. Who cares? It is not anybody at the White House who loses their job, so we do not hear about this. But for a lot of the American families, it is a very serious problem.

We believe a significant part of the problem rests with China. Almost a third of that trade deficit is with China. China's markets are still too closed to our products. They say they are open, but they are not. China is awash in counterfeit goods and piracy. Two-thirds of the goods that come into our country that are counterfeit goods come from the country of China. And China does nothing about that.

China, as we know, is an attractive place for American companies to move their workers. I will not do it today, but I have given plenty of examples--Huffy bicycles, Radio Flyer, Little Red Wagons, Etch-a- Sketch--I could go on for a long period of time. Those jobs go to China because you can hire people for 30 cents an hour in China. You can work them for 7 days a week and you do not have to give them a day off for months. And the Chinese Government looks the other way. You can do that in China. You cannot do that here.

So that is why these companies are moving their jobs to China. American companies move their jobs to China. They produce the product, ship it to the United States to sell it in the U.S. marketplace, and then they run their income through the Cayman Islands, in a tax-haven country, so they do not have to pay taxes or at least avoid as much as they can of their tax burden. It is a very serious problem.

In discussing this issue of normal trade relations, we have to remember who we are dealing with. Yesterday, my colleague from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham--described the case of a man named Shi Tao. Not many Americans, perhaps, know Shi Tao. But Shi Tao was sentenced, in April of last year, to 10 years in prison. He happens to be a journalist. He was ``divulging state secrets,'' which is the reason he was sent to prison in China. He is a former staffer at the Contemporary Business News agency. He was convicted of sending to foreign Web sites the text of a message from authorities in China warning journalists of the dangers of ``social destabilization'' from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

So he sent this to some foreign sites, and, as a result, he was charged with ``divulging state secrets'' and sent to prison. Much of the evidence against him came from a company called Yahoo!, an American company. The Chinese Government traced the e-mails sent by Mr. Shi Tao--a journalist--they traced those e-mails with the cooperation of Yahoo! They asked Yahoo! to provide the information. Yahoo! did. And now this fellow is in jail for 10 years for passing on an e-mail by the Chinese Government that said they worried about the dangers of ``social destabilization'' from the return of dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Reporters Without Borders, an organization that we hear about these days, has complained that Yahoo! has disregarded ethical concerns in an effort to maintain a good business relationship with the Chinese Government.

There are other cases that are similar to this.

Last month, Google, an American company--a great American success story, I might add--agreed to censor its search engine results in China, agreeing to free-speech restrictions in exchange for better access to the fast-growing Internet market in China.

This shows you the power of money and profits over ethics and morality when it comes to doing these kinds of things.

Google, last month, rolled out a new version of its search engine that is easier, specifically for use in China. What has happened is, previously Government barriers that were set up to suppress information had prevented the Chinese users from using Google at all. So in order to obtain a Chinese license, Google has agreed to omit Web content that the country's Government officials find objectionable. That includes information about Taiwan's independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre, and so on.

It is particularly concerning, I think to me and to a lot of others, that we have American companies helping the Chinese authorities track down a journalist who did nothing wrong, was engaged in some free speech, and now sits in prison for 10 years.

But I digress. My main point is that we have a pretty serious trade problem.

It is a trade problem that is significant in a lot of ways, and is by no means limited to China. We run very large trade deficits with everyone with whom we have had a trade agreement. We run big trade deficits with Mexico. We run big trade deficits with Canada, with Europe, with Japan, and yes, with China. A part of it, of course, is the basic incompetence of our trade negotiators. And the other part is a trade strategy that has been embraced by this and previous administrations and this Congress that chants about ``free trade''--not caring, of course, whether trade is fair--and has allowed American corporations to decide to structure trade in its own image. And that image is to decide it wants to produce where it is cheap; that is, take Huffy bicycles away from Ohio and fire 900 workers. Move it to China, pay them 33 cents an hour, work them 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, and then send the Huffy bicycles to America to be sold in Sears, Wal-Mart, and Kmart and believe that is good for our country. It is not.

It might be good in the short run for some consumers in this country, but, after all, America is not going to be measured in the long term by what it consumes. It will be measured by what it produces. Economic health is about what you produce, not what you consume.

I believe this morning's announcement will produce one more large yawn at the White House, one more large yawn in the Congress. I do not know exactly what it is that is going to provide a tipping point that will finally convince policymakers we are headed toward very serious trouble. It is unsustainable to have a fiscal policy that increases the debt in this year from our budget policies of $704 billion and a trade policy that increases the trade debt in this year of $720 billion. That is $1.4 trillion in combined debt. That will choke this country.

We know better than that. We know what to do. We know better than to sit around on our hands and gnash our teeth and wipe our brow. We need to get busy and solve these problems. But first they have to be recognized. There is this blissful ignorance these days about a fiscal policy that is wildly offtrack and a trade policy that has not worked for some years, that is shipping America's jobs overseas and weakening this country.

This Congress and this President have a responsibility to address this head on. My colleague, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, and I joined on the legislation I described yesterday, and I hope my colleagues will support it.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Feinstein, Collins and a number of my other colleagues to introduce the Medicare Drug Formulary Protection Act of 2006. This legislation will improve the new Medicare prescription drug benefit by preventing prescription drug plans from unexpectedly dropping coverage of prescription drugs that were covered when seniors enrolled in the plan.

Although seniors enrolled in the new Medicare drug program are only able to change their health plans once a year, nothing prevents insurers from dropping drugs from their plans on a whim. Under current law, prescription drug plans can change which drugs they cover as long as they provide 60 days notice to their enrollees.

It is difficult enough for seniors to navigate the confusion and complexity the Administration has built into the Medicare prescription drug benefit. They ought to be able to do so secure in the knowledge that once they have picked a plan, the plan will not change on them midstream. Seniors need the protection and certainty this legislation extends to them.

I had some hopes for this new Medicare plan, but it has become a complete and utter mess. In North Dakota, we have 41 different plans being offered by 17 different companies, and we have the highest percentage of senior citizens in the nation with no prescription drug coverage.

In North Dakota, 68 percent of seniors still do not have prescription drug coverage. With the sign-up period nearly one-third over, only 9,000 seniors in North Dakota have voluntarily signed up for the program. More than 70,000 seniors still lack coverage.

Other States in the northern Great Plains region are not far behind. Fully 67 percent of South Dakota seniors have no prescription drug coverage and in Montana 65 percent lack coverage. Wyoming also ranks high, with 61 percent of its seniors without prescription drug coverage.

I have asked Secretary Leavitt to dispatch a survey team to North Dakota and neighboring States to determine why enrollment rates in the new Medicare prescription drug program are among the lowest in the nation in our region of the country.

In the meantime, we need to enact the Medicare Drug Formulary Protection Act and other commonsense reforms like the Medicare Informed Choice Act and the Medicare State Recovery Act.

The Medicare Informed Choice Act would extend the enrollment deadline until December 31, 2006. We need to enact this legislation right away. Seniors need more time to evaluate their options. Extending the enrollment deadline will also give Congress time to address some of the problems that have kept more seniors from enrolling in the benefit.

The Medicare State Recovery Act will ensure States are reimbursed for the cost of prescriptions for low-income seniors and people with disabilities who were improperly denied coverage under Medicare.

I want this new benefit to work. That is why I urge my colleagues to support these efforts to improve the benefit and make it less confusing for seniors.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Feinstein, Collins and a number of my other colleagues to introduce the Medicare Drug Formulary Protection Act of 2006. This legislation will improve the new Medicare prescription drug benefit by preventing prescription drug plans from unexpectedly dropping coverage of prescription drugs that were covered when seniors enrolled in the plan.

Although seniors enrolled in the new Medicare drug program are only able to change their health plans once a year, nothing prevents insurers from dropping drugs from their plans on a whim. Under current law, prescription drug plans can change which drugs they cover as long as they provide 60 days notice to their enrollees.

It is difficult enough for seniors to navigate the confusion and complexity the Administration has built into the Medicare prescription drug benefit. They ought to be able to do so secure in the knowledge that once they have picked a plan, the plan will not change on them midstream. Seniors need the protection and certainty this legislation extends to them.

I had some hopes for this new Medicare plan, but it has become a complete and utter mess. In North Dakota, we have 41 different plans being offered by 17 different companies, and we have the highest percentage of senior citizens in the nation with no prescription drug coverage.

In North Dakota, 68 percent of seniors still do not have prescription drug coverage. With the sign-up period nearly one-third over, only 9,000 seniors in North Dakota have voluntarily signed up for the program. More than 70,000 seniors still lack coverage.

Other States in the northern Great Plains region are not far behind. Fully 67 percent of South Dakota seniors have no prescription drug coverage and in Montana 65 percent lack coverage. Wyoming also ranks high, with 61 percent of its seniors without prescription drug coverage.

I have asked Secretary Leavitt to dispatch a survey team to North Dakota and neighboring States to determine why enrollment rates in the new Medicare prescription drug program are among the lowest in the nation in our region of the country.

In the meantime, we need to enact the Medicare Drug Formulary Protection Act and other commonsense reforms like the Medicare Informed Choice Act and the Medicare State Recovery Act.

The Medicare Informed Choice Act would extend the enrollment deadline until December 31, 2006. We need to enact this legislation right away. Seniors need more time to evaluate their options. Extending the enrollment deadline will also give Congress time to address some of the problems that have kept more seniors from enrolling in the benefit.

The Medicare State Recovery Act will ensure States are reimbursed for the cost of prescriptions for low-income seniors and people with disabilities who were improperly denied coverage under Medicare.

I want this new benefit to work. That is why I urge my colleagues to support these efforts to improve the benefit and make it less confusing for seniors.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation which would deal in a small but, I hope, meaningful way, with the crisis of youth suicide in Indian Country. On the reservations of the Northern Great Plains, the rate of Indian youth suicide is 10 times higher than it is anywhere else in the country. This needless loss of young boys and girls whose whole lives lay ahead of them is a very serious problem.

I am pleased that last year, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee held two hearings on the tragic issue of teen suicide and the urgent need for prevention, intervention and treatment services. We heard the testimony of youth and family members, representatives of the Indian Health Service and other agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Indian professionals who work with young people. We continue to sift through their recommendations to find possible solutions that could be proposed in legislation.

I believe it is urgent that solutions be put forward now to deal with this troubling problem. Following the Committee's second hearing on Indian youth suicide last summer, several more Indian young people attempted suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota. Thankfully, their lives were spared and their attempts not completed. But time is running out for addressing this tragic issue.

When the Indian Affairs Committee marked up legislation to amend and reauthorize the Indian Health Care Improvement Act last October, I offered, with Senators Conrad and Smith, an amendment which had three components, all of which were presented as ideas at the Committee's hearing in Washington, DC, on June 15, 2005, on Indian youth suicide. I am very pleased that my amendment was unanimously adopted.

The legislation which I introduce today parallels one part of that amendment to the Indian health reauthorization bill, and would authorize the Indian Youth Telemental Health Demonstration Project. The Secretary of Health and Human Services would award grants under this 4- year demonstration project to five Indian Tribes and Tribal Organizations that have telehealth capabilities. Grantees would provide services through telemental health for such purposes as counseling of Indian youth for suicide prevention, intervention and treatment; providing medical advice and other assistance to frontline tribal health providers; training for tribal community members, elected officials, tribal educators and health workers and others who work with Indian youth; developing culturally-sensitive materials on suicide prevention and intervention; and data collection and reporting.

My proposal has been revised since it was adopted as an amendment to the Indian health reauthorization bill in response to Administration concerns about expanding new health care programs or services to Native Americans living in urban areas. I will leave the Federal Government's obligation to provide health care to urban Indians--most of whom are in urban areas because they or their parents or relatives were relocated from their reservations or Alaska Native communities under federal policy--to be discussed another day.

Many Indian reservations and Native villages in Alaska are in remote locations and quite isolated, and experience much more limited access to mental health services than in our nation's cities. The testimony received by the Indian Affairs Committee showed that it is particularly in these communities that there is a crisis among the youth. Accordingly, the bill I propose today is intended to provide services for counseling, medical advice and training and educational materials under this new demonstration project to Indian youth living on reservations and in Native villages.

I thank my colleagues who have joined me in this initiative and who have added thoughtful insights for ways to address this crisis that deprives many tribal communities of one of the richest resources, our youth. I look forward to continuing our efforts and developing a more comprehensive legislative proposal on this sensitive and very important issue. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill as introduced be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation which would deal in a small but, I hope, meaningful way, with the crisis of youth suicide in Indian Country. On the reservations of the Northern Great Plains, the rate of Indian youth suicide is 10 times higher than it is anywhere else in the country. This needless loss of young boys and girls whose whole lives lay ahead of them is a very serious problem.

I am pleased that last year, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee held two hearings on the tragic issue of teen suicide and the urgent need for prevention, intervention and treatment services. We heard the testimony of youth and family members, representatives of the Indian Health Service and other agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Indian professionals who work with young people. We continue to sift through their recommendations to find possible solutions that could be proposed in legislation.

I believe it is urgent that solutions be put forward now to deal with this troubling problem. Following the Committee's second hearing on Indian youth suicide last summer, several more Indian young people attempted suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota. Thankfully, their lives were spared and their attempts not completed. But time is running out for addressing this tragic issue.

When the Indian Affairs Committee marked up legislation to amend and reauthorize the Indian Health Care Improvement Act last October, I offered, with Senators Conrad and Smith, an amendment which had three components, all of which were presented as ideas at the Committee's hearing in Washington, DC, on June 15, 2005, on Indian youth suicide. I am very pleased that my amendment was unanimously adopted.

The legislation which I introduce today parallels one part of that amendment to the Indian health reauthorization bill, and would authorize the Indian Youth Telemental Health Demonstration Project. The Secretary of Health and Human Services would award grants under this 4- year demonstration project to five Indian Tribes and Tribal Organizations that have telehealth capabilities. Grantees would provide services through telemental health for such purposes as counseling of Indian youth for suicide prevention, intervention and treatment; providing medical advice and other assistance to frontline tribal health providers; training for tribal community members, elected officials, tribal educators and health workers and others who work with Indian youth; developing culturally-sensitive materials on suicide prevention and intervention; and data collection and reporting.

My proposal has been revised since it was adopted as an amendment to the Indian health reauthorization bill in response to Administration concerns about expanding new health care programs or services to Native Americans living in urban areas. I will leave the Federal Government's obligation to provide health care to urban Indians--most of whom are in urban areas because they or their parents or relatives were relocated from their reservations or Alaska Native communities under federal policy--to be discussed another day.

Many Indian reservations and Native villages in Alaska are in remote locations and quite isolated, and experience much more limited access to mental health services than in our nation's cities. The testimony received by the Indian Affairs Committee showed that it is particularly in these communities that there is a crisis among the youth. Accordingly, the bill I propose today is intended to provide services for counseling, medical advice and training and educational materials under this new demonstration project to Indian youth living on reservations and in Native villages.

I thank my colleagues who have joined me in this initiative and who have added thoughtful insights for ways to address this crisis that deprives many tribal communities of one of the richest resources, our youth. I look forward to continuing our efforts and developing a more comprehensive legislative proposal on this sensitive and very important issue. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill as introduced be printed in the Record.