Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment. I have listened to the debate; it is an interesting debate, but I think all of us know what is happening in this country with respect to credit cards. I noticed an article this morning in the Washington Post on the front page: Banks Risk New Wave of Bad Debt: Report Cites Easing of Credit Standards. They are talking about commercial loans in response to competition; even though the risks will rise, they are easing standards, lowering lending standards. What are the standards of lending for credit cards? Go to a college campus and look in the mailboxes and see the solicitations for these kids that have no jobs, no income, no independent means of paying. They get solicitations from companies halfway around the country. The solicitation says we have something to offer you. You don't have money? We have money. We will give you a piece of plastic, and you get a preapproved range of credit. Sign this, send it in, and it is all yours. It is Byzantine to me to see what is happening with the ``blizzarding'' of these credit cards all around the country, even to people without money. Yesterday in our mail, my son got a solicitation from the Diners Club. My son, Brendon, is a great young guy. In fact, do you know what Brendon told me he wanted to do when he gets big? Brendon told me he wants to be like his grandpa. Now, I know that doesn t sound surprising. But do you know why? It s because he wants to be retired, just like his grandpa. You see, Brendon went to Arizona to see his grandpa, and Brendon watched his granddaddy and thought, that's what I want to do--sleep late, get up and golf a little bit, come home, have some lunch, take a nap, then watch television. Brendon says, ``I like what grandpa has. I want to be retired.'' Brendon is only 11. The Diners Club wrote to Brendon. Doreen Edelman, Senior vice president at Diners Club, wrote: Dear Brendon, Whether you travel for business or pleasure, wouldn't you like a Card that rewards your spending with something you could really use--frequent flyer miles on the major airline of your choice? It says get our Diners card. You can go to lounges, you can go to fancy restaurants, you can rent cars, you can pay for your airline ticket. I didn't show Brendon this last night because the fact that Brendon would like to be retired might persuade him that he would like a Diners Club card, too, but he is only 11. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have any money. He isn't going to have a Diners Club card. I don't know whether Doreen Edelman, senior vice president of the Diners Club, listens to this debate. In fact, it looks like she is from Sioux Falls, SD. Holy cow, I didn't think anybody from either of the Dakotas would think this way--that an 11-year-old boy ought to get a Diners Club card. I know why he got this. They don't know him from a head of lettuce. They don't know Brendon Patrick Dorgan. They gathered the name someplace and sent him a little letter that says they would like him to get a Diners Club card. It would serve them right to have all these 11-year-olds send this in, get the Diners Club card and go spend some money. I come from a town of 300 people. If someone in business on the main street of my hometown said, Do you know what I want to do? I want to send some 11-year-old an invitation to have credit with us. That person would have to be drunk or just dumb. What are they thinking? That is what is happening. I know this debate is a little more serious than that. It is about the explosion of credit cards to college kids and so on. I understand that. But this is a wonderful example of how ridiculous it has become, isn't it? It is just indiscriminate. Are you alive? Do you breathe? Do you have a name? Are you on a list? Congratulations, we would like to offer you some preapproved credit. What kind of standard is that? What kind of business behavior is that? I happen to support the underlying bill. I believe the pendulum has swung too far on bankruptcy. I think it ought to swing back some. I am prepared to support the underlying bill. I also believe those in this country who run these businesses and send solicitations to 11-year-old boys and solicit every college student in the country with credit cards with preapproved limits, I think they have some responsibility, as well. That is what the Senator from Connecticut is saying today with his amendment. They have some responsibility, too. I am pleased, on behalf of Brendon, to support the amendment by the Senator from Connecticut. Perhaps we will make some progress in saying to those who extend credit in this country, yes, we believe bankruptcy laws ought to be adjusted some; you are right about that. We also believe you have some responsibility, which you have been ignoring with the solicitations you are making indiscriminately around this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I rise to discuss briefly my thoughts about the automated teller machine (ATM) fee ban amendment offered today by Senator D'Amato to the bankruptcy reform bill. I share the concerns that Senator D'Amato and others have about the rapid, and seemingly unchecked, increases in ATM fees across this country over the past few years. There is compelling evidence that some banks are charging exorbitant ATM charges that impose an unnecessary and unfair financial burden on bank customers. For many consumers, this happens every time they use an ATM that's not owned by their bank. And there appears to be no end in sight to this explosion in ATM fees. I do applaud the work of Senator D'Amato and others for bringing attention to this growing problem. But regrettably, I was forced to vote against Senator D'Amato's amendment, as drafted, because it failed to recognize that many of our rural communities have significantly higher costs for providing many kinds of services. I'm afraid that adopting Senator D'Amato's approach may actually be harmful for people living in these higher-cost areas. In my judgment, this amendment might have forced some of our banks to shut down existing ATMs in more sparsely populated areas in our state or made it too costly for them to install new ones in places where they are needed. Let me be clear on this point. I would have liked to support a proposal to stop those ATM owners who are charging excessive and, in some cases, outrageous fees. And I'm willing to consider other approaches to help put the brakes on ATM price gouging. Unfortunately, the amendment that Senator D'Amato offered today is one that I could not support because it may inadvertently hurt rural America. Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is an interesting debate that likely will get very little attention, given the proclivity of the press to cover other things going on in our country these days. I rise today to support the amendment offered by Senator Boxer. There is a charming quote from Abraham Lincoln that came during his debates with Douglas. At one point, very exasperated because he simply could not get Douglas to understand a point he was making, Lincoln turned to Douglas and said, ``Tell me, how many legs does a cow have?'' Douglas said, ``Four, of course.'' Lincoln said, ``Now, assume that the tail were a leg; how many legs would the cow have?'' Douglas said, ``Five.'' Lincoln said, ``You see, that's where you are wrong. Just calling it a leg doesn't make it a leg at all.'' As I heard members discuss this amendment on the floor of the Senate, saying this amendment affects independent oil companies, I thought it was easy to say, but it was totally removed from the facts. This bill has no impact on independent oil companies. It does not have an impact on independent oil companies. It has nothing to do with the fact that commodity prices are collapsing which is true on the farm and true for energy companies. It has nothing to do with that either. In fact, the lower the price for oil, the less royalty fee would be required to be paid by the oil industry. So that is not what this issue is about. A lot of folks want to confuse the issue. It is not about that. It is not about independent oil companies who are not affected, and not about the price of oil. When the price of oil goes down, royalty fees go down. Let me describe what it is about. It is very simple. The companies who drill for oil on Federal lands pay a 12-percent royalty to the American people for the privilege of doing that on the oil that they bring up out of those lands and sell. They are required, because they are drilling on lands that are owned by the American people, to pay a royalty fee. That is fair. I suppose some think they ought to drill and keep all the money. But it is fair. Over many years, we have decided that if they are going to get something the public has, they will pay a fee. That is the 12-percent royalty fee. A fair portion of that fee that goes to the States is used for education. That is an important part of the revenue base of our States. A large part, no, but an important part. How much do we get from these royalties? When someone wants to produce oil on public lands, how much do we get from the royalties of 12 percent? Well, it is 12 percent of the price of the oil. What is the price of the oil with respect to the independent oil companies that produce it and sell it? That sale price is the price of the oil. They are then required to pay a royalty fee on the price of the oil. So an arm's length transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller establishes the market price for oil. That is not a problem. That is not a matter of contention. But what about a company that is a large integrated company that produces oil and then, as a producer, sells it to itself as a wholesaler or a retailer and it produces the oil and prices it and sells it to itself? What about that company? What then is the price of the oil, and how much in royalty payments do the American people get from that transaction? The answer is, the price of that oil in a large integrated oil company is whatever the company says the price of the oil is. What if they say, gee, well, the price of our oil is $4 a barrel, and you get 12 percent of that? Are we being cheated if, in fact, oil is selling for $12 a barrel and they say, ``Ours is only worth $4 because we are selling it to ourselves, and we have artificially priced it because we want to avoid paying your fees, avoid paying our fair share to the American people?'' Are we being cheated? Of course we are being cheated. The question is, Who cares about that in here? Does anybody care? Does anybody care if the American people get taken to the cleaners by somebody that wants to underprice something they sell to themselves and, as a result, pay the American people something less than they were supposed to pay? Does anybody care about that? A few of us do. We will have a vote on it to see who cares. So what is the royalty fee we get? It is 12 percent times the value of the oil. Who establishes the value of the oil? In most cases--95 percent of the cases, with all of the independents and some others--it is the fair market value, a willing buyer and a willing seller in an open market transaction, which establishes a price upon which a 12- percent royalty payment is made. This amendment isn't even a close call, by any standard. I want to use this example to talk about two other things that relate exactly to this, which give me as much concern as this does. In fact, this is not a very large issue. It is an issue of $66 million a year; $66 million is a lot of money, but in the construct of a trillion dollars, or a trillion and a half--the $1.6 trillion budget that we have, and the $135 billion of revenue here and there--I mean, it is not that big an issue. Yet, they are waging a fight; the major integrated oil companies are waging a fight, and you would think you were taking away their last oil truck. Let me tell you about an exact replica of this debate. We lost it on the floor of the Senate. We have the exact same issue on taxation-- corporations, especially foreign corporations, but domestic as well, that sell to themselves and then tell us at what price they sell the product to themselves, a wholly owned subsidiary, and therefore how much profit they made and how much income tax they will pay to the Federal Government. And 65 percent of the foreign corporations doing business in this country, most of whose names you will recognize, do tens of billions of dollars of business in America and pay zero in income tax--not a penny. Zero. How do they do that? Let me give you one example. A company sells a piano to its affiliated subsidiary and prices it at $50. Would you like to buy a piano for $50? It is exactly the same thing we are talking about with pricing oil you sell yourself--undervalue it and pay a tax, or in this case, a royalty, based on evaluation that is artificially low so you can avoid paying the royalty, or as in the case I described, avoid paying the income tax. How about a tractor tire? I don't know if anybody in here buys and sells tractor tires. Probably not, but $7.60 is the price of a tractor tire in a transaction between a corporation--a foreign corporation--and its wholly owned subsidiary in the U.S. Why $7.60? The company artificially prices it low so that it doesn't pay income taxes in the U.S. We voted on that. We voted on something that corrects that problem. We have people in this Chamber, sufficient numbers, who have said, ``We don't want to correct that. We don't even want to debate whether it is cheating. We don't want to deal with it because big business doesn't want that to be changed.'' We don't intend to change it. It is the same principle here. Big, integrated oil companies sell to themselves, underprice what they are selling to themselves, and, therefore, cheat the American people out of royalty payments that they ought to be making. Then members come to the floor of the Senate and say to us, ``Gee, you are being unfair.'' We are not being unfair. We are required to stand up for the interests of the American people. They own that land. They own that land on which drilling takes place. They are owed the 12-percent royalty based on a fair computation of the price of that oil. I will tell you one more story. I served in State office before I came here. In our State, we assess a tax on railroads. It is exactly the same principle we are talking about here today. We assess a tax on railroads. When I assumed office as Tax Commissioner, which was an elective office, and assumed responsibility for that tax, I asked one of the folks who were responsible for that tax--which is an ad valorem property tax on the railroad system--``How do you do that?'' He said, ``Sit down and I will show you.'' He said, ``Because the railroads aren't bought and sold, you look at all of the stocks and all of the debt. Assuming you bought all of their stock and debt, that is the value of the railroad.'' I said, ``Tell me a little more about that.'' He said, ``Here is the stock. I sell you this railroad. Here is the stock.'' I said, ``Gee, what price are you using, par value?'' ``Par value,'' he said. Remember, we have been doing that for 25 years. The railroads indicated to us that that is the value. Using the par value, of course, is absolutely ridiculous. Par value has nothing to do with the value of the railroad stock. But the industry had convinced the people in our State who value railroads to use an artificially low, absurd value for the railroad stock. They were fat and happy for dozens of years underpaying their taxes. They loved it. The minute I decided to change it, they said ``Holy cow. What are you doing to us? Why on Earth are you being unfair to us?'' I said, ``I am not being unfair. I am asking you to do what every other American does--pay your fair share of the taxes.'' That is the principle and the issue on which we will be voting. The principle and the issue here is not about ma and pa. It is not about independents and not whether you support the oil industry. I do. I have cast a lot of votes on behalf of the independents, and support the majors as well, because I think they play an important contributing role for this country in providing energy for our future. But in cases like this where you have integrated companies who are undervaluing their oil so they can underpay the royalty fee they owe to the people of the United States, I say let's correct it. Some of my colleagues say that underpayment is not happening. Let's take a look at the rates. Alaska settled with the oil companies for over $2.5 billion. Is that because somebody was making arithmetic errors? I don't think so. California, $350 million; Texas, $17.1 million. My point is that the States have been plodding their way through this issue with respect to royalties owed to the States. Can we not have the strength to stand up here and say to the integrated oil companies, ``You have a responsibility to be fair to the people of the United States? We are not asking for more than you owe. Your oil prices have declined. Therefore, you should pay the new price.'' We understand that. ``We are not asking for more than you owe; not a penny more. We are asking you on behalf of the people of this country to pay your fair share.'' What is happening today--and in this bill that came to the floor of the Senate--is an attempt to intercept a rule that will require these folks to pay their fair share of royalties. And a bunch of folks here in the Senate stand up and say, ``No, no, no. We want to protect the old order.'' The old order is to let people sell oil to themselves, to underprice it, undervalue it, and avoid paying the American people what they owe them in royalty fees. That is what is wrong. If we turned out the lights and voted on this, people in this Chamber would express that view. I hope when we have a vote on this we will all decide that there is a right and wrong answer. The right answer is to just ask the integrated majors who sell oil to themselves to price it fairly and abide by the new MMS rules. They have been studied and worked on and they are fair. Do this the right way. The Senator from California is not on the floor trying to attack an industry. The Senator from California is not offering an amendment that in any way affects the independent oil producers. Ninety-five percent of the oil producers in this country will be unaffected by this amendment, 95 percent of them. In fact, some of those who have been unaffected have been convinced to send us letters saying that they are going to be affected by it. I assume they have been convinced by their bigger cousins, or bigger uncles. But the fact is, it is wrong. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg at all, as Lincoln said. Saying this affects independents doesn't make it affect independents. It does not. It is a very simple, direct approach to say to the integrated oil companies who sell oil to themselves that they have a responsibility to price oil fairly so that the American people get what they deserve. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is an interesting debate.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. DORGAN. I object.

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

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Minnesota yield?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator from Minnesota will yield further just for a question before he begins his address. I understand that this coming Saturday in Worthington, MN, there is to be a farm rally, which I assume the Senator will be speaking about. The rally is in his home State, but it is a rally designed to encourage farmers from a four-State area to come together to talk about and demonstrate the urgent need to stress this farm crisis. I intend to be in Worthington, MN, this Saturday with Senator Wellstone and others. I think it is a 9:30 a.m. farm rally. But I would expect a good many farm families will come from our four-State region to talk about their hopes and dreams and talk about especially what they hope this Congress will do to address this deep and abiding farm crisis.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand that the unanimous consent request I am going to ask for has been agreed to by both sides. I ask unanimous consent that no amendments be in order to the pending Harkin amendment prior to a tabling vote.

Mr. DORGAN. If I might, I will show my colleagues that this is the barley he sent to my office a couple of days ago. Then he sent a similar bag of kitty litter. This kitty litter is worth 20 cents a pound, and the barley is worth 2 cents a pound. This farmer said, ``Is there something wrong here? Kitty litter is 20 cents a pound and barley 2 cents a pound. Am I missing something?'' No, he is not missing something. There is something fundamentally wrong with grain prices. There is something wrong when we say to the world and to family farmers that what they produce has no value. What they produce has no worth? I have said this before on the floor of the Senate and we have heard it in testimony of people. Halfway around the world, old women are climbing trees in Sudan to scour for leaves to eat because they are facing starvation. A million and a half people in Sudan are starving halfway around the world. At the same moment that an old woman is climbing trees to get leaves to eat, a family farmer loads up his truck to drive to the elevator with a load of hard red spring wheat. When he gets to the elevator, he is told, ``This wheat doesn't have much value; it is not worth much.'' Is there a disconnection here? I think so. We produce an abundant quantity of food that the world needs, but somehow we cannot get to halfway around the world where they need it. Those who need it can't get it and those who produce it are told it has no value. If you want to talk about a disconnection of things that are really important on this Earth, that is it. Now, we passed a new farm bill a couple years ago. I didn't vote for it. I didn't believe the farm bill was the right approach. I still don't. Like so many political promises, that farm bill had big print and it had little print. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the big print giveth and the little print taketh away. Now, the big print promised that price supports would be set based on marketplace prices. Loan rates would therefore be 85 percent of the Olympic 5-year average of prices on the market. This promised a price cushion for family farmers. If market prices fell, there would be a cushion set at 85 percent of the Olympic 5-year average price. That was the big print. Now here comes the little print. The little print then said that what the big print said was wrong. The little print said that while loan rates were supposed to be based on market prices, the little print put a cap on it. That is an innocuous little word, that three-letter word-- ``cap.'' So the big print says you get 85 percent of the Olympic market average, and we are going to give you that as an opportunity to provide some kind of price support so that if the market collapses, you have something to support you. But then the little print comes back and says, ``Oh, by the way, we are not going to give you what you were promised; we are going to put a cap on it; and therefore your support prices are pathetic.'' They never use the word ``pathetic''; they put the cap on it that made it pathetic. Now we find ourselves under circumstances where we must come to the floor and say let's take the cap off the loan rate and give farmers what they were promised in the farm bill. All we want to do is delete just a part of the little print. Our amendment would just delete a part of that little print in the farm bill. Why, you would think we were burning 85 barns down with all the commotion about this. We come and say, ``Let's delete the little print that took away from farmers what the big print promised,'' and you would think we were burning barns down. Holy cow, people are jumping up and down and screaming that we are going to unwind, unravel, and tear apart the farm bill. No; we are just going to make the farm bill honest. We are trying to make it do for farmers what the farm bill promised it was going to do for farmers. If making that bill honest is the wrong direction, then I guess I have lost part of the compass by which to measure these issues. Well, let me show the second chart. It describes part of the problem that cries out for attention. The red and orange areas are counties in our State. This is the State of North Dakota, which is 10 times the size of the State of Massachusetts, just for some land mass comparisons. This whole area of the State has been declared as an agricultural disaster. One third of our counties have been declared a disaster every year for the last 5 years. That's right; every single year. Two thirds of our counties have been declared disaster areas in 3 of the last 5 years. Why? It is because of a wet cycle that came and stayed, and provided the conditions for the worst crop disease in a century. And, now we have collapsed grain prices on top of it. Now, farmers can't make it when, year after year after year, they have recurring natural disasters. That is exactly what has happened. It is precisely why, if we are going to save the family farmers, we must take action now to deal with this issue. One of the problems that came from these wet cycles and all of the other natural disasters is a crop disease called fusarium head blight, which is a fancy way of saying scab. Farmers know what scab means. It means money is sucked right out of their pockets by decreased grain quality and quantity. Brian Steffenson, a cereal scientist from North Dakota State University, said: Make no mistake about it. This is the worst plant disease epidemic that the U.S. has faced with any major crop during this century. Our family farmers face collapsed prices, the worst crop disease of the century, disaster declarations year after year in most of the State. Yet, North Dakota, which is a rural State, is an important part of the bread basket in this country. Let me add one additional chart which shows another part of the problem. As if this situation is not bad enough with bad prices, poor crops and crop disease there is another economic dilemma facing our farmers. When the farmer does produce a product, the farmer faces basic monopoly pricing or monopoly influences up the marketing stream. Want to sell some beef? Well, then, show up at the packing plant and you will find that 87 percent of the beef packing is controlled by four firms. Eighty-seven percent of the cattle slaughtered in this country is controlled by four firms. How about pork? Sixty percent of pork slaughter is controlled by four firms. Fifty-five percent of broiler chicken processing is controlled by four firms. Do you have sheep to send to the market? Well, 73 percent of sheep slaughter is controlled by four companies. Everywhere a farmer turns, as he sells his commodities up the marketing stream, he finds that it is controlled by monopolistic kinds of enterprises. How about transportation? Take it to the railroad, and what do you find there? Competition? No. You find one railroad that says, ``We will haul your wheat, and here is what we charge you. If you don't like it, tough luck. Try walking down the highway carrying your wheat to market in gunnysacks.'' In North Dakota, when you want to ship your wheat from Bismark to Minneapolis, MN, the railroad charges a farmer $2,300 to ship that carload of wheat. But, if you put that carload wheat on in Minneapolis and ship it to Chicago, which is about the same distance, they don't charge $2,300. They charge $1,000. Why do we get charged more than double? Because there is only one railroad. And they say, ``Here is your price. If you don't like it, tough luck.'' So we pay too much money for transportation. My point is that in every direction the family farmer is confronted not by a free market but by a controlled market--controlled in someone else's interest. That is the dilemma we face. At some point in agriculture, we reach a point of no return. The question for this Congress is whether we care enough about the future of family farmers in America to take effective action. Do we want to save family farmers? We can decide not to do that. The best way to decide not to do much about family farming is to essentially say the farm bill passed by Congress was just fine. We can say it is all right that the big print giveth and the little print taketh away. Well, I don't think that is just fine. I think it is critically important to save family farmers. If this country believes that food is expensive these days, they ought to try buying food once corporate agrifactories farm America from California to Maine. Then they will find out what the price of food really is. It won't be cheap food. It will be expensive food for the American consumer. This last chart shows a cartoon from one of our newspapers. There is nothing very funny what we have been discussing. This cartoon tells the story of agriculture in our region. It shows ``Family Farmers: The Point of No Returns.'' It describes the roadbed our farmers are traveling. That roadbed is made up of low yields, low market price, low cattle prices, high production costs, crop disease, bad weather. Our farmers have no returns on their production and now are on the point of no return. When I talked about transportation costs earlier, I should have also mentioned that there are many other business stories of what family farmers are facing. My colleague from Minnesota is ready to speak. He comes from the east of North Dakota, Minneapolis, MN. Did you know that if a North Dakota farmer is going to ship his or her grain on a rail bed, put it in a car and ship it on the railroad, that the same railroad that will ship a carload of wheat from Iowa all the way up through North Dakota and then to the West Coast for less? That's right shipping from Iowa up through Minneapolis, through North Dakota to the West Coast will be cheaper to than to load the grain on in North Dakota and ship it from North Dakota to the West Coast? Why? Because shipping from Iowa is a circumstance where you are shipping where there is competition at the point from which you start to ship it. The railroad will charge more money for fewer miles to North Dakota farmers to ship that same load of grain. My point is, it doesn't matter where you intersect this farm problem. In every single instance you will find out that there are no free markets; not in transportation, chemical prices, slaughterhouses, grain markets, you name it. I haven't yet even mentioned the unfair trade that comes from Canada and elsewhere that undercuts our farmers' markets and further collapse farm prices. This is in addition to all of the other things I have mentioned. Right now, as I speak, somewhere up in a border port between Canada and the United States there is an 18-wheel truck driving up. And the driver is leaning out with his left elbow telling some Customs' inspector, ``Yes. I have Canadian durum on the back of this truck. I have got a load of Canadian durum.'' He is going to drive that Canadian durum into the United States, undercutting our market, and thus taking the money right out of the pockets of American producers. How is he going to do it? Because the grain on his truck was sent by the Canadian Wheat Board, which is a monopoly. It is a state-sponsored monopoly that would be illegal in the United States of America. The durum wheat that he is hauling is sold through the Wheat Board at secret prices, which is not something that can happen in this country, either. So we have a state monopoly from Canada selling at secret prices in this country to undercut our farmers' price. It is fundamentally unfair. While that truck comes across today, we have trade officials who just sit on their hands. They see nothing, they do nothing and they say nothing. In fact, they ought not be there when the paychecks come out. We ought to save the money. Why have a trade office that doesn't have the energy to get up in the morning and suit up, with the notion that, ``I am going to do something good''? I will have more to say about that this week. Right now my sense is we have trade people who have an unwillingness to take action. I say get rid of them. Get rid of all of them, and do it now. I am at my wit's end with our trade officials, because they know in their hearts that all they have is this mantra of free trade. They ought to really have some cymbals on the street corner someplace and just chant all day. That is all they do is chant. They certainly don't do any effective work with this country. If they did, they would be at the borders deciding that when people come into this country unfairly to try to undercut our markets and dump in this country at secret prices that there ought to be sanctions for that. As I said, I will have more to say about our trade officials later this week. But I am here today for a very specific reason. Between now and several weeks from now when this Congress adjourns, there isn't a more important agenda item for us to complete than to deal with the farm problem. I hope we can do it together. I hope that Republicans and Democrats coming from farm country are able to stand together and say, ``We want to do something to help family farmers get over this price depression.'' When prices drop and you have a price valley, we need to build a bridge across that valley. That is what this farm program this Congress passed was supposed to do. But, as I said, the promise was in the big print and the small print took that away. Shame on the small print. What we propose to do is dump the small print today and give family farmers the kind of support that is necessary to get across these price valleys. Let me finish as I started by telling you about Brian and Johnet Christianson. This is just one farm family--one couple living on a farm--that is representative of thousands and thousands of farmers across the region. They say, ``This will be the last year for us, our loan officer tells us, if we can't make scheduled payments.'' They ask a question. When their prices drop 57 percent and they are getting more than $2 a bushel less for their grain than it cost them to produce, how can they possibly be expected to meet their payments? There are no better people in this country than our farm families. I am not judging who is best. But, certainly there is nobody better folks in this country than those people who went out and homesteaded the land, built themselves a house, raised a family, and operated a family farm. There are no bigger risk takers in America than those who plant the seed in the spring, and borrow some money to do it. They put everything they have, their sweat, their blood, their tears, everything they have into it. They risk everything they have every year. Then they hope that the insects don't come, it doesn't rain too much, that it rains enough, it doesn't hail, hoping their crop grows. And, when it grows, they hope that if they can harvest it and get it to the elevator, they hope among hope there is some kind of price that will give them the opportunity to make a living. All of us know in our hearts that those folks are out there crying tears tonight because they are losing their hope and they are losing their dream of wanting to continue a family farm for themselves and their children. We know what is happening to these people in those farm houses that Brian and Johnet talk about it. This mother says she is only able to buy her young daughter one pair of new jeans for the school year, and her daughter says, ``No, no, that is all right; I know we can't afford that.'' We know that in those houses they hope tonight that this Congress will do the right thing. Congress extends itself to say to everyone around the world whenever there is trouble, ``We are off rushing to help.'' What about now, here at home on the family farm, where there is trouble? Shouldn't we begin to rush to help with some real assistance that gives these farm families the hope of surviving for another day, another year, and an opportunity to say, ``I am a family farmer, I am making a decent living on the family farm, and I am proud of it.'' If at the end of the day, together we do what we can and should do to make things right for America's family farmers, we will give these people on our family farms the opportunity to be able to say that with dignity and pride. I yield the floor. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened carefully to the comments by Senator Harkin from Iowa. I have spoken over the weekend, again, with Senator Daschle, on whose behalf we offer this amendment. A group of us have joined together, believing it is urgent that we respond to the farm crisis and that we do so quickly. I want to go through a couple of charts, just briefly, that describe what this crisis is about. The first chart goes back to April 1996 and shows what has happened to farm prices. Wheat prices have fallen from $5.75 per bushel down to $2.46. The price of wheat, in this case, dropped 57 percent in this nearly 2-year period, since the farm bill. Now, I ask people to think of their own situation. If their income dropped 57 percent, what shape would they find themselves? That is what has happened with family farmers. At the same time the price of their inputs have grown, and increased dramatically. The price of their grain has collapsed. In my State of North Dakota, in 1 year, net farm income for family farmers dropped 98 percent. Anyone in this country, any neighborhood, any community, any business, would be in desperate trouble if they lost 98 percent of their income, and yet that is what has happened to our family farmers. When historians look back at this period, they will say that this is one of the most significant farm crises that we have faced since the Great Depression. We, in fact, have Depression-era prices for grain in rural America right now. We won't have many family farmers left if this Congress doesn't extend a hand to help out when family farmers are in trouble. Each month has brought more and more bad news for family farmers. Wheat prices have fallen an average of a 11-cent-a-month drop during this entire year. That amounts to an almost $40 million income loss each month to North Dakota farmers. I want to read a letter from a 15-year-old high school boy who comes from a family farm. He wrote me a letter that I received in recent days. My name is Wyatt Goettle. Incidentally, he told us we should go ahead and use his name. Wyatt says: I live on a farm by Donnybrook [in North Dakota], and we raise sheep, cattle, and grow crops. I'm 15 years old and I'm a sophomore at Stanley High School. This year we rented out most of our cropland. The prices of crops this year and in past years is ridiculous. What would happen if all the farmers just quit because they couldn't even feed their families? I don't know what is going on, but somebody somewhere is making money and it isn't the farmers that put all the work into it. Then he says this: You know, my dad can feed 180 people, but he can't feed his own family because of the prices. . . . Our farm is a small family farm and it's hard to keep going . . . It's hard getting back from school and working until 10:30 or 11:00 at night. Then having to get up at 6:15 the next morning just to find out that you can't put gas in the car to go to school because you can't afford it. It all goes back to the beef and grain prices. This from a 15-year-old boy, a sophomore attending school in Stanley, ND. Let me read an additional letter from Brian and Johnet Christianson, who wrote to me recently from Glenburn, ND. She said: Our loan officer has told us this will be our last year of farming if we can't make our scheduled payments. We want to farm. I have a good job, and my husband has taken on a full- time job and a part-time job [off the farm] to make ends meet. That is to cover living expenses. . . . The public keeps hearing about the family farmer, but what about the farmer's family? The wife tries to be a decision-maker with her husband to pay a bill or get disconnected; or put food on the table. The wife is there to give a smile and a hug when he comes in from the field. As a new school year is getting underway, it is the farmers' children who continue to suffer the misfortunes of the farm life. Don't get me wrong. We have chosen this life for our family, and we will fight to keep it going. She said: When mom offers to buy one pair of new school jeans, it is the daughter who says, ``No, mommy, I don't need them because we [can't afford it], right, mommy?'' As I fill out reduced or free school lunch applications, the farm has brought us $72 a month this past year. Yet people think we are rich farmers who can handle a bad year. . . . Brian and I have a very strong marriage and we will get through this year with hope for a better tomorrow. Our children will, too. We will make it--the optimism of the farmer. Please continue to fight for equity in grain prices for the farmer and his family. Now, these two letters--one from a husband and wife and one from a 15-year-old boy--describe this crisis better than I can describe it. The young 15-year-old boy, a sophomore in high school, says: My dad can feed 180 people, but can't feed his own family because of farm prices. There is something wrong with that. One fellow sent me something that I ask unanimous consent to be able to show on the floor of the Senate. It is a handful of grain.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator is going to offer an amendment on our behalf and on behalf of the Senate minority leader. My expectation is Senator Gorton would like to provide an opportunity for the minority leader to speak before the vote. I don't know if he made a unanimous consent request. I hope, in any event, if there is a discussion of time with respect to the tabling of this amendment, that there is an understanding the minority leader will be given time to speak prior to the tabling motion. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me inquire of the Senator from Iowa-- does the Senator from Iowa have the floor?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk briefly about a couple of issues that are of critical importance to the country, and especially to that part of America that I come from--North Dakota, the farm belt. It is an important part of our country. Our country is made up of many parts--of cities, of country, of family farms, of main streets, and small businesses. But we are going through a very, very tough time in rural America. I asked the majority leader some moments ago on the floor of the Senate about the ability to deal with this farm crisis through some action by this Congress before we adjourn. I was impressed that he indicated that it is his intention for us to take up legislation to address this farm crisis once again as we did in the month of July. It is an urgent situation. The future of many family farms and the future of many families living out in rural America depends on this Congress stepping up and making the kind of decisions that will give them the opportunity to make a decent living on the family farm. When I talk about my part of the country, or our part of the country, I am reminded of something that Daniel Webster said. He was one of the giants of this institution. In fact, his portrait is on the wall out here in the reception room of the U.S. Senate. He is recognized as a giant in the history of this body. When Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, which was fairly controversial at the time, let me read to you what Daniel Webster said. Remember; this a part of the country that I come from. About that Louisiana Purchase, Daniel Webster said: What do we want with this vast, worthless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of desert and shifting sands and whirlwinds, of dust, cactus, and prairie dogs? What can we ever hope to do with this western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use do we have for this country? Daniel Webster is not considered thoughtless because he made this statement. But it is quite clear, I suppose, to all of us now that he missed the mark some. ``What do we want with this vast, worthless area?'' Gosh. What a remarkable part of our country that Louisiana Purchase became. Then a couple of years after Daniel Webster asked this question about that part of America, Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore that area, and it was one of the great expeditions in the annals of American history. Lewis and Clark, on May 14th, 1804, left St. Louis, MO, with 44 men and 120 gallons of whiskey, by the way, purchased with government vouchers. The President said, ``Buy whatever you need.'' I have made jokes about the need to purchase 120 gallons of whiskey to get them through certain States. But I will not repeat those jokes here. I do that only because I think it is interesting to study the history of that Lewis and Clark Expedition. It was a remarkable expedition. In April of 1805--April 7, to be exact--after Lewis and Clark had gone from St. Louis up to what is now near Washburn, ND, and spent the entire winter with the Mandan Indians, before they began the next portion of their journey to the West Coast, April 7, 1805, Captain Lewis wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson. That letter--a six-page letter--was put on a keelboat with some soldiers and sent down the Missouri back to St. Louis, then down to New Orleans by boat, then to Washington, DC, to Thomas Jefferson. And then we never heard another word from Lewis and Clark for 17 months. Then we discovered on the conclusion of that remarkable expedition that they had been to the West Coast and back. And they told us what they found in this remarkable country of ours. That letter, by the way, just for interest sake, was never viewed by the public until a couple of months ago. That letter, in a special effort by the Library of Congress, is now being viewed publicly at an Interpretation Center of Lewis and Clark near Washburn, ND, with all proper security, about a mile from where Captain Lewis wrote the letter in the year 1805 on April 7. He sent it by keelboat down the Missouri, all the way around to President Jefferson, and, of course, it came back in by jet airplane nearly 200 years later. I tell you that just to say that this is a wonderful, remarkable country, and in our part of the country, which is called the farm belt, a rural area of the country, we are having an enormous amount of difficulty, one that requires this Congress' attention. There are two things that are of great concern to us. The collapse of grain prices means that we see the threatened loss of thousands and thousands and thousands of families who now live out on the family farm. Grain prices have flat out collapsed. Crop disease has come and visited our State --the worst crop disease of the century at the same time that grain prices have collapsed. And, on top of that, these farmers also fail because of unfair trade, unfair trade which helps cause the grain price collapse; an enormous amount of unfair trade, unfair trade that no one seems to be interested in doing anything about. That brings me to the point I want to make today dealing with our trade problems, especially with our neighbors to the north--the Canadians--but these trade problems relate to Mexico, to France, to China, and to other countries as well. Let me describe the problems just briefly, as I have before, and then tell you why I am especially interested today. Trade agreements: There are those talking about this mantra of free trade saying let's do more free trade agreements, and the more we trade, the better off we are, and the better it is for our country. Trade statistics show that as we negotiate these agreements, agreement after agreement, whoever is negotiating these agreements must not be keeping their eye on the ball, because agreement after agreement we see deeper and deeper trade deficits for this country. I ask those who negotiate our agreements: Is there any chance you might negotiate a trade agreement that is in our country's best interest just once; something that benefits our country instead of deepens our trade deficits? The economic all-stars in trade have become America's family farmers. We have an abiding and abundant trade surplus in agricultural commodities and products. But that is shrinking, as you can see. That is shrinking because the trade agreements that have been developed over the years with other countries--the Canadian agreement, Mexican, and others--have not been in the interest of our farmers. They have created a bifurcation of trade strategy so that we become a sponge for virtually anything anyone wants to send into our country, even if it is sent here unfairly. And we increasingly cannot get our products into other countries' markets. The result is that the agricultural trade surplus, which once was healthy and which once reflected the one bright spot on our trade picture, is now itself diminishing. Our foreign debt grows to finance this trade deficit. You know what red means, and I have shown many of these charts before that show that the trade debt is increasing and increasing dramatically. Now, we have a U.S. trade ambassador's office that negotiates trade treaties. I voted against, I guess, the last three or four of the treaties they have negotiated. They went and negotiated one with Canada and, fundamentally, in my judgment, sold out the interests of American farmers. I think I can demonstrate it; I think I have. Then they negotiated NAFTA with Canada and Mexico. Same thing--a wholesale exodus of American jobs. They negotiated GATT--fundamentally unsound in the way it was negotiated to protect our producers' economic interests. I am not talking about being protectionist now. I am talking about standing up for the economic interests of our producers to say, if you must compete--and that is a worthy objective--then we will make sure the competition is fair. Has that happened in all of these recent trade agreements? Not at all. Because these folks are interested in negotiating agreements, some kind of trade agreements that comport with some notion of free trade they have, a notion that is foreign to the folks where I grew up. Is it free trade to say to an American producer, you go ahead and produce a product, then ship it to a marketplace and try to sell it? And by the way, you are going to compete with a manufacturing plant in Sri Lanka or Indonesia or Bangladesh, and they are going to hire 14- year-old kids and pay them 14 cents an hour; they are going to work them 14 hours a day, and they are going to make that product dirt cheap so they can increase their corporate profits; they are going to ship that product to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, or Fargo, and you, Mr. and Mrs. Producer, compete with them, go ahead, compete with them. Is that fair trade? Absolutely not. Or how about saying to a mom and pop operation in this country that is producing a product, you produce a product, but we need to make sure you are not polluting our air, not polluting our water, not hiring kids, and you don't have unsafe plants? So we have restrictions on air pollution, restrictions on air and water pollution, we have child labor laws, and we have worker safety provisions. And then we say, you produce that product under those conditions--and I support all of those conditions, by the way--and then go compete, and when you compete, you compete against a plant in some country tens of thousands of miles away that doesn't have any restriction on dumping chemicals into the air, chemicals into the water, hiring kids or having unsafe factories. And so they increase corporate profits, make cheaper products and ship them here and compete unfairly. I ask our trade ambassadors to defend that; defend that. And if you can't, then don't go negotiate another treaty for this country unless you can demonstrate to the American people you are willing for a change, for once, to stand up for this country's economic interests. Now, there will be some people in this town who will listen to this, and they say, well, this guy is some xenophobic isolationist, and that is what all this language is about. I am not that: we need to find a foreign home for much of what we produce in farming today. I want expanded trade, I want expanded trade opportunities around the world, but I am flat out sick and tired of our farmers and our business men and women being consigned to trade internationally in a circumstance where our trade negotiators have negotiated trade agreements that, A, are incompetently negotiated so they put us at a disadvantage and, B, totally nonenforced, unenforced. They won't lift a finger to enforce a trade agreement that I can see. This morning I read in the paper that our steel industry is going to file an action alleging that there is dumping going on in this country. I don't even know much about it, but I say to the steel industry, sign me up as a supporter. It is about time people start standing up for their interests and demanding that trade competition be fair competition. The first 25 years after the Second World War, trade policy could be foreign policy and we could tie one hand behind our back and beat anyone, anytime, anywhere. That was fine. War-torn Europe was trying to restore itself, and we were dealing with weak competitors. That is not true anymore. Now we have shrewd, tough international competitors, and the fact is our trade policy is still half foreign policy and our negotiators and our trade agencies don't seem to give a whit about either negotiating good agreements or enforcing the agreements we have. That brings me to the issue of Canada especially. While our farmers face collapsed prices and are having auction sales the Trade Representative does nothing. You can go to those auction sales and see the tears those farmers cry because they have lost more than a farm and a home; they have lost their hopes, their dreams and everything they wanted to do in life. And one of the reasons that that is happening and that prices are collapsing is this grain from Canada, durum, wheat, barley, is flooding through our back door because of a trade agreement that was, again, incompetently negotiated. It is unfair trade, in my judgment. That is quite clear. It is sent here by a State trading agency in Canada which would be illegal in this country. A State trading monopoly in Canada would be illegal here. It sends that grain with secret pricing. By the way, we don't have secret prices here. Their prices are secret, and yet our trade agency refuses to lift a finger, doesn't lift a finger. And they boast about all the work they are doing. Senator Byrd once talked about Aesop's fly. It probably fits here. Aesop's fly, sitting on the axle of a chariot observing, ``My, what dust I do raise.'' Yes, my, what dust this USTR does raise. It is not even relevant to what is going on. The fact is, there are levers, there are opportunities, for our agencies to use, including the USTR, to stand up and fight for fair trade for our producers, our farmers, and our manufacturers, and they consistently refuse to do it. I will have more to say about this specifically next week and specifically about USTR and specifically about the trade agreement with Canada. I will have more to say about it next week. But this country and this Congress should not allow this to continue where our producers are confronted with unfair trade circumstances. We either ought to expect an agency to stand up and fight trade fairness or get rid of the agency; just get rid of it. Stop pretending. Mr. President, I mentioned Canada. I could talk about beer, Mexican beer coming north and American beer not going south. That is liquid barley, I guess. You know that is where beer comes from. I could talk about looking at trade through the eye of a potato, whole potatoes south, french fries north with the Mexican agreement. Or maybe we could do it with something everybody understands--Beanie Babies. You go stand at the border and see a convoy of trucks coming south with millions of bushels of Canadian grain, coming into a country that already has too much grain, and the result is prices are collapsed. And at the same time those convoys of trucks and railroad cars with millions of bushels of Canadian grain are coming into our country, trading unfairly, incidentally, at the same time that happens, try to bring a Beanie Baby in, and they stop you at the border and say, oh, no, you can only bring one--one. You only get one Beanie Baby to come across the border. So we are willing to stand up for cloth dolls filled with beans but not for family farmers whose lives, whose economic lives are threatened, who are going out of business in record numbers, going out of business so fast that they have had to call auctioneers in my State out of retirement to handle the auction sales. Am I upset about this? Yes. I am upset because I am a part of a system here that anticipates that those in the system will do what they are supposed to do, and I am especially upset with the U.S. trade ambassador's office. It is not new. I have been upset with them for years. But there is a new energy at this point because they are sitting on their hands doing essentially nothing while our farmers are going out of business. And there is a real and abiding problem that all of us understand that they refuse to take action to deal with it. I will revisit this subject next week, early next week on the floor of the Senate and have more to say about the USTR with some specifics, and also about Canada. But I wanted to make the point today, once again, that as part of the response to the farm crisis that I asked Senator Lott about today, we must deal with strengthening prices. We must deal with an indemnity program that Senator Conrad and I got passed. But we must also deal with the trade component, because we can't continue to try to find a way to deal with strengthening prices and finding new markets overseas for our grain products and then have a flood or an avalanche of grain coming through our back door, unfairly traded into our country. That is not fair to farmers. They ought to expect more. I certainly expect more. And the President ought to expect more from the U.S. Trade Ambassador's office, and as I said, I will have more to say about that early next week.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, that is welcome news. I appreciate the cooperation of the majority leader. We obviously are facing collapsed farm prices and as tough a time in farm country as we have ever seen. I appreciate the response of the leader.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the majority leader will entertain an inquiry. At the conclusion of Senator Byrd's presentation, it is my intention to speak for a few moments on the agriculture crisis, and I would just like to inquire of the majority leader, who I know was supportive in July as we moved a $500 million indemnity piece out of the Senate dealing with the farm crisis, I would like to ask the majority leader if he has some interest and some intention of allowing us to work on a farm crisis package during the month of September. The reason I ask the question, I know that the Senator from Mississippi, the majority leader, is trying to fit a lot of things into a very short window here, but I think he knows that Members on this side and the other side coming from farm country are having to deal with an enormously difficult farm crisis. We hope very much that that will become part of the agenda in the month of September. I would just inquire of the Senator as to his intentions.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, and I shall not object, what I would like to do is ask consent that following the remarks of Senator Byrd, I be recognized for 20 minutes, and I also ask, on behalf of Senator Kennedy, that he be recognized for 30 minutes following my remarks.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from West Virginia for his kind words. He always contributes immensely to this Senate when he rises and speaks to the Senate and to the American people. I am enormously proud to serve with Senator Byrd, as I have indicated on previous occasions.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let briefly turn to one additional subject. That is the question of interest rates and the Federal Reserve Board. I want to talk about this because it also affects farmers--not just farmers, but all producers and all Americans. There is a lot of discussion these days about what is happening to the economy in our country. We have plenty of challenges. But it is also hard to miss some good news. The unemployment rate has gone way down. And the Federal Reserve Board, as most of us will recall, said: Now be careful, because if the unemployment rate ever falls below 6 percent there is a natural rate here below which we will get new waves of inflation; go below 6 percent, the Fed said, and we are going to have inflation problems. Of course, the Fed was dead wrong. We have had unemployment below 6 percent for 4 years now. Inflation has not gone up, it has gone down. But this is good news for the economy. The unemployment rate continues to be down. The Consumer Price Index has gone way down too. The core rate with respect to the CPI is 2.2 for the last 12 months ending in July. Finally, the real Federal Funds Rate, that is the short-term interest rate, adjusted for inflation, that the Federal Reserve Board sets, is 3.9 percent, the highest it's been in nine years. When inflation is way down here and the Federal Funds Rate, the real interest rate, is up here, you ask the question: Why? Let me see if I can answer that question and give just a bit of advice to the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board is doing its best imitation of petrified wood. It is not a tough imitation for them. All you have to do is look at the Federal Reserve Board and it resembles the Petrified Forest. In fact, what I would like to do is, just for those who might be watching or those who might be interested, I would like to show them the Federal Reserve Board's Governors and regional bank presidents, because they don't get enough attention. Here is who they are, here is where they are educated, largely their experience, and this is how much money they make. This is who sets interest rate policy in this country; interest rate policy which now has short-term rates too high and therefore the prime rate and other interest rates is too high. Jerry Jasinowski, President of the National Association of Manufacturers, says: Interest rates are a dangerous drag on the economy in view of the fact that 1/3 of the world is in a recession. He calls on the Fed to cut interest rates. Dr. Sung Won Sohn, Norwest Corporation: If the Fed were to cut interest rates today, it would help ease the farm crisis, which has become critical because of low commodity prices, bad weather, crop disease, and so on. James Glassman--I don't quote him very often, but James Glassman says: [Interest] rates are not really as low as they seem. After adjusting for inflation, long-term rates are high, and short- term rates are even higher. . . . The longer the Fed waits (to cut rates), the closer a serious slowdown, or recession, becomes. Mr. President, the Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee will meet on September 29. Two of these folks still probably think that interest rates ought to be increased, despite the fact that our economy is slowing down and the real interest rates are far too high now. It might serve the money centers' bankers' interests. It certainly does not serve the interests of the producers in this country. And there has been, for 200 years in this country, a tension between those who produce and those who finance production. At this point, with this crowd, it tilts in favor of those who believe it might be in the interests of the Fed to serve their constituency, the money center banks. But there is no reason, given the economic circumstances in our country today, for them not to put interest rates where they belong, given the current rate of inflation, and that would augur not for an interest rate increase on September 29, but a cut. Here are the folks. Here are their names. You could put them in a barrel and shake them all up and you would still have a gray suit, somebody with an economics background, no one from my part of the country, and no one who has ever fixed anything or built anything. In fact, we have a vacancy now, and I said I would like my Uncle Joe to be considered for that. My Uncle Joe doesn't have any particular skills that would suggest him for the job, but he used to fix generators and alternators, so he has run a business and worked with his hands. He fixes things. Nobody here represents producers. Nobody on the Federal Reserve Board has an understanding, in my judgment, about the productive side of our economy. My Uncle Joe is not going be seriously considered, I suppose. But what we will probably find is this administration, like all others, will find somebody who looks just like this, same color suit, Ph.D. in economics. Certainly nobody from the Upper Midwest where they have been farming or their folks have run a small business or anything like that. I guess the point I wanted to make today is, as we head towards September 29, all of the evidence suggests that we ought to be seeing a cut in interest rates. I should confess that I actually used to teach economics a bit in college. I have been able to overcome that and lead a reasonably productive life. All I ask from the Federal Reserve Board is to look at this from the standpoint of this country's long-term economic health and the economic facts that are now self-evident. There is nothing that could persuade a couple of these people, as I understand they still believe that we ought to have higher interest rates except that they must represent some narrow self-interest for the money center banks. Certainly most of them ought to be able to look at the facts and understand we need--and this country deserves and our economy requires--a lowering of Federal Funds rate and therefore a lowering of the prime and other interest rates that represents where we ought to be, given the historical interest rates and declining inflation. Mr. President, I understand that when you come down and are even obliquely critical of the Federal Reserve Board, it is like taking on the last American dinosaur. I regret that I do that. But it is the last part, the last institution that remains impervious to the broader public interest. Some think that the Fed is a hero for whatever has happened in our economy. I don't happen to view it that way. I think they view themselves as a set of human brake pads, and they keep their foot on the brake--and good for them. Except that what we have now is a need to put interest rates back where they ought to be for producers and farmers and others, given the fact that overall inflation is down at 1.7 percent over the last twelve months and only 1.5 percent since the beginning of this year. Today's announcement was that the Producer Price Index for finished good in August fell 0.4 percent. This means that producer prices have fallen 1.6 percent over the past twenty months. All these numbers augur very hard for the Federal Reserve Board to do something that some suggest they are not prepared to do. I ask Fed Chairman Greenspan and others to see if they can't do what some people now don't expect them to do, but do the right thing: On September 29, we reduce those interest rates. Several of us in Congress are considering offering at least a sense- of-the-Congress resolution to send a message to the Fed. Who knows whether it will get through the door there, but at least send a message to say here is what we think. Interest rates have a significant impact on virtually every family in America, on every producer, business and farmer in this country. And my hope is that at the end of this month, given the uncertainty we face in the world, given the numbers from the last quarter here in this country showing a slowing of our economy, and given the historical low rate of inflation and the fact that we are now overpaying because of the Federal Funds Rate, the Federal Reserve Board will finally do the right thing. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this debate and this vote are not about whether we support research on a missile defense system. I am on the Appropriations Committee. I am on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The Defense appropriations bill has over $3 billion for research and development of theater and national missile defense programs. I expect all Members of the Senate support that. I do. But this bill presents us with a different question. This bill would put the Senate on record saying there must be a deployment of a national missile defense system--there must be a deployment as soon as ``technologically feasible.'' And we must then deploy. Well, 25 years ago, we had an antiballistic missile system in North Dakota. I guess that particular system was technologically feasible then. Of course, that system would have used nuclear bombs to intercept and destroy incoming missiles. But it was built, at the cost of over $20 billion in today's terms. Thirty days after it was declared operational, it was mothballed. That system was too expensive and too controversial. Let's keep that cautionary tale in mind as we consider this bill. If this bill were to pass, the question is, What is technologically feasible? What kind of technology? At what cost? Does cost have any relevance at all? How will the bill affect arms control? Will this bill crowd out spending on other ways of dealing with terrorism? What other defense programs that respond to terrorist threats or rogue nations will then lack funding because we forced deployment of a system when someone said we now have the technology, and we forced deployment notwithstanding costs? Frankly, a rogue nation or a terrorist state is much more likely to pose a threat to us with a suitcase nuclear bomb planted in the trunk of a rusty Yugo car at a dock in New York City. The threat is much more likely to be a nuclear weapon put on top of a cruise missile--not an ICBM, but a cruise missile. There is far greater proliferation of cruise missiles and greater access to them. Will this defend against cruise missiles? No. Will it do anything about the suitcase bomb? No. What about a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked in front of a building? No. What about a vial of the most deadly biological agents? Again, no. There are a lot of terrorist and rogue nation threats that we ought to be concerned about, and we ought to worry about developing missile defense--and we are. But rushing to say we must deploy now, as soon as it is technologically feasible, notwithstanding any other consideration, makes no sense. The Senator from Michigan was asking what this bill would do to arms control. I want to hold up a chart of unclassified pictures to try and show what arms control means. This is a photo from March 26, 1997. It shows the launching of an SSN-20 missile from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. The submarine launched a missile, and within minutes the missile was destroyed. And the last picture here shows the missile's pieces falling into the sea. Why was that missile destroyed? Because of arms control agreements that we have reached with Russia. There was a whole series of these ``launch-to-destruction'' launches, because they were an inexpensive way for Russia to destroy its submarine-launched missiles and for us to verify their destruction. That is the way to deal with these threats--a reduction of nuclear weapons, reduction of delivery vehicles. This is the kind of thing, with Nunn-Lugar and other efforts, especially arms control agreements, that results in a real reduction of threat. The question is, What will the vote today do to arms control? Will it mean more delivery systems, more nuclear weapons? A greater arms race? I don't think anybody in this Chamber has that answer. My colleague, Senator Conrad, put it well. To those who support--and I think almost all of us do--theater missile defenses and the research on national missile defense, it doesn't make any sense to say that notwithstanding any other consideration we must deploy as soon as technologically feasible. That is not, in my judgment, the right thing or the thoughtful thing to do in order to defend this country. Mr. LEVIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have a number of things to complete and to discuss and debate in the coming 5 or 6 weeks before this Congress finishes its work. Many of them are very important. The work of the Appropriations Committee in getting the appropriations bills done on a timely basis is critically important. All of us understand that. I am here today to talk about one specific issue that must be addressed. It is an issue that must be addressed on an urgent basis by this Congress before it completes its work in the 105th Congress. The issue is the farm crisis that exists in rural America. I come from a rural State, the State of North Dakota, which is the size of 10 Massachusetts in landmass. It has 640,000 residents, and 40 to 50 percent of our State's economy comes from agriculture, and our system of family farming. I have spoken on the floor at some length about the problems and challenges we face these days. In the last year, family farmers in our State suffered a 98-percent drop in net farm income. Yes, I said a 98-percent loss of their net income. Now, these are families who have elected, for a variety of reasons, to populate rural America. They own a farm. They raise livestock. They till the soil and produce grain. They produce America's foodstuffs. They take enormous risks, often with very few rewards. They live out in the country and they turn that yard light on at night, and that illuminates a family out there somewhere living on the land trying to make a living. What is happening these days in the Farm Belt is that grain prices have collapsed, and livestock prices are way down. These family farmers who have risked everything they have and invested it in their hopes and dreams in making this family farm work, are now all too often standing with tears in their eyes as their farm is being sold at an auction sale. This country will lose something important if it loses its family farmers. I suppose we could farm America from California to Maine with giant agrifactories. We could have big corporate farms and a farming system where nobody lives on the land and there are no yard lights because nobody is there at night. Do we want corporate agrifactories farming America? This country will have lost something very important in its culture and in its economy if we lose our family farmers. And, we will lose them if we don't decide as a Congress to take action soon. Congress needs to tell farmers that this nation wants to help them through these troubled time. We need to build a bridge across these price valleys, when grain prices, cattle prices and hog prices collapse. We want to help. But, if we don't do that soon, we won't have many farmers left. This isn't about Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals; it is about values and whether we in this Congress believe that family farming contributes to this country. I consider myself a Jeffersonian kind of Democrat. A Jeffersonian Democrat is somebody who really believes in broad-based economic ownership in this country, and who believes that the political freedoms we enjoy in this country could not exist without economic freedom. Such freedom comes only with broad- based economic ownership. It does not come with concentration, nor with big corporations, but with broad-based ownership in which the men and women of America are out there investing in farms and small businesses. Nowhere is that broad-based economic ownership more important and more apparent to the economic health of this country than on America's farms and ranches. I was in a Quonset building a couple of days ago in North Dakota. It was in the evening and there was a picnic out on the farmstead. Farmers from all around the county came. About 100 folks gathered there. This young fellow who owned this farm hadn't finished taking off his grain. He had been trying hard, but he hadn't gotten it all off the field yet. As we were in this Quonset hut at this picnic, the clouds began to form out in the west. First they were blue and then almost black. Those clouds came in as part of a vicious, vicious storm. It came with a vengeance with wind, hail, rain. Inside that Quonset, it sounded almost like war as the huge hailstones were hitting that steel roof, making a loud, echoing sound together with the pelting rain. I watched those farmers in that Quonset building look at those clouds. I started to understand what that storm meant when tears welled up in their eyes and they were shaking their heads. Some of these farmers knew that storm was probably wiping them out, destroying their crop, and probably destroying their hope to get something off of those fields and get it to the market and pay some bills. Those are the risks our farmers face. Two years ago, the Congress passed the farm bill. I didn't vote for it. I didn't think it was a good farm bill. In the last 2 years, wheat prices have dropped 57 percent, right off the table. This is critical to us because wheat is the largest cash crop in North Dakota that the family farmers raise. In addition to wheat prices collapsing on us, we have also had the worst crop disease in the century. The most damaging is known as fusarium head blight or scab. So we have had crop diseases, together with the wet cycle that has fostered these diseases, a collapse in prices, and we have had auction sales all across the State. Family farmers are wondering whether they can continue. Their lenders are saying, ``I don't think you can continue because the farm bill Congress passed has decreasing support prices in the out years, and it doesn't look good. Maybe you ought to get out now and save whatever little equity you can.'' That is the position farmers now find themselves in too often in rural America. So the question for us is what should we do about it? In July this Senate passed a bill that included $500 million in what is called an indemnification program. Senator Conrad and I authored that, along with Senator Craig and others. That bill is now going into conference committee with the House. We need to get that bill through to try to get some short-term help to family farmers. The indemnification program will have to be increased because of other disaster situations. The Texas cotton crop was devastated. Louisiana, Oklahoma, and other States now face an increasing crisis in family farming and in agriculture. In addition to that bill, it seems to me the Congress has a responsibility now to reach out to family farmers and say: ``We made a mistake a couple years ago. We need to build back some sort of price support program for you. We don't want to tell you when to plant, or how to plant, or what to plant. We don't want to do that. But we want to say that you matter and we care about family farmers, and we want to provide some basic kind of price bridge to get you over these price valleys.'' We only have a couple of weeks to do that. I find it disturbing that in our economic system that almost everyone who touches something that a farmer grows or produces is making money with it. Farmers buy the seed and they buy the equipment to plant the seed. They put the fertilizer in the ground. They hope it doesn't hail, and that the insects don't come. They hope it doesn't rain too much. And, they hope it rains enough. Then maybe they get a crop. When they harvest the crop, they hope when they put it in the truck and drive it to the elevator, they will get a decent price for it. Any problem along the way may mean they are gone, broke, and out of business. Let's assume that farmer gets through the year and harvests the grain and gets a dismal price for it. That is what is happening right now. What happens to this harvest? Somebody puts it on a train and they put it on those tracks and down the tracks it goes. And guess what? The railroads are making money. Do you think they aren't making money off that wheat? The farmer who planted and harvested it didn't, but the railroads are making money, I suspect record profits. Then it goes to a miller. The millers are doing fine. They are making money. Then it goes to some plant someplace where they are going to make breakfast food out of it. They take that kernel of wheat and put it into a plant and they puff it up. They make puffed wheat. They put it in a box and send it to a store and somebody buys the puffed wheat. They are making money off it. The people who move it, the people who puff it and crisp it, and the people who sell it in a store make money. Everyone makes money except the people who produced it. The family farmers don't make money from their harvests. They are going broke. What kind of a system is that? Speaking of disconnections in the system, let's look further at our food system. We have a system that doesn't make sense. As farmers go broke we have circumstances where halfway around the world today, we hear that old women are climbing trees in Sudan trying to find leaves to eat because they are on the abyss of starvation. Millions are starving. At the very same time an old woman is climbing a tree to get leaves to eat in Sudan, a farmer is loading a 2-ton truck to take to the country elevator, and when they get there, the elevator operator says, ``We're sorry, this wheat isn't worth anything; the market has collapsed. This wheat doesn't have value.'' What kind of a disconnection is that? In the same world, halfway around the globe, people are starving and those who produce the best foodstuffs in the world are told it doesn't have value. There is something wrong with that picture as well. My hope is that in the coming 4 or 5 weeks, Republicans and Democrats will understand that it is our responsibility as a country to say to that this most important sector, the agriculture sector, matters. We need to especially tell our family farmers that they matter and that we are going to make a difference by passing a price support mechanism of some type that gives them a chance to survive. Let me add one final piece to this. In addition to saying that price supports will be available when prices collapse and we want family farmers to survive, this Congress also ought to do something to help family farmers survive by saying we will correct the problems in the trade agreements that we have negotiated over recent years that have been to the detriment of family farmers. Almost no one wants to hear my recitation of the trade problems because they have heard it so often. We send negotiators to go to negotiate with Canada, and we have an $11 billion trade deficit with Canada. They finish the negotiations, bring the treaty back to Congress, Congress passes the treaty, and the trade deficit doubles. They send negotiators to go negotiate with Mexico. That is done. They send it to Congress, and Congress approves it--not with my vote--and a surplus turns into a big deficit. They send negotiators to go out and negotiate a GATT agreement. The same thing: Record trade deficits. Mr. President, there is something wrong. Mr. President, there is something dreadfully wrong when our family farmers and other producers in this country--but especially family farmers--are told: ``You compete in the open market. It is a global economy. You go compete.'' And our negotiators somehow fail to suit up. I don't think it should be necessary for our negotiators to wear a jersey reminding them for whom they are negotiating. But, somehow they should be reminded. Maybe we ought to have our negotiators wear a jersey like they wear in the Olympics that says ``USA'' just so they understand whom they represent. Maybe the next time they bring a trade treaty back to the U.S. Senate they can bring one back that serves our economic interest. We need trade agreements that are not driven by foreign policy, but instead are guided by hard-nosed economic policy that represents our economic interests. Now we are told that in the next week or so we are going to have fast-track trade authority brought to the floor of the Senate. Good luck. This fast track is going to do more of the same trade stuff that got us into this trouble. Not with my vote. I intend to stand here and object to every single thing that is asked and every single thing that is requested to get fast track to the floor of the Senate. I am only one person. I probably can't stop it. But I can sure slow it down some. I fully intend to do that. I have something to say to those folks who are so all-fired anxious to bring fast-track trade authority back to the floor of the Senate based on the package already reported out of the Senate Finance Committee. If you are so anxious to talk about trade, why don't you figure out how to deal with the problems created in our previous trade agreements. Before you start trying to figure out how you send people over to do new trade treaties with other countries, fix a few of the problems. Fix the problems with Canada. Tell our farmers why a flood of Canadian grain can come across in this direction, and a pickup truck with a few kernels gets stopped at the Canadian border, and they have to sweep the few kernels off because you can't take a few kernels of wheat into Canada. Tell our farmers how that is free trade. It is not. Fix those trade agreements before you come to us talking about more fast-track trade agreements. I just want to say this to the majority leader and others. If you think this place is going to move quickly, trying to bring fast track to the floor of the Senate is a sure fire way of slowing down the proceedings of the Senate. I guarantee it. Fast track will not solve the farm crisis. It is the farm crisis that has to be our priority in the remaining few weeks of this session. I hope very much that we can agree on a bipartisan basis on the need and the urgency to address the farm crisis. I hope that we can do that on a bipartisan basis. Farmers don't get up in the morning or go to bed at night as Republicans or Democrats. They don't care with respect to their long-term economic survival whether it is a Republican or a Democratic plan. They care about whether it is a plan that works. They need a plan that says to them that we care about them and their future. I hope that all of us who come from farm country and who represent rural America can join together and decide to do something meaningful, something real, and something that really does help family farmers before we adjourn this 105th Congress. I wanted to make those comments because in the next week or so I expect there will be amendments offered once again on the floor of the Senate dealing with farm price supports that need to be passed. I will also be involved in the Appropriations Committee in conference with the House to move forward with the $500 million indemnification program which Senator Conrad and I and others authored and that we have already passed through the Senate. And we may be working on other issues as well, including the trade issue that I just described. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Washington for allowing me to make some interim comments. I noticed I wasn't interrupted. I guess that means no one showed up to offer an amendment on his Interior bill. Let me also say that I am a member of the Appropriations Committee and a member of the subcommittee. I very much respect his leadership. I think he does an excellent job with this piece of legislation. I say that because tomorrow I intend to offer an amendment that I hope he will perhaps accept. But I thank him again for allowing me the time to interrupt the legislation on the floor. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.