Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 10, 2005, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing on ``Identity Theft: Recent Developments Involving the Security of Sensitive Consumer Information''.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 10, 2005, at 10 a.m. on pending committee business.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, March 10, 2005, at 11 a.m. in Senate Dirksen Office Building Room 226. The agenda is attached.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I yield back all time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CRAIG

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. CRAIG. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Feingold have 2 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, Chairman Grassley would ask for a no vote, as would Senator Hatch.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, it is not often that persons speaking on the opposing side of the issue on the floor yield time to someone who might disagree with them. So I am thankful to the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Chambliss, for being so accommodating. Yesterday, a judge in Montana said there remains a question of concern as it relates to the science that we hope is well underway in Canada. You have certainly heard my colleagues from Montana and others argue that is a legitimate concern. Senator Conrad has made that point time and time again. It is fair for us to err on the side of science. That is where we ought to be. That is where our industry is. That is where we ought to demand of the Canadian industry. Our industry people have been north of the border and they have seen the tremendous progress that has been made. Our Secretary of Agriculture has recognized that progress and, in part, premised his rule on that basis. At the same time, I am one of those who remains skeptical. I think we have to ensure that we cannot take another hit in our agricultural economy. In 2003, May, Canada, boom. And then in December, along came the cow in the lower 48 that stole Christmas. She wasn't green, she was black and white and she pulled the rug out from under the industry just for a moment in time. Our Secretary of Agriculture effectively stepped in and talked our industry and the consuming public into stability again. Why? Because the cow had come from Canada. We have had our act together in the lower 48 for a good long while, prohibiting the incorporation of animal protein into the feed supply. We have played by the rules, and they have been sustainable, scientific rules, which has assured the American consumer safe, high-quality beef. But when Canada sneezed and we got the cold, our trading partners backed away. In that backing away, we lost a billion-dollar Japanese market. I have been one saying to my industry in Idaho that I am going to work to force the Canadians to get their act together, while at the same time we are going to assure that we open the Japanese market. Our President has put pressure openly and personally on the Japanese, as has our Vice President and Secretary of State. It is unique and unusual, but it demonstrates the importance of the livestock and cattle industry to this administration and to our country for them to say to the Japanese: Get your act together. We are clean; you know it; you see our science. We are doing the right thing. Yet the Japanese push back. I cannot in good conscience open a border that brings greater numbers to the lower 48 when the science remains questionable and we have not resumed the Pacific rim markets that are extremely valuable to the livestock industry. The new Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary Johanns, has been to the Hill. We have talked with him. He is doing the right things. We sent a letter to him in opposition. He backed away for a time. He is pushing the science, and he will continue to do so. But I do believe that a March 7 implementation is premature. I trust that the judge looking at the evidence in Montana yesterday has the same concerns that are being reflected by the Senator from North Dakota and certainly by this Senator and many of us firsthand. Actions do produce reactions. There are consequences to our action. The Senator from Colorado has been concerned about the displacement of the packing industry and what it will do, and it is having an impact. I am tremendously concerned that if we do not continue this aggressive pressure, we could lose capacity in the lower 48 as the Canadian industry begins to extend its ability into packing of their livestock products. Today, in good conscience, I cannot nor will I oppose S.J. Res. 4. I believe we are sending an extremely valuable message to all of the markets involved, including the Canadians. The Canadians do not get it. They see NAFTA as a one-way road. We have been fighting them for 4 years on timber. They do not get it.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I appreciate that. The Canadians do not get it in timber and are still rope-a-doping us. The Senator from Montana is in the Chamber. He and I have partnered in trying to get them to get their act together on timber. They do not play the game well when it is one-way traffic. They are doing the same thing in potatoes, and my potato farmers in Idaho are understanding the consequence of losing markets. Those are the real problems. To our Canadian friends: Listen up. Get your act together in Canada. Play by the rules in NAFTA and resume and remain the good friends and trading partners we have always been. But we will not dislocate economies in the lower 48 for the benefit of economic gain in Canada. That is not equality, and that is not the fair trade that we are looking at. Let's make sure the science is right. We cannot allow another hit on the livestock industry of the lower 48. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that S. 476, to authorize the Boy Scouts of America to exchange certain land in the State of Utah acquired under the Recreation and Public Purposes Act; and S. 485, to reauthorize and amend the National Geologic Mapping Act of 1992, have been added to the agenda for the hearing previously scheduled before the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, on Tuesday, March 8, at 10 a.m. in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 32

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that a hearing has been scheduled before the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The hearing will be held on Tuesday, March 8, 2004, at 10 a.m. in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on S. 179, to provide for the exchange of land within the Sierra National Forest, California, and for other purposes; S. 213, to direct the Secretary of the Interior to convey certain Federal land to Rio Arriba County, New Mexico; S. 267, to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, and for other purposes; and S. 305, to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to recruit volunteers to assist with or facilitate the activities of various agencies and offices of the Department of the Interior. Because of the limited time available for the hearing, witnesses may testify by invitation only. However, those wishing to submit written testimony for the hearing record should send two copies of their testimony to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510-6150. For further information, please contact Frank Gladics 202-224-2878 or Amy Millet at 202-224-8276.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, on February 10, I introduced S. 359, the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2005-- AgJOBS. I ask that materials I am submitting in support of that bill be printed in the Record. The material follows. The Need for AgJOBS Legislation--Now, February 2005 Americans need and expect a stable, predictable, legal work force in American agriculture. Willing American workers deserve a system that puts them first in line for available jobs with fair, market wages. All workers deserve decent treatment and protection of basic rights under the law. Consumers deserve a safe, stable, domestic food supply. American citizens and taxpayers deserve secure borders, a safe homeland, and a government that works. Yet we are being threatened on all these fronts, because of a growing shortage of legal workers in agriculture. To address these challenges, a bipartisan group of Members of Congress has introduced the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act of 2005. This bipartisan effort builds upon years of discussion and suggestions among growers, farm worker advocates, Latino and immigration issue advocates, Members of both parties in both Houses of Congress, and others. In all substantive essentials, this bill is the same as S. 1645/H.R. 3142 in the 108th Congress. The Problems Of the USA's 1.6 million agricultural work force, more than half is made up of workers not legally authorized to work here--according to a conservative estimate by the Department of Labor, based, astoundingly, on self-disclosure in worker surveys. Reasonable private sector estimates run to 75 percent or more. With stepped-up documentation enforcement by the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the successor to the old INS), persons working here without legal documentation are not leaving the country, but just being scattered. The work force is being constantly and increasingly disrupted. Ag employers want a legal work force and must have a stable work force to survive--but Federal law actually punishes ``too much diligence'' in checking worker documentation. Some growers already have gone out of business, lacking workers to work their crops at critical times. Undocumented workers are among the most vulnerable persons in our country, and know they must live in hiding, not attract attention at work, and move furtively. They cannot claim the most basic legal rights and protections. They are vulnerable to predation and exploitation. Many have paid ``coyotes''--labor smugglers--thousands of dollars to be transported into and around this country, often under inhumane and perilous conditions. Reports continue to mount of horrible deaths suffered by workers smuggled in enclosed truck trailers. Meanwhile, the only program currently in place to respond to such needs, the H-2A legal guest worker program, is profoundly broken. The H-2A status quo is slow, bureaucratic, and inflexible. The program is complicated and legalistic. DOL's compliance manual alone is over 300 pages. The current H-2A process is so expensive and hard to use, it places only about 30,000-50,000 legal guest workers a year--2 percent to 3 percent of the total ag work force. A General Accounting Office study found DOL missing statutory deadlines for processing employer applications to participate in H-2A more than 40 percent of the time. Worker advocates have expressed concerns that enforcement is inadequate. The Solution--AgJOBS Reforms AgJOBS legislation provides a two-step approach to a stable, legal, safe, ag work force: (1) Streamlining and expanding the H-2A legal, temporary, guest worker program, and making it more affordable and used more--the long-term solution, which will take time to implement; (2) Outside the H-2A program, a one-time adjustment to legal status for experienced farm workers, already working here, who currently lack legal documentation--the bridge to allow American agriculture to adjust to a changing economy. H-2A Reforms: Currently, when enough domestic farm workers are not available for upcoming work, growers are required to go through a lengthy, complicated, expensive, and uncertain process of demonstrating that fact to the satisfaction of the Federal government. They are then allowed to arrange for the hiring of legal, temporary, non-immigrant guest workers. These guest workers are registered with the U.S. government to work with specific employers and return to their home countries when the work is done. Needed reforms would replace the current quagmire for qualifying employers and prospective workers with a streamlined ``attestation'' process like the one now used for H-1B high-tech workers, speeding up certification of H-2A employers and the hiring of legal guest workers. Participating employers would continue to provide for the housing and transportation needs of H-2A workers. New adjustments to the Adverse Effect Wage Rate would be suspended during a 3-year period pending extensive study of its impact and alternatives. Other current H-2A labor protections for both H-2A and domestic workers would be continued. H-2A workers would have new rights to seek redress through mediation and Federal court enforcement of specific rights. Growers would be protected from frivolous claims, exorbitant damages, and duplicative contract claims in State courts. The only experience our country has had with a broadly-used farm guest worker program (used widely in the 1950s but repealed in the 1960s) demonstrated conclusive, and instructive, results. While it was criticized on other grounds, it dramatically reduced illegal immigration while meeting labor market needs. Adjustment of workers to legal status To provide a ``bridge'' to stabilize the ag work force while H-2A reforms are being implemented, AgJOBS would create a new earned adjustment program, in which farm workers already here, but working without legal authorization, could earn adjustment to legal status. To qualify, an incumbent worker must have worked in the United States in agriculture, before January 1, 2005, for at least 100 days in a 12-month period over the last 18 months prior to the bill's introduction. (The average migrant farm worker works 120 days a year.) This would not spur new immigration, because adjustment would be limited to incumbent, trusted farm workers with a significant work history in U.S. agriculture. The adjusting worker would have non-immigrant, but legal, status. Adjustment would not be complete until a worker completes a substantial work requirement in agriculture (at least 360 days over the next 3-6 years, including 240 days in the first 3 years). Approximately 500,000 workers would be eligible to apply (based on current workforce estimates). Their spouses and minor children would be given limited rights to stay in the U.S., protected from deportation. The worker would have to verify compliance with the law and continue to report his or her work history to the government. Upon completion of adjustment, the worker would be eligible for legal permanent resident status. Considering the time elapsed from when a worker first applies to enter the adjustment process, this gives adjusting workers no advantage over regular immigrants beginning the legal immigration process at the same time. AgJOBS would not create an amnesty program. Neither would it require anything unduly onerous of workers. Eligible workers who are already in the United States could continue to work in agriculture, but now could do so legally, and prospectively earn adjustment to legal status. Adjusting workers may also work in another industry, as long as the agriculture work requirement is satisfied. AgJOBS is a Win-Win-Win approach Workers would be better off than under the status quo. Legal guest workers in the H-2A program need the assurance that government red tape won't eliminate their jobs. For workers not now in the H-2A program, every farmworker who gains legal status finally will be able to assert legal protection--which leads to higher wages, better working conditions, and safer travel. Growers and workers would get a stable, legal work force. Consumers would get better assurance of a safe, stable, American-grown, food supply--not an increased dependence on imported food. Law-abiding Americans want to make sure the legal right to stay in our country is earned, and that illegal behavior is not rewarded now or encouraged in the future. Border and homeland security would be improved by bringing workers out of the underground economy and registering them with the AgJOBS adjustment program. Overall, AgJOBS takes a balanced approach, and would work to benefit everyone.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I speak about some people who, through the way they lived their lives, have been very important, not only to me, but to their entire community. I am talking about Stu and Bethel Dopf of Cambridge, ID. Stu Dopf passed away in 2001, and just recently, on January 17, 2005, he was joined in Heaven by his wife of 63 years. When I read of Mrs. Dopf's passing, fond memories flooded my mind from my time growing up in Washington County, where Cambridge is located. I have only good things to remember about Mr. and Mrs. Dopf and the family they raised from my very first experiences with them. For more than 40 years, the Dopfs worked together to publish a small weekly newspaper known as the Upper Country News-Reporter. It was printed on newsprint, but I have no doubt in my mind that this paper represented and still does the very fabric of that community. The paper plays that role because the Dopfs wanted it that way, and made sure it happened. I believe my first experience with Stu Dopf was almost 50 years ago at the Washington County Fair in Cambridge. I was in 4-H and had entered fat calves to be judged at the fair. Now, to some reporters or newspaper editors, livestock judging at a county fair may not seem like much of an assignment. But Stu understood the community in which he lived, and the farm and ranch families that made it a closely-knit community. People were interested in the activities and accomplishments of their neighbors, and no achievement was too small to report. After that, any time I had some news or any stories about my 4-H or FFA activities, or public speaking contests, I knew I could stop by the News-Reporter office, where the Dopfs would be certain to listen. More often than not, those stories would show up somewhere on the pages of the next issue. Later, when I made my decision to run for office for the first time, for a seat in the Idaho State Senate, I went to the Dopfs to ask if they would print the pocket brochure for my campaign. Their sons, Alan and Don, had just started a printing business the year before, so it was an easy choice for me to go there. Throughout my life, whether in the activities of my younger days, my endeavors in the legislature, or my time in the U.S. House and Senate, Stu Dopf always provided a fair, unbiased account in the News-Reporter. He always gave me a fair opportunity to make my point. Continuing Stu's example, the editors generously include each weekly column I write in the paper, and I am truly grateful. Even after they retired, the influence of Mr. and Mrs. Dopf remained at the News-Reporter. Their children have carried on the same brand of community reporting, and this is why I continue to subscribe to the paper and read and enjoy it every week. The Dopfs took pride in Cambridge and Washington County, and they loved it down to the smallest details. They took a special interest in the youth of the area, including articles and pictures of local high school sporting events, essay contest winners, invitations to baby showers, and as I mentioned, 4-H and FFA news. They were great community people, and they were great people in their community. The Dopfs were a big reason I had such a positive experience growing up in rural Washington County. It is people like them who make Cambridge, Midvale, Weiser, and other small towns across Idaho great places to live. I'm sure they are resting peacefully in Heaven.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senator Baucus in introducing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This bill addresses the abuse of our Nation's courts through predatory lawsuits against the U.S. firearms industry--suits attempting to force law-abiding businesses to pay far criminal acts by individuals beyond their control. It's important for our colleagues to understand that the lawsuits we're talking about are not brought by victims seeing relief for same wrongs done to them by the firearms industry. Instead, they are part of a politically inspired initiative trying to force social goals through an end-run around the Congress and State legislatures. These lawsuits are based an the notion that even though a business complies with all laws and sells a legitimate product, it should be held responsible for the misuse or illegal use of the firearm by a criminal. This isn't a legal theory--it's just the latest twist in the gun controllers' notion that it's the gun, and not the criminal, that causes crime. The truth is that there are millions of firearms in this country today, only a tiny fraction of which have ever been used in the commission of a crime. The truth is that again and again, law-abiding firearm owners are using their guns, often without even firing a shot, to defend life and property. The truth is that the intent of the user, not the gun, determines whether that gun will be used in a crime. The trend of predatory litigation targeting the firearms industry not only defies common sense and concepts of fundamental fairness, but it would do nothing to curb criminal gun violence. The cost of these lawsuits threatens to drive a critical industry out of business, losing thousands of good-paying jobs in the process and jeopardizing Americans' constitutionally protected access to firearms for self defense and other lawful uses. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would stop these abusive lawsuits. However, it would not insulate the firearms industry from all lawsuits or deprive legitimate victims of their day in court. Indeed, it specifically provides that actions based on the wrongful conduct of those involved in the business of manufacturing and selling firearms would not be affected by this legislation. The bill is solely directed to stopping abusive, politically driven litigation against law-abiding individuals for the misbehavior of criminals over whom they had no control. This bill is virtually identical to legislation introduced and debated to length in the Senate during the last Congress. As my colleagues will recall, the addition of two unrelated poison pill amendments doomed final passage of that bill; however, it is worth noting that all amendments to the actual substance of that measure were defeated. The need for this legislation is every bit as serious today as it was in the last Congress. I am proud that a number of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle asked to sponsor this bill before it was even introduced: Mr. Alexander, Mr. Bunning, Mr. Burns, Mr. Chambliss, Mr. Coburn, Ms. Collins, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Domenici, Mr. Ensign, Mr. Enzi, Mrs. Hutchison, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Isakson, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Kyl, Mrs. Lincoln, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, Mr. Santorum, Mr. Sessions, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Thune. I thank these original cosponsors for their support. The courts of our Nation are supposed to be forums for resolving controversies between citizens and providing relief where warranted, not a mechanism for achieving political ends that are rejected by the people's representatives in Congress and the State legislatures. I hope all our colleagues will join us in taking a measured, principled stand against this abusive litigation by supporting the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senator Baucus in introducing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This bill addresses the abuse of our Nation's courts through predatory lawsuits against the U.S. firearms industry--suits attempting to force law-abiding businesses to pay far criminal acts by individuals beyond their control. It's important for our colleagues to understand that the lawsuits we're talking about are not brought by victims seeing relief for same wrongs done to them by the firearms industry. Instead, they are part of a politically inspired initiative trying to force social goals through an end-run around the Congress and State legislatures. These lawsuits are based an the notion that even though a business complies with all laws and sells a legitimate product, it should be held responsible for the misuse or illegal use of the firearm by a criminal. This isn't a legal theory--it's just the latest twist in the gun controllers' notion that it's the gun, and not the criminal, that causes crime. The truth is that there are millions of firearms in this country today, only a tiny fraction of which have ever been used in the commission of a crime. The truth is that again and again, law-abiding firearm owners are using their guns, often without even firing a shot, to defend life and property. The truth is that the intent of the user, not the gun, determines whether that gun will be used in a crime. The trend of predatory litigation targeting the firearms industry not only defies common sense and concepts of fundamental fairness, but it would do nothing to curb criminal gun violence. The cost of these lawsuits threatens to drive a critical industry out of business, losing thousands of good-paying jobs in the process and jeopardizing Americans' constitutionally protected access to firearms for self defense and other lawful uses. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would stop these abusive lawsuits. However, it would not insulate the firearms industry from all lawsuits or deprive legitimate victims of their day in court. Indeed, it specifically provides that actions based on the wrongful conduct of those involved in the business of manufacturing and selling firearms would not be affected by this legislation. The bill is solely directed to stopping abusive, politically driven litigation against law-abiding individuals for the misbehavior of criminals over whom they had no control. This bill is virtually identical to legislation introduced and debated to length in the Senate during the last Congress. As my colleagues will recall, the addition of two unrelated poison pill amendments doomed final passage of that bill; however, it is worth noting that all amendments to the actual substance of that measure were defeated. The need for this legislation is every bit as serious today as it was in the last Congress. I am proud that a number of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle asked to sponsor this bill before it was even introduced: Mr. Alexander, Mr. Bunning, Mr. Burns, Mr. Chambliss, Mr. Coburn, Ms. Collins, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Domenici, Mr. Ensign, Mr. Enzi, Mrs. Hutchison, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Isakson, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Kyl, Mrs. Lincoln, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, Mr. Santorum, Mr. Sessions, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Thune. I thank these original cosponsors for their support. The courts of our Nation are supposed to be forums for resolving controversies between citizens and providing relief where warranted, not a mechanism for achieving political ends that are rejected by the people's representatives in Congress and the State legislatures. I hope all our colleagues will join us in taking a measured, principled stand against this abusive litigation by supporting the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage increased production of influenza vaccines in the United States. I am happy to honor my commitment to reintroduce the Flu Protection Act of 2005, along with Senator Bayh. We dodged a bullet this year because we had a relatively mild flu season. Also, because the administration and public health officials did an excellent job of immediately addressing the vaccine shortage when it was announced in October. While this season's vaccine shortage didn't have as strong an impact as it might have, we should not go a day without looking for a path toward solving this problem so that we don't have the same issues in years to come. We may not always be so fortunate. Scientists believe that the return of an especially strong pandemic strain of flu is overdue. This legislation supports the administration's efforts to take steps to prepare for the imminent threat of avian flu. The Bush administration has made progress on this issue, but Congress needs to address the underlying problems. The United States is disturbingly underprepared to deal with a massive outbreak or a sudden shortage of vaccine. We don't want to get caught short next year. We must aggressively encourage vaccine companies to come into this market and pass building incentives for existing companies. I am encouraged that some sections of this legislation have been included in the majority's priority legislative package and look forward to working with other Members of Congress to ensure that the most comprehensive piece of legislation possible can be approved. We must move quickly to pass legislation that ensures sufficient flu vaccine supply, encourages an increase in production capacity, supports a flu vaccine awareness campaign, and prepares the United States to combat a pandemic or epidemic.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage increased production of influenza vaccines in the United States. I am happy to honor my commitment to reintroduce the Flu Protection Act of 2005, along with Senator Bayh. We dodged a bullet this year because we had a relatively mild flu season. Also, because the administration and public health officials did an excellent job of immediately addressing the vaccine shortage when it was announced in October. While this season's vaccine shortage didn't have as strong an impact as it might have, we should not go a day without looking for a path toward solving this problem so that we don't have the same issues in years to come. We may not always be so fortunate. Scientists believe that the return of an especially strong pandemic strain of flu is overdue. This legislation supports the administration's efforts to take steps to prepare for the imminent threat of avian flu. The Bush administration has made progress on this issue, but Congress needs to address the underlying problems. The United States is disturbingly underprepared to deal with a massive outbreak or a sudden shortage of vaccine. We don't want to get caught short next year. We must aggressively encourage vaccine companies to come into this market and pass building incentives for existing companies. I am encouraged that some sections of this legislation have been included in the majority's priority legislative package and look forward to working with other Members of Congress to ensure that the most comprehensive piece of legislation possible can be approved. We must move quickly to pass legislation that ensures sufficient flu vaccine supply, encourages an increase in production capacity, supports a flu vaccine awareness campaign, and prepares the United States to combat a pandemic or epidemic.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor at this moment to join my colleague Chuck Hagel in the introduction of legislation that he has put together out of a variety of avenues of interest and importance to deal with the issue of climate change, a issue in which he and I have been engaged for a good long while. I am not quite sure how many years ago it was that I, as the freshman chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, turned to Chuck to see if he could bring Senators together in a bipartisan way on what we believed at the moment--and we still believe today--was a critically important issue to be addressed. Out of that effort grew the Hagel-Byrd resolution which passed this body by an overwhelming vote, and was a very clear message to America-- and to the world--on what we believed was necessary and important if we were to responsibly and effectively engage in the debate of climate change outside and well beyond the Kyoto protocol. The legislation Senator Hagel brings to the floor today, of which I am proud to be a cosponsor, is what I believe is a needed and necessary next step to work cooperatively with this administration and with countries around the world to begin to recognize all that is the makeup of this issue. Our policy must recognize the legitimate needs of our bilateral trading partners to use their resources to meet the needs of their people. Yet, at the same time, the initial debate basically suggested that if in fact human involvement in the climate of the world was changing the climate of the world, the only way you could save the climate was to turn the lights out. It did not address the human need. It did not address the economic growth that was critically necessary at that time. That is why our country pushed back and said no, we would not ratify Kyoto; that we would go much further than that in bringing about the changes that were necessary and that this administration engaged in. This legislation does a great deal more toward recognizing the need for bringing resources together. Senator Hagel has made clear the other important things this legislation will do. Above all, this legislation is a true acknowledgment that climate variability and change is a top priority as an issue for the United States--and for all nations--to be involved in. There can be an honest debate about whether the United States should do more or whether too much reliance is being placed on voluntary initiatives, but to claim that the United States is not acting seriously reflects, at best, a lack of knowledge or, at worst, political posturing. An objective review of Government and private sector programs to reduce increases in greenhouse gas now and in the future would have to conclude that the United States is doing at least as much, if not more, than countries that are part of the Kyoto Protocol which will go into effect tomorrow. The best evidence of this is our domestic rate of improvement in greenhouse gas intensity relative to the improvements other countries are making. The term I just used, ``greenhouse gas intensity,'' is defined in legislation as the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output. This is a far wiser measure of progress because it complements, rather than conflicts with, a nation's goal of growing its economy and meeting the needs and aspirations of its people. Too much attention is being paid to the mandatory nature of Kyoto. Too little results are being achieved. It is very interesting to note that most of the countries that ratified Kyoto will not meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets by the deadlines required by Kyoto. Indeed, when I and Senator Craig Thomas and Congressman Joe Barton were in Buenos Aires at the COP-10 conference in December, many nations were quietly acknowledging that they could not get to where they promised they would get, and, in fact, some have even suggested that by 2012 they would find it incumbent upon themselves and their nations to back out of Kyoto. However, all still recognize the importance of this issue, understanding it, and clearly defining it. What Senator Hagel's legislation does is shape for us a variety of things that are already underway, while still allowing us clearly to define them and to say, both here at home with our domestic policy as well as internationally, that we mean what we say and we mean what we do. The United States is currently spending in excess of $5 billion annually in scientific and technological initiatives. When we were in Buenos Aires, I was very proud to stand before my colleagues from around the world and before nongovernmental organizational groups and state that the United States is spending more on this issue, in both advances in science and technological change, than the rest of the world combined times two. Then I reminded them that all that we do, they could have also: that our technology would be in the world, that our science would be available to them, and that to work our way out of or to change the character of our economies without damaging those economies would in large part be the responsibility of new technologies. This legislation does not pick one technology over another or one energy source over another. That has always been the debate. Somehow we had to go around and selectively turn out the lights if we were going to change the climate around us. We knew that was not acceptable to the developing world and in large part that is why the developing world would not come along. How can you deny a country the right to use its resources for the economic, humanitarian, and health benefits of its people? You cannot do that. Nor should we be engaged in trying to do that. What we can do as a developed and advanced Nation is offer up exactly what we are doing; offer up what the Hagel legislation brings together. That is all we are doing now, and advancing and incentivizing, through this legislation, countries to do more in the area of technology. These programs are designed to advance our state of knowledge, accelerate the development and the deployment of energy technologies, aid developing countries in using energy more efficiently, and achieve an 18-percent reduction in energy intensity by 2012--a phenomenally responsive goal and something we clearly can take to the world community. Our administration today in a series of bilateral agreements is working with other countries to help them get to where we want and where they want to get, and for the sake of the environment, where we all want us all to go. I was extremely proud sitting in different forums in Buenos Aires to see the United States talk about the leadership role it has taken and the bilateral partnerships it has agreed to, and all the things that we can help with in the world of change today. It is clearly to our advantage and to the advantage of the world at large. What Senator Hagel has effectively done today is to get our arms around this issue to try to more directly define it, and to show that we are sensitive to it; that we are responding to the issue as clearly as our administration has and continues to do. Domestically, the United States has and continues to make world leading investments in climate change science technology. The United States has also implemented a wide range of national greenhouse control initiatives, cash sequestration programs, and international collaborative programs. All of those are bound up within the bilaterals I have talked about that we are engaged in. The legislation we have introduced today furthers all of these goals. President Bush has consistently acknowledged how human activity can affect our climate, and that the climate variability does not recognize national borders. The key issue is not whether there is any human- influenced effect. Instead, the issues are how large any human influence may be as compared to natural variability; how costly and how effective human intervention may be in reversing climate variability; and how and what technology may be required over the near and the long term as determined by developments in climate science. As I said, there can be a legitimate debate about whether more can be done while meeting our Nation's economic objectives. I, for one, support doing more in the areas of technological development to help lift developing countries from the depths of their plights and to advance their cause as we advance ours. That is why I am proud to be working with my colleagues in the Senate. I thank Senator Hagel, Senator Alexander, Senator Dole, and others for the hard work they have put in and the cooperative effort reflected in the bill introduced this afternoon. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor at this moment to join my colleague Chuck Hagel in the introduction of legislation that he has put together out of a variety of avenues of interest and importance to deal with the issue of climate change, a issue in which he and I have been engaged for a good long while. I am not quite sure how many years ago it was that I, as the freshman chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, turned to Chuck to see if he could bring Senators together in a bipartisan way on what we believed at the moment--and we still believe today--was a critically important issue to be addressed. Out of that effort grew the Hagel-Byrd resolution which passed this body by an overwhelming vote, and was a very clear message to America-- and to the world--on what we believed was necessary and important if we were to responsibly and effectively engage in the debate of climate change outside and well beyond the Kyoto protocol. The legislation Senator Hagel brings to the floor today, of which I am proud to be a cosponsor, is what I believe is a needed and necessary next step to work cooperatively with this administration and with countries around the world to begin to recognize all that is the makeup of this issue. Our policy must recognize the legitimate needs of our bilateral trading partners to use their resources to meet the needs of their people. Yet, at the same time, the initial debate basically suggested that if in fact human involvement in the climate of the world was changing the climate of the world, the only way you could save the climate was to turn the lights out. It did not address the human need. It did not address the economic growth that was critically necessary at that time. That is why our country pushed back and said no, we would not ratify Kyoto; that we would go much further than that in bringing about the changes that were necessary and that this administration engaged in. This legislation does a great deal more toward recognizing the need for bringing resources together. Senator Hagel has made clear the other important things this legislation will do. Above all, this legislation is a true acknowledgment that climate variability and change is a top priority as an issue for the United States--and for all nations--to be involved in. There can be an honest debate about whether the United States should do more or whether too much reliance is being placed on voluntary initiatives, but to claim that the United States is not acting seriously reflects, at best, a lack of knowledge or, at worst, political posturing. An objective review of Government and private sector programs to reduce increases in greenhouse gas now and in the future would have to conclude that the United States is doing at least as much, if not more, than countries that are part of the Kyoto Protocol which will go into effect tomorrow. The best evidence of this is our domestic rate of improvement in greenhouse gas intensity relative to the improvements other countries are making. The term I just used, ``greenhouse gas intensity,'' is defined in legislation as the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output. This is a far wiser measure of progress because it complements, rather than conflicts with, a nation's goal of growing its economy and meeting the needs and aspirations of its people. Too much attention is being paid to the mandatory nature of Kyoto. Too little results are being achieved. It is very interesting to note that most of the countries that ratified Kyoto will not meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets by the deadlines required by Kyoto. Indeed, when I and Senator Craig Thomas and Congressman Joe Barton were in Buenos Aires at the COP-10 conference in December, many nations were quietly acknowledging that they could not get to where they promised they would get, and, in fact, some have even suggested that by 2012 they would find it incumbent upon themselves and their nations to back out of Kyoto. However, all still recognize the importance of this issue, understanding it, and clearly defining it. What Senator Hagel's legislation does is shape for us a variety of things that are already underway, while still allowing us clearly to define them and to say, both here at home with our domestic policy as well as internationally, that we mean what we say and we mean what we do. The United States is currently spending in excess of $5 billion annually in scientific and technological initiatives. When we were in Buenos Aires, I was very proud to stand before my colleagues from around the world and before nongovernmental organizational groups and state that the United States is spending more on this issue, in both advances in science and technological change, than the rest of the world combined times two. Then I reminded them that all that we do, they could have also: that our technology would be in the world, that our science would be available to them, and that to work our way out of or to change the character of our economies without damaging those economies would in large part be the responsibility of new technologies. This legislation does not pick one technology over another or one energy source over another. That has always been the debate. Somehow we had to go around and selectively turn out the lights if we were going to change the climate around us. We knew that was not acceptable to the developing world and in large part that is why the developing world would not come along. How can you deny a country the right to use its resources for the economic, humanitarian, and health benefits of its people? You cannot do that. Nor should we be engaged in trying to do that. What we can do as a developed and advanced Nation is offer up exactly what we are doing; offer up what the Hagel legislation brings together. That is all we are doing now, and advancing and incentivizing, through this legislation, countries to do more in the area of technology. These programs are designed to advance our state of knowledge, accelerate the development and the deployment of energy technologies, aid developing countries in using energy more efficiently, and achieve an 18-percent reduction in energy intensity by 2012--a phenomenally responsive goal and something we clearly can take to the world community. Our administration today in a series of bilateral agreements is working with other countries to help them get to where we want and where they want to get, and for the sake of the environment, where we all want us all to go. I was extremely proud sitting in different forums in Buenos Aires to see the United States talk about the leadership role it has taken and the bilateral partnerships it has agreed to, and all the things that we can help with in the world of change today. It is clearly to our advantage and to the advantage of the world at large. What Senator Hagel has effectively done today is to get our arms around this issue to try to more directly define it, and to show that we are sensitive to it; that we are responding to the issue as clearly as our administration has and continues to do. Domestically, the United States has and continues to make world leading investments in climate change science technology. The United States has also implemented a wide range of national greenhouse control initiatives, cash sequestration programs, and international collaborative programs. All of those are bound up within the bilaterals I have talked about that we are engaged in. The legislation we have introduced today furthers all of these goals. President Bush has consistently acknowledged how human activity can affect our climate, and that the climate variability does not recognize national borders. The key issue is not whether there is any human- influenced effect. Instead, the issues are how large any human influence may be as compared to natural variability; how costly and how effective human intervention may be in reversing climate variability; and how and what technology may be required over the near and the long term as determined by developments in climate science. As I said, there can be a legitimate debate about whether more can be done while meeting our Nation's economic objectives. I, for one, support doing more in the areas of technological development to help lift developing countries from the depths of their plights and to advance their cause as we advance ours. That is why I am proud to be working with my colleagues in the Senate. I thank Senator Hagel, Senator Alexander, Senator Dole, and others for the hard work they have put in and the cooperative effort reflected in the bill introduced this afternoon. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

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

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have introduced what I believe to be a very important piece of legislation that the Senate will consider this year, dealing with an issue that is certainly on the minds of many Americans and No. 1 on the minds of some Americans. It is on the question of immigration reform and dealing with it in an appropriate fashion, to create a transparency in the process, and to begin to end and identify the 8 million to 12 million undocumented foreign nationals currently in our country. Over the last 5 years, I have worked in a bipartisan way with many of my colleagues, and literally hundreds of organizations around the country, in focusing on a specific area of immigration, and that is the H-2A area, or those who work in agricultural employment. What we have discovered over the course of time is a broken system, which in large part now allows the possibility of well over a million foreign nationals working illegally in this country, but working in an economy where they are desperately needed to bring the food products from our fields, to process those products and put them on the shelves of the American consuming public. As a result of that great concern, I, working with my colleague Senator Ted Kennedy in the Senate, with Congressman Howard Berman and Congressman Chris Cannon over in the House for some time, have produced legislation that brings all sides of this very diverse and oftentimes very contentious issue together, to therefore be able to offer tonight a piece of legislation that has at this moment nearly 40 Members of the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, supporting it; whereas last year, identical legislation had over 63 Senators, and we believe we will have that same support again this year. Americans, after 9/11, cried out to the Congress and to our Government, saying: What is wrong? Why were people allowed to come to our country who then turned on us to kill our citizens? Why did we let that happen? Well, we learned that the immigration policies of our country were largely broken and that the Congress, over years and years, had turned its back on the issue, either not funding immigration appropriately or not enforcing the laws already on the books regarding immigration. As a result of that, it is now estimated that there are between 8 million to 12 million foreign nationals living in this country, the vast majority of them working and living in law-abiding, peaceful ways, but working here to better themselves and their families for their own human well-being. We did find out there were a few who were here to do evil things to Americans. In the legislation I bring to the floor tonight, in legislation we call the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefit and Security Act, I focus rather narrowly on what is believed to be about 1.6 million of the total number, to recognize that clearly the vast majority of them are here for peaceful purposes, to better themselves and their families, and, in the meantime, cause American agriculture to work as effectively and efficiently as it does. Oftentimes, these men and women do work that American citizens do not want to do or will not do--toiling in the hot fields of American agriculture day in and day out, dirty, tough work, but seeing it as an opportunity for themselves and an opportunity for their children to have a better life. In so failing to recognize that need, we have oftentimes caused them to live in the back alleys and the shadows of America in an illegal status, but we still rely heavily on them for the services they provide. Americans need and expect a stable, predictable, legal workforce in American agriculture, and consumers in our country deserve a safe, stable, domestic food supply. Willing American workers deserve a system that puts them first in line for the jobs that are available with a fair market wage, and our legislation does that. All workers deserve decent treatment and protection of basic rights under the law, and our legislation does that. American citizens and taxpayers deserve secure borders, a safe homeland, and a government that works, and our legislation helps accomplish those three very important goals. Yet we are threatened on all fronts because of a growing shortage now of legal workers in American agriculture. Last year, in 2 of the 12 months, we were net importers of agricultural food products. For the first time in the history of our country that happened. I grew up being told--and most of us did--that because of our great American agriculture always being able to feed us, we were a secure, safe nation, and our food supply was such that we would never be dependent upon foreign interests to feed the American consumer. Last year it happened 2 out of 12 months that we grew dependent. This year, USDA tells us that we will break even at about 50-50. There will be no surplus agriculture trade. We will be importing as much as we are exporting, and that will be a historic first for our Nation. What it tells me, as someone who grew up in American agriculture, is that agriculture as an economy is becoming increasingly fragile. It no longer has the strength or the dynamics it once had. It grows increasingly dependent on the high cost of inputs--energy, equipment, other supplies necessary to produce the bounty of the American farm field. But one of those key inputs is labor--labor that is stable, labor that you know will be there, and, most importantly, labor that can get the job done at the right time, when the crop in the field is ripe and ready to harvest. That labor pool is largely undocumented today. It is estimated that anywhere from 72 to 75 percent of those who work in American agriculture today are undocumented foreign nationals; in other words, illegal. And yet they toil in the fields, they pick our food, they help prepare it through the processing plants to get it to the consumer's shelf. If in our effort to protect our borders and to create a law enforcement community that can apprehend a person who has entered this country illegally, if all of that happens and we do not create a system that stabilizes and provides a legal foreign national workforce, we could literally collapse American agriculture. We are working at trying to protect our borders. We have invested heavily in it for the last good number of years. We just passed an intelligence reform bill in the latter part of the last session of the 108th Congress dealing closely with our borders. Members on the House side are ready to introduce new forms of legislation to tighten up and allow the driver's license to become a more secure legal documentation--an American citizen versus one who would not be. I support nearly all of those things because they are the right thing to do for America to reclaim herself and to control her borders. But at the same time, there is a legitimate and responsible need to recognize the importance--the critical importance--of foreign nationals in our workforce helping to provide for our economy. In the late nineties, we were near 100-percent employment in our country. Anyone who wanted to work could work and was working. Those who were not probably either did not want to or could not. Yet during that time, we were still employing an estimated 8 million foreign nationals in our country. That is not a negative, that is the character of a great country. That is the character of a great economy and a strong economy. It is also that diversity that has produced the great American way, the idea of the American dream, the phenomenal hybrid vigor of a diverse character that is this country and has always been. And American agriculture has been a part of that. Those who toil in American agriculture have been a big part of that. What we do today by this legislation is reach out and attempt to recognize those who are here in an undocumented way and cause them to come forward to be recognized, to have a background check done, to make sure they are not law violators or felons who are here for some other purpose. If they have been here and worked a period of 100 days since January 1, 2005, we will provide for them a temporary green card and then allow them to work and earn the right for permanent work status in our country. To me, that seems fair and responsible. All of the parties involved in American agriculture today from the workforce to the producer themselves, they, too, agree that is a fair and responsible fashion. It is not giving anything away. It is attempting to correct a problem. It is doing the background checks. It is making sure we have a legal and legitimate workforce so that as we plug all of these holes and change the character of a broken immigration law, we do so without collapsing the very economy that feeds our country, recognizing that they became too dependent as agricultural producers on a workforce that was not legal. So we do not just wipe the workforce away. We attempt to identify it, shape it, and cause it to be legal and do so in a responsible fashion. That is clearly what our legislation does. That is why 63 Senators supported it last year, and well over 100 in the House were cosponsors of it. We are working hard at this very moment to pass this legislation, to get it to the President's desk, and recognize that it may be a template, it may be a pilot for others to look at for a more comprehensive approach toward immigration reform. There is no question in my mind that our immigration laws are broken, and I am not going to stand here tonight and suggest I have the wisdom to fix it all. But I and others and hundreds of organizations and interest groups from around this country have spent the last 5 years trying to solve this problem. When we started, many of us were 180 degrees apart. Slowly but surely we came together out of need, the clear recognition of the necessity of providing a legal, recognizable, and stable workforce for American agriculture. I do not think any citizen in our country would sleep well if they knew that a majority of our foodstuffs were imported, if they knew that we were dependent upon foreign nations and their producers for our food supply. I think they would grow frustrated over the risk that would be at hand there, the stability, the availability, the safety issue. Many have suggested that if we are going to have a terrorist attack again some day, one of the approaches terrorists might use would be to attack our food supply. If we control our workforce, if we produce it here, the possibility of that happening is considerably lessened. That goes right back to the old historic belief that a nation that can feed itself and its people is a nation that is inherently stable, and without question the produce of the American farm has allowed us to be that generation after generation, war after war. We are now at a very fine point and balance in our Nation's history where this year we will zero out that old historic belief of stability. We will be importing as much as we are exporting. So American agriculture deserves our attention. The people who labor there deserve our attention and respect. They deserve to be treated fairly as we would expect all people in our country to be, to have proper conditions and proper wages and to be recognized for the quality of work they do, instead of simply shoving them into the shadows in the back streets of America and denying they are there but knowing that we need them. That is an interesting contradiction in the current immigration laws in our country and America knows it and has reacted accordingly. It is why our President says immigration reform is critical and necessary and has proposed ways to accomplish it. It is why it is in the top list of issues and concerns that most Americans hold about what Government ought to be doing to create a safer, stronger America, from controlling our borders to an effective law enforcement system, to assuring that we know those who are within our borders and why they are here and what their intent is. That is all part of the agricultural jobs bill we introduce tonight, the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefit and Security Act of 2005. I am proud that 40 Senators, nearly 50-50 in partisan split, have already endorsed this legislation. We will strive for that number of 60-plus again. In doing so, I will ask my colleagues to help us bring this bill to the floor very early in this session, to debate it, to pass it out, to work with our House colleagues and to put it on the President's desk. I believe it is a positive and necessary start in marching down the road toward comprehensive immigration reform. To do anything less than we are proposing is once again to do the very thing we have done for well over a decade, and that is to turn our back on the problem and the issue, to know it is there but to deny it exists, and then to have a broken system produce the crisis that occurred on 9/11. We are a better country than that, and this Senate is a more responsible legislative body than that. So tonight I bring to my colleagues what I think is a major first step in immigration reform necessary and important to protecting our borders, to making sure we are secure at home, to stabilizing a food supply, to assuring that American agriculture has a predictable, stable workforce, and to say to all at hand that those who come here to toil, in the benefit of the American economy, will be treated in a fair, just, and responsible way. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have introduced what I believe to be a very important piece of legislation that the Senate will consider this year, dealing with an issue that is certainly on the minds of many Americans and No. 1 on the minds of some Americans. It is on the question of immigration reform and dealing with it in an appropriate fashion, to create a transparency in the process, and to begin to end and identify the 8 million to 12 million undocumented foreign nationals currently in our country. Over the last 5 years, I have worked in a bipartisan way with many of my colleagues, and literally hundreds of organizations around the country, in focusing on a specific area of immigration, and that is the H-2A area, or those who work in agricultural employment. What we have discovered over the course of time is a broken system, which in large part now allows the possibility of well over a million foreign nationals working illegally in this country, but working in an economy where they are desperately needed to bring the food products from our fields, to process those products and put them on the shelves of the American consuming public. As a result of that great concern, I, working with my colleague Senator Ted Kennedy in the Senate, with Congressman Howard Berman and Congressman Chris Cannon over in the House for some time, have produced legislation that brings all sides of this very diverse and oftentimes very contentious issue together, to therefore be able to offer tonight a piece of legislation that has at this moment nearly 40 Members of the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, supporting it; whereas last year, identical legislation had over 63 Senators, and we believe we will have that same support again this year. Americans, after 9/11, cried out to the Congress and to our Government, saying: What is wrong? Why were people allowed to come to our country who then turned on us to kill our citizens? Why did we let that happen? Well, we learned that the immigration policies of our country were largely broken and that the Congress, over years and years, had turned its back on the issue, either not funding immigration appropriately or not enforcing the laws already on the books regarding immigration. As a result of that, it is now estimated that there are between 8 million to 12 million foreign nationals living in this country, the vast majority of them working and living in law-abiding, peaceful ways, but working here to better themselves and their families for their own human well-being. We did find out there were a few who were here to do evil things to Americans. In the legislation I bring to the floor tonight, in legislation we call the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefit and Security Act, I focus rather narrowly on what is believed to be about 1.6 million of the total number, to recognize that clearly the vast majority of them are here for peaceful purposes, to better themselves and their families, and, in the meantime, cause American agriculture to work as effectively and efficiently as it does. Oftentimes, these men and women do work that American citizens do not want to do or will not do--toiling in the hot fields of American agriculture day in and day out, dirty, tough work, but seeing it as an opportunity for themselves and an opportunity for their children to have a better life. In so failing to recognize that need, we have oftentimes caused them to live in the back alleys and the shadows of America in an illegal status, but we still rely heavily on them for the services they provide. Americans need and expect a stable, predictable, legal workforce in American agriculture, and consumers in our country deserve a safe, stable, domestic food supply. Willing American workers deserve a system that puts them first in line for the jobs that are available with a fair market wage, and our legislation does that. All workers deserve decent treatment and protection of basic rights under the law, and our legislation does that. American citizens and taxpayers deserve secure borders, a safe homeland, and a government that works, and our legislation helps accomplish those three very important goals. Yet we are threatened on all fronts because of a growing shortage now of legal workers in American agriculture. Last year, in 2 of the 12 months, we were net importers of agricultural food products. For the first time in the history of our country that happened. I grew up being told--and most of us did--that because of our great American agriculture always being able to feed us, we were a secure, safe nation, and our food supply was such that we would never be dependent upon foreign interests to feed the American consumer. Last year it happened 2 out of 12 months that we grew dependent. This year, USDA tells us that we will break even at about 50-50. There will be no surplus agriculture trade. We will be importing as much as we are exporting, and that will be a historic first for our Nation. What it tells me, as someone who grew up in American agriculture, is that agriculture as an economy is becoming increasingly fragile. It no longer has the strength or the dynamics it once had. It grows increasingly dependent on the high cost of inputs--energy, equipment, other supplies necessary to produce the bounty of the American farm field. But one of those key inputs is labor--labor that is stable, labor that you know will be there, and, most importantly, labor that can get the job done at the right time, when the crop in the field is ripe and ready to harvest. That labor pool is largely undocumented today. It is estimated that anywhere from 72 to 75 percent of those who work in American agriculture today are undocumented foreign nationals; in other words, illegal. And yet they toil in the fields, they pick our food, they help prepare it through the processing plants to get it to the consumer's shelf. If in our effort to protect our borders and to create a law enforcement community that can apprehend a person who has entered this country illegally, if all of that happens and we do not create a system that stabilizes and provides a legal foreign national workforce, we could literally collapse American agriculture. We are working at trying to protect our borders. We have invested heavily in it for the last good number of years. We just passed an intelligence reform bill in the latter part of the last session of the 108th Congress dealing closely with our borders. Members on the House side are ready to introduce new forms of legislation to tighten up and allow the driver's license to become a more secure legal documentation--an American citizen versus one who would not be. I support nearly all of those things because they are the right thing to do for America to reclaim herself and to control her borders. But at the same time, there is a legitimate and responsible need to recognize the importance--the critical importance--of foreign nationals in our workforce helping to provide for our economy. In the late nineties, we were near 100-percent employment in our country. Anyone who wanted to work could work and was working. Those who were not probably either did not want to or could not. Yet during that time, we were still employing an estimated 8 million foreign nationals in our country. That is not a negative, that is the character of a great country. That is the character of a great economy and a strong economy. It is also that diversity that has produced the great American way, the idea of the American dream, the phenomenal hybrid vigor of a diverse character that is this country and has always been. And American agriculture has been a part of that. Those who toil in American agriculture have been a big part of that. What we do today by this legislation is reach out and attempt to recognize those who are here in an undocumented way and cause them to come forward to be recognized, to have a background check done, to make sure they are not law violators or felons who are here for some other purpose. If they have been here and worked a period of 100 days since January 1, 2005, we will provide for them a temporary green card and then allow them to work and earn the right for permanent work status in our country. To me, that seems fair and responsible. All of the parties involved in American agriculture today from the workforce to the producer themselves, they, too, agree that is a fair and responsible fashion. It is not giving anything away. It is attempting to correct a problem. It is doing the background checks. It is making sure we have a legal and legitimate workforce so that as we plug all of these holes and change the character of a broken immigration law, we do so without collapsing the very economy that feeds our country, recognizing that they became too dependent as agricultural producers on a workforce that was not legal. So we do not just wipe the workforce away. We attempt to identify it, shape it, and cause it to be legal and do so in a responsible fashion. That is clearly what our legislation does. That is why 63 Senators supported it last year, and well over 100 in the House were cosponsors of it. We are working hard at this very moment to pass this legislation, to get it to the President's desk, and recognize that it may be a template, it may be a pilot for others to look at for a more comprehensive approach toward immigration reform. There is no question in my mind that our immigration laws are broken, and I am not going to stand here tonight and suggest I have the wisdom to fix it all. But I and others and hundreds of organizations and interest groups from around this country have spent the last 5 years trying to solve this problem. When we started, many of us were 180 degrees apart. Slowly but surely we came together out of need, the clear recognition of the necessity of providing a legal, recognizable, and stable workforce for American agriculture. I do not think any citizen in our country would sleep well if they knew that a majority of our foodstuffs were imported, if they knew that we were dependent upon foreign nations and their producers for our food supply. I think they would grow frustrated over the risk that would be at hand there, the stability, the availability, the safety issue. Many have suggested that if we are going to have a terrorist attack again some day, one of the approaches terrorists might use would be to attack our food supply. If we control our workforce, if we produce it here, the possibility of that happening is considerably lessened. That goes right back to the old historic belief that a nation that can feed itself and its people is a nation that is inherently stable, and without question the produce of the American farm has allowed us to be that generation after generation, war after war. We are now at a very fine point and balance in our Nation's history where this year we will zero out that old historic belief of stability. We will be importing as much as we are exporting. So American agriculture deserves our attention. The people who labor there deserve our attention and respect. They deserve to be treated fairly as we would expect all people in our country to be, to have proper conditions and proper wages and to be recognized for the quality of work they do, instead of simply shoving them into the shadows in the back streets of America and denying they are there but knowing that we need them. That is an interesting contradiction in the current immigration laws in our country and America knows it and has reacted accordingly. It is why our President says immigration reform is critical and necessary and has proposed ways to accomplish it. It is why it is in the top list of issues and concerns that most Americans hold about what Government ought to be doing to create a safer, stronger America, from controlling our borders to an effective law enforcement system, to assuring that we know those who are within our borders and why they are here and what their intent is. That is all part of the agricultural jobs bill we introduce tonight, the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefit and Security Act of 2005. I am proud that 40 Senators, nearly 50-50 in partisan split, have already endorsed this legislation. We will strive for that number of 60-plus again. In doing so, I will ask my colleagues to help us bring this bill to the floor very early in this session, to debate it, to pass it out, to work with our House colleagues and to put it on the President's desk. I believe it is a positive and necessary start in marching down the road toward comprehensive immigration reform. To do anything less than we are proposing is once again to do the very thing we have done for well over a decade, and that is to turn our back on the problem and the issue, to know it is there but to deny it exists, and then to have a broken system produce the crisis that occurred on 9/11. We are a better country than that, and this Senate is a more responsible legislative body than that. So tonight I bring to my colleagues what I think is a major first step in immigration reform necessary and important to protecting our borders, to making sure we are secure at home, to stabilizing a food supply, to assuring that American agriculture has a predictable, stable workforce, and to say to all at hand that those who come here to toil, in the benefit of the American economy, will be treated in a fair, just, and responsible way. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Department of Interior Volunteer Recruitment Act of 2005. This bill would allow the Department of the Interior to recruit and use volunteers in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Offices of the Secretary. It also addresses some problems with existing volunteer authorities at the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey. The Department of the Interior is a leader in the Federal Government in providing opportunities for volunteer service, and this bill significantly enhances our ability to provide volunteer opportunities to interested Americans. The bill provides for appropriate ethics and tort claims coverage for DOI volunteers and ensures against the displacement of employees by volunteers. Last, the bill contains provisions which explicitly protect private property rights. By making it easier for people to volunteer in more Department of the Interior bureaus, this legislation contributes a crucial piece to the President's call to all Americans to volunteer in their communities and to the Secretary's Take Pride in America program, which is working in concert with that call. There is wide support for the bill and there is no known opposition. I look forward to working with my colleagues to move this excellent bill through the legislative process quickly.