Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, last week the Senate was not in session and most of us in the Senate were in our home States. I spent most of the week in North Dakota visiting with people about the economy, jobs, health care, and a wide range of issues. I had meetings on the issue of No Child Left Behind, on the significant problem in rural States with methamphetamine and the scourge this deadly new drug poses to young people and to law enforcement. A lot of us were doing a lot of activities last week. I wish to talk about a couple of issues that happened since we left town. Last week, there was a lot of discussion about the Economic Report of the President that was sent to the Congress just prior to our leaving town. This week's BusinessWeek, March 1, 2004, says: Will Outsourcing Hurt America's Supremacy? That is similar to the front cover of BusinessWeek a year ago: Is your job next? A new round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include chip design, engineering, basic research--even financial analysis. Can America lose these jobs and still prosper? So BusinessWeek, in front covers, now and exactly 1 year ago from now, asks the same questions: Will outsourcing hurt America's supremacy? The issue of outsourcing of jobs has been raised in the President's Economic Report, and there has been a lot of discussion about it. I thought it would be helpful perhaps to read it because it gets back to the question of international trade and its impact on our economy. On page 25 of the Economic Report of the President, it says: Outsourcing of professional services is a prominent example of the new type of trade. The gains from trade that take place over the Internet or telephone lines are no different than the gains from trade in physical goods transported by ship or by plane. When a good or service is produced at a lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically. Let me read that last sentence again. When a good or service is produced at a lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than produce it domestically. So that created a significant debate. This is a booklet, the Economic Report of the President, that is extolling the virtues of outsourcing of American jobs. It is safe to say, perhaps, that no economist who worked on this booklet has ever had their job outsourced. In fact, I know of no American economist who has lost his or her job because of outsourcing. I also know of no politician in this country who has lost his or her job because the job was outsourced to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, or Indonesia. So it is easy then for politicians and economists to thumb their suspenders, smoke their cigars, ruminate, cogitate about these things, and come up with this goofy idea that somehow when a good or service is produced at a lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than produce it domestically. I will take this point just for a moment and see if I can dissect it by talking about bicycles. I know I have spoken about this before, but repetition is the hallmark of good policy, so let me do it again. When it can be produced less expensively overseas, the President's economic advisers and the President's report say do it. Well, Huffy bicycles are a good example. The company that made Huffy bicycles had 20 percent of the domestic market. People can buy these bicycles from Sears, Wal- Mart, and Kmart. Most people know about Huffy bicycles. They used to be made in this country. They were made in Ohio by American workers. Those American workers made $11 an hour making bicycles. I did not know one of the workers but I am sure they were proud of their jobs and proud of their product. They made Huffy bicycles. In fact, on Huffy bicycles the decal on the front between the front fender and the handlebars was an American flag decal made by American workers. So Huffy bicycles moved to China. Why? Because it costs $11 to hire an American to work to make a Huffy bicycle and a Chinese worker can be hired for 33 cents an hour. Huffy left Ohio and went to China. The last job that was done by the workers in Ohio was to replace the little flag decal with a decal of the globe. They removed the flag and put a globe on the front of Huffy bicycles. The last bicycle that was boxed up and left the plant in Celina, OH, was at 10:15 in the morning when a red 20-inch Huffy model was put in a box for shipment, and then Huffy changed its nationality. Huffy bikes are now Chinese. Now, bicycles do not speak, so there was no visible sign of this change of nationality when the Huffy showed up at Wal-Mart or Kmart or Sears. They are now for sale as a Chinese bicycle rather than an American bicycle. Question: Does anybody think that when Huffy decided to send its bicycle production to China, those bicycles ended up on the showroom floor of Wal-Mart or Kmart at a much lower price because instead of paying $11 an hour for workers constructing these bicycles, they were now paying 33 cents an hour? Instead of having safe workplaces, there are none of those OSHA problems in China. Instead of having a manufacturing plant where they cannot put chemicals in the water and put chemicals into the air, there are none of those restrictions in China. Instead of having child labor laws where 12-year-olds cannot be hired to work 14 hours a day, there are none of those restrictions in China. So is it less expensive to produce Huffy bicycles in China? Darn right it is. Does the consumer benefit from that? Do my colleagues think Huffy bicycles that showed up on the showroom floor of Kmart and Wal-Mart are less expensive bicycles after they cut manufacturing costs of workers from $11 an hour to 33 cents an hour? The answer is no, of course they aren't. This has nothing to do with advantaging consumers. It has to do with corporate profits. It has to do with laying off Americans and fattening profits. So going to page 25 of the Economic Report of the President, his economic advisers say: When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than produce it domestically. The keyword here is cost. They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, as the old saying goes. I will tell my colleagues where things can be produced at less cost: Mexico, Indonesia, Bangladesh, China. I can name a dozen countries. But is that the only criterion? Is that the judgment we are going to make in this country: If it costs less somewhere, then there is an advantage to producing it there and shipping it back here and there is some sort of inherent advantage to our consumers? It is simply not true. I do not understand whether it is being hard headed or soft headed to fail to understand the basic truths about international trade. I am not someone who believes we should build a fence around our country but I do believe there ought to be some fairness with respect to the rules of this globalization. I will describe for a moment something I did just before the break. I came to the Senate floor and I listed--which, incidentally, is on my Web site as well at http://Dorgan.Senate.gov for those who might be interested--the top 100 companies that basically moved jobs to Mexico after the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now these 100 companies--this is not conjecture from me--these are companies that certified to the Department of Labor that these jobs were no longer going to exist because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Why did they certify it? Because they wanted to make eligible the workers who were being laid off for this transitional trade adjustment assistance. What a wonderful, remarkable term: Transitional trade adjustment assistance. That means, for somebody out there who is losing their job, they are going to be transitioned and they are going to get some assistance in the short term. Guess what. One loses their job, they get transitioned, we give them some money, and then go away, please. So in order to get that transitional assistance, one had to have a certification from their company. So here is a certification. Levi Strauss, 15,676 jobs, mostly moved to Mexico; they certified that. I am not accusing them of it. I am just saying they certified that to the Department of Labor. Levi's, now that is all American; right? Everybody wears Levi's, but Levi's are not American anymore. They are made elsewhere. Fruit of the Loom used to be in Texas. They certified 5,352 jobs gone, T-shirts, shorts, underwear; Fruit of the Loom, not American, gone. Do my colleagues want to order some Mexican food? Well, they do not have to say: Give me a chalupa, give me an enchilada. What they can say is: Give me some Fig Newtons, because Fig Newtons left America and went to Mexico. They are gone. Do my colleagues think Fig Newtons are made at home? No, they are not. Fig Newtons are on this list, certified as leaving America. Why? Because they can make them less expensively elsewhere. How many Americans know that Fig Newtons now come from Mexico? So we lose our Fruit of the Loom, we lose our Levi's, we lose our Fig Newtons. I am mentioning some things that are not high tech. I should mention some high tech--Motorola telephones. Let me give an interesting statistic that most people would not believe. Do you know that after NAFTA, when we were told that what would be shipped to this country from Mexico would largely be the result of low- skilled, low-wage labor, they said that is what this is going to be. We are accessing the Mexican marketplace for low-skilled, low-wage labor which will ship jobs into this country and it will not displace those in this manufacturing sector who have good jobs, making good money, because they have high-skilled, high-wage jobs. Wrong. The three largest categories of manufactured items coming into the United States from Mexico are automobiles, electronics, and automobile parts. Did you know in a recent year we imported more automobiles into the United States from the country of Mexico than we exported to all the rest of the world? I am going to say that again. The United States imported more automobiles from Mexico than we exported to all of the rest of the world. That describes to you what happened with NAFTA--a substantial flight of U.S. jobs, good manufacturing jobs, good-paying jobs to Mexico. It is all about wages. I understand that. So you go to page 25 and the issue here is not about values. It is not about the American economy. It is not about caring whether this world-class economy of ours retains a strong manufacturing base--which I think is essential to be a country with a strong world-class economy. It is not about that. It is about cost. When a good or service is produced at a lower cost in another country it makes sense to import it. So you say, ``So long to American jobs.'' There are no tears shed for that with these economists. Of course they sit there without worrying about their jobs because no economists I know have lost their jobs. No economists lost their jobs to NAFTA. No politician lost his or her job. Despite the fact that everybody was wrong. This describes what happened. This happens to be the 100 top companies that certify job loss: Only with respect to Mexico; only with respect to NAFTA. We were told. The best economists said: Pass this North American Free-Trade Agreement because if you do we will produce substantial new jobs. Guess what. We had a small trade surplus with Mexico. We passed NAFTA, the North American Free-Trade Agreement, and that small surplus turned into a giant deficit. Ross Perot called it a giant sucking sound, and those jobs have gone to Mexico wholesale. We had a modest deficit, a relatively modest deficit with Canada, which is the other country that is the participant in the North American Free-Trade Agreement, and that has become a very large deficit. In both cases with Mexico and Canada, all the experts were wrong and we have dramatically increased the Federal trade deficit with respect to both countries. Let me also say in the Economic Report of the President there has been a discussion in recent days about what is manufacturing, because they pose the question on page 73. They ask a question. The definition of a manufactured product, however, is not straightforward. When a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a service? Or is it combining inputs to manufacture a product? I don't know exactly which economist might have written page 73, but when a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, is it providing a service or is it combining inputs to manufacture a product? This rather serious economist poses one of the questions of our era: Should a hamburger be considered part of our manufacturing base? Should the making of a hamburger be considered part of our manufacturing base? How about the person who hangs out the window and says, Do you want fries with that? Is that a key part of the manufacturing base? Where does this go? What would your mom, or my late mother, think if you came home and said what you had been doing and you told her you had been manufacturing chocolate pie? I don't think so. Sometimes in this town language becomes such a barrier to understanding. This is so fundamentally absurd on its face. Is making a hamburger part of America's manufacturing base? The answer is of course not. Of course not. We have lost a massive number of manufacturing jobs in this country in recent years. I suppose some of the same economists who have sold us on this economic strategy may want to make it appear as if we have lost fewer jobs by counting those who construct a hamburger--two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, whatever it is--as part of our manufacturing sector. But of course on its face that is nuts and this ought not be part of any significant or serious discussion. There are a lot of questions being raised these days about jobs. Let me say I don't think, with all the discussion we have about social programs in the Congress, there is not a social program in this country that is as important as a good job that pays well. Because that is what helps provide the security for America's families. We are going through a time when we face the loss of a lot of jobs. We face the restructuring of an economy. We did have a recession, relatively short. We are now a year and a half past that recession and the fact is we are still not producing any significant number of new jobs. So the question for all of us is, Is this economic strategy a strategy that produces new growth without new jobs? Paul Craig Roberts, who was one of the top economists for the Reagan administration, recently wrote a piece suggesting that perhaps this is an economic recovery without new jobs. If that is the case, we have some serious problems ahead of us. He says maybe this new economy, this new growth, does create jobs but not in the United States; jobs in China, jobs elsewhere, just not jobs here. If that is the case, we face significant challenges. We are going to have an agenda in this Senate that will move very quickly between now and the first Tuesday of November, which is election day. I understand all that. We are going to be working on a lot of extraneous issues, some because one side or the other wants to have a political wedge issue someplace. We on our side don't schedule this place. The majority schedules it at this point so they will determine what is on the floor of the Senate. But for me, I believe there is not a more important issue that we need to deal with than the question, are we going to have an economic engine that creates jobs so the American families, as they talk about their lot in life, have a chance to visit about progress? How will American families answer the questions: Do I have a good job? Does it pay well? Do I have job security? Am I going to be outsourced? And then answering the other questions that come from the ability to have a decent job, Do we send our kids to schools we are proud of? Do Grandpa and Grandma have access to good health care? Do we live in a safe neighborhood? Do we keep this country safe from terrorist attacks? There are so many issues that confront us, but I think the issue of jobs is critically important and we spend far too little time working on it in the Senate. I want to say this: Those who think it is a good thing to send America's jobs overseas, those who think this is a new economic approach that is good for America, don't understand. Because they have not been in that place. They have never been a part of a family where they know about secondhand things, second jobs, second shifts, and second mortgages. They have never been a part of that. They think it is just fine to construct some economic theory, some model that says if we can produce Huffy bicycles less expensively in China, good for us, let's do it. Except the consumer doesn't benefit from that, it is just the American workers who lose their jobs. The questions these economists need to answer--and the politicians, incidentally, who support this, and there are plenty--is: Who will be the purchasers and consumers in an economy in which you diminish and then finally ship good jobs overseas? Who is going to purchase all of these things you are producing overseas? I have given a number of trade speeches. I come to the floor of the Senate and talk about this repeatedly and nobody seems to care very much. That is lamenting. I should not say it quite that way. It does not result in dramatic change in public policy. We can talk about the most recent trade agreement with China. We have roughly a $130 billion trade deficit with China right now. It has been growing leaps and bounds. Our negotiators negotiate an agreement with China and say on the bilateral trade with respect to automobiles: We will agree with this, China; you can ship any Chinese automobile you may wish to manufacture to the United States, and we will charge a tariff of only 2\1/2\ percent. And we agree any U.S. cars we try to ship to China are charged a tariff 10 times higher of 25 percent. Stupid? Sure. On its face it is a stupid provision. We say to China, which has a $130 billion trade surplus with us, by the way, we will make a deal. We want to have bilateral automobile trade, and we will let you charge a tariff 10 times higher than we will. I would love to find the negotiator who did that and see if we could not find a way to prevent them from ever having a public sector job once again. That makes no sense. Yet we see this time after time after time. As I speak today, every single pound of American beef that is sent to Japan has a 50-percent tariff on it. We have a huge trade deficit with Japan. Every pound of American beef sent to Japan has a 50-percent tariff. That is 15 years after our trade negotiators reached a beef agreement with Japan. This country needs to get a backbone and stand up for its economic interest. Yes, I am talking about ranchers. I am talking about manufacturers. I am talking about business owners who do business in this country and have to compete. We need a spine, backbone, some willingness to stand up for the economic interests of this country, not being protectionists but just saying there needs to be some basic rules. If, in fact, we are a global economy--and, indeed, we are--then the rules with respect to that global economy need to keep pace with globalization. We had people killed in the streets of this country in the last century. They gave their life fighting for some basic rights: The right to organize, basic rights for workers to organize. We had people fight on the issue of child labor to prohibit the sending of 12-year-old children down into the coal mines and into manufacturing plants. We waged fights over the issue of minimum wage and safe workplaces and the environmental laws that prohibit a plant from dumping its chemicals into the air and water. Now we are told forget all that because if you are a global company, you pole-vault over that and go someplace where you do not have to worry about environmental or labor rules. That is a nuisance. Child labor, minimum wage, the right to organize, that is a nuisance. This is what we have dealt with for 100 years in order to create a more perfect opportunity for business and labor. There is something fundamentally wrong. I hope we can have a discussion about jobs in the Senate. I intend to offer a series of amendments at the next opportunity dealing with the issue of jobs and dealing with the issue of trade. The President has just finished a Central American Free-Trade Agreement. I believe we ought to have that debate in the Senate. He has just completed the Australian Free-Trade Agreement. We ought to have that debate in the Senate. I intend to be in the Senate opposing both. I will describe why later. Neither, in my judgment, represents the best interests of this country. I want trade pacts to be mutually beneficial. That means they need to benefit this country, as well. What prompted me to speak were a couple things: One, this discussion about outsourcing. The economists who wrote this--this is the President's book, actually signed by the President, but the fact is, I understand it is written by the President's economic advisers. He, in some ways, began to do a U-turn and lost the steering wheel and turned back again. My hope is the President certainly does not believe this nonsense. Outsourcing of good jobs in this country, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing of service jobs is not in this country's best interest. They say in the long run it will even out because the other countries will raise themselves up. John Maynard Keynes said in the long run, we are all dead. I am interested in the next year, the next 5 years, the next 20 years. I am relatively uninterested in the realignment of the economies 100 years from now. I want very much for this country to succeed. I want this country to remain a world economic power. It will not be a world economic power if it is deep in debt, up to its neck in fiscal policy deficits and up to its neck in trade deficits. We have fiscal policy deficits this year alone of about $660 billion. I know the numbers that are advertised are $530 billion, but that is if you take the Social Security revenue, which is a dishonest thing to do. So $660 billion in Federal budget deficits, and add to that the highest trade deficits in human history, very close to $480 billion, and it is appropriate to look at this country's fiscal policy and trade policy and ask: Where is the leadership? Where does the leadership come from to address these issues? My hope is that I and others who care a great deal about this can provide some of that leadership. We invite the President and people from both political parties to join us. This President needs to speak forcefully in response to this ``Economic Report of the President.'' He needs to say: This is not what I mean. The economists may have written it, but I don't believe outsourcing strengthens our country. I don't believe moving American jobs overseas strengthens the United States of America. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2430.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is an amendment about which I have spoken previously. It deals with the subject of drunk driving. More specifically, this amendment deals with the issue of open containers of alcohol in vehicles. It is similar to an amendment that was voted on and approved by the Senate when we passed the previous highway bill 6 years ago. I would like the opportunity to explain what this amendment does and what it means. Let me describe to my colleagues an organization that most of them know well, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a wonderful organization that sprang up over recent years dealing with the issue of drunk driving. Every 30 minutes someone gets a call that their loved one has been killed by a drunk driver. That is a relentless number of deaths caused by something that can be avoided and can be dealt with, if we get tough dealing with drunk drivers. The scourge on American highways from drunk driving is not some mysterious illness for which we don't have a cure. We know what causes it. We know what cures it. Let me offer some statistics: Of the children from birth to 14 years of age who were killed in alcohol-related crashes in 2001, more than half were passengers in vehicles with drivers who had been drinking; 23 percent of the children under 15 years of age who were killed in motor vehicle crashes were killed in alcohol-related crashes in 2001; the leading cause of death for children 4 to 14 years of age is motor vehicle crashes, too many of them, far too many, as a result of alcohol. During the year 2001, 8,054 passenger vehicle occupants under 15 were involved in fatal crashes. It is estimated that 269 children under age 5 were saved as a result of child restraint. The statistics about safety issues with children are really quite remarkable. It is especially compelling to take a look at what is happening with respect to drunk driving. It is important to understand what we can do about it. The amendment I have offered is very simple and would be hard to oppose. It says that nowhere in this country should you, driving a vehicle, come to an intersection and meet someone else driving another vehicle who is drinking while they are driving. It ought not be legal anywhere in this country to drink and drive. It ought not be legal in this country anywhere for there to be open containers of alcohol in moving vehicles. Some say: Well, but that is the State's decision. That is a decision the States ought to make. Thirty-six States have already made that judgment. Thirty-six States have said they agree, under no condition should there be open containers of alcohol in passenger vehicles on the roads. There are 14 States, however, that don't make that same judgment. There are some that prohibit consumption by the driver but say it is fine if others in the car are drinking alcohol. There are some that say it is OK to have open containers of alcohol, but you can't have it when the car is in motion. You just have to pull off to the side of the road. There are others that have prohibitions on open containers that apply only to drivers. But one State has an exception for frozen daiquiris. Sound goofy? It does to me. Let me say that again. We have 14 States that do not comply with the requirement that would prohibit alcohol in a moving vehicle on America's roads. There are several States in which there are no laws at all with respect to alcohol in vehicles. You may, in some of those jurisdictions, put one hand around the neck of a bottle of Jack Daniels, put the other hand on the steering wheel, start your car, begin to move, and you are perfectly legal. You may drink and you may drive. That is unforgivable. Nowhere in this country should we have laws that permit drinking and driving or drinking in vehicles that are on American highways. This is not rocket science. We know how to prevent this, and 36 States do. Six years ago, when we passed the legislation creating the highway bill, we had a vote on this. It was a tougher amendment that I offered then. It would have imposed a penalty that 5 percent of the highway funds that were going to a State be withheld unless that State complied with the requirements to prohibit open containers of alcohol in vehicles. That passed the Senate 52 to 47. The first year it was losing 5 percent; the second year and thereafter, losing 10 percent of the highway funds. That was tougher than this amendment. This amendment provides that if States do not comply with a prohibition on alcohol in passenger vehicles, then they will lose 2 percent of their highway funds each year during the 6 years. The amendment that passed the Senate 6 years ago--an amendment I offered and one that was supported by a majority of my colleagues--was watered down in conference. The requirement still existed, but it was a requirement that said, in effect, you better watch it. It said if you don't comply, some of your highway funds, a small amount, will go to hazard mitigation or safety programs. Money is fungible, so these 14 States that have not complied have not minded that because they have to use money for hazard mitigation in any event. So we have 14 States that have decided it is all right in some circumstance or in some form to have alcohol in your moving vehicles. I mentioned that one State does actually have a small prohibition against this practice, saying that apparently drivers only cannot drink, with the exception of a frozen daiquiri. There is actually a frozen daiquiri exception. I think I have the exception here. In this particular State, just to show you the extent to which States have gone to produce their own version of whether you ought to be able to drink and drive: It shall be unlawful for the operator of a motor vehicle, when the vehicle is on the public highway or right of way, to possess an open alcoholic beverage or container or consume an alcoholic beverage in the passenger area of a vehicle. Then it describes alcoholic beverage: Beer, ale, port, or stout, so on, wine, distilled spirits. Open container means any bottle, can, or other receptacle--(B) except open alcoholic beverage container shall not mean any bottle, can, or other receptacle that contains any amount of frozen alcohol beverage unless the lid is removed and a straw protrudes. I don't think there ought to be a State in this country where you ought to be able to drink and drive. It is as simple as that. It is a fact that conditions have changed dramatically in this country, and thank God they have. It wasn't too many years ago when a drunk driving arrest produced a slap on the back and a knowing grin-- well, you got caught, did you, old buddy? These days, it is far more serious than that. A wonderful organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving decided to stop the carnage on America's roads. They have had a dramatic impact in Congress and in State after State. I have met most of the presidents of that organization in recent years. All of them have lost children to drunk driving accidents. They are all passionately committed to stopping this. Again, there is no mystery to this. We understand what causes these deaths, and we understand how to stop it. I have told my colleagues before that, at 10:30 at night, I received a call that my mother had been killed by a drunk driver. I will not describe that except to say the horror of that call, that happens over and over and over again in this country, is a horror you never forget. It is so tragic because none of it has to happen. All we have to do is get serious about drunk driving and enforcing our laws and having the right laws. I wish we were as tough and serious as Europe is. In most of Europe, your attitude had better be that you will not even think about doing this. You don't dare get caught in Europe drunk driving. The consequences and penalties are far too great. That is what I wish we would do in this country. For about 12 years now, I have been unable to successfully persuade the entire Congress that there ought to be such penalties to require every State in this country to make a very simple statement with their law, and that would be that, in no circumstance, at no intersection, at no time shall anybody be driving a vehicle in this country and drinking at the same time and be perfectly legal. It is nuts, in my judgment, to have laws that allow that to happen--and not just drivers. Yes, there are circumstances where drivers can drink and it is legal in this country--in addition to others in moving vehicles who are consuming spirits and wine, beer, liquor. It is not the right thing to happen in this country. We have gone well past the time when this ought to be debatable. My colleague, Senator DeWine--who, incidentally, supports my effort here--offered an amendment dealing with drunk driving which I supported. My colleagues in this Chamber know this is an important and serious issue. They also know that this is the place to address it. If you were going to address the issue of drunk driving, it seems to me you would address it in this venue, right here on this bill. We spent a great deal of money putting together a piece of legislation using Federal revenue that we collect and send back to the States. We have every right to impose a restriction that says we expect the States to have a prohibition on open containers of alcohol. As I have indicated to you, 36 States have such a prohibition. This relatively small map shows, in dark green, all of the States that already have legislation that causes a complete prohibition on the consumption of alcohol in a moving vehicle. The legislation I offer would simply require the other 14 States to comply. In fact, a fair number of the 14 are close to complying. I believe it would not be much effort for them to do so. Only those few States that are remaining, where they insist on some sort of personal right to allow people to drink and drive, would object. There is no justification for that objection. When someone turns an automobile into an instrument of murder because they decide to get drunk and drive, then there need to be consequences. One of the consequences, in my judgment, is not only to get tough with drunk driving, as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have all across the country--they have gone to court and they have represented victims and they have insisted on changing State laws. They have been here in the Congress and have been very successful in dealing with Federal law changes. In addition to that, they support this, and I believe we ought to change Federal law one more time to make this prohibition on open containers stick across the country. Once again, there is no justification to say that anywhere, anytime, under any circumstance, someone ought to be able to drink and drive. Too many of us--many in this Chamber, in fact--have experienced a phone call and that phone call is one we never, ever forget because it is such a senseless tragedy and needless death when someone gets drunk and decides to get into a vehicle and it results in the death of another American. Let me make a couple of additional comments and then I will complete my presentation. We know from studies that have been done that prohibitions on open containers of alcohol in vehicles--the laws that exist--have made a difference. They have deterred both moderate and heavy drinkers from driving. We know those laws are successful. In fact, some States have had the laws for many years, and there are a good many studies that describe that success. States with prohibitions on open containers in vehicles have had significantly lower rates of alcohol-related fatalities than States without. States with open container prohibitions have had lower numbers of hit-and-run crashes than States without such laws. In every single State in this country, the majority, by far--80 percent, 90 percent, 76 percent, 91 percent--of the people say they support passing legislation prohibiting the open container of alcohol in vehicles. My amendment is not hard to understand. It is simply written. It is a short amendment. The objective of it is quite clear, and the passion with which I have, for 12 years, worked to try to effect this change remains. I don't know how the vote will occur today. I regret that some will decide we cannot take the simple step of saying to the American people that nowhere in this country should you be able to drink and drive. I regret that some will oppose that. My hope is that perhaps the Senate once again today will decide, on this issue, to do what is right. If so, perhaps we can go to conference and do what is right. We won't know the names of those whose lives we saved, but I can tell you they are young children, high school students, babies, senior citizens, workers, moms, and they are grandpas. A lot of people's lives will be saved if we take this step, pass this requirement, and get people off America's roads who now drink and drive and, in some parts of the country, who drink and drive legally. In my judgment, that is unforgivable. I don't want any American, under any circumstance, to come to any intersection at anyplace in this country and meet someone driving another vehicle who is driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand on the neck of a bottle of Jack Daniels, drinking whiskey, and it is legal. That situation exists in this country and it ought not to. If this Senate doesn't have the stomach to take that simple step, I wonder whether we have the capability to legislate on much of anything. That completes my remarks. I don't know what the procedure might be. I expect we will have a vote on that. I suggested that the manager of the legislation, the chairman, accept it by unanimous consent or by a voice vote, or at least vote for it. I don't know what the chairman intends to do.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this most surely is a mandate, and those who believe no mandate is worthy ought to oppose this. I say to the Senator from Oklahoma, the proposal that has existed now for some years in which we have tried to encourage the States to comply is a very simple proposition that has not worked. The encouragement has been to say you will lose highway construction money that will go into hazard mitigation if you don't comply. Fourteen States have not complied. In some States, it is legal to drink and drive. I say this to my friend from Oklahoma, if ever there is a case for a mandate, it ought to be to say that, as a nation, we have a national purpose and a national interest in deciding that nowhere in this country on no public highway shall it be legal to drink and drive at the same time. I think there are enough Americans who understand the consequences of this and the tragedy of it to understand why it is necessary for us to be aggressive. We can decide that we don't like mandates. That is perfectly acceptable. But that then will not solve this problem. I guarantee, if we pass this legislation and the other 14 States comply, lives will be saved. In any event, aside from the mandate issue, I don't expect there is one person in the Senate who will come to the Chamber and say: I really think it is good public policy to allow people the choice, to let people choose whether they want to drink while they drive. If someone has a hankering thirst for whiskey and a powerful need to drive at the same time, God bless them, get them on the road. There is not one Senator who will come to the Chamber and say that because that is nuts and we know it. There is no justification for allowing anybody in this country to drink and drive. None, none at all. If this Congress cannot take baby steps in the right direction dealing with public safety, then a lot more lives will be lost. This is not radical. This is easy. This is not complicated. This is simple. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is we could dispose of the amendment I have offered in a moment. Let me again explain this amendment. Six years ago, the Senate did pass an amendment that is slightly tougher than the one I now offer dealing with the issue of drunk driving. It specifically deals with the issue of open containers of alcohol in vehicles. We understand that nowhere in this country should someone be able to drink and drive at the same time. Yet there are still jurisdictions where that exists. The Senate has had a vote on this. When we previously considered this legislation 6 years ago, the Senate voted in favor of my amendment. It did get watered down in conference. My understanding is that the amendment would now be accepted, and I appreciate that. I have spoken twice on it and have fully explained it. I feel passionately about this piece of public policy. I thank Mothers Against Drunk Driving and all of the other Senators across this country who dedicate their time and commit their lives to try to do something to make a difference about drunk driving and save the lives of so many in this country who are at risk as long as there are people who are drinking and driving in the United States. I thank the two managers of the bill. I yield the floor with the understanding the amendment is accepted.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is my amendment will be cleared by an approval of a voice vote and I ask that that occur.

Mr. DORGAN. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Nevada will yield? I wonder if he would yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have visited the Senator from Nevada and others following the announcement of the cochairs of this commission. First of all, I believe there should be an independent commission. I believe very strongly that the question of intelligence--both the gathering of and use of intelligence--is critically important to this country because it, and only it, will provide protection for this country against the next terrorist attacks. We have to get it right. When Mr. Kay comes before a committee and says it was all wrong, it was wrong and it failed the President--it also failed the Congress and the American people--we had better figure out what happened, what was wrong. There needs to be a commission. But it needs to be an independent commission. Now what we have is the President announcing a commission to investigate the intelligence. But more than that, the point the Senator from Nevada just made about the cochair, Mr. Laurence Silberman, a judge--I read this book from a while ago, ``Blinded By the Right.'' I was aware when I read this book by David Brock of Mr. Silberman's activities in other venues as well. I must tell you that having read this book and seen that a sitting Federal judge was involved in the sort of things Mr. Brock says he was involved in with respect to a series of things that it seems to me would go well beyond what would be acceptable activities by a Federal judge, I think it is just Byzantine that the President would appoint a cochair to this commission who doesn't meet the test of objectivity or the test of common sense at all. There can be nothing independent about a commission that is cochaired by a sitting Federal judge whose discussions and activities in this book disclose that there is nothing at all impartial about this judge. I will not read into the Record these passages. I assume perhaps the Senator from Nevada has. I know many of my colleagues are talking about the same thing. I ask the Senator from Nevada: Can there be a presumption of impartiality by a cochair of this commission, appointed by the President to investigate this issue of the executive branch--by the way, without subpoena power or anything of the sort--when the President has chosen a very strident, aggressive, partisan supporter as the cochair?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, again, inquiring further of the Senator from Nevada, aside from the fact that this is not an independent commission, it is not what is needed to be done at this point to evaluate and investigate the ``failures'' Mr. Kay described in our intelligence. This so-called commission cannot possibly be a commission held in much respect if the selection as the cochair is a fierce partisan whose exploits are described at least in part in this book. Incidentally, I think the question should rest with the judicial system, Why has this not been investigated? I know of no investigation in the judicial system with respect to what is alleged with respect to the activity of Mr. Silberman. This country needs an impartial, independent, aggressive investigation of what happened with respect to our intelligence. As I indicated, our safety and security depend on intelligence getting it right with respect to protecting us against the next terrorist attack. That is why this is so important. I personally plan to support and aggressively speak in favor of a truly independent commission. I am assuming one will be offered by perhaps Senator Corzine who has offered it on the floor of the Senate. We will have this debate at some point. We need a commission. It needs to be independent. It needs to be cochaired by people who do not have a partisan agenda. That is simply not the case with the independent commission that has been announced now by the President. I ask the Senator from Nevada: Is that not the case?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I might respond, there is no question that any evaluation of this should be an evaluation of what kind of intelligence existed and how it was used. That is not an attempt to put any one person under a microscope; it is an attempt to evaluate what happened here. What on Earth happened? Again, I say there are some who want to say nothing happened. They want to allege nothing has happened. Clearly, something has happened. The top weapons inspector came back to this country and said our intelligence community has failed the President, and in fact the intelligence community failed, and we now believe that to be the case. The Secretary of State went to the United Nations and he said: We know, we know, we know, on point after point after point, slide after slide, intelligence pictures, satellite photos, we know this, we know this, we know this. It turns out we didn't know that. This is important business. This country needs to act on what we know--not what we think we know. If our intelligence community failed us, as Mr. Kay indicates it did, and he says failed the President--I say failed all of us--then the question is, Why? How did that happen? How was intelligence gathered? Where did that failure exist? And how was that intelligence used? I believe only an independent commission will get to that answer. I think it is urgent that we get there. As you know, in England they are now having such an investigation, with an end date I believe of July. They understand the urgency. They are saying let us do it, and let us do it quickly but thoroughly. In this case, we have a so-called independent commission, cochaired by a strident partisan, and at the same time we are told it is fine to have that commission report sometime after next year. I just do not think that is the right thing.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN. Let me respond briefly to my friend from Oklahoma, and I will phrase it in the form of a question to the Senator from Nevada. There is no question the world is better off because Saddam Hussein was found in a rat hole and no longer runs the country of Iraq. The world would be better off if Kim Jong Il were not running the country of Korea. That is not the issue. An interesting point, but not the issue. The issue is, the top weapons inspector says that which we said we knew, which we told the world we knew, was not the case. Why? Because he said our intelligence system failed. No one here should sleep quite as soundly as they used to sleep, understanding that our intelligence system failed. We all ought to demand on an urgent basis to understand what happened and how it happened. That is the point the Senator from Nevada and I are making. I hope the Senator from Oklahoma believes in the urgency of this, as well. I ask the Senator from Nevada if it is not the case that the question by the Senator from Oklahoma about the September 11 commission moving in the right direction, is it not the case that yesterday we saw this headline: ``9/11 Panel Threatens to Issue Subpoenas for Bush's Briefings''? In fact, they have already had to issue subpoenas. This commission investigating the September 11 attacks had to issue subpoenas against the FAA and others and is now threatening to issues subpoenas against the White House and said this morning they had more cooperation. Is it not the case that any administration, Democrat or Republican, ought to say to this commission and any commission: Here are our records. They are open. We want you to get to the bottom of this.

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 just talked to the managers of the bill. My understanding is there is nobody waiting to speak on the bill. As a result of that, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes, with the understanding that I will relinquish the floor if the managers have Senators who wish to offer an amendment to the bill. I don't want to delay the bill.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wanted to speak for a moment about the issue of jobs. There has been an especially vibrant debate recently about the number of jobs that are being created in this country and the number of jobs that are moving overseas from the U.S. to other countries. I wanted to talk about jobs specifically today because there was an announcement that the U.S. has finished a trade agreement with the country of Australia. We have already had the completion of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA; we have had NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico; we have had GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; and the WTO. We have all of these agreements and the fact is they are not working out well. Despite that, instead of correcting the problems in previous trade agreements, our negotiators are continuing to move ahead to negotiate new trade agreements. Let's consider NAFTA. NAFTA was negotiated with Mexico and Canada. Prior to NAFTA being negotiated, and then approved by the Congress, the United States had a very small trade surplus with Mexico, nearly a $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico. Now, 10 years later, we have a $40 billion deficit with Mexico. I will say that again. In 10 years, with the North American Free Trade Agreement, we took a small surplus with Mexico and turned it into a very large deficit. Again, when we negotiated the trade agreement with Canada--it was with Canada and Mexico--we had a $10 billion trade deficit with Canada, and that is now $50 billion. With Mexico, we took a small surplus and turned it into a big deficit. With Canada, we had a modest deficit and quintupled it, from $10 billion to $50 billion. We still have people walking around this town thumbing their suspenders, between puffs of their cigars, and saying this trade agreement was wonderful for our country, it has worked well. I decided to check which companies certified to the Federal Government the movement of jobs, or the loss of jobs, as a result of NAFTA. I have just received the information from the Congressional Research Service. It is the first time anybody has catalogued this job loss, in this level of detail, as far as I know. But here is what you have. Now, NAFTA allows for transitional trade adjustment assistance. That is a fancy way of saying, if you are going to lose your job because of this trade agreement, we will give you some supplemental income to help you over the tough spot. The anticipation was people would lose their jobs, and we would try to provide some help, transitional trade adjustment assistance. In order to get transitional trade adjustment assistance, the employer has to certify that jobs are going to be lost in their company as a result of this trade agreement. That certification goes to the Department of Labor, which keeps track of those certifications. Let me describe what we found with this Congressional Research Service study, based on Department of Labor data. This is the first time a study has been done in this level of detail. It says the No. 1 company that certified jobs certified they had 16,095 jobs that they lost either because they moved the jobs to Mexico, in most cases, or because of additional imports from either Mexico or Canada that displaced their workers here. No. 2, Levi Strauss: 15,676 jobs over this nearly 10-year period. Levi Strauss, now, that is everything that is American, right? Just go buy some Levis. Levis used to be made in the United States. Not anymore. Levis left, and the workers who used to make Levis in this country were able to get some transitional trade adjustment assistance. That is a fancy way of saying: By the way, we are going to sew those Levis in Mexico, and we will give you a few bucks as your job leaves and goes to Mexico. That is what it said to American workers. There is a whole series of companies, as one might imagine. Fruit of the Loom is seventh on the list, 5,350 jobs. I remember when I saw the actual notice in the paper that Fruit of the Loom was shutting down its U.S. manufacturing plants. I spoke on the floor of the Senate. I said: It is one thing to lose your shirt, but Fruit of the Loom is gone. They are making shirts and shorts and underwear in Mexico. I understand even now that labor costs are too high, and now it is moving to Asia, in some cases. How about Fig Newton, Kraft Foods? Eat a Fig Newton and you think you are eating a Fig Newton cookie from the U.S. I am sorry, think again. It is Mexican food; Fig Newtons made in Mexico. It left this country, and the resulting layoffs of U.S. workers meant they received transitional trade adjustment assistance. What does that mean? It means they got laid off. They made a good Fig Newton cookie, but they don't make it here anymore. American employees lost their jobs, and Fig Newtons are now made in Mexico. This is a list of 100 companies from the Congressional Research Service. This list can be derived from Labor Department data because the companies had to certify job loss. This is slightly over 200,000 employees who lost their jobs. In fact, if you included in the list all who certified, it would be over 400,000 American workers who lost their jobs because of NAFTA, the free trade agreement with the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Some say other jobs were created. Maybe so. Ask yourself this: If we took a small trade surplus with Mexico and turned it into a very large deficit, and a modest deficit with Canada and turned it into a very large deficit, isn't it inevitably the case that we will have lost a lot of jobs? The answer is clearly yes. It doesn't matter what all the other folks say. We have lost a lot of jobs, and all of these folks-- these are just numbers on a chart, but of these 200,000 people, every one of them had to come home, perhaps some evening after work, and say to their spouse: Honey, I lost my job. I did good work. I had good evaluations all of my career with this company, but they have decided to shut the doors in this country and move to Mexico. The reason I wanted to point this out is to say there is precious little attention paid these days to the question of what is happening with jobs being so-called ``outsourced.'' I recently visited with a fellow who is founder and CEO of a very substantial company. He said to me: All of my competitors have now moved offshore. All of my competitors have moved offshore, and I have not. He said: I am not going to at this point, but I want you to know it puts me at a dramatic competitive disadvantage because I am paying American wages, and they are in India or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or China, and they are paying pennies on the dollar for those wages and it makes them much more difficult to compete with. I said: Good for you for keeping your jobs in this country. He said: Yes, but somebody has to do something. The question of this globalization is not just about whether we are globalizing, whether the economy is becoming increasingly global, because it is. The question is, Are there rules attached to globalization? What will the rules be for globalization? Is it OK to move jobs to a country where you pay them 16 cents an hour and work them 16 hours a day and 7 days a week? Is that something we should aspire to have American workers and American companies compete with? Yet that is exactly the case today. The answer so far has been, yes, that is fair trade. It is not fair trade where I come from. This economy will not be the economy that produces jobs and represents the economy of the world's biggest and most vibrant economic engine if it does not retain a strong manufacturing base. No country will remain the dominant economy in the world without a dominant and strong manufacturing base. For 42 straight months, we have had reductions in the manufacturing job base. Why? Because of outsourcing; moving jobs overseas where you can hire people for pennies on the dollar. Let me go through a couple of charts that show where we are with trade. This chart shows trade with Mexico. We can see where we were just before our trade agreement. What has happened since that time? A flood of red ink every single year; more and more trade deficits with Mexico. This chart shows our trade deficit with Canada. I mention both of these only because this is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. There is a flood of red ink. We negotiated the trade agreement in 1993, and we can see what is happening. And we still have people saying this has been a great free trade agreement. This chart shows our trade deficit, which is completely out of control. The President's budget last week asked the Congress to approve a budget that has a dramatic budget deficit. In it, he predicts in the fiscal year in which we now work, the budget deficit will be roughly $530 billion, roughly $530 billion. But in order to get to that, he had to take the Social Security trust funds for the year and use them as other revenues to make the deficit look lower than it really is. The budget deficit this year is going to be about $660 billion. That is the budget deficit. Add to that a nearly $500 billion trade deficit, and we can see where this is going--higher, higher, and higher. We have a Government with a combined budget deficit and trade deficit that is over $1 trillion, and people walk around as if nothing is going on. This is serious for this country. This is a burden that must be repaid. Let me talk for a moment about a couple of specific trade issues to show the absurdity of what is happening. This chart shows cars to Korea. Korea sent to the United States 620,000 cars to sell in our marketplace, and we sold to Korea 2,800. Let me say that again. Mr. President, 620,000 Korean cars came to the U.S. We were able to sell 2,800 in Korea. Why? Because the Korean government doesn't want U.S. cars sold in Korea. Beef? We can't sell beef in Europe. Why? Because $100 million of beef is banned from the EU each year due to bogus reasons, and we have a very large trade deficit with the EU. Here is the way they characterize U.S. beef: A cow with two heads because of growth hormones. Guess what. We said to Europe: If you are going to take that action against us, we are going to take action against you. And in the first small semblance of direct action on trade, the U.S. Government decided to take action against Europe. What did we do? We are going to slap Europe around. We decided to slap Europe around by imposing duties on Roquefort cheese, goose liver, and truffles. That will strike fear into our trade adversaries, and I say adversaries because when they take unfair action against us, we have a right to take action against them. What do we do? We slap import duties on truffles and goose liver. I am sorry, that does not seem to me to be the kind of action that is very effective against trade partners that are engaged in unfair trade. I could go on at great length about the issue. The issue, to me, comes down to the subject of jobs. This is a BusinessWeek article of February 3, last year. It talked about U.S. jobs moving offshore. They talked about the official estimate of 3.3 million white-collar jobs moving offshore in the near future. They are talking about in the coming 10 to 12 years an additional 3.3 million jobs. These are not factory jobs, manufacturing jobs. These are white-collar jobs that will be moving offshore. On the cover of BusinessWeek Magazine recently, it states: ``Is Your Job Next?'' A new round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include chip design, engineering, basic research. Recently, in the last couple of weeks, a Wall Street Journal article talking about documents from the IBM Corporation gives a rare look, they say, at ``sensitive plans for offshoring.'' They got ahold of IBM documents that show the company is acutely aware of the sensitivities involved when they ship jobs overseas. These are white-collar jobs. They say: Do not be transparent regarding the purpose/intent, and cautions that the terms ``onshore'' and ``offshore'' should never be used. The memo-- Which talks about moving jobs offshore-- suggests that anything written to employees should first be ``sanitized'' by human-resources and communications staffers. In the draft prepared for managers at IBM they suggest workers be told: This action is a statement about the rate and pace of change in this demanding industry. . . . It is in no way a comment on the excellent work you have done over the years. . . . For the people whose jobs are affected by this consolidation, I understand this is difficult news. It is a rare look at companies that are now moving high-skilled, high-wage, white-collar jobs overseas. We have some serious problems to deal with. This issue of the movement of American jobs overseas is a very serious issue. We can talk about the issue of globalization, and I am somebody who believes this is an increasing economy--I understand that--but I also believe there needs to be standards: What is the admission price to the marketplace of a developed country, a country that fought, for example, for the right of workers to organize, a safe workplace, the ability to prohibit the dumping into streams and waters and the air, poisons and effluents? We fought for years about those things: Child labor laws, fair labor standards, minimum wages. Now, with just an airplane ride and a decision memo by a company which said we will just pole vault over all of that, we do not have to worry about that, they move our jobs to Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, or to a place where they can hire 12-year- olds, pay them 12 cents an hour, and work them 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. And they do. Then they will ship the product back to Toledo, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Fargo. They say that consumers will be advantaged by that because they will get lower priced commodities. I conclude by telling one story that I have told previously. It is about Huffy bicycles. Most people are familiar with Huffy bicycles, 20 percent of the American marketplace sold at Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart. They used to have an American flag as a decal between the handle bar and the front fender. That was when they were made by workers in Ohio who made $11 an hour producing a Huffy bicycle. I do not know any of those workers, but I am sure they were proud because they had good jobs and produced a good bicycle. They were all fired. Huffy bicycles are now made in China. The workers in Ohio were making $11 an hour. That was too much, according to the company. So Huffy bicycles are made in China for 33 cents an hour by people who work 12 to 14 hours a day for 7 days a week. No, there is not a flag anymore. That little tin decal between the fender and the handle bar is not an American flag. It is now a picture of the globe. The question for this country is: Are we going to have any manufacturing jobs left? Is it fair competition to ask an American worker to compete against 33-cent-an-hour labor? We have to answer these questions. I am not suggesting it is not an increasingly global world, but we need rules for globalization. What is fair competition for the American worker and for American businesses? That is something the Congress has been unwilling to deal with and recent trade agreements have ignored. In fact, the trade agreements have been fundamentally incompetent, the ones with China, NAFTA, and others. I have spoken about those agreements at great length previously. Today, what I wanted to do was simply show the chart that shows the 100 companies that have exported jobs, and they have certified that the export of these jobs came about as a result of our trade agreement. This certification is not some speculation on my part. This is certification by each of these companies about the number of jobs that no longer exist in this country because they either moved to Mexico or they displaced imports coming into this country. This certification that has been made and the CRS has compiled for me is on my Web site, Dorgan.Senate.gov, if someone wants to see the list of companies. I think it is important for people to understand this is what is happening. The question is: Does it matter? For me, it does. If we are going to have a strong manufacturing base, we have to worry about this. No country will remain a dominant economic power without a strong manufacturing base, in my judgment. I have more to say about trade. I will do it at a more appropriate time. I understand my colleague wishes to speak on the bill, and I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, this amendment very simply deals with the question of open containers of alcohol in automobiles and moving vehicles on the roadways. Some perhaps will not believe this, but there are some locations in this country where it is still legal to put one fist around the neck of a bottle of whiskey, use the other hand to put the key in the ignition, and then with a hand on the steering wheel and a hand on a bottle of whiskey drive off down the road. And it is perfectly legal. Some would say that can't be. Yes. It is. It is the case. In some parts of this country, you can't be drunk while you drive, but you still can drink while you drive, and you are perfectly legal. I don't think there is any intersection in any part of this country where you or your family or your neighbors ought to meet a vehicle, an automobile, that is being driven by someone who is drinking alcohol, in a circumstance where it is legal for them to drink alcohol while meeting you at that intersection. That is unforgivable, in my judgment. I have been trying, I suppose for 10 or 12 years, to get this done. I offer this amendment again. It simply says to the States: You must have a prohibition on open containers of alcohol in State law. If not, you lose 2 percent of your highway funds. And for up to 4 years you can get the funding restored if you pass the prohibition, but you must have a prohibition of open containers that meets the Federal requirement. We have that federal requirement. I was instrumental in getting it passed into law. It says you must have a prohibition on open containers of alcohol, and if you do not, some of your highway money goes to hazard mitigation. So we have 36 States that have actually passed statutes that prohibit open containers of alcohol; 14 States have not passed statutes that meet this test. A number of them still get the same amount of highway money, but because money is fungible, they use it for hazard mitigation and use the money on the other side and there is no pain involved at all. The result is that we have States in this country where it is, one, legal, or, two, illegal but not enforced, where people are driving while they are consuming alcohol. I don't think it ought to be the case anywhere in America for it to be legal to drink and drive. Every 30 minutes someone receives a call in this country that their loved one has been killed due to a drunk driver. I received that call at about 10:30 one evening, a moment I will never forget. My wonderful mother was killed by a drunk driver. She, like so many others, was driving down the street 30 miles an hour, coming from the hospital at 8 o'clock at night, and a drunk was coming in the other direction, witnesses say at speeds between 80 and 100 miles per hour, in a high- speed police chase, and ran into my mother's car and she was killed. This carnage on America's highways that is caused by someone drinking and driving is not some mysterious illness or disease for which we do not know the cure. We know what causes this, and we know how to stop it. The way to stop it is to say to people all across this country: You cannot drink and drive. Just that simple. You just cannot do it. Yet there are still States in this country in which it is legal to drink and drive. And there are other States in which it is legal, if the driver does not drink, that other passengers in the car can have open containers of alcohol. It is long past the time for us to stop it. We have passed legislation that tries to coax the States into doing this, and many have complied by passing legislation that prohibits open containers of alcohol. Now I say let's go the next step, to say to the States: It does not matter where you are driving in this country. We expect, as policymakers, never to have to meet someone at an intersection where the driver or the passengers in that car are drinking, and doing so legally. We know better than that. Again, every 30 minutes someone receives a call that some member of their family was killed by a drunk driver. That simply means that someone took a drink of alcohol, took too much alcohol, got drunk, got behind the wheel, and turned the automobile into an instrument of murder. We can do better than that in this country. I suggest this piece of legislation is long overdue. It is interesting to note that the States that do not have a prohibition of open containers of alcohol on the books have alcohol- related fatalities that are higher than the States that do have that prohibition. So the evidence exists that the prohibition works. It is true that I grew up in a State that is not going to be affected by this because North Dakota has never allowed anyone to have an open container of alcohol in the vehicle. I grew up understanding you do not do that; no one ought to do that. If you are old enough to drink and you want to drink and it is legal for you to drink, you do not drink in a vehicle. There are places for you to drink--in your home or perhaps in an establishment somewhere, but not in a vehicle, not in a car. It is also the case that those States that have prohibitions on open containers of alcohol have a lower rate of hit-and-run accidents. That is a fact. The Department of Transportation has that information. It is just common sense for a State to say to people, you cannot do this, No. 1, by law; and, No. 2, in enforcing the law, you will have fewer deaths as a result of drunk drivers. Let me finally say something about an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It was not too many years ago that a drunk driving charge by the neighbor had others giving him kind of a knowing wink and a nod and a grin and a pat on the back, saying: Well, tough luck, Charlie; you got caught. Not anymore. Now it is serious business. Drunk driving is not a joking matter. Do you know what changed that? Mothers Against Drunk Driving--all across this country, that organization, started by mothers who had lost children and lost loved ones to drunk drivers and decided they were going to make a difference. They went statehouse to statehouse, capital to capital, and they put in place some tough laws. But it is still not enough. I am pleased to say Mothers Against Drunk Driving have supported what I am trying to do in the Senate today for some long while. They have made a difference. We can help them make an even greater difference by passing this amendment and saying to the States: We are not fooling around. This is serious business. This is life or death for thousands of people. As I indicated previously, I have offered this amendment prior to this time, I suppose on three or four other occasions. Each time I have offered the amendment, I have been told: Those sanctions are too tough. So they got changed, so that it attempts to coax the States to do the right thing. But the fact is, coaxing is not enough. This Congress, this Senate, ought to say to every State in this country, ought to say to every State, reflecting every jurisdiction, there should be not one corner, not one highway in this country, in which it is legal for people to drink and drive at the same time. That is the policy that ought to come out of this Senate. A mandate? It is a mandate, no question about that. We propose a number of mandates from time to time on a bill such as this. It is not a mandate that will hurt any State. No State will lose money if only the States decide as a matter of common sense that in their State it shall never be appropriate and never be legal for people to have an open container of alcohol in the vehicle, it shall never be allowed in their State for people to be able to drink and drive simultaneously. People will shake their heads and say it cannot possibly be the case that that would exist today, but it is, long after the time that should have been changed in some little corners of this country. That is the amendment I offer. I know my colleagues from Oklahoma and Vermont have pleaded with people to come and offer amendments. I hope they will approve this in 5\1/2\ or 6 seconds, but perhaps it will require more discussion because, as is always the case, I understand, there are some who have heartburn when I propose a significant mandate. And this mandate is 2 percent of highway funds, although no State, in my judgment, would ever lose it and no State need ever lose the highway funds if only they decide, as we have decided, that it ought not be permissible to drink and drive at the same time anyplace in this country and it ought not be permissible to have an open container of liquor in a passenger vehicle on America's highways. That is a devastatingly simple concept and one that I hope before we finish this highway bill will be approved by this Senate. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I recognize a North Dakotan who is celebrating a special birthday this weekend. On Saturday, February 14, 2004, friends and family will gather in Mandan, ND to celebrate and honor Edward N. Friesz on his eightieth birthday. Edward Friesz was born on February 14, 1924 to Adam and Magdalena Friesz on a farmstead near Fellon, ND. The oldest of nine children, Edward worked on his parents' farm before moving to Mandan to live and work. He worked at various places before retiring in 1989 from the Morton County Courthouse. In 1951, Edward met Elsie Frohlich, a friend and coworker of his sister, Irene. Edward and Elsie were married on September 30, 1953 in Bismarck. Last fall, the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Mark Twain once wrote, ``Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.'' Edward's greatest joy in life--the origin of many of those smiles--is his family. Edward and Elsie started their family in 1954 with the arrival of their first child, Delphine. Their family would grow to include three daughters, Delphine, Sharon and Annette, and three sons, Kennard, Gerard and Maynard. Edward and Elsie are also proud grandparents. They have 10 grandchildren ranging in age from 25 to 1. They include: Trever, Anton, Maria, Elizabeth, Alec, Jakob, Brett, Rachael, Ryan and Adam. While the family has spread throughout the country, they remain very close. The family comes together for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and special occasions. Twelve years ago, the family started a new tradition: a summer campout. Armed with tents and campers, sleeping bags and lanterns, the Edward and Elsie Friesz family embark each year on a weekend campout to share food, fun and fellowship. Over the past 12 years, they have camped in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. They have endured rainstorms, thunderstorms, and cold and hot temperatures. As the family has grown, so have the annual campouts. One year, they even designed t-shirts to commemorate the family tradition. This Valentine's Day, February 14, 2004, the family will get together again this time to celebrate their patriarch's 80th birthday. I extend a warm birthday greeting to Edward Friesz and wish him well on his 80th birthday.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Daschle. I say to Senator Frist, blood pressures rise from time to time actually on the floor of the Senate, depending on what we are doing. Mine relates to the issue of when we treat serious things too lightly or light things too seriously. Speaking of that, most of us agree that a serious matter that ought to be treated seriously is the highway bill. This week was a disappointment because we had the difficulty of getting into our office buildings and the ricin issue here on Capitol Hill. I know both the Republican leader and the Democratic leader share this view. This highway bill is critically important. I recall a political campaign in an election that was waged a couple of campaigns ago where they had a sign on the wall that said, ``It is the economy, stupid.'' That was their sign, just to remind them every day to focus like a laser on the economy. With respect to this country's economy and jobs, at a time when more than 2\1/2\ million people lost their jobs in recent years and 8 to 10 million people are now looking for a job this morning, there isn't anything that we can do that is, in my judgment, more urgent than passing this highway bill. Why? Because this is a job generator. Instantly, people go back to work. It means that contractors are out there with new contracts. They are hiring people. Everyone in this Chamber knows that the one formula for producing jobs now, immediately, is to pass this highway bill. It has been a disappointment to me this week that we have had some-- it was described in the National Journal or Congressional Quarterly as a small group of Republicans--who have decided to hold this bill up and stop it. That would not be in this country's interest. We must get this done. I appreciate the strength of the majority leader and the strength of the Democratic leader, as well, to stay with it. I would say to Senator Frist that I believe there is a broad, bipartisan consensus in this Chamber to produce a highway bill that helps us invest in the improvements necessary in roads and bridges across the country. Over 30 percent of them are in disrepair. But more important than that, in my judgment, is the ability to be a job generator, to expand this economy and put people back to work is job one. There is not much more of importance we can do this year. I don't know of a more important bill this year that will be related to American jobs than this bill. So it is my hope that, even though there is some obstruction going on by a few in the Chamber on the other side, we stay here, stick with it, work late if necessary, and get this bill done. It is that important for this country. Frankly, I think there is a broad, bipartisan consensus on that point. When we have that, let's stick with it and do it, even if there are some in this Chamber who have decided they want to hold it up. I thank my colleague from South Dakota, Senator Daschle, for giving me the time. I am about to go chair a hearing. It also relates to jobs. This jobs issue is so critically important. People got out of bed this morning in this country asking themselves: Where can I find a job? There are millions and millions of them. It is a big deal, a big issue. It is a serious matter for this country. The bill we are considering now has the opportunity to allow us to address this in a very significant way, and we cannot and should not miss this opportunity. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator from South Dakota yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Reclaiming my time.