Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, let me compliment my colleague from New Mexico on his presentation about energy. I know in recent days I have read reports by various spokesmen and spokeswomen here in Washington and in the press around the country saying that there is a lot of hysteria in the Congress about the price of gasoline and the price of oil, and the Congress is making much ado about nothing, according to some. It is a very serious issue, and it suggests an even tougher set of circumstances to come with respect to this country's energy supply. Let me describe some of the reasons why, and let me add to some of the things my colleague from New Mexico just described that I believe our country must do in order to resolve these problems. We have about 20 million vehicles that are being driven in the country of China today, I am told. China has 1.3 billion people, with about 20 million automobiles. In 15 years, it is estimated that they will have 120 million automobiles. In other words, China is set to add about 100 million cars and trucks to their roads. Will that substantially change demand for oil? Yes, it will. Will it have an effect on the price of oil and the accessibility of oil? It will, and it will have an effect on us in the United States. That is not because of our difficulty today, but it is reason to be concerned about tomorrow. Every single day, we take about 84 million barrels of oil out of this Earth. Every day, about 84 million barrels are sucked out of this planet and used. Twenty-one million barrels are used here in the United States. One-fourth of all the oil that is taken out of this planet every single day is used here in this country. This country has a lot of automobiles, a lot of vehicles. We are an advanced country, we are highly developed, and we use a great deal of energy. Now we see the price of oil spike to $75 a barrel, the price of gasoline at the pump to $2.80, $2.90, $3 and above per gallon, and people are concerned about that, and should be. It ought not be a surprise to anyone that people in the Congress are concerned about this issue. The fact is, we have a circumstance where there is one sector that has all of the gain, and all of the rest of the American people experience all of the pain. I am not in any way opposed to the oil industry. I have supported the oil industry on many occasions and will again, I expect. We need oil. We need to use our fossil fuels, and we will continue to need to do that, as far as I can see, for the long term. So we need to produce more. As an energy policy, we need to produce more. We also need to conserve more. That is very important. We need to provide new and different kinds of energy in the form of renewable energy. Most especially, in addition to conservation, we need what is called efficiency for all of the things we use every single day. Let me talk a little about what has happened in this country. This chart shows the expression of concern that a lot of people have these days. This shows the largest oil companies--there are only four up here, but this shows the increase in profits--I guess there are actually five--the increase in profits year by year: a 17-percent increase in profit, a 43-percent increase in profit. ExxonMobil went from $21 billion in net profits to $36 billion in net profits in 2 years. Shell had a 47-percent increase in profit. We see another 37 percent increase in profit. Now I am not opposed to profits. I am opposed to profiteering, but I am not opposed to profits. We have a capitalistic system, a market system. It works. Having taught some economics in college, I don't know of a better system of allocating goods and services than the so-called free market system of capitalism that exists here in this country. It is by far the best method of allocation of goods and services. But that free market sometimes doesn't work very well, and sometimes it needs a referee. I am reminded of the fact that it is the free market which has given us a circumstance where a baseball shortstop signs a contract that is the equivalent of the payment to 1,000 high school teachers. So you weigh it, right? The free market system says a shortstop in the Major Leagues is worth 1,000 high school teachers. Do you think so? I don't. It seems kind of strange to me. Then there is Judge Judy. I seldom watch Judge Judy, but occasionally, when my television remote moves past the channels, I see her. She seems kind of intemperate to me. Judge Judy, according to People Magazine, makes I believe about 200 times the amount of income that Judge Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, makes. Free market system? Fair? Thoughtful? I don't know. It doesn't seem right to me, but that is the system, I guess. So the free market system is a system which I have always supported, but it does from time to time create strange results and needs a referee. Having said that, we don't have a free market in oil in any event. With respect to the oil market in this world, you have several things happening. One, you have OPEC ministers, and OPEC ministers from the OPEC countries sit in a room and they make a decision: How much are we going to produce, and what price do we want for it? So they decide how much they are going to produce. They are a cartel. I mean, that is the antithesis of the free market. It is interesting that on this planet of ours, we have 6-plus billion people, and we circle around the Sun on this planet of ours. For some strange reason, we have been blessed by the Almighty in this wonderful country of ours with a standard of living that is nearly unparalleled, and yet that which we need to use, particularly in the case of oil, exists under the sands--in the largest quantities--under the sands, for example, of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Iraq. The OPEC ministers from the OPEC countries sit around a room, and I assume it is a closed room, but I don't know because I have never been there. I assume they sit around in a closed room and make judgments about how much they are going to produce and how much they want for it. Second, the oil companies are the ones who decide these days because they have more raw muscle in the marketplace--and I might just point out that they all now have two names. They used to have one name, but then they got romantically entangled and decided to marry up. Exxon used to be Exxon, but Exxon fell in love with Mobil and by and large it became ExxonMobil. Chevron-Texaco and ConocoPhillips, they all had a romance and they all merged, and this orgy of mergers--these megamergers became these blockbuster, huge companies, and that now gives them more muscle in the marketplace, and that is just a fact. It is hard to contest. So again we have the OPEC ministers sitting around the table, and then we have the large oil companies, much larger because of the blockbuster mergers, and then third and finally we have the futures market. And the futures market regrettably has become, in my judgment, just a huge amount of speculation, giant speculation about oil. I understand how that speculation works, but sometimes speculation drives these markets in ways that are completely unintended. So we don't have a normal supply-demand relationship with respect to the price of oil. As a result of that, today people drive to the gas pump and it costs $50 or $60 to fill up with a tank of gas. A farmer is trying to figure out how to order a load of fuel for their farm to put in the spring planting, and then they try to figure out: How on Earth am I going to pay for it? And even as they drive up to the gas pumps and the farmers try to figure out how they are going to pay for a load of fuel, they see the profits of the large oil companies, the highest profits in the history of corporate America, the highest profits ever. The minute you say that, people say: Are you against profit? No, I am not. I am not at all. But I think it is pretty unfortunate that you have one side with all the pain--that is, the consumers--and on the other side are the biggest oil companies with all the gain. It is almost as if you have a hose hooked up to the pocketbooks of the American people just sucking money out to go right to the treasuries of the big oil companies. So what do we do about that? I propose a windfall profits rebate. It is simply this: We say to these companies, the major integrated companies--only the major integrated companies--we say this to them: On profits above $40 a barrel--and I picked $40 a barrel because that was the price in 2004, the average price at which the industry had the highest profits in their history--at profits above $40 a barrel, you will have a 50-percent collection fee you have to send, which will be rebated back to the consumers. The Federal Government will get the money and rebate it to the American consumers. So it is a windfall profits rebate. We collect it and then send it all back to the consumers. There is a way the oil companies wouldn't have to pay that. In the legislation I have proposed, the way they would avoid paying that is if they are investing all of that windfall profit back into the ground to explore for more energy and thereby increase the supply of energy, or if they are building refineries above ground, then they wouldn't have to pay it. They say: We need these profits because we are using them to invest back into exploration and drilling to find more oil, but they are not. They are doing some of that, but they are using the majority of their profits to buy back their stock or to drill for oil on Wall Street--and incidentally, there is no oil on Wall Street. But if they, in fact, were doing what they claim they are now doing, they wouldn't be affected by the proposal I offer. A windfall profits rebate would say to the oil industry: If you are not using these profits to expand the supply of energy and therefore reduce the price of energy, then you are going to have to pay this and it will be coming to the Federal Government and rebated to the American consumers from whence it came. It is pretty simple. We are literally, unfortunately, in this country held hostage to this price of oil and therefore the price of fuel and the price of gasoline. We can do something about it in an aggressive way in the longer term. I helped, along with 2 of my colleagues, to write the renewable fuels provision that was in the energy bill. We are going to go to 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol fuel by 2012. That makes sense to me, using renewable fuels and being able to have farmers plant in their fields the corn that can be turned into ethanol. Then we could drive up to a pump someday and say: Fill it up with corn. That makes sense to me. Biofuels, ethanol, biodiesel makes a great deal of sense. As I said, I was one of three Senators who wrote the provisions that will take us now to 7.5 billion gallons a year, more than double the ethanol we are now using. Wind energy. How remarkable it is to be able to take the energy from the wind with the new, better turbines, more efficient turbines, take energy from the wind and turn it into electricity. By the way, using electrolysis, you can separate hydrogen from water and produce hydrogen and use hydrogen in a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. By the way, with the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, which I hope will be our future, you put water vapor out the tailpipe and have twice the efficiency of power to the wheels. What a remarkable thing. Virtually everything in our life has changed. Technology is unbelievable. The Lunar Lander, in 1969, when our two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, landed on the Moon--a new automobile today, sold in the United States right now, has more computing power in it than the Lunar Lander that landed them on the Moon. My point is technology is changing everything. It is unbelievable what is happening with technology. But you know something, nothing has changed with the car or automobile with respect to the way you fuel it. It is full of computers, full of technology, it has more computing technology than the Lunar Lander that landed on the surface of the Moon, but nothing has changed since 100 years ago with respect to fueling a car. I often tell my colleagues that my first car was a 1925 Model T Ford that I bought for $25 dollars, and as a teenager, I spent 2 years rehabilitating this old Ford. I discovered later you can't do much with the Model T, you just drive it until it starts boiling over and then turn and drive it against the wind for half a mile and then drive it a little more, so I sold it. But I loved rehabilitating that old Model T. What I discovered about a Model T is you put gasoline in a 1924 Model T Ford exactly the same way you put gasoline in a 2006 Ford: You drive up to the pump, take the cap off the fuel tank, you put the hose in, and you start pumping. Nothing has changed. Almost everything else in our lives has, but nothing has changed with respect to fueling a vehicle. That is why I think, in the long run, we ought to go to a hydrogen fuel cell future. I hope our children and grandchildren are driving vehicles that do not need to use gasoline from oil. That's my fervent hope. That can happen if we make it happen. We decided to go to the Moon, and we did it by the end of a decade. We can drive vehicles by remote control on the surface of Mars. But we can't figure out how to remove ourselves from our addiction to oil, particularly most of which comes from troubled parts of the world? That doesn't make any sense. I think we have an intermediate strategy, including renewables, wind, biodiesel; it includes dramatic conservation including more efficient automobiles and a range of other things--more efficiency; more production. Yes, we need to produce more oil. I don't believe we should produce in ANWR. I do support producing in Lease 181 of the Gulf of Mexico. There are a range of areas I think we can and should produce, in areas in which we are not now producing. But at this point I think we ought to understand, if we sit by and do nothing at a time when you have all of the gain from these dramatically increased oil prices going to the largest integrated oil companies, only part of which is being invested back into searching for more energy, while all of the pain goes to the rest of the American consumers, I think we should not be surprised when consumers say to Congress: What on Earth are you doing? When are you going to get off your backside and do something about this? People have a right to expect that Congress will take action when things go haywire, when something is wrong. Clearly, what is happening now is not right. My hope is in the coming days we will see action on the floor of the Senate that begins to address these issues. They are not easy to address. I understand that. But to suggest that there is nothing wrong, to put our head in the sand and say this is just a temporary aberration, don't worry about it--after all, we can easily afford a tank of gas on congressional salaries. What about people who cannot afford the tank of gas? That money is going, not incidentally, just to the major oil companies. We have 60 percent of our oil coming from off our shores. A portion of this money goes to the Saudi royal family, and they thank you. But it is not fair. There is much to do. I notice in recent days a real pushback by those who say: Don't be hysterical about this, let's not do anything, let's not play the blame game--let's do nothing. Let's just let the coffers of the major integrated oil companies fill up, don't worry a bit, let people exhibit the pain, don't worry a bit, this will all be fine in the long term. John Kenneth Galbraith stated: In the long term we are all dead. How about in the short term? What about the intermediate term, where we can do something about the problems that exist, the real problems that confront this country? This country deserves better than it is getting. This country deserves leadership. It deserves aggressive leadership to tackle problems that are real problems in the lives of the American people. This is one. My hope is that that leadership is something that we can exhibit sooner rather than later. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend paragraph 4 of rule XVI for the purpose of proposing to the bill H.R. 4939 amendment No. 3670. (The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of amendments.'')

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are on the supplemental appropriations bill, I understand. I heard the presentations by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the ranking member earlier today. I would be remiss if I didn't first compliment both of them. This is not an easy job. It is difficult putting together legislation such as this and bringing it to the floor of the Senate. I compliment Senator Cochran and Senator Byrd for their diligent work. I know that others will speak at some length about various pieces of this bill. I know the bill itself is controversial. I know there will be amendments perhaps to strip provisions that are in the bill. I wish to speak specifically about legislation that I added, along with Senator Burns and others on the Appropriations Committee, dealing with agricultural disasters. I wish to do that because I think there is a feeling by some that somehow this extra money that is a part of this legislation to try to respond to agricultural disasters or disasters faced by family farmers is something called pork, as some would put it, or is unnecessary, is extraneous, is unworthy. I wish to talk about that. There is not a lot of talk on the floor of the Senate about family farming because I think, with the exception of perhaps one person here, we are not farmers. We don't get up in the morning on the farm. We don't milk cows in the morning. We don't check the cattle at night. We are Senators. We work here on the floor of the Senate. We give speeches, go to committee hearings, and travel back and forth on weekends, but we don't run a family farm. Family farmers in this country by their very nature are risk takers. They don't know what is ahead. They are going to plant a seed and hope it grows. They plant a seed in the spring, and they hope that somehow they will harvest in the fall. They hope that after they plant that seed, they will get enough rain but, they hope, not too much rain. They hope they don't face a drought. If they get just enough rain, then they get a crop. Then they hope when they get the crop that between when the rains come and the crops are ready to harvest, they don't have bugs, they don't have grasshoppers, they don't have disease on that crop. And then if, by chance, they are able to harvest that grain, they truck it to the elevator, and they are told by the elevator: This is the price. This is what the world price is. This is what the market price is. This is what the posted price is. If it is not what you expect, if it is below what it cost you to produce it, that is tough luck, that is the price. So farmers take all those risks. Because they are substantial, we have decided for many decades in this country to build a bridge across those price valleys, to say to farmers: When times get tough, you are not alone. You are living out there on the land, under the yard light all by yourself taking those risks, and we want you to know when times get tough, this country wants to keep farmers on the farm. That is why we have a farm program. The farm program used to have a disaster title. It doesn't any longer. I wish it did. I think it should, but it doesn't. We have had to do disaster programs now on an ad hoc basis. So we added a disaster provision to this supplemental appropriations bill. We do that because we have had weather-related disasters all around the country. In the Gulf Coast we had a devastating disaster, perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of this country, called Hurricane Katrina. I can't pretend to know what it did to the Gulf of Mexico, to the people who live in the Gulf Coast region, in Louisiana and Mississippi and elsewhere. But my heart goes out to them, and I have wanted to be a part of everything that is done here in the Congress to extend our hand to them to say: You are not alone. This country wants to help. This country insists on helping in a time of need. Family farmers in the gulf, I understand, got hit hard as well and, in many cases, lost their entire crops, just gone. We should and we will, and with this legislation, we did provide help to them. With this legislation, we say: If you planted a crop or if you couldn't plant a crop and your crop was destroyed, we are going to help you with a disaster plan. Our point was that there are farmers in the gulf who desperately need help, and there are farmers in other parts of the country who need help as well. I want to show you a couple of pictures. This is of a little town called Souris, ND. This town called Souris, ND, as you can see, was inundated with water in June of 2005, with torrential rains that were just devastating, torrential rains that came to this area and several other areas of my State. The result was over 1 million acres--over 1 million acres--couldn't even be planted. Those farmers who had those acres, they didn't have a crop. They had a building and a family and a yard light, but they had nothing to harvest because they couldn't get anything planted. Another nearly 1 million acres was planted and then washed away by these torrential rains. Another scene in Souris, ND. I could show many pictures of exactly the same circumstance in parts of my State that suffered devastating flooding. These farmers need help. Other farmers in States such as Illinois, for example, where they had the third driest year last year since 1895, are facing a drought. They too need help. Last December, I offered a disaster amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill when we were in conference. The Senate conferees accepted it, and the House conferees rejected it. That is what brought us to this position on this emergency supplemental of offering another disaster bill. The support in bringing that package to the floor of the Senate by Senator Cochran, who has always been a very strong advocate and supporter of family farming and American agriculture, and the support by Senator Byrd and others when we offered this in the Senate Appropriations Committee, was very heartening. It was approved unanimously in the Appropriations Committee. So it now exists on the floor of the Senate. It is, in many cases, the distance between being able to continue farming and being forced off the land for a good many families in this country. We have a fellow in North Dakota named Rodney Nelson who writes. He is a farmer and a rancher in Elmont, ND. He wrote a question once. He wrote a question on a piece of paper, and then asked this. He said: What is it worth? He was talking about farming. He said: What is it worth? What is it worth for a kid to know how to weld a seam? What is it worth for a kid to know how to build a lean-to? What is it worth for a kid to know how to drive a tractor, grease a combine? What is it worth for a kid to know how to butcher a hog? What is it worth for a kid to know all of these things? What is it worth for a kid to know how to teach a calf to suck milk from a pail? What is that worth? What is it worth to have a kid know how to plum a door? What is that worth? We know what it was worth in the Second World War. This country sent millions of young men, particularly off America's farms, all around the world to fight. They could do anything. They could fix machinery, they could overhaul an engine, they could do anything. They knew how to weld, they knew how to build, they could do anything. There is only one university in America where they teach that, and that is the American family farm. It is the only place where you get that education. And the question is, What is it worth? What is it worth to a country? That is the question I ask when we offer legislation to say that when family farmers get hit by torrential rains or drought, when family farmers get hit by devastating occurrences of weather that destroy their crops, destroy their ability to make a living, the question then is, Will Congress want to help? Should Congress help? The answer, in my judgment, is yes. It is important not just for those families living out on the farm; it is important for the character of this country. There was a wonderful author who wrote some remarkable books about small towns and family farms, and he talked about the seedbed of family values in America, in American history coming from family farms. And that seedbed of family values that comes from family farms and rolls on to small towns and big cities and nurtures and refreshes the character of this country is something that is very important to that which we call America. That is why the desire that I and my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, have to offer a disaster piece on this emergency supplemental bill is so important. This isn't about words; it is about saying to families who were devastated by weather disasters, who are living out on the farm, far from town, under a yard light, struggling to try to make a living, raising a family, to say to them: We understand what you are facing. You are not alone, and we want to help. That is why this piece is in this legislation. Again, I compliment the chairman and I compliment the ranking member for their work. Let me mention one additional piece. A number of my colleagues today have mentioned the energy issue, particularly with respect to the price of gas and oil and the price of fuel. There isn't anybody hurt much more than family farmers with what is happening to the price of energy, and the price of gas and diesel, especially. Family farmers are heavy users of fuel. It is the way they plant their crop in the spring, and it is the way they take their crop out in the fall, with the heavy use of fuel and the heavy use of nitrogen and fertilizer. So there is nobody that is hurt more by what is happening with the price of gas and oil than family farmers. It is devastating to them. This legislation also includes a partial offset with respect to a percent of direct payment that farmers receive as a result of what is happening on energy prices. But with respect to that, I want to make another point. We hear these days that what is happening with respect to the price of gas and oil is the function of the market. There is no market price that is a fair market price for oil. First, you have OPEC ministers that sit around a table from OPEC countries and talk about how much we should produce and how much we expect to get for it. That is No. 1. That is called a cartel; that is not a free market. Second, we have oil companies. They used to have one name, now two names, and sometimes three names. Why? Because they all got married, decided to merge; big, blockbuster mega mergers, bigger and stronger, with more raw muscle in the marketplace. Third is the futures market which is supposed to be a market that establishes pricing strategies, but the fact is it has become an orgy of speculation. It is an unbelievable orgy of speculation. So you have three things: The OPEC ministers, the bigger oil companies, bigger by merger, and then a massive amount of speculation on the futures market. Then we are told: Here is the price of oil, it is $73. If you don't like it, tough luck. If you don't like it, you do not understand; it is the free market. That is total baloney. There is no free market here. All the pain is on the side of the consumers who pay 50 bucks or 60 bucks for a tank of gas, and it is like hooking a hose right up to the pocketbook of the American people to suck money right into the treasury of Exxon. That is what this is about. I am not anti-oil. We produce oil in our State. We also are heavy users of energy in our State. But what I am feeling strongly about is not about profits, it is about profiteering. When companies decide they are going to ride this price in a way that injures the American people--and I believe what is happening today does do injury to the American people and is unfair and is not part of the so-called capitalistic market system--then I think Congress has a responsibility to act. The President said this morning the Federal Trade Commission should do an investigation. I and a couple of my colleagues wrote a piece of legislation last year that became law as part of the Energy bill that requires the Federal Trade Commission to do the investigation. If the President had called the FTC, he would have understood that they have been doing an investigation and will report sometime toward the end of May. I have to confess, however, that I believe the Federal Trade Commission has been dead largely from the neck up for some long while. I don't expect great results at the end of May, but, nonetheless, they are required and will be reporting the results of an investigation sometime in mid to late May. I believe there should be investigations. I believe the issue of market manipulation is real. When you have market manipulation or potential price gouging, the way the system works in this country, there ought to be a mechanism by which you investigate it and take action if necessary. But I believe in the meantime, when the price of oil goes where it has gone, and where, with the historical circumstance that in 2004, at $40 a barrel average price, the oil industry had the highest profits in their history; and now with the price of oil at $65 and $70 and $72 a barrel, we have profits far in excess of that, despite the fact that the oil companies haven't done anything to generate those profits. They have just come. I believe those profits above the $40-a-barrel pricetag is a windfall. The oil companies say: Well, we need all those profits because we are sinking that back into the ground to look for more energy. If they were doing that, I wouldn't be here talking. But that is not what they are doing. They are buying back their own stock. They are drilling for oil on Wall Street. And, oh, by the way, there is no oil on Wall Street. That doesn't come from me, that comes from Business Week: Drilling for oil on Wall Street, and that is all about using the capital on Wall Street to become bigger through mergers, buying back stock, drilling for oil on Wall Street, or paying a retired CEO, according to press reports, up to $400 million for a retirement package. That is not a golden parachute, that is a platinum parachute, one that I have not heard of before. Does that anger the American people? It sure does, and they have a right to be angry. Something is wrong with this system. My colleague, Senator Dodd, and I offered an amendment last year that would have imposed a windfall profits rebate on profits above $40 a barrel at which price the oil companies have the largest profits in their entire history, and then we said this: But if those profits are used to sink back into the ground for additional exploration or to build refineries above ground, if those profits are invested back to expand the supply of energy which will inevitably, hopefully, reduce the price of energy, the price of gasoline, then they will not be subject to the windfall rebate. If the oil companies, in short, are doing what they say they are doing, then they will not be affected. If they are not, if they are buying back their stock and drilling for oil on Wall Street and paying executives $400 million for a retirement package, then they get hit with a windfall profits rebate. All of the money will be sent back to the American consumer as a rebate. All of it. It is not a revenue-raising measure. It is not designed for the purpose of raising money for the Government. It is designed for the purpose of righting a wrong: Taking the windfall profits and sending it back to the consumers as rebates from whence it came. We expect to offer that again. We didn't succeed last fall. I suppose someone could make the point that you didn't succeed because it wasn't a very good idea. I would disagree strongly. I think it is the right idea. My hope would be that when we offer it again on this supplemental that we will be successful. One way or another, I think the American people want this Congress and this President to stand for their interests. I know we have larger energy problems, longer term energy problems; I understand all that. We have price-gouging legislation, and we have all kinds of issues that we need to deal with. A good start would have been in early 2001 with the meetings for which we still have not received public information. Notwithstanding that, we are where we are today and we need to find our way out of this. The point I was trying to make is that no industry, no group of people are hurt more, in my judgment, than family farmers. All Americans are facing pretty stiff penalties with these prices, but family farmers are devastated by these gas and diesel prices. For that reason, I think it is ever more important for us to support the disaster package that has come as a part of this emergency legislation brought to the floor of the Senate today. Again, I will speak at another time on the floor about a couple of other pieces of this legislation. I am enormously proud to be a part of the Appropriations Committee. I think we have a great committee. We work well together. It is a bipartisan committee. I think the legislation we have brought to the floor, while not perfect, and while we might alter it in one way or another, I don't know, but I think given the President's request, this Senate is responding. Let me make this final point. One of the responses with this legislation is to replenish the accounts in the Department of Defense with respect to what we are asking our men and women to do in the service of our country. I think each time we have done that, the chairman and ranking member and every member of the Appropriations Committee has indicated that when we ask men and women to wear America's uniform and go abroad and serve in harm's way, we are going to do everything conceivable, everything possible to fund that which is necessary for them to do their job. That is at least a part, a significant part, of this legislation as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened with some interest to my colleague. I have to observe, though, he said that now we are going to see the blame game, and he tells us where the fault lies. Well, that is the first chapter of the blame game. I have not been out here with respect to amendments. I have been chairing a hearing for a couple of hours. But I say this to those who are talking about these amendments: Those of us on this side of the aisle have certainly had a great deal of experience with having our amendments not considered by the Senate. Most recently, we had an amendment to a bill that would have dealt with this issue of the Dubai company taking over American ports. The United Arab Emirates' wholly-owned company, Dubai Ports World, was going to take over the management of American shipping ports. We attempted to offer an amendment, but it shut the Senate down because the majority party didn't want an amendment such as that offered. I have been trying for a couple of years to offer an amendment on the reimportation of prescription drugs to drive down prescription drug prices in this country. We have been thwarted on that. I could go on at some great length. To the extent there is a complaint that some have not been able to offer amendments, we understand that pretty well. We have been in that position for a couple of years now, including my colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, who offered an amendment that would have effectively prohibited our country from engaging in torture with respect to those whom we have apprehended during wartime. That amendment on the prohibition of torture shut down the consideration of the Defense authorization bill last year month after month because the majority didn't want to vote on the McCain amendment on torture. So there is plenty of practice that has existed in this Chamber for prohibiting amendments. Again, I don't know what the approach has been this morning on the floor because I have not been here. When I listen to discussions about why can we not offer amendments, that is a cry that has been echoing in this Chamber for a couple of years, much to the regret of those of us who have had amendments to offer. It is a cry that has not been heard by the majority party, which now jumps to the front of the line to complain today. I want to talk about this issue of the underlying bill, the immigration bill and guest workers. I should also start by saying I don't have any particular claim to understanding or expertise in this area. I don't serve on the Judiciary Committee. I was not someone who helped write the underlying bill. So I don't come to the floor to claim to be an expert on the legislation. But I have spent a great deal of time in the last year or so doing research in a range of areas for a writing project dealing with American jobs and American workers, so I claim to know something about that. I claim to know, for example, that we have lost somewhere around 3 million-plus jobs in this country, most of them having moved to China or Indonesia or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka--but most perhaps to China. We have lost millions of jobs in this country in the last 3\1/2\ to 4 years. American workers, middle-income workers, and particularly workers at the bottom of the economic ladder, have been devastated by what has happened with this race toward globalization and the race by the largest American corporations to produce where it is cheap, and then sell their products in our marketplace. All of that is going on in a very accelerated way. Now we see, with the bill brought to the floor of the Senate, not only do we have a strategy in this country of allowing the export of good American jobs, now we will have a strategy of importing additional low-wage jobs. I will review some numbers, if I might. We have somewhere around 11 million to 12 million people who have come into this country illegally and have stayed here. Some have been here a long while, and some recently arrived. Is it surprising that we have a lot of people who have come into this country and stayed in violation of the law? No, it is not surprising to me. We live in a big world, and a lot of people in this world don't have the opportunities we have in this country. We have built something very special in the United States. This is a country that provides basic rights for people. It took us some while to perfect all that, but having struggled through the issues of civil rights, workers' rights, and women's rights, we have created an extraordinary country in which workers can band together to collectively bargain and negotiate. We have made decisions about the workplace and the right of a worker to work in a safe workplace, child labor laws, minimum wages, environmental protection, so you cannot produce a product and emit poisonous chemicals into the air and water. At the same time, we have created circumstances where businesses can earn a profit, and a good one. This is an economy in which we have a vast consumer base, with the most affluent consumers in the world. All of that coming together created a country that is unparalleled on the face of this planet. So if you go anywhere in the world, and particularly impoverished areas in less developed countries, you will find, in discussing this with those people, that many would say they want to come to the United States of America. If you ask the question ``why,'' they will say it is because there is opportunity there, jobs there, better income, better pay. That is what you find. I have found that in many parts of the world, particularly in less developed countries. Think for a moment what would be the case if tomorrow the United States said: Look, what we have built here is quite wonderful. We understand it is unique and we want to share it with everyone. We have no immigration quotas and anybody who wishes to come here can come. Tomorrow, you are all welcome. Come and stay as long as you want. What would be the consequences of that? We all know the consequences of that. Those who are living in impoverished conditions from other parts of the world will find their way to this country. We will be importing poverty and we will have a massive number of people migrating to the United States of America, because they would see this as an opportunity. So we don't have a circumstance where we say that anybody who wants to come tomorrow, come on, this is wide open, and stay as long as you want. No. We have a series of quotas for immigrants. We have immigration quotas by country, by category, and then we allow people in based on these quotas. I will describe exactly what we now face. We have 11 million to 12 million people who are here illegally. Last year, according to data I have seen, 1.1 million additional people tried to cross the border from Mexico into this country, but they were denied access. So 1.1 million were kept out who wanted to come in. And 400,000 to 700,000 who wanted in illegally got in illegally and are here. They came last year. Another roughly 150,000 people--according to estimates I have seen--are here on a temporary basis, H-2A or H-2B. Another 175,000 people came in last year legally, as family members and quotas, just from Mexico. That is what we face. Now, at the same time we face these pressures of people wanting to come into our country, particularly in most cases low-skilled and low- wage workers, we face the largest trade deficits in the history of the world. We face the wholesale movement of American jobs overseas. So we see the two elements of the worst marriage of public policy; those are the export of good American jobs to China and elsewhere, and the import of low-wage workers to take the jobs of those in this country who are at the bottom of the economic ladder. That is about corporations, big companies, about their strategy, which has been embraced and given a bear hug by this President and the Congress, controlled by the President's party, standing for corporations and their interests. Export American jobs, do another trade deal, cause more American jobs to leave this country. Import cheap labor. Why? They say: We want to import more cheap labor because we cannot find Americans to do the work. So not only does the bill on the floor of the Senate describe that we will create a legal status for 11 million to 12 million people who are here because, practically speaking, nobody is going to round them up, or arrest them, or detain them, or export them--we will create a status for those folks--but in addition to that, it says let's also create a new guest worker program of 400,000 people per year each year, with an escalator of being able to increase that by 20 percent each year, which over 6 years could amount to 4.7 million more people coming into this country who now live outside of this country. And so the bill provides a guest worker program saying we not only want to deal with the legalization of those who are here illegally-- millions and millions and millions of them--we also want to add potentially another 4.7 million. And, by the way, there is more than that, but that is just the piece about which I am talking. On top of that would be the provisions dealing with the new agricultural workers, which was an amendment offered in the committee. So where do these 4.7 million people go--the ones who are now living outside of our country who come into our country legally--under this legislation? They go to find jobs in competition with American workers. Let's talk about low-skilled, low-wage American workers. This Congress, as stingy as it has been for low-wage, low-skilled workers, has decided for 8 years it will not increase the minimum wage. Boy, it is Katy bar the door if it comes to helping somebody at the top--tax breaks, unbelievable tax breaks for people at the top. One of the world's richest people told me the other day when I was talking with him that he pays a lower income tax rate than the receptionist in his office. Why? Because the priority in this Chamber, the priority in this Congress, the priority of the President, is to drive down income tax rates for people who have capital gains. Who has capital gains? The wealthy. They have most of the capital gains. The wealthiest Americans are now paying the lowest tax rates, and this Congress can't be quick enough to see if they can't offer another gift to those at the top of the income scale. I have nothing at all against those at the top of the income ladder. God bless them, that is what America is about; it is about success. But that does not justify saying that those who are the most successful shall pay the lowest income tax rates in our country, and that is what is happening. At the same time, Congress can't move quickly enough to provide the lowest tax rates to those with the highest incomes. It says to the people with the lowest incomes: We don't have any interest in increasing the minimum wage. Sit there for 8 years, let inflation work against your purchasing power; doesn't matter to us, we don't intend to increase it. I think that is a terrible mistake, but that is the way people at the bottom of the economic ladder have been treated in this country now for many years. Now they will be treated again to the prospect of saying: Let's have some more people come in; let's not just deal with this 11 to 12 million, let's have more people come in on top of that because we can't find Americans to do that work. Why can't we find Americans to do that work? Let me read something from Robert Samuelson, a Washington Post editorial. I fully agree with this. He talks about: It's a myth that the U.S. economy ``needs'' more poor immigrants. He is speaking especially of the guest worker provisions. The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the current labor force, reports the Pew Hispanic Center. In no major occupation are they a major- ity. . . . Hardly anyone thinks that most existing illegal immigrants will leave-- Or be rounded up, arrested, or deported. I understand that. I think all of us probably understand that. I think there should be some enforcement of employer sanctions which we created but have not enforced, which would make a big difference with respect to illegal immigration. Here is what Samuelson said: In 2004, the median hourly wage in Mexico was $1.86 compared to $9 for Mexicans working in the United States, says Rakesh Kochhar of Pew. With high labor turnover in the jobs they take, most new illegal immigrants can get work by accepting wages slightly below prevailing levels. . . . But what would happen if new illegal immigration stopped and wasn't replaced by these guest workers? That is an assumption. First, I don't buy the assumption that even if this bill is passed with legalizing 11 to 12 million immigrants and then allowing up to 4.7 million new people to come in who are now living outside our country, I don't buy the notion that we have plugged the border. I don't think we in any way inhibit illegal immigrants from coming across the border. I know my colleagues are talking about tightening the border and employer sanctions, and I will talk about that in a minute. Employer sanctions was the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. That was a miserable failure, and I will explain why. Again quoting Samuelson: But what would happen if new illegal immigration stopped and wasn't replaced by guest workers? At some point higher wages would be going to American workers. President Bush says that his guest worker program would ``match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs.'' But at some higher wage, there would be willing Americans. As long as you can bring illegal immigrants, which is what has been happening, into the country and they can work in the shadows and employers can employ them for subminimum wage, I understand why employers would not be employing American workers because they have a steady stream of workers they can employ below the minimum wage. Business organizations understandably support guest worker programs. They like cheap labor and ignore the social consequences. That is what is at work here. What is at work here is the same corporate interests who are exporting good American jobs are supporting this bill because they cannot only export good American jobs on the production side, but for those jobs you can't export, you can import cheap labor. And that is what this is about: Export good jobs and import cheap labor. Let me talk for a moment about the debate over the Simpson-Mazzoli bill two decades ago at a time when we were told we had a significant immigration problem. That was a bill about border enforcement, strengthening enforcement at the border, and also creating employer sanctions. The purpose of that bill was to say to employers: Don't you dare hire illegal immigrants; if you are hiring workers who are illegal, you are going to be in trouble, you are going to be slapped with a fine and subject to enforcement actions. So I went back and read the 1985 and 1986 debate about Simpson-Mazzoli. I won't embarrass anybody by reading it on the floor of the Senate. It was fascinating debate in the House and the Senate. This was nirvana. This was the entire solution. It was going to work like a charm because if you say to employers you dare not hire people who are not here legally, you shut down the job, you shut down the magnet, you shut down illegal immigration, end of story. The fact is it didn't work at all. We have people in my State, the State of North Dakota, today--in fact, I think there is a story in today's paper about illegal immigrants working on some energy plants in the middle of North Dakota, found to be illegal. The question is: Is anybody going to take action against the employer? That would be a Minnesota employer, by the way. Most of our troubles come from Minnesota. We joke about that. If a Minnesota employer hires illegal workers, and he is caught, are there any problems for the Minnesota employer? No, no, not even a slap on the wrist; just a pat on the back. Nobody is going to prosecute. Nobody is going to fine them. Nobody is going to take enforcement action. It is exactly why we are in the situation we are in today. There are no sanctions for employers who hire illegal aliens. I want to say very clearly that I don't in any way, because I oppose this guest worker program that will bring 4.7 million people in to compete with American workers at the bottom of the economic ladder, I don't in any way want to diminish the dignity and self- worth of immigrants. I don't mean that at all. I know in most cases these are hard-working people, good families. Most of us have come from immigrant families at some point in our lineage. Because someone would come out and say, as I do today, that I don't support this proposal offered by the President and offered on the floor of the Senate, saying not only are we going to legalize or give legal status to 11 or 12 million people who came here illegally, but in addition to that, we are going to allow 400,000 people a year with a 20-percent escalation clause for the 4.7 million additional people potentially in 6 years to come into this country, I am not going to support that. That is a strategy for corporations to provide a ladder of cheap labor coming into this country, displacing American workers. We have a serious crisis in this country with respect to the plight of America's workers. A lot of people who worked hard all their lives, worked for companies and were proud of it are now discovering their jobs are not safe, their jobs are not secure. In many cases, their jobs are gone--gone to China, gone to Indonesia. Yes, they can find another job. The statistics show they find another job at 20 percent less income. In most cases, they have lost their pensions; they have lost their health care. These are middle-income American workers, and the low-income workers, the people at the bottom of the ladder, the people who are high school dropouts, they work hard, they struggle, and now what they have confronted in recent years is a corporate strategy of being able to hire illegal immigrants at subpar wages, so the jobs are not there for them. We have a lot of people come to this floor and want to offer amendments. They say they speak for this immigration bill, and they say they speak for immigrants. Again, let me emphasize, I don't want to diminish their concern for immigrant families. I don't want to do that. That is not what I am about. But I want to come to this floor to say a word on behalf of American workers because nobody is coming to this floor to talk about American workers, American jobs, and what it means to our country's future to have good jobs that pay well with retirement benefits and health benefits. The current strategy we are employing in this country today, a strategy embraced by this President and this Congress, a corporate strategy that says let us export good jobs and import cheap labor, that is a strategy that undermines our economy. I am interested in the long-term economic health of this country. We have a lot of kids who will grow up in this country, American kids, who want opportunity. Every single set of parents wants to leave a country that is better for their children. They want to leave a country that provides more opportunities for their children, and that is simply not the case these days, regrettably. It is because we have an economic strategy that is off track, and we need to put it on track. I have ideas about how to do that. Others do as well. But one of those ideas would not include suggesting that we ought to displace American workers with 4.7 million additional immigrant workers who now live outside of our country but who will come into our country to assume low-wage jobs and displace jobs for low-wage American workers. That would not be included in my suggestion of how to fix what is wrong in our country. There is so much to say about this subject. I know there is great passion. I have heard it from all of the groups. I have used a lot of statistics. This is not, after all, about statistics or data. It is about hopes and dreams and aspirations. It is about human misery. It is about living in the shadows. It is about all of those things. So I understand the passion that exists on the floor of this Senate about this matter. But I also, as one Member of this body, lament that there seems to be so little effort and so little activity on this floor about the passions and the hopes and the dreams and the inspiration American workers have about their future. I have indicated previously, I know we have this global economy and I know part of that global economy plays a role in this immigration debate. People say you are a hopeless xenophobe who doesn't get it. We all see over the horizon, and you somehow are nearsighted. My sense is that we as a country will have our better days ahead of us if we adopt public policy which is thoughtful and, yes, which has as a self- interest the long-term economic well-being of our country. But this global economy has marched and now galloped forward without adequate rules with respect to jobs and income and opportunity in this country, and too few people seem to care about the diminished circumstances facing most American families and most American workers. That, too, should play a central role in this discussion. That, too, should be a part of the consideration here in the Senate. Regrettably, it has not been. My hope is that perhaps in the next 48 hours it will be, finally. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I wish to follow the next Republican speaker.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe we are going back and forth, but since there is no one on the other side of the aisle seeking to claim time, let me claim time on our side. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 25 minutes against our time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, at a time when our country sees so much of the outsourcing of good jobs and now the proposal to continue importing cheap labor, I think it is a strange set of circumstances that has a proposal on the floor of the Senate saying let's deal with immigration and the immigration problem in this country by adding to the immigration bill a so-called guest worker program that would allow 400,000 additional people who now live outside our country to come into our country's labor force. They would do that with an escalator of potential 20 percent more than the 400,000 each year or, over 6 years, if they use the maximum, another 4.7 million immigrant workers into this country. Open the newspaper these days and take a look at the news: outsourcing of American jobs; good American jobs that pay well, with benefits, retirement, and health care, going to China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh--outsourcing American jobs. In addition to outsourcing good American jobs, we are also insourcing, importing cheap labor. We now have 11 million immigrants in this country who are here illegally. This Chamber is full of talk these days about immigrants because we are on an immigration bill and will be until the end of this week. The question is, Where is the talk about American workers as we discuss the issue of immigrants and immigration reform? Where is the description of the plight of the American worker? Who is here describing the circumstances faced by American workers? There are many here speaking for immigrants, and I don't ever want to diminish the dignity or the worth of the immigrants who have come here over the life of this country and helped us build something very unusual on the face of this Earth. This country is a country made up of immigrants. I think everyone who stands on this floor would likely describe their great-grandparents or their grandparents or great-great-grandparents who came here from somewhere--mine from Norway, for example, and Sweden. But what we have built on this Earth is a country that is unique and unusual. It is a country that has created a standard of living which is almost unparalleled in the world: good jobs that pay well, the creation of a middle class, an expanded middle class where people had good incomes and those good incomes allowed them to increase their standard of living. Now we see a different kind of circumstance in our country. We see the largest corporations that have become the preeminent economic entities, very large corporations that have described a different set of circumstances for themselves. What they like to do is produce somewhere else--send their jobs to China, for example--and then send the product back to this country to sell and then send their income through a Grand Cayman Island bank so they don't have to pay taxes. They ship the jobs overseas, ship the products here, and run the money through the Cayman Islands. In addition to all of that--and there is plenty of evidence that is going on wholesale; 3 million jobs lost to that sort of activity just in the last several years--in addition to that, at the same time these jobs are moving overseas and hurting the middle class in this country and shrinking opportunities for the people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, we have people trying to get into this country. Why? Our country is an attraction to them because this is a place they want to come to get a job and make some money. In much of the world, they pay various substandard wages--different economies, less developed countries, undeveloped countries--and so this country has become a magnet for people who want to come here. I have described the circumstance some years ago when I was on a helicopter that ran out of gas somewhere between Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, up in the mountains in the jungles. After we ran out of power, after the fuel tank was empty, we landed, and the compesinos came to our helicopter to see who came through. I, through an interpreter, talked with some of them. I talked with a woman who had three children. After describing who we were and asking about her life, I said: What is it you would like to do with your life? She said: Oh, I would like to come to America; I would like to come to the United States. Why would you like to do that, I asked? Because that is where opportunity is, she said. Get a job, make some money, have opportunities for me and my children. That is not unusual. It wasn't unusual to hear that in Nicaragua or El Salvador, and it wouldn't be unusual to hear that in most parts of the world. If we had no immigration laws at all and we said tomorrow to any one else of this world's population of roughly 6.3 billion who want to come here: Come on along, you are welcome in this country. Come and stay. Come and grab a job, if you like--why don't we do that? Why do we have immigration laws? Why do we have quotas of the number of people we can allow in each year--and we do allow people in--why do we have those numbers? Simply because we can't absorb a massive inflow of immigration from around the world willing to work at substandard wages. We can't absorb that. The social services that are required to attend to it, the jobs they take, we can't do that. So we have a process called immigration by which people legally come into this country. People have come to this country illegally. It is estimated we now have 11 million people here illegally. I heard an actor--well, actually he is not much of an actor--but I heard this fellow on television yesterday on CBS, I believe it was, and he was doing his commentary about immigration. This is a fellow who has been wrong about most things, so it didn't surprise me what he said about immigration. He said: No one should call this illegal immigration. Well, I am sorry, but if people come here illegally, it is illegal immigration. We have 11 million people here illegally. In addition, 1.1 million people tried to come across our southern border last year, but were stopped--1.1 million were stopped at our southern border trying to come into this country. In addition to that, somewhere between 400,000 and 700,000 people we estimate came into this country across the southern border illegally last year. Finally, above that number, 175,000 immigrated from Mexico last year legally. That is in addition to the other quotas from the other countries. So the fact is, we have a very significant number who come into this country, and many of them come in illegally. So my colleagues bring an immigration bill to the floor and the President describes the need for an immigration bill, as well as the President of Mexico. What they say is: We can't arrest and detain and deport 11 million people. I understand that. I am not sure I know the solution to all of this, but I understand there is not going to be a sweep in this country to detain or deport or arrest 11 million people who are here illegally. We will have discussions about that portion of the bill and we will have amendments about that portion of the legislation. We will also have amendments about employer sanctions. I was here when the previous immigration bill was passed. The presumption was that if you make it illegal for employers to hire illegal aliens then, in that circumstance, they will have to pay a significant fine--the employer will--and they won't be hiring them. If the job is not the magnet to come here, it will shut down immigration at the border. That was all nonsense. It didn't work. I think last year three immigration cases were brought by this administration against employers who hired illegal immigrants. There has been no enforcement at all. So we are going to have discussions and amendments about that portion of the legislation. Let me talk about the other piece, if I might, and that other piece is a guest worker program attached to this, saying, In addition to all of the other things that will be done in this legislation, including making legal 11 million people who came here illegally or giving them legal status, we have an addition called a guest worker program. The guest worker program is the proposition that 400,000 additional workers will be allowed in. These are people who are now living outside of our country. They will be allowed into our country with a 20-percent escalator per year and, by the way, at the end of 6 the escalator works and they let these folks come in years, if, we will have 4.6 million additional guest workers who have come into this program in the 6-year period--4.6 million. Why are people saying this is necessary? They are saying it is necessary because Americans won't take these jobs. We can't find Americans who will take these jobs. Well, why do you suppose that might be the case, if it is the case? I dispute that, but let's assume it is the case. One of the reasons is those jobs don't pay enough. Since the big businesses don't want to raise salaries at the bottom, they say the solution to not having to raise salaries is to bring in immigrant workers who will work for less. Let's not worry about the Americans. If we can't find Americans to take the jobs at the minimum wage and, by the way, this Congress has decided for 8 years it will not increase the minimum wage--those folks, the working poor and others who work at the bottom of the economic ladder, have not had an increase in the minimum wage in 8 years. So the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, big business, and others say, What we need to do is to have a separate and additional guest worker program. In addition to the 11 million people, we need to have a guest worker program that could reach 4.6 million people in the next 6 years. Let me respond to this question of jobs that Americans won't do. This is what the research says. Construction jobs: 86 percent of the workers are American workers and other legal workers. Food preparation: 12 percent are illegal immigrants; 88 percent of the food preparation workers are American workers and other legal workers. Manufacturing: 91 percent American workers. Transport: 93 percent. These are the jobs that corporations and others say Americans won't take and, therefore, they have to bring in immigrant labor, new guest workers, 4.6 million additional people. While we are doing that, let's take a look at this issue of change in income for the American people. This happens to measure 1979 to 2003. You can see the top 1 percent of the American income earners are doing very well--lots of extra income, massive growth in their income. The bottom fifth: almost no growth in 25 years. In fact, some studies show they have actually lost ground. This shows that they have been stagnant for 25 years. So at the same time we have people saying, We need to bring in more immigrant workers to take these low-income jobs, we have people at the lower end of the economic scale in this country--and we have the middle-income workers as well--struggling, trying to figure out, What do they do next? How do they find a good job? About 30 years ago, the largest corporation in this country was General Motors. General Motors paid well, had good benefits, good retirement, good health care. Most people not only got good pay when they went to work there, they worked there for a lifetime. Now, the largest corporation is Wal-Mart--Wal-Mart. In the first year of employment, turnover I understand is about 70 to 80 percent. Wal-Mart pays very low wages. I believe the average income at Wal-Mart is $18,000 a year, and they pay very little benefits. Very few have health care. I think a third to just over a third have health care benefits, and those who do pay substantially more than is the employee's share in most other companies. That is what we have come to. So the middle- income workers are looking for a replacement for those jobs that have been shipped overseas. I have spoken at length about the issue of outsourcing of jobs, and I won't do that today, but whether it is Huffy bicycles or Little Red Wagon Radio Flyer, Fig Newton cookies, Fruit of the Loom, or Levis or Tony Lama boots--I could go on forever--these are jobs Americans used to have, good jobs that paid well, almost always jobs with benefits-- gone, gone to China for somebody who will earn 33 cents an hour, probably working in Shenzhen, China, 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, to produce the product and ship it back to Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears to be sold to the American public, and then have the same companies run their income through the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes. That is interesting but not very good for this country, and exactly the wrong strategy for the long-term economic health of America. Employment rates for individuals lacking a high school diploma, you will see that nearly one-half of U.S.-born workers without a high school diploma are without a job. Immigrant workers, on the other hand, many of whom come here without a high school diploma, find work in high numbers. I have a picture of some immigrant workers that was given to me recently. These, by the way, were workers who came in by a contractor who hired them to help do work after Hurricane Katrina, undocumented workers who came into this country, and--by the way, at the hearing I held on this, one of the people who testified was a fellow who ran a Louisiana construction firm. His firm was hired by a Halliburton subcontractor to do electrical repair work in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. But the Halliburton subcontractor changed its mind, and they hired a good number of people to come in who were undocumented workers and who didn't have adequate training to do electrical work at this particular base. It is the sort of thing that is going on all the time, and I think it is hurting this country. So the question is for this Congress, Who is going to talk about American workers? I know the subject is about immigration, but it has a profound impact on American workers. So who is going to come here today to talk about American workers? We are told that the corporate strategy here is that they can't find additional American workers without paying higher wages and they don't want to pay higher wages because they want to keep costs down, so they are going to import additional workers. They are now called guest workers. By the way, these are nonagricultural, these guest workers. This is in addition to H-2A and H-2B workers, agricultural and nonagricultural, who will still exist under law. I haven't even described the people coming in under those two provisions. Yet we have people saying we must have this additional guest worker program. I understand people listening and those who feel very strongly that we have to have this immigration bill, including the guest workers, who will say: What you are talking about is anti-immigrant. That couldn't be further from the truth. I indicated that I think immigrants contribute a great deal to this country. Most of us come as a result of some immigration back a generation or several generations in our family. But the question is: What are we going to do to fix this issue, and what are we going to do to balance the immigration legislation and the proposal for guest workers against the needs of American workers? I think what is going on here is going to pull the rug out from under American workers. I don't understand this at all. Let me put up a chart that shows the average wages--perhaps I should show you the New York Times story of March 17, a couple of weeks ago, about a businesswoman in New York. Sister Ping is her nickname. She was sentenced to 35 years for running one of New York City's most lucrative immigrant smuggling rings and for financing the infamous Voyage of Golden Venture, the rusty freighter that ran aground with 300 starving immigrants in its hold. Sister Ping said she would be happier in prison in the United States than free in her rural village in China. Let me describe what persuades Sister Ping and others to attempt to bring low-wage income earners to this country. A typical unskilled labor wage in Russia is 51 cents an hour. In Nicaragua, 37 cents an hour. In China, 33 cents an hour; in Bangladesh, 33 cents an hour; in India, 11 cents an hour; and in Haiti, 30 cents an hour. We are suggesting that we are short of workers here. We want another 400,000 plus 20 percent every year for 6 years, or 4.7 million additional workers because we don't have enough workers in this country. What we don't have is enough courage and enough common sense to, first, increase the minimum wage and second, to tell those who are trying to employ immigrant labor at below standard wages, which they have done for years now, that you have to pay a decent wage at the bottom to get people to work, and that includes Americans. That includes our country's workers. If this Congress has some common sense, we don't need guest workers. That is the other side of this immigration debate, the extra guest workers. We don't need them. What we need employers to do is to pay a decent wage. What we need the Congress to do is to increase the minimum wage. We need to understand that American workers have worth. They want jobs. What is happening to them is good jobs are being exported overseas for these kinds of wages overseas, and then low-income jobs in this country are now going to be filled and have been filled by immigrant labor. So we are importing low-wage workers for jobs here and exporting high-wage, good jobs for jobs there. I am telling you I think that is a strategy to injure this country's economy. It is a strategy to hurt low-income American workers. It has been going on for some while now. But this memorializes it in an immigration bill. I don't understand at all why this is being seriously proposed. In fact, the President's proposal would have no limit. I talked about the 400,000 plus a 20-percent escalator per year for so-called guest workers who now live outside of our country who will be told to come on in legally. The Congress has a 400,000-person plus a 20-percent escalator which, as I indicated, would relate to about 4.7 million workers over 6 years. But the fact is, the President's proposal has no limit at all; the sky is the limit. I am telling you, this is a U.S. Chamber-big business strategy. It is probably good for them. It allows them to import cheap labor. It probably keeps their costs low. But I will tell you what else it does: It pulls the rug out from American workers in a way that is very unfair. Having said all of that, it is not my intention to suggest that we don't have to deal with immigration issues. We do. I understand that. It is not my intention to suggest that anybody can round up or should even seriously consider rounding up 11 million people and deporting them. That is not going to happen. I was in the Congress when the Simpson-Mazzoli bill was passed dealing with immigration. It was going to fix immigration. Immigration problems have become much worse. This proposal, the Simpson-Mazzoli proposal, was described as a proposal that would say that the attraction--the magnet--for immigrants coming into this country is a job. Take away the job, you take away the attraction or the magnet. How do you take away the job? You tell employers in this country, if you hire people who are here illegally, you are going to pay a real price for it. You are going to be slapped with a big fine. You are going to have a big problem. Guess what--they didn't even get hit with a feather duster. Not a thing. As I said, last year there were three enforcement cases against American businesses that hired illegal labor. I just heard of one the other day in our part of the country. An employer from one of the big cities up near our area hired some illegal immigrants to come in and do a construction project. They were caught. The question was, for the local State's attorney, the question for the attorney general's office and others, is anything going to happen? No, nothing is going to happen. No action is going to be taken. It has been that way for years. The result is that the so-called Simpson-Mazzoli bill meant nothing. My colleagues say now we are going to really enforce things at the border. If we have a guest worker provision, somehow we will not have additional people coming across the border because we will allow about 4.7 million of them in illegally in addition to the 11 million who are here. I don't understand why they believe allowing 450,000-plus a year, or 4.7 million in 6 years, potentially--how that is going to stop others who want to come in. We have an inexhaustible number of people working around the world at dirt-cheap wages. We have an inexhaustible appetite in this country, for businesses, apparently, to hire people at substandard wages. So how is it you are going to plug this border? I don't see it in this bill. We are told we don't really plug the border. What you really do is invite up to 4.7 million additional people in, and therefore that cuts the appetite for people to come in. It is total nonsense. That is not going to do it at all. It just isn't. All it is going to do is undermine American workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. That is what it does. I don't understand why this issue is brought to the floor of the Senate with guest workers. I mentioned the other day a story about FDR. Let me close with that. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's funeral was being held. Before his funeral, his body lay in State here in the Capitol Building, and there were long lines to view the casket of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The journalists were trying to get color pieces for their stories. A journalist walked up to a man who was holding his cap in his hands, a working man. He had been standing for some long while in line to file past the casket of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The journalist asked him: Did you know President Roosevelt? The working guy said: No, but President Roosevelt knew me. The question is, Who knows American workers now? Yes, President Roosevelt did know American workers. He is the person who got us the Fair Labor Standards Act. He stood up for American workers. Who knows American workers now? Is there any discussion about American workers as we talk about immigration on the floor of the Senate, a subject that will have such a profound impact on jobs in this country? Is there any discussion about American workers? I don't hear it, regrettably. Amendment No. 3223 to Amendment No. 3192

Mr. DORGAN. I am also today going to offer an amendment numbered 3223, which I believe is at the desk. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask that we call up amendment No. 3223.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I--and I know the time is being divided--be recognized as the next Democratic speaker following Senator Kennedy's presentation, intermingled with Republican speakers as well.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this amendment is cosponsored by Senator Snowe, Schumer, Burns, and Jeffords. I will just briefly describe the amendment that I hope we will consider this week. It deals with cross- border traffic between the United States and Canada and the issue of the card that is being considered by the State Department in lieu of a passport that would be required for United States-Canada cross-border traffic. The amendment is quite simple. It would provide, for children under 18--that is, 17 and under--who are accompanied by parents moving cross- border, they would not need one of these new cross-border cards. It would provide that there be an opportunity for the State Department to offer 3-day passes for those who are simply on a 1-day cross-border trip and would also provide that these new cards which would be required in lieu of passports cost no more than $20. As you know, it takes over $90 to purchase a passport. That is not an inconsiderable sum. It takes some while to get a passport. If you have a family of four or five going up to Winnipeg or Regina, the northern part of our State--we have a 4000-plus mile border--for a family of four or five going to see a relative, if we have a passport requirement, that is pretty dramatic. We have always been able to use our driver's license, and the Department of Homeland Security says that is going to be replaced by a passport. We complained about that. They said: All right, what we will require is a passport card. We don't know the specifics of that card, but what we want to make sure of is that card not be prohibitive for families. I don't have any problem with requiring a standardized card, but I don't believe it should cost more than $20. I don't believe it should be required for children under 17 traveling with their parents. There also ought to be exceptional circumstances, with proper identification, for those who make day trips. As I said, I am joined in this amendment by many of my colleagues from the border States, including Senator Snowe from Maine, Senator Schumer from New York, Senator Burns from Montana, and Senator Jeffords from Vermont. I hope we can have some discussion and debate and hope in the conduct of the debate on this immigration bill that we may include that. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, some long while ago, I was on a helicopter flying in Central America between Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, in the mountains and jungles, with two other Members of Congress. We, unfortunately, ran out of fuel. So we abruptly landed. It is a universal rule that if you are in a flying machine and you run out of gas, you will be landing soon and we did. We were there for 4 or 5 hours until someone found us and sent other helicopters in to get us out. The campesinos in the area had seen the helicopters landing and they decided to walk up and see who we were. So 30, 40 campesinos came to the helicopter that landed, and we talked with them. We had an interpreter with us. I visited with a young woman with her three children in tow. We talked about her life. She had never met anybody from the United States. I asked about her life and I said: What would you aspire to do with your life? She said: I would like to come to the United States of America. I said: Why would that be the case? She said: Well, that is where there is opportunity--in the United States of America. This young woman, in the jungles of Nicaragua and Honduras, saw opportunity in the United States. It is true that in much of the world, if you ask people what are your aspirations, they would like to go to the United States. We are a beacon of hope and opportunity. We have created a country that is quite extraordinary--a country in which we have developed a broad middle class. That middle class helped create jobs that paid well, that had retirement and health benefits, raised families, built communities, built churches, built schools, sent their kids to schools. What a remarkable country. At the start of the last century, leading all the way up to this century, we had debates, which sometimes turned violent, about what are the conditions of freedom, what are the rights in this country. People died in the streets. James Fyler died. Not many remember his name. He was shot 56 times. Do you know why James Fyler was shot 56 times? It was because he believed that people who were going down into the coal mines ought to have a better deal. He stood for coal miners, for the right to form labor organizations and bargain collectively. He paid for that with his life. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the first third of the century, helped write and signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created rights for American workers. It changed the conditions of work in our country. When Roosevelt died--there is the story that I have mentioned previously on the floor of the Senate about the journalist covering his funeral. As his body lie in state in the Capitol of the United States, a long line of people formed to file past the body of the President. A working man holding his cap, with tears in his eyes, stood in the line a long while. The journalist came up to him and said: Did you know President Roosevelt? And the working man said: No, I didn't, but he knew me. His point was that this was a President who stood with working men and women. Who knows the working men and women today? Who stands with them and for them today? Well, we built a place that is quite extraordinary, and a lot of people want to come to this place. Now, if you fast forward to 2006, we see a strategy in this country with respect to trade, the outsourcing of American jobs, and now with respect to immigration, of insourcing cheap labor. I know this is a sensitive subject and a very difficult one for the Congress and the American people. There are two elements of what is being discussed by President Bush and by those in the Chamber of the Senate. One deals with those who have come to this country illegally-- the 11 million or so--and the second deals with an add-on to that, offered in unlimited quantity by President Bush and in the quantity of 400,000 workers per year by the underlying bill discussed in the Senate, called guest workers. I will talk a little about this. This chart shows the illegal immigration over the past two decades. People don't like to use the term, but you have to use that term. We have processes for immigration here. Let me describe what that process is. We allow people, through H- 2A visas and H-2B visas--agriculture and non-agriculture work--to come into this country legally. In addition, people immigrate to live here permanently. In 2004, 175,000 people immigrated here legally from Mexico. By comparison, last year, 1.1 million who attempted to come into this country illegally were stopped at the border. Last year, we understand--although we don't have hard numbers--in addition to the 1.1 million who were stopped at the border, another 400,000 to 700,000 came across illegally, to add to this growing number of illegal immigrants in this country. My colleagues say--and I understand the comment--nobody is going to round up 11 million or 12 million people and prosecute them and deport them and all that. I understand that. We are going to discuss the conditions of all of that, and that is important to do. I don't want to, nor would any of my colleagues want to, diminish the worth, the dignity of those who are part of this pool. They came here illegally, but many have been here a long time. I understand that is a difficult issue. But let me not talk about that. Let me talk instead about the add-on by President Bush and by the underlying bill in the Senate dealing with guest workers. I want to talk about that because as we outsource American jobs through terrible trade deals and because big American corporations want to find cheap labor in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, as we outsource those jobs and decide to insource cheap labor to take the jobs on the bottom of the economic ladder here, the question ought to be asked: Mr. President, who knows today's American workers--especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder? I know the folks at the top have had it real good for a long time. They have an increasing share of America's income. But the folks at the bottom have struggled, lost ground, lost jobs, lost retirement, lost health care. Now this Congress is saying we want to change the status of 11 million people who are here illegally and make them legal, No. 1; No. 2, in addition to that, we want to have a guest worker program by which 400,000 people who now are outside of this country are going to be allowed in, in the next year, and that can increase 20 percent each year. As this chart shows, that guest worker provision, in my judgment, will likely lead to 4.6 million additional people coming into this country who now live outside of the country. What is the purpose of this? I don't think there is much question at all. Why does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American business want this? They want to bring in cheap labor. We have seen lots of examples of this. Let me show a picture. This photograph shows immigrant workers who were doing work in response to Hurricane Katrina. I will tell you about this for a minute because I want to talk about motives and what is happening with respect to this proposal for guest workers which is of, by, and for American business that wants to import cheap labor. On October 17 of last year, I chaired a Democratic Policy Committee hearing to talk about contracting practices with respect to the recovery effort due to Katrina. I heard from Al Knight and Mike Moran from Louisiana. They run a small business in Louisiana. Al and Mike run a New Orleans company. They were hired by a subcontractor of the Halliburton Corporation to provide 75 qualified electricians to work on a project they had begun at the naval air station in Belle Chasse, LA. The Halliburton subcontractor very quickly replaced their 75 local workers with workers from outside the region, many not trained as electricians and not from that region. Here is what Al Knight said, manager of the New Orleans company that lost that job, who had 75 workers who lost jobs: Almost all of the workers were from out of State. Most did not speak English. Few seemed to be qualified electricians. According to the Halliburton subcontractor, they were being paid two-thirds of our prevailing hourly wage, with no benefits. At the time, they were living in small tents off base. Another person who testified had this picture of the living conditions of immigrants being brought in at subpar wages to do this work. That is at the root of much of this discussion with respect to guest workers. Five days after I held that hearing, the Washington Post ran an article that pointed out that there was a raid and they found the illegal workers down at that job site on a U.S. naval air base. Look, I am not unsympathetic to people who want to work and come into this country. But I am much more sympathetic, as an American, to those people at the bottom fifth or the bottom fourth of the wage scale in this country who are struggling to find good jobs, to hang onto those jobs. We are told by companies: We cannot find American workers to take these jobs. Oh, really? I am telling you that there is a price at which people will take those jobs. You just want to pay dirt poor wages. How? Just bring in immigrants who work for lower level wages, and that way you never have to raise the income by which you attract American workers. That, in my judgment, undercuts our economy, it disserves our workers, and it sends a message when you ask the question: Who knows American workers? Not this Congress, not this President. My hope is that we will start understanding what we are doing here. We are talking about American workers who all too often these days are seeing lost jobs, lost wages, lost retirement programs, lost health care, and lost opportunity. Now we are talking about a Congress that is talking not just about the 11 million people who came here illegally but about a Congress who says on top of that: Why don't we see if we can find a way, a formula by which we can add 400,000 a year; and at the end of 6 years, you conceivably could have said we want 4.6 million more workers who are now living in our country to come back to do this job. Is this about good government, about good economics? Is this sensible? Is this standing up for American workers? No. I will tell you, it is about American businesses, big businesses who run most of the agenda around here, who want to continue to have access to a pipeline of cheap labor, because if you have cheap labor coming in, you never, ever have to increase wages at the bottom. It has been 8 years since this Congress has increased the minimum wage for American workers--8 years. We have increased everything else-- tax breaks for wealthy Americans, opportunities for companies to move jobs overseas. But we have not increased the minimum wage in 8 years. That is unbelievable. It is unforgivable, just in terms of values. Now, we have quotas in this country by which we allow people in. Some don't like that. But the fact is, if tomorrow we had a new public policy and said as a country, look, there are no restrictions, no more quotas, no more immigration issues, whoever in this world wants to come here, God bless you, come and stay. If we did that, we all know what would happen. We share this small planet of ours with about 6.3 billion people; half of them live on less than $2 a day. Half of them have never made a phone call, and they don't have access to clean, potable water. We simply cannot, as a country, having built what we built to increase our standard of living, decide that we can be the sponge for everybody everywhere who wants to come to our country. We cannot do that. As a result, we have immigration laws. Those immigration laws provide opportunities for others to come to our country. Last year, for example, our Southern border allowed 175,000 people to immigrate legally. Second, through the processes of the visas that are issued for agricultural workers and temporary, seasonal nonagricultural workers, tens and tens of thousands more came across temporarily. That is the way we have always done business. I understand those who have come to this floor saying let's try to find a way to address the status of the 11 million people who are already here. I don't understand this Congress, this President saying: Oh, by the way, we have this huge problem that has become a mushrooming problem, so let's bring in 400,000 more workers each year, and let's add to it by putting a formula in this bill that says we will have an expansion of 20 percent more each year, if you reach the 400,000 in the first quarter. I don't think that makes sense. I understand all those who speak for immigrants, and I don't want to do anything to diminish their value, their worth, their dignity. God bless them all. But I also want to be here standing for American workers who are struggling trying to find their footing, trying to find a job. There is no social program in this country, there is no social program that we work on in this Congress, as important as a good job that pays well because that allows everything else to be possible in a family. A good job allows people to take care of their kids. It allows people to do the things they want to do. There are fewer and fewer of those kinds of jobs. To suggest on top of dealing with the 11 million-plus guest worker program to bring 400,000 a year in with a 20-percent expansion program on top of that, I think it defies all common sense. This is clearly a corporate strategy to keep wages low. It clearly will replace the jobs of American workers. Let me describe a study that was recently done. Professor George Borjas of the John F. Kennedy School of Government did a study on the impact from 1980 to 2000 on U.S. wages by ethnicity. What he said is the kind of integration occurring with people taking substandard-wage jobs--and incidentally, corporations have been wanting to do that because if someone is illegal, they can pay them little or nothing. They don't have a lot of leverage with the employer. What he said is it has decreased income for the average American worker. It has decreased income for the Hispanic workers more than anyone, talking about the Hispanic workers who are part of the workforce legally, and it has decreased income for African Americans, Whites, and Asian. But Hispanics and African-Americans have been the hardest hit of all. The fact is, with this illegal immigration and now on top of that, hundreds of thousands of so-called guest workers on top of the visas that already exist, there isn't any way to describe what this is going to mean other than it is going to depress income for the lowest 20 to 40 percent of the American workers, and it is going to take jobs from the lowest 20 to 40 percent of the American labor force. I remember Ross Perot when he talked about NAFTA, the horrible trade agreement that has dramatically injured our country. He was then talking about American jobs going to Mexico. He called it that giant sucking sound, that giant sucking sound, sucking American jobs to Mexico. He was right about that. All the economists, all the hotshots who got paid all the money on behalf of American businesses particularly supporting NAFTA told us: Some jobs will go there. They will be low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Oh, I am sorry. We have some experience now. Mr. President, do you know what those jobs are? The three biggest imports into this country from Mexico are automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics, all of them the product of high-skilled jobs but not high wages. They displaced high-skilled, high-wage jobs in this country. Now that giant sucking sound will be heard from the other direction. That giant sucking sound will be sucking 400,000 immigrant workers into this country each year at the bottom of the economic ladder to displace workers in this country. I am not talking about the 11 million; I am talking about 400,000 additional workers who will displace American workers and continue to put downward pressure on wages. I don't understand what the thinking is of people who decide that they want to find a way to continue to diminish opportunities in our country for our workers. I think of what a turnabout this has been for this country in a century. There was a time when American workers were valued, work was valued. No one stood quite as tall as those who had a good job. I am going to speak on this next week again, and I know others have some time, but I do want to make one final point. I have not yet spoken about the security on our borders. Senator Domenici and I introduced legislation dealing with real border security, which I expect we will talk about additionally. While I have talked about jobs and income and immigration, the issue here is in addition to security, a country targeted by terrorists has to have secure borders. A country that is such a magnet for illegal immigration has to have secure borders. A country that cares about its workers has to have secure borders. A country that cares about the ability of a worker to find a job and have a decent wage and have retirement benefits has to care about the security of its borders. It is just that simple. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. DORGAN. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this coming month it will be 2 years since the body of a young woman named Dru Sjodin was found in Crookston, MN. Dru Sjodin was a young woman, a college student at the University of North Dakota, who walked out of a North Dakota shopping center at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. She was abducted, a search was made for her, and some months later her body was found near Crookston, MN. She had been brutally murdered. I have visited with her parents a number of times. The more I have come to know the details of her abduction and her murder--and since that time I have come to know the details of other abductions and murders, in many cases of young children in our country--it is clear that Congress needs to take some action to deal with some of these issues. What happened to Dru Sjodin was a vicious, almost unspeakable crime for which a man will soon be tried for murder. The man who has been arrested and will be on trial shortly for the murder of Dru Sjodin is Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr. He has served prison time for rape. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison for a violent rape. At the end of his sentence, he was deemed by prison officials-- including psychiatrists and psychologists--to be at high risk of reoffending. Despite that, he was let out of prison with little or no supervision. The State's attorney in the jurisdiction where he was prosecuted was not notified of his pending release. He was released without any significant supervision. And within 6 months--it is alleged--he murdered Dru Sjodin. I have proposed a piece of legislation called Dru's Law, and gotten it passed by the Senate twice. It still has not passed the House. Dru's Law is title II in a comprehensive piece of legislation reported out October of last year by the Senate Judiciary Committee, yet that bill has also not been brought to the floor of the Senate. Let me describe the legislation I put together because I was astounded when I took a look at Federal and State laws that so little information is available about those who have committed violent sexual offenses. First of all, there has not been a national database of convicted sex offenders. A year ago, I met with the Attorney General and talked to him about Dru's Law. When the Attorney General took office he began the development of a national database, administratively. We need to do that in law. And provisions of Dru's Law would require the development of a national database of sex offenders that is accessible to the public. So the bill requires the development of a national database of sex offenders accessible to the public. Second, it requires States to notify prosecutors of impending release of high-risk sex offenders. When we have sex offenders who have committed violent acts, there is a substantial amount of information demonstrating it is very likely, upon release, they will recommit those violent acts. When seen by psychiatrists and psychologists and evaluated for high-risk activities upon their release, it seems to me when those high-risk offenders are about to be released from prison, their names should be given to the local State's attorney where they were prosecuted so the State's attorney would have the time and capability to determine whether they wanted to seek civil commitment, which is to say further incarceration to protect the public. That is a procedure that many States have allowed. In this case, the alleged murder by Alfonso Rodriguez, who the experts alleged would be at great risk for reoffending, if he had been civilly committed, he would not have been on the streets. What is happening too often now, violent sex offenders are let out of prison at the end of the term without so much as a wave, ``so long, good luck.'' That is not what should happen, and this brings me to the third piece of the bill. If, in fact, a high-risk sex offender is released from prison, there must be monitoring by the States upon their release for at least 1 year. Martha Stewart is put in prison and let out of prison and she wears an ankle bracelet. Martha Stewart is wearing an ankle bracelet, and high-risk sex offenders are let out of prison with a wave, ``so long, see you later.'' Then they abduct and murder children. It is not just Dru Sjodin. I can go through an entire list of young people who have been abducted and murdered by people we knew about, people whose names we had, people who had been serving time in prison but were let out with a wave, to say, ``so long, see you later.'' Now, I mentioned that Dru's Law, which has the three provisions I described, has twice been passed by the Senate by unanimous consent. But the House has not taken it up and as a result it is not now law. I have not stopped trying to get Dru's Law passed. In fact, Dru's Law has now been incorporated into S. 1086, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, has been authored by Senators Hatch and Biden, both former chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is legislation I fully support. It is terrific legislation. I commend both of them for doing a great job. Title II of that legislation incorporates all of Dru's Law. That legislation is cosponsored also by Senator Specter, who is the current chairman of the Judiciary Committee. And I'm happy to say that S. 1086 passed out of the Judiciary Committee in October of last year. Yet S. 1086 has not been considered by the full Senate. I don't understand that. The majority leader has told us what we are going to consider. We are going to consider constitutional amendments on gay marriage, constitutional amendments on flag desecration. The list goes on and on and on, but we do not have time to consider this? This is important. This is life or death in many instances. We have had time for a free trade agreement with the country of Bahrain. Boy, that is a priority. What would have happened if we had not had a trade agreement with Bahrain? We passed the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area Improvement Act. We did the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial Commemoration Act. We have done a lot of things here, but we did not have time to bring up S. 1086, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act? I don't understand that. There is a recent study that found 72 percent of the highest risk sexual offenders reoffend within 6 years of being released from prison. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has determined that sex offenders released from prison are over 10 times more likely to be arrested for a sexual crime than individuals who have no record of a sexual assault. This legislation is endorsed by a good many people. Dru's Law has 18 cosponsors in the Senate. Senators Hatch and Leahy have worked closely with me to pass Dru's Law separately, as a standalone bill. Mark Lunsford, the father of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, is a strong supporter of this. Jessica Lunsford, this country might remember, was abducted a year or so ago from her bedroom in her Florida home. Her body was found a month later. The crime was committed by a 46-year-old convicted sex offender with a 30-year criminal history. After committing the assault of Jessica and the murder of Jessica, John Couey, the man who committed this crime, fled across State lines to Savannah, GA. Had he not been recaptured, he very likely would have reoffended in Georgia, as well. Mr. Lunsford wrote me a letter about Dru's death: If my daughter's death is going to have any meaning, it will be efforts such as yours that strengthen existing laws by making our streets safer for all children. My heart continues to break as I mourn the loss of my beautiful little girl. I do not want other families to suffer as mine has done and I believe that your effort will go far toward that important goal. This bill is endorsed by Marc Klaas, the father of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was kidnaped and murdered by a previously diagnosed sex offender. Mr. Klaas wrote: I would like to reiterate my full support of this important effort. It does not take the recitation of 100 cases, but let me mention Sarah Michelle Lunde, 13 years old. She disappeared and was found dead. David Onstott, a convicted sex offender, who once had a relationship with the girl's mother, has confessed to killing her. Jetseta Gage of Cedar Rapids, IA, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered. Roger Paul Bentley was arrested for that crime, a convicted sex offender on Iowa's sex registry. The list goes on and on and on and on. I held a meeting in Fargo, ND, about a year ago to describe how important it is to track sex offenders' movements across State lines. I held a town meeting in Fargo, ND, to talk about the issue of violent sex offenders. This was an outgrowth of the information I had developed as a result of Dru Sjodin's murder. Before that meeting in Fargo, I checked the registry in North Dakota to find out the names of convicted sex offenders living within walking distance of the place I was going to have a meeting. One name kind of jumped out to me and I described the case to the people at the meeting: Joseph E. Duncan. I did not know him, I had never previously heard of him. But in 1980 when Joseph Duncan was a 16 year old, he abducted a 14-year-old boy who had been walking in his neighborhood, sexually assaulted the boy twice at gunpoint, pled guilty to rape in the first degree, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released from prison July 14, 2000, after completing a 20-year sentence. Because he completed his full term, he was released without parole and without probation. He went to live in North Dakota within walking distance of city hall in Fargo. So I mentioned to the people in Fargo about five cases of people who were convicted sex offenders who lived within walking distance of city hall, just to describe the people who were living in our midst. What I didn't know when I mentioned it that day in Fargo was that 1 month earlier, Joseph E. Duncan had been charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a playground just across the river in Detroit Lakes, MN. He appeared in court on April 5, 2005. A county judge set the bail at $15,000 and Duncan was released after paying the cash. A friend apparently posted the cash for him. The next I heard of this man was July 2. He was arrested in Idaho for kidnaping 8-year-old Shasta Groene and her 9-year-old brother Dylan Groene. The children had been missing since May 16 when the bound and bludgeoned bodies of their mother, older brother, and mother's boyfriend were found at their rural home. This case is another tragic reminder of the urgent need. Duncan has now been charged with abducting and molesting this young girl, three counts of first-degree murder. These predators, in many cases, are not strangers. We know who they are. They have been in prison. They have violently molested, violently sexually assaulted other people. I am not necessarily suggesting we put them in prison and throw away the key, but I am saying when we know someone is a violent sexual predator and they are about to be released from prison and the psychiatrists tell us they are at high risk for reoffending and recommitting another violent sexual act, then it seems to me the local people ought to be notified to determine whether the State's attorney wishes to recommit them for a civil commitment to protect society at large. And, second, if that person is released, it cannot any longer be ``so long and good luck,'' with nothing much more than a wave. We cannot do that. There must be a high level of monitoring. Kids are dying. People are being murdered. We have not had a national registry of sex offenders that is complete and that works. We let people out of prison who we know are going to offend again, or at least we know will offend again, and we let these people out of prison with virtually no monitoring at all by the Government. Again, isn't it interesting, Martha Stewart--and, incidentally, I don't even watch her television show, but she sure got a lot of press for going to prison. Martha Stewart goes to prison, and when she is let out, she is walking around with an electronic ankle bracelet. Yet these people are going to prison and they come out after having been guilty of violent sex offenses, they are judged to be at risk for committing another sexual offense, and they do not wear any electronic bracelet, any electronic monitoring device. It is ``so long, see you later.'' That has to change. That is what Senator Hatch and Senator Biden say in their bill. It is what I say in Dru's Law. And it is long past the time for the majority leader to schedule this for a debate in the Senate. Last October, this Hatch-Biden bill was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is bipartisan. It has strong support in the Senate. There is no longer any excuse for that not to come to the Senate and to be debated and passed. Will it take the next vicious murder, the next brutal murder of some young child, to understand that violent sexual predators exist and are being let out of prison with little monitoring? I hope not. I hope before we have the next set of headlines the majority leader will decide this represents a priority, a priority far higher than some of the other priorities he has suggested for floor action, and that we can see in the Senate very soon the legislation offered by Senator Hatch and Senator Biden. I commend them for the legislation they have written. I appreciate the fact that title II is Dru's Law. I have worked with them, as have many of my colleagues. They have done this country a great service by putting S. 1086 together. Now the majority leader can do this country a great service by scheduling the Senate's consideration of this bill, after these many months following its favorable reporting from the Senate Judiciary Committee. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I am going to be offering an amendment. I have noticed an amendment dealing with Indian program funding. I think most who understand these issues understand that we have a bona fide crisis in Indian health care, Indian housing, and Indian education. We have had hearings. I have had hearings in my State, and we have had hearings in the Indian Affairs Committee, and we have to address these issues. The issue of Indian health care is not an optional issue. When there is a young child on an Indian reservation or an elder on an Indian reservation who is sick, they need health care. This is interesting. We have trust responsibility for health care for a couple of groups of Americans. One is Federal prisoners. If they are incarcerated, we have a responsibility to Federal prisoners for their health care. We also have trust responsibility for health care for American Indians. That is our trust responsibility. We spend nearly twice as much--twice as much--per person to provide health care for Federal prisoners as we do for American Indians. That is wrong. Housing: We have a bona fide crisis in housing. In many cases on many of America's Indian reservations we have people living in Third World conditions. Education: Do we really want a young child who is 6 or 8 years old to be walking through the doorway of a grade school and receiving an education that is much less of an education than other children are simply because we don't have the money? Shouldn't these young Indian children be given the opportunity for a good education? I think with respect to education, the GAO report shows quite clearly that facilities in BIA schools are inferior to other schools. My point is this: When we take a look at our priorities, what is important, what we should be doing, we see that we have Americans living in Third World conditions on many of these Indian reservations. We have a crisis in health care, in education and housing, and we ought to do something about it. You can't go to these places and look at their health care system or look at their schools or look at people living in substandard housing and believe that it is not a priority for this Congress to meet its responsibilities. I have offered this legislation before in the form of an amendment. I do so again today. I have a number of cosponsors I would like to add for the Record. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, might I, with the indulgence of my colleagues, simply read the cosponsors? They are Senators Cantwell, Murray, Bingaman, and Johnson are added as cosponsors.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me ask for consideration of amendment 3102, as I had previously filed. That is the legislation I described previously. Senators Cantwell, Murray, Bingaman, and Johnson join me in proposing this amendment as cosponsors. I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.