Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, for the information of Senators, there will be no rollcall votes during tomorrow's session of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until Friday, January 22, at 9:30 a.m.; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that the Senate resume consideration of H.J. Res. 45, the debt limit.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I support the Conrad-Gregg fiscal action task force amendment. I am going to vote for it, and I do so not because I think it is the best solution. The best solution would be for us, year to year, to reconcile that which we spend and the amount of money we have to spend. But we don't do that, and we are now in a position where we have an unsustainable fiscal policy. It just is. I know people on that side want to blame this administration; people on this side want to blame the last 8 years. Whatever the blame might be, let me say that we are on an unsustainable course, and it is required, in my judgment, by Republicans and Democrats, to come together to find a way to address it. This is not the best way, but it is probably the only way we are ever going to get some control. I have heard so many people come to the floor of the Senate to say this administration is a socialist administration; it is going to spend this country into the ground. I have heard all of that. It is easy for me to stand here and go all the way back to a time when I stood on this floor--a time when we had the only budget surplus in several decades-- and say in response to a President's proposal to spend it before it even existed, and all we had was 10 years of projections, why not be conservative? These surpluses only exist this year, not for the next 10 years. Let's be a little conservative. And the blowback was: Katey, bar the door. Let's do big tax cuts. Let's do all these things. Then immediately--and I didn't vote for it--but immediately we ran into a recession, then we ran into a terrorist attack, then a war in Afghanistan, and a war in Iraq--which, by the way, we never paid a penny for. We just sent men and women to go to war and said: We won't pay for it except with emergency supplementals every year. So there is plenty of blame to go around. This current President, President Obama, has been in office just 1 year. There are things with which I disagree with this administration, for sure. But, look, he inherited the biggest mess in the history of a Presidency, in my judgment. So let's try to figure out how we can get the best of what both parties have to offer in this country rather than the worst of each. I have often quoted Ogden Nash's four lines that I think captures this the best when he was talking about a guy who drinks too much and a woman who scolds. He drinks because she scolds, he thinks. She scolds because he drinks, she thinks. Neither will admit what's true. He's a drunk and she's a shrew. So it is perhaps with the political parties. Neither will admit what is really true. Both have some responsibility, and both have a responsibility to lead. We are not leading year to year in the normal budget process and in the normal appropriations process to reconcile the amount of money we have and the needs that exist. We are not reconciling that. We are offering a level of government that exceeds the amount of money we have, exceeds the American people's willingness or ability to pay for it, and that is not sustainable in the long term for this country. So the question is, What do we do? Some say, Well, you can never increase any taxes. I say: Why not, if you have people who aren't paying their fair share? How about increasing taxes on them? Some of the biggest folks in the country, who are running hedge funds, are paying the lowest tax rates in America. How would you like to make $3 billion a year? By the way, when somebody comes home and says: Honey, how are you doing? That person says: Well, I'm doing pretty well--$3 billion a year. That is almost $250 million a month salary. Doing pretty well. By the way, I don't know whether you know it, sweetheart, but I get to pay the lowest taxes in the country. I get to pay, on carried interest, a tax rate of 15 percent. So if somebody says: What is the solution to this? Cutting spending? Yes, I think so, in areas where we are spending money we shouldn't-- such as beaming television signals into the country of Cuba. We have spent $\1/4\ billion sending television signals to the Cuban people in TV Marti. Yes, we have spent that, and there are television signals beamed from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. and blocked by the Cuban Government so nobody can see them. So we have spent $\1/4\ billion sending television signals no one can see. I guess some people here feel better about that. I have been trying to shut that down for 10 years and can't even shut down that kind of insanity. So cutting spending, yes. How about asking those who aren't paying their fair share of taxes? Yes. Let's do all of that. Perhaps we are requiring that be done if we set up this mechanism. Perhaps that is what will happen. I wish we didn't have to do this, but with the choice of yes or no, which is a very simple choice on should we do something or should we just continue down this bumpy road that leads to a destination none of us wants and none of our children will like, my answer is let's vote yes on this amendment. Let's decide to do something that maybe can put this country back on track, help us restart this economic engine and give the American people confidence again. I used to teach a little economics in college, and I used to teach that it didn't matter what the supply and demand curve and all those issues dealt with, with the graphs. What really matters is do people have confidence about the future--about themselves, their family, and their future. If they do, they do the things that expand the economy. They take a trip, buy a suit of clothes, buy a car, buy a home. That is what expands the economy. If they are not confident, they do exactly the opposite, and they contract this economy. Let's do some things that give people some confidence in the future. Let's give them confidence that finally, at last--at long last--we are going to grab these issues, look them square in the eye, and say: We will fix them. Why? Because our kids and grandkids deserve that, and this country deserves that leadership. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there has been a lot happening in this country with respect to politics and the economy over these past months, and I know there is great angst and concern across this country. There are questions: When will America get the bounce back in its step? These are troublesome times, for sure, for a lot of reasons, but I am convinced we will find ways to put America back on track. I am convinced of that. You know, you go back a couple hundred years in American history, and this country has been through some very tough times but always-- always--rebounds. There has always been a sense of optimism that the future will be better than the past, that kids will have it better than their parents. I am convinced of that. I think the American people have plenty to be steamed about, and they need to find ways to let off that steam. They have a right to be steamed, and let me describe a bit of it. One year ago, this President took office and he inherited an economic wreck. That is just a fact. The question at that moment was, will this economy completely collapse? That wreck was caused by a lot of things, but deciding to go to war and not paying for a penny of it year after year--everybody knows better than that. You can't do that. Hiring regulators who were boasting that they weren't willing to regulate, saying to the big shots on Wall Street, the speculators, the big investment bankers, and others: Do whatever you want. We won't watch. The sky is the limit. We don't care. Now we see the carnage that results from that: derivatives--instruments that derive value from something else--CDOs, mortgage-backed securities, synthetic derivatives. Do you know what a synthetic derivative is? That is something that doesn't have any value of any kind. It is just a wager. You might as well put a craps table in the middle of an investment bank lobby and say to them: You don't have to go to Las Vegas, you can gamble here. And by the way, you can gamble with other people's money, not your own. But even investment banks and FDIC-insured banks have been gambling on their own proprietary accounts on derivatives. We ought to know better than that. So what happens is the regulators give a green light to that kind of rancid behavior, and it steers this country into an unbelievable bubble of speculation. Then the center pole of the tent collapses, the economy nearly collapses, and a whole lot of the American people are paying for it. The fact is, these folks fleeced America. It is the great bank robbery in American history. When I talk about big investment banks and some others, the community banks out there weren't involved in this. Go to most of your hometown banks and take a look at how they are doing. They are doing just fine because they weren't involved in these sorts of shenanigans. It was the biggest financial firms in this country that steered this country into the ditch, and it started, yes, with mortgage brokers and mortgage banks and investment banks and hedge funds and derivatives traders. All of them steered this country into the ditch. By the way, now they are driving the getaway car, going to the bank to deposit their big bonuses. They got big bonuses even while their firms lost a lot of money. Now, all of a sudden, many of the firms that would have collapsed were it not for the help of the American people are now earning record profits and set to pay the biggest bonuses in history in the next few weeks. That is unbelievable, and in my judgment, it shouldn't be allowed. In my judgment, we have to do something about this, and one of the pieces of the agenda in front of us is to reform this system of finance and try to wring out the unbelievable orgy of speculation in this system that puts the American economy and the American people at risk. So one of the pieces of this agenda at this point is so-called financial reform legislation. As I said, I am convinced that while this ship of state has a lot of leaks, we can fix it and set it right and set it back on course, but it is not going to be done by revisionist history of the past by some, by those who put their hands over their eyes and plug their ears and decide, you know, we are not interested in learning the lessons of the past. This President inherited a wreck. He may not have done every single thing right in the last year, but I will tell you this: He took action to try to put a foundation under this economy to prevent its collapse, and I think he deserves some credit for that. Had he done nothing after walking in the White House door, the Federal budget deficit was going to be $1.3 trillion. That is what this President was left with from the previous administrations. So, as I said, we have a lot of work to do, and it is going to require the cooperation of people in this Chamber. There has not been much cooperation recently. This Chamber has been pretty divided. You know, I have I guess dozens of times quoted Mark Twain when he was asked once by someone if he would engage in a debate. And he immediately said: Yes, if I can take the negative side. And they said: Well, we have not even told you the subject. He said: That doesn't matter. The subject doesn't matter. The negative side will take no preparation for me. And so it is here in this Chamber--the negative side saying no to every single initiative, even those initiatives that I believe saved this economy from collapse. But we need to do better than that. We need to work together and find ways, in a bipartisan manner, to cooperate for this country's benefit. So what are the issues? Well, I just mentioned financial reform. We have to fix this system of ours. The fact is, the same firms that steered this country into the ditch, the same people, the same interests are doing exactly what they did before: trading on their own proprietary accounts and taking on massive amounts of risk. We have to decide whether we should separate investment banking from FDIC-insured banking. We have to decide if you are too big to fail, you are just flatout too big. We have to decide those things in a financial reform bill that comes to the floor of the Senate. The American people are concerned about a lot of things--first and foremost, jobs. There is no social program in this country that is as important as a job that pays well, in my judgment. A good job that pays well makes everything else possible for families. So we need to focus like a laser on trying to create jobs once again in this country and put people back on payrolls. If we want to do something for the economic health of both families and America, it is good jobs that pay well, with some security and some benefits. There is no better tonic than that. It is also the case that we need to focus like a laser on this issue of deficits and debt because the fact is, we were left with an economy that is not sustainable with respect to the current deficits. It just isn't. You can't fight wars without paying for them. You just can't do that. You can't enact programs without paying for them. And when you fall into a very deep recession and your revenues dry up and you have $400 billion a year less in revenue--because of unemployment and many other stabilizing programs that try to help people who have been laid off and who are in trouble, you have $400 billion more in outlays--and you run into giant Federal budget deficits, we have to fix that. We have to do that because this course is not sustainable. There is one other issue I want to talk about for a moment. I hope that early on in this year, we will do something else that is important to the economic strength of America, and that is to pass an energy bill that moves in the direction of giving us the freedom from foreign oil. Let me describe why this is important in the context of trying to also fix what is wrong in this economy. We are a nation that uses a substantial amount of oil. We stick little straws in this planet every day and suck out oil. We suck out about 85 million barrels of oil a day from this planet called Earth. Of the 85 million or 84 million barrels of oil a day, one-fourth of it is used in this little place on the planet called the United States of America. We need one-fourth of all the oil that is produced every day just to keep America going, and a substantial amount of that oil is produced in areas of the world that don't like us very much, areas of the world that are very troubled. So we have great vulnerability with respect to our nation's energy security. The fact is, energy powers this country's economy. We don't think about it. We get up every single day and we flick on a switch, we plug something into a wall socket, we turn a key in an ignition. In dozens of ways, beginning when we first step out of bed and turn on the light, we use energy, and we use a lot of it. So the question is, What can give this country some energy security? Being 70 percent dependent on foreign oil? Certainly not. By the way, in addition to getting nearly 70 percent of our oil from other countries, nearly 70 percent of the oil is used in our transportation fleet. So what do we do about all that? The fact is, we passed the Energy bill out of the Energy Committee, about 6, 7 months ago here in the Senate, and that Energy bill, in my judgment, has a lot to commend it. I believe that early on in this Congress, the President and the Senate ought to decide we are going to take up this bill. It is bipartisan. We should pass this legislation and give America another step in the direction of being less dependent on foreign oil. It is also about jobs. You create a lot of jobs by new production and conservation systems and so on. Let me describe what is in this legislation. The legislation deals with increasing production of energy here at home. It also increases conservation and efficiency and maximizing the production of renewable energy. It also creates the first ever national renewable electricity standard, which means that a certain percentage of our electricity to come from renewable energy. All that is in this legislation and it has already been passed by the Senate Energy Committee on a bipartisan vote. Let me start for a moment with some good news. Mr. President, could I be notified at the end of 15 minutes, please, of my presentation.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me start with some good news because we almost never hear good news these days in America. All the news in America is about what went wrong, the old saying about bad news is that it travels halfway around the world before good news gets its shoes on. Almost nobody has any interest in saying let's broadcast good news all day. The good news last year, with respect to oil, was that for the first year in a long time, America actually increased its production of oil. We have been on this declining path. No more. Last year we increased the production of oil. Part of that comes from a formation in my part of the country called the Bakken shale. It is unbelievably complicated what we have done, but our country has learned to go explore and get oil from formations that 5, 8, 10 years ago you could not get oil from. There is up to 4.3 billion gallons of oil in the Bakken shale formation, 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, that can now be unlocked using today's technology. They drill down 2 miles with a drilling rig, do a big curve, and go out 2 miles. With one rig they go down 2 miles, then go out 2 miles and then they hydrofracture it and the oil drops. They are getting up to 2,000 barrel-a-day wells. That is just one part of the substantial additional production available in this country, and it is producing now in a very significant way in Montana and North Dakota in the Bakken shale. Also, in the Energy bill that was passed by the Senate Energy Committee, I introduced an amendment that was agreed upon on a bipartisan vote that opens the eastern Gulf of Mexico. We believe that there is at least 3.8 billion gallons of recoverable oil and at least 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico including the Destin Dome. There is a lot to be achieved by additional production and we should do that. There is no question we should do that. The legislation that has been passed on a bipartisan vote, with my amendment to open the additional production, would allow that to happen. That is one piece of the Senate Energy Committee's legislation. But there is much more. We understand our most abundant resource is coal, but we need to have a lower carbon future as we continue to use fossil fuels for energy. So the research and the science that is exciting, to be able to continue to use coal and capture and sequester or capture and provide beneficial use of CO2, is something we are working on very hard. We advance it in this legislation. If you are going to maximize production of energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines, through solar energy and wind energy, you need to develop an interstate highway of transmission. We don't have that. We have an interstate highway system to drive on, but we don't have an interstate highway system to move electricity on and to produce energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines and then move it to the load centers. That does not exist at the moment. In the last 10 years, we have built about 11,000 miles of natural gas pipeline to move natural gas around the country. During the same period, we only built 668 miles of high-voltage transmission lines between the States. We have to fix that. If you are going to maximize the production of energy where the wind is blowing and the Sun is shining, and we should, then you need to have an interstate highway of transmission to move that energy to the load centers. This transmission section is in the Senate Energy Committee's bill. We have included a national renewable electricity standard, for the first time in history, in this legislation. That will drive the production of renewable energy because 15 percent of the energy that is sold must come from renewable energy sources. I think the votes exist on the floor of the Senate to get to a 20-percent RES. All of that, I think, is very important. The other thing we do is we move toward an electric drive vehicle system with investments in battery technology and all of the related issues that would involve electric drive vehicles. That is going to be part of our future. Beyond the electric drive future, I think, is hydrogen and fuel cell technology. There is so much to be excited about. We do need to get the legislation that has already passed the Senate Energy Committee to the floor of the Senate. Let me describe it briefly by saying this. There are some who say the issue is climate change, and we have to bring a climate change bill to the floor of the Senate. Here is my view. To address climate change and have a lower carbon future means that you have to put in place policies that actually reduce carbon. How do you do that? By doing the very things I have described in this legislation that is now out of the Senate Energy Committee and ready to come to the floor. It is addressed to the specific policies that will reduce carbon, that will actually allow us to make progress in addressing climate change issues. I know there is a lot of discussion, and also a lot of controversy surrounding the issue of cap and trade. My own view on cap and trade is that I don't have the foggiest interest in providing a $1 trillion carbon trading market for traders and speculators on Wall Street to decide on Monday and Tuesday what our energy is going to cost on Thursday and Friday. I am not interested in doing that, given the history of what has happened on Wall Street and the economic wreck they caused in recent years. Having said that, we still need a lower carbon future. I agree with that. The way to do that is to pass smart energy policy. We have a bipartisan bill that addresses all these issues: additional production, additional conservation, more efficiency, maximizing renewables, the first ever renewable electricity standard. All these issues will strengthen our country, and I hope very much one of the priorities in the coming months will be to pass the energy legislation that was passed by the Senate Energy Committee and advance our country's interest.

Mr. DORGAN. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield, I have always refrained from using the word ``retire'' because I can't sit around very much. So I don't intend to quit working. But I am not seeking reelection, the Senator is correct about that. This is a great institution, and it is a great privilege to serve here. I look forward to a lot of work this year with my colleague from Illinois and I hope, together, we will frame the policies that will help put America back on track to a better future.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the health care reform bill we voted on today in the U.S. Senate merited my support because it is a fiscally responsible bill that will expand health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans who are currently uninsured, reduce health care costs for families and small businesses and strengthen our health care system in rural America. While I recognize that this is a very controversial issue, I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. Our country spends nearly twice as much on health care as most other countries in the world. And the cost of health care and its claim on our economy is increasing every single year. There are some tens of millions of Americans who are not covered with health insurance and whose health care costs are then transferred to the rest of the American people to pay. It is estimated that those with insurance pay, on average, $1,000 per year in a hidden tax to cover the uncompensated care given to those who don't now have health insurance. So, I think it is important for us to try to put the brakes on increasing health care costs, and also to extend health care coverage to those who now don't have it. I told citizens of North Dakota that I would not support a government takeover of health care. This legislation is not a government takeover. I have said that I would not support public funding for abortion. This legislation does not provide public funding for abortion. I have promised that I would not support legislation that provides health care for illegal immigrants. This legislation does not. But you wouldn't know those facts if you heard the negative advertising about the bill. In North Dakota alone, nearly $2.2 million has been spent on advertising that, in many cases, is just not honest. These ads are paid for by out-of-State groups and big interests that have a lot at stake and will do anything to defeat the health care reform bill. The first amendment allows these groups to do this but it does nothing to advance the debate since most of these attacks have been based on lies and scare tactics. This health care bill includes important protections that will stop insurance companies from taking advantage of patients. It begins to reform the delivery of health care in a way that would control costs and improve the quality of health care. It will increase competition in the insurance market by allowing insurance companies to compete across State lines and by offering nationwide plans. It also establishes pilot programs to support creative ways to deal with medical malpractice reform. In addition to being paid for, the legislation also extends help to individuals and small businesses that need assistance to afford health insurance. And the legislation contains important provisions to strengthen health care in rural America, including a provision I added called the Frontier Amendment, with Senator Conrad. For the first time in many decades, this bill finally provides fair reimbursement to North Dakota and several other States who have the highest quality health care, but the lowest reimbursements under Medicare. This new fair payment system will mean a strengthened health care system for senior citizens on Medicare. It will also mean a better health care system for all North Dakotans because there will be less cost shifting among individuals with private policies in order to cover the shortfall in Medicare reimbursement. The bill guarantees that Medicare services to senior citizens will not be cut or affected in any way. In fact, the bill improves the solvency of Medicare. The health care reform bill in the Senate is being supported by the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP, the National Committee to Save Social Security and Medicare, American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, and many, many consumer groups across the country. So this bill is about a lot of things. It is about standing up for American business and growth in our economy. It is about standing up for senior citizens and Medicare. It is about creating a better health care program for all Americans. For those reasons, I voted yes to move this process along in the hope this bill will be further improved in the weeks ahead. This is not a perfect piece of legislation for sure. But voting for this legislation in the Senate moves it along to a conference with the House of Representatives, which is another step in determining whether we can write legislation that advances our country's interests.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I want to briefly draw your attention to an extraordinary trial that took place in Beijing yesterday morning. Mr. Liu Xiaobo is a 53-year-old writer and social critic and one of China's most prominent advocates of democratic reform. After being detained without charges for over a year, he went on trial yesterday morning in a 3-hour proceeding closed to the public. If convicted, Mr. Liu faces up to 15 years in prison. His verdict is likely to come on Friday, Christmas Day. What was Mr. Liu's crime? He was tried on charges officially defined as ``incitement to subvert state power.'' Mr. Liu's calls for open elections and free speech were viewed as a threat to the ruling Communist Party. What precisely did he do that got him into trouble? He contributed to ``Charter 08,'' a political manifesto calling for human rights and the rule of law in China. The manifesto was posted on line last December and quickly gained thousands of signatures by Chinese workers, teachers, and retired party members. Its name is a reference to Charter 77, a Soviet-era petition by Czech dissidents like Vaclav Havel. Mr. Liu's crimes are nonexistent. Yet his fate has been predetermined. In short, his trial is a travesty of justice: Mr. Liu's 3-hour trial was closed to the public. Even his wife was not allowed to attend. She has been relentlessly harassed and unable to speak to him since March. Officials warned Mr. Liu's supporters to stay away from the trial and not write about it online. Police detained some people who came to the courthouse to show support. His verdict will be announced on Christmas Day. This is an obvious calculation so that the verdict's announcement will garner less international attention. According to his brother, one of the two family members allowed in the courtroom, Mr. Liu told the judge that ``if he was sent to jail, it might bring others freedom of speech.'' I was struck by a report in yesterday morning's New York Times that an unemployed meat plant worker took an 18-hour train ride from his far-flung province to show solidarity outside of the courthouse in Beijing. The worker said he had never met Mr. Liu, but that they had exchanged emails. He also said proudly that he had signed ``Charter 08'' and pulled out a copy of it from his backpack and handed it to a courthouse official. The worker's intent was clear: ``I am not afraid. I love China. I just want my country to have freedom and human rights.'' The trial of Mr. Liu is a sad milestone that has further diminished hopes that China's economic rise would bring about significant political and legal reforms. During the past year, as the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's reporting has shown, the government has tightened restrictions on the Internet, harassed the country's human rights lawyers, and jailed muckrakers, working with grieving parents, blamed shoddy school construction for the deaths of thousands of children during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. We will learn the court's verdict and its jail sentence for Mr. Liu on Christmas Day. I call on China's leaders to demonstrate compassion and genuine commitment, not just in words but in deeds, to the rule of law and fundamental rights by dismissing the case against Mr. Liu. In doing so, the Chinese Government would be recognizing the serious procedural flaws that have taken place in this case. It would also signal to the rest of the world that the Chinese Government is committed to developing the rule of law and upholding international human rights standards.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is interesting to listen to the discussion on the floor of the Senate. We hear a lot about what is wrong these days. For a moment, let me say that there is a lot right in this country as well. We are in a deep economic recession. I understand that. This is the deepest recession we have seen since the Great Depression. It is a difficult circumstance. But this country has been in tough circumstances before. The American people are a resilient bunch; they pull themselves up and move forward. I understand the angst and the concern across this country. I understand the debate in the Chamber about what is wrong. I would be the first to say I don't think either political party is a great bargain sometimes. Both of them have their faults. I think of that Ogden Nash poem that goes like this: He drinks because she [scolds], He thinks she [scolds] because he drinks, She thinks while neither will admit what's [really] true that he's a [drunk] and she's a shrew. Both political parties, it seems to me, have faults, but both political parties have also contributed to the well-being of this country. When I hear people say nothing works in America--I answered phones at the front desk yesterday for a while to hear from callers calling in about various things. I heard it on many occasions because a lot of people on the radio and on TV are saying nothing works in America and there is nothing the Federal Government has ever done that works. The Internet--what a wonderful invention in the life of our planet. Yes, that was created by the Federal Government. Going way back, we brought electricity to America's farms and unleashed a barrage of productivity in American agriculture. When you drive around with a locator on the dashboard of your car, that is a GPS satellite--that is the government as well. The Interstate Highway System that connects America--when you drive down big roads that are connecting all of America, that is the Interstate Highway System, suggested by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. What a remarkable thing. I also think of the story I read a while back about those two little creatures that are crawling around the planet Mars, one called Spirit and one called Opportunity. Five years ago, our country sent both of them to land on the surface of Mars. They landed 1 week apart. They are dune buggy-sized mechanical creatures on the surface of Mars. We sent them up by a rocket. They landed encased in a shroud, and they bounced and the shroud opened up and these dune buggy-sized vehicles began driving on the surface of Mars. They were expected to last 90 days. Five years later, Spirit and Opportunity have been driving on the surface of Mars collecting samples. One of them--I believe Spirit--had an arm that looked as if it was arthritic, so it was hanging at an angle, almost like a salute. The wheel broke, and so they were dragging the wheel and creating a trench. The arm reached back, and the scientist--it takes 9 minutes to send up a signal--the scientist had the arm reach back and dig into the trench so they could get better samples on the surface of Mars. These dune buggies were running on the surface of Mars. Yes, that is the Federal Government and all the contractors. When somebody said to me that the Federal Government has never done anything right, I said: If you ever get to the Moon, just check the boot prints. They are not Chinese or Russian; they are made by an American astronaut--the one who planted the American flag there. There is plenty wrong in this country, to be sure, but there is a lot right about this country. About 9 years ago, at the start of this decade, our country had a budget surplus. Poor Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, wasn't able to sleep. He was worried that we were going to pay down the debt too quickly. I assured him he ought to go to sleep peacefully because that is not a problem. President Bush came to town and said: We are going to do very big tax cuts because it is estimated that we are going to have very big surpluses. I was one on the floor who said maybe we ought not do that. Let's be a little conservative. These surpluses don't exist for the next 10 years yet. They existed that year for the first time in a long time in the year 2000--a budget surplus. President Bush said: No, we are going to begin very large tax cuts right now in anticipation of these surpluses in the future. Some of us said: Be careful. The wealthiest Americans got very large tax cuts, especially. Almost immediately, this country went into a recession, and 6 months after that, this country was hit with 9/11, an unbelievable terrorist attack. Almost immediately, we went into the country of Afghanistan to go after Osama bin Laden. Then, very quickly, we invaded Iraq. We were at war for the rest of the decade without paying for one penny of it. Not a penny was paid for those wars or the increased funding to deal with terrorist attacks. Some of us went to the floor of the Senate and said: Let's begin to try to pay for some of this. Why should we send our men and women to war and decide we won't ask anybody to pay for it? They thought we will just have the kids and grandkids pay the cost. The President said: If you add this to the bill to pay for it, I will veto the bill. So here we are. Then we see, at exactly the same time, regulators coming to town boasting that they were willing to be willfully blind and they would not look or see and they would not care. We had a bunch of big high fliers create unbelievably exotic financial industries, such as credit default swaps and liars loans for mortgages, and they steered this country right into a ditch while the people at the top were making a lot of money, causing economic havoc the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s. Our revenue at the Federal Government dropped $400 billion because of the deep recession. Expenditures for unemployment, food stamps, and so on, which are caused to go up during recessions, increased substantially, and we have very serious economic problems. There is no question about that. I can recite the problems as well as anybody. But let's also, from time to time, recite the strength of this country. It requires leadership from all of us to put this country back on track. I am convinced we can. I am convinced we will do that. We need a little cooperation here and there. There is not much these days. But I am convinced all of us want the same thing for this great country, and perhaps we can come together even if we have different views of how to get to that common destination. I am convinced one of these days we will make some progress and put America first. I wished to come today to talk about something that is happening half away around the world in Copenhagen. That is the issue of climate change and energy. Even as leaders around the world gather in Copenhagen to talk about climate change, I wish to talk about the energy legislation that addresses the issue of climate change. The energy legislation that was passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee earlier this year is a real energy policy that also protects the planet by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are not going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because somebody signs a paper. We have a lot of environmental laws. Mexico is a good example. They have a lot of environmental laws on the books. They are just not enforced. Signing a paper is not going to mean much unless you have an agreement that makes sense for the planet and an agreement that is enforced and an agreement that is agreed to by virtually all the countries that are emitting a great deal of carbon. I will tell you what will make a big difference; that is, for the Congress to pass the Senate Energy legislation, which truly does move us in the direction of addressing climate change. That energy policy, by the way, is not some secretive policy. This past June we passed an energy bill out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that does all the things I think we need to--or virtually all the things--address the issue of climate change and a lower carbon future. But it was not brought to the floor of the Senate or the House of Representatives because we are told energy legislation must be married or merged with climate change. I do not agree with that. We are going to have wasted a year, in my judgment, in which we could have debated the energy legislation on the floor of the Senate, and passed it into law by the signature of the President. This energy legislation maximizes the use of renewable energy, such as the building of the interstate transmission capability that would allow us to maximize renewable energy. The energy legislation would also establish a renewable electricity standard, the first one in the history of this country. The energy legislation would also retrofit buildings to make them more energy efficient, which would increase energy savings. I also offered an amendment to this legislation, that would also give us the ability to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by opening oil and gas production in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. All these issues are in an energy bill that passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a bipartisan vote. Yet the benefits to this country from those energy policies that make a lot of sense, will not be available during this year, because those who are pushing for climate change legislation here say you have to do energy and climate change together. I say this: I hope when we turn the corner and start a new year, that an energy bill that is bipartisan--Mr. President, I had indicated I wished to take 20 minutes today. I ask consent for the 10 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the legislation that exists and is ready, in my judgment, could be signed by the President and already moving this country down the road. The deliverable for the President to go to Copenhagen could have been: Look what we have done in energy policy; we have taken the significant step in the right direction. Yet we are told that energy legislation has to move with climate change legislation. I am not opposed to a lower carbon future. I am not opposed to trying to do something on climate change legislation. I have indicated I am not supportive of the trade piece of cap and trade. I have no interest in consigning to Wall Street the opportunity to have a $1 trillion carbon securities market that they could trade on Monday and Tuesday, and then they can tell us on Wednesday and Thursday how much we are going to pay for our energy. I have no interest in creating a carbon securities market. There are a lot of things we can do, especially an energy policy at the front end--and I hope early next year--we will advance this country's energy security, No. 1, and advance this country's movement toward a lower carbon future. I wish to put up a couple charts as I describe this. We must reduce our dependence on foreign energy, especially foreign oil. Seventy percent of the oil we use comes from off our shores. We sink straws in the planet and suck oil out. We suck out 85 million barrels a day, and one-fourth has to come to this country because of our appetite for oil. You know what, when 70 percent of it comes from other countries--many that do not like us very much--that means we have an energy security problem. This Energy bill I have described, that has been out of the Energy Committee since June, and was passed on a bipartisan vote, reduces our dependence on foreign oil, increases domestic production, establishes a renewable electricity standard, and creates a transmission superhighway. By the way, in the last 9 years, we have laid 11,000 miles of natural gas pipeline in this country--11,000 miles. Do you know how many miles we have laid of high-voltage transmission lines interstate? Mr. President, 668. On this bill, I worked on the transmission piece with Senator Jeff Bingaman and others and we solved the issue of transmission. We can get about the business of building an interstate highway of transmission lines so you can produce electricity where the Sun shines and the wind blows, put it on a wire and move it to where it is needed in the load centers. This is not rocket science. This is rather simple. We already passed a bipartisan bill out of committee to do this. Electrification and diversification of our vehicle fleet is in the bill. The legislation also enhances energy efficiency in a wide range of areas, it expands clean energy technology, and the training of an energy workforce for tomorrow. Every one of us gets up in the morning and the first thing we do is flick a switch and all of a sudden there is light. Then many decide to plug in a coffee maker or turn on the stove, turn on the radio, turn on the television set, get in the car, put in a key, the engine turns on--all of this is because of energy, and that is before you get to work. No one even thinks about the role energy plays in our life. That is why it is important for us to understand we have a very serious energy security issue in this country. No. 2, we have a serious issue of the need to construct new kinds of energy and also to use the existing energy differently or produce energy differently and reduce carbon emissions. I chair the committee that funds most of our energy projects. I chair the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. It funds the energy and water issues, obviously. There is a lot going on, for example, that I think is so exciting that can unlock our opportunity to continue to use coal. Some say you cannot use coal. Of course, you can. Our science and our technology can clearly decarbonize the use of coal, which is our most abundant resource. Why would we not want to use coal in the future? There are unbelievable things going on Dr. Craig Venter, a scientist not far from here, is working on this issue: developing synthetic microbes that underground would turn coal into methane. These microbes would consume the coal and turn it into methane. Pretty interesting to me. There is a guy in California who has an idea, a patented idea I don't know if it works, but they insist it is the silver bullet. He takes the entire flue gas from a coal plant and he mineralizes it through some patented process he has. It does not separate CO2. It mineralizes all of it and turns it into a product that is harder than concrete and more valuable than concrete and produces, as a result, the cost of carbon at almost near zero. Maybe that is the silver bullet. I don't know. There are dozens of examples like it that are very exciting and very interesting. I started algae research after it had been discontinued for 15 years--single-cell pond scum, that green scum on the pond out on the farm--algae. You take the CO2 that is released from a coal plant, feed it to an algae farm and grow algae. It increases its bulk in hours. Then you can harvest the algae and produce diesel fuel. Get rid of the CO2 and produce a fuel. That is called value added. That is called beneficial use of carbon. There are others now--Dr. Craig Venter is involved in this, along with Exxon--who have projects in which they create algae that excretes lipids directly. Instead of harvesting algae and destroying it for the purpose of acquiring a diesel fuel, it excretes lipids directly which, with very little manipulation, is a fuel. One of the scientists with the Sandia National Laboratory talked about the development of a solar heat engine in which you put CO2 on one side and water on the other and you fracture the molecules and thermochemically recombine them and you have methanol-- water, CO2, develop a fuel. All these ideas are opportunities for us to continue to use coal and at the same time reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. My point is, I think we ought to be doing a lot of everything with respect to producing a better energy future for this country and with respect to reducing the carbon in our future. I am not somebody who is a naysayer about climate change at all. I expect to be a part of discussions about how to reduce carbon in our future. But I do believe it will be a profound mistake if we do not advance the very policies we have the opportunity to advance in the Congress, in the Senate, the very policies that move us in the direction of reducing carbon and making us more energy secure. To date, what we have had is all this breathlessness about you have to do a climate change bill right now and you cannot take up energy legislation until you take up climate change legislation. You know what, I do not agree. I hope that high on the list of the agenda next year for this Congress is to say: We have a serious energy security problem and we have a serious issue with respect to carbon. Let's deal with both. If anybody believes this country can continue to have a 70-percent addiction for oil from foreign countries, they are dreaming. That is not something that will be sustainable in the long term. It undermines this country's economy to have that kind of addiction to foreign oil. So how do we address this issue and fix it? We address it with thoughtful policies inside this country--to increase efficiency, increase conservation, increase production, and increase production in the right way that protects our planet. All these things are possible. I guess I have spoken six or eight times on the Senate floor about these issues, not that anybody is listening so much I guess. But it is all health care all the time right now. Health care is not unimportant. I happen to think among the first things on the agenda is, A, financial reform which restores confidence. That was important because a bunch of high fliers steered this country into the ditch. We have to make sure people think that will not happen again; then, second, restarting the economic engine and putting people to work--jobs; third, dealing with energy which has to do with the very security of virtually everything we do to create jobs in this country. All these are important issues. My hope is, when the calendar turns and January comes, we will have the opportunity to grab and seize the progress that was made in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, now nearly 6 months ago, to do the right thing for this country and to do the right thing to address climate change at the same time. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume under the hour I control. We are going to have people trotting onto the floor of the Senate this afternoon--and some have this morning--talking about this issue of prescription drug reimportation and saying there are safety problems with it--safety problems. I wish to talk about one small piece of health care reform without which you can't call it health care reform, because at least with respect to the issue of pricing of prescription drugs, there will be no reform unless my amendment is passed. My amendment is bipartisan. It includes support from Senator Snowe, Senator McCain, Senator Grassley on that side and many Democratic Senators as well and it says: Let's put the brakes on these unbelievable increases in the price of prescription drugs; a 9-percent increase this year alone in brand-name prescription drugs. Why is this an important issue? How about let's talk about the price of Nexium--the price of Nexium. You buy it, if you need it: $424 for an equivalent quantity in the United States. If you want to buy it elsewhere, not $424; you pay $37 in Germany, $36 in Spain, $41 in Great Britain. We are charged the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We are going to have a lot of people come out and say: Well, there will be safety problems if we reimport FDA-approved drugs from other countries--absolute rubbish. Here is Dr. Rost, a former vice president for marketing for Pfizer Corporation, and this is what he said: During my time I was responsible for a region in northern Europe. I never once--not once--heard the drug industry, regulatory agencies, the government, or anyone else saying that this practice was unsafe. Personally, I think it is outright derogatory to claim that Americans would not be able to handle reimportation of drugs when the rest of the educated world can do it. They have been doing this in Europe for 20 years, reimporting lower priced prescription drugs from other countries, and they do it safely. Our consumers pay the highest prices in the world because there is no competition for prescription drugs. When a drug is sold for a fraction of the price elsewhere--one-tenth the price for Nexium in Germany and Great Britain--the American people can't access it. Even though it is made in the same plant, the same pill put in the same bottle, the American people are told: It is off-limits to you. Dr. Rost also said this: Right now, drug companies are testifying that imported drugs are unsafe. Nothing could be further from the truth. This from a former executive of Pfizer Corporation. When the pharmaceutical industry goes around the Hill today and tells you that importing medicine is going to be unsafe--and by the way, our bill only allows the importation from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the European countries, where they have an identical chain of custody and where we require pedigree and we require batch lots that will make the entire drug supply much safer, including the domestic drug supply--when the pharmaceutical industry goes around the Hill today saying: If you vote for the Dorgan-Snowe-McCain, et al. amendment, you are voting for less safety, ask the pharmaceutical industry this: What about the fact that you get 40 percent of your active ingredients for drugs from India and China and from places in India and China in many circumstances that have never been investigated or inspected by anyone? Answer that, and then tell us that reimporting FDA-approved prescription drugs from other countries is unsafe. What a bunch of rubbish. My understanding is, sometime yesterday--maybe late last night-- somebody made a deal. I don't know what the deal is, but I guess the deal is to say we are going to have this amendment--it has been 7 days since we started debating this amendment--we are going to have this amendment vote and then we are going to have another vote on another amendment that nullifies it. It is the amendment I call: I stand up for the American people paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. If you want to support that amendment, go right ahead. What you are doing is nullifying any ability of the American people to have the freedom to access lower priced drugs where they are sold elsewhere in the world. I am talking about FDA-approved drugs made in FDA-approved plants. It doesn't matter what the fancy wrapping and the bright ribbons are on this package. This package to nullify what we are trying to do is a package that comes directly from the pharmaceutical industry. Why? To protect their interests. This year they will sell $290 billion worth of drugs, 80 percent brand-name prescription drugs. On brand-name drugs, the price increased 9 percent this year and on generic drugs it fell by 9 percent. Now I understand why they want to protect those interests. Here are two pill bottles, both contain Lipitor, both made in a plant in Ireland by an American corporation. This sent to Canada, this sent to the United States. The American consumer gets the same pill made in the same bottle made in the same plant by the same company. The American consumer also gets the privilege of paying nearly triple the price and can't do a thing about it because this Congress, vote after vote after vote, has said: We stand with the pharmaceutical industry and against competition and against freedom for the American worker. If I sound a bit sick and tired of it, I am. We have been going after this for 8 to 10 years, to give the American people the freedom to access the identical FDA-approved drugs for a fraction of the price where they are sold everywhere else in the world, and we are told again and again and again there is this phony excuse about safety, completely phony. I will have more to say about it later, but I did want to say we are going to see a lot of people trotting out here with such a shop-worn, tired, pathetic argument to try to keep things as they are and try to keep saying to the American people: You pay the highest prices in the world for brand-name drugs and that is OK. That is the way we are going to leave it. We will call it health care reform, and at the end of the day, that is what you end up with: The highest prices in the world, a 9-percent increase just this year alone. Over the next 10 years, that 9-percent increase, just this year, nets the pharmaceutical industry $220 billion, but that is OK. That is the way you are going to end up, American consumer, because we don't want to give you the freedom to access those lower priced drugs where they are sold for a fraction of the price. One final point. I have mentioned often an old codger who sat on a straw bale at a farm once where I had a meeting, and he said: I am 80 years old. Every 3 months we have to drive to Canada across the border because my wife has been fighting breast cancer. Why do we drive to Canada? To buy Tamoxifen. Why do we have to go there to buy it? We paid--I think he said-- one-tenth the price in Canada. We couldn't have afforded it otherwise. Is that what we want the American people to have to do? Most people can't drive across the border someplace. Why not establish a system like they have had in Europe for 20 years, to allow the American people the freedom to access reasonably priced drugs, FDA-approved drugs. So this is a day in which we will vote on my amendment and then we will vote on an amendment that nullifies it and we will see whether enough of a deal has been made so the fix is in. So, once again, the American people end this day having to pay the highest prices in the world. Pay, pay, pay, pay, soak the American consumer, keep doing it. That has been the message here for 10 years. A group of us, Republicans and Democrats, 30 who have cosponsored this legislation, have said, you know what. We are sick and tired of it. Give the American people the freedom. If this is a global economy, how about a global economy for real people? How about let them have the advantages of a global economy? Once again, I will have a lot more to say this afternoon. It is apparently a day for deal-making and we will see who made what deals, but we are going to have votes. I know one thing. I know the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of clout. I know that. I hope the American people have the ability to expect some clout on their behalf in the Chamber of the Senate this afternoon. I yield the floor, and I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is there is a desire by some to have a quorum call in which the quorum call time is charged against all sides. My understanding is, there are, I think, 5 hours allocated with respect to today: 1 hour for the Baucus amendment, 1 hour for the Crapo amendment, and 3 hours distributed as follows: 1 hour for me, 1 more Mr. Lautenberg, and 1 hour for the Republican leader on the prescription drug reimportation; am I correct?

Mr. DORGAN. So I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be allocated against the 4 hours and not against the hour I control.

Mr. DORGAN. Well, Mr. President, did the Senator object?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is I will put in a quorum call, the time is equally divided, apparently, between the sides, in a circumstance where the other side has 3 hours and our side has 2 hours and especially on the subject I have just discussed, the other side has 2 hours and I have 1 hour. I will put us into a quorum call, and I guess it will be equally divided between the two sides. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to make a point. I know my colleague from Arizona wishes to engage in a brief colloquy on this point. The amendment we are offering, a bipartisan amendment dealing with the price of prescription drugs, is a very important amendment. We are going to get our vote on that, but then there is also going to be a vote on a poison pill amendment that nullifies it. It says if you pass the second amendment, it means nothing happens and prescription drug prices keep going through the roof. I wish to say quickly there have been very few bipartisan amendments on the floor of the Senate during this health care debate. That is regrettable. This, in fact, is bipartisan. A wide range of 30 Senators, including Republicans John McCain, Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe and so on support this effort and the effort is simple, trying to put the brakes on prescription drug prices by giving the American people freedom and the ability to find competition among drug prices where they are sold in other parts of the world for a fraction of what we are charged as American consumers.

Mr. DORGAN. We have been working on this for 10 years--myself, the Senator from Arizona, and others. He knows because he was chairman of the Commerce Committee. We held hearings on this in the committee. The fact is, we have gotten votes on it before. In each case, the pharmaceutical industry, which has a lot of muscle around here, prevailed on those votes with an amendment that is a poison pill amendment saying somebody has to certify with respect to no additional safety risk and so on. These safety issues are completely bogus, absolutely bogus. They have done in Europe for 20 years what we are proposing to do in this country, parallel trading between countries. What we are trying to do is save the American people $100 billion in the next 10 years because we are charged the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and there is no justification for it. I want to show the Senator from Arizona one chart. This is representative. If you happen to take Nexium, for the same quantity you pay $424 in the United States, if you were in Spain, you would pay $36; France, $67; Great Britain, $41; Germany, $37. Why is it the American consumer has the privilege of paying 10 times the cost for exactly the same drug put in the same bottle made by the same company in the same plant? Justify that.

Mr. DORGAN. That is the case. The President was a cosponsor of this legislation when he served last year. I do want to say as well the American consumer gets to pay 10 times the cost for Nexium. Nexium is for acid reflux, probably a condition that will exist with some after this vote because my understanding is, after 7 days on the floor of the Senate, there is now an arrangement by which the pharmaceutical industry will probably have sufficient votes to beat us, once again, which means the American people lose. I also want to make this point. Anyone who stands up and cites safety and reads the stuff that has come out of a copying machine for 10 years, understand this: Dr. Peter Rost, former vice president of marketing for Pfizer, formerly worked in Europe on the parallel trading system, said: The biggest argument against reimportation is safety. What everyone has conveniently forgotten to tell you is that in Europe reimportation of drugs has been in place for 20 years. It is an insult to the American people to say: You can make this work in Europe for the benefit of consumers to get lower prices, but Americans don't have the capability to make this happen, don't have the capability to manage it. That is absurd. This safety issue is unbelievably bogus.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Arizona is right. If this is ``Groundhog Day'' for pharmaceutical drugs, the clock strikes 6 and the pharmaceutical industry wins. They have been doing it for 10 years. We just repeat the day over and over again. My hope is that we will not have to repeat it today. My hope is that after a lot of work on a bipartisan piece of legislation, the American people will have sufficient support on the floor of the Senate to say it is not fair for us to be paying double, triple and 10 times the cost of prescription drugs that others in the world are paying. I wonder if we might be able to yield some time to the Senator from Iowa, 5 minutes, unless the Senator from Arizona wishes to conclude.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask the Senator to withhold his request for a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, back in the mid-1800s, when Lincoln and Douglas were having their famous debates, at one point Lincoln was exasperated because he could not get Douglas to understand something he was saying. He said to Douglas: Listen, how many legs does a horse have? Douglas said: Four, of course. Lincoln said: If you call the tail a leg, how many legs would he have? Douglas said: Five. Lincoln said: There is where you are wrong. Simply calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg at all. Yes, that is exactly what my colleagues have done, suggesting the amendment we are offering is for untested, unregulated drugs. It is not true. The only drugs we are talking about are FDA-approved drugs that are made at an FDA-inspected plant, part of a chain of custody equal to the U.S. chain of custody. It is simply not true that we are talking about untested, unregulated drugs. That is not true. Simply saying that doesn't make it true. Here is why we are on the floor of the Senate. We are reforming health care. That is what the bill is. Part of health care is prescription drugs. A lot of people take prescription drugs to keep them out of a hospital bed. It manages their disease. Prescription drugs are very important. Here is what happened to the prices year after year. As you can see on this chart, the rate of inflation is in yellow and the prescription drug prices are in red. This year alone, it is up 9 percent, at a time when inflation is below zero. Well, why do we want to be able to access the same FDA-approved drug where it is sold elsewhere at a fraction of the price? Because the American people will pay in the next decade--if we don't pass this legislation--$100 billion in excess prescription drug prices. If you need to take Nexium for acid reflux--maybe after this vote we will all need it. But if you are going to buy Nexium, it costs $424 for an equivalent quantity in the United States. You can buy it for $41 in the UK, $36 in Spain--but it is $424 here. Sound fair? Not to me. Lipitor is the most popular cholesterol-lowering drug in the world. It is $125 in the United States for an equivalent quantity. You get the same thing for $40 in the UK or one-third of the price. It is $32 in Spain, one-fourth the price. It is $33 in Canada. The American people get to pay triple or quadruple the price. By the way, it comes in these bottles. I ask unanimous consent to use the bottles.