Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator would yield further for an inquiry. I have worked with the Senator from Utah as a ranking member when he chaired the subcommittee. He is easy to work with and I know we will be able to work with the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Wisconsin on this issue. Especially in the last week or so, I have been immensely concerned about this issue of the importation of live cattle from Canada, only because the circumstances of live cattle coming across borders from a country in which there has been a case of mad cow disease is a very difficult situation. We want to be very careful about our country's beef herd and the potential devastation to that herd were we to have an outbreak or a case of mad cow disease. We belong to an organization called the Office of International Des Epizooties, which establishes the guidelines that our country and others follow with respect to animal health. I want to talk about that at some length and then offer the sense-of-the-Senate resolution because I think all of us ought to be very concerned about when and how we decide to take action with respect to the import of live cattle from Canada. Finally, I might say I regret Canada has suffered this problem. It is a devastating problem for them to have had a mad cow case, but we ought to be very concerned and very careful about our beef herd in this country, and my amendment will address that subject. I thank the Senator from Utah for his courtesy.

Mr. DORGAN

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. My understanding is we are in morning business.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I bring to the attention of the Senate an issue dealing with jobs. It is a story about international trade, unfair competition, and the impact it has had on countless of our workers. There was great euphoria a week or so ago about the economic growth numbers for the past quarter, some 7-percent economic growth. The problem is, it was accompanied by a loss of jobs. Jobs are the kind of thing that families talk about in the evening as they sit around the supper table: Do I have a good job? Does it pay well? Do I have job security? Do I feel good about the company I am working for? Our country, regrettably, has lost nearly 3 million jobs in the past several years. This is a picture of a bicycle. This happens to be a Huffy bicycle. Huffy is a well-known brand. It is sold at Wal-Mart, KMart, Sears. This Huffy bicycle used to be made in the United States. In Celina, OH, some 850 U.S. workers worked manufacturing bicycles. When a bike came off the Ohio plant's assembly line, they would put a little decal on, of an American flag. That was then, this is now. In the last couple of years, those jobs have all moved to China, Taiwan, and Mexico. There were about 1,850 workers at Huffy plants in the United States as of 1998. And all those folks were fired, as their jobs were moved overseas. In Celina, OH, Huffy workers were paid $11 an hour plus benefits. These are decent manufacturing jobs. Nobody was getting rich on $11 an hour plus benefits, but these were good, solid jobs. Then they were told one day they would not be working those jobs any longer because Huffy bicycles would be produced in China. My understanding is that the very last assignment for these U.S. workers was to take off that decal from Huffy bikes, and slap on a decal that had a picture of the globe. Let's talk a little about why a company would decide to shut its plant in Ohio and make bicycles in China. Huffy started to manufacture its bikes at a plant in China, where workers have to put in 13\1/2\- to 15-hour shifts, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., 7 days a week. Let me say that again: 93 hours a week, 7 days a week, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. They are paid between 25 cents an hour and 41 cents an hour. Failure to work overtime is punished with a fine of 2 days' wages. There are strong chemical odors in the plant from the painting department, excessively high temperatures from the welding section, no health insurance, no social pension, strict factory rules, harsh management, no talking during working hours. Twelve workers are housed in each dark, stark dorm room. They have two meals a day, with poor quality food. If the workers complain or attempt to raise a grievance about harsh working conditions, or excessively long, forced overtime hours or low wages, they are immediately fired. In this particular plant, in late 1999, all the workers in the delivery section went on strike and were fired immediately. So the question is, if we cannot produce bicycles in Ohio for 25- cent-an-hour to 41-cent-an-hour wages, do U.S. workers lose? Under current circumstances, yes, we do, because companies decide that if U.S. workers can't compete with slave-like conditions, tough luck. If you can't compete, you are out. So people who were working in this company in Celina, OH, making bicycles for our marketplace, could not compete because they were expecting a liveable wage. They worked hard, and they were able to take a paycheck home that meets the needs of their families: $11 an hour plus benefits. But they were told that this was an outrageous level of compensation: $11 an hour--far too much. So instead Huffy found a place where it could pay 25 cents an hour, and then shipped its bikes back to Celina, OH, so that some young kid in Celina, OH, could go into a Wal-Mart or a Sears or a KMart, and with a gleam in their eye buy his first bicycle. A bicycle now made by somebody who is making 25 cents an hour, working 93 hours a week, 7 days a week. I guess this so-called globalization is globalization without rules. It means it does not matter that Americans lose their jobs to somebody making 25 cents an hour. I have given other examples of 12-year-olds working 12 hours a day, making 12 cents an hour. I am talking about Huffy bicycles today to drive home a point, because Huffy is a household name. If we fought for a century on the issue of a safe workplace or child labor laws or minimum wages or the conditions of production, then the question should be, Is there an admission price to the American marketplace? Is there any admission price at all? What about bicycles made in a plant where workers are working 93 hours a week, where workers are working from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., 7 days a week? Is that fair trade--25 cents an hour, 93 hours a week, 7 days a week, working in a factory that does not meet the basic conditions of fairness or safety for workers? Is that fair trade? It is not where I come from. Yet no one will say a word about it. In this town, you are either blindly for free trade, unfettered free trade, globalization, or else you are considered some xenophobic isolationist stooge who does not understand it all. It is so tiresome to see people in this Chamber and the people who write the editorials and the op-ed pieces to continue to make excuses for the thousands, and, yes, millions of jobs lost in this country by people who worked hard but who could not make it because they made too much money. They could not compete with somebody making 25 cents an hour in Asia. It is so tiresome to see and read and hear the excuses from those who continue to support a failed trade policy. If this is a race to the bottom, with corporations deciding they want to circle the globe to find out, ``Where can I produce the cheapest? Where can I find 12-cents-an-hour production by 12-year-olds?'' if that is what this is a race towards, we lose, this country loses. More and more families in this country will lose their jobs, not because they are not great workers, not because they do not know their job well, but because someone else in other parts of the world--where they are not able to form labor unions, where they are not able to complain about unsafe working conditions, where they are not able to stop a plant from dumping chemicals into the air and the water, and where they are not able to complain about being paid 12 cents or 20 cents an hour--will get the jobs. That product will then be made and sent back to the store shelves here. I will guarantee you, it will not be cheaper, it will simply represent more profit for those who took jobs away from Americans to give them to people in other parts of the world who will work for pennies an hour. We can continue to pretend it does not happen. We can continue to act like ostriches. But the fact is, this country is losing economic strength as a result of trade policies that are, in my judgment, incompetent. We will have on the floor of this Senate, very soon we hear, additional free trade agreements--the Australia agreement, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. In fact, this administration is now working on additional free trade agreements. We just did one with Singapore which itself was incompetent. But that is another story for another time. This country, it seems to me, has a great deal at stake. This economic engine of ours will work provided we have jobs for American families. When you see the decimation of our manufacturing base, and now our high-tech industry, as well, with jobs moving wholesale overseas--in the manufacturing base, moving to Indonesia, China, and other parts of Asia; in the high-tech industry, jobs moving to India and other countries, and moving en masse--then this county's economy is going to have trouble because the engine of progress in this country is jobs. You can talk all you want about percentages--7 percent economic growth; that is all great--but it does not mean a thing if we are losing jobs. The engine of progress for the American family, the engine of progress for this country's economy, is jobs, good jobs that pay well, that have decent benefits, that give a family confidence and hope about the future, because that hope and confidence is what expands the economy. That is all the economy rests on. The great minds involved in international trade tell the 850 workers in Celina, Ohio: you are paid too much money. You cost $11 an hour to build bicycles. Shame on you. We can do this for 25 cents an hour in China. So say goodbye to your jobs. We are taking them to China. Is that what we want for our country? Is that what we are willing to stand for? Well, I am telling you something, year after year after year, the majority of the people in this Chamber are willing to stand for it. At some point we better get a backbone to stand up and insist and demand that there is an admission price to the American marketplace. We are open and free, but we require fairness. There are thousands of examples like the one involving Huffy bicycles, all over this country--of someone coming home saying to their husband or wife: Honey, I have lost my job. They are shipping our manufacturing to China, or Indonesia, or Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka. Why? Because I didn't do a good job? No. Because I am making $11 an hour, and they say that is too much. They can get it for 15 cents an hour or 31 cents an hour somewhere else. This is not going to save the American consumers any money; they will charge the same price for the products. It is about profit-- international profit. This is hurting our country. These trade rules injure this country and we have to change them. I serve notice again that, as we negotiate these new trade agreements--and they are being negotiated in Australia, the free trade agreement with the Americas, and others. Be aware that some of us in the Senate are going to continue to fight as hard as we can possibly fight to say that what is happening to American jobs is wrong. If we are inefficient and cannot compete, that is our problem. But don't tell me the workers in Ohio making $11 an hour, building a good bicycle, with an American flag insignia on the front of it, are inefficient. We fought for a century over these issues--fair pay, safe workplaces, the ability to organize as a labor union. We worked for a century on these things, and now you wipe it all out by pole-vaulting over those nettlesome little laws in the United States and say: We can avoid that. We will ship our bicycle production to--in this case, China; it could have been Sri Lanka or Indonesia. We ought to think long and hard about how to save our jobs in this country. Our marketplace can certainly be enhanced by having goods and services come from other countries, but only when they are produced under some basic element of decency and fair play. There is an organization I want to give credit to that has done excellent work in this area. The National Labor Committee investigates unfair labor practices in various parts of the world. They have investigated the dismal labor conditions at the Huffy factories in China, as an example. Look, I think these are really important issues. We talk about the economy, expansion, jobs, and opportunity. All of this, in my judgment, comes down to the basic premise that when American families in this country have a job, they have security, and they feel good about the future, our economy thrives. But we are increasingly seeing jobs in this country, which have been the bulwark of support for American families, moved overseas and the American families are told: We are sorry, you don't have a job anymore, so you can find two or three part- time jobs to make up the difference and have all of the members of your family working, and you can make it that way. That is a quick way to undermine the strength of this country. No country will long remain an economic power or world economic power without a strong, vibrant, growing manufacturing sector. Ours is being decimated. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I will take a few moments to discuss the Iraq supplemental conference report. At the start of this process, we attempted to have two portions we might consider. One would be the military, which provides almost $1 billion a week to support our troops, and the second is the Iraq reconstruction fund, which is the amount of money the American taxpayer will be asked to fund for the reconstruction of Iraq. We were not successful in separating these two, and so this travels as one. As a result of that, I offered an amendment to provide that Iraqi oil ought to bear the burden of Iraq reconstruction. We did not target Iraq's infrastructure. We did not target or attempt to bomb their roads, their bridges, their dams, their power structure. So the requirement that the U.S. taxpayer should pay for the reconstruction of Iraq is a requirement that does not make much sense to me. Iraq, by the way, has the second largest oil reserves in the world, something people have frequently said on the Senate floor. If they have the second largest oil reserves in the world and are capable of producing, according to Ambassador Bremer, 3 million barrels of oil a day beginning next July, that is $16 billion a year in export value, $160 billion in 10 years. There are ample resources, by pumping oil out of the sands of Iraq, to pay for the reconstruction of Iraq. It ought to be that oil, not the burden of the American taxpayer, that pays for the reconstruction of Iraq. I lost that vote on the Senate floor. The President did not support it. The majority did not support it. They said the American taxpayer must bear the burden of the reconstruction of Iraq. I think that is wrong. It does not make any sense to me. But, again, the requirement is included with the requirement to support our troops. This country cannot send its sons and daughters to war and then say to them, oh, by the way, when you need some additional money for equipment and ammunition and those kinds of things, we will not provide them. We have no other alternative. We have an obligation to provide that which our military needs to complete this mission. We must do that. So this is going to pass today. I will support it. I support reluctantly the provisions that have to do with the reconstruction of Iraq for the reasons I just mentioned. It is unthinkable to me that the American taxpayer will now be required to come up with $18.6 billion. The reason it is $18.6 billion is because, with my colleague Senator Wyden, I offered the amendment to cut $1.8 billion. The cut of $1.8 billion, which was accepted by the Senate, includes cutting money to construct two new high-security prisons at $50,000 a bed, $100 million to restore marshes, $4 million for a nationwide telephone numbering system in Iraq, $9 million to create ZIP Codes and do a postal architecture in Iraq, $10 million to modernize the business practices of Iraqi television and radio, $20 million for 1-month-long catch-up business courses at $10,000 per pupil. That is more than twice as much as the Harvard Business School costs. You get the point. I was able to cut $1.8 billion, so this is $1.8 billion less than it otherwise would have been, but it is $18.6 billion. I think there is great question of whether that money will be spent effectively. Let me give some examples. A contract is let to provide air-conditioners in hundreds of public buildings. Then it goes to another contractor and then a subcontractor and that which represented air-conditioners in that contract has now become $11 ceiling fans. Let me say that again. That which was air-conditioners in the contract, when installed by the subsequent subcontractor, became $11 ceiling fans. What happened to the money? Halliburton is importing oil into the country of Iraq at $1.59 a gallon. The Iraqi oil officials say we can get that oil for 98 cents a gallon. So what is happening? Is the American taxpayer getting squeezed to the tune of $300 million here? It looks like it to me. These are the kinds of questions that I think are very important to ask. I am going to be chairing a hearing today at 1:30 on these issues. The Democratic Policy Committee is holding a hearing on contracting in Iraq to make sure that, if the American taxpayer has to pay for this-- and apparently by this it does because those of us who attempted to make it the burden of Iraqi oil to pay for Iraq reconstruction lost--if that is the case, when you send $18.6 billion out into the wind, I am telling you there is going to be a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse unless we set up conditions to watch it carefully. This started with sole-source contracts. That is the way this started. That is not what we want to have happen in the future. So there is a requirement for contracts that are bid, which is important, but the question is how do you make sure there is not abuse as a result of this, and waste and fraud? We need to care a great deal about that. I do not understand. I just don't understand the circumstances here, when it is Katie bar the door if you want money for reconstruction of Iraq. The taxpayers will ante that up. We have an unlimited supply of money. That is what some say. I don't think that makes any sense. We are going to borrow money in this country so we can send that money to Iraq for the reconstruction of Iraq for a whole series of things that have deteriorated for 20 years in Iraq. We didn't destroy them. Then Iraq, incidentally, is going to pump oil out of the ground. They have liquid gold under that soil; the second largest reserves in the world are there. Then, guess what. When Ambassador Bremer testified before the Appropriations Committee I asked him: Why can't we use Iraqi oil to pay for Iraqi reconstruction? He said: Very simple; it's because Iraq has a lot of foreign debt. I said: Who does Iraq owe money to? He said: Germany, France, Russia. At that point I didn't know enough to respond to him. I checked after the hearing and found, yes, indeed, Iraq owes money to Germany, France, and Russia. But that is not the biggest debt it owes. Mr. Bremer didn't know, or failed to mention to me, the largest debts are to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait--interesting. Wouldn't it be a perversity if the American taxpayers are borrowing money to ship it to Iraq to pay for reconstruction, and then Iraq is pumping 3 million barrels of oil a day beginning July 1 and selling the oil on the open market making $16 million a year and using the money to pay Saudi Arabia on past debts? It is incredible to think of the perversity of that kind of situation. I don't know whether Mr. Bremer simply didn't know that Iraq owes large debts to the Saudis and Kuwaitis or just neglected to mention it. They do owe money to France, Germany, and Russia, but it is a lesser amount of money. Most Americans have a right to take a look at this and say this is a missed priority and a missed opportunity. The reason those of us who attempted to change the construct of this were denied the opportunity to do so by a vote in the Senate was we were told every single dollar of this is necessary for the support of our troops, and the quicker we get things back on track in Iraq, the quicker the troops come home. Therefore, we were told it is necessary to reconstruct the ZIP Code system in Iraq, number the telephone system in a different way, and restore marshlands. That, of course, is all patently nuts. I mean only in this town would people not laugh out loud at that assertion. You don't need to do that to provide for the safety of our troops. We have a responsibility, it seems to me, to try to make sure that we win this battle in Iraq. Yes, indeed, it is a battle. This weekend another 16 soldiers, tragically, lost their lives. All of us are heartbroken about those losses. We cannot withdraw from Iraq. Some say let's pull out tomorrow. We can't do that. There is not any way this country can do that. There would be a bloodbath in Iraq tomorrow if we pulled out. So we have a responsibility to stay in Iraq at this point. But what we have a responsibility to do, in my judgment, is to put this back on track by making it less a U.S. occupation and more an international occupation. That means it is very important for us, as Secretary Rumsfeld said this weekend, to build up the security forces in Iraq--that is very important--and do a lot of other things so at some point we can withdraw our troops. But especially we must understand that we need to get other countries to commit troops so this is, in fact, an international occupation in Iraq, not just a U.S. occupation. In response to that, some would say it is an international occupation. It is not. It is not. The overwhelming, 90 percent of the occupation is American. We need it to be an international occupation now and we need to set the stage to do the things to allow there to be security in Iraq, to allow the Iraqis to develop a government, and then to allow us to withdraw our soldiers and bring our soldiers home. We can't do that this week, we can't do that this month, but our goal is to do that. In the context of doing that we provided $66 million requested by the Pentagon to keep those troops in Iraq, to provide the funds they need while they are in Iraq. Attached to this is the $18.6 billion now for the reconstruction of Iraq. I regret that is there. Although that reconstruction may well be necessary in many cases, it ought not be an obligation borne by the American taxpayer. It just should not be. Yet here in the Senate we vote, and when we lose a vote, we lose. I lost the vote believing this ought to be a burden of Iraqi oil. Now we will pass, today, the Iraq supplemental conference report. The President will sign it, and the funds will begin to flow for our troops and we will also see substantial money that begins to go in contracts to reconstruct Iraq. This afternoon, as I indicated, I will chair a hearing that looks at that, to evaluate exactly what is happening with those funds. We had some sole-source contracts with Halliburton, Bechtel, and others that were not bid. There was some allegation of substantial waste. We will have testimony today about some very wealthy families in Iraq who are extracting kickbacks from suppliers and from contractors in Iraq. We will have other questions about waste of money and waste, fraud, and abuse in this contracting. I think all of us want the same thing. I don't think anybody would object to making sure that we put a structure in place to protect the American taxpayer against the waste, fraud, and abuse. You talk about a bunch of hogs in a corn crib, I will tell you how to get that sound going. You just provide $18 billion out there and say to companies: Come and get a part of this and do something in Iraq. I will show you the opportunity for substantial waste, fraud, and abuse. We ought to make sure, if we are going to do this--and we are because I lost on this--if we are going to do this and provide $18.6 billion in taxpayer funds, then let's make sure we shut down the opportunity to waste this money. Madam President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum. I ask unanimous consent the quorum call be charged equally against both sides.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me begin where my colleague from Montana ended. That is, with thanks to a great deal of staff help to put this subcommittee bill together: Bruce Evans, Virginia James, Leif Fonnesbeck, Ryan Thomas, Larissa Sommer on his side, and Peter Keifhaber and Brooke Livingston on our side. This is a conference report that spends $19-plus billion on a wide range of issues--the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Indian Affairs, a portion of the Department of Energy, and the Forest Service. As you take a look at all of these issues--the National Endowment for the Humanities and Arts, the Smithsonian Institution--this is quite a remarkable subcommittee and the jurisdiction is broad and very interesting. Senator Burns and I do share a common border between North Dakota and Montana. He is a good legislator to work with. We are friends and have had a good working relationship on this conference report. I am going to vote for this conference report. There is much in it that represents progress, as far as I am concerned, in a range of areas, but I do say--and my colleague, Senator Burns, knows this--that I have great heartburn about the final provision in this conference report that deals with Indian trust land. I will talk about that in a moment. While I vigorously oppose that provision, I, nonetheless, will vote for the conference report. Let me say that we have in a range of areas in this conference report a backlog of work that needs to be done, whether it is dealing with the infrastructure for repair and maintenance of the Park Service or the Forest Service, the issues dealing with Indian housing, health and education, and there are so many areas that it is hard to focus. We have tried to have a limited amount of resources spread throughout the obligations here to meet unlimited wants and needs. But that is the process of trying to get a bill such as this done. One of the key issues where we made some progress this year is the area of tribal colleges. The reason I mention that is because we have been battling for some long while dealing with a range of issues on Indian reservations. I mentioned previously there is a bone fide crisis on the issues of Indian health, housing, and education. There is really a crisis in those areas. It seems to me that one of the ways to give people an opportunity and some hope for a better future is education. On Indian reservations, the tribal college system has been a remarkable tool that has given hope to a lot of people who were not able to get their education but have now gone back to school to get their education through a tribal college. We have been able to increase the funding for that to $48 million. That is not a large part of this bill. But the President recommended $38 million, which is a cut from last year. We restored last year, and my colleague, Senator Burns from Montana, and I got this up to $48 million. It is the most sizable increase we have seen in the history of this account. We have done it because it is an investment in the lives of the people who have hope for a better life because of this. I appreciate the cooperation and the assistance of my colleague from Montana. Let me also speak about the provision in the bill that is troublesome to me; that is, the issue of Indian trust lands. All of us understand that the Indian trust situation has grown more and more difficult. We now have a court order, as a result of the Cobell v. Norton lawsuit, that apparently, according to experts if followed to the letter, would require us to hire accountants from Maine to California and about $9 billion worth of work--that is right, with a ``b,'' $9 billion worth of work--to try to sort out what the accounts are in the Indian trust funds. If this is a $13 billion fund, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $13 billion, would the Native Americans want us to begin a process in which we spend up to $9 billion to hire accountants and financial folks and others to sift through these accounts? I think that is just nuts. That doesn't make any sense at all to anybody. But what I have difficulty with is resolving this issue. We can't put it off. We have to resolve it. At the end of this piece of legislation, the House-Senate conference, over my objections, put language in the conference report which effectively stays the court's September 25 order for as long as 14 months. First, I think that is unconstitutional. I think that is a violation of the separation of powers. It is apparent to me, at least. The language I am talking about that is in this conference report tells the court how to construe and apply statutes. But the question of construction and application is not a function of the Congress. We passed the statute but how it is construed and applied is not a legislative function. We don't have any business or ability, for that matter, to tell the courts how to write their opinions. But I am afraid we are going to add another issue to the litigation because of what was put in this bill. We know that between now and late next summer we have an obligation in this Congress to try to find a way to resolve this issue and head off the requirement to spend billions and billions of dollars doing the accounting necessary to sort out the Indian trust funds. Failure to do that undermines the legitimate rights of Native Americans in this country to whom these funds belong. We have a requirement, in my judgment, to create a solution between now and the end of next summer in order to avoid in the next appropriations bill having to spend billions of dollars for an accounting of these funds. There needs to be a settlement, an agreement. I hope that will be the case. But I think what we have done, in effect staying a court order--or creating a ``timeout''--is going to add a layer of additional problems rather than begin to solve a problem. I regret that was put in the conference report. Having said that, the conference report is an important piece of legislation. It has taken longer than we would have hoped to get it done. But it is now going to the House and to the Senate for approval of the conference report and will go to the President. I assume he will sign this conference report. I think we will have done pretty good work in most areas of this report. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. My colleagues, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman, have brought to the Senate floor a serious proposal dealing with an important issue. The issue of climate change and global warming demands our attention. We live in this fragile spaceship called Earth, and we have but one environment to sustain us. We ignore the health of our environment at our peril. So the question is not whether but rather how we address these questions that are being raised about our environment, about climate change and global warming. The proposal we are voting on today is one that I think requires some additional work and some additional thought. We now live in a global economy and these issues must be addressed globally. We cannot create emissions caps and targets that we enforce unilaterally in a manner that encourages American companies to move overseas and avoid these restrictions. If we do that, we will end up doing little or nothing to protect our environment while harming our economy. In this global economy, where companies can move from one country to another with ease, it seems to me the only way to achieve the goals of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is to engage with all other countries in a global strategy for these reductions. Otherwise, these global companies will simply move their plants and their jobs to areas where they are not impeded by emission caps and other restrictions. When a global agreement is negotiated, it cannot be an agreement that allows some countries to avoid emission caps while others embrace them. For example, if we through an international agreement will embrace emission caps for our country but allow the Chinese or the Indian governments to avoid them, we will simply be developing a strategy for companies to move out of the United States and move their plants and jobs to countries where they will not face such restrictions. That approach would represent the worst of all worlds. There would be no environmental benefit but we in the U.S. would suffer a heavy economic penalty from plant flight and job loss. I do not think the McCain-Lieberman proposal is the right way to address these issues, but my vote in opposition should not be seen as a denial that these are serious issues that do need to be addressed. This amendment and today's debate and vote will be a constructive start of a healthy debate about what we do to provide leadership on these issues. While I think this proposal today falls short, I intend to be a constructive part of future proposals that can and will offer leadership in the right direction.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I agree with the chairman of the Interior appropriations subcommittee, Senator Burns, that this yearly problem of borrowing and paying back must be addressed. Those discussions need to include the relevant authorizing committees, the Budget Committee, and, of sources, the Appropriations Committee. As the Ranking Member of the Interior subcommittee, I would be pleased to work with my colleagues any way that I can.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2000.

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

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

Mr. DORGAN. How much time remains on this side?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Florida, Mr. Graham.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that I also offered yesterday. I was not able to get a vote on it yesterday because of a ruling that it was nongermane. I have filed a notice that I intend to move to suspend Rule XVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate. I will do that at the end of my presentation. That will give us a vote on this important issue today. Let me describe why I think a vote is necessary and what this issue is. This issue deals with 9/11, the day on which our country was attacked and thousands of Americans were murdered by terrorists, many of whom came into this country and lived among us and plotted an attack against the World Trade Center; they plotted an attack against the Pentagon and perhaps the U.S. Capitol. They hijacked commercial airliners and used commercial airliners, full of both passengers and fuel, as flying bombs and missiles. No one in this country will forget the devastation, the loss of life, and the horror of the terrorist attacks committed against the United States on September 11. We know a fair amount about September 11: who organized it and how it was organized. We know Osama bin Laden has taken credit for it. We know it was planned by Osama bin Laden and a terrorist group called al- Qaida, and they were supported by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. We know a fair amount about the details of that day and the activities of the hijackers. There has been a great deal of discussion about how did it happen--how did it happen that these coordinated attacks by terrorists occurred in this country without our intelligence community knowing it was going to happen and taking action to prevent it. As we know as well, from testimony before the Congress and from other information, we had some warnings. The FBI had some warnings. In fact, one FBI agent wrote a memorandum inside the FBI saying he worried about certain people of certain nationalities taking flying lessons, potentially for the purpose of using an airplane for hijacking and as a tool of a terrorist attack. We had other evidence that existed in our intelligence community from both the FBI and CIA. So there has been a great deal of discussion about how do we find out what we knew, what the agencies knew, what we could have done to prevent these attacks, and what we now know about those who committed the attacks and how to prevent future attacks. That is all very important. There are a couple of efforts underway. One was an effort before the Congressional Joint Intelligence Committee. They did an inquiry into intelligence community activities before and after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. That inquiry was done and finished with a report that was released this past summer. The report was authorized for release by the Bush administration. It took 9 months to write, 7 months to declassify, and when it was released, we discovered there are 28 pages of that report that are redacted; 28 pages of the report have been classified, so that the American people cannot know what is in that report. The question is, Why? On behalf of the victims, the victims' families, the American people, I ask, Why would 28 pages of that report be classified and unavailable to be seen by the American people? We are told it contains information about other governments, or another government and its activity with respect to some of these issues. We are told by some that there were areas of support by another government, or governments, for the terrorists themselves as they began to work and put together the resources and plan these attacks against the United States. If that is the case, the question is, Which governments? Who was involved? How were they involved? Are those governments still involved in supporting terrorists who would strike at the heart of this country and kill innocent Americans? Why do we not have the right to know if governments supported some of the terrorists who were working and planning and gathering the resources to attack this country? If another government provided any support for that, do we not have a right as an American people to know that? Why has that information been classified?

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Well, Mr. President, the Senator from Vermont is absolutely correct. The American people ought to have a right to know if a foreign government was involved in helping provide resources for and planning for attacks against this country. We have a right to know that. The amendment I am offering is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment that says to the President: Declassify this material. What is so sensitive that the American people can't know whether a foreign government was involved in the planning and providing the resources for a terrorist attack against this country? Let me tell you what the chairman and the ranking member--a Republican and a Democrat--of the Intelligence Committee said on this issue when these 28 pages were withheld from the American people. Senator Shelby, the ranking member then on the Intelligence Committee, a Republican, said: I went back and read every one of those pages thoroughly. My judgment is that 95 percent of that information could be declassified and become uncensored so the American people would know. Asked why this section was blacked out, Senator Shelby said: I think it might be embarrassing to international relations. Senator Graham said: During the negotiation that was held with the administration prior to the release of the documents, we had submitted a counteroffer indicating what we thought were legitimate areas of national security with the rest of the section dealing with foreign governments to be released to the public. The counteroffer was not accepted. The administration took the position that the totality of this section dealing with the role of foreign governments should remain censored and beyond the view of the American people. Question of Senator Graham: Can you give us some idea of how big the counteroffer was? Senator Graham said: It was in the range, which Senator Shelby indicated he thought it was, of 28 pages that represented genuine national security interests which was 95 percent open and 5 percent continued classified. I am not trying to embarrass anybody with this amendment. I just feel strongly that when the 9/11 commission--that is the inquiry by our Intelligence Committee--was completed and the effort was released, to have 28 pages censored or classified and to be told the American people can't see it leads me to ask the question, Why? Why? If there was another government--and all the indications are there was another government--involved in providing support for the terrorists who attacked this country, the American people have a right to know it. They have a right to know who it was, what were the circumstances, why, how do they justify that. The Saudi Government has asked that this information be declassified and released. The Saudi Government has asked that. Most of the speculation, of course, is the questions about Saudi support of terrorism, as my colleague from Vermont just described. But the Saudi Government has asked this be declassified so they can respond to it in public. There is no basis, no good reason for this to remain censored and classified. My sense-of-the-Senate amendment asks the President to declassify that portion of the 28 pages. As Senator Shelby and Senator Graham have described, 95 percent of it does not deal with national security or our national security interests, and would not compromise our interests. Senator Schumer is a cosponsor of this amendment, and Senator Lieberman is a cosponsor as well. My hope is we will certainly have a vote on this amendment this morning. My amendment will require a vote under suspension of the rules. I reserve the remainder of my time, Mr. President.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Kentucky, there is, in fact, an ongoing war on terrorism, and it is critically important for this country, it is important that we be successful in preventing terrorist attacks against this country. It is important we be successful in hunting down those in the world who are planning terrorist attacks against this country and destroying their network of support. But with respect to the ongoing war against terrorism, it is critically important, in my judgment, for this country to know, Are there foreign governments that have supported terrorists? Are there foreign governments that have given active financial support to those who attacked this country on September 11, 2001? If so, who are they? How would it compromise any interest of this country or, for that matter, any other country under any other circumstances to disclose a discussion in the inquiry that was done, a painstaking inquiry that was done about another government that provided support to terrorists that murdered thousands of Americans. The American people have a right to know that information. I know the easiest way to withhold information is to always claim there is some important sensitive information that would compromise some intelligence operation. The people in the best position to know that would be the chairman and the ranking member of the committee who did the inquiry, Senator Graham and Senator Shelby, a Democrat and a Republican. Both of them have already made a judgment about this. They said: Nonsense, this won't compromise anything. Ninety-five percent, they said, of these 28 pages of censored, redacted material could and should be made available to the American public without compromising anything. If one is wondering whether this compromises anything, I say go to the experts, go to the authorizing committee, go to the Republican and Democrat who were chairman and vice chairman of the committee and ask them and they will tell you they did not support redacting this material, censoring this material, and classifying this material. It came from the White House. It wasn't fair to the American people to do that. If there is another government that provided active support-- financial support and comfort and assistance--to those who decided to commit acts of terror against this country and murder thousands of innocent Americans, then, in my judgment, by God, the American people have a right to know that. The American people have a right to know that, and classifying 28 pages that describe the circumstances in which another government may well have provided support to terrorists attacking this country is wrongheaded, in my judgment. If, in fact, this inquiry describes that, another important question exists: Is the country that provided support--financial assistance and comfort and aid--to the terrorists who attacked this country in 2001 still providing support and aid? Do they still have adjuncts in that society, in that government, that provide support and comfort to terrorists? We have a right to know that as well. In my judgment, withholding information from the American people is, in most cases, a bad decision. If it is necessary because it would compromise something that is important with respect to the intelligence community, I understand that. But the two experts would be the chairman and the vice chairman of the committee who decided to launch the inquiry. And those two Senators, Senator Shelby and Senator Graham, have already spoken on this issue. They have said 95 percent of that information ought to be made available. I will make one additional point. Talk to the families of the people who were murdered on 9/11 and ask them, if a foreign government was involved in supporting acts of terror against this country, whether they think that information ought to be made available to the American people or ought to be censored, classified, and out of the reach of the American people. They will say we ought to disinfect this whole area by deciding to give everybody as much information as possible about what happened on 9/11, not by closing the books and pulling the veil and deciding whether to keep information from the American people. As I indicated, even the Saudi Government that has been so much the subject of this speculation wants this information made available, and it ought to be made available. My sense of the Senate is very simple. It says to the President: Declassify this. Now, I also understand that this is a foreign operations bill. It is an appropriations bill. There is no good time to have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution come to the Senate floor, I suppose, if one does not support declassifying this information. But this amendment does not interrupt the foreign operations bill. I support that bill. I am happy to work with the chairman and ranking member who, I think, have done a remarkable job on that bill. It seems to me we have a right to have a vote in the Senate about whether this information ought to be made available to the American people, whether it ought to be declassified, uncensored, and the question answered: Is there another government or governments that participated with the terrorists by providing aid, comfort, and financial support to terrorists who committed acts of terror against this country? That is information, in my judgment, the American people deserve to have. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, how much time remains on each side?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have a few additional comments at some point. If the Senator from Kentucky has other speakers--I had expected a couple of other speakers. I do not know whether that will occur before the end of the time. I believe we have 40 minutes, 20 minutes equally divided.

Mr. DORGAN. I do not intend to delay the vote. It is fine to have a quorum call and have it equally divided, but let me ask the courtesy of the Senator that if we get to the point where we have 6 or 8 minutes remaining, that I would have the opportunity for a couple of those minutes so that we could close and have a debate at the end.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky for his courtesy. Let me say to my colleague on the Intelligence Committee, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter Goss; Senator Shelby of Alabama, the past vice chairman; the past chairman of the Intelligence Committee here in the Senate, Senator Graham--all have indicated that at least some of this redacted classified material should be made available. But they have taken that position with no success. I would expect the two former chairmen of the committees and the vice chairman would not take that position if they believed it would compromise intelligence sources and methods. Let me quote, if I might, Bill Harvey, a member of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 independent commission. He lost his wife on 9/11. She was killed in the Trade Center. He is pretty critical of both the White House and Congress. The White House's refusal to produce the 28 pages is just one more example of its manipulation of intelligence for political purposes, but the Congress's reluctance to remedy the situation by declassifying the redacted information is equally troubling. The United States of America deserves to know the true nature of its supposed allies, and the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks deserve to know what our Government new about the terrorists that took their lives. That is the key. After this commission has completed its work, the inquiry is complete, and we have knowledge and information about whether another government provided financial support and other support to terrorists who attacked this country, do we have a right to know who that government is, which government it is, and whether that government still provides support to terrorists who still would like to commit an act of terrorism against this country and who would like to murder innocent Americans? The American people have a right to know what is in that redacted portion of the report. If there is 5 percent of it, as Senator Shelby and Senator Graham have suggested, that ought to be withheld, I understand that. But if the bulk, as they have indicated, ought to be made available to the American people, I believe it ought to be made available now.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I move to suspend rule XVI of the standing rules of the Senate during consideration of H.R. 2800 for the consideration of amendment No. 2000.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.