Floor Statements

Mr. President, born in Grenada, raised in Pascagoula, and educated at the University of Mississippi--there is no denying where Trent Lott is from. He is a true son of Mississippi.

Trent is one of my few colleagues who knows how to say ``Missouri'' right.

In all seriousness, it has been an honor to work with Trent Lott, and a real pleasure for Linda and me to get to know his wonderful wife, Trish.

Senator Lott has had a remarkable career in Congress that has spanned seven Presidents, two impeachments, and most importantly, decades of progress that has made Mississippi and America stronger and more prosperous.

He saw Watergate up close and personal, oversaw the end of the Cold War, spearheaded enactment of historic welfare reforms, shepherded passage of tax relief in both the Reagan and Bush administrations that made America's working families more prosperous, and helped pass numerous historic trade agreements to create more U.S. jobs.

While his career in Washington began in the House, he quickly became a creature of the Senate and built a reputation as a parliamentary master.

Getting work done in the Senate is no easy task. I like to say it is a lot like getting frogs in a wheelbarrow. Some may call it herding cats. However you would like to say it, Senator Lott knew how to get the job done.

Senator Lott always knew how to count votes and get the best deal based on Republican priorities and principles. In the Senate, there is no higher compliment. And in that respect, Trent is a Senator's Senator, reflected both in his work on behalf of Mississippi and on behalf of America.

On behalf of the country, his belief in fiscal responsibility led to a historic tax cut agreement that produced the first balanced budget since 1968.

His belief in investing in a strong national defense has made our country safer.

On behalf of his home State of Mississippi he has been tireless in his efforts to promote economic development and expand job creation. From investing in schools to improving infrastructure, his contribution has been extensive and lasting.

Thanks to Senator Lott, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and many other companies have a home in Mississippi.

It has been a tremendous honor and privilege to serve with Trent Lott.

I join my colleagues in congratulating the Senator and thanking him for his many years of service and our friendship.

Mr. President, we yielded some time to the distinguished chairman from my side. How much time is remaining on this side?

Forty-six. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, first let me begin by thanking our majority leader, Senator Reid, and our minority leader, Senator McConnell, for bringing this very important bill to the Senate floor. It is critical that we discuss it, debate it, vote on it, and pass it. I express my great thanks to the chairman of the committee, Senator Rockefeller, for his thoughtful discussion of the bill and his urgent request, in which I join, that all Members of this body move forward, adopt cloture, and adopt this bill. I wish to thank the chairman and all of the members of the committee and the staff of the Intelligence Committee who have labored long and hard

over many months, beginning well before the April request for legislation, to understand the program. I believe almost all of us have gone out to the NSA to see how the program works and to see what the protections are that are built in.

We have asked questions many times over. I think I have heard the same questions asked many times, and each time they are explained, I learn a little bit more. I think we have a good understanding--not a perfect understanding--of the process, but we do fully appreciate how important it is.

The bill before us today reflects a tremendous amount of work and compromise. The distinguished chairman and I and others have had disagreements. We view things a little bit differently. But I think it is significant for this body to realize we came together, the majority and the minority, in a 13-to-2 vote to present to this body a good compromise. Nobody is 100 percent happy with it. I don't expect them to be. But this is about as good as we can do in earthly matters, and particularly in congressional matters, if we can come that close, I think it is a good product.

Obviously, I have some disagreements with the chairman on the Protect America Act of which I was a principal sponsor. Because that bill was passed--had to be passed hurriedly before the August recess--what we were able to do in that bill was to restore the FISA process with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court acting as it had originally been intended to act: to approve collections on U.S. persons in the United States. We changed the law so that technological changes would no longer bring within the FISA Court jurisdiction--or the FISA Court workload, more appropriately--collections on foreign targets where very often they were communicating with foreign recipients of messages. That was never the purpose and, as I indicated on the Senate floor, the FISA Court objected to the intelligence community having to be burdened by approving collections against targets where there was only minimal impact on any U.S. citizen.

The Protect America Act did fill in a critical national security intelligence gap. We all heard about it for a number of months. The intelligence community was shut out of the ability to go up on foreign targets which might have had vital information. Now, we have had time to consider all of the aspects of this collection program, and we have come up with a plan that will modernize the bill not only to make sure it keeps up with modern technology, but that it adds additional protections under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

This morning, in a few minutes, we will hear from some of our colleagues about why they are not happy with the bill coming before us. I would venture that some individuals made the same speeches back in 1978 before the passage of that bill as well. But let me state the measure very plainly. The question is, Can the intelligence community of the United States obtain signals intelligence on foreign persons believed to be terrorists and reasonably believed to be outside of the United States, and do so in a manner that will protect us.

We know the electronic surveillance that was done under the President's program and under the current FISA Court jurisdiction has provided valuable intelligence which has helped to thwart attacks on the United States and, more importantly, as we heard from GEN Stan McCrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, when the outmoded FISA law application shut down our ability to collect foreign intelligence, the people most greatly at risk were our men and women in the service overseas who did not have the benefit of collection of intelligence that might have foretold attacks on them. So our men and women volunteers defending America, protecting security in the world, were without the protection our technology enables us to collect at the same time they were fighting overseas, and this kind of information could have been a big help.

Well, the legislation we are looking at today contains far greater protections for U.S. persons than this body ever conceived of or was ever willing to grant Americans when it passed FISA 30 years ago. We have gone further than ever before in this bill in protecting Americans' privacy rights, and I am proud to be part of the process that is shoring up our national security while protecting to the greatest extent possible the liberties of all Americans.

The chairman is correct; we made many changes. We added many protections--important protections--that the Director of National Intelligence agreed were necessary additions to provide protections for Americans, U.S. persons that were not previously in the law. But I believe we can say today that Americans can feel safe and secure; that not only is their privacy being protected but their lives are being protected from terrorist attacks if we pass this bill which will modernize and extend FISA.

We have an urgent need to proceed to the Senate's consideration of the FISA amendments of 2007. Just last week, the Senate heard from our Director of National Intelligence, ADM Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Mike Mukasey in a closed briefing about the vital importance of this legislation to our intelligence collection efforts. This legislation will give the intelligence community the tools it needs today and in the future to protect our country.

The Protect America Act, passed in August by Congress, allowed the intelligence community temporarily to close critical intelligence gaps that were impeding the intelligence community's ability to protect our troops and to detect terrorist plots against our homeland. That temporary legislation expires in less than 2 months, and we must not let those dangerous gaps reopen. Two months may seem like a lot of time, but when it comes to this bill or when it comes to floor action in the Congress in both Houses and then a conference, it is a very short time period. Anybody who has watched this distinguished deliberative body and its counterpart on the other side work knows that 2 months sometimes can go in the flash of an eye.

The Senate will go out of session this week until mid-January, leaving only about 2 weeks for us to work out our differences with the House to get a bicameral bill sent to the President--one that he can sign into law before the current Protect America Act expires on February 5. I regret the majority did not let this important bill get to the floor sooner, particularly when we had the DNI on the Hill last March urging Congress to modernize FISA, giving us his template of legislation for FISA modernization in early April. But we are here in the last week before Christmas, and I hope we will not waste any time in passing the bill on the way to becoming law.

I sincerely hope we are not going to leave ourselves in the same uncomfortable position we found ourselves in this past August when the Senate's consideration of the Protect America Act had to be passed very quickly. Because the Senate waited from April until August to act, we found ourselves in a chaotic rush to pass a bill, and there were genuine fears in the intelligence community that a terrorist attack against the homeland might be in the works. If we had acted in a more timely manner, we would not have had some of the hard feelings we do today that resulted from that rushed process in August. That process produced a bill that continued FISA as it was originally intended but did not include the additional protections we have added today.

The good news, however, is that all of that is ancient history now because the product we have coming before us today is a thoroughly bipartisan Intelligence Committee bill that was put together in close coordination with the subject matter experts in the offices of both the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice. I can assure my colleagues that all of the good ideas we have had--I have had and other members of the committee have had--when we have taken them to these experts, we have found out you have to do it this way if you want to accomplish the results you want. Some of the things we attempted to do had impossible burdens that we did not understand until we laid them out for these experts. They have told us how to accomplish our purposes and do so in a manner that would be effective in protecting the interests, and yet not destroy the ability of the intelligence community to collect the information we need.

So I implore my colleagues in the Senate to move as quickly as possible on this bill since its construction has been quite deliberate so that we do not repeat the history of the hasty manner in which we had to pass the Protect America Act. But that also means we must pass a good bill that will not get vetoed. We don't have time for that. It is always fun to posture and make political statements, but what is more important, we don't have to do that. The bill coming before the Senate out of the Intelligence Committee offers the legislation that gives the intelligence community the flexibility it needs to protect our troops and those of us in America, while protecting the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. With two small fixes that Chairman Rockefeller and I intend to add to the bill in a manager's amendment, I have been assured that the President will sign that bill.

Now, let me comment a minute on exclusivity. We are working on an agreement on exclusivity that states to the greatest extent possible this will be the exclusive legislative means for the President to collect foreign intelligence. As one who used to be a student of the Constitution and still remembers a little bit of it, I have been impressed to read over the years how article 2 of the Constitution has been interpreted. Article 2 of the Constitution has been interpreted to say that the President--the President alone--has the power to collect foreign intelligence.

That power was used by Presidents going back in history. President Carter and President Clinton have used that bill to collect information. The FISA Court of Review has said, in the in re: Sealed Case, that the President's power to collect foreign intelligence remains. The President has put this bill under the FISA Court. So he has accepted the jurisdiction of the court in assessing the appropriateness of the collection means that have been requested.

We cannot erase by legislation a constitutional power. That constitutional power that the President has was fully laid out in the opinions and advice given by the Department of Justice and the intelligence community to any carriers that may have participated in the collection of information during the pendency of the President's terror surveillance program.

One other item I will comment on is the sunset. The provision we have in the bill--the 6-year sunset--is a compromise we reached. I don't believe a bill such as this should have a sunset. FISA did not have a sunset. It stayed in effect from 1978 until 2006. We should have reviewed it before. That is what we are in business for.

The Intelligence Committee of the Senate continues to hold hearings and have oversight of the intelligence community, and I would expect that if we see problems in the bill, we will move to correct them when we see them, not wait to a sunset. General Mukasey strongly opposed having any sunset on the bill, and I oppose lessening the sunset from 6 years. In fact, I prefer to see that sunset provision out of the bill.

To summarize, S. 2248, the bill passed out of the Intelligence Committee by a solid bipartisan vote of 13 to 2, on which I hope the Senate invokes cloture in a few minutes, will be the proper means of assuring the intelligence community can go forward with the vitally important collection of signals intelligence, while at the same time protecting the civil rights and privacy of all Americans and U.S. persons.

The bill is an extremely delicate arrangement of compromises that will fall apart if significant changes are made to it. By ``fall apart,'' what I really mean is it won't become law. We need a bill that Democrats and Republicans can support, that the DNI says will work for the intelligence community, and that the President will sign into law. That means the first principle we need to follow today is that the age- old advice that doctors and others use: ``do no harm,'' and not deconstruct what the Intelligence Committee has carefully crafted.

We don't have time for poison pill amendments or any other sort of political posturing. The Senate Intelligence Committee bill is a good one and needs to become law without further delay so our intelligence collectors and troops in harm's way will have the tools they need before the Protect America Act expires in February.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote with Chairman Rockefeller and me to proceed to this bill.

I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.

What is the time remaining?

Mr. President, I yield 13 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania, then 5 minutes to Senator Sessions, 5 minutes to Senator Chambliss, and 5 minutes to Senator Kyl. That would conclude the time on our side, and I think that will put us at a vote or it will consume the time on our side. So I unanimous consent that be the order.

Mr. President, did I hear the majority leader ask unanimous consent that votes would have a 60-vote requirement?

Mr. President, I object to any measure coming up that does not have a 60-vote requirement. We conditioned our approval to bring up these amendments on agreeing to 60 votes; otherwise, we will use the prerogatives of the Senate.

Mr. President, I am a little bit confused. We certainly don't want to cut short the remarks of our friend from Connecticut, but I thought this was supposed to go back and forth. I believe there is an hour limit under postcloture on time that can be consumed by any Senator. I thought we would go back and forth to enable people on both sides and let the chairman and me perhaps respond where necessary.

I wanted to know, through the Chair, what the procedure is right now.

All right. Again, I seek recognition, and I thank my colleagues for sharing their views.

Mr. President, I wanted to share a few views on matters that have been just raised. I thought it was important to bring these up. I will have longer remarks when we actually get on the bill.

I appreciated hearing from our colleague, who is an original cosponsor of the first FISA bill, and to learn about the negotiations which went on then. But I was a little puzzled to hear how this bill-- this bill, which includes significantly more protections for Americans' civil liberties and constitutional rights--somehow goes back on the original FISA. The original FISA required a court review of targeting of U.S. persons. We have gone far beyond that in this bill. As a matter of fact, the Protect America Act, which he decried, contained all of the protections that were in the original FISA bill.

Now, we have, on a bipartisan basis--I keep emphasizing that the Intelligence Committee, on a bipartisan basis, after being fully briefed--fully briefed--by several elements of the intelligence community--and we asked them questions. We had briefings. We went to the NSA to see how it worked. We went through all of these ideas with them. They said: We understand your objective. Here is how to accomplish it.

I think we have prepared a very good bill that by any fair reading-- any fair reading--will extend the protections beyond what the original FISA, and even the Protect America Act, had for the surveillance, electronic surveillance of anybody either in the United

States or a U.S. person abroad. I am very much surprised that he says somehow, this bill, which provides more protection, doesn't provide the basic protections of FISA. I regret to say that is just not right.

I also want to address some questions about immunity which have been brought up. I thought our committee report, a bipartisan product, said it pretty well when talking about why providing immunity--and it is not amnesty because these companies, the companies alleged to have done wrong, did nothing wrong. This is what the Intelligence Committee said. We concluded:

The providers had a good faith basis for responding to the

request for assistance they received. The intelligence

community cannot obtain the intelligence it needs without

assistance from these companies. Companies in the future may

be less willing to assist the government if they face the

threat of private lawsuits each time they are alleged to have

provided assistance. The possible reduction in intelligence

that might result from this delay is simply unacceptable for

the safety of our Nation. Allowing continued litigation also

risks the disclosure of highly classified information

regarding intelligence sources and methods. In addition to

providing an advantage to our adversaries by revealing

sources and methods during the course of litigation, the

potential disclosure of classified information puts both the

facilities and personnel of electronic communications service

providers and our country's continued ability to protect our

homeland at risk. It is imperative that Congress provide

liability protection to those who cooperated with our country

in the hour of need.

Now, there was some talk about article II, and some suggested that the FISA Court would not have--this could not have been approved by the FISA Court. Well, my understanding is the FISA Court knew about it. The FISA Court has acted on this measure, and in one of the few published reports of the FISA Court of Review, In Re: Sealed Case--that is a very compelling and provocative title, but that is the name of the case--it is stated in one of the footnotes dealing with the case that: The Truong case, where a warrantless search of U.S. persons in the United States was approved by the court, the FISA Court of Review said:

The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have

decided this issue, held that the President did have the

inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain

foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the

court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that

constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for

granted that the President does have that authority and,

assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the

President's constitutional power.

The court went on to say:

The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify

the President's power by providing a mechanism that at least

approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the

government's contention that FISA searches are

constitutionally reasonable.

That is the view of the FISA Court of Review. Everybody is saying, well, we need to find out what the FISA Court of Review has to say about these certifications, about the authorizations. What I just read is what the FISA Court has said. The President does have the power under article II of the Constitution to conduct warrantless surveillances. Once that determination is made, then to go back and say that any company, any U.S. person, or any corporation that got a notice from the Attorney General to carry out an order of the President through the Intelligence Committee to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance is breaking the law is just absolutely beyond the bounds.

I am very sorry we have such a disjoint in the reading and understanding of the constitutional powers. And to say now that these people should be dragged back into court where they will be subjected not only to the potential of large legal bills, the potential loss in terms of any judgment--although I think that is minimal; I don't think anybody is going to be able to show any harm that would warrant the court to grant a monetary recovery--but what they will find, what they will find is great damage to their reputation, as the people who are enemies of the United States go out actively and trash any company or any individual who cooperates with the United States.

There are evil people out there who would love to be able to get information and confirm what companies may have participated. Once that happens, those companies would be at great risk abroad. Their reputations would suffer, and they and their personnel could be at great risk of physical harm.

So there are many good reasons not to bring these cases in court against the providers. Please note, as we have stated before, that this measure only protects the private sector people who might have cooperated. It does not protect Government employees. I hope by clarifying this, people will get a better understanding of why immunity is necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the United States in collecting foreign information.

Many of my colleagues want to speak, so I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the question of immunity.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I thank our minority leader, Senator McConnell, for outlining the importance of the Peru Free Trade Agreement and the other trade agreements. We have 3 short weeks to get to work and do the work we have not done so far this year. I wanted to address three aspects of it.

First, for the intelligence community, we must act, and we must act now, to assure that the community has the ability and the tools they need to fight terrorists.

Over the last 30 years, the world has experienced a technological revolution, and our laws governing terrorist surveillance have not kept pace. The old 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that I will refer to as FISA was drafted to deal specifically with the technology in use at the time. This spring, a court ruled that because of the change in technology, the old FISA law severely limited our ability to collect intelligence. Essentially, it made us deaf to collection of vitally needed information.

Following that ruling, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, told Congress the United States was unable to conduct the critical surveillance of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside our country because of the outdated law. It not only affected our ability to protect the United States, but it also threatened the safety and lives of our troops abroad.

In May I heard that directly from the commander of our Joint Special Operations in Iraq, who told me the limitations in the old law prevented him from capturing key information needed to protect our troops in theater. He could kill or capture a top al-Qaida leader, but he was not able to collect signals intelligence on them. The bottom line is that terrorists were able to use technology and our own outdated laws to stay a step ahead of us.

Congress acted. On August 3 and 4, fortunately, we were able to pass the Protect America Act. I was proud to be the lead sponsor of it because passage of this temporary law essentially put our national security forces back in the business of collecting the information they needed.

But this is only a stopgap measure and expires in February. It did not include all of the reforms we wanted.

I hope this week the Senate will move to pass a permanent fix, or at least a longer term fix, to our intelligence surveillance law. It is critical we act before we leave for the holidays to make sure that our intelligence laws will be up to date and we will not run into a deadline when we come back in January and have to rush through a bill at the end or leave our intelligence community deaf to the new collections they need.

We have two bills before us. Unfortunately, the Senate Judiciary Committee took the bill that came out of the Intelligence Committee and changed it so much that it would gut our intelligence surveillance ability. The committee ignored significant concerns expressed by the working level officials in the Department of Justice and the intelligence community, the very operators who know how the system works.

The Senate Judiciary Committee ignored the concerns of its own minority members. The bill was voted out on a straight party line. The good news is there is another option. Earlier this year, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted out a bipartisan bill to update FISA. After the members of our committee had months and months to study this program, most of our committee members went out to the agency to see how it worked, to see the layers of protection built in to make sure it stayed within the law. We put together, Chairman Rockefeller and I, a bipartisan agreement which added more protections to the constitutional rights and the privacy rights of American citizens. We worked with the intelligence community representatives and the Department of Justice lawyers to make sure it would work.

This bill we reported out of the Intelligence Committee gives our intelligence operators and law enforcement officials the tools they need to collect surveillance on foreign terrorists in foreign countries planning to conduct attacks inside the United States or against our troops, our allies. It is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our intelligence agencies. I hope we can do the right thing and bring that bill to the floor.

Now while we are working together to get our intelligence community the tools they need, our military needs Congress to provide the funds to get them the equipment, supplies, and fuels they need in the field. We have got men and women fighting for security in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and our own security. Regrettably, the Democratic leadership in Congress wants to hold these funds hostage to a far-left agenda which does not represent anything more than a sliver of popular opinion in this country. There is no excuse for stalling much-needed funds for American troops. These are American troops fighting in the field, and we are not giving them funds.

By kowtowing to the far left moveon.org and the Code Pink constituency, some of the leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress who have control of it are playing a dangerous game with the safety of our troops in the field and the readiness and morale of our troops here at home.

The latest partisan move comes despite the good news out of Iraq. Even the media, who has been opposed to our involvement in Iraq, is recognizing that as a result of the new Petraeus strategy, a surge on the counterinsurgency, working with the Iraqi security forces, our forces together with the Iraqis have been successful in eliminating key terrorist safe havens and hampering the enemy's ability to conduct coordinated attacks. There has been a consistent and steady trend of progress over the last 6 months.

There are positive stories describing Baghdad's marketplace coming back to life. All over the place violent attacks in Iraq are falling. Even some of the war's loudest and strongest opponents in the House have acknowledged the signs of progress. But despite this, the leadership has failed to give us the opportunity to improve the funds our troops need in the field.

With only a few legislative days left, our soldiers, sailors, our airmen, and marines cannot afford more of the partisan delay. We have got men and women risking their lives, and we are denying the funds they need for support. That is unthinkable. That is unthinkable. We have got to abandon the far left's strategies of retreat and defeat and allow our troops to do their jobs.

Peru Free Trade Agreement

While we are talking about winning the war, there is also the war that is the soft war, the war of economic progress and opportunity. That is why, as Leader McConnell said, the free trade agreements are so important. We have the opportunity to help countries that are less developed get the free markets, the economic opportunity, the democratic chances to influence their government that we treasure and that have helped make our country successful.

One of the most important things we can do is adopt the free trade agreements. We have four agreements pending. If enacted, these four pending FTAs would expand market opportunities between the United States and countries that have nearly 126 million consumers.

Today's vote on the Peru FTA is very important. I urge us to support that. This will generate U.S. exports, create jobs, enhance the well- being of farming communities such as those I represent in Missouri. Ask these farmers and the small businesses how important these agreements are. Opening these markets would boost U.S. farm exports by $1.5 billion. Under the Peru FTA, more than two-thirds of current U.S. farm exports will become duty free. Tariffs on all farm products would be eliminated in 17 years.

The FTAs are vitally important. When FTAs are defeated, it is bad news for progressive government supporting the United States. In particular, it would be a blow to President Uribe in Colombia, who has been successfully fighting the leftist FARC terrorists, curbing illicit drug production. He is the most important counterweight to the anti- American vitriol of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Chavez was rebuffed by students in his own country. We have an opportunity to establish good working relationships with Peru, with Colombia, with Panama, to show the leaders of the opposition in Venezuela that there is a better way than Hugo Chavez and his blind adherence to the Castro model in Cuba.

Every President since World War II, Republican and Democrat, has fought to reduce the kind of trade barriers that triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s. This administration has followed that example. I hope that in addition to Peru, the leadership of Congress will seek approval of free trade agreements and pass them for South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. It is vitally important not only for free trade between those countries but for our standing in leading for security, peace, and freedom in Latin America.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I object.

Mr. President, here we go again. We have had an effort to take another vote on whether we should pull out of Iraq. Apparently, it is based on public opinion polls. Some think it would be popular, and certainly the moveon.org and Code Pink wing of the majority party would be very happy if we could have crammed down a measure to make a substantial change in our policy without even allowing an amendment. It is absolutely unacceptable on its face.

I object not only on behalf of myself and many of my colleagues but for the brave men and women from America who volunteered to go into harm's way for our security and to promote security in the world. Retreat and defeat may be politically popular with some, but this kind of poison pill does great injustice to what our American volunteers have done. From the people on the ground, when we first started considering these retreat-and-defeat measures, I heard a very heartfelt plea: We have made too many contributions and made too many sacrifices to see it all go for naught because of political maneuvering on Capitol Hill. That comes from people who have seen their comrades fall in battle.

This year alone, the Democrats have attempted at least nine times to force the President to change the military strategy and tactics in Iraq, on the misbegotten notion that somehow we, in this comfortable setting of Congress, can make better military, tactical, and strategic decisions than our commanders on the ground. I find that deplorable.

It used to be the tradition of this body, of America, that we supported our troops when they were going in harm's way. Now some are doing everything possible to undermine their efforts. Nine times they have tried to change the policy. After 77 of us voted to send troops into Iraq because we knew it was a dangerous place, we found out--by the Iraq Survey Group--that it was even more dangerous.

Make no mistake, while some in this body may not think Iraq is important, two people whose activities I try to follow fairly closely in intelligence, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his No. 2 man, think Iraq should be the headquarters of their caliphate, the headquarters of their vicious terrorist empire that wants to subjugate the region and threaten the United States.

Now, however, there is a key difference from earlier because we are seeing dramatic improvements in the security situation in Iraq, in particular in Al Anbar Province, which a year ago was a deadly place, a deadly place into which American troops could only go under heavy fire.

My son and several thousand marines are coming home because they have succeeded. Yes, there is a strategy for drawing down our troops. The President has announced it. It is called ``return on success.'' We bring the troops back when they have succeeded in their mission.

In Iraq, in Al Anbar, I have heard from people who are imbedded with Iraqi security forces that times have changed. There now are Iraqi citizen groups, citizen watch groups, who look for IEDs, who will identify foreign terrorists--al-Qaida types--who come into the area, and who will point out factories designed to build explosive vehicles. They turn that over to the Iraqi police in the area, and they clean it up. I have heard from a guy on the ground who is responsible for maintaining stability and security from the terrorists that the marines were no longer needed. So they are coming back. This is being replicated in places throughout Iraq.

Have we finished? We have not finished the job. There are still other areas, but it means we are succeeding. Iraqis are going about their normal business. Unfortunately for our fighting men and women and the Iraqi people who put their trust in us to see this mission through, too rarely are their successes being reported. They are ignored, although the New York Times, on the back page, I think, this past weekend, pointed out that we had routed al-Qaida in Iraq. Surprise. That wasn't on the front page, did not make headlines, because it has indicated a major change. Have you heard much about the success of General Petraeus and the counterinsurgency strategy after he testified on Capitol Hill? If you are like most Americans, the answer is you have heard very little, because it has fundamentally changed. While the media has always been quick to report bombings and failures in Iraq, it is simply not providing all of the good news.

They have been remarkably successful in 2007 in reducing violence. Yes, with the surge, with the new strategy, there was violence. But, according to General Odierno, the operational commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, enemy attacks are now at their lowest level since January 2006 and continue to drop. There has been a 60-percent decrease in IED attacks.

The reduction in violence is partly as a result of the presence of additional American forces and their adoption of the sound counterinsurgency strategy--go in and clear an area, work with the Iraqi security forces, and help them build an economy, a neighborhood, a safe place. It is also because the leaders on the ground in Iraq, the Sunni sheiks, have said--they have seen what continued terrorist attacks do to their country, to their people. The most frequent victims are Iraqis, good Muslim Iraqis who are being killed by the terrorists. They want to cooperate with us, and they are building, from the ground up, a stable, reliable, peaceful control over the area with the Iraqi security forces. Yes, some of them fought against us in the past, but they are now on our side because we are on their side and we are helping them. And when they take over, we will move back.

Now, I am fully aware of and concerned about the lack of political reconciliation. But, again, from boots on the ground, I hear: How do you expect them to establish a perfect democracy when this country is still not secure? Our goal in Iraq must be to work with the Iraqis, the Iraqi security forces, and responsible leaders to establish relative peace and security in the area.

What would happen if we withdrew precipitously for a political goal? We learned in an open hearing of the Intelligence Committee in January that if we pull out before we have stabilized this area and left in place Iraqi security forces, there would be chaos, and three bad things would happen: No. 1, there would be greatly increased violence among Sunni and Shia; there would likely be intervention by other states coming into Iraq to protect their coreligionists, potentially a civil war spreading into a region-wide war in a vital security and energy part of the world; but most dangerous for United States, and this is something my colleagues who want to cut and run seem to refuse to acknowledge, is that al-Qaida would be able to establish a safe haven. Yes, they have been driven off to the hills, the mountainous regions somewhere in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they cannot mobilize and exercise their command and control. If they had a place for command and control, had access to the oil riches of Iraq to fund their deeds, we would be significantly at greater risk to weapons of mass destruction attacks by terrorist groups funded and supported by al-Qaida.

We need to be realistic in defining what reconciliation is. It is a long process. To this day, for example, not all outstanding political tensions have been reconciled in Northern Ireland, in Bosnia, or Kosovo. Yet the civil wars and the terrorist campaigns that once threatened to engulf those areas have ended, and competing factions are pursuing their agendas primarily by peaceful political means.

Our men and women in uniform are fighting in Iraq to bring violence under control, to destroy al-Qaida, to drive out destabilizing Iranian meddling, and to establish a relatively stable and secure structure in Iraq, and they are making progress to those goals.

Getting a perfect democracy--we thought we had a perfect Jeffersonian democracy; then we had to have a Lincolnian republic after the Civil War. We are continuing to see the democracy. While it is the best of all the other bad situations, it is not perfect and does not work in a clear upward path; it takes time. And now we are seeing the questions being worked out at the local level on revenue sharing, oil revenue sharing. But to push a retreat-and-defeat, a delay-and-deny battle for the funds for our troops on the ground is unthinkable. This unanimous consent agreement to which I objected would be the ultimate cut and run: declare defeat, and hope to be rewarded in 2008 at the polls--a very regrettable effort by our colleagues on the other side.

The 2008 Defense appropriations bill recently passed by Congress includes no funding for our current operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the global war on terror. For 3 years prior to this, we included emergency funding for the regular Defense appropriations bill to cover the cost of military operations until a full supplemental could be adopted. We are now seeing, coming over from the House, a pittance of what is needed, encapsulated in all kinds of restrictions that tie the hands of the troops on the ground and put unreasonable restrictions on them that are likely to cause much greater danger to American personnel, military and civilian, over there. What we need to provide-- and I hope we will be able to put an alternative emergency funding bill on the floor--are funds for force protection initiatives, body armor, helmets, ballistic eye protection, even knee and elbow pads, flares, and armor. The 2008 Defense spending bill did include funding for MRAPs, but why did the Democrats insist on omitting other critical items?

Now that DOD will be forced to continue robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to fund operations, it has a tremendously negative impact, not only on the way we conduct the war but how the Department of Defense operates. Important equipment reset and other procurement programs have to be slowed down. It will impact the availability of equipment, including critical equipment for the National Guard needed to respond to domestic emergencies. Without this funding, the Pentagon is forced to divert money from their regular accounts to fund overseas operations, about $13 billion a month.

I have a letter that has just been sent by Gordon England. He has pointed out what this would mean to the Defense Department. It means, among other things, the Deputy Secretary of Defense said, they will have no choice but to deplete appropriations accounts, and it will result in a profoundly negative impact on the defense civilian working force, depot maintenance, base operations, and training activities, and within a few weeks they will be required by law to issue notices of termination to civilian employees.

In addition, a lack of any funding for the Iraqi security forces and the Afghanistan national security forces directly undermines the ability of the United States to continue training and equipping Iraqi and Afghanistan troops who are needed to take over. This makes absolutely no sense in a time of war. We deny the needed funding that will keep our troops--not only keep the troops in the field but support those who are working to assure that we can turn over the responsibility to them.

This is absolutely the wrong message to send to our deployed troops. We must provide emergency funding without political timetables to win votes at home but undermine our troops.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from Deputy Secretary of Defense England to House Defense Subcommittee chairman John Murtha and an article in today's Washington Times called ``War Funds Under Attack.''

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

Mr. President, I thought I would talk about agriculture and the farm bill today. I have a number of amendments I would like to offer. For example, I have one that we hope will spur the planting of cellulosic feedstock on CRP land, which I think is necessary if we are going to go to cellulosic ethanol, growing switchgrass on CRP land, maintaining the Conservation Reserve Program requirements, and providing a reduced payment, CRP payment, in exchange for allowing that switchgrass to be harvested for cellulosic ethanol. That is just one of the steps we need to take in renewable fuels.

Today, I have filed an amendment at the desk called the Farm Red Tape Reduction Act. I think it is very important to give farmers a voice in Federal rulemakings whenever a Federal regulation threatens to impose severe economic pain on farmers. As we saw with small business, many times the Government overlooks the plight of the little guy who does not have the resources or know-how to weigh in with big Government agencies in Washington.

In 1976, Congress created the Office of Advocacy to ensure that small businesses have an advocate in Government and a seat at the table when new regulations affecting them are drafted. I wish to share that same success with farmers. We also did something along the same lines in the Small Business Committee about 10 years ago. We introduced--I introduced and we passed something called the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, or SBREFA. That has allowed small businesses and small business advocates to have a say in regulations affecting them.

I believe we need to do the same thing for farmers. This amendment would help provide a more transparent Government, ensure that the Government listens to the people most affected by the regulations, and it would hold the Government accountable for its action. It is a message I think we all want to take to our constituents; that is, the Federal Government is meant to serve its citizens, not bully them. We want to make it an easy

process. Citizens should be heard while Government is deciding on a regulation that affects them, not after the decision is made.

The difference is subtle but important: Listen to farmers and agriculture first, to be inclusive. Cutting unnecessary redtape will provide greater flexibility for agricultural businesses by removing barriers to enterprise. Encouraging enterprise is essential if the United States is to compete in a global environment. Farms and other agricultural businesses will benefit from simplified rules. This measure will help in cutting redtape with a view to improving the environment for agriculture and business.

My experience on the Small Business Committee tells me there are currently dozens of regulatory proposals before Federal agencies but most without a true assessment of the impact on the very people they will affect. What are the initiatives necessary? Are they all essential? What are the consequences? I want the agencies to look into that question.

It is not my intention to throw out regulations simply as a matter of principle if, for example, they involve costs for agriculture. I am more concerned with obtaining solid impact analysis that can serve as a basis for informed decisionmaking. It is also quite clear that better regulations will be possible only if those affected also play their part since they will be responsible for implementation.

I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

Carbon Cap

Speaking of burdens, Mr. President, this morning the Environment Committee conducted a hearing on the proposed Lieberman-Warner carbon cap legislation. I addressed then how I think this proposed legislation will hurt farmers in the farm economy.

As part of the farm bill discussion, I want people who are focusing on agriculture and the impact on farmers to know what could be happening to them if we were to pass the Lieberman-Warner bill. Now, I have great respect for both of these gentlemen. I also am concerned about reducing emissions, but I believe this legislation will be very expensive for them. It will make it much more expensive for all of us cooling our homes in the summer, heating them in the winter. It will make more expensive the electricity we need to light our homes. It will make more expensive the gasoline we need to power our cars and trucks.

An economist at that hearing today gave testimony that the Lieberman- Warner bill would cost American families and workers at least $4 trillion--that is trillion with a ``t''--$4 trillion over the life of the bill. She expects a net loss of some 1.2 million jobs by 2015, and annual losses of U.S. production will top $160 billion in 2015, rising to at least $800 billion to $1 trillion in production lost per year in the outyears.

The bill's sponsors have tried to say that farmers will be spared some of the pain by goodies they put in the bill, but no farmer should fail to understand that the farm costs of this bill far outweigh its benefit.

Already record-high prices farmers now face will go even higher under Lieberman-Warner. For years, ammonia fertilizer cost farmers $250 dollars a ton. No one thought it would break through $400, and now we have seen $500 per ton. Even corn at $6 a bushel cannot support where fertilizer prices are heading. As one who buys a small amount of fertilizer, 13-13-13 fertilizer, I have seen the cost of fertilizer go up because nitrogen very often comes from natural gas. Well, Lieberman- Warner would make expensive fertilizers' main ingredients much more expensive.

Now, electric utilities competing for natural gas to meet their own cap requirements can pay higher natural gas prices and then just pass them on to all of us as consumers of natural gas. But farmers will have to look to Middle East countries to import their fertilizer. That would make farmers dependent on Persian Gulf imports. Farmers will also face higher fuel costs to run their trucks and tractors, higher drying costs, and higher transportation costs to get their products to market.

The Lieberman-Warner ag offset program could decimate small farm communities. Electric utilities that lack the technologies to cut emissions to levels demanded by the bill will have to take full advantage of the bill's so-called offset provisions. They will have billions of dollars to spend to retire cropland for its sequestration benefits. Those of us from farm country know the existing Conservation Reserve Program authorized through the farm bill has already taken more than 30 million acres out of production. The CRP is a conservation success. I support it. But that program has limits that prevent harm to local economies such as capping participation at 25 percent in any given county.

Nevertheless, we would be potentially taking even far more land out of production, land we need to ensure that our abundant food supply for people at home and export markets is met by farmers. Areas which exceed the level of 25 percent, especially in States to the west, show what happened to small communities. The resulting economic damage drove merchants out of business, people out of the communities. In the past, excessive CRP enrollment has led to a disinvestment in infrastructure and rail line abandonment which, in turn, triggered higher transportation costs for remaining farmers.

Of course, our Environment and Public Works Committee has not considered these farm problems. That is no surprise since we on the Environment and Public Works Committee don't deal with farmers, and some have even less farm expertise.

I share with my colleagues who are concerned about agriculture and the impact this could have on farmers what they need to know about this bill that will cut carbon emissions. We need to cut carbon emissions without cutting family budgets or imposing a devastating impact on certain sectors of our economy. I am one who supports a broad list of measures to result in lower carbon emissions. An overwhelming majority of this body would. We have on the shelf, ready to go, carbon-cutting initiatives such as aggressive but achievable new CAFE vehicle standards to raise the mileage of automobiles and trucks. We have clean portfolio strategies to require a certain portion of power from renewable and clean sources such as wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, even tidal power. Help for zero carbon emissions nuclear power has been advanced in measures passed by this body. We need to do even more. We need to make sure we have the workers available to install those plants.

We need more low carbon emission biofuels. That is why I propose making switchgrass planting on CRP land permissible. We need to do more on clean energy technologies, such as clean coal, that can capture and sequester forever the emissions from our Nation's abundant fuel source. We have 250 years of energy in the coal under our ground. We need to move more quickly to convert that coal to liquid coal, to gas, which will be cleaner burning and will allow us to sequester carbon emissions generally.

I urge my colleagues to consider that we have legitimate carbon- cutting strategies. I urge my colleagues in the name of agriculture, as well as vulnerable families and workers, to reject strategies such as Draconian carbon caps which have not worked in Europe and which will not work here and will result in great economic displacement and hardship.

I thank the Chair. I hope we will be able to introduce some of these very good amendments we have on the farm bill.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Oklahoma. I congratulate him and the Chair, Senator Boxer from California, for bringing this balanced and much needed bill to the floor so we may expeditiously override the veto.

Now WRDA is supposed to be authorized every 2 years, but there has not been a bill passed by this Congress during the entire administration. I have been working on this bill since 2001, so we are calling it WRDA 2001. The reason I have a direct interest in it is my State has nearly 1,000 miles of Missouri and Mississippi River frontage in addition to our lakes. Our communities rely on Corps projects for affordable water transportation, flood protection, energy production, environmental protection, and recreation opportunities.

When we talk about the environment--and in a minute I will be telling you why the environmental benefits of transportation by water are so important--my constituents know that Corps projects mean jobs, trade competitiveness, reliable and affordable energy, drinking water, and protection from floods which ruin property and kill people.

We are not alone because States up and down the Mississippi River, up and down the Missouri River, up and down the Ohio River, States in the central part of the Nation, depend on the lakes; and States on the coasts depend upon their ports as well. So this is truly a national bill. But I can speak to it directly from what I have seen and what I know in my part of the world.

I am delighted we are completing our long journey to permit modernization of the Mississippi River locks. These locks were built during the Great Depression, some 75 years ago, for paddlewheel boats--paddlewheel boats--that only pushed 600-foot barge tows. Now we have 1,200-foot barge tows trying to get through 600-foot locks. They have to double lock. And these locks are old.

I have spent a lot of time with the people who depend on these locks--the farmers; shippers of cement, building materials, fertilizers, energy, coal, and petroleum that travel by water. They showed me and I have seen that these locks are not just leaking, sheets of water are coming through them. You can only use so much bailing wire and duct tape on a 75-year-old lock to keep it from going out.

Now one medium-sized 1,200-foot barge tow carries the same amount of commodities that 870 large semitrucks would carry. It would take a train car unit 2\1/4\ miles long to carry the same load. But there is not room on our highways to put 870 trucks for every barge tow that would be used. The rails are filled. There is not room to put a 2\1/4\ or 2\3/4\ train on our railroads.

If we want to get our commodities to the market, if we want to have the most environmentally friendly and efficient means of transportation, we have to be able to move goods up the Mississippi River.

The locks in the bottleneck begin just above St. Louis. So all of the northern Midwest depends on those locks. The Mississippi River itself carries about 60 percent of the grain moving in international commerce, foreign trade--getting better prices for our farmers, keeping our rural communities healthy with good prices, and also lessening our balance of trade deficit. If you believe in selling our goods abroad, if you believe foreign sales are good for us--and I am strongly convinced they are--then we must have transportation.

We have had a long, arduous process to get the 2-year bill in 7 years, and we have been blessed with strong bipartisan support. From my part of the country, Senators Grassley, Harkin, Durbin, and Obama have played key roles, and I express my gratitude.

Now the administration says they vetoed this bill because they say it is too big. If it were a normal 2-year bill, it would be big. But this is a 7-year bill, taking into account literally four different WRDA bills. If you total only three WRDA bills during the 5-year period-- 1996 to 2000--the authorization levels are comparable.

I think we must override the veto because this bill does not spend a dollar. It is an authorization bill. It says these projects are approved for consideration for funding. The Corps of Engineers has gone through extensive processes--engineering, public comment--to come to this point, and we are giving congressional blessings. This just adds projects to the list eligible. Put another way, it is a license to hunt. You still have to go out and hit the bird, and you cannot go beyond the limit. The limit is the budget.

The White House should know this bill spends not one dollar. The breakfast menu is larger, but the breakfast budget is unchanged. To say otherwise is to either misinform or purposely mislead.

The unfortunate reality for our State and the farmers and shippers in our

State is that water resources and water transportation do not seem to be a high priority of this administration, despite the expectation of supporters in 2000.

The previous administration was not supportive, and this one is no better. I know the White House staff will disagree, but OMB ought to try to go out and talk to the people who live in our part of the country. There are many areas where these projects are needed.

In November of 2005, the Washington Times reported that President Bush noted during a press conference with Panamanian President Torrijos:

[I]t's in our nation's interest that this canal be

modernized.

Well, I think that is a great idea: modernize the Panama Canal. But while we are at it, why not modernize our own shipping areas? The administration does not oppose modernizing the Social Security-aged locks on the Mississippi River built for paddlewheel boats, but they also have not endorsed it or lifted a finger to endorse it. Endorsement was reserved for upgrading the waterways in Panama. My colleagues and I believe our Midwestern exporters deserve as much consideration as Chinese exporters who transit the Panama Canal.

I could list the supporters of it: the National Corn Growers Association, Carpenters Union, Operating Union, American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, scores of members of the Waterways Council, and a whole lot of hard-working folks in Missouri and Illinois with whom I have met.

Our staffs have worked tirelessly on this legislation--not for days or weeks but years. There are many who have worked hard. I thank Ruth Van Mark, Ken Kopocis, Angie Giancarlo, Joe-Ellen Darcy; and a very special thanks to the bipartisan staff support of a very good friend of mine, Let Mon Lee, who has worked on the committee.

The success of our economy and its people owes a great debt to the investments that were made by those who came before us.

I urge my colleagues to vote for investments that will provide opportunity, value, competitiveness, and growth to our future so our export growth will not be limited to exporting barges.

This, as shown on this chart, is what we are exporting. We are exporting the barges to countries in Latin America so they can ship efficiently, economically, in environmentally friendly waters and take markets away from American farmers.

My thanks to the committee and the staff of Environment and Public Works. We appreciate their work. I urge my colleagues to join with us and adopt this bill by a veto override.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending amendment and call up amendments Nos. 3467, 3468, 3469, and 3470 en bloc, on behalf of Senator DeMint.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that those amendments be temporarily set aside.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3464, which is at the desk.

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

(Purpose: To amend section 24101 of title 49, United States Code, to

clarify Amtrak's mission)

On page 10, between lines 12 and 13, insert the following:

Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to S. 294, the Amtrak reauthorization bill. I applaud the authors of the bill for their hard work in putting this legislation together. As one who hopes to see a robust, efficient passenger rail service, I have long been a supporter and rider on Amtrak. As Governor of Missouri, I started the State support of Amtrak to run trains between Kansas City and St. Louis. As I have watched Amtrak over the years, I have been increasingly concerned about the rising costs and relatively stagnating ridership. As I look at this bill, I do not believe it includes all the needed reforms that are crucial to the success of Amtrak.

While there are many positive aspects of the bill, the fundamental problem with Amtrak is that it has no clearly defined mission. Is it supposed to provide only those services where it can make a profit? Is it supposed to supplement air service in specific markets regardless of cost? Is it supposed to serve rural markets regardless of cost? Is it supposed to provide tourist travel regardless of cost? All of these have been held out from time to time as reasons to subsidize Amtrak and as excuses for why it should not be held accountable for the effective use of the taxpayers' money. However, those are empty excuses. The money continues to flow out, and I believe strong reforms are necessary.

While Amtrak's revenue, ridership, and cash operating loss numbers improved this year, this improved financial performance reflects labor costs held low by the absence of a labor settlement. Once a settlement is reached, Amtrak's costs will jump up, reflecting the pay raises that have largely been deferred during the past 7 years during which time there has not been a labor contract.

Amtrak has made no significant progress in restructuring its operations to become less reliant on Federal funds. The pace of Amtrak's reform savings has slowed from $61 million in fiscal year 2006 to a planned $46 million in fiscal year 2008. There is little chance Amtrak will achieve anywhere near the $500 million in annual reform savings it promised when it adopted its 2005 plan.

GAO reports consistently cite that Amtrak has lost the focus of its statutory mandate to be operated and managed as a for-profit company.

Just last year, over 10 percent of Amtrak's operating subsidy was spent on food and beverages and a like amount subsidized first-class service. There is no critical public purpose associated with such expenditures. Yet there are some who assume they are OK because that is what Amtrak has always done.

S. 294, I regret to say, will not change this deplorable system. While section 208 would have FRA and Amtrak develop performance metrics, there is no clear statement of Amtrak's mission on which to base these metrics.

After 36 years, we should not miss the opportunity to finally and clearly state Amtrak's mission. It is for that reason that I offer as an amendment to S. 294 the establishment of Amtrak's mission. That mission should be:

To provide efficient and effective intercity passenger rail

mobility in those travel markets where passenger rail offers

a trip-time and service quality competitive travel option

consistent with the goal of continual reduction in Federal

operating subsidies required to provide service.

With this mission clearly established, then FRA and Amtrak can establish meaningful performance measures that hold Amtrak accountable for accomplishing that mission. Obviously, meaningful benchmarks will help both Amtrak and those of us in Congress measure its efforts at reform. In fact, failure to meet benchmarks will be a good reason to lessen or terminate these excessive subsidies.

My colleagues may say that the bill contains benchmark reforms under section 208, Metrics and Standards. The section reads:

Within 180 days . . . develop new or improve existing

metrics and minimum standards for measuring the performance

and service quality of intercity passenger train operations,

including cost recovery, on-time performance and minutes of

delay, ridership, on-board services, stations, facilities,

equipment, and other services. Such metrics, at a minimum,

shall include the percentage of avoidable and fully allocated

operating costs covered by passenger revenues on each route,

ridership per train mile operated, measures of on-time

performance and delays incurred by intercity passenger rail.

Exactly what reforms are contained within these metrics and standards? There is no mission, no goals, and no benchmarks for operating subsidies and, as I said, quite frankly, no reform.

If the authorizers were truly offering operating metrics, they would have year-over-year improvement on metrics applied on a route-by-route business line or corporate basis on some of the following:

Operating ratio--operating revenues relative to operating costs, excluding depreciation to measure improvements in cost recovery; two, cash operating loss--would measure revenue expense improvements; three, savings from reform initiative--while the operating loss includes these savings, monitoring these savings allows for tracking the implementation of structural reform improvements; four, cash operating loss for passenger mile--an overall efficiency measure; five, labor productivity--passenger mile per employee; and finally, six, equipment reliability--percent of units out of service.

The other thing missing from Amtrak oversight has been real teeth. So I propose changing the language in section 210 from being permissive, which says the FRA ``may'' withhold grants from trains that don't measure up, to being mandatory, to say that FRA ``shall'' withhold grants from trains that don't measure up.

Today, the Secretary of Transportation has the ability to discontinue service on specific routes, but none have been proposed for elimination because perhaps there is no mission

statement for Amtrak on which to make a determination for closure.

This measure I propose does not push Amtrak off the cliff, but it recognizes we cannot afford for Amtrak to be all things to all people. It requires Amtrak to take a degree of responsibility that has been lacking in the use of the taxpayers' money. It would require Amtrak to improve efficiency and effectiveness of its service, to reduce the demands it makes of our taxpayers, including, where appropriate, recognizing that passenger rail is not the best option in all places.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, that is what we all live with, I assure my friend from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I agree with that. Of course, I would agree in some areas there are no rail lines available to relieve that congestion. While many metropolitan areas do have rail lines, they are definitely an efficient alternative. In many areas of the country, people do not have rail service, existing rails. So rails cannot solve all of our transportation congestion problems.

I didn't say that, no.

Mr. President, I wish to respond to my friend from New Jersey and point out that while I may have had some operating delays coming into downtown Washington this morning because of the rain, I am not the only one. Service reliability continues to plague Amtrak. Amtrak systemwide in 2007 had ontime performance through August at only 68 percent and long-distance ontime performance was only 40 percent.

The Senator points out that there are constraints on Amtrak. With the exception of Connecticut, which I believe has its lines, most of the Amtrak lines run on lines established, bought, and paid for by freight railroads. For the lines to be kept operating, they have to continue to use freight.

If the chairman of the subcommittee is proposing that we build a national network of passenger rails--buy the land, buy the equipment, install the rails--I will be happy to take a look at the numbers that would be involved, whether they are billions or trillions, but I question whether we could make that investment.

What I have stated only in this amendment is that we should come to an agreement on what the mission of Amtrak is. What is it supposed to do? If you don't know where you are going, it is hard to tell when you have gotten there. Yes, we put money into a capital operating plan, a 5-year plan in 2005. There were supposed to be operating savings. The operating savings are not being realized. What I propose is simply good management techniques.

My colleague has run a successful business, and I assume to run a business he had to have a mission and he had to have standards and goals by which to judge the achievement of that mission. S. 294 talks about all kinds of metrics, but it doesn't say there are any goals. How do you know if you

have gotten there? Where are you going? You don't know.

Maybe I have missed it, but I don't think any of us are clear on the clearly stated mission of Amtrak and any standards by which the achievement of that mission should be judged. I would be happy to have a discussion--and this is the appropriate place to do it--on what should be the mission of Amtrak. Maybe for my edification, I ask my friend from New Jersey to cite to me what the written mission of Amtrak is because I will have to admit, I am not familiar with that specific mission statement and the standards and goals by which Amtrak and the FRA and we in Congress can judge the effective accomplishment of the objectives within the parameter of that mission. Through the Chair, I ask my friend from New Jersey to enlighten me.

Mr. President, if I may respond, I don't see any clearly defined mission. If my colleague doesn't agree that Amtrak should be providing efficient and effective passenger service in those travel markets in which passenger rail offers a trip time and service quality, competitive or complementary travel option consistent with the goal of continuing to reduce Federal operating subsidies--we are not saying it should be a for-profit company, but it certainly should not be a continual growing loss operation.

I believe we must have some discipline that I do not see in the law and particularly saying ``best business practices''--best business practices to do what?

I hope we can continue this discussion, and I thank the Chair and my colleagues for the time.

Mr. President, I wish to thank everyone for all their work in putting this bill together. I fully appreciate the significant challenges that Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Specter face in balancing spending priorities with limited resources. I want to thank them for restoring $99 million in funding for the Children's Hospital GME program. Unfortunately, that level is still almost $200 million below last year's level.

CHGME is a valuable investment. It made it possible for children's hospitals to sustain and expand their teaching programs without having to sacrifice their commitments to clinical care for all children and research to improve children's care. These hospitals are major safety net providers of inpatient and community-based ambulatory care for low- income children and--as most of us know--the hospitals we depend on to care for seriously and chronically ill children.

Spending has grown less than 4 percent over 5 years since the program was fully funded. Congress reauthorized the program with overwhelming bipartisan support last year and set a new funding level at $330 million, which is based on continuing equity with Medicare GME. The House Labor-HHS appropriations bill funds the program at the $307 million level, which I hope we can achieve in conference.

I know that both the chairman and the ranking member are strong supporters of this program, and it is my hope that we will be able to work together to secure the House number in conference.

Mr. President, today our friends and colleagues Senators Lieberman and Warner are introducing their bill to cap carbon emissions. I would like to outline some of the ways their approach will unfairly and unnecessarily hurt our most vulnerable families and workers.

To begin with, capping carbon will make more expensive what we all depend upon in our everyday lives. Our heating bills in the winter, air conditioning bills in the summer, every time we put gas in our cars; they will all be much more expensive under their plan.

While the rich can afford higher power bills, millions of struggling families cannot. Will we force them to

choose between heating their homes or buying school clothes for their children?

I support higher Federal LIHEAP funding, but almost 30 million American families still cannot afford to pay their heating bills. How many millions more will suffer under this bill?

Millions of fixed-income seniors have no room in their budget for higher power bills. Will we force them to choose between air conditioning in the summer or buying their prescription medicine?

Blue collar workers supporting middle class families will also suffer when their manufacturing jobs flee the U.S. for cheaper energy sources in other countries.

Are we telling millions of auto assembly, steel, aluminum, plastics, fertilizer, cement, and lime workers we do not care about them supporting their modest families?

The Lieberman-Warner bill admits it hurts vulnerable families and workers and tries to help them through rebates funded by carbon auctions. But vulnerable workers cannot afford to pay higher energy bills now and wait months later for a rebate check. Where do they get the extra money to pay their higher energy bills now? What do they go without while they are waiting to get their rebate check later?

The whole carbon auction and rebate system is inherently unfair and unnecessary. Some push it so that companies will not see windfall profits. I oppose windfall profits too, but they are only possible in 14 States, mostly in the northeast and west coast where electricity markets are deregulated. In the other 36 states with regulated markets, utilities are prevented by law from reaping windfall profits.

That means a national carbon auction unfairly punishes 36 States in the midwest, mountain, west and south where there would be no problem. Mr. President, 36 States will pay higher energy bills then needed. Families and workers in 36 States will suffer unnecessarily. We must find a better way.

Europe, in their system, made the mistake of passing out more carbon allowances then needed. We can easily avoid that mistake.

As long as the obligation we impose to submit carbon allowances for carbon emissions is greater then the amount of allowances we pass out, there will be no surplus profits in those 36 regulated States.

We must address the issue of preemption. We will create havoc with a national carbon cap system on top of regional systems.

We also need to set up a liability system for sequestering carbon underground. We do not want to set up an impossible situation where we capture all this carbon and have nowhere to put it.

We need to guarantee that we will not harm low income families and vulnerable workers. Protections should kick in automatically at a set level, so that our struggling elements of society are not left to the whims of a fickle and vague cost containment system.

We need to calibrate any cap plan to the ability of technology to meet that plan'' The welfare of millions are too important to roll the dice that low carbon solutions are around the corner. We also cannot inflict too much pain on struggling families and workers in the interim while we wait for those clean energy solutions to come on line.

There are many things we can do now to reduce carbon emissions. We have on the shelf or stuck in stalled legislative vehicles, measures to promote energy efficiency, promote low-carbon biofuels, cut vehicle emissions through aggressive but achievable stronger CAFE standards, require renewable and clean energy generation, increase renewable energy transmission, green buildings, carbon storage research and development, and clean energy research, development and deployment.

That is 8 different ways I am prepared to reduce carbon emissions today. So before we go down the road of hurting the poor, hurting vulnerable workers, sending jobs overseas, let us take advantage of what we have now. Let us get serious about our energy future and fund a Manhattan project for clean energy. Let us get to work where we can join together and do so now.

Mr. President, the distinguished chair of the subcommittee and I have long been strong supporters of plant genomics in general and the Plant Genome Research Program undertaken at the NSF in particular. The Plant Genome Research Program produces basic scientific research by providing for peer-reviewed competitive research grants to qualified institutions. Maintaining significant support for fundamental research in crop systems is more important than ever as agriculture is trying to meet the demands of consumers worldwide by providing a safe and secure supply of resources for human and animal nutrition, fiber, green products, bioenergy,

and plant-based nutraceuticals and other leading edge applications. This initiative has had strong backing over the years from the broad- based science community in conjunction with farmers and those up the food supply chain.

Together, as leaders of the VA/HUD and Independent Agencies Subcommittee, we began this initiative in 1997. It remains critical that we protect the integrity of the program and ensure its remains a priority at the NSF.

Is it the expectation of the subcommittee that the Plant Genome Research Program is funded at no less than $100 million?

Further, is it the expectation of the subcommittee that funding for the Arabadopsis 2010 program continue to be financed through the BIO directorate, yet separate from funds provided for the plant genome project as it has in the past?

No objection on this side.

Mr. President, has the time for the majority side expired?

I thank the Chair. Most of all, I thank my chairman, Senator Rockefeller. I thank the chairman of the committee and all of the members of the committee to be able to pass this very important intelligence authorization bill. We have had a 3-year hiatus with no intelligence authorization bill. This came despite multiple attempts on the Senate floor. Today, we see, fortunately, the end of that cycle with the passage of the fiscal year 2008 intelligence authorization bill.

Passing this bill is important and noteworthy because it is one of the committee's most important tools in providing strong congressional oversight of the intelligence activities the American people expect and deserve. This bill we have just passed contains important provisions that would improve the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies, most of which were requested by the intelligence community. It is not a perfect bill, and there are a few things in it that I may not totally agree with, but overall this bill will benefit the intelligence community and marks the important reassertion of congressional oversight over our intelligence agencies and operations.

I commend Chairman Rockefeller for all of his hard work and the diplomacy, skill, and patience in putting together the managers' amendment that brought us to the floor today. In particular, we worked very hard to keep the bill clean and to strip it of challengeable and politically charged amendments, things that would have drawn objections from this side and the other side. Several Senators on both sides of the aisle had to give until it hurt to reach agreements, and I thank them for their flexibility and cooperation. We cannot get this bill done or any bill done in this Senate without bipartisan cooperation. With this bill, the chairman and I and our committee are making a great step forward in returning the work of the Intelligence Committee to nonpartisan oversight and away from the politics that have weakened it over the past few years. We have limited the bill to just those provisions that had strong bipartisan support. Chairman Rockefeller and I were also able to get a number of good-government positions into our bill that will improve the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies.

Having said that, my colleagues should know that the chairman and I will fight very hard to keep this agreement in conference.

If the House were to put in political amendments or other problematic amendments which the Senate would not support, I will not support the bill. Intelligence should be conducted behind closed doors. When we talk about our intelligence matters openly in other committees or on this floor, we hamper our intelligence ability.

I asked the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency at his confirmation hearing about 16 months ago: How badly have the disclosures of our most sensitive intelligence methods hurt our ability to deal with terrorists?

He ruefully said: We are now applying the Darwinian theory to terrorists. We are only capturing the dumb ones.

Every time we talk in public about how we capture information, it gives a roadmap to the terrorists to know exactly how to avoid being intercepted. Unfortunately, there have in recent days been more examples of such disclosures.

But back to this bill. This bill provides for the empowerment of the Director of National Intelligence to conduct accountability reviews of the individual elements of the intelligence community in relation to significant failures or deficiencies.

This provision will encourage the intelligence community to address their own internal failures or inefficiencies--something they have been reluctant to do on their own. In the event that they are reluctant or unable to do so, this amendment gives the DNI the authority he needs to step in and conduct his own reviews, authority the Director of National Intelligence currently does not have.

The Intelligence authorization bill also contains a wide range of other important provisions that will improve the efficiency and accountability of the intelligence community, while at the same time providing the DNI with additional authority and flexibility, including creation of a strong, independent inspector general for the intelligence community; additional authorities for the DNI to improve information sharing in the intelligence community; measures to protect the cover of our clandestine intelligence officers; and measures to address excessive cost growth in major acquisition programs--a real problem we have seen in recent years.

The intelligence community has now gone 2 years without the detailed guidance from the Congress that only this Intelligence authorization bill can provide. I hope we can move this bill expeditiously through a conference with the House to correct that situation.

We must do a better job of asserting congressional oversight of the intelligence community, and one of the best ways to accomplish that goal is to pass the annual Intelligence authorization bill. I am proud to announce that today we have done that.

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

Mr. President, I want to talk more broadly about the war on terror and say it is with pleasure that we see the President's policy of bringing back troops home when they complete their mission successfully. Return on success is working. Marines are coming home after having pacified Al Anbar Province and turned the responsibility for maintaining security over to the Iraqi security forces. I know about that personally and it is working. The marines are coming home. We know they are coming home because

there was a story this morning on television about how marines were held up for about 2\1/2\ hours by the TSA at one of the places they landed in the United States. They refused to allow the marines to go into the terminal because I guess they provided some kind of threat. In any event, the marines are now coming back to face additional challenges--not just the challenges of the TSA that we all undergo, but, regrettably, too many of them have mental health problems, TBI and PTSD, and in the Defense authorization bill we have passed provisions to assist the wounded warriors coming home. But they have been successful, and return on success means al-Qaida is no longer able to exercise control over Al Anbar.

For those who think this is a diversion in the battle in the war on terror, all they have to do is listen to the leaders, Osama bin Laden and Zawihiri, who have said the headquarters of the caliphate from which they are going to conduct worldwide operations is the land between the two rivers. That is, of course, Iraq. If they win there, they are stronger, and they will establish their headquarters there.

The intelligence community leaders, in January of this year, spoke in open session before the Intelligence Committee. They said if we withdraw before we have established relative peace and stability in the area--in other words, if we withdraw on a political timetable dictated by this body--there will be chaos. Three things will happen. There will be increased killing among Shia and Sunni, genocide and bloodshed. Two, that will bring in the other states in the region to protect their coreligionists, and we will see the potential of a regionwide sectarian war. Three, most frighteningly, al-Qaida will establish the safe haven they have sought in Al Anbar and elsewhere from which to embolden their efforts and attack the United States and United States persons abroad, and our allies.

All you have to do to get an idea of the effectiveness of our new counterinsurgency efforts, led by General Petraeus, is to pay attention to what was found in the pocket of Abu al-Tunisi, the Tunisian al-Qaida leader in Iraq who was responsible for bringing foreign fighters into Iraq--the ones from Iran, Syria, Yemen, and others, with all of the resources they had. Al-Tunisi had written letters to his leader, saying: I am suffering. They are strangling us. I cannot get support.

We have hurt them and we have hurt them badly. Yes, al-Qaida is a threat, but al-Qaida is not basing that threat from Iraq. Their leaders are probably in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan. I can assure you we are doing everything we can--and we obviously cannot discuss what we are doing--to capture and kill those leaders. Right now, we have taken advantage and the counterinsurgency strategy is working. I commend our troops and General Petraeus.

I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, does that include 10 minutes for my colleague from Texas? I will ask for 10 additional minutes for the minority side, which may have other subjects to talk about.

In that case, I withdraw my request.

Mr. President, on behalf of my fellow Missourians, I extend my warmest congratulations to KCUR Radio, 89.3 FM, licensed to the curators of the University of Missouri and operating from the campus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. KCUR Radio is celebrating 50 years of continuous service to our community on October 21, 2007.

KCUR Radio entertains, enlightens, and informs, enhancing the quality of life for listeners by broadcasting and webcasting noncommercial radio programming 24 hours a day, including 20 hours of news each weekday.

KCUR Radio has been recognized for groundbreaking features and extensive coverage of politics, the arts, health, and minority matters.

KCUR Radio has grown from a station with 2 full-time employees and a signal range of 4 miles, to 23 full-time broadcast professionals and 17 part-time employees, reaching a 90-mile radius of northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas, and has raised funds to support staff growth, update equipment, and expand programming, largely through the efforts of its 200 tireless volunteers.

KCUR Radio broadcasts original shows that have captured the hearts and minds of listeners nationwide.

The KCUR news department informs the Nation about our community through KCUR's charter membership as a National Public Radio station.

I am pleased to honor KCUR Radio on its 50th anniversary in October 2007.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair for 2 minutes so that we may bring in a distinguished visitor.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate EPW Chair Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe for bringing a balanced and much needed bill to the floor.

Normally this bill is a 2-year authorization, but there has not been a bill, a WRDA bill, during this administration. So I will call it the Water Resources Development Act of 2001.

Now, my State has nearly 1,000 miles of Missouri and Mississippi River frontage in addition to our lakes. Our communities rely on Corps projects for affordable water, transportation, flood protection, energy production, environmental protection, and recreational opportunities.

Nobody knows better than the farmers of Missouri and the Midwest how important river transportation is to serve the world market. This bill for my constituents means jobs, trade competitiveness, reliable and affordable energy, drinking water, and protection from floods, which can ruin property and kill people.

This is not of minor importance to those out in the world, in the Midwest, who work for a living. I am delighted we are completing our long journey to permit modernization of the Mississippi River locks. These locks were built during the Great Depression for paddle wheel boats 75 years ago. They were designed to last 50 years.

Well, they are 25 years past their design lifetime. This is a long, much needed, overdue investment in infrastructure, jobs, trade competitiveness, and environmental protection.

Sixty percent of all grain exports move through the bottleneck of obsolete locks. Some 30 percent of oil is shipped by barge, by waterway, a significant amount of coal, of cement, of fertilizer. A single medium-sized barge tow carries the same amount of freight as 870 trucks. There is a comparison for railroad, but the railroads are so full they cannot carry any more; they are at capacity. But it carries something akin to 2\1/2\ trainloads.

These facts speak volumes for the cost, pollution, and fuel efficiencies of river transportation. Throughout this long and arduous process to complete a 2-year bill in 7 years, we have been blessed with strong bipartisan support for modernizing the locks. I have already referred to the relationship of our EPW Committee.

Senator Grassley has been supportive of this from the start. We would not be here today without Senator Harkin, the occupant of the chair, Senator Durbin, Senator Obama, Senator McCaskill, and others from the Midwest playing a key role in this becoming law. I express my gratitude.

Outside Congress, modernization of the old bottleneck looks has won the untiring support of agriculture, the waterways community, industry, labor, and community leaders. I am concerned the administration may veto this bill because they say it is too big. Well, if it were a normal 2-year bill, it would be big. But this is a 7-year bill; taking into account three cycles which we should have and have not yet passed a WRDA bill. So it is big by historic standards.

When we total the three WRDA bills passed during the 5-year periods of 1996 to 2000, a 5-year period, the authorization levels totaled almost the same as this 7-year bill, almost $21 billion.

Now, if there is a veto, I look forward to overriding it on a bipartisan basis as soon as action can be scheduled. This is an authorization bill. Without appropriations, it spends nothing. As Senators know, this bill simply adds projects to the list of items eligible for appropriations subject to the binding budget limitations faced under the appropriations process.

Put another way, this is a license to hunt. You still to have hit the bird and you can't go over the limit. So all it is is a license to ask for appropriations. The backlog of unfunded items often referred to by opponents of this bill is unfunded because many of the projects are not sufficiently high priority within tight budgets. Some may be very good projects but they do not make the cut given the limited budget. Does it make sense to say that bills passed

many years ago have to be funded before we can take a fresh look at priorities facing our waterway infrastructure and other waterway needs? I don't think so. Priorities change. Right now these items in this bill are the priorities that have been thoroughly vetted by the Corps, by all those who have input, and by the Environment and Public Works Committee in our body and in the Transportation Infrastructure Committee on the other side. I urge my colleagues to support it.

To oppose new authorizations is simply a way to pretend to save money without saving money, while unwisely assuming that all currently authorized projects are of a higher priority than the newly authorized projects contained in this bill. In many ways, this will cost money, and I will talk about that in a minute. But if there were to be a veto, the unfortunate message for water States and agricultural States in the Midwest is that water resources are not a high priority to this administration, despite the expectation of many supporters in 2000, when supporters of waterways in Missouri came out in record numbers to carry the State for the current President. The previous administration was not supportive and this administration is no better. Our concerns started with proposed construction budget cuts. Then they fired Mike Parker, a strong proponent of water resources. Then they underfunded flood control and navigation on the Missouri River. Now it would be capped off by vetoing WRDA. I truly hope that doesn't happen. They would get a grade for consistency, except that they say they support aggressive trade policies. But they say nothing about the transportation capacity vital to move the goods they want to trade, so they say. Bulk commodities can't be faxed or e-mailed or Fed-Ex'd or UPS'd in the real world to the rest of the world. Again, on our waterways in Missouri, one medium-size barge tow carries the same freight as 870 trucks with cost, pollution, fuel efficiencies, economic and environmental benefits that are obvious to all.

I was interested to read a November 2005 article in the Washington Times which reported that the President noted during a press conference with Panamanian President Torrijos: `` . . . it's in our nation's interest that this canal be modernized.'' I know the administration does not oppose modernizing the Social Security-age locks on the Mississippi River, built during the Depression for paddle-wheel boats, but they also have not yet even endorsed it. Yet there was a rousing endorsement for upgrading the waterways in Panama. My colleagues and my constituents back home believe our midwestern exporters deserve as much consideration as Chinese exporters who transit the Panama Canal. I remain hopeful the administration will agree.

While no two of us would write the bill the same way, I am pleased so much work was done for so long by so many to find a compromise that could serve the diverse needs of a nation that needs water resources to function. Among a very long list, this bill is supported by the National Corn Growers Association, the Carpenters, operating engineers, laborers, American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Soybean Association, and scores of members of the Waterway Counsel from coast to coast, communities large and small.

Our staffs have been working tirelessly on this not for days or for weeks but years. It has been a long process. We have gotten to know them like family. There is almost some regret in knowing that our family will be broken up when this bill is signed into law. But maybe we can get back on schedule and have another WRDA bill in 2 years. The staff has been tremendous. They took on tough issues, set up difficult criteria, helped to sort through competing objectives, and they never quit. While there were many who worked very hard on this over the years, including Andy Wheeler, Ruth Van Mark, Angie Giancarlo, Ken Kopocis, Jeff Rosato, Tyler Rushford, Jo-Ellen Darcy, Mike Quiello, and others, I especially thank the bipartisan staff support of Let Mon Lee with the committee. Let Mon has been working with us for all these years. He is truly part of our family. We would hate to lose him, but if that is the price for passing WRDA, so be it.

The success of our economy and its people owes a great debt to investments that were made by those before us. I urge my colleagues to make the investments now that will be providing the benefits for future generations and vote in favor of an opportunity and value for our future. We were reminded tragically a few weeks ago in Minnesota of the need to be vigilant in upgrading our infrastructure. When you see what happened in Minnesota, we saw a bridge collapse. There was a tragic loss of life. There was some disruption of commerce. But if one of these locks midway on the river between Missouri and Illinois at the bottom of the chain fails completely and bailing wire and chewing gum can only hold back the river so long and they leak not like sieves but by continuous sheets of water, if one of those locks were to blow out and fail, the impact on our economy, on commerce, would be huge, the impact we almost felt when Katrina shut off the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Fortunately, they got that undone in a couple of days. But even papers that don't normally think about water commerce and agriculture were saying what a danger this was. A failure of one of these locks, one of these half-size, outdated, overaged locks could tremendously cripple our economy, put our rural economies into a significant downturn.

I urge our leadership in this body to move quickly for a speedy override vote should a veto materialize. But again, my thanks, my congratulations, and deep appreciation to the Environment and Public Works Committee leadership and the diligent staff who have brought us to this point.

It is time we pass the 2001 WRDA bill. It may be 6 years late, but it is even more needed now than it was in 2001.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I rise with my colleague from Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill, to correct a small but important injustice in the National Trails System Act. The Trails Act Technical Correction Act of 2007 is a Senate companion to a bipartisan House bill sponsored by Representatives Carnahan, Akin, Clay, Emerson, and Graves. Our bipartisan bill will ensure that property owners are compensated for land taken from them as Congress intended.

In 1992, the Federal Government confiscated property owned by 102 St. Louis County residents through the Federal Rails-to-Trails Act. The taking imposed an easement on their property for a public recreational hiking/biking trail. A trail easement was established on their property on December 20, 1992. After 12 years of bureaucratic fighting and delay, the Justice Department admitted the government's takings liability and agreed to pay the property owners a total of $2,385,000.85 for their property, interest and legal fees.

However, 2 days before the U.S. Court of Claims was scheduled to approve the agreement, the Federal circuit issued the Caldwell decision regarding a Rails-to-Trails takings case in Georgia. That decision interpreted the statute of limitations for a taking in this program as beginning with a notice of interim trail use, not the commonly understood later date the trail easement was legally imposed on the property. Under the new date, the statute of limitations on the St. Louis County takings claim had expired. The Justice Department accordingly sought dismissal of the claims without payment and the court of claims judge agreed.

Our bill clarifies in statute that the statute of limitations for a takings claim under the Trails Act begins on the date an interest is conveyed and allows for reconsideration of past claims dismissed because of this issue. This technical clarification--the takings statute of limitations starts upon the taking--makes the most sense. It also corrects a past injustice that deprived landowners of their rightful compensation. It makes no change to the substance of the Rails-to-Trails program and is supported on a bipartisan basis. I urge my colleagues to agree to its passage.