Floor Statements

Mr. President, first, I was fascinated by the comment from the Senator from Connecticut that after a few years some of this stuff will make sense to us. I have only been here 20 years. I am a patient man; I will wait.

Let me put this in perspective, as far as my interest in this. Back in 1986 I was elected to the House of Representatives. There was a procedure that was used at that time called the discharge procedure whereby a person could discharge a bill out of the committee without having committee action, but it could be blocked by someone and we could not know the name of the person who blocked it.

Consequently, we found ourselves in this situation where there would be legislation that everyone at home is very excited about. We could go home and campaign and say, yes, I am for this. I remember several of the West Texas Democrats wanting to oppose gun control. Yet their caucus wanted them to support gun control. So they would tell the people at home that they were opposing it. Yet they were the very ones who kept it from coming up for a vote.

That is exactly the same thing we are dealing with here. In 1994 we were able to pass that reform. When we came over here in 1994, I was not even aware that you could put a hold on a bill without disclosing who you were or who was putting the hold on. This is a very similar thing. It is transparency, bringing it out in the open.

I agree with my good friend Senator Wyden that if Members want to, they can put a hold on a bill. This does not affect that. Members just have to say who they are.

This morning I had my amendment on the floor and Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley showed me their amendment was essentially the same. I was very happy to fold mine in. I am happy to be part of this.

After a number of years now, this will become a reality. I applaud my fellow cosponsors for the fine work they have done.

Let me review how that means of obfuscation worked--this from the Congressional Record, page H1131, March 10, 1992:

A good example is the method Members from the House of

Representatives used to hide their votes from the people

concerning a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution.

Shortly after it was discovered in a USA Today poll in 1987

that over 80 percent of the people in America want a

balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, House Joint

Resolution 268 was introduced. House Joint Resolution 268

immediately gained 246 coauthors from over the Nation. I can

just envision, at the town hall meetings back home, a liberal

Democrat standing up and holding House Joint Resolution 268

in his hand saying, ``See here, ladies and gentlemen. This is

my name as cosponsor of House Joint Resolution 268.'' What

the Congressman didn't tell these people is that he has no

intentions of allowing House Joint Resolution 268 to come up

for a vote. How does this Congressman, who is trying to make

the people back home believe that he is supporting a budget-

balancing amendment to the Constitution, keep from having to

vote on it?

It is very simple, the Speaker merely puts it in a

committee and then makes a deal with the committee chairman

not to bring it up for consideration. The only way that it

can be brought up for consideration is for a discharge

petition to be signed by 218 Members of Congress. The

discharge petition is in the Speaker's desk and must be

signed during the course of a legislative day. However, the

names of those individuals who sign a discharge petition are

kept secret and if a Member discloses the names of other

Members who sign the discharge petition, he can be

disciplined to the extent of expulsion from membership of the

House of Representatives. So House Joint Resolution 268 had

240 cosponsors, but only 140 Members were willing to sign the

discharge petition.

Pretty cozy, huh? The Congressman can falsely represent his

position to the people at home and never have to vote on the

issue. I might add that there is a happy ending to that House

Joint Resolution 268 story. Several of us contacted a

national publication. While the publication knew we couldn't

divulge the names of those who signed the discharge petition,

they agreed to print the names of the individuals who

coauthored House Joint Resolution 268, but did not sign the

discharge petition. We found a loophole in the corrupt

institutional system that protects Congressmen from their

electorate and as a result of that, we were able to

immediately force it out onto the floor and we missed passing

a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution by only seven

votes.

That situation disturbed me so much that in March of 1993 I filed a one-sentence bill on the House floor challenging the secrecy, ``Once a motion to discharge has been filed the Clerk shall make the signatures a matter of public record.''

I had 87 cosponsors, and it passed by a vote of 384 to 40.

In an article about my initiative, Reader's Digest in November of 1994 wrote, ``The success of this legislation is proof that when Congress is required to do the people's business in the open, the people--rather than special interests--win . . . the passage of this one bill is an important first step in the right direction. And it took a little-known Representative form Oklahoma to point the way.''

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full text of this article.

The situation is exactly the same here, Mr. President.

In fact, the very stated reason for this whole bill is to require Congress to do the people's business in the open.

A Senator may have a hold on a nomination or a bill or a unanimous consent agreement, and that hold is secret.

It is just as possible for a Senator to keep his constituents and Americans in general in the dark now about their holds as it was for House Members before I successfully led the charge for transparency in discharge petitions.

Indeed the Wall Street Journal was strongly in favor of my House efforts at that time.

Toward that end, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Wall Street Journal's six editorials on the issue of discharge motions.

As the Wall Street Journal mentions, neither the Constitution nor the Senate Rules mention holds. We need this legislation to correct the current situation.

One of the many times I personally have run into this problem of holds was in the case of the nomination of Governor Mike Leavitt of Utah to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

As chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee I was trying to shepherd the nomination of Governor Leavitt through my committee.

At that time in 2003, Governor Leavitt was being run through unprecedented hoops by the Democrats to obstruct his nomination even though we had an affirmative statement from my Ranking Member Senator Jeffords that he considered Governor Leavitt a friend and admission that he was going to receive the vote of Senator Jeffords.

Pursuant to this situation, Roll Call wrote the following piece that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

You can see from roll-call's reporting that no matter what I achieved in my committee, an anonymous hold could always be placed on the President's nomination, and thus a

halt could be brought to operations of the Senate and in turn the administration.

The American people do not want obstruction; they want progress from us.

Obstruction was certainly practiced by Senator Daschle, and the people showed their lack of appreciation at the ballot box.

I ask that Members join me in this effort and do what our constituents want for the sake of transparency and honesty.

We ought to have the courage to stand up for our convictions, not hide in the shadows of darkness and anonymity.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now resume consideration of S. 2320, the LIHEAP funding bill, and that the Kyl amendment be temporarily set aside so I may offer a first- degree amendment. It is amendment No. 2898. I further ask that following my statement on the amendment, the Senate then proceed to a period for morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

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

Mr. President, this is simply what I have called the energy price reduction amendment. Each year proponents of LIHEAP funding complain that energy prices have increased and therefore more assistance is needed. Yet subsidizing high prices does nothing to lower prices. Increasing the funding for today's LIHEAP without acting to reduce the price of energy tomorrow is not an acceptable solution.

Home energy prices are excessively high because of two simple facts, two critical reasons: First, the demand for energy has increased along with the economic output. However, because natural gas is regarded as an environmentally preferable fuel, demand for natural gas has increased dramatically as more of it is used for electricity generation. We have gone through this with coal-fired plants. We have tried to have major advancements in clean coal technology, which we are doing right now. But right now, the one thing that is environmentally pure is natural gas and, for that reason, the demand is up. Second, with the rise in demand, the market should have responded with a corresponding increase in supply.

I have here a chart, and this is from the Energy Information Administration. Domestic production of natural gas has actually declined. Not many people understand this, that the supply has actually declined. So not only do we have an increase in demand, but the supply has reduced, as is pointed out in this chart. I want my colleagues to recognize that I am reporting clear facts. I am ignoring partisan rhetoric, relying on recognized, unbiased experts from the EIA, not from the New York Times, not from the industry representatives. The EIA's consumer guide, ``Residential Natural Gas Prices: What Consumers Should Know,'' states that:

One of the most significant factors why prices are so high

is due to weak production, noting that production decreased

by only .6 percent in 2004, declining below the 2002 level

and reaching the lowest production levels since 1999.

The fact is that demand has increased and production levels have not. As a result, our constituents--the very same residents desperate for LIHEAP assistance--are facing artificially high natural gas prices.

This chart is from the EIA. It illustrates how much residents of each of our States are paying for natural gas. Now I would encourage my colleagues to look and see what it is, and look at one of the higher elevations. It is from $16 in those regions there, all the way down to--I can't read it from here, but you can see it. It is such a disparity as you go around the Nation, and I think people need to know what their constituents are being forced to pay.

EIA data has shown that production of natural gas has decreased dramatically. The National Petroleum Council, which is a nonpartisan entity charged by the Secretary of Energy, concluded that significant gas resources were effectively off limits for various reasons.

The American Gas Association, a strong supporter of increased LIHEAP funding, came to the same conclusion. Both entities called for a better, more efficient process for producing natural gas.

My amendment provides a more certain process for energy-related decisionmaking on public lands. It requires the Secretary to act on an energy-related application within 120 days. If the application is not approved, then the Secretary must inform the applicant as to the reasons and allow the applicant to modify its application.

What is happening here is that these applications to produce on these lands, public lands, sit there and there is never any decision. Certainly it should be shorter than 120 days, but that should be adequate.

Further, it clarifies existing practice and requires that a reviewing court accord a rebuttable presumption to the Secretary's determination that an energy project as mitigated does not have a significant environmental impact. The recently enacted Energy bill included significant energy efficiency improvements. In fact, it included so many that EIA modified its energy projections in some ways to incorporate the new law.

My amendment would improve natural gas efficiency through the EPA's Natural Gas Star Program. This is a good program. It works, and it is being voluntarily complied with. Under my language, the EPA would be authorized to provide grants to identify and use methane reduction technologies, and the Administrator would be required to conduct a series of methane emission reduction workshops in oil and gas-producing States. The less gas that is leaked means more gas is available to consumers. It is a no-brainer.

The lack of sufficient domestic refining capacity has received significant media attention. The public understands that tight capacity translates to higher prices of motor fuels.

Yet some LIHEAP proponents might not realize that home heating oil, which the Northeast desperately needs, as you can see on this chart, is a middle distillate along with diesel fuel. Therefore, according to the Congressional Research Service:

Because the residential and transportation sectors are in

potential competition for the same part of the barrel, any

unusual circumstances affecting the price and supply of one

of these fuels affects the supply and price of the other.

Increasing refining capacity not only lowers the price of motor fuels but reduces the price of home heating oil as well.

Although States have a significant role in permitting existing or new refineries, they face particular technical and financial constraints when faced with these extremely complex facilities. It wasn't long ago that I authored the Gas Price Act, and it was one that never even made it out of my committee. Yet it would have dramatically reduced the cost of refining. Right now we are at 100-percent refining capacity in America. Yet nothing is being done about it. Quite frankly, those individuals who are feeling the heat the most, who are not getting the heat the most in the Northeast are the ones who objected to the Gas Price Act.

This amendment does not have the same provisions as the Gas Price Act; it merely establishes a Governor opt-in program that requires the EPA Administrator to coordinate and concurrently review all permits with the relevant State agencies. This program does not waive or weaken the standards under any environmental law that seeks to assist States and consumers by providing greater certainty in the permitting process.

In fact, the Environmental Council of the States--an organization representing the State environmental directors--stated in a letter of support for similar language that the language:

Does not weaken the standards and allows each State to

choose its best course.

This improved process does more than just increase the process for production of heating oil; it also redefines one's idea of a refinery. My amendment provides Federal assistance to States for the permitting of ethanol plants or bio refineries, as well as facilities to produce ultraclean diesel or jet fuel from coal.

Assisting the expansion of bio refineries and coal-to-liquids facilities provides even more slack in the system that will lead to lower home heating oil prices in the future.

In its consumer guide, EIA points out that prices could even increase if there were disruptions to liquefied natural gas pipeline delivery systems, two very real points, especially to my friends in the Northeast. Keep in mind that if you divide the country up into sectors, the Northeast uses 31 percent--31 percent of the people residing in the Northeast use home heating oils, that in contrast with the Midwest, 3.2 percent; the South, 2.1 percent; and the West, 0.7 percent. That is a huge disparity. They are the ones who are opposing the various things that we can do to refine the home heating oils as well as diesel fuel.

Something has to be done. You can't say we want to have cheaper energy, we want to have a LIHEAP program to make it more affordable for people in the Northeast, and yet the legislators in the Northeast oppose consistently any major changes in our refining capacity. As I said, we are already 100-percent refining capacity now, and that was before Katrina, I might add.

On the subject of liquefied LNG, I was astonished to learn that two members of the Massachusetts House delegation inserted a provision in the transportation bill in the dark of the night--I know this, I was the author of that bill--it happened in the middle of the night before it was taken up the next morning, to the detriment of the Northeast region. They slipped in a provision that blocks the construction of an already approved LNG terminal by maintaining an old bridge scheduled for demolition because it has been classified as a navigational hazard. This short-sighted stunt by a few Members means that the Northeast region will be deprived of supply that would reduce wholesale natural gas prices by up to 20 percent--up to 20 percent. It was an LNG already accepted terminal in Massachusetts.

My amendment repeals that offensive provision so harmful to the entire Northeast. Bipartisan Members of this body, from the senior Senator from Maine to the senior Senator from New York, interested stakeholders from the AARP to the National Conference of Black Mayors, have all expressed their concern over how high energy prices are hurting their constituents.

Members, voting for this amendment means you are voting to lower those prices. A vote for this amendment means you are voting to help the LIHEAP beneficiaries. This is something that makes so much common sense and something that is hard to understand here in Washington, DC. We

have to do something about increasing the supply of natural gas as well as home heating oils through the refining capacity as well as doing something to affect the supply.

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

Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Nevada, frankly, I think the Senator from Louisiana made a very good point coming up and saying this makes sense. I had an amendment that would allow us to go into BLM lands to extract natural gas and for LNG plants. That was taken out in the highway bill up in Massachusetts.

It doesn't seem at all reasonable to me that you would support something such as this for electricity and at the same time turn around and oppose every effort we have to try to get more natural gas to bring to these homes.

I certainly agree. I had an amendment to do that. It doesn't look like there will be an opportunity to entertain that amendment. Without that, I think it is unreasonable to expect that we would be able to do this.

Mr. President, on February 2, 2006, I was absent for the rollcall vote on the motion to waive the Congressional Budget Act on Conrad amendment No. 2729 to Senate amendment 2702 to H.R. 4297, Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005. My absence was due to a previously scheduled speaking engagement at the Africa Dinner in conjunction with the National Prayer Breakfast. Had I been present, I would have voted nay on the motion to waive. Additionally, I would like to note that this absence did not affect the final outcome of the vote.

Mr. President, I want to speak about a matter of urgency and extreme concern to me that is going on right now in Uganda.

As my colleagues may know, I have spent much time in Africa, particularly in Uganda, talking with President Museveni.

The major issue that he and I discussed is the ongoing terrorist tragedy in his country. The Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, is a rebel paramilitary group formed in 1987 operating mainly in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. The group is engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan

Government in what is now one of Africa's longest-running conflicts.

It is led by a man named Joseph Kony who claims to be a spiritual medium and uses his influence to kidnap and murder thousands of innocent civilians, most of them children. Because of this twisted man and his army, the region has become one of the darkest spots of human atrocities worldwide.

Between 20,000 and 50,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA for use as soldiers and sex slaves.

More than 1.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes, living in Internally Displaced People, IDP, camps. Every week 1,000 people die in the camps from the appalling conditions.

Though the Internally Displaced People camps were meant to provide security against the LRA attacks, they are now where most abductions take place.

It is estimated 40,000 children flee every night to bigger towns, seeking the safety in numbers, sleeping on street corners and in other public spaces. I recently saw a documentary on this titled ``Invisible Children.''

Up to 200,000 people have been killed in the violence, with many more dying from disease and malnutrition as a direct result of the conflict.

The conflict continues to retard Uganda's development efforts, costing the poor country's economy a cumulative total of at least $1.33 billion, which is equivalent to 3 percent of Uganda's GDP.

Last night, in his State of the Union address, President Bush declared we must, ``take the offensive by encouraging economic progress, and fighting disease, and spreading hope in hopeless lands.'' He is absolutely right. We can no longer allow these atrocities in Uganda to go unnoticed and unaddressed; we must become more involved.

To that end I am supporting a resolution, S. Res. 366.

Further, I will include for the Record a letter to Secretary of State Rice signed by 34 organizations. This letter urges high-level attention to the situation in northern Uganda.

I will also include the text of United Nations Security Council, UNSC, Resolution 1653 dated January 27, 2006. This resolution ``strongly condemns'' the activities of the Lord's Resistance Army. The Resolution also reiterates the Security Council's demand ``that all such armed groups lay down their arms and engage voluntarily and without any delay or preconditions in their disarmament and in their repatriation and resettlement.''

UNSC Resolution 1653 ``[r]equests the Secretary-General to make recommendations to the Council, as appropriate, on how best to support efforts by States in the region to put an end to the activities of illegal armed groups, and to recommend how United Nations agencies and missions--the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS), MONUC and ONUB--can help, including through further support for the efforts of the governments concerned to ensure protection of, and humanitarian assistance to, civilians in need.''

These words are long overdue, and are only the beginning. Thus far the action of the United Nations has been woefully inadequate. Words are not nearly enough. We need more action from the UN. If the United Nations is to be useful for the peoples of the world, this sort of problem is its highest and best use.

As for the role of the United States, I suggest that Secretary Rice and Permanent Representative Bolton actively engage in drafting the aforementioned recommendations to the Security Council.

I also strongly suggest to President Bush and our administration that they examine every aspect of his executive authority to relieve this suffering, including the new authorities Congress provided under Section 1206 of Public Law 109-163, the train-and-equip legislation.

I believe these will be significant steps toward shedding light into the darkness that has cloaked the ongoing Ugandan tragedy, ending the conflict, and drawing the region into a positive future. I ask members for their support and thank the dozens of Senators who have joined me as cosponsors of this bipartisan resolution.

Let us pray for a cessation of the horrors and evils in Uganda and the Sudan.

I ask unanimous consent to print the above-referenced documents in the Record.

Mr. President, I say to my good friend from Connecticut, I was surprised to find out he was not a member of the conservative caucus. Now I know. But I would agree with him insofar as the significance of the confirmation vote that will take place

tomorrow. There is nothing more solemn, nothing more significant that we have to deal with than confirming judges, whether they are nominated by Democrats or by Republicans.

However, I respectfully disagree with the Senator from Connecticut. I look forward to voting for the successful confirmation of Judge Alito. I have had a chance to talk about him. I believe he will be a strict constructionist and will do a good job for the United States, specifically for my 20 kids and grandkids.

Mr. President, I am not here, people will be glad to know, to talk about Judge Alito. I am here as an assignment. Serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, as is the keeper of the chair, I have been there for quite a number of years. I have taken the assignment of giving a grade as to what President Bush, prior to his State of the Union Message tomorrow night, has done in the way of national security and national defense. I am proud to say that I am very proud of the job he has done. In doing this, what I would like to do is break it down into three segments.

First, I want to talk about the problems this President inherited when he became President in terms of our national security; second, the solutions, the very impressive solutions so far to these problems; and third, the challenges he has for the future, for the next 2 or 3 years. In doing this, I know I will come across as being very partisan. Quite frankly, when we are dealing with national defense, I am quite partisan. I think the most important thing we have to do here is to keep America strong, make sure that we have a strong national defense system. I hate to say it, but that becomes a partisan issue. However, it is too serious of an issue to try to be diplomatic, so I will not attempt to be diplomatic tonight. I will be dealing with the truth.

Winston Churchill said: Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may destroy it, but there it is.

First, in dealing with the problems that he inherited, I would like to outline seven huge problems that this President inherited when he became President. The first is, when he was inaugurated he received a military structure that was in total disarray. During the Clinton administration in the 1990s, I will show you in terms of dollars what happened to our system. There was a euphoric attitude everyone had that somehow the Cold War was over and we did not need a military anymore.

This is what the Clinton administration did. If you take this line right here, this is kind of the baseline only increased by inflation. So by doing this, we would say if that President had taken the baseline, the appropriations that he came in with and just applied the inflationary rate, it would be that top line, the black line. However, he didn't do it. Instead, with his budget, this yellow line is what he requested.

Fortunately, we in Congress were able to get this up to what I see as a green line here. So this is actually what happened right here. This is what was actually appropriated. This would have been a static system. This is what the President wanted.

What does that mean? It means that during the years he was President, he decreased spending from the level where it was by $313 billion. If we had not raised the amount that was in his budget, his budget called for a decrease of $412 billion. We are talking about the difference between the black line and the red line. It means that the Clinton-Gore administration cut the budget by 40 percent, reducing it to the lowest percentage of gross national product since before World War II.

The first 2 years of the Clinton administration, I was in the House of Representatives. I was on the House Armed Services Committee. I knew what he was going to be doing to our military. I started complaining about this during the first 2 years of his administration. Then as I saw it taking place, we were on the floor at least every week or two talking about what this President was doing to our military.

When they say the Cold War is over, we don't need a military anymore, I look wistfully back to the days of the Cold War. During the Cold War, we knew we had one superpower out there. It was the Soviet Union. We knew what they had. They were predictable. Their attitudes were predictable. They represented a great country, the U.S.S.R. We knew pretty much where we were. We had a policy that was in place. It was a military that stood up to an Eastern Bloc type of mentality. It was one that was working quite well.

During the time of the 1990s, during the Clinton drawdown of the military, one particular general comes to mind. I considered him to be a hero because it took courage. It is hard to explain to real people, as I go back to Oklahoma, how much courage it takes for someone to stand up against his own President if he is in the military. These are career people. GEN John Jumper, who later became the Chief of the Air Force, stood up in 1998 or 1999 and said: This insane drawdown of our military is something we cannot continue.

Not only were we drawing down to almost 60 percent, in terms of Army divisions, of our tactical airwings, our ships were coming down from 600 to 300, but also our modernization program.

So General Jumper, with all the credibility that he had--and there is no one in America more credible than he is--was able to say that we have a very serious problem and we now are sending our kids out in strike vehicles where the prospective enemy has better equipment than we do.

People don't realize it. When I go back to Oklahoma, I say: Do you realize some countries make better fighting equipment. For instance, five countries make a better artillery piece than the very best one that we have, which is the Paladin.

John Jumper said: Our best strike vehicles are the F-15 and F-16. The Russians are now making the SU-27, the SU-30s, and are proposing to make the SU-35. Those vehicles are better than the best ones we have in terms of jammers and radar.

I could get more specific in how they were better, but they were better. I agreed with him at the time and said so and applauded him when he made the statement that we need to move on with the FA-22 so we can get back and be competitive again.

People wonder why the liberals and, I say, the Democrats do not support a strong national defense. There are some reasons for this. One of the things we have in this country, which people don't stop and really think through, is the convention system. It is kind of a miracle. In a living room in Broken Arrow, OK, Republicans all meet and they decide what we stand for. We stand for a strong national defense, we are pro-life, all that stuff. At the same time, across the street you have the Democrats meeting. They are talking about gay rights and abortion and all the things they stand for. They decide what delegates go to the county convention. So the most activist of each side, liberals and conservatives, become the people who end up going to the conventions. Then they go to the district convention, the State convention, and then the national convention.

The bottom line is, if any Republican wants to run for the Senate or for the House or for a higher position, that person has to embrace the philosophy, at least partially, that is adopted by his party in the national convention of the Republican Party. It is a conservative agenda. For the Democratic Party, it is liberal agenda. That is a long way around the barn, but it kind of explains as to why these Members of the Senate from the Democratic side are not strong in terms of a national defense.

It is because if you really look at a liberal, they don't think you need a military to start with. Liberals believe that if all countries would stand in a circle and hold hands and unilaterally disarm, all threats would go away. They don't say that, but that is what they really think. So we have these people running for President on the Democratic side, and they don't want to perform in terms of what the needs are from a national security standpoint.

I said at the outset, there are two things unique to America. The other one is, we are so privileged in this country. If people at home want to know how Jim Inhofe, as a Member of

the Senate, or any other Republican or Democratic Member of the Senate or House is voting, they can find out because we are ranked and rated on a daily basis. If you are back home and wondering what your Member of Congress is doing and somehow your concern is taxes, the National Taxpayers Union ranks all of us in terms of what we do and what we feel in terms of taxes. If we want to increase taxes or decrease taxes, they know.

They don't have to listen to us because, unfortunately, a lot of the Members of the Senate and the House go back home and lie to the people. They tell them they are for reducing taxes when, in fact, they vote to increase taxes.

If you are concerned about whether you are a conservative, then the American Conservative Union ranks every Member of the Senate, every Member of the House in terms of whether they are conservative or liberal. I bring that up because they happen to have me as the most conservative Member this last year. I was very proud of that ranking.

If you are concerned and you are back in Sapulpa, OK, wondering which Members are voting for a more favorable climate for small business, the National Federation of Independent Business ranks each one of us as to what our attitude is insofar as business issues.

I say that because if you want to know how we are voting on national security issues or on national defense issues, the Center for Security Policy is a ranking organization that ranks each one of us. I could name 30 or 40 of them. Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, confirmation of John Bolton, missile defense filibuster, the American Missile Protection Act--these are all things that have to do with defending America. This is significant and people need to know it. The way we are ranked in accordance with how we vote for national defense issues, the most recent report shows that the Republicans voted in favor of national security 82 percent of the time. The Democrats voted prosecurity and prodefense 21 percent of the time. That tells you why defending America is a partisan issue.

We all know what happened during the hollow force that followed the Carter administration. We saw what Reagan had to do to rebuild our defenses. He did it. Now we have a situation where we are going through essentially the same thing. The Bush administration inherited the Clinton military and had to start building on it. That is a serious problem, but he has done a good job.

I said there are seven things that this President inherited. The second thing is an economy that was set up to fall. We all know now that we went into the recession in March of 2000. That was prior to the time that President Bush came into office. So he inherited this recession. People have asked: What does that have to do with national security? What does that have to do with national defense? It has a lot to do with it because each 1 percent of increase in economic activity translates to $46 billion in new revenue. So if we are 5 or 6 percent down during a recession, that is money that the President can't spend.

I often say to my conservative friends when I go back to Oklahoma and they are complaining about the deficit--and you hear the ranting and raving from this side that Republicans are responsible for it--they have to realize that this President not only inherited a military that had to be built up, he also inherited an economy that was down in the cellar and, of course, he had to prosecute a war. That is a serious problem. That is the second thing this President inherited.

The third thing this President inherited were the international challenges that have become threatening to this country. In Iraq, the failure of the Oil-for-Food Program, we all know about that. We know about Saddam Hussein taking the money and using it for other purposes and denying the weapons inspectors access to the country, as he had agreed to do. All these things were happening in Iraq. Sometimes I look at the way people were trying to--I don't think they are trying anymore--talk about weapons of mass destruction. That wasn't the real issue at the time. When you stop and realize, if we hadn't gone in and done what we did to Saddam Hussein, we would have more of what we had for the 12 years, between the first and the second Persian Gulf wars.

Let me explain that a little bit. The first freedom fight came in 1991, after the first Persian Gulf war. I was one of nine people selected to go on the first freedom fight. Alexander Hague went, and a Democrat, Tony Cohelo, went. We had one person I will not mention. We had a prominent Kuwaiti citizen, one of nobility, and his 7-year-old daughter. All they could talk about was they wanted to go back and see what their home looked like after the demise took place in the first Persian Gulf war. We found that their home--this was the day after the war was over. At that time, the Iraqis didn't even know the war was over. They were still burning the oilfields. We went to their home on the Persian Gulf, which was a beautiful palace, only to find that--the individual and his daughter who were with us on this first freedom fight found out that Saddam Hussein had used that particular house for a headquarters. I took the 7-year-old girl up to her room--she wanted to see her animals--only to find that her bedroom was used as a torture chamber. There were ears and body parts scattered about the place. Twelve years following that, one of the bloodiest regimes took place, with the torturing of individuals. They were shredding people, and they would beg to be put into the shredder head first to avoid the pain. It was the same with vats of acid. Babies were taken from their mothers; they were taken by their arms and banged against a brick wall until they were dead. This happened for a long period of time. And people think the only reason to go in there was for weapons of mass destruction.

There is something kind of interesting happening right now that I don't think even the Presiding Officer is aware of, and that is there is an individual I met in my office in Oklahoma, a former general in the Iraqi Army. He was an air general of the Air Force in Iraq, Georges Sada. There is a book he has written, which is out today, called ``Sadam's Secrets.'' He witnessed what they did with the weapons of mass destruction. They took them and put them into various aircraft and took them across the Syrian border. It is all in this book. He was on ``Hannity and Colmes'' about 4 days ago. Watch for this guy, Georges Sada. He will let you know that there were weapons of mass destruction. We knew that anyway because he used them on some 200,000 people that he was able to painfully kill using chemical weapons.

But I say that not because we have now solved the mystery of the weapons of mass destruction because that never was important. What was important was the things we knew when we went into Iraq.

Let me tell you the most significant thing and the greatest victory that we could not talk about at that time, which was the three major terrorist training camps that were located in Iraq--Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak. We broke those as soon as we brought down Saddam Hussein.

I said there were seven things the President inherited--a downgraded military, a broken economy, and one was the national security challenge. The fourth one is international terrorism. We had with bin Laden--and during the Clinton administration we remember a lot of things that did happen. We had the 1993 car bomb that went off in the basement of the World Trade Center. We saw, in 1996, Khobar Towers blow up. We remember the embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, that were blown up in 1998. We remember, of course, the USS Cole in Yemen, when a little boat floated up and killed a bunch of our sailors. The Clinton response was comparatively benign, restrained and, at best, inconsistent. The operation ``Infinite Reach'' included cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, which were not the problem. But that was during the Lewinsky scandal, so nobody paid much attention to that.

The fifth thing was the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This is something we saw. When the Soviet Union fell, when the vast nuclear stockpile kind of disappeared--we had people going up there, including brokers--and then we could only identify some 30 or 40 percent of that which was stolen from the massive stockpile that

the Soviets had put together. That means there is about 60 to 70 percent of the stolen stockpile out there, and we are not sure where that is.

During this time, AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, began an international network of clandestine nuclear proliferation to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

I remember one thing that happened because I was in this body at that time and a member of the Armed Services Committee. I was trying to get the point across that even though President Clinton's staff had said we don't have a problem in terms of North Korea, I asked the question--I wrote a letter to the Clinton administration on August 24, of 1998 and I asked the question: How long will it be until North Korea has multiple-stage rockets that could send a missile that could reach the United States. I got a reply back, but it wasn't in writing--they didn't want to put it in writing. They said it would be 5 to 10 years before they will have that capability. Seven days later, on August 31 in 1998, the North Koreans fired a multiple-stage rocket with the capability of reaching America. In fact, it did reach some areas of Alaska; that is America.

We have gone through the weapons of mass destruction proliferation, and we didn't have a strong response to that. The strongest response we had back during the problem with Somalia and Mogadishu--you might remember that tragedy--we bailed out, ``cut and run,'' which is a favorite thing for liberals to do when crises appear.

The sixth huge problem that the President inherited was an intelligence breakdown. It had been broken for a long time. I could not blame Democrats for that. When I was elected in 1994 from the House to the Senate, I replaced David Boren. Senator Boren had been chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for quite some time. After I was elected in that special election, he said we need to sit down and talk about our intelligence system. So we did. He talked about turf battles, that we have the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DIA, and none of them were cooperating or coordinating with one another. I said I will get on the Intelligence Committee, which I did, only to find out what David Boren told me was exactly the situation. We tried to correct it, and we were not successful, the same as he was not successful prior to 1994.

I remember once going down to the NSA in Virginia and they were showing me, at that time, a new listening device that could listen to somebody through 2 feet of concrete. I said: That is great; it is what they need in New York City right now. The FBI has a need for this type of technology. They said: This is ours, they cannot have it. That is the type of situation we had. It was something that had been that way for a long period of time. Nonetheless, the President did inherit that.

The last thing that falls into the class of the huge inherited problems by this President is the problem of China, and I was critical about this on the Senate floor. I stood here at this podium and said at the time that the first thing Clinton-Gore did when they assumed office was go to our energy labs and start tearing down the security system. They did away with color-coded badges. We remember that. Everybody knew that. Do you know why? They said: This is demeaning for someone who has a color that designates a lower form of security. We want everybody to be the same. Then they did away with background checks and with the FBI wiretapping, and as a result of that--remember Wen Ho Lee who ended up taking to China everything we had from our energy labs? We lost at that time to China our W-88 warhead capability. This was a crown jewel; this was the device that would allow us to have nuclear capability where we could attach 10 nuclear missiles to a single warhead. We lost that and the Chinese got that.

Remember what happened with the Loral Corporation? At that time, we had a system the Loral Corporation had that was a guidance technology that we were using in this country. However, they were precluded from sending it to other countries because this was something we didn't want anybody else to have. In order to send this to China, the President, Bill Clinton, had to sign a waiver, and he signed a waiver so Loral could sell guidance technology to the Chinese so they would be more accurate in their efforts to use their missiles. I am sure it was not related at all to the fact that Bernard Schwartz, the head of Loral Corporation, was their largest single financial contributor. Now they are talking about how terrible this thing is with this guy that was contributing to both Democrats and Republicans and, yet, that wasn't half as bad as what happened during the time that President Clinton signed a waiver so the Chinese would have our guidance technology.

Tomorrow night is going to be the State of the Union Message. I sat in the House Chamber and watched the second or third one that President Clinton had. He made the statement--and it was documented that at the time he made the statement the Chinese had between 13 and 18 of our cities targeted, and he stood up and said: Not one missile is pointed at one American child tonight, not one. Everybody applauded, but at that time between 13 and 18 of our cities were targeted by the Chinese.

So we have had a problem that is a very serious one and one that the President had to deal with. Of course, we knew the Chinese were transferring the prohibited weapons technology to Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea and other countries. That is the ninth thing the President inherited. That is the real serious problem. Yet if we look at this chart again, the President had the lowest, in terms of percentage of gross national product, since before World War II.

This President came in, and the first thing the Bush administration tried to do is rebuild this broken military system. This is what President Bush did. I was so proud of him for doing it. You saw the other one, where you take the static line up there and it looked like a bathtub, where Clinton was $400 billion below, down here, just a static increase that would go with the inflationary rate. This is what the Bush administration did. If you take that black line, instead of being below that, they proposed, and the Senate and House agreed, to increase it during that period of time. That is up now, and that is 5 years. So it is $334 billion more than the static inflation-rate increase--not $400 billion less, as it was in the Clinton administration. Now, if you take, in addition to that, the emergency supplementals that went to military, that is another $292 billion. Add that together, and it is $626 billion more. That is a lot of money.

It is hard for me, as a conservative, to stand here and brag about the fact that we are spending more on the military, but we had to in order to strengthen our programs and build up our troop strength and our modernization program. Bush went in and he did a lot of other things, too. He helped the troops by increasing salaries and their housing allowances. Prior to this time, they were having to spend 15 percent of their housing out of their own pockets. He took care of that for them. He increased their capabilities and readiness, the growth in the language training and funding of intelligence, and we have seen an increase in lethality across all forces by focusing much more on precision instruments.

If I could, I will go through our different services and make some comments as to what this President did when he inherited this broken defense system.

In the Army, he moved it from the old system of dealing with divisions and organized them into modular brigades, combat teams that are much more capable and much faster to be deployed. These are ongoing plans to increase our force size from 33 brigades to 42 brigades to build back up what came down in the nineties.

Because of this reorganization, about 75 percent of the Army's brigade structure should always be ready, and with the increase for the Special Ops, for the Psych Ops, for the military police, and for the logistic units, he has done a remarkable job.

The rotation of units is kind of interesting, and I will get to that in a minute.

In looking at the Navy, the biggest problem he inherited there was spare parts. None of our ships would float. He concentrated on spare parts, and he now has the ships so they are out and ready and are actually out in areas that could be combat areas.

One of the changes he made was, instead of bringing it all the way back to

the United States and changing the crews, he leaves the ship in the battle area and flies the crew back and puts a new crew in. As a result, the percentage of ships routinely at sea has increased by more than 50 percent.

In the Air Force, the modernization program--we are back with the Joint Strike Fighter working for that, and we actually have our FA-22. It is flying. We have increased that fleet. We are actually going to be ahead of the other countries.

Keep in mind--I talked about China a minute ago--back during the time the Russians were selling the SU-27s which are better than our F-15s and F-16s, in one purchase, the Chinese purchased 240 of those. We have a long way to get back.

One of the things the President did in the Air Force was recognize our ALCs, air logistic centers, and start funding them again so we can maintain and rebuild our aging aircraft fleet. We now have three ALCs. They are located in Utah, Georgia, and Oklahoma.

It is amazing what they have done. The rate of aircraft grounded due to parts issues decreased by 37 percent, it has bettered our flying goal of 922,000 hours, the rate of aircraft incidents due to parts issues has decreased by 23 percent, and logistics response time has increased by 20 percent. Good things are happening, and we see tangible results.

On force posturing, this is something the President did, and I am very proud I had something to do with this. It occurred to me as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee that we have all these families deployed in Western Europe and South Korea, and yet, as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I know what some of the far-left environmentalists are doing to our ability to have live ranges.

In Europe, that same thing was happening. So our families with our soldiers training over there could only train on live ranges, sometimes 5 days a week, sometimes 3 days a week, only during daylight hours, and the restrictions were so cumbersome that we were not able to train these guys.

It just made sense, if we tried something totally different and changed our force structure, instead of having them in Western Europe where they cannot train, put them in Eastern Europe. I went to Bulgaria and Romania and a number of places where they have training ranges that they will allow us to use free of charge. They will even billet us while we are there.

In changing our structure, we will bring all the families back. Instead of having 2-, 3-, 4-year deployments with the families going over to Western Europe, we will have 2- and 3-month deployments and not send the families, just the troops over to the eastern areas, and they can get as much training in 3 months as they could before this in 3 years. That is one of the major changes. Right now, we are in the process of bringing back 70,000 troops, and 100,000 family members are coming back. It is a major improvement.

That is how Bush responded to the national security threats. He did it swiftly and decisively. After taking office, he was faced with a couple of crises. The first one was not quite as severe, but it was serious. That was back when the Chinese shot down one of our EP-3 Navy surveillance planes, and he was able to, because of the decisive action he took, bring the plane back and the crew and no one was hurt.

Then along came the tragedy of all tragedies, 9/11. I thought: Boy, am I glad we have somebody in there who is decisive and can respond. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon got hit. If it had not been for the courageous bunch of people over Pennsylvania, very likely this building, where I am speaking right now, would have been one of the targets and one of the victims. That is what we are dealing with and the changes that were made.

The third part is policy change. I am going to run through this quickly, but I would like to have people think about this. The President changed the policy, and I think we can pretty much take his rhetoric that he has lived up to and see how different this is from the decade of the nineties.

The President said: You are either with us or against us. That is what the President said to other countries. If you are not with us, you are an enemy. He said that Americans are asking how will we fight to win this war:

We will direct every resource at our command, every means

of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of

law enforcement, every necessary weapon of war to the

disruption and defeat of the global war on terror network.

The President went further to say we are going to do four things. He said we are determined to prevent the attacks of terrorist networks before they occur.

Second, we are determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and to their terrorist allies who will use them.

Third, we are determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes.

Fourth, we are determined to deny militants control of any nation.

Within weeks of 9/11, he sent the military to Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. Operation Enduring Freedom was successful.

He asked Congress for the PATRIOT Act.

He established the Department of Homeland Security.

He formed the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission had 39 recommendations, of which we adopted 37.

He launched a preemptive attack against Saddam Hussein, and that worked successively. That was Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He established the National Counterterrorism Center, which is now up and running.

He established a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office where just one single Federal agency is in charge so these things don't get lost in a barrage of bureaucracies.

He established the Terrorist Screening Center.

He established and transformed the FBI to focus on preventing terrorism.

He strengthened the Transportation Safety Administration.

He improved border screening and security through the US-VISIT entry- exit system.

For the first time, he started looking at our problems with regard to cargo coming into this country. He set up the National Targeting Center, which is responsible for that.

He expanded shipping security through the Container Security Initiative, which worked successfully.

He developed Project Bioshield. This is an organized defense against chemical weapons and biological weapons, as well as nuclear attacks.

He aggressively cracked down on terrorist financing with many international partners. Over 400 individuals and entities have been designated pursuant to the Executive order, resulting in nearly $150 million in frozen assets and millions more blocked so they cannot get to the terrorist activities.

The international successes he has had are incredible. We are safer today.

Mr. President, 9/11 was a wake-up call. We are doing the right things.

Another measure of success is Iraq. You would never know it, listening to the media. The first thing the troops ask me when I go over there is, Why doesn't the media like us? Why don't they understand what we are doing? I think now they are catching on that the American people are aware of our success.

They have had three successful nationwide elections. They voted for a transitional government and drafted the most progressive democratic constitution in the Arab world, approved a new constitution, elected a new government under a new constitution, with each election less violent, with a bigger turnout than the one before.

The Sunnis, the ones who were not cooperating, are now cooperating. There was an article about a week ago in the Los Angeles Times that talked about the killing by a suicide bomber of literally hundreds of Iraqi troops, and most were Sunnis, and 225 Sunni families each offered another member of their family to replace those who had been killed. That is Iraq.

Still, there are international successes with terrorism. The terrorists who attacked on 9/11 are in jail, dead, or on the run. They are isolated. Al-Qaida and bin Laden no longer have a safe haven in which to hide. The Taliban is deposed, and democracy is in its place.

The al-Qaida structure has been taken out. No major attacks on the United States have taken place since all this took place. We have had the

disruption of at least 10 serious al-Qaida terrorist plots since 9/11. Three of those plots, incidentally, were plots to do something to the United States of America within the confines of our borders.

We had the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that was taking place during the nineties and the AQ Khan network in Pakistan. They are no longer distributing weapons of mass destruction or information about them.

There are now six-party talks ongoing with North Korea, and the United States is no longer alone in pressuring the North Koreans to give up their nuclear programs.

Libya opened its doors to inspection. This is really critical because Libya, during the Clinton administration of the nineties, was building weapons of mass destruction, their unconventional weapons program. I can't help but think they equate President Bush with President Reagan because we remember and they remember, certainly, what happened in 1986 when President Reagan sent about F-111s into Libya and pounded them into the ground. All of a sudden, Libya opened their doors to our inspectors, and they have admitted the country had sought to develop unconventional weapons, but now they are eliminating them.

In missile defense, this is significant because since 1983 when the SDI program started and people were deriding it--the liberals didn't want us to be able to defend ourselves against incoming missile attacks. We now have the beginning of one coming in place. We can now knock down incoming missiles into the United States. That is huge. Not many people are aware of it, but that is what is happening.

We talked about the problems he inherited and about the solutions. How much further do we have to go? In the State of the Union Message tomorrow night, we are going to hear the President talk about Iraq and about some of the things we need to continue in Iraq, the successes we have had, but also the international community, the fact they are going to have to come up with what they agreed to. They agreed to supply $13 billion toward the war in Iraq. They have not done it yet. I think he is going to invite them to do it tomorrow night.

The Iran problem, with the President of Iran declaring Israel must be wiped off the map and the Holocaust was actually a myth--a far more serious issue is Iran's attempt to restart their nuclear program. Against the International Atomic Energy Agency directive, on January 10, Iran reopened Natanz nuclear complex. That is a serious problem.

Mexico and the borders--we have talked about that and recognize it is a serious problem.

The NSA eavesdropping--I think the President will talk about that. Everyone is concerned about people's feelings being hurt and not about the intervention of the President to eavesdrop and try to get information from known terrorist groups coming into this country and trying to communicate with terrorists within the country. I am really proud of this President for sticking to his guns on this issue. We need to keep that going. I am sure he will mention something about that tomorrow night.

China--I am sure he will talk about the problems with China. I have to say this: As a member of the Armed Services Committee, during the nineties, during the Clinton administration, I watched the dismantling of our system. At the time, we were going down to about 60 percent of what we had at the end of the Persian Gulf war, and at that time, China had increased its military procurement by 1,000 percent. That is bad enough, and that is serious, but the other thing they are doing, their problem with us is we are the No. 1 and No. 2 country in terms of having to depend on other countries to have the energy to run our country and certainly to fight a war.

When we do this, I see China out there all of a sudden has its $70 billion deal with Iran, and now they are importing 13 percent of their oil from Iran. They are refusing to go along with us on sanctions against the Sudan with all the atrocities going on there. Now they are importing 70 percent of their oil from Sudan. We know what they have been doing with Chavez in Venezuela.

These are real serious problems we are facing with China. I am sure he will talk about these tomorrow night.

He will talk about our overreliance on foreign oil. I cannot be critical of the Democrats or Republicans. We are all responsible for that.

Back when Don Hodel was Secretary of Interior during the Reagan administration, we had a little song and dance where we would go out to the consumption States, such as New York and Illinois, and we would tell them that our reliance on foreign countries for energy is really not an energy issue, it is a national security issue because we are relying on them for our ability to fight a war. Do you know what our reliance was at that time? We were relying on foreign countries for 35 percent of our total amount of oil imports, oil to run our country. Now it is at 63 percent. That is serious.

I have to say in conclusion I believe the President deserves excellent grades. What this administration accomplished in the last 5 years is phenomenal. If we compare where we were and where we are now, we are a more secure nation. We have finally awakened and we have started to deal aggressively with the threats that are facing us. We are no longer treating the terrorist enemies of the United States like disadvantaged people. We are no longer turning a blind eye to the nuclear proliferation by negotiating without the real threat of military action. Our negotiators can now go to the table with more credibility.

We are no long underfunding the readiness challenge. If we had an administration without the willingness to fund defense, take decisive action and stand up to our allies with their heads buried in the sand, we would be in far worse shape than we are today. I believe Europe is slowly awakening to the threats that exist. Fortunately we have had one very strong ally who stayed with us through this challenging period, Tony Blair. I am sure the President will renew his praise for Tony Blair and all the help he has given to us.

I wish to say one thing. Let me ask the Chair how much time I have remaining?

Let me make a comment about this thing, ``The U.S. Military Under Strain and at Risk.'' It is amazing that the media would give any attention to this group. Do you know who this group is? This group is Madeleine Albright, Burger--this is the group, Podesta--these are the ones who gave us the problems we had in the 1990s and so they came with a report and say the military is under strain, at risk.

We are undoing the damage they did. The far-left Democrat club that gave us the broken force of the 1990s is the one in charge of this report. If you watch TV, you would think they are actually people who are seriously concerned about the United States of America and concerned about undoing the damage that has been done there when they in fact were the ones who caused damage. The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Schoomacker is a good guy. He came out of retirement and agreed to do this. He didn't have to do it. He is not one of the guys who had to do it for a job. He is retired. He is down on a ranch. He agreed to come in and become the commander of the Army, and he read this report and said there is no truth to it. Our Army is not broken. We are actually going through modernization challenges, but it is trying to modernize, modularize, and mobilize, and fight a global war at the same time.

The accusations that were made, let's look at one of them in particular. It says:

Nearly all of the available combat units in the U.S. Army

National Guard and Marine Corps have been used in the current

operations.

That is true because we started with a force that was underfunded and had been drawn down during the 1980s by the very people who came out with this report. They didn't have the right kind of a mix. So we are changing that and taking it away from the Cold War military to one that is facing this asymmetric threat we have out there. We are currently raising the number of our brigades from 33 to 42. Congress has given us now, through the leadership of the President, authorization for 30,000 more troops.

The shortfall, that was their fault. Again, you can go in and read more of this report saying the Army is experiencing the beginnings of what could become a major recruiting crisis. Right now we are raising our number within the Army from 484,000 to 512,000 and, while we are doing that, our recruiting and our retention is very good. Right now the Active Force retention and recruiting figures combined for 2005 were 99.1 percent. It may not be growing as fast as we would like toward the 512,000, but we can hardly call that a failure. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2006, we achieved 104 percent of the recruiting mission and 100 percent of the retention mission for the quarter.

The Guard and Reserve are all overworked, but in the first quarter, recruiting figures for the National Guard are 106 percent and the Reserves are doing even better at 122 percent. General Fuzzy Webster, who came back with the Third Infantry Division--that was their second rotation--they now have a 133-percent retention. That is the third ID that has been over there fighting for freedom on two different occasions.

Anyway, the surprising thing is the press would give them any attention at all.

Last, let me share my own personal experience. I have had occasion to go to Iraq or the Iraq area 10 times now. I take very seriously my job as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Let me share with you, not all 10 times but a little anecdotal experience on 3 of those times.

First, in January, January is the first vote. I remember one lady--I had an interpreter and we were interviewing--and she said I couldn't see the ballot because of the tears in my eyes. Then it occurred to me, this is not the first time in the 30 years of the butcher Saddam Hussein, this is the first time in 7,000 years we have had an opportunity at self-determination.

A few days later I decide to spend my time in the Sunni triangle because that is where they are supposed to hate us the most. There is a general in Fallujah by the name of Mahdi, the brigade commander for Saddam Hussein, the brigade commander for the Iraqi security forces in Fallujah. At that time he hated Americans, until they started training with the Marines in Fallujah, called embedded training. They became so fond of the Marines, when they rotated the Marines out we all got together and we cried. He renamed Fallujah Iraqi security force the Fallujah marines. That man is now in charge of security in Baghdad because he is doing security for us. In Tikrit, I was there when they blew up one of the training centers where 40 Iraqis were seriously injured. What you don't see in the media is the 40 families who had that loss replaced their loved ones with another member of the family.

When you go across the Sunni triangle 50 or 100 feet off the ground in a helicopter, little kids are waving American flags. When we send care packages to our kids, cookies or candies, they don't eat them, they repackage them and throw them to the kids there. That is the truth of what was happening.

I was up there last month during the election. Everybody expected the problems of the terrorists, the insurgents, to spike at that time, but it didn't happen because they have run out of steam. The IEDs, they went down by 30 percent in the month before the December election. Suicide bombs went down by 70 percent in 90 days. The road from the airport that goes into the green zone, I have been on it many times, they were having about 10 terrorist activities each week and now there have not been any for 7 months. Not one. That is when we turned over the security to the Iraqis and they are taking care of their own security.

These are the successes that are taking place. The number of tips that come in from Iraqis, they used to be 500 a month, now they are up to 5,000 a month. This is what is happening.

When we see that this general is now in Baghdad, and more than the eastern half of Baghdad, there is not one American boot on the ground, they are all Iraqis. They are the ones taking care of their own security and the 112 battalions they have right now, approximately 220,000 troops, 32 of those 112 battalions are either level 1 or level 2; that is, they can go into battle on their own. In January a year ago none were in that position.

Is it going to be over? People are always asking that question. People are not answering. I will answer that question. If you take the trend where we are right now, right now we have trained and equipped 220,000 Iraqi troops. By the end of this year it will be 300,000 Iraqi troops. The goal was to get up to 325,000. Why? Because all the military people tell me we need to get to 10 divisions before we can turn the security of Iraq over to the Iraqis, and that will be 325,000. We will be there by June of 2007. By June of 2007 we will have turned over the security to the Iraqis. We will still have a few troops there--we still have troops in Bosnia and Kosovo--but the security will have been turned over to them.

When you go through the towns and see the hospitals, the schools, the businesses--$22 billion in oil reserves are going in. Yet you have several Senators coming back, Senators who, I might add, are running for President in 2008, trying to make you think things are not successful there. Senator Biden came back and said they only had 30,000 troops. It was not 30,000, it was 200,000 when he made that statement. Senator Kerry said our troops are out at night terrorizing women. I talked to the troops. None of them even know what he is talking about.

I have to conclude, and I say this in all sincerity to the authors of this report and to the 1990s crowd that got us into this mess, and I say to the naysayers, and I say to the cut-and-run caucus, I have named them--I say to the hand wringers: I am sure glad you are not in charge because, if you were, what happened to the military and national security in the 1990s would be happening again right now. We would be right back to the same path where surrender is always an option. Back where? Negotiating with terrorists. There is nothing wrong with that. Negotiate and appease, negotiate and appease. I thank God every day our President, George Bush, is not an appeaser. An appeaser is a guy who throws his friends to the alligators hoping they will eat them last.

Hiram Mann said:

No man survives when freedom fails.

The best men rot in filthy jails.

And those who cry appease, appease,

are hanged by those they tried to please.

Back in 2000 we came within six electoral votes of being hanged by those we tried to please.

Looking at what this President has done, grading the President on national defense and national security, very clearly President Bush--I am anxious to hear him tomorrow night--very clearly he will get an A.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent there now be a period for morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I request that my fellow, Scott Fisher, be granted floor privileges during the debate tonight and for tomorrow.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on Tuesday, January 31. I further ask that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court as under the provisions of the previous order.

I ask further that the time until 10:20 a.m. be equally divided, with the time from 10:20 to 10:30 under the control of Senator Leahy and the time from 10:30 to 10:40 under the control of Senator Specter, the time from 10:40 to 10:50 under the control of the Democratic leader, and the time from 10:50 to 11 be reserved for the majority leader. I further ask unanimous consent that following the vote on confirmation, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the nomination of Ben Bernanke to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, as under the previous order.

I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m. to accommodate the weekly party luncheons, and that Senator Bunning be recognized at 2:15 for his 30 minutes of debate on the Bernanke nomination.

Tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock we will vote on the confirmation of Judge Alito to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. Senators should be seated at their desks for this historic vote. Following that vote, we will consider the nomination of Ben Bernanke to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve under a time agreement reached last week. Tomorrow evening we will proceed as a body to the House Chamber to hear the President's State of the Union Message, which is due to be delivered at 9 o'clock eastern standard time.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, I have just learned that two of our distinguished Senators, both from Massachusetts, have made the statement that they are trying to drum up support for a filibuster. This is not going to happen. I know that people get desperate. They get desperate because they are afraid something might happen to their liberal agenda. But the Constitution is very clear.

We have discussed this, we have debated this, and there is not going to be a problem there. But I think it is worth bringing to the attention of the American people that this is actually taking place right now. Nowhere did our Founding Fathers say that to confirm a judge, you had to have a supermajority, and I do not believe this is going to happen.

Let me share a couple thoughts with you. First of all, I am not a lawyer. I am not a member of the Judiciary Committee. In a way, that puts me in a position, perhaps, that is a little better than a lot of my colleagues who are. In fact, most of the people who have spoken are members of the Judiciary Committee. But, by now, we have heard so much about Judge Samuel Alito's resume, about the type of person he is. I would have to say, yes, he is guilty, he is guilty of being a strict constructionist, of being a strict interpreter of the Constitution, and he will rule according to settled law. I do not think anyone has any doubt in their mind that he would.

The problem is that some of the Democrats have made it clear they are going to make this a partisan fight, now even talking about perhaps even a filibuster. They have a litmus test. They do not confirm any nominee of any President unless that nominee makes some type of a commitment and passes a litmus test for their far-left liberal agenda, whether that is gay marriage or whether it is abortion on demand or any of the rest of it. That is really what it is about. We do not talk about this. They kind of dance around this issue, but that is the real reason they do not like this guy, because he is not going to line up and give a litmus test to some liberal agenda.

One of the things that bothers me about this is, this is all new. This did not happen in the past. I can remember when Judge Scalia was up for confirmation. People talk about Judges Scalia and Alito not just because their names sound similar, but their temperament is the same and their background is the same, their writings are the same--very similar. We went through a very long process with Judge Scalia during his confirmation, and he ended up being confirmed by a unanimous vote-- a unanimous vote.

If you will remember, that is when William Rehnquist was taken from the Court and made the Chief Justice, which created the vacancy. A lot of people did not want to have someone who was a strict constructionist, but they realized he was qualified, and they realized he was appointed by a President who was a Republican, Ronald Reagan, and they went ahead and confirmed him. It was unanimous. Now this is something that is really changing now because there is no way in the world Judge Alito is going to be unanimously confirmed.

Back in the Clinton administration, I remember so well when President Clinton nominated Judge Ginsburg and then Breyer. And keep in mind, we Republicans were not real excited about that. They did not have a very conservative background, and yet they were overwhelmingly confirmed.

That is the change I see happening. It is not like it used to be. Ginsburg was 96 to 3. Breyer was 87 to 9. They were overwhelmingly confirmed.

Not too long ago, just the other day, Jeff Sessions, who is our colleague from Alabama, made a statement. He said if we really get into this thing where we are looking at it philosophically, then you are going to have to remember--and the way he worded it was--``the knife cuts both ways.'' He said if this new standard is affirmed, then it will be more difficult for future Democrat Presidents to have their nominees confirmed. I agree with this. If a Democrat President comes up and makes a nomination, we would change, the same way they are changing during this. Maybe the litmus test would be discussed at that time.

On the plane coming up here just a few minutes ago--we just landed, after this recess--my wife and I were talking about this, and I told her about the comments of Senator Sessions. I said:

What I think I will do in my speech on the floor tonight on the confirmation of Judge Alito is make the statement that if they adhere to this litmus test, that if I am around--I do not think there is going to be a Democrat President, but if there is and I am still in the U.S. Senate, I am going to do the same thing. I am going to hold them to a litmus test. My wife said: No, don't do that. Don't stoop to that just because they are doing it. So I am not doing it. I learned a long time ago that--my wife and I have been married 46 years--I do what I am told.

So anyway, this is something that is a change that we have observed, and I think it warrants our consideration.

Now, the Democrats are also making outrageous accusations, trying to justify partisan votes. I believe in my heart that they do not believe these accusations they are making, but what they do want to do is have some excuse so they can go home and say, ``I voted against this guy,'' but not tell them the real reasons. Let's go over some of these accusations that are made.

I start out with Senator Kennedy, who inaccurately stated that Alito opposes the one-person, one-vote principle. I will go ahead and give the quote. Senator Kennedy, on January 9 said:

It expresses outright hostility to the basic principle of

one person, one vote, affirmed by the Supreme Court as

essential to ensuring that all Americans have a voice in

their government.

Now, the fact is, Judge Alito has stated that the principle of one person, one vote is a bedrock principle of American constitutional law. He has never taken issue with that principle. And to quote him, he said:

[T]he principle of one person, one vote is a fundamental

part of our constitutional law. . . . [and] I do not see any

reason why it should be reexamined. And I do not know that

anybody is asking for that to be done. . . . I think that is

[a] very well settled [principle] now in the constitutional

law of our country.

I would adhere to that. Well, he could not be more emphatic than that. Again, Senator Kennedy--what he said is not true. I know he wants it to be true. He wishes it were true, but it is not.

Then along came Senator Schumer from New York. In attacking Judge Alito's jurisprudence, Senator Schumer tried to paint Alito as someone who is ``too conservative.'' His statement was:

Judge Alito, in case after case, you give the impression of

applying careful legal reasoning, but, too many times, you

happen to reach the most conservative result.

Well, the fact is, Senator Schumer's characterization of Alito overlooks the bulk of Alito's record of nearly 5,000 votes as a court of appeals judge reached on the law and the facts, which are inconsistent with Senator Schumer's picture of Alito.

Now, if you question this, the statement that was made by Senator Schumer, if you believe there might be some merit to it, let's stop. The easiest way to refute that is to read an editorial that was in the Washington Post. There is not a person who belongs to this body or anyone within earshot of what I am saying right now who is going to say the Washington Post is a conservative publication or a Republican publication. It is not. Yet what they said about Alito was:

[J]udge Alito's dissents are not the work of an unblinking

ideologue. . . .[T]hey are the work of a serious and

scholarly judge whose arguments deserve respect--a respect

evident among his colleagues even when their positions

differ.

And that is not the Washington Times; this is the Washington Post making this statement. So I would say, like Senator Kennedy, that Senator Schumer, what he said is just flat not true. I am sure he wishes it were true, but it is not.

Here is another statement made by Senator Kennedy. He is trying to make a position that Judge Alito wants, through the Presidential signing statements--Presidential signing statements are statements that are made by the President when a new law is passed--to say: This is my interpretation of it. Well, he likes to imply that Alito supports giving the President absolute power. Senator Kennedy said:

You argued that the Attorney General should have the

absolute immunity, even for actions that he knows to be

unlawful or unconstitutional; suggested that the court should

give a President's Signing Statement great deference in

determining the meaning and the intent of the law; and

argued, as a matter of your own political and judicial

philosophy, for an almost all-powerful presidency.

Well, the fact is, the President's bill-signing statement is a device developed long before Alito came along.

They try to imply that he had something to do with this. This has been embraced by Democratic and Republican Presidents for years and years, all the way back to Presidents Monroe and Jackson. The suggestion that Alito somehow invented this notion is patently absurd. So, again, Senator Kennedy is wrong. His statement is not true.

He further cites false and inaccurate Knight Ridder analysis. This is rather interesting. Senator Kennedy made more outrageous statements this time about Alito's view of government searches. Senator Kennedy, on January 10:

Mr. Chairman, at this point, I'd like to include in the

appropriate place in the Record the Knight Ridder studies

that concluded that Judge Alito never found a government

search unconstitutional.

Knight Ridder's writers, Stephen Henderson and Howard Mintz, have repeatedly been accused of biased reporting on Alito's record. The National Journal's Stuart Taylor wrote:

I focus here not . . . on such egregious factual errors as

the assertion on C-SPAN, by Stephen Henderson of Knight

Ridder newspapers, that in a study of Alito's more than 300

judicial opinions, ``we didn't find a single case in which

Judge Alito sided with African-Americans . . . [who were]

alleging racial bias.

He went on to say:

What is remarkable is that any reporter could have

overlooked [case after case after case] in which Alito has

sided with African-Americans alleging racial bias.

In a few minutes, I am going to be specific on some of these, but there would be too many to cite for the amount of time we have. Senator Kennedy's statements are inaccurate and untrue. I know he wishes they were true, but they are not. These guys are grasping at straws.

Then Senator Biden came in with inaccurate statements on Presidential treatment toward the State. Senator Biden charged Alito with ruling in favor of the State against the individual. This is what he said:

But as I've tried diligently to look at your record, you

seem to come down more often and give the benefit of the

doubt to the outfit against whom discrimination is being

alleged. You seem to lean--in close cases, you lean to the

state versus the individual.

The facts belie that. The fact is, Alito's record shows he consistently approaches each case based on the law and the facts. He rules for plaintiffs and for defendants when the law supports him. He rules for the corporation or the State when the law supports their position. This is the appropriate approach for a Federal judge. It is clear that Alito understands the importance of the independence of the judiciary and has a healthy respect for its role as the bullwark against executive overreaching.

Alito often cites Alexander Hamilton. I think Alito has quoted Alexander Hamilton more than anyone else, at least it seems that way to me. He said:

[A]s Alexander Hamilton aptly put it in Federalist 78, the

courts should carry out [the judicial power] with ``firmness

and independence.'' ``Without this,'' he observed, ``all the

reservations of particular rights or privileges [in the

Constitution] would amount to nothing.''

Alito continued:

When a constitutional or statutory violation [by other

governmental institutions] is proven, a court should not

hesitate to impose a strong and lawful remedy if that is what

is needed to provide full redress. Some of the finest

chapters in the history of the Federal Courts have been

written when federal judges, despite resistance, have

steadfastly enforced remedies for deeply rooted

constitutional violations.

During his 15 years on the bench, Judge Alito has repeatedly ruled to restrain executive authority, reflecting his understanding of the role of the judiciary to protect the constitutional rights, separation of powers, and so forth. What Senator Biden said is not true. I know he wishes it were.

Next we had Senator Feinstein. She was approaching something to which I am particularly sensitive. I chair the committee called Environment and Public Works. The Presiding Officer is a member of that committee. We deal

with environmental issues. Senator Feinstein mischaracterized Alito's environmental record.

Let me say this for anyone who might be listening: If there is nothing better going on right now, these Senators I am very critical of, I love them dearly. That is possible. It doesn't happen in the other body, seeing a Senator here who also served in the House at the time that I was there. We can love our friends, our Senators, with whom we serve, and we can detest their philosophy and their agenda. I learned this the hard way.

I will share this story. Back in 1994, I came from the House to the Senate. And operating as I had always operated in the House, there happened to be a Senator on the floor named Wendell Ford from Kentucky. He was known as the junkyard dog of the Senate. I disagreed with him. I came down here. That was the opening day, the first day I was elected and confirmed in a special election. I went down and I took him on. It was mean. It was wicked. And we are yelling and screaming. Afterwards I felt pretty good. I went to go back to the Russell Building, went down the elevator and ran into none other than Senator Bob Byrd.

Bob Byrd said: Ride along with me. He said: Young man, I appreciate your spunk.

I liked that because that happened to be November 17, 1994. It was my 60th birthday.

He said: Young man, I appreciate your spunk, but this isn't the way we do it in the Senate. He explained to me the history of the Senate, how it must have been divinely inspired, so that there is a genuine love for your fellow Senators, something that doesn't exist in the other body. I don't know why I said all that.

But Senator Feinstein accused Alito of ruling against the Clean Water Act. She said:

In Public Interest Research Group of New Jersey v.

Magnesium Electron, a citizens environmental group sued a

chemical manufacturer under the Clean Water Act for polluting

a river used by members of the group . . . your decision, as

I understand it, was based upon your conclusion that the

environmental group did not have standing to sue under the

Clean Water Act because even though members of the

environmental group had stopped using the river due to the

pollution, they did not prove any injury to the environment.

The decision, if broadly applied, would have gutted the

Citizen Lawsuit Provision of the Clean Water Act . . . so you

see where the concern comes with respect to overthrowing

something on a technicality that can have enormous

implications.

That is what Senator Feinstein said. Keep in mind what Alito's vote was. He did not write the opinion. He voted in this case. It was a straightforward application of the Supreme Court's controlling precedent in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife. Most of us remember Manuel Lujan who later became Secretary of Interior. This decision was a 1992 decision in which the Supreme Court required that in order to file suit, a plaintiff must allege the actual injury, not just have this great concern over activities such as pollution.

What we are saying here is that Senator Feinstein should have read this. He was interpreting a law he may have agreed on or may not have, but this was sent down. This was settled law, established by the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito's vote, which he didn't write, was one based in law. I think what Senator Feinstein said was not true. It needs to be answered. That is the answer.

Another one that Senator Kennedy researched. Senator Kennedy charged that Alito rarely votes for the little guy. Senator Kennedy charged Alito with false accusations saying that he was biased toward the rich and powerful. This is Senator Kennedy talking about the rich and powerful. He was biased toward the rich and powerful and against the little man. I will use the quote that he used. He said:

And on the cases he decided, in case after case after case,

we see legal contortions and inconsistent reasoning to bend

over backwards to help the powerful.

This is on January 12, stated by Senator Kennedy. Time after time during his hearings, Alito and other Senators have repeated instances in which Alito did rule for the little guy. In cases involving criminal law, employment and labor law, immigration law, and others, Judge Alito has consistently ruled for plaintiffs or defendants as the facts and the law demanded.

I will give some examples. In Zubi v. AT&T Corporation, in 2000, Alito dissented from a case foreclosing a plaintiff's opportunity to advance his claim of race discrimination. Alito would have applied a longer statute of limitations to let the claim go forward. That is just the opposite of what was asserted by Senator Kennedy.

In another case, Caruso v. Blockbuster-Sony Music Entertainment Center at the Waterfront, writing for the unanimous panel, Judge Alito reversed in part the district court's grant of summary judgment for Blockbuster-Sony ``E-Centre''--this is a big corporation--and against a disabled patron. The plaintiff was William Caruso. He was a disabled veteran of Vietnam who used a wheelchair, brought suit against E-Centre under the Americans with Disabilities Act claiming that the wheelchair areas in the pavilion do not provide wheelchair users with lines of sight over standing spectators. The lawn area is not wheelchair accessible.

Judge Alito explained that even though the Department of Justice's standards do not require that wheelchair users must be able to see the stage when other patrons stand, the E-Centre must make assembly areas like the lawn accessible to people in wheelchairs. He concluded:

We reject the argument that assembly areas without fixed

seating need not provide access to people in wheelchairs.

Again, Alito's stellar record proves that Senator Kennedy's statement is false.

The next one I will mention was Senator Kennedy's statement on racial discrimination. Senator Kennedy wrongly stated that Alito had never written an opinion related to race discrimination, implying that he could be a racist. Senator Kennedy said:

Judge Alito has not written one single opinion on the

merits in favor of a person of color alleging race

discrimination on the job: in 15 years on the bench, not one.

He said that on January 9. The facts are that Alito has repeatedly ruled in favor of minorities making allegations of racial discrimination in employment. One such case is Smith v. Davis, 2001, in which Alito voted to reverse a grant of summary judgment against an African-American man's claim that he had been discriminated against in employment on the basis of race. Another one is Zubi v. Johnson & Johnson Medical, Inc. Alito voted to reverse a district court's grant of summary judgment against the plaintiff.

Judge Alito and his colleagues concluded that the female African- American plaintiff had introduced sufficient evidence to question whether the employer had, in fact, given her lower quality assignments due to her ``objective'' scores on certain evaluations, as the employer maintained. There are many more cases.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the other cases.

The facts, as we have demonstrated, speak for themselves. Samuel Alito is not a racist, not a rightwing extremist who believes in an executive branch with sole authority and rules only in favor of the powerful but a thoughtful, mainstream, fair, experienced interpreter of the Constitution. He is a good guy. I have heard many people say that he is probably one of the most qualified persons ever to be nominated for this High Court. Those liberal Senators who are desperately grasping at any straw to find justification to vote against Judge Alito, they have their litmus test. In order to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, a judge must embrace all of the leftwing's extremist agenda, an agenda that is so unpopular in America that the American people reject it, and it must be legislated from the bench. That is the problem they have.

When my service in the Senate is over, one of the greatest honors I will have had, for the sake of America and

for the sake of my 20 kids and grandkids, is to vote to confirm Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce The Small System Drinking Water Act of 2005 to assist water systems throughout the country comply with the numerous Federal drinking water standards. My bill will require the Federal Government to live up to its obligations and require the EPA to use all of the tools given the Agency in the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments (SDWA).

In Oklahoma we continue to have municipalities struggling with the arsenic rule. Further nearly 80 percent of our small systems, those serving less than 10,000 people, are not in compliance with the Disinfection Byproducts (DBP) Stage I rule. In EPA's most recent drinking water needs survey, Oklahoma identified $4.5 billion in infrastructure needs over the next 20 years. $40 million a year of that need is to meet Federal drinking water standards. This does not include costs imposed by Oklahoma communities to meet Federal clean water requirements.

The EPA on December 15th finalized the Disinfection Byproducts Stage II rule and the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule. The costs of complying with these two rules are not included in the $40 million a year need recently identified by the State. At current funding rates, the State receives $8.5 million dollars for its drinking water revolving loan fund.

My bill proposes a few simple steps to help systems comply with the rules. First, it reauthorizes the technical assistance program in the SDWA. The DBP Stage I rule is very complex and involves a lot of monitoring and testing. The other rules are equally complex in nature and many small systems simply do not have the expertise needed to implement them. If we are going to impose complicated requirements on systems, we need to provide them with help to implement those requirements. Therefore, my legislation also requires that each system receive the help it needs to come into compliance before an enforcement action can be taken.

The bill also creates a pilot program to demonstrate new technologies and approaches for systems of all sizes to comply with these complicated rules. It requires the EPA to convene a working group to examine the science behind the rules compared to new developments since their publication.

Section 1412(b)(4)(E) of the SDWA Amendments of 1996 authorizes the use of point of entry treatment, point of use treatment and package plants to economically meet the requirements of the Act. However, to date, these approaches are not widely used by small water systems. My legislation directs the EPA to convene a working group to identify barriers to the use of these approaches. The EPA will then use the recommendations of the working group to draft a model guidance document that states can use to create their own programs.

This legislation seeks to provide communities with more tools in order to comply with these Federal requirements while also requiring EPA to use the tools it has been provided, including the identification of variance technologies.