Floor Statements

Earlier today, Senator Frist spoke about the importance of preparing our Nation for the serious and growing threat of an influenza pandemic.

Members of this body made pandemic flu a priority when it unanimously adopted an $8 billion amendment to combat avian flu offered by Senate Democrats.

I hope that Senator Frist will join me in standing by this commitment and will work to ensure that Congress provides for the full $8 billion America needs to begin addressing this critical issue before we adjourn.

The avian flu has spread to 15 countries and killed 70 of the 137 individuals it has infected. Scientists are warning that it is only a matter of time before this virus mutates to a new strain that will allow for sustained human-to-human transmission and cause the next pandemic.

The human and economic impact of an influenza pandemic on our Nation would be devastating.

According to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, a severe flu pandemic could infect 90 million U.S. residents and 2 million would die.

Thirty percent of the workforce would become ill and those who survived would miss 3 weeks of work. This lost productivity and decrease in consumer spending could cause a $675 billion reduction in U.S. gross domestic product and move the Nation into a recession.

Perhaps the only thing more troubling than the human and economic consequences of an avian flu pandemic is the fact that our Nation is dangerously unprepared to deal with it.

We are not dedicating enough resources to global surveillance activities that allow us to detect and contain an outbreak of avian flu.

If we are unable to contain a pandemic overseas, our strongest defense at home will be an effective vaccine. However, our domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity is so inadequate it could take nearly a year to produce and distribute a vaccine.

Effective drugs that can slow the spread of a pandemic until a vaccine is developed are only available for 2 percent of our population.

Finally, all of these problems are compounded by the fact that our public health infrastructure cannot handle a pandemic and the medical community, businesses, and general public must be better prepared for a pandemic.

All of these facts are reasons why Congress must immediately address the avian flu threat and why the Senate voted to do just that earlier this year.

I am troubled by reports that congressional Republicans are on the verge of approving about half of the amount approved by the Senate.

Senator Frist rightly pointed out that the threat of pandemic flu is not and should not be a partisan issue. A pandemic strain of flu will not distinguish between Democrats or Republicans.

That is why I hope that Senator Frist will stand with me and will continue to fight for the full funding level approved by the Senate so our Government may begin to prepare and protect our Nation from this looming threat.

Mr. President, in approximately an hour and a half, there will be a vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the PATRIOT Act conference report. Rather than terminate debate on this flawed piece of legislation, the Senate should work harder to achieve a strong, bipartisan PATRIOT Act that

strengthens national security while protecting the privacy of innocent Americans.

Earlier this year, after negotiations that went late into the night, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill to reauthorize and improve the PATRIOT Act. Soon after, the full Senate passed this bill by unanimous consent. Every Senator, Democrat and Republican, approved this reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. Every Democrat and every Republican in the Senate--every one of us--is firmly on record in support of giving law enforcement the appropriate tools to fight terrorism.

We all know the House of Representatives is in shambles. Leadership is in a state of disarray.

The spirit of bipartisanship that led to passage of the Senate bill, because of the problems in the House of Representatives, did not prevail in the conference. Not long after the House appointed conferees, Democratic negotiators were shut out of discussions. In fact, Senator Leahy's staff was directed by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House to leave the room.

The final bill was written by Republican-only conferees working behind closed doors with Justice Department lawyers. The result was an imbalanced conference report that departed significantly from the bipartisan Senate bill.

Chairman Specter, to his credit, joined other conferees in refusing to sign the conference report. Over the next few weeks, he and Senator Leahy worked hard to improve it and succeeded in eliminating some of the worst provisions.

I commend and applaud the efforts of the chairman and our ranking member to work to improve this conference report.

But I am sorry to say, in my view--and in the view of many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--the conference report still does not contain enough checks on the expanded powers granted to the Government by the PATRIOT Act. It simply is not acceptable.

I supported the passage of the original PATRIOT Act in 2001. This was enacted in the days immediately following the vicious attacks on September 11, 2001. I do not regret my vote. Much of the original act consisted of noncontroversial efforts to update and strengthen basic law enforcement authorities. More than 90 percent of the 2001 act is already part of permanent law and will not expire at the end of this year.

We are currently considering renewal of these provisions that were considered so expansive and so vulnerable to abuse that Congress wisely decided to subject them to 4-year sunsets, meaning that after 4 years they had to be renewed or they would fall. The authors of the act wanted Congress to reassess these in a more deliberative manner with the benefit of experience.

The act of 2001 came, as I mentioned, when the country was feeling the devastation of the terrorist attacks of 2001. I, frankly, don't think we took enough time at that time to do it the right way. That is why a number of us demanded the sunset provisions.

Now, more than 4 years later, we are presented with the opportunity to do it right.

While the conference report before us makes certain improvements over the original PATRIOT Act, it still does not strike the right balance.

We can provide the Government with the powers it needs to investigate potential terrorists and terrorist activity and at the same time protect the freedom of innocent Americans.

Liberty and security are not contradictory. Additional congressional and judicial oversight of the Government's surveillance and investigative authorities need not hamper the Government's ability to fight terrorism.

I say to the Presiding Officer, someone whose heritage is from the island of Cuba, where there is very little liberty and very little security, we are in the United States of America. We are not a dictatorship like Cuba. We can have liberty and we can have security.

As I said, additional congressional and judicial oversight of the Government's surveillance and investigative authorities need not hamper the Government's ability to fight terrorism. These checks are needed to ensure that the Government does not overreach or violate the privacy of ordinary American citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Is there any reason to be concerned? Yes. There is a reason to be concerned.

For example, the need for such checks is based on a number of things, not the least of which is the story that ran in the Washington Post in early November of this year after the Senate passed the bill. The story reported that the FBI issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year--30,000. These letters go to businesses. And they say: I want you to tell everything you know about Ron Weich, Gary Myrick, Russ Feingold, Herb Kohl. It doesn't matter who it is. And that person--the names I have mentioned--does not know that they have had this request to give all information about them or any information about them. The person who has been requested to give the information can't tell them. It is against the law to tell them.

These national security letters are issued by FBI agents without any judicial supervision. The third party recipients of these orders, such as banks, phone companies, and Internet service providers, are prohibited, as I have said, from telling anyone that they have been served. The customers whose records are seized will never know that the FBI has gathered their personal information.

For example, the article described an incident at the end of 2003 in which the Department of Homeland Security compiled information of hundreds of thousands of New Year's visitors to Las Vegas. They obtained the records of everyone who had rented a hotel room, car, or storage unit, and every airplane passenger who landed in the city of Las Vegas. They obtained records, how much they paid for their hotel room, did they order any X-rated movies. I don't know what other information they got.

When Las Vegas businesses objected to this effort to gather unprecedented amounts of information on their customers, the FBI responded by serving them with national security letters. According to one law enforcement source quoted in this piece, agents encouraged voluntary disclosure of information by threatening to demand further records, further profiles from the casinos about their guests.

Perhaps worst of all, what happened in Las Vegas did not stay in Las Vegas, but, instead, stayed in Federal databanks. It is still in the Federal databanks. None of the information gathered in that investigation has been purged to this date. The rental and travel records of hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans remain in Government hands.

Las Vegas first; was there any place else? Did they go to the New Year's Eve celebration at Times Square in New York? Did they go to the warm beaches of Florida snooping and spying?

I have three major concerns about this conference report. First, I am disturbed the conference report provides neither meaningful judicial review nor a sunset provision for those provisions regarding national security letters. Instead of protections, this conference report effectively turns these NSLs, as they are referred to, national security letters, into administrative subpoenas. For the first time, the report authorizes the Government to seek a court order to compel compliance with one of these letters. Recipients who do not comply could be found in contempt, fined, or even sent to jail.

A third-party recipient, such as one of the Las Vegas hotels, could theoretically challenge an NSL in court in order to protect the privacy of its customers, but the conference report makes it unlikely such judicial review will matter because the court is not required to find any individualized suspicion that the records sought are connected to a terrorist.

Second, I have significant concerns about section 215, often referred to as the library provision. Under a key provision in the Senate compromise reached this summer, the Government would have been required to show that the records sought under this provision had some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy. But under the conference report we have now before the Senate, the Government may demand sensitive personal information of innocent Americans merely upon a showing that the records are ``relevant'' to a terrorism investigation.

For example, the Government may be broadly suspicious of individuals in a

particular immigrant community. Under section 215, the Government could go to the library in that community and demand the records of library cardholders to see which individuals are reading what. What about someone reading scientific texts, maybe even Smithsonian or one of the magazines people read dealing with automobiles, or Scientific American? Are these people considered terrorist threats?

A court challenge to a section 215 order must be conducted in secret. At the Government's request, the recipient is not permitted to review Government submissions regardless of whether the Government has any national security concerns in that particular case. Moreover, the conference report does not permit any challenge to the automatic permanent gag order under section 215.

Third, the conference report contains sections not included in either the House or Senate bills limiting the right of habeas corpus in cases that have nothing to do with terrorism. These provisions have not been passed by the Senate or the House. One provision would eliminate judicial review of whether a State has an effective system in providing competent lawyers in death penalty cases. That does not belong in this. Such a far-reaching change should not be inserted in an unrelated conference report.

There are many other problems with the conference report that leaves largely in place a definition of domestic terrorism so broad it could be read to cover acts of civil disobedience. For example, a few days ago we had members of the clergy who, believing that the budget before the House and the Senate is immoral, were protesting, saying it is a bad budget. There were a number of arrests. Are these individuals to be deemed domestic terrorists? They could be under the conference report.

The conference report still contains a catchall provision that authorizes a government to conduct a sneak-and-peek search upon a showing that notice would seriously jeopardize an investigation. Sneak and peek, what does it mean? It means they can go into your home, look around, see if there is anything that is incriminating, and then come back out and seek permission to use what they have obtained all without telling you--which I believe is un-American.

As many critics of the bill have observed, a good prosecutor could fit about any search under this provision. I say ``good'' prosecutor any prosecutor. He wouldn't even have to be good.

The Justice Department reported 90 percent of the searches that have taken place under sneak and peek under this act have nothing to do with terrorism. For these and other reasons, this conference report does not meet the American standard. It certainly should not merit Senate approval.

Fortunately, we do not face the choice of accepting this conference report or allowing the 16 PATRIOT Act provisions to expire. I am a cosponsor of S. 2082, introduced by Senator Sununu, to enact a 3-month extension of the expiring PATRIOT Act so we can take the time we need to produce a good bipartisan bill that will have the confidence of the American people.

The majority leader said previously he won't accept such a 3-month extension. I hope, if we fail in invoking cloture, he would reconsider this. I am confident in the end that it would be so much better that we extend this for 3 months to see if we can reach an acceptable goal.

Based on that, I ask unanimous consent the cloture vote be vitiated, the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of Senator Sununu's bill, S. 2082, the 3-month extension of the PATRIOT Act, the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration, the bill be read the third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I will continue to work to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act in a way that gives the Government needed tools to protect national security while placing sensible checks on those expanded powers.

I apologize to all my colleagues. I am sorry I took more time than I should have. I know there is a lot to do. I appreciate everyone's courtesy.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, through the Chair to the distinguished junior Senator from Mississippi, it is my understanding this is the Katrina matter we spoke about last night.

Mr. President, I would say to my friend, we are very close to being able to have that cleared on this side. In fact, I have been very busy since early this morning. I have not had a chance to check with even my staff on this yet. But I think we are close to being able to do something very quickly. So, therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed

to the consideration of S. 2120 introduced earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

This is not the time for a long statement. I especially extend my appreciation to the chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Finance--it has been tough sledding--and, of course, the delegation from

Mississippi, that of the Senator from Louisiana.

I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Louisiana be recognized for 90 seconds.

Mr. President, when the Senate returns in January, we unfortunately will be without one of the finest Senators in this body. Senator Jon Corzine will be moving to New Jersey to serve as its Governor. I want to publicly congratulate Senator Corzine on an impressive victory, and congratulate the people of New Jersey for making an outstanding choice. Their gain is the Senate's loss.

Jon Corzine has been an exceptional Senator largely because he is an exceptional person. It didn't take Senator Corzine long to demonstrate to his colleagues his intelligence and his impressive knowledge of a broad range of political and economic issues. But perhaps even more important, he quickly convinced members on both sides of the aisle that he possessed a genuine decency and humility.

Jon Corzine surely has one of the most impressive resumes of any American anywhere. He has a remarkable record of accomplishment, both in business and public service. But success never went to his head. And if you are fortunate enough to meet him--no matter who you are or what your place in society--you can be sure that Senator Corzine will treat you with respect. He is sincere. He listens. And he's humble. Its almost impossible not to like Jon Corzine.

When Senator Corzine came to Washington just 5 years ago, it didn't take him long to earn both the admiration and the affection of his colleagues. But he wasn't just a nice, smart guy. He also worked on behalf of the citizens of New Jersey and the Nation like there was no tomorrow. And it didn't take long for him to make his mark.

Soon after coming to the Senate, Senator Corzine played a critical role in efforts to respond to widespread abuses at corporations like Enron. At the time, Congress needed someone who understood corporate America and who could help find balanced solutions that made sense. Jon Corzine stepped to the plate and helped develop one of the most important corporate reforms in American history. That legislation, known as Sarbanes-Oxley, may not bear his name, but it surely bears his mark, and all Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude for his contribution.

Senator Corzine's economic expertise also helped him become a real leader on budget and fiscal issues. Since coming to office, he has been an outspoken advocate for fiscal responsibility and a leading defender of Social Security. In the last Congress, he headed the Senate Democratic Task Force on Social Security, where he developed the case against privatization long before the issue was in the headlines. Democrats stopped the administration's misguided attempt to privatize Social Security dead in its tracks this year. Senator Corzine's efforts last year laid the groundwork for much of what we were able to accomplish.

Senator Corzine also has taken up another important cause that still fails to attract sufficient attention: the genocide in Darfur. After prior mass murders abroad, such as the one in Rwanda, many Americans looked back with regret at our Nation's failure to act. Yet today, in the midst of another terrible genocide, the U.S. response is again woefully and tragically inadequate. Jon Corzine has personally gone to Darfur and has worked hard to focus the Nation's attention on this crisis. It has been a thankless task with no apparent political benefits. For his willingness to pursue this moral cause, he deserves real credit from every American. It will be incumbent on all of us to remain focused on this terrible tragedy after he leaves.

Another cause of great importance on which Senator Corzine has taken the lead is the effort to prevent terrorism at chemical plants. As Senator Corzine has told us repeatedly, there are more than 100 chemical facilities around our Nation where a terrorist attack could endanger more than a million people. Unfortunately, security at too many of our plants is grossly inadequate. Senator Corzine recognized the importance of addressing these security risks now before a catastrophe occurs. Each of us has a responsibility to push forward on this issue he has pushed so tirelessly.

I could go on about the many other issues on which Senator Corzine has taken a lead from protecting prescription drug benefits of New Jersey seniors to promoting financial literacy to preserving our environment, blocking cuts in student aid and protecting workers against unsafe conditions. In his relatively short time in the Senate, Senator Corzine has been one of our most active Senators and he has had an impact on a surprisingly broad range of issues.

I also want to take a moment on behalf of the Senate Democratic caucus to publicly thank Senator Corzine for his work in the last Congress as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Senator Corzine had a tough Job and was dealt a tough hand. But he worked extremely hard, as he always does, and he did an excellent job.

Let me also express my appreciation to Senator Corzine for selecting an outstanding member of Congress to replace him. While we will miss Senator Corzine greatly, Bob Menendez is going to be an excellent Senator for New Jersey. It is a credit to Senator Corzine to have chosen such a talented and committed public servant, who I am confident will not only represent New Jersey well but will also help this body better represent the great diversity of our Nation.

Now Senator Corzine moves from Washington to Trenton, where he will take on some very difficult challenges. But, nobody should ever underestimate Jon Corzine. The people of New Jersey have selected a man who not only has extraordinary talent but someone who always give it everything he has. I know he will serve them well and I know at the end of the day, he will remain what he is today: a kind, humble, and principled person who represents the very best of our Nation.

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

Mr. President, this morning the Senate voted to continue debating on the conference report on the PATRIOT Act. Clearly, Senators believe we can do better in protecting the privacy of innocent Americans while we fight terrorism. No one seriously believes that the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act should be allowed to lapse while this debate continues.

I am disappointed that our distinguished majority leader objected twice to a unanimous consent to extend the expiring provisions of the act for 3 months. I cannot believe that my distinguished friend, the majority leader,

wants these authorities to expire. I do not believe the President of the United States would be willing to let these provisions expire when we all agree they are important tools for our Nation's law enforcement authorities. It would be irresponsible and a dereliction of duty for the administration to allow these provisions to expire. By refusing to reauthorize these parts of the PATRIOT Act, the President and the Republican leadership are playing politics with the American people's safety.

We have bipartisan support for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. That was proven in a unanimous vote in the Senate. We want a 3-month extension of the PATRIOT Act in its current form so that we can pass a better bill than the one that came before the Senate today in the form of a conference report, a better bill that will have the confidence of the American people. The American people are afraid. They are afraid of Big Brother. We, this great country, should not become Big Brother. We need more checks in this law to protect the privacy of ordinary American citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism. I support giving the Government the tools it needs to fight terrorism. I voted for the first PATRIOT Act, but we need more oversight and checks to protect against Government overreaching and abuse of these tools.

We have had these years to find out how the first PATRIOT Act worked. We know there were problems with the first PATRIOT Act. We need to correct these problems. Just as Senator McCain persuaded the President, we needed to check potential excesses in interrogation tactics. We also need to ensure that we have put in place checks on the Government's power to trample on the privacy of innocent Americans.

I would hope people would understand that legislation is the art of compromise and that the Republican leadership in the Senate, in the House, and the White House should move to work on a compromise, accept our 3-month suggestion, giving Senators Leahy and Specter, the leaders of our Judiciary Committee, time to work out the differences.

Mr. President, make a few remarks about final passage of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Extension Act of 2005. Let me start by thanking Senators Sarbanes, Dodd, Shelby and Bennett for their tireless effort in the last several months to pass this critical piece of legislation. These Senators worked through significant differences on the substance of this bill and ultimately reached a compromise with the House that extends the basic structure of this important program for another 2 years, and I commend them for those efforts.

The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, commonly referred to as TRIA, has proven to be an effective program that has made terrorism risk insurance available to commercial propertyholders and has provided businesses meaningful access to coverage in a post-9/11 world. The program has made sure that the American economy and markets function in the face of a still-present threat of a terrorist attack. In my home State of Nevada, large construction projects and jobs were threatened because of uncertainty in the terrorism insurance market created by TRIA's imminent expiration. Extending TRIA will eliminate that uncertainty and provide an economic backstop in the event of another terrorist attack in this country.

Our Nation's economy will be more stable now that TRIA will be extended, but I remind my colleagues that this legislation only extends the program through the end of 2007. Fortunately, the legislation mandates that the President's Working Group on Financial Markets consult with other stakeholders and come up with an analysis of the long-term availability and affordability of terrorism risk insurance. I look forward to future discussions and continued work on crafting a permanent solution to these problems.

I understand the difficulties of the distinguished Republican leader, especially these last few days of this session of the Congress, but I would say that one way to expedite this is to get the Defense appropriations bill over here as quickly as possible and move in the ordinary course. I have said on the record and off the record, trying to stick this ANWR provision in a place it does not belong is going to create for this body untoward problems in the future.

I am a long timer of the Appropriations Committee and the rule that is now in effect dealing with the scope of the conference; that is, the matters in the conference report that come back to the Senate floor have to be pertinent to the subject matter of the legislation that is taken to conference.

We could complete the Defense appropriations bill in a matter of minutes but for this. There are people of goodwill on both sides of the aisle who do not like that process of trying to stick on this bill the unimaginable. I was not happy when earlier this year we lost on ANWR. The bill went out of here and the place where it could legally be put in a bill, that is reconciliation spending, was stripped by the House of Representatives. As a result of that, now we come back with this suggestion that they are going to stick it on the Defense appropriations bill.

This is a body that lives by rules. We cannot be changing them just because the other side has more votes. So I would simply say to the distinguished majority leader, I hope he would help us stop this mischievous thing. I hope we have more of my friends on the other side of the aisle join with us in this, which is the right thing to do.

I have heard the senior Senator from Arizona give speeches on this matter numerous times: Why did you put that in conference? Those are things within the scope. I cannot imagine how the Senator from Arizona must feel about putting something in a bill that has nothing relating to the scope.

I say to all Senators that one way to wind up this session in a very positive vein is passing the Defense appropriations bill, not having to go through steps that would take us to have to invoke cloture on the Defense appropriations bill, change the rules of the Senate, change precedence in the Senate.

I am terribly disappointed this is even being contemplated. I am willing to work with the distinguished leader and try to work things out this weekend. I do not contemplate any votes that would be necessary. We have to do the continuing resolution and we will complete that as soon as we get it. On my side I am not aware of any amendments on that. I spoke earlier this evening to the distinguished ranking member of the Armed Services Committee and he said he and the chairman, Senator Warner, are at a point where they can complete that legislation very quickly, and I hope that is the case. If we could finish Defense authorization, Defense appropriations, we could be out of here on Sunday.

Mr. President, I wish I had the words to express the thoughts I have in my heart now. I love history. I love the Senate. I have spent a lot of my life here. The mere fact that I am a Senator is, every day, hard for me to comprehend. But I am, and I am so thankful to the people in Nevada for allowing me to serve.

But I want to say to the senior Senator from the State of Virginia that when the history books are written about this institution and someone flips through like a dictionary, wanting to have described what a U.S. Senator should be, John Warner has to be near the top of that list, if not at the top. He is a man who is a gentleman. I have served with him now for 23 years. He is a man who believes in this institution and has the record to prove it. He is a person who is a good member of his political party, but he is also a patriot. As important as the two- party system is to our country, to the Senator from Virginia, party comes second, country comes first.

As I said, I don't have the ability to express my conviction about this man. But the statement he just made, his off-the-cuff statement, is what the Senate is all about. It is about protecting this country, the individual rights of Members of the Senate, and that is why John Warner is a great Senator.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the life of Preston Robert ``Bob'' Tisch, who died this past November after a battle with cancer.

Bob left a permanent impression on many lives, including my own. He was a pillar in his community, well-liked and respected, considerate, wise, and passionate about life and serving others. He will be missed.

Bob was born in New York City and proudly lived there for most of his life. He was chairman of the board of Loews Corporation, a company he cofounded along with his late brother, Lawrence. Bob was also chairman and cochief executive officer of the New York Football Giants.

Bob was a proud New Yorker and greatly assisted in enhancing New York's position as an international business center. He held a number of civic posts, including chairman of the New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau, founding chairman of the New York City Convention and Exhibition Center Corporation, chairman of the New York City Partnership and the New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Bob believed that along with success comes great responsibility and exemplified this by giving back to his country and community. He served as chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Democratic National Conventions held in New York City in 1976 and 1980. From 1986 to 1988, he served as U.S. Postmaster General. In May 1990, Mayor David Dinkins appointed him New York City's Ambassador to Washington, DC.

He also served chairman of New York City Public Private Initiatives, a public-private partnership that funds vital community programs, and was a founding director of New York City Meals-on-Wheels. A graduate of New York City public schools, Bob founded Take the Field, a nonprofit organization dedicated to renovating the athletic fields of New York City's public high schools.

With Bob's passing, we have lost an extraordinary philanthropist, businessman, and a great American. I express my heartfelt sympathies to Joan, his wife of 57 years, his sons Steven and Jonathon, daughter Laurie, and the entire Tisch family. May they be comforted by all that Bob did to enrich the world.

Mr. President, I rise today for Senator Ensign, Senator Bennett and myself to introduce a bill to increase the safety and security of our Nation's nuclear power infrastructure, The Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Security Act of 2005.

I am convinced that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will never be built because of the myriad of scientific, safety and technical problems in which it is mired. It simply is neither safe nor secure, as illustrated by several significant scientific, legal, and budgetary setbacks this past year.

Here are some of the highlights: On July 9, 2004, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the people of Nevada in a lawsuit to stop the proposed Yucca Mountain project. The court decided that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's radiation standard for the site was not stringent enough to protect the public from the significant risks associated with nuclear waste and failed to follow the recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences.

On August 31, 2004, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain document database, saying it had failed to make public many of the documents that it had in its possession. The Board said, ``Given the 15 years that DOE had to gather, review, and produce its documents and the fact that the date of production, and the incompleteness of its privilege review, it is clear to us that DOE did not meet its obligation, in good faith, to make all reasonable efforts to make all documentary materials available.''

On October 4, 2004, the DOE Inspector General found that DOE has given away more than $500,000 worth of Yucca Mountain construction equipment in 2003. Half a million dollars is a tremendous amount of the people's money to waste.

On November 22, 2004, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said DOE does not have a plan for safely transporting nuclear waste to the proposed repository.

On February 7, 2005, Dr. Margaret Chu, most recently the Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said the project would be delayed until 2012 and that DOE's license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would not be filed until December 2005, delayed a year. To date, the license application still has not been filed.

On February 8, 2005, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board have called for hearings to review concerns over the corrosion of the titanium drip shields that are intended to keep water from leaking into casks inside Yucca Mountain.

On February 28, 2005, a DOE official said the proposed Yucca Mountain repository may not open until 2015.

On March 16, 2005, DOE revealed that documents and models about water infiltration at Yucca Mountain, a key issue, had been falsified.

On July 18, 2005, DOE announced that it will use dedicated train service for its rail transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste to Yucca Mountain, a shift from two decades of administration policy that ignores the fact that about one-third of reactor sites are not capable of shipping fuel by rail.

On August 22, 2005, EPA published its revised radiation standards for the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level waste dump. These standards are wholly inadequate, do not meet the law's requirements and do not protect public health and safety.

On October 13, 2005, DOE began a series of actions to overhaul the Yucca Mountain project. We are going back to the drawing board, frequently revisiting proposals discarded decades ago as unsafe or unworkable.

On October 25, 2005, DOE announced that it would be redesigning the spent fuel storage process, both the containers and facilities.

On November 16, 2005, the DOE Inspector General announced that DOE has ignored numerous admitted instances of falsification of technical and scientific date on the project, showing that years of quality assurance problems continue.

On November 17, 2005, DOE sent a detailed letter to its contractor specifying some of the desired changes in the site proposal.

At the December 7, 2005, at the NRC-DOE quarterly meeting on Yucca Mountain, DOE announced that it expects to re-baseline the project mid- 2006, requiring many of the technical and scientific analyses to be redone.

On November 19, 2005, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill became law, cutting the Yucca Mountain budget to $577 million, half of what DOE said it would need to keep the project on track.

In numerous media reports, DOE has confirmed that it is preparing a legislative package that addresses Yucca Mountain. Clearly, DOE cannot meet the current public health, safety and technical requirements.

It should be clear to anyone that the proposed Yucca Mountain project is scientifically unsound and that it cannot meet the requirements of law. It is not going anywhere. Delay after delay costs the taxpayers billions and billions of dollars for a project that the courts have ruled does not meet sufficient safety or public health standards. I do not believe that Yucca Mountain will ever open, and Nevada and the country will be safer for our successful efforts to stop the project.

Yet, we must safely store spent nuclear fuel.

A 1979 study by the Sandia National Laboratory determined that, if all the water were to drain from a spent fuel pool, dense-packed spent fuel would likely heat up to the point where it would burst and then catch fire, releasing massive quantities of volatile radioactive fission products into the air. Both the short-term and the long-term contamination impacts of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. The consequences would be so severe and would affect such a large area that all precautions must be taken to preclude them. This is the type of serious, avoidable risk against which all the Nation's nuclear sites can and should be protected to counter terrorist threats.

It is time to look at other nuclear waste alternatives. Fortunately, the technology to realize a viable, safe and secure alternative is readily available and can be fully implemented within 6 years if we act now. That technology is dry cask storage.

The technology for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage casks has improved dramatically in the past 20 years. Seventeen cask designs have. been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which says that spent nuclear fuel can be safely stored using dry cask storage on-site at the nuclear power plants for at least 100 years. Already, dry casks safely store spent nuclear fuel at 34 sites throughout the country, many of them near communities, water ways and transportation routes. The Nuclear Energy Institute has projected 83 of the 103 active reactors will have dry storage by 2050.

Compared to water-filled pools, dry storage casks are significantly less vulnerable to natural and human-induced disasters, including floods, tornadoes, temperature extremes, sabotage, and missile attacks. In addition, dry storage casks are not subject to drainage risks, whether intentional or accidental.

On March 28, 2005, the Washington Post revealed that a classified National Academy of Sciences report concluded that the government does not fully understand the risks a terrorist attack

could pose to spent nuclear fuel pools and that it ought to expedite the removal of the fuel to dry storage casks that are more resilient to attack.

Our bill requires commercial nuclear utilities to safely transfer spent nuclear fuel from temporary storage in water-filled pools to secure storage in licensed, on-site dry cask storage facilities. After transferal, the Secretary of Energy will take title and full responsibility for the possession, stewardship, maintenance, and monitoring of all spent fuel thus safely stored. Finally, our bill establishes a grant program to compensate utilities for expenses associated with transferring the waste. The costs of transferring the waste and providing the grants will be offset by withdrawals from the utility-funded Nuclear Waste Fund.

Nuclear facilities currently provide 20 percent of our Nation's electricity, but in light of the events of September 11, they also present a security risk that we simply must address. There cannot be any weak links in the chain of security of our Nation's nuclear power infrastructure. There is absolutely no justification for endangering the public by densely packing nuclear waste in vulnerable spent fuel pools when it can be stored safely and securely in dry casks. This bill guarantees all Americans that our Nation's nuclear waste will be stored in the safest way possible.

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

Mr. President, I rise today for Senator Ensign, Senator Bennett and myself to introduce a bill to increase the safety and security of our Nation's nuclear power infrastructure, The Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Security Act of 2005.

I am convinced that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will never be built because of the myriad of scientific, safety and technical problems in which it is mired. It simply is neither safe nor secure, as illustrated by several significant scientific, legal, and budgetary setbacks this past year.

Here are some of the highlights: On July 9, 2004, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the people of Nevada in a lawsuit to stop the proposed Yucca Mountain project. The court decided that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's radiation standard for the site was not stringent enough to protect the public from the significant risks associated with nuclear waste and failed to follow the recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences.

On August 31, 2004, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain document database, saying it had failed to make public many of the documents that it had in its possession. The Board said, ``Given the 15 years that DOE had to gather, review, and produce its documents and the fact that the date of production, and the incompleteness of its privilege review, it is clear to us that DOE did not meet its obligation, in good faith, to make all reasonable efforts to make all documentary materials available.''

On October 4, 2004, the DOE Inspector General found that DOE has given away more than $500,000 worth of Yucca Mountain construction equipment in 2003. Half a million dollars is a tremendous amount of the people's money to waste.

On November 22, 2004, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board said DOE does not have a plan for safely transporting nuclear waste to the proposed repository.

On February 7, 2005, Dr. Margaret Chu, most recently the Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said the project would be delayed until 2012 and that DOE's license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would not be filed until December 2005, delayed a year. To date, the license application still has not been filed.

On February 8, 2005, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board have called for hearings to review concerns over the corrosion of the titanium drip shields that are intended to keep water from leaking into casks inside Yucca Mountain.

On February 28, 2005, a DOE official said the proposed Yucca Mountain repository may not open until 2015.

On March 16, 2005, DOE revealed that documents and models about water infiltration at Yucca Mountain, a key issue, had been falsified.

On July 18, 2005, DOE announced that it will use dedicated train service for its rail transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste to Yucca Mountain, a shift from two decades of administration policy that ignores the fact that about one-third of reactor sites are not capable of shipping fuel by rail.

On August 22, 2005, EPA published its revised radiation standards for the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level waste dump. These standards are wholly inadequate, do not meet the law's requirements and do not protect public health and safety.

On October 13, 2005, DOE began a series of actions to overhaul the Yucca Mountain project. We are going back to the drawing board, frequently revisiting proposals discarded decades ago as unsafe or unworkable.

On October 25, 2005, DOE announced that it would be redesigning the spent fuel storage process, both the containers and facilities.

On November 16, 2005, the DOE Inspector General announced that DOE has ignored numerous admitted instances of falsification of technical and scientific date on the project, showing that years of quality assurance problems continue.

On November 17, 2005, DOE sent a detailed letter to its contractor specifying some of the desired changes in the site proposal.

At the December 7, 2005, at the NRC-DOE quarterly meeting on Yucca Mountain, DOE announced that it expects to re-baseline the project mid- 2006, requiring many of the technical and scientific analyses to be redone.

On November 19, 2005, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill became law, cutting the Yucca Mountain budget to $577 million, half of what DOE said it would need to keep the project on track.

In numerous media reports, DOE has confirmed that it is preparing a legislative package that addresses Yucca Mountain. Clearly, DOE cannot meet the current public health, safety and technical requirements.

It should be clear to anyone that the proposed Yucca Mountain project is scientifically unsound and that it cannot meet the requirements of law. It is not going anywhere. Delay after delay costs the taxpayers billions and billions of dollars for a project that the courts have ruled does not meet sufficient safety or public health standards. I do not believe that Yucca Mountain will ever open, and Nevada and the country will be safer for our successful efforts to stop the project.

Yet, we must safely store spent nuclear fuel.

A 1979 study by the Sandia National Laboratory determined that, if all the water were to drain from a spent fuel pool, dense-packed spent fuel would likely heat up to the point where it would burst and then catch fire, releasing massive quantities of volatile radioactive fission products into the air. Both the short-term and the long-term contamination impacts of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. The consequences would be so severe and would affect such a large area that all precautions must be taken to preclude them. This is the type of serious, avoidable risk against which all the Nation's nuclear sites can and should be protected to counter terrorist threats.

It is time to look at other nuclear waste alternatives. Fortunately, the technology to realize a viable, safe and secure alternative is readily available and can be fully implemented within 6 years if we act now. That technology is dry cask storage.

The technology for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage casks has improved dramatically in the past 20 years. Seventeen cask designs have. been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which says that spent nuclear fuel can be safely stored using dry cask storage on-site at the nuclear power plants for at least 100 years. Already, dry casks safely store spent nuclear fuel at 34 sites throughout the country, many of them near communities, water ways and transportation routes. The Nuclear Energy Institute has projected 83 of the 103 active reactors will have dry storage by 2050.

Compared to water-filled pools, dry storage casks are significantly less vulnerable to natural and human-induced disasters, including floods, tornadoes, temperature extremes, sabotage, and missile attacks. In addition, dry storage casks are not subject to drainage risks, whether intentional or accidental.

On March 28, 2005, the Washington Post revealed that a classified National Academy of Sciences report concluded that the government does not fully understand the risks a terrorist attack

could pose to spent nuclear fuel pools and that it ought to expedite the removal of the fuel to dry storage casks that are more resilient to attack.

Our bill requires commercial nuclear utilities to safely transfer spent nuclear fuel from temporary storage in water-filled pools to secure storage in licensed, on-site dry cask storage facilities. After transferal, the Secretary of Energy will take title and full responsibility for the possession, stewardship, maintenance, and monitoring of all spent fuel thus safely stored. Finally, our bill establishes a grant program to compensate utilities for expenses associated with transferring the waste. The costs of transferring the waste and providing the grants will be offset by withdrawals from the utility-funded Nuclear Waste Fund.

Nuclear facilities currently provide 20 percent of our Nation's electricity, but in light of the events of September 11, they also present a security risk that we simply must address. There cannot be any weak links in the chain of security of our Nation's nuclear power infrastructure. There is absolutely no justification for endangering the public by densely packing nuclear waste in vulnerable spent fuel pools when it can be stored safely and securely in dry casks. This bill guarantees all Americans that our Nation's nuclear waste will be stored in the safest way possible.

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

Mr. President, I reluctantly oppose the legislation implementing the U.S.-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement. I have nothing against expanded trade with Bahrain, and I know that there is plenty in this FTA that is appealing to the U.S. business community. However, this agreement is another example of the misplaced priorities in the Bush administration's flawed trade policy, which can best be described as a policy of ``fiddling while Rome is burning.''

If you were to ask Americans to list their top trade priorities, I think they would suggest the following: dealing with the enormous trade deficit, on pace to exceed $700 billion this year; addressing the rise of China; meeting the challenges of outsourcing and globalization; enforcing our existing agreements and rules for fair trade; and perhaps global negotiations in the World Trade Organization. A trade agreement with Bahrain would be nowhere near the top of the list; it probably would not even be on the list at all.

Yet, here we are, with the Bahrain FTA as the big trade item to close out the year. The U.S. has a trade deficit with China that is on pace to exceed $200 billion this year--more than a quarter of the entire U.S. trade deficit. Last year, China passed the U.S. as the largest exporter of high-tech information technology and communications products. There is no doubt that the rise of China presents an extraordinary challenge to the United States. Yet, the Bush administration has essentially no policy dealing with China's currency manipulation and the accompanying U.S. indebtedness to the government of China, rampant piracy of U.S. intellectual property, WTO violations, forced technology transfer requirements, and industrial policy in areas critical to the U.S. like semiconductors and automobiles.

Instead, we have the Bahrain FTA, which involves .03 percent of total U.S. trade.

The Bush administration has proposed no policies in the face of outsourcing and the revolution of globalization to ensure that America keeps good-paying jobs and remains the most competitive economy in the world. They basically say, ``Don't Worry, Be Happy.''

Instead, the U.S. uses the scarce resources of the U.S. Trade Representative to negotiate an FTA with Bahrain, which has an economy one-tenth-of-one percent the size of the U.S. economy.

When it comes to enforcing our current agreements, the Bush administration has been asleep at the wheel. While the Clinton administration brought on average 11 WTO cases per year to knock down foreign barriers to U.S. exports, the Bush administration has filed fewer than three cases per year.

Instead, they have focused their energies on negotiating an FTA which is so small that the independent ITC has stated, ``the effect of the FTA on total U.S. exports is likely to be minimal.''

Meanwhile, the WTO negotiations have delayed and floundered. Ironic may not be the right word, but it is a fitting testament to this administration's skewed priorities that Senators are stuck in Washington debating the Bahrain FTA this week, and so were not able to travel to Hong Kong to provide oversight on the WTO negotiations--which could have an impact thousands of times larger than a trade agreement with Bahrain.

Looking at the merits of the Bahrain FTA in isolation, let me note that I applaud the Government of Bahrain. It has been a good U.S. ally and is an important moderate Arab and Islamic country. I wish the people of Bahrain well and hope that the U.S. and Bahrain will continue to enjoy good relations, including trading relations. I also note that there are many good provisions in this agreement to ensure protection for U.S. intellectual property rights, to prevent expropriations of U.S. investments, to reduce barriers to U.S. exports, and to expand the access of U.S. service providers to Bahrain's market.

It is regrettable, though, that the Bush administration followed its flawed model in this FTA. In short, the interests of the business community are taken care of, but the interests of the average American are not. I certainly understand that many of the businesses that care about these FTAs make important contributions to the U.S. economy and are a critical source of employment, exports, and innovation. I value those contributions and think for the most part the chapters and provisions of the FTA important to the U.S. business community make sense. What I do have a problem with, however, is the fact that our trade agreements provide short shrift to areas of interest to human beings, including workers' rights and environmental protection.

When it comes to transparency in government regulation, telecommunications regulation, financial services regulation, other services regulation,

and e-commerce, we include provisions that force our trading partners to change their laws. When it comes to protection for intellectual property rights, our trade agreements have provisions that force our trading partners to adopt some of the highest levels of IP protection in the world. In each case, if a country violates the rules in the FTA, it is subject to trade sanctions.

Yet, when it comes to respect for the most basic, internationally- recognized worker rights and respect for the environment, our trade agreements say, ``You don't need to change your laws, just enforce whatever you have.'' If our trading partners violate even this weak rule, then they pay a fine; and the fine gets turned around and given right back to them. Somehow, trade sanctions imposed to vindicate the interests of business are just ``tough enforcement,'' but trade sanctions for worker rights or the environment are ``protectionism.''

Worse, our FTAs would allow a country to weaken its laws related to workers' rights and the environment, and the United States would have absolutely no effective recourse. If Bahrain turns around and allows child labor, or turns around and prohibits its guest workers in export industries from joining unions, then the best the U.S. can do is seek consultations with Bahrain. This is a step back from what the Clinton administration negotiated, which would have allowed the U.S. to pursue full dispute settlement on all of the labor provisions in the FTA. It is also a step back from existing U.S. trade preferences programs, which allow the U.S. to impose sanctions on countries that are not adequately protecting basic workers rights.

What is it about worker rights and environmental protection that warrants this disparate treatment? The same people who argue that these provisions do not belong in trade agreements bemoan U.S. labor standards and environmental rules, arguing that they hurt U.S. competitiveness and add to our trade deficit. It is absurd and dishonest to say on the one hand that these rules affect competition, and then on the other that they do not belong in an agreement that is designed to set the terms of competition.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the good work done by Democrats in the other chamber, who pushed and pushed and got Bahrain to agree to make important reforms to its labor laws to bring them into conformity with internationally-recognized standards. And, to its credit, USTR agreed to monitor Bahrain's implementation and enforcement of these changes as part of the FTA. I applaud the efforts of these congressmen. Their hard work on this and other FTAs should shame anyone who has tried to discredit their cause by calling it protectionist or xenophobic. I regret that I will not be joining them in support of this agreement, however. The bottom line is that this agreement does not contain binding, enforceable rules that treat respect for workers' rights and the environment on the same footing as respect for corporate interests, so I will oppose it.

Separately, I want to address Bahrain's boycott against Israel. For decades now, the United States has had a policy to oppose the Arab League boycott against Israel. There is an entire office in the Department of Commerce tasked with implementing this anti-boycott policy. Congress has also directed USTR to ``vigorously oppose'' WTO admission for countries that engage in the boycott. In my view, it is an implicit corollary of this latter rule that the U.S. should not enter into bilateral trade agreements with countries that participate in the boycott.

Bahrain continues to participate in the boycott, however. To its credit, Bahrain has terminated participation in the secondary and tertiary aspects of the boycott. And, Bahrain has stated in a letter to USTR that ``the Kingdom of Bahrain recognizes the need to dismantle the primary boycott of Israel and is beginning efforts to achieve that goal.'' That said, it is worth noting that even the primary boycott can hurt U.S. producers. The primary boycott prohibits imports with Israeli content. So, U.S. companies that use Israeli inputs could be barred from exporting a mostly U.S.-made product to Bahrain.

USTR and supporters of this agreement argue that the quoted statement constitutes a binding commitment by Bahrain to eliminate the primary boycott. I hope they are correct, but I am not so sure. First, the lower house of Bahrain's parliament--the only democratically elected body in Bahrain's national government--recently voted resoundingly to keep the boycott in place. Second, it is not as clear as I would like that the statement at issue has the character of a legal obligation rather than a statement of unilateral intent. While I hope that Bahrain has officially committed itself to eliminating the primary boycott against Israel once and for all, there is certainly no way for the U.S. to bring an enforcement action against Bahrain if it fails to do so.

I think the antiboycott policy we have had in place for decades now is the correct one. We should not be entering into trade agreements-- whether bilaterally or through the WTO--with countries that enforce the boycott against Israel--primary, secondary or tertiary. It is disturbing to me that the Bush administration has been quietly moving away from this policy--here in the FTA today, as well as in its support for Saudi Arabia's WTO accession this week.