Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I have a question of the majority leader or the minority leader. I have been asked by a number of people who want to come to the Senate floor when I give a couple sentences of goodbye to the Senate, and I am just wondering when might such things be available for myself, Senator Warner----

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, will the leader yield to the Senator from New Mexico for a question?

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I know Senator Warner would like to speak. That is satisfactory with me, as long as we are expecting to give people like you and me a little bit of time.

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I thank our leader.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, now I wish to say that I looked for a little bit of history about myself to see what I said when I first came to the Senate. In those days you waited a few months before speaking on the floor, so I will tell you that I did not give a so-called maiden speech, Mr. Leader, until I had been here 4 full months. I guess it was because I was frightened. I thought this was such a mammoth organization with such compelling things happening, I didn't know where I should be or what I should do. I sat in that seat over there because I was 99th in the Senate. Joe Biden was 100 when I came. Incidentally, they parked him in my office, so there were two Senators in the same office when I arrived because Joe had no place to stay and they put us together. So it was Domenici and Biden in the same office. But what I said, Mr. Leader, in my first speech--I will just read one sentence, and I said this: ``Let us quit this self-serving struggle and get on with the business of governing.'' Now, that was when the Senate didn't have time to legislate because we were arguing about Richard Nixon. As a brand new Senator, I said those words. Now, isn't it interesting that I could say those words today. I wish we could quit partisan arguing and get more done. As I leave the Senate, I must say there is no place like the Senate. I don't think you could ever invent one. It has evolved out of our Constitution and out of the rules, the Jeffersonian rules that were adopted, and then the evolution occurred with this body trying to meet the challenges of this fantastic, great country, from its infancy to the growth that it has today. Believe it or not, we have passed over the years one-sentence bills that were very meaningful that took a long time. We have had complicated matters that probably we never thought would be handled by the Senate or the House. One of those is before us today. It is so complex for this kind of a body to legislate this problem that we are having in our financial markets that one wonders whether we can do it. But I do wish to say that it is my feeling that we will solve the problem. We will solve the financial problem which could cause the ruination of our country, and it is because the Senate almost always, if not always, finds somebody who will take the lead. Somebody will rise up and be the leader. Somebody will take the reins and run with it and others will follow, and you will get done what must be done for America. There is no question that it is easy to play politics, even with something as profound as our financial system and its potential for bankruptcy. It is easy to play politics and hide when you have something before you that says perhaps we are going to have a depression if we don't act. But the Senate doesn't expect everybody to agree. I wish to address for a moment two things that are happening in the Senate that I wish could be changed. I wish the filibuster--which I am a staunch advocate of retaining--but I wish we could find a way to use it less. The use of the filibuster so frequently is beginning to distort this place. When you add it with a couple of other things such as the filling of the tree activity, we are becoming more and more like the House and less and less like a U.S. Senate. I don't know whether we can do anything about that, but surely, surely we ought to be solving more problems in a bipartisan way. I think the rules of our Senate are more apt to operate well if Senators could work together rather than being polarized. Again, I can't say anyone is wrong in doing it, because we feel very strongly about the issues before us, and that is why these things happen. I did mention, at least in passing, in these few words about New Mexico and the things I was privileged to do there. And, how they made me what I am by letting me do for them what they needed. I do wish to mention that there are great people in that State. As a matter of fact, people don't know that those two giant national laboratories in the State of New Mexico, the one called Los Alamos and the other one at Sandia. Between the two of them, they provide more Ph.D.s and advanced degrees in science, math and physics to that part of the United States than any other part of the country. It is rather phenomenal what they do and what they contribute. To be part of them has caused me to become somewhat of an expert in nuclear power, and I am proud to tell my colleagues that nuclear power is in a renaissance posture. I take a little bit of credit for it because I spent 10 years working on it, and finally, it came forward. We are going to have nuclear power. It will take awhile, because it takes about 4 years to clear the permits, but they are coming forward four at a time, four permits at a time. There are about 26 of them, 1,000-megawatt units pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Our distinguished leader mentioned one, because one had to start it off, but we have many more now than one. Those nuclear powerplants will begin to help America achieve what we have always been best at: We will achieve with large operating machines that are perfectly safe; we will achieve without any carbon dioxide to bother the outer limits where we are worrying about climate change. They have no emissions that have anything to do with that. What a big achievement for us. I am proud to have had something to do with that. There are many more things that are kind of matched between New Mexicans telling me about them and my getting to work on them up here. Because of my scientists and the expertise in nuclear matters, I was encouraged after the two balanced budgets that I was privileged to put forth and manage--we did have two of them, John, even though we look back and wonder when was it and will it ever come again, we had two in a row. I was chairman of the Budget Committee. After that, my staff said: What is next, Senator? I said, I don't know. We have to dream it up. We have already balanced the budget and we all came up with let's work on nuclear power, and we did. That is how it happened. One thing followed another. One accomplishment begged out and asked for another. That was, indeed, exciting. Many other things have happened in the field of energy, in the field of nonproliferation. I remember going to Russia when we finalized an agreement with the Russians. President Clinton invited me because I was the one who led the cause here to buy the remnants of 20,000 missiles that had been taken apart in Russia and they had highly enriched uranium in abundance. We bought it. It was my proposal: $350 million. The lights in the leader's home and in people's homes today--10 percent of all of the lights in America are being lit by that highly enriched uranium that is still flowing from that agreement, which is about 14 years old. Now we are going to enter into new agreements to use that material that comes out of those nuclear rockets; 20,000 is what was dismantled for what we bought, but there is much more there, and that is always dangerous for America and for the world. So somebody will need to fill this vacuum and work hard at it. I heard the Presidential candidates speaking of it. I am not quite sure that either of them has been involved enough to know what is going on, but I wish whichever one of them wins well in that regard, because that is important. The nonproliferation of nuclear materials is drastically important. Now, I don't know whether I am going to be around here. My wife Nancy and I haven't decided whether we are going to live here or in New Mexico. If we live here, I won't be bugging anybody or bothering anybody, but maybe some of you might bother me. Who knows, I might have a cause that brings me to talk to you once in a while. But leaving will be difficult for me. You all already know me. I don't take things lightly. I get so worked up about this issue of the possible financial problems of our country. I feel so personal about it. But, you must take care of it after I leave. After a day of debating and arguing, I feel so uptight about the fact that we didn't do something, that I don't know how we can continue day after day, especially the leader, waiting for these things to materialize. I want them done yesterday when I see a problem as big as the one we have in terms of our financial system. The first day I find out all about them, I want to sit down and finish it, Leader. I guess you have sensed that, have you not? I bother you a lot asking what is going on, when are we going to do this, when are we going to do that. If I don't have any of that around, I don't know what exactly I will do or what kind of a person I may become. Maybe I will just fade away. I hope not and I doubt it. What I have learned in the Senate. I learned what I wish every Senator would learn, every Republican Senator, just speaking to my own party, I learned that the best way to solve a big problem is to do it in a bipartisan manner. That puts me looking over my left shoulder and seeing Senator Bingaman. He is a Democrat. He has not been here as long. Almost as long. The way he is going, he is probably going to pass my 36 years. Although every time I tell him that, he nods no. I don't see what he is going to do if he isn't in the Senate. He is so involved. He loves it. I do wish to say the most successful piece of legislation in 36 years--I did budgets, but they are not legislated. I did reconciliation bills, which I am going to talk about in a moment as my closing remarks. But when it came to doing a major energy bill, we failed until I made up my mind that I would not do it unless I did it in a bipartisan manner. I went to my fellow Senator, Senator Bingaman, and I said: Are you willing to give it a try? We will do it in a bipartisan manner. I was chairman for 3 years. And he said: It will be great. I can tell you it was the best 2 years of legislating here that I have had, and I think he would say the same. He recalls. He pushed me, and he knows I pushed him. That means I took him as far as I could, and when I got to a certain place, I said: I better agree with him, he doesn't want to do this, because he is apt to quit, he is at the end of the rope. I don't know how many times he did that to me, but that is how you do it. You have to push and push, and then you have to give. That was a very exciting thing and a lesson for all of us. There are too many people who don't know what is in that bill and they talk about it. But that bill is the reason why we are going to have a rebirth of nuclear power. It is the reason we are moving ahead as rapidly as we are in solar energy and wind energy, no question about it. It is a bill that set the ground rules for improving the national grid for electricity so we might have a day soon when we can say the national grid will not break again. It will continue unabated. No matter what you do to it, you will not knock the whole thing offline. Those are the kinds of things that are in this bill, and much more, on conservation and a host of other issues. We did that bill in 2 years because we walked hand in hand, Republican and Democrat. He had to, as it goes, because I was chairman, take a lot less notoriety in New Mexico than I got. I never heard him complain a bit. He should have probably told me every now and then: Why don't you shut up for a week and let me talk about the bill so New Mexicans will know I am working too. But he didn't do that. When we finally finished, the President of the United States made sure he got his credit because Senator Bingaman went for the signing of that bill. The reason he got so much credit is because I put on a pair of glasses to hide from the Sun. They were so big and bulky that people didn't know who I was. They surely knew who he was because he was clear and lucid and I had these glasses hiding me. So he got his just due. My last comments have something to do internal to the Senate that I have achieved with the help of some mighty fine people, with Steve Bell and Bill Hoagland as leaders. We passed a bill in 1974 called the Budget Impoundment Act of the United States. That was done for two reasons. One, President Richard Nixon got involved a little too much in impounding as a means of cutting budgets. So he would impound ongoing projects, such as a water project, I say to David sitting there. I should comment that without David Schiappa and all his staff, we cannot make it. This place needs the young, smart, dedicated and honest. Here is what happened in that law. That law was passed, and it was bragged about that Senator Robert Byrd joined with those who put it together and it will run and operate exactly as it was written and there are no loopholes in that bill. Maybe there were not and maybe there were, but early on, we found you could not get anything out of the Budget Act by just adopting budget resolutions because there was no way to make enforce anything other than points of order. So we found a little section in there called reconciliation. That is a funny word. We said: We are going to interpret reconciliation to mean our committee can order another committee to do something and how. What they are ordered to do is reconcile with the budget. We soon found we could reconcile tax bills. We could reconcile entitlements. We could reconcile direct spending. Lo and behold, the committees had to do it or we would do it. They said: You will never do it because you are not the committee chairman; it is my committee. I said that is the perfect intent of this provision. If you don't want me to do it, you better do it. We never had to find out whether the chairman could because they always did it. Why is that so important? Because reconciliation was provided to make sure you could not delay matters of budget. It was not filibusterable, let me say. A matter in that budget, anything in that Budget Act that was put forth before the Senate was not subject to filibuster. Senator Byrd, the first or second time we used it, came to the floor and said: That is not what we intended. And we said: Well, we think it is. We had a vote. The Senate said it was. If you wonder why almost all the major legislation of the U.S. Government has been appearing with a funny name--it is usually called something that says ``Budget and Reconciliation Act of'' such and such a year. That is generally the major piece of legislation that we passed--major tax changes, major Medicare changes, major Social Security changes, if any. All of them will come out in that form. That means every one of those bills became law because of that interpretation of the Budget Act that we put on it called reconciliation. That is how all the bills passed. What does it tell you then? It tells you that a filibuster doesn't work because to get the work of budgeting done, you abandon filibuster. You send it to a temporary ash heap--not permanently--because if you tried to do it permanently, everybody would die because they think the filibuster would be abolished and maybe there would be a vote. But that is not what happens in the Budget Act. You can read it in the act and interpret it and say you cannot stop budgets indefinitely. There is no reason to have a budget. If you stop the implementation indefinitely, you kill the budget. Right? That is where it comes from. I certainly took a lot more than 20 minutes, but I didn't take 2 days to say goodbye and to tell you how I felt about this place. But it took a long time. Some of you certainly could have gone a long time ago, but out of courtesy to me, you have sat here, including you, Mr. Leader. I do hope whoever reads the Record and whoever hears me today and those of you who are on the floor, at least got out of this that I worked pretty hard at being a Senator. I somehow got myself involved in a lot of different things, and it was kind of fun that way. We got things done. We didn't always make a lot of noise, although I am known to make noise, if necessary. But those were not the areas I was involved in. I wish to close with one funny story about my wife, Senator Ted Kennedy, and myself. One night I was over here and Senator Kennedy was over there. My wife sometimes watches the TV to see what we do here on the floor. It was between 7 and 9 in the evening. When I talk loud, you notice my face gets red. I didn't talk very loud today, but you have seen plenty of times late in the evening when I talk loud and my face gets red. Some people say it is because you are yelling. I don't know what it is. Maybe it is yelling, maybe it is just talking too loud. I got a note. I was called to the cloakroom, so I went to the cloakroom while Senator Kennedy held the floor. My wife had written a note and said--my family nickname is Bocci, not Pete: Bocci, you don't do any better when you yell and get red in the face than when you talk low and you don't get red in the face. I love you. I came back. I said to Senator Kennedy, when it finally got to be my turn: Senator Kennedy, I want you to know I got a note from my wife. He said: Oh, you mean Nancy. I said: Yes, Nancy. He said: What about it? I said: She sent you a note. Really. So I read him the note with his name in place of Bocci my name: Dear Senator Kennedy, you don't do any better when you yell and get red in the face than you do when you talk low and you don't get red in the face. I said: I don't know why my wife said that to you, but she did. My wife would almost not let me in the door that night. But we made our point and both of us tried from time to time to yell a little less. I hope he is getting well or feeling better. We finished a bill that I did not mention--maybe I did in passing--but we did a bill together over the past 8 years, which is a very important bill for the mentally ill of our country. I have worked on the mentally illness issues for about 25 years. The treatment of the mentally ill in the United States is one of the most disgraceful ways of handling a social problem of almost anything. We let them all out of dungeons and then provided no physical facilities for them. We just thought it will happen, but it didn't happen. That is the worst. We acted like it wasn't a disease, even though it is. In the meantime, insurance companies decided not to cover it. Even if they had an insurance policy that covered everything, they would cover mentally ill less. This bill says that will not happen anymore. Insurance companies would not be able to do that any more--the bill is called parity, which means fairness, which means equality. We are going to have fairness and equality of treatment by all insurance companies for the mentally ill. Senator Kennedy was as excited about that as I was. He is very sorry he couldn't be here when you helped me, Mr. Leader, get that through the other day. We called him and told him and sent him a letter saying we couldn't have done it without him. That bill will cover 113 million people who will no longer have the threat of having less than full coverage for their mental illness, such as they do for other diseases. That seems like it is pretty close to the end of my time, my 36 years. It will soon actually be, literally, 36 years, but for now, I will act as if it is and say this is my time to say thank you to the Senate. To all those who have worked with me and with whom I have been privileged to work. What a magnificent opportunity I have had. Coming from Albuquerque, my father never went to school. He got here at 13. He claimed he was lucky. He didn't have to go to school because the law said if you are 13, you don't have to. He didn't know education was valuable, so he was glad to go to work. He didn't want me to go to law school because he was quite sure I had been overeducated. But when I explained it to him, he paid for everything. He said: I want you to be a lawyer, which was absolutely fantastic. It has been an honor to serve my home state of New Mexico. With that, I just want to say thank you and goodbye.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, first, I have to thank the distinguished Republican leader for his kind remarks and equally as important for his consideration of me ever since he has been our leader. It has been easy for me to make suggestions and to know he would listen. It has been easy for me, when he has asked me to do things, to do them because for the most part he has been right on his ideas, he has been right on his judgment. I very much appreciate his remarks here today. I have worked with a number of leaders, as everyone knows, and they are all wonderful people. Obviously, when you serve with people such as the distinguished Senator Bob Dole, who was in your position, I say to my good friend who just remarked on my behalf, and when you sit in the same position as our good friend from Tennessee, who sat there for so long, Howard Baker, you know you are in good company. And I know you are in good company. But I would say to them, they are in good company with you. Now, I am supposed to say goodbye to the Senate and that is probably what I am not going to do because I do not quite know how to do it. But I am going to say something in my address today. It may be a little bit broken up. But I do want to start by saying I want to thank my wife first. Frankly, to be honest, she should not have let me run for the Senate. After I ran for city council and became mayor of Albuquerque, we already had our children. We were not a moneyed family, and I guess you all could guess we were pretty broke. Here I was in that condition telling her that I want to run for something else. And the Lord blessed me. I had a luck-out. I got a big lawsuit that settled. No, it did not. It went to jury right about that time and made a lot of money. I was able to at least tell my wife we were not going to go broke running for the Senate, although there would not be much around for us to share. The case was a good one, and it made us able to go on through that campaign. But anybody that has been from a family that is as large as ours knows that for the head of the household to decide to run and serve as a Senator, especially in a State like New Mexico--which is not Republican at all, and which is, very big--for the lady of the household to say yes, and then to live with it, has not been an easy job. She has probably had as hard a job--a much harder job--than I, and she has never been anything but beautiful and decent and honest and loving and caring. Obviously, she did not have enough time to do all these things that I have done. She did some of them. But I can say, wherever any of the Members and their wives met her, they had nothing but good things to say because they could not say otherwise. She deserves just that. Let me say that these remarks about the Senate itself--I say to my fellow retiree sitting here, John Warner--I could do this in 20 minutes or 2 days because, obviously, there is so much to talk about. The time in the Senate, when you look at it day by day, was wrenching and difficult at times. It was so hard; but when you look at it over 36 years, it is like a storm. It blew by, and all of a sudden it is 36 years later, and you are gone. Nobody will experience the strange feeling it is after 36 years in a place such as this to wake up of a morning and say you are not going to be here anymore. I don't know what I could offer the Senate to make it more pleasant for people who are leaving, but for me it is time to say goodbye. Having said that, I wish to move on to what makes a Senator succeed. I have a list of the people who have worked for me in my Senate office here, or in my Senate office in New Mexico, or on the Budget Committee, or on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I will say I could not have done what I have done without fantastic leadership from my staff. My first recommendation to anybody coming here anew is don't let anybody tell you that you can get by with just this person or that person. You have to find people who are smart, people who are gifted, people who are ambitious, and people who want to serve you, the Senator, and make you achieve for your constituency. I have been blessed by an abundance of them. They are not all still here. They are all over the place. Wherever they are, most are in high places doing distinguished things. The whole list I wish to mention will go in the Record shortly. There are three or four people whom I want to recommend. First, Steve Bell, who has been with me most all of my 36 years--all but 8. Those 8 years he took off to go to Wall Street and make his own fortune. He did that. Then he came back, and I caught him one day when he wasn't doing anything. I asked him if he would like to work, and he wondered: Where? I said: How does chief of staff sound? He didn't bother to say I have to talk to my wife or anything. He said: I will take it. And he has been here ever since. A young man named Alex Flint, as well as another young man in my office--a lawyer--Ed Hild, who shepherded the mental health parity bill for 10 years. There are many other people. I am sorry I mentioned three, because others are going to wonder why I didn't mention them. I am compelled to mention two others. Bill Hoagland was the director of the Budget Committee and is now known in the United States as the our Nation's foremost expert on the budget of the United States. He has written a white paper on the budget and it is incredible. Anybody who wants to know the first 25-year history of the Budget Act should read Bill Hoagland's white paper. Then there is a lady named Carol McGuire who I got from one of the other appropriations Senators. He was a Democrat. As he left, she came to work for me more than 25 years ago. I can tell you with all honesty, she became as if she were a New Mexican. She knows more about her adopted State, which is my State, than any living public servant of any category in anyplace in New Mexico, because she has served me there and that means in every district she has been the principal person on appropriations projects and activities. Clearly, there are many others and they all have my greatest thanks as I ask unanimous consent to have this list printed in the Record at this time. As I go through and find a few more that I must put in, I think the Senate will indulge me to add them.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Thank you.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend, Senator Salazar, from the State of Colorado. I don't know what brought us together on our Energy Committee. Maybe it was a little bit of common language--we both spoke a little Spanish to each other, and it made us both understand and feel like we were friends. But we became that, we became friends rather quickly in his short 4 years. I obviously remember your very first 6 months when we became friends and worked on many issues. I compliment you on your constant effort to work in a bipartisan way on issues. It is tough around here. It is going to have to move in that direction or we are going to continue to have trouble getting things done. For that, I hope you will stand your ground and at least keep trying. I appreciate the kind words you said in my behalf. Let's hope we see each other frequently, if not in your State, in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. Thank you very much, Senator.

Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, I tell you, I said a little bit in my remarks a while ago about it. I get very excited and anxious because it takes too long. But that is the deliberative body. But we don't have a long time to give the Secretary of the Treasury the kind of authority he needs to fix a broken train. We have had a wreck--lots of wrecks. All the freeways are clogged. We have to take away the things that are clogging them. We could look at it as a freeway with cracked-up cars, but actually the assets that are piled up there are the toxic assets that have been accumulated by those banks. If you don't get them out of the way, the line continues growing because of the broken-down cars, the toxic assets. The running cars can run no more. They are stopped in place. They contain everything that has given us a decent life in America. We have to fix that. I am going to be here. Let's hope our negotiators will put something together that the executive branch tells us will work and that the world accepts it with confidence. When we come off this floor, when we vote that in--whatever it is, Monday or whatever--we will join, you and I, with great confidence that we have once again done something important.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, with the backdrop of gas prices soaring to new heights this past summer and the specter of sending a half a trillion dollars to overseas to purchase oil from foreign regimes, I am told that the majority leader seeks to reinstate a moratorium on final regulations for the commercialization of oil shale. Ironically he is doing it on a bill that is being called a stimulus. Well, it certainly won't stimulate domestic production of energy. If brought to fruition it will give the majority in the Senate the dubious distinction of being even more antiproduction than the majority in the House. I have heard my friends on the other side say that they are not standing in the way of oil shale, but at the same time, they are doing exactly that. In the next sentence, they argue that there is nothing about oil shale that will bring relief to the American consumers. I find it difficult to understand these statements, and so do a majority of Americans. Over the summer, the majority did everything it could to obstruct our efforts in increase domestic production. The majority cancelled an appropriations committee markup to avoid the issue of drilling on the OCS and developing Western oil shale. They prevented a real debate and a real vote on energy. Finally, we saw a breakthrough from the House. After dodging the energy reality for months, they passed a continuing resolution without the moratorium on oil shale regulations and without the moratorium on the OCS. This was a great development and not one we should turn back by reimposing an oil shale ban. Several recent polls inform us that a strong and growing majority of the American people want to us to produce more of our own American energy resources. The development of Western oil shale will not be upon us today, but an indefensible moratorium on regulations will ensure that the development of oil shale will not be upon us tomorrow, either. And, therefore, relief for the American people will be delayed as well. Let me tell you what I know about oil shale, and the moratorium that the other side supports. Oil shale is a rock from which oil can be extracted through technologies such as in-situ heating and surface retorting. I have been out to Colorado and I have seen the vast commitments that private industries are making to help make oil shale production a reality in this country. But make no mistake about it--with this moratorium, the other side seeks to stand in the way of that progress. The USGS estimates that there is a potential total of 2.1 trillion barrels of resource in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The Strategic Unconventional Fuels Task Force and Rand Corporation have estimated that 800 billion barrels of oil equivalent is technically recoverable. This is enough to replace the amount of oil we currently import at today's pace for more than 160 years. With oil prices above the $100 mark for a sustained period of time and with technologies advancing rapidly, the potential development of large quantities of oil shale is a reality. American companies stand ready to continue the necessary work, but a moratorium placed on oil shale casts a large shadow of uncertainty. We must remove that shadow immediately. In 2005, we passed the Energy Policy Act. Working across party lines in both the Senate and the House, Senator Bingaman and I brought together broad bipartisan support behind a conference report that each and every Senator from the Western oil shale States supported. In that bill we set up an oil shale pilot program with research and development leases. We also set forth a time frame for the development of final regulations for commercial leasing. This does not mean that commercial leasing would begin now, but what it does mean is that companies that need to make long-term planning decisions on where to make significant capital investments have a clear sense of rules of the road for future Western oil shale leasing. If these regulations were completed, companies could be provided with certainty and stability. Recently, Chevron joined other companies who have publicly called for the lifting of the moratorium on oil shale regulations. The final regulations would provide a road-map on diligence requirements, royalty rates, conversion fees, and operating and environmental requirements such as reclamation requirements. Both private industry and localities would know the terms and conditions necessary for this American energy project. That is why we included this provision in the bipartisan 2005 Energy bill. Two years after that bill passed, along came an appropriations moratorium quietly written into a large omnibus spending bill. In other words, Congress has prevented the Department of the Interior from doing the work necessary to make oil shale a reality. Shell Oil Company recently testified before the Senate Energy Committee that, ``the extension of this moratorium on potential future development of America's vast oil shale resource may be intended to become permanent in nature. The extension of this moratorium may well have a chilling effect on our efforts to develop this resource in the future.'' I could not agree more with this assessment. Additionally, the Department of the Interior recently testified that finalizing oil shale regulations is a critical component to realize the vast potential of our Western oil shale resource. Assistant Secretary Allred stated that, ``absent the certainty that final regulations would bring, the commercial oil shale industry may not be willing to invest the necessary dollars for research, and this vast domestic resource will remain untapped at a time when our Nation is searching for ways to further its energy security.'' And recently Utah's Governor--a voice from on the ground--requested that Congress remove this moratorium, writing, ``I recommend lifting those restrictions. Utah is home not only to substantial oil shale reserves . . . but also to businesses willing to develop oil shale using new technology that will make extraction cleaner and more efficient. We have State and Federal regulators who are capable of ensuring that this resource is developed in an environmentally responsible manner.'' So, despite this coalition of industry, local support, and a Federal agency eager to do the necessary work, and now even the Speaker and the majority in the House--the majority in the Senate is asking us to stand in the way of this progress. For all of the above reasons, I introduced a bill in May that lifts this unnecessary and harmful oil shale moratorium. We pushed and proded and pushed some more until the House majority listened to the American people. Now, I am sending the same message to the Senate. Ending this moratorium would send a message to the world that America is serious about Western oil shale development. I urge my colleagues on the other side to reaffirm their bipartisan commitments made during the Energy bill of 2005 and help us join the House in removing the oil shale moratorium. If we do that, we will take a step in the right direction of reducing our great dependence on foreign oil and we will strengthen our Nation's energy security.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues, Senator Kennedy, Senator Leahy, and Senator Specter, to laud the passage of S. 2304, the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2008. This bill reauthorizes and improves several programs intended to provide federal support for collaborations between criminal justice and mental health systems. I must first show my great admiration and appreciation for Senator Ted Kennedy, with whom I have worked diligently on legislation related to mental illness. His support, knowledge, and friendship have been invaluable in our joint fight for better access and opportunities for the millions of Americans who suffer from some form of mental illness. To him I owe a debt of gratitude and am thankful for the opportunity to have worked so closely with him for so many years. It is estimated that approximately 16 percent of adult U.S. jail and prison inmates suffer from mental illness and the numbers are even higher in the juvenile justice system. Many of these individuals are not violent or habitual criminals. Most have been charged or convicted of non-violent crimes that are a direct consequence of not having received needed treatment and supportive services for their mental illness. The presence of defendants with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system imposes substantial costs on that system and can cause significant harm to defendants. In response to this problem, a number of communities around the country are implementing mental health courts, a specialty court model that utilizes a separate docket, coupled with regular judicial supervision, to respond to individuals with mental illnesses who come in contact with the justice system. Many communities are not prepared to meet the comprehensive treatment and needs of individuals with mental illness when they enter the criminal justice system. The bill passing today is intended to help provide resources to help states and counties design and implement collaborative efforts between criminal justice and mental health structures. The bill reauthorizes the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Grant Program and reauthorizes the Mental Health Courts Program. It creates a new grant program to help law enforcement identify and respond to incidents involving persons with mental illness and it funds a study and report on the prevalence of mentally ill offenders in the criminal justice system. All of these reforms will help to address this problem from both a public safety and a public health point of view. This will help save taxpayers money, improve public safety, and link individuals with the treatment they need to become productive members of their community. Certainly, not every crime committed by an individual diagnosed with a mental illness is attributable to their illness or to the failure of public mental health. Mental health courts are not a panacea for addressing the needs of the growing number of people with mental illnesses who come in contact with the criminal justice system. But they should be one part of the solution. Evidence has shown that in communities where mental health and criminal justice interests work collaboratively on solutions it can make a significant impact in fostering recovery, improving treatment outcomes and decreasing recidivism. I thank my good friends for working with me on this very important issue. I appreciate their commitment to advancing these important programs and I am thankful to be here to see the passage of this legislation that we worked so hard on. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I need 20, so I ask unanimous consent for 20.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I rise today with a heart that is not totally joyful because I am going to be talking about four of my colleagues who are leaving the Senate. Pretty soon, I will be talking about my own leaving the Senate but not today. I will save that for another day. The first one I want to talk about is John Warner of Virginia. I have gotten to know him and his wife Jeanne. It is with great pride and honor that I pay tribute to my friend and distinguished colleague from the Commonwealth of Virginia, Senator John Warner. He served in this body for 30 years; I have served for 36. So the arithmetic is simple: I have been with him for all of his 30 years in the Senate. He dealt almost exclusively, and with perfection, on military matters. I did the budget for the Senate for a long time, and I have been privileged to work for the last 5 years on energy matters. In between, it was nothing but joy on my part to work on matters of the Senate. I believe the same was true for John Warner, who not only worked in military matters and worried about our troops, but he also from time to time got over into public works. Early in his Senate career, Senator Warner and I served on the Environment and Public Works Committee. More recently, our work together has centered on defense and national security and, as I indicated, of late homeland security. He earned the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle because of his unique ability to negotiate and foster positive working relationships with fellow Senators. There was much being said about working across the aisle and being bipartisan. Clearly, when things had to be partisan because it was the nature of things, John Warner was a partisan. But obviously, when it was a matter that pertained to something that could be worked out between Democrats and Republicans, one could bet that he was quick to raise his hand and lift it across the aisle and work with Senators from the other side. He has been a leader on a broad range of issues. As I indicated, he is someone who makes me proud. Prior to his five terms in the Senate, John served his country as a United States Marine, was later appointed Under Secretary of the Navy and was eventually appointed and confirmed as the 61st Secretary of the Navy. Early in our Senate career, Senator Warner and I served on the Environment and Public Works Committee together. Over the past several Congresses, our work together has centered on defense, national security and homeland security matters. During his Senate, tenure John has earned the respect and admiration of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle because of his unique ability to negotiate, accommodate, compromise, and foster positive working relationships with fellow Members. Through this approach, John Warner has been a leader on a broad range of issues such as strengthening our defense and national security, fighting the global war on terrorism and decreasing carbon and other emissions globally. While in the Senate, he dutifully served on the Armed Services Committee, Intelligence Committee, Environment and Public Works Committee, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. John has been a long time colleague of mine, and I will dearly miss him. The Commonwealth of Virginia has been fortunate to have John on their side. He has been an asset not only to his state, but also to our Nation. In the course of working together for so many years, I have developed genuine respect for Senator John Warner. I thank him for years of distinguished service and wish him the very best in all his future endeavors. My wife Nancy and I wish John and his wonderful family all the best during his retirement. Larry Craig At this time I would like to take some time to talk about Senator Larry Craig and to thank him for his service here in the Senate and for his service and dedication to his home State of Idaho. I have been fortunate enough to work with Senator Craig on many of the same issues over the years. More often than not we were on the same side of those issues. We worked for many hours together on energy policy, and more specifically, nuclear energy policy. In addition, the States we represent, New Mexico and Idaho, are similar in that they are both in the west, are largely rural, have vast swaths of Federal land, and are home to Federal research laboratories. These similarities-- between the States we represent--brought us together by way of common interests on many of the same policy subjects. Senator Craig and I served on the Appropriations Committee together for many years. During that time, we worked together to make sure the Departments of Energy and Interior were taken care of in terms of funding. As many of us know, Senator Craig comes from a strong agriculture background. At times we had to try to fend off, as best we could, efforts to change the Milk Income Loss Contract program. The changes to the program would have compromised dairy producers from each of our home States. Dairy farmers in New Mexico and Idaho knew that Senator Craig was a formidable ally for their cause, and I thank him for his help and support. As chairman and ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I have always admired Senator Craig's command of public lands policy. He has been a great leader on public lands issues throughout his career and without the leadership of Senator Craig, we would have never been able to pass the Healthy Forests bill in December 2003. It was also through his leadership we passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-determination Act which has been so important to both our states. He led the Republican side on public lands and forest issues as chairman or ranking member of the Public Lands and Forest Subcommittee from 1995 until 2007. Some of our most important work together took place in the nuclear arena. Senator Craig has done a tremendous job of promoting nuclear power as a safe, reliable and clean source of energy. I appreciate his outstanding work on nuclear matters, and I appreciate his support and encouragement along the way for my efforts in this important area. Many people know that because of where we live and what we do in our States, Senator Craig and I naturally work on similar matters. That is as it turned out. I will talk about some matters that have been very big for our country that are not natural to our States. First, I served with him on the Committee on Appropriations for a number of years. We worked together on energy policy and, more specifically, nuclear energy policy. The States we represent are home to national research laboratories. As many of my colleagues know, Senator Craig comes from a strong agricultural background. At times, we had to try to fend off, as best we could, efforts to change the Milk Income Loss Contract Program, called the MILC Program. That sounds like something we should all be for. It turns out that dairy farmers in New Mexico and Idaho knew Senator Craig was a formidable ally when it came to subsidies that would help some and hurt others. We were generally on the hurt end because we were smaller States that had that particular set of facts. We worked hard on those issues. I learned to respect him greatly. He led Republicans on public lands issues and forest issues as chairman and ranking member of the Public Lands and Forest Subcommittee from 1995 through 1997. This led to the enactment of the healthy forest bill in December of 2003--I was part of that with him--and the Senate Rural Schools and Communities Self-Determination Act, which was his. I am sure most of the thinking to put it together was his. It was an absolutely stellar bill that got assistance to schools across his State and other Western States that lost some or all of their revenues for their schools because of the curtailment of timber sales in the area. He and the distinguished Senator from Washington worked together to get this done. Senator Craig and I have spent a great deal of time on matters pertaining to nuclear power. Nuclear power is making a renaissance in America. We will soon have many of them built in the United States. We have more than any other country in the world, but we only get 20 percent of our electricity from nuclear power. Countries such as France have gone way ahead of us and now have 75 to 80 percent. Other countries of the world have as well, since America has made its bid, saying: We are going to change our minds, for which I am very proud. I took the lead in that, with Larry's help, and we have changed America. With it has come a renaissance in nuclear power. I wish him the greatest success in his retirement. I am sure we will hear from him. He is too young to be quiet. He will be doing something, and we will hear about it. Chuck Hagel I also wish to take this time to pay tribute to Chuck Hagel, the senior Senator from Nebraska, who is retiring after serving for two terms in the Senate. Senator Hagel, a fourth generation Nebraskan, has served his State and his country in many ways. He served as an infantry squad leader with the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry Division and is a decorated Vietnam veteran, having been awarded many honors including two Purple Hearts. As a U.S. Senator, Chuck Hagel has served on four committees: Foreign Relations; Banking; Housing and Urban Affairs; Intelligence and Rules. During his time in the Senate, coinciding with mine, it has been my pleasure to work with the distinguished Senator on issues affecting our Nation. I can recall a chance meeting between a member of my staff, one of my constituent groups from New Mexico and Senator Hagel, in which he took time out of his busy schedule to speak with my New Mexico constituents to offer his insights and share some very kind words. Such a small genuine instance like this made all the difference in their trip to our Nation's Capital. As I said, when he came here, for some reason, I think I became one of his very first friends. He must have decided that I was a big chairman, and when I went on a trip with the Budget Committee to Europe, I asked him if he would go, and he jumped to it. So we got to know each other during the first 2 or 3 months of his term on a trip to Europe where we learned about the new monetary system that was about to take place in Europe. We did a number of other things together. Obviously, he has been an exemplary Senator in all respects. He will return to his State and to America filled with ideas and ready to do other things for this great land. My wife Nancy and I wish Chuck and his family all the best. Wayne Allard Now I rise to speak about Senator Wayne Allard from Colorado who announced in January 2007 he would not seek reelection in 2008, keeping his promise of only serving two terms. I would like to thank Wayne for his service here in the Senate and for his service to the State of Colorado. In the course of working together with Senator Allard for many years on the Senate Budget Committee and more recently on the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have developed genuine respect for Senator Allard. We have a lot in common, fighting for the interests of our predominantly rural, Western States. Although we did not always agree, we worked well together, and I valued his commitment to his home State. Senator Allard announced in January of 2007 that he would not seek reelection in 2008, keeping his promise to serve only two terms. Some of us were sorry that he did that. I was one. I would like to thank Wayne for his service in the Senate, for his service to the State of Colorado, my neighbor. We worked together for many years on the Budget Committee. More recently, we worked on appropriations. Colorado is my neighbor to the north, and we have much in common in fighting for the interests of much of our rural way of life that Western States have. At the same time, we have growing metropolises with the problems of transportation and the like, which he has spent much time on. He has supported many things I have worked on. For that, I am grateful and thankful to him today. He and his wife Joan will return to non-Senate life. I don't know if he is going home. I haven't asked him personally. But wherever he goes, it is obvious he will make an impact.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I want to give a little history lesson on banking. It is strange that I only served on the Banking Committee 2 years of my Senate life. That was when I filled in. I served and learned a lot. But when this crisis came about, I decided that somebody was going to teach me about what had happened since the Great Depression. So I am going to try to do that as quickly as I can. First, it is not time for partisan ideological finger-pointing. Second, there is no plan that can emerge from any set of honest deliberations that will be painless. We are undergoing a massive deleveraging in the finance markets. Third, I was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee when the Resolution Trust Corporation was formed in order to curb the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s. That effort was also controversial. I hope the plan that emerges from Congress and the administration does the same for financial markets now. I recognize the difference between the two. The first was much easier because there were many physical assets we could look at and transfer title to, and people could feel assets. I would say that, as a model, that terrible situation ended with the Federal Government making money instead of losing money. From everything I know about the proposal, the principal proposal put forth by the executive branch through the two spokesmen who have been working 24 hours a day nonstop, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, an absolute expert in this field--it has been said over and over that he knows much about recessions and he knows much about depressions. He wrote his professorial doctorate thesis on the Great Depression. That is why he talks as if he knows what happens in depressions. He has been telling us what will happen if we go into a depression. Then we have the Secretary of the Treasury, whom we all have gotten to know. He apologizes profusely for not being a great speaker, but he has presented a difficult plan and come a long way. I, for one, hope we come to a resolution soon between Democrats and Republicans and the White House, speaking through their spokesmen, and send a signal to the American people that we know how to take care of the financial markets--not Wall Street, the financial markets--of America. The financial markets, not Wall Street, are plugged. They don't work right now. They don't run. They are filled with toxic assets. We have to get the toxic assets out or else we will have no liquidity in the financing system. Some say the basic problem goes back to 1933 and the so-called Glass- Steagall Act that separated investment banking from commercial banking. Some say that, to the contrary, if Glass-Steagall were still the law of the land, we wouldn't have the problems we now confront. Both sides cite great scholars, economic theorists, and market gurus, but both Democrats and Republicans voted for the original Glass-Steagall. In 1999, under the leadership of President Clinton and Treasury Secretary Rubin, Glass-Steagall was repealed. Now many say that repeal of Glass- Steagall has caused the problem. I should note that Republicans controlled the Congress then and Democrats controlled the executive branch. Both parties played a role. Some contend that the problem goes back to 1977, when Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act requiring that financial institutions finance home purchases to borrowers who were historically deemed unlikely to pay back the loans. The theorists say that when politicians try to determine who is a good borrower, both the borrower and the lender will suffer. I think we will look back on this effort to save the system and that conclusion will become a reality. Let me repeat. Some say that when we try to determine who is a good borrower and make a determination rather than letting the market make the determination as to who is a good borrower, we both suffer. Those who lend the money don't get paid, and those who buy don't get what they bought. That is sort of what has happened here. Many of those became the toxic assets that we are now talking about. The Reinvestment Act, which both Democrats and Republicans voted for, was an act that attempted to push loans that were questionable in terms of whether the people buying could ever pay them off. Some say we should have seen this coming. They note that the savings and loan crisis came not too long after the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982 that loosened regulation of savings and loans in America. The law drew the support of both Democrats and Republicans and was signed into law by a Republican President. This argument says that when regulation of Government-insured money loosens, the odds that extremely risky behavior will occur increases. During the last 10 years, as regulation of markets decreased, globalization of markets increased. More and more complicated and model-driven financial products were invented, and regulators clearly lost the ability to analyze risk and to step in when necessary. Many believe the Long-Term Capital Management debacle was an early warning that financial mathematicians in the marketplace had gotten ahead of the financial regulators. Warnings about the size and complexity of derivatives of all sorts proliferated. Many policymakers asked aboutthe size and complexity of these derivatives of all sorts and could not get answers and could not understand some of that which they were being told. Many policymakers and regulators assumed that the financial companies themselves would realize that proper risk analysis was in their self-interest and self-regulation would naturally occur. That assumption has proved wrong. Many purchasers of these convoluted products were reassured because rating agencies continued to give so many of them AAA ratings. Instead of going through the extremely difficult process of analyzing each and every component of each and every product, purchasers depended upon the ratings agencies. So some analysts now say it was the rating agencies that failed. Finally, we all recognize that turmoil plagues all markets worldwide. Many nations and institutions in many countries now own what are called ``toxic assets.'' I have just tried to describe them a minute ago. Literally trillions of dollars of various complex financial products are held by many banks, investment houses, pension funds, and insurance companies in almost every developed nation. China has had to step in by increasing Government shares of some banks. Russia closed down its markets for 2 days and may spend as much as $120 billion to stabilize its markets. Germany and the United Kingdom have had to devote billions within the last 18 months to try to stem financial contagion. Serious erosion of confidence in financial institutions threatens to freeze credit, with all the disastrous consequences that holds for a financial world built on easy, safe, transparent credit. Now credit is hard, insecure, and opaque. So, I will not pretend to know if the plan proposed by the administration and some in Congress will solve the problem. Since no one seems to know what shape this plan will take in the end, any predictions seem foolish at this point. I do know that the size of the potential market injury, and the consequences that the working man and woman in this and other nations will suffer, compel serious, strategic sovereign government action. Thus, I believe the warnings of a Federal Reserve Chairman who probably knows as much about the financial consequences of the Great Depression as anyone else in town, and the warnings of a Treasury Secretary who used to head a Wall Street firm that invented many of the instruments that now seem ``toxic.'' If they don't know the severity of this problem, and if they cannot at least give us a plan that will stabilize market behavior until a clearing price for these assets emerges, then I suspect that no one can. We will pass legislation that I guarantee you will be imperfect. All sorts of objections from various industries and groups have already filled cyberspace, and newspaper space, and air time. Ideological and theoretical objections already fill the atmosphere. It seems to me that the time for such almost theological discussions is long past. As a Senator who has been here a long time, and seen many recessions and market crises come and go, I only know two things: we are all to blame in some form or other; and we need to act now, with a very large, Government-led program, and with all prudent speed. Madam President, I believe my time is about to expire. I certainly hope we will pass something like what has been asked of us by the executive branch, with five or six things that clearly are necessary, that we find necessary as representatives of the people, but that we get it done because we must save our own ability to lend money--that is, our system of borrowing and lending--and the rest of the world kind of waits on us also. So this is truly a big one. As I said to my hometown paper, after 36 years in the Senate, on the last day or next to the last day of my time here, I will vote on the most important issue I have ever voted on, the most complex, and that costs the most--all in one shot. As I leave and walk out, here will be behind me the most difficult issue we have faced as a Nation. It is very hard for our people to understand it, but it is a terrible one.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I say to the Senator, thank you very much, Senator Dole.

Mr DOMENICI

Mr DOMENICI. The Senator is absolutely correct. We enhanced FERC's authority to police and prevent market manipulation and we increased the Commission's authority to levy fines to $1 million per day. It was our thinking that the potential for fines of this magnitude would serve as a meaningful deterrent to market manipulation. While I am a long time supporter of markets, I agreed to the grant of enhanced penalty authority to the FERC as a step to ensure that those markets were conducted fairly, openly, and without the exercise of market power by any of the participants.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I think the Senator's question is well informed, and I can assure him that there was no intent to change the standard of review which would attach to any enforcement proceeding. The longstanding practice has been for the accused party to have rights to a de novo review of the charges in Federal court. Such rights are necessary to ensure that the agency does not act as both prosecutor and judge in any enforcement proceeding. That right is clear, not just in the case law but in other statutes administered by the FERC, including the Federal Power Act and the Natural Gas Policy Act. There is no suggestion and there can be no inference that we intended to change that standard with our enhanced market oversight provisions in the Natural Gas Act.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I understand we are in morning business.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent that I may speak until about 11:45.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I didn't get the entire message of the distinguished Senator from Florida. The part of the speech I heard talked about us getting together and working as American Senators, not Republicans or Democrats, in this time of crisis. I totally congratulate the Senator. I agree with him and I believe it is imperative that we do something before we leave. Today, I hear talk that we have a continuing resolution we have to pass, and then we are finished. I am not hearing that from anybody officially, but it is chattering around. That is the big thing to do. I must say, that is a frightening thought. If we are thinking of leaving here without doing something to give the Treasury Department of the United States some authority to stabilize the credit system of the United States--if we don't do that and spend time doing that, we don't deserve to be called Senators. It is hard to explain, but when you look at it, credit and the American credit system--call it the banking system if you would like, but I am calling it the credit system--is what makes America's prosperity available to millions and millions of people. It is the credit system that we set up that has given us the greatest standard of living that any people have ever had. Something is going wrong with that financial system. It is not a question of Wall Street; it happens to be that Wall Street is the center for some of these financial systems that I am talking about. But they are going amiss; they are going awry. Something basic is happening, so that the liquidity of the system, which means the money available for the American financial system that I have just spoken of--something has clogged it up. We are told by the experts--and I don't think they have anything to gain. I think the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is a distinguished American who never would have thought he was taking on this job when he agreed to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Incidentally, for those who don't know, he has a Ph.D. in economics, but guess what his dissertation was on. It was on the Great Depression. I think we are lucky that we have somebody there who understands the worst of times. He is here, joined by the Secretary of the Treasury, who is not a long-term Wall Streeter. It is only about 6 years that he has been involved in the Wall Street activities as a businessman. He is here begging us, pleading with us, and apologizing that he is not a good speaker. I am kind of saying: Who cares. Just listen to what he says. If you can understand it, pick it up and decide there is something for you to do. If I sound like I am concerned, I would like everybody to know I have a very large stake in the future. My grandchildren haven't stopped arriving on the scene. I have 13 of them. I have 8 children of my own, and America has been great to all of us. There are millions more Americans like myself. What is going to happen if we leave here without solving this problem or at least giving the executive branch, through the Secretary of the Treasury, the authority to try to do something to make this system liquid so that money will flow again? If we don't do that and we go home and think we are going to have a Christmas, we are apt to have a Christmas that will shock us all. We are being told we can have a recession. Those are the words of a mild-mannered Federal Reserve Chairman. That is what he says, we could have a recession. I am quite sure when he is in the back room talking with those experts who advise him and with Secretary Paulson, he says worse than that. He probably says the thing can fall apart because it is all tied together and now it is all going to come untied, this great country, with billions of dollars in securities in the hands of all kinds of countries and people, having the dollar fall and the other signals out there that maybe they are right, that we are getting close to things falling apart. I have a prepared speech. I asked somebody who is an expert to give me the whole history of the banking system of the United States since 1933. I was hoping I would have time to read it and let everybody know what it was and how it happened and how we as legislators in America didn't quite respond to the banking system as fast as we should. Legislation didn't keep pace with the changes. So many people are to blame for us getting to where we are. There are plenty of people who abused the system. But if we get hung up trying to find out who did something wrong, then we are going to sit here, with our fingers pointed, in chairs trying to conduct hearings, asking the FBI to do things while the America we know goes down the tube. I believe it is time for clear thinking, for Senators to say: We have to take this one on the chin. If it is going to hurt politically, it might as well hurt politically while you are doing the greatest thing you could do for your country, and that is save it--save it from economic turmoil. If that is not the case and you don't believe it, then obviously you can leave as Senators or Representatives. Once the CR is passed, you can go home and start your Christmas festivities and start running for reelection. I hope if you do that, when you come back, maybe those of us who will stay and work will not let the system fall apart for you. But if you want to take that chance, do it. I think my colleagues should be here, not home campaigning. And I think the American people are going to hold you responsible if you don't get this thing solved. I hear some say we will do a little something. No, no, not do a little something. We have the best people advising us that we have to do this, and there is even a chance if we do this right that we won't lose as much money as we will as if we do nothing; that, in fact, we may lose many more billions of dollars if we don't do something to stop the hemorrhage and at the same time loosen up the money. I haven't said ``Wall Street'' very often in this speech, and I haven't used the word ``bailout'' because I don't think we are bailing out Wall Street and I don't think it is Wall Street that is the beneficiary of what we are trying to do. Stop and think. Who is involved in this thing called money lending in the United States, credit in the United States? There are millions of people and thousands of institutions that lend money. To whom? To people buying a car, buying a house, buying the Christmas presents for their children, improving the house, buying the lawn mower, buying their third car, and on and on. Those are the people who are using this credit system. One time off the cuff I didn't know what to speak about before a crowd. I decided to have them guess with me: What is the greatest system that is working in the United States that is beneficial to you on an everyday basis? Of course, nobody could guess what I was going to say. I said: the credit system of the United States. And then I proceeded to tell them why the credit system was one of the best things that America had going for us--not for Wall Street, for us. And the credit system is at stake. If it doesn't work, nothing works. If your credit system doesn't work, you don't buy houses, you don't buy cars, you don't buy toys. Maybe you buy groceries. But if it is broken, who knows what will happen to a country such as ours when we have been so used to so much for so long. Having said that, I have a little bit more time and I wish to talk a little bit about the history. Maybe I will rethink this for a minute and put it this way. I believe it is imperative that we pass legislation, and I believe that if the consensus is, after saying we want to give the executive branch what they think they need to solve this problem, if the consensus is that we need to add something to that legislation--add oversight, add something on executive pay, whatever the other things are--let's get on with it. Let's do that. Let's sit down with the leaders from the White House, from the executive branch, and say: What do we need in addition to their proposal? And let's talk seriously. I don't see why it would take so long. I don't see why we can't do it. Incidentally, I was chairman of the Budget Committee when the Resolution Trust Corporation was formed in order to curb the savings and loan crisis in the early nineties. That effort was also very controversial. Yet that effort stabilized the markets and eventually made money for the American taxpayers. Of course, it was much more limited in scope. We were talking about the savings and loan institutions. Some were regulated, some were not regulated, and we were in some kind of a real mess. Some had deposit insurance that was adequately covered, some didn't. We had to take over their assets and then dole them out. Some people made a good deal and bought them cheap and made money. People focused on that and said what a dumb thing we did because some people made money on the buyouts from this Resolution Trust Corporation. In the end, when we added it all up, it made more money than it lost, and it saved the system. In the process, a lot of purification occurred, a lot of cleaning out occurred. The same is going to happen here. I am no expert on the difference between then and now, the Resolution Trust Corporation problem that was being solved and the problems we are going to solve now, but clearly there are many similarities. We were frightened. When we heard the first reports about how much we might lose, there were many who supported it who didn't want to go home, they wanted to hide their heads under the desks because it was so many billions of dollars. This one is going to be worse, and if we don't decide to fix it, there are not going to be any desks to hide under, in my opinion. The other problem we have is we haven't told the American people that this affects them. They have been told, because of the way it was presented, ``Wall Street,'' ``bailout,'' those famous words--it has been presented as if it doesn't have anything to do with the people on Main Street and in our shopping centers across America and those who are selling and buying houses anywhere in America or buying cars from their local dealerships. It applies to all of them. If liquidity, the liquid money flowing, stops for any period of time, all of those are affected. And guess who is at the end of each of those. The American people. They are all going to be affected. In fact, I am quite sure many thousands of Americans are worried today as to what they should do with their money, with their savings. We need to build some confidence back into the system and in them. We need to stabilize the system and build confidence in the American people by us being confident, by speaking out that we intend to do this, and by doing it we are going to save this credit system in the United States which applies daily to each American in a different way, but is their credit system, the credit system of the people of this country. The history of the banking system in the United States is clearly an interesting one, and I believe rather than give it today, I will reserve it--I know I will have another opportunity to speak--and change the tenor of my remarks today from the history of the banking system to my version of the problem, from the top of my head as I think and look at a few words, what I think the problem is and what I think our responsibility is. I once again say that before we leave here, we have a responsibility to face up to what could be the greatest economic crisis America has ever seen. If it isn't that big, we don't understand it. We are being told by those who know that it is that big, that it could be the biggest economic crisis we have ever had. I tend to believe these two gentlemen. I have heard them. I don't know them. I listen to them. I have no idea why they would be telling us this if it were not that they truly believed it was the fact as they gathered the facts from this enormous credit system of the United States. I repeat, we are fortunate that the two experts are truly expert on matters similar to the ones we are facing. I didn't know about the good doctor who is Chairman of the Federal Reserve until I was preparing for this speech and for these hearings, that not only is he an economist but his expertise is in the Great Depression. No wonder he talks so confidently about what might happen if we do this or that. Who are we going to believe if we don't believe people such as them? Who are we going to believe if we don't believe the Secretary? The Secretary worked so hard yesterday. I was around him late in the afternoon. I thought maybe he ought to go home and rest, he had worked so hard. He truly is trying to tell us with two red flags--if he could hold five of them--he is trying to tell us there is a big problem and we better start solving it. Don't be worrying too long how big the fire is or how big the fire hose has to be. We know how big the problem is. It is either as big as they say, or we have to guess and say we, as Senators, with no expertise in this area, no more than that, we are going to guess. I don't choose to do that. I don't think that is why we are here. This is a complicated system. The credit system of the United States is complicated. They have narrowed it down to five or six major events and now the big one that will wrap it up. We better help them or we better be prepared to face the consequences ourselves as individual American Senators. I yield the floor and thank the Senate for listening. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wanted to indicate if the minority leader chose to speak I will yield now and wait my turn.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, first I want to say how proud I am to see Senators on the floor, and others I have spoken to in meetings, speak up on this issue. I particularly commend the former chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Judd Gregg. Senator Gregg, I was chairman of the committee when the Resolution Trust Corporation--another one of these where a group of banks, called savings and loans, were going broke and the Federal Government had to step in. I recall having gone through what you are going through. What is the real value? How much is the real cost? I do laud your statesmanship and your ability to tell it to us the way it is. I thank you for it. I recommend you make your expertise available to the Senate because this is not a Republican issue, this is an American issue. The facts as you know them are as important to Democrats as they are to us. I commend you for that, and our leader, who made a forceful statement today that delays are not the order of the day, that something must be done. I talk of this issue--I have spoken two times or three times for at least 10 minutes on the issue and never once in those speeches did I mention ``Wall Street'' or ``bailout,'' because I think it is neither. It has nothing to do with either of those. Wall Street is a location. As far as a bailout, this has nothing to do with Wall Street. The credit market of the United States, that which makes money available day by day to the people of our country for any and everything--their car, the new car they bought, the house they added on to that they want to pay for--anything you want to think of that requires the exchange of money or the payment of something by a check, all of this requires liquidity. It requires that money move. When money is stopped, the whole thing stops. The best that we have in America, the two men representing the executive branch, I think are as good as we could have. They are telling us they have a way to attack that problem and perhaps come out of it without having to spend all the money we put up, that we will let the Treasury Department use to try to buy these assets that are stopping up things and take them to the trust corporation and see what happens over time. In the meantime, the money for Americans must be loosened. That is the whole issue. I am glad we are talking about it forthrightly and honestly and that each Senator who has spoken has spoken of the fact that we ought to get this done as soon as possible. Time is hurting Americans, and the longer we wait the more difficult it gets for us to get it done. I also laud the two candidates for President. It is no use running for President of the United States if, when you get there, America has gone bankrupt or is in the middle of a recession so big that it approaches a depression. From my vantage point, things are not going to get better until we do something rather extraordinary. Two experts have told us what that is. They have a plan. I don't have a plan. I hope other people don't have plans. I hope we build on the plan submitted to us. With that, I will yield the floor. Once again, I thank Senators who have had the courage and the will to understand that this is a big American problem requiring big actors who are not worried about their reelection but worried about America's future. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, my thanks to the chairman. First, I wish to thank a number of individuals and institutions. First and foremost, I thank Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy is my long-time partner and friend in our work on parity and other mental health issues. Obviously, he cannot be here today, but he is fully aware of what we are doing. I know he is very pleased with what we are doing and thrilled that we have found the offset for our bill, the bill that has been accepted by the House. The question is whether our bill with the offset or our bill with a different offset becomes law. There should be no doubt that we will now get parity of treatment for a large number of Americans suffering from mental illness. My further thanks go to Senator Enzi. I could not have asked for a better colleague to help work on this issue of mental health parity. Senator Dodd, my long-time friend, has done an admirable job standing in for Senator Kennedy, not to mention his own work on mental health issues. Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley: Simply put, we could not be here without you. Leaders Reid and McConnell: I cannot say enough about the fantastic assistance the leaders have provided and they should certainly share with us the optimism that comes from this bill. Members of the House of Representatives Kennedy and Ramstad, the chairmen and members of the committees of jurisdiction and the leadership in the House; our superb coalition outside the Senate and House. Mental health groups, insurance companies, and business organizations banded together and stayed together to ensure a broadly supported bill. It might shock some, but I read the long list of those who banded together. And yes, you will see that this bill is supported by businesses--by big businesses--by those who pay for the large numbers of people who are covered by insurance and who are going to be guaranteeing parity of treatment under this bill. Finally, my dear friend Paul Wellstone. He was always the one who pushed and prodded me to move quicker and faster. I know he is watching us today and is extremely proud of what we have accomplished. Let me take a couple of minutes to talk about the historic mental health parity compromise before the Senate. Twelve years have passed since the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 became law. The compromise is the product of 3-plus years of continuous work and thousands of hours of labor. Rather than say just thousands, I will say a thousand hours at a minimum. For those 3-plus years I would walk into my office from time to time and I would see my conference room occupied by 30 or 40 people. Whenever that conference room was full, I knew that the member of my staff who handles mental health parity, Edward Hild, who is sitting at my right hand today, was among them. He was working with them to see what they could agree on and to see which problems could be solved. Joined with him was Senator Kennedy's aide, Connie Garner. I thank the two of them especially. Without them we could not have completed this bill. They worked and worked in order to get all sides to agree. And now we have what many have waited for a long time. My thanks to Ed Hild, and Connie Garner, who works for Senator Kennedy. What does this bill do? It provides mental health parity for about 113 million Americans who work for employers with 50 employees or more. It ensures that 98 percent of the businesses that provide a mental health benefit do so in a manner that is no more restrictive than the coverage of medical and surgical benefits. It ensures that health plans do not place more restrictive conditions on mental health coverage than on medical and surgical coverage; parity for financial requirements, such as deductibles, copayments, and annual and lifetime limits; parity for treatment limitations, and the number of covered hospital days and visits. It provides an out-of-network parity for mental health coverage if a plan provides out-of-network coverage for medical and surgical benefits. It provides a small employer exemption for companies with fewer than 50 employers and provides a cost exemption to all covered employers. Simply put, our legislation will ensure that individuals with a mental illness have parity between mental health coverage and medical and surgical coverage. No longer will people with mental illness have their mental health coverage treated differently than their coverage for other illnesses. That means there will be parity between the coverage of mental illness and other medical conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. No longer will people be treated differently only because they suffer from a mental illness. And that means 113 million people in group health policy plans will benefit from our bill. We have worked with the mental health community and business and insurance groups to carefully craft a compromise that all members of the coalition support. I wish to take a minute to talk about what we are doing and what we are not doing. I have done that in all of my remarks, talking about what we are doing and what we are not doing. Mr. President, I say to everyone here, I do believe that if Senator Kennedy had his way, he would be standing over there where his chair is and he would be speaking as long as I speak or maybe longer. He and I would be discussing how difficult it has been to get this very basic American insurance coverage for the mentally ill. Parity means fairness. We have been unfair to the mentally ill since we started medical insurance coverage for people with illnesses. Somehow we got off the track. We said, of course, we will treat everything that has to do with the heart, but, for instance, we won't do anything having to do with illnesses that affect the brain. Perhaps, it was because we didn't know that illnesses such as schizophrenia were diseases of the brain. We started talking about them as if they were something else. So we began saying they don't get the kind of coverage that people with heart problems do, or people with cancer do, or people with tuberculosis do. What we have had is millions of Americans, since health insurance was first started, to this date, millions of Americans have been born and died with mental illnesses. Illnesses never covered by health insurance. However, over time the unfairness has been whittled away, and we have become more and more fair. Today this bill says all of the group insurance policies in the United States of America, no matter who wrote them, no matter where they were written, no matter which company they were written by or for, will have to provide for the mentally ill who are covered. If they are going to have any mental health coverage, those insurance companies must cover them with the exact same coverage they give to others who suffer from other diseases as I have described in the last 6 or 7 minutes. This is a red-letter day for fairness, a red-letter day for doing something very positive. This was a tough one, and it should have been easy. But it was tough. It took many years to get it through here. In fact, the last effort we had, believe it or not, we had a Senator who was so concerned about his work that he said he wanted one more weekend. To which I said: What can you do in one more weekend? And his response--and he was sincere--he said: I want to finish reading the bill. Nobody tells us that, but he did. He finished reading the bill. I thank him. I said: You must be a genius to understand what we wrote. I compliment you. That was one of our last hurdles. That was months ago in the Senate. Then it got to the House, this final bill, this bill before us today. We had a parity bill a number of years ago which was quasi almost parity. That got through here a little easier, although even that bill was resisted in the House. Many of us have warmed to the idea finally that the mentally ill of our country are truly people who are sick, and if they are treated by doctors or in hospitals for that ailment--be it schizophrenia, be it bipolar, be it depression, any of those doctors have to treat--those patients ought to be covered by general health insurance. I am so pleased we are finally doing this bill. I am so unhappy that my friend Senator Kennedy cannot be here today. He and I spent many hours talking about this legislation, changing it, moving it around. I know he would have loved to have been here. So I say on behalf of Senator Kennedy that he and I thank the Senate for this bill. It will be adopted shortly. My 10 minutes is up. This is on a bill which is destined to pass. We were glad to put it on the bill. Maybe we helped the bill; maybe the bill helped us. In any event, we are trying to do everything that anybody asks of us. We even had the Congressional Budget Office say this bill costs the Government money, and that was a hard thing to eat and buy, but we did buy it. It took us a long time because we had to have an offset. We did get one. For those people interested in the bill, I have said everything about the bill and the people with mental illness across our land. I have seen these people by the thousands--the mothers and fathers and relatives of the mentally ill. They are my friends across the land. Today, we have added other things and we are getting close to covering the mentally ill, as we should--as a concerned, considerate country should do. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.