Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the legislation described by my colleague, the Travel Promotion Act, is legislation I wish to discuss. The Travel Promotion Act is a bipartisan piece of legislation I have introduced with Senators Ensign, Inouye, Martinez, Klobuchar, Reid, and many others. I believe in the last session of Congress, when we introduced this, we had over 50 cosponsors. Let me describe what its purpose is. Who can be against travel promotion? Here is what has happened to our country with respect to the jobs and economic growth that comes with a decline in foreigners traveling to the United States. Measures put in place quickly after the 2001 attack on 9/11 had a significant impact on travel to the United States by foreign travelers. We, obviously, wanted to be careful about whom we allowed into our country. We still do. But what happened following that is, instead of reaching out to the world to say: Visit the United States, this is a great place, we encourage you to come here, to vacation here, to see what the United States is all about, we backed away from that. Other countries have not. Here is what we have experienced. I have a chart here showing overseas travel between 2000 and 2008. Since 2000 and 2008, there has been a 3-percent decrease in foreign visitors to the United States. At the same time, there has been a 40- percent increase in visitors to other countries around the world. Think of the consequences of that to our economy. A foreign visitor, overseas visitor, coming to our country spends on average $4,500 per visit--that is a lot of economic activity, a lot of economic growth and jobs. But inbound travel has decreased in our country and substantially increased in others. Why is that the case? The rest of the world is very anxious to attract destination visitors to their country, international travelers, to say: We want you to come to our country as a destination for your trip. Take India--one special reason to visit India is this advertisement saying: ``Incredible India, any time is a good time to visit the land of Taj, but there is no time like now.'' Not unusual to see this. It is not only India. Australia's says: ``Arrived looking for an experience to remember. Departed with adventure we will never forget. Australia, come to Australia.'' If you are an overseas traveler, deciding where to visit, be sure and come to Australia. Ireland says: ``Go where Ireland takes you.'' Pretty straightforward--makes you want to go to Ireland. Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Australia, India, Ireland, they say: Come to our country. Travel to our country. See what our country is about. We are not doing that. As a result, in the last 8 years, we have seen a 3-percent decrease in travel by foreign visitors to the United States, while the rest of the world has had a 40-percent increase in travelers destined to those other areas. It makes a big difference. It is very negative in terms of our country's economic opportunity that comes from travel and tourism. I showed the examples of what other countries are saying in their very explicit campaigns around the world, to say to people: If you are traveling abroad, if you are planning a vacation, a trip, come to our country. Come and see Italy, Great Britain, Ireland, India. Let me show you what is happening with respect to our country. Headlines such as these: The Sydney Sunday Morning Herald: ``Coming to America Isn't Easy.'' From The Guardian: ``America: More Hassle Than It's Worth?'' From The Sunday Times in London: ``Travel to America? No Thanks.'' There is a perception that it is difficult to come to our country, hard to get a visa, and tourists will experience long waiting lines. Many of these problems have been corrected or improved. In the construction of this legislation, we address the need to better communicate our entry and exit procedures and their improvements. We don't want these negative headlines to be the message to the rest of the world--in fact, quite the opposite. What a large group of us in the Congress want is for our country to be engaged internationally, to say to people around the world: Come to our country. To see the United States is to understand the wonder of this great country. Come here. Stay here. Vacation here. Understand what America is about. I can't think of anything better, in terms of our position in the world and how people think of this great country, than to invite them and encourage them to come here. That is why we have introduced this bipartisan piece of legislation called the Travel Promotion Act of 2009. Interestingly enough, the Congressional Budget Office has said this piece of legislation will reduce the Federal budget deficit by $425 million between 2010 and 2019. We don't bring many pieces of legislation to the floor of the Senate in which the Congressional Budget Office says: This will make money. This is a net positive. This will reduce the Federal budget deficit. That is what this bill is about. Let me explain, for a moment, what we are trying to do with the legislation. The Travel Promotion Act will attempt to create international travel opportunities for people from all around the world to come to this country. It will set up a nationally coordinated travel promotion campaign run in a public-private partnership to communicate to the world our country's travel policies and, more importantly, communicate to the world: We want you here. We want you to explore what this great country has to offer. This public-private partnership is an ideal method for us to improve any negative perceptions out there, particularly as we work on visas and any remaining delays in entry procedures which we have corrected, in large part. This combines public sector accountability with private sector enterprise. This bill establishes a Corporation for Travel Promotion, an independent, nonprofit corporation, with an 11-member board of directors appointed by the Secretary of Commerce. It creates an Office of Travel Promotion in the Department of Commerce to work with that nonprofit corporation. It sets up a travel promotion fund, financed by a public-private matching program. Federal contributions will be financed by a $10 fee paid by foreign travelers from visa waiver countries and collected in what is called the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. Many other countries impose fees for people coming and going: Australia, $37 departure fee, an entry fee of $19 to $70; Mexico, an $11 departure fee, up to $38; New Zealand, $16 to $19 on the departure fee; United Kingdom, $80 to $160. There are a lot of fees around for people traveling internationally. We propose to fund this with a very modest fee of $10. This is very simple. It should be noncontroversial. There are many of us who have worked on this and worked very hard. My colleague from Minnesota is here, Senator Klobuchar, who has worked with us on this legislation. This is a piece of legislation Senator Reid has worked on. Senator Ensign is the lead Republican cosponsor. Other cosponsors include Senator Martinez and Senator Nelson of Florida. We have cosponsors across the political spectrum because this issue of asking people from around the world to come to America is not controversial and benefits every State. It cannot possibly be partisan, and it certainly is job creating. Now here is what some newspapers around the country have said about the legislation. The Sacramento Bee: This country needs to reclaim its status as a global magnet for visitors . . . and Congress can help by passing the Travel Promotion Act. The Los Angeles Times: Considering that the U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars on public diplomacy with dubious results and nearly nothing on promoting tourism, we might do well to invest a little money in wooing travelers. The Detroit Free Press: Doesn't it make sense to encourage--at no cost to taxpayers--foreign visitors to come here and leave us some money? There's no good reason not to pass this bill. The Dallas Morning News: The Travel Promotion Act is a sensible first step toward putting the welcome mat back on America's doorstep. And the list goes on. I do not come from Hawaii or Florida or California, I come from the northern Great Plains. And we have a lot of tourist destinations: the Badlands in North Dakota, some of the most beautiful areas in our country. Tourism is North Dakota's second largest industry. There are so many destinations with such wonder to attract people to our region of the country. It is where Lewis and Clark, in their epic adventure, decided to spend the winter in area about 40 miles north of Bismarck, ND. We celebrated the 200th anniversary, the bicentennial, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and we had a lot of people come from around the world to see that. The fact is, every State in this country has something it is anxious to show the world, to say: Look at us. Look at what we are doing here. Look how beautiful this part of America is. So what has happened is, we have been unilaterally disarmed since 9/ 11, to say: Well, we are worried about who is going to come into this country. We certainly want to keep terrorists out. We sure do, absolutely. But that message ought not be mixed with a message that we do not want to encourage foreign travelers to come to this country to vacation and to experience America. So at long last a group of us, Republicans and Democrats, have said: If we disagree on so much, how about if we agree on tourism? Can we agree on promoting travel? To say to the English, the Italians, the Spaniards, the French, the folks from India and Thailand and China and elsewhere: You are welcome in this country. We want you to come to this country. We want you to see what our country is about? To experience this country is to have a sense of wonder about the greatest democracy, the most significant and longest surviving democracy on Earth. We want them to go home with that understanding of what a great country this is. That is what we want. By the way, we do not believe our nearest neighbors--Mexico and Canada--are irrelevant. We have a lot of people coming from Mexico and Canada, and God bless them. They are great neighbors. We welcome them. We are told they spend, on average, about $900 per trip. The foreign travelers from overseas, by contrast, spend about $4,500 per trip. That is why this is such an unbelievable job generator. People who come here and spend significant money and purchase the hotel rooms and the rental cars and go to the tourist attractions and do the things people who want to experience America routinely do not only create a lot of jobs and boost economic activity, but their travel also gives us the opportunity to show the rest of the world this is an extraordinary place where they can go home and tell their neighbors they just went to one of the greatest places on Earth. So as to the Travel Promotion Act of 2009, my hope is--after having battled here on so many different issues, and having cloture votes on everything, and then 30 hours post-cloture while we all stand around with our hands in our pockets and shuffling our shoes--my hope is, perhaps this is the issue, this is the one time, this is the occasion where everybody might say: Do you know something. There is something we can agree on that is noncontroversial, that makes sense. It creates jobs, it expands the economy, and represents the best of sending American values abroad; and that is, the Travel Promotion Act. If, perhaps, next week we get to that point, I think the American people will have believed we have done something good. So I am pleased to be the lead sponsor. We introduced this in the last Congress and did not get it passed. In this Congress I believe we will. I give my commendation to the majority leader and thank him for putting this on the agenda. I give my thanks to Senator Ensign as the lead cosponsor on the Republican side. But so many Republicans and Democrats have said: Yes, this makes sense. Count us in. We want to be part of expanding this economy and creating jobs and giving an opportunity for the people in the rest of the world to understand we welcome them here.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ryan Douglas, Christian Fjeld, and Lisa Hone, Congressional fellows with the Commerce Committee, be allowed floor privileges during the consideration of S. 1023.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, be recognized following my presentation.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I wanted to compliment Senator Dodd for his work on this bill, as well as Senator Enzi and others. I want the Record to reflect something we agreed to today. Some will wonder what has happened to the legislation that I indicated I would offer on the bill we just had a cloture vote on--the importation of prescription drugs. I intended to offer it on this bill. I have received from the majority leader a commitment that it will be put on the calendar under rule XIV and brought to the Senate for a vote, and he will do that very soon. On that basis, I voted for cloture. I know my colleagues, Senator Snowe, Senator McCain, Senator Stabenow, and many others feel very strongly about this, as do I. We have been at this for 8 or 10 years. It has been a long time, and the support for allowing the importation of FDA-approved prescription drugs is very broad in the Senate. Senators McCain, Grassley, Kennedy, Stabenow, myself--in fact, President Obama was a cosponsor of our legislation last year. He has included in his budget a provision for this kind of legislation. We had over 30 Senators--Republicans and Democrats--who believed the same thing, and that is we ought to allow the American consumer to access FDA-approved prescription drugs from other countries--not because we want them to shop in other countries but because we believe the ability to do so will put downward pressure on prescription drug prices in our country. Madam President, if I might, I ask unanimous consent to display these two pill bottles to show exactly what we are talking about.

Mr. DORGAN. This is Lipitor, produced in Ireland by the same company, shipped in two different directions. Even the bottle is identical, except one has a blue label and one has a red label. One of these went to Canada and one of them went to the United States. The American people get the pleasure of paying twice the price for Lipitor than the Canadians do. But it is not just Canada, it is virtually every other industrialized country that is able to pay a fraction of the price for prescription drugs our consumers are required to pay. Why? Because there is a law in our country that says the only entity that can import prescription drugs is the manufacturer of the drug itself. The legislation we have put together on a bipartisan basis is very straightforward and it provides substantially greater protections with pedigree and batch lots, and so on, substantially greater protection than now exists. So don't anybody tell me there is a safety issue. This is about whether the American people should continue to be paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. At last--at long last--we ought to have a vote on this and get it through the Congress and signed by a President who was a cosponsor when he served in this body. So the majority leader has committed to giving us the opportunity to get this on the floor, and that commitment we will exchange by letter in the morning. I expect that to happen in the very near future, within a matter of a couple of weeks, and I believe that finally we will be able to dispose of this on the floor of the Senate. I believe that we have more than sufficient votes to pass this importation of prescription drugs legislation in order to put downward pressure on drug prices in this country. What is happening in this country with drug pricing is unfair to the American people. It is as simple as that, and we aim to correct it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, June 11, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Reforming the Indian Health Care System. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know we are on the 30 hours postcloture on the legislation that is the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. I support that legislation. I applaud our colleague Senator Kennedy for his leadership on this issue. It gives the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco, including ingredients in tobacco products and tobacco marketing, which I think is an important step for our Nation's health. We talked a lot about this in the past. The fact is that smoking and the use of tobacco is dangerous to one's health. We know that. I had a doctor once say there are three things that will give you pretty good odds for a longer life. One is wear a seatbelt. The second is keep your weight down. And the third is don't smoke. Pretty sound advice. The ``don't smoke'' piece is about the health consequences of smoking. We know especially the issue of marketing and marketing to children is a pernicious activity. We also know the best way you can get somebody hooked on cigarettes is to get them when they are kids, get them when they are young. Do you know of anybody who at age 35 is sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner watching a color television set ruminating about life and thinking to themselves: What on Earth have I missed in life? What can I do to enhance my life? What should I be doing that I so far have been unable to do and they decide: I have to take up smoking. That just doesn't happen. If you don't get them when they are kids, you don't get them. That is why we pay a lot of attention to addiction to nicotine, marketing to children, and so on. Let me say again the leadership of Senator Kennedy and so many others on a bipartisan basis on this issue I think is very important. It deals directly with the issue of the health of the American people. I do want to say, however, that I intend to offer an amendment tomorrow when we get on the bill itself. I want to describe why I am offering an amendment and what the amendment does. The amendment is called the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act. This underlying bill deals with the FDA. So, too, will my amendment deal with the FDA. I will offer the amendment with Senator Snowe from Maine, the Dorgan-Snowe bill which we worked on for a long while. It has very wide support in this Chamber from Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Chuck Grassley, Debbie Stabenow. So many others in this Chamber on a bipartisan basis have supported this concept. Let us give the American people the opportunity that comes with the worldwide economy and the ability in the free market to choose your products. And here is the reason it is important to do that. The American people at this point understand the value of prescription drugs. They are enormously valuable, and I commend all of those who produce prescription drugs. Yes, the pharmaceutical industry--good for them. Yes, the National Institutes of Health and in so many other areas with public funding as well that develop the approaches that result in lifesaving prescription drugs. I commend all of them, including the pharmaceutical industry. But it is also the case that the pricing mechanism the pharmaceutical industry uses in this country is fundamentally flawed. They have a pricing mechanism that in most cases for major brand drugs, the American people are told: You get to pay the highest prices in the world. You, the American people, get to pay the highest prices in the world for the same pill put in the same bottle made by the same company. And it is not fair. I have an example of that, and I ask unanimous consent to show them on the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is the drug called Lipitor. Most people understand what Lipitor is. It is a drug that is used to lower cholesterol. This happens to be made in Ireland and sent all over the world. These two bottles were sent to two different places--one to the United States and one to Canada. The United States consumer got to pay twice as much as the Canadian consumer. It is the same bottle, same pill, same company, FDA approved, and the American people are charged twice as much. And it is not just Lipitor. It is drug after drug. The question is, why? Why should that be the case? It is not just Canada, it is virtually every other country in the world as well that enjoys lower cost prescription drugs, when, in fact, we pay a much higher cost for the identical drug. This happens to be the price--$4.47 per 20 milligram tablet of Lipitor to a U.S. consumer, and just north of the border, $1.82 for the same drug. I could have used other countries. It would have shown the same result. I have taken a busload of North Dakotans to Canada because I live in a State that borders Canada. In a one-room drugstore at Emerson, Canada, I saw individuals buy their prescription drugs and saw the savings drug by drug. I sat in a farmyard one summer afternoon with an old codger in his eighties from North Dakota. He was talking about health care. He said: You know, my wife has been fighting breast cancer for 3 years. He said: For 3 years every 3 months we have driven to Canada to buy Tamoxifen to fight her breast cancer. Why did we drive to Canada? Because we couldn't afford it in the United States. We couldn't afford to pay for the drugs for my wife's fight against breast cancer. It was 80 percent less costly for the identical drug just north of the border. That is not fair. Again, it is not just Canada. It is virtually every other industrialized country where drugs are sold for a fraction of the price they are sold in the United States. These are FDA-approved drugs, made in FDA-approved facilities, and sent all around the world. The only difference is pricing. We are charged the highest prices in the world. The Wall Street Journal had a piece on April 15 of this year, quoting some experts: These kinds of price increases-- Speaking of prescription drugs-- are way out of line with what's being experienced in the rest of the economy. Said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a consumer health care advocacy organization. Credit Suisse's Catherine Arnold said drug companies have increased prices so aggressively in recent months to wring sales out of products before any health care cost-cutting efforts eat into profits. That is not fair. One might ask: How can they do it? They can do it because there is something in law that prevents the importation of prescription drugs, even FDA-approved drugs, prevents the importation into this country by anybody except the drug manufacturer itself. That means the American people are not given the same opportunity to shop worldwide for an FDA-approved drug. It means it is a free-trade economy except the American people cannot participate in that free trade. What we propose to do is to offer a piece of legislation that gives the American people the opportunity to access FDA-approved drugs, the same drug made in the same place marketed differently but priced higher in the United States to access those same drugs. Do we do this because we want Americans to buy their drugs from other countries? No, that is not the point. The point is if they can access that same FDA-approved drug sold for a fraction of the price in another country, it will force the pharmaceutical industry to reprice their drugs at a lower cost in this country in a manner that is fair to the American people. The estimates of what this will save are $50 billion in 10 years--$50 billion in savings in this country. That is not insignificant at all. One of the things that is always raised by those who support the practice of the pharmaceutical industry is this is going to cause all kinds of safety concerns. Can you imagine the counterfeit drugs that will come across? I just described this drug Lipitor. This is not made here. It is made in Ireland and then shipped in. How do we know this is real? The provisions in the legislation that we have created actually provide safety requirements that exceed those that now exist with respect to batch lots and pedigrees and all kinds of new resources for the FDA to do more audits than they now do, to do more inspections than they now do. Don't anybody come to the floor of the Senate raising those kinds of issues because they do not exist. This legislation is legislation that has very stringent safety requirements and will provide an opportunity for the American people for some basic fairness. Here is a quote from Mr. Hank McKinnell, former Pfizer CEO. He said: Name an industry in which competition is allowed to flourish--computers, telecommunications, small package shipping, retailing, entertainment--and I'll show you lower prices, higher quality, more innovation, and better customer service. There's nary an exception. OK, there's one. So far, the health care industry seems immune to the discipline of competition. That is exactly why the pharmaceutical industry can decide this afternoon behind a closed door: Here is what we are going to do to our prices, and if you don't like it, tough luck, because we have the capability to make it stick. I don't come to the floor of the Senate as someone who has some sort of grief against the pharmaceutical industry. As I said when I started, the pharmaceutical industry plays a very important role in health care in this country. I have a grief against their pricing policy, however. I held hearings on this issue long ago. A group of us on the floor of the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--has tried for some long while only to be blocked to pass legislation that would give the American people the opportunity to access the identical prescription drugs that are sold for a fraction of the price in the rest of the world and do it in a manner that is fair to the American people. We have been blocked in that opportunity. This is an FDA bill on the floor of the Senate. This is the place to offer this amendment. I visited with my colleagues this morning, Democrats and Republicans. I talked with Senator Stabenow, Senator Snowe, Senator McCain, and many others this morning about this amendment to this bill. On a bipartisan basis, we believe this will help the American consumer. It is long overdue. And at a time and during a year in which there is a lot of discussion about health care issues and the problems confronting this country in health care, one of the most significant problems is this dramatic march of price increases in health care. Look, we spend more money per person on health care than any other group. We spend more money than any group of people in the world per capita by far, and we rank 41st in life expectancy. Something is not working out quite so well there. One of the areas of these price increases in health care that leads the pack is the issue of prescription drugs. Prescription drugs allow us to manage disease, in many cases keep people out of an acute care bed, which is very expensive. We know the ability to manage health care conditions through the use of prescription drugs has been very helpful and has been lifesaving to many Americans and people around the world. We understand that completely. Those who oppose the amendment I am proposing would say: Look, all that will do then is shut down or at least reduce the revenue that the drug companies have, pharmaceutical companies have and, therefore, they will do less research and, therefore, have less opportunity to unlock the mysteries of these dreaded diseases and find the very next cure for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or some other disease. It is interesting to me that the costs or the amount of funds spent for marketing and promotion by the pharmaceutical industry, at least from information I have, exceed the amount of money they spend on research. How many people in the morning have a little television set somewhere near while they are brushing their teeth getting ready for work. The television set is on, and there is a voice on the television set and a really interesting picture and it is describing some awful symptom that you have that you want to get rid of, and they are describing the symptom and describe the 85 things that could go wrong if you take the pill they are pushing. Then they say: Go to your doctor and ask him if the purple pill is right for you. I don't know what the purple pill does; I don't know what it is about, but the commercials are so intriguing and so persuasive, you almost want to go ask someone if the purple pill is right for you. There is so much advertising relentlessly pushing prescription medicine at consumers--who can only get it if a doctor prescribes it in the first instance--how about cutting back on some of that advertising? So don't tell me that if they have to charge a price that is competitive with other prices around the world for the prescription drugs they sell in the United States that somehow it will injure their research. Let me say that a fair amount of the research goes on here at the Federal Government level through the National Institutes of Health and the contracts all across the country, and we are substantially increasing that investment. I believe in that and I support it. I am one of those who has pushed and pushed because there are so many things that we can unlock with respect to these mysterious diseases, and we can make this a much better future if we invest in the research necessary. When we find the capability and research to address these diseases, very often we see that research available to pharmaceutical industry companies that then market a pill or market some medicine as a result of it. And they do some research themselves--not insignificant, by the way--and find opportunities in their own companies as well to introduce and provide life-saving medicines. So my hat is off to all of them. It is just that I insist on fair pricing for the American people, and that has not been the case for a long time. I am offering an amendment that is going to save this country $50 billion over the next 10 years. My colleague, Senator Snowe, and I, along with many other colleagues, have introduced this piece of legislation--with more than 25 colleagues now, but we have had far more than that many in previous Congresses--and we are impatient. This has been a long tortuous trail and we are impatient to get this done on behalf of the American people. I wanted to come today, even during the 30-hour postcloture period, to say that when we are on the bill tomorrow, I intend to offer this legislation and to do it in a way that advantages the American consumer to be able to access the same quality prescription drugs that other consumers around the world are accessing for similar prices. At the moment that is not the case. We are overcharged. The drugs are overpriced. It is unfair to the American consumer, and it is past time--long past the time--for this Congress to do something about it. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing to examine Executive Branch authority to acquire trust lands for Indian Tribes. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to address today's vote to confirm Mr. Gary Gensler as a Commissioner and Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, CFTC. I have serious reservations about this nomination and am voting against it. Let me explain why. Mr. Gensler was a key proponent of deregulation in the late 1990s and he specifically advocated that swaps and other derivatives not be regulated. I had the opposite view. I argued at the time that such deregulation would result in banks making very risky bets which would ultimately lead to massive taxpayer bailouts to save the financial system. I regret that I was right. We now know the disastrous consequences of the push to deregulate. We will long regret repealing the protections put in place after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the view that the market knows best and regulation was the enemy. The costs for these views and actions have been monumental. Taxpayers and American families have paid the price. Our government has spent, lent or guaranteed more than $13 trillion responding to the financial meltdown. In addition, U.S. household wealth has decreased by almost $13 trillion as home values plummet and stock markets crash. But, that is not all. As our gross domestic product goes down, our unemployment rate goes up, getting close to 10 percent, and, when combined with those working part time who want to work full time, is actually higher than 15 percent. However, we must not forget that the real cost of these disastrous policies is much more than dollars and statistics. The real costs are lifetime savings vanished, jobs lost, careers shattered, homes foreclosed, neighborhoods destroyed, retirements deferred, colleges unaffordable and the American dream for too many of our neighbors devastated. Now that all this wreckage has happened and now that he has been nominated for the CFTC, Mr. Gensler has stated that he has changed his views on the need for and importance of regulation. I welcome those new views and look forward to him putting his words into action. If he does, I will be one of the first to come to the floor to applaud him. I met with him privately and Mr. Gensler was candid and forthright about changing his views. In our meeting and in his testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Mr. Gensler made clear that he now understands how important the CFTC is as one of the key regulatory agencies charged with protecting the integrity of our markets. I stressed to him that America can no longer afford a do-nothing CFTC. The CFTC has to be a cop on the beat. It has to vigilantly monitor the commodities markets and aggressively act to ensure that they are not being manipulated or distorted by speculators or anyone else. It has to act quickly in an unbiased and nonideological manner to protect those markets and consumers. In my view, Mr. Gensler does not have to wait to put his words into action. Last year, the CFTC acted like the three monkeys: see nothing, hear nothing, and do nothing, as oil prices skyrocketed from $50 to almost $150 and a gallon of gas approached $5. Like a parrot, the CFTC said over and over this was caused by the fundamentals of supply and demand, ignoring all facts to the contrary, including massive speculation from Wall Street pouring investment cash into the commodities markets. The CFTC must investigate whether or not speculators were able to manipulate and distort the commodities markets. I believe they did and they will do it again unless they are thoroughly investigated by an agency that takes its mission to protect markets and consumers seriously. While I am prepared to be surprised by Mr. Gensler and I hope I am, I simply cannot vote for someone to lead such an important agency after he had such a critical role in ensuring that derivates were not regulated, which caused so much devastation across our country. I look forward to Mr. Gensler proving my concerns unwarranted.

Mr. DORGAN

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

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this week we will once again take up legislation--and, hopefully, finish it--called the credit card reform bill. I wanted to speak for a few minutes about what the bill contains and why it is important we enact that legislation. I have spoken many times in the last year and a half about the subprime mortgage scandal. It is another adjunct of this. A substantial amount of debt, debt to purchase a home, is not unusual. Almost no one can purchase a home by using cash because they don't have that kind of cash. So they borrow money, which is called a home mortgage. The subprime home mortgage scandal is unbelievable, and I have spoken about it at length. I have shown advertisements from Countrywide Mortgage which was the largest mortgage lender, from Millennium Mortgage and Zoom Credit, and other mortgage companies that were advertising to people with: If you have been bankrupt, if you have bad credit, if you don't pay your bills on time, come to us. We will give you a mortgage. It was unbelievable what was going on. Bad credit, no credit, slow credit, bankrupt, come to us. We will give you a home mortgage. That sort of thing steered this country's economy right into the ditch and caused a massive amount of problems. Now we see all of these foreclosures and banks in trouble. It is an unbelievable mess. At its root is a substantial amount of greed and a massive amount of mortgage debt. In some cases mortgages were made to people who couldn't pay them, with teaser rates of 2 percent which, when reset, would be 10 and 12 percent, and prepayment penalties so that someone couldn't get out of this mess. It is unbelievable. That is the home mortgage subprime scandal. A lot of folks got rich. The guy who ran Countrywide Mortgage left with $200 million. The company collapsed, a substantial amount of people were injured and hurt, but he left with a couple hundred million dollars. He was given the Horatio Alger award. He won businessman of the year, a big deal. He steered his company right into the ditch as well. This isn't about subprime mortgages. It is about another form of indebtedness, credit card debt. Let me talk for a moment about where we find ourselves with credit cards. It is interesting. In 2008, there were 4.2 billion credit card solicitations sent to consumers. Think of that, 4.2 billion credit card solicitations sent to consumers. We are told it was a bad year--the economy was collapsing--but apparently not in the credit card industry. The average credit card debt per household that has a balance is $10,000. That is the average credit card debt of households that have a credit card balance. Total amount of credit made available by issuers in 2007 was about $5 trillion. This legislation will start to help to curb some of the unfair credit card practices. Let me be quick to say that I use credit cards. I am sure all of my colleagues do. There is a very significant value to credit cards. I am not suggesting there is not. I am saying, when you wallpaper the entire country with credit cards, including especially targeting kids who have no jobs, and then saying, as they did in the subprime mortgage, if you have bad credit, come to us, we will give you a credit card, there is something wrong with that. Yet that is what has been happening. Now we are seeing credit card companies who have had customers for 5, 10, 20 years, who have never been late with a payment, jack up their interest rates from 7 percent to 27 percent. Credit card holders are completely astounded by the penalties and interest rate increases, despite the fact that they have never had a late payment. Those are some of the abuses that have existed. This legislation will begin to deal with those abuses. Let me show a couple of charts. This is an advertisement for a platinum card. It says: Even if your credit is less than perfect. That is just a little offshoot of what they did in the subprime mortgage. Hey, if your credit ain't perfect, as they say, come to us. You got bad credit, slow credit, no credit, been bankrupt, come over here; let us give you a hand. That is what this credit card says. Here is a debit card. This is one by the Bank of America. It makes a point but that I think is important. You can see the colors on this debit card. Obviously, this is aimed at kids. This is obviously a children's approach to Joe Camel for cigarettes. But we have a debit card that is about the same thing. Let me show first this chart. This shows Bruce Guiliano, senior vice president for licensing for Sanrio, Inc., which owns the Hello Kitty brand. That is the next card I will show you. It says: We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14, although it certainly could be younger. Can you imagine grown men and women sitting around saying: What is our target group for credit cards. We think this is our target group for the new Hello Kitty Platinum Plus Visa credit card. Is this unbelievable? If somebody said to you in class at Harvard Business School: Here is a business proposition. What do you think it will be like if you run a company and you are putting credit cards out there and you are aiming credit cards at kids, 12-year-old kids. This is, obviously, the Hello Kitty Platinum Plus card. I would love to know the person who thought this up, to ask: Are you nuts? My son happened to get a credit cart solicitation a long while ago. He is in college now. He got a solicitation from a credit card company saying: We have a preapproved credit card for you, and we want you to take a trip to Paris, France. So actually I came to the floor of the Senate and explained to this credit card company, my son is only 12 years old. He is not going to Paris. He is not going to take your credit card either. But what are the credit card companies doing soliciting young kids to get a credit card? This is not an accident. I just showed you: Our target audience is 10 to 14. So what do we do with the targets? We design a credit card, a Hello Kitty Platinum Plus, pink and white and yellow. Unbelievable. Let me show you a credit card for people who don't have such great credit. They get a gold card. This is First Premier Bank. Here is what they do. You don't have such good credit? We will give you a credit card. Come on. The limit is going to be $250. It is going to be gold. But here is the trick. In order to get this credit card that you can use for up to $250, you have to pay a $48 annual fee. You have to pay a $29 account set-up fee, a $95 program fee and $7 a month for servicing. Does that sound like good business to you? Not to me. It sounds like the kind of thing I used to see in the movies. They wore strange suits with big thick stripes, and they carried violin cases. They loaned each other money. I understand this. Michigan State University. I could use this for any university. A credit card company wanting to wallpaper the dorms and fraternity houses of virtually anyone who is going to college. Most of them don't have a job; some do. I understand the value of a credit card for a college student. What I don't understand is, the credit cards are given to a college student and, in many cases, the parents will cosign because if the student doesn't have a job, you have to have the parents' cosignature. Then all of a sudden the credit card limit is increased without the permission of the cosigner. That is the game. Here are some notes from constituents of mine. This is a couple from Minot: My wife and I both have credit scores greater than 800 and have never been late on any of our payments. So Capital One just sent us a notice that our interest rate on our credit card will almost triple. Never been late, always made payments on time. Their interest rate is going to triple. Here is one from Fairmount: I just wanted to let you know how upset I am with the credit card company (Citibank). They have decided to raise my interest rate to 27 percent. I have always paid my bill on time, have a good credit rating (820). Why would a company that has been bailed out by taxpayers because of bad practices then decide to stick it to us by raising interest rates so high. He refers to the local mafia, but the fact is, I know there are no local mafia there. From Williston: Enough is enough. We have shored up these banks with our hard-earned tax dollars just to have them raise the interest rates on their credit cards to 28 percent and 26.3 percent for absolutely no reason. Something has to be done. Let me reiterate that I think credit cards are valuable and useful. Most of us use credit cards. But what I think has happened is certain practices have evolved and developed that are pretty unseemly. A practice that says: We need to figure out how to go after kids. It reminds me of the tobacco debate. Because if you don't get a kid when they are a kid, you are not going to get them to smoke; right? Anybody know of somebody who has reached the age of 30 and they are sitting around their living room thinking to themselves, all right, I need to do something different, what haven't I yet done that I should begin doing, and decides the answer is to start smoking? Does anybody know anyone like that? The only way you get somebody to smoke is you find a kid and addict the kid to cigarettes. What about this, aiming a Visa card at 10 to 14-year-olds? It is unbelievable to me. We bring a bill to the floor of the Senate that we think we will vote on tomorrow. We will have a cloture vote first. We will see if we can't put a stop to some of the practices that have allowed some of the same companies that have gotten substantial bailout funds to say to their customers, who have always paid their bills on time, never been late: We have a treat for you. We have a big, old surprise in your mailbox. You know that 7 percent or 9 percent interest rate you used to pay on your credit card balance? No more. Now it is going to be 27 or 28 percent. That is not a business practice I think is justifiable. I think Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby from the Banking Committee have brought us legislation that is necessary and one that will be helpful in trying to put a stop to unfair business practices. I know there are some who say this is none of government's business. I think it is. When consumers are injured, consumers individually and even in a significant group are no match for the size of the companies that have decided to engage in this and do this to the American people. This legislation is very simple. It sets up the conditions under which we will try to protect consumers from arbitrary interest rates, fee and finance increases, and we will prohibit interest charges on paid-off balances from previous billing cycles, prohibit interest charges on debt that is paid on time. We will require payments to be applied first to the credit card balance with the highest interest rate. We will protect students and other young consumers from aggressive credit card solicitations. We will require greater disclosure of rates and terms and billings, details by credit card companies, and establish tougher penalties for companies that violate these laws. This is not rocket science. It is very simple. When you engage in these practices and start injuring consumers, often without their knowledge, when you are doing something that is fundamentally unfair and doing it all across the country, the Banking Committee, led by Senators Dodd and Shelby, has a right and the Senate has a right to say: We will try to put a stop to it. There needs to be some semblance of fairness and equity for the American people. There are a whole lot of folks who go to work every day, work hard, try to do the best they can to care for their family and deal with their daily lives. They pay their bills. They have credit cards. They pay those credit card bills. They have made a deal with the credit card company over time about the conditions of that credit card bill, only to discover one day when they come home from work their mailbox contains a little message from the credit card company: Yes, you are a good customer. We have news for you. You are going to pay higher fees and triple the interest rates, and there is not a thing you can do about it. Well, do you know what? The American people can do something about it through the actions of the Senate. I think that is going to happen-- beginning tomorrow--and I think it will be good news for the American people. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that William ``Bill'' Curlin have full floor privileges during the consideration of the supplemental appropriations bill. He is a fellow in my office.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 5 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, yesterday we heard on the radio and in news accounts of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the crash that occurred in Buffalo, NY, of a commuter airline. I chair the Aviation Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee; Senator Rockefeller is chairman of the Commerce Committee. I visited with him early this morning on this subject. I was stunned yesterday to read and hear the results of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Last evening, I met with the families of some of those who lost their lives in that commuter airline crash. I want to make a point that the things we now have learned about that particular flight are very disturbing--the question of crew rest, the question of training, of safety issues. I am not here to suggest that when someone gets on an airplane today or tomorrow or anytime, they should worry about who is in the cockpit, but I do suggest this: In this case, what we have now learned is that one of the people in the cockpit traveled all night because the duty station was in New York and the person lived on the west coast. That person traveled all night from the west coast, stopping in Memphis, then on to New York, and then went on a flight. Well, one wonders about having an all-night flight. Many of us have it. I have been on red-eye flights from the West many times. But for a pilot in the cockpit to live on the west coast, fly to New York, and take an all-night flight, poses real questions for me in terms of crew rest. The voices in the cockpit suggest that one of the people in the cockpit said that person had no experience with icing. Well, I have had a lot of experience with icing, and it is unfathomable to me that someone in the cockpit of a commuter airline would have no experience with icing if they are flying in the Northeast at a time of the year when icing would be present. It appears from what we know that the person in charge of the cockpit on that airplane had 3 months of experience with that type of airplane. The question is not just experience but how much experience do you have in the cockpit of that type of equipment. The copilot on that flight was paid $16,000 a year. Think of that. A copilot was paid $16,000 a year salary and worked part time in a coffee shop to make ends meet and lived with the parents in order to make ends meet. I don't know if most people understand this when they get on a commuter flight. A lot of flights in this country are on commuter airlines. You get on a plane that has the same markings on the tail and wings and fuselage of a major carrier, but in many cases it is not that carrier at all that is operating the flight. When people get on an airplane, they expect the same standard, the same standard of training, of crew rest, the same set of standards no matter what airplane they are on if they are flying commercially. The Federal Aviation Administration has the responsibility to set standards and then enforce them. The National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the Buffalo crash has raised very serious questions that need to be resolved. As chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, working with the chairman and ranking member of the full Commerce Committee, I intend to be very involved in investigating what is happening. I don't say this to alert people to be anxious or excited about having to take a flight somewhere but as someone who flies a great deal. This disclosure about these issues on this flight is very troublesome. I want every American to believe that when they walk onto an airplane, no matter the company, that the experience, the capability in the cockpit is such that they can have comfort. I don't care whether you are flying on an Airbus 320, a Boeing triple 7 or A-8, you ought to feel, as a passenger, that that experience, the crew rest, the capability with the airplane in the cockpit gives you a substantial margin of safety. We have an unbelievable record in the skies across the country. We have had very few accidents. In recent years when we have had accidents, most of them have been with commuter airlines. I am not suggesting in any way that we get along without commuter airlines, but I believe the FAA has some significant questions to answer. I believe the FAA has a lot of work to do. We will now have a nomination hearing for Randy Babbitt to head the FAA. Frankly, the FAA has not had consistent leadership. I hope Mr. Babbitt will provide that. I expect during his confirmation hearing he will get a great many questions about these issues. I will have more to say about what we will do in my subcommittee as well later today. I did want to mention that I have been stunned by what has been revealed by the National Transportation Safety Board about that crash in Buffalo, NY by that commuter carrier. The family members of those who perished in the crash obviously are very concerned as well by what has been disclosed. It is a service to this country for the NTSB to have done a complete investigation. It will provide for all of us a reminder that there is much yet to do in the FAA to make certain that we maintain a good record of safety going forward. That applies to the major airlines and just as well and equally to commuter airlines. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I have been on the floor often talking about the subprime loan scandal that led to the financial crisis we are involved in, in this country. I have held up charts on the floor that describe the solicitations from the mortgage companies and others that say: Come to us. If you have bad credit, if you have been bankrupt, come to us. We want to give you a home loan. I have shown all of those--from Zoom Credit, from Millennium Mortgage, from the largest mortgage company in the country, Countrywide--all of them saying to people: You know what, if you have bad credit come to us. We want to loan you some money. That subprime loan scandal was a tipping point for a significant difficult time for this country's economy and that time includes right now. I have talked about that at great length. But today we are talking about credit cards. The same influence exists with respect to credit cards. We have companies that just wallpaper this country with credit cards. Go to a college campus and try to find out how many credit cards they stick on those college campuses preapproved, saying to these kids: Get our credit card, please. Walk through the concourse of an airport and see how often you are accosted by someone who wants you to take their credit card. It is all over. Last year the economy tipped over, and we went right into a financial crisis. But in that year, 2008, 4.2 billion credit card solicitations were mailed to consumers. Let me say that again. In the middle of an economic crisis, at a time when there was so much unbelievable leverage and debt out there, companies in this country sent 4.2 billion credit card solicitations to people. Yes, some of them went to kids. The fact is, I spoke on the floor years ago about my 10-year-old son getting a Diners Club card saying it is preapproved, we want you to consider going to Paris, France. My son wasn't going to France. As a matter of fact, he was 10 years old, for God's sake. He had no money. He wasn't going to get a credit card. Was it a mistake that they sent him a credit card solicitation? Probably. But I went to the floor one day with a whole pile of them, saying you are preapproved, please take this piece of plastic, spend it where you want, as much as you want. Madam President, 4.2 billion new credit card solicitations went out last year alone. They don't seem to care who gets them, as I said with home mortgages, which are much larger than most of the limits on credit cards. For home mortgages they solicited people with bad credit. You have been bankrupt? Come to us. You do not pay your bills? Come to us. That is a business model I never learned about, by the way, but it is what happened. They created the house of cards and the whole thing collapsed. With credit cards, the big companies out there--and by the way it is heavily concentrated--wallpaper this country with preapproved credit card solicitations: Come to us, load up; come on, spend what you don't have on things you don't need; come on, you can load up on my card. Then when they got everybody with all these cards and substantial balances on the cards, here is what happened. This is a person from Minot. My wife and I both have credit scores greater than 800 and have never been late on any of our payments so it is odd that Capital One just sent us a notice that our interest rate on our credit card will almost triple. There they are, using a plastic credit card, paying their bills on time, and they are told we are going to triple your interest rate. At least they know it. That is not an excuse, but a whole lot of folks don't even know it. Here is another constituent who wrote to me. I just wanted to let you know how upset I am with my credit card company--Citibank. They have decided to raise my interest rate to 27 percent. I have always paid my bill on time and have a good credit rating--820. Why would a company who was bailed out by taxpayers because of bad practices then decide to stick it to us by raising the interest rate so high that it is competitive with the local Mafia rate? There is no Mafia rate in Fairmont, I might say, but I get the point. Williston, in my State: Enough is enough. We shored up these banks with our hard earned tax dollars just to have them raise the interest rates on their credit cards to 28 percent and 26.3 percent--that's Bank of America and Capital One--for absolutely no reason. Something must be done. One more: I received a letter from my credit card company-- This person from North Dakota writes-- the Bank of America, that they are upping my interest rate from 7.99 to 18.4 on my credit card and we have not been late with a payment. We have been with them for 15 years. I want you to know I am really angry over this. Billions have been going to these banks and this is what we get for it. Here is a solicitation for a bank debit card, Visa. You might look at that and say what are they trying to solicit? Some 70-year-old codgers who are retired, sitting around worrying about their teeth? No, they are trying to solicit kids. That is the purpose of the bow. It is a little like Joe Camel and cigarettes, except this is much more obvious, a credit card for kids. It is pink with a beautiful little bow. Here is a statement from Bruce Giuliano, a senior vice president with a company that owned the Hello Kitty brand. We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14 although it could certainly be younger. How much younger than 10 years old can you get people to start using credit cards? That is unbelievable. We think our target age group will be 10 to 14. Here, by the way, is the Hello Kitty brand I was describing. Does it seem to you like they are targeting that 10-year-old to 14-year-old? It is a nice little pink thing with a kitty, new Platinum Plus Visa credit card with world point rewards. If they could couple this with an airline and get 10- year-old kids flying to France, they would have what my son experienced, plus a pink credit card. It is unbelievable to me. We wonder why people are upset. You have a bunch of companies out there going after your kids to see if they can put plastic in their pockets, kids who never had a job and will never get a job--at least not when they are 10 years old--saying: Load up on debt. Here, First Premium Card says: Get our platinum credit card. We have a platinum card. Even if your credit is less than perfect. Once again, a solicitation to say if you don't do so well paying your bills, we have a credit card for you. Has anybody thought through that maybe this is what steered the country into the ditch? Has anybody thought about that? By the way, some of these financial companies are the ones that have gotten very large bailouts from the Federal Government. This is interesting. This is a credit card, presumably, for somebody who does not pay their bills so well. So it is hard for them to get a credit card. Here is what they are going to do. It looks pretty good. It is actually a gold card with a $250 total credit limit. The problem is the annual fee is $48, the setup fee is $29, the program fee is $95, and the monthly servicing fee is $7. So if you pay all these fees to that bank, you get to have a piece of plastic in your purse or your wallet that allows you to charge up to $250. What an unbelievable opportunity for people who are not thinking or do not know or at least have been cheated by a company that suggests these terms. This chart simply describes a college credit card. Everybody makes money on credit cards. That is why they accost you when you are going through the concourses at an airport--the airline is actually pushing credit cards. They are all making money on credit cards--including some colleges, by the way. They wallpaper all of those college hallways with credit cards because if you can get someone at that age to start using credit cards with your company, then you have got them for a long period of time. Now, 84 percent of undergraduates in college had at least one credit card, up from 76 percent in 2004. Midwestern students continue to carry the highest average number of credit cards, with more than half of the students--think of this--more than half of these college students have four or more credit cards. Again, a cultural lesson about debt? I don't think that is a lesson we want college students to understand. I am not suggesting college students should not have a credit card. I understand the value of that. But they ought to have a limit. By the way, here is the other thing that happens with credit cards and college students. You cosign a credit card as a parent for the college student who does not have a job, and it is not very long before the credit card company ups the limit to the college student without telling the cosigner. I know that is an interesting business practice, to be pushing additional credit toward those who do not have income, but it is part of the culture of this country, I guess. Undergraduates are carrying record-high credit card balances. The average balance grew to $3,100--the highest in the years the study has been conducted--and 21 percent of undergraduates had balances between $3,000 and $7,000. My point is simple: This is some of the same culture and some of the same difficulty that has tipped this country's economy over, beginning with the subprime loan scandal in housing but very quickly going into credit cards. Someone said to me a while back: You know something, nobody spends money like the Federal Government. I am talking about debt. The Federal Government has run up all of this debt. Shame on the Federal Government. I said: I agree with you. This Government has to decide it can only deliver Government to the American people that the American people are willing to pay for. We cannot continue with these deficits. But, I said, understand this: It is not just the Government. This culture has had a dramatic runup in household debt, a dramatic runup in corporate debt, you name it, all across the board, including trade debt. But we are here today because Senator Dodd has brought a bill to the floor with his colleague, Senator Shelby, and they deserve great credit. They deserve a lot of credit from the American people for doing this. It is a piece of legislation that begins to put the brakes on, puts a bridle on those who are engaged in practices I have just described: aiming credit card solicitations at 10-, 12-, 14-year-old kids, wallpapering college campuses so that kids came up with four or more credit cards. The fact is many of these companies got involved in all of these unbelievable instruments--credit default swaps, CDOs, and shame on them. Shame on WaMu, shame on Wachovia, shame on the companies that did it. They are supposed to be banks. Banking is supposed to be reasonably conservative. Instead, they loaded up with unbelievable debt. Now some of the same companies, by the way, that are putting credit cards out all over this country are saying to credit card customers: You know, I understand you have never been late, never missed a payment, been a customer for 20 years, but you know what, your 7.9 interest rate has now gone to 26 percent, and you are lucky we told you because some people are not going to know it. By the way, we are going to add some additional fees, and we do not care what you think about this. This legislation says: No more. You cannot do that. It says: If you are going to go in this direction--way overboard, in many cases cheating customers--then we are going to put the brakes on. Some people say: Well, of what business is it of the Government? Well, you know what, we have a responsibility, it seems to me, to stand up for consumers. In this case, you have some very large companies that have engaged in this business and now, in recent years, have decided to impose very substantial fees and very high interest rates, in a way that I believe takes advantage of the people. These people are good citizens, pay their bills on time, are conscientious about it, and now discover that the company they have had a relationship with for a very long time has imposed all kinds of dramatic penalties and fees that customer does not deserve. So this legislation is legislation that I believe will pass the Senate with a very wide margin. Why? Because I think those companies that have done this have invited this today. They asked for it. This Congress has a responsibility to stand up for the interests of the American people. I come from a State in which Teddy Roosevelt lived for a while, and he always said: Had it not been for my time in North Dakota, I never would have been President. He was a rugged guy, and he went out there and ranched in North Dakota. By the way, he was in the depths of despair because both his mother and his wife died in his home on the same day in New York. Think of it, losing your mother and your wife the same day on different floors of the same home. He went out to try to renew his spirit in the Badlands of North Dakota. He became a rancher and later became President of the United States. One of the things I remember him for and the country remembers him for is as a ``trust buster,'' willing to take on the big interests, willing to stand up to the big interests when they rip into the interests of the American consumer, the American people. Thank God for what Teddy Roosevelt did in so many areas in trust busting. In many ways, this is a smaller piece of that larger issue, taking on the bigger interests when they are taking on the American citizens in a way we believe is unfair and untoward. So I came today simply to say to my colleagues, Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby, that I appreciate the work they have done. I am a strong supporter of this legislation, and I know we have some amendments back and forth. At some point, I am going to be proud to cast a ``yes'' vote. I am not suggesting credit cards are bad--far from it. Credit cards are very helpful to the American people. I am suggesting there are some practices that have occurred that go way beyond that which is reasonable, and we are going to try to rein that in with this legislation.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced, with Senators Ensign, Inouye, Martinez, Klobuchar, and others, the Travel Promotion Act of 2009. We seek with this bill to increase travel to the U.S. and rebuild the country's place in the global travel market. After 9/11, the number of overseas travelers to the U.S. decreased dramatically and has still not recovered. In addition, the current U.S. economic downturn has caused many American families to cut back on vacation plans and our travel industry is struggling. Travel and tourism are a crucial part of our economy. Travel expenditures in the U.S. are estimated to be $775.9 billion for 2008. Yet other countries have gained market share to our detriment. Foreign travelers are going elsewhere. The absence of Federal leadership in travel promotion has resulted in States having to step in to fill that void. An example is the effort made by my home State of North Dakota, where tourism is the State's second largest industry. Research by North Dakota State University found that in 2007 out-of-State visitors spent $3.96 billion in North Dakota. The investment that North Dakota made to encourage travel and tourism has reaped enormous benefits. But we can only imagine how many tourists would enjoy each of our States if we did not just leave the promotion to the States, but made that investment as a Country. The lack of a coordinated Federal campaign creates a comparative disadvantage with countries that have centralize ministries or offices to encourage international travel to their countries. The example of North Dakota should be a lesson for the entire country. The U.S. offers unique and diverse destinations for travelers--a small investment in national coordination has the potential to create a significant windfall for our economy. The Travel Promotion Act of 2009 will promote travel to the U.S., including areas not traditionally visited, highlighting the U.S. as a premier travel destination. The bill will improve communication of U.S. travel policies and perceptions of the process--negative perceptions can often deter foreigners from traveling here. Our communities will benefit from growth of this multibillion-dollar industry--with an increase in visitors they will experience an expansion of jobs and local economies. The bill initiates a nationally coordinated travel promotion campaign established in a public-private partnership to increase international travel to the United States. It creates a Corporation for Travel Promotion, an independent, nonprofit corporation, to run the travel promotion campaign. The program will be funded equally by a small fee paid by foreign travelers visiting the U.S. and matching contributions from the travel industry. This is a great country, and we should welcome visitors to our shores to meet our people and experience our culture.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 10:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate office building to conduct a business meeting to consider the nomination of Larry J. Echo Hawk to be Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, on Thursday I was privileged to host a bipartisan lunch of the Senate Democratic and Republican policy committees, in honor of a team of Green Berets who earned the Silver Star for extraordinary bravery in combat operations in Afghanistan. These are true American heroes, and their actions were in the proudest traditions of our Armed Forces in general, and of our Special Operations forces in particular. On April 6, 2008, this team's mission was to capture or kill several very high-ranking members of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, HIG, militant group. The insurgents were in their stronghold, a village perched in Nuristan's Shok Valley that is normally accessible only by pack mule. During a harrowing, nearly 7-hour battle on a mountainside, this team and a few dozen Afghan commandos they had trained took fire from all directions. Outnumbered, the Green Berets fought on even after half of them were wounded--and managed to kill an estimated 150 to 200 enemy fighters. For their heroism in battle, 10 members of Operational Detachment Alpha 3336 from the 3rd Special Forces Group received the Silver Star, one of the highest awards for valor in the U.S. Military. This was the highest number of such awards for a single engagement since the Vietnam war. The men who earned these Silver Stars were CPT Kyle Walton, SFC Scott Ford, SSG Luis Morales, SSG Seth Howard, SSG Ronald Shurer, SSG John Walding, SSG Dillon Behr, SGT David Sanders, SGT Matthew Williams, and SPC Michael Carter. I will ask to have printed in the Record a copy of their Silver Star citations. I will also ask to have printed in the Record a copy of a Washington Post report describing the battle on that Afghan mountainside. Mr. President, as I mentioned earlier, it was our privilege to honor these heroic Green Berets, who were joined at the lunch by SSG Robert Gutierrez, Jr., an Air Force special tactics combat controller who targeted airstrikes during the mission. For his actions, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with ``V'' device for valor. No words can truly express the depth of our gratitude to these men and all the other members of our Armed Forces who have answered their country's call. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have the materials to which I referred printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about a couple of issues that relate to the Department of Defense and to defense issues, but I want to especially today talk about the work that has been done by my colleague, Senator Levin, and my colleague from Arizona. The work they have done on procurement reform is very important. I listened to some of the presentations earlier today by Senator Levin and Senator McCain about the overruns in various weapons programs, the cost overruns, and the significant dislocations with respect to decisions that have been made or not made with certain weapons programs. I think there is real need for reform, and the bill they have brought to the floor of the Senate is a great service to the American taxpayer. I think it is also a great service to our defense structure. We have limited funds. We have to use them effectively. We have to fund weapons programs that are essential to the defense strength of this country. That is what both of my colleagues are saying. And they are saying, when we have a program that has outlived its usefulness, a program that has cost overruns that never stop and seem completely out of control, we have to address that and deal with it and respond to it. So we have been going through a long period here of unbelievable cost overruns in some programs without much notice and without much action attending to it. I think my two colleagues are doing a great service. I hope, as I know the chairman does, we will be able to move quickly to address this legislation, perhaps without even amendments, and go forward and get it through the Senate. We will have done, I think, a great service to strengthen our defense capability and protect the American taxpayer at the same time. Defense Duplication Mr. President, I want to raise an issue that does not directly relate to this bill but relates to all the considerations of this bill because it is a follow-on and one I think we will deal with in the next bill, defense authorization. That bill will also be chaired on the floor of the Senate by my colleague, Senator Levin. It deals with the issue of duplication. In addition to contract and procurement reform--in this case procurement reform--the issue of duplication of our services at the Department of Defense is a very important issue. Every service wants to do everything. That is just the way it is. I wish to give an example of something I have been working on, so far unsuccessfully, but I am going to raise it and push it during Defense authorization because it relates to the very same things that my colleagues have talked about today. These are pictures of unmanned aerial vehicles; UAVs they are called. It is sort of the new way to fly, particularly over a battlefield for reconnaissance purposes and so on. Many of us are familiar with what is called the Predator B, which the Air Force refers to as the Reaper. That is this airplane. The Predator B is used extensively and has been used extensively in the war theater in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in that region. It is an unmanned aerial vehicle, unmanned aerial aircraft without a pilot. The pilot sits on the ground someplace in a little thing that looks almost like a trailer house, and they are flying this aircraft. In some cases, the pilot is 6,000, 8,000 miles away from where the aircraft is, flying it at a duty station perhaps at a National Guard base or somewhere else. But, anyway, the Air Force has what is called the Predator. That is built by General Atomics, and it is a worthwhile program that has provided great service to us and to our country in terms of our defense capability. This, by the way, is called the Sky Warrior. This is the Reaper. It is owned by the Air Force. This is the Sky Warrior. That is the U.S. Army. Why does it look alike? Well, it is because it is made by the same company. It is made to different specifications because the Army wants a slightly different vehicle, but the Air Force has the Predator B, and the Army has the Sky Warrior. Why does the Army have a Sky Warrior? Well, because they want to run their own reconnaissance. So what we have in these circumstances is, the Army, in the next 5 years, wants to spend $800 million to buy more than 100 of the Sky Warriors, and eventually they want to have 500 Sky Warriors. The Air Force wants to spend $1.5 billion to buy 150 more Predators, Predator Bs. Here is what the Predator B and the Sky Warrior look like. As you can see, they are nearly identical. Both carry intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors so they can find and track targets on the ground. Both can fire missiles so they can hit a target they might find, both can fly over 25,000 feet high for more than 30 hours which gives them range and endurance, but it seems to me a complete duplication of effort. We are not talking about just the UAV mission itself; we are talking about the duplication of acquisition programs--engineering, contracting. I don't understand it. For years, the Air Force used U-2s, F-15s, F-16s, even B-52s from time to time to provide surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance, and close air support for the Army. They used manned aircraft to provide all of those services for the U.S. Army. It is not clear why that ought to be different just because we are using unmanned aircraft. The Army says they plan to assign each set of 12 Sky Warriors to a specific combat unit. Of course, since most combat units in the Army are at their home base at any given time, most Sky Warriors will be based in the United States or perhaps Europe at any given time. The Air Force has a different approach. They have a streamlined operation concept. They have been working nearly 8 years in almost constant combat operations, and almost every single Air Force Predator is at this point in the Central Command of Operations--CENTCOM. It seems to me the services ought to do what they do best. What the Army does best is fight a war on the ground. What the Air Force does best is to provide timely intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance for the troops on the ground and to attack ground targets from the air. That is what each does best. However, the Army wants to do exactly what the Air Force does and have a separate acquisition program to do so. So we ought to be asking the question: Does this make sense to send thousands of airmen to Iraq and Afghanistan to be truck drivers in Army convoys while the Army plans to have thousands of troops operating unmanned aircraft? Yes, that is happening. Putting all of our large UAVs under the Air Force will result, in my judgment, in streamlined and more efficient acquisition of UAVs and allow the Army to concentrate its manpower on Army tasks. Let me be clear. There are some surveillance--at low-altitude, over- the-battlefield surveillance with unmanned aircraft--that are just fine at 500 feet, 1,000 feet with various kinds of unmanned devices. I understand why the Army would want to operate that, and should. However, I don't understand the Army flying at 25,000 or 30,000 feet, a duplicate mission for which the Air Force exists. So given the budget problems we face, with nondiscretionary and discretionary spending, we can't afford duplication of effort. A few years ago, the Air Force proposed that it be designated as the executive agent for all medium- and high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles. That made sense to me. The Air Force is the logical choice. They already have the infrastructure to deliver that combat power. In 2007, by the way, the Pentagon's Joint Requirements Oversight Council endorsed that proposal, but the proposal didn't go anywhere because of intense opposition from the Army and those who support the Army in this Congress. I don't think this should be an intramural debate between supporting the Army and supporting the Air Force. I support both. I want the Army to be equipped in an unbelievably important way to do its mission, and I want the Air Force to be similarly equipped. I just don't want the taxpayer to be paying for duplication of effort, and I don't want every service to believe it should do everything because that clearly is a duplication of effort. The legislation that is before us today is about procurement reform, procurement reform itself. It does not address this specific issue of duplication, but this issue is certainly the second cousin to it. We will be discussing this when we get to the Defense authorization bill, and that, too, is a very important part of how we can strengthen our defense; how do we make certain the taxpayers are getting their money's worth; and how do we make certain the men and women who serve in defense of this country are equipped to do what they do best. I raise this issue of duplication because I think it is so important that we find a way to begin to unravel the unmistakable duplication that exists in so many areas within the Pentagon. This is one that should be self-evident to virtually everyone. I wish to mention as well today the issue that will also come up in Defense authorization that is the first or second cousin to procurement reform, and that is contracting reform. I know my colleague from Michigan and my colleague from Arizona are very concerned about this as well, and I look forward to working with them on the Defense authorization bill. A couple of points about contract reform: I have held, I believe, 18 hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee that I chair on contracting issues over a good number of years now. I wish to show a couple of photographs that describe some of the unbelievable circumstances that have existed and that we must take steps to correct, and I know my colleagues, the chairman and ranking member, are already doing so. This, by the way, deals with contracting. I understand during wartime there are going to be contracts sometimes that are let without a lot of scrutiny and somebody is going to make a lot of money, or perhaps somebody doesn't quite measure up, but this is different. I think we have seen some of the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country in contracting. This is a picture of a couple million dollars wrapped in Saran wrap, a couple of million dollars in cash. Franklin Willis is the guy with the white shirt. He is holding one of these. This happens to be in a palace in Iraq, one of Saddam's palaces. I assume the chairman of the committee has been in one of Saddam's palaces. I have been in one of Saddam's palaces in Baghdad. So we took over all of those palaces for headquarters, or a good many of them. This happens to be a couple of million dollars in cash put on a table because the contractor was coming to pick up the cash. Franklin Willis--a very respected guy, by the way, who went over from the Federal Government to work on these issues and testified in one of my hearings--said the word was to contractors: Bring a bag because we pay cash. We were contracting for everything in Iraq. Just all kinds--they had over 130,000 contractors, I believe, at one point. So the company who was going to pick up this cash, by the way, was later indicted in criminal court. But Franklin Willis was showing us how reimbursements were made in Iraq. This is bills wrapped in Saran wrap. He would say from time to time he would see people playing football catch with 100- dollar bills wrapped in Saran wrap waiting for the contractors to bring a bag, to pick up a couple million dollars on this day. It is not an isolated problem that the contractor that was going to show up to pick up this money was later convicted--indicted and convicted--in a U.S. court for stealing millions of taxpayers' dollars. Franklin Willis said it was just like the old Wild West. That is what he said to us: It was like the Wild West. Bring a bag. We have cash. So during this period of time, in Baghdad, as they began to try to set up a provisional government--which was the U.S. Government trying to set up a government, and we sent Ambassador Bremer over to set up a government--during that time, we know that pallets of cash were shipped to Iraq. This cash left the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. This pallet, each pallet, contains 640 bundles of 1,000-dollar bills and weighs 1,500 pounds. They sent 484 of these pallets to Iraq on C-130s. That is more than 363 tons of cash that was sent to Iraq in C-130s, totaling $12 billion. Think of that: $12 billion with reports of distributing cash onto the back of pickup trucks. Do you wonder why we were stolen blind? A woman who has had a substantial amount of experience who has never gotten her due, but one of the most courageous women I have met in Washington, DC, Bunny Greenhouse, and for her testimony and for her courage she lost her job. Here is what she said. She was the former chief contracting officer at the Corps of Engineers. She was the top civilian working for the Army Corps of Engineers, and she was in the room when the logcap project was negotiated. Let me describe to you what she said. This is the top civilian official in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She had 25 years of great service to our country with two masters degrees, unbelievable qualifications, and performance appraisals that said she was outstanding every single time--until she spoke publicly. Here is what she said: I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to the contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root-- A subsidiary of Halliburton-- represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career. For that, this woman was demoted and lost her job; for the courage to speak out, she lost her job. Pretty unbelievable. This is an extraordinary woman. We have seen from all of these circumstances unbelievable waste in contracting. It is not just--it is what Bunnatine Greenhouse said, the way the contracts were negotiated. She said they were illegal and so on. Let me give an example, and I could give 100 examples. This shows $40 million spent on a prison in Iraq they called the whale. This is when most of the money had already been spent. You can see there is virtually nothing done. The Parsons Corporation got that money. This now sits empty, never having been used. A top floor was never finished. The U.S. Government says: Well, we gave it to the Iraqis. The Iraqi Government says: Are you kidding me? We wouldn't take that in a million years. We don't want the prison. We would not use the prison. It was never given to us. So $40 million was spent of the taxpayers' money. Procurement reform and contractor reform are all related. I don't want to come and provide a message that steps in any way on anything that the chairman is doing on procurement reform because that is critically important. We have to follow it with its first cousin, contract reform. The stories are so legend. In this photo is a young man who was killed. He was a Ranger and a Green Beret. He was electrocuted while taking a shower. This is his mother Cheryl. He was electrocuted because KBR got the contract for wiring facilities in Iraq and didn't do a good job. He was killed in a shower. Another man was power washing a Jeep or humvee and got electrocuted. The Army said: We think he took a radio or an electrical device into the shower. But he didn't. It is not just this, but it is providing water to military bases that was more contaminated than the Euphrates River. I will be on the floor when we come to defense authorization with a good number of amendments on contracting reform because we have to put a stop to this. It has gone on way too long. Let me finish by coming back to where I started, and that is the issue of procurement reform. Our colleagues on the Defense Authorization Committee are trying to deal with virtually unlimited wants and resources. That is not new. We understand the problems that creates. So they have decided they have to put together procurement reform legislation. It is so important to this country to get this done and to get it right. Procurement reform is essential. It is the foundation of fixing the problems that exist with respect to these major weapons programs. Then, I hope we can segue into contracting reform and the issues of duplication, on which I wish to work with the chairman and ranking member. I thank Senators Levin and McCain for their leadership. I requested that I be made a cosponsor of the procurement reform legislation. I look forward to visiting and working with them on amendments on contracting reform in the coming month or two, when we get to the defense authorization. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 7, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in Room 628 of the Dirksen Senate office building to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Larry J. Echo Hawk to be Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.