Floor Statements

Will the Senator yield for a question?

First, I want to commend the Senator for his integrity and his courage in standing up. I know, as the Senator said, this is an unpleasant matter and that is why I wanted to bring to light, having served with the distinguished Senator, now ranking member but then chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is my recollection correct that this matter was brought to light in a front-page story expose by the leading newspaper in Iowa? This was not a matter that was a partisan trying to find information about somebody, this was brought forth by the newspaper itself?

Would the Senator yield for another question?

During the time the Senator referenced, I believe the Senator was the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. It was the responsibility of the administration to perform the due diligence necessary to investigate all of the relevant factors, the background of this gentleman, Mr. Dorr, but especially it was then the responsibility of the oversight committee of the Senate, the Agriculture Committee, of which the Senator was chairman, to look into these matters. I again commend the Senator for taking on that responsibility as the chairman of the committee and doing it so forthrightly.

Mr. President, I express my admiration to the Senator from Iowa for his willingness to make this accommodation. Those watching, who wonder whether we do act in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, can note this as one of those instances. I share, however, the concern of the Senator about the timing of this admission by Mr. Dorr.

The first hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee on the original nomination was, I believe, in March of 2002. That is over 3 years ago. If Mr. Dorr had made this kind of acknowledgment in this letter back then, this matter would have been resolved some time ago. Instead, the committee records will show during that time, and I believe at the subsequent hearing--which I did not attend but I believe the record shows happened earlier this year--he said exactly the opposite. He denied any culpability, he denied doing anything wrong, he denied any responsibility for anything that might have occurred inadvertently. This is a direct contradiction of that and it does occur, as the Senator noted, at the very last instant before this matter was going to be voted for cloture--and I think it is seriously in doubt whether cloture would have been invoked, in which case that nomination would have been in limbo as it was previously, which led to a recess appointment.

I also, with reluctance but out of necessity, will vote against this nominee. Again, I commend the Senator from Iowa, but I think in this matter this is a highly suspect maneuver at the very last instant.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that Brigit Helgen on my staff be granted the privilege of the floor during the remainder of the debate.

Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague, the leader of our representation on the Senate Finance Committee, the Senator from Montana, who has been outstanding in his guidance to all of us in our caucus and in standing up for the interests not only of his own State but for the farmers and the workers and the people of Minnesota and America, as well as Montana. I thank him and I thank my colleagues from North Dakota who also have been in the forefront of this issue because they, like myself, represent people who are seriously at risk with this agreement.

Tribute To The U.S. Capitol Police

Mr. President, before I address DR-CAFTA, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to the courageous men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police, who risked their lives yesterday, once again, to help evacuate the rest of us safely from the Capitol Complex.

This is, unfortunately, my fifth evacuation from the Capitol Complex, beginning with September 11, 2001. This has been the best of them, if such a word can be applied to that race against time and the possible horror that is involved.

But as my staff and I walked out of the Russell Senate Office Building's nearest door yesterday afternoon, which is directly across the street from the Capitol, and hurried down the street away from the Capitol and the buildings, I saw several Capitol Police officers who stood directly exposed while they were calmly directing everyone else to safety. Other officers, I am told, remained once again at their posts inside or right outside the Capitol Building itself, helping everyone else to exit as quickly and safely as possible.

Had the plane yesterday been a hijacked jetliner, as it was on 9/11, it would--if it had not been shot down--have struck its target within 2 minutes of that evacuation alarm. It is questionable whether the evacuation of everyone in this complex would have been completed by then. But it is almost certain that the Capitol Police officers--who were doing their jobs heroically--would have still been at those posts, or very close to them, at that time. They kept themselves exposed to mortal danger to help their fellow citizens escape it. To all of them and to the other Senate staff who were involved, I say a heartfelt thank you.

It is unfortunate, Mr. President, that exceptional virtue--to place the best interests of other Americans ahead of one's own--does not apply to this trade agreement called DR-CAFTA. It is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It pretends to help American workers and American farmers, to provide net gains to our domestic economic and employment growth, and also to benefit the people in six neighboring countries, when, in fact, its driving motivations are higher corporate profits and capital gains by shifting American jobs and their production to those nearby countries to exploit their low wages, scarce benefits, nonexistent protections for workers, environments, local economies, and lower transportation distances and costs than in China, India, Vietnam, and other places, to increase corporate profits and personal wealth at the expense of other Americans and our national economic health.

This is the era of un-American capitalism, with great riches and no taxes for the richest Americans and lost jobs, lower incomes, and less financial security for the rest of Americans.

Those are the facts from a decade of NAFTA, the unfortunate, unpleasant but actual real-world economic, employment, and trade facts resulting from 10 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

As with DR-CAFTA now, NAFTA's proponents prior to its enactment peddled lots of wonderful promises and projections: that NAFTA would create big economic gains for every country and almost everyone in them; there would be increases in U.S. exports to NAFTA countries that would exceed the increased imports from them; and that net gain would increase domestic employment, domestic production, and domestic prosperity.

They turned out to be, unfortunately, domestic dilutions. The real net effects from NAFTA have been exactly the opposite of those promotional fantasies. Over the last 10 years, U.S. imports from Mexico and Canada have increased by 10 times more than our exports to them, resulting in huge net losses, estimated to have cost over 900,000 American jobs.

Many of them have been good-paying jobs, benefit-providing, company- pension-offering and previously secure, reliable, lifetime jobs, the kind of jobs that create stable, secure, healthy, and prosperous communities all across America, throughout all of our 50 States--the jobs that were the economic engines and the social foundations for the hard-working, productive,

and successful people who had those jobs for their families, who were-- and still are--themselves the greatness of America.

But those ingredients of America's greatness--those jobs that support families, provide security, provide health benefits, provide pensions, allow Americans to earn the American dream--they are being dissipated, outsourced, traded away for immediate profits and financial gains for a few, at the expense of many more dislocated workers, destructed families, damaged communities, destitute seniors, and deficit-plagued local, State, and Federal governments, with serious trade imbalances that are increasing private and public debt, and having a weaker national economy with even more serious consequences ahead.

The proponents of these free-trade agreements--and they are on both sides of the aisle, and they come from the preceding administrations as well as this one--remind me of the story of the crew that was blazing a road in the jungle. After quite a bit of work, the foreman sent somebody up to survey their progress. He climbed up to the top of the highest available tree and looked out and said: Stop, stop. We are going in the wrong direction. The foreman called back: But we can't stop now, we are making so much progress.

These trade agreements have made progress but in the wrong direction. The proponents' solution to that predicament is more of the same--yet another trade agreement with the same bad effects for much of America. In fact, DR-CAFTA is the worst of NAFTA. It involves countries that have even lower standards of living than our own. The per capita income, the average citizen's income, in those six countries range from one-tenth of the U.S. per capita income to one one-hundredth of our per capita income.

We are told, by those who want to pass this agreement, that it is going to create these great export opportunities for our own industries. But exports require people in those countries who can afford to buy what Americans produce. There will be a marginal increase, to be sure, if there is increased employment in those countries. That is positive. I hope--and we should hope--that any trade agreement we make will be good for our fellow world citizens.

However, we should make our trade agreements for our own citizens first and foremost, and not for anyone else's, because every other country in the world, every government in the world, whether capitalist, Socialist, or even Communist--if it is rational in its economic policies--makes trade agreements in its own national self- interest. And then they try to maximize the benefits to their country from those agreements. Unfortunately, we have seen other countries' governments far more effective, even within the scope of these previous trade agreements, at maximizing to their advantage, and often to our detriment, what they can gain from the exploitation of those agreements.

Our trade policy should not be based on free trade or fair trade or any other kind of policy ideology or economic idolatry, as it has almost become, but on what is the best policy with the best economic results for the most Americans. By that measure, what is the broad public interest--after you take the winners and the losers, which in an enormous, complex, diverse economy such as our own, almost any trade agreement is going to have gains and losses--you have to look at the net effects, what is in the broad public interest, to decide what is best for America.

The U.S. International Trade Commission--independent of all of us; tasked by law with developing the expertise to carry out these agreements and to analyze them and to analyze each of these proposed agreements in advance of our voting--has already concluded by its independent, expert analysis that under the DR-CAFTA agreement, as proposed, the U.S. trade deficit with those six nations will increase by an estimated $110 million per year.

That is because the increases in their imports into the United States will be greater than the increases of our exports into those countries. That is the net balance. That is the bottom line. That is not, as some people say, one group's interests or another group's interests. That is America's best combined interest, and it is exactly the opposite of what proponents have been saying is going to be one of the benefits. Once again, the facts, based on the International Trade Commission's projections, but also consistent with the facts as we have seen from 10 years' experience with NAFTA, do not support the Bush administration's false assurances and the claims of others who will benefit and are promoting this agreement.

The response, one would hope, from the administration, in light of that projection by the International Trade Commission that came out about 6 months ago, would be to negotiate changes in the agreement so that we would come out as a net winner rather than a loser. But that has not been their response. It is to increase the advertising, increase the paid promotions for this proposed agreement by those who will benefit from it and by, reportedly--and I have heard this directly from some of those involved in the sugar industry who have been in direct negotiations with the administration--to threaten those who oppose the agreement because they perceive, correctly, that it will have serious negative consequences for their own livelihoods, for their own families, their friends, their neighbors, threaten them with reprisals in the future if they persist in their opposition, or to try to, as we are seeing now, buy them off with some special side deal.

I don't hear anybody on either side of the argument, for or against CAFTA-DR, who disputes the projections by the experts and the industry itself that the American sugar industry--sugar beets in northwestern Minnesota and central Minnesota and neighboring States, sugar cane in other States--would be seriously and negatively affected.

The extent is perhaps debatable, but the negative effects are indisputable, if CAFTA-DR is approved. So to tell them that they should sign off on their own economic death warrant, or they are going to suffer future reprisals for not doing so is wrong. It is unfair.

The latest approach has been, well, we are going to offer you this special side deal for a couple years to buy you off. I don't know all the details. It has just been disclosed. I don't fault my colleague in the Senate from Minnesota who is purportedly instrumental in that negotiation. I don't agree. I strongly disagree with the arrangement, as I understand it. But I fault the administration for insisting that he or others try to work out such a deal. It is like being handed a huge lemon and being told to make lemonade. Unfortunately, with this trade agreement, there is not enough sugar in all of America to sweeten what is wrong with CAFTA, even for the sugar industry.

I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes to complete my remarks.

I thank the Chair.

The proponents want this agreement so much that they are going to use--one way or another, directly or indirectly--U.S. taxpayer dollars to subsidize domestic sugar production or to buy off some of the otherwise imported sugar from these CAFTA countries at taxpayer expense in order to promote a free-trade agreement. It has the added irony, bitter irony of using tax dollars from working Americans in some cases to subsidize an agreement that is going to cost them their jobs. It underscores how the policy is bad economics, how it is bad trade policy. But the proponents of it want it so badly, because of its benefits for those companies that can outsource their jobs, based now in the United States, and that production to nearby countries, taking advantage of low wages there, costing American jobs, costing American communities their businesses and their employment and their social stability for the benefit of the wealthy few corporate interests who are bankrolling this effort, and now, in the ultimate bitter conclusion, taking taxpayer dollars to pay for the political grease to get this agreement through.

If I really wanted to be Machiavellian in my thinking, I would say also--as a big proponent of the domestic ethanol industry, which is now just reaching, because of the world oil price, competitive parity, even without

the public tax subsidy for ethanol, of price competitiveness, even a price advantage in my State of Minnesota with regular gasoline--that by taking this, as some reports have said, excess sugar production and providing what will be an effective subsidy of an additional dollar for a gallon of the ethanol produced from it, distorting the economics, the competitiveness of ethanol, distorting the supply in the competitively growing, successful domestic ethanol industry and trying to show how-- in this case, with sugar beets or sugar cane in this country--price uncompetitive making ethanol is from those products is poisoning the well, the public support, is going to reinforce those opponents of ethanol who will then say: Look at how uncompetitive it is and how outrageous this additional taxpayer subsidy is for the production of ethanol from it. And in this case they will be right. And they will use that, I believe, unfortunately, to try to poison the political and public well of support for ethanol, which is a very important, promising part of our energy independence and economic future.

This is a bad agreement for America. It is bad for the sugar industry, and I oppose it for that reason. But even taking sugar aside, it is bad for the rest of America. It is bad for American workers, American industry. It is bad, as the International Trade Commission has concluded, on the basis of the bottom line--the trade imbalance increased, trade deficit with those countries increased, imports that will exceed the increase in our exports. That means, net result, it is bad policy, bad trade for America.

I oppose it. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana for making the time available. I will be brief. In addition to what I said earlier today, I want to reference representations that have been made since then. It is hard for anyone listening, and even for a Member watching these proceedings, to separate the facts from all of the claims and descriptions that are being presented.

Unfortunately, in complicated issues like this, even experts can reach different conclusions. So it is not surprising that Senators can reach different conclusions--often from different information or different interests from the people we represent. I find it less understandable or acceptable when I hear mischaracterizations of the expressed positions of other affected Americans. If somebody here or anybody else chooses to try to convince people that what is not good for them is what they should believe is good for them, I will disagree, but I won't object to that undertaking.

I do object, however, when the actual statements or the official positions by individuals or organizations are not accurately represented, especially ones being made as currently as today or yesterday. So I want the official public record of this debate to record accurately the positions on DR-CAFTA that have been taken by the American

sugar industry in general and Minnesota's sugar beet farmers and workers in particular.

A public statement issued today by the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association and major Minnesota sugar beet cooperatives on behalf of the State of Minnesota's sugar industry stated in part:

. . . and we remain convinced that a vote for CAFTA, based on

a short-term fix, places Minnesota's 20,000 sugarbeet farmers

and workers at risk.

Plain and simple: No deal was brokered that addresses our

concerns with CAFTA. And there appears to be no interest by

the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the U.S. Trade

Representative's office to find a long-term comprehensive

solution.

Our jobs, farms, factories, and way of life are on the

line. It's our livelihoods that hang in the balance of the

CAFTA vote, and we know what's best for us.

The administration's proposal to ``fix sugar'' is

unsustainable. It will not protect our jobs or Minnesota's

rural economy because CAFTA is a permanent trade agreement.

The men and women of Minnesota's sugar industry remain

adamantly opposed to CAFTA.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full statements by the Minnesota organizations, plus the American Crystal Sugar Company letter and the American Sugar Alliance release be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

Mr. President, plain and simple, the Bush administration is trying to make temporary side deals that run contrary to the actual DR-CAFTA treaty to get the votes necessary to pass it. With the sugar industry, the Secretary of Agriculture just yesterday announced his own farm program, with no congressional hearings or review, to be paid for with tax dollars, at his entire and sole discretion. It is, frankly, such an ill-considered, ill-designed, uneconomical and improper program that if any member of the Senate Agriculture Committee on which I serve introduced it, I think we would be run out of the room. If any Member on the floor introduced it, I think it would be defeated overwhelmingly by a vote. Yet it is supposed to be sweetening this agreement and making it palatable to pass tonight. The Secretary will buy U.S. sugar and convert it to ethanol for no good reason, or economical reason, except to get this agreement passed in the Senate.

To their credit, the Minnesota sugar beet farmers, workers, and industry leaders are not buying this boondoggle. They know it is a bad deal for them. It is a bad deal for the U.S. agricultural economy, the ethanol industry, and the American taxpayers. It is claimed to be for them, but they don't want it. It is claimed to be good for them, but they know it is not. It shows, however, an administration that is so determined, and perhaps desperate, to get what it wants--even though it is not what is best for America--that they will make the agreement even worse, at American taxpayer expense, with these kinds of side agreements and deals that should be rejected by the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

CAFTA Vote Critical to Sugar Industry's Future

In response to the upcoming U.S. Senate vote on the Central

America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Minnesota sugar

industry release the following statement (supported American

Crystal, Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative, Red River Valley

Sugarbeet Growers Association and Southern Minnesota Beet

Sugar Cooperative):

``The sugar industry has said throughout the debate on

CAFTA that the agreement presents our industry with short-

term and long-term problems. In the last few days an effort

was made to provide a short-term fix. Friends do sometimes

disagree, and we remain convinced that a vote for CAFTA,

based on a short-term fix, places Minnesota's 20,000

sugarbeet farmers and workers at risk.

``Plain and simple: No deal was brokered that addresses our

concerns with CAFTA. And, there appears to be no interest by

the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the U.S. Trade

Representative's office to find a long-term comprehensive

solution.

``Our jobs, farms, factories, and way of life are on the

line. It's our livelihoods that hang in the balance of the

CAFTA vote, and we know what's best for us.

``The Administration's proposal to `fix sugar' is

unsustainable. It will not protect our jobs or Minnesota's

rural economy because CAFTA is a permanent trade agreement.

``The men and women of Minnesota's sugar industry remain

adamantly opposed to CAFTA. We will continue to send the

message to Minnesota's lawmakers to vote against it.''

The Senate is expected to vote today. A House vote is

likely to occur before August.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tasha Byers, an intern in my office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of this debate on CAFTA.

Mr. President, I ask that the pending business be set aside.

I call up Senate amendment 790.

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

Mr. President, we have been talking about the laudable goals of recycling, our Nation's dependency on foreign oil, and developing alternative sources of energy. The old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Our current energy program and practices are taking this country in the opposite direction--toward increased imports of foreign oil.

Even with the renewable fuel standard in the Senate bill, which some want to eliminate, the projected gasoline consumption in our country will increase from 135 billion gallons this year to 168 billion gallons in 2012. That is a 26-percent increase in America's use of gasoline in just 7 years. At a time that worldwide demand is also expected to increase significantly, where we will get the increased supplies? How much will we have to pay for them?

As my colleague, Senator Cantwell from Washington State, courageously warned last week, even with the adoption of the Senate's renewable fuel standard, our imports of foreign oil would increase from 59 percent currently to 62 percent in 2012. Without adopting the Senate renewable fuel standard, our oil imports would be over 67 percent in just 7 years.

Taking yesterday's world price for oil, which was over $59 a barrel, we will spend $220 billion this year for foreign imports of oil, and we would spend $243 billion in 2012, even with the renewable fuel standard. Anyone who believes the world price of oil in 2012 will not be higher than it is today is beyond optimistic.

Of course, if we can continue to get all the oil we need at today's prices or lower, we would have no need to develop alternatives. That has been our national energy strategy today. People say we do not have an energy policy. I respectfully disagree. Our policy has been and continues to be to maintain the status quo for as long as possible. We continue to depend almost entirely upon oil and oil products, natural gas and its products, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power for over 97 percent of our total energy needs nationwide, just as we did in 1970 before our so-called energy crisis began.

The so-called alternative fuels provided less than 2 percent of our country's energy in 1970. They provide less than 3 percent today. None of them are likely to provide significantly more of our total supply 10 or even 20 years from now except for ethanol and other biofuels such as biodiesel. That is why we do not see full-page ads attacking solar, wind, or geothermal energy by the Petroleum Institute or other major energy sources, because they know the alternatives are no threat to replace them anytime soon.

The only alternative source of energy the American Petroleum Institute is attacking is ethanol. Why is that huge industry, oil and gas special interest, spreading misinformation about a business competitor? Because they recognize that ethanol has the ability--not just potential but the ability now, not 10, 20, or 40 years from now but right now--to replace gasoline, to replace not just MTBE, the--3 percent additive to regular gasoline, but to replace the gasoline itself.

I know that from my own experience driving a Ford Explorer that has run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline all over Minnesota during the past 3 years. My Senate office leased a van that has run on the 85 percent fuel for the last 4 years. Both vehicles have factory-made flexible-fuel engines which can run on the 85-

percent ethanol or on regular unleaded gasoline or any mixture of the two. However, for the past 9 years, every car, SUV, or pickup truck in Minnesota has run on a blend of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol.

The courageous Republican Governor, Arne Carlson, and the Minnesota Legislature passed a 10-percent ethanol mandate law. Back then, the oil and gas industries tried the same scare tactics they are using on Capitol Hill now: More ethanol will be prohibitively expensive, unsafe, and unreliable. But for the last 9 years, every motorist in Minnesota has put a gasoline containing 10 percent ethanol into every vehicle at every service station with no problems and at prices that are lower than our neighboring States. Just 2 weeks ago, I bought E85 fuel in 11 Minnesota cities at prices ranging from 25 to 70 cents a gallon less than regular unleaded gasoline. Unleaded gas costs between $1.90 and $2.05 a gallon and E85 between $1.35 and $1.65 a gallon.

I have introduced legislation that will require all of the gasoline- consuming cars, SUVs, and trucks sold in America after 2008 to have these flex-fuel engines which would give their owners the choice between ethanol and gasoline every time they fueled up. Every time, consumers could choose the lower priced option, and that consumer choice would provide healthy competition for both fuels.

Certainly there are other good reasons to buy ethanol instead of gasoline, such as putting that money into the pockets of American farmers rather than Arab sheiks or using a cleaner burning ethanol fuel that is better for engines and the environment. However, the automobile industry will not support such an engine requirement because not enough consumers ask for it or insist upon those flex-fuel engines, even though on most models there is no difference to consumers in the sticker price. Without consumer demand, most service stations do not yet carry E85 fuel.

When I visited Ford and General Motors plants recently to better understand their challenges and costs in designing, producing, and selling vehicles with flex-fuel engines, I told their engineer and executives that the transition to fleets with flex-fuel engines could only occur with their support, not over their opposition. After all, they make the engines, warranty them, and service them. I was greatly impressed with their success in designing and manufacturing those engines that can measure the ethanol content in a fuel tank from 0 to 85 percent and adjust the fuel intake and carburetor to burn a more dense 87 octane gasoline or a less dense 104 octane ethanol, or any blend of the two, and then produce the same acceleration efficiency and other performances from either fuel.

If E85, without its tax subsidies, now equivalent to 43 cents a gallon, and after accounting for its 15-percent fewer miles per gallon because of its lesser density, is still cheaper than regular unleaded gas, which it is at its current price in many parts of Minnesota, then savvy consumers, of whom there are now 100,000 in Minnesota, will decide they, too, are sick of ever higher and higher gasoline prices and they, too, want to take advantage of ethanol's lower cost and equal, if not better, performance in their engines. Then when consumers ask for and insist upon flex-fuel engines at no additional cost in the vehicles they buy, automobile manufacturers will produce them. A marketplace will drive that transition. My bill would accelerate it, but this Congress and this country are not yet ready for that conversion.

My other legislation, Senate amendment No. 790, would have an even greater impact on our country's energy independence, on reducing our imports of foreign oil, on putting more of that $220 billion we now send out of our country to import that foreign oil into our U.S. economy instead.

This bill would require that in 10 years, the rest of America would do what Minnesota has done for the past 9 years--require that every gallon of gasoline contain at least 10 percent ethanol. Right now, the nationwide use of ethanol is about 2.5 percent of gasoline. The Senate's renewable fuel standard in this bill would raise nationwide ethanol consumption to almost 5 percent of gasoline by 2012--an amount of gasoline which I said earlier is expected to be 26 percent more than what we are consuming this year nationwide.

For the gasoline that is refined from that oil, 62 percent of which would be imported foreign oil with our renewable fuel standard, replacing 5 percent of that gasoline with ethanol is real progress, but it is small progress. It is only half of what we could achieve by a 10- percent ethanol mandate nationwide. Ten percent of the 168 billion gallons of gasoline that Americans are projected to consume in 2012 would be 16.8 billion gallons of fuel. If gasoline remained at $2 a gallon, substituting ethanol for 10 percent would shift almost $34 billion each year from a nonrenewable fuel, over half of it foreign, to annually rely on American grown and American manufactured oil that could supply over half of all that oil and gasoline.

Now we see why the American Petroleum Institute is attacking ethanol and why, regrettably, it has convinced some of my Senate colleagues to do the same. I am deeply dismayed by accusations made in the Senate that I and other ethanol proponents are trying to foist some huge additional costs on American motorists in order to increase the profits of one company or to create some profits for our Midwestern farmers. I am beholden to no company or industry. I certainly support policies that benefit Minnesota farmers, but I would never, ever try to advance their economic interests at the expense of all other Americans.

Americans are almost certain to be plagued by higher energy prices in the years ahead. They do not deserve any congressional action that would cause those prices to go even higher. Americans do, however, want congressional leadership to redirect our country away from our continued reliance on the same energy sources--oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear--and they know we cannot replace something with nothing.

It is true that conservation--using less energy--remains our best energy alternative. Individually and collectively, Americans will need to conserve more and consume less energy in the future. That conservation is essential, but it is not enough. If we are to reduce our national consumption of oil and oil products, we will have to replace them with something else. Electric cars, hydrogen cells, and hybrids may sound good, but they are years away from being able to replace gasoline. Ethanol can replace gasoline today.

Ethanol is cheaper than gasoline in Minnesota today. That may not yet be true on the west coast or the east coast due to transportation costs because most ethanol is transported in relatively small amounts by truck or by rail rather than in large quantities by pipelines.

A nationwide commitment to increased use of ethanol would involve developing a transportation system or, better yet, producing ethanol locally, as Minnesota farm co-ops are doing today.

Ethanol can be made from many different sources, including wood chips, corn stalks, organic garbage, and even animal waste. I will rejoice when California, New York, and other farmers and small business entrepreneurs begin to produce ethanol and sell it locally or regionally. They can make decent profits while still offering consumers lower fuel prices for cleaner burning fuels. If they fail to do so, consumers can continue to buy gasoline, but they will have a choice.

Again, none of this would be necessary if we could continue to get all the oil and gasoline we need at prices no higher than they are today. In the past, we have taken that gamble, and most of the time we have come out ahead. That is evidently what we will continue to do, despite the benefits of this legislation, even if those benefits survive a conference with the House and the administration and if they survive all the efforts to defeat them by the American Petroleum Institute and the other established energy interests because they will still make their profits, no matter how much their energy prices increase, as long as Americans have no alternatives.

They profit and the rest of us pay. That will not change unless we take action to change it. We cannot, and we will not, change our dependence on foreign oil or on any of our current energy sources by wishing them away or by making speeches about alternatives or by waiting for the next energy crisis to demand them. We have to take actions--and sustain those actions--to

make the transition to using significant amounts of other sources of energy and to use enough of them for long enough to enable new entrepreneurs and expanding businesses to produce those supplies, transport them, sell them, and service them.

There is no magic wand. There is no overnight cure. There is not even a guaranteed success. There is only the choice to try to maintain the same old energy supplies and pay for them or to develop real alternatives. Ethanol is ready now. And when America is ready, I will offer my amendments again.

Amendment No. 790 Withdrawn

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw amendment No. 790.

Mr. President, I yield the floor. I thank my colleague from Nebraska.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Max Frances Moran of my office be granted floor privileges during the debate on the Energy bill.

Mr. President, reserving the right for a minute, I note that Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye performed a magnificent service to our Senate and to our country by hosting our distinguished guests from China in such a superb manner. They and their staffs put on a superlative discussion over these 2 days, and Senator Stevens recognized with his foresight the two countries will determine the future of the world. I commend Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye in particular for recognizing that and initiating these exchanges which are now in their second year. On behalf of the Senate and the country, we are in their debt.

Mr. President, ``how a minority, reaching majority, seizing authority, hates the minority'' is attributed by the Library of Congress to a Leonard Robinson, in 1968. So I guess there is a historical precedent for the attitudes of the majority in the Senate today. The minority is treated often with contempt and disdain. Presiding Officers read their mail or sign photos while our Members speak on the Senate floor. Democratic conferees are excluded from the committee meetings. Our Democratic Senate leader is again smeared and targeted as an obstructionist. For what? For leading the minority party's lawful and proper dissent to the policies and practices of the majority, as though the expression of dissent on the floor of the Senate were improper or un-American or, now we are even being told, un- Christian, when, in fact, it is the intolerance of dissent that is improper, undemocratic, and the charges that political or policy disagreements here are actions ``against people of faith'' are the slurs of charlatans.

We are at this brink because during President Bush's first term, our Democratic caucus blocked approval of 10 of the President's judicial nominees, while 208 of his nominees were confirmed. That is a 95- percent approval rate. Ninety-five percent of President Bush's judicial nominees were confirmed by the Senate, but that is not good enough for this majority and this President. Nothing less than 100 percent is acceptable. It has to be their way all the time.

A President who said he was going to change the tone in Washington, promote bipartisanship, encourage democracy, does just the opposite. He demands congressional submission, insists on his way always, denounces and tries to destroy whoever disagrees with him.

I am astonished that the Senate Republican leadership has flip- flopped just because the President is now Republican instead of Democratic. Republicans were in the majority in the Senate for the last 6 years of President Bill Clinton's two terms, and they certainly did not champion their now precious principle of an up-or-down vote for the full Senate for each of his judicial nominees. To the contrary, they themselves prevented--or condoned others preventing--69 of President Clinton's judicial nominees from a vote by the full Senate. Many were denied confirmation hearings. Sometimes one Senator singlehandedly blocked judicial nominations. They received no votes by the Senate, not by part of the Senate, not by all of the Senate, not once, not ever, not this year, not next year, not in 4 years, not ever--69 judicial nominations. Republican leaders not only defended their actions to deny confirmation votes to Clinton nominees, they bragged about it.

Here are some of the statements they made at the time:

The confirmation process is not a numbers game and I will

not compromise the Senate's advise and consent function

simply because the White House has sent us nominees that are

either not qualified or controversial.

Another:

So we are not abusing our advise and consent power. As a

matter of fact, I don't think we have been aggressive enough

in utilizing it to ensure that nominees to the Federal bench

are mainstream nominees. Do I have any apologies? Only one, I

probably moved too many judicial nominations already. When I

go around my State or around the country the last thing I

hear people clamoring for is more lifetime tenured Federal

judges.

Regarding the use of the filibuster, Republican leaders were equally emphatic:

It is very important that one faction or one party not be

able to ride roughshod over the minority and impose its will.

The Senate is not the House.

The filibuster is one of the few tools the minority has to protect itself and those the minority represents. Clearly, what distinguishes the Senate as a legislative body is unlimited debate, a traditional aspect that most Senators have felt very important for 200 years. The only way to protect minority views in the Senate is through extended debate.

Their judicial blocking tactics are right, but ours are wrong. Their use of the filibuster is good, and ours is bad. How convenient. How self-serving. And how wrong.

It is bad enough that the Senate Republican leadership wants to change the Senate rules to suit their purposes and disregard 214 years of bipartisan institutional wisdom which understood and cared about the proper role of the Senate in our carefully designed system of checks and balances. As James Madison, one of our Constitution's principal architects, said during the Constitutional Convention in 1787:

In order to judge the form to be given to the Senate, take

a view of the ends to be served by it. First, to protect the

people against the rulers. Second, to protect the people

against the transient impressions which they themselves must

be led.

It is bad enough the Republican leadership wants to weaken the Senate's historic role and present responsibility. But what is even worse, much worse, is that they evidently intend to violate the procedures and disregard the rules by which the Senate can properly change one of its existing rules. They are going to use their own new and unprecedented procedure and disregard a ruling of the professional parliamentarian that their procedure violates Senate rules.

A senior Republican aide was quoted in today's Washington Post that Senator Frist does not plan to consult the Senate Parliamentarian at the time the nuclear option is deployed. The Parliamentarian ``has nothing to do with this. He is a staffer and we don't have to ask his opinion.''

Of course they don't because they are going to throw out the existing Senate rules that they do not like and make up new rules that they do like. Then they are going to ask the Presiding Officer, one of their own, to rule in their favor and then all vote to ratify what they have just done, even though it is wrong, and they know it is wrong.

They can't change a wrong into a right with a vote. They cannot disguise a shameful abuse of power by calling it a constitutional option. There is nothing constitutional about violating Senate rules, there is nothing American about violating Senate rules, and there is nothing senatorial about violating Senate rules.

In my career, I have learned to be effective in politics you have to become a realist. To remain effective, you have to remain an idealist. When I came to the Senate almost 4\1/2\ years ago, I was both realistic and idealistic. I knew that the legislative process brings out the best and the worst in people. But I thought the Senate would inspire more of the best. That the 1,863 men and women who had preceded me into this institution, many of them the best, the brightest, and the wisest of their generations, I thought their collective wisdom embodied in the Senate's rules and procedures would elevate our individual conduct and our collective actions and protect us and, more importantly, protect the American people from the missteps or the misguided attempts of one Senator, of a minority, or even of a majority.

My faith in the uplifting effect of the Senate was perhaps wrong or, rather, it was right until now. Now we are at the brink of desecrating this great institution. It will be a disgrace and a desecration if the Republican leaders of the Senate disregard longstanding Senate rules and substitute their own new rules and if a majority of Senators vote to approve this wrongdoing.

Everyone here should know whatever their honest differences of opinion about Justice Owen, unilaterally breaking rules because you do not like them or because you will not get your way by following them, is wrong. It is terribly wrong.

Now, why would the Senate's Republican leadership do this to the institution? To prove what, to whom? This

week's Congressional Quarterly reports that the Senate majority leader told a group of conservative activists questioning his resolve to invoke the nuclear option:

Remember, before I came here I used to cut people's hearts

out.

That is a very revealing statement. Not ``saved'' hearts or ``mended'' hearts, but cut them out.

This ploy will cut out the Senate's heart of integrity. Why do it? From much of what I have read, this is being set up as a presidential purity test. I respect the majority leader's right to run for President. I respect that absolutely. I wish that it would not involve the institution of the Senate.

According to the executive director of the American Conservative Union, if he--the majority leader--aspires to the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, it is a test he has to pass. This is pass- fail. He does not get a grade here. He cannot get a C for effort. He needs to deliver on this.

So this is not a constitutional option. It is a campaign opportunity, except that Senate leaders are supposed to deliver the Senate from this, from the President--any President--demanding that every one of his nominees be approved by a submissive body, the Senate; from political zealots and ideological fanatics demanding we give up our role and our responsibility so they can fulfill their delusional rantings of how Federal judges cause everything they cannot tolerate. Because there is no doubt about it, getting 218 judges, instead of 208 judges, is just their beginning. And then, by God, those judges had better decide every case just right for them or it is ``impeach, impale or eliminate.''

Self-anointed evangelist James Dobson--recently, on a national televised rally appeared with the Senate Republican leader--has called the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy the ``most dangerous man in America,'' and he has demanded he be impeached, along with Justices O'Connor, Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, and Stevens, that is, six of the nine members of the Supreme Court that he wants to impeach; a Court he has compared to Nazism and to the Ku Klux Klan.

Not to be outdone, and this is a contest of extreme, incendiary, vitriolic hysterics, the director of Operation Rescue has alleged that the courts of this land have become a tool in the hands of the devil, by which the culture of death has found access.

Pat Robertson has written that the out-of-control judiciary is the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al-Qaida, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War.

Don Feder of Vision America claims:

Liberal judges have declared unholy war on us, and unless

Christians fight back their faith, family, and freedom will

be lost.

He also promised that whatever prominent Republican was willing to take the lead on the issue of judicial reform and impeachment will probably have the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

Not one to miss such an opportunity, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay declared that the judiciary has ``run amok,'' and poses a threat to self-government. He threatens Congress must take action to rein in the judiciary and that such actions must be more than rhetoric.

And remember, before he came here, he used to exterminate things. So the threat of a congressional leader in running amok to take action against Federal judges must be taken as ominously as he undoubtedly intended it to be.

God's will and Jesus's word are hijacked by false prophets like James Dobson and Pat Robertson. The independence of Federal judges is threatened by Tom DeLay. Now the integrity of the Senate's rules and procedures may be violated. And these are the men who want to run our country. They want to dictate who is elected, decide who will be appointed, and even determine who is on God's side, who is not.

Well, if ever--if ever--there were a need for 51 profiles in courage in the Senate, it is now, to save this Senate from those who would savage it for their own gain. The world will note and long remember what we do here, and we will be judged--as we should--whether we acted so that, as Abraham Lincoln said, government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish on this Earth or here in the Senate.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the privilege of the floor be granted to Dana Chasin on my staff today and for subsequent debate on judicial nominations.

Mr. President, on May 11, 2005, I was necessarily absent from the Senate to attend the funeral of St. Paul, MN police officer, Sergeant Gerald Vick, who tragically lost his life in the line of duty on Friday, May 6, 2005. I joined over 2,000 Minnesotans in paying our final respects to this heroic peace officer, community leader, and devoted husband and father.

Had I been present to vote on the amendments to the Transportation Equity Act, I would have voted as follows:

On the motion to waive the Congressional Budget Act, in relation to amendment No. 605 and H.R. 3, I would have voted ``yea.''

On the motion to table Corzine amendment No. 606, I would have voted ``nay.''

On the Lautenberg amendment No. 625, I would have voted ``nay.''

On the Harkin amendment No. 618, as modified, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. President, I salute the chairman and the ranking member for this excellent legislation. I will support a cloture motion.

It is very important we pass this legislation as expeditiously as possible for States such as Minnesota which have a short highway construction season.

I wish we had been able to put into place the Senate version a year ago. I salute Chairman Inhofe for his tireless efforts, working with his associates in the House and also the administration, in an effort to pass what would have been an excellent Senate bill a year ago.

This bill is as good as it could be, given some of the pressures. It is a mystery to me, knowing the serious state of disrepair of our highways in Minnesota and the lack of funding at the State and particularly the local level--it is hard to imagine how any other State could be so far advanced beyond Minnesota's highway construction situation that the money the Senate wanted a year ago, that would be providing for needs this year if not for certain pressures--and is beyond the realm of common sense not to have passed this. So be it.

I thank the chairman and the ranking member for, as I understand it, accepting an amendment I offered, along with Senator Lugar, also cosponsored by my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Coleman, Senator Harkin, Senator Grassley, Senator Durbin, Senator Brownback, and Senator Bingaman. It is a simple amendment that calls for cars produced starting the model year of 2007 to have a sticker in two different locations indicating the presence of a flexible fuel engine that allows a car or other gasoline-consuming vehicle to use regular gasoline or up to 85-percent ethanol, which in Minnesota is called E-85 which is 85- percent ethanol, 15-percent regular unleaded and is used as a substitute for regular unleaded gasoline in vehicles that have these flexible fuel engines.

I have two cars, factory-produced Ford Explorers--one in Washington, DC, where unfortunately I cannot find the fuel, and one in Minnesota, where I can--which are as efficient as my previous vehicles using regular gasoline, and presently in Minnesota between 30 and 40 cents a gallon cheaper than regular unleaded.

Consumers will use this fuel as a lower cost alternative if they have cars or vehicles that can use it, which is why I have another amendment to offer to the Energy bill that requires vehicles produced starting model year 2007 or thereafter to all carry a flexible fuel engine so consumers have this lower cost option. At least those who buy these vehicles will be aware they have a flexible fuel engine and can take advantage of this much lower cost fuel.

This amendment is supported by the National Ethanol Vehicle Association, by the National Corn Growers Association, by the Governors Ethanol Coalition which Governor Pawlenty from Minnesota chairs, the Renewable Fuels Association, National Farmers Union. The automakers are neutral to it.

I thank the Chair and ranking member for accepting it and hope it will be enacted soon.

I ask unanimous consent Senator Brownback be added as a cosponsor to the Lugar Dayton amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this budget proves the old saying that the end justifies the means. In this case the process used to produce this budget was a disgrace, and the budget itself is a disgrace.

The Democratic Senators who were the official members of the conference committee were not even allowed to attend the meetings behind closed doors. That is not only unfair, that is ridiculous. The other side has the votes on the conference committee to pass whatever they want. That is fair. They are the majority caucus. To not even allow Democratic Senators in the room, what are they hiding? What are they ashamed of?

They should be ashamed of this budget, and they should be ashamed of hiding their decisions behind closed doors. In my home State of Minnesota, we have an open meeting law. It applies to every public body from the State legislature to city councils to school boards. Any meeting of three or more members must be a public meeting. There must be a public notice given so that people can watch their elected officials make the decisions that affect their lives and hold them accountable.

This budget fiasco underscores the need for such an open meeting law in Washington to open the doors of these conference committees to Democrats, to the press, and to the people. But if the budget process we have seen here is the reason we need an open meeting law in Washington, this budget product is the reason we will not get one.

If I were responsible for this disgrace, I would want to hide, too. But I am not responsible for it. No Democratic Senator is responsible for it. This budget manages to increase the Federal debt, as the Senator from North Dakota so articulately demonstrated, and I commend him for his vigilance, for his integrity, and for his straightforward honesty.

This budget increases the Federal debt. It preserves the tax favors for the rich and the super rich, and it cuts services for schoolchildren, college students, senior citizens, veterans, and so many others. To use the President's phrase, that is a trifecta. In this case, it is a terrible trifecta.

This budget also uses a backdoor trick to open ANWR to oil and gas drilling, and that makes it a grand scam.

It is a clear picture, this budget of Republican priorities. It contradicts all the fake rhetoric and false promises such as No Child Left Behind, Clear Skies, or Healthy Communities because this budget leaves millions of

schoolchildren behind and millions more college students in debt. I know because I offered my sixth amendment to fully fund the Federal commitment to special education, and it failed once again.

This budget leaves the Federal share of the cost for special education still less than half of what was promised 28 years ago. It underfunds veterans services, including health care services for our service men and women who are returning from their heroic service in Iraq and Afghanistan, many with serious wounds and injuries. And this is on top of Republicans' rejection of emergency funding for VA health care and supplemental appropriations for our war efforts. Every Democratic Senator voted for that emergency funding for VA health care, and every Republican Senator, except for Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, voted against it.

This budget tonight means that all veterans, young and old, will have longer waits for the health care they need, that they were promised, and that they certainly deserve.

This budget tells the truth about Republican priorities, not the soothing rhetoric, not the misleading slogans, not even the face-saving votes on the Senate budget to spare senior citizens in nursing homes from draconian cuts that the President proposed. Those cuts were put back in this budget once again behind closed doors. And it is certainly not the tricks and gimmicks that were used to disguise how bad the deficits in this budget really are.

This budget takes America in the wrong direction, toward a fiscal Armageddon that will occur much sooner than the much advertised and overdramatized Social Security shortfall that the President's proposal would make much worse.

The continuing deficits in this budget are what the nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, the Concord Coalition, has called ``the most reckless fiscal policy in our Nation's history.''

The deficit reduction that is pretended to be in this budget is about as likely as finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has observed tonight, this budget ignores the rising injustice of the alternative minimum tax which will cause major tax increases for millions of middle-class Americans in the years ahead unless we address it as we should.

As the truth-telling ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, the Senator from North Dakota, said tonight, this budget hides the rising deficits that begin 6 years from now which will grow and grow until this Nation is so deep in debt that the rest of the world finally refuses to keep loaning us $500 billion or more every year, and when they stop, there will be, for all of us--our children and our grandchildren--real hell to pay.

This budget is wrong. It is wrong for most Americans, wrong for America, and wrong for those who are here tonight to approve it. I will vote against it, and I urge my colleagues to reject it also.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I concur with the remarks of the Senator from Wyoming. I also represent a Northern State with a very short construction season. We were severely impacted last year by the inability to reach an agreement with the House and with the President. But in fairness to all of us in the Senate, we were not the holdup in that matter.

As I said on numerous occasions to the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Inhofe, and to the ranking member, Senator Jeffords, we had a bipartisan agreement in the Senate that was best for Minnesota and I think for virtually every other State. I have not heard anybody say they have too much Federal highway or transit money and don't know what to do with it. But, unfortunately, we ran

into the intransigence of the administration a year ago, and with the insistence of the President, the concurrence of the House, and were unable to get what the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, said was a fiscally sound and balanced--in terms of the highway trust fund revenues--measure in the Senate.

So while I concur with the Senator from Wyoming, I might also point out, as it relates to this particular legislation, the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, last week wrote to the Senate Republican leadership and urged that this measure be brought up this week. I commend Senator Frist and Senator McConnell for deciding to proceed on this very important matter for the people of this country rather than some of the shenanigans that others were urging upon them. So we are proceeding on a measured basis, but not with any resistance or opposition by anybody on this side of the aisle.

We voted overwhelmingly to proceed on the motion to proceed earlier in the week. It is unfortunate timing that our long-planned Senate recess for next week will truncate the process. But I share the Senator's view that this bill needs to be enacted as expeditiously as possible. I hope the conference committee will be able to proceed as quickly as possible thereafter, while recognizing the Senate bill has been, and continues to be, vastly superior to the House version in terms of additional funding. Those are matters worth arguing about and, hopefully, prevailing on because Minnesota needs the money even as much as we need the bill to be completed.

Mr. President, if there is no immediate business related to this measure--I spoke earlier with the bill's manager--I ask unanimous consent that I have up to 10 minutes to speak as in morning business. Is this a propitious time to do so?

Mr. President, when I went to work in the Washington office of then-Senator Walter Mondale from Minnesota as a young, beginning legislative assistant in 1975, Al Eisele was a Washington correspondent for the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press, Duluth Herald and News-Tribune, and other Knight-Ridder newspapers. In 1976, after Senator Mondale was elected as Jimmy Carter's Vice President, he named Mr. Eisele as his press secretary and senior adviser, a position that Mr. Eisele held for the next 4 years.

``He previously covered me as a Washington correspondent for Minnesota newspapers during my 11 years in the Senate, so I obviously know him well,'' Senator Mondale later explained. ``He was one of the most well-respected and knowledgeable reporters in Washington, with a reputation for even-handedness, incisive reporting, and personal integrity, which is why I asked him to join my staff.''

After the Carter-Mondale administration, Mr. Eisele helped found the Center for National Policy in Washington; was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard; served as an assistant to Mr. William C. Norris, the founder and chief executive officer of Control Data Corporation in Minnesota; and started his own literary agency and international consulting firm, Cornerstone Associates.

For the past 10\1/2\ years, this native Minnesotan has been instrumental in the success of The Hill, a nonpartisan, nonideological newspaper covering Congress, that he helped found. Indeed, the April 27, 2005, issue of The Hill includes the 500th column Mr. Eisele has written since the newspaper's inaugural issue of September 21, 1994. In addition, he has acted as a mentor for more than 50 young journalists whom he helped train and who now work for many major newspapers, magazines, and broadcast organizations.

Last month, Mr. Eisele traveled to Iraq to get, as he wrote, ``a firsthand look at what the American military is up against in this greatest projection of American power since Vietnam.''

With his customary dedication, he did not just visit Iraq; rather, he traveled throughout the country for 10 days and interviewed everyone, from generals to privates, high-ranking Iraqi officials to ordinary citizens, visiting Members of Congress, fellow journalists covering the war, and private contractors involved in rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure.

His subsequent articles and columns in The Hill provided many compelling accounts of personal realities there, as well as very valuable insights.

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