Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was thinking as the Senator from Arizona talked about fares, the ultimate objective of more competition is more kinds of service and lower fares. I pointed out on the Commerce Committee--and I thought maybe I should for my colleagues on the floor--the disparity in fares. I pointed out in the Commerce Committee that we may fly from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles to go to Disneyland and see Mickey Mouse, which is all the way across the country. Or, instead, we could choose to fly to Bismarck, ND, which is half the trip, and see the world's largest cow sitting on a hill outside New Salem. If you wanted to see Salem Sue, the largest cow in the world, you would pay twice as much to go half as far than if you were to go see Mickey Mouse.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as I indicated when I spoke previously on this bill, I think Senator McCain and Senator Ford have done a remarkably good job on this piece of legislation, and I appreciate their work so much. And I think many involved in airline issues in this country, such as safety and so many other related issues, feel the same way. This is an important piece of legislation, and we very much appreciate their good work. I think both of them will be on the floor shortly, but I did want to offer the amendment and begin a discussion of it. Let me first describe why I felt a requirement to offer an amendment of this type. I offered an amendment similar to this in the Commerce Committee and lost by a vote of 11-9. It is interesting to me. I always remember the exact vote when I lose--11-9--and somehow that sticks with me, because I understand why I lost: there are people who view these issues differently. My concern here is about competition in the airline industry. I know about competition. I come from a town of 300 people. I grew up in that town. I was in a high school class of nine. We had one blacksmith. We had one doctor. We had one barber. We had one of almost everything. Actually, we had a couple of bars. I guess that is probably typical of a lot of small towns. But we had one of most things. I understand that. The fact is, most of the people who had their exclusive services that they offered in my hometown always priced their service in a very reasonable way. Go to the barber and the haircut was just very little cost. Same was true with the blacksmith. But then, as I left my small hometown in southwestern North Dakota and started studying economics and lived in some big cities and went off to graduate school and so on, I began to understand that is not always true in our economy. When you have one entity providing a service or a commodity, it is not always true that they will always price that service in the public interest. Sometimes they will price it in their interest. I began to understand what monopolies were. I studied economics. Actually, I taught economics for a couple years in college. And I have told people I was able to overcome that experience, nonetheless. But I understood about economic concentration, market dominance. Then I watched what has happened in the airline industry in the last 20 to 30 years. I understood some of the things that I had studied and learned and understood something in the field of economics relates to what we are experiencing in this country in the airline industry. In 1938, when the Federal Government began to regulate air transportation, there were 16 carriers--16 carriers--who accounted for virtually all of the air traffic in our country. It was a pretty primitive system back then. If you looked at those airplanes now down at the Smithsonian Institution you would say, ``Gee, I'm not sure I would want to ride very far in those airplanes,'' but people did. Sixteen air carriers accounted for the total traffic in our U.S. domestic market. By 1978, 40 years later, the year that Congress passed something called deregulation of the airlines, those same 16 carriers had reduced to 11. They were merged. A couple went out of business. So you had 11 carriers. Those 11 carriers accounted for 94 percent of all the airline business in the country. Today, those 11 carriers have been reduced to seven airline carriers because of mergers, a couple bankruptcies--a lot of mergers. Those seven now account for over 80 percent of all the total traffic. American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta, Northwest, United and USAir--they account for 95 percent of the total air traffic in the domestic U.S., with their cochair partners. Since deregulation, 1978, it was estimated that we have had about 120 new airlines appear. And then about 200 different airlines have disappeared, appeared, disappeared, merged, been purchased. But we do not have more competition after deregulation; we actually have less competition. Between 1979 and 1988, there were 51 airline mergers and acquisitions. Twenty of those were approved by the Department of Transportation after 1985 when it assumed all the jurisdiction over mergers and acquisition requests. In fact, the Department of Transportation approved every airline merger that was sent to it. You do not need a human being to do that. You do not need somebody that breathes and lives and eats breakfast; all you need is a big rubber stamp. If we are going to have a Department of Transportation that will say, ``Gee, no merger is too big. No merger's consequence is too significant for market dominance. We'll just stamp `approve' with a big, big ink pad and a big stamp,'' we don't need to pay anybody any significant amount to do that kind of Government work. Every airline merger submitted to it was approved. The 15 independent airlines operating at the beginning of 1986 had been merged into six megacarriers by the end of 1987. The father of deregulation, Alfred Kahn, testified recently at one of our hearings. He said that he had great disappointment in the industry concentration because he said it perverted the purpose of deregulation. And he pinned most of the blame on mergers and the Department of Transportation's approval of all of these mergers. What has happened is that these megacarriers--I will probably describe in a moment ``megacarriers''--have created competition-free zones in effect, securing dominant market shares at regional hubs. Let me describe a couple of these. Atlanta: Atlanta is a big, old city. If you go down to Atlanta, Atlanta is bustling. It has an economy that is vibrant, a huge city, big airport, a lot of folks coming and going, a lot of traffic. One airline has 82 percent of all traffic in and out of the airport in Atlanta. Why would that be the case? A city that big, that vibrant, an economy that strong, one airline virtually dominates the hub? Why? Because that is the way the airline companies have sliced up the pie. Charlotte: One airline, 92 percent in and out of Charlotte. Cincinnati: One airline, 94 percent. Dallas-Fort Worth, a big city: One airline, 72 percent. Denver: One airline, 74 percent, Detroit: One airline, 82 percent. Well, I do not need to go through all of them, but you get the picture. This is not exactly the picture of a robust American economy in which there thrives aggressive, interesting competition, one company competing with another for the consumers' business, deciding ``I'll offer a better product. I'll offer a lower price.'' That is what competition is about. Most businesses understand competition. The airlines have constructed a series of regional hubs which have dominance for major carriers, and then they retreat from the kind of competition you would have expected. That is my way of describing my criticism of where we find ourselves. I would like to infuse some competition here. I would like to see if we can find ways to say to the major carriers, ``We need more competition.'' The consumer deserves more competition, the consumer deserves more choices, and the consumer deserves lower prices with respect to airlines. We have had plenty of studies about this issue. I come from a sparsely populated State, and deregulation has affected us in a much more detrimental way than in other parts of the country. Here are some studies--just a few--that describe deregulation and its impact on small States and rural economies: Airline Competition, Industry Operating and Marketing Practices Limit Market Entry; Trends and Air Fares at Airports in Small- and Medium-sized Communities; Fares and Competition at Small City Airports; Effects of Air Competition and Barriers to Entry. The list goes on and on, study after study. We don't need to study this. We know what is happening. We know what has happened. Most of us know what should happen. We should do something to help provide competition, certainly in areas that are underserved. For areas that used to have service but don't now have jet service, we ought to find some way to allow that service to exist. I have produced a piece of legislation that I think will do that. I mentioned that we had an airline shutdown as a result of a labor strike recently. That shutdown was very inconvenient to a lot of people, but it was much more inconvenient to my State. Just prior to deregulation, we had five airline companies flying jets in and out of my State. Now we have one. That one happened to shut down as a result of a labor strike. At 12:01 a.m. on August 30, there were no more jet flights in and out of our State. It was devastating to North Dakota, to the passengers, and to the economy. That kind of dominance by a carrier I admire. I think the carrier that serves our State is a wonderful carrier. It has some labor problems and other issues, but the fact is, they fly good planes and they have been serving North Dakota for many, many decades. I hope they will continue to serve many decades. I have told their president that one day there will be another carrier and some competition. Although I hope to get them some competition, I want them to stay there because they are a good airline carrier. But I also want to plug some holes in service that does not now exist, that should exist, and used to exist. For example, a State like North Dakota, for 35 years, had jet service connecting North Dakota to a hub in Denver, CO. After 35 years, that jet service was gone. We no longer have jet service to Denver, CO. The only way a jet service can exist between North Dakota and Denver, CO, is if you have a regional jet service that starts up and can cooperate with and have interline and other agreements with the major carrier that dominates in Denver. We had a company that started and tried to do that, but, of course, the major carrier in Denver said, ``We want nothing to do with you; we don't want to do interline agreements with you.'' So the only passengers they could haul were the passengers going from North Dakota to Denver. In fact, 70 percent of our people were going beyond Denver. They were flying North Dakota to Denver to Phoenix, to Tulsa, to Tucson, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco. That airline pulled out because they couldn't make it. The large carriers will coshare with each other, they will do all kinds of interline agreements with each other, but they don't want regional jet service to start up and flourish in these regions. I don't understand that. It seems to me it would benefit them to have regional jet service startups. However, I proposed something I hope will address this issue in the Commerce Committee that lost 11-9, as I mentioned before. I have modified that substantially now. But even with those modifications, it embodies the principles I am trying to establish: the opportunity for new regional jet service carriers to compete in a regional market by encouraging agreements between new regional jet carriers and large airlines with respect to a number of items--gates, baggage, and other issues. I will not read the amendment, but let me say that the current Presiding Officer, the Senator from the State of Washington, Senator Gorton, is someone who has spent a great deal of time on airline issues. I will be careful not to mischaracterize any of his views. I hope it is accurate to say that he has been someone who has felt very strongly that he does not want to move in the direction of reregulating air service. While we might disagree on some issues, I very much respect his views, and he has been very strong in asserting his views on a range of these issues. I have worked with Senator Gorton and others in the last few days to see if we could find agreement on a set of principles in this amendment that will accomplish the purposes and the goals that I want for my region of the country and other regions without abridging the principles that he has with respect to the consistency, deregulation, and other areas. I think we have done that. The amendment I have sent to the desk, I believe, is an amendment that is approved by Senator Gorton, who is the chairman of the subcommittee on the Commerce Committee that deals with these issues. I want to say to the Senator I very much appreciate his willingness to work with me to address this issue. It is more urgent than it has been in the past, because everyone understands the dilemma that we faced with this shutdown. It could happen again. We have other circumstances out there that could very well result in it happening again. I just want the Congress to send a signal that we are going to provide some workable solutions to allow regional carriers to serve areas not now served, in a way that can give them a viable opportunity to make it. That is the purpose of this amendment. I think I have described the amendment without spending time on a great deal of detail about the amendment itself. I have worked with Senator McCain, his staff, and Senator Ford. I recognize that doing anything in this area causes some heartburn for some people. There are some who are still not pleased because they would prefer the existing order--leave things as they are. Honestly, we can't leave things as they are. We must make some thoughtful changes here. That is what I propose to do with my amendment. Since the chairman of the subcommittee and Senator Ford were not here, let me again say I thank them very much for their cooperation. I am pleased we were able to work out this amendment. I hope very much they will be able to help me prevail in conference with the House on this very important amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask to be recognized to offer an amendment to the underlying bill.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the current amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. I have indicated that I will offer two amendments to this piece of legislation. This would be the first. I intend, however, not to seek a vote on this amendment. I intend to ask unanimous consent that it be withdrawn. I am offering it for this reason. This legislation provides tax credits under certain circumstances. I recognize that it would cause a blue slip on this bill because this tax legislation must originate in the House of Representatives. I do not intend or want to cause that kind of problem for this bill, but I believe very strongly that this amendment is part of the solution to a very large problem we have, and I introduce it today for the purpose of describing to my colleagues an approach that I would intend to offer to some future tax legislation that will be considered by the Senate and the House. Mr. President, the chairman of the subcommittee--excuse me, chairman of the full committee--I have demoted him--the chairman of the full committee, Senator McCain, and the ranking member, Senator Ford, have brought a bill to the floor of the Senate that is very important.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as I was saying, the amendment that I have offered to the FAA bill is an amendment that is very important to the country and especially to my region of the country. Just before I yielded the floor, I was talking about the leadership of Senator McCain and Senator Ford. I think they have both done a wonderful job with this piece of legislation. It is an important piece of legislation for the country's sake, and it now appears that we will get this through the Senate and probably be completed with the legislation today, and that will be in no small measure due to their tenacity and their skill at crafting and moving this piece of legislation. Let me describe what I intend to do with this amendment, and I will not talk about the second amendment which I intend to offer later today and hope that that will be approved by the Senate. In late August, Northwest Airlines had a pilot strike and therefore a shutdown of their airline service. That might not have meant much to some. In some airports, I assume Northwest was one of a number of carriers that was serving certain airports and serving passengers. But in North Dakota, the State which I represent, Northwest Airlines was the only airline providing jet service to my State. That is a very different picture than the last time we had an airline strike, which was over 25 years ago. Nearly a quarter of a century ago when Northwest had another strike and a shutdown prior to deregulation of the airlines, we had five different airline companies flying jets into the State of North Dakota--five different jet carriers in North Dakota. And then we had folks in Congress saying, you know what we really need to do to foster competition? We need to deregulate the airline industry. And so we deregulated the airline industry. I wasn't here at the time. But we deregulated them and we went from five jet carriers in North Dakota to one. So I am thinking to myself, all those folks who are choking on the word ``competition,'' we need to deregulate so we stimulate more competition, where are they now so they can really choke on the word ``competition''? We have much less competition in airlines today, much less competition with a couple of exceptions. If you live in Chicago and you are flying to New York or Los Angeles, God bless you, because you are going to have a lot of carriers to choose from and you are going to find very inexpensive ticket prices, and you can make a choice of carriers and ticket prices that are very attractive to you. You live in a city with millions and millions of people and you want to fly to another city with millions and millions of people. Guess what. This is not an awfully big deal for you; more choices and low fares. But you get beyond those cities and ask how has this airline deregulation affected other Americans, and what you will find is less selection, fewer choices, and higher prices. North Dakota is just one example, but the most striking example--one airline with jet service. And on that night at midnight, when the strike was called and the airline shut down, just like that, an entire State lost all of its jet service. What does that mean to a State? It begins to choke the economy very quickly. People can't move in and out. North Dakota is a sparsely populated State, 640,000 people. Up in the northern tier, we are 10 times the size of Massachusetts in land mass--big State, 640,000 people, and one airline serving with jets. Now, I happen to think Northwest is a good carrier. I believe the same about all the major carriers. Most of them are well-run, good companies; they went through tough times, now are doing better, and I admire them. What I do not admire is what they have done--retreating into regional monopolies in this country, retreating into hub and spoke so that they control the hub. You go to any big area in this country and take a look at what they do. The major carriers have retreated so that they now, one company, will control 60 or 70 or 80 percent of all the gates at that airport. They control that hub. Do you think anybody is going to come in and take them on, anybody is going to come in and compete aggressively and say, ``Boy, this is a free market; we are going to go into your hub and we are going to compete against you?'' This is not happening. They cut the pie, created the slices, retreated into their little slices, and there is no competition. We now have regional monopolies without any regulation. What sense does that make, to have monopolies without regulation? The minute I say ``regulation,'' we have people here having apoplectic seizures on the floor of the Senate. Oh, Lord, we should talk about regulation? I am not standing here today talking about regulation because I want to reregulate the airlines. All I want to do is see if we can provide some sort of industrial-strength vitamin B-12 shot right in the rump of those airlines to see if we cannot get them competing again. How do we do that? We do it by creating the conditions that require competition. This amendment is one. Let us assume there is somebody out there who says, ``You know what I would like to do, I would like to run an airline. I have the money, I have the energy, I have the time, I have the skill. I want to create a regional airline, and I want to fly in an area where nobody else is flying a jet, and I want to haul people to a major hub.'' They create their airline and fly to a major hub and they drop somebody off. And guess what. That somebody in most cases is going beyond that hub. Let me give an example, of Bismarck going to Denver, which is a major hub. For 35 years, we had jet service with Frontier Airlines and then Continental, from Bismarck, ND, to Denver, a major hub. Now we do not. So a new company comes in and says, ``I will connect Bismarck to Denver, a major hub.'' But about 70 percent of the people leaving Bismarck are not going to just Denver, they are going beyond, to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix--you name it. So this airline carrier starts up and hauls the Bismarck passengers to Denver and opens the door of the airplane, and they disembark on a sunny Denver day and discover they cannot go anywhere else, because if they walk over to United or another carrier, they don't have the opportunity to get a joint fare ticket. They charge them an arm and a leg. In fact, they even have trouble getting their baggage moved from one airline to another, because the big airlines do not want competition. They have their hub, they don't want anybody messing with it, and they certainly do not want these upstart regional airlines springing up, hauling people into their hub. So what you have is a circumstance where there is deregulation of the airlines, and the major carriers have merged. There has been all this romance going on; they decided they like each other a lot. Pretty soon they are going to get married. They merge up, two airlines become one, and now we have five or six large airlines in this country because they like each other so much, and they have retreated into these regional monopolies because they don't want to compete with each other. They create their own hub and they create their own spokes and they say to those who want to start up, ``We are sorry but we are not interested.'' Having said all that, and that is a mouthful, and having said I admire the majors--most of them are good carriers and they have good management and they do what they do in their interest--there is their interest and then there is a parallel and sometimes not parallel public interest. In some cases it is not a parallel public interest, as the case where we have areas that used to be served and are now not served but could be served by a new carrier if only the majors would cooperate with those new carriers. In order to encourage new startup regional jet service, I am proposing a 10 percent investment tax credit for regional jet purchases. That is, those startup companies that want to begin regional jet service to fly these new regional jets between certain cities and hubs that are not now served with regional jet service, we would say to them that we will help with a 10 percent investment tax credit on the purchase or lease of those regional jets. We will help because we want to provide incentives for the establishment of regional jet service once again in our country. My legislation would require that they serve those markets for a minimum of 5 years. We have defined exactly what those underserved markets are. It is targeted, it makes good sense, and will stimulate investment in an activity that this country very much needs and an activity that the so-called free market now does not accommodate, because the free market is clogged. There is kind of an airline cholesterol here that clogs up the arteries, and they say, ``This is the way we work, these are our hubs, these are our spokes, and you cannot mess with them.'' My legislation simply says we would like to encourage areas that no longer have jet service but could support it. We would like to encourage companies that decide they want to come in and serve there to be able to purchase the regional jets and be able to initiate that kind of service. My legislation has a second provision which reduces the airline ticket tax for certain qualified flights in rural America. This proposal also has a revenue offset so it would not be a net loser for the Federal budget. Having described all that, the second amendment I am going to offer also addresses this in a different way. My hope is we could work to get that accepted. We have been working hard with a number of Members of the Senate to see if we cannot get that accepted. I just want to make two more points. We are not in a situation in rural areas of this country where we can just sit back and say what is going to happen to us is going to happen to us and there is nothing we can do about it. There are some, I suppose, who sit around and wring their hands and gnash their teeth and fret and sweat and say, ``I really cannot alter things very much, this is the way it is.'' The way it is is not satisfactory to the people of my State. It is not satisfactory to have only one jet carrier serving our entire State. Our State's transportation services and airline service, especially jet airline service, is an essential transportation service. It ought not be held hostage by labor problems or other problems of one jet carrier. We must have competition. If all of those in this Chamber who mean what they say when they talk about competition will weigh in here and say, ``Let's stand for competition, let's stand for the free market, let's try to help new starts, let's breed opportunities for broader based economic ownership and more competition in the airline industry,'' then I think we will have done something important and useful and good for States like mine and for many other rural States in this country. Mr. President, as I indicated when I started, I will offer my second amendment later this afternoon, which I hope will be accepted, because the amendment I have just described and offered has a blue slip attached to it in the sense it would be objected to, because a revenue measure must begin in the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives--and I used to serve in the House and used to serve on the Ways and Means Committee, and we were fierce in our determination to make certain that committee always had original jurisdiction on those issues. I am willing to say I understand that. But I wanted my colleagues to be able to review this amendment in the Record, because if and when there is a piece of legislation dealing with tax issues later this year, it is my intention to see that this becomes part of that discussion. With that, I ask unanimous consent my amendment be withdrawn.

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

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

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are going to conference, I think, this afternoon or tomorrow on the agriculture appropriations bill. I want to make some comments so that those in this Chamber who believe what some are proposing to go to conference with is adequate will understand it is not adequate at all. We have a farm crisis in our country that is as significant a crisis as we have had since perhaps the 1930s. As you know, farm prices have collapsed. The price of wheat has dropped nearly 60 percent. We have farmers facing a serious, serious problem, many of whom will not be able to continue farming next year. That means that yard light someplace out in the country is going out, that family farm is losing their money, their farm, their hope, their dreams. This Congress has the capability to do something about it or it has the capability to ignore it. We have had two votes here in the Senate to increase price supports to give family farmers some hope. Twice we have been turned back. We are going to have a third vote. I am not sure when that is going to happen. As soon as we have the opportunity to offer the emergency plan sent down by the President on Monday of this week, we are going to have another vote. We have only lost by a handful of votes. The future of a lot of farm families will depend on that next vote. Some have offered an alternative plan in recent days. I am told they intend to put that in the agriculture appropriations conference in the next day or so. I would say to them, it is not going to work. It is not enough. It is offering a 4-foot rope to somebody drowning in 10 feet of water. ``Well, thanks for the rope, but it doesn't help.'' This Congress has to decide that it is going to help family farmers when prices collapse. If it does not build a bridge over price valleys, we will not have family farmers left. I have a letter from a young boy named Wyatt that I mentioned the other day on the floor of the Senate. Wyatt is 15-years old, a sophomore at Stanley High School in Stanley, ND. He comes from a family farm. Wyatt said, after a long description of the problems his family is having, ``My dad is a family farmer. And my dad can feed 180 people, but he can't feed his family.'' It just breaks your heart to get letters like Wyatt's, and so many others, who write to us talking about what happens to them when prices collapse. Our farmers in North Dakota lost 98 percent of their net farm income in 1 year. Washed away was 98 percent of their income--gone. Just have any neighborhood, any block, any community, any group of people think to themselves, ``Where would I be if I lost 98 percent of my income?'' I know where I would be. I bet I know where you would be. That is what farmers are facing right now in my State and all up and down the farm belt. People seem to think, ``You know, things will be just fine. Food comes from the store. Butter comes from a carton. Milk comes from a bottle.'' Things will not be just fine if this country loses its family farms and America's farmers to big agrifactories from California to Maine. I will tell you what will happen to food costs. The way you get good, wholesome, safe food--the best in the world, at the best possible price--is to have a network of family farmers farming this country and putting food on our tables, at a price that gives them a decent opportunity to earn a living. We have had this kind of economic circumstance in our country recently where I guess the farm belt is viewed as one giant economic cow. Nobody is willing to feed it, but everybody wants to milk it from every single direction. Well, the cow is about out of milk. The question for this Congress is: Are you going to step up, when you pass a farm bill that says, ``Let's have farmers operate in the free market,'' but then in every direction the farmer turns, there is no free market? Want to market some cows? Guess what? Eighty-five percent of the cattle slaughtered in this country is done by four firms--four. They will tell a family farmer what they are going to pay them. If they do not like it, tough luck. Want to ship your wheat on a train? Well, there is one train that comes through our State to haul that wheat. They will tell the farmer what they are going to charge them. If the farmer does not like it, tough luck. Let me give you a little example about what farmers face on transportation. Ship a carload of wheat from Bismarck, ND, to Minneapolis; the railroad says that is $2,300--that is what it is going to cost you to ship that wheat to Minneapolis. Ship the same wheat from Minneapolis to Chicago--about the same distance--the railroad says that is $1,000. So you ask the railroad, ``Why do you double-charge North Dakota farmers?'' The answer is because there is competition between Minneapolis and Chicago and there is none in North Dakota. So the railroad says, ``We're able to double-charge farmers in North Dakota.'' So send a cow to market; you face a monopoly. Take your grain to the railroad; you face a monopoly and get double-charged. Send a hog to market; the same thing. Send your grain to a flour mill; the same thing. And 50, 60, 70 percent of the milling, the slaughter, the transportation--all controlled by a couple big corporations that then tell family farmers, ``Yeah, you worked hard, you plowed this soil in the spring, you planted the seed, you nurtured it, you put some chemicals on it to keep the bugs away and the weeds out, put some nitrogen in to make it grow, and then you harvested it--and, by the way, when you are done, we're going to pay you half of what it's worth and half of what it cost you to produce. And if you don't like it, tough luck.'' Well, that does not work for this country. That is not the way this country's economy should be allowed to work. It is not a free market. So let's assume a farmer would be able to find a benevolent railroad--that is, of course, an oxymoron. Let's assume the farmer was able to market up through a cattle market that was not controlled by monopolies. Let's assume all of that worked--it does not--but let's assume it all did. The only thing left that farmer would face is a series of other countries, like Europe. The farmer then finds half of his grain, or her grain, goes overseas to a foreign market where they compete with other governments that subsidize the sale of their grain into northern African markets and other places to the tune of 10 times the United States. People here say to farmers, ``Well, go compete in the free market.'' Yes, the farmer should compete against the big grain companies, against the big chemical companies, against the big railroads, against the big packing plants, and against European countries, and against the Canadians. And if all of that were settled--if all of that were settled--those farmers would still be told, ``Just compete in the free market. And here's one more piece of the free market. We've signed you up for some competition with a trade agreement that we've negotiated with Canada.'' And my colleagues have heard me speak about this many times. That trade agreement says to the Canadians, ``You just flood us with your grain and your cattle and your hogs. You just run them over, just bring them right on down. And we can't get our grain up, but you just keep bringing your grain down here, undercut our price.'' That is the kind of trade agreement we negotiated. We send incompetent negotiators to negotiate bad agreements, and then we do not even enforce them. We had farmers gather at the Canadian border the other day. The Canadians are good neighbors of ours, have been for a long while, but the trade agreement with Canada is unfair and taking money right out of the pockets of our farmers. And we have trade officials who do not seem to want to do much about it. So every direction you turn, we have these problems that press in on our family farmers. We face the prospect of up to 20 percent of our family farmers in North Dakota not being able to plant in the next spring or the spring thereafter. You fly over my State and look out at night from a small plane, look out that window and look at those yard lights that shine down on a family trying to make a living out on the land; and then see them turn off, one by one, because public policy says to them, ``You don't matter anymore. This country doesn't need you anymore.'' Ask yourself whether this country is going to be a better or a weaker country when family farmers are gone. They are talking about bringing the endangered species bill to the floor of the Senate soon. I am thinking of enlisting family farmers. I know it will list birds and butterflies, frogs, and flowers. I am the first one to say I like birds, I like butterflies, and sign me up for frogs and flowers, as well. I think they are good for our environment and good to have around. However, another endangered species in this country is Wyatt. He is a young boy that comes from a family that will lose their farm, and there won't be another family like Wyatt's out there. There is only one family like Wyatt's. Does it matter if Wyatt and his folks and tens of thousands of others are told, ``You are too small an operator, you don't matter.'' I think this country will make a huge mistake. The reason I wanted to speak for a moment now is we are fixing--I think tomorrow--to take a pathetic little plan that has been offered that will maybe pole-vault some farmers between now and December, just over the next election, but won't do nearly enough to get those family farmers into the field next spring and give them some hope that they can get a harvest next fall. It is a pathetic little plan. It will be offered, perhaps, in the agriculture appropriations conference tomorrow, and then people will wash their hands and say, ``We sure took care of that.'' No, they won't have taken care of anything. All they will have done is nudged enough resources out of the scarce pot of money to get them from here to December, to be able to say to farmers here is a little, but it is not enough. We understand you won't make it. There are some of us in this Chamber who are not willing to stand for that and are not willing to let that be the last word on the fight for the family farmers' future in the 105th Congress. I don't mean to sound challenging--yes, I do, now that I think about it. Of course I do. It is unforgivable in my judgment when we have people coming to the floor of the Senate and the House and there are hundreds of millions of dollars here and billions of dollars there and they have appetites for everything and everything is important, for us to go home and decide it is not important to save family farmers. I do want to challenge that. In my judgment, that is a goofy set of priorities for this country. Thomas Jefferson said 200 years ago that those who live on that land and produce that food are the best Americans, the first Americans. He wasn't necessarily saying that nobody else is any good, I am sure. Thomas Jefferson believed in everyone's worth and he believed in broad- based economic ownership. Part of what makes this country so strong is the opportunities for people around the country to engage in broad- based ownership of America's economy and resources. No one represents that more than families living on the farm trying to make a decent living. I hope in the next 2 weeks we will have the opportunity to convince the leadership of this Congress that family farmers matter and the submission on Monday by President Clinton of an emergency plan to respond to this farm crisis is the right step for this Congress to take. If Congress does not stand for family farmers, if it fails to take the step the President has requested, if it decides that this doesn't matter somehow, then we will have made a very fatal error. The Senator from Kentucky stood on this floor month after month this year in very tough circumstances when we were debating the tobacco bill. He said he understood the public policy issues of tobacco, but he said I want the Congress to understand the public policy issues of family farmers out there raising tobacco, as well. Their interests need to be heard. I know he did that and I watched the passion with which he did that. He feels very strongly about the interests of those family farmers. I feel as strongly about his farmers as I do about mine and all of the farmers up and down that farm belt. I just want to say to those who think they will shortcut this issue and they will ram some pathetic plan home tomorrow, take a deep breath, because you are in for a heck of a fight in the coming weeks if you think that is how you will solve the problem. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask consent to speak in morning business for 3 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will shortly offer an amendment to the FAA bill on the floor. But I could not help but listen to my colleague from Texas. I should not frame it that way, I ``could not help but listen to him.'' I was here and listened to him, and I couldn't help but have a desire, an urgency to respond to some of it. I shall not do that now, but reserve the time later. I notice he talked about the Kennedy plan. He is probably talking about the plan that is embraced by hundreds of organizations in this country, by the President, by the American Medical Association, and others who believe that health care ought to be practiced in a doctor's office or in a hospital room, not by some insurance accountant 500 miles away, and who understand the stories we have told on the floor of the Senate about a little boy had cerebral palsy whose HMO says this boy only has a 50 percent chance of being able to walk by age 5, and that is insignificant, and therefore we will not give this young boy the kind of therapy he needs. That decision was not made by a doctor. The doctor of that boy recommended therapy. That decision was made by an accountant, and had everything to do with an HMO's bottom line, not health care. That is the issue. The issue is, do patients have a set of rights here? Do patients, when sick, and who present themselves to a doctor and hospital, have a right to know all of their medical options? Or do they have a right to know only the cheapest medical option? Does a patient have a right to be taken to an emergency room when they have just broken their neck? I will give you an example of somebody who broke their neck, went to the emergency room, unconscious, and the HMO said, ``We can't pay for that because you didn't get prior clearance.'' That is health care? That is a decision a doctor would make? I do not think so. That is why doctors across this country, health care professionals across this country, and increasing numbers of people who have been herded into these shoots called ``managed care,'' 160 million of them are now saying, there needs to be some changes here. Health care ought to be practiced in the doctor's office, in a hospital room. I understand there is great passion about this issue. I hope this Congress will address this issue. The Senator from Texas proposes a way to address it. ``We have a bill; they have a bill. We have a vote; they have a vote.'' What about regular order? Why does the Senator from Texas propose that we not have regular order? Bring your bill to the floor--we have amendments, they have amendments--vote on the amendments one by one. How do you propose to deal with emergency care? What about the choice of specialists when you need it? What about the ability to know all of your medical options? What about the issue of bringing managed care to the floor of the Senate, a Patients' Bill of Rights--any version--and then having votes, amendment after amendment after amendment?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator would yield for a question.

Mr. DORGAN. By 5 minutes. That would be 11:50 a.m. I am waiting for Senator Harkin to arrive on the floor. He is the principal sponsor, along with myself, on the legislation. He wants to speak on it. I just finished speaking. I am waiting for Senator Harkin. I suspect he will want to provide some remarks, after which the Senator from New Mexico can proceed.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the 11:45 a.m. time has been extended, I think, by about 8 minutes by unanimous consent.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand debate on the Harkin amendment was to begin at 11 a.m.?

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Nevada talked about this audit that was done of the Fed by the GAO. What the audit showed was a $3.7 billion fund accumulated at the Federal Reserve Board--$3.7 billion. And they pointed out that the Fed has not had a loss for nearly 80 years--will never have a loss. You can't lose money when you create money. So there was no reason to have a rainy day fund or some sort of provisional fund of $3.7 billion. And the GAO recommended that it be returned to the Treasury. It belongs to the American people. Not only has it not been returned, the $3.7 billion has now been increased to $5.2 billion. So you have to say to somebody, if you think there is reason to get some of these resources to do something with it--pay down the Federal debt or to do some of the other issues--there is $5.2 billion down at the Fed that they have for a rainy day fund, and they never have rain down there. They create money. They make their own money. And they have never had an annual loss, and will never have a loss; and yet they have squirreled away $5.2 billion of resources. And we have raised this issue. The GAO--not us--the GAO says that ought to be returned. But it will not be, I assume because this Senate--Congress says, ``Gee, we don't want to touch that house on the Hill that's got those big gates around it, the big fence. And it's an American dinosaur. We can't crawl in there and see what's going on.'' But the GAO did a 2-year study. I would commend my colleagues to take a look at what they found in that study. There is plenty wrong down there. There is not good accounting. There is not good contracting. There is a rainy day fund of billions of dollars. So there is plenty of work to do with the Fed. I ask the Senator from Iowa, isn't it the case that all we were doing today was to say, ``Gee, we think it's time for you to reduce interest rates the next time you meet, given all the evidence that exists''? Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Senator Harkin is on his way. He spoke briefly on this amendment yesterday afternoon, and I would like to make a couple comments on it. This amendment is very simple. It is an amendment that expresses the sense of Congress that the Federal Reserve Board, through the Federal Open Market Committee, should reduce its Federal funds rate. The Federal Reserve Board will meet soon and consider once again what it wishes to do with monetary policy, and especially with short-term interest rates. I would like to show a couple of charts just to describe where we are at this point with the American economy. ``Consumer Price Index.'' As we know, the Federal Reserve Board has been chasing inflation now for, oh, 4 years or so. Every quarter they have another discussion and wring their hands and gnash their teeth and fret and worry and sweat about what is happening to inflation and when the next wave of inflation is going to hit. Of course, inflation has gone down, down, way down. The Federal Reserve Board told us, by the way, at the start of this, that the inflation rate would jump up almost certainly if the unemployment rate went below 6 percent. Of course, the unemployment rate has been below 6 percent for over 4 years and the inflation rate keeps coming down. The Federal Reserve Board was dead wrong on that issue. But the Federal Reserve Board sits in that house of theirs on a hill impenetrable by the American public, closes its doors, makes its decisions in secret about interest rates. Only, and then tells us after the decisions are made what the interest rates in this country will be. The Federal funds rate set by the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee is much higher than it ought to be. Prior to Mr. Greenspan becoming Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, from 1950 to 1987, the average real Federal funds rate was 1.8 percent; for 37 years on average. The real Federal funds rate, the economic rent for money, adjusted for inflation, that was set by the Federal Reserve Board, was 1.8 percent. Today that short-term interest rate, after inflation, is 3.9 percent--the highest level since just before the last recession in 1990. One must ask the question, Why, why are the American people in effect being taxed with higher interest rates? Why is the Federal Reserve Board punishing the American people with interest rates that are higher than they should be? The answer: Because they have served their constituent interests, which are the large money center banks; they want the higher interest rates. But that moves against the interests of the American people, of the people who produce and work and borrow. I have brought to the floor from time to time pictures of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the presidents of the regional Fed banks, and the reason I have done that is because they control monetary policy and nobody knows who they are. So I thought we should probably have pictures of all of them, when they were appointed, where they were educated, what their background is, and how much money they make. And so here, once again, is a picture of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the regional Fed bank presidents. On a rotating basis, these regional Fed bank presidents join the board of governors, they go into a room, shut the door, and in secret determine what our interest rates are going to be in this country. Here is who they are. You could put them all in a barrel, shake it up, roll it downhill, and you would always have somebody with a gray suit on top. They are economists. They all come from the same background. They all pretty much look the same, and they all pretty much think the same. There is not a person among them who represents somebody who manufactures something or fixes something or sells something, but that is the way the Fed is. When I was a kid in a town of 300 people in southwestern North Dakota, we had a circus come to town. That circus--it was a very small circus because you do not get a big top in a town of 300 people--but that circus had an elephant. It was the first elephant I had ever seen, and the first elephant, I think, that had ever come to my hometown. The thing that interested me as a little boy is that that big old elephant would stand out there by the tent and he had a steel cuff around his foot and a chain of about 6 or 8 feet attached to a stake that was pounded into the ground. I thought to myself, how on Earth can that little stake hold that big elephant? How can that work? Then I was told later, when I grew up, about that elephant and that chain and that stake. They say that when they capture wild elephants in Thailand, they get a wild elephant and they put a big metal cuff around the elephant's leg, put a chain on that cuff, and then they tie the other end of that chain to a big banyan tree. And for 6 days, 10 days, 12 days, maybe 2 weeks that elephant will pull and struggle and grunt and groan and try to pull that chain away from that big banyan tree. Of course the banyan tree doesn't budge an inch. After a certain period of time, the elephant understands that the elephant cannot move. Then they take the chain off the banyan tree and just put a stake in the ground and the elephant stands there with a cuff around his leg and a chain and a small stake. The elephant is chained to his habit. His habit is he knows he cannot move. I was thinking about that the other day and I was thinking about the Federal Reserve Board. What a wonderful analogy, chained to his habit. You talk about a board chained to their habits, the Federal Reserve Board has been, for 4 or 5 years--despite all the evidence to the contrary in this country that the global economy is putting downward pressure on wages, that there are no new fires of inflation out there in the country, that the inflation rate is coming down even as the unemployment rate has come down. These gray-suited folks, chained to their old habits, have continued to insist, no, they must keep interest rates higher than they ought to be because they are worried about some future specter of inflation despite the fact that inflation is running in the opposite direction. What does that mean? What does it mean when these folks lock their doors and in secret say, ``We are going to keep interest rates higher than what it ought to be''? What it means is everybody who owns a house, everybody who is paying off a credit card, anybody who has any debt at all of any type is paying higher interest rates than they ought to pay. In a number of cases it means some homeowners might be paying $100 or $200 a month more in interest than they ought to pay. Somebody is just taking it out of their pocket. In effect, they have taxed them--to the detriment of the individual, to the reward of the lender. That is why I asked the question earlier: Whose interest does this Fed serve? Some say its constituent's interest is that of the big money center banks. It looks that way. How else would they justify interest rates that are more than 2 full percentage points above the real rate of inflation, when in fact for nearly 40 years prior to Mr. Greenspan joining the Federal Reserve Board the real interest rates above inflation set by the Board were 1.8 percent? How else would you justify that kind of massive overcharge of the American people through higher interest rates? The Federal funds rate is not charged to everybody. It happens to set the fee, set the charge. The prime rate comes off the Federal funds rate. Other rates come off the prime rate. The fact is, when the Federal Reserve Board decides in secret to set interest rates that are higher than they ought to be, then everybody else ends up paying more than they should pay. And who benefits? The big money center banks. It is interesting, these folks who will be in that room making the decision when the door is closed--the last dinosaur in America that makes decisions in secret, the last dinosaur that exists in our Government--when they go into a room and close that door and make decisions in secret, they will be representing--who? Who hired them? Their boards of directors. Who hires the regional Fed bank president? The regional board of directors. And who is that? The regional bankers. Whose interests are they going to look after in that room when the door is locked? They are not accountable. Their names did not come here for the Senate to say, yes, we would like to sanction you to go into a room and make decisions about monetary policy. They are not accountable to anybody. They were not confirmed by anybody. They are not accountable. Yet they go into a room with a locked door and make a secret decision with others and tell the American people what they are going to pay in interest rates. We have people come here and talk about taxes forever--that is a tax. A higher interest rate than ought to be paid is a tax; it is a big tax on almost all working families in this country. So who are these people going to represent? Are they going to be sent to the Open Market Committee to make decisions that contradict the interests of their boards of directors? I don't think so. Would it be logical to assume that they would come to this decisionmaking point representing the interests of those who gave them their jobs? I think so. The amendment to be offered by Senator Harkin and myself and a couple of others is an amendment that asks the Congress to express itself to the Federal Reserve Board. I know we have people who say, ``Oh Lord, the last thing Congress ought to be involved in is monetary policy.'' Why should we not be involved in making our views known to the Federal Reserve Board? Anybody who comes out here opposing this, I would like to ask them this: If for 40 years the real economic rent for money set by the Fed through Federal funds rate is 1.8 percent, if that is the rate for 40 years, how do you justify having a rate that is nearly 2 points higher, on average during the Greenspan years? How do you justify it? Do you think it is fine? If so, how do you justify taxing your constituents with the higher interest rate because the Fed decides it is going to represent their interests, not ours? I am not here arguing for easy money, easy credit. I am here arguing for fairness. I am here asking the Federal Reserve Board to represent the entire public interest here, not just their interest. Our economy, from most recent evidence, looks to be slowing down some. Our economy faces a number of international threats. We have an Asian economy that is in shreds--Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia. The difficulty in the Asian economy, a very significant difficulty, is beginning to be felt in this economy. It seems to me, when we have a Federal Reserve Board that imposes higher interest rates than are justified, much higher interest rates than we have historically had with respect to real economic rent for money, it seems to me when they do that at a time when we begin to face what appears to be some significant difficulty from external economic forces, the Fed ought to take a look at doing what it should have done long ago, and that is reduce real short-term interest rates to where they ought to be. I know this discussion causes a lot of people just to fog out and glaze over and go to sleep because, frankly, it is in the interests of those who make monetary policy to keep the monetary policy questions outside of the purview of public discussion. A century ago you could go to a barber shop or a bar in this country and get into an aggressive, interesting, lively discussion about interest rates. All over the country they talked about interest rates. Mr. President, 35 years ago there was going to be a one-quarter percent increase in the Federal funds rate. And the fellow who was heading the Federal Reserve Board was thinking about the one-quarter of 1 percent increase. There were front page headlines all across the country. Lyndon Johnson invited this fellow, the head of the Federal Reserve Board, McChesney Martin, invited him down to the ranch at Perdinales, in Texas, and they say almost squeezed the barbecue sauce out of that guy, he was so upset the Federal Reserve was going to increase interest rates by one-quarter of 1 percent. Interest rates used to be part of substantial discussion and lively interest in this country, but we now have a Federal Reserve Board, as I said, that is the last dinosaur. It wants to keep monetary policy outside the purview of normal public debate. It wants to do what it wants to do in a locked room behind a closed door, and decide to keep interest rates about 2 full percentage points above where they ought to be given the real rate of inflation in this country today. The Senator from Iowa will offer an amendment. The sense of the Congress at the end is very simple. It is one short sentence: It is the sense of the Congress that the Federal Open Market Committee should promptly reduce the Federal funds rate. It is very simple. That is preceded by a series of pieces of information that make the case. Let me finish, Mr. President. I know Senator Harkin is on his way. I know Senator Domenici is also scheduled to speak. We have a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. There is one seat vacant. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has seven people, all appointed by the President, confirmed by the Congress. The confirmation process requires there be accountability, so that is what we have, a Presidential appointment with confirmation. That is not the case with regional Federal bank presidents. They serve on the Open Market Committee and make decisions, but they are not confirmed by anybody. We have one vacancy. I have come to the floor to say I would like my Uncle Joe to be considered. My Uncle Joe is retired. My Uncle Joe used to fix generators and alternators in his shop behind his house. He is pretty good with his hands. He knows how to fix things. My theory is, there is nobody on the Fed who has ever fixed anything or ever manufactured anything or ever been in a part of the business where one is actually involved in a consumptive use of credit to make a business work. For a couple of centuries, we had tensions in this country between those who produced and those who financed production, and in some decades those who produced have had an upper hand, and in some decades those who financed production have had an upper hand. With the help of the Federal Reserve Board, in most recent years those who finance production have had the upper hand. That ought not be the case. There is a clear and compelling case, made by Senator Harkin yesterday, and I hope by myself, that the current Federal funds rate established by the Federal Reserve Board responds to a threat that does not exist and, as a result, keeps interest rates substantially higher than they should be on a real basis. As a result of that, the Federal Reserve overtaxes every American family that pays a higher cost for credit than can now be justified. The Congress has every right to send a message to the Federal Reserve Board that: ``When next you meet and close that door and begin deciding in secret the fate of this country's monetary policy and interest rates, we encourage you, given all the evidence, to decide to reduce interest rates.'' Mr. President, I notice Senator Harkin has not yet arrived on the floor. Let me go down the findings briefly while we are awaiting Senator Harkin to come to the floor. While interest rates, we hear on the news, continue to decline, long- term mortgage rates, and so on, the inflation rate, of course, is way, way, way down. The question is the real interest rates, the economic rent for money. And also the question is, What is happening to our economy? Is it slowing down? And if so, would paying higher interest rates, as imposed by the Federal funds rate, be beneficial to this economy? Real interest rates are at historically high levels, the highest in 9 years--real interest rates. The Federal funds rate is 5.5 percent. It has been there since March of 1997, despite an inflation rate of 1.7 percent. Between 1992 and 1994, the Federal funds rate averaged 3.6 percent, while inflation was at 2.8 percent. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Greenspan, said during his testimony before the House Banking and Financial Services Committee on February 24 of this year: Statistically, it is a fact that real interest rates are higher now than they have been on the average of post-World War II periods. Actually, real interest rates are higher now than they have been prior to Mr. Greenspan becoming Chairman of the Fed. Inflation over the last 2 years, preceding the date of enactment of this act, was at its lowest level since the 1960s. Corporate earnings are down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, and, as I mentioned, farm debt is at its highest level since 1985. Broad commodity price indexes are extremely low. There are signs of global depression or at least severe recession and the potential of depression in parts of the economies of Asia, and there are signs that that will negatively impact this country through fewer purchases of U.S. exports and through a greater influx of cheap imports to the United States. We, as a result of this resolution, want to put the Senate on record as saying to the Federal Reserve Board: ``You ought to do what the evidence requires you to do; you ought to do what the American people know you should do; you ought to do what most good economists would advise you do now, even though you have not done it for sometime now; you ought to reduce the Federal funds rate to a level that is fair and fairly reflects the economic rent for money relative to the real rate of inflation.'' The Federal Reserve Board has kept the Federal funds rate artificially high because it has worried about inflation. As I indicated in the chart, the rate of inflation has come down, down, way down, even as unemployment has come down. The Federal Reserve Board, predicting new waves of inflation at every step along the way, has been consistently wrong about this. Some say the Federal Reserve Board should be given credit for the fact it is down. The Federal Reserve Board did nothing but predict this was going to be different. It requires no credit to be wrong. So I ask, and I think Senator Harkin would ask, the Federal Reserve Board to do the right thing when it meets in the Federal Open Market Committee, and make the reduction in interest rates that is justifiable and is important to this country. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of the time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the full 45 minutes allowed for debate on the Harkin amendment begin now.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, going back to the previous discussion on the Internet tax issue that the Senator from Arizona raised, I want to make a comment about both the objection raised by the minority leader, Senator Daschle, as well as the bill itself. The bill started out being a very controversial piece of legislation. There was great disagreement on exactly whether and how to proceed on this issue. But I must say, the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Arizona, and others have worked with a number of us who have had reservations and concerns about the bill. I think we have made a substantial amount of progress. I expect at some point it will get to the floor of the Senate here, and I will hope to be helpful on a compromise that I think does the right thing. I always said if the proposition is, let us not apply punitive taxes to the Internet, I am for that. I am for a prohibition against punitive taxes on the Internet. But the way it was described initially, I have a lot of concerns about that. There have been a lot of changes made on this bill and I think the changes made a lot of progress. I compliment the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Oregon as we continue to discuss this. But I did want to mention one additional point. The Senator from South Dakota, Senator Daschle, was constrained to object. I know the Senator from Arizona understands well the concerns. It is not just about the issue of the Patients' Bill of Rights. We must also find a way to address this agricultural crisis in a satisfactory manner. If we do not, about 20 percent of the family farmers in North Dakota will not be in the field next spring. It is a devastating circumstance in the farm belt. So the Senator from South Dakota was saying we need somehow to protect our rights to address these key issues. I know the Senator from Arizona acknowledged that he understood that. I just wanted to point out, again, it is not anybody's intention to provide roadblocks. What we want to try to do is see if we can find avenues to address significant and real issues. Yes, the Internet bill will get here and I think get done at some point. But we need to protect the rights, as legislation brought is to the floor, to deal with the Patients' Bill of Rights and to deal with the agricultural crisis which is potentially so devastating to the farm belt in this country. I wanted to make that point clear to reinforce the comments made by Senator Daschle earlier. I yield the floor. I know the Senator from Oregon wishes to be recognized. Mr. WYDEN addressed the Chair.