Floor Statements

Mr. President, today's passage of the Preserving Independence of Financial Examinations Act of 2003 is an example of solid, efficient bipartisan work on a needed legislative reform. I am pleased to have seen its passage so swiftly through the U.S. Senate and I thank my friend from Utah, Senator Hatch, for his assistance and advice.

The bill provides a logical and necessary modification to important, but outdated, criminal statutes originally written to ensure the objectivity and integrity of financial institution examinations. Sections 212 and 213 of title 18 of the United States Code, first drafted in 1948, appropriately provide criminal penalties for bank examiners who are offered, or who accept, a loan or gratuity from the financial institution they are examining. This bill exempts from the law's reach ordinary credit card and residential home mortgage loans sought and held by bank examiners in their everyday lives.

Several factors supported the proposed blanket credit card and residential loan exceptions. Most important, consolidation within the banking industry made it increasingly difficult for examiners to obtain nationally available credit cards and mortgage loans and for the banking agencies to assign examiners to work.

The Leahy-Hatch bill strictly defines the circumstances under which the exceptions to the criminal statute apply with a keen eye on preserving the independence of financial institution examinations and the original legislative intent of the statute.

I thank Senator Hatch for his assistance in this bill forward and making it possible for bank examiners to engage in arms-length and routine business transactions without fear of prosecution. I also thank our friends in the banking agencies, including the Federal Reserve Bank, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for bringing this important issue to our attention.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senate Majority Leader for his remarks today on the need for the Senate to consider asbestos legislation next year. I wholeheartedly agree with him on the need for reform to establish a better system for providing fair and efficient compensation to victims of asbestos-related diseases. I remain committed to working with Senator Frist, Senator Daschle, Senator Hatch, Senator Dodd, Senator Specter, and others, to forge a bipartisan solution to this complex challenge.

Last fall, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I held the Committee's first hearing to begin a bipartisan dialogue about the best means to compensate current asbestos victims and those yet to come. Chairman Hatch wisely held two additional hearings this year. Our knowledge of the harms wreaked by asbestos exposure has certainly grown since last fall, as have the harms themselves. Not only do the victims of asbestos exposure continue to suffer, and their numbers to grow, but the businesses involved, along with their employees and retirees, are suffering from the economic uncertainty surrounding this litigation. More than 60 companies have filed for bankruptcy because of their asbestos-related liabilities.

These bankruptcies create a lose-lose situation. Asbestos victims who deserve fair compensation do not receive it, and bankrupt companies can neither create new jobs nor invest in our economy.

A solution has never before been closer than it is today. Since the beginning of 2003, we have come to complete accord on the idea that the fairest, most efficient way to provide compensation for asbestos victims is through the creation of a national fund that will apply agreed-upon medical criteria in evaluating patients' injuries. We have been working tirelessly with representatives from organized labor, defendant companies, insurers, and other interested parties, to craft an effective trust fund system that will bring the certainty of fair payments to victims and financial certainty to industry. A myriad of issues have been resolved, from the definitions of the panoply of illnesses resulting from asbestos exposure to a ban on the use of asbestos in the United States. We are working, even today, on the details of other aspects of this scheme, down to the fine points of the administrative mechanism for processing claims.

We have made real progress in finding common ground. But we have yet to reach consensus, and without consensus we cannot end this crisis. Too much is at stake for us to walk away when we have come so far. An effective and efficient means to end the asbestos litigation crisis is within reach, and we must grasp it. Although the year is drawing to a close, our bipartisan commitment to this effort remains strong. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues and all stake holders to craft a consensus bill that we can move through the legislative process and into law next year.

Mr. LEAHY: Mr. President, I rise today to express my pleasure with the House passage of the ``Hometown Heroes Survivors Benefits Act of 2003,'' S. 459, at daybreak today. This bill, as amended and passed by unanimous consent in the House, will improve the Department of Justice's Public Safety Officers Benefits program by allowing survivors of public safety officers who suffer fatal heart attacks or strokes while participating in nonroutine stressful or strenous physical activities to qualify for Federal survivor benefits.

I want to pay special thanks to Congressman Bob Etheridge, the author of the House companion bill, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Sensenbrenner for their leadership and fortitude while negotiating this legislation. Without their perseverance and willingness to find bipartisan compromise language, passage of this bill in the House would not have happened.

I also commend Congressman Coble, Congressman Bobby Scott, the Fraternal Order of Police and the Congressional Fire Services Institute for working with us on bipartisan compromise language so that we could pass the Senate bill through the House. I look forward to working with Senate Judiciary Chairman Hatch, Senator Lindsey Graham, the lead Republican cosponsor of this bill, and Senate leadership to quickly pass the Senate bill, as amended by the House, and send it to the President's desk for enactment into law.

Public safety officers are our most brave and dedicated public servants. I applaud the efforts of all members of fire, law enforcement and EMS providers nationwide who are the first to respond to more than 1.6 million emergency calls annually--whether those calls involve a crime, fire, medical emergency, spill of hazardous materials, natural disaster, act of terrorism, or transportation accident--without reservation. Those men and woman act with an unwavering commitment to the safety and protection of their fellow citizens, and forever willing to selflessly sacrifice their own lives to provide safe and reliable emergency services to their communities.

Sadly, that kind of dedication can result in tragedy, which we all witnessed on September 11 as scores of firefighters, police officers and medics raced into the burning World Trade Center and Pentagon with no other goal than to save lives. Every year, hundreds of public safety officers nationwide lose their lives and thousands more are injured while performing duties that subject them to great physical risks. And while we know that PSOB benefits can never be a substitute for the loss of a loved one, the families of all our fallen heroes deserve to collect these funds.

The PSOB program was established in 1976 to authorize a one-time financial payment to the eligible survivors of Federal, State, and local public safety officers for all line of duty deaths. In 2001, Congress improved the PSOB regulations by streamlining the process for families of public safety officers killed or injured in connection with prevention, investigation, rescue or recovery efforts related to a terrorist attack. We also retroactively increased the total benefits available by $100,000 as part of the USA PATRIOT Act. Survivors of first responders killed in the line of duty now receive $267,494 in

Mr. President, I will oppose the conference report on H.R. 1904, the so-called Healthy Forests Act. While I have several substantive concerns about this legislation, let me first speak about the process by which this legislation has come before the Senate.

As my colleagues know, there has been a significant and growing concern about the way the other side is operating conference committees. In fact this conference was delayed several weeks because the minority has continually been excluded from conferences.

However, in good faith, I, along with interested Members and their staffs, worked out an agreement on the first six titles of the bill. Coincidentally, there were only six titles in the House version of the bill. An agreement was reached on those first six titles, and while I still had serious concerns about the substance of the agreement, I did not object to the process moving forward. I did so because I was given commitments that we would work out an agreement between the House and Senate on the remaining three titles that were passed by the Senate.

But what happened next is absolutely astounding. One half hour before the conference committee was scheduled to meet, I was informed that the conference would only consider the first six titles of the bill, and that the remaining titles that were passed by the Senate were ``off the table.''

Yet another backroom deal was cut by the other side to exclude the minority from any real conference proceedings.

These were highly important provisions that were passed by the Senate. Of particular importance to me was the Rural Community Forestry Enterprise Program, which I authored with Senators Crapo and Baucus. In my State of Vermont we have a good deal of small-diameter trees for which we need help finding markets. This program would build on the existing expertise of the Forest Service by providing technical assistance, cooperative marketing and new product development to small timber-dependent communities. Whether it is producing furniture, pallets, or other creative new markets, this program would help small forest-dependent communities expand economically.

Back room deals summarily excluded this, and several other important initiatives in the Senate-passed bill, from consideration in the conference committee. That is why I declined to sign this conference report.

I will not vote for this conference report because this bill before us remains a well-camouflaged attempt to limit the right of the American people to know and to question what their Government is doing on the public's lands.

The bill before us is really a solution looking for a problem. So let's take a closer look at the ``solution'' on the table.

First, the bill would make it much more difficult for the public to have any oversight or say in what happens on public lands, undermining decades of progress in public inclusion. In this new and vague pre- decisional protest process, this bill expects the public to have intimate knowledge of aspects of the project early on, including aspects that the Forest Service might not have disclosed in its initial proposal.

The bill gives the Forest Service a real incentive to hide the ball or to withhold certain information about a project that might make it objectionable, such as endangered species habitat data, watershed analysis, or road-building information. If concerns are not raised about this possibly undisclosed information in the vaguely outlined ``predecisional'' process, the Forest Service can argue to the courts that no claims can be brought on these issues in the future when the agency, either through intent or negligence, withholds important information from the public.

Essentially, this provision penalizes citizens and rewards agency staff when the agency does not do its job in terms of basic investigation and information sharing regarding a project. This bill makes other significant changes to judicial review. It will force judges to reconsider preliminary injunctions every 60 days, whether or not circumstances warrant it.

In many ways, this provision could backfire on my colleagues' goal of expediting judicial review. It will force judges to engage in otherwise unnecessary proceedings, slowing their consideration of the very cases that proponents of H.R. 1904 want to fast track. Moreover, taking the courts' time to engage in this process will also divert scarce judicial resources away from other pending cases. It is also likely to encourage more lawsuits. Requiring that injunctions be renewed every 60 days, whether needed or not, gives lawyers another bite at the apple, something they often find hard to resist.

Instead of telling the courts when and how to conduct their business, we should instead be working to find a workable and effective approach to reducing wildfire risks.

This bill does not achieve that, but, with these provisions that minimize the public's input, it instead poses a real risk to the checks and balances that the American people and their independent judiciary now have on Government decisions affecting the public lands owned by the American people.

Sadly, this bill plays a bait-and-switch trick on communities threatened by wildfires. It is not fair to roll back environmental laws, public oversight, or judicial review under the guise of reacting toe devastating wildfires. It will do nothing to help or to prevent the kid of devastation that southern California recently faced. It is a special interest grab-bag shrouded behind a smokescreen.

We should be offering real help and real answers, instead of allowing fear to be used as a pretext for taking the public's voice out of decisions affecting the public's lands and for ceding more power to special interests.

Mr. President, I call attention today to a part of American heritage that is literally disintegrating faster than can be saved. Motion pictures are an important part of our American experience and provide an extraordinary record of our history, our dreams, and our aspirations. The National Film Preservation Board and the National Film Preservation Foundation were created by Congress under the auspices of the Library of Congress, to help save America's film heritage. Today, I am introducing the ``National Film Preservation Act of 2003,'' which will reauthorize and extend the ``National Film Preservation Act of 1996.''

We first acted in 1988 in order to recognize both the educational, cultural, and historical importance of our film heritage, and its inherently fragile nature. The ``National Film Preservation Act of 2003'' will allow the Library of Congress to continue its important work in preserving America's fading treasures, as well as providing grants that will help libraries, museums, and archives preserve films, and make those works available for study and research. These continued efforts are more critical today than ever before. Fewer than 20 percent of the features of the 1920s exist in complete form and less than 10 percent of the features of the 1910s have survived into the new millennium.

The films saved by the National Film Preservation Board are precisely those types of films that would be unlikely to survive without public support. At-risk documentaries, silent-era films, avant-garde works, ethnic films, newsreels, and home movies are in many ways more illuminating on the question of who we are as a society than the Hollywood sound features kept and preserved by major studios. What is more, in many cases only one copy of these ``orphaned'' works exists. As the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James H. Billington, has noted, ``Our film heritage is America's living past.'' I encourage my colleagues to support the ``Film Preservation Act of 2003'' so that America's past can survive in order to enlighten and entertain future generations.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I call attention today to a part of American heritage that is literally disintegrating faster than can be saved. Motion pictures are an important part of our American experience and provide an extraordinary record of our history, our dreams, and our aspirations. The National Film Preservation Board and the National Film Preservation Foundation were created by Congress under the auspices of the Library of Congress, to help save America's film heritage. Today, I am introducing the ``National Film Preservation Act of 2003,'' which will reauthorize and extend the ``National Film Preservation Act of 1996.''

We first acted in 1988 in order to recognize both the educational, cultural, and historical importance of our film heritage, and its inherently fragile nature. The ``National Film Preservation Act of 2003'' will allow the Library of Congress to continue its important work in preserving America's fading treasures, as well as providing grants that will help libraries, museums, and archives preserve films, and make those works available for study and research. These continued efforts are more critical today than ever before. Fewer than 20 percent of the features of the 1920s exist in complete form and less than 10 percent of the features of the 1910s have survived into the new millennium.

The films saved by the National Film Preservation Board are precisely those types of films that would be unlikely to survive without public support. At-risk documentaries, silent-era films, avant-garde works, ethnic films, newsreels, and home movies are in many ways more illuminating on the question of who we are as a society than the Hollywood sound features kept and preserved by major studios. What is more, in many cases only one copy of these ``orphaned'' works exists. As the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James H. Billington, has noted, ``Our film heritage is America's living past.'' I encourage my colleagues to support the ``Film Preservation Act of 2003'' so that America's past can survive in order to enlighten and entertain future generations.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate has passed the John Marshall Commemorative Coin Act, S. 1531.

As an original cosponsor of the John Marshall Commemorative Coin Act, I have worked closely with Senator Hatch to do all that we possibly can to speedily pass it into law.

This bill authorizes the Treasury Department to mint and issue coins in honor of Chief Justice John Marshall in the year 2005. Funds raised by sale of the coin will support the Supreme Court Historical Society. Sales of the coin also cover all of the costs of minting and issuing these coins, so that the American taxpayer is not bearing any cost whatsoever of this commemoration.

That sales of a coin that bears the likeness of Chief Justice Marshall will be used to the support of the Supreme Court Historical Society is fitting. The society is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to preserve and disseminate the history of the Supreme Court of the United States. Founded by Chief Justice Warren Burger, the society's mission is to provide information and historical research on our Nation's highest court. The society accomplishes this mission by conducting programs, publishing books, supporting historical research and collecting antiques and artifacts related to the Court's history. John Marshall is known as ``the great Chief Justice'' of the Supreme Court. Marshall served on the bench for 34 years and established many of the constitutional doctrines we revere today. He is best known and respected for the fundamental principles of checks and balance of our democratic government.

In our successful efforts to gender support for the bill, we gained over 75 cosponsors in the U.S. Senate. Given the noble cause, it was not a hard sell. Yet, the sheer numbers of bipartisan supporters are a fitting tribute to the Great Chief Justice John Marshall. We are happy to assist a worthwhile organization like the Supreme Court Historical Society.

I thank all the Senators who supported this bill--too numerous to name. I also thank the Supreme Court Historical Society for its dedication to this important cause.

Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate is taking up and passing legislation to authorize salary adjustments for Justices and judges of the United States for fiscal year 2004.

As a member of both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary, I have worked hard to help preserve a fair and independent judiciary. I have repeatedly introduced and cosponsored legislation to give our Federal judges meaningful and significant pay raises. I have been disappointed that the Continuing Resolutions approved by Congress fail to give the Federal judiciary even a cost-of-living adjustment,

Reserving the right to object.

Let me see what this means. Are we doing this under a particular time?

The Senator from Vermont would like to speak on two different issues: the energy issue and wants his experiences here in Washington at the time of President Kennedy's assassination. I want to get some idea of time.

Mr. President, Senator Domenici was saying the Senator from Oklahoma and then the Senator from California. Might I ask the Senator from Oklahoma--I am not going to object--how long will the Senator speak?

The Senator from California?

I wonder if I might ask, to make sure in case Senators wish to speak longer, to amend the unanimous consent request so the senior Senator from Vermont could be recognized at a quarter of 2 for up to 20 minutes.

But at quarter of 2, the Senator from Vermont is to be recognized.

I thank the Chair, my neighbor across the Connecticut River in the great State of New Hampshire.

Those of us who have wiled away the time sometimes on long airplane trips reading a bad book, we know a lot of bad books have ghostwriters. Well, a lot of bad bills that come before the Congress also have ghost writers.

If one reads through this 1,100-page Energy bill, they can tell actually who the ghostwriters were: The oil, the gas, the coal, and the ethanol industries that--surprise, surprise--are going to get almost $200 billion in tax subsidies from this bill. The voices of those ghostwriters echo throughout the bill.

The cost to the taxpayers does not stop there. If taxpayers feel their wallets are getting lighter this week, it is because this bill will cost them another $70-plus billion in other subsidies over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, the 1,100 pages of this bill are full of special interest giveaways, but they are empty of innovative and sustainable energy policy, a policy that would ensure Americans a clean, reliable, and affordable policy in the future.

Some of our colleagues are trying to sell this bill to the American public as a balanced energy plan, something that would give our Nation energy security over the decades to come. It is not that. It only increases our reliance on unsustainable petroleum-based energy sources. It undercuts recent progress in developing renewable energy sources and technologies that reduce pollution. It undermines the reliability of our electricity markets by opening the door to more manipulation and mergers in stalling regional efforts to improve the transmission grid.

The Senate sent a decent Energy bill to conference. What did we get back? We got a frog. We went from the prince to the frog, not the other way around. The roster of squandered taxpayers' dollars and squandered opportunities in this bill is breathtaking to behold.

Now the American people might have expected us to learn from this summer's blackout. After all, it should be fresh in our experiences and our minds. It cost governments and businesses billions of dollars. We could have used this bill to address what went wrong. We could have used it to build upon what is right. Incredibly, the bill does the opposite.

New England, where we rely on energy--as all parts of the country do--is also a part of the country where we can get 10, 20, 30 below zero sometimes. We have already created a regional organization to increase reliability of our transmission lines. In fact, that was able to stop the blackout from cascading further into Vermont and other States. Instead of using an organization that we know works as a model, this bill actually discourages utilities in other regions of the country from joining regional organizations. It would also discourage badly needed new investment in the transmission grid.

Apparently, we can only invest in transmission grids if they are in Iraq. We cannot invest in them when they are in our own country.

There is also no prohibition on the price gouging schemes employed by companies such as Enron, even though the Senate, on a wide margin, voted for that.

The bill repeals a 70-year-old law to restrict mergers of utility companies with other companies where they have no expertise. In the past, that has caused financial troubles for utilities and consequently the ratepayers.

One might have hoped the bill could have done more to emphasize technological innovation, promote clean and sustainable energy, but it does not. Instead of working to advance technologies to create jobs and reduce pollution, we have a bill that gives oil, gas, ethanol, and nuclear companies enormous subsidies.

One of the things it does, in my own State of Vermont, is it hands Vermont drivers a double whammy by mandating the use of 5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012 while threatening deep revenue losses in the highway trust fund. Under this bill, Vermonters and drivers in other States can expect higher prices at the pump due to this mandate and more potholes in the road due to the trust fund cuts.

We have heard talk about MTBE producers. We know this protects producers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability, but in Vermont and around the country States and communities face multimillion-dollar bills for cleaning up the MTBE that is already in the ground water. And, to stop the cases filed, the Energy bill makes the provision retroactive. It wipes out cases filed in September by several New York communities, cases filed by the State of the distinguished Presiding Officer, New Hampshire. The list goes on and on but so do the echoes of the ghostwriter's voice in this bill.

This turkey would waive environmental analyses for energy projects on public lands, exempt them from the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, open coastal areas to oil and gas development, reduce support for clean coal technology, and this bill will simply mean that more toxic pollutants like mercury will get dumped on Vermont's forests and our lakes and our rivers.

Shortly after the administration entered the White House, it closed the doors to the public and they started to put together the energy industry's wish list of subsidies--environmental and consumer protection rollbacks. If we pass this bill, we are going to say Christmas came before Thanksgiving for these special interests.

I don't see how, at a time when we are justifying drastic cuts to vital social programs, we can push through a $100 billion counterproductive budget buster for the energy industry.

As I said, many a bad book has a ghostwriter, and so do many bad bills. When you read through this 1,100-page energy bill, it is clear who the ghostwriter were: the oil, gas, coal and ethanol industries that--surprise, surprise--would reap almost $20 billion tax subsidies from this bill. The voices of these ghostwriters echo throughout this bill.

But the cost to taxpayers does not stop there. If taxpayers feel their wallets getting lighter this week it's because this bill will cost them another seventy-plus billion dollars in other subsidies over the next 10-years.

Unfortunately, the 1,100 pages are full of special interest giveaways but empty of innovative and sustainable energy policy that will ensure Americans clean, reliable and affordable power in the future.

Some of our Republican colleagues are trying to sell this bill to the American public as a balanced energy plan to give our Nation energy security over the decades to come. It is not.

It will only increase our reliance on unsustainable, petroleum-based energy sources. It undercuts recent progress in developing renewable energy sources and technologies that reduce pollution. It undermines the reliability of our electricity markets by opening the door to more manipulation and mergers and stalling regional efforts to improve the transmission grid.

The Senate sent a decent energy bill to conference, and we got back a frog. The roster of squandered taxpayers' dollars and squandered opportunities in this bill is breathtaking to behold.

The American people could have expected that we could have learned from this summer's blackout--still fresh in our experience and on our minds--and used this bill to address what went wrong and build upon what went right.

Incredibly, this bill does the opposite. In New England, we have already created a regional organization to increase reliability of our transmission liens. It was able to stop the blackout from cascading farther into Vermont and other States. Instead of using this organization as a model, this bill actually discourages utilities in other regions of the country from joining regional organizations. It could also discourage badly needed new investment in the transmission grid.

The bill also does not do enough to protect consumers and ratepayers from manipulation of energy markets. There is no prohibition on the price-gouging schemes employed by companies like Enron, even through the Senate supported such protections by a wide margin.

The bill repeals a 70-year-old law to restrict mergers of utility companies with other companies where they have no expertise. In the past, this practice has caused financial troubles for utilities and consequently, the ratepayers.

The American people could have hoped that this bill would do more to emphasize technological innovation that would promote clean and sustainable energy. Instead, it barely holds on to the status quo in incentives for renewable and energy efficiency. If we are going to avoid future blackouts, we have to decrease demand on the electricity grid as well as make improvements to it.

But instead of working to advance technologies to create jobs and reduce pollution, we have a bill that gives oil, gas, ethanol and nuclear companies enormous subsidies.

At the same time, this bill fails to address one of the biggest energy and environmental issues facing our country: how to improve fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. In fact, the bill actually would enlarge a loophole for huge SUVs that will actually encourage more people to buy these gas guzzlers. We all have heard of the SUV dealerships that actually use the existing tax loophole in their TV ads.

The bill also hands Vermont drivers a double whammy by mandating the use of 5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012, while threatening deep revenue losses to the Highway Trust Fund. Under this bill, Vermonters and drivers in other States could expect higher prices at the pump due to this mandate, and more potholes in their roads due to the Trust Fund cuts.

While the bill fails to take any steps forward on energy policy, it takes a giant step backward on environmental protections. When the Clinton administration strengthened the requirements for reducing smog around cities, it was hailed as a major step toward reducing asthma and other chronic illnesses. Well, by postponing these ozone attainment targets, no one will be breathing easier after this bill except the special interests.

Although you won't be able to see much through the smog when you're looking up, you might see more when you're looking down, and what you see will be unwelcome.

This bill includes several new provisions that let polluters off the hook when it comes to reducing contaminates in groundwater and drinking water. It protects producers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability if their product is found to be defective. In Vermont and around the country, States and communities face multi-million dollar bills for cleaning up the MTBE that already has leached into the groundwater.

At least one court has already found MTBE producers liable for these cleanup costs because of product defects, and several other cases are pending. To make sure these cases are stopped, the energy bill makes the provision retroactive, wiping out cases filed in September by several New York communities and New Hampshire.

The list goes on and on, and so do the echoes of the ghostwriters' voice in this bill. This turkey would waive environmental analysis for energy projects on public lands. It would exempt oil and gas drilling from requirements of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. It would open coastal areas to oil and gas development. It also would reduce support for clean-coal technology in favor of the conventional dirty power plants.

This will simply mean that more toxic pollutants like mercury will get dumped on Vermont's forests, lakes and rivers.

Days after this administration entered the White House, they closed the doors to the public and started to put together the energy industry's wish list of subsidies and environmental and consumer protection rollbacks. Well, Christmas came early this year for the special interests.

The energy bill now before Congress is stuffed with everything on that wish list, plus just about everything else that these special interests could dream up when they were given the chance.

The bill before us now costs three times more than the proposal that the administration first put on the table 2 years ago.

When you look at the list of special-interest giveaways, it is no wonder the bill was written behind closed doors.

The President and the Congress had a real opportunity to produce a bill that would lead the Nation toward balanced, sustainable, clean energy production. This bill fails on all counts.

Instead, we have 1,100 pages worth of policies that will increase our dependence on fossil fuels, prop up wealthy energy corporations, repeal consumer protections and threaten environmental and public health. I do not see how my Republican colleagues can any longer justify their drastic cuts to vital social programs while pushing through this $100 billion, counterproductive budget-buster for the energy industry.

Tribute To John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I would like to talk for a moment about a more personal matter. Here we are today, November 20, 2003, just two days away from November 22. I think back to 40 years ago on November 22, 1963. I was living in Washington, D.C., at that time, as a young law student. My wife, Marcelle, and I were living in a small basement apartment. She was working as a nurse at the VA hospital, then called Mount Alto, up on Wisconsin Avenue, where the Russian Embassy is now. I was going to Georgetown Law School downtown here in Washington.

They say that anybody who was old enough to remember on that November 22 remembers exactly where they were when they heard the news about President Kennedy's assassination. That is true of anybody I have ever spoken with.

I was in the law school library and one of my classmates, who was not a supporter of President Kennedy, came in and told me the President had been shot. I told him this was really not funny, and then I realized he was crying. He was a person who had never voted for President Kennedy but realized the enormity of what had happened. When I saw his tears, I knew it had to be true.

My wife and I did not own a car at the time. I went outside and hailed a cab to head back to our apartment. My wife had worked the whole night before, and she was home asleep. I did not want to call her. I wanted to tell her in person what had happened.

I think I probably got in the only cab in all of Washington that did not have a radio. You can imagine my frustration as we started through the Washington traffic. As we drove down K Street, where many stockbrokers have their offices, we could see the screen that normally displayed stock prices was blank. That was an obvious signal that they had closed the markets in New York.

I saw Mrs. Kennedy's brother-in-law. As he would be chauffeured in a Rolls-Royce to his brokerage house each morning, I would watch with envy from the bus as I went to work. I saw him running into the street, frantic, trying to hail a cab. I saw a police officer directing traffic with tears coming down his face.

When I got to our apartment, I banged on the door and woke up my wife. We turned on the television to see the now famous announcement by Walter Cronkite--taking off his horn-rimmed glasses, announcing the President was dead.

Just a short time before, President Kennedy had given a speech at American University, a speech that I thought laid out his focus for that term and what most people believed would be a second term. That was the speech in which he said, ``We must make the world safe for diversity.'' I would like to include a copy of this speech with my statement.

We should think about this quote these days. President Kennedy said, ``make the world safe for diversity.'' He did not say we should make the world an exact copy of the United States. If everybody knew they could follow their beliefs and they could follow their system of government, it would be a safer world. But that was not to be.

I remember the next day when my wife and I stood on Pennsylvania Avenue with a half a million people watching as the cortege went from the White

House up to the Capitol. It was silent. It was so silent that as we stood there, we could hear the traffic lights. Even though the street was blocked off, the traffic lights were still operating, and from eight lanes away, you could hear the click of the lights as they changed. This is with half a million or more people on that street.

Where we were standing, near the National Art Gallery, almost from the moment the cortege left the White House, we could hear the noise of the drums and the horses. I remember vividly the riderless horse, the boots turned backwards. It was a very spirited horse. I recall his name was Blackjack. He was skittering, his feet dancing on the pavement. I can still hear the click, click of his hooves. I remember a car going by with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy in it, his chin on his hand, just staring straight ahead, not seeing any of the crowd. And, of course, I remember the coffin being brought here to lie in state in the Rotunda.

We heard the distinguished majority leader at that time, Mike Mansfield, a very close friend of John Kennedy, give a eulogy. He spoke of President Kennedy's and Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding rings. She took her husband's ring from his finger. It was 40 years ago, but I remember it so well.

I did not meet Senator Mansfield until more than 10 years later when I was the Senator-elect from Vermont. I got to know him well and realized the depth of his affection and his friendship for President Kennedy, with whom he had served in the Senate. It must have been so difficult for him to give that eulogy.

For two days, there were people--not just officials from Washington, D.C., but people from all over the country--who were stretched literally for miles, waiting to pay their respects. I can still see them huddled in their coats with frost from their breath in the air as they stood in line all night.

We stayed at our apartment to watch the funeral, because we were expecting our first child. We felt the crowd would have made it too difficult to go back downtown.

At the funeral, there were heads of state marching from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to St. Matthews. There were Prime Ministers, Presidents, Kings, Princes, and dictators. Someone came up with the idea of having the representatives march based on the name of their country. The head of France marched next to head of Ethiopia. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia marched next to Charles de Gaulle.

The interesting thing about this is the way the world came together. In fact, for a while there was a rumor that Premier Khrushchev might come. Remember, this was the height of the Cold War. This was when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev had stared across oceans at each other during the Cuban missile crisis. Khrushchev was dissuaded from coming by security considerations. Instead, he personally went to the American Embassy to sign the book of condolences. This was the kind of unity that was felt around the world.

Actually, I cannot think of any time when we felt that kind of unity and support for the United States, until the tragedy, 38 years later, of September 11.

Everybody watched the television, listened to the radio, or stood downtown to watch the funeral. We saw on television planes fly by in a missing man formation followed by Air Force One tipping its wing in salute. We ran outside just in time to see the planes which we had seen seconds before on television fly over our heads.

Looking around, everybody else had run outside too. We stood there, neighbors and strangers.

At that time, there was so much optimism, so much hope, even though it was at the height of the Cold War, and even though we had just experienced the Cuban missile crisis. After the death of President Kennedy, we felt so much of this optimism was lost.

I saw the unity come back after September 11. I don't know if the optimism will ever came back fully. We were optimistic of many things.

In my lifetime, we have seen so many wonderful advances in science. When I was young, we had to worry about polio. Our children and my two grandchildren will never have to worry about those kinds of things. Our country has had many wonderful advances and much to be optimistic about. There was unity and support from around the world for the United States right after that event, as there was right after September 11. We are now in a time where that unity is missing. I hope it will come back.

I hope this weekend all Members of this body--most of us are old enough to remember that day--I hope we stop and think what is best for this country. It is time to start working together more closely, with more support for each other and the country, and it is time to help restore some of the optimism. We are a great country. We have survived world wars, civil wars, Presidential assassinations, and terrorist attacks. We can survive much more--if not for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print President Kennedy's 1963 commencement address delivered at American University.

Mr. President, yesterday saw passage of yet another example of this Administration's secret efforts to further expand secret powers of the FBI. The FBI can now use National Security Letters, NSLs, which do not require approval by a court, grand jury, or prosecuting attorney, to demand confidential financial records from car dealers, pawn brokers, travel and real estate agents, and other businesses, and to prohibit the business from disclosing that the records have been sought or obtained.

There is no requirement that the FBI demonstrate a need for such records. It need only assert that the records are ``sought for'' an intelligence or terrorism investigation. Nor are there sufficient limits on what the FBI may do with the records or how it must store them. For example, information obtained through NSLs may be stored electronically and used for large-scale data mining operations.

Congress last expanded the FBI's NSL authority in October 2001, as part of the comprehensive antiterrorism package known as the USA PATRIOT Act. Incredibly, the Intelligence Committee forced passage of this latest expansion without consulting the Judiciary Committee, which oversees both the FBI and the implementation of the PATRIOT Act. Indeed, the Committee is in the midst of holding a series of oversight hearings on the PATRIOT Act, including the very provision that has now been significantly modified.

What is even more incredible is the fact that this very provision is the target of sunset legislation that I and other members of the Judiciary Committee, both Democratic and Republican, have introduced. There is no doubt that we would have meaningfully and thoroughly explored further expansion of the NSL authority had we been given the opportunity to do so.

This is what the new law has done. Under the PATRIOT Act, the FBI was permitted to use NSLs to obtain records from banks and other similar financial institutions if they were ``sought for'' an intelligence or terrorism investigation. Now the term ``financial institution'' has been expanded to include a host of other businesses that have nothing to do with the business of banking, and the term ``financial record'' has been expanded to include any record held by any such business that pertains to a customer.

The FBI has long had the power to obtain this sort of information, whether through a judicial subpoena or a search warrant. But with the stealth amendment of the NSL authority, the FBI can now obtain a vast amount of personal and highly confidential information without obtaining court approval, and without any other independent check on the validity or scope of the inquiry. The privacy rights of all Americans have been compromised as a result.

Mr. President, today I introduce an important, bipartisan piece of legislation that will amend the Trade Act of 1974 to help ensure that America's intellectual property rights are properly protected by our trading partners and that disputes between America and other governments can be investigated and resolved in a quick and sensible manner.

This bill makes commonsense changes to three important aspects of the Trade Act of 1974. First, this bill makes certain that our partners who benefit from trade with the United States adequately protect American intellectual property. The TRIPS standards (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property) that the World Trade Organization uses today in order to determine if a country is protecting intellectual property laws were written in the early 1990s--before digital piracy had become widespread. Our legislation will codify the necessity on the part of other nations to keep intellectual property protections current with technology.

In addition, this measure will establish a petition process for bringing intellectual property claims against trade partners in the Caribbean Basin who fail to enforce intellectual property rights while benefiting from profitable trading programs. Under current law, there is no provision for parties to petition the United States Trade Representative to investigate whether or not one of our Caribbean partners is meeting the criterion of ``fair and effective'' enforcement of intellectual property rights in order to benefit from special trade programs. This legislation invests the USTR with the power to ensure that beneficiaries of favorable trading programs will not be rewarded for failing to protect intellectual property in a meaningful way.

Finally, this bill will correct an undesirable and unintended technical deficiency of the Trade Act of 1974 when applied to the dispute mechanisms of the World Trade Organization. Current

timelines for investigating intellectual property violations under the Trade Act force the USTR to designate certain countries as failing to protect intellectual property before a complete investigation can be completed and make it virtually impossible to negotiate with that country or bring a WTO dispute settlement case in order to resolve a dispute. This bill amends Section 301 of the Trade Act to make sure that investigations can proceed before policy is made.

Mr. President, today I introduce an important, bipartisan piece of legislation that will amend the Trade Act of 1974 to help ensure that America's intellectual property rights are properly protected by our trading partners and that disputes between America and other governments can be investigated and resolved in a quick and sensible manner.

This bill makes commonsense changes to three important aspects of the Trade Act of 1974. First, this bill makes certain that our partners who benefit from trade with the United States adequately protect American intellectual property. The TRIPS standards (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property) that the World Trade Organization uses today in order to determine if a country is protecting intellectual property laws were written in the early 1990s--before digital piracy had become widespread. Our legislation will codify the necessity on the part of other nations to keep intellectual property protections current with technology.

In addition, this measure will establish a petition process for bringing intellectual property claims against trade partners in the Caribbean Basin who fail to enforce intellectual property rights while benefiting from profitable trading programs. Under current law, there is no provision for parties to petition the United States Trade Representative to investigate whether or not one of our Caribbean partners is meeting the criterion of ``fair and effective'' enforcement of intellectual property rights in order to benefit from special trade programs. This legislation invests the USTR with the power to ensure that beneficiaries of favorable trading programs will not be rewarded for failing to protect intellectual property in a meaningful way.

Finally, this bill will correct an undesirable and unintended technical deficiency of the Trade Act of 1974 when applied to the dispute mechanisms of the World Trade Organization. Current

timelines for investigating intellectual property violations under the Trade Act force the USTR to designate certain countries as failing to protect intellectual property before a complete investigation can be completed and make it virtually impossible to negotiate with that country or bring a WTO dispute settlement case in order to resolve a dispute. This bill amends Section 301 of the Trade Act to make sure that investigations can proceed before policy is made.

Mr. President, I rise today to commend the Federal Communications Commission for its continuing work on the important broadcast flag regulations. Over-the air-television remains a critical part of the distribution of American television, and these regulations help to promote and improve over-the-air broadcasting of high quality digital programming. They do this by giving broadcasters the tools they need to protect their digital

broadcasts against piracy. Without this protection, broadcasters would simply not broadcast their high value content over the air, and we would be left with two classes of American consumers: those who can afford, and live somewhere where they can receive, cable television with its high-value content, and those who receive only low-value over- the-air television. We must not allow this to happen.

While I am encouraged by the FCC's progress, and in particular pleased to see that they have taken steps to keep the setting of technical criteria for protective technologies open and transparent, the FCC's recent notice of proposed rulemaking raises some concerns. First, the FCC should make the process inclusive of all parties with an interest in the outcome, especially consumers. Second, a sound final regulation should address the effect of a broadcast flag on fair use rights and works that are already in the public domain. Third, the final regulation should address the broadcast flag's effect on privacy. What is intended as a technological measure to ensure the security of over-the-air broadcasts should not turn into an ability to track viewer behavior. Last, the final regulation must continue to ensure that no one player becomes dominant in this industry, and that the American consumer continues to reap the benefits of innovative new technologies. Most of all, the FCC should not lose sight of the most important goal of these regulations: to provide the highest quality content possible through over-the-air television. I am confident that it will do so.

Mr. President, the Burlington Free Press recently ran a story about expansion plans by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury, VT. The company has begun work on a 52,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center that will significantly expand manufacturing capacity. Under the leadership of Bob Stiller, Green Mountain Coffee has consistently been rated one of the fastest growing and best managed small public companies in the United States.

Small businesses are the backbone of Vermont's economy, and Green Mountain Coffee has been an outstanding corporate partner in our State for over 20 years. Started in a small cafe in Waitsfield, VT, in 1981, growing into a publicly traded company in 1993, and now announcing this $8.4 million expansion in Waterbury, Green Mountain has been a national leader in the specialty coffee market and an international leader in promoting fair trade coffee.

I commend Bob and all the employees at Green Mountain Coffee for their success at not only selling great coffee but also promoting sustainable farming throughout the world. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article that appeared in the Burlington Free Press be printed in the Record so that all Senators can read about the success of this company.

Madam President, I agree, this can be an issue and probably should be an issue in the election, but let's make sure it is an issue on the facts. There is this discussion we heard on the floor this last hour or so of the great vacancies. That is balderdash.

The fact is, there are more Federal judges sitting right now than at any time in history. We have been told that we are blocking 130. There are only 40 vacancies, approximately 40 vacancies in the whole country. Let's get our numbers right. This number is right. We have confirmed 168; we have blocked 4. We confirmed 168; we blocked 4. That is the fact.

It is hard on the other side to hear that, after they blocked over 60 of President Clinton's nominees by one-person filibusters, but it is a fact. We confirmed 168; we stopped 4. They stopped 61.

Thank you.