Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

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 4 p.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 7, 2009, at 10 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. DORGAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last Friday the New York Times had an article which caught my eye, and the headline was the following: ``October New York Philharmonic Trip to Cuba is Off.'' I want to talk for a moment about this. I was extraordinarily disappointed to read this because this is an issue of the freedom to travel by the American people, specifically, the freedom to travel to Cuba. This country has had an embargo against the country of Cuba for a long while. Cuba is a Communist country. Fidel Castro has poked his finger in the eye of America for a long time, so we have had an embargo for a long time. Part of the way to injure the Castro regime, presumably, as a part of this embargo is to prevent the American people from traveling to Cuba. The American people can travel to Communist China, to Communist Vietnam, to North Korea, but the American people are considered taking a criminal act if they travel to Cuba. There are some exceptions; the U.S. Treasury Department gives licenses to travel for certain kinds of educational and cultural things, and for trade. So the New York Philharmonic orchestra was going to Cuba, but had to cancel the trip. Daniel Wakin wrote about it in the New York Times last Friday October 1, 2009. The reason I wanted to mention this is because it is almost unbelievable what we are still doing with respect to our travel policy with Cuba. Senator Enzi and I have a piece of legislation that removes all travel restrictions with respect to travel to Cuba. We have over 30 Senators who are cosponsors of that legislation, but while we are waiting to pass our legislation, we are going through this nonsense of having the Federal Government and the Treasury Department tell us who can and who cannot travel, restricting the liberty and the freedom of the American people. It is outrageous, in my judgment. Trips like the one the New York Philharmonic planned to Havana are not unusual. These kinds of trips happen all of the time. In 1959, at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the New York Philharmonic played in Moscow. It is a reasonably good thing, in my judgment, to be able to extend our culture and the hand of friendship through music. One of the reasons I was especially interested in this is that the New York Philharmonic visited North Korea last year, and I asked conductor Loren Maazel and Zarin Mehta, President of the Philharmonic's board, to come and speak to our caucus. They described to us their performances in North Korea. They said the applause went on and on, even after they left the stage. What a great way to exchange with another country, to extend cultural enlightenment and to share with other countries. Again, the New York Philharmonic orchestra played in North Korea last year, but cannot play in Cuba without a special license. The New York Philharmonic is going to Communist Vietnam this month. Yes, it is a Communist country. So, too, is North Korea, as is China, as is Russia. But the New York Philharmonic orchestra has no difficulty being able to play music in those countries because there are no travel restrictions with respect to those countries. Let me describe, if I might, the absurdity of all of this. The Office of Foreign Assets Control is a little agency in the Treasury Department that is in charge of granting licenses that, under certain conditions, will allow you to travel to Cuba. The license they decided to allow the New York Philharmonic to go to Cuba and play their music did not include allowing the benefactors of the Philharmonic to travel with them and the Philharmonic decided that was unacceptable. Frankly, I understand why it is unacceptable for them. That doesn't make any sense to me. The OFAC regulations says Unless otherwise authorized, any person subject to U.S. jurisdiction who engages in any travel-related transaction in Cuba violates the regulations. That is unbelievable to me. That has been around, I think, for 40 years, 50 years. Let me give examples of some people who have traveled to Cuba who our Federal Government has chased and harassed. By the way, this little agency called OFAC, somewhere in the bowels of the U.S. Treasury Department, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is supposed to be tracking terrorist money, protecting us from terrorists. Instead they have been busy chasing people who go to Cuba. In the previous administration, up to a quarter of their time was spent trying to track Americans who were under suspicion of taking a vacation in Cuba. It is pretty absurd, it seems to me. This is Joan Slote. She was a senior citizen and bicyclist who was fined $7,630. Do you know why? Because she joined a Canadian bicycling group that took a bicycle tour of Cuba and, as a result of that, her government--under the previous administration--tracked her down, threatened to attach her Social Security checks, and fined her $7,630 for riding a bicycle in Cuba. Here is a picture of a woman I have met named Joni Scott. Joni Scott's transgression? She is a very religious woman, a devout Christian. She went to Cuba to hand out free Bibles on the streets of Cuba and her government tried to track her down and fine her $10,000 for handing out free Bibles on the streets of Cuba because she violated the travel ban. The travel ban, that means restricting the liberty of the American people. We do not ban travel to other countries. We do not do it for communist China, for communist Russia, communist Vietnam-- just for Cuba. This is SGT Carlos Lazo. A number of years ago, Carlos Lazo went and fought in the country of Iraq, wearing America's uniform. He is a Cuban-American. He was in Iraq as a fighting soldier for this country. He won the Bronze Star for gallantry. He had two children in Cuba, one of whom was sick, and his government that he fought for and won the Bronze Star for, told him he was not able to travel to Cuba to see his own sick child. Hat shows how unbelievably wrong this policy is. Let me describe what the policy is about traveling to other countries. The rules say: All transactions ordinarily incident to travel to or from Iran . . . are permitted. If you want to go to Iran, no problem; that is not an issue. You are welcome to go to Iran. If you want to see Kim Jong-il in North Korea, it is not a problem. The rules say: U.S. passports are valid for travel in North Korea and individuals do not need U.S. Government permission to travel there. Here are the 10 Presidents we have had since we decided to punish the American people with a travel ban to Cuba--10 Presidents. You talk about failure--it is one thing just to fail; it is another thing to insist that failure is a good thing for 50 years. This Government of Cuba has lasted through 10 Presidents. What we have decided to do is, over all these years, to ban travel to Cuba by the American people. You can go to Cuba in certain capacities. You can go in certain educational capacities, or cultural capacities, provided you get a license. I have been to Cuba. I have been to Havana. I have visited with government officials, I visited with all the dissidents in Cuba. Many of my colleagues here in Congress have undoubtedly traveled to Cuba. But we have a licensing requirement with respect to travel to Cuba. We also had this trade embargo for all of these years. I was one who, some years ago, lifted that embargo slightly to be able to sell food and medicine into Cuba. I think it is fundamentally immoral to use food as a weapon. We had an embargo against selling food to Cuba. The Europeans were selling into Cuba, the Canadians were selling into Cuba; the American farmers were told you can't sell food into Cuba. As a result of my amendment, the amendment I offered with then Senator Ashcroft, that amendment opened just a bit the sale of food into Cuba and allowed medicine to go into Cuba as well, but that is the only thing that has happened in all of these years. Senator Enzi and I have offered a bipartisan piece of legislation that would allow travel, allow the American people the freedom to travel in Cuba. My colleagues in this Chamber talk a lot about freedom. What about the freedom of the American people to travel? Why is it we have decided to punish the Cuban regime by restricting Americans' freedoms? I come back to the basic proposition. That is, one of the great music groups in the world, the New York Philharmonic, which has played in North Korea, in Russia, and is about to play in Vietnam, is told: Here are the circumstances and conditions in which you can play in Cuba. By the way, they are onerous. The New York Philharmonic found those circumstances and conditions unacceptable and I understand why. I am writing to the Office of Assets Control to see if we could not get them to think straight a bit. It makes no sense at all to decide that this kind of exchange is unworthy. Does anybody really think that having the New York Philharmonic play beautiful music in the city of Havana, in the country of Cuba, is in any way going to threaten anybody? Wouldn't it perhaps do at least what it did for those who were able to experience that wonderful music in North Korea? I saw the photographs, I saw the video. I believe ``60 Minutes'' did a piece on it, that showed how unbelievably they were responded to by the North Korean people who heard them, who listened to the New York Philharmonic. Wouldn't that be the same with respect to Cuba? Why on Earth should our government be interpreting this travel restriction in the way that is designed to try to restrict rather than expand these opportunities? I have seen how OFAC, over these years, tries to find ways to tighten, find ways to create opportunity to restrict travel. That makes no sense to me at all. When I read this, this weekend, I thought what on Earth could they be thinking of? Where is the deep reservoir of common sense that you should expect from people who are confronted with this issue? When confronted with the issue of granting a license to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to represent our country in doing concerts in Havana, why should OFAC be trying to find ways to make that too restrictive for the Philharmonic and its benefactors to travel to Cuba and do what they had intended to do? This kind of opportunity to connect with other countries has a long history. I showed a picture of the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, performing in the Great Hall in the Moscow Conservatory. Let me show that again. It raises the question about common sense. If we are able, in 1959, with all of the tensions with Moscow and the Soviet Union at that point, and we sent our New York Philharmonic Orchestra in an exchange and Leonard Bernstein conducted, and they, too, were greeted with long, sustained applause because people were so appreciative of them being in Moscow; if that has been the case--and it has been in every circumstance and last year especially it was with respect to the appearance in North Korea--if that is the case, why on Earth would our Government do anything other than encourage the New York Philharmonic to do the concert in Havana, instead of discourage it, instead of finding ways to tighten this down so the New York Philharmonic and their benefactors had decided they simply couldn't go under those conditions? Common sense ought to apply on this issue of the liberty and the freedom of the American people to travel. There ought not be travel restrictions to Cuba at all. They ought to be gone and we ought to pass the Dorgan-Enzi bill that strikes the travel restrictions with respect to Cuba. We have not yet found a way to get it to the floor. When we do, I guarantee we will have sufficient votes on the floor of the Senate to offer the American people the freedom they should have had in the last 50 or 60 years, and that is freedom to travel. In this case that freedom has been taken from them and it is outrageous. I mentioned Joan Slote. When I became involved in this issue of what this embargo costs our country, I was furious to find an elderly woman riding a bicycle in Cuba and then fined $7,300 by her government. By the way, when she came back, her son had brain cancer so she wasn't home, she was attending to her son who had brain cancer down in California, and she didn't get the mailing to her house and then they threatened to take her Social Security away. Why? Because she was suspected of vacationing in Cuba, riding a bicycle with a Canadian bicycle group. All of this I think is nuts and I hope at some point the New York Philharmonic will be given the license, with their benefactors, to go down and do the concert in Havana, Cuba; do the concert there. In the meantime, I hope the Office of Foreign Asset Control will take a look at this and make a new decision. They have the right to make a better decision. In my judgment they didn't make the right decision here. I hope they overturn that decision. I have written them a letter today asking them to do that. Let's use a little common sense here. Following that, I hope Senator Enzi and I will get our legislation on the floor of the Senate and remove the travel restrictions that now impede the freedom of the American people to travel to Cuba. The country of Cuba has been a thorn in our side for a long time; I understand that. But attempting to punish the leaders of Cuba by punishing the American people makes no sense at all. That is exactly what has happened since the early 1960s. My hope is that some day, despite the news last Friday that the New York Philharmonic has canceled this trip--my hope is some day very soon we will have a policy that doesn't have anybody canceling trips because they didn't get their license to travel. My hope is anybody can travel anywhere, representing the best of this country. The New York Philharmonic is a wonderful cultural ambassador--to the Soviet Union, and North Korea, and Vietnam, all communist countries-- and it can also be with Cuba. I hope that will happen soon. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the majority leader be authorized to sign any duly enrolled bills and joint resolutions during today's session, Monday, October 5.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for such time as I may consume.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, today a news story had the title ``Leading Dem Plans to Blow Up Deal with Big PhRMA'': A Senate Democratic leader is hoping to blow up the deal reached between the White House, drug makers and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus by introducing an amendment on the floor to allow prescription drugs to be imported from Canada . . . et cetera. There is a picture of me. I woke up this morning not thinking I was going to try to blow up anything. So I want to respond to this. The question is, are those of us in this Chamber--a bipartisan group of 30 ranging from myself and Senator Snowe as the lead sponsor, Senator Stabenow, Senator McCain, and so many others who want to deal with this issue of fair pricing of prescription drugs--are we trying to blow something up? The answer is no. We have been trying for a long time in this Chamber to say we ought to have fair prescription drug pricing for the American people, and presently it is not fair. This is a pill bottle that would contain Lipitor made by Pfizer. It is made in Ireland and then sent around the world. These two bottles are identical. One is red, one is blue, but had the same pill made by the same company put in the same bottle, this one shipped to Canada, this one shipped to the United States. This was $1.83 per tablet. That is what the Canadian consumers paid. Our consumers got to pay $4.48 per tablet. The same pill, same company, same bottle, different price-- American consumers get to pay the higher price: $4.48 per pill compared to $1.83. It is not just Lipitor. That is the most popular cholesterol- lowering drug, widely taken. It is not just consumers of Lipitor, it is consumers--this happens to be Canada, but in here I could put France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and so on--it is that we are charged the highest prices in the world for brand-name drugs. Plavix is 73 percent higher than Canada. Boniva is 90 percent higher than Canada. Zocor is 103 percent higher than Canada. The list goes on--157 percent higher than they pay in Canada; 194 percent. It is just not fair. One day, I sat on a hay bale at a little farm reception with a guy in his eighties. We sat there just talking. He said: My wife has been fighting breast cancer for 3 years. He said: For 3 years, we have driven to Canada to buy Tamoxifen, where she could buy it for 80 percent less than it cost her in North Dakota. That is the only way we could afford to pay for her drug to fight her breast cancer. I am just saying that is not fair. So a group of us have been trying for a long time to pass legislation that allows the consumer freedom, the freedom to say: If this identical drug is being sold in Winnipeg, Canada, at a fraction of the price why can't our consumers in this country access that drug? Why don't they have the freedom to access that drug? We have put out a piece of legislation that establishes much greater security for the safety of our drug supply with batch lots and pedigrees and everything that attaches to the security side, and then we say the American people can access the FDA-approved drugs in the countries that have the same chain of custody we have and that have the same kind of safety we have. Give the American people freedom. When they have that freedom to access those identical drugs at a lower price, sold at a fraction of the price in other parts of the world, then the pharmaceutical industry will be required to reprice those drugs in this country and give the American people fair pricing. That is just a fact. I understand the White House negotiated with the pharmaceutical industry and came up with a plan by which the pharmaceutical industry over 10 years would fill part of what is called the doughnut hole. It is complicated to explain--the doughnut hole is a portion of the drug benefit in which the seniors have to pay their own drug costs. So I understand there was an agreement between the White House and the pharmaceutical industry to provide a discount to seniors in the donut hole, but nobody here was a part of that agreement. The 30 or so of us who have been very strongly working to address this issue feel that when the health reform bill comes to the floor of the Senate, we intend to offer this amendment. If you don't deal with the increasing cost of prescription drugs when you try to put downward pressure on the cost of health care, in my judgment, you have failed. One of the fastest areas of cost increases has been prescription drugs. You are just going to leave that aside and say: Don't pay any attention to that; it doesn't matter. You can't do that. So we are trying to find a way to put some downward pressure on health care prices, and that must include putting some downward pressure on prescription drugs. Let me be quick to point out that the pharmaceutical industry does important things. I don't wish them ill at all. I have done things that support them, including research and development tax credits and so on. But I am not interested in just waiting to allow them to continue to price their brand-name pharmaceutical drugs much higher to our consumers than they do to virtually every other consumer in the world. It is not fair. When the health care reform bill comes to the floor of the Senate, I and my colleagues--Senator Stabenow, Senator McCain, many others; a bipartisan group--intend to offer this bill as an amendment. It is not intended to blow up anything. We weren't a part of constructing anything; we are not going to blow up something. All we are going to do is demand that some common sense and basic fairness be established in the pricing of prescription drugs in this country. The way to do that is to give the American people the freedom to access this identical prescription drug in other areas where it is sold at a fraction of the price. So, again, I wanted to disabuse anybody of the notion that we are going to blow up something. It is not true. I understand the pharmaceutical industry does not like what we are trying to do. They would like to have absolute pricing capability to price our drugs, in the case of Lipitor, at $4.50 a tablet when they sell it to others for less than half of that. I understand they would like that opportunity. On behalf of the American citizen, I say it is not fair. It is wrong, and it ought to change. If we pass the legislation we have introduced-- a broad bipartisan group here in the Senate--it will give the American people freedom and force, in my judgment, a repricing toward fair prices for prescription drugs in our country. Again, I wanted to make the point that we are not trying to blow up anything; we are trying to fix something that is wrong, and we are going to try to do that when the health care reform bill comes to the floor of the Senate. We have been guaranteed an opportunity. Senator McCain and Senator Snowe and I intended to offer this earlier in the year, and as a result of that, the majority leader said: Don't offer it here, but I will make certain you have the opportunity on the floor of the Senate. That is why we will be in line right toward the front end of the health care reform bill to offer the amendment and have a debate. Financial Industry Reform If I might, for a couple of minutes on another subject, say that I have spoken often about an issue on the floor of the Senate that goes back some decade or so on the matter of financial reform. I am not going to revisit all of that, which happened 10 years ago, but I do want to say this: I happen to think one of the first items of business this year should have been financial reform. I know others disagreed. I know the President wanted to do health care and some other items first. But I know the President and his team are working very hard now on financial reform. It is very important to get this right. I wish to make a point. I have been reading recently about what is happening, and I would like to demonstrate what is happening. Last fall, a whole series of things steered this economy into the ditch, the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. So now, September 12, 2009, The New York Times, ``A Year Later, Little Change on Wall Street'': One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little. Not much change on Wall Street. September 15, the Washington Post, ``The Wall Street Casino, Back in Business.'' Think of that. A year after the almost unbelievable, deepest recession since the Great Depression, 1 year later, ``The Wall Street Casino, Back in Business.'' What are they talking about? Credit default swaps, derivatives, synthetic derivatives, you name it, all kinds of exotic products where they securitized everything. Everybody made a bunch of money, and on the way back from depositing money in their bank accounts one day, they discovered the economy collapsed because a lot of bad decisions had been made by people who were gambling. September 8, the Washington Post, ``A Year After Lehman, Wall Street's Acting Like Wall Street Again.'' Not much change. Wall Street Journal, August, last month, ``Bankers Play Dress Up With Old Deals'': Irresponsible securitization helped bring the financial system to its knees. Yet, as banks start to heal, little seems to have changed. Wall Street has quickly fallen back on old habits. By the way, some of these FDIC-insured banks are still trading in derivatives out of their own proprietary account. They may just as well put a casino in their lobby or be playing Keno in their boardroom. This is Steve Pearlstein, September 11: ``Wall Street's Mania for Short-Term Results Hurts Economy.'' Look, the reason I wanted to go through this is I agree not much has changed, and certainly not enough has changed. The question, it seems to me, as we deal with this issue of financial reform is, Will we address a central issue for me, and that is the too-big-to-fail issue? When we have decided as a matter of economic doctrine in this country that there are big companies that are too big to fail--too big to fail--to me, that is no-fault capitalism. We saw that last fall. We had the Treasury Secretary come to the Congress, and he said, on a Friday: If you don't pass a three-page bill giving me $700 billion and do it in 3 days, there is eminent collapse of the American economy. The fact is, I didn't vote for the $700 billion because I didn't think he had the foggiest idea what he was going to do with that money. The plain fact is as well that the very firms that did the kind of damage that steered this economy into the ditch--by the way, one of which the then-Treasury Secretary had previously worked for-- dramatically expanding leverage; engaging in unbelievable, sophisticated exotic products they couldn't even understand. But you didn't have to understand them as long as you were making a lot of money on them; securitizing almost everything; the scandal in subprime loans; paying massive bonuses to brokers who put mortgages out there called liar's loans, meaning people didn't have to describe their income in order to get a mortgage; and then securitizing the good with the bad and slicing and dicing as if you were cutting sausage and selling it to investment funds. So everybody was fat and happy, making all this money despite the fact they were creating this house of cards. And then the house of cards collapsed, and we had all of these firms with dramatic leverage and exposure. Then we were told: You know what, you have to bail them out. They are too big to fail. The American taxpayer has to come out and open their pocketbook and provide the funds because these companies are too big to fail. The fact is, when we discuss financial reform, there is too little discussion about this right now. All the discussion we see are these stories: ``Wall Street is Back in Business Again''; ``Banks Still Trading in Derivatives on Proprietary Accounts.'' They might as well just put up a blackjack table in their lobby. Nothing is changing. So the question is, when we get to this point--and it is very soon, I hope--will we seriously address the doctrine of too big to fail. If we don't, we will go down exactly the same road and, mark my words, we will find the same ditch once again for this economy. We must address this issue of too big to fail. Some of the too-big-to-fail institutions got a lot of TARP funds from the American taxpayer. And by the way, they have gotten bigger now--too big to fail, and now they are too bigger to fail, I guess. It doesn't sound like good English to me. But too big to fail is a problem, so you make them bigger. It makes no sense. This has to be a centerpiece in our discussion going forward. Are we going to continue to have no-fault capitalism where some of the biggest financial institutions in this country are engaged in gambling, trading in derivatives on their own financial accounts in a bank, while the bank is FDIC insured? Are we going to continue to allow that, or are we finally going to decide that this doctrine of too big to fail has to be addressed along with the other issues? Are we going to securitize everything? Are we going to continue to allow this unbelievable expansion of leverage? All of these are important questions. At the end of the day, to me, the question of the doctrine of too big to fail is overriding. We must end that proposition. It is not just me, there are a lot of good economists who believe this must be a part of our financial reform. My hope is that in the coming month or so following the discussion on health care reform, we turn to financial reform. I am going to be on the floor talking again about the doctrine of too big to fail and about the Federal Reserve Board's notion of what that doctrine means and what their responsibilities are. I yield the floor, and I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators allowed to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last evening the Senate passed a 3-month extension--until December 31--of the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, and I wanted to mention a word about that. The 3-month extension is necessary because the authorization ends at the end of this month, September 30. This is such an important issue, so I hope we are able to find time on the floor of the Senate--I have talked to the majority leader, Senator Reid, about finding time on the floor to consider the FAA reauthorization bill, which includes important provisions to modernize our air traffic control system. Let me talk about the process for getting a bill considered on the floor just for a moment. It has been difficult here to get things done on the floor of the Senate. Sometimes we have had cooperation, sometimes not. Sometimes on very noncontroversial things we have had to file cloture just on the motion to proceed. It takes 2 days to get cloture, have a vote on cloture, and then the minority has insisted on 30 hours postcloture. So you have to take the better part of a week just to get to a piece of legislation, even the noncontroversial ones. So my hope would be that perhaps we could get more cooperation particularly when it comes to passing the FAA Reauthorization Act. The FAA Reauthorization Act is critically important because we need to modernize the air traffic control system. I chair the Aviation Subcommittee, and that is why I wish to bring this bill to the floor, along with my colleague, Senator Rockefeller, and move rather rapidly on the issue of modernization of the air traffic control system. We are still flying using ground-based radar systems that have been around for a long time. Previously, I described on the floor of the Senate that when flying began in this country and we started to haul mail by airplanes, planes could only fly during the day when the pilot could see. Then eventually they began flying at night by building big bonfires 50 or 100 miles out so the pilot could see the direction they were supposed to head. Then, with more sophistication, we developed ground-based radar and we put transponders in an airplane which send signals to a radar on the ground, and that radar then puts a little signal on a screen that says: Here is where the airplane is. Well, that is all fine, except in most cases it's actually: This is where the airplane was. Because for the next 7 seconds that jet is elsewhere. It is moving. So you have a single dot on a ground-based radar system, and the transponder says, here is where that jet airplane is, but it is really not there anymore. It is there for just a nanosecond, and during the rest of the sweep of the radar that airplane is somewhere else. We need to go to an entirely new system. Europe and the United States are both moving to a system that uses GPS so that we know exactly where that airplane is. It is a much more effective system and a safer system. It will save energy. It will allow airlines to fly more direct routes, so it will save time for passengers. It will be better for the environment because planes will be using less energy. All of that is true. But we can't get there until we pass the provisions that move the FAA forward with modernization that are part of the FAA reauthorization bill. I and others have worked on this for a long time. We extended the existing reauthorization last evening until the end of the year, but between now and then we need to pass the reauthorization bill through the Senate so that we can conference it with the House and get a bill to the President. It also includes provisions dealing with safety. For example, I have chaired two hearings on the tragic accident in Buffalo, NY, with the Colgan Air flight in which many lives were lost. We have included in this legislation issues dealing with the FAA and the issues of pilot fatigue, crew rest, pilot training, and other issues dealing with safety that are very important. We also include the Passengers' Bill of Rights, which some of my colleagues have worked on for a long while. I included that in the mark that has now passed the Commerce Committee. It includes, for example, one little piece in the Passengers' Bill of Rights says that if you are on an airplane and you are stranded someplace on a tarmac, they can't keep you more than 3 hours without being required to take you back to the terminal. We have had examples--tragic examples, I should say--of people being stuck on an airplane for way too many hours and not allowed to come back to the terminal. Well, we put a provision in here dealing with that which relates to the Passengers' Bill of Rights. My point is this: This is important to passengers, it is important to the airlines, and it is important to our country to get this done and get it done right. My fervent hope is that we will get time on the schedule and get it through the Senate so that we can get it to conference with the House of Representatives and see if we can get done what should have been done 2 years ago. It is called the Air Traffic Control Modernization Program. It is part of the FAA Reauthorization Act, and it is very important for this country. Energy Mr. President, I want to talk just for a moment about energy. I know we have been spending a lot of time dealing with health care. I believe the Finance Committee is meeting and working on a health care bill, as we speak, and that is important to continue that work. Another important issue for the Senate to address is energy. I want to talk just for a moment about the need for an expanded energy program in this country and a new set of energy policies. Just as we have reported an FAA reauthorization bill, we have also reported a bill out of the Senate Energy Committee. I worked with Senator Bingaman and others on a bipartisan bill, and we have reported a very important bill out of the Energy Committee which is now on the Senate calendar. If we can pass it in the Senate and House, resolve the differences, and have the President sign it, this legislation can move us in the direction toward addressing the climate change. But it also makes us less dependent upon foreign energy, thus improving our energy and our national security situation. Here are the issues. We produce millions of barrels of oil every single day by sucking it out of our planet. We stick little straws in the dirt, and we suck oil out at a rate of about 85 million barrels a day. Think about a globe in your office or someplace at school and look at where we are relative to the size of the planet. Even though we produce 85 million barrels a day for the world, one-fourth of it comes to this patch called the United States of America. We use one-fourth of all the oil that is sucked out of our planet every single day, so we have a prodigious appetite for energy. That is not surprising. Everything we do uses energy, and we are an advanced industrial country. We get up in the morning and turn on a switch and the light goes on. We plug in an electric razor and shave. We use it for the coffee maker or for the toaster by using electricity. We open the refrigerator which keeps the food cool all the time. We get in our cars, put a key in the ignition and ignite an engine with probably 250 horses to take us to work or to get a doughnut and coffee. We are unbelievable users of energy, and we do not even think much about it. But if tomorrow morning we awoke and none of that energy were available, our lives would change in a dramatic way. Now think of this: Although we need one-fourth of 85 million barrels of oil today, brought to this country, almost 70 percent of the oil we use is produced elsewhere. Some of it is produced in countries that do not like us very much. Then in addition to nearly 70 percent being produced elsewhere, about 70 percent of the oil in this country is used in the transportation sector. So those are the elements of things that ought to concern us. How do we deal with all of this? What we need to do is produce more energy at home. We also need to produce different kinds of energy. I happen to believe we ought to produce virtually every kind of energy to the extent that we can do so, and do it with an eye and understanding on how that impacts climate change issues. We should be attending to and producing more renewable energy--including wind, solar, biomass and other renewable resources. Developing renewables will move us in the direction of addressing climate change. So here is what we have done in the Energy Committee. We have produced a piece of legislation that maximizes the use of renewable energy. Here is a picture of wind turbines. They are plentiful in my State and in many other States as well. We are taking energy from the wind and producing electricity. When we put up a turbine, it can blow for 10 years, 20 years or 50 years so that we are getting energy from the wind. It is renewable, increasingly reliable, carbon free, and very protective of the environment. By producing electricity from the wind, solar or biomass resources, we are capable of extending and expanding our energy supply and in many ways, making us less dependent on foreign oil or energy that comes from foreign sources. This is especially true as we work to electrify our transportation system. One of the things we did with respect to wind energy is, for the first time in the Senate Energy bill, establish a national renewable electricity standard. We said we believe there ought to be a requirement of how much of our nation's electricity should come from renewable energy. So we have a 15-percent requirement. When we get a bill to the Senate floor, we ought to increase it to a 20-percent requirement where 5 percent is for energy efficiency and 15 percent is for renewable energy. I would like to see if we can strengthen that standard which came out of the Energy Committee. But at least the first renewable electricity standard of 15 percent is in the committee passed bill. It is very important that we a starting point for where we want to be. There is this old saying: If you don't care where you are, you are never lost. That is very true for public policy in this country. If you don't care where you are, then you don't set goals. But we should set goals because we are unbelievably and dangerously dependent on energy from other countries. That doesn't make any sense to me, so we must maximize the production of renewable energy. The problem is where the Sun shines or where the wind blows and where we can produce electricity from the wind and the Sun may not necessarily be where we most need the energy. What we need to do is produce energy where we can and move it to the load centers where they need the electricity. So we have a transmission piece in this energy legislation which is very important because it essentially will create an interstate highway of transmission capability to maximize the production of renewable energy and move it to where it is needed, the load centers. We cannot seem to produce or build transmission capabilities at this point to the scale we need it. We have--we built 11,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in the last 9 years in this country to move natural gas, but we have only been able to build 668 miles of interstate, high voltage transmission lines. We just can't get it done. There are 100 different ways for people to say no. We put a transmission piece in this legislation which will move us down the road to maximize the production and the movement of renewable energy. This is a positive step for this country. Here is a chart that describes what has happened with domestic production and use of petroleum in our country from 1981 to today. It is pretty clear from this graph what has happened, and this ever growing gap is what makes us dangerously dependent on foreign oil. We use a lot of oil, and we are unbelievably dependent on foreign oil. As I indicated, some of it is from countries that don't like us very much, and that is not smart at all. The Energy bill passed in the Energy Committee awaiting floor action is legislation that contains an amendment I successfully offered that would open access to the eastern gulf of Mexico which is closed for oil and gas production. It would open it for oil and gas production. That is very important because there are substantial amounts of production available to us in this region. Down in the Cuban waters we have this misguided embargo against Cuba for the last 50 years that has not worked. It continues, and at the same time, the Cubans are opening their waters for oil and gas production to companies based in other countries. We understand there is about a half million barrels a day for production available in these waters. The Spanish are there, the Indians are there, Canada is there-- they are all seeking to develop the resources, but American oil companies can't because of that embargo. That makes no sense to me, and we ought to remove that embargo, in my judgment. But the point is, the bill I have just described actually opens a substantial area for additional oil and gas production that came from an amendment passed with bipartisan support. Here is another chart describing where we get our energy. It includes coal, petroleum, natural gas, hydroelectric, renewables, and nuclear. I happen to think to the extent that we can, even as we take action to protect our environment, we ought to consider all types of energy to make us less dependent on foreign energy. Coal--I recognize, by using coal to produce energy, we release carbon into the atmosphere. That is difficult when we are dealing with a need to address climate change. In the appropriations committee I chair on energy and water, what we are doing is making sure we are investing in finding ways to remove the carbon from fossil energy. I believe it can be done. I believe one day we will have a near-zero emission, coal- fired, electric-generating plant. I think we ought to do a lot of everything and do it well. I believe there are so many exciting things going on that will alter our future, if we just keep investing in them and make them happen. I want to show a chart that is kind of a Byzantine chart, actually. This might not mean much to anybody at first glance, but this is algae. It is single-cell pond scum. We have all seen in very common places, especially those of us who grew up in rural areas. In a pond when the Sun shines we will see this film develop, this green slimy stuff in a pond. It is pond scum, right? Algae. When I became chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, I restarted the algae research work that had been discontinued for 15 years. Why would we research algae? Here is why: Because if CO2 is a problem in coal-burning or fossil-fired plants, what we can do with it is take the CO2 from the facility and feed it into a big old greenhouse. We can grow algae because algae grows with sunlight, water, and CO2. We get rid of the CO2 by feeding it into and growing the algae, then harvesting the algae and producing a diesel fuel. We take the CO2, which is a problem because we want to protect the atmosphere. There is research going on right now in which I believe Exxon and Dr. Craig Venter are working on for new algae research. They are taking the algae and excreting the lipids which, with little manipulation, would then become petroleum projects. Dr. Venter was also one of several leading scientists involved in the research to map the human genome which gave us the first owners manual for the human body. Dr. Venter and Dr. Francis Collins are remarkable Americans. He is now doing research in which people are trying to determine how to create synthetic microbes that would consume coal and, in the process of consuming coal, leave methane gas behind. Isn't that interesting? Isn't it something, if we could have synthetic microbes turn coal into gas by consuming the coal? I don't know what the future holds for all of this. I do know this. The Energy bill we have passed in our Energy Committee builds on a lot of these interesting and important ideas, and I believe does it well. While I haven't mentioned nuclear, there are loan guarantee funds and other incentives that Congress has already passed to try to build some of the first few nuclear projects, which obviously don't produce carbon. I think it is important that we recognize we should do a lot of things, do them well, make us less dependent on foreign oil, protect the environment, and provide greater national security and energy security as a result. That is the point of it all. The reason I have described all this--I come from a State that produces a lot of energy and I am on the Energy Committee. I am the second ranking Democrat on the committee. I am also chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds all energy and water projects, and that is a great opportunity for me because I come from a State that produces a lot of energy. We have virtually every form of energy. In the western half of that State, we produce a lot of oil and natural gas. We produce a lot of coal. We also have a great deal of wind and biomass. In fact we have more wind than any State in America. According to the Department of Energy, we are the Saudi Arabia of wind. Also, we have a plant that uses lignite coal and produces from lignite coal synthetic natural gas. It is the only plant of its kind in the United States. We take CO2 from that facility, put it in a pipeline to inject into the oil fields in Canada. We are taking CO2, sequestering it, selling it, using it in enhanced oil recovery because a very small amount of oil a new oil field is actually brought up until we use additional means to move it. We can do that by injecting it with CO2 which stays in the ground. Then we can bring up a lot more oil. We are doing all these things. The reason I wanted to talk about this today is we need to get that Energy bill to the floor of the Senate, get it passed, get it to the President for signature. It is a significant first step in the direction of addressing climate change but is also a significant step in making us less dependent on foreign oil. Senator Bingaman and Senator Murkowski, the chairman and ranking member of the Energy Committee, worked with me and other Members for many months to produce this legislation. Some say let's merge it with climate change. We should put this energy bill and climate change together and bring it to the floor for a debate. Well, you know what. I have said I think it would be far more beneficial, as a matter of practical policy, to bring the Energy bill to the Senate floor, pass it, put that progress in the bank because it is a significant stride toward addressing climate change, then follow that up with a climate change bill behind that. I know some have interpreted my remarks as saying I do not support climate change legislation. Well, I have already spoken on the floor to clarify that point. I do not support a cap-and-trade bill as it relates to the market trade portion of cap and trade. I do not intend and do not have any interest in consigning the price of energy tomorrow to the decisions in a $1 trillion carbon securities market that will be populated by investment banks and speculators today that are going to tell us what they believe the price of carbon should be tomorrow. I have had way too much acquaintance with markets that are broken and markets that do not work in recent years to believe that is what we ought to do. I do believe there is something significant happening with respect to our climate changing. I believe this country should take, at a minimum, a series of important ``no regret'' steps in addressing those issues. But I have great difficulty with those who believe we should do cap- and-trade bill when you talk about carbon marking trading, given the experience we have had in recent years in other markets. We have discovered that time on the Senate floor is evaporating quickly because health care is taking longer than one would have expected. We must also do financial reform. I would hope that financial reforms come after health care. My own view is we do financial reform first this year because that would have established the foundation by which people could have confidence in the system that steered this country's economy into the ditch. I have expressed this to the President. But I understand health care is a very serious problem as well. So we need to consider health care and financial reform. I also hope we can consider the issue of FAA reauthorization; all these things and others are needed to be done before the end of the year. The majority leader understands all of that, is working very hard to try to fit the pieces of that puzzle into the time available. My only point for expressing the point on the floor is that I would very much hate to lose some important work on energy that affects virtually every form of energy, including energy efficiency, the first ever national RES, more transmission, additional access to oil, and more that will make us less dependent on foreign oil and start to address climate change. All of that is part of a plan that I think is a plan that will advance the interests of this country. So my hope is that in the coming weeks, as we think through and talk through what should be our agenda in the near future, my hope is we can find a way to move these important parts of an energy bill. This, I think, should represent a significant opportunity for bipartisanship at a time when there has been precious little. Too little bipartisanship exists right now. But if there is any area in which most of us would believe our country's best interests reside, it has to be producing more energy and doing it the right way, protecting our environment at the same time. That is very much what this Energy bill strives to do. It will advance our country's interests, and so my hope is that when the calendar turns for the new year, we will have sent to the President's desk an energy policy that has a lot to commend in it for this country's future. I visited personally with the President, the Majority Leader and others about this idea and commit to working with them on it. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 3:15.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 288 submitted earlier today.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no interviewing action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Friday, September 25, 2009, at 9:30 a.m., in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Bill Curlin be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am not so sure, given what is happening in the country these days, it would be very easy to enact the Medicare Program, had we not done so previously. The Medicare Program was enacted at a time when one-half of the senior citizens in this country had no health care--none. That is not surprising because the fact is, insurance companies do not go running after elderly people to say: Can we provide health insurance coverage to you? We know you are in your seventies or eighties, and we know you are probably going to need coverage for various things in the years ahead. We would like to provide that coverage. In the mid-1960s, this country and the Congress said: People in their elderly years should not have to lay their head on their pillow at night and wonder whether tomorrow might be the day when they become ill, have a disease, have an accident, and go to a hospital with no health insurance to cover their needs. This Congress did something very important, and, as is usually the case, when it created Medicare, there were plenty of people saying: Don't do it. It won't work. It is socialism. It shouldn't happen. But it did happen. There is a health care bill being written in the Finance Committee now. I am not part of a gang of two or a gang of six or a gang of eight. I am part of a gang of 99 Senators, as of today, who will consider the bill they come up with. I do not know what it will look like, and I wish to see all of it before I make a judgment about its merits, but I will say this: Even as it is being written, we hear of efforts to cold call into homes of senior citizens to tell them that what is happening is an attempt to injure and take away services from Medicare for senior citizens. It is not true. It is false. It is hard to make the case, it seems to me, but some are trying, that if you try to reduce the cost of Medicare by getting rid of waste and fraud and abuse, somehow that results in less health care services for senior citizens, yet that is exactly what is being represented by some. I have watched very carefully and been very concerned about the issue of waste and fraud and abuse in Medicare. There should be aggressive oversight, with respect to those who are providing Medicare benefits to senior citizens. There is too much fraud. My hope is--and my understanding from what is being written with respect to preventing fraud--it is going to be a new day. If you want to sign up as a provider and get reimbursement from Medicare for helping senior citizens, you better be providing the service. All too often that has not been the case. So when we decide we are going to try to cut waste and fraud and abuse in a very serious and relentless and aggressive way, we have people who say: Aha, what they are going to do will harm senior citizens. It is not going to harm senior citizens in the delivery of health care to those who are entitled to it if we take on the waste and the fraud and the abuse and start putting the crooks in jail. That is not going to hurt senior citizens. That is going to help America's elderly. Let me describe what I am talking about. In 2007, the Department of Justice randomly visited 1,600 durable medical equipment suppliers that bill Medicare for services. They found that one-third of the businesses did not exist. Think of that. They randomly visited 1,600 durable medical equipment suppliers that provide services to beneficiaries, we are told--they are billing the government for it--and they found out that one-third of them did not exist. They were mailboxes to collect fraudulent checks. They billed Medicare, combined, $237 million in 2007. Putting those people in jail and stopping that kind of fraud does not injure Medicare. It strengthens it. It does not hurt senior citizens. A man named Mr. Alcides Garcia was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Here is a picture of him, so we can give him a little credit for what he did. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison after his medical equipment company made millions in false Medicare claims. Mr. Thomas Fiore, as shown in this picture, was indicted with 10 others on racketeering charges in south Florida for identity theft and Medicare fraud and much more. In April of this year, just months ago, officials in Oregon wrapped up a lengthy fraud case. Again, to give credit where credit's due, this is a man named Richard Vanderschuere. He faked disability. His wife Karen and son Richard, Jr. claimed to be full-time care providers. His mother claimed to be a weekend backup assistant. The so-called caretakers received payments for providing home health care while he received Social Security disability benefits. His mother was employed. By the way, this person's mother was employed as a fraud investigator for a State agency in the State of Oregon at the time. Here is his wife, to make sure she gets proper credit. We don't want to leave out the kid because they were all involved in this--trying to fleece the American taxpayers and defraud the American Government. My point is very simple. My point is that when we take on waste, fraud, and abuse--and this is a new day; this is not part of the lost decade when we had a whole lot of people fleecing this program--when we do that, when we cut down on the waste, fraud and abuse and reduce the costs of Medicare, it is not about reducing Medicare for senior citizens. I was in a little ice cream shop about 6 weeks ago in a little town in North Dakota. Two elderly women came up to me and said: Byron, please don't let them take my Medicare benefits away. I understand that is what they are going to try to do. I said: Well, they are not going to do that, but who told you that? They said: We got telephone calls from some organization that said you have to be aware they are trying to take your Medicare Program away. I said: Well, that is not true. They said: Well, we got the telephone calls. I said: You might have gotten the calls, but it is not true. It is false. But what is happening around here--again, I don't know what the health care plan will be that comes out of the Finance Committee, but I will guarantee this: Whatever it is, it would not have a ghost of a chance of passing this Chamber if it begins to harm Medicare Programs for the elderly in this country. This is a very important program. We are the ones who created Medicare. We believe it is important. Those naysayers, those people who have always opposed everything--and there are plenty of them, by the way--they are the ones who are saying: If you cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you are going to cut X billions of dollars of costs; therefore, you are cutting health care for senior citizens. That is false. I think it ought to stop. We have groups out there that are making cold calls into homes trying to scare senior citizens. The fact is Medicare is a very important program. It has enriched the lives of the elderly in this country. Would we want to go back to a time when half the senior citizens reached the point in their lives where they were finished with their work life, didn't have much in assets, and then sat around thinking: Oh, my God, I hope I don't get sick because I don't have health care, and I can't find an insurance company that wants to cover me because they know what I know; that when you get older, sometimes you have those health issues that are most acute. In North Dakota, I recently met a 111-year-old woman named Mary--111 years old. She is acutely aware of everything; she can visit with you about everything. She described to me when the barn burned down in 1904 when she was 6 years old. This is a wonderful, remarkable woman. She is certainly the oldest person in my State and I assume one of the oldest people in our country. But think of what she has experienced in 111 years. Unbelievable things: the automobile, the airplane, walking on the Moon, you name it. But then think of this: In the middle of all this, after she was well into her sixties, Medicare was provided to say to America's senior citizens: You don't have to be frightened anymore. We are going to provide health care coverage in your older years. Now 99 percent of the senior citizens in this country have health care. They are our parents, our grandparents, those who raised us, those who loved us, those who cared about us. This country then provided a program called Medicare which said: You don't have to be afraid in your older years. You are going to be able to get health care. That is what Medicare is about. Is it perfect? No, it is not perfect. Is there waste, fraud, and abuse? Yes, there is, and we are determined to shut it down. It will be shut down with the right kinds of programs to prevent fraud. And if you try to cheat the Medicare Program, we are going to aggressively prosecute. Again, I wish to make sure everybody understands, when we hear people say: If you reduce the cost of Medicare by getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse you are hurting senior citizens and you are trying to cut senior citizens' benefits, that is false and it ought to stop. It is going on right now and it ought to stop. Organizations doing cold calls into homes of senior citizens ought to stop. And it is parroted by politicians and others who think it is an interesting message to scare senior citizens and it ought to stop. Let me finish as I started. I don't know what kind of health care bill is going to come to the Senate, and I want to see it before I evaluate it. It is important. It is important to everybody. But I do know this: The Medicare Program is something that has very substantial support in this Chamber. I don't believe there is anything being written in any one of the committees in the Senate that would begin to diminish or in any other way weaken Medicare coverage for America's senior citizens. If that was the case, it wouldn't have a ghost of a chance of getting through this Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. On behalf of the majority leader, I object.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I am in support of the amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma. I also offered an amendment which I understand will be accepted. It allows for something called an ``opt in'' for private property. It means that for the Northern Plains Heritage Area, private property would be involved only if someone wishes to be included. My understanding is, after having worked with the Senators from Tennessee and Oklahoma, and the Senator from California, who is managing this bill, my amendment will also be accepted by unanimous consent. My amendment is amendment No. 2441 which has previously been filed.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me say I think this has been cleared by both sides. It does have a connection to the previous amendment. I appreciate the cooperation of the Senator from California, the Senator from Tennessee, and the Senator from Oklahoma. I ask for its immediate consideration and approval.

Mr. DORGAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 1707, introduced earlier today.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a technical amendment to the Act of June 18, 1934. On February 24, 2009, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Carcieri v. Salazar case. In that decision the Supreme Court held that the Secretary of the Interior exceeded his authority in taking land into trust for a tribe that was not under Federal jurisdiction, or recognized, at the time the Indian Reorganization Act was enacted in 1934. The legislation I am introducing today is necessary to reaffirm the Secretary's authority to take lands into trust for Indian tribes, regardless of when they were recognized by the Federal government. The amendment ratifies the prior trust acquisitions of the Secretary, who for the past 75 years has been exercising his authority to take lands into trust, as intended by the Indian Reorganization Act. On May 21, 2009, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing to examine the executive branch's authority to take land into trust for Indian tribes. At that hearing, it became clear that Congress needs to act to resolve the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court's decision. Therefore, this legislation was developed in consultation with interested parties to clarify the Secretary's authority. Inaction by Congress could significantly impact planned development projects on Indian trust lands, including the building of homes and community centers; result in a loss of jobs in an already challenging economic environment; and create costly and unnecessary litigation. Further, if the decision stands, it would have the effect of creating two classes of Indian tribes--those who were recognized as of 1934, for whom land may be taken into trust, and those recognized after 1934 that would be unable to have land taken into trust status. Creating two classes of tribes is unacceptable and is contrary to prior Acts of this Congress. In 1994, Congress passed the Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act to ensure that all tribes are treated equally, regardless of their date of recognition. I want to thank Senators Tester, Inouye, Akaka, Baucus, Udall, Bingaman, and Franken for their support on this legislation. My cosponsors are well aware of the resulting impact this decision could have on our Native American communities. Affected tribes deserve our timely consideration of this bill. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the passage of this legislation. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.