Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from West Virginia. In many ways, you have never really heard spring described until you have heard it described by the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. It also fits with something I come to the floor to talk about.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I came back from North Dakota on a late flight last evening on Northwest Airlines, flying North Dakota to Washington, DC. When one is traveling all day and up late, one gets up in the morning and it takes a while to adjust to find a good mood. My morning wasn't enhanced when I saw USA Today and saw the headline, once again, that Mr. Greenspan digs in his heels on rate hikes. Mr. Greenspan goes to Congress and decides he will tell the American people they should brace themselves, he will increase their taxes in the form of higher interest rates. That did not exactly make my day this morning. I will make a couple of comments about what Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board are doing. March 7, Wall Street Journal: The U.S. work force was much more efficient in the fourth quarter than initially thought, push labor costs sharply lower. Nonfarm productivity grew at a 6.4% rate in the last three months of 1999, the fastest pace in seven years and well above the government's initial estimate of 5%, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The increase caused the biggest decline in unit labor costs in seven years--a drop of 2.5% that was more than double the 1% reduction the government estimated. The surge in productivity, which was in line with expectations, generally would suggest that the risk of inflation remains low despite feverish economic growth. Because workers are producing more goods and services per hour, employers can afford to pay higher wages without having to pass on additional costs to consumers. I wonder if Mr. Greenspan has seen this information, or does he just disregard it. It does not matter what the facts are. They are intent on increasing interest rates at the Federal Reserve Board. How about this. Mr. Greenspan says he fears demand is still too strong, even after reports last week that job growth has slowed in February, unemployment rose, and sales for new homes dropped sharply at the beginning of the year. He says our country is growing too fast and too many people are working, and so he has decided he wants, once again, to increase interest rates. What does increasing interest rates mean? I will tell you what it means. If he, as some expect, increases interest rates another full 1 percent, which will double it from where rates were about a year ago, it means that every North Dakota farm family will pay about $1,500 more per year in interest costs. Typical nonfarm households in North Dakota will pay about $700 more a year in added costs. There will be no debate in this Chamber about this issue. This is the Federal Reserve Board saying: We are going to tax the American people with higher interest rates. Why? Because we decide we are going to do it. Who are they? I do this as a public service. These are the members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents. This is a chart showing who they are and from where they come. They all wear gray suits. They all come from the same area. They all think the same. I even put their salaries on the chart. I do this so we can put some faces to this public policy because they want to close their doors, make decisions about interest rates, and impose higher interest rates on every American at a time when it is unjustified. My children used to go through a book called ``Where's Waldo?'' At night they would lay on the bed and search through those large pages trying to find Waldo. My son especially always claimed to find Waldo even when he had not sighted Waldo. I think my son knows something that Mr. Greenspan knows. Mr. Greenspan has been searching for inflation forever, even as inflation has gone down, way down, and he continues to increase interest rates with no justification at all. Where is Waldo? Where is inflation, I say to Mr. Greenspan? Where is the justification for deciding that family farmers in desperate trouble already should pay about $750 a year more in interest charges under your current interest rate increases that have already been put into effect by you, and $1,500 a year total in additional interest charges if you do as many analysts expect and increase interest rates another 1 percent over the coming year? Mr. Greenspan is a public servant. I admire him for his public service, but I profoundly disagree with that monetary policy. Perhaps he will discover what most Americans know: Productivity has increased dramatically, inflation is down, and this economy can least afford, in my judgment, the increased interest rates that Mr. Greenspan is now proposing. I had asked for time this morning to speak on another subject. I thought if I was coming to the floor, I should at least make a comment about what Mr. Greenspan is talking. I ask unanimous consent to speak on another subject under a separate heading.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to talk about the issue of arms control this morning. There are many issues that we consider in this country. We have the deafening sounds of Democracy as the American people and politicians discuss, debate, and describe many, many issues. Both candidates and crowds these days are generously discussing issues ranging from abortion to economic growth to defense policy, and so on. But there is dead silence on the subject of the spread of nuclear weapons and the threat it poses to every single person on this Earth and especially the threat it imposes to our children. Let me describe where we are with nuclear weapons. In 1985, the Soviet Union had 11,500 nuclear warheads on long range missiles. Defense analysts predicted that would go up to 18,000 or 20,000 nuclear warheads by the mid-1990s. These numbers do not even mean much. What is a thousand nuclear warheads? Each Soviet warhead had about 20 or 30 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Instead of the 20,000 warheads many predicted, Russia has only about 5,000 warheads today. Why do they have 5,000 warheads? Because they have gotten rid of about 6,000 of the nuclear warheads they used to have. The Soviet stockpile, now the Russian stockpile, has been cut by the equivalent of 175,000 Hiroshima bombs. How did that happen? Because of arms control agreements. We agreed to reduce our nuclear weapons and they agreed to reduce theirs. I will describe what has happened. We have something called the Nunn- Lugar program, named after our colleagues, former Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar. They said a good way to reduce the threat is by helping a potential adversary destroy his weapons while we reduce our own weapons. As a result the Nunn-Lugar program has reduced the threat to the United States by eliminating 4,900 Russian nuclear warheads, 471 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 12 ballistic missile submarines, and 354 ICBM silos. For example, this is a picture of a Typhoon submarine owned by the Russians. It carries 20 missiles with 10 warheads on each missile. That is 200 nuclear weapons that can be fired from this Typhoon-class submarine. This submarine is twice the length of a football field and a third larger than the Trident submarine, the largest U.S. submarine. What is going to happen to this submarine? It is going to be dismantled, and we are going to help pay for the dismantling of this submarine under the Nunn-Lugar program. We are going to reduce the threat by taking a Typhoon-class submarine and destroying it. This is a picture of what it looks like today. This is what it will look like later this year. You can see what once was a submarine carrying 200 nuclear warheads aimed at U.S. targets is now a shell being taken apart and turned into scrap metal. This picture shows the elimination of intercontinental ballistic missiles. They pull them from the ground and take off the warhead, and then cut the missile to pieces. This is a picture of an ICBM silo, the last piece of metal being removed. The dirt is then piled over and sunflowers are planted. This is in the Ukraine. Is that progress? You bet your life it is progress. A silo in which a missile once rested aimed at the United States of America with multiple warheads with nuclear explosive power is now eliminated. The Ukraine is free of nuclear weapons because of the Nunn- Lugar program. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to show this piece of a wing strut from a Soviet bomber.

Mr. DORGAN. How did I get this? Did we shoot the bomber down? No. This bomber was sawed up. The wings were sawed off as a result of an arms control agreement that we have with the Russians by which we reduced our delivery systems and nuclear weapons and they reduced theirs. Their submarines are dismantled, their intercontinental ballistic missiles are dismantled, and their bombers have had the wings sawed off. This is a picture of the heavy bomber elimination, TU-95. That is what is happening with arms control. It is, in my judgment, exciting and breathtaking. What is expected to happen in the future? Under START III, we are expected to go to 2,500 nuclear weapons. Think of that--2,500 nuclear weapons. What is one nuclear weapon? In most cases, the yield of a nuclear weapon is many times the yield of the one used in Hiroshima. Mr. President, 2,500 weapons on each side if we get to that--we are not there. What has the Senate done with respect to arms control treaties? The U.S. Senate over the years has done a great deal. We passed START I, START II, the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty--a whole series of arms control initiatives. We have funded the Nuclear Cities Program to employ scientists in Russia who know how to make nuclear bombs so they are not hired by the Iranians, the North Koreans, and others. We funded the Nunn-Lugar program. We have done a lot of things. The fact is, there is no discussion anymore about arms control in this Senate. In fact, all the discussion is about deploying a national missile defense system, abrogating the ABM Treaty, and making a full retreat on issues on which we were making significant progress. We need to change that. In addition to that, last year, after languishing for 2 years without even a hearing, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty was defeated by the Senate. The President just asked General Shalikashvili to head a task force to see if everybody can work together toward a common goal and resolve the concerns many Senators have about the treaty. Does anybody really believe it is in our interest or anybody's interest to begin testing once again nuclear weapons? What a huge step backwards. My hope is we can, once again, on the Presidential campaign trail and in the Senate and in this country, as a matter of discussion among American citizens, talk about what we want for our future and our children's future. Do we want a future with 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 nuclear weapons? Do we want a future, by the way, in which more and more and more countries have access to nuclear weapons? Because that is going to happen unless the country provides some leadership. There is no significant leadership in the world at this point to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. It is our responsibility to do that. It is our job to do that. Most people do not understand the danger that was posed just a year or so ago when India and Pakistan--countries that do not like each other, countries that have fights on their border-- both exploded nuclear weapons, virtually under each other's chin. Most people do not understand the potential consequences of that. But we must, once again, as a Congress, and as a Senate, begin working seriously on the issue of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons and reducing the stockpile of nuclear weapons. We must get to full implementation of START II, and get to START III, and continue discussions, and not abrogate the ABM Treaty, and pass the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. We must do those things. It seems to me we must not run off and decide: Well, now what we want to do is start an arms race once again. Let's deploy a national missile defense system. It does not matter what it costs. It does not matter what the consequences are. We don't care what the Russians think. We do not care what it does to the Nunn-Lugar program. We do not care that it abrogates the ABM Treaty. We just do not care. In my judgment, that kind of mindset does not serve this country's long-term interests well at all. What will best serve this country's interests is if we decide that a safer world will be a world in which we provide world leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. We do not want any additional countries to access nuclear weapons. I know people say: But we have these rogue states. They may shoot an intercontinental ballistic missile at the United States. That is probably the least likely threat this country faces. A rogue nation is not very likely to shoot an intercontinental missile. They are much more likely to acquire a cruise missile, for which a national missile defense system would not provide a defense. They are far more likely to get a suitcase nuclear bomb and plant it in the trunk of a rusty Yugo, plant it on a dock in New York City, and hold the city hostage. That is a far more likely threat than that some rogue nation would actually achieve access to an intercontinental ballistic missile. Even more likely than all of that is the threat of a deadly vial of biological or chemical agents, that is acquired by a rogue nation or some terrorist, planted in a subway system in a major city. Those are the most likely threats. Yet we have people in this Chamber who stand up and say: We demand deployment, immediately, of a national missile defense system. What that threatens to do is pull the legs out from under every bit of arms control efforts we have had underway for 15 years in this country. The reason I show this chart is that I want to show that arms control has achieved the reduction of 6,000 nuclear weapons in the Russian arsenal. Six thousand nuclear weapons are gone. The experts predicted it would grow from 11,500 nuclear weapons to 18,000 or 20,000 nuclear weapons. They were wrong because arms control agreements with the Russians and the old Soviet Union represent a substantial decrease in the number of nuclear weapons they now have in their arsenal. The equivalent of 175,000 Hiroshima explosions has been eliminated from the Russian arsenal. Will our children and grandchildren live in a world in which thousands of nuclear weapons are targeted at their homes, at their cities, at their country? I hope not. Will our children live in a world in which dozens of additional countries have access to and have acquired nuclear weapons and can and may use them to hold others hostage? Will our children live in a world in which terrorists will have access to nuclear weapons and hold cities and countries hostage? I hope not. But the answer to those questions depends on the will and the aggressiveness here in this country of a President and the Congress to stand up and say: Arms control works. The United States of America will lead in this world to achieve new arms control agreements, dramatically reduce numbers of nuclear weapons, and reduce vehicles to deliver those nuclear weapons, with a substantial regime of inspection and monitoring and a Senate that will pass the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. The American people should expect us to do that. Let me conclude where I started. There is a deafening noise in this country about a lot of issues-- some important, some not. That is the noise of democracy. It is the sounds of democracy. But there is a dead silence on the subject of arms control. When Members of the Senate walked out of this Chamber last year, after having voted in the majority against the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, most must surely have felt some dissatisfaction about that. That treaty was signed by over 150 countries, sent to this Chamber, and not one hearing was held in 2 years. Most must surely have left this Chamber with a feeling of dissatisfaction. I hope that dissatisfaction can persuade those of us who care about controlling the spread of nuclear weapons and reducing the arsenal of nuclear weapons to come together and work together. There is nothing Republican or Democrat about the issue of nuclear weapons. I say today, I hope the Presidential campaign can be about these issues. I hope the debate in Congress can be about these issues because, in my judgment, there is no issue more important to our future and our children's future. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be set aside.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the amendment I offer today deals with a standardized school report card. I want to describe that, but first, I will talk generally about this issue of education and about the debates we have had in recent hours and days in this Chamber. I talked about the schools I have visited recently in North Dakota. I had a meeting yesterday in Washington, DC, with some people from the Ojibwa School on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. I want to describe it because we are talking today about how to spend money to improve this country's education system. Some say: Let's provide it in the form of tax credits for education savings accounts that will allow parents to accrue money to send their kids to this school or that school. There is another way to handle it, and that is to make investments in our schools so children are walking into school buildings that are well-equipped and in good condition, repaired and renovated, and they are going into school classrooms where they have quality teachers and the classrooms are not crowded. That is another way to improve our country's schools. Because I just had a meeting yesterday with the folks from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation about the Ojibwa School, a school I have visited many times, I will read a couple of comments from eighth grade students so Members of the Senate, as they discuss these issues, will understand what eighth graders are saying about their school. I can verify everything they say in these letters is true, and in some cases, worse. This is Cathy Renault. Cathy says: In the 2 * * * short years I've been at Ojibwa, I have had to go home during the day very often. This is an eighth grader. It isn't because of sickness or being checked out or because a teacher or substitute weren't available. No, it's because of very threatening subjects, things you wouldn't find at other schools: Sewer backup, mold growing in buildings, heat that's too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter; harsh weather and having to walk from building to building just to go to lunch. This is an eighth grade kid. The Ojibwa School is in mobile buildings, small buildings on a hill where young children are moving back and forth. By the way, the fire escapes are made of wood. Figure that one out. There are all kinds of problems with this school. Does this eighth grade child get the same education as another child where they have less crowding and better facilities? The answer is no. Leslie Champagne is another eighth grade student. This is what she says: Last year our seventh grade teacher slipped and broke a part of her foot and at the same time the other seventh grade teacher had a cast on and had to step in all of the mold and dirty water on the floor. There has been a lot of elders-- Again, this is on an Indian reservation-- There has been a lot of elders and children falling down outside and getting seriously hurt walking to another building. Again, they are mobile buildings, like a double-wide trailer, sitting on the side of a hill on the Indian reservation at Turtle Mountain. There are even roofs caving in and leaking because of heavy rain or snow. I haven't seen anything new in this school for a long time. The only time I've seen something new is just this year when we got a more decent gymnasium. From Belcourt, ND, Shelly Selina Davis: . . . we don't have shower systems that work properly. After physical education class, we are not able to take a shower and are forced to go through the rest of the school day feeling our hygiene is unhealthy. Last year and one time this year, the whole school had to eat lunch in their classrooms or office, because there was a sewage problem in the kitchen and it made the whole cafeteria smell very badly. Each year, during the winter, there are many students who become ill and miss many school days because of their sickness. The students became ill from having to walk from building to building in the very cold winter weather. These are grade-school students saying kids do not get to make the decision if they want to be poisoned by a poor sewer system or mold. Kids should be worrying about how they are going to do on a big test, not whether the building is going to collapse. A new school is something we need and have wanted for a long time. This is an eighth grade kid imploring that they need help. Yesterday, I talked about the Cannonball School. It is no different than this school. Part of the Cannonball School is 90 years old and has been condemned as a fire hazard. The second level of the school is unusable because the stairs leading up to it are unsafe and the school cannot afford to replace the steps. The sewer and the water systems are old, and they back up regularly, sending the smell of sewage gas throughout the school. Classes routinely have to be moved because of the smell of sewage gas becoming so bad in classrooms. One wing of the school does not have running water. There are 150, 160 kids and two bathrooms, one water fountain. They are packed in 8-foot-by-12-foot classrooms with desks so close they almost bump each other. They do not have to worry about whether or not they have computers; they would not have a place to put them. Of course, they could not hook them up anyway in a school in that condition because they do not have the capability to wire the computers. I have said before that when Little Rosy Two Bears asked me the day I visited that school--and I have done it a couple of times--``Mr. Senator, are you going to build me a new school?'' the answer is I cannot build her a new school. This is a public school with a public school district and no tax base. We have mice running around, mold growing, sewer gas coming up, kids crowded into classrooms, and that little third grader walking through that classroom door is not getting the same kind of education other kids are getting, and we ought to do something about that. We know about the value of education. This is not rocket science. The way to solve this is not to give tax breaks to folks. The way to solve this is to decide we are going to renovate, improve, and rebuild these schools that are falling down. The Ojibwa folks need a new school, and they need it now. Cannonball School needs to be replaced and replaced now. If we care about kids all across this country who are going to school under those conditions, we will do something about it. We will not talk about it, we will do something about it. My father left school at age 9. His mother died giving birth to a younger sibling. His father was institutionalized for tuberculosis. My father quit school in order to go to work and raise money. My father worked all through his youth, so he had almost no education. Then my father, in his fifties, one day came home and announced to us, when all the family was together, with a smile, that he had just passed his GED. He never even told us he was studying for it. He did not tell us he was going to take it, but in his fifties, he decided he wanted to become a high school graduate because he never had the opportunity. He had to quit school when his mother died, and he had to help provide for his brothers and sisters. Then at age 50, with a smile on his face, he told us he was now a high school graduate. We understand how much people care about education. I guess it is one of the reasons my father and mother always impressed upon us that education was paramount, you must invest in yourself. Ben Franklin once said: Anyone who empties their purse in their head will never be without riches. Thomas Jefferson once said: Anyone who believes a country can be both ignorant and free believes in something that never was and never can be. We understand the value of education. That is why we are debating it now. But we are debating it in circumstances where I fear we will come out with a wrong result. One piece of a series of steps that makes sense to me is to provide for a standardized school report card so parents will understand what they are getting out of that school system. All parents get a report card on how their child is doing every 6 weeks, every 9 weeks. They get a report card on how their child is doing. But no parents get a report on how their school is doing. How is their school doing in educating children as compared to other schools in other school districts, in other States, in other communities? It seems to me, there ought to be some standardized way for parents to understand: How is this school doing? We spend $350 billion a year on elementary and secondary education and have no earthly idea how our individual schools are doing for our children. Could we do that? We could have a basis for a comparison of our schools with other schools-- our schools with other schools in the school district, between school districts, between communities, and between States. Some will say there already is a school report card. Most parents have never seen it. Thirty-some States have some version of a school report card, but most of them provide very little information, if any at all. I believe there are about eight standard things we ought to require the State education authorities to provide on this school report card. If we did that, every parent in this country--as a taxpayer and a proud parent--would understand what the school is producing for their children. I say this, if we get to this kind of approach of providing a standardized school report card on how the school is doing--not only how the kids are doing but how the school is doing--we will only be able to say, as parents, this school is doing fine if we are willing to accept our responsibility to schools, such as the Ojibwa School and the Cannonball School, and to rebuild, renovate, and repair schools that we are sending children to that are not up to standards for educational purposes. In conclusion, there are two principal issues we have fought for on the floor of this Senate--so far unsuccessfully. One issue is having a smaller class size, because we know that with 15 or 18 kids in a classroom there is a better relationship between teacher and students, and education is much more effective than if a teacher is teaching in a classroom with 30 or 35 students. We need more teachers to reduce class sizes. The second issue is that we also want to improve and renovate schools that are in the condition I have just described that exist in Cannonball and Ojibwa that ought not to exist. It is not going to be solved by some scheme of giving tax cuts. For every national ache or pain, we have someone who trots to the floor of the Senate and says: I have a new idea. Let's provide a tax cut. That is not a new idea. That is a substitute for what we ought to do to fix real problems in education. Every time someone suggests anything that describes some kind of national aspiration or goal, someone else pops up and says: Oh, so you want some Federal bureaucrat to run the education system? The answer to that is no, of course not. But let's not brag about having no national goals or no aspirations nationally as a country for our education system. Let's stop bragging about that. That ought to be a source of despair. We, as a country, ought to have national goals of what we want to produce in our education system. If we develop those goals, then we will also accept our responsibility to improve our schools, invest in our schools, renovate, repair, and rebuild our schools, and reduce class size. We know that works. We know how to do it, if we have enough people who will stand up in the Senate and cast the right votes. I will not seek a vote at this point. My understanding is that my amendment will be set aside and dealt with at a later time. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk. It is an amendment that has been duly noticed under the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the subject, of course, is education and I wanted to come to the floor for a few moments to visit about this issue. I am a product of a small public school in Regent, ND. I graduated in a high school class of 9. I always kid that I was in the top 5 of my class; I won't tell exactly where in that 5, though. I went to college and to graduate school and, through a strange set of circumstances, I made my way to the Congress and finally to the Senate. I am proud to stand on the floor of the Senate and discuss education. I don't pretend that I know more than anybody else in the Senate on the subject. I don't pretend to have all of the answers. But I do hope that when we debate education--and most parents in this country want us to debate how to improve public schools--I hope we will be able to debate all of the good ideas that exist in this Chamber, not only some or a few. It is my hope that, shortly, we will have an agreement by which we will be able to consider all of the good ideas that exist in this Chamber to improve and strengthen education in this country. Thomas Jefferson used to say that anyone who believes a country can be both ignorant and free believes in something that never was and never can be. He understood the value of education, as I am sure most of my colleagues do. I understand the value of a quality education. I want every young child in this country to be able to go through a classroom door that we are proud of, into a classroom that will allow young children to be the best they can be. Regrettably, that doesn't happen all across our country. We have some wonderful schools and some excellent teachers, but we have some challenges as well. Let me start with this premise: Those who suggest the public education system in this country has collapsed and is unworkable are wrong--just wrong. We have many fine public schools in America. We have some outstanding teachers in our country. We need to have more. There are some significant areas of concern in some schools. Some inner-city schools and BIA schools on Indian reservations, for example, have physical facilities that should be cause for great concern. Mr. President, decade after decade, we hear the debate that the school system in this country is collapsing, and that somehow public schools are not making the grade. In fact, however, the evidence shows that we have many fine public schools in this country. The public school system has allowed the United States of America to progress and do things that virtually no other country has done. Why? Because we have an educated population. Some while ago, a periodical described the progress in our country. They said we have spliced genes, we have split the atom, we have cloned sheep, we invented plastic, the silicon chip, radar, television, and computers. We built airplanes; we learned to fly them. We built rockets and flew to the Moon. We cured polio. We cured smallpox. And this country is hardly out of breath. Did that come from a country that didn't educate its people? No. All of those advancements are a result of our investments in education in America--an investment in a system of public education in which we decided as a nation that every young child should be allowed to become the best he or she could be. We do not say to children somewhere along the line: All right, here is what you are going to do and become. Instead, we've said every child has the opportunity to be the best they can be in this system of ours. Is it an accident that we stand at this precipice in history with the strongest economy in the world? Is it an accident that we invented television, that we invented the computer, and that we are the center of the high-tech industry? It is, in my judgment, a direct result of the educational system. I am a little tired sometimes of hearing people denigrate the system of public education in our country. There is a lot to be said for public education. I'm reminded of the old saying that bad news travels halfway around the world before good news gets its shoes on. Never is that more evident than in the debate on education among politicians. They can't bump each other fast enough to get to a place to make a speech about how bad our schools are. Yes, some of our schools are not up to par. Some of our schools are in terrible need of repair. Some of our schools need reform. Yes; that is true. But I go into a lot of schools, and I see some remarkable places of learning. I have a couple of children in school. I deeply admire their teachers. They do more homework than I did when I was in school. They are studying subjects at a higher level than I did when I was in their grade in school. When we debate this subject of education, let's debate it based on the facts. I intend to bring a book to the floor by a researcher who compares the test scores of children in school now to children in schools a decade ago and to children in other countries, and who evaluates what, in fact, is happening to our system of public education. Is it, in fact, collapsing? Are test scores among the same group of students actually increasing? Said another way, perhaps only the top 25 percent of the kids in high school took a college entrance exam not too many years ago. Now somewhere around 60 percent do. Has the average score dropped? Sure. That is because you have the top 60 percent rather than the top 25 percent taking the exam. Compare the top 25 percent of today to the top 25 percent a decade ago. Have the scores decreased? No. They have not at all. There is a lot to be commended in our system of public education. I don't want to hear people talk about how awful it is because it is not awful. In my judgment, it has created a country that is the best in the world. But let me talk about the challenges because they exist. That is part of what we want to address. As I said, I come from a town of 300, and a high school that had 40 kids combined in all four grades. So I know something about small schools. I visited an inner-city school--something with which I was totally unfamiliar. When I went in the front door of that school, there were two metal detectors and armed security guards sitting at the front door. There was a shooting at this school some weeks after I had been there. One kid bumped another at a water fountain, and the other kid pulled a gun and shot him three or four times. This is a school with metal detectors and armed guards. Does that school have a serious challenge? You bet your life it does. In my State of North Dakota, there are two schools I have described before. If people have heard this already, I am sorry, but it is important. Among the issues we will discuss, now that we have an agreement, is not only the proposal brought to the floor by Senator Coverdell and others to provide a tax cut for education savings accounts, but also ones to provide some help to improve and renovate schools and to reduce classroom size. Let me talk about the Cannon Ball School. I am probably the only one in the Senate who has been to the Cannon Ball School, which is about 40 miles south of Mandan, ND, on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. It is not a BIA school; it is a public school with mostly Indian students. And since it is on Indian land it has almost no tax base to support it. The school has roughly 160 kids, most of them young Native American children. Much of the building is 90 years old; some of it is newer. Most of the classrooms do not have the capability to be wired for the Internet, so we do not have high-tech education. It has 160 kids, 2 bathrooms, and 1 water fountain. When I went there, they were using the old boiler room as a sort of make-do classroom, except a couple times a week they had to evacuate that temporary classroom because of a backed- up sewer system. In the classrooms, the desks are an inch apart, with kids crowded into the little classrooms. How would Members feel if their daughter or son were walking into that classroom? Would they feel their children had an opportunity for a good education? A little girl named Rosie Two Bears, who was a third grader at the time, said to me: Mr. Senator, are you going to build me a new school? No, I am not able to build you a new school, not by myself. But I hope the actions of the Senate will give Rosie the opportunity to have a new school. I hope every young Rosie who is walking into a classroom in this country has parents who believe they are sending a child into a classroom of which they are proud, not one that is crowded with 30 or 40 children, but a classroom in which a teacher can pay attention to those children and give the children a good education, a classroom connected to the future with new technology, a classroom in a building that is safe, a classroom where that child can learn to be the best she or he can become. That is not the case, regrettably, in Cannon Ball, ND, and those poor folks who run the school cannot do a thing about it because they don't have a tax base with which to issue a bond to renovate that school or build a new one. We ought to do something to help schools like this one, by providing funding for new teachers to reduce class size and to build new classrooms to reduce overcrowding. Some will say that this is a bureaucrat's approach to solving the problems at Cannon Ball Elementary School. If we say let's provide help to a school such as that, so that child can go to a good school, we are told that we want bureaucrats to run our public education system. That is not the case at all--not a bit. I am not embarrassed as a country for having goals and aspirations for our children. Some want to brag that we as a country, the United States of America, have no national goals in education; good for us. Don't count me among those who pat themselves on the back for having no national goals or no national aspirations for what we want to get out of our public school system. Has anybody been to the Ojibwa School? Probably not. The Ojibwa School has trailers sitting out on a hillside on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. It is a BIA-funded school. We have a responsibility to these schools to do better. This school has been deemed unsafe by everybody. God forbid that someday there should be a fire that sweeps across those temporary classrooms with their wooden fire escapes, taking the lives of children. Everybody says: Why doesn't somebody stand up and take notice of that? They did. Study after study after study has found this school to be unsafe. Those children have to go out in the freezing cold weather in North Dakota between these mobile, temporary classrooms. Does anyone in the Senate volunteer to have their children attend that school? I don't think so. Where are the resources to give those kids a decent school building? Maybe from some bureaucrat? Is it by the local school district? By the tribal council? How about the State legislature? No, no, no, in every case. How about from us? Could we in the Congress do something for the young school children in the Ojibwa School? We have a list of those schools for which the federal government has responsibility. This is a federal trust responsibility that we have for Indian schools, and we are not meeting it. Why? Because we don't have the will to put up the money to build a decent school for those children. Everyone in the room knows what makes a good education: A good teacher who knows how to teach, a child who wants to learn, parents who care about that child's education, and a safe and effective learning environment. We know what works. We will, because of this unanimous consent agreement that was just reached, be able to address not just the question proposed by the Senator from Georgia regarding providing tax-favored education saving accounts for K-12 education. In conclusion, I fully support and feel very strongly about the need to address the issue of reducing class size. We know a teacher does much better for students when she or he is teaching a class of 15 children rather than 35 children. We know that. That is not rocket science. We also know that a child who goes into a classroom that is in decent repair, in a good school building of which we can be proud, has a better opportunity to learn. We know that. To fail to address those two major issues is to fail on the subject of education. We will have an opportunity to debate that. I intend to debate those issues. An additional point. I believe every school in this country ought to provide a report card to parents about how it is doing. I am a parent. My children are in school. I get report cards. I am able to open the mail and get a report card that gives me a grade for how my children are performing in mathematics, in English literature, and so on. That is very helpful for a parent. Parents can talk to their children all day long when they get home from school: What did you do in school today? What did you learn? And you get one-word answers, as we know. So a report card is a very important tool to let parents know how their children are doing in school. But what about a report card on the school itself? Why don't parents, as taxpayers, have an opportunity to get a report card that says: This is how your school is doing versus other schools in the State; this is how your school is doing versus other schools in the school district, the State, and the Nation; so parents and taxpayers can compare their school to other schools? A school report card would give a parent information, not only about their child, but also information about their child's school, which is very important to their children's education. So I intend to offer an amendment that would provide that report card. It is not intrusive, in my judgment. It would empower parents, give parents information about what they are getting for their tax dollars, what kind of school they are producing for their children to attend. Let me say to the Senator from Georgia, as I have on past occasions, that he is a serious legislator. He brings ideas to the floor, some of which I disagree with strongly. Occasionally I have supported his ideas. But we are on the right subject. Education is the right subject. It is our future. It is our children. The unanimous consent agreement now gives us the opportunity in the next couple of days to address all the ideas for improving education. Instead of getting the worst of what each has to offer, maybe we can get the best of what both have to offer in this Chamber. That would be a refreshing change. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am so pleased that the Senate has confirmed Kermit Bye's nomination to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Kermit Bye is one of North Dakota's most distinguished and respected attorneys, and a senior partner in one of the top law firms in the Midwest. He has nearly 40 years of trial and appellate experience, he was President of the North Dakota Bar Association, and he's received the North Dakota State Bar Association's Distinguished Service Award. I won't name every civic and community organization that Kermit Bye has chaired and served on, because the list is too long. Instead, I will say Kermit Bye cares deeply about the law and about the people our laws protect. He is a man of impeccable integrity and sound judgment, possessing a formidable intellect and a healthy dose of North Dakota common sense. Kermit is temperamentally very well-suited for the bench, and can be counted on as a fair-minded jurist who understands the importance of the rule of law to society, and the judiciary's proper role within our constitutional system. As many will recall, this seat on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals was first vacated in April 1997, and my fellow North Dakotan John Kelly was nominated and confirmed to this seat last summer. Tragically, just a few weeks after taking his oath, Judge Kelly took ill and passed away. I am pleased today that Kermit Bye has been confirmed to fill this vacancy so that our Federal judiciary can benefit from his wisdom and judgment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senator be recognized for an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I should mention also, about the trip to Canada, the Customs folks will allow you to bring a small amount of prescription drugs back across the border for personal use.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from California says it better than I. In the multiple-tiered pricing systems, we have preferred customers who get drugs at a fraction of the price if they are in the right system; others pay the highest price on Main Street because the local pharmacies are not able to access, in most cases, those less expensive drugs. We have several different problems with pricing. One is internal. A preferred customer gets one price; if one is not preferred, they get another price. Often, senior citizens are the ones who walk to the corner drugstore in their hometown. The corner drugstores buy from a distributor that does not give them the preferred prices, and senior citizen pay the highest prices. I took senior citizens to Emerson, Canada. Senator Wellstone and others are working with me on a piece of legislation that deals with the international pricing issues. Senator Wellstone has done the same with Minnesotans and talked about this issue. We went to Emerson, Canada, which is 5 miles north of the North Dakota border. The same drugs are being sold 5 miles north of the border at a fraction of the price as in Walhalla or Pembina, ND. Does anyone think the drug companies are selling in Emerson County at a loss? Of course not. A small drugstore--a little, one-room drugstore in Emerson County is making a profit, pricing at a fraction of what they charge 5 miles south. We have two issues. One is something called the International Prescription Drug Parity Act. If the global economy is good for everyone, make it work for everyone. Let the pharmacist go up to Winnipeg, Canada, and access the same drug for a fraction of the price and pass the savings on to the pharmacist customer. There is a Federal law now that prohibits that. We ought to pass the International Prescription Drug Parity Act that Senator Wellstone and I and others introduced. Also, this Congress ought to work, Republicans and Democrats together, to understand that after 35 years it is time to add a sensible, thoughtful, and affordable prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. Let's help those folks who are in their declining income years be able to access lifesaving drugs that will allow them to continue to live healthy lives. That is our challenge.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this will be a session in Congress in which we will have plenty of challenges and opportunities to discuss issues. We live in a country where we are blessed with an economy that is growing, and with unemployment that is about as low as it has been in my adult lifetime. Inflation is down. We have had the blessings of a rising stock market; we recently had some adjustments there. But home ownership is up. Personal income is up. We have a lot of things that exist in our economy that represent good news for our country. I come from a farm State, and there is not such good news for family farmers. They are suffering through a very severe crisis with collapsed grain prices and other difficulties. But, generally speaking, our country has been doing quite well. Our economy is stronger than almost any other economy in the world. Economists now predict that we will have budget surpluses as far out as the eye can see. Of course, that is not very far; economists who can't remember their home address try to tell us what is going to happen with the economy three, five, and ten years from now. It is interesting to note, if you go back to the early 1990s, virtually all leading economists in America predicted that the 1990s would be a decade of slow, anemic economic growth. Of course, they were almost all wrong. So as we confront our challenges and opportunities in the future, I think it is wise for us in this Chamber not to be seduced by some who would say that if we are going to have continued budget surpluses, let's have a $1.3 trillion tax cut over 10 years. I think it is much wiser to provide some targeted tax cuts with some of the surplus, if it materializes, and use a fair amount of the expected surplus to reduce Federal indebtedness. Why? Because during tough economic times you need to use increased debt to help you through those tough times, and during good economic times it seems to me you would want to reduce indebtedness. So I hope that is what we do. However, even as we discuss all of those fiscal policy changes and challenges, it is important for us to evaluate what else is necessary to be done, and what investments should be made. One is education. Clearly, our future is our children, and clearly we all, Republics and Democrats, want the same thing for our children. We want every single young child in our country to walk through a classroom door and believe, as parents and as Americans and as legislators, that that classroom is one of which we are proud. That is a classroom in which that young child can learn, in which that young child may grow up to be a nuclear physicist, or to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or the best plumber, mathematician, carpenter-- whatever it is the talents of that young child allow it to be. That is what we want for our children in education. There are a range of other education challenges that we will debate and discuss this year. In the area of health care, there are challenges as well. I came to the floor to talk about one specific area which, it seems to me, we must work together to address, and that is this: How do we respond to the increasing needs in Medicare, especially with respect to prescription drugs? Times have changed in this country. Many people are living longer and much more productive and healthy lives. I have talked before about my uncle, and I will not describe him again in great detail. But my uncle is 79 years old. My Uncle Harold is a runner. He didn't discover he could run until he was in his early 70s. Then he discovered quite by accident that he was a pretty good runner. My uncle is now 79 years old, and he has 39 gold medals from running in races all over the country. He runs in the 400 and the 800 in Senior Olympic events. My uncle is probably a perfect description of how things have changed in our country. It wasn't too many decades ago that when you reached 79, there was a special place for you. It was a big, easy chair where someone would serve you soft food--probably oatmeal. You were 79, you were old, relaxed, and you were retired, eating soft food. That is not true anymore. People are living longer, better, and healthier lives. My uncle, God bless him, is in Arizona today training for his next race at age 79. In this job, we all meet and confront wonderful and interesting people. I have met some senior citizens who now, reaching the retirement portion of their lives and facing diminished income because they are no longer working, are able to look forward to responding to some of the health challenges with lifesaving drugs and therapies. They weren't previously available to them. But medicine has marched forward with new procedures, surgeries, and medicines. A woman came to a town meeting one day and told me that she had two new knees, a new hip, and cataract surgery. She said she feels like a million dollars. I told her that it was a pretty big investment, but good for you. Forty years ago, if I had held a town meeting in that small community, she would have been there in a wheelchair--if she was there at all--with bad knees and cataracts. But now, with surgical advances, there are so many things happening that allow people to live longer, better, more productive and healthier lives. And a part of that is the medicine that allows people to deal with their difficulties. There are breakthroughs in medicine that are quite remarkable. One of the things we must do in this session of the Congress, in my judgment, is to try to attach some sort of prescription drug benefit to Medicare. What is happening to senior citizens in this country is that all too often they reach that portion of their lives when they have diminished income and they have an increased need for prescription drugs, and they can't afford them. Senior citizens are 12 percent of the population in America, and they consume one-third of the prescription drugs in our country. Let me say that again because it is important. Senior citizens are only 12 percent of our population, but they consume one-third of the prescription drugs. Why? Because they need them. In Dickinson, ND, a doctor said to me that one of his Medicare patients had breast cancer. She was being treated for breast cancer, first with surgery, and with some prescription drugs to reduce her chances of recurrence of breast cancer. The doctor told his patient that she needed to take these prescription drugs to reduce the chances of recurrence of breast cancer. This woman told the doctor that she couldn't afford those prescription drugs, and therefore couldn't take them. She told him that she couldn't afford them because she didn't have coverage to help her pay for them through insurance or Medicare. This woman told the doctor that she was just going to have to take her chances with the recurrence of breast cancer because she couldn't afford the prescription drug. What about the woman with heart disease and diabetes, in her 80s, living on several hundreds of dollars a month of income who is told that she needs several different kinds of expensive prescription drugs to manage her heart disease, her diabetes, and all the other health challenges that come from that? She said to me: ``Mr. Senator, I don't have the money to do that. I can't buy these prescription drugs because I cannot afford them. I buy prescriptions as much as I can, and I try to cut the pills in half and take a half a dose occasionally in order to try to make it stretch.'' Doctors tell me that can actually exacerbate health problems. That is the difficulty. How do we respond to that? We respond to that by providing a thoughtful, sensible, affordable prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program. We can do that. To put this together is not rocket science. All of us together can do that, understanding that people are living longer. But when they reach diminished income, as senior citizens do, they need affordable prescription drugs to deal with their health care problems. I have held Democratic Policy Committee hearings in New York, Chicago, and North Dakota. We will be having future hearings in Atlanta and other places to talk about these issues and to take testimony from senior citizens about the issue of prescription drugs and Medicare. The testimony is so gripping. Senator Durbin and I held a hearing in Chicago. A woman came to testify who had a double lung transplant. She explained to us that the way the system works for her health care is it costs her $2,400 a month in prescription drug costs for the very expensive drugs to prevent the rejection of these organ transplants. She said she didn't have the money. She said that because she couldn't afford them, she could get them through Medicaid for 1 month. Then they stop coverage for a second month. So she described to me the circumstances. It is like every other testimony you hear all across this country from senior citizens. Lifesaving drugs can only save your life if you are able to afford to take them. If you do not have the money, and don't have access to the drug that you need for your health--especially senior citizens--you will discover their life is not so long and not so healthy.

Mr. DORGAN. Certainly.

Mr. DORGAN. Senator Boxer raises the question that is raised in so many hearings. We had a woman testify at a hearing I held who said something you hear often. She goes to a grocery store that has a pharmacy in the back of the store, and she takes a number of prescription drugs. By the way, a lot of senior citizens will take three, five, or seven. I have had senior citizens tell me they are on ten different prescription drugs for a whole series of health challenges and problems. This woman told me that when she goes to the grocery store, she must first go to the back of the store, to the pharmacy, to buy her medicine. She said that she does this so she will then know how much money she has left to purchase food. Only then will she know how much food she can buy. We hear that time and time again. Last year, spending on prescription drugs in America rose 16 percent. Some of that is price inflation; much of it is increased utilization. Let me talk just for a moment about the cost of these drugs because that is part of the other issue. A fellow named Alan Holmer, who represents the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, wrote a letter to the newspapers in North Dakota because he was upset about prescription drugs. I have been putting pressure on the prescription drug industry to try to moderate prices. How much do we pay for prescription drugs? When we pay $1 for a drug, the same pill, in the same bottle, made by the same company, the Canadians pay 64 cents; we pay $1 for what the English pay 65 cents for; we pay $1 for what the Swedish pay 68 cents for; we pay $1 for what the Italians pay 51 cents for. We pay the highest prices for prescription drugs for any consumer in the world. I want to show my colleagues four pill bottles which make the point better than I, and I ask unanimous consent to do so.

Mr. DORGAN. This is a bottle of medicine called Cipro, used to treat infections. It is a commonly used medicine. This bottle contains pills made by the same company, from the same plant--the same pill, inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. The difference? There is no difference in the medicine, no difference in the bottle. The difference is in price. This bottle of 100, 500- milligram tablets is sold for $399 to the U.S. consumer. This bottle-- same company, same medicine, same pill--that sells for $399 in the United States is sold for $171 in Canada. Why? Good question. This is a different bottle, same pill, same company. Everyone will recognize this drug called Claritin, 10 milligrams, 100 tablets. In North Dakota, this is purchased for $218. The same pill--same company, in plants inspected by the Food and Drug Administration, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, sold for $218 to the United States consumer--is sold for $61 in Canada. Why? Good question. The same is true with a whole list of drugs, especially the most commonly prescribed drugs for senior citizens. The drugs on this chart include Zocor, a cholesterol drug. Buy it in the United States, it costs $106; in Canada, $43; in Mexico, $47. The question is this: Why is the U.S. consumer required to pay the highest prices of anyone in the world for the exact same drug that is sold for a fraction of the cost in virtually every other country in the world? Mr. Holmer, who represents the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, has written a critical letter to the editor, which is fine. It is a free country; he can do that. I want the drug companies to do well and be profitable. I want them to produce good products. I want them to do research to find new medicines. We do it at the Federal level; there is a lot of federally sponsored research. I also want fair pricing for the American consumer. Fair pricing gives us an opportunity to put a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program. This is a very important issue for all Americans, especially senior citizens.

Mr. DORGAN. They would not allow a pharmacist who runs a drug store in Grand Forks to go to Canada and purchase Claritin and bring it back and sell it to a consumer. That is the problem. We have a global economy that is apparently good for the global interests, but it doesn't work for the Main Street pharmacist or distributor who wants to access lower prescription drug prices in Canada, for example. But if you ask doctors where we go from here, they will tell you that if you have a senior citizen who has a series of health difficulties-- and often they do, perhaps diabetes, perhaps some cardiac problems, arthritis, a whole series of problems--the most expensive way to treat them is to wait until the problem is magnified because they cannot afford the prescription drugs they need. If they cannot afford them, they will just not get them, and that is the expensive way to solve medical problems. What will happen to that patient? He will end up in a hospital bed someplace. And what does it cost for a day in the hospital? It is less expensive way to say to those folks: Here are the opportunities for you to access the right kind of prescription medicines that you need to manage your disease, and to allow you to stay out of the hospital. That is the most thoughtful and the least expensive way to treat health problems. In some ways it is like the old argument about wellness. We have always, as a country, been willing to treat somebody who is desperately ill. The minute someone becomes ill, we want to help. But when it comes to preventing someone from becoming ill, we don't want to worry about that. We would never pay for that in an insurance policy. We will only pay for the higher cost treatments once you are admitted to a hospital somewhere. The same thing applies to providing prescription drug benefits to Medicare. It will promote wellness, in the sense that it will keep people out of the most expensive medical treatment--time in an acute care hospital bed. We can do this. The Senator from California asked the right question at the start of her last discussion: What are our priorities? John F. Kennedy used to say that every mother hopes her child might grow up to be President, as long as they don't have to be active in politics. But, of course, politics is the process by which we make choices in our country. We do not have an unlimited opportunity to make choices. I hope this economy continues in ways that provide significant budget surpluses. If we have those surpluses, then let's be sensible and thoughtful about what we do with them. Let's have some targeted tax cuts, and, especially, pay down the Federal debt. But, in addition, we should find ways to use some of that surplus to do important things in education and health care. Let's construct together, in this Chamber, a prescription drug benefit for Medicare that, in my judgment, has been needed for a long time and is an issue Congress has ignored. We can do this. We cannot do any of this--we cannot even begin to talk or think about it, if someone comes to the floor, gives us a bill, and says they would like a $1.3 trillion tax cut over 10 years. First of all, we don't have those surpluses; they are simply economic projections. Second, $1.3 trillion means you are going to dip into the Social Security trust fund to give the tax cut, and it means nothing else can be discussed because you have given out all that money in tax cuts. At least one of the Presidential candidates out there has proposed the $1.3 trillion tax cut in a way that, as always, gives the bulk of the money to those who need it the least. These at the upper side of the income scale will get the preponderance of this money and it will foreclose the opportunity to do some other important things. Yes, let's have a targeted tax cut; yes, let's reduce the debt and pass some other measures that will help this country offer a prescription drug benefit, and then let's invest in an education for our children that we can be proud of as well.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time of Senator Durbin's as I might use.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, well over a decade ago, plant pathologists at North Dakota State University's Agricultural Experiment Station observed signs of a plant disease called Fusarium Head Blight-- more commonly known as scab--in a few of the region's wheat fields. Upon this discovery, the researchers swung into action, not knowing they were about to do battle with an insidious plant disease which would eventually devastate wheat fields across the Northern Plains during the 1990s. Since 1993, scab has been an ever present scourge. Losses to the region's farmers from this cereal crop disease have been estimated to be as high as $2.6 billion during the last decade, the most costly plant disease outbreak ever in the United States. Earlier this month, though, some good news was delivered on this front by those researchers who have battled this disease for so long. The North Dakota State University Agricultural Experiment Station announced the release of a new scab resistant spring wheat variety named Alsen. The new variety is named after the town of Alsen, located on route 66 in Northeastern North Dakota, an area which was particularly hard hit by this disease. The researchers say that while this variety is not immune to scab, it can fight off the disease. This is excellent progress and welcome news. And, while this is the first spring wheat variety to exhibit scab resistance, it certainly won't be the last. My hat is off to these researchers from North Dakota State University! There are many long, tedious, and unglamorous hours involved in cross-breeding wheat plants. The farmers of the region will be served well by this research, and it is proper and fitting that we recognize the dedicated efforts of those who have contributed their life's work to combat this disease which threatens the livelihood of our producers. On behalf of all who are involved with, or impacted by, the agricultural economy of the Northern Plains--which includes just about everyone living in the region--I am proud to be able to take this opportunity to say thank you for a job well done to the researchers and support staff of the North Dakota State University Agricultural Experiment Station.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I had sought permission to speak as in morning business--not on this bill--for 15 minutes. I shall not take that entire time.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this morning there was a story in a daily newspaper in my State, the Bismarck Tribune, entitled ``National candy company takes on Mandan couple.'' It is a curious story, an interesting story, and one that is perhaps repeated all too often around the country. It concerns a type of business dispute in which one company alleges that another company is doing something that intrudes upon the rights of the first company. As corporations become larger through mergers and acquisitions, all too often we see big companies trying to muscle mom-and-pop businesses around. That is what I think this case is about. For those of us who care about small businesses and stand up for the rights of entrepreneurs, people who work hard, people who risk almost everything to make a go of it on Main Street, this kind of story is pretty ominous. Let me describe what it is about. It is about a small business in Mandan, ND, run by Debbie and Russel Kruger. They run a drugstore and soda fountain on the main street of Mandan; and to try to make a little extra money, they make homemade candy. Debbie Kruger has created three different candy bars, and she markets these candy bars as well. It is a good small business. They are not making a fortune, but they are struggling and doing business on the main street of Mandan, ND. If I might, with the permission of the Chair, I ask unanimous consent to show the Lewis & Clark Bar on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN. It is a candy bar that has on its wrapper a picture of Lewis and Clark, and buffalo, and the young Indian woman, Sakakawea, who guided Lewis and Clark across the West. It is a milk chocolate candy bar called the Lewis & Clark Bar, designed by Debbie Kruger in 1997. She did this because we are coming up to the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. There will be celebrations up and down the route that Lewis and Clark took. They stayed the winter in Mandan, ND-- about 40 miles north. They spent the entire winter there. They spent more time in North Dakota than any where else on their trip. The 200th anniversary--1804, 1805, 1806--will bring enormous visitation to the Lewis and Clark route. So Debbie Kruger, created a candy bar, the Lewis & Clark Bar. She produced 20,000 to 30,000 bars. She sold about 20,000; and 10,000 are on shelves or in inventory. Then she got a letter from a lawyer in Boston, MA. That is ominous enough, just getting a letter from a lawyer in Boston, MA. The lawyer wrote: ``I represent New England Confectionery Company (Necco).'' I know Necco. I have been eating Necco products since I was a little kid. The letter continues that a matter has come to the attention of this lawyer for the New England Confectionery Company. The matter that has come to his attention? There is a candy bar in Mandan, ND, named the Lewis & Clark Bar. What does that mean? He says his company has produced this bar--it is the Clark Bar--and this woman has infringed on our rights by using the name, Lewis & Clark Bar. She must cease and desist, he says. We seek an arrangement. We demand she suspend operations. The small business has to go hire a lawyer, who writes back and says: This is not an infringement. This is a different candy bar, a different wrapper. We aren't infringing on anything. The Necco lawyer writes back from Boston--I guess one has to go to a special law school to do this--and says: The differences between your client's candy bar and my client's candy bar are not the kinds of differences that dispel confusion. ``They are both candy bars,'' he says. Where do they train lawyers like this? Where on Earth could such lawyers come from? He says, ``We seek an arrangement.'' We know what that means. They seek some money. Then at the end, of course, they demand that the registration for the Lewis and Clark bar be withdrawn and ``assigned to us,'' and so on. Now, the corporation that owns this confectionary company--Necco--is actually the United Industrial Syndicate. They do mill works. They make automobile parts, truck parts. And yes, they make candy bars, including the Clark bar. That candy bar was named after a Mr. Clark who lived in the 1880s in Pittsburgh and started the company that made the bar. The United Industrial Syndicate bought this company at a bankruptcy sale in 1999. It has nothing to do with Lewis & Clark. But here is a Boston lawyer, working on behalf of this company, this corporate conglomerate, who thinks the name Lewis & Clark apparently belongs to them. Sorry, it doesn't. Debbie and her husband weren't looking for a fight. They don't have the money to spend on a battery of lawyers. They are a small business trying to make a living. What is happening here is wrong, but it happens all the time. It is a form of corporate bullying. It is throwing your weight around, if you are big enough to do it. My message for Necco is: Pick on somebody your own size. I am one of your customers. I can't walk past a candy counter without stopping, if they have those little wafers. I like the all chocolate ones. I buy them all the time. Is that a vice? I suppose. But I do it because they are awfully good. I am one of their customers, and I say to Necco: Lay off small businesses. Don't hire blind lawyers. If you can't tell the difference between their Clark bar wrapper and the wrapper for the Lewis and Clark bar, then get a new lawyer, and do something worthwhile for a change. Thomas Jefferson always said that the long-term success of this country would be our ability to sustain broad-based economic ownership. Of course, he was talking about a network of family farms and small businesses. That is what refreshes democracy, broad-based economic ownership. He always insisted that you can't maintain political freedoms unless you maintain economic freedom, and economic freedom comes from broad-based economic ownership. Therefore, this freedom is rooted in the economic health of men and women in this country who run America's small businesses on main streets. We need to be concerned about that. How often do you hear Members come to the floor of the Senate and worry about the number of lawsuits in this country? They worry about the lawsuits filed by customers against big corporations. What about this use of lawyers by a big company trying to put a small company out of business? What about that kind of corporate bullying? It is time to stop it. The men and women who risk their all and work hard to run small businesses in this country don't deserve to have to defend themselves against a battery of lawyers hired by big corporations. I hope the company that produces a product that I purchase--a company I don't know very well--will decide that they ought to cease and desist. I hope they will decide they have better things to do. I hope they will decide they don't own the name ``Lewis & Clark.'' I hope they will decide that there is no threat to the economic well-being of their company by the existence of a small business on the main street of Mandan, North Dakota that makes candy bars and hand-dipped candy. I hope they will find lawyers who can understand the difference between these two wrappers. There must be better things for this company and for its lawyers to do. I hope to report to my colleagues one day that this company has decided to take a more constructive approach. I also hope that the many others around the country who suffer the same sort of difficulty--who are being bullied and muscled by some of the larger corporate enterprises that worry about the existence of competition--I hope these small business people will decide that the solution is not to cave in. The solution is to fight. Don't give up. I know that this subject is radically different from the issue of nuclear waste. But it has a lot to do with what goes on in this country, the kinds of business we pursue and the kind of economy we will have in the future. If those who are big enough can always gain the upper hand then those who are small will never be able to defend themselves. We must from time to time be the defenders of those in this country who aspire to do good work and aspire to run a small business and create something of value on the main streets of America. I yield the floor.