Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I use.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, might we at this point find out what time remains of the three allocations of time on this bill? You can proceed with the unanimous consent and then perhaps give us the time remaining.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have great respect for all of my colleagues no matter what they decide to do on this vote. I think the vote is probably predetermined this evening. I must say there are a lot of promises I have heard on the floor the last day or so. There have been a lot of promises made downtown. I would only point out that I have seen the result of most of these promises after the votes are taken and most of them have not been worth the paper they are written on or the assurances given have not been valuable at all. One might want to look at the side agreement dealing with sugar from Mexico; one can then go on to a sweetener agreement with Mexico; then can go on to a lot of these areas and understand that there are a lot of promises in order to get these bills passed, but by and large they do not amount to very much. They will not need anybody in this Senate after the ``yes'' votes are cast. I start at the beginning, if I might. I know we are nearing the end of this debate. I do not want to go all the way back to the beginning, but let me go back a fair piece. It is when John Adams is in Europe as they are putting this new country together. He is in Europe representing our country. He writes back to his wife Abigail and asks Abigail the question: Where is the leadership going to come from? Where will the leadership emerge to help form this great country of ours, to help form a new government? He plaintively kept asking, where will the leadership come from? Then in subsequent letters he would say to her, there is really only us. There is me. There is Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Madison, Mason. Of course, in the rearview mirror of history, the only ``us'' represents some of the greatest human talent ever assembled. They wrote a document that is the most remarkable document. It is a document called the U.S. Constitution that begins with ``we the people.'' That Constitution that begins with ``we the people'' provides mechanisms, the framework of our Government, the framework of a representative democracy. Over many years, with that document providing the fabric of the growth of this great country, we have been a country that has been divinely blessed in many ways. We have built a place unlike any other place on the face of this Earth. There is no place like it. One can spin the globe and on this little planet called Earth, with 6 billion neighbors, there is no place quite like the United States of America. We created an expanded set of opportunities for all Americans, through a lot of good decisions; for example, universal education. We as a country decided long ago every young child ought to be whatever their God-given talents allow them to be. We are not going to separate kids in our school system. They get to go to school and they get to become whatever their talents allow that child to become. That universal education for all Americans has created a country that is unlike any other in the world. We went from the Colonies to the States. We survived a Civil War. We beat back a Depression. We resisted the oppression of Adolf Hitler, won a Second World War. We provided a GI bill, and when those soldiers came back from that war, they went to college. They got their college degrees. They came back to their communities. They built a home, got married, raised a family, built schools, built communities. What a remarkable country this has been. It all comes back to this book, this Constitution. Other countries have constitutions, but none are quite like this Constitution. This Constitution says something about international trade and commerce. It describes the regulation of commerce and trade to the Congress. It is our responsibility, not the President's responsibility. So over a number of years we have worked on and dealt with these issues and then we have had in many ways an almost breathtaking series of decades. We have split the atom, we have spliced genes, we have cloned animals, we invented plastics, nylon, the radar, the silicon chip. We cured polio, smallpox. We built airplanes, learned to fly them. We built rockets, flew to the Moon and walked on the Moon. We created telephones, television sets, computers. What a remarkable set of achievements for the men and women in this country who are the doers, the achievers, the inventors. We stand on each other's shoulders looking to the future. So about three decades ago things began to change. This world became smaller. We started hearing about the global economy. We began to do more and travel more and have more connections with other parts of the world, and particularly large corporations which were developed because of economies of scale. Those large corporations began to be able to do business in more than one country. Then they defined for their own interests the opportunities by which they would do that business. It then became a global economy. In that global economy, we began to hear the term free trade, free trade, like a chant, almost like the hare krishna chanting on a street corner, wearing robes: Free trade. Well, free trade is of little interest to me. I am very interested in expanded trade and fair trade, but free trade, there are a lot of things that are free. This country built a place unlike any other on the face of this Earth and we need to be concerned about its continuation. So the question is what kind of trade gives us the opportunity to continue improving the standard of living in America, creating an economy that produces new jobs and new opportunities? I am sure every single set of parents in this country wants things better for their kids. If there is something in second place, beyond the importance of their children, I guess I understand that, but everybody would believe, I expect, that what is most important in their lives is their children. We care about these things that affect our children. Are we sending our kids to good schools? Are we proud of these schools? Do we believe we are able to leave a world that is a better place in which to live than the one we found? Is that what we are going to do for our kids? So as we confront this question of the new global economy and a new global strategy, the galloping globalization of our economy, without a set of rules that has kept pace, the question for all of us is: What does it mean for our country? What does it mean for our future? What does it mean for our kids--especially our kids? In the past decade, we have seen a very substantial loss of American jobs. Some people say, do not worry, be happy, ignore it. It is all part of the transition. What we will see is our low-skilled jobs move elsewhere, we will educate our children, and we will assume the role of high-skill, high-paying jobs; don't worry. So we pass trade laws. They are called CAFTA and NAFTA and GATT, WTO. We do all of these things. Then somehow, at the end of this process, we look back and we see, you know, something fundamentally has changed. Somebody has pulled the rug out from under what are the basic strengths of this country--a good job that pays well, that provides benefits, that you can count on. About 30 years ago the biggest corporation in America was General Motors. In most cases, people who went to work for General Motors expected to work there for a lifetime. They were paid well and they had benefits, health care and retirement. That was 30 years ago. Now the largest corporation is Wal-Mart. They do not pay so well. Most people do not spend a lifetime at Wal-Mart. The average wage is much lower, and a fairly substantial number of their employees do not have benefits. That is a very substantial change, really a dramatic change in our country. But the biggest change has been the development of a set of ideas by those who are able to influence thought in this country, particularly the largest corporations that have unlimited quantities of money, who convinced us that free trade, as a moniker, is a mechanism for success in our country. So we pass trade agreements, the end of which means we lose American jobs, lose economic strength, and somehow believe that somewhere in the future things are going to get better. I want to show a chart I have shown many times during this debate. It is a chart that shows what has happened with our trade deficit. This is a dangerous trend. Behind these red lines are lost jobs, families who lost their jobs, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and millions of them. Not many people in here know those people. No one in this Chamber lost his or her job because we all put a suit and necktie on and come to work. Nobody is going to get outsourced or offshored in the Senate. But all these folks did. I have lists of companies and lists of names of people who just lost their job because of this new approach, a new defined approach in international trade that says in our country, we will be the leader that says go ahead and find, with the mechanism of production, the lowest cost production in the world. Get your Gulfstream, circle the globe and find out where you can produce for 30 cents an hour. Move that job to that area and, by the way, when you do, we will give you a tax cut. Let me say that again, because that is kind of a Byzantine proposition. When you close your American factory and fire your American workers, you get a tax cut from our Government. And, yes, I have tried twice to change that in the Senate and, yes, a majority of the Senate voted to keep a tax cut for workers who get fired and companies that move those jobs overseas. I will put in the Congressional Record their names. I really don't need to. A very easy Nexis-Lexis search will give you the names of who decided they should keep their tax cuts for companies that move their jobs overseas. The point is, we are seeing this inevitable, relentless move to produce where it is cheap and then sell into the established marketplace. The problem is, this is unsustainable. This is a theory that is off track and it is a practice that injures this country. Why do I say the theory is off track? Henry Ford decided, when he was going to make Fords, that he wanted to pay his production workers sufficient money so that they could buy the cars they were producing. That is pretty simple. That is simple economics. If you are paying your workers enough money so they can buy the products they are producing, you have a market and a consumer for the product. A pretty smart guy, Henry Ford. Now it has changed. Now we should produce those shirts and those shoes and those trousers and all the trinkets where you can do it for 30 cents an hour and then ship it to Fargo and Toledo and Dayton and Los Angeles and New York and sell it there. The question is, Who ultimately is going to buy that? Who ultimately will buy this? We have a lot of dislocations that are dangerous. I have not talked at all about this, and I will not talk at length. A part of this, by the way, is oil. A part of this is oil. There are some on this globe who are lucky enough to have enough oil under the sands so if you stand in a depression in the sand with boots, your soles are going to look oily because some parts of this world are loaded with oil, particularly the Middle East. So the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, and others have a lot of oil. We are desperately and hopelessly addicted to it. Our economy is addicted to it, and that is part of this. It also relates to jobs because, when you have the purchase of oil from these countries--Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and so on--they end up with American dollars, which means they want to buy American companies. They want to buy American stock. It is a way of buying part of our country. In today's newspaper it says, ``China Tells U.S. Not To Meddle in the Bid for California Oil Giant.'' The story is the Chinese want to buy the ninth largest oil and gas company in the United States called Unocal. Why would they want to buy Unocal? They are like everybody else. They want to control oil to the extent they can. The Chinese, I am told, now have 20 million cars. They have 1.3 billion people. By 15 years from now they are expected to have 120 million automobiles. They are going to need gas. They are going to need a lot of gas. The price of oil is not going to go down, it is going to go up. They want to buy an oil company. I don't think this should happen in a million years, by the way. I don't think we should have the Chinese buying American oil companies, but I will tell you why this is happening. It is happening because these trade deficits are putting massive amounts of money in the hands of Chinese, and it gives them the opportunity to purchase, on the open market, America's stocks, bonds, companies. I mentioned previously that Warren Buffett, whom I like a lot--I think he is the second richest man in the world, but you would never know it. Warren is just a great guy. Warren Buffett described this problem as ``a country that is now aspiring to an ownership society will not find happiness in a sharecropper society.'' This is where we are heading, he says, a sharecropper society. He describes this is when every day, 7 days a week, you put $2 billion in the hands of foreigners. You are buying $2 billion more from foreigners than you are selling to them every day, 7 days a week. You are putting $2 billion more into hands of foreigners and foreign governments. That means each day they have more purchasing power to buy another part of America. That is where this comes from. The Chinese want to by Unocal. That is where the money comes from, the $140 billion trade deficit with China last year. That means they have our country's currency. They have the capability of buying our stocks and our companies. The question is, Do we care about that? Does anybody here want to change the strategy or do you want to do some more of it? The attitude in the Senate, as I think we will discover when the vote is taken tonight is that if you are digging yourself into a hole, what you need is more shovels and just dig a little harder. That makes no sense to me. If there is one person in the U.S. Congress who does not understand the danger of this, then they are in the wrong business. This is trouble. This comes from CAFTA, it comes from GATT, it comes from incompetent trade negotiators and bad trade deal after bad trade deal. I just heard on the floor of the Senate today, I will bet you six people who talked about promises that have been made to them in order to get this trade deal through the Congress. These promises mean nothing. These are totally, completely empty promises. Let me briefly describe this. I am going to use Warren Buffett to describe it because, again, I like Warren Buffett. He described it this way. Stay with me just for a moment. To understand why, take a wildly fanciful trip with me to two isolated, side-by-side islands of equal size, Squanderville and Thriftville. Land is the only capital asset on these islands, and their communities are primitive, needing only food and producing only food. Working eight hours a day, in fact, each inhabitant can produce enough food to sustain himself or herself. And for a long time that's how things go along. On each island everybody works the prescribed eight hours a day, which means that each society is self-sufficient. Eventually, though, the industrious citizens of Thriftville decide to do some serious saving and investing, and they start to work 16 hours a day. In this mode they continue to live off the food they produce in eight hours of work but begin exporting an equal amount to their one and only trading outlet, Squanderville. The citizens of Squanderville are ecstatic about this turn of events, since they can now live their lives free from toil but eat as well as ever. Oh, yes, there's a quid pro quo--but to the Squanders, it seems harmless: All that the Thrifts want in exchange for their food is Squanderbonds (which are denominated, naturally, in Squanderbucks). Over time Thriftville accumulates an enormous amount of these bonds, which at their core represent claim checks on the future output of Squanderville. A few pundits in Squanderville smell trouble coming. They foresee that for the Squanders both to eat and to pay off--or simply service--the debt they're piling up will eventually require them to work more than eight hours a day. But the residents of Squanderville are in no mood to listen to such doomsaying. Meanwhile, the citizens of Thriftville begin to get nervous. Just how good, they ask, are the IOUs of a shiftless island? So the Thrifts change strategy: Though they continue to hold some bonds, they sell most of them to Squanderville residents for Squanderbucks and use the proceeds to buy Squanderville land. And eventually the Thrifts own all of Squanderville. At that point, the Squanders are forced to deal with an ugly equation: They must now not only return to working eight hours a day in order to eat--they have nothing left to trade--but must also work additional hours to service their debt and pay Thriftville rent on the land so imprudently sold. In effect, Squanderville has been colonized by purchase rather than conquest. That is my friend Warren Buffett's description of what is happening. And it is why, by the way, the Chinese have the money to buy Unocal. This is about Squanderville and Thriftville. The question he asks: Is anybody listening? Regrettably, the answer in the Senate is: Precious few. I have spoken at great length about companies. I have not spoken previously about Pennsylvania House, which I will do just for a moment. I have talked about Huffy bicycles, Radio Flyer little red wagons, Fig Newton cookies--which, by the way, went to Monterrey, Mexico, so if you want some Mexican food, order Fig Newton cookies. Let me tell you about Pennsylvania House Furniture, high-end furniture made with Pennsylvania wood, hardwood and cherry wood, high- end, terrific furniture, made for many decades in Pennsylvania and marketed as Pennsylvania Furniture. Pennsylvania House Furniture was purchased by Lazy Boy Corporation about 4 years ago. Lazy Boy decided it is just too expensive to manufacture Pennsylvania House furniture in Pennsylvania, so we have to move it to China. Now Pennsylvania House furniture will be made in China. They will ship the wood from Pennsylvania to China, the hardwood, the cherry wood. They will put it together in China and ship the furniture back. So it is for Robert Zechman. Robert Zechman worked for that company for 29 years. On December 21, four days from Christmas, he got his letter: You get $92-a-year severance for the service you have given this great company. Now we are shipping the wood and your job to China. They put the furniture together and ship it back. We will still call it Pennsylvania House Furniture, but the only Pennsylvania part of that furniture is the wood. The people are expendable. The question is, Does anybody care about that? Does it matter to anybody? It mattered to Pennsylvania. Governor Rendell said: We have 500 people who work here. We would like to save these jobs. They put together an effort to save those jobs. Finally, we were told that Lazy Boy said: We are not interested in having competition domestically, so we are not going to sell. We are moving to China. Same story with Huffy bicycles. Same story with dozens and dozens and dozens of companies. I spoke last week about a refrigerator company that decided they will close their American plant, notify the workers: No jobs in this country for you anymore. Why? Because we are going to make those refrigerators in Mexico. And, by the way, just to rub salt in the wound, one part of the manufacturing plant with which they will manufacture those refrigerators in Mexico has an Ex-Im Bank loan. That is a loan subsidized by this Government to build a part of a plant in Mexico to house the jobs of the workers who were fired in this country to build some refrigerators. Does it matter? Maybe not to some. It matters to me. Does it matter whether we make refrigerators? Does it matter whether we make fine furniture? Does it matter whether we have a manufacturing base? Will America remain a strong world-class economy if it gives its manufacturing sector away? In the last 25 years, we have lost one-half of our manufacturing capacity. Is there anybody here who is having an apoplectic seizure about that? Not hardly. We snore our way through this. President after President gives us a new trade law to see if we can improve on this massive debt that keeps growing and growing and growing. In the meantime, Robert Zechman will probably ask his Congressman or his Senator: What is going on there? Are you standing up for America, standing up for jobs in this country? Absolutely, he will hear. You bet your life. We are all for American jobs. It is just that the trade agreements trade them away--quickly. The majority of the people in the House and the Senate are going to vote for these trade agreements. America Online--December 2003--had just laid off 450 American employees, mostly design engineers and software engineers, in its California offices. Then those same engineers read that America Online was trying to hire software development teams and engineers in Bangalore, India. Does that mean you change your name to India Online, or is it still America Online that divests itself of U.S. employees and hires the engineers in Bangalore? The list is endless. We come down, finally, to a choice, a choice this Senate will make once again on another trade agreement. The NAFTA trade agreement, called North American Free Trade Agreement, was negotiated between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It was just one more chapter of bad trade agreements. But before that trade agreement, we had a slight surplus in trade with Mexico. We had a modest deficit with Canada. Now we have had about 10 years of trade agreements called NAFTA, and now we have a very large trade deficit with Mexico and a larger trade deficit with Canada. One would wonder if somebody would stand up and scratch their head and say: Gee, I wonder if we didn't make a mistake here. The economists, by the way, who most trumpeted the benefits of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, were two economists named Hufbauer and Schott. I am sure they are still practicing economists. I see the names Hufbauer and Schott. I actually used to teach economics. Economics is just a little bit of psychology pumped up with a lot of helium. I taught it for a little while and was able to overcome that experience and still lead a productive life. But these economists, Hufbauer and Schott, said: If you just pass NAFTA, we will promise you a remarkable future. What will happen is jobs will transpose. We will see low-income, low-skilled jobs being performed by Mexicans and high-skill, high-wage jobs now producing a product to be sold into an emerging middle class in Mexico, and those will be produced in America. These people were totally, completely wrong about everything. Has anybody said, We were wrong? Of course not. In this debate on CAFTA, which is another acronym--NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFTA, whatever it is--on this debate, we are now hearing NAFTA was really good. Boy, if we could just get some more of this spoiled trade agreement, somehow things would be better off. They would not be better. Let me try to tell you what I believe our obligation is. Yes, I want a strong economy. Yes, I want American companies to understand we support their interest in competing around the world. But I believe that, first of all, in the boardrooms they ought to say the Pledge of Allegiance from time to time. If we charter American corporations as artificial people--and that is what a corporate charter is about. We say we are going to create you as an artificial person. We are going to give you a charter which gives you limited liability. You can sue and be sued, contract and be contracted with. You are, in fact, an artificial person. If that artificial person, by corporate charter, given by this country, is in America, then it ought to care just a bit about this country's interests. And, yes, maybe just a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, occasionally, in the boardroom might help. When we hear people say, ``We want all the benefits for our corporation being American, except the responsibility for paying taxes is something we want to shed,'' I worry about loyalty and commitment to this country. And, yes, that is happening. We see what is called inversions, where corporations want to renounce their American citizenship to become citizens of the Bahamas. Why? Because they want to become Bahamian citizens? No. Because they want to avoid paying U.S. taxes. I have always said, if they want to do that, if they run into trouble, let them call out the Bahamian Navy. My understanding is, there are about 24 people in the Bahamian Navy. Let them call on the Bahamian Navy. The point is, I think we ought to support American companies in competing around the world, but we ought to expect certain things from them as well. The same is true with respect to other countries. Whether it is China, Japan, Europe or Korea, we should not any longer sit idly by and roll our eyes at trade agreements that are unfair to our workers and unfair to our companies. Let me again mention just one specific piece of information. I do not mean to pick on Korea for the sake of picking on Korea. I have spoken about the Chinese automobile trade previously. Korea, this year, if this year is similar to last year, will likely send us about 680,000 Korean cars, all on ships, to be delivered to the United States, and to be sold in the United States--680,000 cars produced in Korea, with Korean labor, to be shipped to the United States. Do you know how many cars the United States will produce that we will be able to sell in Korea? Do you think it will be 680,000? No, 3,900. Do you know why? Because Korea does not want American cars sold in Korea. They had a little spurt once on the Dodge Dakota pickup, and they shut that down real quickly. So 680,000 cars coming this way; 3,900 cars going from the United States to Korea. I think for us to put up with this stuff is unbelievable, just unbelievable, in its ignorance. I would say to the Koreans, with respect to that piece of bilateral trade, if that is what you want to do on bilateral automobile trade, then, for a while, why don't you sell your cars in Zambia? Just ship them to Zambia, and we hope you have a good commercial success with them. Very soon, they would understand they need the American marketplace, and in exchange for needing the American marketplace, to have their marketplace wide open to us. We know, those of us who will vote against this, and especially those who speak as I do, we know that the Washington Post, which will largely not run any op-ed pieces from those of us who hold our view, they and the other institutional thinkers on this will say: Well, do you know what you are? We have just heard you speak, and you basically ignore the world as it is. You are willing to reject the global economy, despite the fact that it exists and is there. And what you are is a xenophobic, isolationist stooge that simply is incapable of seeing over the horizon. You don't have the breadth of thought we do. And because you don't, you have a basic level of ignorance. That is how they treat people who do not buy into the jingoism of free trade. This country used to be known as a country of shrewd Yankee traders. We were good. Our country wants us to succeed. We should want us to succeed. And we want to help others succeed with trade relationships that help lift others up, not push us down. But I have described already what we have gone through in the last century. Unlike almost any other country on Earth, in the last century we decided some pretty basics things. And there are some people who had a tough time forcing these things to happen. I do not have the names of the people who were killed on the streets of America who were demanding the right for labor to be able to organize, but they died. Those who fought for a safe workplace, they suffered. Those who demanded a fair part of the income stream in this country for those who work for a living, they too paid the price for that. Those who fought, who said, belching chemicals into the air and water out of our factories, it is poisoning where we live, and you have to stop it--and they forced Congress to put an end to it--they paid a price for that as well. But we did all that. It made sense. And now all of a sudden we see that does not matter. What matters is to be able to pole-vault over all of those regulations and go set up a factory in Guangzhou and produce that commodity and send it to Pittsburgh. And the consumer may get a $25 lower bill for that commodity. The consumer probably lost their job to the worker in the factory in Guangzhou, but they are able to pay slightly less for that commodity. That is not a bargain for our country. It is a way for our country to lose economic strength and to lose its way. Now, let me just conclude by saying I have great hope for this country. If I did not have hope, I would not serve here in the Senate. We come here from a quiltwork of interests around the country--some big States and some small States, some big towns, some small towns, ivy league colleges and State schools. I come from a town of 300 people. I think it is a thrill every day to go to work. I think it is a special privilege to be here. If I did not have hope, I would not keep coming here, I would not have run for reelection last fall. I still have hope that, in the long run, we will understand that the path we are on cannot be sustained and there is a better path. And it is not a path that is selfish. It is not demanding ``us or nothing.'' It is just a path that understands our first responsibility is to nurture and strengthen and protect this country of ours and to do what we think is necessary to give our kids opportunities. We need to leave this place better than the way we found it. And that is not what is going to happen unless we change course. So I am on the floor of the Senate, not to preach but just to try to play a role in seeing if we cannot finally make a U-turn on these issues and head in the right direction, in a direction that says to our trading partners--China, Korea, Africa, South America, CAFTA, Central America--it says to them: Yes, we care about this. We want to help you. We want to work with you. But we do not want to do that at the expense of taking the American economy apart. We do not want to do that at the expense of saying to American families: We are busy helping somebody else down there, and so we do not have time to worry about your job. If this country says to the people who make bicycles, ``You are paid way too much. You are paid $11 an hour plus benefits. We cannot afford that. Those jobs go to China,'' there is destined, in my judgment, to be nothing but hopelessness for those who come after us. I do not believe we can allow that to be the case. I started by saying John Adams used to write back to his wife, when he was helping put this great country together, and asked her plaintively: Where is the leadership? Who will be the leaders? Where will the leadership come from in this country? And the answer in every generation in America has been to provide that leadership. And that question is a loud question in this country, again. It begs for an answer. Who will be the leaders? Where will the leadership come from to put this country back on track, to put its economy back on track, so 5 years, 10 years, and 25 years from now we can see something that gives us some confidence and some faith this is going to be a better place for our children. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor. U.S.-Dominican Republic, Central American Free Trade Agreement

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, how much time remains on my allocation?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me reserve 5 minutes of that as well.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I agree with the chair and the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. DORGAN. I, too, will do my best to help solve this problem. highlands conservation act

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Burns, who I think has done a wonderful job. I appreciate working with him and his staff. I think this is a good bill, produced under difficult circumstances. This bill is actually substantially below the current fiscal year's spending. The professional staff on the majority side--Virginia James, Leif Fonnesbeck, Ryan Thomas, Rebecca Benn, and Michele Gordon--have done a great job. Also, I thank Rachael Taylor on the minority side. And Bruce Evans and Peter Kiefhaber, the two clerks, both have done a lot of work to get us to this point. I want them to know how much we appreciate their work.

Mr. DORGAN. I thank my colleagues from New Jersey and I thank them for bringing this project to my attention. This does sound like a good project and as this bill moves to conference we will try and do what we can for it.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New York. I know the Senator has advocated for including New York in the account that funds the Northeast States Forestry Research Cooperative. This is a great program that provides significant research, economic development, and technology transfers related to our Nation's forests. I applaud the Senator for her continued advocacy and I want to assure her that I will work with the Chairman to consider additional funding as the Interior bill moves to conference with the House.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I object.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I object.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask for the regular order to consider amendment numbered 1025.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me describe the amendment. This amendment is very simple. It does not require an elaborate explanation. It provides additional resources, desperately needed resources to particularly the Indian Health Service. We have had a lot of discussion in the Senate in the last several years about the Indian Health Service. We have a responsibility for the health of Indians under trust responsibilities to the Federal Government. The Federal Government also has a responsibility for health care for Federal prisoners. It is interesting to note that the Federal Government spends almost twice as much per person for health care for Federal prisoners as it does to meet its trust responsibility per person for American Indians. If you travel to Indian reservations in this country, there is a bona fide crisis in health care on reservations and in other areas as well. Go to a reservation, and you will find a dentist practicing out of a trailer house, a small trailer, for 5,000 people. That is the dentistry. Go to a reservation and find half a dozen kids have committed suicide recently. You will discover there is virtually no mental health treatment available for those kids who end up taking their lives. There is such a desperate need to satisfy the obligation here for health care for American Indians. We are so short of funding, it is unbelievable. This amendment adds $1 billion to funding particularly for Indian Health Service but also to the BIA to provide the other services that are necessary on the reservations. I have indicated we have a bona fide crisis in health care, housing, and education on Indian reservations. Let me tell a story I have told previously about a young girl named Tamara Demaris. Tamara was a 3- year-old. I read about Tamra in a newspaper. I met with her and her granddad. She was 3 years old and placed in foster care by a person who was handling welfare cases and so on. The woman who was handling the case was handling 150 cases. So this was a case of a 3-year-old child who was put in a foster care situation. But the person did not check out the home to which she was assigning the 3-year-old child. She was working on 150 cases. So Tamara Demaris goes to this home. There is in this home a drunken brawl and party. The aftermath of that drunken brawl and party was this 3-year-old girl named Tamara had a broken nose, a broken arm, and her hair pulled out at the roots. This is a 3-year-old child. That was our responsibility. We did not provide sufficient funds for available resources to check the foster home in which they would put this little kid. The result is this little kid is scarred for life. I helped fix it on that particular reservation so that will not happen now. But why did it happen? They do not have the resources. One person handles 150 cases? That is unbelievable. A child gets injured, badly. It is going on all across this country on Indian reservations. Again, I have told my colleagues about a hearing I held in which a young woman who had just assumed the job on an Indian reservation--this was for child welfare--said on the floor of her office was a stack of folders with allegations of child abuse, including sexual abuse of children. She said they have not even been investigated. Those folders sit there without an investigation because they do not have the resources. She broke down at the hearing and began to sob, began to cry. She said: I have to beg and borrow to try to get a car to take a kid to a clinic or take a kid to see a psychologist or get mental health treatment. I don't have a vehicle, let alone the money to investigate the cases in the files on the floor. I could go on at great length about diabetes, about all of the issues faced on these reservations. My late colleague, Mickey Leland, with whom I traveled to many areas of the world, was a great humanitarian. He died when his plane crashed into a mountain in Ethiopia. He was a Congressman who worked with me and others on hunger issues. Mickey Leland came to the three affiliated tribes in North Dakota to hold a hearing. This is what we discovered that day in the testimony about diabetes. They do not have double, triple or quadruple the rate of diabetes of the rest of the population; theirs was 10, 12 times the rate of the rest of the population. It is a devastating situation on Indian reservations. It means people are losing their legs, losing their good health, losing their lives, sitting through dialysis in a crowded room. We have so many challenges to meet, and we are so far from meeting them with the necessary resources. These are the first Americans. I am talking about American Indians. They are the ones who greeted Christopher Columbus. These books that say Columbus discovered America--I am sorry, he was greeted by the American Indians, the first Americans. Yet we are not meeting our trust responsibility. I suggest now is the time simply to take the step and say, if we care about health care, if we care about funding for these needs on Indian reservations in this country, let's do it. We have Third World conditions in some of these areas. Sarah Swift talked about a grandmother who goes to bed, lies down on a cot, and freezes to death. She freezes to death in this country. This was a Native-American grandmother, an American-Indian grandmother who at 35 below zero in the middle of the winter was living in a house that had only plastic sheeting on the window. She froze to death. One would think, if you read in the paper, it was a Third World country. No, that wasn't. That was South Dakota. We have to do better. That is the purpose of my amendment. This amendment is paid for with $1 billion we take from the Federal Reserve surplus funding. Most of my colleagues--perhaps none of my colleagues know--in the Federal Reserve Board, there is an $11 billion--yes, I said it right--an $11 billion surplus fund. I call it the rainy-day fund. They should not have it, first of all. The Federal Reserve Board was created in the nineteen teens. We have a rainy-day fund so that if they run out of money, they have some money--$11 billion. How do you run out of money when you actually create money, for God's sake? The Federal Reserve Board does not need $11 billion. Senator Reid and I had the GAO do an investigation of this back in the 1990s. That was at a time when they had $4 billion to $5 billion. Now they have $11 billion squirreled away. I say take less than one- tenth of that and invest it in the health of America's first citizens, citizens who now all too often are living in Third World conditions. I will not describe at greater length the health challenges. I have done it before in speeches in the Senate. I want one person to tell me it does not matter that a young kid is lying in bed today on an Indian reservation thinking of committing suicide, and tomorrow or the next day they may find that young child hanging from the closet as they found Avis Littlewind hanging from her closet after missing 90 days of school. Her sister, by the way, committed suicide 2 years before. The mental health services on that reservation did not exist to help these kids. The question is, Do we want to help these kids? Do we want to meet our responsibility? Do we want to keep our promise and tell people this matters? It does to me. My hope is, with this amendment, my colleagues will finally decide to do what is right and do what is necessary to invest in the things in which we need to invest to say to the Native Americans: Your health matters, too. Your education matters, too. Housing matters for you as well. That is our obligation. I recognize I have to make a motion to waive the applicable sections of the Budget Act. The reason is because people with very small glasses and very narrow breadth of thought have decided that $11 billion sitting in a squirreled-away bank account as a rainy-day fund for the Federal Reserve Board, a board full of people wearing gray suits, living in a concrete building, squirreling away $11 billion--there are some people with these tiny glasses who decided this $1 billion cannot be used for this because it would violate the Budget Act. I might observe, however, that on previous occasions in the Senate other Members of the Senate have found a way to use a portion of this in the normal process. So I suggest perhaps there is not a greater need than doing what we should do for the children I have just described and for those who are suffering, those who are living in poverty, those who through no fault of their own are having a tough time. This would be a great way to reach out our hand and say to them: You are not alone. Let us help you up and out of this situation. Let us help improve your lives. When my colleague rises, I am sure in aggressive support of my amendment, I will ask for a proper waiver of the Congressional Budget Act. I ask unanimous consent Senators Bingaman and Johnson be added as cosponsors of my amendment.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is the next order of business would be my amendment numbered 1059, and there is 10 minutes per side?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask to claim as much time as I may consume from the 10 minutes. Perhaps we can move through this rather quickly. This relates to an issue I have already spoken to the Senate about on two occasions. It relates to a soldier named Carlos Lazo. Carlos Lazo escaped Cuba on a raft. He tried to escape once and was caught and put in prison in Cuba. The second time he escaped on a raft, he got to this country. His wife and children were not able to get out of Cuba. After he got to this country, he subsequently joined the National Guard, and went to Iraq on behalf of this country to fight in Iraq. Sergeant Lazo received the Bronze Star for from his country for courage and bravery in fighting in Iraq. He is now back in the U.S. from his service in Iraq. He has a son who has been quite ill in Cuba, so he wanted to go see his sick son in Cuba. His Government, the U.S. Government, the Government that he served by going to fight for freedom in Iraq, said: No, you are not free to travel to Cuba to see your son. Why is that the case? Because the President of the United States has created a new regulation, and the regulation says you can only travel to Cuba once every 3 years. So this soldier, the soldier that wins the Bronze Star fighting for this country in Iraq, is told he can't go to see his sick son because he does not have the freedom to do that. He visited me and asked me about it. I called Condoleezza Rice. She didn't call back, Bob Zoellick her deputy did. I called the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary Snow. He did not call back. One of his underlings did. I called Karl Rove at the White House. He called back, and later the Chief of Staff's office called me and said that relative to Karl Rove's call, Bob Zoellick in the State Department would handle it. And I have not heard back from him. We talked once. He said he would call back, and I have not had the call. The question is this, Is there a humanitarian relief exception to the travel ban for someone with a sick kid in Cuba, for a soldier to go see his sick kid? The answer, according to the head of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury, which runs this is, no, there is no humanitarian relief. He said: We get calls from people who say my mother is going to die in a few days, and we can't give them the opportunity to go to Cuba to see them if they have traveled once before in the 3-year period. He said: I understand what you are saying, Mr. Senator, but we turn them all down because we must. I said: But you created the regulation. What on Earth are you thinking about? This soldier's story--and I have told the story about the woman that distributed free Bibles in Cuba, who gets fined by her Government, the U.S. Government, for doing it--this soldier's story begs out and screams for attention by this Congress. So I have offered an amendment that will provide for humanitarian circumstances under which Americans can travel to Cuba to visit or care for a member of the person's family who is seriously ill, injured, or dying; make funeral or burial arrangements for a member of the individual's family. I am just wondering who in this Chamber is going to stand up for this soldier and this soldier's right. It is not just him, it is the others who are applying who say their mother or father or child is dying and now they are now being turned down by the Federal Government because there is no humanitarian exception. This is unforgivable. There ought to be a humanitarian exception. I hope my colleagues will stand up for this soldier's rights. He fought for freedom in Iraq and now doesn't have the freedom to see his sick son? What can we be thinking about? Why do I need to go further? I have spoken about this issue previously, but Sergeant Lazo obviously comes to us because he has a selfish interest. It is in seeing his sick son. That is a pretty good selfish interest as far as I am concerned. Others have come to me. Joan Slote, who is in her midseventies, took a bicycle trip in Cuba and got fined by her Government. It is unbelievable what is going on. I come to the Senate today only because I am persuaded from last week's visit with Sergeant Lazo that this ought to stop. This Congress ought to have the courage to stand up and do what is right. If we don't have the courage to do this, we don't have the courage to object to anything the White House does. This came from the White House. This is all about politics. This rule that says Americans visit their family in Cuba only once in three years is all about Florida politics. Everybody in this Chamber knows it. This amendment does not overturn the travel rule with Cuba. I happen to think people ought to be able to travel to Cuba. I know Fidel Castro pokes his finger in America's eye. The quicker we get rid of that Government, the better. But the fact is, we will do that, it seems to me, by allowing trade and allowing travel, just as we do with Communist China and Communist Vietnam. But that is not the way this country deals with Cuba because of Florida politics. We have decided that Sergeant Lazo shall not be allowed to go see his sick child. The question is, Will the Senate, will the men and women in the Senate, have the courage and the good sense to cast the right vote and say to Sergeant Lazo and others, If you have a member of your family who is seriously ill, injured, or dying, you have a right to go see them? We will give you the license to do that. We have had vote after vote on these issues. The question today is will we have enough Senators to decide to use a little common sense? If you care about families--a lot of people are talking about profamily these days--if you care about family, if you are profamily, cast the right vote. Cast the right vote on this amendment. My understanding is the Senator from Montana will have some time, as well. I reserve my remaining 3 minutes 50 seconds.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator uses the acronym CBO; some call it the Confused Budget Office. Is that the Congressional Budget Office or, on this amendment, the Confused Budget Office?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable sections of the act for the purpose of the pending amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DORGAN. Well, Mr. President, if we are going to use the other time for someone who opposes the amendment, I would like to use my several minutes to close the debate on this amendment. So I ask unanimous consent to reserve my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it will be unbelievable to me if the Senate buys this line that somehow waiving the rules creates chaos in the Senate. That must be confusing appealing the ruling of the Chair with waiving the rules. Waiving the rules does not create any chaos. It simply says in this circumstance, with this set of facts, this Senate says that soldier, who fought in Iraq and won a Bronze Star, ought to have the right to see his sick kid. If this Senate cannot find that common sense, then there is something wrong, something dreadfully wrong. So we are told: Well, why don't you have the kids come to the United States. Did you forget the word ``sick''? We have a sick kid here, among other things. But this is not about common sense; it is about politics. It is about Florida politics. That is why a new regulation went into effect that replaced the old one. And, by the way, the old regulation did have a humanitarian exception. It did have a circumstance where this soldier would have been able to go to Cuba to see his sick son. But when the President made it a new rule, a new regulation--only one visit every 3 years--they eliminated all exemptions. It does not matter. Your mother is dying on Saturday? Tough luck. A real ``profamily'' stand, as far as I am concerned. It seems to me there ought to be a humanitarian exception. Look, if I were doing what I wanted here, I would lift the travel limitations completely. I am not doing that. I am providing a humanitarian exemption to say that if a member of your immediate family is seriously ill, injured, or dying, you ought to be able to get a license to go see them 90 miles off the coast of Florida. So if you want to come to the floor and decide we should not do this, then, please, if you don't mind, call Sergeant Lazo tonight--I will give you his telephone number--and tell him why you don't think he has the freedom to see his sick kid. A guy who put on the uniform and traveled halfway around the world to fight for this country does not have the freedom to go see his sick child. There is something fundamentally bankrupt with that thought process. If this Senate does not have the backbone to stand up to the White House on this--and, yes, it is the White House; that is who formed the rule, a rule with no exemption at all, no humanitarian exemption--if we do not have the backbone to stand up on this, I probably will not come with another story like this, because if you cannot do it for this soldier, you cannot do it for anybody. But it ought not just be this soldier, it ought to be anybody who has a sick or a dying relative who ought to have the right to go see them 90 miles off the coast of Florida. This is not rocket science. For all the times that people stand up and talk about being compassionate, caring about the individual, talking about freedom, for all of those occasions they talk about being profamily, let's see it. Let's see it manifested on this vote, at this time. Do not vote against this and say: Oh, it had something to do with suspension, it had something to do with this, that, or the other thing. This is simple. You cannot misunderstand this vote: Do you believe this guy ought to have the right to see his sick kid or not? Do you believe the American people ought to have the right to travel in circumstances where one of their relatives is sick, injured, or dying? If you do not, then vote against my amendment. But if you believe in some common sense here, then, please, support this amendment. Send the right message. This does not eliminate the travel ban. It does provide the humanitarian exemption that used to always exist and should exist again. I yield the floor.