Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Bob Wills of the Texas Playboys back in the 1930s had a song with a verse that fits almost perfectly the philosophy of those who wrote this bill and left out 12 million children. The little bee sucks the blossom, and the big bee gets the honey. The little guy picks the cotton, and the big guy gets the money. It is a simple verse with an important lesson. I followed a car the other day, an old car that had several children in it. They had the back bumper taped up but they had a bumper sticker that said: We fought the gas war and gas won. I pulled up behind that car at a four-way stop sign and smiled to myself because, you know, in circumstances like that, that family trying to raise children, trying to keep an old car together, keep the bumper taped on, they figure everybody wins except them. They are trying hard but they do not win; somehow they do not count. That impression is always reinforced. Yes, it is reinforced by Bob Wills in the Texas Playboys' verse, but it is reinforced every day in almost every way, especially in the policies of this Chamber. It is about values. This decision we make about tax cuts is about our value system. What do we think is important? What do we hold dear? What is our character about? Let me yield the floor in a moment by simply saying Mr. Wallis, the Convenor of the Call To Renewal, a National Federation of Churches and faith-based organizations, said: The decision to drop child tax credits for America's poorest families and children in favor of further tax cuts for the rich is morally offensive. My whole hope is we just do the right thing and do it quickly. We know what the right thing is. It is not the right thing to say these 12 million children coming from the lower-income households, working households that are trying to make ends meet, that they should not count with the child tax credit. We know that is wrong. If we know that is wrong, and in our heart all of us know that is wrong, then we know what is right. What is right is to say we will fix it and we will fix it now--not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, not after we have another closed meeting and some secret conference--right now. We can do that. That is our obligation, in my judgment, to a lot of people in this country who deserve a break from us--taxpayers. Yes, they are taxpayers who deserve some tax relief in the form of child tax credits, taxpayers who were left out of the original bill but who will, with the help of my colleagues, be put in, in this Senate.

Mr. DORGAN. I don't think it is fair for the Senator from California to ask me questions she assumes I can't answer. The correct answer is no. I have to leave the floor. Let me ask consent that my colleague from California be recognized for 3 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this morning the Federal Communications Commission made some decisions I think were wrong-headed and counterproductive for this country. I would like to describe them just for a moment. The Federal Communications Commission, by a vote of 3 to 2, decided to change in a dramatic way the ownership rules with respect to broadcast stations and newspapers around this country--radio, television, newspapers. Let me describe where we may end up as a result of the FCC decisions. As a result of what the FCC has decided today, it is likely that in the largest markets of our country, the same company will own the newspaper, three television stations, the cable company, and eight radio stations. I can't think of anything more destructive to the interests of localism and to the interests of diversity, both of which are hallmarks of what we aspire to have in American broadcasting, and the free flow of information and diversity of information in this democracy of ours. I don't understand why the FCC made this decision. The majority of the members of the Senate Commerce Committee signed a letter asking the FCC to delay and provide their recommendations to us first so we could perhaps have a hearing and discuss it with them. But they didn't do that. The first anyone knew of the specific recommendations was this morning at about 10 o'clock. There were somewhere close to 500,000 communications from the American people to the FCC saying don't do this. Instead, the FCC took this action. They say they took this action because there are more voices, there are more outlets and more diversity; therefore, the old rules with respect to ownership are outmoded and old-fashioned. That is simply not the case. Ninety percent of the top 50 cable stations are owned by the top handful of the broadcasters. Twenty-five of the top Internet sites are owned by the same companies. In terms of diversity of thought in terms of where you get your news, it all comes from the same source--many voices, one ventriloquist. Is that in the public interest? In my judgment, the answer is no. The FCC held only one hearing in Richmond, VA, and the rest of their work was done largely in secret. There is a history to some of this. The FCC today said that one ownership group should be able to broadcast to 45 percent of the Nation's audience. It is actually going to be much more than that because they have a rule that counts UHF stations and only 50 percent of the stations. It is a complex system. But it is 45 percent of the national audience. It used to be 25 percent. In 1996, a piece of legislation-- the Telecommunications Act--came to the floor of the Senate taking that 25 percent to 35 percent. I offered an amendment at that point to restore the 25-percent limit; take the 35 percent out of the bill and restore the 25-percent limit. We had a vote. The proponent on the other side in support of the 35 percent was Senator Dole from Kansas, a pretty aggressive competitor, as a matter of fact. We had a vote and I won. I was dumbfounded. I had no idea I would win. But I won by, I think, three or four votes. That was about 4 in the afternoon when we considered the act in 1996. On that same day, at about 7:30 in the evening, we had a another vote because Senator Dole was cagey enough to have another Senator change his vote, and then we came back after dinner and had a vote on reconsideration. Apparently, three, four, or five Senators had some sort of epiphany over dinner. I lost. I have no idea what they had for dinner, or who talked to them, or how far their arms were bent. But I won that vote for about 4 hours, and then I lost. The result has been that for 7 years we have had a 35-percent ownership cap with respect to a broadcasting company broadcasting television signals across the country, providing that there is a limit on broadcast stations--that you can't go over 35 percent of the national audience. Now the FCC this morning said they are taking that to 45 percent. They are eliminating the ban on cross-ownership between newspapers and television stations. This weekend one of the large newspaper chains was reported in a story that I saw to have said, Look, we intend to buy a television station in every city in which we have a newspaper. We intend to do that. I don't doubt it. Another story which I read this weekend talked about the plan of one of the large broadcasting enterprises and all the deals they had lined up anticipating the FCC was going to do what they wanted them to do. They have deal after deal. They are going to start. There will an orgy of concentration and mergers that start almost immediately. What I would like to say to all of those who are now celebrating the FCC's decision today is that Congress will have another bite at this. There are many ways to do it. No. 1, we have a Congressional Review Act which is a form of legislative veto dealing with rules that we don't like. It has been used rarely. But I think it should be used in this circumstance; it would provide a vote here in the Congress, up or down, on this rule. There are other approaches. Several of my colleagues--the Presiding Officer is one--have introduced legislation restoring the 35-percent cap. That is a bipartisan piece of legislation cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. Of course, there is always the timeline tradition of, if everything else fails, attempting to legislate on an appropriations bill. But my point is this: I don't think the FCC decision this morning should be considered the last and definitive word. My own personal view is that I hope we will attempt a form of ``legislative veto'' which is provided for in law. But there will be attempts to overturn much of this decision. It makes no sense to me that we will have decided through a regulatory agency not to do effective regulation on behalf of the American public, and to say, oh, by the way, concentration is not a bad thing. Let us just allow in one big American city the same company to buy the cable company, buy three TV stations, eight radio stations, buy up the cable system, and buy the newspaper. It makes no sense to me that a Federal regulatory body ought to do that. I very much regret what the FCC did this morning. In the review mirror, this will be seen as a terrible decision that marches this country backward and not forward, and one that will well satisfy those who have billions at stake because they have lobbied very hard to have this kind of decision come from the FCC but one, in my judgment, which will detract from the interest of localism. Those big enterprises win and American communities lose. Who is going to broadcast basketball games? Who is going to broadcast the local baseball games? The fact is, we have had some experience with concentration in the media in recent years--since 1996--and it isn't working. We are destroying localism and destroying diversity. I think this Congress needs to weigh in now and deal with the FCC.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to make a comment finally on the Energy bill which my colleague from Wyoming discussed moments ago. If we have learned anything--and I expect we have learned a lot with respect to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the trouble in the Middle East--it is that this country is foolish to continue its excessive reliance on oil from troubled parts of the world. When 55 percent of our oil comes from overseas and outside of our borders, and when the largest growth in energy usage is for transportation and putting gasoline through our carburetors so we can drive back and forth to work and take trips and so on, this country ought to understand the great peril it is in--the peril to which the economy would be flat on its back tomorrow morning if, God forbid, the supply of oil from outside our borders was discontinued or interrupted. We need to understand that. We need to pass an Energy bill that recognizes and addresses it. The Energy bill, in my judgment, should be legislation that does four things: incentivizes increased production of fossile fuels--yes, oil-- using clean fuel technology, coal and natural gas; incentivizes conservation and provides for substantial conservation initiatives; provides for efficiency with all of these things that we use in our daily lives, especially using electricity; and then, finally, addresses the issue of limitless renewable sources of energy--ethanol, biodiesel, and especially, in my judgment, hydrogen. If we fail to do all of that in an aggressive way, we will not have much of an Energy bill. We will, as we do every 25 years, come back and debate where we should drill now. Digging and drilling is a policy that I call ``yesterday forever.'' It doesn't advance this country's interests. Yes. We should produce more fossil fuels, and we will. But we need to decide that putting gasoline through our carburetors is not what we want our grandchildren to do. The President talked about moving to a hydrogen economy with fuel cells. I agree with that. Good for him. Putting his administration on line in support of that initiative makes great sense. Frankly, his specific proposal was timid. It was not very bold. But he deserves great credit for moving in the right direction. I and some of my colleagues will introduce legislation dealing with hydrogen and fuel cells. That will be a $6.5 billion program over the next 10 years--a type of Apollo program. At the start of a decade we said, Let us have a man working on the Moon at the end of the decade. We did it with timelines and with targets. If we decide we ought to use hydrogen and fuel cells to power America's vehicle fleet, and also some stationary engines, then we ought to move in that direction boldly, not timidly. This is the time to do that with an energy bill. This is the time we decide the direction in which we want America to move and then establish public policy that makes that happen. I don't know whether we will have a bill through the Senate that does all that. I hope so. We will have many amendments. I have some amendments I will offer to get us in that position. Let me make one additional point. Anyone who watched what happened in the California and the west coast energy markets in the last couple of years has to understand that if we pass an energy bill that does not provide safeguards for the consumers, then we will have failed miserably. We saw companies--and I will name Enron, for one, but there are others the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has already identified--that were playing a monopoly game in west coast markets manipulating loads--they were buying and selling energy to themselves, jacking up prices, in some case, five, ten, and a hundredfold, and stealing from consumers. And it was not just a few dollars; they were stealing billions and billions of dollars from west coast consumers. They are now going to be held criminally liable. But while all that was happening, we had a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that was dead from the neck up. It would not do a thing; it sat on its hands, looking like a potted plant. It did not do a thing. So this massive stealing went on in west coast markets because big companies that could control supply did control supply, manipulated load, and attempted to extract from the consumers in western America billions of dollars in an unfair way. We must put safeguards in this legislation that prevent that. If anybody wonders about it, there is plenty written about it. Go trace the trail that describes the Enron Corporation strategies called ``Get Shorty,'' ``Fat Boy,'' and ``Death Star.'' Do you know what those are? Those are strategies to steal from consumers. The FERC is now deciding there was plenty of activity, and there are criminal investigations going on that warrant perhaps prosecution of both companies and individuals. But all that happened because we had regulators who did not want to regulate. Regulators were afraid to step in and take effective action. Once again, it demonstrates that when you have the market power, the muscle, and the clout, and you do not have regulators who effectively regulate it, people are victims. And in this case on the west coast, the victims lost billions of dollars. The question is, How is there going to be recompense for that? How is that going to be resolved? Who is going to be tried? Which FERC investigations are sent to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution? My point is, safeguards need to be in this energy bill dealing with that. We have been through this once. We have colleagues still calling for deregulation of these markets. Deregulation, when you have companies with market power willing to use it to the detriment of consumers, is a devastating mistake. You need effective regulators, wearing referee shirts, who safeguard the interests of the consumers. That has to be a part of this bill as well. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will take a voice vote and say, this amendment will be visiting the floor of the Senate again soon on another matter. I appreciate the comments from the Senator from Iowa. I believe this is an important issue. I hope my colleagues will support it.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me also congratulate my colleague from New Mexico: A hearty congratulations to you. Amendment No. 837 Mr. President, I know airplanes are waiting and jet engines are idling, and there are some Members wishing to leave this Chamber quickly. Let me, in a matter of a couple minutes, say a word about the national debt and then about the trade debt. We worry a lot about the national debt, as a result of budget policy in the Congress. So we actually come to the Congress, and we come to the floor of the Senate, and we vote on putting a limit on Federal debt. We have a debt limit. However, there is another debt, and there is no limit on that debt. I am referring to the foreign debt--the debt that results from trade deficits. We have a Federal budget deficit this year that is expected to be somewhere around $317 billion. That is the current estimate. But if last year's figures are any guide, our trade deficit this year will be much higher than the federal budget deficit, well over $435 billion. And that trade deficit means an increase on our foreign debt. There is no limit on the foreign debt. Whatever it is, it is. Wherever it goes, it goes. That is just the way we, apparently, have decided to live with it as country, for as long as we can get away with it. Well, in my judgment, we ought to have some basic limitation with respect to trade debt, or at least some mechanism that triggers actions if the trade debt exceeds a certain level. My amendment, which I have at the desk, would say that when U.S. foreign debt exceeds 25 percent of GDP, or the trade deficit exceeds 5 percent of the GDP, it triggers the following: USTR will be required to, within 15 days of such a breach, convene an emergency meeting of the Trade Policy Review Group, and within 45 days present to Congress, from that group, a report detailing the Trade Policy Review Group's trade deficit reduction plan. My feeling is we ought to have some basic limitation on what we are doing with respect to international trade. I do not suggest we put borders around this country or we, in any way, inhibit trade. But trade needs to be fair trade--and it is not. As shown on this chart, this is what has been happening to our trade deficit. The ink is all red and it is escalating at a very serious rate. Let me use one example to show the absurdity of what is happening in international trade. It involves the country of South Korea. I just picked this but I could pick China, Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico. I just happen to pick South Korea. In 2001, Korea shipped 618,000 vehicles into our country--Hyundais, Daewoos, etc.--all around our country. Do you know how many cars we were able to ship to South Korea? We shipped 2,800 American cars to South Korea. Why is that the case? South Korea does not want our cars sold in that country. They put up every kind of imaginative trade barrier you can think of. We just had an example in the first part of this year with the Dodge Dakota pickup. Daimler-Chrysler started to sell the Dodge Dakota pickup in Korea. They were actually fairly successful. They had 60 orders in February and they had 60 orders in March. They don't make a pickup that is equivalent to the Dodge Dakota in South Korea. So at an annualized rate, that would have been almost a 50-percent increase in U.S. car imports alone in that country just with the Dodge Dakota pickup. Guess what happened. In March, an official from the Ministry of Construction and Transportation decided: Enough of those Dodge Dakotas. He said people were going to put optional cargo covers on them and that might make them dangerous if passengers rode in the back. He announced that cargo covers on pickups and Dodge Dakotas are illegal. South Korean newspapers had big headlines: ``Government Ministry Finds Dodge Dakota Covers Illegal.'' Guess what happened. Immediately, Korean customers cancelled their orders for Dodge Dakotas. And all of a sudden, we were not selling Dodge Dakota pickup trucks in Korea anymore. So here we are, 618,000 cars headed to the United States, and we only get to sell 2,800 in Korea. I could talk about China and wheat, Europe and beef, Canada and durum. I could talk about Mexico. I don't have the time today because several of you want to leave. I respect that. But I do want to at least offer this amendment. I will accept a voice vote. I will come back with this amendment because this country ought to have the spine to stand up for fairness in trade. One of the reasons we are hemorrhaging in red ink is that trade circumstances with our major trading partners are simply not fair to American producers and to American workers. We need to change this. We can attempt to ignore this forever, but we do it at our peril. You can make a case that budget deficits we owe to ourselves, and we will repay ourselves. You cannot make a similar case with the trade deficit. We inevitably will repay a trade deficit with a lower standard of living in the United States. This country should be about the business of having fair trade, requiring fair trade, and requiring enforcement of existing trade agreements. I have a lot more to say. I will say it at some future time. I ask that the amendment be called up. It is at the desk.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am asking the Senator from Washington to yield for a question. Frankly, I am surprised, and I think it is a travesty that you are not able to offer your amendment. I do not understand on what legislation this would be relevant if not this legislation. I know you have offered it previously on the Defense authorization. I have voted for it on the Defense authorization on previous occasions. And this seems to me to be the same kind of trap we have discovered now with respect to the amendment dealing with concurrent receipts for retired veterans who also have been disabled who are prevented from collecting both. We are told that is not relevant. My amendment to scrap the 2005 base closing round, we are told that is not relevant. I wonder if there is any legislation on which these kinds of amendments would be more relevant than the Defense authorization? It is where they should be offered. It is the location of this debate. It is where this debate must be held. Somehow we have gotten into this trap of being told this is not relevant. Clearly, it is relevant. So can the Senator from Washington tell me, is there another piece of legislation where this would be more appropriately offered? I cannot think of one.

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

Mr. DORGAN. I am sorry, if the Senator wants to talk about credibility, let me correct the Senator, if you do not mind. On page 2 of my amendment it prohibits it for the year 2004, because that's all I can do, with respect to 2004.

Mr. DORGAN. And for the year 2004 it says: No funds authorized or appropriated or otherwise made available, et cetera, for a feasibility study.

Mr. DORGAN. That was my understanding.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me finish my point. If we are going to be completely accurate here.

Mr. DORGAN. For purposes of the Senator from Virginia, giving him comfort, let me say my amendment will end the second step. If his point is the research for the bunker buster nuclear weapon was last year a first step, then let me suggest to you my amendment will withhold the money so we do not take the second step. However, I think the larger point the Senator from Virginia understands. The step this country wants to take, to say there are usable nuclear weapons, that there are designer nuclear weapons that can be produced with lower and higher yields for special kinds of uses is a very dangerous step and exactly the wrong step for those of us who believe our leadership responsibility is both to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. I think the larger point the Senator from Virginia understands. But if he is more comfortable with my saying we will stop the second step rather than the first step, we will stop whatever steps are taken in the wrong direction, in my judgment.

Mr. DORGAN. I am sorry, I do not understand your question. Would you rephrase the question.

Mr. DORGAN. The amendment numbered 750 is at the desk for consideration.

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

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are debating the question of whether this country ought to begin developing new nuclear weapons, an important debate, as about important a debate we will have in this Senate in a while. The press gallery is empty because this is not some sex scandal. It does not have sensational aspects to it. It is not a murder investigation. It is about whether this country ought to decide now to begin producing additional nuclear weapons. I regret this is not debated and reported as a major national initiative so that the American people can be part of this discussion in our democracy. But it is not. I feel very strongly that where we are headed at the moment is in the wrong direction. I told my colleagues before about a fellow from North Dakota I have always kind of enjoyed watching. He is called the flying farmer from Makoti. Some have heard me tell about it. The flying farmer from Makoti, a guy in a small town of 80 people, Makoti, ND, who drives a car, goes to county fairs and builds himself a ramp and jumps over cars, kind of a dare devil. His name is John Smith. He is actually in the Guiness Book of Records because he drove a car in reverse 500 miles averaging 36 anywhere. That is the claim to fame of the flying farmer from Makoti. I think to myself, he has nothing over the Senate, especially on this issue. We are fixing to go in reverse a good long ways, with pretty aggressive speed, on the issue of nuclear policy. We have had in this country an understanding that with respect to nuclear weapons, we have them as a deterrent. We do not have them to use; we have them as a deterrent. We now have people walking around this town engaged in policy discussions, talking about ``usable'' nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons? It is just another weapon. In fact, let's talk about not just nuclear weapons, let's talk about low-yield nuclear weapons. Programs, they say, are mininuclear weapons or micronuclear weapons, usable nuclear weapons. Let's do designer nuclear weapons, they say. Let's now build a new nuclear weapon as a bunker buster nuclear weapon. I have no idea what they are thinking about. In the paper today we have statements in this debate. We have to go ahead and develop new nuclear weapons because we do not want to tie the hands of our military. If we would not allow additional nuclear weapons to be developed, we would be the only country in the world that cannot produce new nuclear weapons. What on Earth are we thinking about? Here is the nuclear stockpile for those who cannot sleep at night. There are some apparently who cannot sleep because we do not have enough nuclear weapons. I want to give you a sedative. We have roughly 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world--roughly. No one knows exactly, but these are the best estimates. North Korea, we think, has two or three. Pakistan has some, India has some, United Kingdom has more than a few, Israel, France, China, the United States, 10,600 nuclear weapons--we think, strategic and theater nuclear weapons--and Russia, 18,600 nuclear weapons. Now, I mentioned yesterday that about a year and a half ago following September 11 there was a threat. Our intelligence community assessed a threat against this country. The threat was that someone has to have stolen a nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal. Terrorists had stolen a nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal and was preparing to detonate that nuclear weapon in this country in either New York or Washington, DC. The intelligence threat picked up, deemed perhaps credible, who knew, and so for a period of time it did not hit the press. For a period of time there was a seizure that terrorists might have a nuclear weapon, might detonate it in the middle of an American city. And then we are not talking 3,000 deaths, we are talking hundreds of thousands of deaths. It was determined a couple of months later that was not a credible threat, and we moved on. But interestingly enough, the lesson from it was that it was perfectly plausible, to most, that a weapon could have been stolen in Russia, and it was plausible that a terrorist having stolen a nuclear weapon in Russia could have detonated it, had the capability to detonate it. Perfectly plausible. We have discussed before the command and control of these nuclear weapons in Russia. We know they do not have the safeguards we would like. We know there are three-ring binders with hand notations about inventories of nuclear weapons; 30,000 of them exist in this world. We had a seizure about one being stolen, one being stolen and everyone is greatly concerned, as they should be. So today we come to the Senate with a bill that says the following: We are not strong enough. We are not secure enough. We are worried about our future. What we need to do is build more nuclear weapons. We need to build low-yield nuclear weapons. What is a low-yield nuclear weapon? That is one-third the size of the one in Hiroshima. And we need to do bunker buster nuclear weapons, earth penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapons. That is my amendment. It strikes the $11 million in this bill, prevents the opportunity to continue a design, a development, or manufacturer of bunker busting nuclear weapons, development testing, engineering, no funds authorized for feasibility study on the nuclear earth penetrator weapon. So the question for the Senate in this amendment is very simple. Do you think you cannot sleep at night because we do not have enough nuclear weapons and the only way you will get a good night's rest is if you can build an earth penetrator bunker buster nuclear weapon? Is that what you think? If so, then vote against my amendment. Katy bar the door. Let's develop another nuclear weapon. We are saying to the rest of the world with this nonsense, we have the right of preemption. We will now renounce the doctrine of first use. We believe there are ``usable'' nuclear weapons, and we need to build low-yield nuclear weapons--new ones. We reserve the right to build nuclear weapons despite the fact that we have had a moratorium for a decade. We believe we ought to have a bunker buster nuclear weapon. You know what the message is to India, to Pakistan, and to other countries that want nuclear weapons: That this country doesn't think we ought to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, or that we ought to prevent the use of nuclear weapons but that we need to bulk up and build new ones, and that we believe they are potentially usable in some future conflict. That is exactly the wrong message this country ought to be sending to anybody in the rest of the world. What we ought to be telling the rest of the world is we have 10,600, roughly, nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them as a deterrent against anyone who would threaten our liberty. We don't need more. To build more is simply a green light to every other country in the world that wants to become part of the nuclear community. I come from a State that understands defense. I support a strong defense. My votes in the Congress will show that. I support a very strong, robust defense system in this country. We have two air bases in the State of North Dakota. One is for K-135 tankers, and the other has both the Minuteman Missile with Mark 12-A warheads, as well as B-52 bombers. Some have said that if the State of North Dakota seceded from the Union, it would be the third most powerful country in the world. I know a little something about this. I have seen a nuclear weapon close up. I have studied what they do and what the impact of nuclear weapons are. I have tried to understand deterrent capability. All of us know that with a world full of nuclear weapons we have been very blessed that we have not had a war with nuclear weapons. All of us know that. As I said yesterday, I have kept in my desk for some long while pieces of material that remind us that the proper approach to dealing with this threat is the approach we have used under Nunn-Lugar and other arms control and arms reduction treaties. This is a piece of metal taken from the shaft of an S-24 missile that had a warhead aimed at the United States. Where that missile was buried in the Soviet Union are now sunflowers. There is no missile. The warhead is gone. There are sunflowers at the place. How that happened is we paid for the destruction of that missile. We didn't shoot it down. We destroyed it with American taxpayer dollars under arms control agreements. This is copper metal from a ground-up Russian submarine. We didn't sink the submarine. We destroyed it under Nunn-Lugar and arms control reduction. We paid to have the submarine destroyed. I also have a metal piece in my desk from a wing flap from a Soviet bomber. We didn't shoot it down. We paid to have the wing sawed off, and that bomber was destroyed with arms reductions and arms control money from Nunn-Lugar. The fact is we know what succeeds. We know what has reduced tensions and reduced delivery systems. Yet we are told today that America will only be safer in this new day and in this new age of terrorism if we begin building new types of nuclear weapons. We are told by people in positions of significant responsibility in this town with policy roles and responsibility that it is not unthinkable for us to talk about ``usable'' nuclear weapons. In fact, such discussions have occurred in the pages of our Nation's major newspapers with respect to both Afghanistan and Iraq. Let me talk for a moment about the so-called bunker buster or earth penetrator nuclear weapons. This is about whether we should begin the research in this new weapon. They are talking about a bunker buster. I assume they are talking bunker busters because of Afghanistan. I went to Afghanistan. I flew over the mountains where deep in the caves of Afghanistan this twisted, sick, demented murderer named Osama bin Laden with his people plotted the murder of innocent Americans. I understand. They have caves there. I understand it was not easy for us to deal with those caves. The result is that we have people saying we need an earth penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapon. They are talking the size of a bunker buster up to nearly 70 times larger than Hiroshima. Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. It seems to me that if you build a 1-megaton nuclear weapon as a bunker buster you are going to bust a whole lot more than a bunker. I am guessing you bust a mountain, you bust the territory for miles and miles and miles around, and you bust any living creature. So I don't know. If the bigger the explosion, the safer we are, the more security we have, then be my guest; I guess this would be your weapon. But the question at this moment in time, at this intersection in America history is, Is this what we want to do? If today the trucks are moving in North Korea taking spent fuel rods from the nuclear plant, if today those trucks are moving in a way that takes that material to be produced in a nuclear weapon to be sold to terrorists, in a way that has a nuclear weapon showing up 14 months from now in a major American city, is our first responsibility in the Congress and in this country to say what we really need are more nuclear weapons? We have 10,600. Is that really our response? Or ought we decide that there are bigger issues and more important issues for us to be talking about with North Korea and the rest of the world? Those issues include stopping the spread of nuclear weapons now. I mean stopping the spread now. We have so many countries and so many groups that want access to nuclear weapons. Our job is to be the world leader. We are the superpower. We have the largest economic engine in the world, and we are the military superpower in the world. We, unfortunately or fortunately, have the responsibility and the mantle on our shoulders to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. It is on our watch. It is our job. It is not someone else's job. How do we stop the spread of nuclear weapons and decide to send the signal to the rest of the world that nuclear weapons cannot be used in this world of ours? Once you start moving nuclear weapons back and forth in anger, this Earth as we know it is gone. Those people who talk about ``survivable'' nuclear weapons are nuts, just nuts. They still think about tank wars. You have 200 tanks; we have 100 tanks. Then we have a battle. Who has how many tanks remaining? Or if we have 200 and you have 100, that is not the way nuclear war will exist on the face of this Earth. The only opportunity we have for our children and grandchildren is to prevent the use of nuclear weapons--not to talk about the use of nuclear weapons, which some are now doing. It is in their minds practical to talk about this new day and new age of threat security issues, and to talk about the potential of use of nuclear weapons. It is interesting to me that in the middle of all of this discussion--even in this bill--I mentioned yesterday that we are going to have $9 billion in this bill for a national missile defense system to intercept an ICBM sent to us by either a rogue state or a terrorist. First, terrorists and rogue states aren't going to get ICBMs. It is very unlikely. Their delivery of choice is going to be in a container on a tanker ship. It is not going to come in at 18,000 miles an hour. It will come in at 3 miles an hour to a dock in a major American city. The lowest threat on the threat meter in this country we are spending the most money on is national defense, and the highest threat has the least expenditure. Regrettably, that is the appetite for these programs in the Senate. But when you talk about threat, the threat, it seems to me, is that this country will decide that it makes a U-turn on public policy here with respect to nuclear policy and decide it says to the rest of the world, here is a green light. The green light is to build additional nuclear weapons. We want to build so-called low-yield nuclear weapons, which is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as a low- yield nuclear weapon. We want to build them. Guess what Russia will be saying. We want to build some, too, then. There you go. We want to build earth penetrator bunker buster nuclear weapons. So will others. So we spark a new arms race. Instead of reducing the number of nuclear weapons and making this world a safer place, we will increase the number of nuclear weapons and will actually have other countries understanding that it is our country that talks about the potential use of nuclear weapons in future conflicts. I think this is the most Byzantine thing I have witnessed in all the years I have served in the Congress. I do not have the foggiest idea how this is not met with the reaction by the American people: What on Earth could you be thinking about? Or aren't you thinking at all? I just do not understand it. I likely will lose this amendment. It is a small amendment. The amendment deals with a relatively small amount of money but a critically important principle. I am just trying to take one piece out of this bill, the piece that says: Let's start the research to move toward an earth penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapon. Let's just start. Let's just take the first step. I am saying: Let's not. If you cannot sleep at night because we have 10,600 nuclear weapons, you are not going to sleep better at night because you have a bunker buster high-yield jumbo buster nuclear weapon. That is not going to make you sleep better. Take some sleeping pills.

Mr. DORGAN. That is correct.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my amendment is not a low-level yield amendment.

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

Mr. DORGAN. So a point of order could be raised that would lie against the amendment because it is then legislating on an appropriations bill. If that is the case, as I understand the answer from the Chair, we are in a circumstance where we have told the Senator from Washington that her amendment dealing with an important issue-- clearly to the center of this bill on Defense--cannot be offered on the Defense authorization bill because it is not relevant to the Defense authorization bill. Then the Senator would be told later, when she tries to offer it to the Defense appropriations bill, this is legislating on a Defense appropriations bill and a point of order would rise against it. Why? Because she should have offered it to the authorization bill. Can someone tell me whether that is not a Catch-22 for the Senator from Washington and others? Have we not put her and others in a circumstance where they are prevented from offering this amendment under every circumstance? Isn't that the case? We say to her, you cannot offer it on the authorization bill. So then she comes to the Defense appropriations bill and offers it. The point of order is raised, and the point of order says, you know what, you cannot offer it on appropriations. You should have offered it on the authorization bill. That is what the Senator from Washington is going to be told. I just ask the rhetorical question, Does anybody in the Chamber think that is fair? Not me. I know there wasn't a deliberate attempt for anybody to be unfair, but I make the point that the consent request entered into with respect to this issue of relevancy has put people in a position--especially Senator Reid, myself, and Senator Murray from Washington on this issue--that is pretty untenable. But that is the position we are in. I think the way to get out of it is to understand that somehow these things could be offered, or should be offered, and a unanimous consent be allowed for these issues to be debated and voted on. I cannot believe it would have been the intent of my colleague from Virginia, or the ranking member from Michigan, to say we want to prevent an amendment that has been offered seven times previously to this bill, which we all understand is clearly relevant to the bill. Again, I say as I said yesterday, the folks who understand this process from our side were very surprised at the issue of relevancy and how the rulings on relevancy occurred. I know yesterday during this discussion a question was propounded by my colleague from Virginia, the chairman, to the Presiding Officer to ask whether the standard of relevancy has changed. And the answer was, no, it has not. That is not accurate. It clearly has changed. My colleague from Washington is evidence of that. If her amendment was germane postcloture previously, then her amendment, by definition, had to have been relevant postcloture. And if it is relevant then, and it is not relevant now, the standard has changed. I don't think that was the intention of the chairman or ranking member with respect to her amendment--mine or any other amendment. I am not asking or suggesting bad faith on anybody's part, but we have an unintended consequence. If an unintended consequence says to the Senator from Washington, I am sorry, you cannot offer your amendment on the authorization bill, and when you try it later--as she will and must--on the appropriations bill, she will be told she should have offered it on the authorization bill, that puts her in a position that is unfair. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield further for another question, if you offered this postcloture on previous occasions--it relates to a question that was asked yesterday--has the judgment about what is relevant changed here in this Chamber? The answer to that, in my judgment, is yes. In my judgment, this would have been relevant under almost any other set of circumstances. But I wonder if the Senator from Washington would agree with me that we should never, ever again--I will never, ever again allow a unanimous consent agreement on the floor of the Senate on an authorization bill of this type to decide that we will restrict ourselves to relevant amendments. If the definition of ``relevancy'' is reasonable and thoughtful, then that is just fine with me, but in this case it has not been. It is a travesty of justice that the Senator from Washington is not able to offer her amendment today. The same is true with concurrent receipt, and the same is true with base closings. So I would say there will not be a unanimous consent request that gets consent to say on the next authorization bill we will limit ourselves only to relevant amendments. It is quite clear now the definition of ``relevancy'' has changed in a way that disadvantages the Senator from Washington and others who want to offer amendments that are clearly relevant to this bill and have always been relevant to this bill, but now we are discovering, for some reason, it has been ruled nonrelevant. I think that is a travesty. I say to the Senator from Washington, would the Senator agree that she would want to join those of us who object to these further unanimous consent requests on future bills with respect to relevancy, if this is the way ``relevancy,'' if this is the way ``relevant'' is going to be defined here in the Senate?