Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise to briefly discuss the nomination of Hector Barreto to head the Small Business Administration. I note that Senator Kerry, the chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, supports this nomination. I plan to support the nomination as well. I think he is a good appointment. He will serve our country well. I look forward to working with him in his new role as Administrator of the Small Business Administration. As he begins his tenure at the SBA, I did not want this moment to go by without pointing out to him, and to the SBA, that we face, in my judgment, a rather severe challenge about an issue that concerns me greatly. Let me describe the issue. The SBA has packaged up a series of loans that it has made, including disaster loans, and sold them with deep discounts to financial companies around the country. The representation to the American people was that this would not impact their loans at all, and it is just a matter of selling them so that the SBA does not have to do loan servicing. That sounded benign enough, I guess, to almost everybody in the country. It sounded benign enough to Congress. And so the SBA sold loans, including disaster loans. Let me describe the impact of what has happened as a result of the sale of those loans. Most Americans will remember the great flood in the Red River Valley in 1997, when the city of Grand Forks, ND, with nearly 50,000 residents, had to evacuate the entire city. The city was inundated with floodwaters from the Red River. In the middle of the flood, after the entire city had been evacuated, a fire started in the downtown area of the city. So we had the spectacle of nearly 3 years worth of snow falling in 3 months and when the snow melted, it caused a dramatic flood along the Red River, inundating the city of Grand Forks. Then a fire started in the middle of the city, and firetrucks tried to get into the evacuated city on flatbeds and various devices to fight a fire in the center of downtown Grand Forks. It was a devastating time for the people of Grand Forks. When the waters receded, most homeowners and business men and women of Grand Forks, came back to their homes and businesses to find severe damage. They found massive damage in buildings all across this city. The city, of course, was helped by FEMA, the SBA and other agencies of the Federal Government. President Clinton came to Grand Forks and said: You're not alone. The American people are with you. The American people want to help you. And, indeed, the American people did. This Congress was generous to the communities along the Red River Valley and to Grand Forks especially. Grand Forks and East Grand Forks were hit very hard, and they required a substantial amount of help. So many of these businesses and families, in order to get back on their feet, took a low-interest SBA loan, often a 4-percent loan with a rather lengthy term. We provide disaster loans in law so that the SBA can help these families and businesses get back on their feet after a natural disaster. Then, after these businesses and homeowners were able to get the loans to help them get back on their feet, the SBA sold the loans, including disaster loans, to private companies. These are private financial companies that come in and buy a batch of loans and often pay about 70 cents on the dollar and then assume the responsibility for servicing the loans. That is a long story to tell you where we are at the moment. We have discovered that homeowners and businesses in Grand Forks, ND, that were hit with one disaster--that is, a disaster coming from a river that inundated their community--are in the middle of another disaster. These people have discovered that their disaster loans were sold to private companies. These loans are now being serviced by private companies who have put many of these families and businesses right smack in a pair of handcuffs when it comes to trying to sell their home and buy another home or sell an asset in a business in order to buy another asset to make the business more efficient. The companies that bought these loans are now saying: No, you can't substitute collateral. If you do that, you are going to have to pay a very substantial fee. We will not allow you to transfer the lien. In other words, the company is sticking to the terms of the SBA loan with respect to the interest rate and time but is not nearly as flexible as the SBA has always been with these homeowners and businesses. The SBA would tell borrowers: We understand, we will allow you to transfer the lien to the next home you are going to buy, or, we understand, you can purchase these additional assets your business needs to become more efficient and transfer the lien from the other asset you are going to sell. What homeowners and small business owners are discovering now is that no such flexibility exists with private companies. Instead, they are told: No dice. That is a very serious problem. People hit with a disaster are now given a pair of handcuffs when a private company buys their disaster loan. That is wrong. That ought not happen. Let me just mention a couple people. There is a woman named Marie from Grand Forks, ND, who wrote me and said: I'm another flood victim trying to find a way to transfer the current loan I have from the SBA to another property. My SBA loan was sold to Aurora Loan Services, and I have been told by Aurora they don't transfer loans, period. So essentially I'm out of luck. Personal circumstances made it necessary for me to sell my property, and I need this low interest rate in order to be able to afford another property and get back on my feet. A man named Steven also wrote to me. He is a businessman in Grand Forks, ND. He said: I'm an optometrist. In the flood of 1997, our office received 5 feet of water. Pretty much a total loss. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me request 5 minutes of the time allotted to our side for my presentation.

Mr. DORGAN. I will not read all of this letter, but Steven goes on to say: We see the opportunity to borrow money at 4 percent for 30 years as a gift from the American people. These people were inundated with water, in deep trouble, and the Federal Government said: We are here to help you. Let's give you a helping hand to get you back on your feet. The letter continues: Nobody was going to make our community whole overnight, but these loans over 30 years, would go a long way in helping. Then he describes his need to have flexibility to purchase additional assets and the difficulty he has had trying to negotiate with the company that purchased the loan. They have simply said: No dice. No way. What he is saying is that he has been handcuffed by this process. He had no idea that would be the case. He had no idea the SBA would sell his disaster loan to a private company that won't allow him to transfer a lien as the SBA has almost always done to disaster victims. I tell these stories only to say there is something wrong with this process. We ought not sell disaster loans. We simply should not do that. The SBA should service those loans and do so in a thoughtful and rational way. Let's not sell those loans. We certainly ought not allow citizens who have been hit with a disaster discover there is a second disaster around the corner if they need to sell a home and purchase another or need to purchase an essential asset for their business but can't sell the old asset because they can't transfer the lien. This is not a fair thing to do. We ought to do a couple things. No. 1, we should ask the new SBA head--someone who I intend to support and vote for, Mr. Barreto--to work with us to see that these companies that have purchased the old loans will use the same flexibility in servicing those loans as the SBA previously did. No. 2, let's not have the SBA selling these loans in the future. That is not the right thing and the fair thing to do. It may require legislation, I expect, to prevent that. I hope to discuss that with some of my colleagues and hope they will agree that those who have been hit with disaster in this country don't deserve to be handcuffed later by a private company that is able to buy deeply discounted SBA disaster loans. This is not the right thing to do to the citizens of this country who have suffered through a disaster. We can do better. I hope we will. I hope my comments will be noted by Mr. Barreto. I wish him well. Although I don't expect there will be a recorded vote on his nomination today, I think he is a good appointment. I commend the President for offering this candidate for public service. I hope we can get together and visit about this important issue very soon, when he assumes office. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I come to the floor to speak again about the issue of highway safety and the issue of allowing Mexican long-haul truckers to come in beyond the 20-mile limit in this country because, as the President suggests, that is part of what NAFTA requires. I disagree with that. Before I talk about that issue, I will talk about something that happened yesterday and has been happening day after day on the floor of the House. A colleague stood up yesterday and said: Is this a way to run the Senate? He was upset at the end of the day that not much had happened on this appropriations bill. What is happening on these appropriations bills is, we are working in the Appropriations Committee to get these bills out. The chairman of the committee, Senator Byrd, and the ranking member, Senator Stevens, have done a wonderful job working with all of the subcommittees. We are getting the bills out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. We are getting them to the floor of the Senate. What we see is a slow-motion action by people in the Senate who decide they really don't want the Senate to act. They don't want the Senate to move. I don't think it is in the Senate's interest and I don't think it is in the country's interest to slow this process down. We have very limited time. We on the Appropriations Committee have tried to do a serious job of putting together good appropriations bills that we can consider, to move forward, so we can have conferences and get the spending bills in place and signed into law before October 1. Senator Murray and Senator Shelby have worked on this piece of legislation. While I have differences on the issue of Mexican trucking with not only the chairman and the ranking member, I also have differences, very substantial differences, with others who want to offer amendments from the other side. We ought to be able to resolve it, have the amendments and have the votes and move on, finish whatever other amendments are available to be offered to this bill, go to third reading, and pass this appropriations bill. I bet Senator Murray and Senator Shelby, who have exhibited enormous patience sitting on the floor waiting for people to offer amendments, would like nothing better than to have this Senate dispatch this bill. Today. Move the amendments. Get this bill out of here. While someone stands on the floor and says, is this any way to run the Senate, the way Senator Daschle and other leaders are trying to run the Senate, bringing bills to the floor, offering amendments, and getting the bills passed, others are sitting on the back seat of the bicycle built for two with the brakes on, peddling up hill. The message is either lead or get out of the way for those who want to stall the business. Senator Daschle has come to the floor and said that these are the pieces of legislation we have to finish before the end of next week. He is serious about that. He should be. He understands what the Senate has to accomplish. We have some who don't care much; they want to stall and stall and stall. We have a number of appropriations bills that are waiting. Let's get this bill done and then move on. It seems to me it serves no national purpose to hold up appropriations bills for any great length of time. Having said that--which I said because I was nonplused by someone standing up being critical of the way the Senate is being run when we are doing the right thing but we are not getting the cooperation; we need the cooperation to get these things done--we ask for more cooperation today to see if we cannot get this appropriations bill moving and through the Senate. This morning's Washington Post says ``Battle on Mexican Trucking Heats Up.'' It describes two positions on the issue of Mexican trucking. Really, there are three positions. I want to describe the one the Washington Post forgot to mention. There is the position that is offered in this legislation by Senator Murray and Senator Shelby. They have negotiated and reached a position that describes certain conditions that must be met before Mexican long-haul trucks move into this country. The other position is the position adopted by the House by a nearly 2-1 vote which says we cannot spend money; we are prohibited from spending money to approve the licenses or approve the permits to allow Mexican trucks to come into this country beyond the 20-mile limit during the coming fiscal year. I happen to favor the House approach because I think that is the only way to stop what otherwise inevitably will happen. The approach taken by the Chair of the subcommittee and the ranking member is one that I think has merit, but one that I think requires certifications that certain things are met. My experience with certifications is that if an administration wants to do something, it will certify anything. I worry very much it will not stop what I don't want to happen. What I don't want to happen is this: I don't want Mexican long-haul truckers to be doing long hauls into the United States of America until and unless we are sure they are going to meet the same safety requirements our trucking industry has to meet: the same safety requirements with respect to equipment, and the same safety requirements with respect to drivers. As I did yesterday, I refer to a wonderful piece written in the San Francisco Chronicle by a reporter who went to Mexico and rode with a Mexican long-haul trucker. This is what he discovered. He rode 3 days in a Mexican truck with a truckdriver. During the 3 days, they traveled 1,800 miles and that truckdriver slept 7 hours in 3 days, driving a truck that would not have passed inspection in this country, driving a truck for $7 a day, driving a truck that if it comes to the border in this country under today's circumstances would likely not be inspected for safety, and if it were allowed to continue into this country on a long haul, one would expect that some American driver in his or her rearview mirror would see a truck with 80,000 pounds on an 18-wheel truck moving down America's highways without an assurance it has brakes, without assurance it has the kind of safety equipment that we require in this country. I don't think that is what we ought to allow. I will not speak at great length because I think there are a couple others who wish to offer amendments this morning. Let me compare the safety regulations between the United States and Mexico. The free trade agreement between our two countries, one which I voted against, has in my judgment, not been a good trade agreement for our country. Prior to the trade agreement, we had a slight trade surplus with Mexico; now we have turned that into a very large deficit. Now we are told by President Bush that because of that trade agreement, we must allow Mexican trucks into our country beyond the 20-mile border. In other words, we must allow Mexican trucks without the same safety requirements--because those safety requirements do not exist in Mexico--to come in with drivers making $7 a day and do long hauls in the United States. That is not a trade agreement that seems, in my judgment, to represent this country's best interests. Here are the differences between the United States and Mexico with respect to safety regulations: Vehicle safety standards in the United States, comprehensive standards for components such as anti-lock brakes, underride guards, nice visibility, front brakes: Mexico, far less rigorous and, in fact, in some places no inspection. Maximum weight: 80,000 pounds in the United States; 135,000 pounds in Mexico. Hazardous materials rules: Very strict standards, training, licensure and an inspection regime in this country that is very strict. In Mexico, fewer identified chemicals and substances and fewer licensure requirements. Roadside inspections: In this country, yes; in Mexico, no. Hours of service: In the United States you can drive up to 10 hours consecutively in the trucking industry. You can work up to 15 consecutive hours with a mandatory 8 hours of rest. You cannot drive more than 70 hours during each 8-day period. In Mexico, none. I described the driver who drives for 3 days and has 7 hours of sleep, driving with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle riding beside him--3 days, 7 hours. Do you want you or your family to have that truck in your rearview mirror? I don't think so. Hours of service in Mexico, none. Random drug testing: In Mexico, none. In the United States, yes, for all drivers. Medical condition disqualification: In the United States, yes, we do disqualify them for medical conditions if they cannot meet medical conditions. In Mexico, no. Logbooks: In Mexico they say, yes, we require logbooks. There is a requirement in law. But, in fact, no driver carries a logbook. It is very much like the Mexican contention that they have very strict environmental rules. When we had American manufacturing plants moving to the maquiladora border, at the border between the United States and Mexico, we had people worrying about environmental rules. Mexico said: Yes, we have very strict environmental laws. Yes, they do and they do not enforce any of them. Strict laws, no enforcement. The same is true with logbooks. Finally, here is a picture. GAO, the Government Accounting Office, did the investigation. Overweight trucks from Mexico hauling steel rolls at Brownsville, TX, a gross weight of 134,000 pounds. The U.S. limit is 80,000 pounds. The Department of Transportation's Inspector General said, when we talked about lack of parking spaces at inspection stations in this country as trucks enter--and, incidentally, there are very few inspection stations; only two of them on all of that border are open during all commercial operating hours. Most of them have one or two parking spaces. In response to one of the problems with parking spaces, when we said, why don't they just turn the trucks around if they are unsafe, he said: Let me give an example. We have a truck come in from Mexico and we inspect it and it has no brakes. We cannot turn it around and send it back to Mexico with no brakes, an 18-wheel truck with no brakes. Is that what you want in your rearview mirror? I don't think so. We have 27 inspection sites, two of them have permanent facilities. Most of them have no access to telephone lines to be able to check drivers' licenses on some sort of database. The fact is, this is a colossal failure. It would be a serious mistake for our country to embrace a policy suggested by the President to allow Mexican long-haul trucks to come into this country beyond the 20-mile border and haul all across this country with an industry that nowhere near matches the safety requirements that we insist on in this country for trucks and truckdrivers. All of us understand the consequences. I understand there are people who believe very strongly that we ought to just allow this to happen because it is part of our trade agreement. No trade agreement in this country, none, should ever compromise safety in this country--not with respect to food safety, not with respect to highway safety. No trade agreement has the right to compromise safety for the American people at any time, period. We have a disagreement about this issue. We will resolve it, I assume, soon. The sooner the better as far as I am concerned. My hope is that we will see people come to the floor of the Senate and offer whatever amendments exist on not only this issue but other issues today. Then we can finish this bill. Senator Daschle, the majority leader of the Senate, has made it quite clear we have work to do. It does not serve this Senate's interests to decide to stay away from the floor of the Senate but try to hold up the work of the Senate. Let's come to the floor. Let's hash these amendments out, decide what we want to do with them, vote on them and pass this piece of legislation. The Senate owes that to the appropriators and the Appropriations Committee. We owe it to Senator Daschle and Senator Lott, who are trying to make this Senate do its work on time. I hope today we can see real progress on this bill. I hope especially one way or another, with one strategy or another, we can find a way to represent this country's best interests on the subject of stopping or preventing the long-haul Mexican trucks from coming into this country because they do not have anywhere near the equivalent safety standards on which we must insist they have, before we allow them to be on American roads. 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 rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes, with the proviso that if someone comes to offer an amendment on the underlying bill, I will relinquish the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Are we on the Gramm-McCain amendment?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Some of us think the Murray-Shelby amendment that is in the bill is not strong enough. I certainly would oppose attempts to weaken it. The issue here is not that we are singling out one country versus another country. The issue is safety on American highways. The fact is that we have a trade agreement that links the United States, Canada, and Mexico. I happen to have voted against that agreement because I think it is very hard to link two economies as dissimilar as the economies of the United States and Mexico. Notwithstanding my vote against the trade agreement, I don't think anyone who voted in favor of it ever would have contemplated, when they were voting, that we would be required to compromise safety on America's highways as part of the trade agreement. That is not logical at all. I indicated earlier this morning that we and Mexico have very different standards with respect to long-haul trucking. The proposition by the President and by the NAFTA arbitration panel that ruled on this is that we should allow Mexican long-haul trucks to operate within this country beyond the 20-miles in which they are currently permitted. The logical question to ask is, What should we expect from the Mexican trucking industry? Can we expect them to meet the same safety requirements that are imposed on American trucking firms and drivers? The answer clearly is no. They have no minimum standard hours of service in Mexico. They do not carry logbooks in their truck. They, by and large, do not have inspections for safety on their vehicles. They have no random drug testing for their truckdrivers. You can just go on and on. All of us understand they do not have anywhere near the kind of safety inspections and regulatory requirements that we impose on our trucking industry in this country. Let me refer again to the San Francisco Chronicle that I thought did a wonderful piece. I know it is just anecdotal but still it is, in my judgment, representative of what we find with the Mexican trucking industry. A reporter went to Mexico and spent 3 days riding with a Mexican trucker. They had a long-haul truck carrying freight from Mexico City to Tijuana. They drove 1,800 miles in 3 days. The truckdriver slept 7 hours in 3 days. This is a truckdriver sleeps 7 hours in 3 days and drives a truck that could not pass a safety inspection in this country. And we are told that a trade agreement requires us to allow Mexican trucks into this country for long hauls, notwithstanding other issues. It is illogical, in my judgment, to do that. This is not about singling Mexico out. It is about protecting our people on our highways. Do you want or do you want your loved one to look in a rearview mirror and see an 18-wheel truck bearing down on you with a 80,000- pound load, wondering whether it has been inspected, whether it has brakes, whether the driver has driven for 2 days and slept for 6 hours? Do you want that for yourself or your family or your neighbor? I don't, nor do I think would most Americans want that to be the case. I know one might say: You are being pejorative here about Mexican truckers and the Mexican trucking industry. All I can tell you is it is a very different industry than the U.S. trucking industry. They drive a much older fleet of trucks than we do. They do not have the same requirements that we have imposed on our drivers. They don't have the same inspection regime that we impose on American trucks. The question for this Senate is, What kind of safety requirements are we going to require and impose on our highways with respect to foreign trucks that are coming into this country hauling foreign goods? I have said before, let me just say it again, the ultimate perversity, in my judgment, of this terrible trade agreement will be to have Mexican long-haul truckers driving unsafe trucks, hauling unfairly subsidized Canadian grain into American cities. You talk about a hood ornament to foolishness, that is it. With respect to the amendment, the amendment on the floor now is to weaken the Murray-Shelby language. I have spent time on the floor saying, frankly, the Murray-Shelby language is not bulletproof as far as I am concerned, in terms of preventing unsafe vehicles from coming onto American highways. I would much prefer the House version, the so- called Sabo language, which the House passed 2-1, which simply said no funds can be expended to approve applications to allow long-haul Mexican trucks into this country in the next fiscal year. It will take some time to integrate the trucking requirements and regulations between our countries. Perhaps it can be done, but there is not a ghost of a chance it can be done by January 1 of next year, which is when President Bush says we ought to allow this to happen. There is not a ghost of a chance for that to occur. We had a hearing in the Commerce Committee on which I serve, and the Secretary of Transportation and the Inspector General for the Department of Transportation testified. The testimony was fascinating. We have 27 border stations through which Mexican trucks now move into this country. They are only allowed to go 20 miles into this country because of safety concerns. Yet we have found truckdrivers operating Mexican trucks in 26 States in our country, including the State of North Dakota. So we know that the current 20-mile limit is being violated. At the hearing we held in the Commerce Committee, we were told of the 27 border stations through which trucks enter this country. Only two of them have inspection facilities that are open during all commercial hours of operations. Even in those circumstances there are a very limited number of inspectors. In most cases where they have inspectors, they work only a few hours a day, and they have one or two parking spaces for a truck. We asked the Secretary and Inspector General of the Department of Transportation: Why do you need a parking space? They said: We just can't turn them back. For example, if a truck comes and has no brakes, we can't turn that truck back to Mexico. Let's not forget that 36 percent of the Mexican trucks inspected are placed out of service for serious safety violations. Think about this for a moment. A truck shows up at the border with a driver who has been driving for 3 days and has had 7 hours of sleep. They discover it has no brakes. They don't have a parking space to park it. They know they cannot turn it back. Here we in the Senate are debating about allowing trucks into this country unimpeded. The other side says that Mexican trucks face a serious inspection regime. Show me. Show me the money. Show me the money you are going to commit to have a rigorous regime of inspection at every single U.S.- Mexico border crossing. Show me the money because it doesn't exist. Even if you show me the money, show me the compliance regime by which you send investigators down to Mexico to investigate the trucking companies before they give them the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval so we know when someone shows up with a logbook that it hasn't been filled 10 minutes before they reached the border; that it is not somebody who has been up for 20 hours. Show me the money by which you will be able to show the American people they should have confidence these trucks and drivers belong on America's highways. You cannot do it because that money does not exist in our appropriations bills to accomplish that task, and everybody here knows it. Yet we are debating the conditions under which we allow these trucks into this country. The issue before us is the amendment offered by my colleagues, Senators Gramm and McCain. I do not support it. In fact, I do not support at all allowing Mexican trucks to enter this country during the next fiscal year. What I do support is to have our people seriously begin discussions on how you could create reasonably similar inspection opportunities and investigations of the trucking companies and their drivers so at some point when we do this, that we have some certainty of safety on America's roads. We are nowhere near that time frame. It is not going to happen in 6 months. And, in my judgment, it is not going to happen in 18 months. But we have to start working on it now. The best way to work on it, in my judgment, is to do what the House of Representatives did. The worst possible thing to do at this moment is to water down the Murray-Shelby language, which is too weak. This amendment waters down language that I think is not sufficient. The worst possible moment for this Senate would be to support an amendment that carves out the foundation or weakens the foundation of a protection that, in my judgment, still does not meet efficiency. I am going to oppose the amendment offered today by my two colleagues. I have great respect for both of them. In my judgment, the Senate will do this country no favor if it rushes to say that the NAFTA trade agreement allows us to compromise safety on America's roads. A trade agreement, should never, under any circumstance, ask any of us to cast a vote that jeopardizes the safety of America's highways. No trade agreement has that right. No trade agreement that anyone votes for, in my judgment, should allow that to happen to this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senate recently passed the Patients' Bill of Rights and we are anxiously awaiting action by the House. The Patient Protection Act, or the Patients' Bill of Rights, is something we have spent a great deal of time on in the Senate. As Senator Daschle indicated, it was one of our top priorities. We had a great deal of difficulty getting it through the Senate. It took us a good number of years to do that, but after 4 or 5 years of debate, we finally got a Patient Protection Act passed by the Senate. We are now waiting for the House to take similar action. The President says he will veto it. And that is the way the legislative process works. We have to do the best we can to advance public policies that we think strengthen this country. We have done that under the leadership of Senator Daschle, with the cooperation of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We passed a real Patient Protection Act or a real Patients' Bill of Rights. Let me describe why that is important and what it does. All of us have had lengthy debates about what is happening to health care in this country, as more and more Americans have been herded into these groups called managed care organizations. They were created, in some cases, for very good reasons, to try to reduce the cost of health care and control and contain the cost of health care. But in recent years, the for-profit organizations that have become part of the managed care industry have, from time to time, taken actions with respect to patient care that have much more to do with their bottom-line profit than it has to do with patient care. So we had a debate about a Patient Protection Act that says the following: One, you ought to be able to know all of your medical options for treatment, not just the cheapest option for medical treatment. That ought to be a fundamental right for patients. Two, if you have an emergency, you ought to have a right to go to an emergency room. Sound simple? Yes, it is simple. But it is not always the case in this country that with an emergency, you are going to get reimbursement for emergency room treatment by a managed care organization. Three, you have a right to see a specialist when you need one for your medical condition. Does that sound simple and pretty straightforward? Sure, but it doesn't happen all the time. You have a right to clinical trials. You have a right to retain, for example, the relationship you have with your oncologist who has been treating you for breast cancer for 7 years. Even if your employer changes health care organizations, you have a right to continue to see the same oncologist who has been treating you for cancer for 7 years. Those are the kinds of provisions we put in the Patient Protection Act. Let me describe why we did it. We did it because in this country too often patients are discovering that what they believed they were covered for in their medical or health care plan was not in fact covered at all. I have told the story of the woman who went hiking in the Shenandoahs. She fell off a 50-foot cliff and sustained very serious injuries. She was unconscious. She had multiple broken bones and was in very serious condition. She was brought to an emergency room on a gurney unconscious. She survived after a long convalescence, only to find out that the managed care organization said they would not pay for her emergency room treatment because she had not had prior approval for emergency room care. This is a woman hauled into an emergency room unconscious, told that she should have gotten prior approval for emergency room care. Does that literally cry out and beg for some kind of legislative attention? Yes, it does. It is just one piece of the Patient Protection Act providing that, if you have an emergency, you have a right to emergency room treatment. There are so many other examples. For instance, the issue of what is medically necessary. I have held up pictures on the floor of young children born with terribly deformed facial features, being told that the correction of that radically deformed facial feature is not ``medically necessary,'' and therefore the insurance they thought they had with the managed care organization would not cover it. I have told the story often of my colleague, Senator Reid of Nevada and I, holding a hearing in the State of Nevada on this subject, where we heard from a mother of a young boy named Christopher Roe who died at age 16. Christopher had cancer. This young boy fought cancer valiantly but lost his life on his 16th birthday. In the process of fighting cancer, they also had to fight in order to get the treatment he needed. He didn't get it in time. It is an unfair fight to ask a 16-year-old boy to fight cancer and have to fight the insurance company at the same time. His mother held up a picture of young Christopher, a big colored poster picture, and cried at the end of her testimony as she described her son looking up at her from the bedside asking: Mom, how can they do this to a kid? What he was asking was: How can they do this? How can they not provide the treatment I need to give me a chance to live? That boy died at age 16. I have told that story. I have told many other stories, including the story of Ethan Bedrick. Ethan had a very difficult birth and was born with very serious problems because the umbilical cord had shut off his oxygen. A doctor had decided, after evaluating him, that he had only a 50-percent chance of being able to walk by age 5 if he got certain rehabilitative services. A 50- percent chance for this little boy to be able to walk by age 5 was ``insignificant,'' and, therefore, the services were denied. Does it sound bizarre? Does it sound like a system with which we are acquainted? Not to me. This all sounds just Byzantine, that decisions are made about health care on what is medically necessary, what is an emergency, what kind of treatment is available, what kind of treatment is necessary. Some decisions have been made with an eye toward the bottom line of the corporation providing the health care. And that is wrong because human health is not a function of someone's bottom line. We had a woman who suffered a very serious brain injury. She was still conscious. She was in an ambulance, and she asked the ambulance driver to take her to the furthest hospital. There was one closer. She wanted to go to the one that was a bit further away. This is someone in an ambulance with a brain injury. She survived and later was asked: Why did you not want the ambulance to drop you off at the nearest hospital? She said: Because I understood the reputation of that hospital. It was their bottom line, their profit; I did not want to be presented on a gurney with a brain injury and be looked at by a doctor who thought in terms of profit and loss. Doctors wouldn't do that, but a health care system determined by profit and loss, how much would this cost? I wanted someone to see me and determine they wanted to fight for my life regardless of cost. That is what people have been concerned about with respect to managed care. Not all managed care organizations have done this. Some are wonderful. Some have done a great job. Some have not. Some have taken a position that jeopardizes people's health. They have said to people: Here is your option for medical treatment, not giving them all the options that might be available to them, only describing the cheapest option that would be available to be delivered by the health care organization. Is that fair to people in this health care system? The answer clearly is no. So we have had a fight in the Senate the last 3, 4, 5 years. We have a managed care organization that is big, strong, well financed, and they very aggressively oppose what we are trying to do. On the other side are doctors, the American Medical Association. They want to practice medicine in the hospital room. They want to practice medicine in the clinic. They don't want to practice medicine only to find out that some young fellow 1,000 miles away, working as a junior accountant for an insurance company, who hasn't yet shaved twice a week, is making decisions about health care that the doctor is going to deliver in the hospital room. That is not the kind of health care they are dedicated to provide the American people. They didn't study in medical school for the purpose of having somebody 1,000 miles away, who knows very little about health care, tell them how they ought to treat a patient. So we have a battle between the managed care organization, that has spent a great deal of money, putting ads all over television to try to defeat it, and doctors, patients, and other health groups saying: We need this. It was long past the time to get this done, and we finally did it. We finally got it done. We got it through the Senate after a number of years. Now it waits in the House for action. We read day after day of reasons that somehow it is not quite getting done. The big industries that have something at stake are making all the efforts they can to try to defeat the legislation. And if we get it through the House of Representatives--and we should; there is no excuse for this Congress not passing this legislation--the President says he will veto it. He has a right to veto it. I must say, though, what we have enacted in the Senate is almost exactly what they have for law in the State of Texas. I know President Bush vetoed it first when he was Governor of Texas, but later it became law without his signature in Texas. What we are trying to do for the country says essentially the same as exists in the State of Texas with respect to a patients' protection act. Again, let me say that we have a lot of issues in this country. We sink our teeth into a good number of them throughout the year in the Senate. This is a critically important issue for us to get done this year. This issue is very important. We have a responsibility to continue applying pressure in this circumstance to the House. I hope the American people will apply pressure to the House and say: Get this done. Do this bill. Bring it up for a vote, pass it, and send it to the President. The President says he will veto it. I don't know that that is the case. I hope when he looks at this bill, he will understand this is the right bill for the American people. It is the right thing to do. It is very interesting to me that as we look at all of the challenges we face in this country, we have had some great successes, and almost every step of the way we have had people who have said: Not me, help me out, this won't work. All of us come from towns and have friends who are there sitting around being crabby all day long, those who describe what won't work. I come from a town of 300 to 400 people. I spent most of my formative years there. Three or four people there were always crabby about things, and they said, ``This won't work,'' or, ``This will never do.'' But the rest of the town was out doing things. They paved our Main Street while others said it could not be done. It got done because the builders and the doers decided to make it happen. The same is true in the Senate. It doesn't matter what the issue is, it doesn't matter whether it is Social Security, workers rights, minimum wage, we have people in this body who have opposed everything for the first time, and it doesn't matter what it is. Those who progressively want to make changes strengthen this country. It is our burden to say, here are our ideas, here is what we must do to strengthen our country. We have done that. A Patient Protection Act is just one more step in a series of things that we know must be done to help the American people deal with a health care system that has increasingly moved toward managed care and has increasingly empowered the bigger interests and taken away from the American people and the individuals who need health care the opportunity to fight back. That is what the Patient Protection Act or Patients' Bill of Rights is about. Now we have passed that legislation. We have had good leadership in the Senate, and in the last couple of months we have passed legislation dealing with that Patients' Bill of Rights and a number of other things that have been welled up for a long while in the Senate. But now it is done. It is up to the House to do the same. I call on the President to join us. I urge the House to pass this bill, and then I urge the President to sign the bill. Let this bill work for the American people. I know the Senator from Nevada, who attended a hearing with me that I referenced recently, cares a great deal about this issue. I know that at the hearing in the State of Nevada I heard exactly what I had heard at hearings I held in New York, Minnesota, and elsewhere. I held hearings as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee on this issue. It didn't matter where you were, you would hear the same story; that is, that patients in this country expect the kind of health treatment they were promised by their health care plan, when they get sick and need health care. Too often they discover that that kind of delivery of health care service is not available to them when they need it. We have, as I indicated, a number of challenges facing us this year. This is but one. I think it is one of the most important challenges. I hope in the not-too-distant future the House of Representatives will take action, as the Senate has already done, and we will see a Patient Protection Act become law in this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, this is a very interesting and a very important issue. There are a number of ways to address this issue. One method is to address it in the manner chosen by my colleagues, Senator Murray and Senator Shelby. Another method would be the approach chosen by the House of Representatives that passed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, a provision that simply prohibits the use of funds in the next fiscal year to license trucks to go beyond the 20-mile limit that are doing hauls out of Mexico. Let me describe this issue, if I might, so that we all get an understanding of what is happening. We are trying to plug together two economies with NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. I did not vote for NAFTA. I did not think it was a good trade agreement. I thought it was terribly negotiated, badly negotiated on our behalf. And I think evidence suggests that has been the case. We took a trade relationship with Mexico, which had a small surplus for us, and turned it into a very large deficit that is growing and growing and growing. We took a deficit with Canada and doubled it, and then some. So I do not think NAFTA turned out very well for a range of reasons. We were told, when we passed NAFTA: NAFTA will allow the product of unskilled labor from Mexico to be moved into the United States; and that is essentially what will happen with respect to the trade coming from Mexico. In fact, since NAFTA was passed, what are the most common imports and the largest imports from Mexico to the United States? The product of skilled labor--automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics--exactly the opposite of what was suggested when NAFTA was enacted. But aside from all of that, aside from the fact that it has taken skilled jobs away from the United States and moved them to Mexico; aside from the fact that it has turned a surplus with Mexico into a huge trade deficit, we are now told by a panel that negotiates these issues of trade compliance that we must allow Mexican long-haul truckers into this country. We have, since the NAFTA agreement, prohibited Mexican long-haul truckers from going beyond the 20-mile limit established by the previous administration. We are now told that must change, and we must allow access to the United States by Mexican long-haul truckers. Many are concerned about that, myself included. Let me give you just an example of why one might be concerned. The San Francisco Chronicle did a piece by sending a reporter to Mexico, who spent 3 days on the road with a Mexican long-haul trucker. I thought it would be interesting to discuss what happened with that Mexican long-haul trucker. It was described in a rather interesting and useful piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. This was a trucker who went from Mexico City to Tijuana. That is the equivalent of driving from the bottom of Texas to the northern part of North Dakota; it is a very long trip. This driver traveled 3 days, 1,800 miles; and during the 3 days he slept 7 hours. Let me say that again. This person drove 1,800 miles and was awake 21 hours a day. No logbooks. No minimum hours of service. No drug testing. No inspections for safety. The question is this, for this country: With such a different set of standards as relates to Mexican trucks versus United States trucks, and the Mexican trucking industry versus the United States trucking industry, do you want to drive down an American highway and in your rearview mirror see an 80,000-pound 18-wheeler behind you that may or may not have been inspected, and may or may not have brakes, and may or may not have been driven by somebody driving for 18 hours straight? Is that what you want for you and your family to see in your rearview mirror? Is this just sort of scare nonsense that we talk about? No, not at all. Look at the difference in standards. We take great care in this country to describe very specific requirements for trucking firms and their drivers in the United States. They must have logbooks to describe how long they have driven and where they have driven. They must have safety inspections. They must take drug tests. They must have safety inspections on the equipment. There are minimum hours of service. There are a whole series of requirements they must meet. Why? Because in this country we decided long ago that if we are going to share our highways--and we must--with this very important part of our transportation system--trucks--then we want to be sure that some 2-door compact car sharing that highway with an 18-wheeler carrying 80,000 pounds--we want to make sure that safety is a preeminent condition in this country. So we established regulations. Some say all regulations are bad. I don't believe that. I think some regulations are critically necessary--for safe food, healthy drinking water, safe highways. On the issue of safe highways, we decided long ago with respect to our trucking industry what kind of requirements they must meet, and we have the inspectors, we have the investigators, we have the entire system in place. This book is the ``Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations,'' January 1, 1999, last revised. This is from the Department of Transportation. This rather large, imposing book is full of regulations. Why? It is to provide for public safety on America's roads. Now if that is what we do in this country, what happens in Mexico? Nothing equivalent to this happens in Mexico. Some say: Well, you know what you are doing. NAFTA was a trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and you are coming to the floor only talking about Mexico. Why not Canada? The reason is obvious. Canada has a rather similar economy to ours. They have similar trucking regulations and safety requirements to ours, but there is nothing that is remotely similar with respect to Mexico. So we must, it seems to me, be concerned about the lifting of this 20- mile limit of Mexican long-haul trucks coming into this country. President Bush indicates he wants to do that on January 1. I disagree. The authors of the Transportation appropriations bill have a provision in this bill that says to the President: You can only do this under certain circumstances and under certain certifications. I happen to think that is a step in the right direction. I would much prefer, however, that we simply shut off funds for this purpose in the coming fiscal year. I have seen people certify anything--Republican and Democratic administrations. They have certified many things. If we say you must certify with respect to drugs in Mexico, they do it. If we say you must certify that El Salvador, in the 1980s, was responsible for human rights violations, they certify it. I am worried about anything that requires anybody to certify because I think there are people here who will certify to almost anything, who will sign a blank sheet of paper. We are nowhere near ready to allow Mexican long-haul trucks into this country. We had a hearing in the Commerce Committee last week. I am a member, and I sat there all morning. I inquired of the witnesses. Some of the witnesses were the Secretary of Transportation, the inspector general, the head of the Teamsters Union, and so many others. I inquired of those witnesses, and the one conclusion with which I think everyone came away from that hearing is that there isn't a ghost of a chance of this country being ready to allow Mexican long-haul trucks into this country without compromising basic safety on American roads. Let me cite some examples. This is the inspector general report of the Department of Transportation. He talks about the capability of inspecting Mexican trucks coming into this country. I think we have 27 border crossings. Only two of those border crossings have full-time inspectors 24 hours a day. So out of all the border crossings that would allow Mexican trucks to come in, only two have inspectors 24 hours a day. At 20 of the crossings, the inspectors who were there--and there are only a few of them--didn't have dedicated phone lines to access any databases so they could validate a simple thing like a commercial driver's license. At 19 of the locations, the inspectors had space to inspect 1 or 2 trucks at a time. At 14 of the locations, inspectors had 1 or 2 spaces to park vehicles placed out of service. The inspector general talked to us about having to turn Mexican trucks back. He said: You know, we have a problem if we don't have a place to park them. I said: Why can't you turn them around? He said: For example, we have a Mexican truck come to the border and it is inspected--incidentally, 2 percent are inspected, so most of them are never inspected--but we inspect it. I said: Why can't you turn it back? He said: No, we have to park it. I said: Why? He said: Because it had no brakes. So we have an 18-wheel truck, with no brakes, trying to get into the United States, but they can't turn it back to Mexico because it has no brakes. To the extent that they have insurance, they buy 1 day of insurance. So, look, the testimony by the Secretary of Transportation, the inspector general, and others demonstrates clearly that we are nowhere near being ready to allow Mexican long-haul trucks into this country. This IG's report is a fascinating document that I suggest all of my colleagues read. Thirty-six percent of the Mexican trucks are turned back for serious safety violations--serious violations--and most of the trucks are not inspected at all. The implication is that we will somehow have the capability on January 1 to have a rigorous inspection and compliance program with respect to these Mexican trucks. There is nothing like that that is capable of being done between now and January 1. That won't be done between now and 2 years from now, in my judgment. The only way you can possibly do this is if you have enough inspectors at the border and compliance officers to go down and actually make onsite compliance inspections of the Mexican trucking firms. There aren't anywhere near the resources to do that. Even the resources requested by the administration in this year's budget come up short of doing what they say they will or must do in order to be ready for January 1. They talked about the number of inspectors they would need--139--and then the IG said, by the way, that is the minimum number, that it would actually be more than that. The administration requested that number, and they came up 40 inspectors short because they are using the number twice for inspectors and compliance officers. The point is that none of this adds up. It is fuzzy math, fuzzy policy. It is plain bad policy, in my judgment, to suggest we are anywhere near the time when we should allow Mexican long- haul trucks into this country. The hearing we held last week persuaded me that we need to take aggressive and bold action. I am going to file an amendment--I do not know at this moment whether I will call it up--I am going to file an amendment this morning that will allow the Senate to vote on the House language. The House language says simply: There shall be no funding allowed for the processing of applications for these trucks or licenses for these trucks to exceed the 20-mile limit in the coming fiscal year. Is that going to change anything? No, because there is not a ghost of a chance of anyone being able to comply or to certify that we have the inspectors or the ability to allow these trucks into the country in the first place and still maintain safety on America's roads. The fact is, even with the 20-mile limit--on this chart the States outlined in red are where Mexican trucks have been seen and Mexican truckdrivers stopped by law enforcement authorities. These are just the ones that have been stopped. Yes, it includes North Dakota. I am constrained to say, as bad as this trade agreement was which hurts us on the northern end by allowing unfairly subsidized Canadian grain to come into this country, that what we will have now is the perverse circumstance, perhaps, of unsafe Mexican trucks hauling subsidized Canadian grain to American cities. Talk about a hood ornament for foolishness, that is it. The States in red are where we have already seen Mexican trucks moving into this country, in violation of the law, I might add. The administration's proposal is to on January 1 open it up completely. The DOT Office of Inspector General mentioned 36 percent of the Mexican trucks that were inspected were placed out of service. In fact, it said something more than that; it said serious safety violations. I mentioned one example of why they could not move the truck back into Mexico. They had to park it because it had no brakes. A 1998 estimate was that 139 inspectors were needed. That is a conservative number. That number is based on conditions in 1998 and did not account for changes, such as expanded hours of operation and growth in commercial traffic. They are 40 short of this number, but even that number, the IG says, is short of what is needed. Currently, the only permanent inspection facilities at the United States-Mexico border are the State facilities, two of them in California. Excluding those two crossings, they observed the following conditions: At 20 crossings, inspectors did not have dedicated phone lines. I mentioned that. At 19 crossings, they had the capability to inspect only 1 or 2 trucks. All of us understand, we are talking about a Presidential veto. God forbid the President should veto this bill. It does not matter to me if he vetoes this bill. What matters to me is that we do good public policy that ensures the safety of the American people. That is all I am interested in. The first and most important step we should take in the Senate, in my judgment, is to take the House language, put it in the Senate bill, and go to conference, and the House and Senate will have said: We will not allow funds to be used in this fiscal year to allow Mexican trucks to come into this country beyond the 20-mile border because it will jeopardize the safety of American highways. Senator Murray and Senator Shelby have put a provision in their bill, and if the provision works as it is written, I expect it will do the same as I propose to do with the House language. My great fear is we have too many people in this town who will certify to almost anything, and an administration that wants to open it up on January 1, very likely, unless we prohibit the expenditure of funds to do so, will find a way to open that border. In my judgment, that will jeopardize safety on American highways. I will conclude where I started. Some of the best evidence is anecdotal evidence. We have some information about accidents and the condition of Mexican trucks and the fact that there is very little done with respect to logbooks. In fact, Mexico requires logbooks, but they do not enforce it. It is like when the maquiladora plants hosted American companies that wanted to build manufacturing plants to manufacture south of the border, and they said: Well, gosh, Mexico has very strict environmental laws with respect to polluting the air and water. Sure they do. They just do not enforce them. So what if they have the laws? It is totally irrelevant. You can have all kinds of laws on the books; if you have a blind eye to the enforcement, it is totally irrelevant. With respect to this issue of logbooks and other things, some say: Mexico requires logbooks. Yes, they sure do; and nobody has them, and nobody cares. I started with the anecdotal piece about the San Francisco Chronicle, and I will finish with that. It is not, I am told, out of the ordinary for long-haul trucks in Mexico to be driven by Mexican drivers who are paid $7 a day, driving 15, 20--in this case, nearly 21--hours a day for 3- or 4-day trips. The San Francisco Chronicle talked about the truckdriver who left Mexico City and drove to Tijuana. He drove 3 days. That driver slept 7 hours in 3 days, making $7 a day, driving a truck that would not have passed inspection in this country with a cracked windshield. No logbook, no drug inspection, no mandatory safety inspection on the vehicle. Is that really what we want to allow to come into our country at this point? I think not. It has nothing to do with who it is. It has everything to do with whether it is safe. The answer is, until the country of Mexico not only has regulations and standards that we can count on and rely on and that are enforced, and enforced rigorously, we ought to decide we will not let safety on America's highways be jeopardized, and the way to do that is, in my judgment, to pass the House prohibition on funding. As I indicated, I am filing the amendment this morning. I am obviously going to continue to talk to colleagues. I share the same concern and interests that my two colleagues do. I think the language they have written is good language. I just believe in the end we will have people certifying to anything and the administration will find a way to allow these trucks to come in on January 1. That will be a giant step in the wrong direction for safety on America's highways. We ought not ever engage in trade agreements that would in any way force us or squeeze us to compromise safety in this country. It does not matter whether it is food safety or highway safety, nothing in trade agreements ought to require us to diminish our standards that we have established for people in this country. That is why I am so concerned about this issue. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I pay tribute today to a North Dakota family that exemplifies the spirit of rural life and all that it contributes to our Nation. The Strand family, of Regan, ND, will this week celebrate 100 years on the family farm. Andrew and Anna Strand arrived in North Dakota in 1901, brought by emigrant train to Wilton, ND. Then, with only a team of horses, a wagon, a walking breaking plow, a disc, and a drill, Andrew and Anna set about making a home in the small community of Regan. From those meager beginnings, Anna and Andrew raised a family of six children and, just like thousands of other North Dakotans at that time, they built a successful family farm and did the hard work that eventually carved hardy communities from the prairie. Today, the Strand family farm is still being farmed by Andrew and Anna's grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Four generations of Strands have lived and worked on the land over the past century. As anyone who knows will tell you, farming is hard work. And the Strand family has kept that farm going through everything from the Great Depression to droughts and floods. The family survived even the leanest years, times in the early part of the last century when there was only one good paying crop out of every 7 years. While some have stayed to continue to work the land, others in the Strand family have built lives and careers that contribute to our State, regional, and national life in a variety of other ways. Andrew and Anna's descendants have worked in healthcare, education, music, public affairs, and agribusiness, to name only a few. Anna and Andrew's children left their mark on our society in a profound way. Einar Strand helped build the United Nations building in New York. Norton was involved in the agriculture industry throughout North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. Alice became the head administrator at Ballard Hospital in Seattle, WA. Both Arthur and Barney, worked the land as their father before them. Today, Barney, Jr., and his son Richard continue the tradition of farming on the original Strand homestead. The Strand family also contributed to community life in many ways. In the early days, when help was needed in the fledgling community, the Strand family was there; helping the local doctor on his daily rounds during the influenza outbreak of 1918, helping to build the first local schoolhouse, building township roads and more. Families like the Strand demonstrate the importance of preserving the family farm and our rural communities. They also remind us that family farms produce more than the food that feeds our Nation and the world. Family farms also produce hardy, enduring families that make our communities and our Nation strong. I congratulate them as they celebrates this 100-year anniversary of life on the family farm, and extend the hope that the Strand family will continue the tradition that Andrew and Anna started a century ago.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for the electric energy systems and storage program that funds transmission reliability. Improving the reliability of our Nation's transmission system is absolutely critical. I note that while the President's budget request substantially cuts funding for this critical program, the Senate has increased the funding from approximately $52 million last year to $71 million this year. Transmission reliability is critical to ensure that our nation's electricity supply actually reaches states and, ultimately, the homes and businesses where it is needed. We have seen in California, New York, and elsewhere, that when we don't have sufficient supply and transmission capacity, we experience blackouts and brownouts that have significant detrimental impacts on our economy. We need to use this money to test new technologies--specifically Composite Conductor wire--that have the ability to dramatically increase the efficiency of existing transmission wires. This type of wire eliminates the need for new wires, new rights-of-way, and new construction, which eliminates siting and permitting problems and related potential environmental impacts. We need to actually test this wire in different climatic and weather conditions to determine the efficacy of using this technology on a larger scale. To this end, I would suggest to the Subcommittee that it provide funds to actually conduct field tests to achieve these objectives.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know we are on the energy and water appropriations bill. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes as in morning business with the proviso that if someone shows up and wishes to speak on the bill, I will be happy to relinquish the floor. The Senator from New Mexico is here, and I know he is anxious for people to offer amendments. I say to him that if someone shows up and wishes to offer an amendment, I will relinquish the floor and finish my statement another time.

Mr. DORGAN. I do not object.

Mr. DORGAN. So there is a requirement of a recorded vote on a noncontroversial amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, while I understand the reason the amendment was put in the energy and water bill, and understand the reason that there has been discussion about a modification of it that the majority leader says he will accept, nonetheless, let me say that I would prefer that we not have this issue in this bill, that the revision of the master manual on the management of the Missouri River has been going on a long, long time--far too long. For 12 years the Corps of Engineers has been wrestling with this issue of how to revise the master manual to manage the Missouri River. For 12 years it has been ongoing. The root of all of these amendments has been to try to continue to stall. Let me describe why this is an important issue from the perspective of those of us who live in the upstream States. We have a flood in the state of North Dakota--a flood that came and stayed a manmade, permanent flood. It is the size of the State of Rhode Island. It visited North Dakota in the 1950s. Why did that happen? Because this Missouri River--this wonderful 2,500 miles of wild and interesting river--was causing a lot of problems for a lot of people in some springs. On some occasions during the springtime, those downstream reaches of the Missouri River would have an awful flood. You could not play softball in the parks of St. Louis in the spring because the Missouri River had gone over its banks and caused substantial flooding. It was true, for a substantial portion of the Missouri River. And for flood control, and other reasons, it was decided that there ought to be a plan to see if they could harness, somehow, this river called the Missouri River. A man named Lewis Pick and a man named Glenn Sloan put together a plan, as you might guess, called the Pick-Sloan plan of the 1940s. As almost anyone who knows anything about the river understands, the Pick- Sloan plan was a mechanism by which they would harness the forces of the Missouri River and create six main stem dams. One of those dams was in North Dakota, at the time, the world's largest, earth-filled dam. It was dedicated by President Eisenhower. It flooded 500,000 acres of North Dakota land. It created a manmade, permanent flood the size of Rhode Island in the middle of our State. One might ask the question, Why would North Dakotans, in the 1950s, say: All right, you can do that. You can come to our State and create a Rhode Island-sized flood? I will tell you the answer to that. The answer to that was, the Pick-Sloan plan was a plan that said: What we would like to do is provide some benefits for everyone. Downstream, we provide the benefits of flood control, the benefits of perhaps achieving more stable navigation opportunities. Upstream, you have the opportunity to have a substantial shoreline for the recreation, fishing, and tourism industries. And then, in addition, and more importantly, what we will do for you upstream is to take from this huge body of water the ability to move water around your State, something called Garrison Diversion. And by the way, you can use that water to irrigate 1 million acres in your State. So those were the costs and the benefits. Our cost? Our cost was the one-half million acre flood that came and stayed forever. Now we have the cost. Take a plane and fly over it, and you will find the cost. It is there. That big old body of water is there. So we have a permanent flood. As a result of that permanent flood, some of the folks downstream do not get flooded in the spring. And some of those wonderful cities downstream in the springtime, late in the day, when the shafts of sunlight come through the leaves or trees, they can gear up and play a good softball game because there is no flooding. Good for them. That is their benefit. They have the benefits. We have the flood. But we never got the rest of what was promised to us. But in addition to all of that, the master manual by which the river is managed was created in a way that said to the Corps of Engineers, here are the things we want to do with this river. And then the Corps of Engineers went about managing to what they thought was written in the master manual. And they have always insisted, notwithstanding the fact that the Government Accounting Office, and others, that have studied this have said they are wrong, that the issues of recreation and fishing and tourism--the industries that have spawned upstream, the industries that have spawned in my State--are somehow of lesser consequence to barge traffic and flood control downstream. So as a result of all of that, there has been discussion about the need to revise the master manual. In 1989, we began to have the Corps of Engineers work to revise the master manual. No one in America has ever accused the Corps of Engineers of speeding, and I expect they never will. It is as slow and as bureaucratic an organization as there is. But 12 years to revise the master manual? Twelve years? I don't think so. That is not reasonable. Yet here we are today. We do not have a master manual revision. And we have propositions that need to be delayed further. There needs to be intervals that are artificially created. Let me say this about the states that are involved. We have had a group called the Missouri River Basin Association--eight States, all of which harbor the Missouri River. All of these States are enriched by the presence of the Missouri River. These eight States together have tried to work on plans about how one would manage the Missouri River and what kind of a master manual plan one would develop. Seven of the eight States have reached agreement. One has not. Seven of the eight States have reached an agreement, and one will not. Can anyone guess which State is outside of the seven? The only State among the eight States that said, no, we will not agree? That is right, the state of Missouri. Compromise is important. Compromise is an art. But it is not just in this Senate Chamber. In the Missouri Basin Association, there is not the ability to compromise on the fundamental issue of how you rewrite the master manual with respect to the Missouri River. I have talked a little about the Rhode Island-sized flood that came and stayed in my State. Let me talk for a moment about this river. Lewis and Clark went up that river. In the years 1804, 1805, they took keelboats and went up that river. It is a fascinating story. My colleague from South Dakota mentioned just a bit of it, but the story is really quite remarkable. Captain Lewis, Mr. Clark, and one of the world's great expeditions--what a remarkable thing they did. Thomas Jefferson actually, with an appropriation of $2,000 that was not disclosed, enlisted Captain Lewis to begin this bold venture. He told them: When you get to St. Louis, charge what you need for your venture and sign a requisition to the Federal Government, and we will pay for it. He purchased keelboats. He purchased a whole series of things. In fact, in St. Louis, he purchased 110 gallons of whiskey. Think of what they would make of that today. Requisition that to the U.S. Government. So he left St. Louis with this band of men, his keelboats, his 110 gallons of whiskey, and so many other things to enrich that trip, and they went up the Missouri River. According to their journals, they saw their first grizzly bear when they got to what is now Williston, ND. They even made notes in their journals about the mosquitoes they encountered. You can encounter some of those same mosquitoes or relatives of them. They wintered near where the city of Washburn, ND, now exists, and spent the winter with the Mandan Indians. Here is what the description of that river was and is by Mr. Clark and others: ``A tawny, restless, brawling flood,'' one observer scribbled about the Missouri River. ``It makes farming as fascinating as gambling; you never know whether you are going to harvest corn or catfish.'' What an apt description of that wonderful river. William Clark, who braved that wilderness, admired the lush swaths of oak, ash, and cottonwood on the Missouri's floodplain. He said: It is ``one of the most butifill Plains I ever Saw, open and butifully diversified.'' ``No other river was ever so dead-set against being navigated,'' another Missouri watcher wrote. This river is unique, remarkable, and wonderful in many ways. But the river has suffered. The people who make a living on that river and near that river have suffered as well. We have not done right by that river. We have created the six main stem dams, and a whole series of things have intervened in the way the river is managed. They have upset the ecosystem. They have caused a series of problems for plants and for animals and for mankind. We can do better. That is the purpose of this issue of rewriting the master manual. It is said that rewriting the master manual will mean that less attention will be paid to downstream barge traffic. The downstream barge traffic is a minnow compared to the upstream tourism, recreation, and fishing industries, which are a whale. We are talking about less than $10 million compared to nearly $80 million in terms of impact. Yet the Corps of Engineers manages this river as if the downstream barge traffic is some colossus. It is not. It is a relatively small amount of economic activity that has been shrinking. Upstream, the interest in recreation, tourism and fishing has been growing and growing. Yet the river is managed as if it was yesterday in terms of economic circumstances and consequences. That is wrong. I have heard the discussions today about the spring rise and split navigation, all the myths about that. The fact is, even with the spring rise, most of the navigation traffic would be unaffected, the downstream reaches. Even with the proposed change in the master manual, and managing this river the way it ought to be managed, 99 percent of the flood protection would be available to downstream States. Some of us have exhausted our patience. We get all the cost and virtually none of the benefits upstream. Downstream gets all the benefits and almost none of the cost. Somehow they have said to us: By the way, we love having the Missouri River run through our cities, but we don't want the inconvenience of having spring floods. We don't want to interrupt the softball games in the middle of our cities. They build a flood up north and you have the flood forever. And by the way, when we are short of water, we want your water. And when we have too much, we want you to store it because we want you to be the reservoir that takes all of the cost all of the time. Sometimes you almost think that what we really ought to do, if they don't appreciate the flood control downstream and they don't appreciate the benefits they have received, maybe we ought to just dump those dams out of there and let that water go where it will. Then see if maybe we do have a master manual that manages this river in a manner that is sensible. Maybe everyone will understand there is a ``balance'' between the interests of the downstream and the upstream States. In most cases, one would be able to resolve this in a pretty thoughtful way. Frankly, the Missouri River Basin Association has some pretty good people from every State of the eight States involved who have worked pretty hard on this issue. Seven of the eight States have pretty much reached agreement on how to resolve it. One State has not. That is the State of Missouri. One would hope that perhaps in that venue, and perhaps also here in the Senate, we might find reasonable compromise to understand that the balance between cost and benefits of downstream and upstream States is something that ought to be a true balance. Again, this issue is critically important to us. Our future relates to economic development. Economic development relates to water opportunities. If you don't have water, you don't have development. It is that simple. We have the development around this flood that came and stayed forever in our State, the development of an aggressive, vibrant group of industries--fishing, tourism, recreation, that of the downstream navigation interests. Yet we are told with this archaic management of the river that somehow it really doesn't count for much. We are saying that is not right. So there ensues this revision of the master manual. Then 12 years later, we are still standing here talking about whether or not the master manual ought to be completed. Of course, it ought to be completed. What on earth can we be thinking about. Twelve years is far too long. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, the Corps and the Congress, that it takes more than a few years to revise a master manual. Maybe we will give it 5 years. How about 7? Maybe 10 years or 11. But you can't do it in 12? You need more time than that? What kind of thinking exists that says you need more time than 12 years to revise a master manual on how to run a river? I hope we don't have to fight a war some day if that is the thinking that exists. We ought to be able to do this in a sensible way. I will not object to what has been offered here. The majority leader spoke on behalf of all of us that while he would prefer this issue get resolved, and that it is critically important to upstream States, I will not object to this amendment. But this issue should not even be here. This is not where this issue should be considered. This issue should have been behind us, not in front of us. I hope one of these days all of the States, all eight States and not just seven in the Missouri River Basin Association, will get together and help to resolve the balance in terms of how to deal with the intricate, simple, and complex issues dealing with the management of the Missouri River. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, I inquire, has the Bond amendment not been accepted or at least is this a controversial amendment?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in the coming days I suspect there will be appropriations bills and we will visit another issue we have visited previously in the Senate and also in the House, and that is the price of prescription drugs, especially those imported into this country from other countries. About a week ago, the Secretary of Health and Human Services decided that legislation which I and several of my colleagues drafted and was passed last year and became law would not be administered. It is a law dealing with the reimportation of prescription drugs into this country. The provision allows distributors and pharmacists to go to another country such as Canada, to access the same prescription drugs made in an FDA-approved plant and bring them to this country because it is much less expensive in Canada, and pass those savings along to consumers. That is what our legislation did. The Secretary of Health and Human Services under the previous administration and now under this administration said they could not certify, A, that it would be lowering costs for prescription drugs and, B, that it would be safe; therefore, they would not certify to that and would not implement the law. We are terribly disappointed by that. We think it was a mistake in the past administration to have made that decision, and we think last week it was a mistake for the Department of Health and Human Services to make that decision. We will revisit this issue, and there will be another vote in the Senate dealing with it. We will have to do it in a different way, but the principles are still the same. The same pill put in the same bottle manufactured by the same prescription drug company by the same pharmaceutical manufacturer is sent to Grand Forks, ND, and to Winnipeg, Canada--the same drug made in the same plant put in the same bottle made by the same company. The difference? Price, and in many circumstances a very big difference. One pays 10 times more for the drug tamoxifen, which is used to treat breast cancer, in the United States than in Canada. I happen to have in my desk--I have had several of them. These are two empty bottles. I ask unanimous consent to show these bottles in the Senate Chamber.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this drug called Zoloft is used to treat depression, a very commonly used drug. The same pill made by the same company; one is marketed in Canada, one in the United States; $2.34 per tablet sold in the United States; $1.28 per tablet--same drug--sold in Canada. Let me make it more immediate. Emerson, Canada; Pembina, ND--5 miles apart. I took a group of senior citizens to Emerson, Canada. We left Pembina, ND, traveled across the border, and went to a little one-room drugstore in Emerson, Canada. The prices for the prescription drugs, for a whole range of prescription drugs that these senior citizens needed for heart disease, diabetes, and a whole series of ailments they had, in every circumstance, was much less expensive in Canada. Why is that the case? It is not just the case in Canada; it is the case in every other country in the world: Mexico, England, Italy, France, Sweden, the identical drug, produced in a plant approved by the Food and Drug Administration, in many cases produced in the United States, is sold for a much higher price here than any other country in the world. Why is that the case? Because the pharmaceutical industry can do it. They can impose whatever price they choose and they choose to do it in this country. The result is the American consumer is charged multiples of what the same pill is sold for or the same drug is sold for to virtually every other citizen in the world. We said if this is truly a global economy, there is trade back and forth, it is a global economy that ought to benefit everyone, how about making this a global economy with respect to the purchase of prescription drugs? Why should you not be able, if you are a pharmacist in Grand Forks, ND, to go to Winnipeg to access a supply of prescription drugs at a fraction of the cost and bring it back and pass the savings on to the customers? Why should you not be able to do it? At the moment, a law prevents it. The United States has a law that says the only entity that can bring a prescription drug into this country is the manufacturer itself. What a sweetheart deal that is. So we said, provided this is a drug that is approved by the FDA, provided for a chain of custody and safety of supply, our distributors and pharmacists ought to be able to go to another country to access the same prescription drug, made in the same plant, put in the same bottle, and come back and pass those savings along to the American consumers. So we passed a piece of legislation like that on the floor of the Senate with over 70 votes. It went to conference. After some laboring in conference, it became law. And then the Health and Human Services Secretary in both the last administration and this administration refused to administer it because they said they cannot demonstrate there will be, A, savings, and, B, they cannot assure the safety. Let's take part A, savings, first. This is not rocket science. I am happy to give the names of citizens from Fargo who can describe to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, either in the previous administration or this administration, that there is savings. They have gone to the one-room drugstore in Emerson, Canada, and saved the money on the prescription drugs. If you are going to pay half the price or a third of the price or a tenth of the price for the identical prescription drug, how on Earth can a Cabinet Secretary not compute that to be a savings? What nonsense is this? Of course there are savings, and substantial savings. Second, with respect to safety, we import a massive quantity of prescription drugs into this country from other countries with the pharmaceutical manufacturers doing the importing. What is the difference between that and having a licensed pharmacist or a licensed distributor access from a licensed pharmacy in Canada the identical prescription drug made in the identical plant, approved by the FDA, to bring back into this country to sell to American consumers at a reduced price? Why on Earth should someone have to go in the first place to a foreign country to find a reasonable price for a prescription drug that was made in the United States? That doesn't make any sense to me. So we passed that legislation and now it has been sidetracked because the HHS Secretary has refused to implement it both last year and this year. We will be back to revisit that and we will change the construct of it some. A group of Senators, including Senator Stabenow, Senator Collins, myself, Senator Jeffords, Senator Wellstone, and others, have worked very hard on this issue for a long period of time. There is no justification for the American consumer paying the highest prices for prescription drugs in this country. There is no justification for that. I have held hearings across this country as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee in recent years on this subject. It doesn't matter where you are--in downtown Manhattan; I have held hearings in Dickinson, ND; hearings in Chicago; you hear the same story. The stories are from people 70 or 75 years of age. A woman testifies at a hearing, saying: I go into a grocery store and I must go to the back of the store first where the pharmacy is because when I buy my prescription drugs and pay for them, then I will know how much money is left for food, if any. We hear that all the time. Or the doctor from Dickinson who did a mastectomy on a senior citizen and told her: Now, in order to reduce the chance of recurrence of breast cancer, you have to take these prescription drugs I will prescribe. And she asked how much they would cost. He told her, and she said: There isn't any way I can take the prescription drugs; I have to take my chances. We hear those stories in town after town. It doesn't matter what the State is. The fact is, prescription drug prices are higher in this country for the American consumer than they are anywhere else in the world. It is unfair. We ought to do something about it. My feeling is we ought to pass a piece of legislation we will offer once again this year and expect someone to implement that legislation as we enact it, that gives pharmacists and distributors and ultimately the American consumers--not just senior citizens, the American consumers--the opportunity in a global economy to access prescription drugs that are reasonably priced. They are reasonably priced in virtually every other country of the world but are overpriced here, often in multiples of prices as elsewhere for the exact same drug that was manufactured in this country. I wanted to offer a preview, again, of this issue to say we won last year, passed legislation that became law, and HHS refused to implement it. But we are not giving up. This is the right thing to do for the right reasons. We say to the American people who struggle to pay the prices, there is a way to make the global economy work for you and allow, through your pharmacist or distributor, a personal amount of prescription drugs, to access those prescription drugs in Canada or elsewhere. Ultimately, my goal is not to ask someone to go elsewhere to buy drugs but to force the pharmaceutical industry to reprice the drugs in this country so our consumers get a fair price as well.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise to support the Trails and Rails Program, a national partnership between Amtrak and the National Park Service. This program provides on-board educational programs to rail travelers. It has played a valuable role in educating Americans about the historic landmark sites in this country. This is an excellent outreach program that allows the National Park Service to reach non- traditional visitors and introduce them to our national parks, trails and historic sites. I am particularly excited about this program as we begin to celebrate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Last May, the famous footsteps of the Lewis and Clark along the trail in North Dakota and Montana came alive as their historic journey was retraced by guests aboard Amtrak's Empire Builder train. This program has been laying the foundation for the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration, which will officially begin in 2003. Train passengers have already been able to explore historic areas along the Lewis and Clark trail such as the Union Trading Post National Historic Site in Williston, ND. It is my hope that the National Park Service could continue its partnership so that Amtrak passengers can explore other historic sites in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Although fiscal year 2002 funding has not yet been identified for this program, I invite my colleagues to join me in supporting this important National Park Service partnership. I trust that some funding will be included for this partnership in the final version of the Interior appropriations bill.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise to support the Education and Training Center for the Power Generation Industry at Bismarck State College. Although funding for this program is not explicitly mentioned in the Interior Appropriations bill, I would like to see the relationship between Bismarck State College (BSC) and the Department of Energy grow during the next fiscal year as BSC builds on its Partnership to Improve Energy Technology Training and Education. Last year, BSC's Energy Technology Program received $50,000 in competitive Federal funding to develop a new curriculum based on conventional and advanced power technologies. Given that the Chairman has been kind enough to increase the budget request for fossil fuel research and development, I would hope that the DoE will provide the funds to expand this program next year, especially given the challenges that the power industry will face in the coming years. I applaud those at Bismarck State College who have been working on this project, and it is my hope that the Committee could provide some funding for this program as we move this bill to conference so that the College could further develop the curriculum plan and provide nationwide online courses in power generation management.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I intend to support the amendment. I don't know how it got to this point. But I was a tax administrator before I came to the Congress. It is not, in my judgment, necessary to send out a letter to say: By the way, here is what you are going to get. And then you get it. Maybe afterwards they will send a letter to them saying: Here is what you got. That doesn't make any sense to me. It is $34 million. There are a whole host of important things that can be done with $34 million. The tax bill stands on its own. It was passed. It is now law. The American people will be receiving a rebate. There does not need to be a substantial amount of money spent to tell them: By the way, this is what you will get in the mail very shortly. Send the check in the mail. They would be much more appreciative of receiving the check than receiving a letter saying they are going to get a check. Do not send them a letter saying they are going to get a check. They will get a check. And maybe people will come to the floor asking to send them a letter saying they got a check. None of this makes sense. This doesn't pass the test. Let's not do this. This is a waste of money. I will support the amendment.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. What is this issue of Mexican trucks coming into the United States? Why is it important and why will it provoke controversy? Simply, the issue is this: We inspect just 1 to 2 percent of the Mexican trucks that come into this country and operate within the 20- mile restriction. And 36 percent of those Mexican trucks are turned back into Mexico for serious safety violations. In other words, up to now, we have told Mexican truckers: We will not allow you to drive on American roads because you don't meet American safety standards. Mr. President, 98 to 99 percent of the trucks were never inspected at all because we do not have nearly enough inspectors at the border. But of those that were inspected, 36 percent were turned back into Mexico for serious safety violations. Mexico has a regime of safety issues dealing with truckers that is very lax. They are printed at the end of the article I previously mentioned. Let me run through a few of these. It says: Hours-of-service limits for drivers: In the United States, we limit truckers to 10 hours of consecutive driving and then they must rest. That is all you can do in the United States, 10 hours. In Mexico, the sky is the limit. In fact, this reporter rode with one Mexican long- haul trucker for 3 days. In 3 days of driving a truck, the Mexican driver slept 7 hours--7 hours in 3 days. There is no restriction on hours with respect to Mexican drivers and truckers. Random drug tests: In the United States, yes for all drivers; in Mexico, no. Automatic disqualification for certain medical conditions: In the United States, yes; in Mexico, no. Standardized logbooks: In the United States, yes, and you better fill them out. In Mexico, virtually no truckers use a logbook. The new law is not enforced. Maximum weight limit for trucks: In the United States, 80,000 pounds; in Mexico, 135,000 pounds. The point is, under NAFTA, it has been determined that the United States should allow Mexican long-haul truckers into this country unrestricted. I wonder if you want a Mexican trucker in your rear-view mirror on an American interstate, coming down the highway with questionable brakes, with questionable equipment, in a circumstance where over a third of all the trucks that we have inspected--and we have only inspected an infinitesimal number--over a third of them have been found to have serious safety violations. This isn't rocket science. Of course, we should not allow unrestricted long-haul truckers to come into this country on America's roads; not until they meet all the requirements for safety that we require of our own trucking companies and our own drivers. This is not a hard question. On the appropriations bill in the House of Representatives there was an amendment added that prohibits funding for permitting Mexican truckers to come into this country on an unrestricted basis. I have indicated I intend to offer a similar amendment in the Senate. I have offered stand-alone legislation which is more comprehensive than that, but it seems to me it is useful to offer language identical to that of the House because then it would be non-conferenceable and the restriction would become law when the appropriations bill is signed. Senator Murray, the chair of the Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, talked to me and I know she is working on some language. I have not yet had an opportunity to see what that language is, but I appreciate the work she is doing. I hope when the appropriations bill leaves the Senate, we will have included similar or identical language to that in the House; language that says we will not allow Mexican long-haul trucks into this country on an unrestricted basis jeopardizing the safety of Americans who are driving on the roads-- virtually all citizens who are driving on our roads. We do not want these safety questions to have to be in their minds. This is a very important issue. It is one more evidence of a trade strategy that is inherently weak, that trades away our interests. How can we adopt a trade policy with another country that says: Oh, by the way, we will not allow anything that reflects safety issues from one side or the other to come in the way of trade? It doesn't make any sense to me. This is a paramount example of trading away our ability to make safety on America's roads something that is of significant concern. We have not gotten to the position of requiring safety equipment, driver's logs, and hours of service restrictions just because we want to regulate; we did it out of concern for safety. When you are driving down the road and have an 18-wheel truck behind you full of tons and tons of material, you want to make sure that truck has been inspected, that the truck has safety equipment, and that the truck is not going to come through the back of your car right up to the rearview mirror if you happen to put on your brakes in an emergency. This is an important issue on its own. Giving up our ability to decide whether we will allow unsafe trucks to enter United States highways from Mexico is almost unforgivable. But it is part and parcel of a trade policy that has been bankrupt for a long while. That brings me to another question about trade agreements. The administration is talking a lot now about fast-track. They want fast- track ability to do new trade agreements. I have some advice for them. I say: If you really want to fast-track something, why don't you fast- track solving some trade problems that you, along with previous administrations, have created through signing past trade agreements. Don't deal with Congress if you need fast-track legislative authority for anybody or anything; deal with fast-track trade solutions yourself. Let me give you some examples of issues that the Administration might want to fast-track. Today, in Canada, they are loading trucks and railroad cars full of molasses to bring into the United States. The molasses is loaded with Brazilian sugar and sent to Canada so it can be added to molasses. The molasses is a carrier that is used to circumvent our quota on sugar imports. They subvert the sugar quota by sending Brazilian sugar through Canada loaded as molasses. It is called stuffed molasses. It is fundamentally unfair trade, but we can not get anything done about it. If you want fast track, let's fast track a solution to solving the stuffed molasses scheme. Fast track: How about this? Do you know how many American movies we got into China last year? Ten. Ten American movies got into China--a country with an $80 billion trade surplus with the United States. This is intellectual property. It is entertainment. We got 10 movies into China because they say: That is all you can get into our country. What about the issue of automobiles? Do you know how many automobiles we bought from Korea last year? Americans bought 450,000 cars from companies building cars in Korea. Do you know how many United States- produced cars were sold in the country of Korea last year? Twelve hundred--four hundred and fifty thousand to twelve hundred. Why? Because Korea doesn't want American cars in Korea. So they ship us their cars and then keep our cars out. How about something more parochial that comes from the rich soil of the Red River Valley that I represent? They grow wonderful potatoes-- the best potatoes in the world. One of the things you can do with potatoes is make potato flakes and ship those flakes around the world. They are used in fast food. So you try to ship potato flakes to Korea. Guess what you find. Shipping potato flakes to Korea means that Korea imposes a 300-percent tariff on potato flakes. Imagine that. Poor little potato flakes with a 300-percent tariff. In all of the issues about tariffs, everybody talks about tariffs and reducing tariffs. Twelve years after we reached a beef agreement with Japan--a country that every year has a $50 billion to $80 billion trade surpluses with us--there still remains on every pound of T-bone steaks sent to Tokyo a 38.5-percent tariff. Can you imagine that? Every pound of American beef getting into Japan still has a 38.5-percent tariff. When they reached the beef agreement, my God, you would have thought they had just won the Olympics. They had dinners and congratulated each other--good for all of these folks who reach trade agreements. Yet, twelve years later, we still have a 38.5-percent tariff on every single pound of beef we send to Japan. That is just a sample. Potato flakes, cars to Korea, beef to Japan, stuffed molasses from Canada, and movies to China--you name it. I say to those who come to us saying we want fast track: look, you don't need fast track from Congress. I am sure not going to give it to you. You don't deserve it. You have constructed trade agreements that, No. 1, threaten safety in this country by saying to us in those agreements you have to let trucks that are fundamentally unsafe come in from Mexico. You constructed trade agreements that have allowed the Canadians to dump durum wheat across our border. I have told the story repeatedly--it bears telling again--of driving up to the border in a little 12-year-old orange truck with a farmer named Earl Jenson, and all the way to the Canadian border we saw 18- wheeler after 18-wheeler hauling Canadian durum wheat south. It was such a windy day that the grain was coming out from under the tarps of these big semis hauling Canadian durum wheat, splattering against our windshield every time we met one. I counted a lot of trucks coming from the other border. When we got to the border with the 12-year-old 2-ton orange truck with a small amount of durum on it, we were told: You can't take that into Canada. You can't take American durum wheat into Canada. So we got turned around with the little 12-year-old orange truck, despite the fact that all of these semis all day long came down from Canada-- evidence, it seems to me, of just one more thorn that exists in this trade circumstance, one more burr under the saddle for all those farmers and ranchers out there who have been taken by unfair trade agreements negotiated by our trade negotiators who should have known better, by trade negotiators who did not seem to stand up for this country's interest in the final agreement. They were more interested in getting an agreement than they were in getting a fair agreement. Again, I say to the Trade Ambassador and others, if you want fast track, hold up a mirror and say this in the morning: Fast track for me means solving trade problems, solving the Canadian durum problem, solving the Canadian stuffed molasses problem, solving the problem of our getting cars into Korea, potato flakes into Korea, movies into China, and beef into Japan. I can stand here and cite a couple of dozen more, if you like. Show us you can solve problems rather than creating problems, then come back to us and talk. But don't suggest to me that we do something for you to negotiate a new agreement unless you have solved the problems of the old trade agreements--yes, GATT, NAFTA, you name it, right on down the road. I have always, when I have spoken about trade, threatened to suggest that we require our trade negotiators to wear uniforms. In the Olympics, they wear a jersey. It says ``U.S.A.'' across the chest. So at least in some quiet moment in some negotiating meeting someplace, these trade negotiators who seem so quick to lose are willing to look down and see whom they really represent. Will Rogers used to say, ``The United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference.'' He surely must have been thinking about our trade negotiators, because in agreement after agreement after agreement we seem to end up on the short end. That is especially true with a trade agreement that now puts us in a circumstance where we are told we are supposed to allow Mexican long- haul trucks to come into this country under the provisions of the trade agreement notwithstanding the safety issues. That is not fair. It is not right. To do so would not be standing up for the best interests of the American people. We are going to have a fight about this. We are going to have controversy about it. But as I said when I started, this ought not be rocket science. We cannot and should not decide that these trade agreements either force us or allow us to sacrifice the basic safety of the American people. It doesn't matter whether it is safety on the roads, safety with respect to food inspection, you name it. We cannot and should not allow these trade agreements to force us to sacrifice safety. We should insist just once and for a change that our trade negotiators stand up for this country's interest. There is nothing inappropriate and nothing that ought to persuade us to be ashamed of standing up for our best economic interests. Yes, we can do that in a way that enriches all of the world and in a way that helps pull others up and assist others in need. We can do that, but we also ought to understand we have people in need in this country. American family farmers are going broke. We have all kinds of people losing their jobs in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing is a sector in this country that is very important and has been diminishing rather than expanding. So let's decide to do the right thing with respect to trade. I want expanded trade. I want robust trade. I do not believe we should construct walls. I do not believe that a protectionist--using the pejorative term--is someone who enhances this country's interests. But using the term ``protection,'' let me just be quick to point out there is nothing wrong with protecting our country's best interests with respect to trade agreements that will work for this country. So we will have this discussion this week on the Transportation Appropriations bill, that will be under the able leadership of Senator Murray. My expectation is we will resolve this in a way that is thoughtful and in a way that expresses common sense in dealing with Mexican long-haul truckers coming into this country. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 4, 2001] Mexico's Trucks on Horizon--Long-Distance Haulers Are Headed into U.S. Once Bush Opens Borders (By Robert Collier) Altar Desert, Mexico.--[Editor's Note: This week, the Bush administration is required by NAFTA to announce that Mexican long-haul trucks will be allowed onto U.S. highways--where they have long been banned over concerns about safety--rather than stopping at the border. The Chronicle sent a team to get the inside story before the trucks start to roll.] It was sometime way after midnight in the middle of nowhere, and a giddy Manuel Marquez was at the wheel of 20 tons of hurtling, U.S.-bound merchandise. The lights of oncoming trucks flared into a blur as they whooshed past on the narrow, two-lane highway, mere inches from the left mirror of his truck. Also gone in a blur were Marquez's past two days, a nearly Olympic ordeal of driving with barely a few hours of sleep. ``Ayy, Mexico!'' Marquez exclaimed as he slammed on the brakes around a hilly curve, steering around another truck that had stopped in the middle of the lane, its hood up and its driver nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. ``We have so much talent to share with the Americans--and so much craziness.'' Several hours ahead in the desert darkness was the border, the end of Marquez's 1,800-mile run. At Tijuana, he would deliver his cargo, wait for another load, then head back south. But soon, Marquez and other Mexican truckers will be able to cross the border instead of turning around. Their feats of long-distance stamina--and, critics fear, endangerment of public safety--are coming to a California freeway near you. Later this week, the Bush administration is expected to announce that it will open America's highways to Mexican long-haul trucks, thus ending a long fight by U.S. truckers and highway safety advocates to keep them out. Under limitations imposed by the United States since 1982, Mexican vehicles are allowed passage only within a narrow border commercial zone, where they must transfer their cargo to U.S.-based long-haul trucks and drivers. The lifting of the ban--ordered last month by an arbitration panel of the North American Free Trade Agreement--has been at the center of one of the most high- decibel issues in the U.S.-Mexico trade relationship. Will the end of the ban endanger American motorists by bringing thousands of potentially unsafe Mexican trucks to U.S. roads? Or will it reduce the costs of cross-border trade and end U.S. protectionism with no increase in accidents? Two weeks ago, as the controversy grew, Marquez's employer, Transportes Castores, allowed a Chronicle reporter and photographer to join him on a typical run from Mexico City to the border. The three-day, 1,800 mile journey offered a window into a part of Mexico that few Americans ever see--the life of Mexican truckers, a resourceful, long-suffering breed who, from all indications, do not deserve their pariah status north of the border. But critics of the border opening would also find proof of their concerns about safety: --American inspectors at the border are badly undermanned and will be hard-pressed to inspect more than a fraction of the incoming Mexican truckers. California--which has a much more rigorous truck inspection program than Arizona, New Mexico or Texas, the other border states--gave full inspections to only 2 percent of the 920,000 short-haul trucks allowed to enter from Mexico last year. Critics say the four states will be overwhelmed by the influx of Mexican long-haul trucks, which are expected to nearly double the current volume of truck traffic at the border. --Most long-distance Mexican trucks are relatively modern, but maintenance is erratic. Marquez's truck, for example, was a sleek, 6-month-old, Mexican-made Kenworth, equal to most trucks north of the border. But his windshield was cracked--a safety violation that would earn him a ticket in the United States but had been ignored by his company since it occurred two months ago. A recent report by the U.S. Transportation Department said 35 percent of Mexican trucks that entered the United States last year were ordered off the road by inspectors for safety violations such as faulty brakes and lights. --Mexico's domestic truck-safety regulation is extremely lax. Mexico has no functioning truck weigh stations, and Marquez said federal police appear to have abandoned a program of random highway inspections that was inaugurated with much fanfare last fall. --Almost all Mexican long-haul drivers are forced to work dangerously long hours. Marquez was a skillful driver, with lightning reflexes honed by road conditions that would make U.S. highways seem like cruise-control paradise. But he was often steering through a thick fog of exhaustion. In Mexico, no logbooks--required in the United States to keep track of hours and itinerary--are kept. ``We're just like American truckers, I'm sure,'' Marquez said with a grin. ``We're neither saints nor devils. But we're good drivers, that's for sure, or we'd all be dead.'' Although no reliable statistics exist for the Bay Area's trade with Mexico, it is estimated that the region's exports and imports with Mexico total $6 billion annually. About 90 percent of that amount moves by truck, in tens of thousands of round trips to and from the border. Under the decades-old border restrictions, long-haul trucks from either side must transfer their loads to short-haul ``drayage'' truckers, who cross the border and transfer the cargo again to long-haul domestic trucks. The complicated arrangement is costly and time-consuming, making imported goods more expensive for U.S. consumers. Industry analysts say that after the ban is lifted, most of the two nations' trade will be done by Mexican drivers, who come much cheaper than American truckers because they earn only about one-third the salary and typically drive about 20 hours per day. Although Mexican truckers would have to obey the U.S. legal limit of 10 hours consecutive driving when in the United States, safety experts worry that northbound drivers will be so sleep-deprived by the time they cross the border that the American limit will be meaningless. Mexican drivers would not, however, be bound by U.S. labor laws, such as the minimum wage. ``Are you going to be able to stay awake?'' Marcos Munoz, vice president of Transportes Castores jokingly asked a Chronicle reporter before the trip. ``Do you want some pingas?'' The word is slang for uppers the stimulant pills that are commonly used by Mexican truckers. Marquez, however, needed only a few cups of coffee to stay awake through three straight 21-hour days at the wheel. Talking with his passengers, chatting on the CB radio with friends, and listening to tapes of 1950s and 1960s ranchera and bolero music, he showed few outward signs of fatigue. But the 46-year-old Marquez, who has been a trucker for 25 years, admitted that the burden occasionally is too much. ``Don't kid yourself,'' he said late the third night. ``Sometimes, you get so tired, so worn, your head just falls.'' U.S. highway safety groups predict an increase in accidents after the border is opened. ``Even now, there aren't enough safety inspectors available for all crossing points,'' said David Golden, a top official of the National Association of Independent Insurers, the main insurance-industry lobby. ``So we need to make sure that when you're going down Interstate 5 with an 80,000-pound Mexican truck in your rearview mirror and you have to jam on your brakes, that truck doesn't come through your window.'' Golden said the Bush administration should delay the opening to Mexican trucks until border facilities are upgraded. California highway safety advocates concur, saying the California Highway Patrol--which carries out the state's truck inspections--needs to be given more inspectors and larger facilities to check incoming trucks' brakes, lights and other safety functions. Marquez's trip started at his company's freight yard in Tlalnepantla, an industrial suburb of Mexico City. There, his truck was loaded with a typical variety of cargo--electronic components and handicrafts bound for Los Angeles, and chemicals, printing equipment and industrial parts for Tijuana. At the compound's gateway was a shrine with statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. As he drove past, Marquez crossed himself, then crossed himself again before the small Virgin on his dashboard. ``Just in case, you know,'' he said. ``The devil is always on the loose on these roads.'' In fact, Mexican truckers have to brave a wide variety of dangers. As he drove through the high plateaus of central Mexico, Marquez pointed out where he was hijacked a year ago--held up at gunpoint by robbers who pulled alongside him in another truck. His trailer full of canned tuna--easy to fence, he said--was stolen, along with all his personal belongings. What's worse, some thieves wear uniforms. On this trip, the truck had to pass 14 roadblocks, at which police and army soldiers searched the cargo for narcotics. Each time, Marquez stood on tiptoes to watch over their shoulders. He said, ``You have to have quick eyes, or they'll take things out of the packages.'' Twice, police inspectors asked for bribes--``something for the coffee,'' they said. Each time, he refused and got away with it. ``You're good luck for me,'' he told a Chronicle reporter. ``They ask for money but then see an American and back off. Normally, I have to pay a lot.'' Although the Mexican government has pushed hard to end the border restrictions, the Mexican trucking industry is far from united behind that position. Large trucking companies such as Transportes Castores back the border opening, while small and medium-size ones oppose it. ``We're ready for the United States, and we'll be driving to Los Angeles and San Francisco,'' said Munoz, the company's vice president. ``Our trucks are modern and can pass the U.S. inspections. Only about 10 companies here could meet the U.S. standards.'' The border opening has been roundly opposed by CANACAR, the Mexican national trucking industry association, which says it will result in U.S. firms taking over Mexico's trucking industry. ``The opening will allow giant U.S. truck firms to buy large Mexican firms and crush smaller ones,'' said Miguel Quintanilla, CANACAR's president. ``We're at a disadvantage, and those who benefit will be the multinationals.'' Quintanilla said U.S. firms will lower their current costs by replacing their American drivers with Mexicans, yet will use the huge American advantages--superior warehouse and inventory-tracking technology, superior warehouse and inventory-tracking technology, superior access to financing and huge economies of scale-to-drive Mexican companies out of business. Already, some U.S. trucking giants such as M.S. Carriers, Yellow Corp. and Consolidated Freightways Corp. have invested heavily in Mexico. ``The opening of the border will bring about the consolidation of much of the trucking industry on both sides of the border,'' said the leading U.S. academic expert on NAFTA trucking issues, James Giermanski, a professor at Belmont Abbey College in Raleigh, N.C. The largest U.S. firms will pair with large Mexican firms and will dominate U.S.-Mexico traffic, he said. But Giermanski added that the increase in long-haul cross- border traffic will be slower than either critics or advocates expect, because of language difficulties, Mexico's inadequate insurance coverage and Mexico's time-consuming system of customs brokers. ``All the scare stories you've heard are just ridiculous,'' he said. ``The process will take a long time.'' In California, many truckers fear for their jobs. However, Teamsters union officials say they are trying to persuade their members that Marquez and his comrades are not the enemy. ``There will be a very vehement reaction by our members if the border is opened,'' said Chuck Mack, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7, which has 55,000 members in the Bay Area. ``But we're trying to diminish the animosity that by focusing on the overall problem--how (the opening) will help multinational corporations to exploit drivers on both sides of the border.'' Mexican drivers, however, are likely to welcome the multinationals' increased efficiency, which will enable them to earn more by wasting less time waiting for loading and paperwork. For example, in Mexico City, Marquez had to wait more than four hours for stevedores to load his truck and for clerks to prepare the load's documents--a task that would take perhaps an hour for most U.S. trucking firms. For drivers, time is money, Marquez's firm pays drivers a percentage of gross freight charges, minus some expenses. His three-day trip would net him about $300. His average monthly income is about $1,400--decent money in Mexico, but by no means middle class. Most Mexican truckers are represented by a union, but it is nearly always ineffectual--what Transportes Castores executives candidly described as a ``company union.'' A few days before this trip, Transportes Castores fired 20 drivers when they protested delays in reimbursement of fuel costs. But Marquez didn't much like talking about his problems. He preferred to discuss his only child, a 22-year-old daughter who is in her first year of undergraduate medical school in Mexico City. Along with paternal pride was sadness. ``Don't congratulate me,'' he said. ``My wife is the one who raised her. I'm gone most of the time. You have to have a very strong marriage, because this job is hell on a wife. ``The money is OK, and I really like being out on the open road, but the loneliness . . .'' He left the thought unfinished, and turned up the volume on his cassette deck. It was playing Pedro Infante, the famous bolero balladeer, and Marquez began to sing. ``The moon of my nights has hidden itself. ``Oh little heavenly virgin, I am your son. ``Give me your consolation, ``Today, when I'm suffering out in the world.'' Despite the melancholy tone, Marquez soon became jovial and energetic. He smiled widely and encouraged his passengers to sing along. Forgoing his normal caution, he accelerated aggressively on the curves. His voice rose, filling the cabin, drowning out the hiss of the pavement below and the rush of the wind that was blowing him inexorably toward the border. How NAFTA Ended the Ban On Mexico's Trucks The North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in January 1994, stipulated that the longtime U.S. restrictions on Mexican trucks be lifted. Under NAFTA, by December 1995, Mexican trucks would be allowed to deliver loads all over the four U.S. border states--California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas--and to pick up loads for their return trip to Mexico. U.S. trucking firms would get similar rights to travel in Mexico. And by January 2000, Mexican trucks would be allowed throughout the United States. However, bowing to pressure from the Teamsters union and the insurance industry, President Clinton blocked implementation of the NAFTA provisions. The Mexican government retaliated by imposing a similar ban on U.S. trucks. As a result, the longtime status quo continues: Trucks from either side must transfer their loads to short-haul ``drayage'' truckers, who cross the border and transfer the cargo again to long-haul domestic trucks. The complicated arrangement is time-consuming and expensive. Mexico estimates its losses at $2 billion annually; U.S. shippers say they have incurred similar costs. In 1998, Mexico filed a formal complaint under NAFTA, saying the U.S. ban violated the trade pact and was mere protectionism. The convoluted complaint process lasted nearly six years, until a three-person arbitration panel finally ruled Feb. 6 that the United States must lift its ban by March 8 or allow Mexico to levy punitive tariffs on U.S. exports.