Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, the Rural Health Care Fairness and Medicare Equity Act, that will help to make Medicare reimbursement more fair and equitable for rural and small urban hospitals and physicians. I am pleased to be joined in introducing this bill by Senator Burns. First, let me take a few minutes to describe some of the challenges facing rural health care systems and why I feel it is critical for the Senate to act now to reduce the inequities in Medicare funding between rural and urban providers. Rural America depends on its small town hospitals, physicians and nurses, nursing homes, emergency ambulance services, and other members of our rural health care system. And because of past cuts in Medicare reimbursement, plus the historical unfairness in Medicare payments, these vital services are in jeopardy. Fortunately, Congress acted in 1999 and again in 2000 to address some of the cuts that turned out to have a larger impact than intended. However, additional legislation is still needed to improve Medicare reimbursement for health care providers in order to stabilize the Medicare program and ensure that beneficiaries, especially in rural areas, will continue to have access to their local hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, home health, and other services. Many small rural hospitals in particular serve as the anchor for the full range of health care services in their communities, from ambulatory to long-term care. Medicare is the single most significant payer for services at these hospitals, and as such, it has an impact on the whole community. Part of the problem in North Dakota is simply demographics: North Dakota's population is the fifth oldest in the Nation, and about two- thirds of North Dakota's 103,000 Medicare beneficiaries live in rural areas. In addition, North Dakota's population--and the population of many rural states in our Nation's Heartland--is shrinking daily. In fact, in 13 of North Dakota's counties, there were 20 or fewer births for the entire county in 2001. Admissions to rural hospitals have dropped by a drastic 60 percent in the last two decades, and those patients who do remain tend to be older, poorer, and sicker. This means that rural hospitals tend to be disproportionately dependent upon Medicare reimbursement, to the extent that Medicare accounts for 75 to 80 percent of the revenue for some rural hospitals. Obviously, given this reality, Medicare reimbursement has a major impact on the financial health of rural hospitals. Another part of the problem is that Medicare has historically reimbursed urban health care providers at a much higher rate than their rural counterparts. North Dakota Medicare beneficiaries pay the exact same Medicare payroll taxes and premiums as beneficiaries elsewhere but receive less benefit from the Medicare program. Medicare beneficiaries in North Dakota receive an average of $4,458 in Medicare benefits. This is $632 less than the national average spending per Medicare beneficiary of $5,490, and $5,500 less than the spending for Medicare beneficiaries in Washington, DC. Moreover, most North Dakotans do not even have the option of Medicare+Choice plans because Medicare reimbursement for these plans is so low in rural areas that they are not offered. As a result of the skewed Medicare formula, North Dakota hospitals are reimbursed significantly less than hospitals of similar size and type elsewhere in the country. For instance, North Dakota hospitals are reimbursed as much as $2,000 less for a Medicare beneficiary with heart failure compared to hospitals of a similar size and mission in Minnesota, New York and California. More specifically, for example, St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, North Dakota is paid about $4,000 for a heart failure patient. A similar sized hospital, with a similar mission, would be paid $5,900 in California, $6,500 in New York, and $6,800 in Minneapolis, MN for caring for the same patient. Likewise, a similar payment inequity exists for physicians. For example, a physician in Beulah, ND is paid about $46 by Medicare for an office visit, while a doctor in San Francisco is paid $63 for a comparable office visit. A physician who inserts a pacemaker in a patient in New York City is paid about $646, but a doctor who performs the exact same procedure in Fargo, ND is paid only $481, about a quarter less. This inequity in Medicare reimbursement has real consequences for hospitals and clinics: They have to reduce services, have greater difficulty recruiting staff, are less able to make capital improvements, and struggle to give their patients access to the latest innovations in medical care. The bill I am introducing today, the Rural Health Care Fairness and Medicare Equity Act, would address the rural inequity in Medicare reimbursement in five ways. First, this bill would equalize the ``standardized payment'' which forms the basis for Medicare's reimbursement to hospitals. You would think something called the ``standardized payment'' would already be standard, but the fact is that hospitals in rural and small urban areas, including all of North Dakota, receive a smaller standardized payment than large urban hospitals. This bill would raise all hospitals up to the same standardized payment. The fiscal year 2003 Omnibus Appropriations bill enacted by Congress earlier this year takes a step in the right direction by equalizing this base payment for the last six months of this fiscal year, but my bill would make this equalization permanent. Second, my bill would create a wage index floor for the hospitals in this country with the very lowest wage indexes. The current wage index, which is an important factor in a hospital's total Medicare reimbursement, is based on an antiquated theory that it costs more to hire hospital staff in urban areas than it does in rural areas. That may have been true once, but it is no longer true today. Today, hospitals in North Dakota are competing with hospitals in Minnesota, Chicago and elsewhere for the same doctors and nurses, and they have to pay competitive wages in order to recruit staff. However, their low wage index has the effect of limiting the salaries that many rural and small urban hospitals can afford to pay their staff. By creating a floor, we would at least level the playing field a bit for hospitals with a wage index under 0.85. Third, this bill would reduce the importance of the wage index in factoring a hospital's total Medicare reimbursement. The current ``labor market share'' of 71.1 percent overstates the actual amount that hospitals in North Dakota and nationwide pay for labor. For instance, in North Dakota, a hospital in Bismarck has a labor market share of 58 percent, while a small rural hospital in Cando, ND has a labor market share of 55 percent. For hospitals in North Dakota and other states that already have a low wage index this overstatement of labor costs magnifies the reimbursement inequity. My bill would set the labor market share at 62 percent, which more closely reflects what the correct proportion should be. However, hospitals that would be adversely affected by this change would be held harmless. In addition, this legislation creates alternative criteria for some hospitals to appeal to the Medicare program for a higher wage index. Hospitals currently can qualify for reclassification to an area with a higher wage index if they can demonstrate that they are proximate to the area to which they seek to be reclassified and pay similar wages or have a similar patient case-mix. The current reclassification process has been used predominantly in areas with high population density as a way for hospitals to increase their Medicare reimbursement. According to a GAO study last year, two-thirds of all hospitals that are able to reclassify are in two areas--California and the northeast. Unfortunately, however, many rural and small urban hospitals located in states with a large land base and lots of distance between communities largely have not been able to take advantage of the reclassification process because they cannot meet the proximity criteria. This is the case even though, despite the longer distances between communities, hospitals are still competing against each other to recruit nurses and other staff. To address this concern, my bill would create an alternative reclassification process for hospitals in sparsely populated states with large distances between metropolitan areas that do not meet the current proximity criteria but do meet the other reclassification criteria. Finally, my legislation would establish a floor of 1.00 for the physician work component of the Medicare physician payment system. The Medicare program currently adjusts physician payments based on a ``geographic practice cost index'' that is intended to reflect regional cost-of-living differences. The result has been that physicians in rural areas are generally reimbursed less by Medicare for providing the same exact level of care as doctors in urban areas. Since rural medical practices tend to serve higher proportions of Medicare beneficiaries, they are doubly impacted by this payment inequity. As many of my colleagues know, it is already very difficult to recruit physicians to rural underserved areas. In fact, many small towns in my State are increasingly relying on foreign physicians working in the country under J-1 visas because they are unable to recruit American physicians. I am very concerned that the disparity in Medicare reimbursement for doctors provides yet another reason for physicians to decline to serve in rural areas. By establishing a floor of 1.00 for the work geographic practice cost index, this legislation will ensure that doctors' work in rural areas would at least be valued at the national average. However, it would still allow for payments higher than the national average for physicians serving in areas with a high cost of living. In closing, I think we as a nation need to acknowledge that a strong health care system is an important part of our rural infrastructure. Over the years, we have determined that rural electric service, rural telephone service, an interstate highway system through rural areas, and rural mail delivery, to name a few services, make us a better, more unified nation. We need to make the same determination in support of our rural health care system, and I will be fighting for policies, such as those reflected in this legislation, that reflect rural health care as a strong national priority. I encourage my colleagues to join Senator Burns and me in cosponsoring this bill.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation, the Rural Health Care Fairness and Medicare Equity Act, that will help to make Medicare reimbursement more fair and equitable for rural and small urban hospitals and physicians. I am pleased to be joined in introducing this bill by Senator Burns. First, let me take a few minutes to describe some of the challenges facing rural health care systems and why I feel it is critical for the Senate to act now to reduce the inequities in Medicare funding between rural and urban providers. Rural America depends on its small town hospitals, physicians and nurses, nursing homes, emergency ambulance services, and other members of our rural health care system. And because of past cuts in Medicare reimbursement, plus the historical unfairness in Medicare payments, these vital services are in jeopardy. Fortunately, Congress acted in 1999 and again in 2000 to address some of the cuts that turned out to have a larger impact than intended. However, additional legislation is still needed to improve Medicare reimbursement for health care providers in order to stabilize the Medicare program and ensure that beneficiaries, especially in rural areas, will continue to have access to their local hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, home health, and other services. Many small rural hospitals in particular serve as the anchor for the full range of health care services in their communities, from ambulatory to long-term care. Medicare is the single most significant payer for services at these hospitals, and as such, it has an impact on the whole community. Part of the problem in North Dakota is simply demographics: North Dakota's population is the fifth oldest in the Nation, and about two- thirds of North Dakota's 103,000 Medicare beneficiaries live in rural areas. In addition, North Dakota's population--and the population of many rural states in our Nation's Heartland--is shrinking daily. In fact, in 13 of North Dakota's counties, there were 20 or fewer births for the entire county in 2001. Admissions to rural hospitals have dropped by a drastic 60 percent in the last two decades, and those patients who do remain tend to be older, poorer, and sicker. This means that rural hospitals tend to be disproportionately dependent upon Medicare reimbursement, to the extent that Medicare accounts for 75 to 80 percent of the revenue for some rural hospitals. Obviously, given this reality, Medicare reimbursement has a major impact on the financial health of rural hospitals. Another part of the problem is that Medicare has historically reimbursed urban health care providers at a much higher rate than their rural counterparts. North Dakota Medicare beneficiaries pay the exact same Medicare payroll taxes and premiums as beneficiaries elsewhere but receive less benefit from the Medicare program. Medicare beneficiaries in North Dakota receive an average of $4,458 in Medicare benefits. This is $632 less than the national average spending per Medicare beneficiary of $5,490, and $5,500 less than the spending for Medicare beneficiaries in Washington, DC. Moreover, most North Dakotans do not even have the option of Medicare+Choice plans because Medicare reimbursement for these plans is so low in rural areas that they are not offered. As a result of the skewed Medicare formula, North Dakota hospitals are reimbursed significantly less than hospitals of similar size and type elsewhere in the country. For instance, North Dakota hospitals are reimbursed as much as $2,000 less for a Medicare beneficiary with heart failure compared to hospitals of a similar size and mission in Minnesota, New York and California. More specifically, for example, St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, North Dakota is paid about $4,000 for a heart failure patient. A similar sized hospital, with a similar mission, would be paid $5,900 in California, $6,500 in New York, and $6,800 in Minneapolis, MN for caring for the same patient. Likewise, a similar payment inequity exists for physicians. For example, a physician in Beulah, ND is paid about $46 by Medicare for an office visit, while a doctor in San Francisco is paid $63 for a comparable office visit. A physician who inserts a pacemaker in a patient in New York City is paid about $646, but a doctor who performs the exact same procedure in Fargo, ND is paid only $481, about a quarter less. This inequity in Medicare reimbursement has real consequences for hospitals and clinics: They have to reduce services, have greater difficulty recruiting staff, are less able to make capital improvements, and struggle to give their patients access to the latest innovations in medical care. The bill I am introducing today, the Rural Health Care Fairness and Medicare Equity Act, would address the rural inequity in Medicare reimbursement in five ways. First, this bill would equalize the ``standardized payment'' which forms the basis for Medicare's reimbursement to hospitals. You would think something called the ``standardized payment'' would already be standard, but the fact is that hospitals in rural and small urban areas, including all of North Dakota, receive a smaller standardized payment than large urban hospitals. This bill would raise all hospitals up to the same standardized payment. The fiscal year 2003 Omnibus Appropriations bill enacted by Congress earlier this year takes a step in the right direction by equalizing this base payment for the last six months of this fiscal year, but my bill would make this equalization permanent. Second, my bill would create a wage index floor for the hospitals in this country with the very lowest wage indexes. The current wage index, which is an important factor in a hospital's total Medicare reimbursement, is based on an antiquated theory that it costs more to hire hospital staff in urban areas than it does in rural areas. That may have been true once, but it is no longer true today. Today, hospitals in North Dakota are competing with hospitals in Minnesota, Chicago and elsewhere for the same doctors and nurses, and they have to pay competitive wages in order to recruit staff. However, their low wage index has the effect of limiting the salaries that many rural and small urban hospitals can afford to pay their staff. By creating a floor, we would at least level the playing field a bit for hospitals with a wage index under 0.85. Third, this bill would reduce the importance of the wage index in factoring a hospital's total Medicare reimbursement. The current ``labor market share'' of 71.1 percent overstates the actual amount that hospitals in North Dakota and nationwide pay for labor. For instance, in North Dakota, a hospital in Bismarck has a labor market share of 58 percent, while a small rural hospital in Cando, ND has a labor market share of 55 percent. For hospitals in North Dakota and other states that already have a low wage index this overstatement of labor costs magnifies the reimbursement inequity. My bill would set the labor market share at 62 percent, which more closely reflects what the correct proportion should be. However, hospitals that would be adversely affected by this change would be held harmless. In addition, this legislation creates alternative criteria for some hospitals to appeal to the Medicare program for a higher wage index. Hospitals currently can qualify for reclassification to an area with a higher wage index if they can demonstrate that they are proximate to the area to which they seek to be reclassified and pay similar wages or have a similar patient case-mix. The current reclassification process has been used predominantly in areas with high population density as a way for hospitals to increase their Medicare reimbursement. According to a GAO study last year, two-thirds of all hospitals that are able to reclassify are in two areas--California and the northeast. Unfortunately, however, many rural and small urban hospitals located in states with a large land base and lots of distance between communities largely have not been able to take advantage of the reclassification process because they cannot meet the proximity criteria. This is the case even though, despite the longer distances between communities, hospitals are still competing against each other to recruit nurses and other staff. To address this concern, my bill would create an alternative reclassification process for hospitals in sparsely populated states with large distances between metropolitan areas that do not meet the current proximity criteria but do meet the other reclassification criteria. Finally, my legislation would establish a floor of 1.00 for the physician work component of the Medicare physician payment system. The Medicare program currently adjusts physician payments based on a ``geographic practice cost index'' that is intended to reflect regional cost-of-living differences. The result has been that physicians in rural areas are generally reimbursed less by Medicare for providing the same exact level of care as doctors in urban areas. Since rural medical practices tend to serve higher proportions of Medicare beneficiaries, they are doubly impacted by this payment inequity. As many of my colleagues know, it is already very difficult to recruit physicians to rural underserved areas. In fact, many small towns in my State are increasingly relying on foreign physicians working in the country under J-1 visas because they are unable to recruit American physicians. I am very concerned that the disparity in Medicare reimbursement for doctors provides yet another reason for physicians to decline to serve in rural areas. By establishing a floor of 1.00 for the work geographic practice cost index, this legislation will ensure that doctors' work in rural areas would at least be valued at the national average. However, it would still allow for payments higher than the national average for physicians serving in areas with a high cost of living. In closing, I think we as a nation need to acknowledge that a strong health care system is an important part of our rural infrastructure. Over the years, we have determined that rural electric service, rural telephone service, an interstate highway system through rural areas, and rural mail delivery, to name a few services, make us a better, more unified nation. We need to make the same determination in support of our rural health care system, and I will be fighting for policies, such as those reflected in this legislation, that reflect rural health care as a strong national priority. I encourage my colleagues to join Senator Burns and me in cosponsoring this bill.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this morning, my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, has introduced a piece of legislation I am an original cosponsor of. I want to make a point about the legislation. The legislation deals with the freedom of the American people to travel in the country of Cuba. I want to talk about that just for a moment. I support that legislation. The legislation has nothing to do with supporting Fidel Castro. We do not support Fidel Castro. It has nothing to do with making life easier for Fidel Castro. This issue is not about Fidel Castro; it is about the American people. Ninety miles off our shores sits a country ruled by communists, a communist government run by Fidel Castro. We have a communist government in the country of China, with 1.3 billion people half way around the globe. We have a communist government in the country of Vietnam. I have visited both. In both of those countries, we have an American Chamber of Commerce. They are doing business in those countries. We have engaged in trade and tourism. People travel there. People do business there. Why? Because our country thinks engagement is the right way to move these communist countries in the right direction toward greater personal freedom and greater liberty for the people of China and Vietnam. But Cuba is 90 miles off the coast of Florida, and we are told that Cuba is different. Instead of engagement being constructive for Cuba, we are told a 40-year embargo, which has not worked, should be retained. That embargo includes not only an embargo on trade with Cuba, but it also includes a restriction on the American people's ability to travel to Cuba. And the restriction is so absurd and so byzantine, here is what it has provoked. I had a hearing on this about a year and a half ago. We have people down in the Treasury Department who are spending their days, with taxpayers' money, tracking Americans who have traveled to Cuba, so they can levy a civil fine on those Americans. Let me tell you of one: A retired school teacher in Illinois. She is a cyclist, loves to bicycle. She answered an ad in a cycling magazine and signed up for a 10-day cycling trip in Cuba. This retired school teacher--I hope she won't mind me saying, a little, old, retired schoolteacher--from Illinois, bicycles in Cuba for 10 days with a cycling group, organized by a Canadian cycling company, and she gets back to this country only to receive in the mail a notice by the U.S. Treasury Department that she has been fined $9,600 for traveling in Cuba. She would not be fined for traveling in China, a communist country. She would not be fined for traveling in Vietnam, a communist country. But she is fined for traveling in Cuba. Or do you want one better? How about the guy whose dad died, who was a Cuban citizen who came to this country, and the last thing he wanted was for his ashes to be taken back to Cuba and spread on Cuban soil. So his son did that. But guess what? That son gets caught in the net of the U.S. Treasury Department, because at a time when we are worried about terrorism, we have people down at the Treasury Department who are chasing retired school teachers and sons of deceased American citizens who used to live in Cuba who want to take their parents' ashes back to Cuba. We have people down there spending the taxpayers' dollars and their time, their effort, and energy to see if we can't levy a civil fine against Americans who travel in Cuba. My colleague, Senator Enzi, has introduced legislation, with myself and others, to say it is not hurting Fidel Castro by limiting the freedom and choice of the American people to travel in Cuba. Cuba and the Cuban people would be much better off with additional travel by Americans and expanded trade. The same circumstances that lead people to believe that engagement with China and Vietnam is helpful ought to understand that it would be helpful with Cuba as well. I have been to Cuba. I have visited with the dissidents. Frankly, they believe the embargo is counterproductive, and they believe lifting the embargo and the travel restrictions would be helpful to their cause. Fidel Castro is a Communist and a dictator. What he has done in recent weeks is appalling to me. He has thrown people in jail, dissidents, for what they have said and what they think. He has executed several people in recent weeks who attempted to allow others to escape. Shame on him. But it makes no sense for us to continue a policy that is counterproductive. Again, talk to the dissidents in Cuba and they will tell you that allowing people to travel to Cuba and allowing our family farmers to sell grain to Cuba is constructive. We are finally for the first time able to sell some products into the Cuban marketplace because I and then former Senator John Ashcroft, now Attorney General, offered legislation that opened that embargo of 40 years that did not work, and for the first time in 40 years, 22 train carloads of dried peas left North Dakota to go to the Cuban market, purchased by the Cubans. Our farmers for the first time in 42 years sold some food to Cuba. That makes good sense. We should never use food as a weapon. Travel is the same circumstance. Limiting the freedom of the American people makes no sense to me. The Enzi bill, which I am proud to cosponsor, moves in the direction of eliminating that limitation on travel by the American people.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this morning, my colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, has introduced a piece of legislation I am an original cosponsor of. I want to make a point about the legislation. The legislation deals with the freedom of the American people to travel in the country of Cuba. I want to talk about that just for a moment. I support that legislation. The legislation has nothing to do with supporting Fidel Castro. We do not support Fidel Castro. It has nothing to do with making life easier for Fidel Castro. This issue is not about Fidel Castro; it is about the American people. Ninety miles off our shores sits a country ruled by communists, a communist government run by Fidel Castro. We have a communist government in the country of China, with 1.3 billion people half way around the globe. We have a communist government in the country of Vietnam. I have visited both. In both of those countries, we have an American Chamber of Commerce. They are doing business in those countries. We have engaged in trade and tourism. People travel there. People do business there. Why? Because our country thinks engagement is the right way to move these communist countries in the right direction toward greater personal freedom and greater liberty for the people of China and Vietnam. But Cuba is 90 miles off the coast of Florida, and we are told that Cuba is different. Instead of engagement being constructive for Cuba, we are told a 40-year embargo, which has not worked, should be retained. That embargo includes not only an embargo on trade with Cuba, but it also includes a restriction on the American people's ability to travel to Cuba. And the restriction is so absurd and so byzantine, here is what it has provoked. I had a hearing on this about a year and a half ago. We have people down in the Treasury Department who are spending their days, with taxpayers' money, tracking Americans who have traveled to Cuba, so they can levy a civil fine on those Americans. Let me tell you of one: A retired school teacher in Illinois. She is a cyclist, loves to bicycle. She answered an ad in a cycling magazine and signed up for a 10-day cycling trip in Cuba. This retired school teacher--I hope she won't mind me saying, a little, old, retired schoolteacher--from Illinois, bicycles in Cuba for 10 days with a cycling group, organized by a Canadian cycling company, and she gets back to this country only to receive in the mail a notice by the U.S. Treasury Department that she has been fined $9,600 for traveling in Cuba. She would not be fined for traveling in China, a communist country. She would not be fined for traveling in Vietnam, a communist country. But she is fined for traveling in Cuba. Or do you want one better? How about the guy whose dad died, who was a Cuban citizen who came to this country, and the last thing he wanted was for his ashes to be taken back to Cuba and spread on Cuban soil. So his son did that. But guess what? That son gets caught in the net of the U.S. Treasury Department, because at a time when we are worried about terrorism, we have people down at the Treasury Department who are chasing retired school teachers and sons of deceased American citizens who used to live in Cuba who want to take their parents' ashes back to Cuba. We have people down there spending the taxpayers' dollars and their time, their effort, and energy to see if we can't levy a civil fine against Americans who travel in Cuba. My colleague, Senator Enzi, has introduced legislation, with myself and others, to say it is not hurting Fidel Castro by limiting the freedom and choice of the American people to travel in Cuba. Cuba and the Cuban people would be much better off with additional travel by Americans and expanded trade. The same circumstances that lead people to believe that engagement with China and Vietnam is helpful ought to understand that it would be helpful with Cuba as well. I have been to Cuba. I have visited with the dissidents. Frankly, they believe the embargo is counterproductive, and they believe lifting the embargo and the travel restrictions would be helpful to their cause. Fidel Castro is a Communist and a dictator. What he has done in recent weeks is appalling to me. He has thrown people in jail, dissidents, for what they have said and what they think. He has executed several people in recent weeks who attempted to allow others to escape. Shame on him. But it makes no sense for us to continue a policy that is counterproductive. Again, talk to the dissidents in Cuba and they will tell you that allowing people to travel to Cuba and allowing our family farmers to sell grain to Cuba is constructive. We are finally for the first time able to sell some products into the Cuban marketplace because I and then former Senator John Ashcroft, now Attorney General, offered legislation that opened that embargo of 40 years that did not work, and for the first time in 40 years, 22 train carloads of dried peas left North Dakota to go to the Cuban market, purchased by the Cubans. Our farmers for the first time in 42 years sold some food to Cuba. That makes good sense. We should never use food as a weapon. Travel is the same circumstance. Limiting the freedom of the American people makes no sense to me. The Enzi bill, which I am proud to cosponsor, moves in the direction of eliminating that limitation on travel by the American people.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, on Thursday of next week, U.S. officials will sign a trade agreement with Singapore. It will be the first free trade agreement that is negotiated under so-called fast track. Fast track, incidentally, is a procedure that the Senate adopted in a Byzantine way. They did it without my vote, but enough Senators did it so that we have a fast-track procedure, which is a guarantee that your trade negotiators can go overseas, go in a closed room, close the door, keep the public out, and then you reach a negotiation with another country. When you bring it back to the Senate, we will agree that none of us will be able to offer any amendment at any time. What we have said is, bring us a straitjacket so we can put it on and we can all grin. It makes no sense. That is what the Senate has done. So now we will have a free trade agreement coming back to the Senate, the first one under the so-called fast-track procedure, and it is done with the country of Singapore. Let me read what is in the trade agreement, just one piece. There are many, and I will talk about them in future days. All of this is cloaked in language that is hard to understand, but the implications are not hard to understand because it is related to American jobs. It all relates to waving goodbye to American manufacturing jobs. Article 32, treatment of certain products, under chapter 3: A party shall consider a good listed in annex 2 when imported into its territory from the territory of another port to be an originating good. Within 6 months after entry into force of the agreement, the parties shall meet to explore the expansion of the product coverage of annex 2. This sounds like six or eight people sitting around drinking, but these are pretty smart people who have reached a trade agreement. This is the way they write it: A party shall consider a good listed in annex 2 when imported into its territory from the territory of another party to be an originating good. What does that mean? What that means is that, in the circumstances of a free trade agreement with Singapore, products such as electronics, semiconductors, computers, telecommunications equipment, cell phones, fiber cables, optical cables, photocopy equipment, medical instruments, appliances, a wide range of high-tech products can come in through the free trade agreement with Singapore, even if they are not produced there. If they are produced elsewhere, they come through Singapore and come into this country under a free trade agreement. It is fascinating to me that in the last 12 years we have lost 2 million jobs. I am not talking about decreasing the rate of growth of jobs. This country has lost over 2 million jobs. We are off negotiating new trade agreements--and, incidentally, proposing new fiscal policies that will exacerbate the loss of jobs with huge Federal deficits--and we say to other countries, by the way, we will give you a special deal. We don't care much about providing basic protection of fair competition for America's domestic manufacturers. We will give you a special deal. The special deal is this, Singapore: You can move goods through Singapore, high-tech goods, the product of high-skilled labor, good jobs. You can move them through Singapore through a free trade agreement into the United States and displace American jobs. That is what this says. In every single circumstance we have negotiated trade agreements-- United States-Canada, NAFTA, the WTO--in agreement after agreement, we have said to American workers and companies producing goods, we want you to compete with others overseas that don't have to meet any basic standards. It doesn't matter if the country will not allow them to organize as workers, if they don't have worker rights, if they hire kids, work them 16 hours a day, pay them 16 cents an hour. That doesn't matter. They should be able to produce those products, these agreements say, and run them through Singapore, some other country, run them through Mexico, for that matter, and move them into Toledo and Pittsburgh and Bismarck and Los Angeles and Pierre, and then have American workers and businesses compete with that labor. What does it mean? It means we can't compete. Is there an American worker who decides they can compete against 16-cents-an-hour labor performed by a 14-year-old who works 16 hours a day in a plant where they don't have basic safety standards, where they can pump pollution into the air and water; is there anybody who can compete with that? The answer is no. And they should not be expected to. This Singapore free trade agreement is coming here under fast track. We cannot offer amendments. There isn't one single parliamentary step that will be missed as we move to try to consider this. When they sign this next Thursday--and they certainly should not sign it with this provision in it; this is a loophole big enough to drive a semi truck through--let them understand that there will be no unanimous consent agreement for anything under any circumstance at any step of the way to get this considered by the Senate. They will get it considered, no doubt, and no doubt those Senators who decided they would like to put themselves in the straitjacket and prevent themselves from offering an amendment--God forbid they should try to correct this--they will vote for it. And no doubt the Senate will ratify this free trade agreement. I am just serving notice that it is going to take some time. We will have some lengthy discussion about it. There is no justification, in my judgment, for this kind of nonsense. I will come to the floor in a day or so to also talk about China. We did a bilateral trade agreement with them 2 years ago that has not meant a thing. It is like spitting in a high wind. They agreed to everything so they could join the World Trade Organization. We have a $103 billion trade deficit with China. Our jobs have been exported. The fact is, China has not done what they said they would do in the bilateral agreement. And nobody seems to care. We have all these bureaucrats running around, most of them negotiating incompetent trade agreements. We have a few of them down at the Department of Commerce who are supposed to enforce the trade agreements. Take a look at what we have. We have this miserable skeleton of an enforcement unit. We have no more than a dozen people who are supposed to enforce the trade agreements in China. If you gave them a pop quiz, they would not have the foggiest idea of what is in the agreements, let alone enforce them. I think we have a growing scandal with the imbalance in Chinese trade, especially since we had a bilateral agreement 2 years ago with them and they have complied with none of it. Madam President, I want to serve notice on the Singapore free trade agreement that there is a lot to fix in this agreement. It doesn't mean a thing when people such as I talk about this because our trade negotiators don't care; they don't see; they are in their little cocoon, and they will negotiate, and the success of their life is reaching an agreement--even if it is bad. They did a bad agreement with Canada, with NAFTA, and with the WTO, and a bad agreement with Singapore. Apparently, they have not done a bad one with Chile yet because we didn't know where they stood on Iraq. The fact is, it is time for them to stop doing bad agreements and time for them, on behalf of American workers and companies, to say we demand and insist on fair trade. That certainly will not be the case with respect to the agreements we expect in future free trade deals, with respect to labor protections and a whole range of issues in the Singapore agreement.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise today to speak about a bill, the Railroad Competition Act of 2003, which, along with Senators Burns, Rockefeller, Craig, Baucus, Coleman, and Johnson, I hope will introduce a bit of competition and better service in our railroad industry. The truth is that our rail system is completely broken; deregulation has only led to a system dominated by regional monopolies and both shippers and consumers are paying the price. Since the supposed deregulation of the rail industry in 1980, the number of major Class I railroads has been allowed to decline from approximately 42 to only 4 major U.S. railroads today. Four mega- railroads overwhelmingly dominate railroad traffic, generating 95 percent of the gross ton-miles and 94 percent of the revenues, controlling 90 percent of all U.S. coal movement; 70 percent of all grain movement and 88 percent of all originated chemical movement. This drastic level of consolidation has left rail customers with only two major carriers operating in the East and two in the West, and has far exceeded the industry's need to minimize unit operating costs. But consolidation has not happened in a vacuum. Over the years, regulators have systematically adopted policies that so narrowly interpret the procompetitive provisions of the 1980 statute that railroads are essentially protected from ever having to compete with each other. As a consequence rail users to have no power to choose among carriers either in terminal areas where switching infrastructure makes such choices feasible, nor can rail users even get a rate quoted to them over a ``bottleneck'' segment of the monopoly system. The negative results of this approach have been astonishing in North Dakota. It costs $2,600 to move one rail car of wheat to Minneapolis, approximately 400 miles. Yet for a similar 400 mile move between Minneapolis and Chicago, it costs only $918 to deliver that car. Not only is that totally unfair to the captive farmer, but in the long run it is unsustainable. It is actually $500 per car cheaper to ship a carload of corn from Iowa to the PNW, through North Dakota, than it is if that carload were to originate in North Dakota. The farmer in Iowa pays $2,900, while the farmer in North Dakota is charged $3,400. The same pattern is true with shipments going to the Gulf of Mexico. Minot, ND is 1,732 miles from the gulf whereas the distance to the gulf from Herman, MN is 1,430 miles, a difference of only 332 miles. But when it comes to paying the shipping costs the farmer in Minot pays $1,630 more per car because Minot is just isolated enough that it cannot take advantage of trucks and barges the way Herman, MN, can meaning the price of being captive is $1,600 per carload from central North Dakota. Another example is Hastings, NE. Hastings is 1,700 miles from the Pacific Northwest, PNW, grain markets in Portland, OR. But, if an elevator from Hastings wants to ship a carload of wheat to the PNW they will pay $4,316. Meanwhile, Minot, ND, is 1,300 miles from Portland, 450 miles closer than Hastings, NE, yet the farmer in Minot will have to pay $4,442 to ship the same carload of wheat to the PNW, a surcharge of $126 for a shipment that is shorter by 400 miles. How has this happened? Since the deregulation of the railroad industry, it has been the responsibility of the Interstate Commerce Commission, later renamed, the Surface Transportation Board, to make sure that the pro-competitive intent of the law was being upheld. It is the STBs charge to protect captive shippers through ``regulated competition.'' In 1999 the GAO reported on how complicated it is for a shipper to get rate relief under the ``regulated competition'' approach at the STB. The GAO found that this process takes up to 500 days to decide, and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is hardly a rate relief process, but it is the only relief shippers have under the law. According to the North Dakota Public Service Commission ``while the Staggers Rail Act uses a revenue-to-variable cost ratio of 180 percent as a benchmark for reasonableness, North Dakota's rail rates on wheat often generate ratios of 270 to 400 percent. On an annual basis, North Dakota's farmers and grain shippers pay $50 to $100 million in excess freight rates [each year].'' The Railroad Competition Act of 2003 will seek to improve things by reaffirming the strong role the STB should play in protecting shippers by: clarifying national rail policy; requiring railroads to quote a rate of any given segment; facilitating terminal access and the ability to transfer goods among railroads in terminal areas; removing paper barriers to competition; capping filing fees; creating a Rail Customer Advocacy Office in the Department of Agriculture; designating Areas of Inadequate Rail Competition; and by making the rate relief process cheaper, faster and easier through a streamlined arbitration process. All Americans, whether they are farmers who need to ship their crops to market, businesses shipping factory goods, or consumers that buy the finished product, deserve to have a rail transportation system with prices that are fair. It is time for Congress to stand up for farmers, businesses, and consumers by making it very clear that the STB has to be a more aggressive defender of competition and reasonable rates.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise today to speak about a bill, the Railroad Competition Act of 2003, which, along with Senators Burns, Rockefeller, Craig, Baucus, Coleman, and Johnson, I hope will introduce a bit of competition and better service in our railroad industry. The truth is that our rail system is completely broken; deregulation has only led to a system dominated by regional monopolies and both shippers and consumers are paying the price. Since the supposed deregulation of the rail industry in 1980, the number of major Class I railroads has been allowed to decline from approximately 42 to only 4 major U.S. railroads today. Four mega- railroads overwhelmingly dominate railroad traffic, generating 95 percent of the gross ton-miles and 94 percent of the revenues, controlling 90 percent of all U.S. coal movement; 70 percent of all grain movement and 88 percent of all originated chemical movement. This drastic level of consolidation has left rail customers with only two major carriers operating in the East and two in the West, and has far exceeded the industry's need to minimize unit operating costs. But consolidation has not happened in a vacuum. Over the years, regulators have systematically adopted policies that so narrowly interpret the procompetitive provisions of the 1980 statute that railroads are essentially protected from ever having to compete with each other. As a consequence rail users to have no power to choose among carriers either in terminal areas where switching infrastructure makes such choices feasible, nor can rail users even get a rate quoted to them over a ``bottleneck'' segment of the monopoly system. The negative results of this approach have been astonishing in North Dakota. It costs $2,600 to move one rail car of wheat to Minneapolis, approximately 400 miles. Yet for a similar 400 mile move between Minneapolis and Chicago, it costs only $918 to deliver that car. Not only is that totally unfair to the captive farmer, but in the long run it is unsustainable. It is actually $500 per car cheaper to ship a carload of corn from Iowa to the PNW, through North Dakota, than it is if that carload were to originate in North Dakota. The farmer in Iowa pays $2,900, while the farmer in North Dakota is charged $3,400. The same pattern is true with shipments going to the Gulf of Mexico. Minot, ND is 1,732 miles from the gulf whereas the distance to the gulf from Herman, MN is 1,430 miles, a difference of only 332 miles. But when it comes to paying the shipping costs the farmer in Minot pays $1,630 more per car because Minot is just isolated enough that it cannot take advantage of trucks and barges the way Herman, MN, can meaning the price of being captive is $1,600 per carload from central North Dakota. Another example is Hastings, NE. Hastings is 1,700 miles from the Pacific Northwest, PNW, grain markets in Portland, OR. But, if an elevator from Hastings wants to ship a carload of wheat to the PNW they will pay $4,316. Meanwhile, Minot, ND, is 1,300 miles from Portland, 450 miles closer than Hastings, NE, yet the farmer in Minot will have to pay $4,442 to ship the same carload of wheat to the PNW, a surcharge of $126 for a shipment that is shorter by 400 miles. How has this happened? Since the deregulation of the railroad industry, it has been the responsibility of the Interstate Commerce Commission, later renamed, the Surface Transportation Board, to make sure that the pro-competitive intent of the law was being upheld. It is the STBs charge to protect captive shippers through ``regulated competition.'' In 1999 the GAO reported on how complicated it is for a shipper to get rate relief under the ``regulated competition'' approach at the STB. The GAO found that this process takes up to 500 days to decide, and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is hardly a rate relief process, but it is the only relief shippers have under the law. According to the North Dakota Public Service Commission ``while the Staggers Rail Act uses a revenue-to-variable cost ratio of 180 percent as a benchmark for reasonableness, North Dakota's rail rates on wheat often generate ratios of 270 to 400 percent. On an annual basis, North Dakota's farmers and grain shippers pay $50 to $100 million in excess freight rates [each year].'' The Railroad Competition Act of 2003 will seek to improve things by reaffirming the strong role the STB should play in protecting shippers by: clarifying national rail policy; requiring railroads to quote a rate of any given segment; facilitating terminal access and the ability to transfer goods among railroads in terminal areas; removing paper barriers to competition; capping filing fees; creating a Rail Customer Advocacy Office in the Department of Agriculture; designating Areas of Inadequate Rail Competition; and by making the rate relief process cheaper, faster and easier through a streamlined arbitration process. All Americans, whether they are farmers who need to ship their crops to market, businesses shipping factory goods, or consumers that buy the finished product, deserve to have a rail transportation system with prices that are fair. It is time for Congress to stand up for farmers, businesses, and consumers by making it very clear that the STB has to be a more aggressive defender of competition and reasonable rates.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, today I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Collins, in introducing legislation that would create the United States Consensus Council. This council would be a nonprofit, quasi-governmental entity. Its role would be to build agreements among stakeholders on legislative issues where there are diverse and conflicting views and bring these agreements back to Congress or other decisionmakers for action. We all talk about the benefit of working across party lines to develop consensus on a variety of policy issues. This bill would help to institutionalize this goal and provide ongoing support to Congress by bringing stakeholders to the table to resolve a wide range of difficult national issues. The North Dakota Consensus Council in my home State serves as a model for this national proposal. In North Dakota, the Consensus Council has helped to find common ground on the use of grasslands in the western part of the State, the structure of judgeships across the State, and flood mitigation efforts in the Red River Valley. By bringing together all of the interested parties, the North Dakota Consensus Council was able to find solutions to problems that had previously seemed insurmountable. Washington, DC, is ripe with opportunity for the same kind of consensus building and mediation. We can not only build on the experience of consensus building in North Dakota, but similar successes in Montana, Florida, Oregon, and many other States. The United States Consensus Council would bring people together and then help to develop recommendations. These recommendations would be advisory and would not circumvent any of the normal legislative requirements or processes. The board of directors would be appointed by the President and the bipartisan congressional leadership. The council would remain neutral on substantive policy matters. The council would focus on issues that are contentious or deadlocked, or they could be emerging issues where mediation could help to prevent later polarization. The council's role will be to design and conduct processes that lead to common ground on effective public policy for a particular issue. The council could be called upon to convene key stakeholders in face-to- face meetings over time to build agreements on complex issues. I have long been a supporter of building consensus and finding ways to reach compromise. I believe that this legislation could help the Congress and the administration to find that middle ground. There are so many important issues that get deadlocked in Washington, and this approach will help to break that logjam. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to move this bill through the process.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, I just had a chance to visit for a moment with the Senator from Nevada. I would like to be able to speak for 20 minutes between now and the time the vote occurs.

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I recall an article by David Broder some while ago. He is one of the thoughtful columnists in the Washington Post. I think perhaps he is considered the dean of thinkers in Washington, DC, who write regular columns. He said in the first sentence: I am going to commit class warfare--not because I want to, but because that is the only way I can describe what is happening. Let me not act as a volunteer to commit class warfare, but I will say some things that others who are in a habit of doing so will describe as class warfare. We have proposals to cut taxes before us. We have plans offered by those who support this budget that will say to those who make $1 million in income in this country that we want to give you an $80,000-a-year tax cut. That is what they are proposing if you are lucky enough to receive $1 million in annual income. And if you are, God bless you. I am sure you work hard for it. But if you are lucky enough to be in that category, the majority party plan says we think you should have an $80,000-a-year tax cut. If we say that, is that class warfare? Is that what it is called? It seems to me it is logical for us to ask a question. When you are deep in debt, should you be talking about giving the most affluent in this country another tax cut? They got a very large tax cut 2 years ago. Should you talk about another one that will go largely to the most affluent in the country? I don't think so. Let me go to the specifics. Everybody speaks in generalities. We use a lot of charts and we talk about the numbers on the charts. But we seldom go right to the resolution itself. We have a budget resolution before the Senate. It comes from a conference between the House and the Senate, which our side was not part of because the conference was not bipartisan. It was a conference of the Republicans in the House and in the Senate, deciding together what kind of a budget they wanted to bring to the House and Senate from that conference. Let me describe what they brought to the floor of the Senate. Here is what they propose. Ask yourself: Is this Republican economics, is this conservative values, or a conservative doctrine? It is not a part of a conservative doctrine with which I am familiar. On page 5, they say: (4) Deficits (on budget).--For purposes of the enforcement of this resolution, the amounts of the deficits (on-budget) are as follows: Fiscal year 2003: $512 billion. Fiscal year 2004: $558 billion. Fiscal year 2005, $487 billion. If I keep going to fiscal year 2013, there are very large budget deficits year after year after year. Does anybody care about that around here? Is there anyone who calls themselves a conservative who is willing to stand up and say this matters? No. The only thing you hear is the chanting from the other side that says you know what this is, this is a growth plan. Let me be the first to admit this is the financial fertilizer that promotes growth. The problem is it promotes growth in deficits and debt and nothing else. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reviewed this nonsense and said this is not a growth plan. This isn't going to promote growth in the economy. Don't take it from me because I belong to a political party. Take it from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. They say it is not a growth plan. Take it from 10 Nobel laureate economists. They say this is not a growth plan. My colleague from Florida just described a bipartisan op-ed piece in the New York Times. Former Senators Kerrey and Nunn; former Senator Rudman; former Treasury Secretary Rubin; former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker; former Commerce Secretary, Peter Peterson-- Republicans and Democrats alike--say this is not a growth plan. This is a serious problem for this country. We have people on the conservative side telling America let's spend money we do not have, often on things we don't need, and let's have the kids fighting the war come back and be saddled with the debt. This is fundamentally irresponsible. It is not a surprise then I am not going to vote for the conference report. This does not make sense. On page 5, for fiscal year 2003, they propose with this budget a $512 billion debt. Do you know what they will say? ``How on earth can you say that? We are not proposing $512 billion in debt.'' What they do is take the Social Security trust funds for that year and reduce this and say: Our debt is only in the $300 billion range. You can do that if you want to loot the Social Security trust fund and use those revenues for a purpose for which it is not intended. I guess you can do that, but how many people are you fooling in this country? What does the word ``trust'' mean? Is ``trust'' a forgotten word in this town, in this Chamber? They are the ones who say in the budget on which we will be voting that they want $512 billion in debt for fiscal year 2003 and $558 billion in 2004, and on and on. In fact, what they are also saying on page 6 is very interesting. I would just love for one of them to stand up and say: Sign me up for this, count me in, I am a big cheerleader; in fact, bring some pom-poms to the floor. We believe we ought to double the national debt from $6 trillion to $12 trillion. Sign us up. In fact, put on some sweaters. Put the letters on the sweaters: We are for higher debt; we are for doubling the debt; we are for giving tax cuts mostly going to upper-income people to increase Federal indebtedness. I would just like somebody to stand up and be honest about that. Just tell us that is what you are for. Instead, we get this nonsense: We are for a growth plan. Growth of what? The only thing you are growing is debt. Deny that. Then take a look at your resolution. Stand up with pages 5 and 6 and deny it. Do I hear anybody denying it? I guess not. I guess they understand page 5 and 6 is what they wrote because this was not a bipartisan conference. Democrats were not involved in writing this. It is what they wrote, page 5 and 6, let's double the Federal debt and decide it does not matter. I just do not understand this thinking. This is a remarkable country. In the McCullough book about John Adams, he writes about how John Adams used to write back to Abigail when he was posted in Europe as they were forming this new country of ours. He would plaintively ask Abigail in his letters: Where is the leadership going to come from? Where will the leadership be to help create this new country of ours? Who will be the leaders? Then he would say: There is really only us. There is just me, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Madison, Mason--just us, he would say. It turns out, with two centuries of hindsight, it was some of the greatest human talent ever assembled, and they created a remarkably strong democracy. It is important from time to time to ask the same question John Adams asked: Where is the leadership? Where is the leadership going to come from? Who will stand up and say: Let me lead; let me make tough choices? Regrettably, we do not see many leaders say that. My colleague, Senator Conrad, is one of those leaders. There are precious few others. Some of my colleagues who have stood up and fought valiantly to say this budget resolution will hurt this country, it will move this country deep in to debt, are willing to assume some leadership in saying that, but there are not enough in the Senate who want to say: Let me assume some leadership. There is not enough here. I regret that. This country is not going to move ahead by leaving some behind. In this plan, they say, we must increase defense spending, we must increase homeland defense spending, we must cut taxes deeply, and we will shrink all other domestic discretionary spending to pay for it. That is not a plan. What we are seeing in Iraq today is something quite remarkable, something that makes all of us enormously proud, first of all, of what our soldiers have done to liberate the Iraqi people. But then it bothers us a lot to see this looting all over the country of Iraq. That is what happens when you do not have civil order in a country, when there is no civil authority and no government. Government means essential functions. It means law enforcement. It means building schools and educating children. It means roads, providing for the common defense--that is what government is. So when people talk about let's just give very large tax cuts and we will just decide to shut everything else down, I say, yes, let's cut some spending, let's tighten our belts in the right way. But let's not decide in this country to provide a budget resolution to America that on page 5 and page 6 says at this moment in America when we are at war--the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism--when we have an economy that is sluggish, when we have so many difficulties, let's embark on an irresponsible fiscal policy that doubles the Federal debt and has budget deficits every year as far as the eye can see. As John Adams would ask: Where is the leadership? Where is the leadership to move this country responsibly toward the future of economic opportunity and growth and hope? When this war is over and the young men and women, sons and daughters of America, come home to their loved ones--and we hope and pray that is soon--we have to get about the business of taking care of business at home. We have an economy that is a mess. Those who make investments in our country, those who work for a living, those who build businesses-- all of them want to be American people who are confident about the future because our economy is all about confidence. If they are confident, then they do the activities that manifest that confidence. They take a trip, buy a car, buy a home, make a purchase, and the economy expands and new jobs are created. If they are not confident, they do exactly the opposite. This budget document takes us toward deep Federal debt, and deeper Federal deficits year by year. This is not a document that is responsible. This is not a document that is a growth document. This is a document that takes America backward, not forward. None of us here would come to the Chamber of the Senate and say, Let's have higher income taxes. But at the very least we ought to decide we should not have very large tax cuts at a time when we are doubling the Federal debt, at a time when we are at war in Iraq and at war against terrorism. The easiest lifting in American politics is by those who shuffle around saying: I am for tax cuts; it does not matter what the consequences are, I am for tax cuts. The consequences are, of course, to say let's do now what we want to do and have our kids pay for it. Let's have America's children bear the burden of the responsibility of this mistake. I think that is a horrible mistake. I wish very much I could come to the floor to support this budget. My colleague, Senator Conrad, made a persuasive argument earlier today. He used a great deal of charts. Let me use two of them. I mentioned what is on page 5 and 6. Here is the chart on debt. That is where it is headed, from $6 trillion to $12 trillion. That is not my number, that is on page 6 of the budget resolution. That is not my number, that is what the Republicans are proposing. I do not mean that just because they are proposing this, I am saying this is irresponsible. It would not matter to me who proposed it. If my side was proposing it, I would say it is irresponsible. It is a fiscal policy that does not add up, and everybody in this room knows it. There is debt every single year, unless you loot the Social Security trust fund. We can make a chart that is a little better than this if one takes the Social Security money and misuses it. But we keep the Social Security trust fund in a trust fund, where the word ``trust'' means something to everybody. This is what we have for 10 years. One can paint a barn with this red ink. Red ink is all we see. It is not a growth plan. The only thing that grows in this plan is debt and deficits, and that is why I am going to vote no. I appreciate the time my colleague has offered me to describe my strong feelings about what this budget will do to this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. About 15 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, today I am pleased to join my colleague, Senator Collins, in introducing legislation that would create the United States Consensus Council. This council would be a nonprofit, quasi-governmental entity. Its role would be to build agreements among stakeholders on legislative issues where there are diverse and conflicting views and bring these agreements back to Congress or other decisionmakers for action. We all talk about the benefit of working across party lines to develop consensus on a variety of policy issues. This bill would help to institutionalize this goal and provide ongoing support to Congress by bringing stakeholders to the table to resolve a wide range of difficult national issues. The North Dakota Consensus Council in my home State serves as a model for this national proposal. In North Dakota, the Consensus Council has helped to find common ground on the use of grasslands in the western part of the State, the structure of judgeships across the State, and flood mitigation efforts in the Red River Valley. By bringing together all of the interested parties, the North Dakota Consensus Council was able to find solutions to problems that had previously seemed insurmountable. Washington, DC, is ripe with opportunity for the same kind of consensus building and mediation. We can not only build on the experience of consensus building in North Dakota, but similar successes in Montana, Florida, Oregon, and many other States. The United States Consensus Council would bring people together and then help to develop recommendations. These recommendations would be advisory and would not circumvent any of the normal legislative requirements or processes. The board of directors would be appointed by the President and the bipartisan congressional leadership. The council would remain neutral on substantive policy matters. The council would focus on issues that are contentious or deadlocked, or they could be emerging issues where mediation could help to prevent later polarization. The council's role will be to design and conduct processes that lead to common ground on effective public policy for a particular issue. The council could be called upon to convene key stakeholders in face-to- face meetings over time to build agreements on complex issues. I have long been a supporter of building consensus and finding ways to reach compromise. I believe that this legislation could help the Congress and the administration to find that middle ground. There are so many important issues that get deadlocked in Washington, and this approach will help to break that logjam. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to move this bill through the process.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I necessarily missed last evening's vote on the nomination of Ross Swimmer to be the Special Trustee for American Indians because of a family obligation. However, had I been present, I would have opposed this nominee, as I did when his nomination was considered by the Committee on Indian Affairs, on which I serve. I would like to take a few moments to explain why I do not support this nomination. Ordinarily, I believe the President has the right to choose who will serve in his administration. The position of Special Trustee for American Indians is unique, however. Congress created the position of Special Trustee in 1994 in large part because of the historical failure of the Department of the Interior to live up to the Federal Government's trust responsibility to Native Americans. The Special Trustee was and is intended to be an advocate on behalf of tribes and individual Native Americans to ensure that those trust duties are met. In my view, Native Americans deserve someone in this position in whom they can have confidence. Regrettably, Mr. Swimmer is not that person. Many tribal leaders from my State have shared with me their very deep concern that Mr. Swimmer would not be an independent voice and advocate on behalf of Native Americans within the Department of the Interior. In fact, under previous administrations and in recent months, he has been an integral part of the Department of the Interior team that has sought to implement trust management reforms without the full support of and consultation with the Native Americans whose assets they manage. To many of my Native American constituents, this is akin to allowing the fox to guard the henhouse. Nevertheless, Mr. Swimmer has now been confirmed by a majority of the Senate to serve as Special Trustee for American Indians, and I wish him success in that position. He has made a commitment to me and others to consult with tribes in a timely and meaningful way, and I will certainly be working with Mr. Swimmer to ensure that is the case.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wanted to make a comment about what I have been reading this afternoon and hearing most of today about a process by which the budget conference is going to cobble together a compromise and bring it to the House and the Senate, with the prospect of having the Senate have its arms tied behind its back procedurally in order to accomplish a very large tax cut. Now, what I do not understand is this: We have an economy that everyone understands is in some significant trouble. We have a fiscal policy that does not add up. About 2 years ago, the President said he wanted a fiscal policy with a very large tax cut, $1.7 trillion. Some of us said: Well, what we ought to do is be a little careful and be a little bit conservative because we don't know what is going to happen in the future. The President said: No. What we have are budget surpluses as far as the eye can see, and we ought to give that money back. I said: I believe we ought to provide some tax cuts, but maybe we ought to be a little bit conservative. Who knows what is going to happen in the future. Well, the President won the day on that, and we had the tax cuts. And then we ran into a couple of problems: One, a recession; two, the terrorist attack of 9/11, which was devastating both with respect to loss of life and also this country's economy. Then we had the largest corporate scandals in this country's history. We had a pancaking or a flattening of the stock market, a collapsing of the technology bubble in the stock market. All of these things came to the same intersection at the same time and have caused enormous problems for this country's economy. Some people say none of that matters. The medicine is still the same no matter the circumstance. I submit, when your economy is sluggish, and people are concerned about the future, they don't have the kind of confidence you would expect about the future--confidence is, after all, what allows this economy to grow--that you ought to take a look at the fiscal policy and see if you can construct a policy that adds up. Let me describe where we are today. Two years ago, we had projections that we would have budget surpluses for the next decade--every year, big budget surpluses. Well, 2 years later, guess where we are. This year, we have a projected $460 billion budget deficit. Under this fiscal policy, this Government spends almost $1.5 billion a day more than it takes in-- every single day, 7 days a week. People say it does not matter. We send our sons and daughters off to war. And those brave souls have performed in a way that make all of us proud. But are we saying to them: ``Go fight this war and come back and we'll allow you to bear the burden of the costs. We will allow you to bear the burden of paying off the debt''. That is what this fiscal policy does. Some will say the budget deficit is only $300 billion. That is not true. One hundred sixty billion is the Social Security trust fund. That belongs in the trust fund. You can't use that to counter the deficit. Our budget deficit right now is $460 billion. What is the solution? The majority party says the solution is to cobble together a budget that looks like Disneyland to me in its construct, that says what we ought to do is have larger and larger tax cuts. Why? Because it is a growth policy. The only thing that is growing in this economy is the Federal debt. The budget that left the Senate--I will bet not many Senators know this--which had the lower tax cut number in it, $350 billion over the next 10 years, proposed on page 6 that at the end of 10 years we would have a $12.9 trillion debt. I wonder if people know that. Will it grow the economy? No, it is not going to grow the economy. This fiscal policy is going to grow the Federal debt, from just over $6 trillion to nearly $12 trillion in 10 years. I come from a small town, but we know how to add and subtract. That isn't progress, not for this country. What is the construction of all of this? The construction is to say, it is a troubled world, we need more defense spending, a lot more. Most Members have decided, yes, we should do that; it is a troubled world; we are threatened by terrorists; we need more spending to protect the homeland--homeland defense it is called, and most Members say yes; I say yes to both of those. So higher homeland security and defense spending, and then very large tax cuts, and then saying: Let's shrink the domestic discretionary spending; let's decide to shrink that. I was at one hearing today--one example of dozens--on shrinking spending: Let's cut spending for young American Indians going to tribal colleges to try to better themselves through education. That is what they propose. We will shrink spending for that. Does that make any sense? I told a story this morning about a young woman named Loretta-- someone I have been privileged to know. She grew up in a pretty troubled circumstance. She was shy, stuttered, had a baby out of wedlock, got into lots of trouble. She found her way back. This young woman went to a tribal college on an Indian reservation, got an education, had the support of an extended family for childcare and the kinds of things you can get support for when you are going to a tribal college on the Indian reservation. That young woman who started out in such a difficult situation is now called Doctor. She went to school. They called her a savage. She had a very troubled beginning. But now she is a Ph.D. Do tribal colleges work? Does it matter? Does it make sense? Is it an investment in life that makes sense? The answer is yes. So if the construct of the fiscal policy says, let's add for defense and homeland security, and we all agree to that, and let's have very big tax cuts, and then let's cut programs such as tribal colleges that give some of those young American Indians an opportunity, if that is the construct, I say this country is not investing smartly. I would much sooner provide an opportunity for those young kids to go to college than provide a tax cut, on average, which will be $80,000 a year for the American who earns $1 million a year in income. At a time when we have a $460 billion annual budget deficit--yes, it is that unless you take the Social Security trust fund and use it as it has been misused--we say we will just take this out of the hide of some programs that really help people. I don't think that makes any sense. By the way, we will have to do that in order to pay for very large tax cuts. That doesn't make sense either. I don't know what happened to conservatism. I thought being conservative meant that you did not want to see this runup in Federal budget deficits, you did not want to end up in 2013 with a $1.9 trillion Federal debt. Yet that is where we are headed. That is on page 6 of the budget report that enough of my colleagues voted for to send it on to the House. Coming back, it will be worse. Coming back, I guarantee you that on whatever page they list public indebtedness, it will be higher than $11.9 trillion, if they come out with the House number rather than the Senate number on tax cuts. I don't understand the rationale. We have Nobel laureates, some of the top business men and women, we have almost anybody who looks at this fiscal policy through a lens other than the rose-colored lens of politics saying: This is crazy. This doesn't make any sense. It doesn't add up. This fiscal policy is going to steer this country in a way that will prevent us from having economic growth. It is interesting to me that this fiscal policy is always described as the growth plan. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says this is not going to grow the economy. The only thing it is going to grow is the Federal debt, doubling it from $6 trillion to $12 trillion. I don't understand. And perhaps some will say: You don't understand; this is a new approach. But it is really not even new. Twenty years ago we did this. Then the fiscal policy was to say, let's double defense spending and cut taxes, and somehow it would produce more revenue and add up. The fact is, we ended up on the road to $6 trillion in additional indebtedness. Then, through a series of good fortunes, this country saw its economy begin to pick up steam once again, and we saw a whole series of things happen, with massive creation of new jobs and growth. Then we began finally to create budget surpluses. At that moment, very quickly eyes began to water; everybody began to salivate over the surpluses: What can we do with the budget surpluses? The President said: It is their money; it belongs to the American people--he is right about that--so the surplus should go back to the American people. But some said: Let's not lock in place a tax cut so large for 10 years that it would put our economy at risk. Never mind, he said. So now the question: What belongs to the people? The debt? At $1.5 billion a day, every single day, $1.5 billion more that we spend every day than we take in. It is unfathomable that we have seen this juxtaposition in American politics that those who say they are conservatives don't worry about the debt. But, of course, the evidence is quite to the contrary. I am perhaps limited by having taught economics for a couple of years. I always point out that although I taught economics, I have been able to overcome that experience. The fact is, the study of economics is not a science; it is an art. But we know enough about how this economy works to understand it works with respect to people's confidence. If the American people are confident about the future with respect to this economy, they do the things that manifest that confidence, and that is the expansion side of the business cycle. They buy a home, take a trip, buy a car, make a purchase, and you have the expansion side of the American business cycle. If, however, they are not confident about the future, they do exactly the opposite: They decide not to make the purchase; they postpone the trip; they don't buy the car; they don't buy the house. And that is the contraction side of the business cycle. It is all about confidence. The question raised by Nobel laureates and many others, and op-ed pieces, in fact, in the last day or so by a bipartisan group of the most distinguished American thinkers, in my judgment, is: How can the American people be confident about the future of this economy until and unless they see a Congress willing to make the tough choices to put this economy back on track and make these budgets add up. The easiest political lifting in America, the easiest lifting for American politicians, is to say: Let me support tax cuts. A more difficult proposition for a politician is to say: Let us make tough choices to make sure our budgets add up. There is no way that what we are going to be confronted with tomorrow morning adds up. The American people know it, politicians know it, economists know it, and it is going to erode confidence in this country that will, in my judgment, stall and stutter the recovery that we expect, need, and deserve. I will have more to say tomorrow on this subject. It is a disappointing day to know what has happened that will bring the budget to the floor tomorrow in such a state that we will hardly give the American people confidence about our country's future. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator from New Jersey yield for a consent request? I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 10 minutes, following the Senator from New Jersey, to speak on the bill.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, this is a good piece of legislation. I am pleased to rise in support and pleased particularly that it is bipartisan legislation that advances very important interests. A wise old fellow from my small hometown once asked me if I had ever seen a U-Haul hooked up to a hearse. I said: No. He said: Well, it goes to show you, you can't take it with you. He is right. You can't take it with you. The question is, What do you do with the resources you develop over a lifetime? It seems to me you find ways to help other people. There is an old saying that we make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give. The issue of charitable giving and providing nourishment and incentives to the notion of charitable giving is a very important impulse. This legislation advances that in a significant way. Two years ago I introduced S. 1375, and then, in this Congress, S. 283. I am pleased that these provisions were included in this legislation by the Senate Finance Committee. Let me describe what they are and why they are so important. The provisions in the CARE Act that relate to the legislation I have introduced, with some of my colleagues, allow individuals to make tax- free outright gifts to charities from their IRAs at age 70\1/2\ and charitable life-income gifts at age 59\1/2\. The reason that is important--to be able to make tax-free gifts from IRAs to charities--is they won't face adverse tax consequences when they rollover that money from their IRAs. The detrimental tax consequences have persuaded some that they can't roll these assets over into a charity. I heard from a good many charities, when I introduced this legislation 2 years ago, that people frequently ask them about being able to give to a charity by using their IRAs to make the donation itself. But many donors decide not to make a gift from their IRA after they are told about the potential tax consequences. Tax-free charitable IRA rollovers will eliminate this concern completely. In his fiscal year 2004 budget, President Bush proposed allowing individuals to make tax-free outright charitable IRA rollover distributions after age 65. That proposal has a lot of merit. But the approach taken in the Public Good IRA Rollover Act, S. 283, and that's included in CARE Act, is superior because it will not only allow direct charitable IRA rollovers, but it will allow tax-free life-income gifts from the IRA at age 59\1/2\. That means the assets can be donated to the charities, but the donor retains an income stream from those assets. This approach would stimulate more charitable giving, while comporting with the federal government's policy of encouraging individuals to provide for and safeguard adequate resources after retirement. This is a very important provision that could put billions of dollars of additional dollars from a new source to work for the public good. I'm told that a senior Salvation Army official once said that ``providing for IRA charitable rollovers would be the single most important piece of legislation in the history of public charitable support in this country.'' I don't think he necessarily understates the proposition. Charitable giving is critically important. The mechanisms by which we incentivize and nurture charitable giving are in this legislation and will advance the interests of charitable giving across the country. Let me make another point. This legislation contains more than just that provision. I single that provision out simply because I have been working on it a couple of years. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a list of principally North Dakota organizations, 18 of them, that have been working with me on this proposition.

Mr. DORGAN. The provision in the CARE that deals with charitable deductions for non-itemizers is also very important. All of this coming together is legislation I am proud to support. It is a significant step for good. Let me say one additional point. In order to pay for these proposals--and these proposals are paid for with a revenue portion of the bill--there are additional curbs on tax shelters. I strongly support that as a matter of good tax policy. Last year, former IRS Commissioner Rossetti told Congress: Nothing undermines confidence in the tax system more than the impression that the average honest taxpayer has to pay his or her taxes while more wealthy or unscrupulous taxpayers are allowed to get away with not paying. He is correct. What we have seen, with front-page stories in journals and technical publications, as well as major daily newspapers, is the growth of abusive tax shelters. Shutting those down makes a lot of sense. I don't believe that there is a provision in this bill that deals with the issue of moving corporate headquarters overseas and renouncing your U.S. citizenship in order to save on taxes. But that is another piece we ought to do as well. I simply make the point that the other piece of this bill that is important is we pay for this, and we pay for it with good tax policy by curbing tax shelters. There are a lot of things in this country that are done that make people feel good. One of those is the charitable giving that Americans do. Americans do a great deal of charitable giving. They do it because they know there is a need, and they know people who need help can count on others who will offer it. With respect to the provision I have been working on, there is an impediment that has prevented people from saying, I would like to roll over my IRA assets to a charity and provide that charity with resources it needs. To do that under present law significantly penalizes them through the Tax Code. This legislation responds to that. Allen Huffman on my staff and others have worked together for a long while on this particular provision of the bill. There are other provisions that have merit as well. I thank the manager of the bill and the ranking member of the committee who bring it to the floor. When we pass this--and we will--it will represent a significant positive step toward good public policy. I am pleased to support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Byrd, is about to make a presentation to the Senate. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following Senator Byrd's presentation.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing a bill with my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, that provides tax incentives for American families to participate in political campaigns. It will empower millions of Americans to become engaged in our political system, by providing a tax credit to those who donate money to congressional candidates. As campaigns become more and more expensive, the number of small contributors is actually decreasing. The current campaign finance system is becoming dominated by big dollar contributors, a trend that is troubling to me. Our bill would make middle income Americans more able to donate to candidates. Specifically, the bill would provide a maximum $400 tax credit to married couples earning up to $120,000 for their campaign contributions. For singles with income up to $60,000, the tax credit would apply to contributions up to $200. This credit will provide a dollar for dollar offset for contributions, an incentive that could encourage the many working families to consider contributions to the candidates of their choice. This is not a new idea. This type of credit was a part of our tax system for more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been a part of many campaign finance reform proposals over the years, proposals that have been introduced and supported by both Democrats and Republicans. And this policy proposal is the focus of a study last year by the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, which concluded that this approach would help to elevate small donors from the supporting role that they now play. So, our proposal has been successful in the past, and it has had broad support from both parties over the past thirty years. Participation in the political process is key to a strong democracy. This bill will help broaden participation and will provide an incentive for more Americans to be included in political campaigns. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I will speak about trade. On occasion, I have come to talk about our problems in international trade because it relates to the center of the issues we need to be concerned about with respect to our country's economy; and that is jobs, a growing economy that produces good jobs that pay well, that expands opportunities for the American people. Yet our trade strategy in this country has been a bankrupt trade strategy for a long while. I will use a chart to describe what I am talking about. The current trade strategy in America is producing nothing but red ink, and not just a small amount of red ink, but we are literally drowning in trade deficits. This is the merchandise trade deficit in this country. These are trade deficits that are completely out of control. Last year, there was $470 billion in trade deficits. April 1 was April Fools Day, and that is the day the U.S. Trade Representative released its 2003 report on trade barriers. This is the 2002 report. The 2003 report is not yet available in hard copy, but I am told it is as thick and as voluminous as the 2002 report. It describes the trade barriers that we find overseas and around the world for American goods produced by American workers in American factories. It lists country by country and barrier by barrier foreign markets that are closed to our products. Frankly, despite all the talk about free trade and expanded trade, there has been very little progress in prying open these markets. Let me use one example that demonstrates better than almost any other of how difficult it has been for us to make real progress on these issues. I will describe it in the context of our trade with Japan in beef--yes, beef. Fifteen years ago now, we reached a trade agreement with Japan so that American beef could be sold into the Japanese marketplace. That trade agreement provided that for every pound of American beef that went into Japan, there would be a 50-percent tariff. That is after our negotiators reached an agreement. We have a very large trade deficit with Japan, but our negotiators reached an agreement that said at the end of this agreement there will now be a 50-percent tariff on every pound of American beef going into Japan, and then it will reduce over time. But if we get increased quantities into Japan, it will snap back. So 15 years after our beef agreement with Japan, and those who negotiated having had a fiesta of sorts on the front pages of all of our papers talking about this enormous success that we would now get more American beef into Japan, there is now a 38\1/2\-percent tariff, and it is about to go back to 50 percent. The USTR report now says that Japan plans to increase the tariff to 50 percent because of an increase in beef imports this year. The only reason there is an increase in this year is that the Japanese consumers are finally starting to eat beef again after mad cow disease was found in Japan some years ago. So Japan decided that a 38\1/2\-percent tariff is not enough. Now it will go back to 50 percent, 15 years after we reached an agreement with this country to take more American beef. This chart shows the agreements we have with other countries in terms of the balance of trade. My colleagues will see that red represents deficits. We have trade deficits with virtually every major trading partner, with the exception of Australia, and we are about to remedy that because we are about to enter into an agreement with Australia. I assume they will be able to turn a positive trade balance into a deficit very shortly. It does not matter which agreement we have had, whether it is NAFTA or GATT, what we have done is create circumstances where all of our major trading partners are running trade surpluses with us. I will talk a bit about the country of China. We have major trade deficits with China, with Europe, Canada, Mexico, Korea, and Japan. Are they getting better? No, they are getting much worse. Does it hurt this country? Of course it does. It means jobs that would have been in this country to produce goods and services the American people want instead exist in other countries. So the jobs that used to represent American jobs are now belonging to some other country producing those products to ship back into this country. Let me talk about trade with China in the context of wheat. I come from a State that produces beef and wheat so I am naturally interested in that. I will discuss other products as well. The U.S. trade official in charge of trade with China recently left his job, and he had the courage to say publicly that China has failed miserably to live up to its promises that it made on agricultural trade when it joined the WTO in November of 2001. In fact, our trade official said the United States would be well justified in filing a WTO case against China. He said the evidence of unfair trade by the Chinese is ``undeniable,'' and the Chinese themselves privately acknowledge they are cheating on agricultural trade. The official said the administration did not have the spine to take action because the Chinese might be offended. He said the administration was worried that a WTO case would be seen as an in-your- face thing to do to China so soon after China joined the WTO. When China joined the WTO in November of 2001, the Chinese agreed to significantly expand the amount of imported wheat that would come into China at low tariffs. They agreed for 2002 it would set a tariff rate on imported wheat at 8\1/2\ million metric tons. That means 8\1/2\ million metric tons of wheat could enter the Chinese marketplace at low tariffs. But according to the Congressional Research Service, Chinese imports were less than 8 percent of what we expected to move into China. China was supposed to allow 8\1/2\ million metric tons, but it imported about 662,000 metric tons, and only 169,000 of that was from U.S. producers. How could that be? China's millers increasingly demand high quality wheat--the wheat we produce, wheat we can produce efficiently. One explanation is, to import wheat under this Chinese TRQ, a Chinese importer needs a license. The license is granted by the Chinese government. The Chinese government decides only 10 percent of the licenses are going to be available to private importers; 90 percent are reserved for the Chinese government itself. If the Chinese government decides not to take American wheat into its marketplace, it will not do it. That is exactly what they have done. They commit to 8.5 million tons of imported wheat and make sure 90 percent will never be brought into the country. I came to the Senate when this happened and quoted a Chinese agricultural official in the South Asian Post. For the Chinese consumption they were saying a bilateral agreement will open up trade between the United States and China. What he said in the South Asian Post, do not expect that is what we will accept into China. He said that to the Chinese. But they were telling the Americans a different story. March 17, the USTR official named Bruce Quinn, who was the director of the China desk at USTR, now the former director of the China desk, told wheat industry meetings that USTR should file a case against China at the WTO. What made Mr. Quinn's comments particularly interesting is they were made on the last week in the job for him. He was moving to another agency. He felt then he could speak freely. He said about the Chinese government: The Chinese officials have never disagreed with the United States technical criticism about China administering tariff-free quotas. They just make the political argument you have to understand China, China is a special case. He said the inter agency trade policy review gave the ambassador's office the green light to proceed to take action against the WTO for China, but too many in the administration feel it is an in-your-face thing to do so soon after joining the WTO. Soon after making these comments in the last week on the job, the administration disavowed its comments, saying he was not speaking for the administration, but nobody said Mr. Quinn had said something wrong or what he said was wrong. Why should we be reluctant to file a case against China at the WTO if evidence of cheating is rampant, so rampant that even the Chinese government admits it? Isn't that what the WTO was supposed to provide, a forum for dealing with unfair and illegal trade practices? If we let the Chinese government or China off the hook in the first year or two of this bilateral agreement, what will happen in the future? Some might say this is about wheat and they are not wheatgrowers. For those who might view the proceedings and think we do not grow wheat and do not see it as a big deal selling grain or wheat to China, this is just one example of many that represents this monumental trade deficit. Our trade deficit in goods this past year was $470 billion. One-fourth of that, $103 billion, was with China alone. The deficits of Canada, $50 billion. Mexico, $37 billion. And Japan and Europe. Not only do we have deficits with trading partners, but we have deficits in almost every sector of trading: $110 billion deficit in vehicles, $47 billion trade deficit in consumer electronics, $58 billion deficit in clothing. I mention the trade deficit with China. Just to give an example of what causes much of this, in many cases it is incompetent trade negotiators on our part. We negotiate a bilateral with China and our trade negotiators agree, after a phase-in with respect to the U.S. and China, we will agree to a 10 times higher tariff on U.S. automobiles that we attempt to sell in China than would be imposed on Chinese automobiles in the United States. We say we will impose 2.5 percent on Chinese automobiles that are shipped here and you impose a 25 percent tariff on U.S. automobiles in China. I don't know who would agree to that. Whoever it is does not deserve to be paid by the American taxpayers. It is an incompetent position to engage in bilateral negotiations and tie our consumers', our employees' hands behind their back in international trade. We will do that by saying you can go ahead and impose tariffs 10 times the amount of tariffs we would impose on equivalent goods. The trade deficit with Canada, similarly, is a deficit that in some respects comes from the Canadians as a result of the trade agreement being allowed to continue, a Canadian wheat board, which would be illegal in this country, a state trading enterprise would be illegal in this country. In Canada, it sells into this marketplace at secret prices, undercuts our farmers, and essentially thumbs its nose at American officials when they say we want the evidence of selling below acquisition costs in our marketplace and, therefore, dumping illegally in our marketplace. And the Canadians say, We are sorry; we do not intend to disclose anything to you, or any prices in this country. Trade deficit with Europe, $82 billion last year. The WTO was supposed to provide us with a forum to resolve trade disputes. The fact is, it has not with respect to Europe. We went to the WTO, got a dispute resolution in our favor against Europe dealing with the import of U.S. beef to Europe which Europe was preventing. And despite that, we are still not getting U.S. beef into the European marketplace. Trade deficit with Korea, $13 billion in 2002. I spoke before about cars from Korea, but let me give an example. We have just received the 2002 figures for automobile trade with Korea. The Koreans sold 633,000 Korean cars in this country. We sold 3,200 in Korea; 633,000 this year and 3,200 that way. Now, why we do not sell more vehicles? Take the Dodge Dakota pickup truck. In February of this year, DaimlerChrysler started to sell that pickup truck in Korea. The Dodge Dakota truck is made in Detroit, Michigan. Korea does not manufacture pickups like Dodge Dakotas, so DaimlerChrysler thought it had a good potential market in Korea and started to market the vehicle to small business owners. It was very successful. It got orders for 60 pickup trucks in February, another 60 in March. That does not sound like much, especially when Korea is sending us 633,000 vehicles in a year, but it is a start. At an annualized rate that would amount to a 50-percent increase in car imports from the U.S. into Korea, into the marketplace just from the Dodge Dakota pickup alone. Guess what happened? In March, last month, an official with the Ministry of Construction and Transportation decided the Dakota pickup posed a hazard in the marketplace so he announced the cargo covers on pickups, on Dodge Dakotas, were illegal and the drivers of those pickups would be fined if they put a cargo cover on the pickup truck. The newspapers had giant headlines: Government ministry finds Dodge Dakota covers illegal. Guess what happened? The Korean people got the message. Korean car purchasers canceled 55 of the 60 orders scheduled for March and now you cannot find a buyer for a Dodge Dakota in Korea, where in the last couple of months hundreds were lining up. Once again, we discover that trade is not free and it is not fair. I have a chart that shows just one example of one sector, and these are last year's numbers, but, as I indicated, they are the same as this year, essentially. They ship us all their cars and this represents good jobs. We cannot get American cars into Korea. Just ask yourself: If the American consumers want to buy Hyundais and Daewoos and cars that are produced in Korea to come into this country, should they have the right? Absolutely. But what if a Korean wants to buy a Mustang? What if a Korean wants to buy a Ford Mustang convertible? Should they have that opportunity, that right? Do they now? Of course not. The Koreans are making sure we are not getting American cars into Korea. The result is an increased trade deficit, fewer good jobs in this country, and the further result is nobody seems to care. All they want to do is negotiate another incompetent agreement. One of my feelings about the USTR is they come to this Congress asking for fast-track authority, which I think is nuts, saying to Congress: Tie your hands behind your back; let us negotiate an agreement in secret, and when we bring it to you, you decide by rule you cannot amend it. I think that is plain nuts. Nonetheless, they were able to persuade enough people in the Senate and the House. So they have fast-track authority so the next agreement they make with another country, they will bring it to the Congress, take it or leave it, no amendments in order. If they hadn't had fast track when they did the United States-Canada agreement, we wouldn't be stuck with the problem we have with the Canadian Wheat Board dumping into our marketplace, cutting into our farmers. But you couldn't offer an amendment. Who knows what will be in the next agreement they make? But when they make the agreement with another country, it will come here, likely pass the Senate and House, and the newspapers that support all this will trumpet this as an expansion of trade and it is free trade and it is wonderful and everybody--all boats are lifted by it. That is total nonsense. I am in favor of expanded trade and expanded opportunity, but I am in favor of trade officials in this country having a spine and backbone to stand up for the interests of this country. Should we continue to decide it is our lot in life to compete with somebody who is making 30 cents an hour, working 70 hours a week? Should we compete with a 12-year-old working 12 hours a day making 12 cents an hour? That happens, by the way. Is that fair competition? That product is produced in any number of countries overseas and then shipped to the marketplace in Toledo or Fargo or Manchester or New York City. Is that fair trade? Is that what our producers ought to compete against? Or should we have some basic standards which say that what we fought for for over a century in this country--the right to work in a safe workplace, the right to organize, the right to be paid a fair wage, the right not to expect you have to work next to children; all of those rights that were fought for in this country--some people died for them; some people chained themselves to the factory gates for those rights--should all those be rights over which producers pole-vault to rush to another country to produce and say we don't have to worry about that, we don't have to worry about dumping pollution into the stream or the air, hiring 12-year-old kids, putting them in an unsafe workplace, we can do that because we have the right to do that and we have the right to ship our products to our country? They ought not have that right because that is not fair trade. It is not fair competition, and we should not ask American workers and producers to compete against that. There are so many issues to talk about with respect to international trade. In the end, I come back to the notion that it represents the strength of our economy to maintain a strong manufacturing base. No country will long remain a strong economic power if it does not retain a basic manufacturing base. Our manufacturing base is very quickly moving from this country to countries where production costs are lower. It is one thing to say we lose in international competition. It is quite another to say we are going to set up the competition in a manner that is fundamentally unfair and guarantees you lose. In my judgment, whether it is farmers or manufacturing workers or textile plants, if we can't compete and win against fair competition, then our plants should not make it at all. But the competition ought to be required to be fair. None of these trade agreements require that--none of them. Whether it is someone who is ranching out there today, producing cattle for a market and expecting to be able to move it into Japan without a 50- percent tariff or somebody who is raising potatoes in the Red River Valley expecting to be able to move potato flakes into Korea without a 300-percent tariff or somebody producing Durham wheat, expecting not to compete against the state cartel in Canada that undersells them at secret prices, or, yes, a big automobile company in this country that expects not to have to compete against those who produce elsewhere and keep their markets closed to us--all of those are very serious problems relating to this country's economy and this country's ability to produce good jobs that pay well for the American people. A $470 billion trade deficit this year--somebody is going to have to pay that bill. You can make the case--at least economists do--that the budget deficit is money we owe to ourselves. You cannot make that case with the trade deficit. This is money we owe to other countries that will inevitably be repaid with a lower standard of living in this country. That is why it is important at some point that we pay attention to it and view this as a crisis. You can't get the editorial pages of the major newspapers to say so. You can't even get an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post unless you have a vision about trade that exactly matches theirs and the prevailing view in this town, which is: There are free traders-- that is what they say--there are free traders who see beyond the horizon, who have a world view that is learned and is to be commended. Then there are the others and the others are xenophobic isolationist stooges who just have never gotten it and understood that things have changed in the world. Those are the two sides. If you are someone who says an unkind word at all about this structure of trade agreements that requires us to compete unfairly and allows others to compete unfairly against us, you don't have a chance of having that view expressed in the major newspapers in this country. That is regrettable because that means we don't have an aggressive debate on international trade. The debate should never be about: Is expanding trade something that helps our country and helps others around the world? The debate ought to be about as we globalize--and we are globalizing our economies very quickly--will the rules of international trade in this global economy keep up with the galloping globalization? The answer to that, until now, regrettably, has been no. The rules have not kept pace, and that is why we find ourselves in this position. I yield the floor. I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing a bill with my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, that provides tax incentives for American families to participate in political campaigns. It will empower millions of Americans to become engaged in our political system, by providing a tax credit to those who donate money to congressional candidates. As campaigns become more and more expensive, the number of small contributors is actually decreasing. The current campaign finance system is becoming dominated by big dollar contributors, a trend that is troubling to me. Our bill would make middle income Americans more able to donate to candidates. Specifically, the bill would provide a maximum $400 tax credit to married couples earning up to $120,000 for their campaign contributions. For singles with income up to $60,000, the tax credit would apply to contributions up to $200. This credit will provide a dollar for dollar offset for contributions, an incentive that could encourage the many working families to consider contributions to the candidates of their choice. This is not a new idea. This type of credit was a part of our tax system for more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been a part of many campaign finance reform proposals over the years, proposals that have been introduced and supported by both Democrats and Republicans. And this policy proposal is the focus of a study last year by the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, which concluded that this approach would help to elevate small donors from the supporting role that they now play. So, our proposal has been successful in the past, and it has had broad support from both parties over the past thirty years. Participation in the political process is key to a strong democracy. This bill will help broaden participation and will provide an incentive for more Americans to be included in political campaigns. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.