Floor Statements

Mr. President, while the distinguished majority whip is on the floor, Senator Bingaman has been working for more than a year on a medal that would go to those military men and women who participated in Afghanistan and Iraq. That matter has passed the House of Representatives without a single dissenting vote. Senator Bingaman has informed me he has spoken to Senator Warner, and Senator Warner believes this matter should come up at the earliest possible date.

In short, we hope we can get to this important piece of legislation today. We could do it very quickly. There would be very short speeches. I bet we could do it in an hour evenly divided. There would be no one against it, but both sides could speak in favor of this legislation. It would pass without a dissenting vote.

I think it would send a tremendous message to the fighting men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq that they would receive a medal for their participation in those conflicts in those two countries.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, did I hear the Senator say that the first arguments took 3 days?

Now, in the Supreme Court, if you get an hour, you are lucky.

Mr. President, I say to the Senator, what a great history lesson we had today. We have only heard a short bit of the knowledge of the Senator from South Carolina. The Senator from South Carolina was one of the originals who decided things were not the way they should be in the South. He has been able to work through the process and stand for what he believed, and because of this, the people of South Carolina have elected him time after time. It is obvious why. He is a man who is a World War II combat veteran, someone we admire so much. We are all disappointed that he has indicated he is not going to seek reelection. It is a disappointment to me.

I cannot express in words what a role model he has been for me. Not only can he stand and speak, as he did today, about the most serious subjects that face the world, but he has one of the best senses of humor of anyone I have dealt with.

Mr. President, we don't have anybody from the majority in the Chamber. I want to reiterate what I said earlier in the day. We are basically in morning business today. There is no legislative business on the floor. Senator Bingaman--I am speaking for him and for everyone on this side of the aisle--badly wants to do Calendar No. 507, H.R. 3104 on the Calendar of Business, which is a piece of legislation to provide for the establishment of separate campaign medals to be awarded to members of the uniformed services who participated in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and members of the uniformed services who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom, of course, in Iraq. I cannot imagine why we cannot do this bill, which passed the House unanimously.

I hear on the other side that ``we are trying to clear it.'' What in the world does that mean? Is somebody opposing bringing this bill to the floor? The problem we have is that the day is winding down. As we all know, people have things to do in their States and around the country. They are going to be leaving. If we don't get something within the next 35 minutes or so, there won't be enough Senators here to allow a vote to take place.

So, again, I say to the majority, why can we not do this piece of legislation? It is something Senator Bingaman has worked on for more than a year. It is important legislation, something we should do. I am terribly disappointed that I am told they are trying to clear it. I don't understand what that means. Clear what? Is someone going to vote against medals for people who participated in those two theaters of war? Is it just because it is Senator Bingaman's idea. I don't know what it is. I hope we get real and move forward on this legislation. I apologize for making my friends wait.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on the side of the Democrats?

Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, and 15 minutes to Senator Stabenow.

Mr. President, I ask the Senator to modify the consent agreement to say that the time from now until 1:45 be equally divided between the two sides. It is more than 2 hours.

I announce that the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Hollings) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Hollings) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

While the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire is on the floor, we could finish this bill before noon if things worked out right. I say, through the Chair to my friend, I spoke yesterday to the senior Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici. He is interested, as are a number of other Senators, in moving forward on the mental health parity legislation. This may be the window that we can do that, and I say that because what we have been waiting on is a proposed amendment dealing with the scope of that matter from the distinguished chairman of the HELP Committee. I ask my friend if he has an idea when that might be ready because that is all that is holding up going to our legislation, as I understand it.

As with all things in life, communication is everything, and I think this communication has been most helpful. I will do everything I can to get the distinguished chairman a copy of the proposed amendment as soon as possible. As I said, this would be an opportunity to do that. As I said last night in closing, this will have been a good week for us. We have been able to finish the FSC bill. We are going to be able to finish this IDEA legislation tomorrow, and if we can do the mental health parity, that would be three very important pieces of legislation in 1 week. For us in the Senate, that says a lot.

Mr. President, I say in response to my friend, we have confirmed 173. I think we are in a position to do more. Although there are some negotiations going on dealing with recess appointments, as soon as that matter is resolved--and I think it can be with a matter of a phone call from the White House--we could move forward and set up votes on maybe not all the judges but a lot of them.

Madam President, whenever I hear the distinguished Senator from Louisiana speak, I think of the wonderful weekend I had in New Orleans. We were working with her on some projects. She wanted me to look at some projects that were funded in the Energy and Water Subcommittee that I have had the pleasure of chairing and being the ranking member on over the years. I have been in New Orleans on other occasions to be a tourist, but this was the first time I had ever gone there to work.

I had wanted to see New Orleans for years. One of the things I told the Senator I wanted to see was these great pumps. New Orleans is below sea level, and to keep it dry their pumps go 24 hours a day. They are big pumps. I had read an article in the Smithsonian Magazine about these old, old pumps that had not been changed since before the turn of the century that still keep New Orleans dry.

So I had the pleasure of going there and seeing something that I wanted to see. The place where these big old pumps were was as clean as a restaurant.

We then went to a big lake where I was----

Yes, Lake Pontchartrain, and I was so educated. For decades, they had been taking the shells from crustaceans out of the bottom of that lake and using them to pave roads around the city of New Orleans. They finally stopped as a matter of law, but in my mind I could not imagine there could be that many shells. Anyway, it was a wonderful trip.

It was highlighted by my trip to Senator Landrieu's childhood home. We took a vehicle there. They were doing a lot of construction in the area. Her mother and father live in the same home that she and I think 9 of her 10 siblings were raised. She was raised in quite a small home, and the famous Moon Landrieu, who had served as mayor of New Orleans and cabinet secretary, was there making and cooking candy.

My payoff for going to New Orleans was I got candy from the great Moon Landrieu that I took home to my wife. Of course, one could see in the Landrieus the pride for their famous daughter. Last year she gave a speech that is one of the finest speeches I have ever heard. It was not long after that that I sent a copy of her speech on the Senate floor to her mom and dad. The next time I saw them, you could just see the pride they have telling me about the speech Senator Landrieu had given. They were so proud of her.

So any time I hear her speak, I cannot take out of my mind from where she came and what a great contribution she makes to the Senate.

One of my favorite stories is a story about David Selznik, the great movie producer. He is the man who produced the movie ``Gone With The Wind.'' As he had made the movie, at that time they had in Hollywood something called the Hays Commission. It was in effect a committee of censorship. They looked at the movie and made a determination that he would have to strike from the movie the words, ``Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'' But Selznik thought that was an important part of his movie and he would not back down. So they were at loggerheads. Would the movie be able to go forward? Because without the Hays Commission stamp of approval, the movie could not go forward. So they made a compromise. They said: We will compromise this. You can go ahead, you can keep those words, ``Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn,'' but if you keep that in the movie you are going to be assessed a fine of $15,000, and $15,000 was a lot of money then, even as it is now. But Selznik agreed to pay that. And that, of course, is one of the most memorable lines in the history of Hollywood.

The reason I mention that is Selznik and the Hays Commission realized that in life there is a time to fight and a time to compromise. The compromise worked out well in this instance.

Compromise, in our business, being legislators, should not be a dirty word. Legislation is the art of compromise, the art of building consensus.

Gerald Ford, whom I met when I was a young Lieutenant Governor and he was Vice President of the United States, was such a nice man. When I did meet him, the first big shot I met, shaking his hand, he sent me an autographed picture. My two little children at the time, when the picture came in, drew all over this picture as if it were a coloring book. But we got the colors off of it as much as we could. It was always smudged. I still have that picture.

Anyway, that is off the subject. But Gerald Ford was so nice--what a nice man. The reason I mention Gerald Ford today is because he said something I believe so strongly. He said, ``Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.'' I believe that. I see the Presiding Officer here--she, on a number of occasions, has been the key person in allowing us to get things done because she has been willing to compromise, in effect, break from the pack and say this is what I need to do.

None of us should compromise our principles, but we should be willing to work together, to seek solutions we can live with for the good of the country. I have been in Congress now more than two decades and I have learned the way you get legislation done in this Congress and in the Senate specifically is when people work together and are willing to compromise.

I have had the good fortune in the years I have been a legislator to have, on the State level and on the Federal level, legislation I have produced that is now law. But there is not a single piece of legislation I have ever written that is as I wrote it. It has all been changed. That is what you have to do to get things done. If people are--and I use this term, not in the true sense of the word--so principled they are not willing to get anything changed, they are not going to get anything done very often.

I know that to be a legislator you have to be willing to compromise. There are some who say this is not right. Some say you have a majority, you should always be able to get your way. Our Founding Fathers didn't believe that. The majority, you see, doesn't need a Constitution to protect them. The majority can get what they want wherever they are. The Constitution of the United States was written to protect minorities. Our Founding Fathers created a government of checks and balances. They wanted the majority to have power, but not all of it.

That is why, for example, we have an electoral college system. The electoral college system creates some unfairness in the minds of people. The result of the last Presidential election is the person who got fewer votes is now President of the United States. But that is our system and the system is so embedded in our minds and our consciences that following that very bitter election, where there was a dispute in Florida that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court--following that election, which was decided by the Supreme Court, there wasn't any civil unrest. There were no riots, no tires burned, no windows broken in buildings. It was decided by virtue of the fact that we have a Constitution.

In the electoral college system, the person who gets the most votes doesn't always win. Why? Because we have to take care of small States, States such as Maine and Nevada.

The Senate was also designed to protect the rights of the minority. I was talking to my friend Senator Enzi, the Senator from the State of Wyoming. I said: Mike, how is Wyoming doing populationwise? Is it growing? He said: No, we still can't break 500,000.

But, you see, Mike Enzi, from a State that has fewer than 500,000 people, has the same power as a Senator from the State of Nevada which has 2.3 or 2.4 million people. Mike Enzi has the same power as someone from the State of California which I think has 34 million people, or some large number such as that. Mike Enzi has the same power as Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer by virtue of the fact that we have a constitutional system that gives a Senator that power.

One Senator has tremendous power. We have heard of the famous holds.

You can have something come to the Senate and a Senator can individually call and say, you know, I am not going to let this move. You are not going to get unanimous consent on this. I stop it.

That is why it takes 60 votes, not 51, not 50, not 59--60 votes to cut off debate, a so-called filibuster.

I realize the party I represent has 49 Senators in the Senate. The majority has 51. There was a time, just a short time ago, when it was 50-50, and had it not been for the untimely death of Paul Wellstone it would be 50-50 now.

So we have a Senate that is so closely divided now, by the smallest of margins, but we all represent this country. Democrats, 49 of us, 51 Republicans, we all represent approaching 300 million people in addition to what we are obligated to do to represent our individual States.

While we recognize the right of the majority to set the agenda, we on the minority side also believe the rights of the minority shouldn't be trampled. That means not excluding us from conference committees.

David Broder, a long-time syndicated columnist who is nonpartisan and fair, recently wrote about the exclusion of Democrats from conference committees in Congress this year. He wrote:

These conferences are no longer the representative bodies

they once were. Under the current Republican control of the

House and Senate, Democrats are routinely excluded from the

discussions after the ceremonial opening day. The real

negotiations involve only top Republicans in Congress and

representatives of the White House.

These conference committees have not only disregarded the views of Democratic Senators, but they have disregarded the views of the Senate itself.

On a number of issues, conferees appointed by the Senate leadership have gone against the will of this body.

Am I making things up? No. Let us talk about a few of them.

Media ownership: What is this all about? The decision was made in legislative session that you couldn't have more than a certain percentage of ownership of a media market by votes on both sides--House and Senate. In fact, when it went to the full committee when we were included in these meetings at that time, the full conference voted to maintain the position we had in the Senate. The conference committee was ended, and sure enough we get on the Senate floor and they have taken that out because the White House told them to. That has never been done before.

Another example, overtime pay. This was an issue where the administration wanted to change the way overtime is paid in this country. It affects 8 million people. On this side, we said it shouldn't be done. We voted accordingly and were joined by friends on the other side of the aisle. The House voted by a large majority to have their conferees do what the Senate did on this vote. On the floor, it was stripped from the conference.

Pensions: Senator Daschle agreed to allow the conference to go forward. Of course, that didn't turn out as well as it was represented it would. That doesn't mean that everything should have gone exactly the way it came out of here. Of course not. But that is an example of what is happening in conferences.

Another example is an amendment we agreed to that said when you are buying meat you should know from where it comes. People are entitled to know that. Where is the beef that you are eating coming from? Both bodies said, yes, that is a great idea. In conference, it was taken from the bill.

The Senate voted for these things and the conferees disregarded the votes of the Senate--not individual Senators, they disregarded the voice of the American people. That is whom we represent.

We have to be able to work together for the good of the American people. That is what the people want us to do.

We have done very well this week. We were able to pass the FSC bill. It was a struggle. We got votes on overtime, on unemployment compensation, and we passed this most important bill. Tomorrow, we are going to pass the IDEA legislation which is very important. I hope tomorrow we can also get to the mental health parity legislation. It is my understanding that Senator Domenici has given his legislation to the chairman of the HELP Committee. Senator Gregg has that now, and hopefully we are in a position to have an agreement to work on this legislation in the near future.

We have to work together for the good of the people. I understand that being in the majority confers power, but with that power comes the responsibility to make sure the views of Senators are respected and the rights of the minority are not trampled.

We all have a responsibility to work together. But I believe those who control the agenda have the greatest duty to seek compromise and consensus. That is part of leadership. You have to know when to reach out and meet people at least halfway.

I think what we have heard around here far too often is obstructionism. I hope no one is deliberately trying to obstruct the business of our country. I don't think that is the case, but without compromise the Senate simply doesn't function.

President Gerald Ford--this nice man--was right. Compromise is the oil that keeps government running. But I believe that today our government needs an oil change and maybe even a lube job. We have to look under the hood and make the proper adjustments to get the engine running smoothly again in the Senate.

On my time, I ask a question of the Senator. I ask the Senator to comment through the Chair.

A lot of people think that doctors are getting fat in our modern society. The fact is, in Nevada--I am sure it is the same in Illinois and Arkansas--doctors are having a difficult time with the managed care programs and the mass numbers of uninsured.

So I ask, does my friend agree that we in this Congress are doing things not to help the physician himself? For example, we come to this floor often and talk about medical malpractice reform, setting caps. Half the doctors you talk to recognize that is not going to help them. But a program the Senator from Illinois has advocated, and I have joined with him, giving an incentive taxwise, a tax credit to a doctor for insurance premiums, they would love that because it would give them immediate help.

The point I am making is we have a health care crisis in this country and the physicians are part of it. They are not doing as well as I personally would like. Would the Senator agree with that?

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Arkansas.

Mr. President, when we finish with morning business, we will have about 15 minutes remaining to speak on the Cantwell amendment. All Senators who wish to speak on the Cantwell amendment should get over here at about 10 after 11. Time will be equally divided. That is the only opportunity to speak on the Cantwell amendment today prior to the vote.

Mr. President, I assume each side would approximately have 25 minutes.

Mr. President, we will allocate that time with 10 minutes to the manager of the bill. There will be 5 minutes for Senator Cantwell, 5 minutes for Senator Voinovich, and 5 minutes to Senator Sarbanes.

How much time do we have remaining?

Senator Voinovich is not here, so if the Senator from Washington wants to use the time, she may.

Is all time used on the side of the majority?

If the majority yields back their time, we will yield back ours.

We yield back.

Cloture Motion

I announce that the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Bayh) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

I ask unanimous consent that prior to the next vote there be 2 minutes equally divided between proponents and opponents of the Cantwell amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

I announce that the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) is necessarily absent.

I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following two amendments be in order subject to the following time limit beginning at 2:15; that the time be equally divided and controlled in the usual form: Senator McCain for 60 minutes, and Senator Hollings for 80 minutes. This has been cleared by both managers. I also ask unanimous consent that no other amendments be in order prior to the vote.

I don't have the number of the amendments, but they have been filed.

I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, I was in the Chamber this morning when the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, the majority leader, complained about our holding up--the Democrats, the minority--appointments to our ambassadorial corps. I thought that doesn't sound right, but I wanted to make sure I had my facts right, even though I had a tremendous impulse to say: Mr. Leader, you are just wrong.

After having looked at the facts, I can say now: Mr. Leader, you were wrong this morning.

This is an important issue. I have been fortunate to have started off in the House of Representatives, and being on the Foreign Affairs Committee, one of my assignments was to travel. I have had the good fortune of being able to travel, in the more than two decades I have been in Congress, all over the world. I am tremendously impressed with the places I go, where we have young men and women who serve, as Senator Dodd did. I think he went to the Dominican Republic. We have had other examples, but that is the only one I know of people who served in the Peace Corps. This is a wonderful organization. They do wonderful things for the country. I admire so much what they do.

But there is no one I admire as much as our career Foreign Service officers, our diplomatic corps. They do such wonderful work, without any notoriety at all. So any time we talk about our State Department, our diplomatic corps, I want to defend them. So I know this is an important issue raised by the majority leader this morning. But I thought it would be important for me to respond to some of the current concerns I have heard expressed this morning.

I was on the Senate floor last Thursday, and I was pleased that the Senate confirmed 20 Ambassadors that day, including the Ambassador to Iraq, Ambassador Negroponte, whose assignment will begin after June 30 of this year. His nomination was completed with near record speed, given that he was confirmed 1 week after he was nominated by the President of the United States. The other 19 Ambassadors confirmed that day were confirmed less than a week after they were reported out of the Foreign Relations Committee. That is remarkably good work.

By confirming these 19, the Senate filled 3 vacant U.S. Embassies. We had hoped to confirm other career Foreign Service officers that day. For example, Nepal--I have been there. There are very important events going on in that country now that we have an Ambassador there. As we know, this has been a site of considerable violence.

Unfortunately, I have been advised that the objection to the confirmation of James Frances Moriarity, of Virginia, a career Foreign Service officer, doesn't come from us; it comes from the majority, meaning this Embassy will continue to be vacant for the foreseeable future.

At the moment, I am told by the State Department that out of the nearly 170 Embassies we have around the world, 8 are vacant. So that means 162 of the 170 are filled. Eight are vacant, meaning they have no confirmed Ambassador. The President has chosen not to fill two of them. So now we are down to six. We have two that are too dangerous to fill, for reasons that are apparent--what is going on in the world. That knocks us down to four. One is awaiting action in the Foreign Relations Committee. The Republicans objected to filling another. The last two, Sweden and Finland, are vacant because President Bush's political appointees--not career Foreign Service officers, which I have no objection to because we need a mix--his political appointees decided they could not stand being there much longer and they left.

So my dear friend, for whom I have so much respect, the majority leader, better have his staff give him better facts because he is absolutely, totally wrong, for the reasons I have just indicated.

Last week, some of our friends on the majority side noted that the vacancies send a negative signal to these countries. Let the President move with dispatch to fill them then.

I also hope the President will work out another problem. We have Ambassadors who have been confirmed by the Senate to posts around the world, but they are not doing their work in the countries to which they were sent. They have been sent to Iraq. Ambassadors assigned to the Philippines, Kuwait, and Bahrain are in Iraq, not in the countries to which they were assigned. I know it is important that they help out in Iraq, but that is not the way it should be. At least, it should not be that people are complaining about these Ambassadors not having jobs and the ambassadorial corps being empty and that we are holding it up.

I recognize the jobs these men are doing in Iraq are important. The things they are performing in Iraq are obviously important or they would not have been sent there. But don't complain about the minority holding up Ambassadors because we are not, for the simple math I have given you. So I hope we can consider the whole picture and not come to the floor and complain and cry and whine about the Ambassadors not being confirmed because of us. It is simply not true.

If there is other business to come before the Senate, I will withhold suggesting the absence of a quorum.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Edwards) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kerry) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, through you to the distinguished majority whip, we have completed this bill. It has been a long struggle. Everybody is happy that it is done. We also are going to pass the IDEA bill within the next couple of days. I see no reason we couldn't also complete the mental health parity legislation. I spoke with Senator Domenici and our leader. There is no reason we couldn't do that in a very short time period, a matter of just an hour or two. The only thing we are waiting on is the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Gregg, who has an amendment that deals with the scope of the bill. That is the only amendment people have indicated they want to deal with. As soon as we see that, we can agree on a time for that. This would be a remarkable week if we could complete three major pieces of legislation.

I have no objection.

Mr. President, I appreciate the distinguished majority leader yielding to me. I know he has some remarks he wishes to make. We are going to have a cloture vote sometime tomorrow. There is a possibility, as there

always is, that cloture could be invoked, especially if there is the ability for us to vote on unemployment insurance. We have not completely vetted that with the caucus.

One point that weighs favorably at least on this Senator's mind is that the distinguished majority leader said on more than one occasion that when and if cloture is invoked we would have the opportunity to debate germane amendments. We have a handful of germane amendments. No one will be trying to use a lot of time, but I think the time on most of our germane amendments would be 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes-- not very much time. So we could do those quickly.

One of the concerns--and certainly the majority leader has never done this, and it hasn't been done for a number of years--if it is possible even postcloture to cut off people from offering germane amendments. I think the majority leader said on Friday that germane amendments would be allowed. That is a step in the right direction, not only for completing this bill but for future work in the Senate. It would be a bad thing if cloture were invoked, people anticipating they could offer their germane amendments, and then we go into a 30-hour quorum call. That would not set the right tone.

I appreciate the attitude and the remarks of the Senator regarding what would happen if cloture is invoked. I think that weighs heavily in favor of some people perhaps voting for cloture on this bill.

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

Madam President, in Reno, this weekend, the price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline was $2.22. Premium gasoline costs more than that. The higher blend fuels in Nevada cost about $2.50 a gallon.

My friend and neighbor from the State of Idaho, the senior Senator from the State of Idaho, was in the Chamber a few minutes ago talking about the fact that if we pass the energy bill that had previously been on the Senate floor, and the one that came back from conference, we would have all of our energy problems resolved. I want to disabuse anyone within the sound of my voice, that simply is not factual.

That energy bill was a bad bill. It did nothing to help the cost of gasoline. The thing it would do is give the industry just what it wants, billions of dollars in the form of subsidies and tax breaks, with no real conservation requirements.

We want an energy bill. We, the minority, want an energy bill. But we want an energy bill that will diversify our energy supply, reduce our Nation's dependence on foreign oil, and protect the environment.

The one thing the bill did not have in it that came back from conference was ANWR. That was at least something of which we were able to convince people of good will around here: The fact that the United States has, at its fingertips, less than 3 percent of the oil reserves of the world, recognizing that we cannot drill our way out of our problems. And that includes the oil that is supposedly in the ground in Alaska. We cannot produce our way out of our problems. Almost 97 percent of the oil reserves in the world are someplace else. So we have to do things that are smart and not only look to the short term but to the long term.

There is no doubt that the price of crude has contributed to the higher gasoline prices in Nevada and throughout the rest of the country these last few years. But the outrageous 55-cent-per-gallon increase in Nevada, since January, has not been driven by the rising cost of crude oil only, but I believe by corporate greed and profit. These oil companies and refiners are getting rich, and middle-class families are getting gouged.

The stalled energy bill will do nothing to reduce the high price of gasoline because it fails to either improve regulations on an oil industry that is over-concentrated or rein in demand by adopting tougher fuel economy standards. Instead, the legislation proposes just what the industry wants--I repeat, giving billions of taxpayers' dollars to large oil companies in the form of subsidies and tax breaks, with no conservation requirement whatsoever.

The Bush administration's own analysis concludes that the legislative incentives to reduce our reliance on foreign oil in the bill will have only a negligible success. The administration report concludes that implementation of the energy bill would reduce net petroleum imports by about 1.2 percent in 21 years--a reduction hardly worth the billions of dollars taxpayers would give away to the oil companies.

We must also pressure the Saudis to increase production instead of cutting it back by a million barrels per day. I have said on this floor previously that Saudi Arabia and the OPEC nations can do a great deal to relieve the problems we have. They are our allies. That is something that I am not too sure exists. It is a one-way street with them. But I was pleased to hear that Saudi Arabia has said they will recommend at the next OPEC nations meeting to increase production by at least 1.5 million barrels a day. That is nice because they just cut back production by a million barrels of oil a day.

We need to be releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drive down prices. We have to stop putting extra oil in the Reserve, for which we are paying an arm and a leg.

In terms of meeting the Nation's energy needs, we should increase the use of alternative fuels and renewable energy resources. That is the thing we can do to take a bite out of big oil. We can rely more on the Sun, the wind, geothermal, even biomass.

So I was encouraged that in the FSC bill the Finance Committee put in energy incentives, including the section 45 production tax credits for renewable energy. That will allow us to use the things that are renewable like the Sun, wind, and, of course, geothermal heat.

So I applaud Senators Grassley and Baucus for having this section 45 production tax credit for renewable energy resources that expands and extends the credit for these issues that I have talked about, these renewable resources.

Renewable energy will protect consumers and create jobs. It is important to stop declaring our energy independence when that is not the case. I do not think it serves any purpose to come out and talk about how great this bill is that failed. If it were that great, it would not have failed. It is a bill that does nothing to solve the energy needs of this country.

One of the big issues in that bill, of course, was the fact that this substitute fuel that had been manufactured around the country, MTBE-- what the bill proposed is that you just simply forget the fact that companies that used MTBE polluted the ground, and that people have suffered from it.

No one knows of a better example of that than what took place in Utah, Nevada, and California. MTBE polluted the water systems there. These companies have had to respond in damages as a result of litigation filed by the water entities in that area. So what this bill would have done is taken away the right of these entities, such as in the Lake Tahoe area, to seek recourse for the damages caused by these chemicals to the water supply.

So the bill that was before the Senate, and the conference report that was defeated, was a bad bill. It was a bill that was a sop to the car manufacturers and the oil companies. That bill would have done nothing to solve the energy problems of this country.

The legislation we will be asked to work on this week, the FSC/ETI bill, has something that will help the long-term needs of the country. I hope we don't become righteously indignant as my friend did--for whom I have the greatest respect. He is a fine man, and we have worked together on a number of issues dealing with western land problems. The fact is, passing the bill that came before us, that was defeated because there weren't enough votes to go forward on the conference report, was some of the best action the Senate has ever taken. If we want to respond to the energy needs of the country, we need to do things that really help the consumers and not big oil and big auto manufacturers.

I was stunned to learn that New Yorker magazine has come out today with a story by a man named Hirsch that talks about some of the things going on in the torture chambers in Iraq, not the torture chambers that were there and run by Saddam Hussein but torture chambers that were there--I am embarrassed, humiliated, and disappointed to say--and were run by Americans. He talked about the story on public radio today, and this is a message that I understand and I think all Americans have to understand: We can't have a few enlisted people, as we refer to them-- no longer draftees; everyone is enlisted--nonofficers, take the fall for what went on there. He talked about the reason pictures were taken, both the videos and stills.

I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

They were going to be used to show the prisoners' families and neighborhoods. That is why they

were produced. This was not something that was done by some soldiers just trying to do something to pass the time of day; the people who were in the officers corps instructed these men and women that they were to take these pictures and what they were to be used for in the future. I know some of these nonofficers did things that were wrong, and I am so grateful there were people in the military who came forward and said enough is enough. That is the reason we know about it now. But let's not have a few of the nonofficers be the scapegoats for what went on.

We are a mighty nation. We have to respond accordingly. We cannot allow a few underlings to take the fall for what obviously was a concerted action that officers were involved in. It is just a question of how high up in the officers corps the problem went.

Madam President, I would ask the leader to modify his agreement to allow Senator Durbin to use 15 minutes of our time during the debate time the Democrats have under this proposed unanimous consent request.

We extend whatever time the Senator from Illinois needs.