Kent Conrad

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. I yield the floor.

Mr. CONRAD. Let me conclude on this note: The thing I am most concerned about is having an entirely separate Central Intelligence Agency and an office of national intelligence director. The thing that I have a difficult time understanding is how that is not going to create its own turf battles, its own communications problems. I hope I am proved wrong by this, but it is the one thing I looked at and I was surprised by and, I must say, I wondered about. I read the reports on the difficulties we had with the coordination between the CIA and the FBI and their turf battles and their unwillingness to share information. When we preserve the Central Intelligence Agency and create an office of national intelligence director and we still have, of course, the FBI's Office of Intelligence, I wonder whether we don't wind up with more turf battles. I know the intention is to avoid that and to appropriately create a place that will coordinate all the work of the intelligence community. My great management concern is that we will wind up with additional turf battles. I hope that is not the case. I am glad the reviews are built in because I think that is important. I wanted to express these concerns publicly. I wanted to raise these issues and have a chance for the managers to fully respond. I very much thank the chairman and the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. CONRAD. The last reference of winding up ``with a big mess,'' whose quote is that?

Mr. CONRAD. In my position on the Budget Committee, people are asking me, how is this money going to be controlled? People are given responsibility. Do they have authority? The final question I have with respect to the Department of Defense is, we heard the other day from the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Rumsfeld, who has a very strong management background. He expressed great concern, and I think it is a concern that absolutely deserves full consideration. His great concern, as I heard it the other day in our briefing, was that he is going to have a separation of responsibility from authority; that is, resources that are currently under his control and direction are going to move up the line to the national intelligence director. He and the warfighters have a fundamental responsibility and need for intelligence. He is concerned, with the separation of these resources--as the Senator describes, much of the budget moving from the Department of Defense level up to the national intelligence director--that he not be shortchanged and that his combatant commanders not be shortchanged of the resources they need to make tactical and strategic decisions. This is my final question: What is the response of the leadership of the committee to his concerns?

Mr. CONRAD. Might I just conclude on that point, and then I am finished. I know there are other Senators waiting. I waited to have this opportunity because I think this is very important. These are questions I am getting.

Mr. CONRAD. One additional question, if I could, on the budget authority inherent in this plan. I indicated the vast majority of resources actually go to the Department of Defense and the various intelligence operations within the Department of Defense. The Senator from Connecticut indicated it was as much as 80 percent. In terms of management of an operation, are we going to be left with a circumstance in which 80 percent of the funding is at the Department of Defense? And if so, how do we avoid a circumstance in which the tail is wagging the dog? That is, typically one finds in organizations that initiative and power follows money. If there is at the top a relatively weak national intelligence director, with most of the functions and resources in a subordinate agency, that creates its own management challenges. I am interested to know what the concept is with respect to budget authority. Who will have that overall authority over resources?

Mr. CONRAD. Might I ask a followup question, because the Senator referenced these earlier reports going all the way back from 50 years ago. I fully support the concept of a national intelligence director. My concern is how we are implementing it. Did the earlier reports, including the most recent from the Intelligence Committees, from the 9/ 11 Commission, contemplate with the creation of a national intelligence director we would still have a Central Intelligence Agency?

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I come to the floor to ask a number of questions of my colleagues who are managing the bill. I have very high regard for the chairperson, Senator Collins. I have worked with her on other matters and found that she is an extremely able and diligent Member. I admire the way she has handled this legislation. I have watched the process as it went through the committee. I am not on the committee but I watched as it was being televised. I thought it was a very professional process. I also have very high regard for the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman. I am not on the relevant committees. I am not on the Intelligence Committee. I am not on the Defense Committee. I am on the Budget Committee and the Finance Committee and deal with these issues from a budget point of view and financing point of view. With that said, I come to the floor to ask a series of questions. I want to indicate that I have with me charts that were prepared by the office of Senator Lieberman to talk about what the structure currently is and what this legislation would do to change it and to raise a number of concerns that I have about that change. First, I think we should indicate the problem we are confronting with the American intelligence community, where there is a lack of coordination and communication, which has been clearly outlined in a series of hearings and a series of reports, including the report by the 9/11 Commission, including the report by the Intelligence Committee, including the work of the very able chairman, the Senator from Maine, all that has been laid across the record very clearly. This chart from the office of Senator Lieberman shows the organization of the intelligence community as it is, with the President and the National Security Council overseeing the various agencies of Government, including the Director of Central Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, but has within it the National Security Agency, the National Geospacial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Military Services and Combatant Commands. The large majority of the funding of the intelligence community is in the Department of Defense. I think maybe that is too little understood by the general public. But that is fact. The large majority of the funding is not at the Central Intelligence Agency. I think people in the United States probably assume that is the case; it is not. The vast majority of the funding for intelligence operations is within the Department of Defense. Other agencies that have a significant role, of course, are the Attorney General's office, because he oversees the FBI, and the FBI has responsibility for intelligence operations within the United States. Then we have the Secretary of Homeland Security within which we have the Information, Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Director and the Coast Guard intelligence. The Secretary of State has the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the Secretary of Treasury has an intelligence branch, as does the Secretary of Energy. The problem with this structure, which has been pointed out repeatedly, is that these are a series of stovepipes, basically leading only to the White House. There is nobody that is in overall coordination and direction of these various intelligence agencies. And the idea has been to have a national intelligence director that would have responsibility to coordinate and communicate with respect to these various agencies. So the proposal before us is to create a national intelligence director with these other various agencies already existing reporting to the national intelligence director, so there is someone in a position to coordinate and ultimately communicate what intelligence agencies are finding. Let me just say that I thought that what was going to happen with the national intelligence director is that funds were going to be brought together and we would not have the continuing existence of all of these other agencies. That is really what I want to ask the managers about. The concern that I have is if we have a failure of communication and coordination, especially between the FBI and the CIA, how does adding another entity, how does adding another player improve the chances for coordination and communication? Let me say that I was trained in business management. My career before I came here was to manage organizations. My experience has been the more layers, the less communication, the more inefficient the communication. When this was first outlined and I found out that the CIA is still going to exist, I must say I was taken aback. I was surprised by that. I thought the Central Intelligence Agency would become the new intelligence, with a new national intelligence director. Therefore, we wouldn't be adding another player to the mix, but we would be putting somebody in a position of authority so that we could hold them accountable. The concern I have is instead of that, we have maintained a Central Intelligence Agency and all of the other intelligence agencies we had before, and added a national intelligence director. The fundamental concern I have and the question I have is, Why has the committee concluded that this is the right way to proceed? Why wouldn't it be better by joining the function, reducing the number of players, reducing the number of boxes on the organizational chart, instead of adding a layer? I would be quick to say I think you need to have a national intelligence director, somebody who is in overall coordination and control because before we did not have that. That is really the question I came to the floor this afternoon to query the chairman and ranking member about. I would be happy to yield so they might respond.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I would like to recognize and congratulate both the George Washington University and its Graduate School of Education and Human Development on achieving centennial milestones this month. George Washington University, which is 183 years old and was created by an act of Congress in 1821, commemorates 100 years of its name change from Columbian University to the George Washington University. As an alumnus of GW, I am honored to offer congratulations for this internationally recognized institution of higher education. The university's Grade School of Education and Human Development celebrates 100 years of providing professional development. The Graduate School of Education and Human Development's partnerships on major national projects have impacted educational reform, increased technological opportunities, and continues to assist and impact the quality of life for people in the United States. Over the past century, students and alumni of the university have participated in groundbreaking research, championed political causes, and contributed to the community of Washington, DC, and the American people. Over the past 100 years, several high-profile graduates from the fields of government, business, education, and law have obtained degrees from GW. GW has awarded honorary degrees to eight U.S. Presidents, which included Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan; eight Supreme Court Justices; and Alexander Graham Bell, just to name a few. In closing, I would like to congratulate the George Washington University president, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development dean, Mary Hartwood Futrell. I know if President George Washington was here today, he would be proud that his dream of a national university has not only been realized, but that the university bearing his name will continue to enrich the lives of students from around the globe for centuries to come.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I am going to go right to the end of my charts. Real median household income has gone down under this President. That is a serious problem for this country, a serious problem for the middle class, and wages are falling behind inflation. This is something which should concern all of us because we see wage increases falling behind inflation. That is why people feel squeezed, and we have not seen anything yet if the fiscal policies of the country are not altered, if we do not begin to get back to fiscal balance to reduce the threat to the long-term economic security of our country. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CONRAD. I know we are out of time. I ask for an additional 30 seconds to close.

Mr. CONRAD. None of us can predict with clarity what is going to happen with interest rates, although we know under this fiscal condition, interest rates are going to go up. Clearly, that is going to offset, if not completely eliminate, the advantage of some of the tax reductions we get.

Mr. CONRAD. In 42 months. I was teaching back home in North Dakota at one of the universities, and I asked the students there: Does it make a difference, should you care, does it matter to you that we owe Japan almost $700 billion? Does it matter we owe China over $160 billion? Does it matter that we have borrowed over $60 billion from South Korea? They said it matters. I said: How do you think it matters? They said: If there is a military confrontation of some kind, maybe that affects our ability to do things we might think is in the national interest because we owe them so much money. On trade, can we really call their hand when they are treating us unfairly in trade relationships when we owe them hundreds of billions of dollars? And what are the consequences here if all of a sudden we do return to economic growth and we have borrowed all this money and we have to start paying it back, what is the effect on interest rates here? That is what frightens the International Monetary Fund. That is what concerns people such as Chairman Greenspan. That as we see rising interest rates because of this enormous indebtedness, and we have to start paying more interest to keep getting people to loan us money, that all of a sudden, the cost of servicing this debt will go up dramatically, it makes it much worse, and, more importantly, for the economy--because we have millions of people who have variable interest rates on their homes, on their cars, on their student loans--these interest rates will start going up dramatically because countries are less willing to continue to loan us money, and all of a sudden the economic strength of America is weakened.

Mr. CONRAD. That is exactly correct. The foreign debt of the United States under this administration has gone from $1 trillion to 1.8 trillion, an 80-percent increase in our foreign indebtedness.

Mr. CONRAD. It is interesting. This is the second warning the IMF has issued this year about the U.S. deficits and debt. This is the second time the International Monetary Fund has warned us and warned the world that growing U.S. deficits and debt threaten not only our own economic security but the world's economic security. Why? Because as the United States accumulates more and more debt, at some point those dollars that we are sending--that are being borrowed by us, money that is coming from China and Japan and, amazingly enough, South Korea--can you imagine that we have borrowed $60 billion from South Korea. At some point, that money has to be repaid. How is it repaid? How can it be repaid? Well, we have to reduce our standard of living in order to produce the funds to pay back the rest of the world.

Mr. CONRAD. Yes.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, yesterday we heard a number of my colleagues talk about their view of the economy and their view of the fiscal affairs of the country and their view that things are on a positive track. Today, I would like to respectfully offer the other side of the story and what I view as a very dangerous course the Nation is pursuing under the leadership of President Bush. Earlier this year, on August 30, the President was on the NBC ``Today'' show and the host asked him this question: Let me ask you about deficits. This year, $445 billion. Ballpark, do you think that's pretty good? President Bush: Yes. I do, I do. That is an odd sense of accomplishment because that is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States. The deficit that is now estimated to be some $422 billion we know is going to be larger because we are funding some of next year's defense money this year because of mounting costs in Iraq. But even at the $422 billion figure, that is the largest deficit in the Nation's history, and by a big margin. Last year, under President Bush's fiscal plan, we had what was then a record deficit of $375 billion. Now it has increased to $422 billion. But frankly, that understates how serious the situation is. By contrast, if you go back to the Clinton years, each and every year of the Clinton administration the deficits were reduced and held for a 3-year period. We actually ran budget surpluses. This President has punched us back into deficit, and by a country mile. The Bush administration now claims that the deficits are coming down. This is the budget director, OMB, chosen by President Bush. He says: We continue to have deficits, even though they are coming down dramatically. I don't know what his notion of coming down is, but here is the record. The deficits are not coming down. The deficits are getting bigger. The last year of the Clinton administration, the first year of the Bush administration, which is a budget that the President inherited, the budget was in surplus by $127 billion. The next year, 2002, it went to $158 billion of deficit. That was the first year under the Bush administration. The next year, $375 billion of deficits, then the largest dollar deficit in our history. This year, it is $422 billion, and the President's budget director says the deficits are going down dramatically. What is he talking about? The deficits are not going down. The deficits are going up. The truth is the official deficit, what is called the deficit by the press, what is called the deficit by this administration, badly understates how serious the fiscal condition is of the United States. The debt of our country is not going to increase by the advertised deficit of $422 billion. This may come as a great surprise and shock to many to find that the debt is going to increase by much more than the deficit. But the truth is the debt of the country is going to increase by over $633 billion this year. The reason for the difference is they are not counting the $150 billion--roughly $150 billion--they are borrowing from Social Security, every penny of which they have to pay back. It does not get counted in the deficit calculation. If you add in the money they are borrowing from Social Security, which they have to pay back, the money they are borrowing from Medicare, which they have to pay back, the money they are borrowing from every other trust fund, which they have to pay back, the debt of the United States is going to increase this year by over $630 billion. That is a staggering sum. The Bush administration promised that deficits will be reduced in the future. President Bush in Annandale, VA, on August 9 of this year said: So I can say to you that the deficit will be cut in half over the next 5 years. This is the same President who said, by the way, in his first year there would be no deficits. In his second year, reporting to Congress, he said the deficits would be small and short term. Both of those statements were wrong and wrong by a country mile. Then he said they would be small by historical standards. Wrong again; biggest deficits we have ever had. Now he says don't worry, I am going to cut the deficit in half over the next 5 years; wrong again. Don't believe it because it is not going happen. The only way the President comes up with the claim that he is going to cut the deficit in half over the next 5 years is he leaves out whole areas of spending. He leaves out finance costs for the war. In his previous budget, he left out any war costs past September 30 of this year. He didn't put money in his budget; none. Does anybody believe there is no war cost past September 30 of this year? That is what the President said in the budget he sent up here. He said there is no money needed to fix the alternative minimum tax past this year. Yet we know the alternative minimum tax, that affects 3 million people now and will affect 30 million people by 2010. That is the old millionaire's tax that has now become a middle-class tax. My friends, we all know Congress is not going to allow the alternative minimum tax to affect 30 million taxpayers. Yet the President provides nothing in his budget past next year--nothing. In fact, if you go back and you put back the items the President has left out--the money he is borrowing from Social Security that he has to pay back; it is not in his budget; if you put in the money needed to fix the alternative minimum tax or the money for the ongoing war costs--this is what emerges as a realistic analysis of what is going to get added to the debt and what the deficits are going to look like over the next decade. Actually, this is conservative because we have left out a lot of things that are also being done by this administration that will add to the debt. So this, too, understates how serious the situation will become. But even with this look, on just a limited number of items--the President's request for additional tax cuts, the President's need for additional funding for defense, the President leaving out the cost of the alternative minimum tax--you can see we are not going to see a reduction in the deficit in the coming years under the President's plan. No. The amount being added to the debt is going to increase, and increase, and increase. What we see is an ocean of red ink over the next decade. Let me show you some of the things the President has left out as he has structured his budget. As I have indicated, on the tax cut, he only shows now in his budget the first 5 years of the effect of the tax cut. Before he submitted 10-year budgets; this year, just a 5-year budget. Why? Because he did not want to disclose to the American people what all of us know is the pattern of his tax cuts. Past the 5-year budget window, the cost of these tax cuts explode. The President is hiding that from the American people with a 5-year budget. He is doing the same thing with the alternative minimum tax, the same pattern. The cost of fixing the alternative minimum tax explodes. He only provided for 1 year of addressing the alternative minimum tax in his budget. The war cost, it is the same pattern. The President has $25 billion he supported in a reserve fund for next year, money, by the way, he is not waiting to spend next year. He is spending it now. He is spending next year's money this year. Even that dramatically understates what the Congressional Budget Office says the cost of the ongoing wars will be. He has $25 billion reserved in his budget. It was not in his budget, by the way. The budget he sent up had nothing in it. But when Congress said that is not realistic, he supported Congress's move to put in a $25 billion reserve fund. But look what the Congressional Budget Office says the real cost is going to be: over $300 billion. It is not in the President's budget. Of course, the President has left out the money he is borrowing from Social Security. Mr. President, $2.4 trillion is being borrowed from Social Security over the next 10 years, every penny of which has to be paid back. He has no plan to do so. In fact, he has a plan to add even more costs by having a privatization of Social Security, or at least a partial privatization that would cost trillions of dollars more. From where is the money coming? From where is the money coming? It is all being borrowed. Is anybody paying attention to what this administration is doing to the fiscal policy of this country? Is anybody paying attention to what this means to our economic future? Is anybody paying attention to what it means to our future military strength? You cannot be strong militarily if you are weak financially. This administration is digging a deeper and deeper hole for this country on the financial front. You remember, when the President unveiled his tax cuts, 3 years ago, he said he was going to have maximum paydown of the Federal debt. Do you remember that? He said he was going to pay off all of the Federal debt that was available to pay off. But look what has really happened. The debt is not being paid off. The debt is exploding. The debt that was $5.8 trillion in 2001 we now anticipate will approach $15 trillion by 2014, and, of course, all of this is happening at the worst possible time, right before the baby boomers retire. Not only is the President borrowing every penny available to be borrowed from Social Security--and, by the way, he is doing the same thing with Medicare--he is also now borrowing from countries all over the world. It may surprise people to find out that, under this administration, the borrowing from Japan has risen to almost $700 billion. We borrowed $167 billion from China; $130 billion from the United Kingdom. We have even borrowed over $90 billion from the Caribbean banking centers. The Caribbean banking centers, we are in hock to them for over $90 billion. South Korea--who would have believed it, who would have believed we have borrowed over $60 billion from South Korea? That is the reality. That is the hole that this President is digging. Just in the last 3 years, this is the increase in foreign holdings of our debt. When the President came in in January of 2001, we owed $1 trillion abroad. Now we are up over $1.8 trillion in indebtedness to foreign countries, an 80-percent increase in our foreign indebtedness in just 3 years. If it was just what has happened so far I would not be so concerned, but it is the direction this President is taking us that has to be of foremost concern because the President's plan for the future is more of the same and a whole lot more--a whole lot more debt, a whole lot more in deficits. This fundamentally threatens the economic security of the country. This chart I show you is not a chart made by me or my staff; this is from the Congressional Budget Office. It is their analysis, assuming an extension of the President's tax cuts, the need for alternative minimum tax reform, maintaining current spending policies. Look where we are headed. This is what CBO says will happen to the deficits and the debt of the country if, roughly, the President's budget policy is pursued. In fact, this is just the deficit. I misspoke when I said debt. The debt chart would be much worse than this chart. This is just the deficit. This leaves out the money being borrowed from Social Security, this leaves out the money being borrowed from Medicare--trillions of dollars that are not in the President's calculations at all. This is a course that makes no sense. This is what the CBO Director said, because some around this town say we will just grow out of this problem. This is what the Director of the Congressional Budget Office says. By the way, this man came from the Bush administration. He came directly from the President's Council of Economic Advisers. This is what he said: [T]his is a fiscal situation in which we cannot rely on economic growth to cause deficits to disappear. He is telling the truth. This is what the Federal Reserve Chairman said, Chairman Greenspan, who opposes deficit-financed tax cuts. Everybody knows Chairman Greenspan is a big fan of tax cuts but not deficit-financed tax cuts. This is what he says: If you're going to lower taxes, you shouldn't be borrowing essentially the tax cut. And that over the long run is not a stable fiscal situation. But that is exactly what this President is advocating, not just for this year, for every year for the next 10 years. Mr. President, what is the outcome of this set of policies? I think the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is warning us of where this is all headed. Back in February, he urged a cut in Social Security. Future benefits must be curtailed. Now he has said, not only cut Social Security but cut Medicare, too. I hope people are listening. I hope people are paying attention because that is exactly where the Bush fiscal plan is leading. It is leading to cuts--dramatic cuts--in Social Security and Medicare. That is where this is all headed. Why? In part, it is because the tax cuts the President has gotten passed overwhelmingly go to the wealthiest among us; 68.7 percent of the benefits went to the top 20 percent. What is most startling is over a third of the benefits--right at a third, 33.1 percent of the benefits--went to the top 1 percent, or the people earning over $337,000 a year. The people in the bottom 20 percent got virtually nothing. Those in the middle class got pretty modest relief. Those in the middle 20 percent got 10 percent of the benefits. The top 20 percent got 68 percent of the benefits. The top 1 percent, over 33 percent of the benefits. Mr. President, when our colleagues say everything is going well in the economy, they are living in a different economy than the one I am watching. Look at the difference on this chart. This is what has happened in the last nine recessions. The dotted red line is what has happened to job growth as an average of the last nine recessions since World War II. This black line is what is happening this time. Do you notice the difference? Something dramatically different is occurring between recoveries in the last nine recessions and this one. At this stage of the recovery, we would expect to have, based on what has happened in the nine previous recoveries since World War II, 5.5 million more private sector jobs than we have this time. Something is wrong. We have already seen 1.6 million jobs lost since January 2001. These are the job loss numbers. We are still 1.6 million jobs below where we were in 2001. The Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers said we expect, sort of on average jobs in 2004 to be 2.6 million more than jobs in 2003. For that to happen, we would have to have monthly job growth of 1.725 million. But what we are getting is 141,000. That is a jobs gap of enormous proportion. The hard reality is that the President's record on jobs shows a loss of private sector jobs for the first time since back to the administration of Herbert Hoover. The President hates that comparison. In some ways, it is unfair because Hoover presided over the Great Depression. That is certainly not the case now. We are not in a depression. We are not in a recession. But the fact is that every administration since Hoover has seen private sector job growth--every single administration, except this one. The President's record on jobs, the President's record on the economy, the President's record on deficits and debt is the worst record of any President we have had, certainly in my memory, because he has taken a reckless fiscal course. We all know the story on manufacturing jobs: 2.1 million manufacturing jobs were lost since January of 2001. Now we get an economic report of the President in February of this year saying they ought to consider changing the definition of manufacturing jobs. The way out of this is not to create more manufacturing jobs, it is to change the definition of what is a manufacturing job. Here is what the President's economic report said: The definition of a manufactured product is not straightforward. When a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a service or is it combining inputs to manufacture a product? Now, there are all kinds of ways to deal with a bad jobs record, but to try to redefine manufacturing as McDonald's manufacturing hamburgers is not going to sell.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I saw this morning in the Hill newspaper an attack by the Speaker in which he said, in response to a reporter's question, that ``al-Qaida would operate better if Kerry were elected President.'' Two weeks ago today, the Vice President said, ``It is absolutely essential that eight weeks from today on November 2 we make the right choice because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we will get hit again and we will be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.'' Mr. President, this is dangerous talk. It is dangerous talk for either side to suggest we will be attacked if the other is elected. I remind my Republican friends that when we were attacked on September 11, we on the Democratic side did not say it was because Republicans were in control. That would have been wrong. We did not do that. Instead, we stood shoulder to shoulder, we stood united, we all agreed on an attack on Afghanistan, and we all supported an all-out attack on al-Qaida because it was al-Qaida that attacked the United States. The President of the United States, when he was running for office, said he would be a uniter and not a divider. But now this President and this administration are dividing us in the most fundamental way. I believe that is a dangerous tact. It is a mistake. Only the President of the United States can stop this kind of talk. I urge him to do so, to rein in the Vice President, to rein in the Speaker, because when this election is over, we need to stand united. The debate we need to have is how best to defend our Nation from terrorist attack. It is important for us to recall what happened on September 11. When we saw these images of the attack on the World Trade Center, when we saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon, we were under attack. But it is important for us to remember who attacked us. It was not Iraq. The attackers were al-Qaida led by Osama bin Laden, not Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. As evil as Saddam Hussein was and is, he was not part of the September 11 attack. Here is the man who should be the target, the primary target of the United States. This is Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida. Al-Qaida are the ones who attacked the United States. Al-Qaida are the ones we have a responsibility to bring to account. President Bush said in convening his Cabinet at Camp David just a few days after the 9/11 attacks, ``There is no question about it, this act will not stand. We will find those who did it. We will smoke them out of their holes. We will get them running and we will bring them to justice.'' That is what President Bush said just days after the 9/11 attack. It is now 1106 days after that attack--1106 days after the attack on the country, and we have still not gotten Osama bin Laden. We still have not kept the primary focus on al-Qaida. Instead, the President diverted our attention and launched an attack on Iraq. This is from the March 29 edition of USA Today. It says this: In 2002 troops from the 5th Special Forces group who specialized in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures. Mr. President, let's get this straight. It was not Iraq that attacked us. It was al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is led by Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein. And yet this administration shifted the focus from going after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and instead shifted special forces to the hunt for Saddam Hussein. He replaced those special forces in Afghanistan with units that were experts in Spanish culture. The article goes on to say: The CIA meanwhile was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from Afghanistan to ensure Iraq was covered. The former Secretary of Navy in the Reagan administration says this was one of the biggest blunders, strategic blunders in modern memory. We attacked the wrong target. That is his conclusion. That is the Secretary of Navy in the Reagan administration saying we attacked the wrong target. We have to have a debate in this country about how best to defend America. The first thing we have to get straight is who attacked us and who is preparing to attack us again. It was al-Qaida, not Iraq. There were no Iraqis on board the planes that attacked on September 11--not one. There is no evidence that Iraq was behind the attack on September 11. It was al-Qaida led by Osama bin Laden. This administration has diverted its attention from finishing business with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and diverted our resources, diverted our attention to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. I believe that was a mistake. I voted against authorizing this administration to launch this attack because, as I said on the night of our vote, I did not believe it was in the national security interest of the United States to attack Iraq and open up a second front before we finished with the first. The first had to be with the people who attacked us; that was al-Qaida led by Osama bin Laden, not Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. This is an article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer last year. It says: Some senior officials concede that the Iraq war also diverted resources from two problems that could prove to be even more pressing than Iraq was: Rooting out the remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorism network and confronting Iran. A senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the CIA reassigned to Iraq more than half of the operatives tracking al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a result, U.S. forces were not able to pursue bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders as aggressively. I believe this is a strategic mistake of significant proportion. Again, our primary target has to be al-Qaida led by Osama bin Laden. Instead, the President shifted resources from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to a hunt for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Again, as bad and as evil as Saddam Hussein was and is, he should not have been the primary target of the American military. Instead, we should have focused, I believe, like a laser on the people who attacked us and who are planning to attack us again; that is, al-Qaida led by Osama bin Laden. This article concludes saying: Al-Qaida's continuing threat has shown that the Department of Homeland Security raised its terrorism alert level Tuesday after bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco. It is not just these articles. It is not just intelligence officials. We look to the Bush administration's own Web site, the State Department Web site. This is very interesting. Thirty days after the September 11 attack, the State Department had this on their Web site: Countries where al-Qaida has operated-- This is 30 days after the attack on the United States. This is on the State Department's Web site. Here are the countries they list where al-Qaida was active. They list Albania, Algeria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia, India, and Iran. There is no Iraq. There is no Iraq. There is no Iraq. This is a report signed by the President. This is after the attack. There is no mention of Iraq being a locale for al-Qaida. But it is not just the State Department. The President himself tried to correct the record last year after the Vice President was asserting and I think fundamentally confusing people suggesting that Iraq and al- Qaida were involved in the September 11 attacks. The President seeking to correct ``reports no evidence of Hussein tie to 9/11.'' In the article, it says: President Bush said today that he had seen no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks, as the White House tried to correct an assertion that Vice President Cheney left extremely murky on Sunday. Mr. Cheney on Meet the Press was asked about polls that showed a majority of Americans believe that Mr. Hussein had been involved in the attack. This is what Mr. Cheney said: ``I think it is not surprising that people make that connection.'' Asked whether the connection existed, Mr. Cheney said: ``We don't know. He described Mr. Hussein's reported connections to al-Qaida, connections that American intelligence analysts say were not very deep. Mr. Bush, asked by a reporter today about that statement, said: ``No. We have had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11, a far more definitive statement than the Vice President's.'' That doesn't end the evidence. The evidence is powerful with respect to the question of who is behind September 11. It was al-Qaida led by Osama bin Laden, not Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 bipartisan commission said this: The intelligence reports describe friendly contact and indicate some common themes on both sides, ``hatred of the United States.'' But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship, nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaida in developing or carrying out attacks against the United States. That is the report of the 9/11 Commission. It doesn't end there. The Secretary of State was just recently on ``Meet the Press.'' This was in the early days of this month. He said he ``had seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime and what happened on 9/11.'' We have all kinds of evidence that al-Qaida was not linked to Iraq in the September 11 attacks or that Iraq was not a link to al-Qaida in the September 11 attacks. The evidence is overwhelming that al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, led those attacks. I believe deeply that our strategy must be to focus like a laser on those who attacked us. We ought not to allow ourselves to get diverted into this attack on Iraq. We have 10 times America's resources in Iraq as we have in Afghanistan. We are 1106 days after the attacks on this country and the President has failed to do what he said he would do in holding al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden to account. Osama bin Laden is still at large. His top adviser, al-Zawahiri, is at large. This murderous ally of theirs beheaded an American yesterday, and we have diverted resources from the hunt from those monsters to go after Saddam Hussein in Iraq when the evidence is overwhelming that Iraq was not involved in the September 11 attack. What doesn't add up here? What doesn't make sense? The Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration says we attacked the wrong target. I believe that is correct. We should have kept our focus on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and not have been diverted to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Let me say to my colleagues that there is additional evidence as well. Our own Intelligence Committee has made findings. For example, Conclusion 96 of the Senate Intelligence Committee says: The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. That is our Intelligence Committee led by Republicans on a bipartisan basis concluding there wasn't complicity by al-Qaida and Iraq, that there was not Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack. Our Intelligence Committee concluded that was reasonable and objective. Similarly, conclusion 93 says: The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established, formal relationship. If we are going to be effective in this war on terror, we have to get the facts right. The facts are, al-Qaida attacked America, not Iraq. The facts are, we are 1106 days after that attack, and Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants are still out there threatening America and Americans. This President diverted our attention and our resources from running down al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden to an attack on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. That was a mistake, and the sooner we admit to it and the sooner we get about the business of tracking down those who attacked us, the better off our country will be and the safer we will be. That is my strong, deep belief. Whoever wins this election, I believe we have to reorient the resources of America into going after those who attacked us. It was al-Qaida, not Iraq. It was al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, not Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein. That is what our 9/11 Commission tells us. That is what the Secretary of State is saying. That is what the intelligence agencies are telling us. Yet this administration--this administration--made a series of decisions, profound decisions, decisions of enormous consequence, and diverted resources and attention from going after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to going after Saddam Hussein and Iraq. I know many people believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that somehow Iraq was deeply involved in the September 11 attack. There is just no evidence to support that. My own conclusion was, and is, this was the wrong war at the wrong time. And the overriding obligation of those of us who are in a position to affect U.S. decisionmaking--the overriding obligation and responsibility that we have--is to defend this country and to do so effectively. We know al-Qaida is plotting, right now, to again attack our country. We ought to focus like a laser on stopping them. We ought to focus like a laser on holding al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden to account. We should never have shifted our resources from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida leaders to the hunt for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It was a mistake, and we have to be big enough to say it was a mistake and move on and remember who it was that attacked us and use the awesome resources of this country to go after those who are plotting to attack us again. We have to get these facts right. We have to reduce the confusion out here, when a majority of the American people thinks Iraq was behind the attacks of September 11 and we know full well that is not the case. The President and Vice President of the United States have a heavy responsibility. They are the leaders of this country. They are the leaders of the free world. They have an obligation, a solemn obligation, to make certain that the United States focuses on those who attacked us--not to confuse the issue, not to distract us from those who are responsible for the loss of nearly 3,000 American lives. Mr. President, it is hard to talk about these things when you are just weeks before an election and not have a political component to the debate and the discussion. But we, I believe, as a nation, need to have a full and vigorous debate on how we best defend this Nation. My strong belief is that we need to keep the focus on the people who attacked America on September 11, and it was al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, not Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein. The evidence is overwhelming. We need to refocus the efforts of the awesome American military on hunting down Osama bin Laden, on hunting down his chief allies and holding them to account. That is the best way to send a signal of American resolve and determination and American unwillingness to accept the vicious attack on our country. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CONRAD. I ask for an additional 10 minutes.

Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, how much time have I been allotted under the agreement?

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the amendment of the Senators from Montana, Kansas, and others States that have been affected by natural disasters. We have enormous sympathy for the State of Florida and the extraordinary disasters they have faced, and we are ready to help them, as we have been helped in the past. My State has once again been hit by the most remarkable set of disasters I have seen yet--and I have seen a lot--from the worst floods in the 1990s--we had the 500-year flood of the Red River. People may recall the images of that extraordinary flooding. In the 1980s, we had the worst drought since the 1930s. This year, our State has been hit by a combination of flooding and drought that is truly stunning. It is almost hard to express what I have seen as I have crisscrossed North Dakota this summer. These headlines on the chart sum up a little of what people in North Dakota have been reading all year: ``Water Everywhere, While Deadline Looms to Get Crops in the Ground.'' What that is talking about is that, in our State this year, nearly 2 million acres were prevented from even being planted because of extraordinary flooding. This is a continuation of the flooding in the Devil's Lake Basin that we have seen over the past 6 or 7 years. This lake is now bigger than the District of Columbia; it is several times the size of the District of Columbia. The lake has risen 25 feet in the last 7 years. Throughout this entire basin, which is the size of the State of Massachusetts, the land is increasingly under water. There is a joke in North Dakota that Lake Agassiz may be reforming. Lake Agassiz, my colleagues will remember, was a giant lake, a glacial lake that covered much of the State of North Dakota in earlier ages. Something truly phenomenal is happening in my State. Some have suggested that global climate change is affecting the severity of the weather. I don't know, but something dramatic is happening. We have towns that have experienced 18 inches of rain in 1 day, and these are places that only get 20 inches of rain in a year. It is Biblical and it is unlike anything we have ever seen. In the midst of all of this, we had a killer frost in August. Whoever heard of a frost in August? In fact, we had several frosts in August. And while that is happening in the northern tier of the State, in the southwestern part of the State is the meanest, toughest drought I have seen in my lifetime. I just toured the southwestern part of our State. In county after county, I was in pastures that are like moonscapes because nothing is growing. This is a headline from one of the newspapers back home: ``Drought Cancels Annual Crop Show.'' They cannot have a crop show because there are no crops to show. That is how devastating the drought has been in the southwestern part of the State. At the same time, the great irony is, just a hundred miles north, it is so wet they cannot get the crops off. I had one farmer--Mr. Baucus--say to me: The incredible thing here, Senator, is when you look from the road, it looks like there is 90 bushels of barley there, but you cannot get in to harvest it because it is so wet that your equipment bogs down. Now, here we are in the second week of September and there are very few days left that will be warm enough to mature the crop. The result is going to be losses that will mount geometrically. This says, ``Losses Total $530 million.'' This is our State university that has done a calculation of the extraordinary losses. Already, there have been Presidential disaster declarations. I make these points because while we have enormous sympathy for Florida and are prepared to assist them and to vote for natural disaster assistance to them, they are not the only ones being affected by natural disasters. I wish it were not so. I wish nobody was being faced with natural disasters, but that is the circumstance we face. On this most recent tour, this is a wheat field that we were looking at. This is a wheat field in September. It is not up much past a person's socks. There is nothing here. It was a total loss. These people are going to lose their entire investment. Here is a cornfield. We say knee high by the Fourth of July. You can see this corn is not knee high by the first week in September. In fact, most of these corn plants have no ears on them. About one in four has any ears, and the ears they have are like those little miniature ears that one gets in a salad when going to a restaurant. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. This is a cornfield that is totally stunted. This is one of my assistants who is holding up this corn plant showing there are no ears on it. It is a total loss. As the farmer who was with me said: Senator, that is garbage. That whole field is just garbage. Yet here is another part of North Dakota--I do not know if people can see this clearly through the television lens, but this is mile after mile of northern North Dakota--water, water everywhere. Everywhere one looks there is water. That is the circumstance we face in North Dakota. In the middle of all of this, here is a map that shows the damage. There are 1.7 million acres that were prevented from even being planted all across northern North Dakota. All the green area is places where acreage was prevented from being planted. Just to put 1.7 million acres in perspective, how much is that? That is 25 percent more than the whole State of Delaware. That is the acreage they could not even plant. Those who were lucky enough to plant could not harvest. They could not harvest because it is so wet the machines are bogged down. That is what we are facing in North Dakota. It is not just drought and it is not just flooding. On top of that, killer frost. Here is the indication of where they had killer frost. My colleagues can see in the blue those are areas that had killing frost this year. On August 20, 2004, there were freezing temperatures. The areas in the lightest blue experienced temperatures from 28.5 degrees to 32.2. In the next shade of blue, 32.2 to 35.9. In all of these areas, enormous damage was done to the crops. One does not have to take my word for it. We brought back pictures showing what has happened. This picture is from Cass County, ND, an ear of corn unaffected. This picture was taken on August 24. That is a healthy ear of corn. Look at the Foster County picture taken the day before, August 23. This is frost-damaged corn. My colleagues can see what a totally different picture it is, the difference between corn that is healthy and unaffected and that which has been damaged by frost. The losses in my State are now enormous and growing geometrically. Our State university just did this assessment: Prevented planting losses as I described, 1.7 million acres, a loss of over $206 million; crop production losses, $264 million; crop quality losses, another $58 million. Total losses in my State so far, $530 million. Now, some say that is what crop insurance is for. Let me explain. Crop insurance will only cover 40 percent of the loss, not even 40 percent of the loss, because of the way crop insurance works. That is with the vast majority of my farmers buying crop insurance. Some will say, gee, more farmers should have bought crop insurance. In my State more than 90 percent of the farmers do buy crop insurance. The way crop insurance works, it in no way makes one whole. It just offsets the losses, and when the losses are this massive and this significant, crop insurance only covers less than 40 percent. This shows net direct crop losses of almost $330 million. The economists at our State university then did an analysis of what the indirect losses would be to the State. Households will lose $511 million. Retail sales will be reduced by $245 million, and put in the direct crop losses, that is an economic loss to North Dakota's economy of over $1 billion, and $1 billion to my little State is a huge amount of money. I know in Washington $1 billion may not seem all that significant. It may not be all that significant in California or New York, but in North Dakota $1 billion is real money. It means real hardship to real people, people who deserve assistance just as much as the people in Florida who have been devastated by hurricane after hurricane. Our people have not been hit by a hurricane. They have been hit by flooding, frost, and drought. What a perverse collection of natural disasters to visit any State in any year. The final point I wish to make to my colleagues who may be concerned that we are busting the budget is this is what has happened to the pattern of farm payments under the new farm bill. The national press has missed this story completely, I might say, but the fact is, farm program payments have come down dramatically under the new farm bill. This is where they were under the old farm bill, $32.3 billion in the year 2000; 2001 it came down to $22.1 billion; 2002, $15.7 billion. Then we had a tick up in 2003 to $17 billion, and in 2004 they are anticipating the spending will be $11.5 billion. That is $20 billion less than 2000. The national press has not reported this at all. The fact is, the new farm bill is costing a lot less than what we were spending under the old farm bill, much less. This year, it is $20 billion less than the cost was going to be in 2000. My colleagues know I have been voting against waivers of the Budget Act for amendment after amendment, and I have told my colleagues there is only one exception for me and that is natural disaster, whether it is Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana. The hard reality is, natural disasters are unpredictable. Nobody can know who is next. Nobody can know who is going to face a flood or a drought or a hurricane. That is why we have always treated them as emergencies, with emergency funding. That is my intention this year as well. I believe we have natural disasters. Nobody could have predicted Hurricane Charley or Hurricane Frances or Hurricane Ivan. And nobody could have predicted these terrible droughts. Senator Nelson from Nebraska said we ought to be naming droughts because then it would get more attention. It kind of personalizes things. People could understand when we are getting hit with a natural disaster, because it has a name. We don't name droughts. Maybe we should. We certainly name a hurricane and that helps us personalize it and remember it. Droughts and floods don't have names, but I will tell you what, they affect real people who have names. I have gone all across my State in dozens of farm meetings, all across the northern tier of North Dakota with this devastating flooding, and all across the southwestern part of my State with this disastrous drought. These are real people, real families, who are being devastated and, through no fault of their own, they are on the brink of being pushed off the farm. They have been devastated every bit as much as the people in Florida. All of them deserve our assistance and our support. I hope very much our colleagues will support this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise today to submit a concurrent resolution to honor the memory of the passengers on flight 93. This past weekend marked the third anniversary of the vicious and merciless attacks that took place on American soil on September 11, 2001. As we reflect on those events and mourn the great loss we suffered, we remember the innocent who perished and we are reminded of the valiant efforts of those who saved lives, including the passengers and crew of flight 93. Those brave people gave up their lives in order to save others that fateful day. In the last several months, the 9/11 Commission released its report about the series of events that took place on September 11, 2001. The Senate has subsequently undertaken an evaluation of the Commission's findings through a series of hearings. As the story continues to unfold, it becomes more clear how important the actions of the passengers and crew of flight 93 were. We now know that flight 93 was almost certainly headed to the U.S. Capitol or the White House. We also know the passengers of flight 93 learned through a series of phone calls to loved ones that hijackers on three other flights had turned airplanes into flying bombs that morning, crashing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Armed only with that knowledge and their own courage and resolve, those brave passengers attacked the hijackers and forced them to crash flight 93 into rural Pennsylvania far short of its intended target. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the Nation owes a debt to the passengers of flight 93. Their actions saved the lives of countless others and may have saved either the U.S. Capitol or the White House from destruction. Those of us who work here in the Capitol owe a special debt of gratitude to those heroes. Their actions saved one of the greatest symbols of our democracy. Had flight 93 reached its intended target, the dreadful day might have been even worse. Today I am submitting a resolution honoring and memorializing the passengers and crew of United Airline flight 93. This legislation expresses our deepest respect and gratitude to them, as well as condolences to their families and friends. This bill also calls for a location in the Capitol to be named in their memory and a commemorative plaque to be placed at that location. Today I bow my head in memory of those who died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I also pay respect to our first responders, volunteers, and average citizens who risked their lives to save others on that day. Finally, I pay homage to the passengers and crew of flight 93 for taking on those who wished to harm our country and Nation's Capital. I believe it is appropriate at this time to acknowledge the actions of the passengers of flight 93 for showing such remarkable heroism and to commemorate them in the very walls that might have crumbled had they not made that ultimate sacrifice. We are forever indebted to them and should never forget their bravery or their sacrifice or that of their loved ones. I hope my colleagues will join me in sponsoring this resolution. I have it at the desk and I am submitting it now. I hope on a broad bipartisan basis we are able to recognize those brave passengers and crew of flight 93 for what they did on that remarkable day.

Mr. CONRAD

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

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, thank you. (The remarks of Mr. Conrad pertaining to the submission of S. Con. Res. 136 are located in today's Record under ``Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')