Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. But is it not also correct--I continue to ask a question of the Senator from Washington, Mr. President--when we had this discussion yesterday, there was a proposal that perhaps a second-degree amendment would be offered, and they said: Well, we will offer some money that is in the form of kind of a block grant--they do not call it that--where they send some money back to the school districts and say: By the way, do what you want with this because we don't have any goals or aspirations with respect to how it ought to be used. In other words, they say: Let us retreat from this program of reducing class size by hiring more teachers and improving education that way; let's decide we will send money but have no national goals. Isn't that the case with respect to what was attempted yesterday before you decided to withhold your amendment for the floor of the Senate, that the second-degree amendment would have said: OK, we will provide some money, but we want to back away from the commitment of reducing class size as a part of solution to improve education?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I may further ask the Senator from Washington, this issue is not new. Is it not the case that this issue has been debated for some long while? President Clinton proposed in a State of the Union Address some long while ago this national goal of improving our country's education system by reducing class size; that is, reducing the number of students each teacher would have in the classroom, and decided there are sort of niche funding areas where we can play a role. It is true that most education funding comes from State and local governments. It is the case, and always should be, that those who run America's schools are our local school boards and those that make education policy in our States are the State legislatures. That is the case. No one suggests that ought to be different.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes. The Senator from North Dakota understands that. I have been in the process of asking a series of questions. I have asked the Senator from Washington several questions. I was in the middle of asking her another question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Washington will yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. But it is also the case we can provide niche funding in certain areas through national goals we establish to dramatically improve education, and one of those methods is to say if we had more teachers, we could reduce the size of the classroom, the number of students per class. We know from study after study that dramatically improves the ability of students to learn in school. The recipe for a good education is not a mystery at all. You have to have a good teacher, you have to have a student willing to learn, and you have to have a parent willing to be involved in that student's education. Those are necessary ingredients for education to work. What about this notion of a good teacher? You have to have a good teacher and put that teacher in a position of teaching well in a school that is functional, not in a crumbling school or a crumbling building that is in desperate need of repair, and we know of plenty of those and are working on that, but also in a classroom that is not overcrowded. I know the Senator from the State of Washington----

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. I was in the Chamber and I heard the presentation by the Senator from Missouri and wanted to make a brief comment and end with a question. The proposal that was offered in the Senate by Senator Ashcroft and Senator Dodd said it is inappropriate to continue to use food as a weapon and that food and medicine ought not be part of embargoes that we apply against other countries for bad behavior. That proposal was passed by the Senate overwhelmingly, as the Senator from Missouri just described. The Ashcroft-Dodd provision once and for all would break the back of those who continue to want to use food and medicine as a weapon. What a wonderful thing it would be to have that happen. I was so delighted when it passed the Senate. Unfortunately, the Senator from Missouri correctly describes what happened in conference. We, in the conference on the Senate side, insisted on the Senate provisions--that is, the Ashcroft-Dodd provision that says no more food and medicine being used as a weapon or used as part of embargoes or sanctions. We said we insist on that position. It was clear that had there been a vote of the House conferees, they would have voted in favor of the Senate position. That was clear. So what happened? They decided to adjourn rather than allow the House conferees to vote. That was a week ago. A week later, the conference has not met. I have received an e-mail, I say to my colleague from Missouri. I will read a sentence or so from it. This is e-mail is from a staff person dealing with the appropriations conference. It was sent to me as a conferee: As of this morning, the Senate Majority Leader signed off on a plan which was offered by the Speaker of the House to resolve the stalled agriculture appropriations conference. It describes what was resolved, one of which was to drop the Ashcroft-Dodd provision which, in effect, says, let's discontinue these sanctions on food and medicine. Then it says: The conference will not reconvene and all items are now closed. My point is, this is not a way to run this place. We didn't have input. We didn't have opportunities, after the first vote in which the Senate insisted on the provision by the Senator from Missouri, the Ashcroft-Dodd provision. After we insisted on that provision, which passed overwhelmingly here, the conference adjourned. And then some other people who are unnamed and who are unknown to me met someplace--I know not where--and made a decision that we have a different approach. They essentially said here is what you are going to have, and all items are closed, and you have no opportunity to debate it. That way of doing things is not good for family farmers, not good for this country. It is not a good way to make public policy. I ask the Senator from Missouri, as I close--and I thank him very much for allowing me to interrupt his statement--is it not the case that when the Senate passed this with 70 votes and then by unanimous vote following that, that we felt in the Senate we had finally broken the back of this effort to always use food and medicine as weapons? We finally said to the country, it is inappropriate; we are going to stop it once and for all. Isn't it the case that if we had had a vote in the conference, from all that he knows, that that vote would have overwhelmingly said we support this position to stop using food and medicine as a weapon, and we can make this public law, but, in fact, it was short-circuited somewhere, and that short circuit really shortchanges our country? That it shortchanges the public policy the Senator from Missouri was proposing?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, is it the case, I inquire of the Senator from Missouri, that perhaps some were worried the conference was about to do the right thing?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, I will not object, but I want to correct a misimpression on the floor. The conference committee in the agricultural appropriations area has not been meeting. I am a conferee. I would know if they are meeting. There is no meeting. It adjourned in the middle of last week. There has been no meeting since. I read the speculation in the newspapers and in the press that there have been agreements made. In fact, one suggestion indicated the majority leader had signed off on certain things. I have no idea who is reaching these agreements. I have no idea whether that is accurate. It is not accurate to say the conference committee is meeting. The conference committee is not meeting. No Democratic member of the conference committee is able to meet because the conference is not in session. I will not object either, but I will say there are some who think it is appropriate to have a conference between the House and the Senate on something this important--and it is one of the most important issues to my State dealing with this farm crisis--and it be done behind closed doors with one party in secret, and an agreement is brought to the floor of the Senate which says take it as it is or leave it. That is not the way it will work. I do not have the capability to make things happen that I want to have happen, but I can slow things down. I wanted to correct the impression left when the majority leader said the conference has been meeting. The conference has not been meeting. It adjourned nearly a week ago. We passed our bill in the Senate August 4. It is now October. With the urgent crises in farm country, we have slow motion going on and no conference at all. I hope the majority leader can agree with me that the way we are supposed to legislate is to have a conference; that when we call meetings with conferees, we have Republicans and Democrats there, we debate the issues, and we take votes. I wanted to correct the misimpression there has been a conference committee meeting. I am a conferee. That committee has not been meeting, and it should.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, has this request been cleared with the minority leader?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are debating a continuing resolution for 3 weeks. The continuing resolution, which probably doesn't mean much to a lot of people, commonly called a CR here in Congress--means we continue the appropriations level of those appropriated accounts that now exist for a time until the appropriations bills are debated and voted on by the Congress. Normally, we should do that by September 30, and then, by October 1, the new fiscal year starts. When the new fiscal year starts, the new appropriations bills which we have passed come into effect and provide the funding. Because we have not passed, finally, between the House and the Senate, appropriations bills from the conference reports, we don't have funding that is assured for the coming fiscal year. Therefore, there will be a continuing resolution. Why haven't we passed the appropriations bills coming out of a conference with the House of Representatives? The answer is, simply, we have not been able to do that because the money doesn't exist to fit all of the priorities in the budget that was passed by the Republicans this spring. We can have a long debate about priorities: What is important and what isn't; what works, what doesn't; what we should do and what we should not do for the future of this country. Earlier this year, we had a debate in part about that with respect to the budget. I said then that 100 years from now, when we are all dead and gone, those who want to evaluate what we were about, what we thought was important, what our priorities were, can take a look at the Federal budget and evaluate what we decided to invest in, what we wanted to spend money on. Did we decide education was a priority, health care, health care research, food safety, or family farmers? Go down the list; there are literally hundreds of priorities. One could evaluate what people thought was important by evaluating what they decided to put in their budget and then what they decided to fund. The two largest appropriations bills have been held until the end of this Congress because the money didn't exist to fund them. We have budget caps that everyone in this Chamber knows do not now fit. We finish appropriating money for defense and a number of other agencies and then come to the remaining appropriations bills and are told: You have to do a 17-percent, 27-percent, or 30-percent across-the-board cut in all of these other issues: education, health care, and more. That is not something anyone would bring to the floor of the Senate. So we start doing creative financing. The majority party said: We can solve this problem by creating a 13th month. That was one of the ideas last week or the week before. We can just describe a 13th month. If you could just have a 13th month, then you could move money around and pretend you had solved the problem. Well, the Washington Post wrote about that and said ``GOP Seeks to Ease Crunch with 13-month Fiscal Year.'' That didn't work real well because nobody knew what to call it. Of course, folks immediately described it as smoke and mirrors and not a very thoughtful approach. The Wall Street Journal wrote this article: ``GOP Uses Two Sets of Books.'' It describes ``double counting.'' Of course, that doesn't work real well either. Double entry bookkeeping doesn't mean you can use the same dollars twice. Some described a new accounting system using two sets of books. That hasn't turned out to work real well either. Now we have what is called ``virtual money.'' I heard somebody described funding for a ``virtual university'' that Governors want to create. I thought that was appropriate. We now have a ``virtual funding'' scheme for the largest appropriations bill. We will see how that works. This process, at the end of this session of Congress, is about as disorganized and messy as any I have seen in the years I have served in Congress. This isn't the way to do the Senate's work or the country's work. The thoughtful way to do it is to pass appropriations bills, one by one, during this year when they should be passed, go to conference, reach accommodations and compromise between the House and Senate, between Republicans and Democrats, between the Congress and the President, and then fund the programs that are important for this country's future. None of that is happening. Earlier today, the majority leader indicated on one of the very important appropriations bills that I care about--the Agriculture appropriations bill--that the conference was ``ongoing.'' He said, in response to the Senator from Minnesota, the conference is underway. I pointed out that the conference isn't underway. I am a conferee. That conference hasn't met for a week. I went back to my office after pointing that out to the majority leader and I read this memo that was sent to all conferees. This is from a staff person with the Republican majority on the conference dealing with agriculture. Mind you, there is not much that is more important as an issue to my State, North Dakota, than agriculture and the health of family farming. We face a very serious crisis with the collapse of grain prices, and dried up trade markets, and a whole range of issues, such as sprout damage with our grain, and just a range of issues. We are in a real crisis. We passed a bill on August 4 in the Senate to try to respond to the needs of family farmers. Then, for 6 or 7 weeks, there was this foot dragging with nothing happening. We finally went to conference last week, and it was adjourned abruptly and there has been no meeting since. The majority leader said the conference is meeting. It isn't meeting. After I had that dialog with the majority leader, I received this today from a staffer, a Republican staffer, on the conference, apparently: As of this morning, the Senate Majority Leader signed off on a package which was offered from the Speaker-- Speaker of the House-- to resolve our stalled agriculture appropriations conference. It is interesting that the majority leader signed off on a package offered by the Speaker. If that is so, I have not seen the package; I never heard of it. There have been no meetings. Is there a group in this Capitol that is deciding what is going to happen outside the purview of the conference? Does the majority leader plan to tell us what is in this package he signed off on? Is it his decision or the Speaker's decision that conferences do not matter anymore? Can they make decisions about family farmers, agriculture, disasters, and farm emergencies without including input from those of us who represent farm States? Is that what is happening? It says: The conference will not reconvene and all items are closed. I am one of the conferees. We haven't met for a week. We are in the middle of a full-scale crisis and disaster on America's family farms. A week ago, we had 100,000 hogs floating dead in the Carolinas, a million chickens, untold cattle, crops devastated up and down the east coast from Hurricane Floyd. You think they don't have a disaster? You think they don't have a crisis? That needs to be addressed in this conference. How is it going to be addressed? Who is going to do it? The conference was adjourned. Do you know why it was adjourned? Because some on the conference--on the Republican side in the House-- didn't like what we did in the Senate with respect to embargoes on food and medicine. What we did, in a bipartisan way, with Senators Ashcroft and Dodd, was say that we ought not ever use food as a weapon again. We are sick and tired of it. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, you name it-- when you slap an embargo on countries that are not behaving well and you include in that the cut off of food and medicine to those countries, you shoot yourself in the foot. We all know it. We have known it for 40 years. This Senate, by 70 votes, said it is time to stop that--no more food embargoes or using food as a weapon. Well, we got to conference and the Republicans on the House side didn't like that, and so they adjourned and haven't met since. Now I am told, by notification of a staffer, that the conference is over, the conference will not reconvene, all items are closed and, as of this morning, Senate Majority Leader Lott has signed off on a package that was offered from Speaker Hastert to resolve our stalled appropriations conference. That is some bipartisan way to run a Senate or a Congress. It shortchanges America's family farmers, and it shortchanges those of us who serve here who are supposed to have an opportunity to serve on these conference committees. In my judgment, it really turns a blind eye to the needs of rural America. We will discuss this at some greater length, but we have to do a continuing resolution now--that is what this debate is about--because this bill wasn't done. This bill wasn't done because we have been stalling for months and months because they didn't feel they had the money to do it. Then we have full-scale emergencies arise with the collapse of grain prices, Hurricane Floyd, a drought in some parts of the country, and, finally, it is decided we have to do some kind of a bill and then it gets into conference, and we have all these folks who can't decide to agree, so they just quit. The majority leader and the Speaker made a decision on how this is going to go, and they will bring it to the floor. That is not satisfactory to me and my colleagues, a number of whom serve on this conference committee and have waited for that conference committee to be called back into session. That is not the way to do business. A CR is not the way to do business, and we all know it. I am not going to object to a 3-week continuing resolution. I will vote for it. I told Senator Daschle I will vote for it. But we all know it represents a failure of this Senate to get its business done on time, a failure of the Senate to describe the right priorities and support them. I hope this is the last of those kinds of failures. I hope that at the end of 3 weeks, we will have had the opportunity to debate, offer amendments, and consider a range of opinions in this Chamber on a range of issues, going from education to farm policy, and more. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from New York is correct. There is a circumstance in the markup document that we saw today, and that we took action on this afternoon, that says there will be money available, if authorized. But, of course, the authorization committee is not going to be on the floor reauthorizing elementary and secondary education. It sets up a circumstance where they know and we know they will not continue this program to reduce class size. How do you reduce class size? You hire additional teachers. We don't have a large role in education at the Federal level. Most of elementary and secondary education is handled locally. Local school boards, State governments, and others decide the kind of education system they want. What we have done is establish national objectives. One of our objectives is to say we can improve education, we know how to improve education, if we can devote more resources to teachers in order to have more teachers and reduce class size. Walk into a classroom bursting with 30 children. Then ask yourself, does that teacher have the same capability to affect each of those children's lives that a teacher who is teaching 15 children would have in the same classroom? The answer is, no, of course not. That is why this is so important. There is nothing much more important in this country than education. Almost everything we are and everything we have been and almost all we will become as a country is as a result of this country deciding education is a priority, that every young child in this country shall have the opportunity to become the best they can be. I walked into a school one day in North Dakota. I have told about it on the floor of the Senate. A little third grader--this was a school with almost all young Indian children--whose name was Rosie said to me: Mr. Senator, are you going to build us a new school? Regrettably, I couldn't say yes; I don't have the money. I don't have the authorization. I don't have the capability. But she needs a new school. One hundred and fifty kids, one water fountain, and two bathrooms crammed in a building that in large part is condemned. These kids need new schools. They need smaller classrooms, better teachers. How do we do that? We devote resources to it. If we have $792 billion to give in a tax cut over the next 10 years, maybe there ought to be some money to care about Rosie and to care about other kids crammed into classrooms across this country, classrooms that are too crowded, classrooms where learning isn't accomplished, where we know it can be accomplished if we have more teachers and reduce the size of the classroom. Isn't that the substance of this debate? Isn't that why it is important?

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from New York talked about the 100,000 teachers program, the program to try to reduce class size all around this country and improve schools, improve learning as a result. I came from a markup of the appropriations bill that will provide the resources for various education functions. We had a discussion in that markup on this subject. It is the case, as the Senator from New York indicates, that unless something affirmatively is done, we will come to the next school year and 25 or 30,000 teachers across this country, teachers in every State, will get a pink slip saying: You are not any longer hired under this program. Last year, during the negotiation over the budget and appropriations between President Clinton and the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, a program was both authorized and funded that said it shall be the objective in this country to reduce class size and provide teachers to help accomplish that. Why? Because we know kids learn better in smaller classes. Does a kid have more attention from the teacher and more individualized instruction in a class with 15 or 16 students than with 30 students? The answer is, yes, of course. From study after study, in State after State, we understand it makes a difference in a child's education to reduce class size. Unless this Congress continues to fund that effort, up to 30,000 teachers will be fired. Isn't it the case that this program was authorized last year and appropriated last year, almost 1 year ago now? And the bill that will come to the floor tomorrow, by the way, will propose that we not fund that, that we decide not to fund that program; isn't that the case? And isn't it the case that we will have to wage a fight on the floor of the Senate for an amendment that affirmatively says: We as a country want to retain and continue this objective of reducing class size to improve education and improve the opportunities of young children to learn in schools?

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

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to make a few comments about the subject of education. We will have two votes later today on two competing resolutions offered by the majority leader and the Democratic leader here in the Senate on the subject of education. I would like to make a couple of comments about that general subject. Some long while ago, I was touring refugee camps as a member of a hunger committee in the House of Representatives. One of the camps I recall visiting was on the border between Honduras and Guatemala. At the United Nations High Command for Relief Operations camp that they were running there on the border of Guatemala, I saw a lot of impoverished people who had been forced to leave their homes and were living in the camp. I visited with some of them through an interpreter. One older fellow, probably in his seventies, could not speak English but he motioned with his hands for me to come with him. So I followed him about 20 paces or so back to this area where he was living in a tent with so many others. The refugees at this camp had cots to sleep on, and this fellow reached under his cot, and from among his meager belongings, which would have fit in one small knapsack, he pulled out a very small book. Then he grinned a rather toothless grin. He had only a few teeth in his mouth, but his smile was a mile wide as he held up this book to show me. The interpreter who had walked with me into that tent said: He wants to show you the book he is learning to read. Here was a man living in a refugee camp, sleeping on a cot, in a tent with many others with only a meager subsistence who was proud to show a visitor that he was learning to read. The book he held up to show me was the Spanish equivalent of a ``See Spot Run'' book. In halting Spanish, he read a couple of pages, and the interpreter interpreted what he was reading for me. I have always remembered those circumstance because there on that dirt floor, in that tent, in that refugee camp, this fellow in his seventies was enormously proud of being able to learn to read, even though he was on his first primer book. This story illustrates for a lot of people how important it is to be educated and to have opportunity. How does it happen that opportunity exists in some societies and not in others? How does it happen that we in America have been so fortunate while some others have not? I have told my colleagues before that one of the first visits I made when I came to Congress was to the oldest Member of Congress at the time, Claude Pepper. He was then in his late eighties. Above the chair in his office were two photographs autographed to him. The first photograph was of Orville and Wilbur Wright making the first airplane flight. Orville Wright had autographed it to Congressman Claude Pepper before he died. Beneath it was an autographed picture of Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon, also autographed to Congressman Claude Pepper. I was struck by those two gifts from the first persons who learned to fly and then from the first person to fly to the Moon--autographed pictures that occurred in the span of Congressman Pepper's lifetime. What was it that caused that explosion of knowledge, learning, and technology? The answer: Education. It was our education system that said to every young boy or girl in this country: You can become whatever you want to become. You can be a physicist, a scientist, a doctor, a barber, a mechanic. You decide what you want to become, and our education system allows your young minds to flower and to develop their full potential. How is it that in our country we invented the television, we invented the computer, we invented plastic, radar, the silicon chip, we learned to fly, we flew to the Moon, and now we splice genes? That all comes from education. This education system of ours is not perfect. Through public education in America, we have decided there will be universal opportunity for all children and our obligation is to maintain a public school system to provide that opportunity for all. In our public schools in this country, we have about 53 million students who went to school this morning, 53 million children in kindergarten through high school, and that number is going to continue to increase. Our challenge is to have education policies that invest in our schools to make sure those children are attending good schools. When they walk through the door of a school, we want to make certain children have a good learning environment. Yet we have crumbling schools across this country. I have spoken on the floor at length about some Indian schools I have visited that no one in this Chamber would want their children to attend, but there is not enough money to invest in fixing these crumbling schools. What are we doing to attract and retain the best teachers? Do we have enough money to do that? Some say these things are too expensive. Yet in the Senate we have folks saying, although we cannot increase education funding, we have enough resources to provide a $792 billion tax cut over 10 years. That is our priority, they say. But we do not have enough money to fund this Federal investment in education. In fact, what has happened is that the $792 billion tax cut is only possible if we put a squeeze on domestic discretionary spending that means there is not enough money to fund education. My colleagues on Friday described the consequences of the Republican actions. The Republican budget allocation for education, which is 17 percent lower than the 1999 levels, would provide 5,246 fewer new qualified teachers, 50,000 students would be denied afterschool and summer school programs, 142,000 children denied access to Head Start, 100,000 students denied Pell grant awards, and the list goes on because there is not adequate funding to do that. Some of us believe there are certain obligations we have to maintain a strong public education system. To do that, we have put forward a proposal that does not cost very much but that would allow the refurbishing and remodeling of 6,000 public schools nationwide. Many of these schools across the country were built after the second world war and many of them are in desperate need of modernization and repair. This is a need not currently being met, and we have proposed a method to meet it. Helping local communities to reduce class sizes by being able to hire more teachers, ensuring teachers get the professional development they need to stay on top of their subject matter, increased funding for special education, and providing 1 million more children with access to constructive afterschool programs--all of these are important ingredients for developing a public education system we can be proud of and one that continues to work. There is a big difference in these proposals and what those on the other side of the aisle have proposed. I am proud to be part of a political party that has always viewed education and investment in this country's children as a priority. There are some people serving in the Senate who have said let's abolish the Federal Department of Education. They have stopped actively trying to do that because they know it is massively unpopular with the American people and so we do not hear much from them anymore. But that is what they believe; that is what they would like to do. They have a right to that belief. I respect that, but I disagree with it profoundly because this country's future progress and opportunities rest on our ability to educate our future, our young children. It is our responsibility to educate our children in good schools with good teachers in classrooms that are safe. I hope that, when we vote on the education resolutions before us this evening and when we continue to discuss this issue in the days ahead, we might reach a consensus among everyone in this Chamber that education ought to be the engine driving the budget train. It ought not be the caboose on this appropriations train, it should be the lead car. Education ought not be dealt with as an afterthought. It ought to be the priority for this Congress. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I make a point of order a quorum is not present.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me ask unanimous consent that, following the 1 hour following the Senator from Wyoming and the hour by the Senator from Illinois, I be recognized for 20 minutes beginning at 2 o'clock in morning business.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was pleased to hear the remarks of Senator Conrad about the Community Builders Program at HUD. I echo all of the comments he made about the difference that HUD made in the lives of the people in the Red River Valley who suffered so immensely from the massive flooding that occurred a couple of years ago. I am on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and we had a discussion about the Community Builders Program. I share the feeling Senator Conrad has expressed on the floor of the Senate about that program. It seems to me we ought to find a way to continue to fund that program. These are people all across this country who are making a difference, men and women who give new energy and new vitality to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I think it is a step backward for this Congress to say that program doesn't work. We know it works. We know firsthand its value. We understand its contribution in our communities and other communities across this country. I placed a statement in the Record a couple of days ago about this subject. I was pleased to have my colleague describe this in more detail, its functioning in the context of what we experienced. I ask the Senator if he doesn't believe, in the end process, in the overall scheme of the amount of money that is spent and invested by the Congress, if the funding for the Community Builders isn't almost an asterisk of an amount, but so significant in terms of what it means to the new direction in HUD and to the capability of HUD to provide new energy and new vitality to these programs. Is it not the case that funding for this program can be done easily, without cost to other programs, but in a way that will make it an incredibly important investment in HUD in the long term?

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to take some time to talk about a couple of items that are related to the desperate crisis facing America's family farmers. One, what the conference committee on Agriculture Appropriations, of which I am a member, is doing--or, as is more accurate, not doing--to help them. Second, I want to talk to the issue of the burgeoning growing trade deficit. I will talk for a moment about the Agriculture appropriations bill which is now in conference between the Senate and the House. I am a conferee. The Senate passed its version of that bill and included roughly $7.4 billion in emergency help for family farmers because prices have collapsed and farmers are in desperate trouble. We passed that on August 4. Weeks and weeks went by and nothing happened. No conference. No meetings. Then last week, those of us who are conferees met with the House of Representatives. Then the Chair called an adjournment. The Members of the House called an adjournment, and we have not met since. Nearly a week later, and there has been no meeting since. Why? They are all hung up on the House side of the conference with respect to the question of whether we should retain embargoes on food and medicine. The answer to that is simple: Of course not. Of course we should not retain any embargoes on food and medicine. That is what the Senate said. By a vote of 70, the Senate said let us stop using food as a weapon. We have used food as a weapon against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea-- you name it. We have embargoes. I do not have any problems with embargoes against countries that are behaving badly, but the embargo should not include food. Why would you want to include food and medicine in embargoes that hurt the poor folks around the globe, the people who need the food and medicine? I have always maintained that when we put an embargo on food shipments anywhere in the world, it is the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot. When you do it for 40 years, it is almost unforgivable. It is one thing to shoot yourself in the foot; it is another thing to take aim, hit it, and then brag about it. That has been the policy. The Senate, by 70 votes, said: No more; we are going to break the back of food embargoes; we are going to stop using food as a weapon; over; finished; done. We went to conference, and the House of Representatives said: No, we want to continue using food as a weapon in some circumstances. The result is, we have not even been meeting in that conference, and the emergency help that is needed for family farmers around this country is not getting done because the conference is not meeting. Hurricane Floyd roared up the east coast, and I am told that there are over 100,000 hogs floating belly up dead in floodwaters, along with a million chickens, untold heads of cattle and horses. There are crops underwater, devastated, and gone. The folks down in that region who were so badly hurt by Hurricane Floyd are flat on their backs wondering how they are going to get through this. How they will get through it depends on this Congress deciding whether it will extend a helping hand saying: When a natural disaster strikes, we want to help you. Other farmers in my home state were flooded out this spring. Over three million acres of farmland did not get planted early this spring, and family farmers who did get acres planted have discovered that if they got a crop, it was, in many cases, a bad crop with sprout damage. If they got a good crop and hauled it to the elevator, they were told by the grain market their crop was not worth anything because prices had collapsed. The bill before the conference committee is a bill that provides from the Senate side, not the House side, emergency help for collapsed prices and disaster relief for the massive loss of livestock and for prevented planning. All of those issues are critical for family farmers. If this does not get done, we will have family farmers going belly up in record rates in the next couple of months. It is unfathomable to me that we have this interminable delay in something that is so urgent. There wasn't a delay in passing a $792 billion tax cut that we could not afford, spending $792 billion in tax breaks over 10 years based on the premise that we might have surpluses in the future. We do not have surpluses yet. All we have are projections by economists. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future, but we are told to expect surpluses for 10 years. So before the first real surplus exists, we have folks rushing to the Senate Chamber to cut nearly $800 billion in taxes. There was an urgency to do that, a real urgency. We had to get it done immediately. But, of course, on the issue of providing disaster relief to family farmers, there is not quite the urgency, at least not for some. There is a crisis in farm country. This deserves a response now. The conference ought to be meeting. We ought to pass emergency relief. We ought to pass disaster relief. We ought to extend a helping hand to farmers of this country to say: You matter. We care and want to help you get through these tough times. Let me turn to the other issue that is related to the family farm crisis, the trade deficit. Last week, we heard from the Department of Commerce. We see in the newspapers that the trade deficit has gone up once again to a record high of $25.2 billion last month alone. What does that have to do with farmers? It means we are selling less overseas than we used to. We are importing much more from other countries. Here is an example of what is happening with our trade deficit with Canada. Mr. President, on this chart, 1998 is in blue; 1999 is in red. There was nearly a doubling of the trade deficit with Canada in one year, a dramatic increase in the trade deficit with Mexico, and a dramatic increase in the trade deficit with the European Union. Of course, these are much lower than the trade deficits that exist with China and Japan. We have huge trade deficits with China and Japan. In addition to all of this, our family farmers in North Dakota who are hurting so badly are suffering from a massive quantity of durum wheat being shipped into our country, in my judgment illegally, by the Canadians. Last year saw the largest amount of durum wheat imports, and in the first 6 months of this year, the level of imports is 80 percent above that. What is being done about all of this? Senator Byrd, Senator Stevens, and I and others were able to establish a Trade Deficit Review Commission last year. That Commission is now meeting to make recommendations on the trade deficit. Otherwise, this matter has met with eerie silence. We do not hear anything from the administration. We do not hear anything from Congress about this issue. This is a very serious issue that could easily undermine this country's economic growth. We have to do something about it, and we have to do something now. One of the things we ought to do is expect this administration to stand up and take action against unfair trade, which is part of this. I will show you what they have done. We have a trade dispute with Europe, and the trade dispute actually is about a couple of things. One is beef, which is legitimate. The second is bananas. We do not produce bananas in the United States. We have American corporations that get bananas from the Caribbean and want to ship them to Europe. Europe does not want the Caribbean bananas, so we have a trade dispute on behalf of American corporations that are shipping to Europe something we do not produce. So we are right and they are wrong. On the merits we are right. It is always surprising to me. We fight so hard over bananas. How about durum wheat? Durum wheat deals with semolina flour. Semolina flour is made into pasta. When you eat pasta, you are eating something from the wheat fields, often in North Dakota. What about standing up for those producers? We stand up for banana producers in the Caribbean. What about standing up for wheat producers? What have we done now? We have done nothing about the unfair trade from Canada, but we have taken tough action against the Europeans with respect to the banana and beef hormones cases. We said to the Europeans: You better watch it. We're going to take action against you on Roquefort cheese. That is tough. You whip somebody with Roquefort cheese. You can have a big fight. Or even better, we are going to take action against your Roquefort cheese and chilled truffles. That is strong action. This is going to scare the devil out of the Europeans. Do you know what else we are going to do? We have decided we are going to take action against goose livers. If that does not scare the Europeans, it will at least scare the geese. Goose livers, chilled truffles, Roquefort cheese--and finally tough action against animal bladders. That is not all. There are some regular things as well. If we are going to get tough on trade--and I have been waiting for this a long time--maybe we can get tough on durum wheat. But, no, not us, not our trade ambassador. We get tough on goose livers. Maybe I missed the point. Maybe everybody in the world will miss the point. If we can't stand up and insist on fair trade, on open markets overseas--and, yes, on fair trade at home, to be sure--if we can't do that, this country will never get this trade deficit under control. The trade deficit is huge and growing. Almost everyone understands that it is dangerous. It is unsustainable. It will inevitably result in a weakened dollar and higher interest rates and less economic growth. This country must get a handle on the trade deficit. I have sent a letter to President Clinton once again and said to the President: If this trade ambassador is not willing to take action against the Canadians, replace the trade ambassador. The Canadians are just one issue. Replace the trade ambassador if she will not take action. This ambassador has the authority to self-initiate a trade complaint, and ought to do so. If the failure to do so at USTR is due to the ambassador, get an ambassador who will. We are willing to get tough with the European over bananas--that we do not produce here. Forgive me for being cynical. Forgive me for wondering if there is some common sense around here. How about standing up for things that matter in a way that says to our trading partners: This country demands action. This country demands open markets. This country demands fair trade. This country demands a stop to dumping in our marketplace. This country demands an end to unfair trade at secret prices by State trading enterprises that would not be legal in this country. How does this relate to farmers? As I said before, family farmers must find a foreign home for much of what they produce. Regrettably, our trade policy has now produced very large trade deficits for two reasons. One is because foreign markets have evaporated, dried up, been reduced in size. It is true that no one in the Congress or the administration caused the Asian crisis. I understand that. Yet there are other problems--the failure to enforce fundamental trade laws, the failure to enforce NAFTA, the negotiation of incompetent trade agreements; and then the failure to even live up to those incompetent agreements. This is not, in my judgment, something that we should be expecting from our trade representatives. Mr. President, I know my colleague from Utah is seeking recognition. How much time remains, if I might inquire?

Mr. DORGAN. Let me take about 2 or 3 additional minutes. I know my colleague has things he would like to say to the Senate, as well. Let me conclude by saying this. I regret coming to the floor and talking in these terms about the trade ambassador's office or about the administration. I think the trade strategy of this Congress is abysmal, to the extent we have one--and I guess largely we do not because you do not hear anybody talking about a trade strategy except myself and a couple others. It is this Congress that passed NAFTA. It is this Congress that passed the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement. It is this Congress that passed the WTO. I didn't vote for any one of the three. But we helped cause these problems, and we ought to help solve them. This administration has a responsibility, and so does this Congress. And this Congress bears responsibility for the farm policy, the underlying farm policy that relates in some part to this trade policy that is such a significant failure. Our President has been very helpful in trying to push for a disaster and emergency package that will be helpful to family farmers, to save them from catastrophe, the catastrophe of collapsed prices. How would anyone in this Chamber, how would anyone in this country like to do business when someone says to you: By the way, your income is going to be changed this year. You say: How is that? And they say: You are going to receive depression-era income. We are going to adjust your income to depression levels. That is what has happened to family farmers. How many here would like to lose 40, 60, or 80 percent of your income and be told that is the way the market system works? It is not the way it works in a country that cares about producing on the land with a network of family farms. Europe does not do that. Europe has 7.5 million farms. And it says: We want you to stay on the farms because we want to have a healthy rural system in our country, with small towns that are thriving and family farms that are making a living. That happens in Europe. It happens because they have public policy that demands it. This country does not have comparable public policy. I hope that it will someday soon. This Congress must create that public policy. This President will lead in that direction. That is what he believes. This President is strong on those issues. I criticize this administration on trade. On farm policy, this administration has been very helpful. It is this Congress that is dragging its feet. As a member of the conference committee, I hope very much that we will soon get back to work on an emergency and a disaster package to respond to the desperate needs of family farmers. I also hope this administration will take action, aggressive action, to deal with these trade problems. I hope the administration and Congress will understand the gravity of the trade deficit and the gravity that the unsustainable increase in our current account deficit poses to this country's economy. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for his courtesy. I yield the floor. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, about four years ago I hosted NASA Director Dan Goldin at the University of North Dakota where he met with representatives from universities in Montana, North and South Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming. We felt it was important to meet with Mr. Goldin to explore ways in which NASA satellite data could be helpful to the public in a region which has always seemed so far removed from the activities of NASA. Over the course of these four years, I believe NASA has been very impressed with the innovations of this group, called the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium. UMAC's primary focus has been to make NASA data useful to the public, particularly farmers, ranchers, resource managers, educators, and small businesses. For example, noxious weed detection through the NASA satellite data has had an astounding effect on eradicating and stemming the spread of noxious weeds on cattle rangelands; wheat farmers have planned their fertilizer applications to optimize their crop yields; and teachers and teacher-educators have prepared geographic information systems that bring modern spatial technologies to rural classrooms. All of these innovations and uses have been the result of three grants that UMAC has won competitively through NASA's peer review process. The organization has now proven its value in a region where NASA's presence had previously been nearly nonexistent. It has reached the juncture where it must achieve the stability that only a long-term commitment by NASA can ensure. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Maryland and Ranking Minority Member of the VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee is well acquainted with the value of NASA's presence in her own state. Now we in the upper Midwest have developed the nucleus for NASA to create a center which would support and advance NASA activities in our region. The report accompanying this bill contains language urging NASA to consider creating a permanent center in the upper Midwest. While it is difficult to find funds in this bill for this purpose, I would urge the Senate to provide $1 million during conference on the bill toward the establishment of UMAC as a permanent entity to continue its work with NASA and the public.

Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the support of the Senator from Maryland for the Upper Great Plains Aerospace Consortium and I thank her for her comments. tubman african american museum

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise today to say a few words about the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Community Builders Program. Community Builders are providing an important customer service, and have been a key component of HUD's outreach efforts in rural states like North Dakota. As Mayor Carroll Erickson of Minot said: ``Through the Community Builders, HUD has become more accessible to communities such as Minot and to rural states like North Dakota. This program is very effective and it should be retained.'' Or, as Grand Forks Mayor Pat Owens said: ``HUD's increased outreach and consultation with non-traditional smaller communities is absolutely the right direction.'' Mr. President, the Community Builders program was part of HUD's successful reorganization effort. Community Builders in North Dakota provide technical assistance that is absolutely vital to rural communities. Those who have used the program have praised it as an example of government's ability to provide helpful, efficient customer service. It would be a shame, Mr. President, for this successful program to be terminated even as it is starting to yield results. I urge the conferees to strongly support this program. I urge them to enable HUD's Community Builders to continue their important work of serving America's rural and urban communities.