Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened with interest today to my colleague from Arizona, and now my colleague from Minnesota, on this subject of economic recovery. This is a critically important subject. This is not the normal run-of-the-mill policy that we debate here in the Senate. Our economy is in some trouble, and I am not sure any of us quite understand how much trouble. It is a new economy. We don't have models by which we can judge what happened in the past and therefore project what might happen in the future. This is a new global economy that operates and behaves in ways that are different than perhaps represent our conventional understanding. I know my friend from Minnesota mentioned that our colleague from Texas, who is in the Chamber, came from a background of teaching economics, I believe, in college. I, too, briefly taught economics in college. I like to say that I have gone on, nonetheless, to overcome that experience and lead a reasonably productive life. The field of economics is not much more than psychology pumped up with a little helium. We have all kinds of economists in this country who will give us their best guess of what has happened and what will happen. But nobody really knows. We have heard suggestions from respected economists in America, Nobel Prize winners no less, that we have an economy that is in a recession; that we have rather substantial overcapacity in this economy, and the most effective way to jumpstart this economy is to do the kinds of things that represent a boost in consumption. This morning, one of my colleagues talked about increasing business investments. Perhaps there is a need for some of that. But most economist will tell you that during a time of recession, when you have overcapacity, the quickest way to jumpstart an economy is to boost consumption. What menu of plans has been introduced that would do that? One of my concerns is that there is almost no room to be critical of a plan these days because if you are critical, somehow you are taking on the President in an unfair way. I gave the response to the President's radio address a couple weeks ago, and I received a letter from a guy who said he was listening and almost drove off the road when he heard me. It was a shrill, partisan letter. Some of us receive those periodically. My response to the radio address--about the first one-third of it was about what a outstanding job this President has done prosecuting the war against terrorism. I complimented him and Secretary Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld and others. I talked at great length about that. Then I said, on the subject of economic recovery, that we have differences. I talked about those differences. I debated the differences in policy. Norman Vincent Peale once said: Most people would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. There is nothing, in my judgment, that injures this country by having a full-scale debate break out on something that represents important public policy. Let me talk a bit about some of the ideas that have been brought forward on the subject of economic recovery. In my judgment, the goofiest idea, if I can use that term, came from the House Ways and Means Committee. We just had a colleague suggest that we start with that bill here on the floor of the Senate. The proposition is that we go back to 1988 and provide tax rebates to large corporations for the alternative minimum taxes they paid over the last 14 years. Somehow that is represented to be a piece of economic recovery policy. That is not going to promote economic recovery. It doesn't have the foggiest thing to do with economic recovery. It has everything to do with writing a very big check to some of the biggest corporations in this country. They paid tax under what is called a ``minimum tax'' because in the 1980s we decided we didn't want to have companies making billions of dollars in net profit and paying zero in taxes. We thought there ought to be some minimum at least. That was the proposition. But, of course, the House Ways and Means Committee, on which I used to serve, wrote a bill that said, by the way, let's provide rebate checks to all those companies that had to pay minimum taxes dating back to 1988, such as IBM. We will give them a $1.4 billion check. Ford Motor Company--give them a billion-dollar check. Does anybody think that will promote economic recovery in this country, when we are in a recession and have overcapacity in the economy. No, that is just a giveaway. I will not apologize to anybody for having passion about public policy and saying, when somebody recommends doing something that will increase the deficit, that augurs against the interests of the average American citizen and will do nothing to help the economic recovery but will enrich those who don't deserve that by giving them rebates for taxes they should have paid-- minimum taxes, not regular taxes. Nobody deserves an apology from those of us who say that makes no sense; that won't help this country. So we have a debate about those kinds of policies. I use that just as one example. My colleague, the majority leader, said let's take those areas of intersection between what the President and others have proposed, and where there is common ground, let's offer that, have amendments to it, and pass it. One area is extended unemployment benefits to those who have lost their jobs. Two months in a row, we have had news that 400,000 American people have lost their jobs. So 400,000 additional Americans came home from work one night and had to tell their families that they got a notice that they had lost their jobs. Do you know who most of them are? Most of them are families who know about second shifts, second jobs, secondhand, and second mortgages. These are the families at the bottom of the economic ladder, and they know about these things. They are the first to lose jobs in a recession. Now, we asked 11 of the leading economists in this country what we could do to give this economy a boost, what would really promote economic recovery. Virtually every single one of them said this: If you extend unemployment benefits to those who have lost their jobs during an economic downturn, that money is immediately spent by those who receive it because they need it. They need a helping hand during tough times. When they are down and out, they need a hand. They will spend that money immediately. That is exactly the kind of help that stimulates the economy. That is what we have done in every economic downturn in the last 25 years. So that is a provision the majority leader brings to the floor today that says: Look, the President says he supports that; we support that. Let's take that provision and pass that provision. Three additional provisions represent the same approach--common provisions agreed to by virtually everyone. He says let's move that which we can move, allow people to offer amendments to it, but let's not drag our feet any longer on these issues. Let's have some movement and action to try to give the economy a lift, with policies that we know and which economists tell us will help this economy recover. We talked a great deal in this Chamber about policies in kind of an antiseptic way. There is not much about real people and the effect of policies on real people. Just take one of those 400,000 people who, in October, had to tell their family they had lost their job, or one of those 400,000 people, in November, who had to tell their family: I have lost my job, but it wasn't my fault. This economy is in a recession. It was in a recession prior to September 11, and then those two airplanes that ran into that World Trade Center and murdered thousands of innocent Americans. That act of terror and mass murder cut a hole in this country's belly and created additional victims. They are people who lost their jobs because this economy continued to slow down even more following those terrorist attacks. So those people came home at night to say to their families: I have lost my job, my ability to make a living. It is said that the unemployment rate is 5.8 percent. For someone who goes home having to tell their family they have lost their ability to make a living, their unemployment statistic is 100 percent. They have lost their job. That is pretty tragic for families to have to explain to others that they no longer have a paycheck coming in. In most case, these are hard-working Americans. They are at the bottom of the economic ladder, scratching and clawing and trying very hard to move up and do well for their families. In a recession, in an economy that turns sour, it almost always injures them first. That is why this provision at the very least ought to be embraced by everyone immediately. Mr. President, I will make one additional comment. If politics was hot air, there would be enough to lift this building. I understand all that. But, frankly, on both sides of the aisle, we have men and women of good faith who really want to do the right thing. Let's try to find a key today to unlock this and find a way for Democrats and Republicans, conservatives, liberals, and moderates to understand that we all live in the same country. We all live on this same spaceship Earth. We are all Americans, and we want what is best for our country. It is not disloyal to break out in open debate about one policy or another, but at the end of the day, we must compromise. We must find a way to reach common agreement in ways that will help the American economy. I hope that is the case. Let me finish as I started. I think this President deserves the praise of the American people and this Congress for many things in recent months. I think the leaders of this Congress--my colleagues, Senator Daschle and Senator Lott--deserve praise in many ways for a lot of the things they have done to bring us together to deal with the threat to our country. I want to provide the same kind of praise to all of us for coming together--the President, yes, Senator Lott and Senator Daschle--to reach agreement now on an economic recovery package. What the majority leader has proposed makes good sense to me. He said we have all kinds of plans out there. Let's take that area where those plans intersect and we have reasonably common agreement. Let us move those and then come back and see if we can reach agreement on others, or take those areas of common agreement, offer some amendments to them, and see where the votes are and then move forward. What the majority leader has proposed makes good sense. I hope others will embrace it today. In the end, I am not interested in what is good for the Republican or the Democratic Party or the President or Congress. There is not a Republican or a Democratic way to go broke. There is not a Republican or Democratic way to lose your job. It is not a partisan thing to have to tell your family that you lost your job yesterday. This is not about politics. It is about whether we are going to do the right thing for the American people. Yes, for businesses, many of which are struggling, and especially for families, many of whom have received the news of a job being lost in an economy that has turned sour. What can we do to help this economy? A lot of the problems of this country we have talked about in recent days will be solved by a growing economy that provides opportunity and hope once again to families, to workers, and to businesses. It is interesting, there is one story going around about a corporation that failed in this country. That is a tragedy as well. But it is always the case when we see these situations, somehow those at the top end up doing real well and those at the bottom end up losing their shirts. In many cases, that is what happens in a recession as well. I hope we can understand that as we grapple with the questions of how do we pass legislation that gives this country's economy a chance to survive and how do we give American families and businesses some hope that tomorrow will be a better day, that they understand the American economy will offer opportunities for them again in the future. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator from South Dakota, the majority leader, yield?

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. This does not wash--to stall for 2 months, to filibuster for 2 weeks, then walk around here pretending you are out of breath from running so far. Every step of the way, we had people on that side of the aisle trying to prevent us from writing a farm bill, and now they are coming to the floor saying: We are trying to move it along. This is a sure way to try to move it along--filibustering through two cloture votes. We will see at 1:15 if they give us help to move it along.

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. I am asking the Senator from Arkansas would he yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time were the proponents offered on this unanimous consent request, and how much time are we offered?

Mr. DORGAN. That is a judgment I don't share. The Senator has, in fact, voted for cloture. Almost all of his colleagues on that side of the aisle have not. We have decided today to allow the Senator from Arkansas to offer his amendment, which is essentially a farm bill. We say, yes, you offer yours; let's have a vote on that. Why are the majority of the Members on your side not willing to do the same for our farm bill?

Mr. DORGAN. It is 45 minutes and 10 minutes. I am asking the Senator if he will yield for a brief question.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me ask if the Senator will yield and I will use a moment of time from the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me ask the Senator to yield. I will use 2 minutes of time that is allocated to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. DORGAN. Well, parliamentary inquiry: We are using the time of the Senator from Iowa but he doesn't yield the floor?

Mr. DORGAN. I so appreciate the generosity here. Let me ask the Senator from Arkansas a question. He says this is the last opportunity for a farm bill, this amendment he is offering. Is it not the case we will have a cloture vote following that and the last opportunity for a farm bill will be for us to break the filibuster that has occurred now day after day after day on the underlying amendment? Is that not the last opportunity for the Senate to move a farm bill?

Mr. DORGAN. We have had a filibuster day after day after day. We have had two unsuccessful votes to try to break it. Almost everyone on your side of the aisle has voted to continue the filibuster. You are now offering your amendment. We say go ahead and get a vote on your substitute farm amendment; go ahead. We will agree to a vote on yours. Why do most of the members of the Republican caucus not agree to the same thing with respect to the Harkin bill, or the Daschle bill that is the underlying bill on the floor of the Senate?

Mr. DORGAN. I would say the discourse between----

Mr. DORGAN. The regular order is 2 minutes on our time. How much of that is consumed?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, I would not expect a second degree, but I think it would be important to see the amendment that Senators Roberts and Cochran intend to file. I would not expect a second degree to be offered.

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator from Iowa will yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, does anyone in the Senate Chamber think Fidel Castro has ever missed a meal because for 40 years we have said to family farmers in America: You can't sell food to Cuba? What meal has he missed? You know and I know this 40-year failed policy is a policy that takes a swing at Fidel Castro and it hits poor people, and sick people, and hungry people in Cuba. And it hurts American farmers here at home. We know that. Let me ask the question about consistency. We hear these discussions about Cuba. Is there a sanction against private financing to send food to Communist China? No, there is not. Is there a prohibition against private financing to send food to Vietnam, which is a Communist country? No, there is not. Is there a prohibition against sending food to North Korea, a Communist country? No. Is there a prohibition of private financing to send food to Libya or Iran? The answer is no. No. So we are told that somehow there needs to be a sanction, or a continued sanction for the past 40 years, to prohibit private financing to send food to Cuba. It is a foolish failed public policy, and everyone knows it. How long does it take to understand that a policy doesn't work? Ten years? Twenty years? With Cuba, it has been 40 years. American farmers are told they should pay the price for this foreign policy. What is the price? The price is your Canadian neighbors can sell food to Cuba. The French can sell, the English can sell, and all of the European countries can sell. It is just the United States farmers who are told: You can't sell food to Cuba. That is a foolish public policy. It is time to stop it, this notion about a Communist country. This is the only country in the world which employs this policy, and it doesn't work. As I said when I started, Fidel Castro has not missed a meal because of this policy. But hungry people, sick people, and poor people have been severely disadvantaged for a long while. That is not what this country ought to be doing in foreign policy. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. I was asking the Senator from Iowa if he has been able to consult with the authors of the other major amendment on the commodities title about when that might be offered. My hope is we could just proceed with the amendments, dispose of the amendments, at which point I hope we will reach the end of the consideration of this bill and be able to report out the bill. Has the Senator consulted with the major authors of that amendment, and what might we expect from that consultation?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I share the disappointment of the Senator from Iowa that we were not able to invoke cloture today for the second time. My belief is that we have a couple of major amendments remaining to be offered. In fact, the authors of one of them are both in the Chamber, Senators Roberts and Cochran. There is an alternative amendment to the commodities title which I understand they will offer. I hope at some point to offer an amendment that does some targeting, and my hope is that we can make some progress and move ahead. I still don't understand what the filibuster is about. My hope is that if we have major issues, let's move ahead with the issues, offer amendments, and have debates on the amendments. It is the case, is it not, that Senators Roberts and Cochran simply have a different idea with respect to how the commodity title ought to be applied and so they are intending to offer an amendment? I ask the Senator from Iowa if he has some notion of when that amendment would come; has he consulted with the authors of that major amendment? If so, what does that consultation disclose to us about when that amendment would be offered?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have listened to the discussion. The chairman of our committee is now chairing a conference committee on one of the appropriations subcommittees. He will be back in the Chamber in a few moments. Let me consume some time to respond to a couple of the arguments. First of all, my colleagues ably described their proposal. Their proposal is different than the proposal brought to the Chamber by the Senate Agriculture Committee. I have listened to a substantial amount of discussion about the amber box. I suspect it is probably confusing to people listening to this debate about family farming to hear about the amber box. I heard someone say perhaps if we took the wrong turn here or made the wrong decision, we would shoot our trade negotiators in the foot. With all due respect, our trade negotiators have shot themselves in the foot. In fact, they took aim before they did it which really compounds the felony. This amber box is not of great interest to me. I understand it is part of our current trade regime. The amber box exists. So does unfair trade with stuffed molasses, so does unfair trade with potato flakes, with Canadian wheat, so does unfair trade with T-bone steaks to Tokyo. I could go on forever. While that amber box up there is shining amber for somebody, all I see are trade negotiators who negotiate bad trade deals for American farmers. Let me talk about boxes, not amber boxes. Let me talk about the box that the American farmers are in. That is the only box I really care about. Here is the box the American farmer is in. The American farmer is farming under a farm program whose presumption was to transition them out of a farm program, give them 7 years of fixed and declining payments at the end of which there would be no farm program. The whole point was to transition to the marketplace. That all sounded good because wheat was $5 or so a bushel back then. Just like people thought that the budget surplus was going to last forever, everybody thought--I did not--that the price of wheat would be $5. So let's give 7 years of fixed payments, farmers can put it in the bank, draw interest and be able to transition into a market economy. Almost immediately the market collapsed. The price of grain just collapsed. So then this farm program of fixed and declining payments didn't look good at all. Each year at the end of the year we had to pass an emergency bill to make up the difference for a farm program that didn't work. So this is the box the farmers have been put in: They are trying to do business, selling a product whose price has collapsed. That is a box. They are trying to do business and ship their product over railroads that are monopolies in most cases. That is a box. They are trying to do business when they buy chemicals from chemical companies that are getting bigger. These companies are exacting the prices they want to exact. That is a box. When our farmers sell their grain into the grain trade, they face concentrations in virtually every area of economic activity. That is a box. Everywhere the farmer looks they are put in a box. It is not the amber box. It is just the box driving them flat broke. Then they turned to see a farm program that at its roots was wrong. The farm program said: We won't relate at all to what is happening in the marketplace. If the grain prices are higher, we will give you a payment. Wheat is $5.50 a bushel. Under our plan, you get a payment. Farmers don't need a payment. If wheat is $5 or $5.50 a bushel, family farmers don't need help from the Federal Government. That was the bankruptcy of that idea in the first place. It didn't recognize the times when farmers did not need assistance. We have had a real struggle to get this farm bill to the floor. We had the Secretary of Agriculture calling around to our colleagues saying: Don't do this; you shouldn't write a farm bill now. The current farm bill is just dandy. Wait until next year. We had colleagues say: The current farm bill is working just fine. Give it time. We shouldn't write a new farm bill this year. It was a long struggle. We have overcome that. We are on the floor. We have a farm bill. Now we have a filibuster. We have had two cloture votes, and we have not been able to break the filibuster. Eventually we will. Debating the Cochran-Roberts amendment is an important step forward, because this is the major amendment to the commodities title. I hope perhaps when we get past this we will be able to move through the rest of the amendments and get this bill completed. That is our goal. The idea in the Cochran-Roberts amendment with respect to the commodities title is a bad idea, but I am not trying to be pejorative about what they are doing. They have a different idea. I don't happen to think it works. I think it is almost identical to Freedom to Farm. The Freedom to Farm idea was fixed payments, not withstanding what is happening in the marketplace. We know that didn't work. We can do it again, but we know that won't work. So the question is, Do we want to revisit what we have done for the last 7 years with a few pieces of chrome added here and there, maybe a hood ornament here and there, but essentially the same basic philosophy? Or do we want countercyclical price protection so when times are tough, family farmers understand there is a bridge over these price valleys? That seems to me to be the right approach. That is the approach in the underlying bill offered by the Senate Agriculture Committee. The entire purpose of a farm program should be nothing more than helping this country maintain a network of family farms producing America's food. If it is not for that purpose, then let's just not have a farm program. Let's get rid of USDA. We don't need it. It was started under Abe Lincoln with nine employees over 140 years ago. We just don't need it if the purpose isn't to try to maintain a network of family farmers and ranchers who produce America's food supply. Why is there some special attention to those family producers? Because those family producers work under conditions that almost no one else in the country does. They don't know whether they are going to get a crop. They planted a seed. It may rain too much, or not enough. Insects might come and eat it up; they may not. It might hail; it might not. You might get crop disease; you might not. If you survive all of those ``mights'' and get to harvest time and get that crop, get it in the back of a two-ton truck, haul it to an elevator, what might happen to you, and almost certainly did happen to you every year under Freedom to Farm, is that elevator would say: On behalf of the grain trade, we must tell you your food has no value. That is the problem. That is the problem we are trying to fix. During tough times, can we create a farm program that offers a helping hand. That is the bill that was brought from the Agriculture Committee. It is a good bill. It has a commodity title that is now the target of this substitute. My hope is that we will defeat the Cochran-Roberts amendment. I have the greatest respect for both of the Senators who offered this amendment. We have worked together on a wide range of issues. They are terrific Senators. But this is a bad idea. This idea needs to be defeated so we can move on with the commodity title brought to the floor from the Agriculture Committee by Senators Harkin and Daschle. I hope we do that soon. I yield 10 minutes to Senator Conrad.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator from Iowa will yield further, might I say that is a very hopeful sign. It is certainly up to the chairman of the committee to decide whether that time agreement is sufficient. Certainly, it sounds reasonable to me. After that, we would be able to dispose of one of the major amendments and move through the bill and perhaps late today or tomorrow we would be able to complete consideration of the farm bill. That is the most hopeful sign I have heard for some long while. As I indicated, the authors of this legislation have been deeply involved in farm legislation for many years. They just have a different approach on the commodities title. The best way to resolve that is to have the discussion and vote and see where it comes out. I encourage the Senator from Iowa to proceed along the lines suggested.

Mr. DORGAN

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