Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I object.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, might I inquire of the Senator, we have been trying to move a 30-day extension of existing authorities for the FAA, which is essential and very necessary. Is the Senator holding that up? We have had objection from his side, and my information is that the objection was the Senator's. Is that accurate?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I think this will be extended 30 days. Failure to extend the current authority for the FAA for the next 30 days while we finish the conference report will mean that 4,000 people at FAA will be furloughed, laid off. Don't tell me that promotes aviation safety. That is the worst possible thing we can do--to decide that we are not going to extend current authorities, and after July 4, 4,000 people will be furloughed at FAA. With respect to what my colleague has just done, without consultation with anybody else, he decided to come to the floor of the Senate and talk about ``special deals'' and ``new taxes'' and so on. Let me describe where we are. We have tried to keep the Senator's staff and him involved so that he understands where we are. In the event there is missing information, let me explain where we are. No. 1, we passed an FAA reauthorization bill that includes modernization of the air traffic control system, very substantial safety provisions, far more than what the Senator suggests we adopt today. As the Senator knows because he is ranking member on the subcommittee, we held a good number of hearings on the subject of the Colgan crash and the safety provisions that need to be done as a result of it. The things the Senator raises on the floor today include most of what I have suggested, among other things. I appreciate the cooperation the Senator offered when he was at the hearings we held on these safety issues. But following the passage of this bill by the Commerce Committee, we have not been able to appoint conferees in this Chamber. That is symbolic of how dysfunctional the Chamber is these days because we have objections even to appointing conferees. Notwithstanding the objections, Senator Rockefeller and I have been working with the House, and we have kept the Senator involved, trying to narrow down most of the provisions that differ between the House and Senate. There are 6 or 8 or perhaps 10 significant differences we are working on now, and the Senator mentioned a couple: the issue of the perimeter rule, slots at Washington National Airport, a FedEx issue, passenger facilities charge, and other issues. I believe there is almost no dispute at all about the majority of the safety provisions that both the House and the Senate will include in the bill when it is complete. We had hoped it would be complete this week. That is not going to be the case. Shortly after we return, I fully expect to have a conference report on the floor of the Senate that will include all of these safety provisions and more, I should say--many more--because, as the Senator knows, I chaired the hearings that helped develop these very procedures. It would have been nice to have gotten some notice about what the Senator chose to do today. I do not think it is appropriate to try to leverage an extension for 30 days for the current authorization of FAA, which, if not extended, will result in 4,000 people being furloughed at the FAA. To try to leverage passing a portion of the FAA reauthorization bill that we are now negotiating with the House and we are very close to concluding does not make any sense to me. No one cares more about these safety issues than I do. I can speak at length--and perhaps I will--about the Colgan crash. I understand what happened in that cockpit. I read all the transcription. I read all the information available about it. I sat for hour after hour in hearings. What happened there is an enormous tragedy. Some of the things that caused it, in my judgment, will be remedied and can be remedied and some of it is already remedied as a result of the action by the new FAA Administrator. I simply want to say to the Senator from South Carolina that I think it is very important that we extend for 30 days the current authority of the FAA and avoid the furloughs his objections would entail. If there is any way to quickly and immediately and dramatically injure safety in the skies in this country, it would be to decide to have that kind of furlough. I did ask unanimous consent for a 30-day extension. I will do so again this afternoon and hope that my colleague will not object to it. I have worked with my colleague all along the way on these safety issues. I wish perhaps he would have consulted us in terms of coming to the floor today at 12:45 p.m. as a ranking member of a subcommittee and saying: I am going to take this on myself and do this, for whatever reasons he described.

Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield without losing the floor, if the Senator has a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I object.

Mr. DORGAN. Why don't we stop this sort of thing? It is unbelievable to me how dysfunctional this place is. I say to my colleague, we have worked on this issue for months and months. I wish it had been done in January, but it was not. But we are very close to getting this done the right way. We have a couple things we have to do together, and I hope we would not be debating this. We need to extend the authorities for the FAA--and do it now--for 30 days. I expect--and the Senator knows me because I have had conversations with Senator Kyl, the No. 2 person on his side. We all had conversations with the Senator from South Carolina and his staff. He knows we have been involved in finalizing at long last just the few remaining issues in order to get a conference report to the floor of the Senate. I have talked with and met with the families of the victims on the Colgan flight many times. I do not know that anybody here has done much more than I have done to reach out to them, to hold hearings, to listen to them, to compliment them, to say to them: Because of what you are doing as families of victims, other people are going to have their lives saved because of aviation safety. I do not take a backseat to anybody in my interest and concern about that and what I have done about that. I have not had the families of the victims come to me to say: Let's decide to object to extending for 30 days the FAA reauthorization or, by the way, let's decide to take this legislation apart and pull part of it out and leave some of the safety provisions outside the Senator's amendment. What the Senator is suggesting is that we should pass legislation that came to us from the Senate with an amendment of his that takes a portion of the bill out that he decided he wants out. This bill, by the way, passed the Senate 93 to 0. The Senator was not there that day, so he did not vote. But 93 Senators voted, and no Senators voted against it. We can get this done, but we are not going to get this done by coming to the floor without consulting anybody; let's take a portion of it and add it to a House provision and threaten to have the FAA not have their authority extended and they can furlough 4,000 people in the coming weeks--that is not, in my judgment, a thoughtful way to proceed. My hope is that perhaps we, in a rational moment, can just decide: Let's do the right thing. We are in conference with the House--not a formal conference but a substantial number of meetings have gone on. We have another one at 5 o'clock this afternoon. My hope would be that the Senator from South Carolina would agree that there is the right way and the wrong way to do this business. We will get all those safety provisions done and more--much, much more--and we will not leave any safety provisions behind that were in the legislation that passed the Senate 93 to 0. It is going to take another week or so beyond July 4, and we will have this done. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3371 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. Let me say that this is the 30-day extension of the FAA reauthorization bill.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me withdraw that request.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I object.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I support the comments of and the legislation by the Senator from Louisiana. I think it makes a great deal of sense to strengthen small businesses. They are, after all, the job generators in this country. So I appreciated her comments. We don't always agree on every issue around here, but I am a strong supporter of her work as chairman of the Small Business Committee and of the legislation she has described. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the Senate floor briefly today because we are talking about extending unemployment compensation, unemployment benefits, to people who are out of work, and we are having a very difficult time doing that. These benefits are for people who worked on payrolls. They actually paid a little of their money in taxes to support an unemployment fund so if they lost their jobs they would be able to get some unemployment help. But in order to do that, this has to be extended by the Senate, and it has become increasingly difficult to extend unemployment compensation to those who are out of work. I find that kind of inexplicable because for the folks at the top of the economic ladder, there is no problem in their getting what they want out of this Chamber. I noticed in the last 24 hours or so that one of my colleagues objected to something that was in the financial reform bill. He said: Well, you are going to impose a fee on the biggest banks. He said: I won't accept that. He said: If you do that, I won't vote for the bill. The biggest banks in the country shouldn't have to pay this fee. I was thinking to myself: Why not? They drove the country into the ditch. They are the ones involved in the cesspool of greed, many of them, trading things on things they will get from people who never had it and making money on both sides, which created an unbelievable orgy of speculation that ran the country right into the ditch. There is nothing wrong, it seems to me, with their having to pay a fee here or there. But one of our colleagues said: I won't support that. All of a sudden, the conference committee got back together and said: How can we fluff up your pillow, big guy? Can we give you an aspirin, put you to sleep? If you are at the top of this economic ladder in this Chamber, you can do just fine because somebody will make you comfortable. But what about the people at the bottom? What about the person who came home from work after 18 years on the job and said: Honey, I lost my job today. And they can't find another job? What about that family and that person? What about extending unemployment help for that person? Things never change. Here is what Will Rogers said many years ago. He said: The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we will get around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK. Boy, if there was ever a description of the way things work these days, this is it. Old Will Rogers. And this description is as old as eight or nine decades, isn't it? The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we don't have time yet. We will get to them after everybody else gets taken care of. And who gets taken care of first? The folks at the top of the economic ladder. I wonder, I just wonder what would happen with a bill to extend unemployment benefits if the only Americans who were unemployed were investment bankers? Do you think that wouldn't have been passed in a nanosecond, just like that? But, no, the unemployed are people named Smith and Jones and Adams and Johnson. They are the ones somehow at the bottom of the economic ladder who don't seem to matter to some people. My hope is this Congress will have the good sense to do the right thing. During tough times, we have something called a safety net--that is the unemployment compensation--that helps people when they are laid off, when they are out of work and are having trouble and can't find another job. It is our responsibility to extend that. That is what we should be doing. As Will Rogers said: Everybody else gets help. In the last 24 hours, the folks at the top of the economic ladder got help--the biggest banks in the country. Why? Because somebody said they needed some comfort--a bedtime story, a fluffed pillow, an aspirin, some comfort. They got their comfort. But we are still waiting to see if the people who lost their jobs and who are at the bottom of the economic ladder will get the help they were promised. I hope so. We will have a vote on that and we will soon see. Energy Policy Mr. President, I wanted to mention that yesterday a group of us went down to meet with the President on the subject of energy, and following that meeting a number of my colleagues spoke to the press. I did not. But because there were stories today about the representation of that meeting with the President, I thought I would at least offer my notion of what that meeting meant and what the consequences of it will or should be. The meeting with the President, calling a number of Republicans and Democrats--about 10 or 12 of us--down to the White House, was to talk about energy and to simply try to evaluate what is achievable, what should be done with respect to energy. We know two things are making this country vulnerable: No. 1, we are way too dependent on foreign oil. We use one-fourth of the oil that is pulled out of this planet every morning. Every day we use one-fourth in this little place called the United States. Yet over 60 percent of that which we use comes from other countries. That leaves us far too vulnerable to others, and, by the way, some of whom are in very troubled parts of the world. We are far too vulnerable to others for our energy supplies. That is a fact. The second something that is happening to this planet is called climate change. We don't necessarily know exactly what that is, but the wide consensus of scientists tells us we need to be concerned about it and we need to be taking actions to deal with it. I appreciate the President's leadership on these issues and saying we need to move. We need to do some things here. But the discussion was, What is achievable? What is achievable, in my judgment, from listening and participating in that meeting, is what I have always believed was achievable. The only thing achievable is that which will get 60 votes to come from the calendar of the Senate to the floor because it takes 60 votes on a motion to proceed to consider anything. I believe the only thing that can get 60 votes, based on not only the meeting yesterday but other discussions I have had, would be to bring the bill passed by the Energy Committee, which was bipartisan, to the floor of the Senate. That does not exclude anything else. That does not exclude anybody from offering climate change amendments, comprehensive climate change amendments. But we will never get to the floor unless we get to the floor with something that can get 60 votes, and I am convinced the only thing that can achieve that is the bipartisan Energy bill out of the committee. The Energy bill itself is a bill that does reduce carbon. It does all the things I think it should do. Yes, it says we are going to continue to use the fossil energy--coal, oil, natural gas--but we are going to use that in a different way. We are going to decarbonize and take great pains to protect the planet as we do. We are going to build some nuclear. We are going to maximize renewables--solar and wind energy. We are going to do the biofuels, including biodiesel, ethanol, and geothermal. All of these sources of energy are important to our country's future. All of these areas--conservation, including retrofitting buildings; the first ever renewable electric standard; building an interstate highway of transmission capability; high-voltage transmission so you can collect energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines and put it on a wire and send it to where it is needed in the load centers--all of that was part of the bill that was passed out of the Energy Committee 1 year ago this month. That is, in my judgment, what is achievable to get to the floor of the Senate, and then it is open for amendments. That does not exclude, by the way, any other amendments people wish to offer that can achieve the 60 votes, once it is on the floor, that can address climate change. As I said before, there is something to climate change, as far as I am concerned. We would be fools not to recognize and fools not to address it. The question is not whether; it is when and how. I said before that I would support capping carbon and I would support pricing carbon. I also said I will not support what is called cap and trade because I do not intend to give Wall Street a trillion-dollar carbon securities market to trade so they can tell us what the cost of our energy is going to be. But that aside, I really think it is important that we not end this year without doing an energy bill that advances this country's energy and national security. Let me mention one additional item very quickly; that is, yesterday there was a hearing in the Armed Services Committee with respect to the nomination of General Petraeus to assume command in Afghanistan. I am not going to speak at length about this. I fully support General Petraeus and this nomination. I think the President has made an excellent choice. By the way, I don't think he had much choice but to replace General McChrystal, and replacing him with General Petraeus makes a great deal of sense to me. I wish to say with respect to Afghanistan that I think it is long past the time for us to have a very significant discussion about Afghanistan. The President has indicated the potential withdrawal date beginning on July 1 of next year, 2011. But I think that even before that, we need to have a discussion in this country about what our role is in Afghanistan. What, in fact, is victory in Afghanistan? Are we fighting al-Qaida? Are we fighting terrorists in Afghanistan or are we fighting insurgents in Afghanistan? What about the Afghanistan Government and President Karzai? What is achievable? Every day, we are sending young men and women to fight in a war, and many--I should not say ``many''--a number of them will lose their lives. We go on almost ``out of sight out of mind,'' not thinking about it, not debating it nearly enough. What is it we are achieving? We have been at war for nearly 8 years, spending a great deal of money--lost treasure and lost lives. By the way, with respect to treasure, not a penny of it has been paid for. I think it is time for us to have a good discussion in this country about what are we doing? How long will we do it? What is victory? What is achievable? Should we, in fact, be engaged in a long-term war against insurgents in that country? Where is al-Qaida? We know where it is in part: northern Pakistan. Where is al-Qaida? What is this--a war against terror or is it a war against insurgents? My own view is that I think it is highly unlikely, no matter how long this country is in Afghanistan, that we will ever be successful in the rural tribal lands of Afghanistan. But my hope and my desire is to want the best for this country. I think the best will be achieved if we have a thoughtful, good, full, complete discussion as a nation about what our objectives are, how we achieve those objectives, and when, at last, at long, long last, we can bring troops home and be in a position where we are not saying America at this point is at war. We need to be addressing the terrorist threat across this planet, and that will take us a long while, but I think that is a very different circumstance than being engaged in the fight in Afghanistan as it currently exists. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I just told my colleague that the unanimous consent request I intend to read is a unanimous consent request that will extend for 30 days the existing authorities of the FAA. The House has passed it, has sent it to us, and is now awaiting action by the Senate. I personally do not intend to support amending it and sending it back to the House. I believe we ought to do what we should always do; that is, try to make things work, and the way to make things work is to give the FAA the extended authority they need while we finish the negotiations with the House. I indicated that we have a meeting this afternoon. Senator Rockefeller and I have a meeting with the House counterparts this afternoon on these issues. We have had staff working for a long period of time. We are down to very narrow, in my judgment, or at least a few narrow differences that I believe we can resolve. It would be a shame, in my judgment, if we do not, just as a matter of courtesy, decide, yes, this is the right thing to do while we try to negotiate these final areas in that legislation. This issue of safety, I indicated to my colleague--I guess the Senator was absent when the Senate voted on the bill itself. It passed 93 to 0. The Senator from South Carolina has been at the hearings. My colleagues have been at the hearings I have called on safety. The crafting of the provisions on safety are provisions I largely crafted in consultation with my colleague. It seems to me to be Byzantine to be standing here and having my colleague come to the floor offering this without consultation with anybody. It does not make sense to do it this way. Let's finish this the way Congress should finish its work: negotiate with the House. We can do that in the next week or two, get a conference report, bring it here, and have a vote on it, and it will include all the safety provisions my colleague wants, which I helped create, and many more. That is the right way to legislate. The wrong way to legislate would be for us to decide we are going to threaten to not extend the reauthorization of the FAA and have about 4,000 people laid off sometime over the Fourth of July weekend. These are people who work at the airports division, engineering facilities, and equipment division. It makes no sense to do this. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent--this is H.R. 5611, the FAA extension bill for 30 days--I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5611, which was received from the House.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me make a point very clearly. A number of the provisions dealing with safety that relate to the Colgan air crash are being implemented already by the FAA. Let me make that point, No. 1. No. 2, in order to successfully do what we really need to do to promote aviation safety, we need to get the bill passed that promotes modernization of the air traffic control system. That is critically important. We are losing ground on those issues. We need to be able to move airplanes around this country and the world with GPS capability. It allows them to fly more direct routes, with a much greater margin of safety for passengers. The modernization of the system is critically important. We worked long and hard on that issue. This comprehensive bill includes air traffic control modernization, safety provisions, and so many other provisions that are important. My colleague, who is the ranking member on the subcommittee that helped produce this bill, knows and I know that we have to have a 30- day extension. That has to be done and will be done this week. I cannot believe my colleague would go home and decide: I don't care who is laid off. I will tell my colleagues how to quickly diminish safety in the skies, and that is to do that, to behave like that. That is a nonstarter, in my judgment. It is also the case that we are not going to have somebody come to the floor without consultation and pull this provision, that provision, or the next provision out of the bill and say: By the way, I want unanimous consent to get this done. That is not serious legislating. It just is not. Everybody knows that. It is time for us to start working together. This place is pretty dysfunctional these days. This is exhibit A as to why it is dysfunctional. My hope is that in the next couple of days, we can reach an understanding to fix some of the issues that affect the Senator. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I listen sometimes on the floor of the Senate and think there should be an Olympic Gold Medal for flexibility. It is interesting. For example, the flexibility would mean you are flexible enough to understand if a Republican President were to send down a nominee for the Supreme Court, and that person had never served as a judge previously, that would be a big advantage, and you would argue that would be something that is very salutary, that this person does not have judicial experience. Such was the case of Chief Justice Rehnquist, who did not have such experience. But because they were nominated by a Republican, it was a big advantage not to have judicial experience. Now a Democrat sends a nominee down and all of a sudden not having judicial experience is a liability. That is some flexibility, as far as I am concerned. I met with the nominee, Ms. Kagan, and she is a great nominee. I am sure she is going to be confirmed easily in the Senate. I cannot believe the Judiciary Committee will have any opportunity to find very much wrong with this very credible, very high-qualified, well-qualified nominee. I did not come here to say that. But listening, again, as I do, I keep hearing the sound of sawing on the floor of the Senate, sawing away in a partisan manner. I simply wanted to observe that much of this has very little to do with substance and has everything to do with partisan politics that we hear on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, today I rise on the floor of the Senate recognizing that we have white roses and a black drape adorning the desk of the late Senator Robert C. Byrd. I had told him personally in the past that when my service is done I will have considered it a great privilege to have served in this body at the time when Robert Byrd served in this body. He was a lot of things. He was smart and tough and honest. Because he legislated and because of his career here, this is a better country, I am convinced of that. All of us know Senator Byrd grew old here and became someone with health problems in recent years and yet even last week would come to this Chamber and cast his vote. In recent weeks I had several visits with him on the floor of the Senate. All of us know as well that he loved his country. He, most of all, loved the Senate. He wrote a two-volume book of history on this body, and I say to anybody listening, if they enjoy history and enjoy knowing anything about the wonderful history of this body, read what Senator Byrd has written. It is extraordinary. He loved the Constitution of the United States, and he never appeared on the floor of the Senate without having a copy of that Constitution in his suit pocket. He always had a copy of the Constitution with him. He was also someone who did not just love the history of the Senate but loved Roman history. I recall sitting on the floor of the Senate many years ago when I first came to the Senate, listening to Senator Byrd talk about Roman history and the lessons in it for us. I recall him 1 day describing Hannibal crossing the Alps, with a conclusion of Hannibal, who had lost an eye--a one-eyed Carthaginian--on the plains, riding the last emaciated elephant before he was cornered, and taking a pill from a secret container in a ring and, rather than being captured, took his life. I learned a lot listening to Senator Byrd on the floor of the Senate about a lot of things, including Roman history. I also learned that he had one of the extraordinary memories you have ever known. And I thought today--because we are saddened but also mourning the loss of a friend and someone who served this country so well--I would read something he read on the floor of the Senate a couple of times, but he read the preamble to it and then recited it from memory, this great story. He did it because he was talking about a crime that occurred with respect to a dog, an animal. He talked a lot about his dog Billy, that he loved very much, and then he told us the story about a man named Vest, George G. Vest, who was to become a Senator later. I will read what Senator Byrd said. He said: At the turn of the century, George G. Vest delivered a deeply touching summation before the jury in the trial involving the killing of a dog, Old Drum. This occurred, I think, in 1869. There were two brothers-in-law, both of whom had fought in the Union Army. They lived in Johnson County, MO. One was named Leonidas Hornsby. The other was named Charles Burden. Burden owned a dog, and he was named ``Old Drum.'' He was a great hunting dog. Any time that dog barked one could know for sure that it was on the scent of a raccoon or other animal. Leonidas Hornsby was a farmer who raised livestock and some of his calves and lambs were being killed by animals. He, therefore, swore to shoot any animal, any dog that appeared on his property. One day there appeared on his property a hound. Someone said: ``There's a dog out there in the yard.'' Hornsby said: ``Shoot him.'' The dog was killed. Charles Burden, the owner of the dog, was not the kind of man to take something like this lightly. He went to court. This was Old Drum that was killed. He won his case and was awarded $25. Hornsby appealed, and, if I recall, on the appeal there was a reversal, whereupon the owner of the dog decided to employ the best lawyer that he could find in the area. He employed a lawyer by the name of George Graham Vest. This lawyer gave a summation to the jury. Senator Byrd recited the summation to the jury, and he did it without a note. It so reminded me of all the things I heard on the floor from Senator Byrd--yes, ``The Ambulance Down in the Valley,'' a piece of lengthy prose without a note, and this without a note. He recited the summation to the jury by George Vest: Gentlemen of the jury. The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter whom he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is the dog. Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground when the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast into the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws and his eyes sad but open, in alert watchfulness, faithful and true, even unto death. Well, I read this summation to the jury in the case of Old Drum. But Senator Byrd recited it, as he did all of these similar circumstances, completely from memory. Senator Byrd came to the floor, and he had a way with words that does not so much exist in the Senate anymore. I was sitting on the floor one day when another Senator came to the floor and said some very disparaging things about a President of the United States. They referred to the President in a way that was very disparaging. Senator Byrd did not like that, no matter who the President was. He came to the floor, and I am sure the person who was disparaging the President at that point never understood what had happened to him after Senator Byrd was done.

Mr. DORGAN. But Senator Byrd came to the floor, and he stood up, and he said this: I have served here long enough to see pygmyies strut like Colossus. And he said, very like the fly in Aesop's fable, sitting on an axle of a chariot, ``My, what dust I do raise.'' And it occurred to me he had just told someone what they had done was unbelievably foolish. I am not sure they understood it. But he wrapped it in such elegant language, as he always did. In addition to serving at a time early on in his career when things were different, when there was perhaps less anger and less partisanship and committee chairmen and ranking members got together and decided what we needed to do for the country and did it together and came to the floor together, he was also, on the floor of the Senate, someone who knew the rules. He studied the rules because he understood that knowing the rules to this Chamber and how this process works was also important to be successful here. Aside from that, he was a skillful legislator--very skillful. I watched him walk out of this Chamber from that door and very often stop as a bunch of Senate pages--high school kids who serve in the Senate-- would gather around and then he would spend 15, 20 minutes telling them a story about the Senate, about the history of this great place. Too many of us walk back and forth around here, walking very briskly because we are late to go here or there and we are working on a lot of things. Senator Byrd always took time to talk to the pages--not just talk to them but tell them stories about what this great Senate has meant to this great country. He also loved very much his late wife Erma and talked about her a lot to many of us. He loved to play the fiddle. Early on when I came to the Senate, if you expressed even the least interest in music, he would get you down to his office and put a tape in his recording device to show us that he played the fiddle on the program ``Hee Haw.'' He was so proud of that. He was someone who loved West Virginia, loved his country, and was a friend to all of us. Today is a very sad day for those of us who see a desk that was occupied by a great U.S. Senator for so many decades, now occupied with a dozen roses and a black cloth, signifying that we have lost this great man. America has lost a great public servant. As one Member of the Senate, I say it has been a great privilege--my great privilege--to serve while Senator Byrd served in this body. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on occasion there are some things that happen in this Chamber that get precious little attention but represent very good news. Last evening, with virtually no attention, a piece of legislation was passed by the Senate unanimously, a piece of legislation, called the Tribal Law and Order Act, affecting Indian tribes across this country. It was bipartisan. My colleagues and I, as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, working with Republicans and Democrats, Senator Barrasso, and Senator Jon Kyl especially was helpful in recent days, and on our side, Senator Tester and Senator Udall and so many others--have gotten a piece of legislation through the Senate, which we hope will get through the House and be signed by the President, dealing with law and order on Indian reservations. Lewis and Clark spent the winter in North Dakota on their expedition in 1805. When they came through North Dakota, there were Indian villages and settlements in North Dakota that had been there a long time. They were farming on the banks of the Missouri River. That is true all across the country. When new people exploring our country came upon Indian tribes, they had been there for a long while. They were the first Americans, and we displaced them, and we have sad chapters in American history that are described as ``Trail of Tears,'' the ``Massacre at Wounded Knee,'' and I could go on for a great length of time. Native Americans were, in many cases, rounded up, placed on reservations, and then the Federal Government, for taking their property away from them, said: We will sign agreements with you. We will make deals with you. We will have treaties. We will accept a trust responsibility. We will educate you. We promised that since we have taken your land away, we will provide for your children's education, we will provide for your health care, and we will provide for your law enforcement. It is what the Federal Government signed to do in treaties and the Government has systematically avoided the responsibility of meeting those conditions ever since. I have talked at length on this floor about Indian health care and Indian education and Indian housing. In many areas on Indian reservations, it mirrors what we consider Third World-country conditions: people living in overcrowded housing, if they have housing at all; sending kids to schools whose desks are 1 inch apart, with 30 kids to a classroom, in a dilapidated building; people going hungry; people having very serious health care problems and not able to get adequate health. We passed in this Chamber the Indian Health Care Improvement Act as a part of the health care reform bill. I am enormously proud of having done that. It is the first time in 17 years this Congress did something on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. We worked and worked and worked. I am proud it is done. This is another significant piece of work. We have had I believe 14 hearings on this subject in the Indian Affairs Committee. Twenty-two Senate colleagues cosponsored my legislation, Republicans and Democrats. If anyone doubts the need for this legislation, let me demonstrate just in this week with three headlines, one in Indian Country Today. ``Rape on the Rez'' is the title. The mother tries to be strong, looking at the photos of her dead daughter's beaten and bruised face. She tries not to cry, but eventually the images prove too much. ``That's what they did to her,'' the mother says. Marquita Marie Walking Eagle died November 1, 2009, the victim of a violent sexual assault. The 19-year-old Rosebud Sioux woman's alleged killer: a 17-year-old classmate from St. Francis High School in South Dakota. Just one headline, but, we also have studies. One in 3 American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped and sexually assaulted in her lifetime--1 in 3; not 1 in 10, 1 in 3. Think of that. Think of the violence on too many of these Indian reservations. Another headline from this week: ``Addicted On The Rez,'' about drug abuse and crimes that are infiltrating the reservation. Another headline this week: ``Indian reservations on both U.S. borders are becoming drug pipelines,'' conduits for Mexican drug cartels and others to move drugs into this country and particularly addict young Indian children on those drugs and have them become carriers. Those are three articles from this week sitting on top of a mountaintop of other articles. In my home state of North Dakota right now, on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that actually is on the border of North and South Dakota--it is an area the size of the State of Connecticut. They had nine law enforcement officers for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week coverage. Well, that means that very often there would be no more than one law enforcement officer patrolling an area the size of the State of Connecticut. So a women being raped, sexually assaulted, a burglary or a robbery in progress, a violent crime, a gun crime, and a plea and a call, a frantic call, might mean that 3 or 4 hours later--maybe not until the next day would someone in a police car show up to investigate that crime. That is what they have been facing. On the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the year before last, the rate of violent crime wasn't double what most Americans experience; it wasn't triple; it wasn't quadruple; it was eight times the national average--eight times the rate of violent crime on the Standing Rock Reservation. There has been some improvement. In 2009 it was simply five times worse than what most Americans experience. The question is, What can we do about those things? One Bureau of Indian Affairs officer on the Standing Rock Reservation--again, as I indicated, an area the size of the State of Connecticut, with nine law enforcement officers--what he said was: ``I felt like I was standing in the middle of a river trying to hold back a flood.'' He said they were forced to ``triage'' rape cases. He said: We only took a rape case if there was a confession; if not, didn't happen. This is not a Third World country. This is in America on Indian reservations. Last summer, the Department of Justice issued a report to our committee. I am quoting now: Native gangs are now involved in more violent offenses like sexual assault, gang rapes, home invasions, drive-by shootings, beatings, and elder abuse on Indian reservations. This is on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a photograph that was brought to a hearing I held on increased gang activity on reservations. This is another photo from the same hearing. These are very serious problems. We have a war on terror and a war on drugs, and all too often across this country, Indian reservations are left to their own, told ``you do it,'' despite the fact that this country promised to provide law enforcement assistance. This entire system isn't working. It is the courts, the jails, law enforcement--it doesn't work. That is why, with 22 colleagues, we introduced this legislation and now last night, thankfully, have passed it through the Senate. This does a number of very important things. It forces the BIA to consult with tribal leaders on joint law enforcement. It says to the U.S. attorneys--by the way, U.S. attorneys are the ones who are relied upon to prosecute felonies on Indian reservations, and all too often it is part of the back room of the U.S. Attorney's Office: You know what, we don't have time; we are not going to do it. The declination rate--that means declining to prosecute--the declination rate for murders is 50 percent, according to Department of Justice information we received in the committee. The declination rate, that is, declining to prosecute, for rape and sexual assault is 70 percent. So 70 percent of the time, they don't prosecute because they are working on something else. It is on an Indian reservation. Hard to investigate, they say. Well, this legislation will change that. This legislation will add the necessary tools to enable tribal governments to better fight crime locally. It will give police improved access to national criminal databases. Judges on reservations will have added authority to sentence violent offenders in tribal courts. Can you imagine that judges in tribal courts, under current law, can sentence to no more than 1 year for an Indian offender? No more than 1 year. Rape, murder, armed robbery--1 year. That is absurd. The fact is, we have put together a bill that finally offers the tools to strengthen this justice system, that also works to cross- deputize Indian police in the Federal criminal system so that Indian reservations and those who patrol on the reservations can work hand-in- hand with those in the adjacent counties, the county sheriffs, police chiefs, and others. This bill will reauthorize and improve existing programs designed to strengthen the tribal justice systems, prevent alcohol and substance abuse, which is the No. 1 cause of violence on reservations, and improve opportunities for youth on the reservations. I am very pleased and proud that we have been able to get this done. We have worked long and hard. If this Congress completes its work having done the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and now the Tribal Law and Order Act, if in one Congress we will have made that kind of stride to address the issue of health care and crime and justice on Indian reservations, we will have done something very significant. I ask people who think, well, this is just something that is out of sight, out of mind: Go to an Indian reservation and take a look at the condition of the housing. Go visit with the kids in school. I have done that. Go sit around, if you can, with 10 or 12 kids and ask them about their lives. Where do they get hope and inspiration and belief that they can be part of something bigger than themselves, that they can get educated, that they have an opportunity to do whatever they want to do? Where do they get that? The fact is, we have created circumstances, abysmal circumstances and broken promises, and it has lasted for a couple of centuries. You know, we have been trying now for almost 6 months to get the Cobell settlement through the Senate. The Cobell settlement is a group of plaintiffs who are Indians whose property and land and resources from that land have largely been stolen from them for a couple of hundred years. The Interior Department has been managing the trust of these Indians for well over 100, 150 years. The other day on the floor of the Senate, I showed a picture of a woman who had six oil wells on her land, and she lived in a little bungalow and never had anything all of her life. Well, why didn't someone who had six oil wells on her land have anything? Because the U.S. Department of the Interior was managing it, and she never got the money. That has been going on for 150 years. And now there is a court action that has gone on for 14 years and finally an agreement to settle the court action, and the judge gave us 30 days in Congress to settle this after it had been agreed to by the Interior Secretary, by the plaintiffs. Finally some justice after 100, 150 years, and the judge has had to extend that deadline now three or four times and we have still not gotten it done. It is in this underlying bill, the one that is being objected to by the minority. The reason I mentioned that is there are so many injustices in this country to the people who were here first. The first Americans deserve better. The first Americans deserve to have this government keep its promise at long, long last. And this is but one: the providing of law enforcement. How many Americans would like to live in an area where the rate of violent crime is 5 times, 8 times, or 10 times the national average? Well, there are a whole lot of young men and women, young boys and girls, and elders living exactly in those circumstances in this country. And that violence exists every day. We need to do something about it. One final point. I have talked to the BIA at great length. There are some things happening right now experimentally to try to move some additional resources into tribal lands to promote greater law and order. It is true on the Standing Rock Reservation and others as well. But the Tribal Law and Order Act, which I have reason to believe will now be passed by the House as well, is a big step forward. We not only negotiated that in the Senate, but we worked very hard with Members of the House as we put this legislation together with their ideas as well. If we do this, we will be able to say this country, at long last, on this issue at least, kept its promise and began the long effort to make sure we are meeting our trust responsibilities to those who were the first Americans. I thank many of my colleagues who helped us achieve this goal, and end as I began, by saying there is plenty of reason to be concerned about the lack of getting things done in this Chamber, but this is a good piece of legislation. Good news doesn't sell quite as well as bad news these days in our system. I hope all of us will be able to take some satisfaction in doing something that represents the public good for people living in this country who certainly deserve it. I yield the floor. Criminal Jurisdiction

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on S. 797, the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010. I offered the text of this bill to H.R. 725, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act Amendments, and last night, the Senate passed this bill as amended by unanimous consent. As chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, I have presided over 14 hearings relating to public safety on our Nation's tribal lands over the past three years. These hearings revealed a longstanding crisis of violence in many parts of Indian country. Indian reservations on average suffer rates of violence more than 2.5 times the national rate. In my home State of North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation suffered 8.6 times the national rate of violence in 2008. In early 2008, there were 9 police officers patrolling this 2.3 million acre Reservation, which meant at times there was no 24-hour police response service. As a result, victims of violence reported waiting hours and sometimes days before receiving a response to their distress calls. With this level of response, crime scenes can become compromised, and justice is not served to the victims, their families, or the community. Our hearings found that violence against Indian women has reached epidemic levels. The Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than 1 in 3 American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped in their lifetime and more than 2 in 5 will be subject to domestic or partner violence. The broken and divided system of justice in place on Indian lands that was devised by dozens of Federal laws and Federal court decisions enacted and handed down over the past 150 years is not well-suited to address the violence in Indian country. Because of these laws and decisions, responsibility to investigate and prosecute crime on the reservation is divided among the Federal, tribal, and in some locations, state governments. Based on this authority, these governments should be diligent in preventing and prosecuting these crimes. Thus, one of the primary purposes of the bill is to ensure that the United States upholds its treaty promises and legal obligation to investigate and prosecute violent crimes on Indian lands. Our Nation made treaty promises, and enacted laws--specifically the General and Major Crimes Acts--that provided for Federal criminal jurisdiction over Indian lands. At the same time, the United States limited tribal government authority to punish offenders in tribal courts to no more than 1 year for any one offense. The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 takes steps to hold the United States to these solemn promises, and will address the restriction on tribal court penal authority over defendants in tribal court where certain protections are met.

Mr. DORGAN. That is correct. The phrase that jurisdiction ``shall be concurrent among the Federal Government, State governments, and, where applicable, tribal governments'' is intended to clarify that the various State governments that are currently subject to Public Law 280 will maintain such criminal authority and responsibility. In addition, this provision intends to make clear that tribal governments subject to Public Law 280 maintain concurrent criminal authority over offenses by Indians in Indian country where the tribe currently has such authority. Nothing in this provision will change the current lay of criminal jurisdiction for state or tribal governments. It simply seeks to return criminal authority and responsibility to investigate and prosecute major crimes in Indian country to the United States where certain conditions are met.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Wednesday, June 30, 2010, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a business meeting on pending committee issues to be followed immediately by an oversight hearing entitled ``A Way Out of the diabetes Crisis in Indian Country and Beyond.'' Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at (202) 224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, 16 years ago I wrote a cover article for the Washington Monthly magazine. The title was ``Very Risky Business,'' the subtitle, ``If we don't watch out, a new kind of Wall Street gambling--exotic derivatives trading--could shake the market and put taxpayers on the line for another bailout.'' I talked about $35 trillion in derivatives. That is now a fraction of what is out there. I talked about banks that were trading on derivatives on their own proprietary accounts. I said they might just as well have a roulette wheel or a craps table in their lobby. It is just flatout gambling, and it ought to be stopped. It is not surprising to me because I made the same point 5 years after that, when they tried to repeal Glass-Steagall--and did successfully--in order for us to compete with the Europeans. That took apart the protections that existed after the Great Depression. It was decided that we don't need those protections anymore. They took it apart. I was one of eight Senators to vote no. I warned on the floor then that another taxpayer bailout would come within a decade. It did, regrettably. Now the question is, as we put together a piece of legislation to address these issues, what do we do that doesn't have us just having a press conference to say: Look at what we did. What is it we have to do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Have we really tightened the regulations? Let me go through a couple things. Will we have dealt with too big to fail? The answer is no, not really. Too big to fail means there are some businesses in this country in the financial services industry, some of the biggest financial institutions, that are determined ``too big to fail,'' and their failure would cause grievous harm to the economy, perhaps bring the entire economy down. Therefore, if they are too big to fail, they are, by definition, going to be bailed out. I happen to believe that if you are too big to fail, you are simply too big. You ought to be pared back, trimmed down until you are not too big to fail. That is not what is happening here. We are going to pass a piece of legislation in which the biggest financial institutions are bigger than they were before we got into this mess. Too big to fail doesn't mean you are too big. In fact, you can get bigger with the kind of legislation that is being considered in conference. Proprietary trading. Will they still allow banks to trade on their own proprietary accounts? Will they put a restriction, finally, on banks' ability to make speculative bets using their own capital in their own lobby? We will see. It doesn't look like it. What about the issue of naked credit default swaps, CDSs? They have no insurable interest on any side of them, just flatout betting. No, this isn't going on in Atlantic City or Las Vegas; it is going on across the country with financial institutions. Will this be trimmed down? It doesn't look like it. How about the ratings agencies, the agencies that gave AAA ratings to fundamentally worthless securities, had a bunch of people left with bad securities in the bowels of financial balance sheets? What about that? There was an amendment on the floor of the Senate to deal with that. That has now been watered down. Or capital standards. I won't go on except to say that I hope the sum total of this conference between the House and Senate on financial reform is about working for the American people and not the interests that helped create this mess. I hope this is a time to suck it up and do the right thing. I hope the conferees understand that if this bill is excessively weakened--and it wasn't strong leaving here--they should not assume they will have the votes to automatically pass that kind of legislation back in the Senate and perhaps the House. This is very important. This is not some other issue. This is about whether the economy will continue to provide strength and expand and promote hiring. It will be what our children and grandchildren experience in terms of opportunities for the future in our great country. It is a conference that is pushed by all sides to do various things for various interests. I hope they understand that this is something that will revisit us again in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now unless we do the right thing and make certain we address the key issues.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to the leaders today. I was thinking about Will Rogers, who once said: You could call me a hick or call me a rube, but the fact is, I would sooner be the person who buys the Brooklyn Bridge than the person who sells it. I was thinking of the fiction in that clever Will Rogers quote and some of the fiction I hear on the floor of the Senate. Everybody here understands--if not, they better understand quickly-- the dilemma of the unbelievable growth of deficits or debt for this country. It is unsustainable. There is no question about that. But it is interesting to me that just recently we have had the minority side of the aisle decide this is their life's calling despite the fact that this President, the day he was inaugurated and walked across the door into the White House, had this President done nothing but sleep for the next year, he inherited a Federal deficit of $1.3 trillion. This stuff about he said, we said, she said, they said, the American people aren't very interested in all that. What they are interested in is what caused this problem and who is going to step up and fix it. Let's talk about what caused this problem. What ran this country into the ditch and what has caused this unbelievable runup in debt? No. 1, early on in 2001, I and others stood on the floor when President Bush-- yes, President Bush; and I am not here just to tarnish his Presidency, I am here to talk about his record--said: We now have 10 years of expected budget surpluses. Let's do something with that money. President Bush had inherited a record budget surplus from the Clinton Administration. The new President took over and said: We have to have very big tax cuts to get rid of these surpluses. I stood on this floor and said: These surpluses don't exist yet. Let's be a little conservative. He said: ``Katy, bar the door,'' we are going to give this money away. Very big tax cuts, the largest benefits went to the highest income earners in the country. Then what did we experience? Very quickly, a recession, an attack against our country on 9/11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then we sent soldiers off to war and didn't pay for one penny of it. Everybody in this Chamber knows better than that. You don't fight a war by asking people to go risk their lives but we won't risk anything by asking the American people to pay for the cost of the war. We will just put it on the debt. As all this was going on, we had a bunch of new regulators who came to town from the new administration who said: It is a new day. We are going to have business-friendly regulation in this town. We won't look. We won't watch. We don't care what you do. As a result, we had an unbelievable outpouring of greed that ran this country into the ditch by some of the biggest financial enterprises in the country. I am not sure either side is much of a bargain for the American people these days. I understand that. But I don't think we ought to rewrite history. This President inherited the biggest mess since Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to the Presidency. That is a fact. Now we have to try to work together to figure out what we do about it. How do we deal with this? How do we respond to the burgeoning Federal budget deficits? By the way, some say: Let's make our stand by shutting down unemployment insurance for folks at the bottom, the folks who don't have a job, those people who have been told: Your job doesn't exist anymore; you are done; you are out of here. And we have about 20 million fewer jobs than we need in this country. In the last 9 years, we lost more than 5 million jobs of people who work in the factories. Will Rogers also once said: I see where Congress passed a bill to help bankers' mistakes. You can always count on us helping those who have lost part of their fortune, but the whole history records nary a case where the loan was for the person who had absolutely nothing. And so it is in this Congress--hundreds of billions here and there in tax cuts and bailouts. But now it is about helping people with unemployment. That is where we make our stand, according to some. It is pretty unbelievable. We need to start working together to find common solutions. Describing where the other side is wrong is hardly a productive enterprise. It is pretty easy to do, in fact. That is not why I came to talk, but it does get tiresome trying to rewrite history here on the floor of the Senate. I am not suggesting one Presidency is good or bad. I am saying this President inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. That is a fact. That doesn't come from me; that comes from the Congressional Budget Office. I understand, at least in part, why that happened. Some of us on the floor of the Senate did not support giving away tax revenues we didn't have. Some of us didn't support going to war without paying for it. I had that discussion. How about paying for some of this? The previous President said: You try to pay for it, I will veto the bill. Is it surprising, then, that we are deep in debt? Not particularly surprising to me. Those are not very thoughtful decisions.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to talk about energy legislation. I have been reading today all the stories in the newspapers about the caucus we had last week in which we described energy legislation and climate change legislation and what we should or should not do. There are two challenges for this country at this point: No. 1, we are far too dependent on foreign oil. Over 60 percent of the oil we receive comes from outside of our country; 70 percent of the oil we use goes into the transportation sector. We are far too dependent on foreign oil. If something should happen to shut off the supply of foreign oil to our country, our economy will be flat on its back for a long while. We need to be less dependent on foreign oil. No. 2, there is something happening to our climate. We are not completely sure what that is, but I don't think there is any question that there is a wide scientific consensus that something is happening to the global climate. We should work on both, no question about that. But there is a practical limitation of what we will be able to consider and do between now and the end of this year. I have said previously that I support a cap on carbon. I support pricing carbon. I have said I will not support what is called classic cap and trade, which would serve the interests of Wall Street by creating a $1 trillion carbon securities market so they can trade carbon securities on Monday and Tuesday and tell us what the cost of our energy is going to be on Thursday and Friday. I have no interest in doing that, nor would I support it. But there are ways for us to price carbon and to restrict carbon. I understand that. The question has lingered now about a piece of legislation that came out of the Energy Committee 1 year ago this month. We had 12 weeks of markup. It was a very difficult markup. We passed, at the conclusion of the markup, a bipartisan piece of energy legislation that advances our country's energy interests and will make us less dependent on foreign oil. It will substantially reduce carbon emissions because it will dramatically change the amount of production that comes from renewable energy, wind, solar, biomass, and so on. For a year we have now waited for that legislation to come to the floor. It has not come to the floor because some say: If we can't do comprehensive climate change legislation, then we don't want to do any legislation. Even that which would reduce carbon, even that which would substantially increase production from sources of energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines so we can collect this energy and put it on a grid. It does not make any sense, that we would not consider a bipartisan energy bill and end this year having failed to address something that, A, was bipartisan, and B, will in fact reduce carbon and will give us an opportunity to be less dependent on foreign oil. That makes no sense, not to be able to take advantage of that kind of success. It seems to me there are not 60 votes in the Senate to bring up a comprehensive climate change bill in June or July of this year. I know some people will have heartburn when I say that. I just think that is the case. If that is the case, let's not block a bipartisan energy bill that does address production, efficiency, and a lower carbon future. We need to produce more in this country. We need to save more, that is, conserve more. Even as we do that, we need to produce more energy in a different way--wind energy, solar energy, the biofuels, obviously, that are renewable and, generally speaking, reduce carbon. Building an interstate highway of transmission capability is essential because it is not the case that all people live in areas where they get the best sunshine or the most significant amount of wind. If we are going to get the most energy available from wind and solar, we need the kind of transmission that is capable of getting the wind energy and solar energy and then moving it to where it is needed. The building efficiency plan that contains the best and quickest capability for saving energy is also in the bill we have written. We will and we should produce more domestic oil. We are doing unbelievable things in new kinds of horizontal drilling. The Bakken shale in my State is the largest assessed reserve of recoverable oil ever registered in the history of the lower 48--just in the last 2 years--up to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. Coal development, including carbon capture and sequestration, an especially beneficial use of carbon--all of that is capable of being done; and, yes, some nuclear energy. I support loan guarantees for nuclear plants, like requested by the Administration. I think all of this is capable of being done in a way that reduces our dependence on foreign oil and is good for our economy. I understand change is hard and that is never demonstrated more concretely than in this Chamber. Change is very hard. I mentioned some while ago that a man named Rudolf Diesel showed up at the World's Fair in Europe about 110 years ago. Rudolf Diesel showed up with a new engine which we now know as the diesel engine. He was very proud of the engine he had developed, and it ran on vegetable oil. Yes, that was 110 years ago. Rudolf Diesel's new engine ran on vegetable oil. Most of what we can and should and I hope will do, does not need to represent a new idea. Ninety-seven percent of our transportation sector runs on oil. So Senator Alexander, myself, and Senator Merkley have just introduced the electric drive transportation bill. We are moving toward electric drive vehicles, and we are establishing the capability of demonstration cities for infrastructure and all the things that are necessary, including battery investment and so on. I think ultimately we will have a 400- or 500-mile battery in vehicles that are electric drive vehicles. Think of the changes in transportation, and it is pretty unbelievable. Nobody knows exactly what the future is going to hold, but we either decide to make that future or we just let it happen. I am a big believer in making it happen. In 1935, it took 3 weeks to go from Chicago to New York. Twenty-five years later, it took 3 days by railroad, then the cars, and then the jet airplanes, and all of a sudden things changed dramatically. From the Roman legions time until when Lewis and Clark came and spent the winter in North Dakota on their wonderful expedition, there was no change to speak of in travel. One could travel as fast as a horse or a river stream could take them, and that was it. All of a sudden, in the last century, century and a half, things have exploded. But it has required a great deal of energy. So the question is, What kind of energy? How do we produce it? What makes us less dependent, for example on foreign oil, so we do not find ourselves, at some point, tipped over in an economy that cannot work because we do not have the energy? How do we address the energy issue, still paying attention to the issue of climate change? Those are the issues. As I indicated, very few people can see the future. In fact, most people are skeptical about anything. They say Fulton, when he developed the steam engine--he apparently was with Napoleon, talking to Napoleon about his idea--and Napoleon said: Are you kidding me? He probably did not quite say it that way. He said: You are saying you are going to make a boat sail against the wind by putting a fire under its deck? I don't think so. That was Napoleon's response to Fulton. Or Einstein said: There is no evidence whatsoever that nuclear energy will ever be achievable. I do not know, has anybody ever said Einstein lacked clarity about the future? David Sarnoff once famously said about the wireless music box, which we now call the radio: Who on Earth would pay for someone to send a message that goes to no one in particular? Or Harry Warner who said: Who would pay to hear actors talk? So much for prognosis. Watson, at IBM, said he thought there was a market worldwide for about five computers. That was his assessment. So it is very hard to predict the future. No one can see very far. The question, it seems to me is: Are we going to decide reasonably what we want our future to be, with new technology--perhaps using old technology--and move there, or are we just going to sit around and let things happen? That is why this Energy bill is so important. We are charting a new path. RES--we say we want 15 percent, and if we can get the bill to the floor, I am going to offer an amendment for 20 percent. We want 20 percent of all electricity produced in America coming from renewable sources. Driving renewable energy will make us less dependent on foreign oil. I also support domestic production of oil and gas and domestic production of coal. By the way, coal is one of the most significant quantities of resources in our country for energy, and there is great concern because it produces carbon when you burn it, and that is tough for the environment and goes against the issue of the global climate change matter. So what do we do about that? Well, one of the things I am convinced we can do is understand that carbon is a product, not just a problem. What can we do with carbon? Well, we can produce fuel with carbon. We have work going on at Sandia National Laboratories that uses a heat engine. You put CO2 in one side and water in the other side, and you fracture the molecules and chemically recombine them, and you produce fuel. So take carbon and air and produce fuel, along with some water. I do not think these problems are unsolvable. But in order to get there, we have to get this Energy bill to the floor of the Senate, and it has now been 1 year. I noticed this morning there were 15 or 20 of my colleagues who said: If a bill does not contain climate change, we would not support any bill coming to the floor. Well, do you know what? Climate change means you want to reduce carbon to try to protect our environment. How do you reduce carbon? With the very kinds of policies that exist in this Energy bill, and we have done it on a bipartisan basis. So my hope is, in the next couple of weeks or so, that we might finally, at last--at long, long last--get to the point where we are bringing up a piece of legislation that is out of the committee, that is bipartisan, that will protect our environment but, most importantly, will invest in virtually every form of energy production and conservation and make us less dependent--much less dependent--on foreign oil. That ought to be the goal of all Americans. We do not think much of it, we do not talk much about it because we just assume energy is going to be a part of our lives beginning tomorrow morning. We get up in the morning, we turn off the alarm--that was electricity--we turn on the light--that is electricity--make a piece of toast--that is electricity--get a cup of coffee--that is electricity--take a shower-- that is electricity to heat the water. We get in the car and turn the key to start the engine--that is oil. The fact is, we use energy in a prodigious way all day long and never think much about it. But if, God forbid, tomorrow morning something happens that shuts off the supply of foreign oil to this country, our economy would be in deep, desperate trouble. We would be smart, we would be wise, to understand that over dependence, that excessive dependence on foreign oil, is a detriment to this county's future. We better get about the business of trying to address it. There is a way to do that, and a way to do that at the same time that is very helpful to this country's environment by restricting and limiting CO2 emissions because we are going more and more toward the development of renewable sources of energy for the future. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 30 minutes in morning business.