Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. This is an amendment which I offered last year. It adds $1 billion to the account dealing with American Indians. All of us in this Chamber know there are neighbors among us in this country who live in Third World communities. We have a bona fide Federal crisis in health care, education, and housing on Indian reservations. We have a trust responsibility for the health care of American Indians. Did you know we also have a responsibility for Federal prisoners' health care? We spend twice as much per person for the health care of Federal prisoners as we do to meet our trust responsibility for the health care of American Indians. We all know we underfund these accounts. This adds $1 billion to a multitude of Indian accounts dealing with health care, housing, and education. It is funded by closing some tax loopholes. I hope this Senate will decide this is the right set of priorities.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The proposed merger between AT&T and BellSouth is controversial. The proposal should trigger a serious evaluation by both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. A recent column in the March 20 issue of Business Week by Leo Hindery caught my eye, and I want to share it with my colleagues. I don't necessarily share all of his conclusions, but I think his perspective is an interesting one. I hope that others will weigh in as we try to make a judgment about whether this proposed merger is in the interest of the American people. For me, it remains an open question whether this merger should be allowed. In the meantime, it is useful to hear many different perspectives about it and I wanted to share Leo Hindery's column with my colleagues. I ask unanimous consent to print the column in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I would like 5 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this has been fascinating. I came in at Senator Gregg's presentation, nearly at a fever pitch, depending on what appears to be the indefensible. But it reminded me of how one argues in court. You take the best you have and then go at it with volume--if possible, as much volume as is possible--and hope some of it sticks. It reminded me a little bit, too, of the message that Gen. George Armstrong Custer received just before they actually got to Harden, MT, with the 7th Calvary. His scouts came back and said: Things look pretty good up ahead. Things look pretty good. General Custer got that message. It is the message I heard this morning as I walked onto the floor of the Senate from our colleague, Senator Gregg: Things look pretty good up ahead. Let's look up ahead for a moment. On page 28 of the resolution that sits on the desks of Members of the Senate, let's look up ahead, see if things look pretty good up ahead. It doesn't matter how many trees you cut down to produce the charts, how much ink you use to create your bar graphs. That doesn't mean a thing. Let's look up ahead just a bit. In 2011, what is going to happen to this country under the best of circumstances, under the most optimistic circumstances offered by the majority party in their resolution? In 2011, we will be required as a country to borrow over one-half of a trillion dollars. That is how much the debt will increase in 2011. So somebody brings this to the floor of the Senate and says: We have a plan. Our plan is to put our fiscal house in order, and 5 years from now we are going to borrow over half a trillion dollars and we call that order. I said yesterday, I yearn for the old Republican Party. Both political parties provide grand opportunities for this country, and have for two centuries. They both contribute to the well-being of America and to the building of this great Nation. But there was one thing you could always count on the Republican Party to do, and that is they wore gray suits. They were conservative. They would wear wire rim glasses, and they would look like they just swallowed a lemon. They were very serious. You could always trust them to stand for fiscal responsibility--always. Pay your bills, they would say. Balance your budget. That is what you would count on them for. That has changed a lot because the new majority party here says this is paying our bills and balancing our budget, page 29. Five years from now, they say, their plan will have us borrow over one-half trillion dollars in that year alone. During the entire 5 years, as my colleague has said, we will borrow over $3.5 trillion. And that is putting our country back on track? I don't think so. It is time that even when we look in the mirror we be honest. It is time this Congress be honest with itself. It doesn't take charts, doesn't take the ink on charts. It reminds me of that old western movie line: What are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Let me choose to believe my own eyes. Let me choose to believe what is in the most optimistic assessment in this fiscal policy. This country is deep in debt, going deeper in debt. And, by the way, we are going to borrow about $600 billion this year, and that doesn't include the $700-plus billion of trade deficit. So we are going to borrow about $1.3 trillion this year alone, just in this year alone, and we are told: Gee, things are good. Things are good. Just like General Custer's scouts, things are really good up ahead. They are not. This country deserves the seriousness of purpose on the part of Republicans and Democrats who are willing to stare truth in the eye. The truth is on page 28. This country is off course, off track, and it is unsustainable. Yes, in trade it is off track. We are shipping jobs overseas at a wholesale rate, we are closing American plants, and we are up to our neck in debt. We are selling America piece by piece, $2 billion a day, 7 days a week, all year long. In fiscal policy, we are borrowing and borrowing. My colleague from New Hampshire talks about taxes. I understand the issue of taxation. I especially understand the issue of those who don't want to tax but want to borrow and spend and say let the kids pay for it. That is not conservative. That is a new conservatism that, in my judgment, doesn't do well by this country's future.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I am proud to be a cosponsor of the amendment that has been offered. I was thinking that people listening to this debate must surely think this is a foreign language: noninterference clauses and doughnut holes, and so on and so forth. This is very simple. Let me try and do it in English, if I can. When Congress passed the prescription drug benefit to provide benefits to senior citizens, a little clause was put in there. My colleague calls it a sweetheart deal. It is even sweeter than that. A clause was put in that says: By the way, the Federal Government cannot negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. Cannot do it. The Defense Department does it. The VA does it. The evidence is that those negotiations produce about 50 percent of the savings that is reducing the drug prices by 50 percent, but the Medicare prescription drug plan cannot have that happen. The Government cannot negotiate for lower prices. My colleague describes this as a noninterference clause. About the time you think you get a handle on something here and have an aggressive debate, they change the titles and change the subject. This is not about noninterference. There is no noninterference involved. The question is, Should the Federal Government be able to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices in this plan, as we do in the VA and as we do in the Defense Department? The answer is yes. My colleague talks about 10-year savings, 10 years out. Look, economists who can't remember their home phone numbers are telling us what they think is going to happen in 10 years. I know what is going to happen. We are going to break the back of this Government financially if we don't negotiate lower prices. This is similar to hooking a hose up to the tank and sucking the tank dry. Let the pharmaceutical companies decide to tell us what they are going to charge us and, by the way, we can't negotiate better prices as we do in the VA system for veterans. That doesn't make any sense to me. The toughest job in the Senate is to come to the floor and justify or defend a proposal that we can't negotiate for lower prices. The second toughest job is for those who vote against this amendment to go home and explain to their constituents how they defied common sense. It makes common sense for us to say: Let's get the best price we can from these pharmaceutical companies. How do you do that? You do that by the power of the purse, having the Federal Government negotiate for lower prices. We have done it in the VA, we have done it in the Defense Department. We saved 50 percent of the cost by doing it. My colleague is dead right. Yes, this is a sweetheart deal. This is not about noninterference; it is about whether we can negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry for lower prices. The answer ought to be, of course, we ought to do that. We ought to do it aggressively in order to save the taxpayers money; otherwise, we are going to break the bank. I thought fiscal conservatism was about trying to save the taxpayers money. This amendment will do more to save the taxpayers money in the next 10 years than almost anything else we can do.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Twenty minutes, yes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have enjoyed the debate, the discussions today, and I have watched some of it from my office. The budget is a discussion about this country's value systems. It is very simple. I have mentioned many times on the floor the proposition that if someone asked you to write an obituary for someone you had never met but who had died and the only information you had about that person was their check register, what would you write? Well, you would write a little something about what that person felt were his priorities in life, what was his or her value system. What did they invest in? What did they spend money on? That would represent their value system. That is what you would tell about that deceased person you never met. One hundred years from now, we will all be dead. Historians will be able to look back at this moment and say: What were our values? What was our value system? By looking at the Federal budget, they will say: Here is what the United States held dear; here is what they invested in; here is what their priorities and their values were. Now, because this budget represents a set of priorities and values, it is important to take a look at the first step in the budget process, and that is the budget sent to us by President. I recall, in the year 2001, the debate on the floor of the Senate about the President's fiscal policy. This President came to town at the time when we had a very large budget surplus for the first time in many decades, and were predicting surpluses in future years. This President said: Let's give away this future surplus. This money doesn't belong to the Government; it belongs to the taxpayers. Some of us said: Well, we don't have that surplus yet. Yes, the year that we are in is a surplus, but we don't have the next 10 years as a surplus. What if something should happen? Maybe we should be a little conservative. The President said: No, don't worry about being conservative. Let's give back money we don't have but are expected to have because experts tell us we will have a big surplus during the next 10 years. So the President got his way and gave very large tax cuts. The most significant amount went to the wealthiest Americans. And those large tax cuts which now eat quite a hole in our revenue stream for this Government turned out to be tax cuts, cutting revenue at the time when we hit a recession some months later, the 9/11 attacks in 2005, about 9 months, 8 months later; then we had the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq. So these large budget surpluses turned into very large budget deficits. My colleague, Senator Conrad, has described with this chart where this administration will take us. This doesn't take an advanced degree from Wharton School of Economics to understand. All you have to do is look at this red ink and evaluate where this fiscal policy is taking America. I believe both political parties have contributed mightily to this country. These are political parties, Democrats and Republicans, that have a grand tradition of offering good ideas to America. One of the things you used to be able to count on the Republicans for was fiscal policy. The caricature was that they wore wire-rimmed glasses and gray suits, they looked like they just swallowed a lemon, and you could always count on them saying: We demand a balanced budget; we demand a fiscal policy that adds up for the good and for the wealth and for this country's future. There is no such thing as those conservative Republicans anymore. There is a Republican in the White House, and Republicans in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate who have a completely different fiscal policy. It is a fiscal policy that steps us up year after year after year after year toward greater debt. I told you, things didn't turn out quite the way the President suggested. He got his way here in the Congress because he had the votes to get his way. So we have a fiscal policy that cut taxes mostly for the wealthy--a few crumbs for the rest but mostly tax cuts for the wealthy--and increased spending, especially relating to the aftermath of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. We had the Emergency Terrorism Response Supplemental Appropriations Act and DOD Appropriations Act, $17.6 billion added to that as an emergency in the fiscal year 2002; emergency supplemental, $13.6 billion, 2002; emergency supplemental, $65.9 billion, 2003; emergency supplemental, $85 billion, 2004. I could go on and on. Over $400 billion sent to us by this President as an emergency request passed by the Congress, none of it paid for, all of it piled right on our children's debt which they will pay for at some point in the future. Now, did Congress vote for this? Sure. Is anybody going to say: Let's send our troops, but let's not provide the equipment they need? No, I don't think so. I think most of us have the same view on that. You send troops to go into harm's way, then you have a responsibility to provide the things they need to do their job. But shouldn't there be some requests of the rest of the American people--not just the troops but the rest of the American people--to weigh in here and to help pay for some of these things? If we are going to ask that it be spent in support of the troops, shouldn't we ask that it also be paid for? As I said, we have a fiscal policy that is out of balance, out of control, and we need to put it back on track. Let me describe what is happening with some of this emergency money. It is the case that we have been hit with a lot of things: a recession back in 2001--and no, President Bush didn't inherit a recession. Let's set the facts straight, if we can. The recession that began on this President's watch, then 9/11, and then a series of others things, including Hurricane Katrina. Not only do we have a fiscal policy that is completely and thoroughly out of whack, adding debt after debt after debt to our children year after year, we also have a sea of incompetence almost never before seen. Let me describe that with respect to Hurricane Katrina. This is a picture of Paul Mullinax. Do you see Paul there? He has a portable radio, he has a couple of bottles of water, it looks like maybe he has some chips, and I think this is a little stove. Paul is a really interesting guy. I met him, actually. He is an independent truck driver from Florida. As you see, he is sitting out in front of his truck. This is Paul's truck. He was sitting with a long line of trucks, and that picture was taken on a base, Maxwell Air Force base in Montgomery, AL. There were 100 refrigerated trucks at Montgomery, AL. Mr. Mullinax was instructed by FEMA, in the post-Katrina Hurricane period, to take a truckload of ice from Newburgh, NY, to Montgomery, AL. Actually they said take it to Carthage, MO, first so he picked up the ice at Newburgh, NY, and then he went to Carthage, MO, and the minute he got there they told him you need to go to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL, so he got there. Then Mr. Mullinax sat there in front of his refrigerator truck for 12 days with 100 other refrigerator trucks that were also hauling ice. The victims of Katrina desperately needed this ice, but it just sat there at an Air Force base in Alabama. So here was Paul, a Florida trucker who hauled the ice to Missouri, then was told you need to go to Alabama, and with 100 other truckers, Paul sat in front of his truck for 12 days. Then he was told by FEMA, you need to take this ice to Massachusetts. You think I am kidding. I hear someone giggling about that. The folks who were the victims of Katrina needed the ice but he was told by FEMA to deliver it to Gloucester, MA, and so he did. I don't know what happened to the other trucks. There were 100 trucks lined up there. It cost $15,000 to have the American taxpayers have Paul pick up ice in New York and deliver it to Massachusetts by way of Carthage, MO, and Maxwell Air Force Base, AL. In the meantime, the victims of Hurricane Katrina could not get any ice. So Paul sat. Then he went to Massachusetts to offload his ice. One load of ice, and there were hundreds and hundreds of such trucks--and just one load of ice cost $15,000, and was hauled from New York ultimately to Massachusetts. A Mississippi sheriff, in the middle of all this, got so frustrated with the ice truck fiasco that he ended up commandeering 2 trucks full of ice and sending them directly to the relief centers for Hurricane Katrina. Sheriff Billy McGee saw trucks sitting at a staging area in Camp Shelby, MS, so he ordered two of the trucks to be sent to Brooklyn and Sheeplow, MS, and a National Guard man tried to stop the sheriff from rerouting these two trucks. The sheriff had the guardsman arrested and got the trucks where they were to be offloaded for the victims, and now the sheriff is being prosecuted for a misdemeanor. Why do I tell you all this? Because we are spending a massive amount of money with parts of a Government that are fundamentally incompetent. It is almost unbelievable to see the way some of this money is wasted. I think a lot of people take a look at the Federal Government and they say there is a lot of waste, and I agree with that. We ought to tighten our belts. We ought to get rid of some of this waste. But there are lots of programs that are vitally important, and that deserve funding. This includes, for instance, health programs for people who live in rural areas of America. The President doesn't distinguish between good spending and bad spending. The President doesn't do that. He says my biggest priority is to preserve a 15- percent tax rate on capital gains and, oh, by the way, everything else can go by the wayside to pay for it. So the community service block grant--it doesn't matter, we can get rid of that if we want to. Rural health, we can get rid of that. All these issues are less important to this administration than the issue of preserving the 15-percent tax rate on capital gains. That is a fact. I have worked with Senator Conrad for many years. We both come from the same State. There is nobody better prepared on the floor of the Senate to make the case on thoughtful and solid budgeting than Senator Conrad. He understands common sense, understands the numbers. I see another of my colleagues volunteering for recognition here--and I will say that the chairman of the committee and the ranking member of the committee have had an impossible job. Trying to make sense of the budget sent to us by this administration is like trying to connect two ends of two plates of spaghetti. It is impossible. It cannot work because this is a budget that does not add up under any set of circumstances. Social services, that is the money that goes in grants and direct appropriations to both agencies and nonprofits to help people around this country--they are the ones that take a hit in many of these areas. I held a meeting with social service groups and nonprofits in North Dakota and asked them about this budget. They told me about the people who are going to get hurt as a result of this. None of those people serve here in this Chamber. They are just people who try to make a living every day or try to exist in retirement with little income. One of the stories that was interesting to me was a nonprofit group which the day before had an 81-year-old woman show up applying for a job. This is a group that helps people get work. The 81-year-old woman wanted a job. Why? Because she lost her last job. What was her last job, at 81 years old? Cleaning office buildings at 1 a.m. Go in at 1 in the morning and clean office buildings at age 81. The company downsized a little bit and she lost her job and now she wants another job. Why? Because her payment under Social Security was $170 a month. That is what she was left with. So she has to work at 81. Should this budget reflect the needs of this woman who is cleaning buildings at 1 in the morning at age 81? Sure it should. There are a lot of people in this country who are vulnerable, who are in difficulty, who understand they need some help. A good budget, a thoughtful budget reaches out to those folks to say here is a helping hand. We want to help you up. This budget doesn't do that. This budget offers a helping hand only to the rich. In fact, every budget since 2001 has been a budget that says let's give a helping hand--to those who have much. That is the way the budget has been working. It is unbelievable. I want to put up another picture. I have used this a fair number of times. I do it because a budget is about how much revenue do you have and how much spending are you going to have. Let me tell you why we don't have enough revenue, and why the President wants to cut funding for key programs, especially program cuts that will hurt the most vulnerable in our country. This is a nice picture of something called the Ugland House. It is a five-story white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. According to David Evans, an enterprising reporter who did the story about this building, this building houses 12,748 companies. The companies are not all there in person. I am not suggesting that. But this is the official home in the Cayman Islands, on Church Street, for 12,748 companies. Do you know why? It is their mailing address. They need a formal mailing address in a tax haven country so they can run their income through a tax haven country and avoid paying the taxes they would owe to the United States of America. This goes on, getting worse. Is anybody talking about cutting that? No, not really. In fact, this issue of cutting taxes for those who are the most well off in America is not abating at all. This administration believes its highest priority is to retain that 15 percent. Interestingly enough, we don't have enough money for community development block grants, rural health, the Byrne grants and so on, but last year there was enough money in this Chamber to decide that these companies and many more should get a 5.25-percent tax rate. That is right, 5.25-percent tax rate on money they repatriate from abroad. The expectation was they were going to pay a 35-percent tax rate. That was the statutory rate. But we said--I didn't vote for it--but we said as a Congress, we want to be generous so all of those big companies with standard brands out there you would recognize, they want to repatriate $30 billion worth of income, bring it back to this country. Did they pay 10-percent income taxes on it as most people would at the lowest income Americans? No, they didn't. Fifteen percent or 25 percent or 30? No, they didn't pay any of that. They paid 5.25 percent. They saved $102 to $104 billion. This Senate had enough resources to decide we want to give the biggest interests of this country a $102 billion tax break by allowing them to pay a 5.25-percent tax rate but now we say we are out of money, we can't afford to deal with those ends of the spending side that affect the most vulnerable in our country. I think those are very strange priorities. There is much to be said about this budget. I am mindful, also, that it is easier to criticize than it is to propose. I think it was Mark Twain who was once asked if he would be engaged in a debate and said, Of course, as long as I can take the negative side. They said, We haven't told you the subject. He said, It doesn't matter, the negative side takes no preparation. This takes even less than no preparation, to look at this budget and look at what this is doing to America and understand that this is to fiscal policy like mud wrestling is to the performing arts. This is an abysmal failure that is dragging this country down, down, down into deeper debt. The question I think most people would ask--they certainly ask those who propose this from the White House, and those who construct it here, is do you believe adding additional debt is a move toward greater sensibility in fiscal policy? The answer has to be no. I have a whole series of recommendations on where we should cut funding. I will not go over them at the moment and I will be happy to come back at some point. I would start with programs such as TV Marti. We actually spend money--we bought a new airplane last year to send television signals to Cubans that they can't see. We have spent close to $200 million on that program. It ought to be shut off immediately, but we can't do it because too many of the Members of the Senate keep voting for it. Why? Because of Florida. Why? Because of politics. That is for another day. I have a whole series of recommendations. These are areas where we can and should cut Federal spending. I think we ought to. We ought to begin collecting revenues from companies that have been generously provided tax breaks from the Senate and our colleagues in the House, pushed by this President. We ought to get our fiscal house in order. As I started, I said I watched some of this debate today. This is very important. This establishes some of the priorities for this Congress and I hope finally this year we might get them right. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there are two other issues that relate to a tax hike, because a budget is about how much revenue you have coming in and how much you are preparing to spend. I mentioned this little Christmas gift--it is not really little--$102 billion given by the Congress to companies that had parked income overseas but were anticipating having to repatriate to this country and pay a 35-percent corporate tax rate. This Congress and the President felt: Gee, we probably should--maybe I should not include the President so much; it was more the Congress decided that we really ought to give those corporations a 5\1/4\-percent tax rate or a $102 billion tax break. So the Congress did, and not with Senator Conrad's vote nor my vote, but nonetheless the Congress did that. About $330 billion was repatriated. Very quickly, we learned that the pharmaceutical industry repatriated at the early stages--I am not sure what the final stage was--$75 billion which they earned abroad. The interesting thing was the pharmaceutical industry said: We charge the highest prices to American consumers because we don't make money elsewhere. We have to charge lower prices in other countries because we are prevented from charging higher prices. Now we discover they were making a lot of money overseas because given the chance to pay a 5\1/4\-percent tax rate, when they repatriated it, they repatriated a bunch of money they earned overseas at lower prices for the same prescription drugs. We not only saw the taxpayers short shrifted by the highest prices in the world, but now we see the drug companies getting $75 billion of their income being taxed at 5\1/4\ percent. If I might make one additional point, we also have a provision in tax law which says to companies: Shut down your plant in America, fire your workers, move it to China, and we will give you a tax cut. And by the way, the Joint Tax Committee says that is worth $1.2 billion a year or $12 billion in 10 years. So we will spend $12 billion in the next 10 years giving tax cuts to companies that shut their American plants, fire their American workers, and move their jobs overseas. If there is any perversity in this Congress, it is those who refuse to be willing to shut down that kind of a tax break. We have had four votes on it. I have offered it four times. We have lost all four times. And on four occasions, people stood up here in the Senate and supported a tax break to companies that would ship their jobs overseas. It is almost unbelievable. The reason I mention this is that in the case of putting together a budget, you ought to be able to at least shut down those drains on the revenue side that run against the public interest in this country. Is it in the public interest to pay those companies to shut down their American plants and fire their workers? I don't think so. Certainly it is not. It is just nuts for the Congress to be saying: Let us reward that behavior. And that is exactly what is happening this year to the tune of $1.2 billion. I say to my colleague from North Dakota that there are many areas in revenue where we would try to plug a drain on our revenue, and the other side will say: You are increasing taxes. Yes. I am increasing taxes for those who aren't paying, for God's sake. Maybe somebody camped out in the Ugland House, an official address in the Cayman Islands, with a lawyer camped out, so they can move their jobs to China, sell their products in America, and run their income through a house in the Cayman Islands and avoid paying taxes. Do we want to increase their taxes? Darned right. Why? Because they are not paying their fair share. Everybody else does. What about them? Yet the majority party keeps saying that if you are going to plug these loopholes, you are increasing taxes. That is a strange viewpoint, and I think one we need to fix. We need to solve these problems. I appreciate the work of Senator Conrad.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I talked earlier about the $12 billion expenditure, $1.2 billion a year over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Tax Committee, that we use to reward companies that move their jobs overseas by giving them a tax break for such activity. I have previously offered this on four occasions. I have lost it on four occasions in the Senate. I can't believe there is anyone left in the Senate who, having thoughtfully evaluated this, would believe we should continue to give tax breaks to those who ship jobs overseas. In the hope that other of my colleagues have seen the light or felt the heat or some way or other found an epiphany about this subject, I anticipate offering this again and consider my previous statement to be an opening statement when I would offer such an amendment, so I wouldn't require any particular time on it. I have already spoken on it, and perhaps my two colleagues would consider at an appropriate point accepting the amendment. It is infused with such wildly common, common sense my hope would be that my colleagues would decide to simply accept the amendment on this fifth occasion on the floor of offering the amendment, especially inasmuch, I might say, as Ford Motor announces that they are going to close plants and get rid of 30,000 workers, General Motors is going to get rid of 25,000 to 30,000 workers--and the list goes on. By the way, not only get rid of their workers but cut their pensions and run them through with health care problems and payment of corporate health care accounts. Given all that news, my guess is that perhaps the sentiment would have changed, believing maybe now is the appropriate time to shut down this perverse tax incentive that rewards companies that fire their American workers and move their jobs overseas. At some appropriate point, I will consider offering it. I would not need time to debate it. Again, I say to my two colleagues that my hope and expectation would be that you would just accept the amendment at some appropriate time. And this would stand as some future discussion, if I offer that amendment at the appropriate time.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have listened to the thoughtful comments this morning. I understand there is some controversy, some passion and anxiety about all of this. It is not partisan. There is nothing partisan about an amendment dealing with the Dubai Ports World issue. This is a significant issue. As my colleagues have said, the bill that is on the floor is also a significant issue. Both need to be dealt with. Both should be considered by this great deliberative body. But this is not about partisanship at all. I understand partisanship. I regret that there is too much of it in this town. I left the House many years ago, decided I was going to leave the House. I did run for the Senate, but I was done with the House of Representatives. What did it for me was when they established, through then-Congressman Gingrich--I guess it is all right to say his name--something called GOPAC. And they word-tested through polls and then sent out a missive to everyone in his political camp that said: Here is the way we deal with this. When you are describing your opponent in a political election, use the words ``sick,'' ``traitor,'' ``pathetic,'' ``antifamily,'' ``antiflag.'' That was sent all over this country by an organization that said: This is the way you should engage in politics. Here are the words you should use to describe your opponents. And we poll tested them. They work. Describe your opponents as sick, pathetic, traitor, antiflag. That was sent around the country. That is what polluted the House of Representatives. I had been there long enough when I saw that sort of thing. I love the Senate. I respect the Senate. I like being here. It is a great privilege to serve in the Senate. I regret there is probably too much partisanship here as well. I don't think we have had the kind of partisanship that infected the House beginning in the late 1980s, but I realize that this body and the House and the President, for that matter, are not in good standing with the American people these days. That circumstance exists because the American people take a look at us and they say: Here is what we face in our daily lives, and you are not addressing it. You are doing nothing about it. Why aren't you sinking your teeth into the significant issues of the day? The issue that faces me when I pull up to the gas pump, why aren't you sinking your teeth into that issue? Someone stood up in North Dakota recently from a human service nonprofit organization and said: I just had an 81-year-old woman come in looking for a job. She just lost her last job. Do you know what her last job was at age 81? Cleaning office buildings starting at 1 a.m. Then they cut back that employment, so now she needs another job because her Social Security is $170 a month. So at age 81 she is looking for a second job to clean buildings. Why aren't you doing something about that? Why isn't the Congress addressing that? An hour ago, this Government announced that last month's trade deficit was $68.5 billion in 1 month, the highest in the history of the human race. What does that mean? It is not just 68.5 billion dollars, it is jobs, massive numbers of jobs moving overseas, and it is the selling of this country piece by piece; at a rate of $2 billion a day we are selling America. Why don't we sink our teeth into that? Stem cell research, reimportation of prescription drugs, why don't you sink your teeth into that, they wonder. At least part of the reason in the Senate that we can't sink our teeth into these issues is because we are prevented from offering amendments to do so. My colleague has offered an amendment on a controversial issue, I understand. The issue of whether a United Arab Emirates company called Dubai Ports World should be managing America's seaports. Should they manage some of America's largest seaports? Is this issue controversial? I suppose it is. Is it urgent that the Congress address this? Of course, it is urgent. The House Appropriations Committee, controlled by the President's own political party, yesterday by a vote of 62 to 2 slapped an amendment on an emergency supplemental appropriations bill designed to provide money for the Department of Defense and for Hurricane Katrina recovery. They slapped an amendment on there to stop this ports deal. Good for them. So there has been offered in the Senate an amendment to stop the ports deal. All of a sudden the Senate is stopped, dead cold in its tracks. Why is it that a proposal such as this becomes a set of brake pads for the Senate? Who decides it should shut things down because someone offers an amendment to stop this takeover of the management of U.S. ports by a company from the United Arab Emirates? Why wouldn't we vote on it? How about yesterday when it was offered, after people got over being upset that we had to deal with it, how about voting on it and then moving ahead? The underlying bill by Senator Collins and Senator Dodd is a bill we should do. I am enormously pleased with their leadership. That has not been easy to bring that bill to the floor. Senator Lieberman, Senator Lott, the two I have mentioned should be commended. Look, this is leadership. They have brought a bill to the floor that is important. We need to do it. But there is nothing that suggests that just because an amendment was offered dealing with Dubai Ports World, it ought to shut down the Senate. It didn't shut down the House yesterday when Congressman Lewis offered it to an emergency supplemental appropriations bill. They just voted. Why have we not voted? Senator Frist, I guess, has decided we won't vote on it. So we will stop the Senate cold in its tracks. We will pull down on the side of the road and hang out for while. Does that make any sense to anybody? This doesn't make sense to me. Seventy, seventy-five percent of the American people--polls tell us-- think that it is stark raving nuts to have a company owned by the United Arab Emirates manage our major ports. I know we have some people who are the elitists in Washington and who think they know better than all of the American people. They think they have greater wisdom and the American people just don't get it. These elitists think that the American people are isolationist xenophobes and cannot see over the horizon. So we have people in Washington who think this deal with Dubai Ports World is fine. It is not fine with me. It is not fine with 70, 75 percent of the American people. If we get a vote on it in the Senate, it will not be fine with an overwhelming majority of the Senate. The question is, Will we be able to do in the Senate what the House did? That is, have an opportunity to vote on this proposition: Should a company owned by the United Arab Emirates be managing America's ports? Well, it is interesting to read some of the things that have been written in recent days about this. United Arab Emirates, to the extent they have cooperated with us since 9/11, good for them. We hope they will continue. But there are questions about the extent to which they were involved in 9/11--yes, two of the hijackers were from there; yes, a substantial amount of evidence exists that the financing for the 9/11 plots went through financial institutions in the UAE. Dr. Khan from Pakistan was moving nuclear materials that were being pirated and shipped around the world to North Korea and Iran and other countries, and that was accommodated by the UAE ports. Interestingly enough, the 9/11 Commission report--I have cited the page in a previous discussion--talks about when we knew where Osama bin Laden was in 1999. We knew where he was, because our intelligence pinpointed his location. They readied the cruise missiles to shoot at this location. Overnight, they decided they had to withhold and would not do it. Why? Because George Tenet later said we might have wiped out half of the royal family of the UAE, who were visiting Osama bin Laden at the time. The 9/11 Commission report puts it a bit differently. It says UAE royal family members were there. But it is written and spoken by the head of the CIA. The reason the attack wasn't launched when we knew where Osama bin Laden was that he was being visited by the royal family of the UAE. My point is this: That country has had some ties to terrorism. It was one of three countries to recognize the Taliban government, which accommodated Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It has ties to terrorism. When the American people learned about CFIUS and all these goofy acronyms and the work these folks have done in secret that says it is OK for a company such as this, owned by UAE, to manage our ports, the people of this country ask: Why is it that a country such as the United States cannot manage its own seaports? If we are so concerned about national security--and we are--and if we are threatened by terrorists consistently--and we are--and if seaports and airports are two of the important elements of national security--and they are--and if you go to the airport and try to board a plane, they will have you take off your shoes and belt, and as you go through the metal detector you will see a 6-year-old kid spread-eagle and being wanded because we are concerned about security, and if that is the case, why then would we turn to seaport security and decide this? With 5.7 million to 5.9 million containers coming in every year to our seaports, we have decided it is OK for a Middle Eastern country--the UAE--with its history, to manage our seaports through a company owned by that government. Does that make sense? My former colleague, Fritz Hollings, who used to sit at this desk, used to talk about seaport security a lot. We don't have any seaports in North Dakota. But we went back and checked the Record: I came to the floor 13 times from 2001 until the end of 2005 to talk about seaport security--13 times. Almost every time I was here, Senator Fritz Hollings was also here talking about seaport security. We offered and offered and offered amendments to heighten and increase inspections and seaport security. Now we inspect only 4 to 5 percent of the containers that come in; 96 percent are not inspected. Does that make any sense? This administration has not been willing to support the substantial enhancement that is necessary for real security at our seaports. One day, God forbid, there may be a terrorist attack that comes from America's seaports. We are spending somewhere close to $10 billion a year now on the issue of antiballistic missile protection, thinking that a rogue nation or a terrorist will acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile, put a nuclear weapon on the tip of it and shoot it at us at 15,000 miles an hour. That is the least likely threat America faces. A much more likely threat is a ship pulling up to a port at 2 to 4 miles an hour, up to the dock in a major American city, full of containers, one of which might have a nuclear weapon in it. Then we are not talking about 3,000 casualties; we are talking about 100,000 or even 300,000 casualties. So is seaport security important? It is critical. We need to deal with it. We need to send a message to this administration and to all those involved in what is called CFIUS the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--that we don't improve security at our seaports by deciding we should have the UAE wholly owned company manage our seaports. Mr. Chertoff said it will actually improve security to have the UAE company managing America's seaports. That is so unbelievable that it is almost laughable. But you should not laugh when you are talking about national security issues. This proposal is going to improve security at our seaports? Hardly. The reason the American people are concerned about it, the reason the Congress is concerned is that we understand this will diminish security. This will erode security at our seaports. Security is already too weak, and it must be dramatically strengthened. Now, we are here in the Senate chambers with virtually nothing happening. The same thing happened yesterday afternoon. The bill is on the floor of the Senate and the Senate rules are such that you can offer amendments to that bill and they don't have to be germane prior to any cloture motion; they don't have to be relevant to the bill. I will give you some examples of the problems of the Senate, the way the Senate works these days. I was promised--and others were as well-- that we would have a vote on the issue of reimportation of prescription drugs. Reimportation would drive down the price of prescription drugs in the United States because we pay the highest prices in the world, and the same drug, made by the same company, put in the same bottle, made in the same manufacturing plant, is sent to Canada and is sold for one-tenth of the price. I recently sat on a hay bale talking with an old codger who is about 85-years-old. He said: My wife has been fighting breast cancer for 3 years, and we have driven to Canada for 3 straight years, every 3 months, to get her medicine, and we have saved 80 percent on her medicine bill; the same pill I could have gotten on the North Dakota side of the border, but it is priced much higher in the United States. So for several years now, we have had proposals that are bipartisan to allow for reimportation, but we have been prevented from having an opportunity to vote on it on the floor of the Senate, despite the fact that the majority leader at midnight one night made a commitment to do it. He thinks he didn't. It is written in the Congressional Record and somebody can look at it and see whether or not the commitment was made. But we didn't get a vote on it. So it is frustrating. The Senate is a place where you ought to get a vote. The complaint now, I guess, is that the amendment was offered. It wasn't offered in violation of the rules. The rules allow it to be offered. Perhaps if somebody says let's not vote on it this afternoon but tomorrow, or let's vote on it next Tuesday, my guess is they can make an arrangement to have that happen. But this is a voluntary rest for the Senate. Deciding not to move forward with the bill is a decision by the majority leader. He has decided that he doesn't want to vote on an amendment offered under the rules and which deals with a very relevant issue that was voted on yesterday in a House Committee by the majority party on a piece of legislation that had nothing to do with the amendment. It was OK in the House to do that. But the majority party in the Senate, even though it was offered under the rules of the Senate, said: No, no, if you are going to force us to talk about and vote on this issue of whether a UAE company should be managing America's ports, we are going to stop the process, stop progress of the Senate, and we are going to sit around and look at each other. That doesn't make any sense. Let's run the Senate the way it ought to be run. If you have amendments, let's debate the amendments and vote on the amendments. This isn't rocket science. If somebody offers an amendment, you have a debate. If you think the people are talking too long, get an agreement on restricting the debate, or get a time agreement and, at the end of the debate, you vote and count them. You don't weigh them; you just count them. It is very simple. Apparently the majority leader wants to run this body like the House Rules Committee. They would have kind of a Rules Committee on the floor of the Senate that says you can offer this amendment, but you cannot offer that one. They have been doing that for a long while now. This body is run by people who want to emulate the House Rules Committee and prevent people from offering amendments that are perfectly allowable under the rules of the Senate. We are told, if you offer an amendment under the rules, we are going to shut the place down. We are going to stop and complain. So now that the majority party has decided that it doesn't want to move, it complains that we are not moving. A very strange complaint. They can fix this in 5 minutes. I said the other day it doesn't take me 45 days to figure out the UAE ports issue. We have a 45-day review period--paradoxically requested by the company rather than our country. Our country should insist on that because it is our security. But the company asked our country to do a 45-day review. My point is I don't need 45 days, or even 45 minutes, to figure this out. Nor do most Americans. This deal erodes America's security. It should not take us 5 minutes to get this place back on track. The underlying bill is important. It is brought to us by four pretty distinguished legislators. Let's proceed with that bill. How do you do that? Let's vote on this amendment in the next half hour or so and then move ahead. If you say there is a scheduling issue, then let's not vote on this amendment today and give us time on Tuesday. That would be all right. I want to make one other point. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but I am on the Appropriations Committee, and on the emergency supplemental bill, when we mark that up, I intend to offer the identical amendment that a Congressman offered in the House Appropriations Committee so that we can have a vote on it and go to conference with the House on the emergency supplement with identical amendments. I think the Senate should pass an identical amendment in the emergency supplemental, no matter how this comes out, as a backstop. I intend to offer that in the future when we mark up the emergency supplemental bill. Madam President, I wish to take an additional minute to talk about the news this morning about the $68.5 billion trade deficit, and then I will yield to my colleague from Connecticut, or whoever wishes to speak. The news is once again devastating: our trade deficit last month was $68.5 billion, which is the highest in our history. This relates to a trade policy that is fundamentally bankrupt and a Congress and a President that are not only asleep at the switch but have their heads buried deeper in the sand every month. And the trade deficit widened substantially with China again. I will not go through all the stories about unfair trade. But if this Congress and the President continue to ignore this issue, at some point, this country's currency will suffer a fate that I don't want to see. It will have enormous economic consequences. This is a strategy that is unsustainable. It is hurting Americans and is shifting Americans' jobs overseas and selling part of America. By the way, this is related to the Dubai Ports World deal because all of this offshoring and outsourcing and globalization and the decision that anybody could do anything, anywhere, and there really are no rules. And the minute somebody says maybe there ought to be rules, they are xenophobes and isolationists. And I will talk about that at another time. If this $68.5 billion is not a wake-up call, if this doesn't wake up the Congress and the President--and it likely won't--then I suggest this coma is probably irreversible, and I worry about the future of this country. This country needs to stand up for its own economic interests. Whether it is trade with Japan or trade with China, trade with Europe, trade with Canada, trade with Mexico--we have very large deficits with all of them--and if we don't find a way to address this issue, this country's economy will not remain a vibrant world-class economy in the long term. Again, we are in this deep sleep, or probably a coma, wanting to either deny or ignore the central facts of a trade policy that is awful. It is trading away American workers, trading away the middle class. We are hollowing out the center of this country. We are saying to this country's workers: If you can't compete with Chinese wages, if you can't compete with Indonesia, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka wages, shame on you; your job is gone. I have gone on at length talking about Huffy bikes, Radio Flyer, little red wagons--a whole host of products and companies that have moved offshore. By the way, the thank-you for moving offshore from this Congress is to give them a big tax break. We voted to end this tax break four times, four amendments I have offered. All four have lost. I will continue to offer those amendments because I still believe that the last thing we ought to do is offer tax breaks to those who shut their American plants and move their jobs overseas. It is pretty unbelievable we do that, but it is part of the willingness to both ignore the circumstances of our trade deficit and the willingness to believe that a completely bankrupt strategy remains workable. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in news reports last evening and this morning there was a suggestion that some sort of deal was being reached in the Congress, between the Congress and the administration, on the issue of the Dubai Ports World Company managing six of America's large seaports. Let me point out there is no deal that I am aware of, but if there is a deal, it is being made by people who have not consulted many of us in the Congress. In any event, I think this proposal still lacks basic common sense. I want to speak about it for a couple of minutes. In the Wall Street Journal, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Mr. Chertoff, says: ``U.S. ports takeover''--again, by the Dubai Ports World, the United Arab Emirates-owned company--the head of our Homeland Security Chertoff says: ``U.S. ports takeover would tighten grip on security.'' So he actually makes the case, the head of our Homeland Security agency, that allowing the management or the takeover of our six major port facilities, seaport facilities, would strengthen America's security. That is an unbelievable statement. I will describe why he says it. He said: Assuming the deal would go through, we intend to have a deep look into their practices, certainly in the U.S. ports. That is a direct quote. That is almost unbelievable. So they apparently haven't had a deep look into their practices before the deal goes through. This is a circumstance where most of the American citizens understand what is being proposed and very strongly react to it in opposition. This country is the subject of many terrorist threats. We understand that terrorists from around the world want to strike inside this country. We have all this security in this country--some judged to be quite good, some very deficient. Go to an airport and see what happens when you want to board an airplane. You are going to have to go to a line and you are likely to have to take off your shoes and you are probably going to have to take off your belt and wristwatch and then they are wanding some little 6-year-old boy, spread eagle against a wall someplace because he set off the buzzer. So all of that happens before you get on an airplane. Why? Because airport security is very important. So is seaport security. We don't have seaports in my home State, but we are recipients of those containers that come on ships into our seaports. Somewhere between 5.7 million and 5.9 million containers a year come into our seaports at 5 or 6 miles an hour to go into the dock where those containers are lifted off by that crane and trucked off all across the country. All of us are recipients of what is coming into our seaports. Seaport security, frankly, is miserable; 5.7 to 5.9 million containers come into this country and 4 to 5 percent is inspected, all the rest is not inspected, and we believe somehow we are protecting our country? You will recall shortly after 9/11, there was a fellow from the Middle East, from Egypt I believe, who decided to put himself in a container, get it nailed up and put on a container ship, shipping himself to Canada. He had all the amenities you would need to travel in a container: he had a cot, a GPS locator, a radio, apparently, and a heater. He was in a container on a ship. He was a fellow they thought to be a terrorist shipping himself into Canada in a container for the purpose of coming into the United States. So seaport security is critically important. We have had vote after vote in the Senate to improve seaport security but the majority doesn't want to spend the money to do that. Now, with respect to the issue of seaport security, we are told that a United Arab Emirates wholly owned company called Dubai Ports World has been approved by something called CFIUS, one of those God-awful acronyms, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. They have approved the takeover and management, which would include security, by the way, of ports, six major seaports in this country, including New York and New Jersey and Baltimore and New Orleans, and so on. CFIUS, which is 16 or 18 of the agencies of the current administration getting together, said they think this will be just fine, so they approved it. They approved it without even the 45-day extension you would normally have if someone expressed some concerns about it. Now Mr. Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, says our security will actually be better if the United Arab Emirates company takes over our ports. Chertoff says, ``U.S. ports takeover would tighten grip on security.'' I don't know. Maybe he's not drinking the same water most Americans are drinking. I don't know how you come to this conclusion. Allowing a United Arab Emirates company to manage our ports is going to manage and improve our security? I don't think so. That doesn't make any sense. Let me describe the United Arab Emirates. I will do it in terms that do not suggest this is a bad country. That is not my point, although I must say that two of the hijackers who attacked this country on 9/11/ 2001 came from the United Arab Emirates, a substantial portion of the financing for those terrorist attacks came through the financial institutions of the United Arab Emirates, Dr. Kahn from Pakistan, who was moving nuclear materials and nuclear knowledge and knowhow around the world, did that through the UAE ports. There are serious questions to be asked. But let me make another point; that is, the relationship of the United Arab Emirates to Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 report described a circumstance in which we had discovered, in 1999, where Osama bin Laden was at that time and our country was attempting to target Osama bin Laden. This is in early 1999. The CIA learned that Osama bin Laden could be found at a camp in the Afghan desert, and the U.S. military began to plan a strike against that camp. But the strike was called off because Osama bin Laden was apparently being visited by members of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. In fact, let me read to you from the 9/11 Commission report. You will find this in the booklet published by the 9/11 Commission: No strike was launched. This is the strike against Osama bin Laden whom our Intelligence Committee said they had discovered. They knew where he was. No strike was launched. . . . According to the CIA and defense officials, policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who may be with bin Laden. That is on page 138 of the 9/11 report, the former CIA Director George Tenet explaining why an attack against Osama bin Laden at a Afghan camp was called off said: You might have wiped out half of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates in the process, which I'm sure entered into everyone's calculation in all of this. The administration says the UAE has been helpful to our country in the fight against terrorism. If they have, and there is some evidence they have since 9/11, then this company appreciates that. But that appreciation, in my judgment, should not and will not extend to inviting the United Arab Emirates-owned company to manage America's seaports. It just defies common sense. The administration says: What about offending the United Arab Emirates by saying no? We would offend this country by saying no? What about offending common sense by saying yes? Most of the American people understand. They understand if you are going to have security in this country, security includes the United States deciding to provide security at its seaports. The United States can't manage its seaports? I don't understand that. I was interested in a piece yesterday in the Washington Post by Sebastian Mallaby. I don't know Sebastian Mallaby, but he is a pretty good reflection of those who are pushing this issue, saying that those who oppose having the United Arab Emirates company manage our seaports are demagogs. He said: The demagogs are poised to strike again. He said: If demagogs can turn a tiny ally such as Dubai into a villain, you can bet they will do that with China. He's talking about China trade. The Dems will next play the China card. One of the things he points out, he says we have a trade deficit with China. He doesn't seem to care much about that. But he says if we are going to get serious about dealing with the trade deficit, we need to get serious about balancing the Federal budget. This person must have missed Economics 101. We did balance the trade deficit under the final years of the Clinton administration and the deficit continued to rise. We keep hearing these folks say the reason we have a trade deficit is because we have a fiscal policy budget deficit, which is not true. We actually created a surplus here before President Bush took over, and the trade deficit continued to rise. Now we have the highest trade deficit in history and a substantial portion of that trade deficit is with the Chinese. It is interesting to me, all of these columnists, of course, tend to be apologists for public policies that don't work. But to suggest that somehow those who stand and oppose the management of American ports by a United Arab Emirates company are demagogs is elitist and it is wrong. The so-called group called CFIUS, which, by the way, almost turns down nothing. They have reviewed lots and lots of proposals, and they have approved them all, virtually. I think they disapproved eight of them out of many proposals. But the Coast Guard had written a classified memo to CFIUS--on February 27 that was disclosed publicly by Senator Collins, I believe, at the hearing. The report said the following: There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations and that precludes an overall threat assessment on the potential DPW and P&O Ports merger. In fact, the Coast Guard restored a large number of potential vulnerabilities. That is directly from the Coast Guard's memorandum. One of the so-called intelligence gaps that the Coast Guard referred to was that no one had checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE company that would manage our ports. So when the Coast Guard's secret report was made public, the administration said the Coast Guard ought to say something pleasant. So the Coast Guard came out and issued a statement the next day saying: Upon subsequent and further review, the Coast Guard and the entire CFIUS panel believe the transaction, when taking into account strong security assurances by DP World, does not compromise American security. Interesting--the Coast Guard statement doesn't say anybody had checked out the backgrounds of the officials at the UAE company. That is what their secret memo had said represented the vulnerability. But the highest ranking official in the Department of Homeland Security, who was part of this group and who reviewed this port deal, said this: The CFIUS review did not include background checks on the senior managers of the company. It is quite clear the Coast Guard, in a classified memorandum, expressed concerns about the terrorist threat, about vulnerabilities as a result of the takeover of American ports by a UAE-owned company and then the Coast Guard, when the classified memo became public, was ordered--the Coast Guard, of course, works for the President, the Coast Guard said something softer, but the Department of Homeland Security's ranking official, Stewart Baker, quite clearly said: The CFIUS review did not include background checks on the senior managers. This is a fascinating description of trying to put a patch on a hole that is too big. None of this adds up very much. I do want to make another point. This is about offshoring and outsourcing, and so on. The question is, Why would we be contracting with a foreign government, essentially--through a foreign company they wholly own--to manage our ports? This is the new global economy, we are told. If you don't get it, you are an isolationist, xenophobic stooge who can't figure it out. This is all part of the global economy. President Bush went to India last week. If you are asking the question: How is it that the management of American seaports should be done by the United Arab Emirates company and you don't understand it, you won't understand what the President said last week in India either. What the President said in India, in several speeches, was you need to understand this global economy of ours. He said things have changed. This is about outsourcing of jobs. I have some quotes from the President. The President says, about globalization: I guess generally outsourcing--you know outsourcing is not bad. People do lose jobs as a result of globalization, and it's painful to those who lose jobs, but the fundamental question is how does a government or society react to that? One of two ways. One is to say losing jobs is painful, therefore lets throw up the protectionist walls and the other is to say losing jobs is painful so let's make sure people are educated so they can find or fill the jobs of the 21st century. I have news for the President. Those 21st century jobs for educated Americans--he was visiting them in India. He was looking at them. He's looking at the engineers who are now working at jobs American engineers used to have. Why did those engineering jobs go to India? Because you can hire an engineer in India for one-fifth the cost of an American engineer. So the solution is not to say let's have an American lose his or her job and then get better educated. How better educated than going to school to get a degree in engineering and then losing it to somebody in the country of India who is able to work for one-fifth the price? So he said: You don't retrench and pull back. You welcome competition. Understand globalization provides great opportunities. It is fascinating to me, the people who always talk about this are people who will never be outsourced. The President of the United States is never going to be outsourced. Do you think they are going to move his job to India? I don't think so--or China or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or Indonesia? I don't think so. Our first great purpose is to spread prosperity and opportunity to people in our own land and to the millions of people who have not known it. How does that fit, spreading prosperity and opportunity by moving American jobs to China and to India? How does it spread prosperity and opportunity by deciding that a United Arab Emirates country will come and manage American seaports? How does that spread opportunity? The President says the United States will not give into protectionists and lose these opportunities. So the President, very much like the columnist, Mr. Sabastian Mallaby from the Washington Post, all use the same language. It is code language. They all understand it. It is elitist language: protectionist, building walls, isolationist xenophobes. We have a trade deficit of some $720 billion. Every single day, 7 days a week, all year long, we actually import $2 billion more in goods than we export to the rest of the world. Every single day, 7 days a week, we sell $2 billion worth of our country to foreigners. I am not suggesting we shouldn't trade. I believe expanded trade is beneficial. But I am suggesting that we have a backbone, nerve, and a little will to stand up for our country's economic interests. Can we not tell China, for example, that they can't have a trade relationship with us that has a $202 billion surplus every year? Last year it was a $202 billion deficit with China. Do we not have the nerve to say to China trade is mutually beneficial, a two-way street, that is the way we insist on it, and if they are going to sell to us then they are going to buy from us? Don't we have that nerve and will. If not, why not? The same is true with others, especially Japan. With Japan it has been a couple of decades where we have had very substantial deficits year after year after year. And our country doesn't have the nerve or will to do anything about it. We still have folks walking around thumbing their suspenders and puffing on their cigars talking about globalization and how wonderful it is. No one ever lost a job to outsourcing--it is just American workers who lose those jobs. It is not just the jobs that are gone. It is the jobs left here that become priced by the China price--downward pressure on wages, downward pressure on benefits, stripping away retirement benefits and health care benefits. That is what is happening all across this country. The issue I started talking about--the issue of managing an American port by a United Arab Emirates firm--wouldn't even have been discussed here 20 years ago. It would have been laughed at. Are you kidding me? Are you really serious? We will have America's ports managed by the United Arab Emirates given the climate we face today? Twenty years ago, you wouldn't be talking about a $700-plus billion trade deficit. Things have changed a lot. We have a President who cheerleads now for that trade strategy despite the evidence--all of the evidence year after year--that this is a bankrupt trade strategy. It is bankrupting this country. It is selling part of America piece by piece of every single day. All of these things relate. I only wanted to speak briefly--it turned out not to be so briefly-- about those who announced to the press or those who talked to the press resulting in news stories last evening that there is a deal in the works; perhaps the United Arab Emirates company could buy an American subsidiary and actually run the ports through a U.S. subsidiary. There is no deal in the works that I am aware of. I have introduced legislation that would overturn this decision. In one way or another we are going to vote on these things. I believe there are other colleagues who believe the same. We are going to go vote on these things no matter what kind of deal somebody else comes up with. I think there needs to be a good healthy dose of common sense expressed on some of these issues, and that is certainly lacking on trade, on national security, and on port security. I hope, perhaps, we can get those before the Senate soon. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for as much time as I consume.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there is a lot of discussion this week in the Congress, in committees on which I serve and in other committees, dealing with the issue of the company that is owned by the United Arab Emirates, a Dubai company owned by a government called the UAE, managing six of America's major seaports. I wish to make a couple comments about that. First, I introduced legislation this week that would simply disapprove the transaction. I don't think I need 45 days, and I don't need 45 minutes to make a judgment that it doesn't make any sense for our country to have a company owned by the United Arab Emirates managing six of America's major seaports. It doesn't make sense to me, and I will explain why. In a time when our country is severely threatened by terrorism--and we read about it all the time that terrorists threaten this country--we understand that terrorists would love to commit another major act of terrorism inside the United States. Go to an airport this afternoon and try to board an airplane. You will find they want you to take your belt off. They want you to take your shoes off. They want you to take your wristwatch off. And then as you get through the metal detector, you see they have some 6-year-old spread-eagled against the wall, wanding that 6-year-old, or perhaps a Catholic priest, because they set off the metal detector. We understand what is happening at airports. There is massive security. We have all these folks who are trying to get to their airplane, and yet we have them lined up in all kinds of ways because of security issues. What about our seaports? We know our seaports are also a target for terrorists. We have over 5.7 million containers coming in on ships into our seaports. The administration says it is concerned about a rogue nation or a terrorist group getting access to an intercontinental ballistic missile and putting a nuclear bomb on the tip of the missile and firing it at this country at 14,000 or 18,000 miles an hour. So we are spending, I don't know, somewhere around $10 billion this year to build an antiballistic missile system. Some of us think that is not a very wise expenditure because it is one of the least likely threats. Instead of worrying about the threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile coming at us from a rogue nation or a terrorist, a very unlikely threat, we should worry about a ship pulling up to a dock at 6 or 8 miles an hour with a container loaded on board that ship that contains a weapon of mass destruction, pulling up to a dock or a pier at one of America's major cities. Then we are not talking about 3,000 people dead; we are talking about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people killed. Yet think of this: We only inspect about 4 or perhaps as much as 5 percent of all of those containers coming into our country. We know that just after 9/11, when there was a lot of discussion about this, there was a fellow who tried to ship himself to Canada, someone who they thought was a terrorist, who loaded himself into a container and actually had a cot to sleep on and a water supply; he had a radio connected to a GPS monitor, a whole series of things. He was shipping himself in a container to the country of Canada. They happened to find that person. The assumption was that he was going to find his way into Canada in a container and come into this country across our border. We know the dangers that exist with these ships and the containers. Yet there is very little, frankly, very little seaport security. I went to a seaport once. We don't have seaports in my State, but I toured a seaport and asked about security and asked about things, and I mentioned previously on the floor that I saw a container that had been taken off a ship and was being opened. I said: What is in the container? Why is that being opened? They said: That is a refrigerated container; that is just one we decided to open. I asked: What is in it? Frozen broccoli from Poland. I said: How do you know what is in the middle of that container? I see what you have pulled off the end of it and you cut open some bags and found some frozen broccoli. But how do you know what is in the middle of that container? Well, we really don't, is the answer, and they inspect somewhere around 4 to 5 percent of those containers. So with all of the potential threat at our seaports, we are now learning that a company owned by the United Arab Emirates has been cleared by the administration to provide management and, yes, security, because security is a part of management, at six major seaports in our country. My colleagues, a number of them, have described the United Arab Emirates. It is not my intention to offend this country. The administration says they have been helpful to us with respect to the war on terrorism. I don't know the specifics about that, but if they have been helpful, we appreciate that. We do know, however, that two of the hijackers who crashed into our World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 were United Arab Emirates citizens. We know from the 9/11 Commission Report that the United Arab Emirates was a crossroads that helped finance the terrorist operations. We know that the United Arab Emirates ports were crossroads through which Dr. Khan of Pakistan moved substantial amounts of nuclear knowledge and material to North Korea and Iran and other parts of the world, and that will pose very much danger to us and to our children. So we know some things about the United Arab Emirates. My colleague, Senator Hollings, whom I have described a few times on the floor and who used to sit at the desk right behind me, my colleague just wrote an op-ed piece, and he described the United Arab Emirates. He said that in some countries, women are allowed to vote. In the United Arab Emirates, neither men nor women are allowed to vote. There are a lot of questions about the United Arab Emirates. Let me mention something from the 9/11 Commission Report as well, about the United Arab Emirates. On page 137, it describes in 1999 the fact that we had found Osama bin Laden, presumably, knew where Osama bin Laden was, and he was near a hunting camp in the Afghan desert being used by visitors of a Gulf State from the United Arab Emirates. On page 138, it describes how in 1999, once our intelligence had decided they knew where Osama bin Laden was, they were going to launch a military strike against him. Page 138 describes that on February 10, 1999, the military was doing the targeting to hit the main camp with cruise missiles. No strike, however, was launched. Osama bin Laden then disappeared. The reason the strike was called off is that intelligence officials were worried that a strike against bin Laden would kill an Emirate prince, somebody from the United Arab Emirates. Part of the Royal Family was visiting with Osama bin Laden at the time, and our intelligence officials were worried that if they launched a strike against Osama bin Laden, they would kill someone from the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates. This is on page 138 of the 9/11 Commission Report. My point is very simple. The United Arab Emirates may very well have been helpful to us in the fight against terrorism in the last couple of years, and if they are being helpful to us, good for them. This is not about offending the United Arab Emirates by saying that we don't want a company owned by that country to manage American seaports. I don't wish to offend the UAE, but neither should we be offending common sense. A whole reservoir of common sense would tell us that this country, given the fact that we are the No. 1 target for terrorists, ought to be managing our own ports, our own major seaports, and ought to be providing our own security and ensuring our own security. If I might also make a couple of points. The Committee on Foreign Investment of the United States, which is made up of somewhere around a dozen agencies within the administration, studied this proposed port deal and said it was okay for the United Arab Emirates-owned company to manage our major seaports. Well, on February 27 we learned that the Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report that was made public this week, and here is what the report said. This is the Coast Guard. It says: There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations that preclude an overall threat assessment of the potential of the merger. In fact, the Coast Guard referred to a large number of potential vulnerabilities, and then it listed them, and one of the intelligence gaps that the Coast Guard referred to was the fact that no one had checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE-owned company. So when the secret Coast Guard report was made public this week--I believe by Senator Collins, who was holding a hearing at the time--the administration had the Coast Guard make another statement, and here is what the Coast Guard said on February 28: Upon subsequent and further review, the Coast Guard and the entire CFIUS panel believe that this transaction, when taking into account strong security assurances by DP World does not compromise U.S. security. The Coast Guard obviously works for the President, and they made this statement dutifully in line with the administration's interests. But it is interesting. The Coast Guard's statement does not say that anybody checked the backgrounds of the officials of the UAE company. That was what the Coast Guard cited as one of the major vulnerabilities. The highest ranking official in the Department of Homeland Security who reviewed this port deal is Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker. Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker told The New York Times on February 17 that the CFIUS review did not include any background checks on senior managers of the company. In fact, the review didn't involve gathering any information from outside sources like the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, because the committee kept the proposed transaction secret. In fact, Baker said the committee's investigation lasted just a couple of months, beginning in November, ending in mid- January, so there wouldn't have been time to do very thorough background checks anyway. So here is what we have. We have the Coast Guard saying in a secret memorandum that there are real vulnerabilities here with respect to potential terrorism, and in that memorandum, they say one of the vulnerabilities is that no one had checked the backgrounds of the people in charge of the UAE company. So then the Coast Guard, when this becomes public, says: No, no, it is okay. We have pretty much been satisfied. And then the Department of Homeland Security official, the top official who did this, says: Well, no, we didn't check those backgrounds. Question: How could the Coast Guard be satisfied when the conditions weren't met, when they had just said previously that there was a potential threat here? They said, ``There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for the UAE company's assets to support terrorist operations,'' and one of the bases for that is they hadn't checked the backgrounds of the people in charge. And then the Coast Guard says: But that is OK, now we are in sync with the administration on this. Then Homeland Security comes out and says: Well, we never did check the backgrounds of the people in charge. This really gives you confidence that the transaction was properly vetted, doesn't it? Let me just mention that in 2002, May of 2002, the U.S. Military Special Operations Command obtained a document produced by al-Qaida in which al-Qaida claimed to have infiltrated the United Arab Emirates. Referring to the UAE, the 2002 al-Qaida document, which was written in Arabic, says: We have infiltrated your security, censorship, and monetary agencies along with other agencies that should not be mentioned. I have no idea whether there is any credibility here or not, but I do know that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE and the financing for the attacks flowed through UAE financial institutions. And it seems preposterous to me that the administration would just dismiss issues which were raised in a secret memorandum by the Coast Guard, even after there is an admission that the conditions that resulted in that concern about terrorism were never met. The point is simple. This relates in many ways to the larger question of outsourcing, offshoring, contracting out the global economy. This global economy has galloped along. The rules, of course, have not kept pace. We now discover that in this so-called global economy, there are things which cause great concern. Among those would be deciding that America's seaports, largest seaports should be managed by a state-owned company, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. Does that make sense? Is the reaction of the American people so out of sync with common sense? I don't think so. I think the American people are in perfect sync with common sense, and the folks in the administration who did CFIUS and the folks in the administration who are now defending this are the ones who are out of sync with any common sense. The President says: I have made up my mind. If the Congress passes legislation and sends it to my desk, I am going to veto it because I want the UAE company to be able to manage these ports. I say if you want to veto it, then go right ahead, but I think this Congress should pass legislation that says very simply that we don't want a state-owned company from the United Arab Emirates managing America's seaports. There are, in fact, security issues, national security issues that trump all of the other issues, and we don't believe that is appropriate. I have introduced legislation to do that, and we will see whether in the coming days and weeks we will be able to pass that legislation. I, frankly, think we will. A colleague over in the House, Congressman Duncan, said something today that I believe is useful to repeat. He said: People call this attitude protectionism. If that is what they call it, then count me guilty of wanting to protect this country's interests. I always liked this so-called four-letter word, ``protection,'' the notion of being a protectionist on international trade. What is wrong with standing up for protecting this country's interests? Yes, economic interests, national security interests. What is wrong with that? Does anybody really think it makes sense to be outsourcing and offshoring all of this? I believe we have the most sophisticated economy in the world. We have a wonderful education system. We have a lot happening in this country. And if we had no immigration restrictions at all and just had an open country, I tell you what, a fair part of the world would be headed in our direction. So it is a great place. And we don't have the resources in this great place of ours to manage our own seaports at a time when we see daily and weekly threats of terrorism against our country? We don't have the resources and we don't have the ingenuity and we don't have the capability to manage our seaports? What on Earth are they thinking about when they suggest that? Of course we do. It is just a matter of national will to decide that we want to stand up for the economic interests of this country and protect the national security interests of this country. That is what our responsibilities are. I wish that I could, in this case, be supportive of the administration and the folks who reviewed this from CFIUS. But the fact is, in carpenter's terms you would call it a half a bubble off plumb, maybe a full bubble off plumb. This makes no sense at all. You are going to turn over our major seaports to a United Arab Emirates-owned company about which there are substantial questions about national security. I said before, it is nuts. There is no other way of describing it. So count me as somebody who is going to try, in every way possible, to scuttle this approach. The interesting little dance that is going on here, because everybody wants to look as though they have been able to win, is: Now we have asked, the company has actually asked our country to extend the 45-day investigation. You talk about Byzantine. The United Arab Emirates-owned company is asking the United States of America to extend its investigation because they cut it off prematurely? It is bizarre. That is the only way you can describe it. I don't need 45 days; I don't need 45 minutes to figure out this doesn't make sense. That is why I introduced the legislation I introduced. Contracting Fraud Turning to another subject, and I will be brief, yesterday I introduced legislation with 28 of my colleagues. I will ask unanimous consent that Senator Cantwell be added to the piece of legislation. The bill we introduced yesterday is about accountability in contracting. It is called the Honest Government and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006. I have held seven hearings, chairing the Democratic Policy Committee, on the issue of contracting. It has been all over the newspapers in the last 4 or 5 years, the massive fraud, waste, and abuse in contracting. I will not go through all of it, but let me put a couple of things up. This is Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking civilian official in the Corps of Engineers. She is in charge of all contracts in the Corps of Engineers, and virtually everything being done by contract in Iraq is going through the Corps of Engineers. She, incidentally, has since been demoted. The reason she has been demoted is this career official, who had great ratings and performance evaluations throughout her career, told the truth. I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the contracts awarded to KBR [that is Halliburton, a subsidiary of it] represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career. Bunnatine Greenhouse, the highest ranking procurement official in the Corps of Engineers is paying for it with her job, but thank God we have people with the courage to do this. When you mention Halliburton, everyone thinks you are talking about the Vice President because he used to run Halliburton. This is not about the Vice President. This is about a company that got huge no-bid, sole-source contracts to do work in Iraq, and it is unbelievable--the whistleblowers from Halliburton described the waste. I will give an example. We had a witness who used to work for KBR--Halliburton. He used to buy things for them. He held up two towels. He said, I was supposed to purchase hand towels for the soldiers. Here is the towel I would have purchased. It would have cost $1.80 a towel, something like that. And here is the towel I did purchase. It cost triple that. Why? Because the company said to me I want you to purchase the more expensive towel so it has the company name embroidered on the towel that goes to the soldiers. Waste? Of course it is. Mr. President, $85,000 trucks, brand new, were left on the side of the road to be trashed because they had a flat tire; $85,000 trucks were trashed and left to rot because they had a plugged fuel pump. Do you think that is not happening? Listen to the whistleblowers or the people who drove the trucks. A guy named Rory, on behalf of Halliburton, runs a cafeteria and food service. We know there is one allegation of one billing for 42,000 soldiers being fed a day when in fact they were feeding only 14,000. Rory said they missed it by about 5,000 in the place he was feeding them, charging for 5,000 more than actually were eating. He said, By the way, we were feeding the soldiers food that had expired date stamps on it, and when we told our supervisors they said, No, no, feed it to them; an expired date stamp doesn't matter. Feed them to the soldiers. He also said the convoys bringing the food in would come under attack and our supervisors said you go through and pull out the bullets and shrapnel in the food, pull it out, and then we will feed the food to the soldiers. And by the way, if they are good bullets, save them for the supervisors for souvenirs. Are these unusual circumstances? The answer is no. I could go on and talk about fuel delivery and water contracts, but that is enough, just to say there is massive waste and fraud and abuse going on with respect to contracting in Iraq. By the way, this fellow in this picture testified, this fellow wearing this white striped shirt. These are hundred-dollar bills wrapped in Saran wrap. This is the way they paid contractors in Iraq. He said we told contractors in Iraq, when you come, bring a bag because we pay in cash. He said, we used to throw these around like footballs in the office, hundred-dollar bills, wrapped. They had a bill vault downstairs. So the contractors are told, bring a bag because we pay in cash. He said it was like the Wild West. Someone else said we do a contract, the American taxpayers are going to pay to get a building air conditioned in Iraq, that goes to a subcontractor, it goes to a local contractor, another little contractor, and pretty soon we pay for it. We get a ceiling fan where we should have gotten an air conditioner. It is like the Wild West. Bring a bag and we give you cash. Finally, a man named Mr. Custer and a man named Mr. Battles. ``Sixty Minutes'' did a recent program on them. They showed up with virtually no money. Eventually, within a very short period of time--nearly 2 years--they got $100 million in contracts from the Federal Government. It is pretty unbelievable. I have a chart that describes what one of the airport managers said about them. This is the chart: Custer Battles have shown themselves to be unresponsive, uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war profiteers. Other than that, they are swell fellows. From the Baghdad Airport, Director of Airport Security. The allegation is, they took the forklifts from the airport, that belonged to the airport, took them to a hangar, repainted them blue, and then sold them back to the Iraq Provisional Authority. My point is there is substantial abuse going on in contracting. We have introduced legislation that has a number of components. No. 1, a piece of legislation that includes as its first section something Senator Leahy had offered in the last Congress: punishing war profiteers with substantial penalties. Those who would profiteer in a wartime situation are despicable and they ought to bear substantial penalty. The bill cracks down on substantial cheaters. It restores a Clinton administration rule, a rule that was made during the Clinton administration on suspension and debarment. If you are a contractor and you have exhibited a pattern of overcharging the Federal Government or failing to comply with the law, basically you have been somebody who has cheated the Government and have a pattern of that, you are out. You are going to be debarred. You are not going to be able to bid again. When the present Bush administration took office they immediately rescinded that rule. We would restore that rule by law, requiring full disclosure of contract abuses. Section 103 provides for greater transparency in contracting. It would require agencies to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the committees in Congress all contractor reports that found contractor misconduct, and put them on a Web site as well. The bill would force real competition, no more no-bid, sole-source contracts. It would also ban corporate cronyism in contracting. No more circumstances where someone works in a certain area and then goes to the private sector and gets contracts in the same area for which that person worked in the government. It ends cronyism in key government positions. This is pretty radical. We are daring to suggest that people who are being hired for key jobs ought to be qualified for them. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, used to be, I think, one of the stars of the Federal Government. My understanding is 7 of the 11 top positions in FEMA were filled by people who had no experience, just cronies. You want a job for Al or Ken or Vern or Mary? Stick them over there. So 7 of 11 positions were filled by cronies with no experience. Then take a look at what happened, see what happened when Katrina hit the shores, the largest national disaster in our country's history, and you see a FEMA that is completely incompetent. The stories are unbelievable. We had a hearing about that. We had a guy who drove an 18-wheel truck. He was supposed to haul ice in this 18-wheel truck for the Katrina victims, at FEMA's direction. He got a whole truckload of ice and away he went to provide ice to the victims of Katrina. The problem is, he didn't quite get there. FEMA had him drive around the country. He was sent to an airbase here and another place there, and he finally, after sitting at a military base for a long while--with hundreds of other trucks, by the way--he finally had to drive back to New York and offload his ice in New York. This is unbelievable. By the way, I have asked the Department, FEMA agency, how did this happen? How did you spend taxpayers' money to have ice run around this country that should have gone to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and instead we end up paying tens of thousands of dollars and the ice never gets there? I got a letter from FEMA this week which says: That wasn't our responsibility. That was the Corps of Engineers. FEMA has since corrected that with an e-mail that is disjointed, were they admit that the responsibility was theirs. Their recent reputation for incompetence is pretty well deserved. That is something I am going to the bottom of. My point is, we need to decide, if we are going to put people in key positions to do key jobs, it ought not be cronies, it ought to be people who have some basic experience that would suggest they can do those jobs. Finally, we will strengthen whistleblower protections. People who have the courage to blow the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse ought not be penalized, they ought to be applauded. That is the legislation I introduced yesterday with 29 cosponsors. Senator Cantwell will be the 29th sponsor. I ask unanimous consent Senator Cantwell be added as a cosponsor of this legislation, which is 2361.

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

Mr. DORGAN. This is not Republican or Democratic, conservative or liberal. It is about being smart and doing the right thing. We have had a lot of circumstances in recent weeks and months where our country has dropped the ball. I mentioned the response to Katrina. I mentioned contracting in Iraq and a range of things. I believe we must do better than that. Some of it stems from these big sole-source, no-bid contracts. That is too sweet a deal. What you need is competition. We do not want to have this Government favoring one company versus another with sole- source, no-bid contracts. That is an invitation for waste, in my judgment. I know we have a pretty substantial schedule. I know Senator Frist has indicated his agenda, what he wants to bring to the floor of the Senate in the coming weeks and months. But let me say I hope we will have time to deal with this issue of honest government and accountability in contracting. That is a piece of legislation that is urgently needed to be passed. I also hope, in the near future, whether it is 45 days or whatever the days, they are going to continue to review the question of whether the United Arab Emirates should be managing America's ports. Whenever that is done, my hope is we will have up-or-down votes here in the Congress about whether we think this makes any sense at all. I agree with Congressman Hunter. Put me down on the side of wanting to protect this country's interests. I guarantee this: We will not be protecting this country's interests to continue down this road of offshoring and outsourcing and deciding this great country of ours does not have the capability to manage its own seaports. What are we thinking about? Of course, we have the capability. The question is, do we have the national will and enough common sense, is there a reservoir of common sense to finally have us doing the right thing? I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Commerce Committee is having a hearing this afternoon--and I have been at a portion of that hearing--dealing with the question of Dubai Ports World, which is a company largely owned by the United Arab Emirates. This is a company that has been given the green light by this administration to manage six of America's largest seaports. This has caused a substantial amount of controversy and discussion. In the last couple of days some of that controversy has been resolved, at least in the minds of some, because the company owned by the United Arab Emirates has asked the administration for a 45-day review of the circumstances of this deal, and they will not take control of the management of the American ports for these 45 days. It is rather unusual for a company to be asking that the United States Government do a 45-day review of the circumstances of whether a United Arab Emirates company should be managing America's ports. Speaking for myself, I don't need 45 days to understand this. I don't need 45 minutes to understand it. I know a bad idea when I see one. The President has made up his mind. President Bush has said he will veto any legislation that is offered here in the Congress that would upset this deal which would allow the company owned by the United Arab Emirates to manage America's ports. If the President feels he should veto a piece of legislation, that is his right. He has not vetoed any bill since he became President of the United States, but if his proposition is he wants to veto a piece of legislation and turn over America's seaports, six of America's large seaports, to management by the United Arab Emirates, so be it. But I think the President would be making a very serious mistake. Our country is under a terrorist threat. We get regular briefings on that in the Senate, and the American people know that from watching the news. We understand the terrorist threats take the form of threat to air travel because the terrorists, as we know, last used commercial jet airplanes to fly into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. We understand the threats at our airports. That is why when you go to the airport and try to board a plane they have you take off your belt, take off your shoes, and run you through a metal detector. There is great concern about the threat of terrorism and security at our airports. There is also great concern about security at our seaports. I have spoken, I am guessing, about a dozen times on the floor of this Senate about the security at our seaports since the time of the 9/ 11 attacks. I recall shortly after 9/11 when a fellow from a Middle East country decided to ship himself in a container on a container ship. He got inside a container, and he got loaded on a container ship. Here was this man with a container. He had a cot to sleep on, he had a GPS device, a radio, a supply of water, and he was shipping himself, I believe, to Canada, and there was concern that he was a terrorist and he was going to enter the country by shipping himself in a container on a container ship. I have spoken here, I suppose, almost a dozen times talking about the danger of having anywhere from 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into this country every year, millions of containers on a container ship coming into this country every year, and somewhere around 4 percent of them and perhaps as much as 5 percent are inspected; the rest are not. I went to a port facility once. We don't have ports in North Dakota. But I went to a port facility to visit and see what the security was. They were showing me a container they had taken off a ship. The container they opened happened to be frozen broccoli from Poland, bags and bags and bags of frozen broccoli. I said, How do you know what is in the middle of this container? I see there are bags of frozen broccoli. How do you know that is all that is here in the container? Well, we don't know. That is why we are inspecting this particular container. How many containers do you inspect? We know the answer to that. Out of every 100, 96 are not inspected. That is a threat to our country's seaports. What about a terrorist organization deciding they want to try to steal a nuclear weapon someplace? After all, there are tens of thousands of them--somewhere, we believe, between 20,000 and 30,000 nuclear weapons that exist in this world. Steal a nuclear weapon and put it in a container, on a container ship and run it up to a dock, appear at one of America's major cities. What about the prospect of that happening? Then we would not see 3,000 deaths. No, we would see 100,000 deaths or more. Seaport security is a very serious issue. Now, in the midst of all of these issues of national security, we hear that something called CFIUS--the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, composed of some 12 Federal agencies coming together as a committee, evaluating foreign investment in the United States--decided it is all right if this company called Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, is allowed to manage six of America's largest ports, including ports in New York, New Jersey, Miami, Louisiana, and Maryland. That is not all right with me. I just came from a committee hearing where we had some people say, Well, you are going to offend somebody here. The United Arab Emirates is a country that has been very helpful to us in the fight on terrorism. The last thing we want to do is offend them. What about offending common sense? Should we be offending common sense here in the Senate? I don't think so. Common sense would say to us when threatened by terrorist threats, security in this country ought to be security provided by the United States. We can't provide for our own security in our management of U.S. ports? The United Arab Emirates is probably a perfectly wonderful country. It is not a democracy, I will tell you. And two of the hijackers on 9/ 11/2001 were UAE citizens. And the United Arab Emirates was only one of three countries that recognized the Taliban Government which played host to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Let me read something from the 9/11 Commission report. On page 137: Early in 1999, the CIA received a recording that Osama bin Laden was spending much of his time at one of several camps in the Afghanistan desert south of Kandahar. At the beginning of February, bin Laden was reportedly located at the vicinity of Sheik Ali Camp, a desert hunting camp being used by visitors from a Gulf State. Public sources have stated that those terrorists were from the United Arab Emirates. I will not read all of this. According to the reports, the military was doing targeting work to hit the camp where Osama bin Laden was thought to be, to hit it with cruise missiles. But no strike was launched. And Mr. bin Laden apparently soon moved on and the immediate strike plans became moot. According to the CIA and defense officials, the reason the strike was not launched against bin Laden was that policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill a prince from the United Arab Emirates who was visiting with bin Laden. The 9-11 Commission report also talks about an official airplane for the United Arab Emirates at a landing strip there. They believed the UAE officials were visiting with Mr. bin Laden. So apparently, any opportunity for this country to target Mr. bin Laden before 9/11 was in part fouled by the relationship between at least some in the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates and Mr. bin Laden. One of our Cabinet officers said, Well, this issue is not just about national security, but also about trade and about commerce. Look, trade and commerce do not ever trump national security. If there are national security issues, then they have to be dealt with and have to be recognized. We are told, Well, everyone signed off on this; there is not a problem here. But now we find out today that not everybody did sign off on this. Yesterday we found out that the Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report, which had already been made public. The report said: There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for DPW or PNO assets to support terrorist operations. That precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential DPW and PNO ports merger. So don't tell me that the Coast Guard signed off on this. They raised questions about it, as they should have. I have a GAO report that I showed a few moments ago in the Commerce Committee. This is the title of the July 2005 GAO report: ``The DOD Cannot Ensure its Oversight of Contractors Under Foreign Influence is Sufficient.'' If the Department of Defense cannot ensure proper oversight of foreign contractors, the Department of Homeland Security can? I don't think so. The Department of Homeland Security, after all, responded to Hurricane Katrina. Look at the mess they made with that. Now they are saying, even though the Department of Defense cannot ensure oversight of foreign contractors, Homeland Security is going to be able to do that with respect to the security of our ports? I don't think so. So national security is an issue. And saying so is not a slap in the face at any country. It is just recognizing the obvious. Something else that has not been talked about should be talked about. We have moved at a full gallop toward globalization. We are in a global economy, we are told. Well, the fact that we are in a global economy should not persuade us not to think. One of the questions ought to be raised by all is--aside from the national security interests, which are significant interests--one of the other questions is, why would our country not have the capability to provide its own port management, its own port security? There are certain things we do that we know we must do. Again, go to the airport and see what they tell you about your shoes and belt and see a little 6-year-old boy spread-eagle against the wall being ``wanded'' and ask yourself: Why is that happening? Because we have decided there is a security threat at airports. Terrorists use a commercial airliner as a guided missile to destroy buildings in our country and to murder Americans. So we have issues of national security to respond to a threat with airport screening. What about our seaports? Does anyone think there is any less danger with somewhere around 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into our country, with 96 percent of them not having been screened? Does anyone think there is less danger to America to have just one of those containers be pulled up slowly at an American pier or port or dock that has a weapon of mass destruction? We are spending billions and billions of dollars building an antiballistic missile defense system that does not work, regrettably. We have spent billions of dollars and are spending billions more trying to hit a bullet with a bullet because we are concerned that a rogue nation or a terrorist will get hold of a ballistic missile, put on its tip a nuclear weapon, and send it to us somewhere around 15,000 miles per hour. By far, the more significant threat is for a ship to pull up at one of our docks at about 5 miles per hour, leaded with containers, most of which have never been inspected, containing in one circumstance a weapon of mass destruction. That is by far a more significant threat to our country. I have spoken, I suppose, a dozen times over the years since 2001 about port security. Not because we have any ports in North Dakota, because we do not. But it is obvious to me that if you are going to begin to provide security for this country, we do not just do it by metal detectors at airports; we do it at seaports and rail security, as well. And with respect to seaports, it seems completely illogical to me from a national security standpoint that we would decide to turn over to foreign countries the management of our ports, our seaports. People have said today: Are you kidding? This is done all the time, for God's sake. Get a life. This is going on everywhere. You do not understand the global economy. We have had other countries managing our seaports. This has become an issue that most American people recognize is a problem. But a number of Members in the Congress do not recognize it as a problem. Some do. But I heard opening statements at a committee hearing suggesting this debate is about racial profiling, it is about offending a good neighbor. Well, that is all nonsense. This is about demanding at least some level of common sense be used in establishing public policy. The President says: We did the right thing. I have already made up my mind, he says, and we approved it. And I will veto anything that would overturn that approval. Then he says, when asked by the company that is owned by the United Arab Emirates to review it for 45 more days, the President says: Yes, we will review it for 45 more days. But, again, he put out a statement today saying: I've already made up my mind. At a committee hearing this afternoon, others on the committee said: Well, some of you have already made up your mind. Shame on you. As I said, it would not take me 45 days to figure it out. It does not take 45 minutes to figure it out. We ought to, as a country, be able to find ways to manage our seaports. And we ought to, as a country, take responsibility for our own national security. After all, it is not every country in the world where you pin a little pin on the map that says: Here's target one, here's the bull's eye of the target for terrorists. They want to attack this country. This is where they want to attack. We understand that. All of us feel fortunate we have not been attacked again since 2001. But we all know, as well, that there is much yet to do. Seaport security is one of those areas in which we have to do much better. My colleague who sat behind me some years, Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina, would come to the Senate and speak at great length about this. He would offer funding for more seaport security. It was routinely turned down. All of us offered this and were routinely turned down. We did not have the money. And we are inspecting 4 to 5 percent. Someday, God forbid, if something happens at a seaport, we will all stand and scratch our heads and say: Why didn't we try to find a way to do this better, more inspections? Why didn't we understand that is more vulnerable even than airport security? Why didn't we figure that out? This is an opportunity. I understand this will be controversial. I understand the President is going to be upset if the Congress takes action. I will offer legislation today that is very simple. It does not tiptoe around 45 days and all these things. It just says this should not happen. If that offends someone, I am sorry. But I do not want to offend common sense. And it seems to me, in this country there is a deep reservoir of common sense at the local cafe or down at the hardware store to say it would make the most sense, given the fact we are targeted by terrorists, it would make the most sense for our country to take responsibility for itself. This is not about globalism. It is not about the global economy. It is not about offending someone. It is about deciding as a country to assume responsibility for your security. Let me make one other point. Yes, we need friends. Yes, we need the United Arab Emirates to be our friend and other countries as well to cooperate with us. But wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if we had more cooperation when Dr. Kahn in Pakistan was arranging to have nuclear materials and nuclear plans and nuclear parts sent around to North Korea and to Iran and to other countries? Our children will pay for that, unfortunately. And most of that material went through the United Arab Emirates' ports. Wouldn't it have been nice if we had more friends? We need more friends. But, it seems to me, we ought not buy friendship by deciding that we will put a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates in the position of managing America's ports. Once again, this is merely common sense. The GAO report of last summer ought to be instructive to us. If the Department of Defense cannot ensure its oversight of contractors under foreign influence, how on Earth can Homeland Security ensure oversight of a contractor that is owned by a foreign government in the Middle East? How on Earth can we expect that to happen? I come to the Senate to talk a lot about trade. In this age of globalism people say: You are just a xenophobic isolationist stooge who does not get it. The world has changed. It is a global world. Everyone does everything everywhere. It seems to me it is not inappropriate even in a global economy to pursue our own interests from time to time, and that is especially true when it deals with the subject of terrorism. Does the global economy mean that you outsource or offshore everything? Is there anything you cannot do without? Some 15 years ago, I used to question Carla Hills, the trade ambassador, at various hearings. Managed trade was anathema to her, and it has been to virtually every administration. Yet virtually every country we do trade with has managed trade. They have managed trade with a set of objectives. I used to continually ask Carla Hill: Is there anything the loss of which would give you problems? For example, if, in a completely open system of trade we lost our entire steel industry--it was gone, no steel mill and no steel produced domestically--would that give you a problem? The answer was, no, whatever happens, happens. That is nonsense. There are certain things that a country must hang on to to remain a strong economic power, a world economic power. Maybe this, also, in addition to the national security issues--which I think are very important--maybe it is also an opportunity to wake up and answer the question: What is appropriate in a global economy? Is everything on the table? Everything for sale? Everything up for trading and grabs? Is offshoring just fine, notwithstanding what it means to the American economy? Perhaps, if we use this opportunity to ask those questions, we will have done this country a favor. In the meantime, I will introduce the simplest piece of legislation introduced on this subject. It simply says: ``Just say no.''

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 and have my speech recorded as if in morning business. I will use the time allotted with my hour postcloture.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, February is American Heart Month. As cochair of the Congressional Heart and Stroke Coalition, I rise today to urge my colleagues to commit to the fight against this devastating disease. Heart disease remains the Nation's leading cause of death. Stroke is the No. 3 killer. More than 70 million adults in the United States suffer from heart disease, stroke, or other cardiovascular diseases. Cardiovascular diseases will cost our Nation an estimated $403 billion in 2006, including more than $250 billion in direct medical costs. Although we need to continue to fund research to unlock the many mysteries that remain, we can make real progress in the fight against cardiovascular diseases by applying the knowledge that we already have today. A recent study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute found that by quitting smoking, reducing obesity and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels, you can add 10 years to your life. Thanks to our prior investments in cardiovascular research and prevention programs, we are now at a point where we have the tools in hand to make substantial progress. Yet, we find ourselves at a crossroads. As the population ages, the number of Americans affected by cardiovascular diseases will rapidly increase if we don't take the right steps today. It is estimated that by 2050, the number of deaths from heart disease will increase by nearly 130 percent. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to fight heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, not back away from our commitment. Yet, the President's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 would cut funding for medical research and cardiovascular disease prevention programs. The administration has even proposed eliminating a program to help rural communities purchase automated external defibrillators, AEDs. Last year, over my objection, Congress cut funding for this program by more than 80 percent. This makes no sense to me. AEDs are small, laptop size devices that help restore normal heart function after cardiac arrest. AEDs save lives, especially when placed in areas where large numbers of people congregate and in rural communities where emergency medical personnel are not readily available. That is why I was pleased to see the Architect of the Capitol announce last month that AEDs will be placed around the Capitol complex. However, I find it highly ironic that Congress decided to purchase AEDs for its own buildings while slashing funding for programs that help rural communities purchase the same devices. In the next several weeks, we will have a serious debate in the Senate about the administration's budget proposal. The decisions we will make will clearly show our priorities. I urge my colleagues to make the fight against heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases a top priority.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Commerce Committee is having a hearing this afternoon--and I have been at a portion of that hearing--dealing with the question of Dubai Ports World, which is a company largely owned by the United Arab Emirates. This is a company that has been given the green light by this administration to manage six of America's largest seaports. This has caused a substantial amount of controversy and discussion. In the last couple of days some of that controversy has been resolved, at least in the minds of some, because the company owned by the United Arab Emirates has asked the administration for a 45-day review of the circumstances of this deal, and they will not take control of the management of the American ports for these 45 days. It is rather unusual for a company to be asking that the United States Government do a 45-day review of the circumstances of whether a United Arab Emirates company should be managing America's ports. Speaking for myself, I don't need 45 days to understand this. I don't need 45 minutes to understand it. I know a bad idea when I see one. The President has made up his mind. President Bush has said he will veto any legislation that is offered here in the Congress that would upset this deal which would allow the company owned by the United Arab Emirates to manage America's ports. If the President feels he should veto a piece of legislation, that is his right. He has not vetoed any bill since he became President of the United States, but if his proposition is he wants to veto a piece of legislation and turn over America's seaports, six of America's large seaports, to management by the United Arab Emirates, so be it. But I think the President would be making a very serious mistake. Our country is under a terrorist threat. We get regular briefings on that in the Senate, and the American people know that from watching the news. We understand the terrorist threats take the form of threat to air travel because the terrorists, as we know, last used commercial jet airplanes to fly into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. We understand the threats at our airports. That is why when you go to the airport and try to board a plane they have you take off your belt, take off your shoes, and run you through a metal detector. There is great concern about the threat of terrorism and security at our airports. There is also great concern about security at our seaports. I have spoken, I am guessing, about a dozen times on the floor of this Senate about the security at our seaports since the time of the 9/ 11 attacks. I recall shortly after 9/11 when a fellow from a Middle East country decided to ship himself in a container on a container ship. He got inside a container, and he got loaded on a container ship. Here was this man with a container. He had a cot to sleep on, he had a GPS device, a radio, a supply of water, and he was shipping himself, I believe, to Canada, and there was concern that he was a terrorist and he was going to enter the country by shipping himself in a container on a container ship. I have spoken here, I suppose, almost a dozen times talking about the danger of having anywhere from 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into this country every year, millions of containers on a container ship coming into this country every year, and somewhere around 4 percent of them and perhaps as much as 5 percent are inspected; the rest are not. I went to a port facility once. We don't have ports in North Dakota. But I went to a port facility to visit and see what the security was. They were showing me a container they had taken off a ship. The container they opened happened to be frozen broccoli from Poland, bags and bags and bags of frozen broccoli. I said, How do you know what is in the middle of this container? I see there are bags of frozen broccoli. How do you know that is all that is here in the container? Well, we don't know. That is why we are inspecting this particular container. How many containers do you inspect? We know the answer to that. Out of every 100, 96 are not inspected. That is a threat to our country's seaports. What about a terrorist organization deciding they want to try to steal a nuclear weapon someplace? After all, there are tens of thousands of them--somewhere, we believe, between 20,000 and 30,000 nuclear weapons that exist in this world. Steal a nuclear weapon and put it in a container, on a container ship and run it up to a dock, appear at one of America's major cities. What about the prospect of that happening? Then we would not see 3,000 deaths. No, we would see 100,000 deaths or more. Seaport security is a very serious issue. Now, in the midst of all of these issues of national security, we hear that something called CFIUS--the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, composed of some 12 Federal agencies coming together as a committee, evaluating foreign investment in the United States--decided it is all right if this company called Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, is allowed to manage six of America's largest ports, including ports in New York, New Jersey, Miami, Louisiana, and Maryland. That is not all right with me. I just came from a committee hearing where we had some people say, Well, you are going to offend somebody here. The United Arab Emirates is a country that has been very helpful to us in the fight on terrorism. The last thing we want to do is offend them. What about offending common sense? Should we be offending common sense here in the Senate? I don't think so. Common sense would say to us when threatened by terrorist threats, security in this country ought to be security provided by the United States. We can't provide for our own security in our management of U.S. ports? The United Arab Emirates is probably a perfectly wonderful country. It is not a democracy, I will tell you. And two of the hijackers on 9/ 11/2001 were UAE citizens. And the United Arab Emirates was only one of three countries that recognized the Taliban Government which played host to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Let me read something from the 9/11 Commission report. On page 137: Early in 1999, the CIA received a recording that Osama bin Laden was spending much of his time at one of several camps in the Afghanistan desert south of Kandahar. At the beginning of February, bin Laden was reportedly located at the vicinity of Sheik Ali Camp, a desert hunting camp being used by visitors from a Gulf State. Public sources have stated that those terrorists were from the United Arab Emirates. I will not read all of this. According to the reports, the military was doing targeting work to hit the camp where Osama bin Laden was thought to be, to hit it with cruise missiles. But no strike was launched. And Mr. bin Laden apparently soon moved on and the immediate strike plans became moot. According to the CIA and defense officials, the reason the strike was not launched against bin Laden was that policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill a prince from the United Arab Emirates who was visiting with bin Laden. The 9-11 Commission report also talks about an official airplane for the United Arab Emirates at a landing strip there. They believed the UAE officials were visiting with Mr. bin Laden. So apparently, any opportunity for this country to target Mr. bin Laden before 9/11 was in part fouled by the relationship between at least some in the Royal Family of the United Arab Emirates and Mr. bin Laden. One of our Cabinet officers said, Well, this issue is not just about national security, but also about trade and about commerce. Look, trade and commerce do not ever trump national security. If there are national security issues, then they have to be dealt with and have to be recognized. We are told, Well, everyone signed off on this; there is not a problem here. But now we find out today that not everybody did sign off on this. Yesterday we found out that the Coast Guard expressed reservations about the deal in a secret report, which had already been made public. The report said: There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for DPW or PNO assets to support terrorist operations. That precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential DPW and PNO ports merger. So don't tell me that the Coast Guard signed off on this. They raised questions about it, as they should have. I have a GAO report that I showed a few moments ago in the Commerce Committee. This is the title of the July 2005 GAO report: ``The DOD Cannot Ensure its Oversight of Contractors Under Foreign Influence is Sufficient.'' If the Department of Defense cannot ensure proper oversight of foreign contractors, the Department of Homeland Security can? I don't think so. The Department of Homeland Security, after all, responded to Hurricane Katrina. Look at the mess they made with that. Now they are saying, even though the Department of Defense cannot ensure oversight of foreign contractors, Homeland Security is going to be able to do that with respect to the security of our ports? I don't think so. So national security is an issue. And saying so is not a slap in the face at any country. It is just recognizing the obvious. Something else that has not been talked about should be talked about. We have moved at a full gallop toward globalization. We are in a global economy, we are told. Well, the fact that we are in a global economy should not persuade us not to think. One of the questions ought to be raised by all is--aside from the national security interests, which are significant interests--one of the other questions is, why would our country not have the capability to provide its own port management, its own port security? There are certain things we do that we know we must do. Again, go to the airport and see what they tell you about your shoes and belt and see a little 6-year-old boy spread-eagle against the wall being ``wanded'' and ask yourself: Why is that happening? Because we have decided there is a security threat at airports. Terrorists use a commercial airliner as a guided missile to destroy buildings in our country and to murder Americans. So we have issues of national security to respond to a threat with airport screening. What about our seaports? Does anyone think there is any less danger with somewhere around 5.7 to 5.9 million containers coming into our country, with 96 percent of them not having been screened? Does anyone think there is less danger to America to have just one of those containers be pulled up slowly at an American pier or port or dock that has a weapon of mass destruction? We are spending billions and billions of dollars building an antiballistic missile defense system that does not work, regrettably. We have spent billions of dollars and are spending billions more trying to hit a bullet with a bullet because we are concerned that a rogue nation or a terrorist will get hold of a ballistic missile, put on its tip a nuclear weapon, and send it to us somewhere around 15,000 miles per hour. By far, the more significant threat is for a ship to pull up at one of our docks at about 5 miles per hour, leaded with containers, most of which have never been inspected, containing in one circumstance a weapon of mass destruction. That is by far a more significant threat to our country. I have spoken, I suppose, a dozen times over the years since 2001 about port security. Not because we have any ports in North Dakota, because we do not. But it is obvious to me that if you are going to begin to provide security for this country, we do not just do it by metal detectors at airports; we do it at seaports and rail security, as well. And with respect to seaports, it seems completely illogical to me from a national security standpoint that we would decide to turn over to foreign countries the management of our ports, our seaports. People have said today: Are you kidding? This is done all the time, for God's sake. Get a life. This is going on everywhere. You do not understand the global economy. We have had other countries managing our seaports. This has become an issue that most American people recognize is a problem. But a number of Members in the Congress do not recognize it as a problem. Some do. But I heard opening statements at a committee hearing suggesting this debate is about racial profiling, it is about offending a good neighbor. Well, that is all nonsense. This is about demanding at least some level of common sense be used in establishing public policy. The President says: We did the right thing. I have already made up my mind, he says, and we approved it. And I will veto anything that would overturn that approval. Then he says, when asked by the company that is owned by the United Arab Emirates to review it for 45 more days, the President says: Yes, we will review it for 45 more days. But, again, he put out a statement today saying: I've already made up my mind. At a committee hearing this afternoon, others on the committee said: Well, some of you have already made up your mind. Shame on you. As I said, it would not take me 45 days to figure it out. It does not take 45 minutes to figure it out. We ought to, as a country, be able to find ways to manage our seaports. And we ought to, as a country, take responsibility for our own national security. After all, it is not every country in the world where you pin a little pin on the map that says: Here's target one, here's the bull's eye of the target for terrorists. They want to attack this country. This is where they want to attack. We understand that. All of us feel fortunate we have not been attacked again since 2001. But we all know, as well, that there is much yet to do. Seaport security is one of those areas in which we have to do much better. My colleague who sat behind me some years, Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina, would come to the Senate and speak at great length about this. He would offer funding for more seaport security. It was routinely turned down. All of us offered this and were routinely turned down. We did not have the money. And we are inspecting 4 to 5 percent. Someday, God forbid, if something happens at a seaport, we will all stand and scratch our heads and say: Why didn't we try to find a way to do this better, more inspections? Why didn't we understand that is more vulnerable even than airport security? Why didn't we figure that out? This is an opportunity. I understand this will be controversial. I understand the President is going to be upset if the Congress takes action. I will offer legislation today that is very simple. It does not tiptoe around 45 days and all these things. It just says this should not happen. If that offends someone, I am sorry. But I do not want to offend common sense. And it seems to me, in this country there is a deep reservoir of common sense at the local cafe or down at the hardware store to say it would make the most sense, given the fact we are targeted by terrorists, it would make the most sense for our country to take responsibility for itself. This is not about globalism. It is not about the global economy. It is not about offending someone. It is about deciding as a country to assume responsibility for your security. Let me make one other point. Yes, we need friends. Yes, we need the United Arab Emirates to be our friend and other countries as well to cooperate with us. But wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if we had more cooperation when Dr. Kahn in Pakistan was arranging to have nuclear materials and nuclear plans and nuclear parts sent around to North Korea and to Iran and to other countries? Our children will pay for that, unfortunately. And most of that material went through the United Arab Emirates' ports. Wouldn't it have been nice if we had more friends? We need more friends. But, it seems to me, we ought not buy friendship by deciding that we will put a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates in the position of managing America's ports. Once again, this is merely common sense. The GAO report of last summer ought to be instructive to us. If the Department of Defense cannot ensure its oversight of contractors under foreign influence, how on Earth can Homeland Security ensure oversight of a contractor that is owned by a foreign government in the Middle East? How on Earth can we expect that to happen? I come to the Senate to talk a lot about trade. In this age of globalism people say: You are just a xenophobic isolationist stooge who does not get it. The world has changed. It is a global world. Everyone does everything everywhere. It seems to me it is not inappropriate even in a global economy to pursue our own interests from time to time, and that is especially true when it deals with the subject of terrorism. Does the global economy mean that you outsource or offshore everything? Is there anything you cannot do without? Some 15 years ago, I used to question Carla Hills, the trade ambassador, at various hearings. Managed trade was anathema to her, and it has been to virtually every administration. Yet virtually every country we do trade with has managed trade. They have managed trade with a set of objectives. I used to continually ask Carla Hill: Is there anything the loss of which would give you problems? For example, if, in a completely open system of trade we lost our entire steel industry--it was gone, no steel mill and no steel produced domestically--would that give you a problem? The answer was, no, whatever happens, happens. That is nonsense. There are certain things that a country must hang on to to remain a strong economic power, a world economic power. Maybe this, also, in addition to the national security issues--which I think are very important--maybe it is also an opportunity to wake up and answer the question: What is appropriate in a global economy? Is everything on the table? Everything for sale? Everything up for trading and grabs? Is offshoring just fine, notwithstanding what it means to the American economy? Perhaps, if we use this opportunity to ask those questions, we will have done this country a favor. In the meantime, I will introduce the simplest piece of legislation introduced on this subject. It simply says: ``Just say no.''

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Earlier this month, Lynette Mund, a teacher and coach from West Fargo, ND, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee about the importance of women's athletics. Lynette is a great athlete in her own right. She was a three-time national champion in basketball. Her home State of North Dakota has always been proud of her and is lucky to have her contributions at West Fargo High School. Her excellent statement laid out the struggles of providing the opportunity for young women to participate in sports. I ask unanimous consent that her statement be printed in the Congressional Record.