Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I believe the Senator from Oklahoma has been allotted 10 minutes. I saw him just walk through the Chamber a moment ago. The ranking member of the subcommittee, the Senator from Utah, is allotted 5 minutes. Let me reserve my time and perhaps ask the Senator from Utah to begin, and then we hope the Senator from Oklahoma would return and use his 10 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the unanimous consent agreement provides I will have the final 5 minutes of debate. If the Senator from Oklahoma wishes to consume the remainder of his time, I will use the final 5 minutes and then we will proceed.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I think I speak for myself and Senator Bennett, we very much appreciate the work the Senator from Oklahoma does. He does it diligently. He is on the floor a great deal pushing his views on these issues. On the specific issue that he just described, it is an issue in which he came to the floor and offered it. We included it in the bill during the Senate floor consideration because we believed in it. We agreed with him, as did others in the Senate, and that is what we took to conference. The Senator from Oklahoma weaves a bit of a larger cloud than exists by suggesting there was some sort of deep secrets or conspiratorial approach to try to prevent the public from seeing something. That is far from the case. The Senator makes a point that we agreed with by accepting his amendment. That is, reports required of the Department of Energy to be sent to the Congress should be available not only to Congress but to the American people. We agreed with that point. That is why we put it in the Senate bill. We went to conference with the House. There was objection. The fact is, this is a very big piece of legislation. If we decided that if we can't resolve an objection or if we can't reach agreement on everything, then there won't be a conference report. If that were the case, there would be very few conference reports on the floor of the Senate. As my colleagues from Oklahoma and Utah know, there is a lot of give and take in the conference process. This is a piece of legislation that has some $30 billion-plus on a wide range of issues such as nuclear weapons. This bill also funds nuclear weapons programs, water programs for both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, energy programs, nuclear waste cleanup sites and many more complicated and important issues. In order to get a conference report, we had to give and take here and there, and there was an objection to the provision the Senator from Oklahoma had put in the Senate bill. I regret that, but that was the case. As my colleague from Utah described previously, I will continue to support the Senator from Oklahoma's efforts to make sure all of these reports are made available to the American people, providing that there is no national security issue or secret clearance to them. I emphasize something my colleague from Oklahoma described about this. This conference report on energy and water is an important conference report. We need to get our bills done on time. Aside from the fact that it does not include his amendment, which we had previously supported and still do, we need to do our work. There is a lot of criticism about not passing appropriations bills. We will pass appropriations bills this year in great contrast to years previous when there have been big omnibus bills. That is a good thing, that we are making progress to pass individual appropriations bills. We brought this bill to the floor for debate. Amendments were offered, and the bill was passed. That is exactly the way the process should work. Senator Bennett and I brought a bill to the floor that is slightly less than 1 percent above last year's expenditures for water and energy and so on. The Senator from Oklahoma acknowledged at the beginning of his remarks that this bill, with respect to the fiscal year 2010, is not a bill that unnecessarily throws a lot of money at programs and projects. We are less than 1 percent above last year's expenditures. That is important to note. With respect to the many programs in the bill, there are many that are flat funded. Some are even slightly below fiscal year 2009. The exception is in three areas where there were increases. The first area of increase was for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs because we are trying to make sure we move down the road more aggressively to attain a lower carbon future and promote greater efficiency. Second, the DOE's Science program represents an investment that will provide significant dividends in the future. Our great science laboratories and other investments in science represent a profoundly important investment in our nation. Finally, naval reactors had an increase. We put some additional money there because of the importance of this program. The rest of the programs are very near their fiscal year 2009 levels with no increase at all. This is a good conference report. I don't believe it is inappropriate for my colleague from Oklahoma to be upset that his amendment is not a part of the report. I understand his position. He has served in the House and Senate. He understands there are many things in conference that get dropped. Yet, for everything that is dropped, there was someone in the House or Senate who believed it was important enough to come to the floor, offer it, fight for it, and passionately believe in it. I understand that is true with everything. It is certainly true for our colleague from Oklahoma who spends a lot of time pushing for increased transparency. We appreciate that. That is why we agreed to the amendment during the Senate debate. This Energy and Water Appropriations bill is an important piece of legislation. It does not contain the one amendment the Senator from Oklahoma got put in the Senate side. We wish it did, but it does not. But the conference report is nonetheless something that merits the support of the broad membership in the Senate. I yield the floor. Cloture Motion

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleagues who voted for cloture for the Energy and Water Appropriations conference report. It is important that we do the appropriations bills and get them done individually. We are now past October 1, but in the last 2 years, we actually had to do omnibus appropriations bills. Thanks to Senator Reid and his determination and thanks to Senator Inouye, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, we are doing the bills one by one by one, and we are going to get them finished. We just voted on the bill that funds all of the energy and water programs in the country, and it is a very important investment in this country. I wanted to comment more generally about a few issues. The legislation we are moving, the conference report, just got cloture. We got it through the House and the Senate and now we are in a period of 30 hours post-cloture. Hopefully, we will then get it to the President for his signature for it to become law. The concerns I have about the issues here include not just the water infrastructure and nuclear weapons programs in our Energy and Water bill but also very much include energy. I wish to speak for a moment about the energy challenges we face. This chart describes a very serious dilemma for our country. Two-thirds of the crude oil used in the United States today is imported. Two- thirds of the crude oil we use comes from other countries, some of whom don't like us very much. Our economy runs on energy. If, God forbid, tomorrow the supply of oil to this country were interrupted by terrorists or for some other reason, our economy would be in desperate trouble. Every single day the American people get up and use energy but take it for granted. We get out of bed, and we turn a switch on. We assume the lights will be on. We perhaps plug in an electric razor or toothbrush and expect there to be electricity to run that razor or toothbrush. We take a shower and expect the water heater to have been heated with electricity or natural gas to provide the hot water for a shower. Then we make coffee and breakfast, and there is electricity assumed to be available. Further, we put a key in the ignition of a vehicle and drive off to work, using energy once again. Every part of our daily life is filled with the use of energy. The question is, How can we address this issue of our unbelievable reliance on foreign oil? It threatens our national security and our energy security to be so reliant on foreign oil. The reliance we have has to be reduced. So how do we do that? Even as we do that, we must also find a way to reduce the carbon footprint and reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere to protect the planet. So two things are working at the same time. I wish to talk for a bit more about the legislation we have finished in the Senate Energy Committee, rather than the Energy and Water Appropriations panel which I chair. Senator Bingaman chairs the Energy Committee, and I am the second ranking Democrat on that authorizing committee. I wish to talk about what we have written in the energy authorizing bill in the context with efforts that some have described to merge that energy bill with a cap-and-trade climate change bill and bring both to the floor for a debate. I prefer we not do that approach. Not because I don't think we should address climate change; I believe we should have that debate too. I believe we are going to have to have a lower carbon future. What I believe we should do is a two-step process that focuses on energy legislation. From a policy standpoint, it would give us a real opportunity to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by changing our energy mix. First by using more renewable energy, and second by finding ways, through greater investments in research and technology, to reduce the carbon emitted when we burn fossil fuels to produce energy. So I have a couple of comments about this two-step approach. The Energy bill we have enacted provides a lot of things. It provides a substantial increase in renewable energy, and it does that through wind turbines which create electricity from the wind. There is no carbon output with wind energy. The problem is that we have a lot of wind in remote areas, and we need to move it to the load centers that need the electricity. It's well known that there is wind from Texas to North Dakota. By the way, North Dakota ranks No. 1 in wind; we are the Saudi Arabia in wind. We also have a substantial opportunity to develop solar from Texas across the Southwest to California where the sun shines all the time, or virtually all the time. We can maximize the production of energy where it is available from wind, solar, biomass and so on, and then we can build the transmission capability to move it to the load centers that need it. By doing this, you will dramatically change our energy capability in this country. The legislation we have done in the Energy Committee accomplishes that goal. We have a significant transmission piece in that legislation that allows us, at long last, to build the transmission capacity we need to support our renewable potential. We built an Interstate Highway System around this country so you can get in a vehicle and drive almost anywhere, but we have not built an interstate highway of transmission to move energy from where it exists to where it is needed. We have a patchwork of transmission that was built up over a period of time when there was a local utility that produced energy for a certain market and then in that area distributed energy to its market. That is the kind of transmission system we have. We need to dramatically modernize the transmission so we can maximize the amount of renewable energy. There are a lot of things happening that I think are exciting in energy that can change our future. Do you know right now there are a couple hundred people working on a process to find innovative ways to use coal. Dr. Craig Venter is involved. He is one of the great scientists in our country and one of the two people who led the human genome project. They are working on finding ways to create synthetic microbes that would actually consume a coal in deep seams and turn the coal into methane. Think of that. It creates synthetic microbes that will essentially eat the coal--that is not a scientific term--they will consume the coal and leave in its wake methane, turning coal into methane. We have others who are working on the development of algae and energy, and Dr. Venter is involved in this as well. By the way, after 15 years of it being discontinued, I restarted the algae research at the DOE energy laboratories through my Energy and Water Subcommittee. Dr. Venter is working on developing strains of algae that will excrete lipids that become a fuel. We know we can grow algae in water and sunlight and CO2 and then get rid of CO2 by growing algae and then destroy the algae by harvesting it and creating diesel fuel. Dr. Venter is looking at ways to produce algae that simply excrete the lipids and, with little transformation, becomes a fuel. We have so many things going on that are so interesting. I think 10 years from now we will look in the rearview mirror and see dramatic changes in how we produce energy and how we significantly reduce carbon. I wish to show a map of my State in which we have some projects that are extraordinary. The western half of North Dakota has substantial oil development. The USGS determined that it was the largest discovery of technically recoverable oil that has yet been assessed in the lower 48 States. They estimated that there was as much as 4.3 billion barrels of oil in this region known as the Bakken formation. We also have a substantial amount of coal, lignite coal. We have one of the largest commercial working example of CO2 sequestration by capturing the CO2 from a synthetic gas plant, putting it in a pipeline, and sending it up to Saskatchewan where they inject it underground for enhanced oil recovery. By doing this, it improves the productivity of marginal oil wells in Saskatchewan. So we actually capture the CO2 from the North Dakota plant that is gasifying coal and gas, ship it up to Canada, and then inject it underground in an enhanced oil recovery process. In my judgment, that is a very exciting thing. Here are the fuels we use for the production of electricity. About forty-eight percent of our electricity comes from coal. Nuclear provides a smaller piece than that need. We have natural gas, hydroelectric, and other renewables too. So my point is we are not going to have a future without using coal for some period of time. The question is how do we use it in a different way. I believe a substantial investment in technology that will allow us to build near- zero emission coal-fired plants. I believe we can do that by capturing carbon and protecting our environment. We must maximize the use of renewables from wind, solar, biomass, and other sources. We must also move toward an electric drive transportation system, and then continue to invest in a longer term hydrogen fuel cell system. We need to do all of these things are what we can and should do. The Energy bill we passed out of the Energy Committee is a giant step forward to maximize renewables and increase energy efficiency as a way to reduce carbon. I think what we ought to do is bring that energy bill to the floor, have a debate, get it to the President for his signature. This would be a giant step in the direction of climate change. Following that, we should bring the climate change bill to the floor and then address the issue of targets and timetables and other mechanisms to find out what is achievable for protecting this country. Some have heard me speak about this and have said, Well, he doesn't support any sort of climate change legislation. What I have said is I don't support cap and ``trade.'' At this point, I have said I don't support providing a $1 trillion carbon securities market for Wall Street so that speculators and the investment banks can trade carbon securities tomorrow and tell us what our price of energy is going to be for us the next day. I have precious little faith in those same people who ran up the price of oil last year to $147 a barrel in day trading when the market fundamentals showed that demand was down and supply was up. So, no, I don't support the trade side using that mechanism, but I do support creating climate change legislation that has appropriate targets and timetables that reduce our nation's carbon footprint. We can do that. We will do that. I think there is general consensus we should do that. All I am saying is this: What we ought to do is bring to the floor energy legislation that will adopt the policies on maximizing renewables, building the transmission capability, creating the building efficiencies and much more that is and important step forward and the lowest hanging fruit in energy. Among these positive benefits, energy efficiency is the lowest hanging fruit by far that costs the least to retrofit America's buildings and homes. We should do all of that in the Energy bill that has now been waiting for some months. I have spoken to the majority leader who has been a terrific advocate for sound and thoughtful energy policies. I have also talked to the President directly about this. It is not that I don't want to do climate change because I know my colleagues are working hard on it. It is the fact that I want to make progress in energy policy first that can change our fuel mix and develop a lower carbon future. Because we have done that work in the Energy Committee, we have taken an important step. We can then bring a climate change bill to the floor after that which I know is controversial, but that we can work on developing targets and timetables for that lower carbon future. I think this is something we should do and I think we can do. I think it would, in my judgment, be the best fit for this country's future energy policy and for the policy that is necessary to lower the future CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and protect the environment. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield for a question, I held a hearing on the beneficial use of carbon. A scientist at Sandia National Laboratory said: Think of carbon not just as a problem but an opportunity. In this case, when you talk of algae, it is single-cell pond scum, a green slime you find on top of wastewater, right? The fact is, you can feed CO2 to algae and produce something from it that extends our fuel supply. It is exactly the kind of thing that makes sense. There are other beneficial uses of carbon as well. If we change our way of thinking a bit, we all have the same goal, which is to protect our planet. We can find other ways of maximizing the use of renewables and to reduce carbon by using it for enhanced oil recovery and producing additional fuel by growing algae. I thank the Senator.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is that we are now in what is called a 30-hour postcloture period. We had a cloture vote this morning on the energy and water conference report. I chair the committee that brought that to the floor, the subcommittee on appropriations which funds the water projects, the energy projects, the nuclear weapons, among other things. It is a very important piece of legislation. We could not just bring it to the floor from conference. We actually had to file cloture, wait for the cloture petition to ripen--2 days--then we have a vote. I think we had 79 votes in favor of it. And now we are in a period where we can't yet adopt it because some are insisting we have the 30 hours postcloture expire. My hope is that whoever feels that way might relent so that later this afternoon we can pass this piece of legislation. But this legislation is very much like almost everything else we are trying to do in appropriations. We have tried very hard to do the appropriations bills as we are supposed to do them--one at a time, bring them to the floor, have votes, debate the amendments, and so on. In the last couple of years, in my judgment, the appropriations process has been a failure because we have had to do omnibus bills, which is not the right way to do it. We were forced to do that, in many respects. But now we are trying to do one bill at a time, and we have done many of them. Credit goes to the majority leader, who has said we want to finish the individual appropriations bills. But the fact is, we are getting almost no cooperation--almost none. I think we have had a relatively noncontroversial Legislative Branch appropriations bill, which is generally pretty noncontroversial. As I recall, I believe we had to file a cloture petition to shut off debate on the motion to proceed--not the bill, just the motion to proceed to the bill. That takes 2 days to ripen, then you have 30 hours postcloture. Virtually every step of the way, we have had this problem, with no cooperation at all. It is like trying to ride a bicycle built for two uphill and the person on the backseat has their foot on the brakes. That is what is happening around here all the time. All we would like is just a little cooperation so we can get these bills completed. When we bring a conference bill to the floor, it shouldn't take us 2 to 3 days. The bill I brought to the floor myself, the Energy and Water bill, took us a fair amount of time. We sat on the floor waiting for people to come and offer amendments. They didn't. That is why I sometimes refer to the Senate as 100 bad habits. It is not very easy to get people to come over, even when they have amendments to offer. And then from time to time somebody comes over and has an amendment that has nothing to do with the subject, which is fine--the rules allow that--but then they insist they have a vote on their specific two or three or four amendments or they will hold everything up forever. So we are getting no cooperation, and it would be nice to get just some so we can get the appropriations bills done. It is the right way to do it--bring the bills to the floor, do them, debate them, and have votes on them. That is the way the Senate should work. Lord knows we have tried this year to do that, but we have had almost no cooperation. At every turn, we have had people stand up and say: Well, I have my four amendments, but, no, I am not going to come over and offer them. I am going to tell you I have four amendments to offer, and if you try to shut this down and shut off amendments, then we will filibuster and we won't give you the 60 votes you need to shut it off. So there you are, stuck in the middle, unable to get things done. Again, the cloture vote yesterday failed on Commerce-State-Justice. Normally speaking, Senator Mikulski would bring a bill like that to the floor of the Senate and it would be on the floor maybe 1 day, maybe 2 days. Instead, I watched last week as she was out here waiting for people to offer amendments--sitting here waiting, and no one was coming to offer amendments, by and large. Then the majority leader sat here until I think 9:30 or 10 o'clock at night one evening trying to reach an agreement, and no agreement was forthcoming. My only point is that it would be nice if we could get some cooperation and some understanding. It is not Republican or Democrat or conservative or liberal to do the work on time and finish our appropriations bills with some amount of cooperation; it is just common sense. If we could just get a bit of that cooperation, we could get the work done around here. I did want to mention as well, with respect to the agenda, that while we are trying to get these appropriations bills done, we will also begin the process of debating health care on the floor of the Senate--a health care bill that will be brought to the floor reasonably soon. I want to mention that certainly one of the efforts I will make when the health care bill comes to the floor--and I have mentioned this before-- is to try to address the issue of the expanding cost of prescription drugs. That is not dealt with in the legislation which is coming to the floor, I assume, and if not, then there are 30 of us, Republicans and Democrats, who have legislation that will give the American people the freedom to import FDA-approved drugs sold at a fraction of the price elsewhere. That will be one of the amendments I and many others will come to the floor to offer. Another amendment I intend to offer is a piece of legislation called the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. We passed that through the Senate last year. We have modified it just a bit this year, and I believe we will reintroduce it later this afternoon. The Indian Health Care Improvement Act has not been reauthorized for a long time. I believe it has been 17 years since the Senate last dealt with Indian health care--an authorization bill--except for last year when we failed because one of our colleagues, who previously spoke, offered an abortion amendment that had the effect of stopping the bill when it got to the House of Representatives. Having said all that, I intend to offer the Indian health care legislation as an amendment to the broader health care bill because I don't think we should go on to pass a health care reform bill if we don't address the health care obligations we have made to the first Americans, the American Indians. The fact is, American Indians were promised by treaty--were promised time and time again and in treaties the Federal Government signed--that we would provide for their health care, and we have not met those promises. We have both a trust responsibility and a treaty responsibility to fix the health care system for American Indians. It has not been fixed, and it would be a tragedy if we moved forward with health care and didn't include the important part that is required by us to reauthorize the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. So I intend to offer that as well. I also want to say that when we get health care completed--and I spoke earlier today about the need to bring up the Energy bill, but there is another bill that is very important that I have spent a lot of time on that has to be considered by the Senate and the entire Congress. That is the FAA reauthorization bill. The Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill is critically important. It has a wide range of issues dealing with safety in the skies, and it has the important provisions dealing with modernizing our air transportation system--our air traffic control system, I should say--and that modernization can't wait. We have to move forward, and it requires a lot of things. Senator Rockefeller and I have brought a bill out of the Commerce Committee that is ready for floor action, but we need to get it to the floor of the Senate and get it passed so we can get it into conference with the House of Representatives. If I might, I want to describe for a moment why this is important. We have the skies full of airplanes. I know the carriers have shrunk their size by 8 or 10 percent in terms of commercial carriers, but nonetheless we have the skies full of airplanes flying around transporting people and cargo, and the fact is, we are still flying to what is called ground-based radar. What happens is, we put an airplane in the air someplace with a couple hundred people on board, and it flies around being guided by ground-based radar. Of course, that is better than the old days, when in order to haul the mail at night, in the early days of airplanes, they first used bonfires every so many miles so that you could fly to a bonfire and see where you were headed. That was the only way you could fly at night. The second thing they did was to use flashing lights, and now, of course, ground-based radar for many decades. But ground-based radar is clearly obsolete, and it only tells someone where an airplane was just for a nanosecond. The transponder on the airplane being shown on a tube someplace or by a monitor somewhere in the air traffic control center shows, when the arc goes around on the radar, where that jet airplane was. Then for the next 6 or 7 seconds, as it is going around again, that jet airplane is someplace else because it is traveling very fast. It only tells you about where the airplane is and only tells you exactly where it was for a nanosecond. The fact is, we need to go to a GPS system so we can save money, use more direct routing, make it safer for passengers, and use less energy. You also don't have to space the planes as far apart because you know exactly where an airplane is, not where it was. We need to move on this newer technology. Europe is moving to it, and many other countries. But it is complicated, and it requires us to pass legislation that includes the modernization of the air traffic control system. Again, we brought that out of the Commerce Committee, and it is awaiting action on the floor of the full Senate. I hope that following health care and following a number of other issues--including, I hope, an energy bill at some point--the FAA reauthorization bill will have its day on the floor of the Senate. I also hope we will have substantial cooperation. I know Senator Hutchison from Texas worked with us, Senator DeMint worked with us to bring that out of the Commerce Committee, and I look forward to having that as part of the agenda so that all of those who have worked for a long time on these issues dealing with safety in the skies and dealing with modernizing our air traffic control system will be able to feel as if we have made progress and have been able to get this bill to conference with the House. Mr. President, I know the majority leader has a lot to try to plan for the agenda now as we near the end of the year, and these are big, difficult issues. I want to help him, as do most of my colleagues. We are going to need a little cooperation here and there. If we continue to have to vote on cloture petitions, on motions to proceed, it means every single thing we bring to the floor of the Senate takes a week just to get up. Cloture petitions take a couple of days to ripen, then there is 30 hours postcloture. All we need is a little cooperation. That ought not be too much to ask in order to get the business of the Senate done. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me spend a few moments talking about this issue of reimportation of prescription drugs and the history of it and the work many of us have done together, a large group of Members of the Senate, including Senator McCain, working on this issue. Senator McCain has offered an amendment, No. 2629, which he has just finished discussing. As I understand the amendment, it would prohibit the use of funds appropriated under the act for preventing individuals, wholesalers, or pharmacists from importing certain prescription drugs. That is in the title. It does have, as I think Senator McCain suggested, perhaps a point of order against it. I do not know whether it is because it would be legislating on an appropriations bill. In any event, whatever the circumstances with this amendment, I was a bit surprised to see this amendment on this bill, but everybody has a right to offer amendments. Let me say that Senator McCain is a part of a group of us who have worked together. We have worked on a piece of legislation called the Dorgan-Snowe legislation. Senator Snowe, as the major cosponsor, and many others, including Senator McCain as a cosponsor, have worked on this issue for a long time. The fact is, the appropriate place to address this, in my judgment, is in the health care bill that is going to come to the floor in the next couple of weeks. I have said previously that I fully intend to offer this bipartisan bill as an amendment. We have over 30 cosponsors in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats. It ranges from the late Senator Ted Kennedy, to John McCain and a wide range of Senators on both sides of the political aisle. That has been the support for legislation that I think addresses a very important issue. Let me describe the issue, if I might. I have in my desk in the Senate two bottles that contain medicine. Actually, these are empty bottles. This is Lipitor. The medicine that would be contained in these bottles is made in Ireland by a company that produces Lipitor. It is the most popular cholesterol-lowering drug in America by far. It is made in Ireland, in a plant that is inspected by the FDA, and the medicine is then sent all around the world. These two bottles, as you can see, are identical. These two bottles contained identical tablets, 20 milligrams of Lipitor made in the same place, so it is the same manufacturing, the same pill, put in the same bottle, made by the same company. The difference? One is shipped to Canada, one is shipped to the United States. Difference? Price. Here is the one that was shipped to Canada; this is $1.83 per tablet. This was sent to the United States, $4.48 per tablet. The only difference is price. Why is that the case? Because the American people are charged the highest prices for brand-name prescription drugs in the world, the highest prices in the world for brand-name drugs. In this case, we paid $4.48 per tablet; someone else paid $1.83. It doesn't matter whether it is Canada. It could be England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain--we pay the highest prices in the world, and it is unfair. The question is not, Is there a problem? Of course there is a problem. We have a whole lot of folks in this country who cannot figure out how they are going to afford to pay for their groceries and their medicine, so they go get their medicine first at the pharmacy in the grocery store and figure out how much they can eat later. Of course this is a problem. I have described the guy who sat on a straw bale once at a farm a while back, 80 years old, who told me in a little meeting we had in a farmyard: My wife has fought breast cancer for 3 years. She is in her seventies. And we have spent all of those 3 years driving to Canada to try to buy Tamoxifen where it is sold for 80 percent less--an 80 percent lower price in Canada for the identical prescription drug. So my wife and I are trying to drive up and get Tamoxifen in Canada. The reason they can do that is, apparently at the border, a small amount of personal use, up to 30 days or 60 or 90 days personal use of prescription drugs will be allowed to be brought over without a hassle. But the question is what about the rest of the American people who cannot drive to the border or go to another country and access the same prescription drugs, same pill put in the same bottle by the same company who decided to charge the American people the highest prices in the world? What about those people? My point is this: We are going to have a big health care bill on the floor of the Senate sometime in the next few weeks. Oh, it has been through this committee and that committee. It has been on a long, tortured trail. Lord knows every single day in the press we read the next little news item about who said what about this. One way or another we are going to have some kind of health care reform on the floor of the Senate. Will it pass? Will it be omnibus? Will it be comprehensive? I do not know any of those things. I do know this: that the Gang of 6 and the gang in the Finance Committee or the gang in the HELP Committee are going to become a Gang of 100 or 100 gangs of 1 when it gets to the floor of the Senate. Everybody is going to have their amendments because most Members of the Senate have not had an opportunity to weigh in on health care at this point with their own views and their own amendments. They are not on the committee, not part of a small gang. Let me say, on behalf of myself and I think Senator Snowe, it is the Snowe-Dorgan legislation with respect to prescription drug reimportation, which includes Senator McCain as a cosponsor, that when health care comes to the floor of this Senate, you can count on it, that there is going to be an amendment and there is going to be a vote on the issue of the prices of prescription drugs. Perhaps there are some people who do not want it. I understand they do not want to have a vote on it. But in my judgment, there cannot be credible efforts to address health care if you do not address the issue of health care costs, the relentless rising cost of health care. Part of that, not an insignificant part, relates to the question of the relentless runup of prescription drug costs every single year. Take a look at the increased prices for prescription drugs every year and then think about the people out there who are trying to figure out: How do I pay for this? I understand senior citizens have the opportunity, under Part D of Medicare, to have some drug coverage. I understand there is a problem with that, there is what is called a doughnut hole in the Washington lexicon. I also understand that someone made a deal with the pharmaceutical industry for $80 billion over 10 years, which is a relatively small part of their gross revenues, in order to fill part of the doughnut hole with 50 percent off on brand-name drugs. I understand all that. I was not a part of it, nor was anybody I know of in this Chamber. The question is, What about all the rest of the American people and the fact that they are now charged the highest prices in the world for brand-name prescription drugs? Is it fair? I say no. We will offer an amendment. My colleague says he was promised and he was concerned about that. I understand all that. All I am saying is, we are going to have this debate, this amendment, and this vote. It is going to be on health care. That is where it ought to be. It ought to be on the health care bill. I know that when we have this discussion, we are going to have people say: If you do not allow the prescription drug folks, the pharmaceutical industry, to charge these prices in our country, they will do less research into finding cures for these deadly diseases. You know what, the fact is they spend more money on promotion, marketing, and advertising than they do on research. That is a fact. I mean you get up in the morning and turn the television set on, perhaps while you are brushing your teeth or something, and then listen to the ads. The ads push at you every single day: Go ask your doctor today. It is Wednesday. Ask your doctor, is the purple pill right for you? I do not know what the purple pill is, but it makes you feel like you should go ask somebody if I should be taking the purple pill. Go ask your doctor whether you might need Flomax. Go ask your doctor what you ought to be getting, what you ought to be taking that you now do not know about or are not taking. All these things are pushed at consumers in circumstances where the only person who can prescribe that prescription drug is a doctor who has decided you need it for your health. Yet every single day, relentlessly across this country on television, in the journals and newspapers and publications it says: Go check with your doctor. Ask your doctor if you should be taking this medicine. What about cutting back on some of that and reducing the price of prescription drugs? What about that? Let me make one other point, if I might. My colleague indicated he has offered this, which is a funding limitation on prescription drugs. The fact is, this has been a long and difficult trail to pass legislation. I understand. Were I working for the pharmaceutical industry, I would understand why you want to retain this little piece in Federal law that says: The only entity that can reimport or import drugs into this country is the company that manufacturers them. I understand why they want that to be the case. Because it allows them to price, in this country, however they want to price. But we are told constantly this is a new economy, a global economy. If it is a global economy, then what about allowing the American people the freedom to access that global economy to find the identical FDA- approved prescription drug where it is sold for half the price? They say: Yes, but you know what, if we do that, we are going to open it up to counterfeit drugs and so on. Guess what. Europe has been doing this for 20 years. It is something called parallel trading. In Europe, if you are in Germany and want to buy a prescription drug from France, if you are in Spain and want to buy a prescription drug from England, that is not a problem. They have a plan that is called parallel trading. It has been going on for 20 years, and there are no counterfeit issues of any significance at all. Europe can do it and we cannot? We cannot keep track of this? The legislation that I and Senator Snowe and many others, including Senator McCain, have put together carefully has all kinds of safety measures that will dramatically improve the safety of the prescription drugs that are now sold. It requires pedigrees be established on batch lots so you can track everything back. Everything. The only proposal we are suggesting the American people be given the freedom to do is to access that FDA- approved drug--yes, only FDA-approved drugs--only from countries in which the chain of custody is identical to ours and as safe as ours is. That is all we are talking about. But that does it the right way. That says: Here is a plan. It funds the FDA to make certain that the drug supplies are safe and so on. This is the right way to do this. That is why we have taken a long time to put this together. It is a piece of legislation that has all the elements you would want to have that gives the American people the freedom to get lower priced drugs, FDA-approved drugs where they are sold and, at the same time, because they would have that freedom, would put downward pressure on drug prices in this country because the pharmaceutical industry would be required to reprice their drugs in the United States. Let me say, as I always have to say, I do not have a grief against the pharmaceutical industry. I think it is a great industry. I think it produces wonderful, miracle prescription drugs that if taken can keep you out of an acute care hospital bed, which would be far more expensive. Prescription drugs, if taken, in many cases, can manage a disease that otherwise would have you in a debilitated condition. I appreciate the research they do. I appreciate the new drugs they develop. Let me say this, that a substantial amount of work, with respect to the development of new drugs, is done with public funding, taxpayer dollars, through the National Institutes of Health, the knowledge from which then goes to the pharmaceutical industry to be able to use to create these drugs. That is a part of it. Another part of it is the research they do themselves. Good for you, I say. My grief is not against an industry. I do not want to tarnish this industry. All I want to say is: We deserve fair prices. This country and the consumers in this country deserve fair prices. We have been trying for 10 years to get this done. If we bring health care reform to the floor of the Senate and say: We are going to do something about health care costs and prices and fail to do something about prescription drug costs, in which the American people are required to pay the highest prices for brand-name drugs, then, in my judgment, we will have failed miserably. It is my full intention that when we have health care on the floor, which I expect to be within a week or 2 weeks or whenever it comes, but it is coming for sure, I will be here, and I will fully expect and demand the opportunity to offer this amendment because there are 30 Members of the Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike, who have done the work to put together the bill that has all the safeguards and, finally, at long last, will give the American people what they deserve; that is, fair pricing on prescription drugs.

Mr. DORGAN. Of course, I will yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Let me say to Senator McCain that I expect the job of majority leader is a pretty tough job. I have watched from Bob Dole on, Tom Daschle, and so many majority leaders and minority leaders try to run this place. It is pretty hard to run. Trying to figure out a schedule is pretty difficult. So I respect the difficulties of juggling all these things. With respect to the specific letter Senator McCain referred to, Senator McCain, I, and Senator Snowe all talked to the majority leader about this issue when the tobacco bill was on the floor of the Senate because we were fully intending to offer our prescription drug reimportation bill. The majority leader did say to us, and then put it in writing, did say to us: I will guarantee you that you will get that up on the floor of the Senate. So that was a commitment by the majority leader. And he understands that commitment. When I saw the letter he wrote, I went to him immediately, and he and I talked about that. Because I indicated to the majority leader: You have indicated that as soon as practicable, or perhaps at the end of the year. I said to the majority leader: You should understand that if it is not up before health care, it has to be offered on health care. Because that is exactly where it fits. Nobody can come to the floor and say: We have to do health care. We have to try and control costs and put some downward pressure on prices. But, by the way, you cannot offer a piece of legislation that would put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. I said: That cannot be the case. He understood and said: I understand that. That is going to be at the front end of this debate on health care. Based on that representation, I feel confident, I would say to Senator McCain, I understand the confusion in the reading of the letter, the writing of the letter, but I feel confident, having talked to Senator Reid, that we are going to have ample opportunity, right at the front end of this debate about health care, to have a full debate, to have a vote up or down, which is what we need to do, obviously. I think everyone in this Chamber, every Republican, every Democrat, needs to be on record: How do they feel about their consumers paying the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world? How do they feel about a bill we put together that has pedigrees and batch lots, all the safety so our consumers can have the freedom to access these lower priced drugs? I think we can do that.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand the anxious state of all of us to do what we have worked on for so long. I understand. I also understand that the letter probably could have been more artfully drawn. I understand from my conversations with Senator Reid, the majority leader, that he fully understands and expects us to be planted on the floor when health care comes here and to offer our amendment and have a full debate and vote. If there is an attempt when we debate health care to decide that 30 of us Republicans and Democrats somehow don't have the opportunity we have been promised on the issue of prescription drug prices, in my judgment they are going to have an awful time getting any health care bill through this place. Because you can't say to me or to anybody else: We will do the bill we want to do and, by the way, prescription drug prices that are going up by double digits, we are not going to give you a shot at that. Let me make one final representation. I said when I started, it is hard to schedule this place. I understand that. The Senator from Arizona knows we have had noncontroversial bills where we couldn't even get past a motion to proceed without having a filibuster to something that is noncontroversial. If I am majority leader, I am thinking this is not easy to do. I am sympathetic to the job he has to try to do all these things. I am convinced Senator Reid will keep the commitment he made to us. I am convinced that commitment will be kept when we get health care on the floor. I don't want it to be in the middle or toward the end. I want to be here front and center at the front end because the bill we have put together is a strong bill dealing with a very important issue.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe that commitment has already been made by the majority leader.

Mr. DORGAN. I understand that. That is why I said I think the letter perhaps is not artfully drafted with respect to that last paragraph. I believe that commitment has been made to me because I went to the majority leader following the release of that letter. I have found over a long period that when the majority leader gives me a commitment, I believe he will keep the commitment.

Mr. DORGAN. I understand, but I believe the Senator will have that experience when health care comes to the floor and he and I are on the floor with our colleague Senator Snowe and others pushing for a solid piece of legislation that has broad bipartisan support. The Senator then will understand the commitment was made and the commitment was kept. I believe that will be the case.

Mr. DORGAN. I believe that commitment has been made to me. In any event, we are here on the floor on a Wednesday talking about something I believe is very important, and we have worked on this for a long time. We have spent a lot of time working on it. I don't intend to decide: OK, somebody is going to put up some barriers and that is OK with me. That is all right. And I don't think Senator Reid is going to do that. He has made a commitment to me that will not be the case. I am convinced that Senator McCain and I and others who have put this legislation together will have our day, and everybody else will have to stand up and say yes or no. I hope when the roll is called, we have sufficient numbers, finally, at long last, to pass legislation that should have been passed 8 years ago. Again, I appreciate the comments Senator McCain has made this morning. I will have further visits with him. I know Senator Mikulski has a bill on the floor she wishes to manage, and we don't want to be in the way of that. My view is that we are going to have our bill on this floor with a full debate and an up-or-down vote, and that will come as a result of Senator Reid keeping his commitment. I am convinced of that. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I intend to offer several amendments to the health care bill. I have not had a chance. I am not part of a gang of anything. I wasn't part of the Gang of 6. I am not part of the Finance or HELP Committees. This is my first opportunity. I have some things I think can improve it. If a bill comes to the floor with procedures--and it will not happen--that lock this up and we can't offer amendments, I wouldn't stand for that. I am not going to be a part of that process. My expectation and the representation made to me with respect to this amendment is when that bill comes to the floor, we will have an opportunity to offer amendments. I don't know how you would get health care through the Senate if the proposition would be that somebody says: The Gang of 6, they had their 6 months or 3 months, whatever they did. And the two committees had their opportunity. But the rest of you, sorry, can't do that. In that circumstance, health care would not be passed through the Senate. Perhaps we have tortured this subject to death.

Mr. DORGAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the following three individuals from Senator Reid's office be granted the privileges of the floor for Thursday, October 8: Lauren Bateman, Caren Street, and Maria Urbina.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 7, 2009 at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Securitization of Assets: Problems and Solutions.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 7, 2009, at 10 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``The Proposed U.S.-UAE Agreement on Civilian Nuclear Cooperation.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 7, 2009, at 10 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``Confronting al-Qaeda: The Challenge Today and Tomorrow.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet during the sessions of the Senate on October 7, 2009, at 10 a.m. in room SD- 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on October 7, 2009, at 10 a.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Workplace Fairness: Has the Supreme Court Been Misinterpreting Laws Designed to Protect American Workers From Discrimination?''