Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to discuss funding for a wind transmission study that was included in the fiscal year 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill signed into law last December. As a member of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, I appreciated the efforts of Senators Domenici and Reid, the chairman and the ranking member of our subcommittee, to include $500,000 for the Western Area Power Administration, WAPA, to continue its work on the placement of additional wind capacity in the Dakotas. They have generously provided funding for similar work for the past two years, and I am glad these efforts will be continued during this coming fiscal year. North Dakota is the ``Saudi Arabia'' of wind. The Department of Energy has long identified North Dakota as having the greatest wind energy resource and potential for wind generation development in the lower 48 States. During my time in the Senate, I have been pushing hard on a number of fronts to develop our wind energy resources. For example, I have been a strong supporter of the Renewable Portfolio Standard, RPS, which requires utilities to produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. In addition, I believe the Federal Government should be a leader in this area and develop a policy of purchasing electricity from renewable energy sources. Last February, I hosted the Fifth Annual Wind Energy Conference with the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota to further promote this clean and limitless energy resource. Wind energy stakeholders from around the Nation attended this successful event, which attracted 436 people from 30 States and three Canadian provinces. Last year, the conference included a second day of events because of the overwhelming interest in wind energy. As a result of the wind energy industry's growth, North Dakota's skyline and economic future are forever changing and progressing forward. We will be doing another conference in February 2005, which more broadly embraces renewable energy in the Upper Midwest. Despite my continued efforts to increase the use of wind as an energy source, North Dakota faces many transmission challenges in moving wind energy to other parts of the country. I have held field hearings in North Dakota on these issues and have also supported the development of new transmission technologies. While the Senate has wisely included funding for the last several years for WAPA to make some progress on these transmission problems, the fact remains that more needs to be done. WAPA and others have done a number of general studies on this issue and I think the next steps are clear. WAPA should use the funding earmarked in FY2005 for an Environmental Impact Study, EIS, that would allow transmission expansion for wind generation to be placed in North and South Dakota and should use the remaining funds to support specific demonstration projects in the region. With respect to site-specific projects to support wind development for future electric generation, I believe that WAPA should first develop parameters for determining what constitutes a bona fide wind project. In doing this, WAPA should ensure that projects meet the following requirements: a minimum period of at least one year; minimum anemometer height of at least 40 meters; multiple monitoring points allowing calculation of wind shear; a defined system interconnection point and wind right easements adequate for the proposed project. To make these limited funds stretch farther, I would expect any proposed project to include a 50-50 cost share provision. It is my hope that WAPA will be able to support projects that will accurately determine the transmission requirements and related costs associated with the installation of specific wind and coal generation projects. Following this guidance, it is my expectation that WAPA will use this funding to make real progress on these transmission problems in the next fiscal year, and provide wider benefits to the large region of the U.S. served by WAPA. After all, WAPA was created to market hydropower, a renewable energy resource. Wind is the next step.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am an original cosponsor of legislation which was introduced today by Senators Johnson and Enzi. This legislation requires that a mandatory system of country of-origin labeling be in place before the U.S. Department of Agriculture can open the border to imports of live Canadian cattle. This legislation would not be necessary if USDA and this Administration were not furiously pushing to allow live Canadian cattle into this country. I am very concerned that they are doing this despite the most recent discovery, just a few weeks ago, of two more Canadian cows infected with BSE. I believe that the decision to open the border to live Canadian cattle should be made based on sound science, not politics. The border should be opened when science indicates that it is safe to do so, and not before. I also believe that it is necessary that this country have a system of country-of-origin labeling in place before the border is opened. That is the only way American consumers will be able to choose between beef raised in America and beef raised in Canada. Right now there is no way to tell the difference. We must have country-of-origin labeling in place before we allow Canadian cattle into this country, and that is why I am cosponsoring this legislation.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me ask consent to speak for 20 minutes in morning business.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the presentation by Senator Leahy.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to speak today about several items, the first of which is the sale of agricultural goods to Cuba. Some years ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft, who then was a U.S. Senator, and I, offered an amendment that opened the opportunity to sell agricultural commodities into the Cuban marketplace. For over 40 years that marketplace had been closed to American farmers because of an embargo. The bill that Congress passed was called the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000. It permitted agricultural sales to Cuba on the condition that the Cubans had to use cash in order to purchase agricultural commodities from this country. We have now sold over $900 million worth of farm commodities to the Cuban marketplace for cash. In fact, about 1\1/2\ or 2 years ago, 22 train carloads of dried peas left North Dakota to be shipped into the Cuban marketplace-- the first time in 42 years our farmers had an opportunity to sell into this market that the Canadians and the Europeans had been selling into all along. That is what we did in the legislation. I felt that having an embargo on food shipments to Cuba all those years was wrong. It didn't affect Fidel Castro. We tried to injure Fidel Castro by slapping on this embargo which included food and medicine, which I thought was an insidious policy. It didn't hurt Fidel Castro. He never missed a breakfast, lunch, or dinner because we were not able to sell food into Cuba. The same is true with travel restrictions. We prohibited Americans from traveling into Cuba except for those who are able to get a license from the Treasury Department, which is increasingly difficult to do. Restricting the American people's right to travel is not hurting Fidel Castro. It simply injures the American people. We can travel in Communist China and in Communist Vietnam but we can't travel in Cuba. I have held up a picture on the floor of the Senate of Joni Scott. She went to Cuba to distribute free Bibles. This administration's Treasury Department tracked her down and said we are going to try to slap a $10,000 fine on you for distributing free Bibles in Cuba. I have also shown the picture of Joan Slote, a retired senior Olympian in her midseventies. She went to ride a bicycle in Cuba with a Canadian group. The Treasury tracked her down even as she was dealing with her son's brain cancer and slapped a fine on her and threatened, by the way, to seize her Social Security payments. It is outrageous what this policy has been with respect to Cuba. But we had a small victory when Senator Ashcroft and I were able to change the law so that our farmers and ranchers could sell into the Cuban marketplace. Since then we have sold $900 million of agricultural commodities for cash to Cuba. In recent weeks something else has happened. It is apparent this administration is fighting every possible way to shut down the opportunities of farmers and ranchers to sell into the Cuban marketplace. Here is a new way. This chart shows part of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 legislation. Here are the words that stipulate that the Cubans must pay ``cash in advance'' for food they purchase. And that is exactly what the Cubans have done for about $900 million in shipments so far. But someone at Treasury took a look at this, and said, You know, there is a way to interpret these words to shut down these shipments even tighter. We will interpret cash in advance to mean the cash must be received by the exporter before anything can be shipped toward Cuba. That is much different from the way the term cash in advance has been generally understood by the export community and the way I as an author would have understood what we meant. Up to now, cash in advance meant that you must pay cash before you take receipt of the product. That ship goes to Cuba with dried peas, or wheat, or flour, or beef. Before it is offloaded and the Cubans take possession, they must pay cash to the seller. It is very simple. You pay cash before you take possession of the product. The Treasury Department has now found a way to say, Not good enough. The way sales have been made to Cuba for the past three years is not what the Treasury thinks the legislation says. We insist that the phrase cash in advance means you pay cash before anything gets loaded on the ship. What is this about? It is about someone down at the Treasury Department who has decided they have found another way to see if they can stop our farmers and ranchers from selling into the Cuban marketplace. I was an author of the legislation, and they need to understand that I knew what I was doing, and I believe my colleague Senator Ashcroft and others in the Congress knew what they were doing. We were trying to provide access to the Cuban marketplace. This country has now said for almost two dozen years the way to move Communist countries such as China and Vietnam toward greater human rights is through more trade and travel engagement to move them in the right direction. We have said that with China and with Vietnam, both Communist countries. The exception is Cuba. They say if we begin to allow people to travel in Cuba, to trade with Cuba, somehow that is pernicious and moves in the wrong direction. At some point you have to say that is an argument that is completely devoid of common sense. But Congress has already acted on this. The Congress said it is all right and we believe we should be able to trade with Cuba provided that sale is for cash. The Cubans buy agricultural commodities from us. They pay for it through a European bank with cash so that no direct transfer of funds from Cuba to a U.S. institution. And now there is someone who has found a way to restrict this, to try to interrupt rice shipments and other shipments to Cuba. The farm community was caught unaware by this issue. I was unaware of it. Once we discovered it, I called people in the Bush administration to ask, What on earth are you doing this time? Can't you get it straight that this Congress has already said this is the law, this is the way the law reads? I have asked, by the way, the Inspector General at the Department of the Treasury to investigate what OFAC--called the Office of Foreign Assets Control--is doing here. Essentially, the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury is supposed to be tracking money to terrorists. They are supposed to be shutting down the funding for Osama bin Laden. They are supposed to be tracking the network of funds around the world that finances terrorism. But what are the people at OFAC doing? They are tracking down Joan Slote and Joni Scott who traveled to Cuba to ride bicycles and distribute free Bibles. They are spending time trying to figure out how they can reinterpret Federal law to try to put a wrench in the crankcase of farmers and ranchers who are trying to sell into the Cuban marketplace. They ought to be ashamed of themselves down at OFAC. They know better than that. When Secretary of Treasury O'Neill testified at a hearing a couple of years ago, I asked him repeatedly about this. He finally answered, but he didn't want to. I asked him, Wouldn't you, with some common sense, much rather use your assets in OFAC to track the financing of terrorists than track Americans who are suspected of taking a vacation in Cuba? Finally, he said, Sure, sure. The OFAC is not a very big agency. But they have over 20 people who are tracking this Cuba issue trying to nab an American person who is suspected of taking vacations in Cuba or trying to find ways to reinterpret the law to shut down agricultural trade to Cuba. They have more people doing that than they have tracking Osama bin Laden, and trying to shut down Osama bin Laden's network of funding to support his terrorist activity. OFAC ought to be ashamed. What a false choice for the security of this country. And what a false choice for the welfare and benefit of family farmers and ranchers, just like the Europeans and Canadians and others who have access to this marketplace. My hope is they will have a meeting in the administration. My understanding is they had one late yesterday afternoon, or will have one today, and perhaps some common sense will prevail. If not, we will find a way here on the floor of the Congress to see if we can't make the right thing happen and perhaps force them to use their resources--or perhaps if they are misusing their resources, to diminish the resources they have. In any event, we have a significant problem in agricultural trade. Ten years ago, we had a $25 billion agricultural trade surplus. This year, it is $9 billion. It shrank from $25 billion to $9 billion, and next year it is expected to be zero. For the first time in over 50 years we will not have a surplus in agricultural trade, according to the estimates in the administration. If that is the case, why are they trying to shut down our sales of agricultural product to Cuba? It doesn't make sense at all to me. I hope those in the administration who have done this and who think that redefining the meaning of cash in advance is a genius scheme to try to thwart the will of Congress will think through it more clearly and understand it is a harebrained scheme that doesn't comport at all with the law. My hope is they will finally get that message.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me mention a couple of other trade issues because I think they are critically important. I am going to spend a great deal of time on trade issues in this coming session of Congress. We have the largest trade deficit in the history of the country. That translates into lost jobs and lost opportunity for our country. This town is completely brain dead on trade issues. We can start with the Washington Post and the major news outlets. They do not cover trade or care about it, and if they cover it at all, they only cover one side, and that is the side of so-called free trade. Let me tell you where the so-called mantra of free trade has led: the largest trade deficit in the history of our country with massive outsourcing of jobs replaced with jobs that pay less with fewer benefits in our country. I have spoken at great length about the trade issues to a deafening silence; it could be because of my presentation. But this country, this Congress, this town, has to get serious about this issue because it is hollowing out the economic stability and opportunity for this country's future. We have a huge unprecedented trade deficit with China. We buy everything China has to manufacture--shoes, shirts, shorts, trinkets, toys, just name it. It is coming in an armada of ships every single day. We buy every single day nearly $2 billion more from other countries than we are able to export. Why do we do that? I have spoken about Huffy bicycles, and I will not go through the story today, but Ohio workers making Huffy bicycles, proud of their jobs, lost their jobs, and Huffy bicycles are now made in China. The little red wagon, American Flyer, made in America for 120 years, but the employees lost their jobs to China. A new report, December 3rd in the Washington Post: ``A Rough Ride for Schwinn Bicycles.'' We know Schwinn bicycles. I rode a Schwinn when I was a kid. They are now made in China. This story describes the mistake of Schwinn bicycles. They decided as a company they needed to try to continue to stay in the United States and manufacture bicycles here. What a huge mistake, they decided later, because it drove them into bankruptcy. So there are no longer any Schwinn bicycles made in America. Let me give an example of why this is happening, whether it is Huffy or Schwinn bicycles or a thousand other items. This is a story about unrest in a Chinese manufacturing plant from the Washington Post. In the latest unrest, about 1,000 workers staged a walk out on November 7th at the Shanlin Technology appliance factory near Guangzhou, demanding higher overtime pay and more days off, according to the government-run New China News Agency. The workers returned to the assembly line a day later after receiving assurances that overtime pay would rise by 12 cents to 36 cents an hour and that they would get two days off a month. When the Huffy jobs went from Ohio to China, for example, the jobs changed in one respect. The U.S. workers had made $11 an hour plus benefits. The Chinese workers instead make 33 cents an hour and work 12 to 13 hours a day 7 days a week. Some insist that is what America should compete with. I insist that is a race to the bottom of economic standards and one this country should not aspire to win. What has happened to our Yankee ingenuity when it comes to international trade? We used to be known as good traders. Instead, we now have a strange idea that if we can just open up all markets and have no admission standards or no admission price to the U.S. marketplace, and allow the production of most goods to migrate to countries in the world where you can hire 12-year-olds, pay them 33 cents an hour, work them 12 hours a day, and ship the products to Toledo and Santa Fe, that America would be better off. And that is just not so. In fact, as the jobs migrate from a country that cannot continue to pay workers $11 or $20 an hour, when corporations will simply move the jobs to China where they are paid 33 cents or 50 cents an hour, this country begins to feel the economic pain and the shrinking of economic opportunity. It seems to me, that after decades of failed trade policy--whether it is GATT, WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA or any one of a number of trade agreements-- at some point those who predicted a good outcome for these trade agreements, and were so fundamentally wrong, should be discredited. NAFTA is an example. We were told with respect to NAFTA, This is a good thing for our country because what will happen if jobs migrate to Mexico, they will only be low-wage and low- skill jobs. But since NAFTA has been in effect, the three largest exports from Mexico have been automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics, all the product of high-skilled labor. It is exactly the opposite of what the experts predicted. I am told that we now import more cars from Mexico than we export to the entire rest of the world. We now import more automobiles from Mexico than we export to the entire rest of the world. What that means is the migration of jobs in automobiles and automobile parts to Mexico after NAFTA. Why? Because of lower wages and fewer health, environmental, and safety regulations on manufacturing. That has meant those jobs have left our country. It results in part in this very significant trade deficit, which, in my judgment, injures this country and is a long-term serious problem. I intend to speak at much greater length about that, and repeatedly, because we must find legislative approaches to interrupt this failed trade policy. I am not saying I am opposed to free trade. I believe trade must be fair trade. There must be fair trade requirements. This free trade is a mantra that people chant. But chanting ``free trade'' at a time when we are up to our neck and choking on trade debt, with jobs moving from the country in wholesale quantity, it is time to stop that and decide it ought not be something to be ashamed of for anyone to say: My interest is in the economic well-being of the United States of America. I am so tired of people refusing to say: My interest is in protecting the economy of our country. Why are we afraid to stand up for American jobs? Why do we believe it is inappropriate for an employee to make $15 an hour in a manufacturing plant? Somehow large corporations have convinced most policymakers and editorial writers that it makes a lot of sense to hollow out our manufacturing business. I guarantee this: No country will long remain a world economic power if it does not have a strong manufacturing base. We are headed in the wrong direction. This country needs to make a U-turn. As I have said, we are completely brain dead in trade policy. We intend to have that discussion. I will force that discussion in the next session of Congress.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the largest area of deficiency for the Congress in the last few years has been the failure to have oversight hearings on issues that demand oversight hearings. I have held some hearings as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, in cases where members of other committees have asked for oversight hearings and they have been denied. This has been particularly true, by the way, when it comes to Halliburton. Let me give an example of why oversight hearings are critical. This comes from a report recently on National Public Radio. I will read this because it describes why this Congress must begin exercising its oversight responsibility. This is about waste, fraud, abuse, and the American taxpayers being cheated. Let me read some of it: Custer-Battles was a young company founded by former Army Rangers Scott Custer and Michael Battles who came to Iraq on borrowed money. An August Wall Street Journal article said that he (Mr. Battles) only had $450 when he convinced an official to put Custer-Battles [his new company he formed] on a list of bidders at an airport security contract. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. An August Wall Street Journal article said Mr. Michael Battles, a former Army Ranger, showed up in the country of Iraq with $450. He and his partner, former Army Ranger Scott Custer, convinced an official to put Custer-Battles, a new company, on a list of bidders for an airport security contract. They promised to get the job done fast, and they won the contract, which included two upfront cash advances of $2 million each. Then there was a fellow, a former FBI agent, whose name is Isakson who said 2 weeks into this job, by this two-person company that showed up with no money but got $2 million of advanced funding for this contract at the airport--Isakson, a former FBI agent, said something went wrong. ``They approached me to participate in a scheme to defraud the government.'' Isakson said it involved bidding for cost plus contracts which guarantee payment for a contractor's actual cost plus an agreed to profit margin. This is what Isakson said: They would take and open a company in Lebanon and buy materials through the Lebanese company, which they owned, then the Lebanese company would sell it to their American company [Custer-Battles] at a highly inflated rate and then they would charge their profit on top of the highly inflated rate. In other words, they would make a [big] profit plus another profit. Isakson said he refused to go along, and he warned company officials that such a plan would put them in jail. Again, this is an ex-FBI agent. He said he could not go along with this. It will put you in jail. The next day at the airport, Isakson claims, Custer-Battles security guards cornered him in a hallway at gunpoint. His brother and his 14- year-old son were there as well. Isakson said: They said you're terminated and you're under arrest and don't move or I'll shoot you. Isakson said the guard took their weapons and ID badges and eventually turned them out of the airport compound, where they made the dangerous journey from Baghdad to the Jordanian border. He has filed a lawsuit against Custer-Battles over the ordeal, and he is also a party to a $50 million Federal lawsuit filed in Virginia under the False Claims Act. The other whistleblower in this case is a Pete Baldwin, a former country manager for Custer-Battles in Iraq who now runs another firm there. Baldwin describes a web of false billing practices designed to inflate costs and boost company profits. He cites a deal to provide forklifts on a security detail. Now, this is what Baldwin says: They confiscated old Iraqi airways green and white forklifts and transported them out of the airport facility which Custer-Battles had control over and painted them blue, then sold them back to the [U.S.] government on a lease. He says: This is a blatant example where something was actually acquired free and sold back to the government [after they were repainted blue]. So Baldwin took his suspicions to Government investigators and quit over the company's billing practices. Now Baldwin claims his life has been threatened because of his actions. The Pentagon has suspended Custer-Battles from receiving further military contracts and sources, according to NPR, say a Federal criminal investigation is ongoing. However, a civil probe ended in October when the U.S. Justice Department declined to join in the whistleblower case. Here is the key, and it is an interesting piece of information: A spokesman says the Bush administration has made a policy decision that cheating the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq is, for the most part, not cheating the U.S. Government. Let me say that again. This is quoting Mr. Gracing: The reason they gave to us is that the Bush administration has made a policy decision that cheating the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq or basically the military, and for the most part the U.S. military, is not the same as cheating the U.S. government. The fact is, the Coalition Provisional Authority was us. It was our money, our resources, our people. So here we have a company that takes forklift trucks from an airport property, moves them someplace to a warehouse, paints them blue, sells them back to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which pays for them with U.S. taxpayer funds, and our U.S. Justice Department says: That's all right. We'll close our eyes while you cheat us because the Coalition Provisional Authority is not really the U.S. Government. Are they nuts? Don't they care whether we are being cheated? These are the kinds of things that literally beg for oversight hearings. Yet this Congress is dead silent on these issues. I said I have held oversight hearings about Iraq with respect to Halliburton. The minute you talk about Halliburton, somebody raises the Vice President. I did not talk about the Vice President in those hearings, but I talked about Halliburton and about cheating. This is about Halliburton. It is not about anybody else. When a company says they are feeding 42,000 soldiers and being paid for it by the U.S. Government and it ends up they are only feeding 14,000 soldiers a day, and 28,000 meals are being paid for that are not being fed, it seems to me there ought to be aggressive oversight hearings to figure out what is going on, who is cheating the Government. Yet there is dead silence. I come from a really small town, about 300 people. We have one small little cafe right in the middle of Main Street. My guess is, if somebody got a check for 4 meals that were never served, they would sure know that, and the same goes for 14 meals, or 40 meals. It would appropriately be a big deal in my hometown. But 28,000 meals that are billed but were not delivered to U.S. troops? In my little town, they would call that cheating and fraud. Yet there is dead silence with respect to the oversight responsibility we ought to have as a Congress to find out what is happening, why, and who is responsible. Mr. President, I will have more to say about this as well, and we intend to continue to hold oversight hearings as well in the Democratic Policy Committee. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

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

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as we near the end of the legislative session and its final day or 2 day, it is interesting what kicks around these Chambers: some people have ideas about adding things to the Omnibus appropriations bill. Other people want to take something out that they think is in that bill. I came across a story in the newspaper this morning that describes something I discussed on the floor of the Senate yesterday. It says, ``GOP looks to repeal food label law.'' Then it quotes the House majority whip saying he expects the Senate to agree to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law now that its proponent, Senator Tom Daschle, is no longer in office. First of all, Senator Tom Daschle remains in office until the end of his term. Second, it is true that Senator Daschle is the strongest proponent and actually the architect and the author of the legislation that has created country-of-origin labeling. But I say to those in the GOP who look now to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law that they are in for a fight. Repeal is not going to happen just because somebody has a hiccup in the morning and decides they don't like this law. It is the law. We passed it. The Secretary of Agriculture dragged her feet and didn't want to implement it. The omnibus conference legislation last fall actually delayed the implementation time for the law, and now they just want to kill it outright, apparently. Let me describe again what it is we are talking about. We are talking about labeling for meats and vegetables. In the morning, when you put your T-shirt on, there is a label that tells you where that T-shirt was produced. Slip on a pair of shoes or slippers and you will find out where they were produced because they have a label. Go to the grocery store and pick up a can of peas off the shelf and take a look at its label and what is in this can, and you can see where it was produced. Most items that consumers are able to buy these days has a label that tells you where those things were produced. But that is not the case with meats and vegetables. Country-of-origin labeling is something that is important for our farmers and ranchers because they produce the finest quality of food in the world for the lowest percent of consumers' disposable income. And it is also very important for consumers. I held up a piece of beef on the floor of the Senate the other day. I said: I defy anyone to tell me where that piece of beef was produced. Where does it come from? Does it come from the processing plant in Mexico that was processing beef and shipping it to the dinner tables of American consumers? By the way, that processing plant was only inspected once. And when it was inspected, the inspector found that carcasses were hanging in rooms that were not cooled, with feces on the carcasses. The meat was being walked on by the folks who were working in that plant, with bacteria all around. The most unclean conditions you can imagine were in that plant, and eventually it was shut down. But that meat was going to the American kitchen table. Meat was produced in that Mexican processing plant under the most unsanitary of conditions. That plant was closed down, but it has reopened under a new name, a new ownership. Does anybody know whether the slab of beef that I held up the other day came from that plant? You don't. It is because there is no labeling. No one has any idea where any of it comes from. That is why farmers and ranchers in this country support labeling. Fruits and vegetables ought to be labeled. Consumers deserve it. Farmers and ranchers in this country produce the best quality food in the world, and we ought to have country-of-origin labeling for meats and vegetables. Who doesn't want it? The big economic interests don't want it. When they start whistling, we have people around here who start dancing. The faster they whistle, the faster these folks dance. Now, apparently, they say let us just dump this proposal that is now law, or let us rather repeal the country-of-origin labeling law. I say, again, there are those of us who will wage an aggressive fight with those who want to decide to repeal that law. Not only do we have people who want to stick legislation like this to repeal the country-of-origin labeling in the omnibus bill at the end of this session, which would be a huge step backwards and a real slap in the face not only of consumers but also of farmers and ranchers, but we also still have people blocking legislation that should be completed by this Congress. Let me describe specifically what that is. We have been working in the Senate for a long while to allow the reimportation of prescription drugs. U.S. consumers pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Brand-name prescription drugs cost a great deal of money in our country. Miracle drugs offer no miracles to those who can't afford to buy them. I commend the drug companies for producing miracle medicines. But there is no excuse for charging the American consumer the highest prices in the world. I will give you some examples. If you are a woman and have breast cancer, God forbid and have to take the drug tamoxifen, I have had people tell me that they went to Canada and paid one-tenth of the price they were charged in the United States for that anti-cancer drug. I spoke just recently, in fact, to a couple in North Dakota who have gone to Canada for 3 straight years to buy tamoxifen. They said they paid one-sixth of the price that was charged locally in this country. As I indicated, I have heard people say they paid 10 times more in the United States for that drug than you would pay in Canada for that. What about Lipitor for cholesterol? Lipitor is one of the top selling cholesterol-lowering drugs in the United States. I have two bottles in my office that I have used previously on the floor of the Senate. They look identical because they are made by the same company; the same pill put in the same bottle, sold by the same pharmaceutical company. One was sold in Winnepeg, Canada, and the other one in Grand Forks, ND--the same pill, the same tablet called Lipitor. The only difference is the price. Buy it in the United States and you pay $1.86 per tablet. Buy it in Canada and you pay $1.01 per tablet. Why is the price for that cholesterol-lowering drug almost double in the United States? It is because U.S. consumers are charged the highest prices in the world for most brand-name prescription drugs. We have been trying very hard in the Congress to pass a bill that would allow the consumers to make the choice where to purchase those drugs. In fact, the legislation Senator Snowe and I and others have introduced would allow American pharmacists to go to Canada and buy that lower priced prescription drug and bring it back to our country and pass the savings along to the consumers. But we have been blocked in this effort. Many of us in the Senate put together a bipartisan bill, and that bipartisan legislation was authored by myself, Senator Snowe, Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, Senator Daschle, and many others. That bill did not get through the Senate because it was blocked. I thought I had an agreement with the majority leader. He believed that he had reached a different agreement at about midnight one evening in exchange for releasing a hold on a key nominee. I believe I was told that we were going to be able to see action on that legislation. The majority leader feels differently. I regret that we have that disagreement. But we come to the end of this session, and the fact is that the effort to help American consumers by putting downward pressure on prescription drug prices in this country has been scuttled. It has been blocked. The White House has blocked it. The FDA has blocked it. The majority in the Senate has blocked it. In the Presidential debates, in fact, this issue came up. The President was asked, why are you blocking the reimporting of prescription drugs to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices? And the President said, ``I haven't yet''--meaning he hasn't blocked it yet. Of course he has, he has continually blocked it. The President went on to say during the debate: Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you. Now it may well be here in December you'll hear me say, I think there's a safe way to do it. If they're safe, they're coming. But the President meanwhile goes on blocking the reimportation of prescription drugs. The bill we have written is a bipartisan bill. This is not Democrat versus Republican. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation. Let me point out with respect to the safety issue, in testimony from an executive of a drug company, a vice president for marketing at Pfizer, Dr. Peter Rost: The biggest argument against reimportation is safety. What everyone has conveniently forgotten to tell you is that in Europe reimportation of drugs has been in place for 20 years. It is called parallel trading. In Germany, if you want to buy a prescription drug from Spain because it is cheaper, you can. If you are in France and you want to buy it from Italy, you can do it. It is called parallel trading. The Europeans have done it for 20 years routinely and there is no safety issue. Our legislation would give American consumers and pharmacists the ability to access FDA-approved drugs that are produced in FDA-approved plants. This approach allows the marketplace to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices here by being able to buy the identical prescription drug, FDA-approved, from Canada, or another country. As long as there is a chain of custody that is safe--and no one argues that the Canadian chain of custody for prescription drugs is not safe-- there is no reason why we should not allow the marketplace to work for the benefit of consumers. We end this legislative session with this proposal having been blocked. It is estimated that if Americans could pay the same price as the Canadians for prescription drugs, the consumers of this country would save $38 billion. This is not a small issue. This is a big issue. The fastest rising portion of health care costs is prescription drugs, and we are trying desperately to do something about it. I don't denigrate the pharmaceutical industry. They are a big industry, strong and tough. They fight hard to protect what they have. I don't denigrate that. But there needs to be some competition in order to put downward pressure on prices. It is unsound public policy for our country to decide to allow the pharmaceutical industry to charge the American consumer the highest prices in the world. It is especially tough for senior citizens. Senior citizens are about 12 percent of the population of this country and they consume one-third of the prescription drugs in America. They have reached that point in their life where they are receiving a lower income and having to shell out substantially more for prescription drugs. Many of them simply say, we cannot afford it. That is why Republicans and Democrats, together in a bipartisan effort, have tried very hard this year to get this reimportation legislation through the Senate. I regret we come to the final day or days and it remains blocked. My hope is that those who I felt had reached an agreement with us to give us an opportunity to have a vote on this legislation will understand we will be back the minute the Congress returns, in a new Congress, ready to fight this battle again. This battle is not over. We are not quitting. On behalf of the consumers of this country, they deserve fair treatment with respect to the prices of prescription drugs. It appears to me we are one or two days from completing this legislative session. I will have great regrets--I believe I speak for my colleagues Senator McCain, Senator Snowe on the Republican side, Senator Daschle, Senator Kennedy, Senator Stabenow and Senator Feingold on the Democratic side--that we have gotten to this point and have been blocked each and every step of the way. Then we have the President say, I haven't blocked it. Of course, he has blocked it. The FDA, the White House, and the majority in the Senate have blocked our bipartisan bill, an opportunity to try to do something to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. That, in my judgment, is a failure of this Congress, and it is a failure I hope we will soon remedy when we turn the calendar over to January and begin a new Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, one area in which the Department of the Treasury should increase their activities is in supporting U.S. financial service firms in opening up markets for our products in other countries. In some of the most important financial markets in the world the Department of the Treasury does not have personnel whose principal responsibility is to assist American financial service firms expand their presence in those markets. The Department should establish Financial Attaches in the following important capital markets: Brussels: The expected pace of change in the EU financial markets in the next few years and the complexity of capital markets legislation now in formation justifies a focused U.S. presence at the center of the newly expanded EU. London: London's capital markets play a critical role in the global economy and foreign exchange markets. Shanghai: The rapidly growing Chinese economy might present significant opportunities for U.S. firms, but recent experience has shown that such opportunities will not materialize without vigorous insistence that China abide by its commitments. It is critical that the U.S Treasury Department have an on-the-ground presence in China. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the Department of Treasury to establish financial attache positions in Brussels, London and Shanghai and to expand opportunities for U.S. firms.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to, on another subject, speak for just a moment about the area of international trade. Yesterday, the Senate approved an increase in the debt ceiling by $800 billion. That is the fiscal policy debt, that is the amount of money that is spent over that which is collected in revenues. That means our kids and grandkids assume this responsibility. It is Federal debt. The budget deficit is the highest in history. This is a completely, thoroughly irresponsible fiscal policy. There is no question about it. Oh, I know people say we have had economic slowdowns or recessions or wars or terrorism and this and that and the other thing. Look, we have had that for a century. But we have never had the size of the deficits we have now had in times like this. As far as I know, we have never before decided to fight a war with borrowed money and ask generations that come after us to pay for it. But I want to talk about another debt that is growing, and it is larger than the fiscal policy indebtedness that we have. And that is the foreign debt, which arises from trade deficits. This chart goes back to 1998. I could go further. It shows that we have the largest trade deficits in history, by far. Last month, it was $54.1 billion, the third highest in history. You can see where it is going. It is growing and growing and growing. Last month alone, the trade deficit with China--just one country--was $15 billion. Now, nobody talks about this. Nobody seems to give a rip. Some people apparently think this will have no consequence for this country or its long-term prognosis. But they are wrong. This trade deficit is dangerous and will be debilitating to the country's economy unless we do something about it. Month after month after month we see these reports. And on this chart, this red ink has everything to do with jobs, which define the quality of life in this country. There is no social program in this country that is as important as a good job that pays well, that gives someone an opportunity to go to work, have some security, have benefits, and take care of their family and have a good life. The expansion of jobs and opportunity in this country will determine what kind of a country we have, what kind of opportunity exists for our kids and our grandkids. And jobs are leaving the country. Yesterday, I had a call from some American workers. I will not describe the company. They are workers for a company that produces a great product. They want to sell that product in China. Now China has a $15 billion monthly surplus with us this past month. They ship us their shirts, their shoes, their trousers, their trinkets. They ship it all to us, and we buy it. But can we get our products into China? These workers say they've been told that to have their product be sold in China, it has to have a 40- to 50-percent Chinese content, otherwise you cannot get it in. So, therefore, the workers are concerned that the company is now going to begin processing operations in China. Why? Because China insists on it. Well, look, that violates the World Trade Organization. That does not come as a shock, of course. There is a systematic violation all the time, by these countries that decide they want to ship all of their products to the United States, but they want to keep their markets closed to us. That means our good jobs are leaving, not coming. There are a lot of reasons for it, one of which is we have had incompetent trade negotiators under Republican and Democratic administrations, completely incompetent. They think their job is to negotiate agreements, the more the better, and they don't care what's in them. If they don't get an agreement, they think they fail. So they negotiate an agreement, and give away the store. We just negotiated a bilateral trade agreement with China. Do you know what our negotiators agreed to? On automobile trade, they agreed to this: After a phase-in, China can impose a 25-percent tariff on U.S. automobiles sold in China, and we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff on any Chinese vehicles sold in the United States. Let me say that again. Our negotiators agreed with China that we would allow them to impose a tariff 10 times higher than the tariff we would impose on them in reciprocal automobile trade. Now, what on earth would possess negotiations to result in that, with a country with whom we have a very large trade deficit? We know China is ramping up an automobile industry and an export automobile industry, and we now have a trade agreement with them where our negotiators said it is all right to have an imbalance that is tenfold in reciprocal automobile trade. What does that mean? To strip all the varnish from it, it means it is all right with our negotiators for American jobs to be obliterated and Chinese jobs created on automobile trade. That might be all right with some unnamed trade negotiator, but it is not all right with me. Whoever negotiated that was fundamentally incompetent. We have some companies these days that are not American companies. Oh, they are American in terms of charter. They get a charter, a corporate charter, that allows them to become an artificial person, be able to sue and be sued, and to contract and be contracted with. They have all the rights of people, except they don't die. They can go broke, but they will never die. These artificial people are responsible only to their shareholders. These companies have decided they would like to have all the benefits of doing business in the United States as American companies, and all the protection that exists from that, except they don't want to have the obligation of paying taxes in the United States. Therefore, they do business through a mailbox in a tax haven country. They can set up a business in the Grand Cayman Islands or the Bahamas. In some extreme cases, they have even decided they want to renounce their American citizenship to avoid paying their tax obligation to the United States, in what is known as an inversion. In addition to that, we now have company after company--and all you have to do is open up the Wall Street Journal every day to see it-- doing something called outsourcing. That means taking American jobs and moving them somewhere else in the world, where it is cheaper. Instead of doing business in America, paying American workers $10, $15 an hour, they can perhaps do it in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, or China. I have described at length on the floor of the Senate the fact that Huffy Bicycles decided to do that, and the little red wagons, Radio Flyer wagons--that firm was in America for 100 years. They decided to move production elsewhere. Why? Because they can pay sub-minimum wages. Huffy Bicycles used to pay $11 an hour to American workers. They got fired because they were too expensive. You can make them for 30 cents an hour in China, and you can work those people 7 days a week and 12 hours a day. So we have what is called outsourcing. American companies are outsourcing jobs. That is a fancy term that describes the firing of American workers, in most cases, and employing overseas workers to do the same job at a fraction of the price. What's even more nuts is that our tax code provides incentives for outsourcing. That's right, when a company wants to outsource, when a company wants to shut down their plant in South Carolina or in Ohio, and do that production in China, we say to that company: We have a treat for you. Get rid of your American workers, shut down the plant, move the whole thing to China and you can get a special tax break. I happen to think that is absolutely nuts. What kind of a country provides a tax incentive for its companies to get rid of American workers and employ foreign workers? What kind of a country's tax system does that? This country's tax system does it. Yes, we voted on that. I offered an amendment to close that insidious loophole, that perversion in the Tax Code. Guess what. I lost in the Senate. Here's something else. In a recent bill, the Senate Finance Committee, in conference, decided that U.S. companies who have foreign controlled subsidiaries and have not repatriated their overseas earnings to the United States will be able to repatriate that income at a tax rate of only 5.25 percent. Well, I have a lot of constituents who would love to have that tax rate. Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? If it is good enough for the biggest companies, which outsourced jobs, it ought to be good enough for all Americans. Ma Ferguson was Governor of Texas once and was involved in a debate about the English-only language back in the 1930s. She had a press conference and held up a Bible and she said, ``If English was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for Texas.'' It is the good-enough theory, I guess. The 5.25-percent tax rate is good enough for corporations that moved American jobs overseas. Why is a 5.25-percent tax rate not good enough for people named Johnson and Olsen? Why is 5.25 percent not good enough for everybody? Why is it that this Congress, when it looks at these issues, won't even take a baby step in the right direction? We are hemorrhaging good jobs in this country. This is a race to the bottom. We fought for a century about important things. We fought for a century about the right of workers to organize. It is a very important right in America. It was a similar fight that lit the fuse that caused freedom all over Eastern Europe. Lech Walesa led that fight, the right to organize. People died in the streets on that issue--the right to say that we are not going to have 12-year-old kids working down in a mine, or in a factory. Child labor laws, safe workplace laws--a whole range of issues. We fought for a century to create safe workplaces, child labor laws, minimum wages, the right to organize, all of these issues, which have, in my judgment, made this a better place. The fact is, there are American companies now that simply pole-vault over the issues and say we don't have to worry about that, about hiring kids. We can hire kids, we can hire 12-year-olds, work them 12 hours a day, pay 12 cents an hour, and we don't have to worry. How do we do that? We hire them overseas, hire them elsewhere. That means those who have to compete in this new world order have to compete with countries that have decided they are going to make it illegal for workers to organize. You have to compete with 12-year-old kids who are paid 12 cents an hour. If you wonder whether that is happening, I can show you stories. There is one about a woman named Sadisha, who is making tennis shoes for 16 cents an hour. This is an hour and a half of labor in a pair of tennis shoes that comes to our store shelves for $80 a pair, and Sadisha's pay is 24 cents for making the tennis shoes. You think that doesn't happen? It does. I can tell you stories about the kids in India who were making carpets, who came to this country and testified before the Congress about the conditions in which they worked. The people they worked for took gunpowder and lit the gunpower on the children's fingertips to create scarring, so these little kids could be employed to sew these carpets. And the carpets were sent to our store shelves so we could buy them, and congratulate ourselves on the low prices. Is there an admission price to the American marketplace? Is there? Are there some basic set of standards, or is this a race to the bottom to have us compete with that sort of situation? I held a hearing not too long ago with some young women from Honduras working in a sweatshop making designer shirts, for a very prominent American label. They were working under incredibly abusive conditions. The story is the same all over. People talk about this being free trade. Look, this is simply a sea of red ink, a trade deficit that is weakening this country, and we have not paid any attention to the rules of trade that would begin to stop this. We had better wake up and decide that our interest is to be protective--and, yes, I use that word even though it is a pejorative word these days--protective of the economic interests of this country. We must do that. I spoke of Lech Walesa. Let me describe his speech to a joint meeting of the Congress, one of the most remarkable moments I recall in my service here. He told us about a Saturday morning in a shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, when, having been fired as an electrician in that shipyard, this unemployed electrician was leading a strike against the Communist government demanding rights for the labor movement in Poland. He said they grabbed him that Saturday morning and began to beat him. The Communist secret police grabbed him and beat him severely and threw him over the barbed wire fence at the edge of the shipyard. He laid there, having been beaten severely, face down, bleeding in the dirt. He said he wondered while laying there, this unemployed electrician having been beaten severely, what to do next. Well, he picked himself up, and climbed right back over the barbed wire fence, right back into the same shipyard, to continue the fight. Ten years later this unemployed electrician was announced at the door of the U.S. House of Representatives as the President of his country, the President of Poland. This was not an intellectual, not a scholar, not a diplomat, not a soldier, but an unemployed electrician with uncommon courage. He said this to us: We didn't have any guns. The Communists had all the guns. We didn't have any bullets. The Communists had all the bullets. We were armed only with an idea, a powerful idea: People ought to be free to choose their own destiny. And then he said: Ideas are more powerful than guns. There was a lot of applause that day, and appropriately so--applause of courage, the progress towards freedom and labor rights in Poland. But around here, we seem to have short memories. We are trading away our hard-won rights. The first baby step we should have taken in this Congress we decided not to take. I offered an amendment, and it was defeated, to stop the perverse and insidious tax breaks that incentivize American jobs going overseas. Let's not reward companies that move our jobs overseas. Stop it; stop it now. It is a baby step to decide to shut down that tax incentive. We did not get it done this time. I lost that vote. But I am relentless, and I will again be on this floor the minute we return in January demanding once again an opportunity to debate and to vote on this issue. This is about American jobs. It is about hope and opportunity in this country. It is about expanding this great American experiment, and this issue, I assure you, will not go away. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in recent days there have been news reports about our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol Building deciding that they would like to get rid of something called country- of-origin labeling for meats and vegetables. This is a law that has been previously enacted by the Congress saying that consumers have a right to know where their meat and vegetables come from. So a Member of the House and the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the House have indicated they would like to find a way, in these waning days, perhaps in the Omnibus appropriations bill, to repeal the requirement to establish country-of-origin labeling for meat and vegetables. Country-of-origin labeling is now the law of the land. The Secretary of Agriculture has been dragging her feet for some long while in implementing it. While she was dragging her feet, the Congress decided to extend the time for implementation, so that time was extended over the objection of many of us. My colleagues, Senator Daschle, Senator Johnson, and many others here in the Chamber objected to that. But, nonetheless, it was done last year in one of these omnibus bills. If those who are making decisions about what to put in omnibus bills these days decide they want to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law in an omnibus bill this year, they will do a great disservice to American consumers. They will pull the rug out from under farmers and ranchers in our country. Why? Because the fact is, we produce the highest quality food in the world. Consumers want to know where their food comes from. Almost any consumer in this country can take a look at his or her T-shirt or their shoes, and on the label it will say: Made in the U.S.A. Made in China. You will find out exactly where it was made. We know where shirts come from, and we know where shoes come from because it is all labeled. But meat is not labeled. The law requires it to be, but it is not at this point. So the question is, Will this law remain, and will it, in fact, be implemented, or will it not? We had a U.S. Department of Agriculture report about the condition of meat that has been imported into this country. And I would like to just show a couple of comments from that report. The report was talking about conditions inside a meatpacking plant in Hermosillo, Mexico. That plant in Mexico supplied raw beef to the American consumers. It had never been inspected and was finally inspected once. Here is what they found. They found: ``Shanks and briskets were contaminated with feces.'' A U.S. Department of Agriculture official wrote of his tour of the plant: ``In the refrigerator a disease-condemned carcass was observed ready for boning and distribution in commerce . . . Paint and condensation from dirty surfaces were dripping on the meat.'' The official found that workers were literally walking on the beef that was going to be approved for export to the United States. They found that a side of beef approved for processing was infected with bacterial blood infection. The problem is not limited to the Mexican plants. This is one plant in Mexico. Incidentally, this plant was shut down, then reopened under another name, and to my knowledge has never again been inspected. Mr. President, by unanimous consent let me ask to show this piece of beef from a supermarket.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, no one knows where this comes from. No Member of the Senate will know where this originated. Did this come from the Mexican plant I just described? Does it come from a French plant that was also inspected and contaminated? Does this come from one of those plants, or does it come from a domestic source in this country in which inspection, we know, is rigorous? Does it come from a domestic source where we have farmers and ranchers who produce the best supply of meat available in the world? Where does this piece of beef originate? No one knows. Consumers deserve to know. They have a right to know. The country-of-origin labeling requirement passed by the Congress will give them the opportunity to know, but some of our colleagues around here, hailing the call of the big packing plants and others, decide now they want to try to repeal that. Maybe, just once, this place can stand up on the side of farmers and ranchers and consumers, just once, and ignore the call of the bigger economic interests who say: Let's not do this. We clearly should do this. Labeling is important. Labeling empowers consumers. Labeling protects American producers who are producing the best quality food at the lowest disposable income of any country in the world. So my message to those who are now sauntering around the Chambers watching this Omnibus appropriations bill be put together is this: It would be a very foolish mistake to believe that the Omnibus appropriations bill should, without any debate, carry a provision that would repeal something Congress has already done that will give people the right to understand where their meat and vegetables come from, where the origination point is for the vegetables and the meat that is being consumed by the American people. If, in fact, the majority party decides to do this--as I indicated, one Member of the U.S. House especially is proposing it. It has been, it is reported, supported by the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the House. If they move in this direction, it will be a very serious mistake, in my judgment.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I intend to speak on another matter at some point. I see several of my colleagues are in the Senate. Senator Levin, I believe, wishes to speak for a short time. I see Senator Bond is in the Senate, as well. I will take 5 minutes to say I have deep respect for my colleague from Texas. I like him and I am pleased he is a Member of this body. I have deep disagreement with what he has said, and I will take this moment to respond to it. There is a newfound passion, apparently, for providing votes for nominees for judgeships. When I say a newfound passion, let me explain that I was here in the 1990s. There were 60 nominees for the Federal court that never got a vote in the Senate by a Republican-controlled Senate. Many of them never even got 1 day of hearings. It was unbelievable what went on with the majority party in this Chamber when the Clinton administration was sending down nominees. Contrary to what my colleague just indicated, this notion of obstructionism, this is a newfound technique. You create your own reality and debate from that reality. There was no obstructionism. This Senate approved 201 Federal judges; 201 of the nominations for Federal judgeships that were sent down here by this President. We held up about 10 of them. Now, the Constitution says something about our obligations. This is not about obstruction. It is not about unconstitutional behavior. It is not anything of the sort. It is about those in the Senate who understand that the Constitution says we have a responsibility when it comes to putting someone on the Federal bench for a lifetime. When someone sends a name to this Senate as this President did that says, I want this man to serve for a lifetime on the Federal bench--by the way, this person has a record of writing articles saying that his belief is that women are subservient to men--I say, wait a second. It is not somebody I want to sit on the Federal bench for a lifetime. I don't happen to think that sort of thinking represents what I want to put on the Federal bench. We held up, I believe, 10 nominees and approved 201. We approved 93 percent of the President's requests. We are told this is obstructionism? And now we are told, today, there is a lesson in the South Dakota Senate race as a result of this? This ``obstructionism'' created a result in the Senate race in South Dakota of which we all need to be mindful? Let me state what the South Dakota Senate race was about. It was not about obstructionism and judgeships. It was about $20 million coming out of the basement of the White House through various orifices and devices, directed at the minority leader in the State of South Dakota in a campaign that in many respects, in my judgment, was shameful. But it was not about obstructionism. It was not about judges because the fact is we approved 201 Federal nominees sent to us by this President. We have been extraordinarily cooperative. Let me say again, I was here during 8 years of the Clinton administration when 60 nominees were sent down here that never got a vote. Some of them never got one day of hearings. Let me say that on my behalf I want to cooperate with this President. But my colleagues and I have constitutional responsibilities with respect to putting someone on a Federal bench for a lifetime that involves two steps: One, the President proposes a nominee; and, second, under advice and consent, the Senate then makes its judgement. We have a responsibility here. It is a constitutional responsibility. I have read and reread that Constitution. I am proud of what we have done. We have been extraordinarily cooperative with this President and will continue to be so. But that does not mean all of us walk to this Chamber with ink on our shoes and become a giant rubber stamp to say: Me too. Yes, sign me up. OK, I am fine, I am with you. It is not our role and it is not our responsibility. When we approved 201 Federal nominees to the Federal court from this President, which was 93 percent of the nominees of this President, I think it strains credibility to somehow call this obstructionism. And it certainly strains our sense of irony to hear those calling us obstructionists when not very long ago there were 60 nominees, some of which never got a day of hearings, and none of which got a vote on the floor of the Senate. Going forward, I think we ought to understand this: The so-called lesson we were described moments ago about the election in South Dakota, that is all nonsense. It is not what that was about. We believe we have a responsibility to cooperate. We will. We also believe we have a constitutional responsibility to use our heads, our hearts and our minds to make good decisions about the future of this country. We will continue to do that as well. Incidentally, I have in my hand a record of two votes during the Clinton administration where there were cloture motions that were required for nominees. So this notion that somehow it is the first time ever there was a filibuster, nonsense, that's just not true. I have records of both votes. It has been done before. It has been done by the majority party. It is just when they do not get 100 percent of their nominees, they do not get a rubber stamp coming out of this Chamber, that somehow they have a problem with that. The American people should not have a problem with it. The Constitution certainly does not have a problem with it, and I do not. I want to be cooperative, but I do not want to sit and listen to a re-creation of reality that does not square with what we have done in the Senate. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me follow Senator Bond.

Mr. DORGAN. I intended to use 20 minutes. I would be happy to follow the Senator.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me suggest the Senator from Michigan begin, and then be followed by the Senator from Missouri, and then myself, followed by the Senator from Oklahoma. I ask unanimous consent that be the order.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe I was to be recognized for 20 minutes following the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. DORGAN. And two additional Senators as well.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this morning in the newspaper we read a report of that which we know, that the administration is going to propose a Tax Code overhaul. I think almost every American would believe that it is worth overhauling the Tax Code. The Tax Code is so complicated, and it desperately needs an overhaul. The headline reads: ``Bush Plans Tax Code Overhaul. Changes Would Favor Investment, Growth.'' It says: The Bush administration is eyeing an overhaul of the tax code that would drastically cut, if not eliminate, taxes on savings and investment . . . . I want to read just for a moment an op-ed piece that appeared in the Washington Post. It is an op-ed piece written by I believe the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett. Warren is a charming, delightful man. I had the opportunity to get to know him some. He has been incredibly successful as an American businessman. He wrote an op- ed piece about taxes and the tax burden that I want to read into the Record. I ask unanimous consent to print his entire op-ed piece in the Record. It is entitled ``Dividend Voodoo.''