Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record as if read.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 497, submitted earlier today.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3253, introduced earlier today.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record as if read.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me ask, if I might, I know Senator Murray and Senator Sessions are here. I do not know in what order they would want to go, and I believe about 10 minutes each or so. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Sessions be recognized, followed by Senator Murray, and I be recognized following the presentation of Senator Murray.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 20 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my colleague from the State of Washington just talked about Wall Street reform. It is such an important subject. It is the case that all of us who have lived through these last several years will understand when the history books record these years that we have lived and existed and struggled through a period that is the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Mr. President, 15 million to 17 million people wake in the morning, now as I speak, jobless, get dressed, and go out to look for a job. Most do not find it. It has been a tough time. Yet those who read the newspaper and understand the difficulty of those who are losing homes, losing jobs, losing hope, also read the business pages and see that one of the heads of the largest investment banks last year was paid $25 million in salary. One of the folks who was one of the largest income earners in this country earned $3 billion running a hedge fund. That is $3 billion, by the way. That is almost $10 million a day. So they see record profits from the biggest financial interests in this country--many of whom pursued policies that steered us right into the ditch. They wonder what is the deal here. The people at the top, the ones who caused most of the problem--the ones many of which would have gone broke had the Federal Government not come in with some funding to try to provide some stability--they are now at record profits, paying record bonuses. The folks at the bottom are out struggling to find a job because they have been laid off. So it always comes back to something I have described often and it seems to never change and it is even more aggressive now. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, in the 1930s, had a verse in one of their songs: ``The little bee sucks the blossom, but the big bee gets the honey.'' The little guy picks the cotton, but the big guy gets the money. So it is and so has it always been but even more aggressive now. The same newspaper talks about the trouble given the workers of this country and the families of this country by the big financial institutions having steered this country into the deepest recession since the Great Depression; even as in the same newspaper they read about the largess, the record profits and record bonuses. So the question is, What do we do about that? We are going to bring a financial reform bill, a Wall Street reform bill, to the floor of the Senate. I wish to talk a bit about that and say we need to review, just for a moment, the unbelievable cesspool of greed that existed--not everywhere but in some places--and at levels that steered this country into very dangerous territory. Yes, new things, new instruments we had never heard of before: credit default swaps, naked credit default swaps. Some might say: What is a credit default swap? And, for God's sake, what is a naked credit default swap? How do you get a credit default swap naked? Well, let me take you not just to default swaps, let me take you back about a year and a half ago to a time when the futures market in oil was like a Roman candle and went up to $147 a barrel--$147 for a barrel of oil in day trading--just like a Roman candle and then went back down. That market was broken. A bunch of speculators--they did not want to buy any oil. They have never hauled around a can or a case or a barrel of oil. They just wanted to speculate on the futures market. So they broke that market, ran it way up. Well, that is one symptom of financial systems that are broken and do not work. Credit default swaps. We have been hearing recently about the SEC decision to file a criminal complaint against a large investment bank, Goldman Sachs. What we have discovered with the interworkings of this scheme that was created is, I think, based on my knowledge of it, that the development of--excuse me, it was a civil case by the SEC, not a criminal case, and that is an important distinction, but, nonetheless, it is a civil complaint against Goldman Sachs. My understanding is, there was created some billions of dollars of naked credit default swaps that had no insurable interest in anything of value. These were people who were betting on what might happen to the price of bonds. Bonds selected by a person whom I have spoken about on the floor of the Senate previously over the last couple years, a man named John Paulson, who, in 2007, was the highest income earner on Wall Street--he earned $3.6 billion. That is $300 million a month or $10 million a day. How would you like to come home and your spouse says: How are you doing? How are we doing? And he says: Well, we are doing pretty good, $10 million every day. So my understanding of the SEC complaint is they set up a system where Mr. Paulson could short what I believe were naked credit default swaps and others took the long position and you had rating agencies rating these things apparently with high ratings, until they discovered what they truly were and then the ratings collapsed. Mr. Paulson made a bunch of money and everybody else got duped out of their money. Well, that is a short description and probably not even a very good description, but it is close enough to understand what has been going on in this country: betting--not investing--betting on credit default swaps, naked swaps that have no insurable interest in anything, no value on either side. You just put together a contract and say: I am going to bet you this issue happens, this stock goes up, this bond goes down. Let's have a wager. Well, you do not have to own anything. Let's just have a bet. That is not an investment; that is a flatout wager. We have places where you should do that. If you want to do that, you can go to Las Vegas, and they say what goes on there stays there. Who knows. You can go to Atlantic City. We have places where you can do that. But those places are not places where you do activities that are equivalent to what we now see having been done in the middle of some of the investment banks and financial institutions in this country. I have spoken many times on the floor about this, and I am going to repeat some things I have said just because, as I talk about what needs to be done in a couple cases on this reform bill, we need to understand what happened and how unbelievably ignorant it was. The subprime loan scandal--everybody was involved in that. When I say ``everybody,'' I am talking about all the biggest financial institutions because they were securitizing mortgages and selling them upstream to hedge funds, investment banks, and you name it--all making huge bonus profits, all kinds of fees, and starting with the broker who could place big mortgages for people who could not afford it; and right on up the line, they were all making big money. So here is an advertisement we all listened to in the last decade during this unbelievable carnival of greed. This was the biggest mortgage company in our country, the biggest mortgage bank in America-- now bankrupt, of course, now gone--although the head of this company left with a couple hundred million dollars, I am told. So he got out pretty well-heeled, now under investigation. But here was their ad on television and radio. It says: Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you have late mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders? Call us. We want to lend you money. Unbelievable. The biggest mortgage bank in the country says: Are you a bad credit risk? Hey, call us. We have money for you. Zoom Credit, another mortgage company. Here is their advertisement: Credit approval is just seconds away. Get on the fast track. With the speed of light, Zoom Credit will preapprove you for a car loan, a home loan, a credit card. Even if your credit is in the tank, Zoom Credit is like money in the bank. Zoom Credit specializes in credit repair and debt consolidation too. Bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit--who cares? Come to us. We want to give you a loan. Ignorant? Sounds like it to me. Greedy? It appears to me it is. Millennia Mortgage: 12 months with no mortgage payment. That is right. We will give you the money to make your first 12 payments if you call in the next 7 days. We pay it for you. Our loan program may reduce your current monthly payment by 50 percent, allow you no payments for the first 12 months. Let us give you a loan. You do not have to make any payments for a year. Sound strange? It does to me. How about the mortgages that say: Do you know what, you don't want to pay any principle? No problem. You don't want to pay any interest? No problem. You pay nothing--no interest, no principle. And, by the way, if you don't want us to check on your income--that is called a no-documentation loan--we will give you a no-doc loan with no interest payments and no principle payments. We will put it all on the back side. Do you know what you should do? Go ahead and do that because you can flip that house. If you can't make the payments a couple years later, when we are going to reset your interest rate at 12 percent--or whatever ridiculous amount they were going to do--you can sell that house and make the money because the price of that house is always going to go up. So it went all across this country, right at the bottom, with teaser rates. The result was, a whole lot of folks were talked into mortgages they could not afford. The loan folks, the brokers, who were putting out these mortgages, were making a lot of money. They were securitizing them, selling them up. There were fees being paid to everyone, and everybody was making a lot of money--very fat and happy. By the way, it has not changed. If you go to the Internet, you can find on the Internet, today, EasyLoanForYou: Get the loan you seek. Fast. Hassle-free. Our lenders will preapprove your loan regardless of your credit score or history. Go to the Internet. See if it has stopped. Here is an Internet solicitation: Bad Credit Personal Loans. How about that? Is that unbelievable? I wonder what college they teach this in. You start a company called Bad Credit Personal Loans. It says: Previous bankruptcy? No credit? Previous bad credit? Recent job loss? Recent divorce? Need a larger loan amount? Well, click here now. For gosh sake, take advantage of what we are offering. If you are a bad person, we want to give you money. Speedy Bad Credit Loans--same thing. Bad credit? No problem. No credit? No problem. Bankruptcy? No problem. Come to us. Well, is it a surprise that a lot of greedy people and a lot of the biggest institutions in this country whose names you recognize instantly loaded up on this nonsense? They loaded up--loaded to the gills. Why? Because they were all making massive amounts of money by buying and selling and trading these securities. Yes, not just the securities, not just securitization of loans but credit default swaps and CDOs and you name it. It was a carnival and a field day. So that has all happened in the last 10 years--and even much worse. But let me end it there to say, we are now talking about: What do we do about all this? This kind of behavior steered the country right into the ditch. We lost $15 trillion when the economy hit rock bottom. Something like $12 trillion has been lent, spent or pledged by the Federal Government to prop up private companies--many of them that were doing exactly as I have just described. This has been a very difficult time. So the question now is, What do we do about this? Do we just decide, do you know what, it is OK? We are not going to do anything about this? I just mentioned naked credit default swaps. I do not know the number in this country, but in England they estimate, of their credit default swaps, 80 percent of them are so-called naked; that is, they have no insurable interest on any side of the transaction. It is simply making a wager. When you have banks that make wagers just as if they are using a roulette wheel or a blackjack table or a craps table, they just as well ought to put that in the lobby, except my feeling is, it is fundamentally antithetical to everything we know about sound, thoughtful finance in this country to have allowed this to have happened--we did allow it--and now to continue to allow it to happen. So I wish to take you back 11 years to the floor of the Senate because I have been through this before in something called financial modernization. It was 11 years ago now, actually: financial modernization. This is not the first time we have had substantial legislation on the floor of the Senate to address the issue of finances and the financial system. We had something called financial modernization on the floor of the Senate, and it was the piece of legislation--big piece of legislation--that pooled everything together. It said you can create one, big, huge holding company and bring everything in together--the investment banks, the commercial banks, FDIC-insured banks, the securities trading--bring them all together as one, big, happy family, one big pyramid. It will be just fine because it will make us more competitive with the European financial institutions, and it is going to be great. I said I think that is nuts. What are we doing? I have some quotes from 1999 of things I said on the floor of this Senate. On November 4, I said: Fusing together the idea of banking, which requires not just safety and soundness to be successful but the perception of safety and soundness, with other inherently risky speculative activity is, in my judgment, unwise. I said: We will, in 10 years time, look back and say: We should not have done that--repeal Glass-Steagall--because we forgot the lessons of the past. I said during debate in 1999: This bill will in my judgment raise the likelihood of future massive taxpayer bailouts. It will fuel the consolidation and mergers in the banking and financial services industry at the expense of customers, farm businesses, and others. I said: We have another doctrine at the Federal Reserve Board. It is called too big to fail. Remember that term, too big to fail. They cannot be allowed to fail because the consequence on the economy is catastrophic and therefore these banks are too big to fail. That is no-fault capitalism; too big to fail. Does anybody care about that? Does the Fed, the Federal Reserve Board? Apparently not. That is what I said 11 years ago on the floor of the Senate. I said: I say to the people who own banks, if you want to gamble, go to Las Vegas. If you want to trade in derivatives, God bless you. Do it with your own money. Do not do it through the deposits that are guaranteed by the American people with deposit insurance. I said during that debate: I will bet one day somebody is going to look back and they are going to say: How on Earth could we have thought it made sense to allow the banking industry to concentrate, through merger and acquisition, to become bigger and bigger and bigger; far more firms in the category of too big to fail? How did we think that was going to help our country? Those are quotes I made 11 years ago on the floor of this Senate. I didn't know then that within a decade, within 10 years, we would see huge taxpayer bailouts, but I thought this was fundamentally unsound public policy. I was one of only eight Senators to vote no. The whole town stampeded. In fact, as the Presiding Officer knows, this Financial Modernization Act was Gramm-Leach-Bliley, three Republicans, but this was firmly embraced by the Clinton administration and by the then- Secretary of the Treasury and others. It was bipartisan: We have to do this, have to compete with the rest of the world, and it was, Katey, bar the door. We are going to allow these big companies to get bigger, and it is going to be just great for the country. It wasn't so great for the country. What I wish to show is what happened as a result of that piece of legislation. This graph shows from 1999 forward the growth of total assets in the largest financial institutions. Look at this graph: Bigger and bigger. Not just a bit bigger; way, way, way up, the growth in assets of those six largest financial institutions. This chart shows the four banks, total deposits in trillions of dollars, and we see what has happened there: liabilities in the six largest institutions, deposits in the four largest banking institutions. This chart shows the aggregate assets of the top six commercial and investment banks and what has happened in 10 years. It doesn't take a genius and it doesn't take somebody with higher mathematics or having taken an advanced course in statistics to understand what this picture shows. We have seen a dramatic amount of concentration--some of it, by the way, aided and abetted by the Federal Government because as we ran into this problem, this very deep recession--the deepest since the Great Depression--our government arranged the marriages of some of the biggest companies, and so the big became much bigger. I have said all of that simply to say: That is where we have been, and now the question is, Where are we going? What kind of legislation are we going to take up on the floor of the Senate? Already there has been a big dust-up. The minority leader came to the floor of the Senate and said what was done in the Banking Committee will be a big bailout of the banks. Of course, that isn't the case at all. This is a fact- free zone with respect at least to some debates. I don't think there is anybody in this Chamber who believes we don't have a responsibility now to address these issues, and address them in the right way. Let me be quick to say a couple of things. No. 1, there are some awfully good financial institutions in this country run by some good people who have done a good job, and we need them. You can't have production without the ability to finance production. We need commercial banks. We need all of the other financial industries and institutions, but we need to make sure the excesses and the greed and the unbelievable things that were done by some in the last decade cannot be repeated, cannot happen again. The piece of legislation that is going to come to the floor of the Senate from the Senate Banking Committee is a good piece of legislation. I commend Senator Dodd. I think he has done an excellent job. By the way, those who have said in the Senate that somehow this is just partisan, they didn't reach out to others; that is not the case, and everybody knows it. Chris Dodd reached out to Republicans week after week and month after month to try to get some cooperation. Finally, they just walked away and they said: We are all going to vote no, no matter what. So it is not the case that this was designed to be some sort of partisan bill. I still hope there will be Republicans and Democrats who together understand what needs to be done to fix the problems that exist in our financial services industry. In addition to Senator Dodd bringing a bill from the Banking Committee, let me say Senator Blanche Lincoln, under her leadership in the Agriculture Committee, has brought a piece of legislation to the Senate floor on derivatives that I think is a good piece of legislation that needs to be a part of the banking reform bill. What I wish to talk about ever so briefly is two other things. There are a number of people who have bills that I am going to be supportive of that I think have great merit that are necessary. I think they are necessary to fix the real problems that exist. The issue of repairing what was done to Glass-Steagall, Senator Cantwell, Senator McCain have a bill on that. There are others who have a bill on proprietary trading, and there are others as well. But I wish to talk about two things very briefly. No. 1, I am preparing an amendment that deals with what are called naked credit default swaps. I don't think that is investing. That is simply betting. If there is no insurable interest on either side of credit default swaps, that is not investing. I think there ought to be a requirement that there be an insurable interest on at least one side in order for it to be a legitimate function because it seems to me if we don't ban naked credit default swaps, we will have missed the opportunity to do something that is necessary to fix part of what happened in the last decade, No. 1. No. 2 is the issue of too big to fail. It has not been described, it seems to me, by either the Banking Committee or by amendments that have been suggested--it has not been described that we should take seriously too big to fail by deciding if you are too big to fail, you are too big. This country has, on occasion--when we have a systemic risk that is unacceptable, when we have a moral imperative to do something about something such as this, this country has decided we will break Standard Oil into 23 parts; we will break up AT&T--and, by the way, the 23 parts turned out to be much more valuable in their sum than the value of the whole. But having said all that, I believe there needs to be an amendment-- and I am preparing an amendment--that deals with the issue of too big to fail. Very simply it says if the Financial Stability Oversight Council develops an approach that says, all right, this is an institution that is just too big to fail and the moral hazard for our country and the systemic risk for our country is too great and therefore we judge it too big to fail, I believe what ought to happen over a period of time--perhaps 5 years--is a symptomatic divestiture sufficient so that the institution remains an institution that is not then too big to fail. I believe that ought to be something that we consider as we develop our approach to these financial reform measures. I don't think big is always bad, and I don't think small is always beautiful. I want us to be big enough to compete. I want us to have the resources to be able to make big investments in big projects. I understand all of that, and I can point to some terrific financial companies in this country run by first-rate executives. So understand what I am talking about are the abuses and the unbelievable cesspool of greed we have seen in a decade from some institutions that were big enough and strong enough to run this country into very serious trouble. That is why I think we have a responsibility at this point to address all of those issues that are in front of us as we deal with banking reform. I know this is going to be a long and a difficult task, but one of my hopes would be that Republicans and Democrats can all agree on one thing: What we have experienced in the last decade cannot be allowed to continue. It cannot be allowed to continue. No one, I believe, would want our financial institutions to continue to bet rather than invest, to continue to invest in naked credit default swaps where there is no insurable interest. Nobody, I would hope, would believe that represents the kind of productive financing that we need to produce in this country again. I want the financing to be available from good, strong financial institutions to good, strong companies that need to expand to produce American goods that say ``Made in America'' again. That is what I want for our country. That kind of economic health can only come if you have a strong system of financial institutions that are engaged in the things that originally made this a great country, not trading naked credit default swaps but making good investments in the productive sector of this country. I believe we can do that again, and I believe we will. I don't approach this banking reform debate with trepidation. I think ultimately cooler heads will prevail and all of us will understand the need, and when we meet that need, this country will be much better off. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider en bloc Calendar Nos. 790, 791, 792, and 793; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that no further motions be in order; that any statements related to the nominations be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I know we have a vote scheduled at 12 noon on a nomination. I know that is but 1 of 100 nominations that are on the calendar awaiting action by the Senate. It is probably not very surprising that people do not think much of this place when we cannot get nominations through, we cannot get business done. But people should understand the reason there are 100 nominations waiting on this calendar is because the minority has decided to say no to everything, just to dig in their heels and decide they are not going to cooperate on anything. This afternoon I will again come to the floor and ask unanimous consent on the nomination of GEN Michael Walsh. I just wanted Senator Vitter from Louisiana to be aware that I intend to do that again. Let me say I am going to be back this afternoon to talk about the START treaty and also to talk about financial reform and a couple of issues that are important to me, particularly the issue of too big to fail and the issue of, what I call just gambling on naked credit default swaps. I will talk about both of those this afternoon. But when I come this afternoon, I am going to ask unanimous consent on the nomination or the promotion of General Walsh. Let me again describe why this is important. General Walsh is a decorated American soldier, served 30 years in the U.S. Army. He now commands a division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has served in wartime. He has served in Iraq. Six months ago, on a bipartisan vote, unanimous vote, the Armed Services Committee decided to promote this general to major general, give this one-star general a second star. And 6 months later, this general has not been promoted. This person with a distinguished Army career has not received his promotion. His promotion has been derailed by one Member of the Senate. That Member has the right to object, and so he has objected to the promotion for this general. My point has been that the objection to promoting a general with a distinguished wartime record and a distinguished record for 30 years is an objection based on a demand from one Member of the Senate that the Corps of Engineers do something that the Corps of Engineers has already told the Senator it does not have legal authority or legal ability to do. As I have indicated on two other occasions, I do not come to the floor to criticise another Member by name. I have never done that before by name. But I did tell Senator Vitter from Louisiana that I intended to do that. As a matter of courtesy, I wanted him to know. I think it is wrong. I think it is a horribly bad decision for him to decide that he is going to hold up the promotion of a general who served this country for 30 years because he is demanding certain things for New Orleans and Louisiana the Corps of Engineers says it cannot do and does not have the legal authority to do. Let me say as the chairman of the subcommittee that funds all of the water issues, and there are plenty of water issues in Louisiana--I know because I have been involved in it--we have sent billions and billions and billions of dollars of the American taxpayers' money to New Orleans and Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I am pleased we have done that because they were hit with an unprecedented natural disaster called Hurricane Katrina. So I was one of those who helped, who helped do some of the lifting to get the money to New Orleans and Louisiana. But our colleague indicated the other day that he is unhappy with the U.S. Government's response down in Louisiana. Well, I would simply say to the folks in New Orleans and Louisiana: You know what life would be like were this money and were the Corps not down there with the billions of dollars that have now been spent. I think it is important to understand the value of that cooperation and the value of that partnership. I understand there are some things about which people disagree. One of the issues raised by my colleague is an issue of the pumping stations down there. There is a disagreement about how they should proceed. He is demanding they proceed with a study in the manner that he determines it should proceed. My point is, the Appropriations Committee has already voted against that and said: We will not do it. No. 1, it costs more; and, No. 2, it provides less flood protection. So we are not going to do that. To demand that be done, which the Corps does not have the authority to do at this point, and as leverage for that demand to hold up for 6 months the promotion of a distinguished soldier who has served in wartime, I think, is unbelievable. So this afternoon I will come again and ask unanimous consent once again that this soldier get the promotion that he is owed and deserves. Senator John McCain, Senator Carl Levin, the ranking member and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, both support this promotion. The entire Armed Services Committee voted for it unanimously, and yet 6 months later this soldier is not promoted. I can understand people using a lot of leverage around here for various things. I have used some leverage myself on certain things. But I do not understand someone using the career of a soldier to make demands that cannot possibly be met. If he continues to do that for 6 or 16 months, the situation will be the same as it is now because the Corps of Engineers cannot do what the Senator from Louisiana is demanding they do. It is simply, in my judgment, using this soldier's career as a pawn. That is terribly unfair to any uniformed soldier who serves this country, especially a soldier who has gone to war for this country. So this is fair notice that I will ask unanimous consent. I assume it will be somewhere in the 4 or 5 o'clock range today. My expectation is that the Senator from Louisiana will be on the Senate floor at that point. My hope is he would not object. Finally, at long last, my hope is that he will allow the Senate to do the right thing and give this soldier's career and this soldier's promotion the due that it is owed by this Senate. As I said, I am going to come back later today. I want to talk at some length about the START treaty, which I think is very important. I was in Moscow, Russia, within the last week and a half taking a look at global threat reduction initiatives that we are working on with the Russians. It is very important that this START treaty be ratified by the Senate. I note that there are some of my colleagues saying: The only way we will ratify the START treaty, the only way we would support that and not block that would be if we get dramatic new monies for new nuclear weapons or something of the sort. So I am going to talk about that today. I also am going to talk about the financial reform bill, which is now staring us in the face, and about, as I mentioned, the issue of something that sounds like a foreign language, but it is not: naked credit default swaps. That is not a foreign language; that is flatout gambling that has been done by the largest financial firms in the country that steered America right into the ditch. It is very important they be dealt with, and dealt with the right way in financial reform. Also, I am going to talk about the issue of too big to fail. In my judgment, if you are determined to be too big to fail, then, in my judgment, you are too big. I believe divestiture is an important part of the solution to that. I will talk about that more this afternoon. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am tempted to ask the minority leader, while he is on the floor, whether he might help us proceed to overcome the objections of Senator Vitter and achieve the promotion that was offered 6 months ago but since has been blocked for a distinguished soldier. I guess I will withhold on that and wait for another moment. But let me indicate quickly--and I will be happy to respond to a question then--the Outfall Canals/Pump to the river, which my colleague is so significantly criticizing the Corps of Engineers for--let me read specifically: The Corps will conduct a supplementary risk reduction analysis as part of the detailed engineering feasibility study, including the NEPA compliance documentation, for options 2 and 2a, if Congress appropriates funds for the study. Congress has actually voted on these funds through the Appropriations Committee and said: No, we would not do that. So my colleague knows that holding up the promotion of a soldier is not going to achieve his ends. The Appropriations Committee has already voted. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Virginia for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Virginia, there are no reasons with respect to this person's military service. I have not heard any reasons from the Senator from Louisiana. He is not holding up his promotion because he thinks the man is unfit or didn't earn the promotion; he is holding up the promotion because he says he is demanding other things from the Corps of Engineers. Despite my irritation, let me say I don't dislike my colleague from Louisiana. I intensely dislike what he is doing, and I expect most informed soldiers in this country should dislike what he is doing because I believe it puts a soldier in the position of being a pawn as between the demands of a U.S. Senator and some agency. I will go through at some point--the Senator, I know, is leaving this afternoon, and that is why I, as a matter of courtesy, told him when I would come to the floor. But at some point later when others aren't waiting, I will go through and describe the issues, responses to the issues, because the rest of the story is much more compelling than the half story given to us by the Senator from Louisiana. The Ouachita River levees, the authorization for that Ouachita River and tributaries projects specifies that levee work is a nonfederal responsibility. Congress has not enacted a general provisional law that would supplant this nonfederal responsibility and allow the corps to correct levee damages not associated with flood events. As much as a person--as someone here--doesn't like that answer, that is the answer. Again, my colleague is saying--if you strip away all the bark, my colleague is saying: I demand we spend more money on something that will give us less flood control. Well, look, the Senate Appropriations Committee has been confronted with that, and the Senate Appropriations Committee said: No way, we are not going to do it. One final point, and then I will come back at some later point and the Senator from Louisiana will respond and I will respond to him and, hopefully, someday he will decide there are other ways for him to achieve the means to an end rather than use the promotion of this dedicated soldier as a pawn in this effort he is making. This Congress has appropriated $14 billion to help the people of New Orleans and Louisiana. How do I know that? Because I chair the appropriations subcommittee that funds these things. I chair that subcommittee. I have been willing and anxious to help the people of Louisiana and New Orleans. I have been willing to do that because I saw what they were hit with: an unbelievable tragedy. I saw it. But I think it is pretty Byzantine to come to the floor and hear the relentless criticism of the Corps of Engineers that has stood with the people of Louisiana and New Orleans, and even today is helping rebuild with that $14 billion. I think there is a time when you wear out the welcome of certainly this Senator and others who have been so quick and so anxious to help, and you wear out the welcome of agencies such as the Corps of Engineers when you suggest somehow that they are a bunch of slothful bureaucrats who can't do anything right. I have seen people wear out their welcome, and I tell my colleagues this: This exercise in using this soldier as a pawn in this little game, trying to misread the law and the authorities of the Corps of Engineers to demand that they do what they can't do in order to satisfy one Senator, it is the wrong way to do business in this Senate. I have not convinced my colleague to release his hold and allow, after 6 months, this soldier's career to move forward. I know this is just one. There are 100 of them on the calendar. This is one, but it is one that is unusual. It is one that is unusual because one soldier's career that has been recommended for promotion by Republicans and Democrats alike is being held up by only one person. I have not heard one other person come to this Chamber and say: I think it is a good idea to use a soldier's promotion as a pawn to try to get what I want. There is not one other person who has done that, and I don't think there is another Senator who would do it. If there is, let's hear from them. I will come back later. I know my colleague wishes to speak. Had he wanted me to yield, I certainly would have yielded, even though he would not yield to me. There are certain things we shouldn't do around here. Again, I don't dislike him, but I certainly dislike what he is doing because I think it is so fundamentally wrong and undermines the kinds of circumstances in which we have always evaluated the merit of promotions for soldiers who have served this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me just quickly say I intend to work with everybody in this Chamber who comes here to work in good faith to solve problems. But in my judgment, it is an unbelievable mistake to use the promotion of soldiers as a pawn in these circumstances. I would say that as chairman of the subcommittee that funds all of these projects and all of these issues, I have been pleased to send all of that money--$14 billion--down to Louisiana. But as I said, my friend is fast wearing out his welcome. I think my friend might want to learn the words ``thank you,'' thank you to this Chamber, thanks to the rest of the American people who said to some people who were hit with an unbelievable tragedy: You are not alone. You are not alone. This country cares about you and is going to invest in your future. But I also think thank you to the Corps of Engineers. It is quite clear they have probably made some mistakes in all of our States. It is also clear that it would be a pretty difficult circumstance for a State or for people in any State to fight these battles without the experience and the knowledge and the capability of the Corps of Engineers. I just think from time to time constructive criticism is in order. I think also from time to time a thank-you is in order. I also think in every case--in each and every case, the truth is in order. I will go through and in every single circumstance describe where the Senator from Louisiana has said the Corps of Engineers has the authority and has the funding, and I will show him that he is dead wrong, and I think he knows it. But if this impasse continues, my colleague, Senator Reid, the majority leader, does have the capability to take 2 days of the Senate's time to file a cloture motion, and my expectation would be that the vote would be 99 to 1 because I don't know of one other Member of the Senate who wants to hold up the promotion of soldiers in order to meet demands that a specific Federal agency cannot possibly meet. I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have come to speak about the New START Treaty--Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty--with the Russians. I wish to talk about that in some detail. A week ago, I and other colleagues were in Russia at a site near Moscow looking at a facility that we in the United States are funding to try to make this a safer world, to safeguard nuclear materials and nuclear warheads in the Soviet Union. I wish to talk a bit about this program as it relates to this new START Treaty. Some of my colleagues have expressed concern and are determined that they are not necessarily supportive of the START arms reduction treaty unless other things are done. I wish to talk about that just a bit. First, I will describe the unbelievable succession of something we have been doing called the Nunn-Lugar program, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. We talk about what doesn't work and what fails, but we don't talk so much about what does work. I will do that for a moment. I ask unanimous consent to show three things I have had in my desk drawer.

Mr. DORGAN. This is a wing strut from a backfire bomber, a Soviet backfire bomber. This is a bomber that would have carried nuclear weapons that would threaten this country as a potential adversary. This is from this airplane. As you can see, this airplane, this backfire bomber, doesn't exist anymore. We didn't shoot it down. I have the wing strut because we sawed it up as part of an arms control and reduction treaty reducing delivery vehicles. This bomber don't exist and carry nuclear weapons because the Nunn-Lugar program helped dismantle that bomber under agreements we have had with the Soviet Union and now with Russia. This photo is of a typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine the Soviets had. It carried missile launch tubes. This is a missile tube from that submarine. You will see that these tubes don't exist in the submarine anymore. They are now scrap metal. This is copper wire that comes from that Soviet submarine that used to prowl the seas with nuclear weapons threatening our country. This ground-up copper wire from that submarine was not because we sank the submarine but because we have a program by which we reduced the delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons. We and the Soviets--now the Russians--have agreed to a systematic reduction of weapons and delivery vehicles. This photo is of a missile silo in the Ukraine. This is an SS-18 missile silo. It was blown up as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. This is what is left of the scrap metal. I have a hinge here from this particular site in the Ukraine that housed a missile that had a nuclear warhead aimed at our country. Instead of a missile being on the ground in the Ukraine, there is now a field of sunflowers. A field of sunflowers is now planted where a missile that carried a nuclear warhead once existed. This is unbelievable success, in my judgment, and something we ought to celebrate. With the help of the Nunn-Lugar program Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus are now nuclear weapons-free. Albania is chemical weapons-free; 7,500 deactivated nuclear warheads; 32 ballistic missile submarines gone; 1,419 long-range nuclear missiles gone; 906 nuclear air-to-service missiles gone; 155 nuclear bombers gone. We didn't shoot them down. We didn't destroy them in air-to-air combat or undersea warfare. We paid some money in a program called Nunn-Lugar with the Soviets and Russians to saw the wings off bombers and grind up the metal in submarines and take out missile silos in the Ukraine with missiles aimed at our country. Therefore, it is a safer world. The question is, How much safer and what more do we need to do? I have previously read a portion of something into the Congressional Record. I will do it again ever so briefly. On October 11, 2001--not many Americans know this--1 month after the 9/11 attack, George Tenet, Director of the CIA, informed the President that a CIA agent, code-named ``Dragonfire,'' had reported that al-Qaida terrorists possessed a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb, evidently stolen from the Russian arsenal. According to Dragonfire, the CIA agent, this nuclear weapon was now on American soil in New York City. That was 1 month after 9/11. The CIA had no independent confirmation of this report, but neither did it have any basis on which to dismiss it. Did Russia's arsenal include a large number of 10-kiloton weapons? Yes. Could the Russian Government account for all the nuclear weapons the Soviets built during the Cold War? No. Could al-Qaida have acquired one of those weapons? It could have. If a terrorist had acquired it, could they have detonated it? Perhaps. Smuggled it into an American city? Likely. So in the hours that followed this report on October 11, 2001, 1 month after 9/11, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice analyzed what strategists then called the ``problem from hell.'' Unlike the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union knew that an attack against the other would elicit a retaliatory strike in greater measure and therefore perhaps destroy both countries, the al-Qaida terrorist organization had no return address and had no such fear of reprisal. Even if the President were prepared to negotiate, al-Qaida had no phone number to call. This comes from a book that was published by Graham Allison, a former Clinton administration official. I first learned about the incident from a piece in Time magazine, on March 11, 2002. The book that describes the detail of it is pretty harrowing. It is a pretty frightening prospect. I will not read more of it. I have read a fair amount of it. After some while, it was determined that this was not a credible intelligence piece of information. But for a month or so, there was great concern about the prospect of a terrorist group having stolen a nuclear weapon, smuggled it into an American city, and being able to detonate it. Then we were not talking about 9/11; we were talking about a catastrophe in which hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people would be killed and life on Earth would never be the same. When and if ever a nuclear weapon is detonated in the middle of a major city on this planet, life will change as we know it. That brings me to this question of nuclear reduction treaties and the work that has gone on. We have about 25,000 nuclear warheads on this planet. I have just described the apoplectic seizure that existed in October of 2001 because one CIA agent suggested he had credible evidence or a rumor that one terrorist group had stolen one small 10- kiloton nuclear weapon. Think of the angst that caused for about a month, which most Americans don't know about. But that was one weapon. There are 25,000 on this Earth--25,000 nuclear weapons. Russia probably has around 15,000. This is not classified, by the way. This is from a recent estimate by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Most people say it is accurate. The United States has 9,400. China has 240. France has 300. Britain has 200. The loss of one to a terrorist group--the detonation of that nuclear warhead in a major city would change life as we know it on planet Earth. So the question is, What do we do about that? We struggle to try to accomplish two goals--one, to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to others who don't now have it, to prevent terrorists from ever acquiring it, and working very hard to accomplish both even while we again try a systematic reduction of nuclear weapons from the 25,000 level and particularly among those that have the most nuclear weapons. We understand it is very difficult to reach these agreements, and when reached, it is very difficult to get them agreed to, get the support by what is necessary in the Senate. About 95 percent of the nuclear weapons are owned by the United States of America and by Russia. There are a lot of groups in this world that are very interested in acquiring one nuclear weapon with which to terrorize this planet. We are now operating under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, known as the Moscow Treaty. It requires the United States and Russia to have no more than 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons--there are many more than that; I am talking about deployed in the field--by 2012. The Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty we are now operating under does not restrict any nuclear delivery vehicles at all--airplanes, missiles, and so on--and it does not have any verification measures and it expires in 2012. A few weeks ago in Prague, the Czech Republic, President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a new strategic arms control treaty. It is called START. I compliment the administration for successfully completing this treaty. I was part of a group in the Senate that continued to meet with and review with the negotiators the progress of their work. Their work was long and difficult, but they reached an agreement with the Russians. It limits each side to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, which is 30 percent lower than the Moscow Treaty under which we are now operating. It limits each side to 800 deployed and nondeployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers--these are all delivery vehicles-- equipped for nuclear armaments. That is one-half of what the START treaty allowed. It sets a separate limit of 700 deployed ICBMs and SLBMs and deployed heavy bombers that are equipped for nuclear weapons. The treaty, in addition, has a verification regime, which is very important. You can have a treaty with someone, but if you cannot verify and inspect, then you have a problem. This treaty with the Russians has onsite inspections and exhibitions, telemetry exchanges, data exchanges and notifications, and provisions to facilitate the use of a national technical means for treaty monitoring. This, in my judgment, is a good treaty that will strengthen this country. It will reduce by 30 percent the number of strategic nuclear warheads that Russia could possess and target at the United States. It allows our country to determine our own force structure and gives us the flexibility to deploy and maintain our strategic nuclear forces in a way that best serves our own national security interests. The new Nuclear Posture Review, as my colleagues know, says the United States will maintain the nuclear triad of land-based missiles, ballistic missile submarines, as well as bombers. The Obama administration has said as long as nuclear weapons exist, this country will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary and to protect our allies. This new START treaty gives us an important window into Russia's strategic arsenal and to ensure that Russia will not be able to surprise us and try to change that balance. This treaty contains no limits on our ability to continue developing and fielding missile defenses. Our country is doing some of that. Frankly, I have some questions about the cost and the effectiveness of some of what we are doing. Nonetheless, there is no limitation on that in this treaty. As was done in the case of START, Russia has made a unilateral statement regarding missile defenses. Its statement is not legally binding and does not constrain us in any of our U.S. missile defense programs. In my judgment, this treaty is very important. It is a very important first step--only a first step--because much more needs to be done. But it is important in terms of enhancing our security and world security. This will bolster, in my judgment, the Nonproliferation Treaty. It demonstrates that the United States and Russia are living up to their part of the deal under the NPT to begin reducing arms. I think it will strengthen Washington's hand in a tighter nuclear nonproliferation regime, especially at the May NPT conference. Some Senators have said, as would be the case, I suppose, with any treaty: We are concerned about this because we think it weakens America's hand; we think it cuts our nuclear arsenal too deeply. I think they are wrong on that point. They are wrong. We have plenty of nuclear weapons. Not enough nuclear weapons is not among our problems; we have plenty. So do the Russians. We can blow up this planet 150 times and more. We have plenty of nuclear weapons. The question is, How do we and the Russians and others begin to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, and, most important, how do we stop the spread of nuclear weapons? Let me put up a chart that shows what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last month: I, the Vice Chairman, and the Joint Chiefs, as well as our combatant commanders around the world, stand solidly behind this new treaty, having had the opportunity to provide our counsel, to make our recommendations, and to help shape the final agreements. This is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He says he and the Joint Chiefs believe this represents our country's best national security interest. Here is what some others are saying. Douglas Feith, not particularly unexpected. I can pretty much guess what he will say on anything dealing with security if I saw his name tag, I guess. Doug Feith, a former Defense official under the previous administration, says: Since the administration is so eager for [the treaty], the main interests of conservatives-- Meaning him and his friends, neo-cons among other things-- will relate to modernization. Republicans are interested in the U.S. nuclear posture, the political leverage they have will be the treaty . . . One of the hot issues is going to be the replacement warhead . . . What does he mean? We are going to use this treaty as leverage to force the government to develop a new nuclear warhead program called the RRW, the Reliable Replacement Warhead. I am chairman of the subcommittee that funds that program. We stopped funding that warhead. That warhead was an outgrowth of the Congress deciding we are not going to fund the provision before it for another nuclear warhead. We remember the provision: Now we have to build earth- penetrating, bunker-buster nuclear weapons. That was the thing about 5 years ago. The Congress said: We are not going to build earth-penetrating, bunker-buster nuclear weapons. There is no end to the menu of nuclear weapons some people want. We are not going to do that. That morphed into Reliable Replacement Warhead, RRW, that was to begin replacing our existing stock of warheads in a big program with the Navy, Air Force, and so on. We stopped that as well. We did not stop it because we did not have the money or anything like that. We stopped it because it is not necessary. We have a process by which we certify that the current nuclear stockpile works, that it is effective. We have a process by which we do that. We have a lot of interest by other groups that have weighed in on the science of this, saying our existing stock of nuclear weapons will last much longer than some had suggested without spending hundreds of billions of dollars for replacement. Yet some will never be satisfied. Here are statements by some Senators who also will want to use the ratification of this START treaty as leverage. One Senator said: Well, I can tell you this, that I think the Senate will find it very hard to support this treaty if there is not a robust modernization plan. That is the need to design and build new nuclear weapons. Another one said: The success of your administration in ensuring the modernization plan is fully funded in the authorization and appropriations process could have a significant impact on the Senate as it considers the START follow-on treaty. And another one: My vote on the START treaty will thus depend in large measure on whether I am convinced the administration has put forward an appropriate and adequately funded plan to sustain and modernize the smaller nuclear stockpile it envisions. As chairman of the Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, I can tell my colleagues that the proposed budget for nuclear weapons, which is in my subcommittee, for fiscal year 2011 from this administration is more than enough to maintain the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons; sufficient so that any Chairman of the Joint Chiefs can say with confidence and authority whose requirement it is to certify each year, that we have a nuclear arsenal that can be maintained as reliable and safe for the long-term future. The National Nuclear Security Agency, the agency that oversees nuclear weapons, would see a 13-percent or $1.3 billion increase under this President's proposal. There are some who have argued this budget increase and planned future increases may not be sufficient to maintain the current stockpile. But that is just not the case. If we look at the budget request, the administration's budget request includes $7 billion for nuclear weapons activities. That is an increase of $624 million in this coming year. It invests significant money in what is called life extension programs. The nuclear weapons in our arsenal are not just the old nuclear weapons. We spend money all the time on life extension programs to make sure they are reliable. I can go on and talk about the budget. The fact is, this President has sent us a budget that does what he thinks is necessary for the life extension programs and the additional funding. At a time when we have significant financial problems, he is proposing additional funding in this area. This is a quote from Linton Brooks, who was the NNSA Administrator from 2003 to 2007 under George W. Bush, in February of this year: START, as I now understand it, is a good idea on its own merits, but I think for those who think it's only a good idea if you only have a strong weapons program, I think this budget ought to take care of that. Coupled with the out-year projections, it takes care of the concerns about the complex and it does very good things about the stockpile and it should keep the labs healthy. . . . That is what he said. That is important to understand when my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and say: I don't know that I can support arms reductions because we want to make sure we have more money spent on nuclear weapons to build a whole class of new nuclear weapons. Understand, there is nothing partisan here. The person who last headed this agency under George W. Bush said this budget takes care of that. It will give us the confidence we need. The September 2009 ``Report on the Lifetime Extension Program'' by the JASON Program Office, which is a very respected group of scientists, said this: JASON finds no evidence that accumulation of changes incurred from aging and life extension programs have increased risk to certification of today's deployed nuclear warheads. Simple. Lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in the life extension programs to date. We have people around here who are just unbelievably anxious to get moving to begin building an entire new class of nuclear weapons. Yet we have evidence from the science of nuclear weapons that the existing stock of nuclear weapons can be maintained with life extension programs for decades. Why would we do that? I wish to make a concluding point. I wanted to talk about the START program because it is so important to the future of our relationship with Russia. But much more important than that, it is important for the world. I pulled out of my desk a wing strut from a backfire bomber and ground-up copper from a Russian submarine. I have taken a hinge from a missile silo in the Ukraine that had an SS-18 with a nuclear warhead aimed at the United States. I have all those in my desk just to remind me every day there is a way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons: reduce the delivery vehicles without having air-to-air combat, without firing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and without detonating nuclear warheads. It is the kind of program we have engaged in, the Nunn-Lugar program, the Global Threat Reduction Program, and it is also treaties such as the START treaty. If it is not our responsibility and if it does not fall on our shoulders to provide the world leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, who else is going to do that? Who else? If you read the book by Graham Allison or understand the consequences of both 9/11 and also October 11 of the same year and the report by a CIA agent code named Dragonfire, that a terrorist group had stolen a 10-kiloton weapon and would detonate it in an American city, if that doesn't send chills down your spine for the future of this world, then there is something fundamentally wrong with your system. We have to understand if we do not back away from this difficult specter of a new world in which terrorists are trying very hard to acquire nuclear weapons--they don't have to acquire very much. They have to acquire the equivalent of perhaps a 2-liter bottle of highly enriched uranium. Think of one of those 2-liter Coke bottles at the gas station that sits on the counter the next time you go past, 2 liters of soft drink. Think of 2 liters of highly enriched nuclear material to produce one nuclear weapon. Some of my colleagues, at least some folks kind of made light of, and some commentators on the radio made fun of the very large group of foreign leaders that was called to this town a week ago to deal with this question of how we get our arms around and begin securing loose nuclear materials that exist around the world. That was nothing to laugh at. That was a historic opportunity by this administration, a big deal by this President to say: You know what. That leadership is our responsibility, and we are going to call leaders from all around the world to talk about these loose nuclear materials that can be acquired by a terrorist organization and made into a bomb, and we are going to secure these materials. We are spending money to do that. We are spending money in our budget to do that. But this President said: Let's work much harder. Let's rededicate ourselves, and not just us, let's all of us rededicate ourselves to gather and secure the loose nuclear material and prevent access to that material by a terrorist organization. Again, this responsibility falls to us. It is our responsibility to lead, to help stop the spread of nuclear weapons. It is also our responsibility, hopefully, to lead toward where the nonproliferation treaty insists we go; that is, to fewer and fewer and fewer nuclear weapons on this planet. I understand we will not and should not disarm unilaterally. I fully understand that. But I also understand that having 25,000 nuclear weapons stored in various locations on this planet is not healthy for the long-term prospect of life on Earth. So it is our responsibility. It is an important step, a step only in the direction because it is not the giant step. But an important first step is to ratify this START treaty. The Russians and the Americans worked very hard to construct a treaty that I think has great merit and will provide for a safer world. Following the ratification of this treaty, then there is even more work to do, much more work to do. But this is the step along the way that is important for all of us to embrace. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a message from the House with respect to S. 1963.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the Senate concur in the House amendment; that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I had informed my colleague from Louisiana that I would come to the floor to once again ask unanimous consent on an issue he has been holding or blocking, and it is the issue of the promotion of General Walsh, a distinguished American soldier who has served his country for 30 years and served in wartime, who has been approved to have a promotion to the rank of major general by the Senate Armed Services Committee, and that committee approved that promotion unanimously, the committee headed by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain. Both strongly support the promotion of General Walsh. That support was given and the notice of promotion was voted on by the Armed Services Committee in September of last year. This soldier's career has been put on hold by the hold of one Senator, the Senator from Louisiana. I informed him that I would speak on the floor on this, so I am not being impolite. I normally would not speak of another person solely on the floor of the Senate. Yet the Senator from Louisiana is the one who has exhibited the hold to prevent the promotion of this soldier. I know this soldier. That is not why I am on the floor. I know General Walsh. He commands the Mississippi Valley Division of the Corps of Engineers and does a great job, in my judgment. But, again, his career has been stalled by the actions of one Senator. That Senator indicates there are certain demands he has of the Corps of Engineers and unless they are met, he will not allow this soldier to be promoted. The point is, this solder executes; this solder is not making policy in the Corps of Engineers, and he cannot do what the Senator from Louisiana demands he do. The Corps of Engineers does not have the legal authority to do what the Senator from Louisiana demands he do. I have put in the Record the two letters the Senator from Louisiana has given to the Corps of Engineers making certain demands. I have put in the Record the response from the Corps of Engineers. I believe 2 days ago when we had this discussion that my colleague from Louisiana indicated the corps had missed 14 deadlines or deadlines on 14 reports and he was not happy with the Corps of Engineers. I went back and found out what that was about. Let me just say that 10 of those 14 reports dealt with the Louisiana coastal area. All of those reports were authorized in WRDA 2007. Prior to initiating the studies, the corps was required by other law that exists to execute a feasibility cost-sharing agreement with the State of Louisiana. To cost share the study would result in the feasibility report. At the State of Louisiana's request, the corps did not execute this agreement until June of 2009. I can describe the other four as well. But to come to the floor and suggest that somehow the Corps of Engineers is slothful and indolent, or at least slothful, for missing a deadline on reports, 10 of which they missed because the State of Louisiana requested they be delayed--I don't know, it seems to me that this may not be on the level. Let me make one final point. When a natural disaster hit Louisiana and New Orleans, I was one of those who cared a lot about reaching out to say: You are not alone. And it was not just me; it was all of my colleagues. But I chair the subcommittee that provides the majority of the funding for this. We provided all of the funding for the Corps of Engineers. The fact is, we have put--listen to this--$14 billion--$14 billion--into New Orleans and Louisiana. I am proud of having done it. It is what we ought to do as a country. But I must say that it wears out the welcome a bit for someone to come to the floor to disparage the Corps of Engineers and the efforts of the Corps of Engineers. That $14 billion--much of that runs through the Corps of Engineers, and I wonder where that city and that State would be without the Corps of Engineers to be engaged with them in these battles. So let me say to my colleague from Louisiana that demands being made of the Corps of Engineers that the corps cannot possibly comply with because the law will not allow them to comply are demands that are never going to be met. To hold up the career of one distinguished soldier who has served in wartime because the corps cannot meet demands required by the Senator from Louisiana is unfair. It is always and will always be a disservice to uniformed soldiers anywhere to hold hostage promotions of soldiers in order to get demands that cannot possibly be satisfied. So I am going to once again ask unanimous consent that the nomination that has existed on this calendar since September of last year to promote a distinguished soldier who has a distinguished record--I am going to ask once again that, at long last, perhaps my colleague will relent and allow the promotion to proceed and allow this soldier's career to continue. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to Executive Calendar No. 526, the nomination of BG Michael J. Walsh; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, any statements related to the nomination be printed in the Record, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?