Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask to be advised when I have consumed 20 minutes of my time.

Mr. CARPER. Thank you, Mr. President. I come today to address the Chamber and our colleagues on the subject of cost-effective airlift in the 21st century. Before I do that, though, I wish to preface my remarks with this: Today, we have received an interim report from the administration on whether progress is being made in Iraq--specifically, progress with respect to the 18 benchmarks that were required in legislation we enacted in May of this year. From the news accounts this morning, there are few surprises. The U.S. military, as expected, is doing its job--a tough job. The problem is, the Iraqi Government and too many of its elected leaders are not. The Iraqi Parliament remains hamstrung by profound, seemingly irreconcilable differences. Despite months of American prodding, the Iraqi lawmakers have yet to agree on any of the major issues before them: how to share oil wealth, how to share power, when to schedule elections, de-Baathification, how to settle the sectarian differences that so badly divide their country. We also have news this morning that al-Qaida is once again on the move, bringing to the forefront how the President's policies in Iraq have effectively created not fewer terrorists but more and, unfortunately, made our country, I fear, less safe. According to U.S. intelligence estimates, al-Qaida has rebuilt its operations to levels we have not seen since just before the September 11 attacks. These reports indicate that the al-Qaida network is regrouping along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The CIA says there is evidence of more training, more money, more communications, and increased activity among al-Qaida. The results of such activity, as we know too well, could be deadly. This new report tells me we have diverted too many of our resources to fighting a war that simply cannot be won by military might alone, and in doing so we have lost ground on the war on terror. Osama bin Laden remains at large 6 years after 9/11, and has seemingly taken peaceful refuge somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan. That is unacceptable. This week and next, we are going to be taking a series of votes on how best to change the course in Iraq and refocus our energy on where it belongs--rooting out al-Qaida and going after their terrorist networks abroad and at home in a way that makes sense and will better guarantee success. Part of that means, beginning later this year, that we begin to redeploy a portion of our troops from Iraq to put additional pressure on, and encouragement for, the Iraqi Government to do what it must do to help bring peace to their nation. Part of that means refocusing our efforts on how to win the war on terror, smoke out Osama bin Laden, and, in doing so, make our world a safer place. I hope our President will work with our colleagues and with me to chart a winning course on the war on terror. We cannot get there alone. This is something we must do together. Having said that, I want to now focus on cost-effective airlift in the 21st century. The Senate is writing legislation this week intended to equip our Armed Forces to meet our national security threats and keep our country safe. Doing so is one of the foremost responsibilities of this body. Our Armed Forces are charged with providing our Commander in Chief with flexible options for responding to a wide variety of threats across the globe. In Iraq, our Armed Forces are keeping the lid on a civil war and protecting civilians from terrorists. In Korea, our Armed Forces are charged with guarding an ally's border and deterring aggression on the part of a large conventional military. In the Pacific and the Persian Gulf, our Armed Forces protect American interests through the projection of naval power and carrier- based air power. At home, our National Guard provides our Nation's Governors with critical response capability to cope with natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina. At times, it can seem as though the demands on our military are practically limitless. Unfortunately, the resources available for equipping our military to meet these demands are not. At a time when our Federal budget remains mired in the red, we need to be looking for ways to meet our military requirements in a fiscally responsible manner. I have come to the floor today to talk about one way we can do that. I have come to the floor, as I have said, to discuss cost-effective airlift in the 21st century. Although the air men and women of our strategic airlift fleet rarely receive the attention they deserve, the reality is our military could not perform any of their missions I described if it were not for their hard work and dedication. Strategic airlift involves the use of cargo aircraft to move personnel, weaponry, and material over long distances--often to combat theaters on the other side of the globe. During Operation Desert Storm, U.S. aircraft moved over 500,000 troops and more than 540,000 tons of cargo. During the current war in Iraq, airlift sorties have made up the majority of the nearly 30,000 total sorties flown by U.S. military aircraft. Strategic airlift enables our military to respond to threats wherever they occur in the world real time. Not only must our fighting men and women be transported to the fight, they must be continuously resupplied. Airlift makes that possible. Most of the supplies, materiel, and weaponry moves abroad aboard ships. Almost all of our personnel and a good deal of cargo, however, are transported by aircraft. That airlift is provided by a combination of U.S. military airlift and commercial aircraft. The three military aircraft doing most of the heavy lifting are the C-5, the C-17, and the C-130. Together, they provide what I call an ``air bridge''--an ``air bridge''--to Iraq, Afghanistan, and to other troubled spots around the world. Over the past 10 years, the United States has reduced its Cold War infrastructure and closed some two-thirds of its forward bases. Therefore, to maintain the same level of global engagement, U.S. forces must now deploy more frequently and over greater distances. Since 9/11, the scale and pace of operations has increased dramatically. There have been several efforts in recent years to quantify our military's strategic airlift requirement. The most recent one is the Mobility Capabilities Study, which was commissioned by the Pentagon, and was completed in February of last year. It concluded that the Nation's airlift requirement could be met with a fleet of 112 C-5s and 180 C-17s. Our current strategic airlift fleet--including aircraft currently flying and aircraft on order--consists of 111 C-5s and 190 C-17s. An update to the Mobility Capabilities Study included in the President's budget this year confirmed that this mix is sufficient to meet our airlift needs. The problem at the moment is not that we have too few aircraft; the problem is that most of the C-5s in our airlift fleet are not as reliable as they could be. There are two ways in which we could choose to address this problem: One, we could fix the aircraft we have, or, two, we could purchase new aircraft. Families face a similar choice when they have a problem with their car. Should they fix their car or should they buy a new one? Usually families make this decision based on one of three factors: Can the car they have be fixed? If it can, is it cheaper to fix than buying a new one? If the car can be fixed, and it is cheaper to fix than buying a new one, do they have so much money that they can afford--in spite of the greater cost--to go ahead and buy a new car anyhow? We should ask ourselves the same question when it comes to paying for military aircraft within the confines of a responsible Federal budget. Let's look at this first chart about meeting our Nation's airlift needs. We pose on the chart three questions: Can the aircraft we have be fixed? Can they be fixed for less than the cost of purchasing new aircraft? Or, finally, can we afford to buy new aircraft anyhow, even if it is unnecessary and more costly? The answer to the first question is, yes, the aircraft can be fixed. The answer to the second question--can it be fixed for less than purchasing a new aircraft--is, yes, it can. Can we afford to buy new aircraft anyhow, even though it is unnecessary and may be more costly? The answer to that, I believe, is no. First, let's consider the question of whether the aircraft we have can be fixed. There are currently programs in place to fix C-5s. The C- 5s are being upgraded with new engines, new hydraulics, new avionics, and more than 70 other improvements throughout the aircraft. The contractor responsible for these upgrades has committed to the Air Force that the improvements to these aircraft will result in at least a 75-percent mission capable rate. That is up from 60, 65 percent today. If that level of reliability can be achieved, our current fleet of C- 5s and C-17s is sufficient to meet our airlift needs now and for the foreseeable future. That is the conclusion of both the military's latest analyses of our airlift needs and an independent study done by the Institute for Defense Analyses. To date, 3 C-5s--one a C-5A and two of them C-5Bs--have received the complete upgrades that are eventually planned for the entire C-5 fleet. General Schwartz, who is commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, has said he is encouraged by the performance of these aircraft and believes the target mission-capable rate of at least 75 percent will be met and possibly exceeded. General Schwartz isn't the only one giving the modernized flights high praise. One of the modernized B models came to the Dover Air Force Base about 2 months ago for their annual inspection. I had the opportunity to see it and talk to the crew. I asked one of the pilots aboard the aircraft who has some 4,000 flight hours on the C-5, ``How does it fly?'' His response: ``Like a rocket.'' While most acknowledge that C-5s can be fixed, there are those who argue that many of them are not worth fixing. I have heard two versions of this argument. The first is that even if most of the fleet can and should be fixed, at least 25 or 30 of the older C-5As are such ``bad actors'' that they should be retired. Unfortunately, those who have made this claim have done little to substantiate their claim. Congress has asked the Air Force to provide a list of these bad actors by tail number. To date, as far as I know, the Air Force has not done so. A recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service suggests a possible reason why. Perhaps these bad actors do not exist. Let's look at this chart, my second chart here: The C-5 reliability argument. These are the words paraphrased from the Congressional Research Service: An examination of C-5 reliability and maintainability statistics for the past three fiscal years does not identify any obvious subset of the C-5 fleet that stands out as notably `bad actors.' The other version of the ``some of the C-5s are not worth saving'' argument draws a line in the sand, not between a set of bad actors and the rest of the fleet but between the older C-5As and the newer C-5Bs. It is a common perception that the C-5As do not perform as well as the C-5Bs, but that perception again is contradicted by the facts. Again, to quote the CRS study, the recent CRS study--I think it was released a couple of months ago: C-5A performance and reliability is not uniformly inferior to C-5B performance. Over the past three years, for example, the C-5A fleet has averaged a higher mission departure reliability rate of over 83 percent than the C-5B fleet, which is right around 81 percent. However, some claim that even if C-5As are not uniformly less reliable, inevitably they will incur structural problems because they are older than the C-5B models. This claim continues to be made even after the Air Force established a Fleet Viability Board in 2003 to evaluate the C-5A fleet and render judgment on the suitability for its continued service. The board 4 years ago reviewed all the relevant data and concluded that the C-5A fleet is structurally sound and viable for at least 25 years and probably longer. To be sure--to be sure--the Air Force actually tore a C-5A apart in late 2005 to inspect it from top to bottom and end to end. The aircraft was given a clean bill of health. The evidence at hand strongly suggests, at least to me, that we could fix the aircraft we have. Here is the question, though: Can we fix them for less than it would cost to replace them with new aircraft? On this point, it is not even close. Before I go on to explain why that is the case, let me pause for a moment to say that as a former naval flight officer--I served 5 years active duty, 18 years in the Reserve; I have about 3,500 hours in a P-3 Navy aircraft. Let me say I am a great admirer of the C-17 aircraft. I have supported, and I suspect the Presiding Officer has supported, acquisition of additional C-17 aircraft out of the 190 that have been bought so far. Having said that, it is a highly reliable workhorse. Its mission-capable rate hovers around 85 percent. It can land on large airfields and small airstrips, all of which highly commend the aircraft to us, and that is why we ordered and bought so many of them. In my own State, the Dover Air Force Base has begun receiving a squadron of 13 C- 17s. We are delighted. We are excited. We are enthusiastic about their arrival. Having said that, let me add that the cost of modernizing a C-5 is roughly one-third--let me say that again--the cost of modernizing a C-5 is roughly one-third the cost of purchasing a new C-17. Modernizing a C-5 is roughly one-third of the cost of purchasing a new C-17. Moreover, the C-5 can carry twice as much cargo as the C-17. By modernizing a C-5, we buy twice as much hauling capacity for one-third the cost. Let me say that again. By modernizing a C-5, we can buy twice as much hauling capacity for one-third the cost. Now, I know some dispute these figures. First, they argue that modernizing a C-5 costs more than one-third of the cost of purchasing a new C-17. They do so by suggesting that the C-5 reengineering program is experiencing dramatic cost growth. Again, the facts say otherwise. According to CRS, claims that the cost of C-5 modernization has risen substantially--and this is what CRS says; this is a quote--``appear to be somewhat at odds with official cost reports from the Department of Defense Comptroller.'' The Defense 2006 Select Acquisition Report for the C-5 reengineering program showed average procurement unit cost growth of under 3 percent. Now, it is never good news when a program cost growth goes over expectation, even by a little. However, 2.9 percent cost growth is not particularly remarkable when compared to other Defense acquisition programs. Moreover, CRS reports that: Projections of future cost growth are driven in large part by the Air Force's decision to slow down the C-5 modernization production and to extend it by two years. Over the last 5 years, the Air Force has pushed this program further and further out into the future--not 2 years but 5 years. Because stretching out the program leads to insufficient production rates, costs have increased. The contractor responsible for modernizing C-5s has offered the Air Force a firm fixed-price contract in order to guarantee no more cost overruns. All the Air Force has to do to nail down a definite, affordable price is not stretch out the program any further. The ball is in the Air Force's court. If the Air Force does not choose to keep the program on schedule, thereby securing an affordable, fixed price, one has to wonder--at least I wonder--whether the Air Force is interested in making the most cost-effective choice for taxpayers. Advocates of retiring C-5s have also disputed the fact that a C-5 can carry twice as much as the C-17. In fact, they have begun to refer to C-5s as ``C-17 equivalents'' for purposes of meeting our airlift needs. However, the C-5 clearly boasts a greater payload capacity than the C-17, as this chart shows. This is the C-5 and C-17 capabilities comparison. Let's look at it: The C-5 and the C-17. MA tanks, the C-5 carries two, the C-17 carries one; Bradleys, the C-5 carries four, the C-17 carries two; Apache helicopters, the C-5 carries six, the C-17 carries three; multiple launch rocket systems, the C-5 carries four, the C-17 carries two. And Patriot missile launchers, the C-5 carries two and the C-17 carries one. Despite the fact its cargo capacity in cubic feet for the C-5 is only 60 percent greater than the C-17, the C-5 hauls double the load in several cases and actually makes more efficient use of its cargo space when transporting large weapons systems, I think as we see here. Despite the size advantage of the C-5, advocates of retiring the C-5 still make two arguments to ignore the vehicle's greater hauling capacity. First, they point out the C-5s currently have reliability problems that negate the C-5s' greater size and capacity. The problem with this argument is we are addressing C-5 reliability problems through the modernization process that our friends in the Air Force continue to delay. The second argument I hear for overlooking the C-5's superior hauling capacity is it doesn't actually matter in practice. Some claim that since both C-5s and C-17s generally fly missions carrying less than the full weight they are capable of carrying, it makes little sense to compare what they are capable of carrying when fully loaded. Well, my office was told the reason C-5s and C-17s generally carry less than the capacity is they ``cube out'' first. That means the limiting factor is more often the number of pallets these aircraft can carry, rather than the weight they carry. However--here is an important point--this point reinforces that C-5s actually carry twice as much as the C-17s, since C-5s have 36 pallet positions and C-17s have only 18. So can we fix the aircraft we have for less than the cost of replacing them with new aircraft? I believe the answer is yes. Let's look at this last chart, some of the benefits of the C-5. This is a paraphrase of the CRS report that came out a couple months ago. This is what the paraphrase is. It says: Current cost estimates of modernizing the C-5 are about one-third that of a new C-17, and the C-5 will carry twice the payload of the C-17. Not my words but those of CRS. We can fix the aircraft, the C-5As and Bs that we have, and it is clearly less expensive to do that than to buy new aircraft. But can we afford to purchase new aircraft anyhow, even though it is unnecessary and exceedingly costly? In 2006, the Federal Government, our Federal Government, ran a deficit of just under a quarter of a trillion dollars. OMB tells us the deficit for 2007 this year will be around $200 billion. We are rapidly approaching the retirement of the baby boomers, which will put unprecedented strain on Social Security, on Medicare, and on Medicaid. In short, we are spending beyond our means, and we are using the Social Security surplus to mask an even larger operational deficit. The Defense Science Board tells us that: Each year of additional C-17 production beyond 2008 will represent an additional $2.4 billion acquisition and $2 billion to $3 billion life cycle cost commitment. I would ask: Aren't there better ways we could use some of this money than purchasing aircraft the military has not requested, credible studies suggest to me--and I think to others--that we don't need? Even if we confine our focus on the Air Force budget, it is clear there are better uses for this money. The strategic airlift fleet--C-5s and C-17s--is the youngest of the Air Force's aircraft fleets--the youngest--not the oldest, the youngest. If we have several billion dollars lying around, I would suggest there are other fleets in the Air Force inventory in more urgent need of new aircraft than the strategic airlift fleet, including tankers, C-130s, to name a few. Yet if you ask the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, he will tell you this is the reason the Air Force is not and will probably not put money in its own budget to retire C-5s and replace them with new aircraft. When we actually sit down and do the math, it is difficult to argue that C-5s, with wings and fuselages that have another 30 or 40 years of useful life, should be retired and replaced with new C-17s. It is even more difficult to argue that it is cost-effective to do so. The only reason left to consider for why we would possibly want to retire C-5s and replace them with new C-17s is that the C-17s can perform missions that C-5s cannot. It is true that C-17s and C-5s have different attributes. The C-17 can land on short, austere runways that the C-5 cannot. But it is important to keep in mind that only a small minority of strategic airlift missions involve taking off from or landing on short, austere runways. On the other hand, the C-5 can carry outsized cargo that the C-17 cannot carry. In fact, the evidence suggests that if we have a deficit, in terms of matching our capabilities with our needs, it is that we have too few modernized C-5s, not too few C-17s. For instance, during Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, the Department of Defense has been forced to lease a Russian aircraft called the An-124 to carry outsize and oversize cargo because C-17s cannot carry this cargo, and not enough C-5 aircraft have been available. An-124s are Russian aircraft that are comparable to the C-5s. Actually, they are a little bigger than C-5s. It is ironic that some are talking about retiring C-5s when the C-5s we have are insufficient to meet our needs and we must rely on an even larger Russian aircraft to help fill the gap. Mr. President, I have come to the floor on more than one occasion during my time in the Senate to discuss this issue. I want to be honest with you; sometimes we act as though our usual obligation to be careful stewards of the taxpayers' dollars does not apply when it comes to defense spending. I want to remind my colleagues of this: When we spend beyond our needs, there is an opportunity cost. We end up shortchanging our troops in the field, failing to provide them with the body armor and up-armored vehicles they need, or we end up shortchanging our troops when they come home, failing to actually tend to their physical and psychological needs, which is a problem and concern we hope to address by the amendment that was discussed before me. Let me finish today by commending the leadership of the Armed Services Committee and its SeaPower Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over this issue. They have shown a commitment over the years to identifying the facts on this issue and making decisions based on the facts. The Defense bill reported out of the Armed Services Committee--the bill before us today--retains the requirement in current law that we fully flight-test three C-5s that have been modernized before making any further C-5 retirement decisions. The committee also approved report language requiring the Air Force to provide Congress with a report this year, giving us an up-to-date assessment on the performance of these three C-5s which have undergone modernization upgrades, as well as the projected cost of upgrading of the rest of the C-5 fleet. I thank the members of the committee and the chairman and Senator McCain, as well as their staffs, for their work on this issue. I hope we pass this Defense authorization bill which is before us. I hope the Senate will insist on its position in this regard in the conference with the House. I yield back my time.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I feel fortunate that Senator Levin was unable to be here yesterday to present the bill from the committee he chairs. As the Presiding Officer a few minutes ago, and now listening for 5 minutes or so, I have become better acquainted with some of the details of a very large and complex piece of legislation. I want to start off by saying a special thanks to him and his staff, to Senator McCain and Senator Warner and their staffs, and other members of the committee. They have crafted a very difficult bill. As one who likes to work across the aisle, I applaud them for the way they have done that, bringing near unanimity from your committee in support of this legislation. I especially salute the Senator from Michigan and his team for the work they have done in providing for a chief management officer within the Department of Defense--God knows we need that--along with many other aspects of the bill. I want to take a moment to talk about the amendment Senator Webb is offering and has laid down. I know there are folks who have concerns within the Senate and outside of the Senate about this legislation. I want to speak in support of his proposal. You may recall he is calling for us to try to ensure that there is some downtime for active-duty personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan--that once they have served in those theaters, they be able to come home, train, rest up, reacquaint with their families, and to prepare to go back, if necessary. He is saying if you are on active duty for 6 months abroad, then they could come home for 6 months. If it is 12 months, there would be a 12-month respite. They would be training and working on readiness and trying to reunite themselves with their families. There is plenty to do during the time they are not deployed. Also, he would say if they happen to be reservists or National Guard, they should have the opportunity for every year spent abroad to have 3 years downtime. The obvious question that came to mind for me is: What if we get into a jam somewhere in another part of the world and we need somebody who has been promised that 6 months back home, or 2, 3 years back home, and we need them to come back and serve on active duty? What if a member of the Guard or Reserves or active duty wanted to serve sooner again in Afghanistan or Iraq, would they be able to? Those are good questions. It was discussed over lunch with Senator Webb. I was pleased with his response. Regarding the question about the guardsmen, reservists, and active-duty personnel who want to come back and serve in the theaters again prior to the end of their period of respite, their time at home, they could go back if they express that they want to serve. That request will be honored. Secondly, if we get into a jam as a country in another part of the world and we need a unit to go there, whether you are Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine, there is a Presidential waiver included in the Webb amendment that says the President can waive the language in the bill, in the amendment, and direct those forces to serve back in the theater where they are needed. I think those are positive and important aspects of the Webb amendment. We ought to keep them in mind. Prior to coming to serve in the Senate, I was privileged to be Governor of my State for 8 years. As Governor of Delaware--or of any State, whether it is Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Delaware--you serve as commander in chief of your National Guard. We had Army Guard and Air Guard who served, and I was honored to be, for those 8 years, their commander in chief. I felt a great affection, a great affinity for them, an allegiance to them and to their families. When I was in Iraq 3 or 4 weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with members of our 198th Signal Battalion of the Delaware National Guard. On the morning I came back from having been in Iraq, I flew into Dulles and hotfooted it up to a place called Delaware City in time to send off the 153rd unit of the Delaware National Guard, a military police unit, who were going to Fort Dix and then on to Iraq. It is a unit we actually created when I was Governor, and I feel a special spot for them in my heart. I wanted to be there when they were sent abroad, sent to Fort Dix and then on to Iraq. Having talked with a number of them, having been with them and their families literally weeks ago as they prepared to depart, I have a special sense from being overseas in Baghdad with folks from the 198th Signal Battalion for what their concerns are with respect to an extended deployment. These are people who did not sign up for one, two, three deployments in the war zone. Before I served in the House of Representatives, I was a naval flight officer. I served during the Vietnam war. I wasn't a hero such as Jim Webb, and I wasn't a hero such as John McCain and some others with whom we serve--Danny Inouye. My job in the Vietnam war in P-3 airplanes was to hunt for Red October, track Soviet nuclear submarines. We flew missions off the coast of Vietnam as well. Interestingly enough, we had other Reserve squadrons come out and fly missions with us during the Vietnam war. Almost without exception, we never gave them difficult jobs to do. Almost without exception, they were not given challenging jobs to do because we didn't want them to mess it up. We would basically take the harder jobs for ourselves. We were not confident in their ability to take on the tougher missions with which we were burdened, were subscribed to carry out. That has changed today. Go over to Iraq or Afghanistan where some of us have been recently. Our Guard and Reserve units are doing the toughest work, the most dangerous work, the most demanding work of any Active-Duty Force. They are in harm's way. They are getting shot at, in some cases getting wounded, in other cases dying. They leave behind, particularly those on active duty, Active-Duty Guard and Reserve, not just families in many cases--spouses, children, in some cases dependent parents--in many cases they have businesses they own and run themselves. It is one thing to be away from an employer who would like to have you there, who needs you there and to be away for a month, 2, or 3 months on active duty. But try leaving your business that you may have started, built, and it depends on you being there, and go away for 15 months, come back for a little while to the States to try to get it started again and have to go away again for 15 months. After 5 years active duty, I served another 18 years as a Reserve naval flight officer. I stayed current on my airplane. I flew with a squadron out of the naval air station at Willow Grove. If members of my unit--and they were great guys, they were all guys, and they loved the Navy, they loved the service, they loved our mission--if you had taken most of us and said: We are putting you on active duty for 15 months, let you come home a little while and put you back for another 15 months on the other side of the world, I am not sure how many would sign up again, reup, renew our commitment. I guess a lot of people said: No, thank you; been there, done that. I served my Nation on active duty and in the Reserve, and we wouldn't have taken on that obligation, at least not with great enthusiasm. Some would have; I suspect others would not. What Senator Webb is trying to do is to say: Look, if you have gone over there, if you are on active duty, if you serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines in the theater for 6 months, we are going to make sure you have a chance to catch your breath, to come back, hopefully, with your unit to retrain here, have downtime to reconnect with your family, to begin to put your personal life together a little bit before we put you back over there in harm's way. To the extent you happen to be a reservist or a member of the National Guard and you have other commitments, you are not on active duty, have your own job, business, family with children, we are going to give you a chance to make sure you can get that business going again, stand it up, strengthen it, reacquaint yourself with your family, make sure your kids and spouse are doing all right, maybe your parents, before we put you back in harm's way again. I think that makes a whole lot of sense. It is humane, in terms of actually being able to keep people on active duty, Reserve status, and Guard status. I think it will increase our ability to recruit and retain people, when their term of enlistment expires, to reup. It will increase the likelihood they will stick with us. The other point I wish to make, for those who are not aware of the waiver authority that is granted in this amendment, we say to a President: You can waive these requirements for Active-Duty personnel or for Guard personnel. You can waive them. If we find ourselves in a bind in another part of the world and we need those forces, those assets to be on active duty again, the President can waive those requirements. Also, if I or any of us happen to be on active duty or in the Reserves and we have done our time and have a chance to come back and we want to go back, we feel an obligation to go back--and God bless them, some of our troops today are serving second and third tours over there--they would have the opportunity to do that, not be barred from doing that. If they chose to take that course, they could. For those reasons and for others I mentioned today, I believe Senator Webb's amendment should be supported. It deserves to be enacted. It is one of those deals where the more I learned about it, the more comfortable I have become with it. As a number of my colleagues who actually served active duty, served in the Reserves and had the privilege of leading a State's National Guard, this is one I thought about. This wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, yep, this is the way to do it. I thought it through and put on my hats of earlier roles I played outside the Senate, outside the Congress. I think the Webb amendment is the right way to go. My hope is, when the votes are cast, it will be adopted and added to this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. While Senator Feinstein is still on the floor, I would tell her: In my life, as I have had a chance to meet great leaders in this country and in other places, other countries, in all walks of life, I have taken over the years to asking those leaders: To what do you attribute your success--whether they happen to be a leader in business or academia or government. More often than not they say to me, among other things, I work hard. They also say: I don't give up. I don't give up. I say to my colleague Senator Feinstein, to my colleague Olympia Snowe: You do not give up. And we are going to be a better country, a country less dependent on foreign oil because of those efforts, a country with a cleaner environment, a country and a world less threatened by global warming because of your efforts. If we are smart, we will pull together and find ways to make sure this legislation, rather than being the death knell for the auto industry in this country, can be like a second wind and help to restore us to the kind of vigor we once enjoyed. Thank you very much. Thank you for your kindness in giving so many other people credit. I echo Senator Feinstein's comments with respect to our staffs, committee staff, and there are a bunch of them sitting back here. David and the first team are back here. I want to say you have done a remarkable job. I have been in the Senate for 7 years. This is my first year on the Commerce Committee. I have never seen staff as helpful, Democratic and Republicans, like one team working together, and Beth Osborne, who works on my personal staff, continues to rave about the great support we get from the committee staff. I think they key off Senator Inouye, our chairman, and Senator Stevens, the senior Republican. It is a wonderful kind of relationship, the way this place ought to work. When it does, we get the kind of results I hope we are going to get with respect to fuel efficiency for our cars, trucks, and vans. I believe it was Thomas Edison who said, and I am going to paraphrase Thomas Edison, that: Sometimes people miss opportunity. And they miss opportunity because it comes wearing overalls and looks a lot like work. There is opportunity in the legislation we are prepared, I believe, to pass with respect to fuel efficiencies for our cars, trucks, and vans. I think there is an opportunity here for the U.S. domestic auto industry. We have to help make sure that opportunity is not missed. We have all seen the Home Depot commercials where the folks from Home Depot say: You can do this; we can help. And with respect to meeting the goal of 35-miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks by 2020, that is an aggressive goal. But for the auto industry, Ford, GM, and Chrysler, it is important for us to be there to help them to meet that goal. If you look closely at the legislation we are preparing to pass here in the next--maybe tonight, maybe in the next day or two--if you look at the legislation, there is a variety of ways where we do help. I will mention a few of those now, if I might. One of those is the infusion of Federal dollars in research and development with respect to new battery technology. The coolest car I saw at the Detroit auto show in January of this year was a Chevrolet. It is called a Chevrolet Volt. It is a flex-fuel plug-in hybrid vehicle. The mileage it will get is probably close to 75, 80, 90 miles per gallon. You plug it in your garage at night, go out the next day, drive 40 miles or so on the battery, push on the brakes, and recharge the battery. But also it comes with an auxiliary battery unit. It can be biocell, it could be flex-fuel diesel, it could be flex-fuel ethanol powered, internal combustion engine, recharging the battery and getting this remarkable fuel economy from what I call an elegant solution. That is the kind of creativity we have in this country; not just Chevrolet, not just Ford, not just Chrysler, but all of us together, working together. It is a wonderful concept, as that car is. It is not going to be a reality in 2010 or 2011 or 2012 if we don't have the next generation lithium ion battery to be able to plug in the garage at night and provide the kind of charge to carry us 30, 40 miles the next day, plug it in at work, and on and on. We have an opportunity, I think we have an obligation as the Federal Government, to make sure tax dollars are appropriately spent. Fifty million dollars a year at least for the next 5 years goes to help fund the technologies so that vehicle and other flex-fuel plug-in hybrid vehicles can be built and get us, if not ahead of the rest of the world, at least at the starting line with them as we begin this next part of the race, the competitive race for market share in the world. One way we can help within the Federal Government is through our R&D investment. A second way we can help is by using our Federal purchasing power to commercialize these new technologies as they come to market. We do that in this legislation in one way, by calling for the development of major steps toward a game plan as early as 2009 for the Federal Government to use its purchasing power to buy new technology, highly energy-efficient vehicles. In the underlying language of this bill, it actually says that 70 percent, up to 70 percent of the vehicles that GSA, General Services Administration, purchases on the civilian side for the Federal Government have to be highly energy efficient, next-generation kind of technology--70 percent. In a week or two we are going to take up legislation on the reauthorization of the Defense bill. If we are smart, we will put a similar kind of requirement in there for the defense side of our Government to do what we are preparing to do in this legislation for the civilian side of our Government in terms of purchasing power, to say to the Department of Defense, when they go to the marketplace and they are buying cars, trucks, and vans, and they buy a lot of them, to make sure that early in the next decade maybe 70 percent of what we are purchasing on the defense side is these new technology energy- efficient, low-emission vehicles. That is a smart thing to do. That is the second thing we can do, use the Federal Government's purchasing power to commercialize new technologies. The third thing we can do is make sure our tax policy marries up with the goals we are setting for more highly energy-efficient, low-emission vehicles. In 2005, we passed legislation that said when people buy hybrid-powered vehicles, they can earn a tax credit from about $300 to up to $3,500. That tax credit brings down the cost of the energy-efficient hybrid vehicles and encourages people to buy them. Unfortunately, most of the hybrids people are buying these days happen to be built in other countries. That is going to change very soon, as GM product comes on the market. Chrysler product comes on the market early next year, and we will have the opportunity to buy not just hybrid vehicles built in other countries but a lot of hybrids built here. We have a Tax Code that is set to infuse and encourage American consumers to buy those vehicles as soon as they hit the road. There is also a provision in the 2005 Energy bill that incentivizes consumers to buy low-emission, highly efficient diesel-powered vehicles. The full effect of that will not be felt until 2009. But Chrysler, in a partnership with DaimlerChrysler, is beginning to bring to the roads a highly energy-efficient, far lower emission diesel that increases performance by 40 percent or more in terms of fuel efficiency. It reduces the emission of bad stuff, including CO2, into the air. Beginning in 2009, when emissions really go down on diesel, the tax policy is there to incentivize folks to buy those vehicles. That is a smart thing to do. The fourth area we tried to work into this legislation--and we need to do more--deals with the kind of infrastructure we have for folks who buy fuel cell-powered vehicles in this decade and the next. We don't have a hybrid highway. It is not as if you can take your fuel cell vehicle and go to the corner gas station and fill up, even in this city or its neighboring States. We in the Federal Government have an obligation, particularly if we want to encourage people to get into fuel cell-powered vehicles, hydrogen-powered vehicles, to make sure the infrastructure is there so people can fill up. The same is true with biodiesel, ethanol. It is no good for us to have vehicles run on biodiesel or ethanol if there is no place to fill up. We tried, in the context of this legislation, to fix that problem. I am sure our present Presiding Officer remembers when we were trying to get folks to buy unleaded cars powered by unleaded gas. Finally, we said: Every gas station has to have at least one pump where you can get unleaded gas. We made it a mandate. Today it is hard to find a gas pump that has leaded gas. But it took a while to do that. We need a similar kind of approach with respect to biofuels and ethanol, not that they would supplant completely the petroleum products--that is not going to happen any time soon--but to make sure people have the fuel to meet the kinds of needs of their vehicles. Those are four things we can do in the context of this legislation. We are going to find ways to do more. The best way to do that is to ask the auto industry: How can we help? We want you to meet these goals. We realize you think they are maybe difficult to achieve, some would say impossible to achieve. I don't think so. This is the United States of America. This is the Nation which invented cars. This is the Nation which invented airplanes. This is the Nation which invented televisions and CD players. This is the Nation which invented the Internet, computers. This is the Nation which unleashed the power of the atom. This is the Nation which put a man on the Moon, did it in less than 10 years, when we said we were going to do it. This is the United States of America. We are creative, hard working. We are smart. If we are really smart, we will find a way to make this new approach to fuel efficiency for our cars, trucks, and vans work; to make it work for the domestic auto companies as well as for others who come to our shores; to make it work for the shareholders and for their employees; and, most importantly, to make it work for our Nation so that we will have reduced our dependence on foreign oil, reduced the amount of harmful emissions put into the air, and made this country a little better place to live. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I will. Mr. President, I was talking about the visit of last week with the CEO of one of our major three automakers. The point I was trying to make is the automakers don't have to come up with cars that get 52 miles per gallon or 50 miles per gallon, but if they have a fleet of 60 percent trucks and 40 percent cars in 2020, they are going to have to do better, and better is 42 miles per gallon. Our leader, Senator Reid, was talking about an event here today where some vehicles were on display. I think they were jerry rigged--maybe it was Ford Escape and some other vehicles, maybe Priuses--in order to get very high mileage, I think he said 170 miles per gallon. We don't need cars that get 170 miles per gallon by 2020 to make this standard of roughly 35 miles per gallon for the fleet. We don't need cars that get 50 miles per gallon. But in this case, Company X--which is a real company, it turns out-- is working toward 42 miles per gallon and they would meet the expected requirements that would be set for them. I said to my visitor last week, the CEO who was visiting me, You have an obligation to your shareholders and you have an obligation to your employees to try to get the best deal out of this that you guys can be proud of and maximize your profits. I said: As a Senator who cares about the economic development and job creation in my State, I want you to be profitable. I want you to be successful. So I feel some obligation too. But I went on to add that we have an obligation here, as does the Presiding Officer, my friend from Pennsylvania, who is going to speak in a minute, we have an obligation that goes beyond that which our CEO feels, or other CEOs feel. We have an obligation to make sure we do reduce our reliance on foreign oil. The car companies, in all honesty, don't have that obligation. We have an obligation to make sure the air we breathe is cleaner. We have an obligation to make sure the threat of global warming is diminished, not increased. They don't have that requirement, as we do. That is our job. It is not enough for us, though, to say to the car companies: You have to eat your spinach. You have to go out there and make the tough decisions all by yourself to raise fuel efficiency standards. I think we have an obligation in the Federal Government and in other levels of Government as well to help them. It shouldn't be them doing this all by themselves; we have an obligation to help them. I mention maybe four ways where we are trying to help them in the legislation that is before us today and that we will be voting on tomorrow and during the next couple of days. With respect to making more energy efficient cars, here are some ways we can help the industry. One is through basic research and development investments. If we go back a few years, we have invested a lot of money in fuel cell technologies, as my colleagues know. In the legislation before us, the underlying bill on CAFE standards, we authorized the expenditure of $50 million a year over the next 5 years for new battery technology, for a new generation of lithium batteries, so the kind of cars the majority leader was talking about a few minutes ago, so we can actually build them, actually build the Chevrolet Volt. The Chevrolet Volt, the car I was talking about earlier, the coolest car at the auto show, a flex-fuel, plug-in hybrid, you plug it in, charge the battery at night from your house, go out the next day, drive maybe 30, 40 miles before you have to recharge again. If you get to work before that time, plug it in at work. In the meantime, when you put on your brakes, it is a traditional hybrid. You put on your brakes and recharge the battery. But in the Chevrolet Volt, it actually carries with it an auxiliary power unit. The auxiliary power unit doesn't run the car, it charges the battery. It can be fuel cell powered, it could be biofuels diesel, it could be an ethanol internal combustion engine recharging the battery, and the battery running the wheels. I saw a headline in the local paper in my State a month ago. It was a picture of one of the top folks at GM standing alongside the Chevrolet Volt and talking about this vehicle, which they hope to have on the road by the early part of the next decade, to get over 100 miles per gallon. That is not the entire fleet, it is one vehicle, but that is 100 miles per gallon. If we can do that, 100 miles per gallon or even 80 or 90 or 70 for the Chevrolet Volt and the kind of things our majority leader saw today, the fuel efficiencies there, if it is even a half or a third of what he saw, the idea of getting 35 miles per gallon for a total fleet in 2020 is not a pipedream, it is realistic. I am convinced that to the extent our auto manufacturers are positioned to build more energy efficient cars, to at least have some of them, they make themselves more competitive in the world environment. But I was talking about the ways we can help, the Federal Government can help our industry to meet these higher standards. One, Federal investments in basic R&D. Whether it is for fuel cells several years ago or whether it is new battery technology, we are putting in about $40 million this year. I hope next year it will be 50 and the next 5 years after that at $50 million a year. Second, another way we can help is to use the Federal Government's purchasing power to help commercialize these new technologies. We are going to be building and putting out on the road a new generation, next-generation hybrid Durango and a next-generation hybrid Chrysler Aspen. Currently they are internal combustion engines. They don't get 20 miles per gallon. They are high teens for fuel economy. But starting sometime by the middle of next year we will have on the road hybrid Durangos and hybrid Chrysler Aspens, the fuel economy of which will be increased by 40 percent over current levels--a 40-percent increase. I want to see--and I know others of my colleagues want to see--when the Federal Government goes out and buys--and we buy a lot of vehicles every year on the civilian side and on the defense side--I want to have included in the legislation we pass something that says some small percentage, some modest percentage of the vehicles we are going to be buying, anyway, should be invested in highly energy efficient new technology cars or trucks or vans, and their reaction to have the opportunity to do that in the context of the underlying legislation. We are going to take up the Defense authorization bill in a couple of weeks and we will have an opportunity to do the same thing in terms of using the Government's purchasing power on the military side to commercialize these more energy efficient technologies in the cars, trucks, and vans that the military buys. A third way the Federal Government can help the auto companies meet these more stringent standards, in addition to investments in R&D, in addition to the vehicular purchases of the Government to commercialize technologies, is with respect to tax credits. In the Energy bill adopted in 2005, we have energy tax credits that say if you buy a highly energy-efficient hybrid vehicle, you get a tax credit of $300 to almost $3,500 for your purchase. There is a similar provision in the same bill that says to folks who buy highly energy-efficient, diesel- powered vehicles with very low emissions that they can get the same kind of tax breaks, $300 to roughly $3,500. As it turns out, almost all of the hybrids, incentivized by those tax credits, are made in other countries. So we have tax incentives to encourage people to buy hybrids from other countries. Shame on us. Hopefully, in the next couple years we will put American hybrids on the road and incentivize people to buy American-made hybrids, such as the Durango and the Chrysler Aspen that will be produced less than a year from now. No American manufacturer is making today, nor will they next year, diesel-powered vehicles with emission levels low enough to qualify under the 2005 legislation. One of the changes that has been agreed to and is in the Finance Committee's package, Mr. President--and you are a member of the Finance Committee--one of the provisions the committee adopted in the finance language that accompanies the Energy bill allows the low-emission, highly energy-efficient Chrysler products that are being manufactured and sold in this country this year, for 1 year--that will be next year--their products will qualify not for the full tax credit but for about three-quarters of the tax credit just for 1 year. After that, they have to be very low emissions starting in 2009, which is as it should be. That is something we can do to incentivize folks to buy vehicles made in this country that have low emissions and are highly efficient. The more energy efficient, the bigger the tax credit. The fourth and last point we can do in the way of helping the industry is, there is a flex-fuel mandate that says some of the vehicles we build in this country have to be capable of running on ethanol or some kind of fuel other than traditional petroleum. However, as my colleagues know, today, if you drive around this country and have one of these vehicles that can run on ethanol, it is hard to find a pump. It is hard to find a pump in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or any other State, except Minnesota where I think they have 400 gas stations that actually have ethanol. But it is hard to find a fueling station where we can actually fill up with something other than gasoline. There needs to be included in this legislation something that mandates the oil companies, just as we did 20, 25, 30 years ago on unleaded gas, so the people who have vehicles that are capable of running on renewable fuel can actually find a place to fill up. Similarly with hydrogen, as we move to the point of building more hydrogen-powered vehicles. It doesn't do us any good if we don't have hydrogen fueling stations in this country. The Federal Government has an obligation to make sure that fuel is available too. Those are four actions the Government can do, and I hope will do, in the context of this legislation before us: One, investments in R&D, in this case new battery technology; two, use Federal Government purchasing power to help companies to commercialize this new technology; three, use tax credits to incentivize people to buy the vehicles once they are produced, more energy-efficient vehicles produced; and, finally, hydrogen infrastructure so people who buy flex- fuel vehicles can find the product, the stations where they can fill up. The last point I want to make, and it goes back to my conversation with my friend who is a CEO of one of these domestic auto companies. I mentioned he has an obligation to his shareholders and employees. I am sure he cares about the quality of air. I am sure he cares about our dependence on foreign oil. That is not his day job. That is our day job, so we should focus on it as we debate these issues. My colleague from Colorado who is presiding, and my colleague from Pennsylvania who is waiting patiently for me to wrap up--and I have been to funerals for people from our State who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. We have tried to console family members. I was in Iraq over the weekend. We have 160,000 men and women there today. They are in harm's way as I speak. We are so dependent on troubled parts of the world for oil, unstable parts of the world for oil, where we have men and women at risk, where we lost lives yesterday and probably lost lives today and probably will tomorrow. I think of a member of my staff, Sean Barney, who worked with me since 2000 when I ran for the Senate. Sean decided he wanted to go into the Marines. He joined the Marines and went through basic training. This is a guy with an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore and a graduate degree from Columbia who decided he wanted to be a marine. A couple years ago, he went to basic training and became a PFC and ended up in Anbar Province, in the streets of Falluja, shot by a sniper in the neck which severed his carotid artery. He, by all rights, should be dead. He lived, miraculously. He has some degree of disability in his right arm, right shoulder, right hand, but he is alive. When I have visited in Iraq, I had a chance to visit with a bunch of National Guard troops. We have them over there from Colorado and Pennsylvania too--folks from the 198th Signal Battalion. I was their commander in chief when I was Governor for 8 years. I have a special affection and devotion to them. I wanted to make sure they come home safely. When I got home early Monday morning, I went to a sendoff for 150 members of one of our military police units. They were heading on to Fort Dix. They are at Fort Dix today and then on to Iraq. I guess the point I am making is, while we want to make sure our domestic auto industry is successful and is profitable, and we have a good, strong auto manufacturing base, I want to make sure we stop sending men and women around the world to these troubled spots that have large amounts of oil deposits. And we are concerned about that situation. That is something of which we need to be mindful. For me, it figures into this equation and this debate. I close by saying, we will have a chance to debate these issues tomorrow morning, and we will have a chance to vote on the language in the underlying bill, maybe with a change from an amendment Senator Stevens and I have offered and maybe will be adopted, or maybe with the more far-reaching change negotiated and developed by our colleagues, Senators Pryor, Levin, Stabenow, and Bond. At the end of the day, though, when we pass this legislation and send it on to the House, it is so important that it moves in a meaningful way toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil; that in a meaningful way it reduces the emissions of harmful matter into our air; and in a real way it also enhances and doesn't undermine the competitiveness of our domestic auto industry. It is not easy to do all three of those goals, but those are the three things we need to do. If we can send from the Senate to the House at the end of this week or early next week legislation that is actually faithful to those three goals, we will have done our work and done good work. Tomorrow and the next day will be the test to see if we can measure up to those standards. I hope we can. I apologize to my colleague from Pennsylvania for going on as long as I have. I thank him for his patience. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today we have been discussing in the halls and corridors and rooms not far from where I many speaking what changes we should make with respect to fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and vans. There are a lot of aspects of this bill that are important. Few are as important as what we are going to do with respect to fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and vans, not just for the next couple of years but probably for the next 15 years or so. I want to begin my remarks by saying how important I believe manufacturing is. We are neighbors. Both Delaware and Pennsylvania have a rich tradition of manufacturing. It is an important part of our economy and continues to be. If we are going to be successful as a nation in the 21st century, it will be because we have retained a vibrant manufacturing base, and we are in danger of seeing that slip away. Part of the manufacturing base in my State has been, for 60 years or so, a vibrant automobile manufacturing base. We have two auto assembly plants in northern Delaware. Outside of Wilmington is a GM plant where we manufacture the Pontiac Solstices and Saturn Sky. We actually export some of those Saturn Skys to Europe, and we are about to start exporting Saturn Skys to South Korea, something we are excited about. In Newcastle County south of Newark along the Maryland line is a Chrysler assembly plant where they used to make tanks during World War II. Today they make all the Dodge Durangos and all the Chrysler Aspens in the world. On a per capita basis, we build probably as many cars trucks, and vans per capita in Delaware as any other State. We are not a big State, but auto manufacturing remains an important part of our economic base. With that as a background, I want to mention the approaching debate on CAFE, fuel efficiency standards for our vehicular fleet. There are three goals I see. The first goal for me--and I hope for us--is to reduce the growth of our dependence on foreign oil, then stop the growth of our dependence on foreign oil, and then reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Over 60 percent of the oil we use comes from sources beyond our borders. We have a trade deficit of about $650 billion. Fully one-third of that is attributable to our dependence on foreign oil. We need to reduce that dependence. I was in Iraq the last weekend. We have over 150,000 troops there exposed and in danger as I speak. Every time I fill up the tank of my car with gas, I am convinced some of the money I spend in buying that gas goes to other parts around the world where people take our money, and I fear they use it to hurt us. We ought to be smarter than that. One of the things we clearly need to do is to reduce our growing reliance on foreign oil and eventually, sooner than later, reduce that reliance. The second goal for me is to reduce harmful emissions, the stuff we put up in the air. Whether it is nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, which is the greenhouse gas that leads to global warming, those emissions come out of cars, trucks, and vans. For me, goal No. 2 is to reduce the incidence of those emissions. It will improve our health and reduce the threat we face from climate change from greenhouse gases. The third goal for me and in the context of this legislation is to accomplish goal No. 1, reduce our reliance on foreign oil; accomplish goal No. 2, reduce the emission of bad stuff into the air; and to do that by not further disadvantaging the domestic auto industry in our State. So those are the three goals I have for us. I want to take a moment and look back to 1975. In 1975, the average mileage for cars, trucks, and vans was about 14 miles per gallon. For several years leading up to 1975, there was a prolonged debate on whether we should require more fuel-efficient vehicles. I have asked my staff to see if we can find a little bit of what was being said back in the mid-1970s as we debated whether to raise over a 10-year period fuel efficiency standards from 14 miles per gallon to 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and roughly 20 miles per gallon for light trucks and SUVs. This is a comment from one of the senior officials at General Motors: If this proposal becomes law-- The increase over 10 years of CAFE standards to 27.5 miles per gallon-- the largest car the industry will be selling in any volume at all will probably be smaller, lighter, and less powerful than today's compact Chevy Nova. The Presiding Officer and I are old enough to remember what a Chevy Nova looked like. I want to tell you, when we were driving around the streets of Washington, DC, or Delaware or Colorado, most of the vehicles out there were a lot bigger than a compact Chevy Nova, and they were in 1975 as well. Here is another comment from the debate of the mid-1970s on raising CAFE standards. This is from a senior official at Chrysler in 1974. In effect this bill would outlaw a number of engine lines and car models, including most full size sedans and station wagons. It would restrict the industry to producing subcompact-size cars, or even smaller ones, within 5 years. Five years from this was 1979. In 1979, we were still making full size sedans and station wagons. We were still making them in 1985. We are still making them today. The idea that we would be producing subcompact-size cars within 5 years or even 25 years, it never happened. Those are a couple of comments that were made in 1974 and 1975, as we took up the debate. The Congress decided in 1975 to go ahead and pass more stringent fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and vans. Over a 10-year period we ramped up so that by 1985, the car fleet was expected to achieve on balance 27.5 miles per gallon, and for light trucks and SUVs about 20 miles per gallon. I put up these quotes because a good deal of what we have heard from the auto industry in recent years, as we have debated whether to return to raising fuel efficiency standards, actually sounds a lot like what we heard in 1974 and 1975. You could almost take away the years that are at the bottom of each of these quotes, and it would be deja vu all over again. For the past 22 years since we raised CAFE standards, what we have heard mostly from the domestic auto industry is, if you raise fuel efficiency standards further, four things will happen: One, the big three--GM, Chrysler, Ford--will lose market share, will lose money. They will close plants. They will cut or eliminate jobs. We have heard that for pretty much the last 22 years, and for the last 22 years we have not raised fuel efficiency standards. This is a chart where we can see the market share for each company. The orange share is Chrysler. The green is Ford. The blue is GM. This is 1985. Here we have 20 years later, 2005. Let me just read it. From Chrysler to Diamler-Chrysler, when you put that together, you get about 13.5 percent market share. In effect, Chrysler's market share has actually dropped without any change in fuel efficiency standards since 1985. Their market share has dropped from 1985, if we actually backed out Diamler. From 1985 to 2005, Ford's market share dropped from 22 percent of sales to almost 17 percent. That is without any change in CAFE. Over at GM, we see market share dropped most precipitously from about 41.5 percent of the market in 1958 to 26 percent in 2005. I would say these numbers are actually lower now. Ford is no longer at 17 percent of market share. Regrettably, GM is not at 26 percent market share. The market share didn't drop because of increases in CAFE. The plants were not closed because of increases in CAFE. Hundreds of thousands of people did not lose their jobs because of increases in CAFE. These companies, last year, collectively, lost in the North American automotive operations--Chrysler, GM, Ford-- lost probably, collectively, about $15 billion. That was not because of increases in CAFE, because we have not increased fuel-efficient standards for 22 years. We have had a lot of visits in my office in the last several weeks. I am sure the Presiding Officer has had folks come to see him from the auto manufacturers, probably domestic and foreign. One CEO said to me, in a visit last week, his company would have to--if we adopted the measure that has been reported out of the Commerce Committee, which is the underlying language on CAFE in the bill before us this week--but if we adopted that, his company would have to produce cars that got 50, 52 miles per gallon. I said: Well, let's think about that. Let's talk about that. You will recall the measure before us today says that by 2020, overall, NHTSA-- an arm of the Department of Transportation--would have to have overseen an increase in the fuel efficiency standards of cars, trucks, and vans; that, overall, cars, trucks, and vans put together would, beginning by the year 2020, have 35 miles per gallon. What most people do not understand is that trucks, light trucks, and SUVs do not have to get 35 miles per gallon under the language in the bill by 2020. But overall, when you combine cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs from the different companies that sell cars in this country, they have to get 35 miles per gallon. Now, let's take a look at a chart that lists a bunch of auto companies. It is a little hard to follow, but I ask you all to bear with me. The effect of the legislation that is before us, the underlying bill, would mean--DaimlerChrysler builds more light trucks, SUVs. They are a truck-heavy company, as opposed to, we will say, Volkswagen. Volkswagen builds mostly cars. They do not build much in the way of light trucks or SUVs and sell that in this country. But the car companies, the truck companies that tend to build the trucks, light trucks, and SUVs, they would end up with a requirement-- between now and 2020--a requirement by NHTSA to have a fuel economy of something less than 35 miles per gallon. For the vehicle makers that are more heavily on the car side, as opposed to the light trucks and SUVs, they are going to expect to have a fuel efficiency standard north of, higher than 35 miles per gallon. In this case, Volkswagen, if they continue to have the mix they have of vehicles in 2005, they would have to have in their mix of product about 38, 39 miles per gallon. So this is not a monolithic number. It is not 35 miles per gallon for trucks, 35 miles per gallon for cars. It is not 35 miles per gallon for each of these auto manufacturers. But the idea is, when you put them all together, at the end of the day, we want, in 2020, for NHTSA to have presided over a process that gets our fleet of vehicles sold in this country, in 2020, to 35 miles per gallon. Now, for years we have heard our friends from Detroit say: Protect us in this way. Protect us so we don't have foreign competitors--who build a lot of energy-efficient cars--don't let them use the high miles per gallon they get from their fuel-efficient cars to allow them to come in and sell a whole bunch of trucks, light trucks, SUVs, and minivans that are not energy efficient. Meanwhile, companies such as DaimlerChrysler and GM and Ford, which are selling a lot of trucks, if we are not careful, will end up with a situation where other companies that are listed on this chart would be able to sell a whole lot of trucks, a whole lot of minivans, a whole lot of SUVs that are energy inefficient. Our automakers could not sell anymore. They would be constrained because of the requirements in legislation. So here is what we have tried to come up with in response to the concerns by our automakers. We have come up with a plan that says to NHTSA: We do not care who is making real small cars, but we want you to set the same fuel efficiency standards for real small cars, regardless of who is making them. For midsized cars, we want you to set the same fuel efficiency standard targets for midsized cars, regardless of what companies make them. For larger cars, heavier cars, bigger cars, the same fuel efficiency standard would apply for that category of vehicles. For pickup trucks, regardless of who is making them, light trucks, the same standard would have to apply, whether it is Nissan that is making them, Honda, or DaimlerChrysler. For a small truck, they all have to be producing vehicles that get the same fuel economy standards. For larger SUVs, the largest SUVs, whoever is making them--I don't care if it is Toyota, Nissan, Chrysler, GM--NHTSA would be promulgating a fuel efficiency standard that would be the same for all manufacturers. Now, not everybody likes that. I suspect some of the folks who have been making energy-efficient cars for some time believe they are not getting the kind of credit they should get for their early work. But this is a proposal that is in the underlying bill, and it is in response to the domestic auto manufacturers who have said: Do not put us in a situation where the only folks who can sell light trucks and SUVs of any size are folks who happen to be building vehicles in other countries. So we tried to be responsive to their proposal. Let's go back to this chart I have in the Chamber, if we could. I wish to return to the conversation I had with the CEO of one of the companies who came to see us. We will call it company X. Company X plans, in about 5 years, to be selling in this country a mix of products that would be 60 percent truck, that would be 40 percent cars. By trucks, I mean light trucks, SUVs, minivans. But that is their goal in 5 years: 40 percent cars, 60 percent trucks. If we assume for a moment that the fuel average requirement, the minimum average requirement for light trucks and SUVs is going to be 30 miles per gallon--that is probably pretty close to what it is going to be; it may be about what is doable--at the 60-percent market concentration for the trucks: 60 percent times 30 miles per gallon adds up to 18 miles per gallon. If another 40 percent of what they build and sell is cars, the question is: What miles per gallon would they have to achieve for their car fleet, collectively--small, mid, large--what would they have to achieve to roughly get to 35 miles per gallon overall for their fleet average? The answer is: 42--not 52, not 62 miles per gallon. But this is what they would have to be able to deliver in mileage per gallon in 2020 from their car fleet in order to come up with an overall fleet average for this company of about 35 miles per gallon. Now the question is, is it realistic in 13 years for a company to be making cars that get 42 miles per gallon? Well, I was at the Detroit Auto Show back in January. One of the coolest cars I saw was a Chevrolet. It was a Chevrolet Volt, a flex- fuel, plug-in hybrid vehicle that, hopefully, Chevrolet is going to be making by the early part of the next decade. You plug it in, charge the battery, and you are off. Let me say, the leader is on the floor. I say to the leader, I do not wish to get in your way, but if you want to jump in here, jump in.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, before I say a word on immigration reform, I would like to add a closing word to the comments of the Senator from Washington and the Senator from Iowa. Just as Senator Murray has talked about her own family experiences with her dad and mom and all, my own mom passed away about 2 years ago. She had had Alzheimer's disease for a number of years. Her mother had Alzheimer's, her grandmother had Alzheimer's, and last year my mother's younger sister, 10 years her junior, was admitted to a residential facility in Huntington, VA, where she has Alzheimer's disease as well. This is one that strikes close to the heart for us and our family as it does for you and literally for millions of families across the country. Thank you for your great leadership and that of Senator Harkin and Mike Castle, my own Congressman, who has been a stalwart in these efforts. I would like to return to an issue we have been focused on in the Senate in the last couple weeks and that is what we do to secure our borders, what to do to make sure employers are not knowingly hiring illegal aliens, at least not without penalty if they do, and what are we going to do about the 12 million or so people here undocumented, roughly 60 percent of whom came here illegally. What are we going to do about all of that? For a while this afternoon, it looked like we might not do anything. For a while this afternoon, it looked like we may basically finish up without taking any kind of definitive action and having debated these issues for a couple of weeks, as we did last year for several weeks, to go home without having taken definitive steps. I am told that negotiations are going on, even as I speak, which would allow us to come back into session, for our Republican friends to offer 10 more amendments, for our side to offer 10 more on top of the 45 or so that already have been offered and voted on. That would take us to 65 amendments. That is a lot of amendments on any piece of legislation. I realize this is a contentious one, but at some point in time I think it is fair to say we have had an opportunity for people to say this is what I think we should do and for people to offer their countervailing views, but I think it is time to move on. My view is the worst thing we can do is, frankly, do nothing. I don't believe the status quo is acceptable, the status quo, which last summer found as many as 10,000 people coming across our borders illegally every week, mostly coming for work. Some could have been criminals, who knows? Maybe there was a terrorist or two in those numbers. But for us to go home not having dealt definitively with that problem, with that challenge, is a big mistake. A country such as ours--any country but especially a country such as ours--has to be able to secure our borders. I read some information provided by some folks in Washington, a think tank in Washington, who looked back at the number of employers who were sanctioned for knowingly hiring illegal aliens in the last several years. The comment was made--I don't know if the Presiding Officer saw this--the comment was made that a person in the last several years had a greater chance of being eaten by an alligator in this country than, if you were an employer hiring illegal aliens, being caught. That may sound like a stretch, but it is not much of a stretch. We actually saw the number of people prosecuted under the law in the last 6 years dropping by some 30 percent below what it was in the last decade. We were not enforcing the laws against employers. We need to do that. There are sanctions in laws and they need to be applied. Those laws need to be enforced. Sort of a question remains: How about all those people who are here without--who are not here legally? They may have come here legally and their visas expired and they stayed on. But when you add those to the folks who came across the borders illegally, it totals some 12 million people. I can understand the views of some folks in my State, and maybe in Minnesota and other places around this country--Washington, Iowa-- that we ought to simply put them all on buses and send them home. I can understand how people would feel that way. I would say I don't know how realistic that is. But the idea of providing some way for them to stay here and work, under a condition of probation, to be able to work over a number of years toward a legal status--before we countenance doing that, before we go down that path, I believe it is critical that, No. 1, we enforce and secure our borders. Second, that we make sure those folks who are knowingly hiring illegal aliens, that we prosecute them with every ounce of energy we have under the law. With respect to the enforcement of our borders and the securing of our borders, let me just mention a couple of things that this legislation requires us to do and to question whether that makes sense, whether that is sufficient. We have thousands of Border Patrol personnel arrayed on the Nation's borders, from the Pacific coast, west coast, San Diego, all the way across to the gulf coast, a couple- thousand-mile border. The legislation that is before us today basically says we are going to double the number of Border Patrol personnel. They have to be better trained and better equipped. Today we are supplementing their numbers with the National Guard. And as an old Governor who once was commander in chief of our National Guard in Delaware, I am all for continuing to deploy those assets as well to secure our borders, to supplement our Border Patrol personnel. However, those Border Patrol personnel have to be better trained. They have to be better equipped. We have technology today that, frankly, we did not have 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago to deploy along the borders. We have unmanned aircraft that can be flown, aircraft that can see for miles, aircraft that can see in good weather like today, aircraft that can see when people are moving on the ground when it is nighttime, aircraft that can see when it is foggy, aircraft that can see through the rain. We have that capability today. We did not have it then. We have the capability with surveillance cameras to look long distances, in all kinds of weather conditions, day and night, to detect the movement of people toward our borders. We have the equipment. This legislation says we have to deploy it and we have to use it and we have to fund it. We have the ability to provide ID, identification, for people applying for jobs in this country, identification that is largely tamper proof. Ten years ago we may not have had the capability. We have the capability today. If I were an employer, I would take great solace in knowing that the identification being presented to me was genuine, was real, had not been tampered with, and to know that I could trust the technology. This legislation seeks to make sure that employers have that confidence. I believe one of the major problems in this country in recent years that has led to a greater influx of folks coming here illegally is, when we catch them at the border, if they happen to be from Mexico, frequently our Border Patrol personnel take those people back to the border across into Mexico. However, if the folks we catch at the border, if they are not from Mexico--Guatemala, Honduras, other countries to the south, if we capture those people, we take them to a detention center. We have been taking them to detention centers for several years. If we have ample space in the detention center, bed capacity, if you will, the folks are basically registered, charged, and have the opportunity to argue whether they are here as refugees, whether they are being politically persecuted, persecuted for their religious beliefs. However, for too long when we have captured people not from Mexico and we take them to detention centers, they do not have enough beds. They cannot book these folks, hold them, retain them in custody because they just do not have the capacity. So what do we do? Well, we basically register them, find out who they are, as best we can, and then we essentially release them on their own recognizance and say: Come back in 2 months, 3 months for a hearing. Surprise, surprise. We never see them again. They just disappear. They melt into the fabric of the communities across this country. For the most part they get jobs and go to work, stay out of trouble. But the idea that people can come in illegally like that, and once captured not be detained, for us not to find out if they are here as refugees, that is wrong. It is especially wrong if you happen to be somebody who is trying to come here legally, not for a couple of months but for years waiting in line patiently, abiding by the law. Meanwhile other folks come into this country whom we capture and essentially release to become workers in this country. That is wrong. In terms of equity, that is basically unfair. It says to people trying to play by the rules: You're foolish. You're foolish. It sends absolutely the wrong message. That is one of the reasons amnesty is not the answer either. It sends the same kind of message to people who have been waiting to come here for a long time. It says: You are foolish for playing by the rules. It is why amnesty is no good. And the idea of us simply releasing people on their own recognizance because we do not have bed capacity in these detention centers makes no sense as well. With respect to employers knowingly hiring illegal aliens and our not prosecuting them under the law--unacceptable. When we have employers who know that the man or woman they are hiring is not here legally, that the documentation paperwork that is being presented to them is false, it is unacceptable that that employer is allowed to do that, to continue to do that, week after week, month after month, year after year. That think tank which told me recently that the chances of a person being eaten by an alligator were greater than a person being prosecuted under the law, whether that is true or not, we know this: Too few employers have been prosecuted. One of the best ways to send a chilling message back home to folks who are thinking about coming here is, one, make sure if they get caught they go to a detention center. If they are not here as a refugee, they are going to go home. And the time they serve in the detention center is not going to be pleasant. The best way to deter, to put a chilling effect on those who come across illegally is to make sure that employers know if they hire folks, they are going to pay a severe price. That sends a strong message to those who otherwise would take a chance and come here. The last thing I would mention is what to do about all of those people here who are undocumented. If there are 12 million, if some 60 percent of them are folks who came across the border illegally, if the other 40 percent who are people who came here legally stayed beyond the time they were allowed to stay here, and now they are here illegally, although they came legally in the first place, what do we do with all of those people? The legislation we have before us that we are debating and we have been amending for the last 2 weeks says: If you came here legally and stayed beyond your time, or if you came here illegally, we want you to step out of the shadows. You have to register with the Government. You have basically one chance to do that. If you do that, take advantage of this opportunity, and you are willing to meet the conditions--I think, tough conditions, a multiyear period of what I would call probation-- those people can work their way toward legal status. It might take 8 years, it might take more. But for folks who have been here for a while, they have worked, they have been good workers, they have paid taxes, they have stayed out of trouble with the law, under this legislation if they are willing to continue to work, continue to pay taxes, pay any back taxes that are owed, pay a very significant fine, thousands of dollars in fines, learn English, learn about the history of our country, and so forth, if they are willing to do those things, they have a chance to work toward a legal status not in 8 weeks, not in 8 months, but in as long as 8 years. If they are not willing to live by the conditions that are laid out in this legislation, they are out of luck. They will not have a chance to ever have the kind of legal status that they otherwise would have. Let me close, if I can, by saying I do not know if the Presiding Officer remembers this, but during orientation for new Senators last November, when I was privileged to spend some time with our newly elected Senators, I mentioned one of the things we do in my Senate office back home is we try to do a good job on constituent service. We actually keep track. I get reports every week on how we are doing on constituent services. We do a monthly survey for the people we serve through constituent services. They can evaluate our services: excellent, good, fair, poor. And I have a great staff. They get, for the most part, excellent and good marks. About 95 percent of them are excellent and good. We are very proud of the work they do. In the weekly reports I have received for weeks now, actually for months now, each weekly report from my head of constituent services starts off with an update on a person who came to this country legally, I think from Greece, who was an older woman, I think in her midseventies, who came here to see, I think, her son, maybe a daughter-in-law, who apparently has dementia, who ended up being hospitalized, essentially abandoned by her son, and ended up in a hospital for treatment. She needed hospitalization and treatment for less than a week for her condition. Less than a week. Unfortunately, no one was there to take care of her, to look after her, to be responsible for her. She stayed in that hospital not for a couple of days, not for a week, more than a month--actually I think for more than 2 months. How much did it cost? It cost that hospital about a quarter of a million dollars because that hospital in Dover, DE, essentially had to eat the cost of that hospitalization. The last week or so I understand that the daughter-in-law has stepped forward. This woman who has her documentation, apparently arrangements have been made with folks back in Greece to take her back. The hospital has bought tickets, and I am told they are going to fly this elderly woman back to Greece. Her daughter-in-law is going to take her. Hopefully the paperwork is being arranged for the woman to be received by her own family back in Greece. I would like to say that is probably the only time that has happened in this country this year or last year or the year before. Unfortunately, it is not. And it is unfortunate that a lot of times it is a failure of us at the Federal level to enforce our borders, to secure our borders, as in this case, when people stay beyond their limited period of time, has led to a situation that has cost this hospital a ton of money. There are probably other hospital facilities that it has cost a lot of money. It is being borne by other people in my State who paid for their health care, and oftentimes State and local governments end up picking up the tab for what really is a failure at the Federal level. It is not right. It is unfair. This legislation would begin to address that. Let me close with this thought. Last year, when we debated for a long time immigration reform, passed from here a pretty good bill for immigration reform, I remember when I talked about the legislation, I always used the words, ``tough,'' ``smart,'' ``comprehensive.'' That is what I believed and said again and again and again that that is what we needed to do in terms of our work on immigration reform--tough, smart, comprehensive. I still think that applies. I would add to that maybe a couple of other terms. One of those is ``fair.'' The ``fair'' that I am thinking of is the ``fair'' to taxpayers in this country. What we pass here ought to be fair to taxpayers, not just Federal taxpayers but State and local folks, including hospitals, and people who are running hospitals and funding hospitals around this country; fair to American workers. The idea that people are coming here and taking away jobs in some instances, too many instances, from people who are willing and able to do the work is not acceptable. The idea of having a large guest worker program like the President has envisioned, in my view, is not acceptable. We obviously are going to have some kind of guest worker program, but not on the magnitude that this President has sought, but tough, smart, comprehensive, and fair--fair to taxpayers, fair to American workers. The last point I would add is practical. As I said earlier in my comments, as much as I can understand the desire to round up 12 million people who are here undocumented, put them in planes, buses, whatever, and send them home, I can understand the rationale, the feeling to do that, but, my friends, it is just not practical. What we have to do is find a way for them to come out of the shadows. If they do not abide by the law, take them home. But if they are willing to work hard, pay taxes, stay out of trouble, learn English, learn our customs and our laws, they can have a chance over time, for a long period of time, multiple periods of years to work toward a documented legal status. I think that is the right approach. And, hopefully, sometime in the next hour or two we will reconvene on the Senate floor, and those Senators who have amendments on the Republican side and the Democratic side will have the opportunity to offer even more than the 45 that we already offered and disposed of. Once we have done that, sometime maybe tonight we will have an opportunity to vote to begin to draw to an end the debate on this legislation. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce a piece of legislation that Senator Voinovich and I have been working on for over a year now. The Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2007 makes available electronic personal health records for every enrollee of a Federal health benefits plan who wishes to have one. Americans will probably spend more than $2 trillion on health care this year alone. Over the next 10 years, health care costs will more than double, topping $4 trillion in 2015. We spend $6,700 per person on health care, more than twice of what other industrialized nations spend; and for the most part, we are not receiving the gold standard of treatment in care. A 2005 survey found that medical error rates in the United States far exceed those of other Western countries. And in that survey, one in three Americans reported getting the wrong dosage of medication, incorrect test results, mistakes in treatment, or late notification of a test result. That is nearly 15 percent higher than similar results in Britain and Germany. Our excessive reliance on paper record keeping makes our health care system less efficient, more costly and more prone to mistakes. Doctors diagnose patients without knowing their full medical history, what they are allergic to, what kind of surgeries they have had, whether they have complained about similar symptoms before. Time constraints, or medical necessity, often force doctors to form a quick diagnosis. Sometimes that diagnosis is wrong and sometimes it proves to be a costly error. The widespread use of health information technology, the ability to immediately grab someone's full medical history off of a computer, can help doctors provide better care more cheaply. It has the potential to drastically transform the way we provide health care. If we are looking for success stories on how health care professionals have integrated the use of electronic health records into their daily routines, we don't have to look any further than our own Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Times have certainly changed since I retired from the Navy some 16 years ago. I used to keep all my medical records in a brown manila folder. I carried this manila folder with me from the time I left Ohio State, on to Pensacola, Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, out to California, across the seas and back again, and finally, getting off of active duty and coming to Delaware to enroll in business school, on the GI bill, at the University of Delaware. Over a decade ago, the DOD and the VA decided there was a better way. And the results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, when a patient enrolls in DOD's Military Health System, they get an electronic health record, not a brown manila folder in which to carry years of paper medical records. Your electronic record will follow you wherever you go, both during your time when you are serving in the military and when you leave to join our veterans' community. Researchers and doctors now laud the VA for having the foresight to use electronic health records to improve patient care and transform itself into one of the best health care operations in the country. And the cost? About $78 per patient, roughly the cost of not repeating one blood test. In other words, money well spent. I have witnessed that new-found satisfaction right in my own back yard, at our Veterans Medical Center in Elsmere, DE. Veterans from neighboring States are now coming to Elsmere to seek care instead of going to regular civilian hospitals near them. So what is keeping the rest of the Nation's health care system from following the lead of the DOD and the VA? The answer is the high cost of implementing the latest information technologies, as well as the lack of uniformity among various technology products. A physician can spend up to $40,000 implementing an electronic health records system. A hospital can spend up to five times that amount. If that weren't enough of a reason to say ``no thanks,'' there is another. We don't have a set of national standards in place to make sure that once health care providers have made the switch, their new systems can communicate with the hospital or doctor on the other side of town. As a nation, we cannot afford to rely solely on health care providers to bring the health care industry into the 21st century. While I was Governor, I signed legislation that would call for the creation of a statewide information network to bring our health care system into the 21st century. Delaware is well underway toward meeting our goal of establishing the first statewide health information infrastructure. We must think outside of the box and build on health information technology initiatives that are all already underway in other areas of the health care industry. The Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006 will require all Insurance Plans that contract with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, FEHBP, to make available an electronic personal health record for enrollees in the program. Via the Internet, an enrollee will be able to log-on to his or her electronic personal health record to keep track of such things as their medications, cholesterol and glucose levels, allergies, and immunization records. An enrollee will also be able to view a comprehensive, easily understood listing of their health care claims. An enrollee can easily share sections of the electronic personal health record with their health care provider, ensuring that their health care provider has the most up-to-date and accurate health information when making clinical decisions. Having health information readily available will increase the efficiency and safety of health care for an enrollee by eliminating unwarranted tests, procedures, and prescriptions. Most importantly, the legislation ensures that the electronic personal health records provided for through this act are kept private and secure. The electronic personal health records are required to include a number of security features, such as a user authentication and audit trails. The legislation also requires that insurance plans comply with all privacy and security regulations outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This bill is designed to jumpstart this new technology by requiring some of the largest health insurance companies to offer electronic personal health records, which many are already doing. As more insurance companies, health care providers and consumers use this new technology, I am convinced that more people will recognize its advantages and we can more quickly move America's health care industry into the 21st century. And as the Nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program, who better than the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program to lead the way in this endeavor. I urge my colleagues to support the Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2007. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce a piece of legislation that Senator Voinovich and I have been working on for over a year now. The Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2007 makes available electronic personal health records for every enrollee of a Federal health benefits plan who wishes to have one. Americans will probably spend more than $2 trillion on health care this year alone. Over the next 10 years, health care costs will more than double, topping $4 trillion in 2015. We spend $6,700 per person on health care, more than twice of what other industrialized nations spend; and for the most part, we are not receiving the gold standard of treatment in care. A 2005 survey found that medical error rates in the United States far exceed those of other Western countries. And in that survey, one in three Americans reported getting the wrong dosage of medication, incorrect test results, mistakes in treatment, or late notification of a test result. That is nearly 15 percent higher than similar results in Britain and Germany. Our excessive reliance on paper record keeping makes our health care system less efficient, more costly and more prone to mistakes. Doctors diagnose patients without knowing their full medical history, what they are allergic to, what kind of surgeries they have had, whether they have complained about similar symptoms before. Time constraints, or medical necessity, often force doctors to form a quick diagnosis. Sometimes that diagnosis is wrong and sometimes it proves to be a costly error. The widespread use of health information technology, the ability to immediately grab someone's full medical history off of a computer, can help doctors provide better care more cheaply. It has the potential to drastically transform the way we provide health care. If we are looking for success stories on how health care professionals have integrated the use of electronic health records into their daily routines, we don't have to look any further than our own Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Times have certainly changed since I retired from the Navy some 16 years ago. I used to keep all my medical records in a brown manila folder. I carried this manila folder with me from the time I left Ohio State, on to Pensacola, Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, out to California, across the seas and back again, and finally, getting off of active duty and coming to Delaware to enroll in business school, on the GI bill, at the University of Delaware. Over a decade ago, the DOD and the VA decided there was a better way. And the results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, when a patient enrolls in DOD's Military Health System, they get an electronic health record, not a brown manila folder in which to carry years of paper medical records. Your electronic record will follow you wherever you go, both during your time when you are serving in the military and when you leave to join our veterans' community. Researchers and doctors now laud the VA for having the foresight to use electronic health records to improve patient care and transform itself into one of the best health care operations in the country. And the cost? About $78 per patient, roughly the cost of not repeating one blood test. In other words, money well spent. I have witnessed that new-found satisfaction right in my own back yard, at our Veterans Medical Center in Elsmere, DE. Veterans from neighboring States are now coming to Elsmere to seek care instead of going to regular civilian hospitals near them. So what is keeping the rest of the Nation's health care system from following the lead of the DOD and the VA? The answer is the high cost of implementing the latest information technologies, as well as the lack of uniformity among various technology products. A physician can spend up to $40,000 implementing an electronic health records system. A hospital can spend up to five times that amount. If that weren't enough of a reason to say ``no thanks,'' there is another. We don't have a set of national standards in place to make sure that once health care providers have made the switch, their new systems can communicate with the hospital or doctor on the other side of town. As a nation, we cannot afford to rely solely on health care providers to bring the health care industry into the 21st century. While I was Governor, I signed legislation that would call for the creation of a statewide information network to bring our health care system into the 21st century. Delaware is well underway toward meeting our goal of establishing the first statewide health information infrastructure. We must think outside of the box and build on health information technology initiatives that are all already underway in other areas of the health care industry. The Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006 will require all Insurance Plans that contract with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, FEHBP, to make available an electronic personal health record for enrollees in the program. Via the Internet, an enrollee will be able to log-on to his or her electronic personal health record to keep track of such things as their medications, cholesterol and glucose levels, allergies, and immunization records. An enrollee will also be able to view a comprehensive, easily understood listing of their health care claims. An enrollee can easily share sections of the electronic personal health record with their health care provider, ensuring that their health care provider has the most up-to-date and accurate health information when making clinical decisions. Having health information readily available will increase the efficiency and safety of health care for an enrollee by eliminating unwarranted tests, procedures, and prescriptions. Most importantly, the legislation ensures that the electronic personal health records provided for through this act are kept private and secure. The electronic personal health records are required to include a number of security features, such as a user authentication and audit trails. The legislation also requires that insurance plans comply with all privacy and security regulations outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This bill is designed to jumpstart this new technology by requiring some of the largest health insurance companies to offer electronic personal health records, which many are already doing. As more insurance companies, health care providers and consumers use this new technology, I am convinced that more people will recognize its advantages and we can more quickly move America's health care industry into the 21st century. And as the Nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program, who better than the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program to lead the way in this endeavor. I urge my colleagues to support the Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2007. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to offer my support for the Water Resources Development Act. The Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I serve, has been trying--without success--to pass a WRDA reauthorization since I began service in the U.S. Senate in the 107th Congress. But I think this year will be the year. This bill includes several provisions that are very important to Delaware. First, this bill preserves the St. Georges Bridge over the Chesapeake and Delaware, or C&D, Canal. This 14-mile long canal owned and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, divides Delaware in half, disrupting the flow of people and commerce in my state in order to provide a shortcut for ship traffic to the Port of Baltimore. In return for this imposition to Delaware, the Corps is obligated under Federal law to provide sufficient access across that canal. Yet in recent years, in spite of population growth that has stretched the capacity of the current bridges, the Corps has sought to reduce the number of bridges over the C&D Canal. Thanks to support from chairman and ranking member of the EPW committee, this will not happen. A second important provision in this bill is a late entry, but needs to be addressed immediately. Two scour holes have developed in the Indian River Inlet and Bay. One is an 80-foot hole that has developed within 100 feet of a bulkhead at the U.S. Coast Guard facility. The second is a 30-foot hole that has formed along a stone revetment that is currently protecting several structures recently constructed by the State of Delaware. I express my deep thanks to the committee for recognizing the immediacy of this request and making sure it is addressed in this bill. There are other important provisions in this bill. Last year, I was pleased to support vital Corps reform measures that require independent peer review of projects, that improve mitigation practices, and that update the outdated principles and guidelines of the Corps. These reforms will result in stronger, more cost-effective projects that better support our economy and better protect our people. I am very happy to say that these same provisions are included--word for word--in the measure we are considering today. Again, I thank our chairman and ranking member for retaining these important provisions. After the lessons we learned in New Orleans, we need to be vigilant. We must continually reevaluate this program and look for the best way to better insure the Corps is designing their projects with long term needs of communities in mind. This is why I cosponsored Senators Feingold and Kerry's amendment to require the Corps to take into account the impacts of global warming on water resources projects. Shifting gears, let me note that addressing global climate change is a major priority that drives much of the work I do. Legislation to set emissions reductions may be a little ways off. But in the meantime, we should be taking steps to ensure that the people and communities who depend on Corps projects can rest assured that those projects are built to withstand the stresses they are likely to face. There is reason to believe that global climate change may lead to more frequent or intense severe weather events. Coastal communities and habitats, especially along the gulf and Atlantic coasts, likely will be stressed by increasing sea level and more intense storms. I think of my State of Delaware, much of which sits on the Atlantic coast. Delaware is on the front lines. We need to take the threat of global warming seriously and prepare ourselves accordingly. Frankly, it doesn't matter whether you believe global warming is a man-made problem or that we are in a natural warming cycle. The evidence is overwhelming that our planet is getting warmer. Climate change will put added pressures on demands for water resources across the country. For example, diminished snow pack, earlier arrival of spring, tendency for more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow, and increased evaporation will affect seasonal availability of water in much of the West. Our water resource projects should be built with that in mind to make sure that we are building the best possible projects to protect our constituents and ensure our nation's continued economic prosperity. This is absolutely as we prepare to face headon what is likely to be the greatest challenge of our generation. Another important amendment that I have cosponsored will set priorities to address the Corps' backlog of projects. Considering recent appropriations for water resources projects--about $2 billion a year--it would take over 35 years just to finish the projects on the books. Since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the gulf coast in 2005, we better understand that the system by which we fund water resource projects is broken. In Delaware, due to limited funds and the large number of requests, we have found it a challenge to get important beach replenishment projects funded, even as homes and infrastructure were threatened. Many in this Chamber will recall that we voted on a prioritization amendment last Congress when we considered WRDA. That amendment failed by a large margin. In fact, I voted against the amendment at that time. But our colleagues from Wisconsin and my friend from Arizona heard our concerns and went back to the drawing board. Last year's amendment would have tasked an interagency committee with prioritizing the $58 billion backlog. Some people, including myself, felt this was taking power from the legislative branch and giving it to the executive branch. I also feared that projects in a small state like Delaware might not get due consideration. This year, Senators Feingold and McCain redrafted the amendment to address a number of the concerns raised in the debate last year. The amendment before us today would establish a Water Resources Commission. This Commission would have one shot at prioritizing many of the projects in the backlog. The Commission's work would provide a guide to Congress to ensure we are spending our limited funding on the most urgent and meritorious projects. Nothing in this amendment binds Congress. It is purely informational. Further, this amendment specifically requires the commission to find a balance between the water resource needs of all States, regardless of size. In closing, let me add that I am delighted that we have taken up this important legislation so early in this Congress. Again, I commend our leaders on the Environment and Public Works Committee for putting such a high priority on moving this bill. I urge my colleagues to support WRDA's passage. I also urge my colleagues to support the global climate change and prioritization amendments. These amendments will strengthen the Army Corps and improve our constituents' faith in the projects the Corps builds.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I wish to change the subject for a moment, if I may. The overall subject is the same; that is, the legislation that is before us. I salute Senators Kennedy and Enzi and their staffs for providing an excellent piece of legislation. It was not an easy thing to do on a difficult subject. I thank them for their efforts and for getting us to this point. Yesterday evening, our colleagues and friends, Senators Dorgan and Snowe, filed an amendment to S. 1082 that would allow for reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada and from certain other countries. In previous years, a number of us, including me, supported reimportation legislation, so long as the Secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that the reimportation of prescription drugs can be done both safely and cost-effectively. Earlier this morning Senator Cochran filed a second-degree amendment to the Dorgan-Snowe legislation that seeks to require that certification in the context of this legislation that is before us today. Senator Cochran's amendment would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to certify that the provisions within the Dorgan-Snowe reimportation program would pose no additional risk to the public's health and safety. In addition, the Cochran amendment would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to certify that this reimportation program would result in a significant reduction in the cost of prescription drugs to the American consumer. So there are two goals. These few lines that Senator Cochran just introduced were passed by unanimous consent 4 years ago in 2003. In 2002, this language passed the Senate by a vote of 99 to nothing. It is clear, at least to me, from these past votes that this is not the first time the Senate has taken up this issue and, again, with some consensus. Since the last time reimportation was before this body, Senators Dorgan and Snowe have worked hard to address many of the safety concerns folks had raised in previous iterations. I commend both of them and their staffs for working diligently to try to address a number of these concerns. I believe they have made significant progress. For instance, concerns were voiced earlier that the FDA would not have enough funds to operate a reimportation program. To provide the FDA with additional resources, the revised Dorgan-Snowe proposal would increase user fees paid by those drug wholesalers and pharmacies participating in the program from 1 percent to 2.5 percent of the total price of the drugs that are reimported. This moves us closer to ensuring that FDA will have the resources they need to operate this program effectively. Senators Dorgan and Snowe's new legislation would also allow the FDA more time to phase in the number of drug exporters and importers that want to participate in the program. A slower phase-in would give the FDA more time to ensure that the importers and exporters are aboveboard and should help alleviate concerns that we would unknowingly allow unscrupulous vendors into this reimportation program. Although Senators Dorgan and Snowe address a number of the drug safety concerns, I believe a couple of possible shortfalls remain, especially when it comes to stopping the proliferation of counterfeit, adulterated drugs. Specifically, this legislation relies on what are called paper pedigrees to show a drug's chain of custody, but there is no guarantee that these paper pedigrees could not be forged to hide possible counterfeiting, possibly leaving American consumers with a less safe drug supply. Moreover, this bill relies on what some believe are unproven and untested anticounterfeiting technologies to guarantee drug safety. While I give credit to my friends for trying hard to build safety into the proposal, it is not yet clear that anticounterfeit technologies, which the proposal relies so heavily upon, is yet at the point of being both widely available and, more importantly, cost effective. In addition, it is unclear to me if this reimportation program would give the FDA the authority to conduct inspections of foreign manufacturing plants. It is unclear to me whether the countries permitted under this bill to export drugs into the United States have the same kind of safety and quality control standards that we enjoy at home. In the end, drug reimportation will only work if we are able to ensure that the drugs we import are as safe as those manufactured and sold in the United States. If the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the person who directly overseas the FDA to ensure the public's health and safety, is not prepared to certify that the importation is safe, then that gives me pause, and I believe it should give us pause. We don't have a reimportation program operating right now, but the incidence of drug counterfeiting and adulterated drugs still exists. In the last few years, prescription drugs that contained bogus or dangerous ingredients as well as actual drugs that were deceptively labeled to hide their origin have made their way into the United States. For example, 4 years ago, counterfeits of the cholesterol drug Lipitor were found in the United States and made their way to a number of American consumers. Recently, FDA warned consumers about counterfeit drugs from multiple Internet sellers. Many would argue that the FDA already has its hands full. If that is true, how do we in good faith add another layer of complexity such as reimportation to an already overburdened and underresourced system without also demanding that the Secretary of Health and Human Services certify that reimported drugs are safe for American consumption. Similar to most of my colleagues, I am not opposed to reimportation, but I do firmly believe that despite the very real progress that has been made with respect to the earlier Dorgan-Snowe proposal, some uncertainties remain in the revised legislation they offered yesterday. Because of those remaining concerns, I support the Cochran amendment and ask my colleagues to do the same. Similar to some of my colleagues, I have held in my hands medicines that appear to be the same as the prescription medicines manufactured in this country. They were the same size, same shape, same color. They have the same markings. The wrapping and the materials they come in are the same. They appear to be, for all intents and purposes, the same legitimate prescription medicines. They were not. In some cases, they contained materials that were unsafe, and in other cases they contained materials that were not helpful to the person suffering from a particular malady. I would like to say that those concerns for that kind of behavior have gone away. They haven't. The profit motives for those who would like to sell bogus drugs, counterfeit drugs, the economic attraction of doing that is enormous. As a result, I think we need to proceed with caution. I again commend Senators Dorgan and Snowe. They are trying hard. Their staffs are trying hard to get us to the point where the Secretary of Health and Human Services can actually certify that we can reimport these drugs in a way that is safe and cost effective. We will be voting later today to determine whether we have gotten that far. The Cochran amendment made sense before, and I think it still makes sense. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, the Founders of our country did not believe in monarchy. They put up with one king for a while and didn't want to have to put up with another one down the line. Meeting in Philadelphia about 220 years ago, about 30 miles from my home in Wilmington, DE, our Founding Fathers did not invest all power over national affairs in our national destiny in the hands of any one person. Rather, they created a separation of powers. They created, as we all know, three coequal branches of Government. I don't sit down every day or night and actually open the Constitution and read it. But every now and then I think a review of some of it and its parameters is instructive. For those who take the time--particularly looking at the debate we have had in recent days on whether it is appropriate for us to provide some guidance and expression with respect to the expenditure of these moneys in the supplemental appropriations, especially in Iraq--it is helpful to look at the Constitution and get a sense of what our Founding Fathers had in mind. In looking at article II in this copy of the Constitution, section 2, there is about a sentence where it talks about the power of the President. This is what it says: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States. That is what it says. You can go back a couple pages before that to article I, section 8, and our Founding Fathers talk about the powers and responsibilities of the legislative branch in this regard. Here is what it says, in part: The Congress shall have the power To . . . Then there are all kinds of things listed, such as lay and collect taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce, and so forth, with foreign nations. It also says the Congress shall have the power: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States. It goes on and on. The point I am trying to make is that the Constitution makes it clear that there is a division of responsibility, a sharing of responsibilities. Part of it lies with the executive branch, and a great deal lies with the legislative branch. For those of us who are trying to figure out which is the right side to come down on with respect to these issues, keep in mind the words of the Constitution. When it comes to charting our Nation's course in Iraq, all three branches of Government do have responsibilities. For the President to go to war in Iraq, he had to come to us in Congress for approval, for authorization. Now, to continue that war he has had to come back to the Congress each and every year to request and receive approval for more funding. Both Congress and the Supreme Court have exercised oversight over this President's war policies--Congress through oversight hearings, and the Supreme Court through rulings on constitutional questions concerning the detention and interrogation of prisoners. That Congress act as a coequal branch of Government, and not a rubberstamp for decisions made by the President, is what the Founding Fathers wanted in 1787. I believe it is what most of the American people want today. It was, in part, because Congress failed in recent years to exercise adequate oversight over the President's policies in Iraq that the American people went to the polls last November and demanded a change in this body and in the folks in the House of Representatives. Let's not debate today, at this moment, whether Congress has a role to play in charting our course in Iraq. We do. Let's not kid ourselves that Congress can meet its responsibilities in this regard by continuing to rubberstamp the decisions of the President. The President has come to Congress once again to request continued funding for the war in Iraq. To put matters in the most basic of terms, Congress has three options: We can say yes, we can say no, or we can say yes, but. To simply to say yes, after U.S. policy and conditions on the ground have drifted in the wrong direction for more than 3 years, I believe would be to abdicate our responsibility as a coequal branch of Government. To simply say no, when we have troops on the ground in harm's way, would be a betrayal of the very Army this Congress is charged by the Constitution to raise and support. The responsible action is to respond to the President's request by saying yes, but. It is to provide our troops with the support they need to perform their assigned mission but at the same time to exercise our power as a coequal branch to begin to change the nature of that mission. The first part of our response to the President--funding the troops-- should not be controversial. I don't believe it is in this body. The President has requested the funding. We are providing that funding for our troops. Indeed, we are not only providing what the President requested, we are making some additions, particularly to improve the care of the wounded when they come home. The second part of our response to the President--seeking a change in the nature of our mission in Iraq--should not be controversial either. There is an old saying: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have been approaching the challenges we face in Iraq in essentially the same manner now for close to 4 years. Over that time, conditions on the ground have grown progressively worse. It is clearly time that we change our approach. Last year, the minority in Congress called for such a change. In response, the American people, the voters of this country, made that minority in Congress last year a majority this year. That majority-- this majority--has a responsibility to the people who elected us and who pay our keep to follow through and demand change from the President, from the executive branch. The changes that we seek are not sudden nor are they rash. They reflect the sober assessments and the unanimous recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, cochaired last year ably by Jim Baker, a prominent Republican, and former Representative Lee Hamilton, a highly regarded Democrat who also served as Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission. The Iraq Study Group said we need to make it clear to the leaders of the various factions in Iraq that we are not going to be there forever. That is the first message we are sending with this legislation. The President, and some around him, equate this with surrender. But his own Secretary of Defense, Secretary Gates, said otherwise last week. He said the fact that Congress is beginning to send this message to the leadership in Iraq is having a beneficial effect on the ground in Iraq. His words, not mine. Last year the Iraq Study Group said a political settlement between the factions in Iraq is needed to quell the sectarian violence. The legislation Congress will send to the President today or tomorrow establishes benchmarks by which Congress and the American people can measure the progress of the administration and the leadership in Iraq toward achieving this political settlement. The Iraq Study Group said that a diplomatic settlement is needed among Iraq's neighbors to ensure regional stability. The legislation Congress will send to the President this week creates a window of opportunity, while our forces are transitioned to a new mission for a regional diplomatic offensive aimed at containing Iraq's sectarian violence and preventing a broader regional conflict. The President does not want to change the mission in Iraq. I believe he wants to do more of the same. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group rejected that approach, the American people have rejected that approach, and now the Congress of the United States is rejecting that approach. For all who wonder what this debate is really about, it comes down to two points--one a point of agreement, the other a point of disagreement. On one point, the Congress and the President do agree that we should support the troops. The way to support the troops is for Congress to pass this bill and I believe for the President to sign it. The funding is all there. On one point, Congress and the President disagree. Congress wants to begin to change the mission in Iraq. Unfortunately, the President apparently wants to do more of the same. We disagree on the second point of whether the time has come for a change. The question is whose view should ultimately prevail. The answer is the will of the American people should prevail. They are the ones paying for this war, not only with their dollars, they are paying for it by sending their sons and daughters to fight, in some cases to be wounded, in some cases to die in this war. As they told us loudly and clearly at the ballot box last fall, the American people want a change. Provide our troops with the support they deserve and provide the American people with the change they demand. I realize the conventional wisdom around here is the President will veto this bill, he will send it back to us, and then we will all get serious about hammering something out that can become law. With all due respect, Mr. President, this legislation should become law. I urge you to drop your veto threat, pick up your pen, and sign it. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, we have made some truly amazing strides in medical research with the creation of new medicine and mapping the human genome. I think we all agree more can be done and more should be done. We know stem cells hold promise, and we have an opportunity tomorrow to pass critical legislation that enables us to take some of those next steps in finding treatments and cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, juvenile diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. Like, I suspect, every Member of this body, I have my own personal experiences in my family and reasons for supporting stem cell research. My mother passed away about a year and a half ago--almost 2 years ago now. She had, in the last decade or so, been stricken by Alzheimer's disease, dementia. Her mother had lived and died with the same disease. Her grandmother lived and died with the same disease. Her sister may be showing early symptoms of the same disease. My mother's father was a butcher. He worked 5, 6 days a week until he was 81 years old in a little mom-and-pop supermarket in Beckley, WV. His hands would shake. Some would probably think, how many fingers would he lose today while trying to cut up the meat. He never did lose any. He was a great hero to me. I remember watching as Parkinson's took its toll on him, as it has others of our colleagues here and in the House, such as Mo Udall, whom we thought the world of, and still do--but to see what happened to them because of that disease. We lost my uncle in Huntington, WV, last year to a form of cancer which is almost always deadly, pancreatic cancer. Those are only a couple of people in my own life, people who were close to me and people in my family whom we have lost or have seen a serious degradation in the quality of their lives. Some day, I would like to be able to say to my sons, who are 17 and 18, you will never have to worry about Alzheimer's disease because of the research and the kind of work that is made possible in this legislation and what it will do for you. I would like to tell them you will never have to worry about Parkinson's or pancreatic cancer. Today is about much more than curing diseases. It is also about keeping America's research centers competitive and relevant. The United States has always been a key leader in the prevention and treatment of illnesses. We have developed vaccines and antibiotics that have literally saved millions of lives, and still do. We have made tremendous advances in biotechnology and pharmaceutical research as well. Now we have the opportunity to make a national commitment to expand the frontiers of medical research. Stem cell research is a key part of doing that. I know a lot of us agree. The nation that is able to take stem cell research to the next step and use it to truly understand how our DNA works and then to use that information to help find treatments and cure diseases will be in the driver's seat of medical research worldwide for some time to come. My friend and fellow Delawarean, Congressman Mike Castle, led the way to expand stem cell research. Last year, he introduced legislation that would allow the NIH to support embryonic stem cell research. Congress passed this bill, thanks to the leadership in no small part of Senator Harkin and others in this body. It was vetoed by the President. I disagree with the President's policy on stem cell research. On this front, I think he is wrong. This year, several of my colleagues, including my friend Senator Harkin, have introduced legislation very similar to the Castle bill that we passed last year. S. 5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, would advance stem cell research by expanding the number of stem cell lines that are eligible for Federal funding. It would also strengthen the ethical rules that govern stem cell research--a concern that I know is on many people's minds, including my own. Under the administration's current policy, the number of stem cell lines available for federally funded research has continued to shrink. There are only 21 cells now available, I am told. What is more, many of the current lines are contaminated or have reached the end of their usefulness. A gentleman named Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, recently testified before a Senate panel and made a similar claim that these 21 cell lines the National Institutes of Health has will not be sufficient for the research they need to do at NIH. S. 5 would allow new lines to be derived from excess in vitro fertilization embryos that would otherwise be discarded. To me, the choice seems clear: Rather than allowing these embryos to be discarded, destroyed, we can use them to further lifesaving research. They may contribute to saving the lives of our spouses, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our children, or our nieces and nephews. S. 5 would allow new lines to be derived from excess in vitro fertilization embryos that would otherwise be discarded. I know people are concerned about that and they have an ethical dilemma they face. I say to people who have those concerns and may have deeply held beliefs, does it make sense to you that these embryos that have been created in fertility clinics are going to be destroyed at the discretion of whoever was the person who donated the eggs and the sperm that fertilized the egg? Does it make more sense to allow the fertilized eggs to be destroyed or to allow that embryo to be--at the discretion of that husband and wife--used to help preserve and enhance and improve life? These new stem cell lines would dramatically expand our ability to study and find treatments for a wide range of illnesses. The benefits will come not only from having more lines but from having better lines. By expanding our research policy, we can create stem cell lines that help us study specific diseases or create specific treatments. I close by urging all of our colleagues to join us--a majority of us--in supporting S. 5. It has been made better because the sponsors of the bill have also introduced legislation that, I think, was offered last year by Senators Specter and Santorum. It is now part of this legislation. It made it better. We should not wait any longer. If we focus our resources and attention today to find cures, we can save lives--and also save money in the long run. I will close by saying for those who believe this legislation is somehow diverting us from pursuing the use of adult stem cells, or stem cells that may come from umbilical cords, it doesn't do that. We should pursue those paths as well. But we should not close the door on this path; we should pursue this path, too. To those who brought us to this day, Congressman Castle from Delaware, the sponsors of this bill today, all who have joined in supporting it, and the people in the country who joined us as well, thank you for doing a good thing for a lot of people who need our help.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CARPER. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. CARPER. I have three amendments, Mr. President, that I will be talking about which I offered with Senator Coburn. Before I talk about the amendments, though, let me take a moment to say, as a lot of my colleagues do, I have a great deal of interest in the budget, the budget itself and also the budget process. Part of my interest goes back to my former role as Governor of my State, where we drafted, prepared, proposed, and implemented those budgets for 8 years. During those 8 years, we balanced our budget every year. We even put money, I think almost every year, in a rainy day fund to deal with challenges that might confront my successors someday down the line. We were able to balance the budget during those years in part because we were guided by a simple, basic principle, and that is if something is worth doing, it is worth paying for. Balancing the budget doesn't mean sitting on our hands and doing nothing. In Delaware, while I was privileged to serve as its chief executive, we cut taxes in 7 out of 8 years, both individual personal income taxes and business taxes. We also invested in our schools to raise student achievement. We sought to improve health coverage for our children. We put in place a prescription drug assistance program. We helped make welfare pay less than work so that people would be incentivized to go to work. We enhanced our transportation infrastructure and paid down some of our debt. It wasn't just the Governor, it was the legislature, with Democrats and Republicans working together, sort of our tradition in my little State. We set priorities, we saved money where we could, and when something was worth doing, we paid for it. We paid as we went. We balanced the budget, and we did so year after year. When I was elected to the Senate in 2000, the Federal budget was balanced as well. In fact, our country was enjoying budget surpluses. When I came to the Senate, we were actually on track to pay off our national debt. We were on track to be debt free, as hard as that is to imagine today. I spent most of my first term in the Senate in the minority. It was a very different experience from being Governor of my State. Over the course of my first term in the Senate, I watched the majority pass budget resolution after budget resolution that ultimately dug us further into debt. In 2000, the Federal budget was on course to run, I think, a $5.5 trillion surplus. The size of the national debt had been falling at that point for a couple of years. Over the last 6 years, we have gone, unfortunately, in the opposite direction. We have run record budget deficits and added some $1.5 trillion to our Nation's debt. Last year, the American people said enough. This budget resolution responds to the desire of the American people to return to what I call a commonsense approach. There is an old saying--I think it is from Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Great Britain. He had a theory on holes. ``When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.'' With this budget resolution, we stop digging. This budget resolution does, once again, what budget resolutions are supposed to do. It not only charts the course to a balanced budget, it also includes enforcement mechanisms to keep Congress's feet to the fire and, I might also add, the executive branch's feet to the fire. A plan on paper to balance the budget is great, but it does no good if we throw that plan out the window as soon as we start passing spending and tax cut bills later in the year. This budget resolution requires that new proposals to increase spending or decrease revenues be fully offset with counterbalancing cuts in spending or increases in revenue. This pay-as-you-go requirement is something that I have been advocating, along with a number of my colleagues, certainly Senator Conrad and others, for years. I am very pleased it will soon be adopted, I hope, by the Senate. This budget resolution takes something called budget reconciliation and restores it to its original purpose. Reconciliation is a special procedure that was created to make it easier to pass legislation that made tough choices to reduce budget deficits. However, reconciliation has been abused in some of these recent years. It has been used to speed the passage of legislation that, far from balancing the budget, actually turned around and busted the budget. It is a little like adding grease to a pig. It makes it exceedingly difficult to get a handle on our out-of-control budget problems. I offered an amendment a couple of years ago to prohibit the use of reconciliation to expedite passage of measures that do bust the budget. I don't know if that amendment was adopted, but I am glad the Senate will soon take this important step to restore fiscal order. This budget also includes a new long-term budget point of order. This is vitally important because our short-term budget challenges pale in comparison to our long-term budget challenges. We ought to be taking steps now to prepare for the retirement of the baby boom generation-- that is my generation and maybe the generation of several of us on the Senate floor today--preparing for our retirement and preparing for the strain those retirements are going to place on programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and, I might add, Medicaid. The last thing we ought to do is take steps now that will make matters worse in the future. The new budget point of order created by this resolution requires 60 votes for legislation that would make our long-term budget challenges substantially worse. This forces the Congress to look beyond the present, even past the next election--something we don't always do--to the future we are leaving to our children and to our grandchildren. I commend the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Conrad. He has inherited a difficult set of circumstances. He has inherited a budget pretty much out of balance. He has inherited a Tax Code that has middle-class tax increases built in, in the form of a rapidly expanding alternative minimum tax. Nonetheless, under his leadership, the Budget Committee has managed to craft what I think is a very sensible resolution. They have provided for our troops in the field. They have provided for investments at home in education, health care for our children, and they have done this in the context of a plan that holds the line on taxes and charts a course to a balanced budget over the next 5 years. I particularly thank Senator Conrad for managing to provide, consistent with a plan to balance the budget, vital support for passenger rail service in this country of ours. It is becoming increasingly evident every day that passenger rail is a good investment, and one I think that is getting better. It is critical to economic growth and mobility. It is necessary to address traffic congestion and to protect air quality, and it is an essential part of reducing our dependence upon foreign oil. I will just share what I think is a pretty good ``gee whiz'' factor. We are in Washington, DC, today talking about how rail, passenger rail and freight rail, can help in terms of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We can take a ton of freight, move it from Washington, DC, to the Northeast corridor, to Boston, MA, with 1 gallon of diesel fuel. Think about that. With 1 gallon of diesel fuel you can move a ton of freight by rail from Washington, DC, to Boston, MA. There are real economies to be gained, real progress in terms of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. That is about as graphic an example as I can think of.

Mr. CARPER. With pleasure. It is possible to move 1 ton of freight by rail from Washington, DC to Boston, MA, for about a gallon of diesel fuel. That is it. There are similar kinds of efficiencies we could realize by moving people, not just tons of freight by rail but people by rail, especially in densely populated corridors. I am not one who argues--I used to be on the Amtrak board, but I am not one who argues we should run trains in places people don't want to ride them or that we should run them in sparsely populated areas. I don't know that always makes sense. But we have 75 percent of people in this country who live within 50 miles of one of our coastlines. What that does, from the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic, Southeast, gulf coast, west coast, is create a lot of densely populated corridors. They lend themselves to passenger rail, especially for trips of maybe 300 or 400 miles or less. With respect to Amtrak funding, we need to appropriate levels of capital. That is going to be more important as we consider a comprehensive reauthorization bill for Amtrak, which I hope is going to happen later this year. I also thank Senator Conrad and the committee for addressing the tax gap in this bill. That is the difference between the amount of tax that is legally owed and the amount that is actually being paid on a timely basis. The tax gap is estimated to be some $345 billion in 2001. The chairman of the Budget Committee has estimated it will amount to as much as $2 trillion over the course of the 5 years covered by this budget resolution. If we completely closed this tax gap, we would largely eliminate the Federal budget deficit. We are never going to completely close it, but we need to do more to narrow it. It is a matter of basic fairness to the great majority of Americans who do the right thing and pay their taxes they owe on a timely basis. Together with Senator Coburn, who is the ranking member of the Financial Management Subcommittee I chair, I am offering three amendments to the budget resolution that I believe complement the initiatives in the budget resolution to address the tax gap. Our amendments deal with the spending side of the equation. Based on our work in the subcommittee, our amendments point to ways in which we can and should reduce the deficit by promoting better financial management. I think actually the administration probably agrees with what we are trying to do here. Our first amendment deals with improper payments. Agencies across the Federal Government spend literally tens of billions of dollars every year on avoidable payment errors. The most recent Governmentwide estimates from OMB report that agencies made about $41 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2006, most of them overpayments. This total is likely only the tip of the iceberg, since many agencies are not in full compliance with the law that requires them to report on their payment errors--the Improper Payments Information Act. OMB has plans in place to improve agencies' compliance with the Improper Payments Information Act. In keeping with our oversight role, our subcommittee is working with OMB to ensure that agencies comply with these plans and make consistent progress toward OMB's goal of eliminating up to $20 billion--that's about half the improper payments--in reported improper payments between now and 2011. The first amendment Senator Coburn and I have submitted would apply such savings as we are able to realize through the elimination of improper payments to deficit-reduction. The second amendment Senator Coburn and I have submitted touches on recovery audits, a tool at least some agencies use to recover payment errors they make. Under current law, agencies with at least $500 million in contracts outstanding must regularly go through their books to find overpayments, double payments, and other errors they may have made in paying their contractors. According to data released by OMB in January, just 2 months ago, agencies used recovery auditing to identify and collect millions of dollars in payment errors made to contractors. Frankly, We would like to see more of this kind of auditing work done. I intend to work with Senator Coburn, OMB, and others to increase the amount of recovery auditing that occurs at the Federal level. The amendment Senator Coburn and I have submitted today would dedicate the savings we achieve by doing that through these efforts to deficit reduction. Our third amendment touches on the management of Federal property. Senator Coburn and I have learned through several hearings in our subcommittee that agencies are spending a significant amount of money each year maintaining unneeded property--including buildings that are completely vacant. Part of this problem comes from the fact that agencies still don't really know what property they own, in some cases, despite some admirable efforts undertaken by the administration. Agencies also aren't given the appropriate incentives under current law to dispose of property they no longer need. Senator Coburn and I have been working on legislation that would give agencies additional tools and incentives that will encourage them to dispose of unneeded and vacant property. In so doing, it will enable the Federal Government and the taxpayers of this country to save the substantial costs that are incurred when we fail to dispose of these excess properties. OMB has said that the legislation Senator Coburn and I hope to bring forward this year would help agencies unload some $11 billion in property by 2011. The amendment Senator Coburn and I have submitted today would devote this savings to deficit-reduction. Again, I commend the Chairman of the Budget Committee and the Full Committee for a job well done. I urge my colleagues to support this budget resolution. And I urge my colleagues to join Senator Coburn and me in our efforts, I hope later today, to reduce the deficit through better financial management, by supporting these 3 amendments. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I want to convey my gratitude to Senator Conrad, our chairman, and also Senator Gregg, our former chairman, and say how much I respect and admire the way they have worked together, whether Democrats were in the majority or the Republicans were in the majority. I think they set an example for the rest of us to follow in the way we deal with each other: with mutual respect, always focusing on the issues, sometimes disagreeing, but doing so in an agreeable way, much the way the Presiding Officer handles himself in these matters. Amendment No. 538 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that it be in order for me to call up one amendment at the desk, and that is amendment No. 538; that once it is reported by number, it be set aside and that I be recognized to speak with respect to this amendment, as already previously provided for.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I thank the chairman. We heard, a few minutes earlier, from Senator Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. He talked at some length about the tax gap, which some suggest may be costing our Treasury roughly $300 billion this year, last year, and next year as well. These are moneys which are believed to be owed but not being collected by the IRS. When we talk about reducing our Nation's budget deficit--something we all know we need to do--among the ways to do it is to close the tax gap. Another way to do it is to address what are called improper payments. Senator Coburn and I lead a subcommittee in Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security called the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee. We have been exploring the issue of improper payments. We have had for a number of years an improper payments law that says Federal agencies have to not continue making improper payments. We found out about 2 years ago roughly $50 billion in improper payments were made by Federal agencies--mostly overpayments, some underpayments. Unfortunately, that is just the tip of the iceberg. It turns out improper payments made for the last year have been down to about $41 billion, but it does not include the Department of Defense, it does not include improper payments made by Homeland Security, and it does not include improper payments that crop up in some other parts of our Federal Government. Senator Coburn and I have been holding hearings. Last year, it was under his leadership as chairman. We held one under my leadership as chairman earlier this month on improper payments. We are going to focus, early this year, particularly on some of the big agencies-- Homeland Security, which still does not comply with the law; the Department of Defense, which still does not comply with the law--to provide a strong impetus for them to begin complying with the law or at least to get on the right track. Senator Coburn has an amendment he has offered, one that is opposed by the National Governors Association and by a number of other groups. What he would attempt to do--and what I think his purpose is; his goal is meritorious--is to compel the Department of Homeland Security to comply with the Improper Payments Act. He does so in a way that holds at risk State and local governments and their ability to receive homeland security grants, really three out of I think the four major grant programs that are handled by Homeland Security that we are discussing today with this bill. The reason why the National Governors Association and I think other State and local governmental entities are opposing the amendment is because they could be held at risk of not receiving the grants for a lot of fire departments and other first responders and other State and local agencies, through no fault of their own but because the Department of Homeland Security is not complying with the Improper Payments Act. Senator Coburn was prepared to offer a second-degree amendment, one I think he and his staff worked on with OMB that I think was a far better approach to getting the attention of Homeland Security to comply with the Improper Payments Act. He is not going to be able to offer the second-degree amendment. As a result, we have no choice but to debate and vote on his initial amendment, which we took up in committee. I asked him not to offer it in committee during the markup. He did not, and today his only choice is to offer that same amendment. Unfortunately, I cannot support it. He is onto a good idea. The idea is we need to put not just Homeland Security but the Department of Defense--and a bunch of other Federal agencies that are not complying with this law--we need to put them under the gun and say: You have to start complying--and to provide pressure, incentives, sticks, carrots to get them in compliance with the law. I think we will be holding our second hearing later this month on further looking at the Improper Payments Act. We are going to be bringing before us the Department of Homeland Security to find out what is their problem, why are they unable to comply with the law. Do we need to make changes in the law or do they just need to get on the ball? It may be a combination of the two. To that end, I look forward to working with my colleague, Senator Coburn. I must reluctantly oppose the amendment--not the amendment he wanted to offer. The amendment he wanted to offer, he is not going to have a chance to offer. But the amendment he is offering, I have to oppose.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I join my good friend, Sen. George Voinovich, in introducing a bill to study the current state and future needs of our national infrastructure, including rail, airports, wastewater treatment facilities, waterways and levees. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the Nation's infrastructure to a good condition. Clearly, we need to look at our needs and find a better way to maintain the infrastructure we have, while meeting new demand--all in a way that is fiscally sustainable. Last Congress, during the debate about the surface transportation reauthorization, we discussed the problems facing our roadways. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $54 billion per year in repairs and operating costs and 3.5 billion hours a year in traffic. Over 27 percent of the Nation's bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. While transit use increased faster than any other mode of transportation--up 21 percent--between 1993 and 2002, the Federal Transit Administration estimates $14.8 billion is needed annually to maintain conditions. In Delaware, while population growth grew a robust 23 percent from 1990 to 2003, vehicle travel on our highways increased 38 percent. And driving on roads in need of repair cost Delaware motorists $160 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs. To take a look at what must be done to maintain our highways and transit as well as address future needs, and ways to pay for all of that, Congress created a commission to study these issues in SAFETEA-LU and report back to Congress with recommendations. But there are more types of infrastructure in need of attention than just highways and transit. Air travel has reportedly surpassed pre- September 11, 2001, levels and is projected to grow 4.3 percent annually through 2015. Aging wastewater management systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage into U.S. surface waters each year. And the EPA estimates that $390 billion over the next 20 years will be needed to replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demands. Further, limited rail capacity has created significant chokepoints and delays, as freight rail tonnage is expected to increase at least 50 percent by 2020 and intercity passenger rail ridership has increased to approximately 25 million a year. To accommodate both freight and passenger rail demand, $12-13 billion a year in investments will be needed. After Hurricane Katrina led to the failure of floodwalls in New Orleans, Congress asked the Corps of Engineers to inspect other flood control structures to identify other repair needs. The Corps found that 146 levees in 28 States, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are in danger of failing. In Delaware, vehicle travel on our highways has increased 38 percent from 1990 to 2003, costing Delaware motorists $160 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs--$273 per motorist. Delaware also has $304 million in drinking water infrastructure needs over the next 20 years and $288 million in wastewater infrastructure needs. Understanding the problem and plotting a plan of attack are essential for attracting and maintaining business and investment in our economy and communities. The legislation we are proposing today would give the National Commission on the Infrastructure of the United States until February 15, 2009, to complete a study of the Nation's infrastructure, in consultation with the appropriate Federal, State and local agencies as well as private sector stakeholders. The Commission would study the age and condition of public infrastructure, the capacity to sustain current and anticipated economic development, the methods used to finance public infrastructure, and the return to the economy from public works investment. Many times, when we debate infrastructure needs, people simply call for additional funds. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is losing confidence in the way we invest their tax dollars. Failures, like the floodwalls in New Orleans, harm confidence in the government's ability to protect communities from natural disasters. The fact that we've made no changes to the Corps' flood control program in the wake of that catastrophic failure has further damaged government credibility. Increasing traffic in spite of the investment of billions of dollars every year in highways and bridges reduces confidence in government's ability to address traffic congestion. Failure to invest in rail while both freight usage and passenger ridership is at all time highs makes the taxpayer doubt that government is spending their tax dollars according to the needs of the people. Part of the solution is, likely, greater funding. But the American people need to be confident in the products we provide before they are going to sign a check for more funding. That is why the Commission will study innovative financing, such as tax-credit bonds and private investment. But also, the Commission will study the impact of State and local governments' land use and economic development decisions on Federal infrastructure costs, and provide Congress with some insight as to how the various levels of government can better coordinate to gain greater efficiencies from our infrastructure investment. Stronger coordination, greater investment and creativity are the keys to maintaining our infrastructure and investing in future needs--as well as a healthy and robust economy. I look forward to guidance from this Commission as to how Congress can better do just that.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I think it has been a good debate. The Senator from Illinois offered a thoughtful amendment, raised some questions, and I think the managers of the bill, the Senators from Connecticut and Maine, have defended well the language in the bill. For our colleagues who may be watching this--or if they are at committee hearings, perhaps their staffs are watching--I ask a couple of rhetorical questions as we decide how to vote on Senator Obama's amendment. Should most of the funds for homeland security be allocated on the basis of risk? Sure. Should the lion's share of the funding be allocated on the basis of risk? Certainly, it should. Should all the funding for homeland security be allocated on the basis of risk? No. What Senator Obama is trying to do is thread the needle and get us closer to somewhere between the lion's share and all the funds being allocated on the basis of risk. We have all heard the old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is risk. Senator Collins talked about some staging that was done by the perpetrators of violence on 9/11 from places such as Stone Mountain, GA; Portland, ME; and maybe Norman, OK. Maybe Senator Lieberman talked about the kinds of targets that terrorists have chosen in this country and others that maybe would not have come to mind, such as the Federal courthouse in Oklahoma City, in a disco or a bus or a train. I don't think most people think of Delaware as a very high-risk State. As we think what is a target for terrorists, in my State we have a lot of chemical plants. Delaware used to be known as the chemical capital of the world; I don't know if it still is. We have a lot of inviting targets for people who want to do mischief. There are nuclear powerplants across the river in New Jersey, and they are closer to my home than to the Senator's from New Jersey. We have northeast corridor train tracks, not just for passengers, that run up and down my State on which all kinds of hazardous cargo is carried by Norfolk Southern and CSX Railroad. We have a busy Delaware River; hazardous cargo goes down that river every day. Some people might look at those in my State and say there is not much risk there and, as a result, they don't need extra money. In my judgment, those are risky targets, which invite some mischief. We don't need an enormous amount of money to help prepare for some harm that may come to those targets and the people who live around them, but we need a reasonable amount. The idea that .45 percent of one program, among several that are funded through this bill, is somehow too much, I don't buy that. The real compelling point is that, if you do the math, multiply .45 percent times 50 percent, you come up with .22, .23 percent on the basis allocated by the fact that your State is under the minimum. When you run through the numbers, as the Senators have said, 95 percent of the money under this funding program, the State Homeland Security Grant Program, would be allocated on the basis of risk. For the Urban Area Security Initiative, I think all the money is allocated on the basis of risk. That having been said, we can have ``food fights,'' I call them, and debates all day trying to figure out should the minimum be .75 or .45 or .25 percent. Our committee said .75 percent is too much. We believe .25 percent as a minimum is too little. We believe .45 percent, which leads to about 95 percent of the funding under this specific grant program being allocated on the basis of risk, is about right. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER. Before the Senator yields, I have one further comment. I take far greater comfort in the words of my friend from Illinois. But what we heard about Washington, DC,--this place was a target. We had people who lost their lives not many miles from where we are. There was another plane trying to get here. Somehow this place, our Nation's capital, which we acknowledge was a prime target on 9/11, and probably is today, should somehow be allocated less funding under the formulas-- not the one in the bill but allocated less funding--doesn't make sense to me.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I join my good friend, Sen. George Voinovich, in introducing a bill to study the current state and future needs of our national infrastructure, including rail, airports, wastewater treatment facilities, waterways and levees. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the Nation's infrastructure to a good condition. Clearly, we need to look at our needs and find a better way to maintain the infrastructure we have, while meeting new demand--all in a way that is fiscally sustainable. Last Congress, during the debate about the surface transportation reauthorization, we discussed the problems facing our roadways. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $54 billion per year in repairs and operating costs and 3.5 billion hours a year in traffic. Over 27 percent of the Nation's bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. While transit use increased faster than any other mode of transportation--up 21 percent--between 1993 and 2002, the Federal Transit Administration estimates $14.8 billion is needed annually to maintain conditions. In Delaware, while population growth grew a robust 23 percent from 1990 to 2003, vehicle travel on our highways increased 38 percent. And driving on roads in need of repair cost Delaware motorists $160 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs. To take a look at what must be done to maintain our highways and transit as well as address future needs, and ways to pay for all of that, Congress created a commission to study these issues in SAFETEA-LU and report back to Congress with recommendations. But there are more types of infrastructure in need of attention than just highways and transit. Air travel has reportedly surpassed pre- September 11, 2001, levels and is projected to grow 4.3 percent annually through 2015. Aging wastewater management systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage into U.S. surface waters each year. And the EPA estimates that $390 billion over the next 20 years will be needed to replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demands. Further, limited rail capacity has created significant chokepoints and delays, as freight rail tonnage is expected to increase at least 50 percent by 2020 and intercity passenger rail ridership has increased to approximately 25 million a year. To accommodate both freight and passenger rail demand, $12-13 billion a year in investments will be needed. After Hurricane Katrina led to the failure of floodwalls in New Orleans, Congress asked the Corps of Engineers to inspect other flood control structures to identify other repair needs. The Corps found that 146 levees in 28 States, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are in danger of failing. In Delaware, vehicle travel on our highways has increased 38 percent from 1990 to 2003, costing Delaware motorists $160 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs--$273 per motorist. Delaware also has $304 million in drinking water infrastructure needs over the next 20 years and $288 million in wastewater infrastructure needs. Understanding the problem and plotting a plan of attack are essential for attracting and maintaining business and investment in our economy and communities. The legislation we are proposing today would give the National Commission on the Infrastructure of the United States until February 15, 2009, to complete a study of the Nation's infrastructure, in consultation with the appropriate Federal, State and local agencies as well as private sector stakeholders. The Commission would study the age and condition of public infrastructure, the capacity to sustain current and anticipated economic development, the methods used to finance public infrastructure, and the return to the economy from public works investment. Many times, when we debate infrastructure needs, people simply call for additional funds. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is losing confidence in the way we invest their tax dollars. Failures, like the floodwalls in New Orleans, harm confidence in the government's ability to protect communities from natural disasters. The fact that we've made no changes to the Corps' flood control program in the wake of that catastrophic failure has further damaged government credibility. Increasing traffic in spite of the investment of billions of dollars every year in highways and bridges reduces confidence in government's ability to address traffic congestion. Failure to invest in rail while both freight usage and passenger ridership is at all time highs makes the taxpayer doubt that government is spending their tax dollars according to the needs of the people. Part of the solution is, likely, greater funding. But the American people need to be confident in the products we provide before they are going to sign a check for more funding. That is why the Commission will study innovative financing, such as tax-credit bonds and private investment. But also, the Commission will study the impact of State and local governments' land use and economic development decisions on Federal infrastructure costs, and provide Congress with some insight as to how the various levels of government can better coordinate to gain greater efficiencies from our infrastructure investment. Stronger coordination, greater investment and creativity are the keys to maintaining our infrastructure and investing in future needs--as well as a healthy and robust economy. I look forward to guidance from this Commission as to how Congress can better do just that.