Floor Statements

Madam President, today, we are witnessing another display of Republican anguish for America's oppressed minority, the rich and the super-rich. They suffer from a terrible injustice: They have to pay taxes on their millions and multimillions and even billions of dollars in accumulated wealth.

Thanks to my Republican colleagues, the rich and super-rich pay far less in taxes than they did 5 years ago. But their sympathy knows no bounds. So today we are debating eliminating taxes--not just lowering them but eliminating them--on only the wealthiest one-half of 1 percent of all Americans, taxes they don't even pay themselves but their estates pay after they die.

This debate is not about saving family farms or small businesses, although I personally favor exempting them from all estate taxes.

This proposal is about eliminating a tax that falls only on the rich and the super-rich. When it comes to tax cuts for them, the Republicans just cannot do enough. They have done so much already. They lowered the top personal income tax rates by more than any other categories. They reduced the tax rate for capital gains to 15 percent. President Bush wanted to eliminate taxes on dividends, but Congress settled on a 15 percent rate for that income as well.

Republicans and a few Democrats--but mainly Republicans--have created a Federal Tax Code where a working person with taxable income above $28,400, or a head of household with taxable income above $38,400, pays much higher tax rates than rich people pay on millions of dollars of income from dividends and capital gains.

Let me say that again. A working American pays a tax rate of 25 percent or higher on every dollar of earned taxable income above $28,400, or $38,400 for a head of a household. A multi-millionaire or a billionaire pays a tax rate of only 15 percent on any amount of unearned taxable income. Now, there is a tax injustice to the middle class working Americans that we should be doing something about.

But, no, what do my Republican colleagues propose today? More tax cuts for only the wealthiest people in America. They don't seem to care that they are sacrificing the financial strength and stability of our Federal Government to continue these tax giveaways. They are addicted to what the nonpartisan Concord Coalition has called the ``most reckless fiscal policy in our Nation's history.''

When George Bush became President, the Federal Government's operating

budget had just been balanced for the first time in nearly 40 years. Now, it is running deficits of $500 billion a year. The entire Social Security trust fund surpluses are being spent to cover part of those operating deficits. The rest of it is being borrowed. President Bush's own budget projects that in fiscal year 2011, the year this proposed repeal would become permanent, the on-budget deficit will be $415 billion.

Total Federal debt will have grown to $11.5 trillion. Over $3 trillion of that debt will be owed to the Social Security trust fund. That is the amount of the trust fund surpluses the Republican tax giveaways will squander to pay for them.

The Federal financial situation only gets worse during the following years. According to the Social Security trust fund's trustees, that fund will start to run annual deficits in 2016--that is 10 years from now--as more and more baby boomers retire. Those annual Social Security trust fund surpluses will be gone. Those previous surpluses that President Bush and most Members of Congress once promised would be saved in a lockbox until needed to pay Social Security benefits will be gone, too--gone to pay for part of the tax cuts for the rich and super- rich. So then the Federal Government's operating budget will be running huge deficits.

The Social Security trust funds will start running big deficits. The operating fund will owe the trust fund over $3 trillion, and yet this Senate is talking about eliminating a tax on the richest one-half of 1 percent of Americans.

This is beyond fiscal irresponsibility. This is fiscal insanity. These projections are right from the President's own budget office and the Social Security trust fund trustees. The revenue shortfalls are catastrophic. We are standing on the look-out tower of the Titanic and all we have to do is open our eyes and look at the financial iceberg that is dead ahead. My Republican colleagues want to keep going full speed ahead. They also want to pour more coal on the fire. The people in the first-class cabin will get to enjoy their extra champagne and caviar for a short while longer.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. This country was founded by anti-tax rebels. But once it became our country and our Government of we, the people, most Americans willingly paid their fair share of the taxes necessary for the public services that we collectively want, like national defense, education, highways, and the rest.

There used to be an ethic in this country that if you made more money as an individual or a corporation, you paid more taxes. That was your fair share. That was a reasonable price to pay for living in the greatest country in the world and for being successful in it. Now that ethic has been lost. Now too many people and companies want to make more and more money and pay less taxes or pay no taxes or get rebates.

Politicians pander to those desires by offering more and more tax cuts because they are popular and they help them get re-elected--while still increasing Government spending, because that is popular, too. But the result of that lost ethic and the insatiable desire for more and more tax cuts in the last year--setting aside Social Security--total Federal tax revenues amounted to only three-fourths of expenditures. Under existing tax policies, it won't get much better. Under this estate tax proposal, it will get worse.

So the question before us is: Who cares about the future of this country? Who will say no to the demands for more money by its most privileged people who apparently don't understand or don't care what they are doing to the financial future of everyone else? But we do know, we, the 100 elected representatives of all the people of this great and still strong Nation, we, the stewards of its financial treasures and the trustees of the public trust, we do know. It is our responsibility to know what eliminating the estate tax would do to our Nation's future financial solvency, and there is no possible way to responsibly adopt this proposal. There is no way to justify placing the financial interests of a few Americans ahead of the financial interests of all the rest of America.

If we eliminate this tax, we might as well eliminate all Federal taxes starting in the year 2011 and start over again because the Federal tax system will have been irretrievably broken, and it will be just a matter of time before everyone finds out and discovers that this country's financial future has been squandered by a few in here to benefit a few out there. Then there will be hell to pay.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am honored to follow the great Senator from Massachusetts and join with him and others in opposing this proposed constitutional amendment. I do so because it is un-American, un-Christian, and unnecessary.

Let us be clear that this proposal is not about protecting marriage in America.

Marriage may need more people to practice it, but it does not need the Senate to protect it. The Founders of this great Nation exercised tremendous wisdom by designing a system in which Government would stay out of the private lives of its citizens and a system in which Government would stay out of the province of religion. This amendment would violate both.

This country was founded on the principle that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure those rights, our Founders wrote a Constitution which guarantees every law-abiding American citizen the same equal rights and protections. Our country's Founders were not perfect. In fact, they were highly discriminatory. They initially denied those full and equal rights to women and to African Americans. This country's social progress has been highlighted by removing those constitutional discriminations based on gender or race or anything else.

Now, for the first time in our Nation's history, the proponents of this amendment would add discrimination to our Constitution. They would tell one group of people, a social minority, that equal rights and equal protections

do not apply to them, not only by the laws which exist today, Federal and State laws which ban gay marriages, not only by the social conventions which deny their recognition, but by an unprecedented amendment to the U.S. Constitution which targets gays and lesbians alone, which says that of all the social practices in this country, theirs alone are supposedly so abhorrent, theirs alone are supposedly such a threat to our social order that they must be singled out for this unique form of discrimination.

Unfortunately, the proponents of this constitutional amendment have it mixed up. It is the Constitution that needs to be protected--from them. It is the foundation of our democracy that needs to be saved-- from them. The foundational principle of a democracy is its tolerance of individual differences. Even the most repressive totalitarian government in the world allows individual behaviors that it agrees with. The true test of a democracy is the government's allowance for differences. That doesn't mean that we agree with those differences. It doesn't mean that we like them. It doesn't mean that we would choose them for ourselves or wish them for our children. In fact, the opposite. We can disagree with them, dislike them, and reject them for ourselves and our children.

But if we are a democracy--if we are a democracy--we allow other citizens to be different from ourselves, to be unlike us. We grant them the liberty to pursue their own form of personal, private happiness so long as it does not interfere with our own. Which other adults, American adults are attracted to, want to live with or commit to is their business and their right, not the business of 100 politicians in the Senate. That is why this amendment would not only alter the U.S. Constitution, it would alter our democracy in a way that is destructive to both.

In addition to being un-American, this amendment is also Un- Christian. I hesitate to bring religion into this debate. I am highly skeptical of politicians who do so. Giving a Bible to a politician is akin to giving a blowtorch to a pyromaniac. However, I reread the New Testament in preparation for this debate. I cannot find a single instance in any of the four gospels in which my saviour Jesus Christ speaks a single word against same-sex marriages or even same-sex relationships. He intones 6 times against divorce and 12 times against adultery. Yet I am not aware of any proposed constitutional amendments to ban either of them, nor would I support them.

What I also know is that he preached for love and acceptance and against hatred and discrimination. He said the great commandment was to love God and the second was like unto it, to love thy neighbor as thyself, not just your family member, not just your friend, but to love your neighbor, whoever happens to be living beside you, as you would yourself.

There is no love in this constitutional amendment. There is discrimination, and underneath discrimination lies judgment and hatred. Jesus said also to beware of false prophets and charlatans, the fake good doers. He said the way to tell the difference is that the true believers practice love, while the false prophets preach hate. That is why this amendment is un-Christian.

It is also unnecessary. There is no rampaging threat to the institution of marriage, as the amendment's proponents pretend. There are no rabid activist judges raging unchecked across the legal landscape. They are figments of unchecked imaginations or clever contrivances by master public manipulators who have conjured up some nonexistent threat and now present themselves as the saviours of civilization.

We are spending 3 days on the floor of the Senate to indulge their political pandering. We haven't spent 3 days debating the war in Iraq during this entire session of Congress, nor Iran's development of nuclear weapons, nor this year the gasoline price crisis afflicting our citizens. No, the Senate's Republican leadership is avoiding the real threats to our country and focusing instead on the divisive, destructive nonexistent ones.

Existing Federal law, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, defines marriage nationwide as between a man and a woman and states that no State need recognize a same-sex marriage. My State of Minnesota is 1 of 45 States that have passed similar State restrictions. This proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary overkill. It is predatory politics, preying upon a minority of American citizens who are of the most discriminated against in our society today. I don't understand why this Senate would want to exploit the prejudice and even hatred which still exists in our society against GLBT men and women. I am not a psychiatrist. I will leave it to them to explain why homophobia trumps racism, sexism, nationalism, and religious intolerance, but it does.

The discrimination against people because of their sexual orientations they were born with or acquired indelibly early in life is vicious, ugly, and cruel. It is the immoral and it should be illegal. And it should not be practiced in the Senate.

I sympathize with the many decent-minded, well-intentioned, nd religiously devout Americans who struggle with their personal feelings toward homosexuality. Many have grown in understanding and acceptance. They want to do what is right, even if it doesn't feel entirely right to them. They and their feelings are being unnecessarily used in this charade. But I have no sympathy and I have no respect for the charlatans who are using them for their own self-serving political purposes, who are spreading prejudice and discrimination, who claim the moral high ground while they reach into their emotional cesspools and hurl their slime at decent and innocent human beings who are trying to live their private lives as God created them and under the promises of this American democracy.

What we ought to do is leave marriage up to God. In the religious marriage services of my faith, the minister says that marriage is an institution created by God. Thus, we should leave the definition of marriage to those ordained by God, the leaders of the respective organized religions, and we should redefine the legal term for marriage to civil union or some other words and make that legal contract, with its rights, protections, and responsibilities, available equally to any two adult citizens as the equal protection clauses of our Constitution require.

That would be an American, a Christian, and a just resolution to this situation, one that elevates and enlightens us, one that continues the progress in our country toward acceptance and understanding, one that honors our common humanity.

Those are the reasons I urge my colleagues to oppose and defeat this cruel amendment.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of S. 3239, the Honesty Is the Best Insurance Policy Act of 2006, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of S. 3239, the Honesty Is the Best Insurance Policy Act of 2006, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, this legislation I am proud to cosponsor, along with my distinguished colleague from Mississippi, is called the Uniform Insurance Noncoverage Disclosure Act. I call it ``honesty is the best insurance policy act.'' It says very simply that all insurance policies--medical, homeowners, whatever they are--must state clearly on the cover page what the policy does not cover.

My colleague from Mississippi can speak eloquently and powerfully about his experiences in his State post-Katrina, but even before that disaster occurred, I have seen similar situations in Minnesota of good people whose lives were devastated by illnesses or natural disasters and then were further devastated by discovering that their losses or expenses were not covered by their insurance policies. For years, they had faithfully paid their premiums believing they had comprehensive coverage, only to find out too late that was untrue.

Insurance companies write the policies, they interpret the policies, they decide what they will and will not cover, and then they handle the appeals and make the final decisions. If they deny the claims, they pocket those dollars in profits. If they honor the claims, they pay them out in losses. Talk about a stacked deck in their favor and against the consumer.

I have had aggrieved constituents show me their homeowners policies. I am an intelligent, well-educated man, but it is impossible to decipher them. They contain cross-references to paragraph numbers in other policies that are not part of the agreement. They cannot be understood, and they are not meant to be understood.

One Minnesota homeowner lost almost everything to a flood. Too late he discovered that his blanket homeowners insurance did not cover losses from a flood. He was protected, according to the policy, if an airplane crashed into his house or if civil insurrection--meaning a revolution--caused damage to his home, but not flooding. What are the chances of those different events possibly occurring?

Another Minnesota family whose father had worked for a company for over 20 years learned that their infant son had been born deaf and needed a Cochlear implant. Two of the insurance companies that carried those policies for the company covered that operation; the other did not, claiming that it was experimental. The family made the unwitting mistake of selecting the wrong policy. No one told them that policy would not pay for Cochlear implant surgery in its comprehensive family coverage, and they, obviously, did not know or could not have known that their unborn son would need this surgery some several years later.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. The president of the company, Honeywell, Inc., learning of this injustice, overrode the policy and decreed that Honeywell, the company, would pay for that missing coverage, and that child is now listening to human voices he never would have had the opportunity to otherwise.

But not everyone is in that situation. Not everyone is that fortunate.

So this legislation, again, no costs to it, no bureaucracy, nothing. It simply says that the policy must state clearly, in plain English, understandable on the cover page, what it will not cover. If it is comprehensive, if it is complete, then nothing needs to be said. If it is not, if they experience situations that will not be covered, then it needs to tell the consumer up front on that front page what they will be.

Mr. President, I yield to my distinguished colleague from Mississippi.

Mr. President, this legislation I am proud to cosponsor, along with my distinguished colleague from Mississippi, is called the Uniform Insurance Noncoverage Disclosure Act. I call it ``honesty is the best insurance policy act.'' It says very simply that all insurance policies--medical, homeowners, whatever they are--must state clearly on the cover page what the policy does not cover.

My colleague from Mississippi can speak eloquently and powerfully about his experiences in his State post-Katrina, but even before that disaster occurred, I have seen similar situations in Minnesota of good people whose lives were devastated by illnesses or natural disasters and then were further devastated by discovering that their losses or expenses were not covered by their insurance policies. For years, they had faithfully paid their premiums believing they had comprehensive coverage, only to find out too late that was untrue.

Insurance companies write the policies, they interpret the policies, they decide what they will and will not cover, and then they handle the appeals and make the final decisions. If they deny the claims, they pocket those dollars in profits. If they honor the claims, they pay them out in losses. Talk about a stacked deck in their favor and against the consumer.

I have had aggrieved constituents show me their homeowners policies. I am an intelligent, well-educated man, but it is impossible to decipher them. They contain cross-references to paragraph numbers in other policies that are not part of the agreement. They cannot be understood, and they are not meant to be understood.

One Minnesota homeowner lost almost everything to a flood. Too late he discovered that his blanket homeowners insurance did not cover losses from a flood. He was protected, according to the policy, if an airplane crashed into his house or if civil insurrection--meaning a revolution--caused damage to his home, but not flooding. What are the chances of those different events possibly occurring?

Another Minnesota family whose father had worked for a company for over 20 years learned that their infant son had been born deaf and needed a Cochlear implant. Two of the insurance companies that carried those policies for the company covered that operation; the other did not, claiming that it was experimental. The family made the unwitting mistake of selecting the wrong policy. No one told them that policy would not pay for Cochlear implant surgery in its comprehensive family coverage, and they, obviously, did not know or could not have known that their unborn son would need this surgery some several years later.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. The president of the company, Honeywell, Inc., learning of this injustice, overrode the policy and decreed that Honeywell, the company, would pay for that missing coverage, and that child is now listening to human voices he never would have had the opportunity to otherwise.

But not everyone is in that situation. Not everyone is that fortunate.

So this legislation, again, no costs to it, no bureaucracy, nothing. It simply says that the policy must state clearly, in plain English, understandable on the cover page, what it will not cover. If it is comprehensive, if it is complete, then nothing needs to be said. If it is not, if they experience situations that will not be covered, then it needs to tell the consumer up front on that front page what they will be.

Mr. President, I yield to my distinguished colleague from Mississippi.

Mr. President, this bill should be a billboard for the corruption of the public interest in Washington. It is a disgrace, it is an abomination, and it should be rejected by the Senate.

Last year, when this body passed a version of this legislation, I voted for it, principally because it included my amendment requiring corporate executives to pay their fair share of taxes when they use their company planes for their personal use. That is a matter of simple tax fairness. When all other Americans take vacations, they pay for their air travel on commercial airlines with their after-tax income. Yet when some of this country's wealthiest people, corporate executives, take vacations on their company planes, they fly for free and they pay almost no taxes on the actual value of that special employment benefit. My amendment would have raised $44 million in Federal revenues during the next 10 years, all of it coming from some of the very richest Americans, all of it coming from the end of their tax avoidance scheme.

What happened to my amendment, which was adopted by the full Senate on a unanimous voice vote? It was stripped from this conference report by the House-Senate conference committee which is controlled by the Republican majority in both bodies. It was done behind closed doors with no explanation and, thus, once again the greedy, a few rich and powerful Americans, have prevailed over the best interests of everyone else.

No wonder so many working Americans have lost their faith and trust in this Congress and in this President. Under their control, the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. And the national interest is betrayed behind the closed doors of a conference committee.

Stripping out my amendment is unfortunately only the beginning of the terrible abuses in this conference report. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, someone in this country who earns between $20,000 and $30,000 a year will receive an average of $9 in tax cuts from this bill. Someone earning $40,000 to $50,000 a year will get an average $46 tax reduction. But the very wealthiest Americans with incomes over $1 million a year will get an average tax cut of almost $42,000 every year.

Let us reverse those numbers since some of my colleagues are trying to portray our failure to pass this as a tax increase. Conversely, if that were to be the case, someone who makes between $20,000 and $30,000 a year would receive by their words an average of $9 a year tax increase. Someone earning between $40,000 and $50,000 a year would get on average a $46 tax increase. But the very wealthiest Americans, those with incomes of over $1 million a year, would get an average tax increase of about $42,000 every year. That is what progressive taxes are about.

Over half of this $70 billion which they want to reduce in Federal revenues, almost $40 billion of that will go to the richest 4 percent of American taxpayers. By doing so, the rest of this country will go deeper and deeper into public debt. Last year's combined Federal budget deficit was $318 billion. All Federal revenue, including the surplus

in the Social Security trust fund thus amounted to only 87 percent of all Federal expenditures.

If you set aside the Social Security surplus, put it in a lockbox that so many people, including myself and the President, campaigned on in the year 2000, that surplus which this administration is squandering every year entirely on current consumption, then last year's so-called on-budget deficit for the Federal Government was $483 billion. That meant all Federal revenue set aside totaled only three-fourths of Federal expenditures.

That occurred during an expanding economy. It will continue this year, according to the President's own projections, during an expanding economy.

According again to the President's own budget forecast, this revenue shortfall of one-fourth of total expenditures will continue over each of the next 5 years. This even assumes the continuation of a relatively good economy.

By contrast, in the fiscal year 2000, which is the last fiscal year of the Clinton administration, non-Social Security revenues totaled 106 percent of on-budget expenditures.

In other words, we were in a budget surplus--there was a budget surplus projected every year for the next 10 years--and now those revenues total only three-fourths of expenditures, which means that, starting in 2001, President Bush and his supporters in Congress have destroyed the fiscal integrity of the Federal Government by recklessly cutting taxes, which primarily benefits the rich and powerful, while increasing Federal spending in every cycle one of those years, which caused the bipartisan or nonpartisan Concord Coalition, headed by the former Secretary of Commerce under President Richard Nixon, to call this administration the ``most reckless'' administration in the history of this country in its fiscal policy.

This tax bill will further feed that greed of the richest and most powerful Americans and it will weaken our country. Any sensible American understands that if their income is $30,000 a year and they are spending $40,000 a year, that is an unsustainable imbalance. Borrowing the difference only postpones the day of reckoning and makes that future reckoning more painful and difficult.

Any farmer or small business person knows if their annual income is $150,000 and their annual expenditures are $200,000, they too will go deeper into debt every year and eventually face bankruptcy. That basic law of economics also applies to governments and nations. It may take longer to exhaust the wealth of a country with our resources, but that will eventually happen unless we change our course.

This tax bill provides more tax favors to those who need them the least while increasing our future deficits and putting additional financial burdens on our children and grandchildren who will ultimately face those days of reckoning for this fiscal hedonism.

What is most disgusting about this spectacle is that the people in Washington who are responsible for it, the people in the Bush administration and in the majority of this Congress, know what they are doing. They know--or at least they should know--the future damage they are inflicting on this country. They just know that they can get away with it. They know when those days of reckoning arrive, when this great and strong nation has exhausted its ability to borrow from the rest of the world, when it has been reduced to being the largest debtor nation in the history of the world, it will be other people's nightmare-- certainly another President's. And they can hope to avoid that future blame by now avoiding being responsible.

They have had plenty of help. These tax handouts don't happen by accident. They are heavily lobbied for by the people who benefit from them. They are the same people who benefitted most from the 2001 tax cuts and the 2002 tax cuts and the 2003 tax cuts. But more is never enough. Greed cannot be satisfied by feeding it more. That greed will eventually destroy this country, if it continues.

There used to be an ethic in this Nation that when you made more money, you paid more taxes. Now the obsession of individuals and of corporations is to make more money but pay less taxes, or pay no taxes, or even get tax rebates. The annual report of a major corporation recently noted proudly that it had paid no U.S. taxes in three of its previous five years although it had been profitable during all five of those years. The chief executive officer of that corporation then is now the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is advocating lower taxes, and even eliminating taxes on unearned income, corporate dividends, and capital gains. He was quoted as saying:

It was as if a light switch has been thrown on. Rarely has

a piece of public policy been so effective, with the effects

so evident and immediate.

Reduce the rate on unearned income, dividends, and capital gains.

There is a noted economist, not a partisan on the other side, but the chief economist of Lehman Brothers Investment Bank, who said in contrast you might credit the cuts with providing a little bit of a jump-start, but they believe the main reason the economy has done so well has more to do with the corporate sector starting to spend some of their record profits.

Former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, under President Clinton, who presided over this period of economic expansion in the 1990s when they balanced the Federal budget, said:

We had very good markets in the 90's, before all of these

tax cuts went into effect.

My colleagues on the other side are claiming that those tax giveaways back in 2003 are responsible for the modest economic expansion that benefitted some Americans while leaving many other Americans worse off than they were before. Most of the tax cuts that they are touting were actually passed and took effect in 2001, and they certainly were not bragging about continuing recession in 2001, 2002, and most of 2003.

Since then, our country's economy has improved, thank goodness, and they want us to believe that this cycle is as sure as the sun is setting and would not have occurred without their tax cuts for the rich and for the super-rich. And they claim the economic growth in this country will not continue if we don't extend those tax cuts, which are not even scheduled to expire until the end of 2008, through 2009 and 2010.

In fact, their priority is such that they will set aside such measures as tax credits for research and development, which this country does need, a real and far more effective fix to the alternative minimum tax, which is part of the Senate bill which I voted in favor of. Those have to be set aside, postponed, delayed, or take no effect at all so they can extend the lower rate on dividends and capital gains the years 2009 and 2010.

Talk about the wrong priorities. Talk about destroying ethics in this country, that people who make more money, who are more privileged, more fortunate than anybody else on this planet, virtually in the history of the world, should not have to pay their fair share of taxes to keep this country strong and provide sufficient revenues to the Federal Government, to balance our budget, to be responsible, to pay our own way, which we are certainly capable of doing, and leave this country in a sound financial state to those in this country now and to those who will follow in 10 or 15 years.

I hope the people who are alive then and facing those consequences will look back and review the transcripts of this debate today. I hope they will ask themselves, Why is it that people today in responsible positions cut taxes for the very wealthiest, most privileged, and politically powerful people in this country and added $70 billion to the debt we inherited, that we have to pay in addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars more they are adding every year to that deficit and to the national debt? They are going to say it was wrong; they are going to say it was misguided; and they are going to wonder how it could be that responsible people could have failed to foresee the consequence of this selfishness and cater to the greed of those out there who want these cuts and won't be sated until they get more and more and more.

If they are working hard, as most Americans do today, they are going to ask themselves, Why is it that I struggle to pay my fair share of taxes, most of which are withheld and never in my pocket to begin with? Why am I paying higher tax rates from my earned income, from the sweat of my brow hour

after hour, than the very wealthiest people in the country? People in many cases don't even earn that much. Who are the beneficiaries--as I have been, and as others of my family have been in my previous generations of success--who are not even willing to pay a tax rate similar to those who earn their income by their daily toil? It is fundamentally wrong. It is fundamentally wrong, what is happening in this country. It is making the rich richer, making average Americans poorer and more tax averse. The cumulative result is that revenues are three-fourths of expenditures, unsustainable, and a fiscally dangerous proposition from which we will suffer the consequences, the pain, for years to come.

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

Mr. President, last week the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, of which I am a member, approved its report titled ``Hurricane Katrina, A Nation Still Unprepared.'' The committee's distinguished chairman set today as the deadline for additional views.

I reluctantly voted not to approve that draft of the report last week because it is seriously incomplete. While it is still lacking all of the information, documents, and testimony which President Bush and his subordinates denied the committee, last March 15 the ranking member asked the chairman to subpoena witnesses and documents that have been withheld by the White House. Regrettably, she declined to do so.

Earlier this year, on January 12, the chairman and ranking member wrote the White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Andrew Card, regarding the information they had previously requested. Their letter stated, in part:

This practice (of withholding information) must cease.

It continued:

We are willing to discuss claims of executive privilege

asserted by the White House, either directly or through a

Federal agency. But we will not stand for blanket

instructions to refuse answering any questions concerning any

communications with the EOP [Executive Office of the

President].

Their insistence that either administration officials comply with this oversight committee's rightful demands or the President invoke his executive privilege not to do so was entirely appropriate. Unfortunately, when Mr. Card and his subordinates still refused to comply, the chairman denied the ranking member's request to issue subpoenas.

Regrettably, at its markup of the draft report, the Senate committee failed to support my motion to subpoena those documents and witnesses, which were being withheld by the White House without claim to executive privilege, and which were being wrongfully denied by executive agencies.

The administration's refusal to comply and cooperate with this investigation is deplorable, as is the Homeland Security Committee's failure to back the chairman and ranking member's proper insistence that the White House do so. That committee is charged by the full Senate with the responsibility to oversee the agencies, programs, and activities that are related to homeland security. The committee was expressly directed by the Senate majority leader to examine the Bush administration's failure to respond quickly or effectively to the disasters caused by Hurricane Katrina. This investigation is not complete without all of the information requested from the administration. Furthermore, the report's findings and conclusions can hardly be considered reliable if the White House has decided what information to provide and what information to withhold from the committee.

This unfortunate acquiescence confirms the judgment of the Senate Democratic leader that an independent bipartisan commission was necessary to ensure complete and unbiased investigation into the failed Federal, State, and local responses to Hurricane Katrina. His request has been repeatedly denied by the majority, with the assurance that the Senate committee would fulfill those responsibilities. Tragically and reprehensibly, it has failed to do so. Thus, the committee failed the Senate's constitutional obligations to be an independent, coequal branch of Government from the executive. It also failed the long- suffering victims of Hurricane Katrina, who deserve to know why their governments failed them, and all of the American people, who depend upon their elected representatives to protect their lives and their interests, without regard to partisan political considerations. That partisanship includes unjustified protection of an administration of the same political party, as much as undue criticism of one from another party.

That partisan protectionism is especially unwarranted given widespread agreement about the urgent need to understand the failures during and after Hurricane Katrina and to remedy them before another large-scale disaster, God forbid, should occur.

Now, 8 months after the hurricane, the lack of progress in cleanup, repair, and reconstruction in devastated areas provides further evidence of the Federal Government's continuing failure to respond efficiently or effectively. There is no time in which the helping hand of Government is more urgently needed and more surely deserved than during and after a disaster. Victims are damaged or devastated physically, emotionally, and financially.

Local officials and their public services are overwhelmed, if not destroyed. They need a Federal emergency response organization comprised of experienced, dedicated professionals, who have the resources necessary to alleviate short-term suffering and commence long-term recovery, and also have the authority to expeditiously commit those resources.

What the failed Federal response to Hurricane Katrina showed is the utter ineptitude of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA. Even worse, FEMA's indifference and incompetence in the aftermath of Katrina was not an isolated instance. In my direct experience with FEMA's disaster relief responses in Minnesota, the agency is too often a major obstruction to recovery projects rather than a principal ally.

Thus, I agree with the report's recommendation to create a new, comprehensive emergency management organization, to prepare for and respond to all disasters and catastrophes. I remain openminded about whether this new entity should remain within the Department of Homeland Security, as this recommendation intends, or be established as a separate Federal agency. The challenge for the committee, for all of Congress, and for the administration will be to actually recreate an existing Federal agency which has become dysfunctional and nonfunctional. Merely ``reforming'' FEMA by rearranging some boxes and lines in its organizational chart, revising it, and giving its head a new title, will be woefully inadequate. The new organization must be more streamlined, centralized, and compact than its predecessor. It must be less bureaucratic, less consumed with regulatory minutiae, and less resistant to local recovery initiatives. It must spend less time creating complex plans and cumbersome procedures, and more time in training and perfecting action responses to emergency situations.

History shows that ``if a student does not learn the lesson, the teacher reappears.'' This report describes some of the most important lessons from the failed response to Hurricane Katrina. The committee's and this Congress's subsequent actions to correct these serious deficiencies before the next catastrophe will indicate whether those lessons will be learned.

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

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

Mr. President, earlier today, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Chambliss, and the ranking member, Senator Harkin of Iowa, held a very important hearing on the biofuels industry. I hope it will be the first and not the last because biofuels, specifically ethanol and biodiesel, are real, viable, here- and-now alternatives to the ever-increasing cost of gasoline and diesel fuels.

We are in the midst of another price crisis for the gasoline, diesel, and oil upon which our citizens, our industries, and our lifestyles and our entire national economy depend.

Most Americans want their fuel prices to be lower, but they do not want to change their fuels in order to make them so. People say, understandably: Solve our energy problems right now, but don't make us do anything differently. That is why I respectfully disagree with people who say: We do not have a national energy policy. We do. And it is to maintain the status quo for as long as possible.

That is actually a rational policy because our existing energy sources, over 95 percent of which are oil and oil-derived products, coal, natural gas, and nuclear, have been and, in most cases, continue to be cheaper, more available, more convenient, and certainly more familiar than any of their alternatives.

The sources of supplies, their production, transportation, distribution systems, and retail networks are all well established and well protected by everyone who profits from them. Those industries and companies that control and profit from our country's enormous and almost exclusive dependence upon their sources of energy have enormous stakes in preserving their control and protecting their profits by destroying any real competitive threats to their energy monopolies.

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in our Nation's transportation sector. Over 40 percent of total U.S. energy consumption is of oil and petroleum products, and over two-thirds of that oil is used for transportation. Our country now consumes almost 30 percent of all the oil produced in the entire world each year, which means that 20 percent, or one out of every five barrels of oil produced in the entire world, goes into an American car, truck, train, or airplane. Up until recently, oil was the only fuel that those cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes could run on. What a gigantic energy monopoly that is. It is the largest monopoly of any in the world. And like most monopolies, it is hugely profitable for the monopolists and hugely expensive for everyone else. Like every other source of enormous profits and financial power, it is not going to be surrendered voluntarily by the profitable and the powerful.

The huge oil and oil products monopoly is not going to willingly surrender sales or market share or profits, not to a competitor such as the biofuels industry. Like any other established energy monopolies, they may give lip service to those energy alternatives, but they don't really mean it. That was very clear when the Senate considered its energy bill last year. There were full-page ads in the Hill and Roll Call newspapers, run by the American Petroleum Institute, which smeared the biofuels industry with the same misrepresentations, distortions, and fearmongering that they tried to use a decade ago to defeat a 10- percent ethanol mandate in the Minnesota Legislature.

Back then, the oil industry claimed that biofuels, particularly ethanol, would raise the price of every gallon of gasoline, that the supply would be impure and unreliable, and that people's gas tanks would explode or their carburetors would implode or the cars would be damaged or destroyed. None of those occurred. Yet almost 10 years after Minnesota required every gallon of gasoline sold in our State to contain at least 10 percent ethanol, we were still the only State to do so. Nationwide, the use of ethanol is only about 2.5 percent that of gasoline.

It turns out that regular automobile, SUV, and small truck engines not only run very well, with no modifications at all, on 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol, but they can also, with factory- modified engines, run as well or even better on a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline called E-85 fuel. In Brazil, where I visited 2 weeks ago, automobiles run very effectively on 100 percent ethanol.

This week's U.S. News and World Report magazine contains a two-page ad by General Motors touting its flex fuel engines which could run on either 100 percent regular unleaded gasoline, 85 percent ethanol, or a combination of the two. Yesterday, Daimler-Chrysler announced that in model year 2008, 500,000--or one-fourth of its vehicles--are going to be produced with flex fuel engines.

The flex fuel engine is the key to unlocking the gasoline monopoly. With a flex fuel engine, as I have in both my Minnesota and Washington cars, the consumer has a choice at every service station offering both regular unleaded gasoline and E-85 fuel. It is that price competition which will do more than anything else to stop the price gouging and profiteering by the oil and gasoline companies.

For the past 3 years, I have introduced legislation requiring that every car, truck, and SUV sold in this country have a flex fuel engine, beginning with the model year 2005, 2007, 2009--you can pick the year. Some people say that simply isn't possible, but last year over 70 percent of all automobiles sold in Brazil had flex fuel engines. I met last year in Detroit with General Motors and Ford company engineers. They told me they can design and install flex fuel engines at a production cost of between $100 and $300 per vehicle. They are better engines. However, until now, most American consumers haven't known about them or even wanted them.

We in the Federal Government can take one of two positions: We can do nothing and let the markets eventually change manufacturers' and consumers' behaviors, as they are starting to do now, or we can act to accelerate that transition. It seems clear that our constituents are clamoring for us to make available alternatives to the rising cost of gasoline and other fuels. We have before us right now the opportunity to do so--right now, not 10 years from now with hybrid engines, not 20 years from now with hydrogen engines. They may ultimately be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, but ``ultimately'' is years away. Right now, we can give Americans a real energy alternative, the first large-scale, readily available alternative to a traditional energy source in many years, because ethanol--and behind it, biodiesel--is not just a substitute for the gasoline additive MTBE, it is a substitute for gasoline. It is not perfect. No energy source yet is. There are transition costs, production and distribution challenges, and similar susceptibilities to supply manipulation, price gouging, and profiteering as with oil, gasoline, or other fossil fuels. The key is the competition, consumers' ability to choose the lower priced, better option.

Last week, traveling around Minnesota, I could choose, with my vehicle with the flex fuel engine, between E-85, which was costing about $2.39 a gallon, and regular unleaded gasoline, which was costing about $2.79 a gallon. Both of those prices were significantly higher than they were in Minnesota 6 months or a year ago. Both prices are too high. Americans are being taken advantage of at the gas and the E-85 stations in Minnesota and other places around the country, and this Congress has a choice whether to do something about it or to do nothing.

President Bush said last weekend that his administration would investigate and prosecute price gouging and profiteering at the gasoline pump. I am glad to hear the President say that. I only question whether he really means it because he said the same thing last September when gasoline prices skyrocketed after Hurricane Katrina. Yet as far as I know, there is not a single charge that has been brought against anyone. In fact, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission subsequently testified before a Senate committee that no ``Federal statute makes it illegal to charge prices that are considered to be too high, as long as companies set those prices independently.'' She went on in her prepared statement to state that an oil company's ``independent decision to increase price is and should be outside the purview of the law.''

As my mother used to say to me, actions speak louder than words. Price gouging investigations and prosecutions for now are just words. I urge the President to turn them into actions.

The President yesterday touted his support for biofuels. However, in the last 2 years, he has signed into law cuts of almost 50 percent in bioenergy grants. His fiscal year 2007 budget calls for a 57-percent reduction for renewable energy grants. I urge the President and the Congress to turn their words into actions by increasing Federal funding for biofuels and other renewable energy research and development.

Another important action Congress should take this year is to pass a new energy bill. Some progress toward increasing the supply and use of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel was achieved in last year's energy bill but, as a nation, we are tiptoeing when we should be running. A new energy bill should accelerate this transition away from our Nation's increasing dependence on foreign oil which, even after last year's legislation, is projected to increase from 62 percent now to 67 percent in 2012. If we are really serious about reversing our growing energy dependence on oil and its products and not being held captive to rising oil, gasoline, and diesel prices here and around the world, we must act again by passing energy legislation, and we must act this year in doing so.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

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

Mr. President, I take offense at the characterizations of the Democratic leader about obstructing this legislation, particularly from those from southern border States who, in addition to the culpability of the Federal Government, should take the blame for some of the failures of these last few years that have perpetrated these 11 million, 12 million illegal immigrants upon the United States. I respect the comments of the Senator from North Dakota, putting those responsibilities, some of them, on the businesses of Minnesota, but I must say that the businesses of Minnesota and perhaps other Northern States have, to their credit, resisted the imposition of workers from other countries upon themselves--again, to their credit. It is from the States of southern borders, those businesses which have allowed this illegal immigration to go unchecked and which have, I believe to their discredit, employed these individuals.

It surprises me--in fact, I would call it the rank hypocrisy of those who have stood here today representing these States whose businesses have allowed these illegal immigrants to be employed, who have benefited and profited from those employments, and who now are suddenly trying to take aggressive action to impose these sanctions upon all businesses. I believe strongly that Minnesota businesses and others in Northern States have been forced to accept illegal immigrants because of the failure of States on the southern border to stand up and to protect their borders, in addition to the Federal Government. I deeply object to those who are claiming that somehow that is the failure of Northern States such as Minnesota.

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

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Central High School in Norwood Young America, MN, which recently earned an Award for Excellence in Education for its exceptional and innovative achievements in educating children.

Central High School is truly a model of educational success. The school earned its Award for Excellence in Education for its interdisciplinary Holocaust Unit, which is required of all seniors for graduation.

The Holocaust Unit has been a hallmark of Central High School for over 10 years. Mr. Mark Lagergren, a social studies teacher at Central, developed the unit and has coordinated with several English teachers to teach it to all students.

Guest speakers, including Holocaust survivors, are invited to talk with the students; students are assigned to read and discuss several pertinent books; and students are required to produce a final, senior Holocaust project.

Ms. Kelly Street, an English teacher at Central High School and a Central High graduate, shared with me the impact the unit has had on her life, saying, ``Before Mr. L's class we had heard references to the Holocaust, concentration camps and Hitler, but after his class we were mini-experts on the subject. I remember Mr. Lagergren's lectures and how powerful they were; I could actually feel his passion for such a harrowing part of history. How can any human being not feel something after seeing pictures and watching videos on the era, and then have those pictures and videos followed by the passionate clarification of a teacher who has dedicated his career to the study of the Holocaust? It was a blessing to be a part of it.''

Ms. Street was very appreciative of survivors' personal accounts, and she credits Mr. Lagergren for having brought these survivors to share their profoundly personal stories.

Much of the credit for Central High School's success belongs to its principal, Ron Brand, and all the dedicated teachers. The students and staff at Central High School understand that, in order to be successful, a school must go beyond achieving academic success; it must also provide a nurturing environment where students can develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for success throughout life. All of the faculty, staff, and students at Central High School should be very proud of their accomplishments.

I congratulate Central High School in Norwood Young America for winning the Award for Excellence in Education and for its exceptional contributions to education in Minnesota.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Century Elementary School, in Park Rapids, MN, which recently earned an Award for Excellence in Education for its exceptional and innovative achievements in educating children.

Century Elementary School is truly a model of educational success. The school, which enrols a large percentage of children from low-income families, has achieved significant academic success.

Test scores in 2005 qualified the school for four stars in reading and five stars in mathematics from the Minnesota Department of Education. In addition to receiving three stars in both reading and mathematics for having made adequate yearly progress, the school received an additional star in reading and math for outstanding performance compared to schools with similar percentages of low-income pupils. It received another star in math for having more than 30 percent of its students scoring at Level 5 on their Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, the highest possible level on these statewide tests.

The year 2005 was the second successive year in which Century School received four or five stars. Last year, the school received five-star status in reading and four-star status in mathematics.

The Park Rapids School District has also recognized the advantages of a full-day kindergarten program, and although the State funds a half- day program, the local school board has allocated sufficient funds to make possible the full-day program.

Century Elementary's success is even more remarkable considering the limited amount of funding available for the school district. The district has attempted to pass an operating levy referendum four times to make up for lack of adequate funding from the State of Minnesota, but these referenda failed to be approved. The district has been forced to lay off 42 teachers over the past 4 years accounting for a 30- percent reduction in total teachers.

Much of the credit for Century Elementary School's success belongs to its

principal, Mitch Peterson, and the dedicated teachers. The students and staff at Century Elementary School understand that, in order to be successful, a school must go beyond achieving academic success; it must also provide a nurturing environment where students can develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for success throughout life. All of the faculty, staff, and students at Century Elementary School should be very proud of their accomplishments.

I congratulate Century Elementary School in Park Rapids for winning the Award for Excellence in Education and for its exceptional contributions to education in Minnesota.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Watertown- Mayer High School, in Watertown, MN, which recently earned an Award for Excellence in Education for its exceptional and innovative achievements in educating children.

Watertown-Mayer High School is truly a model of educational success. The school offers a comprehensive curriculum in a four-period block schedule. College in the Schools, an honors program sponsored by the University of Minnesota, is offered in writing, fiction, American government, U.S. history, and German. Advanced math and science courses include advanced placement calculus I and II, advanced placement physics, chemistry, and advanced biology, ecology, and meteorology. Excellent vocational programs include industrial technical education, family and consumer science, business education, work experience, and agriculture/horticulture education.

As part of their academic program, highly motivated seniors can enroll in a comprehensive professional mentorship program, which offers real-life experiences, including mentorships with surgeons, physicians, nurses, business professionals, theater professionals, undercover law enforcement personnel, and teachers. These opportunities have helped many students explore their professional goals.

This year, carpentry students from Watertown-Mayer are building a model house, intended for sale at a public auction this spring. Proceeds of the sale will be used to buy tools and supplies to help continue these opportunities for future students.

The academic successes of Watertown-Mayer are reflected in students' test scores. Last year, Watertown-Mayer High School received five star ratings in both math and reading. Fewer than 7 percent of all Minnesota schools have rated so well in both math and reading.

Watertown-Mayer High School's goal is to ``invest in the life of each and every student and to make a difference one child at a time.'' It is not the curriculum that resonates for graduates of Watertown-Mayer but, rather, their personal experiences with the dedicated people who guided their learning and who truly make the school one of Minnesota's finest.

Much of the credit for Watertown-Mayer High School's success belongs to its principal, Scott Gengler, and the dedicated teachers. The students and staff at Watertown-Mayer High School understand that, in order to be successful, a school must go beyond achieving academic success; it must also provide a nurturing environment where students can develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for success throughout life. All of the faculty, staff, and students at Watertown-Mayer High School should be very proud of their accomplishments.

I congratulate Watertown-Mayer High School in Watertown for winning the Award for Excellence in Education and for its exceptional contributions to education in Minnesota.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Grand Rapids High School, in Grand Rapids, MN, which recently earned an Award for Excellence in Education for its exceptional and innovative achievements in educating children.

Grand Rapids High School is truly a model of educational success. With 1,240 students, the school is one of only 13 Minnesota high schools to offer the International Baccalaureate Program, which is distinguished in the field of international education and helps students to be active learners, well-rounded people, and engaged world citizens. The founding organization works with 1,742 schools in 122 countries to develop and offer three challenging programs to over 200,000 young people ages 3 to 19. Grand Rapids High School participates in the Diploma Program.

Grand Rapids High School offers a comprehensive curriculum that focuses on meeting students' wide range of needs. The school has embraced the national education reform effort known as Breaking Ranks II, which outlines the need for high schools to engage in the process of change that will ensure success for every high school student. Breaking Ranks II includes tools and recommendations in the areas of leadership for change, development of professional learning communities, the need to provide every student with meaningful adult relationships, and the development of personalized learning, to show students the meaning and relevancy of learning.

The Grand Rapids High School focuses on literacy and personalization of environment. The literacy team has coordinated the training of all staff to offer common reading strategies throughout the curriculum. Within 1 year, test scores in all areas have reflected students' progress.

The personalization of environment is designed to ensure that every student feels welcome, safe, and cared for. The school's BRAVE Team, Building Respect and Valuing Everyone, of students and staff take action to create an atmosphere of respect with the purpose of helping reduce stress caused by differences in levels of achievement.

Much of the credit for Grand Rapids High School's success belongs to its principal, Jim Smokrovich, and the dedicated teachers. The students and staff at Grand Rapids High School understand that in order to be successful, a school must go beyond achieving academic success; it must also provide a nurturing environment where students can develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for success throughout life. All of the faculty, staff, and students at Grand Rapids High School should be very proud of their accomplishments.

I congratulate Grand Rapids High School in Grand Rapids for winning the Award for Excellence in Education and for its exceptional contributions to education in Minnesota.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Churchill Elementary School, in Cloquet, MN, which recently earned an Award for Excellence in Education for its exceptional and innovative achievements in educating children.

Churchill Elementary School is truly a model of educational success. The school has recognized the vital need to nurture children's love for reading. At the same time, the school has taken the initiative to find new, creative ways to improve children's reading academically. For ``I Love To Read Month'' in February, every classroom at Churchill Elementary established a goal for the amount of reading the students would collectively complete during the month. The children met every goal.

At Churchill Elementary, many planned activities help motivate pupils to read. On Valentine's Day, the school hosted a ``Books for Breakfast.'' Families came to school to share a breakfast and reading time together. Earlier in the month, Churchill hosted a family reading night, for which families congregated in the media center to read books together.

These and other activities emphasize the importance of reading for each child's life. This year, during one week of the month, different mystery readers, including the police chief, the superintendent, and the Cloquet mayor, were invited to read a story over the school intercom. All events culminated with a celebration on March 2nd, Dr. Seuss' birthday.

The success of these initiatives is reflected in the reading test scores at Churchill Elementary. Last year, Churchill Elementary received four out of five possible stars from the Minnesota Department of Education for both reading and mathematics. Fewer

than 20 percent of all schools in the State have rated so well in reading and math.

Much of the credit for Churchill Elementary School's success belongs to its principal, David Wangen, and the dedicated teachers. The students and staff at Churchill Elementary School understand that in order to be successful, a school must go beyond achieving academic success; it must also provide a nurturing environment where students can develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for success throughout life. All of the faculty, staff, and students at Churchill Elementary School should be very proud of their accomplishments.

I congratulate Churchill Elementary School in Cloquet for winning the Award for Excellence in Education and for its exceptional contributions to education in Minnesota.