Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be agreed to en bloc: Martinez, No. 3906, as modified; Bingaman, No. 4083; Barrasso, No. 3898; Coburn, No. 4078, as modified; Coburn, No. 4029; and Vitter, No. 4038.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, for the information of colleagues, with the agreement of the minority, I ask unanimous consent that we have the vote scheduled at 5:25 and that we have consent that there not be other amendments in order prior to the vote on this amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the issue of methamphetamine on Indian reservations is a dilemma. It is devastating scourge to Indian reservations. The Senator from Montana asks for cooperation of law enforcement jurisdictions to form opportunities to work together. It makes a lot of sense. It is not a mandate. He is not requiring it. But he is shining a spotlight on one of the significant health problems on Indian reservations. If I spent the time to talk to you about the testimony we received in committee hearings about what methamphetamine addiction has done, it is almost unbelievable. I won't describe that in detail here. I support the sense-of-the-Senate resolution. It makes a great deal of sense. My colleague from Alaska will no doubt want to give her thoughts. I believe the Senator from Montana will ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DORGAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are considering the intelligence authorization bill. My understanding is later this afternoon we will have, perhaps, a final vote on the bill. There are many important provisions in the bill. Many of us who have been here for some while-- from the destruction of the World Trade Center and the murder of thousands of innocent Americans on 9/11, where terrorists used airplanes loaded with fuel as guided missiles to bring down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon and through the subsequent period leading up to the Iraq war--know we have had all kinds of difficulties with the intelligence community. We have a lot of men and women risking their lives all around the world every day collecting intelligence, and yet most of us have been through top secret briefings that we later find out to have been absolutely false, wrong, just standing facts on their head. So it is critically important for this country to have a good system of intelligence gathering and good analysis of intelligence if we are going to prevent the next terrorist attack against our country. It is a difficult world out there. We have terrorists who would like nothing more than to kill Americans and attack our country. So passing an intelligence authorization bill that provides the resources, provides a structure for a good system of intelligence is very important to the safety and the security of this great country. That is what the debate is about. That is what the upcoming vote is about. But there is one provision that has caused a special concern for some in this Intelligence reauthorization bill, and I want to talk about it a bit. That is the provision that deals with the subject of torture. One of the most important provisions in this legislation is one that makes the Army Field Manual provisions on interrogations applicable to all U.S. Government personnel. Right now, those provisions which forbid torture apply only to the military. Those provisions do not apply to some others that are conducting interrogations on behalf of our Government. That means that some others who work for the U.S. Government--the CIA, for example; contractors, for example--may use interrogation techniques which may constitute torture and which are forbidden in the Army Field Manual. This legislation incorporates the Army Field Manual provisions on interrogations and says it applies to all personnel from the United States. Now, why is that important? Because it makes a vote for this bill a vote against torture. It is a vote that says American values and torture are not in any way compatible. Voting for this bill is a vote for a country that has been looked up to throughout the world because of our system of values. It is that simple, and it is that important. Let me say that I acknowledge today there are tyrants and despots and dictators and a lot of evil people in this world and throughout history who have used and have always justified the use of torture--but not this country. We have not done that, with the exception of some recent disclosures I will talk about. Some people argue that this issue of torture is especially about waterboarding. Waterboarding is a more antiseptic term. It should be described as water torture. Some people say that: Well, we have waterboarded. In fact, it has been disclosed by administration officials that we have waterboarded--which is water tortured--three of the most dangerous, despicable terrorists who attacked this United States, and we only did it at a time when we thought they would provide information or had information that would allow us to avoid other catastrophic attacks, and we need to be able to do that again in the future, if necessary, if some despicable terrorist is planning an attack on this country. Let me talk a little bit about what we are describing here. waterboarding is a practice that has been around for centuries, and it has been known--widely known--as torture for a long time. In fact, waterboarding has been prosecuted as torture and as a war crime on many occasions in history. Trying now to claim it is legal, that it is not torture, or that it is something other than torture doesn't square with the facts. Second, history teaches us that torture is not effective. Aside from the question of morality, it is not effective. Those who know tell us that those being tortured will often tell you anything they think you want to hear in order to have the torture stopped. The provisions in the Army Field Manual set forth the many approved methods to get reliable information, but those methods do not include what is defined as torture. The question about torture is: If you decide that torture is appropriate and available as a tool for our country to use, why stop at waterboarding? There are many other forms of torture that are even more heinous, more abusive: putting people in boiling water, pulling out their fingernails, amputations, electric shock. Justifying torture is a very slippery slope that doesn't have a pleasant end for a country that cares about its system of values. We don't do that and haven't done that. We haven't been engaged in torture as a country for a couple of centuries because we don't belong to that group of people in the world who want to do damage and want to commit mayhem and want to kill others. We hold ourselves to a higher standard in this country--always have--a higher standard, a standard that all of us can be proud of. It is interesting when you think back to the Cold War. We won the Cold War, but we didn't win it with bombs and bullets; we won it with American values and American standards, and American rights. The other evening I saw a very large portion of the Berlin Wall that had been transported to the United States of America. It was a wall that kept the free world out and it was a wall that kept those in East Germany behind it, living in oppression, living in a circumstance where they were denied freedom. I was thinking again about the Cold War and the fact that we didn't win the war with bombs. I have in my desk something I have had there for a long period of time, if I might show it by unanimous consent. This is a piece of a wing from a Soviet Backfire bomber. This bomber very likely carried a nuclear weapon that would have been used against the United States. Actually, we sawed part of the wing off this Soviet bomber because when the Cold War was over, we reached an agreement to destroy delivery systems. I have also in my desk a hinge. This hinge used to be on a missile silo that held a missile with a nuclear warhead on its tip aimed at a U.S. city. It was in Ukraine. Where that missile used to sit, there are now sunflowers growing. It is now a sunflower field. The missile is gone, the warhead is gone. This bomber is now in pieces. We won the Cold War. And we have agreements with Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics under which we help destroy their Cold War weapons and delivery systems. But we didn't win the Cold War with bombs; we didn't blow up that Backfire bomber. We didn't blow up the Soviet missile silo with one of our missiles. We won the Cold War because of our values. American values won the Cold War. What are those values? Well, people are free. They believed what they said. They believed what they wanted. The Government had to respect the rights of everyone in this country. We were a country that had a government based on a Constitution that had a Bill of Rights that applies to all Americans. Our country stood for liberty, human rights, human dignity, the rule of law. That is what won the Cold War. Those values were so strong that in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, those values shone a light of hope into the darkest cells and the deepest part of the Soviet Union. In the gulag prisons, in the outermost reaches of Siberia, those values reached those cells. Millions of prisoners had been held, often in solitary confinement, simply for thinking and speaking freely. Many were there for years; some swept off the streets, never to reappear again; many tortured into false confessions, and many murdered. Some survived, however, and talked about their experience, and about how important the idea of America was to them, how important the idea of freedom was to those who had been detained and had not been able to experience freedom, and to those who had been tortured by a country that didn't want them to be free. It was a clear and vast difference between America and the Soviet Union. As imperfect as we are, the basic foundation and bedrock of values in this country is what shined so brightly in the middle of the Cold War. It wasn't the amount of bombs and bullets each country had; it was what we stood for. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Iron Curtain was lifted, all of those police states crumbled, and every single one of them became free countries that provided freedom to their citizens. Every single one chose freedom and democracy. That is how powerful the idea and the values of this country have been. What I say today is we have to regain the moral high ground and describe our values in circumstances that make it clear that we do not subscribe to some things others might. We do not support torture. We will not support torture. It is not what our country is about. From the very beginning in this country, America has held itself to a higher standard. George Washington, leading the Continental Army--think about it: 5,000 soldiers in the Continental Army going up against a British Army of 50,000 soldiers, and our 5,000 were shopkeepers and farmers; 5,000 against 50,000, and we prevailed over time. George Washington, after a large number of his troops were captured and slaughtered--he saw the Hessian mercenaries kill unarmed prisoners. After that, George Washington and his troops captured a large number of British soldiers, and many of the troops justifiably wanted revenge. They sought to execute them just as they had seen done to unarmed American prisoners. George Washington refused. He refused to treat the prisoners as his soldiers had been treated. He insisted America was different. He said: We are different, and we are going to treat people the way they should be treated, not the way they treated us, and that has been our birthright. That is why this discussion right now is so very important. It goes to the core of what we are and who we are as a nation. Quite simply, we have to say unequivocally: We are against torture. We, the Congress of the United States, must say that torture is un-American, simply because it is. No hair splitting, no fancy words, no legal distinction about what might or might not be torture. That will begin to restore, I think, our rightful place if we say we are against torture. Let me briefly continue to say that being against torture is being for an America that is better than its enemies. It is that simple. I said we fought and won the Cold War after many decades. We faced nuclear annihilation during that period. We faced a ruthless enemy all around the world, and yet we won that war. We did that with our reputation, our values, and our moral authority intact. It was and still is, I think, a beacon of hope around the world. Those values and that moral authority, I believe, are what is going to allow us to prevail in the battle against the terrorists who wish to do harm--not just here but in other parts of the world as well. We need--and I believe the world needs--an America that people respect and admire, an America that is different, that begins in a manner that is loud and clear saying: We do not torture. This will empower our country and make us stronger. I was very disappointed last week to hear the head of our intelligence service, and then to hear a spokesperson for the White House, say: Yes, we have waterboarded. They used the term--the right term--water torture; yes, we have done that. We did it because we must, and we reserve the right to do it again. It is exactly the wrong thing for this country. It is not just me saying that. I am not just quoting George Washington who has established the higher standard, and God bless him for doing so. Let me read what General Petraeus said, who leads the American troops in Iraq right now. Our most senior commander in Iraq, GEN David Petraeus, sent a letter to every Soldier, every Sailor, every Airman, Marine, and Coast Guardsman serving in Iraq. He said this: Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we--not our enemies--occupy the high ground. Continuing to quote: Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows us that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. That is General Petraeus, who leads our troops in Iraq, and says those who believe that torture is appropriate would be wrong.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, that is a significant contradiction for our country. I was as surprised and disappointed as the Senator from Illinois was to have one of the leading officials in this administration testify under oath that, yes, in fact, waterboarding had been used. It was in fact legal, they said, and it would be used again, if necessary, and could be sanctioned by the President of the United States. The Senator is correct that this Congress passed a piece of legislation that defined waterboarding as torture and prohibits it, and the President at the White House, in a signing statement accompanying the legislation, essentially said: It doesn't matter so much what the legislation says; what matters is what I will decide to do. Now, we have a disclosure--a public disclosure--to the world that this country has employed a technique that has, for hundreds of years, been described as torture. I know and understand the passions that exist. I understand what I would like to see done to Osama bin Laden when he is captured. I understand the passions. But I also understand that what has given this country a different standing in the world is our value system. Again, let me, if I might, for the Senator from Illinois, refer back to George Washington, which I described earlier before the Senator came on the Senate floor. When I think of the odds facing the Revolutionary Army, it is pretty unbelievable. The Senator from Illinois and I were at Mount Vernon recently, and we saw a display describing that at one point there were 5,000 soldiers in the Continental Army and 50,000 British soldiers. That was the fight. Our soldiers were shopkeepers and farmers, ordinary folks off the street. Theirs were trained British soldiers. So it was 5,000 to 50,000. George Washington and his soldiers saw members of the Continental Army captured and then, unarmed, murdered, executed by the British soldiers and the Hessians. Washington's soldiers, when capturing some British soldiers, wanted to do the same thing. But he said, nothing doing, we are not going to do that. George Washington said that we are different and we are going to treat people the way they should be treated, not the way they treated us. When you think of that set of standards and values and then wind your way through the discussion in recent days, and to have a top U.S. official say, yes, we have used waterboarding--and it is widely acknowledged as torture--we used it and it was legal and we intend to use it again if it is necessary.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is far more than disappointing to me, and I think to a lot of people in this Chamber and across the country, that the President received advice from people who work for him in the White House and have said this under oath and on television and in every other venue that under the Commander in Chief powers, the President has the power to do almost anything. He can put out a drift- net and collect every communication under every condition--e-mails and telephone calls. Go to the documentary recently done, entitled ``No Way Out'' and view the interviews by this administration's officials, who take the position that this President has the authority as Commander in Chief to do almost anything. That includes this issue of torture. The point I make is that we have a piece of legislation that we will vote on later this afternoon. Included in that legislation is a provision that says the Army Field Manual will describe the conditions of interrogation of enemy combatants. I just read what General Petraeus said to all of his soldiers--that torture is inappropriate and will not be allowed. The Army Field Manual prevents torture. What we are saying in the conference report that we will vote on in an hour or two is that the Army Field Manual's restrictions on torture apply to all U.S. Government officials and contractors doing interrogation. My concern about this administration--and I think it is echoed by the Senator from Illinois--is that they have decided they are not bound by the law, they are not bound by what the Congress enacts. They are doing other sorts of dances with signing statements and interpretations of the Constitution to say that under the Commander in Chief powers they can do almost anything if they believe there is some kind of a threat. That is a very dangerous mind set, in my judgment, for any administration at any time.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator answers the question by phrasing the question. Let me conclude by saying this: We have 43 top retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces who have written a letter. As one, they say: We believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in the uniform of the United States not to sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted on our captured Americans. Today there are men and women fighting for this country. If captured, how would we react if the leader of a group that captured them says: We are torturing them because we feel we can get information, and we can only get it by torturing them, and we believe torture is legal. We are going to waterboard them, we believe it is legal. We have already done it, and we intend to do it again if we need to. How would we feel if that were somebody else talking about how they are going to treat American soldiers? That is unacceptable. We have a country with a higher moral purpose and standards that have served us for two centuries, and we should not obliterate that just because we have some people in this administration who believe it is appropriate. It is not. John McCain knows that. He led the fight to put a provision in law that prohibits torture. This President did a signing statement next to the legislation he signed, saying: I don't have to abide by it if I don't feel like it. That is a scary thought in a democracy. I hope this afternoon we will register a very strong vote in support of this conference report and against the concept of our country engaging in torture. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, February 14, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on the President's fiscal year 2009 budget request for tribal programs. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at (202) 224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe we have worked through most all areas of controversy, where we are waiting on some amendments that I believe Senator Coburn wishes some votes on. But I think we have made a lot of progress on both sides of the aisle to resolve items of controversy. I think if we could get it on the floor for 1 day, we can finish it. And, frankly, there is some urgency to Indian health care issues. As I said, Senators Murkowski, Thune, and others join me in hoping we can include that next week to be completed on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have been working with Senator Kyl and others to try to see if we can reach an agreement on any amendments. I believe there will be very few votes required. I think Senator Coburn has some that may require a couple of votes, but by and large I think we have worked through most of the issues. Senator Kyl and Senator Thune, on that side of the aisle, have been working with me. But I would very much like to get whatever list or whatever time agreements we need so that we can bring that up. We really do need to finish that next week, following the disposition of FISA, if it is possible.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I think most Senators will feel good about the significant progress on FISA, and hopefully we will get that completed. Senator Thune and I were speaking a moment ago about the other piece of legislation we hope we might finish, when FISA is completed next Tuesday or Wednesday, and that is the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which we started on the floor of the Senate. I would ask the Senator: Might we expect to be able to bring that up for a day? We believe we can finish that in a day next week.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing a piece of legislation aimed at changing the course of our international trade policy. Part of the problem with our current trade agenda is that there is no mechanism to gauge whether the trade agreements we enter into are successful--and there is no mechanism to withdraw from agreements that have not been successful. So I am joining with Senators Brown and Casey in introducing the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act, which aims to fix that. This is how the bill would work. The legislation would create a point of order in the Senate against any future bill implementing a new trade agreement unless it included benchmarks to gauge the success or failure of the agreement. The benchmarks would include, at a minimum, the trade agreement's impact in four respects. First, the number of U.S. jobs created and lost. Second, the impact on U.S. wages. Third, the extent to which U.S. exports gain foreign market access in key sectors. Fourth, the extent to which labor and environmental laws are followed and enforced. The U.S. Trade Representative's office could include additional benchmarks in the implementing legislation, at their discretion. Every 5 years, the U.S. International Trade Commission, ITC, would assess whether the benchmarks in the implementing legislation had been met. If the ITC determined that any of the benchmarks were not met, there would be an expedited process under which the House and the Senate would consider a privileged resolution to pull the United States out of the trade agreement. The resolution would be considered under expedited rules. The resolution would first be referred to the Ways and Means and Finance committees. If those committees failed to report out the resolution within a set period of time, either favorably or unfavorably, the resolution would be automatically discharged to the full House and Senate. The resolution would not be amendable, and a floor vote in the House and the Senate on whether to approve the resolution would be mandatory. Let me explain why something like this is necessary. When NAFTA was sent to Congress for a vote in 1993, its advocates said that there would be 200,000 new jobs created annually as a result. The proponents relied on a study by economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott. Hufbauer and Schott actually predicted that NAFTA would create 170,000 new jobs by 1995. But proponents of the deal in the administration and the Senate rounded this number up to 200,000 jobs. Well, we now know that NAFTA has resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses. About 412,000 U.S. jobs have been certified as lost to NAFTA, under just one program at the U.S. Labor Department. In 2003, 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service, which identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA, between 1994 and 2002. To come up with its data, CRS turned to the Department of Labor, which has a ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' program that gives temporary benefits to workers laid off due to NAFTA. This program requires companies to certify that they intended to eliminate U.S. jobs specifically because of NAFTA. This means that we can directly attribute these job losses to NAFTA. These 100 companies accounted for 201,414 U.S. jobs lost specifically due to NAFTA. In every instance, the companies doing the layoffs certified that the jobs were being cut directly because of NAFTA. If you look at all U.S. companies that participated in the Department of Labor program, the total number of U.S. jobs lost due to NAFTA is 412,177--and that is just under this one program alone. There are some very familiar products, which many people consider all-American, now being produced in Mexico. Levi Strauss laid off 15,676 U.S. workers due to NAFTA, and now makes its jeans in Mexico. In March 2003, Kraft Foods closed the Nabisco plant in Fair Lawn, NJ, that made Fig Newtons. About 240 jobs were lost right there. Those jobs are now in Monterrey, Mexico. Kraft Foods has cut about 955 jobs due to NAFTA. Fruit of the Loom laid off 5,352 U.S. workers in Texas alone, and thousands more in Louisiana. I have often said that it is one thing to lose your shirt, quite another to lose your shorts. In March 2001, Mattel closed its last factory in the U.S.--a western Kentucky plant that produced toys such as Barbie playhouses and battery-powered pickups for nearly 30 years. The company shifted production at the 980-employee Kentucky plant to factories in Mexico. John Deere has laid off about 1,150 workers, who made lawn mowers and chainsaws, and moved the jobs to Mexico. By the way, in addition to this CRS study, a separate study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the overall net effect of NAFTA had been the loss of nearly 800,000 American jobs. Today, the administration and the U.S. Trade Representative are careful to avoid promising that new trade agreements will create more U.S. jobs than the agreements will destroy. But the administration has no problem figuring out how great trade deals will be for other countries. One month before the administration signed a trade agreement with Korea last year, our principal negotiator in Korea, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler, was already touting the benefits that the agreement would offer Korea: An FTA with the United States is predicted to produce significant economic benefits for the Korean economy, increasing Korea's real GDP by as much as 2%, establishing a foundation for Korea to achieve per capita income to as high as $30,000, boosting exports to the United States by 15%, and creating 100,000 new jobs. Remarkably, Ms. Cutler had no difficulty predicting a specific level of job creation in Korea. But she made no similar projection with respect to the United States. Well, we need accountability in trade agreements. And the best way to do that is with benchmarks. This is a forward-looking strategy for a successful trade policy that is in America's national interest. Our bill would apply only to future trade agreements. It would not apply retroactively to NAFTA. I should say, however, that I think it is important that we gauge the impact of NAFTA on U.S. jobs. And I was able to include language in the omnibus conference report that will require the Department of Labor, by the end of 2008, to calculate the net impact of NAFTA on U.S. jobs, industry by industry. In any event, we think that this piece of legislation should be embraced by the U.S. Congress, because the American people are beginning to demand accountability in trade. On October 4, the Wall Street Journal provided fresh evidence that the American people don't believe that free trade deals are creating jobs. The Wall Street Journal ran a story with the headline ``Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade.'' The story described a poll, which found that by a two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade deals have been bad for the U.S. economy. It turns out that dissatisfaction with our current trade policy is a bipartisan sentiment. The poll found that 59 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement: Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy, because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products. Only 32 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement: Foreign trade has been good for the US. economy, because demand for U.S. products abroad has resulted in economic growth and jobs for Americans here at home and provided more choices for consumers. This poll suggests a dramatic change in the way Americans view free trade agreements. In December 1999, the Wall Street Journal did a poll that found that only 31 percent of Republican voters thought free trade agreements had hurt our country. But in this month's poll, the Wall Street Journal found that the number of Republican voters opposing free trade agreements had risen from 31 percent to 59 percent. Clearly, the American people have seen the results of free trade deals, and they don't like what they see. They demand accountability. And the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act would give them precisely that. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing a piece of legislation aimed at changing the course of our international trade policy. Part of the problem with our current trade agenda is that there is no mechanism to gauge whether the trade agreements we enter into are successful--and there is no mechanism to withdraw from agreements that have not been successful. So I am joining with Senators Brown and Casey in introducing the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act, which aims to fix that. This is how the bill would work. The legislation would create a point of order in the Senate against any future bill implementing a new trade agreement unless it included benchmarks to gauge the success or failure of the agreement. The benchmarks would include, at a minimum, the trade agreement's impact in four respects. First, the number of U.S. jobs created and lost. Second, the impact on U.S. wages. Third, the extent to which U.S. exports gain foreign market access in key sectors. Fourth, the extent to which labor and environmental laws are followed and enforced. The U.S. Trade Representative's office could include additional benchmarks in the implementing legislation, at their discretion. Every 5 years, the U.S. International Trade Commission, ITC, would assess whether the benchmarks in the implementing legislation had been met. If the ITC determined that any of the benchmarks were not met, there would be an expedited process under which the House and the Senate would consider a privileged resolution to pull the United States out of the trade agreement. The resolution would be considered under expedited rules. The resolution would first be referred to the Ways and Means and Finance committees. If those committees failed to report out the resolution within a set period of time, either favorably or unfavorably, the resolution would be automatically discharged to the full House and Senate. The resolution would not be amendable, and a floor vote in the House and the Senate on whether to approve the resolution would be mandatory. Let me explain why something like this is necessary. When NAFTA was sent to Congress for a vote in 1993, its advocates said that there would be 200,000 new jobs created annually as a result. The proponents relied on a study by economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott. Hufbauer and Schott actually predicted that NAFTA would create 170,000 new jobs by 1995. But proponents of the deal in the administration and the Senate rounded this number up to 200,000 jobs. Well, we now know that NAFTA has resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses. About 412,000 U.S. jobs have been certified as lost to NAFTA, under just one program at the U.S. Labor Department. In 2003, 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service, which identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA, between 1994 and 2002. To come up with its data, CRS turned to the Department of Labor, which has a ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' program that gives temporary benefits to workers laid off due to NAFTA. This program requires companies to certify that they intended to eliminate U.S. jobs specifically because of NAFTA. This means that we can directly attribute these job losses to NAFTA. These 100 companies accounted for 201,414 U.S. jobs lost specifically due to NAFTA. In every instance, the companies doing the layoffs certified that the jobs were being cut directly because of NAFTA. If you look at all U.S. companies that participated in the Department of Labor program, the total number of U.S. jobs lost due to NAFTA is 412,177--and that is just under this one program alone. There are some very familiar products, which many people consider all-American, now being produced in Mexico. Levi Strauss laid off 15,676 U.S. workers due to NAFTA, and now makes its jeans in Mexico. In March 2003, Kraft Foods closed the Nabisco plant in Fair Lawn, NJ, that made Fig Newtons. About 240 jobs were lost right there. Those jobs are now in Monterrey, Mexico. Kraft Foods has cut about 955 jobs due to NAFTA. Fruit of the Loom laid off 5,352 U.S. workers in Texas alone, and thousands more in Louisiana. I have often said that it is one thing to lose your shirt, quite another to lose your shorts. In March 2001, Mattel closed its last factory in the U.S.--a western Kentucky plant that produced toys such as Barbie playhouses and battery-powered pickups for nearly 30 years. The company shifted production at the 980-employee Kentucky plant to factories in Mexico. John Deere has laid off about 1,150 workers, who made lawn mowers and chainsaws, and moved the jobs to Mexico. By the way, in addition to this CRS study, a separate study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the overall net effect of NAFTA had been the loss of nearly 800,000 American jobs. Today, the administration and the U.S. Trade Representative are careful to avoid promising that new trade agreements will create more U.S. jobs than the agreements will destroy. But the administration has no problem figuring out how great trade deals will be for other countries. One month before the administration signed a trade agreement with Korea last year, our principal negotiator in Korea, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler, was already touting the benefits that the agreement would offer Korea: An FTA with the United States is predicted to produce significant economic benefits for the Korean economy, increasing Korea's real GDP by as much as 2%, establishing a foundation for Korea to achieve per capita income to as high as $30,000, boosting exports to the United States by 15%, and creating 100,000 new jobs. Remarkably, Ms. Cutler had no difficulty predicting a specific level of job creation in Korea. But she made no similar projection with respect to the United States. Well, we need accountability in trade agreements. And the best way to do that is with benchmarks. This is a forward-looking strategy for a successful trade policy that is in America's national interest. Our bill would apply only to future trade agreements. It would not apply retroactively to NAFTA. I should say, however, that I think it is important that we gauge the impact of NAFTA on U.S. jobs. And I was able to include language in the omnibus conference report that will require the Department of Labor, by the end of 2008, to calculate the net impact of NAFTA on U.S. jobs, industry by industry. In any event, we think that this piece of legislation should be embraced by the U.S. Congress, because the American people are beginning to demand accountability in trade. On October 4, the Wall Street Journal provided fresh evidence that the American people don't believe that free trade deals are creating jobs. The Wall Street Journal ran a story with the headline ``Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade.'' The story described a poll, which found that by a two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade deals have been bad for the U.S. economy. It turns out that dissatisfaction with our current trade policy is a bipartisan sentiment. The poll found that 59 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement: Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy, because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products. Only 32 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement: Foreign trade has been good for the US. economy, because demand for U.S. products abroad has resulted in economic growth and jobs for Americans here at home and provided more choices for consumers. This poll suggests a dramatic change in the way Americans view free trade agreements. In December 1999, the Wall Street Journal did a poll that found that only 31 percent of Republican voters thought free trade agreements had hurt our country. But in this month's poll, the Wall Street Journal found that the number of Republican voters opposing free trade agreements had risen from 31 percent to 59 percent. Clearly, the American people have seen the results of free trade deals, and they don't like what they see. They demand accountability. And the Trade Agreement Benchmarks and Accountability Act would give them precisely that. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act of 2007. This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to suspend filling of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, SPR, for 1 year. I appreciate that Senators Bingaman, Levin, Kerry, Collins, Lieberman, and Wyden have joined me as original cosponsors of this legislation. This bill directs the Secretary to stop filling the reserve through direct purchase, royalty-in-kind or any other measures. The secretary may only resume filling if the price of a barrel of crude oil drops below $50 per barrel during the remainder of 2008. The price of a barrel of oil is reaching record highs and global supplies of oil continue to shrink. During this period of volatile markets and short supply, it makes no sense to me for the U.S. Government to continue to take highly valuable crude oil, especially light sweet crude, off the market to store underground in a reserve that is at least 96 percent full. Continuing to ``top off'' the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with highly valuable crude oil is putting upward pressure on oil prices and raising energy prices for consumers. I believe that we must take a ``time out'' from filling the reserve in order to send a signal to the market to reduce rising energy prices that are hitting American consumers' pocketbooks. Lowering energy costs will put additional money back into consumers' hands and will help provide a real stimulus to our economy in my judgment. Historically, the average price of oil used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been about $27 per barrel. The Administration is now filling the Reserve with oil that averages over $90 per barrel, including highly sought after light sweet crude. This is a bad deal for American taxpayers and consumers. On January 8, 2008, the Secretary of Energy sent me a letter stating that our Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains only 57 days of import protection and that the 50,000 barrels per day they are filling with is a small amount of the oil used on the global market daily. This is only part of the story. The fact is that the SPR, combined with our private oil stocks and refining inventories, total more than 118 days of import protection. The current levels in our strategic petroleum stocks are more than adequate to meet our international treaty obligations requiring 90 days of import protection for all OECD countries. I also disagree that taking 50,000 barrels per day off the market, especially light sweet crude, has no impact on energy prices. During the Clinton administration, Congress signaled that it wanted more than $200 million sold from the SPR in 1996, the price of oil dropped precipitously in the market. The market looks at many factors, including our filling of the SPR. This is another reason we can afford to temporarily suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Further, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides directional guidance to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The provision in law clearly states that filling the reserve must be achieved ``without incurring excessive cost or appreciably affecting the price of petroleum products to consumers.'' I think filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in today's environment is indeed impacting the price of petroleum so that we must defer filling for now to ease pressure on the market. Finally, the Congress enacted and the President signed historic legislation in December 2008--the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. That legislation established a strong foundation to put our Nation on an alternative energy security pathway. This includes strong fuel economy standards and an expanded renewable fuels standard. Conservative estimates provided by the Securing America's Future Energy Coalition show that the new legislation would reduce net oil imports by 1.75 million barrels per day by 2020, increasing to 2.26 million barrels per day in 2022 and rising thereafter. These estimates represent roughly half of the theoretical SPR drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels per day. They also increase the number of days of protection afforded by a given quantity of oil in the SPR. Thus, our enactment of historic Energy legislation will, over time, increase the insurance value of the SPR, even if the actual inventory level is frozen or slightly decreased. Let me be clear. I believe maintaining a Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in the economic and national security interests of this country. However, during this time of record oil prices, rising energy costs for consumers, economic downturn and tight global oil supplies, the U.S. Government should suspend taking highly valuable oil off the market to store underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are required from time to time to make tough votes in the Senate, but this isn't one of them. This is not a tough vote. The question is, Shall we try to stimulate the economy? The answer, clearly, is yes. I think most people feel we should do that. So then, if we are going to give a rebate, some kind of rebate to people who should get the rebate, perhaps we should think of it in terms of a family sitting around a supper table and they are talking about who is going to get this rebate. So somebody says: Well, you know what, let's make sure grandpa and grandma don't get it. Let's not give grandpa and grandma a rebate. They don't need to be in it. And by the way, Uncle Carl is unemployed. He doesn't need it. He ought not get a rebate. Or Cousin Ralph, he is a disabled veteran. He is not going to need a rebate. Do you think any family sitting around a supper table would make those choices; that they are going to throw grandpa and grandma off the train and the disabled veteran who served this country and put his life on the line? So here is the deal. We are told by some: Well, you know, they haven't earned income, so, therefore, they are not going to qualify for this rebate. Oh, really? You haven't earned your Social Security check? Seems to me that is a lifetime of earning. You didn't earn your disability payment? You earned it by putting your life on the line for this country. So let's include the 20 million people who are senior citizens, many of whom live near poverty trying to stretch their reasonable income--in many cases a very small income--through the month to pay for both food and medicine. Let's include senior citizens, let's include veterans who are being paid veterans disability, who otherwise would not be included. And let's do what we have always done during economic downturns: Let's extend unemployment benefits. That is the economic stabilizer we have always used. Let's do the right thing and vote for the finance bill and move it into conference. Let's do that now. This is not a tough vote. We know what the right thing is. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act of 2007. This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to suspend filling of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, SPR, for 1 year. I appreciate that Senators Bingaman, Levin, Kerry, Collins, Lieberman, and Wyden have joined me as original cosponsors of this legislation. This bill directs the Secretary to stop filling the reserve through direct purchase, royalty-in-kind or any other measures. The secretary may only resume filling if the price of a barrel of crude oil drops below $50 per barrel during the remainder of 2008. The price of a barrel of oil is reaching record highs and global supplies of oil continue to shrink. During this period of volatile markets and short supply, it makes no sense to me for the U.S. Government to continue to take highly valuable crude oil, especially light sweet crude, off the market to store underground in a reserve that is at least 96 percent full. Continuing to ``top off'' the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with highly valuable crude oil is putting upward pressure on oil prices and raising energy prices for consumers. I believe that we must take a ``time out'' from filling the reserve in order to send a signal to the market to reduce rising energy prices that are hitting American consumers' pocketbooks. Lowering energy costs will put additional money back into consumers' hands and will help provide a real stimulus to our economy in my judgment. Historically, the average price of oil used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been about $27 per barrel. The Administration is now filling the Reserve with oil that averages over $90 per barrel, including highly sought after light sweet crude. This is a bad deal for American taxpayers and consumers. On January 8, 2008, the Secretary of Energy sent me a letter stating that our Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains only 57 days of import protection and that the 50,000 barrels per day they are filling with is a small amount of the oil used on the global market daily. This is only part of the story. The fact is that the SPR, combined with our private oil stocks and refining inventories, total more than 118 days of import protection. The current levels in our strategic petroleum stocks are more than adequate to meet our international treaty obligations requiring 90 days of import protection for all OECD countries. I also disagree that taking 50,000 barrels per day off the market, especially light sweet crude, has no impact on energy prices. During the Clinton administration, Congress signaled that it wanted more than $200 million sold from the SPR in 1996, the price of oil dropped precipitously in the market. The market looks at many factors, including our filling of the SPR. This is another reason we can afford to temporarily suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Further, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides directional guidance to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The provision in law clearly states that filling the reserve must be achieved ``without incurring excessive cost or appreciably affecting the price of petroleum products to consumers.'' I think filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in today's environment is indeed impacting the price of petroleum so that we must defer filling for now to ease pressure on the market. Finally, the Congress enacted and the President signed historic legislation in December 2008--the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. That legislation established a strong foundation to put our Nation on an alternative energy security pathway. This includes strong fuel economy standards and an expanded renewable fuels standard. Conservative estimates provided by the Securing America's Future Energy Coalition show that the new legislation would reduce net oil imports by 1.75 million barrels per day by 2020, increasing to 2.26 million barrels per day in 2022 and rising thereafter. These estimates represent roughly half of the theoretical SPR drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels per day. They also increase the number of days of protection afforded by a given quantity of oil in the SPR. Thus, our enactment of historic Energy legislation will, over time, increase the insurance value of the SPR, even if the actual inventory level is frozen or slightly decreased. Let me be clear. I believe maintaining a Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in the economic and national security interests of this country. However, during this time of record oil prices, rising energy costs for consumers, economic downturn and tight global oil supplies, the U.S. Government should suspend taking highly valuable oil off the market to store underground in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, February 7, at 9:30 a.m., in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Robert G. McSwain to be Director of the Indian Health Service. Those wishing additional information my contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 224-2251. committee on rules and administration

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I had wished to conclude a couple of comments in morning business, after which I believe the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, will want to begin discussing an amendment. I talked about the stimulus package and about the economy generally. I wished to talk about two issues I have been working on that I think need to be resolved. First, it is almost unbelievable to me, but there is a tiny little issue--not so tiny perhaps to some--that needs to get fixed. This administration decided they wanted to farm out the collection of taxes owed to the Federal Government to private debt collectors. A number of us--myself, Senator Murray, and others--objected strenuously. We tried that before, and it didn't work. The administration pushed ahead. We passed a funding prohibition through the Senate Appropriations Committee. The full U.S. House passed a bill saying don't do this. Nonetheless, the Internal Revenue Service and the Bush administration pushed and pushed very quickly. So they decided to farm out tax debt collection. What they did was put taxes that were owed and not paid in the hands of private debt collectors. Now we have had 1 year of experience with it, and I want to share with my colleagues what has happened. It is almost breathtaking to hear. What has happened at the end of a year is the cost of administering the program to provide these delinquent taxes to debt collectors for collection has exceeded the revenue by $50 million. In other words, we have a project where the Internal Revenue Service says we are going to take some of these areas where the taxes haven't been paid, we are going to give them to private debt collectors, and we are going to give them a commission for collecting it. So at the end of a year, the IRS lost $50 million. I don't know how you lose $50 million when you are collecting taxes. That takes some genius apparently. It was estimated by the National Taxpayer Advocate that if the same money, just over $70 million that was invested in this program, had been invested in hiring the agents at the Internal Revenue Service, generally based on what they calculate, they would have collected $1.4 billion. So for this investment, the IRS could collect $1.4 billion or they could lose $50 million. Talk about staggering gross incompetence. It would be kind of nice to put in the Record the names of every person who was involved in the administration so they can somehow be recognized in a ``Hall of Shame.'' How on Earth do you lose $50 million at the Internal Revenue Service with a program as goofy as this one? Again, take delinquent taxes, give them to private debt collection, and lose $50 million, or take the same amount of money and invest it in IRS collection and collect $1.4 billion. What is the choice? The President's people said the choice is to give it to the private collection agencies because we like to privatize everything, and they end up losing $50 million. That is unbelievable. We are going to try once again this year--and I think we will succeed--to shut this program down. Aside from losing $50 million, we have had experience with this program before. It was tried before. It was a miserable failure when it was tried previously. We have examples of what happens when private debt collectors get ahold of these things. First of all, you have very sensitive information about people's lives, the financial information on tax returns. There are criminal penalties for dealing with that information. You are going to farm that out. They say: We will farm it out, but we will protect the information. It makes no sense at all to have been through this and then to farm it out to a private debt collection agency and find one elderly couple who gets 150 telephone calls over 27 day from a collection agency. It turns out they were not the taxpayers who were being called but, nonetheless, their phone rang 150 times. That is the kind of thing that goes on and shouldn't, in addition to the incompetence of losing $50 million. Senator Murray, myself, and many others are going to fix this problem. It is important the American people understand what happened, and someone needs to be accountable for it. Strategic Petroleum Reserve I wish to mention one additional point because tomorrow Secretary Bodman is coming to Capitol Hill. He is the Secretary of Energy. I have great respect for Secretary Bodman. I work closely with the Department of Energy. I chair the appropriations subcommittee that funds all the water and energy projects in our country. So I have a relationship with the Department of Energy. I like the Secretary and I like some of the people who work for him down at the Department of Energy. But there is something going on down there that bothers me a lot, and I intend to talk to the Secretary about it tomorrow. At a time when oil is priced at $90 to $100 per barrel and when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--that is oil we stick underground that is saved for a rainy day, a national emergency or a time when we desperately need the oil--at a time when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 97 percent filled, this administration is taking oil through royalty-in-kind payments from producers in the Gulf of Mexico and sticking it underground. They are taking oil out of the supply pipeline that should have gone into the supply pipeline, at a time when we have these unbelievable prices for oil, and sticking it underground in domes to increase the supply in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is exactly the wrong thing to do at this point in time. It is exactly what we should not be doing. From August of 2007 to January 2008, 8.4 million barrels of oil were taken out of the supply. That is oil that was given as a payment in kind for the royalties our Government was owed. Instead of taking that and putting it into the supply, using the money to reduce the Federal debt and having the oil in the supply pipeline, the Dept. Of Energy stuck it underground. So at nearly a hundred dollars per barrel, we are putting oil underground, which tends to price gasoline at a much higher rate because you are diminishing supply at a time when that is the last thing we should do. Now, the strategic petroleum reserve is filled with about 700 million barrels of oil. The administration's approach is: Well, let's top it off. Let's fill it to 727 million barrels of oil. The administration just awarded three companies contracts--Shell, Sunoco Logistics, and B.P. North America--to place an additional 12.3 million barrels of royalty-in-kind oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next 6 months. So that means another 12 million barrels will be taken out of supply and stuck underground. I mean, can anybody think of something that makes less sense at a time when $100 or $90 or $80 a barrel of oil exists? People are driving to the gas pump and having to consider a mortgage to fill their tank. Can't anybody think of something that we should rather do than take oil out of the supply pipeline and stick it underground? It makes no sense to me at all. So I am going to propose legislation that says no more for filling the strategic petroleum reserve for the next year, unless oil drops below $50 a barrel. Let's take that royalty-in-kind oil and put it in the supply pipeline and make sure it contributes to an increasing supply and, therefore, lower prices for gasoline. Instead, the administration is intent on taking that oil and sticking it underground. That will have the impetus of pushing gas prices up. Now, some would say: We are not talking about a large portion of oil here. Well, no, it is true, we are only talking about 12.3 million barrels in the next 6 months--8.4 million barrels from August to January. Is that a massive quantity of oil? No. But we have had witnesses testify before the Senate Energy Subcommittee and the Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that the government is taking light sweet crude, which is part of a smaller subset of more valuable oil, and putting it underground that has the effect of increasing the price of gasoline. So I am going to ask the Secretary a lot about this issue tomorrow when he appears before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, and I intend to address this in the appropriations process this year so that we can prevent this from happening further. At least until the point we have seen the price of oil come back down. My legislation proposes a prohibition from filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for 1 year or at least until a time when the price of oil comes back below $50 a barrel. Again, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is nearly 96 percent filled. Why would we put upward pressure on gas prices? Because the Federal Government has decided to do things that would put upward pressure on gas prices by putting oil underground at a time when we have hundred- dollar-per-barrel oil. It defies common sense. You couldn't find two people in Mike's Bar in Regent, ND, to make a judgment like that after they have been there a couple hours. Just common sense would tell you this makes no sense and we ought to stop it, and I intend to visit about this at some length with the Secretary tomorrow when he comes before the Senate Energy Committee. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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