Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the American Association of Airport Executives and the Air Transport Association, and others, have told us it is unlikely we would see the security investment--after all, this is national security--we would not see the security investment in airport improvement and safety with this money if we did not waive the local match. I continue to believe we ought to make this habit forming. The value expressed by the Senator from Mississippi is on the mark in many cases. I appreciate very much the ability to work this out and be able to move this amendment. If appropriate, I think it has been agreed to by both sides. I ask if we can have the amendment considered at this point.

Mr. DORGAN. I have.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I visited with my colleagues Senator Lott and Senator McCain on this amendment. I believe they are prepared to accept it. This deals with the creation of an aviation security capital fund. Many of us know both revenues and passenger boardings are down in airports. We have gone through a pretty difficult time. The creation of this aviation security capital fund is very important in order for these funds to be invested in what that will make aviation safer and deal with the security issues we intend to have dealt with with this fund. I think it appropriate at this point to waive the local match, State and local match, which I believe in most cases cannot be raised because of the circumstances I mentioned earlier. I believe accepting this amendment will give us the assurance that this investment in security will be made across this country. It will be a wise investment. I think it ought not be borne by the carriers at this point, nor the local airports that can least afford it. I appreciate very much the fact this will now be accepted by the Senate. I want to especially say thanks to the Senator from Mississippi. We have talked about this, I suppose, 10 times in recent days. He is a tireless advocate for what makes sense for our aviation system in this country. Of course, he is chairing the subcommittee here in the Senate on those issues. I thank him for his cooperation in allowing us to move forward with this amendment at this stage.

Mr. DORGAN. Is my amendment the amendment pending before the Senate?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me take such time as I may consume on our side.

Mr. DORGAN. I intend to oppose the amendment. In many ways, I regret opposing my friend from Oklahoma. He is quite a remarkable pilot. I have had the opportunity to ride with him. I believe he flew around the world in a single-engine airplane at one point.

Mr. DORGAN. Nonetheless, he is a pilot who has flown around the world. He knows a bit about flying. I learned to fly at one point in my life. I know something about the wonders of it. I know something about the time the instructor steps out of the plane and says: It is your turn. Take it up alone. That is one of the moments in your life you will always remember. The issue here is about an age limit for commercial pilots. I don't stand here as an expert on this subject. I don't expect there is an expert in the Senate on this subject. The question of the age rule is a question that the FAA has dealt with, and they have dealt with it repeatedly. The history of this rule goes back many years. It is a rule that has been around for a long while. It was established by the FAA as a matter of safety. I know this rule has actually been considered by the Senate previously as well. At one point during its consideration in the Senate, it was considered and proposed that we had a shortage of pilots, and, therefore, we should remove this age restriction and increase it some. Of course, now we have exactly the opposite. We have many pilots who are furloughed and laid off and would like to come to work. That is not the issue. The issue is one of safety. I think the FAA has always erred on the side of safety. I expect that all of us want them to err on the side of safety. My judgment about this is that the decision about age requirements for commercial pilots ought to be left to the regulatory agency, the FAA. They are the experts in this area. We are not. They know more about this subject than we do. I just feel uncomfortable substituting our judgment, with an arbitrary number, for the judgment of the FAA. Let me say I am sure the Senator from Oklahoma would agree, the FAA has the opportunity and the discretion and the ability right now this afternoon to make that age change, if they wish to do that. The FAA has the authority under law, as I understand it, to change the rule as they see fit. They have continuously, however, kept the 60-year age rule because they want to maintain the highest degree of safety in air transportation. There have been a number of studies dealing with this issue. In 1979, Congress mandated a study conducted under the auspices of the NIH. In 1990, the House Committee on Public Works asked the Office of Technology Assessment to examine the medical aspects of the Federal requirement that airline pilots retire at age 60 and to assess the state of the art medical risk assessment. There have been a number of these studies. I chose not to go into the conclusions of all the studies except to say that the FAA, in reviewing the body of information in those studies, decided that they believed the 60-year age retirement rule was appropriate. Again, in April 2000, the FAA reaffirmed its position and decision to maintain the 60-year retirement age. That decision was appealed to the courts actually in 2001, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FAA's decision. Once again, I say I am not an expert. I would expect, perhaps, the Senator from Oklahoma would make the same statement. The question of safety and the question of the proper retirement age given medical circumstances with respect to commercial flight and the commercial license that one needs to fly is a decision that is enormously complicated. It is a decision that has been studied and restudied by the FAA folks whose job it is to provide the assurance of safety. I frankly am comfortable with whatever decision they make. If they were to decide this afternoon, look, we have studied this from six more angles and here is what we have concluded, and it came up with a different number, that would be fine with me. But I must say, I am not comfortable with the Senate arbitrarily deciding there is a number that we know better than the FAA which represents the risk assessment with respect to this mandatory retirement age. For that reason, I regret I have to oppose the amendment. Again, let me finish by saying this is not a new subject and not a new debate. We may not know much more about it than we did the last time we debated it, but I believed then and believe now it is appropriate to allow the Federal Aviation Administration--the regulatory agency that has the experts and has the charge to make these decisions--to make this judgment. Again, it is my contention, if they decided this afternoon to increase that mandatory retirement age, that would be fine with me. And they have that capability under current law to do so, but they have not because they believe it not advisable. I think the Senate would be well advised to listen to the FAA on this subject. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask it be considered at this point.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me make one final point. It is not quite so simple to say it is ALPA, the airlines. The fact is, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, has the authority today to make a decision about increasing this retirement age. It has chosen not to, I assume because the experts there have taken a look at the OTA study, the accident rates, and whole series of things. I agree, people are living longer, better lives. I have an 81-year- old uncle who runs in the Senior Olympics. He runs the 400 and the 800 at age 81. People are living longer. I understand all that. The issue is, what the proper age is for retirement of commercial airline pilots is not a function of the Senate, making a judgment on the floor of the Senate. In my judgment, it is a function of people who know, the medical experts at the FAA, looking through the data and making a considered judgment on behalf of the American people of what constitutes their best safety. So that is the basis of this position. It is not, in my judgment, about ALPA or the airlines, it is just saying, look, whatever the judgment is, let it be, but let's have the experts make it. That is my whole point. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield, my understanding from the majority leader is that it is not the relevancy determined by the Parliamentarian, but they must be related to the subject of energy, which is infinitely a broader definition. That is my understanding.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the majority leader will yield further, that would satisfy my concerns, if I understand exactly what is intended by the leader. As I indicated, we have some concerns about the relevancy issues and the determination of what is relevant. If the wording is as the majority leader suggested, that would satisfy my concerns.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wanted to ask a question about the issue of relevancy. That piqued my interest because we have had experience here with respect to the definition of relevancy on amendments. Could the majority leader explain it to me so that I understand the unanimous consent request that he had propounded dealing with relevancy? I think there is some merit in the discussions going on to try to get a list. I am not wanting to be destructive to that effort, but I would like to understand the discussion about relevancy. That has become an increasingly important issue for many of us.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand my time has expired.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the amendment I have offered is an amendment we will vote on this morning. I was disappointed yesterday to discover that there was opposition to the amendment. This is an amendment that passed without opposition in the last Congress. So surprisingly now I am discovering that some have changed their mind. I will describe why, if this Congress has any gumption at all to decide that we ought to change course and move in a new direction and be bold and big when we think about our energy future, they will support this amendment. President Bush said the following about our dependence on foreign oil in his State of the Union Address: America's energy security is threatened by our dependence on foreign oil. He said: We import 55 percent of the oil we consume. That is expected to grow to 68 percent by 2025. Nearly all of our cars and trucks run on gasoline. They are the main reason America imports so much oil--that, from President Bush--two-thirds of the 20 million barrels of oil we use each day for transportation. Fuel cell vehicles offer the best hope of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. The President said that because he was proposing a new direction for America's energy supply: Hydrogen and fuel cells. Following his State of the Union Address in which he proposed that, he had a gathering at the Building Museum in Washington, DC. He invited all of the industry leaders throughout the country to come. He gave a great speech. I was there with my colleague Senator Domenici. We were invited to be a part of it. He talked again about striking out in this new direction and talked about developing hydrogen and fuel cells as part of our future. That made sense to me. I have spoken often of the first old car I had when I was a young kid. I bought a Model T Ford and restored it as an old antique. The way you gas up this 1924 Model T Ford is you pull up to a pump, stick a hose in the tank, and pump it full of gas. And what do you do with a 2003 Ford? Exactly the same thing. Nothing has changed in almost a century. We are still running gasoline through those carburetors. What the President says--and I agree with him--is let's decide to change that and reduce our dependence on foreign oil because that is where the growth in energy use is coming; that is, on America's roads and America's vehicles. Do we want to be at a point where we have over one-half of our oil coming from off our shores, much of it from very troubled parts of the world? Do we want to be at the point where we have 68 percent of it coming from other parts of the world, where if, God forbid, some morning we woke up and discovered terrorists had interrupted the supply of oil and this American economy would be flat on its back? Is that how what we want to be held hostage? I do not think so. So the President says let's strike out in a new direction. He proposed $1.2 billion on a hydrogen program. It is exactly the right thing to do. I commend him for it. But $1.2 billion is timid; it is not enough. Nonetheless, it is moving in the right direction, and for this American President to put his administration on the line to move in that direction is not insignificant at all; it is very significant. I have pushed and pushed, and now this Energy bill has almost tripled the amount the President recommended for a new hydrogen-based economy and fuel cell future. I proposed $6.5 billion over 5 years, an Apollo-type program. President Kennedy said: Let's put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. He set a goal. And we did. I said: Let's have an Apollo program, decide we are going to move toward a hydrogen fuel cell future for our vehicles. Do my colleagues know that a vehicle is twice as efficient using a fuel cell as it is using gasoline through a carburetor? It is double the efficiency getting power to the wheel. And what do you get out the back end of a vehicle that uses hydrogen in a fuel cell? Water vapor. You are not driving around town belching black smoke. You get water vapor. It is good for the environment, good for this country's energy security, and good for this country's economy. The fact is, this is moving in exactly the right direction. So I commend President Bush. We also made progress in the Energy Committee, saying let's increase that which the President recommended, but it is still short of where we ought to be, No. 1. No. 2, it does not include targets and timetables. I do not suggest they be mandatory, but I do say this: Let's decide where we are headed, and when we give the Department of Energy and others $3 billion plus, let's say here is where we would like to go, here is our destination, here is our map. I say let's aspire to have 100,000 vehicles on the road in the year 2010 that are hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles and 2\1/2\ million vehicles by 2020. My colleague yesterday said, well, we think maybe it is a mandate. I said, no, it is not a mandate at all. Just ask the Department of Energy to develop a strategy that says here is what we would like to do. We cannot force that to happen, but at least a goal is established. Japan has goals and strategies with respect to hydrogen and fuel cells. They are moving very quickly. Europe is moving very quickly. Japan wants 50,000 by 2010 and 5 million vehicles by 2020. General Motors has a goal of having 1 million vehicles by 2010--Ford, Nissan, DaimlerChrysler. The fact is, the industry is moving very quickly as well. I just do not happen to think we ought to throw a bunch of money at Energy and say: Do what you can with it and report back. I guarantee, if $3 billion or $3.5 billion is put into a bureaucratic envelope and sent down to an agency and they are told to report to us when they have half a notion and tell us what they have done, we are not going to make much progress. What I believe this Congress ought to do is say: Here is what we aspire to achieve. This is a big, bold plan, and we want to make progress. We would like by the year 2010 on the streets in this country 100,000 automobiles that are powered by hydrogen and use fuel cells. We would like 2\1/2\ million by the year 2020. Why do I say we need some targets and timetables? Because this is not easy to do. This is not something that one company can do or one industry can do. This requires a combination of private sector investment and initiative, and it requires public policy that accommodates this conversion. First of all, we have to deal in a whole range of areas. How do you produce hydrogen? Hydrogen is everywhere. It comes from everything. It can come from natural gas, from coal, you can take hydrogen from water. You can use a wind turbine and produce electricity from the air and use that electricity to separate oxygen and hydrogen in water, store the hydrogen, use it in a fuel cell, and double the efficiency of how you power an automobile and have water vapor coming out of the tail pipe of the automobile. How wonderful this country's future. But it will not happen unless the Congress and the President decide we are going to move to a different future. The first antique car I bought and restored when I was a kid was 75 years old. I put gas in it the same way I put gas in a car today. It is never going to change unless in public policy we accommodate the private sector's investment and the initiative that comes from both the private sector and public policy, to say here is where our country aspires to be. Here is where we want our country to move with respect to an energy bill. There is a lot to this Energy Bill. Any energy bill worth anything, in my judgment, has to incentivize additional production. It has to provide for significant amounts of conservation because we are wasting a great deal of energy. It has to provide for new efficiencies with respect to all the appliances we use. Most importantly, in my judgment, the fourth title of an energy bill has to be limitless renewable sources of energy. Yes, that is ethanol, which we debated last week; it is biodiesel; but most importantly, it is trying to move toward a new energy future with respect to our vehicle fleet. That is hydrogen and fuel cells. I am not talking during this conversation about stationary engines, although that is another application for fuel cells, and we have fuel cells that are deployed and being used in this country. We also have fuel cells and vehicles using hydrogen. I have driven one. We have had a fuel cell vehicle drive from California to New York. It is not as if this technology does not exist. It does. Like all other new technologies, it is originally very expensive. As the research and development into the new models and prototypes are done, it is very expensive. But those costs come down, down, way down, as our country embraces the notion that we want a different future for our vehicle fleet; we want a hydrogen fuel cell future that relieves this country of being held hostage by sources of oil that come from out of our country. If we just think for a moment about that, this American economy is the strongest economic engine in the entire world by far. There is nothing close to it. Yet some catastrophic event could happen that could shut off this supply of oil to this country because over half of it comes from outside of our shores. Something could happen to shut off the supply and this economy would grind to a halt. It would be flat on its back. And everybody knows it. When it happens, if it happens, and God forbid it happens, but if it happens everyone will say, We told you so. That is why this President wants to move to a different path, go to a different place, to embrace hydrogen and fuel cells, and has stated so in a State of the Union Address. He is dead right. We have to do that. I don't understand why establishing an aspired-to target and timetables engenders opposition. A year and a half ago when I offered this amendment it was accepted by voice vote. I have no idea why all of a sudden some people say, this is radical. What a bunch of nonsense. Radical? Yesterday, I was told, what we are talking about are wild guesses: 100,000 vehicles by 2010, 2.5 million by 2020. Do you think General Motors has an aspiration of putting 1 million cars on the road by producing 1 million fuel cell cars by 2010? Do you think they go to the board of directors and say, We have a wild guess to talk to you about. These are not wild guesses. This is public policy, from our standpoint, of stating our goals. I find it fascinating; although this is not a mandate at all, it is trying to establish some benchmarks. Instead of just giving money to bureaucrats or a Federal agency and saying report back when you get half a notion and let us know how you are doing--the report will show not much is going on. Instead of mandates, I put some targets in and say, aspire to achieve these. We ask the Department of Energy to give us a strategy on how they will achieve these. Some who would not want to put this kind of a strategy or this sort of a target in law will come to the Senate and say, on national missile defense, we are going to spend $9 billion this year on national missile defense and we demand you deploy a system. It does not matter whether it is not ready or whether the technology does not exist, and it does not matter if you cannot hit a bullet with another speeding bullet; we demand you deploy that system by 2004. So the mandated targets are fine with respect to a national missile defense system for which you want to spend $9 billion. All of a sudden, when the President says, do a hydrogen fuel cell initiative for America's energy security and you put in a rather weak, in my judgment, set of targets, just so you have targets rather than no targets and timetables, they say, gosh, what on Earth are you doing here? Why would you suggest that? I suggest this, because I think if we are going to spend money, we ought to spend it effectively. If you are going to go on a journey, you might want to get a map. If you want to take a trip to go to a different kind of energy future, you might want to have a spot in mind about your different nation. Those who want to take the taxpayers' money and throw it at a problem and send it to an agency and say, do the best you can, I say, God bless you, but I will show you how not to make progress. Just do that, keep doing that, and you will never, ever, make progress. If we want a different energy future, then we have to be driving the train. We have to decide this is what we aspire to achieve; these are the goals we set for our country. If you do not want to set goals, do not tell me you support an energy future different from today. Don't tell me you want to withdraw and disconnect from 55 percent dependence on foreign energy--55 percent going to 68 percent. This is a habit that is destructive to this country. It is destructive to our future, and it is destructive to our security. It is a habit we must end. This President has supported an approach to do that. I have worked on hydrogen for some while, as have others in the Congress, Republicans and Democrats. But working on hydrogen and fuel cells to try to move to a different energy future, while a worthwhile enterprise, is not going to move us down the road unless this Congress decides to be bold and decides to have big dreams and big goals. The fact is, we try to incrementalize everything. We talk big and think little. If we want to do something, this amendment should be attached to this Energy Bill. As I said before, this amendment was accepted by voice vote 2 years ago. I don't have the foggiest understanding of why someone would oppose this. It is not a mandate. It is not a wild guess. It is not radical. In fact, in many ways it is the most conservative of approaches to say, let's not spend money unless we know what we are going to do with it, unless we have a strategy, unless we aspire to achieve certain goals good for this country and that fit with what the President intends to have happen with respect to a hydrogen and fuel cell future. I ask unanimous consent Senator Feinstein be added as a cosponsor to my amendment No. 865 to Senate Bill S. 14.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DORGAN. This amendment is very simple. It establishes timelines and targets: 100,000 vehicles on the road by 2010, 2\1/2\ million by the year 2020. It is not a mandate, it is not enforceable, but at least it sets targets that we aspire to achieve. The opposition would say, well, let's just throw money at the Department of Energy and hope something good comes of it. That is not the way to address this issue, in my judgment. I know my colleague complimented me but the greatest compliment, of course, would be voting for my amendment. What is disappointing is that this amendment passed the Senate by unanimous voice vote a year and a half ago. This amendment has already been embraced by the Senate. I am disappointed that it will not be passed by a voice vote today because if we are, in fact, going to move toward a hydrogen fuel cell future, we need to think big and bold. Then we ought to set some targets and have some aspirations and say to the Department of Energy, here is three-plus billion dollars and, by the way, this is what we would like to see achieved with that money. We would really like to see these goals achieved--not mandates, just strategic goals.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes and the other side will be added 5 additional minutes to the closing side.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me show a couple of photographs that might be helpful for people to understand what this issue is about. This is a DaimlerChrysler fuel cell bus introduced in Germany in 1997 that runs on fuel cells. I rode on a fuel cell bus in California. For anyone who thinks this technology does not exist, it does. We have fuel cells. We use hydrogen. Let me give another example of what is happening in the private sector: The Ford Focus fuel cell vehicle, 2002. This is a Nissan Xterra, fueled by compressed hydrogen that was tested on a California road beginning in 2001. This General Motors Hy-Wire fuel cell concept car was unveiled in August of 2002. Let me make a point about all of this. You can't convert a vehicle fleet in this country from a fleet that pulls up to the gas pump and you take the cap off and you stick a hose in and pump away--you can't convert a vehicle fleet from a gasoline-powered vehicle fleet to a hydrogen-powered fleet without substantial public policy initiatives that complement where the private sector wants to go. One cannot do it without the other. That is why, even as all these companies are working very hard on these issues, they need public sector and public policy support. This is a picture of a hydrogen fueling station at Power TechLabs. So if you had a car with a fuel cell that uses hydrogen, where would you go to fuel that car? Where would you go to power it? Where would you find a supply of hydrogen? So you have a whole series of questions. As I mentioned earlier, you have to develop the question of how do you produce hydrogen in large quantities. It is not terribly difficult. You can produce it in many ways, but what would be the predominant method of production? How do you store it? Where do you store it? How do you transport it? All of those are important issues that the private sector and public policy will answer, in my judgment. Then, what kind of infrastructure can develop and how do you incentivize its development so those who are purchasing the new fuel cell vehicles powered by hydrogen have a place to come where they can fuel those vehicles? We have plans for many areas of public policy, whether it is Social Security or Medicare--a whole series of issues. We have all these studies and plans of where we aspire to be and what we aspire to do. The goals in this amendment, while not mandates, are very simple. In my judgment they are reasonable goals and ones that ought not frighten anyone in this Chamber into believing they are mandates. We know California's Clean Air Act requirements will ensure there will be many fuel cell vehicles on the road in California in the future. By this year, 2003, 2 percent of California's vehicles have to be zero emission vehicles, and around 10 percent must be zero emission by 2018. California will have nearly 40,000 to 50,000 fuel cell vehicles on the road by the end of the next decade. One of the other considerations in public policy is Federal fleet purchase. We can be the first purchaser of these technologies and put thousands, tens of thousands of vehicles on the road through the Federal fleet purchase. Those are the kinds of activities I think can make a big difference. Let me finish as I started. I am very disappointed. I hope perhaps a good night's sleep will have persuaded those who came yesterday, who were a little cranky about this amendment and wanted to see if they shouldn't maybe oppose this amendment--I am hoping maybe a good night's sleep would have provided some sort of epiphany to those who would have otherwise opposed it and they will decide that they should support what the Senate unanimously supported 2 years ago. This is not anything other than a step in exactly the right direction. If you want to be big, you want to be bold, you want to agree with President Bush that we ought to move to a new energy future, if you want to do all that and believe hydrogen and fuel cells, as the President says, are the future--and I do--if you believe all that, then let's do this the right way: Set timetables and targets and goals. If you want to spend money, then let's make those who are going to receive the money give us the strategies that relate to where we want our country to move. Or do we just want to throw money in the air and sort of mill around and thumb our suspenders and smoke our cigars and say we did a great job; we spent $3 billion on hydrogen, and boy, we hope something comes of that. That is not the way you do business. The way you do business is you have a plan. You decide where you want to go for the future of this country and what you want to do and how you want to achieve it. That is what this amendment does. It just sets out those goals. I am hoping when we have this vote it will have a very sizable victory here in the Senate later this morning. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I make a point of order a quorum is not present.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Bodar Tareen and Joe Krueger from my staff be allowed floor privileges during the consideration of S. 14.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I shall not carry this much further either because there is much we agree on. But let me just say to the folks at the Byrne Drugstore, a drugstore I have not had the pleasure of visiting, my guess is, at Byrne Drugstore, if you told the folks sitting around the cracker barrel there--if they have a cracker barrel--in talking about life that we are going to give $2 billion plus to the Department of Energy, and we would just like them to use it as best they can, we really have not told them what we aspire to have happen in terms of goals or timetables and, what do you think of that, my guess is they would say: They are going to send their great- grandchildren back to you to say, ``We have not reached any conclusions yet.'' My guess is, the folks at Byrne Drug, just as the folks playing pinochle in my hometown's little bar, would probably say: If you are going to give the folks over there in that big bureaucracy some money, you might ought to give them a plan in terms of what you might want to accomplish with that money because they will find a way to spend it if you don't give them some sort of plan. They will tell you the money is all gone, but they really don't have a product yet. There are plenty of examples, of course, of that. But my own view is, if we are going to give the Department of Energy money--and we must because, as the Senator from Tennessee knows, we cannot convert to a hydrogen-based fuel cell economy without public policy support. You have to, after all, have a complete infrastructure change in this country, so that in the future, if we are driving mostly hydrogen fuel cell cars, you are not pulling up to a pump that pumps regular gasoline, you are pulling up to a pump that pumps hydrogen fuel. The question is, as I indicated before, where do we produce the hydrogen? How do we transport the hydrogen? How do we store the hydrogen? What is the infrastructure for dispensing the hydrogen at fuel stations across the country? All of that is important. And all of that is a function of public policy. The private sector cannot by itself do that. That is why the public sector lays the groundwork for it. It is like building the roads. We don't have General Motors building roads in this country. We build roads, and they build cars which you drive on the roads. We create the public policy by which we will move toward a hydrogen fuel cell policy. It is what the President believes we ought to do. It is what I believe we ought to do. The Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from New Mexico believe we ought to do that. So as we do that, the question is: In pursuit of public policy, when we provide the Department of Energy with $3 billion plus, should we say to them: ``Here is $3 billion plus. You folks--you good men and women at the Department of Energy--use it as best you can, and try to give us some idea of what you might accomplish with it'' or should we say to these people in the large, vast bureaucracy here: ``Here is $3 billion plus, and what we want you to do is the following. Our goal, our aspiration, what we strive to achieve for the country is the following''? I think that is a much better approach because, I guarantee you, we will provide that $3.3 billion, and at the end that money will be spent. I have not ever, I guess, seen a Federal agency that has failed to spend the money. They do pretty well at that. But when they spend the money, and it is gone, the question is, Will this country have moved beyond where we are today in energy policy? Will we have achieved the result we wanted? Will the President have advanced the issues he portrayed so well in his State of the Union Address? I guess my answer to that is, I do not think so. I come back finally to this point--and I will have to leave the floor but make this my last word--I fail to see any downside at all to putting in these targets. Again, this is not some wild guess. I go back to the Nissan example. The chairman of Nissan does not go to the board of directors aspiring to spend $800 million, and say, ``By the way, I have a wild guess, and I want you to authorize my spending $800 million on it.'' This is not a wild guess. The private sector does not believe it is. I do not believe it is. President Bush does not. I think most of us understand this is a new, big, bold direction. We can do this the old way, giving the bureaucracy some money and hoping it turns out or we can do this a different way, saying: Here is what we aspire to achieve as a country. Here are the targets. Here are the timetables. Let's get about the business of doing this. If we, in fact, want our children and their children to be able to drive hydrogen fuel cell cars, then that is not going to happen because we let it happen; it is going to happen because in the private sector and in the public sector we are taking the steps that can make this happen. Having said that, I have enjoyed our discussion. Again, I have great respect for the Senator from Tennessee. I think the work he has done in the bill is excellent. I hope in the intervening hours or days before we vote on this proposal that I will be able to garner his support for this very minor, very small adjustment to a piece of legislation that is not a mandate but that, in fact, is a commonsense approach in terms of how we ought to spend this money and what we ought to expect the taxpayers to get for this money. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, because the Senate in the last Congress passed an Energy bill which included targets and timetables, I think it would be considered a retreat if for some reason or another we this year objected to targets and timetables that were included in this Energy bill. In the past Congress, with the President supporting fuel cells and a hydrogen economy, I don't think we ought to be retreating on these kinds of issues. The Senator from Tennessee said there are two parts. There are many parts of the bill. He is right about that. There is the part of the legislation that deals with that which we have always done. We have always been concerned about production of fossil fuels. So we have, of course, portions of the bill to deal with that. We have conservation issues and renewable energy issues. Those have always been in the bill. But this piece is a different part--a part that is different and unusual. This part deals with something that is new, big and bold. It is why the President put it in his State of the Union Address. That is why he had a special rollout of his proposal down at the Building Museum with hundreds of people present. Virtually every industry leader with respect to hydrogen and fuel cells in the country came to town. Why did the President emphasize that? Because this is a different part. This is not some unusual part of the energy debate. It is the big, new, and bold part of that debate. I have used the term ``Apollo project.'' That perhaps could have used or I could have used ``the Manhattan project,'' or something that would denote a project by which a country aspires to achieve something. A country aspires to establish goals, and it reaches those goals. A strategy that says, let us spend this money and, by the way, let us know if anything comes of it, is, in my judgment, not much of a strategy. I am a big believer in understanding that things happen that you make happen--not that you let happen. If you have a problem and resources, you have two choices: Let us move this money out and see what we let happen with it, as opposed to deciding what we are going to make happen. There is a very big difference. My colleague from Tennessee used the term ``wild guesses'' several times. Let me just tell you that Nissan, Toyota, Honda, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors are not engaged in wild guesses. None of them is engaged in wild guesses. They are making substantial investments in fuel cell vehicles believing that we are moving toward a hydrogen fuel cell economy--not wild guesses at all. Incidentally, I think my colleagues would, if they checked with most of these organizations I have mentioned and others in the industry, find that they very much support us being bold and establishing these targets and timetables. Why? Because they know that a country that establishes targets and timetables in pursuit of a policy is a country that is going to be fostering new development through research, and opportunities through research in the private sector as well. I just think it is really important for us to do this. All of us come from different kinds of hometowns. I come from a small one with about 300 people. I am guessing, probably like every hometown, we had two or three people who every day went down to the bar and played Pinochle all day long. That was their social life. They just stayed there all day long and played Pinochle. They most likely in their conversations opposed almost everything new that was going on in the community: ``It won't work, can't work; shouldn't do it.'' They just played Pinochle and criticized anyone who was making things happen in the community. The President has said we ought to do this. There are going to be doubters outside of this Chamber and doubters in the country who don't want us to move in this direction who say it can't work, it won't happen, or this is not our future. But they are wrong. President Bush is right. They are wrong. This country will best serve its future, in my judgment, if we decide that we are going to do this with the President and with the Congress; we are going to do this and make it happen. Should we just say, well, except that there are other alternatives and no such picking and choosing? If President Kennedy had said, let us not pick a goal to go to the Moon, maybe it ought to be Mars, but if we decided the Moon, let us not decide it had to be in this decade because the technology doesn't exist, let us say we are going to one planet and the Moon maybe someday, we probably would have never gotten past Cape Canaveral. We probably would have never gotten off the launch pad. He established for this country a very bold vision. The Manhattan project was a very different project. It was the same thing: We are going to do this. We are going to marshal all of the resources and try to make this happen. My amendment is much more timid than that. I do not suggest we can strap a mandate on this country and a burden on the Department of Energy, or the private sector for that matter, that says we have to meet these goals, timetables, and targets. That is not what I am saying. I am saying, in the pursuit of this money, that we are going to spend several billions of dollars, let us ask the Energy Department in their plan to describe their activities in pursuit of this goal which says we aspire to have 100,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the United States by 2001 and 2.5 million by 2010. Maybe it can't be reached; I don't know. It is certainly not a wild guess; it is just deciding that we ought to as a country establish some goals. Once again, I think there is a big difference between letting things happen and making things happen. We have the capability, it seems to me, with this President and this Congress--and with the private sector very engaged with an aggressive aim, which my colleague from Tennessee described a while ago--to do some really remarkable things in this area. I think they will be enhanced by establishing these targets and timetables. I really see no downside at all. I sometimes can see in legislation or amendments that are introduced that there is an upside and a downside. What if it succeeds or fails? For the life of me, I cannot see the downside of Congress establishing in this legislation some targets and timetables that put us on a path to a new, bold, and aggressive energy policy that will do all of the things my colleague from Tennessee described and all the things I described which are good for this country--substantially limiting our dependence on foreign oil, which provides much greater economic and energy security for this country, and dramatically improving air quality in America. Instead of putting pollutants out of the tailpipe, you are putting water vapor out of the tailpipe. There are so many things that make sense with respect to this proposal. Much of the proposal that is in the Energy bill makes great sense. I support it. I wish it were a bit bolder than it is. Nonetheless, it is substantially better than what was sent to us in the President's budget. I compliment my colleague from Tennessee and my colleague from New Mexico and others on that score. But I still believe we will do this country a favor and improve this legislation as it leaves the Senate by including timetables and targets which were in the legislation in the last Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. There is nothing in here that would be a mandate. These are establishment of targets by asking the Department of Energy to provide Congress with their strategies on how to reach them. I have specifically not imposed mandates. I am simply asking them to develop strategies and to report those strategies to the Congress.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator would yield further?