Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am going to talk about a couple subjects this afternoon. I am going to begin, however, talking about the issue of children's health insurance. The Children's Health Insurance Program will be the subject of the cloture vote later this afternoon, and it is a very important issue. We have a lot of children in this country who do not have health insurance coverage. Ten years ago, we put together a piece of legislation called the Children's Health Insurance Program. It has worked. It has been very successful. Millions of children who otherwise would not have had health insurance coverage now have health insurance coverage. The President, when he campaigned for office a couple of years ago, said he supported and wanted to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program to cover more children. The Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has now passed the Children's Health Insurance Program reauthorization that would provide additional coverage for nearly 4 million additional children in this country--3.8 million additional children, to be exact. The President vetoed it--this after he campaigned saying he supported expanding the program. In fact, not only did he veto the expansion of the program--that was done on a bipartisan basis in the Congress, and fully paid for, I might say--but he sent Congress a budget that left 21 States without enough money to continue to cover the existing kids in the program. So this administration has it wrong. That is not just me saying it, it is a bipartisan group of Members of Congress who believe very strongly we need to do what is right to try to get health insurance to children. We should try to make sure every American has health insurance. That is very important. But it seems to me if you do not have legislation that does that, at least start with the children. I have said before, I do not know what is in second or third or fourth place in most people's lives in terms of what is important, but I know what is in first place in the lives of most people. It is their children and their children's health. If this is not a priority, if it is not a priority at the White House--it passed the Senate with a wide margin, passed the House with a wide margin, but we did not have 67 percent of the votes in the House to override the veto--if it is not a priority at the White House, I ask what is a priority? If providing health care for an additional 3.8 million children is not a priority, what are the priorities at the White House? What is more important? Once again, this may be unfamiliar territory to the President because this is a piece of legislation that is fully paid for, unlike much of what we get from the White House these days. I am going to talk about that in a bit. But before us here in Congress, the President has two requests. In addition to his regular budget, the President has said to us: I want another $196 billion for the purposes of continuing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said: I want the $196 billion declared an emergency. I do not propose we pay for it. I propose we put it all on top of the debt. That will take us to almost two-thirds of a trillion dollars the President has asked for--none of it paid for, all of it requested by the President as an emergency. Contrast that, by the way, a $196 billion emergency request--none of it paid for--with a bipartisan group in the Congress that says: We believe the priority is our children. We propose to cover 3.8 million additional kids with health insurance coverage, and we fully pay for it. That is a very significant departure from what we hear at the White House these days. Now the President gases up Air Force One, flies all over the country, and flew down to Arkansas not many days ago and said: I am the fiscal policy President. I am going to get tough. I am vetoing bills. Interestingly, he did not veto a bill in the 6 years his party controlled both branches of Congress. He did not veto bills in the 6 years in which, in nearly every case, the appropriations coming out of the Congress exceeded his request or at least were dramatically changed from his request. It is now, only in the shadows, the evening hours of his Presidency he decides he wants to be a fiscal policy President, tough on fiscal policy. The problem is, it is not so much what you say that matters, it is what you do that matters, and he has before us one more demonstration of the reckless fiscal policy we have seen now for some years, turning a very significant budget surplus, when he took office-- and, yes, we had a budget surplus of about $240 billion in that year-- turning that into a stream of fiscal policy budget deficits, adding $3 trillion to the Federal debt, and asking us, once again: Please give me another $196 billion above all the regular appropriations. By the way, even as he asks for the additional $196 billion, he says we cannot afford providing insurance coverage for 3.8 million kids whom we fully pay for in a bipartisan bill. I am telling you, I think the President is wrong. I admire the fact this is a bipartisan bill. We did it the right way. The President will have a second opportunity to have a bill on his desk. My hope is he will understand the good faith and goodwill of bipartisan Members of Congress who have the right priorities, saying our children come first and children's health insurance is very important. Indian Health Care Improvement Act Mr. President, that leads me to talk about a health insurance issue that includes the Children's Health Insurance Program but is much more than that. It is a bill that is going to come to the floor of the Senate soon, and thanks to the commitment by Senator Reid, the majority leader, it is the reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It has been 8 years since Congress should have reauthorized the Indian Health Care Improvement Act--8 years--long past due, long past the time for us to have done this. The fact is, in this country we have 2 million of the first Americans--they were here greeting the folks who came to this country--American Indians, and many of them live in Third World conditions, and many of them experience health care rationing, which I think is a scandal. It is not written much about these days, unfortunately. But there is a full-blown scandal, in my judgment, with respect to health care that is not available to American Indians--health care that was promised, health care that was committed, and health care that is our trust responsibility as a government to American Indians. We made that commitment, and we are not keeping it. Indian children will benefit from children's health insurance as well. But also, Indian children live--and in some cases die--with the results of the Indian health care system. This young lady shown in this picture is a 5-year-old beautiful young girl--sparkling eyes, with a beautiful dress, dancing in the traditional Indian dress--5 years old. Her grandmother, who testified at the Crow Indian Reservation, at a hearing I headed with Senator Tester, held this picture up. Her name is Ta'shon Rain Littlelight--5 years old. Ta'shon died. Her grandmother brought her photograph to the hearing and held it high. She talked about her granddaughter. She said Ta'shon lived the last 3 months of her life in unmedicated pain, and died of terminal cancer. She was taken and taken and taken again to the Indian Health Service, was diagnosed with depression, and treated for depression. Ultimately, it was discovered she had terminal cancer--not depression, terminal cancer. She was flown to Billings, MT, and then to Denver, CO, and this young 5-year-old is gone. Her grandmother asks the question: Would better health care have saved her? Should she have been diagnosed in a different manner? I don't know the answer to that. I do know this: There are too many children like Ta'shon Rain Littlelight who do not have the same health care as others have, and Ta'shon lost her life. It is not just this beautiful little girl. This is the photograph of a young girl whose photograph I have shown my colleagues before. Her name is Avis Littlewind. Avis Littlewind is also dead--14 years old. She took her own life. Her sister took her own life. Her father died at his own hand. She was in a fetal position in bed in her bedroom for 90 days at age 14, and somehow no one quite figured out this young lady desperately needed mental health treatment. So she took her life. I went to that Indian reservation. I talked to the school officials. I talked to Avis Littlewind's classmates. I talked to the tribal officials to try to understand: How does a 14-year-old child fall through the cracks? Well, there was not mental health treatment available in any significant way for this young child. The people who would get her health care would have to beg and borrow a car to drive her someplace. But she is gone. This young girl apparently felt hopeless and helpless and took her own life. The question I ask with respect to the mental health treatment she should have gotten--with respect to so many other kinds of health care that should be available to American Indians--the question I ask is: When? When will they get the health treatment they deserve? This is a picture of a woman from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. I have described her situation to my colleagues previously as well. Suspected of having a heart attack, she was put in an ambulance and driven to a hospital--the nearest hospital off the Indian reservation. Arriving at the hospital, as they were carrying her into the hospital, transferring her to a hospital gurney, they discovered at the hospital something taped to her thigh with an ordinary piece of tape. Here, as shown on this chart, is what was taped to this woman's thigh, as she was taken into the hospital off of a gurney, suspected of having a heart attack. What they found taped to her thigh was a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services, and it described that this woman was not going to be eligible for contract health funding because they were out of money: So if you admit this woman to your hospital, understand, you are on your own. Financially, you are on your own. We are warning you. That is what the letter taped to this woman's thigh said. That is health care today in modern America on Indian reservations. Now let me describe why there is an urgency to pass Indian health care legislation, to reauthorize the Act that should have been reauthorized 8 years ago. We spend twice as much money per person on health care for Federal prisoners incarcerated in our Federal prisons as we do for American Indians, and we have a responsibility, a trust responsibility, for health care for American Indians. This is not being generous. This is meeting a promise America made to Indians. This country made the promise over and over again that we would provide for their health care. But we have not met that promise. If you take a look at what we spend per capita for American Indians, what you will discover is, we spend half as much per person for American Indians as we do for Federal prisoners. We have a responsibility for health care for those we incarcerate. I understand. If you stick someone in a Federal prison, you have to take care of them, provide for their health care. Why do we spend twice as much for a Federal prisoner's health care as we did for Ta'shon Rain Littlelight's or Avis Littlewind's or, in per capita expenditures, we do for American Indians? We spend $6,700 a year, per capita, on Medicare expenditures, veterans, $4,600; Medicaid, $4,300; Federal prisoners, $3,200; Indian health program; $2,100 per capita. We have to do better than that. We have significant responsibilities, significant problems, and regrettably, full-scale health care rationing on many of America's Indian reservations, and I think it is a scandal and an outrage and we have to fix it. Senator Murkowski and I, as chairman and ranking member of the Indian Affairs Committee, have written in our committee a piece of legislation called the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. We are ready to bring that to the floor of the Senate at last, at long last. Lives will be saved if we can pass this piece of legislation. Senator Reid has given us a commitment that we will have this piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate, and when we do, I think it will be a day of some celebration for American Indians who have been promised health care and, regrettably, have not received the benefit of the promises that were made. I am not suggesting there aren't some talented men and women who work in the Indian health care system and who work in public health. I am not suggesting there aren't some very talented people out there. But I can tell horror stories that are almost unbelievable. A woman goes to the doctor on an Indian reservation, and she has a knee that is unbelievably painful--bone on bone. It is the kind of knee that if it belonged to a Member of the Senate or one of the Senator's families, they would go and get a knee replacement. Bone on bone, unbelievably painful. This woman is told: Wrap your knee in cabbage leaves for 4 days, and it will be fine. Well, that is not fine, and that is not medicine. That isn't what we should expect in terms of meeting our responsibilities in this country to the first Americans. Again, I asked the grandmother of Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight if I could use her image, and I do so respectfully and I do so understanding the delicacy of it. But when the grandmother came to the hearing and held up the picture of this beautiful young girl with the sparkling eyes, and said: My granddaughter died, and here is how she died. In 3 months of unmedicated pain after her terminal cancer had not been diagnosed for months and months and months. I think it is important for us to ask the question: Does this matter? Do we care? I hope the answer is yes, it does matter and, yes, this Congress does care and, yes, this Congress is going to meet its responsibility. I hope in the coming weeks that certainly will be the case, starting here in the Senate. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wanted to speak about the subject I referenced briefly, and that is fiscal policy and this President. It gives me no joy to come and be critical of the President's fiscal policy. But it should give the American people no joy either to understand the consequences of a fiscal policy that turned very large budget surpluses, which took us a long time to begin to see, into very long-term Federal budget deficits and three trillion dollars of additional debt. That is a reckless fiscal policy and one that has to be fixed. When he recently asked the Congress for an additional $196 billion-- none of it paid for, all emergency--the President said: Now we will see whether the Congress supports the troops. Well, the fact is, not all that money goes to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A substantial portion of that money goes to contractors. I wanted to go through with my colleagues some examples of what we are finding with respect to the spending of taxpayers' money for contractors. I believe I have held 17 hearings over the recent 4 years as chairman of the Policy Committee on these issues. Let me put up a couple of charts to describe where we are headed. This is a Congressional Budget Office estimate of October of this year. The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 when you count the very large interest costs because this is being financed with borrowed money. Again, a President who says he is a conservative borrowing all of this money, insisting it be borrowed and not paid for, and we end up in this country paying a fortune for the war costs. So the question is, is this money for the troops? Well, let me describe what we have. Last month, military officials said contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan--including food, water, and shelter--were under review by criminal investigators. In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for soldiers and material for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities. Think of that: $88 billion; $6 billion under criminal investigation; $88 billion, financial irregularities by these contractors. Once again, under this President, last month the Army reported that it had 78 cases of fraud and corruption under investigation, had obtained 20 criminal indictments, and had uncovered over $15 million in bribes. Another $196 billion, while those who prance around this money have a field day. It doesn't seem like conservatism to me. Again, in August, 2 months ago, the New York Times reported: The enormous expenditures of American and Iraqi money on the Iraq reconstruction program, at least $40 billion over all, have been criticized for reasons that go well beyond the corruption cases that have been uncovered so far. Weak oversight, poor planning, and endless security problems have contributed to many of the program failures. So we ante up money from the United States Congress--billions and billions of dollars. We are going to provide health care clinics for the Iraqis. We are going to build 142 health care clinics. We hire the contractor. The money is gone, but the clinics aren't there. An Iraqi doctor--a very courageous Iraqi doctor--testified at one of my hearings. He said: I went to the Health Minister in Iraq and said: You know, we had these contracts with an American contracting company that was going to do these 142 health care clinics in Iraq. I would like to visit them. The Iraqi Health Minister said to this physician: You don't understand. Most of those are imaginary clinics. Well, the American taxpayer got fleeced. The money is gone. The contractor got the money. The clinics don't exist. We can't even keep track of the guns that are being sent to Iraq. We sent Iraq 185,000 AK-47s, and at this point we know where 75,000 of them are; 110,000 are gone and unaccounted for. We sent them 170,000 pistols, 90,000 of them we can't account for. Are some of these AK-47s and pistols being aimed at American troops? Of course they are. How is it that we fund with American taxpayers' money the shipment of massive quantities of weapons to Iraq and don't keep track of where they are? Again, there are 110,000 AK-47s, we don't know where they are, and 80,000 pistols, we don't know where they are. This is almost staggering incompetence, in my judgment. Saddam Hussein is dead. He was hanged by the neck. The Iraqi people no longer have Saddam Hussein in their lives. The Iraqi people voted for their own new constitution, and they voted for a new government. All that is left for the Iraqi people is to provide for their own security. The question is, when will the Iraqi people demonstrate the will to provide for their own security? We have trained 360,000 Iraqis in the interior forces and defense forces, soldiers and police men and women--360,000 have been trained, and they can't provide for their own defense, for their own security. Is there not a will in this country in which Saddam Hussein is gone, a new constitution, a new government exists, and they have 360,000 people trained, and that training was paid for by this country--is there not a will, then, to provide for security? If they can't, we can't. We are not going to provide security in Iraq for the next 5 or 10 years. We should not be going door to door in Baghdad in the middle of a civil war with U.S. soldiers. But it seems to me we should reasonably ask the question: If we have trained 360,000 for security in Iraq, and they can't provide for their own security, where are they? We are now told that up to 50 percent of those we have trained are probably not on the job anymore. We don't know where they are. I also just saw information a couple of days ago that the number of people we are training has dropped by two-thirds. I mean, everyone talks about--including the President--the way out of Iraq is to train the Iraqis for their own security. We have trained a third of a million of them and now we have reduced the amount of training by two-thirds and now we have a surge of American soldiers going door to door in Baghdad in the middle of a civil war. I am just saying I don't think that adds up in the context of what this administration is asking of this Congress. Between April 2003 and June of 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency, much of it in one-hundred-dollar bills, was dispersed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. That is us. We airlifted billions of dollars in C-130s. Some of it was shoveled out the back of pickup trucks in Baghdad. You think that doesn't attract flies and people who want to cheat and steal? It does. What happened? About $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed, it is said. ADM David Oliver, who was a senior official of the Coalition Provisional Authority was asked by a reporter about what happened to the cash that was airlifted to Baghdad. Our official said: I have no idea. I can't tell you whether the money went to the right things or didn't. Nor do I actually think it's important. Oh, really? You don't think it is important whether billions of dollars was used for the proper purpose? An independent oversight agency reported this month that it could not complete an audit of a $1.2 billion contract to train Iraqi police because records kept by the State Department and by DynCorps International, the contractor, were inaccurate and in disarray, documents not sufficient to do any kind of an audit. The State Department paid $43.8 million for manufacturing and temporary storage of a residential camp that has never been used. They paid $36.4 million for weapons and equipment, including body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment that couldn't be accounted for. Among the problems identified before an audit--this is a New York Times story of this month--were duplicate payments, the purchase of a never-used $1.8 million x-ray scanner, and payments of $387,000 to house DynCorps officials in hotels rather than other available accommodations. My colleagues get my point. I could show 100 charts which would all show in my judgment massive, staggering incompetence and lack of oversight of these contracts. The President says: I want $196 billion in emergency funding, none of it paid for, and by the way, if you don't support that, you are not supporting the troops. Well, a substantial amount of this money is supporting contractors, not troops, and there is substantial evidence that there is dramatic waste, fraud, and abuse of these contracts, and no one seems to care. No one seems to be watching the store. That goes for the Defense Department, the Secretary of State, and many others, including the White House. Finally, when we vote on the issue of whether we should provide additional emergency funding for the President, and yes, for the troops, and also for these contractors, I am going to suggest something very different. Some things are habit forming, and one of them, it seems to me, is to ask the Congress to increase spending substantially and not pay for it. This President has done this now to the tune of two-thirds of $1 trillion for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aside from the fact that I think it is wrong because it doesn't have the country going to war with the soldiers--it seems to me if you send soldiers to war, you also ought to ask the country to be with those soldiers, not just with their thoughts and prayers but also to pay for the cost, rather than charge it to some future generation and have the soldiers fight the battle, and then come back to our country and pay the bills for those battles. So I have said to my colleagues, and I would say to the President, when we consider this issue of additional funding, I am going to offer this time some ways to pay for a portion of it, and I am going to give some examples. I have used many of these before, but this time, we will have a chance to vote on them. Maybe I will win, maybe I will lose, I don't know. But it seems to me we ought to do some things that are thoughtful and patriotic, even as we decide that we are going to provide support to our troops. Let me give an example. Let me give you an example. I have used this many times. This is a five-story white building in the Cayman Islands. A very enterprising reporter from Bloomberg named David Evans went to that building. It is on Church Street. That five-story white building is home to 12,748 corporations. They are not actually there, of course; it is legal fiction that was created by smart lawyers to give corporations an address in the Cayman Islands so they can avoid paying U.S. taxes. I have legislation that says it doesn't matter if you are living in this building, you are not going to be able to avoid taxes by doing that; if your operations are not there, you cannot attempt to ``move'' your operations there to avoid paying U.S. taxes. I will attempt to close that. This is one of the most egregious. Wachovia Bank in the United States is one of the most prominent companies to do this. They purchased a sewage system in Bochum, Germany. It is not because they have a special interest in sewage systems. They don't want a sewage system. They bought it and immediately leased it back to the German city, which never lost it, and the Wachovia Bank never got it. They just had a financial transaction that gave an American bank a $175 million tax writeoff for the sham of buying a sewer system in Germany. Mr. President, only a portion of this practice has been shut down. I will give my colleagues a chance to shut that down and also raise revenue to begin to pay for some of the costs of the war as well. This one is a streetcar in Dortmund, Germany. We had First Union Bank lease streetcars there--not for the purpose of running a streetcar system; they wanted to avoid paying U.S. taxes. That is a scandal. I will also offer a piece of legislation that will shut down the tax scam that says if you fire your workers, close your plant, and move your jobs overseas, as Huffy Bicycles did, we will give you a tax cut. It is unbelievable that we provide that tax cut in this country. If you get rid of your American workers, shut down your plant, move overseas, and then ship the product back here, you get a tax deferral. Huffy is now a Chinese bike company. All the workers in Ohio got fired, and the American tax system gave a reward to this company for moving to China. We have had a chance--four times--to vote on this, and a majority in the Senate supported that tax break. One of these days, it will get closed. We will vote on that in the context of paying for some of the costs the President is asking us to pay for. Finally, just two more. This is, as you know, a picture of the dancing grapes from Fruit of the Loom. We have seen the television commercials. I don't know why someone would dress up as a grape and dance, but they made an imprint for Fruit of the Loom underwear before they left America. I assume they are still dancing, but I assume those who lost their jobs when Fruit of the Loom went to Mexico and other countries are not dancing. It is not that people stopped wearing underwear, but they are not making them in the United States. Finally, the little red wagon--Radio Flyer, a Chicago company for over a century--is now made in China. It was for the same purpose: tax cuts and low wages in China. I am going to close that loophole with respect to the description I have just given of moving your company to China and getting a tax cut. The point is, the President wants $196 billion in emergency funding. I don't know whether the Congress will do that. When the President asks for funding in the future, saying he wants to charge this, leave office, and then somebody else can pay the bill, we in Congress ought to say that there are easy baby steps to at least begin raising some funding. I have named three of them. We can stop American companies from benefitting from buying sewage systems or streetcars in other countries, stop paying an incentive for people to move American jobs overseas, and stop allowing companies to set up sham offices on Church Street in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It doesn't take a giant step or a lot of courage to decide to shut down those tax scams and those wrongheaded, perverse economic incentives. Doing that will raise money and allow us to offset some of these war costs. And I hope that perhaps--I know better than to say this. I was going to say that perhaps the President will support this. But this administration opposes most of the proposals I have described that would raise funding by shutting down some of these terrible loopholes. This issue of if the President asks the Congress for $196 billion-- which he has now done in emergency money, with none of it paid for, and says: Now we will see whether the Congress supports the troops, I want my colleagues to understand that a substantial portion of this money is not going to troops, but it is going to contractors. I think this is the most substantial waste, fraud, and abuse that has existed in the history of this country, with respect to what is going on with the contractors. That is something we should be considering or a portion of what we should consider as well as we react to the President's proposal. Who is minding the store? Who is providing real oversight? Why have we allowed this to happen? Those represent the hard questions I believe Congress has a responsibility to ask. We all want the right thing for this country. I think we all want to be able to extract ourselves from a war in the Middle East, to be successful in the fight against terrorism, to expand opportunities with an economy that provides jobs and expand the middle class in this country. We all want to fix the health care system and provide solutions to our energy needs so that we are not so unbelievably dependent on foreign sources of energy. We all want that. I hope in the coming weeks, particularly as we end this year, we can find ways to decide to work together. There ought to be common purpose and a common set of goals for us to advance the interests of this country. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time be equally charged to both sides.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, October 31, 2007, at 2:30 p.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Post-Catastrophe Crisis: Addressing the Dramatic Need and Scant Availability of Mental Health Care in the Gulf Coast.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 31, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``Climate Disclosure: Measuring Financial Risks and Opportunties.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Examination of the Licensing Process for the Yucca Mountain Repository.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, October 31, 2007, at 11 a.m. in order to hold a business meeting.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``FISA Amendments: How to Protect America's Security and Privacy and Preserve the Rule of Law and Government Accountability'' on Wednesday, October 31, 2007. The hearing will commence at 10 a.m. in room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Witness list Panel I: Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division, U.S. Department of Justice. Panel II: Edward Black, President and CEO, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Washington, DC; Patrick F. Philbin, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis, Washington, DC; Morton H. Halperin, Director of U.S. Advocacy, Open Society Institute, Washington, DC.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the Committee on Veterans' Affairs to be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, October 31, 2007, in order to conduct a hearing on the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. The Committee will meet in room SD-562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, November 1, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to conduct an oversight hearing on the Impact of the Flood Control Act of 1944 on Indian Tribes along the Missouri River. Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 224-2251.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to talk this morning about the President's request for $190-plus billion in emergency funding for the war in Iraq and for activities in Afghanistan. Before I do that, however, I wish to mention the subject of Iran. I notice in the paper this morning, and I noticed the other day in a press conference by President Bush, he made a reference to world war III in a description of the issues with Iran. I am very concerned about what I hear from this administration. This administration has had a history of describing for us how they see the world. Many of us have spent a lot of time in classified, top-secret briefings with members of this administration, some of whom are now speaking out now about Iran. They include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, and others. We have had plenty of experience in top-secret briefings with them in which they described circumstances with respect to the country of Iraq. It turns out what we were told in top-secret briefings about Iraq was not accurate. No one has done the in-depth investigation to find out why that was the case. It appears to me, in some cases that which was described to us by top-level folks in this administration about Iraq prior to the Iraq war--in some cases, it turns out they either should have known, and in some cases may have known, that what they were saying to the Congress and to the American people was not accurate. My point is this. I think there is precious little credibility on the part of the administration on these issues. I do not--I would say most of my colleagues feel the same--do not want this administration moving off precipitously based on information they have, to take military action of any type against another country. They certainly cannot in my judgment do that without the consent of Congress. I believe they would have a very difficult time getting the consent the Congress, given the lack of credibility in this administration on many of these issues. These are important issues. Preventing the country of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is a very important mission, in my judgment. But we will best accomplish that through diplomatic means with other countries, particularly with the Europeans and the Russians and many others. I must say my own view is that the foreign policy of this administration--I regret to say it--has largely been an inept and a clumsy foreign policy at best. We face, as a result of it, very substantial challenges around the world. My hope is that we see much more action on diplomacy and negotiation and working to form alliances and much less front-page headlines by members of this administration. Now I wish to talk about priorities. I wish to talk about the President's request for $196 billion in emergency funding, none of it paid for. But first I want to talk about this little girl. This little girl, her name is Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight. Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight is from the Crow Nation in Montana. She loved to dance, as you can see-- sparkling, beautiful eyes, 5 years old, loved to dance the Indian dances. Ta'shon's grandmother testified at a hearing I held at the Crow Reservation in Montana, with my colleague, Senator Tester. Her grandmother told us a story about Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight. Ta'Shon died, by the way. This little girl with the bright eyes and the love of dancing isn't with us anymore. Ta'Shon had health problems. Last year she was taken, many times, to the Crow Indian Health Service clinic. They were treating her--after they had diagnosed various things--they were treating her for depression. It turned out this little girl didn't have depression, this little girl had a cancerous tumor, terminal cancer. At one point, her grandfather, who was with her at the clinic, pointed out the bulbous condition of her fingertips and toes and said to the health care folks that it appeared to him this reflected a lack of oxygen to the body and they ought to check on what was causing that. That concern was dismissed. On another visit, her grandmother asked the doctor to eliminate the possibility that this child was suffering from cancer or leukemia, but the family's concerns went unheeded. In August of 2006, Ta'Shon was rushed from the Crow clinic to the St. Vincent Hospital in Billings, MT, airlifted to the Denver Children's Hospital, diagnosed with an untreatable, incurable form of cancer. Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight lived 3 more months after the tumor was discovered, in what the grandmother said was unmedicated pain, and then died. I show you this picture of this beautiful young girl because her family said it was all right for me to use her image to describe the serious problem of health care on American Indian reservations. Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight didn't get the health care we would expect, and she died. We had, on the floor of the Senate, a bill that would have provided 3.8 million American kids who do not now have health insurance coverage--it would have provided them health insurance coverage. But the President says that is not the priority, so he vetoed the bill. I am trying to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate right now that extends and reauthorizes the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It has been 8 years, and I am likely to have to have a cloture motion filed on the motion to proceed to it, because for some it may not be a priority, apparently. This ought to be a priority. Yes, for this little girl, her memory, and the health of other children similar to her, it ought to be a priority in this country. I hope this Senate will make it a priority. We certainly did on the Children's Health Insurance Program, and we came up short in the House of being able to override the President's veto. But we will try again. Isn't this something most of us believe represents an urgency? As I have said before, I don't know what is in second, third or fourth place in what is important in people's lives, but I know what is in first place. It is their children and their children's health. Having said that about priorities and values and about someone looking at what we spend our money on 100 years from now, looking back, the historians, through the rearview mirror, will say: What was that group of people--what were they doing? What was their value system? What were they about? They said they didn't believe--at least some of them didn't believe covering children with health insurance was the most significant priority. They didn't believe that adequate funding for the Indian Health Service was the most significant priority. Nobody knew that Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight lived several months in unmedicated pain, lived many months before that in an undiagnosed condition, with a terminal illness; nobody knew that, so that wasn't a priority. So let's look at the priorities. The President has proposed to us, in this year, that we spend $196 billion in emergency funding to continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. By my calculation, that is nearly $16 billion a month, $4 billion a week, and not one penny of it is paid for. The President said: I declare an emergency. Put it on top of the debt. Then the President went to Arkansas, at exactly the same time, and held a press conference at a political rally and said: I am going to be the fiscally responsible President, and I am going to stop this profligate spending. I don't know, maybe he thinks people are not paying attention, people are not reading what is going on. Here is what the Congressional Budget Office says. They estimate a $2.4 trillion long-term war cost. The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money, according to the . . . the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. We are borrowing the money because the President wants to spend the money, but he doesn't want to ask anybody to pay for it. Here is what this war is costing, all of it borrowed. The soldiers fight at the order of the Commander in Chief, and when they come back, they and their children can pay the bills. That is not a value system that makes much sense to me. Now, the President says: I want another $196 billion, and, by the way, if you do not agree with that, you do not support the troops. He says: We will see who supports the troops. Let me make another construct here. This is in some ways about supporting the troops, but it is much more than that. It is about supporting the contractors, because a substantial portion of this war is contracted out. I want to go through with my colleagues about whom we are supporting with this money as well, contractors for whom there is no oversight. The Secretary of State was up here yesterday answering questions about that. I hope the Secretary of State is properly chastened, reading the stories and finally understanding what these contractors have been doing, with no oversight and virtually no accountability. Let me go through a list of these contract issues so that people understand, and the President would understand. This is not just about ``are you supporting the troops,'' it is about are you supporting the contractors with virtually no oversight. This is from September 21, 2007, the New York Times: Military officials said that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, including food, water and shelter were under review by criminal investigators. In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and material for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities. So when the President says: Are you supporting the soldiers? My question is this: Are you watching the contractors? Because the American taxpayer is getting fleeced. This does not support soldiers, this undermines the soldiers. Of $6 billion in contracts reviewed, the Pentagon says: The Army reported that it had 78 cases of fraud and corruption under investigation, had obtained 20 criminal indictments, and had uncovered over $15 million in bribes. That is from the same article. Contract abuse. Of the enormous expenditures of American and Iraqi money on the Iraq reconstruction program, at least $40 billion overall has been criticized for reasons that go well beyond the corruption cases that have been uncovered so far. Weak oversight, poor planning, and endless security problems have contributed to many of the program's failures. Some $40 billion has been spent. No, this is not in support of troops. This is in support of the administration's mission by which they hire contractors and shovel the money in their direction. Most of us have read the stories about this, but they are pretty unbelievable. We sent 185,000 AK-47s to Iraq; 185,000. They can only account for 75,000 of them, so 110,000 AK-47s, bought and paid for by the American taxpayers, are missing. Some undoubtedly will land in the hands of the insurgents being aimed at American troops. We sent 170,000 pistols; 80,000 of them are missing. That is unbelievably inept on the part of those whom we ought to expect to be accountable and to make certain the taxpayers' money is spent wisely, No. 1; No. 2, that if you are sending weapons to Iraq, they end up in the right hands, not the wrong hands. It is unbelievable that we have a couple hundred thousand AK-47s and pistols that we sent to Iraq, we do not have the foggiest idea where they are, yet we know some of them end up in the wrong hands. We have trained about 360,000 police and soldiers for security in the armed forces and the police forces. We have trained 360,000 of them. We believe there are somewhere around 180,000 to 273,000 still around, but no one knows. Absenteeism is up around 50 percent. There is no official document in the Federal Government that tells us how many exist in the security forces at the moment; and, by the way, today we are only training about one-third of the number of Iraqis as we were training before the surge. So we have reduced by two-thirds the number we are now training, even as we are losing a substantial portion of the 360,000 who have already been trained for security, which begs the question: When we leave Iraq, and we will, is it up to the Iraqis to provide for their own security? After you have trained 360,000 people to do so, have you not trained enough Iraqis, so if the Iraqis have the will to provide for their own security, they can do that? One would expect so. Between April of 2003 and June of 2004, $12 billion of U.S. currency was hauled to Iraq in C-130s on big pallets. It was disbursed by what was called the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we created. At least $9 billion of that is missing. Some have said: So what? It does not matter. This money was Iraq's own money. This was the oil money we had for safekeeping. So if we lost the money that came from Iraq oil, so what? Well, here is the ``so what.'' Retired ADM David Oliver, then the CPA's director of management and budget, when asked by a BBC reporter about the cash that they airlifted. I have no idea. I can't tell you whether the money went to the right things or didn't, nor do I actually think it's important. Tuesday, October 23, that is this week, an independent oversight agency said it could not complete an audit of a $1.2 billion contract to train Iraqi policemen because the records kept by the State Department and by DynCorp International, the contractor, were inaccurate and in disarray. . . . The documents were not sufficient in order for us to do an audit. The Secretary of State is up here this week testifying. I do not know whether she was asked about this. But this is under her stewardship, her responsibility. The State Department paid $43.8 million for manufacturing and temporary storage of a residential camp that has never been used. The State Department's payment of $36.4 million for weapons and equipment, including body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment could not be accounted for. This week again: Among the problems identified before the audit was suspended were duplicate payments, the purchase of a never used $1.8 million x-ray scanner, and payments of $387,000 to DynCorp officials in hotels rather than other available accommodations. I should have brought a towel that Henry Bunting brought to a hearing I held last year to show you symbolically what has been fundamentally wrong. Henry Bunting was a purchaser for Halliburton or Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. He said: I worked in Kuwait. I was supposed to buy the equipment and so on. They wanted towels, hand towels for the troops. So I made out an order for hand towels, because Halliburton was furnishing the towels for the troops. My supervisor said: No, you cannot order that particular hand towel, you have to order a hand towel with a logo on it that was embroidered that says KBR. We want the logo of our company on the hand towel. Bunting said: But it will triple the price. The supervisor said: It doesn't matter. The taxpayer is paying for this. This is a cost-plus contract. Then Bunting went on to tell us about $7,600 a month for leasing an SUV, about paying $40 or $45 a case for Coca-Cola. He went on to tell us all these stories: It does not matter, the taxpayer is paying for it. ` It is unbelievable, if you take the lid off this and smell a little bit about what is happening with these contracts. The President says: I want $196 billion in additional funding. I want it as an emergency. I do not want anybody to pay for it. I want to put it on top of the debt. That is almost $16 billion a month this year, $4 billion a week, and I do not want any questions about it, and we are going to see, he says, who supports American troops. Well, that money is also going to support the same kind of incompetence in contracting that has been facing the American taxpayer now for about 4 years. I think hard questions need to be asked, yes, of the President, the Vice President, the heads of agencies who are responsible for this: How do you justify this? How do you justify insisting that this Congress come up with $196 billion and then tell us that we cannot afford, we do not have enough money to care for Ta'Shon Rain Littlelight? She died because the health care did not exist for her. That is not a priority for this administration. The President says we cannot afford it, despite the fact that the bill was fully paid for, Children's Health Insurance. We cannot afford sufficient money for the Indian health care system, so Ta'Shon died. What is the value system here? What are the priorities? Once again the President says: Well, the priorities are we need the $196 billion. It is an emergency. If you do not support it, you do not support the troops. The fact is, this entire Senate supports our troops. We have demonstrated it time and time and time again. But it is also time for us to tell the President: We do not support a strategy that says: Let's keep spending money and not paying for it. We do not support a strategy that has us in the middle of a civil war, going door to door in Baghdad, when Osama bin Laden last week sent us another tape. Osama bin Laden is the one who boasted about attacking our country. He is the one who boasted about killing innocent Americans. Our National Intelligence Estimate of July of this year says the greatest threat to our country is al-Qaida and its leadership, and they are reconstituting themselves and developing new training camps, and rebuilding. They are in a ``secure'' or safe hideaway in northern Pakistan. There ought not be one acre of ground on this planet that is secure or safe for those who murdered innocent Americans. But instead of dealing with the greatest threat to this country, and that is eliminating the leadership of al- Qaida, this administration has us going door to door in Baghdad, in the middle of a civil war, and now says--they say they want $196 billion in additional funding, and they want it as emergency funding, $4 billion a week for the next year. I think there is something horribly wrong with what is going on here. I think this Congress has to tell this President that change is on the way. I want to mention something that relates to this, because I do not know what this Congress is going to do with all of these funding requests. But I know the next time we vote on emergency funding requests by the President, I am going to offer a couple of amendments. They may be out of order, they may be blue slipped, they may be whatever, but we are going to vote on them one way or the other. That is, we need to start paying for that which we are spending money on. The President can go to a political rally down in Arkansas and say: This is a new George W. Bush, and now I am going to be fiscally conservative. But the fact is, he has recommended all of this spending, the highest amount of spending in the history of our country from this administration. He now suggests that we continue to spend but not pay for it. I want to talk about a couple of pay-fors. My colleagues have often heard me speak about this, but I am going to offer this again the next time we have an emergency funding bill. There is an enterprising reporter named David Evans from Bloomberg. David Evans went to the Cayman Islands, and he went to this little place on Church Street, a quiet little five-story building, and reported that there are 12,748 corporations living here in this little four-story white building. They are not there. This is a legal fiction created by lawyers so companies could avoid paying taxes. Well, I have got some legislation that would stop that dead in its tracks. You cannot move an address for the purpose of not paying U.S. taxes you rightfully owe. If you are not doing your central business there, you cannot claim this is where you are; we tax you as if you never left. I intend to offer that as an amendment to what the President would suggest we spend money for, and not pay for. I would suggest that: Let's begin paying for some of this. Runaway manufacturing plants, that is another one. I have a piece of legislation I have introduced on runaway manufacturing plants. We actually pay somebody, if they close their American manufacturing plant, fire their workers, move the jobs to China, we say: Good for you. We want to give you a tax cut. That is totally nuts. I have tried four times to close it down. There are over 50 Senators who actually support this perverse tax break. About 44 Senators have supported me, and I am going to keep pushing this until we have a deep reservoir of common sense that says it is crazy for us to say, if you close your plant in our country and ship your jobs overseas to China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, we will give you a tax break for doing so. That makes no sense at all. Third, I have a bill I have introduced ending benefits of abusive foreign cross-border leasing transaction. The most pernicious of all of the things going on is American companies buying foreign assets belonging to foreign governments. Let me give an example. Wachovia Bank, formerly First Union, one of the big banks, entered into a sale in-lease out transaction to purchase a sewer in Bochum, Germany. Why would an American bank want to buy a sewer--not a sewer in America, a German city sewer system? Because they want to take ownership and be able to get large depreciation on property that otherwise would not be depreciated because it is owned by a government. So they lease the sewer back to the city which will continue to use the sewer system as if they still own it, but that financial transaction turns out to be about a $175 million tax savings to an American bank. Of all of the unbelievably pernicious tax cuts that exist, this is it. The Finance Committee has taken some action. Good for them. They need to take more action. I testified a couple of weeks ago. I say shut it off, even retroactively. There is no sense supporting something that was fundamentally wrong. No one can justify this nonsense. I am going to offer these three and several other provisions to anything we have on the floor of the Senate that calls for emergency funding. The emergency funding request in itself needs to be inspected carefully. Is there a change of course in Iraq? If not, why not? Is this support of the troops, or is it to support contractors? A young woman named Bunnatine Greenhouse had the courage to give her job up because she was willing to stand up and say: This is the most blatant contract abuse I have witnessed as an employee of the Federal Government. She was the highest ranking civilian official in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They are the ones who monitor and approve the contracts. She stood up to the old boys network and said: What you are doing is wrong. It is the most blatant abuse. She is talking about contracts that were worth billions of dollars, many of them awarded sole source to Halliburton; Kellogg, Brown & Root; and other companies. She blew the whistle. She paid for it with her job. She was an outstanding public official. She had the courage that was necessary to speak out. We need to have similar courage. We need to say to the President: This $196 billion is not about demonstrating whether one supports the troops. All of us support the troops. A substantial portion of this money is also going to go to contractors for which there has been no oversight. There is the greatest waste and fraud and abuse in the history of this country in recent years under this administration's contracting out virtually everything, much of it sole-source, very large, no-bid contracts. This Congress needs to weigh in on these issues. With respect to the value system, the President says we can't afford to cover 3.8 more children who don't have health insurance with a bill that we fully pay for. He says: We can't do that. That is not important. I am not willing to sign that. I will veto it. I will stop it. Then he goes to Arkansas and says: I am a fiscal conservative. I want to shape everybody up. Then the next day he sends us a $196 billion request. Give me some emergency money, $16 billion a month, $4 billion a week, none of it paid for, piled on top of the debt. That is not a fiscal conservative where I come from. That is not what they call those kinds of actions. All of us want this country to succeed. All of us want this country to do well. We need to put this country on track. Yes, we need fiscal responsibility, absolutely. We also need a foreign policy that makes sense. We need to change course in Iraq. We need to describe our values at home through the legislation we pass that represents the best of what America can do. Yes, that includes providing health insurance for children who don't have it, so that young girls such as Ta'Shon have a chance at life. There is so much debate these days that is thoughtless rather than thoughtful at a time when we so desperately need thoughtful discussion about so many important issues that deal with America's future. My hope is that in the coming weeks, we can engage in some very thoughtful discussion about public policy and how to advance this country's interests. All of us want the same thing. We want this country to succeed, to provide expanded opportunity for people. But we face enormous challenges. Those challenges will not be met and resolved by the kind of sloganeering we hear too often these days and by chaining ourselves to certain public policies that we already know do not work. We must force change. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I had previously requested the right to speak for 30 minutes in morning business.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, 5 years ago today, our colleague Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila Wellstone were killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota. It hardly seems like 5 years. I remember that morning I was on the road driving in a van to Grand Forks, ND, going to a meeting when I received a call that an airplane had gone down in northern Minnesota and it was the plane that Paul and his wife Sheila and some staff were on. They feared that the crash had taken their lives. I was thinking as I was coming over here today that the day Paul and Sheila were killed was very much like today--a gray day with rain and moisture. Paul and his wife were on a plane flying to a funeral in northern Minnesota. They lost their lives. They were in the final stages of a very aggressive Senate campaign, one I believe Paul would have won. I believe he would have retained his seat in the Senate. He cared deeply about his opportunities, his privilege, and his obligation as a Senator. A couple weeks ago, I was on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I was walking across the commons of the campus and looked to my left and I saw a small memorial garden to Paul and Sheila Wellstone. I didn't know it, but I asked someone why that garden existed on the campus of the University of North Carolina. They said because it was where Paul Wellstone earned his PhD, where Paul Wellstone had been a college wrestler and, I believe, a college champion wrestler. I had not known that previously. Nonetheless, there is a tribute to Paul and Sheila Wellstone on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Last week, I was visited in my office by about eight people to present me with a framed plaque of sorts because of Paul Wellstone. I was thinking of that as I came to the floor as well. This was a group of people who represented the major automobile industry in this country, the large auto producers, and the independent shops around the country that do automobile repair. I had nearly forgotten about what had gone on as a result of this, but they asked to come and see me and they came in and said: You and Senator Paul Wellstone 6 years ago did something that made a big difference, and we wanted to recognize that work. I said: I am happy about that, but let me make sure you recognize and let me accept it for Paul Wellstone in his memory. Paul sat in that desk right back there on the end. It was on the floor of the Senate that he came to me breathless--and he was usually breathless because he had so much energy and passion about things--and he said: I went to an automobile repair shop in Minnesota, a small family-owned auto repair shop. They told me they cannot get the codes for the new automobiles in order to be able to repair them because the automobile manufacturers have these codes in their computers and they won't provide them to the independent auto repair shops, which means when you buy a car at a dealership, you have to go back to the dealership to get it fixed. In order to get a diagnostic, you have to have the codes and they won't give the independents these codes. He said: Byron, that is an outrage. I want you to hold a hearing on that. I chaired the appropriate subcommittee in the Commerce Committee, and I said I would be glad to do that. Why don't you come and be a part of the hearing and sit on the dais. He was not on the Commerce Committee. I invited him to make a statement and ask questions. So we held a hearing in the Commerce Committee. The room was full of people representing the independent auto repair shops around the country. We had a lot of them travel to Washington, DC. There was testimony by the automobile manufacturers and the folks running these little auto repair shops around the country. They had a big disagreement. I felt and Paul felt it was unfair to the independent auto repair dealers, the small shops, not to be able to get the codes so they could fix these automobiles that were in disrepair. I remember Paul's statement at the hearing sticking up for the little guy, saying these folks running these automobile independent repair stations should not be disadvantaged like this; they ought to have an opportunity to do this as well. As a result of that hearing, the automobile manufacturers and the independent repair shops decided they would work together and find a way to solve the problem. Last week, a group of them came to my office and presented me with something that said what you and Senator Wellstone did required us to sit down and negotiate, and we negotiated and solved the problem, and now we provide the codes to the independent auto repair shops. The folks from the independent shops were there and said we now have a good relationship with the auto manufacturers. That issue got solved because Paul Wellstone was standing up for the little guy. He went to a repair shop in Minnesota and found out the independent owner of that shop was not being treated fairly, in his mind, and in my judgment. So he brought it to the Congress. We got together and held a hearing, and the result is this was solved. It was negotiated in a way that was good for the consumer, good for the folks who owned the automobile repair businesses and, frankly, good for the automobile manufacturers. They have admitted that as well. I thank all of them for negotiating that in the right way. Mostly, I thank Paul Wellstone for the energy he had in the Senate to always stand up for the little guy. The interesting thing about Senator Wellstone, however, is that as he stood over by that back seat over there, on every single issue Paul Wellstone stood up and wanted to know how it would affect kids--especially poor children in this country, many of whom feel hopeless and helpless, many of whom feel they do not have the same opportunities. He was unrelenting in trying to make certain we pass legislation that gave America's kids a good opportunity to be successful. The other issue for which all of us remember Paul Wellstone--and my colleague, Senator Domenici, surely will because he was Senator Domenici's partner--is parity for mental health care because mental health care has not been treated the same way in most insurance policies, and still is not in many insurance policies, as other health care one might get. If one breaks an arm or a leg or has a disease, one gets health care treatment, and it gets covered by their insurance policy. But mental health has been treated differently. Paul devoted much of his time in the Senate saying we ought to be fair and have parity as to how mental health is treated in health insurance policies in this country. I came to the floor to observe, as others have today, that it is 5 years to the day we lost a good friend. He was one of those who said: Here is what I am; here is who I am. I am not trimming my sails to make things sound better for anybody. I am just going to fight as hard as I can fight for issues I care about and issues I believe are right for Minnesota and our country. I have always admired that spirit. Those of us who were privileged to be Paul's friend also know Paul Wellstone was a team. It was Paul and Sheila Wellstone. Most of us in the Senate who had the privilege of serving with Paul and knowing Sheila and Paul as a team continue to miss them a great deal. I wanted simply today to celebrate the memory of Paul Wellstone and Sheila Wellstone and talk about the contributions they made in this country and the contributions through public service to their country.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the courtesy. Mr. President, how could something so wrong sound so good? Well, the answer is the label doesn't describe the problem. This label says it is going to be fine, but the product says: Let's get rid of rail passenger service in this country, except for Boston to Florida, the eastern corridor. Let me describe it in the context of the Empire Builder, a wonderful train that goes up through my part of the country. One hundred thousand North Dakotans rode the Empire Builder last year. That train has a great history, it has a past, and it also has a great future in my judgment. But there are those who come to this Chamber time after time after time and want to get rid of long-distance train service in this country. Why? Because they believe the country is crowded on the east coast and they ought to have good train service on the east coast and the rest of it doesn't quite match up. Look: Every country in the world virtually that has rail service, rail passenger service, has some subsidy for it. We subsidize most transportation services in this country. I don't have a problem with doing that. I think a national rail passenger system contributes to this country in a very significant way. Somehow, to suggest that our rail passenger system in the future should look like this: You have rail passenger opportunities from Boston down to Florida on the east coast, and the rest of it, you know, you don't need it--to suggest that is to ignore a significant part of this country. I support Amtrak. Can it work better? Sure. My colleagues, Senator Lautenberg and Senator Lott, have been great stewards in trying to put together legislation that accomplishes that. But I would say this: I think this country is strengthened and is a better country and has a transportation system that is a better system because we have a national rail passenger system. This is not a new amendment, I say to my colleagues. We have had this amendment around before. It has had different titles, but it is an amendment that says: Let's get rid of long-distance train service because there are people who have never liked Amtrak very much. Well, people probably will want to have train service, passenger rail service from Boston to Florida forever because that income stream of the large population center sustains it. The question is: should we have a national rail passenger system? Our country long ago answered that question and said: Yes, we should. That is why we have a national system. My colleague says: Well, there wouldn't be much consequence if we pass this amendment. Oh, yes, there would. Most of the long-distance rail system would cease to exist. That is what this product is. It doesn't say that on the label, but that is what the product is. I don't disparage my colleague for suggesting it. We come from different parts of the country. He apparently believes that only the eastern corridor should end up with a rail passenger system. I think it enriches our country, across the country from East to West to have a national rail passenger system that works well. It works well for my State. One hundred thousand people a year board that Amtrak system. They like that service. I hope the Senate will decide to weigh in, in opposition to this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield 3 minutes to me?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3342

Mr. DORGAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I commend the chairman and ranking member for rejecting the President's proposal to slash funding for rural health programs by more than 90 percent. The President proposed eliminating practically every rural health program except for the Federal and State offices of rural health. If enacted, these cuts would have a devastating effect on communities in North Dakota and all across rural America. Although one-fifth of the Nation's population lives in rural areas, 70 percent of all underserved areas in the country are rural. I thank the chairman and ranking member for restoring funding for the rural health programs in this bill. One of the big problems in rural areas is recruiting and retaining health professionals. More than 80 percent of North Dakota's counties are designated as Federal health professional shortage areas. Although recruiting and retaining health professionals is a major challenge in rural communities, it is also a problem in some urban settings. In fact, more than one of every four counties in the United States is designated as a health professional shortage area. Residents who live in these areas frequently have to drive long distances or wait to access the care they need. One of the ways Congress has sought to reduce the number of shortage areas is by supporting a program called the National Health Service Corps, which provides full-cost scholarships or sizable loan repayment to clinicians who agree to serve in a shortage area. I was disappointed that the President proposed cutting funding for the National Health Service Corps by $9 million in fiscal year 2008. I appreciate that the chairman and ranking member were able to restore funding to the fiscal year 2007 level. However, I believe that we must ramp up our investment in this program as well as consider other initiatives to reduce the number of health professional shortage areas. When this funding bill gets to conference, I encourage the chairman and ranking member to support the funding level proposed by the House for the National Health Service Corps. The House bill would provide a $5.8 million increase for the National Health Service Corps for fiscal year 2008.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have an amendment I have offered, and it is pending, I believe. It may well have been set aside; nonetheless, it is pending to the underlying bill. It is the simplest of amendments. It is amendment No. 3345, to be modified by amendment No. 3429, and it is a request of the Department of Labor to do a study which is fairly innocuous. Senators Brown, Stabenow, and Casey and I--also, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Sanders as a cosponsor.

Mr. DORGAN. With this amendment, I am requiring the Labor Department to perform a study to determine the number and the types of jobs that were lost by the North American Free Trade Agreement. That agreement was done a long while ago, but we are now in the process of considering additional trade agreements--one with Peru, one with Panama, one with South Korea, and one with Colombia. As we bring another group of free- trade agreements--so-called free-trade agreements--to the floor of the Senate, I would like to remind our colleagues there is very little information about what has happened to previous trade agreements except that we know they didn't work out very well, and so we are going to do more of the same. NAFTA, for example--the North American Free Trade Agreement--at the time we did it, we had a modest trade deficit with Canada. Now that has turned into a very large trade deficit with Canada. At the time we did NAFTA, we had a modest surplus, a very small surplus in trade with Mexico. Now we have turned that into a very large trade deficit with Mexico. So we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. Despite that, we still have folks who huff and puff here about the need to do more of the same. I want there to be a study that talks about what are the types of jobs we have lost as a result of these trade agreements--how many jobs have we lost, in what sectors have we lost those jobs. On October 4 in the Wall Street Journal, this month, the Wall Street Journal said: ``Republicans grow skeptical on free trade.'' It was talk about Republicans, but actually the skepticism among non-Republicans is greater. It turns out the dissatisfaction with our trade strategy is bipartisan. The poll found that 59 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement: Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy, because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products. It is not surprising that people are concerned about this free trade strategy. Free trade is a mantra, a moniker that doesn't mean very much. I like trade. I am for plenty of trade. I come from a State that produces a lot of agricultural product, and we need to find a foreign home for more than half of what we produce, so I don't come to the floor of the Senate saying let's not trade. I say let's do trade agreements that are good for this country, not bad for this country. We passed the North American Free Trade Agreement and we were told-- by the way, this is an agreement that started under George Bush I, it was completed by President Clinton. I opposed President Clinton and George Bush I, President Bush. But we were told that if we completed NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, we would have 200,000 new American jobs created in this country as a result. Two economists, Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott--Hufbauer/Schott they called the study--said, actually, 170,000 new jobs in a couple of years. The supporters of this trade agreement rounded it up to 200,000 new jobs. Let me tell you what has happened since that time. I told you we turned a very modest trade surplus with Mexico, about $1.5 billion, into a very large trade deficit, now somewhere around $60 or $70 billion a year. We have a little program in the Labor Department that requires companies to certify jobs that are lost because the jobs went to Mexico. Then you get trade adjustment assistance for the workers. So what we know is 412,000 U.S. jobs have been certified as lost because of NAFTA under one program at the Department of Labor. In the 10 years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service, and they identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA during that first 10 years. To come up with that, they turned to the Department of Labor. They have this Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. It says these top 100 companies accounted for 201,000 jobs they certified were lost due to NAFTA. If you look at all the companies, that is 412,000 jobs. Let's look at this list, a few of the names. We passed NAFTA-- Hufbauer/Schott--all the political supporters, including those in the Senate, thumbing their suspenders, talking about what a wonderful deal this is going to be for the United States, knowing nobody who wears a blue suit in this Chamber is going to lose their job. It will be somebody else. Let's look at what happens. Levi Strauss, 15,676 jobs lost due to NAFTA. Does that mean people aren't wearing Levis? No, you can find some. Go outside the door, you can find Levis. They are still buying them. You can find places where they are selling them, a popular American jean. Except you will not find a pair of Levis made in this country. That is gone, 15,676--that is a big number. What about just one of them? What about one person--follow that person home from work one day, and that person had to tell their spouse: You know what, I lost my job today. The spouse says: What happened? I don't know, I have done a good job, I worked for them for 15 years. But they told me I lost my job. They are moving the job to Mexico. Why? Because I make too much money, that is why. I get paid $6, $8, $10, $11 an hour, and that is way too much money. You can hire people for much less money than that in Mexico, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. Kraft Foods is on this list. Kraft Foods decided they were going to move their Fig Newton cookies to Mexico, Monterrey, Mexico. If somebody says to you someday: Let's go out for some Mexican food, go to the store and buy some Fig Newton cookies. That is Mexican food. All those folks who made Fig Newton cookies in New Jersey, they say some of them had to shovel fig paste with a scoop shovel, but they made too much money in New Jersey. Is there a better scoop shovel in Mexico or is there somebody who will shovel that fig paste for much less money per hour? Or is there some natural fig advantage in Mexico? Probably not. It is that Kraft, similar to Levis, decided: this trade agreement gives us the opportunity to move these jobs to Mexico. Fruit of the Loom--5,352 U.S. workers in Texas alone. Have people stopped wearing underwear? I don't think so. People still wear underwear. They just don't wear underwear made in this country. Fruit of the Loom is gone, and I suppose there are people who made a career out of Fruit of the Loom and probably enjoyed it. Maybe their neighbors kidded them a little bit: you work down at the Fruit of the Loom place. But I bet they enjoyed those careers. But they are gone because those jobs are moved in search of cheap labor. Barbie playhouses that Mattel made in a Kentucky plant, they shifted that factory to Mexico. The list goes on and on. You can see the list here, the corporations that certify to the Department of Labor that we moved our jobs. These companies moved the jobs as a result of the NAFTA trade agreement. My feeling about trade agreements is this. When you sign a trade agreement with another country, it ought to be mutually beneficial to us and them. I came from a meeting 5 minutes ago about the issue of automobiles--nothing to do with trade, it had to do with CAFE standards, better gas mileage for vehicles. Somebody was talking about we are going to have Chinese cars coming into this country. We are going to see an import of cars into this country because China is ramping up a very aggressive automobile export industry, and we will very soon see small, efficient cars on the streets of this country coming from China. Guess what. We did a trade agreement with China a while back, a bilateral agreement. Here is what we agreed to, with China, a country we have a giant trade deficit with--$230 billion a year. We said this: China, when you sell your cars in the United States, we will impose a 2.5 percent tariff on your cars. And, by the way, we agree that when we sell U.S. cars, U.S. cars made in the United States, in China, you can impose a 25-percent tariff. So a country we have a huge trade imbalance with, the biggest in human history, we said to them: it is OK for you to impose a tariff that is 10 times higher than we would impose on bilateral automobile trade. It doesn't make any sense. In my judgment, it undermines our country's economic interests and it undermines our country's jobs. Yet this country does that. We are going to have, as a group of bills on the floor, Peru, Colombia, Panama, South Korea. Among that group of bills, the free trade agreements have already been done, will be South Korea. Let me mention automobiles in South Korea. Last year, they shipped us close to 700,000 cars, put them on ships and sent them to this country to be sold in America and 700,000 cars made in Korea sent here to be sold to American customers. We were able to send 5,000 American cars to South Korea. Why the imbalance, 700,000 this way, 5,000 that way? Because that is the way South Korea wants it; 99 percent of the cars on the streets in South Korea are made in South Korea and that is the way they want it. They don't want our cars sold in South Korea, they want the jobs there, they want to make the cars there and sell them there. Why would our country allow that to be the case? This agreement that is going to be brought to the Senate, the trade agreement with South Korea, does not address that issue. I could, and I have, spoken at great length about trade on a wide range of issues. But at some point we need to reconcile what we are doing with these agreements and we need to stop this bad habit of negotiating bad agreements for this country. We don't know who negotiates this. But the person who said to China it is OK for you to impose a 10 times higher tariff on U.S. cars than we would impose on Chinese cars, that person obviously doesn't understand whom he or she is working for. I have threatened, from time to time, that these trade negotiators should go out and negotiate--in secret, presumably, on behalf of our country, should begin to wear jerseys such as they wear in the Olympics, so occasionally they could look down and try to remember for whom they work. These trade agreements undermine this country's basic economic strength. People say it is fine these jobs migrate. It is not fine. A country without a strong, vibrant manufacturing base is not destined to long be a world economic power, and we have to understand that. I am not talking about protectionism or building walls, I am talking about trade, and plenty of it, but trade in circumstances where the rules are fair and where this country insists on fair rules. I know my colleague, Senator Harkin, the chairman of the committee, is here and perhaps is about to make a presentation. I do wish to say I have filed this amendment. It is the most innocuous. It says let's at least go back and take a snapshot of this one trade agreement, NAFTA, and find out what happened. What happened with jobs? How many did we lose? What kind? Where from? But apparently even this is controversial. Why? Because maybe we will learn something. Maybe we will learn that these one-way trade agreements are not in this country's interests and that we ought to be smart, shrewd, and tough negotiators, standing up for our country's economic interests, standing up for our jobs. One final point. In a century we lifted this country's standards; expanded the middle class. We said you have to have a safe workplace. You have to have child labor laws, minimum wages, the right to organize--a whole series of rules that lifted America. Now we are saying let's compete with others and allow them to diminish those standards. I am not very interested in doing that. I know the people who made Huffy bicycles couldn't compete for 20 or 30 cents an hour. They made $11 in Ohio. They all lost their jobs because they couldn't compete with people who made bicycles for 20 or 30 cents an hour, so every Huffy bicycle is made in China. None are made in Ohio. I know you can't compete with that, but I don't think that should be the standard of competition because I think by its nature it diminishes economic opportunity in this country. I am going to ask, if we can't clear this amendment, that we have a vote on this amendment. I appreciate the work the chairman of the subcommittee has done. I support his bill and am pleased to speak in favor of the bill, generally, which I have done on a previous occasion. My hope is he will support the amendment I have offered as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I commend Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Specter for putting together a funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that reflects our Nation's priorities making college more affordable, increasing our investment in medical research at the National Institutes of Health, restoring funding for critical rural health programs, and increasing our investment in a number of proven education programs. I was pleased that the bill includes a $2 million increase for the Division of Transplantation at the Health Resources and Services Administration to implement the Organ Donation and Recovery Act. There are currently more than 97,000 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list. Unfortunately, nearly 6,000 people on the list die every year while waiting for a transplant. More than two-thirds of those on the waiting list suffer from end stage renal disease and are in need of a kidney transplant. The good news is that patients with end stage renal disease who require a kidney transplant no longer need to wait for a kidney from a deceased donor or from a blood relative. Advances in medical science now make it possible for friends and spouses to donate a kidney to a patient in need. The $2 million increase provided in the bill for the Organ Donation and Recovery Act will help increase the number of donations from living donors by reimbursing travel and subsistence expenses for donors who could not otherwise afford to donate. This modest investment will save lives. It also makes economic sense. Patients with end stage renal disease require dialysis, which is covered by Medicare. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare spends about $55,000 per patient per year for dialysis. On average, patients with end stage renal disease wait four years before receiving a kidney transplant. This means that every kidney donation made from a living donor has the potential to reduce the number of people on the waiting list and save the government as much as $220,000. I hope the chairman and ranking member will continue to support this important program in conference and support maintaining the Senate funding level.

Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the Senators' support, and I look forward to working with them to support this program and other initiatives to increase the number of organ donors.