Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was thinking of asking unanimous consent so that each time I take the floor it would be assumed that I frame my comments preceded by ``don't you agree'' to satisfy the quaint rules of the Senate with respect to asking a question. I will refrain from that and when asking my colleague to yield the next time, I will say ``don't you agree'' before I give my speech. My colleague does a service. I don't disagree with him. I think we ought to be tightfisted; we spend money on things we should not spend money on. We are getting huge blocks of funding requests coming in our direction by the administration calling it ``emergency funding.'' We have had almost $200 billion worth, and another $45 billion is coming now. They say, don't pay for it, don't worry about it. We will declare it an emergency and we won't count it.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. I don't know of any amendment also intended to be offered today. I do know we have had some colleagues talking to us about amendments they wish to offer on Monday, but at least on this side, I know of no amendments to be offered for the remainder of the day. My understanding about the amendment the Senator has just laid down on behalf of Senator Voinovich is we are not going to dispose of that amendment at this point. We have some issues we need to discuss. We will begin to think about action on that on Monday; is that right?

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for as long as I continue.

Mr. DORGAN. I will not speak for a lengthy time, but I wanted to thank my colleague from Montana as he leaves. He will be back on Monday as we take up this bill again, and I look forward continuing to work with him. We put together a pretty decent bill. As I indicated previously, this bill actually cuts by $\1/2\ billion, slightly more, spending over the previous year. So it has been a chore to get this done because of the substantial cuts. But the Senator from Montana has been good to work with.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if my colleague from Montana is going to be leaving the floor for a period, as I understand, to go to a listening session in the Commerce Committee--if he is going to be gone for some while, I may get a lot of legislating done on the floor of the Senate. But we will see. Actually, I will consult closely with Senator Burns's staff. We have worked well together and we put together a piece of legislation that was hard to do. I want to just tell those who think there are no spending cuts, this bill that is brought to the floor of the Senate spends $544 million less than is spent in the current fiscal year. That means we are a half billion dollars less in spending for the next fiscal year than is now being spent. Putting together an appropriations bill that cuts a half billion dollars is not a small task. It is hard. There are some areas in this legislation that I think we have not done what we should have done. We did the best we could, having to cut a half billion dollars. My colleague from Montana and his staff have been good to work with. It is the case that in the Appropriations Committee, on the subcommittees, there truly is bipartisanship. We work together to try to resolve issues in a way that provides a product that all of us can support. That is the case here today. I will in the course of time offer an amendment that will restore some funds to Indian health. We have desperate conditions on Indian reservations with respect to Indian health, and I am going to talk a little about that today. For example, we restored some funds to the tribal colleges. The President was intending to cut that substantially in his budget, which really makes no sense to me. We have not only restored those cuts but actually increased it a couple of million dollars. So there are many things we have done that my colleague from Montana has described in his opening statement. I think it would not be useful for me to once again review his comments with respect to funding for the Forest Service and the EPA and all of the various accounts in this bill. There are many of them. It is a fairly substantial bill. I think my colleague aptly described what we tried to do, things that we have succeeded in doing. He described we have fully funded the EPA clean water State revolving fund $1.1 billion. The President proposed a dramatic cut there. We restored that. That is a $370 million increase over the President's substantial cut. There are a number of things. I will not go through all the details only to repeat what my colleague has said. I want to focus for a moment on something that I think needs more focus in the Senate, and that is Indian health. The reason I do that is I come from a State, as do a number of my colleagues, where we have Indian reservations. We have four Indian reservations. We have a genuine bona fide crisis in health care, housing, and education on our reservations. It is easy for people to put it out of sight and out of mind and not think too much about it. I have been working with my colleague, Senator Burns, for the last 3 years to increase funding for tribal colleges. I want to read a letter that I read previously to my colleagues because it is such a wonderful description of the value of tribal colleges. This letter is from a young woman who wrote to me. This is a woman I happen to know, who has quite a remarkable career at this point. But here is the letter she wrote to me: I grew up poor and considered backward by non-Indians. My home was a two-room log house in a place called the ``bush'' on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. I stuttered. I was painfully shy. My clothes were hand-me- downs. I was like thousands of other Indian kids growing up on reservations across America. When I went to elementary school I felt so alone and different. I couldn't speak up for myself. My teachers had no appreciation for Indian culture. I'll never forget that it was the lighter-skinned children who were treated better. They wore usually from families that were better off than mine. My teachers called me savage. Even as a young child I wondered . . . What does it take to be noticed and looked upon the way these other children are? By the time I reached 7th grade I realized that if my life was going to change for the better, I was going to have to do it. Nobody else could do it for me. That's when the dream began. I thought of ways to change things for the better--not only for myself but for my people. I dreamed of growing up to be a teacher in a school where every child was treated as sacred and viewed positively, even if they were poor and dirty. I didn't want any child to be made to feel like I did. But I didn't know how hard it would be to reach the realization of my dream. I almost didn't make it. By the time I was 17 I had dropped out of school, moved to California, and had a child. I thought my life was over. But when I moved back to the reservation I made a discovery that literally put my life back together. My sisters were attending Turtle Mountain College, which had just been started on my reservation. I thought that was something I would do too, so I enrolled. In those days, we didn't even have a campus. There was no building. Some classes met at a local alcohol rehabilitation center in an old hospital building that had been condemned. But to me, it didn't matter. I was just amazed I could go to college. It was life- changing. My college friends and professors were like family. For the first time in my life I learned about the language, history and culture of my people in a formal education setting. I felt honor and pride begin to well up inside me. This was so unlike my prior school experience where I was told my language and culture were shameful and that Indians weren't equal to others. Attending a tribal college caused me to reach into my inner self to become what I was meant to be--to fight for my rights and not remain a victim of circumstance or of anybody. In fact, I loved college so much that I couldn't stop! I had a dream to fulfill . . . This young woman is now a doctor, a Ph.D. She continued in her letter telling me what she was doing. She said: I have worked in education ever since, from Head Start to teacher's aide to college professor. Now I'm realizing my dream of helping Indian children succeed. I am a . . . Program Superintendent working with nine schools, three reservations, and I oversee two educational contracts with two tribal colleges. Think of this. This young girl grew up feeling hopeless and helpless, stuttering, being called a ``savage'' in a school. She, now, is a Ph.D., helping other children succeed, helping create and nurture an education system that gives others a feeling of hope. The reason I wanted to read that story is this is all about a tribal college. It is all about giving a young woman an opportunity through a tribal college. I can't tell you how many tribal colleges I have visited, but I know that they enrich the lives of those who attend them because it is an opportunity to step up and out of poverty and hopelessness. I recall one day I was asked to speak at a commencement at a tribal college. I asked the graduates there: Who is the oldest graduate? They pointed to a woman. They said: She is the oldest graduate. I went over. She was in her mid-forties and she was, on this day, graduating from college. I asked her about herself and I found out a bit about her. She was a single mother. I believe her husband had left her. I believe she had four children and she was the janitor at the college, cleaning the hallways and the toilets. She decided that she really wanted to do more than clean the hallways and the toilets in that college, she wanted to attend that college, and she did. She found a way as a single mother to attend that college. The day I showed up she wasn't cleaning anything, she was wearing a cap and a gown and a smile. And that smile was a recognition of what she had invested in herself. But she couldn't have done that had there not been a tribal college, not been Pell grants, not been an opportunity for this country to say to her, through the funding of tribal colleges, through Pell grants, and through other approaches, that: We want to help you. We want to offer a helping hand. So there is so much to be done. I am speaking now about education and tribal colleges. That is just one piece of it. I am proud to say that Senator Burns and I have very substantially changed the recommendations of the President. He proposes cutting funding for tribal colleges. We propose increasing funding. Why? Because it is the right thing to do. It is investing in people's lives in the right way. The other thing I want to talk about for a moment is Indian health care. I mentioned there is a bona fide crisis in health care, housing, and education for American Indians. I have spoken previously on the floor about this. I have talked about a woman who died, froze to death in her bed, a grandmother. She froze to death in her bed on a reservation in South Dakota when it was 35 below zero, in a home with plastic over the hole where windows should have been. There were six people living in a very small space without sufficient beds and a grandmother goes to bed and freezes to death. Most would think from reading that, it is from a Third World country. It wasn't. It was from our country. We have serious problems on Indian reservations in health care, housing, and education. I mentioned education with respect to tribal colleges. Let me mention health care for a moment because I will offer an amendment dealing with health care. There simply is not enough money to provide the kind of health care Americans would expect to provide to every child in this country. I have been to reservations to see a dentist working out of a small trailer home, serving 5,000 people. That dentistry is not so much about doing bridgework or fixing a tooth. It is about someone coming in with an ache and deciding the tooth has to be pulled because you cannot do fancy work in a trailer house when you serve 5,000 people. That is just life on the reservation with respect to the underfunding of Indian health care. I have held two hearings recently on the subject of teen suicide on Indian reservations. I know it is sensitive. These are hearings you would prefer not to be having, to talk about a subject you would prefer not to talk about. But the fact is, we have young people--particularly in the Northern Great Plains--across this country, young teenagers on Indian reservations who are taking their own lives at the rate of two and a half to three times the national average and in the Northern Great Plains 10 times the national average. This is not about statistics. It is about a young person who decides to commit suicide. I have spoken in the Senate previously, with the concurrence of the relatives of this young woman, about Avis Littlewind, the 14-year-old. About 9 months or a year ago, Avis Littlewind committed suicide. She had missed 90 days of school. She was lying in her bed, missing school, in a fetal position, with serious problems. Her sister committed suicide 2 years before. Her dad had taken his life 6 years before. Then Avis Littlewind got out of bed one day and went to the closet and they found her there. She had committed suicide. Most are doing it by hanging. We have had a cluster of suicides on the Standing Rock Reservation in the last 5 months. I have spoken to the relatives of these young kids who have decided to take their lives. One of the things we discover when we talk to the psychologists. I went to the reservation where Avis Littlewind committed suicide. I talked to the school administrators, those involved in mental health, tribal officials, relatives, to try to understand how this happens, how does it happen that no one sends up a big warning flag to say, here is a kid in trouble, let's intervene somehow. What I learned there I have known previously, because I had a hearing one day on these issues some years ago and the young woman who was in charge of these children's issues testified. She had only worked there about 2 months at this reservation. She said, I have a stack of papers on my office floor of allegations of child abuse that have not even been investigated. A stack of papers, alleging child abuse in each of the folders, with no investigation. Then she said, I cannot even get a kid to a clinic someplace because I don't have a vehicle so I have to beg for somebody to give a ride to a kid to take them to a clinic, perhaps to see a mental health professional. As she began to describe the need to beg for a ride for a kid who is in trouble, she began to sob and she broke down and cried. She could not continue at this hearing. She quit a month later because she said it was hopeless. My point is we know this is happening right now. Yes, in teen suicide; that is, mental health issues. It is the whole range of health care issues, including substance abuse, devastating substance abuse issues with very few in residential treatment beds to deal with it. I will offer an amendment that says it is time for this country to address these issues. We have trust responsibility for the health care for Indians. We have a responsibility for health care for people in Federal prisons. We spend twice as much per person on health care for Federal prisoners as we do to provide health care to American Indians--twice. Ask yourself, for a kid who felt hopeless and helpless, who decided to take her own life, shouldn't we face that and decide we have a commitment as a country to meet our trust obligations to provide adequate health care? I will offer an amendment regarding that. I probably will do it on Monday. My past experience is the Senate will turn it down because tax cuts for wealthy individuals are much more important than adequate health care funding for Indian children, for example. You say, that is unfair. No, it is not unfair to say that. There is plenty of money around here to say those who get money from investments, ratchet their tax rates down, down, down, so we can remove the burden from people who make millions every year, and say, by the way, we don't have enough money left to address the issues of these kids. I started this discussion by reading a letter from Loretta De Long, who is now a Ph.D., but who started in school being called a savage, who stuttered, who got into trouble, had a child at 17, moved to California and thought her life was hopeless, as well. Now she is a Ph.D. She is involved in Indian education. But her letter that I read describes hope. It describes hope and opportunity and what gave her hope and opportunity. Yes, that was tribal colleges and the family encouragement to be able to go to a tribal college. My point is simple: We have a big bill here. We have done a lot of good work. In some cases we have come short of what I would like to do. In one area, especially, I am talking about the area in which we have a responsibility to deal with Indian health care, we are desperately short, have always been short. The administration never asks for enough--not just this administration, previous administrations, as well--and the Congress is never willing to give enough to provide adequate health care to Indians. I hope, perhaps, we can have a broader debate as soon as we are into this bill and perhaps Monday morning I will be able to offer that amendment. There is much to say about this legislation. My colleague described the EPA, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, so many areas that are important. We have attempted to do the very best we can to provide adequate funding. We are going to be asking for amendments to be offered today and on Monday with the understanding that all amendments will be offered by the end of the day Monday, after which we will dispose of those amendments and then hopefully complete this bill. When we do that, we can go to conference. This is part of that process, this march we should be making to complete our appropriations bills on time, have a conference with the House, reach an agreement, and get this funding for the next fiscal year done this way rather than present some big omnibus bill that in most cases is exactly the wrong way to legislate, where a few people go into a room and close the door and come out and announce to us, we have 800 pages and, by the way, we will vote in 15 minutes, and you do not have time to read it nor should you care what is in it. That is the wrong way to legislate. Senator Cochran says he wants to do it the right way, one step at a time. This is one step. It is an important step because the agencies are important. I hope we can do it with the cooperation of all of our colleagues. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have here a photograph of a soldier. He joined the Army National Guard as a combat medic and went to Iraq. His name is Carlos Lazo. Carlos came to my office the other day. That is a picture of him in my office. Carlos is a wonderful soldier. In fact, let me put up another chart that shows you that Carlos won the Bronze Star in Iraq. In the description of the Bronze Star won by this remarkable soldier, it says: SPC Lazo's courage, initiative, along with his calm, cool composure was instrumental in saving numerous lives on the battlefield and at the BAS all thru this operation. They were talking about some very heavy fighting and mortar rounds and bombs exploding very close to where Sergeant Lazo was busy saving lives. They described the work Mr. Lazo did, this courageous soldier. It was quite extraordinary. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the Bronze Star citation printed in the Record. I show you the Bronze Star citation, which was from last November, just in order to tell you that this is an extraordinary person. So Carlos Lazo came to see me on Wednesday of this week. Do you know why he came to my office? Because he wants to see his kids, and our Government will not let him see his kids. No, this is not about a child custody fight. His kids are in Cuba. And one of them has been in the hospital with a high fever. We have decided in this country to punish Fidel Castro by slapping around the American people and injuring their rights to travel. This President has said that people like Carlos Lazo cannot go to Cuba to see his kids. He cannot visit his kids. It is unbelievable to me. I have been on this floor before talking about the restriction of travel to Cuba. We have people in the Treasury Department who are investigating Americans because they are under suspicion of taking a vacation to Cuba. It is unbelievable. I have brought a picture to the floor of the Senate of Joni Scott. Do you know what Joni Scott did? She went to Cuba to pass out free Bibles. Well, guess what her Government did. Guess what the U.S. Government did. They tracked her down and slapped her with a big fine because she was passing out free Bibles in Cuba. A wonderful young woman, filled with spirit and faith, wanting to provide free Bibles on the streets of Cuba, and this Government tracks her down to fine her. I have shown a picture of Joan Slote, a 75-year-old grandmother who is a cyclist who joined a Canadian cycling group to ride bicycles in Cuba. And guess what they did. While her son was dying of brain cancer, they tracked Joan Slote down, and they threatened to attach her Social Security payments because they were trying to slap a big fine on her because she rode a bicycle in Cuba. She did not know you had to have a license to go to Cuba. She just joined a Canadian group. But, boy, did they track her down. They tracked down Joni Scott and tried to slap a fine on her for distributing free Bibles. They tracked down a guy in Seattle whose dad died. His dad's last wish was that his ashes should be distributed on the grounds of the church he served as a pastor in Cuba. So he takes his dad's ashes in a can to Cuba, and they track him down and slap a fine on him. It is unbelievable. Now, this young solder, Carlos Lazo, who earned a Bronze Star in November for bravery on the battlefield. He came from Cuba, by the way. He escaped Cuba. He fled in 1992. He was part of a group that fled Cuba. Regrettably, the rest of his family was not able to get out. So he has two sons left behind. He has been in contact with his children. He has been able to go back from time to time and visit them a number of times under the rules that allowed that kind of family visit. Then, last year, the President decided we are going to tighten all that up. We are shutting all that down. So now Mr. Lazo, someone who has performed heroic service for this country in America's uniform, is now told: Yes, your son has been in a hospital. Yes, he has a high fever. But he is in Cuba, so you cannot travel to see him. This Government will not allow this soldier to see his children. Why? Is it about him? No, it is not about him. Fidel Castro has poked his finger in this country's eye for a long time, so our country, this Government, this President, wants to injure the rights of the American people to travel in a way to punish Fidel Castro. It does not punish Fidel Castro. He has been in office through 10 Presidencies. All that does is punish the American people: Joni Scott; Joan Slote; and, yes, now Carlos Lazo. Carlos has asked me, ``Is there any way you could help me?'' because he has heard me on the floor of the Senate talking time and time again about the absurdity of this policy. Let me just say, I don't have any desire to see Fidel Castro remain in power. The quicker he is gone, the better. But that will happen, in my judgment, through engagement through trade and travel, just as we preach that it will in China and Vietnam--both Communist countries. We have, instead, given Castro his best excuse. He says to the Cuban people, with a sense of nationalism: Of course our economy is in deep trouble because that 500-pound gorilla up north has its fist around our neck. It seems to me, after 40 years, when a policy does not work, you change the policy. Yet in this case, after 40 years, when a policy does not work, we have decided to further injure the rights of the American people. I hear all this talk about freedom and liberty. Where is the freedom for this young soldier, who has earned a Bronze Star just months ago? Where is the freedom of this young soldier to see his son, to get on a plane and travel to Cuba? I am asking the State Department and the President to make the right decision here. What on Earth can they be thinking of, deciding Sergeant Lazo should not see his sick child? When America called, he went to the battlefield. He risked his life. He did his work among bombs and grenades and mortars that were falling all around him--sufficient so he received the Bronze Star--and now he is told he cannot see his kids? He asks me, What on Earth is happening? Where is the freedom here? Now, I know speaking on the floor about this upsets the people in the State Department, who have to follow the dictions of the White House. It upsets the people in Treasury, OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Incidentally, my colleagues should know there are far more people in the Office of Foreign Assets Control--which is an organization designed to track the money to shut down the funding for Osama bin Laden and terrorists--there are far more people in OFAC right now working on tracking down Americans suspected of taking a vacation in Cuba than there are tracking the money for Osama bin Laden. That is shameful, but it is the truth. It has been put in the Congressional Record. My colleague, Senator Baucus, got that information, and so did I. I have asked the Treasury Secretary--I asked the former Treasury Secretary, Secretary O'Neill. I said at a hearing: Look, wouldn't you sooner use that money to track terrorists as opposed to trying to track people who are vacationing in Cuba? He did not want to answer. I asked him several times. Finally, he said: Mr. Senator, of course I would sooner do that. The White House had a press release out instantly vilifying the Treasury Secretary for doing that. This is an obsession with this administration. This has nothing to do with good policy. I am not talking this morning about selling wheat to Cuba. An odd couple--myself and then-Senator John Ashcroft--which is really an odd couple because we are philosophically very different--we are the ones who offered the amendment on the floor of the Senate that finally--finally--after 40 years, opened, just a crack, the ability to sell food into Cuba. We should never have used food as a weapon. Food and medicine was used as a weapon, which I think is fundamentally immoral. Telling our farmers, ``You can't sell food to Cuba'' meant nothing to Fidel Castro. He never missed a meal. Do you think he missed breakfast, dinner, or lunch in 40 years? Of course he didn't. It just hurt American farmers and hurt sick, poor, and hungry Cubans. So for the first time in 42 years, one day not long ago 22 train carloads full of dried peas left an elevator in North Dakota and ended up in Cuba, paid for by cash. The administration opposed that as well. Now they have taken further action. Nearly $1 billion has been sold in agricultural commodities by our farmers to the Cubans, and now this administration has decided to tighten that down to try to shut it down. I have more to say about that, and I will speak more about it at another time. It is about farming and it is about agriculture and using food as a weapon, which is fundamentally immoral. This country is above that. But today, this is about this man. It is not about a big policy. It is about this man. Can this man see his kids? Can Carlos Lazo--who fought for this country in Iraq, who risked his life in Iraq, who earned a Bronze Star and was celebrated and honored by his country-- will he be allowed by his country to go see his kids? It is unbelievable. Every time I hear another chapter of this book of absurdity coming from this administration with respect to their obsession about Cuba, I wonder, Where does it stop? The reason I have taken the floor this morning is because this young soldier came to see me the other day and said: Can you help? If logic does not help maybe-- maybe--embarrassment will. Perhaps the administration will be sufficiently embarrassed. They were not embarrassed enough to stop trying to find a young woman who was distributing free Bibles in Cuba. Perhaps they will be embarrassed by trying to prevent this young man from seeing his children--a young man this administration certainly would honor as someone who has done heroic things for his country. I am going to call the State Department today. I am going to call the White House today. I am going to call the Treasury Department today. They will all have the letter I sent. My hope is, they will finally find a way to say yes, it is the right decision, it is the right thing for this country to do. I am here talking about Carlos Lazo, but ultimately this issue is not just about Carlos. I hope I can solve this for Carlos. But it is about the broader issue of the administration deciding we are going to injure Fidel Castro by restricting the right of the American people to travel. It makes no sense at all. My hope is there may be a few other Members of the Senate who would be willing to speak out about this absurdity. I hope there are a few who are as offended as I am and will decide to again do the right thing. I will report to my colleagues later today about the response of the State Department, the White House, and the Treasury Department to see whether they will honor this young soldier, not just by his Bronze medal for heroism on the battlefield but by allowing him to exercise the freedom any American ought to have to see his child. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. First of all, the chart the Senator uses about deficits and accumulated debt, he describes something that is very real, that is a threat to this country's long-term economic future. There is no question about that. I have spoken about it with respect to both the fiscal policy of this country and our trade policy. Our trade policy has created the largest debt in the history of the country by far. I wanted to mention that the House of Representatives approved legislation for another $45 billion in an emergency supplemental. That comes on the heels of the $81 billion we approved. The Senate is going to approve the requested emergency supplemental because we are going to restore the funds that the Pentagon says they need to prosecute the war in Iraq. But it is interesting, for the $81 billion that we just passed, $45 billion which now comes on the heels of that, not a penny of it is paid for. The administration keeps saying--and these are big numbers--we have to pay for that which we are doing, and we need to restore these accounts to the U.S. Army. All of us say, yes, we not going to send soldiers to do a job and not provide the funds necessary. But I ask the Senator: Does he agree with me that it is bizarre, to say the least, to send the soldiers to Iraq and then say: By the way, when we pay for all this, let's not ask anybody to pay taxes to do it. Let's just have these soldiers pay the debt when they come back. It is unbelievable. There are spending cuts the Senator likely will propose that are meritorious. I think he has pointed out at the start of his presentation correctly, this appropriations bill cuts one-half of a billion dollars below the previous year's expenditure. But the big issue around here is the massive amount of money being requested on an emergency basis so that it doesn't have to be paid for and it adds to the Federal debt. And then the soldiers can come home and help pay that. I believe that is unfair. I ask the Senator from Oklahoma to respond, from his perspective, about that.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN. First, I appreciate his generosity in yielding. It would be interesting for us to have a discussion at some point about the economy and fiscal policy. I think we are wildly off track. Maybe the Senator from Oklahoma and I agree on that point. I will make a couple of observations, if I might. No. 1, the Senator suggested that we have never paid down the debt. In the late 1990s, we had a fiscal policy that generated revenue by which we began to reduce the debt.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield further.

Mr. DORGAN. Of course, the issue of whether our fiscal policy is different now than then is not at odds or not in question. At that point, I know the Federal Reserve Board and others, including the President, all talked about debt held by the public versus total debt. In fact, our fiscal policy at that point was dramatically different than it is now. We were headed in the right direction. Let me make this point. It is, in my judgment, a service to the Congress for someone to look at every appropriations bill and say, where can we trim? Where can we get into a position of not spending money we should not be spending? That is a service to the Congress. I think it is important to understand that we cannot look at the mouse in the corner when a lion is at the door. We cut a half billion dollars out of this subcommittee from last year's spending. So those are real cuts. We could do that for 90 years, every single year, and at that point we will just meet the $45 billion that is coming our way in an emergency supplemental, none of which is paid for. Do you understand what I am saying? This would be over $200 billion now sent to us by the administration, saying we have to increase these expenditures and we ask you to do it, Congress, but we are not going to pay for it. We will add it to the debt. In addition to that, the highest priority, of course, is to eliminate a tax that doesn't exist--the death tax, the tax on inherited wealth, making the tax cuts permanent, which would benefit upper-income folks. Let's trim everything, but let's especially--and I will work with the Senator from Oklahoma on this--worry about the big ones. The big one that is coming--and I voted with the Senator on the embassy amendment-- is the $45 billion. It is headed our way; it is a big deal. Should we be paying for that? Should the President suggest--as most have whenever we have been at war--that perhaps all of America, not just the soldiers, has some responsibility to contribute? But not under this circumstance. This President says no, no, give me an emergency designation so we can spend it and it doesn't count. It counts on the chart of the Senator from Oklahoma. It counts in terms of lost opportunity for our children and grandchildren. This burden doesn't belong just to one political party. I agree. I am saying that, in my judgment, we are off track. This fiscal policy doesn't add up. And what is being requested of us by the President is to have all our soldiers sacrifice but none of us sacrifice.

Mr. DORGAN. Absolutely. No question about that. And the control of Congress is of the same political party as the White House, and there is no interest in having a discussion about whether we should pay for that which we are spending in Iraq. The administration decided we are going to simply declare it an emergency, add it to the national debt, and let somebody else pay for it. That doesn't happen in most wars. Usually, the leadership says here is why we have to spend this, and it is a national purpose. But we are going to ask the soldiers to represent the country and let's find a way to do it. I will make this point. The Senator says we have some mutual responses. No question. On one of the early tranches of appropriations to replenish these accounts, there was a vote on the floor of the Senate to pay for some of it. But the Congress, as he knows, is not of a mind to do that, when the President says he doesn't want to. You can dramatically cut spending or increase some revenue. It would be interesting to see if the administration would be interested in sitting down with the Congress to talk about whether we even should pay for it because the administration thinks we should. It would be interesting if we had a sit-down discussion about how to pay for it. I happen to think that would be useful for the country. I would like us to do that. I think this country has a fiscal policy that is dramatically off track. I don't diminish the tax side as much as my friend does. About two-thirds of the current deficit comes from reduced revenue. We are at a lower revenue of GDP than we have been for a long time. Most of that came from the tax cut, and most of it didn't benefit people that I represent, by the way. Making the rich richer doesn't benefit everybody. The President says extend all of the tax cuts, which is a substantial amount of money and lost resources, and let's repeal the death tax, which doesn't exist. We should have a long discussion. I think our country deserves a fiscal policy grounded in fact and good thought about the future. My colleague from Oklahoma does a service by coming to the floor to talk about those red lines on that chart. I feel strongly about them, not just in fiscal policy but also trade policy. I hope at some point all of us could decide this is a crisis. There is an urgency here and we should work together on that basis. If my colleague wishes me to yield further, I am happy to do that.

Mr. DORGAN. The Grace Commission has long since been discredited. I will not go into the recommendations, some of which were adopted but many of which were absurd. That is a 20-year-old debate. Let's assume for the moment there was no increase in spending of any type. That would represent a huge problem for the poorest of the poor who get medical care from Medicaid. As you know, health care costs are rising dramatically, not having to do with much that is happening in this Chamber. Nonetheless, there is substantial increase in health care costs every year. If you said to the poorest of the poor, everybody else is going to get health care, but we are going to freeze health care funding for you, I am sorry, they would be in big trouble. We also have more people every month becoming eligible for Medicare. The fact is, we have a rising Medicare population. Every single month more and more people hit the Medicare rolls. With increased medical costs and more people being eligible, does Medicare cost more? Of course, it does. People are living longer, better lives. I have spoken at great length on the floor of the Senate about my Uncle Harold. My Uncle Harold is 84 years old now, and he is a runner. He has 43 Gold Medals. He is a 400-meter specialist in the Senior Olympics. My aunt thinks he is half goofy. He is always off running road races. He runs the 400-meter and runs faster than anybody his age. It used to be when you reached 80, you found a Lazy Boy and you just sat in the house until you died. You were old and you had a right to act old. Now people are living longer, active lives. That puts a strain on Medicare. More people are living longer, so they hit the Medicare rolls. Health care costs are up very substantially, double digits in many cases. So we bear the burden of that on the spending side. If we were to decide tomorrow we are not going to spend a penny above last year, all you say to poor people on Medicaid is: Sorry, you are out of luck. You are going to have less health care. My colleague from Colorado is a very interesting Senator. We do not know each other very well. He just arrived in the Senate in January. I am looking forward to getting to know him. I am sure I will. I hope we can have further discussions about the economy. I do not dismiss quite as quickly, as I think my colleague was trying to do, the fact that when you decide to have large tax cuts mostly to benefit the wealthiest of the wealthy in this country that you have an enormous consequence on the revenue side that therefore causes a substantial amount of that red bar on that chart, and one-half to two-thirds, at the moment, of the current deficit is because of less revenue because of the tax cuts. I know the minute I started talking about maybe we should pay for the cost of the war, my colleague segued immediately into we want to raise taxes. I am looking to see a fiscal policy that meets the needs of this country. That is a combination of things that are thoughtful and interesting that puts us right on track so we can have a future that expands opportunity for our children rather than contracts opportunity for our children. I will be happy to yield one more time. I see my colleague would like for me to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me make a final comment. I know we have a couple colleagues who want to speak. Frankly, we Senators are not much of an audience. We much prefer listening to ourselves than others, and we are probably boring them to tears. Discretionary spending is very interesting. As the Senator knows, what comes from the Appropriations Committee to the floor of the Senate is the discretionary spending side. Much of the spending is mandatory. The Senator from Oklahoma is correct that health care is mandatory spending. We could virtually eliminate the entire discretionary spending side and probably still not put this back on track. The Senator made a point that I want to emphasize. It is a point on which we agree. All these people walk around saying this is what the deficit is. That is not what the deficit is. My colleague, Fritz Hollings, who used to sit right behind me, talked about this forever. For him it was a religion. The number they publish as to the Federal budget deficit is total nonsense. That is not what the deficit is. It is much higher than that because they are raiding all the trust funds to get to that point. We will have a longer discussion. I enjoyed this one. This is an important issue. There are some issues that are small and unimportant, some big, and often the Senate treats the serious issues too lightly and the light issues too seriously. In this case, this is a big issue and will affect this country for decades to come. We ought to have more discussions, both on and off the floor, about how we put America back on track. Mr. President, I wish to make one final point. This morning's New York Times said IBM is cutting their hiring here to hire over there. Get rid of American workers, hire workers in India. The first step--not the second, third, or fourth step--the first step toward sanity would be for everyone in this Chamber to vote the next time I have an amendment on the floor--I have done it twice and lost twice--that says the first step we ought to do is to decide to stop having tax breaks for those who move their American jobs overseas. Stop the American public from having to pay for this nonsense. We are providing tax cuts to companies that fire their American workers and move them to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, or, in this case, India. That is absurd. I am going to offer that amendment again for a third time, and perhaps I will have enough support so we can take the first baby step toward sanity in dealing with job loss in this country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I do wish to mention two issues before we complete today. I talked a few moments ago about a soldier who is trying to see his sick children in Cuba. I put in a call to Secretary Snow to see if we can't make that happen. I will not go through all of that again. But, again, it is unbelievable to me that we are penalizing this soldier, who has earned a Bronze Star and is an American citizen who wants to see his sick child in Cuba, and penalizing him because we are upset with Fidel Castro.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to make a comment today about actions taken yesterday by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I have spoken about this on the floor of the Senate previously. Let me describe just a bit of the history here. I read some while ago that Mr. Kenneth Tomlinson, who is the Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting--again, Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was making the case publicly that public broadcasting has a liberal bias. He was relentlessly making the case that public broadcasting has a liberal bias--public television, public radio, and so on. Maybe he thinks Big Bird is a Republican--or a Democrat. Maybe he thinks the Cookie Monster goes to precinct meetings someplace for some political party or other. I have no idea what he thinks. Frankly, he was concerned about Bill Moyers, who was doing a program called ``NOW.'' He was sufficiently concerned about that, having made allegations that there is a liberal bias in the public television, that he hired a consultant to do an evaluation of the program that Bill Moyers does. This consultant was paid for with public funds. So I wrote Mr. Tomlinson and I said: You believe there is a liberal bias here with public broadcasting. You have paid taxpayers' monies to have a consultant--who himself, by the way, is a partisan--a consultant to evaluate a specific set of programming. I would like the results of that. So he sent me the raw data, which is about I think maybe 70 pages. It is a rather large stack of raw data--no summary. So I called him back and said: I really want the summary. There wasn't a summary, he said. He said he is making a summary, preparing a summary. He said he would have it to me, I think, a week ago now. And I have not yet received the summary, but the raw data was interesting. At least in portions, this program was evaluated, by a particular consultant who himself was a partisan, as is Mr. Tomlinson, the raw data was evaluating segments in public television, particularly in the NOW program, on whether they were anti-Bush or pro-Bush. Anti-Bush, anti-Bush, anti-Bush. Apparently the lens or prism through which they are evaluating public broadcasting was: Do they support the President or not? One was interesting. For example, in one case, it was labeled ``antidefense'' because it was a program about waste in the Pentagon. My colleague from Oklahoma talked about waste a little earlier. He said there is a lot of waste in the Pentagon. If you talk about waste in the Pentagon, you, apparently, are ``antidefense.'' Unbelievable. I mentioned previously, my colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska, a red-blooded American patriot who served this country, a Republican conservative, by all accounts, who serves in the Senate, someone with whom I am proud to serve, was on one of the programs. He apparently said something that was at odds with the President's policy, so he was labeled a ``liberal.'' Yes, my friend, Chuck Hagel, conservative Republican Senator from Nebraska, is labeled liberal because he was on public broadcasting and said something at odds with the policy of the Bush administration. Unbelievable. Anti-Bush, anti-Bush, liberal, antidefense. What an unbelievable thing to have done to hire a partisan consultant to evaluate for a liberal bias in public broadcasting. Is Big Bird a Democrat? What a weighted question. So Mr. Tomlinson, Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was not only embarking on this effort to prove an allegation he had been making--that is, there is a liberal bias in public broadcasting--but also working to put in a new president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. So who does Mr. Tomlinson want as the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? The former Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee. Yes, that is right. You say, well, that cannot be. Of course, that is exactly right. In fact, that person was just hired in a split vote by the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It is unbelievable. The Chairman spends his time alleging the organization he heads has a liberal bias, hires a partisan to try to prove it, to put together work papers that come from evaluating programming, and then embarks on an effort to decide there should be a former Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee to run the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I don't know, maybe it is hard to take a level look when you are a partisan. But public television has a program that deals with the Wall Street Journal editorial board. No one would suggest the Wall Street Journal editorial pages are anything other than solid, hard-rock Republican. No question about that. They don't pretend. There is no veil over their secrecy about their politics. That is what they are. They have a program on public broadcasting with Tucker Carlson. I don't know Tucker Carlson. I don't know Tucker Carlson from a block of wood. He wears a bow tie. He is a conservative Republican, and so they hire him to do a program. I think he has just left. It is not as if public broadcasting has not had conservative voices. They are just upset with the ``NOW'' program by Bill Moyers. Why are they upset with Bill Moyers? Let me give one example. Public broadcasting tackles subjects others will not tackle. One subject is the concentration of media ownership in this country. What has happened with the radio and television industry is it has been gobbled up into huge packages. One company owns 1,200 radio stations. The Federal Communications Commission, under pressure from the broadcast industry, was going to change the rules on ownership, and they did. Pressure from the publishers, pressure from the television, pressure from the radio industry. The Federal Communications Commission did the most complete cave-in to corporate interests I have ever seen in my life. They have new ownership rules that say, totus porcus, you can own everything. Here is what they said in the rules: In the largest city in this country, or in the largest cities, it is okay for one company to own eight radio stations, three television stations, the dominant newspaper, and the cable company. That is all fine. That is nirvana. That is absolutely nuts. Yet that was the rule the FCC came up with. Majority party, representing the interests of the President, says this is what we are doing. We will allow more concentration in broadcasting so that four, five, or six people will largely control what the American people see, hear, and read. Guess what. A Federal appeals court decided they were going to stay those rules. Three-quarters of a million people wrote to the FCC saying, do not do this. It was the largest outpouring of letters I can recall. The FCC did it anyway, caved in to the corporate interests, and the Federal court stayed the rules, it went up to the Supreme Court, the stay was not lifted and it is back to the FCC to do over. We will see whether they cave in, once again, or whether the public interest might prevail. My point of telling that story is this: Bill Moyers did stories on this issue about the concentration in the broadcasting industry. Do you think anybody else was interested in doing big stories about this? Do you think CBS would do a story about that? Or FOX? Or ABC? Or NBC? Not on your life, because they are the beneficiaries of those policies. They want to be bigger. They want more. They think it is fine if you live in one city, that one company will call the tune on information. One company will own eight radio stations, three television stations, the newspaper, and the cable company. They think that is fine. You are not going to see stories as you peruse the television dial about this subject from the major companies. They will not do it. Guess who did it. Bill Moyers, on a program called ``NOW.'' Did that upset some people? I suppose, sure. They do not like that. But the fact is, public broadcasting has been independent. It was created as the independent source of news, oblivious and impervious to the pressures and partisan wins. So the ``NOW'' program does a couple of programs on concentration of broadcasting and they collect a firestorm of protests by the big economic interests and by those who support the President's policies on this. Let them all merge. They say, well, all these mergers do not matter. You have all these television channels these days, you have more opportunities. What you have are more voices coming from one ventriloquist. Add up where all the channels are owned and where they come from. It is exactly the same concentration. There are investigations going on at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mr. Tomlinson was named Chairman by the President, September 2003. He spends his time telling us there is a liberal bias in public broadcasting so he hired a consultant to track the political leanings of certain programming. He hired a conservative partisan to do that. Paid for it with taxpayers' money. That is now being evaluated by the Inspector General. He did not tell the Board of Directors about this expenditure. He, in a letter to me, said, maybe I didn't tell the Board of Directors but that is because the President of CPB signed the contract. That is not accurate. He signed the contract several months before the President that he alleged signed it had actually become President at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Now they have appointed a new President at the urging of Mr. Tomlinson, a partisan former Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee. Some of the members of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have alleged to me personally that the process by which that was done was a stilted process, not a fair and open process. I am going to ask the Inspector General to include that in his investigation as well. I did not join all those in the Senate last week who signed a letter to suggest Mr. Tomlinson should resign. I was not one of those who signed it. But I now think he should. I think orchestrating the hiring of a partisan former Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee to run the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after he has made a mini- career here out of alleging there is a liberal bias, to suggest he should be the point of the spear to move it in a direction that clearly is partisan is unfortunate, in my judgment, and will do dramatic injury to public broadcasting. My hope is public broadcasting will recover from these missteps. Public broadcasting has done a wonderful service in our country. I kidded about Big Bird. Big Bird is not a partisan. When American children watch ``Sesame Street'' and see wonderful programming--which, by the way, they took care of that program and it does not exist on commercial television--most Americans in the polls I have seen believe public broadcasting does a real service. I don't think there is a better newscast than PBS, Jim Lehrer. I think he is incredibly good. You get it straight. You do not get it in 8-second sound bites as is the case with the network news. You get a discussion by both sides, in depth, about issues that matter to this country. Those who are deciding to take it upon themselves to try to do injury to public broadcasting did no service to this country. I know there is a network of radio and broadcast opportunities out there for largely one voice, the conservative voice, that is relentless, every day, all over the dial. The fairness doctrine is gone so they can do that. There does not have to be balance on commercial stations. There used to be. It does not have to be anymore because under President Reagan the fairness doctrine was obliterated. I know they do not like this message about the push-back on public broadcasting. In my judgment, when I see someone doing injury to public broadcasting, I think it is important to speak out. I think Mr. Tomlinson is doing injury to something that is very important to our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for part of this week and want to indicate how I would have voted if I had been present. If present, I would have voted in the following ways: ``no'' on the Nelson (FL) amendment, rollcall vote No. 143; ``yes'' on the Hagel amendment, roll call vote No. 144; ``yes'' on the Voinovich amendment, rollcall vote No. 145; ``no'' on the McCain-Lieberman amendment, rollcall vote No. 148; ``yes'' on the motion to table the Bingaman amendment, rollcall No. 149; ``no'' on the Alexander amendment, rollcall vote No. 150; ``yes'' on the Kerry amendment, rollcall vote No. 151; ``yes'' to invoke cloture on the energy bill; rollcall vote No. 152; and ``yes'' to waive the budget point of order on the Domenici-Landrieu amendment, rollcall No. 153.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will be necessarily absent from the business of the Senate for a portion of today in order to attend the high school graduation ceremonies for my son. I will also necessarily be absent from the Senate beginning tomorrow afternoon and continuing into late afternoon Thursday, in order to join my colleagues from North Dakota and Minnesota to attend the hearings of the base- closing commission that are being held in Grand Forks, ND. I have notified the leadership of these expected absences.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to speak about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. My understanding is their board of directors is meeting today. I don't know whether they are going to select a new president for the corporation, but I know that was at least announced as the intention today of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Let me go all the way back to Big Bird. Everyone who grows up watching Sesame Street and Children's Television Workshop understands that Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and all of those things represent learning devices and the wonderful characters on Sesame Street. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created a long while ago as a part of an approach to do something unique. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Television, and National Public Radio have been pretty remarkable. Every week 94 million Americans watch public television or some portion of public television and 46 million people listen to public radio. That is a remarkable statistic. Public radio and public television are available to over 90 percent of American homes. We have come a long way since President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. It is the case that public broadcasting will tackle issues that other broadcasters don't tackle. I admit you won't see Fear Factor on public television. You won't tune in and see someone sitting in front of a bowl of maggots to see whether they can eat an entire bowl in 15 or 30 seconds. That is not the kind of television I watch. But occasionally when you are browsing through the television routine, you tune in to programs that have that kind of approach. You wonder what has become of good television. Or you might tune in to another program where you see a couple of women or men engaged in a fist fight over some romance that turned sour, where on that program day after day they hold this imperfection up to the light and say: Isn't this ugly? Let's entertain ourselves with everyone else's dysfunctional behavior. You won't find that on public broadcasting. They sink their teeth into some pretty interesting things. I mentioned Big Bird. I suppose could you say Big Bird isn't quite so serious, but a lot of children grow up with Sesame Street watching Big Bird and the lessons therein. Frankly, it is wonderful television--more than television for children, I will give you an example of the kinds of things public broadcasting tackles that others will not. Do you think ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX is going to tackle the question of concentration in broadcasting? There are no more than five or six companies and people that control what we see, hear, and read. Because we see all of these concentrations of television stations and radio stations, the Federal Communications Commission decided in their ruling, which the court subsequently stayed, that it is OK to open this up. And the Federal Communications Commission said: We believe that in one major American city, one company ought to be able to own eight radio stations, three television stations, the cable company, and the dominant newspaper. We think that is fine. It is not fine with me. It is limiting what people can see and read and hear. The controversy surrounding public television, public radio, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting saddens me. My hope is that perhaps actions taken in the next couple of days might resolve that. There is apparently a board meeting this afternoon and apparently another meeting of some type tomorrow where they will choose a new president. This all is with the backdrop of the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who has consistently and publicly said that public broadcasting, public television, public radio has a liberal bias. There have been all of those allegations over some long period of time. A liberal bias, it is easy to say. It doesn't have a liberal bias. It is just independent television which most people appreciate. Let me talk for a moment about my concern about where we are heading. Press accounts from last week noted that the House Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill on Thursday that would slash spending for public television and radio by nearly half. That includes a 25-percent cut in financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and a total of $112 million in additional cuts for programs that provide continuing children's programming. Just the news coming out of the Appropriations Committee in the House is ominous. But more than that, inside the organization, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting hired a consultant to evaluate the bias in public broadcasting. He hired a consultant to go after the program called ``NOW with Bill Moyers.'' He hired that consultant without notifying the board of directors. This is the chairman of the board. He hired that consultant with public funds. As an appropriator, I asked him: Would you provide me with the information that the consultant provided you. This is what I received. I received a substantial amount of what he called raw data. It didn't include any summary, just raw data. I was struck and disappointed to see that a consultant was hired, and this is a summary of April 4 to June 4, just to pick one. And they go through the list of programs, and they label anti-Bush, anti-Bush, anti-DeLay. I guess if he reported on the controversy about Tom DeLay, it is anti- DeLay programming. It says, ``anticorporation.'' In fact, they did a program about some waste. It might have been about Halliburton, although I have done hearings on Halliburton. I guess that would then be declared anticorporation. It is really not. Again, it reads anti-Bush, anti- Bush, pro-Bush. I am struck that it is way out of bounds to be paying money for a consultant who decides to evaluate public broadcasting through the prism of whether or not it supports the President. That is not the role of public broadcasting, to decide whether it supports the President of the United States. If we ever get to the point where you can't be critical of public policy, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the President, then there is something wrong. Interestingly enough, they used another approach on another set of programming, and they divided these segments that were shown into either liberal or conservative segments. And there was a segment on June 7 last year and Senator Hagel from Nebraska, a conservative Republican, was on that segment and apparently said something that wasn't completely in sync with the White House. So he is labeled as a liberal. A conservative Republican Senator from Nebraska is labeled a liberal by the consultant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Why? Because he said something liberal? No, apparently he just didn't have the party line down and said something that was perhaps at odds with policy coming out of the White House. This list goes on and on. My guess is my colleague Senator Hagel is going to be mighty surprised to discover that a consultant hired by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting views his appearances on public broadcasting as appearances that contribute to a liberal bias because a conservative Republican Senator from Nebraska shows up on public broadcasting. I don't mean to make light of this. I think it is serious. In addition to all of this, an allegation of bias--a relentless allegation of bias by the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in addition to his hiring a consultant to do this kind of thing--evaluate programming, whether it is anti-Bush or pro-Bush--in addition to all of that, there is now a discussion and potentially even a vote today in which they would select a new president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the leading candidate for that job is a former cochairman of the Republican National Committee. I would not think it appropriate for a former cochair of the Democratic National Committee to assume the presidency of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; nor would I think it would be wise for Mr. Tomlinson, the chairman of the board, to usher in a former partisan as president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Again, I only say that, going back some 35 years and more, I think public broadcasting has been a real service to our country. Public television and public radio tackle things other interests will not tackle in this country. They are, in fact, independent. That is precisely what drives some people half-wild. My hope is that the actions of Mr. Tomlinson, the chairman, the actions of the board, whatever they might be today--my hope is that those actions will not further contribute to injuring public broadcasting. We fund public broadcasting because we think it is a great alternative to commercial television. If you tune in--nothing against broadcasts in the evening on the commercial station, but I happen to think Jim Lehrer has one of the best newscasts in our country. He covers both sides aggressively. I think it contributes to our country and I think, in many ways, public broadcasting is a national treasure. I regret that I have to describe these things--consultants who evaluate whether or not something is anti-Bush. That is not the prism through which one should evaluate whether something makes sense. I will wait to see what happens today at the meeting taking place of the board. My hope is that they will not take action that will further injure and be detrimental to public broadcasting.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my colleague, Senator Wyden, just offered an amendment on his behalf and mine. He spoke in support of it. Obviously, I am a cosponsor so I support the amendment. It is an amendment that is very simple. We are putting oil away underground in something called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or SPR. The purpose of putting oil underground at this point is in the event that we would have an emergency at some point in the future, we would have a substantial inventory of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That SPR is nearly full. As I understand, it is well over 98 percent filled at this point. Yet we are still, each day, taking about 100,000 barrels of oil off the market and putting it underground at a time when we are effectively paying the highest price ever for that oil in order to put it there. There are two problems with that. No. 1, at a time when we have very high prices, which means we have lower supplies and higher demand, it makes no sense to have 100,000 barrels a day taken off the market and stuck underground. Even more than that, it makes no sense to do this, with the last increment to be put into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, at a time when oil is $55, $57, $58 a barrel. Our amendment is very simple. It would suspend the acquisition of oil at these inflated prices, suspend the acquisition of oil at a time when we need more supply, not less, and it would allow the acquisition to complete filling the SPR when the price of a barrel of oil reaches $40 per barrel or below. My hope is the Senate will adopt the amendment. It is just common sense. It is not rocket science to believe that if you have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve almost filled, you should not go to the market and take $55 or $57 oil in order to take inventory off the market at a time when you have record prices. That doesn't make any sense. We are asking that the Senate approve the amendment. Before the Senator from New Mexico leaves the floor, I have another matter I wish to address, but I don't intend to address something in morning business that would interrupt the work on the bill. I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to 15 minutes with the understanding that if someone comes to the floor with an amendment on the Energy bill, I will defer. I don't want to delay the bill. I ask unanimous consent for 15 minutes in morning business with that understanding.

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