Floor Statements

Madam President, fellow Senators, this is a fundamental private property rights vote. This is what is happening across America. This is what is happening across America in a post-Kelo decision. Counties and cities are oftentimes reaching out into farm country, condemning land, and holding it as open space when it is already open space, and this amendment speaks to that.

Sandra Day O'Connor, in her dissent against Kelo v. New London, said this:

The fallout from this decision will not be random. The

beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with

disproportionate influence and power in the political

process, including large corporations and development firms.

As for the victims, the government now has license to

transfer property from those with fewer resources to those

with more.

The American Farm Bureau, the American National Cattleman's and Beef Growers, and the National Public Lands Council support this amendment. If the Judiciary Committee had responded, and I hoped they would have, we would have a much broader definition as it relates to Kelo and as it relates to the right for eminent domain.

Clearly, the public good is not damaged because entities still have the right for the public good, and that has always been the purpose of eminent domain. But simply to acquire property through condemnation when it is open space, to hold it as open space and to deny the private property owner his or her rights is fundamentally wrong under our Constitution.

I urge support of this amendment.

Madam President, I call for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Texas for their leadership. With that leadership comes a very clear voice about the problems this current Congress is facing. They are problems that are historic in character. I was once in the majority. It was the minority who said: We can do better and, therefore, we should run the Congress. In the last election, the American people listened and they changed the Congress. While I was chairing the Veterans' Affairs Committee at that time, we lost the Congress--we, the Republicans--by a reality of dropping to 32 percent in the minds of Americans as to an effective and responsible Congress. The minority played on that. They became the majority. They took over the leadership. They made a great deal of promises. Here we are in the eleventh and a half hour headed toward the twelfth hour of this session of Congress. They have not accomplished it. They have dropped below 11 percent in favorable rating among the American people.

The American people do want to see us get along. At the same time, they want their Government to function in a timely and responsible way. That is exactly what this Congress has failed to do.

I come to the floor to speak about two issues specifically. The assistant majority leader came to the floor earlier today and asked unanimous consent that S. 1233 and S. 1315 be allowed to come to the floor under unanimous consent or to come to the floor with debate and final passage. The reason he had to do that was before the Thanksgiving recess, I came to the floor and objected to the movement of those bills. The Senator from Oklahoma also now objects to the movement of those bills. I think it is very important that not only does the record bear why we objected but the American people clearly understand why we are objecting, because these are veterans bills.

These are bills that deal with critical needs of America's veterans. I was once chairman and ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and I am not going to suggest that I need to add credentials to my record as supporting America's veterans. My responsibility is to make sure the services to our veterans get delivered in a responsible and timely way, that the truly needy service-connected and poor veteran gets served, and that the needs of those coming in out of Afghanistan and Iraq, who then become veterans out of our active service, are met in an immediate way. That is the responsibility of this Congress. It is not to keep adding and adding and adding new programs that may or may not be necessary and adding and adding and adding billions of dollars that anyone in service to veterans can say is at best questionable. It is for those reasons that I objected to those bills.

Now, let me break down why because there are some very real issues here.

S. 1233 is an important piece of legislation that a majority of those of us who supported the legislation to begin with agreed to. It is called the Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury and Health Programs Improvement Act of 2007. Any bill with that title would capture your imagination. One of the great concerns we have today is the traumatic brain injuries our men and women in service are coming out of Iraq with, especially because of the types of bombs that are being used over there. Oftentimes, this kind of injury does not show up in a veteran until he or she becomes a veteran.

If you look down through the priorities of that bill, you look at increased veterans' travel benefits--yes, rural veterans coming to veterans centers to be served; a major medical facilities project; adding to the expanded services of veterans health care; professional scholarship programs; extended time for preferred care; help for low- income veterans; traumatic brain injury program enhancement; assisted- living pilot program enhancement--all of those very valuable and very meaningful, strongly supported by the Veterans' Affairs Committee and strongly supported by this Senate.

But what happened at the last minute was that a Senator on the other side added a new program. They said: We are going to allow Priority 8 veterans to become eligible for the full service of health care under the veterans health care system. What is a Priority 8 veteran? A Priority 8 veteran is one who has no service-connected disability or injury or health care concern. Did they serve? Yes, they served. Did they sustain any injury or physical needs as a result of their service? No. Are they at the poverty level or below? No. They are above it. And in most instances--in fact, in a high percentage of them--through their own employment, they have health care.

So for a good number of years, because of costs, we who watch the veterans issues and Presidents and Secretaries of the VA have said we will not serve them. They will not be eligible for the full benefits. This President, President Bush, said: I will make them eligible, but they need to pay a small fee, a couple hundred bucks a year, to have access to the greatest health care program in the world. The minority at that time, the Democrats, said: No. They get it free of charge or they don't get it.

Well, all of a sudden into this very valuable bill they parachuted Priority 8 veterans. What does that do? Well, if you go talk to the Secretary of the Veterans' Administration, they are going to tell you that it might cause a substantial problem. Why? Because all of a sudden in this health care system there could be 1.3 million more Americans eligible for health care--not planned for, not anticipated, not budgeted for, but parachuted in, I have to believe all in the name of trying to show a concern for veterans and to demonstrate that maybe we are a little more sensitive than the other side.

What does that mean? Well, it also means the potential of between $1.2 billion more expended in 2008 and up to $8.8 billion more by 2012. Did they fund it? No. Have they stuck it in the bill? Yes. Are they trying to create a priority? Yes. Are they trying to create a new expenditure? Yes. And I said: No. Let's serve our poor and our needy and our disabled first and our traumatically brain injured and our post-traumatic stress syndrome veterans. Let's serve them now. Let's put money into the bill to do that.

So the Senator from Texas talked about the VA-MILCON bill that is right at the desk right now, sent out by the ranking minority member of the VA-MILCON Subcommittee, on which I serve, of Appropriations, Senator Hutchison. We are trying to get a vote on it. That bill--that bill alone--has nearly $8 billion worth of new spending in it for veterans. That is a near 17.5-

to 18-percent increase over last year. I believe it can be said, other than defense, to be the largest increase in a budget of all of Government for this year. But the money I am talking about, the new money for Priority 8, is not even in that one. All of this new money for veterans needs that is in the bill that we are being told cannot be passed, that we keep trying to get a vote on, does not even include the $1.5 billion to $8 billion necessary to fund this new program for veterans who are not needy, who are not service connected, and who have not been eligible for a good number of years.

That is why we are saying no. You take Priority 8 out of this, and the Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury and Health Programs Improvement Act, S. 1233, could pass, and it would pass on a voice vote because the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--have always supported our veterans. But we will not nor will I allow us to get caught in the game of first you argue on the other side that we have a war nobody likes and a President who is not managing it well, and then on the other side you are saying we are not taking care of our veterans. I reject that, and I reject it totally for these reasons.

While I was chair and ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and throughout the Bush administration, we have increased the funding for veterans on an annualized basis anywhere from 10 to 12 percent. When I talk about the appropriations bill that is at the desk for veterans being a historically large increase, well, the one the year before was a historically large increase. We have never ducked our responsibility to veterans. But we must prioritize, and we must focus on the truly needy, and we must focus on those who are coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan and traumatic brain injury and all of those who continue to suffer today. That is the first bill, and it will continue to be objected to until they take out those kinds of add-ons.

Let's talk about the second bill. The second bill is S. 1315. Now, that is an interesting bill because if you look at it on its face value, you say: Yes, that makes some sense. We are going to give a veterans' benefit enhancement to a certain class of veteran. Let me tell you who that veteran is.

The bill includes roughly $900 million in new entitlement spending on an array of veterans' benefits, but what is interesting is, it is moving money away from poor, elderly, disabled and wartime U.S. veterans. It is taking effectively $2,000 annually from our veterans and moving it over to a veteran who does not even live in the United States and is not a citizen of the United States--a Filipino veteran.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

Why I object to this--and I call this bill the ``Robin Hood in reverse'' bill--is quite simple. If any of you have watched the Ken Burns PBS series ``The War,'' there is one whole segment of that about the war in the Philippines and the Filipinos who came forward to fight with Americans and even serve in American uniforms in defense of their land and ours during World War II. They did not become American citizens. They were Filipinos, and they have always received benefits. But this bill now reaches in and takes money away from our veterans, our poor veterans, because of a court case and is giving it to them.

Here is my problem. First of all, they do not live in this country, and they are not U.S. citizens. They are currently receiving benefits. But for the average U.S. veteran, their benefits, right now under law, cannot exceed $10,929 a year. That is roughly 24 percent of the average U.S. household income. But this benefit which is in this bill gives to a veteran--a non-U.S. citizen, living in the Philippines--100 percent of the average household income in the Philippines. They are taking that money away from our veterans to do it. That is the ``Robin Hood in reverse'' effect. At least Robin Hood, when he took money, left it in Nottingham. He spread it out amongst his own. Here we are taking money from our own and sending it all the way to the Philippines.

Now, let me say, and let me be very clear, Americans have treated Filipino veterans fairly. After the war, the United States provided $620 million--or $6.7 billion in today's dollars--to repair the Philippines. The United States provided $22.5 million--$196 million in today's dollars--for equipment and construction. We have a hospital in the Philippines, and Filipino veterans legally residing in the United States--in the United States--are fully eligible for all VA veterans' benefits based on their level of service. Survivors of Filipino veterans who died as a result of their service are eligible for educational assistance and all kinds of programs.

That is why I object. First of all, because we are taking money away from ours, but also because we have been more than generous since that war ended to our comrades, the Filipinos, who fought side by side with American men and women, who were in the Philippines at the time, after we were able to reclaim the Philippine Islands. So we have done wonderfully by them, and we have been very supportive of providing them with programs.

Remember, the average U.S. veterans' benefit--24 percent of U.S. average household income--is limited. Yet we are taking that money away from them now, giving it to Filipino veterans who are non-U.S. citizens, and increasing their benefit to over 100 percent of the average household income in the Philippines. U.S. dollars spent in the Philippines at that amount lifts--there is no question about it--lifts that Filipino dramatically. The question is, Is it fair? Is it equitable? My answer is, It is not. I offered to say, yes, we can bump them a little bit, but let's take the rest of this money and put it into educational benefits for our veterans coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The answer in the committee was no.

So that is why these bills are in trouble on the floor. They have loaded them up. They are too heavy. The tires are blowing out from under the trucks of these bills simply because too much is too much. In the instance of this, Disabled American Veterans--that great organization which is a loud spokesperson for our veterans--is saying: Whoa, wait a moment here. Enough is enough, and this is too much. They themselves oppose this legislation as it is currently written.

So here we have a funding bill on the floor with a 17.5- to 18- percent increase over last year's funding for veterans, and we are not allowed to vote on it. We have funding at the highest level ever for America's veterans, as we should and as we must, but these bills take us well beyond it in an unfunded environment or in one instance reaching in the pocket of our poor and disabled veteran and taking that money out and putting it into the pocket of a veteran living in the Philippines, who never became an American citizen, and who never came to this country, who has chosen to stay in his homeland. We now give them benefits, but this is a benefit well beyond what is even currently being offered to our own. Those are the fundamental reasons why we have objected.

I was pleased when the Senator from Texas said to the Senator from Illinois, the assistant majority leader: No. Yes, we will object, and we are not embarrassed about doing it, because there have to be priorities to our funding, especially at a time when the VA budget that is at the desk is the largest increase of a veterans' budget, to my knowledge, ever. We are proud of that, but there is a point when enough is, in fact, enough.

I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request for material to be inserted in the Record?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that minority views on S. 1233 and minority views on S. 1315 be printed in the Record.

May I ask how much time remains in opposition to the Alexander amendment?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes in opposition to the Alexander amendment.

Mr. President, it is rare that I disagree with my friend from Tennessee, especially on energy issues. We are very much in concert on how we not only deal with climate change, in many instances, but how we build a full energy portfolio for our country that makes us increasingly independent of foreign nations and oil-producing nations.

One of the ways to do it, in my opinion, is to promote all sources of energy. While there are wind turbines going up in Idaho and in locations that I don't necessarily care for, I have very much supported wind, I will continue to support wind, and I support small wind. I say that in respect to the provision within the bill and in opposition to what the Senator from Tennessee is trying to do. Not only is it important that we produce as much as we possibly can because, clearly, our Nation is rapidly growing in deficit as it relates to energy production in nearly all segments. I agree you don't produce electricity when the wind doesn't blow; but when it does, you do.

I will give you an example of a small company in Idaho that a few years ago, with little Federal assistance, built an obscure building out on the high deserts of Idaho, tapped underground water and brought in some electrolysis equipment, put up small wind turbines, exactly the kind the Senator from Tennessee is talking about. Those turbines produce 25 percent of their electrical needs. When you add that 25 percent wind turbine capability to their online use of electricity, they produce hydrogen in a profitable way that users of hydrogen in the Boise Valley are no longer trucking it in from Seattle, WA. They simply pull their truck out to the hydrogen facility and leave it there to be filled by this small hydrogen-producing company that uses electrolysis machines that are literally off the shelf, that are already being made and built into small business America. What made the difference for that company, what made it profitable, was to gain 25 percent of its energy base from wind, with the small turbine he is talking about.

If you don't want a wind turbine in your front yard in an urban area, planning and zoning will take care of that. That is a local decision to be made. If you don't want them in certain places in your State, then whether it is county planning and zoning or municipal planning and zoning, that, too, can take care of it.

America is rapidly adjusting to where the wind isn't and where the wind is. Wind isn't everywhere, but in certain segments of the Midwest, upper Midwest, and the West there are wind troughs, if you will, where the wind blows in a sustained way to make wind turbine generation profitable, adding to our overall energy base. I hope we will oppose the Alexander amendment.

Along with many others, I have changed my mind over the years in rapidly encouraging all kinds of clean energy production. Wind certainly is clean, hydro is clean, and photovoltaic is clean. We need all of the rest, but we need to get increasingly a cleaner energy portfolio. Wind assists us in doing that. It is not the cure-all. And I agree with the Senator from Tennessee that nuclear, without question, is the base-loading generation capability that is clean, that is in our current technology base that, thank goodness, America has awakened to and we are beginning to see that happening. We are seeing the licensing of new nuclear reactors and we will be able, within the decade, to see multiple reactors coming on line to produce large volumes of energy. But there is no doubt that conservation, supplementation by wind, and all other sources remain important pieces of that total package.

I oppose the Alexander amendment. I hope we can support small wind development along with large wind development. Is it pricey? Yes, it is; it is not inexpensive. I believe right now we are spending upward of a billion dollars a day offshore to foreign nations to buy their oil. The more money we can keep onshore for America, American enterprises, and the consumer, we ought to be doing. This is one way to do it.

Mr. President, before I call up my amendment, let me thank both the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from South Dakota for their leadership in getting this very important new ag policy to the floor. I, like they, have been frustrated the last month that we could not get on the bill and cause it to work its will. That is where we are today. We are on the bill, ready for it to work its will.

I do appreciate the comments the Senator from South Dakota has made and thank him for his leadership as it relates to the biofuels issue, to ethanol. Because of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, we have expanded and accelerated--along with agricultural policy--this issue. As you know, if we can pass the Energy bill with the renewable fuels standard, we will go to potentially 15 billion gallons a year in ethanol in the outyears, and hopefully 15

billion plus 6 billion in the outyears of cellulosic biostalk ethanol- based fuel.

If the Energy bill cannot work its will, then the Senator from South Dakota and I and Senator Domenici from New Mexico, who just passed through, will attempt to put on the farm bill the renewable fuels standard, which is phenomenally important to the continuation and the growth of the biofuels that will make us increasingly independent of those rogue nations and of what I call the ``petronationalism'' that is sweeping the world, in the fact that if you are a small country and you produce oil, you can take a big country like ours and jerk it around right by its nose, if you will, simply by pricing the oil that you know is so sacred to the developed world.

Having said that, with the phenomenal runup in commodity prices in the last several years, in part because of what the Senator from South Dakota has said--the high value of corn, as corn moved out of feedstock, if you will, into a new kind of feedstock, to ethanol production--farmland and farmland values have gone up tremendously. A farm that had been a second- and third-generation farm--for which, a decade ago, a farmer or his son or daughter might have said: We can no longer afford to farm it; we are going to sell it into development--all of a sudden that land, as part of our energy base and part of our food base has become increasingly important.

Amendment No. 3640 To Amendment No. 3500

With that, Mr. President, at this time I call up amendment No. 3640 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, the bill talks about land, it talks about valuable farmland, it talks about valuable grazing land, and the issue is eminent domain. As we all know, the issue of eminent domain was elevated greatly as an issue following a highly controversial 2005 Supreme Court decision known as Kelo vs. The City of New London. Since that decision, we as a nation have allowed State governments and local municipalities to utilize eminent domain to force landowners to yield their property to private development.

That is a new phenomenon in our country. That has not been and was not the historic use of eminent domain. We are talking about land that maybe generationally has served America's farmers and ranchers for the purpose of food and fiber.

As shown in this picture, here is an example of a beautiful piece of pastureland in Camas County, ID, for which one day the county and/or a city in the area could decide: Oh, gee, we like it for open space. It is open space today. As I would suggest, the economics of today would suggest it will remain open space for a long time.

But since the Supreme Court's Kelo ruling, farmers and ranchers in particular have become vulnerable to State and local municipalities taking their property for economic development, open space designations, or other purposes.

The recent, most vivid happening occurred in the State of Pennsylvania, where over a 3-year period in Pennsylvania, a county government has been in a struggle with a local family over an attempt on the county's part to purchase a section of their farmland. When the negotiations failed, the county moved to seize the land using eminent domain, with the goal of turning the land into a park or an open space along, I believe it was, the Susquehanna River. Very recently, after 2 years of dispute over the value of the land, the county withdrew its request, leaving the family without any kind of deal, with the family having spent thousands of dollars and years on endless amounts of litigation and court costs. There were no winners, but the family that had the farm still owns the farm.

In the words of the American Farm Bureau's president, Bob Stallman-- he says it this way, and I think he says it accurately--No one's home or ranch or ranchland is safe from government seizure because of the Kelo ruling.

We are now increasingly hearing of incidents in which States and local governments may be pushing the boundaries of what our constitutional power was designed to accomplish. I read often of farmers and ranchers being forced to fight to save their land from local governments looking to take it. The Pennsylvania decision, of course, is a great example of that. I believe we in Congress need to bring back common sense in determining when we use the power and what it is appropriately used for; and, of course, I am talking about the power of our Constitution in respect to eminent domain. What are we talking about when we talk about common sense in State and local governments, what they should or should not do: Does it make sense to take open space out of the private sector and make it open space in the public sector by simply a taking, if you will, by the power of eminent domain? There are plenty of ways to assure that farmland and grazing lands stay as open space if the county or the government wishes to reward the landowner and establish a relationship with that landowner for the purpose of keeping that space open and available. But just to use the power of government for the purpose of crushing that private property owner's right is simply wrong.

American Farmland Trust reports that every minute of every day, America loses two or more acres of farmland, and the rate is increasing as our population grows and expands. This farm bill and what it embodies now will tell you that farmland will probably become increasingly more valuable for the production of food and fiber. In many instances, we don't have an acre to spare. When our county governments decide they want to take it for the purpose of simply changing its ownership, that is greatly frustrating.

Additionally, many of our parks in this country are facing major budgetary shortfalls. To unnecessarily add more parks using eminent domain makes the problem worse, and to take private land to do so simply makes no sense. If the city wants to create a park, go find a willing seller and a willing buyer. That is the way it has been done historically--not to use the power of eminent domain given them, if you will, by the Kelo decision.

My amendment is very simple. For this reason, in offering it, the amendment will deter State and local governments from taking working agricultural land against the will of the landowner only to designate the same land as open space for parks and similar purposes. It is a very targeted amendment. It addresses only cases in which private working agricultural land is taken and turned into open space--a park or a preservation or a conservation area.

Listen, fellow Senators: It does not prevent States and local governments from exercising their right of eminent domain. What we are talking about is that it does not prevent nor deter the use of eminent domain such as taking for what we have always viewed as a legitimate public purpose: power lines, schools, and similar projects of public value; rights-of-way, when necessary, for roads and all of that type of use. It does not even tackle the issue of taking private land for private economic development. That is the Kelo decision. That fight, I have to say, is probably for another day. I hope my colleagues of the Judiciary Committee would grab the value of private land-ownership in this country and change and allow us to work our will on the law and not give municipalities and local governments the right of eminent domain over economic development, for a private purpose. But, as I say, that is for another day and another purpose.

What does this amendment do? It creates a strong but targeted financial disincentive for the local governments to get involved. This will cause State and local governments to stop and think when considering forcibly taking the working land of a farmer or a rancher in order to keep that property as open space. Every farmer and rancher reserves the right to voluntarily, of course, enter into an agreement; as I mentioned earlier, a willing seller, a willing buyer, into a land trust for the value of keeping land private and all of those types of things but to allow it to remain as it is for the purpose of openness. That is already going on. That already has well established law as it relates to how that land gets used.

I believe land preservation is a worthy cause. However, farmers and ranchers should not be forcibly removed from their lands simply to prevent them from making a personal decision about their private property sometime out into the future.

Let me end by saying it is necessary for Congress to discourage the illogical and unwarranted use of eminent domain. I think that is very clear. Many of us were surprised by the Kelo decision, and we saw new precedent being set as it relates to government's use of eminent domain. I believe it is both illogical and unwarranted to forcibly take working agricultural land only to designate it as land as an open space or for a similar purpose. A farm bill is an appropriate vehicle to accomplish this goal to protect our private property rights and our Nation's farmers and ranchers, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Let me thank Cori Whitman on my staff for working this issue. I also note the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the Public Lands Council, and many others are recognizing the risk and the threat to private operating agricultural properties and are supporting this amendment to become policy in the new agriculture policy embodied in this bill.

I thank my colleagues for listening. I hope to gain their support as we work this amendment through the process over the balance of this week.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 3549 to Amendment No. 3500

Mr. President, very briefly--because it is the other side's opportunity--I thank the ranking Republican on the Energy Committee for bringing this amendment forward. It fits well in the farm bill. Last Friday afternoon, I spoke to that again. Clearly, this is an opportunity we cannot pass by. I would like to see it in the Energy bill and see this concept grow to 2022 and get us to 36 billion gallons. Corn based and cellulosic is absolutely critical. This is a market we created by public policy and with public support. There is no question about it. This is a market that can continue to grow and develop, as long as Government advances it and stays out of its way.

I thank the Senator from New Mexico for bringing up the amendment. It is appropriate on the farm bill. I hope our colleagues will consider it as a plus to the overall growth of domestic American agriculture.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, does the Ranking Republican of the Agriculture Committee want to introduce an amendment on this side before I speak? I understand he has an amendment he would like to introduce and set aside before I speak.

Mr. President, many of us in the Senate have been waiting now for well over a month for this document, S. 2302, to come to the floor and begin what is a right and responsible approach toward legislating: offering it up to amendments, allowing Senators to work their will under the rules of the Senate, and to complete it on time. The Democratic leader thought he could short-circuit that, that he could what we call ``load up the tree'' and not allow these kinds of amendments, only to find out in the end that wasn't about to happen; that both Democrats and Republicans alike would not allow the rules of the Senate to be thwarted and to deny the responsibility of each and every Senator, if they choose, to offer an amendment.

Later on in the course of this debate next week, I and Senator Domenici and Senator Thune will be offering an amendment that relates to RFS--renewable fuels standard. It is with that in mind that I come to the floor today to talk about a farm bill in a substantially different context.

We believe, and we have always felt, that agricultural policy was critical for America--for American farmers, yes, but for America's consumers of food and food products, most importantly.

There is no doubt the average consumer in America today spends less on high quality food than any other consumer in the world. America's food supermarkets are full of food. There are no shortages. There is great abundance. There is phenomenal variety. Without question, our food supply is the safest in the world. I believe, in large part, that is as a result of a combination of two things happening: the phenomenal capability of America's free and independent farmers, as well as a government that has been consistently willing, down through the decades, down through the Depression and the droughts and the hurricanes and the hail storms and all of that, to work with its farmers to ensure that they could stay on the land and produce. But rarely in the course of all of these decades of farm policy have we thought in the context that we are beginning to think today, which is that America's farmers can become, or are becoming, one of America's largest suppliers of energy. It is not a new phenomenon; it is a rapidly growing diversity in the American agricultural portfolio that is doing what we have wanted done for a long time, but simply because of a combination of program and price in the market didn't see happen.

So for a few moments this afternoon I would like to talk about the farm bill but in the context of energy and energy supply. Farmers, we have always believed, and know, if you have been one--and I have--are large consumers of energy. It takes a lot of diesel to plow a field, to run a combine, to run a corn dryer. It takes a lot of natural gas to produce nitrogen and phosphates and all of the necessary supplies and input costs that the Senator from Georgia was speaking to and about a few moments ago. America's agricultural producers are very large consumers of energy. But it has only been in the last decade that they have begun to become large consumer producers of energy. As that has happened and as we have changed and shifted policy in this country to incentivize and reward that production, we have watched that production grow very rapidly. We are now producing around 8 billion gallons of ethanol annually.

We encouraged it in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, and America's farmers went to the task of building the ethanol distilleries and beginning to supply the market as we allowed ethanol to enter the market at ever- higher volumes.

Now, an old farmer told me not long ago: You know, this is nothing new for American agriculture. Before we had tractors, farmers supplied all of their fuel for their farming. I hadn't put it in that context. I grew up on a farm and a ranch where one side of a barn once housed--I am talking a horse farm--once housed teams of horses that pulled the plow, that pulled the harvesters, and did all of that, and it was energy from our farm that fed the horse that produced the energy of the horse. We were not importers of energy to our farm. We were producers of energy. But that was 90 years ago. Then, American farming changed dramatically, and we became increasingly more productive. We began producing our own energy, and we started consuming it from outside sources, and it became gasoline and diesel. It isn't that we will see a reversal, but we are seeing a phenomenal new opportunity of production, and that is in combination a result of farm policy. This bill is a good farm bill, and the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Iowa need to be congratulated for the cooperative effort in which they have worked to produce it. It will be, if you will, in part, one of the directives of American agriculture for the next 5 years, when it is passed.

What is important now is to try to look down the road and talk about a role for America that we must increasingly play if we are going to continue to be the strong power we are for ourselves and our citizens, but also for the world. What has happened from that time when horses once pulled the plow until now with that big tractor out there with hundreds of horses under the hood, if you will, pulling multiple plows, is that we began to become a nation of energy importers. Since I have been in Congress over the last 27 years, we went from 30 percent to 40 percent to 50 percent to 60 percent dependent on foreign countries producing our energy for us. I did say countries. I didn't say companies because the bulk of the oil in the world is owned by governments, not companies, and almost every one of those governments today is less than concerned and, in many instances, hostile to America.

So it seems only fitting to me that as we shape public policy in this country, we do so in a way that begins to move America toward energy independence. The American farmer, more than ever before, can become that producer of energy and help in that equation of energy independence in a way that even a decade ago we didn't think possible at all. With the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the expansion of entry of ethanol into the market, we saw that market begin to take off and we saw production of ethanol begin to take off. We saw the distortion that always occurs in a market when a new demand begins to occur for a commodity that isn't overly abundant. In that case, it was corn, and we saw our dairy farmers and our feeders of beef cattle and hog farmers begin to be concerned about the high price and the high cost of that import because corn had been shifted from the feedlot to the distillery to produce ethanol. We are continuing to encourage that.

One of the things we will do with a renewable fuels standard in the farm bill is begin to shift that equation to stabilize the use of the inputs to produce ethanol. Right now, ethanol is produced by corn almost exclusively in this country, and many of us believe with the new science that is coming, with the new loans and guarantees that

are coming out of the Energy Department because of the Energy Policy Act we passed in 2005, we will begin to see a shift toward a combination of ethanol fuels, both corn-based and cellulosic-based. Cellulose, fiber, not only could it be the grain of the corn itself producing, but it could become the ear of the corn and the stock of the corn and grasses and other kinds of fibers where cellulose is dominant but could become a major producer.

In the Energy Act the Senate passed this year that went to the House--and the House largely destroyed it by trying to use it as a taxing mechanism more than a production mechanism--we had placed in it a renewable fuels standard that did the combination of things I am talking about. We said we could take corn up to about 15 billion gallons a year, and we could take cellulose-produced ethanol up to about 15 billion gallons a year by the year 2020, and by the year 2022 we would add another 6 billion gallons of cellulose-based ethanol as that science, as that technology began to be increasingly more efficient and refined.

Here is a reason why we would want to do that. Right now, corn-based ethanol only reduces the output of CO2 into the environment by about 19 percent, compared with conventional fossil fuel. It is a help, but it is not where we want to be if we want a clean world out into the future. I know a lot of farmers and I have always said in my life that farmers are probably the finest environmentalists in the world because they are phenomenal stewards of the land, and they want to make sure the land is viable and the water around it is sustained. They want to produce a better quality product.

What we are suggesting is that we increasingly shift the equation in America agriculture, in its participation, in the production of energy, to make us more energy independent and help us find new and cleaner sources. In the end, when we shift this production portfolio of ethanol from corn-based to cellulosic, in the outyears--25 or 30 years out-- cellulosic-based ethanol fuel will be 86 percent cleaner. That is what we want. That is what we ought to ask for.

That is why, for the first time, at least in my time in the Congress, America's farm bill, America's agricultural policy, is, in part, an energy policy because agriculture is looking at not only its input costs of energy but its opportunity to produce energy. There are a lot of other things I could talk about as it relates to taking biomass and animal waste and converting them into energy. All of that is starting to happen. But the big production--the production that makes the difference, the production that makes America and America's energy consumers more independent from a Venezuela or from the Mideast--is this right here: ethanol, both corn-based and cellulosic. That is what we are about. That is what we have to be about as a country.

There is every reason for the American consumer to say: Why can't we be energy independent? We should be. But our policies have not taken us there. In part, it is because I think we didn't think we could get there but largely because there was all kinds of bias out there in the whole energy arena. The bias is quite obvious. We all like big cars, we like our SUVs, and we all like what we like--until we cannot afford liking them anymore because the cost of feeding them has gone up dramatically. That has helped us a little bit to develop changes.

For the first time this year, I introduced a bill, with Senator Dorgan, to have mandatory CAFE standards. The auto industry was quite upset with me. I have always defended them not changing that standard. I have been here 27 years and we have not changed the standard in 27 years and they have not changed. I wish to change that standard and force the American marketplace and the American producer to look at what can happen if they become more realistic in auto consumption efficiency. Oh, what a difference a day makes when a car gets another mile or two to the gallon nationwide in the consumption of oil. So it is a balancing part, a total picture, the big portfolio of production.

I will be back to the floor all during 2008 talking about energy independence, talking about drilling offshore, talking about ethanol, cellulosic and corn-based ethanol, talking about all the kinds of things America must do to get independent of foreign sources of energy and to get clean. My children, who are all adults now and are pretty conservative folks, say: Dad, why can't we produce clean energy? Why can't we be energy independent? Why are we allowing a dictator in Venezuela to jerk us around?

What is wrong with this great country that we cannot do for ourselves what we have always done for ourselves--stood up and be counted and be independent and strong, and we can. America's farmers now, for the first time, have a phenomenal role to play beyond putting food on the consumers' shelves, which they have done so beautifully for 200 years. Now they have a role to play of putting fuel in the fuel tank. We ought to encourage that in every way but balancing the policy, as I think this final bill will do, to make sure we don't distort the markets, that we allow them to grow responsibly, that we allow them to work their way into a 15-billion-gallon-a-year production of corn-based ethanol and, by 2026, a 15- to 20-billion-gallon-a-year production of cellulosic-based ethanol. It is doable. We know how to do it. We are putting programs into place to promote it and advance it.

America's auto fleet will adjust to it, and America will be a stronger Nation. But more importantly, it will be an independent Nation from the small countries who have, underneath their geologic strictures, large bodies of oil they now see as tools for diplomacy, tools to shape a world, and tools to control this great country called America.

I will be back next week, along with my colleagues, to make new changes in the farm bill. S. 2302 is a good work product. I am pleased that finally the majority leader of the Senate has said: OK, put it on the floor and let it work its will. By the end of next week, we will have a farm bill. It is about a month late. That could have happened a month ago. It will happen now. I guess patience counts. Many of us have been patient. America's farmers need a new farm bill, and I believe the Senate Agriculture Committee has done a worthy job in producing it.

The RFS that was included in the Senate passed Energy bill this summer, and that was similarly filed as an amendment to the farm bill, reduces our dependence on foreign oil and reduces our carbon footprint, by emphasizing the importance of developing cellulosic biofuels. The RFS is, by definition a clean fuel standard, and the House has offered some additional language which endorses this low carbon fuel approach. This week in the Environment Committee we marked up a climate bill that seeks to regulate fuels with a cap on all emissions, including transportation. At the mark-up, Senator Alexander offered an amendment that is now layed on top of having fuels already covered under a ``cap and trade'' program by subjecting them also to a low carbon fuels standard. I and other members of the minority strongly opposed this amendment because it was offered in addition to the cap-and-trade, rather than as a substitute, which would have made much more sense, so as not to double-regulate the industry. In addition, however, and most importantly it also conflicts and overlaps with what we are now doing as part of the Energy bill and the farm bill as it relates the Senate RFS language, and certainly raises serious questions of jurisdiction. Senator Alexander indicates that he supports a sector approach, as do I, and I hope we will be able to move in this direction together.

Trading carbon credits between transportation sector fuels and other industry sectors is unprecedented and could lead to high fuel price volatility, supply issues including possible disruptions, and a level of market uncertainty that could discourage critically needed investment in new and innovative technologies. The EU-ETS has not included transportation fuels in its cap-and-trade program for stationary sources for this very reason. The U.S. transportation and electric power sectors are subject to very different national and international market forces and forms of regulation. Mixing these two dissimilar markets under a common cap can lead to unpredictable and potentially intractable conflicts in how each market will respond to this untested economic combination.

Studies conducted by the Energy Information Agency and the University of California on economy-wide cap-and-trade programs show that carbon reductions are less cost-effective in the transportation sector as compared to other industry sectors. Mixing transportation fuels with other fossil fuels under a common cap simply raises the cost of transportation fuels without a guarantee of significantly decreasing their carbon emissions, at least until much more cost-effective options have been exhausted for reducing emissions in other sectors. Studies by EIA indicate that this will generally not occur until after 2030.

There is a better approach for technology development for advanced transportation fuels. Technology development is driving a separate lower carbon transportation fuel standard rule that is being developed by the administration and expected to be proposed later this year. The bill should have a separate approach for transportation fuels that recognizes the confluence of these policies to ensure this sector is not subject to overlapping or conflicting requirements.

I am concerned that the fuels amendment offered by Senator Alexander during committee markup conflicts with provisions regarding low carbon fuels and the renewable fuels standard that are already included in the Energy bill now being considered by the House and Senate. Cellulosic ethanol is key and will substantially reduce the carbon content of fuels and this is included in the Renewable Fuels provisions. The Alexander amendment overlaps, and is conflicting and also raises questions regarding fuels jurisdiction with the Senate Energy Committee. In addition, the amendment develops a low carbon fuel standard that is fundamentally flawed and well beyond the bounds of current technology and science. Developing and advancing technology, not mandating a ``wish list,'' is a superior approach to meeting the challenges of providing affordable and clean fuels that American consumers need.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, let me inquire, we are in morning business?

Mr. President, I come to the floor of the Senate today to speak about two very important issues to America's taxpayers.

The first, of course, is the alternative minimum tax on which we had a cloture vote this morning. That is a very serious matter. I voted against a motion to proceed because I do not believe the best way to prevent a tax increase on 25 million taxpayers is to raise taxes elsewhere by about $80 billion. There is an old phrase out there saying that you are going to rob Peter to pay Paul. Obviously, Peter feels his pocket has been picked, but Paul might feel pretty good about it. And that is the scheme that was played out here. It is a switch game that goes on. The alternative minimum tax is important, but you don't do what they are doing. How can you give a tax break that is already going out somewhere else and raising taxes to give it? That is the issue at hand. I hope the majority is serious about protecting millions of middle-class taxpayers by bringing realistic, bipartisan legislation to fix the AMT, something both sides of the aisle can and, in all fairness, should support.

Even though I did not support how this legislation was crafted, there is a provision in the tax extender package that I wish to highlight because it is very important to taxpayers.

The bill we just voted on contained a provision to delay for 1 year a Federal mandate that requires every level of government--Federal, State, and local--to deduct and withhold a 3-percent tax on all payments of goods and services if that government spends $100 million or more for those goods and services. Oh, yes, that is a shuffle game that has been going on in the Finance Committees in the House and the Senate for some time, and it was slipped in as a way to grab some money. I saw that coming early on and began to object to it and began to look at the figures on it when others of us were saying: Well, gee, I thought that was an ability to raise some more money. I was pleased this issue was finally addressed, but what we need is full repeal of this terrible tax policy, not just a 1-year delay, although I must say a 1-year delay is going to awaken a lot of my colleagues because their State, county, and city governments are going to be calling, if they haven't already, saying: Wake up, you are putting a substantial tax on top of us.

I have come to the floor of the Senate today to renew a promise I made over a year ago. The same day this Senate provided tax relief for millions of Americans by passing the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, for which I voted, I pledged to do all I could to remove this terrible provision I just talked about that was quietly slipped into the conference report as a last-minute revenue raiser. So I stand here today to renew that pledge.

Last year, I told Members of the Senate this provision would not go unnoticed, and I was right. Once taxpayers learned what this Congress had done in the middle of the night when somebody wasn't watching, they began to react. Angry taxpayers from across the Nation are joining forces, organizing coalitions, and rallying grassroots support to fix this unjust tax policy. I applaud them for their efforts, and I am here to help them.

Let me take a couple of minutes to share what hundreds of angry taxpayers shared with me. I want every Member of the Senate to listen carefully. I want them to understand how this 3-percent tax withholding will affect each and every one of their constituents. I want them to understand why this mandatory 3-percent withholding tax is so bad.

First, 3-percent withholding was justified in the name of closing a tax gap. Proponents argued it would improve compliance. I will show a chart. They say it will improve tax compliance by approximately $7 billion over 5 years. I do not agree, and neither do the numbers.

These numbers are based on the Joint Tax Committee's original estimates. These numbers are simply slightly different when we take the 1-year delay that was in the provision that was on the floor this morning into account. But these numbers tell the story of why this is such a terrible provision.

In 2011, the first year this provision goes into effect, this 3- percent withholding tax accounts for about $6.79 billion in new revenue--boom, a big chunk of new revenue. Can't you see the spenders on the floor of the Senate salivating as they factor that into their budgets and bring down their deficit margins? However, each year after this provision only brings in about $200 million. Why is that? I will tell you. Because about $5.8 billion will be rightly returned to the taxpayers each year

thereafter. So it is a big bubble once, but then it is a constant tax.

Proponents argue that 3-percent withholding will improve tax compliance by $7 billion over 5 years. It is simply not true. The real value of increased tax compliance is only about $200 million. The bulk of these revenues, $5.8 billion, are not found. It is not real money. They are accelerated tax receipts. Contemplate that into any private or public budget or revenue and my guess is an accountant would say you are cooking the books; you can't get away with that; that is not real money.

Many of our taxpayers are already skeptical of what we do around here and would suggest we are not dealing in the real world in our desire to spend money and pay for it in some way. That is exactly what is happening. The finance committees in the conference that put this in cooked the books. As the pressure builds, that is why, well, we better push this back for 1 year.

Now, even though these estimates say you are bringing in $200 million in new revenue, which is a good thing, I guess, I am here to argue that the harmful consequence of withholding 3 percent on all payments of goods and services--and when I said that, the presiding officer brought his head up. The reason he did, and the reason any of us do when we hear about these things is, wait a minute, you are taxing goods and services of counties and cities and State government. Why are you doing that? This is going to far and away exceed the benefit we gain from additional tax revenue because somehow it makes its way through, obviously, to the constituent at the local level.

Not only are their numbers misleading you, but the unintended consequence of this tax withholding are very serious. Who is going to bear the burden of enforcement and implementation--the IRS? The Federal Government? Oh, no. The burden is going to be borne by State and local governments--your cities, my cities, our counties, our States, and companies large and small that do business with our Government are going to have to reach into their pockets in advance. The magical threshold is $100 million. Well, we say that is only for big business. Well, a lot of our cities out there today and a lot of our counties out there today and certainly all of our States fit into that category.

Let me give an idea of what I am talking about. The State comptroller's office in my State of Idaho, an office that would oversee compliance of all State agencies with this new tax-withholding requirement, conservatively estimates it would cost that office, that office alone, about $358,000 to implement and about $78,000 a year to carry it on. Now, remember this is a State of 1.5 million people. This is not 10 million or 12 million or 14 million people. Those are real dollars. That is one office in a small State. When you add all the other Idaho State agencies and offices that must also comply, those numbers will go up. So it is not overstating the case to say.

That tax withholding will collectively cost my State of Idaho millions of dollars to implement.

Now, think of what it would cost the State of Colorado, substantially larger than the State of Idaho, or the State of California, Florida or Texas. The numbers get big, and the numbers get staggering. What about our city and county governments? They will have to comply as well if they spend $100 million a year. That is the threshold.

Most counties and cities don't even know what is about to hit them, but there is one that does, and they figured out how much it is going to cost them. Let me talk about Miami, Dade County, FL. They expect withholding provisions to cost them $27 million. Let me say it again. The new tax withholding will cost Dade County, FL, $27 million. Now, if it costs them that, what do they do? They pay it. Do they cut services to their constituents or do they go out and raise taxes to offset it so they don't have to cut services? Because they are going to be forced to pay it by the Federal Government.

It is not a stretch to say this is going to cost our States, our counties, and our city governments millions and millions of dollars a year. That cost, as I said a few moments ago, has to be moved somewhere else. You either cut the services that the counties or the cities provide or you raise taxes to offset. The unsuspecting victim ultimately then has to be the taxpayer. Either the services they expect from their government are gone or they take a little more out of their back pocket.

Proponents of the 3 percent withholding tax are saying this is the best way to make sure everybody pays their fair share of taxes. Well, it is a new tax. I disagree. I don't think this is the best way to do it. I believe all citizens ought to pay their taxes. I think you and I would agree with that. I also believe our taxes should be straightforward, transparent, and fair. This new withholding tax is not straightforward, it is not transparent, and I suggest it isn't very fair. It is simply another way for the Feds to get their hands in the hip pocket of every level of government below them and into the poor taxpayer's pocket, ultimately.

The new withholding tax, ultimately, will devastate businesses and their customers across the Nation. Let me explain about businesses now. It isn't just governments that are going to have to be paying this. If you own a business and you have a contract to provide goods and services to the cities or the State, or the Federal Government for that matter, then the Government will not pay you in full. Oh, my goodness. You cut a contract with the Federal Government for ``X'' hundreds of millions of dollars to provide goods and services and they withhold 3 percent before they send you the money. So how are you going to deal with that one? Because that is exactly what will happen.

Competitive contracting? Very tight. We hope the margins are tight. We want the margins to be tight. So they will keep your money for 12 to 15 months because it is withheld. So where do you go then to get the money to provide the goods and services? You go borrow it. That endless circle goes on. Doing business with the Federal Government will be more costly, and, ironically, it will cost the Federal Government more if we expect private contractors to deal with our Government.

Here is the problem with that. It will impact nearly every industry in our Nation and it will negatively affect nearly every business or organization in America that contracts with a government entity to provide goods and services. Many industries, especially health care and construction, and most small businesses will be particularly hard hit, because a 3-percent withholding is actually larger than, in many instances, the entire profit on a contract. Think that one through. If the tax withheld is larger than the profit, why would you want to engage in business with the Government? This will seriously impede cash flow, which for small businesses can mean deciding between meeting a payroll, expanding a company or buying needed equipment. We leave small businesses with only two options: They either pass the cost along to their consumer and the price of business goes up, or they borrow money from the bank and make up the shortfall. Of course, when you borrow money from a bank, it is going to cost you a little money to do it, and so down goes the margin of profit, down goes the viability, and down goes the strength and the ability of a small business to compete.

It is ironic we are forcing these small businesses to take out a loan to pay for our mistakes while the Federal Government is essentially getting an interest-free loan from the taxpayer. That is not right.

I am on the floor of the Senate today honoring a commitment I made 1 year ago to speak out and to help shape coalitions to make America aware of what had been slipped into a conference in the dark of night that was going to impact them directly. Well, it is working. Slowly but surely America is awakening to this phantom gain our tax writers thought they could get for our tax spenders.

I sponsored legislation to repeal the 3-percent withholding. I have not yet won that fight, but to all who are listening, the tax writers are starting to blink. That is why the 1-year extension was stuck into this AMT provision, because all of a sudden the pressure is beginning to build and those politicians who raise your taxes are slightly feeling the pressure. We have to keep it on because a 1-year extension simply is not good enough. A full repeal is what we must ask for, unless we want to pass all of this through to our cities, to

our counties, to our States, to the business and industry that does business with our governments, and ultimately to you, the taxpayer, who always pays the bill in the end no matter who writes the check.

So it is important. I hope we can work out the differences we have across the aisle on the AMT. I hope when we do that, the 1-year extension will be in there because we will have had one step down a road toward victory in getting the 3-percent withholding tax repealed.

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

Mr. President, I wish to notify the Senate of my intent to object to proceeding to S. 311, a bill to

amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes.

The bill would prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption. In short, it would further limit the already limited options for disposal of unwanted horses.

An unwanted horse is one that has reached the useful end of its economic or recreational life. There are numerous reasons for the existence of unwanted horses, not the least of which are economic reasons such as loss of job, price of feed or stabling, relocation, poor health of the horse or its owner.

It must be recognized that no one has adequately addressed the fate of the estimated 90,000 unwanted horses that were formerly slaughtered on an annual basis. Animal welfare groups and rescue organizations can only do so much to shoulder the load of aiding the adoption or care of these horses. They are currently stretched to capacity, and we expect an increase in need. As a result, we are witnessing a significant increase in abandonment and neglect of horses in this country. Particularly in the West, growing numbers of unwanted horses are being dumped on public or private rangelands.

I believe that we should take the time to examine this growing issue of the unwanted horse before passing legislation that ties the hands of horse owners, public and private land managers, and others.

I object.

I object.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, I wish to discuss my opposition to two bills reported by the Veterans' Affairs Committee, but I continue to hope we can resolve the concerns I will address today.

Unanimous consent has been sought to pass two controversial bills: S. 1233,

the Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury and Health Programs Improvement Act, and S. 1315, the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act. Although both bills are well-intended, they contain unacceptable provisions that I believe would be detrimental to the care our returning wounded warriors deserve and currently receive at VA facilities. At the very least, these provisions are controversial enough to merit considerable floor debate, and therefore I have no alternative but to oppose the unanimous consent agreement.

In the past, the Veterans' Affairs Committee has worked in a bipartisan fashion to settle differences at the committee level and avoid taking up Senate floor time to debate and amend significant veterans legislation. Unfortunately, that is not the case with S. 1233 and S. 1315. Even so, I do not want to close the door on these bills because each has numerous provisions that I support or have sponsored in the past. Both bills contain provisions to enhance the care our veterans receive, and I believe that if we can return to the negotiating table, we can find an acceptable solution to both my concerns and the concerns of my colleagues.

I would like to address these two bills separately because they clearly raise different issues. S. 1315, the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act, contains a number of important provisions that will enhance benefits and services for America's combat veterans returning from the war in Iraq and the global war on terror and for all veterans with service-connected disabilities.

Among those provisions that I believe are important and responsible for us to provide our veterans are retroactive payments under the traumatic injury protection program of Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance for those injured outside of Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom theaters of operation between October 7, 2001, and December 1, 2005. This will ensure that soldiers injured on their way to fight in OIF or OEF, but not in the theater of combat, are eligible for these benefits.

Other provisions in this bill will expand the housing grant assistance program available to those with severe burn injuries-- injuries that are a sad and terrible reality of our current conflict. We must continue to adapt and modify the benefits our veterans receive based on the changing environment in which our soldiers fight; these provisions are a great example of our ability to do so.

However, there is a section within this bill that I vigorously oppose. In fact, this provision is the sole reason for my unwillingness to support the bill, and I would like to explain it here today. Included in S. 1315 is a section that would expand benefits to certain Filipino veterans residing both in the United States and abroad. I have supported, and continue to support, improving benefits for Filipino veterans who fought under U.S. command during World War II. However, I believe that the approach taken in this section with respect to special pension benefits for non-U.S. citizens and non-U.S. resident Filipino veterans and surviving spouses goes beyond the intent of veterans benefits. Further, I do not believe such a provision would have the support of the American people.

Let me explain.

Pension benefits for veterans in the United States are paid at a maximum annual rate of $10,929 for those with no dependents, $14,313 for those with dependents, and $7,329 for a surviving spouse. The maximum VA pension represents somewhere between 16 percent and 31 percent of the annual U.S. household income of $46,000. Contrast that with the average Philippines household income of $2,800. The special pension for Filipino veterans in S. 1315 would amount to an astounding 86 percent to 161 percent of the Philippines household income.

This legislation did not take into account the vast discrepancy between the standard of living in the United States and the Philippines. By refusing to look at the purchasing power of the benefits being provided here, this legislation would pay veterans in the Philippines far more in benefits and pension than we pay our own veterans. It is especially ironic that a bill intending to treat Filipino veterans equitably would create such a dramatic inequity for our U.S. veterans.

Furthermore, the offset that S. 1315 uses to ensure that the bill is in compliance with congressional budget rules would have the effect of reducing pension amounts to elderly, poor, and disabled veterans predominantly residing in the United States. I acknowledge there is considerable agreement that these extra payments for certain categories of veterans were never contemplated by Congress and, therefore, are not justified. However, if presented with the choice of using the savings from eliminating these payments to provide extra pension assistance to low-income veterans in the United States or to underwrite the kind of special benefit I described earlier, I believe the American people would choose to take care of our own veterans' pensions first--and when providing benefits to the Filipino veterans, they would insist that those benefits are adjusted to reflect the real differences in costs of living between our two countries.

The other bill I would like to address today is S. 1233, the Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury and Health Programs Improvement Act. I was originally a cosponsor of this legislation and would very much like to see it move forward and be signed into law. However, there are a few provisions that are premature, considering the current capacity of our VA medical facilities, and I hope my colleagues will agree these provisions should be deferred to a later date.

The provisions I must regrettably oppose at this time are the proposed admittance of Priority 8 and Priority 4 veterans into the VA health system. To ensure VA can meet our Nation's obligation to veterans with combat or military-related disabilities, lower income veterans, and those needing specialized care like veterans who are blind or have spinal cord injuries--to ensure appropriate care for these veterans, former VA Secretary Anthony Principi suspended additional enrollments for veterans with the lowest statutory priority. This category includes veterans who are not being compensated for a military-related disability and who have higher incomes.

It has become very clear, especially over the last few years, that servicemembers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are enduring lengthy waiting times for care. In the face of such assessments, I do not understand why we should be in a rush to open up the health care system to hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of new patients who by definition are not in need of immediate assistance or can afford private health care.

Moreover, it appears that the provision in this bill would open VA to new enrollees on the day the legislation is signed into law. Yet no plan is required to ensure that the enrollment process would be orderly and executed so as to minimize impacts on current patients, nor is there any requirement that the necessary funding be available prior to its implementation. Instead, VA would simply open the doors and wait to see who arrives. I believe that is irresponsible and unfair to the current enrollees who are in most need of care.

We should forgo opening up the VA health care system until such a time as the Secretary of the VA can certify that troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are being provided timely, high-quality health care and neither timeliness nor quality would suffer because of newer enrollees, such as Priority 8 veterans. VA's health care system was created primarily to care for ``he who shall have borne the battle.'' Congress should ensure that this unique group of veterans is not unduly burdened by any new influx of higher income veterans with no military- related disabilities.

Some Senators may contend that money can overcome any obstacle to providing all veterans with health care through VA. However, since any money provided for new patients would be used to acquire new staff, new equipment, and new space, it is important to know if those resources are even available.

Let's first consider where VA will find the new staff needed to care for the huge influx of patients this legislation proposes. It is widely known that our Nation has a shortage of primary care physicians and nurses to provide basic health care services in non-VA facilities. This issue was made clear in a July 2007 report from the Health Research Institute of Pricewater-

houseCoopers which showed that the United States will be short nearly 1 million nurses and 24,000 physicians by 2020. In this environment, simply finding new staff to hire will be a challenge for any health care system, including VA.

Further, assuming the requisite staff can be found, I am skeptical that VA has the necessary clinical space in which to provide more primary and specialty care services. I am also skeptical that many VA facilities could open the additional operating rooms, postsurgical recovery units, and intensive care units that would be required with a large increase in patients.

Last, the Congressional Budget Office has scored this legislation at $1.3 billion for the first year of inclusion of just Priority 8s into the system, or $8.8 billion from 2008 to 2012. However, it must be noted that CBO assumed Priority 8s would only be allowed to enroll in the system for 1 year, after which enrollment would be closed. Based on past experience, it is highly unlikely that Congress will maintain such a 1-year limit and virtually certain the costs would continue to rise above and beyond what CBO projected for implementation of this legislation.

When the VA health care system can support a substantial increase in patients, I will be more than happy to address this issue with my colleagues. However, at this point, when even our returning wounded warriors are forced to sit in long waiting lines to receive care, it would be grossly irresponsible for us to move forward with this legislation, and I must therefore continue to object to its passage.

The underlying legislation also contains a provision waiving required inpatient care copayments for Priority 4 veterans with higher incomes. I have concerns with this provision as well.

The passage of this provision would change VA's policy of charging a copayment for the care of a nonservice-connected condition, to allow an exception for circumstances that have nothing to do with a veteran's ability to pay. A grateful Nation has seen fit to provide cost-free care for service-connected conditions and has generously extended the same benefit to those with limited financial resources. However, with this provision, it would no longer be relevant whether veterans could afford to contribute even modestly to the cost of their care. Rather, cost-free care would be provided to a population of patients based solely on a particular health condition. That is a bad precedent.

If this legislation passes, I believe that in the not too distant future, it will be strongly argued by higher income, service-connected veterans that their benefit--cost-free care for service-connected conditions--has been diluted. And the dilution is not fair because now they would be charged for nonservice-connected care, while those with similar economic means in Priority 4 would not be forced to make copayments for the same type of care. With this provision as precedent, a future Congress will be forced to concede to the dilution and its unfairness. Then they will probably be forced to accede to the change.

All that being said, I would like to make sure that my colleagues understand that while I am objecting to passage of these bills in their current form, I sincerely hope and believe that accommodations can be made so that we can pass these bills and get much needed improvements made to the VA health care and benefits systems. Both bills have very meaningful and well-intentioned provisions that I support; unfortunately, there are a few provisions that I believe are detrimental or simply unfair to our Nation's veterans, and for that reason I am here on the floor of the Senate explaining my reasons for objecting to passage of these bills.

I look forward to discussing with my colleagues ways that we can move these bills and reach a compromise that benefits our brave veterans.

Madam President, may I inquire what the order of business is at this time?

Madam President, many of us are coming to the floor today to speak to the new farm bill that the Senate Ag Committee has proposed and brought to us over the last several months.

Over the years I have had the privilege to participate in a variety of farm bill developments and structures as we ultimately came to a new 5-year farm policy in our country.

First of all, let me say for the first time in a good number of years we have actually had the Secretary of Agriculture go out amongst American agriculture, ask questions and listen, and send us proposals of change in farm policy.

We have also had both the House and the Senate committees operating extensively in bipartisan ways to hold hearings, looking at the existing farm policy and what may need to be changed to justify a new farm bill.

While many are caught up in the bits and pieces of a farm bill structure, what is important to remember is a nation that feeds itself is a nation that is, by its own definition, strong and independent. And that has been throughout our history one of our great legacies: that we could produce our own food and fiber to feed our own populations, and then step beyond that to help feed the world.

In fact, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, as we saw a burgeoning export market in agricultural growth, we were expanding our own growth capabilities not only to feed ourselves but to feed the world.

That, in part, has been the product of a consistent farm policy over the years that stabilized agriculture, agricultural producers who looked at the primary commodity crops and said: This is the base of American agriculture, and this is what we ought to support to assure there is adequate food and fiber for the American consumer.

We now take for granted every day of the week that as we walk into the supermarkets of America the shelves will be full and overflowing with an abundance of food. We just take it for granted--unless you are amongst the very poor, and then you might stand in a soup line. But there are few of those in our country today. And, certainly, for those less fortunate there are a variety of food and nutritional programs embodied within farm policy that assure there will be minimal nutrition values offered and provided to America. That is truly one of our great legacies and something I think all Americans can be proud of.

Over the years, American agriculture has changed. We think traditionally of corn and wheat and soybeans and cotton and, of course, we used to have a tobacco program in the South that was supported, that no longer exists for obvious and important reasons.

But little did we recognize something that we now value greatly as a part of our nutritional base today: our vegetables, our fruits, and that huge variety that you see on the fresh produce shelves as you walk into any of our great supermarkets across the Nation.

And to those of us who have been associated with agriculture all of our lives, it is not the meat shelf, it is not the bread shelf, it is the fruits and the vegetables, the specialty crops, the kinds of things that never have been in a farm bill, that we have never spoken clearly to, that embodied a very large part of American agriculture.

In fact, today, at farmgate, meaning the value of products leaving the farm itself, we view specialty crops as somewhere in the area of 50 percent. Not a program crop, not a loan program, not a base support price, but American farmers out there working to diversify and to ensure the variety that all of our consumers enjoy today.

So it is, in my opinion, a very big victory that today I come to the floor, along with a group of my colleagues, to talk about a new provision within farm policy to deal with the specialty crops. And for the next few moments, let me talk about it and its importance as we recognize what it means not only today but what it could mean in the future.

This sector includes vegetables, fruits, nursery crops, herbal crops, floriculture, horticulture, dried fruit, tree nuts, and turf grass. We know about all of those things. Turf grass you do not buy at the fresh produce stand, but if you are building a new home and all of a sudden you have instant yard because the landscaper has laid turf, then you know a lot about turf.

In my State of Idaho, that is a rapidly growing and, in some areas, urbanizing area; turf farms are a very important part of Idaho agriculture today. It may surprise some, when they think of specialty crops, they think of the great agricultural belt known as the San Joaquin Valley of California, where you see one different crop after another for hundreds and hundreds of miles across that phenomenally fertile stretch of American agricultural soil.

But in my State of Idaho, we are one of the top States in the Nation as it relates to producing specialty crops. Beyond being the No. 1 producer of potatoes that we certainly recognize, and most of us enjoy, Idaho is proud to boost production of cherries, table grapes, mint, apples, onions, carrots, and a variety of seed, nursery and ornamental crops.

The specialty crop industry has never relied, as I earlier mentioned, on the traditional farm program to support or sustain it. Yet they are subject to high volatility in markets. They face significant risk in their operations, including pests and disease threats, along with technical trade barriers and disaster conditions.

The inclusion of these new crops does not cost the traditional programs at all because we are not looking for, nor has the specialty crop industry asked for, the kind of program that is represented in wheat and barley and pulse crops and sugar and others. These new provisions do not provide direct subsidy to producers but create and fund programs that will, among other things, help to improve the competitiveness of specialty crops, expand valuable nutritional programs, and direct new mandatory funding to specialty crop research.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Many States of the Nation now have a growing wine industry. Idaho is amongst those. We have a unique microclimate along the Snake River Valley of Idaho that allows us to raise quality grapes and to produce very fine quality wine.

But the problem of adapting an Australian-based or a German-based or an Italian-based grape to a new ecosystem takes research. A few years ago I was able to get the wine industry of Idaho research grants, hire a university professor, do the laboratory work, and learn how to manage a Melbac, or a Shiraz, or a particular type of Cab grape that allows us to up our values and up the quality of the wine grapes of our State. That is the kind of program we have embodied in the new specialty crop title and provision of the farm bill.

It provides producers better ways to address technical barriers in trade. It assists in the prevention, detection, and eradication of invasive pests and diseases in specialty crops.

I am pleased to see the bill extends the authority of specialty crop block grants, a charge which I led back in 2004, and will provide funding to States for locally driven and directed programs relating to research, commodity promotion, product quality enhancement, food safety, and other areas.

These are all very critical to the quality, the safety of the food that the average consumer, once again, walking into the supermarket on a daily basis simply takes for granted.

Mandatory dollars for specialty crop research will help our Nation keep a competitive edge on breeding, genetics, and genomics, also fund initiatives to address a certain economy such as the increased need for mechanization and food safety initiatives.

Very frankly, fellow Senators, if we do not begin to ensure a labor force to American agriculture, the kind that has largely left agriculture over the last 2 years because of the immigration debate and the border crisis that we are now trying to fix, we are going to have to see more and more of our industry mechanized or it will simply have to move out of our country to an area where that labor force exists.

So here is an opportunity in the specialty crop bill to do a little more of that research toward mechanization that again gives us opportunities that we heretofore did not have.

I also applaud the national expansion of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program, a program in which Idaho has been fortunate to participate for several years now. With the expansion, it is estimated that 4.5 million low-income elementary school children in 5,000 schools nationwide will benefit from receiving a fresh fruit or vegetable snack every day of the school year.

This bill takes a major step forward in recognizing the significance of the specialty crop industry to the overall agricultural economy of our country. The benefits to the health of U.S. citizens and the need for a stable, affordable, diverse, and secure food supply are clearly addressed within the specialty crop title.

For the first time in my years in Washington working on farm policy, I think it is possible to say the farm bill we currently have on the Senate floor, crafted in a bipartisan way, with the administration fully participating in the initial input of it, now covers a much broader whole of the American agricultural scene than we have ever before had.

With the inclusion of specialty crops in the overall program, it can clearly be said that is the case. So while I know the bill currently has its own problems on the Senate floor based on what may or may not transpire here, this ia a very fine piece of work, in my opinion. Do I agree with all of it? No. Would I have written it this way had I been chairman of the Ag Committee or had the ability to do so? No, probably not.

There are several provisions within it that would simply not be there because my State of Idaho, for example, does not necessarily care for some of them. For example, the large milk program of dairy is not what adjusts or identifies to my State's large and rapidly growing dairy industry. This is designed to protect a much smaller producer; in my opinion, a less economical producer today than the kind that has built the dairy industry in my State.

Be that as it may, that has always been the character of farm policy. Has it been bipartisan? Yes. By definition it has to be. Does it need to recognize all regions of our country? Yes, it does.

But most importantly, in doing all of those things, what it always has been able to do is to assure the American consumer that food in this country will be relatively inexpensive compared to the amount of consumer income required to put a meal on the table of an American family. Americans, without question, are blessed because of the phenomenal productivity of American agriculture, the ingenuity, the technology, all that goes there.

In part, the stability that has produced that is a product of farm policies down through the decades that have recognized the basic principle that a nation that can feed itself, that can be assured there will be an abundance of food for itself and use the surplus to sell to the world, is a nation that not only can be preeminent but certainly a nation that can stand on its own.

Senator Stabenow has just entered the Chamber. She and I were the first two Senators to actually sit down with the fruits and vegetables industry of our Nation and say: We need a specialty crop title. We need provisions within the farm bill that recognize and bring forth all of the kinds of programs that I have just talked about.

Over the course of the last 3 years, working in a bipartisan way, we have done just that. Let me recognize Senator Stabenow for the phenomenal work she has done over the last several months in shepherding this piece of legislation through to inclusion in the farm bill, in working with both sides of the aisle to assure that happened. And I must say hats off to the Senator from Michigan because she, like I, recognizes the phenomenal diversity of agriculture in our State and the need to not only recognize it and enhance it where we can, but to do so in a bipartisan way, that has produced the work product we have before us.

I am proud to stand on the Senate floor today recognizing a small but very important new provision within the farm bill, recognizing the nearly 50 percent of gross farm revenue across America today that is embodied within the phenomenal specialty crop diversity that makes us the great agricultural Nation we are.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Madam President, while I know that on the floor of the Senate this afternoon SCHIP, or the State Children's Health Insurance Program, is the topic of the moment, something else is near conclusion across America at this time that I thought it would be appropriate for me to speak to. I am speaking of the 2007 fire season. Of course, we-- you and I--have been riveted to our television sets over the last several weeks as we literally watched the Los Angeles basin burn. Well, while the smoke is starting to clear in California and the losses are being assessed, I thought it would be time to come and speak to one of the worst fire seasons America has experienced in decades. First, in doing so, I must say--and we have all watched it--thank you to the literally thousands of courageous firefighters, men and women out on the line every day, facing almost impossible odds. We saw it in California. We saw it in my State of Idaho. We saw it across America this year, during that wildfire season period, where flames were as high as buildings, and men and women were scurrying to stop them and to protect both habitat and watershed and homes. They were putting themselves at risk. So I say to all of those marvelous firefighters who stood in harm's way throughout the early summer, summer and fall, and now into the late fall in California, thank you. Thank you for the phenomenal work you do, the selflessness you put yourselves into, on behalf of America, on behalf of people's property, on behalf of our natural resources.

In California as we speak, 14 people lost their lives, 2,100 homes were destroyed as that week-long blaze roared across the greater Los Angeles basin. Over 809 square miles of land was charred, and now, about the time the fires are to die down, we hear rumors that the Santa Ana winds are expected to pick up again and we could possibly find ourselves back in flames in California.

The 2007 fire season: 77,000 fires. Stop and think about that; 77,000 fires, 9.2 million acres of land, and as I have said California may continue to burn.

In my home State of Idaho, we went through one of the worst fire seasons we have ever experienced. Of that 77,000 fires I talked about, 1,775 of them were in the State of Idaho. Of the 9.2 million acres of land charred that I talked about, over 2.2 million acres of that, nearly 25 percent of the whole burn, occurred in my State of Idaho.

Thankfully, in Idaho, no great structures were lost because it happened to be out in the back country or on our foothill grazing land. Finally, as the snow began to fall in the high country of my great State a few weeks ago, the fires were put out because some of those fires were simply impossible to corral and to put out by man's efforts.

So here is an interesting statistic. This chart shows us the phenomenal escalation and the cost of firefighting at the Federal level and what has transpired. In 2005, nearly $1.6 billion was spent. Let me show you what happened this year. Here is what happened this year. So we go from $1.6 billion, and let's go to $1.87 billion. Those are the figures we are talking about now, and that doesn't even include California. So we will probably hit well over the $2 billion price tag in fighting America's fires this year, and that, in itself, is phenomenal, a phenomenal cost.

So let's remember it: 77 million, 1,000 fires, 9.2 million acres burned, and now we are bumping up over $2 billion worth of tax dollars spent in protecting America's marvelous wildlands and in protecting properties and all of that.

Let me give an example of what happened in Idaho, where 25 percent of that acreage burned. On one fire alone, in size as big as the Los Angeles fires--we called it the Murphy Complex fires. Well, there were 50,000 AUMs--or animal unit months--of grazing, because the public lands in Idaho are very valuable for grazing. Six ranchers were 100 percent burned out. Seventeen others were partially burned. Now that the fire is over, now that the fall has come and we have had a few rainstorms and things have settled down, this is Federal land, what do we do?

Here is what we are doing, because the cost is not over. The figure I have given you of nearly $2 billion, that is to put out the fires. Now, what are you going to do with the land? You start rehabilitating the land. You start trying to stop it from eroding and doing all of that. We are going to spend $10 million in 2007, and $22 million is already requested for the next 3 years. That is for one fire in Idaho, estimated at 128,000 acres to be rehabbed, and currently 66,000 have been rehabbed. I flew over that fire. It is very hard to understand what 600 square miles of fire looks like. I was in a military helicopter. I flew for 35 minutes and never saw unburned land. That is the expanse of the size of the fires, and that fire was a little smaller than the collective size of the Los Angeles, or the greater California fires.

So it is phenomenally important that we put these fires into context and understand what they are all about. Some of you watched on national television as the great ski resort, Sun Valley, near Ketchum, ID, nearly burned this year. We spent well over $150 million saving the community of Ketchum and saving the great Sun Valley Ski Resort from the Castle Rock fire. I was up there two different days on that fire. As the community came around and helped and tried to protect themselves and as our Government poured in resources in a class one fire, there was a great lady up there who was the fire boss. They brought her out of California. She was fearless in her effort to stop that fire, and she did so very successfully.

There are a lot of other stories to be told. The Salmon River, the great ``river of no return'' in Idaho, one of the No. 1 whitewater rafting rivers in the world, shut down 27 days this summer because of the smoke and risk of fire. Millions of dollars from recreation

were lost in my State from fire or the risk of fire. Oh, yes, there were millions lost in resources, but when you live off the economy of tourism and recreation, fire becomes a very real problem. I don't think we have drawn a bottom line yet to determine the losses in Idaho. But I will tell you they literally are in the millions of dollars. Sun Valley itself had to cancel a great event it has every Labor Day called Wagon Days; they had to cancel altogether, telling people not to come, and tens of thousands of people did not come and spend their money. That community lost millions as a result.

When you see a fire being fought and you know there are millions of dollars being spent to put it out, that is one phase of the great cost of fires in America. As you know, in California, with 2,100 homes burned, many of those homes will be rebuilt, the communities will be rebuilt, to the tune of well over a billion dollars. Someone is going to pay for that--State money, insurance money, private money--a tremendous expense. In many of the areas of the State of Idaho, in that 2.2 million acres that burned, campgrounds will not be able to be used for several years; trail heads will be canceled because it is charred, it is gone; the wildlife habitat, the watershed--all of that, as a result of the great ineffective management of public lands, has been wiped out.

The reason I am telling you all of this is because there is a very important message that has to be brought into context as we look at America burning--and America burns. Last year, it was nearly 10 million acres; this year, it is 9-some-odd million acres. We are burning unprecedented acres in our Nation and somebody ought to ask why. Why is it greater today than it has been in decades?

There are reasons, I believe, and in the next few minutes I will try to explain those to you because not only is our attitude about fire different, our attitude about how we manage our public lands and reduce the overall fuel loads that feed these fires is out there; and the Senator who is chairing at the moment, concluded the drafting and markup of a climate change bill. Our climate has changed. We are, in some areas, getting hotter and in some areas getting drier. But the management of the lands in response to the change of the climate isn't there, or we are not giving the management agencies the resources to change management practices to reflect the kinds of changes that are going on in our public lands.

So, for Idaho, not only was the loss real this summer in millions of acres of beautiful wildlands, but it is now wildlife habitat that is gone; it is watershed that, in the wet season, could come tumbling down and bring sediment to our streams and damage fisheries, and much of the recreation that was there is gone, potentially, for years to come.

As I mentioned a few moments ago, the seeding, the stabilization, all of the things that have to go on in the urban watersheds to protect them and bring water quality back--all of that is going to be the additional expenses of the Forest Service and BLM and many of our management agencies that have the responsibility over those lands.

The firefighters are gone from Idaho. The smoke is gone and the skies are clear once again. At the same time, the damage is real, and the damage will be there for years to come.

The skies will clear in California one of these days, but in California, the wet season will come. As we watched 2,100 homes burn, now we will watch the land grow wet and begin to slide, because there is no vegetation on it to hold it and protect it and to save it from the kind of slippage to which that region of the country is very prone.

The reason I mentioned Senator Lieberman is because he is on the floor today, leading a charge on climate change. Here is another aspect of what we have done this year, but nobody registers it and few account for it. On average, 6 tons of CO2 are released for every acre burned in the United States. Up to 100 tons of CO2 per acre can be released. Now, last year alone--we have not calculated this year yet--10 million acres of forest lands burned. By conservative estimates, that means 60 million tons of CO2--carbon--was spewed into the atmosphere, not to mention greenhouse gases and air pollutants as a product of our fires.

Can we do something about it? Should we do something about it? We are proposing changing our whole energy structure to try to effect climate change and reduce our greenhouse gases, but few are focused on our public lands and our policies of managing them and what results from that when they burn.

Here is an interesting fact. When I talk about the 60 million tons of CO2 spewed into the atmosphere, that is roughly equivalent-- understand this figure--to taking 12 million vehicles off the roads for 1 year; in other words, turning off their motors, stopping their pollution, 12 million vehicles for 1 year. That is equivalent to about half the automobile fleet in California. That is a pretty significant picture.

One of the things our forests do so very well when they are young and youthful, and when the matrix of our forests old and new are different in their changes, they do something that only a green-growing plant can do: sequester carbon, take it from the atmosphere. When they burn, it releases carbon back into the atmosphere. Our management practices ought to be to keep our forests as young and vibrant and alive as they can be, so they become a tool, an asset, in climate change, to pull the carbon out of the atmosphere that man produces and store it in trees. The great secret that lots of people who don't understand our forests do not understand is they are the greatest captor and storer of carbon in a forest. When they burn and when you see smoke on the horizon, it is just that--the release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Let me conclude by saying what I think is critically important for our future. Active management of our forests, recognizing not only their contribution to our great Nation, as it relates to all they bring in water quality and wildlife habitat and the producing of fiber to build homes, is what keeps a forest healthy. To simply lock them up and watch them and watch Mother Nature move in with her bugs and kill them and burn them and do what happened this year is, in itself, a statement of mismanagement.

This year, and last year, we saw record examples of mismanagement: 10 million acres last year, 9.2 million acres this year, and billions of dollars of tax money spent and thousands of homes lost. Our public resource agencies spend more time protecting homes nowadays than the resource itself. We sit idly by while the courts are in suit to keep us out of our forests so we cannot manage them to clean them up, to reduce the fuel loads, to adhere to the laws that have been passed, such as Healthy Forests and others.

I will be back to talk more about this in detail in the coming months. We are now off the chart. We are now literally, in spending, off the chart. This is only phase I. This is fighting fires, trying to put out fires. This is trying to protect habitat or to protect homes. This has nothing to do with the rehabilitation and the seeding and management that may come afterwards or all of the dollars that have been lost in California because business would not be conducted, or all of the dollars lost in Idaho and other States because people could not come there to enjoy it and recreate.

There are a lot of other consequences, let alone the phenomenal bleeding in the atmosphere of carbon and greenhouse gases, that come from a wildfire season. America burned this year. The 2007 fire season was one of the worst we have had in decades. This is part of the story of what it was all about. There is more to be told. It must be told, and Congress should act in concert with climate change and everything else to make sure that part of what we do sequesters our carbon, keeps our forests healthy, young, and vibrant as a part of the total picture of a great Nation that manages a great resource instead of simply watching it burn.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to talk about something very important--the Special Olympics World Winter Games.

It is a privilege for all of us in Idaho to be a part of these games as the host for the 2009 worldwide games. And it has been an honor for me personally to be involved with this wonderful organization. I know the people of Idaho are looking forward to welcoming the world to our great State.

I especially want to thank Senator Harkin for his help. He has been a tremendous advocate for the Special Olympics. And from what I understand, he is a big fan of the games in his home state of Iowa, where they recently hosted the National Summer Games. Senator, thank you.

I think we all know that the Special Olympics is a first-class organization. Its sole purpose is to enrich the lives of literally millions of people across the world. Through training and competition, individuals with intellectual disabilities have a chance to become physically fit, productive and respected members of society.

However, Special Olympics is responsible for much more than games and competition . . . it is about quality of life. The Special Olympics Healthy Athletes Program, developed over a decade ago, focuses on health, fitness, and well-being of people with and without disabilities. Last year this program made it possible to conduct more than 135,000 health screenings. Just this month, at the World Summer Games in China, medical volunteers provided free dental, vision, and hearing exams. Clearly, the games are more than just a sporting event they provide services to promote better fitness and health care.

So when the Special Olympics asked me to help with the Idaho Winter Games, it is easy to see why I considered it a great honor.

Now, hosting the largest multiday winter sports competition ever held in the United States isn't easy--and it isn't cheap. There is a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes. It requires a lot of manpower and resources to prepare the infrastructure and organize housing, meals, and transportation for participants from all over the world. As a world-class nonprofit organization, Special Olympics relies mostly on in-kind gifts and services. Raising enough money to pull off such a large event is a daunting task, to say the least.

This is why I am pleased that the Senate Appropriations Committee has provided the Idaho Special Olympic Winter Games with some much-needed funding. This critical financial assistance will make these games possible. It will make it possible for some truly remarkable athletes to compete.

Again I would like to thank both Senator Harkin and Senator Specter for their devotion to the Special Olympics. Their work will make these games a success. And while I am on the floor, I would like to invite my colleagues to come to Idaho--to experience the magic of an Idaho winter and to experience the magic of the Special Olympics.

Mr. President, this past Saturday was National Public Lands Day. On September 29, hundreds of thousands of citizens from across the country volunteered to give their time to improve our public lands. These volunteers cleared obstructed trails, picked up litter, planted trees, removed invasive species, and taught young Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts about camping. I commend all volunteers for their commitment.

Now in its 14th year, National Public Lands Day has become the largest grassroots volunteer effort on behalf of our public parks, rivers, lakes, forests, rangelands, and beaches. Last year, an estimated $11 million worth of labor intensive work was carried out, and this year it is expected that $12 million of improvements were added to America's public lands.

On Wednesday, September 27, the front page of USA Today displayed a picture of Coeur d'Alene, ID, with a headline that read ``No end in sight for Idaho's growth.'' The article went on to provide a breakdown of how Idaho's economy has remained strong despite the current slump in the housing market. It reads, ``[An] ingredient in Idaho's boom has been the ``amenities business''--hiking, hunting, fishing, skiing, whitewater rafting--that attracts tourists and new residents, from billionaires to young outdoor enthusiasts.''

Today Idaho is experiencing a new brand of tourists and a new brand of neighbors moving in down the street. These people are focused on the vigorous quest for a quality of life that includes the enjoyment of the outdoors. What ties the third generation Idahoan to a newcomer is an appreciation for the resources and the value that multiple uses contribute to our livelihoods and communities.

The USA Today article also points out that ``[t]he federal government owns about two-thirds of the land in Idaho, mostly national forests. The state has 21 million acres of roadless wilderness, about the size of South Carolina and more than any state except Alaska.'' Public lands have much to offer and are very beneficial for Idaho.

There are a myriad of different resources that can be responsibly harvested or extracted from our public lands. From sustainably managed forests to livestock use to oil and geothermal potential, these lands hold the resources Americans rely on to achieve the standard of living that we have today.

Using the resources on our own public lands, as opposed to relying on foreign resources, affords us the opportunity to fund schools, highways, and national defense, all the while easing the financial burden on the taxpayers.

There are those, however, who would prefer to see land management agencies take more of a preservationist role, prohibiting access to our national forests, parks, beaches, and rangelands and leaving nature to run its course. This is not a value that many Idahoans hold, and neither do I.

We must actively manage our lands so that the recreational and resource benefit can be utilized by every American citizen. Under certain circumstances, active management includes limited access in specific areas;

however, we must be cautious not to be overly restrictive of public access to public lands. The same holds true for natural resource management. We cannot use a one-size-fits-all management style when there are so many differing opinions on how to best utilize our domestic natural resources.

In closing, I want to again say thank you to the volunteers for their tremendous efforts to ensure that the public lands we enjoy today will be enjoyed by many, for years to come.