Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I support the Durbin amendment but not because I support fast track. Trade promotion authority, which is better known as fast track, is a piece of legislation this Congress should not adopt. However, if the Congress decides that there are sufficient votes for fast track, I certainly want the provisions dealing with labor and the environment offered by Senator Durbin to be in that final package. Yesterday, at some length I described the dilemma. The dilemma is, in international competition, what is fair competition and what is the admission price to the American marketplace? Do we want standards, when we adopt trade agreements, that do not put American producers in a circumstance of having to compete with others around the world who are hiring 12-year-old kids, putting them in factories working 12 hours a day, paying them 30 cents an hour? Yes, that happens. The question is, Is that fair competition for American producers? The answer is clearly no. What do we do about that? Every single trade agreement we seem to adopt--and it is proposed now that we adopt them under fast track so we can offer no amendments when they come back--every single trade agreement fails to address these underlying issues. What is fair competition? Will we really deal with the labor issues? Will we really tell others that you cannot hire kids and put them in plants at age 12 and 11 and 10 and pay them pennies and then ship their products to Pittsburgh or Toledo or Cleveland or Fargo or Los Angeles? Will we do that or will we tell companies you cannot pole-vault to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh or China and pollute the water and air and hire kids? Is that fair competition? Will we ever as a country decide that we will stand up for our producers and our workers to say, yes, you must compete, you must be ready to compete, but we will make sure the competition is fair? That is why the underlying issue is not fast but fair trade; not fast track but fair trade. This debate will go on at some great length. If this Congress is to pass fast track, it must do so with the provisions on labor and the environment offered by my colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin. I do not support fast track. Our trade deficit is growing every single year. It is now at record high levels: $450 billion, over $1 billion a day every single day in merchandise trade deficit. That is not a debt we owe to ourselves. That is a debt that will be repaid someday with a lower standard of living in this country. Why? Because our trade agreements haven't been in this country's best interests. They don't deal with the central issues of what is fair competition. That is why my colleague, Senator Durbin, is proposing, if we have an amendment dealing with fast track that allows no amendments to be offered when trade agreements come back, that at least fast track include the labor and environmental provisions he proposes. I will not support fast track, but I do believe his attempt to insert these provisions in this legislation makes good sense. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Nevada without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Nevada makes an interesting point about the difficulty of getting a vote even on amendments that have wide support. Nearly a week and a half ago I offered my amendment dealing with chapter 11 of NAFTA, to deal with the issue of secret multinational tribunals that consider trade bases behind closed doors. This was an amendment that was bipartisan, and had wide support. I offered my amendment, and there was a tabling motion. We had 67 Members of the Senate vote against tabling, and then we could not get the amendment adopted. A number of days elapsed where we just could not get the amendment adopted. It appears the same thing is happening here. The same Member of the Senate is doing it. He certainly has a right to do that, but as the Senator from Nevada says, if somebody wants to filibuster this, then let him come to the floor and bring a pitcher of water, get some comfortable shoes on, and stand here for a few hours. But what I hope we will do is adopt the Dayton-Craig amendment. It is quite clear, from the evidence of the vote on tabling a while ago, that this amendment will pass by a very significant margin. And the sooner the better. I tell you, I listened, at great length, to my friend from Texas. I must say that I actually taught economics in college for a couple years, but I was able to overcome that experience and go on to lead a different life. The issue that is before us is not about economic theory. It is about the reality of trade relationships we have with other countries--and what real remedies we have to address that unfair trade. I am sure there are people listening to this debate or watching this debate, and they think this all sounds like a foreign language: CVD, antidumping, 301, 201, chapter 11. But trade issues can and should be discussed in terms of how they impact real people. This debate is about real people in our country that decide to form a company, to produce a product and market it, and then have to contend with foreign competition. I have no problem with fair competition--I welcome it. But when our producers' competitors overseas are exploiting the labor of a 12-year-old for 12 cents an hour locked in a garage 12 hours a day, is that fair competition? Take a person who works in a manufacturing plant and has worked there 22 years, is an honest employee, has committed his or her life to that employer, only to discover that next month the identical product is coming in from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or Indonesia, produced by children working 12 hours a day or 14 hours a day, getting just cents per hour. Fair competition? American workers are told that they cannot compete. You, Mr. and Mrs. America, can't compete because working in this factory we have 12-year- olds who will work for less money than you will. They live in countries where it is all right to work them 12 hours a day and pay them $2 at the end of a day. That is not fair competition. The issue is, what are the remedies? What can we do about that? Should we be able to do something about it? Should our trade laws allow our companies and our workers to do something about trade that they think is fundamentally unfair? The answer clearly ought to be yes. If the answer is not yes, then just forget about the past 100 years of history dealing with labor and other issues. There are people who died on the streets in America some three- quarters of a century ago, during the struggle of American labor to get the right to organize and form labor unions. There are people who risked their lives in this country because they demanded that we have a safe workplace. There are people who risked their jobs and their lives fighting for the issue of child labor laws so we could take kids out of the coal mines. The fact is, we worked on all of these issues for a long time. Over a century this country had to digest these issues. Should we have a requirement for a safe workplace? Should we have child labor laws so people aren't putting 8 and 10 and 12-year-olds down in the mines? Should we have a requirement of a minimum wage? Should we have the right to organize as workers? The answer to all of those issues has been yes. But it was never an easy yes. It took this country decades to get through those discussions and debates. As I said, there were some people who died on the streets during the violence that ensued over those debates. A century later we have some who say, let's just get a big old pole and pole vault over all those issues and act as if they don't exist. Because you can start a company and you don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about whether you hire kids. Just go to another country and hire kids. You don't have to worry about paying a decent wage. You can go somewhere else and pay them 24 cents an hour to put together canvas bags so they can be shipped to Fargo or Los Angeles or Pittsburgh. You don't have to worry about dumping chemicals and pollutants into the streams and the air. Just move your factory somewhere else where they don't have environmental laws, laws that protect the drinking water and the air. You can just pole vault over all of that and decide to move all these jobs somewhere. The person who is working in that factory and has been there 22 years says: Wait a second. What has happened to my job? That person is told: Your job is gone, my friend. Your job is somewhere else because you were too expensive. There are kids who will work for less money in another country. They will work all the overtime hours they are told to work, and they have no recourse. I happen to believe that expanded trade and fair trade is good for this country. I think it enhances this country. It increases the opportunity for a better economy. But I don't think we can talk about fair trade without addressing the issues I am describing. We have a lot of people in our country who work hard all day, every day. To be told that somehow they can't compete because someone else can produce that product at a fraction of the price because they don't have to follow any rules, anyplace, anytime, that is not fair trade. What we have is a situation where globalization is here. No one is attempting to turn back globalization. It is a fact of life today in the world. This is a globalized economy. The question isn't whether globalization. The question is what are the rules for globalization. What are the rules for the global economy? There is an admission price to this marketplace, and that is fair trade. That is part of what we are trying to define with respect to the rules of the global economy. My colleagues, Senators Dayton and Craig, have offered an amendment. It is a fairly straightforward amendment. It says that if and when the next trade agreement is negotiated under fast track rules and brought back to the Congress, we ought to have the right to have a separate vote on any provision that diminishes the protections we now have to take action against those who engage in unfair trade practices against our businesses and against our workers. If they do anything behind a closed door in some foreign land where they negotiate a trade agreement to diminish our protection to take action against unfair trade, we reserve the right to have a separate vote on it. Let me show you what Mr. Zoellick said in Doha, Qatar. I wonder how many of the Members of the Senate could point to Doha on a world map. I will tell you why this ministerial meeting was held in Doha: Because they couldn't hold it anyplace else. You have to find a place that is very hard to find and has very few hotel rooms in order to avoid the people who will demonstrate against these trade agreements these days. So they picked Doha, Qatar. Last November at the ministerial meeting, Trade Representative Zoellick agreed that U.S. antidumping laws could be discussed as a new trade round gets underway. Why is this important? Well, we have laws that say to other countries and other producers, you can't dump your products into this country. You can't, for example, produce a product that costs you $100 to produce and dump it in the American marketplace for $50 apiece to undercut the American producer. My colleague from Texas said: Gee, that is a good thing, isn't it, that they are going to send a $100 product over here and sell it for $50. Well, I guess it is a good thing if you don't lose your job as a result of it. I don't know of one Senator or one Member of the House who has ever lost a job because of a bad trade agreement. Just name one, just one man or woman serving in the Senate or House who has ever lost their job because of a bad trade agreement. It is just folks out there who work all day in factories being closed because of bad trade agreements who lose their jobs. That is not theory. Those are broken dreams. Somebody coming home from work having to say: Honey, they told me I have lost my job today because I can't compete. I can't compete with 50 cents an hour wages, working 12-hour days in a factory where they don't have to worry about pollution. That is what antidumping laws try to remedy. What Senators Dayton and Craig say with this amendment is very simple: If you want to negotiate an agreement, Mr. Trade Ambassador, that negotiates away our antidumping laws, then Congress has a right to have a separate vote on that provision pertaining to our trade laws. Because this Congress is not any longer going to allow you to dilute or delete the protections and remedies which we have to deal with unfair trade. I have spoken at length in this Chamber about my concern about our trade policy. We have a trade deficit that is growing and growing and no one cares a whit about it: Over $400 billion a year. Every single day we add over $1 billion to our trade deficit and our current accounts balance. We used to have debates about deficits in this Chamber, about fiscal policy deficits when the budget deficit was $290 billion and going in the wrong direction. We would have debates, we would have people doing handstands and cartwheels about how awful it was. Not a word about the trade deficit. One can make the case in theory that the budget deficit is a deficit we owe to ourselves. One cannot make that case about the trade deficit. The trade deficit is going to be paid for by a lower standard of living in America's future, and over $1 billion a day every single day we are adding to the merchandise trade deficit. This trade policy of ours is not working. We cannot load ourselves up with debt and choke on this trade debt and say: Boy, this is a good thing; this is really working well. I have been very critical of our trade ambassadors, Republicans and Democrats, for not having the backbone to take action when we see unfair trade. We now have remedies that are not used. Even when they use remedies, I always scratch my head and think: What a strange approach. We have a little dispute with Europe. The dispute is with respect to beef produced with hormones that are banned in Europe. We went to the WTO, and the WTO ruled in our favor. But Europe said: Fly a kite. Europe would not comply with the WTO requirement, and so we took action against Europe. Mr. President, do you know what we did to Europe? Our negotiators said: We are imposing sanctions on imports of truffles, Roquefort cheese, and goose liver. That will sure strike fear in the hearts of competitors. Those engaged in unfair trade ought to know from here on forward, America takes tough action to deal with goose liver imports. My point is, our country does not stand up for its economic interest in international trade very often, and to weaken the remedies that already exist--they did that under the United States-Canada agreement and under NAFTA. Section 22 used to be helpful to us. Not anymore. Section 301 is weakened and diminished as an area of trade protection. It is interesting, I pointed out the antidumping laws we now have are on the trading block. Our allies who want to get rid of these antidumping laws in our country will negotiate them away, if they can. And by the way, they will do that in secret because the American public and Congress will not be there when it is done. It will be done, in most cases, in a foreign land behind a closed door. They will bring it back here and say: you have one vote on it, yes or no, and it deals with a broad range of issues and you cannot get at the antidumping provision we traded away because you just get a yes or no on the entire product. That is why Senators Dayton and Craig say this is not the right thing to do. I was interested to hear, this morning, one of my colleagues talk about all of the trade problems we have, as if to suggest we should blame ourselves for the problems. We have trouble getting high-fructose corn syrup into Mexico. So that is our problem? I do not think so. That is Mexico's fault. Grain coming in from Canada by the Canadian Wheat Board unfairly subsidized, that is our problem? Not where I sit it is not. That is Canada's unfair trading practice. I could go on and list a dozen more. Seventy percent tariff on wheat flour into Europe, is that fair? I do not think so. I cannot even begin to talk about our trade problems with China. And it's not just unfair trade, it's also about badly negotiated trade agreements. A year and a half ago, we negotiated a bilateral agreement with China. The United States agreed that after a long phase-in with respect to automobiles, any Chinese cars that are sent to the United States will be subject to a 2.5- percent tariff on them. Any U.S. cars that are sent to China will be subject to a 25-percent tariff. So we have a 2.5-percent tariff on the Chinese cars coming into our market, but the Chinese can impose a tariff that is 10 times higher on U.S. cars into China. You ask: How did that happen? Because our negotiators negotiated away the store. It is the same squishy-headed nonsense our negotiators do every time they negotiate. Will Rogers once said--I have told my colleagues this many times--the United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference. He surely must have been thinking of our trade negotiators. They seem to manage to lose within a week or two of leaving our shores. Whenever I talk about trade, someone will call my office and say: you are a protectionist. I am not. If protectionism means standing up for America's economic interest, then count me in, sign me up, that is what I want to do but I am not asking for anything special for anybody. I want all our people to have to compete--farmers, businesses, and others. But I want the competition to be fair, and if the competition is not fair, then I want the remedies available to address that unfairness. Those remedies have been weakened dramatically, and they will be weakened further, mark my words, in the next set of negotiations. This amendment is not in any way, as some have said, a killer amendment. That is not what this amendment is about. If my colleagues want to stand up for American jobs and demand fair trade and demand the remedies that will get you to fair trade, then it seems to me they have an obligation to support this amendment. I was pleased with the last tabling vote because it showed an overwhelming number of Members of the Senate understand this issue and are no longer going to sit quietly by and say: You go ahead and negotiate. Get on an airplane, go someplace, roll up your shirt sleeves, and negotiate. Whatever you come back with, that is fine, we will handcuff ourselves. You can negotiate away our antidumping laws; you can trade away our remedies; and we will agree to handcuff ourselves and not have a vote on it. I believe the Senate is finally saying to those who will listen: We are not willing to do that. I did not support providing fast-track trade authority to President Clinton, and I do not support giving it to President Bush. I say to this administration, as I said to the past administration: Negotiate agreements and you will do so with my best wishes. And I hope you will negotiate good agreements for our country, agreements that stand up for our economic interest, and agreements that demand that the rules for that competition be fair. Then come back, and when you see unfair trade, be willing to stand up, have the guts to stand up for this country's interest. The reason there is so much anger about trade these days--we see it in the streets during these ministerials, and we hear it in the debates--is because we are so anxious to negotiate the next agreement and so unwilling to enforce the last agreement. We have done so many agreements with Japan that nobody can even find the agreements. USTR cannot find all the agreements the United States has with Japan, let alone enforce them. We have something like eight to nine people in the Department of Commerce enforcing our trade agreements with respect to China. The same is true with respect to Japan, eight or nine people. Why? Because this country is not serious about enforcing trade laws. This country is serious only about negotiating the next agreement and not caring how many people lose their jobs because of unfair trade that results from that agreement. My beef with trade is that, A, we negotiate bad agreements and, B, we consistently fail and in most cases refuse to enforce the agreements we do negotiate. I will conclude by saying this: We have, for the 50 or so years following the Second World War, largely dealt with trade as a matter of foreign policy. For the first 25 years after the Second World War, it was not a problem dealing with trade as foreign policy. This country could tie one hand behind its back and beat anybody at any time in almost anything in international trade. So our concessions in trade to almost every country were concessions that reflected the struggle that economy was having and our ability to help them in that struggle. The second 25 years after the Second World War, our competitors became shrewd, tough international negotiators. Our trade policy must change to be a trade policy that demands the rules of fair competition, and is no longer about foreign policy. There is one issue in recent days that demonstrates that trade is still, in many cases, foreign policy, and that is with Cuba. Cuba is a communist country, no question about that. So is China. So is Vietnam. We have people traveling back and forth to China and Vietnam. We trade with China and Vietnam, but we have a 40-year failed embargo with Cuba. Until I and a couple of others from this Chamber fought to get food shipped to Cuba, we could not even ship food to Cuba. Cuba could not buy food from us. That did not hurt Castro. He never missed a meal. It hurt poor, sick, and hungry people. That has finally changed, except we have some people in the State Department who still do not want to ship food to Cuba, and they are trying to impede in every possible way American food from being sold in the country of Cuba. So once again, trade policy is not trade policy, it is foreign policy. I think it would be smart if we could get some of the folks in the State Department to stop meddling in trade policy. They should start worrying a little more about terrorists with bombs and a little less about Cubans who want to buy beans in this country. I have taken a long, meandering road to get to the point, but it is therapeutic to talk about these trade issues from time to time. The Dayton-Craig amendment is a very simple, straightforward amendment that this Senate ought to enact and ought to do so soon. We have now been on this amendment a good many hours. These are people who apparently support fast track but do not support the Senate imposing its will with a popular vote, as was the case on a motion to table the Dayton-Craig amendment. I hope that we can get past this and put our trade ambassador and our trading partners on notice, that we will not trade our remedies that exist against unfair trade. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I would like to propound a question to my colleague. I believe this is one of the most important amendments we will be dealing with on the trade promotion authority legislation. I am pleased to be a cosponsor, and I will be pleased to speak in support of it at some point. I ask the Senator from Idaho, is it the case that much of the angst that exists with respect to recent trade agreements--U.S.-Canada, NAFTA, and others--is that when we see areas of clear trade problems, clear manipulation of the markets, clear abuse of trading practices, we cannot ever get much of a remedy? We have all these trade agreements, but we cannot get a remedy; we cannot get a problem solved. Why? At least one of the reasons, in my judgment--and I inquire of the Senator from Idaho if he feels the same way--is that we have weakened all these remedies to the point that no one wants to use them because they believe they are ineffective. For example, section 22 is pretty much gone. In many ways, section 301 is made much weaker by subsequent negotiations. The result is, it does not matter whether it is wheat from Canada or high-fructose corn syrup from Mexico or a dozen items I could mention. We just cannot get anybody to tackle a remedy to say: Yes, this is unfair, and we will stand up on behalf of our producers and deal with it. That is why this amendment makes so much sense. If the Trade Representative negotiates a new trade agreement and that agreement further weakens remedies that now exist, my understanding is the amendment allows that to come back to the Congress for an up-or- down vote. I think that is one of the most important provisions that we could adopt to this underlying bill. I ask the Senator from Idaho, is it the case that the biggest problem these days has been we cannot get a remedy for anything in international trade?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, of course the Senator from Iowa is correct; the Constitution does provide in article I, section 8, that the Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations--not the President, not the trade ambassador, but the Congress. That is in the Constitution of this country. The Congress has, over some period of time, decided it would like to put handcuffs on itself so these handcuffs would prevent it from being involved in any trade negotiation or trade agreement that came back to the Congress. If it did not like a provision, if it thought a provision was not in accordance with this country's interests, the Congress will have said, by fast track or trade promotion authority, no, we are not allowed to offer amendments to that trade agreement. Congress has done that on previous occasions. I do not support that. I do not believe it is appropriate. What the Senators from Minnesota and Idaho are saying with respect to fast track, or trade promotion authority, which will tie the Congress's hands, at least in regard to the issue of providing trade remedies for trade abuses that exist, that our businesses and our employees in this country have to try to deal with, at least with respect to those trade remedies, Congress ought to have a say in that if someone negotiates a trade agreement that weakens those trade remedies. We have had plenty of examples: Section 22 was largely negotiated away; section 301 has been diminished in importance. So we have had examples where the trade remedies are not available. My colleague from Iowa cited some of the trade abuses that I could cite. On high-fructose corn syrup to Mexico he says: Yes, that is a problem. Do not blame us. Let us not blame America for trade abuses that are imposed by other countries. Unfair wheat subsidies or unfair wheat trade flooding into this country from Canada, that is a problem. That is not our fault; that is Canada's fault. The high-fructose corn syrup, that is Mexico's fault. I could go on to give a dozen such examples, but let's not blame our country for trade abuses that are committed by other countries. Let's make sure businesses in our country and their workers know that when another country does that, when it tries to rig the marketplace with a trade practice that is abusive, then we have a remedy against it. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that common sense is genius dressed in work clothes. When we deal with trade issues, I find very little genius these days, especially in Washington, DC. Almost all of the debate that ought to be thoughtful turns thoughtless in an instant. This morning's Washington Post editorial is an example of that, suggesting this amendment is going to torpedo this trade promotion authority legislation. It will do nothing of the sort. It strengthens it. Let me give some examples of what is going on in trade. Canada pushes an avalanche of grain into our country, unfairly subsidized, unfairly traded in our country by a Canadian wheat board that is a sanctioned monopoly in Canada which would be illegal in this country. So our farmers are confronted with this massive amount of unfair trade, and it takes money right out of the pockets of our family farmers, and nothing can be done about it. It has been going on for 10 years. It was given the green light, incidentally, in the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement, which I voted against; nonetheless, this has been going on relentlessly, and nobody does anything about it. We had an investigation by the ITC, and they said: Yes, Canada is guilty of unfair trade. There was a 301 action filed by wheat growers in my State, and the trade ambassador said: No, despite the fact that there is a conclusion that Canada is guilty of unfair trade, we will not impose fair trade quotas that United States law would allow because it might be inconsistent with NAFTA and the WTO. But Ambassador Zoellick says to farmers: Don't lose hope. Under U.S. laws you can always consider filing antidumping or countervailing duty cases. Let me show my colleagues a Congress Daily Report, November 26, 2001--November 9 through 14: The WTO ministerial at Doha, Qatar, Trade Representative Zoellick agreed that U.S. antidumping laws could be discussed as the new round gets underway. In other words, in the next round the antidumping laws will be up for discussion because many countries don't want us to have antidumping laws. They want to dump their products into the American marketplace, and if our producers are concerned about that--saying we cannot compete, we will have to close our plant, we can't compete against products coming from China or Japan or Europe or Canada or Mexico or Korea, we can't possibly compete against them because they are dumping at below the cost of acquisition, what are we going to do--we are going to put this on the table to talk about. Maybe we can get rid of countervailing duty or antidumping laws. Maybe the next negotiation in a room, behind a closed door, in which we are not present, the American people are not present, trade negotiators from all around the world will decide that the United States will agree to get rid of its antidumping laws. Maybe that is what will happen. If that happens, I sure want the Congress to be able to vote on that separately on behalf of farmers, factory workers, steelworkers. I want Congress to have a shot at saying yes or no, and my vote is going to be a resounding no. One final point, if I might. I have just had a bellyful of people saying it is wrong to worry about protecting America's interests. The word ``protect'' has become a vulgarism in trade speech, and I find that Byzantine. Who in this Chamber does not want to stand up and protect our country's interests? Who do you not want to protect? Do you not want to protect a steel industry that is under siege from unfairly subsidized shipments into this country? Do you not want to protect farmers and factory workers? Who is it you do not want to protect? Isn't it our job to decide that we will protect our industries to the extent of demanding fair trade? I don't mean, by ``protection,'' saying we are going to put walls around our country. I don't mean that at all. I don't believe we should do that. I believe we ought to be required and able to compete at any time, at any place in the world. That competition does not mean, however, that our companies and our workers ought to compete with 12- year-olds who work 12 hours a day and are paid 12 cents an hour in some plant 8,000 miles away, and some company takes the product of that plant and moves it to a store shelf in Pittsburgh or Fargo or Los Angeles or Pocatello. It is not fair trade and it is not what our businesses and workers ought to have to put up with. When we talk about protecting our country's economic interests, it is not about diminishing trade or putting walls around our country. It is about saying we have a right in this country to protect the economic interests of businesses and workers who want to play by the rules when they confront others in this world who decide they will not play by the rules. One final point. I have made this point over and over because it is so dramatic. I want to mention automobile trade with Korea to demonstrate what is happening on a range of things throughout the world in a way that hurts our workers and hurts our companies. Last year, Korea sent us 630,000 cars, Daewoos, Hyundais, and others. Madam President, 630,000 Korean cars came into the U.S. marketplace. Good for them. Last year, we were only able to sell 2,800 cars in Korea. Let me say that again: 630,000 Korean cars coming to the United States, and we were only able to get 2,800 U.S. cars sold in Korea. Do you know why? Because the Korean Government doesn't want American cars sold in Korea. It is very simple. And that is not fair. We ought to say to Korea and other countries, if your market is open to American products, then our market is open to you. But if we make the American marketplace open to your products, then you had better open your marketplace or you find a way to sell your cars in Kishasa, Zaire, next year and see how you like that marketplace. I want to speak a little later, but let me say Senator Dayton and Senator Craig have propounded an amendment that is very important. All it says is we need to preserve the opportunity to vote if someone behind a closed door in some room half a world away is going to negotiate away the remedies for unfair trade, our remedies to get after and take after the unfair trade that exists. That is not antitrade; that is protrade. That is not undercutting the bill that is on the floor of the Senate; that in fact will strengthen and improve it. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico raises a point that a lot of people are not talking about much. They talk about pension reform a lot around here but they fail to mention that a good many Americans have no pension. The Senator from New Mexico used statistics--for example, 61 percent in my home State, and I think 70-some in New Mexico, have no pension. We should do pension reform, but we also ought to think through how do we encourage additional retirement savings and pensions to be offered to workers.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak to the underlying legislation we will be on following the vote on the judgeship this afternoon. That is the trade bill. We are going to be discussing once again so-called fast-track trade authority. I am not going to support the bill, but I do have some amendments. I think fast track is fundamentally undemocratic. Our trade deficit is ballooning; it is now over $450 billion in merchandise trade deficits. And every time we have had a new agreement, we have been injured further. I am going to offer several amendments to fast track when it is before the Senate. One deals with wheat from Canada. The unfairly subsidized wheat coming in from Canada has injured our farmers in a dramatic way. The International Trade Commission says this wheat trade is unfair, and the trade ambassador, to his credit, says it is unfair. But there is no specific remedy. It is a five-point remedy in the sweet by-and-by; we will never quite get to it. My amendment will say we want specific remedies identified and reported to us within 6 months of what the trade ambassador is going to do to take specific action and remedy the unfair wheat trade that exists with Canada and the unfair trade that exists in other markets with respect to Canada. That is No. 1. No. 2, this administration is proposing on June 30 to allow long-haul Mexican trucks into this country. That is in contravention of everything Congress debated just months ago on this issue. I am going to offer an amendment that tries to stop that. Mr. President, you know and I know and everyone in this country knows Mexican truckdrivers are not driving with the same safety requirements imposed in Mexico that we impose in this country. They do not have the same safety inspections. They do not have the same requirements with respect to length of service or hours of service or logbooks. I ask everyone to read the newspaper accounts of people riding with Mexican long-haul truckers, and you will discover the truckers drove continuously for 24 hours or drove unsafe equipment. The fact is this administration on June 30 is going to allow those long-haul Mexican trucks to come into this country to do long hauls, and that is wrong, it is unsafe, and it ought not happen. The safety requirements the Senate would have imposed some months ago when we debated this issue are nowhere near in place. The inspection stations do not exist. The compliance and enforcement requirements in Mexico do not exist. The fact is, we are going to have American families driving up and down American streets and highways with long- haul Mexican trucks and no one is going to know whether that driver has been driving 24 straight hours or driving a rig with faulty brakes because it has not been inspected. I am going to offer an amendment on that issue. In addition, I am going to offer an amendment dealing with Cuba, and that amendment will impose the same circumstances that were dropped out of the agriculture conference just last week. The amendment is very simple. It says when Cuba buys grain from our country, it ought not have to pay cash through a French bank; it ought to be able to buy grain with commercially accepted credit from our country. I am going to support the Dayton-Craig amendment which is very important. Our trade negotiators are prepared to negotiate away antidumping authority, the ability on behalf of our producers to remedy trade that is unfair because someone else is dumping into our marketplace. If we eliminate the antidumping remedies, we will put our producers in desperate trouble. Their amendment is right on point. I intend to ask to cosponsor that amendment, and I will be very supportive of it. I also will be supportive of an amendment to be offered by Senator Durbin and will ask to be a cosponsor of that. That amendment deals with labor and environmental standards with respect to trade. The issue for this country should continue to be this: We want people to access the American marketplace, to give the American consumer the widest range of goods from all around the world, but we want it, when those goods come in as a result of trade, to be fair trade. We do not want goods that come from prison labor in China. We do not want goods to come into our marketplace that are made by 12-year-old kids working 12 hours a day being paid 12 cents an hour. That is not fair trade. It is not what this country ought to support, and it is not what we ought to allow into our marketplace. Conditions of fair trade are very important, and as we discuss trade in this Chamber with the advent of the fast track debate, it is very important for us to say to the American people that there is an admission price to the American economy, and the admission price to other countries is that their markets must be open to us and their markets and laws must represent fair trade with this country. That is not a standard that now exists. I do not want to put a wall around our country. I believe in expanded trade. I believe in greater trade opportunity. But I believe also this country needs to have the spine and the backbone to stand up for its own economic interest and demand that trade be fair trade. That will represent the several amendments I will be offering and supporting, including the three I mentioned I will be offering soon. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me talk about two other issues briefly. One is a letter I received last Friday from Secretary of State Colin Powell. This relates to a decision by the State Department to cancel the visas for Cubans coming to our country to buy additional food. Since the hurricane, they have purchased over $70 million in American food. That is available for them to purchase because I and my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, and others changed the law to allow food sales to Cuba. Strangely enough, they have to pay in cash and do it through a French bank; nonetheless, they can finally buy American food. We ought never use food as a weapon, and we have done it for 40 years with Cuba. That is over. They are now buying food from this country. We had a group of people representing Alimport, including Pedro Alvarez and others, coming to this country to buy food. They were coming, in fact, to North Dakota and they were going to buy dried beans and wheat. They were granted a visa by the State Department, and then immediately that visa was revoked. I asked Secretary Powell, ``By what authority was it revoked and why?'' Let me use a couple of charts to see what happened on this issue. This is a news story about it: A State Department official confirmed Wednesday that the administration policy is not to encourage sales of food to Cuba. In the letter from Secretary Powell, he disavows that, but that is what they told us: It is our policy not to encourage food sales to Cuba. I said it is a brainless policy to decide you do not want to sell food to Cuba; you ought to sell food to Cuba. We sell it to China, a Communist country. We sell it to Vietnam, a Communist country. And we are told we do not want to sell food to Cuba? Does anybody think Fidel Castro has not eaten a meal along the way because we had an obstruction on the sale of food to Cuba? No, it just hurts sick people, poor people, and hungry people. This is what this policy has represented. At a hearing last week when I raised this question with Secretary Powell, he said: I have never heard of this policy not to encourage food sales to Cuba. In fact, he said additional sales should be encouraged so long as American farmers benefit. The Farm Bureau said the cancellation of Mr. Alvarez's visa will adversely affect the sale of corn, rice, wheat, poultry, soybeans, lentils, and eggs, valued at $35 million. I received a four-page letter from Secretary Powell. Frankly, it does not answer any of the questions. It says Mr. Alvarez's visa was revoked because of a 1985 then-President Ronald Reagan directive. He also said: Mr. Alvarez was here once before and he lobbied to undermine the U.S. embargo. I guess when he was here before, he said Cuba would like to have a circumstance where they could buy food from American farmers. The State Department considers that undermining America's interest. Give me a break. Mr. Secretary, that does not undermine anything. I hope the State Department and others will pay a little more attention to the issue of terrorists getting bombs, not Cubans buying dried beans and wheat. The subcommittee which I chair is going to hold a hearing, and I will ask the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Reich, to come to Congress and explain who decided to revoke these visas.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this morning the President signed the new farm bill into law. We worked long and hard on that. It was a long, tortured trail to get it done, but the importance of it cannot be understated. In North Dakota, for example, the difference between the first Freedom to Farm bill--the current law--and this new farm bill is over $270 million in additional assistance during collapsed prices to family farmers. Now, that help is not just for family farmers; it shows up on many of our main streets and supports our jobs in a rural State such as North Dakota. I cannot say strongly enough how important this bill is. It took us too long to get done, but it is done. I appreciate the work that all of us did together and the cooperation in the final analysis to get it to the President. I am pleased and relieved that this morning, finally, this bill is now signed into law.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I think it sounds good to have some cooperation with respect to time. But there is frustration on all sides with respect to this legislation. The issue of trade promotion authority, for example, came to the floor. Then we had to go off, I believe for 12 hours, debating the Agriculture conference report, which took the better part of 2 full days. We have now, I believe, voted on only one amendment on trade promotion authority. That was the amendment I offered. And that was held over. We couldn't clear it after we had a tabling amendment. That was held over several days in order to clear that. Senator Dayton has an amendment. I have two additional amendments. I know other colleagues have amendments to trade promotion authority, but we have not been able to get at that, and my understanding was we had people on the floor on the other side saying they were not going to let us do anything until all of this gets negotiated to some successful conclusion. I think the way to legislate, I say to the majority leader, would be to allow us to proceed with the amendments. If there are those on the floor who are blocking it, perhaps the Senator from Oklahoma and the Senator from Mississippi, if it is on your side, might help us remove that block and let us get to the amendments and have votes on the amendments. Trade promotion authority is a reasonably controversial measure. People will have a fair number of amendments, but we have had one so far. It seems to me we ought to get at them and have votes on them. Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member for the work they have done. I know there are differences of opinion on the floor of the Senate about this farm bill. Let me say that I intend to vote for this farm bill. It is not a perfect piece of legislation by any means. I will talk about some of the shortcomings. But it is far better than current law. The current Freedom to Farm law is a very flawed piece of legislation. It was always a flawed piece of legislation. It required us every year to come in with an emergency piece of legislation to try to deal with the problems in Freedom to Farm. Is what is brought to the floor of the Senate today a much better approach than Freedom to Farm? The answer is clearly yes. But it is always interesting to me that people in dark suits who shower before they go to work will come to the floor of the Congress and talk about the economic future of people who wear work clothes and who shower at the end of the workday. These are family farmers. They work hard. They live on hope--hope that they will be able to raise a crop, have some livestock, survive a season, and go to market and make some profit. They live on that hope. Most of all, they work very hard. And they live in a world in which more and more people are hungry. We are told half a billion people go to bed every night with an ache in their belly because it hurts to be hungry. Our farmers take their grain, in a 2-ton truck, to an elevator, grain which they had planted in the spring and nurtured, which they go to sell in the fall. After they planted those seeds, they worried that it would not rain enough, they worried it might rain too much, they worried it might hail or that disease would come or the insects would eat that crop up. If they are lucky enough to survive all of those things that nature puts in the way of a good crop from time to time, then they put this grain in a truck and drive it to the elevator. They are then told: Oh, by the way, this food you produced isn't worth anything. And the family farmer scratches his or her head and says: But we have a hungry world. Most of the people in the world need food. Why is our grain a product without value? And the grain trader says: It is worth what the market says. Farmers would much sooner get their money from the marketplace than from a safety net proposed by the Federal Government. But the fact is, the marketplace has collapsed. Almost immediately after passing the Freedom to Farm bill, the marketplace collapsed, and stayed collapsed. Family farmers are not able to survive with the current price structure in the market, so we are trying to build a bridge over those price valleys. That is what this is about: for family farmers to get from here to there. I mentioned, they survive on hope. All of us who have a lot to do with family farmers understand that hope. Against all odds, they put all they have into the ground in the spring, hoping they will be able to harvest a crop in the fall and get a price for it. Increasingly, in recent years, the answer has been, they have not gotten a price for it. They know, and we know, that we add one New York City in population to this world's population every 30 days. Let me say that again. Every 30 days, we add the equivalent of the population of New York City to this Earth. Those are mouths to feed, people who need food. Yet our farmers are told that which they produce in such great abundance is without value. They understand, and I understand, there is something fundamentally wrong with that. The question for our country is not whether we produce the food, the question is how we produce it. Corporations could produce food for our country by having corporate farms stretching from California to Maine. They could start with a big tractor in the morning and plow until the Sun goes down, and then plow in the other direction back the next day. Yes, they can do that. They can produce food. And what you would do is take all those family farms off the land and change the culture and change the economics of what we do in this country. So the question for this country is, Do we want family farmers in our future? Do family farmers provide value to our country? Well, I think they do. In this age of terrorism, we worry about bioterrorism in our food supply. What better way to defend against that than to have a broad network of family producers producing America's food? How easy would it be to introduce an agent of bioterrorism in a feedlot with 100,000 cattle? How much more difficult would it be with a broad network of food producers, families out there living under the yard lights who are running their operation, to provide livestock and grain for the marketplace? So, for food security, to combat bioterrorism--yes, this makes sense. Preserving a network of family farms is an investment in this country's future. There are also cultural and economic reasons for us to care about whether we have people in this great country of ours out there living under the yard lights and farming a family farm. Europe has already made that decision. People come to the political arena in this country disparaging Europe, saying they spend so much on family farming. Europe has been hungry and is determined to never be hungry again. As a result, they have decided they want family farmers dotting the network of rural areas in Europe. The result of this decision is, family farms do well in Europe. Small towns do well in Europe. Small towns are alive on weekend nights in Europe. Why? Because Europe has already made the decision that we should make; and that is, family farmers are important and they matter to this country. They provide an economic and a cultural component to this country that we desperately need. There is no one in this Chamber who got up early and milked a cow this morning. I am safe in saying that because I am looking at staff and Senators. No one in this Chamber, within recent days, has gassed up a tractor and tried to plow a straight furrow or seeded some wheat or corn. So, we don't have such a big stake in this. We just wear blue suits and come to work every day and talk about policy. But there are people whose very economic lives are at stake with respect to the decisions we are going to make in the Congress. I had a call from a woman from North Dakota who wept on the phone, just sobbed uncontrollably. She said she and her husband married just after high school and they wanted to farm. That is what they wanted to do, take over her husband's dad's farm, and they did. She said: We farmed for 20 years, and now we are being put out of business because prices were not good enough for us to be able to make it. They were actually milking cows, which is one of the hardest things you do on the farm, day in and day out, seven days a week. She said: We didn't go to town on weekend nights. We didn't spend money in a foolish way. She said: I told my daughter in junior high school that I couldn't buy that new pair of jeans she needed for the start of the school year because we didn't have the money. Now the bank says we are out of business. All we know is family farming. We put our lives into this. It wasn't our fault that commodity prices collapsed. It just wasn't our fault. She said: Mr. Senator, what do we do next? What can we do now? There are people like that all over this country, wondering why the marketplace says to them that what they produce, in such a prodigious quantity--the best quality food in the world--is judged valueless by trade. As a result of a lot of those kinds of concerns, we put together a safety net. The safety net we had for the last 6 or 7 years has been a disaster itself. It has been an awful farm bill. As the Senator from Iowa said, every year we have to come to the floor to put together some sort of emergency bill to deal with it. It is like patching a big inner tube. Every year we know there is a big hole in this tube, so we just slap a big patch on it called an emergency plan. And we have done it every single year. Why? Because the current farm bill has been worthless, just hasn't worked. So we tried to make something of it by doing emergency legislation every single year. The legislation that is brought to the floor of the Senate is not legislation I perhaps would have written. I would have had a higher loan rate for wheat and feedgrains. We had to compromise with the House of Representatives. This loan rate is not as high as it was when it left the Senate. I regret that. But it is a darn sight higher than current law. Above that loan is a countercyclical piece, so the safety net is better, far better, than current law for our family farmers. In North Dakota, it is estimated that in this year--2002--this bill will mean about $273 million in additional farm income above the current Freedom to Farm law. So in my State alone, this year, $273 million goes to family farmers. But, it also shows up on every main street in North Dakota to support jobs, because almost 40 percent of my State's economy is dependent upon agricultural. So this bill has a safety net. While not perfect and not one I would have perhaps written myself--I would have been more generous and provided a stronger safety net--it does have a safety net that is much better than current law. This bill has other things that I think are important. We include pulse crops for the first time: chickpeas, dried beans, lentils. These crops will have a loan rate under this bill. That is very important in terms of crop rotation and the opportunity for farmers to deal with crop disease problems. So this bill adds something we have not had before, which I think is very important to family farmers. It also has country-of-origin meat labeling, which we have been fighting to get for a long while. I believe that is an important step forward so that consumers understand what they are eating and where it is from. I think the country-of-origin meat labeling is an important piece, especially for livestock producers. There are some disappointments to this bill. When we passed this bill in the Senate, we included a payment limitations amendment by a 2-to-1 margin. That was my amendment with one of my colleagues. We included payment limitations, but it was knocked out because the House of Representatives would not accept it. I regret that. I say this: This issue isn't over. I know this is the farm bill, and this is where we should put payment limitations, but we will come back and try to put that amendment somewhere else. I did not come here to talk about the value of family farming to this country's future to then see somebody who has 60,000 or 70,000 acres get $20 million over 5 years. That is not what I am fighting for. This isn't about corporate welfare. This is about helping family farmers with a safety net during tough times. That is what a farm bill is for. This issue isn't over. Payment limitations didn't get done in this bill because the House of Representatives wouldn't accept it. The administration wouldn't support it either. But we will come back with payment limitations in some other form. Ultimately that will get done. On balance, this is a farm bill that is worth voting for. I intend to vote for it. Some will say: Why do we need to do a farm bill at all? I have heard many colleagues in the last couple days talk about their concerns about this bill. If you care about entrepreneurship, if you care about small business, if you care about independent-minded people trying to make a living, you have to care about family farmers. They are the economical all-stars in this system of capitalism. It is just that the marketplace has conspired to find a way to ruin their economic hope and opportunity. Let me describe that. For every single thing a family farmer does, they find that someone else makes the money and they get the burden. Farmers raise a crop. They want to put it on a railroad track someplace. They are going to get charged through the nose by the railroad company for hauling that grain. In my State, they are going to overcharge shippers by $100 million, according to our public service commission. Why? Because you don't have rail competition. In my State, in most cases you have a choice of one railroad. The railroad says: By the way, Mr. and Mrs. Farmer, here is what you will have to pay for transporting that grain. If you don't like it, tough luck; there isn't a thing you can do about it. So it is an issue of who has the muscle. Is it family farmers or railroads? The answer is railroads. How about the chemical companies? The chemical companies say: Here is what you have to pay for chemicals. Who has the muscle? The chemical companies. How about the packers? Over 80 percent of all the packing is done by three or four companies. They say to the ranchers and farmers: Here is the price; if you don't like it, tough luck. Who has the muscle there? The packing companies. How about the cereal companies? It is interesting that our farmers produce rice and wheat and corn and all these products. You go to a grocery store someplace and buy that product. You discover that someone else took that wheat and rice and corn, and they popped it, and they shredded it, and they crisped it, and they puffed it. And guess what. As soon as it shows up puffed or crisped or shredded, you pay a fortune for it. The fortune has nothing to do with the rice or the wheat or the corn. It has to do with the fact that somebody made a fortune popping it or crisping it. The farmer who produced it, the person who drove the tractor, the person who plowed the furrow and seeded the land gets virtually nothing for it. That is wrong. That is a system that is wrong. Why does it happen that way? Because of economic muscle. We have had the growth and concentration of virtually every area of enterprise in this country that squeezes family farmers, squeezes them in a way that says: You can't make it, but we will. Everyone makes a profit off that which farmers produce. In the area of international trade, our farmers have gotten taken to the cleaners. It doesn't matter in which direction you look. Look to Canada, Mexico, China, Japan. They have gotten taken to the cleaners. Unfairly subsidized grain from Canada; stuffed molasses with Brazilian sugar coming down; high-fructose corn syrup being impeded going into Mexico; a 70-percent tariff on wheat flour going to Europe; a 38.5- percent tariff on every pound of American beef going to Japan. In every single direction, our farmers have been taken advantage of in international trade. And the farm organizations and commodity groups out here--most of them, not all--are saying to the farmers that all this trade is a good thing for them. No, it is not a good thing: They don't understand, those groups doing that, the interests of family farmers. They understand the interests of agrifactories. But that is different from family farmers. Our farmers produce more than food. They produce community. They produce something very important to the economy and culture of this country. I have spoken at length about family farmers. I come from a town of 300 people. We raised horses and cattle, my father and I. The fact is, my home county is bigger than the State of Rhode Island. When I left, it had 5,000 people; now it has 3,000 people. In that county there is a Lutheran minister, a friend of mine, who said at her church she officiates over four funerals for every wedding. That is the opposite of the movie, you know, ``Four Weddings And A Funeral.'' Here it is four funerals for every wedding. That says those rural areas are losing population. People are growing older. Young people can't stay. That is the case because family farming doesn't work under the current system. That is why you need a farm bill that works, that says to family farmers: If you are going to be out there on the family farm and risk everything you have to plant a seed and hope it grows and then try to market it to a hungry world, we want to help you. That is what this bill is about. It is trying to help families over tough times. These tough times have lasted 6 or 7 years. There is no end in sight. The question for this country is, Do you want family farmers producing America's food? The answer ought to be a resounding yes. Why? Because it is important to have a network of family producers producing America's food. There will be, and there was yesterday, substantial criticism of this bill. I could join in that criticism because I find several parts of this bill wanting. It is strange for me to see those who authored what I think was the worst farm bill I have seen in decades, the Freedom to Farm bill, come out and criticize this bill. It was only 6 short years ago when they stood on the floor of the Senate and said: We want to transition farmers out of the farm program and into the marketplace. Whatever the marketplace says, God bless you, that is your future. We knew better than that. The marketplace was going to squeeze farmers until there were no family farmers left. That is exactly what happened almost immediately after we passed the Freedom to Farm bill. The Freedom to Farm bill, we are told, produced celebrations around Washington, DC, and the country by the largest agrifactory organizations and the big commodity organizations and others who make money off family farmers. The chemical folks, the grain trade, they all had a great celebration because that was a great bill for them. But, it was a bill that devastated family farmers. That is why year after year after year we had to come back and pass emergency legislation to correct it. This bill provides certainty, perhaps at a lower rate with respect to the safety net than I would have liked, but a substantially higher rate than the Freedom to Farm would offer family farmers. Freedom to Farm was scheduled to evaporate after 7 years. It was called transitioning. I have been transitioned a few times. Family farmers know what being transitioned means. They are flat sick and tired of this notion of being transitioned. What they want is the ability to make a living by producing the best quality food in the world, doing it for a hungry world, and getting a fair return on that which they produce. Virtually every part of our economic enterprise in this country is concentrated now with giant economic muscle so that it squeezes family farmers out of our future. This bill provides some hope and some certainty. This bill, and this bill alone at this point, will tell family farmers: We are on your side; this Congress wants you to succeed; a safety net is worth doing; we believe in your future. I intend to support this bill. While not perfect, it is dramatically better than Freedom to Farm. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to thank the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee for taking the lead on making the broadband initiative a part of the farm bill. I also want to thank the ranking member of the committee and Senator Daschle for their work on this program. The $100 million provided in the farm bill for broadband is unprecedented and long past due to ensure Rural America has the same access to broadband service as its urban neighbors. Several years ago, I introduced legislation to establish a new Federal broadband program. The chairman is a cosponsor of this legislation. And now, after 2 years of a pilot program similar to my bill, the farm bill gives the rural broadband program under the Rural Utilities Service an authorization and funding. That funding will create hundreds of millions of dollars of broadband loans each year. The Rural Utilities Service, RUS, once known as the Rural Electrification Administration, REA, has administered a telecommunications program for over 50 years. It has been an unprecedented success. In 1949, about 40 percent of American farmers had phone service. Today, that has changed dramatically and nearly everyone at least has a telephone. Not only do these investments need to be maintained, but we need to make new investments in the next generation of telecommunications technology, known as broadband, to ensure that all Americans have access to the Internet. The RUS lending record in its telecommunications program which would be the envy of any financial institution in America. In over 50 years, there has not been a single loan loss in the RUS/REA telecommunications program. In recent years, the agency has been leading the American information revolution by financing some of the most advanced telecommunications systems in the Nation. The broadband provisions of this bill should significantly advance the deployment of broadband technologies in all regions of the country. It should spur the deployment of new wireline, wireless, cable, and satellite broadband infrastructure and service. It promotes technological neutrality and a definition of broadband, which is meaningful, flexible and appropriate to spur significant advancement in all technologies. For the purposes of ensuring a successful implementation of this program, it would be helpful if the chairman could respond to a few questions about the legislation.

Mr. DORGAN. Does the legislation give the Administrator of the Rural Utilities Service flexibility to adopt a definition of broadband, which encourages advancement in all modes of communications?

Mr. DORGAN. Does the chairman expect the RUS to maintain its high standards of determining the financial feasibility of broadband loans?

Mr. DORGAN. I thank the chairman.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the ranking member, conferees and staff members who worked so hard to bring the new farm bill to the floor of the Senate for final passage. I especially want to applaud them for the inclusion of a strong provision to encourage the deployment of broadband technology to rural America. Ensuring that all Americans have the technological capability is essential in this digital age. It is not only an issue of fairness, but it is also an issue of economic survival. But, as the demand for high speed Internet access grows urban America is quickly gaining high speed access, while rural America is, too often, being left behind. Historically, our economy has been defined by geography, and we in Congress were powerless to do anything about it. Where there were ports, towns and businesses got their start. Where there were railroad tracks, towns and businesses grew up around them. The highway system brought the same evolution. But the Internet is changing all of that. No longer must economic growth be defined by geographic fiat. Telecommunications industries and policymakers are proclaiming, ``distance is dead!'' But, that's not quite right: distance will be dead, only as long as we ensure that broadband services are available to all parts of America, urban and rural, and the bill we pass today is an important step toward improving Internet access in rural America. To remedy the gap between urban and rural America, several years ago I introduced legislation to establish a new broadband loan program within the Rural Utilities Service. I am very pleased to have worked with the chairman and others to craft a broadband provision modeled after that bill that will give the rural broadband program an authorization and funding. This funding will create hundreds of millions of dollars of broadband loans each year. This issue is not a new one. When we were faced with electrifying all of the country, we enacted the Rural Electrification Act. When telephone service was only being provided to well-populated communities, we expanded the Rural Electrification Act and created the Rural Utilities Service to oversee rural telephone deployment. In place for over 50 years the RUS telecommunications loan program has been an unprecedented success. In 1949, about 40 percent of American farmers had phone service. Not only has that changed dramatically, with almost everyone having access to basic telephone service, but it is important to note that in over 50 years there has not been a single loan loss in the telecommunications program. Today's legislation seeks to build on that success to make new investment in the next generation of telecommunications technology, known as broadband, to ensure that all Americans have access to the Internet. This will give RUS new authority to make hundreds of millions of dollars in low interest loans each year to companies that are deploying broadband technology to rural America. Loans will be made on a company neutral and a technology neutral basis so that companies that want to serve these areas can do so by employing technology that is best suited to a particular area. Again, I commend the chairman and ranking member, and the staff of the Senate Agriculture Committee for their work on this provision. This program and the loans that will flow from it will be the biggest broadband investment program ever enacted in the United States and will go a long way toward ensuring that rural Americans have access to the next generation of technology.

Mr. DORGAN. Given that record of success and assuming a treasury rate of interest, would it be reasonable that the $20 million a year included in this bill for the early years of this program could fund a treasury rate of interest broadband loan program of at least $750 million a year?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes, and I yield to the Senator from New York.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator from Nevada yield?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I inquire whether the Senator has been informed of the delay here being a delay because someone needs more time to speak on this amendment. That is certainly reasonable. I spoke on the amendment yesterday. I spoke on it this morning. Others spoke on it this morning. Senator Craig, who is a cosponsor, spoke on it. Unless there are others who wish to speak on the amendment--certainly that is reasonable. But if that is not the reason, we have had plenty of time on this amendment. I thought we had. Then there was a tabling motion. We should be ready to adopt the amendment. After all, 67 people voted against tabling. One would expect there would be a pretty strong expression here with respect to this amendment. Was the Senator informed about the manner of the delay? Is it because there needs to be more discussion on the underlying amendment or is there some other reason?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on May 3rd the Federal law enforcement community will lose one of its finest civil servants. Charles W. Winwood, Deputy Commissioner of the United States Customs Service, will retire after a very distinguished 30-year career. Mr. Winwood served as Acting Commissioner from January to September 2001. During that time he continued his longstanding and persuasive advocacy of the need to modernize Customs automated systems through the creation of the Automated Commercial Environment, often referred to as ACE. I share his strong view that ACE is critical to enforcement and trade facilitation needs. Therefore, I was especially pleased almost one year ago when Mr. Winwood announced the selection of the contractor team that will make ACE a reality. While he was Acting Commissioner, Mr. Winwood also had the difficult task of managing Customs through the critical days immediately following the attacks of last September 11th. He immediately put the agency on Level One Alert and set the course for the commendable job that Customs is doing today on anti-terrorism and homeland security efforts. Mr. Winwood is a graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and earned a master's in management and public administration from Florida International University. He began his Customs career in 1972 after serving his country for 2 years in the U.S. Army, including a combat tour of duty in Vietnam. After service in a number of important management roles, Charles Winwood was chosen as Deputy Commissioner on June 5, 2000. Customs was formed in 1789 and is our Nation's oldest law enforcement agency. Mr. Winwood's dedication to duty has added yet another chapter to the agency's long, proud history. As he ends his service to our Nation, I ask the Senate to join me in thanking Mr. Winwood and wishing him a long, happy and satisfying retirement.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that David Roll, a fellow on my staff, be granted the privilege of floor.