Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Warner. Let me just continue for 1 additional minute, and then turn the floor over to the Senator. I don't like having to come here and ratchet away on this issue day after day. I know some get tired of that, but this literally is about whether people will survive out on the family farm. I have used some letters to try to describe their plight. I used a letter the other day of a woman who described the two jobs she has, the two jobs her husband has, in addition to raising kids and running the farm, and all the part-time jobs her kids have. She wrote how they are just flat broke, out of money and with no capability of making it. The price of hogs is down. The price of cattle is down. The price of grain has collapsed. She said to her daughter, ``Let us try to buy you one pair of new jeans for school.'' And her daughter said, ``No. Mom, I understand we can't afford that.'' They are just out of money and about to give up hope. This Congress needs to intervene to do something. We need to say to our farmers, ``You matter to this country.'' I am not saying we should prop up some artificial economy for farms. I am saying that these farmers face monopolies in every direction they turn. They face monopolies with the grain trade. They face monopolies with the way they do business with the railroad. They face them with the cattle slaughter. They face them with the hog and sheep slaughter, and they face them with the flour millers. I had charts. I will not put them up again. In every area, the top three or four companies control 60, 70, and in some cases 80 percent of all of the activity. And these farmers are told, ``You compete in the free market.'' Then they have to compete with other countries that deeply subsidize their products. It is not a free market. It has never been free. We are the only ones who will come up with these goofy stories and tell the farmers to go to the grain markets which are stacked against them. Then when prices collapse, we tell our farmers we are not going to be there to help. This is the only country that does that. This country ought to decide now that it made a mistake putting the future of family farmers on a free market that doesn't exist, and we ought to correct it. This President says that we have an emergency need, and he asked for a supplemental appropriations to meet that emergency need totaling about $8 billion. I drove home the other night after the conference committee between the House and the Senate. That conference, on a party-line vote, said no; we are not willing to do that. I hope we are going to change that result in the next week and a half, Mr. President.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from South Dakota is absolutely correct. The farm bill that Congress passed said we would provide a support price equal to 85 percent of the five-year Olympic average of the average price of this grain. Then they put an artificial budget restraint on it even though they promised that formula. Once again, the big print giveth and the little print taketh away. Despite the promise, they put an artificial cap on it. That means our support prices don't work. The promise doesn't offer real help and it doesn't offer protection. What we have proposed--and the President and others have proposed--is to get rid of the artificial cap and to give them what the big print said they would give them and stop this taking away with the little print. That is all this proposal is about.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes. The Senator from South Dakota is, of course, correct. Emergency needs have always been anticipated and expected in the budget process. When emergency needs are requested, I am someone who will always vote to fund those emergency needs. It is not outside of the scope of what we decided to do when we decided to try to get this country's fiscal house in order. The Senator is correct about that. I don't understand why some continue to insist that the funding doesn't exist for this emergency need. Of course, it does. Of course, it is a need. Let me say to the Senator from Virginia, when I said he is here for serious business, that the implication was not that this isn't. This is the most serious business for me in this Congress. I know the Senator from Virginia is involved in defense and a range of other issues that are also very serious for this country. I very much appreciate his service and the service of the Senator from Arizona. The Senator from South Dakota, Senator Johnson, of course, is from a farm State, just like mine, that is suffering the same kinds of problems. It is devastating. This crisis is really devastating to not just the economy of the State but to the families who tonight will go to bed not knowing whether they are going to be able to hang on to their family farm. That is the dilemma here, and it is something we have to face.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me finish with just 1 minute. I know our colleagues are on the floor. They look like they want to do some serious business.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we talk about the farm crisis and whether Congress will address a farm crisis that is urgent. I just want to make this point. I watched this week, as did all Americans, this hurricane that came roaring out of the Caribbean and threatened a fair part of the southern part of this country. My heart goes out to those people, worrying about their State, their lives, their property, and everything that they have saved and built. Then a wind comes along at 100, 125, and 150 miles an hour, and wipes it away. There is an emergency declaration, as we always do. Whether it is floods, fires, or earthquakes, or hurricanes, Congress responds with an emergency declaration. We say: You are a victim and the rest of the country wants to help. A week ago, the President sent down an emergency request to this Congress dealing with the farm crisis. It wasn't a wind, it wasn't a fire, it wasn't a flood, it wasn't a hurricane or an earthquake. Family farmers in this country have been literally devastated by the abject collapse of farm prices. Grain prices have just collapsed. In my State, in 1 year net farm income collapsed 98 percent. Ask yourself: Could anybody on your home street or block or in your county or your city survive if their net income dropped 98 percent? The remaining income is 2 percent. These are people who milk the cows, plow and put seed into the ground, and harvest in the fall. These are people in this country who raise America's food. They take enormous risks. They turn their yard light on and with their family have hopes and dreams to make a living. There has been a 98 percent collapse of the net farm income in North Dakota for family farmers. Prices have collapsed. We have the worst crop disease in this century. This President is right when he says we have an urgent farm crisis and he sends down an emergency proposal to deal with this. Two nights ago, I drove home after a conference committee on the Appropriations Committee. In that conference meeting, on a party-line vote, the President was told: We don't care about your emergency request. We don't think it is quite that important. We are going to offer up a 4-foot rope to somebody drowning in 10 feet of water, and we will suggest somehow that we have helped. I was sorely disappointed. More than that I was angry when I drove home that night. We meed to understand that these folks who farm America's land out there, the family farmers, don't ask for very much. All they ask is for an opportunity to make a living. When farm prices collapse and when they are hit with crop disease, it is as much a crisis for them as wind, flood, fire, or tornado. This Congress has a responsibility to help. There is a week and a half left in this Congress. If this Congress doesn't help, thousands and thousands and thousands of farmers and their families living on the land will lose their livelihood. I know the Senator from Nebraska has some information about exactly what the President has proposed and what the stakes are here, State by State, and what we are trying to do. I yield for a moment to the Senator from Nebraska for a question and some comments.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am joined on the floor today by the Senator from Nebraska, Senator Kerrey. I cannot help but mention the presentation just made by Senator Kennedy. I fully support and agree with his presentation. He talks about the agenda. What is the agenda here in the Senate? What do the leaders of this Congress feel is important for this country? I gave a presentation on the Senate floor one day about a young boy named Ethan, who was born with severe difficulties from cerebral palsy, for which he required intense physical therapy. And the HMO said, ``No, we're going to cut off that therapy because he will not make significant progress.'' Now what they defined as ``insignificant progress'' was the ability to walk by age 5. It was not doctors who were making that decision. It was accountants in an HMO who were saying, ``Being able to walk by age 5 is insignificant.'' So there was a matter of dollars and cents versus a young boy's health. That is the point the Senator from Massachusetts makes about the urgency of having an agenda on the floor of the Senate that deals with real issues that affect real people. We have a ``legislative landfill'' here. You know landfills. Almost all landfills are out of sight, over the hill, down the valley. You go through a big gate and don't even see it. You drive your merchandise down there that you want to dispose of, then you dump it and they cover it up. We have a legislative landfill here in the 105th Congress. There was tobacco legislation. It was sent out to the landfill, and covered up. Campaign finance reform also went into the legislative landfill, and was covered up. Add the Patients' Bill of Rights as another bill sent into the legislative landfill they have created, and covered it up.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The regular order is that I am recognized following the unanimous consent request, and I was recognized for an hour. I will not take all of that hour. The regular order is that the Chair would recognize me.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, thank you very much. I was happy to allow the unanimous consent request to be granted.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know the Senator from Iowa wishes to join in this discussion, and I am happy to have his input. I was driving home last evening after the Agriculture appropriations conference committee, and I was once again struck by how some in politics here just sort of shrug off some things that are so important. I am referring especially to the future of family farming. It is true that almost every day you see something around here in which someone treats the important things too lightly and then someone treats the light things in a far too serious way. It is hard to see that things are treated appropriately. There is no more urgent need in this country, in my judgment, than to address the farm crisis at this time. If we do not act on a timely basis, we will not have family farmers left in the Farm Belt given their current circumstances. Again, this chart shows the price of wheat. This is the income our farmers receive for their production. In 1 year in North Dakota, our farmers lost 98 percent of all their net income. It was just washed away. Their net income was virtually all gone. It was a 98 percent drop in their paycheck. Think of it this way: What if this were your salary or your wage? Look at what has happened, month after month after month after month. This is the gross returns that our farmers receive. The price of wheat in our part of the country is down, down, down, way down. In fact, the price of wheat has fallen 57 percent since the Freedom to Farm law was passed. These families are out there living on the land, turning the yard light on, illuminating the dreams and hopes of a family that is trying to make a go of it. They are discovering they are going broke in record numbers and nobody seems to care much because we have people that chant on street corners in Washington, DC, ``the marketplace, the marketplace, the free market.'' There is no free market. What a bunch of unmitigated baloney. This is no free market. There has never been a free market in agriculture, and there will not be one. This is picture of a farmer that is being sold out. This is an auction sale. All his equipment is being sold. These farmers go broke and they have an auction sale. They are told, gee, you didn't make it in the free market. Let's examine this free market. This farmer plants some wheat in the spring and harvests it in the fall, if the farmer has some good luck. If it doesn't rain too much, and if it rains enough; if the insects don't come and if the crop disease doesn't come; if it doesn't hail; if all those things don't occur or do occur, this farmer may or may not get a crop. And then this farmer puts that crop, after a hard day's harvest, into a truck and puts it on a county road and goes to market. He pulls up to an elevator and the elevator manager says, ``You can dump that grain in my country elevator.'' Guess what it costs a farmer to produce that crop? It costs five dollars a bushel to produce that bushel of wheat, and the elevator man says he is prepared to give the farmer $2.50. In other words, he is prepared to give only half of what it costs the farmer to raise it. The elevator man says, ``What I want to do is to put that grain on the railroad car and the railroad company will charge you twice what it is worth to haul it, and they will haul to the miller who will make a record profit grinding it, and they will send it perhaps to a grocery manufacturer and they will puff it and pop it and crisp it and flake it and they will put it in a bright colored box.'' Then they are going to ship it to the grocery store shelf and somebody out there is going to come and buy it in Pittsburgh, or Fargo, or Los Angeles. These consumers are going to pay $4 a box for a bright-colored box of wheat that is puffed up and called puffed wheat now. The person who put the puff in it is making record profits, the person who hauled it on the railroad car is making record profits, and the miller is making record profits. Everybody is making record profits, except the farmers who got their hands dirty, gassed up the tractor, plowed the ground, seeded and fertilized the ground, harvested the crop, and hauled it to market. They are going broke in record numbers. Yet, nobody seems to care a bit. Last night, in that conference committee, they were stone deaf to a proposal by this President who said we need $8 billion in emergency aid, and we need it now if we are going to solve this farm crisis. They rejected that on a straight party-line vote. It is not that there is not enough money. They think they have enough to give an $80 billion tax cut. The sky is the limit there. But how about another $4 billion for family farmers? That is what we were talking about last night. We were asking just another $4 billion more to save family farmers. They have $80 billion for a tax cut, but they don't have another $4 billion to invest in the lives of these people, who I think are the salt of the Earth. Family farmers are the ultimate risk-takers. Let me mention one more point about this free market. I talked about the monopoly railroads that haul the grain and the monopoly grain trade firms. Wherever you look, in every direction our farmers face a monopoly. It doesn't matter which way they turn. Let's say we have a cow out here. They are raising wheat, corn, soybeans, and they are raising some cows. They are going to send the cow to market. But are they going to make money off that cow? I don't think so, because that cow is going to be sold into a monopoly. Four firms control over 80 percent of all the slaughter of beef cattle in this country. That farmer markets up to a monopoly. That farmer moves the grain to a monopoly railroad and markets into a monopoly grain trade. Then we have these half-baked economists who talk about the free market. Harry Truman used to say, ``Give me a one-armed economist. I'm sick and tired hearing `on this hand' and `on the other hand.''' I am not sure how many economists we have around here talking about the free market. Maybe we ought to put a robot out on the street corner and let him chant, ``There is no free market here.'' In every direction, the farmer is getting fleeced. This Congress, for a change, needs to say we are going to be on the side of the ultimate producers in this country, who are the economic all-stars in this country. If we don't, we won't have any family farmers left. I had a young boy named Wyatt write to me. He is a sophomore at a school in Stanley, ND. The other day in a letter to me, he said, ``I am a 15-year-old farm boy. My dad can feed 180 people, but he can't feed his own family.'' That says something about family farming. It says how productive they are, how important they are, how incredible they are as producers, and what they have to face in a market controlled by economic giants that pillage and prey on these family farmers every day and in every way. And, they do it in such a way that family farmers can't make a living. This Government and this Congress, has to decide whether we are going to stand up for these people or not. We are going to force another vote on the floor of the Senate. We have had two votes to get a decent support price, and we lost by a handful each time. But for those who don't want to vote on this, I say: Brace yourself, because you are going to have to vote again. We are not going to quit. Family farmers would not expect us to quit. They don't quit and we are not going to quit them. We are going to vote on this again until we get a result that says this Congress stands with family farmers and that this Congress cares about the future of farm families. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Iowa, if he has a question.

Mr. DORGAN. No, no. This is about corporate profits, not about advantages to consumers at the disadvantage of farmers. What is taken out of the hide of family farmers in collapsed prices doesn't go into the pockets of consumers through cheaper bread prices. Take a look at the price of a loaf of bread when the price of wheat peaked about 2\1/ 2\ years ago. Then go to your grocery store and look at the price of a loaf of bread today. Ask yourself, gee, if farmers suffered a nearly 60-percent drop in the price for wheat, what happened to the price of a loaf of bread? The answer is that somebody in between is taking more profit. But the consumer hasn't gotten the benefit. This country always had a cheap food policy. Will it have a policy that protects the basic income requirements of family farmers?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Iowa. He and I and others from the farm belt feel very strongly about this issue because it is not just some cerebral discussion about economic theory. It is about thousands and thousands of people who have had dreams and hopes of continuing to operate their family farm and raising their family out in the country and tilling the soil and producing food. It is about whether they are going to be able to continue to do that. This isn't a bluff nor is this crying wolf. What has happened in my State is the complete collapse of grain prices coupled with the worst crop disease in a century. It has just put thousands of family farmers in a position where they are not going to be able to continue to farm. I would like to read just a couple of letters. This one is from a young man named Eric. He graduated from high school 10 years ago. He is a farmer. His family and his wife's family were farmers. Eric wrote to me and he said, ``When I started out, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. The only support either family, mine or my wife's, was able to afford was advice and hard work.'' They could not afford more support than that. He goes on to say, ``In our area we have been hit with heavy rains the past 5 years which has greatly reduced the yield of our crops, and caused crop disease. One of those years we had to burn the crop off of the fields so it would be able to dry enough to farm the following year.'' That, he said, was like ``burning dreams.'' He is raising cattle, crops, hogs. He writes, ``As of this fall we decided that we would have to reduce the number of acres we farm. I am watching my hopes and dreams fade away as I reduce these acres. Yet, I work 16 plus hours a day to try to keep the farm going again for another year.'' He adds, ``My wife works about 55 hours a week just to try to pay household bills. She works off the farm and then comes home and does the farm work as well. At one time I had hopes of being able to pass this farm down to the next generation. Now the only hope I have is that we can just continue.'' This is a letter I received the other day from Barbara. Barbara says, ``I have been married for 19 years. I have two sons. It was our dream, my dream and my husband's that one day this farm of ours would belong to our boys.'' Then she describes the way they have tried to make ends meet and can't. ``My husband not only farms, he works out in the winter and finds as many part-time jobs in the summer as he can to help supplement our income. We raise hogs to help supplement the farming also. I work in the county school system during the school year. I am a cook in the elementary school. I also drive a bus some evenings after working in the cafeteria. I also work as part-time help in our local hospital and dental office. I'm an emergency medical technician and, my husband is a firefighter with the local fire district.'' She writes, ``Our oldest son is 17 and works part-time during the school year and this past summer went on part of a run with a custom harvesting crew to make some money. Our youngest son has a job mowing cemeteries for our local church and helps on the farm. He is 15.'' ``As you can see we have full schedules which don't allow us much in the form of extra cash or time for vacation or leisure. The part I can't understand,'' Barbara writes, ``is why after working 17 or 18 hours a day we can't make enough to live on. My husband went to the elevator yesterday to haul in some wheat to pay our expenses for the coming month. He was told he would get $1.82 a bushel for the wheat.'' By the way, she doesn't write this, but USDA says it costs them at least $4.75 a bushel to raise that. Her husband goes to the elevator and is told that he will be paid $1.82 a bushel. ``You tell me,'' she writes, ``how we are supposed to pay our bills with these prices? She said, ``A couple of weeks ago, our youngest son came to me and he asked if he could talk to me. I said yes. And he asked if we would be mad at him if he chose not to farm after he finished school. He didn't want his dad or grandfather to be upset with him. He has seen how much work it is and how little the family is getting out of it, but still feels the love of the land and pride in continuing another generation of farmers.'' This young boy asks if they would be angry if he doesn't try it. She says, ``I have come to fear that my generation is the last, if we survive. It's hard to tell your children that you really wish they would not come back to farming because there's no future there for them.'' Mr. President, these are two letters from Eric and Barbara, a farmer and farm wife, both struggling out there, trying to make a living with collapsed prices and crop disease and a farm crisis that gives these folks depression-era prices for their crops. What makes me so angry about all this is in thinking about it in driving home last night after the conference committee. What makes me so angry is there is this kind of blithe attitude about it here. It is an attitude that dismisses this crisis and says: Well, this is just another day; this is just another problem; this is just another group of Americans who want something. These people don't want anything special. But they don't want to be turned loose in a circumstance where they are told you compete in a free market and the market isn't free. Everything that they do in this economic system means that someone is preying upon them, and that someone is taking money out of their pockets unfairly. Then the Congress somehow says we don't have the time to help; we don't have the resources to help; you are too small to matter; all we care about are those who are too big to fail. And as I said when I started, I drove home last night thinking about the story I read about a $100 billion liability outfit that gets in trouble and the Federal Reserve Board apparently convenes a meeting of bankers. They get a bunch of aspirin together and fluff up the pillows and say, ``Gee, can't we make you comfortable. We sure wouldn't want you to fail. You are too big to fail.'' They got 20-some banks in that circumstance. I guess we got other hedge funds out there and a whole series of speculators as well. But what about these folks? What about the folks who Congress says are too small to matter. These are the folks who day after day are holding auction sales, standing around watching their farm implements and watching their personal possessions being auctioned off because they can't make a living. It is not because they are not good at what they do. They are the best in the world. There is nobody in the world who measures up. Nobody. Not even close. Yet this economic system is stacked against them, stacked against them in a way that is almost criminal. You know what we ought to do? These folks face a railroad that hauls their grain and charges them double the price they ought to be charged, and they market that grain up through a grain trade in which there are just a few companies. That is not free enterprise. And then they send their cattle up where you have four companies controlling over 80 percent of the slaughter. You know what we ought to do? We ought to put an independent counsel on all those issues. How about an independent counsel investigating the marketing of cattle, and looking into the four companies that control the slaughter of over 80 percent of the cattle in this country. How about an independent counsel tracking down railroad prices on behalf of family farmers to see if they are fair? How about an independent counsel looking at the grain trade to see whether this is truly a fair market? I could go on at great length about that. What about an investigation on behalf of these folks that says to them we are intending that you have a fair deal, and that you have a fair opportunity to make a living. And, if you don't, we are going to help. That is part of what yesterday was about. It is part of what last night's conference committee was about when, unfortunately, on a party-line vote the folks in that committee said, no, we can't afford it; we don't have any money. The President says, I need $8 billion in emergency aid to deal with the farm crisis. The same people who said we have $80 billion to provide a new tax cut said we don't have $8 billion above the current budget level to meet the President's request to deal with the farm crisis. I am telling you, that is a misplaced sense of priorities. We have had two votes in the Senate on this issue of providing a decent support price. When I say ``decent,'' this is very modest. It is much more modest than I think is necessary. But even at that, we lost each of those votes by a handful. I say to those who were in the conference committee last night, who voted against standing up for family farmers, you are going to vote again. One way or the other, you are going to vote again in the U.S. Senate, and the vote is going to be on this question: Are you willing to stand up and support family farming in times of crisis? When prices collapse and you have this price valley, and those family farms simply fall through the cracks, are you willing to stand and say, ``Let us build a bridge across that valley,'' or do you say that family farmers don't matter? Are you willing to say that it doesn't matter that corporate agrifactories will farm America from California to Maine? Will big corporate agrifactories get up in the morning, put on their Big Ben coveralls and milk 3,500 cows at one lick, because that is corporate agrifactories? Or will they plow their tractors as far as they can go on a tank of gas and then turn around and plow back? Do you think it will benefit this country to turn out all the farm yard lights in the country and say to these families, ``You don't matter; we will replace you with a big agrifactory''? This country will have lost something very important and it will have done so because this Congress said that they don't matter. If they do that, this Congress will have to answer to a lot of the American people about their sense of priorities. This has become a legislative landfill in recent months. I can go down on two hands the list of important things we should have done that have been taken out in the country and covered over with dirt, because we have too many people in here saying, ``No, you can't do the important issues; we have to track around chasing the tail of unimportant issues.'' This is one issue that a number of us from farm country are not going to let be sent out to some legislative landfill and be covered up. One way or another, we are going to push and fight and scrap on behalf of those families who still have their hopes and dreams to make a living as family farmers. We are going to push and fight to the end to get a decent, kinder program out of this country that will say to family farmers in this country, ``You matter; you matter to this country and its future.'' Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. DORGAN. There are some who don't want to take the time to deal with important issues. This is, I think, one of the most important issues. We just dealt with the Vacancies Act on judicial nominations. How does the Senator view the farm crisis versus the judicial Vacancies Act we spent some time debating?

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield for one additional point.

Mr. DORGAN. We have been talking about financial modernization. It seems to me the farm crisis is more important than that. That is ahead of us. The Internet tax freedom bill, it seems to me the farm crisis is more important than that. We apparently are going to take that up. I mentioned when I began this discussion the juxtaposition of a hedge fund nearly going broke on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Board getting so concerned that they convened the bankers and said, ``Gee, can't we help those people; prop up their pillow, help them get back to bed, give them a nap and get them some strength again?'' And it is interesting to me that, in fact, the Fed even signaled when that was going on, they were going to reduce interest rates. So today, lo and behold, they lowered interest rates. It is the ``too big to fail'' thing. It reminded me of what Will Rogers once said. He said, ``You know, if one day all the lawyers on Wall Street failed to show up for work, wouldn't anybody miss lunch. But if all the cows in America failed to show up to the barn to get milked, then we would have a problem.'' What Will Rogers was trying to say in a humorous way is ``What really matters in this country is what we produce.'' And there is no more all- star producer in America than the family farmer. Yet this country has an economic system that says to them, ``There's no connection between effort and reward. You make the effort. You go broke.'' And that is what is wrong with this system. This farm bill of ours does not work. Everybody ought to now be willing to confess that and decide that this farm bill does not work and we want to save family farmers. Let us join together in a bipartisan way to make something happen that really will work to save family farmers.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know that we are in a 30-hour postcloture debate on the motion to bring to the floor the Internet tax bill. I believe I am correct in that.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Let me say that piece of legislation and a lot of other legislation that has been considered by the Congress, by this 105th Congress, in my judgement pales in importance to the responsibility we have to deal with the current farm crisis that exists in this country. Last evening, I drove home from the Capitol, and I thought about the day. When I left, I left the conference committee between the House and the Senate on agriculture appropriations. It was a conference committee in a small room. There were a lot of people. It was cramped and hot. The result of that conference committee was a party-line vote to reject a proposal by President Clinton to provide nearly $8 billion of emergency aid to deal with the farm crisis. Instead, the conference committee accepted the majority party's proposal of roughly $3.9 billion which almost everyone understands comes far short of what is necessary. I also thought about the news yesterday that was described in a story in the Washington Post this morning. I was thinking about it on the way home because I was thinking about the juxtaposition. It was a story about a hedge fund. This particular hedge fund apparently had liabilities upwards of $100 billion and ran into serious problems. And then the rescuers were brought together under the Federal Reserve Board's so-called official sponsorship. The banks were brought together, and they put together a rescue package for this group that is involved in hedging. By the way, the Fed spokesman said they are helping sponsor this rescue package not with Federal funds but from all of the lenders. The Fed felt it had to get these lenders together for a rescue package because it had a ``concern about the good working of the marketplace and the large risk exposure and potential for a disruption of payments.'' One wonders about such an organization that is involved in hedging. By definition this is a rather speculative occupation. In fact, one of the principals had been one of the top officials at the Federal Reserve Board. He went over to this hedging operation. It grows and expands, and then has liabilities up to $100 billion. I have no idea what the assets were. Then it gets in trouble. But then instead of having the marketplace assess its future, the Federal Reserve Board apparently brings together the lenders and says, ``Well, gosh, you're too big to fail.'' If you apparently work in these environs, have these contacts, and are involved in this kind of risk, you are too big to fail. But what if you are one of those family farms out there that has seen what has happened to their wheat price. The price of wheat has been going down, down, down, down. These family farmers are told, ``You're too small to matter.'' What is the difference between those who are too big to fail and those who are too small to matter? I guess it is economic clout in the form of sheer raw economic power. I would hope that we would have the opportunity to decide in this Congress that family farmers ought not be failing in this country either. The fact is this country will lose something very important to its future if we decide that family farmers do not matter. Right now they are suffering through a crisis that is very significant and one that we must address. The question is whether we will address it in a kind of a puny, cheap way that does not solve it? Will Congress do just enough to pull us through the election for a month or two? Or is Congress going to address it and say, ``Farmers, we're on your side. You matter to this country. We're going to do something significant to help you get in the field next spring, help you harvest next fall, and give you some hope that maybe you can make a decent living"? Mr. President, I notice that a couple of my colleagues perhaps want to propound a unanimous consent request. And I will be happy to yield the floor briefly provided that I retain my right to the floor and provided it is not going to take 15 or 20 minutes. If they intend to propound a unanimous consent request that is very brief, I am happy to interrupt my presentation and allow them to do that so they don't have to wait.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent I regain the floor following the unanimous consent request.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, the subject about which my colleague from Texas just spoke and the subject addressed by a couple of my colleagues earlier today, the question of a proposed tax cut, is one that I think will engender a great deal of debate in the coming weeks, not with respect to the question of whether the American people could use a tax cut or deserve a tax cut, not about whose money it is. The issue, instead, is going to be, that there is an election 5 weeks from tomorrow. On Saturday of this past weekend, the House of Representatives passed an $80 billion tax cut. And the discussion by many, including those on the other side of the aisle, and by those on the other side of the Capitol, is about what to do with the so-called ``surplus.'' I want to make the point again, as I have made before, that there is not at this point a budget surplus, evidenced by the fact that even though there are those who say there is a budget surplus, the Federal debt will increase this year to next year, and next year to the year after. Now, why would the Federal debt be increasing if there is a surplus? The answer is, the Federal debt is increasing because there is not a surplus. What is called a surplus, in fact, is the Social Security dedicated funds that are to go into a ``trust'' fund to be used on behalf of future generations. This chart shows that what is called a surplus can only be called a surplus if you take these Social Security funds and put them over here. Take the Social Security moneys away, and you don't have a surplus in the 5-year budget window. Instead, you are short $130 billion. The point is that, without using the Social Security revenues in the trust fund, there is no surplus. Now, there have been two arguments made in the last days about this subject. One is we are not using Social Security trust funds; the second is that we are only using 10 percent of the surplus. Those arguments don't mean very much to me. These numbers do not lie. The Federal debt will increase. To those who argue for this tax cut by saying that there is a surplus, I would simply point to the following fact: the Federal debt will continue to increase because there is no surplus. We have made enormous progress in tackling this Federal budget deficit. Most people would not have predicted we would have been this successful. And we have very nearly balanced the Federal budget, but not quite. We will have truly and honestly balanced the Federal budget when you can call it ``in balance'' without using the Social Security trust funds, and that is not now the case. If we here in the Senate debate using Social Security trust funds for this tax cut, we should be honest and call it theft. It will be a theft; yes, theft. It will be a theft to use the trust funds to give a tax cut. If that debate exists, I will offer an amendment to take the word ``trust'' out of the trust fund. Why call it a trust fund if people reach in and grab the money and use it for something else? I happen to believe that most of the recommendations on tax changes are recommendations that I support: Eliminating or substantially reducing the marriage tax penalty makes good sense; full deductibility for health insurance for sole proprietorship, and I've supported that for years. I can go down the list. All of them, or almost all of them, make good sense. But none of them make good sense if they are paid for with Social Security trust funds, the funds that were taken from American workers' paychecks and pledged to go into a trust fund to be used for only one dedicated purpose. What the supporters of this tax cut are saying is, let us use those funds now, 5 weeks from election day, so we can tell the American people we gave them an $80 billion tax cut in the coming 5 years. I believe that those who support it should have to say, we took $80 billion out of the Social Security trust funds. We took that money despite the fact we told you we were going to save it for your future. We took it and we used it for something else. That is not honest budgeting. Try to do that in a business, try to claim in a business that you have now reached a break-even stage, or you are even seeing profits in your business because you have been able to take your employees' retirement funds and show them as part of your business profit, you would get sent off to 5 years of hard tennis at some minimum security prison someplace. That is against the law. You can't do that. That is stealing from the funds. You can't do that. And you ought not be able to do it in Congress. One thing the American people ought to be able to rely on is that when taxpayers put money into trust funds that comes straight from their paychecks, and which we promise is going to stay in this trust fund to be used for their future, we ought not allow this money to be used, 5 weeks from an election day, so that the majority party can brag to the American people that they handed out a tax cut. If they do that, and if they brag about it, I want them to brag with full disclosure. Let's see if they will brag about taking money out of the Social Security trust funds. That would be theft in any other avenue of public or private life, and it ought to be theft here as we describe it. This will consume a fair amount of debate in the coming couple weeks of the closing days of this Congress. I would like to see a tax cut. I support most of the provisions of the tax cut that was debated this weekend, but I will not ever support a proposition that says take the trust funds from the Social Security accounts and use those to give a tax cut 5 weeks before the election. That is not good government, not good politics, not good for this country's future. I hope in the next 10 or so days of legislative activity those of us who feel that way will band together and say to this majority that appears determined to want to do this that we will not let them. When this country has truly balanced its budget, when we have finished the job--and we have come a long way and made a great deal of progress on fiscal policy--then, and only then, is it time to talk about the kind of tax cuts that are being discussed. I yield the floor. Mrs. FEINSTEIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to make some comments on three items that are left on the Senate's agenda that I am very concerned about. The Senate is going to continue, for apparently 2 additional weeks, and try to adjourn for the year and finish the 105th Congress on October 9th or October 10th. In the 2 short weeks that remain, I am told that we will consider H.R. 10, the financial modernization bill, fast-track trade authority for new trade treaties, and a substantial tax cut. I want to describe how easy it is, with a small amount of time left, to make big mistakes. I am mindful there will be much disagreement about these three items. And I am also mindful back in my hometown one of the older fellas who was the wise sage said, ``It's hard to tell the difference between the open minded and the empty headed. They dress alike.'' Let me describe these three issues and tell you what I think is empty headed about the attempt to try to pass these three pieces of legislation in the final 2 weeks of a legislative session. Financial Modernization First, H.R. 10, the Financial Services Act of 1998. H.R. 10 is a huge piece of legislation that deals with the financial institutions of this country and the methods by which they are involved in various kinds of activities. We have had some experience in this country with the mixing of different kinds of enterprises--banks whose deposits are insured to $100,000, by the American taxpayer I might say; banks, those who are speculating in real estate, those who are involved in securities activities, those who are selling insurance; those kinds of financial activities. We have had some experience in this country putting a number of those together in one institution and then seeing, through speculation, one part of the institution weakening and eroding the other part of the institution that caused massive bank failures in our country. The result was in the 1930s and this country said let's not forget what happened here. Let's not allow this to happen again, and let's create certain circumstances that would prevent us from merging banking enterprises whose very existence depends on the perception of safety and soundness--not unsafety and soundness, but on whether people perceive the institution to be safe and sound. Their very existence depends on that. Let's not threaten again the banking institutions by fusing together financial conglomerates that merge banks with the more speculative enterprises of securities and insurance, or even commerce. The American public has in this century paid a heavy price for the mistakes in those areas and put together walls in the form of legislation to prevent it from happening again. H.R. 10 is an attempt to bring the walls down. It says, ``Let's create a kind of financial fruit salad here. Let's decide we can merge all of these again. We can put all of these together and we can build firewalls, and you'll never feel the heat in between and it will never threaten bank institutions and the American taxpayer will not be put at risk.'' I guarantee you this, that if this Congress passes in the final hours, H.R.10, financial modernization legislation, it will result almost immediately in exacerbating the orgy of mergers that now exists in this country with big banks, and an orgy of mergers that will not only include banks, but will continue to include, at a greater pace, banks with the other kinds of financial enterprises I just described. And 20 years or 30 years from now they will look back at this Congress and this period and say, ``How on Earth could they have thought that that made sense? How could they have possibly thought that was in the public interest? How could they have forgotten the lessons that they learned in the 1920s and 1930s that resulted in the legislation that had protected us?'' I know that there are some big interests around this town who want this bill to pass. There is a great deal of lobbying on its behalf. But I feel so strongly that to do this in the final 2 weeks of a legislative session would have such enormous consequences and pose such substantial risks for our country that I am going to resist with all of my effort the motion to proceed and in every other way to see if we cannot slow this train down on behalf of the American citizens. I know it sounds attractive. I know some say, ``This is creating a new financial blueprint for our institutions for the future, allowing them to compete at home and abroad. It's now a global economy.'' What it is is forgetting the lessons of the past. It will be a replay, in some ways, of the Garn-St Germain bill of the early 1980s in which they unhitched the S&Ls and said, It is OK. You go broker deposits. You load up with risky junk bonds. You can become Roman candles. Take a small S&L and turn it into a giant S&L with broker deposits, and you can do a whole range of other things, and it is fine--and the American taxpayer got stuck with a nearly $500 billion bailout for that fiasco. If this bill passes, there will be massive, massive mergers once again. And they have already been going on at an unprecedented and unhealthy pace in the banking industry and other related financial industries. So that is one big mistake I hope this Congress will avoid in the remaining days of this session. And to the extent I have the energy to be able to help them avoid it, I intend to try to do that. Fast Track Second is fast track. I know that also has a lot of support, fast- track trade authority. Just the very words ``fast track'' connote lack of preparation. Fast track, fast food--you just go down the line on what ``fast'' precedes, and it describes well ``fast track.'' Fast track means you create a trade agreement negotiated in secret, behind locked doors someplace, probably in most cases overseas, and bring it to Congress and say to Congress, ``You weren't there when we negotiated this trade agreement, but you have no right to offer amendments to it.'' The last three trade agreements under fast track have been incompetent. I voted against all three. In each case we have, as a result of it, had higher and higher trade deficits--Canada, Mexico, GATT--record trade deficits. This country is choking on trade deficits. I think to bring fast track to the floor of the House and the Senate in the final 2 weeks is regrettable. I will, again, to the extent I have any capability of slowing this down, there will be nothing fast about it. If I can create a legislative bog through which they cannot pull this fast track, I guarantee you I will object to every circumstance that allows anybody to short-circuit any amount of time to try to get fast track through this Congress. It is not in this country's interest to continue that kind of trade policy. A Tax Cut And the Social Security Trust Funds The third item is an $80 billion tax cut paid for with Social Security trust funds. Some say, ``Well, that's not the way it's paid for.'' Show me the money. Where do you get the money? You get the money for a big tax cut by taking Social Security trust funds that are in a fund that is preceded by the word ``trust.'' Taking those trust funds and saying these now represent the resources by which we can offer a tax cut is not the way to do this country's business. When we have that debate--and I expect we will next week or the week after--it will be an aggressive debate because some of us are fiercely determined never to let that happen. I recall when we had the constitutional amendment to balance the budget on the floor of the Senate, I voted against it. In fact, it lost by one vote. Had some folks pretty upset with that vote. I said, ``It's not that I don't want to balance the budget, I do.'' I helped play a role in balancing or nearly balancing this country's budget, not by writing something in the Constitution, but by doing the kinds of things you need to do on a day- to-day basis, to do things on taxing and spending that really does balance the budget. But to write into the Constitution a proviso that says, ``Let's balance the budget by describing all revenue coming in as operating revenue'' is to mistreat the Social Security trust funds once again. And to actually write it in the Constitution of the United States, that does not make any sense to me. It does not make any sense to me in the final 2 weeks of a legislative session coming up to an election for anybody to say we are going to package up $80 billion in tax cuts so we can say to the American people we are offering tax cuts, when in fact the money by which they offer these tax cuts is to take the money out of the Social Security trust funds and make them available for tax cuts. Those moneys are not available. Those moneys were collected from paychecks in this country. The paychecks are a result of the work of the American people, and they are told ``We're going to take some money from that paycheck to put into a trust fund because it is needed when you retire to make Social Security viable.'' Then somebody comes along and says we are changing the words ``trust fund''; we will just drop ``trust.'' Maybe we should amend that to the extent they want to bring $80 billion in tax cuts to the floor, paid for by Social Security trust funds. Perhaps we ought to require them to take the ``trust'' out of the trust fund name. That will, in my judgment, certainly abridge the trust that is supposed to exist with those trust funds. Those are three big mistakes in a very short time. The potential, in a small amount of time, to make big mistakes is very substantial: H.R. 10, fast track, and tax cuts. I have a lot of things I want to get done, others have a lot of things they want to do, and in most cases we work closely together and have good relationships, but on large public policy issues like this it seems to me we ought to be very careful. I feel very strongly about all three of these areas. All three, in my judgment, would be a mistake. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me add my words of admiration for the work done by Senator Ford. He has been an important part of the Senate for many years and has done some very important things for his country and the Senate will miss very much the service that he has offered. He is in the leadership, has been for many years on the Democratic side of the aisle. But he is fiercely independent. He is smart. He is tough, and he has all the qualities that you look for in a good legislator. He will, in my judgment, for many, many years be remembered as one of the really outstanding legislators in this body, and I feel very fortunate to have been able to serve with him. I just wanted to add those words to the words offered by the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. No.

Mr. DORGAN. No; the cow is dead. Because you might be interested in going there, I will tell you that it is a big metal cow that sits on a hill. My point is that we have a fare structure that says you can go twice as far and pay half as much. Or, if you choose, if you want to go half as far, you get to pay twice as much. People talk about bureaucrats, and the discussion here a while ago was about bureaucrats and the HMO issue. I can't think of many Americans who could sit down and develop a rate structure that says, ``You know, we are going to tell people that if they will just go farther, we will cut their ticket in half, but if they don't go as far, we will double their price,'' and think that marketing strategy has any relevance at all. That has everything to do with competition. Where there isn't competition, they will price at whatever they want to price. Where there is competition, of course, prices must come down because that is the regulator in the competitive system.