Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I will yield on the Senator's time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we only have 20 additional minutes to debate this. There will be a vote this morning. I have always had the greatest respect for my colleague from Oregon. I think he is a really excellent Senator and a good thinker. On this issue, the purpose of our being here is about competition. I don't think anyone can dispute that family farmers have been squeezed by a system in which highly concentrated industries are taking more of the profits, saying we want more of the profits and we want to give family farmers less profits. That is not a sign of good competition; it happens because these industries have the economic power to do it. I taught economics briefly. Some would suggest you are not fit for other work when you have done that. But I have gone on nonetheless. Economists will argue this both ways. I understand that. But there is a commonsense aspect to this. Harry Truman used to say that nobody should be President who first doesn't know about hogs. The Senator from Minnesota talked about hogs and concentration in the hog industry. Hogs are just one. Beef, grains--in every single area, industries are more and more concentrated, choking the economic life out of the little guy, out of the little producer. Why? Because they can. They want to increase their profits, increase their size, and choke the life out of family farmers. Our point is, that is not free, fair, and open competition. That is not a marketplace that is working.

Mr. DORGAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, is the Senate currently in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have introduced a piece of legislation in the Senate with my colleagues, Senator Ashcroft from Missouri, and Senator Leahy from Vermont. I have written this legislation with their assistance to deal with a problem that could cause and will cause and perhaps has caused significant jeopardy to Americans, American families and others. Let me describe the circumstance. There is a young girl from North Dakota named Jeanna North. Jeanna was a wonderful 11-year-old young girl from Fargo, ND, who was brutally murdered by a man named Kyle Bell. Kyle Bell had previously been sentenced to 30 years in prison for assaulting three other girls, had been convicted of violent acts, and then sentenced to life in prison for murdering this 11-year-old girl, Jeanna North, in Fargo, ND. This convicted child murderer and violent offender, after being convicted and sentenced in the courts of North Dakota, was being transported to prison in another state. Apparently, folks who molest children and are convicted of crimes against children sometimes are put in prisons elsewhere because they run into problems in prison. Even in that culture they are not considered very good people, so child molesters are sent to other prisons for their own safety. This fellow named Kyle Bell, who killed young Jeanna North, was being transported to a prison in the State of Oregon. This convicted child killer was being transported by a private company which was contracted by the State of North Dakota. Apparently-- and I wasn't aware of this--there are transport companies that hire themselves to State and local governments to transport prisoners and criminals around the country. The private company's name was Transcor. Kyle Bell was on a bus with more than a dozen other prisoners. The bus stopped in New Mexico at a gas station. One guard got out of the bus to fill the bus with some fuel, a second guard got out of the bus and went into the service station apparently to buy a hamburger or whatever one was going to buy at the food station, and two other guards fell asleep on the bus. The other guards slept on the bus. Kyle Bell, a convicted child killer, in handcuffs and shackles--with one guard putting gas in the bus, the second guard buying food in the gas station, and the other two asleep in the front seat--Kyle Bell took a key he had in his shoe, took off his shackles and climbed out the ventilator, the roof of the bus. That bus then continued on its route. It wasn't for 9 hours, when the bus was already in Arizona, that the guards discovered this convicted child killer had escaped. Nine hours later they finally discovered he had escaped. Two hours after that, the guards finally notified law enforcement authorities. Today this man is somewhere in this country. ``America's Most Wanted'' did a story last Saturday, the second they have done. Now over a month has gone by and this violent child killer is somewhere on the loose. Why? Because a private company that is required to meet no standards at all hired itself out to haul violent criminals. If you hire yourself out to haul toxic waste interstate, I will tell you one thing: you are going to have to meet standards. If you are going to haul toxic waste, one State to another, you have to comply with reasonable standards for public safety. The same is true if you haul circus animals. The same is true if you are trucking cattle across the country. But if you truck convicted killers across the country--no standards at all. If you want to be in that business, get your cousin, your brother-in-law, maybe a couple sons, buy a minivan and you are in business. Contract with a State or local government and you can haul violent criminals through Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, New Hampshire, anywhere. You do not have to meet any minimum standards. There is something wrong with that. Senator Ashcroft and I and Senator Leahy are introducing a piece of legislation saying: If you are holding yourself out to do business hauling violent criminals interstate in this country, then you must meet some reasonable minimum standards. When Kyle Bell walked away from that rest stop, he was wearing civilian clothes. Apparently, he walked into a parking lot, they think, of a shopping center. But he wouldn't have been noticed as a convicted child killer because he was wearing civilian clothes. One would ask the question: if you are hauling a convicted killer across this country, why would you not have that convicted killer in an orange suit that says ``prisoner'' on it? Instead, he was sitting on that bus with a key in his shoe and civilian clothing, so when he slipped out of that bus when the guards were asleep and walked into a shopping center parking lot, apparently no one noticed. So over a month has gone by and people in this country are at risk because this convicted killer is on the loose. This young girl, Jeanna North, who died, you can imagine how her folks feel. I talked to her folks last week. The aunt and uncle of Kyle Bell, this murderer, are worried as well because he has threatened his own relatives. The point is this: All of this has happened because a private company decides it is going to hire itself out to haul killers around the country, but there are no standards to be met. Senator Ashcroft and I and Senator Leahy believe the Justice Department ought to write standards--no tougher than they themselves will follow in the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the U.S. Marshals Service. Incidentally, they do transport killers all across the country. The U.S. Marshals Service has done it for years; so has the Federal Bureau of Prisons. We believe there ought to be some minimum standards that apply to these companies. The Justice Department ought to be able to establish those standards that are no greater than the standards that will be complied with by the Federal agencies themselves. Is this, this escape of Kyle Bell, some sort of strange and unusual occurrence? No, regrettably it is not. Let me give a few examples. Although there are no reporting requirements for private companies that haul convicted prisoners across this country, media reports indicate that in the last 3 years alone, 21 violent convicted prisoners have escaped during transport by private companies. No Federal Bureau of Prisons prisoners have escaped during transport-- none. U.S. Marshals Service--it has been years and years since the Marshals Service has had anyone escape from their custody during transport. But private companies that are unregulated and have no requirements to meet? July 24, 1999: Two men convicted of murder escaped while being transported from Tennessee to Virginia. Two guards went into a fast food restaurant to get breakfast for the convicts. When they returned, they didn't notice the convicts had freed themselves from their leg irons. While one guard returned to the restaurant, the other stood watch outside the van, but he forgot to lock the door. The inmates kicked it open and fled. One was caught 45 minutes later; the other stole a car and was free for 8 hours before being apprehended. July 30, 1997: Convicted rapist and kidnaper Dennis Glick escaped while being transported from Salt Lake City to Pine Bluffs, AR--again by a private company. While still in the van, Glick grabbed a gun from a guard who had fallen asleep. He took seven prisoners, a guard, and a local rancher hostage, and led 60 law enforcement officials on an all- night chase across Colorado before being recaptured the next morning. November 30, 1997: Whatley Rolene was being transported from New Mexico to Massachusetts. He was able to remove his handcuffs and grab a shotgun while one guard was in a gas station and the other slept in the front seat. He later surrendered after a showdown with the Colorado State Patrol and a local sheriff's office. December 4, 1987: During transport, 11 inmates escaped from a private company after overpowering a guard in the van. Among the escapees was convicted child molester Charles E. Dugger and convicted felon and former jail escapee Homer Land. Apparently, they shed their shackles by either picking their locks or using a key. The guard in the van opened the van doors to ventilate it while the other guard was inside the Burger King. The guard in the van had been on the job less than a month. The man named Dugger was apprehended a short time later, but Homer Land forced his way into the home of a couple in Owatonna, MN, held them hostage for 15 hours, and forced them to drive into Minneapolis where they escaped when Land went into a store to buy cigarettes. He was later apprehended on a bus headed to Alabama. August 28, 1986: A husband-and-wife team of guards showed up at an Iowa State Prison to transport six inmates, five of them convicted murderers, from Iowa to New Mexico. When the Iowa prison warden saw there were only two guards, a husband and wife, to transport six dangerous inmates, five of them convicted murderers, he responded, ``You've got to be kidding me.'' Despite his concerns, the warden released the prisoners to the custody of the guards when he was told the transport company had a contract to move these prisoners. Despite explicit instructions not to stop anywhere but a county jail until reaching their destination, the guards decided to stop at a rest stop in Texas. During the stop, the inmates slipped out of their handcuffs and leg irons and overpowered the two guards. The six inmates stole the van and led police on a high-speed chase before being captured. The escape was not even reported to the local police by the guards who were at fault but instead by a tourist who witnessed the incident. There is clearly something wrong here. I mentioned a few of these examples. Violent prisoners are being hauled across this country, interstate transportation, without the kind of basic precautions you would expect. Again I say if you want to haul toxic waste interstate you must meet specific safety criteria. But that is not the case if you want to haul violent criminals. What if you or your family were to drive up to a gas station and stop next to a minivan that is holding three convicted murderers being transported by some guy and his two sons-in-law to a prison in California? Is that something you would worry about? I would. People in this country ought to worry about that. There ought to be standards. It is interesting that most of these escapes occurred when a private company stopped at a fast food place or to get fuel. Do you know what federal agencies do when they need to stop someplace? They try to only stop at a police station or jail or prison so they have decent help in making certain these folks are not going to escape during a stop. None of this makes any sense. All of us know this is not the way to do business. The Kyle Bell escape is just the most recent. God forbid that this man should murder someone while he is out. God forbid someone is injured, hurt, or murdered during this person's escape. This story of Kyle Bell's escape was on ``America's Most Wanted,'' last Saturday night. I don't know whether he will be apprehended, when he will be apprehended, where he might be apprehended. But this country and its law enforcement authorities should not be having to go through this. This person should be in a maximum security prison in the State of Oregon right now. That is where he was headed. He should be serving life in prison for the killing of this 11-year-old girl. Instead, he is somewhere out there in this country, a danger to the American people because we have private transport companies that are required to meet no regulations, no minimum standards. The legislation I have introduced is rather simple. With my colleague from the State of Missouri, Senator Ashcroft, and my colleague, Senator Leahy, from Vermont, I have introduced legislation that will say the Justice Department shall establish minimum standards and minimum requirements a business must meet in order to transport violent offenders. I am only talking about violent offenders. Among those would be the requirement of certain kinds of handcuffs and shackles, the requirement for violent offenders to wear easily recognized, bright clothing identifying them as prisoners, and a range of other sensible ideas. The bill does not allow the Justice Department to impose requirements on the private sector that exceed the requirements the U.S. Marshals Service or the Federal Bureau of Prisons themselves will meet as they transport prisoners. But it seems to me reasonable, and it does to my colleagues as well, that we ought to require some basic, thoughtful, commonsense standards to be met on the part of these private companies. I should also say that some of the companies themselves believe this is a reasonable thing to do. Some of the transport companies themselves say there needs to be some set of standards. Because when anyone can get into this business without taking reasonable precautions, we will have convicted murderers escaping and the American public will be at risk. This legislation is supported by a wide range of organizations: The National Sheriffs Association, the American Jail Association, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the New York Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, the North Dakota Chiefs of Police Association, the North Dakota Fraternal Order of Police, the Victims Assistance Association in my State, the Klaas Kids Foundation in California, the Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation, and others. We call this bill Jeanna's bill. It is called Jeanna's bill in the hopes that the memory of this 11-year-old girl, Jeanna North, might serve for the Congress to pass good legislation that will impose sensible, commonsense requirements on private companies transporting violent criminals so some other family will not have to go through the agony, the heartbreak, and the sheer terror that has visited the North family--first because of the murder of their daughter, then the trial of the murderer, and now the murderer's escape. Let us hope Congress can pass this kind of legislation and we will not in the future be seeing stories about private companies allowing convicted killers to escape while they are being transported to their life in prison in a maximum security institution. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I must respond to the comments made by our distinguished colleague from Missouri and comments made by his colleague from Missouri yesterday, as well, with respect to the Dakota Water Resources project in North Dakota. The legislation that was being referenced is profoundly misunderstood. In fact, the Dakota Water Resources Act (S.623) reduces the authorization of the water project. It doesn't expand it; it dramatically reduces it--cutting authorized irrigation from 130,000 to 70,000 acres and deauthorizing several project features. It also fully protects the interests of the State of Missouri. Nevertheless, one letter from the State of Missouri, written today and delivered to us, complains about the Dakota Water Resources project. In so doing, the letter describes a completely separate and unrelated project (the Devils Lake outlet), which has nothing to do with this at all. So there is a profound misunderstanding here about the facts and circumstances affecting two distinct projects. I might say, additionally, that the Dakota Water Resources Project is not some dream somebody just had in the last day or two. My State has a Rhode Island-sized flood that has visited us permanently, forever. The Federal Government said, if you will keep a flood forever, you can move some of the water behind the dam around North Dakota for your beneficial purposes. Why did the Government want the permanent flood in North Dakota? The reason was to prevent Missouri River flooding at St. Louis and dozens of other downstream communities. North Dakota said, fine. The downstream states have flood protection and a lot of the benefits. We agree with that. We support that. But we have not gotten the benefits, after these many decades, that we were promised, in turn, from a multi-purpose water project. It has been pared back and back, and the legislation just discussed on the floor by my colleague from Missouri shrinks it even further. In fact, we have proposed further protection for Missouri, because one of the objections by the Senator from Missouri was that this project would use water from the Missouri River and Missouri really wants that water. He doesn't feel that the equivalent of one-tenth of a foot off the Missouri River at St. Louis should be used in North Dakota. So we have proposed there be no reduction in water going through St. Louis. We would manage the water impounded by the Garrison Dam in a way that guarantees there would be no reduction in the Missouri River water for St. Louis. I make the point that the comments made by the Senator from Missouri and his colleague from the same State, in my judgment, and with great respect, profoundly misstate what we are doing. This bill shrinks the authorized project dramatically and would not produce anything like the kind of results that have been alleged. In fact, we believe this project is good for Missouri and all of the States in the Missouri Basin and in the region. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator would yield, I think the Senator is describing, at least in one case, a barley shipment coming from the European Union to Stockton, CA. It pulled up to the dock in Stockton, CA, and was able to offload barley shipped over here from Europe at a price that was dramatically below the price that was received in this country by barley growers, at a time, incidentally, when our barley price was in the tank. How could that be the case? The reason they could do it is they deeply subsidized it. In fact, they dumped it into our marketplace. When that ship showed up at the California dock, it represented legal trade. Think of that: A deeply subsidized load of grain coming into a country that is awash in its own barley, with prices in the tank, and that ship shows up, and it is perfectly legal. They can just dump it into our marketplace. They can hurt our farmers. It doesn't matter because it is legal under the previous trade agreement. That describes why our farmers and ranchers in this country are so upset. They have reason to be upset. They ought to be able to expect, when our negotiator negotiates with other countries, that we get a fair deal. It is not a fair deal to say to other countries: We will compete with you, but you go ahead and subsidize; drive down the price. Dump it, if you like, and there will be no remedy for family farmers to call it unfair trade because we in our trade agreement will say it is OK. It is not OK with me. It is not OK with the Senator from Idaho. It is not OK with many Republicans and Democrats who serve in Congress who insist it is time to ask that trade be fair so our producers, when they confront competition from around the world, can meet that competition in a fair and honest way. That is not what is happening today. If I might make one additional point, the Senator represents a State that borders with Canada, a good neighbor of ours to the north. My State borders with Canada. I like the Canadians. I think they are great people. But following the trade agreement with Canada, and then NAFTA, we began to see this flood of Canadian durum coming into this country. It went from 0 to 20 million bushels a year. Why? Do we need durum in this country? No. We produce more than we need. Why are we flooded with durum? Because Canada has the state trading enterprise called the Canadian Wheat Board, which would be illegal in this country but legal there. They sell into this country at secret prices. It is perfectly legal. You can sell at secret prices. You dump and hide behind your secrecy, and no one can penetrate it. That is why our farmers are angry. It has totally collapsed the price of durum wheat. It is unfair trade. All the remedies that farmers and ranchers would use to fight this unfair trade are gone. Ranchers have just gotten together in something called R-CALF. They have spent a lot of money and legal fees and so on and taken action against the Canadians. Guess what. The first couple steps now they have won. But that should not be that way. You should not have to force producers to spend a great deal of money to go hire Washington law firms to pursue these cases. Trade agreements ought to be negotiated aggressively on behalf of our producers in order to require and demand fair trade. But I wanted to make the point about State trading enterprises, which must be addressed in this new WTO round, because the STEs have dramatically injured American farmers and ranchers. My expectation is that Senator Craig has discovered exactly the same circumstance in Idaho in terms of his ranchers and farmers trying to compete against sanctioned monopolies from other countries.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add 10 minutes to the discussion. I want to ask the Senator from Idaho a question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, further inquiring, is it not the case that exactly the same thing happened on export subsidies? The Senator from Idaho described tariffs that exist in our country versus other countries and trade talks attempting to reduce those tariffs, except they left the tariffs much higher in other countries than in our country. If you go down 10 percent, and one country has a 50-percent tariff, that means you have taken their tariff down from 50 to 45 percent. If we have a 10-percent tariff, we go from 10 to 9. That does not make any sense to me. Exactly the same thing was true with respect to export subsidies. So the European countries were left with export subsidies many times in excess of anything we could possibly use. That was probably fine in the first 25 years after the Second World War because then our trade policy was really foreign policy. We were trying to help other countries out of the trouble they were in. We could beat anybody else around the world in trade with one hand tied behind our back. It didn't matter very much. We could do a lot of concessional things. That is not the case anymore. The European Union is a tough, shrewd economic competitor. Japan is a tough, shrewd economic competitor. The same is true of many of our trading partners. We must begin to insist that trade policy be hard-nosed economic policy, not foreign policy. I inquire of the Senator from Idaho, is it not the case that the point we are making in these trade objectives is to say, on both market access--on tariffs, on export subsidies--and other items, that we do not want to be in a circumstance anymore when, at the end of the negotiation, we have made concessions to other countries that put our producers at a significant and distinct disadvantage? Is it not the case that our producers, at the end of the previous rounds, were at a distinct and dramatic disadvantage, and our objective is to make sure that does not happen again.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Idaho, and one of the points he made is important. A lot of people do not understand that following the conclusion of the latest round of trade talks, there remains a 50-percent tariff on average in other countries. To the extent we can get our agricultural commodities into those countries, there is a 50-percent tariff on those goods. In previous speeches I talked about eating American T-bone steaks in Japan and that there is a 40.5-percent tariff on every pound of beef going into Japan. That is actually a bit lower than the average tariff that is confronting our products going elsewhere in the world. I think anyone would conclude it is a failure if we had a 50-percent tariff on an agricultural commodity coming into this country, and yet our producers confront it all across the world. In fact, those are the cases when we can get products in. There are many circumstances where we will not get products into a market at all or, if we get some products in, we cannot get sufficient quantity; is that not correct?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have been pleased to work with Senator Craig and others in establishing this caucus. I will be in Seattle at the trade talks, as are many of my colleagues. We are determined this time to make sure that, at the end of these trade talks, we do better than we have done before on behalf of family farmers and ranchers. Will Rogers said, I guess 60 years ago, the United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference. He surely would have observed that if he had observed the trade negotiations that have occurred with Republican and Democratic administrations over recent decades. We are determined to try to change that. That is the purpose of this caucus. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the floor today along with my colleague from Idaho, Senator Craig, to discuss objectives we have for the upcoming WTO trade summit in Seattle, WA. We want that trade summit, the initiation of a new round of trade talks, to be as productive as possible for this country and especially for this country's family farmers and ranchers. In recent years, we have seen the results of our trade negotiators negotiating trade agreements in secret around the globe and developing the conditions under which we trade goods and services. Family farmers and ranchers largely have discovered they have been given short shrift and not treated very well. In fact, their remedies to attempt to confront unfair trade arrangements were taken away. They discovered that in many cases the competition they face in the marketplace for agricultural goods was unfair competition. They discovered foreign markets were still closed to them, with little promise of them being opened. We decide this time that the round of trade talks that will begin with the WTO in Seattle would be different. So Senator Craig and I convened a caucus, the WTO Trade Caucus for Farmers and Ranchers. We called our colleagues in the House, Congressman Simpson and Congressman Pomeroy, and, with the four of us as cochairs, created an organization in Congress that has nearly 50 Senators and Congressmen, to try to establish, a set of objectives that will be helpful to family farm interests in this country for our trade ambassador and our trade negotiators to follow. Mind you, we are not simply focusing on the issue of family farmers. We want our trade talks to be fruitful to our country and our economy as a whole. But we believe very strongly, representing rural States, that family farmers have been hurt by recent trade agreements and that ought not be the case. Trade arrangements and trade negotiations ought to help our producers, not hurt them. So our caucus--again, nearly 50 Senators and Congressmen strong--Republicans and Democrats working together, established a set of objectives. Those objectives we have used in meetings with the trade ambassador and with the Secretary of Agriculture and others, and many of us will in fact go to Seattle the first week of December and be present at the initiation of these trade talks, trying to press the case that this time family farmers and ranchers across this country must not be given short shrift in the trade talks. I would like to go through a couple of charts that describe the seriousness of the situation we want to confront with this trade agenda. Here is a chart that shows what has happened to our trade deficit. We are beginning a new round of trade talks at a time our trade deficit is going through the roof, $25 billion in a month in trade deficits. That is very serious. That is the highest trade deficit anywhere in history, by any country, any place, any time. What is happening with imports and exports? This chart shows that imports keep going up, up, and up, while exports are basically a flat line. That is, of course, what is causing our trade imbalance. Just on agricultural trade alone, in the last couple of years, we have had a very healthy surplus in agricultural trade that has shrunk, and shrunk, and shrunk some more. This is a chart that spells out the difficulties family farmers now face--the rather anemic ability to export to other countries. We are not exporting as much as we used to, and there is a substantial amount of increased imports in food products from abroad. Finally, let me take it from the general to the specific, to say one of the burrs under my saddle has always been the trade with Canada. It is fundamentally unfair. This chart shows what has happened with our agricultural trade balance with Canada. The United States-Canadian trade agreement and NAFTA turned a healthy trade surplus with Canada in agricultural commodities alone into a very sizable deficit. That is the wrong direction. In durum wheat, in the first 7 months of this year compared with the first 7 months of previous years, which themselves are an all-time record, you will see once again we continue a massive quantity of unfair trade coming in from Canada. I simply tell my colleagues this to explain that we have serious challenges in this trade round. The caucus that we have established created some objectives on behalf of farmers and ranchers, under the heading of Fair trade for agriculture at the WTO conference: Expand market access. Too many markets around the world are closed to American farmers and ranchers who want to compete. Expand access, eliminate export subsidies. Those are trade-distorting. The fact is, we are barraged with export subsidies in multiples of what we are able to do. We ought to eliminate export subsidies--the Europeans, especially, are guilty of massive quantities of export subsidies. Discipline state trading enterprises. These are sanctioned monopolies that would not be legal in our country. The Canadian Wheat Board, especially, engages in unfair trade. Improve market access for products of new biotechnology. Deny unilateral disarmament; that is, do not give up the tools to combat unfair trade; and do not give up the domestic tools to support family farmers. We have a substantial list on our agenda. Rather than go through all of this, I want to yield to the Senator from Idaho in a moment, but let me also say the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Wyoming, is also involved in this caucus, as are many others, Republicans and Democrats, working together for a common purpose, and that common purpose is to say: Farmers and ranchers around this country work hard, and they do their level best. They raise livestock and grain and they do a good job. They can compete anywhere, any time, under any condition, but they cannot compete successfully when the rules of trade are unfair. That, sadly, too often has been the case, and we intend this time in this WTO round to see that is no longer the case. We want these negotiations to bear fruit--bear grain, actually, now that I think about it, from my part of the country, but fruit for others. We want these negotiations to work for our family farmers and ranchers. Bipartisan work in Congress does not get very much attention because there is not much controversy attached to it, but there are many instances in which we work together across the aisle. This is one. A bipartisan group of 50 Members of the House and Senate are working together for a common objective: to improve conditions in rural America as a result of the upcoming WTO round of trade talks. I am very pleased to have been working with my colleague, Senator Craig, from the State of Idaho. I yield to the Senator from Idaho.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Senator Craig from Idaho and I, following the Senator from Montana speaking, intend to have perhaps 15 minutes split between the two of us. I ask unanimous consent we be recognized following the presentation by the Senator from Montana.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent following the presentation of the Senator from Montana I be recognized for 15 minutes with the intention of yielding some of that time to the Senator from Idaho.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, we are here debating the question of the minimum wage: Should the minimum wage be increased? We are talking about people at the bottom of the economic ladder in this country, people who work hard, who do not ask for much. They do not have stock in the stock market. They have not, by and large, been blessed with substantial increases in income by a growing economy. In many cases, they have been losing ground. I know when we talk about the minimum wage, we tend to talk about it in terms of statistics, tables and charts. I have met repeatedly over the years with people who have had difficulty, who are trying to get back into the labor market, who are working at minimum-wage jobs. I recall one such meeting in my office in Fargo, ND, with probably a half dozen young women who were struggling to get off the welfare roll and get on a payroll and earn a living, to get some training and move into the job force again. All of them told me the same story of the difficulty of making ends meet on a minimum wage paycheck. They shared with me how hard it was to balance a checkbook on minimum wage--meeting the monthly bills like child care, rent, a car payment, let alone trying to find a few dollars to buy a Christmas present for the kids. The story is always the same. Those stories come to you from people who are trying very hard. Most of them tell those stories with tears in their eyes. It is the case here in Congress that the halls are not full today of interest groups who are well organized, who have hired some very skilled people to lobby on their behalf for this kind of legislative change. For people at the lower end of the economic ladder, there are not halls full of well-paid lobbyists and others pushing for this change. They are largely the voiceless in our society who do not have the capability to influence legislative events quite as easily as some other very important interests in this country do. But that should not persuade anybody that this interest is not important. It is very important for our country, especially in a circumstance where the economy is growing. All the signs are that our country is doing well. The stock market is doing very well. Unemployment is at a 30 year low. It is important for us also to understand there are families struggling on minimum wage trying to make ends meet. The fact is, the purchasing power value of that minimum wage has diminished dramatically. It is about $2.50 below the purchasing power value in 1968. None of us in this room are working for minimum wage. No one. So none of us have experienced what it is like to put in 40 or 45 hours this week and be paid minimum wage and then try to make a car payment, pay rent, buy food for the kids, and make ends meet. We cannot do that. No one in this Chamber would volunteer to do that, I expect. But there are a lot of people trying to do that because they want to pay their way. They want a decent job; they want an opportunity. They want to work. That is why it is important in this circumstance for us to increase the minimum wage. Its purchasing power diminishes over time because of inflation. The value of the minimum wage has decreased for a lot of these families. Many of us know that poverty in this country is increasingly poverty of a single woman trying to raise a family. Many of us have met with those folks in our offices and elsewhere telling us the difficulties they are having. In many ways, it is hopeful that both sides of the political aisle in this Chamber are talking about increasing the minimum wage. This is an important subject. We are both talking about this subject now in a serious way, and that is good. It ought to give hope to those at the bottom of the economic ladder who are trying very hard to make ends meet and have difficulty doing it on today's minimum wage. There is a difference between the proposals. The minimum wage we are proposing will provide a minimum wage increase on January 1, 2000. The alternative plan will not. We provide a $1 increase in the minimum wage over 2 years. The GOP plan does not. We protect overtime compensation for 73 million working Americans who are entitled to it. The GOP does not. We offset the full cost of the tax cuts, and there are some tax incentives and cuts in this proposal to help businesses that will confront some additional costs. We fully offset ours. The competing plan is mostly unpaid for. We can go on down the list. We extend the welfare-to-work credit. The other plan does not. We provide a work-site child care tax credit. The GOP plan does not. We provide wage tax credits for small businesses located in the empowerment zone which, incidentally, is very important in our part of the country. These are zones, especially the empowerment zone in my State, which have as a criteria the outmigration of people. People who have left. This is not unemployment and poverty. That is one sign of economic distress. The other sign is a rural county that has lost half its population. People cannot find work, so they leave, and the county shrinks like a prune. Empowerment zones create jobs and restore economic vitality and health in those areas. We include that in our proposal, but the GOP plan does not. These are interesting and important differences between the two plans. I say this: At least we are on the right subject. The Senator from Massachusetts has worked tirelessly on behalf of those at the bottom of the economic ladder who are struggling hard and valiantly trying to make ends meet. By proposing this minimum wage increase which, in my judgment, is long overdue, the Senator from Massachusetts does a real service. I hope at the end of this debate we will be able to adopt the Senator's amendment, and I hope those who are working on minimum wage struggling to care for their families and create a future for themselves, on January 1 will be able to say: Yes, Congress did something that will help me and my family as well. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor in a circumstance where I will not support the legislation that is before the Senate today. Before I describe the reasons for that, let me say I certainly admire the craftsmanship and the legislative skills of the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Maryland, the Senator from Connecticut, and so many others who have played a role in bringing this legislation to the floor. Frankly, I did not think they were going to get it done, but they did. In the final hours of the Congress, they bring a piece of legislation to the floor--it is called financial services modernization. I know they feel passionately and strongly it is the right thing to do. For other reasons, I feel very strongly it is the wrong thing to do. I do not come to denigrate their work. We have a philosophical disagreement about this legislation, and I want to describe why. This legislation repeals some of the major provisions of the Glass- Steagall Act named after Senator Carter Glass from Virginia, and Henry Steagall, a Congressman from Alabama, the primary authors. It will allow banks and security underwriters to affiliate with one another. It also repeals similar provisions in other banking laws to allow banks and insurance firms to marry up. It will permit many new kinds of financial services to be conducted within a financial holding company or a national bank subsidiary. I want to describe why I think in many ways this effort is some legislative version of back to the future. I believe when this legislation is enacted--and it is expected it will be--we will see immediately even a greater level of concentration and merger activity in the financial services industries. When there is this aggressive move toward even greater concentration--and the concentration we have seen recently ought to be alarming to all of us--but when this increased concentration occurs, we ought to ask the question: Will this be good for the consumer, or will it hurt the consumer? We know it will probably be good for those who are combining and merging. They do that because it is in their interest. But will it be in the public's interest? Will the consumer be better served by larger and larger companies? Bank mergers, in fact, last year held the top spot in the value of all mergers: More than $250 billion in bank mergers deals last year. That is $250 billion out of $1.6 trillion in merger deals. Of the banks in this country, 10 companies hold about 30 percent of all domestic deposits and are expected to hold more than 40 percent of all domestic assets should the pending bank mergers that now exist be approved. After news that there was a compromise on this financial services modernization bill in the late hours, a compromise that there was going to be a bill passed by Congress, I noted the stock values of likely takeover targets jumped in some cases by more than $7 a share. That ought to tell us what is on the horizon. Clearly this legislation is not concerned about the rapid rate of consolidation in our financial services industries. The conference report that is before us dropped even a minimal House bill provision that would have required an annual General Accounting Office report to Congress on market concentration in financial services over the next 5 years. Even that minimal step that was in the House bill was dropped in this conference report. What does it mean if we have all this concentration and merger activity? The bigger they are, the less likely this Government can allow them to fail. That is why we have a doctrine in this country with some of our larger banks--and that ``some'' is a growing list--of something called ``too big to fail.'' A few years ago, we had only 11 banks in America that were considered by our regulators so big they would not be allowed to fail. Their failure would be catastrophic to our economy and so, therefore, they cannot fail. The list of too big to fail banks has grown actually. Now it is 21 banks. There are 21 banks that are now too big to fail in this country. We are also told by the Federal Reserve Board that the largest megabanks in this country, so-called LCBOs, the large complex banking organizations, need customized supervision because their complexity and size have reached a scale and diversity that would threaten the stability of financial markets around the world in the event of failure. Let me read something from the Federal Reserve Bank president from Richmond. This is a Fed regional bank president saying this: Here's the risk: when a bank's balance sheet has been weakened by financial losses, the safety net creates adverse incentives that economists usually refer to as a ``moral hazard.'' Since the bank is insured, its depositors will not necessarily rush to withdraw deposits even if knowledge of the bank's problems begin to spread. Because the bank is too big to fail. In these circumstances, the bank has an incentive to pursue relatively risky loans and investments in hope that higher returns will strengthen its balance sheets and ease the difficulty. If the gamble fails, the insurance fund and ultimately taxpayers are left to absorb the losses. I am sure you remember that not very long ago, the S&L bailout bilked taxpayers for well over $100 billion. Again, quoting the president of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank: The point I want to make in the context of bank mergers is that the failure of a large, merged banking organization could be very costly to resolve. Additionally, the existence of such organizations could exacerbate the so-called too-big- to-fail problem and the risks it prevents. Consequently, I believe the current merger wave has intensified the need for a fresh review of the safety net--specifically the breadth of the deposit insurance coverage--with an eye towards reform. This bill addresses a lot of issues. But it does nothing, for example, to deal with megabanks engaged in risky derivatives trading. I do not know if many know it, but we have something like $33 trillion in value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks in this country. Federally-insured banks in this country are trading in derivatives out of their own proprietary accounts. You could just as well put a roulette wheel in the bank lobby. That is what it is. I offered amendments on the floor of the Senate when this bill was originally here to stop bank speculation in derivatives in their own proprietary accounts and also to take a look at some sensible regulation of risky hedge funds, but those amendments were rejected. You think there is not risk here? There is dramatic risk, and it is increasing. This piece of legislation acts as if it does not exist. It ignores it. A philosopher and author once said: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We have a piece of legislation on the floor today that I hope very much, for the sake of not only those who vote for it and believe in it but for the American people who will eventually have to pick up the pieces--I hope this works. Fusing together of the idea of banking, which requires not just safety and soundness to be successful but the perception of safety and soundness, with other inherently risky speculative activity is, in my judgment, unwise. I do not usually quote William Safire. I guess I have done it a couple times on the floor of the Senate. I suppose we all look for things that are comforting to our point of view. But William Safire wrote a piece 3 days ago in the New York Times: Americans are unaware that Congress and the President have just agreed to put us all at extraordinary financial and personal risk. Then he talks about the risk. The risk of allowing the coupling of inherently risky enterprises with our banking system, that requires the perception of safety and soundness, I personally think is unwise. I do not denigrate those who believe otherwise. There is room for disagreement. I may be dead wrong. It may be that I am hopelessly old-fashioned. But I just do not think we should ignore the lessons learned in the 1930s, when we had this galloping behavior by people who believed nothing was ever going to go wrong and you could do banking and securities and all this together-- just kind of put it in a tossed salad; it would be just fine--and then we saw, of course, massive failures across this country. And people understood that we did something wrong here: We allowed the financial institutions, and especially banks in this country, to be involved in circumstances that were inherently risky. It was a dumb thing to do. The result was, we created barriers saying: Let's not let that happen again. Let's never let that happen again. And those barriers are now being torn down with a bill called financial services modernization. I remember a couple of circumstances that existed more recently. I was not around during the bank failures of the 1930s. I was not around for the debate that persuaded a Congress to enact Glass-Steagall and a range of other protections. But I was here when, in the early 1980s, it was decided that we should expand the opportunities for savings and loans to do certain things. And they began to broker deposits and they took off. They would take a sleepy little savings and loan in some town, and they would take off like a Roman candle. Pretty soon they would have a multibillion-dollar organization, and they would decide they would use that organization to park junk bonds in. We had a savings and loan out in California that had over 50 percent of its assets in risky junk bonds. Let me describe the ultimate perversion, the hood ornament on stupidity. The U.S. Government owned nonperforming junk bonds in the Taj Mahal Casino. Let me say that again. The U.S. Government ended up owning nonperforming junk bonds in the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. How did that happen? The savings and loans were able to buy junk bonds. The savings and loans went belly up. The junk bonds were not performing. And the U.S. Government ended up with those junk bonds. Was that a perversion? Of course it was. But it is an example of what has happened when we decide, under a term called modernization, to forget the lessons of the past, to forget there are certain things that are inherently risky, and they ought not be fused or merged with the enterprise of banking that requires the perception and, of course, the reality--but especially the perception--of safety and soundness. Last year, we had a failure of a firm called LTCM, Long-Term Capital Management. It was an organization run by some of the smartest people in the world, I guess, in the area of finance. They had Nobel laureates helping run this place. They had some of the smartest people on Wall Street. They put together a lot of money. They had this hedge fund, unregulated hedge fund. They had invested more than $1 trillion in derivatives in this fund--more than $1 trillion in derivatives value. Then, with all of the smartest folks around, and all this money, and an enormous amount of leverage, when it looked as if this firm was going to go belly up, just flat out broke, guess what happened. On a Sunday, Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board decided to convene a meeting of corresponding banks and others who had an interest in this, saying: You have to save Long-Term Capital Management. You have to save this hedge firm. If you don't, there will be catastrophic results in the economy. The hit will be too big. You have this unregulated risky activity out there in the economy, and you have one firm that has $1 trillion in derivative values and enormous risk, and, with all their brains, it doesn't work. They are going to go belly up. Who bears the burden of that? The Federal Government, the Federal Reserve Board. We have the GAO doing an investigation to find out the circumstances of all that. I am very interested in this no-fault capitalism that exists with respect to Long-Term Capital Management. Who decides what kind of capitalism is no-fault capitalism? And when and how and is there a conflict of interest here? The reason I raise this point is, this will be replicated again and again and again, as long as we bring bills to the floor that talk about financial services modernization and refuse to deal with the issue of thoughtful and sensible regulation of things such as hedge funds and derivatives and as long as we bring bills to the floor that say we can connect and couple, we can actually hitch up, inherently risky enterprises with the core banking issues in this country. I hear about fire walls and affiliates, all these issues. I probably know less about them than some others; I admit that. But I certainly know, having studied and read a great deal about the lessons of history, there are some things that are not old-fashioned; there are some notions that represent transcendental truths. One of those, in my judgment, is that we are, with this piece of legislation, moving towards greater risk. We are almost certainly moving towards substantial new concentration and mergers in the financial services industry that are almost certainly not in the interest of consumers. And we are deliberately and certainly, with this legislation, moving towards inheriting much greater risk in our financial services industries. I regret I cannot support the legislation. But let me end where I began because this is not one of those issues where I don't respect those who have a different view. I said when I started--I say as I close--there was a great deal of legislative skill exhibited on the part of those who put this together. I didn't think they were going to get this done, frankly. I wish they hadn't, but they did. That is a testament to their skill. I don't know whether I am right or wrong on this issue. I believe fervently that 2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now, we will look back at this moment and say: We modernized the financial services industry because the industry did it itself and we needed to move head and draw a ring around it and provide some guidance, some rules and regulations. I also think we will, in 10 years time, look back and say: We should not have done that because we forgot the lessons of the past; those lessons represent timeless truths that were as true in the year 2000 or 2010 as they were in the year 1930 or 1935. Again, I cannot vote for this legislation. My hope is that history will prove me wrong and that this will not pose the kind of difficulties and risks I fear it will for the American people. One final point: With respect to the regulation of risky hedge funds, and especially the issue dealing with the value of derivatives in this country--$33 trillion, a substantial amount of it held by the 25 largest banks in this country, a substantial amount being traded in proprietary accounts of those banks--we must do something to address those issues. That kind of risk overhanging the financial institutions of this country one day, with a thud, will wake everyone up and lead them to ask the question: Why didn't we understand that we had to do something about that? How on Earth could we have thought that would continue to exist without a massive problem for the American people and for its financial system? I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, amendment No. 2402 deals with section 301 of the Trade Act. As a backdrop for this discussion, I wish to mention quickly several pieces of information. First, we discuss the issue of trade with a backdrop of a trade deficit that is quite alarming. Almost everyone in this country now says a $25 billion-a-month trade deficit is unsustainable. The merchandise deficit is worse than this. But this is the trade deficit of goods and services. The trade deficit is spiking up, up, up, way up--a very difficult circumstance for this country. We must do something to address it. What does this deficit result from? This chart shows imports and exports. We can see exports are a flat line, with imports spiking dramatically. The section 301 trade law remedy, which I intend to discuss briefly in a moment, describes something that relates to a trade dispute we have not only with Canada but others, a state-sanctioned monopoly selling Canadian wheat. This is what has happened with respect to the shipment of Canadian durum wheat into this country. It was almost nothing and then spikes up. It came down when this country enforced a tariff rate quota against Canada. This is unfair trade by a state- sanctioned monopoly with secret prices. It is unfair to our farmers who have flat prices. We produce more than we can use or consume domestically, and we have an avalanche of Canadian grain coming into our country traded unfairly by a state trading enterprise. Is this problem receding or growing? The first 6 months of this year is nearly double the first 6 months of last year. Last year was a record high. This is just durum wheat, a small issue, but big in North Dakota and big for family farmers--just one issue. What about a state trading enterprise or state monopoly that trades Canadian grain, or agricultural products to Australia, and decides they will have a trade relationship that doesn't play fair, for example, in Algeria? Assume that Canadians say: We will use our state trading enterprise and we intend to ship our grain to Algeria at 10 cents a bushel and take away the United States Algerian market. Is it fair trade? Is it actionable for the United States to file a 301 trade complaint? I think it ought to be. The law is unclear. I propose with this amendment a simple process to clarify that section 301, a remedy in trade law, can be applied to predator pricing by state trading enterprises in third-country markets. Very simple. The law is completely unclear whether this now exists. I think it does; some people think it does not. In any event, I think it ought to. If a state trading enterprise--for example in Canada, the Canadian wheat board--decides to push the United States out of a foreign market with predator pricing, is that not actionable by the United States? Of course, it should be. Our amendment clarifies that the actions, policies, and practices that are unreasonable and inequitable, that destroy market opportunities, are actionable under 301. Anyone who is proud we have eliminated the fiscal policy deficit in our country--and I am among those--ought to be alarmed by this chart. Our budget policies have created a fiscal policy that is largely now in balance. We do not have growing, swollen Federal budget deficits, and that is a success; it belongs to everyone involved in public policy. However, this is a failure; this is a deficit that is running out of control. The trade deficit is a very serious problem. We must remedy it. One way to remedy it is to be able to respond to unfair trading practices with remedies that work. This green book produced by the U.S. trade ambassador describes foreign trade barriers. In the bowels of this book rests the story about why our producers are unable to access foreign markets. It is a big, thick book, nearly 500 pages, country after country after country. One way to address these issues is to decide we are going to take action against those that discriminate against American producers with unfair trade practices. A final point. I turn to Japan in this green book. Japan has agreed to gradually reduce tariffs on imports of beef, pork, fresh oranges, cheese, et cetera. Japan has a $50 to $60 billion trade surplus with us; we have a deficit with them, and it has gone on forever. Even after our negotiations on beef, if one buys a T-bone steak in Tokyo this afternoon, there is a 40.5-percent tariff on every single pound of beef that goes into Japan. It is unforgivable. This country cannot persuade our trade partners to trade fairly. I ask we include in this piece of legislation something that strengthens section 301, that gives the United States a remedy to go after unfair trade practices. I hope the majority and minority will decide to accept this amendment and take it to conference. It is a small amendment. Nonetheless, I think it is very important to American producers--not just farmers but manufacturers, all producers. I ask for some time to discuss this amendment with staff. Therefore, I ask that the amendment be set aside. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I filed on a timely basis an amendment numbered 2402. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment, and I ask for consideration of amendment No. 2402.

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

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask consent to be recognized in morning business. I understand the majority leader and Democratic leader will soon appear on the floor. When they do, I will be happy to yield the floor to them to take care of business they will transact. In the meantime, I would like to speak in morning business about a very important issue.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, the picture I have displayed on the floor of the Senate is of an 11-year-old child named Jeanna North. Jeanna North was tragically murdered by a man named Kyle Bell. Kyle Bell was a previously convicted child molester, a violent criminal living in the neighborhood. This young girl, out on roller blades one afternoon on a quiet Fargo street, was abducted and murdered. Kyle Bell was convicted of that murder. On October 13, Kyle Bell was being transported to prison and he escaped in New Mexico from a bus that was transporting him and nearly 30 other prisoners across the country. Kyle Bell, this convicted child murderer, escaped from a company called Transcorps. Transcorps is a private company. There are a number of private companies that states contract with to haul killers and criminals around the country. When you haul toxic waste around America, you have to meet certain requirements. When you haul circus animals around this country, you have to meet certain minimum requirements. But if you are a business holding yourself out to transport prisoners all around this country from State to State, there are no minimum requirements and no standards. Get yourself a minivan, hire your brother-in-law and two cousins and say you are in business and you want to haul a convicted child killer around the country. The escape of this convicted child killer occurred in a circumstance where the bus transporting him, which carried over 30 people, pulled up to a service station to get gas. One of the guards apparently was fueling the vehicle, the other apparently might have been getting a hamburger at the Food Mart, and the third was asleep on the bus, and in the meanwhile this killer goes out through a hatch in the roof of the bus. Then the guards get back on the bus and for 9 hours that bus drove across the country, and they never knew this convicted killer had escaped. He escaped in civilian clothes, incidentally--a convicted killer being transported across this country in civilian clothes. One would logically ask the question: If you are doing that, if you are transporting a convicted killer across State lines, why would you not have an orange prison uniform that says ``I Am A Prisoner''? Because there are no regulations, no standards. You can haul prisoners, including violent prisoners, across this country coast to coast and you do not have any standards to meet. I think that is wrong. If you are a company, a private company contracting to haul violent prisoners across this country, it seems to me you ought to meet minimum regulations, minimum standards. In order to enhance public safety, I am going to propose later this week a piece of legislation that will require the Justice Department to establish standards that private companies effecting that transport must meet. When there is an interstate transport of criminals across this country, especially high-risk criminals, certain minimum conditions must be met. Minimum standards on background checks for employees--is that reasonable? You bet. Minimum standards for the type of training an employee would have, who is transporting a violent criminal across State lines; restrictions on the number of hours that employees are on duty during a 24-hour period; minimum standards on the number of guards that must be present for supervising violent criminals; standards requiring that high-risk violent prisoners wear brightly colored clothing, clearly identifying them as prisoners; minimum standards on the type of restraint that is used when transporting these prisoners; and a requirement that private prison transport companies notify law enforcement officials of scheduled stops in their jurisdiction when they are hauling a cargo of violent prisoners. These are standards that ought to be implemented. The murder of this young girl in Fargo, ND, by Kyle Bell is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy that is compounded by the escape of this murderer who now, this afternoon, is on the loose. God forbid he should harm or kill someone else while he has escaped from custody. But this escape should persuade us, as almost all law enforcement officials have told me, that there is a need for some reasonable standards or requirements. Even the private companies themselves have said, yes, there is a need for some basic standards. I intend to introduce legislation that would allow the Justice Department to establish these standards and perhaps we will not again see an escape of a violent killer of this type. The U.S. Marshals Service also transports offenders or criminals across this country, and they have never lost a violent criminal during that transport. When private companies are contracting with States and cities to haul violent criminals, the American public ought to expect that if they pull up to a gas station someplace they are not pulling up next to a minivan that contains three or four convicted murderers who are being handled improperly, by ill-trained guards, sitting in civilian clothing, and potentially able to escape. The American public should not have to accept that risk. We will not accept risks in the transport of toxic waste. We will not accept the transport, without standards, of cattle; or for that matter of circus animals. Neither should we accept the transport of convicted killers across this country without some basic minimum standard that would guarantee public safety.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. That is right. They said they wanted to have certain directed scoring adjustments. Let me give an example of what is a directed scoring adjustment. They were writing to the Congressional Budget Office to get comfort for what they were doing. Directed scoring adjustment is, if I went to an accountant and said: All right, I want you to certify for me what my checkbook balance is, but I direct you not to count the last 10 checks I have written in determining the balance. That is a directed adjustment. Or I say: I want you to tell me whether there are any hills on the Earth, and for that purpose, will you assume that the Earth is flat. That is a directed assumption. The Republicans used these directed assumptions and said to CBO: Using these directed assumptions, tell us, are we in good shape? CBO: Yes, using those assumptions, you are in fine shape. Not using Social Security money, you are in good shape. This is what Mr. Crippin, the head of CBO, says in response to Congressman Spratt who wrote to him: As you requested, these estimates reflect the Congressional Budget Office's assumptions and methodology and exclude these directed scoring adjustments. That is the little funny money put in--