Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about the issue of reimportation of prescription drugs. I also wanted to talk for a moment about the tax bill that is being negotiated by the conference committee between the House and Senate, especially with respect to the runaway plant issue and tax incentives that now occur for those who shut down their American manufacturing plants and export jobs. I will speak about those two issues briefly. Before I do that, I'd like to address some of the remarks of my colleague from Georgia, who was speaking when I came to the floor of the Senate. I disagreed strongly with my colleague when I heard his speech at one of the national political conventions. He certainly had every right to give that speech. I disagree strongly with the presentation he gave on the Senate floor, but he has every right, of course, to express those opinions on the Senate floor. I have great respect for my colleague from Georgia. I honor his service. He has provided great public service to this country in many different ways, so I honor that service. But I, of course, reserve the right to disagree with my colleague as well, just as he came to the floor and disagreed with some of the votes that have been cast by Senator Kerry. The last time I was on the floor when my colleague from Georgia came to speak, he was offering a proposal that we take away the right of the American people to vote for Senators. He proposed instead that Senators be appointed or selected by State legislatures, and that the right of the people to vote for Senators should be rescinded. Well, I thought that did not sound like a very modern approach. We left that idea a long time ago in this country, and I got up and spoke and indicated I did not have quite such a pessimistic view of this country's future and certainly did not agree that we ought to revert back to the States appointing their Senators and taking away from the American people the right to elect Senators. But that was the only previous occasion I recall on which I took the floor of the Senate and disagreed with my distinguished colleague from Georgia. I must say, however, that I feel compelled to disagree once again. I have not come to the Senate floor to be critical, ever, of President George W. Bush's military record. I would not do that. And I would not be critical of Senator Kerry's military record. Both of them served. My colleague came to talk about Senator Kerry's record in voting for defense for this country. This is not a new technique in American politics. This is timeless. It always happens that someone stands up and points at someone else and says: You don't represent this country's interests in defense. You don't support a strong defense. You are not willing to stand up when you need to stand up and be counted and support a strong defense for this country. Sometimes that works. But let me just say this. I don't think it works when you point at someone who decided on graduation from Yale that he would volunteer to go to Vietnam; not only that, he would volunteer to serve on a swift boat, where he was certain to be involved in hostile action. He didn't have to do that. He did that, he volunteered. He received a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, and still has fragments in his body from the wounds from which those Purple Hearts arose. I don't think it works to point fingers at that man and suggest he, somehow, is weak on defense. My colleague's assessment of Senator Kerry has changed some. Senator Reid pointed out that in March of 2001, at a banquet in Georgia, my colleague from Georgia introduced Senator Kerry. Here is what he said about him: My job tonight is an easy one. It's to present to you one of this Nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best known and greatest leaders, and a good friend. Then he said this, my colleague from Georgia: John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. Let me say that again because it is important. It is at odds with what we just heard from my colleague from Georgia on the floor of the Senate this afternoon. Speaking of John Kerry, my colleague from Georgia said: John has worked to strengthen our military. This is a speech from March 1, 2001. What is the difference between then and now? John Kerry has had the same record on defense. Incidentally, John Kerry has supported a great amount of this country's defense: the Apache helicopter, Aegis, The Bradley, Black Hawk, B-2 bomber, C-17 cargo jets, F-16, F-18, Tomahawk missiles, C- 130s, and I could go on and on and on. Billions, tens of billions, yes, trillions of dollars for defense Senator Kerry has voted for. What is the difference between March 1, 2001, in my colleague's assessment of Senator Kerry where he said ``John,'' speaking of Senator Kerry, ``has worked to strengthen our military,'' what is the difference between that and the discussion we have just heard today? The difference is, it's an election year and my colleague has, apparently, decided to change his mind. If there were an Olympic event called ``stretching,'' I have a couple of personal nominations for who might win the gold medal. This ought not be, in American elections, an attempt to find out who is the worst. It ought to be a search for who is the best. Who can best lead this country? Who has a vision for the future that grows our economy, that protects our country, protects our homeland, provides for a strong defense, protects the environment? It is a search, in my judgment, for who is the best, not who is the worst. We have two candidates running for President, both fully qualified to serve in that office. It does not serve our country well to point at one and say somehow he is weak on defense, doesn't support defense, especially when it is so at odds with the record. But it is now an election year. I guess almost anything goes. There is a term, I suppose, for changing one's mind, and it is called flip-flop. I have not used it, but some have used it to the point of significant repetition this year. I will not use it here except to say what we have just heard today is at significant odds, not only with the record of a member of our caucus who has served with great gallantry but also at odds with the previously stated views of the person who made the speech today. Let me end as I began and say I honor the service of the Senator from Georgia. I disagree with him about these issues. Four weeks from today this country will see fit to make an informed choice between two men who strive to serve for the next 4 years as this country's President. Both candidates, I am sure, care about national security. Both care about homeland security. As was stated in the debate last week, both love this country. I submit, just as one Senator, both are qualified to serve in that office. Both parties have nominated people they choose to support and support aggressively. I come to the Senate floor today to simply say this: John Kerry is someone with whom I have served for many years. I have watched him vote. The fact is, he supports a strong defense for this country. He always has and always will. When it came time to answer his call, his country's call, he left one of the prestigious colleges in this country upon graduation and said: Let me volunteer. He went to Vietnam. He went in harm's way. There is no amount of energy or wind that can be exerted by others who will change the basic fact of a voting record that is in strong support of America's defense.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. That is correct.

Mr. DORGAN. I say to the Senator, I have, in fact. I serve on the appropriations subcommittee here on the Senate. I care a lot about this country's defense. And I voted against the MX missile program, because I felt it was a terrible waste of money. But I am a strong supporter of defense. I believe anyone who looks at my record will understand the weapons programs I supported, significant weapons programs, have added strength and boosted this country's capability. Because I serve on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I watch what others do as well. From a firsthand knowledge, I say that Senator Kerry has a strong and aggressive record in supporting this country and supporting a strong defense for this country.

Mr. DORGAN. No question about that. My colleague from Georgia was talking about Vice President Cheney and John Kerry. I didn't quite understand that comparison of their records on defense. I have lived a couple of doors down from Dick and Lynne Cheney for a number of years. I know them well. I would never come to suggest somehow that Dick Cheney doesn't support a strong defense. And I know John Kerry very well. I certainly wouldn't come to suggest he doesn't support a strong defense. Both of them have records that demonstrate a support for this country's defense. Well, enough about that. I didn't come to the floor of the Senate to speak about that. But I felt that there should be some response to the statement by the Senator from Georgia this afternoon which I think, frankly, is not supported at all by the facts. American Jobs On May 5 of this year, we had a vote in the Senate. That vote was on an amendment that I had offered, together with my colleague, Senator Mikulski from Maryland. The intent of the vote was to shut down a loophole that rewards U.S. companies that move their manufacturing jobs overseas. Yes, we have that kind of loophole. It is a perverse, insidious loophole in our Tax Code that says: Shut down your U.S. manufacturing plant, get rid of your U.S. employees and outsource those jobs, and, God bless you, while you leave this country, we will give you a tax cut. Talk about a perverse incentive to do exactly the wrong thing, that is it. We are now seeing the conference committee between the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee meet and negotiate over a FSC/ETI bill, sometimes also called the ``jobs bill.'' If they finish putting this bill together in conference and do not include a provision to eliminate this perverse incentive, they will have done precious little to help protect, nurture, and strengthen American jobs. Incidentally, when I offered this amendment on May 5 of this year, the amendment was tabled by a vote of 60 to 39. Sixty Members of the Senate voted to say they did not want to shut down a tax loophole that provides an incentive for companies to fire their American workers and move their U.S. jobs overseas. So that loophole still exists in tax law. Now I read in the paper this morning they really do not want to pay for the cost of this FSC/ETI bill by shutting down loopholes. This is unbelievable. We have American companies now that decide they want to do business through a post office box in the Bahamas or the Grand Caymans. Why? Do they want to be a citizen of the Grand Caymans? Not exactly. They just want to avoid paying U.S. taxes so everyone else can pay taxes that these folks do not pay. I suggest that once companies have decided to move their corporation and run their business out of a mailbox in the Bahamas for the purpose of avoiding U.S. taxes, the next time they get in trouble maybe they ought to call the Bahamian Navy to protect them. I understand the Bahamian Navy has 20 people. Maybe the next time one of these companies gets in trouble with some expropriated assets or other issue they can call on the combined flexed muscle of the Bahamian Navy. My point is simple. We have a real problem in this country with the outsourcing of jobs. In the last 4 years, we have actually lost jobs at a time when we are supposed to be creating jobs. We have an expanding population. We need new jobs. But we are losing jobs. I will not give the same speech I have given previously about the Radio Flyer and Huffy bicycles, those quintessentially American products that are now being made in China. I will not talk about the all-American cookie, the Fig Newton, now being made in Monterey, Mexico, so that it is now Mexican food. I will not give the speech about the outsourcing of these jobs to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China. But if this country does not wake up soon and get rid of these pernicious loopholes in the tax law that say, ship your U.S. jobs overseas and we will give you a big tax cut, if we do not do that, we are not going to succeed. Growing an economy requires us to do the right things. We cannot talk about growing the economy and then support tax loopholes and say, by the way, ship your U.S. jobs overseas. That does not work. We are outsourcing jobs every single day and no one seems to care much about it. Incidentally, that also relates to the trade deficit, because when we outsource the jobs and ship the products from those jobs back into this country, it means we exacerbate the trade deficit, which is the largest deficit in human history. One can make an argument as an economist--I used to teach a bit of economy in college--one can make an argument that the budget deficit is money we owe to ourselves. We cannot make that argument with respect to a trade deficit. We owe a trade deficit to other countries. It will be paid inevitably by a lower standard of living in our country in the future. The largest trade deficit in history ought to be cause for substantial alarm in this Chamber and at the White House. Yet there is almost a conspiracy of silence all around this town about a trade deficit that, in my judgment, hurts this country very badly. Incidentally, Lou Dobbs has written a book about this trade deficit. I encourage colleagues and others to read it. His program, more than any on television these days, is talking about the danger of this trade deficit. At any rate, as they finalize this jobs bill in conference, which is going on as I speak, they need to come back to the amendment I offered last May 5 with my colleague, Senator Mikulski. They need to shut down this perverse incentive in tax law, which gives benefits and encouragement and financial help to companies that move their jobs overseas. Reimportation of Prescription Drugs Let me make one other point on another subject that I think is critical. We are told we are near the end of this session. Perhaps on Friday of this week we will complete our work and then come back for a lameduck session, which happens to be a terrible idea. Perhaps, because this Congress has not done much of the right kind of work or much of the work it needs to do, we will have to have a lameduck session. As we near the end of this session, the one relentless issue that many Members of Congress say they care about and want to do something about is the issue of the prices of prescription drugs. We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and there are far too many in this country who cannot afford them. Senior citizens are 12 percent of our population yet they consume over one-third of the prescription drugs in America. Senior citizens have reached that point in their lives when they have a fixed income. Yet one-third of the prescription drugs are taken by our senior citizens. Why? Because they must. These are lifesaving drugs, miracle drugs. My hat is off to the pharmaceutical industry and to the researchers at the National Institutes of Health and others who have helped create these new drugs, but miracle drugs offer no miracle to those who cannot afford to take them. I sat on a bale of straw the other day at a farm in southern North Dakota with a fellow who is 87 years old. He told me: I fought cancer for 3 years and I think I finally have beaten it. This is an 87-year- old man. I fought cancer for 3 years and I think I finally won. For those 3 years, my wife and I drove to Canada to buy the prescription drugs I needed to fight this cancer. Why? Because the same FDA approved drug, the identical pill, is put in the same bottle, made by the same company, but is priced at a dramatically lower price in Canada. He said: For 3 years, we went to Canada to save that money because we had to. Senior citizens should not have to go to Canada to save money on prescription drugs. He is right about that. I would prefer that pharmacist be able to go to Canada to purchase those lower priced prescription drugs from the pharmacist in Canada, come back, and pass the savings along to the consumers in our country. By getting rid of the artificial barriers that prevent re- importation, we would put downward pressure on prescription drug prices in this country so people would not have to go anywhere but their local drugstore to purchase prescription drugs. They could purchase them here for a fair price. But we are charged the highest prices in the world for these drugs. We are told by the Food and Drug Administration that if we reimport prescription drugs from Canada in any organized way that there would be a safety issue. We are told by the Secretary of Health and Human Services that there may be a safety issue. We are told by the President that he thinks maybe we should look at this but there might be a safety issue. That suggests somehow that Americans are not able to do what Europeans have done everyday for years. The Europeans have something called parallel trading. Their parallel trading programs allow someone from Germany to buy a prescription drug from Spain, someone from France to buy a prescription drug from Italy. They don't have any safety issues in Europe. The marketplace determines the price for the drug, and the market puts downward pressure so the Europeans don't pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs as we do. They do what is called parallel trading, and there are no safety issues at all. European officials have testified before our committees. The safety issues simply are not there. It is a bogus issue. We have drafted a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act. Myself, along with Senators Snowe, McCain, Stabenow, Feingold, and others, we have drafted a bipartisan piece of legislation that systematically addresses the safety issues so that there cannot be any safety concerns. Our bill would allow the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada and from other major developed countries and would put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. The House of Representatives has passed such a bill. That bill is on the calendar at the desk. The bipartisan bill which we have introduced is similar to the bill that is at the desk. Yet we are unable to get a final vote in the Senate. We have had substantial discussion. I had a discussion with the majority leader on this subject at midnight one night earlier this year on the Senate floor. I had a hold on a nominee. I withdrew that hold because I believed we had an agreement that we were going to work toward an opportunity to have a vote on this legislation. I believed that agreement with the majority leader existed. He now indicates it was not an agreement for a vote. He indicates it was an agreement that a process would begin and that the authorizing committee would work on this. The authorizing committee worked on it, to be sure. They would have markups scheduled and markups cancelled, markups scheduled and markups cancelled. The fact is, they never were able to get a bill out of committee because they couldn't get consensus on anything. We have a consensus on the bill that is on the calendar. We have a consensus on the bipartisan bill. If there is a vote on that in the Senate, it will pass by a significant margin. We don't need another consensus. There is a consensus that already exists. What we need is a vote on the floor of the Senate. I encourage the majority leader once again to allow us the opportunity to cast this vote. Senator McCain, Senator Snowe, myself, Senator Stabenow, Senator Feingold, Senator Daschle, Senator Kennedy and many others have worked very hard on this issue. In my judgment, it is a disservice to those who deserve to pay fair prices for prescription drugs not to have a vote on this bill. It is a disservice to their interests for us not to complete work on this bill during this session of the Congress. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record two editorials. One is by the Chicago Tribune and it is entitled ``Shielding the Drug Industry.'' This says essentially what I have said: While Congress dithers, States and cities skirt if not break the law by helping seniors and others take advantage of lower prescription-drug prices in Canada. And the editorial talks about the desperate need for Congress to pass a law dealing with reimportation. They specifically feel that the legislation that is before the Congress would be meritorious and they talk about Peter Rost who is vice president of marketing for one of the largest drug companies who broke ranks with the drug industry in the last couple of weeks and publicly endorsed the proposal in Congress that my colleagues and I have sponsored. Then I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a New York Times editorial that is titled ``The Senate's Chance on Drug Costs.'' If Dr. Bill Frist, the Senator majority leader, knows what's good for the body politic, he will allow a quick floor vote on the drug reimportation bill he has been bottling up for the benefit of President Bush and the pharmaceutical industry.

Mr. DORGAN. As I have indicated, there is a bipartisan group of Senators who have worked a long while on this issue. The House of Representatives passed this idea by a wide bipartisan margin. This is not a partisan issue. It is bipartisan. My hope is that the majority leader will decide that as a matter of scheduling, we will, before we adjourn sine die, address this issue and resolve it for the benefit of the American people. There is no safety issue. Everyone knows that is a bogus issue. To continue to raise that issue suggests somehow that Americans are unable to do what the Europeans have done routinely year after year. That is, put together a system--we call it reimportation; in Europe it is called parallel trading--that is safe for consumers and that puts downward pressure on prescription drug prices. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I seek recognition to speak about the bill and about Senator Byrd's amendment and generally about the subject the Senate is considering.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me say that the Senator from West Virginia has done a great service today by pointing out that there is a substantial difference between flexibility and accountability. I cosponsored the amendment offered by Senator Byrd, not because I want less flexibility but because I demand and expect that we should have accountability in terms of how money is spent by the Federal Government, especially in these areas. I don't think there is one instance in which the administration would argue they have not been given the flexibility to move funding from one account to another in order to accomplish their specific goals and purposes in defeating terrorism. The Congress has been extraordinarily generous in working with the administration in every conceivable way to move money around to areas where they need that money with which to fight terrorism. Senator Byrd, in his amendment, indicates that he thinks we should continue to have some accountability. Under the pending bill, the Treasury Secretary is authorized to create appropriations accounts, to which the national intelligence director then can transfer funds, and there are really no limits on how those funds would be used at this point. Let me give a short description of some of the angst I have about this when you just provide funding and say: Katey, bar the door, do what you want, and don't worry about how we feel about it. This is a tiny little issue, but there is a small area down in the Treasury Department called the Office of Foreign Asset Control, OFAC. Its purpose is to track money that goes to fund and support terrorist organizations so we can shut down that funding. That is the purpose of OFAC. I found that OFAC has 21 people tracking American tourists traveling to Cuba. These are American citizens who are suspected of trying to take a vacation in Cuba. We have 21 people in an agency designed to try to interrupt the flow of money to terrorists who are now spending their time trying to shut down travel by the American people to Cuba. I will give you an example. A young woman named Joni Scott went to Cuba. She didn't have a license to go there. She went there to distribute free Bibles on the streets of Havana and other Cuban cities. She is a devoutly religious young woman. I have met with her. She went to Cuba to distribute free Bibles. OFAC tracked her down and slapped her with a $10,000 fine because she didn't have a general license to go to Cuba. And there is Joan Slote, a 76-year-old grandmother who likes to ride bicycles, who signed up with a Canadian company for a bicycle tour of Cuba. She happens to be a senior Olympian who rides bicycles in the Senior Olympics. They tracked her down and slapped a $10,000 fine on her. It was later reduced, but they decided they were going to try to attach her Social Security check because she did not pay her fine on time. That was because she had been in Europe. She rushed back home when her son had a brain tumor and was dying, went to her son's bedside, and was not at home to get her mail. What was her transgression? She was an American who decided to ride a bike in Cuba. My point is this: This is a rather small agency, OFAC. And when Paul O'Neill was the Secretary of the Treasury, I asked him at a hearing, because I was the chair of the appropriations subcommittee--I said: Mr. Secretary, wouldn't you really prefer to use all of those assets at OFAC to track terrorists? He didn't answer for three or four times. Finally, about the fifth time, he said: Of course. If I had my choice, that would be the most productive thing. We now discover that more and more of those people at OFAC are being used to track Americans who travel to Cuba. I don't understand that. But it goes to the point that Senator Byrd has made. Should we have some accountability? When we decide to take the taxpayers' money and appropriate that money, should we have some accountability with respect to how the money is spent? This isn't about Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals; it is about accountability. My colleague from West Virginia, a unique, extraordinary Senator, often pulls from his pocket that well-worn and underlined copy of the Constitution and he asks whether the Senate is carrying out its responsibility. Because after all, this is a Government with several branches. We want to work together. We certainly all want to fight terrorism. There is no question about that. We are willing to appropriate the funds with which to combat terrorism, but we are not all willing to say: By the way, here is the check, spend it the way you want. Congress needs to be involved. This is not about turf. This amendment described today by Senator Byrd is a bipartisan amendment. But it is not about turf. It is about Republicans and Democrats together who have joined to take a look at this issue and say: In this circumstance, we believe there ought to be some fundamental accountability.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I cosponsored the amendment not because of what I think but because of what I know. Let me describe for the Senator from Connecticut a circumstance that I believe means less accountability for the Congress and a circumstance that puts the Congress in a position of having to act retroactively with respect to an action that is already taken which dramatically changes the prerogatives of Congress. As I understand it, under the bill, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to create appropriations accounts to which the national intelligence director then can transfer funds. As I further understand it, the underlying bill includes no limits on how those funds can be used once they are transferred. As I understand it, the intelligence director would be authorized to transfer about $3.5 billion from the defense budget, and that gives the director a substantial amount of transfer authority never contemplated by Congress. The circumstance is that Congress would have to take action only retroactively to transfers that are made by the national intelligence director, which means that director begins and works to expend funds by their own volition. My colleague from Connecticut indicates that they must get approval from the Office of Management and Budget. I would point out, that is just the administration giving itself approval to do what it wants. That is not a check and balance of any type. My point is this: Once these transfers are made into this account and from the account, the only action that would then be available to Congress is some retro-action to say that is not what we intended. That puts Congress in a circumstance that, in my judgment, is disadvantageous for the body in this Government that has the power of the purse. I go back to this point, and this is a small point, but it is one that is instructive to me: If we do not tell those for whom we appropriate money how we want those funds to be spent, then, Katey, bar the door. Then you have a circumstance of the type I just described to my colleagues. I bet there is not one colleague in this Chamber who would stand up and say this young woman named Joni Scott should have been fined for going to Cuba to distribute free Bibles. I bet there is not one person in this Chamber who would stand up and say: I think we ought to fine a good Christian, a young woman who goes to Cuba and distributes free Bibles. That is what the people in OFAC are doing. They are tracking people down, such as Joni Scott. That is not the intent, in my judgment. When we appropriate funding--and we are going to appropriate a lot of it--we are in every circumstance accommodating to the administration when it needs to move money for a good purpose, to combat terrorism. When we appropriate that money, we demand accountability. We expect and demand accountability. That is what the Byrd amendment provides. It is not a radical amendment. First of all, it is bipartisan, and, second, it is just the most fundamental step that, in my judgment, we ought to take as a Congress because we, after all, are the ones who decide how much the American people pay in taxes, what do they have to provide for Government, and then we are the stewards of how that money is spent. Without this amendment, we have lost control over the stream of this funding. That is why I was a cosponsor of the Byrd amendment, again a bipartisan amendment. I think it is the right thing for us to do. I must say to my colleague from Connecticut, I honestly do not think this amendment in any way undermines the Collins-Lieberman bill. I think, frankly, it will strengthen that bill and say to every Member of the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats: We are going to do this in a way that requires accountability. What better message, in my judgment, than that message? So I actually think it strengthens the underlying bill.

Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I can reclaim my time for a moment on that point because I think this is a fruitful discussion, the authority in the underlying bill given to the national intelligence director is extraordinary and above that which we provide in most other circumstances with respect to appropriations. The two Senators may well intend that. I expect they do intend that. Our only point is there has never been a circumstance, to my knowledge, where someone has come to us on an urgent basis saying, We need to plug this hole, we need to move funds, there has never been a circumstance in which the Congress says: No, you cannot do that. We have always said: Absolutely, let us work with you.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me just say, first of all, you can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility. No one can delegate responsibility. We have certain responsibilities for the taxpayers' money. I must say the amendment that has been offered, in my judgment, conforms to the Constitution's understanding of what our responsibilities are. We have a disagreement. I don't want that disagreement to undermine my comments about the work that Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman have done. They have done a lot of work on this bill, perhaps more than anyone else in the Congress, with hearing after hearing after hearing. Very few of us not on that committee understand the hours and the work they put in on this product. I don't mean by cosponsoring this amendment to denigrate or undermine their work, I mean to improve on that work. And let me just make this point: We have a very fundamental disagreement, the Senator from Connecticut and I, because he believes there is no new authority given to the national intelligence director. As I understand this, what happens is, the Treasury Secretary creates appropriations accounts, and he creates appropriations accounts to which the national intelligence director can then transfer funding. I also understand under current circumstances, several billion dollars would be transferred to those accounts, and then at some point later, if the Congress determines the expenditures for which that sum of several billion dollars has been committed is not appropriate to what the Congress intended, Congress can then retroactively evaluate how to deal with that. I am saying I believe it puts us in a position, historically, that we are not in with respect to our role as appropriators. I think the circumstances have always been that money is appropriated through an appropriations process, not through an authorization. The bill we have today is an authorization. I happen to believe this authorization bill should give some additional authority to a new person--in this case the national intelligence director--but I am going to speak for a moment, when we finish this discussion, about the stovepipes and my concerns about what is going on in intelligence generally and why we are in a position, I think, of some vulnerability based on what is not being done. So I happen to think that it is useful to put someone in charge, but putting someone in charge does not mean that we ought to say to them, oh, by the way, here is a pot of money, move it around as you wish, let us know how you used it, and then we will take a look at it and see whether we evaluate that to have been appropriate use. That is not the way we do things in Congress.

Mr. DORGAN. Of course, I would be happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. DORGAN. I would be happy to yield for a response.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me reclaim my time.

Mr. DORGAN. In my judgment, the discussion we have just had is easily resolved. Either the Senator is providing much greater authority and therefore more flexibility at the expense of less accountability to the Congress or he is not. As I read this, I believe the amendment that has been offered by Senator Byrd, Senator Stevens, Senator Inouye, Senator Warner, myself and others, a bipartisan amendment, does not in any way weaken the bill that came to the Senate floor on which the Senator has spent a lot of time. I think it, in fact, strengthens it. It strengthens the role of Congress and I think makes this a better bill. So I understand the Senator believes that the way the Senator has created this underlying Collins-Lieberman bill does not provide less accountability for Congress. The Senator has described it as much better flexibility, and that flexibility, as I read this, comes at the expense of accountability for the Congress. My only point is, all of us want exactly the same thing. We want this to work. If there is anybody in here who does not want this to work, they do not belong in this Chamber. We want this to work. Why do we want it to work? Because we know people want to murder innocent Americans. They want to commit acts of terror in this country and we need to stop them. Now, how do we stop them? With good intelligence. I cannot say how profoundly disappointed I am at the poor intelligence we have been given as a Congress in recent years. Somebody needs to answer to that. Somebody needs to be accountable for that. In part, that is what Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins are trying to do with this legislation. That is why I commend them for their work. Let me describe a continuing problem that we have with our law enforcement and intelligence communities in their efforts to prevent another terrorist attack. On September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11, two messages apparently related to the 9/11 hijackings were intercepted by our Government, by the National Security Agency. The Arabic language messages said, ``The match is about to begin'' and ``tomorrow is zero hour.'' Those messages were not translated until the day after 9/11. You would think that the FBI's translation capabilities would have been vastly improved in the intervening three years. Yet last week we learned that the Inspector General of the Department of Justice had issued a report, which found that three years later, the FBI has neglected to translate hundreds of thousands of hours of intercepted communications among suspected terrorists. This is not about politics at all. There is no partisanship in this. The question is, Do the FBI, CIA, the NSA, and others do an effective job or do they not? Can we prevent acts of terrorism or can we not? Let me read this, from the Inspector General's report: Three years after September 11, more than 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism-related recordings have not yet been translated by the linguists at the FBI. In fact, some recordings have been deleted from audio computer files, and FBI officials speaking on condition of anonymity said officials have had to go back to original al-Qaida recordings on some occasions to try to restore them, after realizing that copies had been deleted because of capacity problems. The inspector general's report said the linguists might not have realized that material was deleted unless a case officer simply happened to notice it missing from the final transactions. The FBI had failed to institute necessary controls to prevent critical audio material from being automatically deleted. After September 11, 2001, the FBI director said this: The FBI needed to change from an agency primarily focused on investigating crime to one whose primary focus is the prevention of future terrorist attacks. The Inspector General says: Yet necessary system controls have not been established to prevent critical audio materials from being automatically deleted, such as protecting sessions of the highest priority on digital collection systems, active on-line storage until linguists review them. This is the Inspector General, again. He says: The results of our tests showed that three of our FBI offices tested had al-Qaida sessions that potentially were deleted by the system before linguists had a chance to review them. There is something wrong here. How can you have 120,000 hours of intercepted phone messages and all kinds of audio recordings-- terrorists, al-Qaida recordings--that have never been listened to? Is there a recording in that 120,000 hours that sounds like the recording on September 10, 2001, a recording that says: ``Tomorrow is the zero hour,'' and no one has listened to it? I don't know. The American people understand, I think, that the capability of our intelligence system, the CIA, the FBI, and others, will determine whether we are successful in preventing another terrorist attack. So it is disheartening when you see the same failures cited over and over, with little improvement. Let's go back to August 2000, before this administration took over. In that month, we had a report of the National Commission on Terrorism--a report authorized by this Congress, issued by a commission chaired by Ambassador Paul Bremer. This was the same Paul Bremer who later went on to head the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. The Bremer commission, 4 years ago--this is before 9/11--had this to say: The FBI's ability to exploit the increasing volume of terrorism information has been hampered by aging technology. All U.S. Government agencies faced a chronic shortage of linguists to translate raw data into useful information. This shortage has a direct impact on our counterterrorism efforts. Mr. Bremer said then, over 4 years ago, that what we need are additional linguists, we need to interpret the raw data, we need to be able to understand it, determine what it means for this country's safety. Here we are 4 years later and we get an Inspector General's report that says there are 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism- related recordings not even translated. Indeed, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice concluded that one-third of terrorism-related audio recordings were not translated within 12 hours as mandated by the FBI rules. There are 123,000 hours in languages primarily related to counterterrorism-- Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashtun--that have not been translated; 370,000 hours of recordings in languages connecting to counterintelligence probes had not been deciphered by that time. That is nearly one-half million hours potential leads to terrorist plots, sitting there, uninterpreted. We can pass legislation. We can have a debate about all these issues. But if agencies can't get their act together, can't do the job, don't even interpret the al-Qaida recordings to understand what is there, how on Earth are we going to protect this country? The 9/11 Commission, incidentally, the Commission which has prompted this bill coming to the floor of the Senate, says the following: The analysts for the 9/11 Commission . . . had difficulty getting access to the FBI and intelligence community information they were expected to analyze. The poor state of the FBI's information systems meant that such access depended in large part on an analyst's personal relationships with the individual in the operational units or squads where the information resided. For all of these reasons, prior to 9/11 relatively few strategic analytic reports about counterterrorism had been completed. Indeed, the FBI had never completed an assessment of the overall terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland. And I continue to quote: The FBI did not have an effective intelligence collection effort. The FBI did not dedicate sufficient resources to the surveillance and translation needs of counterterrorism agents. It lacked sufficient translators proficient in Arabic and other key languages, resulting in a significant backlog of untranslated intercepts. This from the 9/11 Commission. Following the release of this information from the 9/11 Commission, we now have the release of the Inspector General's report, which is absolutely stunning. It is astonishing to receive a report that, nearly 4 years after a recommendation was made by the Bremmer-Sonnenberg Commission, 3 years after we were attacked on 9/11, that we have 120,000 hours of recordings of intercepted information, a portion of which is from al- Qaida, and it has not yet been interpreted or translated. This is unbelievable. I talked for a few moments about accountability. Where is the accountability here? Who is accountable for that? Who is responsible for that? I want to make one other point, if I might. Again, I know I had a discussion with my colleague from Connecticut. My colleague from Maine is on the floor. I don't know whether she heard me, but I said I appreciated the work the two have done to bring this to the floor. Much of it has great merit, in my judgment. Much will be very protective of this country's interests and advances our interests in combating terrorism. I do support the amendment because I think that amendment will strengthen the bill. But let me say one other thing. The 9/11 report is a roadmap and we are using that roadmap in an attempt to construct some legislation here. Other roadmaps, for example, include this Inspector General's report of which we have just become aware. That ought to tell us something about where we are headed here. It is not good. Let me mention one additional point. As we evaluate what yet needs to be done to protect this country, and discuss issues of transparency, there remain 28 pages of information up in the Intelligence Committee that should still be released. They are classified ``top secret.'' Some in the Senate have read this material; all have the opportunity to read it. It comes from the December 2002 report of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the House and Senate that was sent to the White House and then was published. That report was on 9/11, what happened, and how it happened. That report was published in the December 2002 with 28 pages missing, and the 28 pages deal with Saudi Arabia. That is what has been said publicly, disclosed publicly, but yet they are deemed top secret and the American public is not able to see them. Then, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Shelby, indicated that he thought 95 percent of it could be easily declassified. The Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia thought it should be declassified. Yet it has been classified by the White House, which refuses to share this information with Congress and the American people. I believe, once again, that all of us should continue to ask the White House to declassify those 28 pages. That, too, is a contribution to understanding what happened and what we do about it. Those 28 pages, in my judgment, should be released. They cannot as long as they are classified ``top secret.'' In my judgment, they should be declassified. Again, Senator Shelby indicated that he thought 95 percent of it could easily be declassified, and, as I indicated, the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia called for its declassification. Considering that fifteen of the 19 terrorists who struck this country were Saudis, I think our country deserves to get to the bottom of this. I believe, once again, as we finish discussing these issues on intelligence, 9/11, and how to strengthen this country, how to prevent future acts of terrorism, that these 28 pages ought to be made available to the American people. I came to the floor today to talk about this inspector general's report and to weigh in briefly on an amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Byrd. Let me conclude as I started by saying that I believe Senator Byrd has done a great service to the Senate by once again saying there is merit in many of these proposals and that he doesn't come to the floor to denigrate these proposals. He comes to the floor to strengthen these proposals. I agree with him that we have a government in which we have separating powers with respect to the ability and the fight to try to prevent further acts of terrorism from occurring in this country. All of us need to work together. But we need to work smart. Working hard and working smart sometimes can be two different things. I hope we will work smart working together to have accountability in Congress to provide the flexibility while still retaining accountability so we can create this new agency, get rid of these stovepipes, and have agencies that are forward working, that will share information which will protect this country from future acts of terrorism. All of us share that goal. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for one point?

Mr. DORGAN. I thank the Senator. I only make the point that I don't think any of us disagree with the point of having sufficient flexibility so the agencies will make decisions to hire people to translate the tapes. Somebody must be accountable today--not just tomorrow--for 120,000 pages not being translated. My point is, whether Senator Byrd or myself or any other Senator, we all want sufficient resources to be devoted to the task at hand-- especially the urgent task at hand. With or without the kind of flexibility you provide in this bill, I believe the evidence is that in every circumstance in the last 3 years when the administration asked for flexibility in moving funding, it has been granted by this Congress, and it has done so immediately. I know that because I am an appropriator and I see what comes to us. We move it immediately. I wanted to make the point that I don't think there is any disagreement at all about our interest in seeing critical issues funded. We all want that to happen.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have asked the two managers of the bill if I might speak in morning business for a few minutes. Let me ask for 7 minutes, and if they need the floor to do business on the 9/11 Commission bill, I will give up the floor. I want to speak of something I think is very important.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first I will talk about disaster aid. I will talk specifically about disaster aid for family farmers in the northern Great Plains who have been hard hit. We have been talking a lot about disaster aid for people who have been victims now of four successive hurricanes in the Southeast. God bless those people who have been victims of the hurricanes. They have had a difficult time. Perhaps none of us can understand how awful it has been for them. Those storms have swept a wide tract across the southeastern corner of the United States. I have always believed, in my service in the United States Congress, that for those who need help because of natural disasters, the Congress should help. I have always voted for assistance, when I served in the both the House and the Senate. The people who await the aid need to understand we want to make certain we provide this assistance during this difficult time. In recent days, I have been reading reports about the disaster aid that the Senate included in the Homeland Security Appropriations bill. In that bill, the Senate included legislation dealing agricultural disaster assistance for family farmers around the country, not just in the Southeast. Now some are saying maybe the disaster aid we put in the Homeland Security appropriations bill will have to be stripped out. I want to talk about that for a moment. It is critically important that we provide disaster aid not only for those people and those farmers in the Southeast, but also for other farmers around the country who have lost their entire crops due to weather-related disasters. I was reading an e-mail from a young woman. She wrote an e-mail that I will paraphrase. It describes the culture of family farming and describes why I care so much and why some of my colleagues are so passionate about this issue. Her name is Annie. She writes that her dad is a farmer and was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor that proved to be cancerous. He has now been taking aggressive treatment. The prognosis is not great. She said: When we found out about dad's cancer, our neighbors told us not to worry about the farm. She said: My youngest brother was trying to manage the farm on his own this summer, but on August 25, 100 neighbors showed up at the farm with combines, grain carts, trucks, and semis to harvest the wheat. The local Case dealership donated some manpower and some machinery. The local crop insurance agency catered an outdoor barbecue to feed 150 people who worked. She sent pictures of her dad, who is suffering from a brain tumor, but more importantly a picture of all the combines that came over, all the trucks, all donated, all from folks who showed up because they knew a neighbor was in trouble. It is part of the culture and the value system of family farming. The network of farms that dots the prairies in this country, especially in the northern Great Plains that I know so much about in terms of family farming, is part of the culture of this country. A wonderful author named Richard Critchfield talked of the origin of family values that originated on family farms, and moved to small towns and big cities to refresh and nourish family values in this country. That is why family farms are so critically important. In my part of the country this year we did not have hurricanes, but in the spring we had torrential rains. These are pictures of the same State. This is the southwestern corner of my State. It looks exactly like a moonscape, or perhaps the surface of Saturn, as we have seen in pictures. There is no vegetation, nothing growing. There has been a protracted drought. I had people tell me north of Hettinger, North Dakota, they had 2.2 inches of total moisture from January 1 to July 1--6 months, 2.2 inches of total moisture. Their land was destroyed; no vegetation at all. This picture is the same State, the State of North Dakota, with a farmer standing in his field inundated by water. There were 1.7 million acres in North Dakota not planted this year. Let me say that again: 1.7 million acres could not be planted. Farmers like this farmer standing in the middle of his field risk everything. When they cannot plant their entire farm, they will go broke if they do not get some help. Drought and inundated by torrential rains, they could not plant 1.7 million acres, and in August, when the corn and beets needed heat units to grow, we had a freeze. It was a very unusual occurrence in North Dakota, but it froze in August, a frost that damaged some of these crops. The Senate passed a disaster aid package for victims in the Southeast recovering from the hurricanes, and also passed an agricultural disaster aid package on the Homeland Security bill. We need to finish that job. I hear and now read in the National Journal and Congressional Quarterly that some are saying it is likely we will not keep the agricultural disaster package in the Homeland Security bill through the conference committee, because we have some people who do not want that to happen. I would say to those people: There is not a difference between the reimbursement for a crop that was lost in northern Florida or a crop that was lost in northern North Dakota due to a weather- related disaster. They both occur in counties that are disaster counties. They both occur in a way that is devastating to the family farmer and will injure that family in an irreparable way unless this country says, We are here to help you. I want to tell those who are saying this cannot be done: this must be done. We will help those folks who have been injured by the four hurricanes, but we will also insist on helping others across a wide band of this country who were injured by torrential rains and by a protracted drought in the heartland and parts of the West. There is a broad consensus in the Senate that disaster aid must be helpful also to family farmers in other parts of America. We cannot allow this to be dropped. We must continue to impress upon those who would not include this assistance that when we provide disaster aid, it must include all of those who have been affected and devastated by weather-related disasters. If I might mention one additional point. We are currently dealing with homeland security and terrorism in the Senate. I commend the managers of the bill on both the Republican and Democrat side. I have watched the debate and the discussion. I think it has been wonderfully done, very professionally handled. National Registry Of Convicted Sex Offenders Mr. President, terrorism comes in many forms. Within our country, one form of terror is perpetrated by sex offenders. I have introduced a piece of legislation to deal with this problem. I would like to describe why it is important that the Senate Judiciary Committee act on this legislation. And let me, at the outset, thank Senator Hatch, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for his support of it. Not quite one year ago, a young coed at the University of North Dakota was working at a shopping center in Grand Forks, ND. At about 5 in the afternoon, she left her job to walk out to her car. She was abducted and brutally murdered. The alleged murderer is now in jail. He will be standing trial. This man had been incarcerated 23 years for violent sex offenses in Minnesota, and then let out of prison. He was considered a high-risk offender, but he was let out of prison to go back on the streets, with no monitoring of any sort. That afternoon, when this young woman named Dru Sjodin walked out of that shopping center, her assailant was free to roam that parking lot, to abduct her and to brutally murder her. After this tragic crime, I found out that there was a serious flaw in the way that sex offenders are tracked in this country. If you were living, for example, in Grand Forks, ND, as this young college coed was, and you checked the North Dakota sex offender registry, you would not know that violent sex offenders had been let out of jail in Minnesota and were living in your area, just a few miles across the state line. I think there ought to be a publicly available national database of convicted sex offenders who are released from prison, so people are able to get a meaningful list of sex offenders in their area, including offenders across state lines. I also think when a high-risk sex offender is about to be released from prison, the local State attorney ought to be notified, to determine whether to seek further incarceration for the protection of the public. Third, if a high-risk sex offender is, in fact, released from prison, then there ought to be intensive monitoring following that person's release, for a period of at least one year. In this case, a high-risk, dangerous offender was released from prison after 23 years. He was under zero supervision. A wonderful young coed from the University of North Dakota walked out of a shopping center. She was abducted at knifepoint and then brutally murdered. Maybe we save some lives with a bill, which would be known as Dru's Law, that would require a national database to be made available to the American public through the internet. Maybe we can avoid future circumstances where high-risk sex offenders are turned loose with zero supervision. I thank Senator Hatch and Senator Leahy. They have both reviewed this legislation, and both think it has merit. It is not something that would cost very much. It is something that has a great deal of common sense to it. I also thank Senators Dayton, Coleman, Conrad, Johnson, Lugar, and Durbin, who on a bipartisan basis have cosponsored this legislation. I passed a piece of legislation very much like this about 2 years ago. A young woman named Jeanna North, who was 11 years old, was murdered in Fargo, ND, by a man named Kyle Bell. He was being hauled around the country by a private company that was contracted by the State to haul prisoners from one facility to another. I do not think a convicted murderer should ever leave the arms of law enforcement, and turned over to a private company. But I found out it is done all the time. If they are going to haul a convicted murderer, a violent offender, they will often contract with a private company. It turns out, they contracted with a company that took this man named Kyle Bell, this murderer, and hauled him around the country. They stopped for gas. One guard was asleep, the other was in buying a cheeseburger, and Kyle Bell crawled out of the bus and walked into a parking lot of a shopping center, wearing his street clothes, mind you. That will never happen again. There is now a law on the books. It says if you are a private company hauling violent offenders, then there are certain responsibilities with respect to the restraints to be used, the clothing the prisoners must wear while being transported--bright orange clothing--and the Justice Department of the United States must establish consistent rules. So what happened with Kyle Bell, the fellow who murdered young Jeanna North, is not going to happen again. Someone is not going to walk into a shopping center in street clothes because a private contracting company was transporting a convicted murderer and one was asleep in the van and the other was buying a cheeseburger and the convicted murderer walks off. That is not going to happen again. Sometimes it is just a matter of common sense. It seems to me with respect to this issue of Dru's Law, dealing with high-risk convicted sex offenders, we can do much, much more, and we should do much, much more. I, once again, say to Senator Hatch and Senator Leahy, thank you for your cooperation. I know you have been working to see how we might move this legislation. I am looking forward to having it a part of other legislation that moves from the Judiciary Committee. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was intending to speak earlier this week on the subject of trade, but because of the Senate schedule I decided to wait until today, when we don't have Senate business that would require votes. Before I get to the subject of trade, I first want to mention that this morning in the Congressional Daily, there is a lead story that says: Growing GOP resistance might doom farm money in homeland funding bill. It says here that House Republican leaders are digging in against a package of drought assistance that Senators added to the Homeland Security appropriations bill. The House Republican leaders say that the drought amendment doesn't have a head of steam. I am wondering how is it these leaders seem to think that spending is very important when it comes to funding the reconstruction of Iraq-- which ran through here like a big old truck in fifth gear--but when it comes to spending here at home to help people, in this case helping family farmers through a real tough time, they say we don't know that we can do that. They are going to dig in our heels. The Senate passed disaster relief for farmers. We also supported disaster relief for the victims of hurricanes. I have never in all the time I have been in Congress opposed disaster relief for those who have been victims. It seems to me, whether it is the fury of a hurricane that hits your area or drought or some other act of nature or God, when people are victimized, the rest of this country will extend its hands and say, you are not alone, we want to help. And we have always done that. For those poor folks in Florida and the rest of the Southeast who have been hit by hurricane after hurricane, we have a responsibility to help them and we did and we will. We will do more. But it is also the case, for example in my State, where torrential rains meant that 1.7 million acres of ground couldn't even be planted and family farmers who rely on that planting to make a living will lose their opportunity and perhaps lose their farm if they don't get help. In August there was a freeze, and that freeze dramatically injured crops. And there was a drought in the southeast part of my State, where between January and July they received 2.2 inches of moisture in 6 months, and they too need some hope. So when we pass disaster assistance, whether it is for the hurricane victims or for those in agricultural areas that suffer weather-related disasters, and then we hear that there is opposition to this by the GOP in the House of Representatives, I ask myself this: Why is it that they are so anxious to help everybody except the people in this country? I offered an amendment last year on the floor of the Senate to strip about $20 billion out of the bill for Iraq reconstruction which the President sent to us. That was the single largest cut in spending proposed on the floor of the U.S. Senate last year. Why did I offer that amendment? Because the President said, let's spend this money for reconstructing Iraq, when, in fact, Iraq has plenty of money to reconstruct itself. Iraq has the second largest reserves of oil in the world. It is perfectly capable, especially with oil prices where they are. Iraq is now pumping slightly less than 3 million barrels a day-- about 2.5 million. But they clearly have the capability to pump oil and sell the oil and raise the money to reconstruct themselves. Instead, what we have is a roads program in Iraq paid for by the American people; we have an education program in Iraq paid for by American taxpayers; we have a jobs program in Iraq paid for by American taxpayers; we have a health care program for Iraq paid for by American taxpayers. You name it, We have all of these programs in Iraq paid for by us, the American taxpayers. The supporters of that bill were rushing to get that through the Congress and couldn't get it through quickly enough. Now when some folks in this country are hurting and we pass a disaster relief bill to say, you are not alone, we want to give you some help, we have the GOP leaders in the House saying, you can't do that. Why not? That is investing here at home, at least. You were so quick to rush $20 billion to Iraq to reconstruct Iraq; how about returning some money to help those family farmers who have suffered weather-related disasters? This isn't over. There is going to be a big fight. If that is the attitude of other side, we are going to have a big fight about this because we owe it to those producers across the country who live on the land, who go to the fields in the morning alone to plow with nothing but hope that somehow things will work out. When they have weather- related disasters, they too need some help. They too deserve our help. So this is going to be a big fight. We are not going to sit idly by and have GOP leaders in the House say that this isn't going to happen. It is going to happen one way or the other. We are going to make this happen. If we can spend nearly $20 billion on reconstruction in Iraq, this country can surely open up its pocketbook and provide some much needed help for family farmers in a significant part of this country who have suffered weather-related disasters. That is a fact.