Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is called the greatest deliberative body in the world. I have always been enormously proud to be a part of it. There are times I think we treat the light too seriously and then the serious too lightly, but in this time and place, the issue of national security is something all of us understand is serious. This is a deadly serious business. The question of war with Iraq, the question of homeland security, are very important issues. I know there was some controversy yesterday beginning with stories in the newspaper and in the Senate Chamber about statements by the President. I don't think there is a context in which it is ever appropriate for us to suggest or the President to suggest the opposing political party or members of the opposing political party do not support this country's national security. You will never, ever, hear me suggest a group of my colleagues don't care about this country's national security. I will never do that. It is not the appropriate thing to do. When you read the President's statements at fundraisers about these matters and hear his suggestion, no matter the context, that the U.S. Senate doesn't seem to care about national security, or places special interests ahead of the Nation's interests with respect to security, that is wrong. National security is deadly serious business. The issue has to do with the country of Iraq, but much more than that--a very troubled region of the world--the question of whether a tyrant, an international outlaw of sorts, is going to acquire nuclear weapons and threaten his region and the rest of the world, and what we might be considering doing about that, what we should do about it, and what the United Nations considers we should do about it. That is serious business. Any discussion ever about sending our sons and daughters to war is serious business. It has no place in political fundraisers or in the normal routine of American political partisan activity leading up to an election. Yesterday I attended a top secret briefing with Vice President Cheney at his invitation. I happen to think we are all on the same side. We have a single relentless interest, and that is the interests of this country and its security. Yesterday it was said some of this dispute relates to the discussions about homeland security and the position taken by some Members of the Senate with respect to homeland security. There is no right or wrong way to do homeland security. There are a lot of ideas on how one might address homeland security. I happen to believe port security is very important. We have 5.7 million containers coming in on container ships every single year; 100,000 of them are inspected, and 5.6 million are not. If a terrorist were to want to introduce a weapon of mass destruction into this country, do you think they would not consider putting it in a container on a ship that is going to come up to a dock at 2 miles an hour and dock at one of our major ports, to be taken off and put on 18 wheels, driven across the country to its target? No, we will spend $7 or $8 billion this year believing a rogue nation or terrorist will acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile, put a nuclear bomb on top of it; so we will spend $7 to $8 billion on national missile defense. Is that the smart thing to do, at a time when 5.6 million containers will show up at our docks and are uninspected? That is a decision this Congress ought to take a hard look at. We have differences on the homeland security bill. It is not that one side believes in supporting this country's defense and this country's security and the other side doesn't. There are differences about it. Is putting 170,000 people into one agency, moving all these boxes around into one agency, is that going to make us better, more fit, more capable of defeating terrorism? Maybe. But big, slow, and bureaucratic is not the way to address terrorism. These 170,000 people will not include the CIA and the FBI. Just read the papers in the last couple of months and ask yourself, where have the problems been in the gathering and the interpretation of intelligence and information about prospective terrorists? They are not even a part of this. Some say if the President doesn't have flexibility to deal with all of these workers in any appropriate way he thinks necessary, somehow it affects our country's security. It is as if taking 170,000 workers and putting them into one agency and providing some basic security, the kind of basic security they have had with respect to jobs, is counter to this Nation's security. I don't believe that at all. Go back 100 years and ask yourself what happens in a country such as ours when you decide the Federal workforce shall become a part of patronage, Federal workers will have no security, but can be used at the whim of an executive agency. I am not talking about this one; I am talking about any executive agency or any administration. This country has been best served by making sure we have a Federal workforce that we can trust, that works hard, that is honest, that serves this country well, and that doesn't serve any partisan interest ever. Some say let's get rid of all the worker protections, that is the way to handle homeland security. That doesn't make any sense to me. There is not a Republican or a Democratic way to develop the issue of security for this country. This is not about political parties. It is about trying to figure out what is the best approach to protect this country's interests, what is the best approach to do that. Those who want to use this politically do no service to this country's interest. It is not about politics. It is, indeed, about security. Let me make the next point. Yes, security with respect to people such as Saddam Hussein, and I hope at the end of the day we can find a way to pass a resolution in this Senate that has broad bipartisan support. I hope that is what happens. I believe that is what should happen. I hope at the end of the day we will have passed a homeland security bill that works, one that is effective, one that gives us confidence about defeating prospective terrorists and those prospective terrorists' acts against the American people. Also, there is another issue with respect to security, and that is the security of our country with respect to the economy and what is happening inside our country. Take a look at the stock market these days. The stock market has collapsed like a pancake. Why? Because investors are nervous. There is no predictability, consistency, security. They are nervous. We have had a circumstance in recent years where big budget surpluses that were projected for 10 years have turned to big budget deficits. We have had a recession. We have had a terrorist attack on our country that was the worst terrorist attack in the history of our country. We have had, in addition to that, a war against terrorists and a collapse of the technology bubble and a collapse of the stock market. We have had a corporate scandal unparalleled in the history of this country. It shakes the faith of the American people in this economic system of ours. Even as we discuss all of these security issues, let's understand there is one additional security issue, and that is the economic security of the people in this country, an economy that, hopefully, grows and provides opportunities and jobs once again. This economy is in trouble, and it would serve this President and this Congress well to decide we ought to work together to do something about that as well. More and more people are out of work. What does that mean? Is that a statistic? No, it is not just a statistic; it is someone who comes home from work one day and says: Honey, I have lost my job, a man or woman who is well trained and worked hard, and because the economy runs into some whitewater rapids and some trouble, they are laid off. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs. It is a big problem. For those who lose their jobs, their statistic is 100-percent unemployment. They wonder whether there are people around here who care about that. Will there be people who care about economic security issues, trying to put the pieces back together in an economy that is troubled? We are told the average 401(k) retirement savings account has lost about a third of its value. A North Dakotan who worked for the Enron Corporation for many years wrote to me and said: I had $330,000 in my 401(k) account. It was my life savings--$330,000. It is now worth $1,700. Do you think that family cares about whether we try to do something to fix what is wrong with this economy? That also deals with security-- economic security. We have all across the central heartland of this Nation family farmers, in my judgment the economic all-stars of America. They raise the food that a hungry world so desperately needs. But a massive drought has occurred across much of this country. Many of those farmers and ranchers have produced nothing. In my home area of southwestern North Dakota, the landscape looks like scorched earth. It looks like the moonscape, in fact, with no vegetation. The question is: What about economic security for people who have suffered a natural disaster of a drought? This Senate answered that. The Senate said: Let's provide some emergency help, just as we do when tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, and floods happen. When these natural disasters occur, this country says to people affected: You are not alone; we are here with you; we want to help. So this Senate, with 79 votes, said: We want to help you; we want to help provide some economic security during a tough time, during a disaster. The drought was not your fault, we say to farmers and ranchers. But the House of Representatives and the President do not support the bill we passed in the Senate that also deals with economic security. Nobody in this Chamber has a farm someplace 15, 25 miles from town and has invested virtually everything they have in seeds to plant in the ground in the spring and then discovered it did not rain and those seeds are gone, there is no crop, and they do not have the money for family expenses to continue, so they are going to have to have an auction sale. No one in this Chamber suffers that fate--no one. No one in this Chamber gets up to do chores in the morning--milk cows, feed the cattle, service farm machinery. Nobody does that. But this Chamber understands because 79 Members of the Senate voted for a disaster package to help family farmers during this disaster. We hope that when we have all of this talk about security, which I think is deadly important and deadly serious--we hope security includes a discussion about economic security, and part of that economic security is providing a disaster bill and disaster help to family farmers when they need it. I ask the House of Representatives and the President to stop blocking that disaster bill. Another part of this issue of economic security is fixing what is wrong with respect to corporate governance in dealing with corporate scandals. We passed a bill in the Senate dealing with that, but it is not quite enough. We must do more. Senator Sarbanes, in my judgment, deserves the hero's award for being able to put together the bill he did. I was proud to vote for it. One amendment, to give an example of the unfinished business, I tried to offer and which was blocked for 3 or 4 days by my colleague, Senator Gramm from Texas, dealt with bankruptcy. That amendment is not now law. Let me give an example of what I was trying to do and why it is unfinished business if we are really going to provide economic security. The Financial Times did a study of the 25 largest bankruptcies in America. Here is what they discovered: Of the 25 largest corporate bankruptcies in America, the year and a half before bankruptcy, 208 executives of those corporations took $3.3 billion out of the company. Then they went bankrupt. My belief is, when executives are taking a company to bankruptcy and filling their pockets with gold, there is something fundamentally wrong. Investors lose their savings, employees lose their jobs, everybody else loses their shirt, and the top executives of the largest bankrupt companies in the country walk away to their homes behind gated walls someplace and count their money. They walked off with $3.3 billion in the 25 largest bankruptcies. Shame on them. I wanted to offer an amendment that recaptures and disgorges those ill-gotten gains. Does anybody here believe that anybody, as they take a company into bankruptcy, the year before it goes to bankruptcy should be getting incentive payments and bonus payments for a company that is going down the tubes? Does anybody believe that? That is unfinished business, and there are other pieces dealing with this corporate issue to which we must respond. The other unfinished business deals with health care, for example, and prescription drugs. We have not passed a prescription drug bill and put a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare Program despite all of our best efforts. That also deals with economic security because when someone needs lifesaving medicine and cannot afford it, it means that medicine saves no lives. We have people in this country who desperately need prescription drugs to provide the miracle cures and the opportunities for a better life and cannot afford them. We believe putting a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare Program is the right thing to do. No, not some shell, not some phony gimmick by saying, as the House did, just cobbling up a little effort: By the way, let's call this a prescription drug benefit and let the managed care organizations handle it. That does not make any sense. They know it. We know it. They are just trying to create a defensive position to say they did something when, in fact, they did nothing. We are going to do something, and we should, with respect to prescription drugs for senior citizens. We ought to do it right and do it well. That is another piece of unfinished business that deals with security--economic security and family security. In Dickinson, ND, a woman went to her doctor with breast cancer and had surgery for breast cancer, and the doctor said to the woman on Medicare: In order to prevent a recurrence of breast cancer, the best chance to prevent a recurrence, you need to take these prescription drugs I am going to prescribe for you. She said: Doctor, what does it cost? And he told her. She said: Doctor, there is no way I can afford to buy those prescription drugs. I am just going to have to take my chances. That is how the doctor testified at a forum I held at home in North Dakota. That is why it is important to complete the undone business dealing with economic security, security for American seniors, to put a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare Program that really works. We have not been able to do that because we are blocked by people who do not want that to happen.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. It is very much like when you learn to fly. I learned to fly with a private plane once. When you fly, you fly the weigh points you establish out there. This legislation says: Yes, let's have a Homeland Security Department. Let's meet the deadline, do it on time, but let's do it right. And it establishes weigh points by which the Congress becomes a full partner with the administration in developing and making sure that we implement properly the Homeland Security Department. If we make a mistake here, it is about the security of the United States of America. This is not about wasting money. It is about this country's security. That is why this amendment is so important. People say: Well, this amendment guts the bill coming out of the committee. It does not do anything of the sort. This bill improves it. And this bill gives Congress the role it ought to have with the administration to make homeland security work for the United States of America. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, thank you very much. I am pleased to be here to support the amendment offered by my colleague, the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Byrd. This is a very important subject, the subject of homeland security. In some areas, if we make a mistake in the United States Congress, we waste money or some other inconvenience occurs or something important happens. But this is a case where if we make a mistake, the safety of the American people is at stake. So homeland security is critically important. I have watched with great interest Senator Byrd's presentation of his amendment. Let me say this about my colleague from West Virginia. Much has been said about him. Let me say today that I think he is old- fashioned. That is right, I think he is old-fashioned. I think he brings to the floor, with this amendment, the values and virtues of being old-fashioned, saying: Yes, let's do it, but let's do it right. I know that is old fashioned to some. We live in kind of a turbo- charged world. We want what we want, and we want it right now. We are a world of fast food, Jiffy Lube, 1-hour cleaning, and Minute Rice. We want it this instant. Senator Byrd brings to us a version of legislative home cooking, saying: Let's put all this together the right way. Let's make sure it is seasoned the right way because the safety and security of this country depends on it. Senator Byrd's amendment does not change the deadlines by which we will provide homeland security, but he sets up weigh points by which we can work with the executive branch to create this new Department of Homeland Security. After all, we are talking about putting 170,000 people in a single agency--one single agency. Some would say: Well, that is pretty easy to do. It is not easy to do at all. The development of a bureaucracy is always at odds and always creates tension with efficiency and effectiveness. Take a look at what has happened in recent days, the stories about the CIA and the FBI and the kind of work that was done, or not done, with respect to what they knew and did not know leading up to September 11. It is very important we have agencies put together and locked together in a way that protects this county's interests, and especially that we have accountability. And that is where the Byrd amendment is so important. The Byrd amendment will guarantee the accountability of all of the Department's activities because it will be assigned to one person. One person will be accountable for this agency as it is constructed: the Secretary of Homeland Security. I think that is very important to understand. We are talking about putting together agencies, such as the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, Border Patrol, Transportation, security, Secret Service. This is a very big project. Now, let me talk, just for a moment, about two very specific areas I am concerned about because they are part and parcel of this and why it is so important we get it right. Port security in this country, homeland security/port security: We are going to spend $7 to $8 billion defending against an intercontinental ballistic missile that is going to come in at 14,000 miles an hour. People are worried a terrorist or a rogue nation is going to get ahold of an ICBM, so we will spend $7 to $8 billion on that in the Defense bill this year. But it is far more likely that a weapon of mass destruction will come into a port, in a container, on a container ship, and pull up to that port at 2 miles per hour. We have 5.7 million containers coming into our ports every year and 5.6 million are not inspected. Dealing with that has to be a part of homeland security. That is why we have to get this right. What Senator Byrd is suggesting in this amendment is not that we should delay the creation of homeland security. It is that, as we move along to the 13 months, we, in fact, create weigh points so we can measure what we are doing, what the President is doing, what the administration is doing.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to speak about several important issues facing the Senate at the moment: namely, the situation with Iraq, and the state of our economy. First, let me speak about Iraq. And let me begin by saying that I don't think there is any question that Saddam Hussein is not following the terms of surrender at the end of the gulf war. He has failed to live up to any one of those terms or conditions. I was at the Incirlik Base in Turkey and visited with the pilots who are flying over the northern area of Iraq enforcing the no-fly zone. These pilots fly in harm's way. They are often shot at by the ground forces of the Iraqi Army. The fact is, Saddam Hussein has violated virtually everything to which he previously agreed. I don't think there is any question that this is a bad person, who poses a real threat. He wants access to nuclear weapons. He has access, apparently, to chemical and biological weapons. And the President says we ought to do something about this threat posed by Saddam Hussein. I agree that we should. The question is, How? The President went to the United Nations. And I think that was the right thing to do. The Secretary of State is now asking the Security Council to join us and pass another enforcement resolution so we can, with other countries, begin to enforce coercive inspections in Iraq to make sure that, if they have weapons of mass destruction, they are destroyed, and to make sure they are never able to acquire weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons. But there are other avenues that we should also pursue. I have thought for 10 years, since the end of the gulf war, that this country should press for the formation of an international criminal tribunal at the United Nations to indict and try Saddam Hussein as a war criminal. I don't know whether at the end of the day there is going to be a regime change in Iraq or not. I hope there is. I believe there ought to be a regime change, but I am not sure whether that is going to happen. If it doesn't happen, I still think we ought to push for the creation of an international war crimes tribunal, so that Saddam Hussein is indicted and convicted. There is ample evidence--both in this country and also in the United Nations--to indict and convict this man of war crimes. I spoke on the floor some years ago about a young boy and his family who lay dead on the ground in Iraq--victims of weapons of mass destruction unleashed by Saddam Hussein that killed thousands of those people. He is the only leader I know of in this world who has used weapons of mass destruction against his own citizens. So there is ample evidence for that and other reasons to indict, try, and convict Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. I have never understood the reluctance of this Government to push ahead to do that. I have never understood that. Senator Specter from Pennsylvania and I offered a resolution--I think it was about 5 years ago in the Senate--calling on the State Department to go to the United Nations and attempt to get a war crimes tribunal so we could indict, try, and convict this man as a convicted war criminal. I think whenever we talk about Saddam Hussein, we should be talking about a convicted war criminal. Had we done what we should have done 10 years ago and 5 years ago, that is what we would now call him, because the evidence is so substantial about what he has done to his own people, to people in the region, to his neighbors, the weapons he has used--there is just no question that this man, even in absentia, would be tried and found guilty as a war criminal. I think even today our State Department should press that case, even as we are pressing for coercive inspections and contemplating taking action again against the country of Iraq. I have asked my staff to talk to the staff of the Senator from Pennsylvania about offering that resolution once again in the Senate. It passed the Senate 4 or 5 years ago without a dissenting vote. Yet nothing has happened with respect to Saddam Hussein and Iraq and the creation of a war crimes tribunal at the United Nations to indict and to try him. Let me turn to the economy for a moment. Because while the Iraq issue is vitally important, we have other very big challenges that are largely being ignored. The President and some in this Chamber don't want to talk about this, but the fact is our economy is in some significant trouble. We have some people whose responsibility it is to be involved in fiscal policy who say: What trouble? Things are going just fine. This is just a little bit of a correction. Things will be fine. Just wait and do nothing. Things will work their way out. The fact is, we have come to an intersection in this country unlike any we have ever arrived at before. Just a year and a half ago, President Bush proposed a fiscal policy. He came to office, and said: What I see in this country is 10 years of surpluses, and big ones at that. That money belongs to the taxpayer. Let us give it back. Let us have a $1.7 billion tax cut. I did not vote for that because I said I thought we ought to be a little more conservative. I don't think we can see 3 months ahead, let alone 10 years ahead. I think the conservative thing to do would be to attempt to be a little more moderate in how we deal with fiscal policy and not lock in a $1.7 billion reduction in revenue. I lost that argument. The majority in this Chamber and the other Chamber voted for a $1.7 billion tax cut over 10 years. The President celebrated and his supporters celebrated. Everyone talked about how wonderful that was. Mr. Greenspan, down at the Federal Reserve Board, thought that was fine, too. It wasn't very much past that--some months past that--when we discovered the country was in a recession. If we had been in a recession at the time we were talking about these expected 10 years of surpluses, would we have made a different decision? Maybe. Not much more than a couple of months beyond that we had the terrorist attacks against our country on September 11. Had we known we were going to face a recession and the terrorist attacks on our country on September 11 that caused such a devastating loss of life, would we have said let us put in place a $1.7 billion tax cut? I think we might have made different decisions. Then, on top of that, we had the technology bubble burst and the stock market began to act like a yo-yo with more down than up. On top of all that, we had the corporate scandals in which we saw some of the largest corporations in this country--Enron, to name one. I chaired the hearings in the Commerce Committee investigating Enron. We saw the executives of that company and others run these companies into the ground. They cheated and lied to the investors and to the employees. The board of directors finally had their own investigation into their own company. Do you know what they said? They said: What we found inside our company was ``appalling.'' They said: We found this corporation was reporting $1 billion in earnings that it didn't earn. To give a small example of what was going on, the chief financial officer of that corporation invested $25,000 of his own money into a corporation, a partnership--a corporation in which he had a proprietary interest--and he took out $4.5 million 60 days later. Let me say that again. He invested $25,000 of his own money and then took out $4.5 million 60 days later. I come from a town of 300 people. We call that stealing in my hometown. In corporation after corporation, we see all of these corporations and the books being recalculated and company executives being led away in handcuffs. There are a lot of great companies in this country, and a lot of great CEOs. Make no mistake about that. Some people say it is just a few bad apples. That is true. How big is the orchard with bad apples? It is just too many corporations, too many accounting firms, and too many law firms that are the enablers that allowed all of this to happen and too many executives with larceny in their hearts who don't understand this wasn't their money. This was the investors' money. What you have is an intersection of a recession, a terrorist attack, corporate scandal, the tech bubble bursting, and the stock market collapsing. Yet, the Administration is telling us that they don't even want to talk about the economy, as if the circumstances had not changed at all. When people sit around a supper table and talk about their lives, most families talk about some key things. Do we have good jobs? Do our jobs pay well? Do we have job security? Do our kids go to good schools? Do grandpa and grandma have access to good health care? Do we live in a safe neighborhood? Those are all the questions that affect the lives of America's families. Do we have job security? Let me give you an example. A fellow wrote to me. He said: My life savings as an employee of the Enron Corporation--he worked for a pipeline corporation that was a subsidiary--were in Enron stock. It was worth $330,000. I saved for years to put together $330,000 in my 401(k) account in Enron stock. It is all that I have. That $330,000 is now worth $1,700. Is that a problem? You bet your life it is a problem for that family, and so many other families across this country who have seen their life savings dissipate. Now, people say: Well, that is just anecdotal information about this family or that family. But it is not that. The average 401(k) account in this country has lost one-third of its value. These are the life savings of people, the retirement savings of people. It has lost one- third of its value. Do you think that is going to have an impact on our economy? Of course it is. Our economy is all about people's expectations about the future. I used to teach economics. I overcame that, nonetheless, and have been able to go on and do some other things productively. The field of economics is not much more than psychology pumped up by helium. It is just people estimating what might or might not happen. Our economy is very simple. If our future is a bright, rosy future, if people are confident about the future, then they do things that manifest that confidence. They buy a house, buy a car, take a trip; they do the things that represent people who are confident in their future. And that expands the economy. When people lack confidence in the future, they do the exact opposite. They decide not to take the trip. They don't buy the car. They don't buy the house. They defer purchases they might have otherwise made. As a result, economy contracts. So we are in a situation where we have an economy that is in some trouble. It is not growing. People are not confident about the future. They see corporate scandals. They are worried about investing in a corporation. They are worried about the method by which we ask people to invest in a share of stock in a company they never visited with executives they don't know, with accounting firms they are supposed to trust but now do not. And still we have the Administration and some in the Senate saying: Well, what is the problem? We don't need to revisit any of these circumstances. We don't need to talk about fiscal policy. We don't need to talk about the economy. They are wrong. We need to talk about jobs. What is happening in jobs? We need to talk about the economy, economic growth, and opportunity. We need to talk about this country's fiscal responsibility, its budget mess. There isn't anyone in this Chamber who can get up and talk about how this budget adds up, because it does not. We have a fiscal policy that is sorely out of balance, and everybody knows it. Everyone wants to pretend that is not the case. And it starts with the President. Now, what is the record? Job losses. We are not expanding. We are losing jobs at this point. Private-sector jobs are down, down sharply. Weak economic growth. In fact, some indicators suggest we may have almost no growth at the present time. We have an anemic economy, there is no question about that. Declining business investment. A falling stock market. Just take a check over the last week or two; in fact, go back 6 years to find when the NASDAQ was as low as it was yesterday. Shrinking retirement accounts. I have just described that. An average family having a 401(k) is losing a third of its value. Eroding consumer confidence. Rising health care costs. One of the issues we ought to talk about on the floor of the Senate is this: rising health care costs. It also explodes the Federal deficit, causes havoc with every State budget, especially causes chaos with the budgets of families. We are trying to say to the American people and the pharmaceutical industry: The prices you are charging for prescription drugs are outrageous. You charge the American people the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and it is unfair. Yet, when you take on that industry in this Chamber, asking, ``how do you justify this; how do you justify to a woman who has breast cancer that the drug Tamoxifin is going to cost her 10 times as much in the United States as you charge for the identical drug in Canada; how do you justify that,'' there is no answer. It is a deafening silence. But yet you can't get effective legislation through the Congress because we have too many here who support the pharmaceutical industry. The big, powerful, and strong make a great deal of money, and they like the status quo. We are going to focus on an economic forum of sorts in the coming couple of weeks, to see if we can get together people who want to talk about the economy who have contrasting views about the economy, and to see if we can begin a debate about what ought to be done. We have too many people out of work. We have too many people who have lost too much money in the market. We have an erosion of confidence. We have a budget deficit that is escalating. We could not get appropriations bills through the floor of the Senate by the October first date. Why? We could not get a budget? Why? Because none of it adds up. And everyone in this Chamber knows it does not add up. How do you add up a circumstance where you have less revenue coming in, and you decide you have to do $45 billion more for defense in 1 year, probably something close to $30 billion more for homeland security in 1 year? Add that additional spending on top of a fiscal policy in which you have either slow growth or a recession, and less money coming in, and therefore higher deficits, and then what is left for the things that represent domestic discretionary spending, including health care and education? What is left to try to do something that says to kids: Your education matters because our future is in our schoolrooms? We believe that every young child ought to walk through the door of a schoolroom where their parents are able to say: We have sent our child to the best schoolroom in the world. How do you do that when there is no money left for education or health care because we have a fiscal policy that does not add up because 18 months ago we said we were going to have surpluses for 10 straight years, and 18 months later--following a war, a recession, stock market collapse, corporate scandals, and more--we now have turned surpluses into big deficits. I think it is time--long past the time--for this Congress to have an honest, real, aggressive, significant debate about this country's economy: what is wrong; how do we fix it; what has worked; what works; what is right; what does not work, and how do we repair it. I began by talking about Iraq. The situation in Iraq is very important. But our economy is also vitally important. We have been the economic engine for this world. When the economy in Asia was soft, we still were the economic engine that provided strength. When the economies of Europe were soft, the American economy was still the economic engine. Take a look what is happening to the American economy today, and it is not working well. This Congress has a responsibility to begin a thoughtful, sober, serious discussion about what works and what does not with our economy, and how we construct a new fiscal policy to fix that which is wrong. The President has a responsibility to join us as well. At the present time he talks only about foreign policy. Foreign policy is important, but it is not exclusive. This President has a responsibility to join us. It is his fiscal policy. He won 18 months ago. It is his fiscal policy that now helps create large deficits rather than large surpluses. He must join us in trying to determine what we can do to pull ourselves out of this morass. This country can do better, but it needs good public policy coming from this Congress. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have been listening to the Senator from Illinois. He is right. Iraq is not an irrelevant issue. It is a very important issue. The President will find, as we finish all of these discussions, that we will have a pretty unified voice on what we do around the world, but we need to do that through the United Nations, with other partner countries, as part of a coalition. At the end of the day, this country will have led the way towards that result. It is also the case, when most people sit down around the supper table and talk about their lives, they are talking about subjects that are much different from Iraq. They are discussing issues such as: Do we have a good job; does it pay well; do we have job security; do we send our kids to good schools; do grandpa and grandma have decent health care; do we live in a safe neighborhood? All of those issues exist as well. There are some who don't want to talk about any of those issues. They say: These issues somehow are irrelevant. They are not irrelevant to people out of work, who are concerned about their jobs, concerned about opportunities for themselves and their children, concerned about the ability to buy health care, to pay for health insurance, to afford their prescription medicine. The Senator is absolutely correct. There are a lot of other issues we must resolve. This Senate is at parade rest; I am guessing because there are some people here who don't want us to do anything on these issues, whether it is health care, the economy, or corporate scandals. And incidentally, I won't have time to talk much about that, but we have not finished on that issue, the issue of corporate scandals. We are talking about hundreds of millions and billions of dollars frittered away by CEOs and others who have run corporations into the ground. A recent study by the Financial Times says that of the 25 largest bankruptcies in America, prior to bankruptcy 208, executives took $3.3 billion out of the companies prior to running them into the ground. Should we do something about that? We should. That issue isn't over, despite the fact there are some in this Chamber and downtown who resist every step of the way. We have a lot to do. There is a lot on the agenda, a lot on our plate. Frankly, there are some people who are sitting here with their feet on the brakes. They don't want anything to happen on issues that matter a great deal to the average American family. I have listened attentively to the presentation. I was going to come over and make a presentation myself. I will do that tomorrow. The answer is, yes, let's be very concerned about Iraq, about foreign policy, about the war on terrorism. Let's be concerned about it, do it seriously. But let's also understand it is not the only subject. There are other important considerations impacting on the lives of American families with which we need to be dealing.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, several weeks ago I wrote to President Bush and suggested it is time--perhaps past the time--to have an economic summit in this country to talk about the challenges we are facing with this American economy. It is interesting, if you look at what has happened. We had gone through a period of almost unprecedented growth and opportunity. The 1990s was a period in which people were working. We had increases in the number of jobs available, home ownership, personal income, and the stock market was moving up. The economy was growing. It solves a lot of problems in a country when you have an economy that is growing. There is no social program that is as good as a good job that pays well, and people who are trained and skilled and able to assume those jobs. But in recent years--the last year and a half, 2 years--we have hit some rough water here, and the economy is not doing well. We have a series of things that have happened. Early in the President's term, he proposed a fiscal policy with a $1.7 trillion tax cut, the bulk of which goes to the upper income folks in the country. And he said: Well, we are going to have surpluses for 10 straight years. I was on this floor and said--I am the conservative on this--I don't think you ought to predict, with any precision, what is going to happen 10 years from now. We don't know what is going to happen 3 months from now or 3 years from now, let alone 10 years from now. The President, and others here, insisted: No. We are going to have all these surpluses, and this money belongs to the American people. Let's give it back. Let's lock it in, and do it now. In a matter of months, we had a war on terrorism, the terrible and tragic attack on this country of September 11. We have a recession that occurs shortly after this new fiscal policy is developed, which probably was occurring even as it was being developed. And then we have a series of corporate scandals, scandals unlike any we have seen in our lifetime, certainly, and perhaps in a century or so. In addition to that, we see a stock market that begins to collapse. So all of these things, coming together, have dramatically changed what is happening in Government. Big budget surpluses have now turned to big budget deficits. And it is as if nothing has happened. We have the administration, the President, and others acting as if: Well, nothing has really changed. There is no need to be talking about these things. Of course there is a need for us to be talking about them. Things have changed in a dramatic way. As a result of that, I think we ought to come together and have an economic summit of some type with the President, to talk about what kind of fiscal policy can put this country's economy back on track, so that those who are out of work can find work, so that those whose life savings in their 401(k)s, that have been dissipated, can begin to see them grow once again, so that the economy produces opportunity and jobs once again. This isn't going to happen just by accident. It is going to happen if we take a look at what is not working and what are the potential solutions to make it work. I understand the discussion in the last few weeks has been all Iraq all the time. I am not suggesting it is not important. That is a very important matter, a serious and deadly issue for this country. It is also the case, however, as the newspaper tells us this morning, that the President is out 2 days a week campaigning across the country and fundraising and so on. He has a right to do that as well. But if he has the time to do that, then he also has the time to work with us to construct a fiscal policy that relates to what we face today. Today we face an economy in trouble. We face a war on terror. We face budget surpluses that have turned to budget deficits. We face a stock market in great turmoil. We face a a circumstance of well over 6 percent of our population out of work, unable to find jobs. It is time for us to stop, take stock, and evaluate what works and what doesn't. How do we put together a plan that moves this country toward economic opportunity and economic growth once again? I understand why some want to ignore it, but it is not the right thing for this country. I have been chairing hearings for the last 8 or 10 months on the subject of corporate scandals. That is an important issue. It has also played a role in injuring the feelings of people and the confidence they have in the economy. There is a difference in how we view those issues. For example, I was trying to offer an amendment to the corporate responsibility bill that passed the Senate. I was blocked by the Republican side. Regrettably, that amendment is not now law. The rest of the bill is law. The amendment is very simple. It says, if you are a corporate executive and you are taking a company into bankruptcy, the 12 months before you run that company into the ground, if you are getting bonus payments and incentive payments, we have a right to recapture them and force a disgorgement of those payments. You should not get incentives and bonuses when you run a company into the ground. Since I was blocked from offering that and it is not now law--I will continue to try--the Financial Times came out with an analysis. They said that the 25 largest bankruptcies in America occurred in the last year and a half; 208 corporate executives took $3.3 billion in compensation out of those corporations before those corporations were run into the ground. I will hold a hearing on that in the next couple weeks. There is something fundamentally wrong with what is going on in those areas. We have people who don't want to talk about it. The administration doesn't want to talk about it. That is not the issue they want to bring to the floor and have a debate on. But that is what we should have a debate on. How do you establish confidence in this economy if you don't clear up those kinds of problems? So whether it is corporate scandals, a troubled economy, a recession, a war on terrorism, a stock market that acts like a yo-yo, we need to put the pieces of this puzzle together again. It is not going to get put together by people just ignoring the issue. One of the significant issues facing our country at this moment is an economy that is in very serious trouble. It does no service to our country to deny that. Let's try to find a way to fix it. There may not be a way where one party says, we have all the answers, or the other side says, we have all the answers. Maybe the answers are the best of what both have to offer, instead of getting the worst of what each has to offer. In order to get there, you have to sit down and talk about it. I urge the President to respond to these requests for an economic summit, to sit down with us and talk about what is wrong with the economy and how you put this back together towards an economy and a future of economic growth and opportunity once again. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wanted to 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, those who provide emergency ambulance services, and other members of our rural health care system. And because of past and proposed cuts in Medicare reimbursement, plus historical unfairness in Medicare payments, these vital services are in jeopardy. Like most of my Senate colleagues, I supported the Balanced Budget Act, BBA, of 1997 when it was enacted by Congress with strong bipartisan support. Prior to the passage of this law, Medicare was projected to be insolvent by 2001, so it was imperative that we took action to extend Medicare's financial health and to constrain its rate of growth to a more sustainable level. We later found that the Balanced Budget Act worked to reduce Medicare program costs, but many health care providers were adversely affected by payment reductions that were larger than intended. To address these concerns, Congress in 1999 made adjustments in the Balanced Budget Refinement Act, BBRA, followed in 2000 by the Medicare Beneficiary Improvement and Protection Act, BIPA. Without these needed changes, frankly, as many as a dozen of North Dakota's hospitals might be closed today. But, 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 second oldest in the Nation, and our population is shrinking daily. In fact, in 13 of North Dakota's counties, there were 20 or fewer births for the entire county last year. 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 85 percent of their revenue. Obviously, given this reality, changes in Medicare reimbursement have 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. Of course, some of this difference can be explained by regional differences in the cost of health care and variations in the health status of older Americans. But this is not the whole explanation. Even after adjusting for these factors, a recent report by health care economists found that, for example, Medicare's per beneficiary spending was about $8,000 in Miami, but only $3,500 in Minneapolis. When average Medicare payments for the same procedure are compared, the disparities in payment in different areas of the country are dramatic. The table below compares payments for two of the most common procedures in North Dakota: hospitalization for heart failure and shock, and hospitalization for treatment of pneumonia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Heart Location in U.S. Failure and Simple Shock pneumonia ------------------------------------------------------------------------ North Dakota.................................. $3,079 $3,383 California.................................... 4,774 5,153 New York...................................... 4,471 5,237 District of Columbia.......................... 6,168 6,588 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As you can see, the average payment for these same hospital procedures, in larger and more urbanized States like New York and California, is 150 percent of the Medicare payment for the same procedure in North Dakota. The average Medicare payment for these same procedures is twice as high in the District of Columbia. In my opinion, the difference is largely explained by a Medicare reimbursement system that is skewed in favor of urban area, and past legislation has done little to address that concern, despite efforts by some of us to do so. I have cosponsored legislation in the Senate, the Area Wage and Base Payment Improvement Act, S. 885, that would address the rural inequity in Medicare reimbursement in two 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. Second, S. 885 would increase the wage index for most of North Dakota's hospitals. This is a major area of concern that I hear about from North Dakota hospital administrators. 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. I am also a cosponsor of the Rural Health Care Improvement Act of 2001, S. 1030. This legislation introduced by Senator Conrad would, among other things, provide for a new ``low volume'' adjustment payment for hospitals with a smaller number of patients and establish a revolving loan fund to help rural health care facilities make much- needed capital improvements. I also want to mention a positive impact of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. That legislation created the Critical Access Hospital program, which has proven to be critically important to the survival of North Dakota's smallest and most rural hospitals. Twenty-eight of North Dakota's rural hospitals, serving about 181,000 North Dakotans, have now converted to Critical Access Hospital status, which allows them to receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare. I strongly support continuing this program and making some modest changes to strengthen the program. We also need to reauthorize the Rural Hospital Flexibility program, which provides grants to states to assist small rural hospitals in making the switch to Critical Access Hospitals. In addition, Congress also must make some other changes to Medicare reimbursement to head off some upcoming reductions in payments. For instance, Medicare reimbursement to physicians and allied health providers is scheduled to be reduced by 12 percent over the next three years because of problems with the payment formula. In addition, reimbursement to home health agencies is scheduled to be cut by 15 percent on October 1, and a 10 percent payment boost for rural home health agencies expires at the end of this year. And skilled nursing homes will be facing a 10 percent reduction in their Medicare payment rates in 2003 and a 19 percent cut in 2004 unless Congress acts to avert this ``cliff'' in funding. I support making changes in all of these areas to help address these concerns. 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 that reflect rural health care as a strong national priority.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this piece of material is part of a wing strut from a Backfire bomber that the Soviets used to fly. This Backfire bomber doesn't exist anymore. It wasn't shot down. It wasn't part of combat with the United States. This was sawed off of an airplane. The wings were sawed off of a Backfire bomber that used to carry nuclear weapons--presumably that would threaten our country in the middle of the Cold War. It was dismantled, sawed apart, and destroyed. And in a sense, we purchased it. We paid for it under the Nunn-Lugar program, in which we decided through arms control agreements with the Soviet Union--and then with Russia--to reduce the number of nuclear warheads and reduce the delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads, because we believed that allowed us to step back from the dangers of nuclear war. I hold in my hand part of a Soviet Backfire bomber that we didn't shoot down. We helped pay to saw the wings off this bomber. This other material is ground up copper wire that used to be in a Soviet submarine that carried nuclear missiles with warheads aimed at the United States of America. That submarine doesn't exist any longer. I am able to hold in my hand this ground up copper from that dismantled submarine because of an arms control agreement by which we negotiated with the Soviets to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and reduce the delivery vehicles for those nuclear weapons, and, therefore, have made this a safer world. A bomber and a submarine that used to carry nuclear weapons no longer exists. We have made progress. But there are, of course, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 nuclear weapons that continue to exist on the face of this Earth. And many in this world aspire to acquire nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups and other countries want to become part of the club that has nuclear weapons. Our children and their children are threatened by the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It doesn't take 100 nuclear weapons or a thousand nuclear weapons to create chaos and hysteria and concern for the future of the world. It just takes one--just one nuclear weapon. Today, if someone is notified that there is a nuclear weapon missing from the Russian arsenal and that has been stolen by terrorists and is put in the trunk of a rusty Yugo car on the dock at New York City, or in a container on a ship coming into the ports of Los Angeles--if just one nuclear weapon is thought to be entering this country's space, its ports, its docks, its cities--that is enough for the kind of nuclear blackmail that can cause chaos and hysteria and threaten a nuclear war. The President gave a very forceful speech yesterday to the United Nations. He is--and we are--concerned about Iraq and Saddam Hussein having access to weapons of mass destruction. He is--and we are-- concerned about the potential of a Saddam Hussein getting access and acquiring a nuclear weapon. I don't diminish at all the concern about that. We ought to be concerned about that. We and the President are all concerned about that. But let us understand that the broader issue of arms control and arms reduction ought to be front and center in this Chamber. This country needs to be a leader in the world to help reduce the number of nuclear weapons and help prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. Regrettably, in recent years, some Members in this Chamber--and elsewhere in the Government of the United States--have expressed, if not a benign neglect, an open hostility to arms control and arms reductions. Let me go through a few of the things that have happened. We had a vote in this Chamber on the issue of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. We should have such a treaty. After all, we don't test anymore in this country. The first George Bush Presidency said we will no longer test nuclear weapons. But this Senate voted against a Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty--despite the fact that we unilaterally decided not to test, and have not tested for a decade. This Senate turned that treaty down, sending a message to the rest of the world that this is not our priority. There is nothing more important, in my judgment, to the children of America and to their children and their future than dealing with this question of a nuclear threat. The Soviet Union is gone. The Cold War is over. The President's discussion about Saddam Hussein underscores the concern about one dictator in Iraq--an evil man in Iraq who is seeking to get nuclear weapons. But I am just saying that there is much more at stake than that. The Iraq situation is at stake for us, and we need to respond to that. But there is much more at stake. So many others want to acquire nuclear weapons. There are so many nuclear weapons around in this world. I indicated that there are somewhere between, perhaps, 25,000 and 30,000 nuclear weapons in existence. A fair number of them for a number of reasons are not very well controlled. So we need to talk in the broader context about what our responsibility is, and what our role is with respect to arms control and arms reduction in the future. The Senate was asked to consider the nomination of a fellow named John Holum, who the President said he wanted as senior adviser for arms control. John Holum is a remarkable American, who has had incredible experience, and he was nominated for the position of Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. He is somebody who believes in his heart that we need to pursue negotiations and efforts to achieve treaties for nuclear arms reduction and to achieve progress in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. But his nomination was blocked. The President sent us instead John Bolton, who doesn't have experience in arms control, who has never served in an arms control position, who has expressed disdain for arms control and those who promote it, and who expressed disdain for the United Nations. He said: . . . a building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 it wouldn't make a bit of difference. And his nomination was approved by the Senate. So we have someone in this area who really isn't interested in pursuing the approach that we have used, which has been quite successful in beginning the process of reducing nuclear weapons and reducing the nuclear threat. We also have had discussions in recent months about perhaps developing a new type of nuclear weapon. Perhaps a nuclear weapon can be developed that will be a cave buster--some nuclear-tipped bomb that will bust into caves and be more effective in dealing with the problem that we encountered in Afghanistan where terrorists burrowed into caves. The minute you start talking about designing nuclear weapons-- especially a little nuclear weapon with a special nuclear tip that can be used against caves--once you start talking about the potential to use nuclear weapons, the genie is out of the bottle. Our discussion in this country ought never to be a discussion about how to use a nuclear weapon. That is not what we ought to be discussing. We ought to be discussing our obligation to assume a world leadership position to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Do you want a future 10 years from now or 40 years from now in which 50, 75, or 100 countries, including terrorists and rogue nations, have nuclear weapons at their disposal? I don't think so. We have had a 50-year effort in this country--50 years--to stigmatize nuclear weapons and brand them only as a weapon of last resort. We ought not do anything to undermine that basic approach to nuclear weapons. We are talking about homeland security in these days. When you talk about nuclear weapons, you have to talk about homeland security against the ultimate weapon; that is, a nuclear weapon. But there are many other kinds of weapons. We may spend $7 to $8 billion this year, in this Congress, on a national missile defense program, trying to build a missile that has the capability of hitting a bullet with a bullet. The purpose of that is a defensive mechanism by which if a rogue nation or terrorist or some other country were able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile against the United States, we would be able to shoot it down and prevent a nuclear attack using an ICBM. We will spend an enormous amount of money on that, believing that one of the threats is an intercontinental ballistic missile coming in at 14,000 miles an hour, with a nuclear warhead, sent by some rogue nation or terrorist state. It is one of the less likely threats; the Pentagon will tell you that. Rogue nations and terrorist states would have a very difficult time dealing with an ICBM, if they could acquire one in the first place. A far more likely prospect would be a container, on a container ship, pulling up to a dock in New York City at 3 miles an hour, with a low- yield nuclear device in the middle of a container, in the middle of a container ship. There are 5.7 million containers that come into this country every year to all of our ports and docks. These big ships pull up with containers stacked on top of their decks. Of the 5.7 million, 100,000 are inspected. So 5.6 million are not. I was at a dock in Seattle recently, and they had pulled off a ship container, and they were inspecting it at the Customs facility. I asked them: What is this? What is in the container? They said: Frozen broccoli, from Poland. I said: Well, do you know anything about it, the frozen broccoli from Poland? They said: No, but we'll show you. They opened up the container, pulled the bag out, and ripped it open, and, sure enough, there was broccoli from Poland. I said: How do you know what's in the middle of this container? You just pulled the one bag out. They said: Well, we don't. We just opened it to see that it was frozen broccoli from Poland. So we have 5.6 million containers that come into this country, and they are largely uninspected. Does anyone here not believe that port security, the security of containers, is critically important? Did you read the story about the fellow from the Middle East who decided to send himself to Canada, presumably with the thought of coming into the United States, and he put himself in a container? He had a cot, he had potable water, he had a telephone, he had a computer, he had a GPS system, he had a heater. And there he was living in a container, on a container ship, shipping himself to Toronto, Canada. Well, they found this guy. They thought he was a terrorist. I don't know what the disposition of that was. But think of it, how easy it is, if 5.7 million containers come into this country, and we only take a look at 100,000 of them. What is in the other 5.6 million? That is a big homeland security issue. What are we going to do about that? We have heard discussions about the potential for a dirty bomb. The National Research Council gave a long listing the other day with respect to homeland security, about our shortcomings on preparedness to defend against nuclear and dirty bomb threats, and against biological warfare. Here is what the report said. We have to develop vaccines for airborne pathogens--we are way behind in doing that--create better sensors and filters for dangerous chemicals; build a system to counter sabotage of the Nation's food supply; find better methods to fend off attacks on nuclear reactors, electrical power grids, and communications systems; and develop defense in depth for airport and other transportation security. Much of what we are talking about in the current debate about homeland security is organizational. We say, let's take a look at an organizational chart and find the boxes and evaluate how we can put all these boxes together in a different way. And so you have, at the end, 170,000 people in a new agency. Putting agencies together in a way in which they are better prepared to deal with homeland security makes good sense to me. But there is not a right or a wrong way to do it. There are a lot of different ideas on how it might or might not work, and we will not know, perhaps for a year or 2 or 3 or 4 years, after the Congress finishes its work, and the President signs the bill, whether what we have done advances our interests or retards it. It is reasonable to ask the question, if homeland security is going to be restructured, should we consider some change to the way we use the FBI and the CIA, and the way we gather and analyze intelligence? I know there is a portion of that in this bill, and I think this is a question we have to consider carefully. Good intelligence is critical. I mentioned the issue of nuclear weapons. Russia, which is now the nuclear repository of the old Soviet Union, has thousands of excess nuclear weapons in storage facilities that fall far short of what we expect for decent security standards. We are told they have more than 1,000 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and at least 150 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, much of it in less than adequate storage facilities. That is enough for 80,000 nuclear weapons, by the way. In addition, dangerous biological pathogens are kept at scores of poorly guarded sites around the former Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of former Soviet Union scientists and engineers are living hand to mouth because of military downsizing and the collapse of the economy. These are people who know how to make these bombs, were involved in the development of the Soviet nuclear capability. We know that individuals and groups have attempted to steal uranium or plutonium from sites in the former Soviet Union dozens of times in the past 10 years. Former Senate Majority Leader James Baker and former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler headed a panel last year that studied the threat to our country posed by nuclear weapons, materials, and know-how in the former Soviet Union. Here is what the panel said about a scenario where a terrorist would have access to some basic material and could get the engineers and scientists to put this together: The national security benefits to the U.S. citizens from securing and/or neutralizing the equivalent of more than 80,000 nuclear weapons and potential nuclear weapons would constitute the highest return on investment in any current U.S. national security and defense program. In a worst case scenario, a nuclear engineer graduate with a grapefruit-sized lump of highly enriched uranium or an orange-sized lump of plutonium, together with material otherwise readily available in commercial markets, could fashion a nuclear device that would fit in a van like the one terrorist Yosif parked in the World Trade Center in 1993. The explosive effects of such a device would destroy every building in [the] Wall Street financial area and would level lower Manhattan. The Baker-Cutler panel recommends spending a substantial amount of money, $30 billion over 10 years--three times what the administration is proposing--to secure weapons and fissile and biological material in Russia by expanding cooperative threat reduction, which is an important part of the outgrowth of the Nunn-Lugar program, and a range of other efforts. So Iraq is important, but there are broader issues to consider as well. Incidentally, the President yesterday did the right thing by going to the United Nations and saying to the U.N.: Look, you have had resolution after resolution after resolution, and Iraq has defied you. They have failed to live up to their terms of surrender from the gulf war, and they simply thumb their nose at your resolutions. What the President said to the United Nations yesterday was: You had better decide whether you are going to pass resolutions and enforce them or not. And the President said: We will take this to the National Security Council. A lot of people were worried that he would not do that. I am glad he has. It is exactly the right step. The notion of saying we don't care what the Security Council does or what the U.N. says, that is not the way to do it. The President yesterday did the right thing. He said to the National Security Council and the United Nations: You need to begin enforcing what you are doing by resolution with respect to the country of Iraq. I hope the United Nations will decide to do that. My hope is we can put together a coalition through the United Nations of coercive inspections that demand and achieve the inspections necessary to make sure we are not threatened by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But let us agree that the problem is bigger than just Iraq, and let us decide to be a world leader in dealing with stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Let's bring back the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. Let's pass it. Let's send a signal to the world that we care about the chemical weapons ban, because this country wants to lead in the right direction to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Now, let me say a few words about the proposed Department of Homeland Security. The President says to us he wants to put this agency together, and he wants to do it in a way that he has maximum flexibility with respect to all of these workers. Whatever we do, however we do it, we will give this President very substantial flexibility. But to suggest somehow that the basic protections that workers expect and have received for many years in this Government of ours should be discarded or disallowed makes no sense. We propose to provide the same basic protections to workers in all of these agencies that you have for civilian workers at the U.S. Department of Defense. That makes good sense. I get tired of people saying: Federal workers, they are not worth much. They are people who can't find a job elsewhere. We have terrific people working for the Federal Government. We have great people in public service--not just the Federal Government, but State and local government as well. Among those people who filed out of the World Trade Center, we had firefighters and law enforcement officers climbing the stairs. Some of those firefighters were up on the 70th floor carrying 60-pound backpacks, climbing up as that fire was coursing through that building, knowing they were risking their lives. They were not asking about overtime or about how tough it might be, what the risk was. They were doing their jobs--wonderful, brave people. There are a lot of people like them all over this country in public service. This Government ought to say to them: We value your work. We honor your work. I don't want anything in this homeland security bill to in any way denigrate the work of those public employees or pull the rug out from under them. They are going to be our first defenders, the first line of defense. They are the ones who will make this work. We have a lot to do here. We have a government of checks and balances which requires cooperation, which requires that we work together. The President has some good ideas. I think our colleagues have good ideas. I think Senator Byrd does us a service by talking about how we put this together in the long term. In politics, there are always a couple of sides. Each side too often wants the other to lose. We should get the best of both rather than the worst of each. That is especially true on homeland security. It is up to us. The moment is now. The President is right to be talking about concern of weapons of mass destruction. But is it not just Iraq. This is a much bigger subject. We need those who now talk in the most aggressive ways about dealing with this issue to join us to develop new arms reduction strategies and to develop approaches by which the rest of the world joins us in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have not been on the floor until now to speak about the homeland security bill and the issues surrounding that bill. I have been thinking a lot about it, as have many of my colleagues. We have had a good number of amendments, and I do not believe anyone here thinks the issue is whether we shall pass a piece of legislation dealing with homeland security. Of course we should enact a piece of legislation dealing with homeland security. We need to respond to the President's request. We will do that. The question isn't whether, the question is how. There are many ideas about homeland security that come from all corners of this Chamber. We ought to take the best of all of those ideas and incorporate them into this legislation. Yesterday the President spoke at the United Nations about the threat that comes from Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Because that also relates to the issue of homeland security, I wanted to make some comments of a general nature this morning. In my desk, I have a couple of pieces of materials taken from weapons that were once targeted at the United States. I ask unanimous consent to be able to show them on the floor. I am doing this for a very important reason.

Mr. DORGAN. I am pleased to yield for a question from the Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me thank the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the ranking member. We have a very short amount of time in which to do a great deal of business. I did not wish to interrupt their work on Interior if in fact there was an amendment that was to be acted upon. I appreciate their courtesy. Let me make some comments about the broad question of homeland security and relate it to the discussion yesterday at the United Nations that was offered by President Bush.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I am pleased to yield to the Senator from Nevada for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask the chairman of the Appropriations Committee if he has other business to transact on that appropriation. If not, I would like to offer some comments on homeland security, which is the second track we have been working on this week.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I had wanted to make some comments this morning on the issue of homeland security. I understand we are currently back on the Interior appropriations bill; is that correct?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for as much time as I consume.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I was not sure if I was going to come and say a few words today. I am almost fatigued by the coverage of 9/ 11, and yet there is something so important about this moment that silence somehow is not an appropriate response. The horror of the moment of September 11 last year remains with us even as we ache in our heart for those who lost their lives on that day. I think all of us understand the target was not buildings. It was not buildings in New York or Washington, DC. The target was the spirit of our country. The target was democracy. The target was Americans and what Americans represent. With the 1-year anniversary of that event, it is important for our country again to take stock of where we are, who we are, and what our citizenship responsibilities are as Americans. One year ago, I left the Capitol Building late at night to drive home and drove past the Pentagon. It was still burning, with smoke billowing out of the Pentagon that was then bathed in floodlights. It was an eerie sight to see the fire at the Pentagon even late at night and to hear and see the F-15 and F-16 fighter planes flying combat missions over our city and the Capitol that day and that evening. We went back to the Pentagon a few days later, and we were, as Members of Congress, meeting with Pentagon officials and viewing the damage. As we were there, one young marine was hanging by a crane in a bucket up near what had been the fourth floor of the Pentagon in what now was an open wound and gash in that concrete building. He had been hoisted up in the bucket by a crane that was moving toward this open gash. As we watched him, he reached around into this open area where this airplane hit and he pulled out a flag he had spotted up in an open area that had miraculously burned, and he brought this red and gold flag, which was the Marine flag, a brilliant red and gold color. He had the crane lower him to the ground. He marched over to where we were, walked past us and said: I am going to give this flag to the Marine Commandant. He said: Terrorists could not destroy this flag, and they cannot destroy this country. I think the spirit of that young marine and the spirit of people at Ground Zero, where we visited a week following the attacks, is something I will always remember. The visit to Ground Zero that many in Congress conducted was a very sad visit, showing the carnage and destruction of the World Trade Center where so many thousands died. The event I recall from that day, among many, was a firefighter who came to me with a several-day growth of beard, blood-shot eyes. He had worked around the clock for many days. He told me of the friends he had lost, those who were his fellow firefighters who had died in the tragedy. Here was a man who obviously had very little rest, had worked day and night. Through his blood-shot eyes and with a uniform that was quite dirty, having worked around the clock, he looked at me and said: Senator, you must promise me to do one thing. I asked: What is that? He said: Get them. Get them. If you do not get them, they will do this to this country again. He represented the feeling of all Americans. We must make certain that terrorists are not able to do this again in our country. Our country is, in my judgment, as united as ever, united to battle terrorism wherever it exists in the world. We have come to understand as a country that a battle against terrorism is not quick. It is not easy. But it is something to which all America is committed. Every fanatic anywhere in the world who thinks terrorism is an acceptable means to an end needs to hear and know that America is united. My State is half a continent away from Washington, DC, and New York City where the attacks took place. Let me speak for a moment about my rural State, so distant from the urban areas where the attacks took place. First, tragically, we, too, experienced the loss of life. A young North Dakotan, Ann Nelson of Stanley, ND, died when the World Trade Center collapsed. I knew Ann and her family. She was a very special young woman. Her father has been a good friend of mine for many years. She had a bright future ahead of her, and she was a joy to all who knew her. Ann Nelson was a young North Dakota woman seeking a career, pursuing a job in the World Trade Center in New York City. She died because she was an American. She was one of thousands of innocent Americans who lost their lives because of these heinous, unspeakable acts of horror committed by terrorists. The day of the attack in Washington, DC, I looked up in the sky to see fighter jets flying overhead. I found out later that day they were pilots from Fargo, ND, members of the Air National Guard called the Happy Hooligans, some of the best fighter pilots in the world. Over the years, they have won three William Tell Awards which is the award for the best fighter pilots. They are stationed on a rotating basis at Langley Air Force Base. Part of their mission is to protect the Nation's Capital. They were the first scrambled and the first in the air and the first over the Nation's Capital on that very day, 9/11. We are so proud of them. They are the ones we saw in the air almost immediately after these attacks. Their mission, I told them, reminds me of something I read some long while ago. I don't know where it comes from, a verse that said: When the night is full of knives, and the lightning is seen, and the drums are heard, the patriots are always there, ready to fight and ready to die, if necessary, for freedom. A lot of patriots last September 11 said: I'm here and I'm ready to fight for freedom. In the weeks and months that followed the attacks of September 11, our country has come together like never before. We understand that we face a very special and unusual challenge. We are a big, wide open, free democracy. It is very hard to provide absolute security in every way, every day all around our country. We do not want any of us to diminish the basic freedoms that represent America, the basic freedoms in our Constitution. We do not want to diminish those freedoms in order to fight terrorism. We want to fight terrorism and eradicate terrorism wherever it exists. We want to preserve that which makes America unique, the most wonderful country on the face of the Earth. A year ago when I spoke in this Chamber about the events of September 11, I recalled the words that Shakespeare wrote: Grief hath changed me since you saw me last. It continues to change us as we go forward carrying the heavy burden that grief imposes. But part of that change is much more than grief. Part of it is a steely resolve to respond forcefully and strongly and with precision to those who carried out the attacks 1 year ago. Our resolve in this year, in my judgment, has grown even stronger. This will be a day that Americans will think about for many decades to come, the September 11 anniversary of 2001. My hope is we rededicate ourselves today to the mission ahead and the challenge ahead to preserve our democracy. My hope is that today we also pay honor to the memory of those innocent Americans who lost their lives, and then say thank you to all of the heroes who, on September 11, extended forward and said: Let it be me to reach out and help. And especially we say thank you to the men and women of the Armed Forces who serve in harm's way all across the world. Finally, months after September 11, I was in Afghanistan, Baghram, Kabul, and that region of the world. As you fly into Afghanistan and look down through an airplane window to the hills and the mountains and understand that somewhere in caves deep in the mountains there were people plotting the murder of innocent Americans, you understand we cannot ever be oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the world. It can have a profound impact on the lives of those who cherish freedom. I say to the young men and women I met in Kabul and Baghram and elsewhere, thanks for your service to America. Thanks for helping us wage the fight against terrorism, a fight this country is determined and destined to win. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to support an important program funded in the fiscal year 2003 Interior Appropriation measure. The Advanced Microturbine Program is a Department of Energy effort to support and develop clean and efficient power technologies for the 21st century. The program's goals are to improve energy efficiency, reduce environmental emissions and expand fuel choices for the next generation of microturbines. As I mentioned in the past, we must produce more energy, but we also must conserve more energy. Conservation of energy is simply another way of producing energy. Energy efficiency is also integral to any energy plan. Electrical systems can and should be made more efficient. Finally, we must utilize renewable energies. Employing fuels such as ethanol and using them to extend our energy supply makes good sense. The Advanced Microturbine Program goes a long ways towards those ends. The ultimate aim of the program is to produce ultra clean, highly efficient microturbine product designs by 2006 that are ready for commercialization. The machines will utilize several fuel options, including landfill gas, industrial off-gases, ethanol, and other biobased liquids and gases. The Advanced Microturbine Program is a good example of how partnerships with industry, including one from my home State, and government can deliver advanced technologies and practices to assist in meeting challenging goals in the areas of renewable resource development and environmental protection. For this efficient technology to reach its full potential, I am told that the Advanced Microturbine Program should be funded at $14 million for fiscal year 2003. At the minimum, I encourage my colleagues to recede to the higher House level of $12 million as we move this bill to conference.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I listened attentively to my colleague from North Dakota and my colleague from Montana. Their remarks about this issue describe how important it is for us to enact legislation dealing with this disaster. I thought I would bring a poster that shows a picture of two parts of North Dakota: One State, two extremes. This top picture shows a farmer/ rancher down in the southern part of our State standing in an area that looks very much like a moonscape. There is no vegetation left. This is completely dry and pretty well dead. This is a drought area that has consumed a significant portion of the southern part of our State, and it has been devastating to those farmers and ranchers trying to make a living down there. This bottom picture was actually taken on the same day in the same State, but this is a different part of the State. This is an area that received 12 inches of rain in 1 day. This is a farmer who lost everything. These pictures are representative of a wide group of producers in our States. We call them producers, but they are family farmers. They risk all they have to try to raise a crop and have a livestock herd that can make it through good and bad times, and then try to take the crop or the livestock to market and make some money. They are discovering this year, as is much of the country, that trying to tend a herd of livestock or raise a crop is very difficult in the circumstances that exist. We have a disaster that has occurred over a substantial portion of this country. This is the Palmer Drought Index. One can see over a substantial portion of the country where there is massive drought. Some people say: So what? So what about family farming? Will Rogers many years ago said: If one day in this country all the lawyers and the accountants failed to show up for work, it would not be a very big deal. But if on that same day all the cows in America failed to show up to be milked, now that would be a problem. He was, in his own way, trying to describe the importance of family farmers, the importance of production agriculture. Production agriculture, from our standpoint in North Dakota, is families out there living under a yard light trying to make a go of it by planting seed in the spring and having every hope perhaps that seed will grow into something they can harvest and take to the market and be able to recapture their living expenses. They live on hope. We have seen now over recent years weather patterns that have devastated large groups of family farmers. These clearly are disasters. When you have a drought of the type we have had, it is truly a disaster. If tonight 1,000 tornadoes spring up and move relentlessly across the prairies or the western part of the United States and destroy all the structures and the vegetation, that is a disaster. Tomorrow we would have FEMA, we would have trucks, we would have armies of people moving because the headlines would be: This is a disaster, and we have to move and deal with it. It does not matter whether it is drought, flood, earthquake, fire, or tornado. The devastation and destruction that occurs to the crops of tens of thousands of family farmers is a disaster, and we need to respond to it. I am proud to say that in every set of circumstances in my service both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, when there has been a disaster and a proposal on the floor of the Senate to respond to that disaster, I have said yes. It does not matter to me where it is in this country. If there are cities, counties, States, groups of people in this country who have suffered a disaster, then I want to be a part of the voice of this Congress that says to them: You are not alone. This country wants to help. I want to be, and have always been, a part of a group in this Congress who says we want to extend the helping hand of America during a time of disaster. That needs to be the case now with respect to the disaster that occurs on family farms in this country because of this relentless, gripping, devastating drought in some parts of the country and, in other parts of the country, flooded lands. There are a good many ways to deal with disasters. Some disasters might be just a single farm disaster. When I was a young boy, a good friend of ours named Ernest died. His crop was still in the field. He died of a heart attack one evening. The neighbors gassed up the combines and the trucks and went over and harvested the crop and took it to the market for Ernest's widow. That is just the way it works. That is what neighbors are about. That is what communities are for. But that is a disaster of one farm where neighbors can solve the problem. In a disaster of this type where you have this relentless drought that has destroyed so many acres, so many crops, so much pastureland, neighbors are in the same shape. They are all devastated by this drought and all losing the opportunity to make a living. Some say: All you do is talk about farmers. This is not just about farmers. It is about those communities and small towns, medium-size towns across the heartland of our country. It is about rural businesses. It is about the local grain elevator that does not have any grain to handle. The local feedstore that is not going to sell any feed. It is about the machinery dealer who is not going to sell machinery. It is about jobs in the manufacturing plants that produce that machinery to process that feed. So it is much more than just family farms. This is a circumstance where we need to take action now. I happen to think family farmers are America's economic all-stars. They produce, produce, produce in a prodigious way. It has always baffled me that farmers are accused of being guilty of overproducing. We have a world in which a half a billion people go to bed every night with an ache in their belly because they are hungry, and our farmers produce food and are told the food they produce has no value. Are they nuts? Of course, it has value. This is a hungry world. We need to be smart enough to connect it all. Our family farmers are enormous producers and have done very well, but they suffer disaster. They are individual, small economic units. They are up against the weather. They are up against insects. Once they plant that seed, they might lose their crop to a drought. They might lose it to a flood. They might lose it to insects. They might lose it to disease. They might lose it to hail. They might lose it to wind. And if they manage to not lose it to any of those things and they get a crop off by harvesting it in the fall, they might find out they lose their value by going to a country elevator and discovering the grain trade has told them their food in a hungry world has no value. So these farmers suffer all of those risks and more, but they cannot cope with the kind of relentless drought that exists in this country in a way that devastates individual producers in State after State. This is an important issue. It is not parochial. It does not deal with just a few problems in a few areas. What has happened in this country is we have passed a farm bill that tries to help farmers during collapsing prices. That is a significant problem and a significant achievement, to pass a farm bill that does that. But if one does not raise a crop because of a disaster price protection, it does not help; there is no protection at all. That is why a disaster declaration and a disaster bill dealing with these issues of drought and floods for preventive planting and destroyed crops is so very important. We need to do this, not tomorrow, not next month, not next year; we need to do it now. If we fail to do this now, there are a good many families who will lose their hopes and dreams for the future. They will not be around next spring. They will not be there because they will not be able to continue farming. This is an important and good investment for this country to make. It invests in the American dream for family farmers, for family entrepreneurs, and I am pleased to be a part of a group that has brought it to the floor of the Senate, and I am pleased today to support it. This is an urgent need. Congress needs to pass this, and we need to pass it now. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to comment on one additional matter. I intend to hold some hearings in the Commerce subcommittee that I chair, on the issue of corporate responsibility. We recently passed legislation dealing with corporate responsibility in the Senate. It was subsequently signed by the President. I supported that legislation, but I thought that it could be improved in some areas. During Senate debate, I tried to offer an amendment dealing with the issue of bankruptcy, that called for recovery of profits by top executives of companies that went bankrupt. The amendment was blocked by my colleague, the Senator from Texas, who kept me from offering it over several days. I was not able to offer that amendment on the bill, but I am going to continue to push it. My point is this: As corporations go bankrupt and as those CEOs take increasing amounts of money out of corporations in bonus payments and incentive payments prior to bankruptcy, I think there ought to be a mechanism for disgorgement or recapture of that money for the benefit of other investors who lost their shirts and the employees who lost their jobs. I believe this idea would have had wide support in the Senate, but I could not get it done because it was blocked by the Senator from Texas. Well, the Financial Times has done a study and written an article to which I want to call attention. It is titled ``The Survivors Who Left All the Way to the Bank.'' The Financial Times found that in the 25 largest companies that went bankrupt since January of 2001, there were 208 top executives who were paid a total of $3.3 billion in salaries, bonuses, and incentive payments. Think of that. As these publicly traded companies were going down the tubes and into bankruptcy, executives were busy taking out massive sums--$933 million from one; $290 million from another; $299 million from another, just to give a few examples. I would like one good reason anybody has for providing a bonus or incentive payment to any executive prior to the company filing bankruptcy--just one good reason. But there is not one. That money ought to be recaptured. There ought to be what is called a disgorgement or recapture or clawback. That money ought to be used to reimburse investors who lost their shirts and employees who lost their jobs. I am going to hold a hearing about this in my subcommittee. We are going to look into situations like that of Enron. We have already had some testimony in this regard in my subcommittee, relating to bonuses paid at Enron. It turns out that Enron paid $55 million to people at the top of the corporation to commit to stay 90 days as employees following bankruptcy. Some people got bonuses of $1 million, some of half a million dollars. I think that is nuts. The investors get ripped by losing their shirts, losing their investments, and a few people inside the companies that went into bankruptcy walk away with pockets full of gold from the treasuries of these corporations. It ought not happen. It is just plain wrong. Yet this was not dealt with by the corporate responsibility legislation. Why? Because I was blocked from offering my amendment. If I had been able to offer my amendment and had gotten a vote on it, we would have gotten a mechanism for recapture and disgorgement. We would have a law that says that you cannot walk away from a corporation you took into bankruptcy with $100 million in your own bank account. So there is unfinished business on corporate responsibility. We are going to have votes on this issue of bankruptcy and recapture of ill- gotten gains. I am also going to be working on the issue of inversions. I know the Presiding Officer cares a lot about that issue, which involves corporations deciding they want to renounce their U.S. citizenship. Why? Because they want to become citizens of tax havens like Bermuda, so they can save on their U.S. tax bill. Shame on them. Inversion, my eye. We ought not have corporations renouncing their American citizenship out of sheer greed. I am going to offer legislation on that issue as well. So we have some unfinished business on corporate responsibility. Nobody ought to think the bill we passed is a cure-all. It addresses the problem of corporate irresponsibility in a constructive and positive way, but it is incomplete and there are other issues yet to be addressed. I, for one, intend to hold hearings and offer amendments on this issue. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I intend to put into the Record a letter I sent to President Bush several weeks ago on the subject of having an economic summit meeting. I note that the President had a forum of some type in Crawford, TX, when he invited people who agreed with his fiscal policy to talk about how well the administration's policies are working. I believe we have significant economic difficulties in this country. The Federal budget deficits now continue to skyrocket. We have a budget that does not add up, a fiscal policy that does not make much sense. I think we ought to have an economic summit at which people of varying opinions come together and have a competition of ideas about what works and what does not, so that we can find ways to put our country back on track. I hope the President convenes this much-needed economic summit. (Mr. WELLSTONE assumed the chair.)

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me follow the remarks of my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, and say as a cosponsor of this disaster relief that I have never voted against a proposal to help people in this country who have suffered a disaster. There are many kinds of disasters that people suffer, and in each and every case I have been pleased to be a part of this Congress to say to them you are not alone, the rest of the country wishes to help. It is an important thing to do. Disaster, in this case, is spelled in part of my State by a drought that is devastating. It means those who have invested their lives and fortunes to put seeds into the ground, hoping to raise a crop and to have some income with which to raise a family, have discovered that drought has killed their crop. There is nothing to harvest. There is nothing left. In other parts of the State, flooding has prevented fields from being planted. Yes, we ought to respond to this in a positive way. I support the efforts of Senators Daschle and Baucus and Johnson of South Dakota, Wellstone, and others, and I am happy to be a cosponsor of the bill.