Barbara Boxer

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I understand that under the unanimous consent agreement, I am to call up my amendment No. 3311 at this time.

Mrs. BOXER. I will be happy to yield without losing my right to the floor.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I yield to my friend from Florida or my friend from Nevada, whomever.

Mrs. BOXER. I am delighted to yield to my friend, assuming we go right back to this amendment as we originally intended in our UC agreement; is that correct, that is what will happen under the UC agreement?

Mrs. BOXER. No, I do not want to speak for about an hour. I want to argue this, and I have 50 minutes remaining on my time. Other Senators want to speak, if they come. I am not interested in stalling.

Mrs. BOXER. Will my colleague yield for a question?

Mrs. BOXER. It is just ethanol minus ETBE, which as I understand it is about 2 percent--a very small percentage of the ethanol. Those are the only two. There is another point I want to make to my friend. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this letter from the Association of California Water Agencies, American Water Works Association, and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, yesterday I introduced the Women's Autoimmune Diseases Research and Prevention Act. This legislation would expand, intensify and better coordinate activities between the Office on Women's Health, the National Institutes of Health and other national research institutes with respect to autoimmune diseases in women. The term ``autoimmune disease'' refers to a varied group of more than 80 serious, chronic illnesses that involve the human organ system; the nervous, gastrointestinal and endocrine systems; the skin and other connective tissues; the eyes; and blood and blood vessels. These are illnesses where the body's protective mechanisms go haywire, and where the body's immune system attacks the very organs it was designed to protect. Overall, some 50 million Americans are afflicted with some form of autoimmune disease. But for reasons we do not understand, the vast majority of those affected, approximately 75 percent, are women, and most are stricken during the working and childbearing years. Taken together, autoimmune diseases represent the fourth largest cause of disability among women in the United States. These diseases, which include lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, fybromyalgia, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Graves' disease, Epstein-Barr virus and chronic active hepatitis, are heartbreaking and debilitating. In virtually all of these diseases the female-to-male ratios are dramatically skewed toward women, in some cases by ratios as high as 50 to 1. Autoimmune diseases remain among the most poorly understood and poorly recognized of any category of illnesses, and although science suggests they may have a genetic component, they can cluster in families as different illnesses. For example, a mother may have lupus; her daughter, diabetes; and her grandmother, rheumatoid arthritis. To help women live longer, healthier lives, more research is needed to shed light on genetic as well as hormonal and environmental risk factors that contribute to the causes of autoimmune diseases, as well as providing early diagnosis and treatment. The legislation I have introduced addresses all of these issues. It directs the Office on Women's Health to conduct or support research to expand the understanding of the causes of, and develop methods for preventing, autoimmune diseases in women, including African American women and other women who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups. It calls for more epidemiological studies to address the frequency and natural history of these diseases and the differences among women and men. The bill also promotes the development of safe, efficient and cost- effective diagnostic approaches to evaluating women with suspected autoimmune diseases, as well as clinical research on new treatments and rehabilitation for women. Finally, it provides for expanded information and education programs for patients and health care providers on genetic, hormonal, and environmental risk factors associated with autoimmune diseases in women, as well as the prevention and control of such risk factors. Autoimmune diseases run the gamut from mild to disabling to life threatening. Nearly all affect women at far greater rates than men. The question before the scientific community is ``why?'' We have come a long way in the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune disease. But more work is desperately needed, more information must be made available, and more resources must be devoted to this effort. The Women's Autoimmune Diseases Research and Prevention Act can contribute to the growing body of knowledge about these awful illnesses. But it is not enough to simply understand these diseases well. We must ensure that the millions of American women stricken with autoimmune disease also live long, and well.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. They have come together behind Senators Cantwell and Dayton to say: Please, fix this bill. Do not do what California did. Just because something is changing does not mean it is changing in a right way. We have to be very careful. Did we learn anything in California, Washington, and Oregon? The word ``deregulation'' is a beautiful word. I love it. I wish we didn't need regulations, and I wish everyone did everything right. However, in a society where you must have your heat and you must have your air because you must run a business, you must make sure an elderly person in summer does not suffer from the dangers of heat exhaustion, you have to have a way to make sure this important need is not forgone. I thank my friend. The California experience is forever seared in my mind and heart. I don't want other States to go through the same thing. This amendment will help in that regard. I hope the Senator wins this amendment. The way things are going, we may not make it. But we are on the right side. We are not going to give up. Just as we learned in California, we can vote a lot of things in, but when the people say, What are you doing, we come back here pretty darn quick. From my experience in California, this is not the way to go. This underlying bill is not the way to go. My friend has pinpointed the need for consumer protections. I thank the Senator.

Mrs. BOXER. Yes, I will be glad to yield.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I thank my friend and colleague, Senator Maria Cantwell, and Senator Dayton for bringing this amendment to the floor. I am a strong cosponsor of it. Senator Cantwell made a point that we need to learn what happened to those of us on the west coast who went through a terrible crisis in electricity and runaway price hikes. We all know if we do not look at history and the mistakes that were made, we are going to repeat those mistakes. What the Senator from Washington is trying to do--and some of us are strongly behind her--is to tell the rest of our colleagues that we hope they prepare against what happened to us and make sure consumers are not forgotten. I am stunned that there would even be objection to this amendment. All we are doing is ensuring that since PUHCA was repealed, we want to make sure the standard is not lowered. We want to make sure consumers are protected. I can guarantee that those who vote for this bill, if this amendment goes down, are going to be back here complaining that they really did not understand what we were doing when we did not protect consumers. How do I know this? Because it is clear. What did we learn from Enron? Remember Enron? We learned that they did everything in secret. They did everything in secret. They sold the same electricity 15 times over. This is according to testimony from the people in California who suffered the consequences. I guess, I say to my colleague, if the rest of this Senate wants to see an energy crisis happen in their States, all we can do is offer up this amendment as a way to stop it. But in the underlying bill, there is very little transparency. We need to make sure the books and records of these companies are open and they are clear so that my colleagues in their States can see why their prices are going up 100 percent, 200 percent, 300 percent. In our case, it was over a 500-percent increase in the price of electricity. By the way, demand was going down. It is extraordinary. One year ago, April 2001, wholesale electricity was selling for $201 per megawatt. A year earlier before the crisis began, it was $32 per megawatt. It went up $32 to $201. That is a 528- percent increase. Why did it happen? Because of deregulation. The problem is, there was no transparency. Everyone was paying more. We had rolling blackouts. We had horrible problems. Believe me when I tell you, Madam President--you know this because you have visited California often--this is a State that, if it was a nation, according to our gross domestic product, would be the fifth largest nation in the world. When I started in politics, we were ninth. It shows you how long I have been in politics, but it also shows the incredible growth of our agricultural sector and Silicon Valley and their need to have electricity. Mind you, it is not wasted. California now is the No. 1 State in energy efficiency per capita. During the crisis, our demand went down. No one can tell us our prices went up because demand went up, which is what the Vice President said. Our demand went down. We have been amazing at saving. Someone has to look out for the consumer, and that is why I support what Senator Cantwell is doing. I, frankly, believed repealing PUHCA in the underlying bill was not the way to go. That was my opinion. But since we have taken the matter of PUHCA and transferred those responsibilities to FERC, let's at least make sure FERC has the same opportunity to learn the facts as the SEC did under PUHCA. That is why this amendment is so important. This is what Loretta Lynch, the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, testified last week before the Commerce Committee about FERC and the weakening of its reporting requirements. Ms. Lynch testified: FERC has over the past few years at the urging of Enron and others diluted the reporting requirements, loosened the accounting rules and exempted large classes of energy sellers from making required disclosures. This is not from me. This is from someone on the ground, the head of our public utilities commission. Then she goes on to say: FERC does not even require the same data to be filed in its quarterly reports, allowing companies like Enron to hide the true nature and extent of activities through skeletal public reporting and not be called to account by FERC. The bottom line is, with this amendment, we are trying to restore some transparency. We need to see what these companies are doing. As I say, it is stunning to me that we do not have support for this amendment, which is very modest in what it tries to do. The Senator from Washington has taken the critiques of this amendment and has answered one point at a time. The critiques we have heard in this debate simply are not right. One of the claims is that we keep PUHCA on the books. How ridiculous. PUHCA is repealed. We do not bring it back. All we are saying is now that the underlying bill gives the responsibility of PUHCA to FERC, there ought to be some rules that show we care about the consumer and that the consumer will not be forgotten. In closing, I think the Senator from Washington knows her stuff on this. She is on the Energy Committee. She gets it. She is taking the lessons of the west coast, what happened to our consumers, which was devastating, and saying to everyone: Please listen to us. We want to avoid this in the rest of the country. That is why she has the support of the AARP. Older Americans are the ones who get caught. They live on fixed incomes. When those electricity prices go up, it is not fun and games. This is real people suffering. They suffered in Oregon, they suffered in Washington, and they suffered in California. So what are we doing in this bill? Nothing to really help them. We are ensuring this cannot happen elsewhere, and that is why we have so many others supporting this amendment, such as the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers for Fair Competition, the Consumers Union, the Electricity Consumers Resource Council, the National Alliance for Fair Competition, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, the National Environmental Trust, the National League of Cities, the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Physicians for Social Responsibility. This is a health issue when people cannot turn on the air- conditioning. If we do not protect the consumers, we have problems. Public Citizens supports this amendment, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. This is the consumer protection package. My colleague from Washington did a good job. She took amendments from those of us who were looking at different areas where we thought the bill did not reach the level of consumer protection it should and put them into an omnibus amendment. I congratulate her. I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER. That is the key. The fact is, in our States--I will just talk to my State--the only agency we had to protect us was FERC. FERC, under the Clinton administration, found that the prices were unjust and unreasonable. Then there was a switch in administrations and they never repealed that. They admitted they were unjust and unreasonable, but they did absolutely nothing to help us--for 1 year. We were talking about billions of dollars of costs. The long-term contracts were signed under duress by our Governor because the spot market was so impossible he tried to get some of the demand away from the spot market, went into these long-term contracts. Fortunately, he has begun to renegotiate those. We have asked FERC to help us renegotiate most of them. It is stunning to me that this underlying bill gives so much more power to FERC when under the law as it existed they did nothing to help our people for 1 year. They finally put in place the market-based pricing and, by the way, it cured our problem. After this administration saying for a year that it would not cure our problem, it cured our problem. Those market-based prices are set to expire in September, and already the new Chairman of FERC has hinted that he is not going to reimpose those price caps. So I say to my colleague, the only agency--because we had deregulated in our State, and believe me there was enough blame to go around. It was a bipartisan deregulation recommended by Pete Wilson, our then- Governor, and it went through. Enron and others had absolutely no one looking over their shoulder, and the only agency that could have done anything to help us against unjust and unreasonable prices was FERC. The bottom line is: They did nothing for a year. It was a disaster. In this underlying bill, we are giving FERC even more work by repealing PUHCA, which was administered by the SEC, and giving it over to FERC, and having very few requirements on the open books and records. So a company such as Enron--Enron is gone. They said California would sink, but they sank. We are OK. They sank. But there is going to be Enron II and Enron III and Enron IV because, unfortunately, they showed how it could be dealt with, at least in the short term. When that happens under the underlying bill, there is very little that FERC will be able to get at in terms of the transparency of the records. The one thing we learned was there was a lot of secrecy going on. The sale of electricity--Enron was a broker, in between the generators and the consumers, so Enron would go buy electricity from a generator at a pretty good price for the generator but then they would sell it to themselves, 14 times to subsidiaries. Each time they showed a profit on the books to make Enron look more successful, more profitable, and each time they jacked up the rates until it got to the final sale at 520 percent--sometimes higher--than it was the year before, and that became the benchmark price. All this was secret. We have an opportunity in an energy bill to make sure this experience does not happen again. What do we do? We step back. That is why the consumer groups in this country are absolutely upset about this bill and why they have come together in an unprecedented number. I ask unanimous consent to have the list of organizations supporting this amendment printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, today I recognize and pay tribute to Dr. Walter L. Buster, Superintendent of Clovis Unified School District in Clovis, CA as he prepares to retire. Dr. Buster has been in education for over 50 years, seventeen of those years as a school superintendent and the last 7 years as Superintendent for Clovis Unified School District. Dr. Buster is committed to educational excellence. He has taught all levels of school: elementary, junior high, high school and college, successfully serving many school districts in California and along the way has implemented visionary programs. In Clovis Unified, Dr. Buster implemented Class Size Reduction and Early Literacy Instruction in grades 1-3. In these grade levels, only 20 students or fewer are enrolled in each class, thus giving the students a better ability to learn during these critical early years. Some of his most prized work in Clovis Unified School District has been in the following programs: Community of Readers, a program where volunteers in the community are trained to assist students with reading one hour each week; CHARACTER COUNTS, a program that teaches the six pillars of success--Responsibility, Respect, Fairness, Caring, Citizenship and Trustworthiness; and Laptops for Learners, a program developed to assist 7th, 8th and 9th graders in classes where laptop computer are used as learning tools. Dr. Buster is truly a credit to the educational system. He has established as a standard a high level of integrity and decency. He is a man of great determination and dedication who has worked tirelessly to educate our children. I am honored to congratulate and pay tribute to him, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in wishing Dr. Walter L. Buster best wishes as he embarks on future endeavors.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. I would like to sum up in 1 more minute, if I might.

Mrs. BOXER. I will go to the Los Angeles Times editorial which I thought was right on point. They say: Wilderness is or it is not. There is no mostly wilderness with just a little bit of development. It continues: No matter what Dick Cheney says, U.S. energy security does not depend on drilling for fuel in the Arctic refuge. The Alaskan oil would not come on line for 10 years. It goes through that. It says: The fastest way to gain more energy security is to use less oil and use it more efficiently. It shows that better tires alone will give you more oil than lies in the refuge. Then it ends up: The nation doesn't need a muscle-bound energy policy. It needs a smart one--one that does not rely so heavily on fossil fuels and fossil thinking. The choice is clear. I respect my friends from the other side on this debate, but I hope we will defeat the proposal to open the refuge.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank Senators Bingaman and Reid for their generosity in giving me this 7 minutes of time. I have been trying to get some time on this matter for quite a while. Mr. President, I am not going to get into a number of details today. What I really want to do is paint more of a broad-brush argument as to why it is so important to preserve this beautiful area. Some 2 years ago, I sent my eyes and ears, my top environmental adviser on the Arctic, Sara Barth, who is in the Chamber today, to the area in my stead. I think it is fair to say that she came back a changed person because of what she had seen because she really, truly was stunned by the beauty of this area. Many times in the debate, when people have been talking about this area, it has sounded as though this area is not really a beautiful area. So what I thought I would do today is put in the Record information that has been taken off the Web site of the Bush administration's Interior Department. This was given to me by Chairman Bingaman. I think it is a good way for me to lead off. It is not Barbara Boxer's words or the Sierra Club's words or the wildlife people's words. It is the Bush administration's words. If you go on their Web site, you get it. It says: The Unique Conservation Values of Arctic Refuge. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the largest unit in the National Wildlife Refuge System. The Refuge is America's finest example of an intact, naturally functioning community of arctic/subarctic ecosystems. Such a broad spectrum of diverse habitats occurring within a single protected unit is unparalleled in North America, and perhaps in the entire circumpolar north. When the Eisenhower Administration established the original Arctic Range in 1960, Secretary of Interior Seaton described it as-- And this is a quote from Eisenhower's Secretary of Interior-- one of the world's great wildlife areas. The great diversity of vegetation and topography in this compact area, together with its relatively undisturbed condition, led to its selection as . . . one of our remaining wildlife and wilderness frontiers. I think nothing says it better than the words of our own former Interior Secretary under President Eisenhower. And this is from the Web site of Interior Secretary Norton today. I want to show a few beautiful photographs. I know the Senators from Alaska live in a magnificent place. Some of these photos are just unbelievable. Here in this photo we see an area in the Coastal Plain, the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a photograph by Pamela Miller. The incredible colors are stunning. We will go to the next photo because we have so little time and so many photos. This is a beautiful picture of a songbird that you can find in the refuge. It makes clear why these words are up on the Web site of our own Interior Department. This is a magnificent photograph as well. Here is a polar bear, which I know we have seen walking across a pipeline, but here it is walking in its natural surroundings--very beautiful. Here are the caribou. I think you have seen a lot of this before. Here are the musk oxen--quite beautiful. I have another beautiful landscape to show of another view of this magnificent area. We do have drilling in a national wildlife refuge there in Alaska. Everyone says there is no damage done. Remember the pictures I just showed. Now look at how it is all left with these floating barrels. It is a pretty devastated site. I think you need to come back to the question of what is a refuge. You could look it up in the dictionary: a place to find comfort and peace and tranquility. Therefore, it seems to me it doesn't make any sense to disturb a refuge. When you do this, if you go this way and drill there, we are going to disturb it. Someone sent me a cartoon. I think it was a constituent. It never ran in the newspaper, but it basically says: The George Bush Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It shows that cars are lapping up the oil on the plain. And it says: Where S.U.V.s are free to roam without fear of regulation. That is somebody's sense of humor about what we are going to do to the wildlife refuge. I hope we don't. I hope we hold the line. It is very fair for people who don't agree with me on this to ask: What is your solution? I really want to talk about that. We know when something isn't a solution. In my opinion, the amount of oil there, from everything we know, is hardly going to make a dent. Here is a chart that shows that. We have a chart that shows the projected consumption of U.S. citizens of oil. Right down here on this little black line is the amount of oil we will get, 3.2 billion barrels over 50 years. I have another chart that tells the tale. You save 2.38 billion barrels more oil from the Arctic if you have just better tires. With just better tires, you get more oil. And then if you close the SUV loophole, which is really not that hard to do--they are going to have hybrid SUVs coming up shortly--you save about 10 billion barrels. And if you just go up to 35 miles per gallon--Senator Kerry led us so well on that issue; I think we made a huge mistake--we save 18 billion barrels. So look at this. Out of all these options, you get more oil if you just use better tires. Some of the people who want to drill seem to oppose a lot of these other easy ways to govern.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, today Senator Santorum and I are proud to introduce the Syria Accountability Act, a bill that will ensure that Syria is held accountable for its actions in the Middle East and for its support of international terrorism. As a state-sponsor of terrorism, Syria has supported and provided safe haven to several terrorist groups, such as Hizballah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This is in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that call on U.N. member states to refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts. Syria is also in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions that call for the sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon. More than 20,000 Syrian troops and security personnel occupy much of the sovereign territory of Lebanon and it is time for them to leave. The legislation we are offering today would expand sanctions on Syria until the President certifies that Syria has met four conditions. First, that it does not support international terrorist groups; Second, that it has withdrawn all military, intelligence, and other security personnel from Lebanon; Third, that it has stopped developing ballistic missiles and has stopped the development and production of biological and chemical weapons; and Fourth, that it no longer in violation of relevant U.N. Security Council Resolutions. To give maximum flexibility to the President, we have included a ``menu'' of sanctions for the President to choose from and a provision that would waive sanctions should the President find that it is in the national security interest of the United States. I hope my colleagues can support this legislation and ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, today Senator Santorum and I are proud to introduce the Syria Accountability Act, a bill that will ensure that Syria is held accountable for its actions in the Middle East and for its support of international terrorism. As a state-sponsor of terrorism, Syria has supported and provided safe haven to several terrorist groups, such as Hizballah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This is in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that call on U.N. member states to refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts. Syria is also in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions that call for the sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon. More than 20,000 Syrian troops and security personnel occupy much of the sovereign territory of Lebanon and it is time for them to leave. The legislation we are offering today would expand sanctions on Syria until the President certifies that Syria has met four conditions. First, that it does not support international terrorist groups; Second, that it has withdrawn all military, intelligence, and other security personnel from Lebanon; Third, that it has stopped developing ballistic missiles and has stopped the development and production of biological and chemical weapons; and Fourth, that it no longer in violation of relevant U.N. Security Council Resolutions. To give maximum flexibility to the President, we have included a ``menu'' of sanctions for the President to choose from and a provision that would waive sanctions should the President find that it is in the national security interest of the United States. I hope my colleagues can support this legislation and ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. One idea that has come up time and again in conversation with my constituents and various organizations in my State of California, is the possibility of creating a Federal holiday on election day. I think that this would be one of the most effective ways to ensure that as many people as possible have an opportunity to cast their vote and exercise that most fundamental democratic right. Many of the hard-working people in this country--people for whom election day represents a unique opportunity to make their voices heard--find it difficult to get to the polls. Many work long hours, or have children that they have to get to school. Would the Senator from Connecticut agree that we should make it easier for these people to cast their vote as well?

Mrs. BOXER. I hope that such a study would be thorough in investigating each of those possibilities and that it would be conducted as soon as reasonably possible. If such a study were to conclude that the creation of an election day holiday was possible and would indeed further the goals of this bill, we would want to begin the process of making it happen as soon as possible. Could my friend from Connecticut assure me that this study will be thorough and will be undertaken promptly upon enactment of this legislation?

Mrs. BOXER. I had considered offering an amendment to this bill that would in fact create a federal holiday on election day to help give as many people as possible the opportunity to vote. I would ask my friend from Connecticut if such a proposal was ever considered when this bill was being drafted?

Mrs. BOXER. I look forward to working with my good friend from Connecticut in pushing the Commission to complete the study. In the meantime, I am introducing legislation to establish election day in Presidential election years as a legal public holiday.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank my good friend from Connecticut and commend him for his hard work on this bill; I agree with him when he refers to this as ``landmark legislation.'' The Dodd-McConnell compromise makes many necessary improvements in our current elections system and moves us toward the ultimate goal that we all share of ensuring that our elections are fair, accurate and accessible to all. In addition to securing the fairness of elections, however, I believe that it is in the best interest of our Nation, as with any representative democracy, to see that as many people as possible participate in the process. Would my friend from Connecticut agree with me that ensuring high turnout at the voting booth is also an important goal in terms of improving our electoral process?

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I rise today to bring to the Senate's attention the exemplary achievements and outstanding service of Nancy Richardson, a resident of Fresno, CA. Nancy Richardson has worked her whole adult life as a community activist and dedicated advocate for children. It is because of her superb work and commitment to the community that she is being honored with the Excellence in Public Service Award. Nancy has a long list of achievements in the community. She was a member of the Fresno Unified School District Board of Trustees, served as a coordinator of the Interagency Council, served on the Fresno County Mental Health Board and was the first sworn Court Appointed Special Advocate, CASA, volunteer and now works on the Foster Care Oversight Committee. She is known for her integrity in all matters she undertakes. Her work is endless, and is devoted to helping children. Nancy Richardson is most deserving of this award and the outpouring of admiration that greets her each day. I am honored to pay tribute to her, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in wishing Nancy Richardson much continued success as she continues her dedicated service.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.