Floor Statements

Madam President, I note that my friend and colleague, the chairman of the Budget Committee, is here. I thought I would begin by quoting something he said which I think sets the tone for the discussion of the budget. I believe it was during a March 4, 2007, interview on ``60 Minutes'' when the distinguished chairman said:

I believe, first of all, that we need more revenue.

Now I won't pretend that I know the exact context in which this statement was made, but it is not the first time I have heard Democratic colleagues say we need more revenue. In one of our informal meetings, colleagues said: We will need a much bigger revenue stream when the next President is elected. That individual was presuming it would be a Democratic President.

Yes, of course.

I am happy to have the Senator from Vermont confirm that on the other side of the aisle there is a belief that the U.S. Government needs more revenue.

I would actually put it the other way around. Especially in times of economic difficulties--and I think we all agree that our economy is not in great shape right now; there is a discussion that we may even be in or very close to a recession--of course, the worst thing to do during that period is to give the Federal Government more revenue, to take more revenue out of the pockets of taxpayers, average Americans who have to pay attention to their own budgets.

As a matter of fact, our problem is not the lack of Federal revenues. We are collecting more money now at the Federal Government level than the historic average over the last 40 years. I hardly think the Federal Government needs more revenue. I argue, instead, that our families need to keep more of the hard-earned revenue that is a result of the efforts of their families in working hard every day.

It is true that because many on the Democratic side of the aisle have plans to spend more money, as my distinguished colleague from Vermont is suggesting, they therefore see a need to take money from taxpayers' pockets so that we in Washington, in our infinite wisdom, can make decisions about how that money should be spent. I think that is the wrong prescription virtually any time but certainly at a time when we may be heading into a recession.

It at least is the case that our Democratic friends in their budget would raise taxes in some cases--not all but in some cases--to pay for this additional spending they believe should occur. As with last year's budget, which would have increased taxes by $900 billion, this year the budget would increase taxes by $1.2 trillion--the biggest tax hike in the history of the United States.

Once again, there is a suggestion out there that we can soak the rich and nobody else will have to bear the burden. The top 1 percent would pay something like $25 billion in taxes; that is the amount we could expect from this budget in 2009. Of course, that wouldn't begin to take care of the spending proposals that have been added up on the other side of the aisle.

Every time we try to target the rich in order to collect a lot of money to pay for spending in Washington, we end up hitting everybody else. The best example of that is the alternative minimum tax, the AMT. Originally, this tax was designed to ensure that millionaires would always pay some taxes, that they could not avoid tax liability by taking advantage of writeoffs and deductions and credits and other provisions of the Tax Code that anybody is entitled to take advantage of, if those provisions meant that you could write off or offset your income with losses or deductions and therefore there is no tax liability. We said: No, that is not right. The AMT will come into play at that point so everybody has to pay some taxes. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

What has happened in the meantime, we all know, because it has not been indexed for inflation, we now this year had something like 23 million taxpayers subject to that kind of alternative minimum tax liability, something people on both sides of the aisle have sought to avoid. We don't want to tax everybody. We don't want to hit the middle class, let alone other taxpayers. But it is a good example of how, when we try to aim at the rich, we end up somehow always managing to hit the poor or the middle class. That is the same thing here.

In the budget, there is a suggestion that we are only going to hit the rich. There are problems with that: No. 1, it is not true, as I will point out; secondly, you wouldn't begin to get the kind of revenue our colleagues say they need in order to engage in the spending programs the budget calls for.

I have a couple other examples. The energy and education tax incentives in this budget must be paid for by other tax increases. The same applies to the middle-class tax relief promised and any AMT relief after 2008. I remember because I chaired the subcommittee of the Finance Committee that has jurisdiction over the IRS. I heard a lot about tax gap collection. So we held a hearing. We said: How much money could we really collect by enforcing revenue collections? Everybody owes these taxes. If we just collected the money, how much could we expect to get? The experts said: Actually, not very much. You would spend more than you would end up collecting in many cases because it is not a matter of just going out and collecting a due debt but, rather, forcing the kind of bookkeeping on various kinds of small businesses that would probably put most of them out of business if they were really to keep the kinds of records that would enable us to collect the kinds of taxes that we suggest maybe they owe. So this business of recouping a portion of the tax gap and using that to pay for these spending programs is one that does not have the support of those who have testified before the Finance Committee.

The bottom line is, we are not going to be able to collect the kinds of revenues and the increased taxes called for here in order to pay for spending programs the Democrats have identified.

Finally, there is talk about a so-called reserve fund. This is an interesting concept. It is sort of, well, there is going to be money out there because we promise we will put money in it, so we can afford to therefore raise spending in anticipation that we will put money in this reserve fund. The amount of reserve funds included in the 2008 budget have now grown this year, representing up to $300 billion in new taxes and spending. As I said, that looks good on paper, but it doesn't come about in reality.

I will get to a final point in a minute about collecting revenues and what that has to do with the death tax, but let me deal with a couple other items before I talk about that.

The ranking member of the Budget Committee has noted something that started last year, and it certainly is included in this year's budget. That is the fact that budget enforcement mechanisms which were put into the budget last year amid great fanfare about how we are not going to have sham budgets; we are going to have pay-go--whenever we spend, we will make sure we collect it in advance--it turns out that has been waived more times than it has been abided by. With the budgetary sleights of hand that were put in place last year, we find that the same things roll over into the budget this year, with the result that, again, we have greater debt that is not really going to be paid for, notwithstanding what the budget seems to suggest.

The House budget included reconciliation instructions to pay for a 1- year extension of the AMT patch by presumably raising taxes on oil and gas companies, taxing private equity, and codifying the so-called economic substance doctrine. The Senate committee did not include reconciliation instructions in the Senate budget resolution, I presume because of the conclusion that at

the end of the last year, the AMT did not need to be paid for.

Obviously, there is an understanding in this caucus that those who oppose higher taxes on oil and gas--there are those who oppose higher taxes on oil and gas and oppose taxes on private equity, and it would be a very difficult thing to get such a bill passed in the Senate. But no one should be surprised that the same reconciliation instructions could very well magically appear in the Senate after a conference in order to get around Republican opposition to higher taxes. That is why you have heard many Republicans predict that when the conference report is concluded on this budget--if, indeed, a budget is passed--and it comes back here to the Senate, we are going to see some things that never would have been in the bill at this point in time and which I hope my colleagues would recognize and would oppose at that time.

I said I would get to the matter of whom this budget really hurts. We in the past have tried to focus on the rich, and we always end up hurting other people. Who are some of the other folks who would suffer under this budget? They include families, seniors, people with low incomes, small businesses--in other words, just about every group in this country we really don't want to hit with higher taxes. But when the current tax rates expire at the end of 2010 and the Democratic budget permits the rates to go back up to where they were before, the so-called Bush tax cuts, we are going to see 116 million taxpayers start sending more of their paychecks to Washington, DC.

The poor Federal Government needs more revenue, as my colleague said earlier. For the 7.8 million taxpayers taken off the rolls, if the current tax policies are allowed to expire, 7.8 million families who currently don't pay any income taxes because of the way we constructed the 2003 tax cuts would be put back on the rolls again. So there you have people in the lower income brackets--7.8 million taxpayers we took off the rolls--who would come back as taxpayers under the Democratic budget. Families, 43 million working families with children would see their taxes raised by an average of $2,300 in the year 2011 on average. Take a security guard earning $50,000, with a wife and two kids. He would see his taxes go up by $2,300 in 2011. Take a widowed teacher's aide with two kids. Her taxes will go up by $1,100 in 2011. That may not seem like a lot of money here in Washington, but it is a lot of money for a family working hard to make ends meet, worrying each month about where they will get the money to do all the things they need to do.

We tend to think in this body and in the Congress generally not in terms of millions anymore or even hundreds of millions but in billions of dollars. In fact, trillions are starting to creep into our lexicon. We need to get back to focus on what families are really concerned about. One thousand there, $2,000 there, $4,000 there ends up being a lot of money to these families.

Who else is going to get hit? Senior citizens, 18 million senior citizens will see their taxes rise by an average of $2,200 under this budget. So every Democrat who proudly casts a vote in favor of this budget, understand, this budget assumes that seniors will have an average tax increase in 2011 of $2,200. An elderly couple with $40,000 in income, if the Democrats roll back our current tax policy, a couple over age 65 at $40,000 in income will see their taxes go up by $2,200 in 2011. Eighteen million seniors will see their taxes increase if the current tax rates are not extended, which is not the case under the Democratic bill. Seniors especially benefit from reasonable capital gains and dividends tax rates because frequently they have small investments. They are part of a teacher's pension or some other fund that pays them dividends. Thirty percent of taxpaying seniors claim capital gains. More than 50 percent of taxpaying seniors claim individual dividends which would, of course, increase their tax liability under the Democratic budget.

We talk about small businesses. Small businesses are the engine of our economy. They provide more employment opportunities than all of the big businesses combined. Yet they pay the income tax rate at the highest level, which is the level of the ``rich.'' So whenever Democrats talk about taxing the rich, understand their shotgun also includes all of the small businesses because that is the rate they pay. So in the tax world, small businesses are the same thing as high-income individuals. Is that whom we want to harm, especially at a time when our economy, being in jeopardy as it is, has to rely upon the jobs created by small businesses? Seventy-five percent of all individual returns in the top 1 percent of income include business income. In fact, 83 percent of all individual returns above $1 million included business income. Think about that. That means that the bulk of the people who are reporting income in this category include business income.

Small businesses pay 54 percent of all individual income taxes. This is one of the worst things about the Democratic budget--not just for the lack of equity, not just because it hurts individuals, but because it has a devastating impact on our economy at this critical time.

If tax rates are allowed to rise to their pre-2001 levels, 27 million small businesses will see their tax bill increased by over $4,000. I will repeat it: 27 million small businesses will see their tax bill increase by over $4,000.

I might just note parenthetically, there is a direct correlation, by the way, between high taxes and high unemployment. In the United States, we have had relatively low taxes because of the Bush tax cuts. We collect about 34 percent of revenues as a percent of GDP; in fact, 34.2 percent. Our unemployment rate is 4.8 percent. In the European Union, the tax rates are more than 10 percent above that. They collect 45.4 percent of revenues as a percent of their GDP, and their unemployment rate is almost 8 percent. It is 7.9 percent right at this moment. So if we want higher unemployment, then raise taxes. It is a pretty sure way to get there.

Let me conclude by discussing briefly what this budget does with respect to the death tax because this has been a matter of particular concern to me. I have talked to Chairman Baucus about this matter.

In the Finance Committee, I offered an amendment to reform the death tax. In exchange for my agreeing to lay the amendment aside because the other side did not want to vote on it, the chairman agreed to hold hearings with the goal of trying to report out a death tax reform proposal sometime this spring. He has now advised me that is not going to happen. We will have the hearing, but we will not have a markup to put out a bill. That is very disappointing. Yet the budget actually assumes that such a bill will pass.

The budget, as I understand it, has a provision for an amendment of the death tax for so-called death tax reform. It is not very good reform because it would freeze the rate at 45 percent, which is a very high rate of taxation. It would set the exemption level at $3.5 million, which is not bad, but it could be better.

I have a better idea about what real reform would look like. What I would like to do is to set the exempted amount at $5 million per person, index that for inflation, and put the top death tax rate at no more than 35 percent. I think it ought to be closer to 25 percent, but in the spirit of trying to reach a compromise, I will propose we at least have it no higher than 35 percent. This would protect almost 120,000 families, family businesses, and family farms from having to pay the death tax each and every year. And it would promote continued economic growth and job creation.

It is interesting to me that the United States has the third highest estate tax rate in the world and is 37 percent above the international average. Twenty-four nations have no estate tax. There are only two countries that have rates higher than ours. Ours would be at 45 percent under the Democrat budget. In France it is only 40 percent. The average is about 13 percent.

One of the reasons other countries do not have this kind of tax at the time of death is because of the amount of money that people will spend to try to avoid it. It has been estimated, as a matter of fact, that there is almost an equal amount of money spent each year in an effort to try to avoid payment of the tax as there is paying the tax itself. And by ``trying to avoid it,'' I mean hiring lawyers and accountants and buying insurance policies, all of

which cost a lot of money. But due to some extent----

Let me conclude my point on this, though I do appreciate the intercession of my colleague earlier, acknowledging that folks on his side of the aisle would like to see a lot more revenue because of the spending they would like to accomplish.

Let me finish this point about the death tax.

The U.S. Treasury estimates that the estate tax reduces bequests by 14 percent. Individuals are either choosing to save less or rely heavily on estate planning, which is a large deadweight loss to the economy. The death tax costs more money to comply with than it raises in revenue. As I said before, there is a direct correlation between the two.

Economists Henry Aaron and Alicia Munnell estimated the amount spent on avoiding the death tax is approximately equal to the amount collected. The IRS estimates it takes about 38 hours to complete form 706, the Federal estate tax return. Estate planning for businesses can range from $5,000 to $250,000 for family limited partnerships and up to $1 million for closely held businesses. Fifty-two percent of the estates that filed a return were required to incur sizable legal, accounting, and other professional expenses even though they owed no tax.

So my point about the death tax is that almost no one thinks it is fair. Almost everybody acknowledges it should be reformed. We have tried year after year to reform it. We have not been able to get the necessary votes to accomplish that, though virtually every Republican has supported reform.

The chairman of the Finance Committee assured us we would work toward the goal of getting a bill this year but now says there will not be a goal, and as to the ``reform'' in the budget, it turns out to be very little reform at all. In fact, it was the same ``reform'' we passed last year as part of the budget. As everybody knows, the budget is not law. The budget is a goal, and we did not follow up on that goal. When I tried to do so, I was asked to back off for a future commitment, that we would try to work on it this year. Now we are told we are not going to do it this year.

So let's just understand that what we would be doing in passing a budget that theoretically has a proposal for death tax reform is not serious. We are not going to have death tax reform.

For those who vote for the amendment which will be offered here to suggest there will be death tax reform, understand that if you do not follow it up with real action to pass a bill that reforms the death tax, then this is nothing more than an unkept promise.

So I urge my colleagues, as they think about this, to recognize we will be held accountable. We now have a year of experience following the Democratic budget that was passed last year, and we see all of the unfulfilled commitments that were made in that budget now. Since the budget tracks so carefully this year what we did last year, one has to ask the same questions: Is it going to be the same this year where on the death tax, for example, we are not able to get relief? As I said, I will propose an amendment that I think takes a little bit better stab at death tax relief. I would hope we could get support as we have from some of our Democratic colleagues on that to demonstrate we want to do something substantive this year on that subject rather than simply put it in the budget and claim we have done something when, in fact, everybody knows that just putting it in the budget does not actually change anything.

Let me close, Madam President, by saying--I will be happy to yield, but I will be happy to stop and let my colleague from Vermont just go ahead, if he would like to do that--I want to acknowledge the hard work of the chairman of the Budget Committee, who is here. I know he is very much committed to trying his very best. But at a time when, as he acknowledged, many folks on his side of the aisle think the Federal Government needs more revenue, we are just in a debate in which we have to agree to disagree. He always does so in an amiable way, and I respect that.

But I just believe it is the American taxpayer who deserves more revenue, not the U.S. Government. Therefore, reluctantly, I will be opposing this budget in the form it is in and hope we can make substantial changes to it in a true spirit of bipartisanship.

I thank you.

Madam President, might I just ask the Senator to yield for 1 second?

I specifically indicated that I did not know the context.

Because I respect the Senator so much and was sure he would tell us what the context was, No. 1.

No. 2, I certainly agree with the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee on both of the subsequent two comments: one, that we should reduce spending, and, two, that we should have entitlement reform.

I would only make the point that I do not see a lot of reduced spending and entitlement reform in the budget, but perhaps the chairman could go on and discuss that as well.

I thank the Senator for yielding.

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

Mr. President, it has now been 20 days since the law that allows us to collect foreign intelligence abroad has lapsed. We are without the authority we need to collect intelligence against our terrorist enemy. The law expired February 16. The Senate passed a bill, a bipartisan bill, with 68 Senators voting yes, Democrats and Republicans. It was fashioned by the Intelligence Committee which passed it 13 to 2, a wide bipartisan margin, clearly a consensus that the United States must have authority for intelligence collection against our terrorist enemies. We passed that bill, sent it to the House of Representatives hoping that the House would act quickly, send it to the President for signature so we could get on with this important aspect of the war against terror. So far the House of Representatives leadership has not brought the bill to the floor of the House; this notwithstanding the fact that it clearly would pass. We know, because of letters Members of the House of Representatives have written to their leadership, that Democrats and Republicans together have more than enough votes to pass this legislation we in the Senate passed. Yet the House leadership sits on its hands.

Three weeks ago the House leadership said it needed 3 weeks to get the job done. That 3 weeks expires Sunday. But the House is not even in session now. So today I rise to urge our House colleagues and especially the House leadership to step to the plate and pass this foreign intelligence surveillance act reauthorization to enable us to collect intelligence.

I am going to, at the conclusion of my remarks, ask unanimous consent to put a variety of things in the Record. But I am going to refer to them now and talk a little bit about why this is so important.

Let's start by stating the premise on which I think we all agree. This is something that does not divide Democrats and Republicans. We have some divisions about the war against terror. We have some divisions about the war in Iraq. But all of us understand, first and foremost, you defeat terrorists with good intelligence. You find out what they are up to, and you are, therefore, better able to stop their plans before they are able to execute them.

Without this intelligence, bad things happen. We did not have the intelligence we needed before 9/11, and we all know what happened. Since then, a lot of changes have been made. Among other things, we have made changes to the law that enables us to collect intelligence abroad. As a result of all of those changes, we have not had an attack on the homeland.

God forbid we should have such an attack, but if we did, the new 9/11 Commission--whatever that would be called--would point the finger directly at the leadership of the House of Representatives for not reauthorizing this intelligence collection because every day that goes by we are losing important intelligence.

As we found out through the 9/11 Commission after that fateful day, we failed to see things we could have known about that might have prevented us from suffering that attack on 9/11. But because of the law that existed at the time, because of the wall that existed between the CIA and the FBI, for example, they were not able to share this information. As a result, we were not able to intercept two of the hijackers.

Well, now, today we have a situation where the law that enables us to collect this foreign intelligence has expired. There are two problems with that expiration. The first is that every day that goes by new intelligence is not being collected. You could have a terrorist in Afghanistan calling a terrorist in Germany, plotting some action against the United States, and because the call happened to be routed through a U.S. connection of some kind the law would not enable us to collect that intelligence. So every day we are losing intelligence.

Secondly, because the telecommunications companies that help us in this effort have been sued by trial lawyers, we need to provide protection against these lawsuits. If we do not, there will come a time, in my opinion, that it will be very difficult for these telecommunications companies to continue to cooperate with the U.S. Government. Then, no matter what kind of law we passed, we would not have the support of the only folks who can help us collect this intelligence. So we need this legislation, and the House of Representatives needs to act soon.

There was recently an op-ed that was written by Senator Kit Bond and Representatives Pete Hoekstra and Lamar Smith. It occurred in the Wall Street Journal on February 26. They point out, in this op-ed, that the intercept of these terrorist communications ``requires the cooperation of our telecommunications companies. They're already being sued for having cooperated with the government after 9/11.'' They go on to say:

So without explicit protection for future actions (and

civil liability protection for the help they provided in the

past), those companies critical to collecting actionable

intelligence could be sidelined in the fight.

They go on to say:

It has already happened, briefly.

They quote Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey saying:

[W]e have lost intelligence information . . . as a direct

result of [this] uncertainty.

So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this article, dated February 26, 2008, be printed in the Record.

Secondly, a letter was written to Congressman Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and Lamar Smith, ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, dated March 6 of this year, signed by Attorney General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell, Director of National Intelligence. I am going to quote a couple of lines from it:

We write in response to your letter of March 5 concerning

the core surveillance authorities needed in any modernization

of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

. . . As we have explained in prior correspondence, the

RESTORE Act--

Which is the bill that had been passed by the House of Representatives earlier--

. . . would seriously undermine these authorities and may

well reopen the gaps temporarily closed by the Protect

America Act. The RESTORE Act, or legislation similar to it,

is, in short, no substitute for the bipartisan Senate bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter of March 6, to which I just referred, be printed in the Record.

The point of this letter, of course, is to urge the House to adopt the bill passed by the Senate.

The next item I would like to have printed in the Record is a note from

the American Legion Commander, in which he urges, on February 25 of this year, that Congress pass the bill passed by the Senate. He pointed out that ``the National Intelligence Estimate noted that the United States will face a persistent and evolving threat over the next three years, with the main threat coming from Islamic terrorist groups and cells.'' And he says:

It defies all common sense to give lawsuits a higher

priority than national security. The American people expect

Congress to protect America, not the lawsuit lobby. This

surveillance is aimed at terrorists who want to kill innocent

Americans. The government is not interested in phone calls

that you make to Aunt Sally.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that that item be printed in the Record.

Finally, a letter was written by a bipartisan group of 25 State attorneys general dated March 4, 2008. It is a letter directed to the four leaders of the House of Representatives. Among other things, these 25 Democratic and Republican attorneys general note the fact that:

Passing [this legislation] S. 2248 would ensure our

intelligence experts are once again able to conduct real-time

surveillance. As you know, prompt access to intelligence data

is critical to the ongoing safety and security of our nation.

As Attorneys General, we are our states' chief law

enforcement officials and therefore responsible for taking

whatever action is necessary to keep our citizens safe. With

S. 2248 still pending in the House of Representatives, our

national security is in jeopardy.

They close by saying:

We therefore urge the House of Representatives to schedule

a vote and pass the FISA Amendments Act of 2007.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

So in conclusion, the bottom line is, we have a bill passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee 13 to 2, passed by the Senate with 68 affirmative votes. I believe it was 28 or 29 negative votes-- clearly, a bipartisan effort. The President has indicated he would sign this legislation. It has now been 19 days since it has been sent to the House of Representatives which said it needed 3 weeks to get the job done.

During that period of time, we have lost intelligence--we do not know how critical. We will never know because we will never gather it. The phone call was made yesterday or the day before or the day before that. It is gone now, and we cannot go back and get it. But what we can do is ensure that from now on we are going to collect that critical intelligence. Unless this legislation is

passed, the telecommunications companies that are critical to the collection of this intelligence are less and less likely to support our efforts. That is why it is critical this legislation, rather than some other version of it, be passed.

Mr. President, I urge the House leadership to call up this legislation. Next week is the last week it can be acted on before yet another 2-week recess. The House recessed before without adopting it. It would be absolutely a dereliction of responsibility, in my view, for the Congress not to conclude its work on this matter and ensure that the President can sign this important legislation into law before the Easter recess; that is to say, by the end of next week, 1 week from right now.

I urge our House colleagues to please--in fact, I implore them to understand the danger in which they have placed the American people by not acting on this legislation--the fact that we are not collecting intelligence today because the authority has lapsed--and that according to the people who know best, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence, it is no answer to say that warrants that have previously been issued will continue in force. All that means is the actions that have been taken in the past can continue. It does not do anything about intelligence gathering today and tomorrow and the next day. And it does not do anything to assuage the concerns of the very companies that are critical to the operation of this program.

So I urge our House colleagues to act on this legislation as soon as possible for the safety and security of the American people.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Hagel) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Hagel), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the DeMint amendment No. 4096 be withdrawn.

Madam President, last week marked the 47th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Peace Corps. Since its inception in 1961, 190,000 Americans have served in 139 countries around the globe. Currently, 126 Arizonans are Peace Corps volunteers, dedicating their time and hard work to projects in 51 countries.

The Peace Corps is an organization through which many Americans have made meaningful service and have contributed to the well-being of peoples in other lands. A spirit of generosity and volunteerism helped build our Nation; in that same spirit, these Peace Corps volunteers are helping others to build theirs.

Peace Corps volunteers are also ambassadors of American culture-- exchanging ideas and bridging cultural divides are critical to helping people understand America's values and message of freedom.

I would like to pass on my thanks and congratulations to those who have served in the Peace Corps, and I applaud their contributions to our Nation and nations abroad.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign), the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Alaska (Mrs. Murkowski), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. President, for the benefit of our colleagues, I will summarize where we are this morning as well. The majority leader and the Senator from Wisconsin offered a resolution, a piece of legislation, and sought to proceed to consider it. Republicans agreed to that. We voted last night to invoke cloture, which means we agreed to proceed to the consideration of that resolution.

It has to do with developing a strategy to deal with al-Qaida. It is, as the majority leader said, a debate worth having. As a result, Republicans were happy to engage in that debate and we will throughout the day.

After the period of morning business, we are back on the resolution. I would urge my Republican colleagues to let us know, let the leadership staff know, when they wish to be here to speak on the matter so the schedules can be coordinated, that everyone can debate the issue as they see fit, and that the minority and majority leader a little later in the day can get together and decide when we might be able to schedule the next vote based upon everyone's desire to speak. So if our colleagues would let us know when they desire to come and make their presentations, that would be very helpful.

I would like to correct one thing the majority leader said, in saying Republicans think everything in Iraq is ``just fine.'' I know he did not mean to suggest Republicans believe the situation in Iraq is ``just fine.'' Because clearly it is not. If it were, we could bring our troops home today.

Unfortunately, it is not ``just fine,'' although it is steadily improving. And when it gets to the point when it is ``just fine,'' we will be able then to bring the remainder of our troops home. The primary difference between

the majority and minority is the majority would like to bring the troops home right now. ``Enough is enough,'' says the majority leader.

The Republicans, on the other hand, believe we have to finish the job. And while great progress has been made as a result of the surge implemented by General Petraeus several months ago, the job is not finished. And until the job is finished, there is a great danger that were we to pull out prematurely, al-Qaida, not totally defeated, would infiltrate right back in, reestablish its presence, begin the terrorism which has taken us so many months now to repress, and that we would have to then come right back in again, all at a greater cost than if we simply see the job through right now.

It is possible every day to have a headline from a newspaper revealing a suicide bomber attack or some other incident similar to that in Iraq. That is the unfortunate reality. Everything is not yet ``just fine'' in Iraq. But it is also true that because the surge has worked to essentially defeat al-Qaida, it has now resorted to the most reprehensible tactics of all: using women, children, the disabled as suicide bombers to go into places where those people are not suspects and they can blow up innocent people in Iraq.

That is the situation we need to help stop, not turn our back and walk away from. It is also true many Iraqis have now been trained by our forces. That is the good news that will enable us eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, to withdraw our troops from Iraq. We are withdrawing them now.

We will, by June as I recall, be down to a level that is very close to the level that existed prior to the surge. We will be able to do that because the surge has worked. What happens after that, we will await a report from General Petraeus when he comes back to the Capitol and briefs us on the situation in Iraq.

In the meantime, Ambassador Crocker and others have noted significant progress on the political and diplomatic front as well as the economic front in Iraq. The Parliament there is now engaging in vigorous debate, passing resolutions. I note that one was vetoed yesterday. It kind of reminds me of the process in Washington, where we do not always agree on everything and we have a robust debate about it.

We should not be critical of the Iraqis because they cannot agree always on everything, but we should continue to push them to move forward with alacrity, so the things that need to be done politically to enable us to eventually remove our troops can be done. I know we all, Republicans and Democrats, share that goal.

So the bottom line is, we will continue this debate today. I would conclude with this point: One of the important reasons for having this debate today about a strategy for dealing with al-Qaida is because there is a difference of opinion between the House of Representatives' leadership and the Senate on this issue.

The Senate voted with 68 Senators, Democrats and Republicans, to reinstitute FISA, the law that enables us to gather intelligence on these terrorists abroad. That law had to be reauthorized because it expired 6 months after we first passed it.

So we had to reauthorize it and make one additional change; that is, to make sure the telecommunications companies that are cooperating with us are protected from lawsuits that have been filed against them simply for their participation with the U.S. Government in collecting this foreign intelligence.

Without that liability protection, they are not likely to continue to help us. So we made that change. It was recommended by the Intelligence Committee on a vote of 13 to 2, a very bipartisan recommendation. The Senate then passed it with 68 affirmative votes. It went to the House of Representatives and there it sits. It sits without a law in force today that enables us to begin new intelligence surveillance activities against terrorists abroad.

This represents a deficiency in our intelligence gathering at a time when as both Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, and Attorney General Mukasey have noted that we are losing intelligence every day that would help us in the war against these terrorists.

Every day that goes past that we cannot intercept a communication because the law has not been reauthorized is a day of lost intelligence, intelligence we will never get back. The terrorists are not going to make the phone call a second or third time to accommodate us so we can finally collect the intelligence we need, so we can find out who he is calling and what they are planning. We cannot do that.

So phone calls that occurred yesterday or the day before or the day before that, they are gone, they are lost forever. It is critical we reestablish this capability for collecting foreign intelligence on terrorists.

The legislation passed by the Senate will do that. The President says he will sign it into law, and it is critical that the House of Representatives' leadership allow the House of Representatives to vote on it. If they do, it will pass and it can be sent to the President and it will be signed.

The reason, I gather, it has not been brought forth is because the leadership of the House knows it will pass and, for whatever reason, they do not want this Senate-passed bill to become law.

It is critical the Congress fulfill its responsibility to ensure that our intelligence-gathering capabilities continue on. I would urge again that the best strategy for dealing with al-Qaida starts with authorizing the kind of intelligence collection that we understand is critical to understanding al-Qaida's intentions and thus being able to defeat them.

So in developing a strategy for al-Qaida, No. 1, the House of Representatives' leadership should bring this legislation up for a vote, allow those who support it to send it to the President for his signature, and we can get on with this important collection.

I urge my colleagues to come to the floor and let us know when they wish to speak so we can organize the debate today with an eye toward the minority and majority leader being able to get together and work out a time schedule that would be acceptable to all of us.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Texas (Mrs. Hutchison), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will make two quick comments. Certainly I respect the majority leader's comments. He talked about the fact that violence is down in Iraq. But, of course, the suicide bombers continue to wreak havoc. We all deplore that.

I was in Israel last week at the border town in Gaza--Sderot is the name--and terrorism from Hamas continues to bedevil the people of that town with rockets coming over every day. But they cannot leave and leave the terrorists to prevail there. I think the same thing is the situation in Iraq.

The majority leader talks about the costs, and they are significant. But the costs if we had to come back in and clean up after the terrorists take over, if we left prematurely, could be far greater than what we are expected to have to pay. In any event, it is very difficult to put a price on freedom and security.

I think we have had a good debate. We have speakers on our side actually for about another about 4\1/2\ hours or so. But as I told the majority leader, we could yield back some time on our side to work with the majority leader to develop a schedule that would be convenient for all of the Members.

At this time, because of the precise nature of the unanimous consent request, I object on behalf of the minority but would suggest it should be possible this afternoon, early this afternoon, for the majority and minority leaders to sit down and work out a schedule that would meet the needs of all of our Members and convenient for the entire body.

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

Madam President, yesterday, I inserted into the Record a couple of items. I wish to speak to them briefly now.

The primary item was a letter that had been sent to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee by Attorney General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. It was a letter that tried to explain the problems we are having in gathering intelligence on terrorists as a result of the lapse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions, the so-called Protect America Act.

What we are debating right now is a resolution that focuses on when and how we should leave Iraq. Presumably, the next resolution we will be debating focuses on developing a strategy to fight al-Qaida. Most of us appreciate the fact that the best way to deal with terrorists, the very first thing we should do is to have in place a good intelligence- gathering capability, primarily in understanding the communications that terrorists are having with one another abroad.

The reason that is the No. 1 part of a strategy in dealing with terrorists is that unlike a war in which we are fighting an enemy with uniforms representing another country, these terrorists are shadowy characters who live anywhere in the world, who travel all around, who get together in cells every now and then and plan some kind of activity which is designed to terrorize, whether in London or Spain or Malaysia or the United States or wherever.

In order to fight the terrorists, we first want to understand what they are up to and then prevent it from occurring.

If we are having to react to a terrorist attack after it has occurred, we are in a very bad situation.

We created the Department of Homeland Security, and we have a lot of different plans and procedures for dealing with an attack after it has occurred. But in many respects, then it is too late.

So in this war against these radical Islamists, these terrorists who would kill anywhere they can and target innocent people, the very first thing we want to do is to be able to have good intelligence on that activity.

We collect intelligence in a variety of ways, but in modern times, one of the best ways to collect intelligence is by intercepting communications. There are a variety of means by which that is done. One of the things the Congress did was to develop a law that provides protection to American citizens and others to ensure that this intelligence collection does not impinge on our civil rights. We do not want to have the Government eavesdropping on us, and that is appropriate for us to ensure.

The problem is, because technology has outpaced the law back when it was written in the 1970s and technology now enables us to do electronic intercepts against foreign targets through some very sophisticated and new means, the law that set up the process for getting approval to do that takes far too long, it is far too complicated and, in fact, the bottom line is it just plain does not work. It is ``paperwork in an electronic era'' kind of comparison.

So the President came to the Congress and said: You have to get a new way of doing this activity that enables us to utilize this new technology we have to intercept these communications. And last August, we passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA law--it has another acronym, Protect America Act--which enables us to utilize this new technology and also, importantly, to provide that the telecommunications companies that work with us do not have to worry about somebody suing them because they are helping the U.S. Government collect intelligence.

The law we passed had two problems. No. 1, it expired after 6 months because some in the Congress felt they wanted to take another look at it; and, secondly, it did not have liability protection for these telecommunications companies for the previous work they had done for us. It was only for the work going forward. The telecommunications companies essentially said to the U.S. Government: We are not going to continue to do this work for you unless you can ensure we are not going to get sued and that the lawsuits that are currently pending go away.

I am oversimplifying. The lawsuit said: You shouldn't have done what you did because the U.S. Government shouldn't have been engaged in this kind of surveillance.

That is not the fault of the telecommunications companies. They were simply doing what the Government asked them to do. They were a volunteer to provide their services, their very essential services, to help us collect this intelligence. As with any other volunteer, you should not get sued just because you stopped to help somebody along the side of the road who got hurt in an accident. The same thing is here. The Government asked them to volunteer their services to help collect this intelligence, and they should not be sued. But lawyers being what they are filed some lawsuits, and those lawsuits need to go away.

The President said: When you revise the law and pass it in February of 2008, make sure you have liability protection not only going forward but also for the suits that have already been filed. Sure enough, the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, by a bipartisan vote of 13 to 2 or 12 to 2--but a very strong bipartisan vote--agreed to extend the law for another 6 years and add the retroactive liability protection, precisely what is needed.

However, when the bill was sent over to the House of Representatives, the House Democratic leadership said: No, we are not going to take this up and promptly went on the recess that we just got back from, a 12-day period in which Congress was not in session. During that period of time, the law lapsed and General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell in this letter made it clear that during that period of time, we lost intelligence that could be very meaningful to us. We don't know whether it is or not because we lost it. We could not collect it. But the kind of intelligence that we have been collecting under this program has been very helpful for us to know what these terrorists are up to so that we can prevent attacks.

We are now in a situation where we are not able to commence certain intelligence gathering. In addition, and perhaps more important in the long run, we have not done anything to solve the problem of these lawsuits, the retroactive liability, with the result that, as they write in this letter, the telecommunications companies are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to continue to help us. They are all responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders do not like to see their company is getting sued. It reduces the value of the company. It creates problems and costs. When they try to do business with other companies, the other companies say: Wait a minute, are you involved in these lawsuits? If so, we don't want to enter into a new contract with you.

They work with companies all over the world. A lot of these companies are concerned that American telecommunications companies are going to have this kind of exposure, and they don't want to get involved in it.

It can hurt business substantially, as a result of which some of these companies have conveyed to our intelligence community their distress, anxiety, and concern about continuing to participate in this program.

Fortunately, through negotiations, according to this letter, companies are still working with us. They are still participating, but without them we have no program. This is not something the U.S. Government can do on its own. This is something that only works if all of the companies that provide our telecommunications services are working with us.

So we have to act pretty soon or we could well be in a situation where the very companies that are critical to the operational success of this program decide that discretion is the better part of valor on their part and they are just not going to be able to continue to help us. At that point, we have lost one of the most important intelligence- gathering operations in this war against terrorists.

I want to go back to the days following September 11, 2001. There was a lot of finger-pointing. A commission was established to try to figure out what went wrong. There were a lot of areas identified where we should have known better, and had we done things differently, at least potentially 9/11 could have been prevented.

We found that the FBI and CIA were not talking to each other, and the Justice Department had constructed a sort of wall between the two, even within the FBI itself which prevented one hand from communicating to the other very important information. In fact, there is information relating to a couple of terrorists that, had they been able to talk to each other, might well have resulted in these terrorists being picked up in the United States, people who were directly involved in the 9/11 attack and, at least theoretically, could have been prevented had they been able to communicate with each other.

The bottom line is, retroactive, after 9/11, we could have been doing more but did not. That report was very critical of the Congress, of the administration, of the intelligence community, of the FBI, CIA, and others for not doing everything that could have been done to prevent 9/ 11.

If there were to be, God forbid, another terrorist attack on the United States and the commission that is inevitably going to study what happened would look at the days prior to that event in the Congress, what they would find is a House of Representatives that is sitting on its hands, that is unwilling to take up the Senate-passed bill. That bill passed with 68 Senators voting yes, obviously Democrats and Republicans voting yes, a very strong bipartisan bill. The President says he will sign it. He said we need it. The intelligence community says we need it.

Now it has been 2 weeks, and we don't have a law that enables us to engage in this intelligence collection.

What happens if before we get that law there is an attack or even an attack after that based upon communications of terrorists that we could have intercepted but didn't because we didn't have the means to do it?

There is going to be a lot of finger-pointing, and rightfully so. The Senate said we are going to do our part, we are going to pass this law so there are no gaps in our intelligence collection.

The House of Representatives continues to sit on its hands. What will it take to get the House leadership to take up the Senate-passed bill and send it to the President for his signature? I hope it doesn't take another terrorist event.

This debate we are having about our policy in defeating al-Qaida and how Iraq fits into that is part of an overall debate about our approach to the war against militant Islam, the terrorists who strike innocent people. As I said in the beginning, the most important thing that we can do in starting our effort in the war is to have good intelligence. In this case, the best offense is not going to war in some foreign country, not bombing somebody, but finding out what these bad actors are up to and preventing them from putting their plans into effect.

Partially because it has been quite a long time since 9/11, and partially because it is not possible to talk about some of these events because they are highly classified, the American public probably is not as aware as it should be of the kind of activities that go on every day. What happens every day is that there are all over the world thousands of would-be terrorists meeting, planning, communicating, training, and, in some cases, carrying out their intentions engaging in terrorist activity. And because we have had good intelligence collection, much of which is done through this electronic interception of communications, we have been able to stop specific terrorist attacks. Some of these are chronicled by the communications from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. Some are laid out in reports from the CIA and other unclassified reports--just to mention one: an effort to blow up elements of the Los Angeles Airport, LAX. There are others. I have kind of forgotten which ones are classified and which aren't, so I am not going to describe any more. But the reality is, it is going on all the time, and only by good intelligence can we find out in advance and then either infiltrate the cell, work with our counterparts in another country to round up the bad guys, or perhaps, if the plans haven't gotten to the execution stage, use our knowledge to gain additional information to track other terrorists. In any event, at some point, when it looks as if the plan may be about to be executed, either we or our allies have to come in and arrest the individuals so that the attack doesn't occur. But we can't do that if we don't know what they are up to.

It is unfortunate that a lot of the information about how we collect intelligence has gotten out, but it is fortunate that we have companies in the United States that are willing to cooperate with their Government because they are in a position to help the Government intercept these communications. It just happens to be because of the way the modern telecommunications technology now works.

We should be doing everything we can to protect these volunteers, in effect. They have relied, in good faith, on the representations of the Government that the President had the authority to engage in these operations and requested their services. This is not my conclusion, this is the conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee in its report on the legislation we passed. It pointed out that it had examined the record and found these communications companies had, in fact, acted in good faith. So there is no reason for them to be subjected to lawsuits. Unless those lawsuits go away, it is quite possible that one by one the companies that are assisting us are going to conclude that it is not in their financial best interests to do so and that, as much as they would like to, they are simply not in a position to continue to be able to do so. That would be disastrous for our intelligence gathering.

So, as I said, the fix is the legislation that passed the Senate. It is a good bill. It reauthorizes this program for 6 more years and adds the one important additional element, and that is the protection from liability.

It also adds some additional civil liberties protections, by the way, for Americans abroad. One of our colleagues, Senator Wyden, had inserted the provision that adds an extra layer of protection for an American who might happen to be abroad and find himself or herself a target of some of this interception because of a call made to the individual or that individual making a call to somebody else who is under surveillance and so on. It is a rather rare occurrence, but we have provided protections so that a warrant would have to be obtained in that circumstance, and Americans' civil liberties would be protected.

So no one should be under the assumption here that somehow or other reauthorizing this law lets the Government loose to begin spying on people. Believe me, there is so much information out there which we don't even have the time or the ability to check out that we are not going to go out of our way to spy on people on whom we have no reason to spy. This is simply a matter of trying to identify those instances in which known terrorists, or people who affiliate with these terrorists abroad, are communicating with each other.

By the way, importantly, if that communication comes into the United States, we want to know whom they are communicating with here because that could be the late stages of an operation. That could be an indication that there is an element embedded in the United States--a terrorist cell, perhaps, that is ready or at least is in the process of planning to engage in some kind of attack.

So these are the kinds of things we need to know about and which have protected the American public since 2001. It is no accident that America has not had an attack on our soil since 2001. It is also no accident that, frankly, the number of attacks in other places around the world is far less than would have been the case had we and these other countries not had in place good intelligence-gathering operations and good cooperation, I might add, among our intelligence services once we find out something that needs to be acted upon.

So as we debate these resolutions that focus on getting at al-Qaida-- our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are insistent that we should be focusing our efforts not on extraneous aspects of this war against terrorists but

on al-Qaida--I simply say to all of you that focusing on al-Qaida means first and foremost getting good intelligence on what they are up to. In today's modern world, that cannot be done without a reauthorization of this law that enables us to collect this telecommunications intelligence. That is not going to happen unless the bill passes and is sent to the President. Every day that goes by that the House leadership sits on the legislation we here in the Senate passed and doesn't send that to the President is another day of vulnerability. It is a day in which we will never get back the intelligence we might have collected.

This is not something where we can catch up. It is not something where it is not doing us any harm. As General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell pointed out, it is lost information forever. That telephone call we might have communicated is not going to happen again. Now, maybe a subsequent call will, but we will never have the benefit of the communication that occurred yesterday or the day before or later on today because we don't have the ability to engage in that collection.

I can't think of anything more important to our national security than getting this legislation adopted. It is one of the reasons we agreed with the majority leader's cloture petition to debate this question of how we should be focusing our effort on al-Qaida, because we wanted to ensure that the American people understood what is at stake here and understood what is at risk by the House of Representatives not taking up and passing the Senate legislation on intelligence collections abroad.

Madam President, I hope the House leadership will take this up quickly, will get the bill to the President so that he can sign it into law and Americans will once again be protected by the most advanced techniques and technologies we have.

I see my colleague from Tennessee is here, our distinguished conference chairman, and I will relinquish the floor so that he may speak. I thank the Chair.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), the Senator from

Minnesota (Mr. Coleman), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Coleman) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted: ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. President, I am a little confused. About an hour and a half ago the majority leader brought up a bill. He and the Senator from Wisconsin had filed this bill to leave Iraq in 120 days. And he filed cloture on that to see whether enough Senators would agree to debate the bill. So that we can start to debate it, it took 60 Senators to vote yes. The majority leader must have been surprised when we voted yes because he does not seem to want to take yes for an answer.

He filed the bill, wanted to debate it, and presumably have a vote on it. But when we agreed to debate it, he called foul and said: You are trying to stall because you did not vote no so that we can move on to the next bill and then the next bill which will be the economic stimulus package.

So I am confused. Maybe I should not be because almost half of the members of the majority voting voted against cloture; that is to say, they voted against proceeding to the bill that the majority leader had filed. Now, ordinarily members of the majority do not vote against these cloture motions that the majority leader files to take

up a bill. Ordinarily, all of the members of the party vote with their leader on these votes.

I gather that the majority leader must have thought that the bill would not get cloture; that is to say, that we would not start the debate. Then I suppose Republicans would be accused of trying to stall, of not being willing to vote on the bill that he and the Senator from Wisconsin had filed, maybe putting Republicans into a no-win situation, damned if we do and damned if we do not.

If we agree with the majority leader and take up his bill to debate it, we are stalling. And if we do not agree, then I suspect we would have been accused of not being willing to debate Iraq and not being willing to vote on the amendments or the bill that he and the Senator from Wisconsin filed.

So as I say, I am confused. All Republicans did was to say: OK, you wanted to debate the bill that you filed. We will agree to proceed with that. Now the distinguished minority whip just said Republicans are speechifying this to death. Well, Republicans have spoken about 5 minutes out of the last hour. All of the rest of the time has been taken by members of the majority party. The majority whip himself spoke, I think, a little over half an hour. I do not intend to take that long.

But I think it is hard to accuse Republicans of speechifying the bill to death when all we did was, an hour and a half ago, agree to debate, and the minority leader has spoken a total of about 5 minutes. Do you want a debate on Iraq or not? Now that the surge is working, it appears maybe that members of the majority party are not so anxious to have that debate.

But as Minority Leader McConnell pointed out, Republicans are willing to have that debate. A group of Republicans were just in Iraq over the course of the last week. Several of us have been there since the first of the year and have a very positive story to report about the work that our troops are doing there and the effect of their efforts.

There is a positive report that the American people deserve to hear. So I think you will see Republicans agreeing to debate the resolution. For my purpose, I am perfectly happy to vote on it. But under the rule that the majority leader has taken advantage of, as soon as we have had 30 hours to debate this, then automatically we go to the next Feingold- Reid bill.

That is a bill that does not have us get out of Iraq, but rather says we should try to develop a strategy to deal with al-Qaida. Well, of course, the administration's first strategy, as we have discussed on this floor many times, the first, best way to deal with terrorists is to get good intelligence on them to know what they are up to. Maybe we could have prevented 9/11 had we had better intelligence. And so the FISA--this is the law that allows us to listen in on the communications of these terrorists--that bill, that law expired.

The President said: We are losing good intelligence. You need to act to reauthorize that law.

The Senate did. I think we had 68 votes, a bipartisan vote. We acted in a bipartisan way to support that. Many of our colleagues, I think it was 28 or 29, voted to oppose that. Now the leadership of the House of Representatives has said: Well, let it expire. And they went on the break 12 days ago without having acted to reauthorize the so-called FISA law.

That law needs to be reauthorized. Each day that passes that it is not reauthorized, we are losing intelligence. Now, what happens if there is another 9/11 and we later find out that one of the reasons is because for a period of several weeks we could not listen in to what those terrorists were saying? We are missing intelligence.

Frankly, we ought not to do anything else around here until we get that law reauthorized and the President can sign it into law. But the majority leader said: First, we are going to have a debate on the Feingold-Reid bill to get out of Iraq in 120 days. Then we need to have a debate on developing a new strategy for dealing with al-Qaida.

Okay. Republicans are happy to engage in that debate, as I said. But to be accused by the majority of trying to stall by simply agreeing to the debate that the majority requested, is not correct.

Moreover, nobody is trying to stall consideration of a housing bill or an economic stimulus package. We understand that the majority is going to be bringing such a package to the floor. We have not seen it. We do not know what is in it. We are certainly not stalling it. It is not here yet. The majority leader could have brought that to the floor. He could have told us what is in it. He could have filed cloture on it so that we had the vote on whether we are going to take it up, but instead he brought up the first Iraq resolution. Then that is going to be automatically followed by a second resolution dealing with al-Qaida. Then, only after that, apparently, do we get to the economic stimulus or housing package.

So it is not Republicans who are holding it up. We have not done anything to hold it up. We have not even seen it yet.

So I think this criticism of Republicans for stalling simply because we agreed with the majority leader to take up his bill and debate it is not accurate, and it is not fair to Republicans.

Now what about the surge and this Iraq resolution? I think it is interesting that the first criticism was that we had a failed policy in Iraq. So when General Petraeus developed a new policy, the surge policy, which began to work, the debate suddenly began to shift. Now that it is very clear the surge has worked it is shifting even more. It is shifting now to, well, OK, maybe the surge is working, but the Iraqi Government needs to do more.

Well, the Iraqi Government is now doing a lot more, too, as we will hear. But I suspect nothing is going to be good enough for those who want to get out of Iraq now because, as the majority whip has pointed out, we really need to improve America's image abroad. And there a lot of people who disagree with us, so that is one of the reasons we need to get out of Iraq.

But he also said--how many times--that we are doing better in Iraq. Well, I do not know how many times, but certainly since General Petraeus reported to the Congress, and every week thereafter, there has been improvement. And all we have to do is listen to our colleagues who have been there recently to see this reported progress in Iraq.

I do not know why people are so afraid of good news when you are winning in a war. Why is that not a good thing? Why are you not proud of that? Why do you not say: That is great; let's finish the job.

I suspect if you ask the majority of our troops: Now that you have got your boot right on the neck of these enemy terrorists, do you think we ought to let it up and walk away or do you think we ought to finish the job? My guess is they would all say: Let's finish the job or you all back in Washington let us finish the job. Do not pull the plug on us so that we have to leave Iraq before we finish the job.

It is interesting there is now a new argument: OK, maybe the surge is working. Maybe the Iraqi Government is going to be taking the action we asked them to do. And, in fact, they have. They are now taking action on the so-called reconciliation there on local elections and the like.

But now the argument is, well, we could actually spend this money on other things. Of course, you can always spend money on other things. When you are in a war, however, it is a little different. You cannot just pull the plug and say we would rather spend the money on housing or transportation or education than we would on the war. You do not have that option. You cannot just pick up stakes and leave because you have to consider the cost of what you leave behind.

Most of the experts who have talked about this have made it crystal clear if we decide we want to leave because we would rather spend the money on something else, the ultimate cost would be far greater than if we finished the job. Because by most estimates, the situation would deteriorate. Al-Qaida would reinfiltrate, and the other enemies of the Iraqi people would create more problems. The next thing you know, we would have to come back in and try to clean up the mess that was created because we left prematurely. The bottom line is, the cost of leaving prematurely would be far greater than the cost of finishing the job once and

for all. It is also difficult to put a price on our national security, especially because of those young men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice. We owe it to them to ensure that what they have done, the sacrifice they have made, is not going to be wasted, is not going to be lost because we were too anxious to get out of there to spend money on something else. That is not good policy. It is not the way to win a war. It is certainly not the way to beat the terrorists.

The final point the majority whip made was we should return to the original al-Qaida threat. I get back to the point I made before. If you want to return to the original al-Qaida threat, there is no better way than, A, to finish the job in Iraq where we have al-Qaida on the run-- they are essentially defeated; let's don't let them rise back up again--and B, pass the FISA legislation, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows us to collect intelligence on these terrorists abroad. Again, we did that in the Senate, though many on the other side--28--voted against it.

The House of Representatives leadership has an obligation to try to get this done. Therefore, I call upon the Democratic House leadership to bring up the bill the Senate passed and see if it will pass the House of Representatives. I suspect the reason it has not been brought up is because they know it would pass. That is a bill the President would sign. Why wouldn't that be a good thing? That is the appropriate way to move forward.

Let me try to summarize. Republicans have put us into a stall, our Democratic friends say, because we agreed to debate the bill they wanted us to debate. They expected us to say no, that we wouldn't debate it. Then we would have been accused of trying to avoid debate. But we agreed. We will have the debate. It is only 30 hours. That is hardly enough time for all of my colleagues to be able to say the things they want to say, if we have half of that time, but nonetheless we will try to give the report of the truth of what is happening in Iraq. The American people will be better off for that. So I am glad we agreed with the majority leader to proceed to the debate on this bill. I suspect we will want to do the same thing on the next bill.

If and when the Democratic majority puts together an economic stimulus package, then we can take a look at that and see whether we want to debate that as well. But, again, our first priority ought to be to get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed because every day that goes by that that law is not in effect, we jeopardize our national security. We jeopardize our ability to collect intelligence on al-Qaida and other terrorists, and we put the lives of Americans at risk. That is unacceptable.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the following letter from the Justice Department commenting on S. 316, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act, printed in the Record.