Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I want to take a moment on the heels of the comments of my friend and colleague from Georgia to look at some of the hard and fast numbers. We can conjecture here all we want about what is going to happen to the price of gasoline going forward. He suggested it is going up by 100 percent or 150 percent--who knows? Here is what happened. This we do know. We do know the price of gasoline starting back here in 2001 was at about $1.50 a gallon and has risen today to almost $4 a gallon. We do know that. We can conjecture until the cows come home about what might happen in the future, but we do know what happened in the past under the watch of the current administration. It is not pretty. If we want to make sure this trend continues, we will not come up with ways to reduce our consumption of oil; we will not produce more energy-efficient cars, trucks, and vans; we will not reduce the amount of miles we travel in our communities and our States; we will not find a whole host of ways to conserve energy; we will not come up with ways to conserve energy through renewables. If we don't do any of those things, this kind of thing will continue. Our challenge here today and the way to make sure this doesn't continue is to pursue legislation along the tracks of that which is before us today and this week. I begin today by commending the work of Senator Boxer, Senator Lieberman, Senator Warner, and others in developing this global warming legislation. Let me say to my colleagues, your initial bill was a good start. I believe the version that has been brought before the Senate this week represents a significant improvement over that original proposal. The leadership of this troika--it is actually tripartisan leadership--a Democrat, a Republican, and an Independent--your leadership gives me hope we will pass landmark legislation on this front, not this week, not this month, probably not this year, but in the not too distant future when hopefully we have a new administration, regardless of who is President, who is more amenable, more supportive, more understanding of addressing global warming. I plan to do all I can in the meantime to make sure we do not lose that opportunity. As a lot of my colleagues may know, addressing global warming has been an important issue for me since my early days in the Senate. I think the facts are indisputable today. Our planet is growing warmer. We human beings are a major contributor to that. My passion on this issue began about a dozen or so years ago when I first met two doctors, Dr. Lonnie Thompson and Dr. Ellen Mosley- Thompson, as they received something called the Commonwealth Award for Science in Wilmington, DE for their pioneering work on global warming. The Thompsons are natives of West Virginia, as am I, and they are both professors at Ohio State University, where I received my undergraduate degree, and both are world renowned for their research on the effects global climate change is having on glaciers and ice fields throughout the world. Measuring levels of carbon from ice core samples that go back nearly 1 million years in time, they focused on glaciers and ice caps atop mountains in Africa and South America. They have concluded that many of them--that being the mountains and glaciers, the ice caps on the mountains and glaciers--will probably melt within the next 15 years or so because of global warming. They fear little can be done to save them. It is up to us in this body to prove the skeptics wrong, to show we can do something, we can pull together and we can address this threat to our planet. Three years ago during our Senate debate on this same issue, I stressed that the Arctic sea ice had shrunk by 250 million acres over the past 30 years, an area about the size of California, Maryland, Texas--and maybe Delaware--combined. Today, I am sad to say, the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by not 250 million acres but 650 million acres, an area the size of Alaska and Texas combined or the size of 10 United Kingdoms combined. If we continue down this path on which we have started, the consequences for our planet and our country and our people will be catastrophic. It is up to us to ensure that America leads the world down a different path. We must and we should. The EPA estimates that unless global warming is controlled, sea levels will rise by as much as 2 feet over the next 50 years. I have heard even greater amounts over the next 100 years. For island nations and coastlines, that could mean entire cities and beaches are wiped out. It is up to us in this body to ensure that those beaches and those cities, those coastlines, are preserved. I have a chart here I want to share with my friends. For those of you who have not been to Delaware, this is Delaware: About 100 miles end to end, and from east to west, maybe 50 miles here. This is the outline of our coast. This is Lewes. This is Cape Henlopen. This is Rehoboth Beach, Dewey Beach, Bethany Beach, Fenwick Island, the Nation's summer capital. This is where the beach is today. Fifty years from now, if we don't do anything about global warming, sea level rises will have been 2 feet and this will be the beach in Delaware. This is Dover, DE, our State capital. This past Sunday we hosted 150,000 people from all over the country--NASCAR race. In 50 years from now, if we are not careful, this will not be Dover, it will be Dover Beach. We won't be having NASCAR races at Dover Beach. We may be having sailing regattas, we may have motorboat races, but we will not be having stock car races unless we do something about it, so this is imperative for a lot of reasons, including some that are close to my heart. Since our last Senate debate on this issue we have seen the scientific community come together on this issue. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has undeniably affirmed that the warming of our climate system is linked to us, human activity. We also know the United States is one of the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, along with the Chinese. In fact, they may have overtaken us by now. We account, in this country, for almost 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and for almost one-quarter of the world's economic output. I believe our Nation has a responsibility to reduce our emissions of CO2. In short, we have a responsibility to lead. Unfortunately, we have not seen a whole lot of leadership coming from the White House or enough from the Congress on this front. At least not yet. That has to change and that change is starting, I hope, this week. Others, in the meantime, have begun filling the void. We have another chart here. This is a chart of our country. There is a lot of green, light green, dark green, and blue. The light green areas are the areas where the States are actually developing their own climate action plans. They have been waiting for us. They have given up on that. They started to take the bull by the horns. Light green is where States have something in progress in terms of developing their climate action plans. The dark greens are the States where they completed action. The blues are where they have revisions in progress--about 38 States. They have been waiting for us. They are tired of waiting for us, and I don't blame them. One of those States is Delaware. We have a plan in my State and a lot of other States will soon have plans to reduce their own carbon emissions. The States are not the only ones filling the void of Federal inaction. Fortunately, our Nation's businesses, a number of them, are doing the same thing. Companies such as DuPont, a global manufacturer headquartered in my home State of Delaware, have taken steps to reduce their own carbon emissions. DuPont CEO Chet Holliday has said: As a company, DuPont believes that action is warranted, not further debate. We also believe the best approach is for business to lead, not to wait for public outcry or government mandates. Contrary to concerns that combating global warming will hurt American businesses, DuPont's actions have had major positive impacts on its bottom line. In the mid-1990s, as part of a climate change initiative, DuPont began aggressively maximizing energy efficiency. That initiative has allowed DuPont to hold its energy use flat while increasing production. As a result, DuPont reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70 percent. By doing so, the company actually saved $3 billion--billion, with a ``b.'' But a patchwork of State initiatives combined with good corporate stewardship, however welcome, is not enough. We must have a comprehensive national approach, not only to give a signal to corporate America that this is a priority, but to the world, the United States is prepared at long last to be a leader on this front as well. I have enough faith in American technology, American ingenuity and know-how, to believe we can provide that leadership without endangering our Nation's economic growth. In fact, if we are smart about it, we will end up strengthening our Nation's economy, we will end up creating hundreds of thousands of new green jobs and we will end up creating products and technologies we can sell and export around the world. I would quote Thomas Edison on opportunity. This is what Thomas Edison loved to say about opportunity: A lot of people miss out on opportunity because opportunity comes along wearing overalls and is disguised and looks a lot like work. You know, some people look at global warming, our dependence on foreign oil or emissions or bad stuff in the air, and they see a problem. I see an opportunity. It is an opportunity that brings with it economic advantages and the possibility of creating jobs and products that flow from that, including technology and jobs and products. Well, that is one of the big reasons I support the approach of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, to provide a solid framework for creating a national, mandatory program to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas over the next 40 years or so. I am pleased to see Chairwoman Boxer's substitute makes several improvements over the bill we passed in the committee last year. Specifically, I applaud the chairwoman's efforts in strengthening the recycling and cost-containment sections of the bill. Let me take a minute here, if I can, colleagues, to focus on the importance of recycling and combating global warming. A lot of times people say: What can I do as an individual to help on global warming? As it turns out, everybody can recycle. Everybody can do that. Here are a couple of reasons why. In 2006, the United States threw away literally, in cans of trash, some 82 million tons of material, with a recycling rate of about one- third--we recycled about a third of that stuff. Let me back up. Let me say that again. In 2006, the United States recycled about 80 million tons of materials. That is about one- third of all that we would otherwise throw away, offsetting the release of some 50 million tons of carbon. That is equivalent to the emissions we save by recycling some 39 million cars each year, because we recycle. However, we only recycle about one-third of what we could. However, each year Americans discard enough aluminum to rebuild our entire domestic airline fleet every 3 months. Put simply, increasing recycling cuts greenhouse gas emissions. To encourage recycling, the bill compels States to bolster recycling programs by requiring that no less than 5 percent of carbon credit revenues allocated to States must be used for improving recycling infrastructure to help States and local communities recycle more. I wish to thank the chairwoman again for working with me on this important issue. Let me talk about cost containment next. I am also pleased with the cost-containment provisions Senator Boxer included in the substitute, such as the extra pool of allowances available in the early years to help contain high prices and the allowances that are returned to customers to keep energy prices down. I believe these provisions are moving us in the right direction to address any runaway costs that might occur in a new market. Although this bill is a good start, I believe we can make some significant improvements in it, particularly in the area of pollution control, in the areas of output allocations and transit, encouraging people to get out of their cars and take a bus, take a train to get where they need to go. Let me start off by addressing the four p's. It stands for the four pollutants. I appreciate that this bill acknowledges that dangerous air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury, are emitted by the power sector in this country. However, acknowledging a problem is not the same as solving that problem. I believe that in addition to reducing greenhouse gases, we must additionally pass a comprehensive bill that also reduces these other three harmful pollutants. As some of my colleagues know because I have driven you crazy over the last 5 or 6 years on this, visiting many of your offices, 12 of my colleagues and I introduced the Clean Air Planning Act of 2007, or CAPA. We believe CAPA provides an aggressive, yet achievable, schedule for powerplants to reduce emissions and alleviate some of our worst air-related health and environmental problems, such as ozone, acid rain, mercury contamination, and, of course, global warming. This multipollutant approach fits perfectly within the framework of this comprehensive global warming bill. I believe we would be foolish to address only one pollutant coming out of our Nation's smokestacks, however important it is--carbon dioxide--while others--sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury--threaten our health and our environment too. My State of Delaware, along with the States around us--Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey--we are at the end of the Nation's tailpipe. We continue to breathe dirty air. During the summer months, when ozone pollution is at its worse, more than 10,000 Delawareans cannot work or carry out daily activities. Nationally, some 27 million children age 13 and younger are being exposed to unhealthy levels of ozone. We have another chart here. Not only do we have problems with folks breathing bad air, which is harming their lungs and their respiratory systems, for young children being carried in the mother's womb, mothers ingest large amounts of fish that contain mercury. This year some 630,000 infants will be born with high levels of mercury exposure. As a result, they could have brain damage. A number of them will have developmental delays, some will have mental retardation, and some of them will have blindness. Sulfur dioxide emissions, meanwhile, from powerplants will cause 24,000 Americans to die this year--24,000 this year, 462 this week, 66 today, and 1 or 2 during the time I am speaking here will die because of exposure to sulfur dioxide emissions from powerplants. I do not know how many people are going to die from climate change, from global warming, from CO2 emissions in this country in this year. I can tell you how many will die from sulfur dioxide--24,000. Twenty-four thousand. That is almost as many people who live in Dover, DE--24,000 people. Fossil fuel-fired powerplants are the single largest source of pollution that is causing these health problems. If we do not act to tighten our emissions of these pollutants, too many communities will continue to live with the air that is unhealthy to breathe and mercury will continue to pollute our communities and bring harm to pregnant women and to children. I believe it is not only the right thing to do but also the economic thing to do. Strict caps for all four pollutants, not just carbon dioxide, can help drive technology toward a comprehensive mitigation rather than a piecemeal approach. That is why I am introducing an amendment, along with Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, that achieves similar reductions for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury that are in CAPA but are adjusted to fit the Lieberman-Warner timetable. The bottom line is, as we develop an economywide solution to global warming, we cannot lose sight of the simultaneous need to enact stricter caps on mercury, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide from powerplants. Next, let me turn to something called output allocations, the way we allocate the credits to polluters that emit carbon dioxide. I applaud this bill's provisions that provide important funding for zero- and low-carbon technology as well as funding to encourage the commercialization of carbon capture and sequestration for coal-fired generation of electricity. However, I believe we are going to use coal for a long time. We have to figure out how to capture the other major pollutants as well, and the sooner the better. I believe the Boxer substitute can do better to support clean and efficient power generation. I am concerned this legislation still provides too many subsidies to dirty, less- efficient power generation at the expense of new, clean technologies. Global warming legislation should make wind and other renewable energy products more economically viable. Affordable clean energy should be one of our main goals. Unfortunately, this bill still continues on the same old paradigm of rewarding the historical polluters by distributing pollution allowances on an ``input'' basis. This means allowances to emit CO2 in this bill are allocated based on historic emissions and the fuel being used rather than with respect to the efficiency with which power is generated. Output-based allocation is an important policy tool to ensure that existing powerplants--particularly coal-fired plants--are made far more efficient and clean within a reasonable period of time. That is why I am planning on offering an amendment to change the distribution of allowances in the fossil fuel-powered sector from an input allocation to an output allocation. It seems to me, colleagues, here we are trying to figure out how to apportion those allowances to emit CO2. Why not provide more allowances to those utilities that create more electricity by using less energy? That is what we should be doing. Unfortunately, what we do in this bill is we provide more allocation to emit CO2 to powerplants that use more energy rather than less energy. We should really provide the allocation and distribution of allowances--to some extent, at least--to reward those that provide a lot of electricity without using a lot of energy. In addition to providing allowances to efficient fossil fuel facilities, my amendment--our amendment--would also provide allowances for new entrants generating electricity from other renewable forms of energy. I have a couple of thoughts on this one. I and some of my colleagues are strong supporters of safe--underline ``safe''--and secure-- underline ``secure''--nuclear power and believe it must be a prominent part of any global warming solution. The resurgence of nuclear power in the United States gives us a unique opportunity to rebuild a carbon-free energy industry and create, in doing so, tens of thousands of highly skilled jobs for building the plants and operating them in the future. But to do this, we must provide support and incentives to the nuclear manufacturers to redevelop the workforce--especially facilities--and capacity to participate and ultimately lead the world in quality nuclear manufacturing. That is why I have joined Senator Warner and Senator Lieberman in an amendment we will offer that provides a sense of the Senate that supports workforce training for the nuclear industry. Next, transit. Finally, I wish to discuss a very important provision in the Boxer substitute that funds transportation alternatives. I talked to you earlier about the importance of getting us out of our cars, trucks, and vans and getting us to take alternative forms of transportation that use less energy and produce less pollution. The transportation sector is responsible for about 30 percent of our Nation's carbon dioxide emissions, almost one-third. That is why Congress passed legislation that I coauthored with a number of my colleagues last year--Senator Feinstein and others--to increase auto fuel economy from an average of 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles a gallon by 2020. The bill before us today also includes a low-carbon fuel standard and funding for alternative fuels. Let's look at this chart here on my left. This line right here shows what CO2 emissions are from our car, truck, and van fleet starting in 2005 by incorporating the new CAFE standards for 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Here is where we end up in CO2 emissions for cars, trucks, and vans. Great progress. Unfortunately, if we keep driving more and more every year, the great reductions in CO2 which could be recognized here are going to end up with no reduction at all unless we do something about vehicle miles traveled and reduce the amount of time we spend in our cars, trucks, and vans rather than continue to see that grow as we have over the last decades. Living in sprawling areas without transit literally can double a family's greenhouse gas emissions. The negative consequences go beyond impacting our environment. With gas prices approaching $4 a gallon, longer commutes and increased distances required for errands costs money too. Public transportation has saved Americans from an additional 286 million hours of sitting in traffic. So we included a provision in this bill--Senator Cardin was very active on this--to use some of the auction proceeds to provide people with an alternative to driving, additional alternatives to people to driving. This provision in the bill would provide transit to more communities and would also expand transit where it already exists. That is good for our environment, it is good for our pocketbooks, and it is good for our peace of mind. While this provision is important, we need to find a way to give communities a greater say in how they can spend their transit dollars. Transit is needed across our Nation. However, many communities would benefit from improved bike and pedestrian infrastructure, be they sidewalks, crosswalks, traffic calming, bike lanes--you name it. In rural areas, increasing freight rail capacity might be the most effective way to reduce vehicle pollution. Ideally, I think we ought to leave it to the local communities to determine which strategy works best for them and therefore allow all communities to take steps to address this portion of transportation pollution. Having said that, the provisions in this bill are a good first attempt to address this problem. We ought to do those, but we can do more and should do more. As the only Member of the Senate who serves on all three transportation-related committees, I look forward to attempting to bring those three committees together and agree on a comprehensive approach to reducing carbon emissions from the transportation sector before we address climate change next year. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about Senator Webb and Senator Hagel's new GI bill. Mr. President, one of the smartest things Congress has ever done is pass the GI bill for World War II veterans. Several of the Members of the Senate--including me--would not be here if it were not for the GI bill. I went to the Ohio State University on a Navy ROTC scholarship, and when I got out, I went to graduate school at the University of Delaware on the GI bill. As you know, the authors of this new veterans benefit proposal and two of my fellow Vietnam veterans--Senators Webb and Hagel--were also able to use the GI bill to help transition back into society after fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. I share their belief that we need to reexamine the current GI bill with an eye toward Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. To that end, Senators Webb and Hagel have worked tirelessly to try to provide the men and women of the Armed Forces who have served since 9/11 with the education benefits they deserve. These two Senators have created a bill that represents the best hope of increasing veterans' education benefits. They should be commended for their hard work and their commitment to our troops. Let me be clear: I support their proposal, and I would be proud to pass an emergency supplemental with this proposal included. However, how we pass this bill will be very important. This emergency supplemental provides these veterans education benefits at about $50 billion over the next 10 years. Like the rest of this bill, there is no offset and no way to pay for these benefits. Our colleagues in the House, however, did something quite different and, in my view, a lot better. When the House passed this same veterans education benefit, they also included a way to pay for it. They created a nominal tax increase of .47 percent on individuals making over $500,000 or couples making over $1 million. By offsetting this increase in veterans' benefits, the House sent a clear message to the country and to the troops. That message was that we will honor the members of the Armed Forces by giving them the benefits they rightfully earned, but we are going to do this in a fiscally responsible way; we are not going to do this by going deeper into the red; we will exercise a little discipline; we will tighten our belts; and we are going meet our troops' sacrifice with a sacrifice of our own. In this time of war and economic hardship, I believe the Senate needs to send a similar message to our troops: We will sacrifice here at home to give you what you deserve, because you sacrificed abroad to protect the United States. That is why I have offered an amendment to this bill that provides the same offset as the House bill. In order to pay for the new GI bill, my amendment calls for a small sacrifice: a nominal tax increase--less than one-half of 1 percent--on individuals making over $500,000 or couples making over $1 million. One of the principles that I have always tried to follow is, if it is worth doing, it is paying for. I doubt any of my colleagues would argue that providing veterans with a new GI bill is not worth doing. So then, I ask my colleagues, why is trying to pay for this benefit not worth doing? I realize my amendment is not the most popular idea. We in the Senate like to talk a good game about the need to rein in Government spending, reduce the deficit, and to adhere to pay-as-you-go principles. But we are not so good at walking the walk. I also know that several of my colleagues have argued that when this bill passes, we will have spent nearly $600 billion in Iraq and none of that has been paid for. Why shouldn't we, then, try to find an offset for $50 billion in education benefits for our veterans? I understand that sentiment. I am a veteran. I benefited from the GI program. And I, too, am not happy about our situation in Iraq. I have complained for years that our spending in Iraq lacks accountability and that we have done little to nothing to make Iraq pay its fair share. Again, I want to unequivocally state that I will vote to pass this new GI bill--offset or not--because our troops deserve this benefit. However, I just feel strongly that before we pass a new entitlement, we should at least make an attempt to pay for it, that we in the Senate should be willing, as the House has done, to put our money where our mouth is, to step up to the plate, and say this is worth doing and it is worth paying for.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I want to say a few words on the 100th anniversary of the National Governors Association. I especially want to thank my friend and colleague Senator Durbin for yielding to me to speak first this evening. It was 100 years ago today that the first meeting of our Nation's Governors took place. In recognition of the National Governors Association's Centennial today, I, along with a number of my colleagues, including Senator Voinovich of Ohio and Senator Alexander of Tennessee, have submitted a resolution commemorating the 100th anniversary of the National Governors Association. It is my hope we will be able to clear this resolution honoring the 100th anniversary this evening. As former Governors currently serving in the Senate, Senators Bayh, Bond, Gregg, and Ben Nelson will also be joining myself and Senator Alexander, along with Senator Rockefeller, in sponsoring this resolution. If you think about it, that is all of the former Governors who now serve in the Senate and who were at one time members of the National Governors Association. I was privileged to serve, along with Senators Voinovich and Alexander, as chairman of the National Governors Association at one time. It is a special privilege for me to take a moment to reflect on the organization's growth and its accomplishments over the last 100 years. On May 15, 1908, 100 years ago today, President Teddy Roosevelt hosted the first meeting of our Nation's Governors at the White House. They gathered to discuss conserving America's natural resources. Now, 100 years later, the Federal Government is still working with our Nation's Governors in an ongoing effort to protect America's natural resources through conservation provisions such as the farm bill that we adopted here today or addressing climate change or protecting our air through legislation such as the Clean Air Planning Act. Today, 100 years later, the National Governors Association serves as the collective voice of our Nation's Governors and remains one of Washington, DC's most respected public policy organizations. Through this bipartisan organization, Governors are able to identify and discuss a broad range of issues relating to public policy and to governance. I have long said the 50 States are laboratories of democracy, and we should use them as such, and we do. Today we do that. From the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters, initiatives and policy recommendations that have come from the Governors often serve as catalysts for change both in the States and at the national level. I was Governor of Delaware back in 1995 when Congress was actively debating how to reform a failing Federal welfare program, trying to decide how do we make work pay more than welfare. Without solutions coming from the Congress, the States had already begun taking reform efforts into their own hands. Over half the States, including my own State of Delaware, and I believe the State of Vermont, had made significant changes to their own welfare programs by seeking waivers from the Federal rules. Many of the welfare policies and practices tested by States were ultimately adopted by the Federal Government in the sweeping 1996 welfare reform legislation passed by the Congress and signed by President Clinton, which the Governors helped to write. As with welfare reform, the National Governors Association has played and continues to play a key role in developing national policies ranging from transportation to education, to environmental protection and health care, to name a few. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower enlisted the Governors' help to help build our very first interstate highway system. The State-Federal partnership forever changed the face of transportation in America and underscored how critical States' participation has been to realizing national goals. The same is true of Medicaid and the SCHIP program, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The same is true of the implementation of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and as we fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the National Guard units of all 50 States. Over the past century, the National Governors Association has played a key role in shaping public policy and addressing America's most pressing challenges. On behalf of each of the former Governors who are privileged to serve today here in the Senate, it is my honor to acknowledge the leadership of Governors both past and present, to celebrate what they have achieved over the last 100 years by working together, and to look toward with anticipation of what lies ahead for our Nation's National Governors Association and for the Governors who will help to lead it in this century and beyond. If I could just add a footnote, I always think of the States as laboratories of democracy. We can test policies or programs to see if they work at the State level, and if they do, maybe see if they would work on a national level. One of the things I especially liked about being part of the National Governors Association was that every even-numbered year, right after the election in mid-November, the National Governors Association would host a school for new Governors and spouses. For 3 days, a different Governor would host in his or her State the NGA's school for new Governors and spouses. The students were the newly elected Governors who had been elected 2 weeks earlier. They were Democrats and Republicans, in some cases an Independent. The faculty were the current Governors and their spouses. We would spend 3 days together. Usually, it was as many as 20 Governors and spouses on faculty. We would spend those 3 days together in different places around the country--no press, very little staff. The idea was for the grizzled veterans to really bare our souls to the new guys and gals, incoming Governors, and tell them the mistakes we made and to say to them: Learn from our mistakes. Don't make the same ones we did, whether it is putting together your team, developing your communications plan, working with the legislature, deciding where you are going to live and trying to be a chief executive and still be a good parent, a good spouse. But during those 3 days we spent together, a remarkable bonding occurred between the old Governors, the veterans, and the new Governors, and across party lines. I am convinced one of the reasons why the Nation's Governors tend to be less partisan is what happens in new Governor school. Among my closest friends are Governor Mark Racicot, former Governor of Montana, who later went on to be national committee chair and general campaign manager for President Bush's reelection; Mike Leavitt, former Governor of Utah, who succeeded me as chair and who serves today as a Cabinet secretary in this administration. What we have tried to do in the Senate, those of us who used to be Governors who serve here today but went through new Governors school, is take that idea and transplant it here. I call it Senators school. It is really orientation. This fall, in November, 2 weeks after the election, we will have new Senators, newly elected Senators, their spouses will come. They will spend 3 days together; some sessions with spouses, others not with spouses. The faculty will be current Senators and our spouses. We will have 3 days to get to know each other, to try to teach the new guys and gals the ropes and to begin to develop new personal relationships that really are needed here to make this place work. I look forward to being a part of doing that this November. But the idea was one of those ideas that came from the National Governors Association. Again, the NGA and the States are laboratories of democracy. Taking that lesson and applying it here on the national level will have good effect. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 568 submitted earlier today by yours truly.

Mr. CARPER. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, 60 years ago, on May 8--or May 14, under our western calendar--Israel declared its independence. On this special day, when Jews and Christians, heads of state, and others around the world celebrate the founding of Israel, I rise for a few minutes to reaffirm our Nation's commitment to Israel's security and the pursuit of a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in the Middle East. That is one of the reasons I cosponsored the resolution recognizing Israel's 60th birthday, and reaffirming the close ties between our country and Israel, a nation I have been privileged to visit as a Congressman, as a Governor, as a Senator, and maybe most importantly as a father with a teenage son. Current events threaten to overshadow the importance, though, of this independence day: Prime Minister Omert is again being investigated. Another round of peace talks appears to have stalled once more. Hamas continues to launch Qassam rockets at Sderot and other towns near Gaza. Suicide bombings continue. Hezbollah has increased military capability, with support from Syria and Iran. The leaders of Iran--the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world--continue to call for Israel's destruction, while denying that the Holocaust ever occurred. These are enormous, complex challenges. But after 7 wars in only 60 years, Israel somehow has achieved remarkable--some would say miraculous--success, all the while having to fight for its existence almost every single day. Today is the day to express our fundamental pride in a number of their successes. For example, Israel's population today is 7.3 million people, more than 9 times the 800,000 who lived there in 1948. Since its founding, over 3 million immigrants have been successfully absorbed. While Israel is the world capital of Torah learning, it is among the world's leaders in high-tech, medical, and scientific advances. In 1948, there were only two universities; today there are eight. On a per capita basis, Israel's GDP places it in the top tier of all nations. Democratic institutions flourish there. Both Jews and Arabs serve in Israel's Parliament, the Kennesset. Additionally, Israel has an independent, effective judiciary and a free press. So today I rise to join many of my colleagues in reaffirming the commitment of the United States to Israel's security. For the people of Israel, to its citizens, our message is simple and clear: We will continue to stand in solidarity with you. We are proud of what you have become. As I said earlier, I have had the privilege of visiting Israel a number of times--when I served in the House, as a Governor leading a trade delegation, as a Member of the Senate, and perhaps the most special and memorable visit for me was with my teenage son, roughly 3 years ago. We were in Israel on Easter weekend. We actually had the privilege of being on Golgotha, where Christ was believed to have been crucified, and we were there on Easter Sunday. We were privileged to be at the tomb where Christ's body was believed to have been lain, and we placed our hands there on Easter Sunday. What an unforgettable memory. I had the privilege of meeting Prime Minister Shamir, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu, and Shimon Peres, among others. I will never forget being at the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel on July 4, roughly 10 years ago--being there and meeting what seemed like half of the leadership of Israel, and any number of prominent Israeli citizens as our guests that day celebrating our independence, our Nation's birthday. Today, some 10 years later, as we prepare to celebrate Israel's birthday with the Israelis and people all over the world, I want to close with the words of Israeli President Shimon Peres spoken only a few days ago. I know the Presiding Officer has met Shimon Peres before in the number of roles he has played. I have been fortunate to do that as well. I have never met anyone who has a greater gift with the English language than this man. I want to share these words he said a couple days ago: Over the past 60 years, we have something that previous generations of Jews, those who were trampled in the pogroms and who were burned in the crematoria, did not have. The soldiers who fell created a miracle unparalleled in history: the miracle of the state of Israel. . . . For 60 years, they fought in seven wars that were forced upon us, and that we won. They enabled us to establish an exemplary society, to be trailblazers in the world in . . . agriculture, medicine and defense, to be a peace-seeking people, a democratic state, and a state that seeks justice. To that I would only add, may it be so for a millennium or more.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. We are wasting way too much time on the floor. I am delighted that we finally have agreement to go to the bill. I thank you and Senator Shelby for leading us here today. Hurricane season in the Atlantic opens officially on June 1. Today is May 7. That is about 25 days from now--less than a month. Thousands of homes, actually tens of thousands of homes along our coast, from Florida up to New York, probably, and down around the gulf coast, are going to be at risk from flooding from what are likely to be more devastating storms. You don't have to live along one of our coasts to be at risk. Many will recall, earlier this year, parts of Missouri, parts of Illinois faced the worst flood they have seen in decades. In Government, we are often asked to respond to terrible natural disasters, and we do, providing, among other things, emergency shelter and financial aid for people who lost a lot, maybe in some cases have lost everything. Today, we are being asked to step up before the next disaster strikes by overhauling our Nation's flood insurance program. I was talking with a member of my staff walking over here about how long ago this National Flood Insurance Program was created. It has been 40 years. As I recall from my Bible study as a youngster, that is about how long Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness trying to look for the Promised Land. We have been looking for the ``Promised Land'' with respect to the right balance of premiums, risk abatement, flood mapping--you name it-- we have been looking for the ``Promised Land'' for the National Flood Insurance Program for about 40 years. For the first 25, maybe 35 years, 37 years of the program, we kind of muddled along. The program pretty much paid for itself but not entirely. There were some efforts back some 20 years ago to actually change the program to try to bring it into the 21st century, and we ultimately were not successful. About almost 3 years ago--remember the story of the Red Sea, the children of Israel going through the Red Sea in hot pursuit by the Egyptians? The Israelis made it through and the Egyptians did not, as I recall. About 3 years ago, as to the National Flood Insurance Program, we did not make it through the ``Red Sea.'' In fact, we did not make it through Katrina. In fact, the program was engulfed by water, by floodwaters, and to the tune of about $20 billion. That is the amount of money FEMA had to borrow from the Treasury in order to try to write this program. Now we are spending more money. The program is marginally self-supporting. We have a huge interest payment to make on it, the $20 billion loaned by the Federal Government. So, in any event, enough of my Biblical analogies today. But actually it is not a bad one. We need to find the ``Promised Land.'' I am encouraged today by the debate on this bill. It is a good bill. It was worked on a year ago in the Banking Committee. It was reported out. It got through the House, got through the Senate, and died. We cannot let that happen again. But when the flood insurance program was established some 40 years ago, it was established as a three-pronged program involving three things: One, insurance; two, mapping, flood maps; and, three, smart land use. Today, that same flood insurance program provides insurance to more than 5 million property owners across America. Before Hurricane Katrina, as I said earlier, the flood insurance program was marginally self-supporting. But the now famous 2005 hurricane season, which included Katrina--not only Katrina but other big storms as well--caused the folks at FEMA to go out and borrow $20 billion from the Treasury. When the Treasury lends $20 billion to FEMA, they do not say: Here, take $20 billion tax free or interest free. You have to pay the interest. The interest on that debt eats up a big part of the premiums paid by those 5 million property owners. For 20 years prior to Katrina, the flood insurance program needed to be reformed. It needed to be overhauled. This week, finally, at long last, we can do that, and I hope we will. Some 20 years ago, I was in the House of Representatives, a Congressman and a member of the House Banking Committee. At that time, Hurricane Hugo was bearing down on the east coast. I was part--along with some of my other Banking Committee colleagues in the House--of an effort to overhaul the National Flood Insurance Program two decades ago. At the time, we were concerned about a couple matters. We were concerned about the low participation in the flood insurance program. We were concerned that too few people were participating. That meant too big a risk, in my book, for the homeowners as well as the Federal Government, which often bore the cost. At the time, I proposed to increase participation by requiring mortgage lenders to escrow flood insurance payments, just like they escrow payments for homeowners insurance. In addition to the low participation rate, we were also concerned that a small percentage of properties had been responsible for more than one-third of all claims, costing roughly $200 million each year to rebuild or repair properties. To help correct this, our proposal back then included a call for floodproofing or removing from the program high-risk properties, while reserving a small amount of funds collected from the flood insurance premiums to pay for this. In addition, in 1988, 1989, we sought to limit new construction in coastal areas that were quickly eroding. Our proposal also sought higher risk-based premiums for those who lived in the most vulnerable locations. In 1989, a bill to reform the flood insurance program passed both the House and the Senate. It was not as far-reaching as the original proposal I and others worked on. I called it at the time ``flood insurance reform lite,'' but it was, nonetheless, a step in the right direction. But, unfortunately, that modest bill never made it to the President's desk, and for almost another 20 years the flood insurance program has continued pretty much as it was--broken and in need of repair. Last year, the Senate Banking Committee, under the leadership of Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby, approved a truly comprehensive flood insurance reform bill. This is not ``flood insurance reform lite.'' This is the real deal. There is nothing ``lite'' about it. Unfortunately, the bill we approved was reported out, came to the Senate floor and stalled and was withdrawn. I think I said earlier our legislation a year ago passed the House and Senate. I was thinking about 20 years ago. That legislation passed the House and Senate, only to die, as I recall, in conference. This flood insurance reform initiative started last year made it to the Senate floor and stalled out. Today, the Senate has the opportunity to breathe new life into this badly needed legislation. It is imperative we seize the day or, as we say in Delaware, carpe diem: seize the day. Where are we today? Today, almost 3 years after Hurricane Katrina, and almost 20 years since our attempts in the late 1980s, we have another chance to put the National Flood Insurance Program on solid footing. So what are our main concerns in 2008? Well, the low subscription rate, for one. The relatively small number of properties that continue to flood year after year is another. And the subsidized premiums that do not reflect the vulnerability of many properties insured under the program remain a big concern. We need legislation that will require us to better consider where we build and rebuild in this country, how we build, and how we allocate risk. The bill that is before us today, the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2008, is a bipartisan bill, reported unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee about a year ago. I wish to take a moment, if I can, to highlight some components of this bill, some of the major aspects of this bill. The devastating 2005 hurricanes resulted in FEMA, as I said earlier, borrowing almost $20 billion from the Treasury to pay flood claims. That is more than the flood insurance program has paid out in its entire history. In order to pay their claims, Congress increased FEMA's statutory borrowing authority from about $1.5 billion to some $20 billion. Annual interest on this debt owed by FEMA to the Treasury is about $1 billion a year. In order to pay the interest on the current debt, flood insurance premiums would have to increase significantly. To prevent that, this bill takes the step of forgiving $20 billion of debt owed by FEMA to the Treasury. This bill also requires that FEMA set aside in a reserve fund an amount equal to 1 percent of all insurance in force to serve as a financial buffer for future disasters. This bill mandates that more property owners be required to purchase flood insurance, including those who live behind levees and dams and property owners in the 100- year flood plain. Homes in flood plains are in greater danger of flooding, even if there is a levee. Families need to be protected whether the levee works or not. This bill requires that property owners pay the actuarial rate. No longer will vacation homes and businesses be allowed to pay a subsidized rate, as they have been under the program for years. This is a fair and needed change. Why should vacation homes and businesses pay less than the residents who sit adjacent to them? Perhaps, most importantly, this bill will compel FEMA to modernize its flood maps. Technology now allows the creation for exact detailed flood maps. Because many of these maps are now decades old, we do not even know who is in danger of flooding and who needs flood insurance in many cases. This has to change. Under this bill, it will. Again, this bill is a bipartisan product. It seeks to move the flood insurance program to the 21st century before the next ``Katrina'' strikes. We have been joined on the floor by Senator Shelby. I know it is something that is near and dear to his heart. He and I actually served on the House Banking Committee a few years ago. I think he may have actually come to the Senate by the time we were working on this legislation in the House at the time. I know this is something he cares a lot about, and he has been heavily involved in shaping this legislation that is before us today. I especially commend him for the good work he has done. But for almost 20 years I have worked, along with a bunch of my colleagues, to make some meaningful reforms--badly needed meaningful reforms--to the flood insurance program. Katrina exposed the problems with this program. Actually, we were aware of them before that time, but it showed the problems for what they are. Now it is time for us to roll up our sleeves and finally fix this program. Abraham Lincoln used to say: The job for Government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. This program is a good example of that. People cannot go to the private sector--homeowners, businesses cannot go to the private sector--and get the kind of flood insurance this legislation provides. This is taking Lincoln's admonition to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves and actually put it into law. It has been part of the law for 40 years. We can do better, and we need to do better with respect to this program. That was driven home very clearly in the summer of 2005. Going back to my Old Testament example, it has been 40 years since this legislation was passed. For 40 years, those children of Israel were following Moses, trying to find the Promised Land. We have been looking for it too in terms of actually the right kind of language, the right kind of legislation, the right kind of law to meet the insurance needs for folks--businesses, homes, and residents--who face the danger of floods. It has taken us 40 years to get it right. This is an effort I have been involved in for 20 of those years. Looking out across from the ``mountaintop'' today, I see the ``Promised Land,'' and I see the ``Promised Land'' written on a piece of paper that we are going to be voting on today and tomorrow. My hope is a couple days from now--if we do not finish this legislation today-- we are going to pass it and we are going to send it over to our friends in the House of Representatives and they will take it up and move it expeditiously. We can do good for the taxpayers of this country who are literally having to underwrite the cost of this program, and they should not be doing that. We are going to better protect the folks whose businesses and homes are at risk, and we will do it in a way that harnesses common sense, harnesses economic forces and market forces. That will be a very good result. Mr. President, I yield back the floor.

Mr. CARPER. That is good news. What did we have for the vote yesterday?

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am happy we are here. Let me ask a question, if I may, of the floor manager, Senator Dodd. I just walked onto the floor from a hearing we are having in Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Do I understand we have agreement now to proceed to the bill? I don't have an amendment to offer, but I understand we are ready to accept amendments.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I congratulate Dover Air Force Base and all the men and women who serve there for winning the Commander In Chief's Installation Excellence Award for 2008. This prestigious award honors military installations for their outstanding service and dedication, and exemplary support of their missions. In the 23 years that this award has been given, Dover Air Force Base is the first Air Mobility Command to ever win this award. This is a great honor not only for Dover Air Force Base, but for all of us in Delaware who are enormously proud of the base and all the dedicated men and women who serve there. This highly coveted award recognizes the excellent working, living and recreational facilities for those men, women and families stationed at the base. For Dover and for Delaware this means winning it all, like winning the Super Bowl or winning the NCAA championship. It is like a home run with the bases loaded. I could not be more pleased or proud of the men and women serving at Dover. I am honored that our Delaware facility serves as a national example of how quality installations enable better mission performance and enhance the quality of life for military men and women and their families by providing quality working, housing and recreational conditions. I would also like to recognize the other winners of this year's award: Fort A.P. Hill, Bowling Green, VA; Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, San Diego, CA; Naval Base Coronado, San Diego, CA; and Defense Supply Center Richmond, Richmond, VA. Once again, it is my honor to congratulate the men and women of Dover Air Force Base for their service and dedication.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I commend detective Ronald Garland of the Delaware State Police High Technology Crimes Unit. Just more than 1 year ago, Detective Garland was assigned to a case involving Internet predators taking advantage of children. Inspired by his sense of urgency to protect young children, Detective Garland worked late nights and weekends, often without compensation, sifting through voluminous computer data. Today, we honor him for his exhaustive work to help identify 10 suspects and to coordinate their arrests with local law enforcement agencies. His great efforts ultimately lead to the prosecutions of these culprits in Federal court. Detective Garland's concern for the children in our community and his willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty has garnered our great respect and admiration. I salute Detective Garland as a hero for keeping our children safe, and I urge others to follow his brilliant example. His determination and meticulous investigative work are truly commendable. Detective Garland is truly a hero for the State of Delaware and for our entire Nation and its children.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, there has been a fair amount of discussion here on the floor today about what to do with respect to rising costs of gasoline and a discussion about what we should do in response to this runup of prices. I heard the Presiding Officer speak earlier today--I thought with passion and with wisdom--on an appropriate course of action. I wish to mention a few things that I think we ought to do. No. 1, we should be investing tax dollars in basic research and development to make a reality the lithium ion battery that is going to provide power for a flex-fuel plug-in hybrid vehicle called the Chevrolet Volt over the next 24 months or so, a vehicle that will run for 40 miles on a charge of its battery and use auxiliary power on board the vehicle to raise fuel efficiency well beyond that, maybe as high as 70, 80 miles per gallon. That is what we ought to be doing, and we are. Another thing we ought to be doing is using the Government's purchasing power to help commercialize the new technologies. Whether it is flex-fuel plug-in hybrids, whether it is very low emission diesels, whether it is fuel cell-powered vehicles, we should be using the Government's purchasing power to bring them to the marketplace. And we are doing that too. This year, there is a requirement that 70 percent of the cars, trucks, and vans the Federal Government purchases, both on the civilian side and on the military side, have to be advanced- technology vehicles. That includes vehicles purchased by the Postal Service. We also ought to be providing tax credits to encourage consumers to buy highly energy efficient hybrid vehicles, highly efficient, low- emission, diesel-powered vehicles when those are produced and when they come to the marketplace. And we are doing that. That is part of our law. We provide a tax credit for folks who buy highly energy efficient hybrids and very low emission diesels, a tax credit that is worth up to close to $3,500 per vehicle. When the Chevrolet Volt or other flex-fuel vehicles, plug-in hybrids come on the marketplace in the next couple of years, we should provide an even greater tax credit to encourage American consumers to purchase those. Several years ago, we voted here in this Chamber to create a commission. We create a lot of commissions around here. But this was an infrastructure commission, a transportation infrastructure commission. It was part of our major 5-year, 6-year bill that we pass every so often on transportation projects, a lot of it roads, highways, and so forth, but transit is included in there too. When we passed the last bill, several years ago we said we want to create this commission, and we want the commission to go out and look at our infrastructure needs, transportation infrastructure needs across the country, quantify those for us and tell us what you think it is going to cost to bring our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems to a state of good repair, and tell us how you think we ought to pay for those improvements. That commission was formed, worked hard for a year or so, and then came back to report back to us earlier this year as to how bad the situation is and what it is going to cost to fix it. They came back and said: We need to spend, to bring us out of the 20th century and into the 21st century, something like $225 billion a year--$225 billion a year; I think that is what they suggested--over 50 years, over the next 50 years. They called for actually increasing the gasoline tax by I think a nickel a year for 5 years, 6 years, something like that. We have seen suggested to us a number of ideas for providing for a holiday for the gasoline tax, to suspend collecting the gasoline tax in this country, maybe for the summer. Now we are hearing from people: Let's extend it not for 3 months over the summer but for 3 months beyond that--which, ironically, would take us through the election, just past the election. Let's think about that. In a day and age when we know our roads, highways, bridges, and our transit systems are falling further and further out of a state of good repair, making our transportation system and our economy even less efficient, we know we are not raising enough money to begin to catch up with the backlog, much less to address the new needs. The notion of diminishing the revenues that are available to try to improve our transportation system suggests to me that we are focused more maybe on the election than we are on the needs of our country. A friend of mine used to say: Leadership is staying out of step when everybody else is marching to the wrong tune. Leadership is staying out of step when everyone else is marching to the wrong tune. I used to say, when I was Governor of Delaware: Things worth having, whether it is health care, whether it is education, whether it is transportation--roads, highways, bridges--if they are worth having, we ought to pay for them. If we are not willing to pay for them, we should not have as many of them. I mentioned a few minutes ago how we are providing tax credits to encourage consumers in this country to buy more energy-efficient vehicles. Wonder of wonders, the big three are beginning to produce them. After years of building these behemoths and the gas guzzlers, Ford and Chrysler are actually displaying and engineering and selling vehicles that Americans ought to be buying. The quality is vastly improved over what it was 10 or 20 years ago. I will mention a couple of them. GM sells hybrid vehicles, not just the big SUVs like the Tahoe and the Yukon but also midsized sedans like the Saturn Aura and the Chevrolet Malibu, both of which were actually ``Cars of the Year'' this year and last year. Ford has a number of hybrid products on the road as well, not just the Escape but another as well. Chrysler joins the parade this summer by launching the hybrid Dodge Durango and the hybrid Chrysler Aspen. I understand from a friend of mine who is driving the Chrysler Aspen that in the city it is getting about 22 miles a gallon and on the highway it is expected to get close to 30 miles a gallon. Is that where we want to be and need to be? No, but that is a huge difference over the vehicles it replaces. Chrysler is launching, this fall, in the 2009 model year, very low emission, highly energy efficient diesel-powered vehicles. We are, through our Tax Code, encouraging Americans not just to buy Toyota Priuses and Hondas but to buy hybrids, low-emission diesels that are manufactured by Ford, Chrysler, and GM. They are making them and we ought to buy them, and in doing that we begin to reduce the demand for oil that threatens to engulf us. I ride the train back and forth most days. I live in Delaware, and I go back and forth. As my colleague, the Presiding Officer, knows, I go back and forth almost every night to Delaware. A strange thing is going on with respect to passenger rail ridership in this country. I used to serve on the Amtrak board when I was Governor of Delaware, and every year we would see ridership go up by a couple of percentage points. We would struggle, try to raise money out of the fare box to pay for the system and the expansion of the system. Well, the first quarter of this fiscal year, ridership at Amtrak is up 15 percent. Revenues are up by 15 percent. People are starting to realize that maybe it makes sense to get out of our cars, trucks, and vans and take the train or take transit. Transit ridership is up again this fiscal year more dramatically than it has been in some time. Americans are beginning to literally buy homes in places that are closer to opportunities for transit--for rail, for bus, for subways, for the metro systems. As we have seen the drop in home prices across the country--in some cases, very dramatic--among the surprises, at least for me, is to see housing prices stable and in some cases actually going up in places where people can buy a home and live and get to work or wherever they need to go to shop without driving to get there. I don't know how gullible we think the American voters are to suggest to them that we are going to have this holiday on gas taxes, Federal gas taxes, for 3 months or for 6 months, maybe to get us through the next election, and then when the elections are over we will go ahead and reinstate the gasoline tax to what it has been even though in doing that we might be depleting further the money available for transportation improvements. I don't know how foolish we think the American voters are. They are a lot smarter than that. They are a lot smarter, maybe, than we give them credit for being. I think in this country people are crying out for leadership. They are calling out for Presidential leadership, whether it is from our side of the aisle or the Republican side. People want leaders who are willing to stay out of step when everybody else is marching to the wrong tune, and I would suggest that the wrong tune is to suspend the Federal gasoline tax and at the same time not replace the dollars that would otherwise go into the transportation trust fund to fix our dilapidated, our decaying transportation system. Voters in this country deserve better leadership from us. I am determined, I am committed to making sure we provide and pay for that. Before I close, there are a lot of good ideas for things we ought to do. I mentioned, tongue in cheek, that we ought to provide more R&D investment for a new generation of lithium batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles. I say, tongue in cheek, we ought to use the Government purchasing power to commercialize advanced technology vehicles. We are doing that. I said with tongue in cheek we ought to provide tax credits to encourage people to buy highly efficient hybrid vehicles and very low diesel-powered vehicles that are efficient. We are doing that. There other things we need to do too. We need to invest in rail service. We can send from Washington, DC, to Boston, MA, a ton of freight by rail on 1 gallon of diesel fuel. I will say that again. We could send from Washington, DC, to Boston, MA, a ton of freight by rail on 1 gallon of diesel fuel. But we as a government choose not to invest in freight rail and, frankly, to invest very modestly in passenger rail. It is a highly energy-efficient way to move people and goods. One of my colleagues spoke a little bit ago and talked about why, as has Senator Dorgan, at a time when gasoline prices and fuel prices are so high, when the cost of a barrel of oil is 120 bucks a barrel, we are buying oil and putting it in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when we are almost up to 100 percent capacity. That is a good question. It is foolish for us to continue to buy as much oil as we are right now to further drive up prices. We should stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as long as prices are at this level. One of my colleagues raised the question of speculators. If you go back a year ago, almost a year ago from today, the cost of a barrel of oil was something akin to $60, $63 a barrel. The price today is about $53 more than that. We have seen an increase of probably 75 percent in the price of a barrel of oil from last year to this. As somebody who studied some economics when I was in school, I believe in the law of supply and demand. But the law of supply and demand is not driving up the price of a barrel of oil from roughly $65 a barrel a year ago to almost twice that today. Speculation is going on that I don't fully understand. Maybe others do, but I don't. But I know something beyond the law of supply and demand is driving these prices of oil through the roof. The investigative committees in this Congress, along with the Government Accountability Office and the administration, need to be all over that. Find out what is causing it and how we can stop it. It is difficult for the Congress. We write a lot of laws. I don't know how we can repeal the law of supply and demand, but more than the law of supply and demand is in effect in driving up oil prices. Some have said: Why don't we have a holiday for the gas tax for this summer or for 3 months or 6 months and replace that with some kind of windfall profit tax on the oil and gas industry. I would suggest, if we are going to take away some tax advantages enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, the smarter thing is for us to use the revenues that would be generated in that way to extend the soon-to-be-expiring tax credits for the production of electricity from wind, solar, geothermal. Those tax credits expire at the end of the year. Businesses, individuals who are thinking of putting in place systems, small and large, to provide for alternative energy need some certainty. They need to know what the Tax Code is going to be. The sooner the better. To be fiscally responsible, we can't extend the tax credits without paying for them. The extension of the tax credits reduces revenue to the Treasury and makes the deficit bigger. We need to pay for it. I would suggest, if we look carefully at some of the tax credits enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, we could probably find something there that is not fair or reasonable or productive. I suggest we use those revenues, not to offset the revenues that would be lost from suspending the Federal gasoline tax until after the election but to use those revenues to make sure we extend tax credits for renewable energy, wind, solar, geothermal, and so forth. I will have a chance to come back later in the week and talk about this some more. Sometimes we underestimate the wisdom of the voters. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said: If you tell the American people the truth, they won't make a mistake. I will do my dead level best to make sure, during the course of the debate on this notion of waiving the gasoline tax or having a holiday on the gasoline tax until after the election, I am going to make sure, I hope with a number of my colleagues, the American people understand the truth and the full picture and that they will make the right decision. Hopefully, we will too. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I wish today to honor this year's Delaware winners of the Prudential Spirit of Community Award in recognition of their exemplary volunteer service. Congratulations to Anna Schuck of Wilmington, Matthew Waldman of Delmar, Alexandra Browne of Wilmington, and Taylor Folt, also of Wilmington. I strongly believe that volunteerism is one of the cornerstones of American society. As shown on numerous occasions, volunteering is not only good for the community; it is an enriching and rewarding experience for the volunteer, as well. Anna, Matthew, Alexandra and Taylor all exemplify this spirit of involvement and giving back to their communities. They serve as models of selflessness and examples of how rewarding volunteering can be both personally and to the community they serve. The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards was created by Prudential Financial and the National Association of Secondary School Principals to inspire and encourage youth volunteerism. Since being founded in 1995, these awards have honored more than 80,000 young volunteers at the local, State and, national levels. Delaware winner Anna Schuck founded the H.U.G. Club, for ``Helping the Underprivileged Globally,'' at her school, coordinating fundraising events including ``Rock Uganda,'' a series of seven concerts. Her efforts helped to raise $14,500 to provide necessities for a school in Uganda. Middle school winner Matthew Waldman has participated in a variety of volunteer activities, including a charity antique show, bell ringing for the Salvation Army, and a Humane Society walk. Matthew has also organized dances instead of birthday parties, asking attendees to donate food and other items instead of bringing gifts. High school Distinguished Finalist Alexandra Browne spent 2 years coordinating events and fundraisers, recruiting volunteers and overseeing other logistics as chair of her school's Relay for Life fundraising event. The event, which raised more than $60,000, donates to cancer research, education, and patient support. Middle school Distinguished Finalist Taylor Folt spent a month of her summer vacation teaching English and American History to students in India, as well as helping them with maintenance tasks around their campus. Congratulations to this year's honorees, Anna, Matthew, Alexandra, and Taylor, who personify the spirit of giving back. These outstanding young volunteers are an inspiration to me and, I hope, to many others throughout Delaware.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Will the Senator yield for a moment?

Mr. CARPER. The Senator is leaving herself out and Senator Inhofe. On behalf of all of us who have been anxious for this day--to see this technical corrections bill put together and have the result we have had, I thank the Senator for dealing with the competing forces and getting the job done. Someone said it was ugly, but it is beautiful in the end. It is going to be good for the folks in all of our States. We worked together in a bipartisan way, and I am grateful for that.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I wish to bring to the attention of my colleagues a speech that my good friend and fellow Delawarean Joe Biden delivered yesterday at Georgetown University. In his remarks, Senator Biden eloquently laid out a foreign policy vision for Democrats and outlined what is at stake for our country in the years ahead. I urge my colleagues to read Senator Biden's speech, and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Congressional Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. While we are talking as in morning business, I wish to continue the detour, although I may take a little different direction. As the Chair and my colleague from Montana probably know, each year our military bases in this country go through a competition in which Air Force bases are evaluated against other Air Force bases, and naval installations against other naval installations, Marine Corps against others, Army installations against other Army installations. For 23 years or so the Air Force has been comparing their bases in a friendly competition called the Commander in Chief's Installation Excellence Award. During that period of time, it is my understanding that no mobility command, no airlift base, if you will, such as Dover, has ever been honored as the best of the best. Yesterday I was visited here on Capitol Hill by COL Steve Harrison, who is the active-duty wing commander for the Dover Air Force Base, and he gave me this letter announcing the good news, that Dover Air Force Base has been selected for this high honor. As an old naval flight officer, I remember often my squadrons on the naval bases where I was located participating in ORI exercises, operational readiness exercises. This is not an ORI. This is a competition which digs in deep and looks at things other than how well you fly your airplanes and meet your readiness requirements and meet your mission, although that is part of it. This is a competition that also involves how you care for your people; what kind of workspaces do you provide for the folks who are on your bases, the uniformed, nonuniformed personnel? How do you look out for the families of those military personnel? How well do you think outside the box in trying to address the problems and challenges you face? What kind of commitment do you have to innovation in the delivery of the service you provide to support our military forces? There are over 100 Air Force installations throughout this country. To have been chosen as the one that is believed to be most worthy of receiving this award this year is a matter of great pride, not only for the men and women who wear the uniform at the base, not only for the civilians who work there, and for the families, not only for the Air Force retirees in our State--and there are a lot of them who served at Dover Air Force Base--not only for the folks who live in Dover, the civilian population in central Delaware, this is a matter of pride for all of Delaware. We have one active-duty installation, actually active duty and a reserve wing at Dover Air Force Base. We have an Air Guard installation up north in our State that we are very proud of. They fly C-130s. But this one, Dover Air Force Base, is very special to the people in our State. They fly C-5 aircraft, which are among the largest aircraft in the world. To be from a little State, and to be the home of one of the biggest aircraft in the world, gives us bragging rights that little States do not often get. We have C-5B aircraft, about 18 of those at our base. We are getting a new squadron, a squadron of brand new C-17 aircraft that will complement our C-5s. The C-5s will be modernized in the years to come. Dover Air Force Base has not only wonderful people, a terrific tradition and reputation, but will also have the new C-17s and maybe the first modernized C-5s. We will be ready to go to work and do our job. Among the things pointed out in the recognition of Dover Air Force Base is that they have secured, I think in the last year or so, October 1, last fiscal year, October 1, 2006 through September 30, 2007, among other things, they have secured some roughly $50 million in milcon projects. I hope our delegation, Senator Biden, Congressman Castle and I, was helpful in that process. We are grateful to our colleagues for the support of that funding. During that period of time, we opened a brand new air freight terminal that cost, over several years, about $77.5 million. The efficiencies that will flow from that new cargo-handling facility will actually pay for that facility within 2 years. Now, whenever companies are looking for a way of a return on investment, the idea that you can get a return on investment in 5 years or maybe even 10 years is not deemed very bad. We will realize a return on this investment for our new cargo-handling facility, our air freight terminal, within 2 years of bringing it on line. What we have done at the base in terms of privatizing the housing and providing enlisted and officer personnel with better housing for themselves and their families is something we greatly appreciate. Also, in the Air Force, they conduct roughly every 400 or so days an inspection called an isochronal inspection. The isochronal inspections that are now being provided for C-5 aircraft take place not only for the air mobility command C-5S but for those that are in the Air Reserve components and the C-5s that are part of the Air National Guards are all done at Dover Air Force Base. The good news is not only are they done at Dover, because they are done at the Air Force base with people who know how to do this work, trained to do it, they are able to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to produce the isochronal inspection--not to diminish the quality, the thoroughness of that inspection, but to reduce the time. Since time is money, we are saving some money there for the taxpayers. Dover Air Force Base provides over one-quarter of all the Department of Defense airlift requirements. They have for some time. With the new cargo-handling facility coming on line, we expect to see that number go up. I understand in the last year or so, the last fiscal year, they completed more than 20 antiterrorism and force protection initiatives. So to the team at Dover Air Force base that very much is a team, the active-duty wing, the Reserve wing, which works seamlessly together in providing airlift capabilities for our country and around the world, this old naval flight officer salutes you on a job well done. On behalf of every single Delawarean, congratulations and God bless. Keep up the great work.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage our colleagues to support the passage, hopefully later today, of the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, the legislation that has been on the Senate floor for the better part of a week now. I like to think of this legislation not in isolation but as the third piece, if you will, of a series of steps that have been taken to try to stabilize our economy, to restore confidence in our economy, and to infuse liquidity into our financial system. The first was really a series of steps taken by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has acted in an extraordinary way, not just in monetary policy and trying to lower the Fed funds rate but also in encouraging Federal banks to act and now investment banks to take advantage of the discount money, to borrow money when they need it, for the Federal Reserve to be willing to take and swap, if you will, highly liquid Treasury securities for very illiquid mortgage-backed securities that a lot of our banks are holding in their portfolios, allowing those swaps to take place to infuse liquidity into the banking system to encourage banks to begin lending money again. The Federal Reserve is involved, as we all know, with JPMorgan Chase to engineer their takeover of Bear Stearns to prevent it from going into bankruptcy and probably creating a domino effect that would have brought down other financial entities and maybe made a bad situation even worse. Those are some of the things the Federal Reserve has done. The Presiding Officer is different, he is not as old as me, but I have never seen the Federal Reserve take these kinds of steps as we enter into a period with this kind of uncertainty. But that is the first series of things that has been done, needed to be done, and is being done by the Federal Reserve. I applaud their action. The second piece is the stimulus package we voted on and debated here a month or two ago and passed. Sometimes when stimulus packages are agreed to by Congress and the President, it takes so long to debate the package that by the time the effect actually takes place, we are coming out of the recession and it can have the overstimulative effect providing inflationary pressures. In this case, I think what has happened is the Congress and the President agreed in a timely way on our stimulus package, and it will have a modest effect on our economy, probably in the second half of this year. Some have said it will raise gross domestic product by as much as 1.5 percent by the second half of the year. I think the most important thing that came out of the adoption of the stimulus package was to send a clear signal to people, taxpayers and others, businesses, that around here, when the chips are down, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the President can still agree on a series of actions to help boost the economy, to give the economy a little bit of a jump start. The third piece in this process is the legislation before us this week and last. I call it a housing recovery package. There are a number of elements to it that are meritorious. I wouldn't oversell this package. This by itself is not going to save the day and prevent all foreclosures and bring the housing market back overnight or within a couple of weeks or months. But it is a third of a series of steps that will be helpful. It is going to be followed within the next maybe 2 months with a handful of other steps that I will talk about in a few minutes. Let me talk about some of the elements I think are most beneficial in this housing recovery package that is before us today. The centerpiece is FHA modernization. The Federal Housing Administration was created about 75 years ago. It was born during the Great Depression. Out of the FHA came the possibility for home ownership for a lot of people who otherwise would never have become home buyers. People wonder, where did we get the 30- year fixed rate mortgages. They were a creation of FHA, a legacy of FHA. As recently as 6, 7, 8 years ago, probably 15 to 20 percent of mortgages were guaranteed or insured by the FHA, 15 to 20 percent. Last year the number was about 5 percent. We dropped, in roughly half a dozen years, from 15 to 20 percent of home mortgages insured by FHA to last year about 5 percent. Where did those mortgages go? Where did people go for financial help to buy a home? A lot of them went to places they should not have gone. A lot of them ended up being induced or seduced and convinced to use a different kind of a financing. They used exotic adjustable rate mortgages, some of them with no money down, no principal payments for an extended period of time. Some of these exotic adjustable rate mortgages called for very low interest, seductive teaser rates which may have been 2, 3, 4 percent at the beginning and would later go up by reset within a couple of years to be 7, 8, or 9 percent. A lot of folks ended up signing on to this deal and didn't realize there is a penalty for trying to refinance out of an adjustable rate mortgage, making it very difficult. I suppose the borrower and maybe the mortgage broker or the lending institution that was involved, everybody expected housing prices to continue to go up; they had for years. As long as housing prices continue to rise, everybody comes out of the hole. If somebody is unable to make payments, they sell the house, do it for profit and pay off their mortgage. Not many people thought about what happens if prices, instead of going up, all of a sudden come down. They have come down, and in some places they have come down a lot. Part of our legislation is designed to encourage people to take a second look at FHA. For folks, especially first-time home buyers or people who have less than perfect credit, the FHA in the past has been their avenue to become homeowners. We wanted to make sure it is an option that is there for the 21st century. Without getting into a whole lot of detail, let me say, of all the pieces that are part of this bill, the most important one is FHA modernization. I will mention a couple of those elements that I think are helpful. One of those takes the FHA loan limit starting at the end of this year to $550,000. Instead of being $420,000, it takes it up to $550,000. In Delaware, you can get a perfectly good house for $420,000. In some places in New Jersey one can get a perfectly good house for $420,000. In some places in New Jersey you probably can't. A lot of places in California, Florida, Connecticut, home values are such that for $420,000, which is the FHA loan limit that will be in effect next January 1, you can buy a cottage, but if you want to think about buying a three-bedroom house with a garage and a bathroom, you can forget about buying anything close to that for $420,000. What we want to do is address the needs in high-cost housing areas so that FHA will still be relevant in those States, as well as in States that have more modest housing costs. The second element of this bill that is good is that the bill seeks to streamline the bureaucracy of FHA. We hear a good deal about that from banks and from realtors, that the bureaucracy is inappropriate for the 21st century. We have streamlined it. We do that in the context of this legislation. Another element that I believe is helpful is, we are going to make more available counseling assistance to people who need it as they are looking for a place to buy and to consider their options. There is a new pilot credit scoring program that will be created. It is designed to increase access to credit for borrowers who may have a history of making required payments on time but haven't established a sufficient credit rating to enable them to be considered as serious home buyers. Those are some of the pieces of the FHA modernization portion of this bill. It is maybe the most important thing we are going to do. A second important element of this bill deals with community development block grants. We appropriated this year around the country, I want to say, roughly $4 billion to communities, State and local governments, moneys they can use to help develop their communities. We want to make sure that some additional moneys--in this case, another roughly $4 billion--might be made available to State and local governments to help communities that have been hit hard by foreclosures and delinquencies. The money could be put to use in many communities around the country. A third element of this bill that I believe has merit deals with housing authorities. Housing authorities currently are able to issue tax-exempt revenue bonds. The proceeds of those tax-exempt revenue bonds are used in probably every State in the country to allow people to become first-time home buyers and to realize a low interest rate. They do this with moneys raised by tax-exempt revenue bonds. The proceeds of these same bonds can be used by housing authorities to build multifamily, affordable housing as well. The proceeds of these bonds cannot be used, though, to assist in refinancing of subprime loans. With this legislation, we say you can do that, too. State and local housing authorities can use the proceeds of these tax-exempt revenue bonds. In fact, we allow them to issue another $10 billion worth and a permissible use is to help folks to refinance out of these subprime loans that they have gotten themselves into. Another element of this bill is actually one offered by our colleague Senator Isakson from Georgia. He has been good enough to let me advise some changes in his earlier proposal. Let's use the situation here. We have 100 desks here, and we will assume for this example that these are not desks but homes in a community. Maybe there are two or three of these homes where the families have run into trouble and cannot keep up with the mortgage payments. The homes have gone into foreclosure and they are decaying, the grass is growing, the shrubbery is not cut, trash not removed. Those homes are destroyed and beginning to decay, and they bring down the value of the other homes in the community. Senator Isakson suggested that we allow a tax credit to be used for someone who will come in and buy a home in foreclosure and live there. He proposed that that person be provided by the U.S. Treasury a $5,000 tax credit. To buy a foreclosed home and to agree to live there, $5,000 for year 1, $5,000 for year 2, $5,000 for year 3, is a pretty expensive proposition. That would certainly get people's attention and encourage them to buy homes in foreclosure, but it is a serious hit on the Treasury. I urged him--I am sure others did as well--to make the proposal a little more modest. What he has done, I think prudently, is to say, in the same situation, a home in foreclosure, to encourage people to come in and buy homes in foreclosure so they don't bring down the values of other properties, that they will get a tax credit but year 1 is $3,500 and year 2 is another $3,500; $7,000 in all as a tax credit from the Treasury to the person making that purchase. It is more modest. There is an impact on the Treasury, but it is not nearly as great as would otherwise have been the case. It is a good proposal. Another idea in this legislation that makes a lot of sense deals with people who are in some distress--maybe they have lost their job, they have sickness in the family, they are finding it difficult to pay their bills, they are getting behind on their mortgage payments. They are not sure what to do, and sometimes they end up turning to people who take advantage of them, shysters who take advantage of them. And rather than helping them with their problems, to work their way through it, they take advantage of the distressed homeowner. There are nonprofit entities. They work under a broad umbrella of something called the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. The shorthand title is NeighborWorks. And the idea there is to have these nonprofits provide counseling assistance. They are not trying to take advantage of home homeowners in distress. They want to help them find the best option for themselves and their family. We provided, I think through HUD's budget, about $200 million initially. That money has been used. Under this legislation we provide about another $100 million, maybe more. I think an amendment by Senator Murray would take that up a bit higher. The idea is to make sure that when people are in trouble and they turn to someone for help, they will turn to someone who is really going to help them. This is a good proposal as well. Senator Reed of Rhode Island has offered an amendment that has been made part of the package that seeks to address complex paper disclosure. When you buy a house, you have all these papers. You sit down with a realtor. It is pretty confusing stuff, even for people who are pretty smart. Senator Reed has come up with some suggestions that would protect a person who is going through the forms, trying to understand what they are signing on to. Without going into a lot of detail, his ideas have a great deal of merit and are part of the package and ought to be. As to another element of the package--I say this as a veteran who served in the Navy during the Vietnam war and came back; they had to protect us--to protect others who have served in our Armed Forces since, we have something called the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act. The idea is to try to make sure our soldiers and sailors-- particularly when they are deployed overseas--and their families are not taken advantage of. We have given them, if you will, a break in making sure they are not taken advantage of by those who are, for example, lenders who loaned money to them. Right now, the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act--say I am deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. I come back from my year or 15-month deployment. My home cannot have been foreclosed on. My family and I live in the home, and we had a hard time making our mortgage payment. Maybe I gave up my regular civilian job and took a much lower paying job, was called up for Active Duty in the military, and I have been unable to keep up with my mortgage payments. Under the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, my home could not be foreclosed on for at least 3 months while I am away and for 3 months from when I come back from that deployment. This legislation would extend that by an additional 6 months. I would be protected for 9 months, my family would be protected for 9 months, after my return to, hopefully, get back on our feet to be able to meet our financial obligations. Also, this provision provides returning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines with 1 year of relief from increases in mortgage interest rates. Where these adjustable rate mortgages are resetting, the military personnel get an extra year. The final part of this provision is that the Department of Defense is required to establish a counseling program to ensure veterans and active servicemembers can access assistance if they have seen financial difficulties. Again, the idea is for folks who are in distress--in this case, military personnel--who are homeowners, that they could actually get access to advice from people who have the best interests of the veterans at heart. Those are some of the provisions, not all of the provisions. There are other provisions dealing with standard property deductions and to allow folks who do not itemize to take a standard deduction--$500 for single filers, $1,000 for joint filers. It is in this legislation. There is an extension of net operating loss carry-back that will help some of the homebuilders who are in trouble. There were concerns raised. I think Senator Gregg raised the concern yesterday--and there are other concerns about it as well--that the cost to the Treasury is considerable. The cost over 10 years, I am told, is about $6 billion, so it is not inconsequential. But we also know among the companies that are undergoing real distress right now are those that build homes. This is designed to try to extend some relief to them. Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho and I have offered an amendment which has been accepted by both Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby on behalf of the majority and minority sides that tries to help homeowners who are in distress in another way. A lot of people do not know in this country we have something called the Federal Home Loan Banks. There are 12 of them across the country. Together they make up the Federal Home Loan Bank system. A primary job they have is to raise money they then turn around and lend to smaller financial institutions, principally for home ownership, to make home ownership more affordable. Delaware is in the Pittsburgh Federal Home Loan Bank region. A lot of financial institutions--banks, savings and loans--work with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh. They get loans, if you will, below market-rate loans, from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh. But one of the requirements under Federal law is these Federal Home Loan Banks have to contribute 10 percent of their net income into an affordable housing fund. The affordable housing fund is used by local entities, local financial banks, local financial entities, banks, thrifts, in order to provide home ownership opportunities for, in a lot of cases, first-time home buyers or low-income home buyers. It is a good program. We use it a lot in my State. It is used to leverage money from State and local governments. It is used to leverage money from nonprofits, from for-profits, from banks. It is a real good thing. The problem with this affordable housing program fund is none of the moneys in this program can be used to help subsidize or refinance-- somebody who is in one of these adjustable rate mortgages that is resetting. They need to refinance and get out of it and maybe get into a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. This is affordable housing money. It is compiled. It is built up. It is about a third of a billion dollars this year. It cannot be used to help folks refinance out of a mortgage they have no business being in. This amendment that has been accepted will allow that to take place. My friend, Senator McCaskill of Missouri, along with Senator Kohl and myself, has offered an amendment. I understand it has been accepted, and we are grateful for that. That amendment seeks to protect folks who have taken advantage of reverse mortgages. One of the nice things about being a homeowner with equity in your home, in a lot of cases when you reach an older age and maybe your home is paid off, you ought to be able to live off the equity of your home for the rest of your life. In some cases, people who are in that situation do not get very good advice, and they are duped into making investments with the equity of their home in ways that really do not help the homeowner trying to live off the equity of their home for the rest of their life. It helps them less than maybe someone who is a scoundrel trying to take advantage of them. So Senator McCaskill's amendment, that Senator Kohl and I have joined in sponsoring, allows HUD to use a portion of the mortgage insurance premiums collected under this program to adequately fund counseling and disclosure activities. So the idea there is to make sure people have good advice. If you think about it, that is a theme of almost every element I have talked about in this bill. Many of the elements of this bill are designed to make sure that consumers, homeowners, purchasers have access to good advice, someone who is going to be there for them and not take advantage of them. I said this housing recovery package is the third step so far of three steps we need to take. The first step is action by the Federal Reserve; the second step, our stimulus package; the third step is our housing recovery package; a fourth step, that I hope will follow in the next month or two--certainly before we get to the Memorial Day recess-- is when the Senate Banking Committee takes up another measure that will consider a Hope proposal, one that Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank have been working on that has a lot of merit to help people, families whose mortgage is underwater; that is, they owe more than the value of their property, find a way to get out of that situation. The lenders, the investors, the homeowners themselves will probably take a little bit of a financial haircut, but by doing that they would be able to stay in their homes and maybe end up with a little bit of equity in their homes in the end. A number of us--Senator Martinez and I and Senator Schumer and Senator Jack Reed--have been very much interested, along with some of our colleagues, in trying to make sure we have a strong independent regulator for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. That ought to be part of our next package. We need to license mortgage brokers to make sure they have the kind of training and the kind of regulatory structure under which to operate, to make sure the appraisals that are written on a lot of homes are actually worth the paper on which they are written. So there is a lot that can be done and should be done, and my hope is we will have the opportunity to take those up, have hearings as appropriate in the Banking Committee, and mark them up before the Memorial Day recess and literally have them on the Senate floor to debate by the Fourth of July. That would be good for our country, and that would be the fourth step, if you will, to help stabilize our economy, to begin to restore some confidence in our economy, especially in the housing sector of our economy, and to make sure we put some liquidity back into our financial system and our banking system where it is needed. But the last thing, and maybe the most helpful, it would do is to clearly demonstrate to folks around this country that this place still works, that Democrats and Republicans can find common ground, work with the administration, and do what is in the best interests of our country, our citizens, and our families. None of what is done in the legislation that is before us today is designed to reward bad behavior. For people who have been borrowers and bought homes as a speculator, where they were interested in buying it to watch the price go up, to simply flip it, flip the house, and take advantage of these exotic adjustable rate mortgages to do that, to work the system, and to look for some short-term profit, we are not interested in helping. With all due respect, we are not interested in borrowers who have misbehaved or mortgage brokers or investors who have misbehaved. That is not what this is about. This initiative is to restore confidence in the system, liquidity in the system, and to say to people: The system-- our legislative system, our political system--still works, and it works for the interests of people who need our help. That said, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to the Honorable Thurman G. Adams, Jr., Delaware's longest serving State Senator. Senator Adams was first elected to Delaware's 19th senatorial district in Sussex County in 1972. He served as senate majority leader from 1999 to 2003, when he was elected President Pro Tempore of the senate by his colleagues. When I was Governor of Delaware, I worked closely with Thurman on many issues. He serves as chairman of the Senate Executive Committee, which considers gubernatorial and judicial appointments. Thurman has a keen understanding of the important role Delaware plays as a worldwide corporate center and has been a consistent champion of Delaware's judiciary. Thurman has also been a strong advocate of public safety issues, sponsoring legislation to establish Delaware's ``Enhanced 911'' emergency telephone system. As owner and president of his own feed and grain agribusiness, T.G. Adams, and Son, Inc., Thurman has worked for the interests of Delaware's farming and business communities. He is a leader in such issues as highway and local roadway improvements, education accountability, and the growth of Delaware Technical and Community College's Owens Campus in Georgetown. Thurman has a long history of civic and community service. Prior to being elected to public office, he served as chairman of the Governor's Highway Safety Committee and a member of the Delaware State Highway Commission. Active in his community, he has held such positions as director of Milford Memorial Hospital and the Medical Center of Delaware, director of the Baltimore Trust Company for 27 years, president of Harrington Raceway, chairman of the Union United Methodist Church Administrative Board, and president of the Eastern Shore Grain Dealers Association. The recipient of awards too numerous to list, Thurman was most recently awarded the Liberty Bell Award, presented by the Delaware State Bar Association in recognition of significant contributions to the community by a nonattorney, and the Silver Good Citizenship Award of the Delaware Chapter of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. He also received the University of Delaware's Medal of Fame Distinction and the ``Wall of Fame'' Award. As his record shows, Senator Adams has a strong commitment to the State of Delaware. Born and raised in Bridgeville, he attended Bridgeville High and later graduated from the University of Delaware. He returned to Bridgeville where he built a successful business and raised his family. Thurman was a devoted husband to his wife Hilda, to whom he was married to for nearly 50 years. Senator and Mrs. Adams raised three wonderful children whom any parent would be proud to call their own. No stranger to tragedy, Thurman lost his beloved wife to cancer in 2002 several years after the death of their son Brent. Despite these heartbreaks, Senator Adams remains devoted to his children, seven grandsons and three great-grandchildren. I have known Thurman Adams for many years. On a personal note, I remember fondly stopping by their summer home for lunch following the annual Fourth of July parade in Bethany Beach and enjoying immensely food and fellowship with him and his family. I can also attest to his expert egg-tossing skill, having been at the receiving end of his smoothly delivered toss at the Delaware State Fair Governor's Day celebration. We have enjoyed many times together both personally and professionally, and we have shared times of deep sorrow, as well. I am proud to congratulate my longtime friend and colleague on reaching this impressive milestone. The people of Delaware, and especially residents of the 19th District, are certainly well-served and fortunate to have been represented by such a man as Thurman Adams. Delaware is a far better place in which to live and work because of his stewardship and his leadership.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, we have just concluded a 2-week recess. We have come back to the Capitol, rested and prepared to get to work on the Nation's business. At the top of the list for most people, at least based on what I heard in my State and likely what Senators have heard from coast to coast, is the desire for us to get to work on the economy. There are other concerns--the war in Iraq, the cost of health care, the list goes on--but at the top of the list is the economy, harking back to the Clinton campaign in 1992: ``It is the economy, stupid.'' It has been for a long time, and it certainly is again today. During the time I spent in Delaware, I visited a lot of places, including a number of schools. One of the questions a group of young people asked me was, what did I like most about my job. There are a number of things I enjoy about serving in the Senate. I love helping people. We have the opportunity to do that through constituent services and other ways every day. That is a source of great satisfaction. I know it is to the Presiding Officer and others of our colleagues. Among the other things that bring me great joy is from time to time we are able to take folks who have different views on a particular issue and actually pull them together to work as one, to develop consensus around issues. We need to develop a consensus on a path forward with respect to the housing situation, the meltdown we have seen, especially with subprime mortgages and the threat that meltdown poses to binding together, tightening up and bringing to a halt the flow of money through our economy, through the banking system. I am encouraged by the vote we just had where 94 Senators voted to proceed to the housing bill. Our Democratic leadership has pulled back and said: We will not try to push forward with five or six actually very constructive elements in an earlier version of our proposal but provide time for Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby to work with others on the Banking Committee and other colleagues who are not on the committee to put together a broader consensus that builds on the package we voted not to proceed to 2 weeks ago. We can do those but more as well. Let me express my hope that the elements of the package Senators Dodd and Shelby bring back to us include the ability for housing authorities to issue revenue bonds, the proceeds of which could be used to help folks refinance their mortgages, people in danger of losing their homes. I am not interested in rewarding bad behavior, in rewarding investors or bankers who made bad decisions or, frankly, individual borrowers who made decisions that were inappropriate or wrong, where they misrepresented their financial standing. I don't think we want to reward bad behavior. But there are a lot of people in danger. We have some 8,000 people who will have their homes foreclosed on today, tomorrow, the next day, and the next. That is a clear signal to me we need to do something. We can do some things that will make a difference without breaking the Treasury. Let me mention a couple elements of what I hope will be in the housing package that we might bring back to the floor. One of those is FHA modernization. Some people recall 75 years ago the Federal Housing Administration was established. People wonder where the 30-year fixed rate mortgage came from. It came from FHA. A lot of people own a home today because their loan was guaranteed by the FHA. My first home loan was guaranteed by the VA for the house I bought when I came back from Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam war. Not even 10 years ago, but 5, 10 years ago, almost 20 percent of the people in this country got a mortgage that was guaranteed by the FHA. As recently as last year, that number is down to 5 percent. The FHA oftentimes has helped to insure mortgages of people who have a questionable credit rating, people who were maybe a first- time home buyer for whom a lot of banks were reluctant to provide a mortgage without the guarantee that maybe an FHA or a VA would offer. But FHA-guaranteed mortgages dropped from almost 20 percent of all mortgages a half dozen or more years ago, down to about 5 percent today. The drop between 20 percent or whatever it is down to 5 percent reflects the number of people who used to go to FHA for help, who today or in recent months and years have instead taken advantage of these adjustable rate mortgages that have low teaser introductory rates that reset after a couple years, that have a clause in them that makes it difficult, if not impossible, or at least very expensive, to refinance the mortgage. Those people are stuck. There are a couple of million of them who have been stuck with adjustable rate mortgages, high teaser rates that are going up, and finding it difficult to get out of that situation. For those folks who have been in that situation, maybe people with somewhat marginal credit, people who are first-time home buyers, I don't want them to look for adjustable rate mortgages for salvation. I want them to see the FHA as relevant in their lives. What we need to do is bring the FHA into the 21st century to make it relevant to today's borrowers' needs. Senators Dodd and Shelby have been working with Representatives Frank and Baucus on legislation we passed in the Senate. The House has passed FHA modernization legislation. I think they are close to consensus. My hope is we can find consensus. And when we take up later this week, hopefully, a bipartisan housing recovery bill, a centerpiece of that will be FHA modernization. We ought to do that. It is something we all agree on, Democrats and Republicans, the President, and, frankly, a lot of people around the country, borrowers and lenders too. The second piece that ought to be in this package will be the authorization that we would provide for housing authorities throughout the country to issue mortgage revenue bonds, tax exempt revenue bonds, the proceeds of which could be not only used for first-time home buyers, not just for multifamily housing, affordable housing, but also could be used to provide moneys to help people refinance their mortgage, people in some jeopardy. The administration supports that idea. Secretary Paulson testified before our committee in favor of that idea. It is part of the Democratic package that we sought to bring to the floor 2 weeks ago. It ought to be part of the consensus package that we will take up later this week. There are any number of other good ideas that hopefully will be part of the package. Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island has a very good idea that seems to be acceptable on a lot of fronts, to provide for greater transparency for borrowers as people go to the credit markets to look for mortgages, to make sure they know what they are getting and get a good deal, a fair deal. Senator Martinez and Senator Feinstein have a proposal. I believe it is one that deals with the appraisals, to make sure the appraisals that back up the homes that are being bought or sold are actually real and not just an appraisal put together, pulled out of thin air because somebody drove by a house and slapped a value on it by looking at it through a windshield. I think Senator Martinez has another good idea with respect to licensing mortgage brokers. It may not be perfect and is something that can be worked on further, but something along those lines should be part of this package. Senator Isakson has an idea and is actually something I think was done maybe when President Ford was President. Senator Isakson's idea is if you have a home--let's say all 100 desks in the Senate Chamber are all homes. There is one for each Senator. Maybe this home right here is in foreclosure, and it is blighting the value of this home and that home and those homes all around it. The folks in this neighborhood would love to have somebody come and live in this home, somebody who is going to take care of that property and maintain that property but also help to maintain the value of the other properties. What Senator Isakson does is provide a tax credit--I think he is saying $5,000 per year--for somebody who comes in and not just buys that home but lives in that home as the owner and the occupier. To the extent they do that, they get a $5,000 tax credit. He suggested we do that over 3 years, which would mean $15,000 for 3 years. That could be pretty expensive. I have suggested to him we try to find a way to bring down the cost of his proposal. My hope is we can do that and include that in the final bill we come up with. Another idea that has merit is to increase somewhat the appropriation for community development block grants and to say to State and local governments they can use some of the proceeds from this money to take a home that is in foreclosure and do something to prepare it to be sold and to restore the value of that home and to restore the vitality of the neighborhood in which it is now decaying. In short, there is no shortage of good ideas. Some of them are authored by Democrats and offered by Democrats, and in some cases they are authored and offered by our Republican colleagues. In some cases they are ideas that enjoy bipartisan support. At the end of the day, together they fashion a pretty good package that will help make a real difference, and a difference in not a couple years but literally in a couple of months. The last thing I would say is, one of the more controversial provisions in the package that came to us actually last month from our Democratic leaders is a provision dealing with bankruptcy and would extend to bankruptcy judges the ability to go in and not only adjust interest rates on mortgages for homes that are in foreclosure or about to go into foreclosure but also to adjust the amount of the mortgage itself. That has caused a lot of concern about the chilling effect it may have on interest rates for primary homes in the future. I give Senator Durbin credit. He has tried to amend his earlier proposal to address the concerns--the legitimate concerns--that have been raised. I think he has acted in good faith. I know Senator Specter has a little different proposal on this approach. I think Senator Dodd has been working along with Representative Frank over in the House on kind of a variation of an earlier idea suggested, I think, by the head of the Office of Thrift Supervision--the folks who supervise the savings and loan industry--to try to make sure we address the issue of a homeowner whose home is not in foreclosure but whose mortgage is underwater. I will give you an example. You have a home that has been bought for $200,000. Today the home is worth $160,000, and the person who owns the home is thinking about literally walking away from their mortgage, walking away from their home. You can do that today for about $1,000, I am told, working through a company that will help you walk away from your home mortgage. The person who walks away becomes a renter, and the obligation they have to continue to have to pay the mortgage goes away. You end up with a home that is in foreclosure. The banks do not want to be stuck with those properties. The folks in the neighborhood of the home being foreclosed on do not want that to happen in their neighborhood. I think Senator Dodd and Representative Frank have a very constructive idea--not a perfect idea but a good idea--that can go forth. It requires some sacrifice on the part of the lenders. It requires some sacrifice and give on the part of the borrowers. But it also leaves them a home in the end, at least, where they still have a little bit of equity and a good reason not to walk away from their home, triggering a foreclosure. The last thing I will mention--this is an idea that is not new, but we have been hearing testimony about this for a couple years--we have three major Government-sponsored enterprises, not counting Ginne Mae, but three major Government-sponsored enterprises whose job it is to help raise money and to provide liquidity and safety for the housing market in this country. One is Fannie Mae, another is Freddie Mac, and the third is a little bit different kind of an animal called Federal home loan banks. There are about 12 of those throughout our country. The way we buy homes has changed a whole lot over the years. When I bought my first home in Delaware, I went to a bank. They agreed to make the mortgage. I borrowed the money. I think it was about $40,000. They borrowed the money and they held my mortgage. They held my mortgage, and every month they would send me a statement, and I would send them a check to make my payment. They held the mortgage for years and years and years. It does not work that way anymore. Today you go to your local thrift or bank, and they make a mortgage to help a person buy a home, and the bank may decide to hold the mortgage. They may decide to service the mortgage. But in most cases, they don't. In a lot of cases they turn around and they sell the mortgage to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are huge financial institutions. They package these home mortgages together from all kinds of financial institutions that originally made the mortgages from across the country, and they put them together into investments called mortgage-backed securities, and those mortgage- backed securities are sold to investors all over this country and all over the world. The problem with the mortgage-backed securities is when you have a drop in home values, you have a problem with homeowners, borrowers not making their mortgage payments. When you have a problem with the underlying homes that make up these mortgage-backed securities going into foreclosure and mortgage payments not being collected, the value of those mortgage-backed securities drops. The companies, the investors who are holding those mortgage-backed securities are getting into trouble, and we have a situation where liquidity in our banking system begins to dry up. When the liquidity in the banking system dries up, two things can help start a recession. One of those is that when people think we are going into a recession, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy because people stop spending money. They stop spending money and, lo and behold, we have a recession. Another way we have recessions is that the banking system stops working. They stop making loans. Liquidity is sort of like the blood in our veins. The liquidity goes away in our financial systems and our economy. That is part of what we face today. The two entities that do the most in terms of trying to make sure we continue to have liquidity in our banking system are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when they buy these mortgages from banks that have made mortgages to individual borrowers. Then they package these mortgages. Sometimes they sell them around the world. Sometimes they hold those mortgage-backed securities in their own portfolio. In some cases, the folks at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, I guess, actually hold individual mortgages for a while. They do some of that as well. The problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is, they have run into trouble in the last couple years because they do not have a very strong regulator. They do not have a strong, independent regulator. We have held many hearings for a couple years trying to figure out how we provide a strong, independent regulator and at the same time make sure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not repeat the sins and mistakes of their past few years. How do we do that in a way and at the same time create an affordable housing fund much as we have with the Federal home loan banks? My hope is--if not in this package that is, hopefully, going to emerge from these discussions in the next day or two--in the next week or two, maybe month or so, the Banking Committee can move together and report out a consensus package on regulatory reform to provide a strong, independent regulator for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal home loan banks. That would be another good thing for our country and for those of us who want to buy homes and sell homes. Let me close with this: Going back to the beginning of the year, as our economy started to slip into what may be a recession--and we will find out in another quarter or so if it really has been a recession--as we began to slip, the Federal Reserve, actually starting last fall, began to use its monetary powers, first of all, to lower the Federal funds rate--the rate at which banks charge one another for lending money between themselves at the end of every day--they started lowering the Federal funds rate rather dramatically--in fact, more dramatically than I have ever seen in my life. The Federal Reserve has made it possible to encourage more banks, more financial institutions, regular financial institutions, and even investment banks to come to the discount window to borrow money to meet their problems. The Federal Reserve has gone so far as to even help make possible for JPMorgan Chase to come in and take over Bear Stearns so it would not collapse into bankruptcy and trigger maybe an even worse situation. While the shareholders of Bear Stearns have taken a shellacking--I think they ended up getting about $2 per share for their stock; Bear Stearns' stock had been valued at over $100 not long ago--the shareholders took a loss, but at least it did not cause sort of a domino effect in a failure of our financial system. The Federal Reserve has been involved in that. The Federal Reserve has been willing to take from financial institutions their mortgage-backed securities and replace them with Treasury securities to put some liquidity back into the banking system. The Federal Reserve has been terrific. It has been very helpful in terms of putting liquidity back into the system but also raising the confidence of consumers, the confidence of our constituents, and us too. So that is one that has happened. The second thing we have done, Congress and the President working together, is we have agreed, about 2 months ago, upon a stimulus package. Is the stimulus package one I would have written or maybe the Presiding Officer would have written? Probably not. But on balance, it does more good than bad, and we expect to see a boost in our gross domestic product in the second half of this year of maybe 1, 1.5 percentage points. That is going to be a nice lift to the economy as we struggle to either shorten a recession or to abridge one altogether. The third piece that is still waiting to be done--after the Federal Reserve has acted in the variety of ways I just described--after the effect of this stimulus package begins to kick in, the third thing that needs to be done is we need to take up and develop and pass and send to the President a consensus housing recovery package. The elements I have described already enjoy support, in most cases, from Democrats and Republicans, including the administration. A lot of the ideas have merit. My hope is we will have, in the next day or two, the opportunity to debate those individual proposals. For folks who want to amend them, in some cases strike them, in other cases to add new provisions, terrific. That is the way this system is supposed to work. That is the way this place is supposed to work. My hope is in a very short while we will be gathered on this floor offering amendments to the package that Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby and our staffs are going to be working on to get things going, to get things done. The people of my State did not send me here to just talk about our problems. They sent me here to do something about them. We have a great opportunity to take the next step, I say the third in a trilogy of steps, that will help get our economy out of a ditch and hopefully head in the right direction. The best thing that can happen is we can demonstrate to people in this country that Democrats and Republicans, in an election year, can set aside our political differences and figure out the right thing to do to help stabilize the housing situation and put us on the road to recovery. That is going to lift the spirits of a lot of people and give our friends in the media a different kind of story to report--not the story they report day after day after day, a drumbeat of all the things going wrong in this county, but to start reporting some things that are going right in this country. As those more positive, uplifting, inspirational stories begin to appear, recessions have a way of turning into recoveries. That is exactly what we need right about now. Mr. President, with that, I do not see anyone else waiting to speak on the floor, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Reclaiming my time, Madam President, I say in conclusion that the American people want us to get things done. They want us to address the mortgage crisis. There is a way to do that that involves some very good Democratic ideas and some very good Republican ideas. Frankly, there are a number of good ideas we share in common, and there is a whole lot more we share than we do not. At the end of the day, I think Senator Isakson's tax credit idea could be accepted in some form to go with some increase in CDBGs, community development block grants. We could do both, maybe not as much of either as was originally proposed but a little of both. Let's see how they work and then, after a year or so, see if there is one or the other that makes more sense to do additionally. I think what is going to happen today, unfortunately, is we are going to have this vote on a motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed on the housing package. It is going to go down. My hope is that as soon as it goes down, if it does, my leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, will go through a finite list of amendments, maybe five or so on a side. We are not interested in nongermane amendments. We are interested in amendments that speak directly to the housing crisis on our side and the Republican side, and we ought to be able to define that list. Senator Isakson's idea is one. Senator Martinez has a couple of good ideas, one he shares with Senator Feinstein. Senator Specter has some ideas on bankruptcy provisions that I may not support, but they certainly deserve to be debated and heard. And we have some ideas on our side as well. My hope is, again, if this goes down today, that it is just a hiccup and not a heart attack, that we are going to come back and actually go to work to develop a consensus package that I know is there. It is literally there within our grasp. We can have not just a Democratic or a Republican win or a win for the administration, but we are going to have a win for the hundreds of thousands of people who are in danger of losing their homes. We can do something about this in the next several days, and we need to. I am going to join hands and arms with my colleagues, Senator Martinez, Senator Dodd, Senator Shelby, and others who care as passionately about this issue as we do, to join our leaders in making sure we do get the job done. I yield back whatever time I have remaining. I thank my friend from Alabama for his graciousness in yielding time.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I understand the time that has been allocated--I think 8 minutes left on our side--is leader time that has been allocated to Senator Dodd, the chairman of the Banking Committee. He is not going to be here until after the vote to use that time. Our staff has been good to say that the time might be made available to me. I wish to enter into a colloquy, if I may, with Senator Martinez, who is a former Secretary of HUD in a previous life and a valued member of the Senate Banking Committee. We are going to have a vote in a few minutes on whether to proceed to a housing recovery package which has a number of positive elements in it. It is one that was largely put together by the Democratic side, but there is a willingness on our side to certainly accept amendments offered by our Republican friends. As it turns out, the administration's top three priorities, as Senator Martinez knows, in the housing recovery package that we might go to at this time would be GSE regulatory reform for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks, FHA modernization, and it would also include the ability for State housing authorities to issue additional taxes and revenue bonds that can be used for helping refinance homes that are going or have gone into foreclosure. Those are the top three proposals of the administration. The third one is actually in our Democratic proposal on housing recovery. The other two, Chairman Dodd and Senator Shelby met, I am told last night, with the ranking Republican and the chairman on the House side on FHA modernization, and they have made good progress toward a final consensus, maybe a good preconference agreement. On GSE reform, the House has passed by a wide margin legislation to provide for that regulatory reform and also to provide for the creation of an affordable housing fund, something strongly pushed and supported by Senator Jack Reed for a number of years. There is a whole lot, frankly, that we have in common. We are going to vote in a few minutes on a motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the proposal that was brought to the floor by our Democratic leader. My fear is we are not going to get consent to proceed to the bill, which, on the face of it, is unfortunate because I believe there is a whole lot more agreement here than one might imagine. I yield to my friend from Florida to add to this discussion and take away whatever he might wish. I actually believe there is more in common by far than there is in disharmony.