Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Minnesota talked about the importance of renewable energy, which I certainly agree with her. Is it the case with renewable energy that we have done a pretty pathetic job as a country to incentivize renewable energy? In 1916, we put in place tax incentives to produce oil and gas. They have been in place permanently for almost a century now, tax incentives to produce oil and gas. By contrast, with wind and solar and renewable energy, we put them in place in 1992 short term incentives. We have extended them short term five times and have let them expire three times. It has been a pathetic response to renewables. The current tax incentives expire at the end of this year, and I have introduced legislation to extend the production tax credit for 10 years. I believe our country ought to say to the world and to investors: Here is where America is headed for a decade. Count on it. Believe in it. Renewables, solar, wind, and so on need a clear signal for investment. You can count on these investments because this is where America is going. Is it not the case, I would ask the Senator from Minnesota, that we have not nearly done the job in incentivizing renewables and establishing a national policy. Does she agree?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, May 1, at 9:30 a.m. in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Indian Energy Development--Regaining Self-Determination Over Reservation Resources.'' Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know a couple of my colleagues will be coming to the floor, specifically Senator Cantwell will be coming to the floor, to speak about some energy issues in a moment. When she does, I will relinquish the floor. I wanted to make a couple of comments. I listened with interest to my colleague from South Dakota making comments about the energy situation. We agree on much of what he has said and disagree on perhaps some amount of it. But renewable fuels, ethanol, providing renewable energy, all of that is very important. The area where we would perhaps not agree is ANWR, which in my judgment ought to be a last resort rather than a first resort. But I might say to my colleague from South Dakota that particularly with respect to the Outer Continental Shelf, if you measure where oil exists, the best resources and reserves of oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf first are in the Gulf of Mexico; second, off California; third, off Alaska. One of the things we have recently done on a bipartisan basis in this Congress was to pass something called Lease 181, which opened up a portion of the Gulf of Mexico for development of oil and gas. I was one of the four Senators who led the effort on that. I was pleased to do that because we are now producing and are going to be producing more oil and more natural gas from one of the most productive areas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. So production is certainly one of the areas we ought to be concerned about, as the Senator indicated. Production, conservation, efficiency, and renewables, all of these are important elements of an energy policy. No one has ever accused this Congress of speeding. I understand that. This system is not established to be necessarily efficient. It has checks and balances, which makes it very hard to get things done. But there is an urgency at this point, an urgency for families, for farmers, for truckers, yes, for businesses and airlines with respect to what is happening with the price of gasoline. There are a lot of reasons for all of this, and I am not here to try to ascribe blame, I am here to say: Let's fix some of these things. I am going to offer an amendment, by the way, to the FAA reauthorization bill, that deals with something that as of today I note that 67 Members of the Senate have agreed to. Some while ago, I introduced the notion of prohibiting the further movement of oil underground into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I have introduced legislation on that matter. Long ago I introduced it, had discussions with the Energy Committee about it. I had 51 Senators sign a letter to the President to say: Stop putting oil underground when the price of oil is $115, $120 a barrel. Stop taking oil out of supply and putting it underground into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is already 97 percent full. Why would we take oil out of supply to put upward pressure on prices, on both oil and gasoline, at a time when oil is at a record high? That makes no sense. Let us use at least some reservoir of common sense. Fifty-one Members of the Senate signed my legislation, signed the letter to the President in support of my legislation. Today, 16 members of the minority signed a letter to the President. They have also introduced legislation. So 51 and 16, 67 members agreed, that includes the person who spoke on the floor today. Senator McCain has called for the identical policy. That is 67. That is veto proof. If 67 Members of this Senate say to this President and this administration: Stop sticking oil under the ground, nearly 70,000 barrels of sweet light crude every day--that is the most valuable subset of oil. We have had testimony before the Energy Committee that suggests it has put as much as a 10-percent increase on the price of a barrel of oil or a gallon of gasoline. And while families and farmers and truckers and airlines and all of these businesses are trying to figure out how on Earth do we pay this fuel bill, and while we see the damage and the dislocation of this country's economy because of it, this administration merrily goes along sticking oil underground. It is unbelievable. At the very least you ought to expect some common sense here. Now, what has gotten us into this mess? Well, let me describe what is happening with Saudi Arabia. And if ever we should wonder about the danger of being overly dependent on oil from off this country's shores, this is the chart that shows why. The Saudis, who have the largest reserve of oil in the world by far, have reduced their production by 800,000 barrels a day since 2005. They have reduced production by 800,000 barrels a day. That is part of the problem. So we sit here in the United States with a prodigious need for energy to make this economy work. And, by the way, as an aside, I have said before: We stick straws in this planet and suck oil out of the planet. We suck out 86 million barrels of oil a day. One-fourth of it is required here in the United States of America. We use one-fourth of everything that is produced every day in this world, on this planet. One-fourth of that oil is used here in the United States. We have an enormous appetite. So we need to conserve; we need more efficiency in the use of energy. We have done some things in that area. The CAFE standards increased fuel efficiency by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years. We have done some things in a range of these areas, but we are far too dependent on foreign sources of oil. When the Saudis decide they are going to cut back oil production by 800,000 barrels a day, and they say to us: Oh, by the way, with our strategic relationship, we want you to sell us precision munitions, it seems to me we ought to not be arming to the teeth the Middle East. But aside from that, strategic partnerships run both ways. You cut your oil production by 800,000 barrels over 2 years; and by the way, we would like some strategic weapons for our strategic need in the region--it does not seem to me that is the way a partnership should work. But let me describe with a couple of charts what is happening with this strategic reserve. Here we see that oil prices have nearly doubled in 1 year. There is no natural reason for that. The supply-demand relationship in the marketplace does not justify this. The marketplace simply is not working. We have these people who shake the cymbals and worship at the altar of the marketplace. By the marketplace, that is the greatest allocation of goods and services known to mankind. Well, I believe it is a great allocator of goods and services. I used to teach economics in college briefly, and I understand the marketplace. But the marketplace needs a referee from time to time because sometimes the marketplace does not work; the arteries get clogged, it does not work. So here is what has happened in a year. Oil prices nearly doubled in a year. Now, my colleagues have used quotes, and I have used many quotes. I am going to use one by Mr. Gheit, because Mr. Gheit said it all. He said: There is no shortage of oil. Who is Mr. Gheit? He has worked for 30 years for Oppenheimer and Company, the top energy analyst for Oppenheimer. He said: There is no shortage of oil. I am absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. Oil speculators, including the largest financial institutions in the world--he said: I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It is open 24/ 7. Unfortunately it is totally unregulated. This is like a highway with no cops and no speed limit and everybody is going 120 miles per hour. What is he talking about? He is talking about hedge funds neck deep in the futures market. He is talking about investment banks neck deep in the futures market. Is this because hedge funds and investment banks want to wallow in oil? Do they want to bathe in oil? Do they want to take it home and store it in their garage? They do not want to see oil. They want to speculate and make money. They have made a lot of money. People who never had it are buying things from people who never will get it. So they are making money on both sides of the transaction. Now, what does that do when you have this kind of unbelievable speculation? It causes the runup of prices in a very dramatic way. There is a trader named Andrew Hall. I would not know him from a cord of wood; never met him, never will, I suppose. He earned $250 million on the commodity market over the past 5 years, one-quarter of a billion dollars. He was betting. All of this is betting. He is betting long term, short term. He is not somebody who takes oil as a commodity; he just bets. There are a couple of things we ought to do. I will be very brief. One, in order to be engaged in the futures market, as I have said before, if you want to speculate in the commodities future market for oil, for example, you only require 5 to 7 percent down; only 5 to 7 percent margin. You can control $100,000 worth of oil with $5,000 to $7,000 of your own money. If you wanted to wager, that is a good way to do it, I suppose. If you want to do it in the stock market, to do this on margin, it takes 50 percent to buy in the stock market. But if you go to the commodities market, you can speculate to your little heart's content with 5 to 7 percent. That makes no sense. It ought to be 25 percent, in my judgment, or perhaps if you want to buy oil futures, you ought to take possession of the oil. But one way or another, when you have a market that is not working, and you have speculation running out of control, I think there is an obligation on the part of this Congress to address that. Because that speculation is driving up the price of oil, and driving the price of gasoline well up beyond where the fundamentals would suggest. It injures the American drivers, consumers, business, and it injures this country's economy. The second point I indicated I was going to make is on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This chart shows what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve looks like. These are holes in the ground, and we shove oil down those holes. We save it for a rainy day; it's 97 percent filled at this point. We are putting just under 70,000 barrels a day every day underground right now. Sixty-seven Members of the Senate as of today have expressed themselves publicly. They think it is the wrong thing to do. They think this administration is making a mistake and they ought to stop it. Now, why do people say that? Because they know if we stop taking that 70,000 barrels of sweet light crude and sticking it underground, it will be part of the inventory out there, and they know that would put downward pressure on gas prices and downward pressure on oil prices. That is why 67 people have come to this conclusion. The question is: What do we do to try to stop this? Well, when you put oil underground, you drive up to the gas station, you see the effects of this kind of policy. The question is: What do we do to put some downward pressure on prices? Stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and stop it now. There is a bill on the floor of the Senate, the FAA reauthorization bill. I am part of the committee that has produced this bill. We need to modernize the system for aviation in this country. It is desperately in need of modernization. It is going to cost some money to do that, but we do not have much choice. We have had, I think, four airlines declare bankruptcy in the last month and a half. A substantial part of it, announced by every one of those airlines, had to do with the price of jet fuel. I am going to offer, as an amendment on this bill, legislation that would call a halt to filling the Strategic Reserve. To stop taking oil and sticking it underground, and put some downward pressure on jet fuel prices, downward pressure on gasoline prices. Some say this doesn't fit on this bill. It does. Fuel prices are why three or four airlines have gone bankrupt in the last month and a half. I will be over here tomorrow speaking about this topic because I believe strongly that we should do something about this issue. My colleague Senator Byrd used to talk about Aesop's fly. He described the fable Aesop's fly who was sitting on the axle of a chariot who would observe: My, what dust I do raise. There are some here in the Congress who have that notion, that if you just make a little bit of noise and have a little bit of activity, you can claim a lot of success. The fact is, that is not what the American people want this time. They want this Congress to understand the urgency, understand the problem, understand what it is doing to this country's families, and do something about it. When you have speculation that runs out of control, this Congress has a responsibility to do something. We can't have someone else do it, we can't wait for somebody else. It won't get done. If we don't do it, it won't happen. These are two steps I believe we ought to take: No. 1, increase the margin requirement and stop the speculation in the futures market to begin to put downward pressure on prices; No. 2, stop putting oil underground when prices are at a record high and put downward pressure on prices. If we did both of those things, I am convinced we would bring oil and gas prices back down and we would provide some relief to the American driver and to the American economy. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wanted to discuss two things today. One is a hearing I have just concluded of our policy committee, and then I want to talk about the price of gasoline and oil. Let me talk first about the hearing I just concluded of the Democratic policy committee. It is the 13th hearing I have done on the issue of contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially waste, fraud, and abuse of contracting in Iraq. I have held a good many hearings. I am not easily surprised any longer about what I hear at these hearings of the unbelievable waste and fraud and abuse in Government contracting, where American taxpayers are being fleeced and where our soldiers are being disserved by waste and fraud and abuse. I do get surprised, even though I say it is hard to surprise me. Today I hear about the stealing of artwork and rugs and crystal, the stealing of gold in Iraq in some of the palaces by contract employees, the stealing of gold and melting down of gold to make spurs for cowboy boots--something I hadn't heard before--the charging of a 100-percent markup on a little thing like a laptop computer. There is testimony today of the purchase of 300 laptops to be delivered to DynCorp in Iraq. They were purchased for $1,400 apiece, and then the Government is charged $2,800. That is a 100-percent markup. A witness told us that a colleague of his was killed in a car in Iraq in a high-risk area. He was on an official assignment in an unarmored car and that car was hit with an ambush and he lost his life. He said that colleague should have been in the armored car, but the armored car was being used to transport prostitutes from Kuwait back to Baghdad for the enjoyment of this particular contractor's employees. So I say, I try not to be surprised, but the depth of incompetence and waste and fraud and abuse in contracting in Iraq is unbelievable. I started the hearing today by describing again, as I have a couple of times, a piece of work done by the New York Times that I wish perhaps would have been done by the Pentagon or by the Congress in terms of oversight. This is Efraim Diveroli, the CEO of a firm awarded $300 million in a contract by the Pentagon to arm the Afghani fighters. Our Pentagon wanted to provide weapons and ammunition to the Afghan fighters, a perfectly reasonable thing to do because they are taking on the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. To arm the Afghan fighters, they contracted with a company who had a 22-year-old CEO. This company was largely a shell company established by this young 22-year-old's father. It had been an inactive shell company, but now it is behind an unmarked door in Miami Beach, FL. So a 22-year-old CEO gets a contract with the Pentagon. His 25-year-old vice president is a massage therapist, a masseur. So you have a 22-year-old and a 25-year-old massage therapist running a company, and they get, we are told, a third of a billion dollars in contracts from the Pentagon. By the way, the contracts were to provide ammunition to the Afghan fighters. Here is a photograph, again, crediting the New York Times. It is first-rate reporting by three reporters. Here is an example of what they shipped to the Afghan fighters, ammunition including 40-year-old, Chinese-made cartridges, and the pictures of what the Afghan fighters received from this $300 million contract--boxes taped up, bulging at the seams and bursting at the side with bad ammunition. It is unbelievable. The question is, How is it the Army Sustainment Command in Illinois provided a $300 million contract to a company that had a 22-year-old president of a company that used to be a shell company for most of its existence and a 25-year-old massage therapist as a vice president and they run off with a third of a billion dollars of the Pentagon's money? Actually, the taxpayers' money, isn't it? So who is going to answer to that? After the New York Times did their story, the Pentagon then suspended this contract. But my understanding from a discussion with a high- ranking Army official in the last week or so, that high-ranking Army official was saying privately: No, the contracting with that company was perfectly logical and legitimate. It is just that the goods that were provided the Afghanis didn't meet standards. You tell me how a general in charge of this kind of contracting can decide to take what had been a shell company and give a 22-year-old and a 25-year-old masseur a third of a billion dollars. You justify that to the American taxpayer. It is not going to happen. That cannot be justified. It is long past the time for this Congress to do something about it. We now have a very large urgent supplemental appropriations request in front of Congress. How much of that money is for this purpose? How many of those contracts would be as embarrassing as this contract? How many of those contracts will go to allow the kinds of things I heard for 2 hours this afternoon at a hearing I just held in the Dirksen Building? When are we going to have some feeling that some of this stuff is going to be straightened out? I have described before what we should do about it. Some of my colleagues have put in place a piece of legislation called the Truman Commission. I fully support that. But that is a commission of people outside of our Government that will study and make recommendations on Government contracting. It is a good thing to do. I fully support it, but the President is not implementing that commission, despite the fact it was passed into law. But what we really should do as well, because you cannot delegate accountability for this, we really need what is called a Truman committee. That is a committee, a select committee, bipartisan committee in the Senate similar to the Truman committee of the 1940s. Harry S. Truman created a bipartisan select committee in the Senate. It cost $15,000 at the start of the Second World War. They held 60 hearings a year. It was bipartisan. It had subpoena power. With a $15,000 cost as they started it, it saved the American taxpayers $15 billion. This Congress needs a Truman committee. Three times we have voted on it. Three times the minority voted against it. Because it takes 60 votes, we do not now have a Truman committee. In nearly every other major war, every other conflict, we have had some kind of select committee to do the kind of oversight, to provide the focus on the waste and fraud and abuse. But that has not been the case now. We need to fix that. We need to make that happen. We have voted on it three times, and we will be voting again because the American taxpayers deserve that kind of oversight, that kind of accountability, and so, too, do the America soldiers who are being disserved by this waste, fraud, and abuse.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to make a comment about energy, the price of gasoline, and the price of oil. It is not surprising to people what is happening in this country. We see the price of oil and the price of gasoline, especially the price of gasoline, go up, up, and up because the price of oil has gone skyrocketing in recent months. I have a chart that shows what has happened to the price of oil. You can see from April of 2007 to April of 2008 the increase in the price of oil. One might say, there must be something in the supply and demand--the need for oil relative to the supply of oil--that causes this to happen. After all, it is the market system, isn't it? No, it is not the market system. There is no free market here. There is nothing about a free market here. A substantial portion of the oil is on the other side of the world, controlled by OPEC countries. That is not a free market. They sit in a room with a closed door, and the oil ministers of the OPEC countries then make decisions about supply and the effect on price that reflects their self-interest. So this is not some natural result of a market system. I made the point a couple days ago that Saudi Arabia, which has the largest known reserves of oil in the world, is producing 800,000 barrels a day of oil less than they did 2 years ago. Think about that. The largest producer of oil in the world has cut back production by 800,000 barrels a day. Is it surprising that the price goes up and up? That is one reason, isn't it? The largest supplier of oil has cut back production. What is another reason? Another reason is this administration--a smaller reason but nonetheless a reason--is taking oil from the Gulf of Mexico as royalty-in-kind oil and putting it underground. Here is what this administration is doing. At a time when oil is $110 to $120 a barrel, bouncing around like a yo-yo, this administration is taking 62,000 barrels of oil every day and sticking it underground in what is called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled. Yet when oil is at a record high, this administration is continuing to stick oil underground, taking it out of supply and putting it underground. That is an unbelievably inept policy because it puts upward pressure on oil prices and upward pressure on gas prices. The fact is, this isn't just any oil. This is sweet light crude which is a subset of oil, the most valuable subset of oil. And we have had testimony before the Energy Committee saying this activity does affect the price of oil and the price of gasoline in a negative way. When I say putting it in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, this chart shows where they are putting it. This is what it all looks like. This is the SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The oil goes underground. They had a choice with that oil. The choice would have been to put it in the marketplace and perhaps reduce some of these prices. Instead they stick it underground. It is a bad policy. I aim to change it in our appropriations process, in the supplemental. One way or another, we are going to vote on this. Do you really think that at $115 to $120 a barrel, we ought to be sticking oil underground and increasing the price? I don't. There is another thing happening with respect to the price of oil. I just mentioned the Saudis cutting production back 800,000 barrels a day over the last 2 years. I just mentioned putting nearly 70,000 barrels underground every single day by this administration. That further cuts the amount in the supply line. But there is something else happening with the price of oil. An orgy of speculation is occurring in the futures market for oil and gas. This didn't used to happen. The futures market is necessary. It is necessary to hedge. It is necessary to provide liquidity. I understand all that. But the futures market has become something unbelievably speculative. We have hedge funds neck deep in the futures market. Do they want oil? They don't want any oil. They just want to bet on oil. They want to gamble on oil. These are people who want to buy something they will never get from people who never had it and make money on both sides of the transaction in a futures market. We have hedge funds making big bets on oil in the futures market. We have investment banks making big bets on oil. Investment banks didn't used to be engaged in the futures market, but they are now. In addition to that, in addition to the investment banks working in the futures market, we have investment banks that are actually buying oil storage for the purpose of taking oil off the market and putting it in storage until oil is more valuable later. That is what is happening. We have not previously had that occur. So we have this binge of speculation in the futures market that has nothing at all to do with the supply and demand of oil. Why is this happening? At least in part it is happening because in the stock market. If you want to buy stock on margins, you have to pay 50 percent of the margin. You have to come up with half the money. If you want to buy stock on the margin, come up with half the money. If you want to buy oil on margin in the futures market, all you need to come up with is 5 to 7 percent. If you want to control 100 million dollars' worth of oil contracts, $5,000 to $7,000 will do it for you. It is almost unbelievable what has happened with respect to the speculation in these futures markets. My belief is, we should change the margin requirements on the futures markets. When there is excess speculation, it injures this country's economy. It damages the American economy. This excess speculation has been pushing up oil prices in a very significant way. Yes, there is a combination of things that are happening. One is, as I said, the Saudis cut back production by 800,000 barrels a day. Our Government, the Department of Energy, is sticking nearly 70,000 barrels a day underground of sweet, light crude. But it is also the case that a significant part of this, in my judgment, comes from a binge of speculation on the futures markets. I believe we should increase the margin requirement at least to 25 percent. I want to go through a couple of observations. On April 1 of this year, Stephen Simon, a senior vice president of ExxonMobil testified that: The price of oil should be about $50-$55 per barrel. Oh, really? Then why isn't it? This is from an oil expert saying: I think the price of oil should be around $50 or $55 a barrel. Well, this company is making plenty of money off of the current price of oil. The price is double. That company must grin all the way to the bank. That company, the Saudis, the OPEC countries, and the other large oil companies, they must be smiling all the way to the bank. But Mr. Simon says the price of oil should be about $50 or $55 a barrel. Mr. Clarence Cazalot, Jr., the CEO of Marathon Oil said: $100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market. That was during a question-and-answer period with reporters. He said a more reasonable range for crude oil prices was between $55 and $60 a barrel. Now, understand what he said. He said: ``$100 [a barrel] oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market.'' He is the CEO of one of the large oil companies in the country. This price is not justified by supply-demand. Well, we are told the market system works; supply-demand determines the market price. I used to teach a little economics in college, and you teach supply-demand curves. You also talk about a free market, there is no free market here, of course. As I started to say earlier, we have the OPEC countries, that is a cartel. We have the big oil companies--all with two names now. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips--they all have two names because they found they like each other and they wanted to marry up. So they merged. So they have much more muscle in the marketplace. Then we have the futures markets which have become a binge of speculation. A New Jersey Star Ledger article from January of this year said: Experts, including the former head of Exxon Mobil, 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 is a man who came to testify before the Senate Energy Committee. Fadel Gheit is an energy analyst for Oppenheimer & Co. I think he has been with them for 25 or 30 years. He knows this business. Here is what he said: There is absolutely no shortage of oil. . . . I'm absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. . . . Oil speculators include ``the largest financial institutions in the world.'' He said: 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 everybody's going 120 miles per hour. Now, here is a picture of NYMEX, the New York Mercantile Exchange, where you can trade commodities such as oil. You will see the trading pits. A lot of people have made a lot of money in those trading pits. In fact, I have a Wall Street Journal story that describes this that is titled: ``Trader Hits Jack Pot in Oil, as Commodity Boom Roars On.'' This describes Mr. Andrew Hall. Mr. Andrew Hall has earned a lot of money, about $250 million--a quarter of a billion dollars. It says: The commodities market's historic surge is generating huge paydays on Wall Street. One of the biggest beneficiaries has been Andrew Hall, an enigmatic British-born trader who, five years ago, anticipated an important shift in the way the world valued oil--and bet big. The point of this is, here is a man who made a lot of money. I do not begrudge a man making a lot of money. But he made a lot of money by betting. He bet big. Isn't that interesting? As I said before, the notion of buying something you will never get from somebody who never had it--that is the futures market. It provides liquidity, yes. But when it goes way beyond liquidity and encompasses a binge of speculation, that is damaging and harmful to this country, then it seems to me it is not anything about the market system. Anybody who has studied history and knows economics knows we have seen binges of speculation before. Go back four or five centuries, and you will read about a tulip bulb--one tulip bulb being sold for $25,000 because there was a speculative binge which, in the rearview mirror, looks completely irrational with respect to the price of tulip bulbs. Well, we have seen over the centuries many of these binges of speculation. We now see it in the futures market, in my judgment, in part because the margin requirement is so unbelievably low: 5 to 7 percent. We now see binges of speculation that are driving up the price of oil and causing the American consumers an enormous amount of lost income and great difficulty. There is a group of truckers who have come to Washington, DC, today. I was talking to somebody who was a little disadvantaged--He said he got slowed down on some travel up Constitution Avenue. I said: Well, that is an inconvenience, but think of what truckers are going through right now--a whole lot more than inconvenience. When it costs a substantial amount of money--one trucker talked about that it cost $1,000 to fill his truck with fuel. That is a lot more than an inconvenience. I talked a week or two ago about how I think there are three airlines--perhaps now four--that have announced bankruptcy as a result of fuel prices. We have working folks who will drive up to the gas pump tonight to try to fill their tank, trying to figure out how to get the money. Where does the money come from to pay for the gas? At the same time, we have people who are engaged on the futures market and who are going to the bank with the largest profits ever seen. I think we have a right to ask in this country--when we have a market that is not a free market; when we have a perverted market, first by OPEC, a cartel, second by excessive speculation on futures markets-- don't we have a responsibility to do something? I think the answer to that is clearly yes. So my hope is we will, first, decide to support an amendment that I will offer to the supplemental that immediately shuts down placing nearly 70,000 barrels of oil every single day underground at a time when we need that in the supply pipeline. Why should we allow the Department of Energy to be taking oil at the highest possible price and sticking it underground? We can fix this, and we can fix it soon, within a matter of weeks, if we had the will to do it. Second, while we have not previously legislated on the issue of a margin requirement for engaging in speculation on the commodities exchanges, I think if the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or other entities will not do it, I think Congress should. After all, Congress created the mechanism by which these exchanges exist. We created the referee for the exchanges, and if it does not work, then we have a responsibility to fix it. I recall--and it does not relate to the oil companies--but I chaired the hearings on Enron over in the Commerce Committee. I had the CEO of Enron come and testify in front of me and take the fifth amendment. Ken Lay came and said he could not speak and took the fifth amendment. But when he did speak later he said he did not know anything about what was going on. The fact is, there was unbelievable speculation going on on the west coast on wholesale electricity prices and the manipulation of markets, and it cost tens of billions of dollars to west coast consumers who were bilked out of that money. When the system does not work, when regulatory authorities are not willing to regulate, when those who are supposed to be referees in this free market system are not making sure a perverted system is changed to make sure it works, then we have a responsibility in Congress to deal with it and to respond to it. So I believe very strongly there are a few things we can do. First, stop SPR oil from going underground; second, find ways to increase the margin requirement on the futures market. There are several other approaches we can use as well. But I would conclude by saying this: I am just a little tired of people talking about the free market. There is no free market here. I want oil companies to do well. I want them to find more oil. I was one of four people in this Chamber who led the fight--successfully, I might add--to open Lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico where there is substantial oil and gas reserves. I believe we should produce more, and I witnessed that by being one of four Members of the Senate who helped get that done. We should conserve more. We should provide much greater efficiency with all the things we use. We should provide much greater effort to renewable energy. We should do all of those things. But even as we do them, in my judgment, we have a responsibility to address this issue of oil and oil pricing. Even the oil companies say there is no justification, given the current supply and demand, for the price of oil to be above $60, $65 a barrel. We have heard it in the statements of people who run our major oil companies. The rest of it is going up to the hedge funds and the investment banks and others who are making massive amounts of money at the expense of truckers, at the expense of airlines, at the expense of the ordinary American drivers who are trying to figure out: How on Earth do I pay this bill?, and stopping excessive speculation. We need to fix this, and the sooner the better because I believe it is damaging our economy. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to discuss several areas this afternoon. One is the excessive market speculation with respect to the price of oil and gas. My colleagues have done so, and I will weigh in on that. I think what is happening is not only unfair to the American consumer but damaging to this country's economy. So I will talk about that in a bit. I want to mention that, on Monday of next week, at 2 p.m., I intend to chair a hearing of the Democratic Policy Committee, in which we will hear from three additional whistleblowers on the issue of waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting in Iraq. I have held a lot of hearings over a number of years with respect to contracting in Iraq. It is the most unbelievable waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country. On Monday, we will hear from whistleblowers who will tell us about the infamous burn pits in Iraq, where in many cases valuable equipment is taken to be burned. In other cases, equipment has been pilfered and taken into the black market. It is an unbelievable tale. But it just fits in with the other things we have heard. I will not go through all the examples. I have spoken about them at great length. Presumably, some are under criminal investigation. One would expect and hope that the Defense Department would begin to debar some contractors that are, in my judgment, cheating the American taxpayers. Let me give a few examples. A contractor is charging for 42,000 meals a day they are serving to U.S. soldiers. It is discovered they are only serving 14,000 meals, overcharging by 28,000 meals a day. I don't know, maybe you can miss a cheeseburger or two on the bill someplace. But how do you overcharge for 28,000 meals a day? An American contractor is paid to rehabilitate 140 Iraqi health clinics and gets paid over $100 million, paid for with American dollars. The money is gone, but there are no health clinics. I guess there are maybe 20 of them with shoddy construction. An Iraqi doctor who knows that an American contractor was paid to rehabilitate health clinics in rural areas goes to the Iraqi Health Minister and says: I would like to tour these clinics that the American taxpayers paid to rehabilitate because health is such an important need. The Interior Minister of Iraq said: You don't understand, most of these are imaginary clinics. I had a guy come to a hearing I held, and he saw $85,000 trucks being burned on the side of the road, left on the side of the road because they didn't have a wrench to fix a flat tire. The road was safe, the only reason they left the trucks by the side of the road was because they could make a profit by buying another one. Mr. President, $85,000 trucks torched because they had a plugged fuel pump. What is the big deal about that? The contractor will simply reorder new trucks because the American taxpayers are going to be stuck with that bill. It is a cost-plus contract. How about $7,600 a month for leasing SUVs? How about $45 for a case of Coca-Cola? How long do we have to come to the floor of the Senate and talk about this unbelievable, utter waste of the American taxpayers' dollars? We had a man named Judge Radhi come to testify. I asked that he be allowed to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee. He came. He was appointed by Paul Bremer to be the head of a Commission on Public Integrity in Iraq. They tried to kill him three times because the folks over there didn't like somebody looking over their shoulders. He said they pursued thousands of cases of corruption; $18 billion had been pilfered and wasted, most of it American money. He talked about $3 billion spent by the former Defense Ministry of Iraq ordering airplanes that never arrived in Iraq because it is likely the money ended up in a Swiss bank account. Judge Radhi said, $18 billion he estimated was wasted, most of it American money. Does that surprise anybody? We lifted C-130 cargo loads of one- hundred-dollar bills out of this country to fly them to Iraq. In a war zone, you are distributing one-hundred-dollar bills out of the back of pickup trucks. Is it any wonder this is the most waste, fraud, and abuse we have ever seen? In 1940, at the start of the Second World War, Harry Truman, then serving in this body, helped create a bipartisan committee. It became known as the Truman Committee. It cost $15,000 and saved $15 billion. They did 60 hearings a year for 7 years--60 hearings a year for 7 years. They issued subpoenas. When they saw waste, fraud, and abuse, they stopped it. They were serious. It was a bipartisan investigative committee right here in this Chamber. This war in Iraq has gone on 5 years. I have held hearing after hearing chronicling the waste, fraud, and abuse. And it is unbelievable. We read that one of the largest contractors we have engaged in Iraq, the Halliburton Corporation, has been paying 10,000 of their U.S. employees through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands that has no staffing at all, just an office address. Why would they do that? Why would they hire Americans and run their payroll through the Cayman Islands? So they don't have to pay payroll taxes to the U.S. Government. When this supplemental comes to the floor of the Senate in the next week or two, I am going to offer an amendment that says any contractor doing that should not be getting any more contracts. At some point, does anybody have the nerve to stand up and say this has to stop? Is there at least a small group of people, perhaps a quorum, who would say this has to stop? What we should do and what I have tried and I say with the support of Senator Reid--and I appreciate his support--we have tried very hard to create a Truman-type committee on behalf of the American taxpayers to say: Stop this waste, stop this fraud, stop this abuse. We have been unable to do that in three votes in the Senate. I regret that because the American taxpayer is being fleeced and American soldiers are being disserved by this waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me mention one additional example, which may seem like a small matter, but is symptomatic of a larger problem. Henry Bunting, a wonderful man who worked in Kuwait as a buyer for Halliburton Corporation, brought a towel to a hearing. He held it up. He said: We were buying towels for American soldiers. Here is a towel I was supposed to buy, a white towel. So I ordered white towels. My supervisor said: You can't buy that white towel. You need to buy a towel that has the logo of our company, embroidered in silk. I said it will triple, quadruple the cost. The supervisor said: It doesn't matter, it is a cost-plus contract. We will earn more money. Unbelievable. Bunnatine Greenhouse came to testify. The price of her testimony was her job. She was the highest civilian official in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She said this awarding of the LOGCAP Rio contracts was the most blatant abuse of contracting authority she had seen in her entire career. For that it cost her job. I have told my colleagues before, I called the general at home at night who has since retired, who hired Bunnatine Greenhouse, who was judged to be one of the best contracting officials we ever had. I called him at home at night. I said: General Ballard, tell me about Bunnatine Greenhouse. He said she was tops and what happened to her was wrong, dreadfully wrong. She blew the whistle on the good old boys network, and now her case is behind a shroud in the Defense Department like all the rest of these issues--under investigation, they say. When will the investigation be done? When will it end? Halliburton KBR was contracted to provide water to the military bases in Iraq. That was their job. A man named Ben who was in Iraq working for Halliburton came and said: We were providing water but were not checking the--were not testing the water. It turns out the nonpotable water was more contaminated than raw water from the Euphrates River. That is what our soldiers were showering in, shaving with, and often brushing their teeth with. Then I got hold of an internal Halliburton document--I believe it was 21 pages--written by Will Granger, the man in charge of water quality in Iraq for Halliburton. He said this was a near miss. It could have caused mass sickness and death. This was an internal document leaked to me from inside Halliburton, written by a man in charge of water in Iraq: A near miss, could have caused sickness and death. We had whistleblowers from inside the company say this is what happened: Water more contaminated than raw water from the Euphrates River being sent to these camps. Halliburton said it didn't happen--despite the fact I had the evidence--didn't happen, never happened, not true. The U.S. Army said: Didn't happen, never happened. I did not understand that. I would have thought the U.S. Army would have been apoplectic on behalf of the health of its troops. So I asked the inspector general: Do an investigation, will you, and tell me what the facts are. The inspector general did the investigation and just finished a month and a half ago. Guess what? The whistleblowers were right. So why did the U.S. Army declare to us it didn't? I understand the company deciding it will not admit to anything. What about the U.S. Army? In fact, they sent a general to this Congress, to the Armed Services Committee, to say these incidents never happened. Now we have an inspector general report that not only demonstrates that the general testified inappropriately, was wrong, deceived the Congress, but that the inspector general had provided that information to the Pentagon prior to them sending the general up here to tell us information that was not accurate. It just goes on and on. Mr. President, we need to have a Truman committee. I know my message is tiresome to some, but it doesn't matter much to me. This Congress owes it to the American people to do what previous Congresses have done during wartime, and that is properly investigate the waste, the fraud, and the abuse on the most significant expenditure of taxpayers' money that has ever occurred ever in the history of this country for contractors. We shoveled money out this door. It is unbelievable. And almost no oversight. I brought to the floor of the Senate many times a picture of a man who testified with bricks of one-hundred-dollar bills wrapped in Saran Wrap. He said it was the Wild West. We told contractors: Come to this building and bring a bag because we pay in cash. I described that in the context of a company called Custer Battles. Two guys who had virtually no contracting experience in a very short time got many millions of dollars worth of contracts. And they were then found to have defrauded the Coalition Provisional Authority. I came to the floor a week or two ago and said the New York Times did some enterprising reporting--good for them, and I say to those reporters: You did some great work, work that probably could have and should have been done by the Congress in the recent past. I showed a picture of a man named Ephraim, 22 years old, and his 25- year-old vice president who was a massage therapist--a 22-year-old CEO of a company and a 25-year-old massage therapist as the vice president. They ran a company that was a shell corporation set up by the 22-year- old's dad some years ago out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach. They got $300 million in contracts from the U.S. Department of the Army to provide munitions and weapons to the Afghan army and police. What ended up in Afghanistan was, in many cases, ammunition from the mid-1960s, manufactured by the Chinese in boxes that were taped and coming apart. This was a company that got over $300 million. Should somebody ask the U.S. Department of the Army and the Sustainment Command of the Department of the Army in Illinois how on Earth did this happen? How did you think you would get by with this? How are you going to explain this to the American taxpayers? We desperately need to establish a Truman committee to investigate this issue. The American taxpayers deserve no less, in my judgment.

Mr. DORGAN

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

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the final matter I want to talk about today is this issue of the price of oil and the price of gasoline and excessive speculation. There has been some discussion today about this, and I want to make this point. We have seen a dramatic runup in the price of oil and, therefore, the price of gasoline. There is no justification with respect to the fundamentals of oil and supply and demand for that. There is no justification for it at all, but something has changed in this country. What has changed is the futures market has become an orgy of speculation. Let me quote a man named Mr. Fadel Gheit, a top analyst from Oppenheimer and Co. He has been in this business for 30 years. He said this a couple of months ago. There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I'm absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. Oil speculators include the largest financial institutions in the world. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It's open 24/7. It's totally unregulated. This is like a highway with no cops and no speed limit and everybody's going 120 miles per hour.'' This is happening in the futures market. You need a futures market to hedge. You need it for liquidity. I understand that. What has happened to the futures market is pretty bizarre. We now see on the futures market 20 times the amount of oil bought and sold every day than is used every day. Twenty times more is bought and sold than is used. For the first time, we see hedge funds up to their neck in the futures market. Is it because hedge funds love oil? No, they don't know anything about oil. Do they want oil delivered to their offices? Do they want oil delivered to their homes? No. They never want to own any oil. They want to buy things they will never get from people who never had it. That is the way the futures market works. These people are speculating. Hedge funds are neck deep speculating in oil futures, and for the first time investment banks have joined them. So you now have big investment banks and big hedge funds with a presence in the futures market like never before. They have all these commodity corners in their company now, and they are hiring more, and they are speculating at an unbelievable rate. I am told, and I have read, that investment banks for the first time are even buying oil storage capability to buy oil and take it off the market. Why? To wait until it increases. So now we have oil upwards to $120 a barrel because we have so much rampant speculation or outright gambling in these markets. What does that mean for the folks driving a Chevrolet down the road, getting low on gas and trying to figure out how to get to a gas pump, and how to pay the bill when they get there? Well, the folks in the hedge funds, these folks in the investment banks on these commodity markets that are engaged in the 24/7 casinos, are going to the bank. Man, they are going to the bank big time. I am talking billions and billions of dollars. It is pretty unbelievable. When you have a person drive up to the gas pump and fill that car with gas, a portion of that money now goes to this carnival of speculation in the futures market to reward the speculators. A portion of it, of course, goes to the OPEC cartel too. These are folks who sit around in a closed room with a locked door and make decisions about price and about production. I might add, while I am at it, that Saudi Arabia, by the way, has 800,000 barrels a day less production on the market than they did 2 years ago--800,000 barrels a day, every day. That means a lot in terms of what might happen in that market. So we have a lot of things going on here. What should we do about it? Well, in addition to all of that, the Bush administration is deciding they want to stick, and they are sticking, 60,000 to 70,000 barrels of oil underground every single day in something called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We have an SPR to save for a national emergency. Well, they are buying oil at $118 a barrel coming off the Gulf of Mexico as a royalty in kind transfers. They are taking $118-a-barrel oil and putting it in the ground, 60,000 to 70,000 barrels a day. With oil at record highs, it is Byzantine to see this administration saying we have to do more to fill the SPR. This is at a time when the Strategic Reserve is 97 percent filled. So they take oil out of the supply, which puts upward pressure on oil and gas. When the supplemental appropriations bill comes to the floor of the Senate, I intend to offer that amendment as well, to stop putting oil underground in SPR when oil is above $75 a barrel. I mean, this doesn't take a reservoir of common sense. It just takes a few grains of common sense from somebody who might actually help to fix this problem. What I also want to do is to increase the margin requirements on the exchange. If you buy stock on margin, you pay a 50-percent margin requirement to buy stock. If you want to control oil by going into the futures market for oil, you pay 5 to 7 percent. You pay a 50-percent margin for stock, but 5 to 7 percent for oil. If you want to control $100,000 worth of oil, it will cost you $5,000 to $7,000. That doesn't make any sense. That encourages speculation. That encourages the speculation that pushes the runup of these prices. I believe the margin requirement ought to be at least 25 percent at this point, during this period of aggressive speculation. So I am putting together a piece of legislation on that as well. You know, I want this country to develop an energy policy that makes us much less dependent on foreign sources of oil, engages in much more conservation, and much more efficiency. We should produce more. I am one of the four Senators who helped pass the legislation finally that opened up Lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006. So I believe in additional production. I believe we ought to conserve more. I believe we need more efficiency, and I believe we need to pay much more attention to renewable energy. All those things are important. All of them are important. But right at the moment we have a circumstance where we have an administration sticking oil under the ground at the wrong time, which puts upward pressure on oil and gas. We also have hedge funds and investment banks hip deep in the futures market speculating and making billions of dollars on speculating. At the same time, they are driving up the price of oil and gas for American families and doing great damage to this country's economy. It is not just the family, and it is not just the business. It is not just the truckers and not just the airlines that are hurt. This country is experiencing significant economic damage as a result of the runup in these prices. I think there are reasons for us to come to the floor on an urgent basis and take obvious steps to deal with it. I have mentioned several, and there are more. But I only want to make the point that this is not some passing fancy that is going to be a magnet for a lot of discussion. This is a very serious, real problem that is doing significant damage to this country's economy. There is a lot to do next week and the week after, and I will be introducing some additional legislation. I will be anxiously awaiting the appropriations supplemental legislation. When the emergency supplemental appropriations bill comes to this floor, either in the Appropriations Committee or on this floor, we must be given the opportunity--and will be given the opportunity--to offer the kind of amendments I have suggested. This will include an amendment that stops the putting of oil underground in the SPR at a time when oil is priced at $118 a barrel. This is just one of the obvious things we can do to stop penalizing American consumers and damaging this country's economy. Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to mention, this morning out of the Senate Commerce Committee, thanks to Senator Inouye's and Senator Stevens' support of my legislation, we passed legislation that will veto a rule that was passed by the Federal Communications Commission that allows for more consolidation in America's media. The Federal Communications Commission decided they want more concentration in the media, despite the fact that most of what Americans hear, see, and read every single day is directed by about five or six major corporations in America. They think we need more concentration. So they passed a rule that says it is going to be OK to allow newspapers to buy television stations in the same city. We have had a prohibition against that action for a while. It is called cross-ownership. They did their rule. The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was very anxious to get this rule done and serve whatever master he was serving. They did their rule, but today we passed a veto resolution out of the Commerce Committee, a disapproval of the rule by the Federal Communications Commission that would allow greater concentration in the media. The last thing we need is more concentration in the media. We have all these supporters that come to the Senate floor who say: What are you talking about? We have all these new outlets. Go to the Internet. See how many sites there are. Go to cable television. See how many channels there are. I say: Yes, a lot of new choices but from the same ventriloquist, the same source. One guy testified before the Commerce Committee and said, for example, on cable television in my office, 48 channels are on basic tier and 42 of those channels belong to the same five or six major companies. That bill will come to the floor of the Senate because it is a privileged piece of legislation. My resolution of disapproval, passed by the Commerce Committee today, will come to the Senate as a privileged resolution. It will be on the calendar now. I am going to consult with Senator Reid, and I will visit with the minority, and find a time to bring it up and have a vote to disapprove the rule that was enacted by the Federal Communications Commission, which, in my judgment, stands logic on its head.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Isn't it the case the vote we had is on the motion to proceed? This is not on the issue, this is on the motion to proceed to an issue? So we have a filibuster on the question of shall we proceed. Time after time after time, isn't it the case that even on motions to proceed, we discover the other side demands 60 votes, then demands to have the full 30 hours elapse after the vote has taken place? This one was, I think, 94 to zero. There was a requirement that we go to a motion to proceed--94 to zero--so it was not controversial, it was a matter of bleeding time. It makes no sense, with all that we have to do.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, April 24, at 9 a.m. in Room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, if people are by any chance watching the proceedings of the Senate this afternoon, they may wonder what on Earth is happening or more likely what is not happening. It has become customary, when we try to do business in the Senate in recent months, that we discover there is a filibuster that requires a cloture motion to be filed on almost anything. On the Senate floor today, as I understand it, we are on a 30-hour postcloture period on a motion to proceed to a technical corrections bill. That is almost unbelievable to me. It is not unusual. We have had 65 filibusters in this Congress. Why would someone require a cloture motion to be filed in order to break a filibuster on a motion to proceed to a technical corrections bill? The only conceivable reason to do that is to stop the Senate from doing anything. I guess those who have been doing this in the minority party have been pretty successful. Today is tax day, April 15. One might ask, if we were not doing this--standing around and gnashing our teeth and wiping our brow, wondering why we can't move this--what would we be doing? If we didn't have a minority that insists on a motion to proceed, a filibuster, a cloture motion and 30 hours postcloture, what would we be doing? We would probably be doing some worthwhile things. It is not that the underlying bill is not worthwhile, it is. It should be done quickly and easily. It is a technical corrections bill. But what, for example, could we do? I thought, because it is April 15, a day a lot of people recognize as a day of obligation to pay their taxes, I would mention perhaps a few of the things we could be doing on the floor of the Senate if we had a bit of cooperation and if we could get the minority party to agree--and in every one of these cases, certainly we could not. But let me describe what we might do, just on the Tax Code. The Government Accountability Office found that 59 of the 100 largest publicly-traded Federal contractors--that is companies that did work for the Federal Government in 2001--had established hundreds of subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes to the United States of America. They want all the benefits you can get from being a contractor for the Government, but they do not want to pay taxes to this country. I discovered this some long while ago. It actually comes from an enterprising reporter named Dave Evans with Bloomberg News. I mention that because it is important. He discovered that in this building in the Cayman Islands, a 5-story white building on Church Street, there are 12,748 corporations that call it home. They are not there. It is their post office mailing address for the purpose of saying they are in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying U.S. taxes. If we were not spending our time at parade rest, or posing as potted plants because the minority doesn't want to move ahead on anything, not even a motion to proceed on a technical corrections bill, are there other things we can do? We could solve this, couldn't we? We could say: If you are going to run your income through a subsidiary in a tax-haven country to avoid your obligation to the United States, maybe you don't need to contract with the Federal Government. Maybe you don't need to get the Federal Government's business. Or perhaps on tax day, we might say we will close this tax loophole--just like that. If you are not doing substantive business in a tax-haven country, we will not recognize you as having gone to a tax-haven country, and you will pay taxes as if you never left our country. If we were not seeing all these interminable delays, perhaps we would pass legislation that I have offered previously, and that is to say to American companies: If you shut your manufacturing plant, fire your workers and move your operations overseas, you are not going to get a tax break anymore. Someone might say: Do they get a tax break for that? They sure do. Let me give an example. I assume that almost everyone has ridden in a Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon. It was made for 110 years in Illinois, in Chicago, IL. Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon was created by an immigrant who came here and created a big business. The thing is, after 110 years the Radio Flyer Little Red Wagons are not manufactured here. They are all gone. They are in China. Every Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon is now manufactured in China. By the way, the company got a tax break to move the jobs to China. I have spoken often on the floor about Huffy bicycles--20 percent of the American bicycle market and made in Ohio by workers who were earning $11 an hour plus benefits. Not any more. They all got fired in Ohio and all these jobs were moved to Shenzhen, China. Huffy bicycles are made by people who work 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 30 cents an hour. Do you know what the workers at Huffy bicycle did the last day of work, as their plants were closed down? As they pulled out of their parking spaces, the workers left a pair of empty shoes where their car used to park. It was their poignant way to say: You can move our jobs to China, but you are not going to fill our shoes. This company received a tax break for moving jobs to China. Fruit of the Loom underwear--everybody knows about Fruit of the Loom underwear. You remember, they used to do commercials with the dancing grapes. I don't know who would dress up as a grape and dance, but I guess they got paid to do that, so you have commercials of dancing grapes advertising Fruit of the Loom underwear. The problem is, there is no Fruit of the Loom underwear made in America anymore because they all went offshore to be produced and the company got a tax break to do it. Why? Because this specific company did that? No, because companies that shut down their American manufacturing plants and move their jobs overseas get a tax break from this country. It is the most pernicious thing I have ever seen. I tried four times to correct it on the floor of the Senate. I ask people to look up the votes and see who is standing up for American jobs and American workers. Perhaps we could do that on tax day, maybe fix that problem and say: At the very least, let's stop subsidizing, through the Tax Code, the shipping of American jobs overseas. Here is another thing we could probably do if the minority weren't requiring cloture motions and engaging in 65 filibusters, which take up dead time. I should point out for anybody watching or listening, nothing can be done during this period. We are in a 30-hour postcloture period on a motion to proceed--not even on the bill, on a motion to proceed to a technical corrections bill. So this 30 hours is dead time, designed by the minority because they do not want us to do anything we probably could do on this tax day. We have a Tax Code that allows almost unbelievable tax breaks to some companies. This happens to be a streetcar in Germany owned by an American company. Why? Because they are experts in streetcars in Germany? No, because they get big tax breaks when they do this. This is a sewer system in Germany. Wachovia Bank, a U.S. company, was buying sewer systems in Germany. Think of that--do you think it is because they are experts in sewer systems? No. Do you think they wanted to buy a sewer system and move it to America? No, not at all. They want to buy sewer systems in Europe so they can avoid taxes in the United States, because if you buy a sewer system from a European city and you now own it, you can actually depreciate it and then lease it back to the city and everybody makes money--except the American taxpayers and the Federal Government loses money. Maybe, since it is tax day, we could shut down this tax scam, although the President has threatened to veto legislation that shuts down these kind of tax scams, for reasons I don't understand. But we could try. We could decide, you know, if working folks pay taxes, maybe everybody else can pay taxes. Perhaps we can pass a piece of legislation that says those on Wall Street who are getting what is called carried interest, some of the wealthiest people in the United States, should pay a higher income tax rate than 15 percent. Almost everybody pays a higher income tax rate than 15 percent, but those who are making the biggest money on Wall Street in the form of what is called carried interest, they are laughing all the way to the bank. They get a 15-percent tax rate. Perhaps we could change that. Perhaps another thing we could do this afternoon, if we were not forced to 30 hours of dead time, is we could deal with what the Internal Revenue Service is doing by farming out tax collections that need to be made--these are people who owe taxes--to debt collection agencies in the private sector. This is going to be hard for anybody to believe or understand, but here is what they have done. This administration is so anxious to privatize and farm out everything, they have gone into the Internal Revenue Service and said let's farm out these collections of taxes owed, so they have contracted with a couple of companies. The problem is that this privatization program lost $50 million in its first year and is expected to lose more this year. The IRS's private revenue collection target for the current fiscal year was $88 million. But they now project that the program will collect only $23 million. After excluding commissions, ongoing operational costs and capital investments, the IRS will still be $31 million in red this year. It is unbelievable. How can the Internal Revenue Service contract with a company that is going to lose money collecting taxes? I have a piece of legislation that says stop it. Maybe we could work on that and pass that legislation today--see if we could find some deep reservoir of common sense. The National Taxpayer Advocate who works at the IRS has said: Had that money been spent for collectors at the IRS, they would have raised $1.4 billion. Instead, they invested $71 million to use private collectors and returned just $32 million in 2007. So they missed it by about $1.368 billion. Isn't that incredible? Does anybody care? Apparently not. We are in 30 hours dead time on a motion to proceed to a technical corrections bill, guaranteeing nothing can be done on the floor of the Senate. There are a couple of other things we might consider when we are thinking what could we do this afternoon in this dead time. This is a photograph of Mr. Efriam Diveroli. He is the chief executive officer of a firm that received $300 million in U.S. Army contracts. He's 22 years old. His dad actually started a shell company back in the 1990s, and then he took it over. He said he was the only employee, except it lists a vice president. The vice president is a massage therapist. He is 25 years old. So here we have a 22-year-old chief executive officer and a 25-year- old massage therapist running a company in Miami. They got $300 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to provide ammunition to the Afghan fighters. Let me describe where they are. They are in this building. No, they do not own this building; they are in a little part of this building with an unmarked door. So you have a 22-year-old and a 25-year-old massage therapist working out of an unmarked office in Miami, FL; Miami Beach, FL, and they are supposed to, with $300 million, provide ammunition to the Afghan fighters on behalf of the U.S. Defense Department. Here is a picture of the ammunition. Some of it is ammunition from China from the 1960s. You can see what it looks like. And the Afghan fighters were saying: Wait a second. What are you sending us? Bullets that do not fire? Now, I must say, the New York Times deserves some real credit. Three people wrote this story. The New York Times, I can tell from the story, they traveled around the world to get the details. Now, we did not do it. We should have. We should have done it in something called a Truman committee. The bipartisan Truman committee was created in the Second World War, run by Harry Truman. By the way, it started with $15,000 and has saved the American taxpayer $15 billion going after waste, fraud, and abuse in defense contracting. Three times we have voted on a Truman committee in the Congress, and three times it has been turned back by the minority. Now, I will come later and give a longer presentation about defense contracting and the most unbelievable waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country. But we do not need more than the picture of the president of this company who got $300 million. The question I started with today is, What could we be doing in 30 hours of dead time, if the minority had not required that there be a cloture petition and had not effectively filibustered on a motion to proceed to a bill that is going to get overwhelming support? I do not understand it. Finally, we probably could do something about the price of oil or gasoline while we are on the Senate floor during this dead time if we were not prevented by the minority, prevented by a President's threatened veto pen. Oil and gas. Well, look, today is Tuesday, and oil is at $113 a barrel. Some are going to the bank with a big smile on their face, particularly the large major integrated oil companies because they are making a massive amount of profit. Then other people are wondering: Do I have enough in my gas tank to be able to drive to work tomorrow? How am I going to do that? So while all of this is going on today, the Federal Government is putting 70,000 barrels of sweet, light crude oil underground in the Strategic Reserve. And they are going to do it every single day all year long, 70,000 barrels a day, stuck underground. Now, the Strategic Reserve is a decent idea. It is 97 percent filled. Why on Earth would we, when oil has hit $113 a barrel, continue, through this Bush and Cheney administration, to put oil underground and thereby put upward pressure on gasoline prices and oil prices? It makes no sense at all. So, perhaps, were the dead time not required by the minority, we could work on that, or perhaps with respect to the price of gasoline and oil, we could work on increasing the margin requirements for those who are speculating in the futures markets. The commodities futures market, especially for oil, is an unbelievable carnival of speculation. Do you know that when you buy stocks, there is a 50 percent margin requirement. But if you want to buy oil, God bless you, it is only 5 to 7 percent. You want to control 100,000 barrels of oil tomorrow, $7,000 will do that. That is the margin. So, as a result, you have unbelievable speculation in these markets driving up the price well above that which the fundamentals of oil supply and demand would justify. Perhaps we can do something about saying to the exchanges: There must be increased margin requirements to stop this speculation hurting our country. It is driving up the price of oil, driving up the price of gasoline in a manner that is completely unjustified. Stop the speculation, stop putting 70,000 barrels of sweet light crude underground every day. Maybe those would be two things we could do when we are required to file cloture petitions to stop a filibuster on issues such as a motion to proceed. I mean it is unbelievable to me that we find ourselves in this position. There is so much to do, and it is such important work. Yet here we find ourselves with the American people looking in on the Senate and wondering: What on Earth are they doing? Well, what we are doing is what we are required to do by the rules when one side decides it wants the Senate to stand at parade rest almost all the time. We have such big challenges in our country. I have mentioned energy. I have mentioned the fiscal policy. I have mentioned health care. We have such big challenges that ought to be our agenda. This country deserves better, and our agenda is, in my judgment, something on which the American people expect us to make progress. They do not expect us to see every single day, in every way, a filibuster on the floor of the Senate, even on motions to proceed. That is the last thing this American public should expect from a Congress that ought to come to work ready to go to work on issues that really matter in peoples' lives every single day. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Maria Kate Dowling, a detailee of Senator Kennedy's HELP Committee staff, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Federal Trade Commission Reauthorization Act of 2008. I am joined by Senator Inouye. We seek with this reauthorization to give the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, what it needs to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition. The agency has a very important mission, but needs more resources and authority. The number of FTC employees has been greatly reduced from its pre-1980 high of 1,746, and the agency currently has approximately 1,102 employees. We need to make sure that they have the manpower and the technology to protect consumers. I'd like to take a second to highlight one of the areas where the FTC needs authority most. The subprime loan market was an orgy of greed from a large number of lenders who knowingly put borrowers in mortgage loans that they could not afford--while at the same time loading up these loans with provisions that trigger large fees and penalties. The mortgage brokers ran ads from coast to coast--you have seen them: ``Do you have bad credit? Do you have trouble getting a loan? Have you been missing payments on your home loan? Have you filed for bankruptcy? It doesn't matter. Come to us; we will give you a loan.'' Many borrowers were brought in by teaser rates, interest-only payments, no payments for 12 months, etc. Loans had quick resets to higher and unaffordable interest rates. Loans had prepayment penalties. Marketed loan payment amounts did not include escrowed amounts, taxes, insurance, and other financial obligations. These unfair and deceitful advertisements are still on Web sites for lenders across the country today. The FTC needs the authority to stop this practice and resources to investigate and go after the bad actors. Let me tell you a bit about what the bill does. The bill provides for a 7-year reauthorization starting in 2009. We set the fiscal year 2009 funding at $264 million and increase it by 10 percent per year. In addition, we give them an additional $20 million to be used by the commission to improve technology in support of its competition and consumer protection missions. We give the FTC independent litigating authority so they won't have to refer their cases to the Department of Justice. We also give the FTC the authority to give preference in the hiring process to administrative law judges who have experience in their issues. We provide the FTC the authority to commence a civil action to recover civil penalties in a district court for any violation of the FTC Act. We extend their jurisdiction to allow them to go after nonprofit entities as well, so bad actors cannot hide behind nonprofit status, and we allow them to go after those aiding and abetting an FTC violation. We also give them the authority, by majority vote of the full commission, to waive their current rulemaking requirements for any rule involving a consumer protection matter. We require the FTC to conduct a rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act, APA, which is faster than their current Magnuson-Moss authority, in the area of subprime loans. The commission has sent 200 warning letters to mortgage advertisers and is conducting several investigations of mortgage advertisers and subprime lenders. In addition, the FTC has brought 21 cases in the last decade. But they haven't had the opportunity to review the bad practices and create a rule preventing their reoccurrence. We give them authority to create a rule preventing unfair or deceptive behavior by lenders and allow the State attorneys general to enforce the rule. Finally, we repeal the common carrier exemption as the FTC has long been requesting. There are too many problems in the telecommunications world that need to be addressed by the FTC--consumers should not be left unprotected. We also make sure that the State Do Not Call laws are not preempted by Federal regulations. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today has been a fairly significant day here in the Congress. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have flown back to the United States from the country of Iraq, and they have reported to both the Armed Services Committee and also the Foreign Affairs Committee. I have not had a chance to listen to their testimony--I don't serve on either of those committees--but I know the news will carry the testimony, and I am sure I will see portions of it and will certainly read their testimony tomorrow morning, but I wanted to make this point. While General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have come here today and I am sure have talked about the progress that results from the surge--although there has been a substantial amount of violence, and tragically, I believe 11 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq just in the last few days--I think there is no question that the extra soldiers, the additional 30,000 or 40,000 soldiers they took to Baghdad and to the streets of Iraq, dampened down the violence some. Yet there is so much discussion about Iraq and so little discussion about something else that matters a great deal to our lives. This is the 2,400th day since 9/11, and 2,400 days later, Osama bin Laden is still at large, the same Osama bin Laden who boasted the day after 9/11--a day when thousands of innocent Americans were killed-- Osama bin Laden boasted about having engineered the murders of these Americans. Two thousand four hundred days later, he is not only at large, but he is reconstituting the leadership and the al-Qaida force, including building training camps to train additional terrorists. Now, Mr. President, are some moments in history where I just remember where I was. I remember where I was as a very young boy when John F. Kennedy died. I remember the day. I remember the day astronauts walked on the moon. And I remember 9/11 very clearly. And it occurred to me on 9/11 that surely our country bring those who were responsible to account. When thousands of Americans were murdered and al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, boasted about having engineered that murder, it occurred to me that Osama bin Laden is not long for this world, or at least Osama bin Laden will certainly be brought to justice and get his due rewards for murdering so many Americans. Yet, 2,400 days later, that has not happened. Now, one might ask the question: Why? And does it have to do with the detour into Iraq? I want to point out that in July of last year, the last time a National Intelligence Estimate was given to us by all of the combined intelligence services in our Government, here is what they said: Al-Qaida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the homeland. Let me read that again. That is the assessment of our National Intelligence Estimate in our country, the official assessment. Al-Qaida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the homeland. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its homeland attack capability, including a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas, operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. Al-Qaida is the most serious threat to us, No. 1. No. 2, it has regrouped and regenerated key elements of its attack capability. No. 3, it is in a safe haven in Pakistan. Now, who would have guessed that 2,400 days after our country was attacked, an attack that Osama bin Laden boasted about having engineered, that there would be 1 square inch of ground on this planet that would be called a safe haven for someone who murdered over 3,000 Americans? Who would have believed that to be the case? Not me. Almost certainly I would have thought he would have been brought to justice. Here is an October 3 story from last year by Griff Witte of the Washington Post. It quotes top military officials in Pakistan talking about al-Qaida. ``They've had a chance to regroup and reorganize,'' said a Western military official in Pakistan. ``They're well equipped. They're clearly getting training from somewhere. And they're using more advanced tactics.'' This is from CIA Director Hayden, a week ago, on ``Meet the Press'': It is very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able, over the past 18 months or so, to establish a safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before; that they are bringing operatives into that region for training. Now, I have flown over that Afghan-Pakistan area. I have been in an airplane at 20,000 feet and looked down. I understand there is no boundary. You don't know where Afghan ends and Pakistan begins. I understand it is a tough area, tribally controlled areas. But what I don't understand is how, 2,400 days later, we are told by our top intelligence officials that the greatest threat to our homeland here in America is al-Qaida and its leadership--the greatest threat to our homeland is al-Qaida and its leadership--and they are in a safe haven, quote-unquote. There shouldn't be 1 acre of ground on this planet that is safe for those who murdered Americans on 9/11. So what happened? What has caused this to happen? Well, this country took a detour. President Bush told the American people and Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the world and the United Nations told us about the alleged threat posed by the country of Iraq. He made the case for a military attack against the country of Iraq. They made the case that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. They got no argument about that. Saddam Hussein was in many ways a brutal dictator. There were football-field-size graves that were unearthed in Iraq with thousands of people who had been murdered by Saddam Hussein. So there is no argument about Saddam Hussein. The fact is, there are a number of bad leaders in this world. That doesn't mean we go invade their country. After 9/11 the case was made that Iraq was a threat to the United States of America. They said Iraq was trying to get yellowcake from Niger and build a nuclear capabilities; Iraq was buying aluminum tubes for the purpose of reconstituting its nuclear capabilities; Iraq has mobile chemical weapons laboratories to produce weapons of mass destruction, which threatened this country. That is all pretty ominous. Colin Powell, at the request of President Bush, showed all the evidence to the world. Then, of course, in the years since discovered that evidence was false. The yellowcake from Niger was from a forged document. Yet it purported to tell the world that Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute his nuclear capability by buying yellowcake from Niger--a forged document. No one has ever described to us where that forgery came from. The aluminum tubes, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, and others sat idly by while in their offices they received reports from other parts of our Government saying those aluminum tubes were not for a reconstitution of nuclear capability. That information was withheld from Congress and the American people. Mobile chemical weapons laboratories? That came from a man named Curveball; a man named Curveball. Curveball was an informant who was being held by the Germans. Curveball used to be a taxicab driver in Baghdad, largely considered a drunk and a fabricator by the German authorities. This country, this administration, this President, and this Secretary of State used Curveball as an example and a source--a single source, mind you--to describe mobile chemical weapons laboratories that existed in Iraq and therefore threatened this country. It turns out it was not true. It turns out that thin thread, one person held by German authorities--again, considered to be a drunk and a fabricator, a former taxicab driver from Baghdad--was cited as a source, just an unidentified source to the entire world, to support the contention that what Saddam Hussein was doing in Iraq threatened this country. So the President, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley, and especially, of course, the neocons--Vice President Cheney, Douglas Feith--all of them. They all got what they wanted. This country went into a detour, and the detour was right into the middle of Iraq. It was going to be a very simple operation, last only a very short amount of time. The fact is, we have been there now fighting in Iraq longer than the Second World War lasted, and we have reports today by the top general in Iraq, General Petraeus, a U.S. general, and by the U.S. Ambassador, Ambassador Crocker--both good Americans--who come to us to describe progress, progress in Iraq. I don't know how progress is being measured. I hope we have a lot of progress. I hope we have enough progress so we can begin withdrawing American troops from Iraq. But the fact is, Saddam Hussein is dead. He was executed. The Iraqi people had the ability to write a new constitution and then vote for it. They had the ability to vote for a new government, which they have. And they had the ability to receive two-thirds of a trillion dollars from the American taxpayers, which we have spent in Iraq and a smaller amount in Afghanistan. We have spent $16 billion of that training military and police capability for able-bodied Iraqis. Four hundred thousand able-bodied Iraqis have been trained for military and police work. The question remains now, in my judgment, if 400,000 Iraqis who have been trained by using $16 billion of our money, and been trained by our people, if they don't have the will to provide the security in the country of Iraq that is their country, not ours, then we can't stay there 2 years or 4 years or 20 years or 100 years, as some have suggested. We must begin to bring troops home and say to the Iraqis: This is your country, not ours. This is your responsibility, not ours. You have a new government. We spent the money to train able-bodied Iraqis. Now you have to have the will to take back your country. My point about Iraq, however, is that we will not only have been detoured in terms of two-thirds of a trillion dollars-plus, we have been detoured here and bogged down in a long-term civil strife in Iraq that has been deadly for this country and deadly for the Iraqis at a time in which the greatest threat to America and greatest continuing threat to our homeland comes from al-Qaida. Don't take that from me. Take that from the top military experts in our Government. If that in fact is the top threat to our homeland, why, 2,400 days after 9/11, is Osama bin Laden in a safe haven? Why is there a safe haven anywhere on Earth for Osama bin Laden? That ought to be the question that is asked today. That ought to be the question that is answered for the American people. I think all of us understand that the terrorist threat exists. It remains, and likely will remain for some time, but we didn't eliminate the terrorist threat and didn't address the terrorist threat by sending soldiers to Iraq. The purpose of sending soldiers to Iraq was to respond to what we now know to have been largely untrue, the threat that Iraq represented a threat to our country. But we do know now, as a result of our National Intelligence Estimate, that Osama bin Laden is a threat to our country. We knew that on 9/11. We knew that on the day he killed 3,000-plus innocent Americans. Everybody knows that. You don't need some intoxicated former taxicab driver from Baghdad to tell us that. We know Osama bin Laden is a threat. We now know that 6 years after he engineered the 9/11 attack that our intelligence estimate says he or his al-Qaida organization is the most serious terrorist threat to our homeland. Were there any hearings today on Capitol Hill asking questions of the people who are supposed to be doing this, What kind of progress are you making? Are you really going after him? Is this job No. 1? Or is all the spotlight on the same spot, that is Iraq, while Osama bin Laden over here in northern Pakistan is rebuilding training camps, recruiting new terrorists, and reconstituting his al-Qaida leadership to once again remain the most serious threat to this country's homeland? My only point is there is nothing Republican or Democrat or conservative or liberal about any of this. This is all about common sense. What is the greatest threat to this country? The National Intelligence Estimate says it is the al-Qaida leadership. So what are we doing about that? Is there any progress? Were there any hearings today asking whether there is progress? Were there any hearings asking whether we are bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, calling in officials who ought to be working on this? It seems to me, after 2,400 days the American people have a right to expect some answers. Again, I think it is good that we have hearings today. We will no doubt read about the hearings, the testimony of General Petraeus who, by all accounts, is a wonderful American soldier. I met Ambassador Crocker when he was Ambassador in Afghanistan. He is a good American diplomat. We will no doubt hear a lot of discussion about what they said today. All the talk today is about Iraq. That is a very important subject. But I assume what will not be discussed today is anything about the most serious terrorist threat to our homeland, and that is the person and the leadership and the organization that engineered the attack that murdered thousands of innocent Americans on 9/11. I hope those hearings are held soon. I hope this administration gives us a report from time to time on what we can expect. Will there be another 2,400 days? Another national intelligence report telling us that the person who engineered the 9/11 attack is in a safe or secure--by the way, that word has been used as well--safe haven or secure haven? There ought not be anyplace safe or secure on this Earth for those who engineered the 9/11 attack, but it certainly has been safe and secure for 2,400 days. My hope is we will not be on the floor of this Senate talking about another 2,400 days. We should be focusing on bringing to justice those who perpetrated the 9/11 attack. That goal, in my judgment, has taken a back seat to the detour that took us to Iraq all these many years, and I hope that will change soon. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in just another couple of minutes, there is an amendment I believe has been filed to the underlying housing bill. I want to make a comment on it. It is an amendment that would extend the renewable energy tax credits. It is a very important amendment. I wish we would extend the renewable energy tax credits for a lengthy period of time. I am not sure if that amendment will be considered germane. If it is, we need to pass it. But I want to make this point. This country has a history now going back to 1992 with respect to renewable energy for wind energy through the production tax credit and things we put in place to encourage renewable energy. We have a history of kind of a pathetic and anemic response to all this. Let me describe what we did with oil. Once we decided we wanted to encourage people to look for oil and gas, we were at it. In 1916, Congress put in place deep, aggressive tax credits and incentives for people to go drill for oil and gas. So for almost 100 years our country's policies have been for going out to drill for oil and gas. God bless you, we are going to give you some big tax breaks. We want you to do that. That has been America's policy: find more oil and gas. In 1992, the Congress put in place a provision that said: Now we want to encourage renewable energy. With oil we put in place permanent, robust tax incentives that have lasted almost a century. What did we do with renewables? When it came to renewable energy, it was kind of a pathetic, lackluster response. It was temporary and short term. We would extend it a little bit here and then we let it expire. We have extended it five times, and let it expire three times. What a pathetic response. What this country has an obligation to do with respect to wind and solar energy and the basic renewables is to say to this country and developers: Look, here is where America is headed. For the next decade, here is where we are going, and you can count on it because this is America's policy. We ought to do that. We are doing 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years at a time, but the production tax credit ought to be extended for 10 years. We should say here is where we are headed, and you can count on it. We are not going to want to be 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years from now 70 percent dependent on the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Iraqis and Venezuelans for our oil. That makes no sense. Yet the only way we are going to get out of this box is to say we are going to begin providing renewable energy in a very aggressive way. But we don't do that with the incentives we put in place. We just start and stop, stutter-start, stop, and every time we stop for a year, the whole investment cycle blows off. It goes to zero. So you have all kinds of projects on the shelf that sit there and never get deployed. In solar, for example, we are way behind in solar because you can't do solar and put a tax incentive in for 1 year. You can't do that. It takes a number of years to get a solar project up and running. You can, if you get a short-term wind turbine up perhaps. You can have a shorter time line on that. But even with that, it seems to me that for wind or solar or any number of these renewable technologies, this country has a responsibility to get serious about becoming less dependent on Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Iraq and all those countries. The Lord did something really interesting: He put oil over there under the soil and put all the demand over here, with the blessings of a country that expanded and produced a great economy. You know we put little straws in this Earth every day and we suck oil out. We suck 84 to 85 million barrels of oil a day out of this Earth, and we use one- fourth of it here in the United States, 21 million barrels a day, and 60 percent of it comes from off our shores. If you don't think that is a dangerous dependency, then there is something wrong. I think that is dangerous and we have to fix it. How do you fix it? You make a commitment to renewable energy. My colleague from the State of Washington was on the floor, Senator Cantwell, who has dedicated a lot of her time and effort to this subject, and I commend her for it. You know, you have to focus around here on so many things. Senator Cantwell has focused substantially on these issues. I wished to work with her. I want whatever she is proposing to succeed. We are working together in the Energy Committee. I am also the chairman of the Water and Energy Appropriations Subcommittee. We need to do a lot. But, most importantly, we need to get this Congress on the side of policy that this country can be proud to say: We are going to make a commitment for the next decade, here is where we are headed in America. We are in support of renewable energy. You can count on us because we are going to put policies in place that will tell you we are in support of it. We cannot keep doing what we have been doing. It is unfair, unfair to this country. So my hope is that when we consider this amendment, that we can approve it. But my hope is we will go much further this year. The minimum we should do on the production tax credit is a 5-year commitment--minimum. I have a bill that says we ought to provide the PTC for 10 years. You know, it is one thing to talk about these things, it is another thing to be serious and enact public policies that demonstrate to the country and the world you are serious. We have not done that on renewable energy. It is time, long past time we do it. I hope perhaps we will support with the first step tomorrow. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Federal Trade Commission Reauthorization Act of 2008. I am joined by Senator Inouye. We seek with this reauthorization to give the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, what it needs to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition. The agency has a very important mission, but needs more resources and authority. The number of FTC employees has been greatly reduced from its pre-1980 high of 1,746, and the agency currently has approximately 1,102 employees. We need to make sure that they have the manpower and the technology to protect consumers. I'd like to take a second to highlight one of the areas where the FTC needs authority most. The subprime loan market was an orgy of greed from a large number of lenders who knowingly put borrowers in mortgage loans that they could not afford--while at the same time loading up these loans with provisions that trigger large fees and penalties. The mortgage brokers ran ads from coast to coast--you have seen them: ``Do you have bad credit? Do you have trouble getting a loan? Have you been missing payments on your home loan? Have you filed for bankruptcy? It doesn't matter. Come to us; we will give you a loan.'' Many borrowers were brought in by teaser rates, interest-only payments, no payments for 12 months, etc. Loans had quick resets to higher and unaffordable interest rates. Loans had prepayment penalties. Marketed loan payment amounts did not include escrowed amounts, taxes, insurance, and other financial obligations. These unfair and deceitful advertisements are still on Web sites for lenders across the country today. The FTC needs the authority to stop this practice and resources to investigate and go after the bad actors. Let me tell you a bit about what the bill does. The bill provides for a 7-year reauthorization starting in 2009. We set the fiscal year 2009 funding at $264 million and increase it by 10 percent per year. In addition, we give them an additional $20 million to be used by the commission to improve technology in support of its competition and consumer protection missions. We give the FTC independent litigating authority so they won't have to refer their cases to the Department of Justice. We also give the FTC the authority to give preference in the hiring process to administrative law judges who have experience in their issues. We provide the FTC the authority to commence a civil action to recover civil penalties in a district court for any violation of the FTC Act. We extend their jurisdiction to allow them to go after nonprofit entities as well, so bad actors cannot hide behind nonprofit status, and we allow them to go after those aiding and abetting an FTC violation. We also give them the authority, by majority vote of the full commission, to waive their current rulemaking requirements for any rule involving a consumer protection matter. We require the FTC to conduct a rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act, APA, which is faster than their current Magnuson-Moss authority, in the area of subprime loans. The commission has sent 200 warning letters to mortgage advertisers and is conducting several investigations of mortgage advertisers and subprime lenders. In addition, the FTC has brought 21 cases in the last decade. But they haven't had the opportunity to review the bad practices and create a rule preventing their reoccurrence. We give them authority to create a rule preventing unfair or deceptive behavior by lenders and allow the State attorneys general to enforce the rule. Finally, we repeal the common carrier exemption as the FTC has long been requesting. There are too many problems in the telecommunications world that need to be addressed by the FTC--consumers should not be left unprotected. We also make sure that the State Do Not Call laws are not preempted by Federal regulations. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, before I leave the Chamber, I do wish to mention the Energy Department has made an announcement last week which, once again, stands logic on its head. They have announced they would continue putting oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve underground. They are putting about 60,000 barrels of oil underground right now, at a time when the price of oil is $100 or $110 a barrel. They are busy putting 60,000 barrels a day underground. It makes no sense at all. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is where we store underground that amount of oil we want to use in an emergency is 97 percent full. So the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled at a time when oil is at a record high. This administration is taking sweet light crude oil, which is a subset of all oil, and a highly valuable subset of oil, and putting 60,000 barrels of oil a day underground. They have announced beginning in August of this year, they hope to get contracts to do just that. We know that in addition to that, they want to increase that, almost double that, to be around 120,000 barrels a day underground for the second half of the year. They are going to use their royalty-in-kind authorities and likely some of the $585 million they had received when they sold reserves because of supply disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina. So here is where we are: We have oil prices that are akin to a Roman candle, going right through the roof, and instead of doing things that would put downward pressure on oil and gas prices, the administration is taking oil through royalty-in-kind transfers, oil payments off the Gulf of Mexico wells, and sticking it underground in the Reserve and taking it out off supply. I mean, that absolutely makes no sense at all. I followed a car once down a road in North Dakota, an old beat-up car with a back bumper hanging by one hinge. He had a bumper sticker, and the bumper sticker said, ``We fought the gas war and gas won.'' I thought, that is not so unusual. I mean, the other side always wins. But at least this administration, this Congress, ought to insist that we not put oil underground and stick it in the Reserve, when it is 97 percent full. We have to pay $110 a barrel for it and you take oil out of supply, which puts upward pressure on gas prices. I do not understand who is advising them, but whoever is, I hope perhaps they can find someone with a little deeper reservoir of good judgment att the moment to suspend putting oil underground in the Reserve. I have a piece of legislation I have introduced that does the following: It would suspend immediately the putting of oil underground in the Reserve for the remainder of 2008 unless oil comes back below $75 a barrel. But as long as it is over $75 a barrel, and the SPR is 97 percent full, let's at least stand up on the side of the average family out there that is trying to figure out how they can get a bank loan to fill their gas tank. Let's see downward pressure on gas prices rather than allowing this administration to announce on Friday they want to continue to put upward pressure on gas prices by seeking to enter into contracts to continue filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, the Secretary of Energy says: Well this does not matter much. This is a small amount. It is 60,000 barrels a day. What he does not understand, I think, is it is a subset, this is sweet light crude, the most valuable subset of oil we have. We had testimony before the Senate Energy Committee that clearly indicates this is putting upward pressure on gas prices. We do not know how much. One expert who came before the Energy Committee said 10 percent. But why should we sit idly by and have the administration have a policy of taking oil off the market and putting it underground, especially the sweet light crude? This is not a debate about whether it is increasing gas prices, it is. The debate is simply: How much does it increase gas prices, and why should we have anyone in this town busy doing things that increase gas prices? How about standing up for the driver? How about standing up for ordinary families for a change? So I wished to say I noted the press release put out by the Energy Department as a matter of policy. They are wrong, dead wrong. One way or another we are going to deal with it. I chair the subcommittee that funds the Department of Energy. I will have a chance to write the Chairman's mark. That will be a couple months from now. But I definitely intend to deal with that in the Chairman's mark. But I hope before then we can stop 60,000 barrels or more of oil a day from going underground because that is a policy that, in my judgment, flies in the face of good sense. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.