Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Thank you.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. I will limit my debate on this amendment and try to come back to the Chamber. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that we call up and consider amendments Nos. 2812, 2813, and 2814, as a block of three amendments, to be debated en bloc and then to be voted en bloc. I ask for their consideration to be available or time be made available to consider those amendments when I have time to come back to the floor.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, we are going to be voting on an amendment very soon, amendment No. 2810. The whole point of this amendment is to reorder our priorities in terms of transportation. We have had significant debate on whether certain ongoing projects will be harmed. We have seen a Department of Transportation inspector general's report that lists five problems with what is happening right now. Basically, the conclusion of the report is earmarks are not the most effective or efficient use of funds--noncompetitively awarded transportation earmarks. Let me say that again. Noncompetitively awarded transportation earmarks reduce funding for each individual State's core transportation funding. They are not in unison with DOT strategic research goals. As a matter of fact, the research institute has oftentimes gone around with earmarks. They provide funds for projects that would otherwise be ineligible for transportation funds. They disrupt the agency's ability to fund programs as designated when authorized funding amounts are exceeded by what they call overearmarking. That is the technique where we put in an earmark, congressionally directed spending, but we do not put enough money in to pay for that congressional spending, so that excess money goes against the rest of the transportation priorities. Then, finally, many low priority earmarked projects are being funded over higher priority nonearmarked projects. This is a simple amendment that says we are not going to spend money on earmarks unless they are for roads and bridges at this time. It does not stop earmarks; it just slows them down and says: Whoa. This is a lower priority than what we are doing. In this bill are over 500 earmarks that come right now to $2.8 billion. Mr. President, $2.8 billion would go a long way in terms of fixing the tremendous number of bridges that are structurally deficient in this country. That is just with the National Highway System. That does not have anything to do with State transportation highways. The real question for this body--and there have been many claims made against this amendment. No. 1, this amendment will not lessen the amount of money that goes to State transportation departments. That money can be rerouted so certain things such as transit initiatives will not have to stop. But what it will say is, the Senate is on record for saying the highest priority ought to have the highest priority. Minnesota is a tragic example of the misplaced priorities we have. Of the billions and billions of dollars, well over 10 percent of the last Transportation bill--authorization bill--and a significant amount of this bill will be spent on projects that are not a priority for a State, are not a priority for national transportation, but are our priorities. We can differ on what the low level priorities are, but nobody can deny we have a significant problem with structurally deficient bridges in this country. We are going to spend $600,000 on horse-riding facilities, $5.9 million on a snowmobile trail, $8 million on a parking garage, $532,000 just on one particular earmark for a pedestrian trail, $1.25 million for a day center and park-and-ride facility, $3 million for dust control mitigation, and $2.75 million for the National Packard Museum when we have bridges falling down? I think we have plenty of room to reorder our priorities. This amendment does not eliminate any earmark. What it does is delay it. There is no question about it. But the purpose is to put us in touch with the American people saying: First things first. This does not eliminate addressing the 13,000 people who die every year on unsafe roads. Those funds are still available. We heard from the Senator from Missouri that 400 people succumbed to accidents related to bridges in the last year. The fact is, we have had almost 40,000 people die a year on our roads. A third of that is secondary to alcohol excess. But another third of that is associated with unsafe roads and bridges. That is according to the Department of Transportation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Department of Transportation inspector general and an accompanying Executive Overview of Report AV-2007-066 of the Department of Transportation.

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

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I appreciate the words of Senator Bond, although I was misquoted. I don't like any earmark. I accept that authorized earmarks have, in fact, been reviewed by an authorizing committee, but I would make a couple of points. This year, the appropriators will spend $188 billion appropriating money for something that has not been authorized. So you can use that as a debate tool, but the fact is, the authorizers have limited influence over the Appropriations Committee because they will spend 20 percent of our discretionary budget on items that are not authorized by the authorizing committees. The other point I would make is that the Senator will get a chance to vote against bike paths because I have another amendment that eliminates funding for bike paths until we have restored the bridges. This amendment cares for the roads that Senator Bond just made a point of. The fact is, this amendment allows the money to bring roads up to quality and safety standards. So it would not eliminate where the 13,000 people die in this country from unsafe and poor quality national highways; it will, in fact, allow those to happen. What it would not allow is $600,000 to be spent on horse-riding facilities in Virginia; a snow mobile trail in Vermont of $5.9 million; parking for New York's Harlem Hospital of $8 million; $532,000 for a bicycle and pedestrian trail in Tennessee; a daycare center and park and ride facility in Illinois; dust control mitigation for rural Arkansas of $3 million; the National Packard Museum in Ohio, $2.75 million; a historical pilot project in Washington for $200,000. I think we are going to have trouble convincing the American people those things are a higher priority than bridge safety in this country. And that is just a small example of the congressionally directed spending in this bill. So I don't deny that those may be priorities, but what I would state is they are lower priorities than safety on our roads and rebuilding our bridges and making sure our highways are safe. And I would wager that the vast proportion of Americans, by far, would agree with that statement. We have lost our way if, in fact, we are going to fund these things at the expense of not funding bridge repair in this country. I think the projects that are funded, many of them, a great many of them, fit into the priorities of restoring bridges and highways, but many don't. And the question around this amendment is, Will we do that which is the highest priority for us? It is kind of like the war. We are spending about $8.5 billion a month. But whose money are we spending on the war? We are spending our children and grandchildren's money because every bit of it has been outside the budget guidelines, so it goes straight to debt. The point is, we don't have the money right now to do some of the things we would like to do because we should be doing the things that we need to do. And the things we need to do should be the highest priority for the American people. That certainly isn't horse-riding facilities in Virginia or a snow mobile trail in Vermont. Madam President, I yield back and hope to speak again on this amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, what does this amendment do? This amendment does not get rid of earmarks. What this amendment does is it delays earmarks. What it says is that for all the earmarks we have had, both authorized and through the appropriations process, unless they are going to build and fix structurally deficient bridges in this country, or they are going to improve a highway that brings it up to standards, that makes it safe, we ought to delay the implementation of those earmarks until we have solved this problem. How many more bridges have to collapse until we get the message? How many more people have to die until we get the message? The Minnesota bridge that collapsed was noticed in 1990 as being structurally deficient. In 1999, the State department of transportation in Minnesota said there needs to be a priority on this bridge, and yet we did not respond. The earmark that should have been made was for the repairs for that bridge, and yet they were not made. This amendment is very simple. I know it goes against the grain of a lot of the processes we use, but it makes common sense that if we are going to forego another Minnesota tragedy, we have to change our priorities. All this amendment says is the priorities ought to be the safety of the American people and quality so that 13,000 people do not die this next year on roads that are not within the quality classified as ``good'' or ``acceptable.'' All we do is say let's put our priority where it needs to be right now. Let's set the priority for making sure there is not another Minnesota. My State leads the Nation in the percentage of bridges that are classified as deficient. Oklahoma, as a State, has never received back what it has paid in to the transportation fund. As a matter of fact, there is over $1.8 million that we have paid in that we never received back. But we have disproportionately shared that in other areas. My State does not begrudge this point. The fact is, our State is small compared to the Northeast and the west coast in terms of structurally deficient bridges. The point ought to be: How do we change the priority, how do we respond to the concerns of the American people over what, in fact, has to be the right priorities for transportation? A couple of actions can be taken on this amendment. We can vote it down, and we can say safety and bridges and safe roads are not a priority, but museums and bike trails and theaters and parking garages are because they help us politically. Or we can adopt this amendment and send a message to the American people that: We hear you, we understand what you are saying, and we agree that your safety ought to outperform and be above our political necessities and our directed spending. This does not limit any directed spending for any of these bridges or any of the Federal highways that will move them to good or acceptable. So in terms of transportation, it will not eliminate anything that is important to our safety, important to repairing the infrastructure in this country. The third action that can be taken on this amendment is that we can pass this amendment, and because it is not liked, it will get trashed in conference. So we can all look good by voting for this amendment, but if we do not insist on this amendment when we get to conference, we will have winked and nodded to the American people again. We would have brought our numbers down by not paying attention to what their concerns are. And, most importantly, we will keep American drivers and pedestrians and passengers at risk. I hope the chair and ranking member will agree to this amendment, will accept it, and fight for it in conference. I believe we should vote on this amendment. This is an amendment we ought to have a vote on in the Senate. I believe it is about time we start getting our priorities right. I yield the floor for the present time and wish to speak on this amendment later.

Mr. COBURN. This amendment is an earmark moratorium until all bridges are repaired.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 2810.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I thank the Senators for their hard work on this bill. As the tragedy in Minnesota showed, priorities are important. I notice Senator Bond referred earlier to the IG's report I had requested on the Department of Transportation. I must thank both the inspector general and Secretary Peters for their forthrightness and plain-spokenness in this report. The report is pretty significant. I wish to spend a few minutes talking about it. First, I want to show the American people the significance of where we stand on the National Highway System. This doesn't have anything to do with States; this is national highways--designated national highways or interstate highways--in terms of the structurally deficient bridges in this country. This is from the U.S. Department of Transportation. These are not my numbers. As you can see on this chart, throughout the country--and it is emphasized in the most populous States, with the exception of Florida--we have significant problems when it comes to bridges. I contend that it is not necessarily too low of a gas tax that has created this; it has been a lack of priority. I have several amendments I plan to offer to this bill. However, I will probably limit those if my overall first amendment passes. There were several key points that the IG made and the Secretary of Commerce commented on when it comes to earmarks. Probably the most important of those is that earmarks, when they are made, don't fully account for the cost of those earmarks. As a matter of fact, the IG found substantial reduction in all of the other programs throughout the Department of Transportation because of the underallocation of the moneys necessary to complete an earmark. What does that mean? It means that when we put an earmark in-- authorized or unauthorized--and we say it costs $100, what the Department of Transportation is finding is that often it doesn't cost $100; because it is mandated by law, we spend $150. That $50 goes out of the rest of the programs at the Department of Transportation; therefore, it cuts. They talked about this as overearmarking, not in terms of the numbers but earmarking a result without putting in the dollars to do it. I think there is a comment on one of these charts out of the IG's report which states just that. Here is another chart. It says: 99 percent of the earmarks reviewed by the inspector general bypassed merit review. What does that mean? That means had they not been earmarked, they would not have been a priority in a State transportation project and would not have met a priority of the standards the DOT has on highways and bridges--there are five. Only 1 percent of the earmarks placed in the appropriations bill actually pass or meet merit review. The very thing our States do is sit up and say: This is how we want to prioritize spending in our States for safety and infrastructure in terms of transportation. These are not my words; these are the IG's words from the Department of transportation: 7,724 out of 7,760 transportation earmarks in 2006 were not subject to the agency's priority ranking, review, or selection process, or bypassed the States' normal planning and program processes. So it comes back to the point, why don't we have all these bridges inspected, and why did we see a tragedy in Minnesota? It is because we failed; the bridge didn't fail. We failed to put in the proper amount of money, and we failed to put priorities on what is most important for our transportation sector. Here is the next chart. Here is another point the IG made: Recent Department of Transportation reauthorizations have included a significant number of specific projects with associated funding directed to specific State and local agencies or locations. For example, the current Department of Transportation authorization for surface transportation accounted for 6,474 of the Department of Transportation's 8,056 earmarked projects for FY2006. We are taking money away from the priorities the States and Department of Transportation have that are out there and are transparent, and we are moving them away. That means there is less money for the tremendous number of bridges that are structurally deficient right now in our highway system. How do we solve that? How do we meet the needs? The State of North Carolina has somebody up here full time to make sure that when an earmark is requested, it meets the State's guidelines. The State Department of Transportation of North Carolina has to lobby its own members to make sure the requests are within the guidelines of the priorities of the State of North Carolina. How did we get to the point that we disconnect priorities to the fact that we want to help a certain group that is outside the priorities of our State but inside the priorities of our political purposes? I think we need to reexamine what we are doing. I think we need to reprioritize. The fact is that a lot has been said about the tragedy that happened in Minnesota. I honestly believe President Reagan was right in 1982 when he vetoed a Transportation bill that had 11 earmarks. His point was that these take away from the priorities. Those 11 earmarks have grown to over 8,000 now. So each year, we have lessened the priorities of safety and efficient transportation to help us politically. Better planning and prioritization of existing transportation funds could improve road safety and bridge safety. Realize that 13,000 people a year in this country die because of inadequate or poor-quality roads--Federal roads, not State roads. What are some of the things we do with transportation dollars? We build transportation museums, we build bike paths, we build parking garages. We have multitudes of earmarks that are anything except a priority for safety for transportation in this country. Amendment No. 2810 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 2810.

Mr. COBURN

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

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I call up en bloc amendments Nos. 2704, 2705, 2706, and 2716.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendments be dispensed with.

Mr. COBURN. Yes.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the next amendment I want to spend some time on has been in the news of late. The Global Fund initiative has been a very important tool in terms of fighting HIV, TB, and malaria, which are the three significant diseases around the world that are limiting progress, health, life, and sustainability for many people throughout the world. What this amendment does is eliminate the secrecy of the operation of that group. I am not highly critical of discretionary spending to accomplish a goal, but I am highly critical of not having transparency on where money goes. We can do that in a way that protects whistleblowers and in a way that satisfies the American public that if we are going to send their money overseas, we know exactly what it is spent on and how it is spent. This is a very simple amendment. It conditions 20 percent of our contributions to the Global Fund, which is significant, on certification by the Secretary of State that the Global Fund has made all the financial and programmatic documents available to the public on a Web site. That says if you are going to spend $100 million on a drug, put it on a Web site and say whether you competitively bid it, and here is what we paid for it. If you paid a consultant, say here is how much we paid them for it. It is the American taxpayers' money. I think it is significant that the total amount of money contributed to date for the Global Fund, which I support, has been $2.9 billion. If we follow both what the committee or the Senate happened to do, we are going to have that above $6 billion at the end of next year; $6 billion is a significant amount of money. What the global fund says is they have an Inspector General and that we don't need this. The problem is that Inspector General reports are good only if the people who have decisionmaking capability on the funding get to see those reports. The board at the Global Fund doesn't even get to see the reports. As a matter of fact, the IG of the Global Fund recently retired over the controversy of his IG report that was very critical of the management of the Global Fund. The answer to accountability is transparency in what we do. This is a straightforward amendment that conditions only 20 percent of the money--less than the increase of what we will be funding with the Global Fund--by saying you have to become transparent, you have to become accountable, and it has to be accessible. It is simple. We will get better value for the dollars we contribute to the Global Fund if, in fact, we adopt this amendment. The other thing that will happen is more people will have lifesaving treatments or preventive strategies applied to them if we have transparency and accountability. All of the amendments we have talked about today are essentially about transparency. It is about if we are going to send American money into foreign places through independent agencies, separate from our own Government, we ought to know how that money is spent. It is straightforward. All of us would do the same thing as we give our money--we look at church budgets and we look at nonprofits' budgets when we contribute to them, and we find out how they are spending their money. We have independent reporting in this country on nonprofits on how they spend money and how much percentage on overhead and whether they waste money. So all these amendments are about accountability-- accountability through transparency. I admit they have some teeth. But we are not going to be accountable for the American taxpayers' dollars unless we apply enough pressure to get transparency so we know where the American taxpayers' dollars are going. I also want to submit for the Record a copy of a whistleblower conversation at UNDP, associated with one of the other amendments. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. COBURN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. I yield back my time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. COBURN. There is not an accountability that we can require. We are the largest contributor to the United Nations. We have a requirement and a responsibility to the people of this country to make sure that money is well spent. The easiest way to make sure money is well spent and properly spent is for it to be transparent and available to the people who are making these contributions. The second reason we should be concerned about how the U.N. spends money is procurement fraud. Last year, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton testified to the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee that of the $1 billion in U.N. peacekeeping contracts that were audited--they didn't audit all of them but just the first $1 billion that they audited--a third was found to be lost to waste and fraud and corruption. The U.N. refused to release this audit, even to Secretary Bolton, our representative at the U.N; however, he was able to secure a leaked copy of it. What that $1 billion represents in terms of waste, fraud, and abuse is our entire contribution to peacekeeping. For all the money we pay for worldwide peacekeeping through the U.N., what we can extrapolate from this audit is that our entire contribution was wasted. There is an even more worrisome program at the U.N. called the United Nations Development Program. What we know over the last 10 years is that over $100 million has been funneled inappropriately, fraudulently, and without any oversight to North Korea for things which it should not have gone. Ten million dollars, at least, was transferred in cash directly to the leaders of the North Korean regime. We know some of that cash was used to purchase homes in Europe and Canada. The Chicago Tribune reported there was evidence that they deposited cash into the same account that North Korea used to buy ballistic missiles. The United Nations Development Program refuses to allow our own investigators from our own Government to audit and review its financial information. It refuses, despite the United States sitting on the UNDP Executive Board and being the largest contributor to the UNDP budget. Basic transparency--the idea that we give money and they spend money to accomplish good in the world--can only be effective if we know where the money is spent and how it is spent. The idea to have the U.N. transparent will protect against future scandals. One of the things that bothers me the most about this and our contribution is the fact that the U.N. refuses to be transparent with the money we give them. Every domestic agency, every government program in this country is required to provide this body detailed financial information, program reviews, audits, and budgets. According to OMB, we spend an excessive $5.3 billion of the taxpayers' money on the United Nations, but despite repeated requests by Ambassador Bolton, by congressional committees, by oversight committees, by committees on investigation, the U.N. refuses to make available information as to how it spends its money, make its audits available, program reviews available, or any other financial data available to the Congress or the world at large or the public in this country. The only way we have been able to find out what we have been able to find out is that documents have been leaked. This amendment matters. The reason it matters is that every dollar lost to U.N. corruption is one less dollar that can save the life of an African child, one more dollar that could efficiently prevent violence around the world. Just in what we know on UNDP waste and fraud last year, 20,000 lives could have been saved in Africa from HIV. Or take the country of Uganda, plagued by civil war, and epidemics, and other things; according to the World Bank, their whole GDP was less than what we have wasted. Think about the impact we could have. Some will say the U.N. has a procurement Web site where information on all contracts that are granted is posted. They didn't have that until 2\1/2\ years ago when we started pushing. It only shows a very small percentage of moneys. It is not thorough or comprehensive. It is controlled by the U.N. Secretariat and not all the other agencies under the U.N. So we don't get a look at how our money is spent at the U.N. This is an amendment that has real teeth. This says what is good for our country in terms of how we spend our money, making it publicly available and transparent to hold us accountable, ought to apply to the U.N. Madam President, I will talk for a moment about amendment No. 2716. This is a straightforward amendment that moves money around in this appropriations bill. I think we can make a great case for why we ought to do it. What this amendment does is divide and take away money from the global environment facility, which is run by the World Bank but managed by the United Nations, which has been found to be totally failing in both what it is trying to accomplish and also measuring the results of what it accomplishes. We redirect that money into the President's malaria initiative--$30 million--to bring it up to what they requested. It is a highly successful program that is done right. It is one of our best foreign programs. It has metrics, measurements, accountability, and results-based, oriented goals that can be measured and quantified. It takes and puts the remainder of that money, $76.67 million, into other lifesaving programs in the child survival and maternal health programs, the global environment facilities in the World Bank, administered by the UNDP, for which grants and contracts are awarded for the purpose of addressing or preventing harm caused by manmade climate change. The Office of Management and Budget has audited or looked at this, and there are no results they can demonstrate; there is no direction in terms of the grants or no evaluation of the grants. They said it is failing to prevent any environmental damage, based on what they have seen. It hasn't mitigated any that are already there. It agreed with the United States in 2002 to implement performance guidelines. It agreed to those. Yet it has done nothing in the last 5 years to meet the required agreement with our Government. It doesn't allocate its funds based on performance or environmental benefit. In other words, there is no relationship between getting the result and the money that was spent. It lacks any significant anticorruption guidelines. We know it is there as well. Yet they refuse to agree to these things our Government has asked for. It is another mismanaged program by the UNDP. What does the effect of moving this money to other areas mean? What we know is that, with the President's malaria initiative, we are fast on our way to solving this dread disease in Africa, this preventable disease in Africa. We are gearing up the focus countries with a plan to expand that. By not funding this at the expected level, or the level that was requested, it means two or three more countries are not going to have the right drugs for malaria. They are not going to have the residual training. They are not going to have the trained staff with which to do that properly. We are not going to have long-term bed netting available for all these families, which is more important. Two million people in Africa are dying from malaria or an ineffective program that is not accomplishing its goals even though it has a great name? This amendment simply moves the money around to a way in which we help children, help refugees, and we help fight the battle against malaria in Africa. I hoped the President's malaria initiative would have been fully funded. This will fund it and allow us to expand the most successful foreign aid program we have, in terms of fighting disease. I hope we have consideration of that amendment. I will ask for a vote if it is not going to be accepted by the chairman and ranking member.

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I have three amendments that I will discuss in a group, and I believe one of them will be accepted by the majority and ranking member, and that is an amendment creating transparency at the World Bank on the malaria program. I will spend a very short time talking about that. What we know is we have seen in the last 2\1/2\ years a tremendous change--much of it thanks to the chairman of this committee in terms of transparency and in working with us on the malaria program--but we have seen a change from using the wrong medicines, the wrong techniques, and the wrong prevention techniques. We have 2 million people a year in Africa die from a preventable, curable, treatable disease. Not long after I came to the Senate, myself along with Norm Coleman and other people who have done great work--and Senator Brownback as well--on malaria, as well as the chairman, what we saw was an ineffective program. The President had a malaria initiative--PMI--and it was set out and peer-reviewed--scientific data to approach this disease from both prevention and treatment. What we saw at the World Bank was a failed $500 million program and an attempt at another program for which there is no transparency. But the reports from the scientific literature Lancet, the greatest medical periodical from the British, had a devastating article outlining the fact that the World Bank continues to use drugs that don't treat, drugs that have resistance, it does not do preventive indoor spraying, does not distribute on a free basis bed netting--the three significant, consistent ways in which we treat African malaria, as well as the way we treat it throughout the rest of the world. So I want to thank them in advance for doing that. This simply says that the World Bank has to be transparent with what they are doing on malaria. What we know is the World Health Organization has also changed significantly. We are going to see hundreds of millions of people's lives markedly changed through an appropriate drug treatment prevention strategy for malaria. Of those 2 million people who die every year, 500 million of them are 5 years of age and under--I mean 500,000. Five hundred thousand are pregnant women. There are another 500,000 children who are permanently brain damaged from malaria. If we are going to help in foreign aid, then it ought to be effective foreign aid. So I thank the chairman and ranking member for their consideration on that. The next amendment I would like to bring up talks about having some transparency with the $5.3 billion we send to the United Nations every year. This body, as well as the House, unanimously passed transparency and accountability for our own Government and our own agencies. We are going to see this next January where everything in this country where the taxpayers' money is spent is going to be online and available for taxpayers, peer-reviewed looks, watchdog groups, as well as the press to see how we are spending money. What this amendment does is it ensures that the U.S. contribution to the United Nations is not being wasted to fraud, which we have seen multiple times at the United Nations--waste, abuse, corruption, which we have seen and which has been documented--by maximizing the public transparency of all U.N. spending or our contribution thereof. This amendment says that the Secretary of State certify publicly that the United Nations is publicly transparent about its spending this year, before any of the money we are going to send to the United Nations next year is sent. The basic transparency required by this amendment would include a posting on a publicly available Web site of copies of all contracts, grants, program reviews, audits, budgets, and progress reports relating to fiscal year 2007. There are a lot of reasons the U.N. should be accountable and transparent, the first of which--and I won't go into a lot of details-- is the Oil for Food Program where $10 billion was mismanaged, stolen, and fraudulently used in a way that was totally unaccountable, to the detriment of the people of Iraq. As of this time, there have been eight guilty pleas, two guilty verdicts, two agreements of forfeiture judgments, and nine pending cases. There are also fugitives from the corruption of that. The U.N. to this day refuses to fully and publicly release the Oil for Food Program's contracts and financial documents. Some people will say: Well, you can't force this on the U.N. (Mrs. BOXER assumed the Chair.)