Kent Conrad

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I support the Medicare conference report that is before us. This was not an easy decision, because the conference report is far from perfect, but I believe it is the right decision for three reasons. First, most basically, the bill provides $400 billion to add a voluntary prescription drug benefit in Medicare. Prescription drugs are an integral part of modern medicine. Yet they are not covered by Medicare today. No other health insurance program in this country today fails to cover prescription drugs. It is long past time to add drug coverage to Medicare. The bill before us creates a voluntary prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program starting in 2006. Here's how it would work. Those beneficiaries who choose to sign up for this benefit will pay a premium estimated to average $35/month starting in 2006. Beneficiaries would then have to meet a deductible of $250 in out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs. Above $250, Medicare will pay 75 percent of the next $2000 in drug costs. Then, the benefit cuts off. Medicare will pay nothing until the beneficiary has paid an additional $2850 out-of- pocket. Beyond this gap in coverage, Medicare will then pay 95 percent of all additional drug costs. Obviously, this is not a perfect drug benefit. It is not the drug benefit I would have designed. And it is going to fall short of many seniors' expectations. The simple reality is that one cannot produce a comprehensive drug benefit that looks like the private health insurance coverage most Americans are used to for just $400 billion. But the $400 billion in drug benefits provided by the conference report will mean a significant improvement in health coverage for millions of seniors across the country. It will provide a meaningful-- if imperfect--benefit to seniors who currently have no coverage, and it will offer more comprehensive coverage and catastrophic protection to seniors who currently rely on medigap plans. This is a step forward. If we do not pass the bill before us today, seniors could be forced to wait years before we get another opportunity to update the Medicare Program. In my view, we need to take this opportunity to lock in a prescription drug benefit now. We can come back later to fill in the gaps in coverage and fix the other troubling provisions of this bill. Second, the bill provides a very generous benefit for low income seniors--those with incomes below 150 percent of the Federal poverty level, or about $13,470 for singles and $18,180 for couples. Seniors in this category--about 40 percent of the seniors in my State-- will not face a gap in coverage. They will get the vast majority of their drugs covered, with minimal out-of-pocket costs. In addition, they will get a $600 annual credit toward their drug costs in 2004 and 2005 before the main drug benefit takes effect. These low income seniors by definition are the ones who most need help paying prescription drug costs. In particular, all seniors with incomes below the Federal poverty level--about $8,980 in annual income for singles and $12,120 for couples--will pay no premium. They will pay no deductible. They will have no gap in coverage. They will pay just $1 for generic prescriptions and $3 for brand-name drugs. Those with incomes up to 135 percent of the poverty level and less than $6,000 in countable assets will also pay no premium. They will pay no deductible. They will have no gap in coverage. And they will pay only $2 for generic drugs and $5 for most brand-name medications. Those seniors with incomes above these thresholds, but still below 150 percent of the poverty level, will pay a sliding scale premium based on income. They will pay a $50 deductible. And they will pay 15 percent coinsurance on all their medications, until their drug costs reach $3600. After that, they will pay only 5 percent coinsurance. Seniors who qualify for any of these low income benefits will get an extremely generous drug plan. In my view, this benefit alone is a very significant achievement. Third, the bill includes a whole host of rural provider provisions that I authored or coauthored. Currently, rural areas face huge payment disparities. For example, Mercy Hospital in Devils Lake, ND, gets paid just half as much as Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in New York City for treating exactly the same patient with exactly the same illness. Yet hospitals in North Dakota don't pay half as much for equipment as their urban counterparts. And rural hospitals have much smaller patient loads over which to spread their costs. As a result, rural hospitals are on the brink of financial failure. These hospitals are critical economic anchors in their communities. Other rural health care providers, from clinics to home health to ambulance services, face similar payment inequities. This bill will go a long way to eliminating some of the Medicare funding inequities that have hurt rural health care. It will help make sure rural Medicare beneficiaries continue to have adequate access to health care. Specifically, this bill will close the gap in standardized payment rates, which will ensure rural hospitals' base payments are equal to those of urban providers. The legislation also takes important steps to address inequities in the wage index system, which is intended to account for labor costs. And it provides a new, low-volume adjustment payments for facilities serving the smallest communities in the state. In addition, the Medicare bill includes important provisions to improve the Critical Access Hospital Program. Today, about 28 hospitals in my state have this designation. This bill will place them on sounder financial footing. Along with the provisions to assist North Dakota hospitals, the Medicare bill will also address payment inequities experienced by our physicians and will ensure they do not face payment cuts in the coming years. There are also new adjustments for home health care providers and ambulance services. I hope these provisions will make a real difference in their ability to continue providing quality care across our state. In total, this part of the bill is a very significant victory for rural America. For these three reasons, I have concluded that we should pass this bill, but we should not oversell it either. As I noted at the outset, this bill is--in many respects--very disappointing. Quite simply, it could and should have been a much better bill. Democrats in the last Congress put together a prescription drug bill that I was proud to sponsor. It provided a good drug benefit to all seniors. It did not have any gaps in coverage, where seniors would continue to pay monthly premiums but get no assistance from Medicare with their drug benefits. It did not rely on creating a whole new type of insurance plan to meet the drug needs of seniors. Instead, it used the delivery mechanism that the private sector uses to provide drug coverage. It was a bill that would have provided much more comprehensive prescription drug coverage to seniors at a reasonable price. Compared to what we have before us today, it was simple and easily understandable for seniors. It did not have a complex scheme of differing copayments, coverage gaps, and premiums. But that bill was blocked by Republicans. This year, the leadership on the other side appears to have put ideology and special interests ahead of the interests of seniors in crafting many of the details of this drug bill. As a result, seniors will be facing an untested delivery model that may not provide the advertised benefits at the advertised prices. The simple fact is that there is no such thing as a private, drug-only insurance plan in the commercial insurance market anywhere in this country. They just do not exist. By contrast, we have a proven, successful delivery model in the traditional Medicare program. It works just fine in providing medical and hospital coverage to seniors today. Yet, in drafting this bill, the authors insisted that the plan rely on untested private, drug-only insurance plans. However, it is possible that no such plans will materialize. Or they may be highly unstable--entering a region one year, just to turn around and leave the next year if they are not making a profit. In my view, it is a serious mistake to set up a system that could force seniors to change drug plans every year. Under this approach, each year seniors could face a different premium, different coinsurance charges, and different lists of covered drugs. I think seniors will be very surprised to learn that they will not have the same benefit from year to year. During consideration of the Senate version of this bill, I fought to correct this plan. My amendment would have allowed seniors to stay in a government-sponsored back-up plan if they liked it. But that effort was rejected by those who insist--in a triumph of hope over experience--that private drug-only plans will work even though they do not exist today. In the conference, the option was further scaled back to make it even less likely that seniors can choose a stable, government sponsored backup. The Senate bill required that seniors be given the option of enrolling in the so-called fallback plan if they did not have at least two private drug-only plans to choose from. But the conference report will not give seniors the fallback option if there is just one private drug only plan available, so long as there is also a managed care Preferred Provider Organization plan in the region. I fear that this will give seniors an unpalatable choice if they want access to drug benefits. Either they will have to join a PPO that restricts their access to health care providers of their choice, or they will have to join the one private drug-only plan even if it charges excessive premiums. That brings me to another area that I think will be a surprise to seniors: the variation in premiums. The authors of this bill like to talk about how the premiums will be $35 a month. But what they don't tell seniors is that $35 a month is just an estimate. Individual drug plans will have premiums that can vary substantially. If the drug plan's projected cost for delivering the benefit is only slightly higher than the national average--a real concern in many areas--the premium would be substantially higher than $35 a month. I think seniors will be very surprised to learn that their premiums may actually be as much as $45 or $50 a month instead of the $35 that has been advertised. These differences will be compounded because monthly premiums will increase each year in line with the increase in prescription drug costs. The thing about this bill that might be the biggest surprise for seniors will be the coverage gap, sometimes called the donut hole. The authors of the bill understandably don't want to advertise this gap in coverage. Many seniors probably don't even know that it exists. But when they hit this gap in coverage, they are going to be mighty surprised. The will discover that Medicare isn't covering one penny of their drug costs even though their monthly part D premium keeps coming out of their Social Security checks. And they're going to be doubly surprised when they find out that the gap isn't a little more than $1000 wide, but is closer to $3000. The authors of the bill like to talk about a coverage gap from $2250 in drug costs to $3600 in drug costs. When you read the fine print, you learn that the real gap is from $2250 to $5100. That's because the $2250 counts all drug costs, by both Medicare and the beneficiary. But the $3600 counts only spending by the beneficiary. When total spending hits $2250, the beneficiary has paid $750--the $250 deductible and 25 percent coinsurance on the amount from $250 to $2250. So Medicare won't pay another dime until the beneficiary has paid an additional $2850 out-of-pocket. Some who are watching might ask, Who in their right mind would design a drug benefit that starts, then stops, then starts again, the way this one does? Why does the benefit have this gap in coverage? The answer is simple: money. It would cost tens of billion of dollars to close this gap. The folks on the other side of the aisle made tax cuts for the wealthy a higher priority than a prescription drug benefit for middle income seniors. As a result, they didn't have enough money left over to provide a drug benefit without this gap in coverage. By most estimates, about one third of all seniors will reach a point at some time during the year when Medicare just stops paying any part of their drug bills. They will keep paying premiums, but Medicare will not pay another dime until and unless they reach the catastrophic spending threshold. Finally, I am concerned about the effect of this contorted benefit structure on retiree drug coverage. Millions of seniors currently have retiree health coverage that provides more generous prescription drug coverage than this bill will provide. When the Senate passed its bill last June, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that one third of those with retiree drug coverage would lose that coverage because spending by an employer plan does not count toward reaching the catastrophic coverage threshold. In other words, if you have employer coverage, no drug spending by your employer plan counts toward the $3600 you have to spend out of your own pocket before the catastrophic coverage kicks in. This provision creates a clear incentive for employers to cut back or drop coverage so that a beneficiary will more quickly reach the catastrophic coverage threshold and Medicare--not the employer--will pay the remaining costs. When this bill passed the Senate, I said it was not a Cadillac drug plan. It wasn't even a Chevy drug plan. Instead, it was a bare bones plan. To stretch that analogy, in conference, some of the bones got fractured, leaving the plan even weaker, and some of those bones were replaced with untested artificial substitutes that may not work the way they have been advertised. The conferees did not just widen the coverage gap and decrease the stability of the fallback drug plans that will be important in many rural and other areas of the country. They also loaded down those weak old bones with a new, heavy load: This bill now is carrying a number of provisions that, in my view, will harm the Medicare program and our health care system. For example, the bill requires demonstration projects to privatize the Medicare program, taking the first steps in turning it from a defined benefit entitlement to a voucher program. I am pleased that this demonstration has been limited to just six areas. I am hopeful that even these few demonstrations may not get off the ground. I, nonetheless, strongly oppose this effort. This policy will allow private plans to cherry-pick younger, healthier beneficiaries, leaving older, sicker beneficiaries to face higher premiums in the traditional Medicare program. This is terrible health policy, and I hope we will succeed in reversing it in the future. The bill also contain a $10.5 billion ``stabilization fund'' that allows the Secretary of HHS to make additional payments to managed care plans. This slush fund will just add to the substantial overpayment of managed care plans that already exists in the Medicare plan. To me, it makes no sense to talk about managed care saving money for Medicare when it costs Medicare more to move people into managed care. Why should we pay managed care billions and billions of dollars more than we would pay in traditional Medicare to provide the same benefit? That money could have been put to far better use in other ways, either by improving the drug benefit or by devoting money to chronic care disease management in traditional Medicare. The fact is that about 5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries account for roughly 50 percent of total Medicare spending. These beneficiaries often have a number of conditions, but they don't get coordinated care because they see different doctors for different problems. This can result in adverse drug interactions, the failure to treat underlying causes rather than symptoms, and higher spending than necessary. Yet Medicare does nothing today to coordinate care in the traditional Medicare program that serves nearly 90 percent of all beneficiaries. Spending a little money up front in this bill could produce significant cost savings over time for the Medicare program. I hope we will be able to find money to expand the chronic care demonstrations in the bill. The bill also expands health savings accounts that are both bad tax policy and bad health policy. These accounts will allow both untaxed contributions and untaxed withdrawals, a terrible precedent. If it is copied for other tax-preferred savings accounts, this policy could have devastating consequences for the future of our tax base. Moreover, like the privatization voucher program, health savings accounts fragment the health insurance market, undermining the fundamental principle of spreading risk that allows insurance markets to work. Health savings accounts will pull wealthier, healthier workers out of the insurance pool, giving upper income taxpayers significant tax savings. Those who remain in traditional insurance plans--average workers who would gain little in tax benefits from the HSAs and those with significant medical costs--will then face higher premiums. This is the first step toward creating a two-tiered health system in this country. I oppose this policy. The money spent on these tax giveaways could have been far better spent to help ensure that existing retiree health coverage is not eroded. Finally, the bill fails completely to impose any restraint on the costs of prescription drugs. One of the chief complaints I hear from North Dakota seniors is that drugs cost far too much. I had hoped that Medicare--which has been more successful in holding down health care cost increases than the private sector--could use its enormous market clout to negotiate lower costs for prescription drugs. Unfortunately, the bill does not do that. In fact, the bill contains language that specifically prohibits Medicare from using its market clout to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. In addition, the conference failed to include a strong provision on drug reimportation that was passed by the House of Representatives. As a result, Americans will not be able to access lower cost medications from other countries. Reimportation will not serve as a brake on rising drug costs in this country. As a result, the Congressional Budget Office tells us the bill will accelerate increases in the costs of prescription drugs. These are serious flaws. I wish many of the provisions were far, far better. I wish other provisions had never been included. But at the end of the day, we are faced with the question: Is this bill, with all its flaws, better than doing nothing? For me, the answer is yes. For millions of seniors who do not have access to any kind of prescription drug coverage at any price, this will give them a new option to have a portion of their drug costs covered. Millions of low income seniors will be significantly better off, with a new generous drug benefit that they do not now have. Rural health care facilities that are now on the brink of closure because they are underpaid for their services will get a new life from the rural Medicare reimbursement provisions in the bill. Even with these significant victories, if I thought this bill fundamentally threatened the existing Medicare program, I could not support it. I know that there are some who sincerely believe that the privatization demonstrations will fundamentally undermine the program. Although I share their view that these demonstrations are bad policy-- perhaps even terrible policy--I do not believe that six demonstration projects affecting less than 5 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries will destroy Medicare. Although this bill is far from perfect, I have concluded that we should pass it. On balance, this bill is a step in the right direction. We do not know when we will have another, better bill that can pass the Congress and be signed into law. In my view, it would not be fair to those seniors--including tens of thousand of North Dakota seniors--who have no access to drug coverage of any kind at any price to deny them this first step in the uncertain hope that we might be able to do better at some point in the future. Rather, we must take the $400 billion opportunity that is on the table today and start providing prescription drug coverage to America's seniors. Then we can and we will go to work to improve the prescription drug benefit provided by this bill.

Mr. CONRAD. Since the hearing, the chairman and I have worked toward the development of a COLI proposal that would garner the support of the broadest possible consensus in the committee and in the full Senate. I believe that last week we were close to an agreement on a proposal that responded to every legitimate criticism of COLI heard during the course of the October 23 hearing. I regret that the crush of Finance Committee legislation on the Senate floor in October and November has so far prevented the chairman from scheduling a markup. Unfortunately, it is now clear that the markup agreed to on October 1 cannot before the end of this session of Congress.

Mr. CONRAD. I welcomed the opportunity the chairman provided in the committee hearing on COLI that occurred on October 23. By the end of that hearing, I believe committee members had a solid grasp of the legitimate problems that still remain after the numerous legislative reforms of COLI over the last 20 years.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise to engage the chairman of the Finance Committee in a colloquy regarding pending committee action with respect to the tax treatment of company-owned life insurance, COLI. Let me again express my appreciation for the efforts the chairman made on October 1 in securing the committee's unanimous consent to conduct a hearing on issues surrounding COLI and to mark up a COLI provision shortly thereafter.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus for all of their work on this bill. Prescription drug coverage under Medicare is long overdue, and I am pleased that we are near to final passage on a drug benefit that will provide our seniors and disabled with help they sorely need. That we have made it this far is in no small measure to the important work of Senators Grassley and Baucus. As we continue to debate the Medicare conference report, I want to make particular note of the efforts of Senators Baucus, Grassley and Murray to address the Medicare bias against self injectable biologics and oral anti-cancer drugs without an injectable equivalent. These biases can mean that Medicare pays for treatments that are more costly and that require patients to travel long distances for treatment. Working together, we have pushed hard for providing coverage of these drugs for an interim period, until the Part D drug benefit begins. This immediate coverage would make a real difference for thousands of seniors suffering from cancer as well as various chronic illnesses, such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. While I am pleased that the Medicare conference includes measures to provide coverage of these medications over the next 2 years, I am disappointed that the funding for this policy was limited and the number of beneficiaries who will be allowed to benefit from this coverage was capped. Also, I am very concerned that the Medicare conference report language does not accurately reflect the intent of the conferees, which is clearly laid out in the statute of the conference report. I would like to ask my colleagues to comment further on this issue.

Mr. CONRAD. I also thank the chairman for that clarification and, again, would like to thank both the chairman and Senator Baucus for their work on this important effort. I also strongly share their view that the rural health provisions in the Medicare conference report are a real victory for not only our States, but for all of rural America.

Mr. CONRAD. Isn't it true that the conference committee intended to provide $500 million above what Medicare would have expended absent this provision to cover replacement self-injectable medications and oral anti-cancer therapies?

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to support the energy bill conference report. I have long believed we need a comprehensive national energy policy. The reality is that our economy depends on affordable energy. We often take it for granted, but just imagine how different our daily lives would be if we did not have plentiful, affordable oil, natural gas, and electricity. We depend on energy in almost everything we do in our lives, from turning on the light in the morning, to driving our cars to work, to cooking our dinner, to watching TV at the end of the day. And energy is absolutely critical to the functioning of our economy. Our manufacturing sector uses vast amounts of energy to produce the whole range of products we take for granted in stores all across the country. Our services sector--and particularly our high tech sector-- rely on electricity. Our agriculture economy uses enormous energy inputs for planting, harvesting and processing its bountiful production. And without energy, we could not transport these goods and services to consumers. It is virtually impossible to understate the importance of energy to our daily lives and to our economy. Yet our energy policy is seriously lacking. As the blackout in the northeast demonstrated last summer, our national electricity infrastructure is decades old and dangerously overloaded. Quite simply, we have under-invested in making sure that the national electricity grid can keep up with demand for electricity. Since 1992, demand for electricity has been growing at 2-3 percent per year while transmission capacity has been growing at only .7 percent per year. At the same time, deregulation of the electricity industry has led to a hodgepodge of control over transmission capacity, without clear rules and responsibility for maintaining the reliability of the system. We need new rules to improve the reliability of the grid and new incentives to increase transmission capacity if we're to avoid future meltdowns. And, we remain overly dependent on foreign oil. Oil imports now account for nearly 60 percent of consumption, and the projection is for that percentage to continue increasing inexorably. That puts our economy at risk, because it is vulnerable to price spikes caused by OPEC or supply disruptions in foreign trouble spots. And it creates national security challenges. We currently rely on the vast oil reserves in the Middle East to meet our import demands, and that makes ensuring the free flow of oil from that unstable, undemocratic part of the world a vital national security interest. So we need an energy policy that will reduce our reliance on imported oil. For these reasons, I have long believed we need to update our national energy policy. The bill we have before us begins to address these challenges. It will improve the reliability of our electric grid. It provides positive incentives for renewable energy. And it promotes conservation. Let me be clear, though. This is not a perfect bill. It does not go nearly as far as I would like in addressing the issues I have outlined and other critical elements of a comprehensive national energy policy. It contains several provisions that I do not think should be in an energy bill. But on balance, it is a positive step for North Dakota and the national economy, and it will mean additional jobs in my State. Let me first talk about the provisions I support that will help ensure our national energy security and benefit North Dakota. First, the bill strongly promotes the use of ethanol and other bio- fuels. The bill will require 5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. And it will create a biodiesel tax credit of $1 per gallon for feedstocks such as canola and 50 cents a gallon for recycled feedstock such as restaurant grease. These are clean and renewable fuels, and these provisions are good for the environment, good for our energy independence, and good for North Dakota farmers. Second, I am very pleased that the bill contains a provision I fought for to extend the production tax credit for wind for 3 years. North Dakota has the highest potential for wind energy of any State in the Nation. This provision will spur the production of wind energy facilities and equipment in North Dakota. That is good for electricity consumers, good for the environment, good for wind energy equipment manufacturing workers, and good for farmers and others who will benefit from having wind turbines on their land. Third, the bill contains a 15 percent investment tax credit to support the development of clean coal technology that will benefit North Dakota's lignite coal industry. We have a thriving lignite coal industry in North Dakota, with seven lignite plants that use 30 million tons of lignite each year. And jobs in the lignite industry are among the highest paying jobs in my State. Fourth, the bill contains incentives for adding pollution control equipment on older coal plants and incentives for building new, more environmentally friendly coal plants. This could be a big help in getting a new lignite plant in western North Dakota while maintaining our pristine environment, something I have been working on for years. Fifth, the bill contains modest steps to promote energy conservation, including a tax credit of up to $2000 to encourage people to better insulate their homes, and provisions to encourage the purchase and use of more energy efficient appliances. Sixth, there are provisions to encourage small producers of oil and gas. Many people do not think of North Dakota as an oil and State, but we have significant reserves that can be tapped to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and address the shortage of domestic natural gas production. The bill includes a tax credit for marginal wells, provisions to speed up permitting on Federal lands, and a section to encourage a particularly important process for natural gas extraction. Seventh, the bill includes a set of provisions to improve the reliability of the national electric transmission grid, reducing the chances of a massive failure like the one that affected the northeast last summer. Eighth, the electricity title also ensures that small cooperatives will not be subject to burdensome FERC jurisdiction and contains native load protections for co-operatives, which are a major source of electricity in North Dakota. These provisions ensure that North Dakota rural electric co-ops can continue to provide low-cost power to their consumers. Finally, the bill expands and extends assistance to low income families in meeting their home heating needs. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, has provided valuable assistance to thousands of North Dakota families in paying their winter heating bills. Because of all these important provisions, a number of North Dakota groups support the bill. These include the North Dakota Farmers Union, the North Dakota Farm Bureau, the North Dakota Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the Lignite Energy Council, and the Greater North Dakota Association. As I said earlier, however, this bill is far from perfect. There are a number of areas where it could and should have been much better. For example, the conference report does not contain a Renewable Portfolio Standard. The bill that passed the Senate required that 10 percent of electricity be produced from renewable energy sources by 2020. This modest RPS would have helped to clean up our environment and spurred wind energy development. I supported this provision and wish it had been included in the conference report. More generally, the conference report falls short on promoting the use of renewable fuels and emphasizing conservation. If we are ever to overcome our dependence on foreign oil imports, we will need to be more aggressive on these fronts. The conference report could and should have done more in this area. I am also disappointed that the bill does not contain tradeable tax credits to encourage cooperatives and municipal utilities to further invest in renewable energy sources. Tradeable credits would have leveled the playing field for these electricity suppliers as we build wind farms and other renewable energy facilities. The conference report could and should have included this provision. And I do not believe the conference report goes nearly far enough in creating new incentives for expanding transmission capacity to reduce the risk of blackouts. I had hoped the conference report would contain provisions to eliminate the transmission bottleneck that is preventing my state from expanding lignite and wind energy plants to export more electricity to regional markets. Here again, the conference report could and should have done more. Finally, the bill contains a number of unnecessary provisions that I do not support. The liability waiver for the dangerous fuel additive known as MTBE--or methyl tertiary butyl ether--is troubling. Clean Air Act changes that will allow certain cities to postpone compliance with reductions in ozone damaging pollutants have nothing to do with promoting sound energy policy and should not be in the bill. I believe we have more work to do to produce a truly comprehensive energy policy that addresses our energy, economic and national security challenges. In particular, I will continue to push for an expansion of transmission capacity to protect against the failure of our electricity grid and allow North Dakota to increase its exports of electricity. It is my hope that we will be able to work on these issues in a bipartisan manner. Despite its shortcomings, on balance the bill before us takes positive steps to address our Nation's energy needs. It will encourage domestic energy production, promote renewable fuels, and modestly encourage conservation to help reduce our reliance on foreign oil. It will help to reduce the likelihood of major transmission breakdowns. And it will provide significant benefits to my State of North Dakota. Energy is the second largest sector of the North Dakota economy, and it will benefit very directly from a number of provisions in the bill. And agriculture, the largest sector of the North Dakota economy, will also see important benefits from the various renewable fuel incentives. For those reasons, I support the conference report.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, in the past few days, the tragic headlines from Iraq have reminded us of the selfless sacrifices our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen make every day to keep this country strong and safe. The conflict in Iraq brings home again the debt we owe to America's veterans for their service and their sacrifices. In North Dakota, we are extremely proud to have the highest per capita participation in the Guard of any State and to be among the leaders in per capita participation in the Reserves. More than 1,000 North Dakota National Guardsmen and reservists in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan are serving with distinction. Behind these statistics, though, are individual soldiers who have left behind families. With the wonders of modern technology, I can hear directly from soldiers who are on the frontlines in Iraq. I hear of their accomplishments, when they've helped make life just a little better for an Iraqi family or even a whole community. I hear of their pride in doing a job well for their country. But I also hear of their frustration with searing heat, swirling dust, and irregular access to showers and the other comforts we take for granted. I hear of their worries about family at home, how their loved ones are coping with their absence and their concern that the news of deaths and injuries among their fellow soldiers are adding to the stress on their families. I hear their longing to get back to home and family. In short, I hear of the sacrifices they are making on our behalf. And every day I hear from the family members of our activated servicemen and servicewomen. I hear how proud they are that their beloved ones are serving the country they love. But I also hear of the added burden that those left behind must bear. I hear the frustration of not knowing when a loved one will come home and of learning that the deployment has been extended. I hear of the hit on the family finances for Guardsmen or reservists who have left higher paying jobs to serve their country--and of the spouses who are left to keep the family business running on their own. I hear of the added work as one parent takes on the work normally done by two--the caregiving, the helping with homework, the coaching, the meal preparation--all the little chores that add up and are starting to become a source of stress for some families. I hear the added anxiety of knowing that a loved one is serving in a dangerous role far from home. Each time the phone rings, they hope that it will be a rare opportunity to hear that everything is going well and to say ``I love you,'' but they fear that it could be news of a casualty. In short, I hear of the sacrifices that they are making on our behalf. And I hear of the tremendous impact on small communities throughout North Dakota. The current call-up has meant the loss of valued employees in small businesses on main streets across the state. It has meant the loss of teachers, volunteer firefighters, policemen, and medical personnel. And it has meant the absence of church leaders, PTA leaders, Little League coaches. In short, it has meant sacrifices great and small. So this Veterans Day, we are reminded of the tremendous sacrifices of our veterans and their families. Today is a Federal holiday. But it is more than that. It is an opportunity to stop and thank veterans for their service and their sacrifice. It is an opportunity to tell them how proud they make you. And it is an opportunity to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and the debt of gratitude and honor this country owes to their heroism. I deeply regret that the business of the Senate is keeping me here in Washington so that I am not able to deliver that message personally to the tens of thousands of North Dakota veterans who served in past conflicts and wars. More than 50,000 veterans currently live in my State. Their service is rich in history. I remember reviewing historical accounts of one of the most significant engagements involving North Dakotans in 1942, when members of the 164th Infantry Regiment of the ND Army National Guard were the first Army unit to engage in combat action in the Pacific Theater on Guadalcanal. I was honored to have introduced a resolution that passed the Senate in 1992 paying tribute to the heroic actions of the 164th Infantry unit. Today, as I noted earlier, military personnel from our State continue to protect our homeland and to serve in hostile environments around the world. Active duty personnel from the Minot and Grand Forks AFB, Air National Guard from Fargo, and the more than 1,000 Army National Guardsmen and reservists continue to play a vital role in homeland security and in the fight against terrorism. We owe these active duty personnel and their families a deep debt of gratitude for responding to the extraordinary challenges posed by international terrorism. As we observe Veterans Day, let us remember that the respect and appreciation that we show our veterans and active duty personnel on this day is an act that we should demonstrate every day of the year. It is especially important that we honor veterans and their families by making certain that our active duty personnel and veterans receive the benefits that we have promised and that they are entitled to receive. We can do no less for the sacrifices that they have made. That is why I am working hard in the remaining days of the 1st Session of the 108th Congress to make certain that our veterans receive significant increases in funding for VA health care, funding that should come as close as possible to the recommendations of our national veterans service organizations in the annual Independent Budget. I am hopeful that Congress will increase the VA health care budget by $1.3 billion, bringing the level close to $27.2 billion. I strongly support that increase. Additionally, I am very concerned by the uncertainty of annual appropriations for VA health care every year, and believe that we need to make VA health care funding mandatory to guarantee that veterans get the health care they need and deserve. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of legislation, S. 50, that would guarantee full funding for VA health care. I also believe that it is time to end the penalty against our disabled veterans, and am pleased that we are making progress on providing full concurrent receipt of veterans disability compensation and military retirement pay for more veterans. While final action has not been completed on the concurrent receipt, I am hopeful that an agreement to expand significantly the number of veterans eligible for concurrent receipt and military retirement pay, without an offset, will be enacted by Congress in the very near future. We must, however, continue our efforts to provide full concurrent receipt for all veterans entitled to this benefit. Let me close by saying thank you. Thank you to our veterans. Thank you to our military personnel now on active duty around the world. Your service and your sacrifice make me, and you make America, very, very proud.

Mr. CONRAD

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

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, less than 6 months ago, we enacted the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act which contained $20 billion in temporary State fiscal relief. Yet before us is legislation that may effectively take back a significant portion of that much- needed relief for States. In my earlier career, I was tax commissioner in the State of North Dakota. My successor, a Republican, a man who currently holds the office, was in my office just a couple of weeks ago explaining the impact of the committee bill on our State. He estimated this bill would cost our State $20 million. That may not be a lot of money in Washington. I can tell you that is a lot of money in North Dakota. That is $20 million we would be taking away from the State of North Dakota they have every right to collect. Let me make absolutely clear that I am not for taxing access to the Internet. I am not for that. I have supported the moratorium. I will continue to support the moratorium. But as Senator Dorgan made clear on the floor this morning, definitions do matter. Unfortunately, the bill out of the committee has left a lot of open questions. Lawyers looking at it are telling us it would restrict the States far beyond a simple extension of the moratorium. I do not believe that is the intention of the Congress. I certainly hope it is not the intention of the committee to go beyond the definition of access we agreed to in 1998 and reaffirmed in 2001 in a way that would preempt States' abilities to levy taxes as its elected representatives see fit. On the floor of the Senate, we have seen a bipartisan effort to make certain what we do here is what we really mean. I have been very interested to see four distinguished former Governors--Senator Alexander, Senator Voinovich, Senator Carper, and Senator Graham, who are among our most respected colleagues on issues such as these, and all of them served successfully as Governors--warning Members of Congress the legislation before us has unintended consequences. I hope we listen carefully to our colleagues, Senator Alexander, Senator Voinovich, Senator Carper, and Senator Graham, and that we pause and get this right. We should not tax access to the Internet. That would inhibit its economic potential. It would reduce opportunity in our society. But at the same time we shouldn't be going beyond that principle and that concept in restricting the States' rights to levy taxes that are reasonable and appropriate. That is not the appropriate role of the Federal Government. I hope very much we will take a few moments and get this right so that this is not a rush to judgment and we not impose on hard-pressed States. We already know there is some $90 billion of shortfall by the States all across the country. The last thing they need is the Federal Government to come in here and take away legitimate sources of revenue from them. That makes no sense. I hope my colleagues are going to be sufficiently patient and that we get this right. As Senator Dorgan said--again, I want to emphasize-- earlier on the floor, definitions matter. I heard Senator McCain say the same thing last night; that it is important to get these concepts right, to get them carefully defined so we are not doing something other than what we really intend to do, which is to provide a continuing moratorium on the taxation for Internet access. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, today I am joined by Senators Roberts, Daschle, Dayton, Dorgan, Johnson, Baucus, Enzi, Kerry, Harkin, Coleman, Reid, and Nelson of Nebraska in introducing the ``Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program of 2003''. Newspaper headlines across North Dakota over the past year confirm that one issue has emerged as among the most controversial that we have seen in the State in some time. That issue has to do with who can hunt in North Dakota, and under what conditions. As one State senator said during the 2003 session of the North Dakota legislature: ``In all my years in the legislature, I haven't gotten so many calls as [on] this one.'' Some have called for stricter limits on the number of out-of-state sportsmen in order to provide greater hunting opportunities for North Dakota citizens. On the other side, many of the rural businesses in North Dakota whose livelihoods have come to depend increasingly on the dollars spent by non-resident hunters have urged a less restrictive policy. An article earlier this year in a North Dakota paper began with the declaration that, ``No bill has stirred more passion in people than Senate Bill 2048, which deals with capping the number of out-of-state hunters.'' One State legislator termed the debate over the bill, ``civil war between residents of North Dakota fighting over hunting ground.'' At its core, the hunting debate is about demand exceeding supply. Quite simply, the public desire for hunting and other outdoor recreation opportunities increasingly exceeds the amount of land available for such activities. And the problem is growing worse each year. Other States face a similar challenge, and they too are in a quandary as they seek to address it. In response to this growing problem, I have been working with a number of my colleagues--as well as farm, conservation, and sportsmen's groups--to develop a positive, straightforward, voluntary and incentive-based approach to addressing the ``supply side'' of this issue. And I am pleased to be introducing that initiative today. Our proposal is a voluntary landowner incentive program. Its formal title is the ``Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program of 2003''. As the title indicates, it is strictly voluntary in nature. It would work like this: Under the program--which I to refer to as the ``Open Fields'' proposal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would provide $50 million per year to State programs that offer incentive payments to farmers and ranchers who agree to allow public access on their land, under terms established by each state. The ``Open Fields'' program would be funded in the same way that Federal farm and conservation programs are currently financed--through USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation. To receive funding under the program, interested states would describe the benefits that the state hopes to achieve by encouraging public access on private farm and ranch land--through such activities as hunting, fishing, birding, and related outdoor activities--and the methods that the State will use to achieve those benefits. In determining the distribution of funds under the program, USDA would give priority to those States that propose--1. to maximize participation by offering a program whose terms are likely to meet with widespread acceptance among landowners in the state; 2. to ensure that land enrolled under the state program has appropriate wildlife habitat; 3. to increase public access on land enrolled in habitat improvement projects under the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program; and 4. to use other Federal, state or private resources, in a collaborative way, to carry out the program. But participation by the States and individual land owners in each State would, as I have indicated, be completely voluntary. In designing the ``Open Fields'' program, our aim has been to build on what works--to grease the wheel, rather than re-invent it. For example, about 13 States already have programs designed to increase the amount of private land available to the public, but these programs are generally modest in scope and suffer from limited funding. Our legislation is designed to give these struggling State programs a needed shot in the arm and to encourage other States. In North Dakota, for example, we have the Private Land Initiative, under which revenue generated from the sale of habitat stamps is used to provide cost-share assistance for wildlife habitat, and to support the Conservation PLOTS program--PLOTS stands for ``Private Land Open To Sportsmen.'' Under this program, owners agree to make their land accessible to the public in return for cost-share and incentive payments. Earlier this year, State officials made an additional $1.5 million available to increase public access on private land, in an effort to help diffuse tensions in the debate over resident versus non- resident hunters. Other States have similar programs. Kansas, for example, has its ``Walk-In Hunting'' program. Montana has a ``Block Management, Public Access/Private Land'' program. Nebraska sponsors a Conservation Reserve Program/Management Access Program, under which landowners with CRP ground receive a bonus payment if they take steps to improve habitat and allow public access on their CRP land. Colorado recently implemented its ``Walk-In Access'' program, under which interested hunters purchase a $20 stamp that gives them access to private land enrolled in the program and a directory of participating landowners. All of these are fine, innovative programs, but they lack the resources needed to meet the public's growing demand for places to hunt and engage in other forms of outdoor recreation. Make no mistake about it, wildlife-related recreation is a major force in defining our national character and in shaping our economy. For example, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2001, 82 million Americans age 16 years and older participated in wildlife- related recreation. During that year, over 34 million people fished, 13 million hunted, and over 66 million participated in at least one type of wildlife-watching activity such as observing, feeding, or photographing wildlife in the United States. According to the Fish & Wildlife Service, those 82 million people who engaged in wildlife-related activities spent an estimated $108 billion, including over $35 billion on fishing and nearly $21 billion on hunting. That's big business by any definition, and it is a slice of the national economy that is increasingly important to our rural communities and small businesses. In 2001 alone, for example, $20 billion was spent on food, lodging, and transportation by those who hunted and fished, while wildlife-watching participants, including birders, spent another $8.2 billion on those same items. In North Dakota, wildlife-related recreation generated nearly $1 billion for the State's economy during the 2001-2002 season, according to the North Dakota Game and Fish Commission. The Commission estimates that direct spending by hunters and anglers laws $469 million during the season, generating nearly $545 million in additional economic activity. North Dakota ranks second in the Nation in terms of the percentage of the State's resident's who hunt, 19 percent, and fifth among States in the percentage of State residents who fish, 29 percent. To underscore the importance of non-resident hunters to my State, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that North Dakota ranks third among States in the percentage of hunters in the State who are non-residents. The estimated 52,000 non-resident hunters in our State make up an estimated 37 percent of all hunters. Only South Dakota, 65 percent, and Colorado, 43 percent, rank higher. In addition, there is ample evidence, from North Dakota State University and individual business owners, that the wildlife and hunting opportunities created by the Conservation Reserve Program have helped to cushion the economic impact first created when the CRP withdrew land from production and caused farmers to purchase fewer inputs and other services so important to our struggling rural communities. So it is critically important that we look for additional means to increase sporting opportunities for the public, and do so in a way that not only allows traditional farming operations to continue, but also increases a farm's income-earning potential. Our proposal would do just that. All in all, this program will be good for farm income, good for conservation, good for our struggling rural communities, and a positive force in strengthening the bond between producers and the general public. Finally, there are also broader policy reasons to move in this direction. For example, it is likely that future world trade agreements are increasingly going to limit the ability of the United States and other major agricultural producing countries to support our farmers in a way that is considered to be trade, or market, ``distorting.'' In other words, U.S. policymakers are likely to find it more and more difficult to provide government farm support in a way that is tied either to production or prices. Instead, we will have to find so-called ``green box'' means of supporting farm income--payments that are not based on bushels produced or current commodity prices. That's clearly the direction that the European Union is taking, and we had better take notice. The program we are announcing today fits neatly in the current green box definition, and should be one of the many tools available to support farm income well into the future, even if new trade agreements constrain our farm policy options. I am pleased that our legislation has already received the support of a number of farm, sportsmen, and conservation organizations, including the North Dakota Farmers Union, the North Dakota Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the Wildlife Management Institute, the Izaak Walton League of America, the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Mule Deer Foundation, Pheasants Forever, the American Sportfishing Association, Pure Fishing, Trout Unlimited, Bass Anglers Sportsmen Society, the Ruffed Grouse Society, the Wildlife Society, the Pope and Young Club, the Federal of Flyfishers, the International Hunter Education Association, the Boone and Crocket Club, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the North American Grouse Partnership, the Texas Wildlife Association, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada. In closing, let me quote from one of news articles that appeared in a North Dakota paper last year. Commenting on the controversy over the proposed change in the pheasant season opening date, the Bismark Tribune editorialized that, ``On one extreme are landowners catering to out-of-state hunters, in part, because of weak and declining rural economies. For them, this is a matter of survival. On the other hand, many sportsmen feel that the growing numbers of acres dedicated to out-of-state hunters, willing to pay big bucks to hunt, are destroying the sport for the state's residents . . . The two sides are a long, long way apart.'' My hope is that we can find ways to bring people together, and in the process strengthen our rural economy, encourage conservation, and preserve our hunting traditions for generations to come. And that's what this proposal is all about. I ask unanimous consent that additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, today I am joined by Senators Roberts, Daschle, Dayton, Dorgan, Johnson, Baucus, Enzi, Kerry, Harkin, Coleman, Reid, and Nelson of Nebraska in introducing the ``Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program of 2003''. Newspaper headlines across North Dakota over the past year confirm that one issue has emerged as among the most controversial that we have seen in the State in some time. That issue has to do with who can hunt in North Dakota, and under what conditions. As one State senator said during the 2003 session of the North Dakota legislature: ``In all my years in the legislature, I haven't gotten so many calls as [on] this one.'' Some have called for stricter limits on the number of out-of-state sportsmen in order to provide greater hunting opportunities for North Dakota citizens. On the other side, many of the rural businesses in North Dakota whose livelihoods have come to depend increasingly on the dollars spent by non-resident hunters have urged a less restrictive policy. An article earlier this year in a North Dakota paper began with the declaration that, ``No bill has stirred more passion in people than Senate Bill 2048, which deals with capping the number of out-of-state hunters.'' One State legislator termed the debate over the bill, ``civil war between residents of North Dakota fighting over hunting ground.'' At its core, the hunting debate is about demand exceeding supply. Quite simply, the public desire for hunting and other outdoor recreation opportunities increasingly exceeds the amount of land available for such activities. And the problem is growing worse each year. Other States face a similar challenge, and they too are in a quandary as they seek to address it. In response to this growing problem, I have been working with a number of my colleagues--as well as farm, conservation, and sportsmen's groups--to develop a positive, straightforward, voluntary and incentive-based approach to addressing the ``supply side'' of this issue. And I am pleased to be introducing that initiative today. Our proposal is a voluntary landowner incentive program. Its formal title is the ``Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program of 2003''. As the title indicates, it is strictly voluntary in nature. It would work like this: Under the program--which I to refer to as the ``Open Fields'' proposal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would provide $50 million per year to State programs that offer incentive payments to farmers and ranchers who agree to allow public access on their land, under terms established by each state. The ``Open Fields'' program would be funded in the same way that Federal farm and conservation programs are currently financed--through USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation. To receive funding under the program, interested states would describe the benefits that the state hopes to achieve by encouraging public access on private farm and ranch land--through such activities as hunting, fishing, birding, and related outdoor activities--and the methods that the State will use to achieve those benefits. In determining the distribution of funds under the program, USDA would give priority to those States that propose--1. to maximize participation by offering a program whose terms are likely to meet with widespread acceptance among landowners in the state; 2. to ensure that land enrolled under the state program has appropriate wildlife habitat; 3. to increase public access on land enrolled in habitat improvement projects under the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program; and 4. to use other Federal, state or private resources, in a collaborative way, to carry out the program. But participation by the States and individual land owners in each State would, as I have indicated, be completely voluntary. In designing the ``Open Fields'' program, our aim has been to build on what works--to grease the wheel, rather than re-invent it. For example, about 13 States already have programs designed to increase the amount of private land available to the public, but these programs are generally modest in scope and suffer from limited funding. Our legislation is designed to give these struggling State programs a needed shot in the arm and to encourage other States. In North Dakota, for example, we have the Private Land Initiative, under which revenue generated from the sale of habitat stamps is used to provide cost-share assistance for wildlife habitat, and to support the Conservation PLOTS program--PLOTS stands for ``Private Land Open To Sportsmen.'' Under this program, owners agree to make their land accessible to the public in return for cost-share and incentive payments. Earlier this year, State officials made an additional $1.5 million available to increase public access on private land, in an effort to help diffuse tensions in the debate over resident versus non- resident hunters. Other States have similar programs. Kansas, for example, has its ``Walk-In Hunting'' program. Montana has a ``Block Management, Public Access/Private Land'' program. Nebraska sponsors a Conservation Reserve Program/Management Access Program, under which landowners with CRP ground receive a bonus payment if they take steps to improve habitat and allow public access on their CRP land. Colorado recently implemented its ``Walk-In Access'' program, under which interested hunters purchase a $20 stamp that gives them access to private land enrolled in the program and a directory of participating landowners. All of these are fine, innovative programs, but they lack the resources needed to meet the public's growing demand for places to hunt and engage in other forms of outdoor recreation. Make no mistake about it, wildlife-related recreation is a major force in defining our national character and in shaping our economy. For example, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2001, 82 million Americans age 16 years and older participated in wildlife- related recreation. During that year, over 34 million people fished, 13 million hunted, and over 66 million participated in at least one type of wildlife-watching activity such as observing, feeding, or photographing wildlife in the United States. According to the Fish & Wildlife Service, those 82 million people who engaged in wildlife-related activities spent an estimated $108 billion, including over $35 billion on fishing and nearly $21 billion on hunting. That's big business by any definition, and it is a slice of the national economy that is increasingly important to our rural communities and small businesses. In 2001 alone, for example, $20 billion was spent on food, lodging, and transportation by those who hunted and fished, while wildlife-watching participants, including birders, spent another $8.2 billion on those same items. In North Dakota, wildlife-related recreation generated nearly $1 billion for the State's economy during the 2001-2002 season, according to the North Dakota Game and Fish Commission. The Commission estimates that direct spending by hunters and anglers laws $469 million during the season, generating nearly $545 million in additional economic activity. North Dakota ranks second in the Nation in terms of the percentage of the State's resident's who hunt, 19 percent, and fifth among States in the percentage of State residents who fish, 29 percent. To underscore the importance of non-resident hunters to my State, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that North Dakota ranks third among States in the percentage of hunters in the State who are non-residents. The estimated 52,000 non-resident hunters in our State make up an estimated 37 percent of all hunters. Only South Dakota, 65 percent, and Colorado, 43 percent, rank higher. In addition, there is ample evidence, from North Dakota State University and individual business owners, that the wildlife and hunting opportunities created by the Conservation Reserve Program have helped to cushion the economic impact first created when the CRP withdrew land from production and caused farmers to purchase fewer inputs and other services so important to our struggling rural communities. So it is critically important that we look for additional means to increase sporting opportunities for the public, and do so in a way that not only allows traditional farming operations to continue, but also increases a farm's income-earning potential. Our proposal would do just that. All in all, this program will be good for farm income, good for conservation, good for our struggling rural communities, and a positive force in strengthening the bond between producers and the general public. Finally, there are also broader policy reasons to move in this direction. For example, it is likely that future world trade agreements are increasingly going to limit the ability of the United States and other major agricultural producing countries to support our farmers in a way that is considered to be trade, or market, ``distorting.'' In other words, U.S. policymakers are likely to find it more and more difficult to provide government farm support in a way that is tied either to production or prices. Instead, we will have to find so-called ``green box'' means of supporting farm income--payments that are not based on bushels produced or current commodity prices. That's clearly the direction that the European Union is taking, and we had better take notice. The program we are announcing today fits neatly in the current green box definition, and should be one of the many tools available to support farm income well into the future, even if new trade agreements constrain our farm policy options. I am pleased that our legislation has already received the support of a number of farm, sportsmen, and conservation organizations, including the North Dakota Farmers Union, the North Dakota Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the Wildlife Management Institute, the Izaak Walton League of America, the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Mule Deer Foundation, Pheasants Forever, the American Sportfishing Association, Pure Fishing, Trout Unlimited, Bass Anglers Sportsmen Society, the Ruffed Grouse Society, the Wildlife Society, the Pope and Young Club, the Federal of Flyfishers, the International Hunter Education Association, the Boone and Crocket Club, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the North American Grouse Partnership, the Texas Wildlife Association, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada. In closing, let me quote from one of news articles that appeared in a North Dakota paper last year. Commenting on the controversy over the proposed change in the pheasant season opening date, the Bismark Tribune editorialized that, ``On one extreme are landowners catering to out-of-state hunters, in part, because of weak and declining rural economies. For them, this is a matter of survival. On the other hand, many sportsmen feel that the growing numbers of acres dedicated to out-of-state hunters, willing to pay big bucks to hunt, are destroying the sport for the state's residents . . . The two sides are a long, long way apart.'' My hope is that we can find ways to bring people together, and in the process strengthen our rural economy, encourage conservation, and preserve our hunting traditions for generations to come. And that's what this proposal is all about. I ask unanimous consent that additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I commend the leadership of the Appropriations Committee, and particularly Subcommittee Chairman Bennett and Senator Kohl for their work on this bill. I wanted to bring to the subcommittee's attention the lack of information on conservation cropping techniques in transitional climate areas. Conservation cropping systems have proven very effective in reducing soil erosion, saving moisture and increasing yields in arid regions of the country. Unfortunately, the adoption of this type of system has been difficult in climate transition areas where precipitation is more abundant and predictable because there was little or no immediate economic advantage to doing so. Efforts are getting underway to study the use of conservation cropping techniques in southeastern North Dakota, northeastern South Dakota and western Minnesota, a transition area between subhumid and semiarid climates. The goal of the study would be to identify conservation rotations, cover crops, seeding techniques, and residue management practices that would make conservation tillage acceptable and profitable in these climate transition areas. It is my hope that in conference a small Federal investment could be directed to this important study.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Dorgan, for proposing this amendment and our friend and neighbor, Senator Burns from Montana, for cosponsoring it. This is an important amendment. I was among the handful of negotiators of the farm bill representing the Senate as we negotiated with the House on the final provisions. These provisions were especially important to those of us who represent the most rural areas in the country. If you do not have broadband access in the modern world, you are left out and left behind, and your economic prospects are badly diminished. On the other hand, if you are part of this extraordinary development, all of a sudden distance and the barriers of distance fall away. We know the greatest difficulty for our State has been our distance from markets. That is what has disadvantaged the economic opportunity for people from North Dakota, Montana, and South Dakota. I see the Senator from Idaho--his State as well, and Wyoming, and so many other States in the heartland of America. The provisions that were put into the farm bill were designed to give us a chance to open new opportunities and to reduce the barriers of distance. Twenty million dollars is a modest amount of money. But in the appropriations bill they cut it by more than 50 percent--to $9.1 million. We all know that amount of money in and of itself is not going to make an extraordinary difference. But that is not how it works. That small amount of money leverages much larger amounts of loans. It is more than 30 to 1. On a $6 million amount, you would increase, by at least $180 million, loans that are available across the country. I have been told it may be more than $300 million because what you are doing with a small amount of money is leveraging a large amount of lending to build broadband in the rural parts of this country. This is a matter of fairness. It is a matter of economic development. It is a matter of keeping the promise that was made in the farm bill. Nothing could be more clear. Nothing could be more important in terms of economic opportunity in the rural parts of the country than to make sure they are part of this developing technology. In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower recognized the importance of having a nation connected by an interstate highway system. He proposed the legislation that provided for Federal funding. That is precisely what this does with the new technology--to provide broadband that ties America together that provides opportunity. Every year, I put on an event in North Dakota which we call ``Marketplace for Entrepreneurs.'' Last year, there were 8,000 people in attendance. We have hundreds of classes. Some of them are on how you write a business plan or how to use the Internet or how to use broadband to develop your business, to expand your business, to create a business. There is nothing more hopeful in terms of opportunity in rural areas than to have this new technology available. Congress ought not to turn its back on a promise just made and cut the funding. I am told now this $6 million will provide an additional loan amount of over $275 million--$6 million becomes $275 million in loans all across the rural part of the country. Why? How can that be? How can $6 million turn into $275 million? It is because you need just a little bit of a guarantee to get over the hump to cause lenders to make these loans. It gives some additional assurance that it is going to be repaid. It is very interesting. History shows that in fact the money is repaid. It works. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I would like to discuss the Climate Stewardship Act, which the Senate will vote on later today. Although I recognize the challenge of global climate change, I must oppose this legislation because of the drastic negative effect it would have on our national economy. Our economy depends on affordable, reliable, and abundant sources of energy. Whether that means natural gas, petroleum, or coal, we have a responsibility to ensure that our businesses, manufacturers, and households have access to energy sources at reasonable costs. We depend on energy in almost everything we do in our lives, from turning on the light in the morning, to driving our cars to work, to cooking our dinner at the end of the day. We need access to these sources of energy, and we need access in a way that doesn't force us to choose between paying our power bill, buying gas at the pump, or buying essentials like groceries and medicine. During my time in the Senate, I have remained committed to keeping energy costs affordable for all North Dakotans and all Americans. The bill before us would threaten the affordability of these sources of energy. It will require companies that produce and use natural gas, petroleum, and coal to acquire credits for each ton of greenhouse gas emissions for which they are responsible. These credits will have a value of anywhere from $8 to $13 for each ton of emissions. Our emissions levels are in the many millions of tons per year. This means dramatic cost increases ranging in the many millions of dollars for the energy industry, costs that will inevitably be passed on to the consumer. According to a recent MIT study--the same study, by the way, that the sponsors of this bill cite in making their arguments--national demand for coal would increase much more slowly under the legislation. Petroleum and natural gas demand will also increase at slower rates. This is because the costs of these fuels will dramatically increase under the bill. It will mean higher gas prices, higher electricity bills, and higher home heating costs. I am particularly concerned about the effects of these cost increases on our international competitiveness. The Kyoto Treaty has not yet taken effect, and it now appears that Russia may be backing away from ratification. In the absence of the Kyoto treaty, other nations across the globe will not be subject to strict greenhouse gas emissions controls. Moreover, even if the Kyoto Treaty does enter into force, there has been bipartisan agreement that the Kyoto treaty contains unbalanced provisions that would require disproportionate carbon dioxide reductions in this country while other countries would have to make much less significant changes. If we were to adopt the bill before us at this time, we would risk putting U.S. manufacturing--which relies on affordable energy--at a significant competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. Already, we are losing jobs to manufacturers in Mexico and China. If our energy costs were to increase because of this bill, our job loss to foreign countries would accelerate. With record Federal deficits and debt, our economy is already in trouble; now is not the time to be making our economic problems worse. Let me be clear that I am fully aware of and fully acknowledge the reality of global climate change. We need only to look to the droughts in my part of the country over the last few years to see the very real effects of global climate change. Human activity since the industrial revolution is warming the planet, melting the polar ice caps, and causing severe weather events across the globe. These developments have very serious implications for this country, and for the world. I do not dispute this ecological situation and I do not dispute the need to do something about it. Let me also state that I very much appreciate the efforts of Senator Lieberman and Senator McCain to try to address this issue. They have done so in a way that genuinely attempts to address a variety of constituent issues. However, I still do not think the legislation we are considering today is the right approach at the right time. We need to continue working for a solution that carefully balances this need for action with the concerns about the impact on our economy and our competitiveness, and I hope to be a part of finding innovative and creative solutions to global climate change. We need to carefully consider impacts on States with energy dependent economies, such as North Dakota. We need to carefully consider the impact on different types of energy and make sure we do not put some forms of energy at an unfair disadvantage. For example, to have my support any legislation on this topic must address the unique circumstances of lignite coal, which is the primary source of electricity in North Dakota. And we need to carefully weigh the impacts that any plan will have on energy consumers. This will require an enormous amount of careful work, and I look forward to being part of the effort to address this very real problem. These are enormously complex issues that will require very careful study and an opportunity for extensive public review and comment. Because of the circumstances under which we are considering this legislation, we have not had that opportunity for extensive review. Without that careful study and review to ensure that we understand in detail the impacts on energy production in my State, on our national economy, and on our international competitiveness, I cannot vote for this legislation. For that reason, I must vote against the bill today.

Mr. CONRAD

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

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

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, this morning's Washington Post has a front-page story entitled ``Inquiry Faults Intelligence on Iraq.'' The subheadline says, ``The Threat From Saddam Hussein Was Overstated, Senate Committee Report Finds.'' Many of us who voted against going to war against Iraq believed it was not in the national security interest of the United States to attack Iraq at this moment; that instead we ought to keep our eye on the ball and keep the pressure on al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden because it was al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden who attacked America on September 11, not Iraq. I think this morning's report has increasing evidence that it was simply a misplaced priority to attack Iraq rather than keeping our full resources directed at taking down al-Qaida and holding Osama bin Laden accountable for his vicious attack on this country. If we look across the evidence, I believe in many ways the United States simply made a mistake of judgment on what was most important. The President and his advisers believed--and I believe they sincerely believed--that the priority was to go after Iraq. They believed there was some link between Iraq and al-Qaida. I think the evidence was always very thin for that and, in fact, the more we know, the more clear it is there really were not any strong linkages between Iraq and al-Qaida. In fact, it is unlikely that there would be because Saddam Hussein was secular, Osama bin Laden is a fundamentalist. In many ways, they are enemies; they are at odds. It is very interesting that if one goes out and tries to ascertain what people of the country think, the polling shows 70 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind September 11. Over half believe that Iraqis were the hijackers of the planes. The fact is, not a single Iraqi was among the hijackers of the airliners that were turned into flying bombs. The vast majority of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabians, as, of course, is Osama bin Laden. I think 15 of the 19 were Saudis. Two were from the United Arab Emirates and there were other countries involved as well, but not a single Iraqi. That is the fact. Another thing, we have now the President himself saying there is no evidence of a Hussein tie to September 11. It is very important we get the facts right when we make these judgments about going to war, especially when we are going to go on a preemptive war, when we attack first, something we have never done in the entire history of the United States. We have never attacked, without somebody attacking us first or attacking our allies first, but in this case we attacked first. As the Intelligence Committee report this morning suggests, we did so based on faulty intelligence and faulty evidence. Another assertion that was made repeatedly was that there was a terrorist camp in Iraq that members of al-Qaida went to, but we knew then and we know now that that camp is in this place on the chart, which is the former Ansar al-Islam pocket. It is in Iraq. As this line shows, that camp is in a part of Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not control. In fact, this part of Iraq is controlled by the Kurds. The Kurds are our allies. So once again, this is a disturbing bit of information used in a way that I believe fundamentally misled people. A second piece of intelligence was that Mohamed Atta, who was among the hijackers, supposedly met with the intelligence chief in Prague, in Czechoslovakia. That charge was repeated over and over. Our intelligence agencies believe Mr. Atta was not in Prague at the time of that reported meeting. Instead, he was in the United States-- again, evidence that simply does not support the case. What we do know is that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida organized that attack on the United States. That is who was responsible. That is who we should be going after. The other thing that was asserted repeatedly was that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I do not fault the administration for making that case because, frankly, I believed there were probably biological and chemical weapons. I believed it because we know that the previous U.N. inspectors had catalogued weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical weapons, but that was some years ago. Even then, there was no evidence that those weapons had been destroyed. So even though now we have not found them, I think it is understandable that people believed there were at least chemical and biological weapons. The Soviet Union had biological and chemical weapons; we never attacked them. China had biological and chemical weapons; we did not attack them. North Korea has weapons of mass destruction, or at least they assert they do. We have not attacked them. In every one of those cases, we used containment. We used patience. We did not attack first. In the case where we were attacked, we know who did that. It was not Iraq. It was not Iraqis. It was al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden. It has now been 775 days since that attack on our country, and Osama bin Laden is still broadcasting tapes threatening Americans and our allies. It has been 775 days, and we have not brought him to justice. I believe that is the priority. I believe that should be our top goal. I believe we ought to find Osama bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaida leadership and take them out. Newsweek ran a story in which they identified a possible location in the Kunar Province between Afghanistan and Pakistan as a place where Osama bin Laden is reported to be hiding. This is a pretty small area of the country of Afghanistan, where they have narrowed it down through their investigative reporting as a place where Osama bin Laden is hiding. What I find most disturbing is in that story, they said this: . . . bin Laden appears to be not only alive, but thriving. And with America distracted in Iraq, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf leery of stirring up an Islamist backlash, there is no large-scale military force currently pursuing the chief culprit in the 9/11 attacks . . . I am here today to ask why not? Why is there not a large military force with an operation underway to find Osama bin Laden and to bring him to justice? That ought to be our top priority. If we have been distracted by Iraq, then that is exactly what this Senator feared when I voted against authorizing going to war against Iraq at this time. That is exactly what concerned this Senator, that a preemptive war against Iraq--a country that had a low level of threat against this country, according to our own intelligence agencies--has distracted us from going after the man and the organization that attacked this country. It was not Iraqis who attacked this country; it was al-Qaida that attacked this country. Saddam Hussein was not the leader of that operation, Osama bin Laden was the leader of that operation. It has been 775 days since that vicious attack on this country and we still have not brought him to justice. What is far more disturbing to me is there is, apparently, no large scale military force currently pursuing the chief culprit in the 9/11 attacks. Why not? I think the American people deserve an answer to that question. I think the Members of this Chamber deserve an answer to that question. Why is there not a large-scale military operation underway to find Osama bin Laden and to hold him to account? That ought to be the priority. That ought to be in the highest interests of the national security of the United States. Osama bin Laden engineered the attack on this country. I must say, last weekend, to see him in another tape, bragging about the damage he has done to this country--outrageous, absolutely outrageous. Let's go get Osama bin Laden and those who attacked this country. That ought to be our highest national security priority. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, over the weekend, Osama bin Laden was again seen vowing that al-Qaida would launch suicide attacks against Americans and our allies. Frankly, it angered me to see these taped reports that again Osama bin Laden is threatening Americans. It has now been 771 days since al-Qaida launched terrorist attacks on American targets on September 11, 2001. For me, this report raised the question of why is Osama bin Laden still able to threaten this country? Why have we not been able to find him and bring him to account? I was reminded, in seeing these tapes, that just several weeks ago Newsweek magazine did a detailed analysis on where Osama bin Laden might be. They narrowed it down to Kunar province on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They had detailed reports in that article of Osama bin Laden being seen in this area. It struck me at the time, if we have a pretty good idea of where Osama bin Laden is, why are we not flooding that area with American forces to take him out? Newsweek went on to report that: . . . bin Laden appears to be not only alive, but thriving. And with America distracted in Iraq and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf leery of stirring up an Islamist backlash, there is no large-scale military force currently pursuing the chief culprit in the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials concede. I find that alarming. Osama bin Laden led the attacks on this country. We know that. There is no doubt about it. If we are being distracted by Iraq, in my view, that is a serious mistake. I must say it is one that I very much feared one year ago when we were considering whether to attack Iraq. I voted against attacking Iraq at that time because I believed our top priority ought to be going after al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. There has just recently been a report in the Boston Globe that says: As the hunt for Saddam Hussein grows more urgent, and the guerilla war in Iraq shows no signs of abating, the Bush administration is continuing to shift highly specialized intelligence officers from the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to the Iraq crisis. I believe that is the wrong priority. I believe the priority ought to be al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, and we ought to be going into this area that has been identified in seeking to find him and holding him to account. When I reflect on the decision to go into Iraq, I am reminded that many in the public believe that Iraqis were part of the 9/11 operation. In fact, 69 percent of the American people believe Saddam was involved in the September 11 attacks. Half of Americans believe that Iraqis were among the 9/11 hijackers. We know that is not the case. There were no Iraqis, none, zero, involved in the 19 who hijacked the planes in our country that turned them into flying bombs that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Egypt, and one was from Lebanon. Not a single one was from Iraq. Yet even now many Americans believe it was in fact Iraqis who attacked this country. In fact, more Americans believe most of the hijackers were Iraqis--21 percent--than the 17 percent who correctly stated none of the hijackers was Iraqi. We are making decisions here, and the American people are supporting decisions, and apparently they do not have the accurate information. Unfortunately, it is not hard to figure out why. In speech after speech, the President and his top officials have juxtaposed 9/11 with Saddam and Iraq, strongly implying there is a clear and direct link between Saddam and 9/11. To take only one of dozens of examples, as recently as last month Vice President Cheney again linked 9/11 with Iraq, describing Iraq as the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11. This is the Vice President of the United States suggesting that Iraq was at the center of the attack on America on 9/11. The President himself was forced to correct the record just a few days later, when he said we have had no evidence Saddam Hussein was involved on September 11; no evidence. The record is overwhelmingly clear. We know who attacked us on September 11. It was not Iraq. There were no Iraqis. The people who attacked us on September 11 were al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden. In 770 days, we have not yet held him to account. That has to be our priority. The President and his top officials have sought to link Saddam not just with 9/11 specifically but with al-Qaida more generally. They have cited three pieces of evidence to back that claim. First, the administration stated that one of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, met with an Iraqi agent in Prague in the spring of 2001. For example, last year the Vice President asserted: We have reporting that places him [Atta] in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer a few months before the attacks on the World Trade Center. That is what the Vice President said then. But what do we know now? The fact is, the CIA and FBI have concluded this report was simply not accurate because Mohammed Atta was in this country, in Virginia Beach, VA, at the time the Vice President had asserted he was in Prague. As the Washington Post reported on September 29: In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a September 11, 2001, hijacker months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, the CIA, and the foreign government that first made the allegation. Second, the administration has argued a senior al-Qaida operative, Al-Zarqawi, was seen in Baghdad. He may very well have been in Baghdad, but that doesn't prove anything about a formal link between Iraq and al-Qaida. We know senior operatives spent months in our own country prior to 9/11. That doesn't make the United States an ally of al-Qaida any more than the presence of an al-Qaida operative in Baghdad makes Saddam Hussein an ally of Al-Qaida. Third, the administration said al-Qaida maintained a training camp in northern Iraq. Again, this sounds convincing, but as the former director of the Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the State Department's intelligence bureau points out, one finds this is not a very honest explanation: `` . . . I mean, you had terrorist activity described that was taking place in Iraq, without the mention that it was taking place in an area under the control of the Kurds rather than an area under the control of Saddam Hussein.'' On this map, this is the camp they were talking about. This is the Ansar al-Islam area. There was a terrorist camp here. This is a map of Iraq that shows very clearly that is an area controlled by the Kurds. The Kurds are our allies. This is an area that was not under the control of Saddam Hussein. If the American people are going to make sound judgments about who is responsible for what, and who we ought to hold responsible, and who we ought to prioritize for attack, it seems very clear to me the ones we ought to be attacking are al-Qaida. The ones we ought to be going after first and foremost are Osama bin Laden and his allies. Over and over, I believe the American people have been led to believe there is this strong link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. I do not think the facts bear out that connection. The President himself has now said Saddam Hussein has not been linked to September 11. Yet the majority of the American people believe that he was. That mistaken understanding is right at the core of what has been to me a serious mistake in the strategy in fighting this war on terror. Our first priority, our top priority, one we should not be distracted from, is going after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. I don't think we should be distracted, chasing the mirage of terrorism being fundamentally a product of Iraq. I don't think the record bears that out. If there is not a strong connection between Iraq and al-Qaida, why have we repeatedly had that linkage made? I think there has been very little credible evidence of a direct connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. As a former State Department intelligence official said in the same Front Line interview: His [Secretary Powell's] own intelligence officials and virtually everyone else in the terrorist community said there is no significant connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. If there is not a strong connection, why have we heard so many references linking the two? That is a question we all need to ask and try to answer. In addition to the link to al-Qaida, the President and his administration have also repeatedly indicated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. First the President suggested over and over there were close links between Saddam and al-Qaida, implying Saddam had something to do with the September 11 terrorist attack on this country. We now see that is a very weak case. Is there better evidence to substantiate the second set of claims used to justify war with Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was about to acquire nuclear weapons, and was producing chemical and biological weapons, all of which could be used for an imminent attack against the United States? First, on nuclear weapons, the President and top officials repeatedly warned of Saddam's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. They buttressed these general claims with two very specific assertions. First, the President and his top officials said there was direct evidence of Saddam Hussein trying to buy uranium in Africa. In his State of the Union Address last January, President Bush told Congress and the American people: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. That is what the President said then. But what do we know now? We now know that the CIA knew, months before the State of the Union Address, and months before the war on Iraq started, the allegation was simply not accurate; it was based on a crude forgery that did not pass the credibility test for CIA experts. Here is just one news story, ``Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says.'' The White House acknowledged for the first time today that President Bush was relying on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate information from American intelligence agencies when he declared in his State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium from Africa. Second, the President and his aides have repeatedly asserted Iraq had tried to purchase aluminum tubes that could be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. The President said: Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes, suitable for nuclear weapons production. That's what the President said then. But what do we know now? The International Atomic Energy Agency's director concluded this spring, before the war on Iraq started, that the tubes were for conventional artillery rockets. As the Washington Post reported: ElBaradei rejected a key Bush administration claim made twice by the President in major speeches and repeated by the Secretary of State that Iraq had tried to purchase high- strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. . . . El Baradei's report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. . . . ``It was highly unlikely Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a centrifuge program,'' ElBaradei said. But the Bush administration did not stop with these specifics. It repeatedly asserted there was an imminent danger of Saddam acquiring and using nuclear weapons. In a speech 1 year ago, President Bush said: The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. The Vice President last March went even further, stating that ``we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.'' That is what they said then. But what do we know now? We have occupied Iraq for 5 months. We have full, unrestricted access to the whole country and more than 1,000 investigators looking for illegal weapons. The Bush administration's chief investigator leading the search for weapons of mass destruction has found no evidence of any serious recent effort to build nuclear weapons. I think this quote from the October 3 Washington Post sums up the most recent finding: After searching for nearly six months, U.S. forces and CIA experts have determined that Iraq's nuclear program was only in the very most rudimentary state, the Bush Administration's chief investigator formally told Congress yesterday. On nuclear weapons, specific allegations underlying the administration's claims had certainly been discredited before we went to war, and since the war we have found no evidence to support the more general claims of Iraqi efforts to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. What about chemical and biological weapons? We all knew Iraq had possessed and had used chemical weapons in the 1980s. We all knew intelligence had not conclusively demonstrated that all of these weapons had been destroyed. In fact, I must say I believed Iraq was likely to have chemical and biological weapons because we knew they did at one point. The United Nations investigators found them. But those weapons have not been found since. We have searched high and low for biological and chemical weapons. We may still find them. I think we have to ask ourselves, would that have justified a preemptive attack on Iraq? My own judgment is it would not. Why? The Soviet Union had weapons of mass destruction; we never launched a preemptive attack on them. China has weapons of mass destruction; we never launched a preemptive attack on them. You can go through country after country where we have decided to use containment rather than military assault. The President told us the Iraqi regime possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. I believe he believed that, and there was reason to believe that. I don't diminish that argument. But the fact is we were wrong, or at least so far it appears we were wrong. I must say I believed--and I say it again--I believed they had chemical and biological weapons. But after searching for nearly 6 months, U.S. forces and the CIA experts have found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. We still may find them. That still leaves us with the question: Did their mere possession of such weapons justify a preemptive attack? What did our own CIA tell us? I remember those briefings, elements of which have been made public. I am not revealing any secrets. The CIA told us there was a low likelihood of an Iraqi attack on us or our allies unless we attacked them first. The point is simply this: We have not found biological and chemical weapons. We have not found evidence of a reconstituted nuclear program. We have not found any serious links between al-Qaida and Iraq. Those were the fundamental reasons we went to war with Iraq. I believe it was a mistake to attack Iraq at the time we did. I believe it was a priority that simply did not make sense given the threat to this country. The imminent threat to this country is in the form of al-Qaida. The imminent threat to this country is the forces led by Osama bin Laden. It has now been 771 days since they attacked this country. Newsweek magazine reports they have a pretty good idea where Osama bin Laden is--right on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet there is no large-scale military operation underway to take out Osama bin Laden. I think the American people deserve to know why not. Why not? Why aren't we launching massive forces into the area identified as the place where Osama bin Laden is hiding? Have we been distracted by Iraq? I hope not. But the evidence I see is that the resources and the attention, which I believe should have been first directed at taking out Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, are going to Iraq. I very much hope we will have answers to these questions in the coming days. The Senator in the Chair, whom I count as a friend in this body, is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Obviously he has knowledge none of the rest of us possess. As one Senator, I saw Osama bin Laden on these tapes again over the weekend and read the stories in the news magazines that said we have a pretty good idea where Osama bin Laden is. But we have not found him, leading to the suggestion that we have been distracted by Iraq. That disturbs me a great deal. I believe the overriding priority for this country and the national security of America is in holding Osama bin Laden to account, finding him, and stopping him.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CONRAD

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I express my support for this amendment-- which is very similar to an amendment I had filed earlier--to pay for the travel home of U.S. troops currently serving in the Iraqi theater of operations. I am pleased to join in cosponsoring the amendment. The Department of Defense recently announced that it would grant soldiers on 12-month deployments as a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom 15 days of rest and recuperation leave. About 270 soldiers a day are now arriving in the United States to begin their leave period. At the present time, these troops are required to pay their own way home from their port of debarkation--right now, Baltimore-Washington International Airport. It says something about the priorities of the Department of Defense that while they are asking Congress for another $87 billion for war and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are also making soldiers on leave pay for their transportation home and back. Many of these soldiers are members of the Reserves and National Guard. Many of those citizen soldiers have recently learned that, because the administration has been unable to mobilize sufficient international support to ease the burden on American troops, they will be required to spend a full 12 months in Iraq. This is in addition to the 2 to 3 months they spent away from home training for their mission. Despite the shifting dates for their return home, our American service men and women have served with courage and distinction in terrible conditions. Soldiers from the 142d Combat Engineering Battalion, a North Dakota National Guard unit, have already begun coming home on leave. The first soldiers chosen for leave were very concerned that they might have to pay well over $1,000 to buy a ticket home from Baltimore. I was very pleased that Northwest Airlines, the main provider of air travel to North Dakota, was able to respond to my request to offer reasonable priced tickets to these brave soldiers. But this should be only a temporary measure. I urge the Senate to now clear the way for full government funding of the travel expenses for our troops on leave, including those that will take leave before we are able to complete our legislation, by adopting this amendment. In working on this amendment, I wanted to be sure we avoided creating an unfair disparity between soldiers. We will not likely conclude action on this supplemental until the tail end of October, and by that time several thousand soldiers will have already paid for their own travel home. It seemed unfair to me that these soldiers should be forced to pay their own way while those who traveled later would go at government expense. Our troops in Iraq have been serving under difficult conditions, and they deserve our full support. I greatly appreciate Chairman Stevens' willingness to include this important issue in the supplemental appropriations bill. I am happy that we were able to work together to provide for the travel expenses of our brave soldiers serving in Iraq.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I want to start by putting in perspective where we are in the fiscal condition of the country as we consider this request from the President for $87 billion for Iraq. I think it is important for us first to recognize we already face next year a record budget deficit of $535 billion. But that really understates the seriousness of the problem because, on top of that, under the President's proposal, we will also be taking $160 billion of Social Security trust fund money to pay for other things. That gives a total operating deficit for next year approaching $700 billion. Some have said, well, it is really relatively small as a share of our gross domestic product. That is not correct. Fairly measured, the operating deficit next year is the biggest we have had since World War II. If we look at the Social Security trust fund, if we back that out and we treat it the same way in 1983, what we see is the deficit as a percentage of GDP is the biggest it has been since World War II. This is a huge deficit, however measured. The President has told us these deficits will be small and short term. Wrong again. They are not small; they are huge by any terms, dollar terms or GDP terms. Beyond that, they are long lasting. In fact, according to the President's own analysis, they go on and on and on, and they get worse as the baby boom generation begins to retire. Just over the next decade, we see an ocean of red ink. According to Congressional Budget Office numbers, if we just add in proposals to extend the tax cuts, to add a prescription drug benefit, and to provide AMT reform, there will be deficits of $600 billion, $700 billion, as far as the eye can see. We have a problem of spending and of revenue. The revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product next year will be the lowest since 1950. That is a revenue crisis, as well as a spending problem. If we look at the spending side of the equation, we can see the increases in discretionary spending over the baseline have occurred overwhelmingly in just three areas: defense, homeland security, and rebuilding New York and providing airline relief. In 2003, ninety-two percent of the increased spending is in those areas. I might add those are areas that all of us, on a bipartisan basis, supported. The President of the United States told us 2 years ago he would virtually pay off the debt. He said by 2008 there would be virtually no publicly held debt left. Now what we see is, instead of the debt being virtually eliminated, we see it skyrocketing. The gross debt of the United States, we estimate, will be $6.8 trillion by the end of this year. In 10 years, we estimate it will be approaching $15 trillion--all at the worst possible time. It is the worst possible time because the baby boom generation is going to begin retiring in 2008. On this chart, the green bar is the Social Security trust fund, the blue bar is the Medicare trust fund, and the red bar is the cost of the tax cuts--those that have already passed and those that are proposed by the President. What this shows is, at the very time the Social Security and Medicare trust funds go cash negative--at that very time, the costs of the President's tax cuts explode, driving us deeper and deeper into deficit and debt. You don't have to take my word for it, or the Congressional Budget Office's word for it. You can take the President's word for it. Here is the calculation from his budget of what would happen if we followed his proposals, his tax cuts, his spending. What it shows is we never get out of deficit and that the deficits explode. This is as a percentage of gross domestic product--which he prefers to refer to now to try to understate the magnitude of the problem. Look at what his own analysis shows. It shows these are the good times, even though there are record deficits--the biggest we have ever had in dollar terms, and as a percentage of GDP since World War II. But it is going to get much worse. The Congressional Budget Office warned us, as the New York Times reported it on September 14: This course prompted the Congressional Budget Office to issue an unusual warning in its forecast last month: If Congressional Republicans and the administration get their wish and extend all the tax cuts now scheduled to expire, and if they pass a limited prescription drug benefit for Medicare and keep spending at its current level, the deficit by 2013 will have built up to $6.2 trillion. Once the baby boomers begin retiring at the end of this decade, the office said, that course will lead either to drastically higher taxes, severe spending cuts or ``unsustainable levels of debt.'' Just this week, the Committee for Economic Development, major business leaders in the country, the Concord Coalition, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned of the dangers of the current fiscal course. They said: To get a sense of the magnitude of the deficits the nation is likely to face without a change in policies, consider that even with the full economic recovery that CBO forecasts and a decade of economic growth, balancing the budget by the end of the coming decade (i.e., in 2013) would entail such radical steps as: raising individual and corporate income taxes by 27 percent; or eliminating Medicare entirely; or cutting Social Security benefits by 60 percent; or shutting down three- fourths of the Defense Department; or cutting all expenditures, other than Social Security, Medicare, defense, homeland security, and interest payments on the debt-- including expenditures for education, transportation, housing, the environment, law enforcement, national parks, research on diseases, and the rest--by 40 percent. Beyond the next decade, the tradeoffs become even more difficult. When we look now to what the President is proposing in this $87 billion, and we look back at what we were told--remember when Larry Lindsey, the President's chief economic adviser, said it would cost $100 billion to $200 billion for our involvement in Iraq, and he was chastised by this administration? The head of the Office of Management and Budget said he was way off. He wasn't way off. He was right on. We are already at $140 billion for this Iraqi undertaking. The administration has been wrong, wrong, wrong. They have been wrong repeatedly. They are wrong about the deficits. They said there wouldn't be any. Then they said they were going to be small. Then they said they were small as a percentage of gross domestic product. They were wrong on each count. Then they told us: Iraq won't cost much. Here is what Ari Fleischer, the President's chief spokesman, said on February 18 of this year: And Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction. What happened? The administration told us Iraq was going to be able to pay, they were going to be able to cover much of the cost of their own reconstruction. Now that proves to be wrong as well. This administration repeatedly told us the cost of Iraqi reconstruction could be largely borne by Iraq. Here is what the Deputy Secretary of Defense said before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense in March of this year: The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next 2 or 3 years . . . We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon. Wrong again. And just months later they are asking for $20 billion, and that is just a downpayment. Make no mistake, they are going to be here asking for more, and they are going to be here asking for more soon because they have already acknowledged they need another $40 billion or $50 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. They say they are going to get it from somewhere else. Where else? When we ask them, they say they have a big donors conference coming up. Do you know how much has been pledged? $1.5 billion. Where is the other $40 billion or $50 billion going to come from? They are going to be right back here asking for more. They misled this Congress. They misled the American people. They did it repeatedly on issue after issue. Here is what their USAID Administrator, Mr. Natsios, said on April 23 of this year: That's correct. $1.7 billion is the limit of reconstruction for Iraq. . . . In terms of the American taxpayer contribution, that is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries and Iraqi oil revenues. Wrong again. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and not just by a little bit; these folks have been wrong by a lot. Whether it was talking about the deficit or talking about the war with Iraq or the reconstruction of Iraq, this is a record of being wrong; wrong on major point after major point, over and over. They say to us now: What we're focused on in the $20 billion is the urgent and essential things. The $20 billion is the urgent and essential things. Really? Let's look. In this plan, there is $6,000 per radio/telephone. It costs for a satellite phone in this country $495. It costs for a walkie-talkie $55. Why when we go to Iraq all of a sudden phones cost $6,000? A satellite phone, where one can call anywhere in the world, costs less than $500, and this administration is coming before this body and saying they need $6,000 per phone. They want $33,000 per pickup truck. We have a lot of pickup trucks in our State. We have more pickup trucks being sold than any other kind of automobiles. The average cost of an award winning American truck is $15,400, and they want us to spend $33,000 per truck in Iraq. They want us to pay $50,000 per prison bed. In this country, it costs $14,000 to build a prison bed. I don't know who did these calculations, but they seem an awful lot more eager to spend money in Iraq than they are to spend money in this country. It goes on and on. They want $10,000 a month for business school in Iraq. In our country, it costs $4,000 a month for the best business schools, and we are going to be telling the American taxpayers they should spend $10,000 per month for business school? Who put these numbers together? Who came up with this plan? The one that maybe is most incredible of all is the witness protection program. They want $200,000 per family member. For a family of five, that is $1 million, and $100 million to protect 100 families. In our country, the witness protection program costs $10,000 per witness. In Iraq, this is going to cost $1 million for a family of five. We don't have a witness protection program like that in this country. We have nothing like it. This is 20 times as much in Iraq. They want $333 for 30 half-days of computer training. It costs $200 in this country. This doesn't stand much scrutiny. This whole plan doesn't stand much scrutiny, and it is time for us to ask the tough questions. Clearly, this administration has not asked the tough questions. I just found out they have $3 billion for water projects in Iraq, when they proposed in our country cutting water projects by 40 percent. They cut the water projects in America 40 percent and put in $3 billion for water projects in Iraq. I don't think the American people had any idea they were signing up to pay for a ZIP Code in Iraq or to have a witness protection program that costs $1 million a family or that they were going to be building $3 billion worth of water projects in Iraq. That wasn't the deal they signed onto. That is the deal this administration wants us to take, and all of this in the midst of the biggest deficits in our history, when we are having to borrow every dime. It does not make any sense. The very least we should do is pay for these costs and not put it on the charge card one more time. That is why the Biden amendment should be supported. He is asking the wealthiest among us to pay it. This is not a matter of what some people claim of going after the rich. Look, my wife and I are in this category. We pay additional taxes under this amendment. I am voting it because it is the right thing to do. We should not be increasing the deficit of the United States. We should not be putting it on the charge card when we already have record deficits. We ought to pony up and pay for the decisions we have made. Paying for this would just be a beginning. We would still have record deficits, by far the biggest in our history. We ought to support this amendment as a sign that we are getting serious about facing up to our fiscal challenges in this country. We also ought to adopt a series of amendments to cut the waste out of this proposal by the administration. If this measure is not adopted, we ought to support other amendments to pay for these initiatives and other amendments to scrub this whole proposal for the fat and the waste that is so clearly included. It is intolerable to say to the American taxpayer, pay these costs, all of it with borrowed money, all of it to be paid by future generations of Americans. That is not the way we have conducted ourselves in the past, and it ought not to be the way we conduct ourselves now and in the future. I urge my colleagues to support the Biden amendment. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.