Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to talk about several things today. I want to start with this question of why, at the end of the legislative session, there is such intractability in trying to get the appropriations bills done. It is a paradox to me that President Bush, who has come to this town in the last 7 years, and at the start of his Presidency said, ``I want a fiscal policy that moves in a certain direction.'' He had a sufficient number of votes in the Congress to accommodate that so he said, ``Look, it appears in the next 10 years we are going to have very large budget surpluses, so I want put in place very large tax cuts, most of which will go to wealthy Americans.'' I did not support that, but a number of people in his party did, so it became enacted. I said we ought to be conservative. We ought to worry things might change. Maybe these surpluses won't appear. We do not have them yet. They are only projections. Well, guess what? The President got his fiscal policy, and those surpluses did not, in fact, appear. We faced a recession, 9/11, a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, and a continuing war against terrorism-- all of which has been very costly. We have run up $3 trillion in debt with this President's fiscal policy--$3 trillion. Now, I think it is unusual that at this stage of this session of Congress the President has done two things. He has sent to this Congress a request for $196 billion in emergency funding for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq-- mostly for Iraq. He wants $196 billion in emergency funding--none of it paid for. He says: This is my priority. If you do not support it, you do not support the troops. We do not intend to pay for it. It is called an emergency. At the same time, he has made another request of Congress. He has said: The budget I sent to you is a budget locked in stone, and if you do not meet those numbers, if you are over those numbers on anything, I intend to veto the bills. Eight to ten appropriations bills he has threatened to veto. We are $22 billion over the President's numbers in his budget for investment here at home. I am talking about the things that improve roads, do the water projects that are necessary, build infrastructure, invest in health, and invest in education. We are $22 billion over the President's budget request. The President says: I will have none of that. The money we are spending to invest in things here at home, we will not compromise on that. I will veto all of those bills. So I am going to be a fiscally responsible President on $22 billion with respect to investments in this country, and then I demand $196 billion from you in Congress, on an emergency basis. None of it paid for. All of it borrowed in order to prosecute the war. By the way, that $196 billion is not all to support the troops. A substantial part of it is for contractors. I have been on the floor talking about the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country with contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been stolen blind by contractors. One short story: This country says that we will commit to building 144 health clinics in Iraq. So our Government hires a contractor to go build health clinics in Iraq. The money is all gone. Over $200 million of the money is gone, but the health clinics do not exist. Out of over 200 health clinics, there are only 20 in operation. An Iraqi doctor came to see me and testified at a policy committee hearing. He said: I went to the health minister of Iraq to find out where these health clinics were because I knew the American taxpayer spent the money for them. The contractor got the money to build them, and I wanted to go see these health clinics and tour them to find out what has been done. The Iraqi health minister said: You don't understand. Most of these are imaginary clinics. They have never been built. Well, the money is gone. The contractor got the money. The American taxpayer got fleeced. The President wants more money, an additional $196 billion. He says: If I don't get it, then you don't support the troops. Then he says: By the way, I don't support the extra $22 billion to invest in health care, to invest in energy, to invest in water projects, to invest in roads, or to invest in this country. I say to the President, it is time, long past the time, to start taking care of things in this country. I have a list on my desk of water projects that we are doing in Iraq costing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I have the specific names of the water projects which we are building in Iraq. The President also says he wants over a half a billion dollars less in funding than the Congress is recommending for the Corps of Engineers to build water projects in this country. This is funding to repair dams, to do dredging, and to do the things we need to do to fix water projects in this country. Why such a reluctance to invest here at home? I do not understand it. But why the contradiction? The President wants to spend $196 billion-- without paying for any of it--and then crow to the east that somehow he is a fiscal conservative because he is opposed to $22 billion spent here at home. Now in the next several weeks, we are going to have to reconcile this, and I hope, in one way or another, this President will be able to try to find out what his true identity is. It certainly is not a fiscal conservative. That is talk. Talk is cheap. Look at what he is asking for: $196 billion to be added to the debt. None of it paid for. All of it borrowed. Then he says that he is opposed to $22 billion to invest here at home. That is not fiscal conservatism. That is ignoring needs here in this country and spending money in a profligate way, especially on contractors which are fleecing the American people in my judgement. I hope we can reach an agreement on meeting our appropriations needs. That is what we need to do. This place works and this democracy works by agreement and compromise with people of good will.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I understand I have time in morning business. Let me claim that time.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I mention that because I want to talk about two areas of speculation that bother me a lot, both of which relate not to the financial issues of this fiscal policy coming from President Bush, but it relates to the issue of whether you believe Government has a role in proper regulation in certain areas. The price of a barrel of oil today is trading at $94 a barrel. It has been flirting with $100 a barrel. The price of oil has been going up, up, up in the last year. Well, it is interesting when you take a look at what is happening with oil prices. Take a look at supply and demand factors and ask yourself if the fundamentals with respect to oil supply and demand justify $100 a barrel of oil? The answer is no. Let me read to you something from a fellow, Fadel Gheit, who works for Oppenheimer & Sons. Here is what the energy analyst for Oppenheimer & Sons said last week. 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.'' ``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.'' Let me tell you what is happening with the price of oil. This is an oil analyst from Oppenheimer & Sons saying that there is no justification for oil being a dime over $55 a barrel. We have hedge funds in the futures market buying oil. We have investment banks in the futures market. We have investment banks building facilities to store oil. Now, why are investment banks building facilities to store oil? It is because they believe oil will be more valuable in the future. If they buy it and store it, then they will make money in the future. So instead of a futures market that works with respect to the fundamentals of the supply and demand of oil, we have a carnival of greed in the futures market, in my judgment. We have investment banks hip deep, we have hedge funds hip deep in this, and we have all kinds of things that are going on that are driving up the price of oil. Who are the victims? The people filling up at the gas pumps have to pay this price that, in my judgment, is unsupported by the fundamentals of supply and demand. What is the circumstance here? Well, the circumstance, like most things, is we do not have the capability to regulate very effectively. Let me tell you this story, if I might, about a 32-year-old trader at a giant hedge fund, and I did not mention that hedge funds are in these markets as well, in a very big way. A 32-year-old trader at a hedge fund named Amaranth held sway over the price the country paid for natural gas a year or so ago. Let me tell you what he did. He helped lead to the collapse of an $8 billion hedge fund named Amaranth. This comes from the Washington Post: His positions were so big that he could cause the price to move in the way he wanted by buying or selling massive amounts of his holdings in the last 30 minutes of trading on NYMEX, a move known as ``smashing the close,'' federal regulators say. At one point, in the summer of 2006, Mr. Hunter, the 32- year-old trader, controlled up to 70 percent of the natural gas commodities on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) that were scheduled to supply companies and homes in November of last year and more than 40 percent of contracts for the entire winter season. Now, this relates to the question of a piece of legislation that is entitled ``Close the Enron Loophole'' Act that Senator Levin and I have introduced. The fact is, in these energy futures, some of them are on regulated exchanges, but many of them are not. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission does not have the capability to see exactly what is happening in these futures contracts and in these over-the-counter or unrelated areas. We need, in my judgment, to pass legislation to try to stop this rampant speculation of unregulated trading. There needs to be a futures market. A futures market is very important to provide liquidity. But when a futures market becomes a gambling hall, and you start with investment banks and hedge funds, and all of these activities that have very little to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand, then there are very serious problems that must be addressed. Now, it could likely be the case that the price of oil will come down in a precipitous way as well. It does not seem that way at the moment. But it could because, clearly, this is a speculative bubble. In my judgment, the price is not justified by the fundamentals of supply and demand. Are we going to have a tightening of supplies in the future? Yes, I understand that. The Chinese want to drive 100 million more cars on their roads in the next 15 years. They are going to build these roads, they are going to drive on them. Is that going to increase demand? Sure it is. Russia wants to capture more oil. I am told they would love to find ways to impede the opportunity of oil and energy supplies coming from the Caspian Sea to the West. Does that potentially impact the price of oil? Sure it does. But the fact is this: At least at the moment, with the price of oil on the futures market, we have a situation in which the trading, in many cases, is completely unregulated and not transparent. We need to change that. There needs to be some regulation. This administration does not believe that. They have never believed in regulation. We understand what happened with respect to the crash of Enron and the bilking of tens of billions of dollars from consumers on the West Coast. Enron, in many ways, was a criminal enterprise, and there are people now in jail as a result of it. The regulators sat on their hands, dead from the neck up, believing: No, no, no, no, this is the market working. It was not the market working. It was criminal activity, and people were hurt, a lot of them. With respect to the oil futures market, there needs to be effective regulation. I am not alleging illegal activity here. I am saying, however, it is not healthy to have an amount of speculation in that market that is far beyond anything that would be reasonable, given the supply and demand of oil. I have one additional topic I want to cover, but the majority leader is on the floor. I would be happy to yield to him.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me continue to talk about one other area of speculation because speculation with respect to the futures market in oil is causing significant problems. Speculation with respect to mortgage lending in the subprime mortgage scandal has been unbelievable as well, and it is causing havoc, as we know. People are getting fired; companies are declaring billions of dollars of losses; and the American people are injured as a result of it. The economy will not grow as fast as a result of it. Let me describe to you what I have learned about this issue. It is stunning because I did not know it. You get up in the morning, brush your teeth, shave, and watch television where you see these ads on television. I never thought much about them. I always thought they were a little goofy. They say: Do you have bad credit? Have you filed for bankruptcy? You can't pay your bills? You have bad marks on your credit rating? Come see us. We will give you some credit. We have all seen those adds. You think to yourself: Well, how can that work? The fact is, it does not work and cannot work. So what used to be a sleepy little industry getting home loans became something like a Roman candle with powder and a lot of flash. All of a sudden these companies became very fancy companies. I will mention one, Countrywide, the largest home mortgage lender. Here is what I have discovered as I began to look at what they did. They said: You know something. We will give you a deal on a home mortgage. You have a broker selling you a home mortgage getting big fees. We will give you a deal on a home mortgage, an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). By the way, we have a mortgage, an ARM, in which you don't have to pay any principal and interest only, and you can pay the principal later. We have a better mortgage than that. We have one in which you don't have to pay any principal, and you pay the interest later or principal later. You don't even have to pay the full interest at this point. We can add the interest you are not paying and the principal later to the loan or loans with a 2-percent interest rate. So they disclose a monthly payment and people say: Man, that is something. That is a low house payment. They don't understand, of course, in two or three years it is going to reset, and it will reset at triple or quadruple the rate. In many cases, they didn't even quote the escrow they were going to be required to pay. So all of a sudden in two or three years the interest rate is going to reset, and they don't have a ghost of a chance of paying the mortgage. This is all about greed, by the way--big brokers, big companies, mortgage companies that are fundamentally unsound. It reminds me of the days when they used to put sawdust in sausages, sawdust for fillers. People found out about it, and they were aghast. Here is what they did with these mortgages. They are out there selling bad mortgages, interest only and even less than interest only, subprime, selling mortgages to people who aren't going to have a ghost of a chance of making the payments. They are out there selling mortgages--not just Countrywide but others as well--which are advertising: Come to us if you have bad credit. We want to help you. We want to give you a loan. They sell these mortgages, and then they package them up, similar to a piece of sausage. They put subprime loans, bad loans in with securities. They package them up, and they sell them. Pretty soon a hedge fund, an investment bank, or somebody else buys them, and now they have a piece of sausage with sawdust that is called a security, which includes bad home mortgages. They don't even know it. Then, all of a sudden, it goes belly up because people can't pay their mortgages. Now, I am thinking to myself, where has common sense gone? What has happened to basic common sense? Those brokers are selling the loans and making big commissions. Those companies were writing the loans making big money and putting in prepayment penalties so they can lock people into bad loans. Those people, the investors who are buying the loans, and, yes, in some cases, those who were taking out the loans because they should have known better, where has common sense gone? It is rampant speculation. One more point. It relates to what I talked about with respect to oil futures, and it is the total lack of regulatory oversight. Don't look. Don't worry. It will all be fine. Well, it is not fine. These kinds of activities have an unbelievably tough effect on this country's economy and on people. Millions of people will lose their homes. We have a lot of work to do, but I wished to make this point: There is a need to have effective regulatory oversight. This administration has never believed in it. We saw the consequences of it with the Enron Corporation. We now see the consequences with respect to oil and natural gas futures trading and its impact on the price of oil and natural gas. We see the consequences of it with respect to what has happened with subprime lending. If this doesn't convince this administration and future administrations that you have to have effective regulation, then I don't know what does. Companies need someone looking over their shoulders to make sure we don't have this carnival of greed take over. You have to have effective regulation. Working in this Congress, many of us are trying to put this back together to see if we can't get back to some sound common sense, some business sense, in terms of working in these areas. I wanted to at least start today by talking about the contradiction of what the President is asking of us and what the President is demanding of the Congress in a way that is completely contradictory to sound fiscal policy. I further wanted to talk about a couple of areas of speculation that both relate to lack of oversight. We need to fix these. We can do it, but we need to fix it and soon. I appreciate the patience of the majority leader. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it has. There is no question we need oil. We use a lot of oil, but we need to have an energy policy that is a balanced policy, and my colleague, the majority leader, is working with all of us on an energy bill that we hope we can get by the end of this session that is balanced. It must include renewable energy. We will also use fossil fuels, as well as need more conservation and efficiency. Further, we must make our vehicle fleet much more efficient. For the first time in 27 years, I believe, the majority steered through this Senate an energy bill that got 65 votes, including for reformed CAFE standards which will make our vehicle fleet more efficient. So we have a lot to do on energy, but we have made some significant progress. I hope we can get that bill by the end of the year.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the majority leader is absolutely right. We have a role to play. The first and most important aspect is to help those who have been victimized by this unbelievable speculation and greed, and the second is to make sure it doesn't happen again. That requires effective regulation. So the response to this subprime loan issue cannot be no response or just to look the other way. It has to be to address those things. One of the points the majority leader has made is the need to rework some of these mortgages. The interesting thing is that, in the old days when you got a mortgage, you knew where you got it, and you knew who had it. If you had trouble, you went and worked it out with your lender. Nowadays, they have already sold that mortgage, so it makes it much more difficult. They have sold it, wrapped it into a security someplace, and sold it two or three times. Borrowers go to the place where they got the mortgage, but the company says we don't have the mortgage. So we have a lot to do. I appreciate the words of the majority leader. We have to help a lot of people try to get through this. We need to help our country's economy get through this and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the reason a cloture motion was even filed is we have been here a week and a half and have not even been able to move to the first amendment because it has been blocked. Yesterday, Senator Harkin offered this. He said: Well, how about if we at least start. The way to move on it is to start. He said: How about let's start with a couple of Republican amendments and a couple of Democratic amendments. In every case, there was an objection by the minority side which said no, we can't start. So I think the majority leader had no choice but to say let's file a cloture motion and try to shut off debate, but that will not shut off amendments that are germane postcloture. After being very discouraged, I really hope those of us who care about a farm program can move forward. Having watched this blocking of the farm bill now for a week and a half, I hope tomorrow morning, when we have this vote, the message that American farmers will get is that this Senate cares enough to decide that, yes, we will go to work, and we will do the farm bill. I would make one final point to the majority leader. I made the point yesterday. Farmers can't do what the minority in the Senate is doing. When it is time to milk a cow, you have to milk a cow, or the cow gets sore. When it is time to plant, you have to plant, or your crop will not grow. When it is time to harvest, you have to harvest, or the crop will spoil. The farmers don't have the luxury the minority has to say: Well, let's do nothing. I hope our colleagues will join us tomorrow in voting for cloture. I appreciate the filing of the motion by the majority leader because we didn't have any other choice.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is almost unbelievably disappointing. This is the second week we are on the farm bill. We have people in the Senate who believe, apparently, they are trying to imitate a set of human brake pads and stop everything. We haven't even started. How can you stop it? I don't understand this at all. If family farmers farmed like Congress legislated, there would be no food. When it comes spring you have to plant the seeds. You have to do it. It is not an option. When it comes harvest time, you have to take it off the field. When the cows are ready to milk, you have to milk. We have a few people in Congress who believe you don't have to do anything. All you have to do, as I said, is imitate a set of human brake pads and just stop everything. I guess maybe that is a successful strategy for some, if you do not believe anything ought to get done. The chairman of this committee, Senator Harkin, and the ranking member, Senator Chambliss, worked hard on this. I understand Senator Chambliss has been objecting as a result of the minority leader's position. I understand that. But my colleague from Iowa just propounded a series of unanimous consent requests. He said let's just start. This isn't rocket science. How do you get this bill done? First, you start the bill. As I understand it, my colleague proposed a couple of amendments from each side, Democratic amendments, Republican amendments. Just start, have some time agreements, have a debate, have a vote. If there are some who do not want a farm bill to be passed in this Congress, I understand. They have a right to vote against and speak against the farm bill. But why on Earth should they hold this bill hostage to their whims? We take for granted, every single day in this country, what family farmers do. They get up out there in the country, living under a yard light, get up, often very early, and do chores. They work hard. They take a lot of risks. They have big dreams. They live on hope. They must live on hope. They hope there is going to be a better crop, a better year. They hope they are going to be able to make a decent living. We take all of that for granted. What we try to do in the Congress is to write a farm bill that says family farmers are important--yes, for economic reasons but also for cultural reasons, to have a network of families out there producing America's food. Family farmers are important, and we understand families can't survive some tough times, so we create a safety net, a bridge over price depressions. And we say: We want to help you. That is what the farm bill is about. There are other pieces of it, nutrition and other issues, but the centerpiece of a safety net for family farmers is very important. I guess I don't remember a time when we had a farm bill on the Senate floor that has been held up. I voted against some farm bills I didn't like. But, you know, I didn't like the so-called Freedom to Farm bill, which I thought was a disaster, so I voted against it, but I didn't come down to the floor to try to prevent it from moving. I just said this is something I will not support, so I voted against it. In this case, and in the previous case with the farm bill we operate under currently, I support it. I really want this to move forward. I do not understand. I do not understand at all. We could compare, perhaps, the Senate to a glacier, but the difference is a glacier actually moves from time to time. This Senate, on this bill, is going nowhere because of a couple of people who decided we are going to stop it. The majority leader has brought this bill to the floor of the Senate, allowed 2 weeks for it. Both colleagues, Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss, have worked hard. My colleague, Senator Conrad, has been out here working hard to see if can we get a list of amendments we can begin working through. Apparently, we now know there are something like 250 amendments that have been noticed. Obviously, we are not going to have 250 amendments on this bill. We don't have time for that. Some of these amendments, a good many of them, have nothing at all to do with this subject at all--going back into immigration and a whole series of tax issues that have nothing to do with farming, agriculture, family farms. So the question is, Can we find a way to reduce that number of amendments and then just start? The first amendment Senator Grassley and I have offered is an amendment that would, I think, improve the bill. But we have not been able to even begin the first 5 minutes of debate on that amendment. There are many others. My colleague offers a proposal: Let's at least start on two Republican and two Democratic amendments. The first step of any journey is the most important step. Let's just begin. Here it is, a week and a half after the bill comes to the floor of the Senate, and this Senate is at parade rest. I do not understand it. One of my great concerns at the moment is that the time has been set aside to try to get this farm bill done. Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss wrote a farm bill that came out of the Agriculture Committee, as I understand, unanimously. You would believe, then, that represents bipartisan agreement on the central portion of a farm bill. Can we improve it a little bit? I think so. There are some amendments back and forth that perhaps will improve some portions of it. But the fact is, they wrote a bipartisan bill that had very strong support, in fact, unanimous support in the committee. How on Earth do we get to a point where a bill that comes out of the committee unanimously, a bill that is as important as this one is to every region of the country, sits on the floor of the Senate at parade rest, and we cannot even get to debate on the first amendment? I do not understand that at all. That makes no sense to me. The fact is, time is running out. I worry if we do not get this bill done this week--work late tonight, late tomorrow night, into Friday, get this bill done--I worry that this bill is not going to get done in any timely fashion. What an awful message for us to send to family farmers. The message in this bill is, we think they matter. We think they are an important part of this country's economic strength. Family farmers have always been the economic All-Stars. But it is beyond me to understand what is going on here. We have amendments. My amendment is pending, but we can't even begin the first minute of debate. I don't understand it at all. I have said before on the floor of the Senate that family farmers in this country produce a lot more than crops and food. They produce communities. They are the blood vessels that create the strength for these small towns. I grew up in one of those towns. We raised some cattle and some horses. The fact is, family farmers are very important to the economic strength and to the culture of this country. They do not expect much. They don't ask for much. They are an independent bunch of people. They are people who try to raise a family and raise a crop, way out in the country, in many cases. They are not asking for anything very much except that this country has believed for a long while that all of the uncertainties, all of the risks that accrue to family farming in many cases just wipe them out unless you have some kind of safety net. That is why we have created a safety net. They plant a seed, hope it grows, hope it rains enough, hope it doesn't rain too much, hope it doesn't hail, hope the insects don't come, hope there isn't any crop disease. Then they hope they have a chance to harvest it in the fall and then hope when they harvest it and truck it to the elevator, it is going to have a decent price. All of that risk, all alone. So we create a safety net to say we are going to try, if we can, to provide some strength to that hope because we want family farms to continue to exist in the future because we think it strengthens our country. That is why we write a farm bill. All of us come from different points on the compass, but we all believe basically the same thing: family farming matters for this country. How on Earth have we gotten to the point where, on a Wednesday, a week after we start the debate on the farm bill, we have not been able to consider even one amendment? Now we risk not getting the farm bill done. How we have gotten to this point, I don't have the foggiest understanding, but it is not healthy and not good. I hope we can persuade the minority leader and others to let us proceed. Just start. We are not asking for the Moon. Just start discussion, debate, and vote on amendments, and let's see how quickly we can move through these to try to get a bill done before the end of this week. Let me finish, as I started, by saying I know a lot of people have worked for a long time on this bill. There are a lot of people on both sides of the political aisle who want this bill to get done. I am among them. But there are some who have decided we ought not move forward, and they have decided the only way they would allow us to move forward is to allow all kinds of amendments that go back and recreate the debates on immigration, and you name it. The fact is, all that means is we will not get this bill done, never get this bill done. So let's go back to the tradition. The tradition has been, with respect to farm bills, we have had farm bills on the floor of the Senate in which we debate and vote on amendments. We do not, in most cases, see amendments that have nothing to do with agriculture load down this bill and decide we are going to try to stop it from moving. I hope we can get back to that tradition. That is the tradition I think farmers would expect of us. Let me again say, as I started, if families out there in the country farmed like we legislate--or at least like a few people in this Chamber want to legislate--there would be no food because they would never plant the grain. It wouldn't matter, timing doesn't matter, they wouldn't harvest the grain, timing doesn't matter; they wouldn't milk the cows because they wouldn't care whether the cows are fresh or sore. This Congress can do a whole lot better than this, and my hope is, in the coming couple of hours, we can reach agreement and begin debate on the amendments. Let's follow this trail until the amendments are done, and I think that farm bill will get a resounding vote on the floor of the Senate. I think the farm bill will get two-thirds or perhaps three- fourths in favor of it. I yield the floor. I know we have two other Members on the Senate floor. The Senator from Colorado had indicated he wanted to speak, but I know the Senator from Georgia is on the Senate floor as well.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, I shall not object to a baby step, but let me try to understand exactly what we have. I looked at the list that is before us. My name is not on that list. I assume that the Dorgan-Grassley amendment is now pending. And if the tree is taken--

Mr. DORGAN. I wish to make sure there is protection for that amendment. I also would like, if I might for a moment, to say that the cloture motion you have filed does not alter or change the opportunity for Senator Grassley and myself? The point that you had made was I did not want a vote on the Dorgan-Grassley amendment to be a cloture vote because there may be some who feel they have to vote with their leadership on a cloture, in a manner that would be different than if we had it straight up and down on the merits. It will still be pending, and we will intend to pursue that amendment. The list of amendments is as follows: Akaka--Amdt. No. 3538, Alexander--SoS: Broadband, Alexander--Increase Ag Research, Alexander--Strike renewable tax credit, Alexander--Wind energy tax credit, Alexander-- Wind energy property taxes, Allard--PART, Allard--Vet Food Systems, Allard--Forest Reassessment, Barrasso--Support project-7, Baucus--State assistance for beginning farmers (Amdt. No. 3598), Baucus--Ag Research, Baucus--Brucellosis, Baucus--Agriculture supply, Bingaman--1 relevant amendment, Bingaman--Ground and water surface conservation program, Bingaman--Regional Water Enhancement program, Bond--Food Stamps, Bond--Red-tape Reduction, Bond--Research. Boxer--6 relevant amendments, Brown/Hatch--Crop Insurance, Bunning--Disaster Relief, Cantwell--Study on climate change and impact on wine industry, Cantwell--increase funding specialty crop block grant, Cantwell--Minor oil seed crops, Cantwell--tree assistance program, Cardin--2 relevant amendments, Casey--crop insurance, Casey--agriculture inspectors, Casey--food stamp nutrition education, Casey-- emergency funding for invasive pests and diseases, Chambliss--Farm Credit Service, Chambliss--Crop Insurance Fix, Chambliss--Trade-strikes section 3101, Chambliss-- Biotech--PPV, Chambliss--Sugar technical fix, Chambliss-- Ethanol/direct payments, Chambliss--Conservation AGI, Chambliss--5 Relevant. Chambliss--2 Relevant to any on the list, Coburn--Waste, Coburn--Chinese garden maintenance, Coburn--Transparency, Coburn--Estate payments, Coburn--Federal hunger problems, Coburn--Crop Insurance, Coburn--Equip, Coleman--AGI Caps, Coleman--Drivers License, Conrad--3 relevant amendments, Corker--Coal gasification project credits, Cornyn--Child obesity study, Cornyn--Strike Disaster Trust Fund, Cornyn-- New Budget P/O, Craig--Loan Repayment, Craig--Land Preservation, Craig--Worker Housing, Craig--Biogas. DeMint--Death tax, Dorgan CRP, Dorgan--2 SECA tax amendments, Dorgan--Secretary's rule regarding cattle and beef (Amdt. No. 3602), Dorgan--Amdt. No. 3508 (pending), Dorgan--payment limits, Dole--Tax Credit, Domenici--Renewable Energy, Domenici--Land Transfer, Durbin--Food Safety sunset, Durbin--McGovern-Dole funding, Durbin--ACR improvements, Durbin--Puppy information, Durbin--Low-interest financing to fight invasive species, Durbin--Food Safety, Ensign--5 Relevant Amendments, Enzi--Captive Supply, Feingold--13 relevant amendments, Feinstein--Ag inspectors, Feinstein-- Energy market oversight, Feinstein--Leafy greens, Feinstein-- Clementines. Graham--Cellulosic Ethanol, Grassley--Agricultural mergers, Gregg-Mortgage Crisis, Gregg--Drivers License, Gregg-- Firefighters, Gregg--Ag disaster funds, Gregg--Farm stress program, Gregg--Proper budget accounting, Gregg--Commodity subsidies, Gregg--Sugar Program, Gregg--Loss assistance (asparagus), Gregg--Commodity subsidies, Gregg--Gulf of Mexico, Gregg--Farm and rural healthcare. Harkin--7 relevant amendments, Harkin--2 amendments relevant to any on the list, Harkin--School nutrition standards, Harkin--Packers and stockyards Act, Harkin-- Managers' Amendments, Hutchison--Southwest Dairy, Hutchison-- Land Grants, Hutchison--Rio Grande, Hutchison--Renewables, Inouye--Food for Peace, Inouye--Rail related, Inouye-- Broaband Data, Inouye--Energy related, Inouye--Sugar/ethanol loan guarantee grant program, Inouye--Exemption for Hawaii, Inouye--Reimbursement payment to geographically disadvantaged farmers/ranchers. Kerry--4 relevant amendments, Kohl--Revised membership/ Federal Milk Marketing (Amdt. No. 3531), Kohl--SOS Rural Energy America Program (Amdt. No. 3532), Kohl--Amdt. No. 3533, Kohl--Amdt. No. 3534, Kohl--Amdt. No. 3535, Kohl--Amdt. No. 3536, Kohl--Amdt. No. 3537, Kohl--Amdt. No. 3555, Klobuchar--AGI Limits, Klobuchar--Timber contracts, Klobuchar--Beginning farmers/ranchers, Kyl--Tax/AMT, Kyl-- Relevant. Landrieu--7 relevant amendments, Lautenberg--FRESH Act, Lautenberg--FEED Act, Levin--Energy Markets, Lincoln--4 Ag tax amendments, Lincoln--Bio Fuels, Lincoln--Small Procedure Credit, Lincoln--1 relevant amendment, Lott--Gulf of Mexico task force, Lott--Tax/AMT, Lott--2 Relevant, Lugar--Complete overhaul, Lugar--Trade, Lugar--2 Relevant. McCaskill--Amdt. No. 3556, McConnell--4 Relevant, McConnell--Death Tax, McConnell--AMT, McConnell--Tax/Horses, McConnell--2 Relevant to any on the list, Menendez--4 relevant amendments, Mikulski--2 cloned foods amendments, Mikulski--2 H2B amendments, Murkowski--Exxon Valdez litigation, Murkowski--Specialty crops, Murray--2 Conservation amendments, Murray--Energy, Murray--Specialty crop, Nelson (NE)--Amdt. No. 3576, Pryor--Broadband (Amdt. No. 3625), Pryor--4 relevant amendments. Reid--Amdt. No. 3509, Reid--Amdt. No. 3510, Reid--Amdt. No. 3511, Reid--Amdt. No. 3512, Reid--Amdt. No. 3513, Reid--Amdt. No. 3514, Reid--2 relevant amendments, Reid--2 amendments relevant to any on the list, Roberts--Technical, Roberts--Ag Fair Practices, Roberts--Definitions, Roberts--Regulations, Roberts--Conservation, Roberts--Conservation, Roberts--Trade, Roberts--Nutrition, Roberts--Rural Development, Roberts-- Rural Development, Salazar--Cellulosic Biofuels Production Incentives (Amdt. No. 3616), Salazar--Colorado Good Neighbor Agreements (Forestry), Sanders--Amdt. No. 3595, Schumer--5 Conservation amendments, Sessions--Rural Hospital, Sessions-- Farm Savings Accounts. Smith--Americorp Vista volunteers, Smith--River Conservatory, Smith--Deschutes River, Smith--Wallowa Lake Dam, Smith--Oregon Subbasins, Smith --North Irrigation unit, Smith--Irrigation Districts, Smith--Fire sprinkler systems, Stabenow--Local farmer initiative--Buy America, Stabenow-- CSFP, Stevens--Protecting Kids Online, Stevens--e911, Stevens--FSA operating loans, Stevens--Quarantine inspection fees, Stevens--Bloc Grant to seafood, Stevens--AQI User Fees, Stevens--Fishing Loans, Sununu--Biomass Fuel. Tester--Amdt No. 3516, Tester--Live Stock Title, Thune-- Bioluels, Vitter--National Finance Center, Webb--3 relevant amendments, Wyden--Illegal logging, Wyden--Biomass grants (Nov. 14, 2007).

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, am I allotted a certain amount of time in morning business?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me describe a couple of things that represent front-page news these days. Regrettably, I believe, these things threaten the potential future prosperity of our country and require an urgent response on the part of the President and the Congress. The economy and fiscal policy of this administration--and the lack of regulatory interest on the part of this administration--has led us to an abyss that is very troublesome. We see the dollar dropping in value to other currencies. We see a dramatic trade deficit of $2 billion a day, that we are buying from other countries more than we are selling to other countries. We see a fiscal policy budget deficit that the President says is coming down. The only way he can say the deficit is significantly coming down is that he is taking all of the surplus Social Security revenues that are supposed to go into the Social Security trust fund and using every dollar of that surplus as an offset against other revenue and other spending in order to show a much lower deficit. We are far off track in trade policy and fiscal policy, and now we have in front of us a proposal for $196 billion in emergency spending--none of it paid for. That will bring us very close to three- quarters of a trillion dollars that the President has requested on an emergency basis--none of it paid for. That is not conservatism. We have a responsibility to begin paying for these costs. We send soldiers to war and the President says to the American people: You go shopping and do your part for the American economy. That should not happen. What should happen is when we send soldiers to go to war and ask them to wear the uniform of their country and go in harm's way, we should, as a responsible Congress and President, pay for the costs as we go. I don't understand it. The President is down there at the White House saying $22 billion additional for the kinds of things that invest in our country--he says I am opposed to that. He said I will veto 10 of your bills, if necessary. He said, I am opposed to that $22 billion of your bills, half of which is invested in health care. Then he says, by the way, I want $196 billion on the other side, none of it paid for, for my priorities, and he says: But that is for the troops. I am sorry, it is not just for the troops. A substantial portion of that is for the contractors. There is dramatic evidence of the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country going to contractors who are profiteering, regrettably, during a war. For a long while I have believed--we have had votes in the Senate and all on the other side of the aisle have voted against it-- that we should have a Truman-type committee, such as the one Harry Truman led many decades ago, that began to investigate the waste, fraud, and abuse in contracting that is existing, that is fleecing the American taxpayer, undermining the American troops, going on under the nose of this administration, and nobody seems to care. With respect to a fiscal policy that is out of control, let me describe the second portion of that, and that is an administration that doesn't want regulators to regulate. I understand some do not like regulation, but this administration has gone way beyond the pale in saying to regulators, look the other way. Here is what is happening. This morning you read the newspaper and see that subprime loans are beginning to have a big impact on all Americans because it is beginning to have an impact on the economy. What does all this mean, subprime lending? Let me describe it to you. Again, the regulators were asleep, didn't do anything, didn't care very much. Here is what has been going on. We have had mortgage companies that used to be kind of the slow, little companies that would lend you money for your home, down on the street corner someplace, not much going on, somebody who was a thoughtful person with a pencil above their ear, they were wearing a white shirt and suspenders. You would sit down and say, I need a home loan. They would be glad to help you and they would sit down and work out a home loan for you. That was the way home loans worked. All of a sudden, home loans have changed. All of a sudden it is a go- go industry. This is what they started doing. It is unbelievable. This is an advertisement from the biggest home lending company in this country: Homeowners, do you want to refinance and get cash? Countrywide has a great reason to do it now. A no cost finance. It has no points, no applications fee, no credit reporting and no third party fees. No title, no escrow, or appraisal fees. Absolutely no closing costs. So you wind up with a lot more cash. Here is another company that had a different thing to say, Zoom Credit: Credit approval is just seconds away. Get on the fast track at Zoom Credit. At the speed of light, Zoom Credit will pre- approve you for a car loan, a home loan or a credit card. Even if your credit's in the tank. Zoom Credit's like money in the bank. Zoom Credit specializes in credit repair and debt consolidation, too. Bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit-- who cares? This is an ad from a mortgage company. Millenia Mortgage had to say in their advertisement: Twelve months No Mortgage Payment. That's right. We will give you the money to make your first 12 payments if you call in the next 7 days. We pay it for you. Let me describe what all this means and what they were doing. I will do it with respect to the largest mortgage lending company. Angelo Mozilo created Countrywide Finance, the biggest mortgage company in our country. They are the ones, along with others, who helped create the riskier loans and in many cases targeted those loans to those who could not repay. Do you have less than perfect credit? Late mortgage payments? Denied by other lenders? Call us. That was one of Countrywide's advertisements. Let me say again: Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you have late mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders? Call us-- Countrywide says. So they began to attract borrowers through advertising, and then they had brokers on the phone soliciting, calling somebody up, saying: Let's talk about a new mortgage. We can get some cash for you and reduce your interest rates. So they created ``affordability loans,'' a new category; then adjustable rate mortgages; then interest-rate-only loans; then reduced documentation or no-documentation loans. When I heard that one, I thought, What does that mean? It means just what it says: If you want to get a loan, a home mortgage, and you don't want to document your income, they say that is fine, we will give you a no-doc loan. You will pay a little higher interest rate, but we will certainly give you a mortgage if you don't have documentation. One of the new mortgages they began to offer is interest-only loans so the borrower is required to pay interest charges only. They deferred any principal payment to much later; and then they came up with a pay option adjustable rate mortgage, which allowed the borrower to pay only a portion of the interest, none of the principal, just a portion of the interest, and defer all of it to the end of the loan. This means you might end up paying much more for the house than the house is worth. All these fancy things--what they were saying to potential borrowers was, if you have bad credit, come to us because we have an instrument for you. This is about greed, by the way, because the brokers and the banks made extraordinary amount of money. So what they did was they created a circumstance where they would loan to people something called subprime loans. There is evidence they put people into subprime loans, even though they could have qualified for prime loans. Why? Because subprime loans paid more. Then they rolled these subprime loans, in many cases for people who couldn't repay, and they would set the interest rate ridiculously low--pay 2 percent interest rate, for example, and then it will reset in 24 months, 36 months, and when it resets, it will reset way up here, but in the meantime here is your monthly payment. They were quoting monthly payments without the escrow, so they were recording ridiculously low payments. In some cases, they were quoting interest only loans, some cases with only partial interest, in other cases at ridiculously low rates that were going to reset at a high rate, and then they would attach prepayment penalties to them so they could lock people in. And then what they did is they rolled this up like sausage. There was a story about how there used to be sawdust in with meat when they rolled sausage up so you didn't know what you were eating. It was good filler, apparently. They rolled these up as securities with the subprime loans, the prime loans, rolled them up as a security, sliced them up to be sold. Guess what. The big investors out there liked this stuff. It paid pretty high rates at this point because you were able to have prepayment penalties and a whole series of things. They are buying these things without having the foggiest idea what is in them. The rating agencies are rating them as OK. So you have the folks investing in the securities that represent these subprimes. Then all of a sudden it is discovered people are not able to pay. They can't make their house payments. The interest rate gets reset. It is way up. They don't have a ghost of a chance of making the house payment, and then they stand around scratching their head wondering what happened. I will tell you what happened, a carnival of greed on the part of the mortgage brokers, bank security firms--all of them, a total carnival of greed. Now they are all walking around scratching their head, trying to figure out what do we do next. Well, Merrill Lynch, for example, lost $8.4 billion, I guess it was, 2 weeks ago, so they fired their CEO. I believe he got $161 million in securities and retirement benefits--as he went out the door. Last week it was CitiGroup that fired their CEO. There was a pretty substantial benefit. That is going on all over the country. By the way, the head of the company that is the largest company, Mr. Mozilo, in the midst of all this, head of the largest company that is engaged in all this, Countrywide, earned $142 million last year. He was celebrated as the executive--Fortune Magazine's prestigious Company of the Year. The Horatio Alger award. He made $142 million last year and the New York Times reports that he was selling $138 million of his stock in the company as he was talking about how well the company was doing. This subprime scandal is all about greed. It is not new. It happened in the savings and loan industry. It has happened in other areas. It is now happening with respect to this mortgage industry scandal. The administration, of course, doesn't want anybody looking over anybody's shoulder, so there has been no regulation. You have hedge funds buying into these things. They are unregulated, by and large. There is no regulation, no oversight, Katy-bar-the-door, do what you want to do, the private sector will be fine. It is not fine. This is having a significant and serious impact on this country's economy. I am going to come back to this in a moment, but let me describe the other issue that is happening. We wake up this morning and oil is $90 to $100 a barrel. You ask why is that the case? Why is oil $90 to $100 a barrel? Once again, it is lack of oversight. Here we have a futures market on which oil is bought and sold. This futures market has now become an unbelievable orgy of speculation. I was reading yesterday from an article, an analyst from the Oppenheimer Company in New York, was talking about the price of oil. He says: I'm absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. Oil speculators include the largest financial institutions of the world. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It is open 24-7. Unfortunately there are segments of the market that are unregulated. This is like a highway with no cops, no speed limit, and everybody is going 120 miles an hour. What is happening with oil? It is interesting, if you take a look at this unbelievable speculation that is going on in the futures market. You have industrial banks in this country, investment banks. They are actually buying tanks to store oil. This takes the oil off the market. They are doing this because they believe that the price of oil will be higher in the future. So they take oil off the market now, store it, and sell it later for a profit. This creates an upward pressure on price. You now have hedge funds hip deep in the futures markets. They didn't used to be. It used to be that the futures market for oil had a relationship to the supply and demand with respect to oil. There were other tensions in various parts of the world that might affect it some, but not like we have seen recently. As is the case in most areas, this has gotten way out of hand. There is no way that current supply-and- demand relationships with oil justify $100 a barrel. It is a futures market that is propelled by unbelievable speculation in search of profits by a whole range of interests, especially now including hedge funds and investment banks and others. The question is, who are the victims of all of this? The victims are people, the people who drive up to the gas pump. The victims on the subprime market are the people who cannot repay a mortgage; and somebody says maybe they should have known better. Maybe so, but when a broker is going to make a $30,000 commission by writing a $1 million mortgage and selling over the phone 2 percent interest rates, I am telling you there are a whole lot of folks who get sucked into that. The point here is we face a situation in several areas where there is a total, complete lack of common sense. There is this little book written by Robert Fulghum a long while ago that would, in my judgment, provide some benefit to some people. The title of the book is, ``All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.'' The lessons are not unusual. The lessons are: Play fair, don't hit, don't take what is not yours, wash your hands, flush--you know, the things I learned in kindergarten; the things that are important. We could write a primer on ``All The Things I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.'' We could write that primer and instantly people would say you can't have an oil futures market that is rampant in speculation with hedge funds and others now pushing up the price of oil having little to do with supply and demand. You can't have a mortgage industry in which the mortgage companies decide they are going to provide loans to people who cannot afford to repay the loan and make very big profits and lock them in with a prepayment penalty. They are all fat and happy and making a massive amount of money. You can't have that without a significant consequence to our economy. What do I suggest? It is simple. Let's sober up a little bit on fiscal policy in this administration and this Congress. Maybe we can say to the President: You want $196 billion. OK. You tell us how you want to pay for it. Send us the recommendation, and we will certainly take a look at that. We want to do everything that needs to be done to support our troops. But a substantial portion is not going to support our troops. It is going to support big contractors that have been bilking the taxpayer for a long time. We are going to take a hard look at that and investigate it and get to the bottom of it. We need to get back on track in trade and fiscal policy. Ignoring it might feel good, but it is not the right thing for the future. With respect to the issue of subprime lending and futures markets, if that doesn't persuade Members of this body there needs to be some thoughtful, sensible regulation, then I don't know what will. I chaired the hearings on Enron. It was to my subcommittee that Ken Lay came on behalf of Enron, raised his hand, and took the fifth amendment. Mr. Lay is dead. Many of the folks who worked with him at Enron are in prison. But I understand what happened in that scandal. The American public, again, was a victim. They got fleeced. In Enron's case, they were manipulating markets to drive up the cost of electricity on the west coast and bilk people out of billions of dollars. What did it mean? It meant we had to put in place some regulations to prevent that from happening again. What does this mean, the subprime scandal that exists, and its impact on the economy? It means we have to put in place some regulations to prevent this sort of thing from happening. People have profited in a very unholy way at the expense of a lot of victims across the country. What does it mean when people go up to the gas pump this afternoon and pay a substantial amount for a tank of gasoline at a time when the price of oil is running toward $100 a barrel and the futures market is driving that price up, having very little to do with supply and demand but more to do with an orgy of speculation? It means we ought to care about that. It means there ought to be some regulatory oversight. This administration has a lot to answer for, as does the Congress. I am pleased to be a part of the majority, and we are working hard to try to respond to and deal with these issues. But these issues are not going to go away. The prosperity of this country's future is at stake. We need to get it right. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I shall not take all that time, but I wanted to talk about a couple of things this morning. Before I do that, I want to express my appreciation for the comments of my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, about what our priorities seem to be and what they should be with respect to fiscal policy and appropriations bills as well as the larger priorities of our country. Let me now talk briefly about the vote that occurred last week on the confirmation of Attorney General Mukasey. I wish to talk about it because I think a very important issue that needs to be discussed--and we have not really discussed it much on the floor of the Senate--is the issue of torture. I don't think the issue of torture, for this country, is negotiable. And, I don't think it is a very difficult question. But, before I talk about the issue of torture specifically, let me just describe what I think represents the great strength of this country, and the great strength of this country does not include a willingness or an allowance to torture anybody anywhere. We were engaged in a long, difficult Cold War for decades. That struggle against the Soviet Union and totalitarianism lasted a long time. But it wasn't, in the end, bombs and bullets that won that war; it was American values that won that war. It was the idea of our country, and the idea of our country is rooted in the Constitution. People are free. They believe what they want. They are able to say what they want. The Government has to respect the rights of everyone. That is the embroidery and the framework of our Government and our Constitution. America is an idea, with a written Constitution and a Bill of Rights, that protects people, and stands for liberty, human rights, and human dignity. In fact, those values of this country were so strong that even during the Cold War those values shined a light of hope into the darkest cells in the Soviet Union, in the gulag prisons, in the outermost reaches of Siberia. We know that because people who were in those dark cells came out from behind the Iron Curtain and told us of the ray of hope they saw from this country. Millions of political prisoners were held, often in solitary confinement in the Soviet Union, simply for thinking and speaking freely. Many were there for years, swept off the streets in the Soviet Union, never to be heard from again. Often, they weren't charged. When they were, they were convicted after show trials because they had no rights. But some survived, and they talked about how important the idea and the values were that embodied this country called the United States. America gave them hope. The idea of America reached to the farthest and darkest places on this planet. It always has, and it has offered hope. Now, it is true that this country is not perfect. We all understand that. But it is also true that what we stand for is very important in terms of the message we send around the world. It is important for our self-respect, and it is important for what we believe America to be. It is troubling to me that polls that are done around the world show that so many in the world now are very concerned about our country, with views that are very negative about the United States, and these views are held by historic foes but also historic friends. That is something which should concern all of us. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We always have, and we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. The issue of torture was an issue that arose because of the questions asked a candidate, a nominee, for Attorney General. There are some who believe under certain circumstances, apparently, torture is all right or appropriate or sanctioned. I am not one of them, and I would think most Americans would not believe that. George Washington led the Continental Army in the War for Independence. After a large number of his troops were captured, he and his troops saw Hessian mercenaries, fighting for the British, slaughter unarmed prisoners from the Continental Army. They saw that, and yet George Washington refused to treat Hessian prisoners the same way. He insisted we were different and we would treat people the way we should be treated. That is America's birthright. It has always been the case. And that is why the discussion about torture is so very important. It is why the discussions about treatment of detainees, about enemy combatants, about habeas corpus, and about the power of the executive branch in this country are important as well. The Attorney General's post is very important. I met with the nominee and I liked him. I talked to him about his commendable experience in Government as a Federal Judge. But his inability to answer the basic questions about waterboarding and torture were very troubling to me. I don't understand that inability, and I don't think, from my standpoint, that issue is negotiable. Torture is not what America is about. Some say or some imply that being against torture is somehow being soft on terrorists. That is as despicable as it is wrong. Being against torture is being for an America that is better than its enemies. Being against torture is being for an America that continues to be a beacon of hope around the world for doing the right thing, and it is being for an America that stands for the rule of law and human dignity and human rights. So I wanted to make the point, after the debate we had last week, that this is not an irrelevant issue. It is an issue that defines our country. It is an issue about who we are, the value system of this great country of ours.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. The important point here is that I think everyone on the floor wants to get this bill passed, and while there will be some amendments, my hope and my expectation--I have one amendment--would be that we would relatively easily get time agreements, have a reasonable number of amendments with time agreements. I think there should be a lot of cooperation on the floor because I think all of us want what you want, and that is to get a piece of legislation passed. This was not easy to get out of the committee. I support this bill. I am going to support a couple of amendments here and there, but by and large I think we are on the right track, and I appreciate hearing the words of the minority leader today on this subject because we need to get this done.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Media Ownership Act of 2007, along with Senators Lott, Obama, Snowe, Kerry, Nelson of Florida, Cantwell, and Feinstein. We seek with this bill to halt the Federal Communications Commission's, FCC, fast march toward easing media ownership rules. The FCC has taken a series of destructive actions in the past two decades that, I believe, have undermined the public interest. Now they appear prepared to do it again. The FCC is working to have a rewrite of media ownership rules completed just next month. Now this seems like a massive rush to me and a big mistake. How will the public interest be served by attempting to rush through a plan to relax ownership rules? We don't need more concentration of ownership in radio and television stations and a green light for cross ownership between newspapers, radio and television stations. Further consolidation of media ownership at all is an affront to common sense. But even if we disagree with the rules the FCC issues, and even if we think the FCC should break up the big media companies rather than allow them to consolidate, the FCC must go through an honest and thorough process. They must study the questions that affect a decision of whether to adjust ownership limits. They have not done this. They have not put the final rules out for comment for a meaningful amount of time, they have not given the necessary consideration to the issue of localism, and they do not know enough about the impact of consolidation on localism or female and minority ownership. The Media Ownership Act of 2007 ensures that the FCC allow enough time for comment on the actual rule changes. It requires that the FCC put out the final rules proposed by the Commission for 90 days of comment. The bill also requires that the FCC complete a separate proceeding on the promotion of local programming and content by broadcasters and newspapers. In 2003, Chairman Powell set up a task force to promote localism in broadcasting and they began some hearings and took in comments. Chairman Martin has wrapped those comments into this ownership proceeding and is finishing the last localism hearing as part of this rushed schedule. The bill requires that they must publish a final rule in a separate proceeding and allow 90 days of comment. This must be completed prior to the vote on ownership. The bill requires that the FCC establish an Independent Panel on Ownership by Women and Minorities. The FCC must collect and provide this panel with data on the specific gender and ethnic makeup of media owners. The panel shall issue recommendations and the FCC must act on these recommendations prior to a vote on media ownership. The last time the FCC tried to do rush to consolidate media ownership, the United States Senate voted to block it. On September 16, 2003, the Senate voted 55-40 to support a ``resolution of disapproval'' of the FCC's previous decision to allow further concentration. If we have to do this again we will. A number of us have sent numerous letters to the FCC stating what needs to be done prior to a vote on media ownership limits and yet the Chairman is on track to move this proceeding to a vote. The FCC is clearly not listening and legislation is now necessary. This is again a bipartisan effort to stop the FCC from destroying the local interests that we have always felt must be a part of broadcasting. It is time to ensure that we first protect localism and diversity, which the FCC appears to have long forgotten. Only then can we really review the rules of media ownership in a thorough process to see if it is actually in the public interest to reverse any of those rules, or if greater public interest protections are necessary. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be placed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Media Ownership Act of 2007, along with Senators Lott, Obama, Snowe, Kerry, Nelson of Florida, Cantwell, and Feinstein. We seek with this bill to halt the Federal Communications Commission's, FCC, fast march toward easing media ownership rules. The FCC has taken a series of destructive actions in the past two decades that, I believe, have undermined the public interest. Now they appear prepared to do it again. The FCC is working to have a rewrite of media ownership rules completed just next month. Now this seems like a massive rush to me and a big mistake. How will the public interest be served by attempting to rush through a plan to relax ownership rules? We don't need more concentration of ownership in radio and television stations and a green light for cross ownership between newspapers, radio and television stations. Further consolidation of media ownership at all is an affront to common sense. But even if we disagree with the rules the FCC issues, and even if we think the FCC should break up the big media companies rather than allow them to consolidate, the FCC must go through an honest and thorough process. They must study the questions that affect a decision of whether to adjust ownership limits. They have not done this. They have not put the final rules out for comment for a meaningful amount of time, they have not given the necessary consideration to the issue of localism, and they do not know enough about the impact of consolidation on localism or female and minority ownership. The Media Ownership Act of 2007 ensures that the FCC allow enough time for comment on the actual rule changes. It requires that the FCC put out the final rules proposed by the Commission for 90 days of comment. The bill also requires that the FCC complete a separate proceeding on the promotion of local programming and content by broadcasters and newspapers. In 2003, Chairman Powell set up a task force to promote localism in broadcasting and they began some hearings and took in comments. Chairman Martin has wrapped those comments into this ownership proceeding and is finishing the last localism hearing as part of this rushed schedule. The bill requires that they must publish a final rule in a separate proceeding and allow 90 days of comment. This must be completed prior to the vote on ownership. The bill requires that the FCC establish an Independent Panel on Ownership by Women and Minorities. The FCC must collect and provide this panel with data on the specific gender and ethnic makeup of media owners. The panel shall issue recommendations and the FCC must act on these recommendations prior to a vote on media ownership. The last time the FCC tried to do rush to consolidate media ownership, the United States Senate voted to block it. On September 16, 2003, the Senate voted 55-40 to support a ``resolution of disapproval'' of the FCC's previous decision to allow further concentration. If we have to do this again we will. A number of us have sent numerous letters to the FCC stating what needs to be done prior to a vote on media ownership limits and yet the Chairman is on track to move this proceeding to a vote. The FCC is clearly not listening and legislation is now necessary. This is again a bipartisan effort to stop the FCC from destroying the local interests that we have always felt must be a part of broadcasting. It is time to ensure that we first protect localism and diversity, which the FCC appears to have long forgotten. Only then can we really review the rules of media ownership in a thorough process to see if it is actually in the public interest to reverse any of those rules, or if greater public interest protections are necessary. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be placed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are now debating the farm bill, and a number of my colleagues have talked about the particular provisions of the farm bill that is brought to us by the committee. I think the farm bill is a pretty good bill and I certainly intend to support it and I am pleased to be here to speak on it. I spoke last evening briefly. But I wish to make a couple of comments about family farmers, generally, before I talk about the bill and then also talk about the amendment that I, along with Senator Grassley from Iowa, will be offering. First, the issue of family farming is one that is not often discussed because when people here talk about the farm bill, the agriculture bill; they talk about the agricultural industry. Let me explain that my interest in this is largely to try to keep a network of families living out in the country under the yard lights, trying to raise food for a hungry world. These are family farms that exist because they are out there trying to make a living, grow a crop, raise a family. They face all kinds of challenges--challenges that most of us don't face. They plant a seed in the ground, and they live on hope. They plant a seed and hope it grows. They hope it rains. They hope it doesn't rain too much to wash the seed out. Then they hope they get a growing season that gives them a chance to raise a crop. They hope it doesn't develop crop disease. They hope it doesn't hail and destroy the crop. They hope they get to harvest with something standing in the fields that they can, at that point, get off the field and take to a grain elevator, and at that point they hope the price will be decent. They don't know. If they survive all of those hopes and get to the grain elevator with the grain and perhaps get a decent price, maybe they make a decent living, but it is just as likely that they don't. Those families live out there alone, taking all the risks. I recall about a year and a half ago driving into a town called Zeeland, ND, and meeting with a group of ranchers and farmers. They had been through a devastating drought where everything was destroyed. It looked like moonscape in the pastures driving into town. These ranchers and farmers had owned livestock they already had to sell, because if you don't have feed, you cannot keep them; they have to go to the livestock market. So they talked about what they were trying to get through, with no crops, no pasture, no capability to keep their cattle and conditions that forced them to market. That is just one issue, the drought. In that case, it was everything to them. So what most farmers face in times where they don't have a devastating drought or some other natural weather disaster, they face economic circumstances that don't give them much of an opportunity either. That is why we have a farm bill, a safety net, to try to help farmers through tough times. If you think about a farmer out there living under a yard light, trying to plow the land, plant a seed, harvest a crop, and make a living, here is what they face. When they order a load of gas to come out to gas up their tractor and their combine and till their fields, they discover the diesel fuel or gas is costing a fortune. They could not help that, they had nothing to do with that, but they are paying a fortune, as is the rest of the country, for this fuel they need. The fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. If they are fortunate enough, for example, to get a crop and get the crop to market someplace, they have to find a foreign home for a fair amount of the crop, and they have to pay the railroads. The railroads, as you know, overcharge, and in my State the Public Service Commission estimates they are paying $100 million a year more than they should. Farmers are bearing a substantial portion of that. So if they get their crops to the marketplace and to the county elevator and ship it somewhere, if some of it goes into a grocery manufacturing facility and comes out the other side, the farmer who started up the tractor, plowed the field, planted a seed of corn, and then hoped and was successful, got a stand of corn, cultivated the corn, and then harvested the corn, and that seed of corn then went to a grocery manufacturer--guess what. They then flake the corn and put it in a box and call it cornflakes. It has a fancy logo on the front, and they send it to the grocery store. They get more for flaking the corn than the farmer does for driving the tractor, planting the seed, and harvesting the corn. The fact is, they get more than the farmer does for growing it. The same is true for puffed rice and wheat chex. You rice it, puff it, flake it, you check it, and they get more than the family farmer who had to grease the combine and the tractor, plow the furrow, and plant the seed. The farmer faces near monopolies in every single direction. If they want to sell a cow, steer, or bull, guess what. They face a packers' industry that is highly concentrated in every direction, the oil industry, the rail industry, the big packers, and the grain industry. In every direction, the family farmers living out there are struggling and trying to make a living, trying to get along, when they are surrounded by monopolies or near monopolies in economic circumstances where it is pretty tough for them. Yesterday, I talked a bit about value. Why do we care? I suppose you could have corporations farming America from California to Maine, and then we would not sing ``this land is your land, this land is my land.'' I suppose we can produce America's foods that way. I think family farmers--at least in my part of the country--produce more than just food, they produce communities. They are the blood vessels that flow into rural areas and communities. I mentioned yesterday that an author named Critchfield once wrote a book about what this contributes, and that is that family farmers are the seedbed of family values, and that seedbed nurtures family values from family farms to small towns to big cities. Family farms are important to this country. We put together a farm bill to try to provide a safety net because during the tough times, when they reach a really tough patch--international price depressions for commodities, disasters, natural disasters, all kinds of things that confront family farmers in a disastrous way--we want to have a safety net for them to get through tough times instead of getting washed out every time there is a problem. The big corporations and agrifactories have the financial strength to make it through tough times. We have put together a farm program, called a safety net, to try to help family farmers through difficult times. I know some view this notion of family farming as some sentimental journey back to yesteryear. A friend of mine named Chuck Suchy is a singer and songwriter. He has a song, ``Saturday Night at the Bohemian Hall,'' describing what it was like growing up on the farm and gathering at the Bohemian Hall to swap stories and talk about the weather and the crops. The description I gave yesterday of what one of the writers in North Dakota--a farmer and a rancher--who used to ask the question that needs to be asked of this country, I think, is important. Rodney Nelson asked the question, ``What is it worth?'' It is worth noting Rodney's question. What is it worth for the country to have a kid who knows how to pour cement? What is it worth for a kid to know how to drive a tractor? What is it worth to know how to teach a newborn calf to suck milk from a pail? What is it worth for a kid to know how to grease a combine, drive a tractor, plant a field, work in the cold winter, and work in the hot sunshine outdoors? What is all of that worth? Well, the fact is that it is important, and it contributes to this country in significant ways. In World War II, we sent millions of young people from America's farms over to go fight. They could do anything, fix anything, drive anything. They were unbelievably important to this country. The only place you learn all those skills is on the family farm in this country. That is why family farming is not just some sentimental journey; it is a value system for the country. Does this country care about families who live on farms? Do they care about putting together a safety net for them? The answer should be yes. This farm bill says yes, and I support it. I want to make it better. Senator Grassley and I are going to offer an amendment that says if we are going to do this--and we should--then let's provide reform with respect to payment limits and really make the payment limits effective so we are providing a safety net for family farmers, not a set of golden arches for the largest corporate agrifactories in the country. Let me read some of the records of farm payment recipients and explain why it is necessary for us to have a payment limit. Senator Grassley and I say, No. 1, there should be a payment limit of $250,000 per farm. No. 2, we say you ought to have to be involved in farming to get a farm program benefit. That is not very radical. I will read some of the payments. This comes from USDA information, and this is for 3 crop years, 2003 through 2005. The Balmoral Farming Partnership got $7.9 million. Phillips Farm in Mississippi got $5.9 million. Kelley Enterprises got $4.9 million. Walker Place got $4.6 million. Dublin Farms got $4.2 million. I could keep reading, but I don't think I need to read a lot more. But take a look at what happened with the farm program. Here is an example. In many ways, I am reluctantly reading the names, but they are public, and if someone is going to receive this funding and it is public information, it is reasonable to use it as an example. Benton Farms, Tyler, AL, got $2.5 million. Haney Farms of Athens, AL, Horace Haney got $607,000, and Shirley, Keith, and Matthew Haney each got $607,000. Combined, the Haney family got $2.3 million. Pickens and Son Company got $4.3 million. The Storey family got $2.7 million. Ronald Storey got $956,000, Hazel Storey got $932,000, Ben Storney got $478,000, Rebecca Storey got $430,000--I could do this for a while as well. I have pages of this. This is not a safety net for family farmers to get through tough times. It has become much more than that. It has become lucrative for big enterprises to farm the farm program and get paid millions of dollars, and it is wrong. Our amendment is reasonably simple. It says we should have a payment limitation of $250,000, and you should have to be required to be involved in farming in order to collect farm program benefits. It is important to note that the Agriculture Committee made some strides in this area as they brought the bill to the floor. They eliminated the three-entity rule, which itself was a loophole that needed to be closed. They provide for attribution, direct attribution, so the payments are attributed to an individual. It is not as if the Agriculture Committee didn't do anything. They did. My colleague, Senator Salazar, talked about section 1105, and that section is also something that can be helpful. My own view of section 1105 is that it doesn't solve the problem entirely. So the proposal Senator Grassley and I offer will address this in a significant way. I mentioned yesterday that, to give you an example of how far this has gone--having nothing to do with farming--if you had base acres for rice or other crops--for program crops--and have base acres on land that hasn't been farmed for 20 years, has not produced a crop for 20 years, people who own that land but have never farmed in their life are getting farm program payments on land that hasn't produced a crop in 20 years because it had a base acre in the mid to early 1980s. That makes no sense to me. That is not about providing a safety net. There is no stronger supporter of family farming in this Chamber than myself, and I am sure others would say the same about their support for family farming. But it seems to me we need to close these loopholes. Why on earth would we have a production base, base acres, on land that has, in many cases, nothing to do with farming? I mentioned yesterday that down north of Houston, TX, they were selling what are referred to as ``cowboy starter kits.'' You buy 10 acres, put a house on 1 acre, run a horse or cut hay on the other 9 acres, and you can get a farm program payment. The reason it is more prevalent in rice is that the payment per acre is over a hundred dollars an acre, as opposed to the other crops that are much less. Does it pass the test of reasonableness anywhere for someone who has never farmed to buy 10 acres someplace and get a farm program payment when they are not farming the 10 acres and it hasn't grown anything for 20 years? That does not meet any test of anything. We can close that loophole, but the more effective way to close this is to say you can't get farm program payments unless you are actively involved in farming. Should an arts patron in San Francisco get $2-plus million? She is not a farmer. She just comes from a family who used to have a farm, and she gets just over $2 million. We have, I think it is 300 or 400 people living in New York City, in that mountain of concrete, who get farm program payments. We have people in Los Angeles, CA, who don't set foot on a farm who get farm program payments. Does that meet any test, or does somebody just not care about that and say: We just want to give payments to make us all feel good. I feel good when we give a payment to a family farmer as a safety net payment to help them through troubled times. When prices are high and the crops are bountiful, if you have a bumper crop and good prices, in my judgment, you don't need the Government's help. With respect to the large enterprises, if you want to farm three or four counties, God bless you. I don't think the Federal Government has to be your banker. You have every right to farm as much as you want. Some people would say to me, and they have said: That discriminates against the big operators, doesn't it? But I say: The purpose of the farm program is to be a safety net to help the family farm get through difficult times. They said: What is a family farm? Describe to me a family because you can't describe it. I remind them of Michelangelo, who said when asked how did he sculpt David, he said: I took a piece of marble, and then I chipped away everything that wasn't David. We could easily describe what most of us believe to be a family farm just by chipping away what isn't. Is it a family farm when you have huge corporate enterprises with multiple family members getting $600,000, $700,000? Is that a family operation? I don't think so. Huge corporations sucking millions of dollars out of the farm program by farming the farm program? I don't think that is what was intended. If you are a reformer, if you believe in reform--and we talk a lot about change and reform around here--in my judgment, one has to decide to do the right thing on this issue, and the right thing is to limit farm program payments to $250,000. That is a great deal of money. And at the same time, we have provided the disaster title in this bill, which I think is a significant improvement. Then decide, if you are going to get farm program payments, you have to be actively involved in farming. We provide opportunities for people to get, for example, loans to go to college, but we don't say to them: You can come and get your loan; we don't care what you do with it. We will only give college loans to those going to college. The same is true with a whole series of items. We actually have a circumstance that we give farm program payments to people who have never been on a farm and don't intend to be on a farm. They just want to collect the farm program payments. Even those who collect it think it is absurd. You can read the papers and gauge the reaction of people who say: I don't understand this at all. I bought 15 acres to build a house on, and I am getting farm program payments. What on Earth is the Government doing? Even the recipients scratch their heads and wonder what on Earth this is all about. I only ask that we, in a bipartisan way--and this amendment is bipartisan--decide to join together to do real reform. I want to be proud of this farm bill. I think Senator Harkin, my colleague, Senator Conrad, Senator Chambliss, and others have done some good work, but it can be improved upon by the passage of this amendment. It has a payment limit, and that also provides that those who receive farm program payments should be actively engaged in farming. Some will think that is unbelievably radical. It is, of course, not radical at all. It is just a significant investment in common sense. My hope is that my colleagues will believe that is the right thing to do. It is sad but true, this is a hungry world in which we live. Passengers on this planet circle the Sun. There are about 6.4 billion neighbors. We, through Divine Providence, ended up in this little space called the United States of America. We are blessed. We have the opportunity to have a wonderful lifestyle, standard, and scale of living. We have the ability to produce a prodigious amount of food. But even as I speak, a significant number of children have died in the last 10 minutes because they did not have enough to eat; 600 million to 700 million people go to bed in this world with an ache in their belly because they didn't have enough to eat. Think of that: They didn't have enough to eat. And we have economic all-stars called family farmers in this country who produce substantial amounts of food, and some people want them to believe somehow that is a liability. It is not. It is an unbelievable asset that in many ways can contribute to stability and world peace. Even as we think through all of these issues about our contribution to the world and about what we can do, it is important to think about our contribution at home in terms of building the kind of country we want. I want to see a country in the future that continues to have people living on family farms, producing food for a hungry world, and doing so in a way with, in effect, a partnership with the policymakers who have decided to create a safety net to say: We think you are important to this country's economy and this country's culture. For that reason, we have a farm safety net. And when you run into tough times, you are not going to be alone. This country is going to have a safety net, and it is going to help you through. I conclude by saying we should not ever believe that family farming is a liability. It is an enormous asset that contributes substantially to the character and value system of this country. I hope this Chamber will stand up for that value system. When we do, family farmers around this country will begin to be able to think about spring planting once again and begin next year with renewed hope. I said yesterday, and I will say it again: You cannot be a family farmer, you cannot live out alone under the yard lights unless you live on a reservoir of hope. Everything is about hope for a better future, and I think the farm bill, amended by our amendment, could give farmers a substantial amount of renewed hope. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the next two Democratic speakers, after the previously ordered lineup, be Senator Baucus and Senator Wyden, up to 15 minutes each; further, that in the previous order, Senator Stabenow be recognized for up to 30 minutes and Senator Craig for 30 minutes--sorry, Senator Isakson be recognized for up to 30 minutes and Senator Craig--let me try to get through this. I could say it is the penmanship, but it is not. It is my interpretation--that Senator Stabenow be recognized for up to 30 minutes, Senator Craig for up to 30 minutes prior to Senator Isakson--Stabenow, I am sorry. Madam President, if you have that straight, you are an unbelievable presider. I will send it to you in written form.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the floor of the Senate to support the farm bill. I believe the committee has produced a good bill. I believe, as my colleagues Senator Conrad and Senator Grassley have said, and before them Senator Harkin and Chambliss--they have talked about the need for a farm bill, No. 1, and, No. 2, the ability to produce a bill that gives farmers some hope. It is late in the year. My hope is we can pass a bill here, go to conference with the House, and give farmers and their lenders and others some certainty by the end of this year about what the rules will be, what the farm program will be as they begin to think about getting into the fields in the spring. They are already planning for spring planting, and they need to understand what the rules are. This is a very important debate. I congratulate and say to my colleagues: You have done a good job. It has been bipartisan. I, like my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, believe we can improve it in a couple of places. I believe we can do that, but I support this bill. I want to try to give some description to what this is about. It is not just about statistics. It is not just about theory. It is about people who populate this country, living out on the land by themselves, under a yard light, trying to raise a family, trying to raise a crop, risking everything. They are called family farmers and ranchers. In most cases, they live out in the country alone. It is them against the odds. They are having to confront uncertain weather, uncertain commodity prices, and uncertain international events that can affect whether they can make a living or not--all of these things. We are here in suits and ties, and we debate. What a wonderful thing. Unlike us, the farmers take a shower after work. We take a shower before work, and then we put on a suit and tie. But the family farmers in this country, in most cases they get up and do chores. They say it is doing chores--5, 6 in the morning, get up, get out, and get busy. They work hard all day, and they are out there by themselves. They are a sole proprietor running their own business, living under a yard light, hoping things go well. They plant a crop; they plant a seed in the ground. They hope it will grow. Maybe it will. They hope they don't get too much rain. They hope they get enough rain. They hope if the seed grows it doesn't develop some sort of plant disease. They hope it doesn't hail, and they hope at some point they will be able to harvest it. And when they harvest it, they hope there will be a price at the elevator that gives them half a shot at making a profit. These are all hopes. The only way a farmer can live is on hope--hope that things will be better, hope that tomorrow is going to be better. These are families who live on hope. This piece of legislation, this farm bill, gives those families some assurance, a safety net, to get them over difficult times. When price swings move up and down, this safety net is a bridge over those price valleys that say to family farmers: We think you matter to this country. We think the fact that you exist makes a difference. We think the fact that families produce America's food makes a difference to this country. Now, family farms produce a lot more than crops. They also produce communities. I come from one of those communities, 300 people. The arteries that fed life into that small community were the family farmers all around it. On Saturday nights, you could not find a parking place on Main Street because family farmers came to town to talk about the weather, talk about the crops, visit with neighbors. It is what a rural lifestyle is about. It is about producing communities. An author named Critchfield once described family values in America. He said: Family farms are the very seedbed of family values. And those family values roll from the family farms to small towns to big towns to nurture and refresh the value system of this country. There is a poet in North Dakota who is a farmer and rancher named Rodney Nelson. Rodney wrote a piece that asked, plaintively: What is it worth? It says exactly what should be said here. He asked this question: What is it worth for a kid to know how to plow a field? What is it worth for a kid to know how to grease a combine? What is it worth for a kid to know how to pour cement? What is it worth for a kid to know how to weld a seam? What is it worth for a kid to know how to build a lean-to? What is it worth? He said: All of those skills you learn on the family farm. It is the only university in our country where they teach all of those skills. What is it worth to the country, he asks? It is a good question. I hope the answer is rooted in a farm bill that says to those family farms: We want you to have a chance to continue because we think you add great value to our country, to our culture. There are many who do not have the foggiest notion of what family farming is about. I remember I took a Congressman with me from the east coast to come to North Dakota on a trip some while ago. We went to North Dakota, and one of the stops was at a dairy barn, George Doll's dairy barn, north of New Salem, ND. We stood in that dairy barn with the soft light of the late afternoon coming through the boards on that barn. The cattle came in to be milked. The milk cows came in and went to their assigned stanchions, and George Doll and his wife began milking 80 cows. And my colleague from the east coast, in a blue pin-stripped suit, observed this standing in that dairy barn, and realized this is a lot of work. So, finally, he said to me: How often do they do this, Byron? I said: Well, they do this twice a day. They do this in the morning and again in the evening. I said to George: What time do you get up? He said: We start about 5 in the morning, then we do it about 5 in the evening. Then he watched for a while more and then he said to George, he said: George, do you have to do this on weekends? He did not know you milk cows 7 days a week, twice a day. He did not know that. There would have been no reason to know that milk comes from anywhere but a carton, unless you go to a farm that is milking cows and see what kind of work it is. So it seems to me there is much to be said about the value system, in talking about family farming. Now, I wish to make one other point. Some talk about agriculture. I prefer to talk about family farming. If this is not about family farms, we do not need the bill. We would have probably separate pieces of legislation dealing with nutrition and so on, food stamps. But it seems to me the question of a safety net is almost exclusively the question: Do we want to try to help family farmers through tough times? The big corporate agrifactories, they can make it through tough times. If you have a real tough time, price depressions and other things, the big corporate agrifactories, they can make it through there, but the family farms get washed away. So we developed instead a safety net. That safety net is rooted in the legislation before us, which incidentally I think improves the safety net. That is why I like this bill. It also includes a disaster title. That is why I like this bill. I think it was important to do. I had included a separate piece of legislation calling for a disaster title. I am very pleased this bill contains a disaster title. Now, my colleague from Iowa indicated he felt there should be some additional reform, as do I, so we will offer, perhaps tomorrow or perhaps a day later, a piece of legislation that will provide some further limitations on payments. Why would we do that? Because I worry what is going to happen is we are going to erode the support for the farm program if we do not provide the reforms and changes that are necessary. One of those reforms, and part of that change is payment limitations, so that we are structuring this to try to provide the most help to family-sized farms. I do not have anything against big corporate agrifactories. If they want to farm two or three counties, God bless them. But I do not think the Federal Government has a responsibility to be their banker. They are big enough to be a big corporate agrifactory, and they have got the financial strength to get through tough times. We ought to provide a safety net to help those families through tough times to stay on the land. So the proposal we offer is a proposal that does say a couple of important things: One, there is a payment limitation of $250,000, a hard cap. I will admit the piece of legislation that has come to the floor of the Senate includes some significant improvements. It eliminates the three entity rule, which is a significant reform. It has an adjusted gross income requirement, of sorts. So it does make some progress in a couple of areas. But it does not, for example, cap payments for all of the payments. It has been said that the committee bill caps payments at $200,000. But it leaves out the LDP, the marketing loan, or loan deficiency payment. Because it exempts marketing loans and makes them unlimited, every single bushel of commodity in America has effectively an unlimited price support. Well, there needs to be a limitation on that, on the direct payment, the countercyclical payment, and the marketing loan, which produces an LDP. There ought to be a limitation. Second, it seems to me reasonable that we would limit farm program payments to those who are actively involved in farming. That ought not be radical. An arts patron from San Francisco, I will not use her name, but a patron of the arts in San Francisco gets $1.2 million in support payments over three years. An arts patron who has nothing to do with farming, her grandfather had something to do with farming, but she does not, she collects $1.2 million from the farm program. Is that sort of thing going to ruin the reputation of the farm program at some point? I think it will. Another related problem is what they call cowboy starter kits. They have a situation in rice country where, going back to 1985, if you grew rice on the land, you now own that land, and it is still rural land, you do not have to produce rice for a quarter century, you get a farm program payment. You do not have to be a farmer to get the payment. In Texas, north of Houston, they were selling cowboy starter kits. Ten acres of land, put a house on 1 acre, run a horse on 9 acres. You have never farmed, you do not have to farm, and you have 9 acres you can get farm program price supports because they grew rice on it 20 years ago. That is not justifiable. One of the ways to shut that done, of course, very simply and very effectively, is to say: If you are going to get benefits, you have to have some real tangible connection to farming. So my colleague, Senator Grassley, and I will offer an amendment that is very simple. It is not at amendment that is attempting to undo this important piece of legislation, it is an attempt to improve it and improve it in a way that will give it even more credibility. A payment limitation of $250,000 and a requirement that you have active involvement in farming if you are going to get a farm program benefit. So that is what we would intend to do. My hope is that working with Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss, we will be able to offer that, perhaps tomorrow. I would be willing to come in the morning, and with my colleague, if he is available, I see he is still on the floor, and perhaps we can reach agreement, offer an amendment, and have that debate. At any rate, it is my hope to be helpful to both the chairman and ranking member to move this legislation. We are going to have a couple of these discussions where there will be disagreement, we will have a vote, we will see what the view of the Senate is. But I want this piece of legislation to be done. I would like to improve it some. But I give this bill good marks. I am going to be a supporter on the floor of the Senate, working to try to get this through the Senate, get it passed, get it to conference so we can tell family farmers: Here is what we are going to do. Here are the rules. I might say, finally, I hope when we have completed our work, I hope the President will be supportive as well. That is another part of this process. I know many are working with the President for that support. As I have indicated earlier, I know there are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of farmers out around the country waiting for an answer. What will the farm program be as they begin to think about getting into the fields next spring? They can hardly wait. That is the nature of being a farmer. I mean they want to get on a tractor, they want to get moving, they want to plant some seeds, they want to buy some cattle. That is the way it is because they live on hope. My expectation is we can give them much greater hope if we pass a piece of legislation that says to them: This country wants to invest in your future. If you are a farmer living out there alone, trying to raise a crop and a family and you run through a tough patch, you run through some tough times, we want to help you. The farm bill says to those farmers: You are not alone. This country believes in the merit and value of having a network of family farms populating this country, producing food for a hungry country. Having said all that, let me again thank my colleagues for the bill they have produced. I look forward to being here tomorrow with my colleague, Senator Grassley, and offering an amendment. Then further, working this week, perhaps by the end of this week or at least into next week, to get this piece of legislation through and get a final vote on it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the children's health insurance bill, H.R. 3963, occur at 3:45 p.m. today, and that if cloture is invoked it be considered invoked as if the vote had occurred at 6:30 p.m. today and concluded at 6:50 p.m., with the time following the conclusion of morning business prior to the vote equally divided between the two leaders or their designees.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to yield to myself 30 minutes, and I also ask unanimous consent that Senator Kennedy be yielded 30 minutes of the majority's time.