Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was actually using that term to describe something done on a tax bill in the other body. I described it as ``larding up.'' It is plugging the arteries of this system by putting in place certain provisions. I will give you an example.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes. When I talk about larding up, the Senator from West Virginia is talking about how people always refer to spending bills as pork, but never refer to tax bills as pork. In fact, there is more lard and larding up of tax bills than almost anything else. The retroactive repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax in the House tax bill does as I said it would--it provides the biggest tax benefits to the biggest, most powerful corporations in the country. Here is what the chief economist from Merrill Lynch said about it because, remember now, the only reason we are going through this exercise is to try to determine how we help the American economy. Bruce Steinberg, chief economist, said: The silliest idea is the retroactive AMT payments. If you want to stimulate spending in the future, you don't give out tax breaks for things that already happened. It is as simple as that.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator describes it in a way that makes it visual. But it is a slow turn on a medium-hot spit--or ``pit,'' I guess it would be in West Virginia. Let me continue. Will Rogers said something I want to put up on a chart. Will Rogers said this a long time ago: The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we will get round to them soon as we get everybody else fixed up OK. Now, while IBM, General Electric, and others are prepared, according to the House bill, to get hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts retroactively, last Friday it was announced that 415,000 people lost their jobs in October. What about those folks? When you talk about stimulating the economy, what about giving the people who lost their jobs some assistance? How about a helping hand to somebody who got a pink slip or a notice that said: By the way, you do a good job and I am glad you are here. It is just that our company is shrinking. We don't have as much business. So guess what, we don't have room for you. Tell your family tonight when you go home and sit at the supper table that you have lost your job. Tell them it is not your fault, that you worked hard, we appreciated you, but you can't go to work on Monday because you no longer have a job. What about those people? For example, in New York, when that act of terrorism struck the World Trade Center, it is true that the people who were climbing those stairs, even as the buildings were collapsing, were people making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, willing to risk their lives in public service--firefighters, law enforcement folks, and others. There are a lot of folks around this country of ours who don't have a lot, don't make a lot, and don't ask for a lot. They don't have a million dollars. They are not going to get $1.4 billion in tax refunds. They are not on this list with K-Mart, American Airlines, and Enron. They are the folks who, last month, had to tell their families they were no longer employed. And if the families asked why, is it a part of a soft economy or part of terrorist acts? The answer is: Yes, it is. What do we do about that? Do we in the U.S. Congress have a concern about those folks, or is it just about the upper income and the big economic behemoths who really have clout? Is there anybody within 100 yards of this building today, Friday, who is here because they are lobbying on behalf of somebody who lost their job last month? No one. It is just the folks who have a lot of money, a lot of assets and a lot at stake. They are here and they are trying to get more than their share. I will tell you, they succeeded in the U.S. House. So we are trying to write a stimulus package, something that provides economic recovery. We have a couple of thoughts in mind. One is there is no quicker or more effective way, and there is no way, in my judgment, that provides more justice to this system as well than to help people who are out of work. They are going to spend that money instantly. When we extend unemployment benefits, that money goes right back into the economy. All economists tell you: Step one, help those who lost jobs because that is stimulative, helps the economy. It is not only just and the right thing to do, it is the most effective thing to provide some lift to this economy. So we are going to have a debate about that because some don't want to do much for these folks. That is wrongheaded, in my judgment. We have a responsibility to the country to reach out and tell them they are not alone; we want to help them and we want to help this economy. Obviously, what we want in the end is for the economy to get back on its feet and for those folks who have lost jobs to become employed once again. That is what we want. There is no social program much better than a good job. There is nothing like a good job that pays well and has security. What we are trying to do is put together a recovery package that recognizes what is just, what is right, and what will be effective in providing lift to this country's economy. Extending unemployment benefits, paying for 75 percent of the COBRA benefits--all of that provides lift to this economy and is the right thing to do. In addition, coming from the Finance Committee, we have put in place some tax provisions we think will provide a lift to this economy. We had a tax cut for people in this country earlier this year. Not everybody got a tax cut. More than 70,000 North Dakotans did not get a tax cut. They did not get a tax cut because it was based on percentage of income taxes paid. Everybody who works pays payroll taxes. In fact, that is a proportional tax. Everybody pays the same rate; it does not matter how much you make. Yet those folks did not get a tax cut. So we propose a tax rebate for those people. That also will be spent immediately and provide lift to the economy. We have a whole series of items we have proposed that we think represent the first step in the right direction to provide lift to this country's economy. Let me make the most important point about all of this. The only way our economy is going to experience a recovery is if the American people are confident about the future. We do not have a ship of state in which there is an engine room with dials, knobs, gauges, and levers and we have some people in there fiddling with the dials, knobs, gauges, and levers and get it just right with tax cuts and move the ship along. That is not how the system works. What propels this economy is people's confidence in the future. If people are confident about tomorrow, next month, next year, they will do things that represent that confidence. They will take a trip. They will buy a car. They will buy a house. They will make life decisions that express their view about the future. Confidence means expansion. If they are not confident, they will not take the trip, they will defer the purchase of the car, they will defer the purchase of the house, and our economy will contract. There is nothing more important than instilling confidence. Our job is to, one, prosecute the war abroad. We have to do that and support our President doing that--and increase security at home. Part of our economic recovery package is investment in security at home. Senator Byrd has a homeland security proposal that is stimulative. It is not only stimulative and gives lift to the economy because it invests in this country and our security, but it is also the right thing and the necessary thing to do. When we can marry the right and necessary things to do with actions that will give lift to our country's economy, that is exactly the course people expect us to take. We need to prosecute the war, increase security at home, and give businesses and individuals the extra incentives they need to make those key purchases and key investments, not 6 months from now, not over a year from now, but now. Now. This needs to be temporary. It needs to have a significant, compelling urge to it to give the American people confidence about the future that we are doing the right thing. If we err as a Congress, I want us to err on the side of doing something, even doing too much. I do not want to err on the side of doing nothing because there are too many families out of work. Our economy is perilously close to a very deep recession, and it could be a lengthy recession. We have a responsibility to blend good fiscal policy in the Congress with monetary policy at the Federal Reserve Board to say to the American people: We are going to put in place the right plans to give you hope for the future. Winston Churchill gave many stirring speeches in the Second World War to fire up the interest and urgency of his countrymen to the cause of the war. At one point, he challenged his countrymen to imagine a thousand years in the future and what they would say about that current generation's efforts. He asked that they do things now that would allow people in the future to look back and say that this was their finest hour, even in the face of substantial challenge. That is what we, it seems to me, need to do now in confronting terrorism, in the challenge to provide economic security. We must fight as hard as we can possibly fight for the right policies now that give this country and economy a chance to do well so all American families can, again, do well and will not have to worry about next week or next month having to tell their family they lost their job. This is about hope. It is about opportunity. It is about expanding this country's economy. The New York Times last week had the headline: ``Attacks Hit Low Paid Jobs the Hardest.'' I had a hearing 2 weeks ago, and the head of the hotel and restaurant union testified. He had a dozen of his members behind him. Each one stood up and told me their name, told me where they worked, when they got fired, how long they had worked there, and what it meant to them to lose their job. It was just gripping. It just breaks one's heart to see someone who struggled all their life, found a good job and worked for 8 years or 10 years or 15 years and had a good record and was making it on their own, only to learn a pink slip has come that says this economy has shrunk and you are out of a job. It requires us to understand this is not about numbers, this is about people. It is about our future. That is why we must get this right. I am pleased with the work the Finance Committee, Senator Baucus, Senator Daschle, all of us have done together to try to get the right solution in place for this country's future. We are going to have a debate about this next week. Let us not shrink from it. Let us not think that debate injures this country or hurts this country. It strengthens this country. At the end of the debate, I hope we can convince everyone there is a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way leads to economic trouble, and the right way leads to hope, confidence, and economic expansion. That rides on our making the right decision on behalf of the American people. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. I hadn't thought about that.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise to talk a bit about the economic recovery plan. I begin by saying that yesterday, I chaired a hearing dealing with the U.S. Postal Service. My colleague, Senator Byrd from West Virginia, attended the hearing and asked the Postmaster General a series of questions. As with a lot of areas in our country since September 11, the U.S. Postal Service has been dramatically affected, perhaps more so than others. They have had postal workers die as a result of terrorists who used the system as a delivery mechanism for terror and death from the anthrax spores sent through the mail. I told the Postmaster General that this country expresses its sorrow for what has happened to the Postal Service workers. These are wonderful people. I mentioned one of the stories about the two Postal Service workers who died which described both of them in quite remarkable terms. One of them had worked 15 years on the night shift and had never, in 15 years, used 1 day of sick leave. One should not judge someone by whether or not they use sick leave. The point is, this person's neighbors talked about what a wonderful human being this person was. The U.S. Postal Service is populated with men and women who do their job, as we say, in rain, sleet, and snow; regrettably now with anthrax, which has taken the lives of a couple of them. I told the Postmaster General yesterday about a town meeting I had in Glenburn, ND, a small town with hundreds of people. At my town meeting, a fellow stood up and said: There is a lot of criticism about things and good government. I want to give you one piece of good news about the U.S. Post Office. I asked: What is that? He said: I got a letter out at my farm that was addressed ``Grandpa, Glenburn, ND.'' It was from my grandson. I asked: How on earth could that have been? How would you have gotten a letter addressed ``Grandpa, Glenburn, ND''? He said: You can ask the postmaster over there. So I asked the postmaster: How would that have happened? He said: We got the letter that said ``Grandpa, Glenburn, ND.'' We looked at the postmark and it was Silver Spring, MD. We knew the only person around here that had relatives in Silver Spring was Frank, so we sent it out to Frank's farm. Sure enough, it got to the right grandpa. I told the Postmaster General that story. So many others like it describe quite a remarkable system that has worked for a long while and one that we must preserve and keep and nurture and protect during these difficult times. I rise to talk about all of the challenges, not just to the U.S. Postal Service but to our country. We face several challenges now. One is the challenge dealing with national security. One is a challenge dealing with economic security. And another is the challenge dealing with energy security. Some of my colleagues spoke about that earlier. National security doesn't need much more description. Most of us understand that some sick, twisted minds hatched a plot that murdered thousands of Americans in cold blood. Terrorism has visited our land in a manner that we never thought before possible. Now this Nation is one in its determination to find and bring to justice those who committed these acts of terror. It is a different time. There is a pre-September 11 and a post- September 11. We have a President who has spoken to the American people about putting the men and women in America's uniform in harm's way to try to find the terrorists and bring them to justice, to root out the terrorist cells formed around the world who would commit acts of these types. This country supports our President and the men and women in uniform who are risking their lives to do that. I toured Ground Zero in New York about a week after the tragedy. I saw on the highest twisted metal beam yet standing where an iron worker had climbed and attached an American flag to that highest metal beam. As we came upon that tragic site, that is what we saw, carnage, destruction, but also an American flag gently blowing in the breeze that morning. Two days later, I was in North Dakota driving between Bismarck and Dickinson, ND, on interstate 94, a patch where you couldn't see a structure of any kind anywhere, just rolling prairies. Someone had taken a flag pole with a flag on it and attached to it a fence post there in the middle of the prairie where you could see nothing that was made by human hand except from this fence post--a single American flag also blowing in the gentle morning breeze in North Dakota. The connection between the flag and the Trade Center and the flag in North Dakota was a connection of unity of spirit and one Nation doing what it needs to do to protect itself and to bring to justice those who committed these terrorists acts. Our Nation was having some difficulty even prior to September 11 with an economy that was very week. Our economy had softened a great deal and people were beginning to lose jobs. Our economy was losing steam and strength. September 11 cut a hole right through the belly of this country's economy. The news since that time has been more layoffs. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their jobs. They, too, in many ways are victims of terrorist attacks. What do we do about the soft economy in the aftermath of these terrorist attacks? We are unified as a Nation in going after the terrorists and trying to prevent terrorist action from occurring again. Are we unified with respect to how we come together as a nation to try to provide a boost to the American economy? The answer to that is, no, not so unified these days. We have a lot of different ideas about how you promote economic growth and how you help the American people during an economic downturn. This is the political system. I don't regret the fact that there is debate about these things. With respect to national security issues, this country has unity. On some of the other issues, we have debate. I don't regret that. It strengthens us. There is an old saying when everyone in the room is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking about much. I don't shrink from debate. We should not shrink from debate. When in debate we get the best of what everyone has to offer, democracy is served. Groucho Marx once said: Politics is the art of looking for trouble; finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and then applying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx was a humorist. Politics takes a lot of humor and should over many years. But politics is the process by which we make judgments and decisions about the country. That is politics; that is the best of the American people. It is what served this country well for a long time. So as we talk now together in this country about how we apply some remedies and develop policies that strengthen America's economy, we have ideas coming from all sides. Let me describe some of them. Some of them are wonderful, challenging, interesting; some of them are nutty--but that is the way the process works. We have, for example, one piece of legislation that was developed by the other body, and it was described as something that is a stimulus package and is going to help the country. I will give you a couple of examples: They put in a $21 billion tax piece that benefits many of the largest corporations in the country for the purpose of incentivizing them to move and keep needed investment capital overseas. How would I classify that? Nutty. Does anybody think that is going to strengthen our country, strengthen our economy, by saying to big companies: What we would like you to do, by the way, is keep investing overseas. We would like you to move capital overseas because we think that is just great. Well, that is not the way to strengthen our economy, the way to provide a lift and boost and helium to the American economy. But that is exactly what came out of this package from the U.S. House of Representatives. There are so many other items in that bill that it's almost hard to start when you describe things you think are kind of off base. Another provision would retroactively repeal the corporate alternative minimum tax. That means that IBM, for example, would get a $1.4 billion tax cut. General Motors would get a $833 million tax cut. It seems to me that is kind of larding up a piece of legislation that is supposed to be designed to help our country recover. Instead, it becomes a carrier for the favored old tax cuts for the biggest and most powerful economic interests among us.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the amendment I have offered is an amendment I have offered on two previous appropriations bills. I will not go into a long and tortured explanation. The Advance Passenger Information System should now be in the law. But because of a jurisdictional issue that arose a couple of weeks ago, it is not in the law. In a couple minutes, I will explain exactly what it is. I just came from S. 207 where I am a conferee on the aviation security issue. That conference is ongoing right now. We are dealing with the issue of aviation security which is of great importance to all people in this country. How do we make flying more safe and more secure? We are doing that because of the concern about terrorism. One of the issues in dealing with terrorism has been to try to make mandatory something that has been voluntary with respect to all airlines that are carrying passengers into this country. Some 78 million people fly into this country each year as guests of our country. They come on visas. They are guests of the United States. Most of them are precleared. Their names are provided by airline carriers under what is called the Advance Passenger Information System, APIS. They are provided to us in advance so we can run the names of the people who are coming from other countries against a list that the FBI has, that the Customs Service has, and that 21 different Federal agencies have. It is a list to determine whether any of these people who are coming into the country are known or suspected terrorists or are people who are acquainted with and associated with terrorists because we don't want them to come to this country. People who come in are guests of ours with visas. But if they are on a list of suspected people who associate with terrorists or who are suspected of terrorist acts, we don't want them in this country. Eighty-five percent of the people coming into the United States have their names submitted to this Advance Passenger Information System. Fifteen percent do not. Among the airlines that do not comply with this voluntary system are airlines from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and, until last week, the country of Kuwait. I could name others. One should ask the question: Wouldn't we want passenger information from those airlines flying here from that part of the world? The answer is clearly yes. The head of the Customs Service, the Bush administration, and others say this ought to be made mandatory. I agree. I offered the amendment in the Senate to make it mandatory on the counterterrorism bill. The Senate approved that amendment, and we would, therefore, have mandatory information about who is coming into this country, and that would be applied to the various devices we have in the Customs Service and the FBI to check these names. It went to conference with the other body, and it was kicked out of conference because of jurisdictional issues. Some believed committee jurisdictional issues were more important than national security, so they kicked it out. I stated that I would offer it to the bills that are on the floor of the Senate until we get it passed and into law. It should have been on the counterterrorism bill the President signed. Since the day the President signed that bill, a bill that contains this provision, 180,000 people have come into this country whose names have not been precleared under the Advance Passenger Information System. A fair number of them came from Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others. Does that improve security in this country? In my judgment, no. We ought to do the right thing. This is not about committee jurisdiction; it is about national security. In my judgment, we ought to say to all foreign carriers and airlines coming into this country and bringing our foreign guests that if they do not subscribe to mandatory submission of names under the Advance Passenger Information System, they are welcome to land elsewhere; they may not land at an airport in this country. That is all my amendment does. It is supported by the administration. It was requested by the administration and should now be law, but is not because we had a squabble here a couple of weeks ago and it was kicked out in conference. I have offered it previously. I offer it again today. My understanding is that it will be approved by a voice vote. I also intend to offer it in the conference on aviation security, of which I am a member and which is now meeting in S. 207. I ask for immediate consideration of my amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, today I am introducing legislation that would create the United States Consensus Council. This council would be a non-profit, quasi-governmental entity that would serve both the legislative and executive branches of government. Its role would be to build agreements among stakeholders primarily on legislative issues where there are diverse and conflicting views and bring these agreements back to Congress or other decision-makers for action. Leaders from the Administration and the Congress have worked together in recent weeks to respond to the terrorist attacks against our country. This has shown the benefit of working across party lines to develop consensus on a variety of policy issues. At a time when the Nation is unified and focused on these unprecedented challenges, the Consensus Council can help institutionalize this spirit of comity. The Council can provide ongoing support to Congress by bringing stakeholders to the table to resolve a wide range of difficult national issues. The North Dakota Consensus Council in my home State serves as a model for this national proposal. In North Dakota, the Consensus Council has helped to find common ground on the use of grasslands in the western part of the State, the structure of judgeships across the State, and flood mitigation efforts in the Red River Valley. By bringing together all of the interested parties, the North Dakota Consensus Council was able to find solutions to problems that had previously seemed unsurmountable. Washington, DC, is ripe with opportunity for the same kind of consensus building and mediation. We can not only build on the experience of consensus building in North Dakota, but similar successes in Montana, Florida, Oregon and many other States. The United States Consensus Council would bring people together and then help to develop recommendations. These recommendations would be advisory, subject to normal legislative or regulatory processes. The board of directors would be appointed by the President and the bipartisan Congressional leadership. The council would remain neutral on substantive policy matters. The Council would focus primarily on issues that Congressional leaders and the White House have agreed are appropriate. These could be issues that are contentious or deadlocked, or they could be emerging issues where mediation could help to prevent later polarization. The Council's role will be to design and conduct processes that lead to common ground on effective public policy for a particular issue. The Council could be called upon to convene key stakeholders in face-to- face meetings over time to build agreements on complex issues. The legislation authorizes $5 million for the first year and would also allow private contributions to the Council. The Council would not be a part of the Federal Government and its employees would not be considered Federal workers. I have long been a supporter of building consensus and finding ways to reach compromise. I believe that this legislation could help the Congress and the administration to find that middle ground. There are so many important issues that get deadlocked in Washington, and this approach will help to break that logjam. Recent weeks have shown that it can be done. I hope that this bill will allow it to happen more often. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to move this bill through the process. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on Tuesday, November 6, 2001, at 10 a.m., in Dirksen 226, on ``Germs, Toxins and Terror: The New Threat to America.'' Panel I: J.T. Caruso, Deputy Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Jim Reynolds, Chief, Terrorism and Violent Crimes Section, Department of Justice; and Claude Allen, Deputy Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services. Panel II: John Paraccini, RAND Corporation; Dr. Michael Drake, Co- Chair, California Task Force on Bioterrorism; and Ronald Atlas, National President, American Society of Microbiology.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Thomas L. Sansonetti, to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, Tuesday, November 6, 2001, at 2 p.m., in Dirksen Room 226. Panel I: The Honorable Craig Thomas and The Honorable Mike Enzi. Panel II: Thomas L. Sansonetti, to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Tuesday, November 6, 2001, at 2:30 p.m., to consider the nomination of Odessa F. Vincent to be an Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 6, 2001. The purpose of this hearing will be to continue markup on the next Federal Farm bill.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 6, 2001, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a nomination hearing. agenda Nominees: Mr. Raymond Burghardt, of New York, to be Ambassador to Vietnam; Mr. Larry Dinger, of Iowa, to be Ambassador to Federated States of Micronesia; Mr. Charles Greenwood, Jr., of Florida, for rank of ambassador as Coordinator for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC); and Mr. Charles Pritchard, of the District of Columbia, for rank of Ambassador as Special Envoy for Negotiations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and U.S. Representative to Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization. Additional nominees to be announced.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. This particular issue happens to be the Department of Customs with respect to advance passenger information. They run all of these names against the Justice Department list, the FBI list, and 21 different Federal agencies that keep lists of undesirable people coming into the country. That is a separate issue in conference. I think the Senator from Montana is probably one of the conferees on the aviation security bill. I am going to be one as well. We can talk about all of those issues. All I really care about--going back to the issue of aviation security--is that we get the job done. The one thing that is clear to me is companies that have been fined for defrauding the Government--in effect, companies that have been put on probation and violate their probation, that hire screeners who leave the company to fry hamburgers because they get more money to do it, and to let somebody come through with nine knives, a stun gun, and a can of mace--those are companies I don't want screening baggage. I want somebody on whom I can rely. All I care about is accountability and results.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I congratulate the Senator from Louisiana and the ranking Senator from Ohio for their work on the District of Columbia Appropriations Act. I am pleased to support it, pleased as a member of the Appropriations Committee to support it. I intend to support the judge my colleague from Alabama just described. That judge has a commendable record of public service. I am pleased to support the President's nomination. I rise to comment about something that is not in the appropriations bill. Then I will speak on an amendment I intend to offer. First, on the issue of aviation security, I believe we are or probably have appointed conferees from the Commerce Committee on the issue of writing an aviation security bill in conference between the House and Senate. I will be one of those conferees. It is a shame we have had to wait this long. We passed a bill dealing with aviation security 100-to-0 in the Senate. It wasn't a great controversy, just judging by the margin of the vote--100-to-0--people here believing that we needed to improve security of the country's airlines. We need to give people a feeling of security that when they board an airplane their fellow passengers have been properly screened, that we have made certain there is not a risk that we are going to have additional hijackings. The airport security bill was very important. We passed it 100-to-0. The House of Representatives dragged their feet and waited and waited and didn't act. Finally, they acted. They passed a piece of legislation that is deficient. Their concern was that the Senate bill would have ``federalized'' workers at airports who are screening baggage and other related activities dealing with security. Let me describe a couple of things about security. Yesterday I was in Chicago. I came back by commercial air from Chicago to Washington, DC. As I picked up the newspaper in the Chicago airport, I read about the events of the previous day, Sunday, at O'Hare Airport. Most people have now heard of that circumstance on Sunday, but let me describe it for a moment. It is not an isolated instance. A fellow named Subash Bahadar Gurung, age 27, was arrested Sunday in Chicago on charges that the night before he tried to bring knives, chemical spray, and a stun gun onto an airplane. Here is the frightening part of all this: This fellow, who according to news reports is in this country illegally, got through the initial screening with the X-ray machine and reached the gate to board his airplane. At the screening they discovered he had two knives. They confiscated the knives, then let him go to the gate. At the gate, he went through an expanded screening and they opened everything he had and discovered he had seven additional knives, a can of mace, and a stun gun. I don't know if the guy is a terrorist, but I do know he is stupid. Nine knives, mace, and a stun gun, showing up at the airport? There is something else that is wrong: He got all the way to the gate with seven of his knives, a stun gun, and a can of mace. The Secretary of Transportation had a lot to say about that yesterday. But the point is this: We don't have a security system in place that gives people confidence. Just ask yourself: If someone can get through O'Hare Airport, one of our largest airports, can get through the screening process with seven knives and a stun gun and a can of mace, what kind of confidence does that give people who are traveling? Let me give you a couple of other suggested incidents that ought to give us cause for concern. In Westchester County Airport in New York last Friday, a woman was arrested on charges of criminal possession of a weapon when she had a palm-size .22-caliber handgun that showed up on an x-ray of her luggage. So they caught her at the screen. She said: Well, this gun belonged to a boyfriend and besides, it hadn't shown up on an earlier flight. That gives you a lot of security, doesn't it, a real feeling of security? She said: It is my boyfriend's gun, but it didn't show up on the previous flight when I went through. We can go to Tuesday, a Mississippi man in New Orleans was able to get through the security checkpoint with a loaded gun in his carry-on bag, and he was allowed to board a plane at Louis Armstrong International Airport. He got on the plane with this loaded gun. He said he didn't realize the handgun was in his briefcase. He discovered it in the middle of the flight and immediately handed it over to a flight attendant. He said it was a pure accident. The question is, How do you get through a checkpoint, a screening process, with a loaded handgun in your briefcase? Let me describe the company that was screening at O'Hare Airport in Chicago this past weekend. Argenbright apparently is the largest company that employs screeners around the country. They employ screeners at more than 33 airports in the United States. In fact, I believe they are an international company that provides services around the world. They were fined $1.5 million in October of last year and placed on 3 years probation for making false statements to the FAA concerning training, testing, and background checks. In other words, they were hiring people with criminal backgrounds, not training them properly, doing a lot of things, and lying to the FAA about it, certifying that in fact things were just great, when in fact they were not. They were fined $1.5 million and put on probation. Then last month, they were found in violation of their probation for continued violations regarding their screening services. Last weekend, they were still on the job, the same company. Filing fraudulent statements with the FAA, fined $1.5 million, put on probation, found in violation of probation, and still working? Would that happen to people, real people, do you think? I don't think so. They would lose their job. But not big companies. Last weekend, this company and its employees allowed a guy to get through a screening with nine knives--caught two of them, missed seven--a stun gun and a can of mace. Talk about incompetence; talk about a story that once again undermines people's confidence in flying on commercial airlines, this is it. The question is, Is there an emergency in this Congress to do the right thing: to pass an aviation security bill and do it the right way, and do the right thing? You bet your life there is. What happened was, we saw that process get hijacked in the House of Representatives by two Congressmen from Texas. Why? Because they said they didn't want these people to be Federal employees. I don't care whose employees they are. All I care about is accountability. I care about making something work. I care about getting something done the right way. I say to those people who always denigrate public employees: Why don't you say that to the families of the firemen who were climbing up on the 25th and the 35th and the 45th floors as the World Trade Center was burning and about to come tumbling down on these brave men and women who served on the firefighters force and the law enforcement forces who were in those buildings and lost their lives, say to them that public service doesn't count. Say to them that somehow being a public employee is a second class citizen. Say it to them or their families. The fact is, we have an obligation to do this right. Security is a responsibility--in this case, at our airports--of ours, of the Government. We passed a piece of legislation here that was Hollings-McCain, Democrat and Republican, a bipartisan piece of legislation that was supported by 100 Senators and passed 100-to-0. Then we run into this brick wall--people who object to everything all of their lives. They get up in the morning cranky and can't find anything right about anything, and they come up with legislation that doesn't solve a problem. It is just the same old approach that will put us back in the same old rut. So as we tackle this question of airport security, aviation security, as one member of the conference, I will insist on doing the right thing right now, not next week or the week after. The American people have a right to expect we will do the right thing, the responsible thing, that will improve security at this country's airports. Madam President, I will mention one other issue, and it deals with aviation security. Every day, we have aircraft coming into this country from overseas, commercial airliners that are landing as I speak at some airport in the United States, carrying passengers who are guests of ours. They are given a visa to visit our country. They are guests of our country. We have allowed them to become guests through the visa process. We have said: You are given a visa and you may come to the United States. On most of those flights, the carrier--the airline sending these guests to the United States--sends us an advance list of their names. It is called the APIS, advance passenger information system. Do you know why they do that? Since 1988, they have been doing that in order that we might check a list of the foreigners coming to the United States against our list at the FBI, Customs Bureau, and 21 other Federal agencies, to determine, are these people known or suspected terrorists, violent criminals, and others who should not be allowed into our country? Are they? Well, we get the list and we check it against all of these data bases. It has been a very successful thing to do. The problem is we don't get all of the names. We get 85 percent of the names; 15 percent of the names we don't get. We don't get the names from airlines from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and we didn't get them from Kuwait until last week. From Egypt we don't get names, and from Jordan, and I could go on. The result is that since the day the President signed the counterterrorism bill on October 26, 178,000 people have landed in this country without having their names submitted for preclearance to our database at the FBI, Customs, and other law enforcement agencies. That is an approach that would allow us to weed out suspected terrorists and others. The Customs Commissioner testified before a committee I chair, and he said this should be made mandatory. I said: I agree, it should be; let's ask the airlines not complying to do so. So I offered an amendment during the counterterrorism bill when it was debated in the Senate, and the Senate agreed to it unanimously. That was that. That bill then went to conference, and some people in conference from the other side said: Gee, I don't know, this is about our committee jurisdiction; it didn't go through our committee, therefore we reject it. They kicked it out of conference. So when President Bush signed that bill, this provision wasn't there. It means that the counterterrorism bill, where this was when it left the Senate, did not have a central provision that is necessary for us to prescreen passengers coming into this country, especially from countries such as, yes, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others. Somebody said: When you raise these issues about certain countries, aren't you profiling? The answer clearly is no. We are only interested in profiling terrorists or suspected terrorists, or those who associate with them, because we don't want them to come in as guests of our country. So we do profile people who are either known terrorists or who associate with terrorists because we want to keep them out of this country. Is that selfish? No. That is self-protection. We have every right to decide we don't want a guest in this country who is going to try to injure this country. So I included that amendment in the counterterrorism bill. It got knocked out in conference. I don't like to use this language, but I said: Of all the boneheaded things for people to do--to assert committee jurisdiction on an issue of national importance such as this. But on the last appropriation bill we passed, earlier today, I offered this amendment last week. The Senate just passed it again. I intend to put it on this appropriations bill. I am going to offer it on every piece of legislation until we get people to think more about national security on the other side than they are thinking about committee jurisdiction, and until they understand airplanes should not land in this country unless they have complied with the APIS system, which has been in place since 1988. Since September 11, we ought to understand the obligation we have to be careful about screening those who are guests in our country. You cannot provide security in this country unless you provide security for our borders. Part of our border security is to deal with those roughly 70 million, 80 million people a year who come into this country on commercial airlines as guests, coming from foreign countries. So I intend to offer that amendment again today. I will offer it to any other legislation we have on the floor. I know people will say that is blue slip, or it is this, or it is that. It is none of that. That is all nonsense.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DORGAN. In closing, the issue is not so much the jurisdiction of which agency. In fact, we do have a law enforcement function and security functions at DOT. Some say maybe it should be the FAA. But the fact is, the big dispute, the thing that held up forever was that the House of Representatives didn't want to have people who were public employees, Federal employees. So that was the big thing over in the House of Representatives. I do not think it was in the Senate. We passed the bill in the Senate 100-0 largely because we believed if we had good training and accountability, if we hired good people and had guidelines for them to follow, then we would be able to provide security in our country's airports. One thing is very clear from all of these reports: We do not have good security with the current system. This system needs changing. This system does not work, and all we need to do is look at O'Hare in Chicago last Saturday and look at the papers on Sunday and Monday and understand how bad the system is and why we have to get at this job now, this week, and get it done. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kyl be recognized following my comments.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to thank the managers of this bill for including $1.25 million for the Congressional Cemetery in the fiscal year 2002 legislative branch appropriations bill. I particularly want to recognize the good work of Chairman Durbin and Carrie Apostolou of his staff for their efforts to include funding for repairs and upgrades to the Congressional Cemetery. I also appreciate the assistance I have received from the Architect of the Capitol and the Congressional Cemetery Association as I have worked with my colleagues to secure this funding. Earlier this year, I spoke on the floor of the Senate about the need for some funding to make some repairs to the Congressional Cemetery east of Capitol Hill. The cemetery has fallen into some disrepair over the years and it is in some ways a rather forlorn place. When I spoke on this issue last April, I asked my colleagues to find the resources to restore dignity to our Congressional Cemetery. I am very pleased that this bill contributes to this effort. My interest in this funding began after seeing a Library of Congress exhibit on the Congressional Cemetery. In particular, I became interested in learning more about the Native Americans who are buried in that cemetery and through research, I came across the name of Scarlet Crow. Scarlet Crow, a member of the Wahpeton-Sisseton Sioux Tribe, died in Washington, DC, under mysterious circumstances in 1867, and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery. So I visited the cemetery last spring to locate his tombstone. This visit prompted me to ask my colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee for this funding, and I am very pleased with their response. It is my hope that this funding will honor the memory of Scarlet Crow by restoring dignity to his final resting place. This funding is a tribute to this dedicated Native American, Scarlet Crow, whose life came to such a tragic and untimely end in our Nation's Capital.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will begin this week with a vote at 6 o'clock this evening, and we will turn to other issues. I want to make some comments about the most important issues we face in Congress and what I think we ought to be doing to address them. I just flew in from Chicago a few moments ago and noticed in the Chicago papers this morning that yesterday a man got through the screening process at Chicago O'Hare Airport with nine knives and a stun gun. He was selected for advance screening at the gate in addition to going through the metal detectors. When they opened the baggage of this particular person, they found nine knives and a stun gun that had been missed at the screening as the individual entered the concourses. That ought to demonstrate, as so many other studies have demonstrated, that the current system for screening passenger baggage and passengers is not working. That is quite clear. The largest company that employs workers to screen baggage at airports has been found guilty of violating all kinds of FAA rules and regulations. They have violated training. They have hired ex-criminals. They have not adequately supervised them. They have falsified records. They were fined by the Federal Government for their behavior and 2 years later, after being put on probation, were discovered to have violated their probation with the same problems. This is the largest company in this country that hires these workers. In fact, it is a foreign company, but it is the largest employer of screeners in America. One wonders why this company is still working at airports screening passengers when it has already been fined, when it falsified reports and then violated the probation that was established for it. My point is that we have just had a significant debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on the issue of airport security and baggage screening. We in the Senate passed legislation 100-0--all Republicans and all Democrats supported it. Then we had a couple of our friends from a southern State, Texas, whom I shall not name, who decided that the legislation was not good and needed to be altered. God forbid somebody was going to make Federal workers out of the screeners. So they ramped up a huge effort in the House of Representatives to defeat the proposal we passed 100-0 in the Senate. My hope is that in the next week or so--in the next few days, in fact--we will convene a conference and work aggressively and to immediately pass an aviation security bill. It is unforgivable we have taken this long. After September 11, everyone understood we had a new requirement, a new duty, and a new responsibility to pass an aviation security bill, and that legislation has not yet passed despite the fact we passed it through this body with every Republican and Democrat supporting it--100-0 only to have it languish week after week in the other body. I regret the House did that, but now that they have passed legislation that will get us to conference, it is very important that we take this seriously and find a way to develop the compromise necessary so the American people will feel confident that when they walk through airports about to board an airplane, there is not some goofball someplace carrying nine knives and a stun gun. This person explained he had forgotten. How do you forget you have nine knives and a stun gun, for God's sake? How do you forget you have that in your luggage? How do you qualify to fly if you have a mind like that--that you take nine knives and a stun gun to the airport? In any event, having said that, that is just the latest information in this morning's paper. Last week, it was the audit that was done at Dulles Airport and the screeners who missed what they should have known. Why does all this happen? Because people leave screening jobs to fry hamburgers so they can make more money. These are low-paying jobs. The people are ill trained by companies that want to put the least cost employees in those positions and make good money doing it. I am not interested in that. I am interested in accountability and security for the American traveling public. That is all I am interested in. I am not interested in the debate about for whom they work. All I am interested in is accountability. We have had a circumstance where these employees have been working for very large firms, one of which I already described that has been fined by the Federal Government and is guilty of falsifying records. We have already had that experience. We know that does not work. So perhaps we ought to try what the Senate has suggested in the legislation it passed 100-0. That is what is in front of us in the next few days, and I hope, as a member of the committee that generated the bill that passed the Senate unanimously, with the help of Senator Hollings and Senator McCain leading the effort, we can find a way to solve this very quickly. Let me turn to the next challenge we have in addition to aviation security. The other challenge we have is to pass a stimulus package. What does ``stimulus'' mean? Stimulus means pass legislation that will provide some incentives to help boost this economy of ours. Last Friday, we received word that another 415,000 people lost their jobs in the last month. Mostly, these are people at the lower end of the economic ladder. These are not people making a lot of money, in most instances. These people and their families know about second jobs, secondhand, second mortgages, and second shifts. They are the same people who during tough times find they have lost their jobs. Then they find out, at least with some people in the U.S. Congress, they are also second choice. There are some people in Congress who do not want to help them very much because they say that would not provide the incentive for those families to look for work again. In my judgment, these people who are laid off during a very difficult and soft economy require our help. We have always, during a severe economic downturn, extended our hand and said: We will extend unemployment benefits to help those who have lost their jobs and are down and out. That is stimulative. That money is spent immediately by the families who have lost their incomes and are struggling. That is a way to stimulate this country's economy. We must do that when we construct a package of incentives to provide lift to this economy. What are the other incentives we could provide that would help this economy? We can do traditional things, such as tax credits that would incentivize investment. We can do things that will incentivize consumption. We can do things that will incentivize production. There are all kinds of menus with which to do that: Expensing, bonus depreciation, and targeted investment tax credits, for example. In addition to tax credits and other incentives in the Tax Code, we can stimulate economic activity by building roads and bridges, by repairing schools, and by making other public investments that put people back to work so that at the end of the time when we have enacted a stimulus package and made those investments, we can look back and say: We not only stimulated the economy, we have something to show for it. My colleague, Senator Byrd, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is working with a number of us in the Senate. He has taken the leadership position on the infrastructure needs and the investment in infrastructure as part of a stimulus package. That is important as well. We have the issues of extending unemployment benefits, health care issues for the unemployed, the issue of what kind of tax cuts might be employed to stimulate and lift this economy, and then the issue of what kind of infrastructure investment we can make that puts people back to work building, repairing, and making things. All of these should come together in a package designed to stimulate this economy. This economy is in much more trouble than most people understand. It was a very soft economy prior to September 11, and September 11 cut a hole right through the belly of this economy. We are beginning to see the evidence of that now each day with each additional number that describes the condition of our economy. It is going to have an impact in every part of this country. It will touch virtually every family. So the question is, What can we do and how can we do it? How can we lift this drowning economy? President Bush has said he wants Congress to act and act quickly. He is right about that. We should. We must. But just acting, if it is not the right thing, will not be the right approach. If we do not do the right thing, taking action is pretty irrelevant. What we need to do is take action now to do the right thing to give help to this country's economy. The House of Representatives passed what they called a stimulus package. I describe it as leftovers. My mother used to talk about leftovers when she was talking about the supper table. What is for supper? We called it supper in my hometown. When she said leftovers, we all understood in our family what leftovers meant. Well, I view the stimulus package that the House passed almost the same way, as leftovers. It is all the things they had left over from previous tax bills that they did not get, but they always wanted to do. It did not have very much at all to do with whether it is going to help this economy, whether it is going to stimulate this economy, whether it is going to lift this economy. It was just leftovers. In fact, I will mention one. I will not go into great depth. One of them, at a cost of $21 billion, was stuck in the House-passed stimulus package to incentivize investments overseas. Now, tell me how that stimulates the economy in this country. It is a big giveaway to companies that move and keep needed investment capital overseas and earn income overseas and do not want to repatriate the money. Now talk about the nth degree of goofy. At a time when our economy is on its knees, we have the U.S. House passing a tax provision that incentivizes additional investments overseas. Our investments ought to be to incentivize creating jobs in the United States, not elsewhere. So we have a big job ahead of us to try to pass legislation that provides a real lift to this economy. The President is right, we need to do it. It would be unforgivable, in my judgment, if Congress left town sometime between now and Christmas, whenever we finish our work, and had not passed a stimulus package to try to provide some lift to this country's economy. I know some will argue we have economic stabilizers that we did not used to have in this economy and that recessions are not quite as deep as they used to be. We do not know that. We do not know what the consequences of September 11 will be on this economy. We do know that going into September 11, we were in the business cycle and we were on the contraction side of a business cycle. It is inevitable that there is expansion and contraction, and we were on the contraction side of that business cycle. Then September 11 occurred. We shut down the airline industry. The entire travel industry in this country is in a huge amount of trouble. Some of us have proposed some loan guarantees to try to provide assistance in those areas. This economy took a huge body blow, and I think most do not understand how deep this likely recession could be or how long it could last if all of us do not now do the right thing. This is not about Democrats or Republicans. It is about good ideas, having the capacity to employ opportunities for investment and consumption in this economy to try to rev this economic engine once again. We went through unprecedented growth in our country for a good many years. We were blessed with that. In fact, some looked at those numbers and they looked at NASDAQ and the stock market and they thought this economy only goes one way. It is true of the President. It was true of the Congress. Everybody said: You know something, we are going to have surpluses for 10 years in a row. The next 10 years we are going to do so great we are going to have surpluses every year. So let us put in a very large tax cut anticipating surpluses for the next 10 years. That was just months ago. Those surpluses are very quickly vanishing, regrettably, and this economy has changed in a very significant way. I hope we can get back to the position where we have economic strength and opportunity, hope for American families who have lost their jobs and a growing economy that provides new opportunities for others in this country who are going to enter the job market. At this point, this Congress has no choice but to be with this President and, between the two parties, construct a stimulus package that really does give a lift and some hope to the American economy. If we do not do that, the American people should judge us harshly, in my judgment. Between now and when we leave this year, we have a responsibility to do that.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. My colleague from Arizona is coming back to speak, but before he does I will mention the issue of the farm bill. We have had a substantial amount of discussion in recent days about the farm bill. I mentioned aviation security, which we need to get done quickly. I mentioned the stimulus package, which we have a requirement to enact, and now a farm bill. We have the Secretary of Agriculture who has left, I believe, for Qatar. It is a country whose name most of us cannot pronounce. They are having the WTO meeting in Qatar because they cannot have them anywhere else. It is a country with very few hotel rooms, and so they will therefore accommodate very few demonstrators. These demonstrators tend to show up wherever they are discussing trade anywhere in the world, so they are having this meeting in Qatar. But we had hoped to meet with the Secretary of Agriculture last week. We think it is very important to pass a farm bill in the next 3 or 4 weeks. The House of Representatives did so. It is better than current law. It is not good enough yet for wheat and feed grains and some of the things we need to do to improve it, but we have a responsibility to pass a farm bill, one that works for family farmers. There are some who are counseling, as the Secretary of Agriculture, the head of the Office of Management and Budget and others have, that, oh, do not worry, do not do it now, do it next spring; the money will still be there. Nonsense. That money is in the budget this year, and it reserves a place this year and in future years, but it will not be there next year. Next year, we face an entirely different economy when we begin constructing a new budget. So we have a responsibility to do a farm bill in the next 2, 3 to 4 weeks as well, and some of us are going to fight like the devil to make that happen. I prefer it be a farm bill that comes out of the Agriculture Committee. Senator Harkin is leading the way, and I want to work with him. If it does not come out of the committee, then there is a farm bill sitting at the desk we could bring before the Senate and amend. It came from the House of Representatives. One way or another we owe it to the American farmers to write a farm bill that works. I see my colleague from Arizona is in the Chamber, and I yield the floor.