Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent Matt King, a legislative detailee from the Customs Service, be permitted floor privileges during consideration of H.R. 2590.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity to talk about the conference report we have now completed with the House of Representatives. It has been a delight and pleasure to work with Senator Campbell. I very much appreciate his work and the work of Patricia Raymond and Lula Edwards, and my staff: Chip Walgren and Matt King and Nicole Rutberg. They have been exceedingly helpful in putting together a very substantial conference report on a lot of subjects. Let me describe some of these issues. Some bills we consider when we have the conference report in front of the Senate consist primarily of salaries and expenses for a number of agencies in the Federal Government. About 40 percent of the Federal law enforcement functions are funded in this appropriations bill: The Customs Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Secret Service; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; and other law enforcement agencies, including the IRS criminal investigation division, as well as the Postal Inspection Service, which a lot of people don't think much about--they don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but especially in recent weeks they played an important role in law enforcement in our Federal Government. These agencies work tirelessly, often below the radar, and work to ensure our Nation's safety. We appreciate the work they do. We had to work under certain fiscal constraints in this subcommittee, as we do in all the appropriations subcommittees. This conference report represents a compromise on a good number of issues. Let me mention a couple of things on which we worked and in which I especially was interested. We added in this conference report $28.1 million for a new Senate- initiated northern border initiative to hire additional Customs Service inspectors, special agents, and canine teams to enforce trade laws at our borders. In light of the tragic events of September 11, that is merely a downpayment on a much larger requirement on the northern border. It is quite clear this country will not achieve the kind of security it wants and needs unless it is able to provide for secure borders. That doesn't mean shutting off our borders, walling up our borders. It simply means providing security on our borders in order to allow those who are guests of this country to come in, in order to allow freight and commerce to move back and forth across the borders but at the same time have the capability to prevent those who are terrorists, known or suspected terrorists, from coming into this country. The northern border has been like Swiss cheese in terms of enforcement. We have spent a great deal of time and effort moving resources, inspectors, and agents to the southern border. For many years, we have been worried about immigration and drugs coming across the southern border into this country. We have spent very little time, unfortunately, on the northern border. There are 128 border crossings, 24 of which are full time, 24-hour crossings, many of which on this 4,000-mile northern border are simply a crossing where people are able to come across the U.S.-Canadian border; then at 10 o'clock at night, when the border crossing closes, they put an orange security cone out and that becomes the security gate for the next 8 hours. But a cone cannot talk, walk, shoot, or tell a terrorist from a tow truck. It is not secure. We must do something to provide for secure borders at all of the country's borders, including the northern borders. To those who say there is not much activity on the northern border, they are correct. But at Port Angeles, a port on the northern border, some while ago a terrorist was apprehended. That terrorist was the so- called millennium bomber who would have caused substantial explosives and bombs to be unleashed at the turn of the millennium and would have undoubtedly killed many American citizens. Good border work by Customs agents and others at Port Angeles averted that terrorist attack. We did add money for northern border initiatives to hire Customs Service inspectors, agents, and canine teams. That is a step in the right direction. I have also included money in this appropriations bill, $10 million, for the Customs Service to add to their ability to combat child labor laws and combat the child labor practices that occur around the world. What we are very concerned about is in some parts of the world there are people who use young children in virtually forced labor situations to produce their products, and they ship those products to this country to be put on the shelves of our stores in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles and Phoenix and Fargo. But that is not fair trade. Nor is it what we want to happen to children of the world. We do not want forced labor with children being exploited. We don't want the products of forced labor and child labor to be sent to the store shelves in our country. So the investigation of forced child labor in much of the world is something to which we need to pay a great deal of attention. I added $10 million for the Customs Service for that purpose. If I might in a graphic way describe one set of circumstances that was described to us in a hearing some while ago on these issues, they talked about young children, 8, 10, 12 years old making carpets in forced labor situations in some parts of the world. In the process of making carpets, at least according to some testimony, some firms were taking these young children, using gunpowder on the tips of their fingers, and lighting the gunpowder to cause it to explode. That explosion and the resulting burns and scarring on the tips of children's fingers meant those children, when they would stick themselves with needles as they made the rugs, would have no pain because their fingertips were full of scars. That is the sort of thing that is going on around the world and it is the sort of thing we need to find a way to stop. One way to stop it is not allow the product of that kind of forced child labor and inhumane treatment to come into this country. That is why I put an additional $10 million in this conference report to combat this situation. Another small amount of money that we have included in this conference report, I included it on the Senate side, is $500,000 designed to deal with an issue that caused me great concern with respect to the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Revenue Service had an inspection by the inspector general of its taxpayer assistance program. The inspector general created questions that were to be asked of the Internal Revenue Service taxpayer assistance areas and sent Federal employees around with these questions to get help from the IRS. Guess what. They went all over the country to many locations to get help from the IRS. They found that 72 percent of the time the Internal Revenue Service gave them either the wrong answer, incomplete, or no answers to the questions they had about how to fulfill their tax responsibilities. Just imagine that 72 percent of the time the questions asked of tax experts elicited the wrong answers. I read the inspector general's report and was so incensed by it I called the Internal Revenue Service Commissioner and I said: I know you are relatively new on the job and trying to do things differently; I deeply admire your work. But I want to tell you what I want to do. I want to have the inspector general do this same thing over and over again. They are going to do it once every second month. They will give six reports to Congress. I want to see improvement in those six reports. It is unforgivable that people who show up at the IRS asking for tax help get the wrong answer or no answer or an incomplete answer 72 percent of the time. If the Internal Revenue Service can't do it, how on Earth can you expect the American people to comply with their tax responsibilities? We are going to get six reports in the next 12 months. I intend to come to the Chamber every time we get a report and disclose where there is progress with respect to providing answers and taxpayer assistance to the American people. It is a small issue in this bill. It is not a great deal of money, but it is a big issue for me. We cannot have a tax system for which you do not have taxpayer assistance. I want to put the ``service'' back in the words ``Internal Revenue Service.'' I want the American people to know where they can get answers, and get the right answers. Let me mention a couple of additional issues. We direct the General Services Administration, GSA, to initiate a pilot project to site what are called automatic external defib- rillators, AEDs. If anyone has seen them, they look a little like a briefcase, not much bigger than a briefcase. We would put them in Federal buildings on a pilot project and provide training in their use to more effectively save lives. The defibrillators are to be used when someone suffers a cardiac arrest. Virtually anyone can use these defibrillators. I was at a demonstration where they showed how to use a defibrillator. Defibrillators are briefcase-sized, relatively inexpensive, and they save lives. They do it every day all across this country, and we ought to have them in every Federal building. We asked the GSA to do a pilot project that will save lives as we begin to put these in all Federal buildings. I mentioned several items that are in the conference report that we will ultimately consider. We fund the President's request of $180 million in continued funding for the Office of National Drug Control Policy's Youth Antidrug Media Campaign, which has been ongoing now for some years. We add $20 million to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program, for a total of $226 million. We add $10 million to the Drug Free Communities Act, for a total of $50.6 million. I am not going to go down the list with all these issues. I will have some printed in the Record. This is a good report. Senator Campbell and I and our colleagues on the House side worked hard to reach a compromise that makes sense. I want to make a special point of an item that is not in this conference report that really should be. It deals with an issue I have been concerned with for a while. I will explain why it is not in the conference report. It is the issue of travel in Cuba. That sounds like a strange subject for an appropriations bill. We have had, as you know, a 40-year embargo with respect to the country of Cuba, an embargo on trade and travel. It has been my belief for some long while that it is not a moral policy for our country to use food and medicine as a weapon and we ought not include that in any embargo. At the very least, we ought to say the embargo against Cuba, which in my judgment has been a failure now for four decades--Fidel Castro has outlived all of those Presidents--clearly is a failure. But at the very least, we ought not continue to use food as a weapon. We ought to be able to send food and medicine to Cuba or sell food and medicine to Cuba. The Canadians and Europeans can. Everyone else can. We cannot. I have been pushing to change that. We have been successful twice in the Senate by a vote of 70 votes in favor of changing it. In three separate cases we have been tripped by the House of Representatives, whose leaders in the first instance actually just adjourned the conference and never came back together because they would have lost the vote if they had taken the vote, and that is the way they hijacked this policy. In the second and the third year that we had some progress on this issue, they changed the language so in fact they said you could sell food to Cuba but in fact you could not. You could not even get private financing in this country to sell food to Cuba. That is how absurd it was, despite the fact that they boasted of the progress. In addition to that, last year they decided not only will we say you can sell food to Cuba but you cannot do it even with private financing, which is a byzantine bit of logic in my judgment, but we will also codify the regulations which restrict travel in Cuba. They were previously by regulation made effective. Now we will codify them, which actually tightens them. In fact, it was moving backward rather than forward with respect to our policy. That is a long way of describing something that happened that some months ago I thought was totally absurd. I read in the paper that the U.S. Treasury Department began levying fines against the American people for traveling in Cuba. I admit that current law prohibits travel in Cuba. Let me describe to you a fine, because I talked to this woman. She is a woman from Illinois. I will just describe one. A retired woman from the State of Illinois responded to an advertisement in a cycling magazine that a Canadian cycling group was taking a bicycle tour of Cuba. She thought, well, that sounded like fun. She sent a coupon, signed up, went to Cuba, and bicycled for 8 days in Cuba with a bicycle tour group out of Canada. Eighteen months later, this retired American citizen from Illinois received a fine from the United States Treasury Department of $9,600 for traveling in Cuba. Where did that come from? The Office of Foreign Asset Control--OFAC, at the Treasury Department. OFAC is supposed to be chasing terrorists. In early August of this year, well before September 11--in early August of this year, I wrote to the Treasury Department to say, in effect: How dare you spend your time and resources chasing a little old retired lady from Illinois. I can describe others as well. The fines ranged from $9,500 to $55,000 for those who traveled in Cuba. How dare you spend your time doing that when we expect you to be using these resources to track terrorists and track the money laundering and money movement to apprehend terrorists. Of course, a month later we discovered what terrorists mean to this country and the tragic consequences of terrorist acts that are committed in this country. This conference report I had hoped would deal with something that the House of Representatives put in their bill. They said no money shall be expended by the Treasury Department for enforcing the travel ban with respect to the country of Cuba. I went to conference with the House of Representatives, intending to recede to the House provision. But before I could do that, the House conferees decided to abandon their own position. So I could not recede to the position they no longer held. It only describes once again that no matter what the circumstances are on the issue of policy with respect to Cuba, the absurd proposition that this country ought to use food and drugs as a weapon, yes, even with Cuba in the pursuit of this foolish embargo that has been a 40- year failure--the absurd proposition that we ought to have the Treasury Department chasing retired schoolteachers from Illinois who join a bicycle tour of Cuba and slap a $9,600 fine on them 18 months after they join a Canadian bicycle tour and bike ride 8 days in Cuba--the absurdity of that just leaves me almost speechless. Yet in the Department of the Treasury, in an office called OFAC, Office of Foreign Asset Control, they are spending money tracking people who might have traveled to Cuba. I called and talked to the lady from Illinois. She had no idea she was violating the law. What she was doing was riding a bicycle. She was retired and wanted to take a bicycle trip. And she did, with a Canadian cycling company, and then was slapped with a fine of $9,600. I didn't mean to go on at great length about it, except to say this subcommittee bill from both the House and Senate should have contained language straightening out both of these issues. One is the absurd proposition that we continue to use food and drugs as a weapon, which in my judgment is not a moral policy. It doesn't matter what country it is directed at; food ought not be used as a weapon. Second, we ought not fine American citizens because of restrictions on travel, as has been enforced here with respect to Cuba. They can travel in China. They can travel in North Korea. They can travel in every part of the world, except somehow, if they join a bicycle tour of Cuba, something awful is going to happen to them. That is not the best of what America has to offer in terms of foreign policy or public policy. As I indicated when I started, this conference report will, I believe, be called up in a bit. I expect my colleague, Senator Campbell, to come to the floor. He has a few things to say. I think following that, whenever it is ready, it is going to require a recorded vote because it did not have a recorded vote when it left the Senate. As is the case with most of these appropriations bills, it has a recorded vote when it leaves this body, and we have a recorded vote on the conference report. In this case, this conference report is going to require a recorded vote this afternoon. I encourage my colleagues to be supportive of it. I think it is a good compromise. It makes good, and it is an important investment, especially in the area of law enforcement. Forty percent of law enforcement in the Federal Government is funded in this particular appropriations conference. I want to make one other point. I want to say to all of those who are involved in Federal law enforcement--not just Federal law enforcement, but these comments apply to everyone in this country who spends time enforcing our Nation's laws, especially now with respect to terrorist acts--that this country is enormously proud of the dedication and commitment of law enforcement men and women all across this country. I walk in the front door of this Capitol in the morning, and I see law enforcement people standing there. I stop to talk to them. I understand they have been working in most cases 12 hours a day 6 days a week. And they have been doing that now for 2 months. There is no end in sight. It is not just these folks who work with us--the wonderful men and women in the Capitol Police Force. My colleague from Illinois is on the floor. I think he has the suggestion and idea about a more formal thank you, saying to them that we are really proud of what they do: What you do is critically important. And we ought to do that every day in every way. Again, it is not just them; it is the law enforcement components of the Secret Service, the Customs Service, postal inspectors, and so many other areas of the Federal Government who are also working 12 hours a day 6 days a week at this point. I think it is important as we consider this conference report on behalf of the Congress to say to them: Your commitment and your service to our country is not unnoticed. We deeply appreciate what you do for America during very difficult times. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I will speak about an amendment I have pending, but I will follow on the comments of my colleague from Minnesota. We do not have the option, in my judgment, of leaving this session of Congress without passing a package of legislation that will try to stimulate this economy. This economy was on its knees going into September 11. It was a weak economy in a great deal of trouble. On September 11, we had the cowardly terrorists acts that cut a hole in this country's economy. I fear very much that perhaps most of us do not fully understand how and why the economy hurts. We need to err, if we err, on the side of taking bold, aggressive action to stimulate the economy. Stimulating an economy is done by creating incentives for investment and incentives for consumption. Part of the incentives for consumption are to assist those in this country who, during a tough economy, are losing their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their jobs and have unemployment compensation that is inadequate, for too short a duration. Part of the stimulus package has to be to help those families, as well. That money is invested immediately into the economy in the form of consumption. I think it is important to do a range of things: Incentivize consumption, incentivize investment, and a range of other approaches to stimulate the economy and give lift to the American economy. We are likely in a recession. We do not know how deep or how long. I know we cannot afford to adjourn this Congress without working together with the President, in a bipartisan way, to create a stimulus package that is serious. This is not just politics as usual. This is serious business. The question of whether the American people have opportunity and hope is dependant on whether we have an economy that provides an expanded economic base, and therefore creates that hope and creates that opportunity for jobs. Amendment No. 2024 On the subject I want to discuss, I have an amendment now pending, or maybe it was set aside temporarily, but I offered the amendment, and I would like to get it approved this afternoon. The amendment deals with something called the advance passenger information system, a system that now exists in this country. It is for those who are entering our country from foreign lands. For those bringing a commercial airliner into this country and for those who will disembark today, we have what is called an advance passenger information system. Those airlines will send to this country a list of the passengers. Our Customs Service, the FBI, and other Federal law enforcement agencies can check names against lists that we have to make sure we are not allowing someone into our country, as a guest, who might be a known or suspected terrorist or someone who is associated with terrorists or someone who is on a list that we do not want to enter this country. There are lists of people who have committed acts of terror, criminal acts, people we do not want to be allowed into this country. Today, we have the advance passenger information systems. Most airliners voluntarily comply with it and send the information to us. Not all airlines, however. About 15 percent of the passengers come into this country without having their name on a manifest that is sent to our country to be run against one of the lists. Let me describe, among others, the airlines that do not voluntarily comply: We do not get this information from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, just to name a few. Does anyone here think it would be important we would get that information from those countries? You better believe it is important. Yet under the voluntary system we do not get it. I chaired a hearing with the Customs Commissioner and the INS Commissioner. We talked about securing this country's borders, among other things. Mr. Potter, the Customs Commissioner, said we must make this advance passenger information system mandatory. It is now only voluntary, and we are not getting all the information we need in order to process who is coming into our country. We need all this information. We need information on people who are going to visit this country from Pakistan, from Saudi Arabia, from Kuwait, and others. I introduced a piece of legislation in the Senate that says the advanced passenger information system shall be mandatory. The Senate passed it. It was part of the counterterrorism bill, which is exactly where it should have been because it deals with border security. It went to conference with the House of Representatives. Some Members in the House of Representatives, citing ``committee jurisdiction,'' decided they were going to knock this out. So that bill went to the President, the counterterrorism bill, was signed into law, is now the law of the land, and does not contain this provision. The result is a provision the Senate previously enacted is now not part of the law dealing with counterterrorism. The result is that today there is an airplane landing from Pakistan, airplanes coming from Saudi Arabia, from Kuwait, from Egypt, from Jordan, and more, whose passenger list has not been provided to our Customs Service, our FBI, and other law enforcement agencies. Why? Because those airlines do not comply. It is voluntary. They don't have to comply. Just yesterday, I understand, Kuwait has signed a memorandum of understanding. That is good; that is progress. It seems to me it is business as usual for some in this Congress to say: What is most important to me is not national security. Some Members say: What is important to me is the jurisdiction of my committee. If we didn't bless it, if we didn't put our stamp on it, if we didn't have our mitts on it in some way, we will not allow it to proceed. The entire Senate passed this provision and it got knocked out in conference last week. So the President signs a bill that does not include this amendment. I have offered it again. Does it belong on an appropriations bill? No, it doesn't. But I will offer it on this bill and every other bill until it becomes law. It is absurd to think we will deal with national security without securing our borders. Securing our borders does not mean closing our borders, it means understanding who is coming into this country as guests of ours. That is the whole approach. The visa approach is to say people coming into this country are guests of our country. Mr. President, 57 million people come in by air every year; 45,000 people today come into this country by commercial airliner, 45,000 people whose names are not run against the Customs, the FBI, and other lists. Why are those 45,000 names not able to be run against those lists? Because we have some people who, in my judgment, are thickheaded. Committee jurisdiction is more important to them than national security. That is strong language, I know. But it upsets me that we are so small minded in some parts of this Congress that we cannot see the bigger picture. The bigger picture is things have changed. The September 11 terrorist attack that murdered thousands of American citizens changed a lot in this country. The anthrax letters that have now killed some American citizens and caused such chaos and concern across this country have changed a lot of things. It apparently has not changed the mindset of some who are busily guarding their tiny little area of committee jurisdiction. With regret to those folks, but not at all apologetic, I say we passed this provision once, and I intend to offer it again and again and again. I intend to have a vote on it. My hope is it will be accepted by voice vote. We will go to conference and get this done in this conference. If not, it will be the next conference. If not, then it will be the next conference. I simply will not allow people who think about jurisdiction over national security to win this issue. This ought to be done. It should have been done last week, but it wasn't. It ought to be done this afternoon, again, in the Senate to say to those who blocked it: You will not block it for long. These are extraordinarily difficult times for our country. We face two very significant challenges. One challenge deals with national security--and that is not an insignificant challenge. It is about as tough a challenge as we faced in many decades. Second, we face the challenge of dealing with our country's economy. My colleague from Minnesota described that. I just came from a caucus in which we discussed it for an hour and a half. This country will meet those challenges. There are no people in the world better prepared or better equipped, no people I have more confidence in than the American people to meet any challenge at any time. This is not a time for us to shrink back in fear. This is a time for us to be bold and to join together in action that we know will prepare us and will secure us and will allow us to have the kind of opportunity that we want for us and our children. One small piece of that is this amendment that is now pending that I hope will be approved by the Senate this afternoon. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, this is an amendment I discussed on the floor briefly earlier today. I shall be brief again. I understand under ideal circumstances this amendment would be placed somewhere else, at some other time, perhaps in some other bill. It is an amendment that is critically important and should have been done last week. It should now be law. It should already be providing protection to the American people today but is not. I am angry about that because the Congress should not have missed this opportunity last week. I don't intend to let the Congress miss this opportunity at any point along the way. I will offer it, and if it is not finally a part of this bill when signed by the President, I will offer it to every bill. Let me describe the circumstance. I am chairman of an appropriations subcommittee and I held a hearing a few weeks ago and had the Commissioner of the Customs Service and the Commissioner of the Immigration Service testifying before that subcommittee. One of the things they talked about was the need to provide security with respect to who is coming into our country. A country cannot be secure unless it has some notion of border security. We have millions of people coming into our country each and every year. They are guests of ours, coming in on a visa given by our country. When people come to our country, we welcome them. We want them to visit our country, but we also want to be sure the people who are coming to our country from foreign lands are people we want to have as guests. There are some we want to keep out: Those involved in terrorist activities, those who have had association with terrorist groups, known and suspected terrorists. We do not want to welcome them into our country. We want to keep them out. That is the whole purpose of border security. We have around 80 million people who come to this country every year on some 400,000 international flights. I repeat, on 400,000 international flights we have some 80 million people disembark to visit the United States. There are just over 100 major air carriers flying those passengers into our country. We have an arrangement with 95 of those air carriers to voluntarily provide the United States Customs Service with advance passenger lists of who is coming to visit our country. The Customs Service runs that list against a list the FBI has, the Customs Service has, and 21 different agencies of law enforcement, to evaluate which of these passengers, if any, should not be allowed into our country, which of them are on the suspect list, and which are on the list of known or suspected terrorists. We have the majority of the airline carriers and the majority of the names of passengers being given to our law enforcement authorities in the form of an advance electronic passenger list. It is called the Advance Passenger Information System. It is a voluntary, not mandatory, system covering 85 percent of the international air passengers that are not already pre-cleared by Customs. It works fine except we have a number of carriers from countries that do not participate. Let me list a few: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, just to name a few. One would ask whether we should be getting advanced passenger information from these countries. The answer is yes. In fact, the Senate said yes last week. The Senate was prepared to adopt this amendment last week as part of the counter-terrorism bill, which is where it should have been. In conference it was knocked out. It went to conference with the U.S. House. Some were worried more about committee jurisdiction than they were about security. So they knocked it out. The result was, when the President signed that counter-terrorism bill, it did not have this provision that makes mandatory the Advanced Passenger Information System. What does that mean? It means that today about 219,000 international air passengers arrived in the United States--today, Tuesday. About 34,000 are pre-cleared by U.S. Customs agents stationed abroad who run an APIS-type check as part of the clearing process, 156,000 are pre- screened through APIS while they are in flight, leaving approximately 29,000 whose names are not provided to the Customs Service until they arrive because their carriers do not participate in the Advanced Passenger Information System. Why? Because the Congress last week decided not to include that requirement in a conference report. The President wants this requirement. The Customs Service wants the requirement. All the Federal law enforcement authorities want the requirement. We get it on 85 percent of international air passengers. And the ones we don't get it from are Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, just to name a few. I ask the question: Does it promote this country's security to require those air carriers to provide the same information that virtually every other air carrier in the world provides to us? The answer is clearly yes. We are less secure today than we should be because the Congress knocked out my provision in that conference committee. That provision was not in the counter-terrorism bill when the President signed it, despite the fact that the Senate supported it. The Senate said yes. But it was knocked out in conference. I intend to offer this to any vehicle I have the opportunity to offer it to. I know that it doesn't necessarily belong on an appropriations bill. But it belongs in law in this country. It belongs there now. It should be there now. It should be providing security for this country now with respect to the 29,000 people who entered this country today whose names were not provided under the Advanced Passenger Information List. It makes no sense to me to be in this situation. Some would say, well, this really inconveniences and mandates the air carriers to do this. No, it does not. Most of the air carriers do it voluntarily, and they have a good relationship with our country. But some air carriers decided that they will not do it. The Customs Commissioner and others indicate that we ought to make it mandatory. I agree with that. Since September 11, things have changed. It is not profiling. It is not profiling in any way to ask for an advanced list of passengers who are going to visit our country as guests in our country. But we are trying to profile those who are terrorists and suspected terrorists. Let's admit to that. One of the goals that we have in all of our efforts with respect to increasing security at our borders is to determine who the people are who associate with terrorists and known terrorists or suspected terrorists, and try to keep them out of our country. Unfair? I don't think so, not in the circumstance where thousands of Americans have been killed-- cold-blooded murder by terrorists who decided to use an airplane as a weapon of destruction; not at a time when terrorists sent anthrax-laced letters around this country through the mail system and people die. I ask that we include this amendment in this appropriations bill. I hope those who are talking about their committee jurisdiction will understand that this isn't about jurisdiction. It is about security. This isn't about trying to protect your little area. It is about common sense to try to protect this country's borders. The Advanced Passenger Information System works. It has worked for a long while. It provides this country names that are important to secure our borders, except that it doesn't do it in all instances. In the instances where it fails, it is critically important to give this country critically important information in order to give this country some assurance and some comfort. I understand that we will probably deal with this amendment tomorrow. I wanted to offer it this evening.

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

Mr. DORGAN. I have an amendment at the desk for immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will speak at more length on the subject I talked about a few moments ago, the issue of the advance passenger information system, which sounds like an innocuous system but it is a very important system by which we help provide for this country's security. Let me describe exactly what has happened. We have 57 million people enter this country every year by airplane. Commercial airplanes from all around the world come into this country. We have some 57 million people on those airplanes entering the United States. There are 94 different air carriers flying those people into our country. There were 400,000 international flights with passengers processed into our country in the last year. The question, especially since September 11, and since the terrorist threats against this country resulted in these devastating attacks of mass murder, the question is, Who are these people who are entering our country? What is their background? Do their names show up somewhere on a list of people who are affiliated with or associated with a terrorist cell? Are they known or suspected terrorists? Who are they? In order to answer that question, we have what is called the advance passenger information system, which has 85 percent of the passengers covered by APIS because the carriers that are bringing them into this country voluntarily provide information to the Customs Service in America, saying here is our passenger list. That list then is cross- checked against the list of the Customs Service, the FBI, and others, to try to determine whether there are people who are trying to enter our country who should not enter. Pretty simple. But the 15 percent of the passengers who are not part of this system, whose names don't come in to be checked, includes passengers on airplanes coming from, among other countries, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan. Let me give carriers that do not comply. They are not part of the voluntary system and do not provide passenger lists or information about passengers: Air Lingus, Aer Transat, Bahamas Air, Champion, Saudi, Kuwait, Royal Jordanian, Air Pakistan International, Canada 3000. I chaired hearings in the appropriations subcommittee dealing with Treasury and general government. We had the Commissioner of the Customs Service testify. He talked about this. He talked about this being an important piece of information we get in our attempt to try to prevent terrorists, or known or suspected terrorists, from coming into our country. He said it is voluntary. There is 15 percent of the information we don't get; 15 percent of the 57 million passengers, with their names, are not given to our Customs Service to be checked. I asked, should it be checked? And he said of course it should, but he said at present it is not mandatory. I said, it is not mandatory? And he said, of course, it should be mandatory. I indicated we would try to get that done after the September 11 attacks when there were 19 people riding the airplanes who came into this country to commit murder. While they committed an act of self- destruction, they murdered thousands of American citizens. Especially following that, we ought to be concerned about border security. This is one part of border security. We had a piece of legislation called the counterterrorism bill which the President signed into law last week. That bill had an amendment I offered on the floor of the Senate that would have required the airlines coming into this country to provide the advance passenger information lists. My amendment passed. The Senate said yes. It was in the Senate bill. It came back from conference, and, mysteriously, it was gone. That somehow got destroyed. That amendment was destroyed in conference. Why? Apparently, because there were some Members who decided in conference they have jurisdiction over this, it didn't go through this hoop or that hoop or didn't have this hearing or that hearing. Therefore, they asserted jurisdiction on this and said they would not allow it to be in conference. What is the result of that, in my judgment, small-minded decision by some in Congress? What is the result? The result is that today, on Tuesday, there are airplanes landing all across this country coming in from Pakistan, from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, from Kuwait, from Jordan, and there is no advance passenger list given the Customs Service against which they can check the lists and determine whether there are passengers we don't want coming into this country. The result of knocking that out of the conference so it was not in the counterterrorism bill last week, in my judgment, injures this country's ability to provide for secure borders. It is small thinking in the extreme, in my judgment. Today and tomorrow these airplanes will haul passengers into this country and we will not have information about who those passengers are. We will have information on most of the passengers coming in from South America, from Europe, from most of the countries with which we have trading relationships and good relationships; they have signed a voluntary agreement with us. But the fact is, some of the key countries, some of the key carriers from that region that we need to be very concerned about at this point, are not involved if we receive no passenger list. Someone said, when you read the names--Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and more--aren't you profiling passengers? I said it is not about profiling passengers but about getting a list of all passengers coming into this country and trying to profile who might be known or suspected terrorists and keeping them out. If they happen to come from one region of the country, I regret that. But we are not profiling passengers; we are profiling terrorists to see if we can keep out of this country those whom we don't want to let in because they have suspect ties to terrorist organizations. Coming into this country with a visa is coming into this country as a guest of the United States. We have every right to keep out of this country those who have ties to or those who are associated with known terrorist organizations. But today, Tuesday, we cannot do that because of behavior that represents monumental littleness, as one of our great former Presidents said in a conference last week, knocking out the amendment to which the Senate had already agreed, knocking out the amendment that came to that conference from the Senate. As a result, I intend to offer this amendment just after lunch today on this piece of legislation, and I will offer this amendment on every piece of legislation until it becomes law, until it is in a vehicle signed into law by the President of the United States. So at 12:30 on Tuesday next week or a week after when a plane lands in this country, carrying passengers from abroad, we will know that in every circumstance information on the passenger list from that plane is provided to the U.S. Customs Service before departure. Some might say, well, isn't this an unusual, intrusive and difficult thing to ask of others? The answer is no. Anyone who watched those commercial airplanes fly into the World Trade Center in New York knows that a lot has changed since September 11. This country's security is critically important. Border security, it seems to me, is where you start. The President said yesterday, as reported in the papers today dealing with visas, that we should be tightening up on visas. I fully agree with that. You have to maintain control of your borders. That doesn't mean you build a wall and keep people out. It means you have sufficient capability to understand who is coming in and to keep the wrong people out. That is what it means. My hope is that we will be able to add this amendment to this appropriations bill. I understand this isn't an appropriations amendment. I understand that completely. My hope is that my colleagues who have already approved this--the Senate has already approved this legislation--will understand that our job is to keep sending this matter to conference on every vehicle possible so that the next airplane that lands from abroad is an airplane with a list of passengers that we have, and that list has been checked against the Customs list, against the FBI list, and against all of the lists of some 20 different agencies that have lists that tell us about people who should not be allowed to enter this country because of their known or suspected ties to terrorist organizations. I will come back after lunch with an amendment I will formally offer. My hope is that the chairman and the ranking member will see fit to agree to it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. So I understand what the Senator from Nevada is saying, I am going to offer an amendment to this bill and every bill that comes to the floor. It is something that was dropped out of the bill last week on counterterrorism. It deals with what is called advanced passenger information systems. We have airlines landing this morning from Pakistan, from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, airliners coming from those countries for which there is no passenger information forwarded to the Customs Department. Eighty-five percent of the airlines do voluntarily provide that information. Fifteen percent of the airlines do not. I have described the countries from which the airlines come that do not provide that information. Everyone agreed we ought to do this. I offered the amendment and it was knocked out in conference on the counterterrorism bill because we had some people worried about their jurisdiction. They would not allow it in conference. Today we have literally thousands of people coming on airplanes from that region and the names of those people are not provided to the Federal law enforcement authorities as they are from 85 percent of the other carriers. In this case, those names are not provided now. It seems to me that compromises this country's security. I aim to fix that as quickly as we can. I intend to offer that as an amendment to every bill, and I will offer it this afternoon to this legislation as well. I want to make sure I am not prevented from doing so.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question? I understand he wants to talk about other things. My interest is in making sure we have the passenger lists of people coming into this country. As I indicated, in 85 percent of the cases we do, but we do not now from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and so on. It seems to me that security is paramount at this point, and I certainly will visit with the Senator from Alaska about the issue he raises. I am talking especially about passenger lists at this point. I will talk more about it this afternoon.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Like Senator Craig, I appreciate the cooperation of our colleagues in helping us to work through this issue. We have arrived at a solution that is agreeable to the majority of parties involved, while at the same time reaching our goal of providing relief to small providers and plans and public health programs that are struggling to prepare their systems for this cost. Senator Craig and I would have preferred that this bill go further in providing more time and coordination for affected entities. On the other hand, we acknowledge that others would prefer no action in this area. Since we are just one year from the scheduled compliance date, however, we recognize that all those affected need some certainty as they move forward with complying with the transactions and code sets regulation. Given that this bill does provide needed relief for our states and given the time constraints we are facing, we believe this compromise is appropriate and do not feel an additional extension can be acquired.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I thank my colleague for raising this matter. It is my concern that the pre-market review function at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health does not have sufficient resources to keep up with the tremendous pace of innovation that is now taking place in the health sector. Despite the FDA's ongoing efforts to improve in this area, review times for breakthrough medical devices are lengthy and likely to get longer. While this bill makes important progress toward giving FDA the funds it needs to carry out its mission, I hope the chairman would work with us in conference to find a way to provide the resources needed to reduce medical device application review times.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Like Senator Craig, I appreciate the cooperation of our colleagues in helping us to work through this issue. We have arrived at a solution that is agreeable to the majority of parties involved, while at the same time reaching our goal of providing relief to small providers and plans and public health programs that are struggling to prepare their systems for this cost. Senator Craig and I would have preferred that this bill go further in providing more time and coordination for affected entities. On the other hand, we acknowledge that others would prefer no action in this area. Since we are just one year from the scheduled compliance date, however, we recognize that all those affected need some certainty as they move forward with complying with the transactions and code sets regulation. Given that this bill does provide needed relief for our states and given the time constraints we are facing, we believe this compromise is appropriate and do not feel an additional extension can be acquired.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, the legislation that is on the floor is legislation I will vote for and support. I think it advances our country's interests in dealing with the issue of terrorism. But I don't want to talk about what is in the bill; I want to talk about something that is not now in the bill and should be. I want to ask the question, Why? I came to the floor an hour ago and was surprised to find out that something about which I care very much, something agreed to in the Senate, is now no longer in this legislation. Here is the issue. I held and chaired a hearing in my subcommittee on Appropriations a couple weeks ago. The Customs Service was there and Immigration was there. They said we have a system in this country called the advance passenger information system. It is a system under which international air carriers electronically transmit to the Customs Service passenger and cargo manifests, so that before they enter and are cleared for departure, we know who is on that plane and what is on that plane, so we can determine whether there are people who should not be allowed to enter this country. That is the advance passenger information system. It works, but it is voluntary and only 85 percent of the carriers are complying. I asked at my hearing of Customs and Immigration: Should this be mandatory? They said: Absolutely, we need you to make this mandatory. When we had the antiterrorism bill on the floor of the Senate, I had cleared an amendment in the managers' package that would make this mandatory. Let me tell you of the airlines that do not comply, for which we don't get advance passenger information: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Royal Jordanian, Pakistani International, to name a few airlines that do not comply under the voluntary standard and give us no advance passenger information.

Mr. DORGAN. I understand we are under a time agreement and I am allotted 10 minutes; is that correct?

Mr. DORGAN. I inquire of the Senator from Utah, what possibly could be their motive to not want this in the antiterrorism bill?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Utah. It is not his fault. I understand he strongly supports this. I kind of felt blind-sided an hour ago when I was told this wasn't in the bill we are discussing because we had cleared it. Apparently, some folks from the other side of this Capitol have this notion of muscle flexing with respect to jurisdictional standards. Frankly, I don't understand that on an issue that is this important. We need advance passenger information clearing--not on a voluntary basis but on a mandatory basis. Somehow it got left out. I thank the Senator from Utah for his cooperation because we are going to get this done. This needs to be done. If we have a few small- minded people in this Capitol simply protecting their turf and who don't seem to worry about combating terrorism, we will move beyond them and we are not going to pay much attention to their concerns. If I might ask, how much time remains on my 10 minutes?

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, while we are waiting for amendments to be offered, I wanted to make a couple of comments about this subcommittee bill and talk about the work done by Senator Kohl and Senator Cochran on this bill. As always, as I have indicated before, a lot of difficult work goes into putting together the Agriculture appropriations bill. Senators Kohl and Cochran work very well together. I, for one, appreciate their cooperation and their assistance. I think they have put together a good piece of legislation. There are two issues that I have on previous occasions brought to the floor during the consideration of this legislation. One issue we discussed last year on this bill, among other things, is the reimportation of prescription drugs. This issue deals with drug prices, and what we can do to lower those prices. As I understand it, in the House of Representatives in their Agriculture appropriations bill, there is a provision dealing with the reimportation of drugs that will come to conference this year. It is my intention not to offer an amendment in the Senate on this matter this year--not because it is not important because it is very much so, but as we all know too well, a number of things have happened at this point to change our focus. Other events have happened in this country that have caused us to focus on other serious issues dealing with terrorism and so on. I think this is not the point at which we ought to go off into the medicine importation debate. Therefore, I will not offer an amendment dealing with the reimportation of prescription drugs. However, let me say this issue will not go away. It is still critically important. The issue will be alive in conference because there is a provision in the bill sent to us by the House of Representatives. One of the reasons we--myself, Senator Jeffords, Senator Stabenow, Senator Snowe, Senator Wellstone, and a number of others of us--have worked on the issue of prescription drug prices and reimportation is that prescription drugs are priced higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world. You see a prescription drug sold across the counter in this country to the American consumer at the highest price in the world. That is not fair. I have told colleagues of my experience in taking a group of senior citizens from North Dakota up to Emerson, Canada, just 5 miles across the North Dakota-Canadian border. In a little one-room pharmacy in Canada, you can buy the same prescription drugs sold in Pembina, ND. The only difference is price--same drug, same pill, put in the same bottle, manufactured by the same company. You can buy it for 50-percent or 70-percent less across the border in Canada than you can in the United States. That is not fair to the American consumer, and it is not fair pricing. We all know spending on prescription drugs is increasing dramatically--15, 16, 18 percent a year, year after year. The American people--particularly senior citizens--are very concerned about this. One of the proposals we had offered previously was to say: If this is a global economy, why can that not work for everybody, why not for all Americans? Why can't an American citizen or, yes, an American pharmacist, or a distributor get access to cheaper drugs in Winnipeg, Canada, and bring them back and pass the savings along to the American consumer? Let me give a couple of examples. Cipro, a drug most of us now know about, is used to treat infections. In recent days, we have seen that it has been given to thousands of people who have been exposed to anthrax. The average wholesale price in the United States is $399 a bottle. You can buy Cipro in Canada at $171 a bottle. Let me say that again. A bottle of Cipro--same strength, same number of tablets--in Canada costs $171, but when you buy it in the United States, it is $399. Why more than twice as expensive in the United States? Why does the American consumer pay more than twice as much for the same drug, put in the same bottle, made in an FDA-approved plant? Does that make sense? Or take the example of Zocor. A football coach tells us on television in an advertisement that I suppose I have seen 500 times that Zocor would be great to lower your cholesterol. The average wholesale price in the United States is $3.82 for one 20-milligram tablet. In Canada, it is $1.82. Fair? I don't think so. Zoloft is used to treat depression. In the United States, it is $2.34 per 50 milligram tablet. In Canada, the exact same tablet costs $1.28. Fair? I don't think so. For every dollar we spend for the same prescription drugs in this country, the Canadians spend 64 cents; the Swedes pay 68 cents; in Great Britain it costs 65 cents; and in Italy, 51 cents. That is what is angering the American people and propelling a number of us to say if this global economy is to work, why can't it work for all Americans? Why can't a pharmacist from Grand Forks, ND, access the same prescription drug produced in an FDA-approved plant and bring it back and pay half the price and pass the savings along to the consumer in this country. I offered an amendment of this type last year. We went to conference. We actually succeeded in getting this agreed to in conference. And both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration Secretaries of Health and Human Services said they would not implement this legislation because they said it would not, among other things, save money. Let me ask if there is anybody who has gone past the third grade who doesn't understand that, if you buy Cipro in the United States and pay $399 a bottle and are only required to pay $171 a bottle in Canada, that you can't save money by buying the bottle from Canada. I guess the only people who think that are the two successive Secretaries of Health and Human Services. I don't know what kind of math they taught in their schools, but I went to a school with 40 students in all 4 high school grades. There were 9 in my senior class. I studied the highest math they offered, and I can understand that this saves money, and there is no Secretary of any Agency in the Federal Government who can convince us otherwise. Nonetheless, neither administration will implement it. The result is a law that was passed last year is not yet implemented. For reasons I discussed before, we will not offer the amendment on this piece of legislation. But this will be a conferenceable issue because a provision is coming from the House on the Agriculture appropriations bill, and we will resolve this then. It is, I think, an unusual time in our country's history, as we wage a fight against terrorism and deal with a range of issues, so that perhaps this is not the right time to have a full-scale debate about this issue. But there will probably never be a right time, and there will be a time when we must force this again on behalf of the American consumer, to ask how do you justify this? How do you justify drug companies charging the highest prices to the American consumers out of any consumers in the world? How do you justify doubling and tripling the price? How do you justify to a woman who has breast cancer that she ought to pay 10 times more money for Tamoxifen purchased in the United States than in Canada. How do you justify that to somebody fighting cancer, who has to fight a pricing policy for prescription drugs that is wrong? The answer is that you cannot justify it. That is why this Congress, sooner or later--and I hope sooner--will deal with that subject. Now, Mr. President, there is one other issue on which I have traditionally offered an amendment on this subcommittee. Again, I will not because I understand we are not able to do it this year for a number of reasons. Each year, in recent years, we have had to offer amendments to the Agriculture appropriations bill on the floor of the Senate trying to provide some weather disaster and economic relief. Why? Because the Freedom to Farm bill was miserable, a miserable failure. It was a disaster, in my judgment. So each year, because it was not countercyclical, it didn't provide help when farmers needed it--or enough help--as we saw commodity prices collapse. We had to try to put some sort of disaster relief in the bill, both weather and economic. We normally described it as emergency spending. We went to conference and boosted it. I would say the Senator from Wisconsin and the Senator from Mississippi were instrumental in making all of that assistance available to family farmers in this country. I commend them for that. We will likely, in some areas of the country, again this year, need some weather disaster assistance. I understand that in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming--and some other areas that colleagues have talked about--there has been drought. And in some other areas, too much rain has fallen. I expect there won't be a weather disaster amendment this year to this appropriations bill because I don't think the money exists or the emergency category exists to accommodate that. But there will be an economic stimulus package that will be discussed and considered, and it seems to me that one of the things that might be considered would be a livestock and crop loss assistance for disaster aid to those who suffered disasters. In fact, it is stimulative because that money gets in the hands of producers who then are able to use that immediately to deal with the debts they have and put that money on the main street of our small towns and cities across the country. So as we move along, even though this subcommittee will not carry these two amendments in its markup this year, it is my hope both of them will continue to be considered, one in conference because it will come from the House, and the second, I hope, perhaps in the stimulus package when we have an opportunity to consider that in the Senate. Finally, there are a lot of provisions of this Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee bill that are critically important dealing with research and other matters relating to American agriculture. Our agriculture in this country ought to be a source of enormous pride to all of us. In my judgment, family farmers in America are America's economic all-stars. Yet they have had an awfully tough time year after year as commodity prices have collapsed. One part of trying to help them is not only trying to write a new farm bill, which we should do and we ought to do soon. In fact, we ought to bring a farm bill to this Chamber within a matter of weeks. But, one part of assistance in addition to that farm bill is to provide the kind of research help that will allow family farmers the ability to have access to new seeds--disease-resistant strains of seeds--to make them more effective and reduce risks. That is what much of this bill is about, investment and research. I again say thanks to the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Kohl, and Senator Cochran from Mississippi. It is always a pleasure to work with them. They do a good job, and I am proud of them. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have been waiting here while a couple of our colleagues are trying to resolve some differences in the Cloakroom on an amendment. It is taking them a while so it gives me an opportunity to say a bit about an amendment that I have offered to this bill the last 2 years and which the Senate has accepted both time. I have not offered it this year and will not this evening. I wanted to explain why. That amendment deals with the shipment of food and medicine to Cuba and the ability of American farmers to sell food to Cuba. In the last 2 years I offered amendments to this appropriations bill that would have eliminated the embargo that now prevents American farmers from selling food to Cuba. As you know, the American embargo of Cuba has been a failure for 40 years. That embargo has included restrictions on the shipment of food and medicine to Cuba. I have said for several years it is morally wrong, in my judgment, for us to use food and medicine as a weapon. It is not right for us to use food and medicine as part of an embargo. It doesn't injure Fidel Castro. He has never missed a meal because we don't ship food to Cuba. Our allies, the Canadians and Europeans and others, of course, are able to sell food and other goods to Cuba. It is just the American farmer who is prevented from accessing that markets. Twice I have offered amendments to fix the problem. The first year my amendment got hijacked because the conference got abandoned and the leaders would not allow it to resume because they knew I had the votes in conference to end the embargo on food and medicine shipments to Cuba. The second year the House of Representatives changed the language and boasted they had solved the problem, but of course they did not. What they provided was that food could be shipped to Cuba, except the sales could not be financed even with private financing. So we still, in fact, have an embargo on food shipments to Cuba. There are no food shipments happening between this country and Cuba. So the U.S. government still tells our farmers: You pay the cost of this embargo. You cannot be part of the Cuban market for food. You can't be a part of it, the Canadians can, the Europeans can, but you can't because we have an embargo of which you are going to pay the cost. This is unfair to farmers. And I don't think it is a moral policy for our country to use food as a weapon. Let me say, finally, the provision that was completed last year started the right way in the Senate with my amendment. We did the right thing. It got watered down and then perverted in the conference, and those who did it that boasted that this really solved the problem. A year later we know it did not. I would say by this time next year, when I certainly will again offer this amendment in the Senate, it will be quite evident that what they boasted of last year never materialized at all. Farmers were still paying the price for this embargo. We have had plenty of experience with embargoes on food. It ought not be a lesson we need to learn two or three times. Shooting ourselves in the foot doesn't really solve much of the problem. As I indicated, Fidel Castro has never missed a meal because of the embargo. He does just fine. It is our family farmers who suffer. If necessary, I will offer an amendment to fix this problem again next year. I would like to do so now. However, I think this is not the time. It is late in the year. We should have passed this appropriations bill weeks ago. If I offered this amendment this evening, we would be off into a debate that would last many hours. But I would like to remind my colleagues that I have offered it for the last 2 years. I will offer it again, and some of my colleagues on this appropriations subcommittee will join me the next time we go around. In deference to the work that we need to do and the times we are in, I think it is important for all of us to work together to try to find a way for us to avoid the kind of controversy that divides us hour after hour after hour. We have been through all of that. I wanted to explain why I am not going to offer that amendment this evening. But be sure to keep tuned because it will be offered again. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to thank the chairman and the ranking member for supporting my request to expand research on cereal crops and sunflowers at the Agricultural Research Service Northern Crops Research Laboratory at Fargo, ND. This bill recommends an increase of $900,000 for expanded research on small grains and sunflowers. The economic viability of small grains industries remains a concern as a result of production and marketing problems faced by producers in recent years. The barley industry has been particularly hard hit due to weather related problems. We have seen production of this crop decline by 40 percent during the past ten years due to weather related problems. In North Dakota, the decline in production has been even more dramatic with production falling off by 53 percent during the same time period. I think we need to use a portion of the increased funding over the last year's level to develop new barley varieties that are high yielding and have good feed quality attributes. No such program currently exists and I think increased research in this area would help the barley industry gain a competitive edge.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the expansion efforts of the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, ND. This facility, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), has been a national and international leader in mineral nutrition research for more than 30 years. In 1995, legislative authority was granted to the center to purchase four city lots to expand its operation. Since then, three lots have been acquired and are being used by the facility. The ARS was not able to purchase the fourth lot at the same time because the owner of an adjacent lot was not prepared to sell. Recently, the owner of the fourth lot decided to sell his property. This is timely, because the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Center recently acquired a mobile research laboratory with funds this bill provided last year to conduct nutritional studies of underserved populations such as Native Americans and the rural elderly. This vehicle needs to be stored in a secure, climate-controlled garage. There is currently no storage facility in Grand Forks appropriate to store this mobile lab, but one could be erected on this adjacent property. It would take no appropriation of additional funds for the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Center to purchase this lot. The facility merely needs a reprogramming of funds, and as a member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, I support this request. It is my understanding that the ARS Area Director, as well as ARS headquarters, support allowing the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Center to spend its funds to purchase this lot. In conference, it is my hope that we can provide direction in the statement of managers allowing this reprogramming to move forward. I would like to solicit the support of the leaders of the subcommittee for this purpose.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, earlier I introduced the American Travel Industry Stabilization Act on behalf of myself, Senator Conrad, Senator Reid, Senator Inouye, and Senator Specter. I wish to simply explain the purpose for this. As we proceed to think through the economic stimulus package that we will put together to try to provide lift to this economy, we need to consider what has happened to the travel and tourism industry in this country. I had a hearing on this subject in the commerce subcommittee that I chair. We know we have provided some loan guarantees to the airlines, and they were very much needed loan guarantees, and I supported them. But, there are a range of other travel and tourism businesses and industries in this country that are in desperate trouble. We propose some loan guarantees to try to be helpful to them during these difficult times. Their businesses are directly tied to the airline industry. When this country shut down the airline industry, we, of course, had a significant impact on the ancillary businesses attached to that industry as well. I want to call attention to this bill today in the hope that my colleagues who are interested in this subject--and I know there are many of them--may consider cosponsoring this legislation. I know my colleague, Senator Reid, who is in the Chamber may well wish to say a few words as well. I yield the floor.