Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, midday today during our Democratic Caucus, when we learned our colleague Senator Kennedy is now facing some very serious health problems, it is an understatement to say we were all shocked by that news and saddened by it. Senator Kennedy has for decades been a major presence in this Senate Chamber. He is a friend, a colleague, and all of us have said prayers today for his recovery. Senator Kennedy has faced much adversity in his life, but he has also contributed so much to this country. I know he will meet this challenge with the same strength and the same grace he has met other challenges. It is my purpose today to say it is my prayerful hope, and I know the prayerful hope of all Members of this Chamber, that in the row behind me and four desks to my left we will once again at some point in the future see Senator Kennedy among us to continue his service to his country. My thoughts and prayers are with our colleague for a full recovery. Madam President, I wish to visit for a few moments on the piece of legislation in front of us which includes the GI bill. We have had a GI bill in this country for many decades. There is a new GI bill in the underlying legislation that is brought to the floor of the Senate. I am so proud to be a cosponsor of it and to be a part of what so many in this Chamber have put together. The GI bill is such an important part of what this country does and says to those who serve this country. This weekend I traveled, and at an airport in Minneapolis there was a family--a man, a woman, and three children; three very young children-- getting on the same plane I was boarding. They were from North Dakota but they lived on a military base in Georgia. The wife came up to me and said hello. She said: My husband has done three deployments in Iraq. I hope--I so hope--that you can find a way to end this war. This is a woman who has watched her husband leave for Iraq three times; a woman who is taking care of her three young children while her husband is deployed three times to the country of Iraq. I visited with her husband and her children, and I know that family is proud to serve their country. I know the entire family is proud of that soldier's service. But I also know the costs of that service, because you could see it in the eyes of that soldier's spouse. Also on Saturday morning I went to an event in one of our cities. It was a homecoming event for 35 soldiers who had just come back from deployment in Afghanistan. These were National Guard soldiers. They too were so proud to have served their country, and some of them had been deployed twice; two deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. One or two had been on their third deployment. Their families were there and all of them were enormously relieved and pleased to have their loved ones home. I was thinking about those events: meeting a family at an airport, a soldier who is stationed in Georgia but who is a North Dakota native, and visiting with the family members at the National Guard event and saying thank you to them from a grateful nation. I was thinking about a day much earlier when I was asked to present medals earned by an American Indian who served in the Second World War but had never received his medals. His name was Edmund Young Eagle. He was a Standing Rock Sioux Indian. He was someone who enlisted in the Army in the Second World War and went to war. He served in northern Africa, Normandy, and across Europe. He served with great distinction as an American soldier in some very difficult fighting. He then came back to the Indian reservation and lived kind of a tough life. He never had very much. He never married. He never had very much in his life, but he lived a good life nonetheless. At the end of his life, he was in the veterans home and then got sick and was put in the veterans hospital in Fargo, ND. His sister contacted my office and asked if her brother could receive the medals he had earned during the Second World War but had never received. We said of course. On a Sunday morning in Fargo, ND, I went to the veterans hospital with the medals for Edmund Young Eagle. The doctors and the nurses and others from the hospital crowded into his hospital room that Sunday morning. Edmund was sick with lung cancer. I didn't know it at the time, but he didn't have many days left. He died about a week later of lung cancer. But on that morning he was fully aware of what was happening, and I was there granting the wish of his sister to get the medals from the Department of Defense that Edmund Young Eagle had earned in the Second World War. We cranked his hospital bed up to a seated position and then I pinned a row of medals on Edmund Young Eagle's pajama top there at the veterans hospital and told him: Thank you from a grateful nation for serving this country in the Second World War. This very sick man looked up at me and said: This is one of the proudest days of my life. He died about a week later. But he served his country and was enormously proud of it. There are so many circumstances around this country where one by one or in groups we honor our soldiers because they put on America's uniform. This morning, soldiers halfway around the world not only put on a uniform, but put on body armor and went out in harm's way, some to be shot at. They didn't ask why; they just did what their country asked them to do. Now the question is: When it is all over, when they come home and their service is done, what will their country say then? What will their country say to them, other than thank you? What we said in the Second World War with a GI bill was when those soldiers came home, we offered them an opportunity to go to college, to help them to be able to purchase a home. So a substantial number of returning soldiers went to college and got a college degree. They went back home and married their sweetheart. They built a home. They built a community. They built their churches. They expanded the middle class. They created an economic boom in this country. Later, it was estimated that for every dollar we spent on the GI bill, $7 was returned because it was an unbelievably good investment for our country. Senator Webb, Senator Warner, Senator Hagel, Senator Murray, and so many others--myself included--as cosponsors of this bill have said it is time again to write a GI bill that is appropriate for wartime and for returning veterans. When soldiers return and become veterans, the question is: What will the GI bill offer for them? How will we invest in their lives, and thereby invest in this country? The previous GI bill was the Montgomery bill written during peacetime. Frankly, it does not do what we have historically been able to do and willing to do for those who serve our country, in addition to saying thank you. The Montgomery bill existed--and we are pleased it did--but this new GI bill is something very different. It tries to say to soldiers, as we did some 60 years ago, not only thank you, but we want to invest in your lives and invest thereby in this country. It is a new GI bill. It allows an opportunity to go to college and to be able to pay the in-State cost of college with a stipend for living during that period of time that you get your college degree. It invests in the lives of those who have invested their lives in this country. This is a very important piece of legislation. I am told there are some who now come to the floor of the Senate, nearing three-quarters of a trillion dollars having been spent on emergency supplemental appropriations bills requested by President Bush to prosecute the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and say: Well, we can afford that and we have to do that on an emergency basis, but we don't have the money to try to help veterans when they come home. A veterans program is the cost of war. It is the cost of war. How does anyone say that somehow the three- quarters of a trillion dollars for so many hundreds and thousands of different accounts and contractors and replenishment of various accounts is more important than the single account of the GI bill, which says we want to invest in our soldiers? How does anybody say those myriad other accounts are more important than investing in our soldiers when they become veterans? I don't understand that. It makes no sense. It is a significant claim and priority for this country to understand that part of the cost of war is to provide health care that is promised to veterans and a GI bill this country can be proud of, which invests in those veterans and our country. That is what this bill is about. This new GI bill is every bit as important--perhaps more important-- than any other provision that exists in this large emergency supplemental requested by this President. The Congress undoubtedly, at some point, in some way, will enact this legislation providing for some supplemental appropriations. When it does, in my judgment, it must do more than just say thank you to veterans, as we do, but it must invest in veterans, which this new GI bill will do. This makes a lot of sense for our country. I commend especially those I have mentioned previously, including Senators Webb, Warner, Hagel, Murray, and so many others. I am proud to be one among them to say that this too is a priority for this country. I hope when the sun sets at the end of this week, if we have passed this legislation called the emergency supplemental appropriations bill, it will include something that ought to give all of us a reason to be proud and that it will include a new GI bill to say to veterans in this country: You matter. It matters to us what you did for our country. I hope we manifest that by passing a new GI bill in the name of their service. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I know we are on the emergency supplemental bill. However, I want to talk a bit about the energy issue, so I will begin on that. I want to make a couple of points. First, we sent a bill that the President signed, I believe, this morning, which I offered here along with my colleague Senator Reid in the Senate last week. We passed it on Thursday. It said stop putting oil underground when oil prices are bouncing around at $128 a barrel or so. We told the Department of Energy stop putting 70,000 barrels a day underground. We have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve--which makes sense to me because if you run into trouble, you will have oil you have put away. But we have put that oil away, and it is now 97 percent full. Yet the DOE and the Bush administration are topping it off by putting 70,000 barrels a day every day underground. Our legislation says stop that. When oil is going through the roof and the price of gasoline is so high, stop putting it underground. It makes no sense. You are putting upward pressure on prices, which is the last thing we should do. I am pleased the President signed the bill today. Some have said it won't make any difference, that there are factors other than the 70,000 barrels going underground that are at play here, and I will talk about them. But it certainly doesn't hurt to put additional oil, and therefore gasoline, into the supply pipeline. That ought to bring prices down. It is common sense. I used to teach a little economics and the supply/demand curve hasn't changed. If demand remains unchanged and supply is increased, prices are going to be lower. So I never understood why they decided when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent full, why they are taking sweet light crude from the Gulf of Mexico and sticking it underground for a rainy day. It is raining at the gas pumps these days. Stop that and put it into the supply chain and put downward pressure on oil and gas prices. I am pleased that we finally did it last week. The House passed the bill. We got it to the President and he signed it. That is one step in the right direction. A big step, giant step? Probably not, but it is a step in the right direction in dealing with the question of the price of gasoline. Now, there is something curious going on in this country. It is not explainable, frankly. This chart says oil prices nearly doubled in 1 year--up, up, up, and up. They doubled in 1 year. What would cause that? Well, here is speculators' activity in the oil futures market. It looks like oil prices, doesn't it? It also goes up, up, and up. There is more and more speculation in the oil futures market. These are not people who want to buy oil--oh, no. They want to buy a contract. They don't ever want to take delivery or get their hands dirty with oil; they want to speculate and gamble in the oil futures market. They want to buy what they will never get from people who never had it, and walk away grinning and deposit their money in the bank--big profits, by the way. It doesn't matter what the consequences are. The wreckage can lie in the gas pump lines, on the family farms, and elsewhere, because they push up prices with this speculation. As you can see on the chart, the speculation looks exactly like the runup in the prices. The senior vice president of ExxonMobil Oil, on April 1, last month, said: The price of oil should be about $50 or $55 per barrel. But it is not. It is $128 a barrel, $129 a barrel today, and is headed north. So an oil company senior vice president said it ought to be $50 or $55 a barrel. Clarence Cazalot, CEO, Marathon Oil, said: $100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market. He is president of an oil company. In January, the Newark Star Ledger said: Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say financial speculation in the energy markets has grown so much over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent, or more, to the price of a barrel of oil. Fadel Gheit, 30 years with Oppenheimer Company, senior energy trader, said this: There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I am absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It's open 24/7. Unfortunately, it is totally unregulated. This is like a highway with no cops and no speed limits, and everybody is going 120 miles an hour. Andrew Hall--I don't know him. I have said I would not know him from a cord of wood. All I know is that the Wall Street Journal reports this trader hit the jackpot on oil as the commodity boom roars on. When they say commodity boom, they are not talking about oil wells, or drilling rigs, or oil tanks; they are talking about the commodities market. Again, it is a market in which speculators abound--an orgy of speculation, with people buying things they will never get from people who never had it, nobody wanting the oil, but wanting to speculate in this class called speculators. Mr. Hall earned a quarter of a billion dollars--$250 million--in 5 years. That is a pretty big payout, actually. All of these folks who are neck deep in futures markets include hedge funds, investment banks, unbelievable speculation in the futures market, which is driving up the price of gasoline and the price of oil. Now, it is interesting to me, and I think important for us to understand, that as the price is going up, and it is going up again today, that more pressure will push prices higher. In this country, people will drive to the pumps tonight and try to figure out, how do I pay for this tank of gas? I need it and I have to drive to work. Or as the farmer tries to figure out, how do I fill that farm gas tank and pay for that? Or a small family trucking company tries to figure out how do I make ends meet, or will I have to close the doors, perhaps, like one of the CEOs of the five airlines that have filed bankruptcy at this point because of fuel prices? As all of this is happening, let me make a couple of points. One, we have more oil in our inventory and more fuel in our inventory right now than we did in January of this year. We are somewhere over 30 million to 40 million barrels of oil in inventory above where we were in January. So go figure. Inventory is up. Shouldn't prices come down a bit? You would think so. Not only is inventory up but demand is also down because our economy slowed down some, and because the price of gasoline and fuel is very high, people are driving a bit less. Some estimate that demand has dipped around 4 or 5 percent. So our inventories are up, demand is down, and what is happening to oil prices? They are continuing to go up. Refiners are actually refining less at the moment, by their own design, because they believe there is an excess of inventory, so they want to catch up a bit, or allow the inventory to catch up with demand. So they are refining less than they previously refined. You would think, then, if supply is up, with millions more barrels of oil in inventory, the supply of gasoline having increased sufficiently so that refiners are cutting back refining capability, that the price of gasoline and oil would begin to come down. But it is not true. What is happening today is it is reaching record highs. So what does that tell us? It tells us there is this unbelievable amount of speculation in which speculators have taken over the commodity markets and driven oil prices to levels that are doing great damage to this economy, great damage to this country, great damage to America's families, and great damage to businesses in this country. They don't care much about that. All they care about is going to the bank with a pile of money. All they care about is making all this money. I am telling you, at the top, take a look at the compensation of the top hedge fund managers in this country. It is unbelievable. It almost makes you ill. They are all making a lot of money, and they are doing it by speculating in a market that is driving up prices beyond where the fundamentals of oil and gas supply and demand would justify. There is no justification for this at all. American families have a right to ask the question of this Congress: What on Earth are you going to do about it? Does anybody care? Or are the consumers just pawns in this big game while the speculators run off with all the money? It seems to me, when markets don't work we have a responsibility to do something about it. If you have a computer handy, you can find a search engine and find excesses of speculation. In fact, over the last decade and a half, we have seen two bubbles already, and now a third. We saw the tech bubble, and it burst. We saw the housing bubble, and it burst. Now we see a bubble on the commodities exchanges, and it will burst at some point. The question is when and what damage will be done between now and then. These exchanges are supposed to be regulating certain kinds of activities. I have a little experience in this--not a lot, but a little. I chaired the hearings in the Senate on Enron. We did it in a Commerce subcommittee. I had Ken Lay come in front of me in my committee. He raised his hand and swore an oath to tell the truth, sat down, and took the fifth amendment. We had Jeffrey Skilling come. He is now in prison. He wouldn't stop talking, by the way. Through it all, the suggestion was, there is nothing going on here. There was this unbelievable runup of wholesale electricity prices on the west coast during that period. We now know it was criminal activity, a criminal enterprise. We now know they were fixing things. They were shutting down plants. They were manipulating supply. They were speculating. I am not suggesting speculation is necessarily, or even in most cases, criminal behavior. It is not. But the combination, going back to Enron, of not being able to see the dark money, the money that moves in the shadows behind the regulatory opportunities that some agencies have, means consumers can be manipulated and injured dramatically. There is a lesson, it seems to me, as we take a look at what is happening in energy. I remember when President Bush came to town. He appointed a new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I believe his name was Harvey Pitt. He said when he took office there is going to be a new attitude around here. This was the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulatory body. He said: There is going to be a new attitude around here, a business- friendly attitude. And sure enough, it sure was business friendly, and not just there but virtually every agency. We don't want to regulate. Yes, we are a regulatory body, but we don't want to regulate. Yes, regulators are supposed to be the referees, wear the striped shirts, call the fouls; we don't want to do that. We don't even like Government very much. We just come here and say it is business friendly, so do what you want. Over the past 7 years we have seen an unbelievable amount of avarice and greed and speculation. Is it any wonder that we saw the bubble burst with respect to housing? Who wasn't minding the store? We know what happened then. We had ads on television from these mortgage companies. Anybody who watched one of them would have known this doesn't work. The ads said: Hey, you have been bankrupt, you can't pay your bills? Are you missing your house payments? Come over here. We will give you a new mortgage. You don't have to worry about all that. You have bad credit? Come to us. We will give you credit. In fact, we will give you a mortgage where you don't even have to pay all the interest. In fact, we will give you a mortgage loan where you don't have to pay any interest the first year; we will pay the interest for you, and the principal. We will say to you: You don't even have to document your income to us. You have to pay a slightly higher interest rate, but you get a mortgage with us, and you don't even have to document your income. It is called a no doc loan. So, no documents, no interest payment for the first year and no principal payment for a long while. And by the way, when we set your interest rate, you pay an incredibly low interest rate. I saw an advertisement that said pay one-fourth of 1 percent interest rate--not telling them, of course, it is going to reset at 10 percent in 3 years. They don't have a ghost of a chance of making those payments, and they are going to lose their house. We are sorry. They never tell them that. Where were the regulators? Were they watching? No, they weren't watching. They didn't care. So you have this buildup of speculation, mortgages, housing, and now the entire economy pays a price for that. On top of that, we have this unbelievable buildup of speculation in the commodities market and oil, which is an essential commodity for every part of this economy, and the cost is going through the roof. Today it is setting a record. Think of this economy and the national result. Does it matter that oil is different? Sure does. We suck 85 million barrels of oil out of this world every single day. We take 85 million barrels and suck it out of this planet. We need to use one-fourth of it in this country. We use 25 percent of all oil pulled out of this planet every day, and we only produce 10 percent. We use 25 percent of the world's oil, and we produce only 10 percent. That means we have to get a lot of it from elsewhere, and we do. Mr. President, 60 percent plus comes from offshore, much of it from troubled parts of the world. We have a major issue with respect to oil. We have to deal with it. In the short term, though, we have to deal with this. John Maynard Keynes said in the long run, we are all dead. In the short run, we drive to the gas pumps and say: How can we possibly afford this? How can we pay this price? Then we understand this price isn't even justified. There is nothing in supply and demand that justifies this price. The supply is up, demand is down, and the price of oil is going through the roof. That is not about market system. Those are arteries clogged in the free market system, and this Congress has a responsibility to do something about it. What do we do? There are a number of approaches a group of us are working on. It includes trying to find ways to make certain we know what is happening on all of these exchanges. The folks who run the exchanges in this country say: The problem is, if you increase the margin requirement, all this stuff is going to go to the Intercontinental Exchange, called ICE, over in London. You can't do that; it goes offshore and you never see it. That is another part of the dark money strategy in this country where they all make money and injure this economy. We are looking for ways, and I believe we will find a way in a couple of days, to get our arms around this issue called regulatory need with respect to excess speculation on all markets. This is damaging this country's economy, and we cannot and should not stand for it. Speculators have had their day. They have made their money. They have injured this country. Now it is time for us to wring that speculation out of those commodity markets. We need commodity exchanges. We need futures markets. We need them for liquidity. We need them for hedging. But when we have speculators grab these markets by the neck and pervert them, this Congress has a responsibility to act. I conclude by saying the price of oil is setting new records today despite the fact that we in this country have an increased supply of oil since January, month after month after month, and demand is going down by the consumer because of price. So supply is up, demand is down, and this perversion in the marketplace is producing the highest price for oil we have seen. That is an unbelievable perversion of what the free market ought to be. We hear people say free market. There is no free market here. You have an OPEC cartel sitting behind closed doors. It would be illegal in this country. That does not contribute to a free market. That is a fixed market. And we have oil companies bigger and stronger. They almost all have two names now--ExxonMobile, ConocoPhillips--because they all merged and everybody thought that was fine, at least in this administration. So they are bigger and stronger and have more muscle in the marketplace. Then we have this perversion in the futures market. That combination is a combination that I say damages this economy. We mean to address it. In the coming days, I intend to talk about legislation that will tie into this speculation, wring it out of the markets and say: You can't continue to damage the economy of this country; you can't continue to injure the consumers in this country because we are not going to stand for it.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. This is a resolution of disapproval of an FCC rule dealing with media ownership. The Commerce Committee has passed this out to the floor of the Senate. I will not go into great length on the merits of the issue except to say we have visited this issue previously. I think there is too much concentration in the media. The FCC rule moves in exactly the wrong direction, adding more concentration. I ask that Members of the Senate who wish to would be able to make statements that appear prior to this vote. I believe we have agreed to a voice vote. I yield the floor. I reserve my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution of disapproval is intended to overturn a specific rule, not other parts of an agency's order. The waivers are not rules. The resolution is written in a specific way referring to an order, but it is the rule that is nullified. These waivers could have been granted alone or under the previous cross-ownership ban. It is not the intention of this resolution to affect the waivers in the order.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask the Senator from Washington to use the remainder of my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator from Washington will yield for a question. I have to leave the Chamber due to another event. First, I thank the Senator from Washington. Senator Cantwell has been unbelievably strong and supportive in getting us to this point of having passed the resolution of disapproval. We got it through the Commerce Committee. She was a leader in that effort. We now have voice voted it. It has passed the Senate. I did want to say, as I said earlier, the issue here is simple. We have far too much concentration in the media. The Federal Communications Commission, at least the Chairman and two others who have been members, have become cheerleaders of more concentration. That means less localism. It means your local radio station, in many cases your television station, other media outlets, are run by somebody living 1,500 miles away, running homogenized music through a radio station having nothing to do with covering the local baseball team or news events. I think this moves in exactly the wrong direction. I believe there needs to be more localism and I think there has to be a procedure on localism at the Federal Communications Commission. There need to be public interest standards with respect to broadcasters that do not now exist. The standards have been emasculated. We have a lot to do to put this back on track. Suffice it to say, the FCC was anxious to move in the direction of more consolidation, allowing newspapers to buy up television stations. We have had a ban on that for three decades. We prohibited the cross ownership in a market. The reason we have done that is pretty simple: We don't want there to be only one or a couple of dominant voices in a market. We want there to be many voices. That is what our purpose is, to bring this resolution of disapproval. It is unusual to do this, but we did it. It got through the Commerce Committee, now through the Senate. It says to the Federal Communications Commission, get things right, do things right, don't truncate these things and cut the American people out of this process. We have also said today we believe this is moving in the wrong direction. Everybody says there are more voices out there in the Internet and cable channels and so on. More voices but the same ventriloquist. We had one person testify from Los Angeles who came and said in my office we have 48 cable channels. I went through who owns the channels--42 of them are owned by the same few companies and that is the problem with concentration. I again thank the Senator from Washington. She has done a great job and I am proud to work with her and Senator Snowe especially, on the other side, and Senator Lott when he was here, to accomplish this result.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate now be in a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am not going to speak so much about what divides us. Today I wish to talk about what would unify us with respect to the two energy plans. We are going to vote on an amendment that is a bill I offered back in February of this year that would stop putting oil underground. Some say that doesn't mean very much in terms of energy prices or that it would not accomplish a lot. We had testimony before the Senate Energy Committee by economists and an energy expert. Dr. Verleger testified that what's coming from the Gulf of Mexico is sweet light crude, the most valuable subset of oil. Despite the fact that it is a small percentage of the oil usage, it could have as much as a 10-percent impact on the price of sweet light crude. I don't think we should underestimate the significance of this proposal. At a time when oil prices are bouncing up in record highs, with oil prices at $120, $124, and $126 a barrel, we have speculators playing their fiddle. The oil prices dance up into the stratosphere; the economy is damaged; consumers get injured; and industries are going belly up. The question at this time is, what unites us here? I will tell you one thing we can agree on. There are at least 80 Senators who have expressed themselves, including all three Presidential candidates. They have said let's stop putting oil underground. Is it a reasonable thing to do to set oil aside underground? We have something called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Let me show you what it is. This is what it looks like. Instead of oil going into the pipeline so you can convert gasoline to your automobile, it is going underground. This is what the SPR looks like. Here is where the SPR is being stored--at Bryan Mound, Big Hill, West Hackberry, and Bayou Choctaw. The SPR is 97 percent full. The question is this: With oil at $126 a barrel and gasoline around $4 a gallon or more, and with the American consumer being burned at the stake, why should its Government be carrying the wood? Why should we be putting oil underground at a time of record-high prices? Who thinks it is smart to go out into the marketplace and take oil that is that valuable and stick it underground when it is having an impact of upward pressure on oil prices? That makes no sense at all. As I said, all three Presidential candidates have said we ought to stop at this time. Eighty Senators have agreed with this decision. Somehow, the President and Vice President are insistent that we continue to fill the SPR. Look, there are a lot of other things happening. Number 1, we need more production. I was one of four Senators who introduced the legislation, with Senator Domenici, that led to opening Lease Sale 181 in the Gulf of Mexico. That is additional production, and I am proud that became law. It should have been broader, but it got narrowed through the legislative process. I have a bill in to expand production in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, we need additional production, conservation, efficiency, and renewables. We need all those things. We have made progress in some of them. Last year, we finally passed reformed CAFE. We increased CAFE standards 10 miles per gallon in 10 years. That is a historic achievement after 32 long years in this Congress. We set us on a course toward renewables. There are short-term, intermediate, and long-term solutions. John Maynard Keynes says that in the long run we are all dead. How about the short term? How about today? I know where there is 70,000 barrels of oil, including sweet light crude, that could go into the gas pumps and into cars and put downward pressure on gas prices. I know how we can take action and so do my colleagues. At least we can agree on that piece of legislation today. Here is another point. There is unbelievable speculation in the commodities market. It is interesting. Let me give you a couple of charts that show this. The senior vice president of ExxonMobil said last month: The price of oil should be about $50 or $55 per barrel. Mr. Cazalot, the CEO of Marathon, said: $100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the marketplace. A man who testified before the Energy Committee, Mr. Gheit, a senior energy analyst with Oppenheimer, said: There is absolutely no shortage of oil, and I am absolutely convinced that oil prices should not be a dime above $55 a barrel. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It is open 24/7. The fact is, we have speculators, hedge funds, and investment banks that have never been in the futures market before and are in neck deep. They are driving up prices that have very little to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand. Should we ignore that and say that is OK? Mr. President, I think I have consumed 5 minutes. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Should we say that is OK, let's talk about other subjects? I don't think so. If you want to purchase stock on margin, you have to put up 50 percent of the money. If you want to control $100,000 worth of oil, the subject of such speculation, all you need now is a margin requirement between $5,000 and $7,000. It seems to me that the margin requirement ought to be increased to the point of wringing speculators out of the system. We need a futures market for legitimate hedging and for liquidity. There are times when speculative bubbles develop. In this case, the bubble driving up the price of oil and gasoline at the pumps is damaging our economy. A lot of industries are suffering, including truckers and the airlines. It is hurting a lot of American families, and we can do something about it. We have a couple different plans. Let's take the one common part of both plans, which is the amendment I offered as a bill in February, and pass that today because that will make a difference. Is it a giant step? Not at all. Is it a step that is finally at long last in the right direction? It is. So instead of getting the worst, let's try to get the best of both sides and say this we agree on, this we can do. My hope is that at the end of today, at least this Congress will have said to the President and Vice President: Stop doing what you are doing. The last thing in the world we ought to do is put upward pressure on gas and oil prices. We ought to put downward pressure on that, and we can do that today with one single vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on each side?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am required by our leadership to object because they want to get the vote off on the time predetermined. I apologize for that, but that is what I am required to do.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me conclude with a couple of thoughts. First of all, my colleague from New Mexico described the issues of speculation a bit. We do, in fact, in our larger proposal that we announced last week, have a provision dealing with speculation. And it is important that we do that because speculation is part of what is driving these prices. I showed comments from executives of some of the largest oil companies in this country that said there is no justification for the current price given supply and demand. They said the price of oil should not be much above $50, $60, $70 a barrel. So what is happening? Well, let me come to that in a moment. Let me say, first of all, my hope is that today, here on the floor of the Senate, we will decide to do some good things. Now, how do you do good things? You try to find areas of common interest and legislate moving ahead where you can. That is what Senator Reid has suggested in the underlying amendment that we will vote on dealing with stopping and halting the putting of oil underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is something I introduced in the Senate back in February. Now, as I said before, when the American consumer is being burned at the stake by high gas prices, its Government ought not be carrying the wood. I mean, it is that simple. We can do something about this. We are talking about 70,000 barrels a day, 70,000 barrels every single day of sweet light crude that we are taking off the market. Dr. Philip Verleger, an economist and energy analyst, testified before the Energy Committee on the effects of such a move. He said although it is only three-tenths of a percent of usage, because it is sweet light crude, the most valuable subset of oil, it could have up to as much as a 10-percent effect on the price of oil. So it seems to me what we do is, do what the Republicans and Democrats have now generally come together to say we should do, and say to the President: Look, you cannot put 70,000 barrels of oil underground every day. You cannot do that. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled, 97 percent. Now, oil is $120, $126 a barrel; gas is going to $4 a gallon. Let me describe the situation we all understand that we face on this planet of ours. We stick straws in the planet and suck oil out. We suck out 85 million barrels every day. We are required to use one-fourth of that in this little spot of geography on the planet called the United States of America. Let me say that again. We take 85 million barrels a day, and we need one-fourth of it to be used in the United States. Now, 60 percent of that which we use comes from outside of our country. That holds us hostage to others. And 70 percent of the oil we use in this country is used to fuel vehicles. So vehicles are an important part of this issue. I am proud to say this Congress, with this majority and some minority help, has passed for the first time in 32 years an increase of 10 miles per gallon in the next 10 years of CAFE standards. This will lead to better automobile efficiency and better gas mileage. We made some progress in other areas. We opened production in Lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico where there are substantial reserves. We made progress in the biofuels ethanol standards and renewable fuels standards. We have made some progress on all of those issues, but we have people coming to the floor today to say: Well, gas is $4 a gallon. Let's open ANWR. That means we get oil in 10 years. As John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. What can we do in the short term? At least today, on Tuesday, we can at least do what we both believe--that is, what the minority and majority believe is appropriate--and that is stop putting oil underground and put some downward pressure on gas prices and oil prices. Give the consumer an opportunity to see some decent prices. This speculation in the futures market is speculation that is driving up prices. We want to do something about that as well. But at least today we have one common theme; we can increase supply by 70,000 barrels a day of sweet light crude. Instead of it going into the supply that comes through the pump into the cars, which puts downward pressure on gasoline, it is now going underground, underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It makes no sense at all. So I am saying: Let's stop doing bad things and let's start doing good things. We can start by taking the first step in doing that today. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN. Let me make one additional point, if I can. It does not relate specifically to this amendment, but this issue of the free market. You have an OPEC cartel behind closed doors. You have oil companies that are bigger through mergers. You have a futures market that is now rife with speculation. There is no free market. So the American people deserve, it seems to me, a Congress that will stand up and take some steps to put some downward pressure on gasoline prices. That is a step we can take today. It is a step that is not a giant step, but it is a step in the right direction that will put downward pressure on gas prices. It will help this country. My hope is, following this vote, we will see that both parties can contribute to something when we agree on it. I think this will be a good day to put downward pressure on gas prices. Amendment No. 4737 Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4737.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me take the 1 minute. This is a piece of legislation I introduced in February of this year. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled. We have oil and gas prices going through the roof in this country. We are putting 70,000 barrels of oil underground every day. It is a subset of the most valuable kind of oil: Sweet light crude, coming from the Gulf of Mexico. We heard testimony before the Senate Energy Committee that even though it is a small part of our oil usage, this subset of oil--the 70,000 barrels a day put underground--could have an impact of up to 10 percent of the price of oil. I am not suggesting this does everything, but it is a step in the right direction. As I said earlier, when the American consumer is being burned at the stake by energy prices, the Government ought not be carrying the wood. Sticking oil underground is wrong at this point in time, and this amendment simply says: Stop it. Halt it.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I do not object, of course, but might I observe that I understood the objection to the previous unanimous consent request. My hope would be that in the coming hours today we might have some discussions between the leadership of the minority and majority so that we can proceed on the SPR amendment. I understand the objection was raised, but there has been an overwhelming amount of support by the Senate. I hope we could have those discussions this afternoon and perhaps proceed on the basis that Senator Reid has suggested.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 15, at 9:30 a.m., in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, am I listed in the order of morning business?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to speak about energy and respond to a couple of things I heard on the Senate floor and talk about what we are going to be doing tomorrow. But first let me say I finished 2 hours of chairing a Democratic policy committee hearing in which three people testified: two previously serving with the U.S. State Department in the country of Iraq, and one, Major General Nash, who has a great deal of experience internationally. I come away from that hearing after listening 2 hours to some very patriotic Americans, Judge Brennan and Mr. Mattil, who talked about their experience working for the State Department in Baghdad. What I heard was unbelievable--almost unbelievable. They were there to try to be supportive of the anticorruption efforts that were underway by our Government and by Judge Radhi al-Radhi, who headed the Commission on Public Integrity in the country of Iraq. What they told me makes me almost furious. They told me our State Department--yes, our State Department here in the United States--did everything they could to undermine the efforts of Judge al-Radhi and the Commission on Public Integrity and the section in the State Department that was in Iraq trying to root out corruption and support those who were engaged in anticorruption activity. Billions and billions of dollars have literally been stolen. The witnesses today who worked for our State Department in Iraq told us money that has gone through the hands of the Iraqi Ministries, an unbelievably corrupt government, ends up in the hands, among other places, of the insurgents, which then fuels the war against our soldiers. Our State Department, they say in testimony--and I encourage people to write to us and get a copy of this testimony--they say our Government and those in charge in Baghdad not only did nothing about it, but tried--because the Iraq Government, full of corrupt Ministries, was upset with the Commission on Public Integrity investigating them-- it was our Government that decided to be helpful to throw Judge al- Radhi out of that country. This is a man whom they tried to kill. They didn't like him investigating corruption in Iraq so they tried to kill him. Yet our Government paved the way for the Iraqi Government to get rid of him, to throw him out of the country. On Thursday of this week we are going to write a bill in the Appropriations Committee. I believe the President asks for $172 billion--that is with a ``b''--$172 billion additional, mostly for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The question is, how much of that $127 billion going through our Defense Department and then coming into the Iraqi Ministries, how much of that is going to be wasted? How much of that is going to stick in the hands of corrupt officials in the country of Iraq? If we could dye that money purple and track it through those who stuff it in their pockets in Iraqi Ministries and then pass it along to the insurgents as part of the take, who would we see stealing this money from the American taxpayers, and who would we see undermining the work, every day, of soldiers in Iraq? We can't leave the country of Iraq, we are told by this administration, until there is stability. There is not going to be stability until we address the issue of corruption. As long as we will turn a blind eye to corruption--which two people from the State Department who worked in Iraq told us today--as long as we turn a blind eye to corruption, which has been done; as long as we betray--yes, betray--those who were standing up in Iraq and risking their lives to get rid of corruption, we don't stand a chance of making an inch of ground in Iraq. In fact, the witnesses today said the Special Inspector General in Iraq, in reporting to us, the Congress, and the American people about progress made in routing out corruption, that Special Inspector General was given information from those in charge in our Government in Iraq that was inaccurate because those responsible for providing the information sent the right information to the Inspector General and then it was pulled back by the State Department and they sanitized it and rewrote it to give a completely different message. We are not even getting the truth. We are being deceived. I want everyone to read the testimony that came today from Judge Brennan and others and understand what is happening. As we start on Thursday on this issue of whether we are going to provide another $172 billion, we ought to understand how much of that money is being stolen, how much of that money is going to actually support the insurgency, and what is being done about it. I am going to send letters, as a result of the hearing that I and my colleagues held today, to officials in the State Department, to Secretary Rice, and others demanding to know what she knows and what they know and who is doing something about this and demanding accountability from those in the State Department relative to the testimony that was given today. Mr. President, I didn't come to talk about that, but I just came from chairing that hearing for 2 hours. It is an unbelievable tale that is very distressing and very disappointing and just cries out for action by the Congress and action by the President and this administration.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I want to talk about oil prices a bit. I noticed today that some of my colleagues were talking about drilling in Alaska. They said that we should drill in ANWR. That has become the hood ornament for every conversation about energy. If we just drill in ANWR, then things will be fine. ANWR is one of those pristine areas we have set aside. There are some who want to drill there as a first resort. If ever there is drilling in some part of the world that we have set aside as one of the few pristine areas left, then it ought to be a last resort. Why would you go there as a first resort? If you take a look at the Outer Continental Shelf and where the reserves of oil and gas really are, You have on that list the Gulf of Mexico, the West Coast, and the Outer Continental Shelf of Alaska. They rank in that order. No. 1 is the Gulf of Mexico; No. 2 is California and the west coast; and No. 3 is the Outer Continental Shelf of Alaska. I was there with three of my colleagues, Senators Domenici, Bingaman, and Talent, in the 109th Congress who introduced the legislation to open Lease Sale 181 off the Gulf of Mexico to get new oil and natural gas production. I am proud to say that became law. We got that passed in the 109th Congress. It was narrowed when we passed it, so I have actually introduced another bill to expand that. I think we should be in the eastern Gulf of Mexico producing more, and we have made progress as a result of my past efforts with Senators Domenici, Bingaman, and Talent. So don't tell me about ANWR is going to solve all our problems. We are trying to open even more in the Gulf of Mexico for additional production. With respect to the price of oil at this point, it's been bouncing around at the top like a roller coaster. But here is what is happening with the price of oil. It has nearly doubled in the last year. That should be no surprise to people. If you drive a car you know what is going on. It nearly doubled in the last year. In my judgment there is nothing that justifies that, and I want to talk about that a little bit. There is nothing with respect to the fundamentals of supply and demand that would justify doubling the price of oil in one year. Take a look at what Stephen Simon, senior vice president of ExxonMobil, a company making enormous profits, said. By the way, they have permagrins. They can't help but smile all the way to the bank with their record profits, some of the highest profits in history. Mr. Simon, said on April 1: The price of oil should be about $50-$55 a barrel. Clarence Cazalot, CEO of Marathon Oil, said, $100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market. Fadel Gheit, Senior Energy Analyst with Oppenheimer & Company who has more than 30 years in this business said to the Star-Telegram on October 26, 2007, There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I'm absolutely convinced that oil prices should not be a dime above $55 a barrel. He is talking about the futures market. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. . . It's open 24/7. . . . Unfortunately, it's totally unregulated. ... This is like a highway with no cops and no speed limit, and everyone is going 120 miles an hour. New Jersey Star Ledger: Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say financial speculation in the energy markets has grown so much over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent or more to the price of a barrel of oil. Here is an example of increases in the speculation in the futures market as opposed to commercial contracts. Speculation has rapidly increased. You can see it has gone up near the 40 percent mark. You will see where it has gone just in recent years, up, up, way up. What has happened is we have much more speculation in the futures market that determines the price of this commodity. Who is making money with all this? I said the other day, I don't know this guy from a cord of wood. His name is Andrew Hall. There is a story in the Wall Street Journal: ``Trader Hits Jackpot In Oil As Commodity Boom Roars On.'' My guess is this fellow doesn't actually want to buy oil or actually acquire oil. He is just speculating in the futures market. Will Rogers said: You will buy things you will never get from people who never have had it. Right? And you make money all along the way. You have the speculators in neck deep and hedge funds in neck deep in the futures market speculating. Here is a guy who made a quarter of a billion dollars in the last five years speculating in the futures market. Some say the futures market, you need that. I agree you need that. You need that for liquidity, and you need it for hedging. That's absolutely true. But you don't need a futures market and should not allow a futures market for energy that ratchets up the price of energy in an unbelievable way, solely due to speculation. The fact is, it does great damage to our economy and does great damage to industries in this economy. I believe we have had five airlines go bankrupt in the last month. We have trucking firms threatening to go belly up because they can't possibly afford to pay for the fuel and make a decent profit. This has an unbelievable impact in our country. It severely damages our economy. I come from a State that is 10 times the size of Massachusetts. So you can put ten Massachusetts in my State. We do not have a very large population, but we drive a lot. We are an agricultural state so we use a lot of fuel. Incidentally, per person we use twice as much fuel as New Yorkers use. We use twice as much fuel per person per capita as New Yorkers do, so when this shoots way up through the stratosphere, it hurts us much more than other areas of the country. We know this in a very personal way. Now, what do we do about that? Well, I have talked about the unbelievable orgy of speculation in the commodity markets. We ought to dampen that speculation by increasing the margin requirements. Buy a stock on margin, you have to put up 50 percent of the money to buy the stock. Buy an oil futures contract, in most cases, you put up 5 to 7 percent to buy an oil futures contract. If you have too much speculation in that marketplace which is well above that which is needed for liquidity and hedging and normal commercial functions, then you have too much speculative capability, and there is too much speculative activity. Thus, we ought to wring that out. I think there is a way to do that, and that is by increasing the margin requirements. Now I want to go to the next piece of information, and that is the bill I introduced three months ago to suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I was thinking today about the movie ``Dumb and Dumber.'' I actually watched a little bit of it because it was so dumb. Dumb and dumber represents a policy of putting oil underground at a time when oil prices are up around $128 a barrel. I know ``dumb'' is not a term of art, but I cannot think of anything that would be dumber than continue a policy that makes no sense. Oil is going through the roof so let's stick oil underground by taking it out of supply, store it underground, and thereby increase the price. Well, here is what we should do instead. This administration is now putting about 70,000 barrels of oil every single day, 7 days a week, at locations like Bryant Mound, Big Hill, and West Hackberry. These are places on the Gulf Coast with salt domes where we store oil. What is the purpose? It is called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We call it the SPR for short. Because if we run into some trouble some day, we want oil preserved in an SPR, and we can call on that oil. Here is what it looks like. It includes big old tubes that pump oil in the ground. This is the oil that ought to be in the supply pipelines right now so, when you drive up to the gas pump, you are paying a little bit less than you are now paying. Instead of it being available at the gas pump, it is being put underground in the SPR. We are required as a country by international treaty obligations to have at least a 90-day reserve. We are at about 118 days if you take public and private stocks into account. We are well above our international requirement. From what I can tell, there are 67 Senators who have signed letters or made statements to the President saying: Stop it. Do not stick oil underground at this time. This is oil that comes off the Gulf of Mexico as a royalty-in-kind oil. Instead of putting it in supply, they are sticking it underground. Furthermore, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled. It is 97 percent full. And when oil is $128 a barrel, we are sticking it underground. It makes no sense; it defies all common sense. Yet 51 Democratic Senators sent a letter to the President, and 15 Republicans Senators sent a letter to the President. Also, the Republican Presidential candidate, John McCain, and said ``stop it.'' That's at least 67 Senators. Last week, Doug Steenland, the President and CEO of Northwest Airlines testified before the Congress. He said: Certainly with the prices at this level, and given the demand out there, we don't need to be filling the Strategic Reserve at $122 per barrel. Now, obviously he has a vested interest, because he and others are engaged in the airline industry. Here is a quote from James May, President and CEO of the Air Transport Association of America: One of the most important and immediate steps that the government can take to help the economy is to stop filling the SPR. Why do we hear from airlines? We are hearing from airlines, truckers, or any number of industries or families and businesses. The airlines are hurt unbelievably by these prices and so are trucking firms. American families are pulling up to a gas pump trying to figure out how do I manage to pay for this tank of gas. It is not unusual to hear industry officials say: Stop it. John McCain, Senator McCain: With oil at over $100 a barrel and an adequate supply in the [Strategic Petroleum Reserve], it is time to suspend purchases. Now, why is it that everyone can hear this message except the President and the Vice President? I am told the Vice President is the one who is absolutely insistent that we keep putting oil underground. Why is it that everyone can understand and hear this message loud and clear except the President and his Vice President? Is it not probably time for all of us to insist that we do that which we know should be done? Fifteen Senators from the minority sent a letter to the President on April 29, 2008, and said: We write today to request that the U.S. Department of Energy immediately halt deposits of domestic crude oil into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, having said all of that, we are going to vote tomorrow on a piece of legislation I introduced in early February. I have spoken about it on the floor until people fall asleep when bring it up. I know repetition is difficult around here, but it is important to understand how urgent this is. The fact is, we all have one thing in common: None of us has ever seen nearly $128 oil until now. We have never seen the price of a barrel of oil go up to $120, $124, or $128 a barrel for oil. None of us has ever experienced that before. So what does it mean to this economy? Do we know? I guess not, but we are witnessing it. I guess we know what it means to the five airlines that are bankrupt. Do we know what it means to a trucking company? A guy called me the other day. He is running a trucking company in North Dakota that his dad started many years ago. They have a good operation. They are a good family company. They have made a good living for their family over many years. He said you know what. I do not see how we can avoid shutting this company down. We cannot afford the fuel costs. We just cannot afford it any longer. Now, what are the consequences of all of this, a family driving up to the gas pump and spending $50 or $60 to fill their tank? Here is what is happening: The speculators in the oil futures area are making a massive amount of money. No question about it. Take a look at hedge fund compensation. It is unbelievable. The OPEC countries, oh, man, they are going to the bank. They are going to the bank with our money. You pull up to the pump, you are lining the pockets of the OPEC and other oil producing countries. You are lining the pockets of the major integrated oil companies too. By the way, the major integrated oil companies now all have two names, because they all got married. They liked each other a lot, liked the bottom line. Now, it is ExxonMobil, and it is ConocoPhillips. They have all got two names. People say to me: what are you talking about? Why do you not let the free market work? Let the free market work. Don't you understand anything? Well, I actually used to teach a little economics in college. But this is not a free market at work. There is nothing about a free market here. No. 1, you have a cartel, a cartel of countries that makes decisions behind a closed door, and they have the capability to make those decisions stick. In fact, Saudi Arabia is now pumping 800,000 fewer barrels a day than they did two years ago. Does that decision have an impact on price? You bet your life it does. So you have a cartel. It is illegal to have a cartel in this country. You would go to jail for that in this country. But we have a cartel for oil producing nations. Then you have the major oil companies which are bigger and much stronger, with much more muscle in the marketplace. Why? Because everybody was shaking pom-poms while they wanted to merge. You want to merge? Absolutely. No problem. Get bigger. Fine. We are supposed to have 2,000 people working for this U.S. Government on antitrust enforcement. You cannot find one of them. I know they are getting paid, but you cannot find one of them. All of these mergers are approved. So now we have got the OPEC cartel, we have got the major integrated oil companies with more muscle in the marketplace. Finally, we have a futures market which has become an orgy of speculation. Then we are told just let the free market work. What is wrong with you? The free market is fine. I guess it is fine if you are on the receiving end of these policies. If you are the one who is the beneficiary, it is not fine. If you are the one who is going to the bank to make deposits, boy, this works out pretty well for you. But if you are on the receiving end of oil, gas, jet fuel prices or diesel prices, then you are in deep trouble. The fact is, this is damaging our economy, and it is going continue to damage our economy until we find ways to address it. I serve on the Energy Committee. I am also Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water, so I spend a lot of time thinking about energy. I understand that in order to address our energy needs we need to do a lot of things, do them right and do them well. We need to produce more. I understand that. I described the need to produce more in the Gulf of Mexico, and what we are trying to do through legislative efforts. We need to produce renewable fuels, and we can and should do that. I think there is great capacity in renewable fuels in the U.S. We need to conserve more. We waste an unbelievable amount of energy in this country. We need to be much more efficient with all of the things we do. We get up in the mornings and never think. We flick a switch from ``off'' to ``on'' and everything comes on. We put a key in the ignition and turn it and somehow the engine starts, and we go to work. We do not think much about all of those issues, and make sure that conservation and efficiency are unbelievably important. So we need to consider production, conservation, efficiency, and renewables as important elements of an energy policy. But, again, when my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and say: Well, you know, if we could have drilled in ANWR, boy, things would be terrific. That is all nonsense. I mean, we can produce much more without going to that which we ought to go to as a last resort, rather than a first resort. That is why many of us are trying to go beyond Lease Sale 181 in the Gulf of Mexico. We ought to be producing off Cuba as well where China is now allowed to drill and produce. So there is so much we can do. Let's take the first baby steps in the right direction and stop doing things that make no sense. Let's stop putting oil underground into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. My hope is that, while we might disagree on a lot of things on energy policy, the one thing we can and I hope should agree on is to stop putting oil underground when it is going from $120, to $125, to $145 a barrel. I think there are at least 67 and probably 75 Senators who have expressed themselves on that. While we might disagree on other parts of energy legislation, we should not disagree on that, if a substantial, overwhelming majority of the Senate believes it. You know, one of the regrets I have had in the Senate in recent times is we often get the worst of what each party has to offer rather than the best of both. The fact is we have got two grand political parties in our country. I know on some things we have different beliefs, and we have differences of opinion. There are some things from time to time where we agree. This is an area where we agree right now. It is time to stop filling the SPR at this point. Not forever but at this point. That is an area of broad agreement in this Chamber. I hope we can manifest that agreement tomorrow when we cast a vote on legislation that I introduced three months ago. I have introduced amendments that Republicans like Senator Domenici and Senator Snowe have cosponsored. Many other Senators have signed letters. Senator McCain has expressed himself strongly and positively in support of this position. So let's do what we can achieve. Will it reduce the price of gasoline? Absolutely. Will it reduce it a lot? I do not know. Probably not a lot, but some. Dr. Philip Verleger, an economist and energy analyst, testified before the Energy Committee last year and pointed out that we are taking certain oil from the Gulf of Mexico and putting underground. This is sweet light crude, a subset, the most valuable subset of oil. He said that it had an impact of about 10 percent on the price of sweet light crude oil. Let's do what we can do to put some downward pressure on the price of oil. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Connecticut, how many amendments are remaining on this bill, based on what he knows at this time?